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Bones and All (2022)
They're young, they're in love, they eat people
Bones and All has an intriguing-and impossible-title. Just imagine eating a whole person! It is being lauded as a compelling love story, yet it is quite amoral and disturbing. We are supposed to root for the joyless main characters because they are beautiful to look at, yet their compulsion to eat people is aberrant and insane. Unlike the much criticized (because it is based on a real cannibal?) Dahmer: Monster, the victims and the reactions of THEIR loved ones in this movie are ignored. This film does not concern itself with the affect on the girl whose finger is eaten, the lack of empathy for a dying woman who is suffering, so she can just die already and be eaten, or the actual killing a young man to feed. The only twinge of conscience of Lee (Timothée Chalamet) occurs when he later learns his assumed-gay victim (Jake Horowitz) in a homoerotic murder scene has a wife and daughter, as if just killing a gay man would be more acceptable. Similar viewer questions arise about such practical matters as why do they eat flesh raw? What is the nutritional value of people? Both Lee and Maren (Taylor Russell) are slim, Chalamet is almost frighteningly skinny, so perhaps human flesh is low calorie. On the other hand, Mark Rylance's character does not seem to limit himself to devouring people: with his over-the-top acting he seems to be quite busy eating the scenery, practically the whole screen. Admittedly Ms. Russell has a lovely screen persona and Chalamet is a fascinating actor. Just watch his facial expressions while merely listening to his friend's dialogue. There is something always happening with his eyes and mouth. Other well-known performers, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Chloë Sevigny, and Jessica Harper are either barely recognizable or have little to do. The do-it-yourself ending is so ambiguous, you will probably have to research what actually happens.
Is this film worth watching? Yes. Is it worth swooning over? No.
Beware: Children at Play (1989)
amateur hour and a half
Children in your local playground doing make-believe roll-playing are more convincing than the kids and even most of the adults here. Poorly written, laughably directed, amateurishy blocked with an end massacre that is unintentionally hilarious in how perfunctorily it is presented. The leader of the stolen kids has scenes of violence and sex that are embarrassing. Many of the freshly killed seem to forget to stop breathing. The sheer inauthenticity of thedialogue is disconcerting. Almost every line spoken is exposition. Backwoods types sound like they are from Brooklyn. There is no dramatic impact. Children disappear and nothing much is done to find them. The same kids come back looking for pies or people to eat and no one seems to be relieved or scared or whatever a real reaction might be.
If you can tolerate watching the whole mess, you will regret wasting 90 minutes of your life on this.
La casa 3 (1988)
"I-did-not-hit-her-I-did-not-oh-hi-Mark"
For those of us who get some sort of perverse enjoyment from watching truly terrible horror movies, this one is for you. The story of 1988's GhostHouse is barely comprehensible, but the real pleasures come from the laughable effects and high kill-count, the inflectionless line deliveries-think of the "I-did-not-hit-her-I-did-not-oh-hi-Mark" style of acting. You may not have seen so many fake cobwebs since the Halloween pop-up stores closed for the season, and you may scratch your head wondering why the young cast, already terrorized by a crazy guy with an ax and ghosts of various sizes and shapes keep deciding to go back into the large old house that any normal person would quickly run away from. Apropos of nothing, there is also a ghost Doberman Pincher with the whitest teeth ever seen on a canine.
Just for the Hell of It (1968)
Too bad there isn't a minus stars rating! Minus 10!
This is such a piece of crap from its apparent dollar store budget which shows in the sets, props, "acting" (if that's what you could call it), mismatched color, bad lighting and on and on. If you are curous, just watch any 3 minutes and that is how the entire inept film is. Is it an attempt at humor--or further ineptitude--that the juvenile delinquents spend as much time tearing up a woman's magazine pages as they do assaulting a couple and smashing an already broken boat. Did they drown the supposedly unconscious but still blinking victim or did the director just forget to show him again? It is surprising that Mr. Lewis even bothered to give it a title.
The Everglades Killings (2019)
Zero
Amateur hour all the way with poor words (hardly worth calling "dialog" or "script") said by ordinary people (not to be confused with "actors") in a non-sensical dead teenager or in this case dead spring-breaker thing (not exactly to be called a "movie"). Unless you are addicted to having to peer at naked breasts, do not waste your time. The name of this review is the rating: zero.
