Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Hell O

Hellraiser: Another rewatch, this one of an old favourite which uses its gory shock-horror as a metaphor, as a wife's adultery with her brother-in-law literally tears the household apart. It still annoys me, however, that it was visibly filmed in the UK, with even the dialogue indicating that the action takes place in Britain, and yet most of the characters are overdubbed into American.

Movie count for 2013: 15

Monday, March 11, 2013

Lincoln segment

Lincoln: Good portrayal of the political finagling, wrangling and so forth as Lincoln attempts to get the 13th Amendment to the Contitution passed. It's a bit too long, has some fairly tedious bits about Lincoln's family, and verges in places on portraying black people as the passive beneficiaries of white people's actions. However, it doesn't shy away from portraying Lincoln as a self-centred dick whose main reason for wanting the Amendment past is less a sense of social justice and more that it gets him out of a complicated legal quagmire regarding war reparations. So, it's no "Munich," but it's no "Poltergeist" either.

Argo: Story of CIA caper involving getting six Americans out of revolutionary Iran, under the guise of making a late-Seventies sci-fi movie. For someone who's a big fan of said genre, the premise is really fun, and there's cameos for some original-series Cylons and a three inch daggit figurine. National pride compels me to observe, however, that the Canadians and the British were a lot more involved in the rescue than the movie suggests.

Anna Karenina: Beautifully staged take on the Russian novel, rendered as a surreal cross between a play and a film. Stars a lot of very good non-luvvie British actors, and full marks for casting Jude Law as an uncharismatic cold fish.

In Like Flint: Spy spoof movie made around the same time as Casino Royale, The Prisoner, et al., and boy does it show. It's funny and cheerfully anarchic in that late-Sixties way. It's also deeply sexist in that late-Sixties way, so while I enjoyed about half the movie, I spent the other half in a permanent wince.

The Plank: Short Sixties British comedy about two builders who buy a plank and bring it back to the house they're constructing. The mayhem which ensues can be seen coming a mile off, but it's no less entertaining despite that. Apparently filmed around where I used to live/work, but the area's been built up so much since then that I didn't recognise a thing.

Movie count for 2013: 14