Recent Viewings, Part 2

[Rev. Powell]

THE SPIRIT (2008): Noirish superhero the Spirit fights the Octopus in a generic metropolis. It looks great (sometimes), but a fantastic cast is wasted with this campy parody that (with a few exceptions) isn't funny or over-the-top enough to distinguish it from a just-plain-bad SIN CITY copy. 2.5/5.

[Dr. Whom]

I am love/Io sono l'amore (2009)

The affair of the Russian wife (Tilda Swinton) of a rich Milanese industrialist serves as a catalyst for the collapse of the family.

It is more concerned with creating an atmosphere than with telling a story. In fact most of the plot is told indirectly. The city of Milan (with some stunning opening images of Milan in the snow) and food (a specific Russian soup in particular) are as important as any of the characters. It is very artsy and so stylish it hurts. I quite liked it.

[indianasmith]

SHARKS OF THE CORN (2021) - Cheesy fun; not as painfully bad as NOAH'S SHARK but not as fun and cheesy as SHARKTOPUS.
Pluses: No CGI, actual nudity, and bonus points for the Stonehenge/Bigfoot angle
Minuses: Bad rubber shark masks, badly done fake kill scenes/body parts, painfully bad dialogue.

[Rev. Powell]

TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (1988): Two men hallucinate while recovering from the plague in a barnyard hospital in the fishing village of Gimli in the unspecified past. Guy Maddin's debut sets the tone for his career--recreating the aesthetics of silent and early talkie movies, spiked with Freudian surrealism and absurdist humor--though his subsequent movies benefited from melodramatic plotting that is absent from the episodic "Gimli." 3.5/5.

[lester1/2jr]

Ready Player One (2018) - A guy who was doing AI stuff at MIT told me this was the movie to watch to understand the metaverse, but it just seems like a video game. Allegedly, it has more interactive and non competitive aspects than a video game, but games are pretty elaborate these days and you can play them with other people via headsets so what's the difference?

In the future everything is dystopian so people escape to a game/ thing called Oasis. The first half of the movie is tons of pop culture references middle aged people would get, the second half is more of a typical action sort of movie. The first part was more interesting. The dialogue is decent and the ideas were clever and colorful but what did it all mean? There really was no great theme. Imagine if Metropolis had been littered with 1880's pop culture references instead of biblical based morality about rich and poor. It's a bit of a lark, but aspects of Spielberg's mastery cut through from time to time.

4/5

[lester1/2jr]

If you liked "Now You See Me" ...Ready Player One should work

[Rev. Powell]

ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET (2023): 6th grader Margaret deals with a move to a new school and crushes while anxiously waiting for her first period and talking to God like a psychotic. As a 55 year old man I am not in this film's target demographic--55 year old women who remember reading this as a kid--but I can say it's well-made and genuine. Add one star if you are, or are considering, menstruating. 3/5.

[indianasmith]

DOWNFALL (2004) - This remarkably accurate account of Hitler's last days was based on extensive interviews with Traudl Junge, one of his last living secretaries, and is bookended with clips from those interviews.  Although the popular "Hitler Rant" clip has been used with many humorous captions, this film captures the madness and cruelty and pathos of the last days of the Third Reich better than any I have ever seen.  5/5

[Zapranoth]

"Across the Spiderverse"

Continues the adventures of Miles Morales, an alternate universe Spider-Man.   The first movie in this series was an *incredible* accomplishment of animation and storytelling, and the sequel is somehow able to go over that high bar and be even better.   10 / 10.

[M.10rda]

I'm back, been working a lot, looking forward to catching up on the last 15 pages or so of posts... in the meanwhile, just watched this (alas):

PRIMAL SCREAM aka HELLFIRE (1988):
This is not a good movie by most lights, including mine, but it has a lot of highly favorable reviews on Letterboxd (as well as alluring poster art), hence I watched it. I didn't enjoy it, but I wouldn't blame a lover of offbeat movies for embracing it.

