deadbull-95171 Reviews

The Guitar (2008)

A companion piece to "The Red Balloon."

[8/10 · 20 June 2024]

This film strongly puts me in mind of the beautiful 1956 short movie the Red Balloon. I remember it very strongly and saw it last well over 60 years ago. The strength of the impression surprises me. Both films are about loss, dreaming, and extreme longing. While the old Parisien film is about a child who loses his coveted balloon, as though a vehicle for all of his floating dreams, the new version is about a girl diagnosed with a terminal disease, who tries to fill her final days grasping for any object, material, sensual,....anything to try and fill the terrible hole created, and at the center, is this memory of a cherry red Fender stratocaster, that she now is able to fund, complete with three huge Marshal Amp stacks. All these desperate purchases are made on credit, including her leased loft, and in the end all these objects are repossessed, with the exception of the cherished guitar. The movie comes with a final happy and surreal twist, as did its forbear from 1956. While it lacks the fantastic final image of the 1956 movie, something we wouldn't arguably see again with such brilliance until Slim Picken's riding the H-bomb, it's a great little movie in its own write.

Sound of Metal (2019)

About pure stillness

[8/10 · 20 June 2024]

I'm going to synopsize the plot in some detail because I don't think that detracts from anything you'll see, and helps clarify what I think is the main point, which isn't deafness, the obvious "plot device" so much as the gift of stillness.

A young man, a dedicated muscian and a drummer in a metal band, is traveling with his woman in an RV, their home and studio, getting traction in their career. Then he's struck with a devastating deafness. His woman goes back home to her rich father and he sells his gear to finance an uninsured surgery. While these arrangements unfold he's staying at a private facility for therapy and adjustment. He benefits from treatment but finally opts for the surgical implant, to partially restore his hearing and continue his interrupted career. Although he is well liked at the clinic and even offered a permanent teaching position there, he is still too tied to his old life style, and doesn't fully recognize or come to grips with the profundity of his changed circumstance. The man who runs the clinic has to let him go, and it hurts and disturbs him to do so, but his "house" does not treat deafness as a handicap, and so they can't keep him on, having opted for "artificial hearing." This sets up the main run of the story. The master of the house had given the drummer an exercise: to stay in a room and sit still, doing nothing, and when stress or rage or frustration built, just write and write, anything, until he was able to sit still again. The point being to find that center, that perfect stillness, "God", the thing that never abandons you, that has nothing to do with hearing or the chaos of circumstance; the essense of Buddhist thought. The drummer isn't ready to see the wisdom of this and gets his surgery and then finds his woman no longer wants to return to the old life. Now he's really alone. His gear is sold so he's broke, his woman is gone, the home offered by the clinic is no longer an option, he has no family that we were ever made aware of, and he now has a marginal ability to hear that often seems more of a curse then a blessing. He's come full circle and he's sitting on a bench in a crowded area hearing the raucous noises of the city. He takes off the hearing apparatus and everything is clear and beautiful and dead silent. He discovers that beautiful Buddhist stillness the therapist described. One reviewer here who also liked this movie actually had the cochlear surgery and as he described it the results are better then what was depicted in the film. While this detail interests me I don't think it detracts from the overall quality of this most interesting and sort of beautiful and smart movie.

Troy (2004)

Son Of Peleus and Thetis, Warrior king of the Myrmidons, Bradeus Pittexandros

[6/10 · 9 June 2024]

