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Groverdox
Reviews
Da zui xia (1966)
Great hero(ine) & villain but an underwhelming conclusion
In "Come Drink With Me", a young woman known as Golden Swallow goes to town to rescue her brother who is being ransomed by a heavily made up dandy known as Jade-Faced Tiger. Golden Swallow proves to be a formidable fighter, but is outnumbered, and a beggar named Drunken Cat, with an army of alfalfa-headed youngsters, comes to her aid.
Golden Swallow was wounded by a toxic dart from Tiger, so he takes her to his hut in the woods and nurses her back to health.
So far so good, right?
But then, something strange happens. Not only does the protagonist of this movie change, so too does the bad guy. We had an all time great hero(ine) in Golden Swallow. We're still getting this stupid woke garbage about how there aren't enough "strong female characters" in movies or whatever nonsense. Hello? Here's a great one from sixty years ago. Why is that still an issue? Oh, that's right: it's because feminists always have to act like we're in the 1950s to try to stay relevant.
The different bad guy, though, is an even worse choice. The manicured, coiffed and made-up Jade-Faced tiger could have been an all-time great bad guy. But instead, we get a different guy... I think.
You see, the story kind of lost me when they swapped people around. Like so, so, so many martial arts flicks, this one's story is just too complicated. Apparently Tiger gets his comeuppance (not a spoiler, because you know he's going to), and I don't even remember seeing that. I do remember Drunken Cat killing some other guy, though, who I assume was the new antagonist.
If they'd just kept the great heroine played by Cheng Pei-Pei front and centre, this movie could have been great. Instead, it's a great protagonist and antagonist, wasted in a disappointing final act.
She's Gotta Have It (1986)
"please baby please baby please..."
Spike Lee's first movie is a good one. It has a similar scrappy feeling to Martin Scorsese's first one, but is surprisingly more watchable.
It also features some of the director's trademarks, ie. Actors directly addressing the camera, and Spike Lee casting himself (for better or worse).
The movie is about a character named Nola Darling, who has three men all jocking for her, and one woman, too. The men are Jamie, a decent man, Greer, a self-obsessed male model, and Mars, the one played by Spike Lee, who is kind of immature and you have to wonder what Nola sees in him.
Lee hadn't mastered breaking the fourth wall yet. Sometimes, the actors' speech to the audience sounds stilted and weird, and I was reminded of the beginning sequence of "Plan 9 From Outer Space".
Also, at one point Lee breaks the fourth wall by mistake, when he glances at his own camera. It looks like he's worried whoever's holding the thing might have put it in the wrong place, or maybe they forgot to turn it on.
This movie is mostly pretty interesting and enjoyable. I did lose interest at some points. There's one scene I have to tell you about, though, and that's a rape toward the end of the movie.
Now, that got my attention, because aside from it being obviously horrible to watch, it was also totally unexpected. The movie has a light, amusing tone, and then it drops that on you. I wasn't sure what to make of it.
It seems like Spike Lee didn't know how to end the movie. Maybe he slept on it, and came back to the screenplay in a totally different, more aggressive mood.
Slumber Party Massacre (2021)
Lame remake is neither homage or parody
The original flicks in the Slumber Party franchise are remembered, if at all, for being among the few (the only?) slasher movies written and directed by women.
Aside from that, they are only distinguished, if at all, by having more gratuitous nudity than most other slashers, having a killer whose identity is known from the beginning and not fodder for a twist ending, and for being perhaps the most formulaic film series in an already notoriously formulaic sub-genre.
Seriously, the three movies in the original trilogy are basically the same. They repeat key scenes, and don't seem to deviate from the first film's plot at all.
The only difference is that the budget gets a bit better, and in the second (or third?) movie the bad guy is a zombified rockstar with a drill coming off his guitar, which he uses to kill people.
Supposedly the whole "you have sex, you die" rule with slashers was even more evident in the Slumber Party flicks, but I never noticed.
Anyway, you could be forgiven (I guess) for expecting some kind of feminist subtext in a series of movies written/directed by women, from a subgenre typically viewed by men. Or at least a new approach to the material? You'd be disappointed.
It feels like with this remake - which was also written and directed by women - the filmmakers tried to right the wrongs of the original trilogy by finally injecting some kind of girl power angle into it. They fail in that aim, with just a couple of throwaway scenes (or mere lines of dialogue) that will barely strike a chord with anyone in the audience or even register as feminist odes.
