thor5894 Reviews

Barry Lyndon (1975)

The first critics had it right

[5/10 · 25 May 2020]

Barry Lyndon was slated by critics on release, kind of forgotten, but in recent years has been reappraised by many as one of Kubrick's great films. I side with the original critics. This is pretty to look at and also pretty pointless. The most glaring flaw is lightweight Ryan O'Neal in the lead role. He's a cipher impossible to care about, kind of a rogue but not an outright villain. The story proceeds as one would expect, there are slight satirical touches but nothing too biting, then it ends. It never gave me a reason to care. No idea what attracted Kubrick to the story or what he wanted to say with this. A large miss.

A Horrible Way to Die (2010)

This almost could have been nearly great

[6/10 · 6 August 2018]

There is a lot to admire here, mainly a great lead performance by Amy Seimetz as the alcoholic ex-girlfriend of a serial killer trying to re-establish a normal life. Also it's tough to pull off a naturalistic arthouse horror flick, and this attempt does better than most. For most of its running time this plays more as a drama (that happens to involve a serial killer) than as horror. But two elements nearly wreck the film. One, mentioned by many other reviews here, is the constant close-ups with a jerky handheld camera. A little of this would be fine but it never lets up, this movie is 87 minutes of random close-ups with a camera that won't hold still. It's too much and becomes a constant distraction. Second, there is a very ill-judged twist five minutes before the end that effectively undoes much of the naturalistic appeal the movie had until that point. I won't reveal it here, but will just say it was wholly unconvincing to me. Even with these serious flaws, I found this to be worth watching for Seimetz's performance and for the unhurried, reflective storytelling. What's good here will stay with me, which makes the misjudgments that much more frustrating.

Defenceless: A Blood Symphony (2004)

Both artistic and graceless

[5/10 · 15 September 2017]

This is a hard one to rate. On the plus side, the no-dialogue conceit works quite well, the slow pace is a virtue, and the lead actress manages to be charismatic even without any spoken dialogue. That said there are serious flaws.

-the movie looks like it was filmed on videotape, giving it a cheap, unwelcome brightness and sharpness to its visual look. I found this a distraction.

-too much of the extreme violence looks clumsy and badly simulated.

-while the story is properly simple, it still doesn't always make sense. At the halfway point the lead character is murdered, after the villains previously murdered everyone close to her. OK, except they needed her signature on a property contract--how does killing her solve this??

I'd say the film's second half is stronger, when the murdered woman emerges from the sea reborn, as some elemental pre-verbal creature to take revenge. The interlude with the young girl she befriends just after her resurrection is maybe the film's high point. But the flaws are glaring and keep the film from ever really taking flight. Also, yes I know we're in the extreme horror sub-genre, but why such fixation on genital mutilation? Is that needed to advance the story? Shock for shock's sake doesn't impress me. But in the end, I go back to the cheap videotaped look; making this on actual film would have been by itself a big improvement. So, not trash, but only partway successful.

Honeymoon (2014)

creeping terror

[9/10 · 28 September 2015]

Fantastic. This is how you make a no-budget horror movie, a good script, exceptional acting, a steady pace, subtle gradations of character behavior, a creeping sense of dread that becomes nearly unbearable. Great debut film by Leigh Janiak, I look forward to what she does next. (The less said about the plot the better, avoid spoilers for this one.) I do wonder at the low 5.6 rating here. Glancing at the message board, it seems some people are hung up on the 'bad' accents. Oy, really? I admit my ear for accents isn't the best, but too many people look for a reason to whine, or maybe they think they'll come off as smart or more sophisticated if they prattle on about this. The two (Brit and Scot) leads sounded American to me; and even if you do detect an occasional word or phrase that's a bit off, so effing what? Get over yourself and watch the movie. Or maybe they're ticked about damn foreigners stealing acting jobs from American actors, who knows?

Better to focus on what becomes a heartrending relationship, and the fraught psychology of these two people. When you get to the end and all is revealed, think back on how loyal Paul was, and how understandable Bea's motivation was for what she concealed and how she acted. I thought this was a knockout.

Call Her Savage (1932)

Call it bizarre

[5/10 · 29 April 2015]

Worth seeing as a curiosity and for Clara Bow's near-unhinged performance, but there's still no way to describe this as in any way a good film. Tonally schizophrenic, it veers from comedy to florid melodrama to unintentional laughs. It also manages to be simultaneously socially permissive while indulging the hoariest stereotypes of American Indians. The one thing to hold onto is Clara Bow. Her performance transcends mere notions of 'good' or 'bad'; whatever it is, it's never dull and you never take your eyes off her.

Plot? Oh yes, lots of it, which I won't try to describe. The narrative here has all the rigor and logic of a Dario Argento horror flick. Just go with it. You're unlikely to see another movie like this.

