Sult - 2018 - 6/10
Predator and prey flirt in wordless horror short.
Seduction, rejection, lingering malice.
Unnamed characters, means you will have to work out events on the fly.
Drinks always taste better when they’re free.
Ambush At Cimarron Pass - 1958 - 5/10
Army patrol, decimated after an Apache attack, meets a group of ex-Confederates.
Likewise, damaged by Apaches who stole the horses they came to trade.
The Civil War fresh in some, tempers flare, whereupon the Apaches steal ALL the horses.
Fort Waverley is a six day march, during which the group are under guerilla attacks.
Horse-oater is routine B-film. Watch and guess who the next corpse will be.
Early Eastwood credited part will lure many, although he swings from stiff to overbearing.
Coming Soon - 2008 - 5/10
AKA - Program Na Winyan Akat
The movie was about a woman who kidnaps and murders village children – before the villagers hang her.
Our protagonist, who films and bootlegs theatrical releases, wonders if this was based on real events.
He decides to investigate. Always a big mistake.
Scattered jump scares. Decent premise of film in a film, although that has been done before and better.
Comic relief – there’s just too much, and it spoils the atmosphere.
I appreciate that the director avoids the “dead wet girl” look.
This spirit is really creepy and blindly vengeful.
Dutch Girls - 1985 - 6/10
Scottish high school field hockey squad is off to the Netherlands for friendly matches.
Coach anticipates easy victories, glories, and a chance to revel in Van Gogh.
The lads? Alcohol, cigarettes and those easy Dutch girls.
Mixed comedy has a fair amount of Benny Hill to it.
Timothy Spall hilarious as the out of control Lyndon.
Colin Firth the awkward mate, bedazzled and tongue-tied.
(All of the players and girls are too old to be 17.)
Funniest scene when the coach loses his way in Amsterdam and leads the boys into the sex district.
Carrie Fisher: Wishful Drinking - 2010 - 7/10
Hilarious one man show from silver-spooned toddler to tabloid fodder.
Hollywood mating rituals, high earners and big spenders.
Drugs, depression, manic depressive, fame and infamy.
Fisher is funny throughout to a responsive and sympathetic audience.
Star Wars fans, OT enclave, at 42” the atrocious bagel haircut appears, as do stories.
Lucas is mentioned, no one else from the Trilogy. Perhaps she is a bit guarded there.
English subtitles = https://sub-scene.com/subtitle/3359473
Girl On The Run - 1958 - 6/10
The canary sings her last number, unaware that in five minutes she will witness a murder.
Subsequently, become the target of a persistent hitman.
Them’s the breaks, blondie.
So, she dyes her hair, relocates, and starts singing under a new identity, in a new club.
Yet the hitman, a jive hustling, cool-as-hell Edd Byrnes, tracks her down.
Middling Noir would become the pilot for the popular series “77 Sunset Strip”.
Most of the elements are here: Efrem Zimbalest, Jazz music, shady officials, the trendy vibe.
Too bad Christian Bale is 50.
Buffalo Creek Revisited - 1984 - 6/10
Ten years after the dam break that destroyed a dozen hill communities.
Restitution? Mega-trailer parks, communities jumbled.
Trailer parks considered concentration camps, one nicknamed Gestapo.
An uptick in alcoholism, domestic violence, crime, despair.
Folks returned to their own land?
No, land was owned by coal companies, lumber mills, oil empires.
Highway Dept. seized the rest for a proposed expansion.
Fatcats enriching themselves exploiting the state’s mineral resources.
Government agencies make promises – without keeping promises.
I could go on and on and on. Fifty years on, this still bothers me. Hell.
English subtitles = https://sub-scene.com/subtitle/3359472
Cropsey - 2009 - 6/10
“Documentary” about the stalker of Staten Island, who might be nothing more than an urban myth.
Children did actually go missing, and an individual arrested.
Noted. Yet, if the myth extended earlier, what or who were the origins?
Archival materials, interviews, theories, all stretched thin.
Insufficient factual meat, his feels like a padded, high school term paper.
Disappointing, more so for my bride, a native New Yorker who vaguely recalled the mania.
Whates, Ian - The Smallest Of Things
Claire witnesses a murder. Worse, she emitted a noise, alerting the killers to her presence.
Now they are in pursuit. Claire turns to friend Chris, freelance trouble shooter.
The ensuing chase skitters across London – various Londons.
Transitioning alternation realities, different timescapes.
