Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate it | {Insert Appropriate Seasonal Greeting Here}

[kihei]

A Hero (2021) Directed by Asghar Farhadi 6A

Rahim has been imprisoned for three years for a debt he cannot repay. On leave, his girlfriend finds a bag of valuable coincs and after some hesititation, Rahim returns them to the woman who lost them and becomes a hero and may not have to go back to prison Then it all starts to unravel and Rahim finds himself in even hotter water than when he started. Are his problems his own doing or just a quirk of fate and bad luck? If you have never seen a film by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, you will likely enjoy this one. Farhardi consistenly makes good movies (About Elly; The Past; The Salesman; A Separation). My problem is that he uses the same basic template over and over to the point of tedium--An ordinary person is faced with an extraordinary but still at least semi-plausible situation and then Farhadi lets that person dangle in the wind as all kinds of unexpected consequences unfold all around him or her. It's as if a band did endless variations on their biggest hit, but never really moved forward beyond that to develop new music. A Hero is well executed but it is time for Farhadi to develop a fresh trick.

subtitles

Prime Video

 

[guinness]

I'm currently watching the Hollywood Legends of Horror Collection (Warner Archive).

I've had this collection in one of my Amazon lists forever, as one of the movies contained Humphrey Bogart is some weird piece of casting (huzzah for the Golden Age Hollywood studio system).

The movies in the collection are The Devil-Doll, Mad Love, Doctor X, The Return of Doctor X, Mark of the Vampire, and the Mask of Fu Manchu. Interesting to note, that these movies are made on demand, and are burned to DVD-Rs, rather than pressed. The labels are well done, full color, but my Sony X800 UHD doesn't like their disc menus at all, so I have to play them, by guessing which chapter is what.

So far, I've gone through half of them.

The Devil-Doll started Lionel Barrymore, as a former banker that was falsely convicted of fraud. After years in prison, he escapes, and with the help of a mad scientist, he uses shrunken people, that he can control through telepathy, to take revenge on those that wronged him.

Directed by Tod Browning. It's...different. I thought Barrymore did well, however, in order to escape detection as an escaped convict, he posed as an old woman, that made dolls. Maureen O'Sullivan played his daughter, and she did well, did surprise me that suicide was actually mentioned in a movie from 1936.

It feels slightly like something Universal would've made, but it was MGM.

6/10

Doctor X was shot in two strip Technicolor...everything is a shade of green or brown...but the rest of the movie was muddy as well. Direction (Michael Curtiz! Casablanca!)...muddy, Fay Wray is good, but she unfortunately played characters that always were screaming, Lionel Atwell was fine as the head doctor, Lee Tracy made me believe that he was an annoying reporter.

But I would struggle to tell you much of what their characters actually did. Walk into location, say lines, and then move on to different locations, characters saying lines.

Anyhow, Atwill runs an institute of medical doctors, some unsolved murders happen in NYC, and the police and Atwill suspect that only the doctors at the institute could've caused the murders. Something something, the one you least suspected actually did it. End.

I've never seen a two strip Technicolor film before, and I honestly think I would've preferred black and white.

5/10

Mad Love starred Peter Lorre, directed by Karl Freund, who photographed Dracula by Tod Browning. Lorre played a doctor, that specialized in organ transplants, in love with a married woman, whose husband is a concert pianist. Pianist loses hands in an accident, and doctor transplants hands from a knife-throwing murder onto to him.

Far-fetched? Sure. A bit slow to get rolling but come and stay for Peter Lorre's mad doctor. One scene gave me shades of the Invisible Man with Claude Rains.

I really liked Frances Drake here, and Colin Clive was OK, but I just kept thinking of him as Dr Frankenstein. Again, this feels more like a Universal horror movie, but came from MGM.

8/10

I'm looking forward to The Mask of Fu Manchu now, as I've been on a Myrna Loy quest of late, but my brain is hung up on her and Boris Karloff (!) playing Asians. But I've already seen her play an Indian (not native American Indian) woman in the Black Watch and Hispanic in Rogue of the Rio Grande...and she wasn't great, so my hopes aren't that high. But she didn't look bad in those costumes at least.

