Crumb - 1994 - USA

Crumb - 1994 - 7/10

 
First rate profile of Robert Crumb, cartoonist, historian.
From 1960’s San Francisco (Fritz The Cat, Big Brother’s “Cheap Thrills”) to his more personal comics after he relocated to France.  
Not only Robert, but his family:  Mom, and brothers Charles and Maxon.  Talented, but dysfunctional.
Topics range from childhood, to obsessions, to scathing observations.
An ultimate outsider, who became successful.
Essential, especially for artists who are told they are “too weird.”

Expensive Women - 1931 - USA

Expensive Women - 1931 - 6/10

 
Early Pre-Code melodrama opens with woman in lingerie chatting with friend in bathtub.
Plot meanders into bored rich types, quite the thing in the Great Depression, who drink and party all day.
Heiress Dolores Costello meets composer William Warren and they seem a good fit,

 
Until she meets his younger friend, a dashing but weak willed gentleman.
Affairs, guilt, oh-so-adult agreements while everyone drinks and dances and laughs.
With something like this I usually end up looking at gowns and set-design.
Interiors all seem to be so white back then.
Photography is period “silver screen” though all shots of Costello and her campy friend (Polly Walters) soft focus.
One of the party goers resembles Wini Shaw (“Lullaby Of Broadway") though I could find no confirmation of such.

The Girl Cut In Two - 2007 - France

The Girl Cut In Two - 2007 - 6/10
AKA - La Fille Coupée en Deux

 
Girl in question is local weathergirl chased by an aged roué and a young wastrel.
In the best ménage à trois traditions, the female attempts to navigate both males.
The provincial town is rather small, however.
The older man, a writer, frequents a sybaritic den with other dissolutes.
The younger man is spoiled, insecure, prone to violence.
Talky (as expected), laced with bedroom politics and petty rivalries.

Note - I braced myself for another French talk-o-drama.
During opening credits, I announced aloud,
“Look, Mathilda May!”
“Who’s that?”  asked one of the girls.
“Brilliant thespian,”  I said.  “She starred in the classic Lifeforce.”
“Oh?  Any good?”
“Unforgettable.”

Lipstick - 1976 - USA

Lipstick - 1976 - 6/10

 
I remember watching this when it came out, disappointed that it was glossy exploitation.
Why rewatch decades later?  IQ of Cheez Whiz, I suppose.
Fashion model catches the eye of her young sister’s music teacher.
Relationship quickly plunges down, “I thought her no meant yes,” territory.
Meaning forced sex and subsequent drama.
Then, as now, it can be maddeningly difficult for females to receive a fair judgment.
Ending(s) remain a one-two hop of implausible contrivances for me.
Breakout role, hoped for by Margaux Hemingway, boosted younger sister Mariel instead.

A Wicked Woman - 1958 - Japan

A Wicked Woman - 1958 - 6/10
AKA - Dokufu Takahashi Oden  /  Poisonous Woman / 高橋 お伝

 
Busy account of very lively girl, Oden.
After shoplifting a jewelry store, she is “apprehended” by a young policeman.
She begs him to let her rest at her home before going to the station.
At home, she enfolds him with the sticky petals and seduces him.
An official perceives her character and forces her into becoming both mistress and procurer for his slave trade.
Oh yes, she also has two husbands tucked away.
All in the first 30 minutes!  Long takes make film feel slow at times, though.
Based - believe it or not - on a true individual.

The Best Intentions - 1992 - Sweden

The Best Intentions - 1992 - 7/10
AKA - Den Goda Viljan

 
Bergman’s story about his parents, written a decade after a premature retirement.
(Turns out he had more fuel in the tank.)
A young seminary pupil falls in love with the rich daughter.
Marriage, and then he is assigned to a parish in northern oblivion.
Gorgeous looking film, cautionary in several ways.
Set in 1909, the romantic idealism of one character and the humorless discipline of the other may not resonate with many (though I know at least three couples in precisely this relationship).

The Big Hit - 2020 - France

The Big Hit - 2020 - 7/10
AKA - Un Triomphe

 
They’re not exactly the ordinary troupe of actors.
Murderers, armed robbers, drug dealers.
Nevertheless, one works with the talent at hand.
Including convicts inside the penitentiary.
Then the director, the outsider, decides they can handle a real play.
Something along the lines of, say, “Waiting For Godot.”
Patience, frustration, deprivations, and the absurdness of life.
Sharp edged comedy with enough teeth to offset happy-days pandering.

Lavalantula - 2015 - USA

Lavalantula - 2015 - 4/10

 
Another gas vent that puts the mindless into entertainment.
This is a blatant riff or rip of the Sharknado franchise, even down to a “Finn" cameo.
Volcanoes erupt in Los Angeles and sheep-sized tarantulas scurry out.
These bugs attack and belch fire.  Roasted human is tastier, one gathers.
Story is of a family trying to  rescue scattered members.
The same template used in every single Sharknado sequel.
Derivative, mindlessly amusing, amateurish special effects - apparently intentional.
Lowest common denominator expectations apply as hipsters make crap for dumb customers.
Mind you, I did go “Whee!” when I found this.
Beware, there is a sequel.

