I'm lovin' it -- a great day for HDCinema! There's not enough time in the day to see everything I want -- especially when you consider the stuff on the free Showtime preview this weekend. I actually just woke up from a nap I forced myself to take so I could stay up (I hope) to watch Monster after Pulp Fiction on TMC-HD. Hopefully, Voom won't wait too long to replay the ones on the exclusives that I didn't get a chance to see today.
Female Misbehavior - 3 stars : This was really four mini-movies, seperated with their own credits and all, put together around the common theme of strong women who eschew the traditional role of women to live life their own way. I found two of the mini-movies to be well-done -- and fascinating -- and the other two not so much. The first one showed what they called an "academic feminist" -- a really smart woman with a rapid-fire fastasyoucan style of talking that takes some getting used to; but once you do you realize she's saying some very interesting things. It does however, feature one very annoying interviewer who needs to learn to shut the hell up and let the subject speak. The other good one was the last one, with a transsexual named Max who's in the process of a female-to-male transformation. Max is well-spoken and open, and goes into depth about his life and reasons for the change. Fascinating. PQ is hit-and-miss (mostly miss) as they switch from one source to another. Sound is pretty bad throughout.
The Silence Of The Lambs - 5 stars : So good. And unbelievably creepy. More suspense than any ten of your regular ol' "horror" flicks. Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster are excellent, as is the supporting cast. And what a story. They don't get much better than this.
The Silence of the Lambs 5.0 stars incredible movie. Keep to the edges of your seat. I have seen it so many times and yet do not get bored. Great acting, great transfer, great story. A must to add to any collection.
The Food Of The Gods - 3 stars: Pretty cool movie, even with the less-than-spectacular 1976 "special" effects that on occasion make the creatures more amusing than menacing. PQ is very good, especially for a movie this old. I really like this movie, but it can be hard to overlook the lack of attention to detail and the sometimes-awful dialogue.
Starman - 2.5 stars : Has sort of a been-there-done-that haven't-I-seen-this-story-before kind of feel to it. Maybe it felt more original back in 1984? Hardly anything happens that you don't see coming a mile away. That being said, the story is a fun one. Good PQ and nice surround sound (albeit one with a cheesy sound effect or two). Pretty bad performance by Jeff Bridges IMO, although I did laugh at his reaction to his first puff from a cigarette.
Some plot background: This is the sequel to 1973's "Westworld" which takes place at a middle of nowhere resort for the elite called "Delos" . Each section (or "World") of the resort has a theme (Roman, Medieval and Western World) with a hedonistic appeal as you can interact with the characters of the resort (even kill them if you want) without consequence as they are robots. Without giving too much away something *does* go terribly wrong resulting in human fatalities and closure of the resort.
Futureworld picks up 3 years later. Delos has been reopened, the flaws that caused the problems with the first version of the resort have been worked out, they have opened up two new sections (Future World and Spa World, though Western World remains closed) but have both a serious public relations problem and apparently some political agenda involving world leaders.
Two television reporters (Blythe Danner, Peter Fonda) have been invited (well, Peter just kind of invites himself, explained early on) to the resort to take a tour and do some preliminary research on the new version of the park in preparation for a feature story to be done a couple of weeks later, and discover that things are not as rosy as they seem...
*****
It really helps if you've seen "Westworld" first to understand the movie better but it's not absolutely neccesary. The chemistry between the reporters is okay and the story is interesting, but "Futureworld" lacks the charm of it's predecessor. The angle here is more of what's going on under the resort than the resort areas themselves (which is good as it's not just a rehash, but I would have liked to seen a bit more of the different "worlds").
Yul Brynner (who was a total badass in Westworld) has a much smaller role here, and it's not very scary. Actually- it's a little (ok-more than a little) embarassing.
Futureworld also has a couple of major story issues.
Spoilers ahoy!
The first one is that they break a rule established in "Westworld"
- if the robots are so vulnerable to the effects of liquids how could they drink alcohol and come into contact of umm.. various "other" liquids in "Westworld".
Also a character set up in the beginning (a contest winner) who would seem to be important to the story for some reason is dropped without explanation.
Unless I missed something. I could have.
