A Happy New Year to anyone reading this. I hope this particular demarcation of our agreed-upon calendar brings you joy, health, and the occasional bon bon. I feel tremendously lucky to still be playing drums, watching films, writing in this here blog, etc.
Quick reviews of the last few films watched:
"Spring Breakers," from 2013 and brought to us by Harmony Korine (writer of "Kids," writer/director of "Gummo," etc.) is certainly one of those movies that is much different than its marketing campaign would have you believe. Even the title is misleading, although, when I think of it, the title might be completely accurate. The plot involves a group of female teenagers who rob a diner in order to facilitate a trip to St. Petersburg, FL for spring break. They have another friend who's definitely on more solid moral ground, albeit through religion, and she joins the trip. Once there, the group is busted at a hotel for using drugs (I think - this part was fuzzy), and a piece of work played by James Franco bails them out of jail. From there, the story gets even more interesting and moves in directions I didn't see coming. Frankly, every time I thought I knew what the next plot point would be.....it wasn't that. I can't say the movie was a stone classic, but it is very good, and I'd recommend it. Especially if you're tired of the mainstream movie wagon.
Hitting the ol' time machine, "Stromboli," from 1950, is the first collaboration between Italian director Roberto Rossellini and actress Ingrid Bergman. This is another one of Rossellini's neo-realistic films from the post-war era. Bergman plays a Lithuanian (!) refugee who is placed in a former POW camp, and while there, she meets an Italian fisherman and decides to marry him. Largely to get herself out of the camp. Once she ends up with the fisherman on his island home of Stromboli, well, she thinks she made the wrong decision. The locals don't take a shine to her, there is nothing of the sort she was used to before the war, and her attitude becomes worse as the picture moves on. Overall, I liked the movie, but I think more as a period piece than an examination of self (which is what the movie is). Good, but it didn't blow me away. I'll be watching the other two Rossellini/Bergman films soon enough, and I should have words about them, too.
Finally, a Paul Naschy gem from 1980, "Human Beasts." Paul Naschy (real name Jacinto Molina, a Spanish horror icon) wrote and directed this one, and it's got one interesting plot. Sort of a kitchen sink story. Naschy plays a career criminal named Bruno who hooks up with a couple of Japanese diamond smugglers (brother and sister). Bruno begins a love affair with the sister. After pulling off their planned diamond robbery, Bruno double crosses the Japanese and ends up killing the brother. And this leaves the sister, Bruno's former flame, to track him down. Bruno ends up, through a series of events, seriously wounded and taken to a doctor's estate, where he's looked after by the doctor, his two daughters, and a servant. Shades of "The Beguiled," in a way. And there's much more. I think this is one of Naschy's best stories. His films are always enjoyable, but this one arguably has the most plot going for it. It's a doozy. The final shot is pretty damned spectacular. See if you're not shouting "that, too??" at the end.
That's it for now....been a lazy New Year's Day. Aaaahhhh......
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