Conqueror (Dick Powell, 1956)

I've seen this craziness before but just couldn't flip the channel when it was played on TV. It's truly hilarious, you can tell almost everything about it just by checking out the poster.

Great candidate for the biggest role miscast in the history of silver screen. I can image how rigid studio system was in 50s, but still Duke - why?!??

Worth noting that Lee Van Cleef is also in it, not that it improves this extremely strange epic eastern western in any way.


4/10

Le Battant aka Ice (Alain Delon, Robin Davis, 1983)

Ah, these good old Delon's 80s crime flicks! Too complicated, too long, too violent, with lots of nudity...

This one is as typical as it can be. Jacques returns from the prison and wants to retrieve the jewels he robbed. In the process body count will raise to double digits number and he will fuck 3 chicks.

It has some cool moments. My favorite scene would be the first one when bad guys are introduced. They are in this bistro all dressed up and talking cool gangster sinister type of shit trying to intimidate the owner. But problem is - check this out! - that they share single pistol between them! Hilarious! So when the poor guy decides to run away, bad guy #1 gives this gun to guy #2 so he can shoot him. Alain, what where you thinking when writing this!?!?

Cast is excellent. Not surprisingly old school François Périer as a main bad guy is superb and there's even a small role for very young Richard Anconina. It is of course always nice to see our favorite Nikita Anne Parillaud who was at time in relationship with Delon. Although to be honest, Marie-Christine Descouard steals the movie from her, at least in feminine department.

Btw, almost 20 years later, in 2002, Anconina and Parillaud did another movie together. Masterpiece, absolute must-see police thriller Gangsters.

All in all cool nostalgic stuff, just don't expect to see Melville flick.

6/10

Hei xue AKA Will of Iron (David Chiang, 1991)

Immediately, during the opening credits, we learn that Maggie, Michael, Carol and Jacky used to be best friends. They were a 'gang', smoking pot together for the first time and Carol had married Jacky.

After this prologue, movie (actually her uncle) picks up Maggie at the airport. She came from Canada for a visit and is a bit disappointed that Michael wasn't there to meet her also. But no worries, he's on his way - he was just held at the office. He has a mobile phone too so we assume that he is a successful businessman.

Story then moves to the poor unfortunate Jacky. He is some kind of cartoon/comics artist and unfortunately hooked on cocaine. To make things even worse, Michael is not really a business man. He works for triads and also supplies coke to his friend.

In the next hour or so Jacky will fall into drugs trap even further, owing even more money and as a result become even greater asshole. Poor Carol will bitch about it and suffer and learned that she's pregnant. Bad guy drug pusher Sam will be introduced and Michael will have moral dilemmas about this whole setup. And Maggie of course will get pissed off and decide to take matters in her own capable hands.

And that's basically it. Sounds good but problem (at least for me) is that this is drama and not action movie. And not even very good drama. I'll rate it a bit more than it actually deserves because (1) at least is not too sentimental, (2) has pretty good drugs hallucination scene and (3) I was able to watch Maggie Cheung for 90 minutes.

5/10

Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)

Masks. Cracks. Cracks in the walls, cracks in the floor. Clock ticking. Razor blade, rabbit. Neurosis. Distorted images. Extreme close-ups. Music, sound effects. Rabbit's head in the purse. Man. Tick-tack, tick-tack, tick-tack. Men. Paranoia. Walls again, hands coming out the walls. Rape. Imaginary rape. The city. Insanity. Walking, high heels clicking. Sister, family photo. Lack of music. Lack of sound effects. Catherine Deneuve. Click-clack, click-clack. Madness. Fear. Sex. Repression. Decay. Bells, children playing outside. Hallucinations. Murder. Final frame. Repulsion. Masterpiece.

11/10

Primal (Josh Reed, 2010)

Six anthropology students go to Australia's wilderness in order to find and study some long forgotten ancient wall  paintings. And to get laid of course. They won't get attacked by some crazed local hillbilly or crocks. Nope, in this flick they'll get possessed by demons, they will massacre each other and use corpses to feed themselves and foremost to awake some ancient evil creature.

Cool stuff and good mixture of the creature/sci-fi horror. Not too original and a bit predictable (that alien bastard did surprise me) but still very entertaining. It seems to be pretty low budgeted, but special effects are more than decent, especially daylight scenes are effective (rabbit dismembering). But movie doesn't really rely on gore anyways, it uses standard cinematographic tricks to build up tension.

Cast is good but their roles are a bit too stereotyped. We have good guy, introverted one, alpha male, blonde horny slut, silent student and so on. But still they click together well, much better anyways than usual bunch of beautiful young people from Hollywood horror flicks. And they do disappear in the right order, from most asshole-alike to sympathetic ones.

Short and sweet and demons fucking scene is total winner! Aussies did it again.

8/10