Caravaggio: Derek Jarman

Roger Ebert once wisely wrote, "No good film is boring. All bad films are boring."  To the casual viewer, Derek Jarman's Caravaggio might seem incredibly dull and plodding.  This biography of Baroque painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio follows his life and development as an les enfant terrible of the art world.  But we see very little of his life or development. Instead, we witness him painting masterpieces, engage in love triangles, and see him consort with models and holy men.  These scenes create a kind of negative space from which we discern his life and growth.  The is more an exercise in tone and color, of light and shadow, than of plot.  But to those willing to apply themselves and give it a chance, Caravaggio is hypnotically enchanting.  Every shot emulates the paintings and style of Caravaggio's work so that they represent a series of breathing still life.  Caravaggio is heart-breakingly beautiful.  Indeed, it ranks with the likes of Days of Heaven and The Magnificent Ambersons as one of the most beautiful films ever made.  But beauty by itself, while admirable, is not enough to solidify a film as a timeless masterpiece.  It is its emotion, its passion, and its quiet stillness which transforms Caravaggio into a film worthy of its namesake.

10/10

The Abominable Dr. Phibes: Robert Fuest

There's something to be said about a beautiful death scene.  Whether by illness or accident, we are fascinated by the idea of death.  Even more so, we bare a macabre interest in murders: their techniques, their perpetrators, their victims.  Horror and pulp films turned scenes of carnage and murder into works of art.  In all of pulp cinema, few films have had such beautiful and bizarre death scenes as The Abominable Dr. Phibes.  Anton Phibes was an accomplished doctor and organist before his wife was killed in a car accident.  Twisted, both mentally and physically, by the same accident, Phibes believes that the surgeons and doctors who tried to save her life on the operating table murdered her.  So he goes about killing nine doctors, nurses, and surgeons.  His techniques are based off the Ten Plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament.  One is mauled to death by bats, another has his head crushed by a frog mask.  This film is the height of camp with the grand poo-baa of pulp Vincent Price as Dr. Phibes.  Realistically, the murders make no sense.  One nurse is covered with vegetable oil in her sleep and then completely devoured by about 20 locusts in the course of a few minutes.  But it doesn't matter.  This is an exercise in over-the-top spectacle.  Who cares if it isn't possible...it's just so damn fascinating.

8/10

Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur)

Jacques Tourneur was one of the very first directors who realized that in horror films, what you DON'T see is more terrifying than what you DO see.  His greatest and most influential film, Cat People, basically pioneered this concept.  Here, in Night of the Demon, Tourneur reaffirms that universal truth concerning fear.  The film follows an American psychologist as he travels to England to investigate a suspected Satanic cult.  A die-hard skeptic, he refuses to believe that ghosts, demons, and curses exist...at least until he becomes marked for death by the very cult that he investigates.  Night of the Demon is a fabulous film and a landmark horror movie.  However, it does suffer from post-production meddling by the studio who shoehorned in two scenes that actually showed the titular demon.  Originally, Tourneur didn't want to show it.  My problem isn't that they show the monster.  After all, many films that flirt with the idea of whether or not the supernatural exists end with a shot revealing the monster: The Blair Witch Project, The Exorcist, and, more recently, Paranormal Activity.  My problem is that they show the creature only about five minutes into the film, completely erasing the suspense and destroying the ambiguity that Tourneur wanted to invoke.  However, I'd be lying by saying that I wish that they kept the monster out.  The final scene where the demon kills the head of the cult is genuinely one of the most chilling things that I have ever seen in a horror film.  Still, Tourneur does succeed by injecting the film with a grim dread and fear that became his trademark and made him one of the most important horror directors of all time.

8/10

Cannibal Ferox: Umberto Lenzi

I'm not entirely sure if I should take this film seriously or not...usually I can figure that out within 15-20 minutes of the beginning.  Did the creators of Cannibal Ferox intend for this to be a real thriller or just a schlocky film for gory fun?  As a real thriller, it fails completely.  It's story about a group of students who travel to the Amazon (which has mysteriously teleported to Paraguay) to discover whether or not cannibalism is real or not is completely contrived an unbelievable.  There's no build-up or tension, either.  There are just scenes with gore and scenes without gore.  If the film-makers wanted to make a fun exploitation film, why did they insist on killing so many real animals on-screen?  I can appreciate gore for gore's sake.  But REAL gore, REAL killing crosses the line from exploitation to snuff.  I can't condone or support the killing of real animals in a film, but I can sympathize with it in films that are trying to unnerve and scare.  Cannibal Ferox doesn't seem to be trying to scare anybody, though.  It's just killing for the sake of killing.  But that's exploitation cinema, I guess.  If judged from an exploitative standpoint, the film is deftly crafted and entertaining in a way that makes my superego shudder.  Viscerally, it's thrilling.  But in every other respect, it seems pointless and meaningless.

5/10

The Blue Dahlia: George Marshall

Raymond Chandler's work defined film noir: it's look, it's tone, even it's characters.  When his novels and stories weren't being adapted to the big screen, he wrote some of the greatest noir screenplays to ever grace Hollywood: Double Indemnity and Strangers on a Train.  The Blue Dahlia is another Chandler-scripted film noir that has come to be considered a minor classic of the genre.  The plot is probably Chandler's most confusing and labyrinthine this side of The Big Sleep.  It involves Navy pilot Lieutenant Commander Johnny Morrison, a veteran coming home from the Pacific Front to find his wife is cheating on him.  He leaves her and runs off with another woman who happens to be...get ready for this...his wife's boyfriend's estranged wife.  Things are made even worse when Morrison's wife is found murdered.  And so, Morrison becomes entangled in a opaque web of lies, murder, and cheating spouses that all seem to involve the Blue Dahlia night club.  It would be wrong to punish this film for the complexity of its plot.  After all, The Big Sleep was so confusing that even Chandler famously couldn't explain all of its plot twists.  But The Big Sleep benefited from a magnificent cast including Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  The Blue Dahlia has it's share of fine actors, too: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Doris Dowling.  But none of them have the same sparkle or chemistry as the cast in The Big Sleep.  The Blue Dahlia is a fine film...maybe even a great one.  But it just doesn't have the same kick or sinister undertones as The Big Sleep, an ultimately superior film that was released mere months after The Blue Dahlia.

