Hanyo (1960)

Hanyo (1960) | A composer has a one night stand with his maid while his wife is away. The maid is jealous of the wife and tries to steal him away from her, gaining more and more control over the family and doing increasingly horrible things to them.

I have mixed feelings about this film, although I did like it a lot. There are a lot of good things about it, but also some very off-putting aspects. It had a pretty intense atmosphere, and for me, that managed to be enough to ignore some of the more annoying aspects of the film. It was not as constrained as the older Asian films tend to be, which was a nice change as it gave it a little bit of unpredictability.

On the other hand, the acting was quite bad. Sometimes it was bearable, other times it was ridiculously over-the-top (the children were constantly horrible though). The maid was quite creepy, but I found it impossible to believe that she was able to seduce anyone – especially a man who had already refused the attempts of seduction by two of his piano students – as she looked almost exactly like Margaret McPoyle from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. She kept licking her lips as well, so all I could think of when I saw her was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZhFLcC02Oo. A lot of the events were pretty unbelievable as well and although most were forgivable because of the nice atmosphere, some were too badly written; such as when his student confesses to him and they have this random little fight.

The ending was alright, aside from the fourth wall breaking. The morals of the film are pretty stupid, but it builds up a creepy atmosphere and is well-paced so manages to be quite entertaining. Not as great as some people seem to be claiming, but not a bad watch either.

7/10

Way Out West (1937)

Way Out West (1937) | Stan and Ollie are sent to Brushwood Gulch to deliver a deed for a gold mine to a woman named Mary Roberts. As soon as they arrive in town, they upset the Sheriff’s wife and Mary’s guardian tries to get his wife to steal the deed from them so they can have the gold mine for themselves.

It’s only a short film (just over 60 minutes), but it feels like it goes on forever. I’m not a fan of slapstick, or westerns, and this was nearing a painful level for me. The only scene I really enjoyed was when they sang ‘The Trail of the Lonesome Pine’, which was somewhat amusing. But overall, this just was too unfunny for me to enjoy it.

4/10

Johnny Guitar (1954)

Johnny Guitar (1954) | Vienna owns a saloon she built on the outside of town and hopes to expand into a town when the new railroad is put through. The other townsfolk want her gone, and when a stagecoach is held up, they blame Vienna and some of her associates and come to take them. Vienna’s old flame Johnny Guitar is back in town and helps her stand up against them.

This was pretty bad. The acting was horrific, ranging between wooden and over-the-top. Joan Crawford and Sterling Hayden’s scenes were the most cringeworthy; the dialogue was terribly cheesy and they had no chemistry at all. There were a couple of scenes that were alright, I did like the scene near the end when the townsfolk and Emma Small come into the saloon and Vienna’s playing her piano. There was a bit of tension there, but the dialogue rambled on for so long and was so repetitive, I started to wonder if they had forgotten what they were even doing there and filled the scene with lots of fluff.

Not an absolutely awful film, but not a very good one either. No idea how this is so highly regarded as it really has very little good things about it. Perhaps fans of westerns would get more out of it.

4/10

Die Bergkatze (1921)

Die Bergkatze (1921) | A womanizing lieutenant is sent to remote fort for duty. He is captured by bandits on his way there and the bandit leader’s daughter, Rischka, falls madly in love with him.

I didn’t think this was particularly bad, but it wasn’t able to hold my interest. I generally like Lubitsch, but this didn’t even feel like a Lubitsch film. It was just very dull and seemed to go for a lot longer than it did. The different frame masking was kind of interesting, but mostly distracting. Rischka was an interesting character; an atypical female and she had a bit of energy to her. Unfortunately this wasn’t enough to keep the film well-paced or entertaining.

5/10

La vergine di Norimberga (1963)

La vergine di Norimberga (1963) | Mary has recently moved into her husband’s castle in Germany. One night she awakes to find a murdered woman in one of the torture devices kept in the castle’s museum. When she is found, there is no evidence that a murder took place, but she is convinced that old family friend, Erich, is the one responsible for it.

