christopher-underwood Reviews

One False Move (1991)

a splendid neo-noir

[9/10 · 15 April 2024]

It's an amazing opening with an unfocused view of LA, gradually we see what looks like a taxi and completely sharp view as a dark girl gets out and goes towards someone's home. They let her in and there is a couple dancing, a guy is using a video camera and it is showing on the TV. She says she will pop out for a moment and then it all goes wrong. This is Cynda Williams known as Fantasia and with Billy Bob Thornton as Ray and Michael Beach as Pluto, these three are desperate enough for killing with drugs and money. A splendid neo-noir and although there is a racist element but there is more that we will uncover. In the LA locations are good but the one's in Arkansas these by the eerie woods are wonderful. Here is Bill Paxton played as Hurricane and we get a very different kind of sheriff unlike the two LA people coming in to sort it out. It is a thrilling and very interesting of the good and the bad and the black and the white and after six killings there is more to come and all the three dwellings there are children inside and Fantasia has her own story.

Desire (1936)

Dietrich good all the time

[9/10 · 13 April 2024]

What a splendid film. I have never seen it before and have hardly ever seen Gary Cooper before. Marlene Dietrich is wonderful here, doesn't put a foot wrong and looks lovely all the time, it must be Ernst Lubitsch helping here especially with the lighting. She just looks amazing every frame and of course her costumes are gorgeous. At the beginning with the stealing of the pearls is great, she looks fine in white or black and funny as well. The scenes later with the cars in Paris and on with the old roads in Spain it is amusing and romantic. The last part in the hotel it is not quiet as fantastic but is still fine because Dietrich good all the time and John Halliday is fun. For me, Gary Cooper looks to be more like a cricketer but he is just okay and at least the right age. It is great but I think that the very slight story just begins to go on a bit towards the end but I just loved it all anyway.

The Revenant (I) (2015)

impressive

[8/10 · 11 April 2024]

It is so beautiful with the forest, the trees so high and wonderful, the rivers so quiet and lovely and other crashing and thunderous. There are splendid sunrises and even better as the sun sets. The mountains are amazing and the snow, almost all the time it is clearly so very cold. Also there are the fights. So many of them, with arrows and guns and knifes and even the odd axe. So many people have to die and the horses, it is as constantly brutal as it is so difficult for us to watch. There are not many birds or animals but there is the bear and the most awful fight that surely we have ever seen with Leonardo DiCaprio even if it is not real but with cgi it is still impressive. Clearly we know that the bear is not real but that everything else is supposed to be and certainly it is thrilling and as when DiCaprio almost dies and then crawling through the snow without much food we just hope as he goes on and on that he will make it (even if it is a little too long).

Blue Bayou (2021)

sad and happy moments

[7/10 · 8 April 2024]

Not usually the sort of film I might watch but there was something about it that it would be good. And it was almost as soon it started that I knew what was going to happen, and it did but there are up and downs, sad and happy moments but rather splendid. I was surprised that the director, Justin Chon, was outstanding, even if his water scenes are rather arty, he was so good most of the time and rather good with the actors, especially with the young girl, Sydney Kowalske, was wonderful. He also did the writing which is fine and of course was the star and also great. Also very much liked Alicia Vikander and thought she was rather impressive. I noticed later that she was married to Michael Fassbender and she had been the star quite amazing in Ex-Machina (2014) by Alex Garland.

A Story Written with Water (1965)

rather slow and unpleasant

[6/10 · 6 April 2024]

It is well shot, some beautiful sections and good dialogue but it is rather slow and unpleasant, and the subtitles can be too fast. The couple are getting married but we learn that the husband is still very close to his mother who has had a long affair with his fiancee's father. Much of the action is in the past when the man is still a child and his father is dying. There is some confusion as to who is his real father. Even if it is rather complicated, although very well done, but there is also more than a suggestion of incest and in the end it is a rather long melodrama for really just four people and I found them unlikable.

Le combat dans l'île (1962)

a noir or maybe some Nouvelle Vague

[8/10 · 4 April 2024]

At the beginning we are not really sure what is going on although we are sure that the cinematography of Pierre Lhomme is wonderful and the dialogue and directing by Alain Cavalier is great. Starting in a car with Jean-Louis Trintignant one of his colleagues and Romy Schneider we imagine that there is something going on with the men. It is a small space but we think that something terrible is going on and that she is a little drunk and tries to work it out, the same as us. Just in those little moments and the three together it is sparkling. Is this a noir or maybe some Nouvelle Vague? Further on we find that maybe these are right-wing terrorists and Trintignant in the middle of it and later on it is Henri Serre his old childhood friend but a pacifist. At the same time Schneider is wonderful and jolly and sad, in love and out and on as Trintignant can be rather nasty. This is like a thriller and the narrator will tell us about the political turmoil of the 60s and there will be violence but then there will even be some sort of duel and eventually some romance.

