OK, here is the rest of your movie reviews. Enjoy!

(January 23)

——Eraserhead (1977)——

David Lynch’s first full-length feature is one weird-ass experience. I think that for about the first half of the film I was able to follow Lynch’s dream logic and had a pretty good idea of what was going on. Then came the dream within a dream, where the chipmunk-cheek lady in the radiator sang to our crazy haired main character, and then his head popped off, was picked up by a child, and sold to a factory that is going to make erasers out of his brain. Yeah, I think that’s about where the movie lost me.

A movie this beautiful doesn’t really have to make a lot of sense though. Lynch made the film over several years using beautiful black and white to tell his story of Henry, a factory worker on vacation whose girlfriend gives birth prematurely to a quadriplegic reptile/calf fetus baby. He finds this out at an extremely creepy family dinner filled with Lynchian weird-isms, like mysterious omnipresent sound effects, odd dreamlike relatives and a mini-chicken whose legs move when you cut into it. Getting back to that baby…well, it cries constantly. Mary can’t take the crying anymore, so she leaves. You get the idea that Henry, as much as he loves the child, doesn’t know what to do with it. He has an affair with a seductive woman who lives across the hall from him and then…well, that’s when things really get messed up.

Be prepared. This isn’t an easy movie to watch. It challenges you at every turn and can be extremely disturbing. But those up for the weird and those fans of David Lynch’s will probably really enjoy this, despite not having a fricken idea what’s going on.

(SEE)

——The New World (2005)——

Terrence Malick’s new film is a visually stunning masterpiece about the first English settlers of America and their relationship with the “Natives.” More specifically, it is about Pocahontas (the astounding young newcomer, Q’Orianka Kilcher) and her relationships with some of the key men of the story, mainly John Smith (Colin Ferrell) and John Rolfe (Christian Bale).

If anything though, this is a movie about nature and its grand majesty. This is a film that has to be seen in the theater to truly appreciate its epic visuals (shot in 65mm). I ask you, when is the last time you’ve ever seen nature shot like this (aside from the last Malick film you’ve seen)? It’s amazing. The movie doesn’t so much have a plot driven narrative, but a poetic one. Scenes of rushing water, trees, Natives, and other forms of stately beauty are edited together in a clever montage that connects thoughts and images through the epic score and the introspective voice-overs, familiar to any fan of Malick’s work.

What ideas are being juxtaposed in the film deftly in Malick’s hands is that of the quiet, calm simplicity and elegant charm of the Native’s world with the chaotic ugliness of the Western world. So much time is spent introducing and enveloping us in the unspoiled riches of the New World that when we turn back to the Englishmen their world comes at us as quite a shock. When finally we go to the royal court in England in the final act you see everything and are as amazed as Pocahontas would be. This is such a visually stunning film you can’t not see it.

(MUST SEE)

(January 24)

——King of New York (1990)——

This is a movie I had never heard of and found out about in Peter Travers’ 1,000 Best Movies on DVD. I found it online for like $10. Money well worth it. This is a kind of companion piece for all of those fans of Scarface. Christopher Walken is Frank, a mob boss just released from prison who goes back to his (mostly black) gang for ruthless business as usual. If you don’t do things Frank’s way, you don’t do them any way, as his number one hit man (Lawrence Fishburne) will find you and gun you down. Frank quickly rises up above the rest of the underworld, which doesn’t go unnoticed by the local police (played by David Caruso, Wesley Snipes and Victor Argo) who want to go above the law to take care of him. What follows is a fun, fine crafted tale of violence and the emergence of gangster hip hop culture. While on the surface it just seems to glorify violence there is actually something unique brewing below the surface and by that memorable ending you’ll actually find the whole thing quite poetic. Abel Ferrara crafts a genre film that really grabs you. Definitely check it out.

(MUST SEE)

——The Omen (1976)——

I was slightly messed up when I rewatched this one, so I’m just…uh…going to move on.

(January 25)

——A Christmas Story (1983)——

First John C. saw this in one of its marathon’s before Christmas. Then he started talking about it all the time, so that John R. and he started quoting it all day long. I had to know what it was they were talking about. I mean, come on, when does anyone at work know of a movie I haven’t seen?

This series of anecdotes about one childhood Christmas in the 1950’s is pretty funny. All poor Ralphie wants for Christmas is a BB gun. His mother and basically every other authority figure around him think he’ll shoot his eye out (which he almost ironically manages to do). Thus Ralphie is on the kid odyssey of finding the perfect way to ask for a BB gun. On his odyssey he sees a kid stick his tongue to a flag pole, his mom and dad fight over a leg lamp his father won in a contest, and a crazy bully who, like most bullies, can’t take his own medicine. His little brother doesn’t eat any food and his mom bundles him up tight enough that it is amazing he can even breathe. And when he finally gets to Santa to take his Christmas wish right to the source, he almost screws it up. But like most good Christmas movies, everything works out in the end. Well, kind of, as anyone whose seen this movie before (which is pretty much everyone BUT me) can attest.

(SEE)

(January 26)

——Videodrome (1983)——

It now seems amazing to me that before last year I had never seen a David Cronenberg film, since movies like Videodrome seem just made for me. Cronenberg makes intelligent films that just happen to have all the f’d up shit you could ever want in a movie.

