avis de Quinoa1984

Abraham's Boys is a really clever concept for any medium, and it is little wonder it began as a short story by Joe Hill (if it wasn't by him his dad would have taken a crack at something like this at some point); on the surface, it appears to be a "Sequel" to Dracula following Professor Van Helsing living in quiet **very sunny** California but, alas, the undead wont leave him and his young boys and wife Mina Harker alone. What stands out is the perspective and how this is closer to Bill Paxton's Frailty as far as twisted and grisly Father Knows Best pressure cooker where the two boys - one older (looking a lot like a stand-in for Zac Efron 20 years ago) and one younger - have to learn their dad's methods for destroying the cursed vampires... but are they that? Were they ever?

I think the movie means to make it clear that even if at some point there was just *one* blood-sucking Bad Guy Abe Van Helsing has killed innocent people (and the big guy Dracula is only mentioned in a cursory way, like it you say his name he will Beetlejuice into the story, maybe a slight misgiving but got to mention it), and that is what makes this so compelling and terrifying, even as this is not exactly a very scary "horror" so much as a domestic drama with the genre clothing. The film is also shot with a lot of harsh bright light during the day scenes (California and all) and there is this slow burn panic that sets in when we realize this story is not going the way we expected.

The Van Helsing of this story is so severe in fact, and giving TV's Bosch himself Titus Welliver a hell of a strong showcase, that he wouldn't be out of place in a brutal Ingmar Bergman existential tragedy. Once you know the tone that director Natasha Kermani has set and the stakes (hehe) for the kid characters to have in their way, not to mention their poor sick mom, you want to see where this goes next. If there is a downside in terms of execution of the material it's that the actors playing the sons are a little stiff, with Hepner keeping the same look of confusion and consternation while Mackey is just hanging on to get through some of the period-set dialog.

The more I think on the film though the more I respect it as it is a good formal swing, and not just because of the affected aspect ratio (though the black and white for the dream scenes is old hat). It gives a more genuine "what if" kind of twist on a world we all know than like Last Voyage of the Demeter, and if it is less than great it is more thoughtful as a rigorous tale of how some critical thinking skills need to take hold when it comes to parents sometimes (especially but not limited to when they are keeping helpless women locked in the cellar!) 6.5/10.

Senna keeps your attention from start to end simply by this man at the center, Ayrton Senna, and a certain enigmatic quality. I think that is by design, though it is more in perspective of other racers in the story, chiefly Alain Prost who was a multi-year champion who found in Senna a formidable competitor not in any political sense since he knew how to maneuver in the behind the scenes world, but just in the sense of "ok, I need to make a split second decision how I use THAT space or I am toast." That is probably the main relationship, if one can call it that, director Asif Kapadia gives the most breathing room to see unfold, and a lot of it is down to looks and expressions that maybe say more (at least to me) than words can.

I think I hooked into that because the documentary around that story is certainly interesting and full of gripping and engrossing footage - not one modern-day talking head is to be seen here, which is wonderful and keeps everything about what Senna was and meant and especially in his native Brazil where he seemed to be a Rock and Roll star - though it does keep things at a little bit of a distance when it comes to more personal matters. To be sure, not everything was captured on video or film and so what Senna had with his parents or siblings (who we see sparsely through home video footage) has to be surmised, and if the bits with the women around him is any indication he had no lack of that.

I don't know what Kapadia could have done to add or change that, so the director has to keep it because of his aesthetic demands to the racing and the footage taken in news coverage and BTS meetings like with the other drivers and the F1 board members. That seems to be more of a critique for me than it may be for you, yet the sole focus on "here was this race and then six months suspension goes by and here is the next race and YES HE WON AGAIN and then time goes and" details is what keeps it as "very good" if not "great" for me. The film certainly raises some questions not just about Senna but about competitors in sports and activies who are so Top of Their League that it not so much isolates but calcifices their status and creates this semi-mystery about them.

Did Senna know his time was up (ie other accidents were going on and another driver lost his life not long before he did)? Could he or would he have given it up to go fishing as that one man in his team gently suggested they go off to do, or was it that thing of "This is My LIFE/JOB" and that was that? It is a story that celebrates his accomplishments, but strangely I was left seeing it as a tragic tale not even so much for how Senna lost his life (though that seemed to be very suss mechanical malfeasance there) but for what life he gave up for everything to do with his profession. And maybe he was perfectly happy in his personal life, but especially in those last months Senna (the movie) makes success to be a kind of trap that can crush you if you are not careful or can't get out.

Whether Kapadia meant for it or not, it makes for something more thoughtful and somber, and that makes this valuable as more than a Here Are the Facts Wikipedia style run down.

The Wedding Banquet is a good example of how a film is so execution dependent on so many fronts. You could take the idea behind this in a much more watered down or conventional form (critic Chris Feil even called it a Sitcom kind of plot, which is not wrong), and I can see a version of this story that emphasizes the contrivances for maximum effect. Hell, there even is a sort of version of this story, but with in-laws instead of parents, a mere three years later with The Birdcage and that takes things into a decidedly more broad but still winning kind of formula. But with this film, maybe Ang Lee's first major work, he has such empathy for everyone here and with one major exception what unfolds here comes out of character first and that leads the story ahead.

Lee spent years writing the script, and I think the effort and time spent figuring out the family dynamic of Wai-Tung Gao (Chao), his partner Simon (Lichtenstein) and the Gao parents and Wei-Wei the Bride in-name, who is set up with Wai-Tung so his parents are appeared and she can get a green card, pays off because we can feel so much affection and warmth and charm going on - and, for sure, awkwardness and eventually in the second half bad vibes that develop because of the deception - even as this lie for this sham marriage unfolds.

Some of the funniest parts (really any time one is laughing) is from what we know and what the reaction says, like when Wei-Wei starts to cry during part of the wedding ceremony (this is after the city hall scene but before the banquet) and how immediate the mother reacts to stop her tears from ruining her make-up and how so many in the room converge to stop it. It is just one of those moments we are drawn even more to the mom and Wei-Wei. Other times, the humor is a little more mild, but still pleasant like how the mother and father react to Simon in those early scenes when it should be clear to anyone with two eyes and ears that there is some sort of closeness between him and their son (though, without saying too much, the dad knows a little more than he lets on, one kinda-contrivance I could have done without even as it leads to a moving scene between Simon and Mr Gao).