Also: this must be Exhibit A in IMDb users' deference in rating older films. 7.2?? Sure, on a scale of 1 to 50.

The Sisterhood of Night (2014)

Secrecy and silence and the fallout

[8/10 · 18 March 2015]

Just saw a film festival showing with the director and writer in attendance for a q&a. This is a difficult film to label, the trailer might suggest a 'mean girls as witches' storyline as in The Craft, but this is not a horror flick, there's no supernatural element. It's about female friendships and being true to oneself, there are familiar high school themes of peer pressure, popularity, a dash of cyber bullying, but thankfully none of these are pressed too hard, so it never devolves to a dreary message movie.

You could say the plot uses The Crucible as a rough template, but best to discover the specifics for yourself. The director has a great visual sense, and Georgie Henley is a real find as the lead character Mary Warren, she has a natural charisma and commands every scene she's in. Maybe there are one or two obligatory plot turns, but overall the narrative unfolds in surprising ways and lands with real emotional punch. The director said it will be available on video on demand in April 2015. Worth seeking out.

The Woman Next Door (1981)

Odd, off-putting, unconvincing

[5/10 · 14 August 2014]

I really wanted to like this one more, it's the kind of domestic drama the French usually do well, but it just didn't work for me. Truffaut takes material grounded in realism and tries to impose a fable-like atmosphere, and ends up in an awkward middle ground. Just one example, he has Fanny Ardant faint at least twice in the movie. Really? Is this 1981 or 1921? I really didn't take to Ardant's performance, though I suspect the script shares the blame for that; she comes off less as a real person than a male construct.

The story--Ardant and her husband move next door to Gerard Depardieu and his wife, the two having had an intense affair a decade earlier--is well told and holds interest, but the details are often unconvincing and there's an off-putting tone to the whole affair. For instance, Ardant and Depardieu act frantic about their secret right from the start--but why? Both were single when they were previously a couple, so there would be no scandal in being honest with their spouses, yet both insist on saying nothing. Later in the film, when the truth is exposed, and by this time the two have become adulterous lovers in the present, the respective spouses are maddeningly reasonable about the whole thing. Yeah yeah, they're French, but really, if betrayed spouses always reacted this mildly, people wouldn't feel the need to hide adultery in the first place.

This vague inauthentic vibe persists right to the melodramatic ending, which also comes off as oddly emotionally flat.

Dark City (1998)

Some movies just don't age well

[5/10 · 30 June 2014]

A few of the problems with Dark City:

-Two-dimensional characters it's hard to care about or engage with. In the case of Rufus Sewell, he has the excuse that he's playing a character with no memory. But really there's not a single real person here, though William Hurt comes close.

-Silly visual effects. The shape-shifting architecture was fine, but the Strangers floating thru the city, and worst, the laughable 'mind-battle' between Sewell and Ian Richardson at the end, oh dear.

-One of the worst music scores I've ever heard. All swelling strings, telling you what emotion you should feel in every scene, ugh. I thought that went out of style in 1958.

-Why does the city look like a 1940s film noir? Because the director thought it was cool?

-The Strangers can manipulate things with their minds, yet they go around menacing people with knives?? Why not a gun then? I guess if they could have simply shot the hero, the movie would have been really short.

-Um, did anyone notice that all the Strangers are men? Yo, menacing bald albino guys--want to know why your race is dying out? No women! How do you reproduce?

I think, though, the real issue is that the movie just ages badly. It was much lauded when it was released, and Roger Ebert named it his Best Film of the Year. If I had seen it when it came out, I'm guessing I would have been a lot kinder. (I had a similar experience when I saw Fight Club, about ten years after it came out; it was good, but I didn't really understand all the hype.) Certainly it would seem that Dark City was a major influence on the television show Fringe, whose Observers were more or less a copy of its fedora-wearing mysterious bald guys. But there's just no emotional investment here. Once you learn that identities are constantly reset, along with memories, all of the human characters essentially become props. This kind of story works better in a shorter format; as an episode of The Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, it might have succeeded.

American Mary (2012)

Mary gets even, then gets really weird

[8/10 · 28 May 2014]

If you find yourself in a movie with Katharine Isabelle, you really should avoid pissing her off. The star of the excellent Ginger Snaps films (see all of them, seriously) plays a med student who gets involved in extreme body modification. This is a true original, and the Soska sisters are now officially on my radar. The script has some problems in the movie's second half, but the many virtues here make that easy to overlook. Ms. Isabelle is the biggest asset, giving a perfectly tuned dry and sardonic performance, while not sacrificing the emotions of all she is put through. The body modification culture is depicted without judgment, and there are a half dozen genuinely memorable characters. One thing I liked is how this avoids being a generic revenge story. Mary suffers a horrible violation early in the film, and to my amazement--because movies almost never work this way--she takes about five minutes to get her revenge. No dragging that out, the movie has other things on its mind.

