He produced this one, but it's filled with his touch: 'CSA' is graced with all the subtlety and intelligence of a surly chimp squatting in a mud puddle. At some point, satire must be based on something like reality. So the South takes over and REQUIRES everyone in the country own slaves? Things are gonna get crowded for all them po' folk in Manhattan studios and one-bedrooms. This isn't satire; it's malicious propaganda by a lackluster filmmaker elevated to star status not because of his artistry or even popularity, but because his vision matches the stagnant 'progressive' worldview so beloved by corrupt, creatively arid Hollywood. Do yourself a favor and pass on this. We've been told that ANYTHING bashing white people is "brilliant" and "insightful". Buy into that crock, and you'll looove this charmless garbage.
Reviews
52 Reviews
Punishment Park
(1971)
Dreary relic of a dreary era
16 January 2014
I remember a contemporary review of this film from a major news magazine - Time, Newsweek, that level of profundity - juicily enthralled with this insipid cartoon, a psychobabble valentine to an endlessly self-aggrandizing generation. After seeing it a few years later at a student cinema, I realized one of the reasons I hated American pseudo-radicals is their utter contempt not only for "law and order", but for ordinary Americans, as well. ...For me. One visionary hippie burbles, "we don't have to call them pigs because they know what they are." That pretty-much sums up the world-view of all our trust fund revolutionaries in that thankfully ancient era. They grew up to be Wall Street traders, bankers and other affluent thieves who've reduced the American working class to near-poverty status. They won. The pigs are suffering.
Like some overheated reviewers here, the alternative press often has praised "PP" as a "chilling vision of the future". OK. It's 43 years later. Hippies have vanished as counterculture vanguard - not because they were hunted down in the desert, but because they outgrew their own retarded fables. So... Where are these killing fields? Where are the American gulags? This turgid agitprop is for true believers, the ones too tendentious to realize this musty dream failed decades ago. Power to the people. ...But only in Malibu and Great Neck, apparently.
Enjoy!
Like some overheated reviewers here, the alternative press often has praised "PP" as a "chilling vision of the future". OK. It's 43 years later. Hippies have vanished as counterculture vanguard - not because they were hunted down in the desert, but because they outgrew their own retarded fables. So... Where are these killing fields? Where are the American gulags? This turgid agitprop is for true believers, the ones too tendentious to realize this musty dream failed decades ago. Power to the people. ...But only in Malibu and Great Neck, apparently.
Enjoy!
Corky
(1972)
Lead foot. Rough ride.
13 May 2013
Hollywood really has it in for auto racers. Whenever they're portrayed on screen - by Kirk Douglas, Clark Gable, Jeff Bridges, anyone - they are God's own SOBs, selfish, brusque, users. 'Corky' takes the cake. The makers of this movie evidently don't know the difference between 'anti-hero' and 'bust-out a**hole'. 'Corky' is one piece of work.
But it's worth a gander for seeing Charlotte Rampling - a real favorite of mine - pushing a baby carriage around a low-rent Southwestern carnival. It's THE milieu that's dead last in any list of places Rampling would be least likely to show up. ...Something of a mind-bender, that scene.
But it's worth a gander for seeing Charlotte Rampling - a real favorite of mine - pushing a baby carriage around a low-rent Southwestern carnival. It's THE milieu that's dead last in any list of places Rampling would be least likely to show up. ...Something of a mind-bender, that scene.
The Fog
(2005)
'Fog' bottoms
19 January 2013
"The Avengers" with Uma Thurman a few years back is actually a reboot, so as the worst reboot made it leaves worst remake title to be filled by this utter dreck. Carpenter's 1980 original was economical, atmospheric and well-acted for the most part. The update evidently was made by gathering the cast beside a road and driving by with a camera hung out a car window until enough film was shot to destroy an hour and a half of viewers' time in a way almost criminally pointless. Miss Grace is awfully nice to look at but simply cannot act. The rest of the cast appear to be playing their characters as industrial soot - blank gray, irritatingly smudgy and immaterial to point of blowing away with a puff of wind. An actor named DeRay Davis was killed off and brought back to life simply because he's the only person on screen showing any vital signs. Early on, he hides in a freezer to escape (The Fog doesn't like frozen yogurt and Mexican TV dinners). And he lives! We're to believe that for hours he's a fishstick, thaws out awhile in a hospital bed and - boom! - it's comedy at the Apollo time. Beat that.
Quills
(2000)
Jean-Paul Marat, where yo guillotine?
10 August 2012
If you look at the cast names, as I did when the credits rolled, you may think you're in for a wonderful time. You're not. There is something about Western society in the past half-century or so: Our self-appointed social visionaries can't relinquish the silly idea that sex and more sex will release us from our backward hangups, usher in a new era of equality and peace, and maybe do the ironing, too. Despite all evidence to the contrary since the '60s, this conviction is advanced with energy and enthusiasm bordering on obsessive/compulsive disorder. The rest of us can only watch in bored disenchantment and growing impatience.
This movie really has nothing to say. It makes a few gestures about free will clashing with priggish authoritarianism. There's some gas-bagging about importance of ahhht and ahhhtists. Some women are stripped bare by a director who evidently feels he has something to say. ...And ...we watch in bored disenchantment and growing impatience. There's a scene about halfway in, set as theatrical production by asylum inmates under direction of the Marquis (Geoffrey Rush, in acting service above and beyond the call of duty). He's burdened with a thudding, anachronistic line about shocking his audience with... the truth or something. It would be fine burbled at some academia cocktail party; not so convincing a sentiment in 18th-century France. The scene is supposed to be deliriously funny and invigorating as the prudes have their nose rubbed in clumsily staged sex acts. It fails on both counts. This is the time to go out front for a cigarette, beer or mind-numbing narcotic, just to shake out the fake laughter banging in your head.