A novelette, brief on character development and lacking atmosphere.
Busyness and the stray gizmo now and then.
Agents on the hunt are straight out of “Dark City”.
A page turner, although the conclusion is abrupt. This feels like a pitch for a series of novels.
Cover art is superb, indicating “various” London realities.
King Of Alcatraz - 1938 - 6/10
The king escapes, coppers in pursuit.
He slips onboard an “adventure cruise” headed for Panama.
Likewise on the steamer are his gang, who soon enough take control of the vessel.
Gangster potboiler barely runs an hour and has menace and murders.
Lloyd Nolan and Robert Preston bicker over nurse Gail Patrick (Perry Mason fame).
Best is J. Carroll Nash, usually a character type, this time lethal and desperate as the boss.
Barely remembered gangster flick, a must for Morse Code fanatics.
Murder On The Inca Trail - 2024 - 6/10
AKA - Mord auf dem Inka-Pfad
Ah, to be young, in love, travel the world.
Since they are in love, the married couple shun guided expeditions, and are attacked.
Ursula dies of her injuries, husband Jona tells elaborate, slippery stories.
Aside from the Andes scenery, Jona is a key, if maddening reason to watch.
He is extraordinarily elusive, lying, denying, forgetting, a bold-faced deceiver.
Based on a true murder, I did wonder if Munich actually spent for those police airfares.
By the end, I thought of how different European laws (France - Germany) differ from States.
I’ll replace this post with the deets and the “you can download now, please don’t just beg for links, it makes everyone sad, DM me instead”
Good luck with that.
Green Snake - 1993 - 6/10
AKA - Ching Se // 青蛇
Two female snakes adopt human form to mix with villagers.
One has her eye on a shy scholar and longs for romance and more.
The other, younger, seeks ordinary pleasures of song, dance, food, joy.
Threatening them is a rigid, over-zealous monk.
He ignores precepts that one can reincarnate into higher existences.
His dogmatic stance is one obstacle, the younger snake sister’s jealously is another.
Dizzying, often confusing Tsui Hark fantasy, makes the most of fog and open sets.
Plot is based on a Chinese folktale, with shortcuts. Repeat viewing helps.
The Snapper - 1993 - 6/10
Sharon, after a night of drinking and debauchery. Soon realizes a snapper (baby) is coming.
Her family is supportive and ashamed, antagonistic and repentant.
Broad Irish comedy will resonate with some, less with others.
Might depend on the sort / size of family you grew up in or live with.
I wanted to enjoy this, eager to laugh, but this was very hit and miss for me.
Next to me, the girls laughed and laughed.
Colm Meaney towers as the father in full charge in this.
Eddie Murphy: Delirious - 1983 - 7/10
Hard to imagine this is over forty years old.
Easy to forget just how damned funny Eddie Murphy was that this stage.
His career was on fire already, and this standup is an avalanche of jokes and stories.
Raunchy, off color, politically correct? (ha, that wasn’t a thing yet).
Those who dismiss Murphy for his Disney films overlook his exuberant youth.
Check out 48 Hrs, hell check out his fantastic homage to Dolemite (overlooked by the Oscars).
Raw gold. Not for the squeamish, easily offended or moralistic.
Gold Diggers Of 1935 - 1935 - 7/10
Not 42nd Street but damn, this is fun.
Young Dick works the summer resort to pay for med school.
(Factor in the Depression, and the undercurrents will make more sense.)
Wealthy, penny-pinching patron hires him to chaperone her daughter.
Meantime, a lavish fundraising show is underway.
Please, this is a Busby Berkeley musical. Despite sly jokes and innuendo the river runs to the finale.
And gracious, “Lullaby Of Broadway” is a showstopper: mammoth choreography, as Broadway baby says goodnight.
The Enchanted - 1984 - 7/10
The old neighbor, Booker, tries to warn him about the peculiar brood.
Following a few years at sea, young Royce returns to the empty family farm.
Living out in the woods are the Perdrys, who offer help – for a pittance.
The oldest girl, Twyla, puts the glamour on Royce, and she is soon in his bed.
Milking the stamen, as well as clouding his reason.
Perhaps too slow for many, Southern yarn set on the fringes between subsistence and the backwoods.
I recognized the landscape almost immediately. Florida scrub. Slash pines, palmetto, cypress, moss.
Strange, hypnotic film of border crossings, and the tenuous veil between worlds.
The Ballad Of Wallis Island - 2025 - 7/10
Herb accepts an offer of a suitcase of cash to perform at a small island.