7/10

Captain America: The First Avenger: Joe Johnston

So how DO you make a movie intended for international audiences about a character who is literally the embodiment of American patriotism?  The answer, as Captain America: The First Avenger proves, is VERY CAREFULLY.  First, make it so that Steve Rogers, the mild-mannered weakling who becomes Captain America through a Super Soldier project, never once mentions that he's fighting for America or the American way.  Instead, make his motivation the fact that he hates bullies and feels that he needs to pull his own weight.  Then, for your German and sensitive European viewers, rarely mention the Nazis and make the villains of your World War Two period drama a mysterious cult-like organization bent on world domination.  And most importantly, don't make the film about America winning the war.  Make it a film about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of tyranny, oppression, or, more realistically, bullies.  Because this is a modern superhero film that isn't directed by Christopher Nolan, make sure that the last third of the film descends into a crazy, over-the-top action sequence with CGI out the wazoo.  Insert headstrong love interest who eventually falls for your everyman and a supporting cast made up of European and ethnic stereotypes who weren't in the comics and...VOILA!  Instant superhero movie.  But most importantly...don't worry if its rough around the edges or the ending is too abrupt.  After all...it's really just a two-hour set-up for The Avengers, anyway.

7/10

Where the Sidewalk Ends: Otto Preminger

Since the definition of the term, critics and audiences have struggled to find a decisive way to define what constitutes film noir.  However, there are certain tropes that are more prominent than others.  One of the most important is the conflicted protagonist.  Film noir are full of dark, brooding leads who struggle in vain to escape some past sin.  Police Detective Dixon is one of these men.  He's a loose cannon who's prone to attacking and beating suspects.  However, at his heart he wants to do what's right.  Notice, I didn't say he was a good man...he just hates people who do evil.  When he is officially threatened with demotion if he keeps up his antics, he tries to reform.  However, during a private interrogation, a suspect attacks him, forcing him to fight back.  He accidentally kills the other man who happened to be a war veteran with a silver plate in his head.  Here's the problem: he dumps the body in the river instead of coming clean out of fear of losing his job.  However, this leads to an innocent man getting pinned for the murder.  Now he must find a way to clear his name without revealing his own guilt.  A fascinating film, it seems to follow the outline of classical tragedy more than your run-of-the-mill detective/film noir stock.  The kicker is that Dixon knows that he's trapped...but he wants to make sure that he takes one last hood down with him.  Who says if you have to fall, you have to fall alone?

8/10

Funny Games: Michael Haneke

Even though it has practically no blood or gore, Funny Games is one of the most violent and disturbing films that I have ever seen.  It's a nauseatingly disturbing and sickening film that simultaneously revels in violence and deconstructs it.  Simply put, two young men, Paul and Peter, capture a wealthy German family and proceed to torture and kill them.  This isn't a snuff film, mind you.  Paul and Peter move with the civility of Hannibal Lector as they toy with their victims.  As I said, there is almost no blood or gore.  In fact, almost all of the violence takes place off-screen.  But it is the implication of violence, the disturbing knowledge of what might, what is, and what has happened that makes Funny Games so difficult to watch.  I could go on about how director Michael Haneke breaks the fourth wall and deliberately side-steps cinematic conventions.  But I am more fascinated by this film's sheer visceral power.  Ten minutes of this film does more to scare and unnerve than almost any slasher or mainstream horror film of the last two decades.  I have seen thousands of films.  Many of them were bloody, violent, disturbing, and even perverse.  Yet Funny Games sits comfortably near the top of all of them in terms of terror.  THAT is worthy of admiration.  Not bad for a European art film director, eh?

9/10

The Proud Valley: Pen Tennyson

The Proud Valley is a film with noble intentions that ultimately falls flat in its execution.  The film stars early African American actor and civil rights titan Paul Robeson as a black West Virginian coal miner who goes to Wales searching for work.  Along the way, he joins and helps organize a men's choir and takes part in union negotiations after an accident kills several miners.  When they go back to work, he and a number of other miners get trapped in yet ANOTHER accident wherein he sacrifices his life to let the others escape.  Here's the film's ultimate problem: it has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be.  Three plot elements are especially prominent: singing, civil rights, and mining.  The three themes are stitched together like Frankenstein's monster so that they don't mix together.  Essentially, John Ford did this film correctly with How Green Was My Valley? one year later, sans the civil rights subtext.  While the film has problems, Robeson's performance shines through.  In fact, Robeson later revealed that of all of his films, The Proud Valley was his favorite.  Too bad the rest of the film couldn't keep up with him.

6/10

Take Aim at the Police Van: Seijun Suzuki

Seijun Suzuki was always one of Japan's most idiosyncratic film-makers.  Although he mostly worked in the crime/yakuza genre, he was a tireless innovator and experimenter of film technique.  He became so radical that his 1967 masterpiece Branded to Kill got him fired from his film studio and blacklisted for ten years.  Here in Take Aim at the Police Van, Suzuki hadn't yet come into his role as a gleeful cinematic iconoclast.  But the film is still distinctly Suzuki-esque.  The film is about a policeman who is suspended for six months after a prison van that he guarded was ambushed and its prisoners killed.  He descends into Japan's criminal underworld to discover a prostitution ring and criminals who will stop at nothing to keep it a secret.  The film is more restrained both stylistically and energetically than Suzuki's later work, but it still packs a punch.  The gorgeous black and white cinematography brings the criminal underworld to stunning life.  The plot can get confusing, but not from a lack of good storytelling.  Instead, it becomes so detailed that it loses itself in its own storyline, much like the classic The Big Sleep.  But Suzuki fills the film with enough life that it is captivating despite its convoluted plot.

7/10

If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death: Gianfranco Parolini

If You Meet Sartana, Pray For Your Death is one of those rare movies that isn't technically very good, yet still remains thoroughly entertaining.  The first official movie in the Sartana series, it establishes many of its titular character's famous tropes: his use of James Bond-esque gadgets, his only wearing black, and his practice of only killing people who deserve it.  The film itself can be seen as a bastardization of Yojimbo in that Sartana finds himself in the middle of a rivalry between two competing gangs and invents ways to play them off against each other.  Of course, by "playing them off against each other" I really mean that he gets them to kill each other.  The film has such an absurdly high body count that they should have depopulated the main town three times over.  There's a plot about some stolen gold, corrupt politicians, and a Mexican general...but it doesn't make much sense.  The plot exists to shove as many flesh sacks in front of the camera so they can be mowed down.  But in a strange way, it works.  The film is definitely a guilty pleasure.  It doesn't make any of the fatal mistakes that many other Spaghetti Westerns fall prey to like horrible cinematography, plodding pacing, and nearly incomprehensible plots.  In a bizarre way, it has a certain charm to it.  After all, it did inspire its own official series and a legion of unofficial knockoffs.

