MY WEEK WITH MARILYN -- DVD review by porfle

Originally posted on 3/6/12

 

If you aren't that familiar with the real Marilyn Monroe, you'll undoubtedly learn a little more about her from MY WEEK WITH MARILYN (2011).  But if you are, you probably  won't recognize her in the inexplicably miscast Michelle Williams.  That glaring bone of contention aside, however, it's a pretty good movie.

Based on the true diaries of Colin Clark, the story begins with the upper-class young film fan getting a menial third-assistant-director job with Laurence Olivier's production company just as American movie idol Marilyn Monroe is arriving in England to star with Sir Larry in 1957's THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL.  While the emotionally unstable Marilyn drives Olivier up a wall with her quirky Method acting and unreliability, a star-dazzled Colin finds himself being adopted by her as an intimate friend to whom she can let down her guard and reveal her true self.

Amidst some nicely-rendered period trappings and atmosphere--and an occasional low-budget look, especially in the meager crowd scenes--the film starts out with the tone of a mildly amusing light comedy but gradually reveals its serious nature as we realize the toll that superstardom is taking on vulnerable Marilyn.  But while managing to convey the actress' endearing little-girl-lost quality to a certain degree, Williams also makes her appear sweetly retarded, especially in her ditzy on-set behavior during shooting. 

What's worse, Williams looks nothing like Monroe and is unable to convincingly mimic any of her body movements or facial expressions.  Her performance itself is fine--if she were playing a fictional character I'd have no complaints--but in this particular role, her casting is a puzzlement.  It's like getting Kirsten Dunst to play Mae West.  And with the winsome Emma Watson portraying a studio employee who catches Colin's eye before Marilyn enters his life, we have the odd situation of a lowly costume girl being cuter and sexier than the big MM.

However, none of this prevents Williams from doing her best with the well-written script and managing to give us a character we can sympathize with.  Her scenes alone with Eddie Redmayne's lovestruck Colin are a bittersweet peek at the everyday girl Marilyn yearned to be, with hints of a loveless childhood that caused her to seek love and acceptance wherever she could find it.  Their outing together at Windsor Castle contains a key scene in which, confronted by an admiring kitchen staff, she turns on her "Marilyn" character for them just as she might adopt any other fictional pose. 

As the story grows more substantial, other characters gain a depth that's only hinted at earlier on.  Colin's bright-eyed neophyte becomes more three-dimensional as Marilyn's dependence on him as a friend makes him rise to the challenge of being one.  Kenneth Branagh has a field day playing old-school thespian Olivier's frustration with his leading lady, eventually revealing his own fears of inadequacy as a film actor in comparison to the young actress' natural affinity for the camera. 

Julia Ormond plays Olivia's wife Vivien Leigh, the aging GONE WITH THE WIND ingenue who sees Marilyn as a sign that her own time is passing.  Judi Dench, best-known these days as 007's boss, is Dame Sybil Thorndike, an old acting crony of Olivier who takes the insecure Marilyn under her wing.  Paula Strasberg, Marilyn's acting coach and all-around enabler to her unconventional behavior, is played by Zoë Wanamaker, while Dougray Scott is well cast as playwright Arthur Miller in scenes that depict Marilyn's doomed third marriage.  Derek Jacobi (I, CLAUDIUS) appears in a cameo.

The Blu-Ray/DVD combo from Anchor Bay and the Weinsteins is in 2.35:1 widescreen with 5.1 DTSHD-MA (Blu-Ray) and Dolby Digital 5.1 sound (DVD).  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  Extras consist of a commentary with director Simon Curtis and the featurette, "The Untold Story of an American Icon."

In a movie about acting, we the viewers are asked to do a little acting ourselves in accepting this image of Marilyn as being as charming and irresistible as the characters in the film keep saying she is.  If you can do that, then MY WEEK WITH MARILYN succeeds as the touching love story of two wildly diverse people and their brief bond of mutual empathy.

MY WEEK WITH MARILYN -- DVD review by porfle

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 9/24/18

 

Italian goremeister Joe D'Amato does it again with the 1980 proto-slasher/thriller ANTHROPOPHAGOUS (aka "The Savage Island").  Like ABSURD, which he directed the following year, this bundle of blood-soaked chills doesn't pour on the gore non-stop, but when it does, it doesn't fool around.

Tisa Farrow (Mia's sister) stars as Julie, who's traveling to an island off the Italian coast to help care for a vacationing couple's blind daughter Henriette (Margaret Donnelly) in their opulent villa. 

She hitches a boat ride with a group of twenty-somethings out for some island-hopping fun themselves, but once they stop over at Julie's island to drop her off, things start going wrong.  And I mean really, really, gore-splatter-cannibalism wrong. 

It's strangely prescient of the 80s cliché of the group of young partiers cavorting off to some isolated location to be stalked and slashed by a psycho killer.  (A cliché that's still going strong today.)

Here, however, the premise hasn't yet become a tired trope, and the characters are mature enough so that their interactions, and later misfortunes, have a dramatic heft that makes them more than just subjects for fun gore effects.

D'Amato (BEYOND DARKNESS, EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS, THE ALCOVE) takes his time establishing all of this and letting us get to know such characters as the nervously expectant Maggie and her equally nervous husband, amorous Daniel who takes a liking to Julie right away, and brother-and-sister Andy and Carol, the former a level-headed good-guy type and the latter, a Tarot-reading flake whose unpredictable actions will eventually make a bad situation worse.

