Recent Viewings, Part 2

[lester1/2jr]

Delirium (2023) - Took a late night chance on this one and didn't end up liking it. It was interesting to see Iceland, where it takes place, but there's too little of the scenery and altogether too much of the lead guy. Basically, it's a really downbeat foreign film combined with a found footage type plot about a horrible, evil, cursed box that makes people who have it go crazy (but they are like dying of curiosity about it). It also has a little bit of Memento to it because he is always waking up in a place and doesn't know how he got there.

2.5 /5 I'd say skip it

[FatFreddysCat]

"American Dragons" (aka "Double Edge," 1998)
A tough NYC cop (Michael Biehn of "Terminator" and "Aliens") teams up with a Korean detective to stop all out war in the streets between the local Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza, who want to take control of the city's underworld. Many bullets fly and punches are thrown.

Due to the East-meets-West angle, this direct to video action flick feels kinda like "Rush Hour" if it had been played straight. It's nothing I'll ever watch again, but it was a decent enough time waster.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Espionage in Tangiers" (1965)
Silly Spanish/Italian 007 knock-off in which studly secret agent Mike Murphy (Luis Davila, who looks a lot like future Bond George Lazenby) travels to Morocco and France in search of the stolen components to a scientist's disintegration ray.
This poorly dubbed spy flick is basically a bunch of random fist fights and car chases in search of a plot. Some nice European scenery and hot 60s babes make it watchable, but just barely. Skip it!

[M.10rda]

APACHE DRUMS (1951):
Produced by Val Lewton but starring and directed by no one I've ever heard of, this is a rare mid-20th century American Western made with a lot of nuance. (I admit Westerns aren't my favorite genre.) The title and opening credits had me braced for pure xenophobia, but then immediately the film establishes a plausible - in fact historically accurate - rationale for the indigenous rampage we're about to be subjected to. Although the Apache are a monolithic and mostly faceless menace, there are also sympathetic/heroic native characters to allow for the #notallIndians defense, and in fact white-on-indigenous racism is a recurring and conscious theme of the film. Ultimately the victimization of innocents by the native villains is deplorable, but if one reads between the lines its clear the filmmakers understood that U.S. Colonialism was the true Big Bad. Even so, APACHE DRUMS affords similar depth and complexity to the central white characters forced to suffer the Apache's rage. None of the Caucasians are above reproach nor are any of them beyond redemption.

Perhaps less-enlightened but quite nifty is the way that APACHE DRUMS is structured entirely like a horror movie. The threat encroaches on a sleepy community, which is slow to recognize or give credence to the imminent danger. Once the situation is inescapable, all attempts to escape, stock up on vital supplies, or summon immediate support are thwarted (fatally!). At last a scrappy handful of survivors must hole up in an imperfect fortress and strive desperately to survive until morning... or beyond! This is the plot of countless horror films - Romero zombie flicks, ALIENS, SINNERS. When the Apache start coming through the windows and leaping upon women and children, and candles get blown out and leave the protagonists in total darkness for a moment - man, this is scarier than any real Horror film from the early 50s!

3.5/5
I don't find Val Lewton films particularly scary or entertaining, either. Val Lewton and 50s Westerns - two bland tastes that somehow taste great together!

[LordGraal]

Nemesis (1992) 

I wasn't sure whether to put this in the Good or Bad section.  I think it's just about good because of the photography, soundtrack (mostly), locations, some of the acting (Tim Thomerson, Marjorie Monaghan, Yuji Okumoto, Deborah Shelton and Merle Kennedy) action and ambience.

Olivier Gruner is a block of wood most of the time.  Brion James' accent is terrible.  But there are some very good scenes along side the hurried and ridiculous ones.  It's very derivative (The Terminator and Blade Runner) but just about makes it's own impression and creates a mood.  The less said about the sequels the better.

My main takeaway is to never trust anyone wearing a suit for a start.

[lester1/2jr]

The Ceremony Is About To Begin (2024) - Interesting little curio here. It's probably not in my top 1000 favorite movies of all time, but was a decent way to pass the time on a very late Saturday night. Imagine a mockumentary about a cult with an Egyptian, Ramses the Great sort of brand combined with a found footage horror film about that same cult. That's basically it.

It's logical enough, but not particularly scary and the comedy stuff isn't laugh out loud funny. If you are a cinematic scenester of some sort I would probably recommend it more than for straight found footage fans.


Definitely a case of "How in the world did they find/assemble the footage if..." syndrome but what are you gonna do

3.99/ 5 not bad

[chainsaw midget]

Godzilla x Kong:  The New Empire

I liked it.  Despite getting top billing though, the movie mostly follows Kong and it's surprising how much emotion they manage to give the guy. The humans are actually interesting too, which is something these movies often struggle against. 

