EdgarST Reviews

Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory (1961)

Effective Drama

[6/10 · 26 April 2024]

In the evolution of Italian horror film, «Lycanthropus» is an effective, low budget and unpretentious early drama from 1961, which is more a whodunit than a straight werewolf movie. Carl Schell stars as a London physician with a secret that is hired as a teacher in an almost open-door reform school for young female delinquents, sponsored by a rich man, played by Maurice Marsac (I think this is the first time I have seen Marsac developing a full character in a leading role).

The school has two big problems: clandestine sex (which is largely absent from the movie) and a werewolf. A young inmate is having sex with the sponsor to obtain her freedom, but he is a liar and unable to help her, so she is blackmailing him. Then she is suddenly attacked and killed by the werewolf, and suspicion of the victim's best friend Brunhilde (Barbara Lass) and the strange behavior of all the personnel in the center lead the situation to the verge of a scandal.

So, more deaths continue, and everything turns really ugly. Identities and secrets are revealed, little scientific dialogues about lycanthropy are conducted, the solution is fast and final, and more gothic horror movies were ready for release. If you do not pretend this is «Psycho», enjoy it, it is fun.

The Lodge (2019)

Slow, Long and Tricky

[4/10 · 26 April 2024]

What a bad little movie, unnecessarily extended to 108 minutes. I really enjoyed «Ich seh, ich seh,» with its vein of double evil with its final "turn of the screw." Here two children are an echo of those, but their childhood evils end up tangled in a plot of a psychotic religious fanatic who flips out without her pills. The film is slow, long and with several tricky scenes without dramatic value or scares: for example, Mia tells Grace that she heard a noise, which creates expectations for the viewer, but flatly concludes with a creaking window, without the expected bang. «The Lodge» ends up being a very disappointing film.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)

Next, Please...

[6/10 · 26 April 2024]

The films of Wes Anderson are so personal, authentic and his own, that he is a true auteur and one of the American filmmakers that I admire the most since his first feature film. However, from time to time the connection breaks and I skip some of his movies. This comedy is my least favorite of his filmography, an expensive, overlong, and superflous portrait of a megalomaniac oceanographer who resembles anything but a scientist, saved by the filmmaker's compassion and gentle way to paint characters for whom he seems to have true affection. A sort of adventure melodrama, in which the sudden appearance in the ocenographer's life of a son he had never met is central to the story. It is not bad, but I have seen much better Andersons.

The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980)

A Treasure

[10/10 · 26 April 2024]

Excellent research that rescues collective memories of the United States and of the struggle of the American woman to gain access to the labour world. A most laudable work of love to preserve those memories of American history by filmmaker Connie Field, as told by those who were protagonists: in this case, the director reconstructs the symbol of "Rosie", as five American working women tell their stories, when they took the posts left by men who went to the front during Second World War, and who were later displaced from their jobs, when the battle was over, the men returned and claimed their positions. A must see.

Leaving Neverland (2019)

And Never Coming Back...

[7/10 · 25 April 2024]

I never doubted that Michael Jackson could be what he was accused of. There are many persons like him in the world, but we are not aware of most of them because they are not "stars" but common folks. After the Jackson 5 fever and a couple of solo albums, I disconnected from Michael Jackson, from his shouts "a la Diana Ross", his sequins, white stockings, his glove, all crowned with his physical transformation, which I thought was worthy of a science fiction horror movie. I know that for many MJ was the greatest musical and aesthetic entity that the planet gave birth to in the 20th century, but I had a few more interesting idols to listen to via their movies, books or music. I wanted to make this point clear, before reviewing this four-hour documentary about two men who accused Michael Jackson of abuse after he was dead.

Cinematically «Leaving Neverland» is not a great documentary. The aerial shots do not compensate for the concept of the product, which consisted in giving space, liberty and exclusivity to choreographer Wade Robson and businessman James Safechuck, so that they could relate the days when they were Jackson's favorites, with testimonies from their relatives and spouses. I do not agree with the accusations of it being a biased product. A documentary does not have to show two, three, four sides of an issue. It is the cinematic genre par excellence, a multifaceted genre, oblivious to journalistic or communicational requirements. It is not a television report, which, in a few minutes, gathers brief testimonies for and against a subject or personality; and director Dan Reed did not intend to make a long version of a report either, but to dedicate that space to these two men, for which, with the green light of Channel 4 of the United Kingdom, he compiled necessary audiovisual material and interviewed the aforementioned and relatives. When everything was ready, the project was proposed to HBO and the deal was closed.

