Alphabetic Film Journal

 A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, 1966

Classic Richard Lester film staring Zero Mostel and with a few appearances of Buster Keaton. He speaks! The thinnest description of the plot is Zero’s plan to purchase his freedom from his owners, he wheels and deals, always some kind of half baked scheme that seems to work at first but is doomed to fail. The longer story is to convince the big guy that his arranged (bought and paid for) bride, who loves the neighbor twit, had died (so that she can marry the twit instead) which lead to lots of mischief and cross dressing. The plot-spoiler ending is that the man played by Buster Keaton turned out to be father of the big guy and the bride, so the wedding is off anyway.

A Mighty Heart, 2997

The story of the wife of a reporter in Pakistan, he is kidnapped and his execution is filmed. 

A Serious Man, 2009

First, sort of a parable. The husband arrives late on a winter evening, his wife is probably always grumpy. He tells her gleefully that he just met an old friend of hers. When she hears the name she is shocked, that man has been dead for three years, it must have been a ghost. There is a knock, the husband invited the old man for some warm soup. The wife is convinced that the old man is an evil spirit in the form of her old friend. She stabs him with an ice pick. The shocked old man walks out, bleeding and probably mortally wounded. The wife is triumphant, she thinks that has driven the ghost from her home, but we never find out. Now for the film. He lives in the suburbs somewhere in the 1950s, and teaches physics. His goy neighbor mows a part of his lawn, but its just odd, nothing seems to be wrong. He has a son and a daughter, a wife and his eccentric brother is temporarily sleeping on the couch. His brother has some kind of juicy cyst on his neck and he spends hours applying some kind of suction device to it, which requires lots of time in the bathroom, rather inconvenient for the teenage girl. Abruptly his wife announces that she has a new special friend, its the widower, who makes a conspicuous show of his warm friendship. They ask him to move out of his house. His brother and he move into the motel down the street. He is up for tenure, but someone has been writing defamatory letters to the tenure board, but the letters are anonymous so the boss says not to worry. Then there are two automobile accidents simultaneously, far apart. His car is totaled, but the widower, the one now sleeping with his wife, is killed. He still has to stay in the motel, plus somehow he has to pay for the widower's funeral. His brother starts having progressively more serious law problems, starting with gambling, then sex crimes. His goy neighbor decides to build a shed on his property, they have a difference of opinion about where the property line is. He sees various rabbis who all give him strange advice. He must engage several lawyers for his various problems, but he cannot afford any of it, as he is paying the mortgage, the motel, the funeral, the car, and his wife has cleaned out his bank account. Plus his son has subscribed to some kind of record club and now he owes them a vast sum as well. When its time to discuss the property matter with that particular lawyer, the lawyer drops dead. His son has a bar mitzvahs, they are all quite proud. Then he learns that the widower had been writing some letters to the tenure board. Then when he learns that he just might be getting tenure, it looks good for him. He gets a call from his doctor, who wants him to come in to discuss some x-ray results, in person.

A Tribute to James Dean, 1957

Directed by Robert Altman, purports to pioneer the dynamic photograph method of documentary film making. That means there are lots of slow pans and zooms of still photographs, Ken Burns took this to a much better level, no doubt this was the first use of that technique. Mixed with the stills are interviews with significant people in the recently deceased Mr. Dean’s life, from restaurant owners and a girl friend, to friends and family in his Indiana home town. There are lots of clips from his three films, there should have been more of the advertisements and bit parts in television programs. Mr. Dean was a gifted and appropriately arrogant artist.

A Very Long Engagement, 2004 

A love story, a war story. Its got Audrey. I love Audrey. Alas, no nudity. They are in love, he goes to war and gets his bean bonked, his memory scrubbed. She is told he is dead over and over again but she finds him, he has no idea of who she is, but she returns to his life and he falls in love with her again. The army is bad, it lies, and of course it kills people, lots of people, even its own.

A Woman Without Love, 1961

She is married to a rich man with no heart, very selfish. The boy is upset, bad day at school and when he is punished by being locked in his room he runs away. A man finds him, talks to him, takes him fishing, figures out where he lives, gets him home. The father is delighted, and invites the man to dinner. She falls in love with him, but though he offers to take her with him to his new job far away, she decides to stay with her husband after he has a heart condition. Years later the youngest son (younger brother of the boy) gets an inheritance from the man, nobody figures out that he is the younger boy's father for a while, but suspicion grows. The boy becomes hostile as he guesses that his mother had an affair, in the end he confronts her and she admits it, the only moment of love and kindness was with the man, not her husband.

Adolf Hitler: His Life, 2005

This turns out to be two movies, created from newsreel footage just after the war. One is American and one is British. The American one is obsessed with Eva Braun, which is puzzling. They attempt to contrast the jolly frolicking Rhine Maidens with the horrors of the war.

Africa Addio, 1966

Stay away from this one. Good idea but terribly disturbing and boring at the same time. The transition from colonial to local rule is difficult and unfair, the problems there now are completely different. Messy. I had a hard time watching this one and gave up, the footage of the animal slaughter is totally revolting.

African Guitar, 1966

One hour with clips of various guitarists playing simple wooden instruments, usually just standing there, no concert footage, playing and singing, recorded informally, on the porch or under a tree. The artists are Mwenda Jean Bosco of Zaire, Faustino Okello of Uganda, Pierre Gwa of the Central African Republic, Daniel Kachamba from Malawi, Moya Aliya Malamusi from Malawi, Erasmus N. Ndara from Namibia and Mose Yotam Yu of Zambia. If this was made in 1966, why are there recordings from 1993, 1991, 1983, 1982 and 1980 on it? My guess is that nobody is paying attention, its an obscure type of recording.

Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, 1990 

The master. I think I prefer his more substantial epic works rather than these short vignettes. Most of these deal with post-nuclear war scenarios. We create what we see around us. They range from realism to wild fantasies with devils and demons.

Alexander Nevsky, 1938

Feudal Russia is a grim place to be, Mr. Nevsky helps rally the folks and rescue the land from the really bad invaders.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, 1974

She comes in from the rain, he asks her to dance, they enjoy talking, he walks her home, she invites him in, he accepts her offer to stay the night, they get married. She is a German widow and he is 20 or so years younger than she is. The neighbors are vicious, the co-workers are prejudiced, her grown children are shocked, one breaks the television. They are happy together, German and Turk, but the hatred from the community is very difficult, so they go on vacation. When they return, things get better, but then Ali starts wanting couscous again, but she does not like couscous, so he must go elsewhere for his couscous and stays away from home for days at a time eating his previous girlfriends couscous. His wife is upset, confronts him at his job, they all laugh at her because she is old enough to be his grandmother. She goes back to the place they met, he is there and he asks her to dance. They get back together, but he has a violent ulcer attack and must be hospitalized. The doctor says he will get better but then he will return to the hospital in 6 months, such is the way of the immigrant in Germany, its the stress. She sits by his hospital bed.

Alice, 1988 (Jan Svankmajer)

The girl talks strangely, this is an excellent bit of animation photography craftsmanship. Bones creep along and form new creatures, the girl explores the hidden world behind the shed, in the doll house and deep inside the dresser drawer. She takes drugs and breaks stuff, in a charming young girl way. No adults, plenty of hallucinations.

All That Heaven Allows, 1955

She is a wealthy widow, adjusting to being alone, keeps herself busy with social acquaintances. He is the gardener, quite a bit younger than she, and from a different social situation, earthy but happy and content with his life and good with his hands. When they fall in love his people all accept her and enjoy her company, but all of her people, including her children, reject both her choice and his company as well. All of her friends are horrible shallow wealthy busybodies with nothing better to do than to gossip about each other. All of his friends are warm friendly people. She surrenders to the pressure from her children to give him up and keep their world the way it always has been, which makes the couple very sad. Then her children abandon her anyway, the daughter gets married and the son goes off to Europe to study for a few years. She is miserable, he is miserable. Her doctor tells her to just go ahead and marry her gardener friend, so she heads over to visit him, he happens to be out when she gets there but she does not see him, she drives off, he spots her and in his excitement trying to signal her he falls off a cliff. She returns to help nurse him back to health and they live happily ever after. 

Alphaville, 1965

Froggy voice. Classic French science fiction in the city of the future. What happens? The detective in the city, searching for some answers. He finds mysteries in modern urban situations. Big brother is ambiguous, dangerous and friendly.

American Gothic: The Complete Series 

A dream fulfilled, to see the whole thing. The one scene that stands out is with the defiant reporter girl, when she surrenders herself sexually to the sheriff. The overall plot is the conflict between the orphan boy who saw his parents and sister murdered by the evil sheriff, and the sheriff himself. Is he really the boys father? If so is the boy destined to take on the evil of the father? No answers, just questions. The overall theme is the friendly evil corruption of the town by the sheriff. There is greed and order, no chaos.

An American Werewolf in London, 1981

Two stupid college boy tourists wander from the path in the moors, one is eaten by werewolves and the other is bitten, so he becomes a werewolf. He is taken to London for medical treatment, which may have been a bad idea.

And God Made Woman, 1956

Bridgett can stay with me anytime. Needs more nudity. Orphan girl grows up, all the men want to fuck her, and the whole town resents her. She marries one guy, she wanders a bit. He finds her dancing with some black musicians. There is violence. She goes back to her young stupid husband.

And the ship sailed on, 1984

Takes place in 1915, a luxury liner is taking the funeral party of a famous diva to a remote Mediterranean island, they rescue some Serbs, they have a big dance, the Russians want the Serbs, but the Russians allow the funeral to proceed, right after its conducted the Russians sink the boat, it does not submerge immediately, the party sings as they board the life boats. Lots of funny use of faux period photography.

Andrei Rublev, 1966

What is with the Russians? So darn boring. Arrogant guy paints icons, has issues with his fellow humans. They hate him back. Its very long and Gothic.

Anita, 1973

This is another of the most boring erotic film I have ever seen. Yawn. Its about the psychological trauma of being a chronic nymphomaniac. She loves to fuck strangers, one falls in love and keeps following her around. She confronts her problem and they fuck happily ever after, or at least to the end of the movie. What about tomorrow?

Apartment Zero, 1988

Stay away from the landlord. Screen credit is given to my friend Fernando! A bored landlord leases a spare room in his apartment, falls in love with the tenant who turns out to be a mercenary political murderer. The landlord wins, but he is insane.

Army of Shadows, 1969

The French underground must kill their own to prevent the Nazis from exposing the resistance network by torture.

The Art of War 2: Betrayal, 2008

The Art of War 1 was excellent. This one falls short. They lure the retired hero back into the business by tricking him, lucky for us he is better at violence than they are.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007

Robert Ford is an emotionally immature young man, he has a collection of penny novels about the James gang that he keeps in a box under his bed, and he can recite a list of circumstances that link him with Jesse James. He convinces his brother Charley to come with him in pursuit of joining the outlaw gang. They succeed and are included in the final train robbery before the James brothers decide to retire from the illegal profession of train robbery forever. Somehow the sniveling Robert Ford is allowed to linger, his free services as an assistant are useful. There is an award for the James brothers and a constant fear of betrayal, with some drama and bloodshed. One afternoon Robert Ford gets nervous as he lingers with his brother in the home of Jesse James, who is living as Mr. Howard. Robert Ford shoots him in the back of the head, Jesse's wife questions him and he lies, he denies that he fired the shot, but his brother Charley clarifies and suggests that it was accidental. The two boys skedaddle to the telegraph where Robert Ford sends a victorious message. The two brothers eventually go on tour, re-enacting the murder on stage, night after night. Eventually there are calls from the audience, the act of shooting a man in the back is a coward's murder. Robert Ford does not see it that way and attempts to defend his own honor. He believes that he should be celebrated as a hero. Charley Ford kills himself because of the shame. Robert Ford continues his pursuit of fame, but is unable to escape the fact that his murder of Jesse James was not honorable. Eventually another man shoots Robert Ford, and that man is acquitted. 

The Baader Meinhof Complex, 2008

Historical portrayal of the sixties in Germany, a time of ethical confusion. The United States was carrying on an ugly illegal war in Vietnam and some young citizens felt obliged to express their opposition. Western Germany was mostly supportive of its moral youth who were willing to do anything to get their point across. Baader was a reporter who clearly articulated her position, Meinhof was a daring young man who was willing to take big risks, to the point of loosing lives. Stores were bombed, the gang went over seas for more military training, then the American Military itself was attacked, and the West German government was forced to react. Eventually the gang was rounded up but the trials were as difficult as various new gangs emerged, more dramatic tragedies, more hostages and kidnapping, demands for the release of prisoners. Everybody in the original gang died, mostly by suicide after years of imprisonment and trials. 

Bad Girls, 1994 

I had to see Drew again, this is a real dud. Mild nudity. Bad plot. Cowgirls. They struggle against the male dominated frontier culture. Drew has her top off but her boyfriend is a psycho-killer renegade idiot. The girls settle down at the end and one gets married.

The Bad Sleep Well, 1960

Kurosawa modern tale of revenge gone bad. Post WWII industrial empire, son of a pawn who was forced to commit suicide has a try at revenge, he fails in the end, the evil guy wins, but his children catch on to his wicked ways, so maybe he suffers after all.

Barton Fink, 1991

Coen Brothers rule. Hollywood beach movie. He should have stayed in Brooklyn. Rising young playwright is offered work in films. He goes but things do not work out because they are all crazy. He meets a pretty girl and looses his job. Goes to the beach.

Basquiat, 1996

A young kid, who happens to be of Puerto Rican and Haitian origin, sees Guerneca in a museum in New York City and it has a profound effect on him. He is yet another poor person in the city, but he makes art in various low budget ways: he is in a musical ensemble (which is obviously pleasant for him but not so spectacular), he paints graffiti (this is big) poetry on walls, and soon he makes paintings. He hangs around with famous artists, including Andy Warhol and becomes good friends. He becomes a rich painter, but he is very troubled by the way the world treats him, it is his black skin. After Andy dies things go really bad. He looses his focus even though he is outrageously wealthy and lets himself die of a drug overdose on August 22, 1988. Maybe ambition can be deadly. One thing for sure, all of our lives will end tragically, no matter what we do.

Battle Hymn, 1957

During World War II he accidentally bombs an orphanage, which has a terrible effect on him. He becomes a preacher, but still his soul is tormented. The Korean conflict comes along and he returns to the service as a trainer. In the remote area that he is stationed in there are numerous orphans, so he recognizes his opportunity for redemption. His wife at home learns that she is pregnant, and he meets a woman there in Korea who is central to the orphanage, she obviously feel attracted to him. He recognizes this but in no way does he advance that relationship, which is difficult for her. It becomes necessary to relocate the orphans, who have grown in number to about 400, and the woman knows of an old school on an island which would be suitable for an orphanage. During the relocation she is killed, but the old school of her childhood is converted to a new orphanage prospers.

Battle in Heaven, 2005

Very strange movie about a chubby man in Mexico City who likes to fuck, but has some more serious issues including homicidal tendencies. There are several nude scenes (ugly fat man but he is real, like most of us), one where he fucks his fat wife and two where he has sex with his bosses hot daughter.

The Beast, 1975

Horses fucking? Big wet sex organs. More examples of boring European sex. Bestiality dreams. Stay away. How can a sex movie be so boring? The hot girl is to marry the strange son of the rich guy, the strange son has too many problems. Ends with the hot girl and her matron running away screaming after the strange son of the rich guy dies, he has a furry tail. Bad dreams throughout.

Being There, 1979

This is my favorite Sellers film. He plays a very simple man that watches lots of television and who has a knack for looking like he is smart by smiling and nodding. He looses his comfortable job as a gardener when the rich man dies, he is lucky enough to get hit by a rich lady's car and is taken home where things happen and he blunders into great wealth.

Belle de Jour, 1967

She decides to be a secret prostitute, not for the money but for the other amusements. Her husband has no idea, but when one of her tricks falls in love with her, her husband is attacked.

Beowulf, 2007

Grendel is hot, which was my entire motivation for spending the time watching this. Its a cartoon version of Angelina. The old story is dressed up quite a bit, but the fundamentals are the same, late night partying gets interrupted by the psycho-killer. A hero is brought in to kick his butt, a secret deal is made, but it comes undone in the end.

Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1980

Der dude is released from prison, he is nutty and agoraphobic, Berlin is a noisy place. He gets taken home by a talkative bearded Jew, they have a strange conversation and we see that he is having a hard time adjusting after prison. Der dude leaves into the rain, they want him to stay. He has a drink. The next day he looks up his dead girlfriends sister and rapes her. She does not object much, but she is married and does not want him hanging around. He goes to a tavern, meets a friend who introduces him to a nice Polish girl, they quickly shack up, he gets a letter from the government saying because he is a criminal he cannot live in many areas of Berlin and must submit to bureaucratic supervision. He goes to a sort of a social services place and they agree to help him. Next hour, Der dude has a job selling plastic necktie things, not very good. He wants to sell newspapers, a guy hooks him up with some porn, which freaks out his girlfriend. She has words with the vendor guy and gives him back his porn. The couple goes to a big fancy bar where everybody is singing. Der dude hooks up with a guy who has him selling magazines but he has to wear one of those new swastika armbands. So now he has the crappy job he wanted, selling newspapers, but there are bigger problems. Some of the local men folks do not like Nazis, they come close to a bar brawl.  

The Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers, 1991

A biography of Mr. Marley, from poverty to success, world wide fame, and then to his demise from brain cancer. 

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, 1972

She is a fashion designer. She has a servant, I am not sure why she takes all the abuse that Petra Von Kant gives her. Petra is somewhat unstable and very creative. She gets a big new opportunity, and she hits the alcohol very hard. She has a beautiful girlfriend, but she drives her away with her wild fluctuations in temper. The climax is on her birthday, anticipating a telephone call from her special one, she is frantic and depressed. Her mother and her daughter come for a visit, her daughter is particularly hungry for some attention, but Petra Von Kant is drunk and emotionally explosive. After much agony for everyone the girlfriend calls, everything is fine for Petra Von Kant, she is happy. She tries to become friends with her servant, who packs her bags and exits as quickly as she can. We end with Petra Von Kant back in a dark room, alone.

Black White + Gray, 2007

A portrait of Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Wagstaff and Patti Smith, more about Bob and Sam, but as Patti is the only one still alive, she contributes directly to the film. The rest is assembled from interviews and the old slow pan and zoom over still photographs concept. I think its more about Sam than anyone else. He was a collector of photographs and pioneered a new aesthetic towards old pictures, plus he championed a small group of artists and helped to develop their careers. Handsome rich gay man, who survived the 1950s and blossomed in the 1970s and died probably late in the 1980s with so many others. James Crump’s debut film. Its on the Netflix label.

Black Sabbath, 1963

Trio of stories. Bava is my new favorite director. Black Sunday is much better. Boris Karloff is host here and appears in one story. Story one is about a poor hairdresser who makes some extra money by fixing the hair of dead people, she takes a ring and gets in trouble with the ghost of the dead lady; then there is the Boris story of the wanderer who spends the night with a family who are being taken by a vampire; and a third story I am trying to remember.

Black Sunday, 1960

This one rules. I love Barbara Steele. I want to see this again and again. Spooky old Italian castles and tombs and graveyards and villagers. Bava! The plot is magnificent. The village religious nuts put an end to the incestuous witch-warlock brother-sister combo, they tie them up, torture them, they have these metal masks with huge spikes on the inside that they use sledge hammers to apply to the faces of the two naughty ones. The brother dies first and we never hear much from him, but the sister puts a curse on the bunch as they roast her alive, wearing her new mask. They bury her and hundreds of years go by. Enter the old professor and the young professor in training. They are traveling and stop by the tomb, the old guy just has to go take a peek. He accidentally (or was it no accident?) rouses the witch, who is still pissed off after all these years. He gets her mask off and she wants sex. Its Barbara Steele, I would probably be thinking about it too. Anyway, she rouses the brother who never says much but is willing to help with the necessary revenge on all the descendants of the village prudes who killed them. I should not give away the ending.

Bliss, 1997

Sheryl Lee sure is pretty. That smile goes a thousand miles. In this adventure she is a rich newly married woman who has problems with her love life, she is unable to experience orgasm. Later in the movie she slowly remembers her father raping her repeatedly during her early childhood years, hence her frigidity problems. She has some huge issues to deal with. The regular marriage doctor secretly sends her to the controversial and illegal sex doctor who does lots of fucking. Husband catches on, first he is peeved, then the decides to become a student of Dr. Love, who teaches him the ways of Tantric Fucking. But the woman’s problems are way too huge and she must go through some heavy stuff by herself, so her husband is alone after all. This is a movie for married couples, not for horny singles. Its an excellent diagram of the complexities of screwed up rich people.

Bliss, Season 1, 2002

Eight stories designed to be arousing for women. Most of them worked for me. I am approximating the names of the stories. 1 Drunkenness and fornication: three couples have dinner, the younger couple leaves (somewhat appalled), the two remaining couples get really drunk and fuck each other, and then they catch each other cheating and decide its okay. 2 The path to roses: a young lady seeks rough sex, her boyfriend cannot provide it, she finds someone who will. 3 Valentines day in jail: the social worker visits a client in the slammer, he wants sex, they get caught. 4 Leaper: a female writer with writer’s block encounters a young ragged bag lady, when the bag lady commits suicide the writer is picked up by a strange lady, they have sex, and the writer figures out that the bag lady was a victim of the same strange lady. 5 X: two high school students (one male one female) with homosexual tendencies hook up and experiment with sex. 6 Voice: a male artist has a series of new lovers and every time he leaves the old lovers, two of them get together and talk about him. 7 Six days: a young farm wife hires a handyman when her husband is injured, they decide to hook up and leave the farm. 8 Guys and Dolls: this was my favorite. Female executive allows herself to be picked up by a mysterious man who asks that they never talk, they have good sex, later they discover that he is a new client of the female executive, but he is married. Good sex prevails.

The Blob, 1958

Steve McQueen, a teenager, and his new girl are up on the hill, making out just a little. They see a meteor hit nearby, and go to investigate. The old man who lives nearby finds it first, it gets on his hand and causes problems, he says it hurts. They take him to the doctor, who sends them back out to find out more about the cause of the trouble on the unfortunate old man's hand. Later, Steve sees the blob eat the doctor, and he calls the police. The police assume its another prank designed to make them look like fools, so they are not about to fall for his silly tricks. Later, Steve gets all the kids together to warn the town about this monster that only Steve has seen. They cause a ruckus at the grocery store in the middle of the night. Just when it looks like Steve's goose is cooked, all heck breaks loose at the movie theater, the blob has gotten into the projection booth and now is in the theater. The blob traps Steve and his girl and her little brother in a small diner. The owner of the diner soon understands the danger. The police and fire department try electrocuting the blob, but it does not work, now the diner is on fire with the kids trapped in the basement. Steve grabs the fire extinguisher away from the diner owner and tries blasting the blob, which reacts to the cold CO2 gas. The kids and the principal (incidentally, he is the father of Steve's new girl) raid the fire extinguisher supply from the school, kids and adults working together. They soon subdue the blob, the air force flies it to Antarctica, and now we are really in for it, with all this global warming stuff going on right now.

Blood Tea & Red String, 2006

Mice are sneaky louts. Crows are clever artisans. Toads are wise. Done with stop action animation of dolls. Good job. The mice pay the crows to make a love-doll for them, the crows decide to return the money and keep the doll. Everyone is happy except the mice, who steal the doll one night, the crows were leaving her outside, bad idea. The crows pick up the trail, they get into trouble and the toad guy feeds them. The crows take the doll from the drunken mice and go home. The mice follow, get into trouble, the toad rescues them.

Blue Man Group Complex Rock Tour, 2003

Interesting, but not totally absorbing. Once through quickly. Some good interaction comedy. Positive.

Blue Wild Angel, 2002

Jimi’s last concert, at the Isle of Wight. Gets off to a rough start, late at night and the equipment is not working very well, but he pulls through and gives a great performance. He hauls out some classics as well as some new stuff, the audience loves it. He does the ritual exotic playing postures, playing with his mouth (teeth? Looks like he is using his tongue), awesome fingers. Well shot, sticks with him, sticks with the band. Lots of his hands and his fingers. Skinny guy, playing with Billy Cox who I never can hear, and Mitch, who gives his all. Gets a nice solo, Billy does not do so well with his solo, looks like he is not interested in it, but he does keep busy with the bass. Hard to believe that this is Jimi’s last big concert, and he would be dead in a few weeks.

Boccaccio ’70: Disc 1 (of two Discs)

Two of four short movies by various Italian film makers, this one had the Fellini short, it was about a religious man who takes on a gigantic sexy woman on a billboard who is advertising milk, which drives him crazy as it offends his sense of decency. She wins. The other short is about woman who is secretly married and works at a place that only employs singles. She gets into a variety of odd situations trying to keep her secret, then gets caught and finds another job.

Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1992 

Can’t get enough. I suppose I should consider owning this one. Wynona running down the stairs in her blue nightgown. Vlad with his granny specs. The red haired Lucy in various states of undress. Gary Oldman as the heavy. I could watch this again and again, from time to time. This is a unique version of the vampire love story, his original bride (also Wynona) is tricked into committing suicide when she thinks her husband has perished in war, he renounces the church because they don’t allow suicides in the family plot. The shadows are excellent, and some pretty good sex scenes including the scenes with the three eager vampire brides in the castle.