Where's Peter Brook when we really need him? I give it three stars for great cinematography and art direction. Minus-two for storyline philosophy that should've been junked with all those old Hot Tuna albums.
This movie really has nothing to say. It makes a few gestures about free will clashing with priggish authoritarianism. There's some gas-bagging about importance of ahhht and ahhhtists. Some women are stripped bare by a director who evidently feels he has something to say. ...And ...we watch in bored disenchantment and growing impatience. There's a scene about halfway in, set as theatrical production by asylum inmates under direction of the Marquis (Geoffrey Rush, in acting service above and beyond the call of duty). He's burdened with a thudding, anachronistic line about shocking his audience with... the truth or something. It would be fine burbled at some academia cocktail party; not so convincing a sentiment in 18th-century France. The scene is supposed to be deliriously funny and invigorating as the prudes have their nose rubbed in clumsily staged sex acts. It fails on both counts. This is the time to go out front for a cigarette, beer or mind-numbing narcotic, just to shake out the fake laughter banging in your head.
Where's Peter Brook when we really need him? I give it three stars for great cinematography and art direction. Minus-two for storyline philosophy that should've been junked with all those old Hot Tuna albums.
Road Kill
(2010)
Not as bad as some IMDb reviewers indicate
30 April 2012
Make no mistake, this is pretty run-of-the-mill horror - as scripted. Four young people on a road trip in Australia's starkly beautiful Outback have a very bad encounter with a very frightening truck that may or may not be possessed. Or maybe the driver is. Maybe the kids are? Or maybe they died in a crash and have gone to hell? What sets this one apart is good acting and tight direction. The quartet is flawed with banal shortcomings we all have - jealousy, disloyalty, arrogance. I can't believe there are so many reviews here dismissing this as terrible. There are worse horror films than this one. Try out one called "Buried Alive" with a bunch of young adults getting carved up at a Southwestern ranch. On second thought, DON'T try it out. It's the worst of the worst. Pour your contempt on that one.
Beach Ball
(1965)
Catch a wave and you're sittin' on top of the dumper
18 April 2012
I don't know what I'm more angry at - frittering away an hour of my life watching a chunk of this stinker or that it was released by Paramount Pictures. What were they thinking? Yeah... yeah. We're the oldest studio in Hollywood. Know what? Let's chuck all that and put out a retarded beach movie.
When you see Edd "Kookie" Byrnes on any credit crawl, you know you're deep in the Bay of Crap. He's the leader of a surf band - right! - and they must raise a grand to keep their instruments out of hock. That's it. That's the movie. And there's skydiving, race-car driving, surfing and bikini waxing. ...All at the pace of glacier retreat at the end of the last Ice Age. There are four very lovely young gals who are uptight, neurotic Sybils until some bongo thumping gets them to unwind and uncork the cocoa butter. I hung around until I saw them in some rather tame bikinis and then hung it up.
This should be a drinking game. Everyone can knock one back every time someone in the cast says "daddio". Then, relax wait for those DTs to kick in. Oh... and vomit your guts out.
When you see Edd "Kookie" Byrnes on any credit crawl, you know you're deep in the Bay of Crap. He's the leader of a surf band - right! - and they must raise a grand to keep their instruments out of hock. That's it. That's the movie. And there's skydiving, race-car driving, surfing and bikini waxing. ...All at the pace of glacier retreat at the end of the last Ice Age. There are four very lovely young gals who are uptight, neurotic Sybils until some bongo thumping gets them to unwind and uncork the cocoa butter. I hung around until I saw them in some rather tame bikinis and then hung it up.
This should be a drinking game. Everyone can knock one back every time someone in the cast says "daddio". Then, relax wait for those DTs to kick in. Oh... and vomit your guts out.
The Wild, Wild Planet
(1966)
Bad, bad dubbing
6 April 2012
Interestingly, the original title, "I criminali della galassia" translates "It-a so crummy gave-a me gassa". In the 1960s, school kids enjoyed twilight of the Saturday matinée at local movie theaters. Soon television technology - big screens and better color - would end this vestige of a gentler, more homespun America. But by that time, instead of wholesome singing cowboys and super heroes in saggy long underwear, we were treated to lightweight erotica and poorly staged violence of all cheapies foreign and domestic. Dime-store sword and sandal extravaganzas, schlock science fiction and bargain-basement spy adventure were favored genres. Somehow, all that sizzling excitement is sprinkled on the bubbling cinema pizza that is "Wild, Wild Planet". Let me add my two cents on this two-bit wonder with this proviso: I saw it in its element almost a half-century ago, so give me some slack. There are joltingly bad martial-arts battles in which tiger women in granny-pants underwear attack and fight to the death for no discernible reason. (Actually, it's not to the death - they just sort of... disappear... leaving cheesecloth negligees to float to the floor.) This is topped only by terrifying super-villains with mannequin limbs hideously attached to their black-vinyl overcoats - creating horrifying effect of four inefficiently operating arms! Heroes look like the head puppet from contemporary Saturday morning fave "Fireball X-L5"; they are impossibly square-jawed and blondie-blond. I wanted to beat them half to death myself, with four arms or even just a forearm. The Italian movie has a lot of familiar faces from Euro peplum films of the era, so any minute you expect Steve Reeves to bolt through a scene in his gladiator jock strap. Another element borrowed from those masterpieces is lurid color that seems to jump right through the screen and pound your eyeballs to full-spectrum jelly. An absolute must-see!
