guitaramore Reviews

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Fairly engrossing, with a pretty hard-edged cat

[7/10 · 1 April 2017]

I like the hard-to-solve mystery we get here. Actually, they don't even come close to giving us enough clues to solve it, hence the difficulty. But in that we feel we're up against it like the protagonist, detective Phil Marlowe, played by Elliot Gould.

Times have really changed for Marlowe since 1946, when he was played by Humphrey Bogart. Then he was cool, implacable, wore a fedora a lot, and wound up with babe Lauren Bacall. That was the only strain of the plot viewers could follow. There were some dead bodies, smoking guns, and tough questions from cops along the way.

In this movie it's 1973, and Marlowe still think he's cool but that opinion is not so widespread this time - he's being played for a sucker by at least half the cast, including a longtime friend, and his own cat. He unravels the mystery mostly out of a lack of having anything better to do, which he clearly stood in need of.

Director Robert Altman follows his own ideas about how to communicate visually. Like when he changes scene to a hospital, he doesn't do any kind of establishing long shot, he shows a closeup of a light over a patient's bed. His montages create a kind of equivalent of our human experience, where we use our minds to focus on detail. He usually winds up with scenes that feel like we're watching something actually happen. But he does know how to use visuals for dramatic power when he wants, as the ending makes clear.

Some of the performances he gets from actors are amazing, like Mark Rydell as psychotically dangerous gangster Marty Augustine. The way he works himself into a rage with his rants changes gears from funny to frightening at high speed, and I can't believe it didn't influence Joe Pesci's performance in "Goodfellas."

Not everything works here, like Gould smearing fingerprint ink on his face then breaking into Al Jolson at police headquarters, but on the whole a fairly engrossing take on detective mysteries.

Count Dracula (1970)

Fair, enjoyable, disappointing for what could have been

[6/10 · 18 March 2017]

No one, it seems, wants to give up on a really good bad guy.

Dracula, the main character in one of the two best all-time classic horror novels, has been in countless movies from numerous nations. He seems out to prove you just can't keep a bad man down.

These movies used to keep me in chills as a kid. Now that I'm a little older, I'm beginning to worry that the full breadth of the character is never going to be captured in one movie.

Bela Lugosi certainly captured Dracula's sinister elegance, but director Todd Browning, working with a severely slashed budget, had to stick to adapting the stage play and abandon plans to realize the novel; it's very slow-moving, especially the second half.

Christopher Lee's Hammer films capture the brute force of Dracula in ways Browning and Lugosi could not in their era. But the Hammer films largely do away with Dracula's intelligence and scheming. They also get progressively worse as the series continued, finally getting to where you're bored silly every minute Dracula isn't on screen, leaving him without much in the way of adversaries.

Francis Ford Coppola did not give us a Dracula for the ages, largely due to making him look like someone's wig-wearing grandma from the Victorian era, and then the thug you hope your daughter never brings home to meet you.

With a talented star like Lee, and a director like Franco, it's a shame this isn't better than it is. But it does give some creepy atmospheric chills.

Franco shows talent in some scenes; other developments he handles pretty tritely, or seems in too much in of a hurry. I couldn't help but wonder if this was a product of his previous experience of low-budget exploitation. Clearly he was a man on the move - he's credited with some 160 movies. This movie could have stood a director who put a little more thought into things. I also wondered if the budget had something to do with us winding up with too much of Renfield (Klaus Kinski) in his padded cell; the part of the story where Dracula comes via ship is totally eliminated, also not to the good of this.

The music is good, Herbert Lom is believable as Van Helsing, Soledad Miranda is pretty mesmerizing as Lucy.

Just wish it would have been better. The ending - Dracula's demise - will be especially disappointing to anyone over age 5. The budget's special effects just did not support what the script called for. For whatever reason, Franco didn't take time to think of an alternative way to show this.

Nevertheless, Dracula will be back, we can be certain.

Invasion of the Star Creatures (1962)

A quick summary of what's wrong with this: everything

[1/10 · 13 March 2017]

It feels weird saying that "Invasion of the Star Creatures" is one of the worst movies ever, since after watching I can't believe it actually is one. I'll just say it's one of the worst excuses for a movie I've seen.

Making you appreciate Ed Wood for the genius he truly was, "Invasion" is painfully unfunny from beginning to end, which can't come soon enough.

