Film Review: Brazilian Star Wars/Os Trapalhões na Guerra dos Planetas (1978, dir. Adriano Stuart)

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Did you like The Passion Of The Christ (2004), but felt it needed slapstick comedy to go along with its overuse of slow motion? Well don’t worry, cause Brazilian Star Wars has got your back. Just like Turkish Star Trek is actually an entry in a different series of movies, this is one in a series of films that featured a Brazilian comedy troupe called The Tramps. They basically run around acting like silent comedians. In fact, the movie has little dialog in it. They must have thought it would be fun to stick them into Star Wars cause I guess sticking them into Planet Of The Apes went over so well in 1976.

The movie opens up exactly like Star Wars. By that, I mean a car chase.

Like almost every scene in this movie, it seems to go on forever. Oh, and it starts with the slow motion right off the bat like these two shots.

It turns out the Tramps were being chased because one of them fooled around with a girl who was already with someone. All you need to know is that this means they are stuck camping out in the middle of nowhere. But before Star Wars can enter into their lives, we need some more comedy. Enter the turtle with a candle on it’s back.

This leads to a guy being set on fire.

And don’t let the comedic opportunity of a fire extinguisher and a black member of the Tramps go to waste!

Now comes Star Wars.

But first, let’s get a good look at each Tramp.

Now it’s time to meet this movie’s Luke Skywalker.

Or Flik. I don’t care. I’ll just call him Hunk Skywalker. He’s there to tell them he needs their help to retrieve half of the brain computer. It is being held by Zuco AKA Darth Vader. He offers to pay them their weight in gold. So of course they agree and go to board the ship. Then Chewbacca pops up in the entrance. This is when this film introduces us to another annoying thing it will do. They see Chewbacca, run away, then the footage is reversed, and they go into the ship. They will also sometimes simply repeat a shot several times for…comedy? Regardless, here’s Chewbacca.

Now we go to Hunk Skywalker’s planet and a battle ensues that goes on forever with so much slow motion.

All that’s important here is that Zuco kidnaps this movie’s Princess Leia.

After one of the sand people blows up a hut, we get introduced to the multi-colored ladies.

I guess the movie thought it needed to add some women in because otherwise it was too much of a sausage fest. That, and maybe this already colorful movie needed even more color. I don’t know, they serve about as much purpose as the Tramps in this movie. After a little travel we come to Brazilian Star Wars’ version of the bar scene. It’s a disco!

Here’s another scene that goes on for EVER!!! Actually I think it comes out to about 10-14 minutes of the movie. Dancing, fighting, and Hunk Skywalker talking to a guy named Igor about where to find Zuco. Eventually this nonsense comes to an end. Then just in case we weren’t sure this was the 1970’s.

Yellow tramp gets hungry and refuses to just eat a pill. He goes off and cracks open a giant egg.

And I’m pretty sure that’s what the Phoenix would have looked like if the Tramps were in Harry Potter.

Then Yellow Tramp spots Zuco and his soldiers which means more pointless scenes. They wind up underground.

After Brazilian Farrah Fawcett looks around, they run into a giant spider.

Oh, no!

Eventually, they make their way out. Too bad the spider didn’t get them so we could be spared this Hunk Skywalker dream.

Do I even need to tell you that’s all in slow motion? Then we get a flashback to the car chase at the beginning of the film since it’s crucial we be reminded of that.

After some talking and this…

they go to make an exchange with Zuco. Their half of the brain computer for the princess. This doesn’t go well. They make the exchange but then the princess takes off a mask and it’s this.

But at least this scene gives us a line that should be immortalized right along side “Use the force”.

Apparently, that meant hanging them over spikes.

They didn’t count on Yellow Tramp to be in the box instead of the brain computer. This leads to another scene that goes on forever.

Eventually this comes to an end and they take Zuco’s men prisoner.

After putting the brain computer back together almost everything is fixed like this city emerging from who knows where. At least I think it’s a city.

Now Hunk Skywalker finally asks Zuco where his princess is. Turns out making that fake mask for the exchange killed her in the process. Isn’t that nice. Yellow Tramp decides he is going to stay with the Yellow Lady, but there’s one problem. Turns out when the princess dies, her older sister takes over as princess.

After the movie gives us false hope…

they wake up back home. At first they think it was a dream, but there’s damage from where the spaceship landed. Then Hunk Skywalker flies by and not only is their Jeep full of gold, but the Jeep itself is gold. The End!

I actually watched this for the first time a couple of years ago and liked it. I didn’t like it this time. The scenes really do go on way too long with way too much slow motion. The comedy is unfunny to say the least. This might be fun for a little kid, but for everyone else, it just means we should all be saying “Now everyone will die the primitive way.”

Sci-Fi Film Review: Warriors of The Year 2072 (dir by Lucio Fulci)

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before The Hunger Games…

Before The Purge…

There was…oh wait, does this sound familiar? Did you just read those two lines and get hit by a sudden feeling of déjà vu? Well, that might be because I used those exact same lines to start my review of the 1965 Italian sci-fi film, The Tenth Victim.

They’re still applicable for this review though. In many ways, the 1984 film Warriors of the Year 2072 (a.k.a. The New Gladiators) is a loose remake of The Tenth Victim. (I imagine some critics would say it’s more of a rip-off than a remake. What you label it will probably depend on how much tolerance you have for Italian exploitation films in general.) Of course, Warriors of the Year 2072 draws inspiration from more than just The Tenth Victim. A Clockwork Orange, Escape From New York, the Mad Max films, Blade Runner; bits and pieces from all of them show up here.

