Movies I Have Seen Lately

[The Baron]

Saw a Takashi Miike picture called The Great Yokai War. "Yokai" is a Japanese term for monsters from folklore, as opposed to the more familiar kaiju. It's a kids' picture, about a young boy from Tokyo sent out to live in the countryside with his older sister and his intermittently senile grandfather. When a vengeful spirit appears, the boy gets caught up in a war between warring groups of yokai and must find his courage to become the "Kirin Rider", the hero who will set everything to rights. It's not a bad picture - nothing deep, but an amusing story. Some of the yokai are really trippy, Japanese folklore can get pretty "out there", apparently.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

"...the dum-de-dum-dum part..."

Now all I can hear in my mind's ear is the theme from Dragnet. 

[Richard Willis]

JD DeLuzio said:

Speaking of Mansters, I re-watched Matinee for the first time in many years. It's one of the underrated films of the early 90s, maybe not a cinematic masterpiece but a great deal of fun.

(Mant, if you've not seen it, is the film-within-a-film and, of course, it's hilariously terrible).

I just watched Matinee for the first time. I second the recommendation.

[Luke Blanchard]

Watching the movie again I found the theme also appears in the Barry version in the casino scene, in the airport sequence, when he's driving to Miss Tara's, when Miss Tara opens the door, and over the final credits.

The brassy part appears in the airport sequence in a chorus position. It may be Maurice Binder cut-and-paste it into its opening position in the credits.

The dum-de-dum-dum theme appears twice in the river fight sequence otherwise orchestrated, before and at the end.

"Underneath the Mango Tree" is briefly heard instrumentally at the end of the scene where Bond meets Leiter and appears in the background music after Bond and Quarrel land on the island as Quarrel takes a drink, as a lead-in to Honey's singing.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE: I'll save my comments for Cap's discussion (which should be up next). 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

THEY (1974): "A group of campers in the Canadian wilderness begins to hear strange reports over their radio. Tales of plague spreading across the Earth, sightings of bizarre beings as well as planes and cars malfunctioning fills the airwaves. Terrified by what they've been listening to, the campers decide to barricade themselves at their cabin in order to face the danger."

That's a pretty good description of what most of the movie is like. There are five campers, four guys and a girl. One of the guys is the girl's brother. Early on, he suggests to his sister that needs to find a man and "mother up some kids." (I can tell that's going to be a catchphrase around here for a while.) One the guys, the intellectual of the group, looks like Elton John. First, one guy bugs out and steals their plane. Then the brother takes the snowmobile to find help. (The nearest town is 60 miles away.) After two days he has not returned and the other three are running out of food. They decide to walk the 60 miles, overland, through snow, rather than starve.

Twelve minutes from the end of the film, Elton gives his theory of what has happened. 2000 years ago, the orbit of the planet Mars brought it in close proximity to Earth, which devastated both planets. Elton cites "proof" from the Bible as well as the fiction of Jules Verne. The Martians abandoned their planet and have been living beneath the surface of the Earth all this time, so Earth is experiencing an alien invasion, but from underground not outer space. 

The girl falls asleep and when she wakes up she is alone. She continues her trek to the nearest town and finds one of her friends frozen to death along the way. She comes across a railroad track and follows it into town. When she gets there, she finds Elton but doesn't say a word to him (such as, "Why'd you desert me, @$$hole?"). The town is deserted. Wordlessly, they hold hands and walk across a snow-covered field.

Here is where the film gets "artsy" like 2001. The screen goes white, and suddenly they are two kids wearing loincloths walking across a field of grass on a summer's day. Then the screen changes again and they are their adult self, still holding hands on a summer day and shot from behind, and they are buck nekkid. THE END.

The movie also has a diverse, but but weird, soundtrack. For example, the song playing during the opening credits is the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but played on some kind of electronic synthesizer. the guy who starred in it also wrote and directed. Apparently, the film is a.k.a. Invasion from Inner Earth and Hell Fire. 