The parts that were apparently supposed to have a feminist point are few and far between and stick out like a sore thumb amongst the tedium and confusion of the rest of the movie. Remember what I said about the original movies having copious female nudity? Well, here there's one scene showing a guy in the shower with a close-up of his butt.
The original movies all have a scene in which the boys spy the girls undressed. Here, the girls spy the boys having a pillow fight or some such nonsense, and it's so weird it's inexplicable.
The movie's tone isn't light or madcap enough to permit these scenes so they're just weird and confusing.
The movie also contains other weird references to the original flicks in throwaway lines of dialogue and blink-and-you'll-miss-them scenes, that seem unnecessary, but at least aren't as bizarre as the above.
Do the filmmakers of this remake like the original films, or hate them? It's hard to tell.
What I do know is that people will go on remembering "Slumber Party Massacre", if only for its rare pedigree as a female written, female directed slasher movie in the heyday of the genre.
Nobody will remember this remake, or homage, or parody, or whatever it's supposed to be.
Chung Hing sam lam (1994)
A special energy in an improvised film
"Chungking Express" is the kind of movie you might have to see more than once to fully appreciate it. It took me a while to understand the movie's approach and get into it, but when that happened, I started to enjoy it.
I'm surprised its rating on IMDB is so high. Perhaps that's from repeat viewers.
The movie is kind of like jazz. I wasn't too surprised to read in the trivia that Wong Kar-Wai wrote each scene either the day before shooting, or the morning of. It feels improvised, and the movie has a pretty tenuous grasp of plot, if you can say it really has one. It also seems to end out of nowhere, but by the time you get to that point, you're not surprised.
I was surprised by the way the movie suddenly changed protagonists about mid-way. It felt sort of like "Lost Highway", or "That Obscure Object of Desire", where you're wondering if it's supposed to be the same character, just played by a different actor, or perhaps the first character morphed into the second.
It's weird that they are both cops. You'd think they'd make them more different like "Lost Highway" did. Here, it's a cop (presumably a detective) who is fixated on a blonde-haired, dark glasses wearing female criminal. Midway, we get a different cop, wearing a uniform this time, and he may or may not be into a short-haired, babin' little pixie who works at a restaurant.
At least, I assumed it was heading that way, but then it seemed like maybe she became interested in him? At least she kept showing up when he was eating dinner, and at one stage maybe broke into his apartment?
Movies like this leave you with a lot of unanswered questions. If you're one of those people who needs everything in a movie to make sense, you should avoid it like the plague. But if you're someone who likes movies that break free from conventional ideas of plot and structure, you should check it out. There's an energy to it, a joy of creation, that most movies don't have.
Beaches (1988)
That's what friends are for
I have just finished what feels like the trifecta of women's movies/weepies: "Steel Magnolias", "Fried Green Tomatoes", and now "Beaches". These all have a predominantly female main cast, are all about friendships among women, and all feature sad deaths.
Of these, "Steel Magnolias" is probably the best, especially with its great performance from Shirley MacLaine as the unforgettable "Ouiser". Coming in a close second is "Beaches", which is a good movie with moments of greatness when the inimitable Bette Midler performs on stage.
("Tomatoes" is last, and if you want to know why you'll have to read my review.)
Midler's performances are the only real source of life in this movie. I love Barbara Hershey, and here she is playing against type as an uptight WASP against Midler's brassy, irrepressible self. However, right when the movie starts letting her take centre stage so we can focus on her performance, the movie cuts it short.
This flick is supposed to be about real women who could really exist, their thoughts and feelings, the way their friendship could enjoy despite their differences and the men that come between them. A great movie could be made of this, but "Beaches" isn't that one. It just doesn't come off the rails of its clichéd plot often enough.
Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
Too unbelievable and clichéd for my taste
"Fried Green Tomatoes" starts well, but heads for tedious clichéd territory, and ends with perhaps the most predictable twist I have ever seen in a movie. We find out that the person telling the story is really the one in the story... who else could it have been? Why treat that like a revelation? Who didn't see it coming?
It reminded me, disappointingly, of "Where the Crawdads Sing", looking authentic but set entirely in Movieworld. I could have done without the stuff about racism and the KKK. It's like the movie is trying to set the characters up as superheroes when it should be trying to make us take them seriously as people who could have existed.