 

[Pink Mist]

Skies of Lebanon / Sous le ciel d'Alice (Chloé Mazlo, 2020)

The Skies of Lebanon is a heartbreaking portrait of a family grappling with the strife of Lebanon’s civil war in the 1970s. The story, which is based off of director Chloé Mazlo’s grandmother, follows a Swiss woman (Alba Rohrwacher) who moves to Lebanon to be an au pair and falls in love with a Lebanese man (Wajdi Mouawad) who wants to launch Lebanon’s space program. The beginning of the film showing the early pre-war days in Lebanon is quirky. It has an animated segment, a stop motion portion, and features obvious painted backgrounds of Beirut. I’ve seen a lot of comparisons to this part of the film to the style of Wes Anderson, but I think its idiosyncratic style and use of absurd vignettes throughout is more similar to Roy Andersson. The tone of the film does shift slightly when the civil war begins, but the playfulness of Mazlo’s direction is maintained with vignettes used to show the absurdity of the wartime situation in Lebanon. At times I found the early part of the film a little too cute and twee, and the hodgepodge inclusion of different filming styles kind of distracting (particularly the animated section), so I think it was wise that Mazlo played the second half a little more straight while keeping what worked best for me (those Andersson like vignettes). The film never wavers from focusing on a normal family experiencing the war and struggling with the decision on whether to persevere or flee the country they love and call home, and I think this choice to focus on the personal microlevel of the breakdown of a marriage and family from idyllic to broken and fragmented is a strong metaphor for Lebanon during the civil war. A beautiful and sad love letter to Lebanon and the Lebanese diaspora.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

If some of you guys are looking for rare movies and want me to check them up, I've got a free ride for a few days...

 

[OzzyFan]

In a Lonely Place (1950)
3.35 out of 4stars

"A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. However, she soon starts to have her doubts."
An excellently layered noir, that's fulfilling as a murder mystery, romantic drama, and psychological character study. Bogart and Grahame bring great depth to their characters, and I particularly enjoyed the few scenes Waterman had as a drunken washed up actor. The parallels made between the mind's of a criminal, a crime screenwriter, and a police detective were surprisingly profound to me. This was also another film I watched that showed suspects of a crime can be fingered just as easily by a quality motive or just an acquaintance with a past background of violence and rage. It appears one can never truly escape one's past, especially if it's on public and private record. The romantic relationship of the film is just as complex as it's characters. No relationships are perfect and all have their ups and downs, but all it takes is the power of suggestion to turn an idea that bubbles under the surface into a full blown contemplative nightmare of a mind game. There is compromise in all relationships, and "one must take the good with the bad", but where is the bad baggage line drawn? Bogart's Dixon is such an interesting character to absorb that I'm sure a psychologist could have a field day with. He's enigmatic, troubled, bipolar, intellectual, witty, short tempered, macho, and yet overly sensitive at the same time.

The Devil Rides Out (1968)
2.85 out of 4stars

"In 1929, when 2 men arrive at a party thrown by one's protégé, they soon realize that the party is in fact a gathering of a Satanic cult that plans to initiate him that night. The 2 men abduct the protégé from the party leading to a hectic couple days for all involved."
A quite fun and at times eerie satanic horror film led by a commanding Christopher Lee performance in the good guy role. This one kind of reminded me of the Conjuring films in a number of positive ways. It's an obvious good vs evil battle on a soul level, it is scattered with knowledge on the occult-black magic/Satanism/Christian defenses, and includes many amusing supernatural set pieces and sequences. I won't ruin anything beyond that, but this was a good film elevated for me personally by some guilty pleasure elements.

Isle of the Dead (1945)
2.50 out of 4stars

"On a Greek island during the 1912 war, several people are trapped by quarantine for the plague. If that isn't enough worry, one of the people, a superstitious old peasant woman, suspects one young girl of being a vampiric kind of demon called a vorvolaka."
A paranoia horror film that plays on both natural and supernatural fears in the setting of a house on an isolated Greek island. A theme here also seems to be that superstitions can be caused and/or explained by medical conditions, which can still have horrific impacting qualities. It's got some food for thought and inspiration, but it doesn't really explore it that far or bring any notable visual or emotional thrills to compensate.

The Stepfather (1987)
2.40 out of 4stars

"After murdering his entire family, a man marries a widow with a teenage daughter in another town and prepares to do it all over again."
A missed opportunity of a thriller horror film. For starters, it starts off intriguing and with a bang showing him leaving and 'cleaning up' directly after murdering his family. Terry O'Quinn gives a great performance as the smart psychopath playing 2 faces and scheming about. After that, the middle half of the story is well...middling. There are some noteworthy touches but altogether it's rather pedestrian thriller horror material without much depth or freshness. The ending does up the ante again with tension, intersecting worlds, and obviously boiling points erupting. But altogether, there was a lot of potential and promise wasted by an average middle act of the script and a great lead turn from O'Quinn.

