Sitting Target - Great stuff, Oliver Reed and Ian McShane escape from prison and all hell breaks loose. It’s a criminal act itself why this hasn’t got a dvd release.
Agreed this is a much overlooked crime film.
I haven’t seen La pirate, but Le petite criminel is Doillon at his best.
Doillon is a pretty unknown director outside France. Most of his films were released theatrically in Germany, but none so far on DVD. His potential audience is a very small one.
The New Barbarians
Watched this post-apocalyptic tale the other day. This movie is a huge piece of shit, but it’s one of those great shits that leaves you feeling good after its over. George Eastman is the best actor in this flick. He does a great job as the Templar leader known as “One”. I did find the “punishment” scene where One shows Scorpion who’s the boss so to say, a little odd. Other than that it was a good movie, far from great, but all in all i enjoyed it.
PIRANHA 3D - (In 2D) A cgi craptacular but it was a whole lotta fun and I enjoyed it, plenty of titties on display too
:o
Kelly Brook on the hook
Just watched NAKED COMES THE HUNTRESS, I thought this was quite good but it started better than it finished. Chen Hsing and James Tien star. Hsing seemed at first to be a good guy but after half an hour or so he shows his true colours and turns out to be a right bastard.
I wonder if there is two versions of this film or some “softer” scenes were shot for the trailer? In the film she lays there without a stitch on and all is to be seen but in the trailer she is clothed.
[size=12pt]La Polizia chiede aiuta[/size] (1974, Massimo Dallamano)
Still in Modo Massimo I watched this one, Dallamano’s most controversial movie
Film is a sort of mix of poliziotescho and giallo: it has a hatchet wielding murderer, but he’s not a psychopatic killer, but a foot soldier of a criminal organization, making money with child prostitution. It’s not the point that it’s rather sensasionalist (sensasionalism can be rewarding in certain cases, like some of the film’s defenders have stated), but it pretends to be an indictment of sexual exploitation, but is unmistakenly exploitative itself. The fact that it’s very well made, seems to make it even more suspicious. Certainly on the edge.
In English the film is called What have they done to your daughters?, a reference to Dallamano’s succesful What have they done to Solange?, made two years earlier. even if you accept the controversial subject matter and Dallamano’s hypocritical approach, this movie can’t hold a candle to Solange. The Italian title means: The Police asks for Help.
Giovanna Ralli stars as a DA, Mario Adorf as a police officer, who gets personally involved in the drama. Six years after The mercenary, Ralli looks 12 years older. She has become a chain-smoker and was made-up to look like Sophia Loren (she looked a little like a scale-model, if you know what I mean).
Yes, those Dallamano What Have You Done… movies, like many other faux-exposés of the period, pose a lot of problems, wallowing in the criminal activities they propose to decry. I like them, but I don’t take them too seriously, certinly not as any kind of valid social statement.
So many exploitation movies have the same kind of mixed agenda, of course.
Based on Topo’s mini review from a few weeks a go I decided to give Fulci’s Beatrice Cenci a go. And very glad I did too. Strange to see Fulci making such an historic drama but in the end it proves him to be a far more versatile director than some (including me) may have thought. I like Fulci but have always thought his penchant for gore limited him as a director. But here, despite some prolonged torture scenes, the emphasis is all on the drama and, as Topo said, his visual composition is stunning. I haven’t seen all of Fulci’s films so I can’t say if this is his best but I have seen a fair number and despite rating a number of them very highly I can’t think of one that is better than this.
It does have its faults of course but these are more than outweighed by its strengths which include a much more subdued Milian performance and a very powerful Georges Wilson one as well as the afore mentioned visual beauty of it all.
Recommended.
Sur le seuil by Éric Tessier (2003)
Based on the novel of the same name, written by Québec’s answer to Stephen King (Patrick Senécal), Sur le seuil is one of the very few québécois horror movie there is. It all starts with the news coverage of a massacre in which a cop shot and killed eleven kids. On the same day, the famed author Thomas Roy (Patrick Huard) cuts his fingers and attempts suicide, he survives but is stuck in a catatonic state. The writer is then put in a mental hospital under the care of Dr. Paul Lacasse (Michel Côté). The doctor discovers that a series of tragedies that have occurred in the past are eerily similar to ones that appear in Roy’s books. Is Roy simply inspired by real life events or is it the other way around?
The movie mostly alternates between poorly made scenes (like the aforementioned “news coverage”) and slightly more effective ones, but it never achieves anything particularly memorable or good. Story-wise, I was kind of bothered by the fact that it unveils like a mystery and yet the protagonist is spoon fed all the information, he doesn’t really work for it. And the characters all seem to accept the fact that something supernatural might be happening too quickly, the doctor excepted, but his transformation into a “believer” isn’t executed much better. The acting is all over the place. Sometimes Michel Côté just looks bored, other times he is pretty good. Patrick Huard (who is mostly a comedic actor) is positively surprising as the disturbed writer. Catherine Florent is close to being awful. The film is often inter cut with weird, cryptic and satanic visuals that really take you out of the experience, especially since they’re all shown during the opening credits.
