nikitalinivenko Reviews

My Blueberry Nights (2007)

Wong Plays It Safe On His American Outing

[4/10 · 12 February 2023]

The lousy thing is, those first twenty minutes (give or take) are really damn good: the prologue where we build up this budding relationship between Jude Law and Norah Jones, in typically sumptuous and poignant Wong Kar-Wai style...fantastic. Then the rest of the movie happens. Flat, monotone and boring, Norah's cross-country trek to "find herself" or some such platitudenal fallback for these sorts of trifles, where she meets David Strathairn and later Natalie Portman (that Las Vegas section was the worst, most forgettably mind-numbing (and visually, vapidly ugly) part of this waste of everyone's potential, and the audience's time), crushes you with its flacid narrative and jejune scarcity. We putter about looking for some sort of essence to this movie, any essence, then Norah abruptly realizes she belongs back in New York and that we could've been saved this whole pointless Paulo Coelho-esque drek masquerading as a journey, goes back, embraces Jude, The End. Watch the prologue (the whole movie should've just been left at that and it would've been so great), skip (or fast-forward through) the rest.

Decision to Leave (2022)

Park's Back

[6/10 · 26 December 2022]

Decision To Leave is Park Chan-Wook's best movie since Oldboy, but there's a caveat. The framing is pleasing, the look is good, and Decision To Leave is by far and away the year's best edited movie (seriously, that editing!). It, however, gets zero points for plot. The story is plucked right off the dusty stock shelf: A murder's committed and the detective assigned to investigate falls for the victim's Femme Fatale wife, to the point he's willing to jeopardize his career to cover for her; and no matter how much you gunk the movie with pretentious symbolism (Those safe, stable mountains! That wishy-washy sea!), if anything it makes the stock-in-trade formulaic outline more tiresome. Fortunately, the technical aspects more than compensate. It's been six years since The Handmaiden (a critical darling that, I'll be honest, I remember almost zero about, since I found it one of those boredoms so stupendous it humbles, and struggled to retain any of it) but directionally, Park is still at the peak of his prowess. A damn good movie that, though personally, left something to be desired - and seemed longer than it is (and maybe went on a bit longer than it needed to, given the aforementioned familiar plot) - is, more or less, still alright to piss away a few good hours on, especially given how long it's been since Park was last at it.

6.5/10.

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

"A Year's Worth of Dead"

[6/10 · 15 December 2022]

The Virgin Suicides plays it pretty safe on the source material - in that it's an almost straight-up visualizer of Jeffrey Eugenides' 1993 novel (there's pretty much literally only one change from the book, and that comes towards the end). It is one of the closest adaptations I've seen, if that means anything at all.

Set in a quiet Detroit suburb, the plot - and all the teenage angst, ennui and loneliness it melancholically baggages the characters, and us the audience, with - centers around local boys who are infatuated with a group of sisters, sheltered and seemingly unattainable, qualities that add to their feminine mystique and, ultimately, inform the downward spiral the plot takes.

The original score by Air is by far the best character in the movie (and has slowly grown on me as perhaps an all-time favorite - an interesting tidbit: The Virgin Suicides is one of only two original movie soundtrack albums included in the book 1,001 Albums You must Hear Before You Die (the other being Curtis Mayfield's soundtrack for Superfly)). Everything else about the movie is pretty basic and quiet (I now realize, The Virgin Suicides might quintessentially be a brooding, mature older sister to another (much more juvenile) sleeper-hit high-school dreck - Napoleon Dynamite), slight and nondescript (similarly-toned, slow-paced indie titles like The Myth of The American Sleepover (2010) are a dime a dozen).

The movie, is, especially on first viewing (I'd softened up on it after the second), a bore; the sort of bore that's more rewarding in literary form...what I mean is, the novel is better. The movie, on its own, is decent, but lacks anything to elevate it above the teen malaise it uses as a crutch to avoid doing anything substantial. Whatever. It's still somewhat better than most high school movies, and the quiet direction that would be borderline insufferable in the hands of most indie directors, has a soft, low-key texture in the hands of Sofia Coppola.

