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Reviews
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961)
Compelling
The science is silly, but it makes for a compelling story. The earth's rotation, let alone revolution around the sun, could not be disturbed by anything so tiny as nuclear explosions; volcanoes are far more energetic. But the notion that the actions of mankind have such tremendous effects makes for great fiction. The story certainly taps into something true about the hubris of modern the science: no doubt mankind is not wise enough to be monkeying around with the nucleus of atoms, or of cells for that matter. The politics of the film are a little too peacenic to be as serous as they could have been. And ironically the notion that humans could so easily destroy the planet is yet another form of hubris. Let the wise understand.
The Dead (1987)
Picture of a lost age
Most of the movie is an engrossing portrait of a lost world, well worth watching : A portrayal of hospitality of the old style that may no longer exist in the current world of techne-solitude. A world in which if one wanted music one had to make it rather than pushing a button, and in which people participated in communal dancing and shared meals.
Then the end collapses into Romantic claptrap. What links the two parts together ? They seem entirely at odds. Is that the point ? That the world of community based around shared values of living and art is being replaced by a world of solipsistic feelings ?
Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989)
Was this groundbreaking for its day ?
I suppose it's playing on what was for the time considered normal sentiments.
Deals with the sexualization of minors. Treats women coerced into sexual slavery with kindness. Has a surprising and interesting religious angle that might have been developed more : Christianity made children persons.
Doesn't hit the kind of people who are trying to normalize such things in the current year overtly ; but the bad guys drive Caddies, the status symbol of the day.
Knowing (2009)
Blatant evil
Give your children to Them, they will be better off.
Bunny rabbits !
Religion ? Metaphysics ? Hah ! Buncha malarky. (Obs.)
Techné will save us ! Thus can we escape death ! Embrace your transhumanist future !
Such is modern gnosticism.
Oculus (2013)
Do not try at home
Is there a clear reason the mirror became cursed ? For example, does the background story suggest that the first owner killed somebody in front of it?
At any rate, the message is clear. Do not attempt to defeat demonic powers with techne. They can use it better than you. In fact, they are even now using social media quite effectively.
Killer's Kiss (1955)
the Code
Whatever else is going on, in the end he runs out on the dame. And then she runs after him ?
I guess that explains why his boxing career is a dead-end alley.
La sirène du Mississipi (1969)
Oui et non
In part this movie seems to be Modernist Romantic claptrap : the notion that romantic love is, or should be, some essence separate from all of the material conditions of life.
But on the other hand, the notion that love is painful and difficult, and hard to learn, that rings true.
Blue Velvet (1986)
What is going on ? To what effect ?
Is sexual perversion not at the center of this movie ? Frank and Dorothy are obviously damaged, but how does the interior plot, investigating crime, relate to the enveloping plot of the love story ? Why does Sandy fall for Jeffrey ? The voyeuristic excitement of investigating a sick crime ? Any sense of masculine virtue seems to be downplayed in him ; he is driven by curiosity.
Perhaps death and love are somehow intrinsically linked. But this film suggests a twisted version of that connection. Does it not promote a kind of Freudian world-view ?
Cure (1997)
Psychological horror
The detective Takabe is suffering anguish because of his wife's mental condition: she, like (apparently) Mamiya, suffers from short-term memory loss, so he has to take care of her in addition to doing his job. Takabe complains to Mamiya that he is emotionally suppressed ; he didn't want things to turn out that way, but he was taught as an investigator never to show emotion. His revelation suggests a social critique, since Japanese society stereotypically suppresses emotions with a strict code of public respectibility.
Dr Miyajima asks Mamiya whether he has any worries. He replies, 'You're the one with worries. . . . All the things that used to be inside me, now they're all outside. So, I can see all of the things inside you, Doctor. But the inside of me is empty.' Then he convinces her to kill a man, making use of her resentment towards men who, she feels, mistreated her as a 'mere woman' studying medicine.
