79) Within Our Gates (1920)

79) Within Our Gates (1920) Dir: Oscar Micheaux Date Released: January 1920 Date Seen: March 23^rd, 2009 Rating: 2/5

Like D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), the film writer/director Oscar Micheaux was responding to, Within Our Gates (192) is most remarkable for its portrayal of volatile racial politics. There the similarities end: unlike Birth, Gates can only be remembered as an echo or a counter-proposition rather than a stand-alone treatise or even racially-charged melodrama. Though it appears to boast a relatively more nuanced portrayals of blacks betraying their fellow men, Micheaux has based his scapegoats on caricatures that are no less clichéd and offensive, like Efram (E.G. Tatum), the giggling servant so eager to please that he’ll tattle on anyone in hopes of rubbing shoulders with the whites that would lynch him without batting an eyelash. Even Reverend Wilson Jacobs (S.T.Jacks), the man of faith that sells his people out for the sake of maintaining an illusory status quo, jitters about his pulpit like a palsied Sambo. 

This makes Larry Prichard (Jack Chenault), the smooth-talking, well-dressed villain-about-town, the most believable baddie in the film. This is especially sad considering how much stress is put on “Divine justice,” or assigning blame to the bad blacks and one or two wrong-doing whites that deserve punishment for their ignorance. Larry “the Leech” does everything wrong, from murder to bribery, a man that doesn’t respect the values of hard work and education. These wrongs apparently supersede the humane value of forgiveness and the storytelling boon of nuance but hey, an eye for an eye, right?

78) The Blob (1988)

78) The Blob (1988) Dir: Chuck Russell Date Released: August 1988 Date Seen: March 22^nd, 2009 Rating: 3.25/5

Though director/co-writer Chuck Russell and co-writer Frank Darabont’s remake of The Blob delivers the kind of detail and humor that such a quasi-nostalgic, quasi-modern remake requires, there’s something fundamentally unsatisfying about a film that so efficiently curtails its own ambition. Their Blob is a neat little drive-in movie for an audience with no cars, multiplex filmgoers whose brains are addled by bad slasher fare that are now (apparently) seeking a light, intelligent and almost challenging alternative. In that respect, Russell and Darabont deliver, but for brevity’s sake, they go no farther. Mindless fun was far enough and to that myopic end, their Blob’s a hit.

 

RV!: Arahan (2004)

RV!: Arahan (2004) Dir: Ryoo Seung-wan Not Yet Released Date Seen: March 22^nd, 2009 Rating: 3.25/5

As anticipated, the big problem with Arahan (2004) is that it doesn’t really work when it’s trying to be serious. Though its action scenes are graceful, fluid and eye-popping, they are as playful as the fitful but satisfying bouts of humor in the film—5 Lucky Stars reference, I’m looking at you. All of the script's talk about training for its own sake and the fight for good and evil though is really kind of dull and eventually flat-out irritating. Ryoo should just make a movie composed of nothing but breezy banter and action as this film proves that he can do those two things very well. I suspect that film is Dachimawa Lee (2008) so I’ll hold my breath.

77) The New Twenty (2009)

77) The New Twenty (2009) Dir: Chris Mason Johnson Date Released: March 2009 Date Seen: March 22^nd, 2009 Rating: 1/5

One musical number, just one lousy musical number would have made this turd infinitely more bearable. I’m not asking for a Bollywood number, just something to tide me over between the moments of Ozpetekian melodrama. See my review for Slant Magazine for more details.

76) City of the Living Dead (1980)

76) City of the Living Dead (1980) Dir: Lucio Fulci Date Released: May 1983 Date Seen: March 21^st, 2009 Rating: 1.75/5

Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead (1980) may be conceptually an interesting stab at visualizing Lovecraftian terrors but never pulls itself together long enough to be much more than a curious precursor to his equally clunky but infinitely more ambitious The Beyond (1981), which he made two films later. The idea of “zombies” appearing out of a hyper-unreal empty, pitch-black nowhere to pull chicken and pig organs out of the scalps of unsuspecting Dunwich residents is kinda cool, but it’s not so fun to watch when it’s this inexpertly filmed, paced, written, visualized, acted, etc. Fabio Frizzi’s soundtrack is neat at times but is ultimately just a weak rehash of his recent earlier Fulci collob, Zombi 2 (1979).

75) Hell of the Living Dead (1980)

75) Hell of the Living Dead (1980) Dir: Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso Date Released: January 1984 Date Seen: March 21^st, 2009 Rating: 0.5/5

My love for Hell of the Living Dead (1984) is admittedly based on a sick ironic fascination with exploitation films that are so preposterously gaudy and ill-conceived on every level that they reach astronomical new levels of camp absurdity. Hell is like a zombie version of Heart of Darkness, a trip into Euro-centric fears of black otherness that actually genuinely believes that it's not being racist by limply repudiating the fears it so clearly has become infected by. 

Even ignoring that intellectual failure, Hell is just plain bad, despite its amazing Goblin soundtrack. Mattei and co. has stuffed this monumental crapfest beyond all reasonable breaking points with ridiculous confrontations, over-the-over-the-top gore (yes, that wasn’t a typo) and a lot of slow-motion animal stock footage. I honestly can’t stay mad at a movie this catastrophically inept for any length of time; instead, I worship at it’s alter.

74) Duplicity (2009)

74) Duplicity (2009) Dir: Tony Gilroy Date Released: March 2009 Date Seen: March 21^st, 2009 Rating: 3.75/5

The pleasures of writer/director Tony Gilroy’s Duplicity (2009) are simple because the story is both complex and breezy enough to be both eye-catching and genuinely well-conceived. As a smart heist comedy, it's got brains enough to be a coherent narrative in-and-of itself and unlike Gilroy’s Michael Clayton (2007), a film where politics get turned into a McGuffin for the titular, formerly apathetic protagonist’s big change-of-heart, the film’s lack of politics doesn’t matter. The many and assorted double crosses that the film revolves around are topically parodic enough and unlike Clayton, none of the characters’ define themselves by the politics of corporate deception. It’s very refreshing to see a film that doesn’t strive beyond being a intelligent bit of escapist entertainment, no matter how close it comes to being more.