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

a nod towards Exorcist and Amityville

[7/10 · 31 March 2024]

I have to say that this is a rather original and really good effort of making a thrilling horror, with a nod towards Exorcist and Amityville. We're surprised we are straight in with a 70s late-night talk show very much like Johnny Carson and this is rather long before we get into this brilliant part of the horror. I realise that we are being drawn into this and it is rather clever and we have almost forgotten about the horror. Of course we enjoy the way the program is made and with all the advert breaks, the short music introductions and the unfunny jokes. David Dastmalchian is brilliant, he doesn't put a foot wrong also Ingrid Torelli is almost even better. She is a young Australian girl with her first film and amazing although I understand that she was had a wonderful run in 2016 with Matilda the Musical in Melbourne but she certainly had a different role in this one with a lovely look in her eye, she is a bit of a devil.

The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

delightful and painterly

[8/10 · 26 March 2024]

As the film begins it is wonderful, even during the opening credits it is delightful and painterly. The action is so beautiful, so colourful like a series of paintings, every word of the dialogue is thoughtful and there is even something amusing. At the start we have the details of the draughtsman's contract and soon he is on his way and starting to get on with his drawings. These are fine and there seems some fun going on and as the pictures seem to change and we realise that not only that there are some puzzles and that in this there is a mystery. After about half way through I had something of a problem and it is clear that every picture and sound of dialogue there is something for us to watch and listen because for Greenaway it all has some meaning. For the gardens and trees and the fruit and the paintings are all there and even if there were to be 12 drawings in the contract there is then a 13th was maybe the murder although he never completed number eleven. I found it all rather difficult that I did not understand everything but I will try again because it is fun anyway and of course with Michael Nyman there is the music and it is splendid.

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

James Cagney is great

[7/10 · 24 March 2024]

It roars on but not quite as thrillingly as we expected. Released in 1939 and set in the 20s but it seems to be really what it was going to be in the 40s. The songs and music and costumes not as good as they could have been although Priscilla Lane is okay. The gangsters, after the war are finding their way and in this one James Cagney is great but is getting bored and will go on with some different films. Humphrey Bogart is fine, sometimes overacting, some not at all and then especially towards the end he is amazing and maybe even better than Cagney. Obviously he will go on to star only a couple of years later and the crime films in the 40s will really become the noir classics, and many with Bogart.

Azor (2021)

not like The Heart of Darkness

[4/10 · 22 March 2024]

I realised that that this was going to be the world of finance of Buenos Aires but I hoped we would see something more of the City or more of Argentina. Instead this is really just about the wealth, the swimming pools, the horses and the racing, the big posh houses and a private plane. The bankers here are really rich and they talk and drink and smoke and talk again. I noted that it was supposed to be in the 80s and about their dirty war but we do not really get much of what is going on except talking during for the most of 90 minutes out of an hour and forty. In the last ten minutes there is some action, then they go in the evening on a boat as if we are finally going to meet the big man, I thought surely this is not going to be like The Heart of Darkness. Of course it's not but I think they just wanted us to think that as if it was, but then, nothing at all.

Lone Star (1996)

murder mystery

[8/10 · 17 March 2024]

Almost 25 years ago when I saw this in the cinema and yet I don't think I had seen it again until now with this splendid Blu-ray from Criterion. In the notes there is a suggestion that this wonderful film might be a mixed genre of the western, the film noir, a murder mystery and romance so there may be something in this. Although I have to say that it really has something of a western about it, set on the Texas and Mexico border, the baddie as Kris Kristofferson (brilliantly) and the goody Chris Cooper (almost as well done) and although there are one sided gun fights but no horses. Not quite a noir, certainly not black&white because the cinematography colour is great although I think that the Joel and Ethan Coen with their low budgets created own classic noir and with this one there is something about the hard boiled dialogue about it. I could say this is a murder mystery because it starts at the very beginning in the desert and only finishes at the very end. There is some romance towards the end but there is of course some history (surely not about the Alamo) and rather a lot of racism. Thrilling throughout but there are the tensions of black, white and Hispanic.

