Barbarians, swords, sorcery and sandals - Part 1

I needed to watch some barbarian and sword & sorcery movies for a project I'm working on, so I bought 11 more or less classics from the genre. That being the 80's Conan copies and of course the Conan movies themselves. Here's my thoughts on the first six of them in no particular order. As a warning for the fans of this genre, I must say I'm not a big fan of them so don't hold it against me if I fail to see the greatness of some of these movies.













Red Sonja (1985)

Brigitte Nielsen is Red Sonja, a master sword swinger who seeks revenge on the evil queen who killed her family. The queen has also stolen a magical orb with destructive powers and Red Sonja tries to retrieve it. Joining her in this adventure is Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor, a warrior on a quest to destroy the orb. They are also joined by an annoying kid prince and his servant, serving as the comic sidekicks I guess. This movie follows very predictable paths, bit of sword swinging and adventure with of course a bit of romance in there as well. The acting is quite bad most of the time, but then again the cast is there for their looks not because of their acting talents. I guess the real reason this movie was made was that Brigitte Nielsen looked hot in that tight warrior outfit. Highlights of this movie was Ennio Morricone's music, but unfortunately not much else. At parts the movie gets so bad it becomes funny, but then it just becomes bad again, so can't really recommend it as a campy fun movie either. Anyway it had it's moments and kept me somewhat entertained despite it's flaws.
40%

The Blade Master (1984)

From a barbarian movie by Joe D'Amato you'd expect quite a bit of sexploitation. Much to my surprise there was basically none, if you don't count the nice outfit of Mila. Well anyway, this is a bad movie and unfortunately it's not the kind which turns into great comedy for being so bad, so I won't waste much time for it. Apparently this is a sequel for Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982), though absolutely nothing is this one made me want to see what the first, or the third for that matter, are about. Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) is this some sort of a great warrior who is living at the far edge of the world which seems to be about a day away from everywhere. One day Mila (Lisa Foster) brings bad news about his mentor who is captured by a bad guy named Zor (David Brandon). So off they go with their mute Asian sidekick, funnily named Thong (Kiro Wehara), to rescue the mentor. Bad effects, horrible acting and a nonsense plot follows. A few scenes cracked me up in laughter, like the snake fight and the hang gliding scene with those hand grenades for example, but mostly the only excitement this movie offered was watching the incredibly short skirt of Mila. So it's not really anything more than just a bad movie. I'm just wondering why did someone make this in the first place? Why did someone finance this horrible excuse of a movie? Why did someone release it as a DVD? And most of all why did I buy it? Well luckily it was cheap, but I'd still rather have my 3.95 back and most importantly my one and a half hours back.
10%

Ironmaster (1983)

Umberto Lenzi is more known from his violent crime movies and cannibal films, but like most Italian exploitation directors, he too wanted to cash in with the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and this is what he made. It's basically not a barbarian movie as it's a story about cave men who discover iron, but the themes are quite barbarian. Vood (George Eastman) kills his tribe leader and the hero of the movie, Ela (Sam Pasco), drives him out of the tribe. But Vood discovers an iron blade and comes back to claim the leadership of the tribe by force. Then Ela is cast out while Vood decides to take rule over all of the neighboring tribes. Ela then joins forces with a peace loving tribe of hippies and they of course have a bloody battle. That's the story in a nut shell, but there's plenty more than that. There's lions, men in monkey costumes, disease ridden people who look like zombies and of course the horribly bad acting. The fights are clumsy as usual but this time, this one being an Umberto Lenzi movie, there's some gore effects to spice things up a bit. The music was quite horrible and annoyingly repetitive. For most parts this was just a bad movie, but there were quite a few absolutely brilliant moments that were so horribly bad they were great comedy. So I must say I was surprisingly entertained and in the end this was quite an ok campy trash movie.
48%

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

This is the first feature length movie of Albert Pyun, the self proclaimed master of cheap b-class action movies. True to his filmography and the genre in question this movie is not good either. The story in this one goes something like this, an evil guy called Cromwell (Richard Lynch) resurrects an evil sorcerer just to kill him moments later. Then Cromwell goes on to kill the king and become the king himself. The son and the daughter of the king escape and years later try to take over the kingdom from Cromwell. There's some twists I guess I shouldn't mention in order to not spoil it, even though I wouldn't really recommend watching this movie in the first place. It clearly shows that Pyun is trying to go for the feel of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with the hero, the music, the dialog and the action, but of course missing the mark by a mile. Though I must say the hero, played by Lee Horsley, was by far the best thus far out of these movies, well at least he tries to bring some comedy into it if nothing else. There are some scenes which were absolutely brilliant in how idiotic they were. For example a scene where an evil jailer gets his head slowly pushed into a grinding wheel which is powered by his own legs. Still makes me laugh to think about it, I mean if your head is about to get grinded out maybe it would be wise to stop pedalling the damn thing. Anyway that's just one example, there are more of those, but unfortunately they are few and far between. So in the end this is not really worth watching, unless you want to waste your time on garbage for a few hilarious scenes.
36%

