The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

I saw the US version of this a couple of years ago and thought it was decent.  Having now watched the earlier Swedish effort, I'm forced to mark the American film down a good few notches.  This is simply better on every front.

The problem with the English-language film is the same as the problem with the English-language title of the book on which both movies are based: it diminishes the lead female character.  She's a grown woman, not a "girl", damn it.  The Swedish title, should you be curious, is "Men Who Hate Women".  Presumably that was felt too confronting to be the English-language title.

In the Swedish movie Lisbeth Salander is allowed to be much more proactive and capable than in the US effort.  Even the sub-plot where she is sexually assaulted is structured in such a way to preserve as much of her agency as possible.

That sub-plot, by the by, is one of two reasons why this film only gets a qualified recommendation.  It is pretty confronting stuff.  The second reason is that this is a near 2.5 hour film in a foreign language, and a lot of people seem to have an issue with reading subtitles (there's no dubbed option on my disc, though perhaps there are on other editions).

For those who don't know, the plot involves a burnt out journalist who gets hired to investigate a 40-year old murder.  He comes to be aided in this by a brilliant but troubled young researcher (the aforementioned Lisbeth) as the two of them unravel a mystery far deeper and broader than they could ever have expected.  Said mystery hangs together pretty well, too.

A satisfying film all around.  I shall be interested to see how the two sequels hold up, when I get to hem.

Lady Frankenstein (1971)

The lady of the title is Tania Frankenstein, daughter of the baron.  She arrives home from university - where she was studying medicine, much to the discomfort of many of her male teachers - and wastes no time informing her father that she has no intention of being a surgeon, as he expected.  Instead, intends to help him with his life's work: the reanimation of the dead.

The elder Frankenstein's experiments are hugely illegal however, and so he forbids her involvement.  Should his activities be discovered, he wants her to have plausible deniability.

Unfortunately for daddy Frank, his wishes aren't going to matter for very long.  His latest experiment involves attempting to transplant a human brain into a new body.  Not only does he choose to use the brain of an executed criminal for this, but he presses ahead even when his assistant points out that the brain has suffered damage.  The baron may as well be wearing a "please kill me" badge and his creation promptly obliges his apparent death wish.  It then storms off into the countryside where it seems to have an unerring instinct for finding (a) the men who brought Frankenstein the criminal's body and (b) naked ladies.

Tania commits herself to continuing her father's work.  Not by preserving his brain and trying to find a body for it, as you might expect her to do, but by seducing the assistant and persuading him to have his body transplanted into that of the estate's handsome young handy man.  She'll prove the value of her father's work, the assistant will finally get to act on his long-term infatuation with her, and they'll both have the benefits of a powerful young body to protect them if the monster returns.  Everybody wins!

Yeah, if you think this plan is destined for disaster, you could be on to something.

Lady Frankenstein was partly financed by Roger Corman, and as usual he proves a pretty good judge of what ought to turn a buck.  The film's start is a little slow but once the monster comes on the scene the script throws plenty of sex and violence at the audience.  If you're in the mood for a schlockier, sleazier Hammer horror pic, this should do you nicely.

Gamera vs Gyaos (1967)

The 1990s reboot of Gamera made Gyaos something of a signature enemy, with an origin story involving Atlantean biotechnology.  In its original appearance though, Gyaos is ... just some bird/reptile thingy with funky powers.

Also, the 90s version looked much less goofy than this.

Gyaos emerges into Japan when an eruption at Mt Fuji exposes its cave.  It immediately eats a reporter, but is prevented from also snacking on an annoying child when Gamera turns up, attracted by the lava.

Naturally, the two monsters fight.  It's refreshing to see that the producers learned from one of the mistakes of Gamera vs Barugon and got to the kaiju battles a lot earlier in this picture.  If you're feeling generous to Gamera, you might call this encounter a draw: he saves the kid but his arm is badly injured by Gyaos's sonic lance.

Alas, all this kid-saving doubtless means we're heading into the "Gamera, Friend of All Children" period of the franchise.  In other words, the hellish period of the franchise.

The rest of this movie though - apart from annoying kid being annoying and coming up with all the answers while the adults just sit around looking perplexed - is actually not so bad.  I mean, it's not good enough that I'd recommend it to anyone but a kaiju fan, but if you fit that definition then there's a decent mid-movie battle and plenty of the inevitable human efforts coming to naught.

All About Eve (1950)

As an inclusion in a Marilyn Monroe Collection, this film is something of a ringer.  Monroe appears in only two scenes, totalling perhaps five minutes of screen time in a more-than-two-hour film.  She's fun in the role she has, but it's not a big one.

But if you're going to have a ring-in film, then I guess one which won the Best Picture Oscar and had no fewer than four female cast members nominated as well (two for Best Female Lead, two for Best Supporting Female) is not a bad one to choose.

The film concerns renowned stage actress Margo Channing - who at forty years of age is painfully aware that she is much older than the roles she is generally called on to play - and her circle of friends.  One night this circle is enlarged by the introduction of Eve Harrington, an ingenue from the mid-west who is Margo's most devoted fan.

Eve soon makes herself indispensable to Margo, attending to all the needs of the actress's household.  But is she really as innocent and wholesome as she appears?