Next Day Air
(2009)
Any dumber and it would club itself to death
2 February 2012
I'm trying hard not to think all that stuff is right about Mayan doomsday later this year. Over the weekend, I saw a grating 15 minutes of this atrocity (that's all I could STAND) and was sure it's a sign End Times are upon us. "Next Day Air" is stupid. It's loud. It's pointlessly violent. It's an Egyptian soccer match of a movie. In one scene, a character cuts out someone's tongue - and that's the punchline! Hilarious! Someone must tell Yazmin Deliz that no one is sitting around missing Rosie Perez performances; foul-mouthed and screeching just isn't attractive. I'd like to know who gave this piece of crap a green light. Who? Who could hate us so much as to allow this to be made? It earned just over $10 million box office on its release - domestic and foreign - which probably was far under its budget. Many here have noted the movie is unfunny. That description doesn't suffice. "Next Day Air" is anti-funny; it explodes any wit or comedy in comes in contact with.
True Confessions
(1981)
Murder by method (acting)
10 January 2012
You'd think a movie with Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall at the height of their game would be excellent. Right? Uh-uh. This movie is so slow, I think some modern reptile bones petrified before final credits. The two men, both deeply method-style in acting, conjure Stanislavsky while the rest of us go to sleep. De Niro was pegged God of Acting by our eastern establishment press and he's always worn the crown uneasily. Some of his work is downright boring. This one isn't - quite. But he and Duvall are locked in battle to see who can take the longest pause in a snatch of dialogue. Please! A little more lively. Both men have actually improved with age, and nowadays, actually speak their lines clearly. Amazing!
...And what ARE we to believe?
12 July 2011
This oddball episode of a not-bad series spends its first half disproving existence of an Allied-Vatican-Nazi conspiracy to spririt war criminals and Nazi fiends out of Europe. Then it concludes by giving last word to the conspiracy theorists - who offer not one speck of actual evidence for their claims. Journalist Uki Goni is the only one of a trio of accusers to actually produce documents, but his exhibits don't prove what he says they prove. For "proof", all three men allege they saw documents, or were told documents existed - and were destroyed before they saw them. There's simply nothing there. One of the skeptics provides strongest doubt: With trials of war criminals like Adolf Eichmann (tried in Israel) and Klaus Barbie, why was an "Odessa" organization not mentioned, if one really existed? If any tried Nazis had connection to Allied intelligence, surely that would be brought up. But... weren't. It's egregious to include private detective Steve Rambam. This tendentious fanatic says Nazis were allowed into the U.S. because they were "white", and besides "what's a few million dead Jews between friends?" For such despicable nonsense, evidence is absolutely required. It's not there.
America Before Columbus
(2009 TV Movie)
How 'bout history before schlock?
7 February 2011
Marxism has codified the great crimes of Western civilization in constantly changing terms, to conform to relentlessly evolving cultural history. First, the general term was "colonialism", and when European colonies were no more, and Europe flourished, it changed to "neo-colonialism". That gradually puffed up to "imperialism", which can mean - anything, really. Today it's virtually derogatory terminology for anything American or Northern European.
"America Before Columbus" spends much of its vastly wasted time prattling something it calls "biological imperialism", which boils down to "European imperialists took the potato and gave nothing back". We evil honkies pollute genetically! In the very germ of plants! Is there no end to our iniquity? The propaganda is hysterically heavy-handed with super-bad stuff like Christianity constantly bashed through unsubtle editing and imagery. In one of many missteps, the program implies Europeans even cursed the new world with pigs, although it pictures the collared peccary, merely pig-like and native ONLY to the Western Hemisphere. And what about the claim that the Americas were filled with urban centers, and had higher population than Europe at the time? This claim is made on zero evidence. What? Were there census-takers in the 15th century? Native Americans lived mostly hunter-gatherer, neolithic lives of grinding hardship - walking for transportation, surviving vagaries of nature. Lifespan in those conditions is 30 years - tops. Yeah... it was one big communal paradise. Hogwash! History of the last 500 years on these two Western continents is nothing less than epic - tragic, triumphant, sad and ridiculous. It needs fair account and appraisal after decades getting festooned with this kind of silly, failed dogma.
"America Before Columbus" spends much of its vastly wasted time prattling something it calls "biological imperialism", which boils down to "European imperialists took the potato and gave nothing back". We evil honkies pollute genetically! In the very germ of plants! Is there no end to our iniquity? The propaganda is hysterically heavy-handed with super-bad stuff like Christianity constantly bashed through unsubtle editing and imagery. In one of many missteps, the program implies Europeans even cursed the new world with pigs, although it pictures the collared peccary, merely pig-like and native ONLY to the Western Hemisphere. And what about the claim that the Americas were filled with urban centers, and had higher population than Europe at the time? This claim is made on zero evidence. What? Were there census-takers in the 15th century? Native Americans lived mostly hunter-gatherer, neolithic lives of grinding hardship - walking for transportation, surviving vagaries of nature. Lifespan in those conditions is 30 years - tops. Yeah... it was one big communal paradise. Hogwash! History of the last 500 years on these two Western continents is nothing less than epic - tragic, triumphant, sad and ridiculous. It needs fair account and appraisal after decades getting festooned with this kind of silly, failed dogma.
Whose majesty?
26 January 2011
It's long been speculated that Edward was both Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite. What we have here is little more than what's been offered in the past - gossip, innuendo and speculation. This applies especially to FBI files that form so much "proof" in this weak case. It's not hard to believe much of this material was produced by lackey agents, relying on hearsay keyed to please the agency's director, noted Anglophobe Herbert Hoover.