Even if you didn’t already know it, you might be able to guess that this film was directed by Lucio Fulci. The film features Fulci regulars Al Cliver (of Zombi 2 fame) and Howard Ross (of New York Ripper fame) in supporting roles. Cinzia Monreale, who had her throat ripped apart in Fulci’s The Beyond, appears in a cameo in which she again has her throat ripped apart. (Actually, she just hallucinates having her throat ripped apart and is seen alive afterward, as if Fulci himself is saying, “See, it’s all just film trickery. Nobody really gets hurt in my movies.”) Finally, and most obviously, a character graphically loses an eye. It’s simply not a Fulci film without some sort of graphic ocular trauma.

The film also features a theme that would show up in a lot of Fulci’s post-New York Ripper works. Warriors of the Year 2072 is about the role of violent entertainment in both maintaining and destroying society. Which is not to say that the film really has that much to say about it. Thematically, Warriors of the Year 2072 is all surface level but those themes are still present.

As for the film itself, it takes place in the year 2072, so at least the title is being honest with us. The world is now run by competing television networks. The American television network has the highest rated show: Kill Bike, in which men on motorcycles battle to the death. Cortez (Claudio Cassinelli), the program director for Rome-based WBS-TV, is ordered by the station’s owner, the mysterious Sam, to come up with a program that will be more popular than Kill Bike. At first, Cortez tries to put on a show called The Danger Game, where people are forced to hallucinate dying in violent ways. When that show fails to beat Kill Bike, Cortez decided to just rip-off Kill Bike…

And let’s just stop a moment to point out the obvious. Neither The Danger Game nor Kill Bike would feel at all out-of-place on television today. Remember Fear Factor? How different is The Danger Game from that old show?

Anyway, Cortez’s new show is basically Kill Bike with a twist. The motorcycle combat will now take place in the Roman coliseum and the contestants will all be convicted murderers awaiting execution. Fortunately, the very popular star of Kill Bike — Drake (Jared Martin) — has recently been convicted of murder! It’s convenient how that worked out…

As we discover through the magic of slow motion flashbacks, Drake was returning home one night when he discovered that his wife had been murdered by three young men who all appeared to be doing a bad impersonation of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. The three men were then murdered and Drake was convicted. However, Drake insists that he’s innocent and, even when confronted by laughing hallucinations of the three men, he refuses to attack them.

Could it be that someone is framing Drake? Of course! But why…

Well, before we find out the answer to that, we watch as Drake is brought to the coliseum and is trained in gladiatorial battle. He immediately makes an enemy out of the head guard, the sadistic Raven (Howard Ross, who is hilariously over-the-top). He also bonds with the other gladiators, one of whom is named Abdul. Abdul is played by Fred Williamson, largely because it’s not a mid-80s Italian sci-fi dystopia without Fred Williamson.

Warriors of The Year 2072 cannot compare to Fulci at his best. This is no Zombi 2 or The House By The Cemetery. At the same time, it’s definitely better than most of the films that Fulci made after The New York Ripper. Fulci was a supreme stylist and, as a result, Warriors of the Year 2072 is always watchable. Even when you don’t have the slightest idea what’s going on, you still can’t quite bring yourself to look away. Yes, the special effects are nothing special. And yes, it’s obvious that futuristic Rome was just a miniature set. But the cheapness of the film gives it an odd charm. It’s the cheapest future imaginable and somehow, it actually feels appropriate. Why do we always assume the future will be sleek and shiny? Maybe it’ll look like cardboard, like in Warriors Of The Year 2072!

Warriors of the Year 2072 is a campy, frequently silly, and oddly entertaining look at the future of the human race. If you’re a Fulci fan or a lover of Italian exploitation cinema, track it down.

Film Review: Turkish Star Wars/The Man Who Saves the World/Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam (1982, dir. Çetin Inanç)

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Well, it wouldn’t be right to let a Star Wars month go by without reviewing two of the most infamous Star Wars knockoff movies. This is the Turkish one best known for its training montage. I swear I haven’t heard the theme from Raiders Of The Lost Ark more times in my life then I did watching this movie. The movie is like watching something sci-fi fans in 1982 would have made by mashing together their favorite stuff. The two main things it combines are Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica.

A voiceover provides the setup of the movie while it literally shows footage from Star Wars in the background. I’d make a joke here about the effects looking better than the special editions, but I’m not that much of a fan. Oh, and it goes on for quite awhile it seems. Let me try to paraphrase here. People left Earth and scattered across the galaxy. A struggle to discover the secret of immortality ensued. Despite all this talk about people leaving Earth, there is apparently still an Earth tribe. However, then it says Earth was destroyed. Okay, whatever. Wait, maybe I can’t paraphrase this cause it makes NO SENSE!!!!

Okay, all you need to know is here’s Cüneyt Arkin who apparently also wrote the screenplay for this.

Here’s his friend played by none other than Aytekin Akkaya AKA Turkish Captain America.

After getting shot down by stock footage from Star Wars, they find themselves on a desolate planet with this bad guy who looks like he belongs in a Turkish Flash Gordon movie.

