Tokyo Godfathers - 2003

 It's incredible to think there was a time when we got two Satoshi Kon films only two years apart.  Tokyo Godfathers came out in 2003, Millennium Actress in 2001.  Kon died in 2010 at the age of only 46, and for such a young guy he sure made an imprint.

Tokyo Godfathers left behind the surreal, imagery-rich films Kon had previously done, Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress.  He did Paprika after this, and the show Paranoia Agent, then if you toss in his short in Memories, that's basically all he ever did.  It's really sad.

Tokyo Godfathers played at my theater while I worked there, and I remember watching it and not liking it.  As I explained in Millennium Actress, I was a young dumb kid obsessed with Perfect Blue and I wanted him to make the same thing again and again.  Truth is, nothing would ever return to the darkness and viciousness of Perfect Blue, not ever Paranoia Agent, which tbh I don't think I ever even finished.

The film follows three homeless outcasts.  We have an older man who's been homeless the longest, Gin, a gay crossdressing middle aged guy Hana, and then a teenage runaway Miyuki.  They discover a baby left in a dumpster early on in the film, and for various reasons they end up wanting to find the baby's parents and return her to them instead of involving the police.  As this adventure builds, we learn more about our three characters, we get hints to their backstories, and get some build into their stories.

Coming at this in 2022, I have to say that it's really good.  The film is short and sweet, and it's all realistic for the most part.  It's a well-spun dramatic story, and I'd say emotionally effective.  I will say, I think the plot turns towards to the end were a little confusing, and the end is perhaps a tad overdone, but those are my only nitpicky issues.  We're left with a lot of individual redemptions, and give that the last day in the film is New Years Day, it's obvious we're indicating towards a better future for our unlucky three protagonists.

I wish I'd watched this with my girlfriend.  I think she'd like it.  I'll give it 4 stars.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - 1997

 Video stores were a place where you could gather nothing about a movie except the artwork and maybe what it said on the back.  Fuck Netflix man, there was something so much more engaging when this was a tactile medium.

The cool thing about video stores, and especially being in them as a kid, was seeing the covers of movies that you noticed for whatever reason, and have stuck with you for years.  As a completionist, I should logically see all of these, eventually...right?  Here is a short list of the titles I remember, sticking only to those that I still haven't seen:

Howard Stern in Private Parts. The Craft. An American Werewolf in Paris

I'll get back to that later.  MITGOGAE here is one of those.  I remember this having cool art and Kevin Spacey, two things I was into apparently.  I never saw it, I always wanted to.  I didn't know it was based on a true story, didn't know it was over 2 hours, didn't know it was directed by Clint Eastwood.  Now I know those things, and now I can say, I guess, probably not really worth seeing.

MITG is a murder mystery of sorts, where John Cusack is a reporter doing a piece on Kevin Spacey as a antique collector in Louisiana, and an hour or so into the movie we learn that the same antique dealer he interviewed, later in the night shot his gay prostitute lover.  This then takes us to the court room to witness the case.  That's the movie guys, and it's built around the strangeness of the crime and the characters involved.

There's essentially nothing wrong with that, and it's a case of truth being stranger than fiction here of course.  The characters are all full of weird antics and the absurdity of some of the things is up to the max here.  It feels extremely realistic, but does it help the movie?  And does it feel like it adds to the story?  And do any of them matter, or their interactions matter?  

I mean, again, kudos to all involved, and the acting is top notch from 99% of the cast, but I just don't really know why the character of Chablis is in this movie.  Or the voodoo lady.  Or a lot of others.  It's clearly a case of these people were there in reality, so put them in the movie, but really?  Do ya need to?

It's overly long and it's not that funny or interesting, and it may be my least favorite Clint Eastwood directed movie I've seen.  It's not like bad, it's just really not for me.  Cool VHS box cover art aside.

Wait Until Dark - 1967

 I don't have very many movie friends unfortunately.  People who have informed opinions, who are critical in approach and yet at the same time are like me:  They want to like a movie every time.  I don't go in with a chip on my shoulder, I don't let thoughts about actors or directors shape my perception of the film.