The bad situation in question, which they discover upon setting foot on the island, is an empty village in which (as we already know but they don't) the local population has been wiped out by a mysterious killer whose handiwork we saw in an earlier scene of a young couple getting meat-cleavered on the beach.

Taking up temporary residence in the villa of Julie's missing friends, the group makes a shocking discovery in the wine cellar that gets our own blood going as the story continues to build at a leisurely pace. 

More unrest within the social unit leads to creepy scenes within the big, dark house and its environs, including a crypt and a spooky foray into the shadow-strewn streets of the deserted village.  And before we know it, there's a sudden, cannibalistic attack that leaves one of them dead. 

To make a long story short, the character described in the title (if you can figure out what that title means, that is) finally makes himself known and proves a terrifying, stomach-churning force of un-nature with a voracious appetite for human flesh and one of the ugliest mugs in monster-guy history. 

Played by co-writer Luigi Montefiori (as "George Eastman"), who would portray a much less hideous killer in ABSURD a year later, the "Anthropophagous" dude is like something straight out of a nightmare, one of the most repellant stalkers ever to stalk. 

Blood 'n' guts sequences are few, but striking--the fetus scene alone is the stuff theater walkouts are made of. And D'Amato shows some style in unfolding the "dark, scary house", "deserted village", and "burial catacombs" scenes as well, giving us some genuine chills between the gouts of gore.  

The Blu-ray from Severin Films features a really nice-looking 2K scan from the original 16mm negative.  The film can be viewed either in Italian with subtitles or in English.

Severin doesn't disappoint with its usual ample menu of bonuses, here offering interviews with writer-star Luigi Montefiori, actor Saverio Vallone ("Andy"), FX artist Pietro Tenoglio, editor Bruno Micheli, and actress Zora Kerova ("Carol"). Three trailers for the film are also included.  The cover art is reversible.

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS has a simple, uncluttered plot that sets out to scare, startle, and sicken us, and it does exactly that with a singleminded determination.  It also boasts one of the ickiest cannibalistic creeps I've ever seen, whose final horrific act sets a standard of "WTF?" of which goggle-eyed gorehounds may never see the equal.


Special Features:
Don’t Fear The Man-Eater: Interview with Writer/Star Luigi Montefiori a.k.a. George Eastman
The Man Who Killed The Anthropophagus: Interview with Actor Saverio Vallone
Cannibal Frenzy: Interview with FX Artist Pietro Tenoglio
Brother And Sister In Editing: Interview With Editor Bruno Micheli
Inside Zora’s Mouth: Interview with Actress Zora Kerova
Trailers
Reversible Wrap

Buy it at Severin Films

ANTHROPOPHAGOUS -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

THE HOWLING REBORN -- DVD review by porfle

Originally posted on 10/8/11

 

THE HOWLING REBORN (2011), Anchor Bay's attempt to breathe new life into an old franchise, is a good news/bad news thing.  The bad news is that, as you might expect, it isn't as good as Joe Dante's 1981 original film and was never gonna be.  Then again, I didn't expect it to match up to that classic of werewolfery, so in that respect I wasn't disappointed.  The good news, then, is that it's way better than any of the other name-only sequels, which one might tend to expect as well.

Seemingly taking a cue from SPIDERMAN,  writer-director Joe Nimziki's story has a nebbishy high school student named Will Kidman (Landon Liboiron) pining away for beautiful classmate Eliana (Lindsey Shaw) who secretly likes him despite her being romantically attached to a musclebound bully.  And just as Peter Parker found himself physically transformed by the bite of a radioactive spider, Will also becomes an overnight dynamo (who no longer needs his glasses) due to the fact that puberty is finally causing his werewolf genes to kick in.  Naturally, this gives him an edge over that pesky bully, but unlike our Petey he's developed an urge to kill that's difficult to restrain.

Will's discovery that his late mother may have been a werewolf comes right about the same time a strange, mysterious woman named Kathryn (Ivana Milicevic) appears and starts trying to seduce him over to the dark side.  With the approach of a rare blue moon, all the werewolves that Will suddenly notices all around him are planning an attack on humankind, and he's invited.  Clinging on to his own humanity even as his animal side grows stronger, Will must rely on both his own fortitude and the love of his hot new girlfriend Eliana to help him survive.



As an example of the "new school" of werewolf flicks (no more "geezers in their 40s" as one character puts it), THE HOWLING REBORN probably has more in common with both the "Twilight" series and even "Teen Wolf" than it does with Joe Dante's original film.  I didn't mind much, though, since Nimziki's stylish direction and cinematography render all the teen angst and raging hormones very easy on the eyes, helped in no small part by a very effective musical score.  The story isn't all that deep but I found it consistently interesting and briskly paced. 

Liboiron is a likable lead as Will, handling both sides of his character's dual nature pretty well.  Lindsey Shaw, who initially reminded me a bit of the first film's Elisabeth Brooks, is the quintessential high-school lust object who turns out to have more going for her than meets the eye as Eliana.  Most watchable, however, is Ivana Milicivec, slinkily seductive yet formidable as Kathryn.  I've been a fan of hers since first seeing her in SLIPSTREAM, and she also snared a small but juicy role in CASINO ROYALE.  This is the best showcase for her acting talent that I've seen so far, and she makes the most of it.

As Will faces the prospect of turning into a werewolf on graduation night, the story builds toward a showdown between lycanthropes and humans inside the darkened school.  Eliana does her best to help Will bring his animal impulses under control, which, in addition to professions of love and moral support, involves copious amounts of dry-humping vividly depicted by Nimziki.  Resolute and armed with makeshift silver weapons, Will and Eliana then take on the werewolves in a battle that veers wildly between cool-looking and disturbingly goofy.

