| Movie | Rating | Review | Date | Your Rating | Match | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Searchers - Unrated | December 7, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Vertigo - PG | December 4, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Rear Window - PG | December 4, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Citizen Kane - PG | Not as big a fan of this film from an entertainment standpoint as a lot of people, but from a technical standpoint it's phenomonal. | December 4, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai) - Unrated | December 2, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Psycho - R | December 1, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Gaslight - Unrated | Probably my favorite Ingrid Bergman performance. In this film she plays Paula, a young wife who is being slowly driven mad by her scheming husband, Gregory (Charles Boyer)...or is she? You actually can feel her pain and her panic as she starts losing her grip on reality. By the time of the wonderful cliimax, you think maybe she really DID go around the bend. Boyer is condescending and evil as the husband. A very young, beautiful Angela Lansbury is a bit on the evil side too as the tacky-trashy Cockney-accented housekeeper Nancy. I enjoyed her performance because it's so different from the wise kindly women she played later in her career. And Joseph Cotten is good as the neighbor and Scotland Yard detective who puts together the pieces on what is really going on. The kindness he showed to Paula was touching to me. But this is ultimately Ingrid's movie. Brilliant. | November 27, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Children's Hour - Unrated | This film really made an impression on me. Not just because it dealt with a lesbian relationship during a time when that sort of thing just wasn't talked about in Hollywood, but because of the lesbian character's (don't want to give anything away) revulsion to her own orientation. It must have been so difficult back than for someone to come out of the closet and not take a beating, both emotionally and sometimes physically as well, over it. And what's worse is that things haven't really changed all that much since 1961. | November 24, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Giulietta degli Spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) - Unrated | November 21, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Orphée (Orpheus) - Unrated |
A modern retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice dies and Orpheus goes to the underworld to bring her back, with the understanding that he can never look at her.
I heard raves about this and was excited about seeing it, especially knowing that director Jean Cocteau had directed the magical, brilliant La Belle et La Bete. But I was profoundly disappointed in this. Yes, the effects were interesting, but La Belle did them SO much better. The underworld, instead of seeming ominous and threatening, just seemed to be a dark street in a bad neighborhood. And finally, I just didn't buy that these characters had a love that transcended death itself. Vastly overrated. But maybe I'm just missing something. |
November 16, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Rashômon (Rashomon) (In the Woods) - Unrated |
A story of what happens when an event witnessed by four different people is described in completely different ways, and someone's life is at stake in the telling. One of Kurosawa's best.
UPDATE: Just saw this again on a HD television. Even though the film obviously wasn't filmed in HD or any digital format, the film took on a depth and a detail I"ve never noticed before. It's almost as though I was participating in the film as one of the witnesses. |
November 16, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Ballad of a Soldier - Unrated |
A beautifully-made film from Russia. As a reward for a heroic deed in battle, a young soldier receives six days leave to go home to see his mother. The rest of the film follows him as he tries to make it home and back in the allotted time. For part of his journey, he sneaks aboard a boxcar, and then later a pretty young girl does the same. You can take it from there...up to a point.
Like many Russian films, the faces are the main focus. The lighting of this film was particularly impressive, and every face seems to glow from within. There are some very interesting camera angles, especially in the early battle scenes, but also the shots of and from the train. Even the musical score was beautful and dreamy. The only flaw I found in the film was the heavy-handed sentimentality. You can show depth of feeling without being melodramatic about it. Otherwise, this is a touching and beautiful film. |
November 14, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Pirate Radio (The Boat That Rocked) - R | November 11, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Monty Python's Life of Brian - R | I'm sure I'm about to make a lot of enemies here, but I just didn't find this film all that funny. Sure it had its moments -- the stoning scene, the crucifixion scene where everyone is whistling while Eric Idle sings "Always Look on the Bright Side". But I don't think it lives up to Python's reputation. Maybe the problem for me is the whole premise of the story. Satirizing something that seems so ridiculous to begin with seems redundant, and a bit dated to be honest. Many MANY efforts, both fictional and non-fiction, have been made since Life of Brian was released to show how stupid (and sometimes dangerous) it is to follow someone based on scant evidence of their credentials. Maybe if I had seen this years ago when I wasn't so jaded, I may have found it funnier. But now all I can say is "good try." | November 5, 2009 | N/A | |||
| WarGames (War Games) - PG | November 5, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Narrow Margin - Unrated |
Good film noir set entirely on and around a train. Charles McGraw plays a cop hired to transport the widow of a murdered gangster cross-country to testify before a grand jury. Also on the train are men who will do what ever is necessary to make sure she DOESN'T testify.
