Vultural

X-Files: Exordium (taken from S01 episodes) - ThrowgnCpr

An excellent introduction to “X-Files,” especially for newcomers.
“X-Files” found an audience readily enough, but finding its narrative footing took longer.
Neither Duchovny nor Anderson seem comfortable in their roles in the Pilot, though by “Deep Throat,” Duchovny had found his Mulder. The “Erlenmeyer Flask” section is by far the strongest, with Anderson secure as Scully.

Video - Grain is to be expected (all my “X-Files” DVDs suffer from it). Cropping to create a widescreen view worsens this, but blacks remain solid and aside from a few pan jitters, the look is fine.
Editing is OK, though it is apparent when one episode concludes and another begins.

Audio - Solid work here, as well. I could do without the final music at the end. Editor’s perogative, I understand.

Narrative - The three episodes selected are wise choices of the earliest views on the “myth” strands of arcs that would be elaborated and explored to dizzying heights in subsequent seasons.
Did this feel like a movie? No. The three stories never transition or connect well.
Best intentions notwithstanding, the resultant edit remains locked in its episodic roots. Not that this is a bad thing. For me, however, the Season 01 pales in comparison with S02, S03 and S04.

Enjoyment - Very much, though, again, I am not a fan of S01. Aside from a handful of episodes, I never view that season. This edit, however, I suspect I will return to numerous times. If nothing else, it is a concise package showing Duchovny and Anderson grow into characters, and spotlights how swiftly the overall writing improved.

Kafka - 1991 - 7/10

Non-descript insurance clerk (and part time writer), Franz Kafka, finds himself entangled with revolutionaries, secret police, anarchists, spies, and the imperious palisade known as The Castle.
Highly stylized film by Soderbergh is part Noir, part Gothic.
Unsettling narrative steeped in paranoia and anxiety.
Third act “Castle” sequence borrows heavily from Brazil. The same black humor abides, though in Kafka it is more brittle, less fatalistic.
Dialogue often conveyed multiple meanings so one has to keep alert.
Outstanding set design (Prague) of empty streets, endless midnight.
Kafka’s works, like Orwell’s, grow disturbingly relevant to our era.

Hagazussa - 2017 - 7/10
AKA - A Heathen’s Curse

Labeled as Horror, though I don’t necessarily agree.
Close in tone to 2016’s The VVitch, only the environment is more primitive, and the community more fragmented.
A mother and daughter live isolated from the nearby village. They raise goats, barter milk.
Because they are isolated, they are viewed with suspicion. Outsiders.
Film beautifully captures the austerity of hardship.
While slow (the girl, later woman, Albrun, often spends great lengths staring, seemingly vacantly), there is a lot going on. An immersion, if you will, into Nature, the pulsing life force.
This is also a tale of vengeance, though the distracted will probably miss it.
Well worth your time. And I still dislike the Horror label as I fear that will mislead casual sorts into expecting modern attitudes and plot devices. I wish there was another label.

Pain And Glory - 2019 - 6/10
AKA - Dolor y Gloria

I watched because this is by Almodóvar, who I view as a spiritual nephew of Woody Allen.
And, as with Allen, just because this bears Almodóvar’s name, the result may not be a masterpiece.
Anyway, a renowned director (Almodóvar), suffers physical pain and creative crises.
Childhood reveries wash over his thoughts, he tries to connect with old friends and colleagues.
Banderas is exemplary is this, yet the actual story is so much watered down milk.
Damn little of the life on parade is noteworthy or compelling.
Perhaps golden to the aging director, the chapters come across as banal.

Gwen - 2018 - 6/10

“Steal a sheep and they’ll take your hand. Steal a mountain and they’ll make you a lord.”

Gwen, young sister Mari, and their mum struggle to keep their Welsh farm.
Mid 19th century, and Dad is away at war, understand? Things are difficult.
Dialogue is minimal in this, as is human interaction. The story is seen from Gwen’s eye,
The atmosphere, the natural world, crushes down. By and by, you realize the family is ostracized.
Standing in the back, not even lurking in the shadows, is a man of wealth and power.
An old story, one that extends into prehistory, of small people trying to hold onto what little they own.

I Wake Up Screaming - 1941 - 7/10

A rising socialite is found murdered! Prime suspects - her sportswriter boyfriend and her own sister.
The detective in charge is convinced of the boyfriend’s guilt and he begins to grind him down.
Highly influential, half forgotten thriller / mystery filled with flashbacks, pungent dialogue and pursuits.
For me, this is where the American "look” of Film Noir begins.

