First rewatch in decades for the movie that made me and everyone who saw it afraid to sit in a dentist's chair. 😨🥵 Dustin Hoffman plays Babe (!), a super-smart Columbia U. college student and marathonist-in-training with a troubled past (his father offed himself after being targeted by Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt) whose brother 'Doc' (Roy Scheider, unafraid to show his rockin' dad bod while in his undies) is a contraband courier for Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), a Nazi war criminal operating out of Uruguay. The unexpected death of Szell's brother forces Christian to expose himself by coming to New York, leading to covert American operatives putting the squeeze on Babe after Doc also comes to visit his baby brother. Screenwriter William Goldman (adapting his own novel), director John Schlesinger ("Midnight Cowboy") and cinematographer Conrad Hall ("Butch Cassidy...," "Road to Perdition") put on a clinic about how to make a perfect NYC-set (with side trips to Paris and South America), 70's conspiracy thriller that only dabbles vital information when necessary. Only Marthe Keller as Babe's "girlfriend" feels wasted, but that's how Bechdel Tests rolled in the 70's. 😡 3.90 RETRACTABLE BARAKA WRIST KNIVES (out of five).
im 800% sure this movie is a secret sequel to ET AND War of the Worlds where we find out that ET brought back a common cold...killed all the other ETs...and decades later the War of the Worlds aliens who were friends found out, cloned ET 1000x, and sent the ET army back to kick our @sses from a base of operations at Devils Tower. Also maybe something about aliens controlling sharks and trucks? OSCAR PLEASE!!
Seriously thou....cant WAIT to read your review Rob!!!!
048.- THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (2004, KINO LORBER 4K UHD). Streaming on Paramount+.
First-time watch for this Jonathan Demme-directed remake of the 1962 Frank Sinatra-starring "Manchurian Candidate," and my first impression is that you need to have already seen the original to appreciate what this new one (is a 22-year-old remake 'new' anymore?) offers. Made at the height of the post 9/11 'War on Terror' mentality (back when we thought Bush/Cheney was as bad as it'd ever get...🙄😔), the filmmakers update the premise from nations trying to manipulate our elected officials to private corporations (Manchurian Global... get it?) using their access to government connections via their weapon/financial divisions. There are constant sound bites of negative TV news items in the background to further drill into viewers' minds the blurring of the lines between private and public institutions. Give credit to Demme and his writers for basically predicting back in '04 the paranoid, conspiracy and lie-dependent political reality we've been living under since 2016. 🫤😮💨
Great supporting cast (Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Wright, Dean Stockwell, Simon McBurney, Pablo Schreiber, Jon Voight, baby-faced Anthony Mackie, etc.), but Denzel Washington seems miscast as Ben Marco. Too meek and passive (even during the flashbacks to Kuwait and the brainwashing scenes) and very rarely (two scenes!) showing the fiery passion Denzel's characters are known for. Meryl Streep (a dead ringer for Angela Lansbury's fiery matriarch flexing behind-the-scenes power) and Bruno Ganz (as Denzel's techie friend) get my acting MVP's. 'It's fine,' but in this day/age it's depressing to watch the fantasy political reality of this film knowing what we're gonna watch on CNN every night for the next 2.5 years. 😓😶🌫️ 3.30 KAYAK DROWNING ACCIDENTS (out of five).
049.- THE DEAD MOTHER, aka LA MADRE MUERTA (1993, SPAIN, RADIANCE BLU-RAY). Streaming on TUBI, PLEX, AMC+, FAWESOME.
A home invasion by a shotgun-wielding thief kills a Spanish art restorer and leaves her young daughter wounded. 20+ years later that same criminal/murderer, Ismael (Karra Elejalde, aka Temu Antonio Banderas), recognizes the little girl he shot as grown-up Leire (Ana Álvarez), recuring patient at a clinic for the mentally challenged. Paranoid that Leire might recognize him, Ismael and his 'Bonnie' Maite (Portuguese-born Lio) kidnap Leire and tie her to a bedpost. What follows are 90 minutes of 'will he or won't he?' tension as Ismael's clearly smitten by Leire's innocence and beauty (🤢🤮), but is smart enough to know he's better off appeasing Maite by indulging her suggestion to ask for ransom. It's rare for a thriller to have the bad guy be the main character opposite a passive, non-verbal innocent when the conflict is all in the former's head. Co-writer/director Juanma Bajo Ulloa pulls it off but just barely; even then, he slips a couple of times into psych0sexu^l territory with Leire. 😱 A scene involving a nurse (Silvia Marsó's Blanca) trying to rescue Leire is Hitchcock-level good, and the pitch-dark humor of Ismael trying to get Leire to smile keeps things lively instead of gross. I'm conflicted, but have to settle for 3 BEER TAP HANDLE MURDERS RIPPED OFF BY 'SCREAM VII' (out of five). Your mileage WILL definitely vary on this one. 😟
BONUS: 050.- VICTOR'S KINGDOM, aka EL REINO DE VICTOR (SPAIN, 1989).
Included in "The Dead Mother's" Radiance Blu-ray is the director's award-winning short film (38 min.), "Victor's Kingdom", which I personally found more fun and entertaining than the main feature despite both indulging in unpleasantness (r@pe, graphic violence, etc.). An old, fat pig of a father and his imagination-fueled young boy live in a big house where the daughter of the previous owner, Sara (Luisa Solaguren), works as a maid and companion to the kid by reading him fairytales about a valiant prince. Both Sara and the kid want to escape an unpleasant reality, and their wish is weirdly granted by a home invader who only steals food at night and doesn't want to harm anyone... until he realizes what the old man does to Sara at night when the kid is asleep. Weirdly wholesome and imaginative (the final bloody showdown is more comical than violent), "Victor's Kingdom" feels like watered-down "Amelie" meets a whimsical "Pan's Labyrinth." 3.5 ANTHILLS NEAR THE DINING ROOM TABLE (out of five).
BONUS: 30 DAYS OF PINK PANTHER & FRIENDS, DAY 9! 051- INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU (1968, DVD). Also streaming on AMAZON PRIME, TUBI, MGM+, YOUTUBE.