See How They Run (2022)

Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce Que C'est?

[7/10 · 13 December 2022]

It's probably safe to say See How They Run isn't going to break the mould on this recent revival of Agatha Christie adaptations and heavy-handed homages (after all, the plot revolves around and heavily features The Mousetrap, and a fictitious version of Agatha herself appears as a character in the movie), cheekily serving as both throwback and meta commentary on the heyday of the detective genre and all its trappings. And no doubt See How They Run will naturally be compared against Knives Out (a whole Star Wars/Star Trek situation) - after all, See does give a feeling of having been made to setup a competing franchise against Ryan Johnson's popular popcorn Hercule Poirot parody.

Now, for the plot: Adrain Brody (in post-murder narration) gets offed on the set of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap (this is 1953, one year into the smash play's 68-year run in London's fashionable West End) and Sam Rockwell's drunken, Devil-May-Care, washed-up detective shows up to piece together who done it (as a side note, I really enjoyed the use of split-screens in this movie). He gets saddled with plucky, go-get-'em constable Stalker (played endearingly by Saoirse Ronan) and they get the baddie in typical Christie fashion, with a handful of twists and red herrings along the way, of course. The cinematography is a minor highlight, lightly skirting Wes Anderson without leaning into him - actually, scratch that; it's closer to Paddington than Wes.

As a piece of studio entertainment, it's all pretty safe; but still a fun way to pass a couple hours (and yes, I liked See How They Run more than Knives Out). 7.5/10.

Don't Look Up (2021)

It's the End of the World as We Know It

[6/10 · 13 December 2022]

Adam McKay's dark comedy serves as both thinly-veiled allegory for climate change, and, perhaps unintentionally, as a nice middle finger to '90's comet-hurtling-towards-the-earth disaster-video garbage like Deep Impact and Armageddon (or pretentiously bland 2000's arthouse installations like Melancholia).

Dicaprio, being Dicaprio, and Jennifer Lawrence (actually good here! Normally I can't stand her, but I actually kinda liked her here!) are two "physicists" (in the unrealistic hot Hollywood sorta way) who spot a comet. Hurtling towards the earth. Which no one takes seriously. Caricature President Meryl Streep (having a blast as a Trumpian Sarah Palin) dismisses them, then begrudgingly accepts the situation, half-assedly makes an attempt to fire the rockets before backtracking instantly for capitalistic purposes, and goes back to her denial, there's-no-problem-here routine. Jonah Hill, being Jonah Hill, bumbles around as her son/secretary of state (stick around for the droll post-credit sequence). Mark Rylance, the best part of the movie, as a high-functioning autistic Steve Jobs brought it all together with some of the funniest gags.

Though nowhere near The Big Short or Vice in this era of the "new", improved, more serious Adam McKay, Don't Look Up is still a far cry above the director's abysmally horrid, cheaply unfunny 2000's output where he was essentially aping those awful Judd Apatow "comedies" that dominated the era. As of now - for me - Don't Look Up sits at a decent third place amongst McKay's inconsistent, mixed-bag filmography. Not bad, not great, a slight, pleasantly-mid end-of-the-world dark comedy that's, at the very least, more decent than most Netflix-distributed content.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005 Video Game)

A Million Stories in Liberty City, and This One Changes Everything?

[7/10 · 12 December 2022]

For a while, I couldn't place just why Liberty City Stories, a game made 4 years after its parent title, looked somehow worse than GTA 3. Then it hit me: which has superior graphics is depatable, but III, though, had more realisitc (or at the very least, more detailed) textures. Not just that, but III had, oddly for the older game, a lot more vivid, immersive world-building detail: the reflective puddles on the ground when it rains, the shine on cars that reflects accurately when you turn; all living, breathing minutae that are oddly absent in LCS, which, on top of that, has a vaguely more murky texture somewhat closer to San Andreas. LCS was a step back for the franchise in other ways: gone was San Andreas' RPG element, as well as this other crazy new thing San Andreas introduced called Swimming (yup, we're back to sinking like a freakin' stone as soon as we step more than a couple inches into the sea). GTA 3 had a rough, almost hand-made charm to it, and this roughness made it feel authentic. This prequel (akin to having a darling indie movie that gets a Hollywood follow-up) has a lot more stuff to do, more gameplay elements tacked on, but feels slightly on the empty side when stacked against its parent.

