The longest training montage in the history of cinema?

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978)

First a bit of a disclaimer, I'm not a big fan of martial arts movies, I mean I surely don't hate them but the fighting is not enough for me to make a good movie. So when reviewing a genre defining classic like this I'm sure to anger some fans of the genre because of my ignorance. My expectations were of course high because I had read and been told this was one of the best in the genre, so the premise for the movie was maybe a bit unfair. Anyway, after seeing it I surely didn't hate it, but it didn't really blow my mind either. So this is a story of San Te (Chia Hui Liu) who gets mixed up in a fight between the patriots and the Manchu, two rivalring groups in the Canton area. His friends and family ends up dead so he swears revenge and seeks the help of a Shaolin temple and their knowledge of martial arts. He seems to be a natural talent and ends up going through the different chambers in a record time to become a master. Surprisingly I quite liked the story, it's very basic and simple, but what can you expect from a movie like this so it worked rather brilliantly. Also the movie looked great with some very nicely framed shots and the restored print on the DVD did it perfect justice. The music was not that great, but didn't bother me either, though the sound effects did get a bit annoying after a while, them being extremely repetitive. The acting was also surprisingly good and surely the cast were extremely good at what they did fight wise. Some of the stuff they do is just mezmerising. But the biggest flaw of this movie is funnily enough the training, it goes on way too long. Sure that's the part where all the skills come to show, but really it could have been cut in half with the same effect for me. I mean I'm not a fan of training montages for sure, but it just got a bit tedious with it's duration. Anyway, I wasn't bored and was quite happy to see this one as I had heard about it quite often. I guess for fans of martial arts this is pretty much a perfect movie, for me it was "just" a good movie.
72%

Purgatory of a hitman

Kill List (2011)

Had this one on my shelf for quite some time before I ended up watching it. Heard some good things about it when it was playing on the festivals so decided to buy it but never got around to watch it. Then a friend of mine said I should watch it and the director Ben Wheatley's latest movie Sightseers (2012), and so I did. I really hate trying to describe the story of a movie like this which evolves from one thing to another and yet another. But as it's told in the back cover and in the trailer as well I guess you can't really avoid it and luckily there's more to this movie than just an intriguing story. The movie reminded me of The Wicker Man (1973) in quite a few ways. Obviously the last 15 minutes or so, but also the weird feeling of the movie and the tension building from the start to finish. Not to forget the surprisingly good dark comedy. Of course comparing this to one of my all time favourite horror movies is not exactly fair, but it actually holds on quite nicely by itself. The acting is also great, so there's many things right in this movie. But there are some problems, can't go into too much details to avoid spoiling it, it's the ending mostly and some of the events leading to it. I liked the idea of it, but the actions leading to it didn't seem to make much sense and especially the outcome was weirdly predictable but still didn't really seem to make any sense. I mean the movie clearly wants to leave something for the viewer to think about, but the thing is that more you give it some thought the more ridiculous it seems. Maybe this movie needs a second viewing to get the whole point of it. But wether it's unintentionally confusing or intentionally complex didn't matter that much as this movie plays with tension quite masterfully. It's after all easier to forgive the flaws of the plot if the movie works on an emotional level and this one worked quite well.
72%

Documenting exploitation

In the past couple of years there's been quite a bit of these documentaries about old exploitation movies. As I watched some of them recently I decided to gather them up here in one big post.













Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! (2008)

Even though this one is almost 5 years old, I'll still include it here as it kind of started this new boom for documentaries about genre cinema. This one focuses on ozploitation, the Australian exploitation cinema. It starts from the goofy sex comedies, continuing through the bloody horror flicks and sleazy violence movies, ending to the high octane road rage movies. The genre in itself was quite unknown to me before I first saw this documentary. I mean sure I had seen the Mad Max movies and a few other, but most of them I didn't know even existed. It's a highly interesting look into the history of Australian cinema, or the lack of it in some cases, with plenty of weird, crazy and fascinating films you most likely have never heard of. But the great thing about this documentary is that it makes you want to see these movies, at least I searched through the DVD stores for ozploitation after I first saw this. There's a great selection of ozploitation film makers, actors, actresses, film critics, stuntmen, producers and fans voicing out their experiences and opinions. The talking heads are balanced with a plethora of scenes from these wicked and sometimes simply lunatic movies. Anyone who cares even a bit about movies should get something out of this documentary and exploitation film fans will just love it.
85%

Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010)

This one is from Mark Hartley as well, but instead of Australia this one focuses on those genre movies made in the Philippines. Just like the previous one this is highly entertaining look at these wild movies. It might not be the most in-depth look, but still there's some movies in it even I hadn't heard of before, so it's more than enough for a documentary like this. It covers the most notable and weird movies from the 60's to the early 80's. It goes from the early schlock horror flicks and the women-in-prison movies to the late 70's - early 80's kung-fu and war movies. Of course not forgetting Philippines biggest movie star, the tiny powerhouse Weng Weng. Again there's lots of talking heads, with a nice selection of actors, actresses, directors, producers, cinematographers and so on. For example Roger Corman, Sid Haig, Pam Grier, Eddie Romero and Cirio H. Santiago just to name a few. The talking heads are balanced with plenty of clips from various movies in question. This was a highly entertaining documentary about a weird time in the movie history, I warmly recommend it to all exploitation movie fans and even to people who know nothing about them just to see how crazy it was back then.
80%

American Grindhouse (2010)

This one is a general overview of the Grindhouse cinema and mostly the exploitation movies it involved. It starts all the way back in the invention of cinema and the silent exploitative films and ends up in the modern homages to the genre. Covering in between pretty much everything which was Grindhouse cinema, though quite notably it leaves out the European exploitation movies which were quite a big part of the genre. But it's called American Grindhouse after all, so that's where it focuses, the American exploitation cinema. Even though this one is missing some big American names as well like Roger Corman for example, it's still a great quick look on what the Grindhouse cinema was all about. As it tries to cover such a large variety of Grindhouse movies it of course left me wanting a bit more in-depth look at them, but I guess that would have made this documentary quite boring for everyone else except the Grindhouse fans. All in all quite an entertaining documentary.
75%

Screaming in High Heels: The Rise & Fall of the Scream Queen Era (2011)

This movie focuses on three of the most notable horror B-movie scream queens; Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer. They weren't the first ones and definitely not the last ones, but I would say they are the most famous, at least to 80's horror B-movie fans, so it's a perfect selection. First this documentary gives a small introduction to drive-in cinema and the video boom which killed the drive-in venues. Then it focuses on the trio going from the late 70's to the golden age of the 80's and from there to the 90's when the genre kind of started to die and even to the 2000's where the video camera had become the number one tool of the B-movie makers. The quality of this documentary can't stand comparison to the previous three as it's clearly a smaller scale work and very narrowly focused on the three scream queens and their work. But that's actually not a bad thing, for me as a horror fan growing up with some of these movies it was quite a fun nostalgic trip down memory lane. Though I kind of doubt anyone else but horror fans get anything out of this one.
70%

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011)

As the title says, this movie is all about Roger Corman, the "King of the B's". The film starts off with Roger Corman on the set of some of his recent horrible movies for the Syfy channel. Then it goes back in time right to the start of his career and works itself back up again. Out of all of these documentaries this must have the most "prestigious" group of people having their say on Corman's life. With people like Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and Peter Fonda you see that Corman's movies were the early playgrounds for some of the biggest stars. Funny thing I noticed is that Joe Dante seems to be the go-to guy when someone needs someone to talk about exploitation cinema as he's in three of these documentaries. Anyway when you are doing a quick documentary about a man who has produced almost 400 movies you are bound to leave some good ones out. Well saying good about a Roger Corman movie doesn't sound right, but you get the point, the ones which are so bad they are brilliant. But that didn't really matter, it still has most of the notable ones and plenty of the campy ones to keep you entertained. I actually learned quite a bit from this documentary, like that Corman almost produced Easy Rider (1969) and he wanted to make Mean Streets (1973) as blaxploitation, just to mention a few. Then again I have never really had the interest in digging into his movies that much, even though I do love some of the pre 80's ones. Lets face it, most of the movies in his filmography are crap and Jack Nicholson said it best; "By mistake he actually made a good picture every once and a while". In the end this was a very entertaining documentary which barely scratched the surface of the filmography of Roger Corman and might be a good watch for people who don't even know who Roger Corman is.
72%

