2010 Films VII-IX
VII: The Strangers (Bryan Bertino, 2008)
A couple get back from a party, having not gotten engaged, and are terrorised by three young scallywags and ruffians.
Liv Tyler gets to scream and scream and scream until she's sick, but only after a build up of half an hour, and then for less than an hour. At least the film has the decency to be short, but given a cast of around half a dozen, the body count was never going to be sufficiently large to be entertaining. Apparently the scriptwriter, Bertino, was not first choice to direct - the original director budgeted the movie at $40,000,000. I can't see how they'd spend $4,000,000.
VIII: Day of the Locust (John Schlesinger, 1975)
Adaptation of Nathanael West's Hollywood satire as a Yale-educated art director arrives in Hollywood and falls in love with a wannabe starlet and part-time whore, who'd rather be dating (but not bedding) the shy businessman, Homer Simpson. (That's a part played by Donald Sutherland. And the resemblance to another Homer Simpson is limited only by skin tone.) You can tell it's not going to end well, and there's a nightmarish climactic scene which ends in a riot at a premiere. Disturbing.
IX: Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)
First of the Eastwood franchise, with the moralising/amoral cop who borders on vigilante justice and whose methods risks scuppering the trials of the very criminals he hopes to put behind bars. Made exceptable by Eastwood being Eastwood, and the plot ensuring he's always in the right. The plot here riffs on the real-life Scorpio killer.
Totals 9 (Cinema: 2; DVD: 4; Television: 3)
A couple get back from a party, having not gotten engaged, and are terrorised by three young scallywags and ruffians.
Liv Tyler gets to scream and scream and scream until she's sick, but only after a build up of half an hour, and then for less than an hour. At least the film has the decency to be short, but given a cast of around half a dozen, the body count was never going to be sufficiently large to be entertaining. Apparently the scriptwriter, Bertino, was not first choice to direct - the original director budgeted the movie at $40,000,000. I can't see how they'd spend $4,000,000.
VIII: Day of the Locust (John Schlesinger, 1975)
Adaptation of Nathanael West's Hollywood satire as a Yale-educated art director arrives in Hollywood and falls in love with a wannabe starlet and part-time whore, who'd rather be dating (but not bedding) the shy businessman, Homer Simpson. (That's a part played by Donald Sutherland. And the resemblance to another Homer Simpson is limited only by skin tone.) You can tell it's not going to end well, and there's a nightmarish climactic scene which ends in a riot at a premiere. Disturbing.
IX: Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)
First of the Eastwood franchise, with the moralising/amoral cop who borders on vigilante justice and whose methods risks scuppering the trials of the very criminals he hopes to put behind bars. Made exceptable by Eastwood being Eastwood, and the plot ensuring he's always in the right. The plot here riffs on the real-life Scorpio killer.
Totals 9 (Cinema: 2; DVD: 4; Television: 3)