All that out of the way, when compared to the imposing shadow cast by many other GTA titles LCS may seem a bit mid, it's still a damn good game in its own right (and for my money, boasts the best theme song so far in the series). A prequel set three years prior to III - and where many of the story missions revolve around setting up the events of - the player assumes control of a younger version of Toni Cipriani (a mission-giver introduced in the original title) as he works his way up from low-level foot soldier to made man to Leone family Don Salvatore's right-hand man. Along the way, you make enemies of pretty much every other gang - mafia and hoods - on the streets of Liberty (many of whose NPC's will attack you on sight afterward) as you vie to single-handedly shift the city's power dynamics and bring Liberty City under Leone influence. The plot is relatively stock and a bit uneven at times, some of the missions might be a dreck (but what game's aren't?), and, on the mobile port at least (where I played it), the touchscreen controls are at times garbage. More than anything, LCS was originally designed as a demo of Rockstar's capabilities on mobile platforms (back when the PSP came out) and wasn't really aiming too high. And that's fine, since what came out of it is still a helluva lot more than average, and is enough to keep me coming back. 7.5/10.

Grand Theft Auto III (2001 Video Game)

Building the Blueprint

[8/10 · 12 December 2022]

From its conceptualizing in 1999, to its release in October 2001 (after a three-week delay to allow for some minute last-minute changes following 9/11), GTA III's landscape-changing impact on the face of gaming stemmed from a roughly 23 man team working in a small studio, grinding the whole thing out over 2 years.

The core through-line of the plot is a by-the-numbers revengeamatic: betrayed and left for dead in the opening cutscene heist, our protagonist Claude (contrary to poular belief, yes, he was always named Claude; his name's never stated in-game, but he is referred to by name in the game's script) makes it out when his prison convoy gets derailed by a Colombian kidnap job (which serves a purpose later in the plot, a wrap-around I didn't appreciate when I first played the game), and after that, you're let loose on Liberty, a hired gun who will (quite literally) turn on people the second a better (or better-paying) opportunity comes up.

A major gripe, though, I realized - looking at the game again - that about half the missions are just empty filler that serve zero purpose in advancing the narrative. It's like watching a hamster go round and round on a wheel - go from point A to point B, whack someone or steal a vehicle, and do the same a couple dozen more times. The mission structure is extremely repetitive and lacks the diversity of gameplay later titles would introduce. And a lot of the missions aren't just gruelling, they're unnecissarily unforgiving; there's challenge and there's sadism for sadism's sake (I literally had to use cheats to beat that damn 'Panlantic Land Grab' Mission - those who've played the game know exactly what I'm on about).

Personally, I really dig the protagonist. Claude's character design is simple but iconic, and - since Rockstar was pressed for time and finding a voice-actor for Claude was low priority, we were left with a mute protagonist - his quiet disposition makes him all the more mysterious and projectionable.

The game is richly detailed and the city design is - at least in comparison to Liberty City's GTA IV itteration - where Rockstar focused too much on reflecting the real New York - unique (a common (and fair enough) complaint is that Shoreside Vale (the third island in the game) has a convoluted map that's confusing to navigate; but even that I love, since it just gives the city a more unique character).

GTA III's HUD display, lock-on systems, world exploration and approach to non-linear story progression have become standard, and those are just some of the ways open-world gaming has followed in Rockstar's wake.

GTA III may not have been the first-open world game, but it was the first open-world game to do Something with that premise, and in doing so, laid the groundwork for sandbox gaming going forward.

Runaway Train (I) (1985)

A Stallone Vehicle, Without Stallone

[1/10 · 10 December 2022]

The fact that a name like Kurosawa's is attached (story credit) is just baffling. Runaway Train comes off as a Sly Stallone vehicle, that they forgot to cast Stallone in. Instead, Jon Voight takes the helm, and comes off every bit as sadly 80's macho-man bland as Sly and his ilk.