McGraw is Mr. Tough-as-Nails as always, and noir queen Marie Windsor is at her bitchiest. The setting on the train gives the whole film a claustrophobic quality that adds to the suspense. There's also a cool little twist that I didn't see coming. A definite star in the film noir universe. |
November 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| The Walking Dead - G | Another excellent outing from Boris Karloff. He plays John Elman, a man framed for murder of a judge and then executed before evidence that could free him is discovered. Dr. Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) has the means to bring Elman back to life through some Dr. Frankenstein-like experiments, and does so. Beaumont begins questioning Elman about what he saw and experienced "on the other side". Elman remembers little of his situation but sets out to avenge his execution against the men responsible. Karloff's character is very much like the Monster he made famous -- even his makeup job is similar, although much less severe. I had the same empathy for him in this film as in Frankenstein. But he could still make the hairs stand up on your neck -- Elman asking each man who framed him in his strange otherworldly lisp "Why did you have me executed?" was creepy as hell, as was Elman wandering through a cemetery saying "I belong here." RIcardo Cortez had his moments as the lawyer/racketeer responsbile for the Elman's framing. And Barton MacLane was..well... Barton MacLane. A first-class piece of filmmaking, courtesy of Michael Curtiz, who went on to direct Casablanca. As good as it is, I dropped a 1/2 star because of the cheezy last line about "our Lord God is a jealous god." Please. Was that really necessary? | November 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Zaat (Dr. Z) - PG |
Oh my. In my love of B-movie toilet fodder, how have I never heard of this film? It's right up there with the films of Larry Buchanan and Al Adamson in its badness. In other words, it's wonderful.
It starts off with this weird narration (the only dialogue for the first 20 minutes) while you watch scenes of various creepy underwater creatures. Turns out the narration is coming from some doctor who decides that the world needs to be taken over by sea creatures. So he turns himself into some Gill Man-like monster (only not nearly as scary or as cool) by dunking himself into a pool of water with some chemical abbreviated ZAAT. This stuff is pretty bad-ass in that it turned him from human to monster in like 5 minutes. Then he starts kidnapping women to turn them into similar creatures so he can breed with them and populate the earth. In the meantime, there's a sheriff and a some environmentalists or marine biologists (I'm not clear which) who are concerned about walking catfish in Florida. They all eventually meet grisly ends at the hands of the dr/sea monster...oops, sorry. Didn't mean to give anything away. Best scene: The sheriff enters a house where a bunch of hippies are listening to some dork on a guitar sing godawful folk music with flute back-up (reminded me of Stephen Bishop in Animal House -- "I gave my love a chicken..."). The next scene shows the sheriff walking down the street with the hippies following him, still playing music and clapping (badly) along. He leads them to a jail cell, tells them they'll be safe there, and WE NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN! WTF are these people anyway? I'm giving this trash 1.5 stars as not to mislead anyone that it's actually a good film. It's not. The special effects are terrible, and the actors are all stiff as boards. But in terms of entertainment value, I could easily give it a four. God bless the Barton Film Co. of Jacksonville, FL. |
November 3, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Circus of Horrors (Phantom of the Circus) - Unrated | Dull horror flick from schock distributor AIP. The plot points are WAY too convoluted for a movie of this genre. A famous plastic surgeon terribly botches a woman's face, changes his name and runs away with his assistants/henchpersons, by chance comes across a run-down circus, buys it from Donald Pleasance (with hair!), staffs it with criminals who he does surgery on so they'll be beautiful and unrecongnizable to the authorities, but he keeps dossiers on all of them so if they try to leave and expose him, he can expose them back, but that doesn't matter because he falls in love with all the women, and when they try to leave he kills them during their circus performances, and....aww, to hell with it. Not bad enought to be fun. Just bad. | November 1, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Team America - World Police - R | Technically excellent but typically crude send-up of the old puppet action series "Thunderbirds", courtesy of Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park infamy. It's the story of a group of "world police" who are ridding the world of terrorism one North Korean dictator at a time. If you're a Thunderbirds fan like I am, you'll recognize many of the elements and techniques. This isn't your parents Thunderbirds though. Nope. This is the 21st century, which means exploding bodies, decapitations, and a hilariously hardcore "puppet porn" sex scene. Lots of songs, some good (I Miss You Almost as Much as 'Pearl Harbor' Sucked", Montage) and some unnecessarily obscene (America...Fuck Yeah!). I could also have done without the extended drunken vomiting scene. But mostly entertaining. Why couldn't the live-action crap film "Thunderbirds" with Bill Paxton -- instead of puppets -- been like this!?! | October 31, 2009 | N/A | |||
| Destiny Turns on the Radio - R | October 31, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Eyes Without a Face - Unrated | October 31, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon) - Unrated | October 31, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Sheik - Unrated | October 31, 2009 | N/A | ||||
| The Corpse Vanishes - Unrated | One of the cheapo horror films Bela Lugosi made for Monogram on his slide from a promising actor to the drug-addicted mess he became. This is not as bad as I had imagined, and Lugosi was good enough, but it's sad to see this and know how much better he could be with better material, such as that he got in the 30s with Dracula, White Zombie and Island of Lost Souls. A true waste. | October 29, 2009 | N/A |
5120 ratings
540 reviews