The Child (1977)
Don't Waste Your Eyeballs
One of the worst movies in the history of movies with possibly the most laughably bad acting ever, the fakest red paint blood, monsters that seem to be wrapped in paper mache, and annoyingly cacophonous noise as a background score. Too bad there is not the option to give this mess a minus score. It is strictly for those who must see every bad movie before they die. For the rest of us, life is too short to waste 82 minutes of it.
Ratched (2020)
Sight and Sound
There is something quite special about Ratched. As soon as the pilot episode starts audiences are in for an array of sights and sounds that evoke many other classic films. Of course, there are allusions to its source material
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. After all this series is all about Nurse Ratched's backstory, so we will see a few familiar moments showing euthanasia and lobotomies. But far more obvious are references to a host of other films of horror and suspense:
Here is Bernard Herrmann's Cape Fear music, Hannibal Lechter's face mask, Brian De Palma split screens, a gorgeous main setting as in The Shining, and several Alfred Hitchcock references like Vertigo's frequent use of the color green, and Psycho's motel setting and background music (sampling Herrman's most famous score). Ratched's cinematography is a visual delight. Its costumes and car colors pop.
The storyline is a convoluted mystery of motives and murders. As season one progresses we learn about inscrutable Mildred Ratched's (Sarah Paulson) plan to save her sexy serial killer brother Edmund (Finn Wittrock) by insinuating herself into a job to help him escape capital punishment and watch her manipulate the psychiatric hospital's head doctor (Jon Jon Briones) and outsmart the head nurse (Judy Davis) to achieve her goals. There are many other assorted quirky characters in the story, including the ravishingly beautiful Sharon Stone, burn victim Charlie Carver, oddball Amanda Plummer. Over all the acting in this series in excellent, with particularly fine work by Paulson, Wittrock, Davis, and Briones. For a series to feature so many disturbing situations and such serious subjects as the mental health, the death penalty, and gender discrimination -and it is, remember, about a diabolical woman and her murderous brother-the episodes are thoroughly entertaining, suspenseful, and funny. Producer Ryan Murphy has put together a very special series indeed.
The Grandmother (1970)
WTF
Any single second of this film's cinematography is immediately recognizable as the work of the creative mind of David Lynch.
It is like watching a nightmare: odd, disturbing, pointless. It is ostensibly about an abused child who grows a grandmother so he can have a comforting
presence in his dysfunctional family. The entire 33 minutes is an exercise in visual and aural ugliness. Everyone is in white makeup; the boy is formally dressed resembling Emcee in Cabaret. When the family sits down to eat, plastic bags of bread are strewn on the table, an unlit electric lamp takes up most of the tablespace (candles may have looked too pretty). Any furniture visible in the stark high contrast cinematography is thrift-store trash.
Although it has sound, it is mostly atonal noise and shrieks. Although it is a live-action film, there is animation (more ugliness); although it is in black and white, there are colors, the most pronounced being dark yellow urine stains. (This poor kid must need a urologist.) Urine in this movie is about as profuse as blood is in The Shining.
The grandmother who grows quickly out of a bulb, smiles sometimes, but since that is about it for her as a contrast to the shouting monosyllabic parents, she isn't that much of a comfort. She mostly lies in her bed of dirt--but isn't that the same bed the boy wets all the time? Oh, well, dreams don't have to make sense.
The surreal look is peppered with stop-motion cinematography, so Lynchian. But it is only "enjoyable" as an example of his style. This is to be seen by film-students, not audiences seeking escapism. The reaction is meant to be less "Hooray for Hollywood" and more "WTF!"
Blonde (2001)
a great tribute by an exceptional performance
This TV production follows much of the plot of Joyce Carol Oates' novel tracing the life of Marilyn Monroe.
There are many familiar names in the cast but the entire film is dominated by Poppy Montgomery's extraordinary performance
as one of the most famous icons of the 20th Century. There have been so many actresses over the decades who have dressed up as MM to either seriously portray her or just to imitate her, but none have ever so captured the sadness behind the glamour, the woman who gave so much pleasure to millions but who remained used and abused, troubled and lonely. There are moments where the resemblance between Montgomery and Monroe is uncanny, aided by spot-on makeup and costuming: the small glances, the visual references to famous still photos, more so than recreations of well-known movie scenes. Watching her performance is like being allowed into the private thoughts and intimate movements of someone we loved from afar. It is almost a privilege to see what Poppy Montgomery has brought to her performance. Marilyn Monroe was an intelligent, sensitive woman who sought self-improvement in her life and in her art, yet it was not rewarded in her lifetime. That Miss Montgomery's transcendent acting did not bring her awards and fame is one of those unfair, inexplicable things that somehow mirrors what the woman she pays tribute to also experienced. Thank you, Poppy Montgomery.
