Jay's Movie of the Week #15: Brainstorm (1983)

As an accomplished movie watcher, I can sometimes get surprised realizing that I haven't actually seen a movie I know a great deal about. Brainstorm is one of those. A bit of a flop, its fortunes were darkened by the death of Natalie Wood during the production. I also knew it was made in two aspect ratios, one being Super Panavision for the effects scenes. When I realized that was all I knew, I decided to get a copy and check it out.

I'm glad I did.

The story itself involves a team of scientists (Christopher Walken, Louise Fletcher, Natalie Wood among them) creating a device that perfectly captures sensory input and translates it for the subject. You can taste what the person on the other end is eating, feel what they touch, see what they see. When the device also proves to not only be dangerous, but also record emotions and memories, they're dismayed when the government steps in to exploit the device's potential as a weapon. The thrills come in when one when Dr. Brace discovers that the project was funded with brainwashing and torture in mind, and in his further quest to see the recording of one doctor's experience with death. Did the tape record the answers of what happens after?

Jay's Movie of the Week #13: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are as comforting a team as Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, or Steve and Edie. Hammer films, be they horror or a mystery-thriller like this, are as comforting as house slippers. Mannered, stage-bound, and always hinting at much darker thrills than they show, this studio produced gem after gem. All together, it's a match-up equal to chocolate and peanut butter.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is perhaps the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and this is one of many versions of the film. Cushing as Holmes and Andre Morell as Watson, however, have a take on the characters that seems somewhat... breezy. Cushing's Holmes is more a sharp and insightful showoff than someone truly driven by their genius intellect and preternatural powers of observation. Just the smartest man in a roomful of dim bulbs.

He's also a fairly emotional Holmes who makes some rash mistakes and assumptions, which is a dimension you don't see enough in this character. Invited to investigate the death of the lord of Baskerville Hall, where the prologue showed us a murder committed by the debauchery-minded Sir Hugo, who was then himself killed by "something."

Sherlock Holmes, never one to suffer fools gladly in any incarnation, agrees to investigate the death and descends upon Sir Henry (Christopher Lee). The son of the deceased Sir Charles, he's the new lord of Baskerville Hall, and a bit of a jerk. (Okay, he's a big jerk.) Sir Charles dropped dead, perhaps running from the mythical hell hound that curses the family. It's equally possible, though, an escaped murderer named Selden might have had a hand in the proceedings. So is the threat something supernatural, or just a prosaic murderer? Worse, will the family heart condition knock off Sir Henry before anything else gets a chance?

Jay's Movie of the Week #12: Nightmare (Stage Fright, 1980)

Nightmare is definitely a product of its time as a circa-1980 slasher film. In such a film, a couple having graphic sex in an alley can't really complain if someone comes along and finds them. This includes the audience gaping at the indulgently gratuitous nudity (and those round vaccination scars anyone who doesn't have one has probably forgotten about by now). The couple is, however, allowed to be startled by a high-heel wearing slasher. To sum the plot up in one run-on sentence: a young girl is traumatized by inadvertently causing the death of her sexually active mother then grows up to be an actress in a theater production where all the understudies are getting promoted because someone is killing off the leads. Could these two things be connected? Well, not to spoil things up front, but there's no real mystery to the proceedings. Helen (Jenny Neumann), our protagonist, spends most of her screen time flashing back to either a death scene or yelling at herself behind closed doors. When a film doesn't bother to have you guessing whodunnit, the shots from the killer's point of view seem more appropriate to an experiment in first-person character study.

Jay's Movie of the Week #11: Snow White: A Deadly Summer

David DeCoteau is doing something right... I just can't quite figure out what for all the wrong here. (Originally reviewed for DVDsnapshot.com)

Official Synopsis:

In this edgy tale of horror, a troubled teenage girl finds herself in a web of lies and deceit when her stepmother attempts to murder her by sending her to a discipline camp.