I do see that Wei Wei does force herself on Wai-Tung, though I am less bothered by the action (she is so drunk and tired by then, as is he, there is a kind of sexual immaturity that almost forgives it) than that this leads to a pregnancy storyline which is the thing I meant earlier about a story beat coming in to lead the way. I think there is a version of this story where it is just about the lie crumbling and how the parents find out (a scene at a hospital where the mother is told is one of the best scenes in the movie, for acting and how Lee keeps the camera going and when he chooses to move it, brilliant and precisely emotional work there), but I get that there should be some stakes for what is to come after the parents leave.

Thankfully what works about the film even in the second half is congruous with ehat came before then, that Lee and Schamus and the filmmakers and actors care deeply about these people, Wai-Tung in particular, as flawed, intuitive, Into Traditional Ways but wholly emotional beings, and the idea of how a Closet puts someone into a box is one that is explored with humor and sensitivity. It is not even truly a film about being gay or what it means to come out, it is most successful about how to relate to one's parents and what it means to be really happy with someone in a relationship. And Lee shows the culture, at the Banquet in particular but throughout, with an affection even as it is so big it almost flows off the lines of the screen.

This is one of the more mixed-bag sort of Godzilla movies for me, and it is not for lack of effort by the filmmakers here. Clearly, they wanted to expand on some of what was possible at the time in the 1980's with animatronics and effects - it seems unfathomable writer/director Omori did not see Little Shop of Horrors five or six times on original release (with some schlocky espionage action movies in between, which I'll get back to in a moment) - and Biollante is a really incredible creation. It is made up of so many different moving parts, arms and tentacles and the giant rose petal-top form that reveals its teeth. And later in the movie, when things are at full escalation, you see it become monstrous and even more terrifying, and it is one of the great monsters of the Zilla movies in its post Showa era.

That is, of course, when we get to see Biollante. Unfortunately, that is not as much as one might like or expect. This does not mean Otomi and company are skimping out on the Main Guy for the audience, and there is a good amount of him here. A larger problem though that comes up for Otomi is his sense of pacing, and that is not so great. The movie has a fairly slow and over-stuffed-with-plot start, mostly involving scientists creating a plant that grows out of control (and has a uh human soul inside of it, maybe two, I don't remember), and trying to make a bacteria that can possibly really get to Godzilla, and with this a group of dudes with guns (you know one is bad because he has on sunglasses and looks like a third tier John Woo movie extra) who are sabotaging these experiments.

Maybe there was more of a clear explanation, but I found myself zoning out and getting impatient to get to the action as, even more than usual, this human beings character stuff wasn't doing it for me. I think the industrial espionage stuff is not *awful,* but whenever it comes up in the movie it is just not that entertaining, or maybe it feels like it is somehow out of a different B/exploitation movie that should fit into the schlock of Zilla-world but feels lacking a bit (and this despite Otomi trying to ramp up the staging for action and gun violence, which is also eh). And during certain scenes where we are with Godzilla attacking and getting attacked and so on, sometimes the movie will cut to someone and it is not organic to the way things should play out (or to create some suspense with cross-cutting).

There is still some fantastic set pieces here, primarily in the final fifteen to twenty minutes, and I would give the movie a pass simply for anyone who likes this series in general to check out Biollante and how there is a lot of gloriously ridiculous heart and soul and thought put into the... thing (is it a she? Don't want to mis-gender a plant here) and there is even some fun 1980s synth music that throws one off until you just go with it. But this is too long and sloppily edited and I watched it in like three sittings.

This is an intense drama about how power structures emotionally and spiritually paralyze women (not religious spirit like a deeper spirit than that), and Berit has a whole lot of trauma, and also some dalliances/affairs with other men, that complicate a newfound relationship with a local port worker.

It's not a major Ingmar Bergman film by much of a stretch, in part because some of the issues It's dealing with, like a man who just can't fathom (gasp) that the Love of His Life(TM) had sex with some other men, even as she describes clearly living in an abusive household and this shaping her into a mess looking for affection. Actually, when Bergman shows how things were with Berit's father and mother as a small child, it is harrowing and directed with the kind of precise dramatic shellshock that marked much of his greatest work on film.

Other times, when like the man looks at the camera drunk and talks about metaphors of "jumping ship" and being so miserable with his "goddamned conscience," it gets to being over the top even for a young Bergman still finding hid voice. There are a few scenes like that. But at the same time, there are exquisite scenes and series of shots, like a few of those flashbacks in how he and his cameraman Fischer (a frequent collaborator in years to come) make spaces as dark and desplate and Film-Noit adjacent as anything in Hollywood at the time.

Or like when Berit is in the girl's reformatory and just how he shoots all of those bodies in that one room lying around. You can see he doesn't just have chops, he wants to create this oppressive atmosphere that is still entertaining to watch and engage in, if that makes sense. Even one shot that peers up at some buildings late in the film is memorable.

In other words, Port of Call has some scattered sexual politics, and for its time it must have been daring just to put it all out there let alone in one 97 minute film. It doesn't all work, but enough does to make it worthwhile - that is, if one has already seen like 10 or 12 or even 20 other Bergman films and want to mark this off the list. And Jonnson and Eklund are giving it 110% always.

Waiting Women is a good reminder that the "Minor" works of a writer and director you cherish are where you see the artist's real worth; of course, Ingmar Bergman (and most directors) aren't thinking in those terms when making a movie, it is just another work that they can only hope gets seen by as many eyes and strikes a chord with as much of the public as possible (albeit by this point he hadn't quite made the crossover into American consciousness, that would come a year or so later with Summer with Monika and Smiles of a Summer Night). But there is a great amount of attention paid to making what we are seeing with these characters in these three stories as dynamic as possible, and even if not every story is equally involving it is still a significant film because of Bergman and his crew's care for enticing mis en scene.

There is one part I want to highlight that if you are watching more for the plot is straightforward but for characterization and atmosphere this is where it counts: when Rakel (Anita Bjork) is in her room while her husband is away and Kaj (suave Jarl Kulle) steps in to talk with her, notice where Rakel is sitting and how Bergman uses the mirror in the scene, how the two move and the more it is clear there is a spark of attraction that is much more, how she gets up to go over to him and when he kisses her and she goes for his advances. This is all staged, until he has no choice but to cut to a medium shot, as one long take that lasts aboht three minutes or more, and the staging is so intricate and it all has to be precise while feeling totally natural.

