Black Rain (Ridley Scott, 1989)

 

The basic element for a successful neo-noir movie is atmosphere. You can have the lousiest story and yet with the help of the visuals you can make your movie shine. Black Rain doesn't have the revealing storyline or the great twist or even the characters that can drive you mad. But it has taste and that's more than enough. It has that inexplicable thing that can be achieved only through the film language and can make the movie penetrate you like a piercing instrument. You can see the charm and the allure of the movie through its frames and lighting. It has the neo-noir devil inside of it that movie. It has that highly bewitching flavor, that can be found at every little detail of the film, that seems to be unimportant to the eye of the clueless, but to the eye of an authentic cinephile it marks a brave universe of totally beautiful frames and synthesis that come into your eyes and steal your breath away. 

I have argued before that cinema is pure emotion. It's what your heart tells you and not what your brain understands. You have numerous surrealistic movies that you don't understand even the half of it, but you are taken completely by the beauty of the film. In the same way Black Rain might be an even cliche movie. A movie that could be a by-the-numbers film, but the treatment of the story, in its visual form by Ridley Scott makes the movie one of those forgotten gems that have much to offer to the viewer. Audience longs for a journey, it longs for that highly idiosyncratic trip that only the art of cinema can offer. And Black Rain offers a highly spectacular journey to the depths of cinema, to the skies of visual creation, to the seas of neo-noir, high contrast, dark and white philosophy of the art.   

Thanksgiving (Eli Roth, 2023)

Eli Roth is by many film goers a deeply misunderstood director and creator of cinema. There are many who consider him a horrible, phony director who exploits violence and gruesome scenes for no reason at all. I read a review on Thanksgiving at a fancy website of a Greek magazine and he gave the film zero stars, writing all kind of terrible, insulting things for the movie. Well truth is that the guy who wrote the review didn't get anything from the film. Quite possibly he gave zero starts to the movie before it had even started. Fact is that Thanksgiving is the best Eli Roth movie till this day and a slasher movie that has much more to offer than the usual body count. Yes there is no doubt that the killings are extremely inventive and thrilling, but there is something deeper to the movie, that the critic from the Greek magazine didn't even care to point.

Thanksgiving has one of the best opening sequences that I have seen in a horror movie. A straightforward, brilliant and deeply vulgar, comment on consumerism, on trend, on holidays and finally on American society in general. That sequence gives to the movie a totally different flavor and the thing that follows is been seen by the spectator through a totally different angle. The killer is a monster, but is he really the only monster in the movie? Thanksgiving goes beyond the typical popcorn slasher movie that you enjoy watching with your friends while smoking a long, thin joint and goes to territories where it sets some questions for the spectator to answer. Isn't real life sometimes even worse than the most gruesome horror film? I don't know what the critic from the Greek magazine had in his mind, but I am certain that he failed to see all this that the movie offered because he was surrounded by cliches, that tell him that Eli Roth is a B director who can't possibly deliver anything good. Well, the fucking truth lies inside the movie. Eli Roth has told us something deeply valuable with Thanksgiving. That we are, all of us, beasts.  

The Rum Diary (Bruce Robinson, 2011)

 

I was reading in Wikipedia that The Rum Diary got mixed reviews when it came out and was also a box office bomb. It didn't even make the money it cost. This is another pitiful example that audience and critics are a waste of fucking time. There are very few apparently that got the humor and the style of the movie and even less who understood the comment of the movie. The Rum Diary based on the fabulous book by remarkable, legendary author Hunter S. Thompson is a film that uses the unorthodox, the indecent, the obscene if you like to make crystal clear to all of us that humanity is drenched in lies. That our character, at least for most us, is a heinous collection of wannabes, pretentiousness and self-righteousness. The answer to all that, to all that lie, that we are witnessing every day is to live on the margins of life. Meaning to live like clowns. To  make sure to everyone that this madness will never get us down. To make sure that these imposters of the human being will never get us down. That's exactly what The Rum Diary is all about and that was also what the life and deeds of the author was all about. The rest of it, the numbers and the reviews of the movie, are simply farts in strong wind. They aren't even smelly. 