Our Take:

The ever-prolific David DeCoteau has made classic Eighties B-movies, lots of Full Moon features, and created the “Horror Guys in Underwear” genre (The Brotherhood and 1313 series). This genre of bad, bland horror films, light on gore and heavy on tease, is mostly notable for being unable to decide if the target audience is straight women or gay men, then failing to reach either. DeCoteau has evidently decided to take a break from being the only director surrounded by more hot young guys than Chi Chi LaRue and audition for the ABC Family Channel. (I can only assume as in Snow White: A Deadly Summer there's gender equity and everyone keeps their shirts on...)

The plot of with this teen-centric “horror” feels like a TV movie, but TV generally requires higher production values. Here, between a borrowed mansion and a camp for teens that resembles a neighborhood public park, DeCoteau makes the best of limited resources with a quickie take on the Snow White story. (Beating the upcoming big-budget ones to the punch?)

Jay's Movie of the Week #10: Suspicion (American Playhouse, 1988)

I stray from my usual horror and genre fair with something a little more high-toned, like a stifled remake of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Verdict: They were asking for trouble from the get go.

Marry in haste. Remake in leisure. Watch in boredom. (Originally reviewed for DVDsnapshot.com)

Official Synopsis:

A powerfully tense remake of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, this British production of Suspicion boasts a dynamic cast, making it a worthy descendant of the original.

Anthony Andrews (The King's Speech) stars as notorious playboy Johnnie Aysgarth, a seemingly wealthy and carefree bachelor. Jane Curtin (Saturday Night Live, Coneheads) plays Lina, a lonely American who is instantly charmed by Johnnie's arrogant wit. After a whirlwind romance, the couple marries, after which unpleasant truths begin to emerge. Johnnie is broke and a compulsive gambler, a deadly combination. Desperate for money, he starts borrowing against her life insurance policy, and curiously develops an interest in murder mysteries. Lina soon fears for her safety, her paranoia exploding into hysteria after one of Johnnie's friends suffers an unfortunate accident.

A white-knuckle thriller directed with elegance and a morbid wit by Andrew Grieve (Agatha Christie's Poirot), Suspicion is a well-executed mystery that will raise goosebumps, and perhaps some suspicions about your own spouse.

Our Take:

The original Suspicion is one of the few Alfred Hitchcock films I haven't seen. A failure for a film reviewer, but it means I can't compare it's style, flair, or big stars against this American Playhouse television adaptation from 1988... which is good as this remake lacks both style and flair.

Johnnie is a dead-broke blue-blooded playboy who meets Lina, an American her own wealthy parents describe as “spinsterish.” Their short courtship, based on mutual-but-incompatible needs, leads them to marriage while they're really still strangers. Lina quickly learns it's not a good idea to get involved in a man you think might be trying to murder you. Is she paranoid, observant, or just working out how much she screwed up by marrying this cheap jerk?

Jay's Movie of the Week Reviews #9: Aenigma

I'm going to start calling my One-A-Week reviews my movie of the week. Why? Why not? No better way to start than this howler of a horror that actually gets better the more you think about it...
 
I haven't liked any Lucio Fulci movies made after The House By the Cemetery (with the possible exception of Cat in the Brain). They're awful; totally overrated by fans. I know this, and yet I keep watching. I guess it's just the completest in me. Aenigma came out in 1987, and didn't even make it to the states until 2001 on DVD. Is it any good? Well... a bit?

In the world of horror movies, everyone attends school well into their thirites. Seriously, some of these students look older than the headmistress. Eva Gordon arrives at St. Mary's school in, evidently, Boston-Herzigovina. (This is Yugoslavia standing in for Massachusetts.  All she wants to do is make out with "as many boys as possible." It's a shame she winds up quickly possessed by Kathy, a student hit by a car after being humiliated in a prank played by her classmates. Kathy is supposedly brain-dead, but evidently psychic. She make your reflection break through the mirror to kill you and also turns snails into carnivorous murderers. (Yes, snails, and it's hilarious.)

