Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

A HAUNTED TURKISH BATHHOUSE (1975): A prostitute reincarnates as a vengeful ghost cat to seek revenge on her abusive pimp husband. A very heavy misogynistic sleaze quotient on this one, but if you can get past that, it's never boring: it's a pink movie melodrama with yakuza elements that turns into a horror movie in the last act.  I'll go 3/5, I wouldn't be surprised if some folks liked it a lot more.

[M.10rda]

36 FILLETTE (1988):
An aggressively unhappy (and unpleasant) 14-year old girl on family holiday alternately pursues and resists a 40something philanderer while venting her spleen on her older brother, her parents, and a more age-appropriate teen suitor. This is my second or third attempt to vibe with Catherine Breillat's coming-of-age nightmare, which seems like a dry-run for the even more horrific FAT GIRL. Hey, I had to do that w/ some of Tarkovski's films - why not allow Breillat similar latitude? I still can't get into Breillat's awkward, atonal A REAL YOUNG GIRL ('76) but then some of her other films, like PERFECT LOVE ('96), go down right away as smooth as a good Claude Chabrol.

This time, 36 FILLETTE clicked for me. Everything plays authentically but magnified. Lead actress Delphine Zentout is perfectly lovely, if well short of glamorous, but under Breillat's unflinching gaze the youth and loveliness just erodes and contorts into unremitting discomfort. Her quest to shrug off her "horrible" virginity takes on the dimensions of todestrieb. Lili's balding, eighties-fabulous suitor/predator comes off at first as equivocally decent if inappropriate, but the longer we hang out w/ him the more pathetic and loathsome he too becomes.

Early in the film, Lili (Zentout) encounters and hangs out with (or just fantasizes about) none other than Antoine Doinel himself, the now 40ish Jean-Pierre Leaud. It's a relief that Leaud/Doinel doesn't perv on Lili - just chats amiably w/ her and lets her vent - and the viewer hopes that Lili will age as gracefully. But of course in Truffaut's Doinel films, Antoine doesn't actually get much wiser as he ages. Likewise, at 36 FILLETTE's close, Lili starts to perpetuate a cycle of abuse.

Recently I was puzzling over Sight and Sound's Top 100 list from 2022. Claire Denis is on there (once, I think); Agnes Varda a couple times; and of course Chantal Akerman now enshrined as the director of the "greatest" film of all time, a tun of events which seems to have caused Paul Schrader no end of upset. My question - why not Breillat? Is it just because most of her films are about sex, and critics are too squeamish? Yet Breillat's films are never actually exploitative nor rarely even that explicit. Her films are challenging, yet not more daunting than Varda's and some of Denis' and surely Akerman's. She's more consistent than Denis (who I also like) and definitely more relatable and entertaining [sic] or, errr, perhaps engaging than Varda and Akerman. And if we care about Paul Schrader, I've got to think Schrader's fragile sensibilites would be less triggered by 36 FILLETTE than by JEANNE DIELMAN.  

4/5

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Sound of 007" (2022)
Way-cool Amazon Prime documentary on the importance of music to the James Bond franchise, from the elaborate orchestral scores to the iconic theme songs. Lots of classic clips and commentary from performers, producers, and crew. A motherlode of trivia for Bond geeks.

[Dr. Whom]

Moon Zero Two (1969)

Hammer's foray into SF to cash in on the first landing on the moon. In the distant year 2021, there is a thriving mining community on the moon, with scheduled passenger flights and custom offices. A veteran space explorer, now down on his luck is approached by a rich businessman for a daring scheme: have an uncharted asteroid made of sapphire crash on the moon for exploitation. There is also a young woman whose brother, a miner/prospector seems to have gone missing.

This is one of those movies that can't make up its mind whether it is serious or not. On the one hand they go for a campy 'western in space' style, while on the other the main story is played completely straight, with somber meditations about the bleakness of existence on the moon. Both aspects effectively undercut eachother.

It is not as bad as it is often made out to be. Acting is competent, special effects hold up rather well, and while not exactly moving at a breakneck speed, it chugs along nicely and doesn't take half an hour to set up as some modern movies do.

Surprisingly watchable, but it would have better as either a comedy or a thriller.

[Alex]

The House.

Three unconnected animated short stories involving different problems with 3 houses. I think I liked the last story the most and the second one the least. The first one seemed very familiar, although I couldn't place exactly where I'd seen the same story, although presented in a different way.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Heavy Metal 2000" (aka "Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2," 2000)
Animated sci-fi action flick about a warrior woman (voiced by late B-Movie goddess Julie Strain) on a mission of vengeance against the space pirate (Michael Ironside) who destroyed her home world. Belated sequel to the 1980 cult classic flick based on the French comic magazine, full of animated nudity and ultra-violence. Not terrible, but nothing I'll ever sit thru again. 

[FatFreddysCat]

"Firehouse" (1987)
Three foxy young female fire academy grads are assigned to the worst firehouse in the city, staffed by a bunch of losers and screw-ups. Meanwhile, the neighborhood is experiencing a rash of arson fires, set by a crooked real estate developer with a plan to bulldoze the entire area.
... this lame '80s "sex comedy" feels like a bunch of random scenes punctuated by girls taking their tops off every few minutes to hide the fact that the movie has virtually no plot and even fewer laughs.
IMDb sez that Julia Roberts (!) made her film debut in a small, uncredited part in this movie, but I didn't notice her and I'm not about to sit thru it again to look for her, either.
AVOID.

