Daily Archives: November 1, 2021

Carpenter’s Gothic [IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS]

From the February 3, 1995 Chicago Reader. –J.R.

In the Mouth of Madness

Rating *** A must see

Directed by John Carpenter

Written by Michael De Luca

With Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, Jurgen Prochnow, David Warner, John Glover, Bernie Casey, Peter Jason, and Charlton Heston.

In the Mouth of Madness isn’t John Carpenter’s best horror movie to date, but it may well be his scariest. What makes it nightmarish isn’t so much its premise — a man set loose inside the mind and writings of a crazed hack novelist — as the many elliptical details that the premise occasions: things that go bump in the head, fleeting suggestions of horrors that brush the edge of our attention and perceptions, like the peripheral events in bad dreams.

In this respect, Carpenter seems to have entered David Lynch territory — an unlikely development, but then Carpenter’s career has been full of unlikely developments. In early features like Dark Star (playing this Tuesday at the University of Chicago) and Assault on Precinct 13, he was a playful auteurist making the rounds of popular genres, nodding to masters like Hawks and Hitchcock along the way. After establishing himself as a suspense and horror specialist in Halloween, his first hit, he took an abrupt right turn into gritty (and implicitly libertarian) action kicks in Escape From New York, then virtually drowned in special effects in his remake of The Thing. Read more

A Matter of Life and Death: A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Written for the 40th anniversary issue of the French quarterly magazine Trafic (Winter 2011). I subsequently introduced a screening of this film at the Centre Georges Pompidou on January 12, 2012 as part of a film series built around this issue, and my introduction (in French and English) can be accessed on video here.  For my original review of this film, go here. — J.R.

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Am I weeping for the death of David’s mother, for the death of humans, for the death of photography, or for the death of movies?

James Naremore, On Kubrick

The scene in question, the final one in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, features a robot boy, David (Haley Joel Osment), and a cloned duplication of a human woman, Monica (Frances O’Connor), who died centuries before and whom David was still earlier programmed by Monica to love as a mother. These characters are shown going to bed together and falling asleep, the robot for the first time and Monica for the last time, after spending a happy day together. Read more