The ultra-bland direct-to-video box title says it all. It's a train, and there's no stopping it. Wow, a real thinker.

The first third is a visually and mentally vapid 80's prison movie (think Bad Boys (1983) all grown up), then the rest of the stretched-out running time (about half an hour longer than the material really calls for, given how paper-thin it is), it's Speed on a train...years before Speed repeated the basic premise, on a bus. Eddie Bunker, mostly remembered for his brief, minor role as Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs co-wrote the screenplay; and that, is about the only interesting fact about this TV filler made for all those packs of man-children raised on disposable titles like Cliffhanger or Convoy. For something that labels itself an action movie, nothing really even gets rolling until about halfway through, and even then it's the standard Saturday Morning checklist: the freighter smashes through barriers, a fed dangles on a rope ladder from a helicopter, the escaped brute - our lead - now suddenly with a heart-of-gold melodramatically pulling a hero at the last moment for these people he just met, and, naturally, we close on a Shakespeare quote - you know, for that much-needed touch of class this bro flick sorely needed.

This movie is so ugly, even those pleasant shots of winter scenery we glimpse as the train - much like the movie - hurls on its brutish path, are rendered just so damn plain. If you're a basic brute, you'll enjoy, in your simplistic manner, this tiresomely stock '80's routine. For everyone else, it's just more background noise.

Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998)

A Perfect Movie, Perhaps, Too Ignored To Be A "Masterpiece"]

[9/10 · 10 December 2022]

Khrustalyov, My Car! Is a film verging on exceptional, that, much like director Alexei German, fell just half a notch, just a finger's tip short of greatness. German, as a whole, had a career that stops, sadly and for whatever reason, just short of remarkable. I struggle to piece together the plot, if ever there was any, since the movie flits dreamily between episodes and vignettes in the bumbling life of its protagonist, General Klensky (Yuriy Tsurilo, fantastic in the role) as he navigates a seemingly labyrinthine, unfocused, and meandering plot (just now, as I write this, I've had to look up the plot summary - he's a doctor, terrorized by Soviet authorities in the waning days of Stalin's regime) that mostly seems an excuse to show off lush black-and-white photography (and I am absolutely more than fine with that). The movie is also labeled a sequel of sorts to German's earlier My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1985) (a movie pretty damn great in its own right, especially for something that clearly aspires to be a bit of a Mirror (1975) imitation). The only caveat is that at nearly two-and-a-half hours, Khrustalyov can crawl along at a snail's pace.

All gushing and p!ss-taking aside, Khrustalyov may be a perfect movie; which makes it all the more a bummer that it doesn't get the recognition it deserves.

The Devil's Rejects (2005)

It Might Just Grow On You

[6/10 · 6 December 2022]

Art, it is not. And that's okay, because Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejects (a sequel to his earlier House of 1,000 Corpses, a borderline guilty-pleasure Halloween favorite of mine) has no pretentions at being "art". Devil's Rejects falls in the same wheelhouse as Black Dynamite, or the Tarantino/Rodriguez team-up on Grindhouse - a loving homage to 1970's exploitation (specifically with the case of Rob Zombie's obsessions, Hixploitation) that far excedes the cherished trash it's sending up.

The plot revolves around a vindictive sheriff (and naturally, as these things go), brother of the murdered sheriff from the last movie, as he leads a raid against the House of 1,000 Corpses, mother Firefly gets taken in, and Baby and Otis high-tail it outta there to reunite with Captain Spaulding, at which point it turns into a dusty road trip movie as they do what rabid dogs do best and try to stay ahead of the fuzz.

Few would argue that Devil's Rejects is, if not Zombie's best movie, than at least his best directed (by Rob Zombie standards); and shows his maturation as a director of 2000's schlock (he took a step backwards and went back to his juvenile ways after this, though). At the very least, as of writing this, Rejects is certainly in his top 3. The drastic shift in tone from the original (ditching the Halloween carnival aesthetic of Corpses) is pretty jarring, and though the movie, as far as movies go, is pretty average in what you see on screen (I wasn't much of a fan the first couple times I saw it), it's basic cable faux-sleaze I've kept coming back to over and over again.

