Movie Diary 2018 by pahaK

Well it's more in the science fantasy realm isn't it? That's definitely a home from home for me .

Razorback (1984) r

Yet another rewatch from childhood. I remember not liking this too much as a kid but now I'd rank it among the best animal horrors.



A gigantic boar is ravaging the Australian Outback. It kills an old man's grandson who devotes his life to killing the monstrosity no one else believes in. Couple of years forward and razorback kills again bringing new fire to the chase and introducing a new player, an american man whose wife was the latest victim.

Razorback isn't just about the monstrous boar though. There's heavily linked subplot involving local rednecks running a pet food factory and generally being the typical hostile locals in a film taking place on a remote location. So the films is a mix of Jaws on land, Deliverance on desert with a pinch of Mad Max thrown in. Sounds silly but it mostly works thanks to Mulcahy.

The first thing to notice is how gorgeous the film looks. Visually it's a mix of Fulci, Raimi and Miller. Individual scenes look stunning but at times the lack of consistent style makes the film look little messy. Still Mulcahy certainly has an eye for making great shots. Soundtrack could have been more daring (and by that I mean more Italian) but it wasn't bad.

Script is not that great. I don't like how it feels like it has two intros (one short and one long) before the story begins. Characters are pretty lame and acting isn't too good either (I liked Bill Kerr though). Cinematography and directing keeps the mess together and makes it better than it should be.

Cronos (1993) r

Del Toro's debut is a unique take on vampires but unfortunately it isn't very entertaining.



An alchemist built a machine holding a mysterious insect that grants eternal life. Hundreds of years later an old antiques dealer finds the Cronos device and accidentally activates it. There's also a dying rich man searching for the device to create some necessary conflict.

Cronos alternates (unnecessarily in my opinion) between light comedic parts and darker more serious tones. I don't think all the comedic parts fitted the film and they weakened the drama. There were good scenes and the concept was interesting but something in the story didn't click.

Cinematography wasn't yet on par with del Toro's later works but there's nothing exactly wrong with it, it's just not as flashy and daring. Quite a few scenes reminded me visually of Taboada's films. Acting is fine but Perlman overdoes his evil henchman routine.

Technically solid debut that's little unsure of what it wants to be.

The Entity (1982) r

Another horror I didn't like as a kid but rewatch proved the younger me wrong.



Carla, a young single mother of three, is haunted and sexually molested by malevolent spirit. Initially she seeks help from psychiatrist but when her friend also witnesses abnormal phenomenons she turns to parapsychologists who try to help her get rid off the supernatural rapist.

I liked the first half and some a lot. It felt quite realistic approach to a situation like that by a person who doesn't believe in supernatural. As a viewer we know that the attacks are real but Carla and her doctor attempt to seek causes from her head. While the first half isn't exactly scary it's rather tense. Latter half with parapsychologists and their grand plan didn't interest me as much.

Cinematography was really nice. I liked how most of the shots with Carla were tilted somehow to (most likely) enhance the feeling that something in her life isn't right. Soundtrack was interesting too and the thumping was nice indicator of evil presence. Barbara Hershey as Carla was brilliant, other actors were OK. Effects were fine except those early CGI lights flying (I really hated that kind of effects even as a kid when they were new).

Very strong start followed by mediocre ending, nice cinematography and good lead performance equals pretty good film.

Yeah, it's unrelenting isn't it? I watched it again a few months ago and I found it more disturbing at times than I had in the past. It's still my favourite 'traditional' horror film.

The Exorcist (1973) R

The power of Christ compels you!



12-year-old Regan starts to behave erratically. At first her mother takes the girl to doctor, then to psychiatrist and finally she gets help from the mother church in the form of an exorcism.

Like The Entity above The Exorcist begins with realistic approach to situation. I don't know if the division between psychiatry and traditional medicine was really that strict back in the 70s but other than that the process felt believable and the growing threat from not getting any answers was built well. Also for someone who doesn't like needles the arteriogram scene is still one of most unpleasant scenes I know.

Unlike The Entity there is no drop in quality towards the end in The Exorcist. I'm an atheist myself but religion is good material for stories. Possession and exorcism were much better plot choices than humbug scientists and a liquid helium trap. In all the movie there might be a few minutes worth of material that could have been dropped to make the film little tighter but otherwise it's nearly perfect.



