Seven Chances
I’ve never actually seen a Buster Keaton movie until this. Holds up very well and has some great scenes of Buster trying to outrun boulders and a mob of angry brides.
Room
This starts as an engaging thriller and then tricks you by turning into a teary drama. A lot of the movie relies on an underwear-clad child actor and Brie Larson’s zits. Both do outstanding work.
Free Fire
This was a movie that I really wanted to see. It’s directed by Ben Wheatley, who made the gangster-hybrid stunner, Kill List. The premise is great: a gun deal goes bad in the first fifteen minutes of the film and what follows is one gigantic standoff with bullets flying and dialogue shouted from behind cover. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite live up to expectations. The characters aren’t particularly interesting and neither is their cross-talk. In the hands of Tarantino this could have been a masterpiece. As it is, it’s fairly entertaining but the direction gets confusing and there’s no sense of the tiny space in which the action takes place. You never really can tell who’s shooting from where.
Arrival
A sci-fi film about a bunch of space squids that communicate with coffee rings. Another blockbuster that steals plot elements from “The Demon with a Glass Hand” episode of The Outer Limits.
Journey to the West: The Demons Strike Back
This would have been much better if it were just a cartoon instead of this live-action/CGI mess. There are tons of original visual ideas but the execution just looks stupid. Why in Buddha’s name would you CGI a monkey face when a rubber mask would look a zillion times more realistic? Still, there are some fun moments between the incoherent plot points. Nothing will match the opening twenty minutes of the first Journey to the West.
Una Farfalla Con Le Ali Insanguinate by Gianni Ferrio - CD
I bought this knowing neither the composer nor the movie. It was cheap and had an interesting cover… never a good metric for making a music purchase. For the most part this is an okay soundtrack, but is lacking the off-kilter dissonance of other Italian soundtracks of the time. I thinks it’s a little too piano-heavy for my tastes and main title sounds a bit too much like the theme song from The Young and the Restless.
The Heroic Ones
This Shaw Brothers kung-fu swordsman epic is a bit of an overly long mess. The “heroic” characters are kinda jerks who deserve what’s coming to them. The film is most noteworthy for its bloody drawing and quartering scene. Expands finger painting to a whole new level:
The Secret History of Twin Peaks
I listened to the audiobook version which features many of the original cast members reprising their roles. The book itself is somewhat of a disappointment and cheapens the mystery of the series by dwelling way too much on U.F.O.s and L. Ron Hubbard. If you are looking for answers, this ain’t the place.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
As much as I like horror, I am woefully unfamiliar with many of the classics of the genre. Amazon was offering this one for free so I finally made time to see it not really knowing what to expect. It’s definitely not the gore-fest that the title would imply, but the off-camera suggestion of violence is pretty disturbing; especially in the matter-of-fact in which the killer commits his acts. The movie suffers from some amateurish performances and limited character development, but otherwise holds up incredibly well and provides some genuinely creepy moments.
Ex Machina
Fresh off of just seeing the new Blade Runner here’s another film dealing with the artificial intelligence. Only, this one is actually smart, suspenseful and creative beyond CGI eye candy. Every little plot point was thought through and the ending sticks with you long after the movie is over.