Goodnight Mommy, The Visit, and at-home viewings on Monday Morning Diary (September 14)

Capture from taut Austrian horror film “Goodnight Mommy”

by Sam Juliano

As we approach the mid-way point of September, we are still mired in oppressive heat, though some rain in the metropolitan area has managed to cool things off a bit on Sunday.  Still, temperatures in the mid 80’s are predicted for the coming days.  While summer refuses to relent, other ninth month habits are unfolding: the baseball season moves closer to the playoffs, the NFL season has begun, the movie season is starting to heat up and various film and book festivals that annually stage at this time are close to launching.  As always we will be heading down to Princeton and across to Brooklyn for the children’s book Festival in a few weeks, and I hope to see something at the New York Film Festival.

The past week at Wonders in the Dark yielded some of the very best reviews in the on-going Greatest Childhood/Adolescent Films Countdown.  Kudos to Lee Price, Brian E. Wilson, Aaron West and Stephen Mullen for their brilliant writing.  I also would like to extend my deepest thanks to the site readership who provided a barrage of glowing comments and page views under my review of Anne of Green Gables/Anne of Avonlea.  The piece was as dear to my heart as anything else I have ever written at this site in over seven years, and I was moved by the extraordinary response.  The countdown has suddenly come alive in a very big way over the last two weeks, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Lucille and I saw two films in theaters this past week, and interesting enough both were in the horror genre.  I also completed the marathon Shakespearean series AGE OF KINGS, and hope to offer up a detailed round-up soon.  The series winds up with a five-star rating.  I also saw a few other films, two of which are directly connected to the countdown.

We saw:

The Visit         **             (Saturday afternoon)   Ridgefield Park Starplex

Goodnight Mommy   ****    (Saturday evening)  Angelika Film Center

At-home:

Age of Kings    *****    (final third)

Anne of Green Gables (1985)  *****

Anne of Avonlea (1987)   *****

Watership Down (1978)   **** 1/2

M. Night Shyamalen has won some solid reviews for his new film THE VISIT.  Though I was a fan of The Village and The Sixth Sense, I found this new shocker as much ado about nothing – scattered and rather narratively ludicrous.  The Austrian film GOODNIGHT MOMMY however, was harrowing- over the top gore at times, but psychologically trenchant and effective in building tension and having you trying to sort the mystery.

Last week’s links with many revisions:

Over at Attractive Variance Jamie Uhler offers us an authoritative musical capsule piece on The Who’s revered John Entwhistle, titled “One Day of Bass”:  https://attractivevariance.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/one-day-of-bass/

At Movie Classics, Judy Geater has posted a fantastic piece on George Cukor’s 1933 classic “Dinner at Eight”: https://movieclassics.wordpress.com/2015/08/14/dinner-at-eight-george-cukor-1933/

Our longtime friend the film maker and movie lover extraordinaire Jeffrey Goodman has posted Part 29 of his series on four films that recently has impressed him.  His latest roundup contains some great stuff:  http://cahierspositif.blogspot.com/2015/07/favorite-four-part-twenty-nine.html

Jeff Stroud brings a higher level of thought to his wonderful new post at The Reluctant Blogger titled “Blank Page”:  https://jeffstroud.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/blank-page/

Ever exploring new angles the resilient Tony d’Ambra has posted a brilliant piece on “Noir Beat: The Finnish Connection” atFilmsNoir.net:  http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/noir-beat-the-finnish-connection.html/

Over at Patricia’s Wisdom, the terrific book reviewer and friend Patricia Hamilton has posted an excellent review on “Coercion: A Thriller” by Tim Tigner:  http://patriciaswisdom.com/2015/09/coercion-a-thriller-tim-tigner/

At It Rains….You Get Wet Robert Tower has posted a wholly engaging piece titled “TMT: Daddy…Dad, I’m talking to YOU”:  http://le0pard13.com/2015/09/11/tmt-daddad-im-talking-to-you/

J. D. Lafrance’s offers up a splendid review of “Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke/Next Movie” at Radiator Heaven:  http://rheaven.blogspot.com/2015/09/cheech-and-chongs-up-in-smoke-next-movie.html

Shubhajit Lahiri has penned an excellent review of Wim Wenders’ 1975 “Wrong Move” at Cinemascope:                                                                                      http://cliched-monologues.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-wrong-move-1975.htm

Weeping Sam’s latest post at The Listening Ear is titled “Music and Sports” and it includes another fabulous song list, a dicussion on fired Red Sox announcer Don Orsillo and soccer:   http://listeningear.blogspot.com/2015/09/music-and-sports.html

At Unseen Films Steve Kopian offers up a very fine review of “Sleeping with Other People,” which ran at Tribeca last year:  http://unseenfilms.blogspot.com/2015/09/opening-fridaysleeping-with-other.html

Roderick Heath has published a spectacular essay on Horoshi Inagaki’s “The Samurai Trilogy” (1954-56) at Ferdy on Films:  http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/2015/the-samurai-trilogy-1954-56/25816/

At Overlook’s Corridor, the cinematic storm trooper Jaimie Grijalba is involved in a remarkable series focusing on Hispanic American films that have won awards.   The latest in his impressive string is the 2014 Cuban work “Vestido De Novia”:                      https://overlookhotelfilm.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/5dop-5-vestido-de-novia-2014/

Terrill Welch’s incomparably beautiful Creative Potager blogsite offers up all kinds of nature-inspired sublimity, and the latest post “A Narrow Artistic Perspective on a Mayne Island Morning” is a stream-of-consciousness beauty:                                                                                                                       http://creativepotager.com/2015/08/25/a-narrow-artistic-perspective-on-a-mayne-island-morning/

At Filmicability Dean Treadway’s latest post is a superlative examination of the film year 1947: http://filmicability.blogspot.com/2015/09/1947-year-in-review.html

At his new site Enic-Cine, murderous Ink has penned a brilliant piece on 1949’s “Late Spring” titled “Ozu, Pickles and Rice Bran” (Part 1):                                http://www.enic-cine.net/ozu-pickles-and-rice-bran-part-1/

David Schleicher has posted a riveting look at the most anticipated films for the 2015 Fall Season:                                                  http://theschleicherspin.com/2015/09/09/the-spin-on-the-most-anticipated-films-of-fall-2015/

At The Seventh Art the exceedingly gifted writer Srikanth offers up reviews on two Hindi films under the banner grouping titled “Love in the Time of Gonorrhea”:  http://theseventhart.info/2015/08/02/love-in-the-time-of-gonorrhea/