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She Gods of Shark Reef (1958)
Cormpletely boring.
She Gods of Shark Reef is a lesser Roger Corman movie through and through, and it was a tough sit, in all honesty. I had some interest in it thanks to the title, and I've sort of enjoyed some movies that he directed around this time in his very long career, but She Gods of Shark Reef just wasn't it.
It's about two brothers who find a strange group of women - basically, the she gods - and then get wrapped up in their quest against the sharks in the reef or whatever.
It's the sort of film where very little effort seemed to be put into most of the making of the film, and that led to a dreary experience for the viewer. At least it's only about an hour long, and is tedious enough that you can drift in and out of it, never really losing anything of significance.
Even for a below-B movie, this one's not really acceptable.
Kimi no Yubisaki (2007)
Pun intended, but it's very touching.
Supremely bittersweet, considering it only goes for about 15 minutes. I was impressed by how it captured a specific teenage feeling and just sat with it for the entirety of the short, not doing much else, but certainly not needing to either.
It reminded me a bit of those parts in Days of Heaven where Linda Manz's character hangs out with that other young girl, only there are a few more heavy implications of romantic feelings here. I think what I was trying to say is that Your Fingertips drifts and evokes feelings in a somewhat comparable way to parts from what might be Terrence Malick's greatest film, and that's got to count for something.
It just ends at a point, unfortunately, but I otherwise found Your Fingertips quite moving and nostalgic for a short film. Could only find it on the cursed Dailymotion site with its ads every four minutes, but it was still an engaging experience, and worth sitting through those frequently obstrusive ads for.
Hinata no aoshigure (2013)
Simple and kind of sweet.
Sometimes known as Sonny Boy & Dewdrop Girl and sometimes known as Rain in the Sunshine (which is always going to make me think of Prince's Play in the Sunshine), this short film is a relatively straightforward one about young love, and an emotional farewell that sees a young boy racing against time to tell his love what he thinks of her.
There's not much more to it than that, but the animation used throughout looks pretty good, and there is some emotion to be found throughout the whole thing. Not quite enough for it to hit hard or anything, but this is a serviceable kind of short film, and it's equally hard to feel either passion or derision towards it.
Frankenstein Unbound (1990)
There's good, there's bad, and there's ugly.
Like a great many Roger Corman movies, Frankenstein Unbound isn't very good overall, but it is quite interesting. It has a beefier budget than the vast majority of his movies, only really looking cheap at the very end when things get snowy (it's such a massive downgrade, as if they shot this in chronological order and, at a point, ran out of money entirely).
But the first hour or so looks pretty good, and the cast is generally impressive too, doing about as good a job as they can with the material at hand. The only performance that didn't work for me was Nick Brimble as the monster, but the look of the creature was also pretty shoddy.
Funnily enough, I lost a good deal of interest when the monster showed up, with the blend of time travel and horror before then making this interesting enough to feel watchable. I think Corman's at his best when he's working with sci-fi, and Frankenstein Unbound is pretty decent for a good chunk of its runtime, though it does sadly fall apart/collapse in on itself at a point.
Noroi no wanpîsu (1992)
Interesting enough
Cursed One Piece (kind of hilarious title) is a horror short that asks the question, "How scary can a cursed dress be?" The answer ends up being "not very," but this is still a good bit of fun to watch, following the experiences of three different young girls who each encounter the titular terrifying piece of clothing.
The whole thing is more than a bit silly, and I'd be surprised if it succeeded in creeping anyone out, but I still kind of liked it in any event. But the animation style is charming and I think the structure is sound, jumping from one character to the next before any individual story runs the risk of getting boring. It feels worth devoting half an hour to, in the end.
Kick-Heart (2013)
huh
A weird and concentrated burst of crazy. I think I kind of liked it, but I also have almost no idea what to make of it. Despite it being a short film, it feels like there's less to immediately grab onto compared to Masaaki Yuasa's feature-length films, or at least the ones I've seen. As such, Kick-Heart feels considerably more difficult to recommend, but I guess the fact that it's only 13 minutes means it won't waste much of your time if you end up baffled by it, like me. All that being said, I did find it interesting, and Kick-Heart was consistently stylish and cool-looking, but it kind of washed over me and left me more than a little lost by the end of it all.
