Reviews of films and television formats. Short or long.
Eyes of a Stranger (1981) – Director: Ken Wiederhorn – 4/10 (passable/mediocre)Though the film opens with a chilling murder scene, it subsequently drops off for want of a fully fledged storyline and completely tapers off towards the end. The work seems to be recycling the premise of I Saw What […]
Eyes Of Laura Mars (1978) – Director: Irvin Kershner – 4/10 (passable/mediocre) The motion picture is cumbered with two crucial shortcomings: firstly, the storyline does not feature any character development and most of it heavily relies on jump scares as well as implausible turnabouts intended to secrete the overarching scripting […]
Demon Pond (1979) (orig. Yashagaike) – Director: Masahiro Shinoda – 6/10 (good)On one hand, the visual sumptuousness, the odd musical score, the eerie atmosphere and some bizarre antics do confer a solid foundation to this outlandish fable, on the other hand though, the said assets are rendered partially ineffectual owing […]
The Shadow Within (1970) (orig. Kage no kuruma) – Director: Yoshitarô Nomura – 7/10 (very good) On the face of it, the motion picture constitutes an agreeable, if somewhat standard, example of a psychological drama. What ultimately variegates the work at hand is Nomura’s eye for pleasing visuals and harmonious […]
Walking the Edge (1985) – Director: Norbert Meisel – 5/10 (okay/decent)This agreeable piece of pulp fiction is quintessentially mid-eighties in that it still contains much of the 1970s grunge, but with some glimmers of the 1980s glitz already starting to show up, even the soundtrack is ‘analog-synthy’ and ‘saxy’ in […]
Hymn to a Tired Man (1968) (orig. Nihon no seishun) – Director: Masaki Kobayashi – 8/10 (excellent) The motion picture marks a shift from previous Kobayashi’s works in two principal ways: firstly, it does not feature a valiant protagonist willing to shed blood for a cause with no regard for […]
Superargo and the Faceless Giants (1968)] (orig. L’invincibile Superman) – Director: Paolo Bianchini – 3/10 (very mediocre/bad)Though Bianchini’s direction is more or less reliable as expected, the outing lacks the psychotronic quality of his antecedent Devilman Story and is evidently at a loss for an element of surprise which could […]
Rollerball (1975) – Director: Norman Jewison – 4/10 (passable/mediocre)It requires quite a bit of patience to disentangle the jejune social commentary of Rollerball from the obstreperous reality of the game, the depiction of which dwarfs the rest of the storyline; the gratuitously bloated plot protracts film’s spuriously profound message ad […]
War Between the Planets (1966) (orig. Il pianeta errante) – Director: Antonio Margheriti – 4/10 (passable/mediocre)Propitiously enough, film’s absolute simplicity and its flamboyant photography partially compensate for the evident budgetary constraints and hackneyed plot progression. There is no denying that the flick does not break any new ground here, what […]
Meteor (1979) – Director: Ronald Neame – 3/10 (very mediocre/bad).It would be unrealistic to expect some unbridled novelty or creativity from a movie of this sort, nevertheless, there is no sidestepping the issue of it being badly assembled and rachitic in its final form. The primary problem seems to consist […]