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Reviews
Martyrs (2008)
Misguided Garbage
I'm as big a horror movie fan as anybody, and I didn't care for this one at all - there seems to be a new trend in French horror filmmaking of great talent in camera-work/performances/eruptions of gore joined with completely idiotic storytelling. After a promising start with the two lead characters as young girls, the film moves to a family scene in the vein of Michael Haneke's loathsome Funny Games, as the filmmakers introduce us to a set of ordinary, likable characters, then blow them away in an orgy of sadistic violence. This kind of strategy has been effective in other films, but here it just feels like a trendy way to provide a gratuitous shock. For a while the movie toys with some pointless plot tangents (one of the lead girls wrestles with a demon from her subconscious, a mindless torture victim is paraded in front of us for no particular reason but grimy spectacle) until finally the movie gets around to its pretentious final act: the film's lead character is brutally tortured until she reaches a level of (maybe) spiritual ecstasy, reminiscent of Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc. But without any, you know, actual feeling or spirituality to it - the whole final act is merely justification for all the otherwise pointless brutality, strained and pretentious. If you got some actual uplift from the film, then good for you. I didn't.
China (2007)
Extremely well done
China is a man, a cowboy, and a remnant of days gone by, and he's finally realizing it, in Jacob Hatley's tremendously entertaining and mature short film. Combining the style and looseness of the best of 1970s films with the earthiness and toughness of classic filmmakers like Howard Hawks and Budd Boetticher, Hatley knows what he's doing and his love of the characters and settings seeps into every frame of this film. On top of that it was shot on gorgeous black and white 35mm film, on location, giving it a very non-Hollywood look. Here's hoping for more work from this young, talented director, who clearly has a more enlightened perspective than the bulk of the repetitive, mindless gunk that his contemporaries are making.
Macon County War
Pretty awful
SOME SPOILERS - This is a direct-to-video Walking Tall retread with very little going for it - best to watch over a six-pack while doing something else at the same time, you won't miss much. Dan Haggerty is in the opening scenes and then sits out most of the middle of the movie. The acting is generally awful, the special effects are laughable (check out when the 'helicopter' explodes) and the ending is silly - who's the old guy with the grenade and where did he come from? There's very little suspense or action at all, but there are a couple of amusing scenes involving a couple of old codgers. At least it's short and uninvolving enough for some (very) mindless entertainment.
Psyched by the 4D Witch (1973)
When Monster A-Go Go is the _good_ half of the double feature, you're in trouble.
This is probably the worst movie I've ever seen. Mostly it consists of voice-over and randomly assembled footage; the footage is typically a girl undressing and hanging around what is (I think) Los Angeles City College - the pretext involves a Salem witch who was burned at the stake and in the present day of the early 1970s convinces a descendant to embark on sexual adventures. I suppose this premise isn't inherently the worst thing on earth, but the execution is horrendous - it's amoral, boring, and irritating all at the same time, which is a pretty unique combination. It's a rare movie that can pull off this trifecta of awful. For all those people who say that modern mass-market movies made by Hollywood like (just for example) Saw 2 or The Village or Flyboys are 'the worst movie ever made', they need to see this to see how much lower than those bad movies cinema can actually reach; this is a true cinematic nadir.
Entity: Nine (2006)
Not very good
This is a bad short film. It is completely derivative of better science-fiction films of the past, particularly Minority Report and Blade Runner. The comparison to Rod Serling is laughable. Rod Serling was interested in the human condition. This film is interested in seeing how close they can imitate other, better filmmakers. It is totally a case of style over substance. Just as a comparison, see the film Primer. It's a fascinating, complex, Twilight Zone-ish sci-fi feature film. It probably cost less to make than this 16-minute short. The filmmakers did not make a horrible film, but they should not be under any illusions that what they did is art in any way, shape, or form.
Cry Wolf (2005)
Lame
What's wrong with horror filmmakers today? They've seen just enough horror movies to know the clichés, but not enough to want to move past them, apparently. Or maybe they just want to make movies that are essentially 90-minute long demo reels to get jobs directing commercials, since all this movie has to offer is a lot of slick camera work and editing tricks but virtually no sense of story or character. Also, the movie essentially repeats the same 'twist' about three times - there's a killer - no, it's just the kids playing a joke - no, there really is a killer - no, still kids - no, this time, I swear there's a killer! So I guess the title makes sense after all. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me five times...still shame on you.
An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe (1970)
Much better than a lot of other Price-Poe films.
I wish that this wasn't on a DVD with the underwhelming Tomb of Ligeia. In a perfect world this would have been matched up with my favorite Price/Poe movie, Masque of the Red Death, which is joined with the dreadful and tedious Premature Burial. Oh well. Price is good as always. This program consists of four Poe stories: "The Tell-Tale Heart" is creepy and morbid. "The Sphinx" is shorter and more humorous, rather minor. "The Cask of Amontillado" is much more rich and decadent, and the final story, "The Pit and the Pendulum" finds Price at his all-out best, reaching the kind of grand emotional climaxes that only he was capable of.