Jeremy_Urquhart Reviews

Mit mir will niemand spielen (1976)

An unusual Herzog short.

[6/10 · 8 May 2024]

This is another unexpected Werner Herzog short - I've discovered two tonight (it's been too busy a day to watch something feature-length).

No One Will Play with Me is about a bunch of kids, and one of them feels ostracized. Things sort of turn around for him, but there's not really much of a story here, and it does end at a point, kind of anticlimactically.

Still, I appreciate Herzog doing something weird again here (the man is relentless in his pursuit of the cinematically unexpected), and there is some empathy that shines through in this look at bullying and the struggles of being a young kid at school. It might lay it on just a little thick, but it was kind of interesting and I admired the attempt enough to call this one decent overall.

Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)

Surprisingly hilarious.

[7/10 · 8 May 2024]

Precautions Against Fanatics might represent a young Werner Herzog making fun of the documentary format before being fully established as one of the all-time great documentary filmmakers? I know he'd had a few credits before this one, but it can't have been many. Plus, I tend to associate Herzog's 1960s with short films, and his 1970s with feature films (particularly the likes of Aguirre and Nosferatu).

So this, in a way, feels ahead of its time, or perhaps ahead of Herzog's time. It's so stupid and one-note, but it made me laugh a good deal of the time, being a mockumentary about a bunch of very unusual people who work at a horse track that somehow functions, despite their strange qualities. It's either a proto-documentary parody or a depiction of a very funny and surreal purgatory.

At the end of almost every mock interview, an old guy enters out of nowhere and antagonizes the interviewee, the cameraman, or both... it was sometimes hard to tell, but funny in any event. There's just this chaotic and stupid energy to the whole thing that was infectious, but even at just 11 minutes, I feel like it started to wear out its welcome a tad in the final moments.

For anyone who wants to see Werner Herzog trying to replicate Monty Python (this is the best descriptor I can come up with; the 11-minute short film that is Precautions Against Fanatics fried my brain), this is the film for you!

Like Nothing Happened (2003)

Snoozy slice of life drama.

[5/10 · 8 May 2024]

The title doesn't lie, because not much happens.

Like Nothing Happened sees Ryusuke Hamaguchi doing his slow-paced, narrative-light thing. While I've liked some of his recent feature films, I've also struggled with his earlier shorts, even though there are clear similarities.

Additionally, the shorts are - obviously - shorter, but I seem to notice and take issue with the slow pace more when things aren't as long. Seems paradoxical, but that's been my experience.

I have to cut Like Nothing Happened some slack for being made when Hamaguchi was so young, and for clearly having modest aspirations as a film. It follows a bunch of ordinary people around and sure, feels like it captures their lives to some extent.

But there's just so little here to grab onto for me. I struggled, but can't entirely hate it, because of its inherent nature and its length (there is apparently a 90-something minute version I was happy to avoid - the version I found was just 43 minutes).

From One Second to the Next (2013)

Simple and effective

[7/10 · 7 May 2024]

It's somewhat unusual that Werner Herzog was behind this, because it's not characteristic of most of his documentaries. Of course, it would feel strange if it did have that signature Herzog style, given it's a very no-nonsense PSA type of documentary about the dangers of texting while driving.

There's not a great deal that can be said about it beyond that, because once you've seen one effective PSA, you've pretty much seen them all (of course, this style can be done badly). Herzog understood the severity of the stories at hand and let them speak for themselves, and though this is straightforward and sad, that's what it needs to be... so it largely works.

Succession: Celebration (2018) Season 1, Episode 1

Imperfect but still great start.

[7 May 2024]

This is my first time rewatching Succession, so I'm looking forward to revisiting it with a knowledge of what to expect.

The common opinion about Succession is that it starts a bit weak, but I think this is silly. This opening episode is great, introducing all the key players with speed and efficiency. Logan and Kendall already feel fully-rounded, in particular, with Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong instantly understanding their characters.

Succession does of course get better beyond this point, but I think the first half of season 1 is much better than most people give it credit for. Ominous, funny, beautifully shot and scored... it all makes a very good first impression.

Atlas (1961)

The smallest of epics.

[5/10 · 6 May 2024]

There's an actor in this who sounds distractingly like a Phil Hartman Simpsons character, so that was funny.

Overall, Atlas isn't very good at all, but it is still an interesting watch, quality aside. Roger Corman was extra ambitious with this one, trying to pull off a classic epic with a clearly minuscule budget. Anyone interested in filmmaking and Corman's whole style will probably find enough here compelling, outside the story and technical qualities.