I'm not sure in the end what statement the film is making, if any, but it tells a gripping story of a life on the extreme fringes. I'm also unclear why the Canadians who made this gave it the title American Mary, memorable though it is. But whatever, there's a real talent here. Back in the '90s an offbeat vampire flick called Near Dark came out of nowhere, directed by one Kathryn Bigelow. She proved to be a director to watch, and I want to see what else the Soska sisters get up to in the years ahead.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011)

See what I did there? (Yes, Joss, now shutup)

[7/10 · 28 May 2014]

Fun and entertaining deconstruction of horror film tropes. If there's a problem, it's kind of like when a magician explains how a trick is done, which spoils the fun. Here, the horror elements are never scary, because you see the gears turning. We can normally suspend disbelief for 90 minutes and believe zombies are real, but not here. Second problem, Joss Whedon simply can't get out of his own way. He can't just do something clever, he has to stop every ten minutes and tell everyone how clever he is. It gets tiresome. So this is a fun ride, and often very funny, not scary, and the presence of Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford is invaluable. (Jenkins has the best moment in the movie, screaming at a monitor, "Fuck you! Goddamnit Japan, how hard is it to kill nine-year-olds?!?" In context, this is very funny.)

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

Too opaque by half

[7/10 · 7 April 2014]

First, a tip of the hat to various people who have posted commentary here, as some of this has enhanced my understanding of the film. It is exceptionally well made and beautifully filmed, maintains a sense of dread throughout and is ultimately heartbreaking. But for all that, this is a film too opaque by half, with so many feints, fake outs, and misdirection that one almost needs a scorecard. This is a film in which:

-a character imagines or pretends to be two other characters who aren't actually there.

-the two characters who aren't there have several scenes in which they are the only ones present. (If a ghost argues with an imaginary person and no one else is in the room at the time, is that why they can yell and scream and smash things and no one else hears?)

-one of the imagined people who isn't really there has nightmares. Given she doesn't tell anyone about the nightmares, and she doesn't exist anyway, how is it we see her nightmares? I suspect even David Cronenberg would reject this as too weird.

-one of the imagined people also exists as a ghost in the house.

-the father, as it turns out, knows that his daughter Su-mi is unstable to the point of pretending to be her stepmother, and he deems it prudent to go along with this, to the point of letting her sleep next to him in his bed. I'm gonna go out on a limb and venture that this was a bad call.

-a dinner party is so bizarrely awkward and strange that a ghost hiding under the sink is practically a footnote.

I don't mean to be merely snarky. I really do, overall, think highly of this film. But at a certain point it's just all a bit much. I've no objection to a film making you work a bit to fully understand it, but A Tale of Two Sisters puts you through a Bataan Death March in order to understand it. And even then, the puzzle pieces don't all fit together.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

film out of time

[7/10 · 17 March 2014]

Hard to get my head around this one. I can only guess how it played in 1955; today, it seems remarkably ahead of its time. While superficially nasty and vulgar (and quite violent for its time), a closer viewing reveals a film contemptuous of its own 'hero'. And rightly so. While Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe et al all have their moments of selfish, thoughtless amorality, Mike Hammer is little more than a crude, obtuse thug who goes through the movie never realizing what he is on to, endangering others while casually asking his bafflingly loyal assistant Velda to prostitute herself. All with a completely unearned sense of grievance. Director Robert Aldrich has too good a track record not to have known exactly what he was doing, though I'd wager few others realized it at the time. Here is a movie where the P.I. really should have stepped aside and let the cops do their job, as they actually had a clue what they were dealing with. But Hammer blunders ahead, and the result isn't pretty. Fantastic, completely over-the-top ending, both ridiculous and terrifying.

Not quite top shelf noir, but still a must-see.

The Clones (1973)

4.7??? I protest!

[8/10 · 28 January 2014]

Saw this twice long ago on Creature Features, hosted by the late great Bob Wilkins (Bay Area folk of a certain age will nod). It's the best kind of low budget science fiction, lean, fast, and unpretentious. It plays as much like an action movie as sci-fi, to be honest, much of the film is an extended chase, but very well done. The lead actor is unknown to me but fine in the role(s). Stanley Adams, Cyrano Jones on the original Star Trek, has a choice role as a scientist (and gets the last word in the movie). Best of all, Gregory Sierra plays a particularly nasty hit-man, in what can almost be seen as a prelude to his role in the excellent Deep Cover many years later.

No idea if this is available anywhere or ever gets aired (TCM, are you listening?), but well worth the time if you get the chance.

