Fishing from the Dead Pool

[Grouchy]

I have been doing this thing for a while where, whenever a talent of cinema dies, I search for a significant title of his filmography that I've never seen and that showcases his work and I watch it just for the pleasure of it. Last night I watched one of those and it was so good I decided I would do this thread and do mini-reviews. I don't know how long I will maintain the custom, but it's worth giving it a shot.

https://pmcvariety.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/tales-from-the-crypt-comic.jpg?w=616&h=346&crop=1

[megladon8]

Sounds very cool! Looking forward to it!

[Dukefrukem]

Totally. Lay it on us.

[Grouchy]

In loving memory of Sid Haig I watched...

https://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/10/b70-5492

Pit Stop (Jack Hill, 1969)

Renamed Pit Stop from the original title The Winner to avoid confusion with the Paul Newman racing vehicle Winning from the same year (although no character in this film ever hits the breaks for a pit stop) this is a treasure of B cinema. Jack Hill in general is the real deal when it comes to this type of films. It's awesome that when watching the first act, although stylishly written and acted, we have the feeling that we've seen this movie before - the loner hero, the abrasive antagonist, the girl, and eight figure racing as the arena for the conflict... Yet each player will have made completely unexpected choices by the end of the third act, which still make perfect dramatic sense. Since this happens with every character it's impossible to deny that it's deliberate. Sid Haig plays the villain Sydney Hawk and it's a compelling performance that completely steals every scene he's in and the film as a whole. His eyes are so expressive here and he's so over the top and yet believable and threatening. It's a career-making turn in a film that's not precisely filled with lightweights despite the low budget - there's Brian Donlevy on his last role and Ellen Burstyn on her first starring one. If there is one flaw to point out it's not even exactly a flaw. It's just that the races consist of documentary footage of real racing (in fact, it appears Hill was fascinated by the dangerous sport and started the project by documenting it raw) and so they don't always match the close-up shots of the actors behind the wheel or exiting their crashed cars. But other than that, this is a goddamn masterwork.

http://www.criterionforum.org/caps/pitstopblu00002.jpghttps://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/images/reviews/290/full/1434976702_3.png

[Grouchy]

Because of Carol Lynley I watched:

https://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?set=path%5B5%2F2%2F4%2F0%2F 5240316%5D%2Csizedata%5B850x60 0%5D&call=url%5Bfile%3Aproduct.chai n%5D

Bunny Lake is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1965)

It took me a long time to begin this mini-review because, apparently, Preminger changed the ending of the original novel significantly on his adaptation, but I couldn't find spoilers to tell me how the book ended anywhere on the internet and it's driving me crazy. If any Evelyn Piper fans can tell me how this whodunit ended on the printed page I'll be forever grateful. Otherwise, curiosity will get the better of me and I'll have to read it. Anyway, Otto Preminger tackles a paranoid thriller in the vein of The Lady Vanishes (where a character goes missing and the plot leads us to doubt whether it really existed or it's all in the lead's head), and I have to admit the resolution is much more satisying than the one Hitchcock presented. It's also better than Flightplan, heh. I love how Preminger starts his movie by subtly setting up, through long takes, the geography of the two main locations where the search and most of the action will take place - the mom's house and the school where her daughter was last seen. Preminger also shows his progressive side when he underlines how differently people treat Ann Lake once they wise up that she's a single mom. The cinematography by Denys Coop is a highlight, specially during a nightmarish sequence set in a dollmaker's shop, but also in the many exterior slices of wonderful '60s London life. Lynley is a compelling actress in a scream queen role before such a denomination existed. But the main appeal of this picture are the many supporting characters, like a pervert landlord played with relish by Noel Coward and the witty, pragmatical constable brought to life by Laurence Olivier. The ending sequence is wonderful and, if nothing else, proves that Preminger had watched and loved Psycho and was willing to go several steps further. That's why I'm so crazy about finding out exactly how different the book's ending was! I wouldn't like to close this blurb without mentioning the creative opening and ending titles by the Bass couple and the Zombies soundtrack.

https://www.cineforever.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/blim1-680x340.jpg

[Skitch]

Good stuff.

[MadMan]

Pretty cool idea.

[Grouchy]

The death of Robert Forster led me to:

http://www.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/182/MPW-91440

Medium Cool (Haskell Wexler, 1969)

Directed by the cinematographer behind Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and In the Heat of the Night amongst other classics, this is an adventurous, experimental film that could only have been made at that period in time. I was expecting a political thriller with Forster as a journalist hero, so imagine my surprise when I was thrown into this mix of documentary footage from the 1968 elections and the resulting riots in Washington (some of which seemingly features the actors playing their roles in the middle of real events) and vignettes with Forster as a more-or-less cynical reporter (to be honest, his motivations are a bit of a cypher) facing different social issues. Of these, maybe the best is the one where Forster interviews a subject inside a building on an impoverished black neighborhood and is accosted by the other tenants - that segment is as current as it was in 1969 and deals with black representation and the utilitarian way in which white media shows the conflicts of the community. Wexler has made a film that's challenging, intelligent, and visually creative, but on purely cinematic terms, it's not perfect or even great. The narrative thread throughout is so flimsy that as a whole, even if I admired it, I wasn't all that compelled. I never really cared where any of the characters would end up because they're not all that well drawn. It might be deliberate for Forster's journalist to be a complete blank (no fault of the actor, who is as good as ever) but his partner or his girlfriends don't get much development either. The only one who stands out is his second girlfriend's son, but that's also the most boring and clichéd subplot. Still, I can only imagine this film must have been hugely influential at the time, specially with US viewers who weren't paying attention to the French New Wave, which gets its due acknowledgement with a huge poster of Belmondo in a girl's flat.

https://blog.laemmle.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ac-medium-cool-c-768x403.jpg

[Grouchy]

My homage to Silvia Montanari was:

https://http2.mlstatic.com/poster-el-desquite-rodolfo-ranni-julio-de-grazia-D_NQ_NP_177725-MLA25500236759_042017-F.webp

The Retaliation (Juan Carlos Desanzo, 1983)

In this noir gangster thriller, Rodolfo Ranni plays Parini, a stereotypical family man and frustrated writer with a declining marriage with Montanari's character Teresa and two children. One night, his old childhood friend Celco calls him out for a drink in one of his nightclubs - it becomes clear he's a pimp and probably engaging other criminal activities. Then, as Parini drunkenly muses to Teresa about the great life his friend Celco is living, said friend is muscled off the road by another car and murdered. His mistress survives the attack and calls Parini with some surprising news - Celco left orders for him to become the new boss of his criminal empire. Such is the premise of this clumsy movie which is a faithful example of the kind of shoddy filmmaking of Argentinian cinema in the years between the late '40s and the beginning of the XXIth century. Of all the things wrong with this film I believe the worst is the forced dialogue - the cast displays wildly different levels of ability (and Montanari is honestly one of the best) but the scenes don't do the actors any favors. They seem written by someone with only a vague knowledge of human interaction. About the kindest thing that can be said about this movie is that it has an intriguing first act and a solid premise but it doesn't go anywhere good with it. The comedic potential of a writer suddenly turned into a crime boss is wasted by the sour approach which makes a bad contrast with the cartoonish depiction of the world of organized crime. There's a very young Ricardo DarÃ*n as a hitman and Celco's role is filled by TV mogul Gerardo Sofovich in what amounts to a metatextual cameo since he was sort of a media pimp to be honest.

https://www.puntal.com.ar/__export/1572222497560/sites/puntal/imagenes/2019/10/27/19---Silvia-Montanari---Jujuy-al-momento.jpg_57698320.jpg

[Grouchy]

Some of these are gonna be embarassing, and you are going to wonder about my position as a member of this respected community for not having seen them. Such is my pick for honoring Robert Evans:

https://cloud10.todocoleccion.online/cine-posters-carteles/tc/2018/10/25/12/137607206.webp

Marathon Man (John Schlesinger, 1976)

With Midnight Cowboy, The Day of the Locust and this, I believe it's time to delve a little more actively into Schlesinger's filmography. Unlike those other two, though, this is an entertaining thriller that, while handling some mature themes and attitudes, aims for simple macabre entertainment. Hoffman is absolutely perfect as Babe. The movie is kind of a unique coming-of-age story with Hoffman as an introvert, conflicted man child who wants to make ammends in life for his father who killed himself when he was a child as a result of being prosecuted by Senator McCarthy. Enter his brother, the spy known simply as Doc (played with relish by Roy Scheider, man, that guy's been in some entertaining cinema) caught in a web of violence with an ex-nazi (the famous performance by Laurence Olivier) closely inspired by Josef Mengele. With William Goldman adapting his own novel and cinematography by Conrad Hall, this is the kind of grand Hollywood film that Scorsese is referring to about when he says artistic high budget cinema is losing ground in the modern landscape. I mean, just look at the list of names I just mentioned. Outside of the world famous dental torture sequence, I was highly impressed by Doc's fight with the assassin in the hotel room - and I wonder if Cronenberg intended to one-up this scene with the sauna fight in Eastern Promises. I think the third act is weaker than the rest, and Hoffman's final confrontation with Dr. Szell was somewhat disappointing - probably because Schlesinger was a brilliant filmmaker but not an action director. Oh and, by the way, the Amazonian jungle is not on Uruguay, do your research, movie.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0257/3165/products/RSD15069.jpeg?v=1497389391

[MadMan]

Marathon Man is a really good 70s thriller. Lots of fun even if it is goofy at times, and parts of it work better as horror than suspense. I saw it years ago on TCM.

[kuehnepips]

Marathon Man is a really good 70s thriller. Lots of fun even if it is goofy at times, and parts of it work better as horror than suspense. I saw it years ago on TCM.

I saw it in a cinema when it came out ... :D

[Dukefrukem]

I watched MM recently, and I was bored by it.

[MadMan]

I saw it in a cinema when it came out ... :D

Lucky.

[Grouchy]

I decided I needed to do a Halloween movie and I turned to Édith Scob's legendary performance in...

https://www.oldgothichorror.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Scob-Edith-1226-2.jpg

Eyes without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960)

1960. Perhaps the greatest year for Horror in the history of cinema? We have high class milestone classics like Psycho and Peeping Tom (both anticipating the slasher era), B-list masterpieces like Little Shop of Horrors (introducing Jack Nicholson!), Village of the Damned and Black Sunday, Poe adaptations like Ibáñez Menta's Masterworks of Horror and Corman's The Fall of the House of Usher, a great Hammer entry like The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll and this one, misunderstood and despised on its original release but hugely influential for generations of future filmmakers. This movie's footprints are all over Jess Franco's filmography just to name one example, and Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In is almost an unofficial remake. So how does it fare today? Well, I believe the movie's main appeal is its unique, grotesque imagery. There's a dreamlike quality to the whole affair that sells the movie based on atmosphere alone. Maurice Jarre's soundtrack and Eugen Schüfftan's cinematography are big contributors to this heavy mood that sets the film apart from its contemporaries. Franju's classic is also notorious for pushing the boundaries of censorship. The filmmakers were strongly urged to discard some elements that are key to the novel it's based on, such as explicit gore, animal abuse and Nazi-like mad scientists. So the screenplay, a collaboration between Claude Sautet and the Boileau-Narjerac team (of Les Diaboliques and Vertigo fame), is heavy on suggestion and implied violence, although the surgery scenes are excruciating enough and late in the film there's a knife to the throat that sticks on the mind - I wasn't expecting that on a 1960 title. Perhaps as a result of all these impositions, I was left yearning for some missing dramatic elements. How did the doctor acquire such precise surgical skills? Why does he have car accidents so often? Is he a drinker? Is he doing it on purpose? What is the nature of his relationship with his female assistant? I feel the characters are left mysterious enough that there was room for more development. Not for Scob's Christiane, though. Her performance is great and she manages the difficult feat of making an antagonist that we can empathize with and relate to even as she's calmly examining her father's restrained victims.

https://alianzafrancesa.org.ec/quito/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2018/08/yeux-sans-visage-large.jpg

[MadMan]

Ah that one is so good. I should rewatch my Criterion copy some time. I actually first saw it thanks to TCM.