It’s kind of funny that my favourite scene in a horror movie was just lighthearted chatter between three priests (“At the speed at which you condemns your fellow parishioner, Hell might as well be sold out by now” or something like that is said by the youngest, also a good actor, but he barely did anything according to IMDb). Hard to recommend.
Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)
I can see why a lot of people may not like this film as not much happens, but I generally enjoy it since I really like Taantino’s Leone-esque style of directing. It’s basically just a small handful of scenes topped off with a great car chase.
I like Death Proof as a film more than either volume of Kill Bill or Inglourious Basterds. Go figure.
I think Kill Bill is better, but I liked Death Proof
I actually was a bit surprised that so many people didn’t, it’s a great fun action movie
Island of the Fishmen.
Group of men get stranded on an island full of man size weird creatures that live in the water. The creatures are really crap looking and the film is a disapointment considering directed by Sergio Martino who did some excellent films in the 70’s.
[quote=“scherpschutter, post:3915, topic:1923”]I think Kill Bill is better, but I liked Death Proof
I actually was a bit surprised that so many people didn’t, it’s a great fun action movie[/quote]
I wasn’t sold on Russell’s car being ‘sinister’ enough… and it probably shouldn’t have been black. Other than that, the work is a solid nail.
[quote=“scherpschutter, post:3915, topic:1923”]I think Kill Bill is better, but I liked Death Proof
I actually was a bit surprised that so many people didn’t, it’s a great fun action movie[/quote]
I liked DP a lot too. I might have had low hopes based on the general consensus but I find it a very fun, unique & well made movie.
Had my second viewing of Glauber Rocha’s amazing Antonio das Mortes last night, the first time on DVD.
It helps to have a little grounding in the film’s historical and production context, its writer/director’s place at the heart of Brazil’s aggressively ideological Cinema Novo movement, the myths associated with the desert-like sertao where it takes place, and the folkloric roots of the characters (I know El Topo can chip in here), but in general this is a more approachable work than its predecessor, Black God, White Devil.
That film introduced the central figure here, the brooding assassin Antonio das Mortes, played by the wonderfully lugubrious Mauricio do Valle, who roams the ‘backlands’ of northern Brazil with his rifle and machete, killing cangaceiros - social bandits - at the behest of landowners. Now weary of killing and plagued by guilt, Antonio takes on ‘one last job’, to kill the last of the cangaceiros, Coirana, who has teamed up with a millennial sect and is making revolutionary noises. Along the way, however, Antonio has a change of heart and turns on the landowner and his hired guns instead.
It reads and looks (broadly) like a Western, and Rocha’s violent climax plays like a crazed mockery of Leone or Peckinpah. But this is a Brazilian film, and it is steeped in native folklore and mythology. All the major characters have an allegorical function - some of them have several (the original title refers to St George and the dragon, embodied alternately by Antonio and Coirana) - while ballads and dialogue allude to Brazilian history and politics. There’s no attempt to involve the audience, as there would be in a conventional narrative film, an approach that many are likely to find offputting.
The stark, black-and-white realism of Black God is replaced by gaudy colours, exaggerated gestures and jarring editing. Early on, a static camera predominates, with characters often addressing their lines, in dry tones, straight at the lens. But gradually, after Antonio’s ritualistic duel with Coirana, a collective mania kicks in, and the action becomes much more operatic.
Black God is the better film overall, but this is a singular and striking experience in its own right - a Third World Western with revolutionary intent.
[url]http://img718.imageshack.us/i/220pxspliceposter.jpg/[/url] [size=12pt]Splice[/size] (2009, Vincenzo Natali)
![http://img718.imageshack.us/i/220pxspliceposter.jpg/[/url]](http://img718.imageshack.us/i/220pxspliceposter.jpg/%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
Canadian-French (English spoken) sf-horror-fantasy movie, about a couple of genetic engeneers who add ‘the human DNA factor’ to their techniques of splicing animal DNA to create new hybrid creatures. When the technique works, they accidently create an almost human, female hybrid. They try to hide the creature, baptized Dren (it was created by two Nerds), for the outside world, but the hybrid has a mind as well as desires of her own, including sexual desires.
Funny, touching, gripping and intelligent, but (alas) losing track along the way, ending in true ‘horrible’ fashion.
The film isn’t as far removed from what is scientifically possible today, or will be possible in the near future, as some might think. In fact, I’ve seen and heard more than enough in some laboratories to suppose that several creatures like this Dren have already been created (and are kept within the confines of those laboratories). They will of course look different - probably not as attractive - and won’t have grown this fast.
So if you accept some of the anomalies (and clichés) this is an inspiring fantasy on genetic engeneering
Both Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley are excellent as the nerds, French actress, model and DJ Delphine Chanéac a sexy hybrid.