Planet of the Apes III: Escape from the Planet of the Apes: Don Taylor

Don Taylor's Escape from the Planet of the Apes is both a good sequel to Planet of the Apes (1968) and an excellent stand-alone film. It's an almost ingenious solution to the problem of how Hollywood could make another Planet of the Apes film after the eponymous planet was annihilated at the end of Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970): set it in earth's past. Of course, the film isn't a strict prequel because it follows three chimpanzee scientists who managed to escape from the fiery cataclysm from the last film. Stunned by the sight of a world ruled by men, the three chimpanzees, Cornelius, Zira, and Dr. Milo (the former two of which had appeared in the first two films), are captured and put into a zoo for further study. After Dr. Milo is accidentally killed by a gorilla in an adjacent cage, Cornelius and Zira reveal that they are from a future where mankind destroyed itself and apes came to rule the earth. Fearful of that possible future, government agents decide to exterminate them and their unborn child. I'm simplifying the plot, of course. But the plot is so well executed that it could legitimately work as a stand-alone film. I'm not kidding. If you showed somebody just this film and none of the other Planet of the Apes movies they would still have an enjoyable, rewarding experience. The screenplay by Paul Dehn brings a much more focused philosophical and scientific punch than Beneath the Planet of the Apes and confronts some truly fascinating ethical dilemmas. I know that some people may be disappointed that the film only has a handful of talking apes, but I still believe that Escape from the Planet of the Apes is both a worthy and entertaining follow-up to one of the most important sci-fi classics of the 60s.

7/10

Planet of the Apes II: Beneath the Planet of the Apes: Ted Post

As you may have noticed, I am labeling Ted Post's Beneath the Planet of the Apes as Planet of the Apes II: Beneath the Planet of the Apes. I am doing this because it makes it easier to organize the review in the bookmark column. But enough administrative jibber-jabber, what did I think of Beneath the Planet of the Apes? In short: I thought it was a good sequel but a mediocre stand-alone film. After the first film, a second spacecraft from the past crash-lands on the planet where apes evolved from men. The only survivor, an astronaut named John Brent, goes exploring to try and discover the whereabouts of George Taylor and the rest of his crew. Along the way, he meets Taylor's lover, the mute Nova, and discovers that he disappeared after the appearance of a wall of fire in the Forbidden Zone. Together they dutifully revisit the locations and characters of the first film in their search. Eventually, they stumble upon a group of mutated telepathic humans who worship an atomic bomb in the ancient remains of a New York City subway station. There they find Taylor, try to escape the mutants, and end up detonating the bomb (killing all life on earth) when an invading force of apes led by the gorilla General Ursus and the orangutan Dr. Zaius break into the station. Most of my problems concerning the film can be summarized in the character of John Brent. Why does he exist? Why is he necessary? I can understand wanting to replace Charlton Heston's character with another lead played by a much cheaper actor for the sequels. But his character is killed off at the end of the film! I know that Heston originally didn't want to reprise his role. But that still doesn't explain why they went through all the trouble of establishing a brand new lead if they were always planning to kill him off! Couldn't they have made an established character the primary lead? Imagine this: Dr. Zaius tricks General Ursus into exploring the Forbidden Zone in the hopes of finding more humans. Once he sees the General and his men ransack the station and kill the mutants, he realizes that his species is doomed to the same violent oblivion as the original humans. So, he either a) activates the bomb, freeing the apes from a pointless future, or b), activates the bomb after sending the mutants to their shelters so they can reclaim the earth and work for a peaceful future, having learned their lesson after two nuclear apocalypses. Or maybe he could have found a way to make the apes and humans accept each other! But that's neither here nor there. Beneath the Planet of the Apes is a good film...but it could have been even better.

6/10

Planet of the Apes: Franklin J. Schaffner

Recently, I decided to do a retrospective of the original Planet of the Apes series. I had already seen Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes, but I had never gotten around to seeing its four sequels. So, in order to properly judge them, I decided to re-watch the film that started it all. The story of a group of astronauts led by George Taylor (Charlton Heston) who crash land on a planet ruled by apes after traveling almost 2,000 years into the future, the film has become a cultural touchstone and one of the most important sci-fi films of the 60s. Now, I had already seen the film once before when I was younger. But at the time I only saw it as a piece of Hollywood entertainment and was unable to appreciate its artistic merit. During this second viewing, I was blown away by the power and nuance of Leon Shamroy's anamorphic cinematography. The first 25 minutes where the astronauts explore the Forbidden Zone are heart-breakingly beautiful and prove that CGI will never match the magnificence of on-location shooting. The ape make-up and costumes still hold their ground against modern special effects. While much of the film's philosophical underpinnings seem forced, over-bearing, and quaint by today's standards, I can't imagine how a late 60s audience raised on benign, cheaply-made creature features would have reacted to a sci-fi film with such intellectual depth. In short, Planet of the Apes is even better than I remembered. Onwards to the rest of the series!

9/10

Sudden Fear: David Miller

David Miller's Sudden Fear is a tragic film noir misstep with honorable artistic intentions but a clumsy, fumbled execution. The film follows Myra Hudson, a wealthy Broadway playwright, as she marries Lester Blaine, a struggling actor, and discovers that he is plotting to murder her and inherit her vast fortune. Miller tries to wrench out every iota of psychological tension within this story, diving deep into Hudson's mind as she tries to cope with the discovery of the plot against her life. And the last 15 minutes or so are an excellent exercise in tension as she stalks Blaine on the night he has planned to do her in. However, despite all of this, the film trips over its own two feet in the character development department. At the beginning of the film, Myra is a strong, independent woman. However, after Blaine publicly humiliates and insults her after she fires him from one of her plays, she seems to instantly fall in love with him. And even more, he seems to genuinely love her, too. Then, once he discovers that he is destined to inherit her money, he seemingly transmogrifies into a would-be murderer. These developments are so jarring and sudden that they are impossible to believe. I know that in Hollywood films people fall in love almost instantaneously, but in Sudden Fear it seems even more unnatural and forced than usual. These aren't living, breathing characters; they're automatons who have been programmed to act out a traditional film noir narrative.

5/10

Razorback: Russell Mulcahy

Before he reached the big-time with Highlander (1986), director Russell Mulcahy was making films in his native Australia. One of these was Razorback, a "nature gone wild" movie about a giant wild boar (i.e. "razorback") that stalks the Outback, killing and eating humans. The film follows two men who swear to kill the elusive yet deadly razorback: Jake Cullen, an Australian hunter who was powerless to stop the beast from killing and eating his grandson, and Carl Winters, a Canadian whose wife, an investigative journalist, was attacked by Australians and abandoned to the mercy of the razorback. Spoiler: she gets eaten, too. Together, Jake and Carl wage war against the monster. But can they kill it without becoming pig food? Razorback has a solid plot, but it is occasionally muddied by Mulcahy's stylistic flourishes. As he got his start as a music video director, many sequences feel like they were shot for MTV instead of the silver screen. Mulcahy fails to blend horror and the bombastic stylization of late 80s media with the success that Sam Raimi had with the Evil Dead series. But Razorback is still a moderately entertaining, if somewhat flawed, monster flick.

