Follow Me Quietly is a terrific little low-budget thriller from the late 1940s. It follows a cop (and a reporter) as they try and catch a serial killer. It barely lasts an hour and it is full of thrillers, chills, and laughs. You can read my full review here.
I don’t know why I still watch exploitation movies. I know why I used to watch them – they are filled with exciting action, violence, and naked flesh, but I can get that anywhere now. Certainly in ways that are far better produced and more interesting than what appears in most exploitation flicks. But when an offer for a film called Waves of Lust appears to me, I immediately say “yes.”
I guess I’ll always be a sucker for this stuff. You can read my review of the film (which isn’t bad, actually) over at Cinema Sentries.
One day I may stop singing the praises of Radiance Films, but today is not that day. I love, love, love the way they keep bringing to my attention films that I’d otherwise never hear of in nice sets, loaded with extras.
Solo is a terrific little French thriller about a couple of young revolutionaries in over their heads and how a jewel thief winds up lending them a hand. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
Lino Ventura has become one of those actors I keep finding myself watching, almost by accident. He just keeps showing up in the films that I’m watching. I don’t know why. But he’s so good I never mind.
In Birds of Prey, he plays a killer hired to assassinate the president of some backwater South American country. Before he can do that, he is forced to wait in a tiny little village for several days, accompanied by a true revolutionary. A kid who will probably replace the president. The kid is idealistic while the killer is old and cynical. Their interactions make up most of the movie, and they are wonderfully played. The whole movie is great. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
I’ve talked about Radiance Films many times in these pages, mostly because I review a lot of their films. They put out international arthouse films that I’ve never heard of, but I always appreciate. Well, mostly. I had a hard time with this one. It is a punk rock film about a pretty horrible person. I appreciated some of the filmmaking but struggled to find anything else to enjoy about it. You can read my full review here.
This French thriller is part film noir, part Hitchcockian suspense. Neither part is as good as that sounds, but it’s not bad either. I’m a sucker for this type of thing, as you can read in my full review over at Cinema Sentries.
I love me a good zombie movie. We Bury the Dead is a very good, if not particularly original, zombie movie. Daisy Ridley stars as a woman who goes to Australia, where some kind of massive bioweapon was released, killing almost everyone but leaving a few in a zombie-like state. She’s there to help with the cleanup but also to find her husband, who she hopes is still alive (even if he is a zombie). It is a pretty slow-moving film, but I dug it. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.
I feel like every time I talk about silent films, I note that I still struggle with watching them. I guess it is an evergreen statement because I keep watching them, and I keep having a difficult time with them. The Thief of Bagdad is a classic filled with stunning visuals and a spectacle-filled story. But I’d be lying if I didn’t have to keep focusing my attention on it because my mind kept wandering off. Still, it is a great movie, and you can read my review here.
Death Ship is one of those movies that kept showing up in my feeds. Every time I went looking for a horror movie to watch, there it was. It looked fun, but I kept putting it off. Then the Blu-ray landed in my lap, and here we are. It isn’t a particularly good movie, and for a movie about Nazi ghosts on a death ship, it is rather dull for its first half, but things do pick up, and it becomes pretty fun in its back half. And it has George Kennedy in it, and that’s never a bad thing. You can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.
Kill Me Again is an overlooked neo-noir gem. Val Kilmer stars as a down-on-his-luck private eye (is there any other kind?) who is hired by a sexy femme fatale (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) to kill her. Well, not really kill her, but make it look like somebody did and thus keep her abusive boyfriend from looking for her.
Naturally, she is lying, and things get complicated in lots of interesting ways. It is by no means a perfect film, but it is a very good one, and it is nice to see it on Blu-ray. You can read my full review here.
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