6/10

Gion Festival Music: Kenji Mizoguchi

Kenji Mizoguchi's films have a way of creeping up on you.  At first, they seem slow and steady...not boring, mind you...but calm and collected.  Mizoguchi takes time to develop his characters, endearing them to us.  And then, by the 2/3 mark, he unleashes emotional hell, stunning the audience with acts of cruelty and unkindness that arise not out of violence, but from the evils of a corrupted world.  In Gion Festival Music, Mizoguchi turns his camera once again to one of his favorite subjects: geisha.  We meet young Eiko, no older than 16 years old.  She wants to become a maiko, or apprentice geisha, so she can pay back her dead mother's debt.  She becomes the maiko and close friend of veteran geisha Miyoharu.  However, when one of their clients tries to rape Eiko, they are thrown out on the street for embarrassing their would-be rapist.  According to geisha code, a geisha must always submit.  So by fending off her client's attempted rape, SHE is the one to commit an unforgivable sin.  Once on the street, Eiko must prostitute herself to support the two of them.  In the end, they realize that they have each other, and that is all that matters.  The ending is reminiscent of My Love Burns, one of Mizoguchi's towering masterpieces where women who have been dejected by the world seek solace in each other.  While Gion Festival Music does not rise to the heights of his greatest works, it remains a powerful film that demonstrates why Mizoguchi is considered one of the godfathers of Japanese cinema.

7/10

Why Change Your Wife?: Cecil B. DeMille

Some silent films are able to captivate and awe audiences after nearly a century of life.  Cecil B. DeMille's Why Change Your Wife? is not one of these films.  This tired tale of marital strife is neither engaging nor entertaining to watch.  I can sum up the entire plot in one sentence: a married couple becomes complacent, breaks up, marries other people, regrets it, and gets back together.  A good film can take such a plot and make it engrossing and entertaining.  But this film drags, sputters, and stalls at every given opportunity.  It is full of the most bothersome padding as the characters meander between sets and marriages.  It doesn't help that the action comes to a complete stop periodically for ridiculously verbose title cards.  These cards, which sometimes contain a full paragraph of text, add nothing to the story and narration, but mainly serve to provide "witticisms" on the action.  It doesn't help that the story is incredibly misogynistic by today's standards.  According to DeMille, it is the woman's responsibility to keep their marriage fresh by being "exciting" and to remember that men want to marry "sweethearts" and not nagging "wives."  Still, the film is a time capsule of early 20th century fashion which may be of some value to cultural anthropologists.  But the regular film-goer will find it contrived and ultimately pointless.  DeMille made other, greater silent films from this era.  I would encourage my readers to seek them out and let this one slip away.

4/10

The Great Escape: John Sturges

The story has become legendary: a group of American/British/European POWs in World War Two mount a daring escape from an "unescapable" prison.  67 escape.  Only 3 make it.  The actors have become titans in American cinematic history: Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson.  When combined with the talents of director John Sturges, they created one of the great action/adventure films that has stood the test of time.  Despite its nearly three hour run-time, The Great Escape moves so swiftly and expertly that we barely notice the passing of time, much like that other great 3-hour action/adventure epic, The Seven Samurai.  Everything is streamlined for maximum efficiency in this film.  Nary a shot is wasted.  The major characters all have nicknames that designate their mechanical purpose in the escape: "The Tunnel King," "The Forger," "The Manufacturer."  There is little character development that is not intrinsically tied to their role in the escape.  Of course, only the first half can be considered historically accurate.  Once Steve McQueen starts to ride his motorcycle over the German countryside, we can rightfully assume that creative and artistic license has been fully taken.  But the film is an engrossing, entertaining ride that is a relic of an era long past: when action/adventure films focused more on plot and characters than action and gore and you didn't have to censor or remove anything when you aired it on television.

8/10

The Cloud-Capped Star: Ritwik Ghatak

Beautiful Neeta lives in a Calcutta slum with her family after being displaced from East Pakistan by the Partition of India.  She once had hopes and dreams of going to a university, but she abandoned them when her greedy family demanded that she work to support them.  Her lazy brother spends all day practicing singing in the vain hopes that he might one day become a star.  Her mother and father lounge around all day, complaining that their children don't work hard enough and don't bring home enough money for them to spend.  It is in this harsh environment that director Ritwik Ghatak set the film that would ultimately become known as his masterpiece.  It is a devastating exploration of self-sacrifice.  As Neeta struggles to support her family as their only bread-winner, she loses her fiancee, then her job, and finally her health as tuberculosis begins to ravage her body.  Ritwik utilized incredible mise en scène to demonstrate Neeta's isolation and hopelessness.  Of great note is the expressionist sound design wherein Ritwik would use odd and non-diegetic sound effects to highlight the emotional impact of certain scenes.  The film is bold and tragic as it careens towards its famous ending where Neeta flings herself at her brother and yells out in defiance, "Brother, I want to live!"

8/10

Twins of Evil: John Hough

If memory serves me correctly, this is the first official Hammer Horror film that I have ever seen.  Twins of Evil takes place during the great witchhunts of central Europe when thousands of people were wrongfully executed for witchcraft and the dark arts.  Maria and Frieda, two recently orphaned twin teenagers, move to central Europe to live with their uncle Gustav Weil (played by Hammer regular Peter Cushing).  Weil is the leader of a group of Puritans who periodically spirit away single women in order to burn them for witchcraft.  However, he is periodically thwarted by the evil Count Karnstein, a local aristocrat who indulges in Satanic rites.  During one of his blood offerings, he resurrects a vampress who turns him into a vampire.  Frieda, resentful of her uncle's rule, runs off to be with him and is also turned into a vampire.  Now, the local village must stop Karnstein and Frieda in their reign of terror and from framing innocent Maria for crimes she did not commit.  Being a Hammer film, it is not a subtle film.  The blood runs quicker and more red, the women are more pale-skinned, and the evil puritans are more sinister and foreboding.  This could have easily been a work of kitsch, but director John Hough is so confident in the story that we believe it and feel thrilled to be along for the ride.

7/10

Zabriskie Point: Michelangelo Antonioni

Four years after directing Blowup, Michelangelo Antonioni made this curious film about the American counter-culture movement of the 1970s.  Like most of Antonioni's films, the plot is only a framing device for his stirring and experimental visuals.  Tentatively, the film is about two young radicals who steal a biplane, go to the desert, and...well...I'm not sure what they do there.  They frolic, they paint the biplane, they have sex.  But what is it all for?  What are they trying to accomplish?  Is it some kind of bold statement on how life can go on without consumerism and politics.  I'm not sure.  Truth be told...I'm not sure Antonioni was either.  But the film is definitely trying to say...something.  I have been very vocal in my distaste for Antonioni's work.  I find many of his films to be tedious and pointless.  But Zabriskie Point is the second of his films that have captivated my interest, the other being Red Desert.  Both films seem to be fascinated by the idea of Western materialistic iconography: stark factory towers that defy the skyline, posters of happy, white Americans advertising Wonderbread, young people in garishly colored clothing.  This is driven home in two sequences in Zabriskie Point.  The first is an advertisement for a new desert community where eerily cheerful mannequins act out the perfect American lifestyle.  The second is a prolonged scene at the end where books, clothes, an expensive house, and other artifacts of Western decadence are blown up in slow motion.  These scenes, like the rest of the film, dare us to interpret them.

