I’ve become a big fan of 1970s Italian crime thrillers. Italy was going through what they now call the Years of Lead back then, which was a period of high crime and political turmoil. Their films often reflect that in the best possible way. This film pushes the politics more than the crime or the thrills, which makes it just a little bit dull. But there is still some good stuff, as you can tell from my review.
My daughter has become something of a gamer. She’s not hardcore about it, but she enjoys playing. She also enjoys watching others play games on YouTube and the like. There is one YouTuber that she likes who plays a lot of horror games. I figured she might have watched him play Exit 8 and thought she might like this movie. She had not watched him play the game, but thought she’d maybe seen someone else play similar games. But anyway, she said she’d watch the movie with me. A rare treat.
The film plays out very much like a game. In fact, it begins with a first-person point of view, something I hoped would not last. Thankfully, it didn’t. An unnamed man (known as Lost Man in the film and played by Kazunari Ninomiya) stands, listening to music on a crowded subway. He hears a baby crying and watches as another man berates the mother for not keeping the child quiet. Lost Man wants to say something to this man, but instead puts his earbuds back in and ignores the situation.
Later, his girlfriend will call him on the phone, announcing that she is pregnant and wondering what he wants to do about it. He doesn’t know. This situation on the subway makes him think that perhaps he should not try to care for another human being.
As he exits the subway, he finds he is lost inside the labyrinth of underground corridors. Soon he is alone, and the corridors have turned into a game. A sign tells him that he must look for anomalies. If he finds one, he must turn back, but if there are none, then he can keep moving forward. He must make it to Exit 8 to get out of this place. If he makes a mistake, he will start over at Exit 0.
There are basically two corridors that he passes through. The first has several posters, some doors, and vents to look over; the second has a series of lockers and a few other things. He carefully takes note of everything so that he can determine if there is an anomaly.
In the first corridor, a man walks past him. This man does not speak or look at him and is unresponsive to Lost Man’s attempts to talk to him. This man is called Walking Man (Yamato Kochi). Later, we will follow Walking Man as he tries to escape this subway labyrinth. There will also be a young boy (naturally called The Boy and played by Naru Asanuma).
I’ve not played the game, but my assumption is that the anomalies are difficult to spot. Otherwise, it seems like the game would be too easy. I can see players staring at every bit of the wall looking for some slight difference in something. I might be wrong in that assumption. Certainly it isn’t that way in the movie. Though Lost Man looks closely at the posters and doors, etc., almost every time the anomaly is something easy to spot.
Once Walking Man turns and follows him. Another time, one of the doors opens and reveals, well, I won’t reveal what it reveals, but it certainly isn’t a way out. On another occasion, the lights go out, and creepy things happen. These aren’t difficult things to spot, but the characters pretty regularly fail the test. I guess it wouldn’t be much of a movie if they got out in ten minutes. I will say the atmosphere the film projects is pretty thrilling. And sometimes it is effectively creepy. This is a film best seen in a theater, or at least at home at night with all the lights off.
I had a hard time with this book. It is angry and sad, and so full of cruelty and abuse (given to the author, not the other way around) that it was difficult to read. It is also very, very Millennial, so it felt like it wasn’t for me. Which isn’t to say there isn’t a lot to recommend. Jaq has a strong voice and a distinctive artistic style, which definitely makes it stand out.
You can read all of my thoughts over at Cinema Sentries.
Please read to the end, or just skip to the last paragraph. I have a little experiment.
Ever since I wrote my first post about Substack, I have been co-posting all the things I’ve written here over there. It feels a little silly doing so, but I’ve been trying to figure out how Substack works. Or to be more frank, I’ve been trying to see if I can generate more readers over there. So far, that has been a spectacular failure. I still can’t figure out if Substack posts are detected by search engines or not. It definitely feels like mine is not getting any Google juice. I think to make Substack work, you probably have to pimp yourself out like mad on social media and other places. I’m terrible at that.
All of this is okay; I was just checking it out. I do thank those who subscribed to my Substack. I appreciate it.
I recently had this thought, though. What if I just post my music stuff on Substack and my movie stuff here on WordPress? I’ve been trying to write more music posts, but they feel a little at odds with the movie writings. Several of you have told me you have no interest in my movie writings – no offence, you say; you just don’t watch movies. Again, that is okay. Maybe some of you will come around if I write more about music, but maybe all this extra movie stuff will be obnoxious.
I like the idea of having a music Substack. I like the idea of doing more show reviews and digging into Dick’s Picks and similar things. I’ll still do movie reviews for Cinema Sentries, and I’ll still do things like the Friday Night Horror Movie, but I could make a bigger attempt at more music writing and less random movie writing. Separating the into this blog and a Substack might help.
AND, and here’s the thing many of you will be interested in. I might be able to do more ROIO sharing. Substack has some tools where I can make a post but make part of it only readable to folks who subscribe. That might keep out the bots who could bring in lawyers looking for a payout.
I’ve not dug deeply into how private Substack really is. I need to research that a little better before taking actual steps to share the music.
My idea would be to include the text file information about a show, maybe even link to posters, artwork, and reviews, etc., blah blah blah, and then at the bottom add a link to download. That part I’d make visible only to subscribers.