The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

Thus far this is the only movie I might consider leaving to my collection out of this bunch. Don't get me wrong, this is a bad movie, but it's so bad it's simply hilarious. The story is basically a copy of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), this time set on planet Ura. Two groups are fighting over the control of a village's only water well, in comes a strange warrior called Kain (David Carradine) who has other plans for the village. You can guess the rest. Anyway, the fighting was bad, the tits were plenty, the acting horrible, the creatures were oddly cute, the effects hilarious, the dialog ridiculous and did I mention the tits already? The movie is horribly edited, it looked like someone did some cuts to the final print of the movie as even the music cuts from time to time and not only between scenes, but within a scene as well. Though that only helped the goofy feeling of the movie. I must say I wasn't bored and I did get some nice laughs, even though I kind of doubt I'll be watching this one again any time soon. Maybe I'll save this one for some hangover morning in the future.
65%

Can't find a linkable trailer for this one, so here's the opening credits, for what ever that's worth...

Deathstalker (1983)

Deathstalker (Rick Hill) is a sword swinging warrior whose goals in life are to have sex with as many ladies as possible and to obtain the three powers of creation. He gets one power, a sword, from an old witch, the other two are held by an evil magician Munkar (Bernard Erhard) who just so happens to arrange a big tournament where the winner gets them. So Deathstalker heads to the tournament and is joined by Kaira (Lana Clarkson) a warrior woman in probably the most ridiculous and sexist outfits I've ever seen. That's about all there is to the story, some sword swinging and plenty of tits to follow. I must say the entertainment values were quite high in this movie, especially during the first half, but unfortunately the second half focuses too much on the story and the sword fights, which of course are not much to go with. Apart from the outfit of Kaira there were quite a few hilariously weird moments, for example a funny sex scene which might give homophobes some very bad nightmares. All in all this was an ok bad movie, had some good laughs and it kept me entertained throughout. Though in the end there are so many better good bad movies out there that this one will just vanish in the vast averageness.
50%

That's it for the first part, the second part with the Conan movies and a few other 80's exploitation flicks, will follow eventually when I get the time and mood to watch them. Might end up watching the Conan remake as well, but don't hold your breath for it.

Not your everyday zombies

Nightmare City (1980)

Well zombies might not be the technically right term for the infected people in this movie, but they are undead, thrive for human blood and can only be killed by a shot to the head. But that's not all, not even close. They can also run, use weapons like knifes and machine guns, fly airplanes, set up traps, cut phone and power lines and fight rather tactical warfare. But only if it's convinient for the "plot", otherwise they are just reduced to those slow moving rather dumb kinds. So they most certainly are not your everyday zombies and this movie most certainly is not one to be taken too seriously. Even though the movie focuses on the raging zombies, there is a bit of a story behind it. A reporter (Hugo Stiglitz) goes to an airport to interview a scientist about a recent radioactive leak on a nuclear power plant. However the plane carrying the scientist is full of these infected people who are a bit of a mix between zombies and vampires because of their thirst for blood, lets just call them "zombires". These zombires plan to take over the city and the reporter tries to get his wife into safety. Another thing which probably comes from their vampire side is the fact that they seem to haunt some of the people, instead of just eating them like normal zombies. But I guess that self moving lawnmover looked so spooky that they had to fit it in somehow. So yes the plot is thin and I guess so was the make-up budget as the zombie masks are mostly rather bad. The acting wasn't any better, but then again it gave me most of my laughs so I guess it was fine for this movie. The score by Stelvio Cipriani was quite far from his best, but it wasn't that bad, I guess he didn't want to waste too much time on this movie. Which I guess the director Umberto Lenzi was thinking as well as he focuses the movie on the killing and tries to get the stupid plot over as quickly as possible. I have to mention the ending, which was something ingenious in stupidity, if that even makes any sense. It was just brilliant in a corny way. Anyway, this movie is trash, but it's quite funny, so I bet I will be revisiting it again and who knows maybe eventually it will grow on me. But for now it's among the average of it's kind, the bad movies which turn into good movies because they are so funny.
55%

Fletch - the man with many names

 










Fletch (1985)