8/10

Black Sunday: Mario Bava

Before he made multicolored masterpieces of giallo glory, Mario Bava directed Black Sunday, a controversial and graphic horror film that shocked audiences across Europe and America.  At it center is the story of Asa Vajda, a Moldavian witch or noble blood who was executed in 1630.  As she died, she cursed her inquisitor, who happened to be her own brother, swearing to return from the grave and kill his descendants.  Flash forward 200 years in the future, and she has been restored from the grave after an accident which destroyed her coffin and the charms put in place to keep her trapped.  She tries to destroy her brother's family, including Katia, a young woman who is her spitting image (indeed, they were played by the same actress).  Of course, a priest, Katia's suitor, and a village full of pitchfork and torch wielding serfs have something to say about that.  Black Sunday was notoriously dark and violent for its era, particularly its famous opening sequence where Asa is burned after having a "mask of Satan" nailed to her face.  This film would go on to inspire many directors, including Francis Ford Coppola.  Bava would go on to direct other, gorier, and ultimately better, films.  But Black Sunday's superb artistry and storytelling have solidified its place as a horror classic.

7/10

Souls for Sale: Rupert Hughes

One of the great tragedies of the movie industry are the countless films that have been lost to the ages.  But every so often, a miracle occurs, and a lost film is rediscovered and restored to its former glory.  Souls for Sale is one of those reclaimed treasures.  Originally thought lost, it was rediscovered and restored by MGM and released on video.  The film is a remarkable snapshot of Hollywood in the early 20s.  It follows Remember "Mem" Steddon as she flees a murderous husband and is rescued by a Hollywood actor while on a film shoot.  From there, she works her way up through the film industry, starting as an extra but becoming a leading lady.  She is introduced to a whole who's who of early Hollywood, even visiting Erich von Stroheim on the set of Greed and Charlie Chaplin as he tries to direct his latest crowd-pleaser.  Of course, the husband tracks her down and tries to claim her, and her new-found wealth, for his own.  A struggle ensues, true love wins out, everyone lives happily ever after.  In truth, it is incredibly formulaic in presentation.  But Souls for Sale is nevertheless a crucial piece of early Hollywood history.  It can be classified as one of the very first films about the film industry.  It exudes a wry cynicism in its evaluation of Hollywood and its stars.  Indeed, it seems to be one of the first films that demonstrated a certain self-awareness concerning Hollywood and the film industry, making careful mention of how pretty faces sell tickets, how scandals end careers, and how expendable actors can be.  In one scene, a sudden storm causes a circus set to catch fire and burn down.  Instead of fleeing, the director forces his cameramen to continue shooting, as they might be able to use the footage.  But this is still a delightful film.  Watching it makes one wonder how many other lost classics may still be out there in the world, just waiting to be rediscovered...

 8/10

The Reckless Moment: Max Ophüls

It starts, as many film noir do, with a murder.  Lucia Harper's daughter has been hanging out with the wrong crowd and has begun dating a mafia hood.  When he tries to overtake her, she strikes back, knocking him out.  He is later found dead on a local beach, murdered by another gangster.  Lucia doesn't realize that her daughter WASN'T responsible for his death, and so goes about hiding the body.  Of course, this act is witnessed by the local mafia who send gangster Martin Donnelly to blackmail her.  Of course, nobody planned on Martin falling for Lucia...except the audience, that is.  And really, was there anything else that we could expect?  Martin is so gentle and soft-spoken that at first we have no idea that he's a gangster intent on blackmail.  When he confesses his love for Lucia and his intent to save her from the mob, we shrug our shoulders and think "why not?"  This is really where the film falls flat.  There is no sinister presence about Martin, no danger or corruption.  Therefore, his transformation into a hero is almost completely ineffective.  The plot and cinematography are decent enough...but with such a weak central performance, The Reckless Moment can never ascend to the stratosphere of film noir glory.

6/10

The Fearless Vampire Killers: Roman Polanski

Do you remember in old cartoons that whenever a comically obese person walked down the street they would be accompanied by a farting tuba?  During Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, I could hear that sound almost the entire time.  This insipidly stupid film plays like a tongue-in cheek satire of the old Hammer horror films...except without being funny or scary.  Almost the entire film is structured around Professor Abronsius and his apprentice Alfred, two "vampire killers," who bumble around a Transylvania town beset by vampires.  Of course, we don't see a vampire or anything supernatural until almost 50 minutes in because the film is too busy having the professor and student knock into things in tired attempts at slapstick.  Eventually, a beautiful young woman is kidnapped, they go to the castle, they rescue the girl, blah blah blah.  This story is so tired that not even the actors seem interested in it.  There are almost no vampires in this movie, either.  The combined screen time of the vampires in this film must only be 10-15 minutes.  Everything about this movie is poorly executed. This was Polanski's first attempt at making anything other than a low-budget, independent art film.  And...I must admit...if this is the price that we had to pay for Polanski's transition to the mainstream...I'll gladly take it.  Films like Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, and Macbeth are worth 90+ minutes of cinematic pain.

2/10

The Story of a Cheat: Sacha Guitry

Some films are so effortlessly entertaining that they exist outside of time and can be appreciated and enjoyed by audiences from every time period.  Sacha Guitry's The Story of a Cheat is one of these films.  It details the extraordinary picaresque life of a professional gambler who seemed destined to cheat when an act of petty theft saved his life from a terrible fate that claimed the lives of eleven of his family members.  The film chronicles how he sneaks, lies, charms, and cheats his way through life.  The entire film follows the whimsical narration of the main character as he sits in a cafe and writes his autobiography.  He indulges the film with fantastic tangents that fill it with incredible energy and charm. He speaks as one who believes that his entire life has been predestined by fate yet has decided to try and deny it at every turn.  While watching it, I couldn't stop thinking about Louis Manzzini from Kind Hearts and Coronets and wonder what would happen if the two ever met up.  But while Louis cheated and killed his way through Europe in response to his feelings of personal injustice, the Cheat seems to flow with the stream of current events, snagging opportunities as they come and never looking back.  We can't help but admire this dashing rogue and his fascinating exploits.  Perhaps that is the film's true power...it makes us all want to cheat a little on the inside.