And sometimes, that's just what you need: basic cable entertainment, and nothing more.

Sophie's Choice (1982)

Oh Meryl, Aren't You the Most Darling Little Thing?

[1/10 · 6 December 2022]

There needs to be more to a movie than simply being an audition reel for the actor's next big project. But with Sophie's Choice, that's pretty much it: a safe-as-milk, by-the-numbers Meryl vehicle, another cushy paycheck, and another guaranteed Oscar for Hollywood's standard go-to theater actress. A conventionally-shot 80's public-access TV melodrama that looks like they used a potato for a damn camera - and that you would be hard-pressed to pick out of a line up of other, more forgotten but equally forgettable Oscar-bait - this theater drama - a chamber piece tapping the holocaust seemingly as an afterthought to add some much-needed prestige to a conventionally disposable VHS tape - epitomizes everything wrong with movies: all the things I've said above, but namely those disgustingly lazy, phoned-in Hollywood studio products that, no matter how ugly it looks, how conventional the blockage, the lack of any attempt at actual visual composition, how horrendously basic it all is, people will praise the whole muddled, ugly thing for one element like the lead actor, or that it's a (gasp!) pretentious period piece (high-brow exploitation pieces like slavery or genocide seem to be a favorite recurring wet dream for the Academy) that thinks it's something while doing absolutely nothing. Sophie's Choice is for the audience that thinks Subject is somehow more important than actual Filmmaking (or Quality in general) or grandma's who don't give a damn what's on, so long as their favorite actor's in it.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007)

The Epitome of Bland, mid-2000's European 'Meh'

[1/10 · 5 December 2022]

4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is one of those movies that - despite how flat and conventional the video is in every single way, and with the production value of a taped stage play that seems to be someone's thesis project for a college film course - is sure to get pseudo-intellectual praise purely for the subject matter, rather than any technical or artistic quality.

Subject is no substitute for craft. Just because something's about a serious topic (in this case we follow a young woman in Ceausescu's Romania who seeks a back-alley abortion in a totalitarian state that's banned the procedure), that's no reason to praise such vapid, boilerplate execution.

At one time, I got into an argument with someone who snobbishly praised this movie, and when pressed to explain just exactly what made this basic and conventionally-shot drama so exceptional in any measurable way (artistry, presentation, technique, cultural impact) all he did was rattle off how many merits and ribbons Mungui's movie won at a handful of festivals and screenings (including the oh-so-bloody prestigious Palm d'Or). On top of that, and this is the best part, he said, essentially, "It's not about Craft, but Feeling." Honest. And that's the sort of crowed this movie is made to draw out; Pretentious, psuedo-intellectual college kid circles who are more likely to praise disingenuous 'socially-conscious' twaddle because of the message rather than any discernable quality. It's another ultra-basic Youtube video masquerading as art, ugly history cheaply exploited for critical-darling praise, pretentious hipster bait for those who can only quote the opinion of others but never demonstrate just How or Why it's special, and it's time I'll never get back.

And if you're seeking an abortion drama, I'd point you, instead, to Eliza Hittman's much more brilliant, sincere, well-shot (and well-made) Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) instead.

The Funhouse (1981)

Stock VHS Horror Video

[2/10 · 5 December 2022]

I've watched The Funhouse a few times over the years, and the best I can say about Tobe Hooper's movie is that it's barely on the upper-end of tolerable among trash-fueled '80's schlock. Recently, though, I had read Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation - where he devotes a whole chapter to The Funhouse - and really, Quentin can take even the biggest piece of crap and make it sound intriguing.

So, I watched the movie again.

...and it still sucks.

The paper-thin premise follows our stock pack of disposable teens (though here, at least, they're given slightly more characterization than their contemporaries) as they venture out to a traveling carnival one night and stay behind for some after-hours hijinks, only to get picked off by a Carny freak until, inevitably, only the final girl makes it out at daybreak after bumbling the monster to his cartoonishly '80's demise.