I used to love this movie when I was younger but for some reason I hadn't seen it in ages, before I found this and the one below in a bargain bin of a local market. So I decided to give them another go, funnily enough I wasn't actually hoping this one being that good anymore. Much to my surprise I still found myself liking it quite a bit. Fletch (Chevy Chase) is an undercover reporter investigating the drug trafficking on the local beach. There a wealthy man, Alan Stanwyk (Tim Matheson), spots him and proposes a deal to him. The deal is that Fletch needs to murder him for 50.000 dollars. The catch is that mr. Stanwyk is suffering from bone cancer and doesn't want to go through a slow and painful death. A murder would leave a large amount of insurance money for his family where a suicide wouldn't leave them anything. Fletch agrees to the deal, but smells something fishy and the movie gets it's mystery plot moving. I quite liked the dry and cynical humour of it all, I actually remembered it being a bit more goofball, but was pleasantly surprised. The best thing about this movie is that you can take all the comedy out and still you're left with a somewhat intriguing crime mystery, so the comedy doesn't make the movie, it just supports it nicely. This movie was done in the wake of the success of Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and you can see some clear similarities to this one. One of the biggest being the brilliant soundtrack by Harold Faltermeyer, who made the soundtrack of Beverly Hills Cop as well. Sure it's extremely 80's and rather repetitive, but still I loved the funky themes of it. Anyway I liked this movie surprisingly much.
75%

 









Fletch Lives (1989)

This time Fletch inherits a mansion in Louisiana from his aunt, so he decides to quit his job and enjoy the country life for a change. But as someone kills his lawyer while Fletch is sleeping next to her, he ends up in trouble with the locals and we have another mystery. This was nowhere near as good as the first one, even though this one had it's moments as well. The story is the biggest problem, it's not as good or interesting as in the first one. The weird thing is that they didn't use any of the novels written by the original author Gregory McDonald for this sequel, even though there were plenty of them, but instead hired Leon Capetanos to write a completely new story for it. Now I haven't read any of those, so can't judge, but it does sound a bit weird to not use the original author and as the end result isn't great I'm willing to bet my money on some of them being better than this. Another thing that troubled me was the editing, at points it was absolutely horrible with very clear editing mistakes. Which is weird as Richard A. Harris has won an Oscar and worked on some very nicely edited movies. I'm guessing the studio had their hands on the editing as they saw the movie didn't really work that well. Anyway, it's not all bad, there's still some hilarious moments in this one as well and I didn't get bored with it. But in the end it's just an average sequel to a good movie.
51%

Some serious party poopers

The House on the Edge of the Park (1980)

Right after Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Ruggero Deodato made this nasty little film. Even though the shock values might not be what they were in Cannibal Holocaust, this movie is still very disturbing. There's two kinds of sexploitation, there's the rather childish male fantasies and then there's the sick kind. This being a Ruggero Deodato movie this is of course the latter. It's a story about Alex (David Hoss) a homicidal rapist and his friend Ricky (Giovanni Radice), who invite themselves into a party hosted by a snobbish couple. Alex and Ricky take the group hostage, beating the men and raping the women. So the story isn't exactly great and similarities to The Last House on the Left (1972) are quite apparent. This is a bad movie, no other way of seeing it, but at parts it's so bad it turns into an unintentional comedy. Especially the twist at the end was just hilarious in it's stupidity and it pretty much ridiculed the whole movie before it. I don't know if that was a planned sick joke or just stupidity, but for me that worked very well. So basically it's an hour of torture, rape and torment and the ending makes fun of it all.
51%

Here's the trailer which is hilariously misspelled.

The Bronx Warriors Trilogy

When movies like The Warriors (1979), Mad Max (1979) and Escape from New York (1981) hit gold at the box office, Italy was soon to answer the call for “post apocalyptic” movies. Enzo G. Castellari was the one who brought us this series here for what ever that's worth.

The Bronx Warriors (1982)

Well this movie is bad, but it's so bad it's actually not bad as it's so funny. The plot is pretty much nonsense, the idea is that in the near future, which was 1990, the Bronx has been turned into a free zone for the criminals where the gangs can roam free and the police rather stay out of there. One day a woman (Stefania Girolami) escapes from some corporate conspiracy into Bronx and ends up stirring things into an all out war between the different gangs. The main gang of this movie is The Riders, who are supposed to be this motorcycle gang and the ruling authority down there, but most of them look like your average office workers dressed in denim and leather. Apparently some of them were played by the real Hell's Angels and indeed some of the lesser characters look quite believable, but anyone with a few lines dialogue is most certainly not. Their leader is Trash (Mark Gregory). He's supposed to be this fearless leader, but he looks more like a gay kid who forgot the butt plug from last night still in his ass which makes him prance around like a fairy. And it didn't really help that he's also crying like a little girl. The other “gangs” are just as hilarious. There's the “gentlemen” gang, dressed in fancy clothing and who seem to be surprisingly wealthy for a slum like this. There's the roller skating hockey gang, which just leaves you wondering how do they get around this ruined city with their small skates. There's a tap dancing gang wearing flashy costumes and makeup who of course fight with only dance maneuvers. Then there's some pale faced zombie gang with with nothing but wooden planks as weapons. Not to forget the all leather wearing police forces in motorcycle helmets wielding flamethrowers while riding on horses. So yes, it's crazy. It's cheaply made which shows in many places, but then again that only adds to the camp values of it all. The acting is from crap to horrible and the fighting isn't much better. Luckily there were some nice gore effects to keep the entertainment values up. Even though I wasn't bored watching this as a campy fun ride, I must say it still wasn't a good movie. So as a proper post apocalyptic action movie it's just garbage and as a fun campy trash flick it's just ok.

