Easily, one of the worst animated films I've ever seen and easily the worst film I've seen this year. Truly awful. The "story" was an incoherent mess with no direction and the comedy was flat AF.
Easily, one of the worst animated films I've ever seen and easily the worst film I've seen this year. Truly awful. The "story" was an incoherent mess with no direction and the comedy was flat AF.
Bullitt - A real meat-and-potatoes kind of film. Bullitt starts out a little slow, but it soon builds momentum until it becomes a tense thriller that rarely lets up. I wouldn't call it understated, but it is certainly less bombastic than more modern thrillers. Most of the film is light on action, focusing on Steve McQueen's detective work, but it's never boring. The stoic Frank Bullitt is the perfect role for McQueen; he is always in tune with the character and really sells what would otherwise be a fairly generic character. The centerpiece of the film -- the famous (for a good reason, as it turns out) car-chase -- is directed and edited to perfection; the action is clear and made even better by how focused it is. This focus makes itself known in the lack of a score during this sequence. It was a brilliant choice that shows that the filmmakers knew what they had on their hands. It's all tire-squealing and engine-roaring and its incredible. Bullitt never strays from what it needs to do and never wastes a minute of the runtime. A classic for a reason.
Seven Samurai - Seven Samurai is another one of those classic films that lives up to its immense reputation. Even at a lengthy 207 minutes, Seven Samurai never slouches; the script is paced incredibly well. The script juggles so many different characters and subplots without any of them feeling flat or left out. It's one of those perennial stories that have been copied dozens and dozens of times, yet there's nothing that tops the original. I've only seen about 3 other films from Kurosawa, but this is easily his best directorial effort I've seen so far. Every single shot is framed and blocked to perfection. The compositions are so, so beautiful. The camera moves are smooth and steady, never missing a beat. It is truly the best kind of cinematography where it isn't just flashy, it has tangible storytelling motivations behind it. Seven Samurai is the perfect case study in grand storytelling that doesn't fall into tedium or self-seriousness. Both light and dramatic, funny and tragic, this film is damn near as good as it gets.
Having a lot more free time has been letting me get to some of the longer movies I've been meaning to watch for years. Gonna try and get to Jeanne Dielman and maybe an Edward Yang movie in the coming weeks. We'll see!
I have a feeling that you're going to really, really, really like From Russia with Love. No real big set pieces and a much bigger emphasis on espionage. The formula didn't really kick off until Goldfinger, where it pretty much codified the series from then on.
I have some minor quibbles, mainly the preponderance of one-liners (wasn't an issue in Dr. No) and the competing gypsy women (dope belly dancing aside), but in general Bond's second outing is a marked improvement over its predecessor. The great location shooting continues, swapping out sunny Jamaica for the gritty streets of Istanbul, but whereas Dr. No's second half flounders, for the most part this only gets better as it chugs along, climaxing with the glorious Orient Express sequence, a spatial masterclass of taut unease, thanks in large part to Robert Shaw's looming presence; I love the shot of Bond walking along the train station as Red stalks him from within. It's just really sweet that his adversary is someone on his level, a shadow Bond so to speak (heck, he kind of even looks like Craig's Bond). And when their inevitable duel finally happens, it manages to avoid the pitfalls of most old school brawls, where brutality seems all but absent; on the contrary, this actually resembles a fight to the death, which makes it a little weird that it's followed by two more action set-pieces, as they can't compare, but I still quite liked them. As for Romanova, she's leagues better than Honey Rider/more integral to the story/the bridal suite scene is excellent. I know it won't last, but I kind of wish every Bond began with him checking into a hotel.
Just saw Lu Over the Wall was added to Netflix and rewatched that. It continues to be a lovely little movie. Yuasa is a seriously versatile director even while maintaining a consistent visual style.
With the bond theme blaring at full volume as Bond casually inspects his room for microphones. I can't help it but laugh at the use of the bond theme in that scene.
elaborate breh. I've been kinda at a standstill not knowing what to watch for a while. think its time for me to finally lean into a bunch of bergman films during quarantine season.
elaborate breh. I've been kinda at a standstill not knowing what to watch for a while. think its time for me to finally lean into a bunch of bergman films during quarantine season.
Primer was ass bruh. Its a great idea that would make for a nice short film. But its so amateurishly made and just throwing its rules at me like a long physics lecture i cant with that movie.
Easily, one of the worst animated films I've ever seen and easily the worst film I've seen this year. Truly awful. The "story" was an incoherent mess with no direction and the comedy was flat AF.
Illimination is a trash company. It hurts me that they are one of the most successful animation companies in the world when vastly more talented companies like Laika are struggling.
Primer was ass bruh. Its a great idea that would make for a nice short film. But its so amateurishly made and just throwing its rules at me like a long physics lecture i cant with that movie.
I rewatched Martha Marcy May Marlene recently and still hits like a hammer, that movie. Watched it with my GF after watching a documentary about cults/sects and had her starting out sceptical and in the end be rather blown away. Those final shots, yo. Read up and realized Sean Durkin hadn't done any movies up untill now - his new movie The Nest is on the way. Interesting cast too, I've recently started watching the Leftovers and one of it's main cast (Carrie Coon) has a main role in The Nest.
I recently rewatched Aliens, and was surprised by how much I "disliked" it this time around. It's obviously an extremely well made movie, but I just didn't like it that much this time around. I had originally rated it 9 on IMDB, but after this rewatch I re-rated it to 7.
I really didn't like most of the action scenes -- they were edited in a way that made it hard to get a proper sense of what was happening. It also didn't help that it was so dark. I guess you could argue that it was intentional to convey a sense of confusion and chaos, but it seemed more like it done to hide the fact that the aliens are just guys in rubber suits, and their movements are a bit awkward at times. I don't know, but I didn't like it.
Obviously, on a technical level it's masterful. The sets, designs, world building, etc are all amazing.
I'm conflicted about Primer. I think it's a really impressive film from a technical standpoint. It's an incredibly high concept film brought in a very low budget way, it shows that you don't need a high budget to make a really cool and inventive movie. At the same time the really scientific and down-to-earth approach makes the film incredibly difficult to follow and even more difficult to untangle. Basically I think it's a very impressive film, but not necessarily a very good one.