One A Week Reviews #8: Libestraum

I've seen Libestraum on offer for 20 years now and always meant to watch it. I had heard it was something of a meditative mystery featuring the last screen appearance of Kim Novak and had the excellent pedigree of being directed by Mike Figgis. Also, it starred Bill Pullman along with two lead actors, Kevin Anderson and Pamela Gidley, who never really "happened," even though they kept getting the opportunities.

Turns out, I wasn't missing much.

It's fitting that a film named after a piece of music should open with a shot of a piano. In flashback, a man and woman are having a tryst only to be interrupted and shot. Thirty years later, we join Nick (Anderson) as he travels to visit his birth mother (Novak), who lives in the Nursing Home of Dramatic Lighting. She is dying, but as she'd given him up for adoption, this is the first time he's met her. He also wants to study the rare cast-iron-frame building that shooting happened in, now about to be torn down by Bill Pullman's character, Paul Kessler. Paul and Nick are old pals, though their relationship is stiff, awkward, and nearly ended by a work-site accident. Was it fate, or somehow caused by the ominous arrival of a mysterious man in a limousine?

One A Week Reviews #7: Final Destination 5

There was a period during my twenties, right after college, where I just couldn't stomach horror movies. There was something about finally getting out of school and entering a not-that-friendly real world, that had me finally grappling with an end to "adolescence."With that came a loss of that youthful viewpoint that nothing could hurt me, an innocence I luckily was able to maintain for a large period of my life.

The Final Destination series aims squarely at that adolescent sense, taunting and amusing it's target audience with stories of attractive teens unable to escape their fate. Unlike the slashers of the eighties, where sexual moralizing ruled the day, these films had a pretty bleak representation of death as something coming unstoppably for you. For all their contrivance, they're a little too realistic. Horror movies let people process fears, but sometimes you don't need to be reminded that no matter what you do, it's coming for you.

Now that I'm at an age where I spent less time inspired to consider my mortality and more calculating the increased insurance rates all the poor innocent venues are going to get stuck with after these poor, doomed soul expire there... these flicks are a lot easier to watch.

From the rather ugly credits, which check manners of death from the last four films, to the impressive CGI disaster, Final Destination 5 wallows in 3D effects porn. One more trip to the well, the film features yet another group of attractive young people, lead by one who predicts it, evading a disaster that goes on to still cost them their lives since death just won't be denied. This time, the members of a corporate retreat narrowly escape a bridge collapse. For the series, this may be the most impressive disaster yet.

(Youngins in peril, after the break...)

One A Week Reviews #6: Cat in the Brain (Nightmare Concert)

Cat in the Brain is a walk down memory lane by Lucio Fulci, mostly built from clips from his other (lesser) films. It's a cheap gorefest masquerading as meditation, some weird, director's walk-about. There's a loose story which is even more loosely draped with clips intended to represent the memories of the director in his Winter. Everywhere he goes, events cause him to flash back to the gore that is his business.

The movie opens with hand-puppet cats, who move like Mr. Rogers' furry friends, digging into a huge pile of "brains." Within five minutes we're also treated to a man cooking and eating a chunk of a corpse's thigh, then cutting the rest up in the world's neatest chain-sawing. Not a drop of blood lands on him. This, like half the footage from this movie, is edited in from an earlier Fulci production. The cats are in Fulci's imagination, while the chainsaw murder is inserted as a movie Fulci is making. The poor man can't get his movie gore to be convincing (while it dazzled, it never really was), and his private life is fearsome. Every mundane event in his day brings with it a gory insert shot, most of which they barely bother to match with the locations, lighting, and look of the story they're integrated them into. He just can't catch a break.

One A Week Reviews #5: The Legend Of Hell House

Of all the well-known horror films I've seen over the years, I somehow continually missed The Legend of Hell House. I haven't even read the Richard Matheson novel, "Hell House," that it's based on. I have however read "The Haunting of Hill House," and seen both versions of The Haunting. I wondered, based on the similarities in plot, where a small group of psychics spend some time in a legendarily haunted house, if they'd be similar. In the end I have to say "Pretty much, but with more sex, violence, and tacky fashion."