Just this shot alone shows Bergman's progression as a filmmaker at this time, which would only get more sophisticated and daring in the rest of the 1950's, but just this scene and of itself is quietly exhilarating to see how he does it (it helps the two actors are quite good in that scene). The following scene that comes when Rakel tells her husband without waiting that she had an affair with Kaj and his reaction is also a bit of brilliant indifelity theater, and while it is cut and shot more simply there is still the thrill of three actors going through a complicated batch of emotions and betrayals and how an entire marriage has been revealed as rotting due to indifference and a lack of romance.

This and the third story, set primarily in a stuck elevator where a couple have a kind of sad but comic bit of revelation-time about their relationship, are the highlights while the middle story, about a wife revealing about how she had her baby by herself even as she is remembering within the memory that she is recounting of happier (and less happy, even haunted) times with an artist and why she had to have the child on her own, is good if not as compelling as the others. This isn't Nelson's fault so much as there not being enough dramatic meat on the bone in that story, even as (again) Bergman is flexing his filmmaking muscles with moments like when Marta is recounting seeing what looks like Death in a dark room reaching out to her (many journeyman directors would destroy someone to have just a scene like that as far as the trust in dark lighting).

I think it being a sort of Anthology-style work may be what made me think this might be a minor or even lessor sort kf work, as it was not really as available to see until a few years back when it came to Criterion Channel and the Bergman box set (it may have been on VHS but also rare to get), and except for some dialog in the elevator set piece there may not be drama (or comedy) as memorable as in Bergman's most iconic or just wholly lacerating major productions.

But that is a high bar for anyone to hit, and for what this is his script taps into some fine (if maybe unoriginal) insights into how fraught relationships can be and how much men take women for granted in their lives in general. And if you are looking for signs of a director attuned to how to get an audience invested based on where the camera is and where he is telling you to look, this is oddly enough a great place to start if you have not seen his films before.

The Eel is a good kind of surprise as a film primarily if you are familiar with other films by this director; works like Vengeance is Mine, The Insect Woman, even his other Cannes winning The Ballad of Narayama contain a harsh view of humanity, unsparing and pitiless really, especially when it comes to how far human beings will take themselves into dark recesses. This film looks like it will go that way, but that is just in the opening minutes as we see Yamashita commit a brutal act (the always tremendous Yakusho, because he always is doing so much with so little in a natural, observant but commanding manner), and then it cuts ahead years later, out of prison, and he has to just move on with his life.

There is the theme or metaphor or what have you with the eel, and a character or two even try to figure out and explain to Yamashita what an eel represents (fittingly, he does not know fully himself, which is the right character move on Imamura's part), though that is less interesting to me than what hoe Yamashita gradually becomes involved with this small community by this barbershop he works at, not least of which the young woman Keiko (Shimizu, very good here as well, if sometimes asked to go big and melodramatic when that is not her strong suit), who Yamashita saves from ending her own life.

If anything it reminded me not what I sort of thought it might be ala Sling Blade (albeit very very different protagonists) than it is like one of those low-key comedy/dramas that were coming out in the mid to late 90s and into the 2000s in America. Of all things The Station Agent in particular popped in my head as far as this sort of outsider who is befriended by a few people despite the fact that the protagonist is reminded all too much that he may not be fully accepted (if he even wants to be), and a tone that is most interesting precisely because it sort of bobs and weaves (or, if I must go to the eel metaphor, a slippery creature you can never get a handle on) between a lighter comedic tone and something that is melancholic and contemplative about how one forgives onself.

All of this makes the film sound more captivating than it is on the whole since Imamura takes his time with the storytelling, maybe too much (and I know I watched the newly released director's cut but hey that is how he wanted the world to see it), as there is some meandering with a side character obsessed with UFO sightings (again, 1996 for you) and Keiko's mother who pops up for some scenes and feels superfluous. Other developments happen that will eventually snowball by the climax, ie a pregnancy and another parolee who is definitely not doing life after jail the right way (two words: prayer beads), and the film picks up some dramatic steam in the last twenty five minutes or so.

The Eel is a character study more than something that relies on shock value like Imamura's other work, but in a way that may make this his most accessible film, which is ironic given how it begins in a graphically violent set piece (not the amount of blood so much as the frankness of it and what Yamashita does right after the killings). It is almost like we have to decompress and find some sort of... is peace the word? This may take too much time to get to where it is going, but there is also a pleasure in experiencing what Yamashita is going through and what connection he is forming - if not romantic than just having a real friend in Keiko - and Yakusho keeps it grounded to that reality, despite some (odd) dips into surrealism for Imamura. 7.5/10.

This would have been a good ol' RSP back in my day of the early to mid 1990s (or uh 1970's? 1950s? That is before my time) - and for the layman in the back, that of course stands for a "Reliable Studio Programmer" - yet now a film like The Unholy Trinity stands as an independent production that squeek by with a theatrical release only/thanks to the still-apparent star power of Samuel L Jackson and to an extent Pierce Brosnan. It may be putting faint praise on this by saying that it really keeps ones attention because of Jackson most of all, and if nothing else one should look to this as a sign that we still underrate him as not only one of the last "Movie Stars" but as a damn good actor.

If this is not a Major Marquis Warren ala Hateful Eight level performance then it is of course due to this not having anywhere near those ambitions nor the artistic acumen or brutality of that Theatrical Epic. This is largely shot like it is meant for a TV show, and that is not meant as a knock but rather simply what it is, that this story of a young man who comes to a town to seek out some possible answers (or may-hap some buried gold) and comes upon some bad dudes and a murder or two or ten.

That said, when Jackson is talking with the Sheriff's wife and the tension is mounting as to what he may do next and what she is going to do, it is one of those examples of why we should at least give his latter-day vehicles a chance (after all, how many of these can he have left in him?)

It is absolutely adequate and thankfully goes by quick in 90 minutes, with a climax that brings the bullets if juat minimal/Mid-competent craftsmanship. Maybe it is that I cant help but wish this was actually a movie from 70 years ago starring Randolph Scott in the Brosnan role (formidable as he is) and directed by Budd Boetticher and written by Burt Kennedy. At the least it would have more scale in its B movie dimensions than what was shot here on some OK Digital Camera.

An "Action" movie that prioritizes and makes so meaningful characterization and those quieter moments where Ichi gets to know (some of) the people in the village.