[Dukefrukem]

Do Lawrence G. Paull.

[Grouchy]

In memory of Luis Ospina, whom I briefly met at the Buenos Aires Film Festival:

https://www.retinalatina.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/gal_todocomenzoporelfin_10.jpg

Everything Started at the End (Luis Ospina, 2015)

Like I said, while I briefly met and talked with the director of this movie, I only read about him later and to be honest I still hadn't watched his stuff when I read he passed away. Ospina was the surviving member of a trio of adventurous filmmakers who came of age in the early '70s, and this documentary (which is as long as The Irishman) is their story and the one of a lot of writers, set designers, editors, musicians and poets who lived a Bohemian, rock & roll lifestyle for the better part of two decades, working in the margins of the mainstream (and occassionally adapting to it) in CalÃ*, Colombia and who appropriately called themselves Caliwood. They were Ospina himself, who directed two genre films (Pure Blood and A Blow of Life) and a humbling amount of documentaries, Carlos Mayolo (a sort of alcoholic Colombian Orson Welles who did everything) and Andrés Caicedo, better known as a writer and poet (although he also delved in filmmaking and wrote two Lovecraft adaptations which he tried to sell to Roger Corman) who killed himself at the age of 25 per his stated wishes. This epic documentary starts with some personal statements explaining that the film changed after Ospina was diagnosed of cancer, which I also didn't know when I talked to him. Look, I'm not usually a fan of cinematic autobiographies but this film simply has to be experienced. Like I said, it's three and a half hours long, but you leave the theater feeling like you actually met a group of human beings for an extraordinary amount of years. It's a labor of love devoted to the archive for posterity of an artistic collective which, even in a disbanded state, continued to produce work. It's also a worthy and sometimes brutal meditation on a number of circumstances present on any life. Considering all this Irishman controversy, this is something that really benefits from a theatrical experience like the one I had at the Mar del Plata film festival. It's simply easier to watch a demanding, epic work of art when you can't hit pause for any reason.

https://enfilme.com/img/content/todo_comenzo_por_el_fin_Enfilm e_6642n_675_489.jpg

[Grouchy]

https://static2.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Mission-Impossible-3-Davian-Mask.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=738&h=369&dpr=1.5

For Syd Mead I watched Mission: Impossible III, a movie where he is credited as "mask maker design". Funny this was the only Mission: Impossible I had left to watch and it came up so short after The Risible Skywalkers. Well, I think this might be the only film directed by Abrams I didn't actively dislike (yes, even Super 8 I find so overrated) because it's anchored in the simple but effective premise of an in media res flash-forward of a damsel in distress getting shot in front of Ethan Hunt and how do we get there. I get that humanizing Hunt was a new feature of the character back in 2006 - by 2019 I think the makers of the M:I franchise (which clearly include Cruise himself) understood that Hunt is beyond human being status and gave a little more room for the supporting characters. The movie has some fun set pieces and ideas but to be honest I can't tell if it's better or worse than the second one which at least had John Woo's graceful style going for it. After hearing so much about Hoffman's villain in this installment I found him underused. And I can't really get over the fact that the IMF acronym actually should stand for International Monetary Fund.

1. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
2. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
3. Mission: Impossible
4. Mission: Impossible 2
5. Mission: Impossible III
6. Mission: Impossible - Fallout

https://estaticos.efe.com/efecom/recursos2/imagen.aspx?lVW2oAh2vjOUUK589v RInhu1E29jOAOxQ4TncnkXVSTX-P-2bAoG0sxzXPZPAk5l-P-2fU5UotMKicTN5VFKD68ENZaeqQ-P-3d-P-3d

For Sue Lyon it was The Night of the Iguana, a Tennesee Williams adaptation from none other than the master John Huston. A Tennessee Williams adaptation by Huston is basically what the doctor ordered for any waking moment in life and this one doesn't disappoint. Richard Burton stars as Reverend Shannon, a priest who was defrocked due to his sexual behavior and who runs a hellish group of church-going old spinsters through a Catholic road trip in Mexico. Concealed amongst the tourist group is Sue Lyon, playing off her Lolita typecasting as an underage temptress whose rich father sent away from a stalker and who complicates things for Shannon. And that's even before Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr's characters are introduced into the story! Really, I set out to write a review but at this point I'm just resorting to writing names to convey how awesomely written, directed and acted this is. I'm not enough of a theater buff to comment on its strenght as a Williams film but as a film it's fucking bananas. I'd love to see how this would play with a modern day "woke" audience.

[MadMan]

Heh I prefer Fallout the most out of the MI series. Three is decent.

[Skitch]

Yeah your M:I ranking is all scrambled up.

[Grouchy]

I'd really enjoyed Rogue Nation but hated Fallout, and I think it's because it just got two pretentious with its running time and multiple storylines - these movies should live and die on the strenght of their suspense/action set pieces. I said before none cares about Hunt, but scratch that, none cares about any character, they can all be enemy spies or be wearing a mask at any time.

https://live.staticflickr.com/22/26069765_c654e194d2_z.jpg

For Anna Karina it was Pierrot le Fou. Yes, a 32 year old cinephile just watched this for the first time. I don't know how to explain myself other than that I'm not really the biggest Godard fan. I enjoy his good stuff like My Life to Live or Breathless but get lost when it comes to his cinematic essays or movies where he completely departs from narrative. Fortunately, Pierrot is not completely one of those, and it's anchored by Belmondo and Karina's natural charisma as a typical French New Wave "lovers on the run" combo. Godard is again doing his deconstructivist takes on pulp fiction, and this might be one of his greatest achievements on making a sort of anti-movie which is constantly reminding us that we're there and that this was made by a group of filmmakers with a lot of aesthetic baggage. Look, I'm not going to kid myself that I can offer some new perspective on a classic like this one, so let me privately rejoice that I've covered yet another huge gap on my mental film library.

[Grouchy]

https://r1.abcimg.es/resizer/resizer.php?imagen=https%3A%2F %2Fstatic2.abc.es%2Fmedia%2Fpe liculas%2F000%2F014%2F401%2Ftr ampa22-2.jpg&nuevoancho=620&medio=abc

For Buck Henry I saw Catch-22. The fact that this film and I hadn't crossed paths so far probably has a lot to do with the Joseph Heller novel not being the formative classic in Argentina it obviously is in U.S. culture. I think a lot more people in South America gravitate towards Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five for this kind of narrative. Without having read the source material but being aware of its existence, it was obvious to me that the unusual structure of the film was an attempt to translate the experience of reading Heller to cinematic language. And it worked - I felt like I was drawn into a world filled with nuance and complexity like few others. Buck Henry's screenplay (praised by Heller himself) had a lot to do with that but other crucial components were the cinematography by David Watkin (seriously, Catch-22 has some long takes involving helicopters and turrets that are incredible for its time) and of course the awe-inspiring cast roll call - including Henry himself, Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, Martin Balsam, Art Garfunkel, Charles Grodin, Anthony Perkins, Martin Sheen, Jon Voight and Orson Welles. The movie underperformed notably at the box office, and it has been conventionally agreed that it was because of the success of Patton and M.A.S.H. earlier that year and artsy war movie overkill. It's a shame because while I still haven't seen Patton this flick has aged much more gracefully on a technical level than the Altman comedy.

Oh and by the way, I've been reading Ed Snowden's book Permanent Record which is very engrossing, and the fact that the dead soldier in Catch-22 has the same last name kind of blew my mind a little.

[Grouchy]

https://images2.static-bluray.com/reviews/16897_5.jpg

For the writer Peter Wollen I watched The Passenger. Same as with Godard, I started watching Antonioni's most famous films until I stopped enjoying his work and so a considerable amount of films got left out. Such was the case with this incredible slow-paced cross between a thriller and an intimate character study. Nicholson dials down his acting style for the part of David Locke, a reporter who sees an opportunity to fake his death and escape the constraints of his life when a casual acquaintance he made on a plane to Africa dies in a God-forsaken hotel of a heart condition. Antonioni's framing has never been more exquisite. My jaw was literally on the floor for quite a few shots, although there are two very famous ones that every review mentions - the in-shot flashback that goes from Locke tampering with the passports to the balcony where he's talking with his friend Robertson a few days ago and the one before last that literally left me scratching my head and wondering how was it even possible to film that. Although a rewatch and reading about it gave me some answers the first effect was one of absolute amazement. The film's story might prove difficult to follow for audiences not used to a slow pacing and paying attention to information that's very subtly delivered, but there is an urgency and suspense to this plot that other Antonioni films lack and that makes it stand out in my opinion. This plays like an intellectual version of a Tom Ripley novel.

[Grouchy]

https://static.filmin.es/images/media/5932/1/still_0_3_790x398.jpg

Branded to Kill featuring Joe Shishido is not my first Seijin Suzuki film (that would be Princess Raccoon) but it is my first foray into the weird yakuza output that he's mostly famous for. The movie starts out great, with cool music and stark black and white compositions announcing that we're in for a stylistic fear. It eventually completely loses track of this tone by going completely bonkers, which I guess was what Suzuki was really going for. Reading about the film afterwards, it seems like a great deal of its satire is lost nowadays because of our distance with the original yakuza films it's making fun of and their customs. However, the movie is still enjoyable for its weirdness and occassional detours into psychological Horror territory. It just failed to blow me away like I expected it to.

https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w780/kZXcCr2h6uLcy2RcmccbBtyRjhq.jp g

Every Man for Himself is a classic raunchy comedy from the Argentinian duo made up of Alberto Olmedo and Jorge Porcel, and I watched it because of the late Beatriz Bonnet, who made headlines after her death for the complete lack of attendance to her funeral (!). Even admitting Olmedo and Porcel are good comic actors, the movie is difficult to defend in any way. It doesn't have any coherent plot, instead resting on extended gag scenes until the two actors are randomly reunited for the final reel, and the jokes are definitively dated.

[Grouchy]

https://pics.filmaffinity.com/o_ritual_dos_sadicos-263742902-large.jpg

Awakening of the Beast (1970, alternatively titled Sadistic Ritual) is the movie I chose to watch in mourning of José Mojica Marins a.k.a. Coffin Joe, the Brazilian legend of Horror films. Here's the catch, though - I'd already watched the official Coffin Joe trilogy, made up of At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1963), Tonight I'll Possess Your Corpse (1967) and the late Embodiment of Evil (2008), but I was aware Marins had written and directed (as well as starred in as Coffin Joe) many other Horror flicks. So, what were those movies about, if not good old Coffin Joe's relentless pursuit of the perfect woman to further his lineage with? Well, prepare yourself to be as surprised as I was. At the start of this absolutely insane motion picture, a group of psychiatrists shot in dramatic B&W chiaroscuro are heatedly bullying one of them over his claim that drugs lead to depravity. This doctor tells a number of exemplary stories about sex and drugs, which run a wild gamut of meanings of the term "depravity", from consensual orgies to rape in the workplace and a really strange one where a rich lady spies on her young daughter having sex with the black butler while she does cocaine and caresses a donkey's head (!). We see all of these in lurid flashbacks, often taking place in the same abandoned warehouse location. Mojica Marins plays himself and sits at the table with the psychiatrists, although by his own admission it's unclear why he would be enjoying such scholarly company.

After this first half of the film the psychiatrist is suddenly accused of doing illegal experiments on subjects by administering them LSD, and apparently he has admitted as much in his latest book. The accused party proceeds to tell his story in flashback mode. As he was finishing his book on drugs and the human subconscious he caught the end of a TV interview with Mojica Marins, a so-called "trial of the people" where Marins and his alter ego Coffin Joe are tried for obscenity and compared unfavorably with more prestigious Brazilian filmmakers like Glauber Rocha and Anselmo Duarte. Somehow the interview inspired him to find four drug addicts (characters taken from the first half of the film, including the coke fiend rich lady with the donkey fetish) and offer to pay them to take LSD, a proposition the four junkies all happily agreed to. The psychiatrist bought a film poster for The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968) and injected LSD in their veins as they were contemplating it, which we can all agree would make anyone trip balls. The four subjects then descend into Hell with Coffin Joe as a guide/host and the whole film goes technicolor! There is all kind of wonderful weirdness in this last act, but my favorite are a series of smoking assholes with grotesque faces painted on them. We then go back to the framing story and the psychiatrists are about to hang their colleague when he sweeps the rug from under them by revealing (with the accompanying evidence) that he only injected his subjects with plain water, which could have provoked an embolism, I guess, but definitively did not cause the hellish visions they experienced. So, he reveals, drugs are not the cause of depravity (and I guess he should pulp his latest book) and are not dangerous if taken in moderation - the real darkness lies in the human soul and drugs are just an excuse. Everyone goes home happy and the argument is revealed to be a very artistically lit TV panel. The film ends on a close-up of a smiling Mojica Marins yelling "cut" at the camera.