Funeral in Berlin (1966)
It's alright
A sequel to The Ipcress File that's not quite as good, I still mostly enjoyed Funeral in Berlin. It's got a relatively young Michael Caine (he always looked a little bit old, or maybe that's just a 1960s thing) doing spy espionage stuff, mostly revolving around smuggling a person out of East Berlin. It's all just okay- very watchable, but nothing great.
And that's all there really is to it. It's exactly what I thought it would be; nothing more and nothing less. It's all a bit slow and stiff at times, but provides decent entertainment value and is just fine for this kind of film made at this point in history.
It's hard to say anything insightful about a movie that's sort of just there, but at least it's not a bad one, at the end of the day.
Kong shan ling yu (1979)
Honestly, it's kind of bad.
People seem afraid to give this one less than 3/5, so I'm going to go for it with a slightly lower 2.5/5. It's boring! It's beautifully shot, sure, but it's dull. I don't think it should be labeled as belonging to the action genre, because this is... I don't know, it's not even really a drama. There's a ceremony to pick a new abbot at a monastery, there's a scroll a few people want to get but it's hidden away, and there's political intrigue after the decision regarding the former event is made.
But the film slouches awkwardly from one thread to another, and much of Raining in the Mountain feels like numerous scenes stitched together, the only through line being that the movie is set in one fairy confined location. Okay, that's something. I'll concede. But I found very little rhyme, reason, or rhythm as to how those scenes were placed together. There was no flow, there were no interesting characters, there was little action in what I thought was a martial arts movie, and some of the music was so annoying (it drove me insane during the chasing/sneaking scenes, and there are many).
King Hu was on autopilot with this one, I think. Every other films of his I've seen is better, or has more to offer. I was enamoured with the first couple I saw, but digging out his deeper cuts has been diminishing returns to some extent... though this is the first one I found really disappointing. If you want something spiritual, atmospheric, and maybe thematically rich (if you want to dig deep or whatever), maybe there's something to be gained from approaching this with that frame of mind. And yes, it does look very good; I can't entirely criticise the visuals without being petty or unfair.
Actually, I would just say watch King Hu's similarly named Legend of the Mountain instead, which came out the same year, is longer, has even less action, but definitely has something to it that makes it compelling and easier to get lost in/hypnotised by.
In the Loop (2009)
Nasty and pretty funny.
First watched this almost exactly 10 years ago, and expected to like it a little more on a rewatch, now feeling a little more knowledgeable about politics and being more familiar with some of the people behind this (namely Armando Iannucci and Jesse Armstrong... it doesn't reach the heights of Veep or Succession though).
It's a funny piece of political satire. It's got a decent number of laughs and the actors are all well-used. There isn't really one amazing scene or exchange of dialogue that really sticks in mind, and I don't know if it'll ever feel like a true classic to me, but it's good. It's very good. It's just not quite as great as I expected it to be.
Challengers (2024)
Very compelling
Challengers is ambitious and goes to some strange places throughout, and most of its big swings pay off. It's about three people who are all involved with tennis, and the complex friendships/relationships between the trio. It takes place over an extended period of time and tells its story in a non-chronological way that's always surprisingly easy to follow. It looks fantastic, too, and the score - while sometimes a bit much - is memorable.
I love how cinematic tennis looks here. In a way, it reminded me of Tokyo Olympiad, which is an artistic and beautiful documentary film about the 1964 Olympic Games. I'm not usually crazy about watching sports, but that documentary and Challengers both find ways to make sports look unique and far more dramatic than any ordinary broadcast. Like the score, the visuals of Challengers sometimes feel like a bit much (some of the slow motion is slooooooow), but it gives the film a unique voice, which is appreciated.
Speaking of slow, that's my main complaint - I wish Challengers was a little shorter, because there were some patience-testing scenes. The slow-burn feel doesn't work as well for this story as it's worked for some other Luca Guadagnino films in the past, but many sequences here soar nonetheless. It's visually inventive and the acting from the three leads is top-notch. That final act went on a bit long for me, but this is otherwise an early highlight of the year so far.
