Thoughts of some eclectic moviegoers

Essays for extinct anatomies

de Llanos y Valdez — Wed, 14 May 2008 04:00:14 +0000

This is the second short by the brothers Quay that we review. As much as I like their style, I think one short by them would have been enought.

The animation is good, very macabre. However, their shorts borrow too many elements from each other. This, just as the Street of Crocodiles, can be described as a macabre show performed by obsessive puppets with an eerie soundtrack by Leszek in the background.

This time, the soundtrack was inspired by Kafka, and the animation was inspired by a mysterious engraving by Fregonard.

Two persons wait for the dawn, locked in their room. Outside, the darkness prevails, and something terrible is happening. Impossible creatures wander.

Well, I wont tell anymore. If you liked Street of Crocodiles you will like this one… But your awe can never be as overwhelming as the first time.

Traveling. BRB

de Llanos y Valdez — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 00:06:27 +0000

Last week the beach stole my movie watching time. Now, it will be the fault of the vineyadrs of Oregon. I’m enjoying life, but I have been unable to update this blog. I’ll be back on cinco de mayo.

See you soon!

Coming soon.

de Llanos y Valdez — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:15:50 +0000

Once again, an overview of what we have in our waiting list. Are we getting ready to watch something awful? If so, then warn us.

Soylent Green
The Go-Getter
Tekkonkinkreet
Yohimbo, by Kurosawa ( also its western version: A fistfull of dollars)
El Topo, Jodorowski’s derranged western.
Dogma (irreverent theology.)
Profondo Rosso, by Dario Argento
Spider, by Cronenberg
American Pop and/or Fritz the Cat, hallucinating retro animations by Bakshi.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Idiocracy, an intellectually decadent future.
Shaolin Soccer
Last life in universe: Love, yakuza, and a neurotic japanese( is there any other kind?)
Lost Highway, by Lynch
Buffalo 66

In memoriam Charlton Heston

de Llanos y Valdez — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 02:46:21 +0000

DeLlanos y Valdez (Red Robot)

Sadly, the young ones of today only know Heston because of his ugly role in “Bowling for Columbine”.

“I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands!”, he said.

Well, they can take it now if they want. The man is dead. But he should be remembered for his other roles. He was a tough guy, on the screen and in real life.

(The man was a sergeant on board a B-52 on WWII…It does not get much tougher than that. )

“The ten commandments” is one of the first movies I remember seeing in my childhood. His Moses did really seem to be an embodiment of divine wrath.

Another memorable role, this one more traditional and action oriented, was the vampire hunter he played for “Omega Man”. (Recently remade as “I am legend” with Will Smith.)

We had a hard time choosing one of his movies to review in memoriam. Lots of great roles. In the end, we decided to watch Soylent Green. Expect a review soon.

The Thing

de Llanos y Valdez — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 03:51:04 +0000

Horror breeds in isolation. Nothing can be really terrible when there is someone you can trust. Nothing is that horrible when help is near.
The protagonists of this movie, a ragtag team of scientists, are in doubly isolated. The Arctic is a kilometric wall of ice separating them from the world. They knew they could not count on anyone but in themselves… But then the abomination is unleashed, and its infectious natures is such that they can not even trust each other.
An extraterrestrial parasite has the ability to digest any earthly creature and mimic its shape afterwards. By the time they understand the nature of the threat it is too late: They don’t know if there is a doppelganger among them, waiting for a chance to escape the base and infect mankind.
A worthy movie, whose special effects don’t show their age: 20 years. Take note, however: The effects are quite grotesque, not fit at all for moviegoers with weak stomach!

Coming soon

de Llanos y Valdez — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 03:14:30 +0000

There were some changes in the list. We already saw “Suspiria” and “Lives of others”,so they got out. On the other hand, we got “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” and “Lost Highway”, and we hope to watch them soon. Therefore, this is the updated list:

Yohimbo, by Kurosawa (and its western version: A fistfull of dollars)
El Topo, a surreal western by Jodorowski
Dogma (an irreverent view on theology)
Profondo Rosso, yellow cinema by Dario Argento
Spider, by Cronenberg
American Pop and Fritz the Cat, hallucinating retro animations by Bakshi.
Paprika
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
The thing, by Carpenter
Idiocracy, an intellectually decadent future
The last life in universe
Lost Highway, by Lynch
Buffalo 66

Your favorite is not here? Let us know, and we will try to get it.