This film showcases everything that made Coffin Joe so special. Even considering his modest funding and commercial approach (which is referenced often in the film, with the real-life Coffin Joe Horror comic books included in the opening titles and as part of the plot, as apparently all drug addicts read them) the guy was an auteur who brought a philosophical approach to Horror. He wasn't subtle and his messaging is often murky as all his films end up being excuses for lysergic glimpses of Hell, but damn if there isn't substance to them. Included below are a film poster which you definitively shouldn't admire under the influence of LSD and a link to his first and most highly regarded film with English subtitles. You can thank me later by finding me a woman who's worthy to carry my seed and further my lineage.

https://i0.wp.com/zinemaniacos.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/O-Estranho-Mundo-de-Z%C3%A9-do-Caix%C3%A3o-poster.jpg?ssl=1


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vO-fYYicKA

[Dukefrukem]

Oh man. I can't tell if these movies are my jam.... Only one way to find out

[Grouchy]

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a3/f6/18/a3f618e1e6cff348b725ec2238d16e e2.jpg

For Kirk Douglas I watched Seven Days in May, the fifth of his seven team-ups with Burt Lancaster. It's a dystopian political thriller with both feet firmly stepped in a Cold War climate that imagines what a coup d'etat in the US might look and feel like. The film is interesting enough, with a lot of talent behind and in front of the camera, but it failed to grab me for some reason. It might be that it's a dialogue heavy work where most of the conflict comes from elaborate ideological exchanges between characters that all feature an exaggerated degree of nobility, or that I didn't find a lot of the situations presented plausible. It nevertheless has a couple of great scenes and despite this being Kirk's homage I have to admit Burt completely steals the film as the general hell-bent on making America great again. His confrontation late in the film with Friedrich March who plays the elected president, while being one of the moments I'd qualify as implausible, is an acting and directing show-stopper. The scenes with Ava Gardner playing Lancaster's spurned mistress are not as good, though no fault of the actress - they are simply there to have some love innuendo in what's otherwise a very sober movie, I guess. As a Frankenheimer film I'd rank it below Ronin and as a Douglas-Lancaster flick, probably below Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Oh, well. Can't all be complete winners.

[MadMan]

I really liked Seven Days in May. I thought it was one of Frankenheimer's best. Also it seems a bit more relevant these days.

[Grouchy]

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For Stuart Whitman I watched Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines; Or, How I flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes. This bloated title precludes an equally bloated blockbuster comedy about the early days of aviation and its pioneers. The premise is simple and tantalizing in a Wacky Races sort of way - a British newspaper tycoon is persuaded by his daughter (Sarah Miles, an Amelia Earhart wannabe and suffragette) and her fiancé (James Fox) to offer a prize for an international air race between London and Paris, which of course must be won by a Brit. The cast of characters and actors then hears about the prize from all across the globe, including a womanizing Frenchman (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a bumbling German Coronel (Goldfinger's Gert Fröbe), a fly-crazy U.S. cowboy (Whitman), an Italian millionaire (Alberto Sordi), the Japanese guy (Yujiro Ishihara) and another posh Brit (Terry-Thomas) who becomes the Dick Dastardly of the picture. This is one of those long, expensive 1960s productions with a musical intermission. And there are a lot of interesting aspects to it, mostly the effort spent in portraying real vintage planes taking off and landing - this must have been a hell of a shoot, apparently made even more grueling because Whitman and Miles (who have their fair share of romantic scenes since the Yank attempts to steal the girl from the Brit) hated each other's guts after what Wikipedia describes as an "ill-timed pass" on Whitman's part.

Ultimately, the movie fails not because of its length but because it balances its many, many sub-plots and characters unwisely. There's no real villain to the piece, for example. Terry-Thomas is a thug who sabotages his enemies but he has no personal stake against any of them, and the Germans are made the subjects of constant ridicule - we must remember this is a film made by people who actually fought in WWII. More egregious is the treatment given to the Japanese guy, who is portrayed as the best pilot of them all but crashes immediately after take-off when his machine is sabotaged and completely disappears from the film. It's clear the writers didn't know what to do with the character and the culture, and there's a mention of "poisoning his chop suey" which I'm not sure if it was intended as a mistake on the part of the characters or genuine ignorance. The best character is the Italian Conte played by Alberto Sordi - his are the only scenes that got honest chuckles out of me, and also, well, he's an excellent comedian. Benny Hill is also in the movie for a couple of shots, a waste of another brilliant performer.

Overall, this is an artifact of a bygone era as much as the planes it's filled with, not without its charms but lacking real entertainment value.

[Grouchy]

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Max Von Sydow shines in Through a Glass Darkly, the most stage-bound film I've seen from Bergman and one which, not surprisingly, became a theater play afterwards. I mean stage-bound in the best possible sense - it has a defined three-act structure, four brilliantly played characters on holiday on an island, and even a play-within-a-play. The plot concerns Karin, Von Sydow's character's wife, who has just been released from a psychiatric hospital for what we are led to understand is severe (and apparently receded) schizophrenia, going off to this island resort with his husband, father and younger brother. This young brother in particular has a severe case of incel-itis which provokes his subsequent mysoginia and some spicy brushes with his sister. This film literally has everything - conversations with God, a typically Bergman-ish domineering father who is also a surrogate for God, deep focus conversations, incest... It's to Ingmar's credit that none of it feels forced. I must confess I was more impressed with Harriet Anderson than Von Sydow himself - her breakdown scene is very believable. I mean, I haven't been around that many schizos, but I'm willing to bet they act a lot like this during an episode. Another highlight is (as usual with Bergman) Sven Nykvist's sharp, expressive black and white cinematography. I dare say Nykvist was essential to all of Bergman's films actually working on screen, since his framing often makes us feel the inner conflicts of the characters whereas the abundant, intellectual dialogue only serves to illustrate them. I did not expect the film to end the way it did but it felt appropriate and, if not subtle, it confirmed what I thought about what the father figure meant in the story. It appears The Berg later regretted this ending and judged it a cop-out. The film constitutes a loose thematic trilogy with Winter Light and The Silence.

[Grouchy]

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I knew I had seen Crocodile Dundee at some point but remembered next nothing about it, and the other movie with a more or less central role for Mark Blum was Desperately Seeking Susan which was a lot fresher in my memory. It's kind of bizarre that this was such a huge cultural phenomenon during the '80s - I remember my Mom loved it and during my childhood plenty of people around me referenced it. It's really... kind of bland. Seriously, I would even go as far as saying it lacks conflict. It has two distinct halves, both playing on the "fish out of water" formula... The first is the city reporter adrift in the Australian outback and sort of promises an adventure movie that never comes to fruition, while the second is pure '80s "romantic comedy" with Dundee in NYC. This latter half brought back the childhood memories, specially the scenes where Dundee can't understand what the bidet is for and when he greets everybody he sees in the streets. But the movie as a whole is curiously lacking drive. It's like they just shot scenes they thought would be funny but neglected making a compelling story. Rod Ansell, the real-life poacher that inspired Dundee, lost a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Paul Hogan and later descended into meth addiction, paranoia (he apparently thought the Masons were controlling his life) and ended up dead shooting it out against the Australian cops. Oh, well. Now there was a better movie.

[MadMan]

I really like that one, but the second one is more fun. The third Dundee movie sucks.

[Skitch]

I also grew up with the phenomenon that was Crocodile Dundee, so I picked up on VHS. I was surprised that the original was kinda dull, and the second one was more fun. Certainly didn't feel that way back in the day.

[Grouchy]

Stuart Gordon double feature! I figured the guy was important enough (and neglected by the mainstream, as genre directors often are) to make it two movies this time. Plus, I'm on fucking quarantine.

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First off was Dolls, a pulpy, fun supernatural thriller which could have easily been a Tales from the Crypt TV film. The film shows Gordon's talent for playing off eccentric characters against one another, as a group of people (a little girl with her abusive father and stepmother, a fat, childish man and a couple of sexy punk rock girls) seek shelter from a storm in what is quite clearly a haunted house, owned by a couple of old toy makers. Hilarity and gruesome killer dolls ensue. The cast of virtually unknowns (at least to me) fares quite well, with the old couple being particularly memorable. I know many casting directors who'd kill to find an old lady with such a peculiar, unnerving gaze. The movie doesn't deviate too much from the stereotypes of these kind of movies, but the resolution is surprising enough to make it enter the director's canon of goodies.

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King of the Ants is a 2003 fick with a DTV feel that's seriously one of the most fucked up stories I've ever seen. It's about a drifter who is a bit of a sociopath and gets recruited as P.I. and later assassin by a gang of construction mobsters led by one of the non-Alec Baldwins, with gruesome and twisted results. The Gordon who would go on to make the darkest comedies imaginable (Edmond and Stuck) begins to show his evil head here and, like Eli Roth wrote in his instagram eulogy, he knows exactly what buttons to push to make the audience squirm. I've always had a huge crush on Kari Wuhrer and she's in some of the lamest erotic thrillers ever made, so it's nice to see her in a solid movie because she's a good actress to boot. However, I wouldn't put this among Gordon's best work - the ending in particular felt perfunctory and rushed. Not bad, just badly executed, and unlike some of his other projects, the low budget really shows here. By the way, this was one of The Asylum's first productions before it went full mockbuster and Sharknado.

[Grouchy]

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Ever since I started this thread I've seen a fair share of good flicks, but few would become lifetime favorites - maybe only the one that motivated it (Pit Stop) and Eyes Without a Face to an extent. But I sure will be revisiting House by the late Nobuhiko Obayashi. It's the kind of film that's hard to explain or even defend - either you become enamored with its zany wavelength or not. But from the opening scenes where the girl's film composer father says Leone liked his score better than Morricone's I knew its sense of humor would be after my own heart. The visual style of the whole thing is so insane, filled with collages, handmade animation and jarring special effects of all kinds. It makes sense the director was known for his TV commercials, and if you've ever seen Japanese advertising you know how deranged it can get. Apparently Obayashi wrote the script based on ideas by his infant daughter, as he believed that adults "only think about things they can understand" while children "can come up with things that can't be explained". The brainstorming really worked as far as I'm concerned. House is a movie in which it's impossible to predict what will happen next. While the surface plot is about a group of young schoolgirls vacationing at the haunted house of a professor's mysterious aunt, I believe like many Japanese fiction it's really about the ghosts of Hiroshima and, in fact, there are a couple of atomic bomb visuals. But this is as far as I can rationalize it. House needs to be seen and experienced. It's my kind of Godard, a lot less boring and much more beautiful.

[MadMan]

I love that batshit crazy movie. If only more ghost movies were as fun as that one.

[Morris Schæffer]

I probably prefer The first croc dundee. I appreciated that the fish outta water story drove The movie whereas in The sequel it’s just a generic story with a few bad guys. Hogan was a real Grizzled man, here’s a cool pic of him around early 1970 working on the Sydney harbour bridge.

https://www.nfsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/02-2017/paul_hogan_bridge_rigger.jpg

[MadMan]

I agree that the first flick is better. I have a foundness for the second Croc flick due it having been shown on TBS a ton years ago. That is a really cool pic btw Morris.

