January:
And as is usual I start the year with a total turd in the hope things can only get better. This year the honour falls to:
The Last Sentinel (2006) - a godawful SF film in which the world is saved from an army of rogue cop killer droids by Don 'The Dragon' Wilson playing an enhanced super-soldier (with a talking rifle), aided by Katee Sackhoff playing Katee Sackhoff. Most of the budget went on pyrotechnics, hiring Universal Studios' main street backlot for the day (with some crumpled up newspapers scattered around to signify the post apocalyptic nature of things), pyrotechnics, paying Katee Sackoff to take her top off (but not enough to turn round when she did), and more pyrotechnics.
Utter crap.
The dialogue is AWFUL (what of it you can hear) and every other shot consists of an explosion or some automatic weapon being fired. Apart, that is, from at the climax where, for some totally unfathomable reason, the next generation of Super Killer Droids come equipped with katanas.
For Katee Sackhoff completist only - and to save them the pain of having to watch it, even on fast forward, here's her with her norks out:
Nice bum.
Tokyo Raiders (2000) - I introduce #1 son to Hong Kong action movies.
65 - Adam Driver, spaceship pilot, crashes his ship on an uncharted planet populated by CGI dinosaurs and about to be hit by a bloody big asteroid. The only other survivor is a nine year old girl who, by movie motivating co-incidence, is the same age as his dead daughter. They take it turns to rescue each other from the usual - including, at one point, a throw things at the screen, Oh For F**ks Sake! pool of Hollywood movie quicksand - before getting to the escape pod on the other side of the valley. There they have a Boss Fight with some really BIG CGI dinosaurs before escaping Earth just in the nick of time. The asteroid was not only going to hit Earth just after they'd arrived but was going to hit EXACTLY where they were standing. What ARE the chances eh?
One of those films that didn't really need making.
Up in the Air (2009) - "American comedy drama film" which, despite the presence of the always watchable George Clooney, had me checking the elapsed time on my player several times wondering how much longer it was going to go on for. I did stick to the end but it was a very long 109 minutes.
There's a Girl in my Soup(1970) - a very long unfunny 90 minutes. But I did learn something; Thorley Walters does a very bad French accent.
Conan the Barbarian (1982) - which, it turns out, I had never seen before. I thought I had but obviously hadn't because, though I had images of sets and costumes in my head, 90% of the film was new to me. I must have seen enough clips and excerpts over the years to make me think I'd seen the whole thing. Max von Sydow is in it! - that was a surprise.
What a stunningly beautiful film. Very balletic and lyrical in the oddest of places. Halfway through I had the odd idea that if Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes had made a barbarian movie it would have looked like this.
February
Les Bronzés font du ski (aka French Fried Vacation 2 1979) - one of those films I keep hearing on French radio mentioned or alluded to as one of those 'loved by everyone' classic comedies that people quote at each other. I was less than impressed. Basically a string of sketches strung together some of them mildly funny. Still it was better than the third one but I'm not alone, the French hated that one as well (but still went to see it in huge numbers).
Lost in Space 1998 - feeling sorry for myself and full of a headcold (which always makes me stupid and clumsy) I just wanted something to watch that didn't involve me having to think at all. By the end of it I was so incredibly f**king angry at the sheer unrelenting stupidity of the film that I may just have cured myself.
The whole film is incredibly dumb but they did save the best till last. Trying to escape the 'gravity well' of a disintegrating planet our rocks-for-brains pilot announces he's going to go for 'escape velocity' as if this was some new and radical innovation. But they haven't got enough power...! Oh No! But! Prof rocks-for-brains Robinson has an idea. Down! he cries, If we can't go up we have to go down! Just as you are mid forehead slapping yourself at the prospect of yet another Hollywood mangling of the 'slingshot manoeuvre' concept, the movie just gets even dumber and they fly through the planet. It's disintegrating see so there is obviously a way through all the bits - seriously that's what they do.
And before you can ask 'what was the point of that?!' (because, obviously, the escape velocity needed to get out one side of the planet's gravity well is going to be exactly the same as on the other) you have certainly forgotten Rule 34a of Hollywood Physics which states: 'Any previous rule of Hollywood Physics does not apply the other side of any sequence containing a sufficiently distracting amount of shiny special effects.'
So off they fly. Hugs and kisses - woohoo!
BUT!
There is one more final insult to be thrown at the audience. The film up to this point has been liberally scattered with references to other SF movies and TV shows - most of them very awkward and contrived: lines like Smith's "I'm a doctor, not a space explorer!" being one of the more subtle. (Did Gary Oldman have it in his contract that someone has to call his character 'a monster' to his face like they did in The Fifth Element and here? or am I over-thinking this?) But just after all the 'woohoo! we escaped!' hugging, Robot appears looking like this; the square 'eyes' which had been present before suddenly backlit for this one shot:
VINcent? Is that you?
Oh No! (again) the planet has turned into a black hole and they have to engage the hyperdrive and who knows where they will end up for the sequel...
The film's denouement contained a Black Hole reference?! Get out of here!
One of those films that has music constantly, relentlessly underscoring every moment... until it stops... and then you can slowly count to five to cue the ginormous explosion that is sure to follow.
None of the cast looked like they were in any way interested in being in the movie and were just hitting their marks and saying their dreadful lines as best they could - apart from Matt LeBlanc who probably saw this as a stepping stone to leading man, action hero roles. He looked like he was really trying. I mean really trying.