It is true that four hours is a challenge for the viewers, for they have to sit down and see heads that talk, cry or are left speechless. Moreover, apart from the archive material, Reed did not show his interviewees as normal beings, in their daily activities, to balance the montage. No, the plan was, "Sit down and tell us what happened to you." He did not even take them to the "crime scene." Despite all these conditions, «Leaving Neverland» is a powerful document on the effects and consequences of sexual abuse, on the economic corruption that powerful people induce their victims (and family members) to satisfy their urges. It is also a drama about the feeling of guilt that is generated in the victim, about the liberating effect produced by the breaking of the secret to tell what was experienced, about depression, about mutism, about escape in drugs and alcohol to avoid the truth... And about the responsibility of the parents.

This is the Wade Robson and James Safechuck show. Those who want to hear the voice of MJ's defenders, watch another work. Even if we believe the allegation that Robson and Safechuck are lying, cynical viewers cannot deny that Wade and James are better actors than Brando and De Niro together, in moving or shocking moments that are equated with the most sublime scenes of the careers of those stars.

That is all. If you have the patience, see it, but be warned that you will hear graphic descriptions of the abuse that the protagonists suffered. At least, I think it will keep us all alert in the future, about the fate of the little ones. Now, a documentary is pending... A documentary on the complicity of the fans and the blindness of fanaticism, which ignore the pain of others to feed the fans' myths.

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

Marvelous

[10/10 · 25 April 2024]

A late great find: 60 years after it was made, I discovered this wonderful comedy winner of the BAFTA award for Film of the Year, the Best Actor award (Alec Guinness) given by the Society of Film Critics, and awarded in Venice and with the Oscar for its screenplay, written by T. E. B. Clarke. This anarchic yet gentle movie is hailed by some specialists as the best comedy ever made by the Ealing Studios, benefitted from great performances by Guinness and Stanley Holloway as the leaders of the Lavender Hill gang of thieves. Marvelous, imaginative, highly diverting film. See also, ingenious "Hue and Cry" (also directed by Crichton) and amusing and fascinating "Passport to Pimlico", among other Ealing products written by Clarke.

Labour/Leisure (2019)

Elegant Reflection on Fact

[10/10 · 25 April 2024]

A serene (and beautiful) observational short, without passing judgment. Between the initial extreme long shot of a golf course and the final shot of a beautiful private house that suggest leisure (of the wealthy), the images follow one another without comment, and show the daily work activity of migrant workers in the Okanagan Valley, heart of the Syilx Okanagan Nation, located in the federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy called Canada, which officially appropriated not-ceded land owned by the native people of North America. The evaluation or interpretation of this brief and clear audiovisual exhibition of two opposites depends on each viewer. Although spoken in Spanish, there is no need for subtitles.

Juntera (Primera parte) (2016)

Power to the People

[7/10 · 24 April 2024]

This is the story of people of Venezuela that did not migrate, of those who were thankful of the agrarian reform made during the government of Hugo Chávez; the story of many persons who lived in self-supporting communes, and who seemed to be happy and fufilled working for their communities. This is the story of the crimes committed against them, of people that have been killed by the landowners' mafia. A "tale" of Venezuelan contemporary history that is not told in CNN or any other capitalist network. It is a beautiful but somehow overlong work, perhaps due to director Giulano Salvatore's strategy: to show the beauty of nature without any rush, to show these persons' vast rural habitat, where fresh waters flow and children played and also contributed to the commune. I have a soft heart whenever I watch peasants exposing their happiness, when they talk about the land they own and how they build an agrarian society with neighbors, with people who share. A dream that is often broken, as it has happened in many countries where people power was exerted during a brief period of time, in which human beings were positively human and better persons.

Supposedly this is part one of a trilogy of which there is no further information.

