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À l'intérieur (2007)
This crap gets a 7.1?!?
I have to say I'm a pretty big horror buff and it's been quite a long time since I saw a film as offensive and irritatingly stupid as Inside. The story concerns a young pregnant woman who is menaced in her home by another woman who wants to steal her baby. One wonders why the villainess doesn't wait until the baby is born to sneak in and snatch it (the story reveals she's waited 4 months already and the baby is due to be delivered the next day), considering the incredible ease that she sneaks into the house undetected. Things might have gone better for her. Of course, this would cheat the hack filmmakers from the money shot they can barely contain themselves for: the ugly extended shot of a woman being cut open with scissors (love how passively our heroine endures this, by the way). This review could go on and on for pages cataloging the ludicrous behavior of the characters, but I won't bother; rest assured, though, this movie has an extremely high "oh, come on!" quotient. I wonder in what alternate universe a woman the size of Beatrice Dalle, carrying only the aforementioned scissors, could break into a house and kill 6 people, 3 of them armed with guns, and not get caught or killed. Welcome to the world of Inside.
Trilogy of Terror II (1996)
Execrable
This sequel to the beloved Trilogy of Terror is a complete misfire, a lousy and even desperate attempt to recapture the elements that made the original film work. This time we have a mediocre, occasionally inept actress named Lysette Anthony playing different roles in the three stories, instead of the brilliant Karen Black. In the first one she plays a rich trophy wife who bumps off her husband with the aid of her boyfriend. The story is lame, but will probably give you the creeps if you are at all claustrophobic. The second story involves a woman who tries to bring her son back from the dead and apparently succeeds. This story is so poorly executed, from the laughably bad acting from the actor playing the son to the horrible final shot, it's just not worth commenting on. The worst story is the last, which is ironic b/c it's a sequel to the best story from the first film. In that one, Black played a young woman who is terrorized in her apartment by an African Zuni fetish doll. In the new one, the filmmakers have thrown all plausibility to the wind to get another young woman in the same situation. (I love it when the woman and the security guard suspect a killer is in the multi-story building and the guard insists she stay in the lab with the door locked while he checks the place out, even though the door to the lab has a flimsy glass window on it). The story then serves as a strict remake of the first one, with Anthony trapping the doll in a case, cutting herself while trying to grab the knife when the doll saws away at the case, and then becoming possessed by the spirit in the doll at the end. Really, just a complete waste of time. Watch the original instead.
Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972)
A masterpiece
I recently watched this for the 1st time in 15 years or so and wasn't going to comment on it, but after seeing all the negative comments felt somebody should defend a truly great film. Bertolucci's gorgeous and stunningly acted drama concerns an American man played by Marlon Brando and his anonymous affair with a young French woman, played by Maria Schneider. They meet regularly in his Paris apartment for their trysts, but he forbids her from revealing her name or any names of any one in her life or past; he does the same. The way the film unfolds, it's at times hard to decide emotionally what's going on, which actually adds to the film's fascination. Is Brando working out his anger and aggression over his wife's suicide on this poor girl? Is it the need to fulfill his sexual desires without any potentially painful emotional entanglement that fuels him to continue the relationship? If so, he certainly fails at not becoming emotionally involved. Why does she continue to see him? At the same time I say this, I don't think this ambiguity is a flaw; the viewer is allowed to make his own interpretation as to what is fueling these characters' actions. Cinematically, the film is fascinating; the stylized flare-ups of music and camera movement make a film that is mostly talk more cinematic. If I have one complaint, it's that the climactic shooting at the end seems overly melodramatic; why, exactly, did she shoot him? The story certainly could, and perhaps should, end tragically but I didn't find this particular ending all that believable, even if it is beautifully executed. Definitely well worth seeing - there's no excuse for missing one of Brando's most deeply impressive performances.