A script this bad could only be fixed with a cup of gasoline, a match, and a little wide-open space.

There are two breathtaking alien women who will make any man's heart sing with joy to see them in their space-alien costumes, which seem amazingly similar to matching swimsuits and high heels. Cutting the movie down to their scenes only would leave about 7 minutes, but it would be worth it, in my opinion.

I suppose it's a satire, but like everything else this is handled so ineptly it's impossible to tune your brain waves into the low frequency this operates on. Persons in captivity who are shown this could make a successful lawsuit for inhumane treatment.

I didn't like it.

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Dismal, like its source

[3/10 · 18 February 2017]

I was enjoying this, how much better it was than a previous attempt to film this book (which I recalled as one of my fave suspense novels). Then I found myself in the middle of a scene of such gorific brutality I was left wondering who, what could have made the tale - or the audience - deserve such a thing.

I wondered so much I actually re-read the 244-page book.

Ah, what a difference 20-plus years can make. Then I read it straight through, unable to put it down. This time it took over a month.

"Killer" tells the story of a man who murders to settle an old family score. On the one hand. On the other, he also obviously gets quite a kick out of it. Then he goes on a killing spree trying to cover up the first murders. He kills everyone he loves the most, and tosses a few he hates into the mix as well. Much to the disadvantage of everyone in town, he's the trusted deputy sheriff.

I was struck by how little Casey Affleck seemed to inhabit the role of Deputy Lou Ford, but checking the original source, there isn't much there to begin with. Reasons why he kills seem limited to the fact that he's a character in a seedy story with a title to live up to and copies to sell. Reason often falls by the wayside - like the murder victims - as author Jim Thompson keeps his vision of small-town life limited to only the ugliest, darkest elements. In this kind of potboiler vision of life, the writer has to keep the pot stirring to distract you from wondering about things like 'how?' and 'why?', such wonderings having a tendency to make things fall apart.

Thompson could clearly put together an intricately-woven crime story, and populate a fictional small town with believable types that instantly resonate. His nihilistic vision seems refreshing at first - hypocrisies are exploded; everything we usually try to push to the back of our minds is front and center. But I get bored with it all pretty quick, and feel kind of cheated; like I'd bought a prism to explore the color spectrum of light, but got stuck with a defective one that only shows the color black.

The filmmakers use their considerable skills to put us right in the middle of the scene where Affleck beats Jessica Alba (Joyce Lakeland) to death. I wish such talent and thought could have been applied towards a deeper exploration of the main character driving all this. Vacant as he is, we're on a ride with a driver who's asleep at the wheel.

Eraser (1996)

Thrilling

[8/10 · 13 January 2017]

This is a great movie. James Caan is the kind of rotten villain you can't wait to cheer the demise of. Vanessa Williams is the kind of good gal who's worth fighting for. Arnold is the brave, never-say-die hero you cheer.

There's even a great story about slimy subterfuge-mongers in the government on a reckless spree, in case you need something to think about or just plain flat out run out of popcorn (I try not to). But the great story is what drives the suspense, which never lets up till the end.

Vanessa Williams in blue jeans is enough to make anyone proud to be an American, and no doubt had many flags flying at full staff.

Born to Be Blue (2015)

Bluer than you probably imagine, but still great

[8/10 · 3 December 2016]

This movie's about a fellow battling some personal demons. We never really get a good feeling about his chances to win. We keep rooting for him anyhow.

It really snuck up on me. I was repulsed by some of the repulsive scenes, but didn't notice how subtle yet effective the love story was until the tragic end, when it pretty much broke my heart, darn it.

Ethan Hawke plays Chet Baker, a jazz trumpeter who achieved 40's and 50's popularity by playing music that sounded like a beautiful dream. His own life was nightmare: wandering into heroin addiction, an anchor that never stops dragging him down.

Carmen Ejogo plays Jane, who fights the battle with him when he needs to kick it to make a comeback. She temporarily derails her own life trying to straighten out his.

The movie is very well made, letting us fill in blanks. Like why does Ejogo gets involved with him in the first place. That led me to wonder why there's always someone like her around trying to pull someone like him out of their self-made quicksand. It becomes a kind of meditation on love and addiction, and when the line between the two gets blurred. These two characters may have a lot more in common than they realize.

The final scene between the two is very powerful. I was stunned by the acting. Ejogo doesn't even speak. It's too bad it's such a sad movie, otherwise it might be getting some Oscar nods.