52%

Escape from the Bronx (1983)

As the first part seemed to do a decent business on the box office, Castellari didn't waste time with the sequel and actually made two of them a year after the original. Even though the other one wasn't a direct sequel, it's still in the same category. Anyway, this time it's complete extermination as the corporate folk decide to clean up the Bronx, by killing everyone of course. Trash is unfortunately back, though this time he doesn't seem as feminine as in the first one, but it's not exactly a great improvement. His parents get killed so he decides to take revenge by kidnapping the president of the corporation tearing down the Bronx, in hopes of holding him hostage for the freedom of the Bronx. He's joined by a pre-school explosives expert and his dad. The story is ridiculous to say the least, but again that's not the main thing, it's the campy exploitative fun of it all. I must say the action was well in hand in this one, the body count must be close to 200 in this movie. So that combined with the horrible acting and the ridiculous plot ensure that the entertainment values are high with this one. The music was horribly 80's disco-like electronic beats which was rather annoying most of the time. Even though this was worse than the original I still enjoyed this more. Go figure...

63%

The New Barbarians (1983)

This is actually the only part which is post apocalyptic as in the previous two the “apocalypse” was merely a decay in the Bronx, but this one it's an actual nuclear winter aftermath. And to be honest it doesn't have much to do with the other two, except the general idea of ripping off these post apocalyptic box office hits. But as it's in The BronxWarriors Trilogy and done by Castellari, that's why it's here as well. The story in this one is like from any spaghetti western, the setting are just futuristic instead of the old west. A group of bandits, called Templars, are terrorizing the people who are trying to build another civilization after the nuclear apocalypse. Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete) is a lone wanderer with a righteous mind who gets mixed up in the mess and well you basically can guess the rest. But it's the little things that made me have a constant “what the fuck?” expression on my face. The costumes are ridiculous with their over the top shoulder toppings and especially the transparent armors were more than weird. The Templars, who are all men for obvious reasons, blame literature for the apocalypse and seemingly just want to kill everyone still alive. They also seem to be an openly gay society as raping a woman is not their ball park, but raping a man is a group event, good for them I guess. The props are just silly, the cars look like modified golf carts and the laser rifles are standard M-16's shooting fireballs. So it's clear the budget was small, luckily most of it went to the explosions and gore effects so the entertainment values are good. I must say I was quite disappointed in the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, usually his name is a guarantee for something good, but this time it was a miss. This movie has tons of unintentionally funny moments which made me laugh out loud. Especially the not so subtle hint at the end where the butt raped hero seemingly rejects a woman who fancies him but instead takes the hand of a young boy left me quite troubled. I really hope I misunderstood the meaning. I'd say this is the best out of the three, at least it's the funniest, though that doesn't mean it's a great movie no matter how you see it.

66%

Like always with these ripoffs, there's plenty of other unofficial sequels as well, like Endgame - Bronx lotta finale (1983), Bronx Executioner (1989) and others as well, but I'll leave those to another time, after all there's only so much I can take of bad movies at once.

Coppola's greatest failure?

One from the Heart (1982)

This is the movie that put the last nail in the coffin of Francis Ford Coppola's dream factory Zoetrope Studios. Even though the company didn't disappear, it went bankrupt and every bit of income from the following movies until the end of the 90's was used to pay off the debts from this movie. With a budget of 27 million and box office of less than one million it's clear that the movie was a disaster for the studio. Then again reading about how extravagant the production was I'm not really surprised, in a way I'm actually happy that it failed as it showed that you can't make a great movie by just throwing money at it. These “studio killers” are actually very interesting and there are quite a few of these kind of movies out there where the studio decides to bet all it's money on them and end up losing. Maybe some day I'll focus more on them, but for now lets focus on this one.

