Recommend a movie

[Vultural]

Somm:  Into The Bottle - 2015 - 6/10

Winesnobs, score higher.  Everyone else, prepare to stroll.

Checklist to see if you qualify.  (The correct answer is “A” every time.)
1)  Preferred evening drink:  A - alcohol, B - soft drinks, C - dairy,  D - water,  E - nothing.
2)  What sort of alcohol:  A - wine,  B - beer,  C - cocktail.
3)  Wine with:  A - dinner,  B - crackers n cheese.
4)  Favorite place to dine:  A - away from home,  B - home.
5)  Restaurant wine list is:  A - at least 10 pages long,  B - house red or house white.
6)  How much will you spend on bottle:  A - $100 or more,  B - $99 or less,  C - are you crazy?

Wine documentary divided fairly equally between vintners (growers, bottlers) and sommeliers.
Vinters matter-of-fact about what they grow, challenges, how the wine ought to taste.
The sommeliers are selling a story, though.  They want you to spend for that $350 bottle.
“Because it is so special - - just like you.”  Sure ...
Mention given to Mondavi and Parker, both of whom I regard as bad influences -
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411674/

I enjoyed, albeit bemused.  My bride and I, while hardly connoisseurs, are “steady” drinkers, meaning 4-5 bottles per week.
But triple digit bottles?  C - are you crazy?  I could buy several cases for that price.

[Vultural]

Bedelia - 1946 - 6/10

Based on Vera Caspary novel of honeymoon couple in Monte Carlo.
She is rich, he is not.  1st marriage for him, 2nd for her.
A wandering painter wants to do her portrait, she refuses.
Just as she adamantly stops any photographs being taken of her.
Sluggish tale of the past trailing after the shady soul.
Caspary also wrote Laura and was always angry that Preminger reduced the title heroine to an empty nothing.
Bedelia is more conniving and multi-layered, but the pace oozes along.

[Vultural]

Florence Foster Jenkins - 2016 - 6/10

Entertaining, amusing biopic, though I can understand why many turned a deaf ear.
Meryl Streep splendid as daffy, delusional society dame who inflicts her voice onto Carnegie Hall and to wax cylinders for perpetuity.
Mrs Jenkins suffers pitch problems, insecure attack, wobbly control, on and on ...
In this telling, audiences were mildly sympathetic, though giggling occurred in film and in reality.
Hugh Grant equally fine as supportive, protective husband.
Her singing numbers, though, are going to kill many of you.

Movie buffs often have a fondness for bad.
Genuine bad.  Not calculated Sharknado rubbish, bur rather Ed Wood working at the zenith of his powers.
Likewise music.  Singers like Tiny Tim, Claudine Longet, Karen Dalton will be an acquired taste for most, yet I do spin them up from time to time.
Your own “guilty pleasure” taste in music ought to inform you of how you will react to Mrs Jenkins.

[Vultural]

Who Killed Nancy - 2009 - 7/10

Nancy Spungen was killed Oct 1978. Six months later, boyfriend-suspect Sid Vicious died of an overdose.
Case closed, everyone decided "Sid did it."
Police records reveal there were actually six suspects.
This documentary tries to pick up the threads with mixed results.
Lots of interviews with friends, drug buddies, roadies, etc ... As well as a great soundtrack.
Narrative meanders, however, and never quite targets the prime alternative.
One has the impression Sid didn't kill Nancy (witnesses confirm he was passed out) ... but who did? And why?
This should have been better.
Still, essential for fans of The Great Rock-N-Roll Swindle or readers of Jon Savage's “England's Dreaming,” or anyone who moshed in punk shows.

[Vultural]

It! - 1966 - 5/10

Museum warehouse burns down and only surviving artifact is tall, black, ugly looking statue.
And ... whenever folks are alone with said statue, they keep dying.
Because, the dark stone is actually a golem!
Cheap looking film with a minimum of actors plays like bad television.
Better - or worse - Roddy McDowell seems to channel Norman Bates and Seymour Krelboyne in portraying the nutso, dotty assistant curator.
Not awful enough to enter the rarefied echelon of Bad Cinema, yet there are enough dreadful proceedings to satisfy aficionados of dreck.

[Vultural]

Good Hair - 2009 - 6/10

Who knew a documentary about "fixing" bad hair could be so fun?
$1000 hair extensions, hair relaxers containing sodium hydroxide (lye), and a outta control stylist competition.
Plus, answers to questions like -
“How do you have sex with a woman wearing a weave?”
Answer - Girl on top.  Touch hair and die!
Hosted by comedian Chris Rock.