The "goofy" part is due mainly to some werewolf body suits that don't quite come off as well as intended.  Granted, I was pleased with the minimal use of CGI (Nimziki wanted to get away from the "videogame" look of recent werewolves) and some pretty good cable-controlled heads, but when seen in their entirety the hairy beasts seem to be wearing fluffy woolen trousers.  Also, there's nothing remotely approaching Rob Bottin's dazzling transformation setpiece in THE HOWLING, or even Lon Chaney, Jr.'s man-into-wolfman scenes from the 40s.  Werewolf fans have to make do with some brief morphing shots here and there. 

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound and subtitles in English and Spanish.  Extras include a commentary track with Nimziki and Shaw, a "making-of" featurette, and a storyboard gallery.

While hardly likely to become a classic in its own right, THE HOWLING REBORN is no doubt the best film to bear the "H" word in its title since Joe Dante was behind the camera.  The fact that I was pretty entertained for its entire running time tends to help me overlook whatever faults it may have.

THE HOWLING REBORN -- DVD review by porfle

ZEBRAMAN 2: ATTACK ON ZEBRA CITY -- DVD review by porfle

Originally posted on 11/13/11

 

If you ever wondered what a cross between Christopher Nolan's THE DARK KNIGHT and Joel Schumacher's BATMAN AND ROBIN might look like, Takashi Miike's ZEBRAMAN 2: ATTACK ON ZEBRA CITY (2010) might come pretty close.  Combining serious dramatic elements with the usual cheeseball stuff found in the more juvenile Japanese superhero adventures (but done on a lavish budget), it's an insanely deadpan seriocomic fantasy romp that works like a charm on both levels.

In the original 2004 film, a mild-mannered school teacher named Andrew Kim (Show Aikawa) assumed the identity of failed TV superhero Zebraman to stop an alien invasion and ended up temporarily gaining his superpowers for real.  Here, he's captured by the evil Kozo Aihara (Guadalcanal Taka) and placed in a centrifuge chamber which splits his good and bad sides into separate entities.  Good Kim now has white hair and amnesia, while his evil half is a black-haired female whom Kozo names Yui and adopts as his daughter.

Fifteen years later, Kim awakens to find himself in a Tokyo that's been renamed Zebra City and is now run by Kozo, with Yui keeping the masses in line as super-sexy pop star Zebra Queen.  Twice a day for five minutes," Zebra Time" allows the skull-faced police force to legally kill anyone, so a wounded Kim ends up in the care of his former pupil Asano, a male nurse devoted to helping Zebra Time survivors.  One of Asano's patients is a little girl, Sumire, still possessed by one of the previous film's aliens, and when Kim comes into contact with her his memory is restored along with his Zebraman powers.  With Kozo and Yui planning to spread Zebra Time throughout the rest of the world, Zebraman must leap into action once again to stop them, confronting his own dark side in the bargain.



First of all, the seriously cute Riisa Naka as Yui is awesome.  She inhabits her character with a vigorous enthusiasm and is wildly flamboyant in her actions and evil facial expressions, not to mention the way she throws herself into the song-and-dance stuff in Zebra Queen's music videos.  Literally the embodiment of evil, her Zebra Queen is stunning to look at and exciting in her evolution from simple bad girl into superpowered villainess reveling in chaos and destruction. 

For me, the film's most effective straight dramatic scene comes when she turns against Kozo in the back of their limosine as smitten lackey Niimi (Tsuyoshi Abe) looks on in wry admiration.  The way Miike builds to this key point in the story, along with the cunningly subtle but menacing musical score and the malevolent glee Naka conveys during Yui's violent outburst, add up to a powerful and rewindable moment.

With all the DARK KNIGHT seriousness with which Kim, Asano, and the rest of the good guys treat the character of Zebraman and his quest to wrest Tokyo from the depths of corruption, the outrageous comedy and over-the-top fantasy elements take on an added richness.  Zebraman's heroic comic-book exploits during the numerous fight scenes are a heady blend of undiluted cheese (including the usual hokey wirework, corny dialogue, etc.) with dazzling design and production values. 

When Zebra Queen unleashes one of the gelatinous green aliens from the first film on Zebra City and it grows to Godzilla-like proportions, leveling skyscrapers and incinerating city blocks with its heat breath, the stage is set for an epic battle brimming with mind-boggling visuals that are rendered with some top-notch CGI work.  Even the most lowbrow sight gags--as when the mammoth alien repels Zebra Queen with a noxious hurricane fart--are treated as high drama, as is the incredibly ridiculous final solution employed by Zebraman against the creature.



Show Aikawa's performance as the befuddled everyman who becomes the grimly-determined and supremely confident Zebraman is right on the money throughout, with the rest of the cast in top form as well.  Much fun is had with Naoki Tanaka's character of Ichiba, who played the title role in a "Zebraman" TV series and fancies himself a match for the real-life bad guys when the trouble begins.  Talented child actress Mei Nagano adds to the film's genuine emotional depth as the alien-possessed Sumire.  Guadalcanal Taka as the comically vile Kozo is especially good in the "creation" sequence, cavorting about his cavernous, Giger-inspired mad laboratory like a crazed Dr. Frankenstein.

