Recent Viewing

Whisky (2004) Watched with Donna. The first Uruguayan film I have seen, the directors cite Kaurismaki as an influence in the closing credits, and it shows - maybe a little too much. The taciturn owner of a sock factory (a tiny shop with three employees) and his shop foreman must pretend to be married while his brother, also a sock factory owner, visits from Brazil. This is the kind of movie in which nothing is explained, there is very little dialog and no establishing shots to show the environment or locales - but that's not bad really. I hesitate to use the word intimate, but it is about the people and learning to see what they are inside when they show little on the outside. You aren't going to learn much about Uruguay from this but it is a comedy insofar as it provides a few quiet chuckles, and is a pretty good movie about people which you may not forget right away. 8/10

Cherry 2000 (1987) [TV] Melanie Griffith sleepwalks her way through this scifi action movie. They seem to have had some money to spend on sets, and deserve credit for the Boulder Dam locations, but mostly it's just go into the deadly zone to find the fabulous object, have gunfights and blow stuff up in the old quarry. Griffith needed a far better movie than this to bring out her subtle qualities. 4/10

Beast In Space (1980) Directed by Alfonso Brescia a.k.a. Al Bradley. The last of his series of five SF films and by far the lousiest. It uses the same sets, props, costumes and effects sequences as the rest, but this is the porno movie of the series and seems as if he had just given up trying. It's all equally dreary and uninteresting, whether they are walking around in a cave or crummy little hallway set, or squirming around kissing each other on the chest and leg. You know that I despise superlatives like "worst ever" as more revealing of the user's ignorance than their knowledge, but in this case it leaves me wondering how to adequately convey the place of these five movies, and this last one, in the history of cinema. I can only say that as a combined work it is unique. This should only be seen after having endured the other four, but preferably not at all. 1/10