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Reviews
Slither (2006)
Pretty disgusting...
...but very entertaining at the same time. "Slither" is so much over the edge that it's hard to hate this movie despite its gore, sexism, bad taste, disgusting detains and so on. There are some great laughs in it, and everyone on this film did a good, solid job. You can clearly see that the actors had a lot of fun whilst making this picture, which seems a lot (compared to rubbish like "The Omen" or "The DaVinci Code") these days.
"Slither" is a devoted homage to all those B-movie and horror classics of the 1940s to 1980s, and I had great fun watching it, but I wouldn't watch it twice.
La encadenada (1975)
A MUST for Mell fans
Normally I'd have given this movie 5 out of 10, but Miss Mell does so fabulously in this solid Euro-thriller that I had to add three more...
"Diary of an Erotic Murderess" is a sexy mystery drama about a woman who murders a millionaire (Conte) to marry his mentally retarded son (lovely but mute: Juan Ribó). Mur Oti, the director, chose a slow-moving climax which might be considered a little boring by most viewers, but I liked it quite a lot. The interestingly atmospheric score was a great plus for me as well.
Whether you like the plot, the direction, the music etc., or not, after all, this is Marisa Mell's film, and she is just wonderful in it! She steals the movie and is prettier than ever.
Marisa was born Marlies Moitzi in Graz, Austria, went to the renowned Max Reinhard Seminar in Vienna and did a couple of less-than-memorable appearances in German and Austrian movies before, in 1963, she went abroad to star in movies like "French Dressing" (by Ken Russell) or "Masquerade", but her career never quite took off. The multi-lingual (fluent in French, English, Spanish, Italian, and German) Mell did excellent in Bava's pop art extravaganza "Danger: Diabolik" and Fulci's "One on Top of the Other" before, in the 1970s, her movies became more and more obscure. The died of cancer in 1992. She was only 53 and had spent her last few years in poverty. She died as she had lived: alone.
Unfortunately, the American distributor cut about 15 minutes from the film, so that the film lacks both, gore and nudity. The dubbing is also quite poor.
P.S.: If you look closely, you can see Carmen Maura, Almodóvar's leading lady of the 1980s, in one of her first movie appearances.
The Omen (2006)
Watch the 1976 original and forget about this crap.
David Seltzer rewrote his classic 1976 screenplay, didn't change the structure and kept very much of the old dialogue, so if you know Donner's classic, please do not expect something new.
I watched it yesterday (on 6-6-06, I thought this was a cool idea) and thought, "The classic was so cool and if they didn't change much, what can go wrong?" After sitting through this unintentionally funny piece of filth, I knew: EVERYTHING.
Julia Stiles was not only terribly miscast (she was at least ten years too young to fit this part properly), her acting was worse than ever and made the audience laugh several times.
Beltrami's score is just plain boring and pointless. One misses the perfection of Goldsmith's moody original music. The direction: poor, alarmingly poor. It seems as if the director phoned it in. A shame! Then: Liev Schreiber, a better actor than Gregory Peck? I don't think so. The supporting cast, like Thewlis, Gambon, and Farrow is practically wasted. At least Farrow could save her the one and only suspenseful scene when she kills Julia Stiles ("Thank God she's gone!") in the hospital. But then again, her performance cannot stand the comparison to Billie Whitelaw's powerful performance.
If you don't know Donner's classic, this might be entertaining. If you do, this is annoying beyond belief. One of the worst remakes in movie history.
Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
Not THAT bad, but far from being great
It seems fashionable to hate this movie, put the blame on Sharon Stone and try everything to throw this movie into the "Bottom 100" slot. I will try my best to judge this movie decently.
First of all, the question we all wanted this movie to answer: Is Sharon Stone still as hot as she was 14 years ago? The answer must be Yes. Stone still does look radiant, thanks to plastic surgery, good make-up artists, sexy dresses and -- in her (very few) sex scenes -- body doubles.
Is Stone convincing in her part of Catherine Tramell? Sure she is. Stone is one of the best (and most underrated) actresses in Hollywood. She did great in part one, and she did a convincing job in the sequel. After 14 years of preparation, she knows Catherine Tramell inside out.
What did I like about this movie? First of all, I was thrilled to see Charlotte Rampling again. She is one of the most beautiful women in the world (still!), and she does fine in her part. I pity that she hasn't got more scenes. There were several supporting actors who made this movie worth watching: Indira Varma, David Thewlis, Hugh Dancy, Heathcote Williams, Kata Dobó. Sad thing that each of them only has three scenes or even less. (If you look closely, you can briefly spot André Schneider from "Deed Poll" as an extra at the police station.) The movie looks cool and stylish, but after all this is a big budget movie, so I do expect good editing, fine photography and art direction. With a budget of about 80 million dollars, one CAN expect a good-looking movie, I think.
The weakest spot of "Basic Instinct 2" is David Morrissey who has to carry the movie. (He's got more scenes than Stone, and the story is told from his point of view, after all.) He's an accomplished stage actor, and he's made some good movie appearances (i.e. in "Drowning by Numbers" or "The Suicide Club"), but this was certainly one of his bleakest ones. He just couldn't deal with the part, sometimes he's unintentionally funny, especially in the end when he's become crazy.
The script. My oh my! The first draft was finished in the late 1990s, and they kept re-writing and re-writing it over and over and over. Michael Caton-Jones, who made "City by the Sea" and "Shooting Dogs", two little masterpieces, stated that he had to change it practically every day while they were already filming because it just didn't work. In the end, "Basic Instinct 2" is overlong, and it tries to surprise the audience so much that it gets ridiculously boring. In the end, you just don't care anymore whether Catherine did it or not. The script alone would have sufficed for a made-for-TV mystery, but...
There are some things about Miss Stone's make-up. She IS hot. She has aged damn well. She's almost 50 and looks like 42. By trying to make her look like 25, they kind of made her face look like wax. Why?
Deed Poll (2004)
This movie belongs to Mr. Schneider's haunting face
Since this movie will probably never be released widely, I was truly fortunate to get a copy of the DVD through a friend of mine who was visiting Andre Schneider in Germany earlier this year.
A weird film, I must say, but it's highly entertaining, dark and sexy. As a gay man, I was hugely attracted to Mr. Schneider who gave a tour-de-force performance in this movie. I haven't seen any of his other performances yet, but this one was electrifying. Equally good were Miss Kowa and Mr. Wittenauer who played an incestuous pair of siblings. But despite of their good performances, "Deed Poll" entirely belongs to Andre Schneider's face and presence: raw and sensitive, sexy and vulnerable, tender and fierce, seductive and ugly. It's his face and the great script that makes the viewer forget about the inept direction, the hilariously bad sound and some goofs.
Too weird for American audiences, this movie will sooner or later become a cult classic. I watched it more than a dozen times and made copies for many of my family members and friends. This is a movie with a message.