Finally watched Prisoners of the Ghostland!
(★★★½)
And it was an odd and enjoyable little number.
Over in Samurai Town, their creepy evil leader, The Governor, has lost his “granddaughter” as she seems to have headed off down the road to the Ghostlands. Even though it seems to be assumed that no one comes back from the Ghostlands, the Gov happens to have an incarcerated criminal who he can lock into a bomb laden suit and send in to the Ghostlands to retrieve her… So he does.
The most interesting part of the movie is the set of Samurai Town, and wondering what Samurai Town is… Is it an example of what their vaguely post-apocalyptic society has become? Is it an amusement park attraction? A colorful trafficking destination for enslaved woman? It s a little unclear as it seems to consist of just about about a single street. And oddly, though it has a distinctly Edo-era feel about it, with painted ladies and samurai, it is also merged with the Wild West and every adult seems to be either sword/gun toting thug, or a woman locked behind bars.
Which, contrasted with the Ghostlands and its weird group dance chants and mobile library room where Enoch reads Bronte to the masses, makes for a couple of odd and intriguing cultures to keep you pondering.
Kidweek brought two classics rewatches to the screen this week.
Up.
(★★★★★)
Just the best Pixar movie! And not only is it a great movie, it’s a great story with a wonderful idea! And with grumpy Ed Asner, adventure, the tepui of Venezuela (which I ave long been fascinated by), the charming Dug, and the delightful character of young Ellie, it’s a lot of fun.
The story of Ol’ Carl, finally taking that dream trip that he and his late wife had dreamed of (well, he promised and there was no backing out), Up is the story of youthful dream adventures put on hold by regular life… But was it put on hold, or just replaced by a different life adventure?
As the rest home comes calling, Carl sees the last chance for their dream appear upon the horizon, and he takes us along on this grand adventure of a lifetime!
and…
Explorers!
(★★★★)
I Don’t have much new to say about this one since my 2008 Review. But I have recently shown the kid Stand By Me, and also The Goonies at some point in the past, and he loved both of those, so he was asking about other movies in a similar vein… This is what came to mind as it’s always a favorite of mine.
Vampires
(★★½)
I kinda didn’t want that watch this but just was out of ideas at the moment and figured I’d give it a shot. I mean, John Carpenter after all…
And, well, it’s a high budget b-movie. A bunch of vampire hunters (led by James Woods) and featuring Mark Boone Junior who I always like and who dies too soon, and Daniel Baldwin (who is a Baldwin and so lasts for too long). They have ridiculously campy equipment (especially the crossbow and the custom staking stakes) and lots of terrible assholish macho dialog.
Basically they kill a bunch of junior vampires, which pisses off the big vampire which leads to him being a big party wrecker and leaving lots of violently deceased bodies. It’s generally entertaining and there are some fun effects, “drag a vampire into the sunlight and see what happens”. But Sheryl Lee and her changing, um, situations, are probably the high point. Plus it has an interesting origin story for vampirism.
Space Truckers
(★★★½)
I knew nothing about this, but I sought it out because I am such a big fan of Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator and From Beyond movies, I was curious what path he took later. And, wow.
The story of an independent space trucker, in an era when most have gone corporate, whose independent attitude costs him the payment for a load of square pigs. He needs to go to the mysterious Mr Zesty to find a load. And oh, what a load it is! Well, that’s unknown… It’s bound for Earth and it says Sex Dolls but is very mysterious and oddly high security for such cargo.
This silly and raucous trucking adventure features lots of zero-g antics, space ship scenes, and pirates!
And it’s worth watching for the square pigs and the fabulous costumes, and you also you get to see Charles dance, Dennis Hopper, Debi Mazer, and George Wendt!
I also watched
Manhunter
(★★★½)
Much different… But I thought that this was pretty good… Except for the lead. I didn’t think he was up to par in his acting, and the character itself was obnoxious. Aside from that, the movie was good. As a long time fan of Silence of the Lambs, it was interesting to see an earlier representation of Lector. I liked the story and, even though I didn’t like the lead, I did appreciate his deciphering of the clues.
Most of all I enjoyed Tom Noonan and Dennis Farina’s roles.
Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteur aka Signals: A Space Adventure
(★★★½)
When the ship Laika finally hears signals that they take to be signs of intelligent life, they get quite excited! But are very soon thereafter destroyed but asteroids…
Another ship investigates and this begins a strange combination of elements… Lots of outer space footage of ships and space stations, reminiscent of some of 2001, but lots of it! Nice internal space ship scenes, most of which are pretty slow and action less, but still engaging.
