When the Austrian Film Museum screened Fuller’s complete works in 2006, I saw most of his films but somehow missed Shark!. At the same time I read his autobiography, A Third Face, and since his own commentary on that film was very negative, I never bothered to watch it. Will get the DVD.
Didn’t realize that.
Empire Records (1995), directed by Allan Moyle
The Last of Sheila (1973), directed by Herbert Ross
Tried to continue my historical-critical retrospective of Liv Tyler’s œuvres complètes with her third film, Empire Records, but found myself unable to fight through it and had to throw in the sponge. I really, really hate to admit it but I felt at least thirty years too old for that movie, a comedy about teenage record store employees with questionable musical preferences (surprisingly, a poster for Love Agenda, the formidable second album by Band of Susans, is displayed prominently in several scenes, although the record was released in 1989, six years prior to the film’s premiere).
Speaking of childhood memories: I next watched The Last of Sheila, the first twenty minutes of which I had caught around 1980 when it was shown on Austrian television. But alas, my attentive parents deemed it then too disturbing for my tender mind and age and, much to my chagrin, sent me to bed (admittedly, I was a bad sleeper, plagued by recurring nightmares). Now, more than thirty-five years later, I’ve finally assured myself I hadn’t missed that much, the film being a somewhat convoluted, fairly entertaining whodunit thriller, set on a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea. Worthy of note are two disparaging remarks concerning Spaghetti Westerns, dropped by a snappy talent agent (Dyan Cannon) and James Coburn’s character, a sardonically overbearing film producer.
By the time The Last of Sheila was made, Coburn’s sadly short Italian Western career had already ended.
THE SPY WITH MY FACE (1965, John Newland)
One of the two feature length movies based on the famous TV-series THE MAN FROM UNCLE from the sixties (the other one being To Trap a Spy, in some countries the films were released as a double feature). Robert Vaughn and David McCallum reprise their roles as secret agents Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuryakin. The base for the movie was an episode called “The Double Affair” from the first season (1964), but various additional scenes were shot, mainly to spice things up.
Along with some colleagues, Solo and Kuryakin, the two top agents of counter espionage organization UNCLE (United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) are assigned to take a top secret code to a hidden location. Things seem to go as planned, but Solo was seduced by a double-agent (Senta Berger) and the team has been infiltrated by a Solo double (both the double-agent and the Solo double were trained by UNCLE adversary THRUSH). The Solo double manages to photograph the code, which gives access to an underground vault in the Swiss Alps, containing a secret weapon of mass destruction. THRUSH is now able to destroy the world, but of course there’s only one real Napoleon Solo (and there’s also Napoleon’s latest girlfriend who notices that there’s something weird going on: the Solo double walks, talks, looks and fights like the real one, but his kiss is definitely not the real thing …)
I wanted to see the original Solo & Kuryakin in action again because I recently watched the Guy Ritchie re-boot/update. With Robert Vaughn playing both Solo and his double, this is a real Solo show, Mccallum’s Ilya is no more than a supporting actor here. The story element of the double infiltrating the Uncle-team is well-handled, but is mainly used to save an otherwise hackeneyed plot about an end-of-the-world crisis. Fun for former fans of the TV show, others won’t probably bother with it.
3 minus (out of 5)
Kickboxer: Vengeance (2016)-This is more or less a reboot of the original 1989 movie. Jean-Claude Van Damm for most of his screen time was the best thing in this and there’s some good fighting scene’s but unfortunately, it’s nothing in comparison to the original. Grade C movie all the way!
Criminal (2016)- Not a big fan of Kevin Costner, but i liked his performance in this action/thriller film.The story/plot line is just completely ridiculous beyond belief, but it held my interest and was pretty entertaining nevertheless. Not bad for an early Sunday flick.
RENT-A-COP
This is Burt Reynolds’ least successful movie, grossing only a little under $300,000 back home and not much more overseas. It could be characterized as a Bad Cop-Good Hooker movie, almost playing like a romcom, but with some violence XL thrown in. Burt is a police officer who is fired after a drug bust went fatally wrong: both his colleagues and the drug dealers were mowed down by a psychopatic killer. He first becomes a security guard in a mall, is fired again, and is then contacted by a hooker who was in the appartment where the fatal shootout took place (for an appointment with a customer) and is now targeted by the killer because she might have seen his face.
Both Burt and Liza Minelli were nominated for a Razzie and the film is far from good but if you’re expecting something really bad - like I did - it might still be bearable and Liza’s performance as a high prized hooker is actually quite good. Burt had hit bull’s eye - at least financially - with a few comedies in the style of Smokey and the Bandit, and many fans now saw him as a comic actor, but he himself was still treasering his tough guy image and that’s part of the problem of this movie. Are we going to do a straightforward cop-versus-killer movie or shall we play it for laughs? Some of the action is decent, most of the would-be funny scenes (Burt as a security agent dressed up like Santa, Liza crawling around, tied to a chair) aren’t funny at all, but Liza scores with a few witty and raunchy repartees. And Burt is still Burt.
