An introverted teenager tells his parents he is going on a ski trip, but instead spends his time alone in a basement.
Slight, but engaging tale is mostly focused on the teenager siblings' interactions in the basement, two troubled kids against the ruthlessness of the outside world.
While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an
incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome
his heroin addiction.
From memory: A movie, just as sleazy as its plot line suggests, gets an artsy treatment, so there a few good set pieces, but generally it's quite a disappointment.
Halliwell (no star): "Interminable catalogue of events few people wanted to experience; the kindest description would be 'pretentious claptrap'."
Maltin***: "Initially dazzling tale......becomes ponderous when it turns into a mother-son soap opera with incestuous implications. Cinematically exciting, though, with a bravura finale."
An American college student in Rome and his sister in New York
investigate a series of killings in both locations where their resident
addresses are the domain of two covens of witches.
From memory: The plot is barely comprehensible, but seen as an intense, horrifying and mesmerizing dream, made with a keen eye for style, it is a quite fascinating work of art.
Halliwell (no star): "Absurdly overplotted and mainly incomprehensible shocker with some small pretensions to style."
Maltin**1/2: "Surreal, hypnotic shocker...is short on sense, but long on style."