Not very much to say about this one. A bland film with no suspense and with lots of ‘nothing’ scenes. It didn’t keep my interest at all and seemed to take hours to finish. The dubbing was annoying, and the acting wasn’t very good. The ending was completely silly as well.

4/10

Naked (1993)

Naked (1993) | Johnny leaves Manchester after raping a girl and goes to London, where he rants to strangers a lot.

Most complaints about the film seem to be about the amount of rape and every character being unsympathetic. Neither of these are problems for me. I like films that are dark and depressing and try to do something different. I love black comedy and I never seem to like the ‘good guys’ in films. However, this film tries too hard in every way that it comes across as pretentious, obvious and dumb. I also dislike the word ‘pretentious’ and use it sparingly, but it fits well with this film.

We first meet Johnny as he’s raping a girl, which I thought was an interesting way to introduce a character. But that was the only interesting thing he ever does in the film. All his dialogue is spouting unintesting philosophical nonsense as he wanders around. Early on he rants about how much he hates people being ‘bored’ and I guess this is correct as he feels the need to always be doing something; usually choosing between random sex or spouting the aforementioned philosophical nonsense at strangers. He reminds me of those people who sit on their porches yelling out all the things they hate about the world – people that we never pay attention to because we don’t care about anything they say. All the characters he meets seem to be high, or just stupid. The characters are not only unlikable and unsympathetic, but boring, undeveloped and used as puppets to receive or speak the philosophical nonsense. The over-acting doesn’t help create any depth or realism either.

There’s not much of a plot. Johnny escapes to London, wanders about, talks to people and has sex with random people. I have no problem with a director wanting to say something about the world, or people, or philosophy or whatever. But providing us with no plot and no characters, it’s too obvious and in your face for the audience to care or enjoy what they’re seeing. Leigh has told me nothing with this film. All this film is is a platform for Leigh to rant about random things. Which again, is fine, but if you want the audience to care about anything you have to say, some effort is needed in creating developed characters and situations.

As a comedy, it doesn’t work either. A few lines made me smirk a little, and I saw many underlying ideas that could’ve worked well as a drama or/and a black comedy, but Leigh chooses to ignore all of these opportunities and instead continue his rants. So far the only good film I’ve seen from Leigh is Vera Drake. All the others fall victim to the same problems with this film. Drake manages to not just show bleakness and darkness, but makes you feel it and that is what makes a successful film.

All in all, it was pretty dull and I didn’t get anything out of it. I didn’t totally hate it, some scenes were enjoyable (I did somewhat like Jeremy’s scenes for some reason). This film is not intelligent; there is nothing deep or thoughtful about it. The characters talk a lot, but don’t really say anything. Perfect for people who like philosophy and interpreting even the most meaningless of things.

4/10

Gertrud (1964)

Gertrud (1964) | Gertrud is a woman bored in her marriage and breaks it off to be with her lover. He leaves her, and through conversations and flashbacks we learn of her affair with another man as well as her adolescent dreams of love.

This is one of the very few movies where I can’t think of a single reason why someone would like it. Honestly, I have no clue. Firstly, I don’t give a feck what Dreyer was going for. What I care about is what is in front of me, not what was going on in the mind of Dreyer. So, apparently the entire cast were robots. Or the characters were meant to be robots. And I’m not just getting this intepretation from the monotone style of speech, but the fact that not a single movement looks natural (when they actually do make a movement, but even their stillness looks too controlled). Staring off into nowhere the entire time they’re speaking is fine, but not when I feel like they are being held at gunpoint to NOT MOVE A MUSCLE.

Speaking in an unemotional tone of voice while speaking of emotional things; ooh, intellectual isn’t it? No. It reminds me of being in a lecture with the most boring lecturer in the world; even if the subject is the most interesting thing ever, if they’re speaking in a dry monotone, you don’t care about a word they’re saying. I don’t know in what universe this is a pleasing style of acting, but it’s not in mine. And the fact that the characters never spoke a single interesting word, made this twice as awful.