My friend Reiss let me know he was going to watch this movie, apropos of nothing.  I looked it up.  Thriller, suspense, 1967, starring Audrey Hepburn.  Very low chance that my library would have it.  To my surprise they did, on DVD.  I rented it, and then last night me and Reiss both watched it, texting a couple times about the spectacle that we were witnessing.

Wait Until Dark also stars Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna and Jack Weston.  It is based on a play, and for me that's always a great sign.  We begin the film witnessing a criminal undertaking, as a mystery doll is slipped into an unsuspecting woman's suitcase.  Then we follow her home.  She is Susy, a blind woman played by Audrey Hepburn.  Her husband Sam leaves her alone for the night, and at that point the criminals launch an all out assault on her and her home to recover their doll.

Holy shit was this a film.  I don't know where else to begin but to say that.  We are mostly in Susy's sub-street level apartment, and we follow the criminals interaction with her.  Richard Crenna pretends to be one of her husband's old war buddies, trying to get the doll to prove Sam's innocence in the death of a missing girl.  Jack Weston pretends to be a police Sargent, coming by to accuse Sam of the death and to promise help if the doll turns up.  Alan Arkin pretends to be three people, the main one being the husband of the dead girl, convincing Hepburn they were having an affair behind her back.

While they take on these roles, they use her blindness to their advantage, mouthing things and signaling things behind her back.  The front door can be opened silently, and they sneak here and there, they tie things to the wall, they open the blinds of the window to signal each other.  There is also a phone booth, which they use advantageously, they call or they have her call the booth instead of whatever place she's trying to call, so that one of their teammates can answer and falsify information.

Later, when we get to the climax of the film, we see a few other ways where they would have really used the fact this was performed on a stage to it's full benefit.  This would be one of the best utilizations of a stage I can imagine, where the audience can really be a part of what's going on without it being contrived conveniences.  It's also extremely simple, and likely all in real time.  

The climax of this movie is incredible, and it delivers.  The movie reminded me of one of those Rube Goldberg devices.  This leading to that, doing something weird, spinning this top, slamming this to open that.  The way that things lead to unexpected places and then have the character react to them, and we get the full glory of witnessing them thinking on their feet, while Susy is left literally in the dark, and is thus convincing as to how she is left out of the reality of the scene.

I'd never heard of Wait Until Dark before, but I will be recommending it to all my movie buddies who would give a shit.  Speaking of last entry and the Criterion Edition, where is the Criterion Edition of this movie?  It really deserves it.  I give it 5 stars.

Seconds - 1966

 In my nonsensical never-ending habit of picking up random movies that have the Criterion stamp on them, I grabbed Seconds.  The back of the DVD proclaimed something about being a thriller and a bizarre fantasy film, okay I'm in, sold.

Seconds stars Rock Hudson, John Randolph and Salome Jens.  In the beginning, we witness John Randolph as Arthur being terrorized by a phantom caller who is saying that he's Arthur's dead brother.  Arthur then gets sent on a mystery ride to a series of destinations that end at "The Company", which turns out to quite literally be a body swapping service. 

They will fake Arthur's death, in a tragic hotel fire, and then they'll surgically alter him to look different, and give him his ideal life.  There's a few really excellent existential moments here where Arthur is greeted with the meaningless of his life.  He is supposedly successful, set to become a bank manager, with a grown daughter and wife of many years.  By all accounts, he should be happy.  But he's not, he yearns for something else, and soon enough he agrees to go to The Company.

Seconds has a very bizarre, very undefined tone to the most of the film.  Like I said in my plot breakdown, there was a very deep, admirable sense of existentialism in the first 45 minutes or so.  I got super interested in invested when I thought that this movie was going to examine the loss of meaning to a life, the loss of the American Dream, and the what-have-you surrounding that.  Then, it changed.   

Then, the movie changes and as the changed Arthur becomes his new person, I think it's a version of the 60's notion: an anti-corporate, anti-conformist, embracive of free love and freedom sendup to hippie culture.  Then, it changes again and becomes a mystery or at least a thriller, and sorta ends up landing there.  Undecided and unclear is an understatement.