The hypnotic recording Takabe listens to after killing Mamiya suggests 'taking a sword in hand to heal.' Then he seems to have killed his wife, or at least imagined her death, as he had imagined her hung before. His love for her is in tension with a guilty desire to be released from the suffering he feels, which would be accomplished with her death.
At the end, Takabe is much more cheerful and energetic, and has a good appetite. Has he somehow lost his identity in some sense, committed some kind of quasi-suicide ? That is unclear. But he has become the carrier of the power to make others kill, or allow them to kill, although we don't see exactly what he does to the waitress.
Suppressed emotions are the disease, a dis-ease. The cure : releasing one's resentments on the world, the outside, and emptying oneself of the emotion-memories that accompany one's identity. The loss of self, symbolized by memory loss, relieves one of suffering.
Also, the Mesmeric technique represents the importation of Western culture, and thus also raises the broader social problem of Japanese identity in a Westernized world.
Surveillance (2008)
Stage four
Stage one, liberalism.
Stage two, realism.
Stage three, vitalism.
Stage four, destructive.
This movie depicts stage four.
Does the movie as a consequence participate in stage four? Does it increase the influence of that spiritual force? What effect does it have on the psyche?
Stephanie is the moral center. She is on to them, but she is immature, innocent, and powerless. Indeed, spared only at the whim of the dominating malevolence.
Blood Simple (1984)
Coens unleavened
The Coens in their movies present a nihilist world-view. When they make a movie using third-party source material with a theme of confronting nihilism, the results can be excellent. No Country for Old Men is the best example ; that movie, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, indicates ways that nihilism is overcome. Here, in contrast, human life is but a series of accidents, and the ends of life (in both senses) are revealed in the image of Visser dying : he looks up to see water dripping from the sink. Random nonsense.
Der Räuber (2010)
Nothing to do with what you call life
Movie about a (compulsive-disordered ?) psychopath being a psychopath. Then he dies. But not soon enough to keep the movie from dragging on for too long. That dude should have slit his throat instead of stabbing him in his precious high-capacity lung.
But if you're an existentialist-nihilist, perhaps you'll find it deep or something.
The Wild Bunch (1969)
Incoherent
Too long. By the end of the climactic, and rather silly, shoot-out, I was impatient for it to end.
The Nihilistic theme is announced during the credits with children torturing ants, reminiscent of the ants in a log scene in Farewell to Arms. Yet the movie also promotes indiscriminate Revolution. All rule is tyranny, all power is oppression, any Revolution is preferable. But if people are what the movie suggests they are, inherently cruel and violent, what good could Revolution do?
All the King's Men (1949)
Not at all like the book
Of course a movie cannot portray a great novel in all of its complexity, and one would expect a movie based on this novel to focus on the plot with the most dramatic action, the career of Willie Stark. No complaint about that.
But through the career of Stark, the book explores the relation between good and bad, and good and evil, in the world : their complex interaction in the lives of actual people and the events of public life. The movie not only over-simplifies the career of Stark into a moralistic story of a politician corrupted by power, but also twists it into the scary rise of a proto-fascist.
Gator (1976)
Two plots
Crime plot 8/10
Underbelly of organized crime in the South vs a good ole boy outlaw.
Weakness is the New York element, which adds nothing except perhaps some sort of condescension.
Romantic plot 2/10
Feminist liberationist claptrap.
One False Move (1991)
Doesnt quite hold together
Like three movies stuck together. The ruthless killers on the run. The small-town police chief confronting LA cops and killers. Those two parts could have been formed into a coherent whole.
The third story is a social melodrama about race and sexual indiscretion. Such a theme could be woven into a crime thriller, though it would be difficult, but here it's ridiculously out of place. The forshadowing is silly, when one of the LA cops asks salaciously "Exactly what is the nature of your relationship with this woman hyuck hyuck . . . ". Then the mother, who is the moral center of this sub-story and chastizes her baby-daddy for his unenlightened racial views, has been shown as a brutal killer. It just seems thrown in as a way for the movie to "make a statement" about racial politics, and ruins much of the last twenty minutes or so.
