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rlodewell
Reviews
Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979)
Beneath the valley
Bryce David is a priggish old lady school teacher. Everything he mentions is accurate, but the movie is actually insane and great. The narrator is wonderful, not annoying and who knows what's going on with the blood and all of that. Frankly, if you watch a Russ Meyer film you're going to get some completely insane adventure. Sure it's idiotic, but that's the charm. What do you expect?
Well, this says I have to have 10 lines of text before it'll put it up on the web page. This is, of course, idiotic. I don't have much more to add to what I've said so I'll have to ramble here and go on and on and on and on and on and make up stuff and try to fill up space as best I can. Oh, here's one thing: I met Roger Ebert on the street in NY City once. I was standing there and he walked past. I said, "you're Roger Ebert, right?" and he shook my hand and never stopped moving. Obviously, he'd dealt with a lot of maniacs in his day and knew if you stop you might never get away. I've wished forever that I'd mentioned his writing the Russ Meyer films he did, but I didn't. Oh well . . . Why he was in NYC I don't know? Perhaps this is long enough now.
Nickelodeon (1976)
First half is okay
The first half, more or less, of this is pretty good. It focuses on the very early days of film making and is generally based on stories Bogdanovich collected and published much later in Who the Devil Made It? The general tenor of the first part is encapsulated in the comment made John Ritter when he tells neophyte director O'Neal something like: "Hell, any jerk can direct."
Unfortunately, the second half of the film is pretty dreadful. Once Reynolds and O'Neal start to battle over Jane Hitchcock and the characters begin to make money from making movies it all falls apart. Had the movie been fleshed out a bit and ended at the point that the 'movie stars" are first recognized by film-goers it would have been a pretty good movie. But the lousy back end just kills the whole thing.
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
A joke
This thing is a joke. I've was a heroin addict for nearly five years. And yeah, it's not a good life, but it's not like this. The appliances never attack you and if you have the drugs life isn't all that bad. I never became a thief, and I never beat people up for money, and I never sold my ass (If I'd been selling no one would have been buying.) Sure, there are drugs that will turn you into some sort of raving psychotic lunatic, but alcohol is worse for you than heroin.
Frankly, I liked heroin and I highly recommend it as an occasional thing.
I do not recommend being a junkie, it's too expensive, but 4 times a year for partying is fine. What they tell you about how addictive it is is a lie. It's not that bad. It just isn't.