Lionel Barrett (Clive Revil) is hired to investigate the truth of life after death, and if the "Mount Everest of Haunted Houses" is a real thing. The Belasco Mansion has a sordid history, and has evidently killed off previous teams who hoped to solve it's mysteries. Barrett has four days, and has psychic Ben Fischer (Roddy McDowell), who survived the last go round with the house, mental medium Florence Tanner (Pamela Franklin) and Barrett's wife Ann (Gayle Hunnicutt) are along for the ride. They're dropped off at the house, and you do expect their driver to say that no one comes there "in the night... in the dark..." as the maid in The Haunting says.


Immediately upon walking in, everything gets portentous and "act-y," with odd noises, thick darkness, and unflattering close-ups. (McDowell particularly suffers, always looking hang-dog and dejected.) They even find a record left by Emeric Belasco (an uncredited Michael Gough), the wonton devil who caused this whole mess, essentially welcoming them to the house. The movie successfully sets an ominous tone, though the general decaying-mansion quality has not aged well in this day and age of condo-set banality, à la Paranormal Activity. The cobwebs, dust, and draperies scream sound stage. Haunted house movies really are scarier when they could be happening in your little Ranch or Cape Cod.

One A Week Reviews #4: Horrible Bosses

The crude comedy Horrible Bosses succeeds on two levels. On one, it's a showpiece for likeable film actors with comedy chops to shine. But on another level, it succeeds as a wish-fulfillment outlet for so many people who're laid off, fired, or feeling trapped in their jobs by this crappy market and horrible economy. As a kind of wish-fulfillment, this triumvirate take on "Strangers on a Train" satisfies. Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudekis play office drones manipulated by bosses who have them by their proverbial short hairs. Feeling out of options, they eventually strike a plan to knock off each others' bosses in a round-robin of "have mercy" killing.

Bateman's Nick works for Spacey, a paranoid, selfish, power mad manager who delights in reminding everyone whose in charge. Kurt (Sudekis) loses his great boss to a heart attack, winding up under the thumb of Farrell as the useless, coke-head heir apparent. Dale (Day) is stuck suffering the (equal parts objectionable and far fetched) harassment at the hands of the sexually aggressive Dr. Julia (Aniston). They're all miserable, pretty much trapped, and decide that their situations are no longer tenable. Botched murder-planning and a running gag about being on the sex offender list are part of this bad-taste comedy's aspirations to be black comedy gold. It's more a silver, but a good time as complications ensue. Things wrap a bit pat.

One A Week Reviews #3: Valkyrie

Sometimes, a boy who loves cheap little B-movies of ill-repute and varying quality must curl up with a big-budget stab at "Historical Epic." To class up the joint, ya know...

At least I picked one with Nazis in it.

Valkyrie is based on a real-life WWII conspiracy by a group of high-placed Nazis lead by one Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg to overthrow Adolph Hitler and take over the Third Reich. Bryan Singer followed up the brilliant X2 and the wildly uneven Superman Returns with this lavish, well-paced period piece that builds real tension out of events that we know going in didn't succeed. The co-conspirators attempted a handsomely-filmed coup to rescue Germany from Hitler's extremism with subtle special effects. (It only takes 70-plus years for film to play Nazis as individuals with conflicted consciences, and even then you're not that empathetic because, um... Nazis). A plan put in action at around the film's midpoint actually had me engaged to the point where I wondered if it would succeed. That's the sign of a well made thriller. The "Operation Valkyrie" section of the film is a fascinating race against the clock, while you wait for the other shoe to drop the entire time.

Tom Cruise plays the lead and, since no one is putting on garish German accents here, the other Nazis are pretty much all English actors. It is a movie truism that all bad guys have British accents, right? Kenneth Branagh and Bill Nighy counterpoint each other, the first now-doughy and the other resembling a sternly greased skull. Eddie Izzard and Tom Wilkinson, both barely recognizable when first seen, round out the conspiracy. Carice van Houten, so exciting in Paul Verhoeven's Black Book again enters the WWII film-fray as von Stauffenberg's wife. Sadly, she was only been given a series of meaningful looks to play in lieu of a actual, developed character and fades out early on. (Seriously, check out Black Book. It's awesome.)

