Black Death - Not quite what I was expecting. Sean Bean and his gang go searching for a necromancer in a far off village that has supposedly been able to keep the Plague away, led by a young monk who was from that area. It was good, and I enjoyed it, but not anything special. I wouldn't mind seeing it again, but wouldn't go out of my way to do so.
Damnation Alley - I only watched this because it's the only film adaptation of a Roger Zelazny story and my dad had been telling me about how schlocy and funny it was. And how it was nothing like the book. Well, it was schlocky, but it wasn't that funny. It was mostly just bad. Post-apocalyptic road trip across America, with dangers including giant scorpions, man-eating roaches and other ******* survivors. There were some funny parts, thanks to the really terrible special effects, but mostly I thought it was just boring and lame. Someone should do a real Zelazny someday.
Merantau - You may never have seen this flick, but you've probably seen a dozen like it. A country bumpkin goes into the big city for the first time and has to kick the asses of all the bad people who try to take advantage of his naive, countryside ways. So, the story is for ****, but the martial arts are pretty cool. If there was a version of the film that was just the fight scenes, I might recommend it, but even then everything here has been done before and done better. Stick with a Tony Jaa movie like Ong Bak or The Protector. I'll keep an eye on the people that did this one because there's potential here, but I only recommend this if you're just really into martial arts movies.
Outrage - Wow, that cover and tagline are crappy. Takeshi Kitano is a favorite of mine, but a few years ago he seemed to go off the deep end a bit, making a trilogy of films that made little to no sense and that were mostly only worth watching for their WTF value. This film represents his return to the Yakuza genre, where he used to reign supreme with flicks like Fireworks, Sonatine and Boiling Point. He plays a lower level gang boss who constantly gets used by an upper gang boss to do the man's dirty work and eventually decides to take him out and start a mini-war. It's really, really violent and it's fun, but it's nowhere near as good as Kitano's yakuza movies used to be. Worth a watch, but not a buy.
The Mechanic - Jason Statham is a hitman hired to kill his friend Donald Sutherland and after he does, he feels bad about it, so he decides to train Sutherland's son in the ways of murder. It's ok. Some of the action is cool, some of it is just way too ridiculous. I know, the word ridiculous applies to most Statham movies, but this one didn't feel like it was trying to be over the top. It felt like they were going for a serious dramatic action film, and doing **** like they did doesn't really work in that situation. This is one of those Statham movies that justifies the bad rap he receives from people that dislike his stuff. Either go balls out crazy (Crank) or keep it in check and be more restrained with it.
Elephant White - Djimon Hounsou is a contract killer in Thailand who decides to be a good guy and help people, which pisses off all the bad guys. Kevin Bacon is his arms dealer sort of friend who owes him for something in the past and has a really, really bad and unnecessary accent. I like both these guys, but I only bothered to watch this because it's the english language debut of Prachya Pinkaew, the director of some really awesome Thai martial arts films like the previously mentioned Ong Bak and The Protector.
In the very beginning of the film, there's a shot that has a large billboard on it with an Expendables poster, making me think that this may have perhaps been Pinkaew's attempt to audition for the director's chair on the sequel to that. If that's actually what he was hoping for, then he shouldn't have bothered, though, and just sent Stallone a copy of Born To Fight or something. True to form, this movie has some good action scenes and it's nice to see Hounsou actually doing the hand-to-hand combat himself, but there are a number of instances in which you can see the bad guy pause for half a second waiting for Hounsou to hit his mark before they throw their punch or try to kick him. Again, I really like that they didn't just stick a double in there and then try to edit around the fact that it wasn't Hounsou doing the fighting, but it still takes you out of the moment. Beyond that, Hounsou put in a good performance and Bacon's horrible accent was kind of funny to listen to, but beyond that there isn't anything here to make this worthwhile. I wouldn't even recommend renting it. It's pretty forgettable.
In The Realm Of The Senses - I've seen this a couple of times, but watched it again for a Psychology class paper I had to write. Great ****in' movie. Based on the true story of a woman and her lover who have a lot of intense sex that culminates in her strangling him during sex and then cutting his balls and penis off after he dies. It's a story about sexual obsession, it's NC-17 and it features real, non-simulated sex between the two lead actors. Lots of it. Amazing performances. Criterion recently put this out in a remastered Blu-Ray and it's glorious. Highly recommended.
A Page Of Madness (Kurutta Ippeji) - As part of series celebrating film restoration, TCM showed this silent 1920's Japanese film about a man who takes a job as janitor at a mental asylum in order to be able to spend time with his wife who is committed there. It's silent and there are no intertitles at all to describe the action, so you have to just follow along as best you can. It's a ****ing insane piece of movie. All kinds of weird visuals set to this creepy, weird soundtrack. For the whole hour long running time, I pretty much just sat in amazement. There's a scene in which a bunch of the inmates riot, trying to get at this female inmate who just dances in her cell all the time and it's set to this steadily increasing drum sound. ****ing crazy.
I don't think this film has ever gotten any kind of release and I hear it's pretty rare to get to see, so I'm super ****ing happy that I noticed it was playing. I would buy the DVD in a second and I'm going to spend a good chunk of time today looking for the soundtrack, pictured here. If you get the chance to see this ****, it's highly recommended. Here's an article/review about it that makes for good reading:
Midnight Eye feature: A Page of Madness (1927)
Monsters - The earth has been invaded and a huge chunk of Mexico just below the US border has been quarantined off as a contaminated zone, but one young photo-journalist and the daughter of the owner of the paper he works for must brave their way through in order to get home. Done with a very small budget, but very effectively by Gareth Edwards, who was tasked with the next incarnation of Godzilla after this. And with good reason. I thought the movie was ok. It took a little too long for things to start happening, I thought, and what ended up happening was slightly disappointing, but not bad. Props go to Edwards for what he was able to do with such limited funds and his sparse use of the monsters, saving the full reveal till the end worked really well. So there's a whole lot of potential here, even though the film itself was just ok. I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do with Godzilla.
Fear And Desire - Another part of TCM's tribute to film restoration was Stanley Kubrick's first feature film, made at the age of 24. Rarely seen because Kubrick asked the restoration company not to distribute it. For good reason. It's crap. Beyond some nice cinematography, the film is poorly acted, has a shoddy story and is not very well done. Amazing to think he did The Killing just a few years later.
Shivers (aka They Came From Within) - Speaking of first films by directors, I also watched Cronenberg's first last night, courtesy of IFC. It's not a bad movie, but it feels like a Cronenberg movie done by someone who doesn't know how to tell a story or develop characters. The gross stuff is there and it's cool, but everything else is missing. Worth a watch only because it's the first Cronenberg film, but if you don't really care about that, you're not missing a whole lot and should just watch a later Cronenberg flick.