I see presentism was alive and well in '91. I thought it was a more recent phenomenon. It's a story we're supposed to believe takes place in the '30s, but has clearly been filtered through the '90s to appeal to modern sensibilities, so after a believable beginning, "Fried Green Tomatoes" just feels like fantasy and wishful thinking.
One thing that elevated the movie, though, was Kathy Bates' character and her performance. She is the one the story is being told to, and we see her change throughout. It's enjoyable to watch. I still cared about her, even after I'd lost interest in the story that catalysed her.
Steel Magnolias (1989)
Ouiser
"Steel Magnolias" is a movie I believe I've known about my entire life. It was released about the time I became cognizant of such things, at age four or five. I think I can remember my mum talking about it, along with "Fried Green Tomatoes", which I'm also about to watch.
The title, indeed, is unforgettable. And intriguing. The movie makes no reference to it, nor explanation. I have seen online that some people have argued it means the characters in the movie are "as delicate as magnolias, but as tough as steel". If that's true it's a fitting title.
What's more indelible, though, and what I'll know I'll remember, is Shirley MacLaine's performance as "Ouiser" - and who could forget that name. She's like the engine that powers the whole movie. The other actresses all play off her.
The movie has a bunch of other great actresses in it, though, and there's not really a weak link. Even the smaller male roles are played by great performers like Sam Shepard, Tom Skerrit, Dylan McDermott, Kevin J. O'Connor.
I wasn't sure if I was going to keep on with this movie at first. It seemed like it might be one of those flicks where the acting is great, but it's like the movie keeps you at a distance. It shows a totally believable world with some colourful characters but you're not sure where you fit in as a viewer.
I'm glad I didn't quit on it. I found the throughline eventually, which is Julia Roberts' character. I kind of knew where the movie was headed (no spoilers) because I read the movie's tagline, and it was pretty predictable. Perhaps, for that, the twist didn't have the emotional impact it should have had.
You know what? I'm going to revisit this movie later. I think it might be the kind of thing that improves on second viewing.
Night Shift (1982)
Good comedy, actually funny in places, but not too memorable
"Night Shift" is a pretty good comedy. It's actually laugh out loud funny a few times, which I didn't expect, and its leads, Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton, are both really good in it.
In the movie, Winkler plays against type as a milquetoast morgue worker who is shunted into the night shift to make way for his boss's son. He is assigned a partner in a yahoo played by Keaton. Winkler's life was pretty much set out for him as he is engaged to a coldhearted woman from rich stock named Charlotte, but when he realises he and his neighbour, a prostitute, are both working the night shift, he discovers was true love is.
He also ends up working as a pimp, and perhaps the nicest pimp in film history. You see, when Winkler starts helping out his prostitute neighbour, he realises that the girls she works with would be safer under his protection, and the morgue turns into a catch for hookers, in a pretty funny development I didn't see coming, knowing nothing about the movie going in.
The movie has a number of other recognizable faces in small roles, like Richard Belzer (Winkler's cousin), Clint Howard (the director's brother), Ron Howard (the director), and early roles from Kevin Costner and Shannen Doherty. Joe Spinell, unpleasant actor from an unpleasant film called "Maniac", also makes an appearance.
I was surprised at the number of bare breasts in this movie. There's no swearing that I could detect, and the on-screen violence is minimal and bloodless. In two or three scenes, though, there's nudity. It's like a PG flick with surprise boobs. Was that added to cash in on the '80s sex comedy craze, with dreck like "Porky's" being big successes?
I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. The only reason why I don't give it a better rating on here is because I don't think I'll remember it for much longer. It's enjoyable, but not too memorable.
Lord of Illusions (1995)
I couldn't follow it
I wanted to like "Lord of Illusions" more. I love some of Clive Barker's stuff. "Night Breed" is a classic, but you have to watch the director's cut. I watched the DC of "Lord of Illusions", but just didn't get into it. The movie is too confusing. It's the kind of movie where you're trying to work out who everyone is and what they're doing and while you're thinking about that, a bunch of stuff happens and now you're even further behind.
The movie has some good ingredients. I think Scott Bakula was a cool choice for the protagonist. And poor Daniel von Bargen (R. I. P.) as the main bad guy. And Famke Janssen. Not sure about Kevin J. O'Connor as the illusionist, though. He's not charismatic enough.