They begin to wander. His friend thinks they might have landed on a planet inhabited by nothing but women. Turkish Captain America thinks he’s a ladies man in this. They see stock footage of the Sphinx, Pyramids, and hieroglyphics. Then the voiceover kicks in saying they were seeing things that look like another civilization that must have fought an unknown power and enemy millions of years ago. This part made me think of Stargate. Of course it doesn’t take long for them to attract some attention from some weird skeleton-like creatures. And this movie doesn’t disappoint. You get to see plenty of Cüneyt Arkin and Turkish Captain America leaping all over the place.

When you’ve fought weird skeleton things, you just gotta follow it up with reject sand people.

And Cylons!

Then they spot the people of this planet. There’s this guy…

who jumps off there for reasons I still don’t understand. Now we meet Turkish Robbie The Robot.

Oh, and Turkish Robbie The Robot doesn’t mess around.

After several of these Turkish Mad Max: Fury Road guys…

kill some people, Arkin and his friend decide to really fight. All you need to know is there’s a blonde with a kid that you’ll see throughout the movie and the bad guy from Turkish First Blood and Turkish Rambo is here as their leader.

After a little conversation, their leader drops the bomb on Arkin and his friend.

Yep, the 13th tribe. This is apparently a piece of Earth controlled by “the Wizard”. The Wizard being the Flash Gordon guy.

Since this is by the same director of Turkish First Blood, there are of course zombies for, um, reasons?

A fight ensues and Arkin and company are sent to go to the “Green Valley” cause, well, I have no idea what this line means, but here it is.

Yep, you apparently need strong body and believer head for fighting with Nimrod.

After the bad guy severs the heads of several zombies, he creates Turkish Abominable Snowman.

There’s some weird stuff that happens here with dead bodies, but who cares because…

it’s time to punch some fucking rocks!!!

Here are some highlights.

Not sure why the punching rocks thing happens considering Arkin will get gauntlets later. No, not Turkish Wolverine gauntlets, but gauntlets none the less. However, I do know why this happens.

It’s cause you will see Arkin fly around in this movie a lot. They made good use of trampolines in this film.

Now while this may be gone by the time you read this because of the music used, here is the full scene in all of it’s glory!

I don’t care how they make it happen, but I want to see Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford punch some rocks. Even if it’s just an extra they do on the DVD release. This needs to happen!

Now we go to the Turkish version of the bar scene. No worries about who shot first here because it just leads to a fight breaking out with one of the saddest costumes I’ve ever seen.

There’s also this guy who looks like he got lost on the way to a Turkish Kung Fu movie.

The bad guy shows up to say this…

and take them to his lair. After traveling through some stock footage they arrive.

Turkish Captain America meets this lady who is the queen of the planet, but will play basically no role in the film. Her and the bad guy seem to think the key to ultimate power and immortality is the human brain. After explaining his plan, Arkin gets this look on his face.

Gotta give the man credit. I’ve seen in him several of these now and he does do one of the best “I’m not happy and about to beat the crap out of everyone in the room” look. And he does just that. He even severs a guys arm and stabs him with it.

Badass! Of course people move in on Turkish Captain America and he joins in the fight. Unfortunately, it’s not enough and now we get to a scene that rivals the Black Widow capture and the inclines in Turkish First Blood and Turkish Rambo for the least inconvenient character inconveniences. The bad guy tries to bury them alive. Yeah, that’s going to work with these two guys. Of course it doesn’t and they simply pop back up out of the dirt.

By the way, throughout all of this stuff is the Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Battlestar Galactica, Flash Gordon, and other popular themes on the soundtrack.

Now we’re outside again for who knows what real reason. Doesn’t matter. It means it’s time for Arkin to battle the Snowman by jumping all over the place.

Turkish Captain America gets in on the action, but isn’t very successful and gets captured again.

Now is the time for another exposition dump. This is the first of two sequences that are quite confusing. I am obviously watching this with fan subs so it could be that, but I don’t think so. The leader of the humans tells a story that basically amounts to a sci-fi retelling of how Muslims in Arabia kept science alive while Europe plunged into darkness. He says his people are from “Islam, the greatest tribe and an established community that lived on Earth.” Makes sense, it’s a Turkish movie after all. Well, at least it makes sense at this point in the film. It won’t make sense later though. However, he does say that Muslims are a guardian of religions. I’d think this is just a typo, but given what comes up soon, I’m not sure. It probably has to do with the fact that Islam is the third in the Abrahamic faiths which doesn’t exclude the stuff that came before Mohammed. Christ himself is considered a prophet. It’s most likely a part of this film’s ultimate message of unity and peace among people.

After some fighting and…

a scene that has Turkish Captain America in Turkish A Clockwork Orange, Arkin and blonde go into the tunnels to find the sword of power. This is when we get stuff that I’m really not sure of. Apparently, the faithful went underground with Jesus as their guide. This place includes Christian religious imagery too.

You can kind of think of this as Indy going through a holy place to find something at the end that will help him. Then we get a little backstory on how the Wizard emerged from these people with an obsession for immortality. I’m really not sure if this is supposed to mean the people on the surface were separate from those underground or not. It’s confusing and I would want someone like Ed Glaser who makes a lot of videos about Turkish films to explain it to me.

All that’s really important, which is something often said when talking about Turkish Star Wars, is that Arkin has the sword and is ready to deal out some justice.

Even the Cylons have trouble because Arkin can block bullets with that thing.

After the movie drops it’s English title into the film…

Turkish Captain America just casually knocks out Arkin.

Once again, all you need to know about what happens next is Turkish Captain America gets fooled and Arkin has to come to the rescue. Sadly, Turkish Captain America is killed. Arkin gets the sword of power again and melts it down into gauntlets.