Acting is top notch by everyone but especially Max von Sydow who at 44 (or 43) looks and feels like a frail old man. Linda Blair does excellent job as a foul mouthed possessed girl (even though the voice isn't hers) as well as normal, scared little girl. It's pretty much perfect cast in every role which is really rare.

Cinematography is good and supports the film's sad (yes, I think it's more sad than scary) tone well. There are some beautifully set shots like the arrival of Merrin that used to be film's poster. There isn't much music which feels like a good decision but what little is there is good. Effects are pretty nice for 1973 and Director's Cut has got rid off some extra wires too (I also happen to like the spider walk).

One the greatest horror classics and for a reason. Will definitely be in top-3 if I ever manage to make my horror film list.

Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) r

Has any sequel ever been more worse than the first film? I can't think of any.


I remembered almost nothing from this but was aware of its reputation, or should I say notoriety. It's amazing that anyone could have thought this was a good idea (even more surprising is the fact that it actually managed to make some profit).

There's this practically insane priest who's sent to investigate father Merrin's death. He ends linking his mind with Regan in psychiatric institute she's having her shrink meetings. Then he flies on a wings of a demon in visions that take him to Africa and meets Thulsa Doom, er, I mean a leopard dude who isn't afraid of Pazuzu played by James Earl Jones. Then we're back in Washington and the film ends in a silly, house breaking finale.

If I had hard time to find flaws from The Exorcist I have equally hard time to find anything else from the sequel. Directing, script, acting, effects, everything is just amateurish. There are few nice shots every now and then but I guess it's hard to completely miss everything with those locations (like the mountain church). I really have to wonder if Richard Burton was the only one coming to work drunk.

Honestly this films deserves only half popcorn but I give it another half for some priceless dialogue that actually made me laugh.

Make Way For Tomorrow (1937) N

For the 1930s HoF. I had no idea what this was going to be but somehow by quickly skimming some of the HoF reviews I got the impression that it would be a heavy drama


During the great depression an old couple loses their house. Of course they don't react in any way during the six month term of notice but inform their children few days before the actual eviction. Then they move to live with the children but, alas, each to different one. From there begins one of the most tedious movie experiences I've forced myself through.

There's absolutely nothing happening in the whole film. The mother is nosing around in the family she's staying with and I think they were rightfully pissed. Father is a bit more pleasant guest (except he's acting like a 5-year-old at times) but the daughter he's living with is total ass. I don't care about any of these people and their problems don't look that great considering the time.

I'm not sure if the film was trying to promote better relationships with the family elders. For me it mostly managed to show why I'd go mad if I had to live with my mother at this age. People need their privacy and while I agree that people should take care of their aging parents having them live with you and run your home isn't a working solution (at least it isn't for the most).

Only tears the film was close to jerking were the ones of boredom.

I havent zeen the movie but that is a heart warming review, Pahak! I enjoyed it on a windy Ffiday. Gotta embrace these antarctic puffs of love when we get them.

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) N

It's like watching someone else's dream from your television.


Valerie is a 13-year-old girl who just have had her first menstruation. She lives alone with her religious (and pale and quite young looking) grandmother. Soon the story, if you can call it that, evolves to include vampires, horny priests, incestuous lust and pacts with the devil. All this flows on like in a dream with no clear structure or coherence.

Valerie is a difficult movie to rate after one viewing. It's basic materials are easy to find; sexual awakening of a teenaged girl and religion's attempt to suppress sexuality with shame and guilt. Because of its dreamlike nature it's filled with all sorts of symbolism and it gets from scene to scene in ways that don't always make sense. It would require multiple viewings and perhaps some preliminary reading in between to unfold majority of its finer nuances.

Valerie is very pretty film and its visual style supports its narrative. It's also very sensual film and sexuality in one way or another is present almost all the time. Acting is mostly good; I liked Valerie, her grandmother, the priest who tried to rape her and the girl with the flower basket the most. Special effects (make ups and false teeth mostly) are quite clumsy but not enough to deter the story.

Very beautiful, dreamlike venture into sexuality that would (most likely) benefit from an extra viewing or two. For now I'll give barely good rating but I wouldn't be surprised if rewatch would raise it.

