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Bad Taste (1987)
Watch out Aliens... here comes Derek!
Filmmaker(s): Peter Jackson

A team from the intergalactic fast food chain Crumb's Crunchy Delights descends on Earth, planning to make human flesh the newest taste sensation. After they wipe out the New Zealand town Kaihoro, the country’s Astro-Investigation and Defense Service (AIaDS) is called in to deal with the problem. Things are complicated due to Giles, an aid worker who comes to Kaihoro the same day to collect change from the residents. He is captured by the aliens, and AIaDS stages a rescue mission that quickly becomes an all-out assault on the aliens’ headquarters.

The World as Hamburger if we are lucky, a film plants itself deep in our souls and thrives there. Other times, a film is something different: an invitation to a party in the world of the filmmaker. In that case, it cannot touch you and...


Published May 16, 2023
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Ishtar (1987)
Telling the truth can be dangerous business.
Filmmaker(s): Elaine May

Two terrible lounge singers get booked to play a gig in a Moroccan hotel but somehow become pawns in an international power play between the CIA, the Emir of Ishtar, and the rebels trying to overthrow his regime.

Farentheit am writing this at a time when George Bush is still president, Michael Moore’s film has just appeared and the American people are beginning to understand what has happened. We all grasp at the movie we live in. At the moment, the “Republican” movie is...


Published March 5, 2023
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Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple: 4:50 from Paddington (1987)
Filmmaker(s): Martyn Friend

Travelling on the 4.50 from Paddington, Mrs McGillicuddy witnesses a murder on a passing train - but where is the body?

Missed Train Marple stories — many of them — are lessons in narrative placement. We start with the basic notion of the mystery narrator shuffling through multiple created realities looking for what makes sense. Marple turns that into the clever notion of detection as gossip:...


Published December 12, 2022
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Ten Little Indians (1987)
Filmmaker(s): Stanislav Govorukhin

A disturbing psychological thriller based on the classic novel by Agatha Christie. Ten strangers are forced to come face to face with their dark pasts after receiving an anonymous invitation to an isolated island off the coast of England.

Invasive are not likely to find this easily. It is ‘Desyat negrityat’ in its original Russian (Десять негритят), being a comparatively faithful adaptation of an Agatha Christie mystery. Some context why this is interesting. The book is allegedly the largest selling fiction book in the...


Published March 3, 2024
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Betty Blue (1986)
Filmmaker(s): Jean-Jacques Beineix

A lackadaisical handyman and aspiring novelist tries to support his younger girlfriend as she slowly succumbs to madness.

The Piano a film makes a long, long journey. For me this happened in several ways. The first is in real time. I saw this a couple decades ago in the short version. I was unimpressed. The word on it then was all about the first...


Published June 16, 2023
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April Fools Day (1986)
Guess who's going to be the life of the party?
Filmmaker(s): Fred Walton

As soon as Muffy St. John and her college friends arrive on her parents' secluded island, someone starts trimming the guest list... one murder at a time.

The Opening now you probably know that the meat of this is quite ordinary. It has an “it is all a joke“ sort of Scooby-doo ending. And this casts the whole thing retrospectively as a spoof of the genre. Not particularly interesting on that basis...


Published May 1, 2023
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To Sleep So As to Dream (1986)
Filmmaker(s): Kaizo Hayashi

An aging silent film actress hires a private eye and his wacky but helpful assistant to track down her missing daughter, Bellflower. The two follow a succession of bizarre, obscure clues, until they track down the location of the kidnappers and the daughter.

Mysterious Silences my readers know, I study folding in film; when films have parallel positions for the viewer as supported by the construction of the thing. Usually, this is a fluid contract between filmmaker and viewer that requires deeper engagement. I like these in part because...


Published May 13, 2022
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Murder in Three Acts (1986)
Filmmaker(s): Gary Nelson

In Acapulco, Hercule Poirot attends a dinner party in which one of the guests clutches his throat and suddenly dies. The causes seem to be natural until another party with most of the same guests produces another corpse.

Bicycle, not spacecraft strangest thing: when films are made of Christie structures, the first thing they worry about is the characterisation of the detective: Poirot or Marple. Clearly, the filmmakers obsess over the potential for engagement within the constraints of the original text, but they...


Published February 3, 2024
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Shadows in Paradise (1986)
Filmmaker(s): Aki Kaurismäki

Nikander, a rubbish collector and would-be entrepreneur, finds his plans for success dashed when his business associate dies. One evening, he meets Ilona, a down-on-her-luck cashier, in a local supermarket. Falteringly, a bond begins to develop between them.

Foreground, Hinted Background am attracted to ambitious films, ones that challenge and that have a lot of powerful layered machinery. It is how I build my life. They are work. Art is work if you intend to collect and use it as fuel. So when you...


Published February 9, 2024
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The Singing Detective (1986)
Filmmaker(s): Guy Hamilton

Tormented and bedridden by a debilitating disease, a mystery writer relives his detective stories through his imagination and hallucinations.

Boundaries, Skin, Akroyd have been without a TeeVee for thirty years. It is a standing challenge to my friends to show me something that is produced for TeeVee that does less harm than good in working with the viewer's mind. I finally have it here. Lynch's...


Published December 9, 2024
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