Being a sympathizer of any kind is not the same as being a traitor and spy; this documentary wildly oversteps its bounds with implied allegation the ex-king and his wife were Quislings nesting in one resort after another while stabbing their countrymen in the back. The key link would be alleged correspondence between Wallis Simpson and Nazi foreign minister von Ribbentrop. Where is it? Where is any REAL evidence? So much of the show's assertions are framed as "many believe" and "there is speculation...". This is hogwash approach to proving any charge, standard method for all specious conspiracy theories. Many believe chupacabras leap onto goats by night to suck their blood! Do you? National Geographic channel should be ashamed of itself.
Being a sympathizer of any kind is not the same as being a traitor and spy; this documentary wildly oversteps its bounds with implied allegation the ex-king and his wife were Quislings nesting in one resort after another while stabbing their countrymen in the back. The key link would be alleged correspondence between Wallis Simpson and Nazi foreign minister von Ribbentrop. Where is it? Where is any REAL evidence? So much of the show's assertions are framed as "many believe" and "there is speculation...". This is hogwash approach to proving any charge, standard method for all specious conspiracy theories. Many believe chupacabras leap onto goats by night to suck their blood! Do you? National Geographic channel should be ashamed of itself.
The Day After Halloween
(1979)
Out of focus
26 January 2011
Some movies seem to have evolved into finished product that's quite different from original script. This is one of them. I'll bet at one time, as writer's brainchild, this was a comedy-drama about a young woman trying to find her own place in the world, beset with oppressive upbringing and surrounded by shark-swarm of modern urban reality. As that, there are some scenes that sizzle, like the heroine's confrontation with her mother. Sigrid Thornton has long been a favorite of mine - a gutsy, resourceful actress who always manages to rise above or enhance her material. In that scene of familial combat (there are none more savage in our lives ), this feels like a completely different movie. ...A better one.
I think sometime pre-production or even after filming began, "Halloween" was released to bang-up box office, and some brilliant producer or studio exec got a brainstorm to turn this into a splatter/horror thriller. The result is a schizoid mess, and the "Godfather" shock moment is practically unforgivable. Some fine actors, led by Thornton, are utterly wasted. A few nice bits of drama, and some drolly funny send-up of the self-obsessed fashion business, don't make this one worth the effort.
I think sometime pre-production or even after filming began, "Halloween" was released to bang-up box office, and some brilliant producer or studio exec got a brainstorm to turn this into a splatter/horror thriller. The result is a schizoid mess, and the "Godfather" shock moment is practically unforgivable. Some fine actors, led by Thornton, are utterly wasted. A few nice bits of drama, and some drolly funny send-up of the self-obsessed fashion business, don't make this one worth the effort.
The Green Hornet
(2011)
The Fat Hornet
13 January 2011
Superhero as jackass. Hollywood is so closed, so... "insider" these days its movies have a generic, dreary sameness. They're also substandard from cinema product we're accustomed to. There was a time Hollywood film had vitality and power - the age of film noir, the '20s when directors moved film away from three or four reels of melodrama to blockbuster. The '70s small-budget masterpieces...
For movies like this, the film industry should open its doors to ex-soldiers, former FBI agents - anyone who has real experience with danger and grace under pressure. It's impossible to become involved in throwaway "heroics" by a paunchy frat-house dope, produce of affluence and nepotism.
Other reviewers here have noted the "Hornet's" misogyny and sloth. What more can we expect from Hollywood today? It films what it knows.
For movies like this, the film industry should open its doors to ex-soldiers, former FBI agents - anyone who has real experience with danger and grace under pressure. It's impossible to become involved in throwaway "heroics" by a paunchy frat-house dope, produce of affluence and nepotism.
Other reviewers here have noted the "Hornet's" misogyny and sloth. What more can we expect from Hollywood today? It films what it knows.
Those dang WASPs!
4 December 2010
...Creepy, nosy, guilty of every fiendish crime... Except maybe making movies as ethnically self-aggrandizing as this one.
There's a straaange psychosis among non-WASPs that has these arch-honkies forever fascinated with them, forever pestering them, following them wherever they go to pry into their lives, peep and annoy. Of course, it's delusion fueled by ego and foiled by reality. So it's odd Foster was cast in the lead role - since no one in the cast besides Alexis Smith looks more WASP than her, and it's obsessively important to the filmmakers that Foster's Rynn be presented as The Other, the object of pushy, lustful folk down Whitebread Lane.
Martin Sheen is very funny as the horn-doggie pedophile sidling up to Foster. If the Trivia entry here is correct, technical advisers weren't hard to find in this regard: "Foster went on record as saying one of the producers on this film was 'nuts', explaining that he wanted her to show more skin and she refused. Foster had a terrible time with the sexual scene upstairs with Mario. Although her older sister did the shot, Foster was very upset that viewers would think this was her and fought and cried with the producers, to no avail." Since Foster couldn't have been older than 13 when this was filmed, THAT'S creepy.
One of the best things about the film is the amazing Alexis Smith. She had a Hollywood career with the greats of that long-ago era - Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Bogart, Grant. Then she was the toast of Broadway in the early '70s in "Follies". She adds class even to classless crap like this.
There's a straaange psychosis among non-WASPs that has these arch-honkies forever fascinated with them, forever pestering them, following them wherever they go to pry into their lives, peep and annoy. Of course, it's delusion fueled by ego and foiled by reality. So it's odd Foster was cast in the lead role - since no one in the cast besides Alexis Smith looks more WASP than her, and it's obsessively important to the filmmakers that Foster's Rynn be presented as The Other, the object of pushy, lustful folk down Whitebread Lane.