There is that scene where Ichi and Hirate are sitting by the side of the river, and they are having a fairly peaceful conversation. Suddenly, Ichi remarks or really asks if Hirate is sick (but if course he knows the answer). Hirate is taken aback by how he knows - he is Blind, but all of his senses are pitched so high that, if he didn't hear him talking about it, he must have heard it in his breathing or general body movement - but he does admit that he has an illness. This becomes a key point in the story for this character, but it is not something Ichi brings up lightly, rather it is because he is connecting with this man who also has skills as a swordsman and yet is frail and trying to put his best foot forward (empathy for an ailment, from Ichi? No way, you'd say).

Director Misumi's draw with this first entry in what would be around 20 or so films are scenes like this, or those where we get to know how equally vulnerable and devious characters in this village are (ie the young woman who is expecting and the man who is the father and wants nothing to do with her), where we are meant to be in Ichi's shoes learning about who these people are, their complexities, why this village has warring factions (spoiler, it is dumb chest beating stuff), while at the same time understanding fully how he is extraordinary simply by way of blending in.

There is a scene where one half of the clan talks about how as much as Ichi may be skilled he is still blind and who gives a damn about him since he is disabled (not those words, my super-power is paraphrasing). Ichi suddenly speaks up as he has been sitting in the back and no one has noticed him, he gets up and says in essence, yeah, I am blind, I know I am awkward, but you will not belittle me or mock me. How Musimi stages scenes like this is really powerful for their simplicity as he keeps a shot going for a couple of minutes and it is never uninteresting, and when he moves the camera it is equally direct and meaningful for the nature of what a character is saying or demanding to be recognized for.

There are stretches here, in other words, where you will need to be patient to get to quick movements of swords slicing into dumb dudes who will fall by the wayside with a quickness, but these scenes keep a momentum going and especially with Hirate and what will happen to him (will he die, will he make it to fight some of the bad guys), and a local woman who falls in love with Ichi and wants to leave with him.

That may be my only minor critique of the film (that and a personal preference for wanting more blood, which is the one place this does not quite match up to what Kurosawa was cooking with Sanjuro and Yojimbo at the same time period); I just didn't fully buy, as impressed as she might be by him, how deeply she falls in love with Ichi (though there is a very good scene where they talk by the moon-light and she let's him touch her face in remarking how pretty she must be), though this is not at all a put down of Banri as an actor as she is good in the film.

Still, this is a classic of its kind for good reason, because of Shintaro Katsu immediately and firmly creating an indelible bad-ass character, not because he kills real good but because he brings to Ichi this moral fiber and sense of self that is commanding and you get after the first like fifteen minutes (right after that card game) why Ichi as a wandering outlaw Ronin has lasted as long as he has - and will continue to as long as he has feet to walk on and ears to hear when a dummy comes a calling to try and take him out. It may be a little more serious than I expected (given the humor of the remake), but it is an exceptional performance in a movie that knows how to use black and white widescreen as smartly and dynamically as Kurosawa.

The Bible... in the Beginning (the title sounds clunky until one knows that producer Dino Di Laurentis planned on a series of Bible movies until this film did not break even despite being the *number one* grossing movie of the year in 1966, it just cost too much) is a highlight reel of the Big Ones from the early parts of Genesis that you may or may not have fallen asleep to at Bible study or Hebrew school: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, and then after the Intermission a diversion to King Nimrod (::chortle::) and then a kind of combination of Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham/Isaac. Huston is awake for all of these segments, though the actors are hit or miss.

Huston himself is one of the highlights playing things fairly grounded and simple in his explanations as to what to do with the animals and how to put together the ark; even his expression when God speaks to him and tells him what he must do initially is a sort of little master's class demonstration in under-playing a "WTF is this" reaction and it is all in the eyes. Michael Parks as Adam is fine, though it almost sounds as if he was dubbed or did some poor post-sync (as Franco Nero later as Abel, not a very long performance anyway if you know the story) and the actress hired to play Eve is sadly negligible.

Later, we get Peter O'Toole adding some gravitas (or maybe it was good to see a performer not just deliver the BIG lines with a quiet grim certainty), and while I was unsure about George C Scott early on as Abraham he pulls out a fiery, terrific over the top performance in the final reel when he has to take Isaac down to Highway 61. I do wish Ava Gardner had a little more to do than to look mostly sad at having barren loins (until she finally conceives), and she tries for conviction best she can but with a character that (don't laugh) has little dimension.

There are stretches here that are dull or a little too stately for their own good, but there are also moving and visually exciting parts, even with a light sense of camp (did I hallucinate or notice the same tiger repeated to walk across the screen to go on to the ark?) What helps is that Huston has his own vision set apart from a Cecil B Demille and has some shots showing dozens/hundreds of characters walking in a desert that is sort of staggering and humbling to see. Other times, like in a few of these Adam and Eve shots, things look too dark to even see what is happening (to hide the nudity? This was reportedly one of the first American movies to have that in the 60s on the edge of the break up of the Code).

But the highlights got me through this, like everything with Cain as Richard Harris runs like he is about to get struck by lightning - or, in reality, get talked to by GOD himself (voiced by... John Huston, duh) - and how much time we get with Noah and his family tending to the animals, which should be boring but strangely isn't and it is almost comforting to watch the simplicity of their movements as the world outside of their ark is destroyed (contrasts!) And while there really are parts with Abraham and the Sodom/Gomorrah scenes that drag and you can feel Huston just checking time before lunch, that climax helps to get it over into the positive column.

And those opening minutes.... wow.

Jane B by Agnes V is on the surface perhaps a seemingly minor work by one of those giants of cinema that we are still taking for granted after they've left us, but it is so special in parricular because Varda sees that cinema should be playful and about how much truth can come in pretending to be someone else. We may even be so invested in a character in the actions and emotions that we can be more at ease than in our every day lives.

Jane Birkin was near 40 and was lamenting this to Varda and she tried to assuage her at first by saying "oh, turning 40 is fine," but then realized a better way to do this would be to give her a kind of living tribute - instead of what people get when they're at like am AFI dinner or at the Governor's awards seeing a highlight reel, it would be much more enlightening and entertaining to do this while someone, like the versatile and talented Birkin, is alive and create some scenes for them to play.

The movie is about the joy and thrills of movies and about what playing characters brings out in a performer, and what being artistically engaged and creating art can do for us. Jane takes on characters she likely wanted to play (and/or Varda had in her head to want to see on screen played by someone like Jane Birkin), and that goes from Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy (complete with a pie fight!) to being the subject of a Renaissance painting come to life, to a character caught in a crime drama with guns, to Joan of Arc and even Jane of Tarzan (though in reality Birkin wishes more to be like a Mowgli ala the Jungle Book).