Watching the end credits I was surprised to see Ib Melchior's name buried deep down. Ib Melchior I know as the author of the short story which formed the basis for Deathrace 2000, the English version of Planet of the Vampires, and director of those wonderfully weird movies The Angry Red Planet and The Time Travelers. It turns out in 1960 he wrote an outline for a never-made television series to be called Space Family Robinson, which may (or not) have become a 1963 comic book from Gold Key predating Irwin Allen's TV Lost in Space by three years - there were lawsuits. He was engaged as a special advisor on this film - there were more lawsuits:
Pure Hell of St Trinian's (1960) - the odd nice moment but the steam had gone out of the series. No Alistair Sim for one thing.
March
Balls of Fury ( 2007 ) I'd seen it before but I remembered it as being funny. Not 'funnier' just funny.
The Arena - tatty bit of tits 'n' togas gladiatrix exploitation crap - but PAM GRIER!
Godzilla vs. Kong - (2021) What a piece of crap! I really REALLY REALLY hope this lost whoever was responsible a shedload of money and they never work again. Ever.
It was made for people who find WWE Wrestling too intellectually challenging. Long time since I saw the original but I do remember thinking I had never seen so many people pointing at maps in a movie before.
"Godzilla was here (point)- now he is here (point)."
" And Kong?"
" Well he was here (point) but then he went there (point) and now he is here (point). We are sending troops from here (point), here (point), and here (point), and the navy is coming from here (point), there (point), and way over there on the other map.. (points with long stick)." This one was just wall to wall instantly utterly forgettable Green Screen SFX and some dreadful dialogue.
St Trinian's 2: The Legend of Fritton's Gold - mildly amusing piece of fluff. I thought I had seen the first but apparently I haven't.
St. Trinian's (2007) - and now I have. Adequate updating. A few nicely timed gags but most of the excellent cast didn't get to do much.
Starship Invasions (1977) - deliriously bad SF film starring Christopher Lee who may well only have been on set for two days - if that. It's an alien invasion story with telepathic aliens (with Lee as their chief). Because the aliens are telepathic all their dialogue was dubbed over their impassive faces in post - this must has saved a fortune in the shooting schedule. "Mr Lee, look left.... Now right... And cut! Next scene...! Stand over there.... and look left..." During Number 1 son and I's riffing watching, it mutated into an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes sequel.
Kidnapped - The Disney Version - which, apart from some cringy accents at times, wasn't bad. Nice to see some of the local scenery even if the way it was used didn't make a lot of sense at times.
Jesus Shows you the way to the Highway (2019) - hell's teeth! I think I have found my new favourite movie of all time for the year. An absurd, frenetic, disjointed at times, incoherent, but as funny as hell, with more WTF?!s per minute than most films, mash-up of Philip K Dickish ideas* and pop-gaming culture. My son and I are going to be quoting this at each other for weeks. Imagine watching Cronenberg's eXistence remade by a bunch of hyperactive 12 year olds on acid.
SPOILER:
The moment where our hero, whose consciousness is trapped inside a portable TV, is dropped from the top of a skyscraper - only to be rescued as he falls by a parachuting, drag queen, lap dance performer has to be one of THE greatest moments in SF movie history.
* a central character is even called Palmer Eldritch.
April
Malibu High (1979) - a high school girl becomes a hooker, then a killer for the mob, before being shot by the cops. Remarkably boring with long sequences of relentless padding.
May
The Bourne Identity - for the first time. It's been sitting on my shelves for years waiting for me to get round to watching it. And I was very pleasantly surprised to find out how good it was. A couple of things really pleased me. The music which I thought was great and knew when to shut up, and the car chase sequence looked real. By which I mean the cars weren't doing all that Hollywood somersaulting and exploding. The cars that hit each other looked like cars hitting other cars, not hugely elaborate choreographed stunt set pieces. It was very refreshing.
and Franka Potente is a babe!
The Itty Bitty Titty Committee (2007) - watched because... deep breath... I read Le bleu est une couleur chaude the night before last and I got all weepy at the end because I always do get weepy at the end of that kind of story (I wept buckets at the end of The Notebook!) and I was wondering if I could actually ever bring myself to watch the film adaptation: La Vie d'Adèle aka Blue is the Warmest Colour (2013). I did try once but gave up as it was too male gaze explicit and I felt uncomfortable and icky - BUT, the next day (the day after after reading the BD, not the day after after giving up on the film half way through) a list of Out magazine's 'Best lesbian films from each of the last 20 years of sapphic cinema' popped up in my Facebook feed:
...and Blue is the Warmest Colour was on it giving me some sort of licence (I guess) to watch it. I was seriously considering doing just that but, a bit further up the list was The Itty Bitty Titty Committee :
'This scrappy indie follows a young butch who falls in with a radical feminist art collective, throwing herself into queer politics, identity, and a little chaos along the way. Directed by Jamie Babbit (But I’m a Cheerleader), it’s a time capsule of mid-2000s queer counterculture with a punky, DIY spirit.'
So I watched that instead.
I'd seen it before and remember not being muchly impressed, so I gave it another watch - and I was wrong; it's an enjoyable fun little film.
Dead Awake(2001) - for a film from Nu Image (the warmed up bones of a bit of the defunct Cannon Group) this is not a bad little film. It openly wears its influences; it's a bit Reservoir Doggy, a bit Twin Peaksy and has an added dollop of Hitchcock but with that elusive ingredient X that makes it a genuinely funny and weird experience. One of those films that should be better known than it obviously is.