This is all very early days in my thinking about this. I can’t promise I’ll ever share like that, but it is an interesting idea (also, if you don’t already know, I have been sharing some stuff via email; if you are not receiving those, leave me a message and I can hook you up.)
Here’s the experiment. I just wrote a post on Substack (you can view it here). I have written two “hidden” sentences. The first is for free subscribers, the second is for paid ones. I’m trying to see how well that works. If you have already subscribed, please check it out and let me know what you can read. But more importantly, if you have not subscribed or do not even have an account, will you let me know what you can read?
For years now, the Criterion Collection has partnered with Barnes & Noble and had a 50 percent off sale every July. It has become quite a big deal amongst collectors. There is always buzz before the sale begins, and once it starts, everyone posts pictures of their hauls.
More recently, other boutique Blu-ray companies have started having sales in July as well. Arrow Video is currently having one, and I believe Synapse is as well (and maybe Vinegar Syndrome and Kino Lorber too). I can’t keep up. I certainly can’t afford it. Sadly, this has been very true this month. Work has been slow, and we’ve had some major bills come in, so I’ve not been able to hit up any of the sales.
I do wish they would pace themselves. Maybe spread out the sales over the course of the year. Even if I had money right now, I could never afford to partake in all these sales.
None of this has to do with the peak of the week, except that there are a lot of cool discs out this week and my pick is an Arrow Video release, and I just found myself staring at it on the Barnes & Noble website trying to figure out how I can afford it.
Soylent Green is a great 1970s dystopian thriller with Charlton Heston in one of his finer roles and a terrific Edward G. Robinson in the last role he ever played. Learn more about this release and everything else coming out by clicking here.
Come Live With Me is a sweet little romantic comedy from 1941. It stars Hedy Lamarr as an Austrian woman who has fled the Nazis and is currently living in New York. When she is threatened with deportation unless she marries an American, she makes a deal with a down-on-his-luck writer. If he marries her, she’ll give him enough money to live on. But she doesn’t want anything more from him because she’s in love with another man (who is already married to a different woman, hence the reason he can’t marry her). Lamarr and Stewart are terrific, and the whole thing is very good light entertainment. You can read my full review here.
I’ve been reading a lot more comics lately. I’ve been reading a lot more books lately. At the beginning of the year, I decided to dedicate some time just before bed to reading, and it has been working. I generally try to read a couple of chapters of a regular book and then maybe a section of a comic book. I’ve been enjoying that, and as such I’ve started requesting some comics from Fantagraphics.
They don’t do a lot of superhero stuff or the type of book you’d find at a mainstream seller. They have a lot of weird, indie comics. Which is fun to read. It gets me out of my comfort zone.
Heaven is a slender little book about a teenage girl who discovers a strange strip club outside of town. She gets a job there and finds it liberating, until she discovers something else about it. It is a slight book, but a fun one. You can read my review here.
When I review discs for Cinema Sentries, it is by request. The owner of the site, Gordon, sends out emails from the PR people noting that they have discs for review. When I want something, I make a request, and if I’m lucky, I get a copy of the disc.
I don’t always know exactly why I request something. Sometimes, it is for a film that I already love and want to own on disc. Sometimes it is for a film that I’ve been wanting to see. More often than not, it is for a film I’ve never heard of, but that sounds interesting. I get a lot of films from Kino Lorber and the Warner Archive that are like that. They usually star actors I really like or are from a director I enjoy. I also often request films from the Criterion Collection or Radiance Films because I know they will be great releases, and usually the films are interesting.
And then there are films like Pretty Maids in a Row. This is a sleazy film about sexy teens getting murdered in a high school. It stars Rock Hudson as a football coach/counselor who’s sleeping with half the student body. Angie Dickinson plays a sexy teacher, and Telly Sevalis is the cop trying to solve the murders. It was written by Gene Roddenberry and directed by Roger Vadim. That’s a lot of talent for a skeezy film. Which I guess is why I requested it.
It isn’t good exactly, but it is a fascinating time capsule into a certain period of Hollywood film. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
Spencer Tracy gets top billing in this World War II epic, but this is really Van Johnson’s film. He plays a fighter pilot who volunteers for a secret mission to bomb Japan just weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The title is apt as the actual bombing raid takes hardly any time at all. The film therefore focuses on the time before, when the men are training for the mission, and the time after, when Van Johnson’s plane is shot down on the Chinese shoreline, and they must find a way to escape to safety.
I wanted to love this film more than I did. Honestly, it is a bit of a drag as the training exercises are dull and the romantic engagements even more so. Things pick up once they crash, but by then I was just ready for the film to be over. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
I apparently forgot to post my Five Cool Things from July 8, so I’m doing that now. In it, I talked about the classic comic book crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths, the great Jean Gabin noir Hi-Jack Highway, a Charles Bronson thriller called Violent City, Chloe Zhao’s first film Songs My Brother Taught Me, Back to the Wall, a wonderful French thriller, and Small Prophets, a brilliant new show from MacKenzie Crook. You can read all about it at Cinema Sentries.
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