It's bullshit what has happened to Shane Carruth though. I do hope he eventually gets to finish his last film before stepping out of the game entirely.
I'm not into convoluted plots or trying to understand clues but I like Primer mainly because it's one of the few movies that shows time travel would suck so bad and is infinitely depressing. It's all in vain, they don't achieve much, and having to retrace/fix your alternate self is just not worth it.
Decided the other day it was apropos under the current circumstances to rewatch Francesco Rosi's Hands Over the City (Le mani sulla città) on the Criterion Channel. Even if the setting here is Italy and there definitely are not exact parallels in the structure of Naples' city council vs that of the American federal government, the overlaps are compelling enough to render Rosi's indictment of corruption at the top never more relevant or incisive to the situation prevailing nowadays in the US (and many other nations).
"In politics, the only real sin is losing," so pronounces the wily Center Party leader at one point, pithily summarizing the fundamental rot at the heart of failing democracy, where morality is beside the point and personal enrichment trumps all other objectives. Although he is dubbed into Italian, Rod Steiger turns in one of his all-time best physical performances as a crooked real estate developer-cum-political candidate (sound familiar?), whom knows all the right palms to grease and laws to skirt. The uniformly-perfect cast is chiefly comprised of non-professionals, including several real-life government officeholders, lending this trenchant exposé an airtight verisimilitude. (The electrifying Carlo Fermariello, as the Left Party foreman, is a particular standout. At one point, he scolds his constituents, "This is what happens when you vote against your own interests!")
Primer was ass bruh. Its a great idea that would make for a nice short film. But its so amateurishly made and just throwing its rules at me like a long physics lecture i cant with that movie.
I wasn't a huge fan of Primer. IMO, Upstream Color represents a huge advance for Carruth over his ramshackle debut. Too bad it might turn out to be his swansong.
I dunno, quarantine has been really bad for my movie watching. even before all this I hadn't been able to see much in theaters so far this year. after a certain amount of home viewing I often feel like I need to see something in theaters to recalibrate/reset, because watching on my small tv in a merely semi-dark room simply doesn't hit me as hard. with that not being an option I've been burned out on movie watching.
I rewatched Primer a couple years ago expecting my feelings towards it to diminish greatly and instead found that I still loved it. it's a damn thrilling and inventive shoestring budget sci-fi piece, feels lived-in and emotionally honest. which might sound weird given the left brainedness of the protagonists but that is exactly what feels honest to me. these men approach everything like engineers and it leads to ruin, cool stuff.
Oh and on Bond, I also totally prefer Thunderball to Goldinger and consider it one of the best in the series. The second half of Goldfinger is kinda boring.
Oh and on Bond, I also totally prefer Thunderball to Goldinger and consider it one of the best in the series. The second half of Goldfinger is kinda boring.
I see a lot of people saying they get bored with the underwater photography in Thunderball after a while but I did not. I thought it was awesome all the way through
What happened? He made 2 shit films in a row and is now no longer allowed to make movies. Seems right to me.
My Beautiful Launderette: 7/10. Daniel Gay Lewis. I'm no Stevie Spielberg but I feel like if you're gonna shoot a scene in a nightclub where the walls are all mirrors you might make some sort of effort to hide the camera. A Brighter Summer Day: 8/10. Did you know before running for the Democratic presidential nomination Andrew Yang made movies? I was left mostly unmoved by all the petty gang squabbles in the first half but loved when it transitioned to more family relationship stuff in the second part. You ever just watch a movie where every frame is a masterclass in composition? I think I already mentioned this but my heart still jumps anytime I see a metal desk fan in an old movie or a period piece because they were such a great source of screws in Fallout 4. The Virgin Suicides: 6/10. This is a movie about being obsessed with Kirsten Dunst's teen body, definitely something I can relate to. I don't know why I've seen like ALL of this lady's movies, I think I've kinda liked maybe 2. Air Force One: 6/10. Oh it's just Die Hard. What an obnoxious score. I'm assuming this is another classic I'm just underestimating like The Mummy. I had fun though.
wrong move ** i get the appeal of the melancholy road trip and the beautiful photography, but the sexualization of a pre-teen kinski is really troublesome.
45 years **** nuance and heartbreaking. i wasn't the biggest fan of weekend, but this feels like a massive leap.
high life **** this virus has ruined my plans to see the tindersticks live, which is the main thing i thought about during this movie. i love that denis didn't hold back with her english lang debut, as good as anything she's done.
wrong move ** i get the appeal of the melancholy road trip and the beautiful photography, but the sexualization of a pre-teen kinski is really troublesome.
45 years **** nuance and heartbreaking. i wasn't the biggest fan of weekend, but this feels like a massive leap.
high life **** this virus has ruined my plans to see the tindersticks live, which is the main thing i thought about during this movie. i love that denis didn't hold back with her english lang debut, as good as anything she's done.
Saw your High Life score on Letterboxd last night and fist pumped. One of us, one of us! As for Wrong Move, I love the movie, but yeah the Kinski stuff is indefensible. The only thing that eases my mind about it is that she'd go on to work with him again and has never said anything bad about Wim as far as I know, so I just chalk it up to weird European art standards of the time. Doesn't negate the ickiness though.
Surprisingly been watching less than pre-WFH, mainly because my entire household online at the same time means the wi-fi goes in and out
Before the Great Theater Shutdown of 2020, I did get to see Wild Goose Lake and Bacurau in theaters. The former was pretty, but kind of disappointing; Bacurau totally lived up to the hype
Bacurau - ★★★★
As I watched Bacurau, I was not expecting the movie Ready Or Not to come to mind. And yet this blood-soaked Brazilian thriller, equal parts social allegory and Carpenter-infused sertão-western, shares a similar tonal harmony. There's a naturalistic sense of place to the town of Bacurau. It's felt in the rustic homeliness and close-knit communal bonds stretching across generations. Seen in the rituals and small-town struggles that turn this isolated village into a scrubland oasis rich in personality. Heard in the songs of mourning and folksy local tunes. That cultural canvas is painted leisurely but always with deliberate intent; there are memorable characters to root for, but the town itself emerges as the true protagonist.