A fashionable secret agent

Modesty Blaise (1966)

I know the comic but I have never really read it apart from a few strips long time ago, so can't judge how faithful this movie is to it. As a stand alone movie it's not bad at all. It has a fun, weird and light hearted mood to it and it looks great. So Modesty Blaise, played by Monica Vitti, is this ex cat burglar turned into a secret agent who gets hired by the British secret service to track down some diamonds and the villain Gabriel (Dirk Bogarde) who is trying to steal them. Modesty gets help from his agent buddy Willie Garvin (Terence Stamp) as she goes on this weird adventure. Can't really say much about the plot as I kind of lost interest in it as it didn't make much sense, so I just enjoyed the fun mood of the film. Can't judge whether Monica Vitti's character fit that of the comics or not, but I must say she didn't seem like much of an agent, unless you judge the skills of a secret agent by how fast she can get another dress on and switch her hair style. Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde kind of steal the show as their characters are so much wilder than the surprisingly one sided Modesty. There's plenty of comedy in this movie, intentional and unintentional, funnily enough the unintentional comedy turns out to be the better kind. Like those explaining dialogue scenes which probably were intended as those explanation texts of the comics. It's just hilarious how the government people seem to always know exactly what's happening, kind of defeats the purpose of hiring an agent in the first place. But anyway it's all fun and fits the weird mood of the film. And that mood is this movie's strongest point.
71%

An early slasher classic

A Bay of Blood (1971)

Even though the influences of the genre come from even older movies, this one is probably the first true slasher film which fits the genre completely. Sure this film by Mario Bava is missing the masked murderer but the similarities for example to Friday the 13th (1980) are quite clear. Last time I saw this about 15 years ago I couldn't really understand much from it, the VHS had a horrible audio track and no subtitles, so all I could understand was that some people were getting killed and that of course didn't impress me much back then. Now luckily the DVD by Future Film has nice audio with subtitles and the image quality is good as well. But I must say I still didn't really understand everything. Now sure I understood the motives and the plot, but at points I was quite lost with who's killing who. The movie jumps timelines and there are multiple killers (not a spoiler, so don't worry) so I got lost quite a many times. Anyway that didn't matter much as there's a nice giallo-like atmosphere and plenty of quite graphic kills which kept me entertained. At points the soundtrack by Stelvio Cipriani sounded great, but unfortunately most of the time it was rather dull. The ending is just something special, shocking and absolutely hilarious in a dark sense of humour and that alone is worth watching the whole movie. As a curiosity piece for seeing the baby steps of the slasher genre this is pure brilliance and as a fun late night shocker this works quite well even today, despite the few flaws.
73%

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%

The undead love

Dellamorte Dellamore - The Cemetery Man (1994)

I've never been a fan of Michele Soavi, but I think this one might be his best movie. It's a story about Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett), a caretaker of a cemetery somewhere in a small Italian town. Francesco has a problem, the dead buried on the cemetery seem to come back to life after a while and he needs to kill them again with the help of his mentally challenged helper Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro). But that's not all, one day he meets She (Anna Falchi) a griefing widow who he falls in love with. The problem is that Francesco doesn't go out that much or meet any people, the undead keep him too busy for that, so the love becomes quite complicated, especially when She ends up dead. The style of this movie is a surrealistic horror comedy love story or something like that. It has a bit of everything in it and that's a good thing as it surely doesn't get boring. Rupert Everett is good and his character resembled a lot like Clive Owen's Dwight in Sin City (2005), I bet Robert Rodriguez has based at least a bit of that character to this one here. Though who knows as the comic book came out the same year, maybe it was Michele Soavi who based it on the Frank Miller's character, but as it's so different I kind of doubt it. Who knows and to be honest it doesn't even matter. Can't say the same about the rest of the cast, though Anna Falchi was quite pleasing for the eyes. The style as in most Soavi's movies is again great, the cinematography by Mauro Marchetti was at times simply brilliant. There's plenty of comedy and enough twists to keep a constant "what the hell is happening?" expression on my face. So in the end this is a great little horror comedy, well worth watching.
78%

