Memorable Scores and Themes

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Kubrick, Lair Of The White Worm, The Original Transformers Movie, Happiness

The genius of Stanley Kubrick is indesputable, its always there, particularly evident in the 1980 masterpiece The Shining. However, some of his stuff can be a bit hit and miss for me. He's sort of known for this very measured steady cam, but it doesn't always quite suit the subject matter of his films. Full Metal Jacket is a good example of this. I think it's a film which looks dated now because it was already alluding to another film made 50 years earlier, one of my favourite war films, All Quiet on the Western Front. You could say Kubrick's fluid camera style and his reliance on dolly's and tracking shots during the later battle scenes is a sort of homage to the earlier film. Also like All Quiet, FMJ's first segment deals with an army training school and a slightly over zealous instructor, but while in the earlier film the instructor is pompous, foolish, a harmless baffoon, in Kubrick's film this character and the entire segment have a darker edge. Whether this works or not is debatable. Another film that seems, in my opinion, to miss its mark is his adaptation of A Clockwork Orange from the novel by Anthony Burgess. It's not a bad film in my opinion, I don't think he could make one if he tried, but nevertheless the plot seems clunky, pointless. The amazing art design and iconic costumes of Malcom MacDowell's "Droogs" do little to distract from the unconvincing shallowness of the characters. It leaves me cold, but maybe thats the point. Kubrick wiseley used the inventive narration of the novel to carry the story and MacDowells performance is remarkable and iconic, bringing to mind his earlier role in Lindsey Anderson's If.

Stanley Kubrick's best films are well known as some of the greatest ever made. Classics like Paths of Glory, Lolita, Dr Strangelove and Barry Lyndon are among them. Here are my top Three.



3. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)



2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1978)



1. The Shining (1980)


























Here is the trailer for another classic by a very differnt filmaker, Ken Russell's The Lair of the White Worm.

I've ordered it from America but I don't know why more film's like this aren't available here.

Another Ken Russell film that looks quite interesting and funny is Whore.


























I Recently re-discovered the film oddity that is the original Transformers movie. Offcourse, it has some of the cynical feeling of the franchise, rather like the Harry Potter films, but nevertheless it is rather entertaining and funny. The plot never lets up and is basically a bizarre childrens adventure about a giant spherical entity, played by Orson Welles (!), who travels through space devouring technology in much the same way the giant whale in a Baron Munchausen story swallows ships. The Transformers flee to Earth after their planet is destroyed by it. Eric Idle and Leonard Nimoy also appear. The use of eighties pop rock songs in the soundtrack is fairly innapropriate and random, the film seems to have been knocked together. It's good in the same way as a Jess Franco film, a stylish accident.

































Re-watched Happiness recently, definateley my favourite Todd Solondz film. Its full of scenes like this:

More Trailers, Freak Storm, Caveman Loves Teenage Girl

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sbHcm0xED0&playnext_from=TL&videos=yy45tDhkEfI&feature=grec

Recent Discoveries

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Rolling Thunder was on my list for a while. It was written by Taxi Driver author Paul Schrader and directed by John Flynn. It's a chilling potrait of two ex prisoners of war, played by William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones, who have become detached from normal existence. After Devanes wife and child are killed infront of him it sends them on a murderous rampage.

















Another pretty decent film is The Quiet Earth. It's based on the novel of the same name by Craig Harrison and is one example of the 'last man on earth' sub-genre of films like Omega Man and I Am Legend. I find it far superior to anything else that runs in this vein. It was directed by Geoff Murphy who did a lot of the second unit stuff on Lord of the Rings.





















Would also recommend Park Chan-wook's last thing, Thirst. It's a vampire love story. Maybe it's not quite as amazing as Oldboy but still much better than some other films I saw of his. I enjoyed it.


































The Mechanic is probably the best film Charles Bronson and director Michael Winner made together. They would offcourse team up a few years later to make Death Wish.



Bronson is a legend. He's basically the original tough guy, like a seventies Bruce Willis. Mr Majestyk is another classic in wich he plays a humble melon farmer who is forced to defend himself against the mob.

More Lists

My most underrated directors:






10. Brian De Palma
De Palma is generally thought of as a sort of weakest link from the 70's generation of Neo-Hollywood directors that includes Scorsese, Coppola and Spielberg. I think this is a bit unfair, he's made some of the most interesting films of the late 70's and early 80's. Theres truly a different side to his earlier work, nameley the forgotten giallo style classics Sisters, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out, and Carrie has to be one of the greatest horror films of all time.




9. Paul Verhoeven
Going on his Hollywood career alone, Verhoeven deserves a place here. His sci-fi trilogy of Total Recall, Starship Troopers and his English language debut, Robocop, are some of the most subversive, and violent, Hollywood movies ever made. He further changed the game with Basic Instinct, a neo-noir sex thriller that would open the floodgates for a slew of inferior, but similar, movies.