9/10

Kuroneko: Kaneto Shindō

In the dead of the forest waits a woman cloaked in white.  If you are alone, and if you are a samurai, she will invite you to her house where she lives with her young daughter.  Sake is served, pleasantries exchanged, and soon the young woman will take you in her arms.  You may notice a fleeting glimpse of charred flesh and singed clothes...but not for long.  By the time you are coupled with the daughter, it is too late; the trap is sprung.  For you have just fallen prey to a family of ghosts who in life were raped and murdered by samurai and have taken a vow to kill and drink the blood of all samurai. Soon the local lord grows restless and sends a powerful samurai to vanquish them.  If only it didn't turn out that the samurai was the son and husband of the two ghosts before he was kidnapped away from them...Such is the story of Kuroneko, a sinister ghost story of revenge and sorrow.  Director Kaneto Shindō uses almost no special effects, but instead uses smoke, fog, and people suspended from wires to pronounce the film's horror.  The film may be a simple ghost story, but Shindō takes it deadly serious.  He infuses the story with critiques of the samurai and feudal classes.  For instance, the local lord where the ghosts reside refuse to believe that samurai are the villains in this story.  He pompously believes that the samurai serve the lords who rule the land with grace and fairness.  Of course, he never leaves his palace, opting instead to send samurai after samurai to their deaths in pursuit of the ghosts.  Shindō films with all of the care and construction of an ikebana master.  For in this world, the social and class systems hide behind barriers of protocol and order to protect themselves from the vulgarities and horrors of their own doing.

8/10

The Plainsman: Cecil B. DeMille

The Plainsman comes from a time of black hats and white hats, of noble cowboys, and of savage Indians.  Gary Cooper towers above this film as a specter of raw masculinity.  Much like the films of his contemporary John Ford, Cecil B. DeMille injected his film with old, conservative values and beliefs: never shoot a man when it's not a fair fight, duty to one's country is more important than what a man might want or his wife might plead for, even the female firebrands grow weak in the knees around the male lead.  This story is a romanticization of the story of Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill Hickok, throwing them into several pivotal moments of American history like Custer's infamous final charge.  Here, they are not outlaws but patriotic men who happen to have histories of not always playing by the law.  It's as white-bread a Western as can be.  To those who have been desensitized by spaghetti Westerns and revisionist Westerns, this film can seem dishonest and even superficial.  But it was from films such as these that the legend of the cowboy, and the Old West, were borne.

7/10

Black Christmas: Bob Clark

This is the problem that I have with most slasher films...at some point, it's all about how creative you can get while killing somebody.  While some filmmakers, particularly makers of Italian giallo, see this as an opportunity to create grisly, yet compositionally stunning deaths, most just see how much gore they can shove on screen at once.  To somebody who has become desensitized by too many horror movies, the only way that horror films can scare them is to actually CARE about the potential victims.  And most slashers forget to do just that.  Take Black Christmas.  Almost NONE of the characters who are murder fodder are likeable.  I felt almost happy seeing them get picked off.  But perhaps I'm approaching this incorrectly.  Movies like these are supposed to be fun, popcorn movies...I guess.  It makes interesting use of the camera, particularly during the stalking scenes.  And there is some genuine tension produced.  But overall, the film is about killing people.  And quite frankly, I don't care if most of them die or not.

5/10

King of New York: Abel Ferrara

It's not easy being king.  Frank White learns this first hand after being released from prison after an extended stay to find that the city that he loves has been taken over by lesser criminals: drug-pushers, child pimps, human smugglers.  So he tries to retake his city by consolidating control over its drug industry and eliminating the criminals who smear it.  However, the local cops are so committed to taking White down that they resort to certain "extrajudicial" methods.  Soon, New York is a battleground.  White discovers that he may not have what it takes to be the king in this new town.  Abel Ferrara directs this film with a keen eye.  He doesn't just see streets or bridges...he sees crime scenes and ghettos full of addicts and prostitutes.  He transforms New York into a nightmarish landscape full of noble criminals and crooked cops.  The film is brimming with one of the best ensemble casts that I have ever encountered with such names as Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, David Caruso, Wesley Snipes, and Steve Buscemi all sharing the spot-light.  It feels like a three hour crime epic that has somehow been miraculously consolidated to a little over 100 minutes.  With his cruel and malevolent gaze, Ferrara has created one of the most fascinating, and terrifying, gangster movies of the 90s.

9/10

The Man Who Would Be King: John Huston

John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King is the heir to the old, great adventure films of the 1930s and 1940s such as Gunga Din.  It features two enterprising British soldiers traveling to the Middle East from India in order to subjugate their peoples and literally become kings.  They do so by conquering village after village with the aid of their advanced weaponry.  Finally, the two become seen as gods and the descendants of Alexander the Great, the only man to ever have conquered the region.  However, one of them becomes develops delusions of grandeur which eventually lead to the destruction of their charade.  The film is a marvelous and unapologetic piece of escapism, dwelling lovingly on the strange and exotic cultures that it finds itself immersed in.  The film is free of any modern day political correctness; the Brits see their subjects as savages.  A modern day directors would twist the story into a parable of respecting people's cultures and the follies of imperialism.  But Huston is more interested in the human angle of the story: how one man can gain everything that he ever wanted and throw it all away.  The man would have been a king...if only he didn't actually believe that he was one.

8/10

Island of Lost Souls: Erle C. Kenton

I remember reading H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau when I was in high school.  I was amazed at how Wells used Moreau's creations as an examination of human nature.  To me, the novel was not so much a thriller as it was a sociological treatise.  So I can understand Wells' disdain for Erle C. Kenton's Island of Lost Souls, the first ever film adaptation of his novel.  The film does try to focus more on the inherent horror of an island full of half-human, half-animal abominations.  But really, for what it tried to do, Island of Lost Souls succeeded remarkably.  Kenton was able to make the island feel claustrophobic so that we were constantly aware of the characters' close proximity to their "neighbors."  And the scenes where the creatures rise up, burn their village, and bellow into the night is one of the best sequences that I've come across in 1930s creature films.  They seem to echo the rise of zombies in later decades with their slow, steady, and unstoppable movements as they close in on the doctor at the end.  Notice how they seem to swallow him up once he lays on the vivisection table...you'll see what I mean.  Clocking in at around 70 minutes, Island of Lost Souls is a short, yet effective film.  I would have liked to see them focus more on the creatures and their society.  In doing so, they might have been able to salvage some of the commentary that reigned supreme in Wells' novel.  But that could have ended in a lop-sided, unfocused film.  If this film is viewed not as a straight adaption, but as a feature that was directly inspired by Wells' novel, then it can be appreciated more fully.

8/10

The Woman in the Window: Fritz Lang

I guess that I should have been more receptive to this film.  After all, it was one of the films that helped inspire the term "film noir" when it was released in Europe.  The film follows the story of respected psychology professor Richard Wanley who falls in love with a femme fatale named Alice Reed.  When he first goes to her apartment, they are confronted by an ex-boyfriend who attacks Wanley in a fit of jealousy.  In the scuffle, Wanley accidentally kills him.  Alice dumps the body, but is blackmailed by the man's ex-bodyguard.  It features some clever storytelling, particularly when Wanley listens to his detective friend break down the murder's criminal investigation.  But it feels tired and even somewhat contrived when compared to much of Lang's other American work.  It shares neither the residual creative sparkle of Lang's European years and none of the calculated, cold-hearted cynicism of his later work.  I had a similar problem with Lang's Scarlet Street, another mid-career effort that I feel largely fell flat.  In a sense, I feel that Lang shares a similar career path with Luis Bunuel: both had early, creatively fantastic work and refined, idiosyncratic late work.  But also, but had middle years where it felt like they were trapped doing other people's movies.  This simply doesn't feel like a Fritz Lang film.  Yes, there is certainly some excellent tension and sexual innuendo that was brave and challenging for its time.  But overall it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi.  My advice would be to end the film when professor Wanley commits suicide in his chair.  The ending where he wakes up and finds that it was all a dream MUST have been tacked on at the insistence of the studio.  With this revised ending, then it becomes a film that more comfortably fits in with Lang's most distinguished oeuvre.

