Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973)

Thriller: A Cruel Picture, or They Call Her One Eye, as it was later named in the U.S., is a Swedish revenge exploitation film, written and directed by Bo Arne Vibenius. Although it was released in 1973, it didn’t arrive in English speaking countries until 1974 and 75.

Madeleine, as a young girl, was attacked and molested in the forest near her home. As a result, she can no longer speak. As a young adult (now played by Christina Lindberg) she still lives with her parents on their farm. Her parents used all their money to send Madeleine to specialists.

One day, she accepts a ride from a well-to-do, Tony (Heinz Hopf). Who takes her out to dinner, and then a drink at his house. Where she is roofied and later drugged to the eyeballs. Tony turns out to be a sex trafficking pimp, who gets Madeleine locked up, hooked on narcotics and forced to work as a prostitute. He even forces her to sign a mean letter to her parents to explain her disappearance. When she fights back against one of the ‘johns’, Tony takes her eye. She complies.

She is eventually let out on Mondays, and going home, finds that her elderly parents have both committed suicide over the loss of their daughter. She takes all the money she has saved and every Monday, she gets training in driving, weapons, and self-defence. She is planning bloody revenge against all the ‘johns’ and Tony himself.

This is an exploitation classic, and has influenced many filmmakers who like this kind of film, most famously Taratino. It’s a story of raw emotions that is sold by its star. Christina Lindberg is mesmerising in a completely silent performance, that holds your attention, even in the slower moments. Everything she is feeling is shown on her face and body. Probably one of the best performances I have ever seen. Direction is sold, as is the cinematography. Good fight scenes, stunt work and a great climax. There is a liberal use of slow motion in the action sequences, but it does seem out of place. As a matter of fact, it is a benefit.

Stylish, heartbreaking, uplifting, sexual, powerful, and ICONIC. Like its lead actress. 

The Phantom of the Opera (1989)

Like Dracula and Frankenstein, there are many different versions of Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera in film and television. Some are faithful to the novel and some just take the general idea, and create something different. The 1989 version of Phantom of the Opera is somewhere in the middle.

This film starts in the present of 1989, a young opera singer and music student, Christine Day (Jill Schoelen) and her friend Meg (pre–SNL Molly Shannon) are looking for more original work by a lost composer named Erik Destler in an old musty book store. After finding the opera Don Juan Triumphant, Christine uses it as her audition piece the next day for a new opera. She stuns the director, but a stage hand accidentally drops a sandbag, narrowly missing her, but knocking her to the floor resulting not only in unconsciousness, but also having the side effect of her waking up in 1885, on a stage in London where a similar thing just happened.

Here, the film becomes a more faithful adaptation of the original tale. Even though the film is book ended by the present day, with a nice but predictable conclusion and singer, it follows many other filmed versions. The Phantom character stalks the opera house, training Christine behind closed doors, and his malicious and murderous protection and artistic advancement of Christine, who is the object of his affection. Except for one element, and a selling point that ramped the film up a few notches. The Phantom/Erik Destler is played by horror icon Robert Englund. His performance is amazing, and worthy of awards, in my opinion. He has moments of a serial killer, like some of his horror characters, but also has many quieter, almost childlike innocent moments that round out his character into a real person with trauma and not just a bogeyman.

There are some great makeup effects here, as the mask the phantom wears is a mask, he masks form human skin that he uses to cover his deformed face. The kills are less gory than other horror films of the time. But marvellously staged. It is a good mix of style and story. It also features Bill Nighy in an early role.

Strange Days (1995)

Damn this movie is hard to describe if you haven’t seen it. Strange Days is a sci-fi, cyberpunk, action thriller from director Kathryn Bigelow and writers James Cameron and Jay Cocks.

Set in the future time of 1999, Los Angeles is a war zone. For all the reasons you would expect. In this version of the future the main ‘drug’ is a device called a SQUID. It is a device that can record a portion of someone else’s life and can be ‘played’ back for others to experience what the wearer was experiencing. And it is addictive, but only like video games are today. But the devices can be set to overload, which creates feedback that fries the user’s brain. This is why it’s illegal.

Our protagonist is Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) and ex-cop now SQUID hustler, who gets caught up in a mystery about a murdered rap icon, racist cops, a paranoid music executive and his thugs, and his ex-girlfriend. And it is all connected by a SQUID recording of the murder of the rap icon.

To add to the mystery and tension, someone starts sending Nero SQUID recordings featuring a murderer killing off all the people connected to the recording and to Nero. Helping out our ‘out of his depth’ hero is security expert Lornette ‘Mace’ Mason (Angela Bassett in a kick ass role) and old friend, ex-cop and now P.I. Max Peltier (Tom Sizemore).