Now the movie just becomes an action sequence with a lot of Arkin jumping. Seriously, I think his jumping rivals the slow motion falling down in Brazilian Star Wars. All of this is going on while Earth is threatened with destruction and I guess is destroyed?

No time for that oddity. Just more action.

After defeating the bad guy, Arkin says goodbye, and flies off in the Millennium Falcon.

That’s it! It really is like watching something that was thrown together by sci-fi fans. It certainly is quite a mess, but a fun mess. A fun mess with some of the best movie scores of the time. Even if they were lifted. I do recommend this. Don’t know if I could watch it again, but it is fun to watch once.

Hallmark Review: Help For The Holidays (2012, dir. Bradford May)

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

What we have here is a story about an elf at the North Pole who becomes disillusioned with her job. She feels that there must be more out there. She has lost some of the Christmas spirit because she’s always making toys, but never really gets to see the lives she touches. Santa takes notice and decides to send her on a mission. There is a family who runs a Christmas store. They too have begun to loose the Christmas spirit. They are so tied up with the business that they are neglecting their children and look forward to Christmas being over. Santa sends her in to be a nanny for the kids and help them rediscover the Christmas spirit. She helps them to see that they are missing experiencing Christmas themselves by spending it with their children. She also helps them to see the lives they touch through their business that helps other people to celebrate Christmas. In the process, discovering the importance of her work at the North Pole. However, she also meets the uncle of the family who also tries to help people during Christmas, but in a little different way. The uncle and the family are a little on the outs, but she helps to bridge the gap so they can reconnect. She also falls in love with him even though that was against the rules. But since Santa isn’t a bad guy, he of course gives her the choice to become human. Although her passion for the work she does at the North Pole has been rekindled, she decides to become human. She can continue to help people have a Merry Christmas with the uncle whom she has fallen for. In the end, we see the newly extended family under the tree at Christmas as Santa looks on from the North Pole. The end.

Well, that’s not quite how it goes. That would’ve been nice. Instead, add more cliched writing and demonizing of the parents to that story, with less of the Christmas spirit stuff.

This is our elf Christine played by Summer Glau. She is not really disillusioned with her work, but kind of feeling cabin fever for lack of a better term. We get a brief scene to make sure we know the kids of the family aren’t happy, the parents have systematized “traditions”, and that their uncle disapproves. Then Santa sends her on her mission under the name of Christine Prancer.

Of course she gets hired immediately which is good. Unrealistic, but it would have felt like the movie stalling by not keeping things moving along. She encounters the parents issues with Christmas because as the mother puts it, they are “kneecap deep in it”. Understandable, but this won’t ultimately lead to any kind of discovery about taking some pride and enjoyment in what they are doing during Christmas to help people celebrate. They will just say they are going to cut back at work, have some of the employees do some of it, and spend more time with kids. The employee part certainly came as a surprise since everything leading up to that made me think the two parents ran the entire operation themselves.

Then we find out about the origin of the store. It was a family thing they used to do that ultimately expanded into a business. Again, this movie doesn’t do anything with this. They just have them cut back on work hours and spend more time with the kids.

Now the film starts to hit its stride so to speak. She starts to warm up to the uncle who certainly has the Christmas spirit. She starts to clash with the parents. Sometimes because she does sort of overstep her boundaries such as when she and the uncle decorate the home tree which the mother clearly wants to hold onto as a family thing. She feels that her trust has been violated, which it has. They also sneak in a line that hints that they only decorate the tree because they own a Christmas store, but they really don’t do anything with that. And of course she becomes good friends with the children. It ends the way I said, but not with a Christmas spirit thing really going on. Basically, the parents just reconnect with their kids at Christmas time.

It’s all nice and everything, but it’s not really a Christmas story. October Kiss is almost the same thing and takes place at Halloween. There’s really not much of a Christmas spirit rediscovery here. It’s a nanny brings a family together and finds love at the same time story that happens to take place with Christmas characters during the Christmas season. Nothing really wrong with that, but it is cliched and falls back on the old demonize the parents who work thing. The story afforded them the opportunity to bring the Christmas spirit into the story and instead of demonize, help the parents to step back and reevaluate the work they do in a new and more meaningful light.

The acting is fine all around, but I particularly liked Steve Larkin as Santa.

Nothing bad here, but it is nothing special when it could have been. It feels like a missed opportunity.

Sci-Fi Film Review: The 10th Victim (dir by Elio Petri)

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Before The Hunger Games…

Before The Purge…

There was The 10th Victim!

This Italian film from 1965 takes place in a future that is a lot like our present. After years of war and senseless violence, the world is finally at “peace.” Wars are avoided by allowing people to take part in the Big Hunt. When you join the Hunt, you’re agreeing to take part in 10 rounds of competition. For five rounds, you’re the hunter. For the other five rounds, you’re the hunted. Survive all 10 rounds and your reward will be money and retirement. So far, only 15 contestants have managed to survive.

If you’re being hunted, you get a letter informing you that you are now being hunted. The only way to win is to kill the person who has been assigned to hunt you. Unfortunately, you’re not told who is hunting you and, if you accidentally kill someone who is not hunting you, you’ll be sent to prison for 30 years. And, of course, the whole time you’re trying to avoid getting killed, others are being hunted around you. World peace means that there are constant gun battles in the streets, all of which are calmly observed by a rather apathetic populace. It’s a violent world but it’s legal violence so it doesn’t really concern anyone beyond the people that are getting killed.

