Recently in Cinema Verité Category

I talked The Fella into watching Bloodrayne.

[I had to heave a sorry sigh before I could type anything else.]

Curious about the foulness that notoriously awful director Uwe Boll foists upon an undeserving world, I insisted upon seeing the evidence. I even bounced on my toes as I waggled the DVD case at The Fella. He, who routinely comes home with packets boasting "Drive-In Classics: 50 movies on 12 DVDs!" or "Horrorlicious! Bonus features: Hostesses of Horror!," displayed no enthusiasm, which should have been my first warning.

No. Uwe Boll should have been my first warning.

Bloodrayne takes its premise loosely from the videogame of the same name, transferring the action from WWII-era to a generic Olde Tyme of corsets, candles, and horseback. The basic narrative, if it can be said to have one, follows half-vampire Rayne as she oh I can't go on. You don't need to know, because you'll never see it, because you deserve better.

We barely even laughed at at. This movie plunged too deep for laughter. I just felt sad. Sad for Michael Madsen, a fine actor trudging wanly through this muck. Sad for Geraldine Chaplin, who brought a glimmer of dignity to her small part. Only a tiny bit sad for Sir Ben Kingsley, who (based on his previous roles) clearly likes money. Sad about the action sequences, which mostly featured bit players walking stolidly up to the point of impact, carefully aiming their blood-squibs at swordpoints. Sad.

Neither of us felt even a little bit bad for beloved horror regular Udo Kier; this is exactly his kind of gig, and its pedestrian dreariness doesn't even touch him.

Remarks I made during this film, in place of the hoots of laughter I expected:
- I feel bad.
- Michael Madsen looks so sad. So sad to be in this movie.
- This is soul-suckingly awful.
- Should we stop?
- Oh. Oh. Oh, no.
- I feel like a worse person for watching this.

Zardoz, 1974. In a post-apocalyptic future, a giant flying stone head named Zardoz rules over the warrior class, indoctrinating them with wisdom like "The gun is good; the penis is evil."

Wait, I'll start again: It's 2293, and the earth is populated by The Brutals, who suffer under the reign of the Exterminators (a.k.a. The Chosen), who in turn are ruled by Zardoz, who (did I mention?) is a giant flying stone head that belches out firearms.

Hang on, this doesn't seem to make sense. Okay: Zed (Sean Freaking Connery!) assassinates the Immortal Eternal pilot (yeah, don't ask me how you kill an Immortal Eternal) of the giant flying stone head that rules over the...

Um. Look: Zardoz was made in 1974; director John Boorman was given carte blanche after the spectacular success of Deliverance, which relied on the terrible simplicity of human nature and a perfectly unaffected setting. In striking contrast, Zardoz features Sean Connery dolled up in red leather briefs with criss-cross suspender straps, dramatically flared thigh-high boots, and a Yosemite Sam mustache, a get-up that in no way enhances his overblown macho posturing as he bounds around a dystopian landscape (and into another dimension, or a vortex, or, uh, something) trying to undermine the totalitarian regime of, yes, a giant flying stone head. As sci-fi, it's peculiar. As allegory, it's fatuous. As camp, it's mindblowing.

From my journal 29.12.05: JM and I are watching a movie made for TV.

Scene: Intense, emotional moment where a tearful mother is speaking about her daughter. Mother says: "We've always had this link. You know, like a connection."

Me: (sarcastically mimicking mother) You know, like a relationship, like we're related.

JM: You ruin every show.

Fed up with the mawkish sentiment oozing from the standard films of the season? Yes, Virginia, I really am.

I want a good old-fashioned Christmas thriller, chiller, or slashfest:

Christmas Stalkings
He Sees You When You're Sleeping
Not A Creature Was Stirring
Christmassacre!
Santa Claws
Satan Claus
Jingle Hell
I Saw What Yule Did Last Winter
Slaybells
O Tannenbomb
Violent Night
How the Grinch Stole Your Kidneys
Godzilla's Merry Gentlemen
Away in a Mangle
Gristletoe

No time to write now!

We're watching The Bloody Pit of Horror, also known as The Scarlet Executioner, The Crimson Executioner, The Red Hangman, The Scarlet Hangman, Il Bola Scarlatto, Virgins for the Hangman, Some Virgins for the Hangman, A Tale of Torture, The Castle of Artena, and Il Castello di Artena.

I am participating in NaBloPoMo.

The Trouble with Harry is not that he's dead. The trouble with Harry is this: what do we do with him now?