The DVD from Funimation is in 1.78:1 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 Japanese soundtrack and English subtitles.  Extras on Disc 2 include the in-depth (almost 90 minutes long) documentary "The Making of 'Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City'", "The Making of 'Zebra Queen's Theme' Music Video", five cast and crew interviews, and original trailers and commercials for the film.  (The film comes as a 3-disc Blu-Ray/DVD combo--this review is for the DVD and its extras only.)

Takashi Miike and scriptwriter Kankurô Kudô have created a fascinating dystopian future whose comedic touches make it no less effective as scintillating sci-fi.  While the unabashedly bizarre nature of ZEBRAMAN 2: ATTACK ON ZEBRA CITY will no doubt put off many viewers, those open to such freewheeling weirdness may find it akin to plunging their hands into a cinematic treasure chest and coming up with fistfuls of pure, glittering fun.

ZEBRAMAN 2: ATTACK ON ZEBRA CITY -- DVD review by porfle

TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE -- DVD review by porfle

Originally posted on 9/4/11

 

Cliched though they may sound, "rollicking" and "rip-roaring" are pretty good descriptive words for director Satoshi Nishimura's TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE (2010), an eye-pleasing anime that's bursting at the seams with fast-moving action and comedy.  A feature-length version of the manga by Yasuhiro Nightow and the popular television series, it's a dense conglomeration of sci-fi, steampunk, Westerns, and various other genres with energy and style to burn.

The film opens with hulking outlaw Gasback and his three henchmen robbing a fortress-like bank but then having a falling out over Gasback's tendency to invest all their spoils in bigger and more elaborate robberies, which is his sole motivation.  Before the three traitors can kill him, however, he's rescued by Vash the Stampede, who values all life even more than he values fun, adventure, and donuts.  Unfairly regarded as a villain and bearing a sixty-billion double-dollar price on his head, Vash (known as "The Humanoid Typhoon") is a wanderer who only wants to help people and have a good time. 

Gasback, meanwhile, has patiently waited twenty years for his former allies to rise to positions of wealth and prominence, so that his revenge will be even greater.  After destroying the livelihoods of the first two, he's on his way to Mecca City to bring down Caine, who is now the mega-wealthy owner of the town's massive power plant.  News of Gasback's impending arrival has drawn hundreds of bounty hunters from all over, including the beautiful Amelia who has some unfinished business with him.



Jittery insurance agents Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, old friends of Vash, are also in town to protect Caine's giant bronze statue of himself, which their company has insured for five billion dollars.  And mysterious clergyman Nicholas D. Wolfwood, another of Vash's past acquaintances, shows up as Gasback's current bodyguard, fulfilling a debt to him with the help of his huge cross-shaped rocket gun.

With its sleek character design and detail-packed backgrounds, TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE is a constant joy to look at.  Along with a colorful vehicular caravan, the bounty hunters travel to Mecca City aboard a huge steamship that hovers across the desert and serves as the setting for some lively encounters between Vash, Amelia, and some troublesome competitors.  The city itself is a clever combination of modern and Old West design, where the main characters engage in an old-fashioned barroom brawl before Gasback's attack sparks a spectacular battle sequence filled with sound and fury.

With so much explosive action going on, the body count in this bullet-riddled but lighthearted tale is practically nonexistent.  Much of the emphasis is on comedy as Vash courts an unwilling Amelia, who is literally allergic to men, while Meryl and Milly work themselves into nervous fits worrying about the fate of Caine's big, gaudy statue. 

Even hardbitten characters like Gasback and the hordes of bounty hunters out for his head contribute to the story's often deadpan-comic atmosphere.  The story isn't all fun, however--surprisingly, things get a little emotional now and then, particularly when we learn of Amelia's tragic origin and at least one of the main good guys bites the dust. 



Before the dust settles over the ravaged Mecca City, the action heads out into the desert as the bounty hunter caravan pursues Gasback in a thrilling sequence heavily inspired by THE ROAD WARRIOR.  Later, a final showdown between the good guys and the bad guy revels in heaping helpings of Spaghetti Western goodness, with Sergio Leone's influence nicely recycled into over-the-top cartoon visuals.  Here, all the various threads of the story are neatly tied up with a satisfying conclusion that extends through the closing credits crawl. 

The DVD from Funimation is in widescreen with English and Japanese Dolby 5.1 sound and English subtitles.  Disc one is the movie and some Funimation trailers.  Disc two contains a number of bonus features including several lengthy, lively cast-and-crew panel discussions at various locations including the film's premiere.  There's also a post-recording short, promotional clips and trailers, and other assorted tidbits.

Like an old Mad Magazine comics panel from the 50s, TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE is so richly detailed that it bears repeat viewing just to take in everything you missed the first time.  But most of all, this seriocomic burst of creative energy is just a ball to watch.


Buy it at Amazon.com:
DVD
Blu-Ray

TRIGUN: BADLANDS RUMBLE -- DVD review by porfle

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN -- DVD review by porfle

 Originally posted on 2/3/10

 

 

Recently I praised the 1985 BBC mini-series "Edge of Darkness" for not being just another "father's revenge" flick. Now I'm jazzed about LAW ABIDING CITIZEN (2009) for being exactly that, only moreso--this time the vengeful dad doesn't just go after the scum who killed his family, but he takes on the entire justice system that failed to adequately punish them in the first place. And the ways in which he does this are downright exhilarating. 

 

Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler of 300) is the happy husband and father who survives a terrifying home invasion which leaves his wife and daughter brutally murdered. 