Also in the cast: Juliette Lewis as Nero’s ex Faith, Michael Wincott and music mogul Philo Gant, Vincent D’Onofrio and William Fichtner as the racist cops, Glenn Plummer as Jeriko One, Brigitte Bako as Iris, Richard Edson as Tick and Josef Sommer as Strickland.

While this film is a science fiction thriller, it has more in common hardboiled detective fiction than the regular cyberpunk tales, but the exaggerated world and the SQUID tech elevates it to sci-fi gem.

Graeme Revell’s music and Matthew F Leonetti’s cinematography help create a movie that stands with Bigelow’s other cult classics Near Dark and Point Break. The first-person sequences are done better here than most first person shooter games.

This movie leaves an impression long after the film has ended and have you reaching for the SQUID headset.

Remo: The Adventure Begins (1985)

This action-adventure film from 1985 exists at a strange place in time. On one hand it is a product of the 1980s action movie excess, and on the other, it is firmly in the adventure films of the 1960s.

Remo: The Adventure Begins (or Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous) is based on the successful Destroyer pulp paperbacks written by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy.

The film tells the story of Sam Makin, a tough New York Street cop and Vietnam vet special forces soldier who is unwillingly recruited as an assassin for a small clandestine agency named CURE. His features are altered and he is given a new name of Remo Williams (Fred Ward). Agent MacCleary (J.A. Preston) and CURE director Harold W. Smith (Wilford Brimley) explain his role and send him off to be trained by Chiun (Joel Grey), an ancient master of the fictional Korean martial art “Sinanju”, who is obsessed with American soap operas. A combative teacher student dynamic soon gives way to a father son relationship between the two men.

CURE is investigating a US military contracted weapons manufacturer George Grove (Charles Cioffi) and his corrupt dealings at the same time as Major Raynor Fleming (Kate Mulgrew) is. While Remo and MacCleary do some undercover work, they are photographed with Fleming and become targets. With his training not yet finished, Remo must step up and defeat the bad guys, and save the day.

This movie is ridiculously fun for me and it has a nostalgic place in my geeky heart. The movie is not perfect, the martial arts action is more the philosophy then fist to cuffs, but it is full of heart, humour and a decent story.

Fred Ward is wonderful, but Joel Grey’s performance steals the show as Chiun. Even if the casting of Grey, a white actor, is a throwback to white wash casting of the past. Due to the Oscar nominated make-up effects, I had no idea for over a decade. While I think Guy Hamilton (of Goldfinger fame) was the wrong choice to direct the film, the performances, concept, and Craig Safan score more than make up for that.

Best line:

Remo: Chiun, you’re incredible!

Chiun: No! I am better than that.

The Hand (1981)

The Hand is the second directorial effort from future icon Oliver Stone. This isn’t what you would usually associate with him. For this is a psychological horror film, with a bonkers premise and a lot of the B-movie aesthetic.

Michael Caine plays Jonathan Lansdale, a successful cartoonist and creator of the successful Conan like comic strip Mandro. His wife Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) is indifferent to her husband and is looking for something or somewhere else to be. Their daughter Lizzie (Mara Hobel) loves them both, but is confused by them.

When Anne drives Jon into town to post his finished boards, arguing all the way, they get into an accident. And Jon losses his hand, his drawing hand. Jon starts his painful recovery, both physical and mental. Feeling useless, Jon and family move to New York in a fresh start, and Jon starts working with a new artist on his Mandro strip. Not happy, he ends the strip and takes a teaching job in California without his family. Oh, and all through this, Jon has been having visions of his severed hand moving around on its own attacking people and pets.

An affair with Stella (Annie McEnroe) seems to be hope for Jon. But when he finds out she is planning to take a vacation with womaniser and Jon’s friend Brian (Bruce McGill), both of them turn up missing, after Jon has visions of the ‘hand’ killing them. Their bodies are found in the truck of Jon’s car. The ending is a gut punch.

The ambiguity of the killings in the film is key. Is there a supernatural element? Is the hand killing on its own? Or is it Jon’s damaged mind protecting him from the killing. And the visual switch from colour to black and white when the hand is about is a nice touch.

While this was one of Michael Caine’s “pay check” movies, he doesn’t phone it in. You believe the him as the proud and creative man slowing descending into madness. He will break your heart. It’s a flawed film, but with Caine front and centre and Stone in the director’s chair, those flaws are hard to focus on. Straddles the fence between good and great.

Deadly Friend (1986)

The trailer for this film, presents you with a teen serial killer thriller. But this is not that film. It was the marketing people trying to align this film with the slasher genre. This film is actually a science fiction horror film from director Wes Craven, written by Bruce Joel Rubin and based on the book ‘Friend’ by Diana Henstell.

Teen genius and roboticist Paul (Matthew Labyorteaux) and his mother Jeannie (Anne Twomey) move to a new town so Paul can start studying/researching neuroscience at the University. Along with the pair is BB, a robot with A.I. that Paul built and programmed. While moving in, Paul meets Tom (Michael Sharrett), the paper boy who crashes his bike after seeing BB, and Samantha (Kristy Swanson) the loveable but troubled girl next door. They all become fast friends.

