Danger: Diabolik (Mario Bava, 1968)
Bava gleefully throws himself into an inverse superhero movie where the lead is a diabolical criminal (John Phillip Law) who goes out of his way to steal anything worth stealing. In between capers, he carries on an intense love affair with his lady assistant Eva (Marisa Mell). Eventually, a befuddled police inspector (Michel Piccoli) makes a deal with a sadistic crime boss (Adolfo Celi) to try to capture Diabolik and stop his criminal rampage. The sets, costumes, and autos all seem to belong to the Swingin' Sixties by way of the Italian comic book, and Ennio Morricone's score uses plenty of psychedic electric guitars to accentuate Bava's assured yet flamboyant direction. Although you cannot really take the film seriously, the love affair and some of the plotting makes it seem much less campy to me than how others may feel it is. The opening and a few other of the action set-pieces get the blood boiling, but I still found a few too many longueurs in the 100 minute flick to give it a wholehearted recommendation, but you'll know if you'll like it by reading this. The film cries out for it and producer Dino De Laurentiis did ask Bava to make a sequel, but the director declined.
Madame de... (Max Ophuls, 1953)
Set at the turn-of-the-early 20th century, Madame de... tells of the flirtatious wife (Danielle Darrieux) of a demanding general (Charles Boyer) who falls in love with a diplomat (Vittorio De Sica) while paying for her flirtations by pawning the earrings her husband gave her as a wedding present. These earrings keep turning up repeatedly, having been sold and bought back several times, and they become a symbol of the couple's marriage and how much control the husband actually has over his wife. The film is somewhat stylistically similar to Casque d'or and both have a romance, plenty of dancing and lead to tragedy, but the chief difference is the passion found in the other film. Although Ophuls' beautiful use of the camera gives pleasure and Madame de certainly shows a tender side of herself to the diplomat, this film is just colder than Casque d'or, and the ending seems a tad too much a price to pay for what the characters dare to do.
Sheba Baby (William Girdler, 1975)
This flick is a substandard Pam Grier actioner where she plays a private detective who returns home to Louisville when her father gets roughed up and his business gets trashed by some mobsters. It contains the requisite gunplay and cat fights of Grier's other flicks, but contains less sex and blood. Director Girdler, who died in a helicopter crash after making four more movies, was always basically a hack who ripped off whatever was popular at the time, so look at this as almost a Pam Grier ripoff movie starring Pam Grier. There really isn't that much to say about it, except that if you want to watch a Pam Grier film, watch any of the other ones before you watch this one.
Sugar (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2008)
Being a baseball fan, I enjoyed much of this tale about Sugar (Algenis Perez Soto), a young pitcher from the baseball hotbed of the Dominican Republic, San Pedro de Macoris. He's signed by the major league club Kansas City Royals and goes to play for their A team in Iowa where he stays with a religious family who are also baseball fanatics. Being made by the team which also made Half Nelson, you can be sure that this isn't your standard baseball tale and there are plenty of curveballs presented in Sugar's story. Much of the baseball seems realistic since they used many real ballplayers but some of the details are a bit lacking in truth. Now, I realize that I had a major problem with critical darling Half Nelson which I found amateurish, boring and unbelievable, but this film is a definite step up for me, even if there's still something off in the way I see these filmmakers trying to mask their deficiencies in some faux naturalistic style. Even so, since I like this film as much as any on the tab so far, I'm going to shut up and just tell you that if you want to watch an offbeat baseball film that won't insult your intelligence, give Sugar a try.
Max Mon Amour (Nagisa Ôshima, 1986)
A British diplomat (Anthony Higgins) learns that his wife (Charlotte Rampling) is having an affair with a chimpanzee named Max, and the diplomat decides it would be better if Max comes to live with the family. That's basically the entire film. Now, what could seem shocking, weird, or funny is mostly played straight and there was little for me to react to since I found that nothing terribly interesting occurred. Rick Baker's makeup effects are mostly impressive, except for a couple of times they used a real chimp which threw things off. The film looks good too, but I just don't understand why things weren't more "fleshed out", if you get my drift. Why make a film with a seemingly-outrageous premise if it isn't going to be fully explored?