 

[guinness]

The Return of Doctor X - (1939)

I'm aping the plot summary from IMDB, because "no, really, I can't even!" otherwise:

New York newspaper reporter Walter Barnett finds himself out of a job after he claims to have found actress Angela Merrova dead in her apartment - only the next day she showed up alive and threatened to sue the paper. Determined to investigate he discovers her involvement with a strange doctor who is an expert on human blood. Barnett then finds a connection to a series of gruesome murders where the victims were all found drained of blood

Bogie must boinked one of Jack Warner's mistresses or pissed in his Corn Flakes or something, because as while this was not a bad movie (once I paid attention), I've always thought of HB of having a very limited range.

Rather typecast for a reason - he's Rick Blaine, he's Samuel Spade, he's Phillip Marlowe. Try and make him Geoffrey Carroll, or in this movie, Marshall Quesne/Dr. Xavier...eeehhh, no.

Humphrey Bogart said of this film: "This is one of the pictures that made me march in to [Warner Bros. studio chief Jack L. Warner] and ask for more money again. You can't believe what this one was like. I had a part that somebody like Bela Lugosi or Boris Karloff should have played. I was this doctor, brought back to life, and the only thing that nourished this poor bastard was blood. If it had been Jack Warner's blood or [Harry Warner's] or [Sam Warner's] maybe I wouldn't have minded as much. The trouble was, they were drinking mine and I was making this stinking movie."

Fortunately for Bogie, he's not the lead in this movie, but this came out in December 1939, he had already worked on The Roaring Twenties or Dark Victory earlier in the year, and The Return of Doctor X is more B movie territory, and all I can think, is that he pissed off the wrong people at Warners.

Otherwise, why would you be putting one of your stars in something like this.

Dennis Morgan was pretty good in this (he's more well known for something like Christmas in Connecticut, and it's good if looking for a Christmas movie, although it's a Barbara Stanwyck vehicle, and for someone that doesn't like romcoms, that's about as good of praise I can give, also Sydney Greenstreet is good in it as well), and I liked the lead, Wayne Morris, whom I was not familiar with at all previously.

I liked it better than Doctor X though...so...6.5/10

 

[Osprey]

Fortunately for Bogie, he's not the lead in this movie, but this came out in December 1939, he had already worked on The Roaring Twenties or Dark Victory earlier in the year, and The Return of Doctor X is more B movie territory, and all I can think, is that he pissed off the wrong people at Warners.

Otherwise, why would you be putting one of your stars in something like this.

I imagine that it was just the way that the studio system worked back then. Bogart had established himself as a good supporting actor, but not yet as a leading man, and they needed a supporting actor, maybe even a recognizable name to give the B movie some cachet. It could just be that he had a few months open, so the studio thought "he's good, we have him under contract and he's available, so let's get the most out of him and assign him a role in whatever we're filming this month." Since he was under contract, it's not like he would've blown the film's meager budget, and I don't think that the studios cared as much back then about whether an actor suited the role. Bogart was even in love stories, socialite dramas and westerns around that time. I agree with you, though, that this probably takes the cake for most un-Bogart roles. I almost want to see it just out of curiosity.

 

[Chili]

In a Lonely Place (1950)
3.35 out of 4stars

"A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. However, she soon starts to have her doubts."
An excellently layered noir, that's fulfilling as a murder mystery, romantic drama, and psychological character study. Bogart and Grahame bring great depth to their characters, and I particularly enjoyed the few scenes Waterman had as a drunken washed up actor. The parallels made between the mind's of a criminal, a crime screenwriter, and a police detective were surprisingly profound to me. This was also another film I watched that showed suspects of a crime can be fingered just as easily by a quality motive or just an acquaintance with a past background of violence and rage. It appears one can never truly escape one's past, especially if it's on public and private record. The romantic relationship of the film is just as complex as it's characters. No relationships are perfect and all have their ups and downs, but all it takes is the power of suggestion to turn an idea that bubbles under the surface into a full blown contemplative nightmare of a mind game. There is compromise in all relationships, and "one must take the good with the bad", but where is the bad baggage line drawn? Bogart's Dixon is such an interesting character to absorb that I'm sure a psychologist could have a field day with. He's enigmatic, troubled, bipolar, intellectual, witty, short tempered, macho, and yet overly sensitive at the same time.

Coincidence, I just watched this film yesterday. Nice review.

