Change Your Image
AlonzoQuijana
Reviews
The Hatred (2017)
So Bad It's Mildly Enjoyable
What a mess.
Instead of using flashbacks, letting the viewer tease out the mystery, the writers just plop it all out in the first 20-minutes. It's 1968, on an orchard in what is implied to be upstate New York (where oranges grow in an inexplicably arid, sun drenched landscape). A super controlling, former father and Hitler aide (or maybe concentration camp "doctor" as is hinted later), dominates his teen daughter and doormat wife. His chief hobbies: taxidermy (mostly of rodents), safekeeping Nazi memorabilia in the basement of the farmhouse, and spraying for pests, while wearing a leather trench coat and World War One era gas mask (producers hoping for a franchise character?). A delivery of a mysterious package containing an iconic amulet, and a letter from a Hitler aide (Hitler is apparently still alive in 1968) gets the movie off and running.
Fast forward to today. Four vapid, boy-chasing, wine swilling students travel to the farm house to baby sit the grade school daughter of their college professor (David Naughton!). We later learn, in what may be a scripting goof, that the professor, his wife and the rather annoying child moved in to the farm house earlier that day. But, for no apparent reason they are now, at mid-morning, headed off on a trip, entrusting the little girl to the air-head students for a week.
We then get:
--20 to 30 minutes of incessant chatter from the girls, fueled by a raid on the household wine supply.
--Later: more wine at a lunch-time picnic, some snooping about the barn and later the house, prying into file boxes and what ever else is stored in the basement and in a "forbidden" sewing room.
--Next: wine in the living room, and the introduction of a medical sub-plot which is mostly unrelated, petering out after a minute or two.
--Then the much predicted thunderstorm strikes and a festival of mayhem and haunted house cliches ensue! Here there are a few good jump scares, but that's about it. The end is unsatisfactory in the extreme.
I had fun mentally cataloging all the unanswered questions and plot plight failures. I love bad movies. But if you are serious about haunted house movies, look elsewhere.
Charlie's Angels: Angels in Chains (1976)
Cheesy, trashy fun!
Deliciously cheesy 1970s T&A television! Was shrieking with laughter during the gratuitous strip search / shower scene and the delousing spray treatment by prison guard "Maxine." And all the southern prison clichés were hauled out: corrupt southern sheriff, the leering, inbred-looking deputy, the Dukes of Hazard - like car chase, the work farm and the hints of cell block lesbianism. Better still, the production values: the cheap interior sets, and the California exteriors (the episode was set in fictitious Pine Parish, Louisiana, but the browned hills and dust betray the S. California back lot.) And then the cocktail dresses for the cat house. Great fun! A must see classic of 1970s television.
The Black Dahlia (2006)
Style Over Substance
I long for the days of Jack Warner whose studio could produce densely plotted 90-minute film noirs that were not only atmospheric but told an engaging, entertaining and, above all, comprehensible story. The characters were well drawn, plot points clear, the writing crisp and energetic. There was substance and style. And always a hero, flawed as he may be. Alas, like so much in our culture today the genre has been debased and we find ourselves with the over-stylized, zero-substance, slightly smutty, voyeuristic, almost campy Black Dahlia.
The disappointments in this film are numerous. Most flawed is the writing. It's as if an over- eager film student pasted together random paragraphs from every sixth or seventh page of the James Elmore book padded by long scenes that did not advance the plot or were there just to shock, and completely over-the-top, camp moments. (Guilty pleasure: Fiona Shaw's drunkologues as Mama Linscott). The writing is at times almost telegraphic and digital at other times turgid and flabby. It screams for a competent editor.
And then there is the sound. Why is it that as sound technology has advanced, dialog becomes harder and harder to understand. I have perfect hearing and the theatre has the latest and greatest acoustics and speakers, but too many of the lines were just muffled. The net effect of the choppy writing and sound was that audience members were constantly turning to each other and asking "What happened?" "He said what?" "Did she sayÂ…?"
That said, the sets, costumes and mid-century L.A. ambiance are gorgeous. De Palma gets this right. But all visuals, no plot make for thin gruel.
As for the cast, Josh Hartnett (Bucky) was wildly miscast. He's way too young, fresh-faced and "pretty" for his role as boxer-turned cop – a cross between an A&F model and an Eagle Scout. Aaron Eckhart, who plays the older partner Lee Blanchard is one-dimensional and not very convincing in his obsessions and weaknesses. But Kudos to Mia Kirshner who delivers a memorable performance as the needy, too-willing-to-please Elizabeth Short in the smarmy film-within-a-film. And special mention to Shaw who deliciously camps it up as the Crawfordesque matriarch of the dysfunctional clan Linscott.
Lansdown (2001)
Unsatisfying, but strangely engaging
This is a very minimalistic movie. Spare dialog. Simple sets and locations. Bare bones plot. Undeveloped characters. It left me unsatisfied and feeling a little cheated. Yet, the lack of detail was somehow engaging -- I felt as if I had to constantly fill in the blanks, especially the characters' motivations, with my own back story, like a cinematic paint-by-numbers. I have to go back to high school lit for this, but the motiveless characters reminded me of something out of Camus -- maybe the Stranger. The austerity of this film, and certainly the running jokes about golf tips, the big softball game and "my day at work," are good metaphors for the banality and meaninglessness of modern life. All in all, refreshingly different than the usual overly plotted, visually dense concoctions turned out by bigger-budget producers.