(At one point, an announcement is heard while a hunter guns down his target: “Live dangerously but obey the law…live dangerously but obey the law…”)

Coverage of the Big Hunt is the world’s most popular television show and, as a result, legalized murder has become big business. Companies regularly sponsor hunters and turn their kills into elaborate commercials for their products.

When we first meet Caroline Meredith (Ursula Andress), she is using a literal bullet bra to shoot a man dead. Caroline is sponsored by Ming Tea and, when she is assigned to hunt Marcello Pollitti (Marcello Mastroianni), the company flies her out to Italy. In order to make Marcello’s death as cinematic and commercial as possible, Ming Tea and Caroline decide to lure him to Rome’s Temple of Venus. The Ming Tea dancers are flown in, a choreographer starts working on their routine, and Caroline tracks down Marcello.

Marcello has just found out that he’s being hunted and he’s more than a little depressed. He’s also paranoid and when Caroline first approaches him, Marcello suspects that she’s his hunter and not, as she claims, a journalist. However, because of the legal penalty for killing a non-hunter, Marcello cannot kill Caroline until he’s sure that she wants to kill him. Meanwhile, Caroline cannot kill Marcello until they’re at the Temple of Venus, in front of the cameras and the dancers.

And, of course, there’s also the fact that, as they get to know each other, Caroline and Marcello start to fall in love. When Caroline observes Marcello conducting a bizarre religious ceremony (he’s the head of a cult of sun worshippers), she is so touched that she starts to cry. Or does she? Are her tears just a ploy to keep Marcello from suspecting that she wants to kill him? We’re never quite sure.

If you didn’t already know that The 10th Victim was made in 1965, you would guess it after just a few minutes. This is one of those hyperstylized works of pop art that, for many people, define 60s cinema. How you react to the film will depend on how much tolerance you have for its nonstop style. Speaking as someone who happens to love over-the-top pop art, I enjoyed it but I could imagine other viewers ripping out their hair at the sound of the film’s peppy theme song.

But, if you’re patient, you will eventually discover that, underneath the film’s excesses, it’s actually a rather clever satire of media, politics, culture, religion, and just about everything else that deserves to be satirized. Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress are both a lot of fun and, in the end, the whole thing works as both a surprisingly accurate prophecy of today’s world and as a time capsule of the 1960s.

Plus, I loved the bullet bra. I need to get one of those.

It’s a dangerous world, after all.

Film Review: Brooklyn (dir by John Crowley)

Posted on December 5, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

OH MY GOD, HAVE YOU SEEN BROOKLYN YET!?

If I seem a little bit excited, that’s because I am. I’ve been excited about seeing Brooklyn ever since it was first acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. I was excited before I watched the film, I was excited while I watched it, and now I’m excited about the prospect of you seeing it.

The thing is, it’s a little bit hard to explain just what makes Brooklyn such a wonderful film. I will admit that, in my case, it probably helps that it’s a deliriously romantic (yet realistic) portrait of a young woman who immigrates from Ireland to Brooklyn in the 1950s. Since I’m an incurable romantic of Irish descent, I suppose it was somewhat predestined that I would love Brooklyn. But, ultimately, you don’t have to be Irish to love Brooklyn. The story that Brooklyn tells is a universal one.

When we first meet Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), she is a quiet and meek girl living in a small Irish town. She spends her weekends working in a shop owned by the spiteful Ms. Kelly (Brid Brennan) and looks up to her older sister, Rose (Fiona Glascott). It is Rose who contacts Father Flood (Jim Broadbent) in Brooklyn and who arranges, with him, for Eilis to come to America.

After a nightmarish crossing that is marked by a Hellish case of seasickness, Eilis finds herself in Brooklyn and living in a boarding house, under the watchful and protective eye of Miss Kehoe (Julie Walters). At first, Eilis is homesick and struggles to adjust to her new surroundings. It’s only after Father Flood arranges for Eilis to take a night class in bookkeeping that Eilis starts to discover her confidence. (Somewhat poignantly, Rose is also a bookkeeper. Even separated by an ocean, Eilis is still trying to impress her big sister.)

Eventually, Eilis meets and starts to date a sweet-natured plumber named Tony (Emory Cohen). Now, in the past, I’ve actually been pretty critical of Emory Cohen as an actor. On twitter, I made some unkind comments about the performance that he gave in the TV series Smash. (He played Debra Messing’s son.) Though I didn’t make a point of mentioning it in my review, I also thought he was the weakest link in the otherwise excellent ensemble of The Place Beyond The Pines. So, when I first heard that he gave an excellent performance in Brooklyn, I was a little bit skeptical. But then I saw the movie and believe it or not, Emory Cohen gives an excellent performance. As Tony, he is sweet and tough and funny and truly the ideal boyfriend. He also flashes the sweetest smile imaginable, which is one thing that he was not allowed to do in either Smash or The Place Beyond The Pines.

Brooklyn handles Eilis and Tony’s relationship with a commendable honesty. This is a wonderfully romantic movie but, at the same time, it retains a realistic edge. As characters, Eilis and Tony are never idealized. When Tony tells Eilis that he loves her, we’re just as torn as she is because we’ve gotten to know both of them. We know that Tony is a good man but we also know and understand Eilis’s struggle to establish a life and an identity of her own in America. We know how important her independence is to her and it’s equally important to us.

