I've avoided reading much about the movie as I'd like to actually see it, and as a result have only seen some secondhand memes and am aware of a scene where Tar supposedly dunks on someone Ben Shapiro style. (Hearing that alone is enough to suggest she's probably not a character we're meant to like.) I must have missed the boat on it theatrically though, as there seems to be just one second run theatre playing it in my city at the moment.

As for 2022 releases, I'm planning to see the Avatar sequel this weekend, and will probably catch up on some other things as they hit streaming.
 

Rock wrote:

am aware of a scene where Tar supposedly dunks on someone Ben Shapiro style. (Hearing that alone is enough to suggest she's probably not a character we're meant to like.)

This scene has little to do with anything in the film, although a number of critics are trying to make it into a big thing because it's the kind of red chum they like to chew on.

I'll add a spoiler here though so don't read any further.....

She goes off on a student who refuses to listen to, to play or to learn from Bach because Bach was a straight, white Christian cis-male.  In fact, I can actually see Ben Shapiro making a similar argument for refusing to listen to jazz or hip-hop.  So in this particular scenario, I'm totally team-Tar.  There's a number of other personal factors (which I alluded to in my review) that are much more problematic about her character.

This has a vague resemblance to the giallo genre, and might technically be considered one, as it was produced in Italy using an Italian crew and (mostly) cast.  But, in reality, this film is a production by two American exploitation entrepreneurs, producer Dick Randall and writer/director William Rose.  Randall is a well-known smut peddler who could be found in virtually every form of exploitation cinema of the 70s and 80s.  This appears to be the only directing effort by Rose, and the amateurism shows.  Really, this is simply imitation giallo, an excuse for splashes of V8 blood and lame S&M sequences, a film that has none of the skill or imagination of the true giallo masters, and the only typically giallo aspect they seem to care enough to get right is in utilizing a cast of beautiful actresses.  But even there, only Daniela Giordano has much to do, while Rosalba Neri and Karin Schubert are wasted in obligatory, almost cameo, roles.  Also wasted are classic Italian talent like Giavanna Galletti and Raf Vallone (aka, the Italian Oliver Reed), doing their generation's equivalent of bank-rolling.  Meanwhile we get some 'Jack Scanlon' (very thin fimography) running around in his underwear like he's Greg Brady or something.

5.5/10






Now here's a more proper and satisfying slice of authentic giallo, more of a sexually-tinged Hitchcockian thriller, with more explicit kills, than a true horror film, and definitely elevated above base exploitation.  I'm only familiar with the director Tonino Valerii from a string of strong second-tier Spaghetti Westerns (Day of Anger, My Name Is Nobody, A Reason to Live A Reason To Die), and this appears to be his only foray into giallo, but he handles the craft with agile ability.  Like the best giallo, you can see a direct line from this style to the later American likes of De Palma and Carpenter (especially the use of the killer's POV).  George Hilton is suave as our detective, and Ennio Morricone supplies his distinctive brand of creepily child-like score.

8/10





Speaking of exploitation, the recently deceased (really, just like two weeks ago) Ruggero Deodato, probably best known for his Cannibal Holocaust, tries his hand at the poliziotteschi genre and this certainly feels more exploitative than some of the better known entires.  Deodato is aided by a script from the master of the poliziotteschi, Fernando Di Leo, perhaps because Di Leo was busy making better movies from better scripts at the time.  Still, this film isn't bad, but pretty blatantly cynical and amoral.  We get a couple Starsky and Hutch-wannabes, part of an elite police unit, abusing their power indiscriminately, absent any of the moral quandries which tempered its American influences like French Connection or Dirty Harry.  For example, I'm not sure if Popeye Doyle and Harry Callahan ever would have run a train on a female witness.  But who's to say?  But this is the kind of cynicism that makes this more of a Deodato film than a Di Leo one.  Still not sure if it was a lack of taste or deliberate irony to score this amorality with some hippie-pop that sounds like Donovan, or the first framing shot of our Italian Duke boys on a motorcycle that seems to mimic the cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water.  I'm going to go with the sick humor excuse.