The Kiss Of Death - 1973 - Hong Kong

The Kiss Of Death - 1973 - 6/10
AKA - Du Nu  //  毒女

 
After hours, a young mill worker is attacked and gang banged by five rogues.
Worse, at least one of them transmitted the deadly Vietnam Rose venereal disease.
She quits the textile mill, begins hostessing at a noisy club run by – whoa – Lo Lieh.
Who, in no time flat, teaches her kung fu, whereupon she starts hunting her assaulters.
Sleazy Cat III exploitation from the Shaw Brothers has good moments and oddball diversions.
For example, during club sequences I heard borrowed riffs “25 or 6 to 4” (Chicago) as well as “The Red And The Black” (Blue Öyster Cult).  Distracting enough that I kept going, “What is this?  I know this.”

Scream And Scream Again - 1970 - UK

Scream And Scream Again - 1970 - 6/10

Man jogging in busy downtown London collapses from an obvious heart attack.
When he wakes up, he’s missing a leg!
Later on, he wakes up with another missing leg!

 
OK, this film is about harvesting.
No, no, no.  Next scene is in a fascist military regime.  Spies and conspiracies.

 
Quick shift back to London where police are chasing after a brutal killer who’s targeting women.
Couple other threads stack this entertaining, if bewildering, horror thriller.
Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing (don’t blink) headline a strong cast.
There is way too much going on.  Defenders say filmmakers decided viewers were smart enough to connect the storylines.  It seems a pieced together job, nonetheless.
The pace is rarely dull, there is nudity, chases, bloody killings, and enough plot jumps to keep your head spinning.
Not a great horror film by a longshot, but contains memorable scenes.
The jogger/patient is eerily unsettling.

To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore - 2007 - USA

To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore - 2007 - 7/10

 
“As long as there is death, there is hope.”
Stand up comedian, performance artist, revival preacher, ruined aristocrat, prophet, madman.
Theodore Gottlieb – Brother Theodore.
“It’s best not to be born at all.”
A biography told in fragments, disjointed, with unnamed voiceovers (MAJOR omission there).
Part documentary, part experimental theatre, part puppet play.
“We are all puppets in the hands of an insane puppeteer.”
Flawed, as this seems to spotlight the aesthete of the man, and not the man himself.
Arguably the last Weimar entertainer, and brother in arms with Emil Cioran.

"What this country needs is a dictator. I feel the time is right, and the place congenial. I will be strict but just. Heads will roll, and corpses will swing from every lamppost... Evil that succeeds is good. The coup is well in preparation."

The Internet’s Own Boy - 2014 - USA

Internet’s Own Boy - 2014 - 7/10

 
Poignant documentary of Aaron Swartz, prodigy and Internet activist.
Swartz was part of the team who developed RSS web feed code (he was 14 at the time) and was instrumental in developing CC (creative commons copyright).
He landed in prosectorial crosshairs after uploading public information and knowledge that private corporations were charging for.
Perhaps his shining moment was rousing public opinion against the SOPA bill which was considered a done-deal.
Everyone who uses the Internet is indebted to him.
Film very good about showing what Swartz did, and one got a good feel for his personality.
Narrative brutally honest about Federal agents intimidating and coercing Swartz’s  friends during interrogations.
No punches pulled when showing overzealous prosecutor, as well as dubious souls who have never been prosecuted (big bankers, a couple of familiar software guys), but stops short of highlighting MIT involvement and lack of intervention.  Swartz might well be alive today had MIT acted better.
Very well done.  Inspiring.  Sad.

Curse Of The Crimson Altar - 1968 - UK

Curse Of The Crimson Altar - 1968 - 5/10

After his brother goes missing, Robert sets off in search of him, and answers.
This takes him back to the family beginnings, and during the annual witch burning reenactments.
Robert, in a word, is a dunce, but he plugs along.
Superb sets, groovy 60’s goings on, and an unbeatable cast.
What could go wrong?

 
Well, the plot is inept.  Worse, Robert the antique dealer, proves an utter boor.
He lacks social graces, his intelligence is lower than a fallen palm tree, and he imposes.
So much promise here, ruined by an extremely poor script.

The Bandit - 1946 - Italy

The Bandit - 1946 - 6/10
AKA - Il Bandito

 
Ernesto, returning home at the end of World War II finds his home of Torino in ruins.
His mother is dead, sister missing.  Jobs are scarce, and housing … good luck.
First act of is a grim Noir, subgenre Rubble Noir.
The narrative swerves into glossy, nightclub gangster mode, barely delving into that world.
Final act shifts back into Noir, with a fatalistic, if puzzling conclusion
Amedeo Nazzari, as Ernesto, could have played Errol Flynn in a biopic (though Flynn was very much alive and active at this time).

Black Belt Jones - 1974 - USA

Black Belt Jones - 1974 - 6/10

 
Lightweight (white-weight) Blaxploitation film.
Mafia gets winds of a future downtown development (back in the day, the term was Urban Renewal).
Mob buys properties, but one hold out is Pop’s Karate School.
The Feds have been after the mob for some time, and their finest agent, a buffed Jim Kelly, also happens to be the preeminent alumni of the school.  How Kelly fit into his way-cool Jensen is beyond me,
Most of the fight sequences are well done.  Kelly was a martial arts expert.
Too many juvenile scenes for my liking, though, as well as too much comedy.
This is not Black cinema with attitude, but feels aimed at the broader audience.