Martin Sheen is very funny as the horn-doggie pedophile sidling up to Foster. If the Trivia entry here is correct, technical advisers weren't hard to find in this regard: "Foster went on record as saying one of the producers on this film was 'nuts', explaining that he wanted her to show more skin and she refused. Foster had a terrible time with the sexual scene upstairs with Mario. Although her older sister did the shot, Foster was very upset that viewers would think this was her and fought and cried with the producers, to no avail." Since Foster couldn't have been older than 13 when this was filmed, THAT'S creepy.
One of the best things about the film is the amazing Alexis Smith. She had a Hollywood career with the greats of that long-ago era - Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Bogart, Grant. Then she was the toast of Broadway in the early '70s in "Follies". She adds class even to classless crap like this.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
(2010)
Tomorrow the world! Just... not today, Scott
17 November 2010
ComedyBlogger.com had the best line, when the first weekend box office rolled in and true dimensions of this flopparoo's losses were noted: "The world won..." Could this be the first sign that Hollywood's geek streak is over, that films starring nerds with zero charisma may have hit their wall? Gotta be.
Even though the graphic novel had the same bug-eye fetish as Jasmine Becket-Griffith, the hero was better looking that Cera. That tell you anything? And it's risible that die-hard fans of the comic book (let's call it like it IS, kids) have surrounded this bomb with conspiracy theory to explain its failure. It was overdownloaded! The studios wanted it to fail! Nobody went to see it! Riiiight...
Even though the graphic novel had the same bug-eye fetish as Jasmine Becket-Griffith, the hero was better looking that Cera. That tell you anything? And it's risible that die-hard fans of the comic book (let's call it like it IS, kids) have surrounded this bomb with conspiracy theory to explain its failure. It was overdownloaded! The studios wanted it to fail! Nobody went to see it! Riiiight...
Shallow Grave
(1994)
Naughty, snotty
13 November 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Here we have the classic suspense plot - friends falling out over ill-gotten gains - involving three comfortably affluent roommates in modern-day Scotland. Here's the problem: They're all so cruel, self-absorbed and superficial, it's impossible to give a damn what happens to them. In any thriller, regardless of how repellent characters' actions may be, there must be some empathy, some identification with their motives. The classic is "Double Indemnity"; no matter how evil the murderous couple become, how deceitful and how greedy, we understand them. That makes the suspense sizzle, since we almost hate ourselves for doing so. This movie goes cold real fast. And the scene in which two gunmen, two experienced and armed criminals, are dispatched in the attic is as believable as hollow-earth theories. It's just too... unpleasant... Pass.
Portal
(2009 Video)
It's what's for dinner! ...Raw!
28 September 2010
I downloaded this cheapie from the spotty On Demand lineup. One of those people who need a helping of crummy horror any given weekend night, I was fully prepared to laugh out loud. But... "Portal" bests its shoestring budget with engaging actors and an imaginative storyline - even if the script doesn't rise above mundane. And out of nowhere is Kevin Dobson, looking about two years older that he did in "Kojak"; I half-expected Telly Savalas to barge out of the cellar and yell "Crock-aaahhhh!" He must be shooting monkey glands and Mexican vitamins.
The CGI/FX budget must've been blown on a couple of corndogs and a Coke, so the movie depends on its cast, especially Conrad, Conwell, and in her few scenes, Barth. They put enough into "Portal" to make you care about the characters, and we share, a little, their growing dread and creepy deja vu. There's a snippet of scene in which a finger dipped in what must be blood draws a languid circle on a naked belly, and you wish this movie and the rest of modern horror had a LOT more erotic sensibility. These days, danger-sex is given up to pimple romance or mechanical soap-opera hypergasm. Where is Jesus Franco when we really need him?
The CGI/FX budget must've been blown on a couple of corndogs and a Coke, so the movie depends on its cast, especially Conrad, Conwell, and in her few scenes, Barth. They put enough into "Portal" to make you care about the characters, and we share, a little, their growing dread and creepy deja vu. There's a snippet of scene in which a finger dipped in what must be blood draws a languid circle on a naked belly, and you wish this movie and the rest of modern horror had a LOT more erotic sensibility. These days, danger-sex is given up to pimple romance or mechanical soap-opera hypergasm. Where is Jesus Franco when we really need him?
Marie Antoinette
(2006)
Still life
10 September 2010
What a beautiful woman Kirsten Dunst has become. In this movie, which is little more than a series of beautiful pictures digesting a world long swept away, she is in her element. In fact, she IS the centerpiece element.
But pretty pictures do not a memorable movie make. I've never seen cinema so lifeless, so utterly devoid of any kind of drama - and yet so watchable. Somehow, I stayed with it, even though superficial knowledge of history precludes all suspense as to how it will end. We follow the last French royal family languidly gliding through their lives of endless amusement and idle chatter, getting drunk and high at garden picnics in dreamy twilight, cavorting in bonnets, picking flowers and looking like they'd just stepped out of a Gainsborough painting.
Maybe that's Coppolla's intention: To show the utter vacuousness of the French court and European aristocracy in general. This is to what rule by God's imprimatur had devolved. The era of strong monarchs like Henry, Elizabeth and Philip of Spain was over. Europe's kingdoms had become... successful. Rich. They'd bumped off all competition. The Mongol threat was ancient fable, Islam was now second-rate, and the age of worldwide empire had begun. But in its prosperity, Europe had become complicated, its economic and political underpinnings wildly sophisticated and enmeshed. Power passed to ministers who specialized in these difficult affairs; royalty was pushed to the background, to estates and sloth.
Coppolla's handling of these superfluous dandies is revolutionary in one respect: She doesn't portray them as selfish monsters, or greedy imbeciles, as our tiresome, Lefty/progressive catechism would have them. They're sympathetically handled as clueless and near-infantile. The coming conflagration, and the Terror, they can neither foresee nor understand.