In the midst of all this slow moving space drama, there are lighthearted scenes of people that seem a bit incongruous with the rest: people playing around at the beach, lots of slow moving scenes of people in zero-g, and even a musical bit of people maneuvering around in zero g. And just some odd music in general.
So it’s a bit odd, but I quite liked it. The sets and ships are pretty neat, the slow moving and meandering story was engaging enough, and it had a nice feel to it.
Clue
(★★★★★)
Confession… I love this movie… Ever since it came out it has been an easily rewatched favorite.
The story of a bunch of blackmail victims who all get mysterious, and anonymous, letters inviting them to a mansion to get some resolution to their problems. There they are greeted by Wadsworth the butler (one of the great Tim Curry performances) who sets them up for secrets being exposed, against a backdrop of confusion, running around, mass mayhem, and many murders!
I love all the actors (though, especially, Madeline Kahn, Christopher Lloyd, and Tim Curry), all the characters (though Colonel Mustard was who I liked to play as when I was a kid, Miss Scarlet is my favorite character in the film), the house, the crazy setups and plot twists, the confusion, the wonderfully quotable dialogue, and the surprising (well, surprising back in the 80’s when I first saw ti) appearances of Lee Ving and Jane Wiedlin!
It is just a super fun, and fast paced, romp around the house filled with murders and scandalous dialogue from a group of strangers who are trying to work together, but don’t trust each other at all.
Just a perfect, fun, and exciting favorite film that I never tire of no matter how many times I see it.
You’ll Never Find Me
(★★½)
I really liked this right away! Great setup of a quiet, and a bit off seeming, fellow who has a strange visitor at his out of the way home, a young woman banging on his door at 2am with no shoes and a continually changing story. Tense and engrossing, slow moving but never boring, and at times it really leaves you wondering what is really up with either one of them! Four stars! Easily rewatchable!
But then the final part of the movie happens. Totally changes direction and loses me right off the bat and just doesn’t improve. I guess I’ll bring it down to three stars for that… But not even sure about that because I’m so disappointed about a movie that really had me digging it for an hour, and then totally just didn’t anymore. And no interest in seeing it again.
Dracula in Istanbul
(★★★)
Someone far too young (and/or unfamiliar with English) is writing these terrible subtitles. Not only are they very sparse, sometimes getting just a few words after a couple of sentences of dialog, but when Dracula asked the Harker character to write letters home, he says “therefore write three emails now and get prepared”.
But that was the InternetArchive version I started with… So I went to YouTube instead and found a better version. Well, the same “washed out old video tape”-looking Sinema Turk video, but with much much better subtitles.
That said, considering that it clearly takes place in 1950’s Istanbul (I mean Guzin, the wife of Azmi, (aka Mina, the fiancee of Harker) is a showgirl!) it’s actually a pretty accurate version of the Stoker story. In addition to liking it for the updated, but still pretty true, version of the story, I also appreciate that they do the searching of houses for Dracula’s boxes of dirt part, as that seems left out from many renditions. One clearly odd angle is that the backstory generally involves conflict between the Romanians and the Turks, but this Dracula is Turkish!
Though I appreciate the closeness to the Stoker story, my favorite part of the movie isn’t from the book, it’s when Dracula approaches Guzin at the theater. He has some interesting dialogue there and then having her dance for him was an unexpected new bit.
As far as I am aware, this is the first film version of Dracula since the original English/Spanish versions of 1931, so that’s pretty impressive, predating Hammer by five years. All in all, a decent version and if it’s even possible, it would be nice to see a cleaned up restoration of this.
Stopmotion
(★★★½)
Well, this was creepy. The story of Ella, the daughter of a commanding woman who is a stop-motion craftsperson of some renown. But her mother’s arthritis is preventing her from finishing her last film and Ella is made to do the work under her mother’s very close eye… I do appreciate stop-motion and it was nice to see that the stop-motion used in this didn’t come across as hokey or silly… Just creepy…
But as Ella, when out from under her mother’s thumb, becomes driven to create a film of her own, it becomes a tense trip downwards into Ella’s mind and obsession. And things go, literally, nowhere good. And I don’t just mean the “neighbor” girl who is basically unbearably irritating from her first scene onwards.
Some super tense and unsettling music, disturbing stop-motion antics, hallucinations, and non-hallucination events that go where I certainly wasn’t expecting… It definitely held my interest and attention (except for the leg scene, I couldn’t watch that).
