The Woman in the Fifth (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2011)

This is just an incomprehensible mess. It starts okay with Ethan Hawke coming to Paris trying to patch relationship with his ex-wife and their daughter. We’re not sure why they parted but we get few hints about him being aggressive and not completely straight in his head. 

Tension then starts to build when he’s mugged on the bus and forced to take a refuge in some dodgy inn. We go slowly into “mystery” mode when owner of the inn takes away his password but gives him some weird job of keeping an eye on empty building. Ethan also starts flirting with his polish wife and gets to know his annoying ass-hole neighbor. And most importantly we meet mystery woman in (always beautiful and nice to see) shape of Mrs. Scott-Thomas. So lots of interesting characters and intrigues, shit is looking promising and stage is all set for things to get resolved.

But in the 3^rd act, when movie should go into highest gear, everything just falls apart. By then we already know that he is a schizophrenic and lots of things were simply playing in his fucked-up head. And movie totally fails to clarify what really happened so there is no big twist. Reminded me a bit of Haute Tension but in horror flick director can get away with this because “who dunnit” is obviously not a main point. But it is very much so in mystery/crime movies and Pawlikowski doesn’t even try to make an effort. Instead he just drops the curtain and closes the movie. Which is maybe just as well, at least it’s short.

Or maybe he didn’t have final cut and we need to wait for special edition DVD with his commentary? Well, not me – seeing this once was enough.

3/10

Naked Ambition - R Rated Look At An X Rated Industry (Michael Grecco, 2009)

There are zillions of documentaries about porn industry (I know because I’ve seen most of them) and - for obvious reasons - 99% of them are watchable even if they are boring and/or fail to tell you anything new about the industry. This crap falls into remaining 1% I'm afraid.

It's not that anything's wrong with the subject of the movie, it's just that director/narrator is so full of shit. Because you see, he is high fashion photographer in Beverly Hills and Hollywood who just recently discovered world (subculture as he puts it) of porn movies and was so fascinated by it that he decided to shoot the stars during the annual AVN awards ceremony. Grown-up man just discovering porn movies? In the year of 2009?!?!

Anyways, this is of course such a colossal project (???) that he and his team will have to work around the clock and he's not even sure they'll be able to make it... And this pretentious shit doesn't stop, this ass-hole is more concerned and interested about himself than with the movie itself. 

So if you are going to watch it, I recommend you put TV on mute and just watch the starlets. Interviews are so idiotic that you won't miss anything important but you'll be at least spared of narrator tortuous blabbing.

2/10

The Black Swan (Henry King, 1942)

Classical swashbuckler, but not very interesting one. Great cinematography and music and decent special effects. Story is more or less standard romantic one with some cool dialogues thrown in every now and then. But pretty weak on action and fighting because there are only two battles and none of them is choreographed very imaginative or spectacular.

Biggest problem is total lack of chemistry between Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara. They are just not Errol Flynn and
Olivia de Havilland...

But still okay for fighting hangover on Sunday morning I guess.

4/10

She, a Chinese (Xiaolu Guo, 2009)

I like movies that are about something, basically anything. I don't really care about the genre or the stars or about the budget or the language or anything. Even if the subject it's not interesting to me, I'll watch it out of curiosity. Even better if there's some sex and violence...

This festival arty sleeper is about the chick who likes her iPod and who likes men. And in my book this means it's about nothing because this is like 99% of people I know. So they could've easily skipped that "Chinese" in the title and named this simply "She".

And we follow her through her relationships with four men (all wrong for her of course) on her voyage from some god forsaken village in China to London. It's not bad and has certain feel about it but it is certainly not very good. Episode with an older English man who marries her is total miss and gives the flick totally unrealistic angle.

But leading actress Lu Huang is kind of cute and she saves the movie to some point.

5/10

The Madness of King George (Nicholas Hytner, 1994)

They showed this on TV and I think I decided to check it out because I liked the title. Thought it was just some light costume drama/comedy with usual politics/romance/sex entanglements.