Robot Dreams (2023)
Excellent
It took me an embarrassing number of dream sequences in this movie for me to realise "oh that's why they called it Robot Dreams."
It's a simple movie narratively, to the point where saying anything about it feels like saying too much. What can be said is that it's a wonderful demonstration of pure visual storytelling (with the help of a great soundtrack). There's no spoken dialogue, but everything is conveyed clearly, expertly, and emotionally. Similar to the narrative, the animation style is quite simple, but this also works very well.
It's a movie that is probably appropriate for most ages, but I appreciate its willingness to be surprisingly realistic. The world depicted in the film contains joy, cruelty, and heartbreak. The ups and downs of life within this world - populated by animals and robots and no one who actually speaks any language - feels true to the real world. That kind of surprised me, in a good way.
Robot Dreams takes the sort of premise you'd expect a short film to tackle and stretches it out to a feature length runtime, and is highly successful at doing so. There were a couple of little detours in the narrative here and there that I think we could've done without, but much of the film is charming, moving, and easy to get swept up in. It's pretty great overall.
La Tulipe Noire (1964)
Not a bad time.
I've been on a bit of an Alain Delon spree as of late, and I saw The Black Tulip get mentioned quite a bit alongside 1975's Zorro, which I really enjoyed. It's another movie where Delon gets to take part in some sword fights while being a dashing hero, and though it's not as entertaining or as action-packed as Zorro, it was still pretty decent overall.
The main trump card The Black Tulip has is that it features Delon playing two characters: brothers who swap identities after one of them gets a scar on his face. Alain Delon has pretty good chemistry with himself, even if it would've made more sense had they been twins, because they do look basically identical (even the scar and different hairstyles do little to distinguish them).
It's all straightforward stuff, with villains being thwarted and an underdog hero becoming a revolutionary figure. It's slow-going at some points and the action scenes don't quite have the spark needed to make them really stand out... though none of it's bad exactly. The Black Tulip looks good enough and Delon's fun in the two lead roles. It doesn't really feel like an essential watch or any kind of classic, but it's good enough.
Secondhand Lions (2003)
Odd but alright.
Secondhand Lions is a strange kind of movie, but I sort of liked it for what it was. It's worth it just to Michael Caine and Robert Duvall doing their thing: two inherently likable actors who unsurprisingly work very well together, playing the uncles of a kid who's made to stay with them, likely because his mother wants him to inherit a supposed fortune the pair have.
It's very much a family movie, and the sort that doesn't seem to get made very much nowadays. Whether in 2003 or 2024, it's surely a hard film to market, because a lot of it's about being old, which kids might find boring, but it's also kind of light and silly, and that might turn away older people. It's an odd one. I'm not crazy about Secondhand Lions, but at the same time, it's hard to feel like I regret watching it.
Underground (1995)
Near-masterpiece
The controlled chaos of Underground is something to behold. Emir Kusturica Can sometimes push things a little far when it comes to surrealism and sheer bizarre sights, but I feel like he reined those sensibilities in almost the perfect amount for this film, and continued to perform said balancing act tonally for almost three hours.
Commenting on the endless nature of war/conflict and mining comedy/satire from it in a way that puts it on the same level as Dr. Strangelove, Underground rushes by in an almost manic way, but never so fast you ever get truly lost.
Ambitious deception, jealousy, love triangles, underground societies, themes surrounding identity, a monkey controlling a tank, the societal implications of three different wars one after the other, slapstick comedy, the conflict between truth and fiction, grim drama... Underground has it all! It's a long sit, but the pacing's generally good, and it doesn't feel the 170 minutes it takes to get through.
Yabu no naka no kuroneko (1968)
Very unsettling supernatural horror movie.
Was glad to buy this on bluray, but my god has physical media just gotten too expensive here in Australia in the last year or two. I love building a collection, but it was easier to do between 2010 and maybe 2021 at the latest. Now it's extra expensive, and various stores are starting to seriously cut down what they sell in the first place.
Anyway, Kuroneko looked great on bluray, and was a good enough film to be worth the premium price tag on it. It has a super harrowing 10-minute opening sequence that has no dialogue, then it's quite fun for about 20 to 30 minutes, while two female spirits get well-earned revenge. Then, the plot thickens when someone re-emerges back into their life. Things do ultimately get grim once more.
