I read some interesting things about LA ISLA MINIMA, but it won’t be shown in any theatre nearby.
already out on Blu
I wrote this about it a while ago:
LA ISLA MINIMA (2014, Alberto Rodriguez)
A stylish, very stylish thriller, set in Spain’s rural South, in 1980, that is: the immediate aftermath of Francoist Spain. In fact society is still dominated by memories of a period that is supposed to have ended, but is not yet history.
Two homocide inspectors are sent to Andalucia to investigate the dissappearance of two young peasant girls. It soon transpires that more girls have dissapeared in the recent past: they were all found dead after a couple of days, their bodies mutilated and dismembered. The main suspect is a local pimp and Casanova, the kind of guy all the girls fall for. Is he a serial killer or is he only a small cog in a much larger operation? Unfortunately the locals aren’t willing to communicate with the detectives, the more so because the older of the two is recognized as a former Francoist by a local journalist and a woman who’s supposed to have second sight …
The movie won no less than ten Goyas (Spanish Oscars) and was received remarkably well abroad. It holds a 90% approval on Rotten tomatoes. But still … As said it is stylish, in fact it’s so stylish and good-looking that you’d almost forgive its flaws. Some things are hinted at but not explained, but that is not really the problem (in post-Franco Spain many things remained unsaid), but a subplot about drugs goes nowhere and the movie also tends to betray its own premise, creating false expectations. In the end it’s a sociopolitical study rather than a thriller, and the tension that was built up in the course of the movie, seems to evaporate during the ambiguous finale.
However the coda, which offers a not completely unexpected, but still meaningful revelation, is both bitter and tragic (and makes you think).
7/10
Recently I’ve watched these 3:
The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)
When I had originally seen the trailer for this movie, I thought it was one of those fake, joke trailers. But they actually filmed this. Not that I’m surprised, I’ve already seen Machete, Hell Ride and few more of those postmodern in-joke fan tributes. But whenever I see one of those, it only adds to my impression that there is only one Quentin and someone should say to him that he doesn’t have to help every friend of his to make a movie. RZA the director could pass under ‘OK for an amateur’, RZA the non-actor is not even funny, but the thing that annoys me the most with these type of movies is that they are actually mainstream, big-budget productions, so they inherently loose all the charms of the amateurish B-movies that they try to emulate.
Lorna the Exorcist (1974)
I don’t have much mileage in Jess Franco’s filmography, but I decided to give this one a try. I was mostly bored, even by the pretty explicit nude scenes. Some scenes were slightly disturbing (I bet they were a lot more disturbing back in the day, than there are now), but the most positive thing I can say about this movie is the use of location. It really made the architecture of one those typical Mediterranean tourist complexes from the 60s/70s, full of concrete and futuristic shapes, look weird and uneasy.
Borsalino and Co. (1974)
French gangster movie set in the capital of French crime, Marseilles, can been seen as answer to both Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather. Its prequel was filmed 4 years earlier and it all-stared Belmondo and Delon. In the sequel, Belmondo is only seen at the start as a picture on the cross. He’s been murdered and his friend Delon is revenge-bound. I’ve read a comment that it is similar in structure to spaghetti westerns. It may have a point: background theme is that of change of times, new kind of organized crime is pushing out the old-school guys, while out front we have a tale of bloody revenge and anti-hero which is tough but can be hurt. Very noir in its sympathy for gangsters and with very graphic violence for its time.
1 Like
Lately I’ve been watching a bunch of ‘EROTIC/SEX’ films, some i had seen before and some i didn’t. So far i have these as my top ten, but that will probably change as i have others to watch.
1. Basic Instinct (1992)
2. 9 1/2 Weeks (1986)
3. Body Heat (1981)
4. The Story of O (1975)
5. Henry and June (1990)
6. The Dreamers (2003)
7. Sex and Lucia (2001)
8. Last Tango in Paris (1972)
9. Body of Evidence (1993)
10. Crimes of Passion (1984)
Oh!!..Won’t need the electric blanket tonight, then!
