Recommend a movie

[Vultural]

Our Kind Of Traitor - 2016 - 6/10

While vacationing - trying to rebuild broken marriage - in Morocco, professor Perry meets mafia boss, Dima.
They strike up a friendship.  Then Dima asks for a favor.
Contrived, implausible spy thriller based on Le Carre's novel.
Slick, yet empty headed, and, in many ways, this feels like a plot from the 80s.
As turistas, middle aged Perry and wife Gail, make decisions teen travelers would avoid.
If you can go with the flow and switch your brain off, this is another way to kill two hours of your life.

[Vultural]

Le Frisson des Vampires - 1971 - 7/10
AKA - Sex And Vampires  //  The Shiver Of The Vampires

Newlyweds Isle and Antoine, still in gown and tuxedo, are driving to their honeymoon.
First, a sidetrip to her cousins whom she has not seen since she was small.
Alas, the cousins died recently under mysterious circumstances. and villagers warn of evil at their castle.
The pair decide to visit nevertheless, and then opt to spend the night.  In separate rooms.
An early Jean Rollin film, so expect well composed sets, beautiful women in sheer gowns, and vampires.
At points, no dialogue, followed by characters talking in paragraphs.
Neither a scary nor a frightening film, this beckons with a trancelike charm.
Mind you, I am partial to Rollin.
Impatient souls may resent a lack of fluids in this, and no running and carrying on.

[Vultural]

Daughter Of Darkness - 1948 - 6/10

Gothic take on the agent provocateur.
Emmy is shunned and ostracized by the women in a small Irish parish.
She seems mild mannered, reserved, fey even, yet males are drawn to her then driven to distraction.
Her lone protector is the priest, until village women order him to send her away.
Emmy relocates to a bucolic farm, where the females' radar quickly flares.
Film is a sea of shadows and odd angles.
While Emmy is not a striking beauty, all of us have encountered plain faced honey pots.
Though she is aware of her siren quality, male desire seems repulsive.
Hers is an arresting character;  as layers of innocence and naïveté peel away, there is a fundamental core of evil.

[Vultural]

They're Playing with Fire - 1984 - 5/10

English professor hires besotted student to varnish her yacht.
Once aboard, she puts the moves on him, followed by the pink sticky.
Afterward, she asks if he can do a teeny, tiny little favor for her.
Of a criminal nature.
Lest you roll your eyes, she is not your sophomore English teacher, but steamy Sibyl Danning.

She disrobes often, keeping our dim lad distracted and motivated, while events swirl.
This claptrap thriller is part dime mystery, part Slasher, part horny teenager flick.
Bodies pile up, support characters come and go for no reason, atrocious 80s generic songs.
Garbage, but I've seen worse, and I shall likely watch even more dismal fare in the future.

[Vultural]

In Darkness - 2018 - 5/10

Muddled thriller of blind concert pianist overhearing death of upstairs neighbor.
Thugs come calling,  "What did you see!"  -  "I'm blind."
Cops have questions.  "Sorry, I was wearing headphones."
Her secrecy masks a personal agenda, and casts aside the mystery of who killed the upstairs neighbor and why.
Therein lies a major problem with the narrative structure.
Focus often swings to side plots at the expense of others.
Deliberate confusion is to be anticipated in a mystery, yet one expects a degree of logic.
The script (co-written by the director and the lead, hmmm) suffers too many threads that need pruning.
Decent, if well worn, premise, marred by excessive busyness.

[Vultural]

Truman - 2015 - 7/10
AKA - Una Sonrisa Ala Vida

Tomás flies from Canada to visit his friend Julián in Madrid.
Julián, actor, ex-leading man, heartthrob, is winding up his affairs; Tomás acts as our observer.
Wry observations about preparing for ones final departure.
The film captures how friends and family deal with, or ignore, Julián's situation.
Despite the subject matter, this is neither maudlin nor depressing.
Nor is it chuckles and giggles, the buffoonish bucket-list preferred by shallow studio moguls.
A soft spoken film, with emotions barely suppressed under the skin.

