Change Your Image
christopher-underwood
Reviews
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
every shot looks great
The first burial is only a shallow one in the desert and the second in a pauper's grave. Pete Perkins (Tommy Lee Jones), his friend and illegal immigrant, Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cesar Cedillo) had been killed, rather possibly by accident by this border patrol officer, Barry Pepper (Mike Norton). Although it is a little complicated at the start with some flashbacks but it always looked good and soon we are on our way with these three characters heading towards that third burial in his homeland. It is a western although it was produced by Luc Besson and written by Guillermo Arriage (Amores Perros (2000) much of the film shot in Mexico and along the border in the southwestern of US. Chris Menges was the cinematographer and so brilliant that every shot looks great, especially with the mountain edges, the river and desert and that difficult journey along the way with a blind man, a cave and a snake bite. And of course with that dead man as well and the other in handcuffs. Tommy Lee Jones, one of his very best roles and doesn't put a foot wrong in the directing. What a delightful film.
Un beau matin (2022)
dull and monotonous
I rather liked, Things to Come (2016) and just about, Bergman Island (2021) but with this one, even though Lea Seydoux is splendid, it is rather dull and monotonous. I'm sure that Hansen-Love intended this to be a bit colourless about their poor father suffering from a neurodegenerative disease although is interesting and him having to going round about with the hospital and various homes, but surely there should be something else not just like a soap opera. I didn't like the Christmas reindeers and the children and I was not at all interested in Lea's affair on and off and on. I thought that the father's friend who was really happy about him this might have been more thought-provoking, but no. At the beginning with Lea walking down the road we understand it was a 'fine morning' but at the end a rather poor shot from the Sacre-Coeur and the affair is back on, so I suppose it will maybe another, One Fine Morning.
It Happened Here (1964)
rather chilling
Clearly not a documentary but this is so well done as if it might have been. Some of the first shots were made as they were teenagers still at school and it took eight years to finally complete it. The actors were not paid or many people at all, as there really wasn't any money but just for the 16mm film stock. They were astute and talented to make this look real. The bombed scenes were clearly shot early on and the later on ones with the Germans in London are very well done. Although, of course, it is really rather chilling, I didn't think there would be shots of people being killed and I thought the cinema newsreels very clever and the posters rather good. At the very end, even if we realised what was coming, it is still rather unnerving.
Anora (2024)
it becomes hilarious
We can see, even during the credits, that we are at an expensive strip club. At first we see sex all the time and the music, it all looks fine and even the girls we hear what is going on. When we see Mikey Madison (Ani) meet Markey Eydelishteyn (Ivan) and in a line of with other girls giving lap dances and some of his Russian friends. Later on we are at his flat and there is more sex and some of it is rather amusing, she finds out that he is a son of a Russian oligarch. There is even some romance but then everything changes and there is violence but it makes us laugh as well but during the last 40 minutes with the various Russian helpers are all looking for Ivan, it becomes hilarious. The director, Sean Baker, does this amazingly with the dialogue and especially with the editing such as at the strip club and with all the guys moving around, with and without their car, looking for the lost boy as it all moves so very quickly. Bright and talented.
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)
There are no bad mothers
At the very beginning I thought that surely this was a mock documentary as it seemed that everyone is just too wonderful about Andrew Bagby but then it dawns on me that not only is this true but it is really terrible and so amazingly sad. A splendid film made by his friend Kurt Kuenne, his very best friend indeed and with this he was the director, written the script and filmed it, but also, probably the most difficult part of this, surely, was the editing most impressive and very clever. Really this begins when we hear about his friend's murder by his ex-girlfriend, Shirley Turner. Sometimes the courts can be really foolish and this is one of those cases. When after Andrew died his parents realised that, that woman, was pregnant and they decided to help their son's child but it was not to become easy at all. Once upon a time, there were some difficult moments within my family and especially with the courts and one time I got so annoyed, and much like the grandparents David and Kathleen Bagby, the child welfare woman in the court, turned to me and said: 'There are no bad mothers'. Oh that's alright then, I thought.