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (Michel Hazanavicius, 2006)
This is one of Holden's favorite recent comedies, and it hits the right spot between incompetent spying, lame-brained action and romance and intermingling of Nazis and Arabs in 1950s Cairo. It may seem to be a spoof a la The Naked Gun or Top Secret, but it actually belongs to an older tradition of French spy flicks dating back to about the time this film is set. Jean Dujardin is hilarious as OSS 117, and I especially like his scenes with the Muslims where he's utterly clueless of what Islam is and will become. Even when the jokes aren't as humorous as intended, the film is one which actually uses humor to critique politics and religion, from the sides of both the French and the Arabs, and if you look even only slightly, you can see that Dujardin does a mean impression of Sean Connery, so often you have to wonder if he's also satirizing just Connery or Bond and all "old-fashioned secret agents". There's already a sequel out, OSS - Lost in Rio.
To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar (Beeban Kidron, 1995)
This is actually a low-key fairy tale about tolerance, being one's self, and always trying to help others in need. Brenda picked this one as a Swayze Tribute movie, and I found it more entertaining than I had previously. It's about two drag queens, Vida (Swayze) and Noxzeema (Wesley Snipes), who take under their wings a "drag princess", Chi-Chi (John Leguizamo) who has a few things to learn before she can become a queen. En route to Hollywood by car, the trio have a run-in with a bigoted sheriff (Chris Penn), and after their cadillac breaks down, they're forced to stay in the boondocks for the weekend. It's little wonder that the three "career girls" change the lives of the locals forever. Although there are some dramatic moments, To Wong Foo is basically a feel-good comedy. The key to the film's charms is that it always takes the characters seriously and rarely resorts to freakish caricatures for its humor (unless you want to count the one about abusive husbands, but I won't count that one). There is also a huge cast of actresses here: Stockard Channing, Blythe Danner, Melinda Dillon, Beth Grant, Alice Drummond, Marceline Hugot and Jennifer Milmore. People often call this a remake or a ripoff of the Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and there are plenty of similarities and just as many differences, so to me, it doesn't really matter unless you're trying to collect some money from Hollywood for plagiarism.
Bava gleefully throws himself into an inverse superhero movie where the lead is a diabolical criminal (John Phillip Law) who goes out of his way to steal anything worth stealing. In between capers, he carries on an intense love affair with his lady assistant Eva (Marisa Mell). Eventually, a befuddled police inspector (Michel Piccoli) makes a deal with a sadistic crime boss (Adolfo Celi) to try to capture Diabolik and stop his criminal rampage. The sets, costumes, and autos all seem to belong to the Swingin' Sixties by way of the Italian comic book, and Ennio Morricone's score uses plenty of psychedic electric guitars to accentuate Bava's assured yet flamboyant direction. Although you cannot really take the film seriously, the love affair and some of the plotting makes it seem much less campy to me than how others may feel it is. The opening and a few other of the action set-pieces get the blood boiling, but I still found a few too many longueurs in the 100 minute flick to give it a wholehearted recommendation, but you'll know if you'll like it by reading this. The film cries out for it and producer Dino De Laurentiis did ask Bava to make a sequel, but the director declined.
Madame de... (Max Ophuls, 1953)
Set at the turn-of-the-early 20th century, Madame de... tells of the flirtatious wife (Danielle Darrieux) of a demanding general (Charles Boyer) who falls in love with a diplomat (Vittorio De Sica) while paying for her flirtations by pawning the earrings her husband gave her as a wedding present. These earrings keep turning up repeatedly, having been sold and bought back several times, and they become a symbol of the couple's marriage and how much control the husband actually has over his wife. The film is somewhat stylistically similar to Casque d'or and both have a romance, plenty of dancing and lead to tragedy, but the chief difference is the passion found in the other film. Although Ophuls' beautiful use of the camera gives pleasure and Madame de certainly shows a tender side of herself to the diplomat, this film is just colder than Casque d'or, and the ending seems a tad too much a price to pay for what the characters dare to do.