The cast is superb, with the exception of Jason Schwartzmann as Louis. Why does this colorless and apparently talentless air-burner have a career? (He is a Coppolla relative.) The inclusion of rock-music interludes is merely jarring and obvious, but in some selections, the sour decadence of '80s pop is a perfect fit. Coppolla's sense of stunning imagery must be genetic; throwaway scenes turn gripping, as when a rider gallops down a pathway, his dress boots tied backwards to his saddle.
Perversely, this "Marie" made me appreciate Norma Shearer's over-the-top version even more. As emotional and melodramatic as it is, it's historically accurate (there really was a Swedish diplomat lover, although whether he looked like Tyrone Power is unclear). It's a vibrant counterpoint to this beautiful, but detached "Marie".
But pretty pictures do not a memorable movie make. I've never seen cinema so lifeless, so utterly devoid of any kind of drama - and yet so watchable. Somehow, I stayed with it, even though superficial knowledge of history precludes all suspense as to how it will end. We follow the last French royal family languidly gliding through their lives of endless amusement and idle chatter, getting drunk and high at garden picnics in dreamy twilight, cavorting in bonnets, picking flowers and looking like they'd just stepped out of a Gainsborough painting.
Maybe that's Coppolla's intention: To show the utter vacuousness of the French court and European aristocracy in general. This is to what rule by God's imprimatur had devolved. The era of strong monarchs like Henry, Elizabeth and Philip of Spain was over. Europe's kingdoms had become... successful. Rich. They'd bumped off all competition. The Mongol threat was ancient fable, Islam was now second-rate, and the age of worldwide empire had begun. But in its prosperity, Europe had become complicated, its economic and political underpinnings wildly sophisticated and enmeshed. Power passed to ministers who specialized in these difficult affairs; royalty was pushed to the background, to estates and sloth.
Coppolla's handling of these superfluous dandies is revolutionary in one respect: She doesn't portray them as selfish monsters, or greedy imbeciles, as our tiresome, Lefty/progressive catechism would have them. They're sympathetically handled as clueless and near-infantile. The coming conflagration, and the Terror, they can neither foresee nor understand.
The cast is superb, with the exception of Jason Schwartzmann as Louis. Why does this colorless and apparently talentless air-burner have a career? (He is a Coppolla relative.) The inclusion of rock-music interludes is merely jarring and obvious, but in some selections, the sour decadence of '80s pop is a perfect fit. Coppolla's sense of stunning imagery must be genetic; throwaway scenes turn gripping, as when a rider gallops down a pathway, his dress boots tied backwards to his saddle.
Perversely, this "Marie" made me appreciate Norma Shearer's over-the-top version even more. As emotional and melodramatic as it is, it's historically accurate (there really was a Swedish diplomat lover, although whether he looked like Tyrone Power is unclear). It's a vibrant counterpoint to this beautiful, but detached "Marie".
Lolita
(1962)
The young and the too-cool
13 July 2010
If you're looking for emotional roller-coasters, for characters and stories that pull you into a world of their own, Stanley Kubrick is not your man. His movies are detached, distant - even chilly. I've never seen one that didn't leave me cold. Oh... he deserves considerable respect for visual artistry and dark comedy. "Lolita" is his blackest, and is his masterpiece. There's not a single character in it that's anything more than a cartoon, but it works here. It's almost startlingly funny, although his satire of early '60s American mores is tired in retrospect. James Mason is perfect as the chronically frustrated Humbert Humbert, forever anguishing in pedophilic dilemma. Peter Sellars almost steals the show as his nemesis; it's a role impossible to imagine being handled by anyone else.
The closest Kubrick ever came to emotional content was "The Shining" - also the closest he ever came to making a crowd-pleaser.
The closest Kubrick ever came to emotional content was "The Shining" - also the closest he ever came to making a crowd-pleaser.
That objectionable obscurity of desire
3 May 2010
The title "Wanted and Desired" indicates empathy toward Polanski: He's the naughty fugitive, despicable yet playfully, passionately attractive. Perhaps that was the original aim of director Zenovich - to provide a celluloid defense of the long-exiled director, an apologia and plea of forgiveness for what Hollywood "heavyweight" Harvey Weinstein calls the "so-called crime". But the documentary ends up quite ambiguous, indicating perhaps, that review of the case against Polanski forced Zenovich to change her mind.
And I think that shift was triggered when Zenovich encountered Polanski's victim... the woman now and especially the frightened 13-year-old she was three decades ago.
The film covers, extensively, her grand jury testimony, in which she testifies she resisted his advances and asked him to call her mother before he drugged, raped and sodomized her. In 1978, L.A. prosecutors allowed him to plead to lesser charges to spare her what likely would be a torturous cross-examination. Did you know that? His crime against a child should be the only issue here; she's the one who was penalized, severely, for the crimes of being young, fresh and physically beautiful.
In a Tatler interview, Polanski said, "If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!" As the "Wanted and Desired" title suggests, there is an assumption of envy toward the director. From his defenders and from his own words, there is current among them belief that his outraged accusers - all of us common folk - are jealous of his ability to seduce innocence, and have his way. Perhaps Polanski's victim was, as the European press pictured her in 1978, a young Lolita as enamored with him as he was of her body. Perhaps what's actually corrupt and hypocritical here is our own bourgeois morality, our belief that a middle-aged man raping an adolescent is... criminal, if not evil.
Today, there is concerted effort to downplay his crime, to rehabilitate a man who is unarguably a great director. Even his victim has pleaded his case, asking the courts, as he does, for time served as penalty. But what about other victims of future predators, perhaps encouraged that they can evade punishment by vacating the country a few decades?