So when weirdness and creeping dread begins to encroach upon that community, the contrast is distinctly felt. Slight disruptions at first, amplified by the apparent normalcy: the town vanishing from GPS, odd visitors, mysterious bullet holes, the wolfish presence of Udo Kier. It's not long till the synth starts and a pendulum sharpened by furious catharsis begins its earnest descent. The climatic payoff is visceral, both in its thematic rage against dehumanization and oppression; and in the literal sense of being laden with viscera.
Bacurau's mix of social mirror and genre thrills can be very on the nose at times. But like Ready Or Not, the very real suffering and struggle inflicted by such a wild heightened threat resonates deeply. The consequences of quite literally being "on the wrong side of history" are realized in vividly satisfying fashion.
Darkman - ★★★★
The Count of Monte Cristo by way of Universal Monsters and The Shadow, Darkman oozes passion. Any low-budget seam is immediately patched by this film's visual flair and mad-scientist concoction of genres. Few movies feel so much like a director's pure unadulterated passions brought to screen....Dark, devilish, tragic yet totally cartoonish, unshackled by source material, Darkman freely molds myriad conventions and inspirations into a mask of its own design.
Hong Kong Godfather (1985) - ★★★½
...when the machetes and blades are finally unsheathed, Hong Kong Godfather becomes the best Chang Cheh film not directed by Chang Cheh. The bloodshed in this is ridiculous, painting the walls and drenching combatants in crimson
Memoirs of an Invisible Man - ★★★★
Carpenter brings his handle of suspense set-pieces into the realm of existential comedy-thriller...a pleasantly playful twist on the translucent icon
The Platform - ★★★★½
A stark prison descending floor by floor, two prisoners per level, the titular platform carrying an overflowing feast ever downwards. Those at the top can gorge, leaving scraps and bare dishes for those below. After a month, prisoners awaken on a new level; the lucky ones find themselves near the top or at the middle. Others are doomed in the depths.
The Platform will undoubtedly bring to mind films like Cube and Snowpiercer through its portrayal of a bluntly-allegorical dystopian nightmare. Unfolding with all the subtlety of a meat tenderizer, Gaztelu-Urrutia's sci-fi thriller is equally gruesome and accessible. In this inverted pyramid of despair, the selfish apathy above crushes those below, gnawing away at flesh and soul through cannibalistic desperation. Grisly horrors act as a dark glaze over a metaphor for inequality and societal disparity.
It's within this ravenous hell that Goreng finds himself. As a protagonist, he's more prism than character, a surrogate for the audience and a filter for the diverse ideologies of his revolving cellmates. Thankfully, those fellow prisoners compensate for his blandness. The standout is the sly wolfish elder Trimagasi, a hardened survivor wielding a self-sharpening blade. Zorion Eguileor's performance is creepily entertaining, like a more jaded and jovial Hannibal.
But the ultimate star of The Platform is the pit itself. Intriguing details and fascinating twists are introduced every few minutes, each descending banquet revealing some new devilish delight. The allegory is compelling despite an ending heavy in symbolism, lacking in satisfaction. However, the film is easy to enjoy purely as a mysterious grotesque powder-keg. Gluttony and bloodshed are portrayed with a disturbing intensity: an orgy of decay, death, devouring, and depravity that paints the concrete walls with blood. Anyone with an appetite for high-concept speculative fiction, vicious visceral thrills, and dystopian bleakness will be sated by The Platform.
Shaolin Intruders (1983) - ★★★★½
It finally happened: a film as creative and surprising as The Magic Blade....from temple challenges to the ultimate bench-fu showdown, Shaolin Intruders is a blast of creative wuxia thrills.
Dagon - ★★★½
This water-logged rain-drenched film is equally soaked in bleak hopelessness...a relentless mad dash to its finale, a dark stormy night of fleeing from misshapen locals and worse horrors. More subdued, darker, and grislier than I expected from Gordon
The Earth Dies Screaming - ★★½
Never as awesome as its title, The Earth Dies Screaming nevertheless is a creepy restrained shot of '60s sci-fi horror....a pulpy sci-fi ancestor to the zombie film, that understands the power of silence and lingering dread.
The Return of the Living Dead [Rewatch] - ★★★★½
If some of best needle drops in the genre didn't clue you in, Return of the Living Dead is an absolute blast of a horror-comedy. And to be clear, the film is very much horror and comedy: a harmony of goopy splatter silliness, self-aware satire, and a terrifying apocalyptic aura. More so than Romero's films, I was reminded of Jorge Grau's Living Dead At Manchester Morgue; like that film, the familiar rules of the genre are upended within a claustrophobic arena laden with doom.
However unlike Morgue, Return upends the rules not from the lack of a formula, but to creatively tweak and satirize the formula. It's both a loving send-up of Romero's classic and a clever evolution of the shambling hordes. The unstoppable unkillable undead allow for fantastic visual gags, while quietly ratcheting the ominous stakes with each new zombie or gory set-piece. The horror almost sneaks up on you, quite like its sprinting ambushing hordes, until reaching an apex during the cold hopeless finale.
Iconic moments lunge off the screen every few minutes. The barking of a bisected dog. The muck of a rain-drenched cemetery bulging as the dead rise. "Send...more...paramedics". It's the little details that elevate Return of the Living Dead, like the Tarman's melting sagging stride or the spinal fluid leaking during a very unusual interrogation. It's the characters too - a mix of incompetent, punk, and desperate folks - all given enough memorable personality that the doom and gloom of the ending has lingering weight.
Return of the Living Dead executes its thrills with frighteningly fun flair, turning one of the genre's most despairing scenarios into a playful and propulsive party-time.
Saw your High Life score on Letterboxd last night and fist pumped. One of us, one of us! As for Wrong Move, I love the movie, but yeah the Kinski stuff is indefensible. The only thing that eases my mind about it is that she'd go on to work with him again and has never said anything bad about Wim as far as I know, so I just chalk it up to weird European art standards of the time. Doesn't negate the ickiness though.
yea, i mean i know she's not shy about talking about her father w/r/t to this, but even as a plot point it's so bad.. i love denis, and was just bummed to miss in the theater so i was pretty stoked you recommended it to me.
