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The Damned (#636)

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If anyone were to ask what THE DAMNED, the film I saw today, was about, I would say it certainly was about guilt and humanity but it seemed much longer to reveal than the hour and 29 minutes the film ran. It was well acted and well directed and the setting more than adequately depicted the utter isolation of a fishing station somewhere remote, with absolutely miserable weather. Headed by a widowed wife, the fishing crew spots a sinking ship offshore, and there was a discussion on whether they should try to rescue them or ignore it and try to get through the winter with an inadequate food supply (which wouldn't have lasted long with more people eating).  No rescue is the decision and the rest of the film reveals the growing guilt among all the characters resulting in violence and even suicide. This is what might be described as a folk horror movie, because it obviously occurs in the last century or earlier. I can't say I liked the film but it was professionally produced but not ...
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Nosferatu (#635)

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I was surprised to see as many people in the audience as were there for what I thought was a relatively obscure horror film starring Willem Dafoe. NOSFERATU takes place in Germany in what I would call the Victorian era, the mid to late 1800s. It is about a young woman who is possessed by an evil spirit from a very early age, a spirit known as Nosferatu, identified by scientist Dafoe. Her new husband must go on a business trip to the mountains to sign up a new client for the company he works for—a strange count living in a typical spooky, dark castle. He is abused and imprisoned there but manages to escape and return home to find his wife in dire straits. She is advised by Dafoe that she must succumb sexually to Nosferatu in order to save the world from the plague he has foisted on the country. If this seems too complex to comprehend, I apologize, but that's what I saw and I'm sticking to it. It jumped all over the place, but the actors were good, the scenery and costuming well ...
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Bloody Axe Wound (#634)

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The movie I saw today with one other person in the audience happily was only 1 hour and 23 minutes long. If it had been any longer, I don't think I would have still been in the theater.  Billed as a satire and comedy, BLOODY AXE WOUND missed the boat in both of these categories but was adequately titled because there were a lot, snd I mean a lot, of bloody axe wounds. The movie was ludicrous, which I think is worse than ridiculous.  A badly disfigured man (at least he looked that way to my failing eyes) and his teenaged daughter (their name is actually Bladecut (that alone ruined the satire) run a failing video rental store, but have s second business—creating horror films by actually killing people, usually with axes. He is ill and asks his daughter to fill in for him by killing fellow students from her school. She appears to have a crush on one of her classmates and is reluctant and finds it difficult to carry out the assignment.  Is that enough for you?  It was fo...
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A Complete Unknown (#633)

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Happy New Year all. If the movie I saw today bodes well for 2025 then maybe movies are headed for a banner year because this one was a fine one, and I liked it very much. A COMPLETE UNKNOWN is supposed to be the true story of singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, and I may be one of the few people in the world who doesn't know very much about him, although I did recognize his name and some of the songs he sang. He is very well played by Timothèe Chalamet (what on earth possessed his parents to spell his name with an accent mark?)  Dylan arrives in New York from the midwest with his guitar in search of his heroes, folks singers Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and goes on to be an incredibly successful folk singer/songwriter on social issues and inspiring major changes in the music business. He comes across as not too nice a person, particularly in his relationships with women, one of whom is Joan Baez whose name, like Dylan's, I heard but knew nothing about. Despite my shortcomings, I thou...
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The Fire Inside (#632)

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I feel as though I've seen every movie about boxing that was ever filmed as far back as the 1940s, including Champion with Kirk Douglas, Bogart in The Harder They Fall, Newman's Somebody Up There Likes Me, Rocky 1 through 17 and beyond.  Most were exiting and bloody and well produced and written and acted. The movie I saw the other day was none of those things, and perhaps it was because it was a true story and depicted women boxing. I found THE FIRE INSIDE dull, boring, with mostly boring and dull performances. I napped often and soundly. This 17 year-old girl beat the odds and won an Olympic gold medal not only once but in successive Olympic games, but in my opinion she was a nasty, unappreciative teen who eventually got rich as a professional boxer. The fight scenes were mercifully brief and never bloody and I guess I will always be indifferent to or disinterested in women in the boxing ring. The only character I liked was the man who played her coach, voluntarily and never ...
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