Movie Recommendations

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Got the Spirit Cabinet disc with The Mill At Calder's End and The Narrative Of Victor Karloch. The stories aren't very interesting, they're fairly nice exercises in Victorian ghost horror style. The puppets are very impressive, there's a little bit of unnecessary computer facial animation. Barbara Steele, Elijah Wood, Christopher Lloyd and some others lend their voices and likenesses for the puppets. I look forward to what this team does in the future.

http://www.thespiritcabinet.com/#thespiritcabinet
Kevin McTurks Videos on Vimeo

I watched the second disc of Quay Brothers - Inner Sanctums (I've seen everything on the first disc on the earlier compilation). I'm less fond of the museum documentaries, which can be a little too slow but their regular puppet stories are still some of the most beautiful and mysterious films being made, some of them are literary adaptations.
The short Christopher Nolan documentary is really just the Quay Brothers giving a tour of their amazing storage room.

===

The route of exploring European fairy tale films is very tantalizing for me right now. I'm a bit daunted by it though, most of this will probably be done on youtube and I've bought Enchanted Screen by Jack Zipes to help me, it's a big book with a good chapter on old European fairy tale films. The film list at the back is enormous.

RUSALOCHKA/THE LITTLE MERMAID (1976)

This time the mermaid trades her hair colour. Some pretty good songs, some of it even sounds a bit like Magma. I thought the witch was going to be a villain but she's just kind of a crude comedic character. I don't understand why they used rubbish special effects to make the mermaid look like she's in the water in some scenes when she's actually in the water in other scenes. It's a nice film, but I mostly enjoyed the incredible cuteness of the mermaid (the only film role of Viktoriya Novikova?) and the gorgeous princess.

MALA MORSKA VILA/THE LITTLE MERMAID (1976)

Beautifully designed film, the caves with mirrors and statues, all the mer-people (who don't have fish tails but regular human bodies) have slightly silly yet amazing hair entangled with decorations. It must be one of the more elegant screen versions of the story and the soundtrack by Zdenek Liska can be quite powerful (the beats in the cave scenes are quite strange), the soundtrack is easier to get on disc than the film. I recommend it.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

BLACK MAGIC

Shaw Brothers. It isn't one of their supernatural martial arts mixes, this is just supernatural horror that revolves around people using magic to have sex with or kill each other. It makes no sense in a few places, has awful special effects, has a scene of a guy wrestling a dog that looks quite irresponsible for the filmmakers to do, but the film is fairly entertaining. There is a brief vision of a woman surrounded by a few hopping women in a forest and I wish it had more imagery like that.

BESOURO/THE ASSAILANT

Brazilian historical fantasy film about a legendary Capoeirista in a time after slavery was officially over but black people were still treated like slaves. It's very nicely shot, has a touch of psychedelia and there's quite a lot of African mythology. Very unusual and pretty good.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

HORRIBLE DR HICHCOCK

If this isn't the first necrophilia horror film it has to be one of the earliest. It fares quite well next to the gothic Bava and Corman films, nice moody colours and cool soundtrack. Some of the acting is a bit lousy but the doctor comes across pretty creepy at times.

ENDLESS POETRY

I enjoyed this but much less than Dance Of Reality. I thought it was a shame that his father's redemption was taken away. I've got mixed feelings about how miraculous and wonderful everything is treated as, on one hand it makes everything seem underwhelming because it's not living up to his hype, on the other hand Jodorowsky seems to really believe in it all and there's something really nice about how much value he places in art, even if it's in a cliched and arrogant way. I thought some of the poems were really nice.

[miguel1984]

This is a Hellboy fan trailer I found again after I watched it almost ten years ago; the artwork made me want to read the comic for the first time back then.

Hellboy opening - YouTube

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

RUSLAN AND LUDMILA

Although it's an epic it suffers from the same cheap made for television look that a lot of Soviet fairy tale films suffer from. It's shoddy and bad in quite a few ways but the whole film is so artificial that it's hard to be too bothered. There's still a fair amount of good things to recommend it.
The guy who plays Ruslan is a really impressive looking man. The gnarled forests are the visual highlight of the film. There's a desert with a giant's sleeping head and cave interiors with giants holding them up. There's a scene that looks amazingly like a platformer videogame a good number of years before they happened.
It gets surprisingly violent towards the end, with Ruslan impaling men on a spear and cutting heads off while riding his horse. One man gets cut in half by a cheerful jester. But there's hardly any blood and I think this is a family film.
For me, the crowning glory of the film is the main theme music by Tikhon Khrennikov. It's gorgeous and the version when the musician sings it at the wedding is amazing too.

Possible animal cruelty: a bull gets shot with arrows but it just flinches a bit. Maybe not real arrows?

Here's a video that repeats the main theme music.

Ruslan i Lyudmila - YouTube

VIVA LA MUERTE

Fernando Arrabal's semi-autobiographical surrealist film about his father being imprisoned as a traitor in the Spanish civil war and his sexualized resentment toward his mother and aunt.
Have to say I didn't like it much, it's quite interesting sometimes but it relies too heavily on shock value. He's considered part of a trio with Roland Topor and Jodorowsky, this is his classic film, so I probably won't watch the others but won't rule out his writing.

If you're sensitive about animal cruelty, avoid this like the plague. The lizard or amphibian getting its head bitten off could be fake but the beetle being cut in half then it's upper body still crawling around and the bulls and sheep being slaughtered and their remains being played with looks very real.

On the disc there's an interview with Arrabal in which he talks nonsense while playing with a chair and admires the smell of his own feet.

DRAGONS FOREVER

Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Yuen Wah. Chan and Hung are dishonest creeps to begin with, Biao just has mental problems. It's a romantic comedy crossed with drug crime and martial arts. Contains offensive bits. Yuen Wah is really good with the physical comedy, I'm growing pretty fond of him. There's some funny deleted scenes they really should have left in that focus on Biao.

MILLIONAIRES EXPRESS

Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao and a large cast of familiar faces. It's kind of a western with lots of chases, funny mix-ups, railway action, Japanese ninjas with swords and Cynthia Rothrock. They pack so much into it and Yuen Biao is great in it. One of the best Hong Kong action comedies I've seen.

[miguel1984]

The Akira Project - Live Action Trailer (Official) - YouTube

[paeng]

The Duellists - Trailer - YouTube

[miguel1984]

I watched or rewatched a lot of horror films this past weekend: It, It Follows, Sinister, The Babadook, The Cabin in the Woods and The Wicker Man.

The Babadook is, by far, the best of the bunch. Here is a short film by The Babadook's director, Jennifer Kent:

Monster - Jennifer Kent on Vimeo

I would say The Wicker Man was the best of those.

[Robin Davies]

It Follows would be my choice.
I was very disappointed by The Babadook which I expected to like.