I also liked the visuals. The special effects look dated now, of course, but I still think they look cool.
I just wish I was able to follow the story.
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
"I'm not insane, do you hear me? I'm not insane!"
So here's a small classic. I can't believe I had never seen this before. Horror movies, especially decent ones, were pretty light on the ground in the nineties, maybe because there were so many of them in the decade before. Perhaps this is why I hadn't seen it.
In the movie, an insurance agent investigates situations in which people who have read the books of reclusive novelist Sutter Cane begin to go crazy. He discovers that the fictional town used in Cane's stories is actually real, and more and more, his life and the world around him are influenced by Cane's writing, to the extent that he begins to believe he is existing in a story Cane is writing. Cane is god.
This is a classic movie that deserves a cult following. We should expect nothing less from the late John Carpenter, one of the greatest cult directors in history. I thought the idea was really novel and cool, and I appreciated the subtle nods to the great H. P. Lovecraft's work.
Last but not least, the movie features a brilliant performance from Sam Neill. How many horror movies can you think of with great acting?
For that reason, and all the others mentioned, "In the Mouth of Madness" is a small classic that deserves reappraisal.
Furyô anego den: Inoshika Ochô (1973)
Good - well shot, involving, but with a too-obscure plot
Every now and then I start to wonder if my attention span is now so bad that I just can't watch or enjoy a movie anymore. Typically this happens after a string of movies that were supposed to be good but only succeeded in boring me.
Then I discover a movie like "Sex and Fury". This one did not bore me. In fact, it had me engaged from the beginning.
The Japanese seemed to handle their exploitation films like they could have been great art. They're much better shot, and seem to have much better production values, than Western b-movies.
They also sometimes seem to transcend the exploitation label. Even full on gore flicks from Japan, like "Splatter: Naked Blood", feel like more than just an excuse for violence or sex.
"Sex and Fury" is no exception. It does have a fair bit of sex in it, but despite the surprising inclusion of Christina Lindberg, it never feels like sexploitation.
The movie also has some violence, though it's not as graphic as you'd expect for an exploitation flick made in Japan around the time the Lone Wolf & Cub movies were coming out.
The movie never seems to lose its sense of purpose or plot. Unfortunately that leads me to about the only problem I had with the flick, which is that I typically found myself unable to follow the story. I got that it's a revenge tale, not unlike "Lady Snowblood". I was intrigued by the introduction of Western actors, particularly a man who is out to start some kind of opium war to Japan's detriment. I wasn't really sure what Lindberg was doing in the movie, though.
I can't give it ultra high marks for this, but I still say check it out.
Wo hu cang long (2000)
It just never grabbed my attention
Sometimes it seems like I have a sixth sense in regards to the movies I will and won't enjoy. Case in point: movies like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", that I have known about for years, and intended to watch for the same length of time.
I have wanted to watch "Crouching Tiger" since it came out. That's more than twenty years. What took me so long? I think that's where the sixth sense comes in. Perhaps I always knew on some level I wasn't going to enjoy it, which is what kept me away. But how could I possibly have known that?
I'm like the Nostradamus of film.
Anyway, a review (of sorts):
I don't really know what this movie was about. It only got my attention maybe once in its entire length. I read online that it was something about people stealing swords. The only bit I paid attention to was when the beautiful Zhang Ziyi was living with some bandit guy and kept attacking him and spitting on him. That got my attention, maybe because it was smaller in scale than the rest of the movie, so it was easier to focus on it. I don't know.
What was the deal with all the people flying through the air in this movie? There's some wonky wire-fu in Shaw Bros. Flicks but I don't remember the people ever defying gravity like a superhero. I never got used to the sight of people flying. It looked weird, like a special effect in a Jean Cocteau movie.
I also didn't enjoy any of the action sequences. It's pretty much all sword fighting, not kung-fu. Maybe I just don't like sword-fighting scenes in movies. The scenes with that in "A Touch of Zen" didn't interest me either.
The Right Stuff (1983)
An underrated and forgotten classic
At last I've found a movie that'd been on my to-watch list for years that turned out to be pretty good when I actually watched it.
