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Reviews
Hollywood and Vine (2018)
The worst movie ever made.
And it isn't even close.
I don't say that lightly. As a long time devotee of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, I have seen more than my share of bad movies. This makes "Plan 9 From Outer Space" look like "Citizen Kane." Let me count the ways:
1) Acting that would embarrass the members of my small town southern Illinois community theater to death. Much of the time, the actors either seemed to be reading lines off cue cards, didn't understand the grammar of the lines they were speaking, didn't understand the meaning of what they were saying, or simply threw in pauses in inappropriate places. Facial expressions that reminded me of 12-year-olds. "Action" and "fights" choreographed by a baboon, and mimed out by people with spastic colons trying not to soil their pants.
2) Photography that looked like it was mostly done with a cell phone, often at the end of a selfie stick. Much of the movie was done in extreme close-up, so that even the handful of cast members with attractive faces became sickening to look at. Whoever shot this wasn't a cinematographer, but a tourist.
3) The director is clearly from the James Nguyen school. Most of the footage is either of people walking or running places (where is not apparent), or scenes that have nothing to do with anything. At least there's no car parking.
4) There's no point in talking about things like sets or costumes, since the actors likely provided their own dress, and the sets were the director's friends' homes, or rent-by-the-hour hotels rooms, or abandoned buildings the crew could sneak into and film without a permit. I'm guessing the budget for this film was taken up almost entirely by daily Wendy's runs by those involved.
5) Plot. There is no plot to speak of. Yes, there is some stupid talk about preventing a terrorist attack at the Hollywood and Vine Metro station (why there? Because they could get away with not having a filming permit if no one was looking at the odd people gesticulating in front of a cell phone). But that's nothing more than a device to make the audience think there's a plot.
In fact, this "plot" is nothing more than an excuse for the writer-director to trot out the most complete set of lunatic conspiracy theories and sovereign citizen nonsense imaginable. He hits it all: the Queen on England runs the United States; demons control the world, and have since the days when Egypt had a Pharaoh; the U. S. government is a corporation; the Illuminati control everything, and are led by shape-shifting lizards, etc.
Perhaps the most insulting aspect of this misbegotten cesspool is that it's blindingly obvious that its whole purpose is to sell the author's book, a piece of schizophrenic gibberish called "The Second Coming of the Messiah: The Awakening" (the cover of which is shown at various points with the director's name on it, despite the fact that the female lead-"The Messiah"-claims to be the author!). Many times, the movie simply stops whatever pointlessness was going on at the time, so that the lead character can spout some lunatic idea of the director. Example: at one point, she's just walking down a street, and she stops to talk to two completely random people to tell them that if police stop them, they don't have to give ID unless the police agree to pay them to do so. The sovereign citizen "fee schedule" is delusional, and so is the director, if he thinks he's actually made a movie.
I don't know what more can be said. This is, hands down, the worst movie ever made, and Amazon hosts it. If you think you can control your gag reflex, check it out, and see if it doesn't belong in the Bad Movie Hall of Fame.
Die Nackte und der Satan (1959)
A German Critique of the Nazi Doctors
Sure, it looks like just another severed head movie with a bit of salaciousness thrown in, but there's more here than meets the eye. Under the guise of a standard issue mad scientist SF flick, there's a clear undertone of horror at what the members of a supposedly noble profession are capable of given the right inducement. In 1959, Germany was still coming to grips with one of the most shocking aspects of the Nazi regime: the ease and depth to which the medical profession was subverted and enlisted in the state's insane agenda of racial purification. To that end, doctors were given free rein to perform experiments on Jews, the mentally ill, Roma, Soviet POWs, and others that were universally condemned for their total disregard for life and ethics. Any of a number of lines in this film echo the justifications the doctors attempted to use when they were put on trial. There's also the use of the full moon-which I made fun of through the first half of the film, until I realized that there was a purpose for showing it to us. The association with madness (or lycanthropy!), as well as the revelation that Ood was experimented on himself, and was now both a legitimate doctor AND a raving madman, neatly parallels the way the world, and most Germans after the trials, saw the doctors who so willingly went along with and enabled Nazi savagery.
Forget The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a piece of Hollywood shock schlock that deserved the MST3K treatment. While hardly high art, The Head is a movie that had something significant to say to its intended audience. Just as Godzilla is not just a monster movie, this is not just a mad scientist film.
Smyrni mou agapimeni (2021)
Ignore the Turkish propagandists
I will state up front that I have not seen this film. I write, not a review per se, but a warning: the Turkish government employs an army of trolls whose seeming sole purpose in life is to attack any film, book, play, etc. That dares to speak the truth regarding the 1915-1922 genocide of the Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians. In a particularly egregious example of this, reviewer "yavuzco" claims that Izmir (the city known as Smyrna until the 1930s, and was populated primarily by Greeks and Armenians) "was always Turkish," as though the 1000-year reign by the Greek Byzantines never happened. This is evil nonsense, on a par with Holocaust denial. If the Turkish propagandists are ignored, you will likely get a far better feel for how good the film is. I know as a result of their idiocy, I'm now going to watch a film I might not have otherwise.