Sheba Baby (William Girdler, 1975)
This flick is a substandard Pam Grier actioner where she plays a private detective who returns home to Louisville when her father gets roughed up and his business gets trashed by some mobsters. It contains the requisite gunplay and cat fights of Grier's other flicks, but contains less sex and blood. Director Girdler, who died in a helicopter crash after making four more movies, was always basically a hack who ripped off whatever was popular at the time, so look at this as almost a Pam Grier ripoff movie starring Pam Grier. There really isn't that much to say about it, except that if you want to watch a Pam Grier film, watch any of the other ones before you watch this one.
Sugar (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, 2008)
Being a baseball fan, I enjoyed much of this tale about Sugar (Algenis Perez Soto), a young pitcher from the baseball hotbed of the Dominican Republic, San Pedro de Macoris. He's signed by the major league club Kansas City Royals and goes to play for their A team in Iowa where he stays with a religious family who are also baseball fanatics. Being made by the team which also made Half Nelson, you can be sure that this isn't your standard baseball tale and there are plenty of curveballs presented in Sugar's story. Much of the baseball seems realistic since they used many real ballplayers but some of the details are a bit lacking in truth. Now, I realize that I had a major problem with critical darling Half Nelson which I found amateurish, boring and unbelievable, but this film is a definite step up for me, even if there's still something off in the way I see these filmmakers trying to mask their deficiencies in some faux naturalistic style. Even so, since I like this film as much as any on the tab so far, I'm going to shut up and just tell you that if you want to watch an offbeat baseball film that won't insult your intelligence, give Sugar a try.
Max Mon Amour (Nagisa Ôshima, 1986)
A British diplomat (Anthony Higgins) learns that his wife (Charlotte Rampling) is having an affair with a chimpanzee named Max, and the diplomat decides it would be better if Max comes to live with the family. That's basically the entire film. Now, what could seem shocking, weird, or funny is mostly played straight and there was little for me to react to since I found that nothing terribly interesting occurred. Rick Baker's makeup effects are mostly impressive, except for a couple of times they used a real chimp which threw things off. The film looks good too, but I just don't understand why things weren't more "fleshed out", if you get my drift. Why make a film with a seemingly-outrageous premise if it isn't going to be fully explored?
OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (Michel Hazanavicius, 2006)
This is one of Holden's favorite recent comedies, and it hits the right spot between incompetent spying, lame-brained action and romance and intermingling of Nazis and Arabs in 1950s Cairo. It may seem to be a spoof a la The Naked Gun or Top Secret, but it actually belongs to an older tradition of French spy flicks dating back to about the time this film is set. Jean Dujardin is hilarious as OSS 117, and I especially like his scenes with the Muslims where he's utterly clueless of what Islam is and will become. Even when the jokes aren't as humorous as intended, the film is one which actually uses humor to critique politics and religion, from the sides of both the French and the Arabs, and if you look even only slightly, you can see that Dujardin does a mean impression of Sean Connery, so often you have to wonder if he's also satirizing just Connery or Bond and all "old-fashioned secret agents". There's already a sequel out, OSS - Lost in Rio.
To Wong Foo Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar (Beeban Kidron, 1995)
This is actually a low-key fairy tale about tolerance, being one's self, and always trying to help others in need. Brenda picked this one as a Swayze Tribute movie, and I found it more entertaining than I had previously. It's about two drag queens, Vida (Swayze) and Noxzeema (Wesley Snipes), who take under their wings a "drag princess", Chi-Chi (John Leguizamo) who has a few things to learn before she can become a queen. En route to Hollywood by car, the trio have a run-in with a bigoted sheriff (Chris Penn), and after their cadillac breaks down, they're forced to stay in the boondocks for the weekend. It's little wonder that the three "career girls" change the lives of the locals forever. Although there are some dramatic moments, To Wong Foo is basically a feel-good comedy. The key to the film's charms is that it always takes the characters seriously and rarely resorts to freakish caricatures for its humor (unless you want to count the one about abusive husbands, but I won't count that one). There is also a huge cast of actresses here: Stockard Channing, Blythe Danner, Melinda Dillon, Beth Grant, Alice Drummond, Marceline Hugot and Jennifer Milmore. People often call this a remake or a ripoff of the Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and there are plenty of similarities and just as many differences, so to me, it doesn't really matter unless you're trying to collect some money from Hollywood for plagiarism.
__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page
Last edited by mark f; 10-02-09 at 09:19 PM.