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The Dark Side of Porn: Me and My Slaves (2006)
One of the Best Documentary TV Episodes I've Ever Seen.
This one will haunt you.
I went into this completely cold, having watched all the other DS episodes out of curiosity. But this one I have watched several times and I am glad that I downloaded it as I do not see it anywhere available on Youtube.
Rick, the protagonist, is a slave-master, and the show does not flinch in its portrayal of all that entails. There are things that happen that you really will not be expecting. This is not for the faint of heart, I can assure you.
But this is not the reason I come back to it time and again. Rick is simply a really interesting guy. He has had a very tough life, which led to his line of work- and I believe he is sincere in wanting to leave the life. However, I do not know how that is going circa 2023. I hope that he was able to leave the life that he so sorely seemed to want to leave- I hope that he has found a way to make peace within himself.
Mississippi Burning (1988)
Surprisingly bad.
Make no mistake- this is a story that should be told, and retold, and told again. But Alan Parker dropped a major ball on this one.
How could the combo of Parker, Gene Hackman, Frances McDormand etc fail so badly? I had to keep reminding myself- "this is the man who made 'Midnight Express'". It was easy to forget in the bad writing, the ham-handed smashing-together of facts, the cartoonish depictions.
Something like this should never be fictionalized, because it could easily be written off as sensationalism. But o, how real it was. ANd how poorly it was rendered in a master's hands. Everyone's performances were not up to par, though Gene Hackman pretty much owns it as usual. Willem Dafoe was strangely incompetent. Frances McDormand's bad accent (as a southerner I really take umbrage at poor southern accents) left much to be desired.
Everyone was drawn in (forgive the pun) black and white, and it just all felt so sophomoric. I feel like the heavy subject matter blinds people to its poor craftsmanship. I would like to see these events depicted again, but properly, and with all the facts. Because the truth was far uglier than this fictionalized brew could impart.
Spring (2014)
Nope.
I seriously do not understand why this film received such great reviews. I knew absolutely nothing about it other than the fact that it had received some accolades and so went in cold. I was expecting the film to go in one direction, then it veered off....another direction, then it veered off again.....and then by the end I felt like i was watching some kind of rom-com-horror mashup. The humor was misplaced, the calmness of the main character when confronted with something that would make any normal person at least hyperventilate was completely unrealistic, and not once during the entire film did i feel even the slightest thrumming of my pulse. It was pointless eye candy and could hardly be called "original". If this is considered original then this tells me all I need to know about the power of mass opinion. It is much ado about nothing.
Tideland (2005)
Meh.
Nope. Don't get it.
Someone mentioned this film had "balls"....ok.
It seemed as if Gilliam wanted to make his own version of "Freeway" but using, instead of a Little Red Riding Hood archetype, Alice in Wonderland. OK. Promising.
But the film just HANGS wrong. It just doesn't ever feel as funny, or as weird, or as interesting as it should be. The little girl is cute, but a little bit too much of a ham to be believable. As soon as she started talking I could imagine her on stage in "Annie" or something, eating up the scenery. Which is fine, I guess, but it doesn't exactly translate to much of anything. And it certainly doesn't hang well with the obvious comic-book dysfunction she spent her entire life in.
Everything feels like a caricature, and you can't get close to caricatures. Its just a blender of weirdness- the sort of weirdness people seem to grab for in place of inspiration. Some people might see it as inspired, but to me it looks like someone is working too hard to be weird.
The Shrine (2010)
Stiff and Stupid.
Argh. I had read good reviews of this film, along the lines of "BETTER THAN IT HAS TO BE" or something, and I couldn't even finish the whole thing.
I wish it were this easy to just slide off to Eastern Europe (the whipping boy of the cinematic world seems like) on a moment's notice, rent a car (I kept thinking- uh, doesn't this take a little more PLANNING? Getting an international driver's license- visas- shots- the whole bit) and then just roll up into town (if you want to call a bunch of ramshackle shacks, weird fog and a guy slaughtering a pig a town) investigating a disappearance when they should be investigating....uh, bees?
The acting is wooden, and stupid. The protagonist, Carmen, sees visions- which I didn't stick around long enough to get an explanation on- and she is a journalist unhappy with the puff pieces she is enlisted to write. Apparently, she has to write an article on bees, and her boss thinks that's far more interesting than a missing person. Uh huh.
So to rebel, she just HAS to go to Alvania (huh?) which is I guess supposed to be a district in Poland? Or more like Pre-Ceascescu Romania by the looks of it- all long-skirted peasants and somehow charmingly dilapidated buildings through which a little girl drifts dressed like in a fairy tale. Uh huh. Go to any small town in Eastern Europe and I will give you a million dollars if you can find little girls dressed like this. They will all be wearing glittery princess tshirts just like kids everywhere.
