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Reviews
The Definition of Insanity (2004)
Struggling actor overload
THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY is a rather engrossing independent film that, for a film-maker or actor, hits home. For those who never had the chance to work on a film, it offers an unfiltered, entertaining look as to what makes us show-biz people click. Director Robert Margolis plays himself, or herself a struggling New York actor. While he searches for profitable and rewarding acting work, his loved ones grow impatient. The stress Margolis experiences is way too real. We see the people around him give him unfair time limits to hit it big. Margolis filmed something he knew. How he was going to film it only came second. Margolis didn't fall in the process of film-making, a opitfall for most low budget film-makers
The Deed to Hell (2008)
Like spinning out of control in a busy intersection. A Thrill Ride
I caught this very strange and exciting film film at a Sunday morning screening. We start off with a bank robbery gone bad. The thieves look middle aged, while the victims all seem young. This reverse-casting drew me in. But then the film gets stranger. As we follow the bank robber, he tries to pick up a girl on a plane to Paris, then we follow her. In Paris, she plots to kill a heavy metal star, then we start following her sugar-daddy and his nightmare wife in the states. But it gets more strange. Inter-contentential Chases, Strangulations, beatings, chasings, shootings, knifings, and then the film goes beautifully crazy. Amazing location photography and action in both New York City and Europe. It's like a Jason Bourne film on wild booze and drugs.
Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959)
That monster looked like it was long dead- creepy
Eugene Lourie did not make socially important film like his fellow 1950's directors like Stanley Kramer, or Elia Kazan. Instead, Lourie made three exciting films depicting a giant dinosaur attacking a major city. His first was 1953's THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, with classic stop motion effects by Ray Harryhausen. The best of this trio was 1960's GORGO, where a highly annoyed off mommy dinosaur rips London into shreds rescuing it's captive baby. Available in this box set is his 1959 Dino-fest, THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, the weakest of Lourie's monster movies, but still, a fun time at the movies. Before, after and during making his own films, Lourie as a art director for Clint Eastwood, Sam Fuller, Jean Renoir, and Charles Chaplin.
The behemoth problem with THE GIANT BEHEMOTH is that it is slow paced. 37 minutes in we get to see the monster's shoulder. It will take another eleven minutes to get to our first monster scene- where Behemoth raises out of the water, and attacks a Thames River ferryboat. One wonders how many animators worked on this film. One of the animators was pioneering stop-motion artist Willis O'Brien, who animated life into the silent THE LOST WORLD, the 1933 KING KONG, and many other exciting monster films. The stop motion animation varies from inventive,
LovecraCked! The Movie (2006)
Agrento meets Mad Magazine
Imagine Monty Python directed by Dario Argento, and you have this crazy collection of nine gore/comedy skits. The linking thread for these surreal bloodbaths is a Monty Python like reporter doing an investigative report of famed horror author H.P Lovecraft. Cameos by famed Troma intern Lloyd Kaufmann and punk rock princess Joanna Angel pepper this savage bit of DVD fun. My only complaint here is that while Juggernaut made a film with a very original look, and format, leaping from dismemberment to giggles, he throws in some rather tired clichés. During the closing credits we see "funny" out-takes off in the corner. Some scenes are pretty much direct repeats of famous Python sketches. Biff, when somebody says, "You know, Biff how we see in all those movies where they (insert cliché here.) We can do that." Just ignore them, Biff. Anyway, fun, sick movie Biff.
The Sign of the Cross (1932)
Gotta love that Naked Moon
Set in Ancient Rome, SIGN OF THE CROSS follows Police Prefect Marcus Suberbus (Young Fredric March with eye-shadow and a tendency for delicious barnstorming!) He is ordered to capture and sometimes kill Rome's "dangerous" and elusive underground Christian cult. However, he falls in love with Mercia, a captive girl who refuses to give up her faith. Along the way, we meet Nero. Charles Laughton plays Nero as a boozed, up, spineless, psychotic baby. Claudette Colbert takes it all away as Poppaea, Nero's wife. Her nude milk-bath, constant demonic purring delivery hypnotizes the audience. There's a bizarre orgy sequence about half-way through the film where a crazy lesbian dancer entertains the crowd and us with her "Dance of the Naked Moon". Trust me, you have to see this.
Then comes the third act of SIGN OF THE CROSS. The captive Christians are forced to participate in deranged and warped games at the Coliseum. This scene will simply blow you out of your comfy-chair, and still come at ya! Naked girls are fed to alligators, one is offered to what looks like a lovesick gorilla, amazon women fight and behead hopping pygmies, men are made to box grizzly bears, and much, much more. DeMille adds to this craziness by cutting in reaction shots of the Coliseum crowd. Some scream in horror, a woman is obviously sexually turned on by the carnage, many gawk and gamble, while others yawn in boredom.
If you watched SIGN OF THE CROSS, let's say on late night TV in the past, you saw the heavily censored version with most of the above insanity cut out. Upon a 1944 re-release, the Production Code forced most of the Coliseum scenes removed. A prologue and epilogue with World War II fighter pilots talking about Nero's Rome was tacked on. This is the original 1932 uncut version, with the Coliseum craziness replaced and the fighter pilot footage removed. Soak in it!
Cloverfield (2008)
Horror via Uncle Bernie's camcorder
In CLOVERFIELD there are no scientists in lab coats trying to comprehend and destroy the beast. Our protagonists are a group of confused, terrified, hip, twenty-somethings. They don't know what is hitting them. One of these panicked yups is armed with a video camera. He's taken it upon himself to document everything that happens as he and his buddies venture back into the monster's path to rescue our hero's girlfriend, who is trapped in one of the many monster-ravished buildings.
Like THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, CLOVERFIELD is presented to us via hand-held consumer video camera. Very often, our vision is not steady. It's shaky, very often it spurts. Despite news articles about CLOVERFIELD's audience-members becoming dizzy while subjected to all the big shaky screen camera-work, I found the shaky-cam gimmick very restrained, paying more attention to the monster and the frightened humans in it's path, rather than saying "Ohhh, lookie at the cool camera angles!". It wasn't so much like BLAIR WITCH, it was more like LADY IN THE LAKE, the 40's noir film shown entirely from the point of view of the protagonist, a private eye.