[Grouchy]

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Watched for regular bad guy Allen Garfield, The Patriots is a somber kind of spy film, the type that focuses more on the human cost of espionage than its thrilling aspects, but that's not to say it's without some effective suspense - just think more John Le Carré than Ian Fleming. The direction by Éric Rochant is subdued and even somewhat languid. The film focuses on Ariel Brenner, a young kid determined on joining the Mossad and defend the state of Israel. Not much is given to us by way of motivation or personal background, although I suppose most Jewish viewers understand this type of nationalism immediately. An initial third focuses on Brenner's initial training which includes an exercise where he has to establish a friendship with a random individual at a hotel - I can't remember where but I read about a situation like that before so it must be based on some actual training. Then we get to his first mission, which is based on the intelligence behing what Israel calls Operation Babylon and the final third which is a dramatization of the events behind the Jonathan Pollard scandal in which an American intelligence analyst leaked US state secrets to the Israelis. So, despite an early title card that claims the entirety of the film is fictional, its roots are firmly based on real-life scenarios. I enjoyed this a lot - not all of it is well handled, particularly a love affair with a prostitute that seems to end randomly despite the enormous importance given to it by the script. But it's a different type of film to watch and blatantly critical of Israel, which I guess maybe accounts for some of its lack of popularity.

[Grouchy]

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Early in The Color Purple we can see Spielberg name-dropping Dickens and Oliver Twist, and his movie on racism and abusive black-on-black relationships does feel very Dickensian. A sprawling narrative covering many years in the life of a black woman (Goldberg) slowly gaining a sense of self worth, it's surprisingly un-manichaean for Spielberg standards. Sure, Danny Glover plays a horrible human being, but the character is at all times very human and not a movie villain. I watched this for the cinematographer Allen Daviau, and his work here is nothing short of spectacular - both in the exterior scenes which clearly bear John Ford's enormous influence and in the artistically lit interiors the movie is very successful at transporting the audience to the time and place. Spielberg was also at the height of his powers as a storyteller here. Every scene leads spectacularly into the next one and the film's tone is always involving and melancholy - that being said, it does suffer a bit because of its length towards the end. But the opening five or six scenes are a cinematic masterpiece, brutal as fuck yet eminently watchable. After watching it I found out that plenty of vitriol was raised at Spielberg's downplaying of the lesbian elements of the novel. As for that, the filmmaker stated "I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism because of that". Spielberg is definitively not a filmmaker who's very interested in sex on screen, and for readers of Alice Walker's book, that might have been a whole turn off. But he nails every other aspect of a complicated story, and one has to wonder which other filmmaker would have embraced such a film (and managed to secure the funding for it) back in 1985. This was his first serious drama and it's a film I never expected to enjoy as much as I did, to be honest.

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No Kids is an Argentinian romantic comedy that features the late great Horacio "el Negro" Fontova in a supporting role. It stars Diego Peretti in what is basically his signature role, an endearing loser trapped in some complicated relationship. This time he falls in love with sexy-as-hell Maribel Verdú, a woman from his past is very serious about her "No Kids" policy in life. So he hides the existence of his daughter (which is his entire world as he's a very responsible dad) from a previous marriage, a typical kid that appears in this type of movies that always has the upper hand on the grown ups, and this leads to increasingly complicated shenanigans. I have to admit I started out despising this film but it's not really bad - I mean, it's fluff but it's well written and all the performers seem to be having fun. It's just not my type of movie at all. Fontova plays Peretti's estranged magician father who has never been allowed to meet his grand-daughter, and MartÃ*n Piroyansky is also in the cast as the comic relief brother whose head is always on the clouds. Fontova seems to be picking up a paycheck here more than anything else, but his and Piroyansky's scenes are definitively the funniest. Overall, if you have really low expectations, this is a decent time-killer as it never becomes completely corny. But Fontova has much better performances in much worthier films, like Goodbye Dear Moon and Aballay, the Man without Fear, both by Fernando Spiner.

[Grouchy]

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The main purpose of doing this thread is to a large extent randomizing my viewing of old films so as to get to zones where my taste and usual preference don't usually venture. And seeing as I had never, ever before seen a full Bollywood film I decided to go with some of Irffan Khan's Hindi output and thus I ended up with Talvar (Guilty), an epic neo-noir based on a true crime story, which was apparently exhaustively researched by the director even before she decided to do the movie. Khan starts as Kumar, one of those obsessive police officers whose views become increasingly sheltered and who grows more violent as the case proceeds. His role as protagonist of the movie comes late in the game, though, since a large half of the first chunk is just the murder case from the point of view of its long-suffering protagonists, a loving couple who wakes up to find their infant daughter murdered in her bed and whose role in the story becomes increasingly complex as the police and the media come up their own theories. The film then switches to his point of view when he enters the case, which I guess is a classic move in a "detective story", but comes poorly backed as far as character building goes - despite Khan's excellent performance Kumar's backstory and tribulations with his wife come off mostly as stereotypical. Other than that Guilty is an engrossing tale which features a passionate, angry criticism of Indian institutions and corruption and kept my interest though a bloated running time. It occasionally had a DTV look and it made me chuckle how a bottle of Ballantine's is a key element of the murder scene but they blur the label in every single shot. I guess it could also be intentional to give it a quasi-documentary feel. I didn't love it but it was a nice foray into a world of international filmmaking I've barely even touched so far.

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Because of Shirley Knight I watched Petulia, a bombastic '60s joint with style to spare. The titular lady is played by gorgeous Julie Christie, a bubbly, unpredictable manic mod dream girl who bedazzles George C. Scott, a taciturn, sarcastic surgeon who navigates the modern lifestyle of swinging London with his "square" charm. Knight plays his ex-wife Polo who adds to Scott's increasing confusion. The film has a unique style as director Richard Lester experiments with unusual ways to edit scenes and introduces some rock documentary fast cuts featuring people like Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead. The story-line itself is loose but engaging, with Christie getting the juiciest part as she goes from joy to depression and disruptive behavior of all kinds, while Scott is more subdued but equally effective as a man torn between love and a desire for sanity. I'm making it sound like a comedy but despite having wit this is mostly a serious drama about emotional trauma. I read in Wikipedia that Steven Soderbergh is a huge fan of this film (and Lester's work in general) and it makes perfect sense. Just like most of Wes Anderson's filmography is a riff on Harold and Maude, the editing style and interest in fragmenting narratives found in something like The Limey are reminiscent of this.

[Grouchy]

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John Laffia was the writer of the original Child's Play and he took over directing duties from Tom Holland for Child's Play 2, the movie that concerns us tonight. I have to come clean about the fact that I ended up watching the entire Chucky the Killer Doll saga, up until Cult of Chucky (2017) and only excluding the 2019 remake. I refuse to be judged by the quarantine time I spent on that. While I think Bride of Chucky is the best overall film, the first sequel by Laffia is the best of the original trilogy. The original is more straight up Horror with no humor while the third film is just clumsy overall and the worst of the entire series. Now, Child's Play 2 is no masterpiece, but I appreciate how dark it's willing to become. Andy's mom, the heroine of the original film, is completely out of the picture and implied to be institutionalized since none believed her killer doll story, and the kid's life is a living hell as he's sent to several foster homes which eventually pair him up with Kyle, played by Christine Elise, an early '90s rebel punk girl who's just a great character for this type of flick. Highlights of this particular entry include the opening credits with the doll being re-made in an assembly line (including some corporate characters that reminded me of those in Paul Verhoeven's Robocop) and the ending chase through the factory which is like Toy Story 2 gone mean and evil. Child's Play is actually a fairly respectable slasher saga, with a far better good to bad ratio than Halloween or Friday the 13th, and this is one of the better entries. Grace Zabriskie plays a social worker.

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By sheer coincidence, the movie I decided to watch for Jerry Stiller turned out to be The Ritz, a gay-themed '70s screwball comedy by Richard Lester, who also did the recently reviewed Petulia. The high concept premise is that a fat guy (Jack Weston) is married to an Italian mob lady whose father is dying and, since the father hates his guts, he orders his son Jerry Stiller to murder him. The fat guy takes a cab and asks for a good hiding spot and the driver takes him to a gay sauna hotel nicknamed "the Ritz", where all of the action takes place, since this film is based on a play by Terrence McNally, who also died recently. Stiller made the trip from the Broadway play to the film adaptation and I think we can see a lot of traces of what would eventually become Frank Constanza in his histrionic performance. F. Murray Abraham, though, is the one who truly steals the show as a charismatic Ritz guest who ends up playing a pivotal role in the proceedings. I'm curious how this comedy would play to a "woke" audience. The comedy is not homophobic at all, but it's altogether too frank and genuine for the exaggerated sensibilities that seem to be the vogue nowadays. Yet, for the 1970s, this was clearly no mom-and-dad movie. The Ritz is not a great movie, though, and it has a tendency to repeat itself towards the end. But it's worth a watch for sure.

[MadMan]

I haven't seen Child's Play 2 all the way through, but what I have seen makes me want to finish it at some point. Chucky putting a knife on his cut off hand was a cool touch.

[Dukefrukem]

Wife and I watched all of the Child's Play movies last Halloween... so no shame in watching them them in COVID19 era when I watched them willingly last fall.. The shocker... Cult of Chucky aint too bad.

Here are the rankings btw

1. Child’s Play 1988 ★★½
2. Cult of Chucky 2017 ★★½
3. Child’s Play 2018 ★★½
4. Child’s Play 2 1990 ★★
5. Child’s Play 3 1991 ★½
6. Seed of Chucky 2014 ★
7. Curse of Chucky 2013 ½

[Grouchy]

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Ok... Few movies lately left me as ambivalent as the late Lynn Shelton's Your Sister's Sister. I'm a bit of a stranger to mumblecore, but whatever genre you choose to call it, the first two thirds of this feature some priceless filmmaking. The premise is that Jack (Mark Duplass) is invited by his friend Iris (Emily Blunt) to chill off at her family's cabin after he creates a bit of a scene at the anniversary of his brother's death. When he arrives there he finds it occupied by her sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), who also went there looking for some peace of mind after breaking up a seven-year-old relationship with a woman. Of course Iris will eventually join them. Three brilliant central performances, three well-developed characters and a story that achieves that elusive feeling of developing at their whim. There's an undercurrent of wonderful, quirky awkwardness in every scene that keeps one glued to the screen. And then a central plot twist happens... and the film is not nearly as good after that. I have no choice but to discuss it in spoilers.

Ok, so Hannah uses Jack, quite intentionally, to get pregnant quick, and lies to his face about it... and that sort of gets brushed off by all. Iris seems far more hurt that she meddled with her love life than by the gravity of what she actually did, and Jack should justifiably be furious. Instead the film ends as they have decided to become a modern family and look upon the pregnancy test together.

I should clarify I'm not morally outraged about this - it's not like I judge the movie politically incorrect and I can't deal with it, storywise. I just don't buy it coming from those characters the same way I totally bought into absolutely everything they did before that. There's also the matter that this third act is far slower and less dynamic than everything that came before. I think Shelton wrote her way into a great conundrum and then she just... forced the third act completely to fit the closing tone she was aiming for. Regardless, I had great fun with this film and it did inspire all this thinking and soul searching about the reasons I wasn't crazy about it.

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The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is only the second Fassbinder film I've seen, after Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. I told you this thread would expose my weak spots as a cinephile. It was on point that I picked this to honor Rainer Werner's muse Irm Herrman since it not only features her silent performance but it also features a sweet and unusual opening credits dedication "to the one who became Marlene here". It's based on a play by five acts also by Fassbinder and it shows - what the German director did was essentially storyboard his own play exquisitely and shoot it in uninterrupted takes. Thus we spend five scenes a few weeks or months apart inside the boudoir of Petra Von Kant, an alcoholic fashion designer and socialite who falls in love with a model who blatantly uses her. I gotta say, every actress in the all-female cast is incredible, and kudos to Herrman who became Marlene (Petra's submissive butler/servant), but Margit Casternsen in the titular role is just incredible and gets all the dramatic money shots and wardrobe changes. I'll freely admit it took me a while to get used to the pacing of its long, exhaustive dialogues, and I'll maintain the somewhat controversial (?) opinion that some close-ups of objects and characters could have seen some trimming, but the first hour of this film is a worthy investment into the operatic drama of the second, complete with what must become the literal definition of "every frame a painting", absolutely rocking those blinds.

