What Films Have You Seen Recently?

[Demoncrat]

White Island (2016, Ben Turner)
Generic crims abroad piece. A hobbit is involved as is Billy Zane somehow .... pass.

The Neighbor (Aaron Harvey)
William Fichtner stars as the titular protagonist. His ordered life is disrupted by the arrival of a younger couple moving in next door. A bit of a non starter this tbh, shame as WF is always worth a look.

Please Stand By (Ben Lewin)
Dakota Fanning doesn't go full 'tard in this 'charming' tale of an autistic woman who sets out on her own 'trek' to enter a competition much to her siblings consternation. Hmmm.

Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam)
Part Kafka, part Orwell this film gets more relevant by the day. Sam Lowry hates his life retreating into fantasy any chance he gets until a chance encounter with a 'subversive' ublocks his potential. Maligned at the time by idiots, this is an assured piece of work. Am digging out Munchausen!!

[keirarts]

Wax mask

A wax museum opens in Rome. Its main displays include depictions of murder and torture. As a bet a wealthy young socialite spends the night in the waxworks and turns up dead. Pretty soon other people begin disappearing and all evidence seems to point back to the mysterious new Waxworks with realistic models.
It's premise and a lot of its execution should be familiar to anyone who has seen mystery at the wax museum and house of wax. Psychotic lunatic turns people into wax statues. Its been done before and in fairness its been done better. The film suffers from a flat, lifeless English dub. Some poor pacing and occasionally flat direction. However in spite of its many flaws its still worth seeing. It was originally intended as a vehicle for an ailing Lucio Fulci, and produced by Dario Argento. Sergio Stivaletti, a special effects guy stepped in last minute and shot the film when Fulci sadly passed away. Where it succeeds is in the incredibly bloody effects sequences that punctuate the action and a final act that goes completely nuts. A failure perhaps but a damned interesting one.

[keirarts]

How to kill a judge.

Franco Nero plays Giacomo Solaris, a film-maker whose latest picture is attracting heat for depicting a Sicilian judge as being corrupt. Being a little too close to an actual public official for comfort the film is ordered to be seized and Solaris calls for the Judge to prosecute as he believes he can substantiate the claims made in the film. Then, just as in the climax to his film, the judge is found shot dead and ridden with guilt and curiosity Solaris decides to stay in town and investigate the judges death. The death rattles local politicians, mafia and press and threatens to uncover a network of corruption. However Solaris begins to suspect something else is going on.
Director Damiano Damiani was somewhat insistent that his political western A bullet for the general was not a spaghetti western in spite of it featuring many of the trappings of the genre. Here I would not be surprised if he claimed this film was not a poliziotteschi (it also has the trappings of a giallo) in spite of it fitting that genre. As one would expect of Damiani the film is fiercely political, raging against public corruption and a seeming lack of justice for the common man. His lead character Solaris is resolutely moral to the point of inflexibility. Something that plays into the films downbeat and cynical ending. Even when it benefits his cause, Solaris places the truth first. It's been compared to Z and I can see why though the similarities are somewhat superficial. However the film is a genuine classic of the genre with a well written script, great characters and an involving plotline. Highly recommended.

[keirarts]

Last house on the beach

A gang of bank robbers need to lie low after their getaway car breaks down. They pick a remote villa that's hosting a nun and a group of teenage girls rehearsing for a Shakespeare play. The trio take the girls hostage and things get unpleasant quickly when the thugs decide to have some fun with the girls.
It goes without saying that the film owes something of a debt to last house on the left. It goes for the same levels of ugly violence as Cravens film and in some cases manages to outdo things. from a technical standpoint its more accomplished than it's predecessor, yet for all this it never manages to quite outdo Cravens film. One of the main strengths of Last house on the left is its rough and ready style. It feels like something a bunch of crazy people went into the woods to shoot. The weird tonal inconsistencies between the dreadful cop scenes and its awful sense of humour and the bleak, nihilistic violence directed towards the two young victims. Its a film where its flaws are working for it. There is a real sense that it could go anywhere because there is no regard for the feelings or sensibilities of its audience to the point that it feels totally out of control. It's weird lack of style making these scenes feel almost like a documentary. Last house on the beach however feels very much like a deliberate exercise in bad taste. Its well paced, acted and shot and edited by people who know what they're doing and weirdly by it being a better film it somehow ends up being worse. It's still worth checking out, don't get me wrong. Its got some interesting ideas behind it. Especially with the casting of Ray Lovelock who is doing some interesting work here. His two accomplices are both clearly sleazy scumbags. However Lovelock is a good looking guy and plays things quietly restrained making him initially seem like the voice of reason. Gradually it becomes clear he's as sociopathic as his two friends and his look of utter disbelief when one of the girls he thinks he has wrapped around his finger shoots him is palpable. He literally cannot accept that its happened.

