Recommend a movie

[Vultural]

You’re Next - 2013 - 6/10

Justly praised slasher flick, for many reasons.
Family gathered at remote, grand home, for parents’ anniversary, gets attacked by killers wearing masks.
Gore is there, but not as much as gorehounds expect.  Not gratuitous, either.
Off kilter mix of savagery, suspense, and humor.  Story glides between darkness and black comedy.
Example would be the “lamb mask”.
Few lulls and fewer heroes.  Turns predictable after the major reveals.
Great nod to Dwight Twilley, too.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Paul Williams Still Alive - 2011 - 7/10

Exasperating documentary about Williams, composer, celebrity, who was everywhere throughout the 70s.
If you don’t know Williams, think “Rainbow Connection,” “Rainy Days & Mondays,” “Evergreen.”
The ‘moment’ never lasts forever, though.
The filmmaker was a constant interference.  Williams wanted to talk about his difficult childhood, the early death of his father;  the filmmaker focused on how Williams fell from Oscar winner to singing in hotels.  Williams agreed to a tour through terrorist filled Philippines;  the filmmaker griped and worried fearfully throughout.
The tour, by the way, was a huge triumph for Williams, in a part of the world where he is still renowned.
One gets the feeling the filmmaker had an agenda, accenting the negative, concentrating on the fall from grace.
Afterward, I had admiration for Williams, not the least for putting up with that guy for two frakking years!

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Superstar - The Karen Carpenter Story - 1988 - 7/10

Probably because I just watched a Paul Williams doc, I dug out this controversial film.
Superstar is a loving, banned, documentary/tribute to Karen Carpenter.
For multiple reasons, all too obvious, this is illegal to sell or distribute, yet easy enough to locate.
Todd Haynes short (45”) charts the rise, fame, and self destruction of the 70s singer.
Unfortunately, he failed to get any sort of rights at all - no doubt because denials would have been across the board.
The Carpenters estate launched an injunction against the film.
Most of the music is from The Carpenters, as well as label mates, so another cease order came from A&M Records.
Finally, there were no clearances from his troupe of actors - Barbie dolls - so Mattel sued.
For all that, a brilliant, inspired work, that has never vanished.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Armeeka - 2009 - 5/10

The trailer indicated a comedy of newly arrived Palestine woman navigating the USA with humorous results.
Apparently, the trailer caught the only funny moments of the movie.
Remainder of film is OK, showing the harsh realities of Palestine, and the difficulties of transitioning to a new culture (be it 1000 miles away or half a globe away) where your skills, contacts, and credentials mean little.
Not the comic gem it was marketed as.  Otherwise, fine.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Rhubarb - 1951 - 6/10

Eccentric, elderly tycoon dies and leaves his estate and baseball team to pet cat.
Disgruntled heirs and gamblers betting against the team try to off or kidnap the feline.
Fairly predictable material here.  Good cast anchored by Ray Milland.
The cat, a rather ugly orange tabby, is a force of nature.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

You Never Can Tell - 1951 - 6/10

Eccentric, elderly tycoon (of Polly Crackers) dies and leaves his fortune to his pet dog.
This time, bad guys target the heir and King, the dog, buys it.
In the afterlife, known as Beastatory, he pleads his case to the grand poobah and returns to Earth to put the bite on the real killer.
Dick Powell plays his incarnate human, detective Rex Shepherd.  Swear, I’m not making this up.
Imaginative, screwball lite comedy.  Depending on your tolerance for corn, an obscure gem.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

The Revenant - 2009 - 6/10

This was on the the top shelf, looking forlorn.  Also looked cheap and bad, yet it was calling to me.
Production was low-rent, but it did not wallow in its lack of money but cunningly overcame fiscal limitations.
An opening desert drive was filmed at night with halogen headlights, smoke and dust.
A later sequence filmed along Sunset Strip must have been shot at 3:00 AM;  about the only time that street is ever deserted.
Nor was the film bad.  The story was steeped in dark humor and acid comments.  Most were from the two leads, but every character was given funny bits.
Story wise, Bart ships off to Iraq, comes back dead.  Only he won’t stay that way.
Wakes up buddy, Joey, and they come up with a plan to keep him from rotting still further.
Laugh out loud funny.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

The Company You Keep - 2012 - 7/10

Nicely turned thriller of hunt for underground Weatherman.
If you are saying,  “Wha?”  that exposes an oversight in the script.
Precious little was given to the backstory, the late 60s - early 70s, when the Weathermen resorted to violence to end the Vietnam War, and also as a reaction to heavy handed government crackdowns.
Redford plays the underpaid, altruistic attorney who disappears into trains and rental cars, touching bygone comrades, with FBI agents and ambulance chasing reporters in pursuit.
Great cast with Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Julie Christie, Shia LeBeouf, Sam Elliot, among many others.
Held my interest throughout, followed by discussion why students are no longer so passionate.
“Cause there is no draft,”  someone said.  “Once students, male and female, get drafted for old mens’ wars, then they would make noise.”

