February 20, 2018No Comments

Cat People, Paul Schrader, 1982

Cat People, directed by Paul Schrader of Taxi Driver fame, is a film whose silliness stands tall. Accept it with all its limbs running askew and you’re in for a treat. Be a serious, humourless ass like I am and you’ll ruin it by trying to find meaning or logic. Here is a film who has at its premise a different race of humans, who appeared when their ancestors sacrificed their virgins to menacing black panthers, which used them for sex, (yes) rather than a more common lunch. Some thousands of years later, the last two remnants of the race, a gorgeous  Nastassja Kinski and wide-eyed Malcolm McDowell, are brothers. Every time they try to have sex, because of all the locomotion they literally turn into a black panther and kill their partner. So the only way to live with it is to go for the incest. Except Kinski’s character falls for the zoo keeper, again, literally.    

February 19, 2018No Comments

Blue Collar, Paul Schrader, 1978

Three pals, working on a Detroit auto-plant, struggle to make ends meet. The management is overpowering and demanding, Uncle Sam wants more money by the day and the Union rep is a two faced guy suspected to be in cahoots with the bosses. One day, the three, brilliantly interpreted by Richard Pryor,  Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto, decide to rob the safe of the Union office - although they’re riddled with ambivalent feelings, being Union members themselves. Inside the safe they find no money, but papers indicating to the Union’s illegal practices. Light in tone and approaching comedy at points, the second half of the film becomes darker as the friends try to monetise as best as they can the compromising files but find themselves at odds as the Union tries and succeeds to pit them against each-other. The soft power of the three’s interpretation makes the film. This is Paul Schrader’s directorial debut. 

Contact

Email: bogdan.stamatin@gmail.com
Insta: @bogdanstamatin
Letterboxd film diary

© Bogdan Stamatin 2020-2024