A giallo on the countryside

Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)

This is one of the most notorious giallos, right up there with Lucio Fulci's other sleazy “stab” at the giallo genre, The New York Ripper (1982). Though this time it's not the brutal and graphical murder scenes, but the targets of the murders which makes this one infamous. In a rural town somewhere in Italy someone is killing the children of the village. There are plenty of suspects, a weird mentally disabled man, a woman who's believed to practice black magic and an ex-drug addict woman who has just moved there from a big city. Maybe the murderer is none of the above, but the villagers want justice to be served so they take the law in their own hands as the police are too slow at solving the case. I must say this movie has one of the most memorable murder scenes I've ever seen, it was actually the only scene I remembered since the last time I saw it over 10 years ago. It involves chains and most memorable music switch I can think of and it will imprint itself into your mind forever. Speaking of the music, apart from that one absolutely brilliant scene the music didn't really impress me that much, it's not bad but nothing to rave about either. The cinematography wasn't bad either, but nowhere near the better ones of the genre. The ending was just hilariously over the top which kind of turned the otherwise quite intriguing thriller into a comedy, but other than that it keeps it's form nicely. So all in all this is a good giallo with some memorable moments.

73%

Sometimes even the villain deserves to be a hero

Wreck-It Ralph (2012)

Ralph (John C. Reilly) is a video game character in a game called Fix-It Felix. He is bored of his every day life of wrecking things and being the villain to everyone in town. One day he decides that he wants to be the hero for a change so he leaves his game to seek out new adventures on other games. That of course creates a chaos in the game universe and he ends up in all kinds of trouble. First of all I have never been a hard core gamer, I mean sure I've played my fair share of them, but as this movie references to so many other games I didn't recognize half of them. So gamers will most likely get more out of this than I did. Anyway this wasn't a bad movie, actually it was quite a good one. The voice acting was brilliant and the animation looked great. So the movie looked and sounded very good, and all in all I can't find a thing to complain on the technical side. But it's the story which got me a bit bored at times. It's just so predictable. I mean sure there were nice surprises and funny jokes I didn't see coming and a few twists at the end, but really the paths that it follows are very familiar. So even though I was thoroughly entertained it left me with absolutely nothing to go with. Anyway, it was well worth the watch.

73%

An executioner without judge and jury

Watch Me When I Kill(1977)

Antonio Bido is a lesser known name amongst the giallo directors, mostly because did this movie, his first feature film, in the late 70's when the whole genre was starting to fade after it's glory days. That doesn't make him a bad director, on the contrary, for a first film this is absolutely brilliant. He has the giallo style well in hand and the music choices to boost it, hell even Dario Argento would be proud of some of the scenes in this movie. The plot goes something like this, Lukas (Corrado Pani) gets mixed up in a murder mystery when his girlfriend (Paola Tedesco) sees a murderer leave a crime scene. Someone seems to be after his neighbor as well and it looks like these two cases might be connected as someone seems to be after the jury members of a certain court trial. The story isn't half bad, sure there are some idiotic parts in it as usual, but it manages to stay quite interesting all the way to the end. I really loved the music in this one, especially how it's used, the operatic twist in the bathtub scene was pure brilliance. The cinematography is quite nice as well, not the most stylistic from the genre, but still some shots looked great. The biggest problem in this movie is the pacing, even though the first murder happens before the titles, it takes it's time to get started. But luckily towards the end it picked up quite nicely. Even though this movie had most of the things right for a giallo, I was still left hoping for more, apart from a few scenes it looked a bit too familiar. But it's still a good movie and well worth watching.