Tragic that rotisseries were not invented millenia earlier; Homer could have been buried on one to make it easier to spin in his grave. But then, The voice of Russell Maximus Crowe echoes across the eons: "Are You not Entertained?" Most definately yes. The popular surfer boy himself, plays the peevish, power-pumped, Herculean Achilles, this time around with a case of the cutes, a man that Agamemnon and the god's simply won't let relax. Waxed muscles gleaming, bold provoking speeches flying in the faces of great Grecian Champions, spears flashing in the sun; fields littered with corpses; Helen, why couldn't you have just stayed put? The casting choices could not be more absurd; Where's Gerard Butler when you need him? But still, a ten year seige has never passed so quickly, Odysseus has never been so suave and urbane, never taken his tortured oddysey with such sprightly indifferent aplomb, Peter O'toole has never before performed both pickled AND embalmed, and Brad, bloated, always ludicrous, has never brought his proto-punk grandiosity to such a role, which is saying something, though what that is escapes me, and Helen, looking like an Aryan cover girl with the facial symmetries that pass for beauty these days, has fallen into a time warp and emerged a few millenia too early to contract, and so acts, for all the wrong reasons, with appropriate surprise, "What am I doing here?," a question you can bet occurred to thousands of lamenting Trojan Citizens when that horse opened up; A most enjoyable epic.

The Shadow (1994)

I know who you REALLY are. Yinko! The Butcher of Llasa. You, and ONLY you deserve to be by my side. Together, we will.....

[8/10 · 6 June 2024]

With a cast so top heavy with A-listers, (Alec baldwin, Penelope Ann Miller, Tim Curry, Peter Boyle, Ian McKellen, Jonathan Winters) it's amazing this thing can float at all, but it's John Lone, who I never heard of, that takes it; Not just the lines coming out of his mouth, it's the half-crazed, meglomaniacle, hilarious delivery. As Shiwan Kahn, last living descendant of Ghenghis, showing up in a giant silver sarcophagus, he's the least mummified character in this well realized version of "The Shadow." It's great to look at, full of funky chuckles, and it's consistently entertaining. Check it out.

Freaks (2018)

Hyped up drivel

[1/10 · 4 June 2024]

When you take a microscopic budget, and center the thing around a leaping 9 year old girl screaming at dog whistle frequencies for ice cream and her mommy this is what you get. After 45 minutes of waiting for a plot to suggest itself and getting sick of all the pointless ominous inferences and hysteria over nothing, I just began skipping through it with subtitles enabled to see if anything would develope. Nothing does.

Emile Hirsch has been in several watchable pictures, and Bruce Dern was in some great pictures thirty years ago but this just sucks. The ominous sound track that suggests something interesting is iminent tricked me into paying attention longer then I should have.

I can't see anything to recommend this silly drivel.

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012)

A plop Instead of an explosion

[5/10 · 2 June 2024]

The first half is a fast paced high action thriller about the wild sleazy criminal exploits and desperate love affair of "Handsome Luke" Glanton, Ryan Gosling, with Romina, Eva Mendes. His partner in crime is Robin; Ben Mendelsohn, who the same year was in "Killing Them Softly," so you know he's a genius at this sort of role. Well developed characters in interesting circumstances work; You get interested.

And then the protagonist gets killed and instantly the momentum crashes. Welcome to the second half. The whole movie shifts to a weary epic melodrama. Now Son of Luke becomes the focus, with his adolescent struggles and the strained coincidence that links him with the son of the cop, now politician, that killed his dad. The business about this cop, Avery, Brad cooper, and his struggles with his father, his social role, his queasy morality; this bathes things in phenobarbital.

Too bad that this speeding, veering out of control motorcycle of a movie didn't shift into an even higher gear and bring it home that way. It ends with a sorry moral plop instead of the required explosion.

Outlander (2008)

People are surprised this is as good as it is

[8/10 · 31 May 2024]

People are surprised this is as good as it is. To Quote Ronnie Cox as Bill Jones in another genre mishmash, the first and best RoboCop, "Good business is where you find it." Putting time zones in a combo-pack is good business in a market starved for originality. Blend some genres and it's Xmas. So, in movie SciFi we get Cowboys and Aliens, Prey, and now, moving back 1100 years, Outlanders.