Scream of Fear (1961)

Efficient little chiller

[7/10 · 16 October 2013]

Another movie completely unknown to me until discovering it on TCM. This is an early Hammer release, more a straight suspense tale than horror, a little reminiscent of Diabolique. The plotting is everything, so take care to avoid spoilers. Susan Strasberg plays a young woman in a wheelchair who returns to her family home after a ten year estrangement. Oddly, her father isn't there to greet her, only her seemingly friendly step-mother, and strange things begin happening straight away. Clearly something is askew, but having just arrived, whom can she trust to sort it out?

Strasberg is very appealing as a vulnerable yet stubborn and headstrong girl in a strange environment. The movie clocks in at just over 80 minutes, yet also takes its time in establishing her situation and the handful of characters. This unhurried but efficient pacing is a major virtue. When the dramatic twists do arrive, they pull no punches.

-Christopher Lee has a supporting role as a possibly dubious physician.

-The original title, Taste of Fear, is a better fit (Scream of Fear sounds a bit silly, like calling a film Killed to Death).

-The opening scene, a bleak discovery on a lake, is one of the most striking and lets you know you're in good hands. Recommended.

Room of Death (2007)

Weird, dark, not entirely cohesive

[7/10 · 24 September 2013]

This is a strange one, a police procedural-type of story mixed with an almost Gothic, Hammer-esque sensibility. It mostly works, but the two strands don't entirely mesh. The police investigation aspect is the stronger. Melanie Laurent is an intuitive detective (with twin infants at home) investigating two kidnappings that may be related. The first has ended badly (not a spoiler, this is in the opening minutes of the film) due to a hit-and-run accident that killed a man trying to deliver a ransom. The accidental killers hide the body and take the money; how they react to this provides an ongoing subplot.

Once the identity of the kidnapper(s) is revealed, the film takes a detour into Gothic-y, almost Cronenberg territory. In addition, there are several flashbacks that hint at a dark past which informs Laurent's character. (I'm guessing that the novel this is based on fills in more detail about this; in the film it remains a bit vague.) The florid nature of the last 45 minutes sits uneasily with the mostly gripping procedural narrative up to that point. It's not a fatal flaw, but once we enter the world and mindset of the kidnapper(s) the film flirts with being too wiggy for its own good. However, the plotting and pacing are strong, the performances are good, the cinematography matches the dark and heightened tone of the story, and Melanie Laurent (if you ignore that at age 24, it's a stretch that she's already made detective) anchors it all as a believable and likable heroine. Plausibility is strained, but it's never boring.

Inside (2007)

Effective if flawed, better than Martyrs at least

[7/10 · 16 May 2013]

Inside scores major points for having no filler (a mean 82 minutes), maintaining incredible tension, and pulling no punches. Also for some very committed acting by the lead actresses and an overall atmosphere of haunted despair. It loses some credibility for increasing implausibilities as it goes along.

..........SOME SPOILERS BELOW.......... I have to agree with other commenters that the cop who practically comes back from the dead near the end is just ridiculous. It's the worst example of an ongoing issue, which is too often we see damage inflicted on various characters that should either kill them or at least leave them maimed and writhing in pain, if not unconscious. Rather than shrugging off grave injuries like a skinned knee. It's nearly as bad that after getting her entire face immolated in flame, the crazed woman, other than being horribly disfigured, simply continues on as if she were Michael Meyers. Yes, I know, it's a convention of horror films, and you have to cut a little slack on this issue. Well, I did; I accepted that a nine months pregnant woman could endure this level of punishment, when in reality that's highly unlikely. That's fine--otherwise there'd be no movie--but these other examples were, in the end, just asking too much.

So Inside isn't quite a modern classic, but it's pretty damned good. And since these often get discussed in tandem, I should give credit for avoiding the pretentious pseudo-philosophical bullshit of the last third of Martyrs. (Martyrs is quite well made technically, but in the end succumbs to the misogynist impulses of its worst characters.) Inside, amazingly, manages to be a film with geysers of blood and shockingly graphic violence but without the underlying sheen of vileness and hate that ultimately poisons Martyrs.

The Sadist (1963)

Oddity from '63

[6/10 · 12 March 2013]

Just caught this one on TCM, after reading some of the reviews here. I give it credit for being refreshingly grim and uncompromising for its time. It's well shot and directed, and the ending is almost poetic. That said, I must comment that the rave reviews here kind of ignore the elephant in the room, which is that Arch Hall jr. is quite possibly the worst thespian who ever thesp'd. Oh my is he bad. Picture an unfortunate hybrid of Michael J. Pollard and Clint Howard, minus Pollard's acting chops. The rest of the cast is competent, not outstanding but good enough.

Anyway, now I've finally seen an Arch Hall jr. film. A couple years ago I saw Rules of the Game, my first Jean Renoir film. It's about 80 gazillion times better than this, if you're wondering.