Evil Dead Trap (1988)

extreme horror

[8/10 · 13 March 2024]

I first saw this more than twenty years ago and it was only a copy and the subtitles were poor and I hardly knew what was going on but it was very scary. Even with this splendid blu-ray for the very first time in the UK it is still not really clear what is happening, something is going on and it is amazing and still scary. It is unfortunate that it is a bit too long but we are reminded of Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento with the maggots in the ceiling and a women impaled with spikes coming out of the wall, the bravura death scene with a woman tied on a chair, a complicated multiple crossbow and an opening door which comes too late. Some of the music is either the German industrial noise or even with the Goblins but it is still very good. There is so much going on, there is never a moment for us to breath during the frightening scenes and with the sound and with Miyuki Ono all the time with her screaming and her wide eyes. We can probably do without the Alien scenes at the end but it is certainly a thrilling, fascinating and electrifying, terrible extreme horror.

Party Girl (1958)

almost all of Nicholas Ray's

[9/10 · 11 March 2024]

There is something about almost all of Nicholas Ray's films that makes them so different from everybody else's but is hard to define. Intentionally or not there is usually a sense of theatre, an element of artifice that makes it clear that realism is not the goal. We enjoy the spectacle, indeed, enjoy the film, knowing all the time that this is a glorious cinematic event. In Party Girl, Robert Taylor and Cyd Charisse are both fine in their roles and Lee J Cobb, nicely over the top in his but they all struggle to compete with the sheer magic of the audacious direction and cinematography. The film is most compelling but at times almost bursts with its exuberance. The first of two dance sequences is a sensation of colour and movement and the great spurt of violence towards the end both a surprise and a delight.

Cuadecuc, vampir (1971)

good seeing Christopher Lee

[8/10 · 10 March 2024]

An extremely interesting documentary although not usually quite like this. It relates to a film being made by Jess Franco of Count Dracula (1970) during General Franco's regime, by Pere Portabella which is a mix of footage and other angles, also of his own bits along the way. He often uses surrealist like solarised images by overexposure shots. Especially in the woods with the horse and coaches most affective, also with the dry ice used for the mist and plays around with it. The sound, but no dialogue, is rather clever although rather annoying near the end as if the sound has been stuck. It is really good seeing Christopher Lee here in black & white and silent with a lot of age added. It was also good to see Herbert Lom here but of course it is really great to see Soledad Miranda, and the odd smile for us, and then killed in a crash weeks away.

Black Tight Killers (1966)

first film

[5/10 · 9 March 2024]

I thought this would be wonderful but unfortunately it is just not as good as I expected. A tongue in cheek spy spoof and there are some great moments especially with the girls dancing routines and the colours and music rather splendid. I didn't think that Akira Kobayashi was really into this but went on with some 140 and he wanted more serious films like Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973). The lovely, Chieko Matsubara really captured the mood and she was even better later that year with the Tokyo Drifter, she went on to make more than 150 films and still working. This was Yasuharu Hasebe's first film and even if it wasn't splendid he would go on with his next one with Massacre Gun (1967) a really cool, jazzy yukuza crime drama. He made Female Prisoner Scorpion: 701's Grudge Song (1973) and considered the creator of the violent pink sub genre like the Stray Cat Rock series in 1970 and then some even more violent like the amazing, Assault! Jack the Ripper (1976). So you can't chuck this film away but it's just not as great as it might be, but will be just round the corner.

Valley Girl (1983)

Nicolas Cage

[5/10 · 7 March 2024]

From the start this doesn't look too good, with the girls in the mall with their clothes and their odd language and shallow opinions, the party with the sushi and the fondu is rather funny. Certainly it gets better after the first half hour as Nicolas Cage appears (except for a sight of him on the beach) and he looks splendid. The cars and the kids are thrilling as the music gets better and Los Angeles at night and the wonderful neon looks great. The club is fine and especially with The Plimsouls and at least Deborah Foreman starts to look good here. But then on the third half it all seems to get lost again particularly with the parents and suddenly with the prom it descends into farce.

