Recent Viewings, Part 2

[M.10rda]

Very interesting review, Lester! I installed a tor browser maybe 7 or so years ago our of curiosity, then opened it and had no idea what to do next, so I closed it and never returned. Alas, it wasn't like as soon as I opened the browser I was presented w/ offers for online drugs or human slaves or discounted assassinations or anything. Maybe they talk about this in the documentary, but I presume the "Dark Web" still required users to know what they were looking for and how to find it.......

[lester1/2jr]

I have a 2010 Gateway computer and an android phone, so I'm with you.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Riot on the Dance Floor" (2014)
Cool documentary about City Gardens, the legendary concert hall/nightclub in Trenton, NJ. The club's uber-dedicated DJ and show booker Randy Now, turned a run down warehouse in a sh*tty neighborhood into a Mecca for punk, new wave, and non-mainstream music of all kinds during the 80s and 90s. I never went to City Gardens (I lived in Northern NJ, at the opposite end of the state) but I heard many stories of famous shows there by the Ramones, Black Flag, Nirvana, and many others. (Henry Rollins' story about Black Flag opening for Venom there in 1986 is worth the price of admission all by itself.) It sounds like it was quite a place!

[lester1/2jr]

"He walked By Night" (1948) - Some walk by night, some fly by day. At least, that's what Billy Ocean or whoever it was believed. I think I saw this before because I remembered the scenes where the guy would evade capture by sliding into the sewer openings on the side of the street. I didn't remember any of the movie itself though and I really liked it this time around.

A normal looking guy is a wiz with modern technology, able to transform normal TV's into awesome projection devices and that sort of thing. Unfortunately, he's also a burglar and cold blooded killer for some reason! Why not just stick with the scientific stuff? Who knows. A hefty part of this low budget but atmospheric film noir is police procedure stuff. I'd give them an A for their fact collecting ability, but they stink at pursuit. You don't have all your guys go in the building pointing the same direction at the same time.

It's a cool movie, though. I'd say the reason it isn't better known is that there is no beautiful female lead. In fact, it's kind of a total sausage fest. There is maybe one cute brunette at the overhead projector, build the profile scene. She says "that's him, but his eyebrows are thicker" or something. That's not enough.

It's definitely a cut above though.

4.5/ 5

[M.10rda]

28 WEEKS LATER (2007):
First-time viewing to prepare for seeing 28YL... glad we watched this as it does illustrate how the first film's "happy" ending gets all FUBAR by a couple of dumb kids.......

Of course this isn't as good as 28DL - it doesn't have Brendan Gleeson, or Cillian Murphy. It does have a strong cast - Robert Carlyle, Imogen Poots, Rose Byrne, Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau, and Idris Elba - but perhaps most to the point, it has four screenwriters (three of whose names I don't recognize) and none of them are Alex Garland, thus the lean, efficient character beats from the original are ground down to the bone. (Elba mostly stands around staring at monitors...)

But, 28 WEEKS LATER is... much scarier than 28DL, maybe much much scarier, and 28DL wasn't exactly a slouch in the frights department. I don't know if I would say I get "scared" much at horror movies, but I definitely get stressed out during the best of them, and this one kept me in a state of high-level anxiety for nearly its whole two hours. Director and co-writer Juan-Carlos Fresnadillo steals with both hands from Zombie Cinema history: from Romero's DAWN... and DAY OF THE DEAD and THE CRAZIES, DAWN OTD '04, Lenzi's NIGHTMARE CITY, Fulci's ZOMBIE, Bava's DEMONS, and even from ALIENS. But the swipes don't feel cheap - all these elements add up to a mega-mix of terror that rarely relents. This is also the first time in a long while a movie has given me nightmares - like, hours of nightmares - or, as I prefer to think of them - sweet sweet dreams of zombie mayhem.  I ain't complainin'!

4.5/5
Fresnadillo has made only 4 films in 23 years. INTACTO ('02) was decent and DAMSEL from last year was pretty good too. The third one stars Clive Owen and a female character named "Mia Farrow"      so the hell I'm watchin' that. I wish he'd make more full-tilt screamfests like this!

[lester1/2jr]

I gotta see that.

[Dr. Whom]

The Cheap Detective (1978)

Peter Falk reprises his Bogart parody of Murder By Death in this joyful mash up of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon. The kind of deadpan nonsense that Police Squad would later turn up to eleven. Silly fun throughout.

[Rev. Powell]

THE WAVES OF MADNESS (2024): An operative investigates an ocean liner overtaken by unspeakable monstrosities in the most remote part of the Pacific. The world's first sidescrolling Lovecraftian microbudget feature film has more than enough originality to keep your interest and won't wear out its welcome at just over an hour. 3.5/5. 