Surprisingly been watching less than pre-WFH, mainly because my entire household online at the same time means the wi-fi goes in and out
Before the Great Theater Shutdown of 2020, I did get to see Wild Goose Lake and Bacurau in theaters. The former was pretty, but kind of disappointing; Bacurau totally lived up to the hype
Bacurau - ★★★★
As I watched Bacurau, I was not expecting the movie Ready Or Not to come to mind. And yet this blood-soaked Brazilian thriller, equal parts social allegory and Carpenter-infused sertão-western, shares a similar tonal harmony. There's a naturalistic sense of place to the town of Bacurau. It's felt in the rustic homeliness and close-knit communal bonds stretching across generations. Seen in the rituals and small-town struggles that turn this isolated village into a scrubland oasis rich in personality. Heard in the songs of mourning and folksy local tunes. That cultural canvas is painted leisurely but always with deliberate intent; there are memorable characters to root for, but the town itself emerges as the true protagonist.
So when weirdness and creeping dread begins to encroach upon that community, the contrast is distinctly felt. Slight disruptions at first, amplified by the apparent normalcy: the town vanishing from GPS, odd visitors, mysterious bullet holes, the wolfish presence of Udo Kier. It's not long till the synth starts and a pendulum sharpened by furious catharsis begins its earnest descent. The climatic payoff is visceral, both in its thematic rage against dehumanization and oppression; and in the literal sense of being laden with viscera.
Bacurau's mix of social mirror and genre thrills can be very on the nose at times. But like Ready Or Not, the very real suffering and struggle inflicted by such a wild heightened threat resonates deeply. The consequences of quite literally being "on the wrong side of history" are realized in vividly satisfying fashion.
They Were Expendable (1945): John Ford's first film after returning from making war documentaries, the saga of a PT boat squadron in the early days of the war in the Pacific as the US garrison in the Philippines is progressively overwhelmed. More or less the story of a series of retreats with the audience knowing defeat is inevitable, this is a remarkably grim picture for the time period, with occasional bits of flag-waving cheer inserted mainly via the score. John Wayne spends much of the early section romancing a nurse played by Donna Reed, then is ordered to retreat from Bataan and we pointedly never see or hear of Reed again. There's some really incredible photography in this, as well as a number of sea battles that combine some very good model work with a lot of access to real PT boats.
Persona (1966): Ingmar Bergman at his most deliberately inscrutable. There's a lot of really masterful filmmaking on display here, and a monologue from Bibi Andersson that is so explicit that it must have caused 1960s censors' heads to explode. At the same time, this sort of filmmaking that is so calculatedly trying to get the audience wondering what it all means is something I kind of resist loving, even if the craft that went into it is undeniable. This is my second viewing of the film, first in a number of years, and I had clear memories of a few parts of it but otherwise it was a lot like watching the whole thing new again.
For US people interested in BACURAU, Kino Lorber is doing a cool thing where you can pay to rent it on their streaming app and some of the proceeds go to an arthouse theater. Full list of participating theaters is here. Pretty cool initiative and arthouses need all the help they can get at this time
As I understand it, this set the template for the series moving forward, codifying elements featured in the previous two—gadgets, lairs, misogyny—into something neater. While I don't think it matches up to FRWL, there's plenty to like, with my two favorite scenes being the golf match between Bond and Goldfinger and the awesome Aston Martin escape sequence; always game for some playful hero-villain banter and "ejecto seato cuz" action. Lots of iconic moments, Bond pulling off the wetsuit to reveal a tux, "Do you expect me to talk?", Oddjob's hat. And of course, the indelible image of Jill Masterson's gleaming corpse. As for our resident Bond girl, leave it to a woman with one of the most obscene, boy's club names ever to be Bond's best foil. She's every bit his equal and the mission simply would not have been accomplished without her (and how can you not love the phrase "Pussy Galore's Flying Circus"). Lastly, I want to give a shout-out to the generic gangsters, their bewilderment at Goldfinger's transforming lair is comedic gold (ha!).
Now onto the negatives: first, can anyone tell me why Tilly Masterson is a character? She has no impact on the film whatsoever. Any weight her death has was already sufficiently covered by her sister's. Is another pretty face and another dead "broad" really the answer? Is it that simple? Also why is Bond such a non-factor for a good chunk of the second half? Even in the climax, he doesn't know what to do with the bomb. A random scientist saves the day! Location wise, the winding roads of Switzerland are gorgeous, but with all due respect to Colonel Sanders and Joe (of Joe's Drive-In), the flat terrain of Kentucky/Florida just can't compare to Jamaica and Istanbul, at least as presented here.
About 2/3rds of Goldfinger has Bond utterly clueless as the plot happens around him. The most Direct action he takes is when he decides to tackle(rape?) Pussy Galore for inexplicable reasons.
For US people interested in BACURAU, Kino Lorber is doing a cool thing where you can pay to rent it on their streaming app and some of the proceeds go to an arthouse theater. Full list of participating theaters is here. Pretty cool initiative and arthouses need all the help they can get at this time
ooo thanks for this, magnolia is doing something similar with the band doc and the whistlers , but they don't have as easy to use format to select the theater to support yr local shuttered cinema.
Watched the Konosuba movie, didn't like the final battle as it was overextended from the LN and missed the scenes with the mages in dramatic situations during the canon part of the fight, on the other hand the humor was pretty spot on as always and maintains most of the canon to make a season 3.
About 2/3rds of Goldfinger has Bond utterly clueless as the plot happens around him. The most Direct action he takes is when he decides to tackle(rape?) Pussy Galore for inexplicable reasons.
In Bond's defense, she was acting a little too lesbian-y for 1964 mainstream filmmaking.
...yeah, Bond's a real creep to her, especially with that "bon mot" he tells Felix about why she turned traitor.
Wow, I haven't posted any movies I watched in a while!