6/10

Dead of Winter: Arthur Penn

I've always had a love of soft-spoken, restrained villains who don't wear their treachery on their sleeves. In Arthur Penn's Dead of Winter, we are confronted with Dr. Joseph Lewis, a villain who at first seems so genuine, kind, and gentle that the eventual revelation of his wickedness can only be met with incredulity. After botching an experimental therapy treatment that led to the death of his patient, he lures an actress named Katie McGovern to his isolated, snowy estate under the pretense of having her star in a movie. However, his true motivations are much more insidious: he intends to use Katie as blackmail bait against the party responsible for his patient's death since she looks almost identical to her. Unfortunately, this plan will eventually result in Katie's death. When Katie discovers the scheme, she must formulate a plan to escape from the terrible yet polite Dr. Lewis. My favorite scene in this film was when Katie managed to summon two policemen to Dr. Lewis' house only for him to convince them that she was a violent mental patient. There is some real horror in the idea of being falsely accused of mental illness. After all, who are the authorities going to believe? The doctor or the disheveled, crazed-looking woman? Overall, I liked this film. It was one of the few thrillers that I have seen recently that actually, y'know, thrilled me.

7/10

The Moment of Truth: Francesco Rosi

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "Bull fighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honour." Francesco Rosi's magnificent The Moment of Truth is a glimpse into that world where beauty meets carnage and death is a constant companion. Disgusted by the possibility of inheriting his father's life as a poor country farmer, Miguel Romero 'Miguelín' leaves his home and journeys to the city where he takes up bullfighting as a means to quickly make money. Perhaps spurred on by thoughts of living a life of poverty, Miguel becomes a veritable over-night sensation with his extreme bravery and cool composure in the face of danger. But Miguel quickly comes to the realization that a life of fast success may not be worth the price demanded of bullfighters by the very nature of their bloody sport. Though the structure of the film's story is anything but revolutionary, Rosi injects a sense of energy and immediacy into it with the use of post-neorealist sensibilities and techniques: the bullfighting rings become universes unto themselves, crowded Catholic processions become mass waves of humanity, and each bull is transformed into a myth-like behemoth. And yet, Rosi refuses to shy away from the gore and brutality of the sport, lingering on the shivering bodies of bulls as the last few pints of blood spill from their necks and how their motionless bodies are dragged away through puddles of their own gore. The Moment of Truth is a film that exists midway between realism and fantastical imagination, much like the terrible sport of bullfighting itself.

8/10

Shark!: Samuel Fuller

Why is this movie entitled Shark!? This film is about a trio of Westerners searching for sunken treasure in the Red Sea. There are certainly shark attacks, but they only happen at the very beginning and the very end of the film. I think there may have been one more attack somewhere in the middle, but I can't be bothered to go back and check. That's because Shark! is an unwatchable, incoherent mess of a film. I feel terrible for Samuel Fuller, the original director. Apparently, Fuller quit the film after the production studio insisted on using the fact that a stuntman was accidentally killed during shooting as part of the advertising. Afterwards, Fuller demanded that his name be taken off the film. But his plea fell on deaf ears. And so, one of the greatest American filmmakers of the Twentieth century will forever be credited with this cinematic abomination. Every single aspect of this film is terrible. It seems that after Fuller left the film, the production studio hired a bunch of invalid monkeys to finish it. The sound quality is so bad that you could swear that a deaf-mute recorded the audio. The cinematography and editing is so confusing and disjointed that it feels like it was created and compiled while the production crew had their eyes closed. Gigantic swaths of the film are swallowed up in opaque day-for-night and murky underwater shots. In conclusion, Shark! is a film that never should have seen the light of day. And I'm not just saying that because it stands as a black mark on Fuller's filmography.

2/10

The Conformist: Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist is one of those blessed films where the camera becomes a character in and of itself. The story of Marcello Clerici, a young member of the Italian fascist secret police in the years leading up to World War Two, is fascinating enough on its own to carry an entire film. But the film's narrative is enhanced by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's virtuoso camera-work and shot compositions. Every single frame is constructed with the skill of a master painter. In fact, the film is so visually striking that it occasionally draws your attention away from the plot. Looking back, I am flooded with memories of striking images: the sterile, empty lobbies of Fascist buildings, the (almost) empty cathedral, the damp Parisian countryside, the squashed yet mysteriously spacious insides of vehicles. Bertolucci's vision of Fascist-era Europe is a kind of lush fever dream. This adds a certain other-worldliness to Clerici's personal odyssey. Desperately seeking acceptance in the new social order, Clerici joins the Fascist police only to be assigned the job of assassinating one of his old college professors and good friends, Professor Quadri, in Paris. Clerici's decision to betray Quadri is a powerful statement on the nature of Fascism and how it can transform seemingly ordinary citizens into monsters. The film reminds me of a moment in Bret Easton Ellis' infamous novel American Psycho when the eponymous Wall Street businessman/serial killer is confronted with the question of why he goes through the hollow motions of living a high life of luxury and refinement even though he is incapable of gaining any pleasure from it. His answer: he wants to fit in. How apropos.

9/10

Scenes from a Marriage: Ingmar Bergman

In an age when filmmakers are increasingly favoring digital media, the cinematic dream-team of director Ingmar Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist stand as one of the greatest testaments to the power and beauty of celluloid. From a formalistic standpoint, Scenes from a Marriage is one of their most stylistically controlled and hyper-realistic films. The film follows the gradual disintegration and eventual reconciliation of the marriage between two wealthy Swedes: Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Erland (Josephson). As can be expected of Bergman, the film delves deeply into their respective psychologies, explaining their motives for tearing the marriage apart and then tentatively limping back to each other. Originally made as a six-episode, 281-minute TV miniseries, the film is certainly fatiguing to watch in one single sitting. Still, Nykvist's cinematography and use of lighting transforms this domestic drama into a spectacle of heart-breaking beauty. Scenes from a Marriage is a veritable painting with film stock as the canvas, Nykvist's camera as the brush, and Bergman's artistic vision and direction as the painter.

8/10

Don’t Go in the House: Joseph Ellison

Can slasher films be regarded as works of art? Can there be artistic merit in a genre specifically designed to fill the screen with exploitative content like sex and gore? Personally, I think that they can. Films like Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974), Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and William Lustig's Maniac (1980) are fascinating cinematic texts worthy of study and admiration. I would like to offer up another little-known slasher for consideration: Joseph Ellison's Don't Go in the House. Heavily borrowing from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), the film tells the story of a deeply disturbed young man named Donald Kohler who has lived his life under the control of his cruel, abusive mother. When he finds her dead one evening, he goes on a killing spree directed against women who resemble her, luring them into his house and brutally murdering them with a flamethrower. The film certainly contains a fair amount of stomach-churning violence, but it is far more interested in Donald's tortured, rapidly-deteriorating mind. With the exception of the scene where Donald kills his first victim (which when compared with the heavily psychological tone of the rest of the film seems out of place with its overt objectification of the female body and its destruction), the violence seems like an after-thought. This is Donald's story. We, as the audience, are here merely to bare witness to his self-destruction.