It's consistently eerie throughout, I loved the music, and it's very stylish. It's beautiful and disturbing, sometimes at the same time, and even with it not being a pleasant watch at times, I think I could see myself reciting it one day.
Per un pugno di dollari (1964)
From little films big films grow.
I'm sure A Fistful of Dollars is someone's favourite of the three Clint Eastwood + Sergio Leone westerns, but it's probably not the favourite of many. This loose trilogy the pair ended up doing comprised one movie a year for three years in the middle of the 1960s. Watching it in order, we go from one solid film to one great film and then finally it concludes with one absolutely perfect film.
A Fistful of Dollars is quaint in comparison to both For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and almost feels like a proof of concept, in hindsight. Still, it's a more than solid western that can be appreciated today, but I don't think it's as enjoyable as any other film Leone made after this. It probably says something that it took me about 13 years to finally watch it for a second time, whereas I've revisited all the others much earlier (and some I've seen several times, on average once every couple of years).
This film also has to be celebrated for the fact it pretty much established two legends who went on to achieve greatness in the years following: Eastwood as an actor (and eventual director) and Leone as a filmmaker. I guess it was also one of the earliest big films Ennio Morricone scored, too, so it's like a star is born times three.
(Also, Yojimbo's much better, and I think I'd still feel that way even if A Fistful of Dollars had come first).
Kuroi ame (1989)
Bleak Rain
Very different from the other 1989 movie called Black Rain, that's for sure.
I watched this immediately after reading a couple of chapters of the graphic novel Maus, and so it's been a pretty heavy afternoon. Both that and Black Rain look at survivors of horrible events that happened during World War II, and how such events never stopped affecting those caught up in them. There's a bleakness to both, and I'm struck by the rawness and honesty, as well as the way such stories look at how World War II led to generational trauma.
Specifically focusing on Black Rain, I'm not sure it's something I'll ever want to watch again, but it was striking and effective and I appreciate it quite a lot. It reminded me a fair bit of 1953's Hiroshima, which is similarly harrowing in its exploration of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath.
Un amour de Swann (1984)
Messy and a little undercooked, but it looks nice, has good acting, and succeeds in hitting a few notes here and there.
Come for Jeremy Irons speaking French and Alain Delon, stay for the sinking feeling of regret that comes from watching a film that you know would work better in its original novel form.
I haven't read anything by Marcel Proust, and I don't know if I will in the foreseeable future, but Swann in Love does feel super literary, as a movie. It deals with the sorts of themes (mostly the pain and frustrations of love) that often seem to be best explored in literature, as opposed to film, the former a medium that's best for getting uncomfortably deep into a character's head and state of mind.
That's not to say movies shouldn't attempt to adapt psychological and dense novels about love/desire/heartbreak, because there's a way to do it right, even if it involves changing things up drastically (I really like both novel and film versions of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, for example).
As for Swann in Love, it has a few really good scenes, it looks nice overall, and I think I mostly get and appreciate what it's going for... but it fails to add up to something great, and is probably overall a little less than the sum of its parts. Still, it could be worth a cautious look for anyone intrigued by the premise or cast on offer here.
Dareka no manazashi (2013)
This gaze's a maze.
I admire the attempt at squeezing a good deal of emotion and storytelling into just seven minutes, but I think Someone's Gaze would've benefitted from having a little more time to breathe. It just feels like it's in a rush, and while on paper it would sound tremendously emotional, the execution left a good deal to be desired.
But not everything disappointed, because Someone's Gaze does have a pleasant and distinct feel to it, and the style of animation used looks pretty great. It's hard to feel like it's a waste of time, given how brisk and short it is, but I do come away feeling like I may have connected more had it just been a little longer, plus a touch less breathless in its pacing.
Aquatic Language (2002)
An interesting short.
Aquatic Language starts well and is definitely intriguing for a while, taking place in some sort of bar or cafe and jumping quite suddenly between various conversations that are happening there.
It establishes a neat rhythm within almost no time at all, and I was wondering how long I'd actually be willing to go along with such a premise for. If done right, I think you could make something almost feature-length that just keeps jumping from one set of people to another every few minutes (maybe like Linklater's Slacker, or something by Jim Jarmusch like Night on Earth).
