Tag Archives: sex

Savage Streets Savage Streets 2 stars

February 1st, 2013 by surlaroute

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This is kind of movie where you know exactly what the next scene will entail when a gym class ends with “okay girls hit the showers” – and not in a plot-moving, semi-tasteful way like Carrie. I’ll admit the teenage boy inside me was perfectly fine with that. I wanted to see this for Linda Blair, of course, and all the artwork I’ve seen for it over the years has been spectacularly 80s-tastic in the worst way.

The plot concerns Blair’s deaf sister who is raped in the gymnasium while Blair is busy having a cat fight in the locker room, followed by Blair’s revenge on the boys who did it. Tone-wise it lies almost directly between Born Innocent (in which Blair played the victim) and The Accused, which says just about everything about early eighties cinema at its worst. Tastelessness aside, however, the bad music and styles etc didn’t let me down here – there’s a great moment where one of the rapists gets run down by a car which, as an IMDb boarder wrote, is a lot like the henchman in Austin Powers who gets run over by a steamroller… sadly I read that before enjoying the pleasure of making the connection myself.

The Last Picture Show The Last Picture Show 3 star

June 3rd, 2010 by surlaroute

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There was never any good reason – especially in the past couple of years when I watched and enjoyed quite a few of Peter Bogdanovich’s movies – but I’ve always put off seeing this one. As it turns out, this one isn’t up there for me with Paper Moon (not even close, I’ve seen that one since that review and it’s easily in my top 50 of all time), Nickelodeon (not quite), or even Noises Off… (okay, that one might just be personal – you might notice all three of those starred Tatum O’Neal and I watched them for that reason).

Bogdanovich’s nuts-and-bolts and highly actor-focussed style certainly comes through but I felt this was far too slow and lengthy for what is ultimately a non-existent plot. It’s ultimately about a lot of college kids in the mid-fifties who, faced with the prospect of growing up, can only think of sex to fill their time. They have no other dimension, aspiration, interest to their characters, so these fledgeling relationships fall apart, and they wonder why. Some people call this a coming-of-age movie… I don’t call this coming of age.

It occurred to me midway that I’m maybe just not old enough, not only physically but in terms of life experience, to get the most from this; and it was around the same time I realised for the first time while looking at the movie’s Wikipedia page (trying to find a plot to latch onto, lol) that there was a Before Sunset-like sequel made which reunited cast and crew 20 years later in Texasville which I’ll certainly seek out in hope it might warm me to the characters more and shed light on whatever I missed here. ‘Cos miss it I feel I did. 3rd heart for “benefit of the doubt“…

Flesh for Frankenstein [3D] Flesh for Frankenstein [3D] 4 star

November 18th, 2009 by surlaroute

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This was on this week in the UK as part of Channel 4’s 3D week which I’ve become increasingly excited about since I first heard about it (it’s not hard to get me onto a 3D kick really). This was to me the clear star item on their schedule, not just because it had never aired on TV like this before, not just because Mark Kermode (my favourite film critic, who despises the resurgence in 3D of late) called it the best of the old 3D back catalogue, but also because it’s just such a curiosity … I knew nothing of it really except of course some link to Frankenstein and that Andy Warhol was connected to it. I really expected something supertrashy … but as the word “End” appeared on screen at the end, I found myself speechless.

There is something Herschell Gordon Lewis / John Waters / Roger Corman -ish “trashy” about this movie … there’s plenty of gore and gratuitous sex (the camera literally just goes in on a woman’s bare breasts at one point “just because it can and it’s 3D!”) and lines like the insanely brilliant, “To know death… you have to f*ck life in the gall bladder,” and (from a man who just lost his hand), “It’s all your fault!” call to mind the deliberately shambolic humour of The Rocky Horror Picture Show … and yet, there are fleshes of real and genuine art, romance, tragedy in this story that frequently had me with a sort of lump in my throat. I just, I don’t know, felt like I really “got” this one.