It's obvious though, that some things are really working.  The acting, the design.  The experimental quick edits and the camera work is all groundbreaking, as well as the newly restored scene at the grape crushing.  The girl of his interest, Salome Jens, I knew from Star Trek Deep Space Nine, and plays an alien in Terror From the Year 5000.  She's had a wild career.  

All in all, this is neither failure nor is it quite a success.  It felt like it never decided what it was, but what it really is, great early experimental film which would in the 70's of course flourish.  This movie was ahead of it's time, and I think it deserves recognition.  I give it 3.5.

The Loch Ness Terror - 2008

 The SciFi channel or SyFy channel was a mainstay for about 5 years of my life, and it was around this time that this movie came out, 2008ish.  There is a very high chance I watched this when it was new on the TV.

Brian Krause stars in this obviously made for TV movie.  It seemed at this time that there was a new made for TV movie on this channel every week, and it was either Friday or Saturday's where they'd end up doing a marathon of these bottom of the barrel, F grade features.  I'd inevitably watch most of them.  

The Loch Ness Terror, oddly enough, does not take place in Scotland, but rather supposedly on Lake Superior.  There is another Nessie creature there, and this giant motherfucker is a terrible CGI monstrosity that's gonna eat you whole.  

Yuuuup.  My Friday, ladies and gentlemen.

You get what you expect, and this movie is complete trash.  But what I didn't expect is the change in me.  I used to watch trash with a cool, complete level of acceptance.  I had a soft spot for movie like this, hence me watching those aforementioned Saturday marathons.  Well, the discovery is that the soft spot is gone.  This is just bad.  It's not fun bad.  It's simply bad bad.

Of minor interest, the composer of this is a Turkish woman who went on to be huge in the business, recently doing the music for the Captain Marvel movie.  Weird!

I'll give is half a star instead of zero, for old times sake.

Species II - 1998

 I was thinking a while ago, sequels are basically universally known for taking the concept of the first and making it bigger. The idea being that you can't do the same thing again, so you go bigger. 

I'm wondering, first of all, has there been a sequel where they did just do the same thing again? I'm really curious. But Species 2 did not brave that frontier. They made it bigger- by a little bit. 

Natasha Henstridge, Michael Madsen, and the other girl are back, and they have a twin of Sil from the first movie in a isolated bunker. Astronauts from Mars get infected with the alien DNA and come home to spread the genes. Eventually the alien on earth and the alien from Mars can communicate and they want to meet so they can reproduce. 

It's mostly different, not bigger, except there is more violence in the setup. More violence, but less nudity, and less interesting characters. Madsen is barely in the movie, and in fact we follow the alien astronaut for most of it just like we followed Sil in the first movie. 

Overall, this movie is a kinda dumb nothing of a sequel, but it was okay. I didn't hate it. It is just sorta there. I did finish it and put on the third immediately, so that should tell you something. 

Thinner - 1996

 At the risk of not watching this for the maybe upcoming Stephen King season of Gourley and Rust, I did opt to rewatch Thinner now.

Thinner is one of those Stephen King books I believe I have read, who knows where, who knows when.  I saw this movie once, same deal, and promptly forgot it about it.  It's in the realm of the movies that I considered a "bad time", in the long long history of bad King adaptations.

Thinner stars Robert John Burke as lawyer Billy, who's married to his wife Heidi and who's weighing about 300 pounds.  His diet attempts are failing, especially after he gets off a criminal mafia guy played by Joe Mantegna.  After a congratulatory dinner, his wife is giving him road head and Billy is distracted and runs over a gypsy woman in his car.  Using his connections, Billy gets away with it, but soon the gypsy finds him and puts a curse on him in the form of a single word: "Thinner".

This movie is not scary, first of all.  It's barely even a thriller.  It's I guess a somewhat unsettling idea, sure, I guess.  But it's also so obviously dumb - I mean, a gypsy curse?  The movie knows that, it shows the characters disbelieving and dumbfounded by the prospect.  So anyways, the curse works and he begins to get thinner and thinner.  That's cool until it's not, and then he sets out to try to reverse it.

This movie is strangely paced straight out, and then furthermore it has some dodgy acting by most involved but especially the main actor.  His vengeance face is not at all good, and especially the hatred for his wife seems tacked on and underwritten.  