Varda staged and directs these scenes with as many resources as she can muster (albeit she mentions one idea Jane has cant be executed because it would need more time = more money), and while a couple are too frivolous to remember most are really engaging and fun. What I found interesting was that sometimes, though not all the time of course, Birkin seems more natural at doing these comedic and dramatic scenes than being interviewed about her life. We all have to put on a sort of "character" when just talking to a camera or to anyone really, or Birkin did her own kind of rehearsal for details about her family life and her kids and so on.

This doesn't take away from the film, so if this sounds like a criticism it is more of an observation; it is just fascinating to see someone who is so much more comfortable and empowered in the act of performance, in doing these scenes that she has maybe not even dreamed of persay because, after all, it is not every day Agnes Varda shows up to create cinematic sketches that include Tarzan and/or Jean-Pierre Leaud. There's even the perfectly surreal sight of everyone naked at a casino (including of course Jane herself).

On one level there is the act of doing these scenes, on individual wish-fulfillment terms and, for example, the crime storyline even has a kind of set up that pays off later on in the film (I didnt expect for that sketch to return, but it does and it is still enjoyable if kind of fluff in its genre pastiche way), and on the deeper level is why this was done at all.

Part of it is Varda revealing herself on a more fundamental lecel as an artist as well - on Criterion channel she said it is a document of painter and subject, meaning herself as well, and to wit her son Matthieu does a scene with Jane as well (this the same year he performed in Kung Fu Master, no less) - so Jane B by Agnes V is even more satisfying for what it says about creating and the act of image-making, and why in a very real sense realizing dreams is important for humanity to have vitality.

It is common knowledge to anyone who has read one of the many Alfred Hitchcock biographies (or a cursory check of Imdb trivia) that Hitch took on directing the film as a favor to his friend Carol Lombard. There are worse ways to get a job, and looking at the chronology of what he was up to at this time - just off the one-two punch of Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent, which put him into the league of major Hollywood directors with the former getting best picture at the Academy Awards (for Selznick, natche) and before Suspicion - maybe he wanted to flex his muscles and show the studios that he could do a For Hire project while bringing in some visual flair that was his metier.

On that score, mission accomplished, and what you get many decades on is a pretty good sorta-screwball romantic comedy that particularly showcases how brilliant Lombard was. I did wait to come to watching this in part because of that relatively "minor" distinction, but also because I was not that blown away by Robert Montgomery when seeing him in, say, the Lady in the Lake (nothing wrong with that movie, it's also pretty good, but he is largely not even on screen for much of it). Or maybe it is because I have been slow to watch some of those Hitchcock films that are not seen as (cue the lights on the marquee, Jim) HITCHCOCK! Films (The Ring and Juno and the Paycock for another day... good evening, I'm Jack Digresscock).

But with it playing along with nearly every other major feature (and imitators and inspired-by sort of films) at the Paris Theater in New York city for the next few weeks, on 35mm no less, it seemed time to give it a shot thr way it was meant to br seen. I was more entertained than not by the film, even as it is largely driven more by the charm and (yes) dramatic chops of its leads (and Gene Raymond playing drunk one scene where he is given too much for his character Jeff, aka "that southern fried piece of chicken" as described by David).

The script is actually more like more modern romantic comedies than one might think, as in there is a contrivance of a sort - because of that whole "we are not actually married, so... phooey to you!" and how much Ann is so stubborn about not going back with David despite all of his moves to make clear to her that he does love her. The inciting incident is damning for him, though, where before we find out about this marriage not on-paper being real when Ann asks David if he would rather be married or not married what he would want and he says nay. Look at Lombard's face in that moment and you see someone who is totally crest-fallen, and it is all the worse because seconds later she has to act like what he said was "fine, really."

In one sense it does fit a little into Hitchcock's body of work - or, ala Scorsese and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (also a studio assignment) he finds what will keep him going in the material - since it is about how much a relationship is shaped on truth and deception, and often times how someone in the relationship needs to understand what they want from themselves just as much as the other (maybe an odd thought, but this paired with Rear Window and the Stewart/Kelly thing in that film could be interesting). David in this film knows he messed up and loves Ann, but Ann is so (rightfully) upset about it that she won't see how much she still loves him.

And around and around we go for 90 minutes till that shot of those ski-shoes are up in the air (perfect innuendo). I don't want to make this sound like it is greater than it is since the script is fairly standard when it comes to dialog and certain scenarios, ie the nightclub set piece where the dinner dates for David are stereotypes and not the compelling kinds that usually populate Hi/chcock films (amusing, sure, but forgettable). While Montgomery gives a strong comedic performance here, especially when he is playing sick in bed at the ski lodge, I do wish Lombard had Cary Grant or William Powell or someone to give this a little extra boost. Luckily, Lombard has so many amazing reactions and bits of timing, like when Ann is with Jeff watching him be stumbling drunk, and up on that ride at the fair that gets stuck.

Definitely watch it if you are going to do the whole oeuvre of the Master of Suspense anyway, and putting it outside of the whole Auteur discussion it just works as a pleasant rom-com that is probably more amusing than laugj out loud funny. I left it being like "that's a good Smile kind of movie... no, not that kind, the genteel kind."

A thought that kept at me for at least a quarter or a third or whatever of Friendship: this is like another of the great comedies of the 2020s, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar, in one sense, which is that it is a vibe and even if you do not get on it you have to acknowledge that the commitment to this particular tone and sensibility makes it a wholly special experience. Andrew DeYoung in his feature debut recognizes that if he is to set out and make a film with Tim Robinson in the lead, and to let him just go off with a dozen different "I think you should leave" moments (and those words are spoken in the film for more than one discomfiting and uproarious situation), it has to have that tone for everyone.

If it were just a little more, shall we say, normal, like if only Tim Robinson's Craig were off and odd and just so maladjusted even as he so much wants to be accepted by Austin (Paul Rudd in peak hipster mode), it wouldn't work. But so many of the characters in this film, pretty much anyone with a significant speaking role, outside of maybe Craig's boss and the Mayor of the town of Clovis, USA (no state given, I checked the mail label since it is so obvious for us to see), has some peculiar things that are spoken in almost every scene. It has that feeling though of being naturally delivered, so it is a film walking a tightrope between aburdism and almost Bunuelian surrealism, like how we have to accept the uncanny aspects of the dialog because of how everyone still seems sort of tethered to our reality.