Bogey with a temper. He had lots of practice from gangster films. Real challenge to go toe to toe with him, liked Gloria Grahame as I have in other films. I liked the ending. Great quote 'I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me. '.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Bigger Than Life (1956) - 7/10

One of the better acted 50s melodramas of this type I've seen. It starts off really well and settles into a slow paced but solid groove. Second half when the psychosis kicks kin does it fall apart into more unrealism and those melodramatic cliches where the tension isn't really all that interesting. I think the choice of so many 50s movies to make that sort of conflict or melodrama and turn it into Hitchcockian suspense ended up making the film weaker.

Also I kinda laughed, the 'mystery/miracle' drug the lead was given to cure his illness was.......cortisone lol.

 

[guinness]

I imagine that it was just the way that the studio system worked back then. Bogart had established himself as a good supporting actor, but not yet as a leading man, and they needed a supporting actor, maybe even a recognizable name to give the B movie some cachet. It could just be that he had a few months open, so the studio thought "he's good, we have him under contract and he's available, so let's get the most out of him and assign him a role in whatever we're filming this month." Since he was under contract, it's not like he would've blown the film's meager budget, and I don't think that the studios cared as much back then about whether an actor suited the role. Bogart was even in love stories, socialite dramas and westerns around that time. I agree with you, though, that this probably takes the cake for most un-Bogart roles. I almost want to see it just out of curiosity.

I have no doubt as well - he had a contract after all, and man's gotta eat. But I just am a bit surprised, that after putting him in other roles throughout the years at Warners, they still put him in this.

But then again, I've seen what I thought were great actors do "odd" films, and I can see the double-edged sword of the contract system. Sure, you get guaranteed pay, but when the head's say jump, you jump.

It is worth seeing Bogart is something so foreign. And it was the only reason I had booked this collection so many years ago.

 

[guinness]

Last two movies of this WB horror collection.

Mark of the Vampire - (1935)

I found Carol Borland's makeup alluring though:

Plot was something about supposed vampires, and people trying to figure out what happened.

The last 5 minutes is when the movie finally got interesting, as it didn't end how I expected it to. However, otherwise it was just a mix of screaming and whispering and that just got grating. 5/10

The Mask of Fu Manchu - (1932)

I could be weird, but Fu Manchu and some of the rest of the characters, and in particular the set pieces gave me all sorts of Flash Gordon vibes. Flash Gordon came out after this movie FWIW.

Plot - Something about two groups, one white, the other "Asian", trying to recover some treasure of Genghis Khan. Ending was predictable, and a movie of its times, with lots of white actors in yellowface.

At one point, a couple black guys tie up and whip the main lead, while Myrna Loy's character stands by and encourages them to go faster. Definitely not something that would've happened post Code.

However, not a great movie, and nearly entirely forgettable, primarily it's just me ticking off another Loy movie that I've seen. 5.5/10

 

[ProstheticConscience]

mother!

with JLaw, Javier Bardem, a wizened Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer (aww...that's a shame...) and other people.

Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence are husband and wife in a palatial old house in the middle of nowhere. JL is attempting the mammoth task of fixing it up by herself because JB is a legendary author who apparently doesn't write very much. The house is 1880, their clothes are 2010. JB clearly has some creative weight behind him...and Ed Harris shows up out of nowhere to stay the night. Uh...okay. Michelle Pfeiffer turns up soon after as his wife, and they love to impose. Their adult sons arrive the next day...one kills the other, who bleeds all over JL's nice hardwood floor. Dammit! That'll strain any relationship. Soon after a total frat-rager party breaks out as all manner of wanker shows up at this place, destroying JLaw's careful renovations. What the hell, man. The chaos starts JB writing again, and soon a full-blown cult takes root. Uh...what? JL unfortunately gets pregnant, but there's a blood vagina on the floor in the nursery that won't stop bleeding even after resurfacing. Which happens all the time. HGTV's worst nightmare happens.

Okay. So. Metaphor for the creative process and hero worship of creative types? The need for the public to destroy what it loves? The insatiable appetite of the unwashed masses for drama? If you were in your 40's and Jennifer Lawrence was willing to renovate your house, make breakfast for you every morning and hang on your every word, would you really want to piss her off if she told you Ed Harris couldn't smoke in your house?

Overstylized garbage that thinks it's a lot more profound than it is. Yawn.

Still on Netflix after all this time.