[Peng]

I just watched Bunny Lake is Missing and loved it. As for the plot/ending divergence with the book, here you go (https://thatssojacob.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/book-review-evelyn-piper-bunny-lake-is-missing/).

[Skitch]

Wife and I watched all of the Child's Play movies last Halloween... so no shame in watching them them in COVID19 era when I watched them willingly last fall.. The shocker... Cult of Chucky aint too bad.

Here are the rankings btw

1. Child’s Play 1988 ★★½
2. Cult of Chucky 2017 ★★½
3. Child’s Play 2018 ★★½
4. Child’s Play 2 1990 ★★
5. Child’s Play 3 1991 ★½
6. Seed of Chucky 2014 ★
7. Curse of Chucky 2013 ½

Bride of Chucky is my personal favorite.

[Grouchy]

I just watched Bunny Lake is Missing and loved it. As for the plot/ending divergence with the book, here you go (https://thatssojacob.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/book-review-evelyn-piper-bunny-lake-is-missing/).
THANK YOU. It does sound like the novel is not worth the trouble.

[Grouchy]

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Not a whole lot that I can say about Waiting for Guffman other than that it achieves the same kind of bizarre tone of This is Spinal Tap with community theater instead of heavy metal music. Fred Willard plays one of the most fleshed out characters, Ron Albertson, who along with his wife Sheila (Catherine O'Hara) are the key actor-singer-dancer team at the heart of the fictional play "Red, White and Blaine". They're truly hilarious together and I found his personality true to life in the sense that I know people like that IRL albeit more toned down, obviously. Guest has a tough act to balance here, because while the film, like Spinal Tap, finds comedy in a troupe of goofy artists, the members of the metal band are at least successful - their antics are funny because they're clueless and there's mention of their record not selling well, but at the end of the day they still fill their shows. The musical troupe of Guffman is made of losers and so the film runs the risk of being a little cruel when it centers on their crushed dreams of celebrity, kind of like The King of Comedy if Scorsese and De Niro had shown zero empathy towards Rupert Pupkin. So at the end I think it's only mildly successful as a comedy but it still has some damn funny scenes.

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For Michel Piccoli I watched yet another Godard hole in my mental film library, Contempt... and this might be my favorite. I think what makes it stand out from the others is that (like in My Life to Live) the story is not completely devoid of human interest - there are characters and a dramatic conflict, and so the viewing experience is less academic and involving beyond the deconstructionism. This is not often the case with Godard and he seems very aware of it, as he announces on the uniquely cut trailer "the new traditional film by Jean-Luc Godard". Piccoli shines as cuckolded screenwriter Paul, who makes the mistake of leaving his gorgeous wife (B.B.) alone with sleazy American producer Jerry Prokosch (a wonderful Jack Palance), which causes a domino effect that crumbles their marriage when she interprets it as him offering her as a bribe to cement his career prospects and thus experiences the contempt of the title. It's unclear if this is actually the case, although the opening scene and Piccoli's performance generally indicate that the character is just emotionally detached and not really in love with anyone but himself. Both Bardot's presence in the film and the opening scene which features a close-up of her insanely beautiful ass are said by Godard to be mandates of producer Carlo Ponti and his American associates... but I don't know if I completely buy that. They seem integral to the story, which I don't think would work as well without opening on a love scene or with a less carnal movie star like Monica Vitti who reportedly wasn't interested. By the way, what an endearing presence Fritz Lang has - it's cool that he essentially agreed to spoof himself in another director's film, and it doesn't gel with the image one generally has of him as the quintessential tyrannical filmmaker.

Here's the unusual trailer, which functions as a summary of the film and features the awesome musical score Scorsese would re-use for the opening and ending of Casino:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wjDWnKTROI

[Grouchy]

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While I forgot to mention this one in the Obit's threads, Silvia Legrand died recently. Silvia was the less famous twin sister of Mirtha Legrand, the undisputed number one female star of classic Argentinian cinema. In 1968 she retired and became the hostess of a lunch TV talk show called Lunch with Mirtha Legrand which has now lasted over 52 seasons (yes, Mirtha is Highlander-level immortal and was still hosting it last year) in which she became more (in)famous for casually pushing right wing political agenda forward. The show and her standing as a conservative cultural icon sometimes make people forget that she was a wonderful actress who starred in genuine movie classics, often (like in this case) directed by her husband Daniel Tinayre. We recently had a short talk about melodramas with baby doll and boy, is Under the Same Face a perfect example or what? Mirtha plays Inés, a model for a clothes department store who has two confidants in life - her false friend and co-worker Susana and her twin sister Sor Elizabeth who is a nun. Susana introduces her to a man called Jorge who charms her and they begin a relationship. Jorge appears to have some difficulty getting a job and so begins to rely on his girlfriend's paycheck. We can all guess where this is headed - Jorge is a pimp (and his pimp nickname is "Bob") and a gigolo and eventually pushes Inés into high end prostitution, and of course Susana is another of his victims. In true noir fashion, the movie begins with the body of Inés being discovered and the police entering the church to interrogate Sor Elisabeth and we get told the story in flashbacks. Inés eventually meets a Spanish soldier on leave who is a good man and wants to take care of her, and so in the final twist of this convoluted tale...

She tries to leave Bob and Sor Elisabeth volunteers to negotiate with him. Bob murders her in cold blood and, as penance, Inés dons her nun clothes and locks herself in the convent to atone for her sins. There's a wonderful melodramatic scene in which the Spanish soldier seeks comfort for the loss of his loved one with Sor Elisabeth and slowly comes to realize what has happened as they talk. And of course the movie ends on this dramatic high point.

Overall this is a really enjoyable "time artifact" movie. Both Legrands are competent actresses and the movie has a pleasant "ripped from the headlines" vibe, shot on location, which is wonderful as we get to see what life in Buenos Aires really looked and felt like in 1962.

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I had already watched all of Denise Cronenberg's collaborations with her brother, but the 2004 Dawn of the Dead... escaped my radar? I think it's more accurate to say that I was a film snob from a very young age and flat out refused to watch the remake of the 1978 George Romero classic. Which is stupid, because both films are as similar as they are different. While having roughly the same plotline, Zach Snyder's feature film debut aims to entertain and thrill, having none of the rich social and political subtext of Romero. In the original, the characters are stuck in the shopping mall and slowly begin to live an empty life which is supposed to mirror a regular, non-apocalypse consumerist lifestyle. There's no time for even this level of subtlety in Snyder's remake which moves from one set piece to the next. Its greatest ally is James Gunn's strong screenplay, which despite a few clichéd moments (I had to laugh every time the tough cop played by Ving Rhames reacted emotionally when someone brought up the concept of family) handles a rather large cast of characters deftly, providing each one with a solid dramatic arc in the relatively small screen time devoted to these things. The best three things about this remake? The opening, nerve-wracking 15 minutes, the zombie baby and the soundtrack. The worst part? It's shallow as fuck when compared to the original, but then again, it doesn't try to be a classic. I know Watchmen has its well deserved fan base, but this is still Snyder's greatest achievement.

[Peng]

I would have to rewatch his animated owl film to know for sure, but it's either that or the DotD remake as my favorite Snyder.

[Grouchy]

I would have to rewatch his animated owl film to know for sure, but it's either that or the DotD remake as my favorite Snyder.
I'll have to get around to it. I do still watch movies without people in it dying.

[Grouchy]

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Another recent departure that went unmentioned in the Obits thread was Rosa MarÃ*a Sardá, a prestigious Spanish actress who plays one of many matriarchal figures in All About my Mother, Almodóvar's heartfelt 1999 masterpiece. Now this movie is really interesting because the late '90s were clearly a transitional period for the filmmaker. Almodóvar was at this point known for arty, zany comedies like Women on the verge of a mental breakdown. Whatever adult topics those movies dealt with, they always did so with an irreverent, light tone. However, from Live Flesh onward, I feel Pedro started maturing as a storyteller and structuring his stories and his whacked out characters within the Hollywood genre of melodrama and thus began the most critically acclaimed period of his career. All About My Mother's plot has its seed in the dialogue of The Flower of my Secret and extensively references A Streetcar Named Desire. It's a film about different trials experienced by mothers, from losing a child to not surviving birth to worrying about their offspring, and also a film about the transsexual experience and the dire consequences of a carefree youth. It's the brand of idiosyncratic storytellers that it's difficult to see any of this plot working in the hands of another filmmaker. There's a kind of miracle in the way Almodóvar draws complex, relatable characters with two or three broad strokes and conveys deep feelings with a single line of dialogue or a simple visual transition. And it's hard if not impossible to leave this wonderful film dry-eyed.

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Not every one of these can be a winner and it was definitively not an inspired choice to watch Chariots of Fire to homage Ian Holm. I wasn't expecting a particularly groundbreaking or dynamic film but still, among the big Academy Award winners of its time, this one sticks out like a sore thumb. I understand a movie like Raiders of the Lost Ark was not going to win the top prize in the early '80s but... Louis Malle (Atlantic City) and Warren Beatty (Reds) are talented filmmakers, there is no way this is better than their works. To make an extremely long story short, this snail-paced feature film decided the story of some students of Cambridge who are also runners and participate in the 1924 Olympics was worth telling. And I guess... it could have been? The crux of the dramatic conflict is that one of them is Jewish and the other Catholic and while they admire and respect each other as athletes, the former suffers discrimination while the latter is the clear favorite of the authorities. Ian Holm plays a supporting role as trainer Sam Mussabini, a last name which reminds me of the imaginary Italians Don Rickles used to conjure up. It's a fine performance but a shallow character. Basically the entirety of his personality is being a gruff Italian with a straw hat whose ethnic backgrounds allow him to empathize with the Jew guy. I swear I tried, but these were the most boring, aseptic two hours of cinema in a long, long while. Some awesome music is best enjoyed out of context, I guess.

[Grouchy]

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Yes, I hadn't seen The Lost Boys! Joel Schumacher's 1987 classic is one of the most mentioned cult movies of all time, and it's not difficult to see why. It's a constantly effervescent movie with fun characters and memorable scenes. It's also a bit all over the place, which doesn't hurt. Kiefer Sutherland's antagonist is a curious vacuum of a character but he oozes coolness in every moment of his performance, particularly the worms scene pictured. The movie's winning cards are its '80s atmosphere and the casting. Dianne Wiest is particularly awesome as she usually is. It was also nice to see so many scenes set in a comic book shop with actual '80s comics and true nerd conversation. I don't know if the writer (Jeffrey Boam, who also penned Last Crusade and The Dead Zone) did that or if it was added during some later stage of the production, but if you were a comic book nerd in the late '80s you were probably so starved for superheroes on the big screen that those bits made your year. However, I don't think it's a truly great movie. I think I prefer Falling Down or Flatliners from Schumacher by a wide margin. My reasons? The comedy can get a bit too silly and towards the end the movie curiously loses all sense of direction. It ends on a special effects extravaganza and a throwaway one-liner that doesn't do what came before justice.

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I watched The Perfect Furlough for Linda Cristal, an Argentinian actress with a long career in Hollywood who died three days ago. Her most famous U.S. roles were in The High Chaparral and a series of westerns (including The Alamo and Two Rode Together) but her role in this 1958 sex comedy with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh won her a Golden Globe, so I settled on that. Oh boy, this picture's storyline would make any feminist's head explode like in Scanners. The premise is that the military has some young soldiers stuck in an urgent unspecified mission in the Arctic, and they are growing crazy about the lack of women. The problem is that they can't get furloughed or the operation will fail, yet they're losing their minds from sex starvation. Janet Leigh, an army psychologist, has a curious idea - ask them what would be their perfect furlough and then make a lottery so that only the winner gets to live it and the rest will vicariously feel vindicated. Tony Curtis has seemingly grown obsessed with an Argentinian actress and asks for a trip to Paris with her. The military actually gets a deal with her agent and then Curtis tricks his way into winning the lottery and here's where the premise gets faulty - the point of the idea is that one guy gets laid and in theory, that will psychologically subdue the other raging beasts, but then the military gets all uptight about it and assigns Leigh to act as chaperone and stop them from fucking. You can all guess where that is going. This movie is just fluff. Blake Edwards was a director with a knack for careful composition and pristine comic timing, so most of it is watchable, but the basic plot is trite as hell. It's harmless and competent (modern audiences would sure gasp at the physical manhandling of Leigh) but not exactly good. To be honest, I'd never heard of Linda Cristal before but she's the highlight here. She's incredibly sexy as the feisty actress, and her manager is always forcing her to do everything by reminding her that he picked her from abject poverty in the Pampas. When he says he found her barefoot riding a jackass, she corrects him by saying it was a burro. Her and her entourage are the funniest characters in a film which is not really about them, which is why it ultimately fails to become a good comedy.

