(no subject)
Last weekend was the V 24-Hour Movie Marathon. I meant to post an account of that on Monday, but I've been surprisingly busy at work. I'd say it was the best one yet, in terms of not having a single movie that I didn't enjoy. I think I've made converts of Faith, Amanda and Ryan, who all seemed to have a very good time (so good, in Ryan's case, that we didn't even see him for the last 16 or so hours - he was too busy cherchezing la femme to even wander across the theatre and say hello every few films. Tut) Without further ado, my very brief take on this year's films:
Lady Terminator
This seriously lowered my future expectations of Indonesia's film industry. The title probably makes you think, 'I bet that's kinda like The Terminator, only with a woman instead of Arnie.' However, you probably don't think, 'And I bet instead of being a cyborg, she's an anthropologist with a magic eel in her fanny.' That's where you're wrong, though. You can pretty much tell you're in for a cinematic treat when the credits tell you the female lead also did the make-up.
Streets of Fire
Why haven't I seen this before? I gather it was a catastrophic box-office flop, and is now virtually forgotten. That is mental. It's a campy '80s vision of a standard noir story, in a stylised '50s rock 'n' roll setting, with a score by Ry Cooder and songs by Jim Steinman. What's not to love about that? It even has a sledgehammer fight!
Burial Ground
Most zombie B movies bore me pretty quickly, but this was pretty pacey, and silly enough to be genuinely entertaining the whole way through. It was pretty gross - not in terms of the gore, really, but more in a creepy little dwarf 'child' who won't stop trying to grope his mother sort of way.
Crank
Ant said he wouldn't be screening any NZ premieres this year - what a liar. I had read about the premise of this one - Jason Statham has been poisoned and must keep his adrenaline levels super high or his heart with stop. It turned out to be just as stupid as it sounds, but really entertaining anyway. It was made by Rockstar Entertainment, and it shows, so if anything about GTA offends you, give this movie a wide berth - it will probably make you shit.
Troll 2
Normally when people say a film is so bad it's good, that actually means that it's so bad it's tedious, and they're too silly to know the difference. But Troll 2 stays reasonably entertaining the whole way through. I'm pretty sure it was made by Mormons, which seems to help for some reason. Afterwards Ant made a phone call to one of the stars, who seemed really nice.
Top Secret
I have this on DVD, and I just about know it backwards. But I've loved it since I was a kid, and it's a very different experience seeing anything under marathon conditions with a pumped-up audience, so it was a lot more fun that I thought it was going to be.
Behind Locked Doors
The mandatory smutty one from the '70s. A Crown Princess Mary of Denmark look-alike and her cute lesbian friend are abducted by Henry Kissinger. This film treated rape as more of an inconvenience than a trauma, which settles it near the top of the weekend's most-offensive list, but otherwise it was pretty harmless. The soft-porn films Ant dredges up are often a lot dirtier than this, but they also tend to be more tedious, so it was much more entertaining than it could have been.
Lisztomania
Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt and Wagner as a vampire Hitler. You wha'?! I had no idea this film existed, and I'm still not convinced - it may have been some kind of potent mass hallucination. It's just so self-indulgent, expensive and wrong, I couldn't help loving it. Ken Russell is nearly 80. Please, someone give him some money to make one last glorious, ridiculous, debauched cinematic craptacular before he goes to spend eternity sitting on a huge penis-shaped cloud with a bunch of topless nuns.
Thunderbirds Are Go
I love how in Gerry Anderson stuff, you never have to leave your seat to enter your car, helicopter, boat, plane or house, because a moving chair is easier to Supermarionate than a person standing up and walking. During this film was the only time when I felt like I might fall asleep. Why do all the machines in the future have to move so damn slowly?
To Live and Die in LA
For most of this, I felt like I was watching a feature-length episode of a generic police procedural. They did amazing things with a relatively small budget, though, and the writing was very good, even if it did kind of come apart at the end.
The Holy Mountain
This movie works as either a mystical exercise in transcendental philosophy or a '70s hippy freak-out head film. Everyone either loved it or hated it. I liked it because it changed tack way too often to ever get boring.
Black Agent Lucky King
IMDb says this film is called Solomon King, but I'm almost certain that the title on the print we saw was Black Agent Lucky King. I can't be sure, because I was just walking back into the theatre, and at the time I thought it was a trailer. The guy who played Solomon King also wrote, produced and directed, and the guy who played his brother, in the worst pants ever created, is his real-life brother. That's the kind of sophisticated Hollywood production we're talking about here. I'm pretty sure at least one reel was skipped, as the story made a couple of pretty glaring leaps. I can't imagine anyone regretting the shortened run time, though. It was a real turkey. A jive turkey, even.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
I couldn't remember having seen this ever, surprisingly, but I'm pretty sure it was just so long ago that the memory had eroded, as the whole thing felt very unsurprising without being familiar, if that makes sense.
