The Banal, the Blah, the Banausic:
Guilty Pleasures:
Passion Play (2010) Dir. Mitch Glazer - US
Recommended:
Shadows (1959) Dir. John Cassavetes - US
An Englishman In New York (2009) Dir. Richard Laxton - US
Wigstock: The Movie (1995) Dir. Barry Shils - US
Essential Cinema:
Down Terrace (2009) Dir. Ben Wheatley - UK
The Last Circus (2010) Dir. Alex de la Iglesia - Spain
In a Glass Cage (1987) Dir. Agusti Villaronga - Spain
Theatrical Screenings:
Point Blank (2010) Dir. Fred Cavaye - France
Winter In Wartime (2008): Please click here for my review of this film for http://www.ioncinema.com/news/id/6509/review-winter-in-wartime-blu-ray.
Conan the Destroyer (1984): What a boring movie. Truth be told, I haven't seen the original film, and really have only wanted to see this one because I love Grace Jones. Poor Grace doesn't get a lot to do except spit and snarl, but she looks like she's having a great time. While the special effects are dated, the rest of the film is even worse. Arnold's acting is damn wooden and cheesy, the plot is as inventive as peeling a banana, and then there's the horrendous teenage Olivia d'Abo as a spoiled, virginal princess (her virginity to be protected by none other than Wilt Chamberlain---and I'm not kidding). At the point where Arnie and the princess spy bandit Grace Jones defending herself from a village of men, d'Abo cried out "Conan, help her, she is defending herself from six men." Arnie counts "One, Two, Three...I think you're right." Yeah. Bleh. Hack director Richard Fleischer (responsible for Amityville 3D, 1983 and Soylent Green, 1973) gets credit for this steamer.
Passion Play (2010): Okay, so this is a really BAD and TERRIBLY made film---but in a real hot-mess, train wreck sort of way. It serves as the directorial debut of Mitch Glazer (he wrote Scrooged, 1991, hence Bill Murray replaced someone else as Happy the gangster), who is married to Kelly Lynch, also starring. So, the gist is this: Mickey Rourke plays a down and out trumpet player who sleeps with a ruthless gangster's wife and gets dragged out to the desert to be murdered by a hit man. Some gun toting ninjas wandering through the desert save him from the hit man....and then Rourke stumbles on a sideshow circus run by Rhys Ifans, where he finds a beautiful winged woman played by Megan Fox. Rourke and Fox fall in love and run away from the circus and the possessive Ifans. An interlude shows Fox fleeing for a plastic surgeon's office to have her wings removed. "I want to be like the normal girls," she pouts at Rourke. He stops her from cutting off her money makers and tries to convince Murray that they could make money off her as an attraction. Murray falls in love with her too, and cuts a deal with Fox that he won't kill Rourke if she becomes his private winged slave. To find her again, Rourke pawns his prized trumpet, a scene where sad music is played as Rourke sits in a diner with the trumpet in a briefcase....clutching at it as someone, perhaps the pawnbroker?? yanks it away from him, opening the case quickly to finger the mouthpiece one last time.......and then there's the scene where Megan Fox tries to fly....and then there's the fucking terrible cornball ending. This movie is one hot, dumb mess. I almost saw this at Toronto last year, but thankfully did not buy a ticket at the last minute. But, boy, this is a turkey for the ages.
Shadows (1959): The directorial debut of American auteur is this improvisational film from John Cassavetes. It breathes like a NYC late 50's beat picture, focusing on three siblings, Hugh, a struggling singer, Benny, an aimless sister, and Lelia, whose light skin causes conflict when the man she falls in love with discovers she's not white. The real stand out here is the extremely beautiful Lelia Goldoni as the lovelorn young lady.
An Englishman In New York (2009): While it's not as good as it's 1975 predecessor The Naked Civil Servant, this 2009 effort that documents Quentin Crisp's later years in 1980's NYC is pretty damn good, mostly for John Hurt's phenomenal portrayal of Crisp. Watching both films is an excellent trajectory of the rise of gay visibility and gay history. Jonathan Tucker and Denis O'Hare are pretty good in supporting roles, while Swoosie Kurtz and Cynthia Nixon tend to feel a bit distracting. Highly recommended.
Wigstock: The Movie (1995): Perhaps the best thing about this documentary is the time-capsule sort of feel it has, documenting the 1993 and 1994 Wigstock celebrations put on by Lady Bunny in NYC. You get to see drag queen alums Jackie Beat, Alexis Arquette, Candis Cayne, Lypsinka, and, of course, the incomparable Ru Paul. However, the real highlight is a creepy number by Leigh Bowery who gives birth to a red painted nude woman on stage. Terrifying.
Down Terrace (2009): The best little British kitchen-sink drama/gangster comedy you'll ever see, this unpredicatble and vicious little comedy about a father/son gansgter duo recently released from prison. Quibbling over this, that, and the other, most of the action takes place in their dirty hovel of a kitchen, with a washed out bitch of a mother who's way more savvy than she appears to be. Enter the son's very pregnant girlfriend and weird familial issues start busting out all over. And then father and son want to find out who it was in the business that narced on them...and then things start to get violent. Excellent little nasty comedy---I am pumped that director Ben Wheatley's next film, Kill List has been announced as part of the Midnight Madness lineup for Toronto Film Festival, 2011. Can't wait!
The Last Circus (2010): For my review of The Last Circus click here.
In a Glass Cage (1987): I've been meaning to watch this flick for years and I was not disappointed when I finally sat down to do so. Like a sick, twisted little nightmare, this perverse little arthouse shocker is about an ex-Nazi pedophile living in exile with his wife (Marisa Paredes) and daughter in Spain. After molesting and killing a young boy, Klaus (Gunter Meisner) attempts to kill himself jumping off a cliff. He survives, but is paralyzed and requires an iron lung to live. A young boy that witnessed his torture and suicide attempt pilfered his diary documenting his war crimes and blackmails Gunter into letting him be his nurse. And then, of course, things start to spiral out of control as Gunter sits helplessly inside his "glass cage." If Apt Pupil (1998) had huevos and dientes, it would be like In a Glass Cage, a beautiful nightmarish flick---and goshdarnit, who doesn't love to see Marisa Paredes??
Point Blank (2010): I just got my Region 2 copy of Fred Cavaye's 2008 film Anything For Her, which was remade by Paul Haggis in 2010 as The Next Three Days. Anyhow, I just caught his next flick, which has American remake starring Liam Neeson written all over it. It's a bit vanilla, a bit by the books, but a pretty good action flick as well. Lead Gilles Lellouche does nothing for me here, and his scenes with pregnant wife Elena Anaya (in a thankless role) are pretty bleh, but I do like Roschdy Zem, in a decent role here. So the plot is, Lellouche is an intern at a hospital who saves a patient from assassination (Zem). Because of this, his wife is kidnapped and he is directed to get the man out of the hospital alive. So yeah, it becomes a political thing that's, of course, conveniently wrapped up. It feels like The Fugitive (1993) mixed with various other popular flicks---so I won't be surprised it will be remade sometime soon. Except the American female cops won't be as hardbitten and realistic as they are here---at least it's got that going for it.
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