Crawlspace (1986)
spectacular ending
It's not great but it is rather unusual and, Klaus Kinski has a ferocious talent and a ferocious temper, here he was 60 and turned in an amazingly good role and one of his last. Some of the other actors are rather poor but Talia Balsam is fine and Sally Brown rather good but sad non talking part, most all of the time in a small cage, as him having taken out her tongue. There was far too much time people going up and down the stairs and knocking on his door, but the crawlspace is good and especially Karl Gunther (Kinski) behind that door in his 'laboratory'. Throughout he is brilliant and really it is just about him and towards the end it is wonderful and there really is some terrible action when he puts on his lipstick with that amazing face and we are set for a spectacular ending.
Un tranquillo posto di campagna (1968)
wild heady mix of art and sex
Elio Petri a writer and director mainly known as being a communist and maker of great films and only the other day I had watched this crime drama set in rural Sicily, We Still Kill the Old Way (1967). The funny thing is that we knew of his interest in the mafia, church and politics but made two films just before and after this one. These were amazing and very different, The 10th Victim (1965) and then in 1968 was the film I watched last night, this wild heady mix of art and sex and maybe a little 'acid', certainly some unusual music of Morricone. I understand that the film won an award at the 19th Berlin International Film Festival, although some critics considered it 'kitsch' and 'nonsense' which I suppose may not be unreasonable. But I love it and even though I don't usually like Vanessa Redgrave, she is pretty good in this although Franco Nero is usually great and here he really has a lot of running around and as some different moods or dreams. We started off at their home and he is bored with her getting him some many odd gadgets and then he is off, straightaway, or maybe not, to this strange and wonderful building. Inside we are not sure he is going mad or maybe it is the ghost of a sexy young girl or both. Later on it gets a little silly with a seance but it is all so wonderful and I think half the time I was watching this with my mouth open.
Shi no toge (1990)
terribly unpleasant
This was selected as the Japanese entry for the, Best Foreign Language Film, at the 63rd Academy Award, but was not accepted as a nominee. I'm not surprised. This looked rather good and the children are splendid but throughout, even from the start, this is terribly unpleasant. Both the couple are rather sad and maybe going mad and there are other things that are difficult to understand. The film is set just after the 2nd World War and I imagine that the Japanese took this rather badly and it was also problematic to get a divorce. There weren't any funny moments although it is a bit odd when the husband suddenly decides to hang himself, the wife tries to stop him and then they both try at the same time and fail. I thought it might be some slapstick but early on he had said he had been a kamikaze pilot so it must have just been more of those terrible moments. It's maybe too subtle for us to comprehend.
Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964)
a bit slow
Glauber Rocha just 25 when he made this and I was only seven year younger although I had never watched this before but maybe then I might have loved it more but now I find it rather difficult. Clearly I can see that it is an amazing idea but punishing to have done this in Monte Santo, Bahia this drought-ridden hinterland of the North-East of Brazil. Manoel has killed his cheating ranch owner and then his mother dies and he and his wife go off to follow a self proclaimed saint. It is slow, and Christ like but also much violence. Although there is even more to come. It is difficult watching Manoel climb up the mountain on his knees and with a 20 kilo stone on his head and apparently the actor decided he should really do it. I found that during this part I thought of Bunuel with Simon of the Desert (1965) and his man on a column. Towards the end with the last few people moving between each other and I thought of Michelangelo Antonioni. Now and again I wondered about Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970), however this film is on its own and even if it is a bit slow it is surely worth a look.