The characters had no personality and no life. Just robots speaking words that they don’t even care about. Again, how the hell is this enjoyable? Maybe if they were talking about something interesting – something to make me think, something to make me feel, whatever – then I would’ve gotten something out of it. But nope, just speaking pointless words, less intelligent and interesting than the dialogue in a Michael Bay film. It was all a completely wasted opportunity. Gertrud’s actions should make her easily hate-able, but I don’t even care enough to hate her.

The cinematography and lighting was kind of nice, but they added nothing to the atmosphere and only just made it ok to look at. A waste of time and it seems to only be held in such high regard because Dreyer is the director.

3/10

Alien Raiders (2008)

Alien Raiders (2008) | A supermarket is just getting ready to close for the night, when an armed group of masked people start killing people and holding the rest hostage. They claim to be robbers, but we soon find out they are scientists who have tracked down an alien infestation to the store and are determined to end the infestation for good.

The action begins almost immediately, which I’m not usually a fan of, but the atmosphere is kept tense and the directing is tight, so it got my attention straight away. The atmosphere is kept up throughout the film as well, so it’s always interesting. It’s fast-paced, but not annoyingly so.

Despite having a lot of unknown actors, the cast is quite strong. Carlos Bernard plays a character similar to Tony in 24, so I had to giggle every time he said ‘yeah’ or ‘alright’, but he was a strong lead. As already stated, everyone was good, which is surprising for a film with such a small budget (and with apparently very little publicity).

We are kept in the dark for most of the film, which I suspect was to make the gore effects seem better than they were – although they seemed fine to me, and it helped atmospherically a lot too. They did extremely well for the budget (under $2 million) and for a film shot in 3 weeks. I didn’t even know this information before watching it and I would never have known.

Anyway, it’s definitely worth a watch and another really great independent horror film discovery. This is one of those times where my rating system makes little sense, there was really nothing wrong with it that I can point out (perhaps the predictable ending but it was still satisfying), but it feels like it’s teetering on a 7/8 (After thinking about it for a while, I let it settle on an 8).

8/10

‘Hukkunud Alpinisti’ hotell (1979)

'Hukkunud Alpinisti' hotell (1979)

‘Hukkunud Alpinisti’ hotell (1979) | The police are called out to a small hotel in the Alps. Someone is killed, there’s an avalanche that cuts them off from the world and some weird stuff happens.

I found this pretty disappointing. I could kind of see what they were going for at times, but it just didn’t work. It starts off as a murder mystery; the cop interviews the people in the hotel to find out what they saw and where they were etc. And then it seems like there were big chunks missing out of the script, the action just started jumping around and then suddenly you get the ‘twist’, which wasn’t really a twist, it was just a complete genre change. I do like the genre change idea – it worked amazingly well in From Dusk Till Dawn – here it was just seemed random and odd. I never cared at any point and I just wanted to know what the point of it all was, but there didn’t seem to be one.

Visually, it seemed to be going for some arty, ethereal atmosphere, but the cameraman just seemed clumsy and inexperienced; it reminded me a lot of Le Grand Meaulnes, especially with the constant random close-ups, but it wasn’t as bad and at least this guy could keep the camera steady. I generally don’t notice visuals unless they are really amazing, or spectacularly awful and they did bother me a little here.

It has some interesting ideas, but none are executed well and it was completely unsatisfying.

5/10

This Island Earth (1955)

This Island Earth (1955) | After his plane almost crashes and is surrounded by a green glow which lands the aircraft safely, Cal Meacham is invited by a strange looking man, Exeter, to join his group of scientists in a secret project. After an escape attempt, they discover Exeter is actually an alien from the planet Metaluna and is looking for a new source of energy to help his planet in a war against Zargon.

A typical 50s science fiction film. I’m not a fan of these, and this wasn’t really any different. If you’re a fan of them in general, you’ll probably enjoy it, but I found it too silly, too dated and just plain dull to enjoy it.

5/10