Not for kiddies or when you want something cheerful, but if everyone in the room's a grownup and you don't mind something tough, it's a great movie.

Night and the City (1950)

OK, not a classic

[5/10 · 3 December 2016]

This movie's an all right way to spend 95 minutes. I didn't find it to be great, or any kind of classic.

It's a low-budget, 'b' movie from 1950. It's mostly about a lot of seedy characters in the underbelly of a big city, who mostly seem in a race to see who can stab each other in the back fastest. The lead character, Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark), is particularly unlikable, a hustling, get-rich-quick schemer who, at two low points, robs his own girlfriend's purse to finance his schemes.

I did read in the liner notes the director didn't think much of this film, and I agree. It gets a little too obvious, too many times. Like Widmark. We get the idea he's pretty low the first time he tries to steal from his own gal's purse. Bringing that back a second time feels a little heavy-handed.

I did feel a little bit sorry for Widmark at the end when he knows he's going to die, but not really a lot. I mostly felt relieved for his girlfriend's sake, who is played by Gene Tierney. I wish there were women nowadays who looked like Gene Tierney does here. There's still plenty of women being made; so maybe it's the period clothes or Hollywood cinematography. Or maybe just the way she carries herself, with a certain amount of class, dignity, and respect.

Probably the most believable strain of the story is how she's also getting interest from a decent, and better-looking, guy (Hugh Marlowe), but she sticks with her unlovable rake, Widmark. That's a human trait that's all too recognizable.

Widmark winds up strangled to death and having his corpse dumped in the river, so Tierney can shrug off her lovin' the bad boy chapter and run into Marlowe's arms, who's already running towards her waiting.

If you think you're getting a 'film noir classic' with this, let me warn ya: except for some of the later ones, 'film noir' was definitely a genre after the fact. Some French film critics noticed a group of post-war Hollywood movies had some dark themes, and lighting and direction to match, and started calling them that. Until then, no one involved knew, at the time, they were making a 'film noir.' They tended to be low-budget crime dramas made, as usual, to try to make money. Apparently, the post-World War II audiences wanted something harsher, so movie makers gave it to 'em. It isn't until you get to the later ones called 'film noir,' like Orson Welles "Touch of Evil," that it really seems a conscious genre choice.

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

Movie deserves to be transplanted - to 3 a.m. showings only

[1/10 · 15 November 2016]

Watching this movie makes you realize how much more valuable your time would have been doing something else. Anything. Like cleaning out that closet you've been meaning to get to, checking your bike tires for proper inflation, etc.

Even though it felt from the beginning like it was financed by someone on the verge of bankruptcy, and directed by someone with a harsh migraine, I kept watching "The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant," hoping for something fun or fantastic.

My jaw dropped a few times at how astoundingly bad it was, but even that somehow wasn't fun. Once they get their creature up and running, it's "incredible" how little the filmmakers think of for it to do.

Running is not accurate - it's one of several things the creature can't do, since, to get the "effect," two actors had to be slammed together like two slices of bacon in a package. On a positive note, this may have been one of Hollywood's earliest nods to custom costumes for plus-sized couples.

Pat Priest of 'The Munsters' is lovely, and somehow Casey Kasem is in this, and does some good acting. The less said about all the other performances, the better.

The inane theme song at the end feels like an insult to brain waves of all shapes and sizes. Better check your brain at the door if you dare try to watch this, no matter how many heads you have on your shoulders.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962)

Yours might, though, if you keep watching this

[1/10 · 15 November 2016]

Ironically, brain activity is what you feel dropping the most as you watch "The Brain That Wouldn't Die."

The plot, if anyone would dare call it that, has a doctor losing his fiancée in a car accident - well, most of her anyway. He manages to keep her severed head alive, even though, obviously, this limits her professional, family-planning, and dancing options rather harshly.

From this sound premise, things proceed logically.

Doc then searches for a female body that pleases him to transplant his fiancee's head onto. One ethical foul ball that is skimmed over way too quickly - all these bodies are still attached to live people.

As either a tribute to voyeurism or a need to pad things out, the doc spends way more time looking over numerous options than seems really necessary. He also spends more time trying to look cool smoking cigarettes than seems needed, but by then such a point seems kind of small. After passing on several voluptuous types who saunter around slowly while smoky jazz music plays, he picks a small brunette with a huge chip on her shoulder, another in a long series of points that don't seem to make much sense.

