Monthly Archives: April 2016

Quest for Fire (1981)

Posted on April 11, 2016 | 5 comments

quest for fire

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cavemen search of fire.

After their tribe is attacked by another one and their only source of fire put out three male members from the group (Everett McGill, Ron Pearlman, Nicholas Kadi) set out to find fire from somewhere else and bring it back to the others.  Their quest is not easy as they are forced to travel through harsh terrain, escape from man eating tigers, and fight off a tribe of cannibals. They also meet up with Ika (Rae Dawn Chong) who comes from a more advanced tribe where the members live in huts instead of caves and who also harbors the secret to starting a fire, which she just might share with the others.

Filmed on-location in Canada, Scotland, and Kenya this film brings to life the true nature of prehistoric times in vivid detail and better than any other movie that has dealt with the same subject. The male actors were fitted with masks that gave them ape-like features and except for one brief moment there is no discernable line of dialogue and communication is spoken through grunts and groans as well as words not connected to modern day language. Some DVD issues do have subtitles, but to me this is taking the viewer out of the experience as the whole idea is to allow one a true sense of how things where like back then and therefore forcing one to try to understand things through the primitives means of communication during that period is the only way to do it and I’m thankful that the theatrical version and the streaming version that I saw did not offer them.

While I applaud the filmmaker’s commitment to keeping things close to the true form as possible and not willing to compromise it simply to make it more accessible to a mainstream audience I still found it to be confusing at spots and even at times boring. The opening battle between the two tribes seemed almost unintentionally funny and the loud, booming music played over most of the movie is a bit off-putting as there was clearly no music at the time of the setting, so silence or natural sounds would’ve kept it truer to the authentic tone.

There is also a scene where the men come upon the remains of some meat left from another tribe. The men are hungry and begin eating the remains only to realize that what they are chewing on is human flesh, which sickens them and they spit it out, but I wasn’t so sure that genuine Neanderthals such as the ones portrayed here would be so ‘civilized’ and instead more concerned with simply satisfying their hunger needs.

Rae Dawn Chong’s presence is a major plus and the movie gets more interesting when her character appears. She remains fully nude at all times while covered in body paint, but isn’t as erotic as you might think. The scene where she gets raped by the men late at night is brutal, but authentic to the animalistic level that I would assume sex would be approached with during that time period. The way her character ends up bonding and even forming a romantic attachment to the one of them as the film progresses is genuinely touching.

The film has a lot of lulls and may be just too unique for some. I found myself intrigued at certain parts and bored at others, but the scene where the men watch in amazement when Chong creates a fire for the first time is a surprisingly exhilarating moment where the viewer feels the same emotion that people back then must’ve felt, which to be able to convey such a feeling to a modern audience is an achievement in itself and a sign of astute filmmaking at its finest.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: December 16, 1981

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated R

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Action/Adventure, Foreign Films, French Films, Movies Based on Novels, Movies with Nudity, Outdoors

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O Lucky Man! (1973)

Posted on April 10, 2016 | 4 comments

o lucky man

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 9 out of 10

4-Word Review: A young man’s journey.

Mick (Malcolm McDowell) is a wide-eyed young man entering into the adult world and full of Horatio Alger-like illusions of working real hard and becoming insanely rich while doing it. His first job is as a coffee salesman where he is told that ‘the-sky’s-the-limit’ in regards to his earning potential, so with the carrot-on-the-string firmly in place he dives into it, but ultimately finds little to show for it. He then meets up with a rich tycoon ( Ralph Richardson) and essentially becomes the man’s lapdog assistant only to learn that this doesn’t work either. After spending time in jail he comes back out into the world as a ‘reformed’ man extoling on the idealistic virtues of humbleness only to again meet with aversion and failure.

The film, which is based on an original idea by McDowell, is essentially a broad look at society’s many socio-economic class levels and how easy it is to fall down it, but hard to move up. Some consider Glengarry Glen Ross to be the bleakest indictment on the sales profession, but having worked in the business when I was like the character here first getting out into the working world I can say that this one is even more searing and accurate.