At first I balked at the length, being that it's over three hours long. But I knew early on I was in for the long haul. The movie is consistently entertaining and engaging. Also it has a number of fantastic actors in it, like Ed Harris, Sam Shepherd, Barbara Hershey, Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid, and small roles from Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer among others.
The aeronautic footage also still looks impressive. I thought it might be showing its age now, but I found it more interesting than that in the recent Top Gun movie, which I thought was very overrated.
The movie also gives powerful roles to its women characters, without it ever feeling preachy. We see what the test pilots go through and the risks they take, and we also see what this does to their wives.
It sucks that this movie tanked at the box office. It totally deserved to do well.
Xia nü (1971)
Disappointing
"A Touch of Zen" is one of those movies that had been on my to-watch list for years or even decades and for some reason I never got around to it. Well, I just watched it, and I don't know why it always seems like movies that have been on my list for ages never live up to expectations. "Tombstone" didn't, "Das Boot" didn't, and now this hasn't.
The movie got my attention immediately and made me think it was something special because it is so well shot. It also seems to be the only kung fu flick ever made that has gotten serious critical consideration (I believe it was screened at Cannes).
I lost the plot thread pretty early on and didn't know what the movie was about. I was just waiting for it to end. Also, the fight scenes all sucked.
Drive-Away Dolls (2024)
Rare believable lesbian film, often laugh-out-loud funny, with great star turns, though confusingly plotted
While watching "Drive-Away Dolls", I kept thinking about how few lesbian-themed movies there are. Off the top of my head, I can think of "Bound" and "Personal Best", and thinking harder, "Blue is the Warmest Colour" and "My Summer of Love".
This movie feels more authentically lesbian than all of those. When it was over, I was very surprised to see that it was directed by a man, and a famous director, to boot. At least three out of the four movies I named above (possibly all of them) also treat lesbianism as kind of a passing fad, like something one or both of the characters is trying to get it out of their system. "Drive-Away Dolls" might be the most lived in and believable look at same-sex female relationships/lifestyles I've seen yet.
This is funny because the movie is a pretty silly farce in terms of plot. It's something to do with dildos made of casts of male politician's penises?
I didn't really get that part, but I got the sense it didn't matter too much.
What really impresses in the movie, and what I'll remember, is the relationships between the main characters and details of their lives, which just feel "real", and particularly, Margaret Qualley's performance. I thought Qualley was incapable of being in a movie without getting naked, so it's nice to know that's not the case. Here she even has a joyful masturbation scene without showing too much skin.
Qualley is a treasure. Not only beautiful and apparently up for any role, but also extremely talented and a force of nature.
I also really like Beanie Feldstein, and Geraldine Viswanathan is hard not to root for.
I often laughed out loud watching this flick. I suspected Coen-involvement from the colourful small-town characters that come in and out of the movie's road trip story. There's even a pair of goons that includes a big quiet guy and a funny looking little guy who talks a lot (a la "Fargo").
I can't give it full marks, though, because I didn't understand its story too well. It seemed like the plot and the characters were too at odds with each other, like they didn't find a way to make them gel and seem part of the same world. I still say check it out.
Tombstone (1993)
Dum dum dah-dum dum!!! *gunshots ring out*
So I finally watched "Tombstone". It's one of those movies that's been on my list for perhaps decades and I just never got around to it. I finally did, because it really seems to have gathered a cult following long after it came out.
Unfortunately I think that following is undue. I just didn't like it that much. The movie doesn't form a cohesive whole. I thought of that famous Shakespearean phrase, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." There's a lot of gunshots, but no interesting gunfights. I kind of got tired of the sound of gunshots because they seemed thrown in at random. The movie has a romantic subplot that does nothing but provide the movie with a romantic subplot. It adds nothing and feels unnecessary.
And the music. Are you familiar with the term Mickey-Mousing? It's when the soundtrack to a film is overbearing in how much it points out to you the way you're supposed to be feeling at any given moment. Plenty of '90s flicks did that, so it's not only "Tombstone". But I felt it more here. Maybe the musicians were trying to compete with all those bloody gunshots.
What everybody talks about with this movie is Val Kilmer's performance as Doc Holliday, and it's true, it is impressive. It's probably the only thing about this movie I'll remember, truth be told. But the thing is that when a movie has a loaded cast like this one does, and you only ever hear people talk about one actor, that's not a mark in the movie's favour. The big bad here is played by Powers Boothe, a guy so awesome at playing bad guys that he single-handedly elevated a mid-tier Van Damme movie and turned it into something memorable. If he could play one of the best bad guys ever in a "Die Hard"-rip off, what could he do here, surrounded by other professionals?