It has a big Cast, a good Idea, a well executed story line, and top notch special effects. In the endless quest for something good that I haven't seen, not necessarily a new Idea, just good execution of ANY Idea, when I examined the components, the "P. E. ratio" and other fundamentals, I liked the prospectus.

I wasn't dissapointed. I think the rating is skimpy. I was surprised by how straightforward and simple the story was. It has an Epic feel to it. A new King, a spaceman and a God, rejects his kingdom in the skies, preferring the people of 1000 AD on earth. He cherishes the similarities, not the differences, and finds a better replacement for his former life, and a hotter babe as well, although this is treated with dignity.

It's all done very well. Winner winner chicken dinner.

RoboCop (1987)

One of the great genre busters

[8/10 · 31 May 2024]

This was a big deal in 1987, boldly taking acerbic social commentary, making it comedic, sidebar advertisements, and fusing it with SciFi, and Pete Weller's Beat Poet sensibilities, a Cyborg with soul.

It all works. Sequels got more complicated, slicker and colder, and less interesting. Verhoeven's first creation has all the developed personalities; RoboCop, Dick Jones, Anne Lewis Clarence Boddicker, Bob Morton, Emil Antonowsky (I'd buy that for a dollar), Sgt. Reed. Every single character is memorable.

The second one has it's moments too, but after that the concept was exhausted. This is the one to see.

Hellraiser: Inferno (2000 Video)

Holds its Own

[7/10 · 31 May 2024]

Craig Sheffer's malarplastic/rhinoplastic face has softened. So has the Grand Guignol vision of Hellraiser 1 and 2. This hasn't been taken well by the diehard fans. Clive Barker in his prime, at his most visionary, is a tough act to follow. In a series as leeched as this one, with the author long gone; the beloved stars that set the gold standard gone with him, the physics of corporate greed absolute and eternal, what can one expect?

Still, this isn't shabby. Yes, as has been pointed out, putting Pinhead on the packaging is deliberately misleading; He has almost no screen time, seen as sacrelige by fans since he's become the Wolverine of the series.

In Inferno, this Hell is rendered as an interior mental state. As I understand Clive Barker, this is consistent with his view. That makes Inferno an acceptable companion-piece to the original work. The Cenobites are still an essential part of Hell, but this time they move in and out of the imagination, driving the intended victim insane, and, being invisible to the rest of the world, making sure he gets his due both in Hell, and in the consensual-reality world.

More complexity this time, the victim is a bad cop; He's alloyed, unlike bad brother Frank, who was "bad to the bone", but in both cases, heterosexual infidelity is the damning situation, an interesting touch by this very outspoken homosexual writer. The surreality of Inferno is in small doses, something like his interesting "Damnation Game", written at a point in his career when he was toning down the written colors that exploded in "Weaveworld."

Hellraiser Inferno, respects the original stuff, takes some chances and goes sideways, but is still credible within the first context, and if you're coming in cold, is still a good movie.

Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer (2018)

Vanilla pudding. Politically Correct Makeover of a Killer.

[3/10 · 30 May 2024]

"America's biggest serial killer." I thought that honor went to highest body count, not most obese. He aborted three fetuses and was up for one count of involuntary manslaughter. The record shows, just glancing at a smattering of celebrity cases:

Henry Lee Lucas, aka. The One-Eyed Drifter, was responsible for over 200 known kills, and with an eye on his own P. R. and image, confessed to 400 more.

Ted bundy, 30 known dead, suspect in over 60 unsolved.

John Gacy, 33 known dead, higher count suspected.

And that old crowd pleaser, Mr. Personality himself, Jeff Dahmer, left 17 (his choicest parts of anyway) bodies in the refridgerator.

How is this sick doctor even a contender for the title? Beyond these facts though, this made for TV (the sensibilities of prudish suburban children) thing, is so whitewashed and slick, so blase and sterile, so loaded with sidebars of kitchen table squabbles and kids playing in the yard, and a hero right out of Disney's "Old Yeller," ...that the entire mess might as well be an ad for pudding. Vanilla pudding.