Demon City Shinjuku: The... kinder? Gentler? Kawajiri film involving demons? Though it certainly has its fair share of bloodshed and ogling from time to time, we are a fair distance away from the far more transgressive Wicked City in terms of content and depiction, with only a teeny bit of nudity and one quickly thwarted rape attempt to its name. The good news there is it's a lot easier for anyone to watch and possibly enjoy, allowing one to enjoy the demon slaying and sword fights without feeling particularly icky about. And like Kawajiri's other works, particularly in this era, the film sure has a look about it that makes great use of limited color palettes at times to set a strong mood, even offering up some rather striking compositions as we go about the city and all its infernal wonders. Yet it can't be denied that its roots as pre-existing material often acts as a detriment, as the story here feels deeply piecemeal with the wild leaps it takes to keep the plot going while also having some bizarre lulls that overdoes the exposition to explain some of the more supernatural elements. The story here is, charitably, less concerned with character development, making the hero's journey here for Kiyoya feel rather unearned and his female companion Sayaka is... kinda just there, barely registering as a damsel in distress for how little impact she has on anything that happens. Thankfully, we get some cool looking villains to end up as mincemeat throughout, with their accompanying visuals allowing for some nicely expressive moments that the story gives way to to create intrigue, even as the finale feels like they ran out of money and settled for a deeply anticlimactic final battle. This winds up as a very minor key for 80s OVA works, one that will certainly get someone to look at it with how promising its key art looks and it has just enough excitement throughout to make it a worthwhile endeavor when watching it. Past that, however, and it's hard not to see this disappearing like vapor, leading to a far less memorable demon apocalypse than you would have wanted.
Journey to the Beginning of Time: If traveling back in time to witness prehistoric life all the way to its origins was as easy as sailing through a cave, we'd have a lot more spelunking going on! Quaint as far as the near-total lack of conflict is concerned, but it's hard to top the genuine sense of childlike wonderment this boasts when our band of adventurers have such a pure goal in mind and achieve it by its end, with plenty of creative stop-motion effects and seriously clever production design elements to help sell the illusion.
Tokyo Godfathers: Satoshi Kon stepped slightly away from the delicate thread that connects reality to dreams for what only seems on paper like a rather conventional story: three homeless people find themselves unexpectedly in custody of an abandoned child, resolving to find her parents and maybe learn a thing or two about themselves in the process. If that sounds like the plot of a late 80s comedy vehicle... well, it is, but rather than casting three popular male comedians of that time for a shot of suburban feel-good generic hokum, we wind up with a rather unusual trio of which our Yuletide tale is centered around: a self-deprecating drunkard of a man, a teenage runaway whose brashness belies her delicate vulnerability, and it what can only be described as somehow revolutionary even as we get to 17 years after the film's release, a trans woman who is absolutely fearless in calling out folks who think of her as anything else. The characters being this unusual would be a heck of a hook as it is, especially with the way their character beats play out that reveal their personal woes to tremendous affect throughout the duration of the film, but in spite of the gorgeously-depicted wintertime Tokyo this film pulls off (Those trashbags! Those air conditioning units! Those numerous lighting sources!), Kon has a lot more tricks up his sleeve to upend your expectations of just how this film is going to play out through its entirety. Getting ahead of the film is impossible as a result, as you get to sit back and have all the wild genre shifts wash over you like a blizzard, producing some gutbusting comedy, well choreographed action sequences and, yes, plenty of tears to hold back futilely with how well the yarn here unravels as we gain more and more appreciation for how inseparable our hero and heroines are in making sure their temporary bundle of joy finds her way back home. As much praise Kon earned over his tragically short career for the worlds and concepts he was able to invent and how immaculately they paired with his filmmaking excellence, a film like this serves as a reminder that he was just as skilled with emotional investment in characters and drama to draw the viewer in for a real knockout guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
Invention for Destruction: The wood print-affected Jules Verne gumbo you never asked for but wind up wondering why you didn't in the first place! The hodgepodge nature of the story does make it a bit hard to invest in the characters, but it's hard to ignore the virtuoso qualities of the production design and how well implemented the special effects are throughout, carrying on Zamen's immaculate eye for fantasy with the clever ways he bridges the gap between cinema technology of yesteryear and what he and his crew did to improve on such techniques over 50 years later. Rather striking and occasionally crackling stuff!
Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street:
Anyone expecting a feature length treatment of the now legendary segment from Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, in which cast and crew alike parse through the text and... well, OK, just text of the homoerotic qualities of Freddy Kruger's second at-bat is going to be disappointed, understandably so, that the filmmakers documenting Mark Patton's life story here are not specifically here to entertain folks wondering just how the hell something like that film could happen in the first place. What we get in its place, however, is more than worth your time as the one-time reviled quickie sequel turned reappraised milestone of queer cinema in the mainstream and certainly in the horror genre gets the proper context in Mark's life story.
From an early childhood where he knew almost right away he was gay, to the early success of his career in ads and theater giving way to a big romance with Timothy Patrick Murphy and a shot at a Hollywood leading man career, only for things to go not quite how he imagined they would have as it had for other future stars who got their start in horror. Tempting as it is for some to believe that the harsh fan reaction to the second Nightmare film as the culprit, what is revealed to us is a sobering reminder of how deeply embedded homophobia was in our society, particularly at the height of the AIDS crisis, putting Mark in a bad spot that he had little hope of getting out of without spiritually killing himself in the process.
Make no mistake: this is one heavy film when it comes to its subject matter, opening up a world that's sadly not as far removed as some of us think it is and how it manages to still haunt people decades on. I can't imagine it was an easy choice to focus so much of the documentary on Mark's queerness in lieu of a more commercially friendly approach to a beloved horror film series, but one can immediately tell of his passion for advocacy immediately as well as the openness he has in showing just how much of himself that he's willing to put out there to move forward from the pain that his career had caused him, as well as a kind of therapy to finally move on to embracing his unlikely yet earned status as a gay icon for an entire generation of genre film fans out there. Mark himself is a great subject, but he does get some help in from his former co-stars and crew members that help to create a palpable sense of support as he makes his moves to being a better version of himself, with Robert Englund providing excellent anecdotes himself and a very tense encounter with the film's screenwriter that comprises the climax of the film that provides a satisfying catharsis for Mark and his journey.