(Now we talk about the big Movie Star, after the break...)

One A Week Reviews #2: An Englishman in New York

After 34 years, John Hurt returns to playing Quentin Crisp in An Englishman in New York. It's a sequel, the follow-up to The Naked Civil Servant, where Crisp shared his story of becoming "one of the stately queens of England" through strife and the Twentieth Century. Here, we rejoin Crisp as he emigrates to America and we rejoin Hurt as he revisits one of the most marvelous characterizations of his career.

This film opens with a TV interview from the night in 1975 after The Naked Civil Servant aired, making Crisp a national sensation. He rises to the occasion and, when invited to the US on a publicity tour, he falls in love with New York and decides to stay.

Quentin Crisp excelled at the brilliance of honestly being one's true self. He gets an agent, played by Swoozie Kurtz in a why-is-she-here performance, who helps him become the toast of the town. At this point he's in his Seventies, but Hurt makes him seem like he's at the prime of his life. He gets a one-man show and a film review column, but his topic is his view of the world. His life of holding court at every invitation and singing for his supper must've gotten tiring after a while, but he pretty much lived on cocktails and crudites. He drifts into  becoming the toast of the art scene.

One A Week Reviews #52: Captain America: The First Avenger

I wish you a terrific New Year's Eve - I for one have some BIG resolutions on deck (What other kind would I have?) - here's the last weekly review for 2011, but have no fear, because there's a whole new set of 52 heading your way for 2012. 

See you next week... year... week... 

Comic books. I love 'em. Always have, and admitted a long time ago, I always will. Captain America was never a favorite though. He was a character who never struck me as having many dimensions. He represents the indomitable, unstoppable will and tenaciousness of the American dream. However, he is not nuanced. Captain America: The First Avenger, however, is a surprisingly satisfying treatment of the character and his story.

What can be done with CGI now really does finally fool the eye and the mind. Backgrounds and chase scenes are one (still-imperfect) thing, and it's easier for the brain to go "that is clearly special effects." Many of the composite assemblages aim for a depth that isn't earned and not quite pulled off. It doesn't convince. CGI works best when subtle, and seeing Chris Evans' face pasted perfectly onto a skinny body is pretty disorienting. Any viewer not familiar with what he looks like probably gets pretty startled when he turns up into a bohunk. Scrawny Steve Rogers desperately wants to ship out to WWII but is simply too small and sickly to make the draft. 4F, though they should have altered Evans' deep, resonant voice, he's ready to do anything to help win the war. Recruited by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) into the Super Solider program, he becomes the one-of-a-kind slab of super-beef, Captain America. He even goes from being dwarfed by his friend Bucky to turning him into a sidekick. Colonel Phillips (a very weathered Tommy Lee Jones) and British Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) lead the program Rogers gets recruited for. To the stories credit, he trains as his sickly version and is shown to have the never-say-die spirit and ingenuity you'd hope for him to have.

 (Superheroics and a photograph of Chris Evans' chest... after the break)

One A Week Reviews #51: Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane

What other Christmas present would Big Lug Land have for you other than the review of a truly campy, trashy, and fun movie? It's a lump of fun for your stocking!

I love awful movies set on airplanes. Be it any of the four Airport flicks, Turbulence one, two or three, Snakes on a Plane, Murder on Flight 502 or even Skyjacked, dumb airline thrillers are a particular thrill for me. If anything it's a wonder I waited so long to see this. Maybe it's just because I never fly on any of these giant two-story wide-bodied jets... I fly Southwest (I'm not famous, no worries about getting thrown off).

Flight of the Living Dead: Outbreak on a Plane is actually a smart conceit. It confines a ravaging, throat-ripping attack like this in one of the ultimate isolated environments. There's literally nowhere to go, and nowhere to land. Most zombie films turn into sieges, anyhow. You couple that with the fact that a) most people hate flying and b) planes are claustrophobic, and you have the makings of a good, high-concept, Saturday night potboiler of a flick... and "Zombie Hijacking" pretty much qualifies as "high concept."