Brazil, 1985

2 hrs 22 min. The classic story of a bugswat causing a whole chain of events which illustrate the core lesson, any kind of authoritarian government based on the surveillance of its own citizens is doomed to perpetuate its own problems. First the anonymous  technician swats a fly that is annoying him, it falls into the machinery causing a single keystroke error, an innocent man is identified as a terrorist and is accidentally killed during his interrogation. Sam is a smart fellow who is enjoying a blissful anonymity within the government system. He dreams of flying and rescuing a lovely maiden from a series of symbolic situations, including some battles with gigantic Japanese robots, in which he barely prevails. His mother continuously creates situations that she intends to help Sam see his own potential and to transform his blissful anonymity into something she can brag about. She spends the rest of her time getting progressively more complicated cosmetic surgery which is a huge source of horror-comedy. There are random explosions presumably by terrorists which are portrayed quite rightly as horrific events. There is a problem with the heating system, when Sam attempts to call Central Services he is only frustrated, but then Archibald Tuttle, the terrorist heating system repair man appears and fixes his problems, but that causes even more problems when Central Services personnel arrive. Sam accepts his promotion to further his quest for finding his romantic interest, which leads him to more bureaucratic power and therefore more potential for self destruction. He rescues Jill from one problem, she has been pursuing the wrongful arrest of her neighbor, Mr. Buttle, and plunges her into a much bigger problem, resisting arrest and killing policemen. There are chase scenes, fiery death, more terrorist explosions, and finally they are arrested and interrogated. Jill is said to have died resisting her interrogation, and now its Sam’s turn. He hallucinates his own rescue by Mr. Tuttle, a shoot-out, then blundering into his mother’s funeral in which Jill is wearing her clothing and flirting with her suitors, and finally the coffin is upended and the various puddles of his mother’s mortal remains splatter all over poor Sam. His hallucination continues with his escape with Jill into the wilderness, but he is shown smiling dreamily after his interrogation. The interrogator shrugs and abandons the lost cause as Sam has lost his mind.

Brazil: Love Conquers All, 1985

1 hr 34 min. This is the disappointing story of the romance between Sam and Jill, it uses lots of the same footage as the real movie (which is 2 hrs 22 minutes long), but excludes anything that conflicts or complicates the story of Sam finding Jill, forcing himself on her, her rejection of him to the point of attempting to kill him, then her falling stupidly in love with him. They wind up living in the forest alone together in blissful peace, far from the troubles of civilization. What is left out are key moments that make Brazil a wonderful story of the horrors of a surveillance based authoritarian governance gone to seed. All of the fantasy scenes where Sam flies and Jill floats about in her little transparent fabric, all of the battles between Sam and the gigantic Japanese robots, all of the ghostly attempts of the widow Mrs. Tuttle to resolve her questions about the arrest and subsequent death of her husband, all those things are gone, cut out, removed, sorely missing. The entire logic is discarded so as not to interfere with the story of the romance, the powerful haunting horror story ending is jettisoned to make room for the happy romance.

Breach, 2007

The story of Robert Hanssen, FBI traitor and spy. Its told from the point of view of the new hire, aspiring FBI agent Eric O'Neill, who is assigned to be Hanssen's assistant and to observe his activities. Hanssen is a religious nut who makes a big show of his devotion, and secretly posts on the internet films of his wife naked. O'Neill befriends the deviant and contributes to his capture. O'Neill's mission is to facilitate the arrest while Hanssen is actually making a drop to his spy contacts, betraying military secrets to the Russians.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961

She is a fun loving girl from a small rural town who is doing well in the early 1960s party scene in New York City, and then her father shows up. He can dance, but he is not so modern.

Breakheart Pass, 1975

The secret agent is sent to the fort in the Colorado wilderness to thwart a plot by the bad guys to sell guns to the angry indigenous men. The secret agent's methods are unusual, he pretends to be a bad guy who gets arrested by the sheriff who is the real bad guy. He rescues the girl in the end. There is a train involved.

Bride of Frankenstein, 1935

The frame for this movie is Mary Shelley Percy, and her friends, discussing how to further develop the tale so far. Mary is played by the same actress as the new monster babe, which is fiendishly appropriate. The movie is her construction, a teenage girl shacked up with a famous married man, and they entertain themselves and their friends with a horror story contest. After the fire at the mill the monster survived. Elizabeth had such a shock that she changed from blond to brunette, and the parents of little Marie appear to be different, but besides this everyone else is pretty much the same. Oh, the part of Igor is now played by two men, Karl and Ludwig. Come to think of it a major new role is Dr. Pratoreus, one of Henry Frankenstein's geeky college chums, who is even more insane and confident in his destiny of rivaling God. The short version of the story is that Dr. Pratoreus moves in and takes over the operation, cajoling Henry into constructing a second atrocity, this time a female monster. Pratoreus has made a bunch of tiny comical fairy type creatures that he keeps in a child-sized coffin. The whole musical hermit concept is present at last, and without a family for the old blind hermit. He plays his violin for himself, and charms the monster who was passing by. The monster gets some language lessons, soup and a cigar. After the Mel Brooks film its all too funny. The villagers take the monster alive and imprison him temporarily, but he busts himself out. He goes to hide in the graveyard where he hooks up with Dr. Pratoreus and is easily convinced to cooperate in a new plan, one that provides him with a female companion. This time the monster allows Henry and Elizabeth to skedaddle and he blows up Praetorius, the alienated monster babe, and himself.

The Brute, 1962

A rich man hires a big dumb guy to be an enforcer, basically to intimidate the peasants he must evict to complete his land development plans. A very complicated web of relationships, truly a masterpiece from Bunuel. It ends in tragedy, its a story of wealth, poverty; a diagram of social dynamics. The rich man is complex, but ultimately unpleasant. The brute is too innocent to be evil, but he does the evil. The pretty girl is a victim, her father is murdered by the brute. The girlfriend of the rich man is evil, ultimately she has brought on all the problems with her deceptions and extramarital lust for the big guy. The peasants  have good hearts, but they are always the victims of the wealthy.

The Bunker, 1981

An exploration of the last days of Hitler, as portrayed by Anthony Hopkins.

Burn After Reading, 2008

The Coen brothers rule. This romp is about national security and exercise clubs. Mr. Cox gets fired from his CIA analyst job for drinking, he writes a memoir (mem-wah). During the process of preparing for a divorce and documenting the marital financial situation, his wife makes a copy of the memoir and the disc is lost by the secretary of her lawyer. Its found in the exercise club women’s locker room and a couple of ambitious scheming idiots attempt to blackmail Mr. Cox who is coming unhinged anyway. One of the scheming idiots needs money for some cosmetic surgery. It ends with several deaths, but the cosmetic surgery is funded, so not everyone looses. Let me rephrase what the romp is about. Its about people in middle age noticing that they are growing old and taking desperate steps. Its set in a Washington DC exercise club. There is plenty of sex and no nudity, one gory shooting. Really funny, well done. 

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, 2007 

Horrible tragedy. We will all pay for this ethnic cleansing stuff. A true horror movie. A young boy is removed from his family and sent to school, he does pretty well, winds up in Washington DC representing his people before Congress. The soldiers kill them all anyway.

The Business of Fancydancing, 2002

Seymour left the reservation but took all the stories from his friends and became a rich poet/author. Aristotle quit and went back to the reservation and never called himself gay. But the movie is about Mouse killing himself and Seymour returning for the funeral. This is more personal than Smoke Signals, which is a fine movie, but this one has more pain, much more pain. Sherman Alexie even has a part. Its about identity, its about moving on, its about staying back, its about old blood in new bodies, its about being a poet and author, its not about the business of Fancydancing. Ironic, ennit

Butterfly, 1982

She looks maybe a bit too young and is extraordinarily sexy and she knows that the boys will do absolutely anything to get with her. She returns to her father, who is the good hearted hermit caretaker of an old abandoned silver mine in the desert. Soon her sister arrives bringing along the little baby. The son of the silver mine owner thinks that he is the father of that baby, and he wants to marry the hot girl, providing funds and legitimacy to the child as well as securing her hot companionship forever and ever (what a fool! She is just not a one man kind of girl). There are some bad men in the story, who have their own designs on the silver, and who have had their way with the girl and her mother, the wife of the estranged caretaker. The caretaker shoots the worst bad fellow, right in the silver mine, evidently his body is never found. The caretaker figures out that the hot girl is not his biological daughter, so he has some quick but hot consensual sex with her. The trial is for incest, but as the sultry girl is not actually the daughter of the defendant, in the end the charges are dropped. Evidently killing the bad guy was the right thing to do and no real problem comes from that. She wanted easy money and she got it by marrying the son of the silver mine owner and they live happily ever after.

The Call of Cthulhu, 2005

In dazzling Mythoscope. This might be the best of the Lovecraft homages. Its done in a very stylized manner, black and white and silent, no voices, plenty of music. Its all about facial expressions and interesting effects. There are various story elements, actually the movie is based on an anthology of different stories. The great-uncle dies and leaves his papers to the protagonist, who pieces together the very strange story. Dreams of very odd buildings, voices calling out odd words. A story from New Orleans of a raid on a mysterious swamp cult. In this house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. The old ones will return to claim what was once theirs. A terrible tragedy at sea, a horrible statue found on an abandoned trawler, clues and events that add up to a gigantic global calamity unfolding. Islands emerging from the depths with strange temples on them. Men driven mad by the forbidden knowledge, dying insane, repeating the words about Cthulhu waiting in darkness. "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents."

Caravaggio, 1986

The life of the great painter who preceded Rueben and Rembrandt in the realm of realism, symbolism and darkness. He was a prodigy painter and homosexual lust object, he started over with nothing more than once, he loved a street brawl, he killed several people which got him into enough trouble to have to go on the run. He played off the Catholic need for religious instruction against his own sense of humor. He was very bad at managing his money and his professional trajectory. The director, Derek Jarman, worked in various anachronisms, the sounds of a train, the presence of automobiles, I doubt that cigarette smoking had evolved that far yet, but maybe it did. Jack Birkett played the Pope, grinning bald naughty old crazy man. One scene was a party in the catacombs, costumed drunk people and old dead bodies. He had a knife with an odd inscription that he kept close from childhood to his death.

The Case of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, 1998

Amazing crafted biographical overtale of Howard Phillips Lovecraft the eccentric phenomenon. There are clever French minds behind the familiar narrator's voice and the story is told in second person tense. Time stands still. Always the same stories. The old, the older, the oldest horrors. The fear that approaches. A silhouette on a roller-foot moving through the shadowy old house. Excellent cinema. There are only about 20 photographs of the old bastard, so they get lots of exposure and variation. His father died insane, his mother died insane, he lived alone in that shadow, refused to work for money, so he ran out of money and suffered increasing poverty. Spent all his time writing letters, worked on a few stories. He experienced the full entropy of life, from comfort to inevitable death. A result and a prologue, an antecedent and a horror, a search and an evocation, a mutation and a madness, a nightmare and a cataclysm. Now we go further: We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. This is the best, absolutely the best, of the Lovecraft homages.

Casino Royale, 1967

James Bond, Agent 007, is forced out of retirement when the villa he resides in is bombed (purely for persuasive purposes), so he agrees to help stop SMERSH from killing all the British secret agents. His tactic, give everyone the name James Bond, 007, including the pretty women, of which there is an abundance. His nephew Jimmy Bond, played hilariously by Woody Allen, turns out to be the despicable evil mastermind behind the dark plot.

Cecilia, 1982

The wealthy bored wife discovers swinging, nothing lasts forever. Filmed in Portugal on the estate of Captain Cook, beautiful. Of this genre of sex films, this is probably the most intelligent, which is not saying all that much.

Changeling, 2008

Her young son disappears, the police provide another boy, but she knows better. The police try to loose her in a mental institution, but a crusader with a radio show gets involved, turns out her boy was killed by a serial murderer and the police are more interested in keeping in business than they are in law enforcement.

Chinese Roulette, 1972

The little girl has leg braces and walks with crutches. She has a helper who does not speak, she signs and only the little girl can understand her. Her mother tries to be good, but we all know she really hates her little girl. The father tries to be supportive of everyone. He has a business trip to go to, so does the mother. The little girl knows the routine, both parents are secretly going to meet their lovers. Father meets the French woman at the airport, they head to the country home. The housekeeper and her son receive them and say nothing. They discover the mother and her lover in an embrace. They all laugh, its an awkward moment, the married couple and their long-term secret lovers. The housekeeper laughs privately. She makes dinner for both couples together, while she and her son dine in the kitchen. Then the little girl and her helper arrive. Everyone is shocked. Then they all figure out that the laughing little girl has engineered this awkward situation, but they go along with it without a word of complaint. The housekeepers son has a secret relation with the little girl's helper, who appears to be alienated by now. The next morning everyone is getting along fairly well enough, the men playing chess and the women are playing beauty shop. The little girl asks that dinner be served to everyone together, the two couples and all the staff. Then she asks that they all play Chinese Roulette. You were waiting to know what Chinese Roulette is. The players (everyone) divides into two groups and they each individually pose interesting questions of the opposing group, such as, if a person were a coin, if a person were an animal, if a person was to be stranded on a desert island, if a person was a member of the Third Reich, etc. what would they be? The entire game is photographed in dramatic tableaus, reflective surfaces abound, interesting combinations of players, its really fantastic, very entertaining to watch. The real question is, why do they keep a loaded gun in the living room where mother, who has emotional issues, can get it? It appears that the little girl intended for mom to shoot her, but instead mom shoots the dumb helper, but not mortally.

Chushingura, 1962

Lots of suicides due to sneaky cheaters. Honor is the key to a good life, those sneaky cheaters get theirs at the end. But before then they have a wild good time.

City of the Living Dead, 1980

In New York City a seance is underway, they have a vision of a priest hanging himself in a cemetery. This unlocks the dead from their rest and they will roam the earth bothering the living, unless we do something. But what? The psychic Mary drops dead. Luckily the gravediggers go home at 5 PM leaving her tomb uncovered. She wakes up. The newspaper reporter hears Mary screaming in her coffin, and takes a pick ax to it. Meanwhile, Bob has found some kind of gooey mess with worms in it. He always has been troubled. The psychiatrist or whatever he is tries to console his various patients, who are also upset. Mary and the reporter set off to save the world, they have to find the cemetery and kill the dead priest before Halloween, which is pretty darn soon. The whole town is cursed, long ago they burned some witches who probably seek revenge, but thats probably another movie. Dead people keep popping up all over, all gooey and oozing organs and worms and stuff, bleeding eyes, guts coming from their mouths, wet choking noises, you get the idea. Icky. Seriously icky. Little John-John misses his dead sister, who keeps coming back to bother him, she kills their parents. For the climax of the movie they go to the cemetery to find the priest and stop him, they find his family tomb and of course they go down there. His individual grave amongst the family grouping down there is disturbed, so they go into that dark hole, down further. Deeper and deeper under the cemetery where lots of dead people are waking up to bother the living. Just when it looks really hopeless, the reporter is dead and its just Mary and the psychiatrist, and Mary starts bleeding from the eyes, the priest appears. In desperation the psychiatrist rams a big old funky cross into the priest's crotch, which surprises him and causes him and the dead folks to burst into flame. The next morning they crawl out of the priest's family grave, John-John is happy to see them and comes running. Something bad happens at the very end, but nobody explains exactly what. They cross-crotched the priest and the gooey wormy dead people all fell down, what is the problem?

City of Women, 1980

Marcello Mastrioanni (yes, Fellini) plays Snaporaz, who loves to boink women. He finds a hot one on a train, he follows her to the restroom and she agrees to have sex with him, but the train gets to the place where she gets off, so she leaves. He follows, calling after her, and is in some deep trouble. She goes to a feminist convention out in the remote wilderness in a hotel. To escape and save his life he accepts a ride on the back of a motorcycle driven by the grim old woman who shovels the coal in the basement. He wants to go to the train station, but she wants him to feed her cat. Guess what that means. She pulls her dress up and pulls him on top of her, which he is uncomfortable with. Luckily her mother rescues Snaporaz from the sex-crazed woman. To get to the train station he accepts a ride in a sports car filled with young modern women who could care less about his desire to get to the train station. They park out in the wilderness somewhere, and he escapes on foot. He comes to the house of Dr. Xavier Katzone (translation: Bigdick) but the doctor is under siege from the feminist police, who kill his dog. Snaporaz finds his own wife there, who explains to him her unhappiness. In the end he escapes laughing and triumphant in a balloon shaped like a huge sexy woman. But then a feminist appears with a machine gun and she shoots the balloon, he falls to earth. 

Coffee and Cigarettes, 2003

Jarmusch directs this film like all directors do, invisible and behind the scenes. Its a series of vignettes which have been helpfully labeled “comedy” all concerning various tables and chairs with one or more human beings, usually two, sometimes three in the role of the waiter (once the third person is the young son of one of the drinker/smokers), and sure enough, all of them actually drink lots of coffee and smoke lots of cigarettes. The first two are very jittery and typical of New York half of them are not native English speakers. One of them has a dentist appointment and does not want to go, so the other volunteers to go in his place, which is a great relief. The next one is a pair of twins, male and female, and Steve Buscemi is the annoying neurotic waiter. Then comes Tom Waits and Iggy Pop, they have both quit smoking and are gregariously proud of their moral superiority for it, but there is a pack on the table, sure enough Tom fires one up and Iggy soon follows. It goes on, different people, two old men who swear like normal urban dwellers; a cousin visits her rich cousin and one actress plays them both; two rappers drink tea and talk about their new healthful food habits and they are waited on by a white-haired old Bill Murray who guzzles coffee right from the pot. 

The Collected Shorts of Jan Svankmajer: The Ossuary and Other Tales, 1964 

Wonderful craft, but boring. No Alice, but its got plenty of animated bones and clay doing odd things. One episode is in a small room, a clay man grows when visiting body parts join on.

Composing the Beatles Songbook, 2008

A variety of advanced fans and authors expound about the song writing axis of John and Paul, with an acknowledgement of the influence of Bob Dylan on their work. The focus is on the early years, to 1965 or so, Rubber Soul. Sometimes Paul wrote songs, sometimes John did, sometimes both wrote together, Paul wrote a bunch of songs for other bands, in all cases they stuck to the agreement to put both names on all their work. The only name I am familiar with is Klaus Voorman, who first thought that Stu Sutcliff was the leader, during the years in Germany. So much fun!

Cool Air, 1999

A man is seeking an apartment in a city that is new to him. The landlady is strange but she has an adequate room for him. Its very hot. Something drips from above, its not water, it smells odd. He meets the old man upstairs who has lots of strange things in bottles, and he has a primitive air conditioning machine. They become friends. One day the machine breaks, the old man is frantic, he asks for help as he cannot leave the building but he requires a repairman to fix his air conditioning machine. The repairman is not found soon enough, the old man dies and his body melts strangely. It appears that he has been dead for many years but the cool air has kept him preserved. Also several short films: Nyarlathotep (an ancient Egyptian being who visits the city and brings trouble), An Imperfect Solution (two medical researchers are having problems with the formula for reanimation, when it does work the subject is never happy), The Hound (two grave robbers make a big mistake), The Hapless Antiquarian (buys an old book that he cannot rid himself of), Dunwich 1927 (a Lovecraft film festival promotion) and The Scroll (an alphabetical lark through dark territory). Amusing but nothing satisfying. Lurker label, different independent film artists.

The Crossing, 2000

George Washington's last desperate attempt to turn the war around.

Cthulhu, 2007

He gets a call, his mother has died. He drives home, on the way another car threatens him and then crashes, the boy driving dies a bloody death. He eventually arrives but he has missed the funeral itself, his father is wearing strange clothing and behaves very formally, he is some kind of religious nut, babbling about the new order the ancient order. His sister attempts to bring them together. The old house is to be sold at an auction, which is in his mother's will. He visits the old waterfront building, there are lots of names written on the floor in chalk, some are friends of his. Lines of odd monk-like people are chanting and slowly entering the old waterfront building. He escapes by rowboat. At the bar his sister introduces him to Tori Spelling, she is oddly friendly, she tells him she has an old book that he is interested in and he agrees to meet her later. There is an old guy at the bar who starts to tell him about some old local legends but the management throws him out. He agrees to buy some liquor for the old guy in exchange for more old stories. At the liquor store a girl gives him a note. She has a younger brother who disappeared but she knows he is still alive and in the area, she asks him to find the boy. The next day he meets Tori Spelling, she takes him home, she and her invalid and irritating husband ask him to impregnate her, he refuses. They wont show him the old book and when they feed him lunch he is drugged. Tori Spelling takes his sperm to impregnate herself. That night he goes back to the old waterfront building, the chalk names are gone but there is something there he cannot see and he is frightened, he runs away. He finds the boy (the missing younger brother), who takes him into the basement where there are odd beings, something happens to the boy. He climbs out of a tunnel and is back by the old waterfront building. He visits his aunt at the nursing home, she tells him that there is something in the old house for him, hidden in the furnace in the basement. He goes to the auction and a mysterious man outbids him and buys the house. He is arrested by the local police for the murder of the boy. The police are going to harm him, they hate his father. There is an unseen mob that attacks the police station, when he comes out of the cell there is nobody around. He goes to the old house and finds a video cassette hidden in the basement furnace, he plays it. Its a tape his mother made, she was afraid, she tries to warn him about his father. Her part is interrupted, his father continues the tape telling him about the coming new order, the ancient order, and he is to be a great leader. There is mob violence outside. He meets with his friend, they leave the old town, people are attacking them as they drive off. They go to his father's house by the sea where the police attempt to arrest him again but his father comes out and shoots the police dead. In the house there is a large group of strange happy people who are welcoming the new order, the ancient order. Its his sister and Tori and odd extras. There are hundreds of vaguely human figures emerging from the sea, walking slowly towards the land. His father tells him to kill his friend as an act of sacrifice to prove his loyalty to the new order, the ancient order. He strikes. Does he kill his friend or his father? The film is over. In what I have written here I left out all of the homosexual stuff, I guess its part of the conflict with his father and further complicates Tori Spelling's reproductive mission, but The Master (Lovecraft) was not so carnal and certainly not so liberal (gay). Do Not watch the production commentary track, what a bunch of trivial babbling  quarrelsome idiots. At first I liked this film, now having seen part of the commentary track the whole thing just irritates me. If you avoid the commentary track its so much better.

Cyborg#1, 1989

Its after the end of the world, the surviving folks are in desperate circumstances. Jean Claude Van Damme is a tough guy who leads individual good folks through the cannibals and bad guys to the good place far away.

Cyborg 2, 1993

Its after the end of the world, the surviving folks are in desperate circumstances. Angela Jolie is a hot robot who can fight really well. She rescues some guy, they escape to the good place far away, but when he ages and dies, she remains hot.

Danger: Diabolik, 1968

The hilarious wealthy adventurer steals the diamonds, outwits the various law enforcement officers pursuing him, and ends up bringing down western civilization for a laugh. He has a knack for faking his own death but the last one, in his secret hideout, appears to end badly.

The Dark Knight, 2008

Batman, the Joker, Two-Face, Commissioner Gordon, they are all here. Starts with the Joker and his crew pulling a heist on a mob-owned bank. The Joker has an intense method, the crew keep shooting each other once their roles are completed, which is part of the plan (saves a bundle when it comes time to divide the loot) but this aspect of the plan is not known by everyone. There is a wealthy Chinese man who joins in the mob families and winds up with all the cash, but he gets kidnapped by Batman from his headquarters in Hong Kong and returned to Gotham city. Bruce keeps working on perfecting his suit. Bruce’s girlfriend, Rachel, now played by Maggie Gyllenhaal and not by Katie Holmes (Katie is much hotter, methinks), hooks up with the politician crime fighter Harvey Dent, who becomes the confused and mostly evil character they call Two-Face after her death. Lots of cool gadgets, some fairly average fight scenes, nothing like the wild Parkour style of chase scenes that are more popular now. Message: insanity tests all.

Dante 01, 2008

Caro presents a new story with his usual players, French guys with wonderfully strange faces. This time we are on a very small prison satellite populated by one organization chief, one behavior modification psychiatrist, three guardians with seven convicts. All bald, so its hard to tell them apart. A new guy and a new doctor are added. Bad things happen. The larger story: the new guy is a survivor found alone on a spaceship filled with dead people, they want to study him so a special genetic scientist accompanies him to the prison satellite where she can work on him. The new scientist has a thing for nanobots that she injects into her subjects. They keep killing the new guy and he keeps coming back to life, also he can cure them. There is treachery and paranoia, in the end, only the new guy survives, he propels himself to earth in a crucifix laden climax scene.

Dark Shadows, 1991

The continuing saga of Barnabas Collins, through the centuries. It all begins with the arrival of the lovely new tutor for the angry youngest Collins boy. No, wait, it all really begins when the greedy half-wit searches for gold in the tombs and accidentally unleashes the imprisoned Barny. Its been 200 years and he is quite hungry. The tutor is a doppleganger for the lost love of Barny, which sets the plot in motion. Barny is tormented by yet another jilted girlfriend, who goes to a great deal of trouble to make is life miserable. Barbara Steele plays the scientist who tries to cure Barny using a serum of some sort, but she messes up. About half way through the modern saga there is a séance and the lovely tutor is swapped for the unfortunate tutor from the 1790s. In the end she is hanged for witchcraft. Evil triumphs and the angry girlfriend continues to torment the immortal Barny, well beyond the series end. Note to self: do not piss off women who practice Santeria. Just stay away from them.

Day for Night, 1973

Truffaut's answer to 8 1/2 a film about making a film. Also it sets the stage for some multiple plot lines that Altman made a career exploring. The director gets to outline just how hard his job is, working with prima donna artists and kooky actors. Everyone is so unreasonable, making huge demands and creating impossible situations that place incredible pressure on him.

The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2008

Remake of the science fiction classic, this time they have come to earth to put an end to the destructive dominance of one species over the whole planet. If mankind dies, earth lives. In this case the wrong choice is made for sentimental reasons.

Day Watch, 2008

Part two of maybe three. Part one was more about the old days, struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, and ends with the son of the protagonist being taken by the dark forces. This one begins with the son becoming accustomed to the ways of the dark forces, and with the working partner of the father on manoeuvers. She is learning her witch powers, and is able to pursue the dark forces beyond some kind of barrier. They carry on skirmishing constantly, there are these big trucks and special buildings. People get killed by vampires, mysteriously, and the skirmishes escalate, but they so far have always stayed short of all out resumption of the old battle. Until now. 

Deadwood, 2004 

How many times can one say cocksucker? I got this just to watch with my brother, hoping to hook him on the series. He could be lying. The overall plot is the growth of a boom town just before statehood is granted, and there is no law, so anyone can do anything so long as they don’t annoy someone with a gun. Its dirty there, probably like the frontier was.

Death Proof, 2007

Grindhouse stuntman Kurt thrills the chicks with his tough guy heart of gold act, then kills them by crashing his car into them. In the end he messes with the wrong chicks, they kill him ugly.

