Hellish Flesh

Jose Mojica Marins
1977

Definitely the weakest of Jose Mojica Marins's films I've seen to date, and I've certainly noticed a trend towards lower quality in his later pictures. Marins doesn't even portray his mad scientist as his well known trademark character "Coffin Joe" in this outing, which is a basic revenge tale straight out of the most mediocre EC comics. Facial disfigurement and infidelity make for the height of a phoned-in effort.

Killer of Sheep

Charles Burnett
1977

This long unavailable and much lauded student film from director Charles Burnett made critical waves on it's release last year - a release made possible by someone flipping the bill for the pricey music clearances to release it legally. Burnett's picture is an unhurried, or exaggerated, examination of black life in Watts with a few trained actors rubbing shoulders with non-actors, and punctuated by divine photography of local children at play. For all the frank and messy life on hand Burnett also imbues a documentary element of mechanized death with the titular patriarch going through his daily routine at a slaughterhouse. By turns humorous, grave, and socially conscious, "Killer of Sheep" deserves it's rep, but I'll admit to never having seen a professional feature of Burnett's or of having been independently interesting by any of his pictures (besides "To Sleep With Anger" (1990)).

The Headless Woman

Lucrecia Martel
2008

It's always a treat when there's a film in theaters from Argentine arthouse star Lucrecia Martel. Her sophomore outing "The Holy Girl" (2004) was enigmatic in extreme with gorgeous camera work and a stylistic sensibility somewhat akin to the Dardennes, and I have yet to see her first feature "La Cienaga" (2001), but am certainly looking forward to it. Her latest is a another distant meditation on character and experience, but this time Martel uses her narrative to make a political statement. Bottle blonde Vero is the dizzying epitome of Argentine upper class complacency, floating through life in a luxury four-wheeler, casually carrying on an affair, and comforting a senile relative fill her days. A hit and run incident with what may be a dog, or child, furthers Vero's opaque and disassociated state. Martel and actress Maria Onetto play a crafty game of cat and mouse with Vero's mental state with an underlying waxing and waning of anxiety. The indictment of the wealth is a strong subtext here with a leisurely bunch of well to do's. Their decadence is expressed in financial interactions with poorer dark skinned shopkeepers and in Vero's presumably incestuous affair. For all it's allegorical oomph though, I still prefer the visual beauty and simplicity of "The Holy Girl" (2004). Looking forward to more Martel.

Bad Taste

Peter Jackson
1987

This is one I've been meaning to see for ages, and while not disappointed upon finally viewing, I think "Dead Alive" (1992) remains far superior. Aliens have arrived on Earth with the unwholesome intention of butchering mankind and selling our manbeef to an interplanetary market. The only thing that stands between total galactic annihilation and salvation is a handful of Kiwi commandos. Of course this being an ultra low budget feature the aliens take the form of humans (until their seriously awesome true form is revealed) and there's only really one spaceship to speak of. The big draw here has always been the high gore quotient (gunshot wounds, disembowlings, and splattered brains) and infectious sense of silly fun. I cannot believe that this picture was anything but a blast to work on, or at the very least any hardships suffered by cast and crew must have been totally worth it. Let's hope Jackson makes his return to horror (or at least goofy) cinema post haste.

Planet of the Apes

Tim Burton
2001
Second Viewing

This is a good place to start in pinpointing Tim Burton's nearly decade long decline from one of cinema's most creative fantasists to one of it's most adequate. With the notable exception of "Big Fish" (2003), everything he's done since (the passable but disappointing "Corpse Bride" (2005), his shrill reimagining of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005)) has come far short of the caliber of earlier efforts like "Beetle Juice" (1988), or "Mars Attacks!" (1996). This classic sci-fi remake is definitely tedious when viewed alone, but downright lame when compared to the original. Burton's take on the tale of an ape-run world has stock hero Mark Walberg passing through a cosmic wormhole and crashing on a planet where anthropomorphic apes rule over human slaves. Burton ups the action quota significantly and adds more visual detail to the ape's world, but these inclusions come at the cost of a worthwhile and engaging storyline - Burton's film is one of visuals, but the original is a film of ideas. The characters are generally one dimensional, particularly the permanently snarling General Thade, a performance by Tim Roth that grows unintentionally comical midway through the picture. There's a nice conceit that reconciles the conflict and the inevitable "twist ending" is a hoot, but overall the "Planet of the Apes" redux is a great advertisement against remakes.

[REC]

Jaume Balaguero / Paco Plaza
2007

I couldn't have been more done with the first person mock-documentary "Blair Witch" style of horror filmmaking until this came along. The Spanish directing duo of Jaume Blaguero and Paco Plaza hit it out of the park with such finesse and perfection that the film's United States release was suppressed in order for American filmmakers to churn out the English language remake "Quarantine" (2008). A local news program rides along with some firefighters for the graveyard shift and is soon locked into an apartment complex beset by a series of strange crimes thanks to a strict police blockade of the building. As the tenants are picked off one by one they rise up as angry flesh eaters (think the "fast" zombies from "28 Days Later" (2002)), and our hapless reporters are thrust into a dire and unescapable situation. This is definitely the best use I've seen of the format, with the first person Kino eye creating the unsettling effect of constant danger just out of frame. There's also some nice nods to George Romero with a disparate group of people undone by selfish personalities and racial prejudices. The video aesthetic certainly gives the special effects people some leeway but with a combination of prosthetics and lighting the violent ghouls are strikingly effective. This is definitely an outstanding addition to the horror canon.

The Jerk

Carl Reiner
1979

This is one of those movies that people have always given me a hard time for not seeing. "What do you mean you've never seen The Jerk, what kind of movie fan are you." I never really had much interest, but after catching a few moments of it on television it became obvious that I really was missing out on something. This is that rare kind of picture tailor made to capture an individual comedian's sensibility, and thus achieving an almost Marx Brothers sense of the absurd and goofy, Steve Martin's masterpiece deserves to be the stuff of Midnight screening legend. The plot hardly matters: a coming of age journey, a rise complete with circus excursion and riches amassed, the requisite love story, hubristic fall, and a happy ending - it's all background noise and props for Martin's schtick. If only the vast output of Saturday Night Live movies (with the exception of "Wayne's World" (1992), which is divine) could be half this good...

Curse of the Demon

Jacques Tourneur
1957

Maybe I'm not watching the right B-movies, but it seems that horror flicks inspired by Satanism are something of a rarity in classic Hollywood cinema. The only other example that comes to mind is Mark Robson's brilliant Val Lewton picture "The Seventh Victim" (1943). This exploration of the malevolent, directed by Jacques Tourneur, who had previously directed for Lewton as well, boasts a massive monster nipping at the heels of a skeptic American psychologist during a stay in soggy old England. Dana Andrews works well as the sober doc, and Peggy Cummins is nice as the hard-to-get love interest, but Niall MacGinnis's mephistophelian Karswell steals the show in being the epitome of a Lovecraftian character in search of dark knowledge. Karswell's got all the occult affectations one could wish for and subtly predicts the style and aesthetic of Satanic icon Anton Lavey. What's more, when he's not siccing hellish demons on his enemies he moonlights as a birthday clown! Tourneur was apparently against any visual depiction of the demon, and the director does a solid job of building atmosphere and mood, most successfully with the grim secret-hiding villagers, but I for one enjoy the giant fire-breathing puppet, and am grateful for it's inclusion.

Religulous

Larry Charles
2008

Liberal pundit Bill Maher has never been much for subtlety in his take on religion, and this documentary, which smacks something heavy of a vanity project, aims straight for the heart of faith's multitude of wackjob practitioners. Unfortunately the film takes the easy route, picking on the feeble-minded and a host of ludicrous zealots who would look just as stupid in any context. It makes for passable comedy, but our host is smarter than this, and even on his HBO series he at least books conservatives that can keep up with him. Also Maher mostly focuses on razzing "the big three," with nutty Christians, Jews, and Muslims taking the brunt of his assault. Apparently Hindu bashing is out of vogue. For all the cheap shots and buffoonery the film's conclusion is impassioned and sincere with Maher warning against putting nuclear arms in the hands of government officials who believe in "end times," a worthy stance that I agree with. It's an adequate picture with it's share laughs (and scares), but is ultimately a puff piece made by the only guy on the left with the lack of shame to yell as loud as the maniacs on the right.

Inglorious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino
2009

The immaculate avatar of Cinematic notation delves deeper into genre ecstasy with a satisfyingly mature WWII revenger complete with Spaghetti Western nods and mission-film tropes. This revisionist take on WWII pits a guerilla gang of Jewish Americans against Hitler's army, while a secretly Jewish young woman running a movie theater in Paris hatches her own plot to stick it to the Krauts. Pitt's scar-necked hilbilly Lieutenant with ragtag gang in tow is the equivalent of cinematic crack, but for better or worse Tarantino proves a lackadaisical pusher man, instead fronting a more ambitious multi-thread yarn, bordering on epic. While the picture left me wanting more action-oriented Basterd madness, it was a fallacy on my part to expect that graphic violence or harrowing thrills would ever steal the spotlight from Tarantino's obsessive expressive rebop dialogue. I certainly enjoyed the picture immensely, but frankly I need to see it again to develop a final opinion. I've found that in Tarantino's work reveals itself best through multiple viewings.

Shadows and Fog

Woody Allen
1991
Second Viewing

I saw this picture on cable sometime in the late 90's and didn't think too much of it at the time, but was pleasantly surprised when this reviewing proved rewarding. Made a year or two before Allen's eventually ill-fated partnership with Jean Doumanian "Shadows and Fog" takes the ubber-nebbish's love of classic cinema, philosophy, and existentialism, all themes he'd explored before, and remixed them in a fresh, engaging, and thoughtful way. In a quasi London, replete with the eponymous mood setters, Allen's meek clerk tries in vain to meet up with a vigilante mob bent on cowing an at-large serial killer, while simultaneously keeping his nose clean. During his misadventures around the city Allen meets up with a comely sword-swallower (Mia Farrow) who's coming off a bad fight with her main squeeze man/clown - the two find safety in numbers. Thanks to the exaggerated backdrop of mannered lighting and gorgeous sets some of Allen's more frustrating intellectual impulses feel right at home in this fabricated world of ideas (he even cleverly tackles anti-Semitism). The great casting and wide range of interesting actors and celebrities is no surprise for a film made during the director's established period but it's never any less of a treat to see such lavish ensembles. "Shadows and Fog" offers nothing daring, nor does it offer anything new in his ouvre, but it's a pleasant reminder that a fresh coat of paint can go a long way.

