Sunday 31 March 2019
The Mummy (2017)
An ancient Egyptian princess is awakened from her crypt beneath the desert, bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia, and terrors that defy human comprehension.
Thoroughly derivative and superfluous attempt to establish another franchise based on the Universal horror classic (and somehow mistaking zombies for mummies); besides some splashy action and effects there's nothing much to be thrilled about.
Saturday 30 March 2019
Grace of Monaco (2014)
The story of former Hollywood star Grace Kelly's crisis of marriage and identity, during a political dispute between Monaco's Prince Rainier III and France's Charles De Gaulle, and a looming French invasion of Monaco in the early 1960s.
A quite pedestrian depiction of an episode of Monegasque history and Grace Kelly's part in it; Nicole Kidman's fits into the title role effortlessly.
Evil Ed (1995)
A mild-mannered film editor is assigned to cut a series of infamous slasher films and is driven murderously insane by the miles of extremely violent footage he edits.
Friday 29 March 2019
Thursday 28 March 2019
Marius et Jeannette (1997)
Marius is the keeper of an abandoned cement works staying high above the quarter of l'Estaque in Marseilles. Jeannette is bringing up her two children alone with her poor checkout operator ...
Likable, but a bit in-your-face romance in a proletarian milieu with some very good set pieces; the wonderful cast makes it worth the watch.
Halliwell*: "A soft-centred romance about a couple experiencing hard times; the craft of its director and the performances of the cast compensate for its old-fashioned tone."
Una ondata di piacere (1975)
A young couple becomes embroiled with the personal problems of another couple on a yacht moored off Sicily during a turbulent weekend of fun, games, sex games, betrayal, spouse abuse, and murder.
Wednesday 27 March 2019
Evils of the Night (1985)
Sex-hungry teens are kidnapped by auto mechanics, who take them to a rural hospital run by aliens who need their blood as the key to their own longevity.
Tuesday 26 March 2019
The Uninvited (1944)
A composer and his sister discover that the reason they are able to purchase a beautiful gothic seacoast mansion very cheaply is the house's unsavory past.
Superior ghost story made in good Hollywood tradition with some good Gothic atmsophere, a bit creepy, but also good-natured.
Halliwell**: "One of the cinema's genuine ghost stories, and a good one, though encased in a rather stiff production; it works up to a fine pitch of frenzy."
Maltin***1/2: "Eerie ghost susenser...No trick ending in this ingenious film..."
The Circus (1928)
Charlie Chaplin distraught after a studio fire during the production of ‘The Circus’
Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957)
An American hotel mogul becomes smitten with a young Italian woman when buying a hotel in Rome, but to marry this gal, he has to get her three older sisters married off.
Monday 25 March 2019
As Sete Vampiras (1986)
A botanist is incapable of handling a carnivore plant that turns its victims into vampires.
Sunday 24 March 2019
Brecht (2019)
Starting from the year 1956, Brecht's year of death, the film looks back on the time of the First World War and the life Bertolt Brecht.
Docudrama is quite informative about the author's life and work, but is rather stiff as a film; the cast is excellent, though.
Skazka skazok (1979)
Distant, well-worn memories of childhood are inhabited by a little gray wolf.
This near-masterpiece of animated cinema uses simple, but enigmatic images to tell a complex fanatsical tale of love and loss.
Saturday 23 March 2019
Spasmo (1974)
On a beach a young couple happens on what appears to be a corpse, but upon further inspection, they see that the woman is still alive.
Friday 22 March 2019
Mon pire cauchemar (2011)
After two guys become best friends, one's mom -- a prim, proper career woman -- meets the other's dad, who lives out of his van.
Modern-day screwball comedy is more satirical than humorous; against all odds, Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Poelvoorde make it work.
Kuime (2014)
Fiction begins to become reality for three actors as they rehearse a stage production of a classic Japanese ghost story.
Thursday 21 March 2019
House on Bare Mountain (1962)
The Wolfman, Dracula and Frankenstein spy on a girls' school in the mountains, where most of the girls spend their time sunbathing in the nude.
Wednesday 20 March 2019
Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)
Johnny Blaze, tortured by the Ghost Rider's curse, gets a chance of redemption through protecting the Devil's son, whose father is pursuing him.
Pure trash cinema: silly story, mayhem and a cast of overacting stars.
Maltin BOMB: "Even worse than the 2007 film; the potential for spectacle is trashed by the relatively low budget."
Horns (2013)
In the aftermath of his girlfriend's mysterious death, a young man awakens to find strange horns sprouting from his temples.
Starts off more like a fantastical satire and descends into melodramtic horror; pure nonsense for a limited audience.
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