World War Z (2013)

Director: Marc Forster

Writers: Max Brooks, Matthew Michael Carnahan, Drew Goddard, Damon Lindelof, J. Michael Straczynski

Composer: Marco Beltrami

Starring: Brad Pitt, Mireillie Enos, Daniella Kertesz, James Badge Dale, Ludi Boeken, Matthew Fox, David Morse, Peter Capaldi,Abigail Hargrove, Fana Morkoena, Fabrizio Zacharee Guido

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Remember Philly!

Plot: United Nations employee Gerry Lane traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments, and threatening to destroy humanity itself.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I understand that this is nothing like the book it's based on so I don't have that holding me back.  As a movie it's not all that bad. The picture starts with a bang and doesn't let up for quite a while.  I dug that part of the ride.  Once the plane crashes and Gerry (Pitt) ends up at the laboratory, that's when things slow down to a crawl, we get to breathe a little and the film starts losing me.  The ending with how Pitt saves the world is mostly horseshit.  You don't just quickly find the solution like this and then take forever to justify it.  That long sequence almost makes the rest of the picture nothing more than a string of visually striking and exciting set pieces that are nothing more than really cool looking filler.  I liked those scenes but the ending felt like it was letting the air out of those tires by cheapening it. 

5 Dolls for an August Moon (1970)

Original title: 5 Bambole per la Luna d'agosto

Director: Mario Bava

Writer: Mario di Nardo

Composer: Piero Umiliani

Starring: William Berger, Ira von Furstenberg, Edwige Fenech, Howard Ross, Helena Ronee, Teodoro Corra, Ely Galleani, Edith Meloni, Mauro Bosco, Maurice Poli

More info: IMDb

Plot: A small group of people come to an island to relax but soon find themselves trapped on the island with a murderer in their midst.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Here's another Giallo that Netflix has categorized as horror.  I'm not complaining because I knew what this was before I watched it and it's been on my mental list to see for a while.  It's OK.  The occasional humor helps like when the bodies are put in the freezer as they're discovered.  There's a little nudity but not much.  The mystery isn't all that interesting but Bava makes good use out of the villa and the island because that's where we are the entire time and at least that and the mod decor kept it a little interesting on the eyes.  The music is half annoying and half good.  Umiliani has a main theme that starts out good and then goes cheesy but I can still dig it.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Hell Bound (1957)

Director: William J. Hole Jr.

Writers: Richard H. Landau, Arthur E. Orloff

Composer: Les Baxter

Starring: John Russell, June Blair, Stuart Whitman, Margo Woode, George E. Mather, Stanley Adams, Frank Fenton, Gene O'Donnell, Virginia De Lee, Dehl Berti

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A cargo of dames, dope and dynamite!

Plot: A criminal gang plots the robbery of a ship carrying $2 million worth of surplus narcotics left over from World War II. The plan goes awry when the gang leader's girlfriend falls for an ambulance attendant who is an unsuspecting pawn in the scheme.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Yeah.

How about that awesome tagline?  This nifty little 50s crime picture has got some damn gritty shit going on.  When Jordan (Russell) beats the shit out of Paula (Blair) you really feel it.  The movie's got moments of harsh brutality which are great.  The acting is fair to good but it works well within the confines of what this film is.  There's a good chase scene at the end that's got a fucking awesome finish!  Les Baxter's score is fun and how about the blind drug dealer watching the striptease show and drinking milk?  Nice!  It drags a little in a spot or two but at just over an hour, who cares.  It's currently on Netflix instant and it's got my endorsement.  Neat-O.

Tightrope (1984)

Director: Richard Tuggle

Writer: Richard Tuggle

Composer: Lennie Niehaus

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Genevieve Bujold, Dan Hedaya, Alison Eastwood, Jenny Beck, Marco St. John, Rebecca Perle, Regina Richardson, Randi Brooks, Jamie Rose, Margaret Howell

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A cop on the edge...

Plot: Wes Block is a detective who's put on the case of a serial killer whose victims are young and pretty women. The killings are getting personal when the killer chooses victims who are acquaintances of Block. Even his daughters are threatened.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Maybe in twenty or so years.

Right, the only thing I really didn't dig about this is the sometimes slow pacing.  It's close to two hours long and it feels longer.  Now, the good stuff is all over the place.  It's a neat story with Eastwood playing a detective with a sexually deviant side to him, and in no way do I mean to imply it's wrong or dirty - perhaps to mainstream vanilla types.  Having grown up with seeing this guy's movies it's a bit odd seeing him in a role like this where he crosses the creepy line but it's only a little creepy to me because I've never seen him do that before and he usually is at odds with that type of character.  The New Orleans setting with Niehaus' score is fantastic and even more so as it's set around Halloween.  It's not a great film but it's a good one and it's probably one of Eastwood's most overlooked films, one that folks should see. The Warner Bros. DVD has a nice anamorphic widescreen presentation and the sole extra is the anamorphic widescreen theatrical trailer. 