Dheepan (2015)

fleeing from the civil war in Sri Lanka

[8/10 · 5 March 2024]

Dheepan, Yalini and Illayaal father, mother and nine year old girl are a family fleeing from the civil war in Sri Lanka and hoping to get on a plane to France. Although, as we see at the beginning that it is Yalini searching to find a girl to help her get to England and see her own relations. She finds her orphan and then a lone man and the three pretend to be together with a passport, it helps that Illayaal, the little girl, has some French and gets them away. Outside of Paris they relocate to live at a housing block. There are many problems but Dheepan does well and gets some language and some money although at first his 'wife' finds it difficult but the girl is fine and translates for them but has some trouble with the girls at school. From the beginning we are struggling to see how they will manage but they do and we also see how difficult it can be. Especially without the language and any real family it is clearly problematic and very distressing and could do without the drugs and gangs. This splendid film is only just under two hours but at the end it feels as if we have come through ourselves and maybe all goes well.

Dragnet Girl (1933)

photography splendid

[7/10 · 3 March 2024]

As this started I realised that it was a silent film and noted later that even though I have seen many of Ozu's films, never the silent ones of which there are at least twenty, but never even other Japanese silents. This is a wonderfully clear blu-ray from BFI and the photography splendid. I understand that Ozu loved the gangsters but I have to say that although in the gym is well shot but the boxers we never see them fighting and although all the men wear their fedoras and coats there is never any great action. We also have the girls, the gangster's moll and the good girl working in a shop, she wants her brother to leave the gang, she tries to get the gang boss to influence him and she falls in love with him. It is interesting but even though it is trying to be American, with all the posters and signage and the wisecracking and gun-toting it is really still very Japanese.

Minagoroshi no reika (1968)

nightmare intensity

[8/10 · 29 February 2024]

This story starts not at the beginning and the genre seems like a pink eiga and then something like a noir, and there are many close-ups and fast cutting. Some close-ups are really difficult for us especially in the graphic murder scenes. The film has a terrible and seemingly long rape and murder scene before and during the opening credits. There is one evening five young women have drinks and fun as they watch a blue movie. This is interrupted when a young delivery boy is drawn into the party. There is suicide and several sex killings. It is not all in the right order and so fast that we have difficulty just working out what is going on, not only with the harsh black&white and inky shadows but those innumerable close-ups. There is also some surrealist like solarised flashbacks that give us more like a nightmare intensity. If all this is not enough one of the women tells the police that the boy's death was not so terrible because he enjoyed the sex, bit like when some rapist tell that the girls liked it. This film gets a lot in 90 minutes!

Violated! (1975)

rape and revenge

[6/10 · 27 February 2024]

Very strange this one. Given as the title is an exploitation film and being a rape and revenge one it turns out to be very strange indeed. At first there is a large number of brutal rape scenes (and a swastika carved in the poor girl's flesh) and then it all changes around. There are serious comments about the difficulties of convicting in rape cases, although when the girls think they have found the rapist it becomes rather amusing but then it gets really serious because they have to have a chair. A home-made electric chair! And at the very end the freeze frame of the masked rapist and dialogue overlap suggesting that maybe all men are possible rapists. Albert Zugsmith was usually a producer, writer, director of exploitation but he also just produced Touch of Evil in 1958 although the same year as The Female Animal. He made more than 20 films and then his very last one.

Angels Hard as They Come (1971)

hippies and bikers

[6/10 · 25 February 2024]

There is not really any story here although the bikes are rather lovely and the girls. It is a shame that there is so little of bikes on the road together and it is more in the ghost town where the hippies are there for the time and then the desert. Certainly the bikers are convincingly sleazy and dirty but they don't really have much to do. The only action is with the girls except for a couple of races that don't go anywhere. So the girls are fine and get to dance and take of their tops, then one gets raped and killed and another tied up threatened with fire but it is really not enough because the guys are either acting or over acting. I'm sure that Jonathan Demme as his first as producer role and writing is okay but I don't thing he was really into Hells Angels although he would go on to have a wonderful time directing.

A Prophet (2009)

terrible and realistic

[8/10 · 23 February 2024]

I hesitated to watch this as it is rather long and was a prison film. Made by Jacques Audiard I assume it would be great although I was almost put off by the blurb at the top of the Blu-ray box as 'Scarface meets the Godfather'. It is not that the films are bad, indeed obviously violent and charismatic, but I wondered if this would be so realistic but it certainly is. Tahar Mahim plays Malik as a nineteen year old Algerian troublemaker serving a six year sentence and it was his more or less first film, although he had a part in the Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury directed on Inside (2007) which was amazing but extremely violent. With him in this is Neils Arestrup who was really known in France and was in Audiard's, The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) and just before this one in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007). Arestrup plays a powerful mafia boss as Cesar and takes Malik under his wing after he does a nasty job for him. This prison film is violent, thrilling and horrible although I thought about an hour in it was going to be a bit too long and suddenly it all steps up another gear with the amazing parole days out. I'm not sure if the French prisons are really like this but it is certainly seems terrible and realistic.

