A man from a post-apocalyptic Paris is a guinea pig for a time travel experiment. He heads back in time to his youth. He remembers seeing a beautiful woman when he saw a man getting shot at an airport. Her beauty left a lasting impression on him and he seeks her out.
MY THOUGHTS
A short film that was made with more intelligence than most feature films.
The 28 minute film is told in a series of photographs with a narrator, music and a few sound effects. It's bare bones storytelling done very effectively. Chris Marker tells a deep and moving tale with a limited palate. It never once feels like you're back in second grade watching a boring filmstrip... though its done in essentially the same style.
The story is well crafted and made perfectly ambiguous. You don't know if the man is actually going through time. It may just be in his head and he's reliving this important memory in new ways.
The short film was remade and greatly beefed up into a feature as Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys. This is the root of that amazing film.
Angel On My Shoulder 1946 - United Artists Directed By Archie Mayo
SYNOPSIS
As soon as gangster Eddie (Paul Muni) is fresh out of prison, he's bumped off by his partner. He finds himself in hell and befriended by a guy named Nick (Claude Rains.) Nick offers him a way back to Earth. He must impersonate and ruin a look-a-like judge. Upon meeting the judge's fiance (Anne Baxter) Eddie has a change of heart and realizes Nick is more than just a minion of hell... he's the boss!
MY THOUGHTS
An enjoyable, entertaining fantasy with some classic actors doing what they do best.
The film is a comedy, but apart from a few good one liners, but is more amusing than hilarious.
Angel On My Shoulder clearly has a low budget. The 'ghost' effects are simple. Hell is also simply shot. It's very very dark and shadowy, except for fire and smoke. It's more of an impressionistic version of hell then we would see if the film were made today with CGI technology. This low-tech, cheap approach doesn't affect the film's quality. It forces your focus toward the actors.
The three lead performances are strong, and are cast to type. Claude Rains is the standout. He's perfectly cast as the devil... probably the best actor ever I could think of for the role. He brings humor, a twinkle in the eye, along with a fair share of menace to the role.
Muni is sympathetic, even though we know initially he's a bad guy. He becomes even more so as he transforms into a good guy and makes the important decision at the film's climax. The role doesn't need his dramatic chops that he showed in Scarface, The Life of Emile Zola, or I Am a Fugitive From A Chain Gang, but he is great and the performance is nearly as strong as those benchmarks.
Anne Baxter initially seems like a weak choice, but the more you get to know her character, the more you feel for her.
Nothing else about the film is unusual or groundbreaking. The familiarity of everything is comforting, without it feeling like you've 'been there, done that.' The film still holds up well over 60 years later.
5 college students head home to their small town for Thanksgiving break. A homicidal, trash-talking turkey, who appears every 505 years, targets the group and makes their lives a living hell.
MY THOUGHTS
With a premise like that, you should clearly expect a budget of $100 million and tons of A-list talent fighting each other for the roles.
OK, so that's not the case. You can pick all the change out of your pocket, subtract 50 cents and that's the budget here. Also, fill the screen with people who clearly have never acted before, and a cliche-ridden script and you have a recipe for disaster.
But sometimes despite all those factors, something genius can still be created.
The amazingly absurd script left me choking with laughter at several occasions. After killing one of the girl's father, the turkey clearly has ripped off the man's face and is wearing it as a mask. When the girl arrives home, she doesn't even realize her tall father is now the size of a turkey (and has feathers) and treats him as she normally would. She introduces her friends to him and no one acts the wiser. It's too absurd to be believable, but then again a talking axe-and-shotgun-wielding turkey is also somewhat unbelievable. ThanksKilling is like the most demented Looney Tunes cartoon with a serious drug habit.
The humor is ever further out there than many of the great cheesy b-horror comedies of the 1980's and 90's like Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Leprechaun, or the Ghoulies films. ThanksKilling adds those film's cheesy campy humor with its absurd mix of silliness to create something unique and WAY over the top.
The turkey is clearly a puppet (see the poster above,) as articulate as Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, with an even filthier mouth. He isn't as funny as Triumph, but more sadistic and offers many laughs. The sex scene between the turkey and one of the girls is priceless.
The main five characters are heavily stereotyped in the Breakfast Club style. The jock, the fat hick, the nerd, the skank, and the girl next door type. The characters remain broad caricatures throughout the film, so it's hard to feel for them, yet they feel little anyway. Most of their families are killed, but they show little emotion towards them. That's most likely a result of the script and not the performances, which are uniformly bad, but fit in perfectly with the overall goofiness of the film.
For such an obvious low budget, the gore makeup is surprisingly excellent and could possibly turn the stomach of some viewers.
If you're looking for genuine scares or astonishingly deep performances from accomplished actors, please look elsewhere. This is the complete opposite. This is clearly made for fans of so-bad-it's-good horror films... and is brilliant despite its flaws.
