Reviews

Visionary filmmaker Chris Marker creates a portrait of ever encroaching globalization in this 100 minute odyssey between the 'two poles of survival'.

Probably one of the greatest 'avant-garde' films of all time, don't let its classification dissuade you. This is a very simple film with a very simple message: though time changes, what nourishes humanity remains constant, namely love, memory, hope, understanding, recognition and belonging.

The only frustrating thing about this film is that one viewing is not enough. This is a work you will cherish re-watching for years to come.

Direct cinema science-fiction set on Planet Earth.

This would truly be the most hilarious film ever made if it wasn't so tragic. In this 70 minute blast-from-the-past, John Wayne uses everyone from Hitler to Stalin to liberal college professors (gasp!) in an attempt to persuade America not to give up on what was surely one of the most awful, despicable wars ever fought.

Everything Big Duke Wayne says in this right-wing agit-pop has been thoroughly disproved by history but that shouldn't keep you from loving his mouth-frothing reactionary madness.

What's amazing is that W. Bush literally re-iterated the Duke's view during his presidency when he famously said that the real lesson of Vietnam was that the US didn't go FAR ENOUGH!!! In reality, that was probably the only lesson the American-Vietnam War DIDN'T teach us.

Cringe-inducing. Watch it and cry.

Ring of Terror is one of those films that, after watching it, you feel compelled to tell everyone you know, if only to warn them about the trouble they will face if they are ever unfortunate enough to cross paths with this piece of total dreck.

Imagine a film noir with no crime crossed with a horror movie with no horror and this is pretty much what you get.

Astonishingly dull in every respect and yes, the college students all seem to be in their forties.

I'd say it's like watching wallpaper dry but that's insulting to wallpaper.

De Antonio's films, while engaging and highly intelligent, are poorly dated primarily because they assume that their audiences are already very familiar with their subjects. (See his superior "Underground" or "In The Year of The Pig") Aside from that, the biggest problem with this film is that it was made pre-Watergate and for many people of my generation ('90s kids), Watergate was such a defining moment for the Ex-Pres it's hard to imagine a time when he wasn't tainted by it.

Still, after the Swiftboat attacks on Kerry in 04 and the entire 08 election, the fevered criticism of Nixon's "Checkers" speech seems almost naive.

Not as side-splittingly hilarious as its proponents suggest, this film of pre-Watergate Nixon is valuable as a supporting document but unfortunately, it doesn't quite, as a Time Out review exclaimed, "completely expose the true horror of Nixon's personality". Sadly, the world would have to wait another three years for that shock.

Formally this film is excellent and is a good example of the agit-prop documentary. Micheal Moore learned a lot from De Antonio's process.

Mike Kelley is one of the greatest artists of his generation. If you've ever seen an exhibition of his oddly sinister psychological portraits of plush toys or obsessive post-pop combination paintings you'll know what you're in for here: An absolute maelstrom of implicit and explicit images dredged from the highs and lows of American consumer culture.

Day is Done is not an easy film to describe. All of the action takes place within the confines of a modern Californian high school. The student body made up of cheerleaders, jocks, vampires, witches, skinheads and ballerinas whose only common ground is that they all worship Satan.

They also sing arias, perform pantomimes that are described by inter-titles as 'reconstructions', give stand up routines and argue about race theory.

At three hours Day is Done is not an easy watch, but it is certainly not forgettable and for fans of Kelley, it stands as one of the artist's most unified and powerful works.

This show is one of the most brilliant things on television. It is brutal and unremitting in its depiction of human evil and not at all worried about getting its hands dirty turning out vile losers from coast to coast.

I'm not surprised people hate this show so much. It shows the worst of the worst and doesn't gloss over its subjects with fake sympathy or coddling. Steve Wilkos was a cop and its great watching him browbeat the bullies, criminals and molesters who unwittingly end up on his stage while giving a voice to too-often neglected victims who feel too trapped in their lives to speak out themselves.