[Vultural]

Herb & Dorothy:  50 X 50 - 2013 - 6/10

Followup documentary to 2008's acclaimed Herb & Dorothy.
The first doc caught the Vogel's, minimalist art collectors of modest means, as they were preparing to bequeath their rather priceless collection to the nation.
50 X 50 charts the flowering of the gift, as fifty museums, one in each state, receives fifty pieces of art.
The film travels, with and without the Vogels, to the various museums.
Interviewees include curators, docents, artists.  Some enlighten, some pander.
Minimalist art is difficult to appreciate and value, so the doc mentions the importance of art and how everyone is deserving.  This is illustrated during a couple of childrens tours.
I can admire and esteem Herb and Dorothy Vogel, and while I shrug off their collection, I'm glad they built it and then shared it.

[Vultural]

The Descent - 2005 - 7/10

White knuckle horror thriller, unsuitable for the claustrophobia types!
Six females who share wilderness, survivalist trips head to the Appalachia caverns (OK, North Carolina).
After a stiff forest hike, they reach the gaping hole in the earth and rappel down.
Personalities run from the reckless one, a controller, a grieving one, and the narrative rolls easy.
As the women descend deeper, and see evidence of previous cavers, the unease tightens.
Again, the friends take awhile until they realize things do go bump in the night.
By then, well, this is a horror ride.  Expect misfortune.

High intensity smash from Neil Marshall makes this viewer wonder how his cinema career stalled.
After four films, and no I didn't care much for Doomsday and Centurion lacked budget, Marshall now seems relegated to television.

[Vultural]

Sapphire - 1959 - 6/10

Scotland Yard investigates murder of young girl, dumped on Hampstead Heath.
Soon enough, they realize she was not white, but was high yellow, and passing.
While digging for suspects and motives, detectives encounter racism, implied, overt or smiling.
That twist seems a mild now, but was probably controversial in its day.
Well cast, well acted procedural - and yet - we never know who Sapphire was, as an individual.

[Vultural]

Belleville-Tokyo - 2010 - 5/10

Ostensibly a marriage in crisis story, do not let the side tale of revival movie house distract you.
The young wife works for two codgers who run the theater, while her marriage crumbles.
Yo yo husband leaves, returns, feeds her excuses a four year old could see through.
The phrase "love is blind" applies, and it is hard to work up sympathy.
The tale wanders around in circles.  Husband is immature, wife is needy.
72 minutes of French piffle.
If, however, one perceives the couple and their marriage as artificial, the lopsized reflection of the arthouse cinema, then the story may hold more interest.

[Vultural]

Married Too Young - 1962 - 4/10

Young, as in still seventeen.
Young man has part time job as mechanic, plans to go to med school after graduating.
He and his sweetie impulsively marry, confront enraged parents, mounting bills, and arguments.
Marked as a comedy, though there are few laughs, though parents are squeezed through the wringer.
More a sanitized time capsule of white bread suburbia, between 50s rock n roll and British Invasion.
Dull, despite the va va voom presence of bad girl Marianna Hill .

[Vultural]

Forever And A Day - 1943 - 6/10

American businessman is tasked with selling long held London property.
He meets the prospective buyer during a nightly Luftwaffe bomb run.
While waiting, the potential buyer tells him the history of the home, as well as bygone inhabitants.
From the old crust who founded it in 1804 during the Napoleonic Wars to the present Blitz occupants.
Defenders of the realm, scoundrels, lovers, souls trapped by Fate.

Almost the entire "British colony" of 1940s Hollywood participated in this forgotten chestnut.
Meant as a morale booster for the home front, as well as a vehicle to stir the Yanks.
This might have been a good film to watch with my father who was also a film buff.
I recognized 20 of the 80 stars involved, I imagine he would have caught far more.

[Vultural]

La Frusta e il Corpo - 1963 - 6/10
AKA - The Whip And The Body

Listed as Horror, this is more of a high Gothic bodice ripper.
Disgraced young noble returns to family manor after his brother marries.
Kurt (Christopher Lee) is a ne'er do well, disowned by his father, loathed by other family members.
The next day, he meets new bride Nevenka on the beach and whips her backside until her blouse rips apart.
She resists, sorta, but she also grows sexually aroused.
Cries of protest yield to more guttural urgings as a bit of droit du seigneur quickens.  
Narrative features twists, but the tainted relationship between Kurt and Nevenka is the core.
Style dominates substance in this Italian potboiler directed by Bava.
Burnished interiors, plenty of creative camera-work (colour filters, dramatic lighting).

