ben wheatley - kill list

fromthe director of down terrace

anybody going to see this? looks like it could be real good

I saw it. The first half hour or so was like nothing else. A film that makes you wonder why other people don't film Britain this way. By the end, I wasn't quite so sure, but reading up a bit about it has intrigued me again. See it, though.

This is a v v difficult movie to talk abt wout SPOILERS!! But basically I agree w Alba, that it kinda collapses in the last third, but is v much worth seeing all the same

the last third makes the first 2/3rds a marienbadian wonderland of interpretation.

I wonder if a second medical opinion will be on the DVD extras.

just seen this. the first two thirds does socio-realism (notwithstanding being about, um, contract killers) pitch-perfect; the lead actor is excellent. not sure what to make of the end. at the showing we saw at liverpool FACT cinema a man stormed out of the cinema at the end opining loudly "loud of crap. disgusting rubbish", i could see where he was coming from but i disagree. i have a thing for film's that live in your head like a dirty squatter though.

a friend of mine has a friend who's in this; the former called the latter immediately after seeing it and said "i'm very upset, in fact i'm pissed off at you for this film being so good that i actually watched that fucking scene"

there are at least three scenes in kill list that would make a great "that fucking scene" for another film, but im assuming he meant the librarian. im still lost as to how they did the last bit of that - cgi probably? im not gonna watch this again tbh.

this was bullshit

that was pretty good! especially after thinking about it for a while and reading other people's insights about it.

Kill List is streaming on Lovefilm now.

Watching this and Prometheus in the same week was a bad idea. I feel like i've lost the ability to make sense of plotting. Assuming the fault lies with Wheatley and not with me, it's quite a bold strategy to throw so few bones to the audience when it comes to resolution and motivations.

i dunno, wheatley doesn't spell it all out, but the basics are p obv, no (STILL resisting spoilers, here)?

a second viewing on dvd only increased my admiration for this movie, think it's one of the few genuinely great horror movies of the last ten years

I really enjoyed it as well. Without going into spoilers, i think there are a few questions over the the ending that aren't entirely resolved, but on the whole it was well executed.

I've read that the director wanted to make an allegory for the most recent wars and the corrupt influence of the establishment which kind of contextualises some of the less clear elements.

there are no questions about the ending. It's just nonsense

xpost

i think the film is v gd at hinting at things like that - the two hit men share at least one dodgy mission in a foreign land - w/out whacking you over the head w/ it. also, wheatley seems genre-aware enough to invoke things like terence fisher's devil rides out, another english film that links 'the establishment'/ruling classes w/ (literally) magicked power and control

Jus watched this. Fucking hell.

i'm not sure what to think here.

Watched Sightseers last night. Like a cross between True Romance / Badlands and Nuts In May / Rita, Sue and Bob Too.

Natural Born Killers and Withnail & I

Saw Sightseers yesterday. Great lead performances but didn't really go anywhere interesting with the central idea after the first half.

Watched "Down Terrace" last night, its a terrific film, like Alan Clarke does a crime film. His new one is being shown on Film 4 on Friday.

That's cool. Yet to be truly impressed by the guy but seeing as I don't have to leave my house to watch it...

so psyched for A Field in England, i want it now now now

Thought this was solid. I liked the end more than the beginning, but then I hate Brit gangster flicks and love pagan horror, so... It made sense to me, though 'sense' in that I had a few options of interpretation rather than a singular, definitive one.

Going to miss tomorrow night, bah.

Also, like, the whole ending thing was flagged up throughout the film - did the people who were saying they hated the end miss this or did they just want to ignore the foreshadowing and carry on with the gangsters?

no cinema screenings in Hull this week, bastards, gonna have to watch tomorrow night on small screen :(

i think i'm going to forego the "premiere & satellite q&a" this evening and save it for sunday afternoon. feels like a sunday afternoon sort of film.