Highlight episodes included a young woman who was molested all of her life by her father while her mother knew and covered it up. Steve destroyed them and I believe the father was arrested after the show. Another great episode involved a bunch of trouble teens being shown what life on the streets is really like. Those kids must have wished to God they went on Maury instead, because Steve brings them to a hardcore Chicago ghetto to meet crack smoking prostitutes who live squatting in an abandoned building. One of the prostitutes has no fingertips because she burned them off smoking crack. The other one goes on and on to the 14-15 year old about being sodomized (they say 'satyrized(!)) and being forced to take it because of their desperate need for drugs. The look on the girls' faces is unbelievable.

This show puts a face to the misery and poverty you read about everyday in the newspapers.

Steve Wilkos is an American Hero.

This piece of sub-barnyard cinema is a real treasure of z film-making and while I don't think anybody is going to mistake it for a Bergman film it is hopelessly and hilariously entertaining in an Eegah sort of way, but with more blood and gore. Think a really terrible version of 'Blood on Satan's Claw'. I know that's hard to imagine.

The plot involves two lovers who go to a strange town in Transylvania and meet up with a creepy hotel owner (played by Jess Franco?) and a relative of the Helzig clan who is a heavy alcoholic when he's not hunting vampires.

The witch make-up is actually quite disturbing as it just looks like someone with fourth degree burns all over there face. Lots of WTF moments including a cockfighting match and a delirious scene involving the witch being driven around in the back of a car that invokes Evil Dead 2 meets Weekend at Bernie's.

Pretty hilarious and some of the torture is weirdly disturbing.

I have no idea how this film would look restored. The print I saw was trash!

'Encounters at the End of the World' is an engrossing, fascinating exploration of what it takes to exist in one of the world's most unforgiving landscapes.

Almost a companion piece to Herzog's earlier poem-like Fata Morgana, the film brings us into a world hidden to almost all but a very chosen few.

There are incredible exchanges between Herzog and his human subjects, who are all researchers studying various aspects of the Antarctic eco-sphere. One such exchange with a cell biologist involves the idea that humans evolved from the ocean to escape what the scientist terms the 'absolute horror' of existence among the extremely vicious, often microscopic 'monsters' that savagely fight for their existence in the frozen waters. Some of these creatures are shown in remarkable underwater photography and it's not hard to see what he means.

Another interview that I found both terrifying and fascinating was one with a journeyman plumber (who also is allegedly related to the Ancient Aztec royalty) about the effects of global warming. I didn't like 'An Inconvenient Truth' and have always been somewhat on the fence about global warming. But the way this man describes global warming set the hairs on my arms on end. The subject is returned to later in the film with several scientists advocating an even bleaker outlook on the topic. Their consensus is that we have already tipped the point of no return and that our existence as humans is already marked for extinction.

As one glacierologist, pointing at a radar screen showing formations of large glaciers puts it: "I don't want to know what happens when that melts." By the way, did you know that seal calls are like the sound of Moog synths and earlier Pink Floyd? I haven't even scratched the surface of this film. There are so many breathtaking moments of sheer rugged beauty that it will bring tears to your eyes.

Do not see this movie on video or DVD. Unlike 'Grizzly Man' which was more of a television format film, "Encounters At the End of The World" is deeply, deeply cinematic.

How many Bat-films do you need to see anyway? Do your brain a favor and lose yourself in 'Encounters at the End of The World'.

Best film of '08 hands down.

I actually owned this on video for three years before watching it. Somehow, I just didn't get around to it. What was I thinking? I read some reviews of it, most were either mediocre or sneering and I thought the work would be a lame shot on video CBC doc with some talking heads explaining (duh) why they think Kurt Weill is a musical genius.

Then I watched this film and WOW! First of all, it's not a documentary! It's a concert film with amazing renditions of Weill's music by luminaries such as Nick Cave, William S. Burroughs(!), Lou Reed, Mary Margaret O'Hara, David Johansson, Elvis Costello and P.J. Harvey, amongst others doing incredible interpretations of Weill's work.

The film is interestingly staged in an old warehouse that evokes both the early industrial period in which Weill worked as well as the alienation technique of Brecht's theatre.

I can't describe how wonderful this work is. If you are a Brecht purist you may find this a little too awesome, but if you have an open mind and enjoy challenging and inventive music, you must see this.

What struck me so powerfully was that Weill's music never fit into what anybody would mistake as a 'musical' or 'opera' or 'pop', but amalgamated them all in an attempt to bridge art with the politics that surrounded him at the time. Weill's music was the soundtrack to the rise of Nazism in Europe and his haunting scores are even more disturbing in retrospect.