[lester1/2jr]

Into the Abyss - Werner Herzog documentary about the justice system/ death penalty/ America. It's pretty similar to an A and E type crime thingie but with slightly more blunt questions. People in the south commit a horrible crime and we meet everyone involved, from the perpetrators to the victim's family to people who knew them and so forth. One guy they interview couldn't read, but ended up learning to read in prison. It always blows my mind that there are people who can't read. My neighbor had some sort of disability and couldn't read. It must be really difficult to get through life this way.

Herzog is anti death penalty but seems open to the feelings of victim's relatives who clamor for justice. One highly dubious character is the "wife" of one of the killers who met him while he was in prison and got artificially inseminated to have his child. he gets out in 2041. Herzog "do you know there are groupies for killers in prison?"

4.75/ 5

its compelling but not as profound as Grizzly Man

[Rev. Powell]

SKINAMARINK (2022): Two children left alone at home overnight hear eerie bumps in the night and witness poltergeist phenomena, and then eventually the voices come in. Slow-paced experimental horror that lists more towards the experimental than the horror side of things---every shot is out-of-frame and fogged over by 2nd generation VHS tape murk, and the lack of plot ensures enjoyment is restricted to those who fall in love with the spooky retro style. 2.5/5. On Shudder.

[M.10rda]

"Heavy Metal 2000" (aka "Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2," 2000)
Not terrible, but nothing I'll ever sit thru again. 

Agreed. The original might not be Great cinema, but I'm able to revisit it every few years and dig on the first half-to-two-thirds. The Corben, Wrightson, and first Moebius sequence ("Harry Canyon") plus the WWII sequence are fun and gloomy and sleazy and scary and gross and just a good easygoing time. Then the "Daarna" bit (also based on Moebius, alas) starts and the momentum of the film really drags to a halt... and that last bit is (or feels like) 30+ minutes of the film. I suspect the makers of F.A.K.K. 2 didn't like ANY of the early parts of the original, 'cause F.A.K.K. 2 is basically just "Daarna" stretched to feature length. Ecch.

By the way, F.A.K.K. 2 was also a video game. More fun to play it than to watch it, and only about twice as long as the movie!

[FatFreddysCat]

"Return Of The Living Dead Part II" (1988)
Another small town is invaded by brain-craving zombies after some kids discover a barrel of the dreaded "Trioxin" formula that fell from an Army truck. You can probably figure out the rest.
This noticeably cheap looking sequel is pretty much a re-tread of the first film, right down to Thom Mathews and James Karen returning for another go round. Even though they're supposed to be playing different characters this time, they pretty much just repeat everything they did in the first movie.
Watchable but not essential by any means.

[lester1/2jr]

Eyes in the Night (1942) - above average crime/ mystery thing, the distinguishing feature being the detective is a blind man. He's helped in his pursuits by his dog Friday, a sighted human sidekick, and some minstrel-y black guys.

The theater is the main setting: a middle aged actor takes up with his 17 year old co star then gets killed. Good riddance right? But what if something even more awful is afoot?

The blind detective using his wits to investigate the crime is the hook. He's funny and the dog is of course smarter than most people. This has been on TCM

4.5 /5

[FatFreddysCat]

"Romancing The Stone" (1984)
A mousy romance novelist (Kathleen Turner) is forced out of her comfort zone and into a South American adventure when her sister is kidnapped by treasure hunters. A handsome soldier of fortune (Michael Douglas) helps her save the day.
...since we've sat through two modern "R.T.S." knock-offs recently (Jennifer Lopez's Shotgun Wedding and Sandra Bullock's The Lost City), my wife and I decided to re-visit the O.G. to see how well it's held up. It's still loads of fun -- Douglas is a passable Indiana Jones wanna-be, Kathleen Turner was fine as hell back then, and Danny Devito is hilarious as one of the bumbling bad guys. Director Robert Zemeckis claims that the success of this movie made it possible for him to do Back To The Future.

[lester1/2jr]

The Mysterious Mr Wong (1934) - Bela Lugosi as a Fu Manchu like Chinatown villain doesn't even come close to working, but it actually gives the whole thing a "who cares" ultra low expectations b movie vibe that does work.

A store with of course all sorts of secret doors is the home base for gangsters who are looking for the 12 gold coins of Confucius which is of course not really a thing. An imitation Jimmy Cagney reporter and his sassy sidekick/ quasi girlfriend take great measures to get the story. Why would a reporter put himself in this much danger and why would his girlfriend, who gets nothing out of it, go along with it? There isn't a thing called a detective in this universe.

Not much genuine suspense but fun atmosphere and off the cuff sort of humor gives this the bad movie energy it needs to get a

4/ 5  recommended



gimmee a break. This is 3 years after Dracula

[RCMerchant]

^ I like it! Kind of a Z-grade Fu Manchu.