[Grouchy]

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Carl Reiner's lengthy career encompassed writing, acting and directing, and his 1979 comedy golden classic The Jerk seemed to unite all three. Here's my one problem with this movie. The same way other folks hate Will Ferrell, Mr. Bean or Jerry Lewis (while I unabashedly love those guys, as well as Myers and Sellers)... I've always really, really disliked Steve Martin. I'm not sure why, and I don't blame him for it, but he's never been my brand of comedian. This relentless comedy's appeal begins and ends with the empathy you feel towards his aimless character, and so my viewing experience might not be the most exemplary. The late '70s were unique for all genres of film, but in comedy, they gave us some of the wackiest, most anarchic examples (Love and Death, Life of Brian, Blazing Saddles) and this sits comfortably with that crowd. Reiner throws everything but the kitchen sink in, providing increasingly absurd laughs at the expense of its protagonist, a simpleton adopted by a black Mississippi family who leaves in pursuit of the American Dream. This is the type of movie where, if you're not a fan of one joke, three will pop up immediately to try your fortitude. I was a particular fan of one remark said by the Jerk to a missionary priest - "Father, you strike me as a religious man". Anyway, The Jerk's status as a classic means I don't have to tell you it's worth a watch, despite my lack of taste for Martin's screen persona.

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Tyrone Power's least famous daughter (the other one had a pop duet with her husband) stars as the daughter of alchemist Melanthius in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, a fantasy film that came late in Ray Harryhausen's career as an FX wizard. John Wayne's son stars as Sinbad. Now, I don't think Wayne Sr. was a particularly great actor outside of his collaborations with brilliant directors like Ford or Hawks, but his son is just a black hole of charisma altogether. Luckily, he's surrounded by a wonderful, energetic cast and stop motion animation that's simply magical. Outside of a few rough chroma keys, the effects in this Sinbad entry are one of a kind. There's a magical baboon present throughout the whole film playing chess and doing monkey business, and even while it's evident that it's not a real primate, the effect works just fine next to real people. This speaks to how finely tuned Harryhausen's craft was at this point. The plot is frankly not too shabby either. I haven't seen the other two Harryhausen Sinbad films (one from the '50s and this one's direct predecessor) and I'm not sure I will as of the moment, but I feel this works just fine on its own. There are some stiff dramatic scenes but it never takes too long before a monster shows up.

[Grouchy]

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Now when it comes to Ennio Morricone, his work was so vast there were at least twenty classics of cinema left on my watch-list. I did end up watching (and in a couple of cases re-watching) five movies, but I'll choose to review The Battle of Algiers because it's the highest profile one I was still a stranger to. This 1966 war classic is directed by political filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo, who actually co-signs the soundtrack with Morricone! It's a harsh, gritty film with Neorrealist flourishes like having almost all of the revolutionary roles played by non-actors who actually related to the movement. The film attempts to present an objective, bird's eye view of the actions of the FLN, a military guerrilla outfit which aimed for the liberation of Algeria. The French government in turns applies torture and intimidation tactics to destroy the movement and although it succeeds by the ending of the dramatic rendition, a documentary epilogue reminds us that eventually Algeria managed to become independent from France. Pontecorvo seems to have endured criticism from all sides despite the participation of former FLN members, but, unsurprisingly, it was only the right-wing French government that banned the film for five years. Now, as an Argentinian, the frank depiction of guerrilla tactics and their subsequent gruesome hunting down by a military government is not alien at all, and I was more than a little surprised by the similarities with all that transpired in my country during the 1970s. It turned out I needn't be so surprised, since this very film was used by my military as a case study during Frondizi's government to squash guerrillas. Aside from all the History surrounding it, it's just a damned effective film, shot in gorgeous B&W with a clinical yet passionate eye. It demands full attention but it's ultimately very rewarding.

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Another recent death was that of Rosario Bléfari, actress, poet and lead singer of the Argentine rock band Suárez, of which I post the most famous album below. Her most iconic role was as the titular Silvia Prieto in a key movie of my country's independent cinema. I wasn't actually sure if I had watched it and it turns out to my embarassment I hadn't. In fact, The Magic Gloves was the only MartÃ*n Rejtman I had seen. And his style, although it grew more refined (this movie is exquisitely framed but sounds kind of rough, in keeping with its indie production values - Rejtman has gone on record saying many of his writing choices were marked by his wish to be able to film the movie as quickly as possible with his friends), remained pretty much the same, marked by aimless characters, monotone line deliveries and absurdist plots. Silvia Prieto wakes up one morning and decides to quit smoking weed and significantly alter her life. During a trip to the coast she steals an Armani jacket off an Italian tourist who later tracks her down and reveals a fact that becomes endlessly disturbing to her - there are two women called Silvia Prieto in the Buenos Aires phone book. This film is enjoyable for many reasons and, like Battle of Algiers, it also ends in a delightful documentary scene, a meeting between a group of real-life Silvia Prietos. But for me this 2020 experience with the film was like taking the DeLorean to what Buenos Aires looked, felt and smelled like in 1999. I was just a little kid but so many small details - the phone books, going to a friend's house to play a VHS tape, even the alarm clocks and newsstand books and magazines - conspired to make me absolutely nostalgic of those years. Plus a lot of it takes place in the neighborhood of Palermo, which will never again look like this due to gentrification and its identification with the film and TV industry, to the extreme of having a few blocks be practically re-named these days as Palermo Hollywood. I don't know what movies (if any) can do that for you guys.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18TfA0fZQ_Q

[DFA1979]

The Battle of Algiers and The Jerk are two movies I should have seen by now.

[Grouchy]

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In my earlier review of Coffin Joe's Awakening of the Beast, I mentioned how the director compared himself ironically with more prestigious Brazilian filmmakers, like Anselmo Duarte, whose The Given Word won the Palme D'Or and was the first South American film nominated for an Academy Award. Its leading man Leonardo Villar passed away recently, and what a performance he gives! This 1962 social drama follows the misadventures of Zé do Burro, a simple rural farmer who made a promise to Santa Barbara to drag a giant cross by foot to her namesake church in Bahia if she spared the life of his donkey. I don't know if North American Christians do this kind of thing, but anyway, the donkey survived and so he dragged the cross to the church at great pain, escorted by his embittered wife. He arrives in the middle of the night and after sleeping on the ground (while his wife gets acquainted with a local low-life and pimp) requests a meeting with the head priest to explain the situation. There's just one problem, and the priest won't bulge on this one - he made the promise to candomblé goddess Iansá, not to the Catholic saint, but for Zé they are one and the same. I loved that the whole conflict rested on this very true detail - that slave religions like orisha often blended themselves with Christianism to escape prosecution, and so to the believer there is no conflict here, while to the priest it would be like defacing the Church. Zé refuses to leave the stairs with his cross and as the citizens, police and newspapers get involved, the situation escalates. Yes, this is one of those great fixed location dramas, like Dog Day Afternoon, based on the ongoing ramifications of a stalemate conflict. And frankly Duarte's work doesn't pale at all in comparison to a Sydney Lumet film. He wrote the screenplay based on a theater play by Dias Gomes, but this is cinematic as hell, with crisp black and white cinematography and brilliant performances and characters.

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I didn't know what this documentary (108) was about, and it's what I actually enjoy about doing this thread - just pick a random film from the vast amount of cinema from the ages and dive into it, zero expectations. It certainly paid off here. I was entirely unaware of this History, but 108 is a slang term for "gay" in Paraguay, both as a pejorative and adopted by the gay community. It all dates back to a list published by the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner in 1959. After radio host and dancer Bernardo Aranda was killed in his house in an arson incident, the Paraguayan police arrested homosexual men, tortured them to make them name other homosexuals and then arrested them, subsequently publishing a list that outed them to the entire country. Apart from this physical and social punishment no serious charges were ever brought up against any of them, and Aranda's murder remained unsolved. It is the belief of some of the survivors interviewed in this outstanding doc that Stroessner's closeted gay son (!) was the actual killer. But what's really personal and irreplaceable is the perspective brought by director Renate Costa. She was the niece of one of the 108 outed men, and begins the documentary after his death, trying to dig out more about his past. Far from being a History lesson about this morbid episode (which is another documentary that should be made if it hasn't already), Costa's film is more of a chronicle of her investigations, and many of them consist of talking to her hermetic father, who's a devoted Christian and enthusiastic homophobe. It's fascinating how this man is able to compartmentalize his filial relationship in a way that makes his brother's gayness (which cost him so much grief) something of a flaw to be overcome, as if he was a bad drunk or a lottery addict. Anyway, the film has a lot to say about a Christian society closeted in all ways, but it's never didactic - it's a first person journey with the filmmaker through the painful history of her uncle, whom she remembers as a fun guy to be around even if the rest of the family didn't allow him to hang out with the kids all that much.

EDIT: These films are available with English subtitles here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgSfeC9Immc) and here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OYWdKeTFTY&t=1884s), respectively. Unfortunately the doc is a little out of synch - there's another video which doesn't have that problem but it only has Portuguese subtitles.

[Grouchy]

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For Kelly Preston I watched Twins from 1988, yep, I hadn't seen this Schwarzenegger/DeVito comedy. Anyway, I enjoyed this. The screenplay is certainly no Tennessee Williams, but Schwarzenegger was just beginning to dig into his acting and comedy chops and no movie has ever benefited from not starring Danny DeVito. They carry the entire story about misshapen twins, one of them left in an orphanage where he grew up to be a street-wise scoundrel and the other the muscular naive virgin who grew up with a scientist on a Caribbean island. Twins is pleasantly wacky, but the two main performers are the only reason to care, they make even the schmaltzy bits work. Arnold's unexplained heavy accent is always a laugh on these earlier movies. The best part is how little we, as an audience, care about that detail. The story could have been more polished, it's a funny case of there being too many villains and none of them being quite distinctive, but... who cares, really.

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The Ordeal (2004) is a Belgian movie, yet I believe it, for all purposes, should be considered a prime example of the New French Extremity. It visually resembles Gaspar Noé, features the late Philippe Nahon in the pictured role, and... it just oozes cruelty, refined, thrilling violence and troubling subtext. This is a hardcore piece of work. It begins very low-key and in fact most of it is a very slow burn, with working class crooner Marc Stevens performing at an old people's home and then driving his way through rural Belgium in his beat-up track which, of course, breaks down on just the precise spot for him to meet some truly fucked up locals. But their fucked-upness, while obvious to any genre fan, is not apparent to Marc from the start, which makes for some suspenseful viewing. This film has some crazy, surreal scenes and is kind of brilliantly directed by Fabrice Du Welz, who really gets the most out of the widescreen format. This is one that kept me glued to the screen - even if the story's structure is loose and the ending somewhat random, man... it's intense. The dancing inside the bar... You'll only know what I mean once you've seen it.

[Skitch]

It's insane that Twins works, but damnit it does.

[Morris Schæffer]

I'm always amused by the fact that the composer of Twins, Georges Delerue, composed the music of several movies of Truffaut, Godard, Resnais, Malle and Bertolucci.