I was interrupted half way through by a phone call from my #2 daughter. She never phones. I answered and listened to her hysterical giggles for a couple of minutes before she could get her thoughts straight. She'd just finished watching (the credits were still rolling) the copy of Jesus Shows you the way to the Highway I'd posted over to her. She loved it. So to, whoever introduced me to it, if I haven't thanked you before I thank you now from both of us. She was planning on waiting for her flatmates to come back from the pub and watch it again with them. Proud dad moment.
Tonight as part of watching selected Doctor Whos in sequence #1 Son and I are backed into a corner and have to watch the McGann's only appearance: Doctor Who the Movie. It was just as crap as I remembered it being from the only time I watched it 30 years ago. #1 Son who had been warned many many times (by many people) as to its crapitude was still shocked.
Housu(1977 aka House) - a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls go visit a spooky old house and spooky stuff happens. Very surreal and weird spooky stuff - one girl lets herself get eaten by a piano ('that's naughty") and another character turns into a pile of bananas. It's very dreamlike and disjointed and the music drifts from hauntingly lovely to totally, bafflingly out of place and just plain odd. There are sudden bursts of OTT very upfront, self-aware colour separation overlay trickery, speeded-up slapstick, weird aspect ratio changes, irises and some extremely odd editing and great big knowing dollops of kawaii fanservice - one character spends the latter half of the movie in her vest and knickers. Imagine Dario Argentio's Susperia directed by Jan Švankmajer.
Vastly WTF?! inducing - I loved it.
Exorcists (2022) - a micro-budget Canadian horror/comedy which despite everything* is actually quite stupidly, endearingly very funny.
*Especially the sound, because it was set (if not shot) during the pandemic, many of the cast are wearing facemasks and no one did any ADR - many of the lines got mumbled and lost.
Hors de Prix (aka Priceless 2006) - Audre Tautou and Gad Elmaleh in a light piece of romantic comedy fluff. Not as funny as it thinks it is but was still fun enough.
Breathless ( À bout de souffle 1960) - I just love the fluid camerawork in this film.
The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977) - I can't believe it! Something that makes the average British Sex Comedy look good! Seriously - Carry-on up the Confessions of a Traffic Warden would look good next to this utterly unfunny pile of pants.
Wing Chun (1996) - Michelle Yeoh hitting people for 90 minutes? That was fun.
Tough Guys(1986) - plodding buddy movie with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas working together (for the last time) as a pair of fish out of water cons leaving jail after 30 years.
I was surprised to see silent movie star King Baggot's name on the opening credits as DP as I was sure he'd died a couple of decades before this film was made. Turns out King Baggot had indeed died long before Tough Guys was shot but, before he died, had a son called Robert King Baggot who worked as a cameraman, and a grandson, Stephen King Baggot, who was the DP on this movie. Finding that out, and, that as a local news cameraman early in his career, Stephen King Baggot turned up vital evidence in the Sharon Tate murder investigation - evidence that had been missed by the police - was a lot more fun than watching the movie.
Nightmares Come at Night - a piece of Jess Franco Euro-sleaze that almost, at times, almost achieves the weird, dreamlike vibe that I think he was going for. For 90 minutes a lesbian stripper suspects she's having a nervous breakdown as her girlfriend abuses her, her doctor, keeps asking the same questions of her over and over again, and the director does all he can to include at least three zooms and a pan into every shot. Sometimes our heroine stops thinking she's going mad, stares into a mirror, and takes all her clothes off. Sometimes she stares into a mirror, and puts her clothes on. Jess Franco had a real thing for mirrors in this film. I think he thought he was being arty. Often here one of his wandering, aimless, waving the camera around on its mount focusing on whatever he happened to see through the viewfinder shots wandered from the half-hearted pretendy lesbian sex on a bed, off to the mirror reflecting the half-hearted pretendy lesbian sex and he'd pull focus into the reflection - and then back out again before panning back to the false real thing. Unfortunately during the focus pull the surface of the mirror is crisp, and as the mirrors were old and blown, the characters suddenly developed strange rashes and blotches all over their otherwise impeccable, tan-lined backsides. (You can tell I was gripped can't you?)
Sometimes this seemingly random footage of ultra softcore (and often out of focus) 'lesbian' writhing, was intercut with slightly more IN focus heterosexual writhing taken from a different, uncompleted, movie. (The lead actress of that film, Soledad Miranda, died in a car crash during shooting but still managed to make the cover of the DVD of this one despite only being on screen for a few minutes - and most of that time the camera was pointing at her bum, not her face.)
There was a plot shoehorned over all this footage of boobs, bums, and more boobs with (wouldn't you guess it!) the lesbian seductress of our heroine being evil and with the doctor using her hypnotised lover to murder the other members of the international gang of jewel thieves to which she belongs. All this 'plot' arrives in the last few minutes and is mostly delivered by characters with their backs to, or off, camera. Gods know what the actors lines were originally but so much of the dialogue in Franco's films comes from off screen characters.
His trademark hand held camera in the backseat of a car shot was well to the fore here. It's a great shot. You have two characters sat in the front seats of a car the camera behind them in the back seats. The actors deliver their dialogue in one long take with the cameraman panning between them, carefully making sure that only the person who isn't talking is in shot. Get it back to the studio and you can dub anything over it. Completely rewrite the script and away you go. (Or, more likely just write the script to fit the take. Franco probably just shot the things as Get out of Jail insurance coverage.)