In this film, Hitchcock allows his macabre humor to take center stage instead of winking at us from the corner of the screen, and it's a pleasure to watch this dark comedy unfold in the bucolic splendor of the Vermont woods. (Okay, some was shot on a stageset due to heavy rains in the Vermont location, but it's a wicked bucolic stageset.)

Young Arnie Rogers (a pre-Beaver Jerry Mathers) discovers a body in the stageset woods near his home. His mother Jennifer, curiously unmoved, recognizes the corpse as her erstwhile husband Harry. Indeed, all the characters populating this small rural town are similarly unflappable: local struggling artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe), retired seaman Capt. Wiles (Edmund Gwynn), and quavering spinster Miss Graveley (Mildred Natwick) take a whimsical, almost jaunty attitude to the annoyance posed by Harry's presence... this despite two of them thinking they may have inadvertently killed him.

Tension and humor bump comfortably against each other throughout the film, making it one of Hitchcock's oddest concoctions --- and one of my favorites.

I am participating in NaBloPoMo.

It's a deceptively simple story: Rex and Saskia are taking a roadtrip, when Saskia disappears from a busy roadside station. For years, Rex wonders how she could vanish so thoroughly, so suddenly... and then he has a chance to find out.

Played out with excruciating deliberation, Spoorloos juxtaposes mundanity with an oppressive intensity that is suffocating to watch.

Funny Games, 1997.

At their luxurious and quiet summer home, a family finds themselves trammeled by two disarming but disquieting young men... and then the story begins to unfurl its vile tapestry.

Director Michael Haneke, known for his provocative oeuvre, claims this is the single film he made intentionally to provoke. And provocative it certainly is, with a stomach-churning dispassion that, by contrast, makes the moments of action (many of them off-screen) so horrifically galvanizing.

Funny Games is all about conventions and complicity; it self-consciously examines cinematic violence and suspense, and the contract between filmmaker and viewer as collaborators in atrocity. Games require rules, and the film is obsessed with rules, but be warned: Haneke doesn't play fair.

I am participating in NaBloPoMo.

Some movie recommendations from the phantom memory:

Whirligig (in Comedy): Trudy and Claude (Kate Beckinsale and Jude Law) shimmy their way through Swingin' London in this mod extravaganza. Initially a celebration of the miniskirted, moped-riding early sixties, the film morphs into something else entirely after the pair meet Professor Guildenstern (Sir Ian McKellan), an amateur chronophysicist who accidentally sends them to the grubby East End of the 1990s. Hilarity ensues as they try to find their way home in time.

Chaste as Ice (in Classics): This little-known screwball comedy was unseated at the box office by Billy Wilder's Ball of Fire, which boasted both a very similar plot line and the star power of Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper. In Preston Sturges' Chaste as Ice, showgirl and one-time girlfriend of a mobster Shotzie O'Fealya (Billy Holiday) dons a wimple and gets her to a nunnery to escape threats from her former flame. Despite her numerous faux pas, the sisters fall for her smooth line of patter and take her in as one of their own.

Rogue and Peasant (in Foreign): An 18th century highwayman (Gérard Depardieu) goes to ground in a small hamlet, where he takes refuge in the home of a peasant farmer (Jean Reno). Despite their differences, the two forge a strong friendship which is tested when an official investigation brings close scrutiny upon the village.

Hawk Handsaw (in Action/Adventure): Bruce Willis toughs it out again in Renny Harlin's 1999 action blockbuster. As fey and furious villain Count Voltimand, Alan Cumming exudes a twinkling, strangely chilling menace, and Julianne Moore brings a believable fragility to her scenes as Hawk's oft-endangered fiancée.

Thrift! Thrift! (in Classics): One of his moneyed pals bets corporate bigwig and playboy Dane Prince (Jack Lemmon) that he cannot live on the income allotted to Dane's own entry-level employees. Determined to keep to his shoestring budget without curtailing his antic love life, Dane resorts to more and more elaborate schemes of frugality, raising the comic stakes with every step.

A More Removéd Ground (in Drama): Emma Thompson stars as Elsinore, a newly divorced woman deeply affected by her estranged father's death and mother's hasty remarriage. Distancing herself, she moves to a ramshackle cottage in the Danish countryside, where she comes to terms with her grief and her future.