I don't think it ended as well as it started, and despite the brief runtime, Aquatic Language did still lose me. Oh well - it was good for a time, and still felt decent enough to be worth the watch.
Revolver (2005)
A bit of a disaster.
This film is to Guy Ritchie's earlier films what Worker and Parasite is to Itchy and Scratchy. In other words, it had me wondering "What the hell was that?"
I appreciate he was trying to do something very different here, and can maybe give it a few points for effort, but the execution left so much to be desired. I haven't seen Swept Away, but this is easily my least favorite thing I've seen from Ritchie. It's just a mess, and more often in a frustrating and tedious way than any kind of fun or interesting way.
It's hard to recommend. I'd like to say it's misunderstood or underrated, but I honestly couldn't without flat-out lying. I think it's a movie that's sort of deservedly been forgotten; a misstep in a filmography that's certainly far from perfect, but is generally at least a good deal better than this.
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
There's at least a little comedic gold to be found here.
I used to think Beyoncé was the weak link in this, but I think I was too hard on her in the past. She's certainly not bad here (now that I get her character's kind of a spin on the sorts Pam Grier used to play in the 1970s), and it's really the title character who tanks this film compared to the other two. Similarly, Fat *******'s (IMDb will not let me type the name) a bit tired after appearing in the second film and doing the same schtick this time around. The inclusion of Michael Caine does help remedy the lesser two of Meyers' four main characters, but Caine can only go so far in lessening the pain of the worst scenes here.
Overall, the comedy's hit and miss more than the other two. There are some really funny scenes sprinkled throughout, but a few too many misses to make it feel as fresh and funny. It's probably for the best that the Austin Powers series ended here. Goldmember certainly isn't bad enough to derail what ended up as a trilogy, but I feel pretty comfortable in calling it the weakest of the three.
Wrath of Man (2021)
A bit of a snooze to be honest.
The cinematic equivalent of the eating too much over-cooked steak that's been prepared without any seasoning or flavour of any kind. It technically gets the job done and fills one's belly, but it's also just bland and a bit exhausting to work through.
Wrath of Man needed some flavour and it needed to be a little shorter/snappier. It's meat-headed in every way (which is why it put steak on my mind), and I guess it's technically a functional movie.
It feels like if it was any dumber or blunter, it would edge towards being a parody of generic Jason Statham movies. For a while, I was optimistic it would go somewhere or pick up the pace somewhat, but I don't know... to me, it was just a flat, middle of the road (and admittedly not offensively bad) action/crime/thriller movie.
The Gentlemen (2019)
Very messy, but a decent amount of fun.
A return to form for Ritchie... sort of? At least it feels like it was supposed to be, taking the kind of film/style that made him popular in the late 1990s - as well as having a big ensemble cast, lots of plot twists, and dark humor - and updating it for the late 2010s. The results are generally fun to watch, and there are some great scenes and performances from an impressive cast, but there's also a certain smugness to The Gentlemen that I found pretty offputting at times.
I think it's a moderately clever film, but it thinks it's an exceedingly clever film, and I wish that strange sort of feeling created by this was toned down a little. Ritchie's earlier films are flawed, but they feel a little more sincere, or maybe they just felt fresher back then. Maybe it also helps that I was still a teenager when I first saw Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and Rock 'n Rolla.
There are attempts at pushing the Ritchie-isms into slightly different directions throughout The Gentlemen, but it didn't always hit for me. Still a decently good time, but there are certainly flaws holding it back.
L'aveu (1970)
Slow, but worthwhile
Between this and State of Siege, the early 1970s seemed to be a time when Costa-Gavras really had a thing for movies where Yves Montand got captured/imprisoned.
Of the two, The Confession is probably a little better. It is long, kind of slow, and very repetitive; all qualities I feel apply to Costa-Gavras's films, or it might just be me, because I'm not the biggest fan of his. But the approach he takes works fairly well with the story being told here, and I found it pretty interesting.
I wish it had been a little tighter and maybe closer to two hours than two and a half, but it does always find itself moving forward... albeit slowly at times.