Harlequin - Modern day retelling of the Rasputin story, wanted to see this for many years but never got around to it after seeing some clips, could have been on Terror In The Aisles maybe?
Up The Junction - I have a soft spot for these 60’s/70’s kitchen sink drama’s, this is one of the better ones along with Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush and All The right Noises. I particularly like seeing some of the locations and see how times have changed.
Seizure - Strange and enjoyable debut feature from Oliver Stone, Nick-Nack stole the show, proper funny with him jumping about.
Peaky Blinders - 6-part crime drama set in Birmingham in 1919, really enjoyed it, the second series will be shown soon.
Group of people including soldiers escape a military attack by using an old school bus. Simple tale with enough action to help forget about loopholes in the plot. Ferdinando Baldi directs.
American Grindhouse (2010)
A documentary about french nouvelle vague. I’m just kidding.
It was interesting, but it covered too much ground in 80 minutes so it moved too fast, I wish they’ve took more time to stop at some movies. It would probably be better if it was done as series. This way I’ve only marked one title in my watchlist, 1932 movie Freaks.
Most fascinating to me was a look at early days of pre-code era which I knew nothing about.
I like this Roger Corman biker movie. To me it is example of good exploitation. Provocative but not dumb.
Couple of years later Peter Fonda with couple of friends “went looking for America (on a bike) and found it nowhere”. He could have saved his trip had he listened to his own advice from this movie: there is nowhere to go…
Now here’s a really oddity, a film about a sensible British sound engineer that lives with his mother and raises small birds for an hobby, that is hired by an Italian Producer to work in an Italian terror/giallo film.
Saying this sounds like some weird stuff and it is. Our man (British actor Toby Jones), mostly works in films for children, spending time registering sounds from cows in the field, the sudden change for Italian horror away from home, was just too much for the sound engineer mind.
For me it’s hard to talk about this film in a fair way, when you love so much Italian horror films, this film it’s almost educational, and pays homage to that period of Italian cinema, unfortunately that doesn’t make it a good film straight away.
It’s a very hermetic and claustrophobic film, with most of the scenes taking palce in the sound studio, it works like a psychological thriller/terror. Toby Jones character starts to be affected by the story of the film he must create the sound effects for the. There’s also a cultural clash making thing worst for him, as he’s not used to Italian style of work, simple things like getting an invoice paid can be more complicated in the Italian way.
In the end the mix of macabre sound effects turns fiction into reality in the Sound Engineer mind, he really loses his grip, and enters in sort of limbo not knowing what real, or imagination.
The terror film he’s invited to work was titled “The Equestrain Vortex”, so he thought the film was about horses, and not a terror feast with, medieval depictions of hell, demons, screaming’s, killings, gore etc.
Have my doubts about the Lynch style ending, would like something more similar to a real Giallo ethereal and eerie ok, but more solid, and that spoiled the film to me, with the last quarter being too surreal.
Anyway some nice homages to films like Suspiria, Death laid an egg, and Italian terror in general. Back in the 70’s most of those films were shot soundless to make it easy to do several language dubs for other markets, with voices and sound effects being placed later in the studio, in a very important work for the final work (the same also happened with many SW). It’s also nice to see the type of things they used to create the sound effects watermelons vegetables etc.
Not a perfect film, I would like it to be more Giallo and less Lynch, but if you like Italian horror films Giallos, you should check this. Great acting from character actor Toby Jones.
The main idea is a good one, but Strieckland is no Argento and certainly not a Lynch, also lacks a typical Giallo soundtrack, in the end it lacks “the” something that the films it wants to pay homage to had plenty
Snow on tha Bluff (2011) - faux documentary focusing on some hood gangsters… the opening is pretty good but then becomes a total bore. Gave it two chances, turned it off midway
The Looters, 1955… A very slightly above-average mountaineering/crime-drama. Rory Calhoun is a post-war mountain ‘hermit’ who becomes embroiled in searching for plane-crash survivors/victims. One of the survivors stole money from a dead Treasury-agent. You can guess the rest, as Calhoun is forced to guide everybody off the mountain at-gunpoint. Imdb seemed to like it, but the so-called ‘mountain-scenes’ were never above the timberline.