Passengers
(★★★½)
Okay, maybe it’s cheesy and suffers from too much “pulled through at the last second” action-movie shtick, not just timing-wise, but also figuring out how to do ridiculous engineering at the last second… And Lawrence Fishburne’s character arc was maybe just a bit too convenient (unfortunately for him), and maybe Jim’s selfish dick-move to get himself some company was just a bit to unbelievable for anyone to actually do (I guess Jennifer Lawrence was just too irresistible), and maybe he shouldn’t have been able to come back from such a selfish maneuver. And maybe The Shining “homage” of Arthur was a bit too much, especially with being not nearly as good as in The Shining (though I did like it and find it charming enough)…
True true. But I like the epicness of the spaceship, and the nice scenes of outer space, and wandering around basically by yourself/yourselves on a giant empty ship hurtling through space does have a sufficiently pleasant ring to it that it’s fun to watch some people do it.
All in all, I thought it was nice to look at and fun to watch.
Santet
(★★★)
Clever! If you are tired of your burdensome spouse, and covet the spouse of the local priest… Then just murder your spouse and then blame their death on the priest so that he gets killed as well! That way, you are free to pursue your passions, and the beautiful widow is available for pursuit, whether she likes it or not…
But the widow may not come along easily, and the crocodile queen of black magic may have some plans for vengeance!
bad man Bisman
So yes, “terrible in every way” thugboss/trafficker/murderer Bisman sets a whole load of crap off by killing his wife and going after Katemi, the cleric’s wife, and we end up in a flurry of poisoning, and black magic! including sores, erupting boils, snakes, snakes erupting from boils, and one very misplaced seeming musical number.
snakelegs!
For Katemi to get the vengeanceinal power of Black Magic, she must go through all sorts of things that, I’m pretty sure, she never thought she would do…
queen of black magic
But the Queen of Black Magic is intent on it! And, really, who can say no to her?
And rewatched Longlegs!
Another in the slew of great “new Nick Cage” movies, Longlegs (★★★★) was even better the second time around!
I think that, even though I enjoyed this a lot the first time around, I did feel a bit of “what the heck is going on” through much of it. This time, I knew what was going on, so I was able to do more watching and less figuring…
I love Cage in this, he is just so creepy. I can see that some folks may find his character to be a bit too overdone, but I liked it. A lot of the movie is kind of a slow moving and quiet police procedural kinda thing, which I also like, and the combination of quiet and slow-moving FBI stuff, with then creepy scenes popping in, and that totally unnerving score, really works for me.
Saturn 3
(★★★½)
I wasn’t sure about this but I’ve been intrigued by the poster for it since it came out, so I figured I’d give it a shot.
First off, kudos to it for being a 1980 sci-fi movie that doesn’t seem to be an attempt to cash in on Star Wars or Alien. It’s got it’s own thing going on here, reminding me more of the early 70’s Sci-fi like Silent Running rather than the far too oft copied classics of the later 70’s.
And for as low budget as it is (sometimes looking shockingly so), it ends up having some thoughtful sets and shots that make it more interesting than expected. The base is actually pretty cool. Dark but also colorful and it looks like a lot of work went into the sets (at least once you get to Saturn 3, the sets on earth are pretty bad).
A mysterious pilot murders another pilot and takes a canister and then rushes off to the other pilot’s ship, being readied for take-off! Clearly he wanted to be picked to go to Saturn 3! But we don’t get to see who this mysterious malefactor is! Until the Captain arrives at Saturn 3 with his canister, he is met by the two staff of the station and they head in…
going in…
Once they dis-helm, what three people do we have in front of us? Why, none other than Kirk Douglas, Farah Fawcett, and Harvey Keitel?? Wtf? How did this happen? But a nice surprise as Keitel, in his short pony tale and leather pants, looks like a sexy, young, euro-vampire (and has a technocrat attitude to match).
The captain claims here’s there to help out the station, but in addition to his mysterious canister that he won’t let them touch or talk about, he has also brought along a new robot (the the Demigod series… Uh oh)! And then he gets the hots for Farah! And utters some classy lines: “Your body is very beautiful, I’d like to use it”.
Anyway, this was much much better and entertaining than I was expecting!
Madman
(★★★)
From Mark comes one of those “telling scary stories to campers around the campfire, as a warning” movies. But this seems to have a bit more going for it. This story is of course about Madman Marz, who lived in the abandoned farmhouse near the camp. The farmhouse in which he killed his family years ago. He was strung up for it, but his body was gone when they came through cut him down. Supposedly, if you say his name above a whisper, he’ll come for you!
you were supposed to watch out!
A pretty standard concept, but it has a different feel than many of these.
The score isn’t bad though there are some pretty bad songs that turn up (turns out that the actor who plays the unfortunately nicknamed “TP” is the same person who sings in these songs) and just about the cheesiest hot tub romance scene imaginable. Not a good movie, but I found it rather likeable due to it having a different feel to it than many of these old “campground slashers”.