Recommend a movie

[Vultural]

I suppose I could add a few holiday films . . .

[Vultural]

The Blue Carbuncle - 1984 - 8/10

“It’s a bonny thing,”  said he.  “Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime.  Every good stone is.  They are the devil’s pet baits.  In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed ... ”
Holiday chestnut from Arthur Conan Doyle.  Sinister jewel is stolen, promptly found and identified by Sherlock Holmes.
That is early in the plot, however, as Holmes and Watson proceed to backtrack the trail of the stone, unearthing the truth behind the theft.
The Victorian Christmas remains constant throughout.  Bracing cold, wandering carolers, the goose.
Wonderful production values and a sense of humour fill the show.
Jeremy Brett, in this, the initial series, brims with intensity as Holmes.

[Vultural]

Black Christmas - 1974 - 5/10

A decade before director Bob Clark struck holiday gold with Christmas Story ( “... You’ll shoot your eye out ...” ), he helmed this Yuletide slasher.
Olivia Hussey and Margot Kidder star in sorority house, receiving chronic obscene phone calls.
Christmas Eve, the house is invaded, and one by one ... yes, you can guess the predictable plot.
The genre had not hardened yet, so the girls I pointed out did not necessarily die, nor was the “order of victims” followed.
Very slow going proceedings, especially by todays tempo, and gore mavens will lament a lack of blood.
Keir Dullea and John Saxon male roles.

[Vultural]

Susan Slept Here - 1954 - 6/10

Film set during Christmas, but not necessarily a holiday story.
Vice cops drop off 17 year old juvenile delinquent (Debbie Reynolds) to 35 year old Hollywood writer (Dick Powell - who was 50 when this came out), and leave her in his care during Christmas.
Creepy premise for romantic comedy fluff.
I am a big fan of Mr Powell, though, and guiltily enjoyed this one.
Lush, over saturated Technicolor hues, and the overall design was packed with reds and greens, white trees, ornaments, presents in foil.
Great dream sequence, as well, with Reynolds doing a trapeze/pole dance thing inside a giant bird cage, while Powell (in sailor’s uniform), tempted by Anne Frances as ensnaring spider femme.
Powell’s last movie role.

[Vultural]

Snow Queen - 2002 - 6/10

Nice Winter movie with no holiday overtones.
Bridget Fonda plays the icy Snow Queen to perfection.
The narrative involves a young girl pursuing her boyfriend who has been "taken" by the Snow Queen.
At three hours, the movie is too long, and visits to "Spring," "Summer," and "Autumn" are little more than childish comic relief.
Worth watching for Fonda and her brittle performance, but this would be better chiseled to two hours or less.
Fonda’s last performance to date.

[Vultural]

Christmas Holiday - 1944 - 6/10

One of the most misleading Christmas titles ever.
After young lieutenant receives his commission, he shows comrades an engagement ring, then receives the Dear John telegram.
He opts to fly to San Francisco, nonetheless, have it out with the woman who dumped him and married another.
Narrative shifts almost immediately as his passenger plane is forced down by bad weather to New Orleans.
A newsman tags the lieutenant as a lost soul and takes him to a “sporting house” where he meets one of the girls, Deanna Durbin.
They go to Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, then to an all night coffee shop, where she starts to tell how a nice girl from Vermont wound up in a Louisiana brothel.
She fell in love with a ne’er do well weakling (Gene Kelly - oddly inspired casting).
Depressing Christmas Noir, with almost every single character miserable, doomed, unhappy.
Durbin regarded this as her best film.

[Vultural]

Rare Exports:  A Christmas Tale - 2010 - 6/10

Ho ho ho.
In Finland, US geologists / archeologists drill into something unexpected in the Korvatunturi mountains.
Animals are later found slaughtered, all the children are kidnapped.
They had accidentally unearthed the original Santa Claus, not the merry Coca Cola version.
The one from the locked histories, the one who devours children.
The dark winter monster with terrible appetites.
Needless to say, a dark film, set at night with difficult characters.
Not as much action or narrative thrust as I would have liked.
Enjoyable, but could have used more voltage.

Note: Most of the dialogue was in Finnish.

[alex28]

Thanks!

Edited March 3, 2015 by alex28

[Vultural]

Gunman In The Streets - 1950 - 6/10

Interesting pursuit Noir set in post WWII France.
Dane Clark plays an ex-GI who remained behind the war and set up a nice little black market operation.
When the film opens, he’s being transfered from jail to jury when he is sprung via armed attack.
From then on this is a cat n mouse police chase.
Clark’s colleagues are interrogated, hideouts smashed, ex-girlfriend followed.
As this was shot in France, the look and feel differs from American Noir.
The streets, the shops, the clothes, the faces, most notably a young Simone Signoret.
Aside from the location, the plot offers nothing fresh.
Clark slips catlike through police nets and his character is cold and unsympathetic.
Director Frank Tuttle was an early casualty of the HUAC blacklist which might have explained the European location.