78%

Unconditional love

Amour (2012)

I guess I wasn't in the right mood for this one as I found it utterly boring and thought the otherwise good story could have been told in 30 minutes instead of the two hours. As the movie starts with a scene from the end you basically wait 2 hours for these old people to die, that in it self isn't really exciting and as the pace is very slow in true Haneke style it does get tedious. Now I'm being too harsh as it's not a bad movie, the story is actually one of the better love stories I've seen and even though I didn't like the slow pace I can see it fitting the story very well. It's a movie about two elderly people offering each other total commitment, there's no candle lit dinners, no fun trips abroad, no sex or any of the cliches you'd expect from a romantic movie. It's just unconditional love. I don't know why Emmanuelle Riva got the Oscar nomination and not Jean-Louis Trintignant as even though Riva is great, it's Trintignant who really carries this movie, kind of literally and figuratively. Would have gladly given him the nomination as well as he's quite brilliant. This movie reminded me of Haneke's first film The Seventh Continent (1989), following the seemingly boring every day life of a family while waiting for something to happen. That something in The Seventh Continent was absolutely devastating, but in this one the shock moment is actually not a shock at all and it's even somewhat of a beautiful moment in it's weird way. With a different mood this movie would have most likely been absolutely brilliant, but now it just dragged on way too long to make a point.

70%

Those grumpy old men

Grumpy Old Men (1993)

This is one of my all time favorite comedies and I find myself revisiting it from time to time as I did again today. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau appeared in 10 movies together and I think this is the best of that lot. These two grumpy old men have had a grudge for over 50 years with each other and one day when a woman called Ariel (Ann-Margret) moves next door things escalate to an all out war between them. Sure this movie follows quite common paths and is even predictable, but it doesn't matter at all as it's pure magic. I can't think of a better comedy duo than Lemmon and Matthau and seeing them going at each other like this is something absolutely hilarious. Now I know this movie might not be for everyone, but for me these grumpy old men arguing are simply brilliant. Time hasn't been kind to the movie, but still I found myself laughing like the first time I saw it. The predictable plot and some of the nowadays cliched jokes don't matter much as this is pure warm hearted entertainment.

92%

Grumpier Old Men (1995)

Of course there had to be a sequel for the brilliant first part, but luckily this time it's not bad at all. Despite the story taking a few unneeded turns which kind of drag the movie along, this comes close to the original. This time Sophia Loren plays the woman who starts a chain of events which lead to the peace between the grumpy old men being broken and it's all out war again. Again the predictable plot troubled a bit, but then again I guess I could watch Lemmon and Matthau going at each other without any plot at all, they are just so hilarious. This is a great sequel especially if you like the first part as it's basically more of the same.

79%

Criminal activities through assisted living

Robot & Frank (2012)

Frank (Frank Langella) is an ex-catburglar who is starting to become old and senile. One day his son (James Marsden) brings him a robot caretaker to help out with every day living. Things don't start off too well between them but soon Frank finds out he can use the robot as his accomplice performing the tasks of a burglary he's too old for. The story of this movie is one of it's strong points, it's highly intriguing while covering some rather relevant questions about aging and the treatment of elderly people. The style is a drama comedy and I found myself laughing quite often even though the jokes weren't exactly fresh, but they fit the story very well. The drama was very light hearted even though the story covers subjects that are quite thought provoking and even touching for everyone who has elderly people in their family. I wouldn't have minded a bit deeper look into the problems, but as this is a comedy after all I understand why some of the subjects are kind of passed through briefly. Frank Langella does a great job in carrying the story which is extremely important as he's pretty much in every scene of the movie. The supporting cast were also very strong, even though they don't have that many moments to shine through. This was clearly a small budget movie, so there weren't any extravagant futuristic visions in it despite it being set in the near future, but that didn't matter at all. Actually it made it more realistic. The direction was quite solid, though nothing to rave about. All in all this was a nice little movie well worth the watch even though it didn't leave me much to go with.

76%

The filmography of Quentin Tarantino

As these were not here yet and since I just watched most of them once again, I'll write my thoughts about them here briefly. Sorry about the short reviews on some of them, but really if a movie is perfect there's not much else to add to it. I'll only include the movies directed by Tarantino, even though many of his scripts directed by others are considered as his movies. Maybe one day I'll revisit those as well. You can find my review of Django Unchained here.