Well, the answer is, not much, as it turns out. It feels like he's barely in it. The parts with him have so many other characters, so many cuts, so many gunshots, so much headache-inducing music, that it all works to distract you from it.
There is another stand out in the flick aside from Kilmer, though, and that's Michael Biehn. I had never seen him play a bad guy in a movie before, and here, well, does he ever play a bad guy. The character he plays is slimy evil incarnate. The movie should have let him take centre stage.
That's the problem. Not much is allowed to take centre stage here, so it's all chaotic and noisy and uninvolving. The movie has a cast like an epic, and a plot that doesn't justify it. A classic Western would have introduced the most important characters clearly and emphatically, letting you know that they're the ones to pay attention to, and then would have gotten busy with the machinations of the plot, involving you in the lives of the characters. Here, we just get some clichés like the unnecessary romance, and then a lot of music and gunshots, signifying nothing.
Colors (1988)
Too confusing, with too many characters, and a very unlikeable lead in Sean Penn's rookie cop
"Colors" is one of those movies that I caught on TV years ago and couldn't remember much about. I just knew it starred Sean Penn as a horrible, puffed up, P. O. C. Brutalising cop, and Robert Duvall as his more level-headed and streetwise partner. I remembered its theme song, though I didn't know it was produced by the legendary Ice-T. I also remembered Damon Wayans providing some out-of-place comic relief.
It's also one of those movies where everything I remembered about it was also everything memorable about it. The script is just too confusing, too hard to follow, with too many gangsters from too many gangs. If they wanted to make a movie immersed in the gang culture of South (and East) Los Angeles, they shouldn't have used the police characters at all.
The movie has quite a few small roles/cameos given to great character actors like Don Cheadle, Jack Nance, Maria Conchita Alonso, and the Candyman himself, Tony Todd... apparently before he developed that amazing voice. These walk-ons gave me something to do while I slogged through the movie. I needed some kind of plot thread to grasp onto instead of freefalling in this maze of characters and unclear motivations. I don't even really know what the movie was about.
In Too Deep (1999)
Where was Nas?
"In Too Deep" carries with it one revelation: LL Cool J makes a very good bad guy. Like so many rappers I knew he'd dabbled in acting, but mostly I just remember him from small roles in "Deep Blue Sea" and "Halloween H20". It's been so long since I've seen either of those.
Here, LL is the antagonist to Omar Epps' protag, and he gives the movie a much needed source of interest. You see, the movie doesn't have that much to recommend it besides LL and maybe Epps. There are some great character actors in there, like Stanley Tucci, Pam Grier, David Patrick Kelly, Robert LaSardo. They just don't do very much.
As a matter of fact, the movie doesn't do very much. It's pretty forgettable. There are too many characters, but only Epps and LL stand out. The plot is also too obscure. It's unlikely I'll remember anything about it. The only scene that registered showed LL torturing a guy on a pool table, and apparently ramming the cue up his jacksie.
Deep Cover (1992)
Good performances from miscast actors
I think the two leads in "Deep Cover" were miscast. When we first meet Laurence Fishburne's character, he is being described as a guy who is an easy fit for a criminal role in an undercover operation because of many criminal character traits he possesses. I was surprised to hear that being said of a Fishburne character. When did he ever play a bad guy? He's a straight arrow in every movie I've seen him in.
It would have been so much more involving to have him playing a straight arrow here at the beginning of the movie, and show him gradually getting corrupted, and coming close to that, by the criminal acts he is required to commit. As is, his character barely seems to change. Maybe that's the point? It certainly makes it less interesting to watch.
Jeff Goldblum is an actor you either get or you don't. I get him: he's one of the most charismatic screen presences I've ever seen. Here he is kind of restrained, less wisecracking, less of an ironic distance. The whole point of his role - and indeed, the movie - is that you can't keep a distance in the life of drugs, guns and money. I didn't really get his character. Is he supposed to be cut out for the criminal life, or not? Sometimes he seems like a rich kid in over his head, other times he seems like he could be the next drug baron.