Death Rides a Horse, 1968

When some bandits rob a small farmer they rape and murder everyone except for a young boy, who grows up motivated to be a good shot fifteen years later. A wise murderer, a tough old man finishes his 15 year sentence in prison, both have reason to hunt, track and kill the members of that bandit gang, but the young man refuses to join forces with the old man. Each time the young man encounters a gang member he has a flashback and before he kills a bad guy he manages to remind his victim of his crime 15 years ago. The young guy interferes with the revenge plans of the old man, but somehow things work out. Ultimately the young guy figures out that the old man was a member of the bad guy gang, and feels honor bound to kill him too.

Decameron, 1970

A bunch of odd stories from way back in old Italy. A wealthy young man is invited to meet a beautiful woman, she tells him they are brother and sister by their common father. She feeds him a meal with green apples and gives him a place to sleep. He gets the trots, the floor to the privy is weak and he falls into the tank of nasty matter. The beautiful woman collects his fortune, he makes his way out of the bad place but he has a terrible odor. The servants tell him to go away, nobody lives here by that name. So he heads off into the night with no pants and covered in filth. Some robbers meet up with him and trick him into robbing the grave of a recently entombed Catholic cleric. He keeps the ruby ring but hands out the jeweled clothing, they lock him in the tomb. Some more thieves come along, he frightens them and dances off with his new ruby ring. Some young men labor in an orchard, they talk about the nunnery nearby, one young man sneaks off in the night and pretends to be deaf and dumb, gets work as a gardener, has sex with all the nuns. A wife is having sex with her new boyfriend, the husband comes home early, the boyfriend hides in a big jar, the husband has a buyer for the jar, the boyfriend pretends to make a better offer for the jar, except the interior bottom is dirty. The husband hops into the jar to clean it and the boyfriend continues fornicating with the wife. Giotto is commissioned to paint a church. He does. Giotto is played by the director. There is another odd vignette in which an Italian youth with bad habits visits the German territories, he is dying, his friends summon a priest, the Italian youth tells some whoppers and then dies, the priest gives him a funeral for a saint.

Delicatessen, 1991

Funny shoes. Make me a sandwich, not so much monkey this time. Stay away from the stairs. Times are hard, nobody has anything to eat. The protagonist in desperation arrives at a boarding house where there is a butcher shop. Where are they getting the meat from? People are disappearing. The protagonist had a circus act and a monkey. Who ate it? When his time comes he is rescued by the daughter of the butcher. There is an underground guerrilla group involved. The climax scene is when the young couple lock themselves in the bathroom while the hungry people beat on the door. To escape they seal up the cracks and fill the room with water, when the door is broken open the water floods them and washes them all down the stairs.

Demon Pond, 2005

Takashi Miike directs a film of a live theatrical performance of a Japanese play about a village being held by supernatural beings. I like arty films but this was hard for me to digest. There is one set, a door and a line that represents the shore. There is whiteface makeup sometimes, in varying thickness, and there are some red costumes for the demons. One subplot is a man hired to be a bell ringer, who falls in love with a village girl who is selected for ritual sacrifice. The man wants to take the girl and vamoose, but the villagers wont allow it and the girl kills herself. Then the guy kills himself. Then everyone is happy, including the villagers and the demons.

Departures, 2008

He gets his perfect job, playing cello in an orchestra in Tokyo, but abruptly the orchestra is dissolved for financial reasons. He brings his wife to his rural childhood home, which he has inherited after his mother died two years earlier. He gets a job listed as “departures” in a newspaper advertisement, but he does not know what it is exactly. Its ceremoniously putting dead bodies into their casket, in Japan its done in front of the family. He does not explain his new job to his wife and he has many doubts, except that the money is very good. Eventually he adjusts and finds that he is really good at it. His friends find out and they tell him to get a respectable job. His wife finds out and she leaves him. Time goes by, he continues to feel that he is doing the right job. She returns in a few weeks with the news that she is pregnant, and tries one more time to persuade him to change professions, so as not to shame the child. Then she has occasion to see him at work, and her attitude changes, she sees that he is good at what he does.

Dersu Uzala, 1975

1910 Russian surveying expedition hooks up with indigenous man who guides them through some difficult terrain. They have numerous adventures and eventually part ways.  They meet up again, Derzu shoots at a tiger, which is bad luck. His eyesight goes bad, he accepts an offer to live in the city, he is miserable, he returns to the wilderness and is found dead.

The Devil’s Backbone, 2001

Stay away from the basement. Bullies at an orphanage during the war. Everybody looses.

Diary of a Chambermaid, 1964

She comes from Paris to take a job at the country estate of a kinky old man. He is into footwear. He dies and on that same day the neighbor's little girl is murdered. The Chambermaid is about to leave, but the murder brings her back, she suspects the coachman. Oddly in her detective work she becomes his lover to learn his secrets. 

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972

Bunuel again. Where are those people walking to? Definitive modern surrealism. What is in the bag? A bomb? There are rich people with no meaning, there are soldiers, there are lots of hidden meanings, its Bunuel of course.

District B13, 2004

Action adventure movie in French. Jumpin’ dude in Paris ghetto teams up with a jumpin’ cop to retrieve a suspicious loose nuclear bomb, turns out to be a conspiracy of some right wing lunatic politicians to bomb the ghetto, just wipe it out and solve lots of their problems. The action keeps the entertainment factor high, the talent is easy to look at, the setting is in the worst poorest part of Paris. But its Paris. The chase scenes are all on foot, climbing trellises and jumping over barriers, quite exciting. No significant sex scenes. 

Django, 1966

A man and his coffin, roman the West. Shoots everybody. They need shooting. Lots of mud, he has a good heart and rescues a girl. Then he machine guns down lots of bad guys, but the main one gets away, which he claims is part of his plan for the big heist he pulls with the help of his old friends the Mexican gang of murderous thugs. The heist goes well. He then steals all the money from the gang for himself and puts it into his coffin, but when he is crossing the rope-bridge he drops it into the mud where it sinks forever. The annoyed gang then crushes his hands, no more fancy shooting, but by sheer will he manages to shoot that last main bad guy who previously had gotten away. Everyone has been shot, but now his hands are broken, and he does not have his coffin. He walks on into the fake American Cowboy West, which is really Italy. End of the movie.

Donnie Darko, 2001

I have seen this many many times. This version is supposed to be somewhat modified. The basic plot is a teenage boy who has become unstuck in time and has problems with sleepwalking. Things happen, a jet engine falls out of the sky and hits his bed, good thing he was out sleepwalking. His psychiatrist prescribes drugs which enhance his problems dramatically, but they are said to be placebos later on. There is a specific date that haunts the plot – most of the story is a count down to the end time. He becomes friends with the Frank the giant evil bunny rabbit, he becomes friends with the new girl, he becomes friends with a crazy old lady, he asks difficult questions about time travel and spirituality which is a taboo topic for teachers to discuss with students. He has a confrontation with a charlatan  huckster who is caught with child pornography, more things happen and his new girlfriend is run over by some foolish teenagers. His mother and sister die in a plane crash, but then he wakes up at the beginning of the movie, he decides not to go sleepwalking and is crushed in his bed by the jet engine. WHAT IS DIFFERENT (mostly additions): the first song, the omniscient voice of Frank, all of the Watership Down references; all of the multimedia diagram and iris stuff; the use of the book as chapter dividers, carving the pumpkin with Frank’s face; skyrockets; a monologue at the end by Donny; the Mad World awakening sequence visiting all the characters is moved to the end. MISSING: the wicked catcalls during the swan dance; the physical letter delivered to Roberta; Donnie’s sister is involved with Frank; at the very beginning at the scene of the accident a kid says “there he is!” Yes, this is a very different movie. I liked the old one better. What is this movie now? I got so far into it, now its changed.

Down by Law, 1986

New Orleans. Three guys get locked up, stay locked up, break out. While the escaped prisoners are wandering in the wilderness of Louisiana, the Italian guy finds an Italian girl and they stay together in the remote shack that she has inherited from her deceased husband. The other two guys take opposite forks in the road. The one guy (Tom Waits) is a disk jockey, he has had some personal problems and his girl friend has thrown him out. A criminal hires him to drive a car for a thousand dollars, but the police catch him and there just happens to be a dead guy in the trunk of the car, so the disk jockey is in jail. The other guy (John Lurie) is a stupid small time pimp who is arrested in a trap with an under aged girl. The Italian guy is a tourist who is learning English, he says he killed somebody over a card game. The other two say they are innocent. They escape somehow and survive in the poisonous swamp for a few days before they find the house with the Italian girl inside.

Down in the Valley, 2005

Cowboy Ed turns out to be crazy. Pretty good. Great quick sex scene with the young girl, mostly this is a psychological study of a poor young man who tries to cheat his way into success. 

Downfall, 2004

Hitler's last days, the last 10 days of the Third Reich. Bruno Ganz plays the dark lord. He does a great job.

Downtown 81, 1981 (2001)

Jean Michel Basquiat before he was a rich famous painter, wandering homeless in the hip Lower East Side scene (Manhattan), musicians, graffiti art, dangerous neighborhood. Wow. Just like I remember it, though I was only there for a few days. I did not see Rick Lewis or Little Cindi there in the crowd, but I saw more or less everyone else there in the movie. Maybe I did talk to Ikue Morei. I will never know for sure. The plot is Jean Michel wakes up in a hospital, they tell him he can go home, he has been evicted, so he goes to sell a painting to a rich lady. He does not get all the money he needs for getting his apartment back, so he just wanders around homeless (which is no big deal for him), having adventures in the night. He kisses a magic bag lady who turns out to be Debbi Harry who grants him his wishes, he finds lots of cash and buys a car from a guy.

Dr. Strangelove, 1964

One general decides to start a war with the Soviet Union. Peter Sellers has three parts, but he was supposed to have four. Lucky for Slim Pickens things turned out differently.

Dracula, 1931

Renfrew makes the journey to Transylvania, and even though he is repeatedly warned by the locals, he visits Count Dracula in his castle, for business. The two men travel to London by sea, bringing several boxes. Renfrew is the only one left alive on the ship when it arrives in London, and he is quite clearly insane. Dracula roams the city by night, he feasts on an unescorted young lady, and then makes his way to the opera where he introduces himself to the good Doctor Seward, his daughter Mina and her fiance Jonathan Harker, and their friend Lucy. When Lucy perishes mysteriously a foreign doctor, Van Helsing, analyzes her blood, and Renfrews blood, and finds some common elements. He is suspicious and mentions Nosferatu, a dusty old superstitious legend of undead monsters who must drink the blood of the living, which is met with derision. Mina begins to receive nocturnal visits from the Count, during one visit Van Helsing notices that the Count has no reflection in any mirrors. Now he is certain that Count Dracula is the source of their problems, and he places Mina under special care. Jonathan Harker is resentful but he eventually comes to believe Van Helsing. The two of them go to the nearby property that Count Dracula has purchased, the old Abbey, and discover Mina in the Count's power. Renfrew appears, and is so annoying that the Count decides to eliminate him, such a sniveling pest. The two men follow the Count and Mina into the old basement as dawn breaks, they discover the boxes, in one the Count is resting. When Van Helsing drives an improvised steak into the Count, Mina revives and allows herself to be escorted by Jonathan Harker to safety.

Dream of Life, 2008

A ten year project, not any concert footage, no whole songs. Its all about the artist herself, Patti Smith, her family and friends. We meet her children and her parents, we hear quite a bit about the influence of William Burroughs and Robert Mapplethorpe, as well as her male sibling and her spouse (all are dead now). She reads some of her favorite poets. She does an interesting homage to a urinal that she claims could have been used by Rimbaud. He is dead too. She is in good shape. Nothing much about drugs or sex, all about rock and roll  music and poetry, and painting too. I would have liked to have heard more about Basquiat and Bacon, she only talked about Pollock. Jackson, her son, is an excellent guitarist, there is a short included on the DVD which shows him playing a bit. 

Dreams of Cthulhu The Rough Magik Initiative, 2000

A collection of films by some independent film makers, Lurker Films, director Robert Fugger, etc. The main film is called Rough Magik, the shorts are Terrible Old Man, From Beyond and two Experiments, 17 and 18. These are just not engaging, the characters are oddly motivated and influenced by invisible powers, disappointing and always pathetic. They use blood to illustrate their violence, the Master's way is entirely psychological. The feature begins with a mother sacrificing her children to Cthulhu using a big kitchen knife, the police immediately bring the idol to a famous artist who they drug, he tells them a tale about his time in the Faukland war and his discovery of a great evil force that inhabits people's bodies and uses them to commit bloody murders. The Terrible Old Man is about some idiot criminals who set out to murder the old man but are soon confronted by a much greater evil that has prepared for them. From Beyond is about an amateur scientist who unlocks a hidden world of evil that overcomes everyone. The two experimental shorts prove that Hitler was a Cthulhu man and he had the Necrominocron. Maybe experiment 18 is the best of the lot, its about Operation Witchhammer, a late Nazi attempt to utilize witchcraft to save their losses and turn the tide.

Duck Soup, 1933

Classic madness. Things get out of control. Hail Fredonia! Groucho is appointed president of Fredonia by the rich widow, and his brothers join in. Things get out of control. War is declared. Fredonia parliament... well, things get out of control.

Earth, 1998 

The Pakistan story. Well done. Tragic. Civil war leads to the ethnic cleansing of the new country. Muslims versus everyone, Hindus and Sikhs caught up in the crossfire. See also Water (2005). A young girl and her older sister meet various young men from the village who all seek the hand of the older sister, because of the revolution things end badly and at the end the older sister is killed by the neighbors.

The Edge of Heaven, 2007

A lonely Turkish old man living in Germany invites a prostitute to live with him. His son, a college professor, is confused but accepts the Turkish woman. The man gets drunk and accidentally kills the woman, and goes to prison. The son decides to go to Turkey to try and find the woman's daughter, to help her pay for her education. The daughter is a political refugee and she turns out to be hiding in Germany. She falls in love with a German girl who takes her in and gives her shelter at the home that she shares with her mother. The two lesbians get arrested and the Turkish daughter is deported and sent to a Turkish women's prison. The German girl eventually finds her, and the Turkish girl passes her a note asking her to help conceal an illegal pistol. Some children rob the German girl, she finds them dividing up her stuff and one shoots and kills her with that very pistol. The son becomes the new owner of a book store in Turkey that specializes in German books and the Turkish old man is deported from Germany after he gets out of prison. The German girl's mother comes to Turkey after the funeral, she gets involved with the book store and also decides to help the Turkish girl in prison. The son goes to find his father who is living in his ancestral village, the father is out fishing and the son decides to wait for him to return.

Eight and a half (8 1/2), 1963

The famous movie about making a movie about making a movie about making a movie. This is the good stuff. Its about childhood, death, work, life, love, sex, suicide, failure, success, intergalactic travel, LSD and some other stuff too. This is huge. I should be writing whole books about it. Maybe someday I will. The title comes from the length of time that the film on a standard small spool contains.

Eklavya, 2007

The queen dies, assisted by her husband (who has some major personality issues), and the banished son is summoned. The royal guard, Eklavya, has great hearing but now that he is an old man he has vision problems, nonetheless he can sure throw a knife. The surviving spouse and his evil brother plot to have Eklavya killed, because he has a troublesome sense of morality, while they are busy exploiting the peasants and getting rich. Lots of plot twists and multiple conspiracies (only the pretty girl is virtuous), but of course Eklavya prevails, even though truth and justice are somewhat diminished. The ends justify the means, evidently. Not much singing and dancing, but some great colorful costumes.

El Bidone, 1955

The Swindle, stars Broderick Crawford, Mr. Highway Patrol, speaking Italian, as Augusto. The story goes like this, these funny guys dress up like clergy and run a scam on poor rural farmers. They pretend to have a confession from a murderer and thief who has hidden money on the property, with a dead body, his partner. The church only wants to reclaim the victim’s bones, but there is a treasure that the land owner can keep if they contribute to the burial of the unfortunate deceased. Turns out they must contribute quite a bit, and they do get to keep the treasure, but they must never tell anyone or they will have to pay taxes on the treasure. There is a big party, our team comes across as petty thiefs which embarasses the wife. Augusto has a daughter that is in college, he tries to help her financially or at least to impress her, but he gets in trouble. After he gets out of jail they try one more scam, but Augusto gets soft and the boys whip his butt and leave him in the dirt. Some important details, Augusto has a daughter that he wants to support, and on the last scam job the farmer has a crippled daughter.

El Topo, 1970

Cowboy magic realist, lots of blood. Some interesting moments, crashes under the weight of its own pretensions. Another experimental spaghetti Western, seems to have LSD influence. Annoying but strange like a dream. Bunny ranching does not work out.

The Element of Crime, 1984

Danish science fiction. Retired detective searches for serial child killer, very strange movie, more boring than amazing. Lots of water and dream sequences. Visually somewhat interesting but the end left me wondering what the heck had happened?

The Elephant Man, 1980

Story of John Merrick, congenital birth defects, made women swoon and men scream, his only job was as a freak in a circus. A doctor (young Anthony Hopkins, with dark full hair) adopts him and provides him with a place to live and eventually an entry into society. He is kidnapped by his circus keeper, but with assistance he escapes and returns to the doctor. He attends a theatrical performance and is honored, he soon dies in his sleep. Black and white, the usual industrial sound effects, which are David Lynch trademarks.

Eleven Fourteen (11:14), 2005

Sort of a Crash for a small town. Entertaining, not that big of a deal. Things all hinge around the moment of 11:14 one night. A body falls on a moving car. The policeman has two perps in the back of his police car. The perps have staged a fake robbery of the liquor store where they work. The hot girl meets with her secret new boyfriend and during sex in the cemetery his head is crushed by a falling tombstone. She decides to frame her old boyfriend for the murder and steals his bowling ball to leave on the corpse. The father of the hot girl decides to toss the body off the overpass where it falls on the moving car. The old boyfriend of the hot girl stages the robbery to get money for the hot girl. Two idiot high school students run over the hot girl while driving around vandalizing the small town. Everybody gets into the picture.

Eskimo, 2003

Personally, I think The Residents is one guy and not an ensemble. This album is all about ice and snow, the arctic, and the people who dwell there. I was surprised to see the Nanook film footage used as a visual counterpart to the sound, it makes good sense. What is annoying to me is the silly tribal chanting noises, why associate any of that with Eskimos?  I think they should be artic spirits and not real people. The isolation, huge expanses of ocean and sky, and generally the primitive struggle with extraordinary cold lends itself well to the electronic sounds. 

Emmanuel in Rio, 2003

This is the only Emmanuel episode that I can stand. Its got some great sex scenes, starting right off with our girl dancing topless. She is a photographer, she has sex with her model, after the shoot is finished of course, then she hooks up with her American boyfriend. The best sex scene is when a young musician who is working with the American calls on the apartment and only the young female roommate is home, she does a great strip tease dance and they go at it, never fails to get me hot. There are some great nude photography scenes. There are plenty of other actual sexual encounters, but the action sort of coasts from there. What I hate about the Emmanuel series is that its soft porn, pretty people faking sex and showing us their wonderful hot moist breasts and buns, but focused on one plot: the healing power of sex. We should have more sex, sex is good for everyone. Why should I have a problem with that? I don't. I guess I just want more erotic substance, more penetration, more of a script, and I have been spoiled by the XXX details.

Embrace of the Vampire, 1994

Vampire on the modern college campus? He has no commitment to his destiny, he has lived a thousand years then abruptly gives up and fades out. The female photographer character has the best sex scene, seducing the main girl. I kept hoping the obnoxious girl would get her bodacious ta-tas out, but no. The main girl gets her ta-tas out a few times, she is transformed from the fiancé of the boy going to another college, to the horny vixen at the Halloween party who gets drugged by the obnoxious girl. Just when it looks like the vampire has won the immortal soul of the main girl, he gets some static from the boyfriend and decides to surrender to eternity without his eternal love object. So, after all this, is the new horny vixen ready to settle down with Mr. Boring? Hopefully after the end of the movie she decides to take up photography herself.

Empire of Passion, 1978

The bored soldier convinces the bored wife to help him kill her husband, but in the end things go wrong.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, 1975 

Not as engaging as it was when I first watched it. Pretty good, one of the formative stories of my film career. A mysterious man raises a boy in isolation, then dumps the young man in the town square. First he is put in jail, then a rich guy sponsors him, he learns to speak and to join society, but someone, probably the mysterious man, stabs and kills him. The body is then dissected and the various elements weighed. Probably the best scene is when he holds a baby and says “Mother, I feel so far away from everything...” No, really my favorite scene is when the clever professor poses the age old question about the village of liars and the village of truth tellers. If you meet a man on the road and ask him where he is from, how can you deduce the truth about his origin... Kasper has the best answer which the professor cannot deal with and gets all upset about it. You ask the man if he is a frog.

Eraserhead, 1977 

The classic. Best movie of 1977. Had enough. Not as engaging as when I first watched it. Henry is unemployed, he has a baby with a girl, they have difficulties and she keeps returning to her parents. The baby is fragile. The movie ends when Henry’s head is used to make pencil erasers. Some other stuff happens, for example Henry hallucinates a dancer who sings inside his radiator. Hilarious interactions with the girls parents and grandmother.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, 1993

Not enough nudity. I would watch Uma do almost anything. Make that anything. In this case she has exaggerated huge thumbs, perfect for hitchhiking, which she does lots of. She gets an odd job modeling advertisements for feminine deodorant at a lesbian dude ranch, and arrives just in time for the revolution. The police surround the place and there is an extended shoot out between the rebel lesbians and the confused police. Uma gets it on with the girl of her dreams, those thumbs are perfect for more than hitchhiking, but there is not enough nudity. The police shoot the girl of her dreams. I am leaving out lots of interesting sub-plots. I would recommend this for only a few folks, primarily Uma fans, hitchhiking fans, lesbian dude ranch fans. No wonder its not so well appreciated.

The Exterminating Angel, 1962

Its a party for the rich folks, but nobody can leave.

Exterminating Angels, 2006

The restaurant scene really lingers in my mind. Its about a director who wants to make a film study of young girls being filmed masturbating or having lesbian sex. He makes the classic mistake of failing to deal with how his nymphets all fall in love with him even though the deal is that he is a professional film maker and will never touch them. The film is a success but one of the heartbroken girls gets him beaten up by her boyfriends. An interesting dimension is the use of two Cocteau devices, the short wave poet broadcaster voice (I guess only we the film audience hear it, nobody else acknowledges it) plus the invisible angels who somehow direct the action from behind the dark curtains. The angels have their own conflicts with their mission.

Factory Girl, 2006 

You’re Quinn, I’m Edie. Lets get out of here. Rich girl tries to make it on her own. Andy Warhol makes her into a celebrity. Bob Dylan, ooops I mean a musician named Quinn, forces Edie to choose between his temporary attention and Andy’s distracted attention, she fails to choose and dies of a series of drug overdoses. That was the 1960s.

Family Plot, 1976

Hitch at the end of his career. Does not do much for me. Swindler fortune teller hooks up with nutty rich lady seeking long lost abandoned baby who haunts her dreams. They find the missing baby now in his 40s who is self employed as a kidnapper. The chase scene is in one car which has been tampered with, Hitch makes his appearance as a shadow on the glass window of a door in a municipal government office.

Faraway, So Close!, 1993

Angels part two, great film! See them in order, part one is called Wings of Desire. In this one the remaining angel comes to earth and hooks up with his old chum the other ex-angel. They get involved with some circus people who get involved with some kind of exotic arms smuggling gang and pull a heist. The protagonist ex-angel of this episode gets shot in the rescue of the circus people from the arms smuggling gang. In the end the circus people take over the boat and the gang is all tied up. The boat is going down the river.

Fata Morgana, 1971 

Werner, what the fuck? Yes, the camera is on, but you left it running way too long. I have very little idea of what this is about, it seems to take place in Africa, its about a guy with a camera and not much money, and not much of an idea of what to do with his camera. But he turns the camera on and there is film in it.

Faust, 1994

Puppets and people, the devil and the curious man. Overall a pretty good romp. The protagonist gets a map from some crazed zombies at the bus station. He resists as long as he can but he ends up going to the location on the map and sells his soul to the devil so that he can learn the truth, or something like that. When he arrives at the location, another guy goes running off screaming, I think he gets run over by a truck. Lots of interesting set locations in old busted up German urban settings. He thinks he is getting away with tricking Satan, but noooo. The trick is on him. When his end comes, he passes the next guy who is just arriving at the location, and he in turn goes running out into the street and gets run over by a truck.

Fear of Fear, 1975

She is a stay-at-home mom and housewife. She has increasing debilitating anxiety, but her family ignores her distress and make light of it. She lives very near to her mother and sister, which is good for babysitting sometimes, but bad for sibling rivalry and intrusive meddling. Her pharmacist, who lives conveniently across the street, takes interest in her and seduces her. She has problems with the drugs, and attempts to shut the pharmacist out and switch to nice simple alcohol abuse, but her family intervenes. She drifts into deeper depression, which is increased by her mother and sister's negative influences. One day she abruptly cuts her own wrist, panics, and runs to the pharmacist, which complicates the affair. She is hospitalized and diagnosed as depressed but not schizophrenic. Her therapy is to get a job typing, and to practice more positive self-imaging, which works when combined with the drugs. The horny neighborhood pharmacist is now shut out of her life, he takes it poorly and kills himself. She is calm and pleasant, demonstrating her new life of better living through chemistry.

Fear of the Unknown, 2008

A biography of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the writer. This is a series of interviews with writers and film makers (Robin Atkin Downes, John Carpenter, Ramsey Campbell, Guillermo del Toro, Neil Gaiman, Stuart Gordon, S.T. Joshi, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Andrew Migliore, Robert M. Price, Peter Straub) who could never have possibly met the man as he died before they were born for the most part. They all have been influenced by the solitary anxious old racist who stayed up all night writing correspondence and some outstanding scary stories, night after night. Some high points: he gets published in Weird Tales Magazine, he leaves his home (he actually walks outside into the daylight), he goes to New York City, he marries a Jewish woman (which obviously contradicts the racial purity fanatic side of his), he returns to Providence and continues to write, he dies an abrupt horrible painful death, probably from cancer of some kind. 

