Yet another plot-less art film from Antonioni about the tedium of life in early middle age. Wonderfully shot, but that wasn’t enough to keep me engaged. It’s filled with overly long scenes that do nothing to drive the threadbare narrative forward. There’s one showing a stock market crash which is literally twelve minutes of screaming, hand-gesturing Italian floor traders. Maybe he was trying to make a point about the animalistic nature of capitalism, instead he made a point about the need for film editors. Then there’s also a scene involving a character who, on a whim, painted herself up to play like she was a black African. This didn’t bother me for its racial insensitivity as much as it did for the fact that it would take hours to apply, let alone clean off, all that make-up.
The Island of the Swedes, also known as Twisted Girls, is basically 45 minutes of movie and 45 minutes of montages. It’s the story of a burgeoning love affair between the two female leads against the backdrop of a desolate island mansion. There are a lots of scenes with the two giggling and gallivanting around the island in various stages of undress and that’s about the only thing this movie has going for it.
I appreciate the brainy sci-fi themes regarding relativity and time dilation, but the “human” story about connecting with a child over time and space really pushed the cheese-o-meter a tad too far for me. Most of the time I was just wishing that I was re-watching The Expanse.
Chris Daunt is known in wood engraving circles as one of the few remaining block makers out there. Here he has written a beginner-friendly guide to the process with tons of examples of his own work and the work of a handful of other engravers, many of which I know from their social media presences. I was already familiar with most of what is covered here, but, since this is a contemporary book, there are many helpful references to companies and products that are all available right now. There is also quite a bit of inspiring info about the variety subject matter and the mark-making possibilities that the medium offers.
The penultimate entry in the Expanse-o-verse has the crew scattered across the galaxy and we’re finally getting a glimpse of the forces that destroyed the ring builders. This final trilogy has been a great improvement over the middle entries and I am excited to find out how it all ends.
I watched this because the music was by Gazelle Twin. Ostensibly a horror film but it plays mostly like a teen drama with some of the most wooden acting you will ever witness. The story is about a gifted music student who is jealous of her sister and discovers the doodles of the devil in a dead classmate’s notebook. No she isn’t possessed, she just naturally speaks in a deep, emotionless vocal fry. So boring.
Part two is more of the same from this Mexican brawling platformer. You explore the world and as you complete sections of the game you are given fighting powers which open up more areas. The combat is fluid and controllable and has a gentle ramp-up in difficulty where you constantly feel as though you are improving.
The world is open to explore, but backtracking is kept to a minimum. Only at the very end of the game did I find myself retreading completed zones in search of missing collectables. For the first time ever, I’ve played one of these games to 100% completion and, let me tell you, some of those final challenges are insanely difficult, requiring every bit of skill I had mastered until that point.
Again, nothing revolutionary here, but my tempered expectations left me much more satisfied in this second iteration of the game. Yeah, I got the good ending!
Say what you will about Tom Cruise, he knows how to put together a decent popcorn movie. The plot revolving around a sentient A.I. is dumb but it does the job of stringing together a set of thrilling action sequences that don’t feel like CGI cartoons.
I have been slowly building out a little library of wood engraving books and this one is a book that has been a suggested read for me on Amazon for years. It’s one of the only modern-ish books on the topic of wood engraving and it serves as a pretty complete guide. The order in which the process is covered is deliberately a bit wonky. It starts with the last step, printing, and then gradually works its way to the engraving process with a large portion devoted to the principles of design as applied to this starkly black and white medium.
I’m starting to think this Jess Franco guy might be a bit of a pervert. Here we have another movie about a swingin’ couple who wants to lure a young girl into their depraved web of smut. Franco managed to get Christopher Lee on set for a day or two to play the leader of a Marquis de Sade cult who spends most of his screen time wearing a red maître d’s coat and reading Sade passages. The best things that this movie has going for it are Franco’s excellent sense of composition and design (when he can manage to keep the camera in focus), a Bruno Nicolai soundtrack, and Jack Taylor—Spain’s perennial perv.
