(art: Mark Ulriksen)
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Attack on a China Mission (1900)
A man tries to defend a woman and a large house against Chinese attackers.
A classic of film history that incorporated a sumptuous production (for that time) and a story told in four shots - in a way the grandmother of all action movies.
Flying Leathernecks (1951)
A Major leads The Wildcats squadron into the historic WWII battle of Guadalcanal.
Mediocre, violent and quite chauvinist flag waver which savours the air battle scenes.
Halliwell (no star): "Empty, violent war actioner full of phoney heroics."
Maltin***: "Solid, if not especially otiginal, WW2 actioner, with good aerial scenes and nice turnby Flippen as crafty sergeant."
R.I.P. Daevid Allen
So sad, one of my very first heroes.
Eulogy:
http://pitchfork.com/news/58386-daevid-allen-founder-of-gong-and-soft-machine-dead-at-77
First Lines: John Wyndham - The Chrysalids
When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city - which was strange because it began before I even knew what a city was.
Afterwards (2008)
A newly divorced lawyer is shaken up after he meets a doctor who claims that he can sense when select people are about to die.
Made with style and atmosphere, and the cast do their best, but the story is just too silly.
Friday, April 24, 2015
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Dirty (2005)
Two gangbangers-turned-cops try and cover up a scandal within the LAPD.
A great cast and feverish atmosphere, but a slightly unclear plot make this an above-average thriller about corruption among cops.
Maltin*1/2: "Aggressively foulmouthed and foul-minded, this visually convulsive TRAING DAY wannabe has ambitions, but offers neither its characters nor its audience any salvation."
Drive (2011)
A mysterious Hollywood stuntman, mechanic and getaway driver lands himself in trouble when he helps out his neighbor.
What would have been another (violent) action flic is successfully given an artsy treatment and the feel of an existentialist drama with a tight-lipped, hard-boiled anti-hero.
Maltin**: "What some see as a prime example of postmodern cool strikes us as a pretentious hogwash from the word go. The bursts of gruesome violence are equally hard to swallow. By the way, Gosling seems fully articulate when he sets up his first gig, but spends the rest of the film nearly silent (and striking poses). Only bright spot is a juicy supporting role for Brooks as a savvy gangster."
Thursday, April 23, 2015
First Lines: Edwin A. Abbott - Flatland: Romance of Many Dimensions
I call our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are priviliged to live in Space.
Hadaka no shima (1960)
A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.
Poetic masterpiece without any dialogue that depicts the bleak, but mutual relationship between landscape and human sustenance in rhythmic daily and seasonal rituals.
Halliwell*: "Slow, controlled, beautiful film in which not a single word of dialogue is spoken. The artificiality of this concept eventually diminishes its stature."
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