[Tracy of Moon-T]

As the guy who stole the plane said, "I don't like it." Well, dude, me either. 

Jeff of Earth-J said:

THEY (1974): "A group of campers in the Canadian wilderness begins to hear strange reports over their radio. Tales of plague spreading across the Earth, sightings of bizarre beings as well as planes and cars malfunctioning fills the airwaves. Terrified by what they've been listening to, the campers decide to barricade themselves at their cabin in order to face the danger."

That's a pretty good description of what most of the movie is like. There are five campers, four guys and a girl. One of the guys is the girl's brother. Early on, he suggests to his sister that needs to find a man and "mother up some kids." (I can tell that's going to be a catchphrase around here for a while.) One the guys, the intellectual of the group, looks like Elton John. First, one guy bugs out and steals their plane. Then the brother takes the snowmobile to find help. (The nearest town is 60 miles away.) After two days he has not returned and the other three are running out of food. They decide to walk the 60 miles, overland, through snow, rather than starve.

Twelve minutes from the end of the film, Elton gives his theory of what has happened. 2000 years ago, the orbit of the planet Mars brought it in close proximity to Earth, which devastated both planets. Elton cites "proof" from the Bible as well as the fiction of Jules Verne. The Martians abandoned their planet and have been living beneath the surface of the Earth all this time, so Earth is experiencing an alien invasion, but from underground not outer space. 

The girl falls asleep and when she wakes up she is alone. She continues her trek to the nearest town and finds one of her friends frozen to death along the way. She comes across a railroad track and follows it into town. When she gets there, she finds Elton but doesn't say a word to him (such as, "Why'd you desert me, @$$hole?"). The town is deserted. Wordlessly, they hold hands and walk across a snow-covered field.

Here is where the film gets "artsy" like 2001. The screen goes white, and suddenly they are two kids wearing loincloths walking across a field of grass on a summer's day. Then the screen changes again and they are their adult self, still holding hands on a summer day and shot from behind, and they are buck nekkid. THE END.

The movie also has a diverse, but but weird, soundtrack. For example, the song playing during the opening credits is the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but played on some kind of electronic synthesizer. the guy who starred in it also wrote and directed. Apparently, the film is a.k.a. Invasion from Inner Earth and Hell Fire. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE: I'll save my comments for Cap's discussion. 

GOLDFINGER: Ditto.

[JD DeLuzio]

Scarlet Street (1945): Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea in a Noir-cum-Morality Tale with a side order of period misogyny, nicely shot on a budget by Fritz Lang. It is based on the novel Chienne by Georges de La Fouchardière. Good overall. Pacing is uneven; the ending, in particular, drags.

Zabriskie Point (1970): A strange piece of the era, Michelangelo Antonioni post-Blow-Up feature has Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin and Rod Taylor in a story about the interrelated lives of two young people and an executive. Frechette is an activist who's "willing to die, but not of boredom." The first half features campus politics and a lot of shots of traffic and billboards. These elements, which probably accounted for some of the negative reviews when it came out, now hold a certain fascination, as footage of a vanished world. The campus radicals are played by members of an experimental theatre group and (briefly) Harrison Ford. An hour in our hero, who steals a private plane after being implicated in the death of a cop during a protest rally, and our heroine, en route to see her new boss in Phoenix, spend a great deal of time getting to know each other in Death Valley and have psychedelic sex. And then....

Frechette and Halprin are both strong, especially for people with little acting experience, but their film careers would be short-lived. Halprin's first appearance was as herself in the hippie documentary Revolution (1968). She would make one other movie before marrying (and then divorcing) Dennis Hopper and becoming a pioneering therapist and educator. Frechette became part of a commune, was arrested for armed robbery, and died in an apparent weightlifting accident in prison.

There's a "Where are They Now?"

The film also features a memorable soundtrack, with contributions from the Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, and (especially) Pink Floyd.