The emotional resonance that this documentary achieves is hard to shake, even if you're the kind of the person that would have wanted more information on the making of the film that was simultaneously a cause and a celebration for its star. I'd normally knock more points off for some of the tangents this can go on, though the filmmakers here do such a great job with Mark and his ability to tell his own story that said tangents would have been better off as their own features, rather than taking away from the core of what really mattered here. While he never got the kind of superstar career that other slasher alumni were able to achieve, Mark's story is so compelling and touching that you can't imagine things turning out any differently for him than they did in the end, and his ability to not let his pain and suffering define him is truly inspirational.
In Search of the Last Action Heroes: For better and for worse, this is the kind of documentary that does manage to throw in the kitchen sink with everything else. Beginning with an intriguing premise of how we didn't really know what an "action film" was until the vaunted golden age of the genre in the 80s, the doc starts with how we managed to get to that point by drawing the line from westerns, turning into the Bond and spy craze of the 60s before finding the immediate ancestors of the topic at hand in both the police thrillers and the martial arts films of the 70s. From there, things go about how you would expect them to in terms of chronological order, starting with the early, genuine classics like The Road Warrior and First Blood, before a certain Austrian actor in a certain fantasy film that turned him into a superstar comes into the conversation and codifies what we know today. The doc does a good job knowing its history, in that many of the early efforts struggled to get big studio backing and the focus on many of the less-than-blockbuster-sized films (particularly those from, you guessed it, Cannon) before we wind up with the big breakthroughs like Commando. Along the way, we get a ton of strong commentary and anecdotes from actors and crew alike, and so many so that you would hardly miss the lack of participation from some of the folks they would happen to be talking about. Everyone is deeply passionate about what they're talking about and that's certainly reflected by the filmmakers as well with the volume of reference materials that they manage to incorporate into the proceedings, but I did find myself questioning often where the through line ultimately was. It's hard to avoid not feeling like we wound up with a great many five-minute clips that are great on their own, as one will have a hard time wondering what kind of ultimate context that everything is being put into when it doesn't seem like there's much connective tissue between the subjects that aren't defined by whichever screen credit they're receiving when their name comes up again. In a weird way, this can wind up feeling more like an audiovisual trivia book than anything else, which certainly has a lot of interest in of itself with how open the folks here can be about themselves and their experiences (Eric Roberts is deliciously catty, while Shane Black shows a surprisingly vulnerable side, to name just a couple), but compared to similar docs like Not Quite Hollywood and Electric Boogaloo, each with clear, tight focuses, this can feel like it's nibbling around the edges of its subject matter rather than biting off more than it can chew.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed: Well, this was great! There is the tragedy of this remaining forever incomplete due to the ravages of time, but what remains is an exciting and surreal adaptation of some of the Arabian Nights, brought to life through dazzling silhouette techniques and a fair few optical effects. Though crude in comparison to the kind of animation the US would soon be known for, the efforts here are just as timeless and striking as they would have been over 90 years ago.
Knives Out (rewatch): Come for the murder mystery, stay for that most delicious flavor of schadenfreude:
rich white people not getting money!
The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (rewatch): They did not cover this in astronaut training!
Good Intentions: See, kids? This is why you don't do hit and runs: you begin to turn into a ghost and the world turns into a horror movie with every step you take. Needless to say, this gets pretty out there, even before the disarming use of stop-motion puppets that find new and horrifying ways to use red dye to sell certain effects, giving off a genuinely creepy vibe to go with some strong tension as our heroine tries to find a way to take her transgression back. Real solid stuff from start to finish!
Jason and the Argonauts (rewatch): Rewatching this, it's a little funny that the ending winds up acting as huge sequel bait since the further adventures of Jason and Medea would not be the kind of material that you would get Ray Harryhausen for! The story suffers greatly from being such a condensed version of the original mythology that to describe it as the Cliff Notes version would be giving it too much credit, to say nothing of how much time it takes to get to actual adventuring, but even as relatively minimal as the screen time they get, Harryhausen's creations here are truly extraordinary in terms of their design and certainly their animation, with the climactic fight against seven skeletons presenting literally gravity-defying feats to feast your eyes upon. The film also happens upon, and at times inadvertently, how much of a closet dickhead Jason is, which is shockingly accurate and deserves quite a few points for an uncharacteristically faithful portrayal, even as it scrubs out some of the more salacious and gruesome aspects of the journey of the Argonauts.
Terror Train: An early slasher of surprising adept technical competence with its keen sense of lighting and good use of its actual train setting, but one that feels enormously padded with all the magic tricks, Ben Johnson doing Ben Johnson things and the pained efforts the film makes in getting you to hate most of its cast so much that most of them deserve far worse deaths than they get. Also suffers from that annoying problem where it's completely obvious just who the killer is when hiding in plain sight, though the base concept of having them shift through disguises in between is inspired and deserves a more engaging film to be a part of. Not something to hate outright, but a trying film all the same.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire: If your heart doesn't stop for even a sliver of a moment when a particular moment during the closing moments of the film happens, you might be actually dead and not know it yet. An absolute stunner of a whirlwind romance that knows how damn effective yearning can be in terms of building suspense, while also having an all-too firm grasp on just how precious each moment is when the end of a professional and personal affair awaits.
swoon thanks for the recs, you never lead me astray
Obsession
Nice off the radar thriller that transposes the UK's postwar anxiety and overreliance on American funding onto an enraged cuckold's calculated revenge scheme. What it lacks in style, it compensates for with great acting, punchy dialogue, and what is surely one of the cutest dogs to ever appear in a movie. There's a smug playfulness to basically every interaction, with Clive's ego constantly butting up against Bill's American pride, Supt. Finsbury's deceptive professionalism, and Storm's general disdain for the man. The scenes with Bill in particular are a highlight, as an uneasy sense of camaraderie begins to form; though he's a prisoner, their relationship is less cat and mouse, and more cat and cat. The underlying themes aren't explored too heavily, but I did get a kick out of Clive's undoing being partially due to picking up as simple an Americanism as "Thanks, pal." And though I wish she had more to do, I appreciate that Storm isn't painted as a morally right victim. Not quite femme fatale, but she's definitely got some nastiness to her. All that said, my favorite thing about the movie is by far the ludicrously ostentatious model train set that Clive owns. It's both a perfect character detail for a narcissistic sociopath and just plain funny.
