Recommend a movie

[Vultural]

Music For Misfits: The Story Of Indie - 2015 - 7/10

Exhilarating three part series tracks the rise of UK indie music from the 70s into mainstream acceptance by 2000.
Tiny labels, obscure groups with new sounds, naive yet enthusiastic entrepreneurs.
And fans.  Fans who were tired of Corporate Rock and glossy, talentless pretenders foisted upon them.
Interviewers with band members, label reps, journalists, shop owners, all older and wiser.
The whole, do-it-yourself, seat of your pants struggles and stories are funny and often telling.
Most try to avoid rosy eyed nostalgia, the trap of only recalling the sunshine.
Terrific soundtrack, to be sure, with dozens of concert clips.
Essential for music geeks.

[Vultural]

Visages Villages - 2017 - 6/10
AKA - Faces Places

Interesting, fascinating, annoying, irritating documentary of two disparate French photographers.
Director (and photo buff) Agnès Varda teams with photographer JR who pastes large photo murals in public spaces.
They travel to remote, often dying villages, and paste up huge photographs of bygone laborers, aging survivors, or interesting faces from the community.
The sense of unearthing history, and preservation is totally absorbing.
Capturing the moment, even the forgotten moment, and showcasing for time indefinite.
On the other hand, Ms Varda instructs subjects - female subjects - to remove their glasses.
For capturing a slice of truth, this struck me as a bit of artistic dishonesty, though I will be the first to admit creative souls often adopt a laissez-faire attitude towards the real.
The final bit, hunting for Godard turns into a very sour finish.

[Vultural]

Das Finstere Tal - 2014 - 7/10
AKA - The Dark Valley

Near great Western is flawless, until a self-inflicted error wrecks the ambiance.
After an unsettling, violent parting of two lovers, the tiny timber community returns to normal.
Then, years later, the stranger arrives.

He is a photographer, and pays in gold to overwinter there.
The community is sullen and unhappy, ruled by old man Brenner and his six thuggish sons.
Women are property, men are beaten down, even the photographer is taught an early lesson.
Until the dying begins.
The high lonesome landscape is jaw dropping.  Sierra Nevada or the Canadian Rockies?
Nope.  German/Austrian Alps.  Whole movie is in German.
Fear not, this is a pitch perfect film that would thrill any Eastwood fan -
- until late -
- when the director stupidly, stupidly, stupidly, overdubs crucial action with pop music.  Some whiney male wails "How dare you?" over and over and over.  At this point, one senses the director has walked away.  From that point on, the tight control ends, it gets talky, and there is a closing credits "song," modern and inappropriate.
To my reckoning, the blundering song choices and last act possibly killed an Academy nod for best foreign film.
Definitely worth hunting for Western fans, or cold paced action fans.  Beware the songs, though.

[Vultural]

Verónica - 2017 - 7/10

School basement.  Ninth grade Verónica and two friends lay out the Ouija board and conjure.
Oh, and there is a solar eclipse occurring at the same time.
Events propitious for a successful contact.
Only thing is, they forget about closing the dimensional door on the spirit.
Horror / thriller from Spain puts Verónica and her three younger siblings in peril.
Verónica is in over her head and only has a creepy, blind nun for advice.
Set in 1991, pre Internet, and based on real events.

The Ouija board, by the way, is generally marketed and sold to children, usually girls.
Opinions regarding the Ouija board range from scoffing to worry to intolerance.

[Vultural]

The Salesman - 2016 - 7/10
AKA - Forushande

Married actors must relocate after their apartment begins to physically collapse.
A fellow actor owns property and has an apartment that seems ideal.
The previous tenant departed earlier, though she has not taken her things.
The couple move in, deposit the woman's belongings in the street.
Meanwhile, the actors try to mount Death Of A Salesman, deal with Tehran censors.
To further complicate things, the previous woman had many visitors - who are unaware she no longer lives there.
Stress mounts in this layered film, making the experience uncomfortable for characters and viewers.
As in earlier films, such as About Elly, director Farhadi explores how people react to tension.
Not fun, but riveting.

[Vultural]

Raw - 2016 - 6/10
AKA - Grave

Strict vegetarian Justine enrolls in premier veterinarian college.
During freshman hazing, she is forced to eat raw meat.
She acquires a taste for it, and the craving alters her personality.
Shocker from France and Belgium boasts  visual style and successfully captures the disorientation experienced by many college arrivals.
Justine's embrace of darker extra-curricular opportunities may upset the squeamish.
Plot holes are often forgotten as carnivore and more primitive appetites swing to the fore.
A moody excursion leaves an unsavory taste.
Animal lovers - consider the vet college setting.

 

[Vultural]

Souvenir - 2016 - 6/10

New hire at the pâté factory spots a familiar face.
"Didn't you -- weren't you ... Laura?"
"No, my name is Liliane."
Indeed, she is Laura, a forgotten singer.  Our lad scores points by saying,  "My Dad used to like you!"
He is 22, a boxer, while she is slightly older (in the Eurovision competition, she placed 2nd to ABBA).
Smitten, he decides Laura can make a comeback, and he can be her manager!
Lightweight fluff.  Isabelle Huppert seems to be coasting in this.
Music snobs, beware songs delivered with lots of hand gestures and dramatic posing.

