MovieGeekBlog

Friday the 13th (1980)

Friday the 13th (1980)

Director: Sean S. Cunningham Cast: Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, Kevin Bacon

I couldn’t let this Friday the 13th go by without acknowledging the existence of this 1980 classic.

However, I’m somewhat baffled about how this could have actually become such an enduring pillar in horror history and one of the most enduring franchises of its genre.

For a start, there’s nothing particularly new here, not even for 1980, since Carpenter’s Halloween had already played pretty much all the same tricks a couple of years earlier, with much better results (though at the time interestingly even that one had been panned and unfavourably compared to Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and even Argento): even the point-of-view shot from the killer’s perspective, giving voyeuristic feel, was by then a cliche. Today many horror lovers want to read this as a cautionary tale or a warning about the teenage sex, but I think this is just reaching as far as I’m concerned.

The film is really just an excuse to bump off annoying cardboard characters one after the other, with some boring bits in between with mostly bad actors and a terrible terrible terrible script.

The music (if it can be called such) is probably one most iconic thing of “Friday the 13th” (and its sequels). It is indeed quite effective playing the “jaws” trick, as being the personification of the killer.

But crucially, Friday the 13th, despite it eerie mood (probably the only decent thing going for it), is just not frightening at all (definitely NOT for today’s standards, but also it can’t have been that much more, back in 1980), and for a horror film, that’s unforgivable.

The first couple of deaths in particular are so badly done that they are almost laughable (with an added bonus on freeze frame, which then burns to white: ludicrous for 1980s and pathetic now).

The budget is so low that it can hardly pull off most of the gore, which is what people come to see these movies for. The death of Kevin Bacon (poor guy what a lousy breakout role) is one of the most effective in the film and possibly the high point of the whole film.

As for the final scare, even that one was already a cliche in 1980 and it pales in comparison with De Palma’s Carrie.

So please, can anyone tell me why was this film so successful? Were the audiences really so hungry for slasher films? And if they were, why did these films have to be so bad?

Oh and by the way, if you’re expecting to see Jason with his white Hockey mask showing up at any point, you’ll be disappointed to find out that he only came into action from the sequel… but then again if you’re an horror fan you should know that already (if anything because “Scream” told you so).

So in the end 2 stars is the most generous rating I can give the film, mostly for its iconic place in history, the music cue, and Kevin Bacon’s first role… and for starting up a slasher series which will (mysteriously) endure for decades

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strage in the Multiverse of Madness

Director: Sam Raimi Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor,Benedict Wong, Xochitl Gomez, Rachel McAdams,

Before I say anything about this film, I should state my credentials: I’ve grown up playing with superheroes (and now I play with them together with my son), I consider myself a bit of a geek (I hear my friends shouting back at me “Only a bit?!?!”), I’ve watched all the Marvel films and TV series made so far (some multiple times) and I’ve always been intrigued by anything which deals with the concept of parallel universes.

So you can imagine my surprise when half way through this film, not only I found myself thinking “How can this be so bad?”, but I was also bored out of my mind.

For the first time in life I saw myself as one of those “despicable Marvel-haters” who think Marvel movies are basically the end of cinema.

This is exactly the kind of film those people think, when they make those statements.

Well, who can blame them now?

The more I watched “Doctor Strange 2”, the more I got frustrated by the huge amount of exposition which was being dumped on rather mercilessly and got angrier and angrier at the huge amount of money being splashed across the screen.

The disappointment felt even bigger after the sheer joy of Spiderman: No Way Home, the previous Marvel film which I had enjoyed immensely, and fleshed out the geek in me like nothing before and had left me with a great taste for more multi-verse fun.

The problem with this film is that it’s anything but fun. In fact the only amusing thing about it is how seriously it takes itself, as Danny Elfman’s score pounds loudly over a kaleidoscope of imagery where neither gravity nor any sense space or time has any baring with reality. Nothing of what we see feels real.

And I know we are talking about superheroes, people in capes, wearing silly masks, but even in those films there must be some rules for us to care about what’s going on.

You can’t just throw everything at the audience and pretend we can just go along with it, just because we enjoyed some of the previous installments.

Here, there’s not jeopardy, no stakes, no real surprises (and no, I don’t count pointless cameo appearances from other films as a “surprise”), but just a messy, disjointed, very confusing and over-produced film both in terms of visuals and sound.

I don’t know what kind of film Director Sam Raimi is thinking he’s doing, but if it is a horror is not scary, if it is an adventure film, it’s dull and un-exciting and if it’s a drama about a woman’s need to be a mother… well then it’s a total failure. And this comes from somebody who is a real fan of that director.

