Under the Skin (2014) dir. Jonathan Glazer

Top 3's gonna be pretty sexy.

(4?)

Stranger by the Lake, Under the Skin and Nymphomaniac actually are the best three new films I've seen this year.

Think I've reached my 2014 cock quota now.

Wait til you see the Godzilla reboot and why what made the hole in that skyscraper may surprise you.

stranger by the lake opens here tonight, am psyched for cinematic cock.

although i get the feeling there may be some walkouts by older folk who "went to see that new French movie"

I wonder if the theater is even aware that real! homosexual! fellatio! is happening on one of their screens.

The scotch-guarding will tip you off.

not sure why certain people are so eager to damn this sight unseen. Possibly they're just idiots

people who don't share your opinions are idiots

i'm damning it sight seen. that's because it's a really stupid movie

people who share my opinions are idiots

i get a whiff of glazer trying to do the whole french-cinema-of-extremity thing a decade late

wronger than ever

I found this kind of disappointing. V enjoyable in many places, but overall the same kind of long slow shots in lieu of much of anything new, that I'm getting a little bored of. I saw it in the same cinema I saw Upstream Color so I think that has affected my take on it slightly (had a similar reaction to that).

v scared of this

Loved hearing all the strong Glasgow accents talking to Scarlett Johansson - though I instinctively think of Limmy (how ace would that've been, in the club scene)

for a moment i thought you mentioned lemmy

So the script development with this was like:

'what would it be like if Scarlett Johansson walked around a shopping centre?'

'what would it look like if Scarlett Johansson watched Tommy Cooper?' (genuinely awesome, that's what)

etc etc.

There was certainly an undercurrent of displaying a disgrace at the way men behave and conduct themselves in regards to women. Not that its gonna stop Scarlett - its sorta like a distant cousin of Story of O or Maitresse with the SF/Species angle and then all the walking and driving around with nowhere to go was a hint of Patrick Keiller too? It hints at those things without taking anything too far which is perhaps for the best.

Interested in reading the novel its based on - no time right now.

i enjoyed the novel, that's pretty much the only reason i want to see this (just to see how they approached it).

It has very little to do with the novel

really wanted to love this but found it underwhelming. its like they boiled it down to its most basic essence so far that all that was left was not actually all that much. found the switching between gritty uk realism and the sci fi sequences to not be all that consequential, though the mix did remind me of holy motors quite a bit. SJ is brilliant, but id have liked her to have just a little more to do. i think everyone going ape over this just wants to back something that isnt easy to like, but im not sure it was worth the wait exactly - its not a failure, but not a masterpiece either. shame cos i liked sexy beast and birth a lot - glazers an interesting director, but after all the hype, i just expected more than a microbudget slice of kitchen sink scottish sci fi. in fact, i wish all the 'interesting' films this year werent so hyped, id probably have liked her, and this one, a bit more, if i hadnt heard so much about them before. it does have some great scenes, but as a whole, its just a bit hmmmm.

also couldnt help feeling dissapointed that all the realisations that SJ's alien came to were all so familiar for anyone whos watched even a few of these aliens-on-earth kind of films. the arthouse treatment of that did make this a bit different, but not THAT different. felt the film didnt really have much to say - it was the style that made this novel, a bit like birth in a way, as the 'dead-person-in-someone-elses-body' thing had been done before that film too, but it was the icy space of it that made it feel different. bit tired of directors thinking empty space alone can excuse paucity of new ideas though.

i agree with all of that except that i don't think SJ was brilliant

though if she wasn't i don't think it was her fault

this was basically a film that could have come out on warp films. i wish someone had told me this before i went to see it, as i was expecting some sort of coldly sublime kubrickian sci-fi, not a film about how its grim up in scotland, with some vaguely rendered outsider perspective to put that point across. also found the score interesting and effective, but never as haunting/fear-inducing as some reviews seem to have made out. it was a bit too measured and subtle. the whole thing should have been MUCH scarier/eerier.

for some reason, i kept thinking of trash humpers while watching this. i think it was the horrific mindlessness of the beach scene (which still makes me uncomfortable).

how does this compare to Morvern Callar?

in terms of boobs?

i would say MC is the superior film

I read this book around the same time I saw Morvern Callar, I think, and always envisioned Emily Watson in this role. And wasn't Lynne Ramsay attached to this at some point? Maybe not. Anyway if this comes out in the US I'm sure I'll see it. I actually kind of hated the book when I read it.

thought this was genuinely incredible, beautiful. "ambushed by unexpected emotion" is correct. and i left the cinema woozily looking at glaswegians like they were aliens. a totally unique experience, overall.

Absolutely with you jed! Went to see this tonight at Cineworld and was utterly stunned by it.

as i was expecting some sort of coldly sublime kubrickian sci-fi, not a film about how its grim up in scotland, with some vaguely rendered outsider perspective to put that point across.

