Movies

Good Times (1967) The Sonny and Cher movie. Sonny has ten days to come up with a movie script or they will be forced to use the script provided by their nemesis, Mister Mordicus, played by George Sanders. Most of the movie consists of Sonny's dopey fantasies about what kind of genre film he would like to be in - western, jungle, detective - and there are songs performed. You'd think a name like Mordicus would be a tipoff from the start not to do business with the guy. Really more of a Sonny movie with Cher just tagging along. I'm afraid this is not the best thing William Friedkin ever directed. In fact it is probably the worst. I liked the first musical number, mainly because it was super-colorful with a pop art motif, but the rest of it I could do without. 4/10

Mansion of the Ghost Cat (1958) Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa. Atmospheric spooky Multigenerational Curse thriller. Murder, rape, suicide, possession, multiple ghostly apparitions, and bloody vengeance. Modern day framing sequence is in bluish monochrome, while the period backstory is in color. Scenes are beautifully and artfully contrived with a fluid camera when necessary but not a lot of whirling around for its own sake, and masterful use of shadow. The bizarre cat-hag's distance manipulation of one of her victims becomes an eerie death dance. A slow pendulum-like swing heightens the conflict over a game of go to a remarkable level of tension. Maximum threat is drawn out of every crash of lightning. Nakagawa also directed the amazing Jigoku, one of the best Hell movies in human history. I have been hoping for quite a while to see some of the Japanese ghost and horror films of the '50s, but it seems the gangster stuff is more popular. Modern technology now makes it possible for me to fulfill this desire and I am extremely pleased with the result. 9/10