7/10

Fatal Attraction: Adrian Lyne

Every now and then I come across a film that hits me like a cattle prod to the neck. If you watch hundreds of movies a year (like I do), then it becomes easy to forget how effective truly expertly crafted suspense films can be. Case in point: Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction. A now infamous film that depicts a married attorney being stalked and terrorized by a mentally unbalanced woman he had an affair with, Fatal Attraction shocked late 80s audiences and reportedly made many men reconsider cheating on their spouses. Glenn Close's performance as the psychotic Alexandra "Alex" Forrest is the stuff of legend. At first, she seems like a normal person with attachment issues. But then she evolves into a full-fledged monster, incessantly calling his house, killing his daughter's pet bunny, and then, in one of the most unsettling sequences in the entire film, kidnapping his daughter for an afternoon. I must have held my breath the entire time Alex had the girl, waiting for a sudden moment of violence that I knew was coming...but didn't. If I had to levy one major criticism, it would be how by the end of the film Alex seemingly develops slasher villain powers: she can break into buildings without being noticed, can survive being drowned for an extended period of time, and can even shrug off otherwise debilitating wounds. But these aren't deal-breakers in my opinion. By the time these scenes arrive, the audience has become so terrified of Alex that these violations of time and space are readily accepted. I've heard that this film sparked off major criticism from feminist critics who believed that the film suggested that all sexually liberated women were mentally unbalanced. But I don't buy it. Nobody thought that Hannibal Lector was anything other than a monster. Why can't Alex just be crazy? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and an unstoppable maniac is just an unstoppable maniac.

8/10

The English Patient: Anthony Minghella

I once heard somebody say that Anthony Minghella's The English Patient was the single most boring film they had ever seen in a theater. This told me two very important things. First, it meant that I needed to cancel that Béla Tarr Fan Club membership that I got him for his upcoming birthday. Second, it revealed that he did not have much patience when it comes to the cinema. I've seen action movies with less action than The English Patient. And, yes, I know that it has developed a reputation over the years as one of the weaker films to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. But I don't care. I thought that The English Patient was a very good film. Told largely in flashback, the film tells the story of the whirlwind romance between a Hungarian cartographer and an English aristocrat on the eve of World War Two. After a tragic accident leaves the woman dead and the Hungarian badly burned, he recounts his story to a French-Canadian nurse in an abandoned Italian monastery during the last days of the war. While I found the film very entertaining and effective, I can easily understand the frustration that it could have caused for many viewers. I don't really understand the necessity of framing the entire central romance as a series of flashbacks, thereby leaving the film vulnerable to countless side plots, supporting characters, and other distractions. The film is easily an hour longer then it should have been and the narrative occasionally loses its focus and direction. But is it boring? I don't think so. Long-winded? Sure. But not boring.

8/10

Cavalcade: Frank Lloyd

Yeesh. This is the film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1933? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't 1933 the year of Cooper and Schoedsack's King Kong, Mervyn LeRoy's Gold Diggers of 1933, and Bacon and Berkeley's 42nd Street? How could Cavalcade have possibly beaten those films out for Best Picture? The film is stilted, top-heavy, and with the exception of a fantastic montage depicting the horrors of World War One, completely uninteresting. It depicts the first three decades of the Twentieth century through the eyes of the Marryot family of London, England. We watch as various members of the family fight in the Second Boer War, die on the Titanic (during a honeymoon, no less), march in Queen Victoria's funeral procession, and get embroiled in World War One. Cavalcade actually reminds me of another Best Picture winner that depicted a regular London family during wartime: Mrs. Miniver (1942). But whereas that film featured fantastic performances, genuine emotion, and director William Wyler's impeccable mise en scène, Cavalcade is a generally unpleasant experience. I guess it isn't a coincidence that Cavalcade is the only Best Picture winner that hasn't received a solitary Region 1 DVD release.

5/10

Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror: Andrea Bianchi

Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror is essentially a stag film of gory death scenes and softcore sex. After a professor accidentally releases a curse while working in a crypt next to a giant mansion, hordes of undead zombies arise and attack. Much like Night of the Living Dead (1968), the film follows a group of survivors (three couples, a 10 year old boy, and two servants) as they try to keep the zombie hoards out of the house. Unfortunately, these zombies are a tier above Romero-zombies in that they seem to have retained rudimentary problem-solving skills like climbing walls and using tools to bash in doors. Therefore, we watch as the survivors are picked off one-by-one in the traditional Italian exploitation manner. The death scene that sticks the most in my mind was when the zombified 10-year old boy (who is actually played by a full-grown dwarf) attacks his mother by literally biting one of her breasts off. Of course, it's difficult to root for the survivors when they're so insanely stupid. Their stupidity isn't even limited to the old stereotype where people waste shots of ammo on zombie arms and torsos even after they learn that they have to be shot in the head. These survivors have a bad habit of freezing and NOT fleeing when confronted by zombies, much like a deer in headlights. The constant repetition of running, getting killed, running, and getting killed makes Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror unforgivably boring. It's a shame, too, because the film boasts some impressively ambitious zombie costumes and effects. Look for the one scene where a zombie sits up through a layer of grass like a robot. It's chilling stuff.

4/10

Marathon Man: John Schlesinger

At first, I feared that John Schlesinger's Marathon Man would lose me with its labyrinthine plot concerning secret agents, Nazi doctors, and stolen diamonds. For the first half hour, I was so confused about what was going on that I felt that I would have to appreciate it solely for its craftsmanship, tone, and atmosphere, much like Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946). But then the plot began to fall into place and I found myself absolutely mesmerized by this terrific thriller. I loved the film's pacing, red herrings, and performances by Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier. The infamous "Is it safe?" interrogation was particularly brutal. I haven't squirmed in my seat like that in a long time. It just confirms my theory that when it comes to unnerving an audience, less is more. Also, I enjoyed how this film had the guts to truly punish its lead villain instead of abruptly killing him off at the end. I know that statement might make me seem like a sociopath...but I don't care. Too many despicable villains don't get their true comeuppances these days. But I'm rambling now. Marathon Man is easily one of the best thrillers of the 70s. It may start off a bit murky, but it leaves you more than satisfied at the end.

9/10

The Children of Times Square: Curtis Hanson

Curtis Hanson's The Children of Times Square is a made-for-TV movie about runaways living in New York City. The film centers on two young boys in particular: Eric, a young boy who runs away from his neglectful step-father, and Luis, an inner city boy who takes up drug-dealing to support his mother and two young sisters. They both fall into a gang called the Leopards which controls the drug trade of a large chunk of Times Square. They are led by an older man named Otis, a Fagin-like hustler. Of course, this being a made-for-TV movie, it is a cautionary tale. Therefore, much of the movie involves Eric's mother traveling to New York to try and find him. It's inevitable that Eric will be found, but that doesn't distract from the fact that The Children of Times Square is one of the grittier made-for-TV movies that I have ever seen. It explicitly deals with child prostitution, pedophilia, and the drug business. In fact, one minor character that weaves in and out of the central narrative is a 15-year old prostitute on the run from her sexually abusive father. And don't get me started on the scene where Eric is sexually assaulted by an older gentleman. The Children of Times Square feels like a grindhouse movie with all the especially naughty bits edited out. But it still packs a sizable emotional wallop.

