An Alien or Predator rip-off starring Rutger Hauer which takes place in the post global warming world of 2008. London is knee-deep in water and a killer is on the loose eating hearts and carving astrological symbols in his prey. You never really get to see much of the monster, so the action is mostly characters shooting at and reacting to things that are off-camera. The dialogue is horrific but the actors seem to be having fun within the constraints of this awful story. In the hands of a more energetic and skillful director this could have been a good B-movie. As it is it’s mostly boring.
I wasn’t exactly sold on this movie. Most of it comes across as a sophomore art project with cheap sets, bad acting, and indecipherable dialogue. I saw many a performance art pieces while I was in art school that felt exactly like this. But there came a point about halfway through when I began to appreciate it. I was fully aware that it was using the style of German expressionist cinema and that everything was very deliberately exaggerated and, doggone it, even those cheap sets began to look cool by the end. I still don’t really get what the point of it all was, but there are some genuinely hilarious moments (in a sort of John Waters sense of hilarity) that make it worth a watch.
The Expanse continues with the story of the first traversals into the mysterious ring. A well-paced story that spends most of its time with new characters rather than Holden and the crew. The TV show follows this story pretty closely but many of the characters are swapped and combined so that, in the show, the main actors are doing things that side characters are doing in the book.
Tippett has done some amazing special effects and animation work but you’d probably be better off watching DVD extras for his various films rather than watching this. He doesn’t exactly radiate charisma and I felt like I hadn’t really learned anything about him when it was all over. The main reason to watch this is to see the various models and sketches he created, but, again, a picture book would probably do this better.
Joe Coleman is a sicko and he wants you to know it! While I still like his art, I have softened on Coleman over the years. Guys who are in to carnival art, freak shows, and serial killers are a dime-a-dozen these days. Looking back, his art style feels very much of its time, indistinguishable from a dozen other indie comics artists of the past. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, just not as radical as I once thought. Not radical but still as gross and shocking as ever. The book opens with a long interview that gives a good sense of where he is coming from in his art and then the bulk of the book is a combination of some narrative cartoons and color plates of his paintings.
George Hilton and Carrol Baker couldn’t rescue this hum-drum story from itself. I felt like nothing happened during the course of its running time. I guess there was a car chase and one dead body. But I can’t even remember who was killed, or if they were really killed or if it was imaginary. Being set in Holland, they did manage to have the climax take place on a windmill.
I am just burning through these late sixties Krimi. This one is actually titled Der Mann mit dem Glasauge. Again, not the greatest piece of cinematic art ever, but these are always going to have a few memorable scenes. There’s a giant pool hall fight, a knife throwing killer, and an amazing scene in which the killer wears a giant puppet head.
Also known as Der Mönch mit der Peitsche, this is the story of German college girls getting murdered by someone other than a monk with a whip. Sure that monk is always lurking nearby but the actual killings are a convoluted scheme involving pickpockets, jailbreaks, and poison gas. I am beginning to realize that these late 60s Krimi aren’t terribly concerned with plot. As usual, the colorful style and comedic tone (and the casting of Slugworth) make it work despite this.
In the end this just became tedious. While you control your character like an FPS, this is almost a point and click adventure. Most missions require you finding an object, combining it with something else, then clicking the combined object on a locked passage. Occasionally you will find yourself hiding from a zombie-like monster (Outlast style). But it is literally a monster—one enemy type the entire game. There’s also some sort of mechanic where you must maintain your sanity, but it’s not interesting at all.
All this would be a moot point if there was a compelling story. Alas, there was not. The backstory is developed as written notes and the occasional narrated flashback. But it’s so easy to forget what it’s about since you, the player, are not involved in the story telling. Something about an orb and a shadow. Who cares. Pass on this one.
This one has some of the best Peter Thomas music. This is especially true during the opening titles in which a Screaming Jay Hawkins sound-a-like keeps shouting, “Blackwood Castle! It’s cold!” The story doesn’t quite live up to the music. The owner of the titular castle is dead and various people from his past show up only to be killed by a dog with big fangs. There’s an inheritance, hidden jewels, yadda, yadda. I did enjoying seeing Sir John and Miss Finley taking the lead as the main investigators.