It's hard to enjoy it on the level you might for a normal sort of movie, but I can't help admiring the sheer ambition of it, even when it's painfully apparent how limited the film is (you notice most of all with the number of extras). It's novel, though - I've never seen a film from this era try to do the sorts of things Atlas tries to do with such limited resources.

Hurry Sundown (1967)

Messy, but not worthless.

[5/10 · 6 May 2024]

Hurry Sundown patiently sets a whole bunch of things up, with things unfolding slowly over a lengthy runtime that nears 2.5 hours. Unfortunately, I don't think it goes to the sorts of interesting places it needed to, and it left me wanting a lot more than it delivered. It's well-presented and the cast is impressive (I guess it was the latter that mostly drew me to watching it in the first place), but overall, it's a bit too slow and has an awkward length.

It sits in between being a grounded/straight-to-the-point drama and a sprawling epic, and committing one way or the other might've helped it be more impactful or memorable. Still, a good chunk is kind of watchable, if a little boring, and I think super patient viewers will get something out of it. For me, my interest waned as it went along.

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011)

A comprehensive documentary tribute.

[7/10 · 5 May 2024]

It's hilarious how sassy Jack Nicholson is in this. It's got some very impressive interviewees throughout too - though apparently, the only time Bruce Dern was free was while he was getting a haircut.

Corman's World is an overall comprehensive and well-made documentary. It hits most of the beats you'd expect, but does go above and beyond by a little when it comes to content and info packed into a 90-minute runtime. It's definitely more than decent, and succeeds in giving me a greater appreciation for Corman (and I've always appreciated him quite a lot).

The guy's a legend, and I believe turned 98 last month. Definitely rooting for him to make it to 100.

The Avengers (2012)

Flawed but important modern classic.

[9/10 · 5 May 2024]

I was feeling nostalgic for the original Avengers movie, and it just so happens to have come out almost exactly 12 years ago to the day. This first team-up is so quaint compared to what came next, even though it's still pretty massive, and I remember how big it felt at the time. They made an ensemble superhero movie work better than ever before, with I guess X-Men walking so The Avengers could run.

It doesn't hold up perfectly, and to some extent, I can understand a few of the reasons why it's become unfashionable to like this movie. It's big, broad, silly, and - unfortunately for some - snarky. The times have changed, and there was a style of filmmaking defined within this that many reject now, or have grown tired of. And I do get that, but I also appreciate what this was for the time.

It was a significant movie and it defined blockbuster filmmaking for the rest of the decade it was released in. The MCU was unstoppable from about 2012 to 2019, and then even in the early 2020s, the franchise has had some serious hits. I don't think anything will ever stop the world again quite like The Avengers did, though. And it might not be the best MCU movie, but it's probably the most significant and game-changing. For that, I do respect it, and as for the movie itself, I still enjoy the vast majority of it.

Silent Möbius (1991)

Competent... just

[6/10 · 4 May 2024]

Like any anime from the 1990s, Silent Möbius looks cool. It's a style I can't quite define, but I just dig the way Japanese animation from this period looks.

As far as I can tell, the story is just about several different women having to team together to take down some demon in the future? I don't know, it was all a bit muddled and occasionally seedy, but I kind of liked the way it look and felt.

It didn't waste much time either, given it was only about an hour long, and I've been pressed for time a bit lately. I also liked the way some of this was set during 2024... time flies and all that. This thing's just fine.

The Fast and the Furious (2001)

As a series newcomer watching for the first time in 2024, I found this surprisingly boring.

[4/10 · 3 May 2024]

For some of this movie's runtime, I found it kind of charming, but it got really tedious at a point. I hope Vin Diesel and Paul Walker get better as the series goes on - both gave kind of awful lead performances here.

It probably doesn't help that I find cars boring and street racing stupid. That should be enough to turn me away from a series like Fast and Furious, and it has for 20+ years... but I'm fascinated by the way the series as a whole started small and morphed into something else. It's a progression I want to experience, but starting off with this first movie (as one has to do)... it was rough!

The racing scenes are pretty boring, the performances are sometimes pretty bad, and the narrative is a dull kind of "undercover cop falls for the people he's supposed to take down" thing that's been done before and done better.

Sign me up for the more over-the-top entries that verge away from racing. I think I'll enjoy them more (I saw Fast Five years ago and found it better than this... the only other movie from the series I've seen in isolation is Tokyo Drift, and I remember finding that one more watchable too).