On a wider scope the film successfully works as a critical statement on capitalism, which due to the purveying political climate of the day most American audiences are just now ready to catch up to. Mick’s journey is more his eventual disillusionment as he slowly realizes that being a ‘go-getter’ and having a ‘good attitude’ isn’t going to be enough as the system is rigged so that the individual is more likely to lose than win and can’t really function otherwise. His efforts then become exploited while helping to make someone else richer as he tolls in the bottom rung doing lateral moves into areas that have potential promise, but only produce the same results.

Although the character’s perpetual delusions of grandeur become a bit annoying McDowell plays the part well. The intent was for him to play against type from the one that he did just previously in A Clockwork Orange by portraying someone who is clean-cut, respectful and obedient, but with all the transitions that the character goes through and at one point even having him strapped to a chair in much the same way that he was in the Kubrick film it eventually comes off more like a continuation of that part than a completely different one.

The fun of watching the film is seeing the supporting cast playing dual roles. Arthur Lowe is great especially in the part where he gets put into heavy black make-up to play the leader of a fictitious foreign nation. Rachel Roberts is good too with the erotic scene where she transfers coffee from her mouth into McDowell’s and then later as a poor woman who commits suicide, which has a foreboding quality to it since Roberts ended up doing the same thing five years later in real-life.

Fans of Helen Mirren will enjoy seeing her when she was much younger and playing the part of a rebellious daughter. I also liked the way Alan Price and his band fits into the film. They do the movie’s soundtrack, which is quite good, but instead of having their music played over the action the movie cuts away and captures them doing their renditions inside a sound studio, which in any other case would be considered distracting, but here helps accentuate the film’s  already cerebral tone. It’s also amusing how the band ends up becoming a part of the story as the McDowell character almost gets hit by their van, which allows the opportunity for Price to say the film’s best line “Are we suing you, or are you suing us?”

The film is full of many surreal and original moments and is so consistently inventive that you hardly notice its three hour runtime. However, to me the best part about it is the way it attacks and criticizes the status quo, which is something that no Hollywood movie ever does.

My Rating: 9 out of 10

Released: March 26, 1973

Runtime: 2Hours 58Minutes

Rated R

Director: Lindsay Anderson

Studio: Warner Brothers

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, British Movies, Foreign Films, Movies with Nudity, Road Movies, Satire, Surreal/Fantasy

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Steaming (1985)

Posted on April 9, 2016 | Leave a comment

steaming

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 2 out of 10

4-Word Review: Saving a steam room.

Three women (Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Patti Love) congregate at a London steam room designed like a Turkish bathhouse. Despite their lifestyle differences they become good friends as they divulge their problems to one another and learn to lean on each other to help them cope with life’s difficulties. Then one day Violet (Diana Dors), who is the bath house owner, informs them that the place is set for demolition, which causes everyone to go on a mission to try and save it.

The film is based on the Nell Dunn play, which was highly regarded at the time, but makes for a very poor transfer to film. It starts out flat and never recovers. The dialogue has too much of a conversational quality that is not interesting and the problems that they discuss are not compelling, or original. The humor from the play is missing and the dry, somber tone only makes things even more boring. The only time it gains any traction is when it’s announced that the place is closing, but everything gets resolved in such a sitcom-styled way that it hardly seems worth the effort to watch.

The entire cast is made up of women and there is an abundance of nudity particularly from Miles, which doesn’t seem like a big deal these days. The biggest issue though is the fact that everything takes place from inside the bath house, which is gray, grimy, and rundown. The film should’ve had some segments shot from different locales if to only allow for some visual variety and to help the viewer understand the characters better by seeing how they react in different social settings.

Miles and Redgrave are wasted in drab roles and this goes likewise for Dors whose last film role this was. Love is the only one that shows any liveliness and although her character is a bit annoying she at least has an emotional breakdown near the middle, which adds some mild dramatic tension.

Joseph Losey was a competent director who made many interesting films, so it’s a shame that his career had to end with such a dud. He was already sick with cancer while he filmed this and like with Dors died a year before it was released. The disease may have sapped his creative energy and explain why this production is so ponderously sterile. It’s certainly a far cry from his other works as well as the Bruce Jay Friedman play Steambath, which had a similar setting, but a much more imaginative plotline.