As a result of unforseen circumstances, Eilis eventually finds herself returning to Ireland. Though Eilis insists that she’s only going to stay for a few months, she soon finds herself torn. Should she return to her old home, where she is now viewed as being a bit of a glamorous celebrity and is romantically pursued by the handsome and charming Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson)? Or should she go back to Brooklyn, to Tony and an unpredictable future?

Brooklyn is a deceptively low-key film. Eilis changes from being a shy and insecure girl to being a strong and confident woman so gradually that both she and the viewer are initially taken by surprise when the new Eilis emerges from her shell. This is a film that both demands and rewards your patience. At the same time, it’s also a film about universal desires and experiences to which we can all relate. At some point in our life and in some way, we have all been Eilis Lacey.

Saoirse Ronan — oh my God, what can I say about Saoirse Ronan? How can I possibly describe what a wonderful performance she gives? Ever since she first came to the public’s attention in Atonement, Saoirse Ronan has been one of the best and most underrated actresses around. In Brooklyn, she gives her best performance yet. She deserved an Oscar for Hanna and she’ll hopefully win one for Brooklyn.

(Incidentally, Brooklyn was written by Nick Hornby, who also wrote another one of my favorite films, An Education. Hopefully, Brooklyn will do for Saoirse Ronan what An Education did for Carey Mulligan.)

See Brooklyn and see it soon!

Hallmark Review: The Note (2007, dir. Douglas Barr)

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

I finally worked my way backwards to the first in The Note trilogy, and I’m kind of disappointed in it.

The movie starts and we are introduced to a newspaper columnist named Peyton Macgruder (Genie Francis). She writes a newspaper column called The Heart Healer. We are then introduced to King (Ted McGinley) who plays her love interest and also writes for the paper.

A small complaint I have is that he never really had the short moment of douchebaggery that he had in the other two Note films. I know it was a weird anomaly, but I had gotten used to it. Here we just get a couple of lines that he chocks up to old locker room talk. It’s just not the same.

During the introductions to the characters, including that her column is on the chopping block, we also are hearing about a plane that is going down. Macgruder goes out to a funeral being held for the family of someone who died in the crash. This is when we are introduced to the problem with this film.

The allegedly evil TV news reporter. We know he’s supposed to be bad because how dare he ask this girl very politely a question after Macgruder also went over to her and introduced herself. She goes back to her office in disgust. She says, “How does a guy like Truman Harris sleep at night?” to which her friend responds, “Comfortably wrapped in the arms of any woman he wants.” All this because he went over, introduced himself, and politely asked her a question. This supposedly evil TV news reporter is a running thing in this story and it’s stupid.

After we get a flashback to tell us her husband is dead, she is sitting next to the water and discovers something. It’s a note and a bag of cookie crumbs. She’s struck gold! Now she has a story to milk in order to keep her job. Even King says, “I think you may have struck gold here.” When she brings the idea to her boss, she’s hesitant, but then her bosses boss tells her it’s a good idea so the hunt for who the letter is meant for is on!

Phone call! It’s the evil TV news reporter. He has called her up to dare to offer her the opportunity to use TV coverage to help find the person the note belongs to faster. But she turns him down because it’s her story, and how could he possibly think that finding the person quicker is what she wants. She wants to “do the story as a continuing feature.” You know, drag it out as long as possible to keep her column going.

Now she visits the first person she thinks the letter might have been meant for. The two of them have a nice little conversation, but it isn’t his. The evil TV news reporter shows up as she’s leaving. The guy says he doesn’t want to speak with him and she says, “no comment”. Then she makes sure to remind him that it’s her story and that “without the note you’ve really got nothin'”. Did they even read the lines they have her saying? She comes across as a person who is holding this personal private note hostage and dragging it out for her personal gain while lashing out at someone who could help her find the person who should have the letter as soon as possible.

Now she writes about it, and it’s a hit! Look she’s got 200 emails!

Of course this being a Hallmark movie, it cuts to her face and back to the screen to find it’s suddenly 1,991 messages.

Now she’s asked to work with the evil TV news reporter by her boss because their companies are related, but she’s not having any of it. She goes on a bit of a rant here saying: “I think corporate should go to…Look, this is a story that either I can tell or Truman can tell! Oh, wait a minute, I forgot. Truman can’t tell it because he doesn’t have the note.”

And just in case we thought we were meant to read her as going overboard, she has a conversation with her boss a little while on where she is congratulated. Apparently, she protected her “readers’ interests” and her bosses boss liked that she stood up to those “new media types in New York.” He has been a print guy for 30 years! Wow! That’s like way before television was invented in the 1980s. By the way, she publishes her articles on the Internet as well as in newspaper form.

Then she meets with another lady and this is when we finally get a real reason why she probably shouldn’t work with the TV guy. This lady shares quite a personal story with her. Of course that really doesn’t matter too much because she isn’t the one who the letter was for. Thus, making this exist only for her to have another article and pad the film out with more emotional material.

It basically carries on this way for the rest of the film. Ultimately, her hunt brings her back to herself. I feel bad spoiling it here for some reason even though you can figure it out if you’ve seen the other films in the series. She also gets closer to King in the process. It would all be a nice little emotional story of her going from person to person as this note touches lives ultimately coming around to touch hers in the most profound way. However, they had to throw in this evil TV news reporter. The only purpose he seems to serve is to pander to people who see someone like him as a threat to their traditional values as embodied by this somewhat religious newspaper reporter. It’s totally unnecessary to the story and damages the credibility of the main character needlessly. This isn’t a bad movie, but one with a stupid writing mistake that drags on it.