If I tell you it seems variously influenced by ALIEN, BLADE RUNNER, DARK STAR, OUTLAND, and maybe Cronenberg, plus it has one double-murder scene lifted directly from the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise, that might compel you to go watch it. So perhaps I should also tell you that all those influences translate into a product that feels much closer to Ed Wood than to Ridley Scott, Carpenter, or Cronenberg, only w/o Wood's humor or subversion. Also it takes place mostly on Earth (not in space) and the plot is completely impenetrable. The lead would be a welcome presence in any big budget studio film, provided he had about 5 lines, but his limited abilities wear very thin over 90 minutes, and he's by far the film's strongest actor...      Easily a 6th of the running time is dedicated to a soggy and unconvincing romance, most of the score is nails-on-the-chalkboard low-budget 80s synth noodling, and the final scene manages to compound both of these drawbacks w/ a treacly sub-sitcom love theme (including vomit-inducing lyrics). What else? Oh yeah, the film opens puzzlingly in media res, showing us the climax of the film before subjecting us to a lengthy "mystery" for which we already essentially know the resolution. (Even still, it's often hard to follow what is happening or why.)

Did I enjoy nothing about PRIMAL SCREAM? I will say this for one-and-done auteur William J. Murray - he spent four years and possibly as much as two or three thousand dollars      successfully completing a feature film that features explosive car chases, explosive experimental aircraft chases, and explosive space station foot-chases. There is a lot of chasing and some exploding, as well as a few odd gore shots, and I admired the extreme discretion w/ which Murray achieves his threadbare FX. Also quite a bit of the lighting is good or even (occasionally) excellent. Should you watch PRIMAL SCREAM, though? Ehhh!
2/5

[lester1/2jr]

^ you should get Veterans benefits for enduring that

The Phantom (1931) - much less of an ordeal here. Very standard murder mystery type thing. The actors are all second rate as is the plot but there's some good stuff, especially one super tall guy with oddball-style humor. One day, I'm going to start an acting agency for all Marfins sydrome actors. It was the type of thing where whoever was revealed to be the Phantom was some guy I didn't really remember.

3.75 I'd watch it again though. who cares any more

[lester1/2jr]

Man On The Prowl (1957) - Alpha Video did the impossible and found a copy of this apparently long lost exploitation flick. I'm sure Alfred Hitchcock never saw it, but if he did he probably would have thought "I better hurry up with Psycho, dudes are starting to figure out what's next". It's a mediocre print at best, but I was very impressed and also baffled as to why it ended up in the cinematic trash can.

James Best aka Rosco P Coltrane from Dukes of Hazzard is the titular man and he goes nuts basically right away. Every single interaction he has with anybody he seems like he's about to kill them and sometimes does. It goes way beyond suspension of disbelief but it makes it that much more of a guilty pleasure. That said, it's a regular movie, not a Something Weird type shoestring budget thing with a psychedelic band playing at a party. The secret ingredient is the Fatal Attraction/ soap opera type sexual chemistry and motivations. Very much like one of those pulp novels they used to have.

It's better than that Johnny Cash movie "5 minute Maniac" or whatever it was called. There are a couple minutes missing but it's pretty clear where the cut was and what happened during it.

4.75 / 5  



look at that sleazy tagline

[RCMerchant]

^ the Cash movie was DOOR TO DOOR MANIAC aka 5 MINUTES TO LIVE.

[lester1/2jr]

roscoe is a better pervert

[FatFreddysCat]

"Dirty Work" (1998)
Two losers (Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange) turn their talent for pulling pranks and creating mayhem into a successful "revenge for hire" business, but they soon need to get even themselves when they're screwed over by a crooked real-estate magnate.
Norm's at his snarky best in this mean-spirited comedy directed by Bob Saget (!), and featuring cameos by Adam Sandler, Gary Coleman, Don Rickles, and more. Funny stuff!