And sure enough, the main theme is extraordinary:


https://youtu.be/1QKXTb24VJs

[Grouchy]

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Because of animé dub legend Kenji Fujiwara I watched Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, a hell of a strange ride. Part Gothic vampire fantasy with traces of Bram Stoker's Dracula, part spaghetti western, part science fiction with steampunk spaceships... this is insane, a hell of a lot of fun and inspirational material for at least a thousand RPGs due to its intense and unique world building. Plus the music is awe-inspiring and heavenly. So far for the good stuff - and the rest is not really bad, it's just that my mind did wander a lot during endless exposition and I found the plot a bit too complex. I mean, I got the basics, but reading the Wikipedia summary afterwards made me realize a great deal went over my head. Maybe I've just became alienated to the animé style of storyboarding a conversation, even atypical examples like this one. This is a sort of sequel to Vampire Hunter D, although apparently the writer of the original novels disliked that one and consequently became the driving force behind Bloodlust. But anyway... did I mention there are vampires and rockets to outer space? And weird parasitic demons and all sort of outlandish shit?

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I truly love the Hollywood landscape of the '80s and '90s. You had all these smart thrillers everywhere, zero fireworks, focusing on good writing and charismatic performers. Gorky Park is one of those cross-genre movies. It can best be described as "Kremlin noir". William Hurt is a militia officer in Moscow who discovers frozen, defaced bodies in the titular park and immediately suspects KGB involvement. His investigations lead him down several paths - he runs across the late Brian Dennehy's character, a hard-boiled, two-fisted Polish-American cop who is the brother of one of the victims. He goes through the motions with a femme fatale involved in the Soviet movie industry. And he tests his wits against an impeccably dead pan slimy evil guy Lee Marvin, an American involved in the pelts thread. If you like gumshoe novels you'll like this film - it's as simple as that. The plot is not great and it runs into many clichés, but the Soviet atmosphere is a strangely brilliant touch. It also ends on an open, lyrical note.

[Skitch]

I love Bloodlust. One of the best blind-buys of my life. Jaw was on the floor for entire film.

[Grouchy]

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For great character actor (and kung-fu fighter) John Saxon I watched Tenebrae, a giallo which is important for Dario Argento's filmography in ways that weren't entirely apparent simply by watching the film. I'd coincidentally watched the Animal Trilogy not that long ago (Bird with the Crystal Plumage was the only one I'd previously seen) and expected more of the same in a genre I typically enjoy. I found that and more in a largely self-referential film about a Horror writer played by Anthony Franciosa who travels to Rome only to be stalked by a crazed fan who stuffs his victim's throats with pages from his latest best-seller Tenebrae. One has to chuckle when he's accused by a reporter of being obsessed with murdering women on his literature. The film obviously has a larger budget (and a prestige cast) and is the work of a more mature, assured filmmaker than Argento's earlier giallos, and there's a wonderfully gratuitous crane shot that's framed meticulously and is so random as to inspire genuine respect. But it was reading about the making of the film afterwards that made some of its intricacies and meta content pay off in unexpected ways. Argento had started his Mothers trilogy with Suspiria (a spectacular critical and financial success that made him a star) and followed it up with Inferno, which was as much a failure as the first one was a hit - although it's of course a cult classic now. He wouldn't complete the witchcraft trilogy, which was a concept conceived with his partner Daria Nicolodi, until Mother of Tears in 2007 already starring their daughter Asia. On this film, while her relationship with Argento was crumbling, Nicolodi was supposed to play a minor role but had to step up and play one of the lead characters when the original actress dropped off. Her blood-curling scream near the end was apparently not supposed to go on as long as it did and was more of a cathartic moment which Asia has gone on record identifying as something she witnessed that made her want to become and actress. It's certainly a memorable shot. Nicolodi's earlier intended role, by the way, is played in the final film by a transgender actress. Another curious detail is that Argento intended the film to exist in a near future, when a Holocaust of some kind (like a virus, I suppose!) had wiped out much of the world's population and so Rome has fewer people in it. But although Tenebrae certainly has a unique look and a focus on minimalist architecture, it appears Argento's futuristic ideas (and his work on those with his production designer Giuseppe Bassan) got lost in the jumble somehow and are not realized on the final cut, despite his insistence that they are there. Saxon's role is as the writer's editor, who is of course a suspect until he's brutally murdered himself, and if you think that's a spoiler you've never seen a giallo.

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If Saxon's role was unfortunately small on the film I chose to watch, Olivia De Havilland's work as The Heiress must be one of the juiciest performances ever made. I think it's a cliche of reviews of any film directed by William Wyler to point out how underrated he was, but I can't help it when you watch a movie by a guy who never gets mentioned in the same lines as the Fords and Hawks of this world, yet his work is so exquisite. It was unsurprisingly De Havilland who brought to the director's attention a role any actress would kill to play in a stage adaptation of a Henry James novel called Washington Square, which apparently the writer despised and tried to keep out of his collected works yet failed because it was a fan favorite. The story concerns a stern, authoritative wealthy father who intends to marry his only daughter Catherine (De Havilland) while systematically erasing her self-esteem by comparing her unfavorably with her deceased mother. When a suitor comes along in the form of Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), an idle, attractive young man who has no prospects in life after reportedly squandering his inheritance, the father is understandably suspicious but the usually reticent Catherine falls in love head over heels. The plot is as carefully constructed as it is unpredictable, and of course the (melo)drama rests on whether Morris is sincere on his displays of affection. This is, quite frankly, a masterpiece of parlor tension and high drama and I won't forget the final scene as long as I live. De Havilland is out of this world good, and the subtle nuances she adds to the character after a pivotal event mid-movie should be studied in drama schools every year. And of course Monty Clift was far from a shabby actor. Wyler directs the hell out of his sets with some expressive depth of field shots and makes an old stairwell almost a supporting character.

[DFA1979]

I love Tenebrae. It doesn't pull any punches and is skillfully brutal. That ending is something else. I rewatched it months ago thanks to Shudder.

[Skitch]

I hated Tenebrae the first time I watched it. Then I got it on a roulette and had to give a second shot...and enjoyed the hell out of it. I think the first time around I was just burnt out from watching nothing but horror for a whole month.

[Grouchy]

https://robertocolom.files.wordpress.c om/2018/06/the-life-of-david-gale.jpeg?w=736

Alan Parker's Fame is probably bigger in Argentina than it is on his native UK due to a combination of factors - Melody was a huge hit over here (as well as in Japan!) and is a movie fondly remembered by an entire generation, and he made Evita, the Hollywood version (a musical, no less) of the life of Eva Perón. For myself, though, the movie by him I love has always been Angel's Heart which I "referenced" without decorum on my first short film, and also Mississippi Burning. Regardless, everything he made was notable for its gorgeous style and poignant themes, and I remember his last feature (The Life of David Gale) being quite talked about on its time. A lot of stuff has happened since 2003 and now watching Kevin Spacey in prison for rape and murder with aggressive editing that cuts the words "innocent", "guilty" or "death" over his close-ups has some added layers of meaning. Strangely enough, this didn't ruin any of the film for me. I guess Spacey is a good enough actor that I kept seeing the character and not him, and it makes me wonder how watchable American Beauty is these days. The plot concerns college professor and anti capital punishment activist David Gale who is convicted of raping and murdering his activist partner Constance (Laura Linney) and has a few days left to live. Journalist Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet), who has spent some unspecified time in jail for refusing to name a source related to child pornography, is sent to interview him and becomes gradually convinced of his innocence. In classical neo-noir thriller fashion, the plot alternates between the flashbacks that show how Gale's life became unraveled and the present, in which Winslet investigates the murder and finds out almost nothing is what it seems. I was constantly reminded of Steven Spielberg's Director's Chair, a '90s videogame which allowed you to direct your own film following Spielberg's on screen advice and starring Quentin Tarantino and Jennifer Aniston in the Spacey and Winslet roles. Every cliché that showed up in the fictional movie within the game is played straight in David Gale, including the final run, evidence in hand, against the ticking clock. What's curious about this movie is how often it gets cataloged as a serious drama about capital punishment in the vein of Dead Man Walking. If those were the filmmaker's intentions, well, he certainly failed because it's impossible to take this movie's plot so seriously. But as an outlandish thriller with a resolution that seriously strains even the most relaxed suspension of disbelief it's not all that bad. It's certainly stylish and has many memorable scenes and character moments. It's just too long for its own good and, like I mentioned, ends in a completely implausible note which, nevertheless, I guessed before it played out on the screen. It might not make logical sense as the resolution of a crime but, dramatically, I can sort of see why they went there, as strange as it is.

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Sometimes a movie has such pop culture relevance that I genuinely wonder if I've seen it or I have just grown up hearing about it. It turns out I'd never seen Cocoon on its entirety, although I knew what it was about. It's certainly a worthy movie to watch in remembrance of Wilford Brimley, as he's arguably the protagonist and the most charismatic performer in it. It's also an endearing film that's simultaneously a bit of a complete mess. Being halfway between a serious sci-fi wonder a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a reflection on old age and a quirky Viagra sex comedy (which I guess is a novel sub-genre if there ever was one) is an enterprise which requires a lot of talent, and Ron Howard is not really up to that snuff as a director. Although he's had his sunny times recently (with solid real-life dramas like Frost/Nixon and Rush) Howard is usually a pretty bland director who lacks the flair and creativity an unusual story like this demands - one can only imagine what this would have been like with a very young Robert Zemeckis directing as was originally intended, but the financial failure of Used Cars put an end to that. Cocoon is about three old guys in a nursing home who regularly sneak into a private swimming pool next door. When the house with the pool is rented by a group of strange people (led by Brian Dennehy, also recently featured on this thread) the old guys again sneak in only to find large "cocoons" in the pool which revitalize their youth and charge them with life force. Simultaneously, Dennehy and Rachel Welch's gorgeous daughter Tahnee carry a somewhat puzzling sub-plot about them hiring a broke boat owner to carry the cocoons to the pool. It's very funny that this film won best special effects at the Oscars since the CGI has aged poorly by all standards. The story, however, keeps its unusual charm, thanks in no small part to the wonderful cast of old performers, including Maureen Stapleton and the real life couple of Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. It's worth noting that Brimley was actually around twenty years younger than the character he played, but his look is practically ageless.

[baby doll]

I guess Spacey is a good enough actor that I kept seeing the character and not him, and it makes me wonder how watchable American Beauty is these days.I rewatched it a few years before the allegations about Spacey hit and it looked pretty bad already. My reaction was basically: Okay, I get why I liked this movie at fifteen, but why were grownups losing their shit about this movie in 1999?

[baby doll]

One scene that might play differently now is the scene where Chris Cooper (who I believe is straight) playing a closeted homosexual makes a pass at Spacey (a closeted gay actor playing straight).

[Skitch]

American Beauty was never actually good.

[Scar]

I love Bloodlust. One of the best blind-buys of my life. Jaw was on the floor for entire film.

I adore Bloodlust. Wasn't a huge fan of the first one, but I think I liked it a bit better on subsequent viewings.

[Scar]

American Beauty was never actually good.


Never. Saw it.

[DFA1979]

I thought The Life of David Gale sucked and I oppose the death penalty.

[Morris Schæffer]

Dead Man Walking is an incredible movie about the dead penalty. Or at least involves that topic in its story.

[DFA1979]

See I thought Medium Cool was great but then I was more engaged in the film's politics than its characters. Also the movie is a tad dated.

[baby doll]

Also the movie is a tad dated.You say that like (a) it's a bad thing, (b) there are films that are not dated, as if a film could be produced on a higher spiritual plane of abstract ideality, one uncontaminated by the messy contingencies of history (or, failing that, could actively suppress any traces of historical contingency so that they are not apparent to the film's spectator), and (c) people are more enlightened today than they were in the past (all of history being one linear story of progress culminating in the present moment), and therefore, films are deficient insofar as they diverge from contemporary attitudes.

[DFA1979]

No I said that because the movie is set in 1968 and is explicitly centered around the Democratic Convention in Chicago in....1968. Sometimes I think you just look for shit to argue about.

[baby doll]

Sometimes I think you just look for shit to argue about.That's exactly what I do.