Bob le Flambeur

Jean-Pierre Melville
1956

One of the weaker Melville pictures I've seen to date, "Bob Le Flambeur" is mostly a slapdash of gangster film cliches with a steadfast reverence for style and "honor amongst thieves." Our titular gambler cuts a dashing figure, impeccably dressed, and topped with a silver coiffure, he lives by night throwing away money in games of chance. Thanks to a longstanding losing streak the normally noble Bob is compelled to mastermind a casino heist - the proverbial "final score." For the most part the story plods along predictably with a protege, a police friend, and an underworld snitch, but Melville does a solid job of capturing a sense of place: his Montmartre and Pigalle are as much a part of the film as it's hoods. The picture's greatest asset is the inclusion of a carefree libertine, young and blonde, rapidly integrating herself into a sleazy world of loose morals and cheap thrills. Bob does his best to set her right (gallantry would come natural to this kind of character), but the tart is oblivious to the warnings, taking him for another in a long line of sugar daddies. This complex father/daughter/lover relationship is far more rewarding than the heist itself, muted in tension and disappointing in conclusion. For my money I find the similarly themed "Touchez pas au Grisbi" (1954) to be far superior.

The Incredible Hulk

Louis Leterrier
2008

I never caught the ill-fated Ang Lee screen debut of Marvel's green meanie but thought I'd get in on the hasty attempt to reboot the potential franchise via an Ondemand lark. This version has Bruce Banner stuck in self imposed exile living a quiet existence in South America while learning to cope with his condition. Unfortunately for him the United States military is hot to unlock the secrets of Banner's blood in order to create super soldiers - enter Tim Roth as an aging Russian-born commando supreme eager to get his hands on some performance enhancing drugs. When Banner (Ed Norton) reunites with former flame Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) it becomes apparent that Norton is a more refined actor than the role requires. His emoting and dramatic gravitas is at odds with his costars' more expected and genre-friendly plasticity. The CG looks great and the action sequences are far more pleasing than Marvel Studios' concurrent release "Iron Man" (2008), though the overall the story is much weaker. I think I might be developing a thing for superhero movies considering the last three that I've seen have all been pretty excellent. I did find Tim Roth's character to be oddly sympathetic during the campus battle scene in which a supercharged but regular-sized Roth single handedly takes on the massive Hulk - the scene innately captures the David Vs. Goliath underdog rooting most audiences have been conditioned for, though I'm sure this wasn't Leterrier's intention.

Battle For the Planet of the Apes

J. Lee Thompson
1973

Unfortunately for the franchise, it's last installment "Battle.." goes out with a whimper undeserving of such a great series. This one finds the rift between ape and man clearly drawn with humans serving as an underclass to their patrician counterparts. The former world of men has crumbled to become underground archaeological strata inhabited by a group of rapidly mutating survivors (these will be the mutants from "Beneath The Planet of the Apes (1970))." Inevitably the paths of ape and mutant cross resulting in the film's titular skirmish. Besides the fierce battle itself, complete with mutant helmed tank and other patchwork war machines, most of the interest comes from the apes discovering their darker side. The final revelation that Caesar's son has been murdered at the hands of a militant rival rends asunder the old axiom that "Ape Shall Not Kill Ape." This last message provides the unsurprising sum total that despite physiological and purported philosophical differences there is just as much capacity for savagery in ape as there is in man.

In the Realm of the Senses

Nagisa Oshima
1976

Easily the most frankly sexual non-porn film I've seen to date. Oshima's notoriously torrid affair puts a tranquilized eye on the obsessed and frequent bedroom frolics of a couple willfully insulating themselves from Japan's rapid pre-war militarization. As much an intellectual challenge as an expressive work of art Oshima attempts to meld human passion with the clinical physicality of bumpin' uglies by combining familiar cinematic romance, with an almost medical sense of anatomy. To say the actors put in courageous performances is an understatement, and unlike the vacant tendencies of hambone pornstars Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda believably convey their roles while engaged in constant, extreme intimacy. Compared to this film Chloe Sevigny's much ballyhooed blowing of Vincent Gallo in "The Brown Bunny" (2003) seems far less daring given Oshima's precedent.

Spider Forest

Song Il-Gon
2004

I never quite understood the rationale behind the whole "k-horror" phenomenon. Being birthed from a waning cycle of Japanese fright flicks it seems that the whole idea is to cash in on a trend that's already passed. This isn't a knock on the movement in general, or any particular film, it just seems counterintuitive to good business. Anyways, Song Il-Gon's psychological freakout is a ghost story, detective mystery, and time traveling riddle all at once. While it doesn't do any of these genres particularly well the film itself is technically very pleasant with a careful, measured aesthetic, good performances, and a pretentious, but achieved gravitas. The twisty paradoxical story involves a jaded documentarian who stumbles on the murder of his boss and coworker while on assignment in a rural area. He is bashed in the head by his colleagues' assailant and lands in a hospital with serious injuries. With little concern for his recovery the now murder-suspect returns to the forest in an attempt to unravel the mystery. Song's creative weaving of narrative and time, an undertaking that often comes off as a cop-out in other films, is admirably elegant here, allowing the director to get away with certain concessions that seem like obvious twists and cliched ghost-story tropes. Inevitably some of the symbols and tricks are corny, but the film remains a good advertisement for how a good director and DP can craft something worthwhile from a weak script.

The Beast Within

Phillippe Mora
1982

I was initially under the impression that this was your average indie werewolf flick but was immensely pleased to find that it's more of a were-cicada affair. When young Michael MacCleary's illness devolves into violent crime and bizarre visions it's of little surprise to the audience considering the picture's prologue involves a bizarre beast raping his mother during an ill fated pit stop. Michael's strange post-pubescent behavior has got his folks nervous about the real identity of his pater familias, and as they begin poking around the archives of the one-horse-town it's locals become more possessive of their proverbial "dark secrets." Some horror fans may be put off by the slow beginning and build-up, but I found the mystery elements of the first two acts, the hostile natives and the isolated provincial feel, a great potboiler that explodes into a rampage monstrous self-actualization. The highlight setpiece involves the town's loathsome mayor having his head ripped off at the (literal) hands of a vengeful monster.

The American Astronaut

Cory McAbee
2001

I was a little unimpressed with the musical aspects of Cory McAbee's out-there DIY space adventure, but am ultimately enthusiastic about the rough black and white cinematography (16mm I would wager), and it's minimalist creation of a science fiction universe with limited means. Like the frequent emphasis on musical numbers, some of the film's eccentricities and quirks are a little rich: a young man on an all male mining town who is revered for having seen a woman's breast feels a bit too much like a failed Guy Maddin flight of fancy. However, the strange shadowing of our hero by the murderous professor Hess (always a step behind) is more interesting, as his destructive raygun renders victims to neat little ash piles. The psychosis of this malevolent doppelganger adds a dark, ultimately madcap angle to this trek across the cosmos. It's a flawed movie for sure, but that's not unexpected for a small auteurist picture with grand vision and limited means. Yet this "littleness" is also from where it derives it's merit.

The Gore Gore Girls

Herschell Gordon Lewis
1972
Second Viewing

This was the first Herschell Gordon Lewis picture I've seen, and though I've only seen a few others since, it remains head and shoulders above the rest. A return to the picture finds it less gratuitously glorious than I remember, but still an eminently enjoyable viewing. A goofy blonde-bombshell reporter hires pimp-like private-eye extraordinaire Abraham Gentry to solve a spate of stripper killings in order to get the scoop. Gentry, a mustachioed sephardic chap with an arsenal of stinging barbs laced throughout his eloquent locution is worth the price of admission alone. The humorous interaction between a dizzy femme partner growing increasingly attracted to this weenie's dubious charms, and his complete lack of interest is an almost Russ Meyer-like cornball side-plot, much appreciated. "The Gore Gore Girls" initially amazed me with it's extreme depictions of violence, and amateurish, but no less effective, use of makeup effects. It's the director's sense of tone that really elevates this above the standard grindhouse fare: silly jokes and cheesecake sexuality combined with an almost cartoonish sense of graphic murder (one unfortunate gal has her face burned on the stove range, and then scraped off hamburger-style with a spatula). My initial viewing took place freshman year of college. I stayed behind in the dorm during a holiday sans roommates. While watching, an extremely liberal and politically active fellow film-student knocked on my door and began watching with me. After a few minutes he asked "so this is basically a movie about killing women?" I confirmed that it was (what else was I going to say?). Offended, he soon left. I thought it was pretty hilarious.

The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow
2008

The best film I've seen so far in 2009, Kathryn Bigelow's hair-rasing Iraq war thriller is at once a triumphant work of art, a psychological analysis of combat, and a mainstream popcorn-muncher. After the death of their squad's IED expert, Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge are saddled with a brash replacement (Jeremy Renner), who goes about bomb defusing with a near insane disregard for military protocol and personal safety. Each life-or-death scenario begins with the company's remaining tour time marked on the screen, echoing Sanborn's vocal anxieties and determination to make it out of the desert in one piece. The tense scenarios are unsurprisingly hackle-raising by design, but the back-at-barracks pathos of tough guys scared shitless, boozing and wrestling for escapism is a nice window into the difficulty of downtime and emergence of mental wounds. Rennner's performance is near perfect with his "git 'er done" attitude and unconscious selfishness pitched against subtly conveyed inner turmoil. The recent spate of films regarding Iraq have been about as popular as the war itself, but leave it to Kathryn Bigelow to prove there's a worthwhile film in this landscape after all.

Tropical Malady

Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2004

Festival darling Apitchatpong Weerasethakul weaves this opaque and intriguing arthouse flick with some partial help from a Thai folk tale. Presented in two parts the film begins with an unhurried romance between a soldier and his country bumpkin buddy. Part two finds the soldier alone in the jungle hunting/hunted by a mystical man-tiger. While it may be an entirely different animal, this film is a marked improvement from the only Weerasethakul picture I've seen previously "Mysterious Object at Noon" (2000), which I remember being admirable for it's lo-fi cinematography and experimental leanings, but generally tedious and uninteresting. "Tropical Malady" benefits from some thoughtful cinematography, with a particularly masterful emphasis on wide shots making a distant and mysterious film all the more enigmatic. Weerasethakul also manages to successfully and convincingly convert what is essentially an old-world fairy tale into the modern age without any conflict in tone. After this one I'm willing to accept, or at least understand why he's become such a big name in world cinema. I'll have to check out "Syndromes and a Century" (2006)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

Tobe Hooper
1986

The inevitable sequel to Tobe Hooper's immaculate original fares better than one might expect, but made over ten years after the original it noticeably suffers (if slightly) from mainstream 80's horror sensibility. Hooper's maniac family is winning chili cook-offs all over Texas with their patented man-beef recipe when local rock DJ "Stretch" (well played by Caroline Wiliams) accidentally becomes an aural witness to one of the their murders. Dennis Hopper joins the fray as a lawman only a hair saner than the family, intent on fighting fire-with-fire via an arsenal of freshly bought logging saws. Horror vet Bill Moseley steals the show in one of his first roles as "Chop Top," a psychopath with a steel plate on his melon who eerily combines flower-child stylings with murderous insanity a la Charles Manson. The picture's got lots of good scares and a heavy gore level, but the epic battle between Hopper's Lefty and the killer clan takes place in a disappointing and overly fake looking set. There's a brief nod to the macabre Ed Gein inspired trinkets/furniture that were so believable and horrifying in the first but this time around they have a plastic quality that betrays any authenticity - overwrought props bought from the Halloween store as opposed to the previous Martha Stewart arts and crafts from from hell. The sequel's sense of humor is unnecessarily elevated as well; whereas in the original any semblance of humor was pitch-black and used to disturb, this outing has more "wink wink" moments as well as outright gags and pratfalls from the loonies.