Do you know how sometimes you feel these films are good up to the last act and then, when the final showdown happens, they always seem to go over the top and ruin everything they have built up to that point? Well, this film is basically that “final act” all the way through, intersperse with some clunky exposition here and there, which I’m not sure I entirely understood anyway, mainly because after about 1 hour I had turned off my brain and was eagerly waiting for it to end.

Of course there were some nice visual effects along the way and yes, some of the imagery that Raimi came up with was interesting too (though sometimes it felt he was more keen in referencing his previous movies than actually creating something which people would care about), but even those things got eclipsed by the amount of “visual noise”. Have they ever heard to the saying “less is more”?

After a while, after endless people showing up in weird places, flying, smashing things, shouting poorly written lines and concocting flames and all sorts of other magical stuff, it all looked the same to me.

This is not just the worst film of the year, or the worse Marvel film so far, but possibly one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

Russian Doll

Russian Doll

Cast: Natasha Lyonne, Charlie Barnett, Greta Lee, Elizabeth Ashley.

The first season of Russian Doll came out of nowhere back in 2019 (Only 3 years ago, but as anything before Covid, it feels like a long time ago). As it happened, it turned out to be one of the best series released on Netflix.

What started off as a Groundhog-Day-stuck-in-a-time-loop story, soon evolved into something which really transcended the whole premise, moving from comedy to a deep emotional journey through mental illness, trauma, life and death.

At the centre of all that, Natasha Lyonne as Nadia was a true force of nature. Her powerful multi-layered performance, just like a Russian doll, hilarious and sad, strong and broken was brilliant to say the least.

It was a tightly-scripted perfect season, an intriguing puzzle, full unexpected twists and turns. Nominated for 13 Emmy awards and directed entirely by women, the series constantly played with the audience’s expectations and just when we thought we had a grip on it, it introduced us to a brand new main character after a few episodes, pulling the rug under our feet and hooking us to the screen like only the best TV can do.

When Season 2 was announced many wondered how could they possibly top that?

Wisely they decided to follow a completely different direction and yet they still managed to maintain that same vibe, mood and capture that irreverence that made the first season so unique.

Just like in season one, the least you know about it, the better, but I’ll just say that it’s still about “playing with time” except that now it’s all about “time travel” and about searching the past in order to fix the future.

This feels a much more complex, deeper, weirder (yes, even weirder) story. It is also possibly a little bit too convoluted in its construction and consequently it feels like bumpier ride and it’s not as fun to watch as the first time around.

It’s a very audacious series which at times suffers from the weight of its own ambition. Some of the metaphors are a bit too much in your face and the two main storylines this time don’t gel as fluidly as they used to, but there are plenty of good moments throughout and when the ending comes it’s just as rewarding and its final message is undeniably powerful.

On Netflix

Season 1

Season 2 1/2

Ennio

Ennio

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore. Cast: Ennio Morricone, Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Hans Zimmer, Terrence Malick, John Williams, Barry Levinson, Dario Argento, Quincy Jones

34 years after “Cinema Paradiso” swept us away with all those “stolen kisses” in one of the most beautiful and iconic ending in cinema history, director Giuseppe Tornatore has found his voice again, and even if this time it’s through a documentary, his ability to melt our hearts, make us laugh, to inspire us and move us to tears seems unchanged.

“Ennio”, the film, covers the life and works of music composer Ennio Morricone.

I don’t think I need to state here what a huge film buff I am (though some people may call me “film-nerd”, or “film geek), but even I was oblivious to most of the stories told in this splendid documentary. I’ve always considered Morricone one of the greatest film composers, certainly up there with John Williams (my ultimate favourite), Bernard Herrmann, John Barry, Max Steiner and Hans Zimmer, but it was only by listening to extracts from some of his pieces, one after the other throughout the 2 hours and 47 minutes of this documentary, that I realised not just the incredible body of work (around 500 scores and apparently 20 of them in 1968 alone!), but also how revolutionary they were, as well of course beautiful.

Tornatore has made a real letter of love to the man and to cinema itself, not unlike his Oscar winning Cinema Paradiso. Through dozens of interviews, little hidden gems from the archive and hundreds of snippets from classic films, all spectacularly weaved together by editor Massimo Quaglia (who’s at times a bit too enthusiastic, but he really delivers when it comes to editing to music), Tornatore is able get us as close to Morricone as I had never hoped I’d be. And what a treat this is! The film also makes you want to go back and re-discover many of those less-seen films (not to mention the ones we watched over and over).