Well frankly there wouldn't be much of a movie if she was, so consider that a rhetorical question.

I do have some issues with the script.  Setting aside that it displays the lamentable attitudes you'd expect of a 65-year old film, both in the things it says about women and its complete lack of non-white characters, there are some plot points that require some fairly strong suspenders for your disbelief.  It also doesn't quite stick the ending, to my mind.  It's not without merit though: there's some very snappy dialogue throughout.

Where All About Eve uniformly shines in its performances.  The womens' Academy Award nominations are I think all richly deserved, though I'd especially call out Bette Davis for her performance as the proud, headstrong, but vulnerable Margo.  She has the benefit of the meatiest role, but she makes the most of it.  If you have an appreciation for fine acting, it's worth seeking out just for that.

Santa's Slay (2005)

So to get the obvious out of the way right at the beginning: this is not a good film.  The plot is thin - and mostly delivered via flashback - and the ending is kind of a muddle.  Nor is it a sophisticated movie: it's the kind of flick that unabashedly drops a fart joke in the middle of a scene because farts are funny, right?

On the other hand, there's something about this anarchic, unashamedly goofy Xmas-themed slasher film that I can't help but like.  Probably a big part of it is that lack of shame.  This movie is utterly unrepentant about what it is and equally bereft of any airs or pretensions.  From the outrageous stunt-casting of the opening scene to the goofy closing credits, it commits to its premise ("Santa is really an evil Demon who has been magically bound to be good for the last thousand years, but now he is free") wholeheartedly.

Of course, it commits to that premise so wholeheartedly that having revealed it, there's not much I can tell you about the plot, because it's all in that sentence.  Santa roams around in his sleigh, murdering people with inventive gusto, while the obvious heroes by virtue of the fact that they survive more than two scenes slowly begin to piece together what is going on.

Said heroes are played pretty well, it must be said.  The casting is solid throughout the film.  Even the obvious gimmick of casting pro wrestler Bill Goldberg as Santa pans out okay, since he's mainly just called on to look menacing and make deliberately cheesy one-liners.

If you're looking to make your holidays less wholesome, you could do a lot worse.

Straw Dogs (1971)

This film does some interesting and unusual things, which is why it has a qualified recommendation, but it is really, really, really qualified.  It's not a happy or comfortable film in any way, and while the violence of the climactic sequence has lost a lot of its shock value in the 40+ years since it was made, there's a two-part sexual assault scene in the middle that is deeply controversial and in my opinion deeply problematic.

David and Amy Sumner have rented a farmhouse in the English countryside.  Amy has roots in the area, but her husband is an American academic, who fits in poorly amidst the earthy locals.  Compounding this awkwardness is a strong sense that all is not well in their marriage.  They obviously feel passion for each other but Amy is contemptuous of David's work and of his lack of ability with tools, while David for his part clearly considers his wife to be intellectually inferior.  This tension - as well as mounting frustration and fear stemming from the ever more confrontational antics of the local men - will ultimately explode in the film's final act.

There are good performances here, and some thought-provoking elements to the film.  It's certainly not a "revenge fantasy" film like you might expect.  The situation where the heretofore diffident David is finally pushed too far is completely tangential to most of what has come before, and has little personally to do with either him or his wife.  We the audience know that Amy was raped by two of the men with whom David will engage in a savage battle, but David himself has no idea that happened.  He's simply - as the tag line says - reached his breaking point.  There's no sense of triumph when the dust finally settles.  He and Amy do not cling to each other, their relationship restored by the ordeal they've endured.  There's a sense of numb relief, but not much more.

This is a confronting and uncomfortable film and I share many of the misgivings that others have over the years raised about the rape scene near the middle, but it is interesting to see a film that so thoroughly usurps many of the expected story beats.  Worth a look if you're in the mood for something stark.  Make sure you get the original though, as the 2011 remake appears to have eliminated much of the complexity that makes the film interesting despite its profound issues.

Funeral Home (1980)

1978's Halloween launched the "shadowy figure murders lots of folks" film on an unsuspecting world, beginning a horror movie revolution that would culminate in the slasher film.  Ironically, one of the key aspects of the genre's final form - the prominence and importance of the killer as a character in the film - was entirely absent from the progenitor.

This movie was released just two years later; the same time as the first Friday the 13th, in fact, and like that film it hews much more closely to the Halloween formula than to the later model.  It also seems to owe more than a little debt to Psycho, though it doesn't really deserve to be discussed in the same breath as Hitchcock's film.

Heather is a college student who is spending her summer vacation helping her grandmother run her new bed & breakfast business.  Grandma Maude has established this endeavour in what used to be the local funeral home.  There's no way such a decision could prove to be a bad one, is there?

As I am sure you are shocked to learn, guests at the B&B soon start "checking out" without notice.  Heather comes to suspect that the building's cellar figures into the mystery: Maude keeps the room locked but Heather has heard voices coming from it, and believes that someone must be living down there.  It takes her rather a long time to get around to doing anything about this belief though.

"Takes rather a long time" is something of a theme of the film, to be honest.  Like a lot of cheaply made horror films it tends to be long on people talking about the creepy things that are happening, rather than actually having creepy things happen.

You'd be better off watching any of the other films mentioned in this review than this one.