Change Your Image
TreatMorrison
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
The Houses October Built (2014)
Waiting, Waiting For It To Get Good
The trouble with nearly all movies in the "Found Footage" genre is I have trouble getting scared at a movie when I'm so busy trying to see what's going on and I can't stop wondering "Okay, now who has the camera going now?" Then there comes a point where invariably I think "So why aren't they helping their friend(s) stay alive instead of filming?" or "Oh, the killers have the camera, now. Then how are they able to film screaming people in coffins after they've been buried alive? "
"Houses Built in October" has its moments, but you have to wait a long time for them to happen. Meanwhile we have to endure six young yuppies whose trite conversations are endless. Guess this was to convey how they were just ordinary folks, shucks, just like us. I don't hang out with dull people, myself, so I suppose the director and writer thought some of us needed the exposure. They were wrong there, too.
Just like "Blair Witch Project" this one gets creepy in the last 20 minutes. Then what happens to these not-very-bright people is so ugly you sort of feel sorry that they're being killed because it seems to be happening just because they're boring. Or stupid. Anyway, some of the haunted houses are interesting, but the film makers couldn't even make the gratuitous titty bar scene fun. It's just there.
La Vénus à la fourrure (2013)
Great Play Evaporates On Screen
In San Francisco I got to see "Venus in Fur" about two months before the film came out. The play blew us all away and we were sorry it was the last night it ran at A.C.T. because we'd have gone again. David Ives managed to update and serve the original material (an obsessive and vital Victorian novel that gave a name to sadomasochism) while making us laugh and then surprising us with a final, fatal twist.
I really looked forward to the movie. After all, it was Polanski! I wish I could say something good about it, but I couldn't remember it the next day. Even the performances evaporated. I do remember waiting for them to heat up and get good, and I remember about 30 minutes into the movie realizing this was as good as they were going to get. The sexy power play on stage was like bad sex on the screen; it just laid there, too "kewel" to rise to the occasion.
Nine (2009)
Every Woman Is Really A Pole Dancer
It takes a special kind of gift to assemble a cast of (mostly) highly entertaining actors, including Daniel Day Lewis and Penelope Cruz, and still make a mess as big as this one. And it's not even cheap sexy fun, though the message appears to be that all women are pole dancin' sluts at heart. Who knew? "Nine" was 2009's "Burlesque." It belongs in the mausoleum where lie such films as "Annie," "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," "Xanadu," "Chorus Line -- The Movie," and "The Wiz." The less said about "Nine" the better. We can, however, say how it retained the essence of the original Broadway show (but not the Fellini movie), and then we can all just pretend it never happened.
Dementia (1955)
David LYNCH -- BUSTED
"Dementia"/a.k.a. "Daughter of Horror" is creepy fun. Nothing like you'd expect. It's surreal, like that part of "Glen or Glenda" where a room full of people mock poor Glen and then come at him with their fingers wiggling, only here it's scary instead of funny. The movie has no dialog, and if it did we'd probably die laughing. Marni ("King and I" "My Fair Lady") Nixon does the soprano obbligato throughout. There's an Orson Welles character in it, too. And a sofa with some laughing, half-dressed, blond broad out in a cemetery. Honest, I am not making this up.
David Lynch has been borrowing from this one for years and none of us knew.