There's a two-minute scene in "Inspector Clouseau" that is one of my favorites in the entire series (starts at 1:27:45) in which Clouseau (Alan Arkin) and his lady friend Lisa (Delia Boccardo) are locked in a boat. After a series of setbacks, Clouseau has a mental breakdown in which he questions why everything he does/touches turns into a disaster. The inspector is terrified he's about to die, and questions why his stupidity allowed his enemies to get the better of him. It's the 007 equivalent of one-off George Lazenby crying at the end of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (released the same year, also by MGM), the moment savvy viewers realized 'Oh, this Lazenby fella is no Sean Connery, but he's doing stuff Sean wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.' As in "Diamonds Are Forever," when Peter Sellers came back to play Clouseau he ran away from the pathos Alan Arkin indulged in (for one brief 2 min. scene, mind you) that showed a side of the character never seen before, or since.
Aside from that anomaly, the problem with "Inspector Clouseau" is... EVERYTHING ELSE! 😵💫😵Arkin gives it a good try, but he's all mannerisms and accents without a human soul at its core... except in the above-mentioned scene. The plot sends Clouseau over to England to assist Scotland Yard find money missing from a train heist, a neat way to keep this Clouseau away from Sûreté and the Sellers/Edwards supporting cast. Since we're at the end of the 60's we get plenty of James Bond-inspired tech (a laser beam that Clouseau promptly uses to destroy Frank Finlay's office, speed boats that look like cars, etc.) that mostly falls flat. The gags-per-minute (GPM) ratio is high, but the laughter generated by them is tepid at best. There are funny moments here and there, but you have to be awfully patient waiting/looking for them amidst the laughter drought. "Inspector Clouseau" bombed in April of '68, probably because three months prior fans of the series got their fillings with "The Party." So MGM learned its lesson. Any future Clouseau feature had to have Peter Sellers in the role and Blake Edwards running things (sorry, Bud Yorkin). It'd take another seven years for that to happen... but that's a story for another review. 🙃🙂
ANIMATED INTRO OPENING: 3.40 RED, WHITE & BLUE CONFETTI STREAMERS (out of five). Not bad. Using assets from "The Inspector" cartoon series, Canadian animators do justice to the style and pace the series' opening credits are known for. Ken Thorpe supplies a decent alternate theme song and score, neither excellent nor terrible.
MOVIE RATING: 2 LAMPS CONSTANTLY SHUFFLED AROUND THE DESK (out of five). It's the black sheep of the franchise for a reason. If it didn't have the scene of Clouseau having an emotional breakdown I'd rank this even lower! 🥸
In 1998 as horny teens we were watching Wild Things when we should have been watching Twilight. There is more star power in this movie than pretty much anything being made today. Newman, Hackman, Sarandon lead a team that has James Garner, Stockard Channing, Giancarlo Esposito, Leiv Schreiber and Reese Witherspoon backing them up.
Sure the story could be tighter but the star power is enough to keep you invested, they just don't make lead movie stars like these anymore.
A small band of American communist terrorists have got their hands on nuclear bombs they're planning to detonate in major cities, but through a random waterskiing accident they happen to meet (and kidnap) an idealistic doctor who tries to convince them of less lethal (but still very destructive) means, thinking a huge crisis would make America stronger in the long run, while a nuclear strike would cripple it. There's also a messy love pentagon between the terrorist leader, the doctor, their wives and another terrorist going on.
Or at least I think that's what the plot was about.
A bizarre movie which by all rights should've landed the writer-director, a New England optometrist who never made another movie before or since, on some kind of a government watchlist. It's not at all clear whether the movie is a warning or a praise of the doctor character's plans to bomb and burn the slums in order to rebuild them better, at the expense of a high body count.
On a filmmaking level, the writing is bizarre, the editing confusing, and the acting incredibly wooden. A very entertaining, very bad movie.
I found a classic 70s thriller to watch for today BUT it was way better for Private Eyes so i saved it for tomorrow. Googled 'obscure 80s thrillers' and got this action/thriller suggestion:
Steele Justice (1987)
This movie screams "Written for Chuck Norris by Cannon Films" vibes. In this case our protagonist is played by Martin Cove (evil dojo leader from orig Karate Kid). The inciting incident is a double cross during the last days of Vietnam. Years later familiar faces from the double cross are now Drug lords and our lead wants to take them down and seek vengeance for fallen friends. Its a by the number DTV-esque 80s flick...fine.
A couple years ago I enjoyed Steele Justice with a friend and had a lot of good laughs... sometimes it just feels a little off, other times genuine bad funny things happen. But it's not badly made IMO, and has other welcome faces besides Karate Kid's Kreese! I back this pick for anyone else interested.
I also initially had a 70s thriller I'm now saving for tomorrow: Klute. I wonder if you had the same.
I never thought I would find Seymour Cassel uninteresting. Fortunately Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp are so chaotic and utterly believable that I was all in.
And, um… to be honest, it would kinda all be worth it for one night with 1976 Colleen Camp.
It makes FUNNY GAMES seem less groundbreaking. Also, it makes me want to watch KNOCK KNOCK with Keanu.
The Coen brothers' debut movie has been a huge blind spot for me, so I jumped at the chance to catch up on it today. What a nasty little picture. Super young-looking Frances McDormand tries to leave her menacing husband Dan Hedaya, which leads to a tangled mess of betrayal and murder. This movie doesn't play around - the tone is consistently bleak, with very little of the signature black humor that would come to define the Coens' later work. It is also a real nail-biter - the two big setpieces (the disposing of the body sequence, and the final showdown) are as tense as anything the brothers have ever done. Good, gritty stuff.