But it is quite good and in a way serious stuff as it deals with actual medical condition that our poor king suffered for a few months. Real drama is of course in exploitation of his illness by his close family and some other court ass holes.

Liked the ending with that reading of Shakespeare. And Rupert Everett is pretty cool, he almost steals the movie from Nigel Hawthorne and Helen Mirren.

6/10

Driven to Kill (Jeff King, 2009)

I have at least 20 DVDs of Seagal movies and they all have subtitles. Rest of his opus I downloaded and those too usually come with optional subtitles. This one doesn't have subs and for the first time I realized how important they are in the Seagal movie.

The thing (or should I say the problem) is that he is so tough and mean motherfucker that he doesn't need to raise his voice. So for the most times he just inaudibly whispers and since he imitates Russian accent it's really hard to follow the story.

Which is complicated and sometimes disjointed as in the best times of his direct-to-video career. In this one he plays ex-Russian mobster now successful crime novels writer who lives in exile in California (at least I think so). But when his daughter gets married he returns to his old 'hood in New Jersey (at least I think so) for her wedding. Which is not appreciated by his old rivals who kill his ex-wife and kidnap the bride. He gets his sidekick in her fiancee and from then on everything is pretty much standard stuff.

Look and feel of the movie reassembles a bit too much to those bleak east European ones, but action is decent. It's not shot or edited spectacular, but there's a lot of it and it comes in all kinds of forms, from martial arts to knife fights to shootouts. Which is good to see after that disappointment of Against the Dark.

The best scene is when our two buddies come to the ghetto to get the bad guys. But when they arrive, Seagal starts, apparently without any good reason, shooting in the air with his big ass shotgun. When you start wondering WFT he quickly offers explanations that "this way rats will come out themselves". Or some shit like that. He is just too cool and too busy to do any routinely investigation stuff. Classis Seagal, almost!

5/10

Ninja Vengeance (Karl Armstrong, 1988)

Just an American Ninja rip-off made three years later on it seems very low budget. David Lord as a main protagonist is no Michael Dudikoff although he's not that awful that this was his first and also last role.

To make one thing very clear at the beginning: he does gets his vengeance at the end but he's definitely no ninja. He does carry that black suit around along with shurikens and some other lethal shit but all his stuff gets confiscated by police when he gets arrested quite early in the movie. So maybe only that kimono gives him ninja powers, we will never know. In this flick he practices just some kind of jiujitsu (I think) and even at that he is not very good as he gets his ass kicked often.

Story is simple. Our hero is stranger on the flashy motorbike who comes into this hillbilly town full of racial prejudices, dirty law enforcement is connected with the bad guys, sheriff's daughter falls for our hero and one of the bad guys falls for her, our hero stands up against the bad guys, he eventually wins and gets the girl.All that said, it is surprising that story is not totally trivial because it has some interesting twists and our ninja does get his ass kicked a bit.

One little thing I've found interesting and somehow amusing is that leading actress Janet Pawlak is not typical blond good looking bimbo who was almost mandatory companion to main hero in this type of straight-to-video action flicks. She's just an average looking girl who could easily miss a pound or two. But don't worry, she does show her tits so movie respects unwritten laws of the genre at least in this area. Although it might still be too stressful for her, because this was her first and last film role. Which is a shame, she did a good job in this one.

4/10

Layer Cake (Matthew Vaughn, 2004)

Another one of those boring English Pulp Fiction clones full of cartoonish characters and "fock this, fock that" macho language with off-screen "witty" narration and infantile dialogues that are probably supposed to be extremely funny.

Although high budgeted (IMDB mentions 4 million pounds), this should just go straight to DVD. Skip it, it's not worth bothering.

2/10

Summer of the Massacre (Bryn Hammond, 2006)

Bad, really bad. And not in the least in the good sense of bad. Just not worth mentioning any words for this. Endured it for 20 minutes or so, then switched to 2x fast forward and then quickly to 4x. So at least it was short...

No budget cannot be excuse for this either because it is just amateurish stuff that doesn't really deserve budget. And this Bryn guy was no fuckin kid when he made it, at 23 he should know better or at least have decency and maybe some self criticism not to release it.