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
Awesome, moving, memorable
Batman vs. Superman not only lives up to all the hype, it is an extraordinary experience. This sequel to Man of Steel builds on the events of that movie and takes the action about a year and a half later. By now Lois and Clark are lovers, Bruce Wayne is furious at the vast destruction of so much of Metropolis, and Lex Luthor, Jr. is smarmy and despicable. Cavill is so imposing and magnificent looking, it is hard to imagine anyone else could be called Superman than he. Affleck creates an aging, brooding Dark Knight. And Wonder Woman's feats of strength are simply thrilling. There even seem to be a few homages to Superman: the Movie and Superman Returns. Zack Snyder films the face-off between our two iconic heroes with breathtaking visual flair, capturing and surpassing the look of the comic books, with the bonus of an engrossing script that references Lewis Carroll, Vladimir Nabokov, and The Brady Bunch. The narrative even before the movie opened was that critics would denigrate this exceptional film. Go see for yourself. It is something else!
Welcome to Woop Woop (1997)
Unpredictable, sexy, and unique. A hidden gem!
Welcome to Woop Woop is a unique comedy, so refreshingly different when the typical film comedy nowadays is so vulgar and predictable. This film is by no means wholesome, as it is sexy as all get out. There are many bizarre characters and plot twists mostly set in a small isolated town in Australia. Its attributes include a frankly remarkable use of Rogers and Hammerstein music as its background score: the songs are remade, very hip yet respectful to their source. If this movie is similar to anything, perhaps it is the musical Li'l Abner since there is a sexy blonde (a very appealing Susie Porter, unknown to American audiences) a handsome, dark-haired man (Jonathon Schaech in a vastly entertaining performance that should have made him a big star. He is extraordinarily good-looking and his comedic delivery is quite good. Think of a male supermodel with a great sense of humor) as well as oddly raggedy dressed townsfolk with weird Dogpatch-like hairstyles. Rod Taylor is both scary and touching as the tyrannical leader and there are small roles placed by Miss Edna's Barry Humphries and a young, muscular bodybuilder , Con Demetriou, who was briefly Princess Di's personal trainer, and an almost unrecognizable Rachel Griffiths. There is also a cameo by Gilligan's Island's Tina Louise. This movie is a little gem and should be seen for a special, funny, weirdly good time.
Superman Returns (2006)
Bryan Singer Deserves an Oscar
Bryan Singer's Superman Returns is a masterful restarting of the Superman franchise. While advancing the characters in surprising ways, particularly the relationship between Superman and Lois Lane, the film pays respectful homage to the 1978 classic Superman: the Movie. Think of everything you liked about Richard Donner's film: the quotable script, the mix of humor and spectacle, the antagonistic relationship between hero and villain, then amp it up. Instead of one chunk of Kryptonite there is an island of it; instead of a glance of Noel Neill there is an important scene with her, instead of a near fatal accident/rescue with a helicopter, there is an entire jetliner at risk, etc.
Brandon Routh makes a spectacular film debut as the most super-powered yet most poignant Superman ever. Routh's interpretation of the Man of Steel and Clark Kent are wonderfully similar in earnestness to Christopher's Reeve's, yet there is a subtlety in Routh's depiction of the very human, charming Clark Kent that is humorous without being cartoony. The special effects are eye-popping and thrilling. The brutal treatment of Superman by Kevin Spacey's awesomely evil Lex Luthor is nearly terrifying. Superman's unbelievable feats of strength are the stuff of new iconographic imagery. The memorable script by Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris is well written and respectful with no cringe-inducing silliness. John Ottman's symphonic score remaking John Williams' music from the '70s is inspiring. New characters like Lois's child Jason and her fiancé Richard White are sensitively played by Tristan Lake Leabu and James Marsden; Parker Posey is highly amusing as Kitty, and Kate Bosworth's Lois has many of the film's best scenes. With stunning art direction and HD cinematography this a terrific and satisfying movie. Superman's cape rippling in the wind is a thing of beauty and so is this movie. Bryan Singer should get an Oscar nomination and he and Brandon Routh should be proud.