Reviews
Don't Look Away (2023)
Not so much
Although it was a valiant effort by the cast, the production quality is not good. The sound is very tinny and distorted. It appears to be a knock off of It Follows. The script plods along and there is no real development. The mannequin is silly's and the editing very choppy and sometimes doesn't make sense.
The direction is interesting and as I said, the actors do a nice job. It's a nice suspense piece. I would not really classify this as horror. As I said it's suspenseful and the mannequin makes it otherworldly.
I am not a film professional and only giving it my opinion as a horror and suspense fan.
Downhill (2020)
Great material. Poorly marketed
I give this 8 stars because as a premise, it is an amazing story. It is intense, and deep, and very serious...which had they let Will Ferral and Julia Dreyfus do their extremely talented thing, it would have been a great movie.
But....they took a very serious matter and had to make it funny because, after all, it's WF and JLD! Hardy har har!! Had they been allowed to play the piece as real (I.e. Without the insipid goofiness of extraneous charactrers), they would have nailed it. (It has "wacky" and "silly" side characters which absolutely don't belong in a movie like this). What a waste of good actors. Even their brilliant talent can't save the script.
Look past the "zany" and look at the real story and how both leads should have been allowed to be amazing in this.
House of the Long Shadows (1983)
Fun Fun Fun!
This film is what old horror buffs want to see. 4 Great horror legends together on the screen. Too bad Boris, Bella, Lon and Peter weren't around for it.
It is a dark and stormy night. Leading man goes to big haunted house. Pretty girl, strange relatives, family secrets and tons of atmosphere ensue. Interesting conclusion with a little wink-wink, nudge-nudge at the end.
Sadly, it isn't on DVD. Too bad.
We are now an age of blood, guts and gore that touts itself as the horror genre. Tall, beefy men wearing masks or pounds of prosthetics are the new horror actors....actors?? What acting? Running around with a chainsaw isn't acting. Ditto to our leading men and scantily clad ladies. Being dirty, wet, bloody and screaming isn't acting. Not your faults....blame the writers. It isn't about acting anymore. It's body count and gross out. It accuses the audience of being too vapid to understand the story from the dialog delivered by skilled artists and forces us to in-your-face nastiness..
This movie, as corn-pone and cheese-whiz as it is, is delightful. It's Cushing, Lee, Price and Carridine...representatives of what acting in this genre was really about. They're creepy, rookie, and weird. They make your skin crawl with each delivery. That, my friends, is what scary is about. They may appear benign on the outside, but you just don't know what they might do or are capable of.
I do wish it would go to DVD. It might ignite a new respect for the horror film...maybe change the way they are written.
One Last Dance (2003)
purely for dancers
I'm sure a lot of dancers saw this and hated it, but this movie is not going to relate to young dancers today. It's a movie for the dancers of the "old school". 20 years ago, when we were coming up through the ranks, it was a lot different than it is now. It's about what it was to be a dancer with a dedication and discipline beyond what people think it means today. And how is can obsess and destroy and how sometimes one can overcome the "demons" for the pure love of dancing.
The story is about the reunion of 3 dancers who are asked to perform a particular work that, for varying reasons, ended their careers.
Lisa Neimi wrote and directed this movie...she is the only director yet who actually knows how to direct a dance film. You are FINALLY able to see the dancing, not just weird fast cuts to keep heads reeling and people's short attention spans. The writing is very good and captures what dancers go through. George de la Pena is still a wonderful dancer and Patrick Swayze is really incredible.
Sorry to all the nay sayers who can't appreciate this movie. I loved it. I thought it was brilliantly filmed and acted...and although some of the dialog may come across as trite, you would have had to live the life of years ago to get it. I'm talking about a time when a person was so dedicated, so disciplined that they would do anything, overcome anything to make their dreams happen and sometimes almost destroying themselves in the process.