Not sure how Thinner works, but it's entertaining enough and has some minor interest.  It was a pretty much failure, and gets just above a 5 out of 10 online.  I'll give it like a 2.

Species - 1995

 When was the last time you rewatched Species?  Does that fucking movie hold up?

Species is that 90's sci fi movie that wasn't Alien but had similar designs.  HR Giger designed this creature as well, this creature being called Sil in the Wikipedia, though I don't think that name is ever mentioned in the movie.  Species is directed by Roger Donaldson and stars Natasha Henstridge, Forest Whitaker, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, and Ben Kingsley.  What a cast!

In the beginning, an alien creature lands on Earth and after it kills some people, a crack-shot team of people are put together to track down the alien that's loose in LA.  Man, remember when movies were casually shot in LA?  Every fuckin movie is shot in Canada, Australia, New Mexico, anywhere else besides LA these days.  Anyways, this team has persons of different specialties hunting down the alien species, and they'll need it cause she's a seductive, intelligent, dangerous foe.

This movie is great!  I liked it a lot as a kid, and I liked it a lot now.  I remembered this as being the "trashy" alien movie, with tons of nudity and some ridiculous effects and a who cares kinda plot.  It is still that.  I remember seeing this when I was say 13, and being so into this fucking movie.  

Rewatching it now, first and foremost, the cast is excellent.  Natasha Henstridge kills it in a demanding, big role, and honestly isn't really naked that many times.  Okay, maybe it's like 7-8 times, but I thought it was much more.  She's beautiful and dead perfect as a somewhat alien acting, deadly woman.  Then, everyone else is great too, even Michael Madsen mostly works.  

The plot of it all is ridiculous, and so many things are blazed by at 100 miles an hour, sorta, hush hush just go with it sorta thing.  Forest Whitaker is a psychic "empath" how, why? Hush!  Go with it.  You know what's gonna happen.  She'd gonna mate, it's gonna become a hunt, and there'll be plenty of action.  It delivers in other words.

It's not a great high-art movie, but it's fun, and it's a perfect high movie, probably.  I was sober.  Such is life.  I give it a classic 4 star B movie rating.

The Invisible Woman - 1940

 The Invisible Man was a sensation when it came out in the 1930's, and spawned several sequels quickly.  Previously in the blog I reviewed The Invisible Agent, and I enjoyed it enough.  This is all from a five film set that I'm periodically renting from the library.

I had a hard time guessing the year of this, and first and foremost, for 1940, this looks damn good.  It's a "simple" effect, but that still means they're quite literally cutting the actress out of certain film stock, and replacing her with something else.  Additionally of course there are the wires holding things up, but overall, shit this looks pretty good.

The Invisible Woman took the series in the direction of comedy, and ya know, I laughed like maybe 3 times.  It's not as bad as one might assume.  Virginia Bruce, John Barrymore, John Howard, and others star in this, the third in the series.  It's pretty simple.  

There's a scientist who's being privately funded by a broke bachelor, and science guy puts a post in the newspaper looking for a willing subject for the invisible injection.  A young plucky model responds to the post, and soon enough she's there being injected and turning invisible.  The mob is after the bachelor guy and soon get involved while in the meantime, she's invisible and that's the main spectacle.  

Barely over an hour, this installment is fine.  It's quick paced, lighthearted, and funny.  The effects aren't as good as some others, and especially the disrobing scenes aren't up to the original Invisible Man film, but for 1940 it's fucking great.  I don't think I'll ever need to watch all five of these, but it's fun every once in a while.  I give it 3.

Space Truckers - 1996

 There's a few movies out there that are known of in the "bad movies" camp.  Birdemic, The Room, Troll 2, Ed Wood films, etc, are well known to be terrible.  Space Truckers is on the fringe, the type of movie I've heard the name of, known it had a following, and is well versed in the cult world.

I downloaded Space Truckers off Amazon, and finally joined the ranks of those that'll know of it.  This is returning to early blog favorite Stuart Gordon, who did Reanimator and such.  Stuart Gordon is a competent director, and this is a certainly competent movie, I say.  Also, rest in peace Stuart Gordon, I did not know he passed away in 2020.  Dang man.

