Hibi wrote: ↑February 20th, 2024, 1:26 pm
MORE 80s BAD HAIR!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS PARTICULAR BAD HAIR IS TIMELESS.
Like, the "bad" girl in many a 1950's PSA about "GOOD GROOMING SKILLS AND YOU" had hair JUST LIKE IT.
**AMENDED TO ADD that curly hair is LOVELY, but like all hair it most be combed and conditioned, and it will help if you can commit to parting it SOMEWHERE as opposed to "just all over in whatever direction."
Nobody could ever say that director Paul Verhoeven operated out of good taste. He always set out to scandalize moviegoers and he did it time again in his home turf of the Netherlands and in his US period, which included Showgirls, Basic Instinct, Robocop, and Total Recall. Indeed, all but one of his films in his US period were originally handed an X/NC-17. The first of these is the subject of this mini-review, and that is 1985's Flesh and Blood, which definitely lives up to its name. This is a brutal medieval set film that seems ready to always bludgeon and attack the audience: In it, a young woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is kidnapped and physically ravished (at first against her will) by an amoral mercenary (Rutgar Hauer) while her beau (Tom Burlinson) tries to fight to save her, complicated by the fact that Hauer has become obsessed by Leigh. It also includes tons of breasts, multiple full frontal nude shots of Leigh, a brief full frontal shot of a man, a partially nude nun, a murderous cardinal, an insult to the Eucharist, rape, decaying bodies hanging from trees, characters getting run through by swords and pikes, a severed limb, a dog getting killed with a pike and then getting dismembered, a silhouette of oral sex, self-flagellation, a graphic near-strangulation, and sundry other shocking elements. Oh, and if that wasn't enough, it also includes mass casualties of the black plague due to infected water and burning lesions. Frankly it's all extremely excessive overkill, although there are elements of what could be a very interesting film if it had been more subdued, the cinematography, costumes, and sets are impressive, and Susan Tyrell does her typically amusing scenery chewing in a supporting part as a very earthy character . But as it stands, its still too off-color for everyone really despite obvious craftsmanship abounding.
Hibi wrote: ↑February 20th, 2024, 1:26 pm
MORE 80s BAD HAIR!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS PARTICULAR BAD HAIR IS TIMELESS.
Like, the "bad" girl in many a 1950's PSA about "GOOD GROOMING SKILLS AND YOU" had hair JUST LIKE IT.
**AMENDED TO ADD that curly hair is LOVELY, but like all hair it most be combed and conditioned, and it will help if you can commit to parting it SOMEWHERE as opposed to "just all over in whatever direction."
I'll catch it on a rerun. The other show was just an hr. so I'm sure this one goes into greater detail. Sometimes those 2 hr shows feel padded, but sometimes they are worth it for the additional info. What a family!
This one didn't seem too padded for the most part. There were so many nuts in this family involved
in so many crazy schemes that it kept things interesting. I haven't even looked at what's on ID tonight.
I'll check it out later.
I swung into the world of new releases to take a look at Golda (2023), which has Helen Mirren playing the Israeli prime minister at one of the most intense moments of her tenure: the Yom Kippur War of 1973, a war which the film posits might not have been quite as brutal if Golda had mobilized the moment she first heard rumors that the war was about to start. As it stands, the film is very earnest , humorless, and bleak, with a color scheme in grim dark tones and a mordantly monotonous musical score. It certainly isn't a very populated film, other than Mirren, the only name actor in the film is Liev Scriebner as Henry Kissinger, with whom Meir had a tempestuous professional relationship with. Mirren is physically unrecognizable as the chain-smoking Meir, her performance is very strong (as usual) and really the sole reason to check it out. Otherwise, the film is well-meaning yet slight, even with a runtime that is less than 100 minutes, and frankly, the film's habit of showing Golda always puffing away or near a full ashtray becomes unintentionally amusing, especially in the final scene which has her with an oxygen mask in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Still, it is fairly tautly handled and the leading performance is very fine, so it might be worth your time.
By the way, Lorna, the actress playing the homicidal daughter with the bad perm in "Reflections of the Mind" is Stacy Nelkin, who had some supporting roles in a few films of the early 80s. The most memorable film she was in was 1980's Serial, a risque and amusing satire of bizarre California behavior such as orgies, religious cults, self-help groups, hippie ministers, and other such things. I saw it after kingrat reccomended it a while back. Its wild, with some of the bluest vocabulary of any film of the era, but its great fun, with an eager cast chomping at the bit to sock across every scene and landing every punchline She played a young grocery clerk who briefly was entangled with a married older man played by Martin Mull. The film also featured Tuesday Weld (always worth watching), Sally Kellerman, Nita Talbot, Bill Macy, Pamela Bellwood, Tom Smothers, and Christopher Lee as the head of a gay bikers group (one of the era's most off-the-wall casting calls in a comedy, maybe only topped by Klaus Kinski as a sex therapist with a necklace with the likeness of a male appendage on it in the woeful finale of Billy Wilder's otherwise illustrious career, Buddy Buddy (1981). Thank goodness that Kinski and Paula Prentiss actually managed to overcome that script and milk laughs out of it, because that script was so crushingly bad that the film's leads, Lemmon and Matthau could not wring a single laugh out of it).
I'll catch it on a rerun. The other show was just an hr. so I'm sure this one goes into greater detail. Sometimes those 2 hr shows feel padded, but sometimes they are worth it for the additional info. What a family!
This one didn't seem too padded for the most part. There were so many nuts in this family involved
in so many crazy schemes that it kept things interesting. I haven't even looked at what's on ID tonight.
I'll check it out later.
MACHETE (2010) I had seen this years ago, we're getting free movie channels and I laughed and laughed again. Intentionally bad is usually no good, but intentionally TASTELESS is no problem. Bad in every good way. Talk about a sh!t-eatin' grin...
Boyfriends/husbands pushing their lovers/wives over cliffs. These poor women always go hiking in remote places with them even when nefarious red flags pop up early in the relationship.
Of course there are those episodes where the gals dispatch their fellas in much the same manner. One in particular stands out -- a newlywed shoves hubby out of their apartment window (top floor of a high-rise), then claims it was an accident. The cops don't buy it. She later takes her own life in jail.