But the real meat of the matter comes fast and early, and is the real attraction to watch the film, which is a stunning, jaw-dropping motorcycle chase through the crowded streets of Rome.  This is clearly inspired by the infamously 'stolen' shoot from French Connection, and, given some of the more abrupt cuts, gives a strong impression that somebody probably got hurt and maybe a couple of cameras damaged.  It's a breathless sequence and excellent stuntwork, and past this (literally the first ten minutes of the film) there's not much left to recommend outside of some lovely natural breasts.

7/10  (motorcycle chase alone - 8.5/10)
 

This is the only case where Deodato’s sociopathy makes the movie more fun.

Surely, you've seen Executive Decision before.

Aubrey Plazathon




Aubrey Plaza gives a strong performance, mysterious and vaguely dangerous, in a slightly overearnest "psychological" (my quotes, because haha) would-be thriller that doesn't really attempt to make a whole lot of sense.  Which is fine.  Writer/director Lawrence Michael Levine also wrote the overearnest, and underbaked, Always Shine for his wife, Sophia Takal, which attempted to halfway rewrite Persona, so I can handle the crooked structure and overwrought metaphor that does all of the heavy lifting.  And all of that would have been fine as well, maybe great, if everyone else in this film wasn't so awful.  I'm still not sure if it's a matter of poor writing or weak acting or maybe even lazy direction, but I just hated everybody (maybe not so much the lesbians) and pretty early on started rooting for the bear, which is also only a problem since the bear is the metaphor and may or may not actually exist.

7/10




Another strong Plaza performance, with her patented tough broad everygirl, and the film paints a salient symmetry between criminal exploitation (the "dummy shopper") and labor exploitation (unpaid interns and "independent contractors") of the so-called gig economy which proves highly unflattering to the latter.  But, in terms of filmmaking, this debut from John Patton Ford is fairly routine and conventional stuff, with at least two really standout scenes, but mostly predictable results.  I was a little baffled as to why this relatively pedestrian film made Barack Obama's year-end favorite list, so I considered how this contemporary gig economy really started to flourish under Obama's administration, at the same time that the DNC was raking in millions from companies like Uber.  I dunno.  Maybe it's a guilty conscience.

7/10
 

I’m seeing a lot of love for Emily the Criminal Letterboxd. I imagine the subject matter has something to do with it. Will likely give it a viewing at some point.

Kai: The Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker

Things in this doc go about as well as could be expected.  Kai assaults a man who had a psychotic episode after Kai had passed him some laced marijuana.  Kai becomes an internet celebrity.  Kai turns out to be a bit crazy, and murders a man whom may or may not have been his john.

But, as crazy as Kai clearly is, he's mostly more of a Chauncey Gardener figure in all of this.  Indeed, there's a certain refreshing purity in Kai's unambiguous insanity.  Instead, the true villains of this documentary are all of the media figures and representatives who were so eager to exploit a homeless manic druggie in an orgy of clicks, likes and views, sucking and fucking every last ounce of potential fame and notoriety out of his unwashed hair.  Along with Balloon Boy and maybe Charlie Sheen, Kai is probably the poster child of the dehumanizing meme-ification of algorithmic fame-whores throughout our very broken media environment of the past decade.  The least surprising part of this doc is when we find out that the Kardashians are involved somehow.  This doc is easier to stomach if you can pretend that it's actually a secret Christopher Guest comedy, otherwise it's just pathetic and all-too predictable.
 

I really didn't like that movie either, and people tell me I'm wrong.

I assume it's a 'had to be there' vibe from watching it with a gamey audience.
 

Rock wrote:

Where does it rank on the Baby Driver to Malignant scale?

Barbarian
Conjuring
Malignant
X
Halloween Kills
Terrifier 1
Babydriver

The ending really really aggravated me though. So much squandered potential. So upsetting.

Last edited by crumbsroom (1/18/2023 8:13 pm)