Island of Death

Nico Mastorakis
1975

This campy dose of Greek grindhouse trash was banned in the UK, and has used that notoriety as a selling point ever since. Mostly a slapdash collection of halfhearted shock tactics (bestiality, male and female homosexuality) genre cliches (religious obsessions, the fetishized photographing of violence), and lots of nudity this is by no means a "lost classic," but you could certainly do worse with a couple hours. Young aryan couple Christopher and Celia vacation to a sunny Greek island where they commence to brutally stamp out what they perceive as perversion through a series of elaborate murders. Christopher's got the die-hard fervor, but an increasingly distant Celia seems to be less into cleaning up the island than getting a few kicks. The most notably extreme scene comes when Christopher beds an older woman (marked for death due to her promiscuity) and urinates on her during foreplay. Initially the old barfly is shocked, but then she begins to like it.... The picture would be mostly forgettable were it not for an incongruously satisfying and effective ending: a take on sexual relations that Sam Peckinpah would dig.

Fritz the Cat

Ralph Bakshi
1972

This marriage between Ralph Bakshi, counter-culture animator supreme, and Robert Crumb, counter-culture cartoonist supreme, is an excellent satire of the waning 60's liberalism, starring animals who do drugs and fuck. The titular hipster spits period slang and slums it in the ghetto working for the all encompassing pursuit of street-cred and tail. For all of Fritz's flagrant disingenuousness, he remains a likable hero: at least he knows what he wants out of life, and his faked affectations in the pursuit of self gratification appear far less dishonest than those that truly "live" them. Bakshi's animation is choppy, but the aesthetic's right-on with a few instances of animated visual gags livening up what sounds like unscripted natural dialogue. The representation of race is particularly ostentatious with African Americans depicted exclusively as ink-black crows, and as for the notorious "X rating," after a lifetime of viewing animated anthropomorphized talking animals it is particularly hilarious and gratifying to see them rendered with genitals for a change.

Frogs

Greg McCowan
1972

This revenge-of-nature film from American International pictures is pretty standard fare, but remains memorable thanks to some solid acting and McCowan's excellent use of atmosphere to transcend lackluster character deaths and special effects. Kickass photojournalist Sam Elliot gets caught up in the Crockett family celebration while shooting an expose on the family's pollution plagued island. Old man Crockett (Ray Milland!) is a cantankerous old cripple, proud of his wealth and his shallow gin-and-tonic swilling family. The festivities take a ghastly turn as guests, family members, and hired hands are bumped off one-by-one by the island's resident flora and fauna. Ray Milland and Sam Elliot play brilliantly off each other as they flex alpha-male wills and vie for the leadership of a dwindling human herd. The frogs themselves are frankly not all that menacing, but shot repeatedly, in large numbers, and with ominous music McCowan successfully makes a monster out of a benign amphibian. While the director uses other swamp critters as primal avengers, it's amusing to note that the better scenes tend to revolve around the more harmless animals: snakes and alligators gobbling up bluebloods is a snooze compared to hissing lizards shattering jars of poisonous insecticide on the same victims.

Gaslight

George Cukor
1944

Famed director of "women's films," George Cukor, directs an excellent psychological thriller, one of the genres less represented in the lavish MGM canon. Musical ingenue Ingrid Bergman marries sweetheart Charles Boyer in a fever, but this pepper sprout quickly turns cold as the couple moves into Ingrid's murdered mother's home, and her husband becomes increasingly antagonistic and manipulative. The grim chamber drama is rounded out with a limited cast: Joseph Cotton (sans transatlantic accent), Dame May Whitty as a local busybody, and a very young Angela Lansbury as the sassy strumpet maid. The emotional abuse Boyer heaps on Bergman is genuinely discomforting, and his final comeuppance isn't nearly satisfying enough, giving the film a deeply unfeminist feel. I found the suffering inflicted upon Ingrid Bergman here to be far more disturbing than anything in Pascal Laugier's notorious "Martyrs" (2008).

Heavy Metal

Gerald Potterton
1981

The horny fantasies of millions of sweaty nerds have been penned, inked, and painted into Heavy Metal magazine, and in 1981 a feature-length animated film was created as a banner for the brand. "Heavy Metal" brings together several vignettes loosely based around the Loc-Nar, a phosphorescent green orb embodying infinite evil. The worlds/scenarios presented are expectedly fantastic and varied, ranging from barbarian kingdoms, to a futuristic Neo-New York, and even an EC comics tinged horror piece involving undead WWII airforce members. The pacing sags a bit in the middle with the stronger segments bookending the film, and while the animation is generally good, one really wishes Ralph Bakshi and his rotoscoping were along for the ride. Perhaps the most telling scene is the one in which a weakling nerd is whisked away from mundane suburbia, transformed into a muscle-bound He-man, and entrusted with saving a fantasy kingdom. The cherry on top of this literal slice of comic book fandom is the boy's voice supplied by John Candy. Cartoon nudity is of course a big draw, and the buxom, thunder-thighed lasses of "Heavy Metal" provide only the slightest disappointment in being physically identical save for hair color. This is the stuff middle school dreams are made of.

Basket Case

Frank Henenlotter
1982

This cult classic deserves it's reputation by maintaining a pleasing balance between low-budget sleaze sensibility and a terrific monster spilling buckets of red stuff. Duane Bradley hits the city with his monstrously deformed parasitic twin riding shotgun in a large basket. Seeking vengeance on the doctors that would have annihilated the less photogenic twin, the brothers Bradley check into a Times Square flophouse and stalk their enemies. Henenlotter wastes little time showing off the beastie in the basket and gives it plenty of screentime, which thanks to the excellent special effects, it handles splendidly. Forget killer's POV shots and close-ups of corpses after the fact, this potato-shaped blob-monster tears throats with fangs and claws, whether the victim deserves it or not. The schlocky premise is treated with a light touch and lots of local New York color, with a grumbling hotel manager, old coot guests, and a genial street walker.

The Wild Child

Francois Truffaut
1970

This is decidedly one of Truffaut's minor efforts, being lifted from a true report of a "feral child" found in the forests of Aveyron, and his attempted rehabilitation by a forward thinking doctor. The no frills black and white cinematography aids in period authenticity and it's nice to see Truffaut in front of the camera ( as Dr. Jean Itard), as he's always had good screen presence. Non-actor Jean-Pierre Cargol puts in an adequate performance as the wild child, but unconvincing moments of "play acting" inevitably pop up in a demanding role beyond the inexperienced actor's capacity. This film is another in a series of love letters Truffaut made about children and youth, particularly the rockier elements of growing up, and it's cleverly dedicated to Jean-Pierre Leaud, who played Truffaut's young alter ego Antoine Doinel in "The 400 Blows" (1959) and it's sequels. While there is narrative progress in the child's slow but steady education, the historical limits of Victor's ability to learn creates a dramatic bulkhead the film crashes, and eventually flounders against. Today it is believed that Victor was autistic, and for all of Dr. Itard's tireless work "milk" is the only word he was able to coax from the youngster.

Magnificent Obsession

Douglas Sirk
1954

The reigning kind of ridiculously over-the-top melodrama notches another Criterion entry with "Magnificent Obsession," the tale of a wealthy playboy (Rock Hudson) who falls for the widow (ever frumpy, ever sexless, Jane Wyman) of the man he inadvertently killed. All it takes is a chance encounter with a wise painter and his wacky half-baked do-gooding philosophy for Rock's uptight prick to 180 into selfless service, as he returns to med school, becomes a neuro-surgeon, and eventually operates on his blind sweetheart (did I mention he was responsible for the blindness as well?). The tragedy is laid on thick and made all the richer by some genuinely awkward moments. It's not quite as heady as "Written On the Wind" (1956), but there is a memorable scene in which a stumbling Wyman flirts with suicide. One of Hudson's pre-star roles, the closeted lunk doesn't project the assurance and warmth found in some of his later roles, but this hesitancy only adds to the bumblingly indelicate nature of the character. Sirk's inclusion of a precocious goldilocks tomboy for comic relief is simultaneously grating, rich, and delightful. I also think it would be fair to say that this picture is a predecessor to the Haley Joel Osment vehicle "Pay it Forward" (2000).

Dead Snow

Tommy Wirkola
2009

The Nazi/Zombie genre is woefully underpopulated and a seeming slam-dunk in the appeal category, but Tommy Wirkola's attempt suffers from a slow start and cribs too heavily off "The Evil Dead" series. On paper everything is there: decent gore effects and great photography, resourceful med students fighting back with makeshift weapons, and a snowmobile armed to the teeth. But despite the cool imagery and obligatory hack 'n slash, much of the picture feels soulless and phoned in. For one thing, "Dead Snow" isn't all that scary, with a confused atmosphere and an action movie sensibility. At this point I can't remember a single character's trait or name, and was disappointed by the shots ripped off almost identically from the aforementioned "Evil Dead." It's one thing to homage, but in this case it's just too brazen. At the end of the day this is an ambitious example of a great concept with mediocre execution.

Mondo Cane

Paolo Cavara / Gaultiero Jacopetti / Franco Prosperi
1962

This shock documentary is the most well known of the Mondo flicks and still makes for an enjoyable viewing today, thanks primarily to it's globe-trotting variety and beautiful technicolor production values. As the Italian opportunists put humanity's many oddities in front of the lens much of the film's pleasure comes from divining fact from cheeky fiction. Several segments are undeniably true based on the footage, as the unflinching eye locks mercilessly on something as basic as the sad parade of drunks in a German bar. Other segments are cultural practices that are more commonly known today, like the massaging and beer swilling of Kobe beef. The truth of other segments isn't so apparent, like a family happily polishing bones in an ossuary in return for the roof it provides. There's still some nice shock value in a moppet dusting off skull after skull, but there is an undeniably staged quality about the whole affair. Of course the PC set will be turned off by the perceived "cultural insensitivity" and exploitative nature of "Mondo Cane," but the service of beautifully photographing and bearing witness to all the strange peoples and events in the picture is of far too much interest and value to be ruined by the ironic or arrogant voice over.