The Landlord (1970)
heartfelt narrative
When I noted that Radiance were to bring out this Blu-ray I wasn't sure I would like it. I understood that it was an Hal Ashby film but this one I had never heard of. It was starring Beau Bridges and I wasn't sure about him either. He was from a rich white family and decided to buy a building in a Brooklyn ghetto, get rid of the black tenants and turn it into a fancy house for himself and find some friends. From the very beginning we realise that the cinematography is brilliant and it is not filmed in a studio, thanks to Gordon Willis and the solid screenplay by Bill Gunn. Although Hal Ashby had edited many films this was his very first as a director. There are a few moments not brilliant and I thought that some of the scenes a little uneven but overall it is an amusing and sincere, heartfelt narrative. Oh and Lee Grant is funny and Pearl Bailey is amazing. Definitely worth watching.
Mon crime (2023)
becomes like a farce
I have to say that this is really fast and funny, right from the very beginning. The pretty and splendid girls, Nadia Tereskiewicz and Rebecca Marder are wonderful and his judge Fabrice Luchini just as funny. We know there is a killing but we are not absolutely sure what is going on, but it is amusing and very fast, back and forward all the time. We have the court, just as much fun as that and then we have a breather and we realise that it is half way through. Then it starts again probably even more fast but for me it becomes like a farce and a bit silly BUT at this point we get Isabelle Huppert. She is always excellent and with this one she plays it farcically and she is really good. For me the second half is not really so amazing as the first but certainly just as fast and Huppert is remarkable even awe-inspiring.
Suzhou he (2000)
modern day fable
It begins as if it will be a documentary but then turns into a modern day fable set by the river. At first the hand camera can be difficult and then it becomes rather splendid, with the bridges and ships along the Suzhou River the tributary of the infamous, Yangtze. An unusual love story with a motorbike, and noirish with the dark, the rain and the neon. With some help from the Germans editing, after the Chinese banned the film for two years. This became a winner for Lou Ye and he goes on to make several others especially, Blind Massage (2014), made with the employees of a Nanjing massage parlour and were all blind. But with this his first success and the lovely and wonderful girl, Zhou Xun, this Chinese actress and singer went on for International acclaim and many more films and TV within China. What a great and surprisingly little story this is and just how amazing must be this city of Shanghai.
The Outcasts (1982)
mystical and alluring
The corn dollies have an old pagan traditional culture for harvest time all across Europe. The larger ones are used as scarecrows or sometimes known as straw men or straw dogs and sometimes they move about. Robert Wynne-Simmons earlier wrote for The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) and rather sexy for this one but in 1982 he made it much more serious and not really folk horror, based on Irish mythology and set during the Great Famine of the middle 19th century. Oddly enough Peckinpah's, Straw Dogs was made the same year as The Blood on Satan's Claw and they both had mention of those corn dollies. The Outcasts has an eerie, magical, atmosphere and the photography in the woods and those muddy or snow paths and the winter trees are made rather scary. The music of the fiddlers also makes of it something of the eerie too but there was also dancing and the thin story had influences of The Book of Thel by William Blake and poetry with W B Yeats. Beautiful, worrying, but with much charm and even if there was some struggle with the otherworldly although there was always that mystical and alluring something that was buzzing around my head.
Die Geschichte vom weinenden Kamel (2003)
'horse fiddle'
Rather lovely this is splendid and although it looks as if it will be a documentary but there is only the people themselves telling their story and considered as a 'docudrama'. These are a family of nomadic shepherds in the Gobi Desert in South Mongolia who keep sheep and camels. These camels have two humps and apparently have tolerance for the cold, drought and high altitudes which is just as well. It looks wonderful much of the time and the cinematography is amazing but sometimes it can be difficult for them to tie up their tent and their animals when it can be really rough. In this there is a problem with this Bactrian or Mongolian Camel gives birth with a rare white one and the mother rejects the newborn. They contact a musician to help and he has one of these two string violin known as a 'horse fiddle' a rather ritual or folk music and chanting. They manage to eventually establish a sympathetic magical link between the mother and her calf. At that moment and she finally takes its milk, the shepherds are happy and the adult camel as well and we see her to weep real tears.