Johnny Depp some many years after the masterpiece Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, returns to play another alter-ego of Hunter. The result of that is a hilarious, crazy and untamable movie that will make your day, stay assured for that. But there is a "secret" point to all that, the humor of author Hunter was not simply funny, for the sake of fun, it had strong roots. And that can be seen clearly in the movie. The humor of Hunter was a fierce "fuck you" to everything this society stands for. And thus The Rum Diary is a movie that is not to be taken lightly. It's not a lighthearted comedy, that's why it didn't get good reviews and was a box office bomb. If it was one of those silly-happy romantic comedies it would be a hit, take my word for it. The Rum Diary shows the struggle of one man to cope with his surrounding. To cope with all the... bastards that are around him. And for that reason we identify with the protagonist, with the movie and with its incredible witty comment.   

Paprika (Tinto Brass, 1991)

 Is Paprika a cheesy soap opera or a voyeuristic, hedonistic journey? I think that it's both. Depends on the way you look at it. On one hand Paprika is a ridiculous movie. A movie that you can call maybe lighthearted, but even that is more "light" than you can imagine or sustain. It's simply a movie that if it wasn't for the nudity it would be playing on television at high noon, along with the other garbage that television plays at that time. But there is another side to the film, that you cannot possibly leave out. And that is the pure, fierce, salacious, tender and fragile eroticism that it offers. Paprika is a movie that makes you love women and especially curved women, more than you would ever think of loving. It's literally a dive inside woman's most intimate and personal moments and things. And it wouldn't be the same if that movie wasn't offering so much nudity.

Nudity makes that journey, that experience to really be blasted into space. Who will ever forget the body of Paprika after that movie? Who will ever not dream those boobs, that ass, that incredible body that screams womanhood at every inch of it? Tinto Brass is a director that makes "crappy" movies, movies that have almost no plot and move around the one and only one thing that moves this planet in circles. Woman. And for that, for his love to female existence, we love him dearly and watch his movie, regardless the fact that at moments we might wonder, why the hell are we watching that thing. It's the aura, the smell of the movie that finally conquers everything else and cures all the flaws of Tinto Brass's filmic universe. So in that way, Paprika is a film for the brave and the fearless who have understood that behind a huge ass hide all the secrets of this world. Behind nudity hide all truths of this world. 

Dead Snow (Tommy Wirkola, 2009)

 I have seen this film twice and I still can't seem to have a good time with it. Dead Snow, a Norwegian zombie horror movie, makes it really difficult for you to like it. You see the story of the movie is super promising. A bunch of friends at a cabin in the deep snow and suddenly attacked by Nazi zombies is something that calls for big laughs and great entertainment. Nazi zombies, who the fuck thought of that brilliant idea, I wonder? And so until the time the zombies arrive, the movie is really superb, building the story and the fun to its extreme. But when the zombies finally arrive and I assure that they are something to gaze at those zombies, all the fun is simply vanished from the movie. And that happens only for one reason and one reason only and that is that the movie is been transformed to a gore fest. 

I have said many times that... movies don't kill people, people kill people. I have nothing against violence in cinema in the same way that I have nothing against sex in cinema. I like them both. But there are limitations to everything. Dead Snow is so profoundly disturbing and disgusting that you suddenly forget all the fun that the film promised you and you are looking for the toilet. I am not particularly interested to see how realistic look the insides of the protagonist and I don't find so funny the continuous blood bath that the movie offers. There is a thing that is called aesthetic and that movie over here is a crime against aesthetic. I know that it is made deliberately without taste that movie, but I cannot fail and not see that this is movie is traumatizing to the stomach and the appetite of the individual. And quite probably for no reason, because there is nothing in that film apart from fun and feelgood emotion, that are been spoiled to their most horrid extend by the abomination of violence that it offers. You know I had the best intentions towards that movie and it fucked my... insides pretty badly I can say.   

Blue Rita (Jess Franco, 1977)

 

You see with Jess Franco's cinema everything could be found in the sensuality of the project. Blue Rita is a spy movie, but underneath that genre facade there is an exercise in womanhood and how that influences the world that we are living. Uncle Jess loved women and the beauty of women that is crystal clear, if you have seen only one movie of his. He used the female body as a naked canvas in order to give power, mystic and mysterious atmosphere to his movies. In Blue Rita we see women using their body and sexuality to seduce men. We also see the female protagonist how she uses her body in order to get her work done, how she uses her body to serve a righteous purpose. We as spectators, we find ourselves dichotomized between the sexuality of the image and the cruelty of the act. We like what we see, but we detest the reason. And it's that duality that you can find in Blue Rita where something beautiful and pretty is also synonymous with evil and pain. In Blue Rita the filmic universe is made from contradictory elements.