This is actually the kind of musical that I like, the music carries the movie but the movie does not stop so that the cast can perform their musical number. That's one of the main reasons I hate musicals as the movie stops when the music starts, same reason I don't like Bollywood movies. So the actors don't sing in this one, but the songs from the soundtrack tell the story as we go along. Even though the concept was great, this is still not a great movie. The biggest issues are the story, or the lack of it and the main couple. The story is just too simple and way too common to keep any interest up. And the main couple, even though Teri Garr has her moments, are just not up for carrying a movie like this. They were rather uninteresting and in a movie like this that's just not going to work. That's mostly the fault of the script and direction but also Frederic Forrest and Teri Garr are not the first that come to mind when speaking of captivating screen presence. It says a lot that the support cast, Raul Julia and Nastassja Kinski, would have made a better lead couple for this movie. But the whole movie is not totally bad. I loved the look of it and even though the ridiculously expensive indoor sets were the main reason for the fall of the studio, they really worked brilliantly for the look. That artificial neon lighted look was by far the best part of this movie. Another thing I liked were the numerous split cuts throughout the movie and the music was quite good as well. So the audio-visual aspect of this movie is great, but unfortunately the heart is missing.

54%

This movie didn't really take off

Flight (2012)

This one looked very promising, an interesting story and a great cast. Unfortunately it's a bit of a crash and burn, pun intended. It's a story about Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), one of the best pilots in the world, whose amazing maneuvers in a plane crash save over a hundred lives, but still 6 people end up dead. Then the crash is being investigated and things start to look bad. There's a huge flaw in this movie. It's that the main character is basically a jerk. And the biggest problem was that the movie makes it very clear right from the start. So my feelings for the movie went something like this;

• He's quite a jerk
• Daaamn that jerk can fly!
• John Goodman is great!
• What does this drug addict have to do with the movie?
• Oh, Whip is horny for the addict, that's why
• Maybe he's not a complete jerk after all
• Nope, he's still a jerk
• Oh there was that plane crash investigation going on as well
• Don Cheadle is also quite good
• Could there possibly be some hope for the jerk?
• Nope, why would I even think of that?
• Denzel Washington can't really act like a drunk person
• Now he's being a straight out dick
• I guess the question is will he redeem himself at the end?

To be honest by that time I already lost every bit of interest to the character and couldn't care less. Why would they right from the start establish the main character as an alcoholic self centered drug abusing jerk? And then the rest of the movie is about whether he can redeem himself or not. Everything else is nonessential after that. The intriguing plane crash and especially what follows after that loses all it's meaning. Had they not establish that in the start and leave it as kind of a surprise later on this movie would have worked a lot better. After all it's not totally a bad movie, most of the cast pull off their roles very nicely and the story is interesting. Too bad it's told in this way.

56%

Drilling for gas is bad, mmmkay?

Promised Land (2012)

Steve (Matt Damon) is a star salesman for a big natural gas company. He and his colleague Sue (Frances McDormand) are trying to get drilling rights from the people of a small rural town. Everything seems to be going according to the game plan until an elderly school teacher (Hal Holbrook) warns the town people about the dangers of gas drilling. If this wasn't trouble enough, Dustin (John Krasinski) an environmental activist comes along and starts to win the trust of the people. The story follows quite familiar paths, except for one twist near the end which almost saves the whole movie, but too bad it then gets back on the old track again. I don't know why but all the time I had the feeling I've seen this movie many times before and I even guessed the outcome during the first 30 minutes or so. Sure the twist was nice and surprised me but then again it was totally wasted in the end. Matt Damon and Frances McDormand pull out nice performances and I can't find a bad thing to say about the rest of them either, well except maybe from John Krasinski whose role was too much like his Jim Halpert from TheOffice. The direction was quite straight forward and I guess that was the main problem. This movie would have needed some spicing as the story, albeit interesting and having some nice dialogue, was just a bit too familiar to be told this way. And about the dialogue, there are some very good scenes in there, but also these unbelievably corny ones as well, especially towards the end. I don't want to sound like a polluting capitalist asshole, which I probably am, but anyway all this tree hugging mentality this movie pushed forward started to annoy me in the end. Which most certainly wasn't their intention I'm sure, as it tries to be subtle about it most of the time before the end third. Even though this movie left a bad taste in the end, it's not entirely bad, it starts off quite nicely and has it's moments, especially that twist near the end gets you thinking, but when all is said and done it's definitely not a good movie either.

50%

It's ok to be a bit mad

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

I have to admit this movie is special, it's one of the very few romantic comedies that didn't annoy me too much. But that really doesn't make this a good movie. Pat (Bradley Cooper) is released from a mental institution and taken to his parents house by his mother (Jacki Weaver). His father (Robert De Niro) seems surprised they let his son out and on we go unwrapping the past. The less you know the better your time passes watching it, so I'll leave it to just that. Bradley Cooper didn't pass as the son of Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver, he's missing the Italian aspect of it quite heavily. And speaking of Robert De Niro, he does an amazing performance in this one, despite that one tear filled Oscar bait moment. But what the hell, he surely deserves the nomination and it's not that often you can say that about his performances anymore. And since pretty much everyone in the cast got an Oscar nomination, I'll give out my opinion on them. Bradley Cooper's nomination I just can't understand, he's rather bland throughout the movie and certainly didn't give me any reason to believe he has some mental problems. Jennifer Lawrence however was quite great as she usually is, so the nomination there went to the right address. And finally Jacki Weaver, her part was overshadowed by De Niro, but still she managed to push through as a believable mother in middle of all that madness, maybe not exactly Oscar worthy, but a fine performance none the less.

