With “Rain Dog,” director Jordan Wippell really refines a great style of neo-noir storytelling for his audience. He does so by providing some interesting flashbacks set to black and white shades set to the slow motion that really do help tell the story. While I’m not always a big fan of slow motion, “Rain Dog” has exception due to its neo-noir callbacks and it works wonders in producing mood and urgency.
Tag Archives: Drama
it's a love thing. (2012)
The only problem I had with director Andy Dodd’s romantic dramedy is that it wasn’t a little longer. With another fifteen to twenty minutes added, “It’s a Love Thing” could have really become an excellent feature. But that’s a mere nitpick, because “It’s a Love Thing” could have been four hours and I’d still be complaining that it wasn’t long enough. “It’s a Love Thing” is a beautiful and engaging drama about two children in a big world that find one another in the midst of the randomness and find out that love is better than anything around them. Including Star Wars.
Amour (2012)
Michael Haneke is an often bold and interesting director who never wants to pull back from the truly disgusting aspects of reality that can tarnish something fragile. “Love [Amour]” while being a sweet tale of two people hopelessly in love, is really a grueling look at life destroying a relationship. From minute one, the tale of Georges and Anne is a love that begins to rot slowly from the inside out.
TekWar: The Movie (1994)
Boy can your memories lie to you. I fondly remember watching “Tekwar” back in 1994 when I’d watch literally anything that was on TV. The station WPIX in New York launched a slew of television movies that were destined to become television shows in the immediate future, and “Tekwar” was one of them. Based on the novels by William Shatner, “Tekwar” began as a series of television movies, then it became a comic book series (I was never that desperate for comics), and inevitably became a television series. Since watching it twice in 1994, I only fondly remember the robotic hockey player who, at one point, has to battle Greg Evigan’s shady police officer character in a hockey rink.
Lost Films Of Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blu-Ray/DVD)
For fans of HG Lewis, Vinegar Syndrome’s newest DVD/BD release of three of his rare films is one of the most interesting jewels in the collection of folks who fancy themselves Lewis fanatics. While the trio of films do not feature the gonzo and hysterical anarchy and grue Lewis mastered and transformed in to artistic expression, the trio of films do have marks from director Lewis who adds his own sense of lunacy on occasion, while worshipping the female form in the process.
Ecstasies of Women from 1969 has a real fancy free Russ Meyer vibe to it, and is a sixties sex comedy in every sense of the word. Lewis opens the film on a strip club where busty naked dancers bounce around on stage, with one of the dancers familiarizing herself with a group of male drinkers enjoying the show.
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
There’s a real under current of sadness and tragedy behind Rob Reiner’s “This is Spinal Tap.” As character Marty DiBergi, a commercial director looking to break in to film, Reiner stands back and films Spinal Tap, a group that is literally running against the clock to make some impact on music. Granted, the threesome of inept rock stars love music to death, but the sad fact is in all the years they’ve made music, they haven’t influenced anyone, nor have they managed to become legends like the Beatles or Led Zeppelin. Since music is an ever evolving and fickle medium, Spinal Tap has spent many decades trying to roll with the changing demand for different music and have literally lost all sense of their own identity. They produce massive presentations during concerts about druids and gothic cocoons, neither of which they have any interest in, and during desperate attempts to seem chic, they fail spectacularly.
Seal Team 6: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden (2012) [Blu-Ray]
Alas, even though there has yet to be a really world shaking event since September 11th, we’re now in an era of films where Hollywood is celebrating the government again. Starting with “Act of Valor” in 2012, in spite of the critical lambasting, the big deal is depicting events of the government where we succeeded. The big news these days is the elimination of Osama Bin Laden as an immediate threat to our country. And now with “Act of Valor” in the background, “Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden” is basically the branch off from the former, except much more Hollywoodized.