 

To his dismay, ambitious young assistant D.A. Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) cuts a plea bargain with the worst of the two killers to insure that the other will be convicted. This means that while accomplice Ames (Josh Stewart) lands on death row, the monstrous Darby (Christian Stolte) will be back on the streets in a few years. 

 

Nick considers this a good enough deal--"Better some justice than none at all", he tells his mentor, D.A. Jonas Cantrell (Bruce McGill)--but the devastated Clyde finds it utterly unacceptable, and spends the next ten years slowly and methodically planning his revenge. 

 

How that plays out is what makes LAW ABIDING CITIZEN so entertaining. Clyde displays an almost godlike ability to influence events from afar, as seen when he somehow manages to turn Ames' simple execution by lethal injection into a horror show. Then comes his capture and slow dissection of the loathesome Darby in an elaborate warehouse torture chamber, in a sequence that gives us such vicarious satisfaction it's almost scary. 

 

We wonder what Clyde's up to when he willingly allows himself to be taken into custody, but this becomes quite clear during his bail hearing (which he turns into a glorious shambles as the indignant judge, played by Annie Corley, bangs away furiously with her gavel) and subsequent cat-and-mouse encounters with Nick. The game quickly escalates when more people involved with the original trial start to get killed in nasty ways while Clyde sits in his jail cell, somehow orchestrating the whole thing. 

 

 

 

One thing that makes the film so interesting for me is that there's no clear-cut good guy or bad guy. Clyde is clearly the avenging hero early on, and even when his actions begin to go far beyond any acceptable idea of revenge (in movie terms, anyway), I can't help but continue to root for him on some level. 

 

Nick, on the other hand, comes across as a shallow, self-interested jerk during his early dealings with Clyde, but once he becomes a father himself and begins to understand what would drive a man to do such things--while finally realizing that there's more to justice than making deals--his character gradually becomes more sympathetic (although he never fully redeems himself in my mind). In the end, our feelings towards both characters remain intriguingly complicated. 

 

Action scenes alternate with tense dialogue exchanges between the leads, who are both excellent in their roles. Gerard Butler puts a lot of feeling into his early scenes as Clyde pleads with Nick not to bargain with his daughter's killer, and later transforms into an unstoppable opponent without becoming a cold, stereotypical villain. 

 

As Nick, Jamie Foxx proves once again that he has the talent and screen presence to handle this sort of dramatic role very well. Bruce McGill (hard to believe he was D-Day in ANIMAL HOUSE) is solid as the wise old D.A. and Leslie Bibb (IRON MAN, WRISTCUTTERS:A LOVE STORY) is likable as Nick's partner, Sarah. As the no-nonsense mayor, Viola Davis makes a strong impression, while the always-reliable Colm Meaney's "Detective Dunnigan" is a tough guy from the old school. 

 

 

Director F. Gary Gray gives the film much of the same snappy, fast-moving energy that made his remake of THE ITALIAN JOB one of my favorite recent action flicks, although this material really could've benefitted from a darker sensibility such as that shown by David Fincher in SE7EN. Kurt Wimmer's screenplay is sharp and often scintillating. 

 

The rich cinematography and shadowy lighting convey what is described as "neo-noir", with actual courthouse and prison locations in Philadelphia serving as photogenic backdrops. There's a moody score by Brian Tyler (FRAILTY), with a special treat for Grand Funk Railroad fans during the closing credits. 

 

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen and 5.1 Dolby Surround, with English and Spanish subtitles. Extras include a fun commentary track with producers Lucas Foster and Alan Siegel, trailers, and three featurettes: "The Justice of 'Law Abiding Citizen'", with actual lawyers weighing in on the movie's events; "Law in Black and White--Behind the Scenes"; and "Preliminary Arguments--The Visual Effects of 'Law Abiding Citizen'." 

 

There's a fair number of thrills, shocks, and twists in LAW ABIDING CITIZEN, and the moral ambiguities raise some interesting questions to ponder (yeah, right) along the way. But most of all, watching Gerard Butler's character exact righteous revenge against his family's killers and then run roughshod over what he calls a "broken" legal system, while plunging the entire city of Philadelphia into turmoil with his delightfully outlandish acts of mayhem, is just plain fun.

 

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN -- DVD review by porfle

HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI -- DVD Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 6/8/19

 

I've always loved the American-International "Beach Party" series, and I always will. This gives you a good idea of the overall tenor of my assessment of HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (Olive Films, 1965). As for WHY I love these movies so much, well...err...uhh...

To be honest, a lot of people will hate this movie and others like it, and, as far as they're concerned, rightfully so. It's a supremely silly slapstick sex farce with the lowest teen denominator in mind, and it was made to shower undiscerning audiences with brightly-colored pop culture confetti made up of whatever seemed like it might appeal to them, including girls in bikinis, bikes, surfing, jangly rock 'n' roll, cartoonish action, really corny jokes, and cameo appearances by faces familiar to both the younger and older generations.

All of which is why I find these movies to be such irresistible fun--because that's all they try to be, and in their own stupefying way, they succeed.  It helps if you're a fan of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello (I am), two of the most appealing young stars of the 60s, and enjoy occasionally turning off your mind, relaxing, and floating downstream. It is not dying, even though some might feel that way about it.

This time, Frankie's serving six weeks of naval reserve duty in Tahiti, separating him from Annette and tempting him to indulge in the local "social scene." Even so, he expects Annette (as "Dee Dee") to be faithful to him back there in Malibu, so he enlists the help of witch doctor Bwana Chicky Baby (none other than the venerable Buster Keaton, whose assistants include the beautiful Irene Tsu and Bobbi Shaw) to help him keep an eye on her with the help of a magical pelican. 

