0805 May 2008

Elle Fanning's performance as a troubled child is devastatingly real. Good performances all around make up for a couple plot missteps.

I saw about an hour of this at a festival screening. The movie's style is just okay, but the subject matter is fascinating. I'd like to see the whole thing someday.

More of a story of love and faith than I expected, but it was surprisingly moving. I get the feeling there's more Genghis Kahn stories to be told -- could there be a sequel someday?

Whiz-bang! I grinned through this entire thing. I loved how much time was spent showing the invention process, the creation of an outlandish rocket suit was made believable and fun by showing Tony Stark's failures and incremental successes.

A solid swordplay film, with great photography and a tried and true revenge plot. After the lengthy imprisonment section, the last half seems a bit rushed. From what I understand, the revenge section is condensed from what it was in the book, too.

People say director Cassavetes wanted audiences to work, and I get that, but I find it off-putting to do ALL the work. Ben Gazarra is terrific as a club owner behind the eight-ball, but I would have appreciated him more if I wasn't trying to work out the plot all the time. Cassavetes works without establishing shots or master shots. Like being thrown into the deep end of a pool, we the audience are thrown into scenes without warning, and it's up to us to sink or swim. Who is this guy he's giving money to? What's he doing at this bar, looking pathetic? Did he get shot back there? If so, why isn't he limping? While my mind is grasping for character motivation and plot points, I'm missing the movie. I picked this movie to see of the George Eastman House's Cassavetes series because it sounded the most action driven, but it's still essentially a character piece. Sure, there's some gun play and a good chase scene, but they don't pay off in the traditional way. I was reminded of Scorcese's Mean Streets and Who's that Knockin, but those character pieces had more bravado and fun characters to grab onto.

I've read that the Waldemar Daninsky movies don't hold together, continuity-wise, but this one acts fairly well as a prequel to La Noche de Walpurgis/Werewolf Shadow. It offers an origin story for the Daninsky curse in that previous movie (although it doesn't jive with the later Night of the Werewolf). It begins with a Daninsky ancestor tracking down and killing a coven of Satan worshipers in the Dark Ages. Just before the last archetypal witch is burned alive, she promises that someday a descendant of Daninsky will kill one of her kind and then his line will be cursed thereafter. (A little convoluted... why not just curse Daninsky now?) So hundreds of years go by, and 19th century Paul Naschy (did I mention he played the Dark Ages Daninsky, too?) shoots a wolf which turns out to be a man. The local gypsies are outraged and send a pretty volunteer to sneak into the naive Daninsky's bedroom to mark him with the bite of a wolf's skull. The movie then gets dull for a while, unfortunately. An escaped ax-wielding crazy (!) is roaming the hills, and draws the local constabulary off the scent while Daninsky wolfs out during full moons and racks up his own body count. There is a huge amount of carnage in this movie, by the way. Daninsky's wolf bites necks and chests, even crushes a man's head with a rock! There's some experimental editing and wild 70s camera work, but the wolf itself isn't scary. Naschy just isn't as frenzied and frothy as I've seen him before, plus the wolf attack scenes would have benefited from growling sounds and music stings. Too many fight scenes involve a silent werewolf jumping at a victim, and Naschy's body language is rarely animal-like. Too bad, because I liked his intensity in other films.

I really wanted to love this movie, but it didn't really hit on all cylinders. The style is amazing -- the cartoon universe is bizarre and wonderful. (The one movie it reminds me of -- however obliquely -- is Danger Diabolik.) The filmmakers' attention to detail is amazing, especially in paying tribute to anime conventions in general and Speed Racer references in particular. The movie falls down in terms of plot and tone. I know the plot involves big business corruption, but it was hard for me to follow. I can only imagine what the intended audience (kids) must think. And the tone? Way too serious. What should have played like a Spy Kids installment was more straight-faced drama. Comedy relief monkey just didn't do enough to balance the seriousness.

An ecological horror movie. Will probably disappoint those looking for typical monsters, but worth a look for the open minded. Like Larry Fessenden's previous movie, Wendigo, this is a thoughtful art film in a horror package.

I love Blade Runner on the big screen. I take something new away from it every time I see it. I've seen BR enough to notice the minor changes in this, the Final Cut, but they didn't distract. That can be a danger when tinkering with a classic, but Ridley Scott knew when to say when.

Watching this with someone who had never seen it before, I discovered a few things I had forgotten. One, the plot is a little opaque if you're watching for the first time. You have to be patient while the story unfolds. The film is gory, even compared to today's R-rated horror. (I remember HATING the neutered version that used to play on WPIX all the time.) Finally, that ending can really leave you hanging if you're expecting something more. What's interesting is that the gaps in the mystery (who got infected and when?) plus the open ending force you to finish the story yourself. Either right away or late at night while trying to fall asleep...