Succubus- Jess Franco gets arty. It's his usual mix of sex and death and 'wait? are we still in the flashback or is this a dream sequence about what happened before the flashback?' non-linear 'storytelling' but this time with a LOT fewer zooms and pans than usual and some thought seems to have gone into the framing of shots. About halfway through one of the dream sequences I thought "Ohh he watched a lot of Buñuel before making this one..." and later I thought a bedroom scene was pure Godard (The Micky Spilaine interrogation bit). I gave myself a big pat on the back when both directors were name-checked and praised a little later by a couple of the arty wankers who populated the film. (I can be a right smug git sometimes.)
So fewer pans and zooms, less wobbly camera head shooting, but...
Blonde lesbian seductress killed before the end of the film? Check.
Central character makes her living taking her clothes off? Check.
Stripping naked and getting dressed in front of a mirror? Check.
Hypnotised into doing evil? Check.
Endless long shots of distant characters walking through interesting European architecture as dialogue dubbed over? Check.
Conversations in front of car with cameraman pointing the lens at the person listening not the person talking?... er no. None. There were a lot of shots taken through the windscreen of a car as it drove past various Berlin landmarks - shooting permits? what are they? - while a character's internal monologue slips out but only one back of a car shot during which we saw dialogue delivered.
Caged Heat 1991 - sleazy, sweaty Italian Women in Prison movie. The incredibly short disjointed running time of 65 minutes explained by the fact that nearly 25 minutes had to be cut before it could get a UK release. Even for a WIP movie this one is pretty tawdry; the 'highlight' being an extended sequence where our avowedly heterosexual heroine, and another avowedly heterosexual woman are caged in direct sunlight without any water and spend an interminable amount of time licking the sweat off each other.
Key Largo - goddamn! Lauren Bacall is gorgeous!
Blade Runner - Director's Cut with #1 Son.
July
His Double Life (1934) - slight romantic comedy which is not really either. Roland Young plays a retiring but incredibly successful painter. His valet dies and, after a mix up of identity, is buried in Westminster Abbey. He meets and falls in love with the woman his valet was corresponding with via a matrimonial agency and marries her under his valet's name. When he takes up painting again complications ensue. I think this one broke my coincidencometer because the number of 'well that was lucky', 'what are the chances'? and 'just how small IS London anyway?' moments piled into its 64 minute run time. The film picked up immeasurably when Lillian Gish, as the practical, no nonsense spinster (her second speaking role after silent stardom) entered the plot and stole the film. Things got a bit weird towards the end when, for no discernable reason, the jury in the trial (to establish the hero's true identity) started talking in unison like a Greek Chorus followed by everyone in the court room chanting phrases over and over - like the intro to a Warren and Dubin number in a Warner Brothers musical. I was expecting the judge to rip off his wig and dive into a pool of Busby Berkley bathing beauties any second. He didn't.
A remake of The Great Adventure (1916) and remade as Holy Matrimony in 1943. Who said Hollywood is running out of ideas? It's always been running out of ideas!
Better Than Chocolate- a rewatch of a gentle indy Canadian girl meets girl romance with a little sequence in it that keeps popping into my head; a lovely little paean to Julie Christie:
Judge Dredd - The Sylvester Stallone one which looked great but by the end was - meh! I did wonder how much of Joan Chen's part hit the proverbial cutting room floor.
Tonight, exhausted and emotionally worn out after a very long few days in which I helped my daughter move house and handed in my notice for a long running job which I love but just can't do any more, I watch Their Finest (2016)- a sentimental British romantic comedy drama that had me weeping like a baby at the bittersweet end of it. I mean serious weeping; there were tears streaming down my face and uncontrollable sobbing going on. I have NO idea at all whether the film is anything like good - but, in that moment, it was the perfect thing for me to have watched.
Condorman (1981) - I got 30 minutes in and couldn't stand any more. I only stayed 25 of of those because I was trying to work out why Robert Sheckley, who wrote the novel it was 'suggested by' (The Game of X) didn't get his name taken off the credits... (I bought a copy of the book the next day on eBay and read it in a sitting. It's a very thin little potboiler which, a month later as I write up this list, I can remember nothing - other than it was better than the film.)
Treasure Island (1950) - directed by Byron Haskins (better known for his work with George Pal - War of the Worlds etc.) which was a lot more enjoyable; true to the spirit (if not the letter) of the book and Newton's barnstorming, movie-stealing performance as Silver was great fun.
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) - what a delight! Beautifully cast and beautifully performed. I now have to read the book (which I'm pretty sure I have somewhere).
Who Wants to Kill Jessie? (Kdo chce zabít Jessii? 1966) - A Czech SF comedy. The only film on a '100 greatest SF movies of all time' lists I came across that I had never heard of. I'm not sure it deserves quite that level of adulation but it's a fun film. A scientist develops a serum for making nightmares go away to be replaced by peaceful dreams. Her husband, wrestling with a insurmountable problem at work and half convinced he has found the solution (anti-gravity gloves) in a comic book, dreams himself into the comic book world. In the strip a nubile young woman, Jessie of the title, is endlessly pursued by a muscle-bound superhero and a giggling cowboy. Spying on his fevered dream with her bedside dream monitoring apparatus the scientist sees her husband and the hot buxom blonde in a compromising position and, in a fit of jealousy, injects him with her serum and he sleeps peacefully. The serum however has an unexpected side effect. It moves the replaced dreams into reality to make way for their substitute. The couple wake up in the morning to find the three comic book characters in their flat. Mayhem ensues.