Martyrs

Pascal Laugier
2008

This film's reputation certainly precedes it with stories of crew members revolting because of abuse towards it's lead actresses and over the top claims of graphic brutality and excessively disturbing content. Not since "Irreversible" (2002) do I remember a picture with such onus inflected buzz. While expecting the worst I actually found the picture to be quite watchable, and above that, pretty damn good. While fitting squarely into the dopily named "torture porn" genre "Martyrs" manages a more novel approach to it's theater of violence than other films of it's ilk. Beginning with a typical bourgeoisie family slaughtered in their home by a disturbed girl and her reluctant sidekick a battle between delusion and horrifying conspiracy is soon waged within the house's confines. While it's true the picture lays the violence on thick, particularly against women, Laugier makes the torment explicitly and purposely non-sexual. This conscious decision goes a long way to making the film more palatable, and in my opinion, more than a sensational exploitation stunt. Finally, the force behind the girls' suffering is far more worthwhile and clever than the hackneyed "unstoppable killer" routine. "Martyrs" is a welcome addition to the horror genre, and deserves to be judged on it's own merits.

Brighton Rock

John Boulting
1947

Pitched by Film Forum as British noir, but more resembling straight crime drama, "Brighton Rock" is made audacious (and difficult) for giving it's gangster lead an unrepentantly rotten core. Future "Gandhi" (1982) director Richard Attenborough's rising hoodlum Pinkie Brown, is the one-man cause of misery for those around him. Small time Pinkie clashes against the underworld's big-boys, bumps off enemies and friends alike, and ruthlessly seduces a naive waitress who unwittingly has evidence against him. The plotting plods, and the dirty deeds aren't all that titillating, but the characters are colorful and well acted. Doomed henchman Spicer, Harcourt Williams' boozy tortured lawyer, and a brassy two-bit stage dame intent on righting the wrongs, all help to elevate the picture above average. Director Boulting adequately lenses the tense situations and ironic, semi-Hitchcockian setups Graham Greene is known for though as far as Greene adaptations are concerned I still prefer "The Third Man" (1949) and "The Fallen Idol" (1948)

Jubilee

Derek Jarman
1978

While there's plenty to like in Derek Jarman's thoroughly British post-apocalyptic freakout, his use of the burgeoning punk movement as a cornerstone is certainly suspect in regards to questions of sincerity and exploitation. With the help of a Sybil Queen Elizabeth I flashes forward to a homeland in decay: authoritarian capitalism and oppressive police rule over nihilistic squatters and hopeless human cattle (a fitting if overblown prediction of Maggie Thatcher's reign if ever there was one). Much of the movie centers around a rat's nest of n'er do wells as they deface books, philosophize, write on walls, fuck, and perform live on television for the rest of the nation. Much like punk-at-it's-worst there's a lot of chutzpah and great fashion but murky motives and shrill, often contradictory, politics. These angry youngsters do maintain a veneer of authenticity however, and make the hapless kids from "Return of the Living Dead" (1985) look like saddies playing dress-up. The inclusion of a megalomaniacal media mogul pushes the picture's sense of absurdity with his Top of the Pops empire quite literally ruling the globe. While Jarman's artistic talent and audacity is firmly on display in "Jubilee," it's also a picture of rough-edges and overreaching: in this most dysfunctional of worlds there are plenty of dysfunctional scenes and touches.

Drag Me To Hell

Sam Raimi
2009

Sam Raimi returns to the genre that put him on the map without missing a beat or a step. "Drag Me to Hell" is a thoroughly entertaining and masterfully crafted horror flick, made all the more admirable considering he pulled it off with a PG-13 rating. Meek banker Alison Lohman gets a doozy of a curse put on her after denying creepy gypsy Mrs. Ganush an extension on her home loan. Now Lohman's got three days to set things right before the monstrous goat-hoofed Lamia demon performs the titular act. The picture's tone and style is definitely in synch with with Raimi's earlier horror outings, particularly "Evil Dead 2" (1987), and it's shocking to see how successful this signature style remains - slapstick-infused horror and plenty of ironic scares have not yet become anachronistic. Kudos to an image-conscious starlet like Lohman for letting herself look haggard and weary under the extreme duress. Her balancing act between fighting demons (literal in this case), and maintaining a feasible modern life not only ups the suspense and anxiety, but also provides for an extremely relatable metaphor. In an unfortunate casting decision Justin Long stars as Lohman's semi-understanding boyfriend. I say unfortunate because it's hard to divorce him from his "I'm a Mac" advertising persona, and his mere presence eventually becomes as distracting as if it were the Geico Gecko trying to console his hexed fiancee. A nice highlight is the "meet the parents" dinner from hell scene.

Gerry

Gus Van Sant
2002

With the thinnest of plots Gus Van Sant shows commercial narrative cinema how much he gives a fuck and gives us what is essentially a movie about filming barren landscapes. Two pals stray from the beaten hiking path to find themselves completely lost in harsh country, no food, no water. The existentialist setup would be corny were it not for Van Sant's blase treatment of the material. The situation deteriorates slowly with the possibility of a freeway or human settlement always just beyond the horizon. The fratty guys (Matt Damon and Casey Affleck) never resort to dramatic theatrics or portents of doom, pointing fingers and crying for mamma won't help them out of the desert. The photography illuminates a vast world of gravel and crags, hardscrabble bushes and vast vistas which Damon and Affleck traverse with mighty strides or ant-like inching depending on vantage point. Most impressive from a technical standpoint are the extended tracking shots in which a slow shuffling of subject and focus maintains aesthetic dynamism. The minimal dialogue and explicit drama is generally tactful and necessary, though it doesn't quite hold a candle to the multi-millenia's worth of geological drama that shares the frame.

Killer's Kiss

Stanley Kubrick
1955

One of Kubrick's first features "Killer's Kiss" shows early hints at the famed director's penchant for precise visuals as well as his coldly unsentimental take on character. A washed up boxer gets mixed up in the affairs of a go-go dancer and her lecherous boss. The boxer and dancer fall for each other and make plans to skip town and return to the simple life, but the spurned nightclub owner won't leave well enough alone. The performances are definitely rough around the edges with a hurried and unconvincing love affair, but unsurprisingly the visuals are razor crisp and noirish, with deep focus and deeper shadows. Even more impressive is the epic final showdown in a mannequin maker's workshop. This extended fight sequence takes full advantage of the off-color locale, and offers a uniquely unstylized fight with the two combatants swinging away at each other (and usually missing) with any available weapons on hand. It's also a hoot to watch Stanley Kubrick try and put forth a traditional happy-ending, definitely not one of the director's strong suites.

The H-Man

Ishiro Honda
1958

This is a largely disappointing Sci-fi effort from Toho's monster movie dream team of Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya. Gangsters, cops, and a sultry night-club singer clash over a hood's mysterious disappearance. Nuclear radiation, that most hallowed boogeyman of 50's fright fare, seems to be the culprit again, liquifying it's victims and turning them into an unstoppable assimilating menace. The picture is slightly reminiscent of "The Blob" (1958), but has little of it's impact as the blue gooey H-man doesn't grow in size with each new victim, instead tending to take it's meals one at a time. Also, "The H-Man" suffers from a painful amount of filler with it's snoozefest gangster angle. The effects, with a few choice examples late in the film, are largely lackluster except for a few extreme "liquefaction" shots. There's a nice nautical scene about midway through that introduces the creature with a great deal of suspense and atmosphere. It's a shame the picture couldn't keep things running at that level throughout.

Kelly's Heroes

Brian G. Hutton
1970

My buddy tried to get me and a couple other friends to watch this back in high school. The premise and casting certainly seemed attractive, but overall we just couldn't get into it, and gave up. I definitely enjoyed getting reacquainted with the picture, but a lot of it's inaccesability is still apparent. Taking a realistically cynical view of WW2, "Kelly's Heroes" is full of tired soldiers desperate for booze and horny for broads. Clint Eastwood stumbles on a tip that there's a veritable shit-ton of Nazi gold stashed in a bank just behind enemy lines, and with a small outfit headed by bulldog Sergeant Telly Savalas, a stereotypical Jewish shyster (Don Rickles!), and a gypsy-loving nut job with three Sherman tanks (Donald Sutherland), the group decides to liberate the gold for themselves. The morally iffy setup and narrative is fascinating when one takes into account how many tried and true war-film tropes are applied. It's as if years of Hollywood tradition couldn't be completely erased by the previous decade's radicalism and revisionism, and it works to the film's advantage. The depiction of U.S. GI's as something other than 100% altruistic must have certainly resonated with the Vietnam-era counterculture, and Donald Sutherland's tank commander, while never shown explicitly, is clearly a skewed caricature of 60's drug use.

Marty

Delbert Mann
1955

Ernest Borgnine barrels about the screen as the titular lunk in this early marriage of teleplay writing and cinematic production. Regular Joe Marty is a simple butcher with a realistic streak. Resigned to bachelorhood after a youth's worth of painful rejections Marty politely brushes off his mother's pleas for "settling down with a nice girl," and his pal's skirt chasing schemes. Of course when Marty finally does snag a gal his friends dismiss her as a dog, and his mother fears being cast off if Marty marries. The blue-collar Brooklyn milieu gives the picture charm to burn with beer-swilling, ballgame-watching guys and little old Italian women butting into their grown childrens' business. Borgnine's ability to convey both Marty's vulnerability and effervescent boyishness is the kind of stuff that wins awards, so it's little surprise that this movie took it's fair share.

House of Games

David Mamet
1987

David Mamet is nothing if not a writer, and a hammy one at that. In this, one of his most celebrated films, his mannered dialogue and blunt ideas are thrust on the screen with all the strenuous specificity of a stage play. Shrink-come-author Maggie Ford gets mixed up with an ace con-man and his grifter pals, soon finding seductive allure in deception while learning greater truths about her own nature along the way. The main attraction here is the interplay between con and reveal, and some of the tricks are downright thrilling. Unfortunately the artifice behind film's major "job" is surprisingly and painfully obvious - if the audience gets it by this point it seems that Dr. Ford should also. The absolute lack of naturalism in the dialogue comes off as hokey with dollops of hyperbole and deliberate metaphors spewing back and forth between partner/victim/lovers. The picture is worthwhile for it's stunts and mischievous tone alone, but certainly retains it's stage-like quality to a fault.