Goodbye & Amen (1977)

constantly thrilling

[9/10 · 21 February 2024]

I've watched at least eight of Damiano Damiani's splendid films, like with The Case is Closed, Forget it (1971), A Rather Complicated Girl (1969) and The Witch (1966) most of them written as well. With this one a blu-ray from Radiance I almost didn't get it as I wasn't sure that, the idea of preparing to overthrow an African government, for me didn't sound too wonderful. But as it is with Damiani the dialogue is usually so great I took a chance and then after about fifteen minutes it all changed and instead someone is shooting from the roof of a hotel and immediately we have action. I always find that Claudia Cardinale is great and in this one she is splendid and also with Tony Musanti as well. In the hotel there is a hostage situation and there is the English actor John Steiner who I never remember but is really good and did some 90 or so films like Slap the Monster on Page One (1972), Caligula (1979) and Tenebrae (1982) and even making eight through this year in 1977. This one really is constantly thrilling, so well written with even some humour but it is always changing around and we never quite know what will happen. The ending is also amazing and what about those black capes with four men with guns at night but maybe with only one that works or maybe another in the dark. Sensational.

No Tears for the Damned (1968)

earliest proto-slasher

[7/10 · 18 February 2024]

Rather one of the earliest proto-slasher although the killing doesn't really look so bloody at all although there are some sudden moments. But maybe it is cutting of the hair that seems to be what it is really about. Early on we see the mother and the massive picture of her and her little boy although he wears girls clothes and certainly his hair is rather big and odd. At the very beginning there is a bar and a jukebox and a girl dancing and a man leering so we know that something is going on. Unfortunately it seems a bit slow but it certainly gets going and I really like it. The kills are different but it is the mother and her domineering manner that seems to lead him on, although at first we will have a ride through Vegas, oh and then onto a rather amazing sex orgy. It is here that we really see just how well shot it is and maybe it is not the director that is in charge. I notice that this was shot in 1964 which makes a difference in the 60s with like the clothes and that hair. Oliver Drake did the writing and his wife who was known professionally as Liz Marshall - she had danced in the 40s and here she was 48 and is acting the killer's mother and also wrote it as well. But Drake had an amazing career, with a ranch near Pearblossom, California used for location shooting mostly for westerns. He was born in 1903 and did silents, TV and films later mostly through the 40s and 50s he became a prolific writer and occasional director and producer, working with Gene Autry, Tex Ritter and others. In this film although we know that it was low budget and marketed for the drive-in and 'grindhouse' and presumed lost until recently discovered a splendid one by Vinegar Syndrome. The very good cinematographer here was William G Troiano born in 1914 and made several such as, She Freak (1967), After They Ran for Their Lives (1968) and later with A Whale of a Tale (1976) starring William Shatner. The main 'star' here was Robert Dix (1936-2018) worked through the 50s and 60s often with the Drakes and was also with Satan's Sadists (1969). I consider that this really is a great 'lost picture'.

Pandora's Box (1929)

she looks wonderful from the very beginning

[8/10 · 16 February 2024]

The scandalous German playwright wrote of Lulu in Erdgist (Earth Spirit) 1895 and later with Die Buchse Der Pandora (1904) and when G W Pabst wanted to make this film he needed to find the right actress. He thought of the German Brigitte Helm or even Marlene Dietrich and settled with Louise Brooks, the Kansas born 21 year old actress he had seen in Howard Hawke's, A Girl in Every Port (1928). It seemed that Lulu was really unhappy when Dr Schon, her sponsor, was getting married and didn't want to see her any more and straight away she was thrilled about her rather unpleasant father/ ponce was back although she seems to love him as well. Despite all of this, what was going on, she looks wonderful from the very beginning. When we look back at photographs or even the blu-ray booklet here, it is so unusual there are so many pictures that she looks great and even close-ups as well, she seems so delightful. There are great scenes of her seductions and backstage moments and her amazing costumes and even of her bare back. Then there is also the gun and the problem with Dr Schon and even that knife and Jack the Ripper. Afterwards she made Pabst's, Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) and then back in America a several more but was never really happy until in the 50s when this film could really be looked at again.