The Lives of Others

de Llanos y Valdez — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:48:20 +0000

DeLlanos y Valdez (red.robot)

He is in hiding, watching, listening, all day long.

The place is Eastern Germany, the time is four years before the fall of the wall. Stasi, the secret police, is watching every step of the writer Gerorg Dreyman. A network of cameras and microphones transform Weisler into an unseen participant of the intimate world of the writer and her lover, the actress Christa Marie.

The agent is watching the writer and waiting for a misstep, no matter how small, that would give the party an excuse to make him vanish.

Das Leben der Anderen is a very polished drama that managed to wrestle a tear from more than one of my friends. The plot goes on methodically, sometimes in an ominous fashion, successfully creating an oppressive mood that provides a contrasting background for the characters strong vitality.

After all is said and done, this is not really a movie about police states, but about humans. It is almost a love story, a story about the love a human must feel towards those who live well and to the fullest…A love that becomes rather bittersweet when one is not allowed to share that life but has to watch every little detail.
I’ll say no more, because I dont want to let any spoiler slip, and because you must watch this movie as soon as you can. It is overwhelming, in a good way.

Black snake moan

de Llanos y Valdez — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:13:44 +0000

DeLlanos y Valdez (Red robot)

The good:: Cristina Ricci in her underwear and chained to a radiator.

Te bad: Its not my radiator.

Nah, just kidding. The good thing about this movie is the acting. ,Jackson is very convincing and Ricci is poetry incarnate. The blues soundtrack is very enjoyable, too.

The bad thing about its movie is the amount of fodder provided for sociology 101, gender studies 101 and race relations 101. If they taught redneck watching 101 in college, they could watch this movie, too.

The place is somewhere in the bucolic south. The movie is abut the trainwreck that is the marriage of Lazarus/Jackson meeting the trainwreck that is the nymphomania of Rae/Ricci.

Rae’s hard partying comes to a climax when she is dumped, half naked and drugged, in a backroad by Lazarus farm. The old farmer stumbles upon her and does the only logical thing to do: He chains her to the radiator and sets her straight.

Ricci is beautiful even while playing white trash, but even her beauty has a hard time making the preaching and the twisted sociology palatable.

Or perhaps im just reading too much. If you can just enjoy the nice acting and the good blues, you can have a good time with this movie. But if you want to be made faintly angry, you can find plenty of fodder here.

The usual suspects

de Llanos y Valdez — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:19:47 +0000

Its kinda difficult to review this neo-noir thriller withut spoiling it, so Ill try to keep this short.

The movie is about a rather mismatched gang of criminals that came with a plan, seemingly impromptu, while they were being interrogated by a police department that was graping for straws in the case of a hijacked truck.

The gang includes a corrupt ex-policeman, a couple of common thugs, an explosive expert, and a lame, timid con-man with a talent for planning hits.

They win up getting the attention of a relentless kingpin known as Keyser Soze, who makes a deal that they cant possibly survive, but they can’t quite refuse it either.

The history is told mostly in d declaration to the police provides Verbal Kint, lame con-man and sole survivor of a massive gunfight and explossion seen at the begining of the movie.

Expect several nice shootouts, and a not so surprising twist ending. Nice movie, but I’m not sure it’s worth its place at the IMDB’s top 25.

Suspiria

de Llanos y Valdez — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:43:14 +0000

DeLlanos y Valdez (Red robot)

One of our readers warned us not to see this 30 year old movie, but the warning came to late and we saw it anyhow.I don’t regret it, but I underdstand where did the warning come from.

This movie is a showcase for Argento’s aestetics of female torture.

Everything is nasty, in a very stilized way, starting with the first murder: A stabbing frenezy where the killer finally strikes the exposed, still beating hearth of her victim before throwing her through the stained glass ceiling of a building, whose sharp shards wind up impaling a hapless friend of the victim.

Argento’s aestetics of viscerae are almost pornographic, technical mastery nonwhistanding. The plot is so thin it is almost insulting, and yet, this tale about a coven of witches hiding within a dance academy has a great redeeming virtue: Its while 92 minutes are full of the uneasy stuff of nightmares.