[Vultural]

Pride - 2014 - 7/10

Feel good movie of LGSM (Gays Lesbians Support the Miners), circa 1984, when Thatcher tories struggled to break the coal miner union.
The government had seized the assets of the Mining Union and were literally starving miners into compliance.
Unlikely support came from gays and lesbians who raised money through bucket drives, later benefit concerts.
An awkward pairing, especially for blue collar males, and film goes into that.
Community is reluctant, unsure, uneasy.  Homophobia contagion, or fear thereof.
Still, LGSM were the only group that gave generous and consistent support.
Film features a slew of top actors, including Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton, as well as a fabulous 80s soundtrack.
Dominic West has show stopping moment when he teaches non-dancing miners that one of the quickest ways to catch the feminine eye is to kill on the dancefloor.

[Vultural]

Born To Be Bad - 1934 - 5/10

Cynical Pre-Code film about 22 year old unwed mother and her 7 year old son.
Mom earns money as an escort (figure it out) while junior runs with gangs and drinks mugs of beer at the house.
When he runs under a delivery truck, they exaggerate the injury and try to hustle the company.
Ought to be more fun, but mother and son play unpleasant to perfection.
One of the films the Legion Of Decency likely pointed at when wanting to tighten the Production Code.
Very young Cary Grant as naive company president, Loretta Young (before she became Miss Wholesome) as call girl.
Short - bitter tasting - with preposterous finale.

[Vultural]

The Hundred-Foot Journey - 2014 - 6/10

Young Indian chef sets up establishment across from haute cuisine in rural France.
Rivalry turns into alliance when starchy matriarch realizes his culinary gifts can get her restaurant a second Michelin star.
Story has the depth of a soufflé and is longish, with nary a Frenchman in sight.
Produced by Oprah Winfrey and Stephan Spielberg (both US).  Directed by Lasse Hallström (Sweden) from an American novel.  Helen Mirren (UK) plays the Gallic proprietress.
Popular with the arthouse crowd who also call themselves foodies.
Pleasant enough way to kill a couple hours, might be more enjoyable on big screen.

[Vultural]

Cyborg Girl - 2008 - 6/10

Cross between Terminator meets Robotrix meets Fembots,
mixing comedy, romance, time travel and apocalypse.
Whew!
Smokin’ hot female cyborg, wearing skin tight get-ups, sent to protect clueless young male.
Haruka Ayase is so scrumptious in this, one temporarily forgets how derivative the script is, or how the male lead couldn’t out act a paper sack.
Cyborg Girl is ostensibly a romantic comedy, heavy on broad based, juvenile behaviour.
Truly, the male has negative social skills and behaves like he has never spoken with a girl in his life.
Good special effects, used (wisely) sparingly.  Plus a few plot twists near the end.
More innocent viewers would rank this higher - more skeptical souls would cut the score.
Probably make an innocuous date flick.

[Vultural]

My Little Princess - 2011 - 6/10

Well done, if exceedingly disturbing mother / daughter story.
Isabel Huppert plays dysfunctional mom with artistic pretensions.  Self delusions far outweigh actual talent.
She takes up photography and starts taking shots of her 10 year old daughter.
Clothes start getting removed, heavy lipstick applied, and poses become sexually provocative.

Ma believes success has arrived as last and pushes boundaries even further.
The young girl, starting to grasp the concept of exploitation, tries to resist.
Unsettling and inappropriate in countless ways, also metaphor for parents as agents or pimps.
Huppert throws herself into this and is utterly convincing, though she is clearly too old for the role.
Newcomer Anamaria Vartolomei acquits herself well.

[Vultural]

Wicked Woman - 1953 - 5/10

Bottled blonde steps off the bus in the boondocks, rents a room in a dumpy boarding house, hires on as waitress in low end dive.
Another role in the checkered career of Beverly Michaels, who seemed to glide from one trashy film to another.
This one exudes sleaze.  Flophouse sets filled with low life schemers and their petty dreams.
The plot is no great shakes, seduction and greed.  Souls fighting for loose change.
Characters are all broken failures, though, and everything they attempt seems to collapse.
Not really dark enough or fatalistic to be a Noir proper, but sour candy for the fans of Michaels, and as good a film as any to start if you’re tempted by or have a weakness for hard blondes.

[Vultural]

That Day We Sang - 2014 - 7/10

Pretty good recreation of what looks like a West End musical.
Filmmakers are shooting documentary of Manchester children, now 40 years later, who sang Purcell's 'Nymphs and Shepherds' and later cut a best selling 78 of that.
Story bounces back and forth between 1929 and 1969, showing characters as children and as adults.
As adults, two main characters attempt to connect.  We glimpse their lives, hear their stories.
Of course, being a musical, tunes sally forth at the drop of a hat.
Melodies are enjoyable, though not exactly hummable.
First rate acting - plus, all leads have good voices.  Tale is thin, but - please - this is a musical.
Recommended for fans of.