Both performances seem off the mark, but they're still good, I guess because Fishburne and Goldblum are heavyweights that are good in anything. And I still liked "Deep Cover", though it's not particularly memorable.
Menace II Society (1993)
A mostly forgotten classic
"Menace II Society" is like the dark side of "Boyz N the Hood". That movie was about a guy from the crime ridden inner city streets of Los Angeles who nevertheless had everything going for him, looks, smarts, charisma, a conscience. There was never any doubt he was going to be a success story, and make it out of there: the proverbial rose that grew from concrete.
"Menace II Society" asks us to regard the kind of young black men who do not make it out, and perhaps that's why this movie isn't as well known or as successful. Caine, the protagonist, is not a bad person, but he's grown up around drugs, crime, guns, and witnessed his first murder in early childhood.
We know, right from the beginning, that this story isn't going to have a happy ending. The first scene is unforgettable for how shocking and confronting it is. Remember Furious Styles, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s dad in "Boyz N the Hood"? He was a strong, proud black man, and "Menace" makes you realise how lucky the protagonist of that film was to have him in his corner. Caine, the protagonist of "Menace II Society", only has a couple of people trying to help him go straight, but the movie makes us see them as the average black teen might. Caine's grandfather constantly quotes the Bible in the kind of voice old men use when they're used to nobody listening to them. Then there's Sharif, Caine's Nation of Islam friend, who just seems like a parody of that religion. None of the other characters take these two seriously.
A far more indelible presence in the movie comes in the form of Larenz Tate's O-Dog, one of the most chilling psychopaths I've ever seen in film. This character helps us see that Caine is indeed not evil by contrast, but his closeness with O-Dog and other killers also further suggests he isn't going to make it out.
"Menace II Society" was directed by 21-year-old twin brothers known as the Hughes Brothers. They were first timers and it was a very impressive debut. It's not so surprising to me that they didn't become better known, though, because sometimes their direction feels a little pedestrian. It does put you right in Caine's world, though, and just like him, you sometimes feel suffocated, like you can't take much more of it.
Fresh (1994)
The loss of innocence
"Fresh" has one amazingly powerful scene I had never forgotten. In it, the titular Fresh, a twelve-year-old boy who works as a drug smuggler, also has a crush on a girl called Rosie. Some men are playing basketball nearby, in which a much younger player is running rings around a young man who is getting more and more fed up. Fresh is tossing up whether or not to approach Rosie, then she approaches him - and then the aggravated young man pulls out a gun and starts shooting.
Can anyone forget that scene?
Besides that, the movie is pretty good, but for me it was held back by a plot that was just too hard to follow. It's one of those things where you keep hearing characters' names, but don't know which name belongs to which character.
I got that Fresh becomes more calculating by the end of the movie. Is it supposed to be that everything he's been through leading up to that has hardened him? The kid that plays Fresh gives a captivating performance, but sometimes I found myself wondering how likely his behaviour is. It wasn't so much that his character developed. It was more like he stopped being believable as a character and turned into a plot device.
I will say one last thing: "Fresh" is very different as a '90s hood movie in that it doesn't feature wall-to-wall hip hop music. That really makes it stand out.
The Holdovers (2023)
A return to form, but not one of Payne's best
It seems "The Holdovers" is a return to form for its fantastic director, Alexander Payne, after "Downsizing" didn't do too well. I haven't seen it, but I know it was a box-office bomb.
Perhaps that movie bombing is the reason why Payne went with a pretty familiar plot with his next movie. Hollywood loves movies about cranky older men learning to soften and relate to other people again, usually with a child as the catalyst, ie. "Saint Vincent", "A Man Called Otto", "Bad Santa". It's been done so many times, but Payne, Giamatti, the screenwriter and a newcomer named Dominic Sessa elevate the material mostly above cliché.
I thought this was pretty good, but it's not up there with the best of Payne's work, ie. "Election", "About Schmidt", "Nebraska". The details in the direction and screenplay are very impressive, letting you know you're in capable hands. The movie just never really grabbed me, though.
Premiers désirs (1983)
More of the same boring nude hijinks on an idyllic beach in slow motion and soft focus... ow, my head
So here's the last movie photographer-turned-filmmaker-wannabe David Hamilton made. It's more of the same. There is minimal plot and characterisation. The movie mostly just shows girls running around on some idyllic island, in and out of their clothes.