6/10 

A Man Called Horse: Elliot Silverstein

It's incredibly easy to be cynical about this film.  After all...it has a plot that we've grown to loath to approach with sarcasm: a white man is captured by a "lesser" society and slowly comes to learn their ways and becomes one of them.  But I must keep in mind that in 1970 this plot hadn't been done to death by Oscar-baiting Hollywood liberals.  So by its own merits, it accomplishes its story with admirable ability.  Richard Harris is an Englishman captured by the Sioux people.  He eventually becomes a warrior, a husband, and then a chief by undergoing initiation rituals and various trials by fire.  It features admirable acting from all involved.  The film claims that the highest care was taken in reproducing Sioux society.  So as a piece of anthropological worth, it has at least some merit.  Additionally, the film seems less interested in promoting the superiority of a primitive culture and bemoaning their exploitation than telling the story of one man's transformation.  This movie is about Richard Harris and the Sioux...not the other way around.

7/10

Metropolis (Restored): Fritz Lang

I'm gonna keep this simple.  Everything that can and should be said about this movie has already been said in ways far superior to anything that I could come up with.  So let me just say this:

If you see ONE silent film in your entire lives, make it the restored version of "Metropolis."

Why?  Do read one of the many essays or watch one of the many documentaries about it somewhere else.  I don't want to occupy time that could be spent by you actually watching it.

10/10

You Only Live Once: Fritz Lang

For his second film abroad in America, Fritz Lang produced a film that predicted the rise of an entire genre: film noir.  Henry Fonda plays Eddie, a three times convicted felon who is released from jail into the arms of his devoted wife Joan, played by Sylvia Sidney.  Just like the future film noir heroes, Eddie is haunted by his past crimes.  Nobody will hire him because he's an ex-con.  When one of his buddies frames him for a heist that killed seven people, he is immediately hunted down and sentenced to die.  But he escapes from prison and goes on the lam with his pregnant wife.  Although many of Lang's American films would suffer from a general dilution of the talent that he presented in his European work, he is still in full force here.  Civilians, cops, and prison guards become fiendish caricatures who spit vile and venom towards Eddie and use him as a scapegoat for petty crimes.  Fonda turns into a terrible animal who is doomed to die...he just doesn't realize it yet...or does he?  You Only Live Once is a disturbingly powerful film with its incredible performances, expressionist cinematography, and jarring visuals.  People say that John Huston invented the film noir with The Maltese Falcon.  But after watching this film...I'm not so sure anymore...

8/10

Heavenly Creatures: Peter Jackson

This should not have been such an entertaining movie.  After all, it's about two young women in New Zealand who grow curiously close to each other and kill one of their mothers when they are threatened with separation.  But Peter Jackson's masterful direction transformed Heavenly Creatures into a film of exuberant joy and heartbreaking tragedy.  Armed with his hyperactive camera and cheap, yet convincing special effects (no doubt picked up during his days as a low budget horror film-maker), Jackson transforms the audience into a third member of their private club.  Of course, Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet must be given every accolade for their masterful performances.  Both acted beyond their years in both skill and maturity.  But I think that it all comes down to Jackson's direction.  Because he was trained in low-budget B-movies, he knew how to keep audiences engrossed and entertained, even with such morose subject matter.  Not for one instant does Heavenly Creatures seem contrived or over-acted.  People wonder how Jackson was picked to direct the massive Lord of the Rings trilogy with only a few films under his belt.  I think it is safe to say that Heavenly Creatures is chiefly responsible for that choice...and a good one it was, indeed.

9/10

Day of Anger: Tonino Valerii

This film almost tricked me into believing that it wasn't a spaghetti Western.  After all, it was missing the incredible bloody violence, the over-the-top acting, and the stylized cinematography.  The story seemed simple enough: a young man named Scott is the town pariah for being an orphan.  He is "adopted" by Lee Van Cleef who teaches him how to be a man in a rough and tumble world of the Old West.  But when Cleef gets too violent and starts to kill people that Scott cared about, the student must confront the master in one final shootout.  I could easily have seen Henry Fonda and Ron Howard replace Cleef and Scott.  But this is a spaghetti Western, all right.  The violence, while not particularly bloody, is prevalent and devastating.  Instead of showing signs of maturity after growing up, Scott becomes a near sociopath, delighting in offending and aggravating the people who once wronged him.  The final shootout is textbook Sergio Leone with close-ups on their faces and dramatic music blaring while they size each other up.  This is a spaghetti Western, to be sure...and a good one at that.

7/10

The Cremator: Juraj Herz

Juraj Herz's The Cremator may not have any jump scares, killers with knives behind their backs, or haunted castles, but it is a hauntingly effective horror film.  Karl Kopfrkingl works at a crematorium in Prague near the start of World War Two.  He firmly believes in reincarnation and that his work frees the souls of the dead from their bodies.  He is a harsh, controlling man.  Notice how he almost never stops talking throughout the film.  There is a sense of finality in everything he does.  He is a rampant hypocrite, consorting with prostitutes while proclaiming himself a model husband.  But when Nazis invade Czechoslovakia, he finds himself at the bottom of the social order due to his Jewish wife and son.  It is fascinating to watch how suddenly and swiftly his allegiances shift.  In one shot he's laughing at the concept of Nazis invading Europe.  In the next he is at a party celebrating the Nazis' success.  But he slowly starts to lose his mind when the true horrors of the Nazi party start to identify themselves.  His mind tricks him into seeing himself as some kind of prophet who must give eternal happiness and an end to suffering to all unfortunates who are not of pure blood...even his own family.  The Cremator is a shifty, uneasy film.  It has been likened to German Expressionism with its stark, disorienting visuals and editing.  But I think there is another link to that great genre.  Just like Francis from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, it was easier for Karl to invent his own fantasy world with him as the hero than to admit to the reality of the outside world.