2+ (out of 5)
Fat City. Superb film directed by John Huston, starring Stacy Keach and Susan Tyrrell, both give outstanding performances, truly great acting. A personal favorite, so much more than a ‘boxing movie’. Have seen it many times and looking better than ever on Twilight Time blu-ray.
Fury (2014)
Disappointed. It has very high score at imdb (7.6), but if you got to most popular reviews, every single one of them is negative, and this one nails it right in the title: “A horrific and emotional journey through every war movie cliché”.
Movie tries to sell gore and mud under substance, but in the end it lacks it and just relies at too many war movie cliches. If you haven’t seen it I know you will be curious and will not listen to my advice, but your time would be better spent watching Saving Private Ryan again.
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I didn’t mind Fury tbh; didn’t love it, but didn’t mind it. I agree though that it appears to want to be Saving Private Ryan, and it’s not.
I liked it, even though I noticed several weaknesses. Don’t know exactly why, the movie and I seemed to be on the same wavelength. On the other hand I didn’t really like Saving Private Ryan.
Blood Father (2016)-Mel Gibson makes a return in this above average action movie that show’s just how good of an actor he really is and he makes the most of it with his role. Yes, we’ve all seen this kind of film before and yes it’s predictable and cliched, but who cares!..It entertained me and that’s what counts, welcome back, Mel.
FACES IN THE CROWD (2011, Julian Magnat)
Faces in the crowd is a thriller of the serial killer kind, but it’s not just the umpteenth entry in this waning subgenre: it stars Milla Jovovich as a woman who suffers from prosopagnosia after she has survived an attack from a killer known as Tearjerk Jack (he cries over his victims). Prosopagnosia? Well, that is a real - if very rare - disorder, meaning that the person suffering from it is not able to recognize faces, not even those of her friends or relatives - occasionally not even the face in the mirror. I had only vaguely heard about this intruiging disorder (reminiscent, in some aspects, to short-term memory loss) and it’s interesting to learn more about it, the more so since director/screenwriter Julian Magnat has obviously done his homework.
The story element of the woman who has seen the killer but can’t remember his face provides the movie with a few unique, oddly suspenseful scenes. A couple of times Jovovich discovers that she and the killer must be in the same room (a disco, a train compartment) and therefeore starts looking for clues that might identify the man stalking her … but all faces have become anonymous, faces in the crowd. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the rest of the story is no more than cherry-picking plot elements from other serial killer movies.
Jovovich has definitely matured as an actress and turns in a decent performance here; she gets some support by Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck) and - of all people - Marianne Faithful (as a therapist specialised in prosopagnosia) but it’s her movie: not only is she the moral and emotional compass of the movie, but we literally see faces the way she does, as if we’re suffering from the same visual impairment, which means those faces blur and keep changing, sometimes in the middle of a scene. The effect of these scenes is quite spooky, but this decision to vizualize the disorder, also leads to a lot of confusion: when the identity of the killer was finally revealed, I asked myself where on earth I had seen that face before.
3- (out of five)
A quite stunningly beautiful woman, IMHO. But, bless her, she’s a virtual guarantee of mediocrity (and I say that as someone who doesn’t mind the Resident Evil pictures).
I haven’t seen this one though scherp, the idea sounds interesting even if the execution doesn’t, particularly.
You don’t become a fan of her because of her thespian talents, that’s for sure (I watch everything she’s in for her beauty), but, as said, she hs become a little better over the years. I don’t mind the resident evil pictures either, they’re energetically made movies, and have Milla as a bonus.
http://imgur.com/a/xgeFj
The Neon Demon (2016)
While I liked both ‘Drive and Only God Forgives’ this lasted film from Director Nicolas Winding Refn billed as a horror/drama about the vicious world of modeling/fashion industry in La La land was not a good watch for me . It turned out to be really boring right from the get go with many useless scenes stretched way too long with nothing much being said, mediocre acting and awful dialogue. It only got interesting in the last 20 minutes or so, but by then I just wanted to end. I’ll admit though that the film boasts some great visuals with beautiful colors, cinematography and a decent soundtrack which at times reminded me of a Giallo, but that alone (boys and girls) does not make for a good movie experience. So…all and all this was a waste of time!!!
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Saw Drive (2011), watched Valhalla Rising (2009), then decided to take an indefinite break from Winding Refn’s films.
,
Yeah, his films are not for everyone.
Spectre - Ugly, bland film, imo… I don’t know where the 250 million goes… and the twist at the end, why?
I liked both movies, at least didn’t dislike them, but two Refns was enough for me as well and I don’t think I’ll ever watch one of these two movies again
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