My Rating: 2 out of 10

Released: September 28, 1985

Runtime: 1Hour 31Minutes

Rated R

Director: Joseph Losey

Studio: New World Pictures

Available: DVD (Region 2)

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Posted in 80's Movies, British Movies, Drama, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays, Movies with Nudity, Obscure Movies

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One Way Pendulum (1965)

Posted on April 6, 2016 | 1 comment

one way pendulum 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 4 out of 10

4-Word Review: An absurd little movie.

The Groomkirby family is one really absurd bunch. The father (Eric Sykes) wants to build a replica of the Old Baily courtroom in his living room and then have a trial, involving his son Kirby (Jonathan Miller) as the accused, reenacted. His daughter Sylvia (Julia Foster) wishes that she were an ape so that her arms would be longer and discusses this at length with her mother (Alison Leggatt). Kirby steals weight machines, which voices the person’s body weight, off the city streets and brings them back to the family’s attic were he then converts them into machines that sing. There’s also Aunt Mildred (Mona Washbourne) who thinks she’s waiting for a train that never comes as well as Mrs. Gantry (Peggy Mount) who’s paid to come over and eat the family’s unwanted leftovers.

The film is based on the stage play of the same name written by N.F. Simpson and was labeled as being ‘A farce in a new dimension’. John Cleese is purportedly a big fan of the movie and credits it as inspiring many of the absurd ideas that they used in their later Monty Python sketches. It was also directed by Peter Yates who went on to direct such quintessential hits as Bullitt, Breaking Away, and Year of the Comet.

The film certainly does have its share of funny and highly original moments. One of my favorite scenes is where the father carts the props that he needs to build his courtroom down a busy street of London using nothing but a wheel barrow and holding up traffic while he does it. Kirby’s ability to make the weight machines sing and sound like a genuine chorus is fun also as well as the climactic courtroom segment in which a myriad of comically absurd arguments, testimony, motions and reasoning is used until it becomes almost mind bending.

Unfortunately it all gets just a little too weird. Normally I’m a fan of the offbeat, but there still needs to be something to anchor it down and this film lacks it. The dialogue, characters and storyline are so progressively strange that it becomes downright nonsensical. The court case loses its edge as well because the father is somehow able to recreate it and the people in it in some magical way using a machine where kidnapping a magistrate and lawyers and forcing them perform in their makeshift court of law would’ve been funnier.

The movie will certainly satisfy those with inkling for the offbeat and the film seems intent to push the absurdity as far as it possibly can with a cast primed to pull it off, but it ends up being too weird for its own good and parts of it are confusing and hard to get into.

My Rating: 4 out of 10

Released: March 2, 1965

Runtime: 1Hour 20Minutes

Not Rated

Director: Peter Yates

Studio: United Artists

Available: None at this time

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Posted in 60's Movies, Black & White, British Movies, Court Drama, Dry Humor, Foreign Films, Movies Based on Stageplays, Obscure Movies, Offbeat

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Major League (1989)

Posted on April 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

major league

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 6 out of 10

4-Word Review: Cleveland Indians become winners.

Rachel Phelps (Margaret Whitton) is the new owner of the Cleveland Indians and her goal is to move the team to the sunnier locale of Miami. She finds a clause in the lease stating that if the team is unable to attract 800,000 in attendance for the season then she will be able to break the contract without penalty. Her plan then is to assemble the biggest bunch of misfits that she can, so that they’ll be so bad nobody will want to watch them, but her idea backfires as the losers somehow find a way to win.

I remember seeing this movie when it was first released and being unimpressed with it as it seemed to be taking the Rocky underdog, lovable-loser theme to redundant heights and beating a tired formula that was already getting stale. It was like The Bad News Bears, but without the interesting subtext. The plot is so obvious that you know where it’s going right from the start and thus making it almost pointless to watch. Unlike Bull Durham it offers no new insights into the nuances of the game and the crude humor is only amiable at best.