Take it from being a man in a modern American suburban plane of existence, it sucks to try to make new friends and it really sucks when you feel like there's someone who is so cool that you can't get to their level of "oh, wow, you have that, and know how to go into that sewer to get to that roof-top, and etc etc, cannot wait till you get that car of your dreams, too." (So, of course, it helps to just... not have many friends and be happy with that, sigh... but I digress) DeYoung understands how it is also so much funnier to have the distinct energy levels Robinson and Rudd naturally have in these parts to play off each other; even though Rudd's Austin is a dork/loser, he's got a cool job and a band and theres a freedom unlocked in Craig with that.

Yet he does something really interesting: this is not what the trailer might make you think entirely, ie a new The Cable Guy with Robinson in the Jim Carrey part of a "I just want to hang out, no big deal" stalker since, frankly, Rudd's Austin is not all that sympathetic, he does make things weird by having like play-boxing-fighting (which is what goes too far), and is kind of an a-hole to the happy oddball lapdog that is Craig. When he says to Austin when he freezes him out that he came on too strong... he has a point!

So when we get into the rest of the story, as Craig's life and relationship to his wife unravels (Kate Mara, with a tougher role to play because she has to be the more "straight" character to react to Robinson's strangeness, is really good here), we should want to almost be on Craig's side... except, nah, he is nuts and going off his own kind of sad deep end, too. We should be more with Austin, but he is the character who is so far apart from Craig and, eventually, the subject of his ire (while still with a fascination and a need to repeat his acts, hence the "adventure" through the tunnel where Tammy gets lost).

So many characters here are equally "off" but kind of wonderful in their off-putting nature (take a shot every time *Marvel is mentioned and it is blotto time), like the kid at the phone store with the toad that sets Craig on his uh... "trip" that is not really that (just a few minutes! And he made a sandwich!) The film is a series of cringe encounters and conversations and breakdowns of sanity, and yet it is always about things that will make us laugh, and hard, because we still can recognize how maintaining any social situation is just, well, who needs it?

Robinson is particularly spectacular here because his Craig should start to veer off into unbelievability, but he makes him a vulnerable and simple creature - he just wants to accomplish eating that Navy Seal Team 6 special meal (the one they had after icing Bin Laden, after all) - and you just want to see what fresh hell he will get himself into next.

And it is very, very, very, very funny. Friendship is one of the most unique films of the year and, as of the halfway point, one of the most memorable.

I could be mistaken, but I believe this features cinema's only Deux ex State Department-ina (?) That sounds silly until you watch this and see how so many twisty buearocratic snafus get sorted out with one call to an aging - and unlike Juliet Mills actually fat - white guy (Edward Andrews, very funny in that oblivious way that Billy Wilder characters have) with deep connections and intel on what's going wrong in this or that country in a not-at-all bigoted under-current tone. Thankfully, this co-writer and director relishes in making that character that shows up to straighten out everything into a total maroon.

Let me make mention of that again, uh, do we call it a "running gag" of "hey, Miss Pigett Juliett Mills is so fat ::insert line you remember from recess here:: I think it is the part of the film that has aged about as well as my Billy Joel t shirt from high school that has permanent sweat stains, but I am fascinated by why it was in the movie to begin with. This script was based on a play, so I have to wonder if the actress originally in that first production was actually overweight (whatever that even is these days), and oddly enough Mills put on 25 pounds prior to shooting. I know the joke is on the Lemmon Ambruster character since he says it and is meant to look foolish... but did the audience at the time see it that way, or actually see her as fat?

It isn't a major part of the film, but it is there, and it calls to mind how IRL culture does get down women, like say Kate Winslet in the 90s or Jennifer Lawrence in more recent times, for not looking rail thin (but still being objectively hot and sexy and here I go revealing my hetero bonafides). The shame is when these bits sort of stop the movie in its tracks, albeit it is kind of funny when she pulls out the apple as all she'll be having for the fancy dinner that she and Ambruster are having to repeat their respective mother and father's Italian dinner tryst routines. Mills is, one should also note, really good in the movie and has a liveliness that is not lost on the serious moments, as her character is grieving, and when she is shot nude by Wilder she is shot to look... good, actually, and the plus side is Wilder knows it and the audience should as well.

Most of Avanti is a Farce, but Wilder is smart enough to keep the types and tropes just silly enough to only be like fifteen years out of date (if it wasn't already then), and the story keeps throwing problem after problem and the tightrope Wilder and co writer IAL Diamond come across (what a monster burger of a name by the way, just had to point that out) is it could fall into Sitcom cheapness, like where is the emotion and something like reality here. But what Wilder has is Lemmon and by this point that wasn't nothing, on the contrary he is elevates the material and every scene he's in, especially with Milld and Clive *Revill. He has that way of taking a scene up and down and sideways and his looks and pauses are one of the great joys of mid 20th century American comedies.

By the mid point of the movie, when Miss Pigott strips down to have that morning skinny dip and bathe out by the Italian coastal rocks (you know, like the baby seals do) and Lemmon follows in his huff and then strips down as well (losing his underwear as he swims because why not) and then connects on a deeper level with Mills on those rocks, Wilder and Lemmon and everyone have found the groove to tap into here which is that sense of "yeah, the world is kind of messed up as were our parents, might as well make the best of a bad lot." Moreover, Wilder captures that odd but pleasant feeling of being away somewhere on a vacation, and the Italian locations do a lot of work on their own.

Lastly, dont take for granted how Wilder, even on a film that is good but not great, manages that tone of bittersweet throughout, and not only with Ambruster and Piggott and their misunderstandings (ie wait where did she take the corpses? Oh, wait, nevermind, it was that one Trotti son with the bad eye, superb casting of the locals by the by). There's the whole crux of... our father and mother have died, and the grieving time is taken seriously and has some depth when it's shown, but in the story we understand, as Ambruster has to come to slowly but surely, that the affair his well to do business magnate dad had with this working class British lady was what he needed to be happy, and sometimes carving that happiness is necessary in a life that has to be shaped and molded by Capitalism.

So, good stuff right there, even if you have to wade through "but she is not fat but oh wait the movie will say she is anyway" lines.

(*Yes, the voice of the Emperor in the original version of Empire Strikes Back. Random)

Kyoko is likely among top worst mothers in modern cinema. Not a question. Let the darn kids go to school and at least leave a phone number or forwarding address or something; do you really want those low propensity voters in your little apartment? That high animated-style voice can only get a cute Japanese woman so far. And yes, some people just are not equipped to have children and shouldn't. But once the kids are here, well... What can one do with those squeaky little shoes for little Yuki?