The biggest problem with this movie was the main character and how his illness is portrayed. It's all just warm hearted fun. Just as an example the scene where Pat accidentaly hits his mother while going through a mental episode, it's portayed as a funny moment. All the while he's supposed to be a bipolar person with anger management issues. I'd see that as a rather scary moment, but no, it's made to be funny so it wouldn't go too deep into the issue. So now the main character's illness is nothing more than a funny gimmick. But as it's brought up so often I kind of lost interest to it and thus to the whole character. The father was actually the character I found most invested in, at least he seemed like a real human being with real problems and emotions. Too bad he was just a supporting character in this movie. And the weird thing is that this movie tries to bring out the drama behind the comedy, so it doesn't shy away from the drama alltogether, but really I think they chose the wrong moments to bring out. In the end this was nothing more than light and quite warm hearted entertainment, something that kept me entertained through it but left me very little to go with.

56%

A bloated history lesson

Lincoln (2012)

This was like a short excerpt from a history book blown into epic proportions for blockbuster movie values. I'm wondering what's the reason behind this movie, it doesn't bring any new views or opinions on the matter, it just tells it as it was. Sure it's a huge event in the history of that country, but for me as a Finn I don't have that patriotic urge to love a movie like this. I already knew the events and I just kept wondering what's the point, isn't reading a history book for 10 minutes enough so you need a two and a half hour spectacle to get the point? And I really don't mean that historical movies are bad, they are great but they either need some new perspective to the events or some kind of an development arc to the story so we would see where it started from and how it got to the end. Especially uninteresting is the way it's filled with political jargon, sure some people might like that but for me it got rather boring. I also wouldn't have minded a movie about Lincoln, he's an interesting character, but that would have needed a wider timespan, so we could have seen what made him the man he was, not just the few weeks around the vote and those couple of speeches everyone has heard many times before. And don't get me started on the racism issue, this movies message to it is like Mr. Mackey from South Park saying "Slavery is bad, mmkay?" I'm guessing people love this movie because it's bad not to, especially if you're American. Well I most certainly didn't love it, but it's not totally a bad movie.

The acting is brilliant, Daniel Day Lewis is amazing as always and Tommy Lee Jones surprisingly good as well, but the best in my opinion was Sally Field. She didn't have any of these momentous lines most of the actors had, sometimes even in the same scene, but still her performance even outshadowed Daniel Day Lewis at times. And that takes some serious skills.

Also it's technically quite brilliant, even though I do have some complaints on those departments as well. One thing which is just plain criminally wrong is the praise Janusz Kaminski gets from the cinematography of this movie. Now sure, mostly this movie looks gorgeus, but really this is like a half assed swing for an artist like Kaminski, there's even plain mistakes in this one, something I haven't seen in ages in big Hollywood movies. For example the introductory shot of Thaddeus Stevens struck my eye as there were 2 quite bad mistakes in that one, first of all the eye light on Tommy Lee Jones shakes a bit during the dolly move and worse yet the camera shakes as the dolly move stops. I do understand why they used that take as Tommy Lee Jones gives out a stellar performance on that one, but still that's just amateurish, and Kaminski got an Oscar nomination for this movie. Give me a break. And speaking of the Oscars, this movie will most likely clear the table, the Academy is mostly American after all, some of the nominations are spot on. But in addition to best picture and cinematography, the music nomination is quite a miss. I mean John Williams is great, but really the guy has been basically making the same freaking song for years. All of his scores from the past couple of years sound the same, hence he should definitely not get an Oscar.

This movie was worth the watch mostly because of the cast, it's kind of like an acting lesson, too bad the story around it was rather dull and that makes this just an ok movie.

55%

I meet Abbott and Costello

I have a big gaping hole in my general knowledge as I haven't seen any of the Abbott and Costello movies, so it was time to patch that up. I started with the double feature of Abbott and Costello: MeetFrankenstein/Meet the Mummy as it had the Frankenstein which seemed to be recommended by most as one of their best and the Mummy from the next decade to give some diversity.