Summer Hours

Olivier Assayas
2009

Olivier Assayas departs from his hyper-modern globalization-heavy thrillers ("Boarding Gate" (2007), "Demonlover" (2002)) to show his range as a director with this little bourgeoisie drama about memory and moving on. Three siblings debate what is to be done with the family's summer house, filled with valuable paintings and furniture, upon the death of their Mother, the house's guardian and curator. One brother is on the verge of relocating to China, and the sister has already expatriated to New York, leaving the eldest brother no choice to but to give up the house and mourn it's loss. The picture is exceptionally low on conflict, instead relying on character study and a quiet, contemplative emotionalism. The petty disagreements with quick resolutions are handled in a wonderfully realistic manner by the director, and the performances convincingly suggest rock-solid sibling ties. The final surrendering of the house creates a link to Assayas's modern films, with the family giving up tradition and provincialism for the pursuit of global capitalism. Instead of grandchildren running around Grandma's desk, school tours will view the desk in a cold museum.

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Sam Peckinpah
1973
Second Viewing

This was a welcome revisit to one of my favorite Peckinpah films. Steely sad-sack Pat Garrett (a world-weary James Coburn) sets out to kill old pal Billy the Kid (barn-broad jughead Kris Kristofferson) at the behest of big ranching. Garrett's heart and soul may belong to yesterday's wild west but his tired body sides with the taming tide, making Billy an outlaw anachronism. Peckinpah will always be associated with screen violence and this is the apogee of his craft. In "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" violence is a hallowed undeniable fact - Billy is forced to duel an old acquaintance who's gone law in an accidental encounter, an unfortunate caveat of frontier life. Shootouts are given the lavish slo-mo treatment with tough-guy survivors glossing over the horror with a little humor or profanity. The thick gunsmoke is mercifully cut, and contrasted, with Billy's carefree attitude and lusty indulgences as he gorges on tortillas and mex women. A knife-wielding Bob Dylan appears as one of Billy's cohorts, appropriately named Alias. Apparently He and Peckinpah didn't get along too well on set, though his music for the film is pretty solid.

The Limits of Control

Jim Jarmusch
2009

For me there's nothing more exciting, and in this case compelling, than a new Jim Jarmusch picture in theaters. I was a touch disappointed with his prior "Broken Flowers" (2005), feeling it fit too snugly into the time's twee and melancholy zeitgeist, erected by Wes Anderson and copied by many. This time around Jarmusch eschews any type of familiarity, offering a picture that is strongly abstract, symbolic, cerebral, and visual. A permanently smooth Isaach De Bankole is the hired gun in this most pared-down of mission films, encountering a series of colorful and distinctive operatives on his way towards a concrete goal. The reigning champion of purposeful casting, Jarmusch is able to lend weight to mere cameos through an actor's personality and physicality alone. John Hurt, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray and Gael Garcia Bernal all float in frame, say their piece, and float back out carried aloft by quirks and costuming. Christopher Doyle's cinematography is the red-blooded heart of the picture, which is interesting considering Jarmusch's predilection for total auteurism. The imagery, heavy on contrast, saturation, and natural light, helps create the alien landscapes and ghost towns the director coaxes out of his Spanish locales.

A Nightmare on Elm St. 3: Dream Warriors

Chuck Russell
1987

This third nightmare is only the second installment I've seen in the franchise, but stands up admirably to the first. Youthful patients sequestered in a mental asylum are preyed upon by child-killer Freddy, with the kids' institutionalization providing another degree of deniability for the clueless adults. Heather Langenkamp returns as the veteran "final girl," and both Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne make welcome appearances, not to mention John Saxon's triumphant return as a sad-sack drunk. Like the original, the kill scenes are creative and fantastic with the special effects gaining plenty of leeway from the hallucinatory nature of the setpieces. A couple highlights are the jalopy apocalypse John Saxon is subjected to, and a mental patient with a heroin past attacked by Freddy's syringe fingers. After this one, I'm definitely willing to go a few more rounds with Mr. Kruger in following sequels.

Prisoner of Shark Island

John Ford
1936
You'd be hard pressed to hear me say anything bad about a John Ford picture, but I must admit I prefer another prison-break film the director would go on to make only a year (and a remarkably prolific four pictures) later: "The Hurricane" (1937). This one celebrates the life, and cruel imprisonment, of Dr. Samuel Mudd, the country sawbones jailed for fixing-up presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth's leg while he was on the run from a quickly tightening Yankee dragnet. The positive depiction of Southern slavery is an eyebrow-raiser that leads to a wild buddy-picture element when master and servant are hunkered down on the eponymous island. The special-effects depiction of the moat circling sharks are a hoot , and there's plenty of thrilling gunfire during the escape sequence. But Ford really hits his signature groove when malaria strikes: institutionalism fails where individualism succeeds, and former enemies become fast friends. Particularly bold/amusing is the inclusion of Mudd's father-in-law, a dyed-in-the-wool Confederate gentleman, blustering about the screen in a flurry of Rebel resentment.

The World's Greatest Sinner

Timothy Carey
1962
If you watch a lot of old movies you've probably seen Timothy Carey even if you don't know him by name. First to come to mind are his oddball supporting roles in the Stanley Kubrick pictures "The Killing" (1956), and "Paths of Glory" (1957). An unrepentant weirdo on and offscreen, "The World's Greatest Sinner" is the flatulence-obsessed actor's only directorial effort. It's a truly bizarre, quasi-experimental rise of an average Joe (Carey) from mediocrity to fascistic rock 'n roll infused mega stardom. The whole thing would be generally laughable were it not for Carey's conviction and singular auteuristic focus. Many of the scenes come off as amateurishly broad brush-strokes with Clarence Hilliard's mephistophelian deal leading to gross indulgence: megalomania and sexual abandon being the big corner stones. Still, it's this amateurish nature that makes the picture interesting - rough around the edges with all the charm of a handmade Valentine, and a dose of Kenneth Anger's daring.

The Wild Angels

Roger Corman
1966

This Roger Corman exploitation biker picture has it's moments for sure, but doesn't add up to much more than some cheap shocks and cool fashions. Ostensibly made about, and with the participation of the Hell's Angels (a claim I find dubious), pretty boy Peter Fonda leads a mobile gang decked out with more Swastikas and Nazi imagery than you can "Heil" at. This profusion of visual rebellion leads to the picture's best line, when early on a cowering oil rig worker claims that he was "shooting guys wearing that stuff in the war." Fonda's performance is too shallow to really carry the picture (not so much his fault as it is the laconic writing's), but the colorfully played bit parts, bawdy women and bad dudes, spice up the picture. The highlight is a comrade's funeral that goes from somber to party in the blink of an eye as the revelers pose with the corpse, drink straight from the bottle, and rape the widow. There's no real rhyme or reason to Fonda's final impassioned stand other than to end the film, but "The Wild Angels" remains a generally entertaining cheapie.

Breaking News

Johnnie To
2004

I've yet to really understand what all the fuss is about Johnnie To. "Fulltime Killer" (2001) certainly had it's merits, but neither that film nor this one seems to achieve quite the same level of bravado that John Woo brought to the genre with his greatest efforts. This one pits cops against robbers in a media saturated battle, in which PR and up-to-the-minute sensationalist reporting are as important as clever getaway strategies and tactical procedures. This being Hong-Kong action there's some reliably cheesy conceits - in this case a pseudo romance brewing between the charismatic crook and the icy cop hell-bent on capturing him. With the criminals sequestered in a large apartment complex, the film's siege oriented plot provides plenty of opportunities for cool setpieces: security camera tricks, booby traps, and SWAT teams. The idea that media and public opinion can interfere with the process of carrying out justice is interesting, but unfortunatley To doesn't really do much with it once the action gets cooking. There's an undeniable amount of charm and refreshing quality to To's somewhat modestly budgeted films. I couldn't imagine a comparable picture being made in the states without millions more dollars pumped into over-the-top CGI infused sequences and pricey Hollywood stars.

Simon of the Desert

Luis Bunuel
1965

At 45 minutes of running time I wasn't sure if this Mexican Bunuel picture was made for television, or with some sort of weird festival funding. Amusingly, it turns out that "Simon of the Desert" was envisioned as a feature, but truncated simply because the producer ran out of money. While Bunuel didn't get the opportunity to complete his vision, the film's still got plenty of signature elements for fans of the surrealist director to sink their teeth into. Loosely inspired by the real St. Simeon, Simon is a holy ascetic who eats nothing but lettuce and contemplates God atop a pillar. Bunuel's sense of satire is apparent right from the get-go as we open on the filthy rag-clad Simon seated atop a new, ornate pillar, donated by a wealthy benefactor. Some absurdist moments with the clergy and a dwarf with a predilection for bestiality are pretty good, but the real icing on this cake is Silvia Pinal as temptress Satan. Simon's seemingly indomitable faith is put to the test by this buxom she-devil in kinky lingerie. While the picture's ending may not have been what was originally intended, the idea of simple Simon suffering a hedonistic NYC dance party in modern garb is a fitting image of the purgatory he dreads.

Suicide Club

Sion Sono
Second Viewing

This may have been the very first J-horror film I'd seen before the glut, and I always remembered it as being excellent. A return proves the picture to be just as good as memory serves, making it easily the best non-Kiyoshi Kurosawa J-horror picture I've seen. All the genre hallmarks are here: tone and atmosphere over outright scares, the dehumanizing and alienating effects of modern technology, and the sense that no character is safe or in control. However, the opening mass suicide via oncoming train adds plenty of splatter, and the rolled up skin wheels left at the crime scenes lend a bit of traditional gross-out as well. I had no recollection of the masterfully strange and eerie ending, or the wacky musical number by the flamboyant ne'er do well receiving credit for the so called "Suicide Club." Ryo Ishibashi (as detective Kuroda here) puts in a performance that is remarkably deep and nuanced for a genre role, lending credibility and real tragedy to the fantastic events. This one comes highly recommended.

Treeless Mountain

So Yong Kim
2008

After the first half of "Treeless Mountain" I began to cynically wonder how many more beautifully shot festival darlings with brilliant non-actor performances I could handle. Thankfully through it's unraveling, this one proves that it's more than a pretty face with some complex psychology and a heartstring-tugging depiction of adolescence in upheaval. The relocation of sisters Jin and Bin to their alcoholic aunt's house is handled with a great degree of sophistication - Auntie is no monster, but by no means a positive a parental figure, yet when the girls are once again relocated (this time to their grandparents' farm) they sob just as hard as when their mother abandoned them. Kim's direction of children is a treat, and she deserves credit for the most nonchalant inclusion of a child with downs syndrome I've ever seen in a film. Beautiful cinematography and lots of neat slice-o-life elements (toasting grasshoppers for after school snacks, the sights and smells of a fish market, Grandma's agrarian routine) round out a great picture by a promising director.