The Fearless Vampire Killers,  1967

The eccentric professor and his assistant are out to disprove the Vampire legend, they go to the inn where the people try to warn them. They go to the castle, where they are wanted for dinner. Somehow they escape, but their case to disprove the legend is lost.

Feel Like Going Home, 2002 

Blues documentary. Excellent. There are many episodes but this is only one of them.

Fellini: I’m a Born Liar, 2003

A documentary combining interviews and clips, plus some footage shot much later of the places where the films were made. Excellent. Little bits from many films, an extended section from 8 ½ that deals with death sex love marriage infidelity and film making.

Fellini’s Roma, 1972

The main character is the city, from late 1930s to early 1970s. Fellini is an amazing story teller and this is one of them. They eat and talk and quarrel, they go to brothels. The first part of the film is with boys in a catholic school during fascist Mussolini’s rule. Part of the film is Fellini making a film about driving into Rome, the film crew working with a mobile boomed camera in the rain. The later part of the film is just scenes traveling around the modern city and it ends with a pack of motorcycles at night. The Eternal City. The most bizarre and entertaining episode is the Pope fashion show. Garments are shown that use exotic materials for religious wear, nuns with winged hats, nuns with hooped skirts, priests on roller skates, priests on bicycles, Cardinals with hats that have electronic displays, they get progressively more intense, a Virgin Mary outfit with a grimacing masked character, some pope outfits with invisible wearers, a relic display with posed skeletons, and the previous dead Pope comes back grinning in a dazzling white light display, which brings the audience (various groups of nuns, priests, cardinals, etc.) to their feet weeping and screaming with joy.

Fellini Satyricon, 1969

Italy somewhere, probably towards the end of the Roman Empire, its about two young bisexual men who are friends and enemies. They have various adventures including rivalry over a hot young boy, an earthquake happens, they meet a rich poet who takes them to a food orgy, they become pressed into serving on a huge metal warship, one gets married to the captain who is soon killed, they kidnap a young blonde hermaphrodite (not sure why) who dies on the road, one gets sent to the Minotaur who is sexually attracted to him which saves him, sort of. He fails at sex with a rich widow which humiliates him. He goes to a witch who helps him get his sword erect again. His buddy dies, his rich poet friend dies and the will states that for anyone to inherit any of his fortune they must eat his corpse. The surviving guy leaves a bunch of greedy guys munching away and heads off on a ship for more adventures. Too homoerotic for me, but its Fellini, so it provides lots of interesting cinema.

Fire Walk With Me, 1992

The FBI investigates the murder of a girl who is found floating in the river. They meet with resistance from the local constabulary, and make many astonishing discoveries. Laura Palmer is a complex girl who finds herself increasingly involved with terrible trouble. This film reveals who her killer is, and ends with her horrible bloody death. It supplements the basics of the television series, the FBI agents, the nightmare land behind the red curtains, the little town in rural Western Washington state, and Laura Palmer's world. Plus she takes her top off.

Fishing with John, 1992 

John Lurie takes various friends fishing, one at a time: Jim Jarmisch, Matt Dillon, Willem DeFoe, Tom Waits and Dennis Hopper. Its a “subtle” spoof on fishing programs. Mostly the action consists of random small talk punctuated by ridiculous voice-overs that try to imply some great danger or excitement but there is none. Its just two men (usually with a non-speaking boat crew) who sit and fish, or they travel to where they are going to fish. They never catch much and with obvious irony there is only one secret fishing tip which is how to dance a sacred dance described to them by an old man in Costa Rica that does not speak any English. They do not speak Spanish, so they have no idea of what he is actually saying, but they try dancing strangely anyway. It has no effect except maybe it makes the fish stay away and the luck bad. My favorite moment is when Jim and John are fishing for sharks and after a few hours of not catching any, John gives Jim a big piece of cheese and tells him to hold it over the water so that the sharks can smell it. Jim is instructed to drop the cheese when the shark comes leaping out of the water. jaws wide open, for the cheese. John sits next to him holding a pistol, prepared to shoot the lunging monsters. Ultimately they do hook a big one using conventional marine fishing poles, fifteen feet long, and they then face the real question: what are they going to do with it? They let it go. When he goes ice fishing with Willem in Maine they do not catch anything and they both die of starvation, its really grim as they become delusional at the end. The next episode is with Dennis Hopper, they are fishing for giant squid in Thailand. The squid hypnotizes them and they forget everything. By far the best thing on the DVD is the special bonus song by the Lounge Lizards (John's band) with a song called Big Heart, which was recorded in Sardania. It has some strange dancing too.

Fire, 1996

Hot girl marries an idiot who has another romance going, the family situation puts her close to her sister-in-law and eventually they find more comfort in each others company than with their spouses, so they get it on, and then decide to leave and that is the end of the movie. But where could they go? Its India, so there are some basic problems with the plot here, the family is the most important thing in life and if you leave your family you are nothing, nobody will hire you, nobody will rent to you. There are various other characters who help round out the array of complications within the plot. Really wonderful vistas and locations.

First Name Carmen, 2007

Carmen is about a girl who is the nice niece of the famous but now aged and ill film director Jean, played by Mr. Godard. The girl is involved with a gang of robbers who use the premise of making a film in their crimes. They have cameras and a film crew, plus they have people with weapons who shoot and ask for the money. She also has a complicated romantic life, wonderful pointy tits of course, and she likes spontaneous sex with new men in her life. Its Godard, so who knows what is really going on? All we can do is watch and try to figure it out, piecing together the clues he presents us. The subtitles give us an edge over native French speakers because they focus us on the designated important stuff and ignore the distracting chattering.

Five Dolls for an August Moon, 1970

A very strange soft-porn murder mystery. On a small Greek island a young scientist is tempted to sell his invention, but he wont do it. There are three men who are there to take control, there is the man that owns the house, and there is the servant. Except for the servant they all have spouses and there are various webs of entanglement between them all. One by one they are murdered, only the neighbor girl survives, but the surprise is that she has captured the scientist and then framed him for all the murders. She winds up with the money.

Flight of the Conchords, 2007

Three idiot blokes from New Zealand attempt to survive as a musical band in New York City. Two are musicians and the third acts as a manager. They are sweetly naive in the difficult urban environment. Some of the music is catchy, but they are so painfully dim, its tiresome. 

The (Four) 400 Blows, 1959

The boy has problems with his obnoxious teacher, he skips school and blunders onto his mother kissing a strange man on the street. The family breaks apart, the boy is put into some horrible military school, he runs away and it ends with him arriving on the beach. Is he there to fulfil his dream of seeing the ocean or to kill himself?

Four Rooms, 1995

The new bellboy, Ted, has the old hotel in Hollywood to himself on New Years Eve. What could possibly go wrong? First is the coven of witches, they need his sperm. Second is the wrong room, Ted the bellboy is caught up in some kind of romantic choppy weather, the girl is tied up and and the insane boyfriend has a big gun. Next comes the misbehaving children, who find a lot of naughty stuff in their room. The climax is the eccentric movie star. There is some stuff in between.

Four Times That Night, 1970

A rich young playboy finds a special girl, she is reluctant but he is persuasive. When he comes to her home to take her out on a date he meets her mother and continues with his compulsive seductive lies. The film has four parts, its the perspective on the evening as told by 1) the girl, 2) the horny lying man, 4) the voyeuristic doorman, plus 4) the film director. Her story is of his relentless pursuit and her virtuous struggle, his story is her insatiable sex drive and his story to his buddies of his resistance to the wild slut, and the doorman puts them both has homosexuals, both the playboy and the girl, queering off with another couple. The film director tells the story of an honorable wealthy man with interest in the tender young sex kitten, her moral strength that preserves her honor, they go watch the sunrise and have a special time together, which is none of our business. The horrible doorman who spies on them and secretly photographs the nude young women is just an incidental fool. 

Fourteen Oh Eight (1408), 2007

He writes books about haunted places, like hotels. He gets an irresistible challenge, the Dolphin Hotel, room 1408. They go to a great deal of effort to keep him from going in there, but he perseveres. Now the room has him. From its bag of tricks emerges his deceased daughter, amongst a range of ghosts and specters. Everything goes wrong, its too hot, its too cold, it floods, the walls crack and bleed, his hand gets smashed by a window that slams shut, demon ghosts attack him with axes and they throw stuff at him, try to push him out of the window, his computer connects to his ex-wife, room service calls him with wrong orders. Not very satisfying.

Foxfire, 1996

One day she just shows up at the high school. There is a problem with a teacher who is a coach, he has been touching different girls. The new girl inspires them to stick together, they confront the bad man, he attempts to fight back, but they overcome him. Naturally the authorities accept his story, but in the end he is fired, which upsets the team. The girls have various adventures and occupy an old house in the woods. The team attempts to abduct and possibly rape one of the girls, but the rest of the girls appear and take the car from them. They are a bit jubilant and when the police pursue them they roll the car over, and are arrested. One of the girls has a bad father who hits her, and she becomes addicted to drugs. In desperation the new girl pulls a gun on the bad father and kidnaps him. At the house the girls are surprised at what the new girl is doing. The gun goes off accidentally, the new girl hits the road never to be seen again, the father makes up a story about accidental gun discharge, the girl gets into rehab and recovers.

Fracture, 2007

Anthony Hopkins stages the perfect murder of his unfaithful wife and almost gets away with it. Very clever. He switches his gun for the gun of the detective who is screwing his wife, so the chain of evidence is distorted, plus he tricks the detective into becoming emotional, which further pollutes the case against him. His double jeopardy defense is defeated in the end by the smarty pants young rising lawyer.

Frankenstein, 1931

The ultimate confrontation of cold science and the spiritual mysteries of life itself, are there limits to what human curiosity and ambition can bring about? This is the source of every Frankenstein cliche, from the mad scientist's laboratory and all its sparking and blinking gear, to the angry villagers with burning torches storming the countryside seeking the evil monster. There is no brother William, no voyage to the north pole, and the body count is much smaller. The one called Victor is a friend of the family, Elizabeth is to marry Henry, the mad scientist, and the part known in cliche as Igor has another name. Its Fritz who bungles the brain business, and is so abusive to the monster that its a relief when the monster kills Fritz. The Baron is the cranky lovable old duffer, Elizabeth survives the encounter on her wedding night when the monster pops by for a visit. Let me back up. Henry has an ambition, he exceeds as a student but his odd ideas about reanimation of the dead are ridiculed, which inspires great obstinacy on Henry's part. Baron Frankenstein is much loved by the village, but he has contempt for them, especially the Burger-master Mayor. Elizabeth, Victor and the good Doctor Waldemore pay a visit to Henry on a dark and stormy night, the very night that the monster is given life. They witness the event, and they attempt to restrain Henry when he runs about shrieking “Its ALIVE!!” There is absolutely no trace of mercy or moral insight in anyone, Henry is insane but he gets to marry the girl, Victor is not morally offended by the whole situation, the Baron is a loving father. The monster hangs the tormentor Fritz, Dr. Waldemore and Henry collaborate in injecting the monster with some kind of nasty poison, which only stuns him. Everyone goes to the wedding but the Doctor, who is left alone to disassemble the monster, who awakens and dispatches the doctor instead. Out into the countryside the monster goes, he is befriended by a sweet joyful little girl, Marie, whom he tosses into the lake and then shows regret for killing her. Meanwhile the wedding party at the village is in full swing, lots of charming local customs are on exhibition. Enter the weeping father carrying the corpse of his drowned daughter sweet Marie, which changes the whole mood of the party. They chase the monster into an old abandoned windmill, it looks to me like Henry got killed when tossed off the top of the windmill, getting caught on the turning blades on the way down, seems like that would leave a mark or two. The fire appears to end the terrible life of the unfortunate monster, or so the music informs us. The end is a happy time, the wedding is completed and the villagers rejoice. This has the best of all the DVD commentary included, it mentions that one of the friends of Mary Shelley, way back in 1816 when the book was originally conceived, is named Dr. Polidori (see Frankenstein The True Story, 1973).

Frankenstein, 2004

A longer adaptation of the work of Mary Shelley, perhaps this one deserves to be called more loyal than that other one. Again, the doctor does not quite fully grasp the evil he has committed, his pain is all selfish. His wife is naive and pays the price, his parents are more supportive here, his monster is a hippie. The blind old man who plays the violin is less tortured and his people also attack to defend against the visual spectacle of the beggar from the forest. They survive. William is a child brother, he is accidentally snuffed by the brute. Henry is an intrusive childhood friend who probably should have made off with Elizabeth early on, both would be tormented but alive. The professor is less involved in the crime, but he does play the part of the frustrated moralist. Its all framed in the northern wastelands, and Victor dies first, after he has told the tale. The big guy takes the dead guy off into the storm, the end.

Frankenstein: The True Story, 1973

This is undoubtedly the worst and stupidest of the various Frankenstein movies. The very idea that it is distinguished for its loyalty to Mary Shelley's original work is both ludicrous and ridiculous, or maybe just laughable. Poor Victor is a misunderstood zealot who really had the best intentions at heart but alas, he is a victim of his own generosity in giving life. His wife is somewhat meddlesome, his parents are distant profiles, his monsters are beautiful and young. The blind old man who plays the violin is probably the closest to the author's original concept but his people are basically evil because of the way they immediately attack the beggar from the forest. The best thing to say about this part is that it sheds new light on the Biblical quotation “My name is legion, for we are many.” The height of blasphemy is the employment of two new characters -- a slightly older grumpy colleague who has already pioneered the reanimation concept, but instead of lighting he uses solar power. His ultimate punishment is having his brain used in the monster, several times he awakens to the horror of his situation. Easily the most laughable new character is Dr. Polidori, endearingly played by the immensely talented James Mason. Those two inventions absorb all of the story's original evil and leave the naive young Dr. Frankenstein a hero or even a victim. I really hated this movie. 

Frenzy, 1972

Hitch. He is a face in the crowd, but in the trailer he is floating down the Thames river, looking for a muhr-dah-ruh. Movie is okay. His film appearance is in the crowd at the beginning of the film when the body washes up on the river shore during a political speech.

Gia, 1998 

Tragic story of the rise and fall of a hot model. She is a waitress at her father’s grill, she hooks up with a photographer and becomes discovered, and becomes extremely wealthy and popular. She likes the drugs and is generally eager for random sex, until she hooks up with a steady girl friend, it takes some time to work things out with her. Time goes by, things fall apart, she becomes a drug addict trading sex acts for drugs, and tragically at the end she dies of AIDS.

Gipsy Kings, live in Kenwood House, 2006

Recorded at a park in England, the band is across a pond, it starts in the afternoon and goes into the darkness. The concert promotes the new album “Roots” which is the only one that I have. Its excellent, fun to watch the band members playing, very well done with the cutting on the beat and featuring intelligent shots of key instrumentals.

Gods and Generals, 2003

Leads up to Gettysburg. Jeff Daniels does a great job. Has Dylan rock video, into the green valley. Begins just before the civil war begins, introduces the major characters, which are generals on both sides of the conflict. Sketches the reasons for the war, spends some time with the rough stuff, but more time with the leadership than the little guys. Jeff is the Yankee soldier from Maine, he rises due to his intelligence and honor.

Gothic, 1987

Rich young people on a vacation in Switzerland, two famous poets Byron and Shelley and their companions, Dr. Polidori with his leeches, and of course the servants, who retreat for the most part, present for serving meals but thats about it. Crazy rich young people. They get hopped up on alcohol and laudanum and then commence to try to frighten each other. In the end, young Mary Shelley comes up with her idea for Frankenstein, and Polidori writes a forgettable vampire story, before Bram Stoker.

Grizzly Man, 2007

Fed himself to the bears. Should have left his girlfriend out of it. He has a dream, to live with the bears in Alaska. He goes there, and lives pretty well for many years, making wildlife movies and making presentations at schools. But one summer the bears eat him. It gets worse. His girl friend was visiting, and she gets eaten too. They left the recorder on, and eventually Werner Herzog gets it. He makes this movie, but he leaves out the gratuitous bloody parts, when the bear eats the guy. Its another Herzog movie about a crazy man with a crazy dream who takes steps to follow his dream, and strange things happen.

Hannibal Rising, 2007

The origin of Hannibal Lector, born to nobility in Lithuania, lost to poverty by World War II, the lad has much hostility to work out. It all started when he and his sister were left with some bad guys after mom and dad were killed during the fighting as Russia pursued the fleeing Nazis. There is no food and the cute little sister becomes dinner for the starving men. Later, Hannibal hooks up with his deceased uncle's exotic wife who teaches him about Japanese fighting techniques and swords, and about Japanese revenge, taking the enemy's head. During this time he is in medical school, learning all sorts of handy things about human bodies. He tracks down all of the bad men and dispatches them.

Haunted Echoes, 2006

The puppy has been bad, and was left outside that night. The little girl heard it whimpering and went to investigate, and that was the last time she was seen alive by her parents. They move into a different house after the suicide of the prime suspect, to put all that behind them, but its a haunted house. The wife senses it first, the husband is incredulous, she leaves. He stays and soon the ghost has him too. The psychic says that the wrong person was accused of the murder of the daughter, the criminal still roams free and intends to keep raping and killing children. The couple gets back together and investigate a new suspect. It turns out that he used to live at the haunted place. He stalks them and hears their plans to kill him, he digs up his step-sister who he buried in the yard, but he cannot convince the mother of the more recent dead little girl of his innocence, he winds up dead. They move to Oregon.

Heart of Glass, 1976

A remote village in the mountains. The formula for making the Ruby Glass has been lost. The factory is in trouble. It appears that there was a powerful hallucinogenic moulde in the bread. Everyone is stoned, slow, staring. One interesting scene is when the darkened bar is opened in the morning and the people are still seated from the night before. The main guy stares into space all the time and keeps making all these nutty predictions. The rich son is a real idiot. The rich old man is nutty and laughs all the time, and is crippled. There is a short guy who serves them, and some strange looking females who tend to make screeching noises, one dances naked on the table while her duck watches us. The story of the village ends after the factory is burned down by the rich son. The main guy finally tells a story about some people who live on some huge rock cliffs by the sea where they spend lots of time standing and staring. He and three buddies set out to find the edge of the world and evidently the little boat sinks because they are never seen again. What have we learned? Crazy people are unreliable.

Hellboy II: the golden army, 2008

Smug sequel to the first one, somewhat more comic. The government agency’s struggle to manage its demonic assets. An elf type creature murders his own father to assume control over the most evil and invincible automated warrior army. The fish guy falls in love with the female twin of the elf guy. The main guy impregnates his fiery girlfriend, which pulls him through some medical problems. Chock full of wonderful creatures, thank you Guillermo del Toro.

Helter Skelter, 1976

The first filmed version of Vincent Buliousky's career making adventure battling Charles Manson and The Family in court. Its about how a case can be constructed to prosecute a man who attempted to create a massive race war for his own benefit, while keeping his own actions as minimal as possible.

Helter Skelter: Director's Cut, 2004

This is the best one, as it attempts to give more attention to Charley. It shows his charisma and his techniques for getting people to do things for him.

Helter Skelter Murders, 1972

Marijuana crazed hippies attack civilization. A documentary.

Hercules in the Haunted World, 1961

Hercules has problems. King Lico is lying to him, instead of being his friend like he pretends, he keeps trying to kill Hercules and he has his fiancée Princess Deianira held prisoner in some kind of spell. The oracle says for Hercules to go to hell and back and take stuff from the folks there to break the spell of Princess Deianira. So he takes his best friend Thesus and the boyfriend of Thesus's latest fling, away to hell they go. They have problems, but being Hercules really helps. They get things done and steal the magic apple and the magic rock, which help with the problems of Hercules. Thesus falls in love with yet another local girl and vows to kill Hercules because he could interfere with his hot new romance. As it turns out she didn't like Thesus so much anyway and sends him into a trance while she sneaks back home to hell. When Herc and the boys get back from hell, King Lico is about to drink the blood of Princess Deianira to become immortal, which would be bad. Even though King Lico sends magical zombies to keep Hercules busy, Herc manages to kick zombie butt, and to take the stuff he stole back to hell  because he's done with them, and besides, the gods were so darned angry about him stealing all that stuff in the first place. Finally he manages to kill King Lico. Then Herc rescues his fiancée Princess Deianira who awakens and is so happy to see him. Then Thesus steals the girl one more time from the man who risked his life to help Hercules. They do it openly on the beach while the cuckolded man tries to drown himself, which causes great laughter.

The Horsemen, 2008

He is a policeman specializing in dental forensics, and they, the evil doers, are a massive conspiracy. They use the Book of Revelations as their framework for the torture and murders that they commit. It all appears to be based on punishing parents or older siblings who have somehow disappointed the perpetrators. Very bloody, involves horrible acts, lots of surprises, victims who are perpetrators, a detective horror story. The bad guys are not always caught, many of them commit suicide, most of them get away. The horsemen refers to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. More proof that excessively religious people are murderous nuts.

Hour of the Wolf, 1968

Great intensely boring horror movie by the master, Bergman. Author on an island, gets invited to a party of the rich folks, they have lots of dark issues. The hour of the wolf is just before dawn. Plenty of great phantasm scenes exploring fear.

House by the Cemetery, 1981

He gets a strange new assignment but its for a lot of money so he takes it. His predecessor seems to have murdered his hot young mistress and then hung himself in the library. Now they want this new guy to pick up the pieces and finish up the research. His wife is a nervous person to begin with, and his son sees a girls face in the photograph of the old house, in the window, she is telling him not to come there, but nobody listens to the boy. Nobody else can see her face, so it must be that the little boy simply has an active imagination. To continue the research, he (Dad) is to make his family live in the same old creepy house by the graveyard deep in the woods, where the bodies were found. Its a large decrepit mansion with some modern features, such as indoor plumbing and some electricity. Its the old Freudenstein place. Dr. Freudenstein got into trouble with his strange medical experiments, this was over 100 years ago now. The strange noises are coming from the basement, which was locked, but the babysitter opened it. Why would she do that? The young son makes friends with the invisible little girl, the same one from the picture that only the little boy can see. First the real estate agent gets killed, then the babysitter gets her head cut off, then the whole thing becomes clear. Some terrible old monster is still living in the basement of Dr. Freudenstein's old house. Its old Doctor Freudenstein himself! As usual, if the victims would fight or just shove the old monster back, they would be fine, but no, they just sit and wait to die, so frightened that they have forgotten to move, and the wobbling fragile old monster gets them. The little boy is the only one to escape alive, and he goes off to live with the little girl and her mother, Mrs. Freudenstein.

House of Clocks, 1989

Its a big opulent old house. The girl who helps in the kitchen finds two dead bodies in the basement chapel, a bride and groom, with large nails driven into their throats, and rather rotten. The crazy old couple who own the house have problems keeping the help. There is a one-eyed gardener who does the heavy lifting and grave digging. After the kitchen girl is stabbed in the stomach by the old lady she is buried in the front yard. The three kids, a girl and two boys, are roaming the Italian countryside whimsically robbing anywhere they can. It seems that the kitchen girl told them of the easy pickings (easy tickings) before she went underground. They used the old single-girl-with-a-broken-down-car-needing-to-use-the-phone routine. The boys cut the telephone line and slip in the back door. Things are not going so well, and when they try the heist with their toy pistol the gardener shows up with his shotgun, and a struggle ensues. The old lady takes a shotgun blast to the stomach, the gardener gets an obviously fatal blow to the noggin, and the old man takes a shotgun blast to the back. When the old man dies the clocks all stop for a short while and then run backwards. The kids load up with the household silver and when they try to leave the big mean dogs in the yard will not let them go. So the kids decide to go upstairs and smoke more joints. The odd boy left out of the sex goes roaming the house. He finds the bodies missing, which creeps him out. Then he gets a shotgun blast to the back. The old couple are back, standing behind the gardener as he chases the remaining two kids all around. Soon they find their friend who is mortally wounded and rather noisy. They go out through the basement window, all but the wounded one who is soon quieted. As they reach the front yard the hands of the kitchen girl reach up from her grave and grab the ankles of the surviving boy, now the girl is alone. Here comes the gardener with the wicked old couple. The girl runs all around the house and eventually finds the bride and groom corpses in the basement chapel, where her luck finally turns all bad. The next morning the bride and groom are all fresh and alive, they now own the house and treat the kitchen girl like a friend, which bodes well for them all. Then the girl thief wakes up in the car. The two boys are laughing, they decide not to rob the house, but they all three die in a car accident. 

The Hudsucker Proxy, 1994 

Coen Brothers rule. Sidewalk jelly. The dingus. A dipshit arrives in the big city and gets a job just when the president of the company jumps out the window. He is appointed the new president of the company by the board of directors because they want the stock value to go down for their own greedy purposes. But the problem begins when the new president has a great new idea that makes the company more successful. There is a girl involved. It ends pretty well. The dipshit’s inevitable suicide attempt fails when the jump is mysteriously interrupted.  

The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1982

Anthony Hopkins plays Quasimodo, the simple unfortunate who falls in love with the lovely gypsy girl Esmeralda. Unfortunately the horny bishop wants her too, he has her imprisoned to convince her to sin with him but she chooses death. Quasimodo rescues her from being burned at the stake, but things go wrong.

I Am Curious: Yellow, 1967

Politically correct. Confusing. Nudity and sex without successful eroticism. The girl lives with her parents who have lots of sex with different people. She goes to the university where she is involved in some protest movements. There is a famous scene that shows the boyfriends doodle near the mouth of the girl. Could have gotten them all busted, but its so boring, no danger there.

I Am Legend, 2007

Omega Man revisited, a scientist creates a cure for cancer, but there are some side effects, everyone turns into mindless vampire zombies. After most of civilization is wiped out another scientist works on a cure for the resulting plague. After years of solitary existence in what is left of New York City, he meets some surviving humans.

I Vitelloni, 1956

The fellas, five buddies in a small nowhere town in Italy, seeking meaning. One is a writer, working on plays; one is a horndog, he got Miss Mermaid pregnant; one is the young brother of Miss Mermaid, he goes along; one is the older bum, he lives with his mama and sister and the fifth guy has a nice voice, he gets gigs singing. There are festivals that probably got Federico started with his circus obsession. A famous actor comes to town, the boys visit while the writer shows off his stuff, but it falls apart. The horndog gets a job with a friend of his new father-in-law, but blows it when he makes a pass at the bosses wife, he also makes a pass at a woman at the movies. All are worthless, middle aged unemployed men living with their elderly parents, except for the younger one, who makes the big move and one morning gets on a train and leaves town.