The dialogue seems to have been written by someone very distracted. I would guess the writer owed rent, and the entire time he wrote this his landlord was banging on the door, yelling loudly.

Almost all the acting is just as bad, so there is a special kind of synthesis there.

The fun and games of watching a low-grade turkey come to a screeching halt when a monster in the basement dismembers the doc's helper, who smears his dying blood all over the walls in what seems like a special effort to make the audience feel depressed. It succeeds. When are these mad doctors going to figure things out - you can't keep your severed-head prisoner close to the monster you keep locked up? Egged on by the woman whose wardrobe needs have been reduced to nothing but hats, the monster breaks out and kills the doc, probably mistaking him for the movie's author.

Belle de Jour (1967)

More middle-class debasement from Bunuel

[6/10 · 13 November 2016]

Catherine Deneuve has a handsome doctor husband who loves her and likes whisking her away to nice spots for romantic getaways. He wants children with her. She responds with frigidness and, usually, turn-downs to his physical overtures.

Then she decides the thing to do is start working as a prostitute at a whorehouse. While he's away working to make the money to support her idle luxury, she flops down on a mattress to sell to a series of fat, sweaty strangers the sexual favors she usually won't share with hubby at home.

For his sake, it's unfortunate she neglects to mention this. He also could stand to know the name of a good lawyer. With a friend like her, he won't need many enemies.

We see she was molested as a child by some elderly pervert. As an adult she fantasizes about being tied up, whipped, raped, and having animal dung flung into her face until half her person is covered in it. And you wondered why they never show this at women's self-esteem conferences.

We do tend to guess she has issues, a side of her sexuality she hasn't come to grips with. Her prostituting herself, we speculate, is some exploration of it.

Director Luis Bunuel seems mostly interested in manipulating the characters like marionettes to reach his pre-planned political agenda, showing them as empty-headed bourgeoisie marching to certain doom.

Doom comes, not to her but to him. He pays a vicious price for her duplicitous back-stabbing. Unable to face what she's wrought, she descends into a world of fantasy, dreaming of him as he was, conveniently forgetting how much it bored her.

While I did care about the characters and was drawn in by the tragedy, it also seemed an all-too-easy excuse to make it all about some dark sexual matter. For all her exploring, Denevue doesn't seem to gain much insight. I didn't either, except that movies like this tend to draw attention.

Bunuel seems to hold his characters and society in contempt, while also not suggesting any better alternatives. Sexuality is almost always depicted as something either perverse or for sale in half-hour increments. The one character who seems to feel it's healthy - Sorel - winds up an invalid in a wheelchair. This anti-human strain was off-putting.

Bunuel's hatred of the middle class seems endless, and is uninterrupted by the fact that he is one himself. He even appears in a cameo, drinking coffee in a cafe. Better he'd been the waiter, so audiences could have sent this all back to the kitchen and ordered up a little less misanthropy, a little more care about the characters.

The Running Man (1987)

Yes, run - away from this

[1/10 · 19 August 2016]

This is a movie with a message, and the message is: this is not a good movie. It's very badly written. The acting is awful. It isn't even well lit, making you long for an earlier era when that was kind of a minimum.

"The Running Man" keeps hitting you over the head letting you know it's set in the future, and it's a bad future. But it never feels like anyone who knew or cared about science-fiction or action had a thing to do with it. It does feel like, some people with way more money than sense decided you didn't need to know anything about making movies to make one. And if they knew anyone with knowledge about how to make a good one, they went way out of their way not to ask them about it.

It doesn't even work as a piece of lowly exploitation, unless a few shots of Maria Conchita-Alonso in form-fitting Lycra are enough to make you blush. I was stunned to recall critics of this era said Arnold Schwarzeneger was not a good actor, since his performance is the only thing that makes this tolerable to watch for even a second. Richard Dawson's attempts to portray a malevolent game-show host are something that should have been left on the cutting-room floor of "Family Feud."

Lacking any type of momentum, the movie makes attempts to whip up emotion in the viewer, attempts which work out as ludicrously failed as everything else.

Not helping anything either is the fact that fashion has moved on, and people do not usually appear covered in Lycra nowadays, as they do in "Running Man." And for that, at least, I feel grateful.