 

Abbott and Costello MeetFrankenstein (1948)

This movie should rather be called Abbott and Costello Meet the Universal Monsters as they don't actually meet Frankenstein, but they do meet his monster with Dracula, Wolf Man and a surprise guest at the end. Right from the start I must say I was amazed that Bela Lugosi was playing Dracula and Lon Chaney the Wolf Man, just like they did in the originals. Too bad Boris Karloff isn't playing the Frankenstein's monster, but still two out of three is quite impressive to be honest, though I guess it wasn't that big of a task to get them in the movie as all of the franchises were owned by Universal as was the Abbott and Costello movies. Anyway Chick (Abbott) and Wilbur (Costello) are working at a postal office and one day they get two crates for delivery to the Museum of Horror. Turns out those crates contain the not so dead bodies of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Dracula plans on resurrecting the monster and plant Wilbur's brain on it for more control. Lawrence Talbot, the Wolf Man, joins the party in hopes of stopping Dracula and his devious plan, but as it seems every night there's full moon things don't work out as planned. Abbott seems to be the brains of the duo while Costello is the goofier one always getting into trouble, but they both get their equal share of laughs. I really liked the chemistry between them at times it was like watching an old married couple going at each other. Another character that stood out was Dracula as Lugosi gives out quite a great performance in this one. What made this movie stand out from the other horror comedies of it's kind was that it didn't directly make fun of the monsters, they could have just as well been in a horror movie, it's the duo around them creating the comedy. That works surprisingly well. The comedy is a mix of crazy goofball action, slapstick and witty remarks. And especially those witty remarks really cracked me up. Even though time hasn't been kind to this one, I must say this was one of the better horror comedies out there and probably the best of it's time. I was truly entertained and got some very good laughs.

80%

Abbott and Costello Meetthe Mummy (1955)

Abbott and Costello are in Egypt and get mixed up with a murder of an archaeologist and a plot to raise the mummy of Klaris. Even though this movie had it's moments and actually couple of hilariously funny scenes, it's extremely repetitive from the Frankenstein one. The scene at the archaeologist's office was almost like an exact copy of the one at the Museum of Horror from the previous one with the same jokes just a different surrounding. Sure it still managed to squeeze a few laughs from me, but I started to worry that these characters don't have that many jokes in them as there were very familiar scenes later in the movie as well. However there were some quite original ones in there as well, so it's not a total miss. The start was not that easy as it seemed so similar to the previous one, but towards the end this movie kind of found its place. So in the end it was merely an ok comedy. Even though I didn't like this one that much I must say I'll definitely will be watching more of the Abbott and Costello movies in the future as they truly are a funny pair of characters.

50%

Cage fighting makes you feel good

Here Comes the Boom (2012)

Kevin James is an oddity. Most of his movies are crap and everything says that I should hate him as much as I hate Adam Sandler, but I don't. There's just that glimpse of a real human being behind his characters which makes it near impossible for me to hate him. On this one he plays Scott Voss a biology teacher who has lost all interest into teaching. One day the principal announces that the school's music program needs to be shut down as there's no money to run it. As Scott has become friends with Marty (Henry Winkler), the music teacher, he won't allow that to happen and while pondering on how to raise the needed money, he decides to become a mixed martial arts fighter. Of course there's a romance in there as well with the school nurse, played by Salma Hayek. The movie is so predictable that I was constantly wondering where have I seen this all before. But the predictability and the formulaic nature of the movie didn't bother that much as it has a nice warm hearted feel to it all. And the comedy wasn't just the usual cheap laughs, there were some genuinely funny moments in there as well. The cast was quite great, especially Henry Winkler was brilliant, but Bas Rutten as the Dutch immigrant ex-MMA fighter steals the show. Absolutely hilarious character and a great performance by him. This movie is predictable and blandly agreeable feel good entertainment, one of those movies that isn't worth seeking out, but it won't do you any harm if you happen to stumble across it.

59%

Frankenstein for the kids

Frankenweenie (2012)

I really liked the short Frankenweenie (1984) so I was kind of looking forward to this feature length version of it. It's a story about a boy who brings his dead dog back to life in a true Frankenstein fashion. Well unfortunately I must say I wasn't really impressed with this movie. Most of the best jokes were already in the short version and to be honest there really isn't enough story to go for a feature length movie. Sure there's tons of references to old horror classics that kept me somewhat entertained, but really most of the new stuff is rather dull. I did like the stop-motion animation, it's always a nice touch in middle of all these computer animated movies also a huge plus for the black and white. Style wise there's nothing wrong in this movie, it looks great. The 3D however seemed rather useless here, even as the stupid gimmick it is, that's really saying something. Also I didn't like the voice acting, not a single character sounded real, not that they looked real either, but some personality would have been nice there. All in all this ends in the average department, with the style just barely pushing it above.