The grasping-at-straws silver linings, few that there are, include Kevin Conway chewing up scenery as the demented carnival barker and father of a mutant son, and above all, William Finley's all-too-brief cameo, when he steals the spotlight as a boozed-up carnival magician.

Vice (I) (2018)

A Comically Vitriolic Stab At Dick Cheney's America

[8/10 · 5 December 2022]

The first time I watched Vice (of which I had almost no interest in until I saw its inclusion in the 2019 edition of 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die), I expected a conventionally flat piece of Oscar bait (it was up for best picture). Sometimes, it's good to be wrong. And on second watch, it's still just as damn good. Despite knowing all the many, many historical inaccuracies and flat-out fabrications Adam McKay makes, It's a damn fine piece of entertainment (same reason why people watch Braveheart, it sure as hell ain't about period accuracy). An unconventional, almost parody take on the biopic, its constantly meta, fourth-wall breaking nature (cut-away gags (torture on the menu), fake-out happy ending halfway through, a Shakespearian scene in the bedroom, a funny twist with Jesse Plemons' voice-over narrator, Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) snarlingly addressing the audience at the end) makes a farce out of the Bush Whitehouse in perhaps much the same way that Armando Iannuci's Death of Stalin (2017) took the piss out of post-Stalinist Russia. Adam McKay's follow-up after his brilliant The Big Short (2015), this quasi-biopic on Dick Cheney follows him from inconspicuous redneck blue-collar roots in middle America to devious mastermind behind some of the Bush administration's most dubious policies (again, cartoonishly embellished and played up for drama). Someone had pointed out, and rightfully so, that some parts feel as though we're only seeing half the movie, what with the way we breeze through a lot of plot points (the cut scenes are worth checking out, especially the deleted war bunker scene) and things certainly feel fudged toward the end and it feels that we arrive at Cheney's closing bad-guy soliloquay rather abruptly. Fair enough, but when that's the worst of it, there's not terribly much to detract. Bale plays the snarky character with plenty of tongue-in-cheek sarcasm and McKay rounds out the cast with Amy Adams, Steve Carrel, Tyler Perry, Sam Rockwell and a plethora of other recognizable faces, all of whom bounce off each other more-or-less pretty well in this zany, flippant, and irreverantly self-aware political satire.

American Pastoral (2016)

Another blow-hard adaptation of an esteemed novel

[1/10 · 9 September 2022]

Ewan McGregor is a fine actor, and he should stick to acting. Taking the helm after the original director attached to the project quit, McGregor makes his directing debut with this cringe melodrama that spits in the face of Philip Roth's critically acclaimed novel. While Roth's Pulitzer-Prize winning magnum opus is a biting takedown of safe, sheltered, suburban idyllic Americana, the movie amounts to one of those adaptations that's essentially an empty, hollow sparknotes summary in video form. Who was this even made for? A cringe daytime soap that functions more as parody than adaptation; there's that flat, nondescript made-for-streaming-service feel to it.

The plot, if you care, is: all-American former high-school athlete Swede Levov, a Jew who's perfectly blended himself into goyim Americana, has it all - until his teenage daughter goes underground after a lame act of domestic terrorism. Then everything - his delicate "civilized" way of life and paper-thin suburban peace - goes downhill a la Job.

Conventional, pedestrian, hollow, empty nothingness, it's also edited in a slap-dash way that makes you think, How the hell did we instantly jump to this part of the plot? A complete waste of everyone involved. There's something satisfying about seeing one man accomplish more on paper than an entire crew of hundreds bunched together. What I'm pedantically saying is, if you're inclined to digest American Pastoral - read the damn book.