Iggy Pop in Paris, 2003

Jimmy Osterberg in March of 1991, showing off his doodle. Some pretty good moments. Mostly its amazing to see a man of his age act like the wild frenetic youngster he was. Pulled a pretty girl up on stage and she danced while he sang. Then he got his doodle out and she faded back, I wonder what happened to her? Closed with Foxey Lady.

I'm Not There, 2007 

Probably the best movie of 2007, I must spend more time with this one. Lives of Dylan. Not for the casual movie goer, this is for the informed followers of Zimmerman. I thought it was excellent because I am one, if I was not this would be a strange disjointed collection of vignettes about a bunch of different pop stars. It cannot end because the man is not dead yet, but it begins with his death, presumably right after the motorcycle accident. There is the young boy who calls himself “Woody” there is the poet rebel being questioned, there is the folksinger who becomes a movie star and marries a French girl who is an artist, they have children but the movie star must travel, he divorces the French girl. There is the outlaw cowboy character who visits a surreal frontier town. There is the dark rock star character.

Imitation of Life, 1959

She is an aspiring actress, we find her with her daughter at Coney Island beach. They meet Annie and her daughter and eventually agree to sharing their modest shelter with the amiable mother and daughter pair. Annie's daughter is light skinned and has a major identity problem, because Annie is dark skinned. The living arrangement is beneficial for all, and it continues for many years. Eventually the actresses career becomes successful, the shell of the story is her struggle and the people she meets as her career flourishes, but the real story is about the conflict between the light skinned daughter and her quest for a life passing as a white girl, and her loving mother's attempts to keep her daughter in her life.

Immortal, 2004 

Animated science fiction, Egyptian and futuristic and evolutionary, amnesia, crowded cities and hybrid creatures. The old order seeks to keep itself alive by breeding with a mortal to create new kinds of life. Mom is on drugs and has no memory of what just happened, but she is a friendly woman and a good mother, overall. 

In a Year with 13 Moons, 1976

The protagonist and antagonist is Elvira, highly self-destructive and he/she compulsively makes very bad decisions. She had a sex change operation rather spontaneously, but previous to that there was a marriage which produced a child who is now an estranged young lady. Love is a difficult and painful thing for Elvira, the central theme of this tortured soul's life is self destructiveness in the quest for love, and the film ends with suicide. But before that we spend some time in a sexual encounter with strange young men that turns into a beating. Then we review a previous career in an abattoir, which is horribly graphic, I am not kidding. There are numerous supportive good friends that are female but the relentless self-destructive tendencies are a challenge for everyone. She revisits the Catholic orphanage that she grew up in, this is an attempt to resolve her childhood amnesia. She introduces herself to the nuns. They knew her as Erwin and they willingly tell her more about her painful boyhood origins and the biological mother who rejected the young lad numerous times. This causes Elvira to dramatically collapse. She has a romantic or erotic fixation on a wealthy man who used her sexually before the sex change operation. Actually, she underwent the surgery for his benefit, but after the sex change she is of no use to him. She dresses up as a man and visits her wife and daughter, who are shocked and awkwardly laugh at her spontaneous appearance, but they permit the social encounter to continue until Elvira  bursts into tears and runs off. The daughter sincerely wants to know her shy and mysterious father or parent. We already know how it ends.

In Bruges, 2008

Redemption? Is it possible? For Chloe it is. Too bad for everyone else. Two hit guys go to a little town in Belgium to hide out after one has accidentally killed a child. They stay in a little Bed and Breakfast paid for by the Man, who eventually decides to pay the older one to kill the new young one (the one who killed the child), but things go wrong. Instead of a simple escape to new lives, they come back to Bruges and The Man, angry about being let down by his boys, kills everyone and then himself. The young drug selling prostitute comes out okay except she has fallen in love with the younger hit man who dies after getting shot many many times at the end. The thing that bugs me about this film is the number of bullets that go into the younger hit man, but still he limps on and on, until The Man finally gets him. Before the big last shootout The Man declares that if he would have shot a child he would quickly kill himself, its a bad thing to shoot innocent children. Then at the end The Man accidentally shoots a midget dressed up like a schoolboy (so he thinks he has shot a child) and decides the honorable thing to do would be to shoot himself in the head, so he does.

In the Mouth of Madness, 1994

A writer has a new book that causes insanity, the publisher hires a guy to find the missing writer, lots of questions about secret plots for the purpose of promoting the book, and the old bit about dreams versus reality, try to pick just one.

In the Valley of Elah, 2006

The boy returns from deployment in Iraq, and one day he leaves a cryptic message on his father's answering machine and then disappears. Upon investigation the boy is found in a field, dismembered and partially cremated. From there things get dark. Soldiers are trained to kill, and they must develop the ability to compartmentalize the parts of their lifes in order to survive with the guilt they have for the murders that they are asked to commit. 

Inland Empire, 2006

Lynch’s 8 ½ This one really blew my mind, had to watch it many times. I think I like this one the best of all the Lynch films, but I am not sure. I need to see the television series Twin Peaks to be sure which is the best. The plot: making a film which turns out to be a remake of an unfinished polish film with a curse. I think the curse is overcome, but there are problems. What the hell happened?

Intervista, 1987

Fellini, the master, directs a documentary film about making a documentary film while a Japanese crew is visiting. One story line is Federico telling the story of his arrival in Cinecetti, the Hollywood of Italy, a young journalist is sent to interview an actress that he admires, he is given a pimple on his nose to help Federico focus the proper attitude in the mind of the young actor. In the story he meets an attractive young woman on the bus but he never sees her again. In our story she plays saxophone and he plays piano and they entertain the crew all night long. Marcello Mastrionni is reunited with Anita Eckberg for a teary reminiscence of the filming of La Dolce Vita, especially the fountain scene. The film crew assembles for an evening shoot, big lights on towers, lots of actors and extras, the rain starts, everyone assembles under an improvised shelter made of plastic over 2x4s. They sing and tell stories and drink Champaign all night long, at dawn the Indians attack, instead of spears they have antennas. Then the shoot is over, one more round of Champaign and everyone goes home.

Intolerable Cruelty, 2003

Its the Coen Brothers, a light comedy. This one explores the question of whether lawyers can experience love or not. Its not clear. The specimen under examination is a divorce lawyer who has no problem disposing of the truth so that he can present an effective winning argument. He meets a woman that he falls in love with, something he does not understand. She reels him in, tosses him back out, he reels himself in, in the end she keeps him.

Iron Man, 2008

Kicks ass. Good job. I Am Iron Man. Little Tony Stark, rich boy genius and munitions innovator, gets kidnapped by evil guys in Afghanistan, he succeeds in tricking them into building a kick butt robot suit instead of the missiles they want him to make them. Turns out his dead dad’s evil partner is the real bad guy, they have a big fight and Tony wins. 

Ivan the Terrible: Part 1, 1944

Classic, wonderful gothic imagery, I just might rent the second part one day. The basic plot moves right along without lots of expansive dialog, just facial expressions. Wonderful strange looking people. Young Ivan tries to consolidate his rule over all Russia, but there is a strong opposition hidden amongst his closest associates, he wins a war with some distant rebel tribes, the comes home, gets sick, almost dies. The opposition shows their hands when it appears that he does die, but he gets better. Then they poison his wife. He consolidates his power with the common people of Moscow and part one ends with him overcoming the opposition and it looks like he is heading into a new stronger empire.

Jodhaa Akbar, 2007

We can all get along with strong leadership. Two discs are required to contain this one. The Muslim prince marries the Hindu daughter from the neighboring kingdom, which is a strategic alliance and brings peace to the valley. There are some misunderstandings, but the prince is a good guy and works things out. Everyone is happy after the evil guys are identified and killed.

Jubilee, 1977

England sucks in this stinker of a movie. Maybe it should be said this way, this stinker of a stupid movie takes place in England, which has nothing to do with how bad the movie is. Bloody ‘ell. The weird bald guy is most entertaining. Queen Elizabeth I travels incognito back in time to see the future of her empire. The main message is that punk rock music is the focus of a huge tawdry pathetic looser culture. A punk rock document. Stay away.

Juliet of the Spirits, 1965

Fellini and Juliet are at it again, excellent portrait of a wealthy housewife driven to madness by boredom and of course an absent husband. Juliet lives in a little dream house with a white picket fence near the beach, and her rich husband sort of pops in from time to time. She suspects him of everything you might expect an Italian rich guy of, but catches him at nothing, then she meets the other woman and works it out. He brings by some interesting visitors including a homosexual medium (his wife enjoys séances) and lots of odd family members. There is a great beach scene where the neighbor lady appears in a huge hat with all these studs frolicking in the sun. Eventually she makes friends with the neighbor lady who introduces her to a really wild sex intensive fantasy life style, but Juliet manages to stay true to her own principles and does not consummate any sex on camera, but she comes close to it. She has some great hallucinations, including lines of marching hooded monks, and a scary grinning wide-eyed girl on fire who turns out to be her childhood friend who died long ago. The horny neighbor has a tree house with a subterranean pool where she cavorts with friends and strangers.

Kagemusha, 1980 

A mortally wounded warlord finds a double to substitute for himself after he dies, slows down the three way civil war. Plenty of drama as the various rivals attempt to put together the various clues they collect about the happenings at the big house.

Kill, Baby... Kill, 1968

Fairly good horror/ghost tale for 1968, a medical doctor is summoned to help a police investigator solve a series of murders (or are they suicides as they seem to be) in a remote Italian village. If the ghost chases you and you fall on some spikes and die, is it murder or suicide? The locals are frightened and hostile, the real trouble behind it all turns out to be the psychic mama of an angry 7 year old girl who died as a result of neglect, nobody in the village would help her after she was run over by a horse cart and she bled to death. So she comes back to kill, baby... kill.

Kill Your Idols, 2003

Lets go back in time. Its the late 1970s, Suicide has changed the scene, a duo with no drums, guitars or bass, just a mouth and a guy who does the little boxes. Then the No New York stuff, like the album that Brian Eno produced, with DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Contortions, and Mars. Interviews with everyone, including the Sonic Youth boys (who came after No New York, but no extended interview with Kim Gordon, damn it) and the ones that came after that, such as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and some other noisy screaming bands that really did not do much for me. Its like we were there again already, only without the smell of a thousand cigarettes and we can turn it down. DNA is the only one that matters to me. Except of course I would get naked with Lydia Lunch if the moment were right. She’ll never know this. Right?

Kiss Me Deadly, 1955 

Excellent. Va va va VOOM! This is film noir. This is it. Right here. The good stuff. The hard boiled detective seeks answers in a crazy mixed up world of LA night life. His secretary has a heart of gold, even though he does more than his fair share of kissing dames. It ends with radioactive insanity on the beach. Kapow!

Knife in the Water, 1962 

Polanski makes his mark. Two men on a boat with a woman. Not enough nudity. The couple decide to take a young hitchhiker sailing overnight. Things happen, some fighting and drinking and jealousy and misunderstanding and some sex of course, between the woman and the young hitchhiker, who thinks he has killed the man and feels bad about it. Then they go their separate ways, the couple drive off and the young man heads down the road.

Krrsh, 2006

Superhero Krishna. Comic book adventure. Evil corporate president creates superhuman brainiac that he enslaves. We win, thank the Gods. Our super hero can run like the wind, jump over mountains, he has a hot girl friend that he impresses with his super powers. The old trusted friend of his father turns out to be the evil man who killed his father, but it turns out the father is not dead, he is a zombie prisoner of the evil corporate president. Things come out well in the end, but not for the evil corporate president.

La Dolce Vita, 1960 

Fellini’s good life. I love the dance scene with the actor who looks like Pan. This is heaven, fine cinema for sure. It begins with a statue of Jesus being moved by helicopter. Mastrionni is a paparazzi and when the hot American actress arrives his girlfriend is jealous and attempts suicide. He goes out drinking with the hot American actress and her boyfriend punches him after the scene where they cavort drunkenly in the famous old fountain. They all wind up in the mansion, where they fail at orchestrating a huge orgy. They go out on the beach in the dawn, where the fishermen have pulled a huge fish up in their nets. What have we learned from this?

La Strada, 1954

The road. Federico and Juliet tell stories very well. The strongman has lots of problems, he gives money to the mother of the main girl and takes her away on the road as he tours and gives his strongman shows in the little Italian villages. They hook up with a circus and the main girl falls in love with a rascal young man, who eventually gets murdered by the enraged strong man. The main girl dies heartbroken and alone.

Last Days, 2005

Kurdt died from confusion and boredom. I guess this had to be done, but I hope I do not have to watch it again. Its not easy nor fun and games being a rich drugged rock star on a huge old estate.

The Last Metro, 1990

Paris is occupied by the Nazis, she is not Jewish but her husband is and they own the theater which is still active. He is secretly living in the basement of the theater and is able to listen to the rehearsals and give his direction. A new actor arrives, he is good at his craft and he likes to sleep with women, different women, this is an accepted French practice evidently. A Nazi drama critic is suspicious that the Jewish husband is hiding somewhere in France and not overseas, he has a column in a Nazi theater magazine and uses his influence in various ways to explore his suspicions. When the occupation is over the theater flourishes and she manages to sustain a successful open three way relationship with her husband and the horny actor.

Lemora: A childs tale of the supernatural, 1973

Young Lila’s father catches her mother and a man in bed, he shoots them and accidentally runs someone over, not sure who. It could be an old neighbor lady. Not clear. He speeds off. Lila is very successful in her church, which is populated by all women, and one male pastor. They spend lots of time singing hymns. Lila decides to visit her father, the famous gangster and murderer, to give him deathbed absolution. She sneaks off by hiding in a stranger's car. Takes a bus, the bus is attacked by zombies, she wakes up under the care of Lemora, who is preparing to turn Lila into a vampire. They keep calling Lemora a lesbian, but alas, no proof is offered. Lila keeps resisting and escaping, werewolves and witches and whatnot chase her around some woods and old houses. Eventually they catch her and Lemora indeed turns her, the film ends with Lila taking a bite out of the pastor. Are the church women zombies? It might be a point of view trick. It could be sort of a Hawthorne twist, not clear.

Let the Right One In, 2008

Oskar is 12 years old and has a bully problem. There is a fiend who is collecting blood and discarding corpses. Then Oskar meets Eli, the girl who moves into the apartment next door and is also 12 years old, but she has probably been 12 years old for a long, long time. She is good for Oskar, but she has some special issues. Specifically she is exclusively nocturnal and she feeds on fresh human blood. She is really good at getting around especially at great heights and has no problems with the cold, often she is barefoot in the snow. Oskar's parents are separated and he spends time with them individually. He soon gains self esteem and works out his bully problem for a while, until the older brother of one of them gets involved asymmetrically, which brings Eli into the picture for the final solution. It ends with Oskar and Eli traveling together to places not specified but they are on a train. Oskar does the daylight operations while Eli stays dormant in her box, presumably until the sun goes down. 

The Life, 2004

The life is prostitution. Denise Richards plays a nice girl who is doing her graduate research on prostitution, anthropology studies. The story explores many aspects of prostitution, lots of interviews. The good part is the sex with strangers and the good it does for them. The bad part includes the diseases and the constant danger of violence. Also the shame and suicide and the various types of mortality that are part of the life of a prostitute. Our girl student stays a virgin until the sodomy scene. Her contribution is almost entirely clothed and clinical, interviewing many female and male prostitutes, but she runs out of money and has limited options, so she cooperates reluctantly with the photographer, its a very short but memorable scene.

The Life & Death of Peter Sellers, 2004

A biography of a man who makes a living acting, he has lots of personality issues. He is extremely gifted, but he is rather unpleasant. 

The Life and Legacy of Spike Milligan, 2005

Biography of the great Mr. Milligan, who struggled all his life with devastating depression while creating revolutionary humor. He was a young man during World War II and was blown up, he survived lots of suffering and insanity. He hooked up with Peter Sellers and a Mr. Seagoon to create the Goon Show. He made lots of appearances on comedy shows, and wrote lots of funny books, many books for children, but mostly he suffered from depression, very painful.

The Lives of Others, 2007

What’s with the East Berliners? Nothing better to do than spy on each other. Powerful historic tale. A totalitarian society attempts to control dissent, but disintegrates as the surveillance shifts from defensive to proactive. An artist and his girlfriend are tormented by the secret police, the girlfriend commits suicide rather than spy on her boyfriend, then the totalitarian society itself collapses, the boyfriend learns the truth.

Lola, 1981

She is a singer and prostitute, when the new government official arrives she accepts the bet that she can get him to kiss her hand, and he does. He falls in love with her, then discovers that not only is she a prostitute, but that the whole town has a dark side. First he decides to rid the town of its darkness, but then discovers that he is in love with her and suffers greatly. In the end he plays ball, he marries her, she buys the brothel, the government projects go forward, everyone is happy.

Lolida 2000, 1996

Painfully stupid soft porn movie, the plot is in the future but they use old computers. A turncoat in a campaign to eradicate all erotic story telling who decides to go into full production. She has a variety of sexual fantasies and some beautiful talent, but the overall humpfest is just not engaging for this spectator. There is lots of cross-promotional activity for the other soft core porn productions by the same house. Nice work if you can get it. What they really need are writers, but they get the most from the physically well endowed acting talent that they have.

Lolita, 1962

Stanley Kubric’s treatment of the classic story of the older man obsessed with one particular young girl. This time through I noticed that the beginning sequence where Humbert says her name slowly, Lo Li Ta, is missing as are the three letters Mrs. Hayes wrote exposing Humbert were not there, nor the scene where impetuous Lolita puts her legs on Humbert’s lap during breakfast one Sunday morning; and I remember these details being there in the version I saw before. Of course none of the details about sex were ever there, which trims quite a bit from the original larger plot. She does not transition from nymphet to nubile. Peter Sellers does a great job with his role as Clare Quilty, sort of a nervous scoundrel, of course they are all scoundrels. Me too, what I want is sex and nudity instead of the coy whispering, the purr pills that Humbert got from the dentist (another interesting layer) were left out, the motel quarrels and the noisy sex that comes to the attention of the neighboring motel rooms, and the implied sexual adventures after she gets away from Humbert, all the sex, I would include all that in my XXX remake. 

Lolita, 1997

Humbert is driving on an empty road through farmland. He wobbles dangerously back and forth, we notice that he has spatters of blood on his empty face, his bloody hands hold a hairpin, he keeps rescuing a bloody pistol that slides precariously on the seat next to him as we wobbles down the road. Flashback to when he was 14 years old, he fell in love with another 14 year old, she abruptly dies of typhus and leaves his intense teen romance  unresolved. Jump ahead a few years to when he first came to the United States to teach literature at a private college. When investigating a housing opportunity he meets Lolita, a nymphet, age 14. He is absolutely smitten and moves in, in a few weeks he marries her widowed mother, for the purpose of being near the nymphet. Mom sends her off to summer camp and plans to send her to a boarding school, but then she discovers Humbert's diary. He has been chronicling his romance of her daughter and saying unflattering things about her. She is enraged and writes three letters to repair the situation, from her point of view, which would be bad for Hum. While Humbert feebly attempts to cool her down, the phone rings, abruptly she was struck by a car and killed when she ran into the road in her rage, on her way to the mailbox with the three letters that would ruin Humbert's life forever after. The incriminating letters are given to the shocked Humbert by a serious child wearing a bunny suit. He goes to the summer camp to retrieve  Lolita. In his quest to seduce the child he fails to tell her about the fate of her mother right away. Just before bed, Humbert has an odd conversation at the hotel with a sleazy character we learn is named Clair Quilty, who seems to understand Humbert's lecherous situation with the nymphet. He spends a troubled night lying next to the nymphet, in the early morning he learns that she has already been having sex with one of the hired hands at the camp. Lolita eagerly demonstrates her new skills, tugging off Humbert's pajama bottoms. Eventually she demands to know about her mother and is devastated by what he tells her. They head off on an extended tour of motels and vigorous sex, until the academic year starts. He begins his new career as a teacher and she settles into her new school. He becomes insanely jealous of her popularity, her extra-curricular interests in theater (a play written by none other than artist-in-residence Clair Quilty), and is terrified she will tell someone he has been madly screwing the daylights out of her, night after night. They quarrel and decide to leave the area for another extended motel tour. There is a mysterious car following them, and Humbert continues with his insane jealousy, which is extremely tiresome for the nymphet. One evening she is ill and requires hospitalization. The next morning Humbert returns to the hospital and is told that she recovered and already has left with her uncle Gustav. Humbert is devastated. Three years later Lolita writes, asking her stepfather for money, she is married and expecting a child. He practices with his pistol, aiming to murder whoever has stolen her from him. He goes to her. He asks her to come away with him, she says she would rather return to the pornographer, Clair Quilty, who was the interloper in Humbert's ruined fantasy romance. She subsequently left Quilty because she was not interested in all the pornographic group sex. Humbert tearfully gives her lots of money and then goes to find Quilty in his mansion. Quilty is drunk of course, and Humbert shoots him to death. The blood spattered Humbert then heads out in his car, which takes us to the beginning of the film, wobbling dangerously from lane to lane on the rural road. The police eventually succeed in arresting him. We learn that he dies of a heart attack in jail before trial, and a month later Lolita perishes in childbirth.

Love is Colder Than Death, 1969

Franz does not want to join the syndicate, but there is a great deal of pressure on him to do so. He wants to work independently. He hooks up with Bruno, another independently minded guy. There are three of them, Joanna, her pimp Franz, and now Bruno. Things happen slowly sometimes. Munich looks like a gangster city. Most of the violence is done as a sort of crude pantomime, not very realistic, and not much blood. Lots of cigarettes are smoked and people are shot. Breasts are exposed, people are rude. There is a particularly strange scene shoplifting in a store with extremely annoying music. They decide to pull a heist, rob a bank, so they acquire a machine gun. They kill a John and dump his body using a stolen black Citroen, which seems like a bad idea when planning a heist. Bruno drives the corpse out to a landfill, but the guy is not dead yet, so Bruno shoots him. Bruno has some other plans going, the robbery becomes part of a larger betrayal. Things go wrong, the heist is abandoned, Bruno is killed and Franz drives off with Joanna. Its Fastbinder's first film.

Lured, 1947

She is an American girl in London and there is an active serial killer who writes poetry. He (not the killer, the leading man) is a cad, seducing women and not noticing his ugly cousin who reads Baudelaire, which is proof enough of his criminality. The police recruit her, she is given a gun but never shown how to use it, and they send her out answering newspaper ads, if she does not come back they have another clue. She uncovers quite a bit of crime, and in the end marries the cad and tricks the cousin into making mistakes that cause him to be arrested for the evil poetry murders.

Mad Max, 1979

The first of the trilogy. He is a policeman in rural Australia and drives cars very fast, the bad guys kill his wife and he crosses over to get his revenge.

The Magic Christian, 1969

The outrageously wealthy character portrayed by Peter Sellers adopts the waif portrayed by Ringo Starr and the two of them set out to create amusing situations illuminating the ultimate greed of society. 

Magnificent Obsession, 1954

He's a wealthy playboy, when he drives his speedboat too fast and crashes, the rescue team asks the police to bring the resuscitator from the kindly old doctor's home. Naturally that is when the kindly old doctor has a heart attack and urgently needs his resuscitator, but its not there, so the kindly old doctor dies. Our playboy is rather sassy until he learns that the kindly old doctor died because the resuscitator was at his speedboat accident. Now he feels bad. He accidentally meets the widow and falls in love with her before she figures out who he is, and then he meets one of the kindly old doctor's friends and learns the old doctor's technique for a good life: giving aid or money anonymously to help people in need, not for recognition or compensation, but simply for the sake of being helpful. In trying to reach out to the widow he causes her to be struck by a car and blinded, so now he feels worse. He devotes his life to medicine and secretly assists the widow, he introduces himself with a false name and because she is blind she is charmed by him and falls in love. He arranges for several European specialists to work on restoring her sight, and pays for her trip to Europe, but its no use. He goes to her and proposes marriage. She admits that she has figured out who he is and she has a magical evening with him visiting a witch burning festival in a small town, but in the morning she is gone. He looks for her for years, and in the end when she is dying he finds her, right then and there her sight is restored and the movie is over.

The Maniacs, 1964

A lighthearted romp through a series of puzzling vignettes illustrating the everyday insanity of some Italian citizens. I selected this because Barbara Steele appears. She portrays a wealthy wife managing her husbands affairs.

The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979

She married Herr Braun just before the end of the war, he was then sent to the Russian front and was presumed dead. She adapted to her environment and entertained American soldiers, so she learned English. She was with an American soldier when her husband returned, he was upset to find her fucking a negro soldier, she killed the boyfriend and during the trial her husband said he killed the American, so he goes to prison. She goes into business and does very well but she has to put out, she visits her husband every Sunday and keeps him informed, no secrets, and she keeps the boss man informed that she was married and did not love him, though he persistently proposes marriage. She was able to be quite successful by focusing on her husband, he was why she was working so hard and making so much money. When the husband is released from prison she is rich but he needs some time to work out his situation and to feel deserving of her love and wealth. Finally he returns to her, just after her boss had died of a heart condition and had left her even more money. She left the kitchen stove gas on after lighting a cigarette, and after the will was read and just when she was warming up to her husband, the house blows up. Note to self: smoking is bad.

Masculin/Feminin, 1966

She has a great new career as a pop singer, he is rather obnoxious but she loves him. Its got sponsorship by Pepsi and there is a conspicuous Tide laundry detergent product placement episode, but its about French communist theory and opposition to the American war in Vietnam.

Max Payne, 2008

His wife died in mysterious circumstances, he came home to find her and the baby being murdered by three men, he kills two of them but one gets away. His wife was working for a pharmaceutical company that was developing a drug that makes soldiers brave but insane. He dies at the very beginning of the film, the film is a flashback, but he decides not to surrender to death, he avenges his wife's death and then is killed.

Maxed Out, 2006

Consumer credit is easy to abuse and has deadly consequences. Free will is dangerous in the market place.