Kore-eda has a seemingly intuitive understanding, probably one that comes from just observing these kids and other kids throughout his life, that little moments can build and build incrementally and for a story like this either that way or overpowering melodrama is the way to go. He is not exactly a Vittorio De Sica kind of Neo-Realist filmmaker (not a shade meant on him, of course, he's great), and he is in the same sort of swimming pool dramatically speaking when it comes to showing the shame and sadness of everyday living for young characters who have little chance in this world to make it based on the circumstances.

His style is not at a remove from the characters, on the contrary he has a cinema verite kind of ideal with the camera operators and editors, and there's natural light as much as possible. He has the courage of a dramatic filmmaker to let us observe and watch based on behavior, primarily that of the boy Akira (Yagira, so exceptional at seeming so mild when he has to be fuming when not trying to just get his young family by each day and night), and to let us figure out how he's feeling or how we feel about this increasingly sad and dire situation.

Everything seems so ordinary and every day in the children's experiences, and that's what makes what happens- ie when yhe other boys come over to play and Kore-eda cuts to a close up of one of the kids doodling on an overdue gas bill- all the more engaging. Everything we are seeing here, from the kids at play to fingers making marks on the windows to Akira's looking at what is never there in front of him- his mother coming home- accumulate. It is a long film, but Kore-eda doesn't waste or or make things stuck in tedium, maybe because tedium is what these kids are stuck in and without much help (and I'm reminded of Parasite as a "smell" from their house ends up othering Akira and the kids).

I get now why this is ranked so highly among Kore-eda's most affecting works since it is so equally unassuming in its style that it keeps us wondering what bad times or suffering Akira will face next (or me I will say me, but you know it'll be you when you watch it), so that it makes all the shall we say nice moments (ie the kids going out to buy their food and play in the playground) more of a balance.

To say that Kore-eda's mastery is deceptive sounds like he's putting one over on us and that's not what he's doing; his heart is with these kids and this awful situation they're in, and he gives these characters so much room and space to be... kids. Thats the thing about it and what makes this great, the depictions of natural resilience and that this capability human beings have (kids sometimes miraculously) to persevere and still try to enjoy themselves despite their abandonment.

Chronicle of a Summer is dated in some, maybe more than some, aspects like in parts where Rouch and Morin just have regular people sitting around talking about the racial disparities of the day (actually some of this may be more topical than I admit), but the person of the psychologist surveyor Marceline, who is also a concentration camp survivor with the numbers on her arms (some of the men at this table scene don't know what it means, though eventually someone mentions they saw Night and Fog), is a particular stand out since she is the one who starts off asking questions to random persons on the street and then becomes a subject herself. But what does stand out is the central question they keep coming back to: Are You Happy?

That whole idea helps to keep a through line of a sort to what is a documentary full of digressions both in subject matter and style - when the filmmakers show characters walking around on occasion it seems oddly staged given how this one of the first Cinema Verite works (that is the term the filmmakers used, in full disclosure) while at other times like the work seen in the factory those moments have a (scuse this word again) reality that sticks.

That question is deceptively simple; some can say they are happy on the surface level, but what they are happy about, and subsequently very much not happy about, has to come out when they need to give examples to support their points. So when we see Marceline at one point, trembling like a hundred leaves in a major windstorm, talking about why she is not happy, and there is that move to show her numbers (at this point we hadn't seen them yet and nothing about her past as a survivor), it hits like a brick.

I can't quite say that every interview kept me totally riveted, and that could be because (not entirely the filmmakers fault if that's even the word for it) this was so new and the roughness was going to be baked into the process and one is more accustomed to either true Fly on the Wall approaches to lives like these ala the Maysles or with more pointed inquiries into the lives of the subjects like Apted with the Up series. But what does stick out and make the film substantive despite frankly being a little draggy even at 90 minutes is how the filmmakers are looking for a kind of anthropology to feelings, if that makes sense, and how that reflects both reality and a sort of "created" reality that some of the subjects (with reason) can't stand.

In short, this was made a the right time with the right subjects and the idea of happiness and how it is what you can make of it - and as someone points out with a clear wisdom that grief and unhappiness are not one and the same and it's important to distinguish those things - stretches beyond 1961 for as long as we have human civilization.

As context always matters, Imamura makes it not only clear, not subtext but the tex itself, that the Japan of Pigs and Battleships is under an occupation that is a form of Gangsterism. There is a reason the troops are there - they won the war - but the extent to which they are still in Japan 15 years later is not about keeping any kind of peace but a form of taking and taking (Americans = Gangsters? I wasn't born yesterday).

The shots of the battleships bookends the film, and Americans are in the story mostly on the sides, except at one key point about midway through as sexual assaulter brutes who make Haurko (a heartbreaking and very good Yoshimura performance throughout) and young woman who is only with them because she's lost her way and looking for quick money. So, if this is a Crime melodrama, Imamura means to say, involving low level thugs and bad deals involving pigs and their feed and other bad crimes, you can't look at that without seeing what surrounds them all - and more distressing is that (some of) the Japanese citizens *like* the American influence and presence.

This isn't so blunt that Imamura hits us over the head with the message because he couldn't make a dishonest or sentimental turn if he tried. Pigs and Battleships is primarily about Kinto (Nagato), one of those young dudes that can't seem to stop moving his body even when things are (relatively) ok, like there's a low to much higher level anxiety that pervades his mind and spirit. He wants to rise in the ranks with a group of local gangsters, but it doesn't sink in that he'll be the Fall Guy (or maybe it does and he just wants to get all the money he can).

This position he's in doesn't sit well with Haruko, who loves him completely against her better judgment and wants him to go away with her. If she had seen a movie before she might know better, but it doesn't look like many (good) movies play around them, but I digress. Point is, Kinto is the kind of screwed that he doesn't fully know it, and his descent into criminality is more pathetic than tragic until it goes beyond that stage, while Haruko goes through her own foolish acts like with the American sailors. Meanwhile, the Boss of the group is for much of the story thinking he's dying - stomach cancer, but its really an ulcer - and is the one part of the story I'm still thinking about (as in, is it meant to be funny or just kind of sad or whatever).

All of this is shot in continually immersive and impressive long takes and wide shots where Imamura not only knows but cares about how we are seeing people in the frames; often these are when Kinto and Haruko are in a room with others who are using them, be it Kinto with his gangster (would be) pals or Haruko with a group of prostitutes who are in their own form of exploitation. He moves it when he has to and when he does you can be sure that its meant to keep us dramatically or thematically hooked (I liked the one shot that is wide for a few minutes and then moves in on the boy reading about Japanese history, it just feels impactful on some level I have to keep thinking about it a good way).