Lastly, it struck me how Breaking Bad lifted a decent amount from this, particularly the first few episodes. The chemical apron, the acid bath, the hostage situation...probably not intentional, but cinematic parallels and all that jazz.
Pitfall "If a man has always been a good husband except for 24 hours, how long should he be expected to pay for it?"
Secretly the superior 40s noir about an insurance agent getting tangled up in a deadly affair? I don't know if I can declare that in good conscience, but it's funny that Dick Powell auditioned for Double Indemnity and then a few years later wound up in this. Anyway, quite enjoyed it: whip smart script (love the opening back and forth between John and Mona + wow at the bit about dreams), a trio of excellent performances, a palpable sense of malaise, and a fat, deluded villain reminiscent of Mickey Mouse's archnemesis, Pete. Lizabeth Scott is a revelation; the way the film subverts the standard smoky-voiced femme fatale is one of its best elements. There's certainly an air of danger about her, at least at first, as she capably pulls off the alluring charms of a typical black widow, but it belies her true innocence—she is in fact a very sweet girl pigeonholed into an archetype audiences have been conditioned to expect, which makes her ultimate fate all the more tragic.
Circling back to Double Indemnity, though the craftsmanship isn't as good here (Wilder is a master after all), the thing that might put this ahead of it for me is the family dynamic. Neff's personal life is nebulous and undefined, but John is a husband and father. It makes for a richer dynamic in my mind, especially because Jane Wyatt is so good. Something that's stuck with me is the small part where Tommy tells his dad he'll go to the movies with him anytime he wants. It's a simple statement, but it hit me hard for some reason.
Desert Fury "It was in the automat off Times Square, about two o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. I was broke, he had a couple of dollars, we got to talking. He ended up paying for my ham and eggs."
"And then?"
"I went home with him that night. We were together from then on."
Truly a wild movie, a technicolor noir/western/melodrama hybrid with as much homosexual and incestual undertones as humanly possible for the time. The poster presents this as a love triangle between Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, and John Hodiak, and it kind of is, but don't let it fool you, Burt is the least important player in the movie (kind of a shame tbh because Burt is awesome/what a head of hair!). The more pertinent love triangles involve a couple of two-bit crook Eddie Bendix's (Hodiak) former lovers (one explicit, one implied): Fritzi, Paula's (Scott) saloon proprietor mother, whose domineering nature projects both maternal love and lust, and Johnny, Eddie's partner in crime and life. I mean, get a load of the above exchange. If that isn't queer-coded, nothing is. Once again Lizabeth Scott is a dream, with hair so golden Auric Goldfinger would surely stop at nothing to have it (hooray for expanding one's cinematic reference pool!) Her outfits are to die for, her voice as sultry as anyone's; she just has this presence, you can't look away. I'm stunned she's not more famous. Mary Astor delivers probably the strongest performance of the lot, she spits out every line with a steely tongue. I watched this on ok.ru as I couldn't find it anywhere else. I believe it was a DVD rip because it was uploaded a few years before the blu ray release, and it was still stunning. Lurid in all the right ways. I'm not well-versed on the technical aspects of film colorization (Technicolor, TruColor, DeLuxe Color etc.), but am I crazy or did colors just pop more back then? Would make for a great double feature with Johnny Guitar.
Just a normal mother/daughter kiss, nothing to see here.
swoon thanks for the recs, you never lead me astray
Desert Fury "It was in the automat off Times Square, about two o'clock in the morning on a Saturday. I was broke, he had a couple of dollars, we got to talking. He ended up paying for my ham and eggs."
"And then?"
"I went home with him that night. We were together from then on."
Truly a wild movie, a technicolor noir/western/melodrama hybrid with as much homosexual and incestual undertones as humanly possible for the time. The poster presents this as a love triangle between Lizabeth Scott, Burt Lancaster, and John Hodiak, and it kind of is, but don't let it fool you, Burt is the least important player in the movie (kind of a shame tbh because Burt is awesome/what a head of hair!). The more pertinent love triangles involve a couple of two-bit crook Eddie Bendix's (Hodiak) former lovers (one explicit, one implied): Fritzi, Paula's (Scott) saloon proprietor mother, whose domineering nature projects both maternal love and lust, and Johnny, Eddie's partner in crime and life. I mean, get a load of the above exchange. If that isn't queer-coded, nothing is. Once again Lizabeth Scott is a dream, with hair so golden Auric Goldfinger would surely stop at nothing to have it (hooray for expanding one's cinematic reference pool!) Her outfits are to die for, her voice as sultry as anyone's; she just has this presence, you can't look away. I'm stunned she's not more famous. Mary Astor delivers probably the strongest performance of the lot, she spits out every line with a steely tongue. I watched this on ok.ru as I couldn't find it anywhere else. I believe it was a DVD rip because it was uploaded a few years before the blu ray release, and it was still stunning. Lurid in all the right ways. I'm not well-versed on the technical aspects of film colorization (Technicolor, TruColor, DeLuxe Color etc.), but am I crazy or did colors just pop more back then? Would make for a great double feature with Johnny Guitar.
Just a normal mother/daughter kiss, nothing to see here.
yay i'm so glad you were able to track down desert fury, it's a wonderfully weird film.i actually thought about it because you highly rate johnny guitar.
Hey. First time posting here on the account that movie threads are basically dead now. So here's what I watched over the weekend:
Green Book
Oh dear.
I held off against watching this for the longest time, but my morbid curiosity eventually won out.
So this movie... is extremely awkward. It's not that movie structurally. The acting was sound and Mahershala Ali was magic in the role given to him. If this was a stand-alone movie with no connection to real events, it could have been considered a decent movie.
And yet.
There are very few stories based on real life events that crapped on the source material in the past decade as much as this movie. The very book in the title was hardly used effectively in the story at all. They basically tried to state that the Italian guy was blacker than the actual black guy just because he enjoyed playing dice games and likes fries chicken. Trying to make such an argument still hurts the film even if you try and make him partially in the wrong. And then there's the fact that Don Shirley wasn't anything like how he was portrayed in the movie.Mahershala literally had to apologize to the family of the man he played for going along with it.