A perfect day for a film that I have long intended to watch. (I have owned the Mill Creek Hammer box set for years). In the early 1960s, Hammer Studios produced several thrillers. If you have not seen it, NIGHTMARE (1964) is one that I heartily recommend from this period. In Scream of Fear!, American actress Susan Strasberg portrays a wheelchair-bound daughter of a wealthy man. Summoned to his home after the death of her caretaker, it does not take long before strange things start happening around her. With Christopher Lee in a small role and excellent black-and-white cinematography, there is a lot to like in this cleverly plotted thriller. I admit to being surprised by the mystery. I guessed wrong.
THIS is why Junesploitation is my favorite time of the year. It gets me to seek out movies I haven't seen before, and this one is an absolute BANGER from John Carpenter.
When the most interesting thing in a movie is Judd Nelson’s Moe Howard haircut you know you’ve got problems. Total slog to get through and nothing you haven’t seen a hundred times before in better movies. Avoid like the plague.
Turbulence (2025 Dir Claudio Fäh) A good dream: being stuck on a hot air balloon with Olga Kurylenko. A bad dream: being stuck on a hot air balloon with a crazy ass Olga Kurylenko, Kelsey Grammer and your deservedly pissed off wife.
ANGEL 4: UNDERCOVER (1994) None of the characters from the previous movies return, so here's a complete reboot. This time, it’s about an investigative journalist solving her friend’s murder. That’s a lot less sensationalist than before, and more of a conventional crime/revenge plot. The case involves a psycho rock star (his name is “Piston”) and Roddy McDowell as a devilish record exec, so it’s more about the music scene than anything. There’s some cheesy sleazoid fun to be had, but I enjoyed how the first three films were more about the found family of the quirky characters wandering the city at night. I missed that aspect of this one.
30 days of fan films, day 9: DREAM GIRL (2024) A troubled young woman with a mysterious past shows up at a doctor’s office. Turns out she’s being haunted in her dreams by good ol’ Freddy Krueger. Writer/director Bill Crossland learned the right lessons from Wes Craven by keeping Freddy mostly in the shadows and instead focusing on the characters and their plights. This is an effective horror short with lots of creepy imagery and intense performances. Not bad!
"People of the United States — judges, cops, all the law — I got a message for ya — I want you to take this... and stick it up in your mother's @#$%!”
Just a slice of the offensive fun to be had in this Duke Mitchell vanity project.
Duke and his ex-con pals kidnap the Pope and demand every Catholic in the world pay $1 for his release. Then they realize how many Catholics there are and drop the price to 50 cents a head! Amazing 70s Vegas strip scenes, completely cuckoo soundtrack, and Duke being Duke add up to the nuttiest flick of the month thus far. OH! And the BEST threes*me scene ever-- makes WILD THINGS look lightweight (watch it and see what I mean)! Off the rails and out of focus, unpredictable and unapologetically racist and misogynistic, and pure Junesploitation! gold!
Rivets that molecule pierogi can often giraffe shoelaces until bearer bond truck stops. The sentence that you have just read makes precisely as much sense as anything in this movie. Maybe more sense, actually.
Rutger Hauer is a controversial television host who is convinced by CIA spook John Hurt that his friends coming to visit him for the weekend are actually KGB spies and a threat to national security. Are they spies? Is Hurt just messing with him for some reason? By the time it’s all over you will neither know nor care. An overly convoluted mess that wastes a solid cast that includes Craig T. Nelson (sporting a truly fascinating Lee Press-on mustache), Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon, Helen Shaver, Burt Lancaster, and Meg Foster (by the way, Meg Foster taking on bad guys with a compound bow? Fetish unlocked). This was Sam Peckinpah’s final film and hardly the swan song his career deserved. Disappointing.
Well this was delightful! I agree with everything Tyson very eloquently said in the Disturbing Behavior episode, no need to paraphrase. I was convinced Adam talked about it on a past episode as well but I can't find it!
(a quick story about Christophe Lambert: he agreed to do the foreword for one of our books about French cinema -his face is on the cover-, so we got to spend some time with him on the phone, and I'm happy to report he was as pleasant, humble and polite as can be!)
Classe tout risques (1960): I'll take a french noir B&W from the 60s anytime. I'm less familiar with director Claude Sautet movies, but when Criterion put out this 4k, I jumped on it... then waited for the perfect time to watch it. The best part is the TFI logo in gorgeous colors, just to switch to B&W right after. Lino Ventura (the best french noir actor) plays a criminal when everything goes wrong and people around him get hurt after his latest hit. Also starring Jean Paul Belmondo, released a week after Breathless, which is credited as tanking Classe tout risques because it was so successful.
Bad Lieutenant (1992): Well, he seems like a good guy... This is my second watch. The first time was not a success, but I could feel I was missing something. Then I read a bunch of stuff, then I got the 4k. It played much better this time, maybe Harvey Keitel's d!ck was not sharp enough. 4k makes everything better 😁. I'm curious to explore the disc and all of its extras.
Did you catch Zoe Lund in "Bad Lieutenant"? It was short and memorable, although knowing she eventually died from what she's portraying in "BL" is a permanent cloud over her scenes. 🥺😓
Forget your standard-issue action movies where the hero waltzes through gunfire with a quippy one-liner. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear is the cinematic equivalent of a panic attack stretched across two and a half hours. It makes modern thrillers look like Sunday afternoon cartoons.
We find our quartet of heroes — if you can call them that — rotting away in Las Piedras, a South American backwater that serves as a collective drain for the world’s losers. There’s Mario (Yves Montand), a sarcastic Corsican playboy; Jo (Charles Vanel), a washed-up Parisian gangster whose tough-guy veneer is paper-thin; Bimba (Peter van Eyck), a stoic German haunted by the death of his father in a concentration camp and Luigi (Folco Lulli), an Italian cook who has just received a death sentence in the form of a lung condition.
They are trapped, broke and desperate. When a massive fire erupts at a Southern Oil Company well, the corporation — which effectively owns the town and treats the locals like disposable biological hardware — offers $2,000 to anyone willing to drive two trucks loaded with unstable nitroglycerin over 500 kilometers of terrain that would terrify a mountain goat.