I'll be in the pub tonight, so I'll miss A Field in England; I'll have to wait till Lovefilm sends me the DVD.

that were v. good

not spoilering yet

after sunday, go for yer life.

So is there a way for me to catch this now except for cinema or purchase? I only have freeview and the internet, no Netflix or Lovefilm or anything... Sunday isn't a repeat on Film4 or anything is it?

you can watch online via 4OD for £3.49, doesn't look theirs a repeat due soon.

thinking about this today has convinced me it's a wee gem

I want to see this.

(assuming this is the Wheatley thread) I thought that there was a motif in Sightseers which seemed nostalgic about a era when seeing Ancient English Sites in a film would signify it was a horror film but now (or at least in this film) it just means there's a visitor's centre nearby.

A Field in England was really good. An Apocalypse Now for the English Civil War.

i found "a field in england" frustrating and confusing(btw can anyone tell me why they were tugging on a rope to get o'neill?) a lot of the time. still though, its different thats for sure.

something i think i knew but i'd forgotten, Wheatley explained in his little interview afterwards - there's an old myth about needing to be pulled out of a fairy circle if you get caught there

the density of language, the drop into the middle of an unexplained story, the lack of resolution - thought these things were great. because there's a lot of potential foreshadowing i think a second viewing will be v. rewarding. it's obviously intended to encourage multiple readings but i'm down with that - a clearer allegory wd've made for a less engaging movie, even if arguably there cd've been more script without sacrificing ambiguity

it's a deliberate puzzle box with no solution but it speaks to me a lot about England as construct and project and it's pretty beautiful

it really captures the vibe of being in the middle of nowhere in the middle of somewhere on a weathery day, too

I was kind of losing patience with it by the end but it really is astonishing to look at

I have to watch this tonight. It sounds like exactly where I am at right now.

I hope you make it out of the field

It reminded me a bit of this:
http://youtu.be/wd8zi5KuyJc

I watched Sightseers last night (hadn't seen it before, excellent but very bleak indeed) and I'm now really looking forward to A Field in England.

according to sight and sound, wheatley's next film is an adaptation of ballard's high rise

i'm listening

yeah this should be great

this was bullshit

― johnny crunch, Thursday, January 12, 2012 6:07 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OK maybe not total bullshit but I was disappointed.

psyched
http://twitchfilm.com/assets_c/2014/02/WheatleyHighRise-thumb-630xauto-45750.jpeg

Nice! Re-read it recently and really think this could work well. Actually bits of it reminded me a little of that one Wheatley short of him chucking televisions off the top of a building onto other people's heads (<-- might have misremembered this)

Yeah, Ideal was pretty good. It handled its surrealism well for a grungy, 'cult' sitcom. Haven't gone back and watched it since it ended, but I wouldn't be surprised if Wheatley's handiwork wasn't evident. Looking back, it was the ~ideal~ place for him to try stuff out. Wheatley has talked about doing a film version, which is on his IMDb as "announced," but who knows if it'll actually happen.

His "Into the Dalek" episode of Doctor Who is visually quite interesting.

I think I hated all of those TV programmes except Time Trumpet, which was still very patchy, and Dr Who which obv is its own thing and I love it.

Absolutely could not get into Down Terrace when I tried to watch it and ended up giving up on it at only a third of the way through - I also don't really like the main bulk of Kill List except for as a build-to-the-end film (like the Vanishing, which is a middling suspense until the fucking awesome ending). I think this might have something to do with me hating all Brit gangster films ever.

Yeah the gangster milieu was something I had to work hard to overcome in kill list, and probably the main reason I rated ss more highly

His 3-min segment for the ABCs of Death anthology horror movie ("U for Unearthed") is up on YouTube. Trigger warnings for gore and shaky-cam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEBUtraX7KA

.

Hated basically the entirety of ABCs of Death too. That one's okay in isolation, but it's not particularly good either.

