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jakeloves
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Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
The Best of all the Halloween Movies!
I don't care what anyone says. One man's meat is another man's poison.
This is my all time favorite Halloween films! In fact, I will go as far to say, this is the better than the first one and the one I watch over and over again.
I really only care for this film.
It is creepy and has the feel of a bad nightmare.
It also has excellent old school special effects makeup.
And the great thing about so many people not liking this film means they will never remake it!
A Masterpiece! Up there with the best of the best. Dawn of the Dead. The Thing. Northville Cemetery Massacre. The Beast Within. The Evil Dead. Escape from New York. Assault on Precint 13th. Mad Max. Eraserhead. El Topo. A Clockwrk Orange. City of the Living Dead. Suspiria. Deathrace 2000. Road Warrior. Lisa and the Devil. The Devils. The Hunger. Cat People. First Blood. Conan the Barbarian. Indy and the Temple of Doom. Just Before Dawn. The Party Animal. Cujo. The Hitcher. Buckaroo Banzai.
Long Live Halloween 3!
Won't Anybody Listen (2001)
Promises a real Catharsis
Won't Anybody Listen, is a surprisingly fresh documentary about an aspect of the music industry I have never seen or heard about before - how to cope with the realization that your dreams are NOT going to come true. After almost two decades of blood, sweat and tears (literally), the members of NC-17, and more heartbreaking, those close to the band (family, friends, wives etc) deal not with final, triumphant success, but, with the painful, sobering reality of failure. As a struggling writer myself, I completely identified with their journey. In pretty much all societies, (but, especially, America) no one is loved more than a winner, and there is nothing more leprous than a LOSER. However, the reality of life is for every winner, there are countless losers. For every successful rock band, there are tens of thousands that fail. For every successful spec screenplay sold, millions never see a dime - you get my drift. The most profound gift of Dov Kelemer's documentary is how it works like an 80 min therapy session. For anybody who is actually struggling to achieve something in life but facing the growing awareness that success is seemingly less and less likely - Won't Anybody Listen promises a real Catharsis. So little in society helps us cope with failure. Yet, so many fail everyday. The band, NC 17, may have failed, but, they have succeeded in showing that life goes on, we pull up our bootstraps, we soldier on. These people may not have got the record contracts, the limo rides, the millions. But, these 'losers' have something a lot of those 'successful' guys believe they have - integrity and strength. Kurt Cobain is considered a Grand Winner as far as superficial success is concerned. Perhaps, he should have stuck around a while longer and watched, Won't Anybody Listen, to realize he had nothing to justify blowing his head off.
Life During Wartime (1997)
Simply a masterpiece!
It's rather sad to see that so many people seem turned off by this comedy. Just like Romeo is Bleeding, too many people seem to just give up when they're finally shown something that truly creates an original tone for itself. This movie walks a tight-wire between the absurd and offbeat while still seemingly plausible and realistic. The plot twists with wonderfully subversive glee. I could not help but fall hopelessly in love with this charming movie. Don't listen to all the negative comments. Rent it and judge for yourself. You just might be wonderfully surprised.
Northville Cemetery Massacre (1975)
The greatest biker movie ever made!
The greatest biker movie ever made! In fact, it's the only biker movie I like. Every other biker movie promises so much and delivers so little. This film gets the job done. Thank God at least one movie made the genre proud. I feel the same about The Mack. Every other movie of the blaxploitation genre just didn't have the bite their bark promised. But The Mack pulled it off. Some great movies were made in the 70's and 80's. Escape from New York, The Thing, Road Warrior, Dawn of the Dead, Squirm, Blues Brothers.
Drum (1976)
Drum is more truthful than most movies. Maybe that is why it is so repulsive to many. We run from that which finally holds up the mirror of true reflectivity.