Space Truckers stars Dennis Hopper, Stephen Dorff, Charles Dance, and the girl from Waterboy, Debi Mazar. So what is this?  This is a comical kids movie/space movie mashup a la Super Mario Bros, similar as well not only with casting Hopper, but also with theme and look.  It begs the question, what was the push in the mid 90's for a kids movie, but I think there's several things really about 90s filmmaking that are questionable.

We begin with Hopper as a sleazy scumbag hitting on Mazar at a bar.  He's a space trucker and his load of whatever is late.  George Wendt as a bossy shipping boss ain't having any of that and strips the cargo from him, giving the cargo to Stephen Dorff.  Dorff and Hopper end up together though, running from Wendt along with Mazar and some mystery cargo.  Turns out what they're carrying is killer robots, which get unleashed after they're attacked by space pirates.

Yes, this movie is stupid, but c'mon, it's obviously a dumb kids movie.  They're not going for a real action epic here or even a mid-brow comedy.  Everything looks stupid, like Dorff's mesh shirt in one scene or Mazar's green bra with high wasted underwear.  This is a movie with multiple, MULTIPLE dick jokes, I mean what do you expect?  

The thing I hate to admit, though...  I felt like shit yesterday.  I was tired, hungry, cranky, headachy, etc.  There was no reason, and it lasted all day.  I fought off the urge to drown my sorrows in booze and I put on this movie instead.  This movie didn't save the day or anything, but seriously, it was the highlight of my day yesterday.  This movie is dumb, it eats it's own shit, and it knows it.  But is it entertaining?  Fuck ya.  Go in expecting crap.  It's not good.  But it's fun.  3.5 stars.

Ugetsu / Sansho the Bailiff - 1953/1954

 Well, it's been a long time since I watched these, but I want to do a review of something and I have nothing else recently I can think of that I watched...so....

Kenji Mizoguchi is one of the Japanese directors I am not as well versed in.  He has some pretty huge major ones too, including these two, Street of Shame, and The 47 Ronin.  Mizoguchi is one of the lesser known guys of this era, but that does not mean less impactful.  As we learn here.

Ugetsu is the story of a war-divided family plight.  Husband and wife are separated after they make a daring escape in a boat after some troops have invaded.  They separate, and husband goes off to certain success while wife is led into a life of prostitution and misery.  

Overall, it's about the horrors of war, the difference between man and woman, and the strife of the everyday person, often overlooked in the big picture of war.

Sansho the Bailiff is thematically similar, hence the grouped together review here.  Brother and sister are kidnapped and taken to a slave camp led by Sansho the Bailiff.  There, brother is helped on the way to escape by sister.  Brother goes and somehow it turns out he is actually going to inherit the role of governor.  He returns to try to free sister, but what he doesn't know is what's happened to her in the meantime.

Writing these down, they sound practically like the same movie, and honestly, they are quite similar.  They're about the disintegration of family, the horror of war (again) and the resiliency of the citizen.  

Spoiler warning, but these movies also end almost exactly the same.  One character finding out the other one is dead and gone, and left alone to suffer and reflect on what happened.  Fuck dude, I mean that sucks you know.

for 'em both

The Serpent and the Rainbow - 1988

Scream 5 or whatever was just released and Wes Craven, being the originator, is certainly a person who's place in horror history is cemented thoroughly.  He passed away somewhat recently, and given he didn't direct all that many movies, what are the ones like that none of us remember?

The Serpent and the Rainbow would certainly be one of these ones that's unknown.  Also, on the surface this concept sounds surefire.  You have the horror master fresh off Nightmare on Elm Street pairing up with Bill Pullman in the movie about the genesis of the idea of the zombie.  An intriguing story, and certainly one ripe for the horror genre, and yet...  it is whatever.

This movie has a generally favorable review pool, and Ebert liked it.  That all considered, I found it to be very tedious and not very engaging.  Bill Pullman plays Dennis Alan, the man with two first names, and he's investigating claims in Haiti about a man who claims he was raised from the dead and forced to be a slave.  Alan investigates this claim and is introduced to a seedy underground world full of deception, violence, and a dangerous powder which may kill you and bring you back from the dead.