Kill List (2011)

Director: Ben Wheatley

Writers: Ben Wheatley, Amy Jump

Composer: Jim Williams

Starring: Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Harry Simpson, Michael Smiley, Emma Fryer, Struan Radger, Esme Foley, Ben Compton, Gemma Lise Thornton, Robin Hill, Gareth Tunley, Robert Hill

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They are bad people.  They should suffer.

Plot: Nearly a year after a botched job, a hitman takes a new assignment with the promise of a big payoff for three killings. What starts off as an easy task soon unravels, sending the killer into the heart of darkness.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

I didn't know it until after I watched the picture and checked out the IMDb page but there's a reason why writer/director Ben Wheatley's name looked familiar, he directed several episodes of IDEAL (2005-2011), a show I have all kinds of love for.  It makes sense now, too, that there are two familiar cast members of that show in this film, Emma Fryer and Ben "I'm on probation" Compton.  I thought the acting in this film was great.  I couldn't find a weak link among the cast.  The score was moody and did a fine job of stringing along the eerie vibe.  The story was pretty good, too, but it's the execution of it all that kept this from being the home run I was hoping it would be.  Once the film shifts from crime to horror you can't help but compare it to A SERBIAN FILM (2010) (and THE WICKER MAN (1973) to a lesser extent) and in not just a couple of ways.  There's a lot of similarity between the two.  I'm not going to compare them because my reviews of each take care of themselves.  Does the shift work here?   Yeah, but the impact of what's happening isn't nearly as effective as it should have been.  This might be a case where style over substance (in a sense) hurts the film.  There's plenty of substance but the wildly moving camera and time-saving edits (you'll know what I mean if you've seen this already) draw attention to themselves and not in a good way.  It works for the early Guy Ritchie pictures as it really amped up the comedy and fun but here it gets to be a distraction rather than an enhancement.  I really want to like this picture enough to maybe give it another go around but I don't think that's going to happen which is a shame since I feel like it deserves a second chance.  Maybe someday.  In the meantime I'm looking forward to seeing some of Wheatley's other work.

Schoolgirl Hitchhikers (1973)

Original title: Jeunes Filles Impudiques

Director: Jean Rollin

Writer: Natalie Perrey

Composer: Pierre Raph

Starring: Joelle Coeur, Gilda Arancio, Marie Helene Regne, Willy Braque, Pierre Julien, Francois Brincourt, Reine Thirion

More info: IMDb

Tagline: The kind of film your mother warned you about.

Plot: Two young women wandering the countryside get mixed up with a gang of thieves and their stolen jewelery.  Lots of fucking and criminal antics ensue.

My rating:

Will I watch it again? No.

Is it me or did Jean Rollin do two kinds of films, arthouse and sexploitation/hardcore porn?  I've seen several of his pictures and it seems like that about sums him up.  This one is pure sexploitation.  By the way, the girls just happen upon the isolated house.  There's no hitchhiking involved, not that I'm getting picky or anything.  If you're going to watch this you're only interested in one thing...

Curdled (1996)

Director: Reb Braddock

Writers: Reb Braddock, John Maass

Composers: Joseph Julian Gonzalez, Tulio Zuloaga

Starring: Angela Jones, William Baldwin, Bruce Ramsay, Lois Chiles, Barry Corbin, Mel Gorham, Daisy Fuentes, Carmen Lopez, Vivienne Sendaydiego, Caridad Ravelo, Sandra Thigpen, Kelly Preston, Lupita Ferrer

More info: IMDb

Tagline: After the killer kills, after the living are dead, somebody has to clean up the mess.

Plot: Gabriella, a Colombian immigrant, is obsessed with understanding violent crime. The current string of murders by "The Blue Blood Killer" of affluent Miami socialites provides her with fodder for her scrapbook of death. She lands a job with a post-murder cleaning service and during a Blue-Blood clean-up job, discovers evidence that police have overlooked.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

Nice!  Remember the taxi driver, Esmarelda, from PULP FICTION (1994)?  Yeah?  Well that's Angela Jones and she's the star of this really fun and oddball black comedy and she's wonderful.  Why does she have so few film gigs?  William Baldwin is OK as the serial killer but he doesn't hurt the picture all that much. Jones is so good she overpowers his detraction.  The score and songs are outstanding.  I just bought the soundtrack.  Everything about this movie is fun from the casting choices to the score/songs to the story and direction.  The one thing that i wasn't 100% on was the drawn out confrontation between Jones and Baldwin.  The picture had such momentum up until then that it felt like it was too much of a breather.  I appreciated the ending but it really threw off the excellent pacing.  I'll definitely watch it again.