The story and characters are not Noir, however. Time is still, barely, pre World War II.
Returning G.I.s would carry disillusionment and a grimmer outlook. The tone of this harks to an earlier time.
An underrated Victor Mature fine as the cornered sportswriter.
Betty Grable, before her mass popularity, radiant as lush American good girl.
The star, though, is Laird Cregar (only 24, looks older), tackle sized with purring voice.

Cregar, and brilliantly stylized camera work.
I Wake Up Screaming is packed with angles, shadows, and inventive camera movement.
DVD has outstanding commentary by Eddie Muller: anecdotes, histories, tragic lives of Cregar and Landis.

Flirting With Fate - 1916 - 6/10

August is broke, behind on rent, can’t feed his two dogs. What’s his problem?
Oh, he’s a struggling artist. Say no more.
Still, he encounters a prim, starchy miss who makes his heart go boom-boom-boom.
Misunderstandings follow and then she troths to a rival.
In despair, Auggie hires Automatic Joe to murder him!
At which point, Fate laughs and turns the artist’s fortunes around.
Then the pace roars full throttle, with madcap chases, dizzying stunts, and farce humor.
Creaky film, threadbare plot, yet an excellent chance to witness Douglas Fairbanks in his prime.
Before he started making longer, heroic adventure films (not that those are lesser).

Die Fälscher - 2007 - 6/10
AKA - The Counterfeiters

Based on Operation Bernhard, the secret unit inside Camp Sachsenhausen.
Objective, to counterfeit Bank Of England notes, then use the Luftwaffe to shower Britain.
This focuses on Salomon Sorowitsch, a master forger (also a Jewish prisoner) who ran quality control.
He is a “survivor’ compared with other characters who act as ethical pillars.
The film is based on a true story, but individuals have been modified and / or embellished.
Timelines have also been modified, and this also merges Operation Bernhard with Operation Andreas.
This is a solid film with brisk storytelling. The unnecessary historical tamperings irk me.

The Great Nazi Cash Swindle - 2004 - 6/10

Highly watchable documentary of a shadowy footnote in World War II.
Nazis decide to counterfeit Bank of English notes, then drop millions of them into the cities.
Afterward, rely on human greed and self-interest to hurl the country into financial chaos.
Interviews range from historians and financial experts, to a few, still surviving, actual counterfeiters, Jewish men from concentration camps.
The story takes interesting turns and will appeal to budding tycoons.
Nations have dodgy histories of counterfeiting during war times. Perhaps during peace times, too!

Tweddell, Benjamin - Sermons In A House Of Grief

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things …”

Problem is, childhood connections are often as strong as steel, and impossible to break from.
Controversial Professor Eskola delivers, apparently, his final, firebrand lecture.
Overnight, weariness has become overwhelming. Time to put this career, his second, to rest.
An encounter with an old colleague, childhood colleague, leads to an impulsive journey.
The train rumbles into the past, into a bitter childhood filled with memories that have begun flowering.
This brooding novella, set primarily in backwoods Finnish hamlets, is a troubling one of abuse and worship.
The sect of Kartanoism, with its terrors of the apocalypse, is neither more nor less relevant today.
Nor is the exploitation of children and the stripping of innocence.
Mr Tweddell has unearthed a distant sect (and perhaps still lingering) and given it wings. Black wings.
As always with this publisher, the book is a work of art in itself. Beautiful endpapers, haunting photos.

After reading, I began crawling through history’s rabbit hole of Alma Kartano and Tilda Reunanen, ending with the congregation Mansion.
True faith is ever the hard path.

The Black Cat - 1981 - 6/10
AKA - Gatto Nero

Alright feline fanatics, and cat haters, line up!
In small village England, a medium tries to communicate with the dead.
He’d best hurry, because the deaths mount. All instigated by a growling black cat!
Odd Lucia Fulci film, loosely based on Poe (ha!), suffers from almost incoherent plot and poorly interacting characters.
The demises, of which there are quite a few, differ and are imaginative, especially when you keep in mind that the cat has to be a plausible killer.
Nonetheless, I’d like to hear how the feline(s) took direction.

Poms - 2019 - 5/10

Diane Keaton, Jacki Weaver, Pam Grier, Rhea Perlman play residents in a retirement community.
They decline the existing, rather cliquish, clubs, and instead form a cheerleading squad.
I kid you not. (And more proof I don’t control the remote.)
Formulaic, clichéd storyline wastes a good cast trapped in by-the-numbers script.
Who was the target audience anyway? Over 60’s females? Do enough still frequent movie houses to make a hit?
The females I watched Poms with enjoyed it more than I, and they laughed throughout.
Go figure.