[Vultural]

Hollywood Boulevard - 1976 - 5/10

Midwest girl journeys to Los Angeles to become a movie star.
Predictably, she winds up at an exploitation outfit, beginning as a stunt driver, then getting lines.
Broad comedy pokes fun at dozens of B-movie clichés.
Rubber suited monsters, machine gun slaughters, car chases, topless girls, pretentious directors ...
More laughs than yawns, though chase sequences extend too long.

[Vultural]

Dukhtar - 2014 - 6/10
AKA - Daughter

Ten year old Pakistani girl is offered in marriage to aged tribal leader.
Mother and daughter flee, with gunmen from both tribes in pursuit.
At stake - honor, which demands blood for atonement.
Themes of female, and child, rights conflict with entrenched male hierarchy.
When I pointed out arranged marriages involving children had been used in Asia and Europe for centuries, I received several frosty responses.
Himalaya Mountains provide exotic backdrop, and child in peril angle may prove gripping to many.
Nonetheless, this falls into the chase genre.

[Vultural]

Horror On Snape Island - 1972 - 5/10
AKA - Tower Of Evil

Two twentyish couples boat to remote island and get frisky.
- What?  Their flat was being fumigated? -
Too late, they realize the isolated isle has another inhabitant.
Dismemberment and carnage.
But wait!!  That's just the intro!
Next, four anthropologists decide they need to explore.  Likewise couples, only estranged and canoodling.
They know someone murdered previous visitors.
Rather than carry weapons, they carry supplies and wear 70s fashions suitable for clubbing.
Hard to be sympathetic for foolish professors in this snoozer.

[Vultural]

The Devil's Mask - 1946 - 5/10

Headless, oh no!  Don't you hate it when that happens?
Another entry in the "I Love A Mystery" franchise finds private eyes Jack and Doc caught between feudin' females, mother and daughter.
A shrunken head is seized at Customs, shipped to the local museum for analysis.
The head could be related to a missing husband / father.
Characters, plot lines, and clues bounce all over this like a rabbit convention.
Light hearted, if deadly, mystery should be OK for fans of creaky thrillers.

[Vultural]

Les Possedees du Diable - 1974 - 5/10
AKA - Lorna The Exorcist

No, Lorna is not an exorcist, but instead a female Mephistopheles.
She makes the devil's bargain with down on his luck, impoverished Patrick.
Fortune, repute, happiness in exchange for his daughter once she turns eighteen.
Desperate - and childless - he agrees.
Nine months and almost eighteen years later, Lorna returns, ready to take possession.
Narrative is more linear and logical than the typical Jess Franco outing.
Sex sequences serve the plot - sometimes - and are not as clinically pornographic as other films.
Sideplot of one of Lorna's discards (and Franco himself as psychiatrist) is pointless.
20 year old Lina Romay fine as the daughter up for grabs.

[Vultural]

United - 2011 - 6/10

Docudrama of Man U's 1958 Busby's Babies.
The young team dominates England's pitch, journeys to Beograd for European matches.
Not really a football flick, as I had thought.
Conflict with league officials, technical issues on the aircraft, survivors bookmark the story.
This story is less well known outside England, and perhaps fading into memory now.
Characters, even those with major lines, are barely more than shades.
Actual turf action - none.
The visual image is too soft, and the colour overly desaturated.

[Vultural]

I Eromeni - 1982 - 4/10
AKA - Ι ερομενι   //  Passionate Lovers  //  The Ambitious Lover

Aspiring Greek dancer wants to meet the great entrepreneur producer so he can fulfill her dreams.
She makes a heady impression, and within five minutes they find a room for bouncy bouncy.
Wait!  He's already married!  Our dancer, Anna, she does not care.  It's love.
Wait!  The producer is in debt over 30 million dracma.  Oh well, easy come, easy go.
His wife, meanwhile, a jealous, ka-zillionaire sculptor, toys with a panting gym instructor.
The show numbers are cheap, interiors are empty, and an aura of sleaze pervades.
Worst of all, despite the nudity, trashy behavior, and weird subplots, the film bores.
Aside from the sultry María José Cantudo, no one else involved seems to make much effort.