dbborroughs (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dbborroughs) wrote,@ 2008-05-11 10:36:00 |
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Last night's Late Night Cinema
EXECUTIONER OF VENICE
Costumed actioner set in the city and benefiting from being filmed in and around the canals. the plot has to do with intrigue concerning the titled character and the inquisition. Its a costumed swashbuckler of the sort they don't make any more and rarely did they ever look this good or have such a great sense of place. Its a shame that a good letterboxed version of this film doesn't seem to be out there since the pan and scan version I saw often had confrontations with invisible men (speaking characters have been chopped out of the frame). the cast headed, by Lex Barker and Guy Madison, is quite good, even when dubbed into English. Its a nice movie for a rainy afternoon, when you want to just sit and watch some adventures from a bygone time.
CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS
Deep brooding melding of numerous ideas and themes including riffs from Hitchcock, Beauty and the Beast, Val Lewton, Lewis Carrol, and on and on. Its the very gothic tale of a woman who meets a man who may have loved her in the past. A triumph of the filmmakers art the story left me cold. I suspect that watching the film well after midnight was a bad idea where its lush visual pleasures helped me to nod off. I know that the films insistence about being about something didn't help, I wanted a 1940's mystery, what I got was psychological drama. I'm going to have to watch this again down the road when its much earlier in the evening.(It is great to look at though)
GORILLA
Sven Nykvist directs and shoots a film about a Swedish man in the jungle. He makes his living collecting animals for zoos. When a village is attacked by a rogue gorilla he heads into the bush to kill it.At the same time he is saddled with a female photographer who insists on going along. More documentary then drama this is a beautiful film that shows a side of the African wilderness that is probably all gone now. Certainly animals like the rhinoceros with horns the size of a small car are gone. As a documentary of life in the jungle and its changing nature its a great little film. Clearly the filmmakers are were aware that the world they were filming was changing and they note it in the narration. As a drama the film is pretty standard stuff. its clear that the man and the women will have a romance and all of that. However there really isn't much to the story and the emotional climax of the film isn't really the gorilla hunt, which ends with a "thats it?" moment, rather its an elephant stampede just before it. Flaws of the drama aside this is quite simply one of the better African lensed films I've seen. Certainly its one of the better documentaries of the period(which predates the Mondo Cane style shock films by a couple of years). I really liked this film. If you take it as a drama its 6 out of 10. As a documentary its 7 out of ten.
A MATTER OF WHO
Actually the WHO of the Title is the World Health Organization as well as the question as to which person is responsible for a small pox outbreak. Terry Thomas stars as the "germ detective" who stumbles upon a case of small pox on a flight into England. The man who has the disease is a recently married oil man who is returning to England and takes ill on the flight. Quarantined the doctors realize what the deal is and try to track down where he might have caught the disease. However things become complicated and potentially dangerous when two more people elsewhere in Europe come down with the disease. As Thomas tries to track down the common source of the infection (the disease takes two weeks to incubate so its very likely that all three victims have something in common) things become more complicated as people with questionable backgrounds and Arab ministers get brought into the mix. This is a super little mystery that I happened to stumble across by accident. Being a fan of Terry Thomas I decided to give the film a go. Both funny and suspenseful this is a great little thriller that keeps you watching to the very end (I loved that I didn't know where it was going and was glad to just follow along). The joy here is Thomas, who plays WHO's best expendable mind, the guy who knows his stuff, who is constantly fired but always rehired since he knows what he's doing. As one character comments there is more to the man then just his eccentricities. This is a super little film. Its one of those that you need to put on a list and keep an eye for or to do a little digging to find. Its just a great deal of fun.
EXECUTIONER OF VENICE
Costumed actioner set in the city and benefiting from being filmed in and around the canals. the plot has to do with intrigue concerning the titled character and the inquisition. Its a costumed swashbuckler of the sort they don't make any more and rarely did they ever look this good or have such a great sense of place. Its a shame that a good letterboxed version of this film doesn't seem to be out there since the pan and scan version I saw often had confrontations with invisible men (speaking characters have been chopped out of the frame). the cast headed, by Lex Barker and Guy Madison, is quite good, even when dubbed into English. Its a nice movie for a rainy afternoon, when you want to just sit and watch some adventures from a bygone time.
CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS
Deep brooding melding of numerous ideas and themes including riffs from Hitchcock, Beauty and the Beast, Val Lewton, Lewis Carrol, and on and on. Its the very gothic tale of a woman who meets a man who may have loved her in the past. A triumph of the filmmakers art the story left me cold. I suspect that watching the film well after midnight was a bad idea where its lush visual pleasures helped me to nod off. I know that the films insistence about being about something didn't help, I wanted a 1940's mystery, what I got was psychological drama. I'm going to have to watch this again down the road when its much earlier in the evening.(It is great to look at though)
GORILLA
Sven Nykvist directs and shoots a film about a Swedish man in the jungle. He makes his living collecting animals for zoos. When a village is attacked by a rogue gorilla he heads into the bush to kill it.At the same time he is saddled with a female photographer who insists on going along. More documentary then drama this is a beautiful film that shows a side of the African wilderness that is probably all gone now. Certainly animals like the rhinoceros with horns the size of a small car are gone. As a documentary of life in the jungle and its changing nature its a great little film. Clearly the filmmakers are were aware that the world they were filming was changing and they note it in the narration. As a drama the film is pretty standard stuff. its clear that the man and the women will have a romance and all of that. However there really isn't much to the story and the emotional climax of the film isn't really the gorilla hunt, which ends with a "thats it?" moment, rather its an elephant stampede just before it. Flaws of the drama aside this is quite simply one of the better African lensed films I've seen. Certainly its one of the better documentaries of the period(which predates the Mondo Cane style shock films by a couple of years). I really liked this film. If you take it as a drama its 6 out of 10. As a documentary its 7 out of ten.
A MATTER OF WHO
Actually the WHO of the Title is the World Health Organization as well as the question as to which person is responsible for a small pox outbreak. Terry Thomas stars as the "germ detective" who stumbles upon a case of small pox on a flight into England. The man who has the disease is a recently married oil man who is returning to England and takes ill on the flight. Quarantined the doctors realize what the deal is and try to track down where he might have caught the disease. However things become complicated and potentially dangerous when two more people elsewhere in Europe come down with the disease. As Thomas tries to track down the common source of the infection (the disease takes two weeks to incubate so its very likely that all three victims have something in common) things become more complicated as people with questionable backgrounds and Arab ministers get brought into the mix. This is a super little mystery that I happened to stumble across by accident. Being a fan of Terry Thomas I decided to give the film a go. Both funny and suspenseful this is a great little thriller that keeps you watching to the very end (I loved that I didn't know where it was going and was glad to just follow along). The joy here is Thomas, who plays WHO's best expendable mind, the guy who knows his stuff, who is constantly fired but always rehired since he knows what he's doing. As one character comments there is more to the man then just his eccentricities. This is a super little film. Its one of those that you need to put on a list and keep an eye for or to do a little digging to find. Its just a great deal of fun.