Tokyo Gore Police

Yoshihiro Nishimura
2008

A pretty decent gonzo Japanese flick that views like a manga and is not want for bizarre setpieces or creative visual effects. The Tokyo police force has been privatized and is defending polite society from a group of dissidents known as "Engineers," who have the reliably bizarre ability to turn their wounds and mutilations into bio-mechanical weapons. Based on the sheer amount of visual effects it's inevitable that not every setpiece is going to be a winner - scene after scene of severed limbs with watery red arterial spray gets old quick. Yet there are definitely some memorable moments as well - particularly the mutant fetish club in which one of the strippers is half woman-half-snail, a battle scene in which a woman's lower half turns into a fierce set of reptilian jaws, and a fight involving a quadruple amputee in bondage gear where all limbs have been outfitted with swords. The production values definitely waver due to the film's ambitions, but overall "Tokyo Gore Police" is a worthwhile viewing experience for any fan of practical visual effects.

JCVD

Mabrouk El Mechri
2008

"The Muscles From Brussels" participates in this self-reflexive quasi-comeback. Director El Mechri puts a playful spin on the notion of image and celebrity as the over-the-hill action-star essentially plays himself, winding up in a hostage situation straight from one of his films. For all the comic jabs at Van Damme's ego and his general adoration as a Belgian national treasure, the picture maintains a deep-seated serious streak. Van Damme is old and tired, lacking the money to pay his lawyer in an ongoing custody battle with one of his ex-wives. Most interesting is a lengthy monologue in which he directly addresses the camera and speaks of his real-life drug problems, marital issues, and waning celebrity. Despite Van Damme's excellently raw performance and it's clever intellectual merits "JCVD" is slightly marred by lousy cinematography. I'm sure El Mechri would argue that the dark, overly color-treated visuals mirror the cheap straight-to-VHS actioners Jean-Claude is known for, but the muddy greens and browns complemented by high contrast lighting doesn't do the picture any favors.

Howl's Moving Castle

Hayao Miyazaki
2004

I never caught this one in the theater because the preview made it look nearly identical to Miyazaki's prior "Spirited Away" (2001). Upon viewing this seems to be mostly true, but surprisingly the similarity does little to dampen one's enjoyment of the expectedly gorgeous animation and delightful story. Frumpy milliner Sofi is transformed from elegant young lady to withered hag thanks to a witch's curse, she soon finds herself in cahoots with Howl, a capricious man-child magician, and his entourage trucking around in the eponymous castle. Besides the stunning visuals the film's greatest strength is it's disinterest in over-explaining (or even explaining, in some cases) the unfolding events. Too much analysis would rob the picture of it's sense of complete unpredictability as Miyazki moves from lysergic setpiece to setpiece. Unfortunately I saw this one dubbed in English. I say unfortunately because Billy Crystal's voicing of Calcifer the fire demon becomes a touch grating after a while.

Obsessed

Steve Shill
2009

If you're willing to accept a few key suspensions of disbelief, Steve Shill's "Obsessed" could make for a tight little thriller. I for one was not. Idris Elba and Beyonce enjoy marital bliss in a new home bought with Elba's hefty salary (he works in investments), until nutty temp Ali Larter begins mucking up the works with her psychotic infatuation with La Knowles's husband. It's the toothless PG-13 "Fatal Attraction" (1987), avoiding the sticky (read satisfyingly complex) issue of male infidelity, and instead burying it's head in stylish camera moves, and ultra modern production design. Elba and Larter put in solid performances, the former a believable cocksure executive and the latter a hot mess of bonkers. Unfortunately there's little else here to enjoy besides eye candy. This reviewer noticed halfway through that Beyonce's not much of an actress despite her strong screen presence, and the supporting characters are straight from central casting (a homo secretary, boozy boss, and fucking Jerry O'Connell as the classic dickhead office-buddy. The script tries hard to hedge it's bets on difficult-to-swallow plot points, but the inability of Elba to come clean to his wife, the inability of Beyonce to calm down and trust her husband, and the initially legitimate but quickly ludicrous fear that Larter could legally harm Elba through lying becomes much to much. Throw in a weak girlfight finale and a weaker detective character, and you've got a flick so safe you could feed it to your infant.

Tokyo Sonata

Kiyoshi Kurosawa
2008

After earning a reputation as one of J-Horror's top directors with a steady output of pictures ranging from fair to excellent (most notably "Cure" (1997) and "Pulse" (2001)), Kurosawa blew my mind with the less genre-oriented but no less fantastic "Bright Future" in 2003. Though he would return to horror, "Bright Future" was a promising example of what Kurosawa could do outside generic confines. "Tokyo Sonata" is the most straightforward drama the director has made since his rise in popularity, and despite the change in subject matter, it's all Kurosawa. The Sasaki family is an apple with a rotten core. Patriarch Ryuhei avoids telling his family that he's recently lost his job, housewife Megumi coasts through her days on loveless autopilot, eldest son Takashi works crap jobs and looks for an out, while Kenji, the innocent youngest, simply tries to navigate an oppressive home/school atmosphere. The family's inevitable disintegration is monitored with a combined tone of sincere honesty and wink-and-smile irony. This duality is separated and expressed on a character by character basis: Ryuhei experiences an increasingly failed city with heaps of humiliation and comic injustices thrown his way. Unfortunately the inevitable outbursts caused by Ryuhei's suppressed rage makes him a far less sympathetic or even understandable character than Kurosawa would like, inevitably leading to a less appetizing redemption. Megumi and Takashi suffer society's decline with a profound melancholy. Takashi makes the alien proposal of joining the American military, and Megumi proves to be an all too-willing hostage for a knife wielding home invader. Kurosawa's trademark style of filming shocking or violent scenes with minimal cuts and a distant camera remains intact, as does his talent for entropic storytelling, but "Tokyo Sonata" remains rather rough around the edges. At times the dark humor seems to dip uncomfortably into sadism, yet there are plenty of other instances where Kurosawa doesn't go nearly far enough, leaving the viewer with an end that seems hasty and incomplete. The picture is a lesson in maturity for an already established director - I'd love to see what he's doing three pictures from now.

Pitfall

Hiroshi Teshigahara
1962

This is my least favorite of the Teshigahara films released by Criterion, but that's not much of a statement considering all three (I'm not counting the Antonio Gaudi doc) are top notch examples of Japanese avant-garde cinema, high on psychodrama and alienation. "Pitfall" follows an unemployed migrant miner both in life and the afterlife when his likeness to a local union leader causes his accidental(?) murder. Thrown into the mix are the aforementioned union leader and his rival, a woman selling candy in a ghost town, a white-gloved moped-riding assassin, and the miner's son who bears witness to it all. The film is nothing if not strange, with the world of ghosts existing freely alongside the living, and a near-martian landscape of slag heaps, sumps, and abandoned houses providing a stage for the drama. On the surface the events seem horribly grim with terrible accidents and twists of fate befalling decent folk, but while it's clear that Teshigaraha's is a Godless world there's also a subtly amusing element of capriciousness in the proceedings - dark humor for sure, but humor nonetheless. The sharp photography and minimalist score are also strongly reminiscent of Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1942), with a similarity in style and tone that is quite striking. My favorite of the three Teshigahara films I've seen to date remains "Woman in the Dunes" (1964).

The Caine Mutiny

Edward Dmytryk
1954

This naval drama, complete with courtroom finale, seems to have paved the road for "A Few Good Men" (1992). Seen through the eyes of corn-pone all American Robert Francis, the good ship Caine is a rustbucket mine-sweeper, lose on naval decorum and high on mediocre complacency. All that changes when Commander Humphrey Bogart takes charge: soon sloppy shirt-tails and crooked hats don't look so bad in light of the Captain's compulsive obsession with keeping things "by the book," a cover for his dangerous predilection for incompetent leadership. You've seen Bogey as the bad guy, tough guy, and hero, but this depiction of a mentally unsound individual crushed by responsibility is unique in it's pathetic pathos. Like Francis, the cast sports a few other dull honkies, but Shaggy-Dog Fred MacMurray adds a little color with his monotone cynicism, and it's always a pleasure to watch Lee Marvin no matter how small the role. Jose Ferrer's drunken belligerence after the bittersweet verdict is a treat in and of itself, but the reasoning behind his anger and logic seem terribly misplaced - a grand gesture that the script could not back up. It would have been much more satisfying to seem him take it outside with MacMurray in a cathartic show of fisticuffs.

Hunger

Steve McQueen
2008

Amusingly named first-time director Steve McQueen's arthouse darling has garnered plenty of critical acclaim for it's viscerally poetic treatment of historical drama, and it's unapologetic fascination with corporeal degradation. "Hunger" keens it's electronic eye on an early 80's hunger strike by IRA prisoners. Focusing on leader Bobby Sands the picture first illustrates the prisoner's efforts to be recognized as combatants through fecal disobedience and then through the self negation of willful starvation. For all it's stark visual horror/beauty, and deft human touches (a shaken prison guard smoking uneasily in light snowfall) there's not enough credible recognition that the tribulations within the Maze Prison's walls are connected to the IRA's greater struggle, the sort of dismissal Maggie Thatcher had been pushing all along. McQueen does wonders with space and light, but his characterization of Sands is by turns overly pat or overly opaque. It's a shame that when we look into the dying man's eyes we're deprived of the image's fascinating mystery and imposed upon with cliched childhood flashback and longing. I am quite curious as to how lead actor Michael Fassbender (assuming it's him and not a double) achieved his ghoulish state of skeletal decline - unlike the ghastly bedsores which can easily be attributed to talented makeup, the physical lack on display is difficult to dismiss as smoke and mirrors.