Picnic At Hanging Rock is rated a classic of Australian cinema. @pahaK? Have you seen the mini series.. it is darker and a touch quirky... but thorouly watchable.

Near Dark (1987) R

I think this was the third time I saw this and for some reason it seems to get worse on every view.



Caleb is a young man living in rural Oklahoma. He meets a pretty girl, gets bitten in the neck and finds himself traveling with a bunch of murdering vampires. Caleb's a good boy so there's some troubles in adjusting to his new nocturnal existence.

On some level Near Dark is interesting deviation from the usual sophisticated vampires but characters completely lack charisma (I hate most characters played by Bill Paxton). Another huge issue is the logistical impossibility of this vampire posse; according to movie each of them needs to kill (why?) every night meaning they've been driving across the states killing more than 1800 people every year for the past four years (Mae says she was turned four years ago and she appears to be the latest addition before Caleb)

So the script is by far the worst issue (oh, and I hate the end so much - it's the worst possible way to end a vampire film). Bigelow can direct and the film looks rather nice. I also liked the Tangerine Dream soundtrack. Acting didn't feel too good but it might be the characters that actually bother me (also it would have needed more actors from Aliens).

A mediocre vampire film that just gets dumber every time I see it.

Not yet. I finished the book while ago though so I'm in theory ready for the series. Will need to finish some stuff from Netflix first but I'll definitely watch it.

EDIT: Decided that the Netflix series was boring and started Picnic. Honestly, I though the first episode was complete trash. They've changed all the characters, added some stupid subplots and made it look like some Guy Ritchie fanfic. I honestly don't know if I'm going to watch the other five episodes. Why did they have to crap on the book so bad?

The Hired Hand (1971) N

American western that tries its best to look and feel European.



A man returns to his wife and daughter after years of drifting and searching his happiness from the world. He's made friends and enemies during that time and past will eventually return to haunt him.

The premise feels like a standard western but the presentation is very much like European film (at times it even reminds me of Finnish movies except it's technically more solid). People talk little, they don't look each other while talking, there's long passages without any dialogue and the nature is often more important than the characters. People are also dirty and unkempt unlike in typical westerns of the time.

Visually the film is beautiful but I didn't like how they put two images on top of each other in many situations, it just messed up otherwise great shots. With very minimal story the camera was never in a hurry and the music accompanied the placid flow of images really well. It was always balancing right between boring and relaxed (it was always borderline both).

Acting was great. There was good chemistry between all the protagonists and bad guys were easy to hate. Film didn't tell us much about the characters but despite of that they felt very human.

It took me couple of hours to decide if I liked this enough to say it was good but eventually the reply to that was yes, very barely yes.

The Company of Wolves (1984) R

Like Near Dark couple of days ago this has gotten worse on every watch.



At the moment my main issue with the film is that it doesn't have a proper story and it fails to provide intriguing enough alternative. Practically the whole movie is set within a dream but the dreamy sequences feel very lame and ordinary when compared to something like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (at least the latter feels much more like my dreams).

All the stories told within Rosaleen's dream are common werewolf legends I already read as a child. I don't think there's enough own personality in them to carry a film especially when the frame story itself is already a wonderless dream variation of well known Little Red Riding Hood. Directing is solid but it's not enough to pull this up among the good films.

Some of the sets look nice and there's occasional interesting cinematography by Jordan. Effects haven't aged too well (especially the transformations). Acting is quite mediocre with couple of good performances on smaller roles.

Too timid and ordinary for a dream, too little content and coherence for a regular story. On this rewatch The Company of Wolves felt emptier than ever before. It's still kinda OK film but there was a time I used to love it.

Big fan of Near Dark, The Exorcist, The Entity, and The Hired Hand. I know I've seen Company of Wolves but I barely remember it.

I've never been interested in Cronos but I was in Razorback but forgot about it. I will watch it.

Viy (1967) N

A Russian horror fantasy based on Gogol's story.



A seminary student named Khoma gets involved with a witch on his way home. He ends up beating the hag near death when she suddenly turns to young girl. He runs away but is later called to pray for rich merchants dying daughter. It turns out that the daughter is the former witch and spending three days praying by her body isn't as easy as it sounds.