An inventive and funny film full of nice touches - I loved the way the comic book characters can only communicate by word bubbles so every time they speak everyone else in the scene has to to stop and read what they just said. During the trial scene a word bubble has to be turned round so the court recorder can copy down the words on it.
The Game (1997) - David Fincher directed. Michael Douglas is a miserable, money-driven investment banker taken, Sullivan's Travels-like, down the to depths to discover the true meaning of Christmas his humanity. Started off well enough but the twists and 'you are kidding me's kept coming, and coming, and coming, and were piling up so high that, at the end, I was just very irritated with it.
Baron Prasil (1962)- Karel Zeman's lovely reworking of some of the Baron Munchausen tales. Slow, inventive, funny and very very beautiful.
The Harry Hill Movie - a very silly film which just makes me laugh.
August
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) - a Ray Harryhausen which I picked up for pennies in a charity shop the other day and which I would have sworn, on the complete works of A E van Vogt, that I had never seen before... until this shot, 75 minutes in:
...when I suddenly realised I had. After this brief, but very welcome, moment of gratuitous female nudity the rest of the movie was new to me again. Consulting my film diary I found I had seen it - back in 2016 and seemed to have rather enjoyed it. I wonder why; it was pretty dull and forgettable - well the other 99% of it obviously was.
Virgin Witch(1972) - a cheap, sleazy little British bit of titsploitation which featured several television actors getting naked a lot. Some TERRIBLE dialogue and a plot that must have taken about seven minutes to construct, write, rewrite and edit. Two innocent sisters are lured by a lesbian modelling agent to take part in a white magic Sabbat.... But one of the sisters is really a REAL witch - and Evil!
It was very boring.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) - for the umpteenth time. I just love to wallow in the design. Something I noticed this time that I haven't before that struck me as odd is how the characters in this pre WW2 alternate universe refer to the 1914-18 war as "World War One" implying there was second that had happened between that and the present day of the film (1938).
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces - is this a movie? It was 90 minutes long and had all the elements of a movie but I'm not sure that if I hadn't seen Fire Walk With Me (of which this is an assembly of out takes and extended scenes) I would have had the slightest idea what was going on.
Bulldog Drummond at Bay (1937) - creaky (and in the print I saw, jumpy) low energy Republic feature shot in the UK. Notable only for having an uncredited Wilfred Hyde White in an early role as a minor henchman.
Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) - a restored edit running over 112 minutes including all credits (other versions run from 79 minutes to 116 minutes in length) of Pabst's second film with Louise Brooks after Pandora's Box. Pabst's L'Atlantide from only three years later is one of my favourite films. I say 'only' like that because L'Atlantide is so much more a mature and confident work. There were moments in Diary of a Lost Girl that look positively amateurish - a stand out was the moment when the sadistic warder is being held struggling by the girls in the dorm. A character decides to steal the keys hanging from her belt. Four shots establish her creeping up on her victim from screen left. Cut to a close up of the keys on the belt. The girl's hand then enters screen right, grabs the keys and the immediate next shot is back on the girl (a continuation of the previous shot of her) facing screen right pulling her hand back with the keys. Ugly.
Judge for yourself - I've cued it up:
And then look what he was doing three years later - damn! I love this sequence so much:
Bram Stoker's Dracula(1992) - Probably my favourite version. I love the way so much of the eerie weirdness was achieved in camera with lenses (that shot of Renfrew standing up!), lighting and simple tricks like having Dracula's shadow played by a different actor so Gary Oldman could walk away and leave it still on screen as the camera reframed - implying that he was still screen left - only for him to re-enter frame screen right, and some lovely reverse filming. I noticed for first time tonight the set being moved in one shot with (presumably) grips behind sections of the set pushing it about. During the shaving scene there's a crane shot with the camera coming down from a high angle onto Reeves and Oldman, as it moves the walls of the set are pushed into different angles in the background. It looks like a rack zoom but isn't. It's weird. And wonderful!
I was thrown out of the film in a couple of places though; Keanu Reeves accent was not good, and during the brides sequence I suddenly realised that one of the writhing semi-naked female vampires was Monica Bellucci. I mean I should have known that but I didn't.
Psycho Beach Party (2000) - silly camp little movie which made me giggle a few times. A very early entry in Amy Adams's CV.
Vamp (1986) - Pretty dull vampire movie but Grace Jones wearing nothing but an aluminium wire bikini and body paint (applied by Keith Haring) eating a forgettable actor who appeared in one season of Babylon 5 was worth the pain.
September
Solarwarriors (1986 aka Solarbabies aka Solarfighters ) - Found today in my village swapshop place; a Blu-ray of a cult movie'. I knew it was a cult movie because it said so across the top of the sleeve - "The Cult Movie Collection" - cool! a 'cult' movie I had never heard of (which I suppose is kind of interestingly what would make it a cult movie; I mean how can it be a cult movie if everyone knows about it?). I don't know what kind of cult worships at the altar of Solarwarriorbabyfighters but I couldn't finish it. The opening started with very long sequence featuring 1980s futuristic rollerskaters - oh gods! were in a Prayer of the Rollerboys territory. I bailed about 20 minutes in. Looking it up on line later I discovered I was not alone. Leonard Maltin described it on release as "An appalling stinker." It wasn't even bad enough to be interestingly awful enough to boggle at and wallow in its cruddiness. It was just flatly delivered, uninspired, clichéd ridden bad - in other words boring; which for me is the ultimate turn off.
