Log: week 0 / 2021
This must be one of the crummiest blockbusters I've ever seen. It's amazing to think they released Jurassic Park just one year before. There's a little charm in that if I'm completely honest, the incredibly fake and cheap look is where the film draws some entertainment, though it's hardly enough to fully redeem itself. Terrible puns, cheap decors and a silly plot. I've never been a Flintstones (and by extension, Hanna-Barbera) fan, no doubt this film is way more fun if you actually have some affinity with the source material. That still doesn't take away this is some of the cheapest film making I've ever seen from Hollywood. It's slightly entertaining, but it's mostly just very, very bad.Read all
An oldskool Tanaka. Different stories intersect to tell a bigger plot, some scenes have a tendency to venture off into a direction of their own and there's an underlying layer of dark comedy that keeps things interesting. It's not Tanaka's best film, but he's so skilled that he can make a film like this extremely entertaining without having to make a real effort. Good fun.
Early Capra. While I think sound is one of the most undervalued and disregarded areas of cinema, I'm really not a fan of the early talkies. It seems they did their very best to catch up with years of silence, dumping as much dialogue into 90-120 minutes as they could muster. Not my kind of cinema. At almost two hours, the film drags on for way too long. Characters can't stop chatting, almost everyone is a caricature and Capra's tendency to makes thing overly cheesy and sentimental don't improve the film either. It's quite a chore to sit through, I haven't really found the big appeal of Capra's work yet.Read all
A tricky film. Dune Drifter clearly didn't have much money to burn. Director Price seemed capable to work around that, but is a bit too ambitious and ends up littering his film with some less than stellar scenes. Less surely would've been more here, but no doubt Price has the chops if he ever manages to land the proper budget. The entire intro in space is a joke. The CG is horrendous and these sequences should've just been cut in full. The alien designs aren't great either, but the rest looks pretty cool. The alien planet feels quite hostile, the space suits have a nice, industrial look and the build-up of tension is pretty cool. This could've been a nice slow burner, but as it is the film feels a bit too conflicted.Read all