The Journey of Natty Gann (1985)

James Horner, the Wolf, and the Father

[6/10 · 23 April 2024]

An enjoyable story almost ruined by James Horner's syrupy score, and by the bland Disney touch, that still identifies the productions made under this banner. The film was filmed in the days when the company made "Splash", started to do less sanitized comedies, moved into a more dramatic territory, and into more realistic approach to the stories being produced, meaning a more "all-audience-approach" , and treating everyone as intelligent human beings who could enjoy a film together as family. Almost everybody did a fine job, away from saccarine land, in this story set during the economic Depression of the early 20th century, in which a girl goes in search of her father. Meredith Salinger, John Cusack and especially Ray Wise contribute to the film's achievement.

Jet Boy (2001)

No Hope for a Happy Home

[5/10 · 23 April 2024]

«Jet Boy» is not a pleasant movie to watch, not for the sordid elements in the plot, but for the options the leading characters choose in the end, in a hopeless intent to form a "happy home". And worse than that, what begins rather promising turns into a melodrama of few merits: the performances by Branden Nadon as Nathan, the "jet boy", and Dylan Walsh, as Boon, the tough driver who is forced to take Nathan with him in a dangerous trip to Vancouver, related to drug trafficking.

The main issue is that 13-year-old Nathan is a prostitute, abused and battered by adult male patrons, who runs away from Calgary when his junky mother dies of intoxication with bad dope that he provided. He meets Boon in a cafeteria on the road, and suspects that the man is into "something". When Boon makes a phone call, Nathan memorizes and then erases a number which is vital for Boon to call in Vancouver... and so on, the plot gets into cliched territory, giving rutinary psychological answers to many of both characters' ticks, blows and surrender, including a return to Boon's hometown, to his dying father, to his ex-bride and her son, whose apparently idyllic suburban life attracts Nathan and unwittingly Boon too.

Things get tougher, deadlier in Vancouver, and... you know the rest. It gets mellow and improbable, but I tell you, Nadon does a fine job as the kid, and Walsh gives good support as the kind of man who attracts and repels Nathan. Not bad to watch as a surrogate of a TV Movie of the Week.

Jeruzalem (2015)

Annoying Movie

[2/10 · 23 April 2024]

«JeruZalem»... what a dreadful movie. Perhaps that is why people viciously judged «The Golem», the Paz brothers' next film, because of this one that deserves all scorn. I saw them backwards. That big Z in the title must have warned me that it was cinema grade Z.

Now, if you liked the plaintive camerawoman from «The Blair Witch Project», who made you see the story from her point of view, through the camera she handles without stopping crying and screaming, then maybe «JeruZalem» may look good to you and you would like it.

The annoying and silly story follows Sarah and Rachel, two Jewish-American women who go on vacation to Israel, but instead of going to Tel Aviv as planned, they make a little trip to Jerusalem, after the ass of Kevin, an anthropologist they meet in the plane. Once there they have a great time with a local Arab called Omar. But they do not know that doomsday is coming, and the trip is going to turn really ugly. After 48 minutes in which we only saw the quartet having fun, in the remaining 46 minutes, the cake is turned and we see them flee from some winged zombies and be slaughtered one by one, as they run through the streets and caverns with Omar's father and two young Israeli soldiers. Only one person is left alive ... at least before the final credits roll up.

If it is already annoying to see the story from Sarah's point of view, it makes it worse that she is supposedly wearing "smart glasses" that take orders, recognize faces, accept calls and messages from social network and just do what they want, like playing a rock track while Sarah rescues Kevin from a madhouse.

Dedicated to their family, the Paz brothers were possibly disowned for making such a bad movie.

The Hunt (2012)

Hate Story

[5/10 · 23 April 2024]

After almost two hours, I found the ending in complete consonance with the rest of the movie, which during many scenes made me feel angry, because it is neither realistic nor plausible, but belongs more to the realm of melodrama. I believe nowadays things are handled a bit different than the way the situation is depicted here: in "Jagten", persons rarely confront each other, as normal people do. They do not question the supposed offender, nobody seeks a lawyer. They just assume things, until everything gets so out of hand, that it becomes brutal and nasty. The writers expect us to take seriously a situation created by a woman who (like a fool) runs away from the "offender" when he goes to the school to talk to her. This does not mean that I find "Jagten" a bad film. I just believe it is an average melodrama, a genre movie from start to end. And in that sense the ending makes complete sense.