LONG LIVE WEILL!

I finally saw Shoah yesterday at the Ontario Cinematheque. I sat through the entire 9 and a half hours in one sitting.

Shoah surprised me in several ways. The first was how the interviews were conducted. Lanzmann is a very direct and aggressive interviewer and initially, I was very put off by how he delved into his subjects. He seemed almost wreckless and completely devoid of empathy as he continued to ask the most personal and private questions, never hesitating to force his subjects to think back to what was not only the darkest moment of their lives, but the darkest moments of modern Western history.

Eventually, what happens however, is astonishing. Most interviewees eventually give up their resistance, and very carefully relate their stories. Lanzmann forces them to consider details. How many bodies per furnace? How wide was the ditch? How far was the train ramp from the camp's bunkers? These details facilitate memory and soon, the subjects open up in the most remarkable way.

No matter how you feel, or what you think you know about the Holocaust, this film puts faces to the tragedy in a way few conventional documentaries could. The emphasis here is on memory and oral history.

As one Holocaust victim says early in the film, "It might be good for you to talk about these things. But for me, no." Eventually however, he realizes he must bear witness.

There's one remarkable scene where Lanzmann confronts German settlers in Poland about the previous owner of their home, who were Jewish and sent to Auschwitz after their properties were confiscated.

People who don't find this film 'entertaining' or perhaps 'boring' probably feel that way because, outside of the immediate experiences of the subjects being interviewed, there is no wider context to present the events. A worthwhile companion to this film would be the BBC's Auschwitz: Inside The Nazi State which runs 4 and a half hours, but will help you understand Shoah better.

The other thing I found fascinating about this film was how the translations actually helped you absorb what is being said in a way direct subtitling wouldn't. For instance, most of the subjects speak German or Polish. Lanzmann speaks French mainly and some German. His translator translates what's being said into French and then the subtitles translate the French into English. By being able to look into the eyes of the people speaking, in their own native language, and then read the subtitles, was a very subtle, but very effective tool that deadens the 'shock value' of what is being spoken and gives the viewer more time to absorb the content.

Some people have complained also that the film also has many long takes, which are seemingly of nothing. For instance, Lanzmann lets his camera linger on the remnants of Chelmno, which was razed after the war. Although it just looks like a five minute shot of a field, what struck me was how different this bucolic field must have been in 1942. Making this connection justifies every frame shot. Lanzmann, however, will not force this down your throat. You must be patient.

This is an astonishing film that must be seen by everyone, at least once. Please review the general historical context of the Holocaust before you see it, to get the most out of it, but otherwise, this is living testament of the most vital kind.

Brilliant, essential film-making.

I finally saw this companion piece to 13 Lakes last night at the Ontario Cinematheque and I must say, it is absolutely breathtaking. It is as vigorous and intense as anything in the cannon of Brakhage. For the patient viewer it stands as a philosophical meditation on the ever-transforming landscape of nature as well as a testament to how much beauty stands outside of the realm of man. When you see a plane or a bird, they seem so alien and intrusive to this world just outside our own.

The clouds sometime seem to have faces, you want to project anthropomorphic features onto them, they shift like Rorsach paintings, sometimes the clouds appear as an ocean, or a vast, impenetrable mountain range...

This is a limitless film for someone who possesses even a modicum of imagination. I also thought about how many great people looked to the skies for truth and enlightenment. Franklin's experiments with lightning, Wittgenstein's experiments with wind and kite coordinates.

This is epic, heroic film-making. If Benning hadn't have made this film, someone had too.

The only problem I have with the film is semantic, and will probably only bother me. 13 Lakes was about 13 different lakes. 10 Skies is about ONE sky, segmented by breaks between ten ten-minute film reels. This segmentation and Benning's way of framing it, make me wonder if I'm missing something rhetorical in the piece, outside of its intuitive formalism.

The other thing about this film is that visually its very straining on the eyes because there's multiple patterns moving at the same time, all the time, endlessly layered, endlessly emerging but also slow moving. Haze comes like a fade in, but its opacity begs the absolute limit of looking. The result is as close to a trance effect as you can find in film-making.

