The Thing (1982)

USA
directed by: John Carpenter
written by: Bill Lancaster
starring: Kurt Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley
seen on 15th February, 2013

Well damn, I sure was not expecting that! My intellectual self got a real feast with the intro and my decadent self was thoroughly satisfied with the rest. A very classy horror indeed. The monster is what it is because the 80s and Carpenter aesthetic and such, but one simply has to admire how muted and down-to-earth the whole process of building the fictional world with the palpable atmosphere really was.. Nothing too crazy or over the top, mainly great soundtrack, a dash of claustrophobia and an unhealthy dose of paranoia and voila. 

And on a personal note: If it's true what they say on the internets and the actual british scientists based on Antarctica really do watch the film on the winter solstice - well then they must be completely crazy because I felt sticky tentacles touching my ankles going to the bathroom at night after watching The Thing and that was when I was separated from the real place by an entire continent and a bunch of seas and oceans.

Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Australia/USA
directed by: Baz Luhrmann
written and directed by: Baz Luhrmann, Craig Pearce
starring: Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Jim Broadbent
comment: 6th January, 2013 + 24th January, 2018

My heart. ♥ As a dark goth teenager I despised this musical because it was about love, whereas now, as an intelectually rampant twenty-something I love it because it's about love! And besides that I become more and more obsessed with postmodern compositions of all the things into one frenzied carnival. (2013)

But it's also interesting to see that such reckless linking must be done with a bit of reck, and Baz Luhrmann himself is the proof of that given it's become his private trade mark of sorts. Out of the three films of his that are comparable in terms of this "post-subgenre", in my opinion Romeo + Juliet functions a bit, The Great Gatsby doesn't work at all and only Moulin Rouge! is made perfectly. The line between this and that is very thin and most likely also invisible. I really don't envy any director that has to pray during production to not cross it. (2018)