Polanski's gifts for projecting his angels and demons onto humanity at large perhaps feed his artistry, but not every man is a pedophile predator pouncing 13-year-olds, or even wants to be. And perhaps there are a few judges and juries who don't want to f--- children. Remember, in 1978, he was a famous rich man in his 40s, she was a scared middle-school student barely in her teens. And this is crucial: She resisted his advances before he drugged, raped and sodomized her. If being appalled and repulsed proves I'm a provincial bumpkin, I am very, very much a provincial bumpkin.
A good portion of the film concerns what has become Polanski's major point of defense: That the court reneged on a deal to free him with about seven weeks behind bars, a term he'd already served. And it's true: A fame-struck L.A. judge did betray this negotiation. So... was Polanski treated unfairly by the L.A. Superior Court? Yes. Was his crime heinous and should he be punished for it? Yes. Polanski is a cinematic genius and disgusting child rapist - truly, a renaissance man.
And I think that shift was triggered when Zenovich encountered Polanski's victim... the woman now and especially the frightened 13-year-old she was three decades ago.
The film covers, extensively, her grand jury testimony, in which she testifies she resisted his advances and asked him to call her mother before he drugged, raped and sodomized her. In 1978, L.A. prosecutors allowed him to plead to lesser charges to spare her what likely would be a torturous cross-examination. Did you know that? His crime against a child should be the only issue here; she's the one who was penalized, severely, for the crimes of being young, fresh and physically beautiful.
In a Tatler interview, Polanski said, "If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But f—ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f— young girls. Juries want to f— young girls. Everyone wants to f— young girls!" As the "Wanted and Desired" title suggests, there is an assumption of envy toward the director. From his defenders and from his own words, there is current among them belief that his outraged accusers - all of us common folk - are jealous of his ability to seduce innocence, and have his way. Perhaps Polanski's victim was, as the European press pictured her in 1978, a young Lolita as enamored with him as he was of her body. Perhaps what's actually corrupt and hypocritical here is our own bourgeois morality, our belief that a middle-aged man raping an adolescent is... criminal, if not evil.
Today, there is concerted effort to downplay his crime, to rehabilitate a man who is unarguably a great director. Even his victim has pleaded his case, asking the courts, as he does, for time served as penalty. But what about other victims of future predators, perhaps encouraged that they can evade punishment by vacating the country a few decades?
Polanski's gifts for projecting his angels and demons onto humanity at large perhaps feed his artistry, but not every man is a pedophile predator pouncing 13-year-olds, or even wants to be. And perhaps there are a few judges and juries who don't want to f--- children. Remember, in 1978, he was a famous rich man in his 40s, she was a scared middle-school student barely in her teens. And this is crucial: She resisted his advances before he drugged, raped and sodomized her. If being appalled and repulsed proves I'm a provincial bumpkin, I am very, very much a provincial bumpkin.
A good portion of the film concerns what has become Polanski's major point of defense: That the court reneged on a deal to free him with about seven weeks behind bars, a term he'd already served. And it's true: A fame-struck L.A. judge did betray this negotiation. So... was Polanski treated unfairly by the L.A. Superior Court? Yes. Was his crime heinous and should he be punished for it? Yes. Polanski is a cinematic genius and disgusting child rapist - truly, a renaissance man.
Dirty
(2005)
To live and lie in L.A.
13 April 2010
The Ramparts Scandal of the 1990s entailed L.A. gang members infiltrating the police department, violently shaking down fellow gang-bangers, then, in perjured testimony after their stupidity busted wide open the whole mess, ruined the careers of honest cops in L.A.P.D.'s gang units. As final salt in the wound, taxpayers were soaked for millions in court settlements to the put-upon homies that got rough treatment from these hoods in blue.
The real villains of the piece were not-well-thought-through outreach projects to recruit more inner-city youth into the city's police force. This was yet another brainstorm of liberal social engineers far removed from the detritus wrought by their brilliance.
This movie, inspired by Ramparts, takes those facts and corkscrews them 180 degrees. The gangstas are the cops. All cops. The real villain is the SYSTEM, maaaaaaan.
This tired, hackneyed tripe represents the warped mindset of Hollywood's establishment today. It's a weak-tea Frankfurt School indictment of class, race, capital, injustice... (yaaaawn). I think one of the great injustices in this country today that so much of our media, so much of our political arena, is fabricated by these tapas-bar revolutionaries from the mean streets of Malibu, Brentwood and Beverly Hills. Decades ago, "Dirty" would be hailed as wonderfully subversive by reviewers feasting on the bounty of the very system they claim to despise. It's as subversive as "Dancing With the Stars". This is the only political viewpoint we get - in any movie or documentary produced in this country.
In that respect, this movie is similar to "Crash", that other self-celebration of hypocritical Lefty gibberish. In fact, the scene in which Gooding Jr. hassles a middle-class white couple was almost straight-lifted a few years later for "Crash", with the racial components reversed.
One reviewer here proposed "it's easy to behave morally in a sheltered, safe, middle-class environment." Well, it's easier not to become murderous animals in that kind of environment - that's for sure. And, evidently, it's a lot easier to develop a morality far removed from the real world by typing out scripts in tony neighborhoods with gates, guards, income levels in the stratosphere and worldviews in Never-Never Land.
The real villains of the piece were not-well-thought-through outreach projects to recruit more inner-city youth into the city's police force. This was yet another brainstorm of liberal social engineers far removed from the detritus wrought by their brilliance.
This movie, inspired by Ramparts, takes those facts and corkscrews them 180 degrees. The gangstas are the cops. All cops. The real villain is the SYSTEM, maaaaaaan.