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Chicago Syndicate - 1955 - 5/10

City officials recruit Federal accountant to infiltrate seemingly untouchable crime group.
Dennis O’Keefe shuffles through the bookkeeper role, while others around him generate a lot more voltage.
Xavier Cugat leads his band, smoldering Abbe Lane croons “One At A Time.”
Still, this is a B-movie quickie.  Only a handful of guys make up the mighty syndicate, and the nightclub they spend most of their time at is cheap looking.
Passable time waster.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

20 Feet From Stardom - 2013 - 5/10

Acclaimed documentary about background singers.
Some were genuinely cheated (Darlene Love), others held the spotlight for a bit (Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer).
Most were - are - simply that, background singers.
Filmmakers make this as interesting as they can, but it stuck me there would be little difference between this and a doc about Hollywood or television bit players.
Sly might have sung, “Everybody is a star,”  but sorry, no, everybody is not.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

The Man Who Would Be King - 1975 - 7/10

Big time, old fashioned adventure film based on Kipling.
Caine and Connery perfect as greedy scoundrels who trek from India to Kafiristan.
Intend to hoodwink the natives, seize the treasure, return to England dripping wealth.
Oh, the best laid plans . . .
Stunning photography (shot in Morocco’s mountains), magical sense of time and place.
Bit slow at times (Star Wars came out two years later, Raiders Lost Ark in ‘81.), and felt quaint when it came out.
Noteworthy for the lack of gore or gratuitous violence.

In the brief documentary, director John Huston commented that he had hoped to shoot this years earlier with Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart, but both died.
Thinking about it, this could have been made in the 40s with Errol Flynn and David Niven.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

I’m So Excited! - 2013 - 2/10
AKA - Los Amantes Pasajeros

Box reads:  “FIRST-CLASS HILARITY!"
Balls.
Shockingly awful film.  Even more appalling / distressing, it was written & directed by Pedro Almodóvar, who had been on a career streak up to this gobbler.
Jet circles over Spain, owing to disabled landing gear, allowing alcohol guzzling crew and 1st Class passengers to confess sexual secrets.  For no apparent reason, stewards prance musical number.
Sexual bathroom humor, rampant homosexual stereotypes, not to mention a sequence where a female passenger rapes an unconscious male.  If genders were reversed, would it be so “funny”?
Benny Hill did this nudge-nudge, wink-wink nonsense 40 years ago.  Yet times pass.
I ended up wondering if this is what Almodóvar values.  Or if this reflects Spanish behavior.
And knowing I had wasted of 90 minutes of my life.  Avoid.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Wir Sind die Nacht - 2010 - 7/10
AKA -  We Are The Night

Vampire tale, set in modern, neo-Weimar Berlin.
Throbbing nightclubs and blood cocktails.  Opulent production design worsens with the narrative.
The V word is never mentioned, by the way, and in this world, there are no male vampires.
The leader of the trio recruits a new member, who has trouble transitioning.
Story flows on a rockin’ pace, though characters don’t really “do” much aside from partying.
Boredom, ennui, debauchery punctuated by kills.  Sex implied, rather than graphic.
Very well cast - but - the English dub is godawful!  Shrill voice actors mar the tone.
So ...
If possible, find the FanEdit version by INH5,  (We Are The Night: Revamped).
German language (with English dub and editor commentary).
Deleted or unfinished scenes finished, enhanced and reinserted.  Also some new special effects.
Disclaimer:  I was a key previewer for this edit, and often shared my thoughts with the faneditor.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Ring Of Curse - 2011 - 6/10
AKA - Gomennasai  //  ごめんなさい

Another riff on the “grudge” theme, popular in J-films.
Setting is high school, and the usual tropes apply.
Popular girls bully the misfit.  Boys are props, standing around silently.  Adults = where?
Girls decide to produce the school play and coerce the brainy weirdo to write the script.
Unluckily for them, she knows select words to write, in precise order, to launch a death curse.
Not a bad film.  Better haunted schoolgirl movies are out there, but this is enjoyable enough and I watched this to the end bits past the credits.