Morricone speaks like a man from another era, with his old-fashion ‘polished’ and refined Italian. We learn so many little stories from the horse’s mouth (his interview, which runs throughout the documentary was filmed just before he died in June 2020), as well as from all the key players in his life. I don’t think they missed a single one: from Clint Eastwood, to Tarantino, Dario Argento Barry Levinson, Terrence Malick, Bernardo Bertolucci, Quincy Jones, Olive Stone and even (quite randomly) Bruce Springsteen and many others. And for those who have passed away (Like in the case of Sergio Leone or Gillo Pontecorvo), they found old interviews and some great archival footage.

And so we learn about Ennio’s early life and how he wrote music for some of the most iconic Italian songs in 60s. I really had no idea! In fact I think it’s a film that certainly speaks even louder to Italians I guess and will touch a special cords to those who remember those early composition so iconic today).

So many wonderful little bits of trivia, like how writing music for films was considered to be almost “vulgar” among composers and how that pushed Ennio to use a pseudo-name for some of his first few films, because he was “ashamed” in front his peers. Well, who’s ashamed now?

But as well all the many entertaining stories (too many to tell here), we get the chance to listen to some of his great scores and learn how they came about and what the reaction was at the time.

This might also be one of the few chances you’ll get to hear some of these wonderful pieces, as some of these films have never actually been released outside Italy.

The film came out less that 24 hours ago in the UK, but I’ve already seen it twice.

Cinema lovers, music lovers, art lovers and everybody else with good taste for anything Italian and more, this documentary is a sublime and inspiring piece of work, which I will never forget.

Out in selected cinemas and available to buy on most of the major streaming platforms.

Road

Roar ⭐️⭐️

Stars: Betty Gilpin, Nicole Kidman, Alison Brie, Merritt Wever, Issa Rae, Fivel Stewart, Cynthia Erivo, Meera Syal.

Based on a book by the same name, this anthology series is a collection of 8 short films (30 stories in the book), all about women, in what feels like a mixture between Aesop’s fables, “the twilight zone” and “Black Mirror”, merging horror, surrealism, social issues, dark comedy and probably more…

Each story is very different from the others and they should probably all be reviewed independently, but they all have things in common: they’re all modern fairy tales about female empowerment, beautifully filmed, with a great cast (Nicole Kidman among many) and to a degree they all have great premises, but they all fail to go beyond the simple one-line synopsis and do something really meaningful with it.

“The Woman Who Disappeared” is about Wanda (Issa Rae) an author who’s in LA for a movie deal on one of her books, but who soon realises what it’s like for a black woman to be in an industry run by mostly white men: invisible. An interesting start, but just when you are becoming invested in the concept, it all just peters out.

In “The Woman Who Ate Photographs” Nicole Kidman is trying to grapple with her mother’s dementia, discovers that by eating her childhood photographs she can relive those memories. And that’s pretty much it. Nothing else happens. A bit of a disappointment and a waste of a great Nicole Kidman.

Zero subtlelty for chapter 3, “The Woman Who Was Kept on a Shelf” in which a model whose only life purpose seems to have been competing in beauty pageant, is kept by her husband on a shelf as a trophy. A rather cheap premise, which is so on the nose that it’s just embarrassing, but once again a great central performance Betty Gilpin

In “The Woman Who Found Bite Marks on Her Skin” a woman struggling to balance her job and her life as a mother and wife, discovers strange bite marks all over her body (they are clearly a metaphor for the guilt she feels in neglecting her family).

Chapter 5 is “The Woman Who Was Fed by a Duck” in which Merrit Weves begins to date… a talking duck! Yes you heard me right… And believe it or not, there’s even a sex scene with it. Enough said.

“The Woman Who Solved Her Own Murder” stars Alison Brie as a ghost who unhappy about how the local detectives are handling the case of her murder, begins to investigate herself. A pretty obvious one, but rather fun.

“The Woman Who Returned Her Husband” tackles the realities of Indian women in arranged marriages. Meera Syal plays Anu a woman who after many years of marriage decides to return her husband to a store and try some new ones. This was probably one of the best ones: sweet and funny and with rather predictable ending, but an ending nonetheless.

The final story, “The Girl Who Loved Horses” is a classic western tale of revenge, though with a woman at the centre of it. By this time I was just do bored that I couldn’t wait for it to finish.

All of these stories are pretty clumsy, they lack subtleties and hit you over the head with their “not-so-well-hidden” meanings. In the end they pretty much all fail to really get under the skin of the issues they are trying to raise, instead they just trivialise them and simplify them too much making a mockery of the ultimate message they want to deliver. And just when they’re about to get interesting, they end… Just like this review.