You just knew the guy who directed this mess went around wearing scarves and wire-rimmed glasses.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) - 7/10

Anthology films are quite hard to rate as they're always a mixed bag and feel incomplete. In this one, the first two of three stories feel like you're dropped into a scene that's already been going on, you're missing a lot of context which has to be filled in, and the ending relies on revealing some of that context and never feels quite satisfying. They do direct calm but almost high stake emotional turmoil well. The third story really shines though, a very well done meet and conversation between two people for the most part which you wish continued for longer, felt like a nice slice of life indie as opposed to the more soap-opera-ish other two stories.

 

[GlassesJacketShirt]

mother!

with JLaw, Javier Bardem, a wizened Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer (aww...that's a shame...) and other people.

Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence are husband and wife in a palatial old house in the middle of nowhere. JL is attempting the mammoth task of fixing it up by herself because JB is a legendary author who apparently doesn't write very much. The house is 1880, their clothes are 2010. JB clearly has some creative weight behind him...and Ed Harris shows up out of nowhere to stay the night. Uh...okay. Michelle Pfeiffer turns up soon after as his wife, and they love to impose. Their adult sons arrive the next day...one kills the other, who bleeds all over JL's nice hardwood floor. Dammit! That'll strain any relationship. Soon after a total frat-rager party breaks out as all manner of wanker shows up at this place, destroying JLaw's careful renovations. What the hell, man. The chaos starts JB writing again, and soon a full-blown cult takes root. Uh...what? JL unfortunately gets pregnant, but there's a blood vagina on the floor in the nursery that won't stop bleeding even after resurfacing. Which happens all the time. HGTV's worst nightmare happens.

Okay. So. Metaphor for the creative process and hero worship of creative types? The need for the public to destroy what it loves? The insatiable appetite of the unwashed masses for drama? If you were in your 40's and Jennifer Lawrence was willing to renovate your house, make breakfast for you every morning and hang on your every word, would you really want to piss her off if she told you Ed Harris couldn't smoke in your house?

Overstylized garbage that thinks it's a lot more profound than it is. Yawn.

Still on Netflix after all this time.

You just knew the guy who directed this mess went around wearing scarves and wire-rimmed glasses.

Would rather watch a Neil Breen film than this trash ever again.

RLM said it best: It's like if a spitballing New York cab driver was given a Hollywood budget to make the most pretentious movie he could.

 

[Osprey]

Okay. So. Metaphor for the creative process and hero worship of creative types? The need for the public to destroy what it loves? The insatiable appetite of the unwashed masses for drama? If you were in your 40's and Jennifer Lawrence was willing to renovate your house, make breakfast for you every morning and hang on your every word, would you really want to piss her off if she told you Ed Harris couldn't smoke in your house?

Overstylized garbage that thinks it's a lot more profound than it is. Yawn.

Yes, the film is highly allegorical. You were on the right track with your second guess.

Spoiler

JLaw is supposed to be Mother Earth (hence the title), Bardem is God, the house is the Garden of Eden, the crystal object is the forbidden fruit, the visitors are Adam and Eve and their sons are Cain and Abel. It adapts the story of how Man took the original paradise for granted to make commentary on what modern Man is doing to the planet. Aronofsky must've thought that using a Bible story to convey an environmental message was creative and edgy. He did something similar a few years earlier with Noah.

 

[guinness]

Mother! sounds terrible enough for me to watch.

Instead, I'm watching Franco Nero play a ninja. Seriously Prime, you know me too well.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Mother! sounds terrible enough for me to watch.

Instead, I'm watching Franco Nero play a ninja. Seriously Prime, you know me too well.

Mother! is actually pretty good. I have it at 7/10. It's fashionable to say it's "pretentious" (a dumb idea to begin with), but I can't imagine anyone having seen a Godard film in the last 40 years, or a Malick film since his return (etc., etc., etc.) pretend that they think Mother! is more "pretentious".

 

[guinness]

I don't watch movies for the directors, so I don't know if they have certain beats, motifs, styles...but I wouldn't be surprised that many do. Probably just as typecast as the actors.

To that end, I could probably give Aronofsky a pass if I watched Mother!, although now knowing that it's an allegorical tale, the surprise would be missing.

I also don't have Netflix anymore, so I would have to watch via another means.

 

[Osprey]

To that end, I could probably give Aronofsky a pass if I watched Mother!, although now knowing that it's an allegorical tale, the surprise would be missing.

Sorry about that! I thought that explaining it would be helpful, but I can see how some people might not want to know going into it. I'll put it in spoiler tags.