I still frankly don’t know what to make of this first viewing except for the certain, that this film is surely unique. I would love to see it again in the better polarized, cinema variety of 3D; failing that, just to see it again without the 3D effect and see if it works on me the same way again that way. The use of 3D is better than most I’ve seen, incidentally; the feeling of depth extends even to scenes that don’t exploit it, though again there’s plenty of that throughout from a grisly beheading (really, if only Tim Burton had been onto 3D when he made Sleepy Hollow …) through to the bats that plague the children as they hide from their father, the aforementioned requisite 3D boobs right to the final extraordinary shot that is best kept to myself as I’m guessing most that read this won’t have seen the movie yet. I just found the experience truly mesmerising, and there’s not much more you can ask for from a movie like this.

À Ma Soeur aka Fat Girl À Ma Soeur aka Fat Girl 3 star

March 10th, 2009 by surlaroute

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Okay, these are kind of running together in my mind now, lol. This, the third of Catherine Braillat’s movie’s I’ve watched in the past few days, differentiates itself from the others by its violence right at the very end which I can’t deny kind of stunned me. The movie is all about this ending, not fully making sense re: why Breillat would cover the same area yet again until the very last line spoken almost direct to camera by the girl of the title. It’s kind of worth seeing once for the shock of those final moments, but what precedes them is really the same as RYG and Fillette … being more recent the production values are slightly higher but I don’t know if this is even a good thing for Breillat’s style. I’ve yet to be convinced she’s capable of anything more unique and memorable than her debut.

36 Fillette 36 Fillette 2 stars

March 10th, 2009 by surlaroute

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Though a poster for this movie declares “the French Lolita!”, like Lola, this is in reality just Lolita-lite … I mean, you’d expect the French anything to be a little more extreme, right? But though the guy is older here than Charlie Bronson’s Scott, the girl looks even more like a young woman (though it appears this actress really was the fourteen years of her character at the time of filming) and it really doesn’t look like that awkward a partnership. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s not a “Lolita story” if the girl in question could quite easily make it through the rest of her life without developing any further, lol. But I guess that’s the marketing peoples’ problem, not the film maker’s.

It’s a slicker effort than Catherine Breillat’s first movie I watched yesterday, and like A Real Young Girl it deals with the ugly side of adolescence. The very 80s setting of it, however, has me speedily recalling the Vanessa Paradis movie Elisa and wishing I was watching that instead. This feels much emptier than A Real Young Girl, too … I could almost imagine Breillat’s debut in novel form such was the arresting and poetic nature of imagery in places, but this just felt like one of those Amy Fisher TV movies without the attempted murder. Then, I know how empty some people like their literature, so what do I know?

A Real Young Girl A Real Young Girl 3 star

March 10th, 2009 by surlaroute

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I read a few things about this before putting it on and feared a kind of similar experience to The Cheerleaders re: whether I would even end up reviewing it or not, lol. Let’s not delay the obvious here: this is one genuinely filthy movie. How it’s filthy, however – that really needs to be elaborated on. I found a fantastic line from a review on the movie’s Wikipedia page that actually applies to a lot of the things I happen to find, as they say, visually stimulating … Brian Price is quoted as saying, “[it …] does not offer visual pleasure, at least not one that comes without intellectual engagement, and more importantly, rigorous self-examination.”

So, you might ask, what does that mean? Well, it means that though this movie shows, as the title suggests, a real young girl and all that entails – it also shows you a real young girl and all that that entails. The girl in question is played by Charlotte Alexandra, who infuriatingly it is hard to find much info about online other than that she was born in the “late fifties”. For the most part she looks far older than the fourteen years of her character, in voiceover even declaring herself “well developed for my age”; but there are times that the lighting and camera angles conspire to make her look actually much younger. And boy does she like to “do things”. But if you’re coming to this movie purely for titillation, be aware that you’ll also see her do other things – like throwing up on herself, having pieces of an earthworm scattered around her “area”, plucking a chicken and feeding its entrails to its family, and other less visually exciting activities.

Love That Car!

The overall effect of these 90 minutes is mixed. At times I found it overwhelmingly sad. The story here is really of this teenager way back when, bored to distraction with only her parents for company in the summer holidays on the French countryside. There are long stretches of uncomfortable silences that truly capture that feeling of being stagnant in the family home. At times it’s hypnotic, so raw is the reality of the title that it captures – one can barely believe someone took the time to put such things on film, but it feels right somehow that they did. Then there are times it’s uncomfortable, embarrassing. One thing’s for sure, though, and that’s that it’s never entirely exploitative despite all the things that it shows. It’s not a great film by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s a curious one as worth seeing as it was worth making and, finally, releasing. The acting’s not too bad, the slightly muffled photography sort of apt, and that song is far too catchy.

