An American action thriller directed by John Singleton, starring Alfred Molina, Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello and Sigourney Weaver.
A young man is being hunted by government agents and spies because of his spy father.
Not very good. Let's start with what other folks thought: paraphrased/compiled
"soulless and incompetent
actual abduction may be preferable to the movie of the same name, but only if your kidnappers don't torture you by forcing you to watch it
Lautner "has the acting chops of Bert from Sesame Street
cringe-worthy dialogue and a wooden leading man
a haggardly slapdash Bourne Identity knockoff"
I was unable to find positive comments. The plot almost held my attention with action sequences. Those were alright, but everything else was terrible. I'm talking fun to mock terrible here. Most of the characters were either cookie cutter or horribly acted. I've seen better acting in TROMA films. What I would like to know is how Sigourney Weaver got roped into this. I wanted her to blow the male and female leads out of the goddamn airlock. I don't have the patience to point out the flaws in every film element on every crappy movie I watch. However, I could hear it, see it and understand the plot. I have to rate this poor because it sucks, but there are so many worse films. Don't watch it.
An American thriller directed by Joseph Zito, starring Leif Erickson and Dorothy Malone.
The daughter of a rich politician is adbucted and held for ransom.
I could not hear this. Maybe I got a bad copy, maybe that is how the film was made. Either way, it sounded extremely muffled. I turned it off in accordance with my new 3-point turn off policy: If I can't see it, hear it or figure out what's happening within the first half, it is then over. The plot seemed clear, but the video was almost as crappy as the sound. Look at the cables of these microphones (image). It's glitching so hard that it looks composited. I rate this shit. Do not watch!
An American blaxploitation horror directed by William Girdler.
A minister visits Africa and unleashes an evil spirit. The spirit possesses a woman from his church.
Terrible. It failed to hold my attention in any way. The audiuo and video were some of the worst. All grainy, fuzzy and pixelated video with old kung fu style clipping audio. The only interesting comment that I can make is to compare black and white possession. Honky possessed women sit around in bed, waiting for the exorcist to show up. They may puke pea soup and jill off with a cross, but can easily be found. This black woman took off. She was hitting the town, going to bars and seducing men. I rate this bad because it was painful to watch and I was counting down time until the end. However, I could hear and see it and understood what was happening. Don't watch it.
An Italian Giallo horror directed by Lamberto Bava.
A musician is working on a film score for a horror film. People start disappearing around his rental house and seem to have been murdered.
Really trashy. The plot failed to hold my attention and I didn't care what happened next or to the characters. One point that was not explained was the reason for all the nudie magazines. Video was alright, but the English dubbing was cited as "some of the worst to be inflicted upon any giallo" (Howarth 2015). It sounded worse than some 1930s films. The soundtrack was pretty creepy and sounded good. It reminded me of the Phenomena (1985) theme, but obviously not as good or long. This film illustrayed many of the reasons why I tend to dislike Italian cinema. I rate it bad. Don't watch it.
An American western directed and produced by Fielder Cook, starring Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards, Burgess Meredith, Charles Bickford and Kevin McCarthy.
A family stop at a saloon/hotel where a high stakes poker game is happening. The husband has quit gambling, but insists on watching. He joins the game and bets all of his money before having health problems. His wife decides to step in and play for him.
So cool. The plot was not very complex, but held my attention well. Casting and acting was good and all of the dialogue fit. I liked the casting of Burgess Meredith because I think he's a good actor and recognize him as Satan from The Twilight Zone episode, Printer's Devil. Filmed in Technicolor, it looked good to me. All other film elements aside, this was about the surprise ending. I won't spoil it because you should watch it. I rate it good.
An American drama directed by George Cukor, starring John Barrymore, Billie Burke and Katharine Hepburn.
A man is released from a mental institution to find that his wife has divorced him and is marrying another man. His daughter calls off her engagement to take care of her father because there is insanity "in her blood".
Boring, trite, simplistic, dated, generally not good. The simple plot had nothing to hold my attention and the shallow characters could not do so either. This was filmed in RCA Photophone, an early system of adding sound to films. It sounded terrible, but looked alright. I noticed good exposure, contrast and detail until the camera panned. During a pan, everything got all glitchy and choppy. I'm including an accurate image from the version I watched so you can see the detail. Check out the crisp highlights on the chairs and the man's hair in the center. The daughter abandoning her engagement because of her father's insanity goes along with the eugenics policies of the time. It was considered bad for people with even family histories of mental or physical illness to reproduce. Some were even given forced sterilization. Hitler picked up this idea AFTER America, but also after ancient Greece and most of Europe. I really had trouble watching this film, so I rate it bad. You should probably avoid it.
