Profile pic is Cheng Pei-pei. Queen of Swords, forever. Favorites are my most recently-watched 5-star films.
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Kiss Me Deadly 1955
Lol, holy cow. Surreal B-noir-slurry, as kinda-quaintly funny as it is nihilistic. The stakes are more apocalyptic, & the tone more satirical, than I expect from this sort of material of this vintage. Efficient, nasty stuff, held back somewhat by some, to my ears, pretty iffy dialogue, mostly delivered very flatly (& thus, sometimes very comedically) from an array of secondary characters. And while not a strike against the movie per se, I do kind of find it hard to get much invested when Hammer is such an asshole.
Wild to think of how many films I've seen that just straight-up plundered key elements from this.
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A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse 1975
OK, you win Japan. I try to be a responsible film-watcher & rater, giving your seemingly dime-a-dozen rapey sexplo 70s studio flicks solid scores because they're almost invariably hugely entertaining & exceedingly handsomely-made, albeit always uncomfortable, of course. But then I can't ever stop thinking about them, about how funny & weird & seriously beautiful & gleefully disturbed they are, so I re-watch them and I'm like oh no--this isn't just solid, this is some kinda masterwork of horrible skeeze! And this happens all. the.…
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La Terra Trema 1948
Beautiful, noble, almost miraculous. Not exactly jonesing to re-watch it.
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The Tragedy of Man 2011
Thrillingly illustrated & designed. But at its core it's just a three-hour rant, full of would-be profundities & narrow-minded malarkey, the latter problem increasingly, & disappointingly, reinforced by the film's visuals as it trudges along. At best: tedious & unconvincing, despite some bright points; at worst: vapid, unoriginal, regressive, & repetitive. Lucifer should sue for defamation.
If I can't rate it lower it's only because there is much visually that really wowed me, especially in its middle third--tho it must be said that I don't know that it ever surpasses the singular psychedelic splendor of White Mare.
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Nosferatu 2024
Technically speaking there's a lot about this film that I liked--it's just that I liked much of it more when it was in other, better, vampire movies. Not that this isn't doing some good stuff on its own merits--there's a few astounding, alarming images, & I'm here for explicitly making van Helsing an alchemist. Bummers abound, otherwise.
For a few examples: nearly nothing about this Orlok worked for me. Everything from his design, to his goofy accent (sorry Bill, I know…
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The Shiver of the Vampires 1971
Watched the new Indicator release. Totally enrapturing--must be among the prettiest films ever made, right?
(A character said it was 9:00 & I checked my phone & it was actually 9:00 just as I was watching that moment. Felt special. I think I'm going to have amazing dreams tonight. Thank you Rollin, et al. )
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