So, the original The Fast and the Furious... it's not for me, but I am keen to keep chipping away at this series, because it's been a pop culture blindspot for me for too long. The start of it all proved to be surprisingly lame and boring though, in my opinion.

Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989)

Messy, strange, and sort of works.

[6/10 · 3 May 2024]

Well, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Is definitely interesting, but it feels like Pedro Almodóvar still finding his voice to some extent. From what I can tell, his earlier films do feel a little more comedic, and then he hit his stride to a greater extent when he started leaning toward drama. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! Is kind of a comedy that revolves around a kidnapping, and to its credit, I think it works for more of its runtime than you might expect.

At a point, however, it starts to focus on the romance between the lead characters, and that felt like a bridge too far, even if the kidnapper is played by Antonio Banderas. I had a slightly bad taste in my mouth by the end of it all, but a good chunk of it was entertaining. Plus, it looked pretty amazing; no one makes Spain look as colorful as Almodóvar does.

Young Frankenstein (1974)

Quite funny and very impressively made.

[8/10 · 3 May 2024]

The first time I saw Young Frankenstein was a good few years before I'd seen any of the old Universal Pictures horror movies from the 1930s and '40s, and so I always felt like a rewatch was in order. Now that we're in the year where this turns 50 (and it came out the same year as the other Mel Brooks classic that is Blazing Saddles, which is just amazing to think about), it felt like the right time to go back to it.

You could technically call it a parody of old Frankenstein movies, but most of the jokes here don't really require any knowledge of that series. The benefit of being familiar with those movies comes with admiring the technical qualities of Young Frankenstein. To me, I think it's more homage than parody, because while it's a very silly and joke-filled movie, it does have a reverence for that style of horror film. Technically, Brooks and everyone else behind the camera really capture the look/feel/tone of those older Frankenstein movies. They just made a classic Frankenstein movie that feels extra joke-filled.

Also, I guess some of them were already pretty silly (at least some of the sequels post-Bride of Frankenstein), so it never quite needed the mockery the Western genre received with Blazing Saddles. Speaking of that movie, I don't find Young Frankenstein quite as funny, and I think I'd also rank it behind The Producers if we're talking about the best Mel Brooks movies... but it is likely his most technically accomplished movie. It's not his funniest, but it's his most impressive as far as the filmmaking goes, and I further appreciated Gene Wilder's gonzo central performance this time around much more than I had in the past.

She Gods of Shark Reef (1958)

Cormpletely boring.

[3/10 · 2 May 2024]

She Gods of Shark Reef is a lesser Roger Corman movie through and through, and it was a tough sit, in all honesty. I had some interest in it thanks to the title, and I've sort of enjoyed some movies that he directed around this time in his very long career, but She Gods of Shark Reef just wasn't it.

It's about two brothers who find a strange group of women - basically, the she gods - and then get wrapped up in their quest against the sharks in the reef or whatever.

It's the sort of film where very little effort seemed to be put into most of the making of the film, and that led to a dreary experience for the viewer. At least it's only about an hour long, and is tedious enough that you can drift in and out of it, never really losing anything of significance.

Even for a below-B movie, this one's not really acceptable.

Your Fingertips (2007)

Pun intended, but it's very touching.

[7/10 · 2 May 2024]

Supremely bittersweet, considering it only goes for about 15 minutes. I was impressed by how it captured a specific teenage feeling and just sat with it for the entirety of the short, not doing much else, but certainly not needing to either.

It reminded me a bit of those parts in Days of Heaven where Linda Manz's character hangs out with that other young girl, only there are a few more heavy implications of romantic feelings here. I think what I was trying to say is that Your Fingertips drifts and evokes feelings in a somewhat comparable way to parts from what might be Terrence Malick's greatest film, and that's got to count for something.

It just ends at a point, unfortunately, but I otherwise found Your Fingertips quite moving and nostalgic for a short film. Could only find it on the cursed Dailymotion site with its ads every four minutes, but it was still an engaging experience, and worth sitting through those frequently obstrusive ads for.

Sonny Boy & Dewdrop Girl (2013)

Simple and kind of sweet.

[6/10 · 2 May 2024]

Sometimes known as Sonny Boy & Dewdrop Girl and sometimes known as Rain in the Sunshine (which is always going to make me think of Prince's Play in the Sunshine), this short film is a relatively straightforward one about young love, and an emotional farewell that sees a young boy racing against time to tell his love what he thinks of her.