And, you know, I must say, can we leave EE alone already? I mean, hasn't the torture porn "Hostel" type films already beaten this land to death? One would think that if you step east past Turkey you are either in danger of falling into a demonic fairytale or getting raped and tortured for kicks.
I'd say more about this film but it isn't worth it. There are so many others worthy of your consideration. This one is just plain poorly made.
Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)
One of the Best.
It is so heartening to come here and see all the fantastic reviews for a film I have been talking about my whole life. I was shocked to come to it again as an adult and nothing had faded for me- the atmosphere, that sense of disquiet, all were completely intact. It is not a perfect film, but coming upon this in your normal diet of bad slasher films, it shines as if it were "Citizen Kane". In fact, I would say that "Jessica" deserves to be known as the "Citizen Kane" of B-grade horror films- and I only call it B grade as a knee-jerk reaction to its lack of cult status. It truly deserves at least an A-. Zohra Lampert in particular blows you away by her complex depiction- she makes everyone around her a little more wooden in comparison. See it- own it- spread the word.
Iconoclast (2010)
A docu made with Windows 98! Edgy! Satin!
One day, in a hundred years, people will realize that "underground" is not synonymous with "quality". As for now though, guys like Boyd Rice rule the weak with his tepid swill of woman- hating, race-baiting, and artsy pretensions stolen from (insert pretty much every Euro art movement here). Ergo Boyd Rice- a guy who believes that rape is the only way to put women "back in their place" (a POV never discussed in this docu), a man who believes that the weak and infirm (read: defective) be disposed of (whose only son is missing a chromosome and will never be able to live on his own, also never discussed in this docu) as well as his views on race (which he eloquently spoke of on Tom Metzger's "Race and Reason", a well-known "white pride" public access show, also not discussed in this docu)...... absolutely nothing is learned of Boyd's real feelings on damn near anything other than pop culture totems like tiki and Tiny Tim. Spread out over two dvds and exhibiting the most ridiculous font-selection and editing style not seen since 1998, its so poorly made and so cheesy that its almost a joke in itself. Did the maker of this docu secretly hate Boyd, and just wanted to present him like a booby with no Deep Thoughts to offer, so how about that record collection? Dunno. I know Boyd Rice isn't as funny as he thinks- his "pranks" consist of throwing bananas at people asleep in hotel rooms- really? You got called an agent provocateur for THAT? Seriously? Fact is, if Boyd Rice had grown up in Alabama surrounded by racists, he would have turned into the swishiest drag queen ever, but no, who grew up in California, so he had to really step outside the box to be DIFFERENT. And that's the whole score, here, folks. In a nutshell. He just likes to make people mad. But, as mentioned before, as to the quality of this depiction, god, its TERRIBLE. TERRIBLE. A 14 year old girl looks like she edited this. And that is insulting to 14 year olds. Goes too long, edits in the worst place possible, and the fonts? THE FONTS. Its like someone have the filmmaker a free set of 30 year old Angelfire style fonts and he just went to TOWN with em. I wish he had never came back.
Anybody who calls this a masterwork, regardless of your feelings for ol' Boyd, needs to watch at least one other film ever, because obviously, they haven't a clue. Seriously? I have seen movies made by high schoolers in a day that had more atmosphere, better editing, and more engaging subjects. In that respect, Boyd and whatssisface deserve each other.
HAIL SATIN!
WNUF Halloween Special (2013)
Maybe Its Just Because I am a child of the eighties....
I can't believe more people aren't praising this film. Its great, silly fun, doesn't work as a horror film that well, but its still entertaining and even hilarious at times. The commercials....someone was complaining about the commercials, I guess you had to be around at that time in some podunk town to understand how brilliant of a recreation this is. Somebody knows that time really well. The music, even the fonts, were all ridiculously of their time. This is the kind of local programming that really doesn't exist much at all (if at all) anymore. I felt like i was watching Channel 36 from Atlanta waiting for "Movie Macabre" to come on. They could have amped up the scares a bit, made it really spooky, but i still think this is one of the more brilliant takes on the whole "found footage" bit. Certainly the most humorous. I have to think this film was loads of fun to make.
See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006)
Meh.
I am surprised that this series got so many positive reviews. Perhaps I am completely spoiled by Emlyn Williams' book "Beyond Belief", which is the definitive book on the case, written in the late sixties. It is profoundly eerie, giving you a sense of "being there" that this series completely seems to ignore. It feels like a TV movie, with an almost total lack of real atmosphere. And if ANY case deserves to scare you, or has the power to, this one does. Brady and Hindley were truly, and I believe happily, evil. They exulted in it. The actor playing Brady could have been used to much greater effect, and is the only one in the film that really delivers. The period production lacks HORRIBLY- this is comparable to some VH-1 ham-handed treatment of the sixties where everyone is wearing headbands and peace signs. Things like this give a film heft, gravity, and atmosphere. And this has none, in my opinion.