I dunno for sure, but it seems like a serial killer movie is supposed to be a about a serial killer. And in the U. S. A, where we get a slaughter every other day, and a population that isn't happy unless it's meal of corpses is truly bizarre, grotesque, and HUGE, big enough to nudge it's own dead sensibilities, this strikes me as a bore. Comments that thrill to its being "matter of fact" are interesting. The case certainly isn't. Maybe that's the new thrill, bland TV movies that are "matter of fact."

The Gambler (III) (2014)

Cold Slick Expensive Imitation

[4/10 · 28 May 2024]

A professor with a gambling problem; The film tries to give it a philosophical spin, in deep debt to several street guys, stringing along a quirky relationship with a girlfiend, every bridge burned, is offered a chance to clear his debt if he gets a college athlete to sell out...Does this seem a little familiar? Even down to the scene where he hits an 18 and gets a 3? Am I the only one who saw "The Gambler" in 1974?; James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton, and Burt young in the identical script?

This copy is padded with plodding classroom scenes and yawning talks with the GirlFriend. The bad guys are meaner and slicker (there are no protagonists, least of all Mark Wahlburg as the soulless and nerveless gambler), and the dollar amounts are wildly inflated from 1974 values, as though $10,000 bank packs flying around are all that's needed to hold an audience. I guess it's true; The collective personalities in this movie, even with John Goodman, barely fill a bottle cap. Corporate actuarial charts determined that 40 years, ten years beyond the average generation gap, is enough time passed to rerelease, changeless, a movie that wasn't a great commercial success in the first place. Just take all the human motives out of it; Everyone is a face on a monitor, and these monitors face each other when they speak. 1974's product was no great shakes either, but compared to this cold slick thing, a very solid and human piece.

Thief (1981)

One of my favorite movies

[10/10 · 27 May 2024]

If ever there was a "Classic" 80's Chicago movie, this is it; It's so loaded with great bits it isn't even funny. Depending on which cut you watch there's a little less or more. The sandwich scene at the dawn lakefront is gone in this one tonight. James Caan is one of my favorite actors and this is his best stuff. The centerpiece is his conversation with Tuesday Weld on the overpass restaurant, convincing her that he's for real. But there are so many great scenes. The action parts, the "high-line" robberies, seem to me, to be as studied and accurate as possible, so they're technically fascinating. Caan is just so hip in this, using the word as we did in the 60's and 70's, and so funny sometimes, and so earnest, he's bringing out the best in everybody. Willie Nelson's only around for a few minutes but he's totally convincing, as is James Belushi, who starts enunciating and spitting out words like Can. Plus, as a Chicagoan, so many of the great hangouts, are there, at a time when they were totally functional and not yuppie set pieces...the Belden Deli, for great 3 AM sandwiches, a real deli by the way, and long gone with nothing to replace it, especially the fantastic Zeitgeist, the Green Mill, before it became a replication of itself. Best of all, there's nothing digital going on, no cell phones or computers in the movie, or used in it's creation...the last of the great old old-school "crime flicks" when people still reacted to each other without a digtal interface. For desert you might want to see "The Driver" with Ryan O'neil and Bruce Dern and Isabelle Adjani. It can't hold a candle to "Thief" but if you don't compare them it's great too, in a more stripped down way. These are two of my favorite "crime" movies.