PQ rating to follow after the encoders are fully set up (I'll rewatch a bit then), but didn't see any obvious transfer problems and the sound is good.
Arguing The World- 1 star : Documentary. Bunch of blowhards with inflated senses of self-importance. And the movie itself did little or nothing to make these people more interesting to me. Could barely watch it.
Pet Sematary - 3 stars : Not a perfect movie -- in fact far from it, as a good portion of it is kinda lame/stupid. But overall it's a pretty fun time that builds up to an excitingcreepycool ending. And I thought it had just the right amount of grossness -- enough blood'n'guts so it won't be teased by the other horror films, but not so much that I wanted to turn my head in disgust. Thought the PQ was good, and was impressed with the surround sound effects -- especially in the last half hour.
The Hawk - 1 star : Didn't like it much at all. The plot was alright, but very familiar. PQ wasn't very good -- nothing very sharp, colors kinda dull. And artistically speaking it was just filled with too many dark scenes where I could barely even make out the faces of the actors, let alone any nuances in their acting. Sound wasn't much better -- the dialogue seemed muffled to the point where I could barely understand what was being said (the accents didn't help me here). At least some of the surround effects were decent.
Microcosmos - 4 star : Excellent visual documentary inside the insect world; hellacious camera work...outstanding PQ...fascinating. A must see! :up :up
A Brooklyn State of Mind - 2.5 stars: Not bad. Not exactly groundbreaking material here -- and an ending you can see coming a mile away -- but it's well acted by a very talented cast.
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum - 2.5 stars: Over-the-top musical/comedy/farce type thing. I found the opening sequence a bit off-putting and annoying, but once I settled in to the rhythm and style of this thing I actually enjoyed it and got a few chuckles out of it. Thought the strengths were the one-liners, and the complexity of the plot. The songs I didn't like so much.
Microcosmos - 5 stars. AMAZING!!!. A masterpiece. The best documentary I've ever seen about insects and/or animals in general. PQ is excellent (3D-like). The HD transfer is one of the best I've seen in VOOM.
The Visitors 4.0 stars Excellent movie with Jean Reno (the professional). It little over the top in the story but still funny and well acted. OAR does not get better. Quality was quite good.
The Trials of Henry Kissinger - 1 star : It just couldn't hold my interest. In all fairness I'm not very interested in the subject matter, but a good documentary shoud be interesting regardless. I fell asleep after about an hour.
Onibaba - 4 stars : What a beautiful film! Very appealing visually. Excellent black and white PQ, artistically shot, beautiful compositions. I usually pass on subtitled/foreign movies, but this one looked so good I couldn't ignore it. Entertaining story, too -- and easy enough to follow the general idea even if you don't keep your eyes glued to the subtitles.
Knife in the Water 3.5 stars. A Roman Polanski (The Pianist) film. It is a B&W 1:33:1 movie which is beautifully shot. The angles capturing the actors and what's happening makes it worthy to watch. The story is not over the top but it is fine. You will see only three people acting on this movie. One of them is Jolanta Umecka (Krystyna) who looks beautiful and hot (I wonder how she would look in colors). One cannot take the eyes away from her as she moves in her bikinis in that boat. In my opinion it was an excellent movie. The story again is not for everyone.
Fat Girl (À ma soeur!) - 2.5 stars : What the hell did I just watch! This film is about sibling rivalry and interaction between two sisters (one a hottie, one a fatty) and their dysfunctional family. The interaction between two sisters, their parents, and the older sisters boyfriend---stereotypical male trying to seduce the lovely young virgin--are well done. However, this film was disturbing on multiple levels. There's no sense if trying to analyze this film beyond concluding that each and everyone involved in its making should receive intense psychotherapy and electroshock.
Short Eyes - 1.5 stars : Didn't think much of this one. I don't necessarily expect to find characters I like in a prison movie wherin the main character is a child molester, but I'd at least like to find a character or two that stir up feelings on way or another. These guys were just sort of boring, uninteresting. I didn't care what happened to any of them. Maybe there was some originality in these characters back in '77, but they pretty much all came across as stereotypes to me. And neither the pq nor the sound were anything to write home about.