There's not much more to it than that, but the animation used throughout looks pretty good, and there is some emotion to be found throughout the whole thing. Not quite enough for it to hit hard or anything, but this is a serviceable kind of short film, and it's equally hard to feel either passion or derision towards it.

Frankenstein Unbound (1990)

There's good, there's bad, and there's ugly.

[5/10 · 2 May 2024]

Like a great many Roger Corman movies, Frankenstein Unbound isn't very good overall, but it is quite interesting. It has a beefier budget than the vast majority of his movies, only really looking cheap at the very end when things get snowy (it's such a massive downgrade, as if they shot this in chronological order and, at a point, ran out of money entirely).

But the first hour or so looks pretty good, and the cast is generally impressive too, doing about as good a job as they can with the material at hand. The only performance that didn't work for me was Nick Brimble as the monster, but the look of the creature was also pretty shoddy.

Funnily enough, I lost a good deal of interest when the monster showed up, with the blend of time travel and horror before then making this interesting enough to feel watchable. I think Corman's at his best when he's working with sci-fi, and Frankenstein Unbound is pretty decent for a good chunk of its runtime, though it does sadly fall apart/collapse in on itself at a point.

Noroi no wanpîsu (1992 TV Special)

Interesting enough

[6/10 · 1 May 2024]

Cursed One Piece (kind of hilarious title) is a horror short that asks the question, "How scary can a cursed dress be?" The answer ends up being "not very," but this is still a good bit of fun to watch, following the experiences of three different young girls who each encounter the titular terrifying piece of clothing.

The whole thing is more than a bit silly, and I'd be surprised if it succeeded in creeping anyone out, but I still kind of liked it in any event. But the animation style is charming and I think the structure is sound, jumping from one character to the next before any individual story runs the risk of getting boring. It feels worth devoting half an hour to, in the end.

Kick-Heart (2013)

huh

[6/10 · 1 May 2024]

A weird and concentrated burst of crazy. I think I kind of liked it, but I also have almost no idea what to make of it. Despite it being a short film, it feels like there's less to immediately grab onto compared to Masaaki Yuasa's feature-length films, or at least the ones I've seen. As such, Kick-Heart feels considerably more difficult to recommend, but I guess the fact that it's only 13 minutes means it won't waste much of your time if you end up baffled by it, like me. All that being said, I did find it interesting, and Kick-Heart was consistently stylish and cool-looking, but it kind of washed over me and left me more than a little lost by the end of it all.

Funeral in Berlin (1966)

It's alright

[6/10 · 1 May 2024]

A sequel to The Ipcress File that's not quite as good, I still mostly enjoyed Funeral in Berlin. It's got a relatively young Michael Caine (he always looked a little bit old, or maybe that's just a 1960s thing) doing spy espionage stuff, mostly revolving around smuggling a person out of East Berlin. It's all just okay- very watchable, but nothing great.

And that's all there really is to it. It's exactly what I thought it would be; nothing more and nothing less. It's all a bit slow and stiff at times, but provides decent entertainment value and is just fine for this kind of film made at this point in history.

It's hard to say anything insightful about a movie that's sort of just there, but at least it's not a bad one, at the end of the day.

Raining in the Mountain (1979)

Honestly, it's kind of bad.

[5/10 · 30 April 2024]

People seem afraid to give this one less than 3/5, so I'm going to go for it with a slightly lower 2.5/5. It's boring! It's beautifully shot, sure, but it's dull. I don't think it should be labeled as belonging to the action genre, because this is... I don't know, it's not even really a drama. There's a ceremony to pick a new abbot at a monastery, there's a scroll a few people want to get but it's hidden away, and there's political intrigue after the decision regarding the former event is made.

But the film slouches awkwardly from one thread to another, and much of Raining in the Mountain feels like numerous scenes stitched together, the only through line being that the movie is set in one fairy confined location. Okay, that's something. I'll concede. But I found very little rhyme, reason, or rhythm as to how those scenes were placed together. There was no flow, there were no interesting characters, there was little action in what I thought was a martial arts movie, and some of the music was so annoying (it drove me insane during the chasing/sneaking scenes, and there are many).