[Vultural]

Mr Hoppy’s Geheimnis - 2014 - 5/10
AKA - Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot

Absurd, feel good twaddle of lonelyhearts and tortoises.
Flat neighbors, one floor apart, chat from balcony to balcony.
She obsesses over her pet tortoise.  “Will he ever grow?”
He decides to help by substituting a slightly larger creature every couple of days.
To do so, he purchases 100 tortoises of varying sizes.  (I also spied some red eared sliders, but will ignore.)
Does she notice differing shell patterns? - No -
Do neighbors notice stench from 100 turtles? - No -
Pace is killingly slow (padded).  I kept reminding myself the original story had been written for children, hence the silly, clueless characters.
No ... children would have viewed them as foolish twits, too.

[Vultural]

The Lady Vanishes - 1979 - 3/10

Early in the year, but this has set the low bar.  One of the worst pieces of crap I’ve viewed in ages.
Pointless remake of the Hitchcock classic, featuring two godawful American leads, irritating music, and a wasted supporting cast.
Gabby nanny type, who may or may not be a spy, disappears from train in Nazi occupied territory.
Cybill Shepherd especially good/horrible as shrill, whining American heiress who demands to know what happened to her new English friend (underused Angela Lansbury).  I would have paid for anyone to have hurled her off the train, moving or stopped, off a bridge or into quicksand, didn’t matter.  She was painful.
A bored Elliot Gould plays the male hero.  Shepherd and Gould have the chemistry of a pair of cracked duck eggs.

[Vultural]

Sunset Strip - 2012 - 7/10

Glossy, shallow, but fun documentary of Sunset Strip, focusing primarily on the club scene.
Doc traces the earliest beginnings, when Sunset Blvd was a narrow lane running from Hollywood to Beverly Hills.
Then goes from nightclub era to music clubs to current Disneyfication.
Interviews with dozens and dozens of historians, musicians, movie stars, comedians, groupies ...
Film also gets the geography correct.  Less accurate docs might try to squeeze in places from Hollywood Blvd as well as Santa Monica Blvd.  Each had their own vibe.  Not only does this stick with the Strip, but it doesn’t bother with the meandering Sunset that snakes to the Pacific.
All Los Angelenos have their own version of the city.  In the doc, Hugh Hefner recalled the glitzy 50s nightclubs.  Others reminisce about the 60s - 70s - 80s or later.  Yet there has never been a “there” to LA.  It’s always a river that flows and changes.

Three Strip shorts -

The hippie chick is four years older than me, and she was a bonefide teenybopper in the 60s.  Saw all the groups who were gone by the time I arrived.  Buffalo Springfield, Byrds, Love ...  She and friends were waiting in a club for the show when they saw a drunken bum stagger toward the stage.  Where is Security, they wondered.  Even more when the wino kept trying to climb the stage.  Eventually he succeeded, grabbed the microphone and started singing “Break On Through.”  The other Doors joined in, the drunk was Jim Morrison.

My brother visited me only once.  I gave him the whole experience.  Pink Flamingoes at the Nuart, Disneyland, Tower Records on Sunset, and a punk show at the Whisky.  The Weasels and The Dogs.  Midway through the Dogs’ set, two guys walked onstage.  One took the mic while the other dropped to the floor and started writhing in convulsions.  My brother started screaming,  “That’s Steve Jones singing!  And Paul Cook!  Sex Pistols!  The Sex Pistols! This is the greatest moment on my life!!”

Tower on Sunset was one of my favorite record stores.  Even when I had no money, no car, I’d hitch a ride then walk.  The shop was a temple of music.  It was vast and stocked massive deep catalogue.  Current chart toppers would be stacked from the floor to waist high - 200 copies of vinyl, maybe?  One stand alone was a Beatles shrine.
Groups were always there for in-store events.  Or you’d see musicians or TV stars, just shopping.  Few bothered them, less gutter paparazzi back then.
I was pulling my MG out of the lot, this VW Karmann Ghia waiting for my space.  “Who’s that driving?”  I asked the hippie chick.  “Rod,”  she said.  “Rod Stewart?”  “No, Rod McKuen,”  she said.  “Oh.”
Rod Stewart I might have gone back into Tower to see what he was buying.  Poet Rod McKuen? - I’d seen him before.

[Vultural]

88 - 2014 - 5/10

Bullet fest mystery / thriller set in the land of violence, the Canadian backwoods.
****harine Isabelle stars as female companion / waitress / hooker to roadhouse owner and local crime boss.
For withheld reasons, she ghosts in and out of fugue state, caused by emotional trauma.
Her alter-ego, Flamingo, is one no-nonsense, milk swigging broad.
Steals cars, shoots up the bowling alley, goes into full bore revenge against crime lord, Christopher Lloyd.

Isabelle terrific once again, truly commits to a difficult role and nails it.  If anything, there was another outrageous whacked out guns and revenge comedy buried in the script had the writers chosen to focus on Ty and Lemmy.
Michael Ironside is the sheriff.  Fine cast in a half-assed script, narrative slice n diced in jumbled chronology.
There’s the flaw.  Because of all the jumps in the story, you really must pay attention and even then you might get confused.  All well and good if the payoff delivers.  Hate to spoiler this, so I won’t divulge.  Note 5/10, though.  And my rating is a wee bit high.
There’s a lot of unexpected, and really funny black humor.
Will I rewatch 88?  Probably (loser)  Do I recommend?  Only to other losers like me.