Looking forward to seeing more of Benning's fabulous work.

My girlfriend is always complaining that I rent gory, hateful Italian horror movies like 'Strip Naked For Your Killer' and 'Cannibal Holocaust', so I figured I'd switch it up and introduce her to the wild world of Hou. I should have stuck with 'Strip Naked...'! She complained the entire time that the film was too slow, that the characters were too vague and the whole thing, well, 'sucked'.

In my opinion, this was a graceful, magnificent film, but it is, what I like to call a 'Phantom Masterpiece' that is, a film which culminates a director's many obsessions, but doesn't really have that special punch that makes masterwork status unequivocal. I felt 'In the Mood For Love' by Wong Kar-Wai was a similar disappointment when compared to his 'true' masterpieces 'Happy Together', 'Chungking Express' and 'Fallen Angels'.

So, while you're right to expect a lot from this movie, don't expect a 'Flowers of Shanghai'.

Regardless, I found this film very fascinating, and one viewer's comment on IMDb about the film as a meta film is interesting, especially when you consider that framing shots of different actors in different times and places are virtually identical sequence to sequence. For instance, when a woman opens a letter, she's shot from exactly the same vantage point every time, regardless of the origins of the letter or herself. Its just too idiosyncratic to not be meaningful.

Also, a lot of this film is playfully back lit as characters are reduced almost to shadows for much of the action, however, as they move through the frame, light finds them and its really quite incredible.

If you are a true film fan, or a fan or Ozu, Haneke, Bresson, or Antonioni, you'll love this.

What happened? When you went to the video store, did someone already rent Beast of Yucca Flats? Eegah was out? Doris Wishman films were all on a five day rental? This is a super low in the history of cinema. Bruce Lee isn't remotely in sight and although the opening title sequence is very, very promising in a Zombie Vs. Ninja sort of way, it quickly, quickly falls off.

The thing I remember most about this film were an Asian guy and a blonde American girl driving around LA trying to find a place to rent.

I think that's all this movie was about. Two people apartment-hunting. It could have been an interesting premise, if it was directed by Wim Wenders, but alas, this is just Z-grade, super lame terribleness that makes Alice in Acidland look visionary. Yikes.

The dubbing is atrocious and the acting makes Andy Warhol's stars seem like Sir Richard Chamberlin.

Watch anything else or better, observe paint drying on the wall, expand your mind reading the dictionary or telephone book or get an addiction. Whatever you do: AVOID BRUCE LEE FIGHTS BACK FROM THE GRAVE!

Basically Snakes On A Plane rules on so many levels its hard to pick which one rocks the hardest. In a nutshell this movie has everything a lover of exploitation films wants: Snakes, planes, Sam Jackson kicking a** and a concept that rests on our most primal fears and anxieties.

The audience I saw this with wasn't really into it until almost a third into the movie, when even the strongest doubters realized this movie experience was something very special and unique. I think for many of the post-35 year olds in the audience, the movie harkened them back to a time when they watched "Werewolves on Wheels" and "Chopping Mall" at the local drive in.

Snakes On A Plane is pure fun. Fast paced, exciting and contrived in a such an implausible way that you won't help but laugh yourself silly.

If more people took themselves just a little less seriously and surrendered themselves to films like SoaP once in a while, this world would be a much better place.

Little Jerusalem is an amazing film about a family of Orthodox Jews living in Paris.

The best reason to see this film is Fanny Valette. I think Fanny Valette may be one of the greatest actresses ever. Seeing her in this film was like seeing Brad Pitt for the first time in 'Cool World'. Although I hated, hated, hated 'Cool World', the second Brad Pitt appeared I knew he was going to be a major, major star. I felt the same way about Russell Crowe in 'Romper Stomper' as well. All I can say is brush up on your English Ms. Valette, because Hollywood is going to be pounding down your door any second now.

Cutting Moments is one of those rare films that lives up to its hype. Its bleak, depressing atmosphere makes it comparable to Michael Haneke's Benny's Video or Seventh Contenent, but with Tom Savini gore.

I've seen Inhumanities, Africa Addio, Guinea Pig etc, but the last scene of this film had me dry heaving, thus giving it the dubious privilege of being one of only two movies that ever made me almost physically ill (The other was Brakhage's Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes).