[Demoncrat]

LHOTB is some film. Have shown it to people who have laughed all the way through it. Takes all sorts. I laughed throughout The Accused .... ahem.

[Demoncrat]

The Park Is Mine (1985, Steven Hilliard Stern)

A timely reminder on how Hollywood treats serious issues ... and/or white folks doing the terrorism shuffle. In NY. How times change eh? Sombre and crazed at the same time, this is also an entertaining thriller of sorts.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Spurred on by the top 10 Tuesday to pick of the week, I've been visiting a few films from the Hitchcock: Masterpiece Collection in the past few days:

Having made a couple of 'innocent man on the run' films in Britain (The Lodger and The 39 Steps), Hitchcock used many of the same tropes in SABOTEUR, his first film with an American cast. This was released in 1942 and has the Second World War as a backdrop, with a Nazi spy destroying an American aircraft factory and the wrong man (Robert Cummings) pinned for the crime. As with later films, most notably North by Northwest, this involves the protagonist teaming up with a woman (Priscilla Lane) and going on a cross-country adventure to clear his name. The chemistry may not be as good as in North by Northwest, but Cummings and Lane are very good together and the third act in New York City, involving a scene of the Statue of Liberty, something which could easily be seen as a precursor for the North by Northwest use of Mount Rushmore, is brilliantly done and very exciting.

SHADOW OF A DOUBT was apparently Hitchcock's favourite of his own films, it is easy to see why. Joseph Cotten is marvellous in the antagonist role, a serial killer who is charismatic but sinister, but the real star is Theresa Wright, playing 'Young Charlie', his devoted niece who begins to suspect, then realise, her beloved uncle is the 'Merry Widow Murderer', the subject of a nationwide manhunt. As with Saboteur, it's a film I hadn't seen since 2012, but so much of it felt fresh and interesting, and I love the interplay between the father and his friend, two men planning how they would carry out 'the perfect murder' on the other person in the conversation. It's that kind of black humour which runs through many of Hitchcock's films and makes them (in a warped way) so much fun.

Missing a couple of films in the collection, I then went for THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, a film I had forgotten was so funny, with lines which wouldn't be out of place in a modern day sitcom or slapstick/French farce movie. It's very much in a typical film for Hitchcock, more akin to something like Arsenic and Old Lace, or other such screwball comedies than his psychological thrillers. Shirley McClane is adorable, the setting looks gorgeous in HD and it's a very watchable and enjoyable movie.

Moving further on in Hitchcock's career, I then went for TORN CURTAIN, a Cold War thriller with Paul Newman playing an American scientist who takes a defection to East Germany in order to (mentally) steal their missile technology. Acquiring the information is one thing, getting out and back to the West is another. So many of Hitchcock's films have male leads and succeed because they have great chemistry with a strong female and, in this, Paul Newman and Julie Andrews (two years removed from Mary Poppins) make an excellent 'couple on the run', similar to those from (to only name three) The 39 Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and North by Northwest. It's a very tense and superbly executed film and one I should really watch more often than every six years!

[keirarts]

Originally Posted by Demoncrat

LHOTB is some film. Have shown it to people who have laughed all the way through it. Takes all sorts. I laughed throughout The Accused .... ahem.

Given it's a film where a man continually aggravates his septic leg with his inability to restrain himself from commiting sexual assault there is some definite uninrended humour to the film.


Fixed

[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by keirarts

Given it's a film where a man continually aggregates his septic leg with his inability to restrain himself from commiting special assault there is some definite uninrended humour to the film.

As there is to this post.

[Nosferatu@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by keirarts

Given it's a film where a man continually aggregates his septic leg with his inability to restrain himself from commiting special assault there is some definite uninrended humour to the film.

Have you drunk more than the recommended quantity of communion wine, kierarts?