McLuhan’s Wake, 2002

Laurie Anderson narrating this eulogy for Marshall McLuhan. I should probably let netflix know that there may be something wrong with this disc, when I watched it (twice at least) it would freeze up at about the same point. Then it would not proceed. Covers the key elements of his philosophy, and his utilization of the Poe story “Into the Maelstrom” to further illustrate his views on media and chaos. Overall a key set of documents for the McLuhan scholar, but it put me to sleep every time. 

The Messenger: the story of Joan of Arc, 1999

A studious interpretation of the story of the country girl called by God to lead France to God and away from the English. She almost succeeded, except for the failure of her King to support her final campaign and the reach of the church with English money. She is put on trial by the church, which is very jealous of miracles. Its a complex combination of conspiracy to remove her from the drama and her own internal contraditions. Did she lead France to victory for God or for her own selfish revenge against the troublesome English? 

The Milky Way, 1969

A multilayered adventure story of two modern pilgrims who follow the ancient route from France to the Spanish coast. Some incidents are historic and some are contemporary. Because they are pilgrims does not mean that they are innocent.

Millers Crossing, 1990

Cohen Brothers rule. The hat movie. Gangsters. The main guy, Tommy, is having an affair with the girl friend of one of the cities big mobsters. But one of the other mobsters is trying to take over the city, lots of people get shot. It ends with the girl marrying the surviving mobster and Tommy has to go.

The Ministers, 2009

On her 16th birthday her dad is killed by two hooded men or monks with long hair covering their faces, and they leave a religious pamphlet on his bullet riddled corpse. She dedicates her life to law enforcement like he did, and becomes a detective with a secret agenda. After many years the murders start again. She has to decide between her instinct to hunt them down and just kill them, and her law enforcement training, building a case and sending them to prison, working within the system. A mysterious man comes into her life and she falls in love. Sure enough, he is one of the murderers, but she never finds out until after the end. In the end his troubled brother (the other monk) in a jealous rage comes to kill her, but is stopped. Both men die, shot by the police, and she is left heartbroken again, with nobody living that she can blame. Moral: overly religious people are murderous nuts.

Mission Kashmir, 2000 

Its all about my brief career at the University of Michigan. A boy witnesses a violent police raid that kills his parents, the boy is raised by the police chief, later they face each other in the struggle for the future of Kashmir. Should Kashmir be ruled by evil foreigners from Afghanistan or evil foreigners from India? The boy and his adopted father decide to back the forces from India. Its Bollywood of course.

Mississippi Mermaid, 1969

She arrives by boat to the remote island where he lives. He said in his letters to her that he was employed at the factory, but really he owns it. They get married immediately. He gives her access to his money, and one day she suddenly disappears with almost all of it. He hires a private detective to find her, and then he goes on vacation in France. By chance he discovers her working as an entertainer at a gentleman's club. He buys a gun and intends to shoot her lying deceptive thieving ass, when he confronts her she talks him out of it and they move into a mansion in the country. One day the private detective arrives, instead of successfully negotiating with the detective he shoots him and buries him in the basement. They run. More trouble builds behind them, they wind up walking through the snow across the border to escape the law and to stay together. The movie Original Sin starring Angelina Jolie uses some of these plot elements.

The Molly Maguires, 1970 

Local Pennsylvania story. Follows the paperback pretty well. An undercover Pinkerton is sent into Schuylkill County to infiltrate the Molly Maguires who are suspected of being a huge conspiracy against the coal barons, but they are mostly a legend about a mutual aid society for angry Irish drunks.

Mon Oncle, 1968

A modern house (the staring role), with papa and mama and garcon, there is a blue water spouting fish sculpture, and lots of charming frisky dogs who explore the little town. Mama’s brother is a bungling idiot who does nothing all day, his beau frere hooks him up with several jobs which he screws up, so then they find him a job at quite a distance away. Au revoir, mon oncle.

Mongol, 2007 

Part one of a proposed trio concerning the life of Genghis Khan, the Mongolian guy. This part is the boyhood and early rise of the warlord, he had lots of false starts and troubles, spent quite a bit of time in captivity, humiliated.

Mother Joan of the Angels, 1962

Satan comes to a nunnery, the girls are having too much fun, and a guy is sent in to fix things. He fails.

Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven, 1975

Dinner is almost ready when the radio tells of a tragedy at the factory, a man has murdered his manager and then committed suicide. Then there is a phone call, and the reporters arrive with clicking cameras and endless horrible questions. Mr. Kuster had been laid off and shot his bosses son and then turned the gun on himself. At the home there is the son, his frustrated wife, and now just Mother Kuster. The story in the magazine was about an insane man, who does not resemble the spouse of Mother Kuster in the least. The daughter, who is attempting to make a career as a singer, allows her billing to include mention of her father, the factory murderer, which boosts publicity a bit, not much. Mother Kuster is terribly alone and takes up company with a group of friendly communists, who recognize her husband's story as the worker versus the management, but justice is slow. When a new character presents himself, Mother Kuster goes along. A small group goes to the magazine's offices and make demands to have the original article corrected. There are two endings. The existing ending has the trio of anarchists sitting on the floor and being ignored, so only Mother Kuster remains. The night watchman talks her into coming home with him for a feast of “heaven and earth”. The alternate ending involves more guns and hostages, more people die.

Mother Night, 1996

The story by Kurt Vonnegut of an American who found success in Germany just before and during the time of the rise of the National Socialist movement. He is contacted by an American from the War department and recruited as a spy. He becomes a successful propogandist, secretly broadcasting coded messages in his inflammatory rhetorical messages from Berlin. His wife is killed, the Reich falls, his life of ease is over and now he is pursued. His wife's sister comes into his life and after he accepts her and falls in love, she commits suicide, his new friends are all either insane or traitors to his face. He surrenders to the Israelis and ends his life after typing his memoirs in prison.

The Mouse that Roared, 1959

Peter Sellers is the Duchess, Prime Minister, and the leader of the expeditionary force that invades the United States in a strategy to rescue the failing economy of Duchy of Grand Fenwick. That strategy is to declare war and then quickly surrender, availing itself to American reparations. While in New York City the invaders accidentally capture a general, several policemen, the inventor of the Q-bomb, his daughter and of course the Q-bomb itself. They are returned to the Duchy before the United States figures out just where the Duchy of Grand Fenwick is located. It ends with the daughter and one of the Seller's characters getting married.

Mr. Sardonicus, 1961

Sir Robert has been summoned to the home of his ex-fiancée. She has married a wealthy but extremely eccentric baron, Mr. Sardonicus. They live in a remote and harsh land. Sir Robert is a dedicated man of medicine, he discovers that Mr. Sardonicus has some questionable experiments underway, for the purpose of repairing a horrible facial defect. Mr. Sardonicus has a problem with his mouth, he has exposed teeth, his face is frozen in a hideous grimace, which makes eating a troubling event, its very noisy (no solids) and he must eat alone. He wears a mask to keep from frightening everyone, which frightens everyone. He and his manservant are binding young female servants and placing leeches on them, mostly their faces, which would not appear to have any direct bearing on Mr. Sardonicus's face problem but it does indicate some deeper psychological issues. Mr. Sardonicus's marriage is loveless and formal, he recognizes that his wife would be much happier with Sir Robert. Sir Robert perseveres with his belief in science and logic and the overall goodness of the human spirit. His therapeutic method is successful enough to cause Mr. Sardonicus to agree to a divorce, allowing for the union of Sir Robert and the lady, and they immediately leave together to live happily ever after. However, there are some complications. The entire film is hosted by William Castle who presents a novel way for audiences to participate in the outcome of the story, by voting. He says that he has created at least two different endings to the film and he has distributed cards with a symbol, thumbs up for mercy to Sardonicus, and thumbs down for punishment. Mr. Castle carefully peers from the screen into the audience, counting cards and calculating which ending to show. Unfortunately for Mr. Sardonicus the audience has always been influenced in a prejudicial manner, probably because of the leech thing.

Mussolini and I: Disc 1 & 2, 1985

The brother in law of Il Duche kept a journal which illuminated the inner life of Italy's dark lord of the 1920s and 1930s. This is during the period when Hitler rose in power, which ultimately ended the Italian fascist movement.

Nathalie, 2007

Wife hires prostitute to seduce her husband and then report on him, prostitute takes the money, never has sex with the husband, and tells whoppers, but she gets caught, somehow it works out okay in the end.

Night on Earth, 1991

Modern Jarmuch set of tales that take place all around the world one night, and have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Well done. One night, portraits of five different cities through the eyes of five different individuals. Los Angeles, Rome, somewhere in frozen Scandinavia, somewhere in Tokyo and one more. Wynonna Rider is a young tough taxi driver who is offered a job acting in films, she turns it down; a black taxi driver guy in Rome deals with his identity and self esteem when he picks up a blind woman. Things are cold in Scandanavia and the boys deal with the heavy problems of one of their own, come to think of it the taxi plays a major role here too. I forget lots of stuff.

Nights of Cabiria, 1957

Ah, Fellini. Ah, Juliet. Excellent any day. The party girl survives lots of bad situations. She hooks up with various men, one marries her and robs her on the honey moon. She decides not to kill herself and walks home, there are some village teenagers walking and playing music, she walks with them into the uncertain night.

Nightwatch, 2005

What’s with the Russians? Long tedious boring film, should be much more exciting. Vampire gangs battle through the centuries. Old scores to settle. Gritty lives both in remote times and contemporary. 

No End in Sight, 2007

The story of the Bush war in Iraq, the one that started in 2003 for unclear purposes.

Notes from Underground, 1995

My first time through I fell asleep. Slavic literature is really painfully boring and based on self-loathing. What is the deal? I guess its an art form that takes a bit of effort to acquire a taste for. I got a look at a copy of the book and the words of Fyodor Dostoevsky are followed pretty much perfectly, at least for my quick peek at it. The film is set in the contemporary time, somewhere in America. No fake accents, everyone talks in “normal” American English. Sheryl Lee is there, but even though she takes her top off twice it does not help. This guy is really intent on suffering and leading a miserable life, he really focuses hard on it. He copulates with her more than once and never fails to make it as unpleasant as possible not just for her, but for himself and everyone around him. He boldly leaps into new levels of self-loathing and pathetic contempt for all existence. He is really annoying, I hope he suffers to the depths of his own contentment. Its a lesson to all of us, WAKE THE FUCK UP! Just put a little effort into having a good life, imagine that you can look away from your own anus, tip your head forward and open your eyes to the world all around you. A good life can happen, even if its short and you always know you are going to die anyway.

Nothing But Trouble, 1991

It starts off as a simple ride to Atlantic City, but when they foolishly take a detour off of the highway on an innocent picnic excursion, things get dark. The city of Valkanvania could be based on Centralia, Pennsylvania, with its coal mine fire eating away down below. The family living in the old mansion has been trying many things to survive, including the amusement park business and the junkyard business. Now they only have the old law enforcement business, collecting passing speeders. Once inside the family compound its impossible to get out, and a vast history of disappearances is revealed. Two of the  most bizarre characters are Bobo and Lil Debbil, who appear to be two adorable infants in diapers and curly baby hair who have aged at least fifty years while keeping their kewpie doll features and infantile dispositions. The judge offers his grand daughter's hand to one of the captives, but that turns ugly. In the end the old mansion falls into the coal mine fire, but the old man and the original picnic party survives.

Oedipus Rex, 1967

The Passolini classic. Heavy. Killed his pa and fucked his ma, as prophesized. Lots of period costumes that were cheap and easy to make and appear to be authentic for pre-agrarian post-cavemen. Interesting looking people. Glad I don’t live there.

The Old Dark House, 1932

It was a dark and stormy night. Through the Welsh wilderness comes a car with two men and a blond woman, which would be Philip and Margaret Waverton, quietly bickering and Penderel sits in the back seat cracking jokes. Its an older type of car with only a windshield, open on the sides, and everyone is soaked and miserable, except for the jolly Pendrel, which makes the Wavertons even more miserable. The car keeps getting stuck in the unpaved road, with terrible rocks, mud and deep water on the rugged hilly path. When they are passing a large hillside there is a landslide just behind them, they barely escape huge boulders and acres of mud which have now blocked the road so there is no going back. They see a dim light, an old dark house, and they head towards it. A knock at the door is answered slowly by a brutal bearded man with scars on his face, he cannot speak, he only sort of grunts and moans. His name is Morgan and he gestures for them to enter. He summons a tall nervous haunted old man, Horace Femm, followed by an unpleasant nearly deaf old woman, Horace's sister Rebecca Femm, who denies them entrance and denies them any beds, but they are already inside gathered by the fire. Dinner is served. Another knock, and a large wealthy man, Sir William Porterhouse, with a beautiful brunette younger woman, lets call her Perkins, arrive, also seeking shelter from the terrible storm. After dinner Penderel and Perkins go out to the car for some of his whiskey, they linger to chat. Inside, the insane butler Morgan gets dangerously drunk and violent, everyone is terrified of him. Mr. Waverton goes with the tall nervous old man, Horace, upstairs to retrieve a lamp. Horace quickly abandons the search and leaves Philip Waverton to continue on up the dark stairs looking for the lamp. On the way, he hears an odd voice behind a door. Meanwhile the butler Morgan is attracted to the terrified Mrs. Waverton and chases her all around, overturning the huge table with the remnants of the meal. All the dishes are broken but nobody cares. The husband brings the lamp down the stairs and discovers his wife's distress. He attempts to fight Morgan and throws the lamp at him and Morgan falls down the stairs, temporarily knocked out. The Wavertons leave the brute sprawled and bleeding, they go upstairs to investigate the odd voice Philip thought he had heard. Meanwhile in the car Perkins and Penderel have decided to fall in love. They return to the Old Dark House and awaken Sir William Porterhouse. The announce to him that they are in love, he says they are insane but accepts the news and wishes them well. Sir Bill and Penderel put the table back upright. Upstairs the Wavertons discover the 102 year old patriarch of the house, Sir Roderick Femm, bedridden. This very old person has a female voice and is of undetermined sex, he could be a bearded old lady, which would be a pun on his family name. Sir Roderick explains the situation, the family keeps the brute Morgan around for one reason, to control the worst and most evil son, Saul Femm, who is locked upstairs. Saul is the most dangerous, a murderer and arsonist. Since Morgan is now angry and seeking revenge on the visitors he probably will now let Saul out to kill them all and set fire to the house. The entire group (minus the patriarch) gathers at the foot of the stairs, sharing rumors and making hurried plans. They overcome Morgan and lock  him in the kitchen. Enter Saul, who seems like a friendly and somewhat fragile small old fellow, except for his shrill manic laughter and his own admitted plans to murder everyone and burn the house down. He and Penderel have a cat and mouse chat, which leads to a fight with Penderel taken by surprise and overcome. Then the fiendishly giggling Saul sets fire to the curtains upstairs. Penderel awakens to fight Saul again and the two of them go off the stair balcony, and they both lie unconscious on the floor below. Morgan breaks out of the kitchen, and finds the girls, uh oh. Margaret tells Morgan that Saul is hurt and points to the unconscious bodies. A weeping Morgan tenderly takes the unconscious Saul upstairs, back to his locked attic room. Soon everyone gathers by the fireplace, they go to sleep by the fire. In the morning the birds are cheerfully singing and calm prevails. This is the Whale version, its ironic but serious in tone. There is a Castle version that is zany.

The Old Dark House, 1963

This is the William Castle version, so its intended to be a horror laugh riot. Mr. Pendrel is an American in London who is employed as a car salesman and he has taken a flat with Casper Femm, who is absent every night, which works out well. Mr. Femm asks Pendrel to the Femm ancestral home for dinner. When Pendrel arrives Casper is already dead, but the family is thrilled to have a guest for dinner, a delicious American. The mansion was built by a famous and very wealthy pirate, with certain odd conditions built into his will. To inherit, the family members must be present every midnight and they must observe the anniversary of the hanging of the old pirate. The house has gotten rather old, and the roof leaks. Unfortunately since nobody can leave, they have all lost their bearings and gotten quite eccentric. Morgan is the silent butler who is insanely jealous of his daughter Morgana's amorous ambitions. Casper's mother knits constantly so that the world wont end. Casper's uncle is the tyrant, he has a huge gun collection. Surprise, Casper has an identical twin, Jasper, but he is soon murdered too. The uncle has constructed Noah's Arc in the back yard and collected two of every animal in preparation for the big flood. Its been raining for quite a while and the uncle is quite hopeful. The sweet quiet sister turns out to be the murderer, she gets blown up in the end. In the morning the sun comes out and Pendrel goes home.

Onechanbara: Samurai Bikini Squad, 2008

Its the year 20XX and zombies roam the land, feasting on the few remaining normal people. A crazy scientist has created a re-animation serum and he kidnaps the younger sisters and transforms them into super-zombies. The main character is a teenage girl looking for her little sister, who went over to the dark side and killed their father. She is good with her sword and likes to use it wearing her tiny bikini. She hooks up with a couple of other super-powered zombie killers, one is a girl who has a gun that never needs reloading, it just shoots forever, which is darned handy when fighting hordes of zombies. The other zombie killer is a cowardly but humorous fat guy who usually hides when the fighting starts. But they all have issues with their siblings and progeny. In the end the two sisters get it on, both with swords, and the bad little sister is killed by the hot older sister wearing the bikini. She is sad to kill her little sister, but she gets over it and returns to the work she really loves, cutting up zombies with her sword.

One On Top of the Other, 1969

He is a young doctor and has a medical clinic in San Francisco, his wife has a complicated type of asthma and requires special medications. His girlfriend is a soft porn photographer, she loves him. but she is tired of their hidden relationship. She does not want to marry him. His brother works at the clinic and he would run it differently if he could. There is a new nurse to care for his wife, he shows the new nurse the two conflicting medicines, one is very dangerous. He goes with his photographer girlfriend to another city for a visit, and while he is gone he is told his wife has died. There is a huge insurance policy that he did not know about, now he can get the clinic out of debt. He gets a mysterious phone call and discovers a stripper who looks exactly like his wife. There is a nutcase who is involved with the stripper, he is very jealous. The young doctor is arrested for the murder of his wife, tried and sentenced to death. His brother comes to visit him just before his execution and reveals his conspiracy, he and his brother's wife have been in love for years, they planned the whole thing, including arranging for the State of California to execute the unfortunate young doctor. The brother meets the wife, who is not dead, in Paris. The nutcase shows up in Paris, at the same restaurant where the sneaky couple is, minutes before the execution, and shoots the brother and wife dead. Their identity is transmitted to San Francisco seconds before the execution, just in time to stop it, and everyone who has survived lives happily ever after. Maybe the nutcase is not happy. Maybe the young doctor will have bad dreams and have difficulty with trust issues forever more, but that is not in this movie.

Orpheus, 1950

Cocteau rules. Do not look back. Adventures of Orphee and Euridicie. (Trilogy with Blood of a Poet, take drugs) The poet looses his true love, but gets another chance, but he blows it.

Outfoxed: Murdoch's War on Journalism, 2004

Guess what! Fox News is the voice of the Republicans. Didn't you know that? Fair and balanced has a special new meaning.

Oxygen, 1998

Smirking criminal tangles with a policelady who has her own kinky sex problems. He kidnaps a rich lady and buries her alive, for ransom. Everything goes according to plan until his first kidnap victim bops him on the head, then they bury him alive, and shoot him just to make sure he stays down. Instead of a resolution, everyone continues to be messed up.

Paris Texas, 1984

A guy walking out in the desert who wont speak. He just walks, when he falls down they call his brother, name on a scrap of paper in his pocket. His son has been living with his brother, slowly he warms up and decides to find his wife, the boy's mother. He has one tiny clue, and it works. She is a sex worker, he eventually hooks her up with the boy, but I am not sure why he gives all that up for himself and just goes on down the road some more. So, the boy is damaged, the pretty wife is abandoned, she is back with the burden of being single and raising a child again, the brother and his wife are left alone since they had formed a relationship with the boy and now he is gone, and the guy continues alone.

Paris, Je T'aime, 2006

A series of short vignettes which are named for various districts in the City of Lights (sound familiar?) The previous adventure along these lines is called "6 in Paris," but what makes this one different is that there are more little stories and at the end there is a foolish attempt to weave them all together into a big happy cityscape. The ghost of Oscar Wilde helps patch up a troubled couple. The most outrageous episode is when the actor that portrays the hobbit in another universe arrives in Paris late at night to find a vampire at work, he is frightened but attracted to her and gives himself to her, she is very pretty. Then when he turns, he bites her and she bites him and they are so happy, clenched in a cyclic embrace slurping away. All the rest of the little stories are realistic and have very clever plots: immigrants from various countries who live in Paris now, a baffled tourist is attacked by an amorous couple, a wounded man recognizes the ambulance attendant but he dies, a quarrel appears to be an affair between an older man and younger woman but turns out to be a father and daughter, the third man is in fact an infant. This was pretty good.

Passion, 2007

Passion is about a group of excitable people who are making a movie. They sometimes make a big deal about what work is and contrast it to something else that is not work, but its really hard to tell what is going on. Is that gesture the genius of acting or is it a nervous twitch? The film they are making features a group of people making tableaus of famous paintings, Rembrandt's Nigh Watch, Goya's execution painting, other famous European stuff, etc. They sort of just stand there posing and wearing fancy costumes. I particularly liked the young nude women of course, nice pointy breasts. There are the usual Godard tricks with voice overs while you see people talking. There are deaf people who do not respond, there is a loud desperate guy who repeatedly demands his payment, there are a whole bunch of eccentric characters, just like you would normally find on a film set.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid: Special Edition, 1973 

What’s your name? Should Kristopherson be spelled with a C? Cowboys work out law and order, Billy was friends with Pat Garrett when they were both bank robbers, but now that Pat is a lawman, somebody has to die. Bob is there, singing and making wisecracks. I only wanted to see Bob. Its not a great cowboy movie, but its an interesting bit of Bob.

Phantom of Liberty, 1974 

A series of vignettes, the basic concept is that as soon as a story becomes interesting the action shifts to a less interesting situation. Toledo 1808, Napoleon’s soldiers shoot prisoners in a firing squad, they occupy a church, they desecrate a grave which is defended by a statue of the husband of the dead woman. The voice over is the nanny who is reading about Toledo in 1808, she is in the park with two girls on bicycles, they are given some photographs by a happy man who appears to be suspicious. The nanny is fired, the parents look at the pictures and treat them like pornography, they are revealed to be pictures of famous buildings. The father is not well. Its 10:30 PM and the father is going to bed, smokes a last cigarette, snubs it out. Light off, light on, he has a drink of water, the cigarette is still smoldering but now the clock says 1 AM, then 2 AM and a woman with a candle enters the room. Its 3 AM and a postman riding a bicycle enters the room and tosses a letter on the bed, then leaves. A chicken walks into the room. Its 4 AM and an ostrich enters the room. The man is in the doctor’s office who refuses to talk about the dreams. The man gives him the letter that the postman left, its proof that his experiences were not dreams, the doctor is interrupted by a nurse who has a letter from her father, who is ill and needs her to come stay with him for a little while. It looks like the letters are switched. The next scene the nurse is driving in the country, she comes upon a tank, the soldiers ask if she has seen any foxes, she says no. They are disappointed, and warn her that the road may be blocked by a landslide. Its raining. She arrives at a country inn. She gets a room, and there are 4 monks also staying at the inn, also because of the weather, not by plan. The woman tells the monks of her father’s illness, they come and pray with her. Then they drink and smoke and play cards. A young man, a high school student, arrives with an older woman who could be his mother, they have reservations for a room. He turns out to be the nephew of the older woman and he wants to have sex with her, she is reluctant. The lights go out, the young man goes into the hall and meets a man who gathers the monks, the nurse and the high school boy into their room and then shocks them with a masochistic display, they all flee the room. There is a stuffed red fox. The next morning the nurse leaves early, a man who looks like a professor needs a ride to the town she is going to, she gives him a ride, and drops him off. He is going to teach a class to some rowdy policemen, who are taking turns dancing with a police woman, one blows a trumpet and one shoots out a light. The class keeps getting interrupted, and the policemen are rather bad students. The professor and his wife visit a couple, its a party, the couple has a young daughter and another female guest. They all seat themselves on toilets arranged like chairs in a circle, pants down, and have a casual conversation, and smoke cigarettes. The professor discretely excuses himself and asks where the kitchen is, he locks the door and eats. The female guest knocks, he says “its occupied” and she hurries off, embarrassed. The conversation at the table then cuts back and forth, keeping the topic, between the police in the classroom and the circle of toilets. Then the class is over, and the police go arrest a motorist. The motorist turns out to be the father of the two little girls who got the pictures given to them in the park at the beginning of the film. The father, released by the police, goes to his doctor who says he is fine, but he wants to make a small incision in him, just to look inside him. The doctor is oddly casual, and repeats that nothing is wrong. Then he tells the man that he has cancer. The man goes home. He finds his wife at home, the phone rings, their daughter is missing from the school. They hurry to the school. The head mistress is upset, they go to the classroom, the little girl is present, but the parents continue to be concerned about the missing girl. She walks up and says “here I am” and they scold her for interrupting the grownups talking. They go to the police station with the little girl and fill out a missing person’s report, the police thank them for bringing the girl, so they can get a good description. The policeman is obsessed with shiny shoes, but he is shy about getting caught polishing them. He gets his shoes shined. There is a second man wearing glasses, there is a big dog there named Chico  who belongs to the shoe shine man, they talk while his shoes are shined. The man wearing glasses is carrying a long box, he goes into a skyscraper, goes to the top floor, which is empty, and takes a rifle out of his box. He shoots people and a bird, the police arrest him, he is tried, found guilty of murder, sentenced to death, and then released. Adoring crowds ask him for his autograph. The father is summoned to the police station, the little girl is declared “found” and the police commissioner begins to read a report to the parents concerning a bomb blast. The commissioner is interrupted, he leaves for an appointment, and the assistant continues reading the report about the bomb blast to the parents and the little girl. The commissioner goes to his favorite bar, asks that the music be turned off. A woman enters, he approaches her saying that she looks like his sister who died four years ago. They talk, he describes his sister, its a hot day and she is playing the piano in the nude except for some stockings. He gets a phone call which he attempts to refuse, the barkeep talks to the caller, says its his sister (the dead one) and he continues to refuse the call but the caller has all these details, so the police commissioner takes the call, he is asked by the dead sister to come that night to the family mausoleum to learn the secrets of death. He goes, finds her coffin, her hair is sticking out and there is a telephone there. He is opening the coffin, and the police run in and arrest him. He protests but they have none of it, take him to jail. The next morning he is taken to another police commissioner, the two of them go to the zoo and supervise the police shooting of an unseen but noisy protesting crowd.