Mrs. Lowry & Son - 2019 - 6/10

By day, L S Lowry collects rent in impoverished neighborhoods.
At night, he dotes on his mother and paints his thoughts and moods on canvas.
His mother, who once had social aspirations, is controlling, cruel, and belittling.
No encouragement from that quarter whatsoever.
Not so much a character study as a “couple” study. Mother and son.
Aside from brief street scenes, and a few ghostly flashbacks, the dramatics play out inside their shared flat.
Acting is superb, but this is very stagebound.
Downbeat film may appeal to creative sorts, who generally receive limited encouragement.

Sideshow:
^

During a lunch break at the bygone job, I was scribbling another masterpiece.
One of my coworkers, an artist, said, “It’s so easy for you. All you need is a pen and any sort of paper. None of the expense of pads, canvases, paints, etc …”
“Oh yeah? How many of the girls here have you drawn, at your apartment?”
“Three, four,” he shrugged.
“And how many have asked you to sketch them?”
“Another five,” he smiled.
“You know how many girls ask me to write about them?” I asked. “Zero!”
Another coworker spoke. “You guys should be musicians. Girls throw themselves at us.”
^

Murder Is My Beat - 1955 - 5/10

My mistake. I mistook Barbara Payton for Beverly Michaels and grabbed this from my stash.
Pretty bad film from the get-go. Note police captain in awful black n white checked sportcoat. Ugh.
Dead man found in fireplace, face and hands burned beyond recognition.
Blame falls on girlfriend - clubgirl - hooker at cheap bar.
Cop traces her to mountain cabin (chance to see snow for no reason).
Atrocious dialogue, like the writer attempted wiseguy Noir and ended up with junior high mimicry.
Acting uniformly bad. Photography ranges from static to overused stock. No pace.
There must have been ten minutes of trains roaring past. Plus, a couple minutes tour inside a ceramics factory!
Blows, man. Payton’s final film. From this point on, her story was ugly.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0668510/bio

Ready Or Not - 2019 - 6/10

Family traditions are often the worst, especially those of the in-laws, particularly “new” in-laws.
Poor but pure Grace marries Alex, filthy rich, member of a family of uncountable wealth.
Nightfall after every wedding, there is a game, played by all.
Almost always inconsequential. Harmless. On rare occasions, though …
Grace draws the dire hand. She runs for her life, the family draw traditional weapons.
Old premise is reworked as foul mouthed, savage comedy.

Dirty God - 2019 - 7/10

Jade is a victim / survivor of an acid attack.
The NHS repairs the facial damage, but they do not, nor seemingly will not, restore her beauty.
Jade is poor, young (I’d guess 18), lives with her mom in a council estate, or crashes on a friend’s couch.
She also has a daughter, though she is an indifferent mother, at best.
More than anything, Jade desperately wants a reset button to restore her life before the disfigurement.
The film reads like a book of bad decisions.
Many of those she makes because she is young and inexperienced.
Her choices, moreover, are narrow, restricted, confined by limitations of education, wealth, class.
While this evokes Ken Loach, a trickle of redemption weeps in and out, offering the sliver of hope.

Hope Gap - 2019 - 6/10

Study of a marriage coming apart.
Grace has provoked Edward for years already.
Trying to get her reserved husband to show signs of life.
Yes, he is tired. Tired of living with her.
Opposites attract, especially when we are young.
Yet over time, such polar attractions often reverse. We have witnessed, we have been miserable participants.
Beautiful location filming, fine acting, though several sequences display stage roots.

Day Of Resurrection - 1980 - 4/10
AKA - Virus

You visit granddad at the nursing home. He could be better, or far, far worse.
In the lobby, strapped to wheelchairs, sit glass eyed residents, brains riddled with Alzheimer’s, and doped with sedatives to keep them docile. All have the IQ of a carrot.
Any of those human vegetables could have edited a better version of this Japan doomsday film than did the Hollywood turnips.

Pentagon bioweapons develop a virus that can exterminate life.
Not to fear, it is safely locked away in –– Wait! Now East German operatives have a vial and are flying to Moscow to – Oh no! They’ve hit an air pocket! Look out! There’s a mountain! Ka-boom!!! And the dying starts.
Headliners expire first (Glenn Ford, Sonny Chiba, Robert Vaughn, Ken Ogata, Henry Silva).
Leaving George Kennedy and his band of 800 survivors in Antarctica as the final humans.
800 men, 8 women. The latter are informed they will need to be generous, in a new, “sharing” world.
Despite explosions here and there, this movie is mind numbingly boring.
The full length, original Japanese version is allegedly superior. I wouldn’t know, nor will I ever.