7/10

Shakedown: James Glickenhaus

I had heard of the legendary exploitation director James Glickenhaus before, but I had never seen one of his films until now. After seeing Shakedown, I feel confident in saying that Mr. Glickenhaus has a new convert. The film follows Manhattan public defender Ronald Dalton (Peter Weller) and NYPD narcotics agent Richie Marks (Sam Elliott) as they try to take down a ring of corrupt police officers and free the name of a crack dealer who killed an undercover cop in self-defense. I've seen this kind of story many, many times, but where Glickenhaus sets himself apart from other filmmakers is his intimacy with New York City and his ability to incorporate it into the actual story instead of simply using it as an exotic backdrop. Take one scene near the end where a magnet crane helps a taxi escape from a group of corrupt policemen. Or what about the shootout on 42nd Street centered around the infamous Deuce? Or the fight between Marks and a criminal on a roller coaster? Glickenhaus has an intuitive ability to block and choreograph actions scenes that are thrilling, original, and most importantly, memorable. This movie should be shown in Action Filmmaking 101.

7/10

SSSSSSS: Bernard L. Kowalski

Look at that title: SSSSSSS. Just thinking about it makes my skin crawl. In the history of gimmicky movie titles, this 1973 film by Bernard L. Kowalski might take the cake as the most ludicrous and ridiculous. And you know what the most outrageous part is? SSSSSSS is actually a good movie! As far as nature horror films go, SSSSSSS is easily one of the very best. Go figure, am I right? The film follows the brilliant ophiologist Doctor Stoner (Strother Martin) as he tries to transform his student assistant, David Blake (Dirk Benedict), into a King Cobra through a series of injections. However, the corniness of this plot is off-set by a series of fantastic performances by both Martin and Benedict. Martin could have easily made Doctor Stoner an over-the-top madman, but instead he plays him as a very old, very sad man who has nothing left in life other than his daughter and his work. Much of the horror in the last third of the film comes from the revelation of just how sick and twisted Stoner truly is. And yet he never loses that quiet, somber, slightly detached demeanor. It's also a testament to the quality of the film that when terrible things start to happen to David, you honestly feel terrified for his well-being. I've seen more horror films and shocking death scenes than I can possibly remember. And yet, few have gotten under my skin as well as what eventually happens to David. Points also go to SSSSSSS for using real poisonous snakes that could have easily killed the cast and crew during filming. But this film's true greatness is in its ability to make us emphasize with the characters...even when they start to do terrible things.

7/10

Life of Pi: Ang Lee

With Life of Pi, director Ang Lee continues his reputation as a cinematic chameleon, proving himself capable of making engaging, entertaining films in any genre, culture, or time period that he chooses. After his mediocre Taking Woodstock (2009), it was good to see Lee back in top form in Life of Pi. Based off the novel of the same name by Tann Martel, the film follows Piscine Molitor "Pi" Patel, a young Indian man who is shipwrecked and forced to spend over 270 days aboard a life-raft with a full grown Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. I was originally bothered by the film's blatant abuse of CGI (apparently every shot of Richard Parker was created with CGI). But soon I settled into the same mindset that I had during Robert Zemeckis' Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) where I became more interested in how the live-action characters and props interacted with the obviously animated creations. In that respect, Life of Pi is a dazzling accomplishment. Within the film, Lee creates some of the most striking images to grace American cinema in years: the doomed ship sinking underneath the waves of a storm, a school of jellyfish illuminating the sea at night, a tropical island full of meerkats, even a simple scene of an Indian religious festival becomes a rapturous celebration of shapes and colors. I also like the ambiguity introduced near the end concerning the validity of the story as it had been presented to us for nearly two hours. Life of Pi is one of those rare films that is both thought-provoking and heart-breakingly beautiful to behold.

9/10

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers: Lewis Milestone

Lewis Milestone's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers was one of the early film noir that blended lush stylization and Hollywood production values (like studio sets) before the genre inevitably evolved to focus more on realism (e.g. Fred Zinnemann's Act of Violence). The resulting film is drenched with intense melodrama centered around lost and forbidden love. The plot is difficult to summarize, but not because it is opaque and confusing (like many other film noir) but because it manages to cram so much story into a two hour run-time. It follows three main characters: Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck), a young woman who accidentally killed her rich yet cruel, domineering aunt, Walter O'Neil (Kirk Douglas), a witness of the crime who is forced to marry Martha when she is blackmailed by his father, and Sam Masterson (Van Heflin), a gutter-snipe who had attempted to help Martha escape from her aunt as a child. The film watches as their lives accidentally intersect 18 years after that fateful night when Martha killed her aunt and Sam (having NOT witnessed the crime) went on the run. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers is a film that demands an in-depth critical re-evaluation. It is a fascinating document that explores the dynamics between rich and poor in the late 40s, or at least the way they were envisioned by the public. Martha and Walter are doomed to an opulent yet loveless marriage that seems to poison their minds and spirits, corrupting their characters (particularly in light of the film's climax). Sam, on the other hand, while living a life of poverty, never loses his morals or his sense of right and wrong...well...at least when it comes to justice. However, the film does overdose on melodrama near the end and becomes almost unbearably bloated. But this is still a film that I will have to return to later on.

7/10

The House on Telegraph Hill: Robert Wise

That's it...I need to go on a Robert Wise binge. In the past I have successfully managed to track down and watch the complete filmographies of Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, and Alfred Hitchcock. Now I need to do the same with Wise. I have yet to see one of his films that hasn't blown me away. The Set-Up (1949) is still my all-time favorite boxing film. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) was one of the first sci-fi films to truly capture my imagination. What can I say that hasn't already been said about the phenomenal West Side Story (1961), The Haunting (1963), or The Sound of Music (1965)? And now I find myself confronted by another one of his films, a lesser known film noir entitled The House on Telegraph Hill. After surviving the Holocaust, Victoria Kowelska assumes the identity of her best friend, Karin. Before dying, Karin had told Victoria that her infant son, Chris, had been sent to America to live with a small fortune in San Francisco. Once in America, she assumes Karin's identity, inheriting her fortune and massive home on top of Telegraph Hill. But a strange thing begins to happen: she develops genuine feelings of love towards her "son." But things are complicated when she starts getting into potentially fatal accidents, suggesting that somebody in her new family might want her out of the way...This film truly took me by surprise. At first I thought that it would be a tired melodrama revolving around a case of mistaken identity. But it evolves into an extremely effective thriller with one of the most tense final acts that I can remember. It involves a glass of orange juice that may or may not be poisoned and a husband who may or may not be responsible. The scene reminds me of a similar situation involving a glass of milk in Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941). But The House on Telegraph Hill reaches levels of suspense and tension that completely outstrip that film. Not many directors can legitimately claim to have beaten the "King of Suspense" at his own game. But, as I keep discovering, Robert Wise was not your average director.

8/10

Conquest: Lucio Fulci

If you take one thing away from Lucio Fulci's Conquest, let it be this lesson: never combine soft-focus cinematography, colored gels, and day-for-night shooting at the same time. Why? Because your movie will be unwatchable. The film follows a traditional "hero's quest" storyline where the protagonist, Ilius, leaves his people and homeland in order to travel the world and prove his worth (read: become a man). He decides that in order to complete his journey, he must vanquish the evil Ohkren, a nude sorceress who only wears a golden mask. Along the way, he befriends Mace, an outsider who has rejected mankind for the company of animals. Together they face many trials and tribulations: deadly flora and fauna, monsters, and evils forces controlled by Ohkren. There is an interesting twist at the end where Ilius is beheaded and the task of killing Ohkren falls upon Mace. This is a nice variation on the "hero's quest," suggesting that what makes a true hero isn't his heritage or birthright, but his willingness to stand and fight against evil. But again, the problem is that a good third of this film is impossible to watch. In his attempt to make the film more dreamlike, Fulci made his cinematographer use the techniques listed at the start of this review. Therefore, the entire film is blurry and hazy and the night scenes plunge the screen into opaque blackness. During these scenes it is impossible to follow what is going on. It's a real shame, too. Conquest could have easily been a decent sword and sorcery film...if you could actually see it.