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (aka... deep breath... La nuit des étoiles filantes (shooting title), Christina princesse de l'érotisme. Une vierge chez les morts vivants, Desideri erotici di Christine, - English languages releases titled it variously A Virgin Among the Living, Dead Zombie 4: A Virgin Among the Living Dead, and Christina, Princess of Eroticism.) There are various edits of this piece Jess Franco delirium knocking about, some with additional sex and zombie footage - shot by other directors without Franco's participation and spliced in at random. The copy I just watched was titled A Virgin Among the Living Dead on the box and 'Christina, Princess of Eroticism' on the opening credits (the rest of which were in French). And seems to be from, from what I can gather - I.E. there were no obvious orgy scenes featuring people who didn't otherwise appear in the movie, or any zombies wandering around shot on a different film stock - something like the original director's cut. Though this being a Jess Franco film a director's 'throw it through a shredder and see what come out the other side' might be more appropriate.
Christina, a young virgin goes to the reading of the will of the father she has never seen. Her relatives are weird, cold, and impersonal - and don't eat a lot. Christina wanders around the grounds of the impressive house she about to inherit , goes skinny dipping, lies on her bed naked a lot and has nightmares (or are they?) that feature incredibly un-erotic lesbian vampire stuff. The director wanders around (typecast by himself) as a severely mentally impaired weirdo character. Our heroine sees visions of her father hanging with a noose round his neck. He's dead but warns her to leave. She doesn't. She dies. She wakes up and it's all a dream - but she's now a lunatic and she dies again. And then she walks into the pond where she went skinny-dipping accompanied by a dark woman, who we are supposed to assume is Death, followed by the rest of the cast who have been standing around on a hillside being gnomic like Rapa Nui moai or actors in a bad Bergman pastiche. Fin.
Stuffed to the gunwales with Franco's ubiquitous zoom pan zoom zoom pan (frantically pull focus) and zoom again once more just for luck shots. He borrowed a really wide angle lens for the weekend and had lots of fun having people loom in and out towards the camera. He is a terrible director. I have no idea why I keep watching his films. (Though the fact they are packed full of naked women a lot of the time might have something to do with it.)
Most hack directors will use an establishing shot to let the audience know where the following scene is going to take place. One. Exterior building; dialogue on soundtrack starts... cut to interior to see who's talking. Easy peasy. Franco will use four or five shots - none of them particularly interesting and all held far too long before he can get his audience inside.
And he can't do a jump scare to save his life. The number of times our heroine opens a door sees... HORROR! She SCREAMS!
Standard operating procedure for your average, directing by numbers auteur at this point would be to cut to a POV of whatever horror she had just seen. Maybe with a short, sharp zoom in to throw it right into the audience's face. Then back to a close up of heroine wide-eyed with terror!
Sr. Franco? Heroine opens door in a wide shot sees... and SCREAMS! Camera pans across to where she is looking* (focus pull) A severed head! Or is it? No it's just something that looks like a severed head... but - isn't. Pans back to the girl at the door (pulling focus on the way), zooms out a bit (for no discernable reason); pans back again to the not severed head, (which hasn't changed at all it is still just a not severed head)... then back to the girl still clinging to the door flame for some reason - at which point another character comes into frame a beat late and out of focus and asks if everything is okay.
It was HARD work watching this one.
According to Wikipédia author Peter Dendle called it “an atrophied psychological horror, which is over-stylish and impressionistic to the point of incoherence”.
Can't argue with that.
* like he's following those dotted 'looking lines' early comic strip artists used put between a characters' eyes and whatever they were looking at.
Spaced Out (1979 aka Outer Touch) - a slightly better than average British 'sex comedy' in which three female aliens discover Earth, men, and sex in that order. A few genuinely funny gags (eventually... the set up is a bit of a chore but once everyone is in the ship things pick up) - some extremely odd costuming, and a bewildering lack of continuity which had the exterior of the space ship (stock footage from Space 1999?) changing shape between shots and a character sometimes wearing (sometimes not) a cleavage enhancing oil stain which she only gets at the end of the movie. Director Norman J. Warren had previously directed the strange little SF/horror Prey and a couple of years later the Alien inspired, and very unBritish, SF/Horror Inseminoid.
Replicas - Keanu Reeves is a scientist attempting to transfer the memories of recently dead people into robots. After his latest failure his walking cliché of a boss all but tells him he's going to pull the plug on the project. His wife gives him one of those 'there is more to life than...' speeches that crop up in Christian movies, as they, and photogenic children set out on a weekend road trip...
... and I bail out of the movie knowing exactly what is going to happen for the next 85 minutes without having been seduced by the plodding, mechanical script to stay and see it out.
Fantomas (1964) - over-long French crime comedy. Jean Marais plays a double role as mysterious arch criminal and master of disguise Fantomas, as well as his newspaper reporter adversary - this led to some nice editing and framing tricks when both characters shared a scene - and French comedy legend Louis de Funès as, commissaire Juve, the policeman on the case. De Funès is one of those wonderfully physical comic actors who does the most perfect double takes. The highlight of the film for me was a sequence in which he has forgotten he put earplugs in during the night and can't understand why he can't hear anything next morning. Sadly he is reduced to little more than mugging and shouting "Vite! Vite! Plus vite!" for the latter part of the film which is just one long chase sequence which gets less and less interesting as it goes on despite the stars obviously doing their own stunts leaping from moving trains and the like...
There were two sequels.