The Dracula Saga (1973)

Equal parts mildly enjoyable, mildly disappointing. Lacks bite

[2/10 · 14 July 2016]

This movie sure is awful. Despite spending $8.99 on it, I threw it in the trash, rather than watch it again.

The first 60 minutes or so isn't totally bad. There's a few creepy chills worked up over some vampires, who sometimes work their way up to the level of almost being scary. The female ones who decided to be nude got my attention, but even that enjoyment fluttered away quickly.

Things really go downhill when we meet Dracula, living in a castle with his 'family.' Dracula doesn't like biting people anymore, apparently, and just drinks blood out of wine glasses. And you thought bargain wines from the supermarket were bad.

The ending is so darn awful it defies description. If I'd been the producer and known it would end so poorly, I never would have let one frame be shot to begin with. The lead actress was good prior to this, but not even she could make the end believable - or tolerable - for one second.

Some directors of low-budget movies realize when their script calls for things their budget can't succeed at. This ending badly needed that wisdom, along with restoring Dracula to someone who preys and bites, not some old dude who drinks wine. You can find someone like that at almost any bar. Some of them are even scarier than Dracula is here.

Boo. As in hiss, not scary boo.

Dark Shadows (2012)

total waste

[1/10 · 3 June 2016]

Seeing this made me wonder why Tim Burton and/or Johnny Depp ever thought this would work as campy comedy.

It totally doesn't. Not that my liking the TV show kept me from being open to other approaches to the material. I guess it takes a special kind of person to laugh at a "comedy" that features lots of bright red blood on the screen. And I guess I'm not one of them.

Michelle Pfeiffer is wasted too. And she seems like someone who should have known better. The total of enjoyable moments clocked in at under 10 for me. An opening scene set on a cliffside, and a nice song by Alice Cooper that sounded great on the theater speakers. I barely even like or listen to Alice Cooper anymore. The fact that his appearance was the most enjoyable part lets you know how little I liked this.

The Angry Birds Movie (2016)

Not worth $20 for 2 adults and 1 child at the drive-in

[4/10 · 31 May 2016]

A 7 year-old might laugh at this. But only a few times, my experience was. Ditto, the folks who brought him.

Not all modern animated features are living up to the unspoken bargain going on, seemingly since Disney pioneered the genre, that these movies will keep entertained the adults that the kids need to get there.

There's a real boring sameness settling in. They all have lots of bright colors and near-constant motion. Voices by 'hip' Saturday Night Live alum. A character who farts a lot, generating the apparent requisite 'rude humor.' Another character who's curmudgeonly but winds up saving everybody.

I just wanted our boy to have the experience of going to a drive-in movie. It wasn't a total let-down, but it sure didn't set his imagination - or funny bone - on fire.

Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)

Awful without hardly ever being fun

[1/10 · 19 March 2016]

I like all kinds of humor, from witty and smart to silly and downright dumb. But not this dumb. This could make an infant throw their Binky at the screen in outrage.

'Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine' is so ineptly executed from all angles, the mind boggles wondering where to start.

Vincent Price is present, his usual mischievous self. You might have a chance to admire how he professionally slogs through this, if the movie didn't keep assailing your senses with such terribleness.

Frankie Avalon fares not as well. His performance is so infuriatingly bad one would wonder how he ever got into movies. Much on the same wavelength in this titanium turkey is Dwayne Hickman. The two ally themselves against the evil Goldfoot. In one sequence, they get drunk then wake up with hangovers. This is acted and depicted so inanely, I got a headache watching it. Then the duo go on a lengthy search - for a new script or better agents, one hopes.

The glimpses of gorgeous women in bikinis scarcely compensate for the waste-pile of a movie that surrounds them. The bright colors captured by the film stock are the only consistent thing to look forward to. It's enough to give drive-in movies a bad name, or make one grateful for long lines to buy popcorn.

Have I made my opinion clear? If not, let me put it this way: it would have been a vast improvement if all the male leads had been played, in a multi-character performance involving disguises, by Jerry Lewis. I am not kidding.

Playing his usual befuddled guy-character, Fred Clark does generate a couple laughs - bringing the grand total for the entire flick to 2. The theme song is pretty groovelicious - sung by the Supremes, with what sounds like the usual great Motown musicians backing them. Don't listen to it more than twice - it's infectious enough to make you go around singing it. Considering how deservedly forgotten this grade-Z time-waster is, this would only alienate you from your fellow man...