5/10

Out for Justice: John Flynn

Three things make John Flynn's Out for Justice the best Steven Seagal film that I have ever seen. First, this is easily Seagal's best performance. He's never been the most talented actor. In fact, there is a rumor that he was only hired by his agent because of a bet that he could make a movie star out of anybody, regardless of how uncharismatic they may be. But Seagal turns in a legitimately good performance as Gino Felino, an NYPD detective from Brooklyn who is on the warpath after his partner is brutally murdered in front of his family by Riche Madano, a cocaine-crazed mafioso with a desperate death-wish. The second reason why this is the best Seagal film that I've ever seen is because of William Forsythe's performance as Madano. He turns what could have been a very generic villain role into one of the most memorable performances of his career, growling and stalking like a possessed jungle cat. And the third reason is the infamous bar-room interrogation/fight scene. Seeking out information on his partner's killer, Felino walks into the toughest bar around and begins to antagonize the muscle-bound patrons. When he finally succeeds in egging them into a fight, he strikes out with a pool cue-ball wrapped in a cloth, unleashing a series of the most brutal ass-whoppings this side of Hong Kong. While I had certainly enjoyed some of Seagal's films in the past, I had never understood his monstrous appeal as either a martial artist or an action hero until seeing Out for Justice. What a film!

7/10

Master Ninja I: Robert Clouse, Ray Austin

Yes, yes, let's get the jokes and formalities out of the way so we can properly discuss Master Ninja I: the film isn't really a film at all. Instead, it's the first two episodes of an Eighties action television show entitled The Master which only ran for one season. The show was a weird combination of martial arts, the buddy cop formula, and David Carradine's Kung Fu. Lee Van Cleef plays an American soldier who stayed in Japan after World War Two and became the very first Occidental Ninja. However, after hearing that he has a daughter in America, he abandons the "Ninja Lifestyle" to seek her out. This, of course, results in his former Ninja comrades trying to kill him. But after teaming up with a young American hot-shot played by Timothy Van Patten (who also becomes his pupil), he continues his quest to travel the country and find his daughter. In the first two episodes which would become Master Ninja I, they fight against two separate incidents where corrupt businessmen try to cheat a father/daughter team out of their livelihood. What a coincidence. There really isn't much to see here. It's boring, predictable, and disjointed.

4/10

Wagon Master: John Ford

When fans and scholars discuss the Westerns of John Ford, his 1956 film The Searchers is frequently the only one from that decade that is brought up. He directed a few other Westerns that decade, but they ranged from unremarkable to minor works when compared with his other input into the genre. Of course, there is one major exception: Wagon Master. Only his second film of the Fifties, Wagon Master is a stunning Western in the true John Ford tradition: a film that focuses on family, community, and justice. After hiring two horsemen (played by Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr.) to act as guides, a group of Mormon settlers set out West for Utah Territory. However, their train is soon hijacked by a group of bandits on the run from the law. They terrorize the settlers, forcing them to "escort" them away from the authorities hot on their trail after a bank robbery went sour. Wagon Train is one of the most intimate Westerns of Ford's later career, balancing superb characterizations with sincere suspense and tension. Two character moments struck me as particularly powerful: an early scene where a Mormon Elder haggles with the horsemen while both parties feign nonchalance by leaning against a fence and whittling and a later scene where the leader of a traveling group of "entertainers" volunteers his wagon (and his life) when the bandits cruelly force the settlers down the side of an impossibly steep hill. These scenes demonstrate an introspective knowledge of human behavior that few other directors have ever managed to duplicate. And yet, none of it seems pretentious or indulgent. And really, that was one of Ford's greatest talents: the ability to create serious works of art while tricking the world into thinking that his films were merely standard Hollywood fare.

8/10

Zardoz: John Boorman

I doubt that anyone thought that director John Boorman would follow up his enormously successful thriller Deliverance (1972) with one of the most obtuse, experimental, and stylistically polarizing sci-fi films ever made. But, lo and behold, two years later Boorman released Zardoz upon an unsuspecting and unprepared public. The film follows Zed (Sean Connery), a member of the "Exterminator" warrior class who are tasked by their god Zardoz, a giant, floating stone head, to kill others. However, after discovering an ancient library and teaching himself how to read, Zed sneaks into the giant head of Zardoz to see just what makes this monstrosity tick.  Zardoz is not an easy film to watch, particularly for those who expected it to be another action-packed Connery vehicle. But for those willing to give it a chance, the film explores scientific and religious concepts that most sci-fi features don't even realize exist. However, Boorman's direction is lacking in focus and purpose. This hardly seems like the work of the same genius who directed the masterful Point Blank (1967). It is much too indulgent and bloated.

5/10

Faceless: Jesús Franco

The similarities between Jesús Franco's Faceless and Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960) are unmistakable. Both involve a crazed doctor that kidnaps beautiful women in order to transplant their faces onto a scarred loved one. But whereas Eyes Without a Face displayed a kind of cinematic poetry akin to Jean Cocteau, Franco approached the film as an exploitation piece. That's not necessarily a condemnation, of course. In fact, Faceless is one of Franco's most technically astute and accomplished films. The film follows plastic surgeon Dr. Flamand and his assistant/lover Nathalie as they steal the faces from beautiful women for his sister/lover Ingrid who was accidentally mutilated with acid by a disgruntled ex-patient. In the true tradition of Italian exploitation, a Nazi doctor and a mentally-handicapped assistant/rapist also become part of their schemes. Faceless also does a decent job juggling its primary story with a subplot concerning an American private detective hired to track down one of Flamand's victims. It's not uncommon for such films to have subplots, of course. But they very rarely manage to incorporate them without making them seem like they came from an entirely different movie. Some of the special effects are decent, as well. Although, in all fairness, one of the effects where a woman's face is removed is particularly amateurish. But, overall, Faceless is one of Franco's better efforts.

6/10

Marked for Death: Dwight H. Little

The best part of Dwight H. Little's Marked for Death is its villain, the maniacal Jamaican drug-dealer and Obeah practitioner Screwface. Basil Wallace's performance transforms Screwface from just another generic action movie villain into a force to be reckoned with. There's one scene in particular that blew me away: after learning that Steven Seagal's character, Chicago DEA agent John Hatcher, had thwarted his men and embarrassed his organization, he howls, "I want Hatcher dead. I want his family dead. And if you can't kill him, I go kill him, and then I'm gonna kill you." Now, that line by itself isn't very special. In fact, it seems like an inferior version of Robert De Niro's famous line in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987). But Wallace's performance is so spot-on that it comes across as genuinely terrifying. The rest of the film is standard Steven Seagal fare: after his family is attacked by Screwface's men, Hatcher sets out to bring down their organization by any means necessary. But honestly, I don't care about Seagal's character in this film very much. I want more Screwface. He is almost too good of a villain for this movie.