Young Adam (2003)
uncomfortable and awkward
This is based on the book of the same name that was published in 1953 of the Olympia Press in Paris although the copy I read, in the sixties and seventies, were the infamous green covered paperback in the Traveller's Company Series. It seemed very sordid, both of the work on the canals and the sex. The life could be rough and the sex as well. Looking at it now it doesn't seem so terrible but although looking at the barges through the Scottish canals it can look wonderful but it is often murky in the water and the fog can be difficult and also going into those tunnels so narrow and dark. They can just about have sex in those small barges down under and Adam finds it possible in others ways and when he used to live with his some time girlfriend. Much of the time everything is rather uncomfortable and awkward as nothing really looks so marvellous. With the book and film the sex with her girl he gave her a beating but she was laughing, and with the custard and her nudity, she almost killed herself laughing but he's not happy and leaves. It opens with a death and it ends for of another but there is also some sex in between.
Kashikoi inu wa hoezuni warau (2012)
rather wonderful at first
In the States there are many films set in their schools or colleges and in Japan it is just the same but, of course, they are both very different. Here we have a girl called Misa and nobody likes her because she is rather stocky and looks a bit different so she gets bullied. The other girl, Izumi is cute, smiles all the time and giggles, she says that the other girls don't like her because she is too pretty. When they get together it is rather wonderful at first and they go out in the rain with a busted umbrella and seem happy, especially on the see-saw in torrential downpour and it looks splendid. Later on their friendship looks a little 'shady', Izumi seems to giggle too much and Misa still loves her animals but the smiling one seems that maybe she only likes to kill.
42nd Street (1933)
breathtaking
Of course it's wonderful and as I haven't watch it for some time and it was the first I'd seen of the Warner Bros, Archive Collection Blu-ray, so I sat back and really enjoyed it. I always think that they rather over do it that the show is not too stunning and the dancers are not too fast and the singers not too good, and they hope that end it would be brilliant. Its good all the time, maybe we would liked to have seen more of Ginger Rogers but Ruby Keeler is fine. Obviously the amazingly Busby Berkeley's choreographed routines are great early on and some short bits of his kaleidoscopic moments but at the end it is so clever and sexy that it is breathtaking and unreal and almost surrealist.
You and Me (1938)
more funny than violent
It's a very odd film but certainly interesting and a couple of good Kurt Weill songs. As this is not really about gangsters although I suppose they are out of jail and working in a store. George Raft is fine but seems to be a bit uneasy with this not very funny comedy, gangsters more funny than violent and this is also about romance. Sylvia Sidney is always lovely and splendid in this and looks much happier than Raft. This is only Fritz Lang's third film having been in the States, Fury (1936) and You Only Live Once (1937) both of these with Sidney and of course Lang would go on to have great things with noir's through the 40s and 50s.
Jigsaw (1962)
police procedural
Based on the book Sleep Long, My Love, by Hillary Waugh and the story moved from Connecticut, US over to Brighton, UK. Often thought rather seedy at the time and certainly many people would pop down from London for a weekend there. This film still has a look of seediness about it, surely like the two men and the sharply photography of Brighton locations. Jack Warner was always known as the much loved tea time TV program, Dixon of Dock Green (1955-1976)- yes really that long time. That was set in the East End with petty crime and Dixon controlling with 'common sense', whereas this is a police procedural. Although at the start there are a couple in bed but we only see one and there is a murder and a dismembered body, we do not see it but we do see the trunk. So this is rather clever and interesting but just a bit slow because there is not really much action.
Strange Darling (2023)
there are some terrible things
What a lovely film. I have to say it is rather violent and the sex also aggressive but it is so well done. At the beginning I was not too happy that there were going to have numbered chapters and I also find that it means I am have to find how many there and will it be too boring. Well not with this one, we start with chapter 3 and there is a thrilling chase, throughout this film it is gripping and changing all the time. Even though there is a lot of brutality all the time there is also this amazing cinematography so we are thrilled in several ways. I didn't think I had ever seen Willa Fitzgerald but she is brilliant in this and I notice she has at least two more films coming this year so I will have to watch out for her. I was stunned in the way she can change around from one chapter from another and within as well. The dialogue also written by the director, JT Mollner, so well done for making such a great film and we even get an epilogue at the end. Even though there are some terrible things in this but that breakfast may be the most disgusting in the film.