Unbeknownst, his ex-musical partner has also been invited.
Despite artistic chemistry, there is a history of damaged personal feelings.
Old partner Nell is married and long out of music, while Herb is a sellout, or artistic compromiser.
Advertised as a “big-hearted comedy”, this is a soft ballad of loss.
Lost youth, lost love, lost moment. Hopes, mere flickers.
Yet, as with many losses, what fills the void is unpredictable.
Charley Varrick - 1973 - 7/10
“The last of the independents,” states crop-duster Varrick, who now adds bank robbery to boost earnings.
Most recent one, in a podunk, one-horse town, nets $750 K.
Which Varrick (a droll Walter Mattheu) realizes is laundered Mafia money.
And they‘ll be coming, with more persistence than local police and the FBI.
The mob dispatch “Molly” (Joe Don Baker), charming, polite, brutally terrifying.
A great heist flick, where amazing luck becomes the worst luck of all for the thieves.
West By God - 2023 - 6/10
Nelly spots Dane across the pool.
She knows he’s a dealer, but agrees to go for a ride.
One deal misfires, but mostly they drive around, talk, gaze at the hills.
Title refers to West Virginia, and this short captures some of the emptiness.
Lot of opportunities have dried up there, so dealing – it’s a living.
Various (Editor: Beech, Mark) - The Rooming House
An inspired collection. Themed, no less. Stories set, for the most part, in a shabby rooming house. Characters high-lit in stand alone tales, yet are also referenced or glimpsed in other tales. Clearly, a lot of thought, as well as back and forth went into this.
“Behind You!” sets the pace lays the track. The theatrical troupe is doing a panto, with Webber & Quinn offering a chuckling, uncomfortable skeleton dance. Webber is jovial, if stale ham, while Quinn carries an unsavory reputation.
The inspector arrives for the “Defective Premises Survey”, bringing along his damaged son. The boy’s solace is playing his piano, almost nonstop. The house exerts and influence on father and son. The man realizes it would be prudent to leave, but he is a thorough and conscientious inspector.
The twin sisters live as shut-ins. Even speak in their own coded prattle, jalinga. Reclusive, hidden, after all “The Gingiver Twins” had a whispered history. Did something wicked. One might assume they were forever inseparable, save for the choking house, damp, dank, suffocating.
Zoe explains to Tim: the rooming hose is only temporary, a way station before moving on, hopefully moving upward to more quality digs. Nonetheless, the house approves of Tim. As one of “The Inhabitants” Tim finds it difficult to explain what the house communicates, what it expects.
Aside from the multiroom house, there are other recurring places. The Palace Theatre, a seedy pub, and a slightly better dining establishment.
Most of the writers play fair with the premise, which builds from story to story. One doesn’t even try, and his yarn gallops in its own loose direction.
Following that, the final quartet lure us back into dim lit hallways and murky chambers, where dreams and hopes go to die.
Wisconsin Death Ride - 1999 - 6/10
Hard to categorize this kinda/sorta Docu-drama.
Wisconsin, 1890-1900, in and around Black River Falls.
Newspaper articles, diaries, medical extracts.
The mines close, one of the banks fails after a bank run, people go to hell.
Insanity, suicides, arson, murders, adultery, epidemics, underage assassins.
One man lays himself down or railroad tracks, another blows his head off with dynamite.
Intermittently, modern scenes indicate how “normal” the area is today.
Funny at times, yet my take was how easily people slip into madness – or murder.
Survive Style 5+ - 2004 - 6/10
“What’s your function in life?”
A birdman, an ineffective murderer, a British assassin, burglars.
Random stories that barely connect, linked by Vinnie Jones’ menacing character…
None are particularly compelling, and the interest factor declines right quick.
All feel like improvised sketches.
As for comedy, this was too silly for me.
I never laughed, just wondered why I bought this one.
The Beguiled - 1971 - 7/10
Wounded Union soldier, deep behind Confederate lines, is taken to an all-female school.
They - girls, teachers, headmistress, staff - they should turn him over to Confederate authorities.
Instead, they take a shine to the flattering, handsome man.
The school slowly tuns into a fox in the henhouse scene.
Jealousies, competition, as well as sexual shenanigans heat the pot to boiling.
Southern Gothic drama finds the soldier (Eastwood) in control and out of his depth.
He never quite grasps how dangerous the female can be.
Underrated Eastwood film, challenging fan-base expectations.