Videodrome is about Max (James Woods), a cable TV programmer on a station so under the radar that Max has to show all sorts of messed up violent and sexual shows from around the world to compete with the major networks. He comes across a pirated signal of a show called Videodrome, which just seems to be torture and murder. No characters, no plot. Max loves it and wants to see more so he can put it on his network. At the same time he meets a radio personality played by Deborah Harry (of Blondie fame, although she’s a stunning brunette in this one) whose actually into this whole torture thing and wants to be on Videodrome. And at the same time he also starts to have the hallucinations.

Videodrome is a new state of being. It was created as a sort of mind control devise, but television also seems to be a new reality more real than what we are living. The film is very philosophical and quite ahead of its time when it comes to the effects TV reality has on us, where reality TV now seems more real than reality. What a crap sentence that was. Rest assured, Cronenberg handles things much more adeptly than I do. The ending is just stunning. Watch it with a friend and let the debate of the films inner meanings begin.

(Also, kuddos to the folks at Criterion for putting out a really frickin’ cool DVD. The case is designed to look like you are pulling out your own Videodrome cassette tape. It’s awesome. Great package.)

(MUST SEE)

(January 27)

——Mondo Cane (1962)/Women of the World (1963)——

You probably haven’t heard of Mondo documentary filmmaking before. I hadn’t. I actually found out about this after watching that 42nd Street Forever DVD I reviewed for you earlier. Not directly. I actually was looking for a film called Shocking Asia. Blue Underground (a great DVD company) put out some pretty inexpensive DVD sets of these films, which were the originals that started the genre, so I decided to start here.

Mondo Cane (which means “Dog’s World” in Italian) is pretty much a first of its kind exploitation documentary, filled with shocking and bizarre footage shot from around the world. Not all of it is as shocking as it was in the 60’s though. Some of it now seems quite quaint. Everyone’s seen those car graveyards where they smash up the cars by now. Much of Mondo Cane is still quite shocking and amazing though. A warning to the faint of heart, there is animal cruelty in this film. A snake in Asia is gutted for its meat right on the street. While puppies aren’t killed on screen, as much is implied by the Chows in cages next to men eating their meat. A bull is decapitated in a Napal celebration. The bull gets back at man in Spain, where in something truly bizarre that I hadn’t seen before several men dressed like matador’s stand in a line until the bull charges them and takes them out like bowling pins. A shot of one of the men says it all. He has blood on his face and a dazed look in his eyes, as if he’s saying, “Why did I ever agree to THAT?”

Parts of the film are just fascinating though. They go to this island in the Bikini Isles where they set off the atomic bombs and show you the heart wrenching tragedy that the nature is going through there. Mother sea turtles now lay their eggs and crawl further inland, having lost their sense of direction, only to die on the desert-like beaches. In the Indian Ocean, natives angry at a recent shark attack (ultimately caused by their own ignorance) go out and find sharks, only to put toxic sea urchins in their mouths and set them back out to sea. The film is just amazing to watch.

Women of the World is a pseudo-sequel inspired by extra footage from Mondo Cane. It’s not nearly as shocking and seems more to consist of 1960’s T&A than anything else but it still contains some pretty interesting stuff. The one downfall of the film is the voice-over narration, which consists of quite dated sexual attitudes about the place of women in society. Feminists will do well to not throw their shoe at the TV. All and all though, I’d give Mondo Cane a

(SEE)

and Women of the World a

(MISS)

(January 28)

——The Sea Hawk (1940)——

This is a fantastic Errol Flynn swashbuckler, taking place right before the Spanish Armada. Flynn is the best of the Sea Hawks, British privateers working for Queen Elizabeth who unabashedly pirate Spain’s ships. The king isn’t happy about this and wants Captain Thorpe out of the way so that when the Armada is finally built Spain can easily overrun England and take over the world. (It should be noted the explicit political context of the film, made and released just as Germany had begun the blitz on Great Britain.)

All of those politics don’t really mean much when the action starts though. The film begins with a huge sea battle that even by today’s special effects standards looks extremely impressive. I was reminded of Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean without feeling like I was missing out on anything. The movie has a very epic scope, and at times I was reminded of films like Ben Hur, especially when Thorpe and his crew are captured and enslaved on a Spanish galleon. Errol Flynn is so fricken charismatic that you’ll follow him everywhere too. The movie ends with a great bit of swordplay and you can tell that Flynn has become much more adept with the foil than in an earlier film like Captain Blood (1935). This is a great adventure yarn that anyone can enjoy.

(MUST SEE)

(January 29)

——Shock Corridor (1963)——

Sam Fuller was a maverick who made low budget movies his own way, which are often times just masterpieces. Shock Corridor is one of those crazy/amazing films. A reporter seeking the Pulitzer commits himself to a mental institution to solve a murder witnessed by some of the insane men there. His girlfriend, a stripper, is against the whole thing, but he somehow convinces her to play his sister so as to have him committed. While he manages to finally unearth the truth of the story, the experience drives him crazy just like the men he has been living with.

Sam Fuller just has a style all of his own. You just enjoy the act of watching his films. What stands out amongst everything else in this movie though is the interviews with the three witnesses. Each man has been betrayed by the American dream and has gone crazy because of it. The most striking story is of the man who went crazy because his family never taught him about what made America great, so he went Commie in the Korean War. Trying to subvert another American, that man actually taught him what his father never could and he decided to come back to America. America shunned and spit on him though. The whole experience drove him nuts, so that now he thinks that he’s reliving the Civil War. These confessionals from the three men are shot as epic monologues cut together with color images from their dreams (the film was shot in black and white). You’re riveted to your seat as these stories unfold. Fuller does it again.

(MUST SEE)