Then there's the mention of the Green Book without much reference to it at all. It's stated that it was used even in the North to highlight safe places to rest for black people, yet it was hardly mentioned in the movie.
Look, there's a good chance that many stories based on real life don't match up with the source material. I liked Professor Marston and the Wonder Women even though there was little evidence Elizabeth and Olive actually kissed each other. Yet that movie at least got through the themes the real life people conveyed. This movie seems to imply that Tony Lip taught Don Shirley how to be black.
...
This movie is at least better than Crash in terms of race relations, but the comparisons to the Oscar winners is sound and justified. Let's hope they don't make such a mistake again. 5/10 (with a 2 point deduction for the wrongful depiction of real life events).
Bloodspot
Okay, I won't be able to escape my bias against Nineties Anti-Heroes, but I'll try my best here.
So I didn't think it would be a good film. And it wasn't. But there were enough trinkets there to make things interesting.
The biggest compliments I will give is the cinematography. They truly go all out to make the movie stand apart from other superhero movies. I would say the closest comparison would be Alita: Battle Angel. The action was handled well, and the nanite special effects were really well done.
Acting wise, it was alright. Vin Diesel did his usual thing. No complaints. I don't want to get ostracized for knowing British accents, but I thought Lamorne Morris had one of the better ones. He once again proves that the New Girl alum has depth. Eiza González had a more nuanced role, but I'm glad she got to show her action chops. I liked her in Baby Driver and Alita: Battle Angel (again with that comparisons).
The plot was alright, but I wish that they didn't reveal the twist in the trailer. Revealing it in the movie would have gotten me much more entertained about them criticizing the typical revenge flick.
Overall... it's yet another film in 2020 that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be (only Doolittle matched my expectations in that regard). 5.75/10
Astor's daughter remarked that this is the film role that is the closest to her actual personality as the daughter remembered her, which...
Emma. (2020): Second viewing, rented on iTunes to watch with my mother (I take the role of selecting new movies for her to watch periodically, since she has very narrow tastes and doesn't pay much attention to pop culture). Still delightful, my favourite movie of the year so far (of the four I've been able to see) -- the way things have been going, it may be a while before it's surpassed.
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948): One of the films leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of the month, a thriller directed by Anatole Litvak that came out the same year as his brilliant The Snake Pit. Not nearly as good, and certainly not anywhere near as good a showcase for Barbara Stanwyck as the other film was for Olivia de Havilland. It's an interesting premise for a thriller (Stanwyck receiving a phone call while in bed that suggests a murder is about to be committed somewhere, and frantically trying to call people to figure out what's going on), but it devolves into a somewhat meandering series of flashbacks, and Stanwyck's character is written with little more than shallow hysterics. But it's got an absolutely killer ending, really notable for a 1940s picture of this type.
Escape From New York
Coasts on atmosphere/production design and Carpenter's typically moody synths, but whatever it has to say about police states and the prison-industrial complex is kind of negated by it not being all that interesting on a moment to moment basis. Despite the amazing cast (Borgninge, Van Cleef, and Harry Dean = holy shit), I couldn't latch onto a single character; Cabbie was probably my favorite and he has the least amount of screentime. And what a waste of Kurt Russell's talents. Not that he's bad, but he's so much better as a wisecracking everyman than a stone-faced badass. The ending is the highlight, all that to save a douchebag. Hard to deny how influential it is, though.
Big Trouble in Little China
Silly in all the right ways.
They Might Be Giants Of course, he carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That's insane. But, thinking that they might be... Well, all the best minds used to think the world was flat. But, what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what they might be, why, we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.
This is a nutty movie, an examination of grief and mental illness masquerading as a literal Holmesian adventure across then-present day New York City. Make no mistake, this is a Sherlock Holmes movie, one that rests almost entirely upon George C. Scott's committed shoulders. He plays Justin Playfair, a widowed judge whose grief has manifested in a most peculiar manner: the man honestly believes himself to be the famed detective, going so far as to wearing his signature garb, having a private laboratory with a secret hiding space, and most impressively, somehow adequately adopting his genius-level deduction skills. And if Justin believes himself to be Sherlock, so too does Scott; it's honestly one of my favorite portrayals of the character, if not my favorite (haven't seen em all, of course). The fact that he isn't actually Holmes just adds to the humor in an oblivious fish out of water way. Plus, he adores westerns. Relatable.
Every good Sherlock needs two things: a Watson and a Moriarty. As the central mystery is one big farce, the nefarious professor is absent from the proceedings, though Justin/Holmes doesn't know that, as he attributes many of the world's tragedies to the man, and the ultimate "goal" of the movie is to finally meet him face to face. Watson on the other hand is present—Mildred Watson that is, a spinster psychiatrist who takes an occupational and eventual romantic interest in the man. She's played by Joanne Woodward, who I'm not too familiar with, but based on her Wiki page I definitely ought to be. She's wonderful, at times exasperated, others fascinated. She deftly hones in on the underlying sadness of her character and why someone like her would get involved in something like this. The scene in her unkempt apartment is very sweet.
Structurally the movie is kind of all over the place, more an assortment of silly scenes than a coherent whole, and it never quite manages to get a wrangle on its preferred tone, alternating between whimsy and pensiveness with unsure footing until it ends in an oddly poetic and powerful manner. But it's flanked by great bit parts (Jack Gilford as Wilbur is the standout/I love the couple living in their secluded botanical garden) and the chemistry of the leads is so endearing that ultimately its weaknesses didn't bother me too much. I haven't seen anything quite like it, which makes for a memorable experience at the very least.
Trolls: I was interested in World Tour, so I got to see the original. There's a lot of inventive art with the trolls, the forest, and the life in it. When they get to Bergen, it's less interesting. I got interested in World Tour because of the licensed music, which this movie also has. Heck, the "Sound of Silence" teaser for World Tour is lifted from a scene in this movie. The plot is predictable if you're familiar with the tropes. Heck, you know Branch is going to sing because he's voiced by Justin Timberlake. Granted, these tropes will be new for kids, and I'm sure they'll have more fun. But gosh, there are better kids movies out there.