Reservoir Dogs (1992)

This wasn't the first Tarantino movie I ever saw, actually I didn't even know about it's existence before I saw the one below. But after that I stormed every video rental shop in the city until I found this. I remember once I finally saw it I was actually disappointed, I mean I still thought it was a good movie, but as I was expecting another Pulp Fiction, I was let down a bit. That of course has changed since then and nowadays I think this is a brilliant masterpiece. Not only is this the best "heist" movie ever made but it's also one of the best crime movies ever made. Can't really say anything about it that hasn't been said a million times, so I'll just say it's a brilliant movie and I'd rank it as Tarantino's third best film.
98%













Pulp Fiction (1994)

I still remember when I first saw this at the theaters, something I guess I'll remember for the rest of my life. I saw it at this crappy small basement theater because I was 17 at the time and the movie had an age limit of 18, but they were cool enough in that theater to not care so much. So me and my date who was a year younger got in without any problems, even though they generally were quite strict about those age limits even back then. Now that I think of it and starting to feel all nostalgic I shouldn't call the theater crappy, I actually wish there still was theaters like that today. They had character and their own feel to them, unlike these multiplexes today. Anyway the reason why I remember it so clearly is because I was totally blown away by the movie. It was something I had never seen before and didn't even think that there could be movies like this. This was one of those movies that changed me in a way. For better or worse that I don't know, but ever since I saw it I've sought out more of these 70's exploitation movies. Seeing this movie today I found some scenes not working as well as back then, like that foot massage discussion seemed to be surprisingly dragging and uninteresting. Then again I still think the second half of this movie is probably the best comedy ever made, so it balances it out more than well. Pretty much a perfect movie, Tarantino's best and one of my all time favourites.
100%













Four Rooms (1995)

For this one I'll give a proper review as this seems to be the one most people haven't seen from Tarantino's filmography. Then again this is only one fourth of a Tarantino movie, but still I think it belongs to this list as there's a clear segment and story of the movie which he wrote and directed. The problem with these kinds of movies is the difference between the makers, which usually makes the movie rather uneven. And that certainly was the problem with this one as well. There was an attempt to glue the stories together with Ted the Bellhop (Tim Roth), but unfortunately that was one of the weakest parts of this movie. Tim Roth has never done a worse performance, so much over acting and his character is all over the place all the time. Might be partly the fault of the four different directors, but still it's a weak effort. Anyway this movie has a very bad start as the first story by Allison Anders is just plain crap and even though it's only 15 minutes or so it's still way too long to give any hope for the rest of the movie. The second story by Alexandre Rockwell worked a bit better, though as the bar was set so low by the first one it wasn't much of an effort. Again bad acting and a useless story, though not as painful to watch as the first one. The third story by Robert Rodriguez is where the movie finally gets going and there's some actually funny moments. Antonio Banderas was also very strong, pulling out the best performance of the whole movie. This third story was the strongest one in the movie, apart from the ending of the fourth. Then the fourth story by Quentin Tarantino, it's actually quite a weak story as the basic idea of it is copied from Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode. Then again that's not the real problem as the idea is what sets up the absolutely drop dead hilarious ending of the movie, it's just the 20 or so minutes leading to it. The dialogue, even though it's nicely flowing as you'd expect from Tarantino, is just plain boring most of the time. Luckily the ending saves a lot, but still it felt like Tarantino didn't really put that much of an effort for this. All in all the movie is not good, with one great episode, one good episode, one bad episode and one just shit, it's way too uneven and mostly badly acted. It's actually a shame as replacing the first two episodes with better stories and better storytellers and someone focusing on directing Tim Roth this would have been a great movie.
45%













Jackie Brown (1997)

Before this movie came out I had become a fan of the 70's exploitation flicks and Pam Grier was one of my favourite actresses, with Coffy (1973) as one of my all-time favourite movies. So expectations were high as always and this one surely delivered. This movie is a bit of an oddity in Tarantino's filmography as it's his only adapted screenplay and it's told in quite a linear format. But that actually only adds to the beauty of this movie. I haven't read the book by Elmore Leonard so can't say for sure how good the adaptation is, but as a stand alone movie this is absolutely perfect. This one probably has the best mood of all of his movies and the best soundtrack to boost it. Tarantino's second best movie.
99%













Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)












Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)

I'll put these two together as that's the way they were meant to be, one four hour action extravaganza. I was really blown away by these when I first saw them, but I must say these are the ones I have most seldom revisited out of Tarantino's works. That doesn't mean they wouldn't be amazing, it's just that four hours is a long running time for a movie no matter how great it is. So my only gripe with these is the length, even though watching them again I really can't think of a single scene worth leaving out. It's very hard to place brilliant movies in any order but I'd say this is Tarantino's fifth best film.
95%