8. Pier Paolo Pasolini
One of my favourite Italian directors. He may have a cult following, mostly among film students, but I think he deserves to be as well known as any of his contemporaries of Italian cinema of the 60s and 70s. His cinema ranges from his early, neo-realist inspired films about the Italian underclass (Accattone, Mamma Roma), to mystical films dealing with Greek mythology (Medea, Oedipus Rex), to later movies inspired by erotic literature (The Cantebury Tales, Arabian Nights, Salo), and what are simply classics of European cinema (Theorem, The Gospel According to Matthew).




7. Bernard Rose
Bernard Rose has made a couple of films that I really like. Most notably the horror film Candyman, a biography of Beethoven called Imortal Beloved and a fairly unknown and darkly comic crime thriller called Chicago Joe and the Showgirl which stars Kiefer Sutherland and the amazing Emily Lloyd. I think all three of these are worth buying. Candyman is a fucking masterpiece anyway.




6. Enzo G. Castellari
This guy has made so much stuff in Italy, what I've seen by him is amazing. He's supposed to be like the Italian Sam Pekinpah. I guess the best example I've seen is Keoma, but also Inglorious Bastards and the spaghetti western that this blog is named after. His films are really fun and he just has a great sense of style and a great eye.




5. Richard Stanley
I think Richard Stanley's only made about two feature films but they're both amazing. Hardware is a little known gem of a post apocalyptic horror slasher film. I'd say it's one of my all time favourite sci fi movies. His other feature is Dust Devil, which I can only describe as a kind of horror-western-lovestory-roadmovie-drugtrip-dreamsequence thing. He's also made a few odd little documentaries about things like the Nazi's quest for the Holy Grail and the practice of Voodoo in Haiti.




4. John McTiernan
McTiernan is on this list solely because of Predator and Die Hard, probably the two greatest action films of the 80's. If you're a boy then you must love these movies. They're basically just examples of really high quality film making. The guys a genius.




3. Michael Reeves
Reeves died of a barbiturates overdose in 1969 after directing only three films, all of which are horror classics. The last and most famous was Witchfinder General starring Vincent Price. I also love his first two films: The She Beast with Barbara Steele, and The Sorcerers with the incredible Boris Karlof, which I've mentioned on here before.




2. Don Coscarelli
Coscarelli is the contributor of such incredible examples of film making as the Phantasm series, Bubba Ho-tep and the truly amazing Beastmaster. He writes all these rich stories himself and then directs them with a sort of very dark sense of humour which I think only special people can really apreciate.




1. Lucio Fulci
What can I say about Lucio Fulci that I haven't already said on here at some point? the guy is probably one of the most underrated and missunderstood film makers ever. His best films were also written by him and I think in Italy he was known as a fairly prolific writer of screenplays and books. This guy had some issues to do with women, religion and the establishment in general and it comes out in his films, a lot of which are pretty excessively violent and crazy. He became known as "The Godfather of Gore", but his formidible imagination wasn't simply limited to depicting violence, he made some of the most inteligent thrillers and horror films of the 70's and early 80's.
















Here are some more of my all time favourite films in no particular order:


















33. Mamma Roma (1962)
Pier Paolo Pasolini's subtly beautiful and tragic masterpiece of his early period. Mamma Roma tells the sad tale of an ex prostitute, 'Mamma Roma', played by Anna Magnani. After her pimp, Carmine (played by Pasolini regular Franco Citti) gets married, she decides to rescue her estranged son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo) from the small town he lives in, and start a new life with him in the city, selling fruit and vegetables in a market. Soon Carmine returns demanding money and she is forced to go back to the streets at night. Meanwhile, Ettore meets local girl Bruna (Silvana Corsini) and falls in with a a group of street hoodlums. As the 16 year old Ettore starts to develop feelings for the thoroughly unsuitable Bruna, Mamma Roma's fears that he will become tainted and dragged down by their surroundings are realised in a tragic chain of events. Pasolini's early films, including Mamma Roma and his debut, Accattone, dealt with the forgotten underclass of pimps and prostitutes and small time criminals of post war Italy. They are stylistically rooted in Italian post modernism, and infact Pasolini never abandoned the rough aesthetic of this genre, using non actors and making the improvised, hand held camera style his own, long after many other directors had abandoned it.





























32. Bad Lieutenant (1992)

Abel Ferrara's masterful character study, about an un-named, corrupt New York police detective (Harvey Keitel), follows him on a journey from total abandoned debauchery and corruption to a type or unexpected salvation, surrounding the case of a raped nun. It was co-written with actress Zoe Lund, who appears in the film as the lieutenants heroin dealer. Lund would later die in Paris of a cocaine related heart attack. This film is undoubtedly Ferrara's best and it remains one of the greatest and most thorough character studies in all of cinema.




























31. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

This film is just incredible. It looks great, it's possible to forget how artfully filmed it is, not just a typical slasher. It's definateley my favourite slasher film. Tobe Hoopers other films don't quite work as well, but somehow Chainsaw Massacre just comes together and it's perfect. It's like some sort of amazing fluke. An undisputed classic, the Citizen Kane of horror films.






























30. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

I find this film so terrifying. The story is just really creepy and apparently the novel, from which the film is adapted, is based on a real event. Supposedly, on valentines day 1900, three school girls and one teacher vanished around a volcanic rock formation in south east Australia known locally as Hanging Rock. There were numerous search parties in the months and years after, but not one clue as to what happened was found. Some of the events surrounding the disappearance are just as strange. Peter Weir's film shows the place it self as a sort of antagonist. Theres something just really unsettling about the way its filmed and the atmosphere of evil that seems to permeate the area. The rock is symbolizing the mysterious and malevolent side of nature. A seemingly incomprehensible, primordial force.





























29. Heart of Glass (1976)
Werner Herzog famously hypnotized all the actors in this film, wich is one of his most beautiful and mysterious. I love all Herzog's early films, I think they're amazing, especially Aguirre The Wrath of God, Nosferatu and his follow up to Heart of Glass, Stroszek. Heart of Glass is about a town in Bavaria, sometime in the last century, where the chief glass blower dies taking with him the formula for the special red 'ruby' glass for which the town is known. Much of the dialogue was apparently made up by the hypnotized actors. The only actor that wasn't hypnotised was the lead Josef Bierbichler, who plays Hias, the prophetic shephard who partially narrates the film.






























28. Torso (1973).

One of the best ever giallo's. It's directed by Sergio Martino and is one of the most suspensefull films I've ever seen. I love everything about this film, even the music and just the look of the killer, its another perfect kind of flukey film. In fact I kind of regret not putting it in my top ten, one of the reasons I keep doing more lists is because I keep remembering films like this.





























27. Castle of Blood (1964).

A little while ago I saw a film by Mario Bava called Black Sunday, it stars a British actress called Barbara Steele who is basically an icon for all goths and wannabe vampire women. She made hundreds of films in Italy, including a part in 8 1/2 as the young beatnick girlfriend of a movie producer, but she was most famous for her run of horror films which followed Black Sunday, of which Castle of Blood is one. I think this film is adapted from an Edgar Allan Poe story, which is always a good sign, and I love these 60's horror films with imposing castles and carriages racing through fog. It's a great look. Particularly in black and white, the kind of photography which seems to suit the proto-Mortitia image that Steele had at the time.





























26. Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)

Lucio Fulci's greatest giallo thriller, this film is just so incredible structurally and just the plot is totally amazing. Like a lot of his films, he wrote the screenplay himself. I think Fulci is one of the most underrated film makers. The story is about a series of murders of young boys in a small Italian town, and the plot tackles themes of pagan idolatry and superstition and Catholicism in sort of rural Italy. It's just a great murder mystery with some really interesting scenes.




























25. Tarantula (1955).

The other "King of the Bs", Jack Arnold directed this film just before his other minor masterpiece, The Incredible Shrinking Man. Tarantula is even better in my opinion, everything about this film is just of a certain quality, especially the amazing script, with naturalistic dialogue and this sort of incredible story structure and pace. It reminds me a bit of The Birds. This is even more amazing when you consider the slightly ridiculous premise: a small American town being terrorized by a giant spider. Its simultaneously quite funny without meaning to be, but also really good. The special effects are really well done.





























24. River's Edge (1986).

This film is really odd, it has an incredible atmosphere. Harmone Korine's Gummo was basically just a rip off of this in a lot of ways and the story is also similar to Larry Clark's Bully. A teenage boy kills his girlfriend for no reason and then his friends try to help him cover it up after he shows them the body. It also features Dennis Hopper as the local drug dealer, Feck. Obviously Hopper co-stared in some other iconic 'youth films', most notably: Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider, this fits in with those pretty well. Other actors who are amazing in this film are Crispin Glover and the mysterious child actor, Joshua Miller.































23. Django (1966).

Django. Probably the most iconic spaghetti western ever made, it really is the most quintisential of the westerns made in Europe. Beautifully shot and edited by Sergio Corbucci, it tells the story of the mysterious drifter, Django, who arrives in a frontier town draging a coffin behind him. A coffin with a machine gun inside. This kind of macabre touch is typical of the spaghetti western genre, which this film helped to invent (along with A Fistful of Dollars, a film made a few months earlier with a remarkably similar plot). Corbucci's films tend to be a bit darker than the films of Leone. Django is particularly violent and nihilistic.





























22. Days of Heaven (1978).

Days of Heaven is a classic from famous auteur director Terrence Malick. It has quite a vague plot but its basically just a really beautifully shot melodrama to do with three destitutes, played by Richard Gere, Brooke Adams and Linda Manz, as they look for work on the Texas pan handle around the time of the first world war. Sam Shepard plays their dying farm boss. The end is quite mysterious and tragic. It also features another amazing score from Ennio Morricone.