I Spit on Your Grave (1959)

Michel Gast's Cult Film

[7/10 · 23 April 2024]

I finally saw «I'll Spit on Your Graves» tonight and I cannot say it is a good movie... but it is a good movie! It is wonderfully trashy and sordid, yet it is truthful, direct, and daring even by today's standards, elegantly enhanced by Marc Fossard's black-and-white photography, Alain Goraguer's jazz score, and Michel Gast's direction.

Based on a novel by Boris Vian (who died on the opening night of a heart attack), it is one of those typical Northern stories about slightly light-skinned people, whom many call blacks, but go through life as whites. Joe Grant, the protagonist (Christian Marquand), is one of those people. In Memphis, his black brother Johnny is murdered for allegedly raping a white woman (in fact, they were lovers planning to get married). Joe's reaction is violent, he has an incendiary temperament, so he moves to another town, just as racist and virulent, where he looks for a way to avenge Johnny's death, seducing white women who, on several occasions, he is about to kill. However, Joe falls in love with the richest girl in town (the beautiful Antonella Lualdi) and tragedy...

What I find amazing is how director Gast decided to recreate places of the American South in France and got away with it, not because of the details, precision or elaboration of environments and sets, but because of the atmosphere he was able to create, a sensation of oppression and racism with a strong American seal, which I, for example, who am not white, could feel when entering the Panama Canal Zone, when it was under the regime of the United States Armed Forces. (Racism is better or only identified by or known to those of us who have experienced it).

«I'll Spit on Your Graves» is, for me, a very good industrial job, in which I do not find any pretense of making an art film, but rather of competing in the international film market with an effective product. The motion picture was successful everywhere, including Panama. I could not see it at the time, because I was 8 years old, but I heard people talk about it, because of its open frankness about sexuality. Despite all its flaws, I believe this film is a French classic on its own terms, an important piece in the evolution of French commercial cinema.

La isla de los dinosaurios (1967)

No Aztec Mummy Around...

[4/10 · 23 April 2024]

This cult movie is pretty bad, I could not even find it funny. This time director Rafael Portillo did not have a terrifying creature like the Aztec Mummy (whose trilogy he directed), but rather magnified lizards from sequences created for "One Million B. C." (1940) and Mexican hunk star Armando Silvestre, who was no longer 25 years old nor in top shape as in "La red", to lead the cast as Caveman Número 1.

The story is simple and silly: scientist Manolo Fábregas recruits his ex-students Alma Delia Fuentes, Elsa Cárdenas and Genaro Moreno to help him prove that he is not crazy, exploring an island in the Atlantic Ocean, which he believes was part of Atlantis, where prehistoric creatures still exist. Alma Delia meets Armando, who kidnaps her and takes her to his cave, while a volcano is about to erupt and giant lizards fight among themselves everywhere. The servviceable integration of live action with the pre-existing footage in some scenes is probably the best achievement of this production... which has to be seen to believe it has a happy and sexy ending in loincloths.

Good copies are available in the net.

The Invasion of the Vampires (1963)

Frau Hildegarda's Feast

[5/10 · 23 April 2024]

After "El vampiro sangriento" (Cf.), this tired entry ends Miguel Morayta's vampire diptych in the same hurried fashion as its predecessor, but unfortunately this time there are no surprises: the same bat with donkey ears hanging from nylon threads, more quarrels of Frau Hildegarda with everybody in sight, long sections of dialogs, and not enough action. Rafael del Río plays a fragile-looking and very indecisive disciple of Dr. Cagliostro (absent this time from the story) who arrives in the same region of the previous film, where nobility and charros live in terror because of count Frankenhausen's evil deeds. The young man's mission is to fight the count with a serum made from the flowers of black mandragola. It takes him 89 minutes of 92 to do so, while the attacks persist, the fangs grow bigger, and the number of dead men increases. Credit must be given to Bertha Moss, whose Frau Hildegarda is fun.