[Vultural]

Elle - 2016 - 7/10

Challenging French fare that defies expectations.
Early on - say first scene - there is a rape (for the sensitive, there are a pair of flashbacks later on, too).
The victim does not phone the police, but simply goes to the clinic the next day and requests an STD panel.
She does not tell friends, family, coworkers.
Partly, she does not know the assailant’s identity (he wore a mask) and she is trying to determine who it is.
Party ... well, there are elements within her, call it the past, that are outside the normal.
Isabelle Huppert captures this rogue soul.  Brittle, icy, razor smart, and possessed with an offhand cunning.
Elle seems to wander aimlessly.  Don;t be fooled.  Investigation and retribution are at the core.

[Vultural]

Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler - 1922 - 7/10
AKA:  Dr Mabuse, The Ganbler

One of cinema’s earliest, and finest criminal masterminds.
Master stock market manipulator, card sharp, swindler.
Mabuse rules a band of weaklings, drug addicts, and thugs through force of will and ruthless discipline.
Lengthy, quite lengthy at 4 hours, it can be enjoyed over several evenings since it is broken regularly into acts.
Interiors are 20s Deco, while exteriors are an Expressionistic rats maze of narrow back lanes and secret gambling dens.
Tempo, which gallops ahead during the first half, relaxes in the second when Mabuse, the epitome of calculated control, tilts to obsession and megalomania.
The entire mood and tone is steeped in the exuberance and decadence of Weimar Berlin.  That, and ennui, sheer boredom of living in an accelerated life.
Metropolis and M enjoy greater acclaim, but this has always been my preferred Lang.
Rudolf Klein-Rogge delivers a bravura, unforgettable performance as the diabolical Mabuse.

[Vultural]

Candy - 2006 - 6/10

A hero, a heroine, and heroin.
Typically sad story of a young couple's slide into addiction.
Predictable narrative,
but reminder how powerful Heath Ledger could be.
And what a loss.
Co-starring Geoffrey Rush and Abbie Cornish.

[Vultural]

Lion - 2016 - 7/10

Deep in his twenties, the young man goes in search of himself.
Rather, his past, who he had been before his adoption by an Australian couple.
As a young boy, he wandered from his small village, ending up hundreds of miles away in Calcutta.
There, he is another runaway, one of tens of thousands, existing on the streets, smiling predators on every corner.
Engrossing story, based on real life.
Harrowing for any parent who ever lost sight of their child for a moment, let alone an hour, or twenty years.

[Vultural]

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men - 2009 - 5/10

"Meaningful" indie film about men's observations, expectations, and misconceptions of the opposite sex.
Front loaded.  Meaning the funniest and weirdest characters were in the first hour.
Then the parade of mopers, losers, downers, feeble.
Suggestion: Watch the first 40 minutes.
Then watch an episode of a terrible sitcom, which will be better than the last half of this sludge bucket.

[Vultural]

SiREN - 2016 - 5/10

B-Horror flick with imaginative touches.
Quartet of fratboy males out celebrating stag party for soon-to-wed mate.
They find a Gothic sporting house nestled in remote backwoods.
Skimpy hotties, rooms catering to perversion, occult entertainment.
Running the brothel is necromancer Nyx (homage to Lord Of Illusions?) who peddles a special girl.
Picture her as a lesser demon, if you will, the ravenous kind.

Despite low expectations early on, my hopes rallied, only to wither in disappointment.
Budget restrictions aside, filmmakers are adroit in imbuing this with atmospheric quality.
The whole Nyx and outré environment is more than one typically sees in fratboy horror.
Naw, the film is sunk by the four friends, terrible actors all, given puerile dialogue.

[Vultural]

Show People - 1928 - 7/10

Silent film.
Perhaps Marion Davies best, if not funniest, vehicle.
Georgia peach, Peggy, and her Pa, the Colonel, arrive in Hollywood to make her a star.
Since this is movie land, she becomes one in less than 30 minutes, vaulting from Mack Sennett escapades to high brow costumers. Losing her spark along the way.
The face she makes during this section is a satire of Gloria Swanson.
A boatload of cameos from bygone stars. Chaplin, Davies herself, King Vidor. The cafeteria sequence pans past Polly Moran, Louella Parsons, Estelle Taylor, Leatrice Joy, Mae Murray, John Gilbert, Norma Talmadge, Douglas Fairbanks, William S Hart, and a few others.
Openly gay William Haines played the love interest, much to the approval of Davies' insanely jealous boyfriend, publisher William Hearst.