57%

Spider-Man born yet again

The Amazing Spider-Man(2012)

My first reaction to hearing that they are making a reboot of the Spider-Man series was why? After seeing this movie I'm still wondering why? It's not a bad movie, that I can say right from the start. I just can't understand why would they make another origin story of it as it's already been made 10 years earlier in Spider-Man (2002), which was good enough already? The only reason I can think of is money. The sequels to the previous series didn't bring in as much money as the first one, so I guess they thought the origin story is where the money is and judging from the box-office scores they were right. Just out of principle I should bash this movie down to the ground as nothing more than a calculated money maker, but then again it's actually not a bad movie. Comparing to the previous origin story, this movie doesn't do many things better but it also doesn't do many things worse, so it's basically the same movie just different. Ye I know I'm starting to sound like a schizophrenic, it's good but it's not, it's the same but it's not. But really, if you take the previous origin story out of the history of the movies, this would be a very good movie. Didn't really like the new Peter Parker, Andrew Garfield, I mean he wasn't bad, but he surely wasn't great either. The lizard wasn't exactly great either as the main villain at least at the start, he does grow on you and I especially liked ending of it all which was a positive surprise. Also the part of Peter Parker growing with these powers, learning to use them and especially the dilemma of whether to become a villain or a hero was a bit rushed. Other than that I can't find anything to complain about this one. But as I just can't shake the feeling of dirty businessmen stealing my money, I can't rate it ignoring the previous one. Won't give it a zero even though something tells me I should, so it'll end up somewhere in the middle of the scale.

50%

The Hobbit, white beard and the 13 dwarfs

The Hobbit: An UnexpectedJourney (2012)

I loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy when they came out, but for some reason I was never really looking forward to seeing this one. Maybe it was the more children's book nature of the original novel and when I read that they are milking every last drop of it with 3 movies from one book which is shorter than any single one of the LOTR books. But I tried to put aside my prejudices as there was still many things I wanted to see in it.

First lets get the technical stuff out of the way. I saw the 48FPS 3D version of the movie and I must say the 3D was surprisingly good. I still think it's a useless gimmick, but this was one of the clearest 3D picture I've seen, so there's been some progress, unfortunately those damn glasses are still a nuisance. The 48FPS on the other hand I'm not exactly convinced on, it felt a bit TV-like, kind of lifting the veil from the movie magic a bit too much. I paid way too much attention to little details which was definitely not a good thing, makeup mistakes, set borders and bad paint jobs were a bit too visible. I kind of doubt that they would slack on those departments, I guess they aren't any different from the LOTR movies, but on those you don't pay any attention to them. So it comes down to the new technology, the old technology needs to evolve a bit more before it would be a viable option to use to capture a huge fantasy movie like this which relies so much on makeup and a mix of physical and virtual sets.

Enough of the tech talk and on with the movie itself. Unfortunately it's not great. It's way too uneven to be a solid entertaining experience following a formulaic nature of introduction-setup-action-introduction-setup-action, rinse and repeat. Way too often the characters get into trouble and just as things look grim out of nowhere comes the salvation, mostly by Gandalf. First time it was ok, but around the third time it became a total joke already. This in addition to the overly comical rollercoaster like action sequences then took out the element of danger from the movie. I know it's more of a children's movie than LOTR, but that's no excuse for doing it poorly. Another thing it was lacking was drama, whenever there's a chance for some deeper drama it seems to turn into almost camp-like nonsense. Why? Is it again because it's a children's movie? Yet there's quite a few heads chopped off on the action scenes, but can't go into dramatic character elements. I just don't understand the reasoning. But it wasn't a totally bad movie. I absolutely loved the Gollum scene, best part of the whole movie, though getting there was not easy. At times it did feel like the long lost brother of LOTR and it tried to take me on an adventure, but too often I just got slapped to the face. All in all I guess it was worth watching, even though it could have easily been an hour shorter. And even though there's quite a bit happening in this movie it still felt like an overly long prelude to something I'm not really sure I want to wait for anymore.

55%

Why don't we have sex before I kill you?

She Killed in Ecstasy (1971)

This is one of the better movies from the infamous exploitation guru Jess Franco, that however doesn't make this a great movie. Dr. Johnson's experiments with aborted fetuses is brought to a stop by a group of surprisingly jealous colleagues who deem it inhumane and revoke his license. Not only that but they decide to trash his laboratory as well for some weird reason. Unable to do what he loves the most makes dr. Johnson lose his mind and commit suicide. Dr. Johnson's wife swears revenge on the people who destroyed her husband, so she decides to seduce and kill all of them. Well needless to say the plot is quite crap and the acting is mostly weak, but that's not exactly the point of this movie. It's of course the sex and violence which both there are plenty enough, though getting there takes surprisingly long. The violence is quite mild compared to others of it's kind and the effects are rather bad. The sex on the other hand is well in hand, mostly thanks to Soledad Miranda who is always a pleasure for the eyes. She also is the one who puts the most effort into the acting and does a surprisingly good performance turning from an innocent wife into a crazed seductive killer. The cinematography and the set design are quite brilliant so the movie looks gorgeous. The music is also great, even though it does start to repeat itself a bit too much in the end. So in the end there's quite a bit I liked in this movie, but on the other hand there was an equal amount which I didn't.

50%