Imagen del sonido: Ingeniero Joselito Rodríguez (2001)

Mexican Sound Pioneer

[7/10 · 23 April 2024]

Interesting account of the invention of the sound system developed by Mexican filmmaker Joselito Rodríguez, successfully tried and tested with the first sound film made in México, "Santa" (1931). Rodríguez worked as sound engineer in other classics, as "Redes", and he went on to direct singing superstars Jorge Negrete and Pedro Infante, respectively in popular musical dramas "¡Ay Jalisco... no te rajes!" and "Angelitos negros"; as well as the 'lucha film' (wrestlers films) "Huracán Ramírez", starring David Silva. The documentary, made for the 70th anniversary of the release of "Santa", includes heartfelt and moving testimonies by colleagues and friends, including actresses Lupita Tovar and Carmen Montejo, director Miguel Zacarías, film editor Carlos Savage, producer Gregorio Walerstein, composer Sergio Guerrero, and his own sister Emma.

Clandestine Childhood (2011)

Nationalist pancarta disguised as cinema

[4/10 · 22 April 2024]

Luis Puenzo, the guy who made "La historia oficial", was behind this film, as producer of a typical Argentinean nationalistic melodrama dealing with the late 20th century dictatorship that ravaged that country from South America. It is a boring tale about a boy with grown-up's interests and perceptions, mixed with infantile montages of the child he carries inside, plus Leftist speeches, songs and rethorics, and an uncle who is a male chauvinist with a grenade in his left hand... just in case. This kind of nationalist banners disguised as films are common in all national cinemas in the North and South, but some know how to handle propaganda better. Not this one.

Imitation of Life (1934)

Outstanding Melodrama

[10/10 · 22 April 2024]

This is a better adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel than Douglas Sirk's overrated 1959 version. All the "gloss" that producer Ross Hunter put into Sirk's remake is thankfully absent from this classic, elegant melodrama. As played by Claudette Corbett, Bea Pullman (renamed Lora in Lana Turner's vehicle) is a sexy widow and hard-working woman, not a past-her-prime glamour queen becoming a superstar, while all the racist elements are stronger and more interestingly portrayed, since all prejudices are taken as the norm, for granted. The central characters are just what the "American dream" of yore pretended them to be: Delilah, the typical Mamie; Peola, a sad mulatta; and Bea, a woman who waits 20 years for the right man and ends putting him in hold, as the Hays Code demanded. Very good.

I Bury the Living (1958)

Slow but effective thriller

[6/10 · 22 April 2024]

"I Bury the Living" is an incredibly slow-paced thriller, its 76 minutes seem endless, but it always keeps you attentive, though: I guess it works for its strange but original premise, in which the administrator of a burial ground discovers that he can cause the death of the plots' owners when he changes the status of the parcels from empty to occupied. The film also features effective lead actors (especially Richard Boone and Howard Smith) who enliven the events. While watching it I thought that maybe it had an influence on George A. Romero, who later filmed "Night of the Living Dead." Enjoy.

Hypocrites (1915)

Moralistic Tale

[5/10 · 22 April 2024]

The highly imaginative resources used in the few Lois Weber movies that I have yet seen (also evident in "The Rosar"y) surely place her among the first auteurs of cinema, regardless of her gender. However, part of her author's signature is the strong Catholic content in her movies. This markedly affects "Hypocrites", which turns into a moralistic (and a bit self righteous) tale. It is serious religious drama, told in three different times: the past, the present and the dream. This structure somehow reminded me of Griffith's "Intolerance", which was released a year later. I'll keep watching her other works.

Hoy como ayer (1987)

A Sad Affair...

[4/10 · 22 April 2024]

I saw the original 90 minute version when the film opened during the film festival in Havana, in December 1987. The reaction was unanimously negative, mainly for the miscasting of Jorge Montes de Oca not even as Benny Moré, but as a young aspiring actor to play the great Cuban singer. In Mexico it was cut to 76 minutes and retitled "El Bárbaro del Ritmo (Benny Moré)", to not be available, but this is the copy that today is available on DVD and is aired from time to time on Mexican television.

As additional information, Cuban co-director Constante "Rapi" Diego, son of renowned poet Eliseo Diego, was also a prominent artist and illustrator of children's books. His first fiction feature film was the award-winning drama "El corazón sobre la tierra" (1984), followed by the ill-fated project "Hoy como ayer", which seriously affected his career and health. It took him five years to recover to make his third feature film, "Mascaró", for which he also received various awards. And in 2002, as a retaliation, he made the documentary "Con la misma pasión", in which he gave the portrait of Benny Moré that he did not achieve in "Hoy como ayer". Rapi died four years later, at age 56.

