Recent Viewings, Part 2

[lester1/2jr]

You Are Not Me (2023) - I will divide this into thirds.

1st third - An unlikable daughter and her unlikable girlfriend ( I can't really hate on their baby) come home unexpectedly to visit her unlikable parents. She discovers an unlikable homeless girl has essentially taken her place in the family. Someone drop a missile on these miserable people.

2nd third - I still hate everybody, but it's slowly getting trashier and more ridiculous a la Orphan or something.

3rd third - Now we're talking. Maybe it's not wildly original or believable, but it's got a good payoff.

I almost turned it off because it just seemed like a bad, preachy independent film, but I'm glad I didn't. It could have been a little more colorful and had more comedy, but it's good.

3.99/5

[indianasmith]

THE DEEP DARK (2023) - French language horror film about some coal miners who uncover a Lovecraftian monster imprisoned in a deep subterranean ruin.  Slow buildup, excellent monster effects!   Definitely worth the watch. 3.5/5

COFFIN TOOTH (2026)  A low budget slasher flick with a decent costume design (reminiscent of Leatherface from TCOM), cheap gore effects, gratuitous nudity, and a half dozen unexplained side plots.  In other words, a bad movie lover's dream!   1/5 on a critical scale, a solid 4.5/5 on the bad movie scale!

[Rev. Powell]

RIFFTRAX: CREATING REM LAZAR: Two kids bring their imaginary friend, blue-haired superhero Rem Lazar, to life through the power of belief in this amateurish production. It's also a musical! A real oddity; since it's not a feature film, I have no idea why it exists. Ample fodder for Rifftrax. 3.5/5. Since it's so short, I watched to other shorts: "Video Toaster 4000," an infomercial for technology that makes Tony Hawk look uncool, and a more conventional 1950s educational short about how to make friends.

[M.10rda]

LE FANTOME DU MOULIN ROUGE [THE PHANTOM OF THE MOULIN ROUGE] (1925):
I guess Rene Clair was like the early 20th century's Tim Burton or something - starting his career w/ the truly incredible Dada absurdity ENTR'ACTE, following it w/ the wild sci-fi adventure THE CRAZY RAY, and then almost immediately takin' that cheddar and beginning to make watered down audience-friendly product like... this! Well, it's better anyway than Burton's reboots of PLANET OF THE APES or DARK SHADOWS, and if nothing else (and unlike lots of silent genre flicks) it does have an actual supernatural(ish) element and some amusing SFX.

Boissel is a 50ish (?) rich Parisian government guy who is secretly dating the much, much (like almost inappropriately) younger daughter of another rich guy named Vincent. A third old (also mean and fat) man, a tabloid publisher named Gauthier, blackmails Vincent into letting him marry the daughter instead ('cause even in the 1920s I guess French girls had no say in their futures). Obviously this really bums Boissel out, so his cute younger cousin Jacqueline (who is clearly thirsty for her own cousin) takes Boissel to Moulin Rouge to cheer him up. There's more plot - too much! - but essentially what happens is Boissel begins an indefinite astral projection adventure where he is allowed to fly around the city rampaging and wreaking mischievous vengeance on those who have wronged him and (uh) strangers too. Even though he's invisible and immaterial, he can somehow manipulate physical objects. Jump-cuts, double-exposure, and wackiness ensue.

ENTR'ACTE was half an hour and CRAZY RAY was an hour - FANTOME is 90 minutes and didn't need to be. The first 30-40 are real slow and the long sequence at the Moulin Rouge is a snoozer. (Turns out it wasn't as surreal and unhinged as Baz told us!) Clair must've been bored himself 'cause around the midway point there's a stark tone shift and FANTOME becomes a broad farce. The many scenes of Boissel flying over and through Paris w/ a big grin and messing w/ people made me think of many feckless "SNL" sketches from the 80s and early 90s - there's only one joke and it isn't even that funny, yet Clair and his crew really commit to the bit w/ stupide joie de vivre. FANTOME also predicts (maybe inspired, though probably not) the classic Ed Begley naked Invisible Man sequence in AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON. (What, I'm the only one that considers it a classic?!)

FANTOME isn't totally stoopid - it has some interesting elements. The actor who plays Boissel looks in wide shot like a young Udo Keir and in close-up like a middle-aged Christoper Walken, and plays the role like an understated Walken, which was enough to preoccupy me for the most part. The climax nearly takes a ghoulish turn into body horror and actually runs right up to light gore (!) inflicted by a scalpel, though danger is deflected and the laughs continue. Finally, Clair specifically predicts the (actually clever) late 80s "SNL" sketch that reveals the deleted final scene from IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE: even after gross old Gauthier loses the girl, he still has to engage in a shockingly vigorous knockdown drag-out beatdown!       3.5/5 by silent standards.

[indianasmith]

KRAKEN (2026) - I saw this after I watched the Netflix series THE DEEP about a giant squid in Canada, and I am not gonna lie - this is the better of the two movies.  A salmon hatchery is experimenting with a "Sonic Flea" device which removes parasites and causes the fish to grow bigger and healthier.  But the pulses from the Sonic Flea have drawn a monstrous predator up from the fjord; an octopod of epic proportions that is not happy with the sound wave they are generating.  Some cool creature effects in this one, and the acting is pretty solid.  4/5

[Dr. Whom]

FAUST (1926)

Murnau's retelling of the Faust tale, which apparently wasn't appreciated at the time for not sticking to Goethe. Quite melodramatic and while it is technically a happy ending, rather bleaker than I expected. The acting and esthetic are of its time, so you mileage may vary. The cinematography and SFX, however are very impressive. The SFX still hold up 100 years later and must have been mindblowing at the time.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Some Girls Do" (1969)
Sequel to "Deadlier Than The Male" sends heroic Hugh Drummond on a mission to stop an aircraft saboteur. He eventually ends up on a villain's private island, surrounded by an army of mind-controlled women. Shag-a-delic!
The movie has some cool action sequences and it's jam packed with lots of pretty girls in mini-dresses. It's not as good as "Deadlier..." but it's a fun watch.