0705 May 2007

Fun action scenes. Great sand effects. Cathartic Green Goblin storyline. I was disappointed by the other villain's underdone backstories, however. Too many storylines meant Sandman and Venom got the short shrift.

Much more somber and internal than I expected. William Devane is excellent. There's some unanswered questions about the villains, but the main characters are engaging. I loved the realistic lighting, too.

Quite possibly the worst movie I have ever seen. I haven't hated a movie this much since seeing The Beyond. Why do I keep giving Italian zombie movies another shot? No sense of story, character, or suspense. Okay one suspenseful scene involving a bear trap, but the rest was barely cinema.

Jacques Tourneur's western, starring Joel McCrea, Vera Miles, Peter Graves, Jack Elam, Lloyd Bridges and others. Wyatt Earp doesn't want to be marshall, but doggone it, the town needs him. The cinemascope frame is often filled with dozens of background players. Good stuff.

A take no prisoners horror flick. Very British and bleak. Right from the opening action scene, I knew it wasn't going to pull any punches. It confidently follows Joe Bob Briggs' first rule of drive-in moviemaking: anyone can die at any moment.

Slavoj Zizek gives an excellent Freudian analysis of desire and fantasy in films. This three episode television series made for a tough stretch to watch in one sitting, though. Zizek is undoubtedly intelligent, but barely intelligible. His enthusiasm almost made up for his accent and slushy way of talking, but not quite. Recommended for students of film and/or philosophy, but get it with subtitles if possible!

My weekend of Argento began with this one. Weird? It's downright loopy. It's got a murder mystery, a girl with a telepathic connection to bugs, a soft-spoken Donald Pleasance and his chimpanzee nurse. The story is moody, perhaps a bit slow, but the last 20 minutes go right off the deep end into insane scares and surreal action.

Second in my Argento weekend came Suspiria. I've seen it several times now, and it still makes no sense. I love it, though. After working in giallos for years, Argento continued to use the murder mystery set-up, but introduced the supernatural this time. The witchcraft element gave him an excuse to not explain everything, and the movie holds together with "nightmare" logic.

I followed up Suspiria with its (sort of) sequel. Again, lush photography and intense music, although by Keith Emerson this time. The suspense scenes are well done and suitably gory. The lack of logic bugged me this time, though. Suspiria's plot is crystal clear compared to Inferno. In a few instances, a line or two of exposition would have worked wonders. Again, Argento wants to show giallo style killings by unknown assailants, but when the credits roll, we're left with a lot of questions about who the actual killers were. There's one death that was so out of left field, I laughed out loud! I suppose the scene in the park was to mirror the dog attack scene from Suspiria, but there's no other reason behind it. Recommended for its style, but not its story. Oh, and you're a cat-lover, you may want to hit the fast forward a couple times.

What a disappointing way to end my weekend of Argento. The low budget shows in this one. Bad lighting, bad wigs, bad costumes. The gore is out of place and repulsive. And is it too much to ask for a phantom to wear a mask? The DVD artwork confused me enough that I wasn't even sure Julian Sands was the phantom the first few times he appeared. And did he have some sort of hypnotic powers? Because Asia Argento's Christine flip-flopped between love and hate for the greasy rat-man so much, that's the only way it could be explained. It is rather amusing watching her lip-synch to the opera singing, though.

There are few films which take on the challenge of creating a self-contained universe like Dark City does. The rules must be established and adhered to -- I found this inspiring, as I'm currently writing a script with similar challenges.