The Happenings - A group of young people commit a robbery that goes wrong at a petrol station and one of the assistants dies, they spend the rest of the film escaping the law and causing more mayhem until the inevitable happens.
Shooter (2007) - Mark Wahlberg plays a highly skilled sniper who finds himself in a setup job being framed for a political assassination, and is now on the run while taking on the corrupt elements which set him up. Great sniper-action flic with a bit of conspiracy thrown into the mix. A bit long at 2 hours, but a good watch if you like sniper-themed action movies.
Normally is Hollywood who works on ideas already tested the screen by European directors, but not the case in this French police thriller.
The plot is about a flick and his hunt for a professional sniper that killed half of his crew when they were closing in a team of bank robbers in the act. Of course that as the detective starts digging for the responsible for the massacre, he finds out that things are not so simple and there’s something to hide.
Like others have notice, the story is similar to Michael Mann Heat, and Placido directing style drinks from Mann, which is quite obvious, of course there’s a bit of European complexity making the plot more close to the European style toward the mid-section of Le Guetteur. The initial scene (the bank robbery) was breathtaking.
Daniel Auteuil and Mathieu Kassovitz really do a good job, even if Auteuil starts to look a little old for these type of parts.
It’s a well made film, maybe done with unnecessary complexity and na implausible plot in my view, but regardless that and the original inspiration (wasn’t Mann inspired by Melville in first place), it’s a fine example of the fine tradition of French police thrillers, maybe the best one directed by an Italian.
Yes, only after doing some research I notice this wasn’t Michele Placido first directing job, by the contrary, I really didn’t know he was working as a director.
Wolfgang Petersen’s Outbreak (1995): as relevant now as at anytime since it’s release (sadly), this is for the most part, excellent. Petersen really excels with the set-up, aided by Michael Balhaus’ immaculate, steady-cam cinematography. Hoffman gives another of his polished performances, although the much rewritten script abandons Rene Russo and Kevin Spacey’s character. The spread of the virus from Africa to a small, West coast town is convincingly detailed, as is the military response. Yet once Donald Sutherland’s cartoon villain enters and tries to have Hoffman arrested, it degenerates into a rather average thriller, with a climax that hovers dangerously near the ludicrous. Still a fine ride, but one shouldn’t be blind to the fact it could have had a helluva a lot better third act.
Hurra, die deutsche sexpartei (1974)
-Really awful and stupid german sex comedy about a woman running political sex-party and a police trying to stop her business. But at least there was a guy with many sw posters on his wall:
Kite (2014) - The recent live-action adaption of this controversial anime about a young girl stolen and used as an assassin. An American movie but filmed in Johannesburg, South Africa, this film is very similar in its hyper-violent style to other action flics coming out of South Africa like Dredd. The film is extremely stylistic, probably too much so for many viewers. Samuel L. Jackson is the only name I recognize in this film, who plays the girl’s handler.
I didn’t think I would like Kite from the trailer, and even during the first portion of the film I felt like I wasn’t going to like it, but it won me over by the end. A good handful of references to the anime, and I’m happy they at least attempted to partially recreate the bathroom sequence.
If the filmmakers would have taken a less music-video-stylistic approach, and instead been more low-key this could have been really great.
Not quite as good to the original, but still a decent watch. Visually and technically fantastic and it’s a little bit more brutal than the first, but weak in parts… mainly in the story and dialogue. In spite of that, it still manages to be entertaining though. Mickey Rourke’s character didn’t disappoint nor didn’t a very nude Eva Green. 6/10
I really liked Powers Booth… can’t really say any actor was better than the other, none gave a bad performance, imo… I thought it was as good as the first, I don’t understand the negative reviews
6/10