The Sinful Dwarf

Vidal Raski
1973

After finally seeing this steamy pile of sexploitation obscura I'm a bit puzzled by the uptight and overly reactionary DVD review that appeared in Fangoria Magazine a couple months ago. It's a problematic situation from the outset considering Fangoria probably doesn't have any business reviewing this sort of sleaze-fare to being with. Wicked Mom and dwarf Son run a boarding house by day and an attic Bordello of dope-slave hookers by night. A down-on-their-luck couple take up residence in the flophouse, and things get hairy when the proprietress decides she wants to add her sweet young guest to the upstairs stable. With expectedly poor production values, porno lighting, and an inevitable degree of camp, this outing is far more preoccupied with cheap thrills than disturbing it's audience on a genuinely psychological level. The rape scenes are plenty racy, but also low on intensity, further suggesting that Raski is far more interested in purveying simple smut than making any sort of comment or provocation on the horror of rape. Take any single rape (or consensual sex scene, for that matter) from a Sam Peckinpah film and it will be a thousand times more disconcerting than all the violence directed towards women in this film combined. Olaf the dwarf is pleasantly creepy, and his Mom gets to mug it up with some fun quirks, but overall the picture is pretty big on fluff, and will probably only really be enjoyed by hardcore exploitation fans. Certainly not the best or the worst I've ever seen.

First Man Into Space

Robert Day
1959

A nice example of Cold War horror/sci-fi on a budget, Robert Day's "First Man Into Space" taps directly into the atomic horrors unleashed on the world via science, while conveniently skirting the issue of both the Reds and nuclear arms race. In post-Sputnik pre-Gagarin America, where space is an unknown frontier, a brash Navy pilot pushes his craft beyond the atmosphere...and falls back to earth a bloodsucking fiend. The rubber-suit monster looks surprisingly good, and the filmmakers aren't afraid to show off their unwitting astronaut covered in what looks like overgrilled hotdog casing - one tortured eye peering out from a hideous deathmask. In the grand B-picture tradition the acting is expectedly terse and wooden, but it's spiced up a bit by the inclusion of the First Man's Italian love interest, initially blown off as a floozy by lead Marshall Thompson until he has to eat his first impressions upon discovering she's a government scientist. Thanks to the above-par monster and clever script Day takes what could have easily been a throwaway screener and makes it an entertaining and worthwhile effort.

'G' Men

William Keighley
1935

A solid Warner Bros crime flick that uses the founding of the FBI as an excuse for James Cagney to mug tough and pop off pistol rounds. Sweetened with an "I don't like you, and you don't like me" interdepartmental rivalry between Cagney and his boss, thick plumes of gunsmoke, and plenty of nefarious gangsters. "G Men" doesn't have the memorable scripting of "White Heat" (1949), or the iconic American gangster narrative of "The Public Enemy" (1931), but manages to satisfy through base masculinity and effective thrills. Most interesting is the inclusion of a wealthy reformed gangster, who had acted as Cagney's mentor and benefactor. While this one-time hoodlum gets his in the end per the era's karmic dictates, it's interesting to see a genuinely sympathetic character who was at one time on the other side of the law - unusual for a period when most screen villains were presented as nihilistic monsters or charismatic psychopaths.

The Black Room

Roy William Neill
1935

This is a barely adequate b-picture that would be a total loss were it not for Boris Karloff playing the dual role of Yin and Yang twins. The Berghman family curse, in which one twin brother is destined to kill the other, leads kindly Anton (Karloff) to travel for many years before returning home at the behest of his wicked brother baron Gregor (also Karloff). The story is all Poe in it's spirit of gothic macabre, with the inclusion of Dario Argento-esque corpse-pit being a legitimately ghoulish conceit, but unfortunately there's little tension leading up to a finale that's not only predestined, but also directly spelled out midway through the picture. Karloff does just fine in his two-faced performance, and the sets and costumes are surprisingly nice, but due to the lack of any sort of tension or suspense this one's pretty much for completists only.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

William Dieterle
1939

This rendition of the oft-filmed Victor Hugo classic boasts the great Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, and large-scale big budget production values. Focusing as equally on the drama of the malformed bell-ringer and persecuted gypsy Esmeralda as on the changing sociopolitical climate of Paris at the dawn of the enlightenment, Dieterle comes up with a film strengthened by it's contextualization. Laughton is by far the best actor I've seen as Quasimodo, better even than Lon Chaney in the silent 1923 version, and his gruesome-yet-human makeup pulls no punches as the roly-poly Brit's beefy frame cavorts about the set. The big surprise here is a young Maureen O'Hara showing a remarkable degree of sexual femininity - a far cry from the macho spitfire who sparred with John Wayne in many a John Ford film. The large crowd scenes are impressive, displaying all the ignorance and filth of the middle ages in a gently assertive way, and the final siege of Notre Dame is a spectacle worthy of the picture's scope (particularly the strange makeshift gun/cannon used by the Beggar King and Quasimodo's brutal employment of molten lead on the attackers). Surprise, surprise, another solid RKO picture.

Mamma Roma

Pier Paolo Pasolini
1962

While this is only the second Pasolini film I've seen (the first being the superb but inconsistent "Accatone" (1961)) it's easy to see that much of this director's cinema, and that of his contemporaries Visconti and Rosselini, is preoccupied with the social attitudes and conventions of Italian society, and the modern Italian experience. Anna Magnani plays (what else?) a reformed hooker hell-bent on making a proper life for her son Ettore. This being Pasolini religious overtones are splashed all over the place with Magnani cutting a clear Madonna/Magdalene to Ettore's sinless Jesus. There's a few cool tracking shots of Magnani walking the nighttime streets as she returns to her old profession, and her boozy associate Biancofiore is a gorgeous knockout. There's no shortage of honesty or emotion in Pasolini's gritty Roman underworld, and thankfully realism outweighs symbolism to prevent the film from being overly pretentious.

Willie Dynamite

Gilbert Moses
1974

I had a hunch after recording this one off of television that it was the same movie the Hughes brothers lifted footage from to use in their excellent documentary "American Pimp" (1999). The clips are used to show the clownish perception of the modern panderer in pop culture: a black man with a stable of tricks decked from head to toe in the absurdest threads this side of the Liberace museum. Director Gilbert Moses does an interesting thing here by giving the exploitation audiences what they want with Willie's outrageous getups, his fly ride (plush cheetah print interior), and his jive talking associates, while slyly inserting earnest social commentary. A resplendent Willie strutting away from court with his ladies may be worth a hoot, especially when it's shot in music video style, but what really sticks is the pervasiveness of heroin in the ghetto, the unbridled rage of a black muslim cop, and the feeling that pimping is the only way an ambitious young hood can make it in this white man's world. There's a strange disconnect in Roscoe Orman's performance as Willie reflected in the dual nature of the film's direction. For the most part he seems more sympathetic than not, as he's perpetually harassed by the fuzz, and spends a good portion of the film running away from a murderous cop in an extended chase sequence. The humanity Willie expresses in his rapid downfall is almost surely at odds with the cartoonish villain the studio was expecting.

Thieves' Highway

Jules Dassin
1949

Jules Dassin's forced blacklist exile to Europe is historically one of Hollywood's greatest losses. At the peak of his skills Dassin was in the midst of building an uncompromising (or at least minimally compromised) body of work that boldly exposed the darker aspects of the American experience. I'm not sure if "Thieves' Highway," the director's last American effort, is my favorite of Dassin's films, but it's been quite a while since I've been this impressed with a picture. Nick Garcos (note the first generation immigrant name) comes home from the navy to find his poor trucker father has been crossed and mutilated by a crooked fruit dealer (Lee J. Cobb) in San Francisco. Partly motivated by Revenge, partly by greed, Nick heads North with a truckload of the season's first Golden Delicious apple crop. Just like his father he's hustled out of his money by Mike Figlia, but won't go home without a fight. The rickety tubs Nick and his partner push up hills and careen through valleys create more tension than the explosion prone lorries of "The Wages of Fear" (1953), and with plenty of severe night photography and overlaid images Dassin perfectly creates foreboding noir atmosphere. By bringing high drama and edginess to the infrastructural elements most of us take for granted, he also cleverly injects social responsibility into a picture that could easily have the romantic gloss of a traditional gangster film. Finally, the most brilliantly subversive move in the picture, is the conclusion of Nick choosing the blue collar life and an earthy hooker for his bride instead of plastic suburbia with a gold-digging trophy wife.

Aliens

James Cameron
1986

A worthwhile sequel to Ridley Scott's space chiller. James Cameron widens the franchise's scope, sadly moving away from Scott's sterile sense of isolation and existential dread. Still, it's hard to argue with the showmanship Cameron brings by pitting man vs. alien in direct combat. The film's design may be less artful but there's still some amazing touches in the marines' hip mounted guns (which fire bullets instead of corny lasers), the mecha-shipping-robot, and the Giger inspired alien queen herself brought to life by the late Stan Winston. Shallow marine characterizations and a sleazy one-note Paul Reiser, are offset by Sigourney Weaver's nuanced portrayal of Ripley and the emotionally punchy inclusion of an imperiled orphan. Motherhood is the theme of the day here with Ripley having lost her daughter to time, picking up the surrogate Newt, and facing off in mortal combat against another mommy who weighs two tons and pops out slimy facehugger eggs. Fleshing out the details of the alien race is a nice treat, and the parallels drawn to the insect world are particularly delightful.

Pineapple Express

David Gordon Green
2008

What happened to David Gordon Green? One minute he's crafting masterpieces like "George Washington" (2000) and to a lesser extent "All The Real Girls" (2003), and now he's stuck making Cheech and Chong rehashes. "Undertow" (2004) may have been far less inspired than his first two pictures, but by general release standards it was in no way a bad picture, but while I was disappointed to miss "Snow Angels" (2007) I heard it was absolutely dreadful. I don't mean to harsh on Green too much. "Pineapple Express" is a pretty decent flick and I love it when gifted directors work in multiple genres (and this one bounces around several at once with shades of the stoner film, buddy movie, and actioner), but ultimately Judd Apatow's involvement goes a long way to damaging a good time. Green's love of 70's film is visually present with clever costumes and gorgeously saturated color photography. The picture's sense of humor is great, less present in the dopey pothead antics, than in it's absurdist tendencies. The drug-lord villain is amusingly banal, and a minor dealer receives massive amounts of punishment throughout, only to bounce back every time. Inevitably though, this lively story gets injected with unctuous doses of Apatovian male bonding. Feelings are hurt and guys blubber like sissies only to "make up" later on. It's fine to do it in one or two movies, but why does every comedy these days have to be filled to the gills with touchey-feeley man-babies?