Jess Franco used genre cinema to get even deeper to the human mind and perception. Many have called him a clown and the worst director in the history of movies, but they are totally clueless when it comes to the fact that Jess Franco's movies had something very strong that went deep into the human psychology. Yes, his movies might have been amateurish, but inside his "flaws" you could see that he was a true visionary filmmaker who could turn the simplest movie idea to a complex erotic, morbid, sinister, horrific, sexually playful cinema experience. And in Blue Rita you can see, once more, taking the fun genre of spy movies and transforming them to an act of style, passion, secrets, games and danger. He was that man a true artist that could take one simple and tiny thing and make it to a big, huge B movie phantasmagoria.      

Wild Things (John McNaughton, 1998)

 

Now neo-noir movies with a twist at the end, is something that comes by-the-numbers from Hollywood. Twists are a great thing for a movie, there is no doubt about that, it makes the film exciting and delicious, but sometimes I think that there is also some kind of recipe that screenwriters follow that says "make sure you have a twist at the end". Quite probably one of the most mesmerizing twists that comes into my mind is that in Fight Club. And another one that worked perfectly and made the movie to explode was in Body Double. But I can think of a bunch of twists that were for the sake of the twist, because the movie had nothing else to offer really. Wild Things is a film notorious for its twists. I would say that it's notorious also for the sex trio that it has in there, but I think that the endless twists of the movie make it more famous than its sex scene.

Now, some might say after the end of the movie, that this was a ridiculous film that took one thing and it took it to the extreme limits. Twist upon twist upon twist. Clearly the movie has nothing else to offer and plays with that like a spoiled baby, they will say. Well my opinion is that I don't think that this is the case here. Yes, the movie makes a non-stop use of twists, but for some crazy reason and that is a screenplay attribute they fucking work. The movie consumes you with all this unexpected turns of events. And you clearly find yourself wanting more of that crazy story that has unfolded in front of your eyes. To make a twist at the end is a relatively easy task, but to fill a movie with twists, well that's a bit more difficult, I must say, and that is the writer in me speaking now. I always admired writers like Raymond Chandler in how the build their mystery. In Philip Marlowe's mysteries Chandler opens up a dozen of events and in the end, like a true magician that he was, he combines them all to a linear, perfectly reasonable story. That is a gift, a precious gift. And a gift that I have worked very hard to even come relatively close to it as a writer myself. Making up crazy stories is not an easy task, I assure about that. So in the movie, to make a film that continuously breaks to pieces the story that has already build, shows definitely a charismatic screenwriter. And in that way Wild Things, a film that has been trashed by many as lurid and ridiculous, is, in reality, a movie that has some power and some charisma. 

Tideland (Terry Gilliam, 2005)

 

Terry Gilliam is a filmmaker of incredible talent and imagination, but it's true that sometimes he is destroying his own beauty by making things hard for the spectator to follow. I would say that there is no really bad movie made by him. All of his films have something, something that makes them unique and made by a filmmaker with a roaring vision. Some of them are simply masterpieces of weird and uncompromising cinema, others are simply good movies and some far fewer are what you call... pain in the ass movies. Movies that could have been great, have all the momentum to be great, but somewhere along the line, something went horribly wrong and the outcome is somehow distorted, decadent. Tideland might be his weakest film ever. And that doesn't mean that it's a bad movie. No, on the contrary is a very promising movie, that goes from one bad choice to the other. As the film begins and ten minutes pass you say to yourself "man that's the old good Terry, again". But as the film proceeds and it, most definitely, proceeds in an unexpected way it becomes a truly and unforgivably tiresome, static movie, that you find yourself difficult to make it to the bitter end.

Weirdness and eccentricity are elements that I surely love and desire from a movie. But there are boundaries to this elements also. If you take too much of them, if you build your whole goddamn movie upon the most weird and the most eccentric, only for the sake of being odd, then chances are that you will fail, miserably, in the end. And that's what happened to Terry, he took things way too far with the quirky characters and the quirky story. Tideland becomes after some point a burden that you have to carry and a movie that doesn't go the next chapter of the story, but stays, obsessively, stuck, in one aspect of it. Yes the girl who plays is charismatic, but you cannot build a whole movie upon one character. Your film will be a fucking flaw, you will fail. There is no one that could direct such a vacant story that would have made it better. It's the screenplay that is horribly problematic here and it takes the movie to the fucking cliff. Terry wants to be a filmmaker that he is not carried away by what it sells and that's a great thing to do, but sometimes he mixes up the commercial with the watchable. This movie over here is on the verge of being unwatchable by many people. I would never recommend that movie to anyone, but hardcore film buffs and hardcore fans of Terry's cinema. And again I would have recommend it only to see how he failed and not because there is anything to it, other than his most stubborn obsessions. I hate to say that, but in this movie he lost me almost completely and I consider myself a devoted fan of his cinematic world.