Sorry, am hating on a lot of things today, so I'll just reiterate: holy jesus A Field in England. Incredible.

it's definitely my favourite of his films, but it illuminates the others too: they are far more about Real Wyrd England, music, landscape and the family stuff than they are about the gangster milieu that they're subverting

Rewatching Kill List last night definitely made me appreciate the stuff in the build-up more than I had when I didn't know there was going to be That Payoff. And I probably should give DT another go (I keep mentally referring to it as 'Downton Terrace', stupid word associating brain).

last night i kept thinking of Kill List as an anti-camp version of something like The Ninth Gate - the whole film plays thru as a gnostic ritual that we're not admitted into

quote from tom hiddleston on his preparations for high-rise:

"i asked ben to send me films. what i always do is try to paste the inside of my brain with images and music and films and books and give myself a sense of the tone of what we're making. i need to build an imaginative framework within which i can then swing freely. ben asked me to watch (bertolucci's 1970 film) the conformist... he sent me a lot of german prog-rock and amy sent me books on psychological theory from the 60s and 70s"

his character being called R Laing is no coincidence

yeah, that's from the sight + sound interview and he explicitly talks about laing thereafter. poor man's brain probably looks like more than a few ilxors' right now

there's a good scene in which Laing literally gets inside someone's head in a pretty realistic-looking way

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61GPpgvuz7L.jpg

???

sort of, no spoilers of course!

Saw high-rise tonight, with a panel discussion afterwards between Ballard/film scholars; the word hauntological may have been uttered

Really loved this: it definitely dials up the comedy and (just slightly) fleshes out ballard's ciphers, very smartly. I don't know their earlier work but this is definitely of a piece with a field in England in that it feels really rich its references & iconography. There were lots of little details I picked up on but many more I missed, I'm sure. Really well shot & edited of course

Ideal was an odd one, I remember joining it mid-series 3 or something and there was a horrific scene of a guy having his eye gouged out with a spoon with This Heat on the soundtrack and I was like this... is not how I remember this situation comedy

Was it yr favourite situational comedy

It's no my hero

kill list is really not a gangster movie.

Saw high-rise tonight, with a panel discussion afterwards between Ballard/film scholars; the word hauntological may have been uttered

One more for the avoid pile then.

I'd watch A Field in England - from the shots I am looking at its clearly a re-thread of Winstanley

By "hauntological" they meant "has portishead on the soundtrack" tbh

Hope they were all drinking expensive red wine too.

Not during the panel/Q&A but when they wrapped up they said "feel free to come have a chat with us at the bar afterwards" which I took as my cue to escape. I have a feeling they were the same pair I saw give a talk on "the alchemical landscape" last year, tho if that's the case at least one of them is way more irritating than I remember

I think they must have had a bet on to see how long they could go without mentioning amy jump too

Like they talked at length about how the film is situated within the producer jeremy thomas's oeuvre, then it was "wheatley's high-rise" for ages, must have been halfway through by the time she got a mention. It's weird, almost like saying "Joel coen's Fargo"

Not during the panel/Q&A but when they wrapped up they said "feel free to come have a chat with us at the bar afterwards" which I took as my cue to escape. I have a feeling they were the same pair I saw give a talk on "the alchemical landscape" last year, tho if that's the case at least one of them is way more irritating than I remember

I think they must have had a bet on to see how long they could go without mentioning amy jump too

lol pocket posting?

something more sinister than that, I think

Talking abt Brit films in the 40s

"The Britsh have made what they always do: nothing"

- JLG in Histoire(s) du Cinema

never has a repeated letter in a username been more apt

Alberto Cavalcanti and Emeric Pressburger are two notable + great "Brits" from that era!

JLG dismissing the Archers is sad

Watched A Field In England last night. Not sure if I was sold on it to be honest. The whole thing felt deliberately confusing. We ended up putting on 'subtitles for the hard of thinking' and without them I somehow doubt I'd have had any idea what was going on.

Alberto Cavalcanti and Emeric Pressburger are two notable + great "Brits" from that era!