[Vultural]

Wonder Wheel - 2017 - 6/10

Woody Allen recalls Coney Island of the 50s.
Married couple struggle with the park's decline.  Young son is a pyro, older daughter has fled her Mafia husband.
Lifeguard, an aspiring writer, narrates, and attracts the wife, who once was an "actress."
Various storylines are solid, if a little threadbare.
Acting is also first rate, and yet, this is highly theatrical.  Meaning, smells stagebound.
Dialogue turns into soliloquy often, conversation is like delivering lines.
Wonderful camera work!  Saturated colours, sweeping shadows, great eye from Vittorio Storaro.
Unfortunately, the plot is a retread and the whole thing is much too talky.
Extremely disappointing, nonetheless, as this has elements for one of Allen's "good ones."

[Vultural]

The Sins Of Madame Bovary - 1969 - 6/10
AKA - I Peccati di Madame Bovary

Florid adaptation dispenses with Charles' first marriage, courtship and marriage to Emma, and opens as Emma is already bored to tears with her unassuming provincial doctor husband.
And with poor country patients who pay with vegetable and chickens.
Those will not buy the gorgeous gowns and jewelry she eagerly desires.
Narrative is fairly faithful to Flaubert's masterpiece, and the film boasts stunning costumes, lavish interiors, lush outdoors.  In fact, I wondered if this was Technicolor (it was Eastmancolor).
Then there is Edwige Fenech, who plays Emma.

No dewy eyed ingenue here, the voluptuous Fenech exudes sensuality and experience.
Her wardrobe is sheer, or cascades to the floor easily, or is designed to highlight her twins.
To be honest, much as I enjoyed this version, she is a potent distraction.
And yet ... I can imagine many males asking,  "And your point?"

[Vultural]

Styria - 2014 - 6/10
AKA - Angels Of Darkness

Circa 1989, professor crosses into Communist Hungary, brooding daughter in backseat.
Old paintings from a long closed sanitarium have been found and are meant to be shipped to England.
The professor has a chequered brief, the daughter is a cutter, and mom ... they don't discuss mom.
Troubled female slips into their midst one evening, and the area slowly stumbles back 300 years.
The new arrival is named Carmilla, but apparently none of characters are familiar with Le Fanu.
Half-lit film, shot in Hungary, borrows from the classic book, but is updated and spins its own silk on the thread.
Much is seen from teenage Lara's viewpoint, and she is confused and haunted.
Dreams contest with ill memory and sordid reality, not only in the sanitarium.

[Vultural]

Step - 2017 - 7/10

Documentary about the step dance team from the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women.
The squad, the Lethal Ladies, have never won the city competition, but they have a new coach.
Seniors struggle to get into college, deal with bad grades, difficult mothers, boys.
Feel good material is darkened by inner-city realities, as well as the understanding that the dream of college, for many, is just that.  A dream.
Camera zeroes in on a handful in the squad, leaving this viewer, at least, wondering about other faces.
Doc does not shy away from a few unpleasantries, but it does not dig deeper, either.
Perhaps because the subjects are minors.  As mentioned, feel good.

[Vultural]

Merci Pour le Chocolat - 2000 - 7/10
AKA - Nightcap

Film opens with second marriage between classical pianist and owner of major chocolate firm.
Scene shifts to two women at a cafe, greeting their engaged offspring.
Table talk, one mother slips the buried secret of a hospital mixup of two infants.
The engaged daughter, an aspiring pianist herself, wonders if the classical pianist is actually ...
Once she decides to visit, the unsettled narrative skims into thriller territory.
The men may be blissfully unaware, but the women have secrets and agendas.
Alert viewers, and this is an adult film, can sense the knives they grip behind their backs.

[Vultural]

Genius - 2016 - 7/10

Unexpected story about the relationship between writer Thomas Wolfe and his early editor, Maxwell Perkins.
To be honest, I have not thought of Wolfe since the 70s, and even then he had faded into memory, eclipsed by the dandy, Tom Wolfe.
Thomas Wolfe, played by an outstanding Jude Law, is boisterous and ebullient, a gushing force of nature.
Perkins, an in-control Colin Firth, struggles to rein in his literary excesses which mirror the author.
Note - The first draft of his second novel,  "Of Time And The River," ran 5000 pages!
Character story of two men, with late 20s New York in the background.
(Neither the Jazz Age nor Roaring Twenties nor Great Depression are indicated.)
Generally, I find stories about writers duller than faded wallpaper.
Genius does not have the usual scribbling, typing, pacing the floors anguish.
Instead, this bares the arguments over words, sentences, paragraphs.
The craft of editing reams of art into a form that will attract as many readers as possible.

