Three young men become terrorized in a high-speed car chase with a mysterious pursuant.
Fins beyond the Law are some things that naturally are cinematic. Among these are car chases, smoke and snow. Similarly on the story side, people cast together in a small space with an outside threat and unrevealed past relationships. It terms of flow, the most reliable...
Frankenstein, a young medical student, trying to create the perfect human being, instead creates a misshapen monster. Made ill by what he has done, Frankenstein is comforted by his fiancée; but on his wedding night he is visited by the monster.
The Witch’s Looking-glass putting this on my list of films you must see. It is short and at first glance completely uninteresting. But look again. Here’s what happens: Young Frankenstein goes to college where he discovers the secret of life. Interesting that the filmmakers would think...
A domineering money-bags' suppressed incestuous urges go into overdrive when her half-brother brings a new bride home to the family’s gloomy Fifth Avenue mansion. The title refers to a secret soundproofed chamber that the villainess uses to entrap her enemies.
Panic Room the last depression, moviegoers were obsessed with the wealthy. As with the aristocrats in Europe, these folks neither created nor managed wealth. They just had it and wanted more. Here we have a domineering woman who believes she deserves it all, taking from...
The villainous Dr. Fu Manchu races against a team of Englishmen to find the tomb of Ghengis Khan, because he wants to use the relics to cause an uprising in the East to wipe out the white race.
Scientific Rape many times a movie can be worthwhile when it does no more than create and display a strange world. Almost always that's the case where the world is new and/or synthesised from previous abstract sources. "Metropolis" of five years earlier is often celebrated as...
When Eddie breaks into a luxury SUV, he steps into a deadly trap set by William, a self-proclaimed vigilante delivering his own brand of twisted justice. With no means of escape, Eddie must fight to survive in a ride where escape is an illusion, survival is a nightmare, and justice shifts into high gear.
Eye Outside no value here; this comment is about a key technique, and setting aside my aversion to the acting stance that Hopkins has settled into. I don’t think it quite earns the right to be a genre, but we do have ‘containment’ films, where...
Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.
Visual Music like Jodorowsky but instead of Chilean mysticism, African voodoo, or what we think so through prior films. Something culturally like ‘Snatch’, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, and ‘Kill Bill 2’ rolled together. Grand cinematic skill but in the small. Like another recent film (‘The...
An American reporter smells a story when he is stranded in an Iron Curtain country where the local dictator is using gamma rays to transform children into mutated henchmen.
Women, Trained story here is a bit interesting, deriving from Nazi experiments with children and indicating a trend actually well supported in the US. But the production is ho hum and it has no value for what it is. But it is an example of something...
After the previous Godzilla attack, a miniature arms race ensues to collect his cells. Concerned over Godzilla's possible return, the Japanese government uses the cells to create a new bio-weapon, ANEB (Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria). They seeks the aid of geneticist Genshiro Shiragami, who's experiments result in a new mutation.
Sexual Spies Godzilla films — the Japanese ones — are essentially social commentary and painful self-reflection embodied in beasts. So we have films about American dominance, gangsters in corporations, pollution, national friendships… This is the most complex one. The core story is a genius scientist creating...
One of the first Czechoslovak films to be shown abroad--a fantasy horror, filmed on the fully furnished premises of the Berlin film studio Am Zoo. The central role is portrayed by the “arrivee from darkness”, Ješek, who is awakened from a deathly sleep. The film represents unusual sparks of creative efforts and the ambitions of creative community around the director Jan S. Kolár, who was inspired by international trends and techniques.
Parallel Realities this is yet another instance of a woman actress, made a star by her filmmaker lover. The story is a valentine to her charm and beauty, sufficient to bend reality. She indeed became a star until talkies made her accent unsellable. Here, she...
As Part I opens, Jubei (Denjiro Okochi), the best of sea skippers, is unable to overcome the stormy seas of Luzon. All hands on board the Kannonmaru were lost except for Shinkei, who alone made his way to land & eventually home to inform his grandson Jiromaru (Kinnosuke Nakamura) that his father Jubei met with disaster. Young Jiromaru tells his grandfather that he doesn't want to be a skipper like his father, but wants to go to Kyoto and become a samurai…
Pirates! Ghosts! Samurai! not sure how much I will be able to devote to a study of Japanese cinema. I am attracted to films that rinse modern concepts through a Shinto lens. So the filmmakers and projects I value are actually few. But you have...