2B (Mystery/Thriller): Stodgy accountant Bernard Francis (Colin Firth) wonders if something dodgy is going on next door. Strange mechanical sounds in the night, comings and goings at all hours, and odd wailings from the seldom seen black-clad neighbor raise his suspicions, and Bernard steels himself to investigate, only to discover that opening the door to 2B sets loose a sea of troubles.

Rotten State (in Mystery/Thriller): In the wake of the President's sudden death, a Washington reporter stumbles upon an unthinkable conspiracy --- or does he? Gary Oldman is riveting as Frank Bacon, the journalist who suspects the President's apparent heart attack was an assassination orchestrated by the First Lady and the Vice President. Bacon's composure unravels as he gets swept up in the plot and starts to find himself tailed and troubled at every turn. But is the plot real, or only a phantom of Bacon's fevered imagination?

If you are curiously unable to locate these films, may I instead suggest Hamlet (starring Laurence Olivier), Hamlet (starring Kenneth Brannagh), or even Hamlet (starring Ethan Hawke)?

A few favorites from the woefully underappreciated sub-genre, the moving movie.

Movers and Shakers: (1983, Comedy). This little gem was largely overlooked in the early-eighties spate of films in the Nice Guy as Unlikely Pimp subgenre (Night Shift, Risky Business). Through a series of mishaps, two naive moving company employees find themselves running a traveling brothel in the back of their moving truck. Starring Tom Hanks and Richard Moll, with Jamie Lee Curtis as the sexy and savvy madame with a knack for business and an eye for the gents. Soundtrack by Mark Mothersbaugh.

Move to Adjourn: (1986, Suspense). Jeff Bridges shines in this legal thriller as Steven Donner, a maverick D.A. seeking to free a wrongly convicted woman (Susan Sarandon) from Death Row. The evidence that will absolve her has been lost in a bureaucratic move, and Donner races the clock in a paper chase, his steps dogged by the real killer. Don't miss Mary Stuart Masterson as his plucky paralegal!

Loose Screws: (1939, Classics). Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell exchange barbs and butterfly screws in this fast-paced romp from Howard Hawks. Sparks fly, literally and figuratively, when stockbroker Cliff Jenkins and his career-girl wife, Kate, move into a Brooklyn fixer-upper and find that the plumbing, the electrical system, the plaster, and the marriage all need some expert repair. Russell and Grant battle the chaos with wrenches, ratchets, and rapier-sharp wits in this, the screwiest of the screwball comedies.

The Underpants Situation: (1970, Suspense/Thriller/Mystery). Michael Caine, Richard Chamberlain, and Honor Blackman. In a world without shame, one woman makes a bid for modesty. Where have all the undergarments gone? Follow her increasingly harried search through boxes, packages, and overnight bags. Tagline: Three is not enough!

Kitch: (2005, Romantic Comedy). The irrepressible Will Smith stars as a home organizer whose bread and butter is helping others maximize their kitchen storage options. Ironically, his own kitchen is a mess! That is, until he meets a saucy sous-chef (Marisa Tomei) who sorts, slices, and dices her way into his kitchen... and his heart. Um, figuratively.

Hard Water: (2001, Made in Japan). Kiyoshi Kurasawa brings his eerie brand of atmospheric tension to the story of a young teacher (Harue Karasawa) who finds the pH of her new home's water drives her hair into horrific disarray. No mass-market conditioner or pomade can tame her coiffure! Featuring Koji Yakusho as Kenji, the poker-faced beautician who races against time to save her locks... and her love.

The Gritty Dishes: (2002, Romantic Comedy). In this lighthearted moving comedy, Bill Pullman and Renee Zellweger discover to their consternation (and the audience's charmed laughter) that their possessions, once unpacked, are at odds with the spaces of their new cupboards, cabinets, and closets! Compounding the comedy antics, everything's covered with a fine grit, and their vacuum cleaner is no where to be found! Tagline: Nature abhors a vacuum!

Switch/On: (2005, Action/Adventure) The seemingly mild-mannered light switch by the front door should switch on the front-door light... but appearances can be deceiving. Featuring Alan Rickman as The Electrician, Bob Hoskins as Hardware Store Guy, and starring Ashton Kutcher (in the role he was born to play) as the spunky martial arts contender/electrician's apprentice. Tagline: Switch-about is fair play.

Whiff: (1999, Japanese Exploitation). A faint, nearly undetectable lingering smell haunts the tenants a mysteriously vacated apartment in Tokyo's largest block of flats. From the acclaimed director of Reek. Not for the squeamish. Tagline: "Do you smell that?"