Lady Terminator
This seriously lowered my future expectations of Indonesia's film industry. The title probably makes you think, 'I bet that's kinda like The Terminator, only with a woman instead of Arnie.' However, you probably don't think, 'And I bet instead of being a cyborg, she's an anthropologist with a magic eel in her fanny.' That's where you're wrong, though. You can pretty much tell you're in for a cinematic treat when the credits tell you the female lead also did the make-up.
Streets of Fire
Why haven't I seen this before? I gather it was a catastrophic box-office flop, and is now virtually forgotten. That is mental. It's a campy '80s vision of a standard noir story, in a stylised '50s rock 'n' roll setting, with a score by Ry Cooder and songs by Jim Steinman. What's not to love about that? It even has a sledgehammer fight!
Burial Ground
Most zombie B movies bore me pretty quickly, but this was pretty pacey, and silly enough to be genuinely entertaining the whole way through. It was pretty gross - not in terms of the gore, really, but more in a creepy little dwarf 'child' who won't stop trying to grope his mother sort of way.
Crank
Ant said he wouldn't be screening any NZ premieres this year - what a liar. I had read about the premise of this one - Jason Statham has been poisoned and must keep his adrenaline levels super high or his heart with stop. It turned out to be just as stupid as it sounds, but really entertaining anyway. It was made by Rockstar Entertainment, and it shows, so if anything about GTA offends you, give this movie a wide berth - it will probably make you shit.
Troll 2
Normally when people say a film is so bad it's good, that actually means that it's so bad it's tedious, and they're too silly to know the difference. But Troll 2 stays reasonably entertaining the whole way through. I'm pretty sure it was made by Mormons, which seems to help for some reason. Afterwards Ant made a phone call to one of the stars, who seemed really nice.
Top Secret
I have this on DVD, and I just about know it backwards. But I've loved it since I was a kid, and it's a very different experience seeing anything under marathon conditions with a pumped-up audience, so it was a lot more fun that I thought it was going to be.
Behind Locked Doors
The mandatory smutty one from the '70s. A Crown Princess Mary of Denmark look-alike and her cute lesbian friend are abducted by Henry Kissinger. This film treated rape as more of an inconvenience than a trauma, which settles it near the top of the weekend's most-offensive list, but otherwise it was pretty harmless. The soft-porn films Ant dredges up are often a lot dirtier than this, but they also tend to be more tedious, so it was much more entertaining than it could have been.
Lisztomania
Roger Daltrey as Franz Liszt and Wagner as a vampire Hitler. You wha'?! I had no idea this film existed, and I'm still not convinced - it may have been some kind of potent mass hallucination. It's just so self-indulgent, expensive and wrong, I couldn't help loving it. Ken Russell is nearly 80. Please, someone give him some money to make one last glorious, ridiculous, debauched cinematic craptacular before he goes to spend eternity sitting on a huge penis-shaped cloud with a bunch of topless nuns.
Thunderbirds Are Go
I love how in Gerry Anderson stuff, you never have to leave your seat to enter your car, helicopter, boat, plane or house, because a moving chair is easier to Supermarionate than a person standing up and walking. During this film was the only time when I felt like I might fall asleep. Why do all the machines in the future have to move so damn slowly?
To Live and Die in LA
For most of this, I felt like I was watching a feature-length episode of a generic police procedural. They did amazing things with a relatively small budget, though, and the writing was very good, even if it did kind of come apart at the end.
The Holy Mountain
This movie works as either a mystical exercise in transcendental philosophy or a '70s hippy freak-out head film. Everyone either loved it or hated it. I liked it because it changed tack way too often to ever get boring.
Black Agent Lucky King
IMDb says this film is called Solomon King, but I'm almost certain that the title on the print we saw was Black Agent Lucky King. I can't be sure, because I was just walking back into the theatre, and at the time I thought it was a trailer. The guy who played Solomon King also wrote, produced and directed, and the guy who played his brother, in the worst pants ever created, is his real-life brother. That's the kind of sophisticated Hollywood production we're talking about here. I'm pretty sure at least one reel was skipped, as the story made a couple of pretty glaring leaps. I can't imagine anyone regretting the shortened run time, though. It was a real turkey. A jive turkey, even.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
I couldn't remember having seen this ever, surprisingly, but I'm pretty sure it was just so long ago that the memory had eroded, as the whole thing felt very unsurprising without being familiar, if that makes sense.