Cold Fish (2010)

Celebrating the loss of a Great Culture

[8/10 · 17 May 2024]

I was entertained. That means I was meant to be entertained. I infer intention from effect. How did Sion Sono go about that? It's everything everywhere all at once; A moral fable, ultraviolent, (The notion of cold fish, sushi, has to do with chopping people into bite sized bits), slapstick comedy schticks, burlesque. The soundtrack was lifted whole from Polanski's Ninth Gate. Many reviewers here take it seriously and I think that's a mistake. Take this seriously for what it Isn't. It punches and pokes but the hit is subdural. It's slapped together and formulaic. Its brilliant superficiality is artifice. That's the point. An actuarial chart of a movie; What bit is known to get a response from a viewer? It succeeds that way. Being a "Japanese movie" gives it even more punch in that direction. It's a nation become famous for copies, or more accurately, cultural absorption. And more; cultural Reflection. One need only look at the movie's advertisement, a reflection in mirrored lenses. Japan would be fun to live in. They have fun with "western" cultural motifs. Reflected back to the original culture, these motifs stand out in vulgar and grotesque bold relief. The Ferrari Murata drives is referred to as vulgar. The beautiful Japanese fish motifs become "Amazon Gold", the final scene evokes Hara Kiri, updated, sorrow about loss, the scattered silk screens: dillutions and traces. No one is more conscious of all this then the director. He's celebrating the loss of a great primary culture.

Prey (I) (2022)

Superior prequel, a new "Revenant."

[9/10 · 4 May 2024]

A more primitive Predator shows up on earth in the pre-tech year 1719. He's as happy cutting down wolves and bears as humans. The little Comanche woman Naru, filled with Warrior ambitions, has something to prove, and so this Predator, presumably in his debut on planet earth, unless there was one fighting Tyranosaurs, is literally heaven sent.

The Cinematography gets you right away; it's gorgeous. Arguably the star is the cinematographer. The story is so simple this could have easily been a silent movie. Amber Midthunder as Naru the Warrior is impressive, she's a graphic novel illustration brought to life. There are plenty of homages to the first Predator with Arnold; the famous treetop Scream, the camoflaging mud bath, and since this is the prequel, Arnold's historically the copyist.

More then "Predator," Prey resembles the Revenant in its brutal simplicity and emphasis on raw survival in a savage land. It's all more impressive then it is great. I thought "Predators" with Adrian Brody was the best sequel, I suppose because I'm sometimes addicted to glamour, but this is without doubt the tougher, "purer" work. It's well worth watching. As Advertised.

It (I) (2017)

Why is this movie so beloved?

[3/10 · 26 April 2024]

I avoided it until tonight and made it to the big haunted house scene 2/3 of the way in before I hung it up. This was supposed to be a really creepy scary movie. How can something as ridiculous as this be scary? An ensemble of "child actors" cowering from a ludicrous clown, some jump scares; "ominous" music to build tension while you wait for a clown head to pop out of the dark.... It is just trivial and silly. A super-soft-core replay of Nightmare on Elm Street, which was anchored with some sub-clinical adult themes, but this is aimed at Kindergarden kids, who would perceive these children as adults. With almost ANY movie,if you turn the sound off and just watch actors act, moving through their carefully composed sets, the whole thing becomes a phony puppet show in a frame. In this case, the sound doesn't change that impression: I might as well have been the cameraman, concentrating on framing shots.

The last horror movie I saw that qualified as creepy was the first Sinister. Everything about it, even it's supernatural elements, were effective. The Dark and the Wicked, not as good as Sinister, had some moments too. The Exorcist, in 1973, had some startling moments; Psycho, given some of the highest ratings of them all, being a type of "first", in the manner of Elvis Presley, made an impression on me when I went to see it at the age of eight, but so did Straight Jacket at the age of 12. Now these artifacts have been demoted to merely having some historic interest. There was a certain corner of the movie house we sat in, a dark old theatre, with tiny purple lamps fluorescing above the exits, a bag of hot (real) buttered popcorn was 5 cents; We wanted to get creeped out; and those old pictures I saw as a child in the dark corner were magically scary. But Psycho now...63 years later...any daily news broadcast, the price of groceries, the USA, (for people who aren't Billionaires, is a lot more disturbing. Que Sera, Sera.

Knox Goes Away (2023)

Really Good. I was moved by it, and I'm a boulder.