Fantômas se déchaîne (1965) - less than inspired sequel that retained the same cast, played much more for comedy this time (with annoying comedy music to make sure you didn't forget) and some groovy Bond inspired sets. Some of the gags worked well. Some fell flat. Though the moment our fleeing villain's Citroën DS turned onto an airfield runway, accelerated, sprouted wings and rocket boosters, then took off - leading our pursuing copper to leap into a nearby plane and yell at the pilot, "Follow that car!" was inspired.
Doctor in Distress (1963) Dear gods that was agony. A painfully unfunny 98 minutes of meandering plotlessness. Though I had to admire the way Dirk Bogarde walked through his part with an effortless easy sincerity. As a game of 'name the bit part actor' it was more interesting; not often you get to see Ronald Lacey and Richard Briers in uncredited parts in the same film. By coincidence the third Mylène Demongeot film in a row. She was the Fantomas movies I watched earlier this month. (Great legs!)
Waking Life (2001) - A young man walks around having those weird erudite philosophical conversations that only happen in American Art House Films directed by people who think Woody Allen is wonderful. Usually the sort of thing that has me screaming at the screen and reaching for the off button but here made strangely watchable (and occasionally funny) by the distorted, drifting, ever moving rotoscope work of the animators who took The director's hand held digital camera footage and painted over every frame. It's a technique he reused - to wonderful effect - in A Scanner Darkly a few years later.
Reptilicus (1962) - dreadful boring Godzilla / Beast From 20,000 Fathoms knock off in which Danish actors showed off their amazing slow motion acting skills while standing in lines like they were working on a very narrow village hall stage. Everso avoidable. I wonder what the other version is like? according to Wikipedia it was simultaneously shot in Danish with a different director. All the green goo stuff was added to the US version along with a complete redubbing with different dialogue, by the distributor. I can't image it would be much better but it can't be worse.
One moment that worked though was the the shot of the crowd crossing the bascule bridge as it opened. One interesting but wasted shot.
October
The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues (1955) - deathly dull underwater radioactive monster movie. Aging scientist and daughter? Check!
The Magnificent Seven (1961) - introducing #1 Son to Mr Steve McQueen.
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) - the first DVD I picked up from my TBW pile that I knew NOTHING about - other than the fact that at some point in the last couple of years I must have thought, 'that looks interesting'. A portmanteau Japanese film of three, very talky little stories of love, loss, and missed opportunity. The third section, in which a middle-aged lesbian and a regretful housewife mistakenly recognise each other - only to find neither of them is who the other woman thinks they are, is the best.
Son of the Pink Panther (1993)- oh dear gods in heaven! (and anywhere else for that matter) what an AWFUL film! I think it raised one smile from me during the whole 90 minutes and I've forgotten what that was. I can only assume this was some sort of contractual obligation thing where everyone HAD to do it because they had already been paid or something.
The Love Witch (2016) - that was either really terrible or really great - or both. (Probably all three.) It's an odd mixture of American TV soap acting, mid 70's Hammeresque suburban witchcraft horror sensibilities, classic lush rich Hollywood lighting with 1960's type costuming in a modern setting. There are scenes set a 'Victorian Tearoom' full of women in wide-brimmed summer hats that looks like it fell out of The Stepford Wives, a romantic horse riding scene that could have come from any 1980s glossy soap like Dallas or The Colbies that segued into a Wiccan Renaissance Fair sequence that ended with the two leads happily smilingly feeding each other tibits as their inner monologues suddenly arrived from nowhere and showed us how incredibly incompatible these two love birds really were. The whole film teetered on the edge of camp knowingness without quite falling in. Some of the dialogue is clunky (at times the characters just deliver pages of the producer/writer/director/costume designer/editor/composer/lyric writer/art director/set designer/set decorator Anna Biller's takes on the history of witchcraft and feminism without pausing for breath) and it is full of actors who looked like they should be the children of more famous actors but weren't; Gian Keys (who played a cop with the wonderfully soap opera cop name of 'Griff Meadows') looked exactly like you would imagine the love child of Roddy McDowell and Bruce Campbell would look like if such a thing was possible.
There was some really odd stuff in here. I think I liked it.
Here's Mark Kermode's take - in which he accurately says, "the best way of describing this is that it's All That Heaven Allows directed by Jess Franco, or it's Douglas Sirk's Vampiros Lesbos"
About the the weirdness of the end of the film ending in a prolonged near silence. When I watched it I thought it really odd that the film ended with the witch of the title lying next to a man she has just killed as a fantasy sequence (that is obviously playing in her head) is shown on screen with just the faintest of ambient noises of her moving on the bed in the background before music starts as the end titles appear. It was very odd and very disconcerting. So much so that I went alooking later and found that for some bizarre reason the disc I watched is missing some of the soundtrack at that point. There is supposed to be a song playing underneath but for some reason it is missing from the disc I own's audio.
The Current War (2017) - Looked great - every shot was exquisitely lit, sounded great the music was that wonderful minimalist driving baroque style that makes me listen to Michael Nyman's music over and over again, the sets (real and greenscreen) were wonderful - but I spent far to much of the film wishing the ****ing director would just put the ****ing camera down and stop pratting about and let the actors do their job. I lost track of the number of overhead establishing shots.
Jumper (2008) - I've seen it before and remember not being impressed but I was feeling in a accepting mood and wanted something unchallenging. I was right. It's pants. I spent a great chunk of the movie trying to imagine why no one asked our hero where the hell he has been for the past five years and how he escaped the certain death everyone assumed he had succumbed to before he disappeared from their lives. The last thing anyone knew he was trapped under the ice of a fast flowing river in the middle of winter - why is NO ONE curious about what happened to him when he rolls back into town years later?