Cutting Moments is so cruel and astonishing you won't believe what you are seeing until it's over and then you won't forget it for a while.

Buck's broke ground in Cutting Moments by marrying realistic dramatic tropes with the iconography of gore films.

I finally saw Life of Oharu at the Ontario Cinematheque in Toronto last night and what an amazing film it was.

I don't know why I held out on Mizoguchi for so long. I think it's because I watched a lot of Ozu in the day and expected more of the same heavily restrained, obliquely symbolic style which is often as alienating as it is inventive. I couldn't have been further off the mark. Mizoguchi's style is fluid and assured like Hitchcock and Bresson. He also injects a warmth of spirit and shows a genuine interest in storytelling which is often absent in much of Ozu's ouevre.

The Story of Oharu is a treatise on how women are economically exploited in a patriarchal society. This is probably one of the greatest 'women's films' ever made. It ranks above 'Breaking The Waves' and Sirk's 'Imitation of Life'. No small feat!! If you like stories that actually say something about the world in which we live, I would strongly recommend this film. It's a masterpiece of world cinema. I am definitely going to see more Mizoguchi.

This shot on VHS monstrosity is one of the worst time-wasters ever, but that didn't stop a friend of mine from watching it THREE TIMES in a single weekend, much to the horror of everyone else in my house.

For the record I did not buy nor rent Mr. Ice Cream Man. I got a copy of it passed to me by a guy who was given an armload of promo VHS screeners from the dubbing house he was working for at the time. The other titles included Laboratory of the Devil, Ozone and The Dead Next Door, not too bad, so I took them all off his hands. Big mistake.

I watched half of Mr. Ice Cream and then, unable to take any more camera hiss, showed it to my roommate who had the weirdest reaction. He didn't love it, he didn't hate it, he watched it THREE times and then didn't really say anything except, "Oh man, that movie is really bad" with a kind of distant, disturbed look in his eyes.

I asked him why he watched it three times if he hated it so much and he just sort of shrugged. I eventually surmised that the reason he watched it THREE times was because he couldn't believe it was actually real and somehow figured subjecting himself to it again and again and again helped it sink in.

This is one of those movies that perplexes you, because in this day and age of moving pictures you'd never imagine that someone would make something this totally inept even if it was on a budget of about $20.00 Also anyone who put their kid in this movie should be prosecuted for child abuse.

I saw this as a child in the late eighties and I must say, Galaxy Express is one of those films that sticks in your imagination for a long time. If you've never understood the appeal of anime, discovering this film may be your golden ticket to Otaku-town.

The story is as delicate and poetic as Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. The cell animation, while somewhat traditional, possesses a vivid style that explosively portrays Leiji Matsumoto's great talent for character design and visual storytelling.

This is one of those unique children's films like Star Wars, The Dark Crystal and The Wizard of Oz that completely transcends 'family entertainment' status and stands as a classic of cinema on its own terms.

I highly recommend this film.

The first time I saw Manson I thought it was a very crappy AIP docu-drama that cashed in the Manson myths.

Several years later, I bought a copy of it on public domain DVD in the 3.99 bin at a local department store. Watching Manson the second time, having already seen Charlie Manson Superstar and a lot of other Manson footage, I noticed that all the participants really, really looked like their real-life counterparts. Then I read that NOT A FRAME OF THIS FILM WAS FAKE!!!

Basically you get to see actual footage of the Spahn Ranch as well as home movies and court footage featuring the real Manson family in their time. I don't know who shot the sequence of Squeaky Fromm holding a shotgun and warning snitches to watch their backs but it's so unbelievably stark you wouldn't believe it. This is an iconic, excellent documentary about the Manson family murders that shows you in detail what exactly occurred during that terrible time and the raging social forces that led up to the family's shocking murders. This film deeply influenced Van Bebber's 'Charlie's Family' aka 'The Manson Family' which is another amazing interpretation of these events.

Hated is one of the most unique films you will ever have a chance to see in your film-going life. Taking one of the most seriously committed artists to ever 'grace' the American soundscape, Philips turns out a documentary that captures not only the spirit, energy and intensity of GG Allin, but also provides a very good context for Allin's life and work.