Note:  The lone available English subs had timing errors and malformed spelling.
I corrected those, and uploaded - https://subscene.com/subtitles/ring-of-curse-gomennasai/english/850604.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Desert Flower - 2009 - 6/10

Lush biographical portrait of supermodel Waris Dirie.
Narrative swings back and forth between her perseverance in 80s London, her childhood in Somalia, and her excruciating solitary trek across the desert wastes to Mogadishu.
The imagery from Africa is gorgeous, though the gradual revelations from her childhood, grow increasingly horrifying.
Based on Dirie’s autobiography.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Alan Partridge - Alpha Papa - 2014 - 6/10

Sleepy, local radio station gets bought out by major broadcast chain.
Changes announced, staff “reassigned.”  One reacts poorly, however.
Hit n miss comedy, but misfires are rare.
Sharp satire of media culture in all its fake forms.
Steve Coogan effective as self-centered sleazebag who hurls everyone under the bus.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Like Someone In Love - 2012 - 6/10

Struggling female student, pretty (they are always pretty), earns needed income by visiting elder men.*
Her procurer pushes her toward a particular client, while urging her to drop her possessive, suspicious boyfriend.
Film almost exclusively talk (Japanese), broken with quiet moments as characters do mundane tasks.
Restless viewers will rush for the volleyball channel after twenty minutes.
Everyone else will recognize the slow trainwreck, and still be unprepared for the ending.

* I thought the casual co-ed hooker urban legend was an overused cliché.
Seen this plotline in way too many movies and TV shows.
Lo and behold, the local rag runs a story on a flock of pretty, neighborhood girls busted for solicitation.
All students at the most prestigious college in town, and a Christian one, at that.
They needed money for tuition, among other essentials.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Library Wars - 2013 - 3/10

Opening sequence.  A bustling library, packed with readers and book lovers, is attacked by a squad of black suited, masked men, toting machine guns and flame throwers.
Library staff massacred, patrons killed, 600,000 books go up in flames.
The government then clamps down on obscenity, hate books, controversial books.
Then books that give readers unacceptable thoughts:  horror, murder, politics, violence ...
Who can save the books?  The Library Defense Force is created, to stand against media censors!
Silly, far-fetched nonsense, based on popular manga, dawdles at length over fresh scrubbed recruit.
Between juvenile lulls, extended gun battles between the LDF and armies in riot gear devastate collections.
Preposterous beyond words.  All these people reading physical books - reporters hustling to print EXTRAS!
No mention of cloud storage, filehosts, downloading, digital copies (one ref to ebooks).
Wooden-faced actors play this dead serious, with lots of yawn inducing speechifying, and self sacrifice.

Edited May 26, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Edge Of Tomorrow - 2014 - 6/10

OK SciFi that grafted Battle Los Angeles with the endlessly repeating loop.
Callous, inexperienced coward dies and dies and dies, only to revive again.
With each awakening, he learns more about the alien Mimics, and perhaps how to thwart the invasion.
Yep, bug hunt.
The dead - resurrect bit was repeated much too often.
Pacing was brisk, but the repetition became tedious, then tiresome.  Film just felt sluggish.
J-Squad underutilized.
Not as awful as the naysayers shout, but not as good as it should have been.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Vultural

[Vultural]

Siren Of Atlantis - 1949 - 3/10
AKA - Atlantis, The Lost Continent

Fruity, cockeyed yarn about expedition searching for, and finding, fabled Atlantis.
The expedition is the French Foreign Legion.
Atlantis is in the middle of the Sahara!
Ruling the lost kingdom is a beautiful, ageless, sexually voracious queen.
Most of the citizenry act as guards or as dancers.  (No TV, no reading material, dancing is the main entertainment,)
The music score is intrusive and distracting, and bulk of the acting is histrionic.
Who cares?
Queen Antinea wears skin tight or sheer as can be outfits.  Plays chess with the men folk, leads them to her yawning conch shell bed, and drains their mojo, till their ain’t no wick in the stick.
Along with provocative costumes, is the $5.00 set design.  Cinematographer Karl Struss filled the flick with phallic imagery.   Candlesticks, chessmen, marble columns, even the omnipresent masked, turbaned guards.
Bad film but a fun one.

Edited May 25, 2020 by Vultural