This tired, hackneyed tripe represents the warped mindset of Hollywood's establishment today. It's a weak-tea Frankfurt School indictment of class, race, capital, injustice... (yaaaawn). I think one of the great injustices in this country today that so much of our media, so much of our political arena, is fabricated by these tapas-bar revolutionaries from the mean streets of Malibu, Brentwood and Beverly Hills. Decades ago, "Dirty" would be hailed as wonderfully subversive by reviewers feasting on the bounty of the very system they claim to despise. It's as subversive as "Dancing With the Stars". This is the only political viewpoint we get - in any movie or documentary produced in this country.
In that respect, this movie is similar to "Crash", that other self-celebration of hypocritical Lefty gibberish. In fact, the scene in which Gooding Jr. hassles a middle-class white couple was almost straight-lifted a few years later for "Crash", with the racial components reversed.
One reviewer here proposed "it's easy to behave morally in a sheltered, safe, middle-class environment." Well, it's easier not to become murderous animals in that kind of environment - that's for sure. And, evidently, it's a lot easier to develop a morality far removed from the real world by typing out scripts in tony neighborhoods with gates, guards, income levels in the stratosphere and worldviews in Never-Never Land.
The Ghost of Frankenstein
(1942)
Last of the Universal-International classics
11 February 2010
"Ghost of Frankenstein" ended the 11-year run of Universal's classic horror films, which began with "Dracula" and the original "Frankenstein". Bela Lugosi repeats his role as the lugubrious "handyman" Ygor from "Son of Frankenstein", giving the movie a sense of continuity. Boris Karloff had migrated to Broadway for a few years, and so was unavailable for the title role he'd created. The chores, and the patented Jack Pierce makeup, go to Lon Chaney Jr. He's not bad. A different monster than Karloff, he's more beefy, physically menacing, and, so, scarier in a way. It has hints of a true ghost story, with detective tale elements, although there is no mystery, of course, with a title like this. And what a cast! Interestingly, Atwill does NOT repeat his role as the maimed police official from "Son..." and he's at his malicious best in this one. For classic horror completists, a must. After this entry, the Universal monster series deteriorated to the "monster reunion" films in which they'd all show up to contribute mayhem - "Hey, Dracula! How ya doin', Wolfman!"
Rising Sun
(1993)
Dreck-o-san
3 February 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This movie has two things going for it: Wesley Snipes, before he went all vampire-zombie, and Sean Connery, who's always a welcome presence. Connery's cop character is evidently Japan's roving ambassador of ass-kissing adoration. Infuriatingly smug and omniscient, he's there not so much to investigate the central murder as tell us all, through Snipes' chronically fascinated everyman, just how wildly superior are Japanese culture and business practices compared to hick-town U.S.A. They will RULE THE WORLD in Toyotas, listening to Sony's, wearing expensive Kenzo cologne. Hmm.
Michael Crichton, who helped adapt the screenplay from his novel, was a doctor AND attorney. He made movies. He wrote bestseller after bestseller - not one of them above the quality of potboiler, but all moneymakers. He was a daunting overachiever. But psychic? Seer? Prophet of the socioeconomic future? Well... in that, he flopped. "Rising Sun" was released in 1993, the year Japan's economy plunged into a 10-year economic tank from which it still hasn't fully recovered. In that time, South Korea, China, even Taiwan have emerged as Asian powerhouses - and, in the region as well as globally, are stiff competition for the sons of heaven. So it goes.
But aside from all the 'future shock' nonsense, the murder mystery itself is pinned to vast, vast conspiracies run by deep-pockets Japanese corporations on the American west coast. Any plot inconsistencies or unbelievable coincidences are written off to the nefarious puppet-masters controlling everything but jackrabbit population. It's... turgid, routine stuff, and, ultimately, ridiculous and unbelievable. The car chases are lame, too.
Another creepy element: The main murder at issue takes place during a session of conference-table fornication; it's all recorded on video disk and during the course of the investigation, we're "treated" to it about 37 times. Can we say "voyeuristic"? A little! That's probably no accident, since Crichton wrote a low-budget independent about that very subject in the early '70s called "Extreme Close-Up". It was a... thing... with him... evidently. If it's not your own particular fetish, you'll feel your skin begin to crawl.
Michael Crichton, who helped adapt the screenplay from his novel, was a doctor AND attorney. He made movies. He wrote bestseller after bestseller - not one of them above the quality of potboiler, but all moneymakers. He was a daunting overachiever. But psychic? Seer? Prophet of the socioeconomic future? Well... in that, he flopped. "Rising Sun" was released in 1993, the year Japan's economy plunged into a 10-year economic tank from which it still hasn't fully recovered. In that time, South Korea, China, even Taiwan have emerged as Asian powerhouses - and, in the region as well as globally, are stiff competition for the sons of heaven. So it goes.
But aside from all the 'future shock' nonsense, the murder mystery itself is pinned to vast, vast conspiracies run by deep-pockets Japanese corporations on the American west coast. Any plot inconsistencies or unbelievable coincidences are written off to the nefarious puppet-masters controlling everything but jackrabbit population. It's... turgid, routine stuff, and, ultimately, ridiculous and unbelievable. The car chases are lame, too.
Another creepy element: The main murder at issue takes place during a session of conference-table fornication; it's all recorded on video disk and during the course of the investigation, we're "treated" to it about 37 times. Can we say "voyeuristic"? A little! That's probably no accident, since Crichton wrote a low-budget independent about that very subject in the early '70s called "Extreme Close-Up". It was a... thing... with him... evidently. If it's not your own particular fetish, you'll feel your skin begin to crawl.
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