[image file][giallo] MARIO BAVA -- SIX WOMEN FOR THE MURDERER (1964)

STARBLACK (1966) Written & directed by Giovanni Grimaldi

Western all'italiana meets giallo, via a masked avenger:

Captures the spirit of Zorro ...The Lone Ranger..Robin Hood..... Clark Kent...Batman...yes, even Mighty Mouse...

THE GIRL WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1979) Written & directed by Dario Argento

Taglines: "A stunning portrait in psycho-terror! All the screaming in the world won't help!"

GUY Madden -- COWARDS BEND THE KNEE AUDITION (2003) Directed by Guy Madden

It's time for hockey! There's no telling what will happen when the Winnipeg Maroons' own star player Guy becomes embroiled in the twisted lives of Meta, a vengeful Chinoise, and her hairdresser/abortionist mother Liliom. Innocent Veronica, caught in the middle, is treated to both services! Meanwhile poor, dithering, cowardly Guy can only stand by and watch.
Written by Anony-Moose

LEE MARVIN'S DEATH IN "THE KILLERS" (1964)

"The Killers (1964) Lee Marvin plays a hit man - here is that man's last stand.
The Killers is also the last movie Ronald Reagan played in. Reagan plays the role of a gangster who slaps Angie Dickinson around.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK on "Tomorrow" Show with Tom Snyder Fall 1973

Shutter Island Poster

[review] SHUTTER ISLAND (2010)

In 1967 Martin Scorsese's picture 'I Got First' (later release as Who's That Knocking at My Door) played the Chicago Film Festival. A young writer named Roger Ebert would immediately write, "'I Call First' ... a work that is absolutely genuine, artistically satisfying, and technically comparable to the best films being made anywhere," he would even dare to put epiphany to print , "I have no reservations in describing it as a great moment in American Movies."

More than forty years later Mr. Scorsese delivers his twenty-first feature film, 'Shutter Island'. This is an accomplished work of art that shows an unwavering strength of vision, the determination of an athletic aesthete, and an entirely uncommon passion for what he does. Mr. Scorsese's artistic tenacity has not only exceeded every other "great" American director from his own generation but he continues to operate with the same artistic and technical class of the best filmmakers working anywhere in the world today. How? His loving commitment to the art of motion pictures, perhaps even more than as his professional experience, allows for his perception to remain relevant.
A friend of mine recently made this astute comment "Most musicians today, and when I say most I mean most, don't sound or even look like they enjoy doing what they're doing." Maestro Scorsese loves what he does, and he does it for an audience that loves the cinema. He remains mindful of yesterdays audience, the audience of today, and the audience of tomorrow. Why was "Shutter Island" put off from being released in the fall along along with the other premium pictures? I like to think it's because this picture wouldn't have found it's full audience. This may not be the type of picture that would matter most to the academy, and that certainly isn't what matters most to Scorsese and his producers -- viewers matter. This picture does better by not competing with ambitions of other films and evading the feeding frenzy. 'Shutter Island' opened at the perfect time. The R rated thriller opened at number one in the box office, earning 40.2 million it's opening weekend.

'Shutter Island' stars Leonardo DiCaprio, as U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, Mark Ruffalo, as his partner Chick Aule, and Ben Kingsly, as the prison medical director. The picture starts kneading your mind from it's opening scene with the dense tone clusters of Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki grafted over Scorsese's swooping and circumscribing shots. Teddy Daniels is fevered from the get go. He enters the film carrying the cuts, bruises, and white knuckled anxiety of a conflict pre-existing outside the frame. Apparently, Marshals Daniels and Ruffalo are on their way to Shutter Island, a remote and craggy island off Boston, the foundation of a prison for the criminally insane, to investigate the disappearance of a child murderer. It doesn't take long before we discover that something else is afoot and suddenly the story takes the shape of cries for reason against the gales of a torrential storm. The action runs the gauntlet through an awfully dark labyrinth that moves between collapsing passages in the mind and the rough-hewn chambers of a most wretched prison.
As I mentioned earlier, this picture begins by immediately commencing on your brain. As a mystery it calls upon your intelligence, but when the expertly crafted mania of this story slips beyond all mental facilities it becomes a full-out drill on the senses. At one point I was actually trying to mentally hold onto something, anything, for a piece of security - be it an horrendously ugly neck tie. But even that went up in flames. This is a picture that works fully from beginning to end without ever letting up on one's need to reason.
Like a good noir we never know more than what the 'Robert Mitchum' type investigator does. The protagonist is always a beat or three ahead of the delighted popcorn popper, allowing for the pleasure of being led by the singular badass to the final conclusion. When you've arrived, you've arrived after taking the fantastic ride together. In a 1964 one-on-one interview with director Fletcher Markle for the Canadian program "Telescope" Alfred Hitchcock described being a good film maker as being "like a good architect for roller coasters." Scorsese has created a very ingenious thrill ride wherein the big drop twists and corkscrews without ever really letting up to the forces of gravity. Teddy is warned, "You will never leave this island", and we remain strapped in with him.