[Vultural]

La Antena - 2007 - 7/10

Silent cinema continues to flourish, this time from Argentina.
In the metropolis, the citizens have lost their voice.  Literally.
Only one individual still has the ability, the mysterious singer, The Voice, her face shrouded in deep black.

The city is controlled and dominated by Mr TV, who owns the silent broadcasts, food, buildings, and enforcers.
Typical of megalomaniacs, he wants still more.
Heavy on German Expressionism and UFA films, experienced viewers will catch Russian elements, as well as modern cinema such as City Of Lost Children.

Visuals in this will be a feast for Silent film buffs, spotting homages and sly references.
The narrative, while simple, seems increasingly relevant to current distracted humanity.
Highly inventive and also fun to watch!

[Vultural]

Iris - 2016 - 6/10
AKA - In The Shadow Of Iris

Banker husband pays for expensive lunch while wife waits outside.
Long enough for his wife to be kidnapped!
Police are summoned, try to devise a trap, but the quarry is slippery.
Glossy thriller comes packed with twists and confusing characters.
(Other reviewers note males all sport beards - the females are long haired brunettes.)
Engrossing French mystery, though the characters are too clever by half.

[Vultural]

Goodbye Dragon Inn - 2003 - 6/10
AKA - Bú sàn  //  不散

Deliberately misleading / baffling last night inside a vintage Taipei movie house.
Few customers fill the rows for a final showing of 1967's Dragon Inn.
Men wander back halls and storage rooms, smoking cigarettes throughout.
Are they are ghosts - or lost souls?
The ticket taker limps from one empty area to another, performing nightly duties.
Little transpires in this haunted environment, allowing viewers - this one, at least - to reflect on the passing of movie palaces.
I recall entertainment shrines being filled with SOLD OUT audiences.
In recent times, however, attendance plummeted.
The cast of this is intriguing, containing members of the 1967 Dragon Inn, influential Taiwanese martial arts classic that I somehow have not caught.
Goodbye Dragon Inn is pretentious twaddle or quietly insightful.  Mix of both.

[Vultural]

Aquarius - 2016 - 5/10

Sônia Braga plays Clara, last tenant at the Aquarius, an old two story apartment.
Her neighbors sold off to a property developer who intends to demolish and erect a high rise.
Clara won't budge, however.  Mind you, the Aquarius sets on the beach in Recife.
Conflict escalates between the 65 year old woman and the developer and his tactics.
Ostensibly a character study, I found Clara unsympathetic and inconsiderate.
Flaws don't mean she is in the wrong, though.
While I do not understand Brazilian property laws, I have tilted against developers a time or two.
Film itself is overlong, with many scenes extending three or four beats past their limit.
Blame the writer-director for self indulgence and leaving pointless sequences in the final cut.

[Vultural]

Stuart Sutcliffe: The Lost Beatle - 2005 - 6/10

Biography that focuses as much on what-if as well as on what-happened.
Interviews include Sutcliffe's sister and an early college roommate - pre-Lennon.
Manager Allan Williams details Hamburg musical adventures, while Voormann and Kirchherr discuss Sutcliffe's artistic endeavors.
Lennon both attacked and defended, while McCartney reaps the most ire.
Geoffrey Giuliano seems to be one of the sources for this doc - caveat emptor.
Nothing "new" here for knowledgeable Beatles' fans, though seeing several of his abstract works in full screen will be a treat.
This is not dodgy material by any stretch, just listen with a wary ear.

[Vultural]

Cuadecuc, Vampir - 1971 - 6/10

Christopher Lee filmed Count Dracula for Jess Franco in 1970, with a powerhouse cast.
While the narrative was faithful to Stoker, the budget was meager and it showed.
Nevertheless - during filming, director Pere Portabella lensed this strange dish.
Black n white, silent film, consisting of outtakes, over-exposures, and oddities.
Such as, you'll see the clapperboard from time to time, also cameras, actors hanging around, laughing.
The music is a mix of ambiant, musique concrète, lounge, and empty silence.
Sets are atmospheric, the pace is lethargic.
Some have slotted this into arthouse territory, but it strikes me as an art installation.
Meaning something you might see in a museum or gallery, watch it for 10-20 minutes, then drift away.
Definitely a curio.

[Vultural]

Maciste al Inferno - 1925 - 6/10
AKA - Maciste In Hell

A demon kidnaps prime physical specimen Maciste and ferries him to Hell.
There, he contests with endless hordes of demons and wretched souls -
and - struggles with the temptations of barely clad demons of the female persuasion.
Oh, but a single kiss can be the undoing of the morally sturdy.
Very busy film.  Loads of action.  Guest characters include Lucifer and Satan!
Lavish production values.  Costumes?  Most of the underworld wears next to nothing -- or nothing.
Save for Maciste, who seems to keep his business suit on most of the time.
Bodywise, Maciste takes after the old-fashioned circus strongman (think Rodrigo Quast) and not todays steroid pumped fantasy figure.