Bwana Chicky Baby also plans to divert the beach boys' attention away from Annette by creating the perfect woman, who appears to everyone first as an empty leopard skin bikini. The great John Ashley (HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER, FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER), an American-International mainstay doing beach duty for the studio, then gets to croon the title song before the bikini is suddenly filled by the gorgeous Cassandra (Beverly Adams).

In short order, a nattily-dressed Mickey Rooney and Dwayne Hickman show up as big business types looking for the "girl next door" to accompany Dwayne in a motorcycle race which Mickey hopes will improve the image of cyclists (an image that Eric Von Zipper and his bumbling biker gang do their best to sully when they show up and Eric falls in love with Cassandra).

Dwayne, against Mickey's wishes, falls for Annette, who plays hard to get as usual while the magic pelican keeps watch over their activities for the absent Frankie.  And thus the film's main action is established with lots of romantic complications and slapstick nonsense until the big bike race, which turns the final quarter of the film into a live-action cartoon that's like a cross between "Wacky Races" and "Road Runner."

This is the seventh film in A-I's "Beach Party" series (if you count "Pajama Party" and "Ski Party") and by this time the concept was starting to wind down. The next related films would be SERGEANT DEADHEAD and DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE, then one more "bikini" movie, the financial flop THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI. After that, the emphasis would be on stock car racing with FIREBALL 500 and THUNDER ALLEY. 

But there's still fun to be had with this formula if it strikes your fancy as it does mine. Annette is just as appealing a fantasy girlfriend as ever, and gets to sing a couple of songs (one with The Kingsmen as her backup band) while fending off Dwayne Hickman's romantic overtures.

Rooney seems to be having a good time spoofing HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING (his character's name, J. Peachmont Keane, is a variation of that play's J. Pierpont Finch). He even participates in some of the many musical numbers that keep cropping up at the darndest times.

Most of the silliness comes from Harvey Lembeck's familiar Eric Von Zipper and his gang of "stupids", with "Seinfeld" regular Len "Uncle Leo" Lesser turning up as their cohort in crime, the evil North Dakota Pete.  The bike race finale throws any semblance of coherence or sanity to the winds, making the old Looney Tunes cartoons look like models of adult sophistication in comparison.

In addition to the great Keaton and Rooney, the film offers supporting roles and cameos from the likes of Brian Donlevy as Rooney's boss B.D. "Big Deal" McPherson and director William Asher's wife at the time, "Bewitched" star Elizabeth Montgomery, as (what else?) a witch. Frankie, by this time, was demanding more money and is relegated to just a few "Tahiti" scenes.  Annette, bless her heart, is just as wonderful as ever.

Will Dwayne and Annette win the big race instead of the devious Von Zipper and Cassandra?  Will Annette finally forget her vow to stay faithful to the unfaithful Frankie and give in to Dwayne's advances? Will the rest of the boys (including Jody McCrea's "Bonehead") forget hypnotic Cassandra and return their attention to the rest of the jealousy-inflamed girls? Will John Ashley sing another awful song? Will Mickey Rooney finish doing whatever it is that he's doing?

If you couldn't care less, there are probably a lot of other people who feel exactly the same way you do. I don't care that much myself, but as a lifelong beach movie lover, I sure do have a great time watching movies like HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI anyway. It's the ultimate in light entertainment, and if you take it lightly enough, the rational part of your brain will enjoy the vacation.   


Buy it from Olive Films

Release date: June 25, 2019

Rated : NR (Not Rated)
Region Code : Region 1/A
Languages : English (captions optional)
Video : 2:35:1 Aspect Ratio; COLOR
Runtime : 93 minutes
Year : 1965
Bonus: Trailer

HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI -- DVD Review by Porfle

THE KING'S SPEECH -- DVD review by porfle

Originally posted on 4/8/11

 

I didn't know if I was actually going to like THE KING'S SPEECH (2010) or if it was just one of those movies that you're supposed to like.  What I really didn't expect was that it would not only tell such a warm and personal story but also blindside me with the kind of genuine and well-earned emotional reaction which brings on the waterworks. 

The story of any stammerer trying to overcome his affliction might make for a moving story, but here we see it at its worst with Albert, the Duke of York and eventual heir to the throne of England (Colin Firth), prodded into the public eye and forced to reveal his inability to speak before a packed Wembley Stadium and a radio audience of millions.  This early scene is one which anyone who's ever had a fear of public speaking can identify with as Albert struggles through his agonizing ordeal.

With the prodding of his sweetly supportive wife Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), Bertie seeks help from an eccentric speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) whose methods are unconventional but effective.  Logue relates to Bertie with a familiarity and intimacy that shocks the future king at first, but eventually persuades him to dredge up painful memories that get to the root causes for his stammering.
 


These include his frightfully overbearing father, King George V (Michael Gambon), and irresponsible older brother Edward (Guy Pearce), who will sacrifice the throne for love and force Bertie to take his place.  To complicate things even more, England is on the brink of war with Germany and needs a strong, confident leader to rally behind--one who can speak well enough to help bolster the nation's resolve. 

Colin Firth plays Bertie with such wounded desperation, his face always haunted by fear, that we sympathize with him even when he uses his royal aloofness as a defensive mechanism.  It's his lack of genuine arrogance--he doesn't want to be a king, just a Naval officer--that helps make him endearing, especially when he finally breaks down from the pressure. 