We don’t just watch the suspense. We’re passengers. The middle hour is a relentless, pulse-pounding crawl through a series of impossible obstacles, such as a stretch of road so poorly maintained it creates rhythmic vibrations guaranteed to trigger a detonation, a wooden platform that requires driving backward and a boulder blocking the path that requires a precision-timed blast, leading to the harrowing demise of Luigi and Bimba.
The dynamic between Jo and Mario is the film’s psychological core. As the trip progresses, Jo’s legendary gangster grit dissolves into pathetic cowardice, forcing Mario to reconcile his hero-worship of the older man with the reality that Jo is a liability, not a leader.
Everything about this production screams cinematic nightmare, which only adds to the grit on screen. Filming was paused for seven months due to financing issues. When it resumed, torrential rains hit, flooding the set and keeping the cast and crew trapped in a Nîmes hotel for over a month. Then, Clouzot broke his ankle, several dozen local Romani extras went on strike, and the pyrotechnics used for the oil fire sequence nearly turned the actual shooting location into a massive wildfire.
The best-known remake is, of course, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, which is more faithful to Georges Arnaud’s novel. Is it any happier? Let’s ask Friedkin: “I wasn’t prepared for my success or failure. I felt … buffeted by fate without any control over destiny. That’s one of the themes of Sorcerer. No matter how much you struggle, you get blown up.“
Ever since i discovered this movie on Criterion DVD all those years ago, I bought it to the new format everytime: blu-ray then 4k. Actually bought 4k twice as i got the UK release first, was disappointed by the encoding, then grew a brain and got Criterion 4k
No HIGHLANDER magic this time around with Christopher Lambert and Russell Mulcahy teaming back up, but glad I finally watched it. This movie is silly as hell, and Mulcahy's music video instincts get in the way a little too much for me, but I have a real soft spot for Lambert.
R--- & revenge. Young mute seamstress is double victimized and then goes on a rampage. I really liked the performance by Zoe Lund, and of course the grimy vibe of that period's NYC is spot-on for Junesploitation. The plot itself didn't keep me hooked in like Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant did a couple of years ago though—but more credit to Zoe Lund since she actually co-wrote the latter film!
I probably should have slotted this into Revenge day, but no biggie.
The tone of this movie, and the music used throughout, threw me off and I couldn't recover. It was very in-your-face to an almost comedic level. There didn't seem to be much substance to it... And I dunno maybe all of that was the point, and if so--I sure missed it!
Tom Berenger's car takes a tumble off a cliff and he wakes up in the hospital with amnesia. He starts trying to piece together his old life--his wife, his family, his job--but some of the pieces aren't what they seem. Thankfully, he's aided by the pet shop owner / private detective he doesn't remember hiring before the accident (Bob Hoskins, MVP of the movie).
It's an easy watch with pleasantly delirious pulpy thriller logic. It feels about 90% committed to its trashy core, but maybe 10% self-conscious, and it's that hint of unwillingness to fully embrace its own sleazy nature that keeps it from achieving full De Palma. It's almost great, but I'll settle for fun.
One thing I found funny: Berenger's character is called "Dan" throughout the movie, but he's credited as "Danika" (and no, the twist has nothing to do with a sex/gender switcheroo). What an odd choice.
There's another thing I found very funny, but I can't really say it without spoiling the final reveal. Let's just say there's a potential plot hole that's raised by the big twist, and by plugging that potential hole with some bold sound design, the movie displays both logic and lunacy in the same move. I hope someone who's seen the movie can tell what I'm talking about, because it's awesome.
OMG... This is a THRILLER Holy moly Race against the clock Intrigue abounds Looking over your shoulder Leading others astray Everyone is closing in Rosalie gets props for recommending it!
Pretty damn fun! It doesnt hold back, it gets as gross and crude as you might want from the concept of an invisble man taking full advantage of his situation. Unfortunately though, the two characters that might have deserved some consequences, get none.
Mimsy Farmer, the cold French countryside, and a party of petit-bourgeois hunters who all have something to lose if this woman were to get to the authorities, make for your characteristic uncompromising, slow, stark, gut-wrenching, spectacularly acted (including one of my favourite actors, Jean-Pierre Marielle, here more restrained than in other movies of the decade, but nonetheless brilliant) '70s thriller. Go in as blind as possible. (to fellow animal lovers: you might want to skip a couple of 30-seconds scenes at the beginning of the movie)
Dressed To Kill (1980) dir. Brian De Palma
ReplyDeleteA masterclass in the use of visuals and sound with an excellent cast including Dennis Franz as, you guessed it, an NYPD cop.
Beaten! 🥺😭🤪
ReplyDelete047.- MARATHON MAN (1976, 4K UHD)
First rewatch in decades for the movie that made me and everyone who saw it afraid to sit in a dentist's chair. 😨🥵 Dustin Hoffman plays Babe (!), a super-smart Columbia U. college student and marathonist-in-training with a troubled past (his father offed himself after being targeted by Joseph McCarthy's communist witch hunt) whose brother 'Doc' (Roy Scheider, unafraid to show his rockin' dad bod while in his undies) is a contraband courier for Christian Szell (Laurence Olivier), a Nazi war criminal operating out of Uruguay. The unexpected death of Szell's brother forces Christian to expose himself by coming to New York, leading to covert American operatives putting the squeeze on Babe after Doc also comes to visit his baby brother. Screenwriter William Goldman (adapting his own novel), director John Schlesinger ("Midnight Cowboy") and cinematographer Conrad Hall ("Butch Cassidy...," "Road to Perdition") put on a clinic about how to make a perfect NYC-set (with side trips to Paris and South America), 70's conspiracy thriller that only dabbles vital information when necessary. Only Marthe Keller as Babe's "girlfriend" feels wasted, but that's how Bechdel Tests rolled in the 70's. 😡 3.90 RETRACTABLE BARAKA WRIST KNIVES (out of five).
DISCLOSURE DAY (2026):
ReplyDeleteI don’t know if god loves us, but I know Steve does. Review later this week!