― calzino, Sunday, 13 March 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, and he talks about Hitch (even if he was as much Hollywood).

Rings a lot more true today.

imago I am reading the English newspapers and I have something more exciting for you:

The Stone Roses are preparing to release their third album – more than 20 years after their second, according to reports.

The re-formed band announced a set of live dates in Manchester and Scotland in November, having got back together in 2012, and there have been rumours of new studio material since.

According to the Mirror, a source said: “Ian Brown and the lads have been busy getting their next album ready. It will be album number three.

“It’s a long time coming, but they feel the time is right now. They’ve been back in the studio. Everyone is very excited about it.”

Announcing the live dates last year, another unnamed source was quoted by the Sun as saying that fans hoping for a new album would soon be “getting their wish”. The source reportedly added: “When the band reunited in 2012 there was never any concrete plans. But now they feel everything is in place to record a new album”.

A spokesman for the band did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

Many Stone Roses fans will have hoped to have got their hands on a new album already. The band’s bassist, Mani, having promised a new release for 2015. Speaking two years earlier, he said the band had been “working on a few bits” and, asked when a release could be expected, he said: “2015 man, 2015.”

However, earlier in 2013, Mani’s bandmate John Squire had predicted a new album would take “about five years” to finish.

After a successful first album in 1989, the band got into a legal fight with their record label and did not release any new material for five years. Two years after their follow-up album Second Coming, the band split up.

Now that's hauntological!

Watched A Field In England last night. Not sure if I was sold on it to be honest. The whole thing felt deliberately confusing. We ended up putting on 'subtitles for the hard of thinking' and without them I somehow doubt I'd have had any idea what was going on.

― draxx them sklounst (dog latin), Monday, March 14, 2016 8:41 AM (6 hours ago)

It didn't feel confusing to me at all, and I was still internetting while it was on (admittedly I did get so into it I stopped doing things on the internet halfway through and just concentrated on the film). Like, obviously there are bits that don't make real-world sense and it's left ambiguous (though not really that ambiguous) about exactly what happened, but it remains perfectly true to its own internal logic, and that's all that a piece of fiction needs to do. I made the mistake of reading IMDB comments about this, so I'm particularly prickly about people who didn't get it and then fling accusations at the film rather than questioning themselves.

^^^^srsly

oh no i'm happy with leaving things to interpretation etc, and I think one of the best things about Kill List is that it presents things in a disjointed way and doesn't spoon feed you the plot. I just didn't feel as though that style worked so well on AFIE. Rather than being intrigued, I just felt confused and tipping on the edge of being a bit bored by it. Might need to try giving it another go, but it just felt a bit 'random'. Some sequences were great, others just frustrating and illogical and reminded me of bad student films... Not sure if it was the set I was watching it on, but the way the dialogue was put together meant I had trouble understanding a what people were saying most of the time too.

Maybe it was deliberate, but I found it really hard to understand what was motivating a lot of the characters to do what they did, and 'LOL shrooms' doesn't feel like a very satisfactory answer even though that's probably the reason.

i loved it the first time through and found it tantalizing rather than frustrating, but if you're game for a rewatch, it might be useful to read up on some of the folklore about mushroom circles and the like

huh, I just found out Laurie Rose is not a woman

High-Rise is fantastic. My favorite film this year so far.

Saw a field in England the last night and liked it very much but think that it's quite clearly not bothered about 'making sense' as a plot. Loved the floaty mystic stylised feel and the nature and the characters and the performers and wow did it look great.

Kill list otoh has plots, they just contradict each other and there's no one answer that makes sense within the film's logic. That's fine too, it's quite brilliant without having to tick off plot boxes at the end.

Somehow I made it to 2019 without having seen Kill List or having it spoiled - what a movie!

behold the dark heart of england

it's one of my favourite films of the last ten years

yep.

Still thinking about this. I've been so frustrated and disappointed with the current round of gimmicky or mystery box horror movies...