Ackroyd, Peter - The Last Testament Of Oscar Wilde

Oddly enough, I missed this book when it was published.
Then again, I was in profound financial distress in 1984.
Fortunately, while reading Green Book #6 (Swan River), interview subject, David Skal, referenced Ackroyd’s book and I directed my library to retrieve a copy for me.

Mr. Wilde is persuaded to keep a journal during his Paris sojourn.
This comes after the fame, after the trial, the imprisonment, after “The Ballad Of Reading Gaol”.
Written during the final four months of his life, Wilde reminisces on his life from childhood through school, from fame to infamy. Determination, temptations, reckless choices.
Ackroyd shows an uncanny ability to, chameleon like, capture Wilde’s voice, the sharp wit, fond recollections, and the weariness of it all.
(When mention was made of an Edison recording with Wilde speaking, I spent several hours searching for it.)
I found this to be an exceptional book, and consider it to be must-read, perhaps must-own, for Wilde devotees.

Kill Me Three Times - 2014 - 6/10

Black comedy of a contract hit, a pair of eloping lovers, theft, insurance fraud.
Mildly complicated, with flashbacks and multiple narratives, but all characters are identifiable and fleshed out.
Difficult - in a funny way - to keep track of who is cheating on who.
Simon Pegg plays a professional hitman with a sardonic sense of humor.
Western Australia provides stunning backdrop.
Style over substance, but nails every one of its marks.

Wolf Creek: S01 - 2016 - 6/10

Vacationing Yanks frolic in the Australian outback.
When a hungry crocodile snaps after junior, they are saved by the sharp shooting, Mick Taylor.
Later, after dinner, Mr Taylor unfurls his true colors, and his sadistic treatment of turistas.
All but one. The daughter, albeit badly wounded, escapes.
When she recovers, she seeks revenge.

Twisted series follows Eve as she begins an almost futile search.
Hunting a monster in the desolate wastes filled murderers, liars, predators.
As well as Taylor, a master of game playing and patience.
A few stray coincidences can test belief, but the series superbly evokes the heat and raw landscape.

Tidelanders - 2018 - 6/10

Sultry, humid flipside to the Wolf Creek series.
The latter was relentless heat, dusty wastes and instinctive behavior,
This is set on the Australian coast, where fishermen subsidize work as middlemen drug shippers.
No idea who they ship to, yet their suppliers, well now, they can breathe underwater.
Yep. Mer – No, that word is never used.
Intriguing concept, updated for modern times, with a few back stories and mysteries.
For most of the episodes, this stays fresh (although I had trouble with the main lead)
Near the end, the script shows evidence of being contrived with explanations and errant turns.
After the final episode, I cannot see a S02, Viewers who disdain endless soap operas might appreciate.

Wolf Creek 2 - 2013 - 5/10

Sequel to the fun grinder that was Wolf Creek.
This opens with lonely encounter with law enforcement grafters, then succumbs to rehashing earlier themes.
From there, repetitive, unimaginative story lines, whining characters.
Mick Taylor remains a grinning, malevolent force of nature, however.
Still, the template of trailer trash meets dead teenagers feels like cold leftovers.
Lazy efforts all around from the creative team: Writers - director - money men.

Son Of A Gun - 2014 - 6/10

Testosterone overload + logic implosion = beach read.
Ewan McGregor plays hardened lifer in max security lockup.
He befriends a shy new arrival, probably because the kid is only in for six months.
Then before you can imagine escape - gold heist - betrayal . . .
Entertaining actioner so long as you don’t think too much.
Story is really from the “kid’s" point of view, but he lacks the charisma to carry this off, especially compared with all the studs.
Alicia Vikander has dark role as crime lord’s less-than-thrilled paid companion.

The Little American - 1917 - 6/10

Stateside, circa 1913, Abigail toys with two suitors. A dashing Frenchman and a handsome German.
Before she has to choose, both return to their native lands as the Great War begins.
No sooner is the Von Schlieffen Plan implemented, than Abigail inherits a chateau in rural France!
She sets sail on the Lusitania - oops! - yet miraculously survives and reaches her chateau …
Just as a German division seizes it for a command headquarters.
Women are raped, villagers shot, looting is widespread.
Propaganda film, well directed by Cecil B DeMille, moves briskly and piles on the excesses.
I don’t know whether intentional or not, but the German top officers reminded me of Von Hindenburg and Ludendorff.
For folks who think Mary Pickford only played little girls, check this one.
(Every copy I have ever watched suffers poor video resolution.)