The Substance (2024)
Cronenberg style horror
This has a brilliant opening. We start with an egg and then with a syringe and a second egg, then an eye, a close up, and then other eyes and it is rather worrying and scary but then a Hollywood style star on the ground and we see it gradually getting old and worn. We then get to see the exercise dancing by Demi Moore and she is rather amazing as she is over 60 and I'm assuming she does her own, and she is very bold doing this and much more. For some reason, as I go through my records, it seems that I have never seen any of her films. But in this Margaret Qualley, younger and really good and I have seen two of her's, Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019) and The Nice Guys (2016). It is confusing at first but then we know what is going on, although there is lots more of exercise dancing but also some Cronenberg style body horror, which is really difficult to watch. It is amazingly well done but we spend too long in the white bathroom. It is also two and a half hours, maybe half an hour too long and I think it really could have been reduced down to 90 minutes and this might have been better.
No Trees in the Street (1959)
great dialogue
I wanted to watch this having just seen J Lee Thompson's earlier one of Diana Dors in Yield to the Night (1956). This is not quite as good as that one but it was much better than I thought it might have been. It was surprisingly good that the East End slums were made to be more realistic than sentimental. The screenplay was by Ted Willis from his original play and with great dialogue. Of course Herbert Lom is impressive, even if I didn't expect he would have been in a kitchen sink drama. Sylvia Syms is also good although I did find the young Melvyn Hayes was rather annoying and I had never really liked him such as in Summer Holiday (1963) or many of his many TV series like, It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974-1981) but I suppose he just about holds it together in this. Stanley Holloway is great and almost sings more than talks and certainly does in this and he could certainly do his authentic Cockney voice.
The Devil's Rejects (2005)
nasty, brutal and thriling
At my local charity shop there were dozens of DVDs at three for a pound so I thought I would have this one. The cover was poor and the credits so small I didn't know what it was. Many of these little horror films can be really terrible, either silly or campy. But this one turns out to be really nasty, brutal and thrilling. From the beginning until the end it is awful but I found it stunning and I sat at the ending wondering if I had really watched this. I was surprised that there is nothing apart from this distasteful and appalling action and this is unusual. And the 70s soundtrack is wonderful.
Yield to the Night (1956)
waiting to be hanged
I like Diana Dors and many of her films, knew of this story as well and find it surprisingly good. At the beginning she is walking across Trafalgar Square and most of it is shot very low down as we see her high heels and seamed stockings and dozens of pigeons fluttering about. Other little shots of some railings a busted gate and chains and an old lock that it looks like a prison. She gets a cab and she has a key and a gun. After the credits we have the story moving back and forth and some narrative well done. There is only so much that can happen in a prison while she is waiting to be hanged but it is good of the woman prison warders, with her trying to sleep but does have some walks under the wall. One of Dors very best performance and we get three deaths, the one at the opening, her at the end and a surprise in the middle. It is not a noir but it does have a feel about it. Splendid.
Ondine (2009)
unusual little film
Well, I have to say that this is a rather unusual little film written and directed by Neil Jordan, who else would have been able to carry this out with assurance? So this is not really a mermaid but a selkie, supposedly a creature that can move between a seal and a human. Okay, so this might be silly but this is very good and rather sweet. Colin Farrell and Alicja Bachleda are both splendid and just right but it is the little girl, Alison Barry who plays his young ailing daughter in an electric wheelchair, is amazing and she loves this fairy tale idea that makes it work. Christopher Doyle is the brilliant cinematographer and with his amazing control over with the shots of the sea, the brilliant boats and the Irish countryside so wonderfully green. It is really lovely.