Logue, then, comes across as nothing less than Bertie's savior, but a wonderfully humble and unassuming one as warmly portrayed by Geoffrey Rush.  A happy family man with a zest for life, Logue helps Bertie better understand the common man from whom he's always been insulated.  More importantly, he offers him something he's never known before, which is simple friendship.  This is what makes the story so heartwarming and, ultimately, emotionally cathartic.

 

The impeccable production design and Tom Hooper's interesting direction emphasize the intimidating, vertigo-inducing, and emotionally cold atmosphere in which Bertie has always existed.  This is well contrasted with the warmer and more intimate surroundings of Lionel and his family, where the future king eventually begins to find respite. 

Performances are uniformly fine, although Timothy Spall's take on Winston Churchill struck me as a bit of a caricature.  Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth and Guy Pearce as Edward are excellent, as are Claire Bloom as Queen Mary and Derek Jacobi as the Archbishop.  A sensitive score by Alexandre Desplat is augmented by some well-chosen classical pieces, particularly the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony which is used to great effect.

The DVD from Anchor Bay is in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.  Subtitles are in English and Spanish.  Extras include a director's commentary, a "making of" featurette, a Q & A session with director and cast, a conversation with Logue's grandson (who discovered Logue's invaluable personal diaries), and two actual radio speeches by the real King George VI.  

The climax of the film is the King's 1939 radio speech announcing Britain's impending war with Germany, through which Logue guides him like a symphony conductor.  After all the suspense, this sequence beautifully juxtaposes Bertie confronting his greatest fear with the solemn faces of his listeners who, facing an uncertain future, are hanging on his every word for moral support.  If a film can make me cry, I've always felt, then it must be doing something right.  And so, especially in these last moments, THE KING'S SPEECH seems to be doing something very right indeed.


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THE KING'S SPEECH -- DVD review by porfle

THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

Originally posted on 2/27/18

 

Comedy westerns are tricky to pull off, especially if you're trying to please both western fans and comedy fans.  BLAZING SADDLES did it by being a merciless no-holds-barred burlesque of sagebrush sagas that skewered all the familiar tropes in hilariously irreverent and farcical fashion.  BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID succeeded by being delightfully witty while still delivering a genuinely gritty, slam-bang western that fans of the genre could appreciate.

What director John Sturges and company try to achieve with their sprawling comedy horse opera THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL (Olive Films, 1965) is no less than a spectacular blockbuster of epic proportions (with a running time of 165 minutes, no less) intended to inundate the viewer in an avalanche of eye-filling thrills and gut-busting laughter. 

As a sort of cross-country road picture filled with familiar faces and as much raucous action as he could squeeze out of an army of stunt people, it's as though Sturges were trying to come up with a western equivalent of the 1963 comedy free-for-all IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD.

Unfortunately, the man who was so adept at serious all-star epics such as THE GREAT ESCAPE and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN comes up short when applying his considerable talents to the field of comedy.  THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL blusters, bellows, wheezes, and beats its chest in a desperate effort to make us laugh with a furious flurry of thundering action and mugging slapstick that barely has a single genuinely funny line of dialogue or bit of business in its entire running time. 

The pseudo-solemn narration by John Dehner sets a mock-serious tone that never really goes anywhere, as he describes the impending disaster faced by an 1800s Denver, Colorado that is about to spend a long, hard winter with no whiskey.  That is, until freight tycoon Brian Keith orders forty wagon loads of the stuff to be delivered from back East across the desert through Indian country. 

Naturally, that much firewater is hard to resist for Chief Five Barrels (Robert Wilke), his comic sidekick Chief Walks-Stooped-Over (Martin Landau), and the rest of his thirsty braves. If you think Wilke and Landau are either convincing or funny as hooch-happy Indians, I have some oceanfront property in Idaho that might interest you.

The whiskey train also attracts the attention of a pretty, charismatic crusader against alcohol, the twice-widowed Mrs. Cora Templeton Massingale (Lee Remick), who vows to lead her fervent female followers to head it off at the pass while Colonel Thaddeus Gearhart (Burt Lancaster) reluctantly leads a regiment of cavalry soldiers to ride guard on the whole thing. 

Lancaster is all bullish bluster as Gearhart, with nary a corpuscle of comic talent in his whole brawny body but with a boxer's determination to pummel laughs out of the mirthless screenplay. Jim Hutton and Pamela Tiffin have the thankless task of playing his callow captain and rebellious daughter, who are in love, while stone-faced character actor John Anderson is a startlingly unlikely choice as his comic foil Sgt. Buell.  

As hymn-humming Cora Templeton Massingale, Remick is utterly eye-pleasing but about as appealing as the whelp she and Gregory Peck churned out in THE OMEN with her sanctimonious teatotalism delivered with a suffragette's zeal (a deadly combination) that had me despising her pushy, self-righteous character from the git-go. 

With striking teamsters on one side and boozehound Indians on the other--not to mention Cora and the ladies' anti-fun brigade--Brian Keith stomps and screams his way through the role of whiskey tycoon Wallingham, abetted by none other than an almost unrecognizable Donald Pleasance as a skinny, bearded frontiersman named "Oracle" who supposedly foretells the future when primed by offerings of free whiskey. 

Other familiar faces include Denverites Dub Taylor and Whit Bissell, Noam Pitlick as an Army translator who only knows English, Hope Summers, Val Avery, and Bing Russell (Kurt's dad). Elmer Bernstein provides the bombastic score.