[9/10 · 22 April 2024]

Offhand, I can't think of a Michael Keaton movie that's been a total dud, and they're almost always very interesting. And this is, I think, maybe his very best, which is saying something. It's got a unique premise; A hit man with galloping dementia who doesn't have much time to get his affairs in order. And given his lifestyle, these are interesting affairs. There's a lot going on, but it never feels busy or rushed, and it isn't confusing or meant to be.

Then, all these great people keep popping up: Marcia Gay Harden, James Marsden, Al Pacino, Suzy Nakamura, Ray McKinnon, to name a few. Better yet, they're fully functional....not ornaments thrown in.

As a directorial debut, it's top shelf. Even for a seasoned director, it'd be excellent. Like Lumet, Keaton takes people operating at the far end of reality, and grounds it, nails it down. It's engaging intellectually, and has an emotional impact that builds, I was moved by the ending, and I'm a boulder. Very satisfying movie, way above average.

Lakeview Terrace (2008)

Samuel Jackson doing his thing in this comedy about rascism

[8/10 · 15 April 2024]

Samuel Jackson has a way of dominating every scene he's in, if not the entire movie, and Lakeview Terrace is a case in point. This movie trots out almost every stereoptype known on "black/white" rascism, reverse rascism, multicultural and sexual rascism, and any other category is inferred. So, Jackson is planted firmly in his wheelhouse as one of the funniest, most outspoken, most attitudinal, and smartest actors dealing with this topic. He revels in portraying angry racial archetypes. This act has made him one of the hottest properties in movies, and these extreme alpha postures have made me a fan too. The movie speaks for itself. It's supposed to be outrageous but I can't picture anyone naive enough to even react to anything except the implicit comedy. If there's anything to question it's the man's actual feelings and thoughts in these matters. When you take a brilliant guy, extremely successful and rich, worldly, highly respected and sophisticated, you might think, well such a person is too sophisticated to really entertain the attitudes he usually, but not always, so blatantly as this , portrays. But you could invert the same argument with equal justification: How could a guy with this level of intelligence, sophistication in the way things work, NOT be genuinely and blatantly rascist? Both arguments hold water, to me anyhow. The interesting thing is, that as an actor, he plays with all these notions and he's good enough at it, that his performance is usually riveting and provocative, as sly as it is bold. It's not a great movie, but it's got Sam Jackson, so it's definitely worth checking out, and I have my own opinion on where he's actually at.

The Night Flier (1997)

Solid Horror Movie, and Very Entertaining

[9/10 · 11 April 2024]

Miguel Ferrer has the chops to run away with Night Flier, playing a cynical bitter s.o.b. Whose been around the block too many times. I've liked him since the first RoboCop. He's got attitude big time. His collaboration as a drummer with the late great Keith Moon makes sense; the guy has rock 'n roll. Stephen King adaptations are very hit or miss and this one is a very definite hit. Too often King's stuff is softened when it gets adapted, or the other way around, like changing Walt Disney's Old Yeller to become horror. Not this time. It's creepy and strange and has a "vibe"; A fresh old school style chapter in the vampire book, but like Nick Cage in Renfield, it's really a one man showcase for Ferrer, who keeps this thing interesting and always moving forward. You might find yourself going back to it a few times when nothing seems to be a good watch. It's solid, and very entertaining.

Run with the Hunted (2019)

A mess with a lot of good scenes and good actors.

[7/10 · 28 March 2024]

I see why this one's widely panned. Another movie best enjoyed with a minimum of thought: Boy meets Girl, Boy loses girl for 15 years, Girl searches and finds boy, the reunion occurs, Boy is shot and drops dead.

This simple business is embedded in a bizarre and busy plot. The thing is, there are some very smart bits floating around in the soup: Oscar, "O", and Peaches, become child-lovers while waiting for the "fated" reunion with Loux. They grow into criminal androgynes and are crudely manipulated by their twisted, jealous and covertly sadistic boss, "Birdie", Ron Perlman, who has a thing going with "Peaches", 50 years his junior, so wants to rip "O" and her apart.

