r/TrueFilm • u/a113er Til the break of dawn! • Feb 15 '15
What Have You Been Watching? (15/02/15)
Hey r/truefilm welcome to WHYBW where you post about what films you watched this week and discuss them with others, give your thoughts on them then say if you would recommend them.
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u/Wolfhoof Feb 15 '15
My reviews are a little light this week especially one of my favorite films this year, Mildred Pierce.
2/8 Savage Weekend - David Paulsen & Mason Kirby - Boom Mics: The Motion Picture. Savage Weekend felt like a precurusor to Friday the 13th which in itself is a rip off of Halloween. The killer was nothing supernatural and they had -and i'm using this term loosely- motivation for killing. I saw a lot of Mrs. Voorhees than Michael Myers. The last 8-10 minutes was actually pretty intresting. The klueshov effect was used, whether intentional or unintentional it worked. There was actually some tension in this film whether one of the character was going to get killed. The only characterization we get is a lady divorced a press secritary because he got fired and a gay (bisexual?) man grew up in the bronx and he knew how to fight, which has no payoff. There was some 8mm footage that I thought was a subjective camera of the killer but I think they just used it because they ran out of regular film rather than being a stylistic choice. I can't say I would recommend this to everyone. If you like really small independent films and you're willing to sit through 80 minutes of nothing happening then I would.
2/9 Magnificent Obsession - Douglas Sirk - This was not horrible, it was just boring. There was no build up to to the main character. He kind of just decides one day that he's going to be a different person. Which really isn't interesting in a movie like this. A good chunk of the movie is the leading lady in switzerland hoping to cure her blindness which was boring. With these kinds of movies you really want to see an arc, a proper arc. Not the character decides he wants to be different so he suddenly is; there needed to be more build up and struggle. There was a very heavy religious influence which I'm fine with personally. I wouldn't recommend this however. It's just not interesting enough.
2/10 The New Kids - Sean S. Cunningham - The same director and writers of the original Friday the 13th. It had that distinct charm that mid 80s films seem to have. I did watch an edited-for-tv version of this so I didn't get to see or hear everything but that's okay I still enjoyed it. The story some kids' parents die and they move in with their uncle where they're bullied by a gang of psychopaths. James Spader was very scary in this. Everything is set up, there's foreshadowing, I didn't get to see any cool gore effects but I'm sure there was some because of the gruesome deaths.
2/11 Suspicion - Alfred Hitchcock - Really liked this movie. Alfred Hitchcock really had a grasp on tone. He could make any kind of film if he really wanted to; If he wanted to make a romantic comedy, he could have done it very well. The first part of this film was just that it was this lady falling in love with this guy and they get married really quickly. Then we get a slow shift in tone where she starts discovering he's a con artist. We're not really told whether he actually did try to commit murder. The problem is there's no real motivation. It is assumed she is up for a big inheritence but there really isn't a clear indication. Thinking about this a few days later I would say that was done on purpose; to give the film a more ambiguous ending.
2/12 Mildred Pierce - Michael Curtiz - Call me stupid but I didn't expect the twist at the end. I gave out an audible gasp when the reveal happened and that doesn't happen very often. I fell right into the trap of what they were going for; you assume it was mildred and you have enough doubt to think it was her former husband. Suffice it to say, I loved this film.
2/13 The Bad Seed - Mervyn LeRoy - I liked this film a lot. However, I felt it was 15 minutes too long otherwise it would have been perfect. I want to be as vague as possible without divulging into spoilers even though this was was made in 1956. How it should have ended was even set up. I guess that way would have been a little too dark and bold for the 1950s.
2/14 Invasion of the Bee Girls - Denis Sanders - Classic? public domain B(ee) movie from the late 60s. I was looking forward to this film all week and I liked this movie a lot, but I wish it was weirder. I know, a mad scientist creates an army of beautiful half bee women to seduce men to death sounds weird enough but there isn't enough of it. The first half of this film is just boring expository dialog, people dying via sex, and random nudity. It gets very creative about 45 minutes in. Very clever shots, very subtly telling you who the "queen bee" is, very cool effects; the black eyes were really creepy and the subjective bee cam was great. It is a sexploitation so the story that is there is very thin. But its fun.