People seem to miss the point of certain movies on many occasions, forgetting that there isn't just one kind of film or method to express ideas in the form of storytelling. Drum is a film that many have labeled as sick, disgusting, homophobic, racist, over-the-top, camp etc. True, these are feelings that are intensely aroused when watching this film. However, one seems to quickly forget, that real life itself can be sick, disgusting, homophobic, racist, over-the-top, camp etc. Are we to curse a movie that chooses to express itself through such 'truths'? Drum has a unique, uncommon (and gathering from the critical reactions) unpopular form of subjective and objective points of view that greatly disturb the viewer to the point he cannot handle it. Most people want stories where they can root for the hero. One complaint about Drum (Maltin review) is one cannot empathize or vicariously experience the forces that are bombarding the hero from his unique pov. This, I do agree, but why is that a perquisite for every story that must ever be told? The filmmakers may or may not have wanted such an outcome, but, as the way it stands now, because we can't see or root for simple cathartic releases through the main character, we, the viewers, are forced to reckon with those dark forces head on. All the scenes of racism and abuse by slave owners (either a product of their culture or out of economic necessity) and the wickedness of bored women enjoying the wealth of such economic exploitation are scenes that surely happened back in the day, if not exactly, at least in spirit. We the audience are thus viewing the film as close as you can from a documentary-like, objective point of view. (The director of this film is a noted still photographer who started out in film making documentaries. Still photographers, including Stanley Kubrick, are known to seem detached, cold, as they study and present their characters and their behavior as though watching it from a test tube. Fincher and Cronenberg continue this tradition). Watching Drum from such an objective stance, leaves the audience nothing to fall back on, since the film is not making it easy for the audience to get lost in the main character etc. One gets the sense of being suddenly transplanted into this depraved hell in history, helpless. The viewer is exposed to repulsive human beings whose philosophies are so deluded, so disgusting. I.e the French Slave Trader and even the Warren Oates character (who believes throughout the story, that it is the white blood in the younger generations of slave, that is making them a little human, and therefore act in a savage way! What absurd logic! To this man, when the slave was first removed from Africa he was seen as completely savage, but yet somehow good and docile and therefore a good slave at the same time??? If a little white blood suddenly wakes up the beast, what does it say about someone who is a 100% white, as is the Warren Oates character. We are never able to ask him this question, and neither do the filmmakers. They leave us to figure it out for ourselves as Warren Oates repeats his frustration and confusion at the end of the film. We know his character believes that anyone who is 100% white is noble, civilized and far from savage. So where does this train of thought of white pollution being the cause of savagery come from? This hypocritical man, of philosophical contradiction and paradox is a fine example of man at his most 'rational' worst. When the mind fails at logical thought, when the psyche is damaged, or giving in to maybe contradictory primal, bodily forces (to survive, kill, gather resources). These are men whom are 'blessed' with only a little knowledge, and therefore highly dangerous. This is the same kind of psychological handicaps, delusions, that kept the Nazi machine running so fast and furious for as long as it did. When characters seem to be so ignorant in Drum, speak innate dialogue, behave over-the-top, campy etc., they do so, because that is in fact who they are!!! In portraying the uneducated, racist, sick, ignorant lowlifes as they way they really would act in their natural surroundings, the audience is stunned! (We don't love them the way some of us do with the neo-hip Tarantinoesque lowlifes or Hannibal scum that fill the films of today! (What is better I ask, to watch Hannibal or some Tarantino character and be entertained and amused, even turned on by their sickness or to watch Drum and be truly sickened by true sickness????!!!)The audience has been doused with cold water and it is they who can only dry themselves. The slave trade was an ugly terrible time in America History. And any dramatic representation of it should be just as equality sick and disgusting. When you watch Rambo, you feel better about Vietnam. Now that is dangerous. If you watch Drum, you feel sick, as you rightfully should be. Back to the subject of subjective and objective points of view. No film is entirely subjective or objective. Most films present the action unfolding as objective, with a tone of subjectivity (that being the point of view of the main character or hero) We see the world on screen as we do in reality (objective) with a sense (tone) of how hero looks at it (subjective) - which will now become our tone, our point of view. In Drum, we are given the world as we would have seen it back then, in very heavy doses. The objective is strongly emphasized. Because, Drum, the character is so insignificantly developed or expressed, we are very light on his point of view. So the tone of the film shifts from his weak to nonexistent point of view to the points of views of other more intensely captivating, disturbing, interesting characters. Drawn to them by default, (it's the audience instinct in us to latch on to a character and variously walk in his shoes), we become subject to their point of view. The subjective POV and tone is then that of the racist scum. This is why we are revolted and shocked by what we're seeing (or more importantly, what we are feeling). For we are feeling what it is like to be a racist scum, we are propelled into our own dark souls where the capacity for such similar evils exist. We do not want to consciously acknowledge this terrible fact, that we can be monsters too. We instead want to suppress such urges or potentialities by experiencing stories that hide such facts and give us a cheap escape through the feeding of the hunger in our souls to be evil. Entertainment is the great sedating pill for man's darker side during peacetime (During wartime, when we are indirectly or directly killing, we want good time comedies, musicals, etc., to counterbalance the bad). In fact, even Drum is guilty of trying to achieve this kind of cathartic cop-out. When the slaves revolt and destroy the slave-owners, we are once again given the Rambo route. And when the film ends, we do not know if Drum escapes or not. This thus sells us hope. But, hope works well, is even needed, when it is directed towards our unknown futures. The hope sold cheaply in Drum is disturbing as the film concerns history, and we know the outcome. Most slaves, never revolted and most never escaped. They suffered greatly and died horribly.