GG was a lot of things to many different of people, but if there is one thing everyone can agree upon it's that GG was extreme.

GG was born in New Hampshire, but made a name for himself in the underground downtown NY punk scene of the early 80s. This was around the same time Sonic Youth, Swans, Cop Shoot Cop, Pussy Galore, Foetus and Lydia Lunch were making the club rounds. These were the names that influenced American underground culture for about twenty years and GG was definitely one of the most risible and visible members of this scene.

Hated is a great film in its own right, showing the obvious, early talents of Todd Philips who would later grow up to be a Hollywood director in what must seem like another life to him. This is Philips at his most acerbic and the wit he shows is great. He also treats GG with considerable tolerance and respect, which almost backfires because you see how GG tries to alienate him at every turn. Despite this smokescreen, Philips captures something genuinely human about Allin, his misery, his sadness and his frustration but also his drive to create art and to challenge a society he saw as essentially hypocritical, empty, pathologically ill and discriminiatory; elements he himself flaunted in his most angry performances.

GG had been doing shows and making albums for about ten years when this film was shot. He was no longer a young man and a life of poverty, drug abuse and vagrancy had finally begun to take its toll. A stretch in prison also deeply affected him. GG died of a heroin overdose soon after.

A lot of this doc consists of very well appropriated footage from various shows, readings and performances Allin did during this time. You can find the uncut performances from other sources and its interesting to see what Philips used and what he didn't. GG's performances were actually far more frightening and depressing than Philips shows, if you can actually believe that, but I think the clips were accurate overall.

I once had the opportunity to have drinks with Kembra Phahler of Volumptuous Horror of Karen Black fame and she told me a little bit about her friendship with Allin and made an interesting comment in that Allin's self-destruction may have had much more to do with his drug addiction than his penchant for extreme performances. A lot of people feel that had Allin lived, he would have become a country or blues artist. It's hard to think about what we missed, or what GG missed, through his early departure.

Even if you think you'll hate GG Allin, or feel this isn't for you, you should really give it a shot. A lot of people I know who hate punk were really fascinated by this entertaining doc. I've probably watched it over thirty times. Whatever your reaction I promise you'll never forget it.

Highly recommended.

PS: May God bless GG Allin and better luck to him in the next world! Live Fast. Die. GG

A lot of posts on this forum say this film is depressing, but actually, nothing is further from the truth. This film is about human resilience, finding beauty and sharing love even in the most difficult or trying of circumstances. Although it's sad to think parents could abandon their kids, the complete lack of anger these children express is inspirational and admirable.

This film is an example of top drawer, A+, world class film-making. It's probably one of the best films of the last twenty years. I don't think it's difficult to find and is probably available at your local Blockbuster, so take my recommendation and see this film. You will thank me.

Yûya Yagira's performance is incredible and is reminiscent of Jean-Pierre Leaud's in 400 Blows.

The reputation of explo-surrealist Jess Franco's penchant for sadism and cruelty largely rests on the four Women In Prison films he made almost back to back in the late '70s. Far from the 'intellectual' flaunting of 'Succubus' or the dream-like aura of 'Vampyros Lesbos', Franco's works like 'Ilsa: Absolute Power', 'Barbed Wire Dolls', '99 Women' and this film, reveal his fascination with unabashed sadism and humiliation without distraction.

Granted a couple of other filmmakers have far surpassed this film in terms of hyper-shocking violence (Guinea Pig anyone?), but the latent nihilism and hatred of Franco's entire oeuvre comes out in spades in 'Cell Block 9'.

Granted, it's highly inartistic, very cheap and mainly a smörgåsbord of cruel scenarios depicting a woman's political prison in the jungle and the cruel warden who rules it with an iron fist. There is a message in the sense that you can feel Franco's outrage regarding prisoners of conscience, but there's no unifying statement here, political or otherwise.

For those who like Franco's skewed view of human sexuality but can do without the heady surrealism, this is a pretty good film to watch, especially if you're curious about what happens when the Master takes his gloves off and gets dirty. Also, for you hardcore Franco fans, if you thought 99 Women and Barbed-Wire Dolls was a little 'soft', you'll be redeemed here. Recommended for Franco fans.