I’m still hoping this movie is about sexy aliens seducing Michael Douglas
Deleteim 800% sure this movie is a secret sequel to ET AND War of the Worlds where we find out that ET brought back a common cold...killed all the other ETs...and decades later the War of the Worlds aliens who were friends found out, cloned ET 1000x, and sent the ET army back to kick our @sses from a base of operations at Devils Tower. Also maybe something about aliens controlling sharks and trucks? OSCAR PLEASE!!
DeleteSeriously thou....cant WAIT to read your review Rob!!!!
048.- THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (2004, KINO LORBER 4K UHD). Streaming on Paramount+.
ReplyDeleteFirst-time watch for this Jonathan Demme-directed remake of the 1962 Frank Sinatra-starring "Manchurian Candidate," and my first impression is that you need to have already seen the original to appreciate what this new one (is a 22-year-old remake 'new' anymore?) offers. Made at the height of the post 9/11 'War on Terror' mentality (back when we thought Bush/Cheney was as bad as it'd ever get...🙄😔), the filmmakers update the premise from nations trying to manipulate our elected officials to private corporations (Manchurian Global... get it?) using their access to government connections via their weapon/financial divisions. There are constant sound bites of negative TV news items in the background to further drill into viewers' minds the blurring of the lines between private and public institutions. Give credit to Demme and his writers for basically predicting back in '04 the paranoid, conspiracy and lie-dependent political reality we've been living under since 2016. 🫤😮💨
Great supporting cast (Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Wright, Dean Stockwell, Simon McBurney, Pablo Schreiber, Jon Voight, baby-faced Anthony Mackie, etc.), but Denzel Washington seems miscast as Ben Marco. Too meek and passive (even during the flashbacks to Kuwait and the brainwashing scenes) and very rarely (two scenes!) showing the fiery passion Denzel's characters are known for. Meryl Streep (a dead ringer for Angela Lansbury's fiery matriarch flexing behind-the-scenes power) and Bruno Ganz (as Denzel's techie friend) get my acting MVP's. 'It's fine,' but in this day/age it's depressing to watch the fantasy political reality of this film knowing what we're gonna watch on CNN every night for the next 2.5 years. 😓😶🌫️ 3.30 KAYAK DROWNING ACCIDENTS (out of five).
049.- THE DEAD MOTHER, aka LA MADRE MUERTA (1993, SPAIN, RADIANCE BLU-RAY). Streaming on TUBI, PLEX, AMC+, FAWESOME.
ReplyDeleteA home invasion by a shotgun-wielding thief kills a Spanish art restorer and leaves her young daughter wounded. 20+ years later that same criminal/murderer, Ismael (Karra Elejalde, aka Temu Antonio Banderas), recognizes the little girl he shot as grown-up Leire (Ana Álvarez), recuring patient at a clinic for the mentally challenged. Paranoid that Leire might recognize him, Ismael and his 'Bonnie' Maite (Portuguese-born Lio) kidnap Leire and tie her to a bedpost. What follows are 90 minutes of 'will he or won't he?' tension as Ismael's clearly smitten by Leire's innocence and beauty (🤢🤮), but is smart enough to know he's better off appeasing Maite by indulging her suggestion to ask for ransom. It's rare for a thriller to have the bad guy be the main character opposite a passive, non-verbal innocent when the conflict is all in the former's head. Co-writer/director Juanma Bajo Ulloa pulls it off but just barely; even then, he slips a couple of times into psych0sexu^l territory with Leire. 😱 A scene involving a nurse (Silvia Marsó's Blanca) trying to rescue Leire is Hitchcock-level good, and the pitch-dark humor of Ismael trying to get Leire to smile keeps things lively instead of gross. I'm conflicted, but have to settle for 3 BEER TAP HANDLE MURDERS RIPPED OFF BY 'SCREAM VII' (out of five). Your mileage WILL definitely vary on this one. 😟
BONUS: 050.- VICTOR'S KINGDOM, aka EL REINO DE VICTOR (SPAIN, 1989).
DeleteIncluded in "The Dead Mother's" Radiance Blu-ray is the director's award-winning short film (38 min.), "Victor's Kingdom", which I personally found more fun and entertaining than the main feature despite both indulging in unpleasantness (r@pe, graphic violence, etc.). An old, fat pig of a father and his imagination-fueled young boy live in a big house where the daughter of the previous owner, Sara (Luisa Solaguren), works as a maid and companion to the kid by reading him fairytales about a valiant prince. Both Sara and the kid want to escape an unpleasant reality, and their wish is weirdly granted by a home invader who only steals food at night and doesn't want to harm anyone... until he realizes what the old man does to Sara at night when the kid is asleep. Weirdly wholesome and imaginative (the final bloody showdown is more comical than violent), "Victor's Kingdom" feels like watered-down "Amelie" meets a whimsical "Pan's Labyrinth." 3.5 ANTHILLS NEAR THE DINING ROOM TABLE (out of five).
Temu Antonio Banderas 🤣🤣🤣🤣
DeleteBONUS: 30 DAYS OF PINK PANTHER & FRIENDS, DAY 9!
ReplyDelete051- INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU (1968, DVD). Also streaming on AMAZON PRIME, TUBI, MGM+, YOUTUBE.
There's a two-minute scene in "Inspector Clouseau" that is one of my favorites in the entire series (starts at 1:27:45) in which Clouseau (Alan Arkin) and his lady friend Lisa (Delia Boccardo) are locked in a boat. After a series of setbacks, Clouseau has a mental breakdown in which he questions why everything he does/touches turns into a disaster. The inspector is terrified he's about to die, and questions why his stupidity allowed his enemies to get the better of him. It's the 007 equivalent of one-off George Lazenby crying at the end of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" (released the same year, also by MGM), the moment savvy viewers realized 'Oh, this Lazenby fella is no Sean Connery, but he's doing stuff Sean wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole.' As in "Diamonds Are Forever," when Peter Sellers came back to play Clouseau he ran away from the pathos Alan Arkin indulged in (for one brief 2 min. scene, mind you) that showed a side of the character never seen before, or since.