7/10

Classe Tous Risques: Claude Sautet

Classe Tous Risques is a film that I have been meaning to see for some time now, as it supposedly occupies a space between the stellar French gangster films of the 50s and the French classics of the 60s.  However, I found myself bored with its lack of emotion or feeling.  The story is simple enough: an old criminal in Italy must escape to Paris while avoiding backstabbing friends and the police.  Along the way he becomes friends with Eric Stark (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and loses his wife during a shoot-out with police.  Now, he must lead his two children to safety in a country that wants him dead.  This has the potential for great drama and emotion.  However, I feel that the film struggles from a serious case of miscasting.  Lino Ventura plays the principal character.  However, he has an almost impossible time doing any emotion whatsoever.  This works magically in hard-boiled roles in gangster films such as Touchez Pas au Grisbi.  However, this role demanded someone who could portray a man who was willing to give his life to protect his children.  Ventura comes off as lifeless, emotionless, and monotone.  The art, style, and attitude of the film is all present and accounted for.  But without a heart in its central role, it will be forever lacking.

6/10

T-Men: Anthony Mann

I've always believed that black and white films could be more inherently colorful than color films.  There is something about stark, chiaroscuro lighting, bottomless shadows, and opaque fog that colors the imagination more than any Technicolor process.  Film noir have always been among the greatest proponents of such cinematography.  And among the great film noir to color their screens black and white, Anthony Mann's T-Men is one of the best, most striking, and most beautiful.  John Alton's cinematography engulfs Mann's characters like portals to another dimension, transforming office rooms into dungeons and streets into hellscapes.  T-Men is the story of two agents for the Treasury Department infiltrating a counterfeiting operation.  The cinematography highlights the stakes of the operation and increases the tension as they plummet farther and farther into the criminal circle.  The acting is decent, but contains no real standout performances.  It is Alton, with his camera, that brings them to life and helps the film transcend its mortal bounds into immortality.

7/10

Amadeus: Miloš Forman

Can a movie be too perfect? This is a strange thing to think while watching a film.  But that thought kept nagging at me while watching Miloš Forman's Amadeus.  This dramatized story of the rivalry between Mozart and Salieri astonished me from beginning to end with its effortless simplicity and consummate craftsmanship.  In a way, I'm glad that I put off watching this film for so long.  By doing so, I was able to take several classes in screenwriting where I learned how to construct films from the ground up.  Armed with this knowledge, I was blown over by Amadeus' presentation.  I could give a long, in depth analysis of all of the things that Amadeus did correctly from a writer's perspective, but this is a site for MINI reviews.  So I must try to encapsulate the greatness that is Amadeus in a few sentences.  Allow me to try.  Amadeus did something that I thought impossible: it made a story of old, classical composers interesting and engaging.  Ever since his days as an architect of the Czech New Wave, Forman excelled in tight, character driven films.  Here in Amadeus, he never loses sight of the inherent human drama that drives the events.  We initially side with Salieri not because we favor his music, but because he is presented as the eternally cheated underdog.  Then, as Mozart falls ill and begins his downward spiral of self-destruction, our sympathies shift so naturally that Salieri becomes a horrific villain.  The entire film is filled with such subtleties: an audience half-heartedly clapping at the end of a magnificent opera, an Emperor dooms a production with a yawn during opening night...The music is as much a character as Mozart or Salieri, so much so that it becomes like an old friend by the end.  Ah, but I see that this review is already getting too long.  All I can say in conclusion is that Amadeus is a triumphant film of epic proportions.  Don't be surprised if after watching you feel an inclination to download a little Mozart or, God-willing, Salieri, to your iPod.

10/10

Hellraiser: Clive Barker

I think I can understand why the Hellraiser took off so magnificently after its debut.  The first film offered not one, not, two, but several interesting and terrifying monster/killers in the form of the Cenobites.  They had their own history, mythos, and motivations.  Plus, Clive Barker's eye for creative gore allowed for some of the most...ahem..."creative" decapitations that I have ever witnessed.  It feels like Barker is trying to create a morality tale about the virtues of free choice...but it largely falls flat.  Still, it is nice to look at, if you're into that sort of thing.  And it did feature some of the best monster and gore effects this side of John Carpenter's The Thing.  So if you want some mindless gore, this is a pretty good place to look.

5/10

The Wicker Man: Robin Hardy

I wonder if it's possible to get a film like The Wicker Man made anymore.  Certainly, a brief description of the film doesn't sound like anything that any modern Hollywood studio would make: a Christian policeman is murdered by an island of pagans as part of a May Day ritual.  Not only that, but the battle between the faiths is the heart and soul of the film.  Throw in the fact that The Wicker Man is essentially a psychological drama that relies on atmosphere more than shock thrills and you have a film that most Hollywood studios would avoid like the plague.  The only other film that I can think of to compare The Wicker Man to is Rosemary's Baby, another film where a vulnerable protagonist is subjugated to a secret cult's machinations against their will.  The real horror in both films is the slow realization that behind the smiles and happy faces of the masses, there are terrible, murderous secrets.  The Wicker Man is more than happy to remind jaded audiences that the true horrors in life rarely lurk in the shadows, but live out in the open in the sunshine.

8/10

The Ear: Karel Kachyňa

Originally barred from release by the Czechoslovakian government for almost 20 years after it was first completed, The Ear is a powerful film of claustrophobic fear and tension.  Ludvik and Anna are a married couple who come home from a party to discover that their house may be bugged by the police.  As the night goes on, they slowly slip into a frenzy as they try to discover who may have bugged them, and why.  The Ear is a powerful drama that predicts future films about Communist censorship and control like The Lives of Others.  Great care went into the black and white cinematography of the film.  Shadows engulf the characters in moments of doubt and madness while suspicious brightness accompanies scenes of the Party.  It isn't as great as other Czech New Wave staples like Closely Observed Trains and The Fireman's Ball, but it remains a well-crafted and taut film that was ahead of its time in the examination of life under the Communist block.

8/10

Blood and Black Lace: Mario Bava

When watching Mario Bava's seminal Blood and Black Lace, all I could really do was marvel at the colors.  No matter how many giallos I watch, I don't think that I will ever be able to stop babbling at their exquisite use of striking colors and sets.  Very little is subtle about giallos; they used overly gory deaths and beautiful women to keep the audience interested until the final credits.  Blood and Black Lace was one of the most important giallos and would go on to help inspire the slasher genre.  But I was amazed at how mediocre I thought it was.  The story was just a vehicle for shoving as many deaths on screen as possible: a killer stalks the members of a fashion house looking for a diary that contains all of their dirty secrets.  The film comes right out and tells you who the villain is about 2/3 of the way in.  There is little sense of the mystery and suspense that dominated other giallos like Suspiria and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.  Still, the film is an important part of cinema history and it features some of the most hypnotically beautiful visuals that I have encountered in a long time.  There are better, more important giallos out there, but at some point, every fan of the genre should see this one.