This one opens up mid-flight with an Apartment 3-G trio of stewardesses excited to go to Paris, a criminal cuffed to a cop, and a group of scientists transporting one of their own who's stored in an icebox in the cargo hold... because she's infected with a ZOMBIE VIRUS. When the pilot, who's of course on his last flight before retirement, powers through some rough weather, the turbulence winds up opening up the techno Coleman cooler, she pops out looking and acting normal, but quickly goes the Full Brain-Munching-Monty. You can't blame her after her guard shoots an Uzi at her in the plane's cargo hold (which resembles my basement more than any airplane I've ever been on).

(Yeah, it gets ugly from here on out...)

One A Week Reviews #50: The Last Circus

A true original, and the most fractured of fairy tales, reviewed for DVD Snapshot.

The Last Circus

Official Synopsis:

Javier, a Sad Clown, finds work in a circus where he befriends an outlandish cast of characters, including the brutish Happy Clown, Sergio, who humiliates Javier daily in the name of entertainment. It is here that he meets Natalia, a gorgeous acrobat and abused wife of Sergio. Javier falls deeply in love with Natalia and tries to rescue her from her cruel and violent husband, unleashing Sergio's jealousy. With neither man willing to back down, this twisted love triangle evolves into a ferocious battle between Sad Clown and Happy Clown, escalating to unbelievable heights in this shocking, irreverent and unforgettable film.

Our Take:

There's little more satisfying for moviegoers than a strong, meaty story told in a dazzling manner. Alex de la Iglesia's The Last Circus (Balada Triste de Trompeta) is some fantastically theatrical eye-candy that offers style and substance. Visually there's1973 fashions complemented with cutting-edge CGI and a modern horror aesthetic. It's coupled with politically-influenced social commentary you can imagine being current in the Seventies. Even those who can't stand subtitles should like this film.
(Seriously, keep reading...)

One A Week Reviews #49: The Perfect Host

To tell too much about the plot of The Perfect Host is to spoil it. The basic setup is that thief-on-the-run John gets much more than he bargained for hiding out at Warwick Wilson's lovely LA home. He starts pulling a con but winds up the guest of honor. Between conga lines, cocktails, and even chess it winds up being a very unusual evening.

A showcase for David Hyde Pierce, he's roundly excellent as Warwick, and the star attraction here. That WASP-y, patrician poise he's famous for balances with suspense, surprise, and moments of violence. He's also clearly having a great deal of fun as his character constantly turns on a dime, going from one extreme to another. The goodwill he won over a decade as "Niles Crane" isn't at all the baggage one might expect, though Warwick at first seems quite similar. This, however, makes his character's personality changes throughout the story seem like a case of "trying too hard to butch up."


(Stay for the party: Read on!)

One A Week Reviews #48: Prince of Broadway

This is one I warmed up to. A kitchen sink drama of the first order that I reviewed for DVD Snapshot, this is a refreshing change of pace.

Prince of Broadway

Official Synopsis:

Prince of Broadway is the story of Lucky (Prince Adu) and Levon (Karren Karagulian), two men whose lives converge in the underbelly of New York's wholesale fashion district. Lucky, an illegal immigrant from Ghana, makes ends meet by soliciting shoppers on the street with knock-off brand merchandise. Levon, an Armenian-Lebanese immigrant, operates an illegal storefront with a concealed back room where counterfeit goods are showcased to interested shoppers. Lucky's world is suddenly turned upside down when a child is thrust into his life by a woman who insists the toddler is his son. While Lucky copes with his new domestic dilemma, Levon struggles to save a marriage that is falling apart. The seedy side of the wholesale district is revealed through a journey that continually confronts the interplay between what is fake and what is real.