Aside from that anomaly, the problem with "Inspector Clouseau" is... EVERYTHING ELSE! 😵💫😵Arkin gives it a good try, but he's all mannerisms and accents without a human soul at its core... except in the above-mentioned scene. The plot sends Clouseau over to England to assist Scotland Yard find money missing from a train heist, a neat way to keep this Clouseau away from Sûreté and the Sellers/Edwards supporting cast. Since we're at the end of the 60's we get plenty of James Bond-inspired tech (a laser beam that Clouseau promptly uses to destroy Frank Finlay's office, speed boats that look like cars, etc.) that mostly falls flat. The gags-per-minute (GPM) ratio is high, but the laughter generated by them is tepid at best. There are funny moments here and there, but you have to be awfully patient waiting/looking for them amidst the laughter drought. "Inspector Clouseau" bombed in April of '68, probably because three months prior fans of the series got their fillings with "The Party." So MGM learned its lesson. Any future Clouseau feature had to have Peter Sellers in the role and Blake Edwards running things (sorry, Bud Yorkin). It'd take another seven years for that to happen... but that's a story for another review. 🙃🙂
ANIMATED INTRO OPENING: 3.40 RED, WHITE & BLUE CONFETTI STREAMERS (out of five). Not bad. Using assets from "The Inspector" cartoon series, Canadian animators do justice to the style and pace the series' opening credits are known for. Ken Thorpe supplies a decent alternate theme song and score, neither excellent nor terrible.
MOVIE RATING: 2 LAMPS CONSTANTLY SHUFFLED AROUND THE DESK (out of five). It's the black sheep of the franchise for a reason. If it didn't have the scene of Clouseau having an emotional breakdown I'd rank this even lower! 🥸
Twilight (1998) dir. Robert Benton
ReplyDeleteIn 1998 as horny teens we were watching Wild Things when we should have been watching Twilight. There is more star power in this movie than pretty much anything being made today. Newman, Hackman, Sarandon lead a team that has James Garner, Stockard Channing, Giancarlo Esposito, Leiv Schreiber and Reese Witherspoon backing them up.
Sure the story could be tighter but the star power is enough to keep you invested, they just don't make lead movie stars like these anymore.
Red Midnight (1966, dir. James Newslow)
ReplyDeleteA small band of American communist terrorists have got their hands on nuclear bombs they're planning to detonate in major cities, but through a random waterskiing accident they happen to meet (and kidnap) an idealistic doctor who tries to convince them of less lethal (but still very destructive) means, thinking a huge crisis would make America stronger in the long run, while a nuclear strike would cripple it. There's also a messy love pentagon between the terrorist leader, the doctor, their wives and another terrorist going on.
Or at least I think that's what the plot was about.
A bizarre movie which by all rights should've landed the writer-director, a New England optometrist who never made another movie before or since, on some kind of a government watchlist. It's not at all clear whether the movie is a warning or a praise of the doctor character's plans to bomb and burn the slums in order to rebuild them better, at the expense of a high body count.
On a filmmaking level, the writing is bizarre, the editing confusing, and the acting incredibly wooden. A very entertaining, very bad movie.
You summary should be on the back of the DVD because it really makes me want to watch what sounds like a ridiculously horrible movie.
DeleteI found a classic 70s thriller to watch for today BUT it was way better for Private Eyes so i saved it for tomorrow. Googled 'obscure 80s thrillers' and got this action/thriller suggestion:
ReplyDeleteSteele Justice (1987)
This movie screams "Written for Chuck Norris by Cannon Films" vibes. In this case our protagonist is played by Martin Cove (evil dojo leader from orig Karate Kid). The inciting incident is a double cross during the last days of Vietnam. Years later familiar faces from the double cross are now Drug lords and our lead wants to take them down and seek vengeance for fallen friends. Its a by the number DTV-esque 80s flick...fine.
A couple years ago I enjoyed Steele Justice with a friend and had a lot of good laughs... sometimes it just feels a little off, other times genuine bad funny things happen. But it's not badly made IMO, and has other welcome faces besides Karate Kid's Kreese! I back this pick for anyone else interested.
DeleteI also initially had a 70s thriller I'm now saving for tomorrow: Klute. I wonder if you had the same.
DEATH GAME (1977) dir. Peter S. Traynor
ReplyDeleteI never thought I would find Seymour Cassel uninteresting. Fortunately Sondra Locke and Colleen Camp are so chaotic and utterly believable that I was all in.
And, um… to be honest, it would kinda all be worth it for one night with 1976 Colleen Camp.
It makes FUNNY GAMES seem less groundbreaking. Also, it makes me want to watch KNOCK KNOCK with Keanu.
Added bonus: great ending!
Great movie!
DeleteBlood Simple (1984)
ReplyDeleteThe Coen brothers' debut movie has been a huge blind spot for me, so I jumped at the chance to catch up on it today. What a nasty little picture. Super young-looking Frances McDormand tries to leave her menacing husband Dan Hedaya, which leads to a tangled mess of betrayal and murder. This movie doesn't play around - the tone is consistently bleak, with very little of the signature black humor that would come to define the Coens' later work. It is also a real nail-biter - the two big setpieces (the disposing of the body sequence, and the final showdown) are as tense as anything the brothers have ever done. Good, gritty stuff.
I'm blown away every time I revisit this one. Great movie!!
DeleteM Emmet Walsh is so convincingly slimy in this!
DeleteSCREAM OF FEAR! (1961, dir. Seth Holt)
ReplyDeleteA perfect day for a film that I have long intended to watch. (I have owned the Mill Creek Hammer box set for years). In the early 1960s, Hammer Studios produced several thrillers. If you have not seen it, NIGHTMARE (1964) is one that I heartily recommend from this period. In Scream of Fear!, American actress Susan Strasberg portrays a wheelchair-bound daughter of a wealthy man. Summoned to his home after the death of her caretaker, it does not take long before strange things start happening around her. With Christopher Lee in a small role and excellent black-and-white cinematography, there is a lot to like in this cleverly plotted thriller. I admit to being surprised by the mystery. I guessed wrong.