The movie also has Hamilton's constant theme of unrequited love. Here, three girls wash up on an island, where one of the girls falls in love with an older man, but he's already married. And a younger guy falls in love with her, whereas his brother (I think) falls in love with one of the other girls. The brother is a fat guy who looks like that stock character in all eighties sex comedies, you know, the fat-guy-who's-always-eating. He's not always eating here, though, nor is he supposed to be funny.
Hamilton's movies all look like one of his photography books come to life. His soft focus and idyllic locations make the movies seem like recorded dreams. Perhaps they're Hamilton's himself. This also keeps you at bay from any story or characterisation, so I guess its' just as well there's generally not much of an attempt at either in his movies.
I'm glad this is the last one, so I won't have to watch any more. If I see one more soft-focussed bowl of fruit, I'll explode.
It's also worth noting that the girls in "First Desires" aren't even that good looking, despite the fact that they are presumably all models. This is worth noting because the girls in Hamilton's flicks usually aren't that great looking, surprisingly. The camera also shows little of their faces anyway. It's more interested in their bodies.
Un été à Saint-Tropez (1983)
David Hamilton brings a movie camera to a photshoot
So here's the fourth movie photographer-turned-filmmaker David Hamilton made. He was famous for taking photos of nude girls in late adolescence, with that "soft focus" style that made people think he smeared vaseline on the lens.
Regrettably, he carried that over into his filmmaking.
Anyway, Hamilton-the-director's first two movies, "Bilitis" and "Laura", were both very similar tales of young girls in a halcyon bygone era that possibly never existed, frolicking nude with other girls on the beach, bathing nude with other girls, sleeping, again most probably nude, again with other girls.
Then the plots kicked in, and the movie mostly left nudity behind, which was the only reason anyone would have ever watched these movies in the first place.
Hamilton seems to have never gotten much renown as a filmmaker. He's always known as a pervy photographer. Maybe that's because his movies mostly just feel like he took a movie camera to one of his photo shoots. The girls in his movies are all doing the kind of things you'd see in a photography book. In some shots, such as one in "Summer in Saint Tropez", they're filmed in obvious photographic poses, arrayed nude around a fruitbowl. The only reason why anybody would ever arrange themselves nude around a fruitbowl with a bunch of other nude girls is, frankly, so a photograph could be taken of them. Did Hamilton forget he was holding a movie camera, and not one that takes still shots?
The movie Hamilton made before this one, "Tender Cousins", actually showed promise. It seemed the photographer was coming into his own as a filmmaker. It was no masterpiece, but it had a believable sense of time and place, and a plot that didn't get in the way. Perhaps if he'd continued in this vein, he might have made a name for himself in the moving picture business.
I'm surprised I've been able to write so much in this review already. It is mostly because I haven't yet said anything much about the movie I'm actually supposed to be reviewing, "A Summer in Saint Tropez". You see, with this one it seems Hamilton just went back to square one. Remember I said that in his first couple of movies, plot got in the way of the nudity? Not so here, because there is no plot. Nor is there any characters. Or dialogue. It's like Hamilton just decided to bung out all that filmmaker stuff and just brought a movie camera to one of his photo shoots.
There being so little to talk about, all I can really say about the movie is to ask a question: How can something with such copious female nudity also be so boring? If you never thought looking at nude models could get old, you should watch this.
Nightmare Beach (1989)
Forgettable slasher with a ridiculous killer's MO
I was perplexed at how notorious Italian director Umberto Lenzi (of "Cannibal Ferox" fame) made such a generic slasher flick as this one. IMDB has our backs: the trivia says that Lenzi didn't really direct it, it was made by a guy called Harry Kirkpatrick. Lenzi was only on set as an advisor to him.
About the only thing that sets this movie apart is the ridiculous method the killer uses to dispatch his victims. He rides a motorbike everywhere (and his helmet serves as a mask) and he coaxes people into sitting on it behind him. Then he pulls a lever and the bike turns into an electric chair, frying the passenger with electricity... but leaving the killer completely unharmed.
How is it possible that he is immune to electrocution?
The movie also has some nonsense about there being a conspiracy to cover up the killer's crimes, but that didn't register, and nor did any of the characters. The protagonist doesn't work on the big screen; the guy I assumed was going to be the lead gets killed, leaving us with the other guy.
And there's nowhere near enough nudity.