"We're not critics. We're professional fan-girls." --- This blog is dedicated to movies and the entertainment industry. We use random selection to bring into light the best and worst of streaming films and entertainment news.
Streaming Service: Shudder Movie Name/Year: Dark Glasses (2022) Genre: Horror, Mystery, Thriller Length: 1h 26min Rating: Unrated Production/Distribution: Alamode Film, Canal+,
Ciné+, Cinobo, Getaway Films, Lumix Media, Ministero della Cultura, NonStop
Entertainment, NOS Audiovisuais, Panda Lichtspiele Filmverleih, Pierrot Le Fou,
Rai Cinema, Regione Lazio, Russian Report, Shudder, Sky, Urania Pictures S.r.l.,
Vision Distribution, Wild Bunch International Director: Dario Argento Writer: Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini Actors: Ilenia Pastorelli, Asia Argento, Andrea, Gherpelli, Mario Pirrello,
Maria Rosaria Russo, Gennaro Iaccarino, Andrea Zhang Blurb from IMDb: Diana, a young woman who
lost her sight, finds a guide in a Chinese boy named Chin. Together they will
track down a dangerous killer through the darkness of Italy.
Selina’s Point of View: I think Dario
Argento (Creepers, Opera, Deep Red) put all the horror tropes from the
80s into a bag, picked them out blind folded then wrote a movie around what he
pulled. I was seriously hoping to get something a bit better, especially from
Argento. Then again, most of his best works are from the 70s and 80s. Maybe I
should have expected this. I’ll admit that
the worst of my fears were circumvented. Whenever there’s a story written with
a specific disability in mind, you need to worry about how it’s going to be
handled. The trailer for Dark Glasses made me worry about how they would
represent blind people. I think it could have done better, but it wasn’t as bad
as I thought it was going to be. I did think that
some of the scenes going into how the protagonist learned to navigate her life
as a newly blind person were decent.
The scene with
the first kill was also bad ass. It gave me the impression that there would be
some body horror and a slasher feel. The rest of the flick didn’t live up to
that promise though. There wasn’t much body horror after that except for the
tiniest amount at the end. All-in-all, Dark
Glasses was basic. It was a trope-filled, slow, disjointed film. Definitely
not one I would choose to watch again. If you plan to
check it out, it will be available on Shudder this Thursday, October 13.
Cat’s Point of View: When a trailer
opens with the statement that the film you are about to watch was created by a
country’s “Master of Horror,” it sets a couple of expectations in motion. When we watched
the trailer for Dark Glasses prior to putting together October’s Top 20
list, there were some red flags in the teaser that pointed to potential issues.
There was a concern about the perception of those with vision impairment, and whether
the crux of the horror would be based on that concept. I’m generally quick to
play devil’s advocate and lean to the optimistic side of things. I guessed that
it was a perception the trailer put forward rather than the actual plot of the
movie. I was somewhat correct, there. I do, however, remain irked with the
amount revealed by trailers these days. At least it didn’t give away everything
this time. Unfortunately,
while the newfound vision impairment of the protagonist wasn’t at the core of Dark
Glasses’ issues – it certainly had them in spades. My points of
contention with Dark Glasses came from the entirety of the rest of the movie.
It was just clunky. The introduction segment was far longer than it needed to
be. There was nearly 6-minutes of practically nothing. If I were really
grasping at straws I could maybe write some of it off as building tension from
a ‘what the hell is going on’ perspective, or even the symbolism of celestial
events. It just felt pointless and had me looking at the runtime because it
felt like forever.
When the story got
moving, it was somewhat compelling – but felt a little stilted all the same. I
felt some emotion for the characters involved, but also had a lot of
eye-rolling going on. I don’t think I fully recovered from my initial annoyance
if I’m honest. I didn’t quite connect with all of the practical effects, either
– mostly at the end. Bless their
hearts, they tried. I do have one
other positive to offer for Dark Glasses, believe it or not. I didn’t
have problems following along, as I sometimes do when I haven’t really
connected with a subtitled movie. Perhaps I was more invested than I thought I
was, or it made enough sense for me to piece things together without feeling
like I was struggling to read a book and watch something at the same time. Dark
Glasses does fit into
our theme of ominous and chilling films to partake of in October. It wouldn’t,
however, be at the top of my list of recommendations… if there at all.
Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – 50% Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – None Metascore – 45% Metacritic User Score – None IMDB Score –5.0/10 Trust the Dice: Selina’s Rating – 1.5/5 Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 2.5/5 Trust-the-Dice’s
Parental Advisory Rating:
R Movie Trailer:
Production Companies:
Cattleya, Rai Cinema, La Chauve Souris, Cofinova 11, Cinemage 9, Canal+, Cine
+, Indie Sales, Indie Invest, Haut et Court, Ministero per I Beni e le Attivita
Cultuali (MiBAC)
Producer: Marco
Chimenz, Matteo De Laurentiis, Nicolas Eschbach, Gina Gardini, Serge Hayat,
Gianluca Leoncini, Éric Névé, Giovanni Stabilini, Riccardo Tozzi
Director: Stefano
Sollima
Writer: Giancarlo
De Cataldo, Carlo Bonini, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano Rulli
Actors: Greta
Scarano, Pierfrancesco Favino, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Giulia Gorietti, Elio
Germano, Claudio Amendola, Alessandro Borghi, Lidia Vitale, Marco Quaglia,
Yulia Kolomiets, Giacomo Ferrar, Adamo Dionisi, Francesco Sechi, Antonello
Fassari, Ahmed Hafiene, Giulia Maria Fiume, Svetlana Kevral, Michele
Bevilacqua, Davide Iacopini, Alberto Testone
Stunts: Paolo
Antonini, David Zamperla, Mirko Zamperla
Blurb from Netflix:
A grueling battle over turning a seaside town near Rome into a gambling
paradise exposes criminal rivalries and endemic corruption on a grand scale.
Selina’s Point of View:
So, um, I apparently know some Italian. Enough to be able to
understand a lot of this film without use of subtitles. I guess I picked up
more than I ever realized hanging out with the Italian families I knew as a
child. Stuff apparently stuck with me. Subtitles were only really needed for
occasional words.
That was a bit weird. I couldn’t speak any of it if I tried –
other than the odd word here and there – but I apparently understand more than
I realized.
Of all the foreign films to understand, though… why did it
have to be this one? It played on every single Italian stereotype and, aside
from a few visually amazing scenes, it was pretty much bullshit.
Suburra felt like
it dragged on for years. It didn’t help that the majority of the soundtrack was
a single fucking song. It was like I was an angsty teen again listening to some
emotional song on repeat after a break-up. I didn’t even like being an angsty
teen back when I WAS one. It was pretty much unbearable to experience even a
flashback of that point of life.
I might have even been happy to hear a song I recognized,
but not twenty times in the same movie. (I didn’t count. Could be an over, or
under, exaggeration.)
The acting was fine, but it didn’t off-set the horribly
shallow and disconnected plot. Maybe there’s a culturally Italian connection
that went right over my head… but if I was going to recognize culture from
anywhere else in the world, it would be Italy. I grew up around Italian people,
I hung out in Italian neighborhoods, I married into an Italian family… I’ve
always adored the culture, the people, and – apparently – the language. I don’t
think I missed anything. I think it was just badly written.
All-in-all? Not my favorite Foreign Film Friday. I hope we
have better luck next week.
Cat’s Point of View:
I was excited to see that we’d landed an Italian movie for
our Foreign Film Friday this week. It doesn’t feel quite as comfortable to me
as Spanish, but it’s a close second. I’m not fluent in either language, but I
can understand some; provided that the speaker isn’t talking too fast. Between
my music background and the bits I learned from my brother from his time
stationed with the Air Force in Italy, I was fairly giddy that I understood
bits here and there without needing the subtitles.
Of course, that’s what I usually rant about in my reviews of
our foreign films, isn’t it? It might seem like a little thing, but subs can
make or break the viewer’s experience of a foreign movie. I’m happy to advise
that the subtitles for this film were handled well. It was an odd half-on and
half-off the movie letterbox placement, but I believe that helped its
legibility.
I wish I could say that I liked this movie. I just didn’t
feel like I was watching anything I hadn’t seen before time and time again. The
exploration of the connection of mobsters and politics isn’t new. There wasn’t
enough fleshing-out of some aspects of the plot. This might be due to the fact
that Netflix plans to release Suburra
as one of their original series sometime this year. Filming began on the TV
series project in November of 2016. While this tidbit of trivia was confirmed
via articles with Variety and Forbes, IMDb doesn’t currently have any
information on the series. Allegedly, some of the same cast from the movie will
be featured.
One of those cast members would be Alessandro Borghi (Ultimo 4 - L'occhio del falco, Roma
criminale, Don't Be Bad), who played the character: Number 8. It’s a sure
sign that I’m bored with a movie if I find myself pondering a character’s
tattoos more than being interested in the scene they’re in. I have a tattoo
that wraps around my right ankle. It was excruciating over my shin and Achilles
tendon. I can only imagine how unpleasant getting tattooed on the head or neck
must feel.
On the bright side, I discovered the name of the musical
group that performed a song I enjoy and as yet hadn’t been able to pin down.
The entire soundtrack was performed by a group called M83. (For the record,
it’s “Wait.”) Their music appears in all sorts of soundtracks for screens both
big and small. Their song “Midnight City,” for example, appears in Grand Theft Auto V (2013), Warm Bodies (2013), and 22 Jump Street (2014). As a crazy
coincidence, I remember thinking to myself while watching this movie that the
soundtrack seemed so familiar – like someone was trying to capture the vibe
from the Oblivion (2013) score. Turns
out it’s the same group.
That’s my takeaway from this film – tattoos and music with a
side of linguistics. As it stands now, I have zero interest in watching the
series when or if it is eventually released on Netflix. I don’t think this
movie was necessarily bad. I’m just left feeling “meh” about it. Note to
parents. Consider this to be a hard R-rating.