And why was Big Ben chiming the hour when the hands clearly showed it was half past the hour?
Stupid movie.
The Groove Tube (1974) - one of those insanely dated 1970 sketch movies which were made for very little money but went on to make stupidly huge profits. This one, as I understand it, was one of the first and wears out its 75 minute run time really fast; the whole thing just seems to go on forever as a succession of overlong, unfunny, laboriously set up sketches fizzle out to unfunny non-punchline after unfunny non-punchline. Apparently the Zucker Brothers saw this and were motivated to make Kentucky Fried Movie - presumably on the very correct assumption that they could do better (they could hardly do worse) and that if The Groove Tube could make fistfulls of money, anything they could throw at the screen would do too.
November
The Lady Vanishes (1938) - early Hitchcock. Great fun.
Doctor at Large (1957) - Not quite as painful as Doctor in Distress which I watched a few weeks ago but still pretty dire stuff. I think that's me cured of British Film Comedy for a bit.
The Yesterday Machine (1963) - probably not the worst SF film made in Texas in 1960s (Attack of the Eye Creatures or some other Larry Buchanan masterpiece would win that) but pretty darn close.
Les Bronzés (aka French Fried Vacation)- bof! I guess you had to be there.
Thunderpants (2002) - one of my feelgood movies. It's about an eleven year old boy with chronic flatulence, who becomes an opera singer, 'singing the high notes with my arse' and ends up rescuing stranded astronauts by flying a rescue space ship powered with his farts. It is an incredibly silly and wonderfully funny film. It just makes me laugh.
The Butterfly Effect - I'd seen it before and thought 'meh'. But from time to time I like to go back and give films that got a 'meh' from me a second go - it was even more meh than I remember. A very long 115 minutes. Part of my extra meh this time was, I suspect, because since watching it the first time I have been exposed to (and come to loath) a lot more of the film's thin, semi-ambient, violin and slow mournful sparse chord piano type non-soundtracks.
Water for Elephants (2011) - with Reese Witherspoon - by accident. It was in the wrong box and didn't have opening titles so I didn't notice that I wasn't watching Vanity Fair (also starring Reese Witherspoon) until I was too deep into the story to jump ship. I quite enjoyed it. A good old fashioned story made in a good old fashioned movie making way.
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad & The Golden Voyage of Sinbad back to back. Stricken (the very word) by the flu I was feeling very Sinbaddy. Didn't want to have to think for couple of hours. I'd forgotten how much fun The Golden Voyage one was. Some nice jokes, and some shockingly good effects but it does look a bit strange these days watching white actors in brownface doing 'foreign' accents with varying degrees of success. Martin Shaw wearing a full Zapa moustache looked (and sounded like) he'd wandered in from one of the later Magnificent Seven movies.
Oceans 11 (1960) - what a thudding, stodgy bore of a movie. Another for the The Remake was Better Than the Original club
The Human Duplicators (1965) - adequate, but hardly inspired, piece of alien infiltration nonsense with Richard Kiel giving a spectacularly wooden performance - but as he was playing an emotionless android was hardly surprising but even so. Lone elderly scientist with beautiful daughter / niece /ward ? check! Basement lab? check! Lone* elderly scientist's mansion where a lot of the action takes place is a bit odd. From the outside it looks like a big chunk of expensive hillside 1930's Southern Californian but once you go inside you're in a weird mishmash of Olde English baronial and Spanish Ranch House and all points in between. If you sneak in through the incredibly convenient back entrance in the cave in Bronson Canyon (Yay! "a Bronson Canyon movie!"), as our hero does during the film, then it's all Gothic arches and ceiling to wall barred dungeons. Cheap and almost fun.
*Except he's not alone - he has two, hot, well stacked, tightly uniformed nurses in 100mm heels pushing buttons, and wheeling Gurneys around for him. Makes a change from hunchback assistants I suppose.
December
You, Me and Him (2017) - a lesbian couple get pregnant (both of them) and Rom Com soap-operatics ensue. Needed a lot of tightening up; it loped along when it should have trotted. The biggest problem with it was the lack of chemistry between the leads. I just didn't buy them as a couple at all. A total lack of backstory didn't help. Just how did a well to do tax-lawyer with big country house parents and Lesbian Manic Pixie Dream Girl get together in the first place? Some odd nice moment but mostly meh. Another off my 'Watch Everything David Warner was Ever In' list. -
Of Gods and Warriors (aka Viking Destiny 2018) A bunch of men with beards have a Sean Bean impersonating competition while the rather yummy Anna Demetriou wanders around being Merida/Xena/Red Sonja in some proper non male-gaze clothing (and bringing more to her role than anyone had the right to ask of her).
Terrence Stamp spent a day on set having been badly miscast as Odin. Not as bad as I was expecting - but boy was I fed up with just about every transition being a series of drone landscape beauty shots. The most impressive thing about the film for me though was the way they managed to avoid shooting any close ups of the anachronistic rhododendrons that were obviously (in the background and out of focus) all over some of the forest locations. A real pet hate of mine.
Eleven days into the year and I finally get my arse into a position where I have enough time to flop and watch a movie. As per recent tradition I have to start the year with a really BAD movie to make everything I watch after it good by comparison. Previous years' kick off films have included Vampyros Lesbos, Shaolin Drunkard, Bloodsuckers and Sergeant Kabukiman (though in 2022 I started the year by watching Independence Day for some reason - maybe I...