A Japanese fantasy drama directed by Hitori Gekidan.
A man is disappointed with his life and gets struck by lightning, sending him into the past. There, he meets his mother and father. He works at a variety show theater as a magician and his father becomes his assistant.
Pretty cool, but also pretty sappy. The first half was interesting and funny. When the second half got sappy, the ending was not far away. Despite language differences, I think the actors did a great job. The magic performed in this was impressive and made me wonder how it was done. As convincing as the magic was the time change. There were real items from 1948 like bicycles and cars. The street scene looked authentic to me. The most important element that I noticed was that it didn't seem forced or contrived. Given that someone wrote it and a crew filmed actors playing roles, it seemed more real than many other films I've seen. I'm sure that good writing went a long way in achieving this. I rate it good because I liked it. If you try to avoid sap like I do, just remember that it gets that way right before ending and after lots of funny stuff with an immersive plot. You should probably watch it.
A South Korean crime black comedy directed by Won Shin-Yeon, starring Lee Moon-sik and Oh Dal-su.
A professor and student get pulled over by a cop, angering the professor. He provokes the cop and then hides on a dead end side road. After trying to seduce the student, she runs away. A gang of criminals show up and engege the cop, professor and student in their violence.
Oh wow! The plot held my attention all the way through, making me want to know what happened. I didn't really care about the characters because of what was happening. They were good though. Imagine a South Korean Gummo (1997) cast, but a few years later. The video had lots of hand held shots, but this did not get in the way. It was high quality Breaking Bad style hand held camera. There was also punctuation through a train passing and the main tormentor of the scene saying "nothing happened here today". Looking at other sites, people didn't seem to like this as much as I do. I'm rating it awesome because it has style and plot. However, this is not one to repeat watch. The first time through, you want to know what happens next. Watching again would destroy that.
American swashbuckling films directed by Gor Verbinsky, Rob Marshall, Espen Sandberg and Joachim Rønning, starring Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Kevin McNally.
Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) is a pirate who gets involved in many adventures, His trusted first mate is Gibbs, his competitor is Barbossa and they become entangled with a romantic couple of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. There is always some magical item being searched for, disputes over ships and supernatural enemies to contend with.
In typical Disney and Hollywood fashion, the first film was immensely successful. It was followed up with others which became stale and predictable very quickly. The plots were always interesting and Johnny Depp's performances always met my approval. I liked that there were many places, people and special effects. However, the moving set pieces got really old. I'm talking after Jack/Johnny and Will/Orlando first meet, seesaw floors should not have been repeated. It got to the point of Jack/Johnny being in a spinning guillotine. Some CG and compositing is nice, but having main characters based upon it is too much for a live action film (Davy Jones). Like Indiana Jones, I got a little tired of last minute escapes. I hope you like the theme music from the first film because all the others have it as well. If I were to pick a favorite scene, it would bo Jack/Johnny alone on The Pearl in Davy Jones' Locker. Regardless of how predictable and repetitive, folks say that the plots are too convoluted and I have found that watching these at least 2x all the way through makes them clearer. It also makes what was stale the first time even staler. I rate them adequate because they are relatively entertaining, the acting is good and the effects work.
American comedy films starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.
A pair of men are in different situations, using the same comedic themes.
I watched a ton of these, but not all. Let's start with a list of what I saw and whether I liked them:
Meet the Mummy (1955) no
Dance with Me, Henry (1956) yes
Keep 'em Flying (1941) no
Little Giant (1946) yes
Lost in Alaska (1952) yes
Mexican Hayride (1948) no
Pardon My Sarong (1942) no
The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1947) no
Who Done it? (1942 NO!
Buck Privates (1941) yes
Go to Mars (1953) YES!