Black Sunday (Mario Bava, 1960)

 

Now Mario Bava is a director that I was introduced to at a relatively old age. Somewhere after 30 I started watching genre films like pigeons eat their bread. I was literally consuming them. I have seen tons of genre movies coming from all the countries around the world. But the three directors that I distinguished more for their work and vision were Dario Argento, Jess Franco and Mario Bava. Now, Black Sunday is not as great movie as it's Blood And Black Lace or Danger: Diabolik, but it is still a very charming horror-vampire movie. And the number one factor for that is Mario Bava himself and his impeccable gothic atmosphere. Black Sunday is a movie that makes you want to dive inside and go to the places the characters go. You want to live in that castle, you want to light that fireplace, you want to see that tomb where the vampiric witch was buried. There is a clear sense while you are watching the movie, that draws you towards it like bees to honey. And that is a characteristic that doesn't happen in every worthy movie. There are great movies that you don't get so attached to them. Black Sunday might be slightly inferior than these great movies, but it definitely got you by the fucking balls.

Mario Bava was a real virtuoso of genre films. He has made great movies, mediocre movies and extremely weak movies also, but all of them even his crappiest, have that Mario Bava touch in them. And this is what you find also in the Black Sunday. There is that sense that the vampire is going to come out of the screen and will start chasing you to kill you. There is that sense that every object in that movie has a different story to tell, a different approach to present. Black Sunday, shot in wonderful black-and-white with a marvelous Barbara Steele in a double role, has that power to take you to places where your imagination and your emotion will really fucking thrive. Black Sunday has the power to make you feel scared, not because you are disturbed, but because you totally dig the chills that the movie so charmingly brings. With a Mario Bava movie you might not know if you will be offered something truly worthy, but you rest assured that the cinematic universe that was created will be something to remember and... brag about. And that's why Mario Bava was a filmmaker that was so distinguishable as a genre filmmaker. He had the way to make you get inside his movie, even if you didn't dig the film. The trip was obligatory, nevertheless.

Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (John Carpenter, 1992)

 

John Carpenter is mostly known for his horror movies like Halloween, The Thing and Prince Of Darkness. Apparently there is also another face of Carpenter, a face for which he is not that famous. One of my favorite movies of the 80s and my favorite Carpenter film is Big Trouble In Little China, a movie that is both hilarious and truly enjoyable. But there is also another movie in his filmography that most people are unaware of. The movie is called Memoirs Of An Invisible Man and star Chevy Chase and Daryl Hannah. Now the movie was both a commercial and critical failure, but that doesn't mean that is not a worthy movie. Memoirs is a movie that hits you in the most guilty pleasure part of yourself. And I am saying that not because the movie is so trashy, but because there is a clear naivete in the movie that was, clearly, misunderstood for a serious flaw. Well I didn't take it for a flaw and I don't believe that there is any kind of flaw in the movie. The movie is a lovely lighthearted science fiction comedy with bits of mystery movie in there.

The fact that Carpenter left his horrific images and tried something completely different from what he was doing is most certainly something welcoming and not something that should be treated with hostility. The movie has virtues that you can feel. It's an example of entertainment movie that works perfectly for a Saturday evening or a Christmas time movie. There is that lovely feeling coming from the screen, that warm thing that you feel whenever there is a movie that doesn't aim for your brain, but for the part of your heart that screams for some joy. With all the crappy popcorn movies that we see every year coming out, this movie over here is a beautiful example of cinema that makes you genuinely happy. I would go as far as to compare it with another film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. And I am not saying of course that it's equally good, of course Roger Rabbit is one of the greatest 80s movies, but there is the same feeling coming to you, when you watch those two movies. That feeling that... you are going to live forever, if you watch that kind of films. That there isn't any obstacle in this life that you cannot surpass. Meaning that Memoirs is a truly and genuinely feelgood movie. A movie that you can watch with your family or your beloved and find that you can take a piece of the love that the movie is brining on the screen. And I know, that some might say that these things that I am writing are completely corny. Well I have only one answer for those people. If my words seem corny to you, you should see a therapist and tell him that you are incapable of having quality time in your life.