The Chase (1966)
Hate letter to small-town America
The rich are degenerate, though it seems more like 1966 swingin' California than Texas. The tycoon Val Rogers thinks he owns the law, one of a number of clichés, and his son Jake, while likeable, is as feckless as his father. The mob, represented by a carload of drunken citizens, unconvincingly gets worked up over the death of a stranger they never meet, and before they're done they display the predictable racial bigotry to remind us we're in the South (ew). Most of the townsmen stand around gawking at the morality play with blank stares. More jarring is when a mob of teenyboppers tries to burn out Bubber, but they're laughable rather than menacing; they're on a lark rather than threatening any kind of rough justice, which would at least have the virtue of being serious.
Anna Reeves is some kind of unbelievable feminist concoction. Mrs Reeves seems to have a guilty conscience over her treatment of her son, and since he refuses even to acknowledge her apparently there's some dark history there, but it's never explained. Mr Reeves is another of the male non-entities. And then there's the religious nut going around yelling how she'll pray for everybody. Wow, you really skewered religion with that one, Lillian!
Bubber is a kind of romantic outlaw hero who isn't much of a hero; he's not even Cool Hand Luke, made the following year. Hey, we all love Butch and Sundance (1969), but this ain't that. The only character with dramatic interest is Calder. If only there were a decent movie around it, the performance by Brando would be worth attention.
As he drives out of town, deserted except for the refuse littering the streets--yes, Litter! It's like, a Metaphor, see!--we can easily imagine him pulling the car over and stepping out to shake the dust off his feet. Calder or Brando? Yeah.
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Faux tragedy
Plenty of interesting elements covered by others. Ultimately it is a faux tragedy. In an actual tragedy, man faces the power and mystery of cosmic forces and is defeated. In a faux tragedy, popular around mid-century, man faces those cosmic forces that overwhelm him, and then simply asserts his triumph as man.
The Awful Truth (1937)
I'm not just an Okie from Muskogee, but nonetheless
The Hollywood/New York contempt for flyover country is impossible to take. Especially since the movie is not very good anyway.
And scenes with a dog are not funny. That's a general cinematic rule.
Rare Exports (2010)
Old vs New Santa
I kinda prefer the Old Santa. The New Santa gives us snowflakes.
Dossier K. (2009)
The Strange Death of Europe
Albanian mobs invade Belgium. But they're not so bad, they are men of honour ! The real bad guys are the Belgian police-politicians corrupted trying to arrest them.
Frailty (2001)
Creepy but confused
Silly notion of demons, so the anti-religious and anti-social (are people who believe in law and order simply fanatical nuts?) theme falls flat, ominous-sounding music notwithstanding.
Grand Prix (1966)
Two movies
Great racing scenes. Off the track, too much sentimentalism.
The Sound and the Shadow (2014)
For a teen audience ?
All the sound recording and engineering, and the other detective work, enjoyable while it lasts, leads nowhere ; then the girl is found by shear chance. The entire movie is misdirection, ending with an annoying flat tire. So it winds up being simply about young girl helps older man learn about life. I suppose it's flattering for a teen audience or something.
Hereditary (2018)
Nonsense that goes nowhere
Several random scary things happen, but with no reason or logic. The movie sets the atmosphere well, and has some interesting thematic possibilities, but the latter are never realized. For example, the use of miniatures isn't developed as it could have been. And the witch theme could have been developed to some moral purpose.
Is this movie a psy-op to defuse concern about actual occult practices ?
What exactly is hereditary ? Grandma is a witch, but that power is not passed down ; instead, she curses her own grand-daughter, I guess, though it's not clear how she accomplished that, and it turns out to be a mistake.
Why does burning the notebook cause the mother to burn ? What is so important about it ? The demon doesn't seem to need it or care about it. Then, later, why does the father burn instead ?
How was the son possessed ? The seance invites the demon into the house, but it must take some kind of complicated ritual to cause a possession.
The mother is normal, and tries to prevent the possession ; so why at the end does she suddenly become a witch herself ?
And anyway, Why are all the females decapitated ?