However, upon second viewing I found it to be a passable time-filler and the crowd scenes during the film’s climactic game sequence were impressive. Most films, even the good ones, have a hard time recreating the kinetic atmosphere of a live game, but this film manages to hit-the-mark and made me feel like I was watching an actual contest.

The casting is also good with each actor a perfect fit for their part especially Charlie Sheen and Corbin Bernsen. I also enjoyed Chelcie Ross even though he was 46 at that time and looking a bit too old to still be playing. However, his character’s attempts to convert everyone to Christianity particularly the player that practices voodoo is amusing. I also enjoyed James Gammons as the manager as his character is refreshingly sensible and grounded and works as a much needed anchor to the silliness.

Whitton, who hasn’t appeared in a film in over 20 years, is great as the bitchy owner and is hot-looking as well. However, I couldn’t quite buy into the fact that she stubbornly continued to cheer against the team winning even after it became painfully clear that her hoped for low attendance mark would never be reached. If anything their winning would help the team’s market value and she could sell them at a nice profit and move herself to the sunny beach. With all the national cameras most likely trained on her during the playoff game why not, at least at the very end, have her begrudgingly get with the crowd and show some appreciation for what the players had accomplished.

I also got a bit of a kick out of a life-sized cardboard cutout that is created of her and a piece of its dress ripped off with each win that the team gets, but writer-director Ward chickens out on his own outrageous concept by having the figure still wearing pasties and a bikini bottom even after the dress is fully removed. The players still cheer raucously at the sight of it nonetheless, but in real-life I think there would’ve been boos as they most likely would be expecting full nudity and disappointed when it didn’t materialize.

The side story dealing with Tom Berenger’s character trying to reconcile things with his estranged wife that is played by Rene Russo is contrived and unnecessary and with the runtime being so long, especially with such a threadbare storyline, should’ve been cut out entirely. I also found it a bit annoying the way Berenger’s character barges into her apartment and her fiancée’s unannounced and without even bothering to knock. Most people lock their doors behind them once they get inside and thus making his attempts to ‘sneak-in’ unlikely anyways.

The majority of the film was shot in Milwaukee and not Cleveland making me wonder why they didn’t just use the Milwaukee Brewers as the team since their history is almost a dismal as the Indians. It’s also important to note that we are only shown what happens in the pennant and never the World Series, which is just as well as the whole thing is a bit fantastical anyways especially given the rooster’s woeful talent and having them go all the way would’ve been too much of a stretch even for a wishful thinking, feel-good movie such as this.

My Rating: 6 out of 10

Released: April 7, 1989

Runtime: 1Hour 46Minutes

Rated R

Director: David S. Ward

Studio: Paramount

Available: DVD, Blu-ray, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 80's Movies, Baseball Movies, Crude Comedy, Sports Movies

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Watermelon Man (1970)

Posted on April 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

watermelon man 1

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 7 out of 10

4-Word Review: White man becomes black.

Jeff Gerber (Godfrey Cambridge) is a bigoted white man who wakes up one morning having suddenly turned black. At first he thinks he’s spent too much time under the sun lamp, but after he and his wife Althea (Estelle Parsons) try every concoction they can to return his skin back to its normal color and nothing works they finally accept the inevitable. Jeff’s lifestyle then changes in major ways. He loses his friends, his job and even forced to move out of his neighborhood giving him firsthand experience with how drastic the racial lines are.

The film was directed by Melvin Van Peeples who was at the front of the independent film movement during the ‘60s and doesn’t get enough credit for some of the groundbreaking films he made in that era, but this one remains his best and most famous work. While other films chose to present racial issues in very serious and dramatic ways this one takes the wacky comedy route and in a lot of ways becomes far more compelling. Some of the funniest moments comes when the characters discuss racial stereotypes, something filmmakers of today would shy away from for fear that they would be labeled racist, but here by bringing it all out-in-the-open it trusts that the viewer will see how silly and absurd they are without feeling the need to suppress anything.