Viy is more fantasy than horror and it's more fun than scary. There are few drunken scenes that made me laugh out loud. Initially I though that Viy was mangling Gogol's story badly but after quick Googling I realized that I had mixed Viy with another story (Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy's Ubir - not sure if the title is correct as I can't find full bibliography for him but it matches the Finnish translation) and the movie appears to be quite faithful filming.



Film looks pretty nice and has some creative camera work. Most of the effects near the end look decent but Viy itself is kinda silly. Acting isn't the best and especially Khoma looks like he's stoned the whole time (well, I guess the character is drunk most of the time so maybe it fits). Witch in her young maiden form is beautiful (hence the two pictures on this review).

There's something in Russian cinema and it's way to tell a story that I don't like. I can't properly explain it but instead of a constant flow they're kind of like bouncing from one big scene to another. It feels weird and while I've got little used to it by now it's still something I dislike to some degree.

Little light on story and characters but visually beautiful and funny fantasy from Russia.

+

Sveto Mesto (1990) N

A Serbian filming of the Gogol's Viy.



Sveto Mesto is considerably darker and more horror than Viy which I watched yesterday. It aimed for more grotesque and disturbing atmosphere but I don't think it went far enough to successfully replace the entertainment of Viy's humor. It doesn't fully exploit its incestuous themes or its threat of senseless violence.

Plot changes were all made to make story bleaker. Some of them worked alright but others didn't (last night at the church and the very ending of the film were clearly inferior to Viy). With more daring the concept could have worked better as there certainly was potential in this variation.

Visually it's more gothic than Viy and is at its best during the night shots. Events within the church are far more lame than in Viy and there's hardly any special effects in the film. Acting is fine but little reserved. Even though it attempts to be more horror it's not exactly scary.

Darker filming of Gogol's story which could have been good by being more disturbed but now loses to much lighter Viy.

The Omen (1976) R

Rewatching some more horror classics.


US ambassador to Great Britain is raising Satan's son as his own. Once the reality dawns on him he starts to look for ways to rid the world off the Antichrist and save his own family. He's helped in his quest by a journalist who notices weird premonitions in photographs he's taken.

The Omen looks and feels very Italian (and I don't mean the fact that half of it happens in Italy). Way the shots are framed, extreme close-ups of facial features and the way story progresses are reminiscent of gialli with the exception of the murderer being known from the start. There's much less blood than in your average giallo but otherwise the deaths are highly stylized (especially the decapitation is beautiful).

Story moves at really slow pace, at times even little too slow as there are moments that don't seem to progress anything. Concept is rather interesting though and except the little need for condensing film is technically solid. It's a good example of a horror film that doesn't sacrifice its other qualities for being more scary but builds on strong story and characters.

Acting is mostly good but somehow Peck seemed to lack little passion. The kid who played Damien is quite good. Soundtrack is a mixed bag; I love the parts with Latin chants but otherwise it is little generic.

Pretty good horror classic but far from the greatness of The Exorcist.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018) N

While not a movie this mini-series has already been mentioned on this thread so I'll post a review of it too.



There was a huge initial shock with this. After seeing the Weir's film and reading the book I had my expectations set for another faithful adaptation that wouldn't have to drop stuff out like Weir because the series is about three times longer than his film. Instead of that I got another modern adaptation that picks few things from the source while rewriting everything else.

Some of the changes broke the story. Especially the new background for Mrs. Appleyard and completely new personality for Miranda seemed to cause issues that made some turns of events feel wrong. I don't like Natalie Dormer in general and she was a complete miscast as Mrs. Appleyard. Another issue with the actors is that majority of the students were too old (some were even older than some of their teachers).

I think there was little too much modern values involved and too often that meant putting the blame on men and softening Mrs. Appleyard. @spookiemoviemania said that the series was darker and I guess there's some merit to that when comparing to Weir's movie but I think the book is even darker than the series (assuming our darks mean the same all the dark things added to series were already in the book and then some).

Technically the series wasn't too great but either I got numb to it or directing and cinematography got better on later episodes. Extra mention to those horrible pink title cards. It wasn't as terrible as I thought after one episode and I'm sure that part of my negativity comes from comparing to both book and movie.

Way worse than Lindsay's book or Weir's film but if you liked those you might be interested to see this one too. Once the shock relents it mostly watchable.