The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

Campy Fun!  Today's film is The Hills Have Eyes.  It starts with an innocent family traveling through the desert on their way to sunny California.  They wind up in uncharted territory in an Air Force testing area/nuclear testing area/Area 51/something like that.  Anyway, it all goes downhill from there.

The bad acting award goes to the mother.  Goodness she was awful.  Also I didn't like Lynne, the mother of the baby Kate.  She was constantly pawning off her baby on the other relatives, and never fed or played with her once.  Then she left her baby in the camper so she could have sex in a station wagon.  Real class act mother right there.  I'm sure we won't miss them when the hillbillies attack them.

There are some very nice explosions in this movie, which I thoroughly enjoyed watching.  Then once the hillbillies kidnap the baby, it becomes all out war between them and the family.  Luckily the family finds a new ally in Ruby, the youngest and only other female hillbilly besides the mother.  She even picks up a rattlesnake and throws it at a guy!

However, don't be expecting a happy ending.  Or a sad ending.  Better yet, don't expect any ending at all.  The film just stops and the credits roll.  It's like they got tired of filming in the hot desert sun and just gave up.  How rude.  I wouldn't want to watch or read anything if it turned out to not have an ending.  I would be so disappo

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989)

I did not like this film. At. All.

The worst part was the "thief", Albert, played by Michael Gambon.  He never stopped talking in every scene he was in.  He was rude and awful to everyone around him, but the worst part is that he never stopped yammering ever.  He was so obnoxious.  I actually had to turn off my netflix and go run errands, not because I had to right away, but because I had to get away from his atrocious yapping.  No, I don't care that he played Dumbledore.  I hope I never see him in a movie again.  I can't get his awful voice and grating accent out of my head. 

I noticed that as Georgie, the wife (of the thief), moved around the restaurant, her clothes changed.  At first I thought nothing of it.  I thought the colored lights were casting shadows on her dress and it appeared to change colors. Then, I realized that her entire outfit changed to match the color of the area! So did everyone else's outfits! In the bathroom, her outfit is white, the dining room is red, and the kitchen is green! But why does this happen? Is this some sort of theatrical gimmick?

Most of this film is softcore porn, which is fine by me. Sometimes I would look at the screen and be like:

 Another terrible thing about this film was their song choice.  It was the same high pitched song over and over and over.  Not a beautiful operatic song, a high pitched wailing song, like when the stray cats fuck outside my window. The cats make all kinds of high pitched noises and it sounds very similar to this song.  My ears were bleeding by the time this movie was over.

But the ending! Let's talk about the ending. Shakespeare already did this is Titus Andronicus. Except this time they cooked the entire thing, not just made it into pie. It's just so over the top; it's stupid.  I'm like, are you even kidding me?  I can't believe I wasted my time watching this film.  I'm giving this a 2/10.

American Psycho (2000)

Look at this blog post. The font is Times New Roman, set by Google Chrome's advanced settings.  It is an easily readable font in a decent size.  The background is pink, dainty and feminine.  It is exquisite.  My god, it even has a timestamp.

That is one of the few things Patrick Bateman cares about.  He notices that he is human in every way, except he believes he is void of most emotion.  However, he does have emotion. He has greed, rage, and in the end, panic. What he lacks is empathy.  Bateman is a textbook case of psychopathy (or what we would call a sociopath).

Bateman is trapped in the sterile, materialistic world of the yuppies in the 1980's.  The only thing they do is make reservations for various restaurants, and party in nightclubs. Their lives are shallow and meaningless, and Bateman cannot cope in this environment.  His desire to kill and destroy becomes stronger and he eventually becomes careless.  Although, there are few things hotter than seeing him run butt naked down a hallway brandishing a chainsaw.

Even after confessing to all these murders, no one cares.  He goes to one of his victim's homes, and it has been scrubbed clean and being shown to potential tenants.  No one cares if someone died there, they just want to own the beautiful apartment in a great location. Again, Bateman cannot escape the cold cleanliness of his world.  He gets no rush from the killings.  He received no catharsis from confessing.  Nothing changed.  Nobody will miss the victims, and no one acknowledges the murders.  And we are left feeling as empty as Bateman does.  This film receives a 6/10.

The Bank Dick (1940)

Today's film is the equivalent of a Three Stooges movie with hardly any violence.  It accomplishes this by being a slapstick comedy (short of slapping each other all the time) and having similar puns and gags throughout. Also, there is not really a plot. And Shemp's in it too!

So Souse (with an apostrophe on the e because that's important) drinks a lot, then directs a film because the real director is too drunk. He then accidentally catches a bank robber and is hired as a "bank dick" to guard the bank. Thus the first part of the plot is forgotten.  However it is very quickly remembered at the end.

When the bank inspector gets "sick", Souse calls in his doctor friend. He gives him a bottle of pills which are actually ping pong balls and tells him to take them. The inspector mentions he has a daughter and Souse says, "I like children...girl children, between 18-20".

