Change Your Image
ss336
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
Hell Ride (2008)
This is an excellent Tarantino-style movie
I think I'll remember most of the scenes in this movie. It was extremely memorable. It was also skillful and clever. However, I'm surprised by all of the negative feedback towards it. I can only imagine that the reason it wasn't appreciated was that it's a Tarantino-style movie, and most people, to this day, don't 'get' Tarantino.
To put it simply, Tarantino established a movie genre of his own, by making **movies about other movies**. Every scene references another, in a completely different movie. All of his references are from popular culture. The problem is that most people don't have even 5% of his movie knowledge, and are unsympathetic and lack understanding regarding his personal psychological issues, which also, always, find expression in his movies.
While this movie wasn't directed by Tarantino, it's still firmly positioned in, and faithful to, the Tarantino style. For example, the scene where Leonor Varela tries to seduce the Pistolero Presidente across a snooker table, in a hallway, while giving him 'prophecies'. This is basically an allusion to a scene in the original Conan the Barbarian, but if you weren't aware of this context it would just strike you as lascivious, pointless lewdness (which, incidentally, is a popular myth or urban legend in its own right, but that's another matter)...
What is this movie about? Again, if you watch this movie and expect to find things from the real world as opposed to a collection of homages and references to the yesteryear's classic cinema, you'll be disappointed. But if you watch it as it was intended - a piece of popular, entertaining art - you'll get the picture. It belongs to the Alexandre Dumas camp of enlightened liberty of consciousness. In short, it's about the romance of freedom. Even down to the arrow-in-the-chest scene, the characters are bandits cast in an exotic frame a la Dumas... I won't spoil it but you will need to have done some reading and/or movie watching before approaching this one.
The English Harem (2005)
Unsubtle propaganda
How do you make polygamy within Islamic relationships in Britain appear socially acceptable? Easy. Art Malik.
Or so it should be... However, it doesn't work like that. This movie is about as subtle as a blow from a sledgehammer. It proceeds on the assumption that all it would take to make the abhorrent appear palatable is for an Oriental-looking gentleman, evidently monied, with an upper- class English accent, to open doors for ladies at the right moment.
It also tries to pull off some neat tricks, including having the working classes quaffing champagne at the gentrification of London, and the demolition of a housing block! It all seems to work out. It turns out, all the viewer needs to be 'educated' about is that everyone who resisted the encroachment of the 'new' ways (polygamy, being forced out of one's own neighbourhood, etc.) is simply backward, and needs to accept the Brave New World.
Bravo, Art Malik! Supremely patronising, politicised nonsense.
La ronde de l'amour (1985)
The most stylish and tasteful movie of its kind, ever made (adult, soft entertainment)
This movie is at the pinnacle of a genre produced by an industry before it lost its genuine joie de vivre. Quite simply, the generic, boring, blonde actress type usually found in this type of movie doesn't feature. The actresses in this one are unique, exquisite physical specimens representing the very best of the European and Asian worlds. Usually, in this type of movie one finds only one racial type, and the actresses involved are blessed much more by surgical enhancements and the treadmill than by genetics. That's definitely not the case with this movie. They are clearly NATURAL beauties of the highest calibre, both in body and in the face. What's more, they genuinely appear to be having fun.
There is an element of humour, within acceptable limits. The movie as a whole is highly watchable, mesmerising and stylish. This really is such a breath of fresh air. The locations are stunning. The sets are genuinely elegant and sumptuous. There is such attention to detail, you will note the real Dom Perignon labels on the champagne bottles. A great deal of attention was paid to the actresses' clothing. None of it looks cheap or made for cheap thrills or some cheap effect. All of it is tremendously exciting. The lace looks like real lace. The fur coats look real as well. And there are some splendid 80s fashions on display. The director clearly had an acute sense of what's important and what the elements of visual appeal actually are. The undergarment becomes a centrepiece of many exciting, erotic scenes. Well worth watching - they don't come better than this, and in these days where there is longer any room for creative judgment it's safe to say they will never be made to this standard ever again. 10 out of 10.
A Grande Arte (1991)
An exceptionally brilliant movie
This is a true masterpiece. One that brings together Greco-Roman culture, traditionalism vs modernism and the struggle of indigenous cultures against global capitalism, mirrors as mystical adjuncts to mundane life, future shock and so much more...
The opening scene: the camera shows a woman in the window of a house. The camera moves back and we see that the house is being demolished by bulldozers. The woman is crying hysterically, and her face is full of anguish.. or is that a state of spiritual ecstasy? We can't easily tell the difference, as the Knieper music score modulates with a Mishima-like nervousnous. The camera moves up and higher, and we see the poor woman's home is an insignificant sacrifice in the cause of the towering skyscrapers and ultra-modern urban business landscape. The changing face of Brazil..
The photographer main character is a witness, who occasionally, reluctantly 'steps out of the frame' and takes part in the great collision of colour and experience of Brazilian life, mostly focussing on the theme of 'evading death', which is said to be a 'male illusion' but which is intimately connected to survival - from the street junkies and prostitutes to the 'train surfer' youths he seeks out.