Coherence (2013)

Some Things Are Better Left on Paper

[3/10 · 9 September 2022]

Just Because something's good on paper, doesn't mean it's good on camera. I'll say it again: good concept doesn't make terrible execution any less terrible. Enter Coherence, a solid premise squandered on a painfully generic Youtube-quality video shot in someone's living room with little to no budget. The plot centers on a group of friends who meet for dinner one night, when the power is briefly cut out by the effect of a passing meteor. When it comes back on and our cast of characters try a handful of outside excursions, they slowly realize their Twilight Zone-esque predicament: multiple parallel versions of themselves running about, switching places house to house amidst the confusion of the night. Despite the fact the video looks like it was shot on someone's phone (which in the age of something as brilliant as Tangerine is no excuse for such visual dreck), the premise is intriguing enough that I actually found myself getting onto it around half-way through. And "Galaxies", the catchy Laura Veirs song over the end credits sorta makes it worth it. In the end, Coherence follows the same old story as Primer: a brilliant concept on paper that should've been left on paper. Why don't they ever just make these things into short stories or scripted podcasts? If it's just words, words, words and no show, why don't they ever keep it in word form?

A Boy and His Dog (1975)

Time I'll Never Get Back

[1/10 · 25 November 2020]

Don Johnson was perfectly fine in Miami Vice, even charismatic, but here he's pretty sub-par and forgettable, starring in a bad 70's cross-mesh of Hills Have Eyes and Mad Max (yes, I know it pre-dates both), the only slightly notable thing about which is the fact that it was the inspiration for the Fallout games. Johnson wanders a dry stock-footage post-apocalyptic desert with his telepathic dog who mind-melds with him via lazy voice-over. Then the plot switches gears, and you forget you're watching the same movie when in the last third - for most of which the dog is absent - he goes underground to score some strange, only to get plopped into a quasi-hixploitation crapfest that still somehow manages to be excruciatingly boring. Harlan Ellison was a sub-par sci-fi writer whose material makes for even worse adaptations. Another dry drop in the sea of low-budget garage-quality 70's footage.

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

More Eugene O'Neill than Rod Serling

[1/10 · 25 November 2020]

I remember seeing this movie a while back and liking it well enough because, despite the insurmountable boredom, it had the distinct feel of an extended classic Twilight Zone episode. Now, after rewatching it, it's just insurmountabley boring. A surreal satire in which a group of rich schmucks get together for dinner and find themselves unable to leave the living room. Yawn. The "action's" limited to one location for most of the run time. They lie about. Maybe do some pacing. And talk, I don't remember about what. It's kinda like watching Sidney Lumet's films of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh, just with the odd touch of the surreal occasionally sprinkled through-out. Or really any high-end taping of a play. Makes you wanna bang your head against a wall. Despite the Spanish-cooked Rod Serling flavour, little, if anything, could save this absolute bore on second viewing.

Ganja & Hess (1973)

Da Sweeter Blood

[2/10 · 18 November 2020]

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is, if not Spike's worst movie, then at the very least among his worst. So imagine my surprise when I realized it was actually a remake. Ganja and Hess is a vampire movie of sorts that lies at a peculiar intersection of Blaxploitation, Horror and Arthouse. It avoids the typical pulp trappings of other black flicks of the era, and plays like an experimental European Arthouse project. What I'm saying is, it's crap, but a helluva lot better than contemporary schlock like Blacula and Scream, Blacula, Scream. Spike's take may be a lot more sharply shot, crisp and clean, like a shiny plastic wrapper, and, like a shiny plastic wrapper, is unbearably empty and lacks the mystique only dirty 70's experimentation can provide.

Moy drug Ivan Lapshin (1985)

Aleksy German's The Mirror

[8/10 · 14 November 2020]

A small-town man lives a normal homelife where he puts on appearances of respectability for his family and friends, but at work he's a brutal KGB enforcer. My Friend Ivan Lapshin is heavily reminiscent of Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror - half-memories told as a series of random disjointed vignets, in both black-&-white and in color, with very loose handheld camerawork lending it a naturalness easy to get lost in. Unfortunately, that's also a crutch. I couldn't help but keep comparing it to the Mirror the entire time I was watching the movie; albeit Ivan Lapshin's a very solid imitation, pretty damn good in its own right. Let's call this one a slightly overshadowed companion piece to Tarkovsky.