 

[kihei]

Mother! is actually pretty good. I have it at 7/10. It's fashionable to say it's "pretentious" (a dumb idea to begin with), but I can't imagine anyone having seen a Godard film in the last 40 years, or a Malick film since his return (etc., etc., etc.) pretend that they think Mother! is more "pretentious".

Why call it pretentious? I'd just call it batshit awful and leave it at that.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Why call it pretentious? I'd just call it batshit awful and leave it at that.

That I can live with.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. A rather lengthy (3+ hours) doc on the history of folk horror in film. I find a lot of horror documentaries boil down to "Hey remember this movie? That was cool, wasn't it?" And don't get me wrong I've enjoyed my fair share of those. What really stood out to me here is that there is some depth and scholarship to this one. It plays like a college course in the best sense of that comparison. It's of the introductory sort so it may leave you craving more depth ... but it weaves a diverse canvas of the world of folk horror, its origins, its themes, etc. If you're into such things it's definitely going to beef up your watch list. I'd love to learn more if this team ever decides to go even deeper.

It did make me add to my watch list. My first choice (opting for a goofier/lighter starting point) was Psychomania in which the world's least cool motorcycle gang with the help of a rare frog and some sacred burial land learn the secret of eternal life. It's bad, but there are laughs to have at its expense. I'm serious when I say they're the least cool motorcycle gang ever.

These aren't from the folk horror realm but I treated myself to a double feature of Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula (billed sometimes as Andy Warhol's Frankenstein or Andy Warhol's Dracula). The artist was a producer on the movies. This duo are the rare birds that aim for and hit a campy tone without managing to tip over into being a spoof. They're knowingly, gratuitously gross and horny. Everything spurts. But they're also very funny (especially Frankenstein). That's due largely to Udo Kier as the petulant, pouty star of both and Joe Dallesandro who basically plays a walking erection with a New York accent in both movies (despite the classic European settings). It's gloiriously reprehensible trash.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

Throw Momma From The Train (1987) - 7/10

I'm a nostalgic mess so I often watch these more mediocre 80s and 90s comedies and end up overrating them but whatever we can't get this style today. I guess the weakest part of this comedy is that it's missing a lot of the actual comedy. It doesn't exactly have jokes per say it has more of....Billy Crystal and Danny DeVito. The two of them basically bumbling along with solid chemistry holding together what ends up taking a long time to set up as a comedic take of Strangers On A Train. A lot of lines looking back now seem a bit awkward and maybe that's because this was DeVito's first feature which he directed, it isn't as polished say Matilda but the quaintness is still there.

Also this movie was #1 at the US box office at one point, absolutely wild to think today, it'd be straight to streaming.

 

[Pink Mist]

Black Medusa / ما تسمع كان الرّيح (ismaël and Youssef Chebbi, 2021)

Nada (Nour Hajri) leads a secret life. By day she is a mute office worker who keeps to herself, but by night she is a serial killer who prays on men trying to pick her up. Filmed in monochrome with beautiful nighttime cinematography, this film is a blend of A Girls Walks Home at Night and Promising Young Woman. We never learn her motivations for her murders, nor can I discern if its an allegory to do with misogyny/patriarchy or, due to Tunisia’s history, colonialism (the film is Tunisian). For some the fact that the killer is a blank slate - quite literally as she is silent and only communicates occasionally through a voice app on her phone – makes the film a little polarizing as her character doesn’t leave viewers with much to hold on to in terms of her character. To me though the atmosphere developed by directors Youssef Chebbi and ismaël (yes, he insists on just going by one name and in lowercase, kind of pretentious), works really well and adds to the mysterious persona of the killer as there is a dreamlike atmosphere in Tunis’ night scene as Nada wonders the streets and into techno clubs searching for her next victim. The atmosphere paired with Hajri’s silent performance adds a mesmerizing and unsettling quality to the film. The film does lose steam in the back half of the story, but I found it a good little stylish thriller in the femme fatale genre.

 

[Chili]

Ice Cold In Alex-1958

Setting is North Africa 1942 and as the Brits are evacuating Tobruk, two nurses have been left behind. A Captain is tasked with getting them the ~600 miles to Alexandria. The journey in an ambulance is full of dangers and heat. The setting is WWII but it's not really a war film, just a small group coming together to try to survive and make it through. Vgood adventure/suspense film. The director J. Lee Thompson (Guns of Navarone) had worked with Alfred Hitchcock, must have learned a little bit about suspense.

Filmed on location in Libya, must have been grueling for the actors who have a lot of physical action. Top notch cast. Supposed to have been based on a real incident.