Cold Sweat - 1970

Charles Bronson is not a actor I have seen a lot.  Death Wish and it's sequels is perhaps the only movie of his that is in my usual genre type, and if that's an adequate excuse, then I will run with it.  I dunno, he's in a lot of western movies and a lot of other random stuff.  It's not my foray.  Although I do wonder if there's another Bronson appearance on the 70's or 80's boxset...?

Bronson had a Dolph Lundgren-esque career as an action star.  A dude that had certainly "made it" and had been around for a long time, but played quite down the list of action stars and didn't have as much popularity.  Well, maybe not.  Maybe he was more like, uh fuck...  well, anyways.  I can't think.  Man I'm fucking tired.  I guess kinda like Steven Seagal.  Or something.  Lundgren is perhaps too minor an actor, though I do love him.

Charles Bronson was an action star for a while in the 70's, and this movie was directed by James Bond regular Terence Young.  Cold Sweat was also based off a book written by Richard Matheson.  I'm not too familiar with Matheson, but I have read some of his books, so that part of the credits did make me excited for this movie.

Bronson plays Joe Martin, a boater dude who is living in France with his family.  Turns out Joe has a history that comes creeping back, as these things do.  Some men who Joe escaped from 10 years ago appear and begin to make matters rough for Joe and his familia, and pretty soon it's the standard "retired criminal versus mob bosses" scenario where the stakes are high and the details low.

This is also the type of movie where, as exciting as it may be in idea, it does sort of fall flat.  As I said in my review of Hunk, I put this movie on when my friend was over.  We got relatively far into it as well.  Like an hour.  But it was too slow, not very interesting, and it was sort of unclear what was really going on.  I'm sure a lot of this could be rationed as our reaction due to being drunk as hell and generally low patience, but we are somewhat good at sitting through bad movies.  My friend vetoed this one and we watched Hunk instead, basically.

It's an average action flick, inspired by James Bond, and it's a revenge story.  It's got decent actors.  It's got some kills.  It has a few short nudity flashes.  But all in all, it really wasn't all that great and I'm just going to give it a 2.

Hunk - 1987

I had the experience of having my friend from Santa Rosa over the other day, and he examined what I have been talking about on here for a while, my boxset of 100 Awesomely Cheesy Movies.  He thought it would be cool to watch on of the movies contained herein.

I tried to service my friend and the blog, and I chose Charles Bronson action vehicle Cold Sweat from the Swinging Seventies set..  We got quite a ways into it.  But we weren't really in the mood, and he's not as adept at watching shitty movies as I am.  So he vetoed that, and wanted to watch something from the Excellent Eighties part of the set.

So, I peeled that glorious cling wrap off the Excellent boxset, I took his recommendation, and in went Hunk.  My friend Matt had read me the description of the movie, and I was going to warn him that it might be a lame comedy.  After all, the plot of the movie is that a geeky kid gets a wish of his fulfilled when he wishes to become a hunk.  That plotline sounded like a recipe for terrible 80's jokes and "comedy" but we forged on, I deciding not to mention it.

Like I said, the plot was as dumb as could be expected.  But it being late 80's, the pacing and the feel of it was not all bad.  In fact I very well may have even liked this movie.  I can't decide for sure yet, for some reason.  The movie's unpopular loser is Bradley Brinkman.  He's got the Jew-fro, glasses, awkwardness, he's the 80's ideal nerd.  He wants to get the ladies so he says he would sell his soul to be a hunk.  The devil appears and offers him everything he could want by turning him into good looking beefcake Hunk Golden.  Hunk has it all, the women, fame, money, and car.  But Bradley's only chance to save his immortal soul is to choose to revert back to his nerdy self, and give that all up...

It was a fine movie.  I'm just saying, I finish this and it's like, yeah okay sure.  That worked.  It made sense.  It kept two very drunk guys mildly interested for 90 minutes.  Was it funny?  Ehhh, I'll say not really.  Was it well made?  Sure!  Decent effects, good acting, and it felt like it was relatively "realistic" in the terms where everything made sense and you didn't question XYZ.

The pacing was a little slow, and it's not a plot to keep one guessing.  I guess they didn't really "do" a lot with the idea too.  Hunk Golden has everything, and he falls in love with a girl.  Naturally that is what eventually makes him wanna turn back into Bradley, but will the girl accept him for who he actually is?  Well of course, ya fucking idiot, it's an 80's comedy.  Naturally everything is going to work out in the end.  But besides the girl, he never really learns any lessons from the brief spotlight.  He fucks a bunch of women, shows off like hell, he does everything he wants and gets a girl, and in the end never learns a lesson except that apparently if you bait girls well enough they will put up with a still relatively attractive slightly more nerdy dude.

Huh.  I feel like I liked it a little less now.  But I think 3 stars sounds around right.

Rogue Male - 1976

Two continuations here.  We got Swingin Seventies boxset as well as 1976 movie marathon.  Double hitter, and if I watched baseball instead of movies, I'd know what that actually means.