Witchboard (1986)
Just plain dumb
Ridiculously cheesy 80s horror features Tawny Kitaen as a prim (!) young woman who is bewitched by a spirit attached to a particular Ouija board that comes into her possession. Her boyfriend doesn't believe anything supernatural is going on, while his former best friend and now mortal enemy does. The spirit starts murdering people connected to the three in increasingly imaginative ways. I can't decide if my low star rating is fair or not; I find this film to be pretty entertaining just for how cheesy it is (there's nothing I like more than a terrible but fun movie). In terms of quality, this is getting close to bottom-of-the-barrel. There's at least one positive, though. The makers have really attempted to focus on the relationships amidst all the supernatural goings on. The two men's arc allows them over the course of the movie to reconcile, and Kitaen's boyfriend finally brings himself to tell her he loves her at the end. But it's hard to take this film seriously when so many elements are so wrong; it's not scary, some of the acting is seriously out-of-whack, the "humorous" elements are anything but (like anymore "psychic humor" anyone?) and the plausibility level gets increasingly low as it goes on (exactly how did Jim get out of legal trouble when the cops thought he was behind several murders?).
Belle de jour (1967)
One of Bunuel's best
Bunuel's mysterious and beautiful masterwork is a film that fascinates as much on its fifth viewing as its first. Catherine Deneuve is a beautiful Parisian housewife who refuses to consummate her marriage with her husband, played by Jean Sorel. She ends up working during the day as a prostitute at a local brothel, while still fending off her husband's advances. She eventually gets involved with an attractive young thug. One of the more fascinating things about this film is Deneuve's opaque performance; the beautiful façade is stripped away to reveal a woman with a strong masochistic streak, as we see a series of her strange fantasies. Eventually it becomes difficult to tell the fantasies from the reality of her situation, leading to a fascinatingly enigmatic ending. The film is frequently funny, particularly in the scenes dealing with Deneuve's customers, and there is an overall "chic" feeling to it, what with the expensive-looking clothes Deneuve wears, the high end apartments and restaurants and the overall glamorous Parisian setting, that adds to its appeal, at least for me.
Dressed to Kill (1980)
Brilliant De Palma
This is without a doubt my favorite De Palma film (and one of my favorite films, period). It's been said this film is total style over substance, which may be true, but that doesn't detract from how outrageously entertaining it is. The story concerns a young computer nerd (Keith Gordon), a prostitute (Nancy Allen) and a cop (Dennis Farina) all searching for the identity of a mad transvestite slasher in Manhattan. Really the plot, as involving as it is, is really just an excuse to hang a number of truly impressive cinematic sequences; my favorite consists of several tracking shots depicting the flirtation and subsequent misunderstandings of one of the (female) main characters and a stranger she sees in a museum. There are just so many elements that are like candy to me: the fun "Nancy Drew" quality of the jaded prostitute and the nerd teaming up to solve the mystery, the humorously antagonistic relationship between the cop and the prostitute, the terrific suspense set pieces and just the overall trashy quality of it. An absolute must-see!
Showgirls (1995)
How can I give one of my favorite movies a 1, you ask?
Easy, it's a mind-bogglingly awful movie. Probably the worst movie I've ever seen by a very talented director (and I have seen Bonfire of the Vanities!). Elizabeth Berkley plays a young stripper who will do just about anything short of murder to get to the top in Vegas. Well, if the top is a hopelessly tacky nudie musical extravaganza. Gina Gershon is terrific as the scheming Crystal, her main rival. Gershon is the best thing about the film and the only one seemingly aware of the sheer awfulness of the film around her; her Crystal is a broadly played Texas "gal" who is just about as ruthless as Berkley. It's hard to pick the worst (read: most enjoyable) element of the film: Berkley's manic depressive performance, her awful dancing, the deliriously over the top dialogue by Joe "Sleaze" Ezsterhaus, the doggie chow discussion
I could go on and on. A must see for lovers of terrible cinema!
Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Beware of the doll
Okay, I have heard about this film over and over for the past twenty or so years. In all that time, I've never gotten the opportunity to see it. Recently, I found it on DVD. Does it live up to its rep? Yes and no. The no part comes from the first two stories. The first of these (all three stories feature Karen Black in a different main role) has Black as a college teacher who is victimized by a student. It's relatively entertaining, but has one of those out-of-left field twists, which is annoying because it involves a supernatural element that everything preceding it never hinted at. The second story is the real loser; again featuring Black as two sisters, one mousy and the other beautiful, who do not get along to say the least. The story's twist is embarrassingly transparent right from the get-go. The third story is the reason that this TV movie is still remembered. This time, she stars as a woman who lives alone in a high-rise apartment building and is terrorized by something called a "Zuni fetish warrior doll". I'm not sure what that means, but it's hard to imagine anyone having a fetish for anything this ugly. The design of the creature and the weird noise it makes scampering after Black really make this mini-movie memorable. The special effects are pretty lame, mostly appearing to consist of someone moving the doll just under the camera frame while its arms and mouth are moved mechanically. But the wonderful Black sells it with a performance of unbridled fear. I didn't actually find this all that scary, just highly entertaining and occasionally really funny. All-in-all, a blast (just skip the first two stories).
Someone's Watching Me! (1978)
Very interesting early Carpenter
I have been a huge fan of EARLY John Carpenter ever since I was a kid. From the absolute awesomeness of Halloween, the grungy thrills of Assault on Precinct 13, the intense paranoia and pessimism of The Thing to the sheer junk heaven of Big Trouble in Little China, his early films are sheer cinema bliss. So when I recently saw that Someone's Watching Me, a TV movie he made right before Halloween, had been finally released on DVD a couple of years ago, I raced out to get it. The film stars Lauren Hutton as a young woman who moves to Los Angeles and finds a job at a local TV station. She moves into a high-end, high-rise apartment building that faces another high-rise. Soon after moving in she is stalked by someone in the other apartment building, although she is initially unaware that anything is amiss. Alright, I admit that this story outline makes this sound like a lame direct-to-DVD potboiler, but the fun in the film comes from its less predictable, even bizarre elements. First off, Hutton's character is really unlike any other main character I've seen; a real goofball, she happily chatters away to herself walking down the halls of her apartment building and makes jokes that other characters don't get or that cause them to squirm. The strange way in which she is stalked, which involves a series of gifts sent by a fictional travel agency asking her to guess the destination of her prize trip so that she can win it, also adds to its unpredictability. I also adore the scene where Hutton, sitting by herself in her car, is approached by a man who leans in and says "It's a hell of a life, isn't it?" then stumbles away, never to be seen again. Sadly the plausibility starts to take a steep dive in the final scenes as the inevitable confrontation is nothing you haven't seen a million times in many other movies. Still, I found the movie highly entertaining (enough that I watched it a second time the next night, something I never do).
Deadly Friend (1986)
Wow does this suck
I had seen this when I was a pretty undiscriminating kid on TV a couple of times. I remember thinking it was just so-so. Seeing it now, I can't get over how horribly misconceived it is, from its cheesy "grabber" of an opening, its lame title, and its completely nonsensical surprise ending. The film stars Matthew Laborteaux as a young teen who moves into a new neighborhood with his mom and robot friend and meets the young Kristy Swanson, a pretty girl who lives with her physically abusive father. The opening scenes of this are a mess-mostly it seems as though we are asked to laugh along with the antics of the unbearably cute robot, then he'll do something menacing, and then it's back to more goofball "humorous" scenes. Then the robot is "killed" and coincidentally so is Swanson. Matthew puts a microchip from the robot in Swanson's head and voila! she's alive again, but now moving like a robot and in a murderous, vengeful state of mind. The only real reason to see this is the first (and presumably only) decapitation-by-basketball scene in cinema history. I also have to admit to being slightly touched by the (admittedly silly) theme of Swanson regaining her humanity gradually, but this is eventually completely jettisoned for the awesomely ludicrous "shock" ending.