#LateNightMovie review: “The Creeping Terror”

Posted on December 4, 2015 by paddiesthoughts

This week for #LateNightMovie we watched ‘The Creeping Terror’ and there are several things I want to say about this movie, but I will get to those soon!

220px-Creepingterror
From the start tho, Tammy, this was a great movie for us! Awesome pick! I never doubt the movies you pick for us, and this was another amazingly (horrible) one! 😉

Director:

Vic Savage (as A.J. Nelson)

Writers:

Vic Savage, Robert Sillphant*

Stars:

Vic Savage as Martin Gordon

Shannon O’Neil as Brett Gordon

Plot:

After escaping from a crashed space ship, a snail like creature terrorizes all humanity! And all humanity snail squishing follows.

Review:

Okay, many of us retro sci-fi geeks regard this as one of the worst films ever (as pointed out by the quips below). And there have been many reviews done about how bad this movie is. So I won’t take my review in that direction. What I will do is point out all of the nepotism in the movie.

First, Vic Savage! Let’s just all giggle and get over that, AJ!

Second, most likely, Robert didn’t write this movie; His brothers Allan and Sterling did. From all the records, it looks like Robert had very little to do with the writing, but is credited anyway.

It is not consequential how the movie got made, but better the fact that we had a great movie to watch!

And obviously the #LateNightMovie gang had fun!

kellythul:
In Spirographvision

We all had our goggles on for that, Kelly!
WarrenPeas64:
This movie is exquisitely excrementlike, but I adore it

TRDowden:
SFX Guy: Okay, here’s what we’ll do. You grab that part of the creature from the last movie we did, and I’ll just sew a couple of rugs on the back of it

JesCoolbaugh:
Nothing this big???? Poor dear…

Sadly, yep! 😦

PinkyGuerrero:
like no one had driven on the road before them

Janeen_FluffyJ:
special unit last night was much better

Wait for the comments, Jinni!

Philo1000:
Is this a Japanese movie?

JesCoolbaugh:
That narrator is so handy. Saves so much time having to write pesky dialogue and stuff…

ekym:
we should DUB our own dialogue into one of these for fun

I thought that is what we did each week at LNM, Myke! LOL

PinkyGuerrero:
never pick the baby up, children are toxic

TRDowden:
It’s the IKEA carpet that ate Cleveland

PinkyGuerrero:
the monster isn’t attracted to hootenannies

WarrenPeas64
So these people are 1) incredibly stupid 2) deaf and 3) have NO peripheral vision

LisaMarieBowman:
But at the end of filming, they rolled up the carpet, lit it on fire, and got really high so there was that.

PinkyGuerrero:
this is like a pre-roomba, everything getting swept under the rug
kellythul:
no words

Well you did have words Kelly, And I will give you to them!

Kelly said it best!

kellythul:
REPORT: Identified human weaknesses: 1) They stand still when frightened. 2) They stand still when their dancing is interrupted 3) Some are SUPER fat 4) They can easily be tricked into crawling

If you want to see what all the LNM fun is about, here is a link to The Creeping Terror!

Thank you Warren, Pinky, Phil, Lisa, Myrna, Kapt Kurt, Kelly, Jes, Jinni, Holly, Myke and Ambie for watching #LateNightMovie with me!

Film Review: Ashby (dir by Tony McNamara)

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

At first glance, Ed Wallis (Nat Wolff) seems like your typical nerdy high school student. An introvert who has a hard time making friends, Ed is a talented writer but what he really wants to do is play for his school’s legendary football team. One thing that sets Ed apart from cinematic nerds of the past is that he is not lacking in confidence. He’s shy but he understands what he’s capable of accomplishing. He knows he’s a good writer. He also know that he has the potential to be a good football player. When he crashes the team’s practice and manages to talk Coach Burton (Kevin Dunn) into giving him a shot, Ed proves that he’s the faster than anyone else on the team. And when one of the other players starts to bully him, Ed has no trouble convincing the quarterback to stand up for him. After all, as Ed explains it, if Ed’s not in a good mood than he’s not going to catch anything that the quarterback throws. And if Ed doesn’t make those catches, the quarterback won’t have a good game and, if he doesn’t have a good game, he won’t get any scholarship offers.

At first, Ed’s determination to play football horrifies both his mother, June (Sarah Silverman), and his best (and only) friend, Eloise (Emma Roberts). June is a single mother who terrifies Ed by openly discussing her sex life with him. Eloise, meanwhile, is a self-styled misfit who is nicknamed “weird girl” by Ed’s fellow jocks. It’s only after they see Ed playing on the field (and, not coincidentally, making the winning catch), that June and Eloise start to support Ed’s athletic dreams…

Meanwhile, Ed is getting to know his neighbor, Ashby (Mickey Rourke). Ashby is a former CIA agent who has just been informed that he has only a few months to live. Ed needs to talk to an old person for a class assignment. Ashby needs someone to drive him around town. At first, Ashby refuses to open up to Ed but slowly, Ashby starts to lower his defenses. Ashby is soon coming to Ed’s football games, flirting with June, and serving as a substitute father figure.

Of course, Asby is also murdering people. Though Ed doesn’t know it, the reason that Ashby keeps asking him for a ride is because Ashby is determined to track down and kill three men who he feels betrayed him. Ashby does this with the full knowledge that eventually, the CIA is going to send somebody to take him out…

Ashby is a mix of genres that don’t really go together. It’s a gentle coming-of-age comedy that’s also a violent revenge thriller. The end result is an extremely messy film that never finds a consistent tone. And yet, at the same time, that inconsistency is a part of the film’s strange charm. The film is so determined to make its oddball mix of genres work that you actually do find yourself rooting for it, even if it doesn’t quite succeed. Ashby is one of those films that shouldn’t work and yet, somehow, it does.