Once the various groups converge on the trail to Denver, director Sturges stages a succession of overblown action sequences--one of them during a full-scale dust storm in which none of the various combatants can see each other--and packs them with shooting, limb-flailing stunts, racing wagons, thundering hooves, and other doggedly unfunny action as characters commit acts of artless slapstick against each other with a rubber-faced fury. 

All of which adds up to one long, joyless, tediously unentertaining western romp that wants to be funny so bad you can almost see it sweating from the effort.  Even with an overture, intermission, and exit music and a running time of almost three hours, not to mention some prodigious talent on both sides of the camera, THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL fails to muster as many laughs as a humble episode of "F Troop."


Order the Blu-ray or DVD From Olive Films

Rated: NR (not rated)
Subtitles: English (optional)
Video: 2.35:1 aspect ratio; color
Bonus features: trailer

THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL -- Blu-ray Review by Porfle

RETURN OF THE APE MAN -- DVD Review by Porfle

 Originally posted on 10/29/17

 

It sounds like a sequel to Monogram's 1944 simian shiver-fest THE APE MAN, also starring Bela Lugosi, but RETURN OF THE APE MAN (also 1944) gives us an all-new story, an all-new ape man, and an all-new horribly unscrupulous mad doctor character for Bela to sink his incisors into.

This time Bela's experiments in freezing people and bringing them back to life (he practices on a bum named "Willie the Weasel") come to a triumphant climax when he and his associate, John Carradine, find a half-human, half-ape cave creature frozen in the Arctic ice and, in Bela's basement laboratory, revive the violent, uncontrollable wretch.

Needless to say, the ape man eventually gets away and wreaks low-budget havoc on the modest Monogram backlot.  He looks ridiculous with a mop of hair and shaggy beard, animal-hide toga, and furry boots, but he's a fun character who adds some amusement value to the film even at its most grim.

This latter quality of RETURN OF THE APE MAN is supplied in spades by Bela in one of his signature roles as a ruthless, utterly inhuman scientist to whom nothing in more important than his latest quest for scientific advancement.  When he suggests transplanting part of a living person's brain into the ape man, thus either killing the donor or rendering him an idiot, Carradine is aghast and calls it murder.  "Murder is an ugly word," Bela retorts.  "As a scientist, I don't recognize it."

As you might guess, Carradine himself ends up the unwilling brain donor after an unsuccessful attempt by Bela to secure Carradine's future nephew-in-law Steve (Michael Ames) to do the honors.  Thus, when the newly-improved ape man escapes again he's drawn to Carradine's house where he terrorizes niece Anne (Judith Gibson) and wife Hilda (Mary Currier) before clashing with the local police. 

Everything looks wonderfully low-low-budget as only 40s-era black-and-white horror films from studios such as Monogram can look.  The subject matter and its presentation are probably among the most tawdry and repellant of mainstream films circa 1945 as the filmmakers seem to relish each atrocity almost as much as Bela's sadistic, vainglorious, and utterly mad doctor. 

It reminds me of a later film that could be similarly described, THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, right down to an almost identical basement laboratory where horrible experiments take place and a "monster in the closet" (here, the ape man struggling against the bars of his cell) waits to break free for his climactic rampage. 

For fans of such dark doings in that distinctive Monogram style, this one delivers enough of the goods to make it one entertaining romp.  (Needless to say, others beware--you won't find much to like here.)  I love watching two distinguished actors such as Lugosi and Carradine imbuing it with their talent and professionalism, each slumming at Monogram for his own reasons and making the most of the lurid, dime-novel script. 

The rest of the cast manage to get through it without falling over, which, for the lovely Judith Gibson (aka Teala Loring, BOWERY BOMBSHELL, BLUEBEARD), is saying a lot (she's not the most expressive actress).  As our hero Steve, Michael Ames (the future Tod Andrews of such films as IN HARM'S WAY, HANG 'EM HIGH, FROM HELL IT CAME, and THE BABY) marks time waiting for better things.  Mary Currier (MAGIC TOWN, VOODOO MAN), sort of a poor man's Mary Astor, plays Carradine's wife Hilda in dignified fashion.

Top: Frank Moran as the Ape Man. Bottom: George Zucco in the role in an early still.

The ape man himself is credited to both Frank Moran (ROAD TO UTOPIA, MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK) and the distinguished George Zucco (THE MUMMY'S HAND, THE MUMMY'S TOMB), who doesn't appear in the film at all save for a few seconds lying on the lab table before taking ill and having to be replaced.  (Monogram still gave him his promised third-billing credit.)

Image quality for the Olive Films DVD release is miles above the usual public domain stuff, and while sticklers for utter clarity may quibble over its specks and occasional rough spots, I found the print used here to be quite watchable.  Besides, as I've often mentioned, those little imperfections only increase my feelings of nostalgia because they remind me of watching such films on the late show or matinees at the theater. 

With a cast headed by stalwarts Lugosi and Carradine (the two embodiments of Dracula himself over at Universal, not counting "son" Lon Chaney), a perversely amusing man-monster who might very well be the direct ancestor of Captain Caveman, lots of sordid goings on to both delight and strain credulity, and that overall Monogram aura of exquisite cheapness, RETURN OF THE APE MAN is the kind of low-rent fun that makes me giddy just putting it into the DVD player. 

Order it from Olive Films
Also available in Blu-ray

Rated: NR (not rated)
Subtitles: English (optional)
Video: 1.33:1 aspect ratio; B&W
Runtime: 61 minutes
Year: 1944
Extras: none

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RETURN OF THE APE MAN -- DVD Review by Porfle