Featuring a veritable gamut of actors I know from maybe one other 90's era film, this movie is stacked with good effects, a decent job of writing, and a very good idea.  It's about 100 minutes long, and all these things considered, it should have been a blast, or at least fun, or at the very least engaging.

Like I said though, I wasn't particularly interested.  It seemed as if the plot elements were vague and I wasn't sure what was happening or why sometimes.  It seemed like other things were done for no reason and didn't relate back to the plot.  Or, more likely, I probably wasn't paying attention, as I sat very distractedly.  

I think the most likely culprit to my disappointment might have been high hopes, specifically for horror, and then I was not paying attention for shit.  I'll give it a cautious 2.5.

The Hound of the Baskervilles - 1959

 I'm currently reading a huge collection of every Sherlock Holmes book ever written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  There are 54 short 10-20 page individual adventures, as well as four longer but still relatively short 100ish page stories.  The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third Sherlock Holmes longer book style adventure, and I just finished it before watching this movie.

In the Sherlock adventures, it's all about deduction, right?  Sherlock arrives on the scene, and with a uncanny alertness, he notices small details which for him paint a specific picture from which he can deduce certain facts, i.e. the man was short because of the distance between his footsteps.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is probably my least favorite of the books so far, let's start off with that.  It's about 100 pages, and maybe 30 pages in Holmes separates from Watson, sending him on to investigate the details of the case.  We always follow Watson in these adventures, so we are privy to his own private investigations, and the letters and conference he has with others while Holmes is away.  Then, in the last 20ish pages or so, Holmes finally returns.

This is duplicated in the movie, and it is really apparent that it is only done because of Holmes' hitherto flawless ability to solve things, and of course to solve things rather quickly.  It would never be a 100 page story if it followed the other writings format, Holmes would just deduce this and that and know the killer before there was any real mystery or horror.

This is of course a mixed blessing, as the atmosphere is built on for a while and we're allowed the liberty of seeing the mystery grow without knowing what happened.  However, it also gets a little plodding and repetitive, with literally a few multiple page-long letters about this or that, which are incredibly tedious to read.  

Luckily those are taken out in the movie, and instead replaced with a long mining shaft scene where Holmes is trapped and presumed dead after killing the Hound.  Peter Cushing is Holmes, Christopher Lee is Henry Baskervilles, and Watson is there too, and this Hammer production looks pretty awesome.

Overall, not much of a movie review, but it's decent, I'd say probably better than the book, and the atmosphere is good.  It's hard to say precisely what happened, and the book is more clear, but it's a fine Holmes-ian adventure of the finest sort.

The Hit - 1984

 There's somehow a precedent for movies to sneak by us, even though they are known, successful, and moderately were around when we were.  The Hit snuck by me.

Stephen Frears directs this moody slow-burn character piece with an all star cast.  I mean really, we have Terence Stamp, John Hurt and Tim Roth.  Can it get any better than that?  

In the beginning of this film, Terence Stamp is in a courtroom, turning in some fellow criminals for a crime he helped commit.  The men he turned on all stand at the end of the trial, quite literally singing out to him, "We'll meet again!" as a threat.  We cut to 10 years later, and John Hurt and Tim Roth are the hit men that as sent to collect on the old score.  John Hurt is a moody, seasoned vet while Roth is the young whippersnapper sent with him.  Soon enough, an innocent girl is dragged into the scene as the simple hit takes escalation after escalation.

The problem with plot synopsis is that they don't capture the small moments.  They don't capture the moment Terence Stamp escapes from the two gangsters, only to stand in awe of a waterfall, enamored with life's beauty.  The synopsis doesn't capture the budding friendships between the three men, despite the situation, the way the hitmen respect Stamp and the way he manipulates them.  And they don't capture brutality of other scenes, like when John Hurt casually murders a gas station attendant.  

This movie reminded me a lot of Badlands, which I recently rewatched.  A sympathy letter to "bad men" both of these or a noir-ish feeling look into the humanity of those who might not normally think of.  This movie also reminded me of Meantime, the British character piece I watched like last year or the year before.  I think these super well written character-piece style dramas as vastly vastly fucking underrated.  

I give this one a 4.5.