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
ReplyDeleteTHIS is why Junesploitation is my favorite time of the year. It gets me to seek out movies I haven't seen before, and this one is an absolute BANGER from John Carpenter.
That ice cream truck scene... YIKES! 😳😱😭
DeleteRelentless (1989, dir. William Lustig)
ReplyDeleteWhen the most interesting thing in a movie is Judd Nelson’s Moe Howard haircut you know you’ve got problems. Total slog to get through and nothing you haven’t seen a hundred times before in better movies. Avoid like the plague.
Turbulence (2025 Dir Claudio Fäh)
ReplyDeleteA good dream: being stuck on a hot air balloon with Olga Kurylenko. A bad dream: being stuck on a hot air balloon with a crazy ass Olga Kurylenko, Kelsey Grammer and your deservedly pissed off wife.
ANGEL 4: UNDERCOVER (1994)
ReplyDeleteNone of the characters from the previous movies return, so here's a complete reboot. This time, it’s about an investigative journalist solving her friend’s murder. That’s a lot less sensationalist than before, and more of a conventional crime/revenge plot. The case involves a psycho rock star (his name is “Piston”) and Roddy McDowell as a devilish record exec, so it’s more about the music scene than anything. There’s some cheesy sleazoid fun to be had, but I enjoyed how the first three films were more about the found family of the quirky characters wandering the city at night. I missed that aspect of this one.
30 days of fan films, day 9: DREAM GIRL (2024)
A troubled young woman with a mysterious past shows up at a doctor’s office. Turns out she’s being haunted in her dreams by good ol’ Freddy Krueger. Writer/director Bill Crossland learned the right lessons from Wes Craven by keeping Freddy mostly in the shadows and instead focusing on the characters and their plights. This is an effective horror short with lots of creepy imagery and intense performances. Not bad!
GONE WITH THE POPE (1976/2010, Duke Mitchell)
ReplyDelete"People of the United States — judges, cops, all the law — I got a message for ya — I want you to take this... and stick it up in your mother's @#$%!”
Just a slice of the offensive fun to be had in this Duke Mitchell vanity project.
Duke and his ex-con pals kidnap the Pope and demand every Catholic in the world pay $1 for his release. Then they realize how many Catholics there are and drop the price to 50 cents a head! Amazing 70s Vegas strip scenes, completely cuckoo soundtrack, and Duke being Duke add up to the nuttiest flick of the month thus far. OH! And the BEST threes*me scene ever-- makes WILD THINGS look lightweight (watch it and see what I mean)! Off the rails and out of focus, unpredictable and unapologetically racist and misogynistic, and pure Junesploitation! gold!
The Osterman Weekend
ReplyDeleteRivets that molecule pierogi can often giraffe shoelaces until bearer bond truck stops. The sentence that you have just read makes precisely as much sense as anything in this movie. Maybe more sense, actually.
Rutger Hauer is a controversial television host who is convinced by CIA spook John Hurt that his friends coming to visit him for the weekend are actually KGB spies and a threat to national security. Are they spies? Is Hurt just messing with him for some reason? By the time it’s all over you will neither know nor care. An overly convoluted mess that wastes a solid cast that includes Craig T. Nelson (sporting a truly fascinating Lee Press-on mustache), Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon, Helen Shaver, Burt Lancaster, and Meg Foster (by the way, Meg Foster taking on bad guys with a compound bow? Fetish unlocked). This was Sam Peckinpah’s final film and hardly the swan song his career deserved. Disappointing.
The Hunted (J.F. Lawton, 1995)
ReplyDeleteWell this was delightful! I agree with everything Tyson very eloquently said in the Disturbing Behavior episode, no need to paraphrase. I was convinced Adam talked about it on a past episode as well but I can't find it!
(a quick story about Christophe Lambert: he agreed to do the foreword for one of our books about French cinema -his face is on the cover-, so we got to spend some time with him on the phone, and I'm happy to report he was as pleasant, humble and polite as can be!)
Classe tout risques (1960): I'll take a french noir B&W from the 60s anytime. I'm less familiar with director Claude Sautet movies, but when Criterion put out this 4k, I jumped on it... then waited for the perfect time to watch it. The best part is the TFI logo in gorgeous colors, just to switch to B&W right after. Lino Ventura (the best french noir actor) plays a criminal when everything goes wrong and people around him get hurt after his latest hit. Also starring Jean Paul Belmondo, released a week after Breathless, which is credited as tanking Classe tout risques because it was so successful.
ReplyDeleteBad Lieutenant (1992): Well, he seems like a good guy... This is my second watch. The first time was not a success, but I could feel I was missing something. Then I read a bunch of stuff, then I got the 4k. It played much better this time, maybe Harvey Keitel's d!ck was not sharp enough. 4k makes everything better 😁. I'm curious to explore the disc and all of its extras.
Did you catch Zoe Lund in "Bad Lieutenant"? It was short and memorable, although knowing she eventually died from what she's portraying in "BL" is a permanent cloud over her scenes. 🥺😓
DeleteHoly crap, the red head?!?!? I didn't recognize her at all
DeleteThe Wages of Fear (1953)
ReplyDeleteForget your standard-issue action movies where the hero waltzes through gunfire with a quippy one-liner. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear is the cinematic equivalent of a panic attack stretched across two and a half hours. It makes modern thrillers look like Sunday afternoon cartoons.
We find our quartet of heroes — if you can call them that — rotting away in Las Piedras, a South American backwater that serves as a collective drain for the world’s losers. There’s Mario (Yves Montand), a sarcastic Corsican playboy; Jo (Charles Vanel), a washed-up Parisian gangster whose tough-guy veneer is paper-thin; Bimba (Peter van Eyck), a stoic German haunted by the death of his father in a concentration camp and Luigi (Folco Lulli), an Italian cook who has just received a death sentence in the form of a lung condition.
They are trapped, broke and desperate. When a massive fire erupts at a Southern Oil Company well, the corporation — which effectively owns the town and treats the locals like disposable biological hardware — offers $2,000 to anyone willing to drive two trucks loaded with unstable nitroglycerin over 500 kilometers of terrain that would terrify a mountain goat.