[Grouchy]

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Yaphett Kotto, one of the gods of character acting, plays an antagonistic FBI agent in Midnight Run, which feels like the gold standard textbook example of the buddy crime comedy sub-genre. De Niro plays Jack Walsh, a chain-smoking, grumpy bounty hunter who conceals a past as a "disgraced honest cop" screenplay trope. Charles Grodin is a far more surprising character, an aggravating, purely cerebral thief accountant who is actually in the verge of Asperger's. Their interplay is glorious, astoundingly acted on both sides and clearly the only thing that made it memorable. You get to care about these two people on a very real level while enjoying a dialogue filled with genuine insanity. The movie surrounding them, though, is stale, filled with clichés and car chases and action stunts that must have already felt old in 1988. It has an amazing cast that sometimes gets to shine (as is the case with Dennis Farina and Joe Pantoliano) and at times feels wasted in thankless roles, as is the case with Philip Baker Hall and, unfortunately, Kotto. The late guy said about the shoot:


DeNiro is very spontaneous and it always helps to work with an artist like that. But Marty Brest! "Herr Director" shot so many takes of the scenes that I lost all joy in doing the film. It became hard and tedious work. Then he stopped eating during the shoot and became thinner and thinner each day, until he looked like a ghost behind the camera. When I met Marty at the Universal studio with DeNiro, he looked healthy and strong, but as filming went on, he began to turn into someone you'd see in Dachau (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dachau_concentration_camp). It was weird. I got sick and for the whole of the film I had a fever and was under the weather for most of it ... I was shocked when it came off so funny ... It sure wasn't funny making it.

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Cinematographer Isidore Mankofsky shot Somewhere in Time, a classic science fiction romance adapted from the novel by Harlan Ellison. The movie takes an old fashioned approach to a story of time travel and impossible love. It's crafted with genuine passion, from the image to the beautiful soundtrack, and I loved the face-off scenes between Christopher Reeve and (the also late, although it's not his turn yet) Christopher Plummer. There's something very poetic about the way time travel works in this movie, with the characters undergoing almost a ritual self-hypnosis. I feel that the screenplay doesn't fully work - perhaps it's too slow or it underestimates how much an educated audience will try to anticipate its surprises. But it's so gorgeous to look at that it's hard not to recommend.

[DFA1979]

Midnight Run is a lot of fun and is very funny. I agree it works despite having multiple cliches.

[Grouchy]

https://cinenthusiast.files.wordpress. com/2010/10/play-misty-for-me-1971-jessica-walter-clint-eastwood-pic-2.jpg

Eastwood started his directing career with Play Misty for me, a harassment thriller calling back to the Italian gialli. Jessica Walter is magnificent as a disturbed woman completely obsessed with Clint's womanizing radio DJ. Eastwood's direction is already interesting, quite stylish and deliberate - loved the opening credits, for example. The movie strangely comes to a halt at one point to become a jazz documentary of Monterey for a while and then picks up the plot again. Weird move, but I guess Clint would eventually get his wish to make a music doc with his participation in The Blues.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bw_3DbRCYAAei1M.jpg

Bertrand Tavernier moves the action of a hard-boiled Jim Thompson novel (Pop. 1280) from its original western setting to a post-WWII colonial town in Africa in Coup de torchon, which means something like Blank Slate. The translation allows him to comment on inequality and racism while delivering an effective sordid crime tale. The atmosphere that provides the backdrop is composed of unkempt public restrooms, starving black children and flies. Our protagonist is Lucien, a cowardly sheriff who bows down to the local pimps and bullies that humiliate him but secretly craves vengeance and will go about it in a sly, smart way. There's plenty of dark comedy in this beautiful-looking film and a very young, barely recognizable Isabelle Huppert is the acting highlight. The hand-held camerawork is also worth noting and somewhat ahead of its time.

[Grouchy]

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For some reason I didn't go as deep into Fulci's filmography as I did into Argento and Bava's, and that's a mistake I will try to fix. It's fun to stay away from 'giallo' films for a while and then come back and be reminded that they're not only an exotic genre but also a different cinematic language - they exist in an alternate reality where reckless dubbing, dream (or should I say nightmare?) logic and disturbing levels of sadistic violence appear to be the norm. The Beyond, with sharp poster artwork by the late Enzo Sciotti, is a beautiful film with a level of visual poetry and romantic atmosphere that makes it stand out among its peers. It also features some of the most haunting imagery I can remember in a Horror film combined with low budget gory goodness.

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What a ride! I was expecting a much more conventional film from Richard Rush's The Stunt Man and was pleasantly surprised by a meta-cinematic romantic comedy that explores a film director's God complex as it constantly weaves in and out of reality and fiction. The screenplay is carefully constructed to constantly provide impossible twists and surprises as it always draws an unlikely but possible logic behind all of them. There's an European flavour to the style and approach of The Stunt Man and that might account for its absence from most American canons of the '80s. While the lead actor is somewhat wooden, Peter O'Toole's performance (based on David Lean) and Barbara Hershey's scene-stealing turn are more than enough compensation. I'm in love with Barbara Hershey, at any age. Never a dull performance (or even film choice) from her.

[Idioteque Stalker]

I recently watched The Stunt Man and really enjoyed myself as well, though I agree the lead drags it down. Quirky movie I won't soon forget. O'Toole is terrific.

[Spun Lepton]

I adore The Beyond, even though I recognize it's not a particularly coherent or exceptionally well-made film. Those fake spiders. Eeek. You should definitely check out Fulci's City of the Living Dead if you have not. I think it better encapsulates Fulci's "dream logic" ideal than The Beyond does. It's extremely gory and features zombies that are killed when they have a church cross jammed into their crotches. (I don't think it was Fulci's intent to have it look like they were being stabbed in the crotch, but that's what it it looks like.)

[DFA1979]

I love most of the Fulci I have seen except for The Beyond which I'm not a fan of. I tried twice to like it. However The House By The Cemetery and City of the Living Dead both rock as does Zombie which is one of my favorite horror movies. Also I like The New York Ripper more than most do.

[Spun Lepton]

Also I like The New York Ripper more than most do.

Too sleazy for me. It even manages out out-sleaze Maniac.

[DFA1979]

Too sleazy for me. It even manages out out-sleaze Maniac.

A double bill of both would be neat imo. 100% utter sleaze.

[Grouchy]

https://www.hellomagazine.com/imagenes/film/20210416111232/helen-mccrory-cherie-blair-pays-tribute/0-537-217/helen-mccrory-cherie-blair-z.jpg

Extremely underwhelmed by Stephen Frears' The Queen. I was completely uninterested in the subject matter, but hey, that has never stopped me from enjoying well made movies before. However, I found this stale both visually and verbally. Everyone's speech seemed forced, with character introductions in particular being just a resume quoted out loud. Of course the actors are great - Helen Mirren and the late McCrory. But I lost interest way before it was over.

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I watched Ride in the whirlwind back when Harry Dean Stanton passed and now, because of Monte Hellman, I finally added its companion movie The Shooting. Both define what has come to be remembered as the "acid western", the hippie point of view of Easy Rider applied to the Old West. The Shooting is poetic, sometimes even nightmarish, and completely different both from classic Hollywood flicks and the spaghetti westerns that were peaking at the time. It also plays a bit like Funny Games in the desert although a lot less traumatic. Nicholson gets in a great early performance as a sadistic gunslinger and he has a rocking wardrobe. The ending frankly confused me, and it took a while before I figured it out, but it's really clever once you think about it. I can see why it took a while to get distribution, though - Hellman plays his cards too close to the chest for the average expectations of audiences.

[DFA1979]

The Shooting is almost great but doesn't quite get there. I'm not sure I get the ending.

[Grouchy]

The Shooting is almost great but doesn't quite get there. I'm not sure I get the ending.
It went over my head! A guy on the internet pointed me in the right direction, then I re-watched it, watched a bit of the beginning and it makes all the sense.

When Warren Oates arrives at the camp he learns that his brother accidentally ran over a child in town and fled the party to avoid hanging. Then someone (presumably from the town) shot his other companion. Then they find the girl who wants to be taken to a place called Kingsley. Oates eventually realizes (way before I did) that the girl is the one who shot Leland and she's after his brother for revenge, we have to assume because he killed her son/daughter. In the ending she finds her prey, they shoot each other dead and we learn that he and Oates were twins.

[DFA1979]

It went over my head! A guy on the internet pointed me in the right direction, then I re-watched it, watched a bit of the beginning and it makes all the sense.

When Warren Oates arrives at the camp he learns that his brother accidentally ran over a child in town and fled the party to avoid hanging. Then someone (presumably from the town) shot his other companion. Then they find the girl who wants to be taken to a place called Kingsley. Oates eventually realizes (way before I did) that the girl is the one who shot Leland and she's after his brother for revenge, we have to assume because he killed her son/daughter. In the ending she finds her prey, they shoot each other dead and we learn that he and Oates were twins.
Oh yeah. I caught some of that but it didn't quite register for me at the time.

[Grouchy]

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As I said back when I started this thread, you won't believe some of the movies I still hadn't seen. I've never been a Trekkie and all I had watched from the franchise (First Contact, the Abrams reboot) was more a result of inertia than actively seeking out those movies and TV shows. And so to homage Robert Fletcher, who designed the new suits for the films, I watched both Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan for the first time in my life. The original movie seems to have set the standard for feature film adaptations of TV shows - essentially being a reunion and a special episode with more epic events thrown in. This makes even more sense sense when one reads about how the project came to be - the original idea being to create a new TV show which changed when Paramount took notice of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind being huge box office hits. The Motion Picture's most glaring influence, though, seems to be 2001: A Space Odyssey, as it goes light on adventure and big on sci-fi high concepts and numerous outer space epiphanies. Reviews at the time focused negatively on this trait, displaying their famous wits to nickname it "The Slow Motion Picture". Technically, they are not wrong, but there's a unique charm here that carries even the slowest scenes. And, also, I get it - the miniature work by Douglas Trumbull still looks charming and beautiful. At the time it must have blown people's heads off - I don't blame the editors for letting those shots run as long as they did although it feels so weird today.

The Wrath of Khan fixes this and a lot of other problems by becoming what's esentially a pirate adventure with spaceships. Whereas the first movie did not have a strong conflict or villain, this one introduces a barbarian hellbent on vengeance against Kirk. Some of this movie's quotes and scenes have made their way so deep into pop culture that it's impossible to have a completely virgin experience. Still, I can say this movie taught me to respect and even love the Starfleet's crew. The chemistry and camaraderie between Kirk and McCoy continues here, but there is also a bigger spotlight (sort of) on Uhura, Sulu and Checkov that genuinely made me crave more of them. And the ending carries a huge emotional punch which explains the endurance of this movie's popularity.

http://www.otroscines.com/images/fotos/Cordillera-Darin-2.jpg

Driven by the death of veteran actor José MarÃ*a Marcos (who almost starred in a short movie I made early in 2020, but couldn't due to his super busy schedule) I watched Santiago Mitre's political thriller The summit. I'd almost seen this many times before because the premise (a thriller starring Ricardo DarÃ*n as the president of Argentina attending an international summit in the Andes) sounded appealing, but I was expecting a much more conventional film. This is hard to review because there are so many ideas and interesting angles that I want to like it, but I also have to consider it a failure of sorts. The film's screenplay is penned by Mariano Llinás, a filmmaker who is known for being subversive and going against expectations (his latest film The Flower is 14 hours long), and presents us with many layers. There's a political tension based on a decision Blanco (the fictional Argentinian president) has to make, but the bulk of the film concerns the mystery of what is going on inside the head of his troubled daughter, played by Dolores Fonzi. The script moves awkwardly between those two storylines, ever refusing to marry them in any way. Every scene between DarÃ*n and Fonzi is intense and interesting but many of the other big moments fall flat. The scene between him and Christian Slater, for example, is inert and way too long despite the actor's obvious appeal. The hypnotism scene, obviously intended to be a tense moment, is too awkwardly directed. Llinás deliberately sets up many angles that won't pay off. I'd be willing to engage in conversation with someone who loves this to see what they took away from it, but right now I feel it's interesting but too ambitious for its own good.

[Skitch]

I adore TMP. It feels so epic. The comparison to 2001 is apt, but I still dig it.

[Grouchy]

I adore TMP. It feels so epic. The comparison to 2001 is apt, but I still dig it.
Agreed and I liked it! But it's undeniably weird how passive most of the action is. A huge chunk of the film is the characters just reacting to freaky lights.