[review] Laura (1944)

Otto Preminger's 1944 classic mystery 'Laura' stars Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, and Vincent Price.

Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is your typical 1940s hard-boiled detective investigating the murder of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). He starts by interviewing the wealthy Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb) and then moves on to Laura’s half polished bumpkin fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price). Through these interviews Laura’s story is told by a series of personalized narrative flashbacks. Through the series of vignettes we begin to uncover how Lydecker fell for Laura, how Laura began to fall for Shelby, and how the obsessions her two suitors result in her apparent death.
The screen play is as masterfully crafted as Preminger's direction. But apparently Preminger was not the first director on board with this picture. But when the material had become a disater in another man's hands Mr. Preminger came in to create one of noir's great pictures.

Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Betty Reinhardt adapted the best selling 1943 detective novel by Vera Caspary. The story is filled with intrigue and mind bending plot twists. Continually conclusions that fall apart in just the blink of an eye. Late in the third act of the picture you find yourself scrutinizing a room full of people gathered at a social party thinking "Is it him? Is it her? Or are those two over there co-conspirators." You will never know until the very last moments of this picture.

[review] Le Boucher (1970)

Le Boucher (1970), written and directed by Claude Chabrol.
Many cineastes consider French director Claude Chabrol to be a master of the mystery genre; though, perhaps his most recognized picture, "Le Boucher", is hardly a mystery at all. One third of the way into the picture you will be quite certain of the killer's identity, however, and this is where exquisite craftsmanship comes to bare, you will also be persuaded to harbor some doubt. That doubt, against all reason, is earned by the way Chabrol develops the story's characters from the inside out.




The greatness of this film has little to do with the narrative, but instead with an attention to detail which conditions a steady sense of unease. Matters of sociological concern are more important to Chabrol's story than the issue of "who done it". The terror of Le Boucher comes from Chabrol’s deliberate direction, his sense of observation, and most importantly his deep interest in character.
The real think piece of Le Boucher is a scene where Héléne takes the children for a tour through the caves of cro-magnon man and then a picnic on a cliff's edge. A sense of subdued horror builds and rather than being manifest in an immediate tragedy it is revealed in fresh drops of blood that fall onto a young girl's sandwich. As if the tension contained within the scene is allowed to bleed out, just a bit, not too much, before we then see the ghastly vision of another victim's body.

It’s a small town, murders are being committed, and the conventional rhythm of a thriller is done away with for a more vivid exploration of violence, its effects on the person, and on a whole community.

[review] Carlos Reygadas: Batalla en el cielo (2005) (aka Battle in Heaven)

Battle In Heaven is a film that, as stated on it's theatrical poster, 'contains strong real sex'. Any audience expecting to be aroused may very well be disappointed: the fleshy carnality on display here is about as unsexy as it may also be familiar. How often do we go to a theater and see sex that we actually know about, the corpulent physicality making love, difficult emotions placed on the nightstand. The graphic sex in "The Brown Bunny" and "9 Songs" while being perhaps more clearly pornographic in content have only a fraction of Reygadas' explicitness in content. "Battle in Heaven" has it's characters exposed, fully exposed, to one another.

Reygadas is a filmmaker that employs what may be perceived as controversial imagery and subject matter to challenge a viewer's capacity to actually engage with discussions on sex, faith, and morality. He doesn’t shy away from showing Marcos and his obese wife going at it just as much as he has no problem allowing the camera to meditate on strong images like Marcos’ limp penis and Ana’s vagina. This is not an easy film to watch, but I would suggest that it can be rewarding.
Carlos Reygadas' mesmerizing films deserve to be seen by as wide an audience as possible, though this one will not be for everyone.

[review] Carlos Reygadas: Japón (2002)

Director & Producer Carlos Reygadas, born October 10, 1971, from Mexico City, has strung together a very particular body of work. Particularly ingenious, remarkably humane, expressly philosophic, artful. His pictures are framed within a magically real world of desires, bodies, ethics, and consequence.
Regadas comments, "After I make a film I psychoanalyze myself retroactively so that I can give explanations to journalists and film people. But I don't believe in those explanations myself."

With his first feature, Japón, Reygadas has attempted nothing less than a justified return to the art film. He works without, and beyond, the narrative conventions of most contemporary “independent” cinema. Keen and unpredictable, Reygadas’ films contain some of the most shocking, fascinating and deliriously beautiful imagery seen on screen.

Zelda Rubinstein - Dies, age 76

Zelda Rubinstein, best known for her role as Poltergeist's 4'3" psychic, has died in Los Angeles at 76.