Good viewing!
Don’t you find though that - for the most part - they’re a pile of old shitbum? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a bit of grot every once in awhile (ie every weekend at least), but… well, when porn is so available, why watch an erotica pic? To me, it’s like needing a hammer but settling for a photograph of a hammer instead. It’s just not going to get the job done. 
Don’t get me wrong, I like and can watch porn whenever i want, but… (you know this as well as i do) "if you’ve seen one no-plot driven porn film you’ve seen them all. "
Now, as for an erotic film!..Well, sometimes it’s more fun and exciting for me and my Lady, (and pending on the film ) it helps provide for some hot sex later on.
“Maybe you should try that with missusCaress!”… instead of watching those Gawd-awful Godzilla shitbum films, no!
You’ll go blind, you dirty hobbit. 
But we watch proper pornos for that (she likes “dogging” and “trib” vids lately)! In fact I haven’t watched a porno without the missus in years.
I guess I’ve never seen an erotica pic with a compelling enough storyline (for me) to want to persist with it. I’ve just always found erotic elements in non-porn to be a fairly irritating distraction. It’s like the so-called “fan service” in anime films. I’ve got High School of the Dead, I think it’s a terrific little zombie show, but the titillation parts… they’re just daft, aren’t they? If I wanted to look at some massive busters (nothing wrong with that, for sure!), I’d hit XNXX up! 
Just imo, of course. 
Yeah! They have good videos, but the site is not that safe. You’ll will get a virus quicker than any other website if you’re not careful. Just saying…
I googled Triple X once, the Asian DVD company, to check if one of their releases had English audio. Don’t remember if it had …
‘All is Lost’
A superlative film…with about two lines of dialogue, in the whole cinematic experience.
Watch this…
An everyday account of a yaughtsman, who must conquer (without speech) , his fear…Robert Redford, sailor, has his yacht ‘holed’…he must survive…how he survives is the basis for the story.
How the vessel is damaged remains the secondary crux of the movie.
The main crux…and the one that exemplifies this film, is Robert Redford…a superlative performance, of a man on his own against the odds.
My thoughts:
Cheers, Last Caress,
It is a beautiful film…and - what I love - is that it is a film about the ‘Everyman’…we could all find ourselves in deep poo, and just be totally alone.
Myself, and the ‘missus’
Ider
forget the bit about ‘Me & Missus’, …and ider (please read prev. post)…even I don’t know who ider is!!
Last Caress: Wonderful words…fantastic review…very well done, Sir!!
An absolute joy to read!
1 Like
Yesterday: Shin Godzilla (Anno, 2016)
Finally got to see the latest Gojira pic, the first by Japanese studio Toho (the owners and creators of Godzilla) since Godzilla: Final Wars (Kitamura, 2004) and their third proper reboot of the franchise. This one only features the one monster, Godzilla himself, but here he’s a creature which can “evolve” almost on the fly, making him a bit of a transformer. His first sojourn onto dry land sees him as a quadrupedal, lizard-like creature (with some unfortunate googly eyeballs which would probably look more at home on The Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, but never mind). Having cut a swathe through a Japanese coastal town, he then rears up onto his hind legs and mutates into the monster with which we’re more familiar, before trundling back into the Pacific. By the time he resurfaces, he’s more than doubled in size, glowing red from the levels of radiation in his body (similarly to his condition in Takao Okawara’s Godzilla vs Destoroyah in 1995) and headed, of course, for Tokyo.