6/10

Monster Shark: Lamberto Bava, Bruno Mattei

Back in the early days of Hollywood, directors tried to utilize a technique known as "invisible editing" wherein the transition from one shot to another was so subtle that the audience wouldn't notice it. I just wish that Lamberto Bava and Bruno Mattei could have tried to mimic this technique when they made Monster Shark, a painful migraine-inducer of a film that follows a hideous creature from the sea and its reign of terror along the Florida coastline. The result of a military experiment gone wrong, this part-octopus, part-prehistoric mega-fish is hunted by a team of scientists seeking to kill it before the military can get to it again. Unfortunately, the film's plot is difficult to follow thanks to poor pacing, abysmal special effects, and some of the most incompetent editing that I have ever seen. Monster Shark was one of the many nature-horror films that were made following the spectacular success of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975). Sadly, it is also one of the absolute worst. A toddler with his eyes closed could have shot and edited a better film than this.

2/10

The Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead: Chin-Ku Lu

Have you ever had the feeling that, despite your best efforts, you have been stuck watching an edited copy of a film? I know I have. The most recent example of this occurred when I watched Chin-Ku Lu's The Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead, a Category III Hong Kong supernatural martial arts film. I kept hearing how this film was notorious for its graphic violence and eroticism, but I didn't see any content that would have earned the film anything more than an 'R' rating here in the States. My copy of the film had a run-time that was only a few minutes shorter than the official Hong Kong version, but that's normal for imported films, particularly those of an exploitative nature. So I'm not sure if I got the complete cut or a slightly edited version. Whatever the case, The Holy Virgin vs. the Evil Dead (and no, I will never get tired of typing that title) is a study in mediocre Hong Kong genre filmmaking. After five young female students are brutally dismembered by an evil spirit with green eyes, their teacher is thrown in jail as the primary suspect. However, it is soon discovered that the true culprit, the aforementioned fellow with the green eyes, is a Cambodian Moon Monster seeking to conquer the world. Somehow his plans for world domination includes raping and murdering many young women, but it's never made very clear how. Leading the assault against the Moon Monster is Princess White of the Cambodian Wind Tribe, a warrior possessing a magical sword that is the key to his defeat. The film contains a lot of great, cheesy special effects and wire-work, but it's ultimately hampered by its occasionally incoherent narrative. If I did watch an edited copy, then I hope that the original cut was better.

5/10

Lincoln: Steven Spielberg

If there's one word that I feel truly sums up Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, it's 'restraint.' Here is an intelligent movie that is not afraid to confront the audience with lengthy political and legal debates. Here is a movie that could have sensationalized the life of the greatest American president, but instead chooses to regard him in quieter moments: time spent with his family, tense meetings with his cabinet, wearied exchanges with political aids and allies. Here is a movie that sees Lincoln as he must have truly been in the last few months of the American Civil War: tired, old, exhausted. Though the film only explicitly concerns itself with his struggle to get the Thirteenth Amendment passed by the United States House of Representatives and to finally end the war in a secret meeting with delegates from the South, the film works as a kind of metaphor for his entire presidency. After all, the nation was already bitterly divided when he took office. He must have faced the same kind of struggles and opposition before that fateful year that would prove to be his last. Anyhow, Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as Lincoln is a revelation that at once seems organic and authentic without slipping into parody. Sally Field and Tommy Lee Jones both give two of their careers' best performances as First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and Republican Congressional leader Thaddeus Stevens respectively. With pitch-perfect performances and one of the most thought-provoking Hollywood scripts in years, Lincoln is proof that Spielberg might still have a few more great films left in him.

8/10

The Pack: Robert Clouse

Joe Don Baker really got a bum deal from Mystery Science Theater 3000. After starring in two of their most famous episodes with Mitchell (1975) and Final Justice (1984), Baker has developed a reputation as a greasy parody of 70s and 80s action stars. But anybody who has seen Walking Tall (1973) can tell you that Baker is the real deal. That's one of the reasons that Robert Clouse's The Pack angers me: it re-enforces the aforementioned negative stereotype surrounding Baker. The film surrounds the population of a small island that are terrorized by a pack of dogs who had been abandoned by their vacationing owners. Baker plays Jerry, a man who recently moved to the island with his family, who helps lead the islanders in their struggle against "the pack." Unfortunately, Baker's performance is so subdued that it seems like he was on quaaludes. It doesn't help that the plot jumps around too much for its own good. I could only properly follow what was going on because I had its Wikipedia page open while I watched it. The dogs, however, give the film's best performances. I don't even want to imagine how difficult it must have been to train and command all of the dogs used in this film. But the results were worth it: the pack is portrayed as appropriately terrifying. A major problem that a lot of killer animal movies face is that the actual animals used will seem uninterested and uninvolved during their scenes. But the dogs in The Pack seem like they genuinely want to kill anything, and anyone, that gets in their way. If only Clouse could have gotten Baker to act as enthusiastically... 

5/10

Body and Soul: Robert Rossen

For me, personally, the main appeal of Robert Rossen's Body and Soul isn't the fact that it was one of the first great boxing films. Instead, the most intriguing part of the film, in my opinion, concerns two performances by actors who were cheated out of the more distinguished careers that they deserved. The first was John Garfield, that chiseled contender who could have gone down as one of the great "city boys" along with Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney if his career hadn't been destroyed for not naming names for the U.S. Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities. Garfield plays Charley Davis, a well-intentioned but weak-willed young man who becomes a champion boxer only to get pulled into the criminal underworld of mafia rackets and gambling. The second amazing performance was by Hazel Brooks as Alice, a cynical nightclub singer who helps pull Charley towards oblivion. Brooks, an actress of South African descent, is a revelation. Imagine a more exotic Lauren Bacall and with just a light peppering of Veronica Lake. It is a tragedy that her career really didn't go anywhere. Anyhow, the film is well shot, tightly edited, and deliciously performed by two great unsung actors.

7/10

An Eye for an Eye: Steve Carver

Even going by early 80s revenge film standards, Steve Carver's An Eye for an Eye has a brutal first act. After seeing his partner brutally gunned down in an ambush, undercover San Francisco narcotics cop Sean Kane (Chuck Norris) overhears his reporter friend Linda Chan get murdered over the telephone. Apparently, Linda managed to get damning evidence against the drug gang responsible for the ambush. In the wake of so much tragedy, Kane teams up with Linda's father, James Chan (Mako Iwamatsu) to bring justice against those responsible. This being a Chuck Norris film, James is also Kane's martial arts teacher. But much to my surprise, Kane isn't a very competent martial artist. He is clumsy and unrefined. I know that this doesn't denote a lack of skill on Chuck Norris' part. After all, this film was made nine years after he starred opposite of Bruce Lee in Way of the Dragon (1972). Making Kane a sub-par martial artist was an interesting character choice. The film also contained a decent twist where the man that we thought was the villain turned out to be a hero and the cooperative, concerned ally turns out to be the main antagonist. At least, that latter twist would have been surprising if he hadn't been played by Christopher Lee. But I applaud the filmmaker's effort in trying to make it work.