As I said, the only part that didn't quite work for me is the subplot with the Boss and his cancer-not-cancer, but it doesn't take away from what does. The kind of character of Kinto is sympathetic, even when he puts himself deeper into this group who would love nothing more than to see him go to jail to cover up their crimes and to not be seen again, and when we think he's lost he comes back with his declaration that he'll finally quit... but of course he has to do One More Thing and we all know that never goes well. But what's so incredible is where Imamura takes this in the final act, as those trucks of pigs get taken along on a chase that leads to the red light district, and that's where I have to stop typing to give away what brilliant chaos you have to see for yourself.

Pigs and Battleships has a kind of cunning to ot because Imamura is using the sort of cinematic grammar that I'd expect more in Western/American films, such as those long wide shots (I thought of John Ford only he'd never make something as gritty as this), and he's using that language in a film that is directly about how much Japanese citizens have lost their souls to another kind of Imperial rule. The black and white cinematography is dark and brooding, like Film Noir stretched at points into a nightmare of itself. And as the film goes into its final reel, Nagato makes his Kinto into this damned creature with that machine gun and there's a wildness and abandon that is only extreme in what he ultimately does, but he is still painfully human and damaged. This is a scathing social critique and a highly entertaining crime melodrama with a few really big laughs.

Come Drink With Me doesn't have any kind of groundbreaking story - it's about a young man who gets kidnapped by sone punks and happens to be a son of governor and the brother of the powerful Golden Swallow (one of the phenomenal martial arts stars of hers or any generation, Cheng Pei-Pei, what a screen presence and what equally graceful and sharp skills as a fighter on film) and what happens when she goes up against these bad guys to get him back. But you don't necessarily have to watch this to get something all that deep or profound, and director King Hu knows that.

Sometimes there is the pleasure in seeing great attitudes on the faces of these actors who trained their asses off to perform well and to what specifications were needed on the sets and in the fights (camera and editing tricks are used only at minimum and Hu favors longer takes and wide compositions whenever he can, so it's mostly of the time), and Come Drink With Me gives the audience so much pleasure in watching Pei-Pei mess up a whole lot of dudes and then as well the full-of-calm-swagger star Elliot Ngok Wah (sadly both of them are no longer with us) as the Drunken Knight. Just his scenes with Pei-Pei in the second half, particularly where he goads her into throwing that giant rock at him, are wonderful and intense alone.

I do think if you want Hu at his very best Dragon Inn and his epic Touch of Zen are superior, but that doesn't take away from Come Drink With Me as a classic of its own kind when it comes to the many times fights and sword battles break out, everything is clear and dynamic and when the pointy ends hit the flesh it's intense and only sometimes completely blood-and-squib soaking mayhem.

Lastly, I was also impressed by the overall spirit of the story, and that for like five or ten minutes it becomes a Musical with a group of signing small orphan children with the most delightfully weird patches of hair. It adds an innocence to a story that is a little bogged down in some details that aren't as strong. As one small critique: if that Drunken Master could do *that* with his hands at his adversaries before, why not do it a little more? Maybe it was to save on budget, I guess.

Overall, The Eagle I'm sure was evem more spectacular for its time and it has some fun moments of adventure a century later - my favorite set up and payoff was with the bear in the cellar and how that attack unfolds when our Black Eagle under duress fights back very easily against it (bearly you might say...) - and it's simplicity in the main bones of the story is its charm. Brown also has some clever lighting effects and staging at times, like when we see the Black Eagle framed in a room as he's entering and his shadow casts a pall over the figure in the bed he's going in to attack.

The thinness of the narrative does make it a little less than a classic, at least for me, and the acting from much of the supporting players (like the guy playing Kyrilla) is rather broad and hasn't held up so well over time. And the ending isn't quite so believable given what we've seen and know about at least one key character. But Valentino is dashing and entertaining and suave and all the things that come with a name like, well, Valentino (doesn't that already sound like someone who comes packing with a romantic adventurous swagger?) Not to mention it isnt just resting on the looks or mannerisms, it's a real performance with layers of physicality and in how he shifts between his created personas.

I don't think I'd seen a film with him in the lead before, and this was not a disappointment as far as a vehicle in being different figures in one film (as the fallen Russian lieutenant, as the vigilante and as another character, seemingly... a French Count!) The more I think on him and the movie as a whole the more I like it. Also, that shot, and you know the one as it's around 40 minutes into the film and because of the seemingly seamless and spellbinding power of the moving camera as it goes over that dinner table that has around 30 people end to end, is one of the truest examples of why cinema is its own distinctive medium (and a darn good one at that)! 7.5/10.

Corridors of Blood (which is so good I'm surprised it isn't a title used repeatedly as a fake movie that other characters go to see like in a Slasher or something) is driven by Boris Karloff's mesmerizing performance as a man with a conscience who becomes consumed by his addiction and his obsession with the potential of his experiments. It's entirely on how he shows through so much of his training and experience as a performer that makes this more than just the B movie curio it purports to be; while a number of the other performers are fairly standard for this material (not counting for sure Christopher Lee or Adrienne Corri), Karloff takes this character and makes him fully tragic and pitiable.

The title may even be somewhat misleading to make this like another of his Horror films - and why not, it was his bread and butter and he was one of the guys on the Cereal Box - but what's important to remember is that Karloff was classically trained as the best of them and found his niche in the world of the Gothic and suspense. And this film, while not so great when it focused on some of the secondary characters (ie I didn't care that much about the younger doctor and his romance with Dr. Bolton's daughter), it almost doesn't matter because of how he gradually and incrementally peels this man down to a knub, even as he is still at heart and good doctor and man.

I also need to note about Christopher Lee, who does also take this up a notch every time he's on screen. At the same time he appeared as Dracula he also performed as this character, and while the Count is the more notable figure forever and ever for genre fans his Resurrection Joe may be the more intense performance; he never lets you have a second where you can relax watching him, and since he's very much a human being as opposed to an undead wine/women/music connoisseur it makes his deeds and attitude all the more ugly and sinister.

Bottom line, it's pretty cool it's something you could just get from a Criterion Closet to boot. That said, any time Lee in this as "Resurrection Joe" gets his hands on a pillow of death I just recoil completely. 7.5/10.