Then, "Sway", Mark Boone Junior, the Faginesque character who makes open reference to Oliver Twist, chomping heart pills like M&M's for his arrhythmia, who finally gets his guts blown out with a 12 gauge by a manipulated Peaches, because "He has a heart problem, it's too big."

A note on the obvious literary references: Dicken's, Romeo & Juliet, Frankenstein, (The Michael Pitt creation) and You Can't Go Home Again, is that they are more or less obvious and awkwardly sutured together, Frankenstein stuff, in this sutured together movie.

These touches are built in and not a big deal is made of them. So the movie is devious, like the characters. The smartest bits are right out there, little subconcious bombs, like after-tastes. These are the best parts of the movie. Interesting players too: It's nice to see William Forsythe again, this time playing a strict dad. If there was ever a natural born bad guy, it's him. And he's put back every pound of the weight he made such a point of losing for much of his career. He looks like himself again for the first time in 30 years.

I agree with the crowd that the movie is a mess. But....it's "shot with sugar, through and through."

In the Electric Mist (2009)

Good movie that settled for "Classy." It coulda been a contender.

[7/10 · 27 March 2024]

It's a classy movie with a bookish feel. It must have been a good book. And if there's any weakness here, I suppose that's it. Re: adaptation; Some plays and books clear the bar with room to spare and this one catches its toes. Everything in the production and actors' delivery is too right, too tight, too pat.

The adaptation is self-consciously literary, and that makes this adaptation feel boxed in, narrative. But Tommy Lee, an old lit major, grounds things with ease. He can't take back the talent he put out there with McCarthy's 'The Sunset Limited.' Plus, he's just made to play cops (people in dominant authority) with troubled minds. John Goodman is less robust than usual; He's separated from his role by the design frame he's in. The bursting exhuberance and joy just isn't there for this show. So I considered what killed it.

Still, it's a fine movie, and this sense of things, this smothering, if I'm accurate, doesn't detract so much, as make the whole movie operate in a vague mist. It's a better watch than the "usual" fare, and the only shortcoming is that the movie just misses its own mark. It could have been edgier, but its conception is too controlled. It settled for "classy" instead. Goodman's performance is the most obvious symptom.

American Dreamer (2018)

This will make your credit card balance seem less disturbing. Excellent.

[9/10 · 26 March 2024]

He looks like a low budget clone of Philip Seymour Hoffman (Think Love Liza) but there's nothing low budget in this performance. Everything about this film surprised me in a good way. I like these broke desperate loser movies; men in the throes of extreme financial distress. Is there anything else that really can disturb a dude to the core? Guys like that come up with special moves and that's what going on here. It's a sort of tradgedy of errors after our hero decides the best course of action is to kidnap the infant son of his employer, a vicious drug dealer. Things go from bad to wretched to comically hideous.....and it's all served up straight. I recommend seeing this and then 'Cash Only' for desert. Your credit card balance will seem less ominous after that program.

The Last Movie Star (I) (2017)

great movie

[10/10 · 19 March 2024]

I really like this movie for the corniest reasons. It seems very honest and courageous and touching. I liked the young Burt Reynolds with his brash and funny style, but there's nothing about Smoky, or the guy from Deliverance that prepares you for the performance here.

If a mark of good acting is that it dosen't seem like acting, then Burt has never done anything better. It has a good story line. But what gets me is how in the end, whatever that is, being old, being young, all of the concerns that we all experience at any age, put us all under the same umbrella. We all have something to say to each other if we can get past all the BS and allow ourselves to be open once in awhile. We're all going to die, some sooner some later, and we're all at some point on the identical continuum. I hate it when I try to be philosophic , it always sounds like some drippy hippie gibberish. But anyway, Burt does a great job here, whether he's acting or just being exactly who he is, and it doesn't really matter. He's just so vulnerable and open and honest, way past being able to kid himself and no interest in lying to anyone either. Along the way in this story he just finds himself opening up to the love around him, which doesn't need to come from some high profile prestige source. Love is love at any age, always in season. Ten stars.