She'll be best remembered as Tangina Barrons, the Freeling family's guide to the spirit world in the Poltergeist franchise. Writer and critic Pauline Kael observed that the character of Tangina "gives the movie new life, and she makes a large chunk of it work. . . . She emanates the eerie calm of someone who is used to dealing with tricky, deceiving ghosts." Rubinstein went on to reprise the role in "Poltergeist 2: The Other Side" and "Poltergeist 3." She also appeared in John Hughes' coming-of-age comedy classic Sixteen Candles. You will also find Ms. Rubinstein in "Teen Witch" and most recently "Southland Tales."

[review] WRAPPING 2009: BALLAST

This is a very small independent picture that did very well at two of the big festivals (Sundance & Berlin) but got little to no distribution. It's available for instant viewing on Netflix now. The story follows a Mississippi Delta family quietly
shattered by a personal tragedy as they move past the wrenching event to possible uplift. The characters seem real every second of the picture and the performances are delivered by all first time actors. Ranks with Silent Light as my favorite films for 2009. Both "Ballast" and "Silent Light" are best of the decade material.

WRAPPING 2009: A SERIOUS MAN

"Imaginatively exploring questions of faith, familial responsibility, delinquent behavior, dental phenomena, academia, mortality, and Judaism -- and intersections thereof -- A Serious Man is a film by Academy Award-winning writer/directors Joel & Ethan Coen.
This movie is a cerebral black comedy kept upbeat, with a sort of uptempo pace of small twists and turns through a kind of "who done it" type of "what's happening to me." Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick are all superb.

WRAPPING 2009: BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS

"I have no idea who Abel Ferrara is," Herzog told Defamer. and his take on the Bad Lieutenant, with Nicolas Cage, ups the hysterics, and in place of the catholic moral anguish Herzog finds humor. It's fun. This picture is ecstatic. An excellent picture developed with great creative confidence.
No shortage of slapstick here. Whether it's the spectacle of Cage hacking through the thicket of the lower Ninth Ward, losing his bets, always betting his "dimes"—as well as a key witness—in a Biloxi casino, or hallucinating an iguana who sings like Tom Jones. Eva Mendes plays his a beautiful, if dim, coke-snorting call girl very well, not entirely unlike her role played with Joaquin Phoenix in James Gray's "We Own the Night".
Terence McDonagh: I'll kill all of you. To the break of dawn. To the break of dawn, baby.

WRAPPING 2009: MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE

MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE -Sabers and pickpocket ostriches! Michael Shannon is on a kind of roll in taking and handling with very lean efficiency these very bat maddie characters. In Revolutionary Road, Shannon's character John Givings tells Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio), "Plenty of people are on to the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness." In William Friedkin's 2006 film, "Bug" Shannon played a paranoiac drifter that introduces Ashley Judd's character Agnes to a claustrophobic nightmare of reality as a grand conspiracy of bugs begin to infest their lives.
My Son, My Son ... will be a lot of fun for many of us. Great loads of humor, very macabre, american gothic material fresh out of the pages of O'Connor and carried in a barrel to the ostrich farm by Werner Herzog.

WRAPPING 2009: THE LIMITS OF CONTROL

New movie from filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. Set in various visually striking landscapes of contemporary Spain (both urban and otherwise). De Bankole stars in the lead role marking he and Jarmusch's fourth collaboration in about twenty years, "Night on Earth," "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," and "Coffee and Cigarettes." Cast includes Alex Descas, John Hurt, Youki Kudoh, Bill Murray, and Tilda Swinton; and actors new to his films, including Hiam Abbass, Gael García Bernal, Paz De La Huerta, Jean-François Stevenín, and Luis Tosar.
Synopsis: ""The Limits of Control" is the story of a mysterious loner (played by Mr. De Bankole), a stranger, whose activities remain meticulously outside the law. He is in the process of completing a job, yet he trusts no one, and his objectives are not initially divulged. His journey, paradoxically both intently focused and dreamlike, takes him not only across Spain but also through his own consciousness."

WRAPPING 2009: SIN NOMBRE

SIN NOMBRE, 2009 - Winner of the Directing Award as well as the Excellence in Cinematography Award at Sundance. Directed by first timeer Cary Joji Fukunaga, starring a bunch of unknowns. The story of three emigrating teenagers from Mexico to the United States. Some small buzz folowed this movie into New York when I first saw it in March. Enjoyed it enough to watch it twice last year. First in the theater and next on IFC On-Demand (an excellent if not socially dangerous cable service).

WRAPPING 2009: MOON

Duncan Jones' first film is a visual and existential trip with paranoia sun at cerebral heights like that of a Phillip K. Dick novel or short, eg. "The Electric Ant".
This picture is exquisite. Sam Rockwell, showing extraordinary talent here, and in 2007's "Snow Angels" by David Gordon Green, is a mentally-tormented astronaut leading a three-year mission on the moon by himself ... or so he thinks. When he discovers something he should not have, a series of revelations unravel his entire existence.