I was in a weird mood after I watched Darren Aronofsky's latest film mother!  That movie, hehe, will put you in a fucking strange mood, that's no spoiler warning.  After it ended, I was left in an emotional void of not knowing what "to do".  Also, a little insider news for you guys at home.  I like to challenge myself in new and different ways.  I'm going to go 2 weeks without watching any movies, TV, internet, everything the whole deal.  So I decided to kick in one last Swingin Seventies.

Rogue Male begins and tosses you right into some rifle cross-hairs aimed at the Fuhrer himself Adolf Hitler.  The shot misses.  Behind the gun is Peter O'Toole as Sir Robert Hunter.  He's a British dude, far out of his league and out of his rights to be taking shots at Hitler.  This is before England and Germany were officially at war during WWII, so he's likely to be held responsible for a murder attempt.  His only choice is to flee.

What we have after the setup is an intriguing, well done thriller suspense film.  No, really it is.  I liked this movie.  It does have a tendency towards the typical British stuffiness feel, very Hu-haa and Hrum Hrum.  There's even jokes about wardrobe like 20 times.  But it keeps it interesting enough with constant police evasions, tactical escape, and great acting.

Peter O'Toole is fantastic as Sir Robert Hunter.  We don't know much about him, except that he's got a few close friends, and he used to be high up in British society.  He took this shot at Hitler pretty much only because he "didn't like him" and that suits the film.  Robert is on the run for literally the entire film, holed up in ship cargo containers, and buried under the roots of a tree.  He's a dedicated hero, someone with uncompromising values, even though we as an audience don't know what he's doing and why.  It's an interesting choice, but it works.

The movie is shot well, looks good, and the acting is solid.  I bet with a cleaned up job and if you brought back the original aspect ratio, this would be a movie worth a nice solid DVD release.  And it was made for TV!  The fuck!  These things just don't happen anymore, actual good movies with actual actors made for TV.

Ummm, yeah I dunno.  I feel like I should keep talking, but suffice to say I did like this movie.  It kept me entertained, it never felt like it didn't make sense, and the 100 minutes went by pretty quick.  I give it a full four stars.

The Swimmer - 1968

I was briefly explaining to my friend from Nepal about my taste for movies the other day.  I said, "Saurav, I have lists, literally pages worth of lists of movies to watch.  And books to read.  But my mind is far too frenetic to just go through, watching one, crossing it off, etc etc.  So I'm constantly running across other things that I find that I want to see, and renting them instead."  Case in point is here with The Swimmer.

1968, the same year 2001 A Space Odyssey came out, this little indie feeling drama and character study made it's waves.  Get it?  Waves?  The Swimmer?  Aw fuck you.  C'mon yo, get with the puns.

The Swimmer, as I explained to my movie friend, is a story of modern urban decay, disenfranchisement, and swimming.  What I liked about this movie is obviously going to be many many things, and I'm almost unsure of where to start.  So, the plot...  Burt Lancaster is Ned, a toned and tan socialite in Los Angeles.  In the beginning of the film, he's at a little garden/swimming party, and off in his own world.  He stares across the abyss of Los Angeles, and suddenly declares he can, via pool-hopping, essentially swim all the way home...

And yeah, that's as much development as we get.  He jumps in the pool, swims across, goes out the other side, and begins his walk to the next pool.  There is not a lot of time shown of his foot journeys from pool to pool.  We gather that essentially, this is the rich area of LA in the 60's, and most people would have a pool.  It's also summer, or at least warm-ish, and people are doing things outside.

From there, one can see the film go in many ways.  It seems that Ned knows about everyone.  As he interacts with those he knows and those he doesn't, we learn about him.  Playboy, Don Juan, unhappy, lost in the past, destroyed, haunted, but mostly disconnected is the feelings we begin to gather about Ned.  There is a casual lost and hypnotic way Ned acts, as if he's gripped by a surreal half awake state permanently.  And as you may know about me, those are all things I love.

All dialogue, super linear, and basically real time, this is an absolute rule-layer about how to do a amazing character study.  The mystery is never quite revealed all the way, and the pieces fit with just the right amount of them still missing to make the film intriguing.  The encounters he has with people paint the portrait of a man who never lived a great life.  But through delusion and lying to himself, perhaps he led himself to believe his life was admirable.  Perhaps he has no idea who he really is, what his life has been, and where he is now... at all.

The payoff is a little bit predictable, but it couldn't have gone any other way.  But it's not about the payoff.  It's about the amazing script, fantastic acting, and the dream-esque, fantasy world we see that slowly unravels.  Physically, Ned destructs, just like how his fantasy gets torn apart piece by piece.  His feet, bloody from walking.  His muscles, sore and cramped.  His body, wracked with cold as the heat of the day dies down.  It's absolutely amazing.

This film feels like it was made for me.  The destruction of fantasy, the power of a mind to lie to itself, the very construct of everything about this fits what I love perfectly.  So no surprise about 5 stars.