6/10

From the Life of the Marionettes: Ingmar Bergman

Despite Bergman's reputation for odd, surrealistic films, very few of his movies were experimental in nature.  Most of his films are piercing character studies.  But Bergman did occasionally branch out and attempt bolder, more unusual films like Persona and The Silence.  After the 1970s, a decade almost completely dominated by character-driven dramas, Bergman made From the Life of the Marionettes.  It would prove to be one of the most unusual and daring films in his entire career.  It examines Katarina and Peter Egermann, a couple introduced in his film Scenes From a Marriage.  At the start of the film, Peter kills and sodomizes a prostitute with his wife's name in a scene of uncharacteristic violence.  The rest of the film is a non-linear examination of the events that led up to and followed the crime.  Simply put, Bergman's brash experimentation does not serve this film very successfully.  There was no real reason for the obtuse flashbacks and dream sequences.  This film probably would have been more successful if it had been a straight drama with a linear plot like his immediately preceding film Autumn Sonata.  Bergman's unusual cinematic machinations suited films like Persona because they reflected the shattered and scattered mindscapes of his characters.  The films were enigmas because their characters were enigmas as well.  But here in From the Life of the Marionettes, there is little to no room for such interpretation.  It is explicitly spelled out that Peter's actions came from feelings of sexual inadequacy and frustration in his marriage.  By clearly defining his characters' motivations, he is working counter-intuitively to the opaque and obtuse cinematic techniques that he employs.

6/10

Blindman: Ferdinando Baldi

Ferdinando Baldi's Blindman is an ugly, chaotic, and unpleasant film.  If you know anything about spaghetti Westerns, then you know that those are usually compliments.  But in this case, they are not.  Blindman is one of the worst spaghetti Westerns that I have ever seen.  It deals with a blind gunslinger who has to escort 50 mail-order brides to a group of miners.  Along the way, he encounters bandits and members of the Mexican army who all want his women and his life.  This film makes no sense whatsoever.  Characters appear without introductions and disappear almost instantly.  All I could make out of this film was that the blind man was embroiled in a series of betrayals and gunfights as he tried to escort the women.  Occasionally buildings will blow up and the blind man will kill groups of bandits like a cowboy Zatoichi.  Oh, and Ringo Starr is a bad guy.  But amazingly, this does little to improve the film.  It is a noisy and brutish affair that is better passed on for better films.

4/10

Where Danger Lives: John Farrow

John Farrow's Where Danger Lives is essentially a mediocre film noir that is salvaged by not one, but two terrific lead performances.  Robert Mitchum plays Jeff Cameron,  a doctor who falls in love with a woman named Margo who is brought in one night to the hospital for attempted suicide.  What he doesn't know is that she is already married to a sadistic and violent millionaire.  During a tense confrontation with her husband, Jeff is knocked unconscious.  When he wakes up, he finds Margo's husband has been killed.  Margo tricks a now nearly disabled Jeff into thinking that he murdered her husband.  She forces him to take her to Mexico to avoid the police.  Mitchum terrifically plays his part as a befuddled man who knows that he is being taken advantage of, but can't figure out how.  Much critical praise was given to Mitchum.  But the true star is Faith Domergue as the manipulative and psychotic Margo.  She quakes and simmers with a deep-seated insanity dwelling just below the surface of her regular, smiling demeanor.  By the end of the film she has delivered the line, "Nobody pities me" twice.  The first time it was a murderous condemnation, the second a cynical act of forgiveness.  Once again, let me stress that Where Danger Lives should have been an average film.  But Mitchum and Domergue help make this an engrossing tale of deceit, manipulation, and madness.

7/10

The Hitcher: Robert Harmon

Critics did NOT like The Hitcher when it was first released.  They called it shocking, exploitative, cruel.  I completely agree with them.  You see...that was the point.  The Hitcher, in my mind, is about the seduction of the innocent, the eternal battle between good and unspeakable evil.  Rutger Hauer's character is a malevolent, near supernatural force of nature that seems to exist solely for the purpose of proving the extent of horror in this world.  As he tortures and torments Jim Halsey, he seems to be representing a force greater than himself.  Of course, violence for violence's sake is pointless.  But director Robert Harmon creates a devastating and claustrophobic world of nightmares for his characters to inhabit where violence is the means to test their limits, both emotionally and psychologically.  It is disturbing?  Yes.  It is gruesome and exploitative?  Yes.  But that's the point.  This is not a film about a pleasant subject.  It has literally been years since I've seen a film that has made me feel this sick and uncomfortable...but for all of the right reasons. 

9/10

The Culpepper Cattle Co.: Dick Richards

Many Revisionist Westerns focus on debunking the romanticism of the Old West.  The US Army is portrayed as the instigators of genocide against the Native Americans.  Cowboys are revealed to be a corrupt and cowardly lot.  The Culpepper Cattle Co. takes aim at another essential part of the Western mythos: the cattle drive.  Ever since films like Red River, there has been a perception of the cattle drive as a kind of epic struggle of man versus nature.  This film strips away all of that and argues that cattle drives were mean, ugly affairs.  16 year old Ben joins a cattle drive as the cook's assistant.  He dreams of being a real life cowboy.  By the end of the film, he will have been through several deadly encounters with land grabbers, rustlers, and horse thieves.  The cowboys are portrayed as vicious and cruel individuals.  In one scene two discuss how they would rather rob banks.  The film almost cheats the audience with its ending where the cowboys band together to protect a group of religious settlers from an evil landlord.  But instead, it treats us to one of the most cynical endings that I can remember from an American Western.

7/10

Super 8: J. J. Abrams

When you get right down to it, Super 8 is what would have happened if late 70s, early 80s Spielberg had ever been given a modern day movie budget.  This is both good and bad.  The good is that it stars a cast of ordinary, likeable protagonists flung into circumstances beyond their control.  Abrams remembers something that many film-makers have forgotten: for an audience to care about a film, they have to care about the characters.  Also, For about 2/3 of the film, Abrams makes glorious use of the old trick of not actually showing the monster.  But this leads into the bad things about this film.  When the monster does appear, it is so outlandish, and so obviously a computer image that there is no way that we can take it seriously.  We cared about E.T. because he was actually THERE with Elliot.  We were awed by the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Time because there were actors on screen in costumes.  The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park looked real because...well...they WERE real...most of the time.  Abrams is still addicted to using large scale, computer aided effects a la Star Trek when Super 8  demanded a more intimate, lower budget approach.  Maybe practical effects are too much to ask for in this day and age.  But I've noticed that the bigger the effects, no matter how well they are done, the less we believe in the actual story.  This is deadly to a film like Super 8 which takes such great pains to keep things on a smaller, more human scale.  Also, too many of the really good effects were obviously computer generated.  The train crash, as well shot as it was, felt artificial.  I'm sorry...but hasn't Hollywood taken every opportunity since the days of Buster Keaton to wreck real trains for such scenes?  Perhaps I'm asking too much.  For all its CGI-assisted effects and plot holes (what ever happened to those dogs, anyway), Super 8 remains one of the best summer movies to come down the pipe in a long time.

7/10