Our encounter with Greek themes of manliness and justice and, most of all, tragedy and revenge, comes when the main character photographs an attempted robbery and a street 'duel' with knives that leaves 2 people dead at the hands of a man who appears to be of substance, and who is known to us only as 'Hermes' - the name of a Greek god and a clear allusion to Dumas's Three Musketeers. Debt is a theme 'we do like the Greeks and the Romans', 'you owe me', 'my debt is paid', 'I have come to pay my debt', masculinity is another (the disgust felt towards a man who murders women and marks their faces), and also revenge - blood for blood.
The mirror - used as a training tool when training with a knife, but behind the mirror a young woman observes disapprovingly. She is us, or a part of ourselves, that has ceased to be sensation-seeking witness and has taken an active stake in the horrible nitty-gritty of the world of real life and flesh. We observe much as she does, except from behind the camera..
There is also karma - a fat rapist with a penchant for stabbing people downwards in the heart meets the same fate, the last words he hears being unintentionally a version of the torrid threats he himself used to issue. All along, there is the nervousness, the fear, the theme of being outside or inside, always reminding us of the smashing of the house and its walls of safety. After our hero exacts revenge for the sake of his friend, he feels himself a total and complete outsider, and his photography habits change so that he photographs the mundane human experience of love between a man and a woman. No longer does he photograph the human juggling with imminent death: he has experienced that as an insider but has changed. And yet he can't go back...
At the end, Hermes is of course the protector of travellers but the hero becomes an unwilling nomad who really seeks stability and married life, but can no longer have it. Like Hermes himself, who wants to return to his own country... Very moving, and brilliant.
The Last Thakur (2008)
A must-see movie
This is an awesome movie. All of the nonsense and kitschness of Indian cinema is absent in this Bangladeshi masterpiece: no songs, no OTT costumes and no ridiculous love themes. It owes a lot to the old Kurosawa movies Sanjuro and Yojimbo, from which it draws considerable inspiration. The use of the tea house as a plot device holding the narrative together is just short of genius, and very tasteful, reminding one of the old-time classics of Indian cinema and bringing a sense of the culture of the place.
Unfortunately certain things, probably best left to the imagination, are left unclear by the end of the movie. However, the Tao is clearly a central theme: one of the main protagonists asks a tea boy whether he is a truly evil man, and clearly the viewer is meant to consider this difficult question. It also deals with the difficult matter of the modernisation of south Asia, and handles the conflict between traditionalism and modernisation quite skilfully. Tradition and modernity blend together, and by the end one has the impression that the old ways to a considerable extent underpin the forces behind what appears to be new, unwelcome and alien.
This movie will stand the test of time much better than the expensive and overly self-conscious pseudo-epics such as Jodhaa Akbar, Asoka and Kshatriya. My one criticism is that it does seem to be rather clumsy when dealing with Hindu-Muslim tension, and turns out being rather one-sided, exalting one side rather unrealistically. Or perhaps this is better seen as a class war than a religious tension: the Thakur lord versus the Muslim man of the people. The director leaves this distinction up to the viewer to a limited extent.
Watch the Shadows Dance (1988)
Hilarious
This is a very entertaining film. The paranoid, defensive hero of the movie is shown to have serious underlying psychological defects, but somehow his sexual insecurities and strange delusions coupled with a predisposition to always be ready to inflict violence are held up to the light as shining examples of moral conduct.
The hero has a profound rage and hatred towards his romantic rival who happens to be a drug dealer, and he reacts violently whenever they meet. In his mind, he imagines his martial arts teacher (!?), his love rival and his girlfriend in his own living quarters, in a drug-fuelled sexual orgy. On account of such dark thoughts, he is unable to sleep. This and other instances of fantasy blending with reality (especially at the end of the film, where multiple endings are shown and in which the girlfriend is subjected to various demises and the student and teacher have several "final confrontations") turn the whole film into a particularly insightful and compelling piece of psychological drama. This is quite inconsistent with the quality of other parts of the film. For instance, most of the actors' performances are weak bordering on pathetic, and there are strange inconsistencies in the plot devices regarding the attitudes to drugs (i.e. the girlfriend is suggested to have been a drug user at some point, but she remains one of the "in" crowd despite that the drug dealer is universally shunned socially on account of having black, slicked-back hair).
The adults of the film both male and female are shown as commandeering and competent. Only the kids have overt insecurities. However, there are strange irreconcilable behaviours at times. For instance, the martial arts teacher is said to be an illicit drug user because he has PTSD on account of being a war veteran, and when his secret is accidentally discovered he inexplicably steps up his deviant behaviour several notches by threatening to kill a schoolgirl, then violently killing his dealer, and then trying to kill his own best student. He chooses these actions instead of seeking out help, which seems odd within the film because he's shown to be a competent, assertive character who would probably be able to kick any drug habit.. It's all part of the strange 1980s fascination and moralising about drugs. Reefer madness..
All-in-all, this is a fascinating film and well worth seeing for a trip back into the 1980s, with the ninja preoccupation of that period, and its skillful depiction of adolescent angst. There's a cheesy moment for everyone to enjoy! However, it is not in the same class at classic 80s flicks such as Big Trouble in Little China or Death Machines, so having the wrong expectations it may disappoint. 6 out of 10.