When BB is shot by paranoid old grouch Elvira (Anne Ramsey) and destroyed after a prank gone wrong, Paul’s world starts to fall apart. But he uses some components and programming in his brain research to some success. When Sam is killed by her alcoholic father Harry (Richard Marcus), Paul hatches a plan to use his research to bring her back, blackmailing Tom into helping him. And it is a success. Paul resurrects Sam as a Sam/BB brain hybrid. The new Sam is confused and is learning as Paul keeps her a secret. And as always happens, Sam starts to venture out and kill all those who have done her wrong, including Harry and Elvira. And the ending is what you would expect.

I have always enjoyed this film, but I can’t call it good by any stretch. There are some good moments, but suffers from tonal inconsistencies, directionless performances, and shoehorn scenes of more violence and gore (Elvira’s death) to try and make a box office hit. Wes tried something different with this film, but with a mix of factors including low budget and studio/producer interference, a dud was produced, which he unfairly took the blame for. There are some good ideas here, especially the cyborg element and the grief of a genius. But it is more fun to riff on than to take seriously. An acquired taste.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Took me a while to get to the cinema, but I finally got there. Regardless of what anyone else thinks, It was worth the wait. I loved this flick.

James Gunn returns as writer and director as does the primary cast, we have all come to love. Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Pom Klementieff and Sean Gunn as Quill, Gamora, Drax, Nebula, Mantis and Kraglin. Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel return to lend their voice to Rocket and Groot respectively.

This film uses Rocket’s past to propel the story forward. We learn that he was created by The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) on his way to create the ultimate intelligent and peaceful race. There is something unique about Rocket’s brain, something the High Evolutionary can’t replicate in his new subject and he is obsessed with reacquiring Rocket to dissect him to find his answers.

To this end, he uses the Sovereign and their newly created champion Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) who is still a child in many ways. When Rocket is injured after the first fight with Warlock, the Guardians race the clock to save him by a daring heist with Gamora’s help.

Like the other films in the trilogy, this film is full of amazing visuals, fights scenes, actual character development, humour, a heart-felt story, great direction, good score (this time by John Murphy) and a kick-ass soundtrack that I am currently listening to.

Every one of the main cast by the end of the film, has either found their purpose or is journeying to find it. Everyone gets their moment. The flashback sequences with Rocket and the other subjects of Batch 89 will break your heart. Drax’s and Nebula’s makes me happy for the future (just in general). These characters are a family, and throw the telling of this story, you know that is never going to change regardless of their solo journeys.

The High Evolutionary is one of the best villains I have seen in a Marvel film. He thinks he is doing a noble thing; he is the most detestable antagonist in the franchise. Nods to Nathan Fillion’s Master Karja and Maria Bakalova’s vocal performance as Cosmo.

Yay, a Michael Rooker cameo.

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)

There is Meta filmmaking, and then there is this film. TUWOMT (as it will now be known) is a comedy action film co-written and directed by Tom Gormican and starring Nicolas Cage as a version of himself caught up in a weird, and strangely touching story.

Nick Cage (spot the different spelling here) in this universe is an actor who fears he is past his prime. Unable to get the role he wants, a difficult relationship with his ex-wife Olivia and daughter Abby (Sharon Horgan & Lily Mo Sheen), and mounting debts for his hotel, he is depressed. He unwillingly takes a gig offered to him by his manager/agent Richard Fink (Neal Patrick Harris) to attend the birthday party of a rich Spanish Nick Cage super fan Javi Gutierrez (Pedro Pascal) for the fee of one million dollars.

Getting off the private plane, he is instantly clocked by two CIA agents Vivian and Martin (Tiffany Haddish & Ike Barinholtz). According to the world, Javi is the head of a drug cartel and not his violent cousin Lucas (Paco Leon), and the two agents use Cage to get access to sensitive intel.

Cage and Javi become fast friends, both being massive film geeks, and start working on a script for a movie while Cage is looking for a kidnapped girl in Javi’s compound for the CIA. Things get weirder when Javi sends for Cage’s ex-wife and daughter. And spoiler: Javi is not the bad guy. But not other spoilers. But the action sequence at the end is awesome. 

This is a ride. Both the leads, Cage and Pascal, shine here. Especially Pascal whose charming demeanour and kind nature add to the likeability of the character. The scene where Nick and Javi take LSD to get inspiration for their film script is one of the funniest pieces of cinema I have seen in ages. As is the pair watching Paddington 2.

There are elements from Cage’s real life in the story, a movie within a movie at the end and a younger version of Cage that the man talks to looking very much like 90s Wild at Heart Cage, called Nicky.

This movie experience is required for all lifeforms.