The Pickle, 1993

He's back in his old urban neighborhood, a big film director. He has just finished directing a real turkey, a teen movie called The Pickle. He is at a big hotel, people recognize him. One fan tears off her clothing and then tears off his clothing, demands to have sex with him, and he obliges. He meets his new grandchild and brings a gift, a huge toy panda. His young girlfriend from Paris shows up, out of the blue and attempts sex with him in the limo. He visits his ex-wife and manages to have sex with her after threatening suicide. He visits his mother and walks through the old neighborhood, talks to the new residents there. His son shows up, he has just written a detective movie that has a talking cat. A reporter comes to interview him, she arrives during a food fight in his hotel room. The young French girl friend manages to play a video cassette version of the new film, its about some teens who grow a huge pickle and fly to another planet where Little Richard is mayor of Cleveland and everyone dies at the age of 39, no exceptions, no big deal. He takes his entourage to visit his other ex-wife, she is a chanteuse. Everyone at the club knows him and knows about his new movie, which he is ashamed of. He has chest pains while attempting sex with his sweet sassy young French girlfriend. The next day he discusses a new movie over lunch. That evening before the preview of the new movie there is a surprise party with all his wives and girlfriends. He manages to get them all to go ahead to the film, and then he attempts suicide by way of a drug overdose. The film is a success. Life goes on, his suicide fails. Hilarity prevails.

The Pink Panther, 1963

This is where it started, and its not as funny as the later films, they had no idea of where this would take them. A jewel thief is having an affair with the wife of detective Clousot. Things end poorly during the trial and the detective is put in prison.

Pirates, 2005

Porn stars have talking roles! The basic plot is the good guy’s campaign to rid the seas of pirates, while the bad guy and his super-hot female associate is working out his plan to assume supernatural evil CGI powers, pursued by the idiot good guy and even more buxom ladies. There are some animated skeletons who put up a feeble fight, and plenty of busty ladies on the haunted island's village brothel. There needed to be period costumes and dialog, maps, skulls and pirates, and so there were. Now I must seek out the XXX version.

Pirates II, 2008

Disappointing because the nudity is incidental rather than a central erotic feature. Jesse Jane is there with her magnificent twin mammaries, but there is no sign of Janine or Devon, etc. A new pirate goddess resurrects the bad guy who was killed off last time, he gets killed off again... or does he?

Playtime, 1967

A complicated tale, the main character is a large shiny steel and glass building. A blundering man thrust involuntarily into modernity, a M. Hulot. wanders all around, confused and drawn into numerous situations, illustrating the conflict between the modern and the human. Too many small vignettes to go into any detail, but obviously a polished work of high craftsmanship. Okay, some illustrative situations, the tourists are directed into a trade show inside, as they enter, reflected on the glass door is the Eiffel Tower. People live in glass boxes, the outer walls are ceiling to floor windows. The television is embedded in the wall so that when observed from outside, they appear to be watching each other intently. Then there is the language issue, Europe has many languages spoken by people who live together, so they pop back and forth between various languages, English, German and of course as its Paris, mostly French. They dance. They socialize together. They get mixed up. Its all so ironic! But what is it about?

Poison Ivy, 1992 

A rich man’s daughter brings a poor girl home, she has some great sex scenes with the father (flirty kissing, some abrupt cunnilingus, sex in or rather on the car, then all-out butt naked sex when the daughter is in the hospital), the hot interloper kills the incapacitated mother and ultimately the rich man’s daughter kills the poor girl in the same way, pushes her out of the window onto the father’s car hood. End of the movie. The next question is what happens to the rich man’s daughter? She murdered the poor girl, maybe there was just cause, but she did take the law into her own hands. Not our problem. The sequel has nothing to do with this plot.

Puppet films of Jiri Trnka, 1951

Master craftsman. Boring. Famous European fairy tales, mixing puppets and real actors.

Quantum of Solace, 2008

Takes place moments after the remake of Casino Royale ends, Mr. Bond has complex motivations for his aggressive investigation of a large corporation that both champions environmental preservation and at the same time exploits the world's natural resources ruthlessly. 

Red Beard, 1965

Kurosawa doctor movie. Conflict: caring for the poor sick people or making a living as a doctor. A new doctor in training shows up at the clinic, he is confused at the whole concept of charity work and learns a lesson in compassion and the meaning of the healing arts.

Red Dragon, 2002

Begins with Hannibal Lector being captured and imprisoned, then used by law enforcement to catch another serial killer. The majority of the story is about the detective who has a strange empathy with the strange doctor. 

Reservoir Dogs, 1992

Tarantino's first movie. Very bloody, ample perversion and nobility, all mixed up. Wonderful camera work, innovative sound track, combustable combination of actors. The perfect heist goes wrong, most of the action is in the warehouse where they are to split the loot. As the gang regroups various truths emerge. They end in one blazing instant by shooting each other, except for the sneaky little guy who runs out with the loot. From the soundtrack it appears that he does not get very far, but we do not know for sure.

Rhapsody in August, 1991

Kurosawa rules. Hiroshima children. Strange ending. Grandmother survived the Hiroshima blast but she wont talk about it with the kids. An American relative visits and everyone works out some hard truths. It ends with grandmother walking out into a storm to die, the family tries to follow her.

Rio Das Mortes, 1971

Her mom wants her to get married, and her boyfriend wants to travel. She invites a travel agent to her home to discuss various places to go. Her boyfriend arrives, he knows the travel agent and immediately attacks him, they fight. It turns out they are old friends who parted under difficult circumstances. Then they talk about Peru and the two men decide to go to Peru as soon as possible. She is upset when he sells his car to raise money, she really does not want them to go. Then the travel agent guy asks for his wedding inheritance from his mother and she gives it to him, still they are short of funds. The girl has a wealthy uncle who funds various business projects, they cook up some flimsy plan to become cotton farmers in Peru. They do some research into the price of land and the cotton market. The uncle does not buy into their plan, obviously they are young and stupid and impulsive, the trip is a frivolous youthful adventure, they have little thought for the larger issues of the journey, such as its aftermath. They continue to yearn for adventure while they work their low wage construction jobs, and the travel agent guy moves in to save rent money towards the Peru travel plans, which does not please the girl. Then they try for academic funding, and hook up with a graduate student who is looking for some kind of company for a field trip, and for a while things look better, but then the plan falls apart, the graduate student is really a jerk anyway. Then they overhear talk in a bar about a lady who gives away money for people with odd ambitions. They find her and the mysterious lady agrees to fund their adventure. Off they go. The girl is not happy, she is going to be left behind anyway. They ditch her but she follows them to the airport, she spots them boarding an airplane and she pulls out a gun, but fails to even be noticed by them. Away the two men go, to the river of the dead in Peru.

The Road Warrior, 1981

Our buddy Max, a few years after the end of civilization, and he is still in the Australian desert. The people are unreliable, most are selfish and eager to rob and murder for gasoline. The story is told by a feral boy who has grown up.

Robinson Crusoe, 1954

Bunuel factory movie. Novel. Not particularly innovative. Rob is shipwrecked for 9 years, makes a life for himself on the tropical paradise island, rescues his only human friend Friday from the cannibals, eventually they hook up with some rescuers and he helps them to overcome a mutiny. He dumps it all in a wink to go back to civilization.

Rome, 2005

The story of two men, Titus and Lucious, who serve in Caesar's army. Eventually Caesar's young nephew becomes the new Caesar. The bulk of the story is about the struggle between the rich folks on the hills of Rome and the larger population of poor folks who live in the Roman slums, but most of the action takes place away from Rome. Nobody is all good or all bad. There is nudity. 

Room 6, 1982

Wim Wenders gets the big guys to participate in his little experiment. Each major film maker attending the conference is invited to come sit in the room, with the television on (nothing special, sports or whatever) and they are asked to opine about the future of cinema for a brief time. Some are very short, none are very long, and he films them while they share their thoughts.

Rose Red, 2002 

Very long Stephen King story. Well done. A rich guy builds a house and runs amok with his libido even though he has a terminal case of an exotic STD. His wife takes over the endless construction and the house takes on a life of its own. Takes place in Seattle. The ultimate haunted house story. A group of psychic specialists spend a night in the house, some die, lots of surprises.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, 1990 

Great movie. Theater on cinema, Gary Oldman as a Shakespeare character. Are they ghosts? Looks like it. They roam around on horses, they hook up with a traveling theater troop, they go to a rich guys house, they work out lots of philosophical and moral issues. Nothing is resolved, but its entertaining.

S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale, 2009

The sister of the deceased Donnie Darko has lots of problems. After Donnie died the whole family sort of fell apart. The film opens with Samantha in a car driven by her friend, on their way to Hollywood to make a new life. The car breaks down. Then the Darko syndrome takes over, lots of dream confusion, multiple personalities wherein the darker ones are unknown to the daylight ones. She has the Sparrow book. People die, but there are second chances and things start over, one ending has meteors raining death on the planet, the other ending has Samantha getting on a bus and getting the heck out of that crazy little town. The subplot with the wicked Christians is most puzzling.

Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, 1954

Toshiro Mifune in 17th  Century Japan, part of a trilogy. Bum looks to better his life.

Sanjuro, 1962

Yojimbo II, with the famous wet slice scene at the end. Kurosawa rules. A strange Japanese cowboy parable.

The Saragossa Manuscript, 1965

A medieval story within a story within a story etc. Its all about abrupt changes in the story line as a plot is established, then someone tells another story which leads in a new direction. This film was influencial on some of Bunuel's later works.

Satan's Wife, 1979

The teen daughter is increasingly difficult. The coven is upset, they try many things, they even enlist the help of a priest, but the daughter is too powerful. After she causes her teacher to commit suicide and murders a few of her little friends, even her mother fails to have any influence over the child. The end of the film has the girl looking at the Vatican as if it were her challenge. True to the 1980s Euro horror genre, at some point each of the women take their tops off, usually for the purpose of worshiping Satan.

Schoolgirl Report, 1970

They love to fuck, but its so boring. A thoughtful list of circumstances compiled by the guidance councilor to convince the grown ups that youthful sex is just fine, part of growing up. How can this be so boring? It just is. We start with a young girl who gets caught fucking the bus driver during a field trip, then a whole bunch of situations, including a first time lesbian encounter, a first time foursome, two girls succeed in hooking up with the life guard for a hot threesome, a first time young guy works it out, a girl seduces her gym teacher, a hot girl tries to seduce a young priest but he keeps his virginity, and there is a dark scene where a girl gets raped by her best friends father. All this has great potential, but its all done like a puppet show, its just not erotic and it should be. The purpose of the film is for the guidance councilor to explain to the school board that girls will fuck, and its okay, its better if we work with them than if we force them to face it all alone. The old way is to banish the deflowered girl.

Secret Things, 2002

Two girls hook up after they get fired from a strip club, the more experienced one teaches the other one about sex and romance, how to harness the sexual power they have over men, they decide to use sex to forward their situation in the corporate world. For the young one it succeeds perfectly, the experienced one breaks her own primary rule and falls in love. The climax is when the wealthy evil playboy marries the young one, the other one goes to prison for murdering the evil playboy. The young one gets the empire, and a few years later on the street she encounters the one who has gotten out of prison, she has married a guard and they have a child, they seem happy. Plenty of great lesbian sex scenes and a couple three-ways, but not really porn, just erotic situations. One really hot giggly strip scene in an office, naughty girl. Begins with a really interesting arty sex show scene that was filmed backwards. Like Exterminating Angels this one has a dark presence who watches, it has a raptor that at one point has a few bites of the dead evil guy.

The Serpents Egg, 1978

Bergman. Really heavy. Nazis gestating. The horror. The horror. Life as the Nazi’s were working out their demonic “science” experiments. Hard times in Berlin. Very devastating film, an excellent portrayal of a very devastating time. David Caradine’s brother commits suicide, they are out of work circus performers, and so David hooks up with his brother’s friends. His wife has a strange job she wont talk about, he follows her, its at a Nazi science center. Things get bad. Really heavy, but well done.

Severed Ways, 2007

Two Vikings are stranded in the New World after they have been given up for dead, the year is 1007. They are in hostile territory, and they are Vikings, so when the meet anyone they kill them. This does not work well in the long run. They set up a nice shelter, but soon decide to try to make it back home. They head out, the first thing they come to is a pair of monks who turn out to speak their language, but they kill one immediately, which alienates the second one. They get separated, one Viking, the dark haired one, stays with the monk and they become friends. The other Viking, with the red hair, wanders about, one day he finds some gooey mess on a rock, its got berries in it so he gobbles it up, bad idea. The poison knocks him out, some locals pack him onto their canoe and they keep him prisoner for a while. It appears that the female mates with the Viking while he is tied up. He wakes up and nobody is home, so he heads out. He comes upon the monk and kills him, as is his way. His old friend is somewhat disturbed by this. The next morning the dark haired Viking sneaks out alone, evidently trying to get away from his dangerous friend, but he gets an arrow in his back. The red haired Viking manages to get his ax into the archer, but it appears that the archer gets away. A traditional funeral follows, with the burning boat. The red haired Viking freezes to death that winter.

The She Beast, 1966

An English couple is vacationing in Transylvania, they meet up with Count Van Helsing, probably the only citizen they meet who is not secretly or overtly harming them, but he is a little nutty. There is a mysterious automobile accident and the wife disappears into the lake, 200 years after the messy death of an evil witch who was preying on the village. There is a mysterious trading of places, the lovely wife is gone and the ugly witch is alive and seeking revenge on the descendents of her persecutors. There is a strong metaphore, the socialist government of 1966 in Romania, and the whole Dracula and evil spirit thing. At one point a hammer is tossed and lands on a sickle in the famous communist symbol.

Shockproof, 1949

Jenny is just out of prison, making a new life, playing by the rules only because she has to. Griff is her parole officer. He finds her a job and a place to live, but there is a bad man from her old life who emerges. She went to prison for murder, and the man is part of the story. He has waited for her and gives her some attention, which she needs. Griff recognizes the tough situation, he finds her a new place to live and a job, caring for his blind mother, in a place where the bad man cannot find her. At first she resists Griff, and feels her loyalty for the bad man. Sure enough, time goes by and she falls in love with Griff, and he falls in love with her, but the bad man makes plans. Because she is on parole she cannot marry, but they decide to marry in secret. When the bad man tries to work the situation, she shoots him. At first Griff feels played, but quickly decides to go on the run with her. They keep running until she gives up and decides to turn herself in. Once in police custody, the bad man who has been shot gallantly does not identify her as the shooter. It turns out that he is a bad man with a heart of gold. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Short Cuts, 1993

We like Robert Altman because the world is complex and full of stories, all twisted up together and happening at the same time. Little boy gets hit by a car driven by waitress who has problems with a drunken boyfriend who drives a limo, guy who does gory makeup, artist who paints nudes, fishermen who refuse to deal with a drowned corpse, cello player who commits suicide, policeman who is unethical, husband of a phone sex operator that rapes and murders a girl on a bicycle, a baker who makes crank calls to customers who fail to pick up orders, birthday clown, earthquake at the end. Not in that order. Medfly. Television commentator. I left out so much.

The Short Films of David Lynch, 2002 

The cowboy one is my favorite this time around, but The Grandmother is the keystone. Lynch started as a sculptor and graphic artist and morphed into film making during the late 1970s. This has his first efforts plus that ridiculous cowboy themed short. A Frenchman is captured by a partially deaf cowboy as he traverses a corn field. Nobody understands him, but later that night they all get drunk and the French girls are quite popular with the cowboys and the Frenchman is quite popular with the cowgirls.

Signs of Life, 1968 

Werner does a better job with this film than the others I have recently watched, but its got some heavy problems. It takes place on a Greek island with soldiers who happen to be German, during WWII. They are assigned to guard the island, a great job during this part of the war, beats combat for sure. One of the soldiers goes nuts and starts shooting people.

Simon of the Desert, 1965

A guy stands on a column in the desert talking to God, the monks bring him food and the villagers like him. The devil tempts him and we shift from wearing rags in biblical times to a discoteque where we dance the night away under the impending nuclear cloud.

Six in Paris, 1965

Six sections of the city: Saint Germain des pres is the location for an American girl who is exploring young French men and finding the same old story; Gare do Nord is a noisy place where a young couple live, she is somewhat bored but when she meets a new man her rejection brings his spontaneous suicide; Rue Saint Denis a young man brings home a prostitute, he fixes her dinner and the power fails; Place de Etoile a crazy guy confronts a shop keeper and upsets him; Montparnasse and Levallois a pretty young girl has sent telegrams to her two new lovers but she thinks she mixed them up and attemps to explain things beforehand but she is rejected by both men; La Muette a young rich boy is bored with his family, his mother is perpetually ill and spends lots of time with doctors, his father is carrying on with the pretty young maid.

Space Is the Place, 1974 

The Sun Ra story, a whole new type of vernacular cinema. Lots of regular poor folks and the man from Saturn. Music is played and appreciated. Greed and evil come and go and the man plays his music from outer space.

Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story, 2007

A biography of the ambitious independent film maker and entrepreneur, creator of many promotional gimics, described as gleefully shameless, who created such innovations as Percepto, Emergo and Illusion-o. One of his first programs had nurses in attendance at the movie theater, collecting signatures on life insurance policies, anyone who perished during the movie due to extreme fear would get $1000 from Lloyds of London. The tingler was probably his most famous concoction, random theater seats were wired with devices that caused electronic sensations for the audience member sitting in it. They were encouraged to just scream as loud as they possibly could, which certainly enhanced the audience experience. Another scheme involved an inflatable skeleton that was on a wire and flew over the heads of the audience at a key moment. Mr. Castle started in New York City and was willing to do anything to get into the business. He impressed the right people with his crude nerve, bluffing his way right to the top, and even then he was not satisfied and created a whole new fright movie business concept of his own. He abruptly dropped dead at home one day. He had a good time and made lots of money. He invented his own job, smart fellow, but he died anyway.

The Spirit of the Beehive, 1973

Two little girls and Frankenstein, Spanish civil war, small village. They have some communication problems, and it appears that the mother is corresponding on the sly but that is not explored, just sort of tossed into the mix. The father has an apiary, and has created a special bee house in the living room using a special enclosure and tunnel leading out for the bees to make their rounds. Frankenstein comes to them in the form of the movie, then one little girl finds a wounded rebel soldier hiding in a remote abandoned building, she imagines that he is Frankenstein and tries to help him, but he is shot by the authorities, and she takes it badly.

Spies Like Us, 1985

Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd are sent to save the world from nuclear disaster in Soviet Afghanistan, plus they get laid.

Stalker, 1979

Russian science fiction. Try to stay out of the forbidden zone. What the hell is this about? Hours and hours, black and white, lots of human drama and inner conflict. Some supernatural stuff, as its the Russian UFO secret crash landing zone.

Strip to the Bone, 1999

No pictures of the lads Sly and Robbie. Its all about the pretty women who take their clothes off to the beat.

Stroszek, 1977

Bruno gets out of prison, has a beer against the advise of the warden, hooks up with Eva who is being humiliated by some gangster bad boys. His apartment has been held for him by the little man who is in all the other Herzog movies, and its full of Bruno’s musical instruments, plus a talking bird. Eva wanders off to become humiliated by the bad boys again, they follow her home and make a series of visits trashing Bruno’s apartment and humiliating Bruno. The three (Eva, Bruno and the landlord) decide to go to America, things look better there. The bird is quarantined and is abandoned in New York City. In rural Wisconsin they hook up with the landlord’s military buddy, Eva speaks English well enough and gets a job as a waitress, Bruno has an opportunity with a car mechanic. The landlord guy starts conducting some animal magnetism experiments with some promising results, but only he understands the breakthroughs he tells them about. The boys only speak German. The bank wants the German trio to actually pay for the mobile home and large television, which begins the collapse of the whole situation. Eva goes off with some truck drivers to Vancouver, the bank forecloses and the home/television are auctioned off. The boys, now homeless, pull a heist and rob not the bank (its closed) but the barbershop next door, and then go on a spending spree at the convenience store. The cops pick up the landlord guy but miss Bruno, who steals the truck from the car mechanic, along with a frozen turkey, some beer and the gun. He drives off. He stops at an Indian reservation amusement park and goes off on a ski lift with the turkey and shotgun, leaving the car in flames, circling the parking lot with no driver. The tribal police come. The end.

Summer Storm, 1944

Its after the revolution in Russia (Chekhov penned the original story), and a man in rags arrives at a publishing house, claiming to be a friend of the owner. He is told that the owner died years ago, and his daughter is now running the enterprise. He asks to see her. He is refused but he is politely persistent, and presents himself to his old friend. It turns out he was a Count, before the revolution, and his friend has bequeathed his life story that he penned before dying. Thus begins our story. The land owners are of the generation that abhor work of all kinds, and treat their servants like pests. It turns out that the author of the story was engaged to the current owner of the publishing house. He meets a peasant girl who charms him, she recognizes an opportunity to elevate herself from poverty. She continuously seeks such opportunities, men find her attractive and she enjoys charming them. She ruins the engagement, ruins her own wedding, she robs the wealthy landowner, she pretty much ruins every man that is smitten by her charms. Someone stabs her, she dies deliriously, its not clear who stabbed her. Her peasant husband is tried and convicted, but the murderer turns out to be one of the abandoned lovers. He lives in perpetual guilt and writes the story, which is posted to the current local authorities, then he regrets posting the manuscript and attempts to intervene with the postal courier. The police shoot him and he dies as yet another unknown man after the revolution.

Sunshine Superman, 2008

The professional career of Donovan Leitch, from youthful beach bum to pop peacenik superstar. He embraced the lifestyle probably more because he did not want to take a day job, and because he was good at it. He got around the problem with illegal drug anthems by the lyrics “but I changed my ways” and kept with the concept of love. He survived encounters with Dylan in person, which was a big deal. He walked away from the bad parts of the superstar lifestyle of those days several times (bless his heart), only to be invited back again and again. He had a major youthful relationship with Gypsy Davey and somehow avoided the whole issue of homosexuality, or so the film purports. He married the cosmic love of his life after a difficult “finds Her looses Her finds Her” romance. He lived in Joshua Tree for a significant time but now lives in Ireland and has a bunch of aging children, and wants to keep touring once a year or so. 

Sukiyaki Western Django, 2007

The ultimate Japanese cowboy movie, shot in English with actors that normally do not speak much English. I loved it. Quentin Terantino has two roles, the wiley story teller and the strange old man. The story is of two gangs who terrorize a mining town, seeking gold. A girl from one gang marries a boy from the other gang and they have a little boy who grows up to be Django, but his parents both get shot to death. Lots of fighting. There are ample strong female role models. Why would Japanese cowboys speak broken English to each other? Why does Django drag that big gun around in that coffin? How many times do the principle characters receive fatal gunshot wounds?

Susana, 1951

The hot bad girl prays to God for release from her horrible cell at the Reformatory, there are rats and spiders and bats and all manner of icky things. She escapes, makes her way to a big estate where she is given shelter. She proceeds to attract the erotic attention of every male in sight. This could have worked out for her, but she was not thinking of the long term and there was excessive jealousy, so they called the police and sent her back to the Reformatory. No justice for hot bad girls gone wild. It ends with the father, sons, uncles and neighboring men all friends again, at the dinner table, the family re-united and back to normal.

The Sword of Doom, 1966  

Chop chop chop. Guess what the plot is? A guy with a sword. Old Japan. Lots of people are chopped when the expert sword dude goes nuts.

Taking Lives, 2004 

Angelina rocks my world whenever she gets naked. Pretty good detective story too. Great surprise ending. A guy figures out how to assume the identity of drifters that he encounters, he gets good at it, but as the body count increases the investigations close in. He is undone by his own lust for the pretty detective lady who surrenders her career to bear his child. Just when it looks like he has won, she shocks him and kills him instead. I hope she gets her job back.

The Talented Mr. Ripley, 1999

It all started with a borrowed coat, they think he is from Princeton, and he allows the error to go on and on, soon he accepts an assignment from a wealthy man. He is to convince the wealthy man's son to return home from an extended Italian vacation, or alternate life. Soon he worms his way deep inside a wealthy lifestyle, and when the swinging doors are about to swing shut again he strikes, kills the son and takes his place with the credit card. There are numerous plot twists and police interceptions, close calls and murders to hide murders. Just when the jaws are closing tight, its a kiss. The film ends long before the story does, he keeps on killing the last person who could connect him to the nightmare of his past.

Terror Creatures from the Grave, 1965

A tax lawyer is summoned mysteriously by a dead man a year after his death, to look into the finances and the will. The widow and her lover, and all of the old circle of acquaintences are not happy to see him, but the beautiful daughter is. The dead man lived in a strange museum of the plague. He had a collection of hands that were cut from the convicted deliberate carriers of the plague, as punishment before they were hung. As the story unfolds, it turns out that the dead man had been wronged by everyone there, and ultimately murdered by them. Now a year later, to the minute, after his death, he was punishing them all. The salvation, a song about clean water washing away the plague and the new lovers dance off into the night of spring rain.

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, 1933

A nervous man is hiding in a noisy factory, he is discovered but not captured, only observed. He turns out to be an undercover policeman, he attempts to give his report but he goes insane. The famous inspector Lohman is on the trail. There is a powerful intellect, Dr. Mabuse, seeking to create a criminal empire in a complicated situation, he is incarcerated in a madhouse. He directs a large crinimal organization with the assistance of his insane keeper. One of the weaker, more virtuous, criminals falls in love and the two plan for a better new life, but somehow they are discovered and are locked in a room where they await their doom. To escape they flood the room, which muffles the explosion, they escape and go to Inspector Lohman. The trail leads back to the madhouse, where Dr. Mabuse has died, but his spirit continues to direct the criminal empire. His bank robbery fails but his plot to burn the chemical warehouse succeeds. 