How to Steal a Million (1966)

Those Were the Days

[8/10 · 22 April 2024]

I became aware of John Williams' music thanks to this film. By 1966 standards this was first-class comedy, considering that Doris Day (44) and Rock Hudson (41) were by then unconvincing as vestal and satyr, respectively, or whatever. Nobody cared much about them anymore with Shirley MacLaine around, and after 1965's "What's New Pussycat" (which nobody cares about today, but back then it gave us kids many ideas to explore body zones...) As a matter of fact the leading "transgressor" in that movie (written by Woody Allen, as an improved alter ego) plays the leading man to Holly Golightly turned Nicole Bonnet here, so it was not hard to imagine some unseen action in that museum.

I have not seen it in many years, but I remember I liked it in 1966, although I thought it needed a bit of "rebellious piquancy", compared to The Beatles' movies and even Howard Hawks' "Man's Favorite Sport?", which put Hudson in front of 22-year old Paula Prentiss, another "transgressor" who played a poetess-suicide addict-stripper in "Pussycat", with strip-tease included that in the end was cut... Those were the days.

How the West Was Won (1962)

The Prescotts' Saga

[7/10 · 22 April 2024]

If it is useful for anyone interested in the dramatis personae of "How the West Was Won", a more appropriate cast listing -in terms of the drama and not the actors' status at the time of release- would read in this order: with Debbie Reynolds, George Peppard, Carroll Baker, Gregory Peck, James Stewart, Karl Malden, Agnes Moorehead, Carolyn Jones, Robert Preston, Thelma Ritter, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Eli Wallach, Lee J. Cobb, Walter Brennan, Tudor Owen, Harry Morgan, John Wayne, Russ Tamblyn, Claude Johnson, Brigid Bazlen, John Larch, Jay C. Flippen, Andy Devine, Raymond Massey, David Brian, Mickey Shaughnessy, Stanley Livingston, Bryan Russell, Kim Charney... Actors appear and quickly disappear in this film, but Reynolds and Baker as the Prescott sisters, and George Peppard as Zeb, respectively their nephew and son, lead the story of three generations of pioneers in the American West. I found the first part of the story the more interesting, with the voyage of the Prescott family in search of a better life.

The House on 92nd Street (1945)

Pleasing Mogul Zanuck

[6/10 · 22 April 2024]

Quite often regular movie viewers complain that some motion pictures -especially documentaries- contain biased propaganda and that these could not be called documentaries because of that. I wish those movie viewers would see this Henry Hathaway film and tell me if this does apply too, especially coming from 20th Century-Fox, one of the major studios that, along with Disney, most persecuted its workers (both actors and technicians) for having ideas leaning towards the Left. Propaganda it is, biased most probably, but I would not say this is not a film. As a matter of fact, it is quite an interesting drama with documentary elements, in spite of its (slanted) narration, but propaganda nonetheless. It even advertises war bonuses in "The End" card. But Hathaway knew his profession and knew how to sugarcoat the pill.

The Wounded Man (1983)

Good film

[10/10 · 22 April 2024]

Patrice Chéreau's first film is not a pleasant viewing experience, but an excellent portrait of male desire, dominance, and confusion, sometimes arousing in its explicit depiction of homoerotic activity, sometimes a horror film of dark and sordid spaces. It was also a turning point in the career of Jean-Hugues Anglade, who became a star with the suggestion of a quiet personality and a clean handsomeness as coverups of the stormy passions of a common man, in curious roles that illustrated, as this one does, the condition of the French young men during the 1980s... and possibly of many men in the rest of the world. Anglade was in his 30s when he made "L'homme blessé", but he projects the innocence and fragility of a teenager, wrapped up in his own addiction to violence, unrequited love and his death wish. Vittorio Mezzogiorno is the addictive complement to him, as the hustler accustomed to the lack of affection and the fight for survival. If you are looking for something happy, this is not the film for you. Believe the title, that is its content.