1/10

The Detective (Gordon Douglas, 1968)

Another collaboration of Gordon Douglas and Frank Sinatra made right after Tone Rome. But instead of cynical PI, Franky boy this time around plays honest and tough as nails police inspector. Which is premise unreal enough to kill the movie before it even takes off. They should just cast Lee Marvin or Steve "The Bullit" McQueen and maybe save the whole thing.

But probably not. It's just not intense enough. Seemed to me like director couldn't decide whether to shoot hard-boiled crime or character study drama. It starts with violent killing of some wealthy gay and soon all the cliches (sex, drugs, politics, dirty cops etc) are thrown into the pot. Which is not bad, problem is that Sinatra starts to have these moral dilemmas (+personal dramas) instead of trying to solve all this mess. Not to mention it runs for almost 2 fucking hours...

I don't know, it was probably a bit daring at the time when it came out but it didn't pass the test of time very well. It certainly left me pretty cold and bored for most of the time. But at least in the second part Jacqueline Bisset appears and lights those few scenes she's in it. And it was funny to watch great lover Mr. blue eyes Sinatra struggling with a fact that his wife is nymphomaniac. I bet his agent was thrilled when he accepted this role.

5/10

Honeymoon Killers (Leonard Kastle, 1969)

Mother of all serial killers movies, with father of course being Henry! Nothing will ever reach standard that these two masterpieces have set.

And also master class for young film makers about how to make something extraordinary with next to zero budget. This should be mandatory viewing in all film schools at least once a year. I don't watch it anually to learn anything, I just need to see it from time to time because it's so damn good.

10/10

Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012)

First movie I've ever seen in 3D. So maybe I didn't get it because I was fooling around too much with those glasses. Or did I start fooling around with glasses because I didn't get this boring and over complicated high-tech crap? Or was I too puzzled about why I actually payed 20 euros (fuck you London, never again!!!) for it.

Anyways, we all know everything about it so I don't need to go into details.

Only word or two about this stupid marketing trick about Prometheus not being prequel to Alien. Which is of course kind of true since it is total rip-off of the original one (if Giger is not receiving big $$$ checks for it, he can sue Scott big time).

And I don't really mind being a rip-off except it is very bad one that completely missed the target. Instead of dirty old ship we get high tech space-craft with all that CGI crap and instead of claustrophobic horror we get mediocre action shot in widest angles possible. And instead of superb cast from the original Alien, we need to suffer and watch for two hours ensemble of bad actors or mediocre ones casted in wrong roles.

Truly forgettable, but not really surprising in this day and age of Hollywood. I'm just angry with myself to pay so much money for it.

3/10

The Angels' Share (Ken Loach, 2012)

I don't follow much new releases so I had no idea that Loach has new movie out and went to see it straight away. But was a bit disappointed by this one I’m afraid. 

It's not that it is bad of course, it just feels too lighthearted. Too much like Barrytown Trilogy social drama type of comedy/drama (that English are so brilliant at btw), it just doesn't have that Loach uncompromising edge that grabs you by the throat and doesn't leave you even days after you've seen the movie. 


And it's quite possible I didn't get some of it because it is spoken in Scottish dialect so dialogues were hard to follow sometimes. Will definitely check it again when it comes out on DVD with subtitles.


6/10

Les Espions AKA The Spies (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1957)

It starts kind of okay but then it just turns into this incomprehensible mess where you don’t know who is who. Which was probably director’s intention because it reflects our protagonist’s state of mind? But the whole thing is 2 hours long and it just drags on for too long. Climax on the train is decent though and ending with the phone ringing reminded me a bit of Gene Hackman with sax in Conversation.

Gérard Séty in a main role as Dr. Malik is okay but supporting cast is great - especially Peter Ustinov, that greedy “nurse” and the old guy who plays Sam Cooper. Half of the movie I couldn’t put a finger on him and then I finally got it! He’s of course Sam Jaffe, Doc from The Asphalt Jungle. So another great role of his in this one.

5/10