Although Cambridge is never completely convincing as a white man despite an admirable job by the make-up department he still gives a splendidly engaging performance and without his presence this movie just wouldn’t have worked. Parsons is great as well with her character being quite supportive initially, but then eventually she turns her back on him like everyone else. Mantan Moreland is funny as a café waiter who laughs politely at all of Gerber’s dumb jokes when he is white, but gives him a completely different response once he turns black. Erin Moran can be spotted as the daughter and songwriter Paul Williams has a brief bit as a would-be employer.

There are moments where it shifts awkwardly between drama and comedy and there’s one scene where the action freezes completely and suddenly begins to display on-screen titles, which does nothing but take the viewer out of the story and should’ve been avoided. It also would’ve been nice had there been some explanation for why this all occurred. A potentially funny idea would’ve been having a scene where God decides to change Gerber into a black man to teach him a lesson and having the Almighty portrayed as being African American, which would’ve been considered quite edgy for the period and helped complement the already outrageous storyline.

Despite all the laughs the issues that it brings out are quite startling and not far from the truth, which makes this an integral part at revealing the problems that the black movement had during the early ‘70’s and still does and a film that deserves more critical praise than it’s been given.

watermelon man 2

My Rating: 7 out of 10

Released: May 27, 1970

Runtime: 1Hour 40Minutes

Rated R

Director: Melvin Van Peeples

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube

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Posted in 70's Movies, Comedy/Drama, Movies with Nudity, Offbeat

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Who Killed Mary Whats’ername? (1971)

Posted on April 1, 2016 | 1 comment

who killed mary 2

By Richard Winters

My Rating: 3 out of 10

4-Word Review: Who killed the prostitute?

Mickey (Red Buttons) is a retired diabetic boxer who is appalled to learn that a prostitute was killed in her apartment and no one seems to care. He decides to do the investigation himself and even moves in to her old place. He inquiries about her amongst the locals and begins to get a few leads including that of a young filmmaker named Alex (Sam Waterson) who may have inadvertently filmed her leaving with her eventual killer. Soon Mickey’s grown daughter Della (Alice Playten) and Val (Conrad Bain), a man he meets at a bar, are helping him in his quest, but the things they learn only reinforce how unpleasant and dangerous a hooker’s life can be.

I commend the attempt at taking a gritty look at a seedy lifestyle and its open-minded approach to the women who are in it, but the film’s poor execution makes the whole thing come off as quite amateurish and even laughable. Why a man in his 50’s would become so obsessed with finding the killer of a woman he has never known and only reads about in a newspaper is quite hard to fathom. There are probably hundreds of prostitutes that share similarly sad fates, so why get so revved up about this one? The fact that he is able to get his grown daughter and another man he meets randomly at a bar to help him investigate seems equally unbelievable and the way they are conveniently able to find clues and connect-the-dots before solving the case comes off as too easy.

The action sequences, especially the opening one in which we see the prostitute getting killed, are poorly staged and filled with chopping editing that makes it hard-to-follow and phony looking. When the 50-year-old Buttons takes on a gang of young bikers, which are led by Earl Hindman who later became famous for playing the neighbor on ‘Home Improvement’ whose face was always obscured by a fence, it becomes downright silly. Sure the Buttons character has a background in boxing, but that still doesn’t mean he can take on four guys who are twice his size and the sound effects used for the punches are overdone and cartoon-like.

A similar issue occurs when Buttons saves a prostitute from an abusive pimp while Alex films it. The first time this occurs it is mildly diverting, but then when he saves another one, who is being beaten up by some of the old ladies in the neighborhood, it becomes redundant and corny.

The resolution, in which the killer turns out to be someone no one suspected, is flat and forgettable. It is also poorly thought out as he admits to the Buttons character that he killed the two women because he didn’t want any potential witnesses, but then doesn’t bother to kill Buttons or at least make sure he is dead even after he divulges his secret to him. The killer then just casually walks away without ever allowing the viewer to know if he was caught and charged with the crimes.

My Rating: 3 out of 10

Released: November 12, 1971

Runtime: 1Hour 30Minutes

Rated GP

Director: Ernest Pintoff

Studio: Cannon Film Distributors

Available: None at this time.

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Posted in 70's Movies, Drama, Low Budget, Movies that take place in the Big Apple, Mystery, Obscure Movies

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