Set in the shadow of the Flatiron building and soaked in the colorful bustle of Broadway, the film is as much a brutal drama as it is a tender comedy, revealing the lives of immigrants in America seeking ideals of family and love while creating their own knock-off of the American Dream.

Our Take:

A low-budget, slice-of-life relationship drama about two different New York City hustlers and the families they create, Prince of Broadway practically feels like a documentary. A collection of belligerent hustlers muddle through trying to get ahead, all the while arguing. There's even fighting in traffic. Feeling improvised and free-form, the film is centered in the claustrophobic back room of Levon's store and Lucky's dirty rented room. There's an oppressive hopelessness to the characters' homes and workplaces that, from the very start of this movie, might make you reconsider watching. It's hard to root for being “aspirational” here. Even Levon's relatively well-appointed (but tiny) apartment is depressing. (Perhaps it's because I'm not a New Yorker. I'm used to space and occasional quiet.)

One A Week Reviews #47: Aftershock

As Thanksgiving was just yesterday, I got to thinking about the family I'm so grateful to have. This film also made me think about them, and just how blessed a life I've lived. I can't recommend this fascinating family tragedy highly enough - originally reviewed for dvdsnapshot.com.

Aftershock

Official Synopsis:

Tangshan, 1976. Two seven-year-old twins are buried under the rubble of the deadliest earthquake of the 20^th century. The rescue team explains to their mother that freeing either child will almost certainly result in the death of the other. Forced to make the most difficult decision of her life, she finally chooses to save her son. Though left behind as dead, the little girl miraculously survives, unbeknownst to her brother and mother. Aftershock follows the family on their separate journeys over the course of the next 32, years as they build their lives forever shadowed by the traumatic experience of the earthquake and eventually face each other – and the decisions of the past.

The acclaimed epic that broke all box-office records in China, Aftershock features an all-star cast including Zhang Jingchu (Rush Hour 3) and Chen Daoming (Hero).

Our Take:

Reading the synopsis, one can jump to the conclusion that, as an epic, Aftershock could perhaps be a mass expression of communal grief. Reading up on the sheer death and damage toll the Tangshan earthquake took, one wonders how anyone who was alive to experience it could possibly ever completely recover. Officially, 240,000 people died and the entire city pretty much had to be rebuilt. According to Wikipedia (and, as always, take of that what you will), experts think two to three times that number may have died that day.

(How often did this film make me cry? Find out after the break...)

One A Week Reviews #45: The Naked Civil Servant

The Naked Civil Servant

I wonder if they didn't include the real Quentin Crisp introducing The Naked Civil Servant so the 1975 audience wouldn't completely dismiss the magnificent queen brilliantly embodied by John Hurt as a caricature. "Quentin Crsip," though was a role created and cultivated by Quentin Crsip, and it was he was an outsized, brilliant marvel. You'd never believe it if you didn't meet the real Crisp up front.

Sometimes, in a world that expects conformity, one must be the biggest, most exaggerated version of themselves that they could be. Crsip's autobiography shared his life, growing up a unique and very gay boy coming of age in England between two world wars. John Hurt is beyond brilliant in the role, not only does he inhabit the part fully, he's also absolutely lovely in drag. As Hurt has pretty much looked ravaged by time since 1977, seeing him so young and delicate is refreshing. Savoring every word of Crisp's bon mots - and he one seriously funny wit- and conveying the strength and dignity required for someone the whole world is against, Hurt's Crisp is like an exotic, hothouse flower in a cold, concrete garden. His armor was his flamboyance and, out and proud before the world knew you could be, he never let any small-minded... bullshit get in his way, and Crisp put up with a lot of it. His struggles and the cruelty of others are a good reminder to those of us, thanks to privilege and, frankly, physical stature don't get menaced by thugs and the judgmental every single time we walk out of the house. Admittedly, part of his survival mechanism is a certain... passivity that can be infuriating, but perhaps detachment was what it took to make it against those odds. He also seems to be the heart of his bohemian circle, and his fondness for those friends seems to be the primary relationships in his life.

(As Crisp himself might say: Don't fear, dear, everything after the break is fabulous)