Death Proof (2007)

Tarantino's take on a slasher, though this time the usual knife is replaced with a car. The cast is great as always, even though it's a Kurt Russell show. The biggest problem of this movie is that Tarantino kind of forgets that slashers need to have people dying on them, not just chatting along. Sure when the killing starts it's brilliant, but really there's too much talking and not enough action for a grindhouse movie. Tarantino's worst, but still a good movie none the less.
75%













Inglourious Basterds (2009)

The absolutely brilliant cast carries this hilarious movie with maybe Brad Pitt's best performance ever to boost it. The thing that troubles me with this one is the continuity errors, there's way too many of them and even multiple times in one scene. I don't usually complain about things like that and I've seen plenty in Tarantino's other movies as well, but for some reason I keep spotting way too many of them in this one. But that's small details as this is Tarantino's fourth best movie.
97%

Sorry about the short reviews, but really long praising posts are rather boring to read and well I kind of expect most people have already seen these movies.

Crime novel characters come to life

Hammett (1982)

Hammett (Frederic Forrest) is a writer who just finishes his latest crime story and is ready to cash in a few bucks for taking it to his publisher. But a visit from an old friend Jimmy (Peter Boyle) from his times at the law enforcement gets Hammett himself mixed up in a real life crime story just like his characters in his stories. Set in the 1920's San Francisco and boosted with a bluesy jazz soundtrack there's that breeze of film noir running through this movie. Though I would have hoped that the photography would have had a bit more film noir feel to it, now it's just a bit too straight forward and apart from a very few scenes doesn't play with the shadows at all. It's a shame as the story and the settings otherwise had film noir written all over it. Speaking of the settings, they were created very nicely and the movie looked quite great. And as the soundtrack was very good as well, I really loved the mood of this movie. Frederic Forrest carries the movie with his great performance but the rest of the cast isn't bad at all either. Peter Boyle, Lydia Lei and Marilu Henner just to mention a few were great as well. The biggest problem of this movie, in addition to the fact that the photography kind of misses the film noir aspect of it all, was the story. It's unnecessarily complex so it takes a long time before the viewer can even understand what's going on. That makes the first half of the movie seem quite dull, luckily in the end the story comes together nicely. But it surely could have been a bit simplified as after all this is a movie that relies on the feeling more than the story so a less complicated story would have worked just as well or in this case even better. Despite it's flaws I was thoroughly entertained and even though it's not a brilliant movie it's still well worth watching.

78%

Can't find a trailer for this movie anywhere online.

Fighting for The Cause

The Master (2012)

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best directors at the moment, so I was of course looking forward to this one. And as he doesn't rush with the productions of his movies it took almost 6 years to finally get a new movie from him. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is an alcoholic World War II veteran who has some serious anger issues. He meets a cult religiously believing in The Cause and befriends the leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Even though Freddie's anger seems to cause more trouble than anything good they still become depended on each other and together spread the word of The Cause. The story is quite interesting and even though this is not about scientology the similarities are quite obvious at times. The cast is superb, Joaquin Phoenix portrays probably the best performance of his career, Philip Seymour Hoffman is great as always and Amy Adams was surprisingly good as well. The movie looks larger than it actually is, mostly thanks to the beautiful 65 mm photography. Direction focuses on closeups and the sets are usually quite small so the photography gives it the larger scale. Even though I understand why it was used, to bring more scale for the emotions, I still think it could have been utilized a bit better. Especially since the biggest problem this movie had was the feeling it left me with. Even though I was entertained and even amazed at times, still I was thinking “was that it?” when the end credits rolled. And to be honest that's a bit unforgivable. I mean I like open endings, it's good to leave something for the viewer to ponder on, but as this movie does it most of the time right from the start and the characters are quite grand, I was constantly waiting for some kind of closure of epic proportions. The kind which would tie up the movie and leave me thinking how it actually got there, kind of like in There Will BeBlood (2007), but there is none. And that's a huge disappointment in an otherwise brilliant movie.