Bill (Jeremy Theobald) is an aspiring writer and enjoys following random people on the streets. He follows Cobb (Alex Haw) who confronts him. Cobb is a burglar and the two soon become partners in crime. But Cobb is not be on the level, and Bill is secretly being set up.
MY THOUGHTS
The first feature film by Christopher Nolan shows a major new talent in the making.
Nolan would soon bring Memento, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight to the big screen. Following is done on a much, much smaller budget but is just as riveting and entertaining as those films.
The film is just as dark and clever as Memento, but told in a much more conventional style, making it easier to follow on a first viewing. The film does jump a bit in time, but this is resolved quickly and doesn't become too confusing. It was ironic to see one of the flats the duo robbed had a Batman bat-logo on the front door, knowing Nolan's future.
The acting is solid and the music greatly adds to the tense atmosphere to many scenes.
The biggest battle in baseball history wasn't fought on the field, but in a courtroom. The two men who claim to own Barry Bonds' record-breaking 73rd home run duke it out in court to see who's the rightful owner.
MY THOUGHTS
An excellent documentary that shows the dark side of capitalism and sports.
The two men, Alex Popov and Patrick Hayashi, are clearly portrayed as the fools and idiots that they are. Both were clearly not true fans of baseball and were there at PacBell Park on that fateful day just to make a million bucks. As a result of the court case, one was left deep in debt and the other with just a small profit. Avoiding trial would have made them both rich, but they were so pigheaded
The story took hold of the media, even as U.S. troops began their fight in Afghanistan, and as it went to trial, even overshadowed Bonds and the Giants playing in the World Series. Several journalists are interviewed and realize the absurdity of it all.
The film is very entertaining and straightforward. It did not overly paint either man as a good or bad person and had interviews with journalists, witnesses, the judge, and others who provided a balanced opinion of them. That's much different than a one-sided Michael Moore-type documentary. Popov and Hayashi are the ones that paint themselves as greedy and self-absorbed.
Baseball's history plays such an important part in it's present. The filmmakers also interview other home run catchers, like the men who caught Roger Maris' 61st homer, Mark McGwire's 70th, and several of Bonds' other historic homers from 2001. Those men seem like normal guys who just happened to catch a ball, unlike the two greedy bastards seen here. It's a real testament to how American values and culture were once a little bit higher in the toilet water as it circles the drain.
The documentary is at time hilarious and often ridiculous... and highly entertaining.
The Accused 1949 - Paramount Directed By William Dieterle
SYNOPSIS
Psychology Professor Wilma Tuttle (Loretta Young) misses her bus ride home and gets a ride from an amorous student (Douglas Dick.) When he later parks and tries to get fresh with her, she kills him in self defense but doesn't come forward. Detectives aren't sure who committed the murder, but soon piece it together and Tuttle may face charges. This may hinder her budding romance with a lawyer (Robert Cummings.)
MY THOUGHTS
A better script would have set The Accused free from prosecution.
The script doesn't really deliver. It's not bad, but flawed. The fact we see Tuttle kill her student in self defense early on does hurt much of the suspense. There's no way she would get the chair or even much prison time even if facing charges for not coming forward to the cops with the facts.
The film does build suspense as it moves along, but more at a slow boil than your average thriller. There's no big chase or gun play that brings the action to a head. The action is more internal, a la the psychology theme. This makes The Accused far less of a visceral experience. Suspense films by Hitchcock and others are far more successful by having more action, or combining action with internal struggles to make a more complex and exciting film.
Also I feel like the film's been done before many times, before and since, though I can't name any other instances. It all felt too familiar and didn't offer any thing new.
The Accused, because of it's subject content and how it was shot, should be labeled a film noir, but it also offers nothing new in that way either.
Still, despite it's flaws, it remains an interesting and somewhat entertaining film.
Ride In The Whirlwind 1966 Directed By Monte Hellman
SYNOPSIS
Three cowhands (Cameron Mitchell, Jack Nicholson, Tom Filer) are headed to Texas. They stop and camp near a group of outlaws who just robbed a stagecoach. When a posse shows up the next morning, the cowhands are mistaken for being in the gang. The posse relentlessly pursues the cowhands hoping they hang from a rope.
MY THOUGHTS
An unusual B-movie western.
The script was written by Jack Nicholson (who also produced.) This was made as he still worked in several B-movies for director Roger Corman... and a few years before he became a superstar. His script does avoid many cliches of the genre. There are no real heroes and no real villains. Every character, from the cowhands, to the posse, to the thieves, to the family, are just trying to survive in the harsh world. You could almost call the film 'artsy' but it completely lacks any pretentiousness. This slow placed film is far from Nicholson's next two writing assignments as you could get... the very psychedelic drug films The Trip (starring Peter Fonda) and Head (starring The Monkees.)
The acting from all involved could be mistaken for being wooden. They play men who live off the land, not fancy talkers, so the performances fit. Always great character actor Harry Dean Stanton shines as Blind Dick, the leader of the outlaws. His role is really the only charismatic character in the film.
Ride In The Whirlwind is an offbeat and unique western.
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