Meet the Keystone Kops (1955) no
Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942) yes
In the Foreign Legion (1950) no
Jack and the Beanstalk (1952) no
Meet Captain Kidd (1952) no
Go to Mars was the best, without a doubt. I was actually laughing about some of the parts. There was a memorable scene in the spaceship in space. Everything including dialogue was slowed down and costello tries to fire a agun, only to find that the bullet drops from the barrel. Although Pardon My Sarong was a crap film, there was a song and dance number called "Shout Brother Shout" which had people dancing on a slippery table. The dancers would slide across the table in an impressive manner and continue dancing. In the Foreign Legion had a fishing scene I liked. Abbott was catching fish and handing them to Costello to clean. Costello dips them in the water they came from and a larger fish wearing human dentures eats them. In Little Giant, Costello is explaining how he figured out how many vacuum cleaners to sell. He does some convoluted math on a chalkboard which clearly took some advanced planning. Who Done it? was the worst because comedy and murder mystery do not mix well. Almost 80 years later, these predictable and repetitive genres mix less well. I liked how Lou Costello could play any musical instrument and the beautiful women always liked him. There were many repeated comedic themes:
Costello mistakes a word for another word
Someone doesn't look at what is happening
Costello handcuffs a man behind his back, but the man gets loose
Costello sees something, gets Abbott to look and by then it has moved
Costello sees something important, but is freaking out and unable to speak
The 2 are working as a team, with Costello undoing Abbott's work
Abbott is mean to Costello until his apparent death, but Costello hears him mourning the loss of his best friend he stole from, cheated, bonked on the head, insulted, knocked down...
I'm rating these tolerable. As a whole, the series was intolerable. Too old, hokey and repetitive. There were moments which made it all worthwhile. I hope that this explanation is sufficient to explain my long absence. You're probably better off not watching Abbott and Costello, but Go to Mars (1953) is worth seeing.
An American musical romantic comedy directed by A. Edward Sutherland, starring Robert Cummings and William Frawley.
A man has been dating 2 women and wants to marry 1, but the other won't leave him alone.
Wretched, vile and loathsome. Lots of movies were like this in the early 1940s, but this is not what I ordered. I've been watching Abbott and Costello films and this is their debut, but it's not about them. It's about some other people and they just happen to be around. The plot held my attention like a fork holds water and I hated the characters. Far beyond not caring what happens to them, I wanted bad things to happen to them. I think there was too much musical for it to be a comedy and that it was trying to be too many things. I rate this shit because I had to turn it off. I will be back soon with my complete review of Abbott and Costello's like 25 or something movies.
A British American drama directed by David Jones, starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins.
A jewish woman in New York is pen pals with a British man at a book shop in London.
Boring. If you've seen them, think of this as a first try at Forrest Gump (1994) and Mary and Max (2009). The penpals live at a great distance and events of the time are mentioned. It was mostly about monologues (not dialogue) as the characters spoke their letters. The woman in New York City was written VERY Jewish and I found myself mocking her speech. Anne Bancroft is a great actress though. It looked and sounded fine. Just so dull. I rate it o.k.
A Swedish Australian musical drama directed by Lasse Hallström.
A Radio host follows an ABBA tour, trying to get an interview with the band. There are also ABBA performances and music videos.
I had honestly not heard this music before watching the film. From a technical view, the audio and video were great. It was filmed in Panavision, so the colors and contrast all looked right. The audio was recorded very well. The radio DJ has such trouble finding a way to interview the band and his segments were filmed and edited wonderfully as well. I just don't like ABBA. Their music and image seem engineered and manufactured to me. Like someone said "wear these costumes and play major chords. You can't lose.". The white guitar (image) is pretty cool though. I rate this o.k. because it was made so excellently about music I don't like.
An American thriller directed by Michael Feifer, starring Brittany Murphy, Dean Cain and Mimi Rogers.
A young woman brings her boyfriend to the hospital for a leg operation. She goes to get coffee and when she gets back, he is gone and nobody has heard of him.
This seemed really low-budget. The plot was actually interesting, but the characters were stale. Anyone who has been in a hospital knows the type of authoritative lack of information that gets communicated there. I would have liked to see more nurses sitting around chatting and a bunch of cops everywhere to make it really accurate. Some more waiting rooms full of people who have been there multiple days would have added authenticity as well. The acting was not so great, but Brittany Murphy was in Clueless (1995), Girl, Interrupted (1999), Spun (2002) and Sin City (2005). Video looked like an updated version of cheap 1980s B movies, but the audio was really good. Here's what really counts: I did not like it. It seemed too contrived and forced to me. I rate it tolerable because although it had some good stuff going on, it just didn't pan out to be an entertaining film.
An American crime mystery directed by Joseph M. Newman, starring Dennis O'Keefe and Jeff Chandler.
A woman arrives in a city, looking for her missing sister, who recently had a baby. She meets a detective who helps her in her search and they find a crime ring of baby merchants.
This was very much like many other films of the time. There was apparently a series of "semi-documentary" films made, which covered social issues in a dramatic manner. I know I watched the gay/transvestite one, but don't remember what it was called. Plug in late 1940s film elements here: plot, characters, audio, video. I could hear it, see it, follow the plot and knew who the characters were, so it gets a tolerable rating. I know that's stupid criteria, but I've seen stuff that missed more than 1 of those essential points. There was nothing really bad about it, but definitely nothing good. You mighht not want to watch this.