The Testament of Orpheus, 1962

Cocteau rules. The famous radio poetry broadcasts. More adventures of Orphee at the club of the poets. Pioneering in pretentious artfilmwork, but it works. This is the final part of the trilogy. 

Thank You for Smoking, 2005

The story of a lawyer who represents a conglomeration of cigarette companies. There are numerous conflicts, but the lawyer manages to keep his integrity. 

That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977

A tale of blue balls. The gentleman desires the hot young lady, she takes it further and further, he rents her a big fancy house and she wont let him in and has sex right in front of him. What is this thing called love, anyway? It is Bunuel, so yeah.

There Will Be Blood, 2007

Kicks ass. Greed forms our past. Preacher boy gets his butt whipped in the end. Oil is everywhere. Shrewd self-made man drills oil wells. He knows there is oil on the land owned by the preacher boy’s family, and the boy knows that the man wants the land to make lots of money, and the boy knows that he and his family will not see any of that money that will be made from the oil on the land. The oil is drilled, money is made. Disasters happen. 

The Third Generation, 1979

The German youth are struggling with their post Nazi issues. What are they doing about the revolution? Robbing banks. Not very good at it either.

Thirst, 2009

Korean vampire movie. Boy (studying for priesthood) contracts horrible plague disease, almost dies but becomes a blood drinker, aka vampire. Girl wants in, Boy is not willing to ruin girls eternal soul with the evil he knows. Girl is persistent, and gets her way. Girl is much more wild than the boy is. Tension. Boy decides to commit suicide and to take girl with him. They watch the sunrise and fry in the holy sunshine, not exactly romantic, lots of screaming and sizzling pain. 

Thirteen (13) Frightened Girls, 1960

Candy is one of the teen girls at the boarding school for diplomat daughters. She scores the highest on her Latin exam and her reward is to drive the bus with all the girls to the airport when they go on vacation. But “Spider” has other ideas, and when the bus is speeding down the long narrow steep and twisty mountain road a tarantula appears on the window, causing dangerous panic amongst the excitable teen girls. Lets go back. As a student at the boarding school Candy is close with twelve other important diplomatic households. Her romantic conquest with the young spy-master in her dad's employ is not going so well, and when it appears that the young spy-master's career is not going so well in general, she secretly intervenes and becomes Secret Agent “Kitten” and jumps right into danger, dead bodies and evil spies from other countries. But her cheerful disposition and good connections pull her through, at least as far as the end of the movie.

Thirteen (13) Ghosts, 1960

Mr. Castle has invented an amazing new technology, Illusion-O, that allows movie goers to use an ocular device to see ghosts, and he gives it  away for the price of a movie ticket. During the movie there are cues as to when to use the special Illusion-O viewers. Young Bud is having a birthday party with his family, but all of the furniture has been repossessed. His birthday wish is for a house with furniture. The wind blows out the candles on the cake, and there is a knock on the door. A strange looking man has a telegram. Dad is summoned to a young lawyer's office. Dad works at the Los Angeles Museum, steady work but evidently not enough to keep up the furniture payments. At the lawyers office he learns that his long lost uncle has died recently and left him the old mansion and some strange spectacles. No money, just an old haunted house that he cannot sell. The uncle was a paranormal researcher and he collected ghosts from all over the world. There are eleven he has gathered at the mansion, his own ghost makes twelve, and one more (who will it be?) makes 13 ghosts. The uncle also converted all of his assets to cash and hid it somewhere, nobody knows where. The family (mom, dad, hot teen sister and young Bud) immediately move in, as they have no furniture and no place else to live. The young lawyer dates the hot sister. There is a spooky housekeeper living there. Is she a real witch? She was in the Wizard of Oz movie. They are uncomfortable with all the ghosts at first, and the lawyer turns out to be a terrible scoundrel. His attempt to murder young Bud fails and instead the young lawyer dies. Then they find the money that the uncle has hidden in the house and everything is all right. 

Thirty (30) Days of Night, 2007

Barrow Alaska is so far up north that in the winter it stays dark for 30 days. A perfect place for vampires to colonize! They send in an advance guy, a mortal, who makes specific arrangements (gather all the cell phones and burn them, kill all of the sled dogs in town) and then wait until it gets dark and move the team in. They are somewhat selective about recruiting new members, and the only way to prevent a victim from turning is to remove their head. Our opposing team of surviving mortals manages to survive for 29 days, and the protagonist, the sheriff, comes into a situation where he decides to sacrifice himself for the greater good. He chooses to inject himself with vampire blood so that he can gain the superpowers that vampires have, and retain his own will as long as possible. His ex-wife, accidentally stuck in Barrow after dark, rekindles his hearts flame, and for her he takes on this subterfuge. He ends up watching the dawn and then turning to ashes like vampires do in sunlight. Seems unpleasant. I hope she appreciates his efforts and intentions. The original vampires, minus the alpha vamp, all manage to escape before dawn so the whole thing can begin again next year.

This Island Earth, 1954

He is an atomic scientist who is flying a government jet back to the laboratory facilities that he works at. His jet controls go haywire, but a mysterious green light takes over and he lands safely. Nobody knows what just happened. Things continue that way, there is some mysterious equipment that arrives and he assembles it. The aliens speak to him and arrange a meeting. He is brought to a science complex where several famous scientists are now working, with mysterious benefactors, who are in contact with aliens. Actually, the are aliens from another world, just look at their haircuts. He and the girl make a break for freedom, the others are killed. The airplane that the two scientists (our man and the girl) are escaping on is brought onto the flying saucer by some sort of tractor beam, but they do not use that Star Trek term. They are taken to another planet, where there is an invasion underway. These mutant cricket beings are slaves, usually used to guard facilities, but they are not the problem. Though these mutant crickets are fearsome looking, they appear to be rather dim and slow, but nonetheless lethal. The problem is the invasion from the nearby competing planet, Zagon. Its impoverished and they want some of the good life too. The invasion overtakes the host planet, the scientist and the girl escape with their new friend, a local scientist, and return to earth, where the airplane is used for a safe landing. Then the saucer crashes and the alien scientist friend perishes alone.

Timecrimes, 2007

A couple has a new home in the woods. He sees a naked girl in the woods, so he must investigate when his wife goes for groceries. He is stabbed by a scary man with bandages on his head, and he runs to (home? no) a strange new building, climbs a fence and then breaks glass to enter what turns out to be a laboratory of some kind. He picks up a phone and a technician tells him to flee to yet another building where he hides in a tank filled with white liquid. From there things go bad. Its a time machine but its never been tested and the technician is not qualified to operate it. Bummer. Not one not two but three parallel universes come close to colliding, well, they do collide. The naked girl in the woods gets the worst of it. He knows exactly what will go bad because he in fact is the victim and the criminal and the next guy, but still he persists, not once not twice but three times. Note to self: if you know what is going to happen, make an effort avoid the bad stuff.

To Catch A Thief, 1955

Hitch at his wittiest, in my opinion. The cat burglar. The pretty girl who gives him a big unexpected kiss which of course leads to seduction, betrayal and then redemption. The rich mom who insists on flaunting her big diamonds. Car chase. Roof chase. Boat chase. Hitch is on the crowded bus sitting next to the cat burglar.

Tokyo-Ga, 1985

Homage to 1970s Japan, also film director Yasujiro Ozu, by Rainier Werner Fastbinder. Its all about the narrative voice over the tourist camera shots, mixed in with a few excerpts from the work of Yasujiro Ozu. Werner Herzog makes a brief visit. Yasujiro Ozu made films of ordinary life in post-WWII Japan. Fastbinder makes the rounds in Tokyo, including a cemetery where Ozu is buried, a park where young people pretend to be 1950s American Rockers, some visits with some surviving film stars and crew that worked with Ozu, and plenty of pachinko is played.

Tom Waits: Under Review 1983-2006, 2007

A bunch of music critics rhapsodizing over Mr. Waits, starting with Swordfish Trombone and on into the present. Once he dumped Asylum records he gained a huge amount of artistic freedom, went to the junkyard for his instruments and really started bellowing. The main influence appears to be his wife. I wonder what her solo music would be like. There is some Howling Wolf footage, some Captain Beefheart footage for artistic and influential comparisons. He also has been more active in both film acting and in theatrical presentation of his music. He makes great faces when he sings. Evidently there is a part one that covers the area up to 1983.

Tomb of Torture, 1965

Horror movie of ghastly boredom. Never again. Stay out of the basement torture chamber. Could have been a great movie, so very bad. The hot girl inherits the castle and visits it, while there she has bad dreams of being tortured in the basement torture chamber, she meets the stupid rich boy when she swims naked, he gives her a ride home so they fall in love. Things happen, he sneaks in the basement window of the castle and rescues the hot girl from the insane lumbering crazy guy who lives in the castle basement and has a thing for torture.

Tropic Thunder, 2008

Its a comedy about some idiots who make an action movie about the Vietnam war, and it covers all of the important cliches. It is funny. Tom Cruise as a big fat rich guy who dances for the final credits. That is my favorite scene, the power dance.

True Romance, 1993 

Gary Oldman as a Detroit gangster. Chilling. Bullets are fired. Butts are whipped. Blood flies. Tru love prevails. A pretty girl escapes prostitution by hooking up with a shmuck who works at a porn shop, he kills the pimp and takes the drugs and the money, the organization follows the couple to California where they botch various attempts to get their property back. Large body count, and lots of red stuff. Sort of a happy ending, except for the organization.

The Tunnel, 2001

Just after the wall in Berlin was built there were numerous attempts to rescue loved ones from imprisonment in the bizarre Eastern lands. This is the story of one guy who wants to free his sister, he enlists the help of several others and they dig under the wall and into a basement. Lots of drama. A very believable portrait of the culture of paranoia that the authorities promoted, conscripting informants and using the brute force of the military to keep their citizens contained and productive.

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, 1998

Three films by Guy Maddin. Very stylized. Twilight of the Ice Nymphs is a Maxfield Parish painting set into motion, Archangel is an homage to Eisenstein, and The Heart of the World is an homage to the very early Fritz Lang. Camera work, the way the actors move, the script, the lighting, the music, the whole thing, a very sophisticated emulation. If someone had not seen the background movies this would just be a campy straight faced weird three hours and seven minutes. I am not sure of what to make of this, its funny but its dry and extended. Do not REPEAT do NOT listen to the stupid director’s comments version, its the worst ever, all smarmy, insipid and irrelevant. The films are pretty good in my opinion. The Russian film has snow blowing around all the time, the Heart of the world is really more of a promotional short for a real film, and I love the piano sound track, but its all there is, there is no longer version. Two brothers, one is a mortician and the other an actor who plays Jesus Christ, and a female scientist who loves them both, she also discovers that the world’s heart is about to give out. She gives herself to an older rich fat man, a wealthy industrialist, but then she kills him and goes to the center of the earth to replace the failing heart and the world is saved, except the two brothers are unhappy.

Twin Peaks: Television series 

Laura Palmer’s body is found by the shore, wrapped in plastic, we meet Peter, who is going fishing, and his evil wife Catherine. We meet the police chief Harry S. Truman and his two deputies, the bumbling deputy Andy, and the wise and clever deputy Hawk. We meet the little town's doctor who knows everyone. Best of all we meet Lucy, the sexy administrator at the Sheriff’s office. We meet the parents of Laura: Leland and Sarah Parker, and the guy who owns the hotel, Ben, who is trying to make the big real estate deal. Ben has a brother, Jerry. Ben’s deal is held up by the saw mill, owned by Josie, the wife of Andrew, brother of Catherine (evil Catherine). We meet Agent Cooper, and the wacky psychiatrist Dr. Jacoby who wears glasses with two different colored lenses. There is a significant dream of Agent Cooper, 25 years later, with the man from Another Place (who dances and talks backwards) and his cousin who looks just like Laura. She tells Agent Cooper who killed Laura, but he forgets. And there is a giant. Speaking of giants, I had a gigantic 50 page episodic commentary which was lost in the tragic final XP disaster of 2009.

Twin Peaks, 1991

FBI Agent Cooper is brought in when a victim who survived a complicated sex-murder crosses over an international boundary. He uncovers a very complex little town with ample drama for years of entertainment. The first season ends one night with a combination of an attempted suicide, the impersonation of a dead girl, the capture of a dangerous criminal, a daughter discovering her father's prostitution business, arson, attempted murder of a jealous husband, marital infidelity, two murders of  witnesses, a frame-up for drug possession, overconsumption of doughnuts and coffee, the revelation of pregnancy complicating an office romance, and Agent Cooper being shot point blank in the chest three times. From there it gets a little crazy with giants and owls and UFO-type lights.

Two (2) or 3 Things I Know About Her, 1967

During the day she is a normal housewife and at night she dabbles in prostitution. This film is secretly all about French communist theory and opposition to the American war in Vietnam.

Uncle Vanya (1970 / 1991), 1970 (!?!)

Two versions of the classic tale, Anthony Hopkins and Ian Holms play the doctor. In rural Russia an old family attempts to continue being wealthy but the money is running out.

The Universe of Keith Haring, 2008

Keith was from Kutztown, just down the road from here. He grew up in a normal little town, two sisters, happy family, encouraged to draw, loved to draw. Tried commercial art, hated it. Went to New York City and fucked his homosexual brains out, and found some time to paint quite a bit. He painted on lots of things, including canvases, walls, floors, windows, over advertisements, sculptures, clothing, human skin, pretty much anything. He was a busy guy. He ran with a wild crowd. He got big. He got AIDS. He got dead. But before he died he traveled all over the world, painting and being celebrated as a giant in graphic arts. I look at his life and know that I am nothing. He was real. He did not have enough time to consume his burning appetite for creative production. On the other hand, he was a sodomite and died of it.

Vampires, 1998

All I wanted was to see Sheryl Lee, she sure is pretty and she loves to get her breasts out. She had no chance, straight into the psychological abuse of the vampire slayers and the erotic dominance of the vampire king. A vampire slayer finds that some rogue players deep within the Catholic church are behind the dark plot to evolve vampires from nocturnal to 24 hour productivity. In the end he allows his good buddy (one of the Baldwins) and the new girl (Sheryl) a head start as their turning begins. They have the vampire killing thing down to a modern battlefield, but they lack electronics. The best technique they have is to shoot an arrow with a cable on it into the vampire and then drag it into the sunshine where it goes up like a flare.

Vamps/Vamps2, 1995

Shock-0-Rama is a production house that specializes in gore and soft porn. Its all about sexy vampires who will fuck you then bite and kill you. This is two long movies and a short one, with the usual collection of trailers from all the other house productions. Its a good combination, stripper vampires and stupid men. Nobody seems to notice the body count, but its just horny stupid men who are disappearing, so who cares?

Vampyres, 1974

Lots of red stuff, a couple of naked women seduce and consume lone idiot Englishmen. They deserve it. Some interesting sex and blood feast scenes, nothing actually erotic. It was a groundbreaking cult hit at the time, probably because of the nudity.

Vampyros Lesbos, 1970

German nudity is boring. Otherwise the story is pretty well done, for a lousy vampire movie. There is an island where a Romanian woman lives, our heroine goes to interview the eccentric lady. Things happen. The women kill the stupid doctor. Insane or just eccentric? No outstanding sex scenes but they try.

The Velvet Underground: Under Review, 2006

Everyone gets a retro movie of their band, now its Lou’s turn. Nico was there, so was John Cale, Andy Warhol, Sterling Morrison and good old Maureen Tucker. Lots of interviews with famous critics, basically its all about the famous critics. Short clips of performances, short clips of the band members, long extensive probing analysis from the professionals. Essential for the fans. Maybe its for placing the Velvets in the larger perspective of the culture at that time. Heroin, Venus in Furs, leaves out the Lou solo stuff.

Veronika Voss, 1982

The story of a famous movie star a few years past her prime, who survives on morphine. Everyone loves her, everyone knows her famous voice, but she is lost to the designs of her physician. The old movie star meets a man who turns out to be a sports reporter, he is smitten by her. She lives in a fabulous mansion and she has traded everything she had for the morphine. The sweet old couple that lives at the mansion commits suicide together. The reporter talks his way into being assigned to write a story about the movie star, he uncovers some of her secret problems. He befriends the alienated husband of the movie star who has long ago been through all this pain concerning her deadly addiction. The reporter's girlfriend is killed by the design of the doctor as too much of the back story is uncovered. The movie star struggles with her last role, but in the end she follows through with the doctor's design too.

Vertigo, 1958

Average Hitch. Stay off the chair, Jimmy. Not a very satisfying story, but the film is well crafted, some innovative camera work as usual, but the story sucks. Its in San Francisco. The hot girl has these strange amnesiac visits to the grave, portrait and properties of a deceased widow. Jimmy is asked to follow her, but her various suicide attempts turn out to be staged, even the last one which appears to work, and it has a devastating effect on poor Jimmy. Somehow he finds the hot girl again, even though she has changed her appearance to red hair instead of blonde, she fails to go on with her life somewhere else far away, turns out she is in love with him too. She commits suicide by jumping out of the same bell tower again.

Viridiana, 1961

Bunuel’s legendary masterpiece, a horny Uncle persuades his hot niece to spend a few days with him before she takes her vows as a nun. She goes, he uses extraordinary means to attempt to persuade her to live with him, including drugging her and telling her he had consummated marriage rites with her unconscious body. On the way out of town, just before she gets on the train, the police bring her back to the home of her uncle, he has committed suicide, and summoned his illegitimate son. Viridiana decides to remain, she gathers a group of poor people to live in the mansion with her. They ultimately trash the place and two of the men attempt to rape her. The poor are cast out, the farm at the mansion is restored, and we leave the son with the housekeeper and Viridiana playing cards together into the night.

W., 2008

The legend of a boy who could not please his father, but still he keeps trying.

Wanted, 2008

He discovers that he has some of the same special abilities that his father had, but his father abandoned him at birth. Angela Jolie helps him develop these special abilities. The larger story is of a secret society of weavers who employ assassination to guide destiny.

Watchmen, 2009

In an America where Nixon stayed President and outlawed costumed vigilante heros, things go wrong because of the selfish plotting of one individual. The good news is that   the big nuclear blast does not kill everyone, just most of them, so the rest of us can start our new lives over again. But what have we learned? Its all chaos.

Water, 2005 

See also Earth (1998), another epic historical fiction depicting the birth of Pakistan. A little girl is married to an old man who immediately dies, she is a widow at age 8 and must suffer for the rest of her life, thanks to the customs of the land. She has a really hard life at the convent, and makes friends with a rebel spirit there, which causes much friction with the management. The management has a lucrative prostitution deal going, so they do not want to have any problems that bring attention to the home for wayward women.

Werewolf, The Devil's Hound, 2007

The intention was to make a scary but funny werewolf movie. The setting is a small business specializing in fireworks and special effects, unfortunately its populated with idiots. This gets tiresome, but only if you have higher expectations, so get over it. The werewolf is female and she is ready to breed. She has been placed in a shipping crate for safety and there is a mix-up somewhere in transit. Idiots die, but obviously they needed to, and there is the requisite volume of gore. It turns out that mom, married to the small business owner and herself a veterinarian, is a secret werewolf hunter, and she saves the day at the last minute, then its time for breakfast. We never learn what happens to the original wolf seeking to breed, but at least the worst of the idiots are all killed, and killed ugly.

The Whip and the Body, 1963

Bava average. Pretty good haunted castle tale. The ghost and his fiancée are rejoined. There is the evil rich boy, returning after being banished for his bad habits. There is the old man, daddy, who dies. There is the good brother who is annoying. There is his wife, who as the object of the evil rich boy’s sinful behavior. He liked to whip her, and she seemed to return for more. There are some servants. Perhaps the main character should be the castle. There is the secret entrance that opens behind the fire place, and lots of great spooky halls and passageways, plus a crypt in the basement.

William S. Burroughs: Three Films: 1950s-1960s, 1963

There were a few films on the disc but I could not tell where one ended and one began. It looked like old young Uncle Bill had a great time, rich boys can have great times. Lots of him just staring into the camera, usual cold dry face. All of the classic experiments, cut ups, odd juxtapositions, odd uses of the camera. He injects himself on camera. No naked homo action, unless I fell asleep. I did fall asleep. His big contribution to the art world, for me, was the cut-up. Take the script and cut it into small pieces, stir and shake, be sure to separate all the parts, read what you like; there you are.

Wittgenstein, 1993

An exploration of the unusual life of Ludwig Wittgenstein, also the last film made by Derek Jarman before he died. Mostly shot with isolated characters, bright costumes, simple props, in a black background, very interesting visually. Early in his life his genius was recognized, plus he was a member of a very wealthy family. He volunteers for the war, which alienates him from the conscripts he serves with. He elects to become a school teacher, but he cannot communicate with his students who are simple country folk. He has a tremendous struggle to be understood and probably has all the right reasons for doing what he does, but he is quite the oddball. One device is the re-occurring presence of the little boy and his dialog with a Martian, this goes all the way to the very end of his life.

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? 1977

He is a mildly annoying person, but there is nothing specifically wrong with him and his boring life. His wife has greater ambitions for his paycheck, his office co-workers are mostly comfortable with him but his boss wants more from him. He sometimes drinks a bit much and gets a bit emotional at after hours celebrations with his co-workers. He has put on a bit of extra weight and he certainly smokes too much. His doctor suggests that his headaches are due to his overindulgence in smoking and tells him to quit smoking, which he quietly does not do. His mother gives his wife and pretty much everyone a headache with her passive-aggressive personality while his father is rather mild. His young son is not doing as well in school as he could be, his teacher says he just does not try hard enough and prefers to just do his favorite things. One evening Herr R. takes a candle holder and bashes his visiting over-talkative neighbor, his wife and his sleeping son on the head, which kills all three and then he goes to work the next day, acting normally. When the police arrive he goes into the bathroom and hangs himself.

Wild Blue Yonder, 2005

NASA footage plus skin diving in the Antarctic. Long journey. I guess its about the long journey any kind of space exploration will require, and it appears that the trajectory of the industrialization of our culture will force us to develop more options for future life away from this polluted and abused planet. Or are we ourselves already renegade life forms from yet another previous culture escaping from a time far away?

The Wild Child, 1969

The story of a child who was discovered to be living in the woods as an animal, captured and brought to civilization reluctantly. An academic man takes an interest and hires a woman to help him care for the boy and attempt to socialize him. Progress is slow, and the lad has no vocal skills but shows promise with his abilities otherwise.

The World of Peter Sellers, 1971

Take a professional extrovert, make him a rich comedian, and film him in various situations. My favorite scene of course is below deck on the Queen Elizabeth II, where all these naked women are rowing, under the leadership of Raquel Welch. This has the ying tang song during the opening credits. Eedle I po.

Written on the Wind, 1956

The rich family adopted a poor boy who is friends of the children, a brother and sister. The rich children are rather wild but their friend provides some common sense. The boy met a girl, he fell in love at first sight, but the rich boy took over and married her and lives a clean and sober life for a change. After a year his doctor tells the rich man that he is unable to have children, which tears him apart. In the end it turns out the doctor is wrong, but I am getting ahead too far. The alcohol resumes. The rich sister craves the poor boy, but he is not interested, which frustrates her quite a bit. The wife becomes pregnant but in his alcoholic stupor the rich man assumes that his friend is the father. True enough the wife and friend are in love, but they never consummated their attraction, the marriage vows remained intact. The frustrated jealous sister tells her brother that he has been deceived by their friend, and in a drunken rage the rich guy obtains a gun and bad things happen.

The Wrong Man, 1956

Hitch’s social conscience film. Well done. Totally boring and heavy. Sure enough, the wrong guy gets arrested for a crime, fingered by the witnesses, sent to jail, put on trial and is about to be sent to prison when they find the right man. Looks just like the wrong man, but luckily he confesses. Hitch makes his appearance at the beginning as a fat shadow addressing the audience, this is a true story.

Wrong Move, 1975

The young man wants to be a writer but instead he is distracted by new friends. Natasja gets naked for a brief moment, and she is on film for the first time. Germans have a burden from the old days.

Young Aphrodites, 1963

Greek film made in the islands amongst the ruins. Starts with sheep herders in trouble in the desert, they come to the shore and not only is there water but there are women. There is a pubescent coupling which turns into a triangle; and an adult duo that starts with the woman shunning the man, but turning into her pursuit of him. When the rainy season comes the sheep herders head off and the fishermen return to their women, but we never see the fishermen. There are lots of interesting uses of nets, birds, rock and ruin formations, contrasting desert and shore. The original story is said to be from long ago and called Daphnis and Chloe.

The Young One, 1960

Escaping a lynch mob, the Traveling Man arrives at the island. The old man has just died, his grand daughter and the local game warden, Miller, are the only ones living on the island. Trav introduces himself to the girl, and he pays her $20 for the things he takes from the cabin, a shotgun and some food, later some supplies to repair his boat. The preacher man comes to bury the old man properly, he also baptizes the girl and learns that Miller has taken advantage of her innocence. He also happens to know the white woman who accuses Trav of rape, and he suspects that the troubled woman has fabricated the whole story in her alcoholic confusion. The preacher was brought to the island by an evil white man. There is almost another lynching, but the girl gives Trav his knife to cut himself free. It ends with the girl going with the preacher to live in a proper orphan's home, Miller helps Trav escape from the island, he might begin courting the girl properly, and the evil white man leaves to get the sheriff and a proper lynch mob, but Trav is going to be long gone by the time they get there.

Young Torless, 1968

The boy has been enrolled in a boy's school where he encounters some bullies humiliating another boy. They have a secret room and after lights out they congregate up there and play their games of humiliation. The victim true enough was guilty of stealing money, but rather than simply punish him the bullies decide to make him their special project and continue expanding their activities of pain. Young Torless ponders this plus the algebrian concept of imaginary numbers and decides not to join in, so he becomes a problem for the bullies. Then Young Torless decides he will leave the school, but he returns and is expelled as the bullies have prepared for his role in the drama they control. Barbara Steele plays a prostitute that the boys visit.

Youth Without Youth, 2007 

Spooky modern fairy tale. Old man gets another lifetime, or is it a dream? An old scholar gets hit by lightening, his youth is returned to him while he keeps his memories and he continues his scholarly research which brings him into contact with various sexy women and the Nazis. He might have dreamed all this.