The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan
2008

This is a real solid sequel to Nolan's reincarnation of the Batman franchise. As a guy who saw "Batman and Robin" (1997) in the theater I can honestly say that this gravely serious take on the caped crusader is a clever avenue to explore, considering the series had degenerated into A-list actors in Circe Du Soleil costumes making stupid puns on massively tacky sets. From a scripting standpoint it's clever how the Nolan brothers take outlandish and iconically established villains like the Joker and Two-Face and integrate them as realistically as possible into a world that's only marginally fantastic. I'm not saying that this grim and dour, hyper-realist batman is the best of all possible worlds, but this experiment in grounding a character whose always lived in a make-believe world is, at the very least, fascinating. Would Heath Ledger have won the Oscar if he hadn't met an untimely death? Who cares. His performance was solid and the Academy Awards kind of blow anyways. For all the creative touches, and expert filmmaking the picture's overly philosophical ending seems a little like a hollow stunt, or maybe the kind of cliffhanger Joel Schumacher would have used to get us ready for the next installment. I hear Michael Madsen is playing the Croc, and Bob Balaban's going to be the Penguin.

Jason X

James Isaac
2001

I've seen my fair share of stinkers but this one takes the cake. "Jason X" is a sci-fi/horror mash-up that sends a cryogenically frozen Jason Voorhees into an interstellar future to inevitably thaw out and rack up a body count. So poorly executed and realized, it's puzzling as to how director James Isaac was ever an associate of David Cronenberg (the creepy Canuck even makes an onscreen cameo!). Despite the awful script, dopey acting, and near complete lack of graphic violence what really kills the picture is the complete lack of imagination in the penny-thin production values. Flat lighting on shitty sets and the most unremarkably generic "futuristic" costumes do no favors for a slasher flick with a noticeable lack of slash. The scene where the robo-chick blows classic Jason all to hell is a hoot, and the ending is actually pretty decent considering the film's generally crappy caliber, but I think I'm going to be hard pressed to find a worse installment as I navigate my way through the franchise.

Bad Biology

Frank Henenlotter
2008

It's a sad truth that a film with a massive killer penis at it's center isn't likely to be anything more than a novelty, and while underground-vet Frank Henenlotter takes his bad taste very seriously "Bad Biology" tends to feel like a self fulfilling prophecy. Fate brings together a sex addict with seven clitorises (clitori?), and a man who has conquered his childhood ED through some serious steroids, resulting in a monstrous member with a life of it's own. The film's lack of money is clearly apparent onscreen, but so is the love of B-filmmaking, and the DIY sensibility shines through with pitch-perfect campy acting, boatloads of nudity, and absurd dialogue. Being partially produced and financed by a rapper whom Henenlotter had made music videos for, "Bad Biology" also has an amusing streak of hip-hop flavor running through it. While it might not be worth much more than a chuckle or two when thrown on at a party, I'm definitely looking forward to catching some of Henenlotter's earlier efforts like "Basket Case" (1982), and "Frankenhooker" (1990).

Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures

George Michel Serkeis / Jose Mojica Marins
1975

This is the latest of the Coffin Joe films I've seen and definitely the weakest despite it's amazing title. Lacking nearly all the oomph, vision, and execution of earlier pictures like "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul" (1964), and "This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse" (1967), and not going far-out enough with it's psychedelic freakout a la "Awakening of the Beast" (1970). The ghost story told is one of the oldest and most transparent premises around with it's disparate group of folks "checking in" to the eponymous strange hotel managed by Coffin Joe on a dark and stormy night. This obvious one-note plot gets dressed up with plenty of Joe's abstract philosophizing and stock footage (a beating heart, forces of nature) edited around, and laid over the drama. The picture does deliver on it's "naked pleasures" with tons of grainy toplessness, and a soft-core biker orgy lending the picture some solid exploitation cred. The only really interesting part of the picture is it's experimental use of sound - heavy on hiss, fuzz, and overlaid tracks to create an expressionistic and otherworldly horrorscape.

Richard III

Laurence Olivier
1955

This is probably my favorite of the three Shakespeare adaptations directed by Sir Laurence Olivier, with "Hamlet" (1948) coming in at a close second and "Henry V" (1944), which I remember as barely watchable, remaining firmly in third place. Olivier delights in playing the villainous King with shades ranging from wicked and mischievous to charismatic and downright heroic. The most interesting/loathseome quality of Richard's ascension to power is not the desire to lead, but the game of it all, as if achieving the throne were a mere exercise of his cunning and his wit. The costumes are a bit rich, and the sets have something of a papier-mache high-school-play quality to them, but sumptuous visuals aren't exactly a staple of Shakespeare adaptations (Ok, I'll give you Kurosawa). The repeated visual motif of figures and objects projected as shadows isn't exactly subtle, but it does provide for an easily readable metaphor and works as a director's artistic choice beyond the source material. The final transformation of Richard from smarmy weasel to berserk war machine is a treat to behold as Olivier bellows threats and challenges foes while being stuck by arrows and overwhelmed in a mass of his would-be subjects.

Z

Costa-Gavras
1969

I had the good fortune of seeing this unique agitprop flick during it's 40th anniversary celebration at Film Forum with a Q & A by director Gavras and editor Francoise Bonnot. A more or less direct repudiation of the military rule of Gavras's home country Greece, the film covers the murder of an opposition party speaker and the ensuing investigation by a regime official. While "Z" possesses a linear and cohesive narrative it's interesting to note that there are no main characters to rely on, but instead an amalgam of people (generally only named by their titles) traversing a climate of political turmoil. Most surprisingly is the picture's use of humor which is subtle but frequent, and almost completely changes the tone of an experience that could be overly grave or pretentious. This is also one of the best examples of mob direction I've ever seen. Gavras shoots the confusion of shouting and sloganeering masses as they seethe and roil with the accuracy of documentary footage. Powerful and often ironic the film concludes with an abbreviated list of the intellectual achievements outlawed by Greece's military dictatorship including homegrown thinkers Plato and Aristophanes.

Gomorra

Matteo Garrone
2008

I'm a little sick and tired of reading reviews for this film claiming that it's "not your average gangster film" with headlines that say things like "Even Tony Soprano Would Be Afraid of These Guys." It's obvious on the surface that Matteo Garrone's adaptation of Roberto Saviano's incendiary book is a completely different animal than the romanticized visions of tommy-gun wielding bootleggers and wiseacre track-suited greaseballs that usually appear in gangster films. Amusingly enough this self-reflexive cinematic worship manifests itself in the picture in the form of two rash punks looking to make it in the Camorra empire, as they wax poetic about "Scarface" (1983) while flying ever closer to the syndicate's flame. Stripped of the usual overly styled Mafia flick trappings "Gamorra" makes for a very engaging, very adult, and very tense viewing experience as a handful of youngsters and average Joes become grist for the all encompassing monolithic crime machine. It's the pervasiveness of the Camorra that impresses most - far from a conspiratorial round table of villains, this is a veritable army of plainclothes men enacting business openly in the streets by day. I'm amazed the film hasn't won more cinematography awards than it has as the photography combines both the documentary realist approach with a heightened artistic aesthetic to remarkable visual ends. "Gomorra" is well worth the photography alone.

The Devil and Daniel Webster

William Dieterle
1941

This moral fairy-tale dressed up in Americana has a very unusual look and feel for a Hollywood picture of the time with expressionistic high contrast lighting, lack of big name actors (save Walter Huston of course), and frank sexual suggestion. Farmer Jabez Stone's got it pretty rough with a hard workaday life and meager returns to show for it, until a 7 year pact with Mr. Scratch (character actor par excellence Walter Huston as great Satan himself) lands the poor schlub in riches up to his armpits. The pot of Hessian gold inevitably leads to Jabez's moral decline as he begins to heartlessly enslave his neighbors through difficult loans, and neglects his simple wife for the carnal raptures of Hell's angel Simone Simon. When Mr. Scratch comes to collect his due, eminent politician of the people Daniel Webster steps up in defense of the wayward farmer to take on the Devil and his jury of the damned in a trial for Jabez's soul. There's a marked contrast between the fanciful and alluring depiction of evil as expressed through Scratch and Simon, and the ugly real-life cruelty and selfishness of Jabez. Scratch makes ironic jokes with a cheshire grin, plays frenzied music, and scarfs stolen pies with abandon, while Simon's Belle lustily competes for the affections of her man - theirs is the world of the naughty child, in which it's more fun to be bad than good. Jabez, on the other hand expresses the cold reality of selfish indulgence through the woes of his neighbors and the mounting emotional abuse directed towards his wife. Daniel Webster provides an interesting character as a drink-loving orator, equally at home with Washington fatcats, rural sharecroppers, and the Devil himself. Indeed, one of the most interesting scenes happens early on as a harried Daniel fights off the advances of Scratch deep into the night. It's an excellent picture, and a great example of how aesthetically and thematically unique RKO films could be in the 40's.

Cimarron

Anthony Mann
1960

I did myself the disservice of watching this sweeping Technicolor 'n Cinemascope epic on a pan and scan VHS tape that I bought unopened on the street for $3. I'm usually a sucker for Glenn Ford and Anthony Mann is my second all time favorite director of Westerns so I was a bit disappointed to find that this Edna Ferber adaptation is certainly the weakest of all the Mann westerns I've seen to date. The picture takes on the settling of Oklahoma from the initial mad dash for farmland to the discovery of oil riches as seen through the eyes of one dysfunctional family. Mann's sticky moral conundrums and unromantic take on the West are mostly muted here, though some complexity comes through in the overt racism towards the Indian and Jewish settlers (some of which is perpetrated by Ford's wife Maria Schell), and the decision of the film's couple to stay together for the sake of their child despite their obvious incompatibility. At it's most irritating the film is a fist in the face of feminism with it's understandable, but perennially unlikable matriarch. Her obsession with material comfort and financial stability for her son is always presented in thorny opposition to the altruisitc flights of fancy and romantic goose chases of her charismatic husband. If this is one of Mann's weaker efforts it's only because his hallmark style doesn't come through as strongly. Overall the picture is a solid, if unspectacular, western imbued with Ferber's predilection for long-winded storytelling.

Inferno

Dario Argento
1980

With Mother Susperiorum having been previously dispatched in Germany, the next episode of Dario Argento's "3 Mothers" trilogy sets it's sights on the Mother of Darkness in the Big Apple. Much like "Suspiria" (1977) Argento goes for the throat early with a horrifying setpiece that is unfortunately unmatched for the rest of the film. In this case it's a curious Rose Elliot swimming amongst submerged corpses in the mysteriously waterlogged lower levels of her apartment building. The flamboyant colored-lighting schemes of "Suspiria" also return for another go, though are not as liberally employed, making for a subtler and more sophisticated visual experience. The filmmaking is expectedly stylish with a sensibility more Grimm brothers than Gothic, but there's nothing overly remarkable going on either. The confrontation with the wheelchair-bound architect before the showdown with Mother Tenebrarum is a nice touch, unfortunately the costume and makeup of the Mother's second incarnation (as death) just look silly. After having finally seen all films in the 3 Mothers trilogy, I'm going to have to say "Mother of Tears" is the best.