A British war film directed by Walter Grauman, starring Cliff Robertson.
A group of pilots must bomb an enemy rocket fuel factory.
I'm glad this was about pilots and planes because I didn't give a flying fuck about it. The plot was predictable and characters stereotypical. It was the first widescreen Panavision film, so it looked great. One thing that I noticed was a man with a very fake hook hand and some terrible compositing. When the pilots were flying, the view through the cockpit cover windows was composited poorly, but when the enemy guns were shown firing at them, it was composited extremely unconvincingly (image). I rate this polished turd poor. I could see and hear what was going on and it had a plot that I could follow. However, what was going on made me wish it were not. You probably should not watch it.
A British erotic musical romance directed by Michael Winterbottom.
A climatologist in Antarctica remembers a relationship with a woman and the concerts they saw. In actual fact, the have sex and watch alternative rock bands.
Vapid, boring, repetitive. The movie is just like the music. She sucks him off and then the alt rock band just plain sucks. This happens about 9 times. A few rare snippets of Antarctica are thrown in and the cinematography is amazing. I liked the close-up of this (image) ice being cut more than the rest of the film put together. In fact, I would rather have watched a few seconds of cutting ice than the whole hour and 6 minutes. I have to admit that the sex scenes were expertly filmed and the audio quality of the concerts was good, even though the content was not. I rate this bad for technical perfection on some of the worst content I've seen in a while. Don't watch it.
A Japanese cyberpunk horror by Shozin Fukui.
A man is ejected from a company for not being able to maintain a constant erection. His memory has been wiped and he wanders the streets until he meets a woman who draws maps for people with no memory. The man's memory returns and after people from the company try to capture him, he returns voluntarily.
Very strange. It reminded me a little of Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) because the plot was very vague, but I knew something odd was happening. I would have liked the characters of and relationship between Pinocchio and Himiko to have been developed a little more. The video and audio seemed like a Japanese version of TROMA. I guess that's their take on cyberpunk. Some of the visuals were pricelessly unique, but most of it was terrible. The copy that I got looked like the video was vertically compressed into 16:9, but that may be intentional for all I can tell. I really like it because of how strange it is, but it was just not good. I give this a weird pink rating because it would be unhappy with any other.
An American crime drama directed by Ramin Bahrani, starring Michael Shannon and Laura Dern.
A young man who lives with his son and mother is evicted by a real estate tycoon. He ends up working for this man and making lots of money, but is unsure whether this is the right thing to do.
I liked the middle. At the beginning, there was like 17 minutes of tachycardia sound over everything that was happening. The ending was inconclusive. In the middle, the main character is questioning the morality of the manipulative things that his new boss is having him do. He has a team of people stealing air conditioners, pool pumps and appliances from houses in order to charge people for not having them there. He also does exactly what was done to him: evicting people. Michael Shannon was cast perfectly as the evil real estate boss and the main character, Andrew Garfield looks all honest and innocent, with puppy dog eyes. The plot held my attention until the end and the characters worked. Video all looked great, but the audio was a little on the trashy side. I rate this adequate because it was interesting, but not super-great. You might want to watch it.
An American romance directed by Adrian Lyne, starring Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger.
A woman who works at an art gallery falls in love with a man wearing a long coat.
I had to turn this off, mostly because the audio was bad on the copy I got. Besides that, I don't like romance (or war) and the pacing was dreadfully slow. Mickey Rourke looked like Christian Slater when he was young. I really prefer him in Spun (2002) and Sin City (2005). If it's romance or war and I can't hear it, I'm not watching it. In accordance with my resurrected turnoff policy, I rate this shit. Do not watch!
An American western directed by William A. Wellman, starring Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark and Anne Baxter.
A group of outlaws rob a bank and cross salt flats to escape. They end up in a ghost town inhabited by a violent, young woman and her gold mining grandfather. The outlaws fight over gold and the woman.
This is the last film I'm watching from the acid western page. The plot and visuals mark it as the first acid western. There is a surprise ending which really breaks expectations. Lots of the film was shot during the day and underexposed or edited to create night. Usually, clouds are not that visible in a night sky. Generally, I found the whole film just odd enough to be cool. Those looking for a traditional western may not notice, but those versed in acid westerns will recognize the beginnings of the outlandishness which would follow. I rate it adequate. You might want to watch it.