Just as the original Godzilla (Honda, 1954) was really a comment on the devastation wrought on the Japanese by the atomic bomb, so Shin Godzilla is really a comment on the triple-pronged 3/11 disaster which occurred in 2011 when a magnitude 9 “megathrust” earthquake hit just off the eastern coast of Japan, which caused a tsunami which in turn caused a massive meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, all of which resulted in almost 20,000 deaths. It was felt at the time that the Japanese government had been woefully unprepared for such a calamity and had reacted ponderously as events unfolded; much of the non-monster sequences in Shin Godzilla take place in one government building or another as the movie cuts quickly between the numerous agencies which would be tasked with the Godzilla problem: What is it? Is it a threat? What can we do about it? The government, law enforcement, armed forces, science departments, tech specialists… all are presented wringing their hands, theorising, pondering the legalities and logistics of enforced evacuations of millions of citizens, waiting on reports or authorizations from one another, whilst Godzilla heads ever closer into the big city. Even an envoy from the US gets in on the debacle, warning that, since the US covered up an old report theorising the advent of a mutation like Godzilla, the US intend to level the monster and everything else in order to nip this in the bud (initial attacks prove alarmingly ineffective in the face of Godzilla’s devastating nuclear-powered abilities).
Unusually, there is no parallel human story running alongside the bigger, monster-sized story in Shin Godzilla. There’s no workaholic-scientist-dad-who-f*cked-up-with-his-kids-and-needs-redemption, or maverick-prodigy-fighter-pilot-who-turned-alcoholic-when-his-wife-died-and-needs-redemption, or any other bugger needing redemption. No, it’s the Japanese system at large being asked to redeem itself this time. As a consequence, there are hardly any characters upon whom we can anchor ourselves; this feels a little jarring at first but, actually, it’s a refreshing approach. The special effects on display here are about as good as any I’ve seen from Toho (proto-Godzilla’s googly eyes notwithstanding) although of course they are nowhere near the standards of their western cinematic counterparts. Godzilla is absolutely massive in this film; at a scale approaching 400ft, he dwarfs the 160ft monster from the 1954 original. Peter Jackson’s King Kong from 2005 would barely reach his ankles. It’s a much more serious movie in tone than many of the movies in the franchise so it’s not a “fun” pic in the same, silly way many Godzilla films are but maybe Shin Godzilla is all the better for that. It’s a very entertaining movie and comes highly recommended if Kaiju pics are your thing.
Last Caress…
I have a soft spot for these ‘Godzilla/Gojira’ movies, but the only ones I have are ‘Godzilla’ films on American NTSC dvd, and my NTSC machine is packed away (Bugger!!)
Two years ago, I bought the ‘Daimajin’ Trilogy, and I’ve watched it twice now…brilliant…my kind of movie!!
I also bought the ‘new’ ‘Gamera’ bluray set (‘Revenge of Iris’ etc.)…
Without a doubt, you either have to be ‘tuned in’ to the Goddzilla/Gojira/Gamera/Daimajin’ or not…
Personally…I follow your ‘I’ve just bought’ threads with interest…
A very happy continued viewing!
RABBIT-PROOF FENCE (Philip Noyce, 2002)
A truly mesmorizing movie, describing the fate of three half-caste Aboriginal girls (they had an Aboriginal mother and a white father) who were taken away from their mother in the 1930s and brought to a settlement, according to the authorities 'for their own protection’. The Aboriginals were seen as a danger to themselves, but these half-caste girls could probably be turned into 'future whites’. The were trained for domestic work (the girls) or to work on the land (the boys); many of them were abused sexually (up to 60% of the girls). The three girls escaped from the settlement, making their way home, on foot, following the rabbit-proof fence from the title, a 1,500 miles journey through harsh territory, including the desert.
The movie was based on a novel by the daughter of one of the three girls, but the ending was changed a little to suggest a sort of happy ending, while the ordeal of the two girls that got home (the third one didn’t make it) never stopped. The film’s epilogue shows recent footage of the two remaining girls (now women in their eighties), in which they tell us what happened afterwards. Wonderfully told and acted, and beautifully filmed, you can almost sense the atrocious heat and the harshness of the arid landscape. Peter Gabriël’s brilliant score adds to the oppressive atmosphere of this small masterpiece. The film was critisized for not being historically correct, but in 2008 the Australian government officially apologized to the children of this ‚lost generation’ and their parents.
1 Like