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Blood Feast (1963)
Amateuristic grind house schlock
Blood Feast apparently derives its notoriety from basically two facts: 1. it has gore; 2. it is at least recognized as the first "splatter" movie, in that it showed visceral gore. Both are indeed facts in that they are true. But what else?
Is Blood Feast a good movie? Not really. The 1960's had already seen the in-your-face horror of Hitchcock's Psycho, but where that movie plays with the audience emotions in an intelligent way and is clearly a product of talented film making; Blood Feast is a prime example of cheap, exploitative and amateurish grind house film making. Maybe that is a merit in itself.
The gore serves as the only major attention drawer in a film with abysmal acting, camera use, sound and script. Only watch this if you're a fan of "so bad, it's good". And even then Blood Feast disappoints.
JFK (1991)
Fascinating thriller appeals to our conspiracy hunger...
Stone's interpretation of the facts surrounding the JFK-case may not be 100% accurate...he surely delivers in creating an awe-inspiring thriller full of famous actors delivering some of the most wonderful performances of a group of star-actors in just one film...take The GodFather for example...
In this movie we get Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Donald Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Michael Rooker, Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek all delivering a memorable performance....to my opinion though the best performance is given by Joe Pesci as the neurotic highly edgy, and bordering on the edge of the insane David Ferrie (with indeed incredible wig!)....this is Pesci acting as he never did before...especially the 'interrogation'-scene in the hotel room...
JFK is Oliver Stone's view of the facts surrounding the Assassination...I read one of the two books it was based on, the Jim Garrison book about the assassination and the film follows the book quite well...actually, the title of the movie should have been: 'Jim Garrison: how I think Kennedy was killed'...
The film talks about one of the biggest mysteries in American history and is therefore bound to be the subject of speculation...some say, Stone doesn't report the facts or better yet, his movie is almost complete fiction!
What people are forgetting is that this is not Stone's vision but Garrison's vision MADE INTO A MOVIE by Stone...and as Garrison was one of the people who did the most thorough investigation into this whole case I think that the representation of the facts herein are pretty close to the truth, or at least from Jim Garrison's and Oliver Stone's point of view!
Now let's see who's going to make the first movie portraying the "magic-bullet-theory"!
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
No deeper than the kiddie pool...
"Pump up the Volume" is a very good feel-good movie and an attempt of hopping on the 'Breakfast Club' and 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High'-bandwagon... Slater performs well as the anarchistic 'Happy Harry Hard-On', the anonymous Pirate Radio DJ who invokes rebellion amongst the local high school youth and gets them to find their own voice in a world where they seemingly can't trust adults anymore... Although the characters have little depth (except maybe Slater) and the movie's plot isn't that difficult Slater's performance makes you want to go out and change the world yourself...it certainly provoked some feelings in me about my own angst.....but it falls a couple of clicks short of being an in-depth movie about teenage angst...it brisks the surface (and delivers very well) but never goes deeper than the kiddie pool...
And I love the song 'Wave of Mutilation' by the Pixies!
In & Out (1997)
Hilarious depiction of prejudice against homosexuals
In & Out starring Kevin Kline, Tom Selleck and the town of Greenleaf, Indiana is a movie about homosexuality.........and the way we think about it(at least in an exaggerated kind of way)....
Kline is excellent as the teacher who has a hard time coming out and being truthfull to his soon-to-be wife Cusack. Selleck gives a good performance as the TV-reporter who tries to make Kline come out about his homosexuality, being gay himself knowing that denial isn't the right answer.... What's so funny about the movie is some of the prejudices the people from Greenleaf cherish.....apparently you're gay if you own a Barbara Streisand collection (and no! She was not too old to do Yentl!) and you're apparently also gay if you ride a bicylce!
The movie is a wonderful example of taking on prejudice and doing it in an extremely funny way....hilarious! The end where Kline is finally true to himself and afterwards rewarded by the town and his students is predictable but nevertheless compliments a good movie...
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
Nice movie only flawed by performance of main star
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is a wonderful fairytale of heroism, knights and a hilariously sarcastic evil sherrif...
Indeed, the lack of an English accent doesn't afflict Costner in his role too much but his performance is lacked by a presence of far too much cliche's to be truly outstanding... The show is stolen, as we say, by two other performers: Morgan Freeman as the mighty Moorish warrior Azeem, who accomplishes to thaw the ice very quickly between him and the catholic englishmen....
But the better part of the cake is taken by Alan Rickman who gives a truly outstanding performance as the hilariously sarcastic sherrif...he truly gives the role of the Nottingham noble an extra glance which can not be said of Costner....
Other than that Robin Hood is an exciting, tense, magical fairytale, wonderfully photographed, with the right dashes of boyish romance and chivalry just as we would suspect of an american feel-good movie!
De lift (1983)
Camp Dutch Horror makes for barrel of (unintended) laughs
De Lift was made by Dutch wonder director Maas who later made such hilarious films as "Flodder" and "Amsterdamned".
Actually 'De Lift'(The Elevator) was his first feature film. It starred two dutch stars of the silver screen including Huub Stapel and Willeke van Ammelrooy (who we also saw as the evil mother in "Ciske de Rat").
Where 'De Lift' succeeds in my opinion is in it's (probably) unintended campiness....check out the scene where the blind man falls in the shaft and the janitor asks the cleaning-lady: "Did you say something, Connie?" -"I didn't say anything" -"Oh, I thought you said something".. It might sound pretty ridiculous but the way it is stated in Dutch (luckily I can understand Dutch) makes for a very funny, hilariously pronounced scene. Moreover the overall feel of the movie is that of low-budget camp horror...the plot isn't that difficult...the bad guy isn't that hard to spot....what makes this film work is the overall feel of claustrophobia and eeriness surrounding the elevator...and the ridiculous acting of some of the stars perhaps...
Mind you that this all is better understandable if you are equipped with certain knowledge of the Dutch language!
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Brilliant piece of horror cinema
Night of the Living Dead...what can we say about?
It paved the way for entire tidal-wave of spawned sequels and other elated films and practically opened up the zombie-movie-era.
Although rebutted as horror,low-budget trash, the movie is actually a masterpiece of low-budget cinema... Nowadays acclaimed cult-director George A. Romero directed this masterpiece with only $114.000 available to him and made it into a black & white movie in stead of the upcoming color movies available with the new color TV...
The story about a band of people being trapped in a farmhouse fencing off a horde of bloodthirsty zombies is in itself simple enough. Where the movie stands out is in it's dark atmosphere and mood set by the use of black and white footage and eerie music Romero got from an audio library! The element of the small group of people against what it seems the forces of nature (actually a UFO radiation accident!) has the viewer enthusiastically rally on the side of the group. Also, the interaction between the people themselves (from the start dividing them into 2 camps) is in itself a nice portrait of human society.
Some of the stars of the movie (including Mr. Cooper) were investors providing Romero with his budget...this also donates to the overall feel of the movie...
Night of the Living Dead is a true classic in its genre...watch it with lights out and the sound up....!!!