Antichrist (Lars von Trier, 2009)

7/10
Kind of ironic that on a day like Thanksgiving (in Canadaland) when every other channel has some kind of family movie on, the FNC decided to show Lars Von Trier's Antichrist at 1 in the afternoon. I dig it.
The movie ended about 8 hours ago and it hasn't been far from my thoughts since. I still don't know what to make of it, and my rating has changed wildly until I settled on a tentative 7 that could still go up or down depending on my mood. There are a lot of things to like and a lot of things to hate, and that's not even counting the graphic scenes of genital mutilation. On a whole, the movie seems to be spread thin, with LVT make half-hearted arguments and statements that you're not sure he ever believes and which dissipate as quickly as they're introduced. There is a heavy air of misogyny throughout and Von Trier seems content to approve and condemn it almost from scene to scene. But the acting is spectacular and the story is so gripping it almost seems not to matter...or it makes the discrepancies easier to overlook.
I still don't know what to think, honestly. It's definitely one of the most affecting movies I've ever seen...I felt like I was in a daze for hours after it was over. The opening sequence is one of the most tragic, compelling, arresting, best-shot pieces of cinema I've ever seen in my life and I'd contend it's worth the price of admission alone.

Vampyros Lesbos (Jesus Franco, 1971)

3/10
Probably one of the more infamous entries in trash director Jess Franco's vast repertoire. But aside from the famously awesome soundtrack, and the mere notion of lesbian vampires, there isn't a lot to enjoy here. It's surprisingly tame on all levels, be it as a schlocky occult thriller or an erotic soft porn flick. Little more than a curio of 70's psudo-occultist/psychedelia filmmaking, really.

Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (Werner Herzog, 1995)

5/10
Made-for-TV pseudo-documentary by Werner Herzog about the Italian composer Gesualdo, famed not only for composing music far ahead of his time but for his life as a prince, a masochist, a murderer (his wife and her lover), an eccentric, and a loner...so right up Herzog's alley then. A lot of the stuff in here is scripted or simply made up by Herzog which is not uncommon in his "documentaries" but I don't think it really works as a means to explore the "ecstatic truths" of Gesualdo as it does in his other documentaries (I'm thinking mainly of Fata Morgana and Little Dieter Needs to Fly). The stuff that's made up doesn't illuminate Gesualdo's life any more for us, it's just distracting as we try to decipher what's real and what's fabricated. At an hour-long, the movie feels too compact to really explore anything in detail, and interviews with scholars and historians slam uncomfortably against rehearsal performances by the Gesualdo company. Gesualdo is an interesting character and I'm glad I got to know a bit more about him but as far as Herzog's documentaries usually go, this one is disappointingly tame.