The acting is terrible, but they do have good comedic timing. Especially when Souse punches that guy in the face and he crashes through the window because he lied about the stocks.  It's a very visually comical movie. I will give it a 5.5/10.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

This movie was spectacularly creepy. First, it opens on the narrator's death scene, so you know it can't bode well for him. Sometimes throughout the movie, I thought, "I wonder if he's going to die now, but probably not, not until the end of the movie."  I was upset by the lack of blood. He was shot at three times. There was no blood on his clothes, and no blood in the water when he fell in. I'm missing the blood here.

This is Norma Desmond, played by Gloria Swanson, a former silent movie actress.  I like how they got someone who actually starred in silent films to play a silent film star. This kind of makes her an expert on the whole thing.  At times, Norma is manipulative and over-dramatic, but mostly I feel sorry for her. She is trying so hard to hold onto her past as a well-loved star.  When the technology of film changed, she was left behind. She never moved to talking pictures and faded into obscurity. She still believes that she's well-loved and famous, and it doesn't help that Max, her butler, is feeding her delusion. He even writes her fake fan mail so she has someone to write to. Her story reminds me of the beginning of "Sorrow" by Pink Floyd:

He's haunted by the memory of a lost paradise

In his youth or a dream, he can't be precise

He's chained forever to a world that's departed

It's not enough, It's not enough

Let's talk about Joe, the broke screenwriter. He sneaks his car onto her property to hide it from the repo men. It is fate that he met her and decided to help edit her crazy long silent film about Salome.  In no time at all Norma becomes his sugar momma and he gets all sorts of nice clothes and trinkets. It helps that he is really good looking.  She throws a New Year's Party for just the two of them complete with cake and musicians, and it is incredibly creepy.  Eventually he decides to leave and have a normal life as a screenwriter once more.  Staying with her for the money was nice for the time being, but he doesn't love her.  Also she is crazy.

There are several meta moments in this movie.  For example, Joe and Norma watch her old films in the living room.  They are actually watching Gloria Swanson's silent films.  So we are watching Norma's films with Norma really in it while we watch Norma watching the films.  In another scene, Betty is criticizing Joe's writing, saying he doesn't need all this psychological stuff about being in the killer's mind.  Joe likes that kind of stuff.  However, we know that Norma has severe psychological issues and will eventually kill him.  So meta I can barely handle it.

Then Norma completely loses her mind when Joe tries to leave for good.  That's when she finally kills him. So the police and reporters show up, and for the first time in years, she sees cameras focused on her.  She dresses in her Salome costume and goes downstairs to greet the cameras.  The police encourage her as they want her to go downstairs so they can arrest her and take her to jail.  But all Norma cares about is all the attention she's getting and smiling for the cameras.  This is all she's ever wanted, and she finally got it.  I'm giving this movie a 10/10 for being one of the best films I've seen all year.

His Girl Friday (1940)

Today's film is His Girl Friday. It's...okay.  It's not great nor groundbreaking. If it were a paper written in class, the teacher would put a smile face sticker with the words "good effort" on it.

 

Rosalind Russell was great as Hildy, but what did they dress her in? All the stripes go every which way! Whoever designed this outfit should be ashamed of themselves.

 

 

So basically what happens is Hildy marches into her ex-husband's office to announce she's marrying a lame insurance salesman and quitting her job.  Hildy and her ex-husband both work for the newspaper. But as a case breaks out surrounding a condemned man and an upcoming election, we slowly realize that Hildy and her ex, Walter, are exactly alike. They have the same drive and same personality. Normally we assume that opposites attract, but in this case alike attracted. That's probably why she became so irritated with him.

 

I knew she wasn't really going to go away with Bruce the insurance agent.  Especially when I heard they were going to live with his mother.  If any man every asks you to move in with his mother, you run.  Run away as far as you can.

 

Cary Grant was okay in this movie. I kind of feel like this is the same character he played in The Philadelphia Story, only he's in a different environment.

 

When I watched this, I had to turn the subtitles on, because they talk way too fast.  It was the only way I could understand what they were saying. I feel I missed out on most of the jokes because they were talking so fast. One of the main parts of comedy is timing, and certainly no one in this movie had that. I'm going to give this film a 5/10.

Repulsion (1965)

The first half is like so boring. Seeing a blonde girl walk around while jazz music plays is not how character development works.  Then I started to realize that she doesn't like men.  She really does not like men.  It doesn't help that her sister/roommate is dating a married man.

Her sister goes off with her boyfriend on vacation, leaving Carole, the blonde girl, at home.  She only has to do two things: go to work as normal, and drop off the rent money.  She fails at doing both.  Eventually she locks herself in the apartment and breaks down.

Question: Is the cracking of the walls supposed to represent the cracking of her fragile psyche? Because that is just way too literal a way to emphasize this. I did not like this at all. 

It's just a crack in the sidewalk. The director allows your
dirty mind to figure out what she's really looking at.

This film stands out as it portrays a character with mental illness from their point of view. We can tell she has suffered some form of abuse as she is untrusting, even afraid of all men, even ones who care about her.  This is confirmed by the photo at the end of her as a child glaring in quiet rage at her father.  I will give this film a 6/10.