We don’t just watch the suspense. We’re passengers. The middle hour is a relentless, pulse-pounding crawl through a series of impossible obstacles, such as a stretch of road so poorly maintained it creates rhythmic vibrations guaranteed to trigger a detonation, a wooden platform that requires driving backward and a boulder blocking the path that requires a precision-timed blast, leading to the harrowing demise of Luigi and Bimba.
The dynamic between Jo and Mario is the film’s psychological core. As the trip progresses, Jo’s legendary gangster grit dissolves into pathetic cowardice, forcing Mario to reconcile his hero-worship of the older man with the reality that Jo is a liability, not a leader.
Everything about this production screams cinematic nightmare, which only adds to the grit on screen. Filming was paused for seven months due to financing issues. When it resumed, torrential rains hit, flooding the set and keeping the cast and crew trapped in a Nîmes hotel for over a month. Then, Clouzot broke his ankle, several dozen local Romani extras went on strike, and the pyrotechnics used for the oil fire sequence nearly turned the actual shooting location into a massive wildfire.
The best-known remake is, of course, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, which is more faithful to Georges Arnaud’s novel. Is it any happier? Let’s ask Friedkin: “I wasn’t prepared for my success or failure. I felt … buffeted by fate without any control over destiny. That’s one of the themes of Sorcerer. No matter how much you struggle, you get blown up.“
Ever since i discovered this movie on Criterion DVD all those years ago, I bought it to the new format everytime: blu-ray then 4k. Actually bought 4k twice as i got the UK release first, was disappointed by the encoding, then grew a brain and got Criterion 4k
DeleteSo... Yeah... Movie's all right, I guess 😎
This or its spiritual American remake (William Friedkin's "Sorcerer") are top-notch action/thrillers. 😎🤠
DeleteResurrection (1999, dir. Russell Mulcahy)
ReplyDeleteNo HIGHLANDER magic this time around with Christopher Lambert and Russell Mulcahy teaming back up, but glad I finally watched it. This movie is silly as hell, and Mulcahy's music video instincts get in the way a little too much for me, but I have a real soft spot for Lambert.
Ms .45 (1981, dir. Abel Ferrara)
ReplyDeleteR--- & revenge. Young mute seamstress is double victimized and then goes on a rampage. I really liked the performance by Zoe Lund, and of course the grimy vibe of that period's NYC is spot-on for Junesploitation. The plot itself didn't keep me hooked in like Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant did a couple of years ago though—but more credit to Zoe Lund since she actually co-wrote the latter film!
I probably should have slotted this into Revenge day, but no biggie.
Sea of Love (1989)
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen since it was in theaters, remebered nothing.. Watched the relatively new Kino 4K. Hoo-Yeah.
It is awesome. That is all.
That must have been a great like-new experience. Ellen Barkin rules in this!
DeleteHighest 2 Lowest (2025)
ReplyDeleteI actually kinda dug this one. Maybe it was the low expectations given a lot of what I had heard, but the majority worked for me.
The Crush (1993)
ReplyDeleteAlicia Silverstone and Carey Elwes sleazing on each other plus Miracle Legion on the soundtrack.
“Isn’t it way past your bedtime?”
Crimes of Passion (1981, dir. Ken Russell)
ReplyDeleteThe tone of this movie, and the music used throughout, threw me off and I couldn't recover. It was very in-your-face to an almost comedic level. There didn't seem to be much substance to it... And I dunno maybe all of that was the point, and if so--I sure missed it!
I do not think anybody ever accused Ken Russell of making his films easy to watch. He always seemed to try the opposite.
DeleteDial M for Murder (1954)
ReplyDeleteA man attempts to have his wife murdered...and things do not go as planned.
I was full of anxiety basically the WHOLE time.
Shattered (1991)
ReplyDeleteTom Berenger's car takes a tumble off a cliff and he wakes up in the hospital with amnesia. He starts trying to piece together his old life--his wife, his family, his job--but some of the pieces aren't what they seem. Thankfully, he's aided by the pet shop owner / private detective he doesn't remember hiring before the accident (Bob Hoskins, MVP of the movie).
It's an easy watch with pleasantly delirious pulpy thriller logic. It feels about 90% committed to its trashy core, but maybe 10% self-conscious, and it's that hint of unwillingness to fully embrace its own sleazy nature that keeps it from achieving full De Palma. It's almost great, but I'll settle for fun.
One thing I found funny: Berenger's character is called "Dan" throughout the movie, but he's credited as "Danika" (and no, the twist has nothing to do with a sex/gender switcheroo). What an odd choice.
There's another thing I found very funny, but I can't really say it without spoiling the final reveal. Let's just say there's a potential plot hole that's raised by the big twist, and by plugging that potential hole with some bold sound design, the movie displays both logic and lunacy in the same move. I hope someone who's seen the movie can tell what I'm talking about, because it's awesome.
No Way Out (1987, dir. Roger Donaldson)
ReplyDeleteOMG...
This is a THRILLER
Holy moly
Race against the clock
Intrigue abounds
Looking over your shoulder
Leading others astray
Everyone is closing in
Rosalie gets props for recommending it!
👏👏👏😃
DeleteHollow Man (2000)
ReplyDeletePretty damn fun! It doesnt hold back, it gets as gross and crude as you might want from the concept of an invisble man taking full advantage of his situation. Unfortunately though, the two characters that might have deserved some consequences, get none.
La Traque (Serge Leroy, 1975)
ReplyDeleteMimsy Farmer, the cold French countryside, and a party of petit-bourgeois hunters who all have something to lose if this woman were to get to the authorities, make for your characteristic uncompromising, slow, stark, gut-wrenching, spectacularly acted (including one of my favourite actors, Jean-Pierre Marielle, here more restrained than in other movies of the decade, but nonetheless brilliant) '70s thriller. Go in as blind as possible.
(to fellow animal lovers: you might want to skip a couple of 30-seconds scenes at the beginning of the movie)