6/10

Skidoo: Otto Preminger

The year was 1968 and the writing was on the wall. Vietnam was burning, students were rioting, hippies were dancing, and Hollywood was failing. As ticket prices dropped, studios began selling their backlots and props just to make ends meet. The legendary stars of the past were shoved aside to make room for teenage heartthrobs like James Dean and Elvis Presley. Hollywood just couldn’t comprehend these bizarre Baby Boomers who craved sex and violence, rebellion and rock ‘n’ roll. The first faint glimmers of the Hollywood New Wave could be seen on the horizon, heralding the birth of a new generation of filmmakers and actors at the expense of the old. It was from this environment that Otto Preminger’s Skidoo seemed to burst into existence both fully-formed and irrevocably apathetic. With nothing left to lose, the film saw a mixture of the Hollywood old guard and a pantheon of 50s television stars throwing up their hands towards the future and saying with one voice, “Screw it. We give up.”

In a quiet, picturesque neighborhood nestled somewhere in the American suburban wasteland of the late 1960s, retired hit-man Tony Banks (Jackie Gleason) is suddenly ordered back to active duty by his old mob boss “God.” At first Tony refuses, having grown quite comfortable with his new life of Teflon frying pans, tacky furniture, and color television. But when one of his close friends is soon discovered in a car wash with a bullet in his brain, Tony reluctantly agrees. His target is his old pal “Blue Chips” Packard (Mickey Rooney), a crook with a date with the US Senate’s Crime Commission. In order to “silence” Packard before he gets a chance to testify, Tony gets sent to Alcatraz Island where he is being held in an impervious prison cell of the future. To get to Packard, he must team up with Fred the Professor, a draft-dodging, brown rice eating electronics genius who just happens to be one of his cellmates, so they can modify a television set to communicate with him inside his cell. But after making contact, Tony realizes that he can’t go through with it. Knowing that “God” will never rescue him from Alcatraz if he doesn’t perform the hit, Tony begins to plot one of the strangest prison breaks in history.


But while Tony languishes in Alcatraz, his wanna-be hippie daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay) and her spaced-out boyfriend Stash (John Phillip Law) decide to confront “God” on his yacht located deep (and permanently) within international waters. They find “God” (played by Groucho Marx in his final film appearance) unwilling to change his mind despite having long since grown tired of his self-imposed exile. When her mother Flo (Carol Channing) discovers that “God” has effectively taken her prisoner, she rallies a massive group of hippies and storms his yacht like pirates.

To make matters even worse, at that moment Tony and Fred arrive at the yacht in a massive hot air balloon made of freezer bags and garbage cans that they used to escape Alcatraz after spiking the prison’s food supply with LSD. In a sequence that seems oddly reminiscent of Groucho’s earlier film Duck Soup (1933), the characters scurry around like madmen in a bacchanalian frenzy of outrageous costumes, music, and crowded sets as a couple are married, a family is reunited, and an old mob boss suddenly dressed as a Hare Krishna smokes a joint and slips away.

For a film by Preminger, a director most known for his legendary output as part of the Hollywood studio system during the 1940s and 1950s, Skidoo displays an unusually vicious contempt for the entertainment industry, American society, and new technological advancements. It’s very easy to miss considering the film’s music and tone, but it is definitely there. Take the virtuoso sequence that occurs during the film’s first five minutes, for example. An animated title sequence featuring a dancing caricature of Preminger zooms out to reveal a television set. Suddenly, the television rapidly changes channels through a kaleidoscope of bizarre programming. First a Senate hearing. Then a skinny blonde woman with a pink pearl necklace, “Now you, too, can be beautiful and sexually desirable like me.” Back to the hearing. Now back to the woman, “Instead of that fat, disgusting, foul-breathed, slimy, wallowing sow that you are...” Now John Wayne on a battleship. Now a fat Bavarian drinking foamy beer. John Wayne. A noisy pig. “You’ll never lose your man if you drink ‘Fat’ Cola.” John Wayne. Two children and a dog smoking cigarettes. The hearing. “Get a gun for everyone in your family. Remember, for family fun, get your gun!” And all the while Flo can be heard complaining, at one point even chiming: “No, Harry, I don’t like films on TV. They always cut them to pieces.”

Skidoo’s America is one of artificial people trying, and failing, to put up a better front around others. Gleason’s Tony is a bloated, short-tempered grouch. Stash and the hippies are ignorant, easily manipulated morons. The local mayor occupies himself with “anti-ugliness” campaigns. Fred claims to despise technology while neck-deep in circuitry. Even the futuristic, technological creature comforts that dominate the film’s interiors fail to work properly. Take one scene where Flo tries to seduce a gangster in order to gain information on Frank’s whereabouts. His “pad” is an automated No Man’s Land of malfunctioning gadgets and gizmos: the remote-controlled lights and stereo go haywire, a liquor cabinet sputters open and closed, and a mechanical bed that rises from the floor accidentally drags her underground.

And then there are the drugs. LSD, marijuana, birth control pills...the film is a cornucopia of chemical delights. During the prison-wide LSD-fueled freak-out, garbage cans dance, guards collapse in laughter, and visiting government officials...*ahem*...lose their composure. In an earlier scene, Tony unwittingly licks an LSD-laced envelope, resulting in one of the best drug-trip sequences of the 1960s (“Mathematics! I see mathematics!”). Preminger seems to condemn them one moment as the playthings of the stupid and unmotivated and then at other moments praise them as the means through which individuals can escape the conformist nightmare of Vietnam-era America.

So what’s the point of the film? Perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps Preminger merely wanted to air out a career’s worth of dirty laundry within the confines of a film that his producers would overlook and the critics would casually dismiss. Perhaps the film finally gave voice to Preminger’s long-held frustrations with his adopted culture. But perhaps we’re over-thinking it. Whatever the case, Skidoo is a technicolor enigma of pop culture detritus. It must be seen to be believed. But don’t expect to understand it instantly. As some are wont to point out, you never get high your first time.

9/10

Django Unchained: Quentin Tarantino

I'm beginning to think that I might need to re-watch all of Quentin Tarantino's films. Until now, I had never seen one of his films on the big screen. But after seeing Django Unchained in a theater, I have come to the realization that I have never truly seen any of his other films before. Here is an artist with a painter's eye for shot composition and blocking. Even when bullets and innards begin to fly across the screen with gleeful abandon, Tarantino never loses his knack for flawlessly conceived and perfectly balanced mise en scène. But Django Unchained also sees the further development of Tarantino as a writer. Much like his previous film, Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained doesn't telegraph Tarantino's influences as explicitly as his earlier work. A well-versed film buff can certainly pick out elements from other movies that Tarantino "borrowed" from: the visual and thematic quotations from Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966), Sergio Leone's characterization of the quiet anti-hero, the snowy landscapes of The Great Silence (1968), and even the impossible, pocket-sized gizmos of the Sartana franchise. But instead of making these references the heart and soul of the film, Tarantino merely uses them to enhance and flavor his original story and ideas. After being freed from his owners by the eccentric dentist/bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), ex-slave Django Freeman (Jamie Foxx) teams up with him to hunt down evil slavers, bandits, and the bastards who sold off his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). The film is both a visual and visceral delight that revels in Tarantino's passion and love for a genre that has influenced him from the very beginning. Now to see if I can find a theater showing Pulp Fiction (1994)....