71%

The latest fashion in murder

Dressed to Kill (1980)

I'm not going to go into the plot of this movie that much as there are so many twists that the less you know the better. I'll just say that there is someone murdering some people. It doesn't sound like much, but there's a psychiatrist, a prostitute, a young nerd and a detective all mixed up in this murder mystery. To be honest the story is rather simple, even though the mystery in it is quite nice. But the style makes up for that very well. It's very giallo-like with it's use of colors and set decoration, not to forget the stylistic murder sequences. This movie is like Brian De Palma's homage to Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho (1960). The similarities actually go even further than the obvious story structure, shower scenes and motives of the killer, some of the scenes are are framed alike and there are little nods towards it everywhere. Some people criticize this movie for ripping off Psycho, but I don't see it that way, it's an homage not a rip off as this movie still has a voice of it's own. Kind of like any Tarantino movie, you don't blame them for borrowing material from other movies, it's the same thing with this one. The acting is quite good throughout, even though I still don't consider Nancy Allen a great actress, but she's ok in this one. Angie Dickinson does the best performance and Michael Caine was strong as well. All in all this was a good giallo like thriller where the lack of story was balanced nicely with style and mood.
77%

The unknown superstar

Searching for Sugar Man(2012)

Sixto Rodriguez is a music superstar, bigger than Elvis or The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, but the weird thing is that he's only that big in South Africa. Rest of the world has no idea who he is as he made only two albums in Detroit at the beginning of the 70's which didn't sell at all and he was soon forgotten. That is except in South Africa where he became a legend and as no one there knew anything about him except for his music rumors started to spread and soon became “known” facts. One of those being that the man is dead. Two South African fans decide to find out who he was and what happened to him. The story in this one is actually quite brilliant, words like amazing and incredible would seem like an understatement. However this is not a brilliant documentary. The problem is how it's constructed. The biggest twist to the story comes around the half way of the film and after that it actually sets more questions than answers them. I kind of understood that they wanted to leave a bit of mystery around the character, but still there were so many juicy topics they could have covered more deeply. So in the end I was at the same time amazed but yet disappointed. Amazed about the story but still disappointed about the structure and focus of the documentary. Technically I didn't find anything wrong with it, it looked good even though there were quite a bit of old amateur video material in there as well, but it fit in there very well. Also it was very “approachable” as in easy viewing even if you're not a huge music fan and if you are then you will get even more out of it. I have to rate this as a good documentary even though it was somewhat poorly made direction wise.

75%

The quest for Osama Bin Laden

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

When doing a fictional movie based on true events about the 9/11-aftermath you usually have to take sides. This movie tries to avoid it, but as it focuses on an American CIA agent it's kind of forced to take a side on the matter. However it's not a bad thing at all, covering all the sides to a complicated matter like this would make quite a dull movie to be honest. But enough of politics and on with the movie. It starts about 2 years after the 9/11, though the events of 9/11 are reminded at the beginning in a simple but surprisingly effective manner. The movie follows a CIA agent called Maya, played brilliantly by Jessica Chastain, on her seemingly impossible efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden. The movie picks out notable moments during the years most of you have probably read about in the newspapers and provides a sort of inside look on how things supposedly looked from the CIA's perspective. Not really any need to go into the plot any more than that as it's kind of self-explanatory what's going to happen, unless you spent 2011 in a closet without any form of communications. The style of the movie is a bit documentary like, sometimes combining news footage and surveillance tapes into the film. This does increase the feel of realism nicely and especially at the end when they go and get the guy those night vision shots almost puts you in there with the soldiers. This movie will surely divide opinions, mostly because of political viewpoints, so it's definitely kind of a provocation. But I'll look past that and I rate it as a quite a strong drama which it is with great performances from nearly all of the cast. There are some problems with it though, pretty much the whole first half of the movie is a bit dragging and kind of seeking a tone for the rest of the movie. Sure the first half also brings out some of the big questions in the movie, like where to draw the line in interrogations and what are people prepared to do when they believe in something strongly enough. But all of those we could have gotten in a lot shorter time as well, though once the movie finally gets going and the second half kicks in, it's quite brilliant. And just to point the obvious out, no it doesn't matter that you already know what's going to happen, so it's well worth watching.

77%