The Jericho Mile (1979 TV Movie)

The Little Inmate that Could

[1/10 · 14 November 2020]

Wow. Another inspirational TV sports movie. Flat, recycled paper-thin plot about a guy (this one's an inmate serving life) who can run fast. So his supporters encourage him to run fast. But the man keeps trying to keep him down. Then he does it. He runs. Then runs faster. Then crosses the finish line. Spectators cheer. He tosses the stop-watch. It smashes against a wall (Yeah! You go! That'll show the man! I mean, he still has you caged up and always will, but that'll show'em!) Freeze frame on our sweaty, muscular hero with his handsome 70's 'stache, like a real man. The end. The cliche shot of the hero bursting across the finish line, arms thrown out, is, of course, on the poster. And the scenery's real far-out - ah, dig those bland gray Folsom walls, captured in the full glory of a 70's TV set. And it won, count'em - three Emmy's! Because it's not like they give them out to just anyone.

The Needle (1988)

Soviet Superfly

[6/10 · 10 November 2020]

If you can get past the fact that this was essentially just a vehicle for the Soviet Union's biggest rockstar with a paper-thin plot, this low-budget Russian-Kazakh movie is oddly charming, in a grimy, off-beat sorta way, kinda like - closest comparison that comes to mind - the Blaxploitation movies of the West. If anything, the standard drug-based plot bolstered by a terrific soundtrack (and pervading sense of Cool, but not quite effortless Shaft-levels of Cool) makes me want to lump this in with b-movie schlock like Superfly (1972). Viktor Tsoi plays a drifter who meets an old friend, finds she's on dope, takes her away for a few weeks to get her off - only for her to relapse when they get back. Meanwhile, he stirs-up trouble for the local drug ring - climaxing in the final scene of the movie (and the most memorable) in which he walks down a snow-covered lane, gets shived by one of the goons, and is left to wander of into the night-time drift - like Shane or John Wayne riding off into the sunset - bleeding, his fate uncertain. As far as celebrity vehicles go (especially musicians), this one's better than most of its American counterparts.

Quest for Fire (1981)

'80's Cavemen

[1/10 · 9 November 2020]

Cavemen look for Fire. That's it. If the entire plot can be summed up in a caveman grunt, then it's not an interesting plot. Unfortunately, this being a crap early 80's video, there's nothing of visual interest going on either. Quest for Fire is nothing more than any one of thousands of flat, cheap PBS productions made for middle-school history teachers to throw on for the class when they don't feel like teaching that day. Wow. People in fur pelts hit other people in fur pelts, then spend night in cave. This is the sort of time-waster snobs will claim is better than pure, unfiltered garbage like 10,000 B.C., but is no less mind-numbing or disposably bland. An absolute nothing.

Dead Man's Letters (1986)

Soviet Threads

[1/10 · 9 November 2020]

The 1984 British TV movie 'Threads' seems to be somewhat of a minor cult oddity in certain parts of the internet. I mention this because Dead Man's Letters is essentially the Soviet response to that movie, a sulky grime-coated 80's production about a decayed world post-nuclear holocaust. The survivors live in ruins and rubble, run around the sepia-tinted fallout outside in rags and hazmat suits, then get sick and die...and that's it. Threads was an utter bore and its TV-production limitations really drag it down - nothing happens in that movie. People get sick from radiation and die and that's the whole entire movie; this was no more exciting. Dead Man's Letters has a bigger budget than many of its western counterparts of the decade, and they put it to a much more creatively cinematic use: yellow and blue-tinted cinematography, sets of Stalker-level industrial decay, scenes of fire and destruction scattered thru-out - but mostly it's just tired and worn people sitting and talking in shanty-town bunkers about their woes. Yawn.

From Hell (2001)

A Quick Review that's as bland as the Movie

[1/10 · 6 November 2020]

Flat, forgettable, Hollywood mandate carelessly churned out just to capitalize on a property, with a bored Johnny Depp there just to pick up a paycheck. 'S like those awful supernatural crime shows, set in a Victorian-fashion studio backlot. If you're even slightly interested, try the Alan Moore comic instead.