9/10 (Side-note: I didn't plan this, but it seems oddly appropriate that this is my 666th Mini Review)

Wee Willie Winkie: John Ford

I must admit that the very thought of watching John Ford's Wee Willie Winkie made me extremely apprehensive. The man directed films in almost every major genre, but I couldn't for the life of me imagine him directing a Shirley Temple vehicle. But much to my surprise, Wee Willie Winkie more than deserves its spot in Ford's filmography. In fact, the film contains more explicitly Fordian themes and concepts than many of his other pictures of the era. Based on a story by Rudyard Kipling, the film follows little Priscilla Williams as she and her widowed mother move to a remote military outpost in India to live with her grandfather, Colonel Williams. Williams is a dour, sour man with little time for anybody who doesn't wear a British uniform. So Priscilla goes searching for new friends, finding them in the many soldiers stationed at the outpost. Moved by her innocence and cheerful pluck, they quickly adopt her as a surrogate daughter, friend, and honorary soldier, nicknaming her "Wee Willie Winkie." However, the base is soon attacked by the followers of rebel chief Khoda Khan. Khan, who had been captured the same day that Priscilla and her mother had arrived, escapes into the frontier...but not before also befriending young Priscilla. Determined to end the cycle of violence, Priscilla naively sets out into the frontier to personally ask Khan to stop the fighting. Will she succeed? Or will her disappearance jettison the British into a new bloody conflict? The film is admittedly very antiquated in its racial depiction of Indians and in its belief that ethnic conflicts going back centuries can be solved overnight. But Wee Willie Winkie is still a great piece of entertainment and a heart-warming tribute to Ford's belief in simple virtues and in the integrity of the family unit.

7/10

Zone Troopers: Danny Bilson

With heaping helpings of aliens and Nazis, Danny Bilson's Zone Troopers is like a B-movie fan's wet dream. It follows a group of American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines somewhere in Nazi-occupied Italy who discover a crashed spaceship. But, of course, the Nazis aren't too far behind them. The Nazis end up stealing one of the surviving aliens, a furry little critter with giant eyes. So it is up to our intrepid group of GI's to rescue the interstellar traveler and foil the Nazis' plans for utilizing the alien tech. The film is pretty standard B-movie fare: the soldiers are a bunch of stock characters (the mean sergeant with a heart of gold, the wide eyed kid from Jersey, the nosy journalist along for the ride), the effects range from rudimentary to impressive (the crashed spaceship is particularly effective), and a predictable conclusion where the aliens help the Americans defeat the Nazis. But the actors really help make Zone Troopers memorable. Two of the central performances, Tim Thomerson as the Sarge and Timothy Van Patten as Joey, bring a lot of heart to this otherwise silly film. It's definitely worth a watch.

6/10

Ms. 45: Abel Ferrara

One of the eternal dilemmas facing film critics concerns the treatment of films with content that they find morally repugnant. Film criticism, by its very nature, requires a tenuous balance between scholastic objectivity and subjective interpretation. Should a film critic praise a film if it's well-made even if they find it detestable? Should a film critic ignore legitimate artistic merit if they find a film offensive? I was recently confronted with this quandary after watching Abel Ferrara's Ms. 45. The film is a rape-revenge thriller that follows a mentally unstable seamstress named Thana as she embarks on a misandristic murder spree after being raped twice in one afternoon. I cannot stand the rape-revenge sub-genre of exploitation cinema. But here's the catch: Ms. 45 is immaculately made and sets itself apart from other films of the genre. The two rape scenes take place in the first ten minutes and don't objectify the actress' body or suffering, at least when compared to other rape-revenge films like I Spit on Your Grave (1978). These films exploited their central protagonists' rape in order to titillate the audience. Ms. 45, much like Hannie Caulder (1971), the only other rape-revenge film that I actively enjoy, tries to get the main assault out of the way as quickly as possible so it can focus on the protagonist's growth as a character. It also helps that Ferrara made Thana mute, thereby forcing himself to depict her downward spiral visually. In fact, much of Ms. 45 feels like a silent film with incidental dialogue provided by incidental characters. The film is a veritable Pandora's Box of subtexts involving Catholic iconography, misogyny, sexuality, and the nature of violence. I may not agree with its content, but I would be a fool to deny Ms. 45's power and Ferrara's cinematic skill.

9/10

Traxx: Jerome Gary

Jerome Gary's Traxx is a pure delight! Imagine if Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker did a self-aware 80s action movie where the nearly invincible hero decided to give up his day job and start making and selling cookies. Sound ridiculous? Well, this all happens in the first ten or so minutes of Traxx. And believe me when I tell you that it is just getting started in the insanity department! After quickly running out of funds, ex-mercenary/soldier Traxx (Shadoe Stevens) decides that the best way to make enough money to keep his new business venture afloat is to offer his "services" as a "sheriff" to the nearby town of Hadleyville, Texas. This, as you can imagine, involves a ton of over-the-top violence. I don't think that I have ever seen a film starring Stevens before, which is a real shame considering that he gives an absolutely incredible performance. Not only is he a completely believable action star, but he also possesses a fantastic sense of comedic timing. He is also one of the few actors that I have ever seen who can successfully display smug self-awareness towards his actions without breaking the 4th Wall. It makes me wish that he had been in more films. If Traxx is any indication, he could have easily been one of the great 80s action stars.

8/10

A Woman’s Secret: Nicholas Ray

A Woman's Secret isn't a Nicholas Ray film. He may have directed it, but there is not a single frame of A Woman's Secret that suggests his style of filmmaking or artistic intent. It is a dry, dull, and tedious motion picture that was obviously made with Ray on auto-pilot. The film is actually a bit like Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950) in that it follows an aging female star and her young rival. Well, it would be like All About Eve if Bette Davis had virtually forced Anne Baxter into show business and attempted to kill her when she pleaded to leave. So...I guess it isn't anything like All About Eve, after all. Not that it matters. A Woman's Secret frames the trajectories of both women via a murder mystery after the eldest apparently shoots the youngest. At least, that is what the film leads us to believe until the last 10 minutes when it suddenly changes directions and...guh...I can't remember. A Woman's Secret is so uninteresting that it's an anti-film; you forget it while still watching it.

4/10

Snake Eater: George Erschbamer

George Erschbamer's Snake Eater features one of the most unintentionally incompetent action heroes that I have every encountered. I say that he is "unintentionally" incompetent because the film plays his exploits entirely straight. If you are having trouble understanding what I mean, let me relate to you a scene near the end that perfectly illustrates my point. After an intense 80s "suiting up for battle" montage, Jack "Soldier" Kelly, an ex-member of the Marine Special Forces "Snake Eater" team, assaults the home of a group of hillbillies who murdered his parents and kidnapped his sister. As he approaches the shed where one of the hillbillies is about to slit his sister's throat, he steps on a bear-trap. He is immediately incapacitated by pain and falls to the ground, alerting his presence to the hillbillies. His trapped sister then springs into action, freeing herself and killing the hillbilly while Kelly stupidly looks on. Now, keep in mind, this isn't a comedic scene. The film still treats Kelly like a bad-ass action hero. This isn't a one-time fluke, either. Before that, he was defeated in a fist-fight by unarmed yokels, fell victim to a "log trap" on a river, and was repeatedly outsmarted and/or captured by the hillbillies. The bear-trap scene wasn't even the first time in the film that Kelly had been saved from certain death by an inexperienced female character who had managed to free herself from the same predicament that he was in before he could. I hear that this film has two sequels. I must seek these films out and see if Kelly manages to maintain his crown as the most inept action hero in history.

5/10