As for the plot, King Kong is in the Hollow Earth looking for more of his kind because he's sad and ends up finding some of them.  But they're ruled by a more evil Kong with a giant skeleton whip and his very own giant Ice Breathing Monster. 

So they managed to get Godzilla and Mothra to help Kong fight them, and it's got some pretty cool monster fight scenes too.

[FatFreddysCat]

"The Corruptor" (1999)
Hong Kong action legend Chow-Yun Fat plays a tough NYPD officer who heads up the Asian Gangs Unit in Chinatown. The inevitable culture clash occurs when a baby faced Mark Wahlberg is assigned to the unit, and the pair must stop a series of gang related murders.
This gritty East-Meets-West shoot 'em up drama gets off to.a rousing, ultra-violent start but eventually gets bogged down with too many side plots and an overlong run time.

"River Of Death" (1989)
Twenty years after World War II, a South American jungle guide (Michael "American Ninja" Dudikoff) leads an expedition to a fabled Lost City in a remote, cannibal-infested part of the Amazon, where an ex-Nazi scientist (Robert Vaughn) has been hiding out creating the Ultimate Weapon.
A goofy but entertaining "Indiana Jones" wanna-be from good ol' Cannon Films.

[HappyGilmore]

Happy Gilmore 2.

It..it's certainly a movie that was produced.

[FatFreddysCat]

"Record Safari" (2020)
This documentary follows Alex Rodriguez, an L.A. based DJ and record collector, as he takes a month long solo road trip across the USA, visiting as many indie record stores as possible. His mission is not only to find cool stuff for his own collection, but also to purchase stock for the on-site record store tent at the annual Coachella Music Festival. Along the way he talks to lots of fellow enthusiasts and obsessed  collectors. As I watched this guy hitting store after store, walking out with stacks of goodies every time, all I could think of was, "This guy has a cool job. I wish I could do that."

[Rev. Powell]

MYTH OF MAN (2025): In a city plagued by red clouds that sicken the population (whose health status is always indicated by red LED bands on their sleeves), a deaf-mute woman dreams of a messiah coming from the comet that flies overhead nightly. Shot almost entirely on green screens in vibrant microbudget CGI, in a silent movie world whose closest trade partner is the CITY OF LOST CHILDREN, this is dense worldbuiding, with a mythology so abstract that it becomes surreal--one of those movies that will bore most viewers, but 5% will think it's the greatest thing they've ever seen. Well worth a watch for the curious. 3/5.

[M.10rda]

ROCK ALL NIGHT (1957):
One of the earlier Roger Corman films (and Charles B. Griffith screenplays) is simple enough in concept and execution to allow the viewer to appreciate Griffith's snappy dialogue and the appealing performances of Corman's stock company. The film opens in a nice nightclub, but within a few minutes Dick Miller as "Shorty" is forcibly ejected from that nightclub and has to go bum around a cheaper dive w/ a bunch of sketchier types. Just his luck, Russell ("The Professor"!) Johnson and Jonathan (o.g. LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS) Haze bust into the dive waving guns around and acting nutty. Fortunately for all the other denizens, Miller's seething w/ vertically challenged rage and looking for the opportunity to knock some fellas down to size...

Dick Miller! This is (to my knowledge) one of only two films he ever headlined - and boy, does he ever sink his teeth into his role and chew that sucker! As a kid I never thought of Miller as "short" - all adults look big to a stupid 7 or 8 year old, even or especially if they're drunk-driving snow plows. To the credit of Miller, Corman, and and Griffith, ROCK ALL NIGHT is (among other more frivolous things) one of the few 50s films I can think of about, well, transforming one's insecurity into something socially redemptive.  I can dig it!

Corman's more ambitious early (genre) efforts spread his resources to paucity, but ones like ROCK ALL NIGHT, though cheap and shot fast, still come off as "Good Movies". The Platters perform two songs in the first club (though sadly no "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes"). Mel Welles (aka Mr. Mushnik) plays a jive-talking beatnik huckster (!) and Bruno VeSota appears as an obnoxious fat slob. I can find no credit nor reference anywhere on the internet about who plays "Phillipe", the weenie maitre'd who has Miller ejected from the Platters venue, but I have a hunch (perhaps because all other performers are credited in the film or on IMDB or Letterboxd) it's Haze in a money-saving dual-role, popping his eyes out like Jerry Lewis and doing a ridonkulous French accent. I talked to Corman on the phone in 1998 for several minutes and in retrospect I wish I'd known then to ask him to resolve this mystery of cinema history!

3.5/5
Apparently Tarantino agreed to remake this for Showtime following RESERVOIR DOGS (while Rodriguez made the superb ROADRACERS), then backed out in order to shoot PULP FICTION. Tarantino's author photo on the back of last year's Cinema Speculation actually bears a striking resemblance to young Miller as Shorty...