[Richard Willis]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

Twelve minutes from the end of the film, Elton gives his theory of what has happened. 2000 years ago, the orbit of the planet Mars brought it in close proximity to Earth, which devastated both planets. Elton cites "proof" from the Bible as well as the fiction of Jules Verne.

The Romans kept detailed records. They probably would have written this down.

The Martians abandoned their planet and have been living beneath the surface of the Earth all this time, so Earth is experiencing an alien invasion, but from underground not outer space. 

This sounds like the “warlords” in THUNDER Agents.

JD DeLuzio said:

Scarlet Street (1945): Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea in a Noir-cum-Morality Tale with a side order of period misogyny, nicely shot on a budget by Fritz Lang. It is based on the novel Chienne by Georges de La Fouchardière. Good overall. Pacing is uneven; the ending, in particular, drags.

Fritz Lang made this movie in reaction/retaliation to what the studio forced him to do with his earlier adaptation of the same source, The Woman in the Window (1944). He used the same basic structure and the same actors to make Scarlet Street (1945). They forced him to tack on an ending to The Woman in the Window that established the whole thing as just a bad dream. I hate the first movie and really like his remake.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

They probably would have written this down.

Ya'd think.

This sounds like the “warlords” in THUNDER Agents.

It does.

THE COLD ROOM (1984): "A British girl is traveling with her estranged father in order to attempt to rebuild their relationship. Shortly after they arrive in East Germany, the girl begins to suffer from strange sensations and mental lapses, where she remembers events from World War II that she could never have experienced herself. Is this a case of mental breakdown, is it possible memories from a past life or is she dealing with a rip in the fabric of time abd she is actually experiencing the events for real?"

The hotel Carla and her father are staying in was a residence above a butcher shop in WWII. The butcher's daughter is (or I should say "was") Christa, and she is harboring a Jewish dissident in a secret "cold room" behind her bedroom in WWII, the same room Carla is staying in in 1984. Carla hears what she thinks is rats behind the wall but, after ripping away some boards behind the wardrobe, finds the Jewish dissident hidden there. Carla keeps shifting back and forth in time with Christa. Also, Christa's father, who does not know about the dissident her daughter is harboring, rapes her. she becomes pregnant, but it's unclear whether her father or her boyfriend is the father. Carla suffers morning sickness and confuses  her own father with Christa's.

It's like a mash-up between Slaughterhouse Five and Dark Shadows. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

UFO: TARGET EARTH: "Under the depths of a small lake located near a small towm, lies a strange and alien spacecraft that is unknown to the town's residents. An electronics expert picks up signals emitted by the spacecraft and begins to investigate the source of these mysterious transmissions. The electronics expert hopes to recruit a group of scientists to aid him in investigating the signals, hoping to discover the secrets contained within the alien ship."

This movie starts with a TV newsman interviewing a series of peopl who thought they had seen, or in some cases been abducted by, a UFO. I'm certain these interviews were genuine because those being interviewed were so sincere. Besides, give the caliber of acting in the film otherwise, I wouldn't expect them to be so convincing. I doubt they even knew they were being filmed for a movie. 

The film is chock-full of half-baked metaphysical claptrap, and I'm certain everyone involved in making thought they were making a real piece of art. The ending in another pseudo-2001. This is the last movie in our 100-movie pack! I feel as if we should receive a No-Prize or something for making it all the way through. We see a lot of these at Half Price Books, but I wonder how many people watched all the movies before unloading them? Not many, I'd wager. Of course, it did take us over ten years to make our way all the way through (including multiple months or even years-long breaks.) I think we should start over, but Tracy wants to buy a different many-movie pack. She gets frustrated with the ones that are merely bad (such as this one), not laughably bad. We'll see.

[PowerBook Pete, the Mad Mod]

I'm with Tracy; get a different movie pack. You may have done the only documentation of the whole pack you've just finished.