King Hu was on autopilot with this one, I think. Every other films of his I've seen is better, or has more to offer. I was enamoured with the first couple I saw, but digging out his deeper cuts has been diminishing returns to some extent... though this is the first one I found really disappointing. If you want something spiritual, atmospheric, and maybe thematically rich (if you want to dig deep or whatever), maybe there's something to be gained from approaching this with that frame of mind. And yes, it does look very good; I can't entirely criticise the visuals without being petty or unfair.

Actually, I would just say watch King Hu's similarly named Legend of the Mountain instead, which came out the same year, is longer, has even less action, but definitely has something to it that makes it compelling and easier to get lost in/hypnotised by.

In the Loop (2009)

Nasty and pretty funny.

[7/10 · 29 April 2024]

First watched this almost exactly 10 years ago, and expected to like it a little more on a rewatch, now feeling a little more knowledgeable about politics and being more familiar with some of the people behind this (namely Armando Iannucci and Jesse Armstrong... it doesn't reach the heights of Veep or Succession though).

It's a funny piece of political satire. It's got a decent number of laughs and the actors are all well-used. There isn't really one amazing scene or exchange of dialogue that really sticks in mind, and I don't know if it'll ever feel like a true classic to me, but it's good. It's very good. It's just not quite as great as I expected it to be.

Challengers (2024)

Very compelling

[8/10 · 29 April 2024]

Challengers is ambitious and goes to some strange places throughout, and most of its big swings pay off. It's about three people who are all involved with tennis, and the complex friendships/relationships between the trio. It takes place over an extended period of time and tells its story in a non-chronological way that's always surprisingly easy to follow. It looks fantastic, too, and the score - while sometimes a bit much - is memorable.

I love how cinematic tennis looks here. In a way, it reminded me of Tokyo Olympiad, which is an artistic and beautiful documentary film about the 1964 Olympic Games. I'm not usually crazy about watching sports, but that documentary and Challengers both find ways to make sports look unique and far more dramatic than any ordinary broadcast. Like the score, the visuals of Challengers sometimes feel like a bit much (some of the slow motion is slooooooow), but it gives the film a unique voice, which is appreciated.

Speaking of slow, that's my main complaint - I wish Challengers was a little shorter, because there were some patience-testing scenes. The slow-burn feel doesn't work as well for this story as it's worked for some other Luca Guadagnino films in the past, but many sequences here soar nonetheless. It's visually inventive and the acting from the three leads is top-notch. That final act went on a bit long for me, but this is otherwise an early highlight of the year so far.

Robot Dreams (2023)

Excellent

[9/10 · 29 April 2024]

It took me an embarrassing number of dream sequences in this movie for me to realise "oh that's why they called it Robot Dreams."

It's a simple movie narratively, to the point where saying anything about it feels like saying too much. What can be said is that it's a wonderful demonstration of pure visual storytelling (with the help of a great soundtrack). There's no spoken dialogue, but everything is conveyed clearly, expertly, and emotionally. Similar to the narrative, the animation style is quite simple, but this also works very well.

It's a movie that is probably appropriate for most ages, but I appreciate its willingness to be surprisingly realistic. The world depicted in the film contains joy, cruelty, and heartbreak. The ups and downs of life within this world - populated by animals and robots and no one who actually speaks any language - feels true to the real world. That kind of surprised me, in a good way.

Robot Dreams takes the sort of premise you'd expect a short film to tackle and stretches it out to a feature length runtime, and is highly successful at doing so. There were a couple of little detours in the narrative here and there that I think we could've done without, but much of the film is charming, moving, and easy to get swept up in. It's pretty great overall.

The Black Tulip (1964)

Not a bad time.

[6/10 · 28 April 2024]

I've been on a bit of an Alain Delon spree as of late, and I saw The Black Tulip get mentioned quite a bit alongside 1975's Zorro, which I really enjoyed. It's another movie where Delon gets to take part in some sword fights while being a dashing hero, and though it's not as entertaining or as action-packed as Zorro, it was still pretty decent overall.

The main trump card The Black Tulip has is that it features Delon playing two characters: brothers who swap identities after one of them gets a scar on his face. Alain Delon has pretty good chemistry with himself, even if it would've made more sense had they been twins, because they do look basically identical (even the scar and different hairstyles do little to distinguish them).

It's all straightforward stuff, with villains being thwarted and an underdog hero becoming a revolutionary figure. It's slow-going at some points and the action scenes don't quite have the spark needed to make them really stand out... though none of it's bad exactly. The Black Tulip looks good enough and Delon's fun in the two lead roles. It doesn't really feel like an essential watch or any kind of classic, but it's good enough.