Some credit for that has to go to director Tony McNamara. He directs with a good eyes for detail (the satiric portrayal of both high school and suburbia feels totally authentic) and he keeps the action moving at such a quick pace that you really don’t have time to obsess over the film’s mishmash of themes and tones.

Even more credit, however, I think has to be given to the cast, all of whom show an admirable commitment to bringing their eccentric characters to life. Mickey Rourke’s plays Ashby as if he might be a distant relation to his character from The Wrestler while Sarah Silverman is so perfectly cast as June that you occasionally find yourself wishing that the entire film could be just about her. I’ve lost track of how many times Emma Roberts has been cast as a quirky high school girlfriend but she still brings as much depth as she can to her underwritten character.

Ultimately, though, the film belongs to Nat Wolff, who was so good (as was Emma Roberts) in last year’s Palo Alto. Wolff’s character in Ashby may not have much in common with the sociopath that he played in Palo Alto or the blind friend he played in The Fault In Our Stars, but Wolff brings a sly charm to all three roles and that charm convince the audience to not only accept but even embrace some of the film’s inconsistencies. Nat Wolff truly holds Asbhy together, helping the film to survive some of its more uneven moments.

Ashby has been given a limited theatrical release and is available through VOD. It’s definitely an uneven film but it’s worth seeing.

Hallmark Review: 12 Gifts Of Christmas (2015, dir. Peter Sullivan)

Posted on December 3, 2015 by Valerie Troutman

Wow! It’s been a little over a week since I subjected myself to a Hallmark movie. Well, no time to discuss that because somebody finally got the message there.

Do you see what makes me so happy? Look here.

Yes, the screens are inconsistent, but they actually thought to do something to hide the Canadian cellphone provider’s name! Finally! All the screens I saw either fudged it or switched the phone into airplane mode. I’m just so happy because so many of these movies throw stock footage and all sorts of things in to totally make it look like the United States only to show a cellphone screen that says Rodgers or Fido. That’s not to say this movie doesn’t have goofs, cause it does, but it’s refreshing to not see this goof repeated.

That’s our girl Anna Parisi played by Katrina Law. She’s an artist who can’t find anyone to really give her a break in the business.

That’s our guy Marc Rehnquist played by Aaron O’Connell. And ah…

rest in peace red bluetooth headset from How To Fall In Love.

Oh, and let’s take another look at Anna cause…

while I know she doesn’t wear that triangle necklace in every scene of this movie till she gets a new necklace from him, it sure felt like it. I’m just going to assume that the Satanists from Crackdown Mission (1988) were involved here somehow.

That, and now that I’ve seen 8 of his 9 movies, I am a believer that Pierre Kirby should be spliced into every movie.

Okay, they meet at a bakery briefly and she gives him some tips on ordering off the menu cupcakes. Then we find out that he works at an advertising firm. Lot of stuff goes on in that office of his. At one point he gets up and buttons his jacket, only to sit down again, then it cuts, and it’s unbuttoned again. His office also goes from having one monitor to having two. Don’t know what that’s all about. But I do know that he really shouldn’t be worried about hiring her as a personal shopper because clearly…

these enormous Christmas lights are out to destroy New York City. He hires her as a personal shopper after she uses Thurbble to look up what a personal shopper is and put herself out there via a business card at the bakery.

Must say this is a big step up from the screens in Strawberry Summer. However, I love that apparently personal shoppers in the United States typically only have clients from Miami. Otherwise, they normally work for people from Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, and Russia.

Okay, I could keep making jokes cause there isn’t much to talk about here, so let’s just cut through this thing. He hires her as a personal shopper because he’s too busy to buy gifts for his friends. After she does get a gift for a friend of his that he didn’t ask her to, but his friend loves, he starts to give her free reign. That plot really doesn’t play into this much. It’s just a foot in the door for them to spend the rest of the film together. Well, that is till he uses a special painting she made in order to sell his ad campaign. She overreacts, comes to her senses, and they live happily ever after! Well, there is this at the end.

That’s supposed to have been painted by Anna. Am I the only one who looks at that and thinks they took a picture, passed it through a Photoshop filter, and then had it printed onto a canvas?

Is it worth seeing?

Well, Candace Cameron Bure seemed to like it when the credits started, but I didn’t bring up Crackdown Mission and Pierre Kirby simply as a joke. Most of the Pierre Kirby movies were made by a director named Godfrey Ho. He would take old, unfinished, or unreleased movies from Asia, then shoot a little footage with caucasian actors. Afterwards, he would clumsily splice the footage together to make a new movie. One of these is a movie called Thunder Of Gigantic Serpent (1988). The original Taiwanese movie was called King Of Snake (1984). I’ve seen both of them. King Of Snake is a generic Japanese style monster movie. It needed the addition of a Pierre Kirby to make it memorable and give it some life. That’s this movie. It needed the Hallmark equivalent. By that I mean an actor like Kavan Smith or Kellie Martin. Either one of them would have spiced this otherwise perfectly fine, but dull movie up. It’s nothing to seek out, but it’s not one to avoid either. Plus, it’s got that unintentionally funny factor going for it.