Plane (2023)

Tense, compelling, nothing mysterious, another good Gerard Butler movie

[8/10 · 10 March 2024]

This is as advertised. That's the great thing about Gerard Butler movies. They live up to expection. This is very much like Rambo in the Jungle, getting a load of passengers to safety, but this time on a crippled passenger jet. It's a surprise how something so formulaic and derivative can be so tense and attention grabbing. It's Gerard andMike Colter that keep things revved up and continually escalating. Spare editing cuts out all the fluff and gives it a modern docu feel. Good action movie. I need another one hundred and four "characters to get this review off the ground, now just twenty too, and...rotate.

Poor Things (2023)

pure mush, unbearably artsy. Some will "adore" this, but thankfully I prefer Rambo (2008)

[1/10 · 3 March 2024]

I couldn't make it through the whole thing. I knew in the first 2 minutes, less actually, that would happen. When a screen goes black and you hear a violin, and you are left to wait with bated breath for whatever fascinating image will be revealed to you in slo-mo, it's a very bad sign. When this image was a slow closeup of a woman's back in a florid rococo gown, jumping off a precipice in slow motion, any lingering doubt ended. "If there's any doubt, then there's no doubt". I jumped around for another minute, doing a biopsy of this thing. Every image was like some hideous combination of Flaubert, Baudelaire, "Madama Butterfly", with a hideous dose of "Black Swan" thrown in for good luck. I already knew the story, a combination of "Short Eyes" and "Frankenstein", so it's not like I need a reprisal of those topics.

Every image was calculated to overwhelm you with the "gorgeousness" of the photography, every lousy second. All that in service of a grotequely dressed up, squalid and boring story about abuse. Some call this cheap shot approach mastery. I like stuff lean and mean and to the point, not jumping into a swimming pool of molasses with violins playing. Polanski is a tremendous artist, so's Scorcese. They impress with great camera work. But it's dynamic. This is just mush.

Lifeforce (1985)

A derailing locomotive moving at top speed right into your astonished face

[10/10 · 2 March 2024]

If your head's in the right place, this is fabulous. Otherwise about all you can do is gawk at Mathilda May, who's body is strategically deployed, stark naked, all over the place. Those fabled appearances, the Vampire Lady Godiva, keep you watching, in a coma, until your next hypnic jerk when she appears.

I am one of those that got off on this. My head was definately in the right place in 1985. Now I'm more aware of the astonishing acting and amazing lines. "And if that fails, sterilization by thermonuclear device has been approved", something like that. Patrick Stewart does a turn here, the "kiss" scene and the deal where, cross-eyed, he vomits a few gravity-defying gallons of blood, that I'd guess still give him insomnia thinking about 40 years later, and with Steve Railsback derailing and getting more wildly frenetic every minute, the stuff these actors are being asked to do, or are not being asked to do, is enough to keep your eyes wide open without even considering the astonishing story line. What could possibly be coming next? What'll top that? Just you wait and see!

This story line has to be unique in motion pictures. I have the arrogance to presume to imagine I see the thread holding it together. But this thread has to be seen to be believed. I won't try to describe it. There's no need anyway, as the greatest scholars on this website have all tried their hand at it, and all of them shed some light on the bedazzling situation.

I'm also a fan of the beautiful mess "Big Trouble in Little China".

But that had some coherence and artistry and this is just outrageous. A locomotive moving at high speed, moving towards complete derailment yet incredibly accelerating, right into your astonished face. As funny as it is, it was designed to be taken with the utmost seriousness.

10 stars.