[Jim H]

28 Years Later - A peak at the UK decades after the initial infection.  Well, one corner of it.  Largely it's about a mother, father, and a son.  Based on the trailer you'll probably not guess the direction this is going.  I found it rather affecting and quite liked it - my favorite of the three films.  In particular, it's one of the few times I can remember walking out of the theatre, looking at the theatrical poster, and feeling quite differently about what's on it.  I'd rather not give too many details, think it's better discovering them on your own.

The sequel hook is quite something, but I'm not totally sold...  Yet.  I'll see it though, and I hope they manage to finish the trilogy.

[zombie no.one]

that is the 3rd one, isn't it?

[Rev. Powell]

RAGEDDY ANN AND ANDY: A MUSICAL ADVENTURE (1977): The children's dolls adventure into the night to rescue a stuck-up French doll kidnapped by a pirate. Plays out as a dull children's' film for the first 45 minutes, but then the acid suddenly kicks in as the rag dolls encounter a mentally ill camel and fall into a vat of psychedelic taffy. The second half rarely lets up. 2.5/5.

[M.10rda]

that is the 3rd one, isn't it?

Yeah, it's the 3rd one, but it begins its own new trilogy.   

I saw it on a big screen a week ago and didn't review it as no one else on here had yet and I didn't know how to frame my comments w/o any spoilers. Like Jim H, I too wasn't "sold" on the ending, among other elements. In my review of 28WL, I suggested that I missed Alex Garland. Well, now we have Alex Garland back and I miss Juan-Carlos Fresnadillo. If you want a good scary cathartic running zombie movie, just watch 28 WEEKS LATER. 28YL really tries to be more than a scary zombie movie and I respect the ambition, but it poops the bed in the catharsis department. Zombie movies (and the 28 series previously) have always been about memento mori, and have excelled through the use of zombies as metaphor. Garland and Boyle get too too literal here, and (just personally) I found this one scary in all the not-fun ways. 28WL gave me a pleasant/fun night of nightmares - 28YL made me uneasy and depressed for days.  Nice try, but I kind of hated it.

[M.10rda]

THE HELL-BOUND TRAIN (1930):
This is an incredible historical document for several reasons, among them that, as crazed religious propaganda produced by a married couple, it beat the Ormonds (and Estus Pirkle) to the theaters by four decades! Eloyce and James Gist were black evangelists who made this 51-minute silent nightmare to accompany their sermons. A plain ol' regular locomotive barrels towards some presumably-Earthly destination. Oh no, wait - the conductor is a guy in red pajamas and horns! Obviously this is a hell-bound train! Documentary-style, we visit each car and see how the all-black ensemble of passengers earned their one-way ticket to damnation. "Car One is dancing", an intertitle announces, then follows it up with "because today's dance is indecent!"

I LOL'd at those titles, and H-BT is often a hoot, but no compassionate and reasonable human in 2025 will possibly make it through this film w/o dry-retching now and then at the Gist's fanaticism. Naturally after we make our way through blues and jazz music, booze, and marijuana, eventually we get to infernal sins like using contraception.    And of course the Gist's can't leave what is God's to God and Caesar's to Caesar, thus they must visualize cops (and other unsavory types) administering corporeal punishments as well. 

But, as several Letterboxd reviewers state more eloquently than I could, one can still admire H-BT as a very early independent black film. Eloyce and James would have been no fun to party with, but as with ol' Estus, you can still chuckle at their straight-faced absurdity and sleep easy.
3/5

Cinema History has a response to HELL-BOUND TRAIN - a conscious, intentional one, I suspect - and that response comes at the end of Ryan Coogler's SINNERS, the best film of this year so far, where after the characters commit every "sin" inventoried by the Gists and then incidentally suffer (not really, though, for those sins), legendary bluesman Buddy Guy shows up to assure the audience that it was all worth it. 

[zombie no.one]

Yeah, it's the 3rd one, but it begins its own new trilogy.   

a trilogy within a quintology?

hope someone's keeping score out there

[zombie no.one]

ORCA (1977)

JAWS lite? bit harsh. too earnest and melancholy to be the creaky campfest I almost hoped it would be, and has too much of its own identity going on to really be considered a JAWS clone... atmosphere-wise it reminded me most of THE WICKER MAN strangely enough.

it's just too laboured and meandering to be that engaging, and the characters come off as a bit distant and uninvolved... nearly all the killer whale footage looks real however (to me)