So what were you watching? Seriously it was never that grim in a gritty way unless it wanted to be (the kids coming up to SJ). I loved the landscapes and Glasgow in the daytime.

Don't think it was that SF either. Like it hints at things without being anything which doesn't automatically translate to nothing.

Kubrick is dead. Stop it.

I would have happily watched an entire film like the first 5 minutes of this, but then it turned into Killer Of Neds, oh well.

krakow, maybe we were at the same screening? 5pm at cineworld?

one thing i loved about this was seeing nightclub scenes that totally conveyed the feeling of being in one.

Yep, I was there too. Never spotted you in the gloom. Really glad to have caught it at the cinema, just before it disappears.

It wasn't alone in being so, but the beach scene was horrifying and bleak.

Any other Glaswegians get excited during the walking around Glasgow bits because they were hoping that they'd spot themselves? Because I was

I was hoping I wouldn't. Actually I wonder how they did this, logistically, especially with the ones who had speaking parts who must have signed off rights afterwards to being used in a film, no?

Yes, and Glazer's said there was some great stuff they couldn't use because people wouldn't sign the release form.

the first guy she speaks to is brilliant. you knew he was real because he was calling Asda "Azda's" which is a detail no writer would pick up. Apart from Limmy, maybe.

[Most of her "victims", who are chatted up by Johansson, and enticed to come and sit in her Transit van, aren't actors, but Jonathan Glazer says "they were talked through what extremes they would have to go to if they agreed to take part in the film once they understood what we were doing.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26559813

This threw me – what extremes did he mean? Were some of the nude scenes done with people they'd picked up in the street? On first viewing I'd assumed not.

yes that's a bit hard to believe. The Celtic scarf guy is so good that it's hard to believe he's acting but on the other hand surely he wouldn't just be a random bloke who thereafter signed up to doing a crazy scene (complete with erection!) of him walking into something like black oil.

The nightclub guys is definitely an actor though - i think he was in The Angel's Share.

"This isn't Tescos is it?"

I got told the guy in the Celtic scarf was an actor from the Neds film. I thought he was real when I saw it. I had seen that guy who wanted to go to Tesco on tv several times. There were only 3 victims, right? So I don't think any of the guys who were successfully lured were just total unknowns.

love this movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089489/

never saw this one:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114508/

only bringing them up because i can't believe they haven't been already!

haha Species is so bad. Lifeforce is pretty bad too but effects and overall insanity make it worth it. I haven't seen this yet but surely Liquid Sky is some kind of precedent as well?

Really enjoyed this, although like Alba upthread it took me a while to stop being affected by the familiarity of the Glasgow locations, especially after SJ picks up her first guy two minutes' walk from my house.

The sequence where we see the guy under the black goop, reaching out to touch the other dissolving victim, will stay with me for a long time. The sound effects and the visuals of the deep blue nothingness surrounding them, followed by the skin twisting and floating like a discarded plastic bag... really haunting.

Loved the way the Highlands looked, and the final shot of the smoke dissipating in the snowstorm was gorgeous.

Watched this again yesterday and agree. The final shot was aiming at Tarkovsky and the like, doesn't begin to match him but its aiming for the stars.

I actually love her transition from alien to...something else - the way her chatter improved with punters to her gentle tap to music but ups and downs - she had to spit out the most gorgeous piece of cake - but I suppose if you compare that w/the Alien in Starman...its different there as he inhabits more of a body not skin but still his assimilation is too quick. He eats a cheery pie when he is nearly dying and enjoys it, doesn't scan..

I am a woman and I enjoyed this movie as well as the soundtrack.

https://news.avclub.com/watch-the-fall-a-nightmarish-new-short-from-under-th-1840036328

new glazer short

with mica levi score

I'm a massive Glazer fan but I thought this was a bit ehhh

same

Is it just the BBC who have it online for the UK still?

Yes, it's a BBC production.

Thanks. One of those rare times I'm frustrated as a TV non-licensee. Oh well, I'll wait until it appears somewhere, doesn't sound crucial viewing.

a man of principles!

Or a man of laziness!

Actually got the Opera browser's built-in VPN to work, so I'll watch it later on the US site, once darkness falls.

I agree that it's a bit something and nothing. There's some cool shots and it's decently unsettling, but I thought there was very little to it. Oh well.

I have a coworker who actively dislikes this one and complains about it being recommended to him as horror, but I think it’s very much in the ponderous genre subset and I get that it’s not for all

Do you mean Under The Skin? For clarity, I was talking about The Fall immediately above.

ahh, yeah. UtS

NEW GLAZER

Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST. Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/PZJ3EFj6PS

— A24 (@A24) May 8, 2023

Mentioned in the Cannes thread. A little put off because Amis, but def interested