[Vultural]

Anthropoid - 2016 - 7/10

Overlooked World War II thriller about Operation Anthropoid.
The plot to assassinate SS Obergruppenführer of Czechoslovakia, Reinhard Heydrich.
Told entirely from the Czech resistance point of view.
The “based on” elements are easy of spot and ignore (such as any love interests).
Measured pace spotlights planning, internal arguing, and constant fear of betrayal.
Unlike other films, this offers the buildup, the event, the aftermath.
Breathtaking cinematography, by the way.

[Vultural]

Alice In Acidland - 1969 - 5/10



Dreary warning of moral turpitude.
High school graduate Alice goes to pool party with friend.
Poolside, Alice smokes her first cigarette.
Menfolk, ignore her and surround the curvy blonde, who, we discover later, is an outta control sex addict.
Alice and her friend go from tobacco to alcohol to climbing naked into the bathtub, groping and kissing.
Tobacco, booze, what’s next? You got it! Marijuana, swinging nympho sex, moccasins and Indian beads.
Sleazy, black n white sexploitation quickie offers a steady flow of female nudity.
Black n white until Alice hits LSD! Then it’s colour female nudity, often double or triple exposed!

Dull film has a better thought-out soundtrack than it deserves.
Going from cocktail jazz (think pianist Paul Smith) to percussion to hippie lite to porno grindhouse to trippin’ psychedelia.

[Vultural]

The Woman With The Hungry Eyes - 2006 - 6/10



Overcooked documentary of Theda Bara, the original Vamp.
Hers is old fashioned, out-of-date by the 20s, dell’‘arte acting. Highly melodramatic.
Alas, much of this has the feel of a padded homework assignment.
Modern actors recreate scenarios, and amateurish animation surfaces from time to time.
Out of place, a newsreel crawls across the screen bottom frequently. Strange.
That said, this is perhaps the best documentary we shall ever see on Ms Bara.
Better, this doc has clips from her few, very few, surviving movies, and loads of stills.
The bulk of Bara’s films were destroyed in a 1937 fire at the Fox warehouse.
Much as I am kicking this, this doc is a must for Silent film fans!

[Vultural]

Captain Fantastic - 2016 -  6/10

Survivalist, home schooled family climbs into the van and heads to the city for Mom’s funeral.
Cultural encounter between “visionary” family the “ordinary” American world.
Well educated children who have learned to process knowledge vs No Child Left Behind.
The physically fit tribe surrounded by gassy, sugary waddlers.
A bit one-sided, more so idealistic, aimed to please an audience of parents.
Aspects of non-social skills barely hinted at, nor is the reality of how they fund their lifestyle.
I enjoyed this while watching, immediately second-guessed once credits rolled.

Note:  I have witnessed and worked with home-schooled kids, some of whom suffer abysmal social skills.
Note:  I fully understand why home-school parents do not want their children in public school.

[Vultural]

Dogtooth - 2010 - 4/10
AKA  - Kynodontas

Pretentious Greek film wearing arthouse garb.
Three late teen children have been raised in complete isolation by overprotective parents.
The parents misinform and deliberately under-educate them. The children’s social skills are non existent.
Is this a cautionary tale about home schooling?  Does that even exist in Greece?
My take is the theme about cultural alienation, and/or government obfuscation.
But if so, this is terribly ham fisted.
To my eye, the directing was sloppy, the acting was poor.
This director also made The Lobster, which I hated, as well as The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, which I hated, and the recent The Favourite.  Good first half, second half snooze-a-rama.
SPOILER – Feline lovers  beware - when the cat appears in Dogtooth, you better leave the room.

[Vultural]

Borderland - 2007 - 6/10

Three University of Texas grads cross from Brownsville into Matamoros, Mexico for 'shrooms and poon.
One gets kidnapped by drug mafia who also practice Palo Mayombe, a bloody offshoot of Santeria.
They want a gringo sacrifice.
The movie was well shot, with a good feel for the border zone. Kids who look for trouble usually find it.
Nudity, drug use, language and extreme violence.
The ending became far fetched.
The actual DVD features a documentary on the real story, based on Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, practitioner of black magic, torture, human sacrifice.

http://docslide.us/documents/constanzo-adolfo-fall-2007.html

[Vultural]

Nocturnal Animals - 2016 - 7/10

Betrayal, death, revenge.  Template of the thriller.  This outing, two interweaving narratives.
Glossy, sterile Hollywood Hills and the midnight scrub of West Texas.
Los Angeles artist receives a manuscript from her ex.
As she reads the dark tale, she overlays herself, her daughter, and her ex onto the protagonists.
Middle of the night, family travels the backroads, and encounters drunken joyriders.
Mistake piles onto mistake with grim consequences.
Academy honchos totally snubbed this one, save for a riveting Michael Shannon as the hard lawman.