The Rules of Attraction The Rules of Attraction 5 star

January 21st, 2009 by surlaroute

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“I must insist you bring back your friend’s corpse for me to do some tests!”

It’s been a while since I watched one of my all-time faves and got that horrible feeling as it began that, eep, this might be the viewing where I finally change my mind. I got it pretty powerful in the pre-credits sequence here – almost to the point of wondering why I keep insisting it should be Roger Avary, who directed here, who directs Glamorama whenever the time comes, Lunar Park for that matter, any Bret Easton Ellis movie that comes along (I wouldn’t mind a remake of Less Than Zero either). I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this movie before so forgive me if I repeat myself in places.

Anyway, the trepidation shook off eventually … and the reason I think Avary should direct Easton Ellis is simply, I think this is how Easton Ellis should look. It should have the gimmicky touches of style, the reverse film, the clever split screen joining together. In the end, yes, I admit it is less than the movie I once thought it was. The drug deal “climax” feels very clunky and an earlier scene setting that up is clunk city with the “asshole on my elbow” guy and the ludicrous excess of swearing. But it has so many great scenes in it: two of which, Victor’s trip to Europe and the girl’s suicide to “Without You” (though I’ve recently discovered Janis Ian’s “Sunset of Your Life” works even better over that scene), I think are masterful – and i just love the overall production and costume design, the cinematography and the soundtrack. It seems Hollywood is loathe to give Roger Avary another shot behind the camera, unless he’s just unwilling to do it himself, but it should be clear to anyone who watches this movie, whether they like it or not, that there’s the germ of a great director here. It’s a movie I will revisit again and again because there’s just so much life and invention in it.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno Zack and Miri Make a Porno 3 star

December 1st, 2008 by surlaroute

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(Random aside, lol: I love how I just watched two movies back-to-back whose respective titles begin with Q and Z …)

Well, I can’t complain much here. This is at least the kind of movie that I kind of like even if they’re awful – being as I am quite the Kevin Smith fan boy errgirl, listening to the SModcast, watching the evening-withs, occasionally checking in on his blog, and lover of about 90% of his output, it’s nice when he does something less than brilliant and I’m able to point it out thus proving I’m not entirely brainwashed.

I was looking forward to this merely because I look forward to anything this guy does, and only now does it strike me as odd that I held back on my anticipation; afterall, I expected Clerks II to be a much lesser movie not only than its original but also of Smith’s previous production, the one that everyone else hated, Jersey Girl … and was ultimately very pleasantly surprised indeed. I guess it was other factors that turned me off here – I don’t find the title funny, clever, exciting, or any of that stuff for one (though the poster is cute); Seth Rogan has never particularly thrilled me; and these days I kind of get my Smith fix, as I said, from the evening-with DVDs and the SModcast. If he’s not gonna make another Dogma, I’d kinda be perfectly happy if that he didn’t make anything at all.

But here’s where I think I’ve gotta give him credit. ‘Cos at least he didn’t try making something more complicated, because if he had, it would’ve been a mess. It’s clear from listening to him every week via iTunes that this is a guy who is pretty darn happy with where he is in his life, raising a daughter, geeking out over other people’s movies, and doing the SModcast which has frankly become something of an achievement in itself. He doesn’t need to make any more movies. What he’s done here is make something incredibly simple, with instant appeal to a certain majority of his fans: and for what it’s intended to be, he’s done it well. There is nothing fancy at all here, none of the surprises I’ve been particularly fond of in his last few movies like the song and dance number in Clerks II or the Sweeney Todd scene in Jersey Girl. The most surprising moment to behold here is a blink and you’ll miss it WTF, to be sure (“She just frosted me like a f**kin’ cake!”) but it’s also (I hope) as unsophisticated as Smith is gonna get (that probably doesn’t make any sense but it does to me, lol).

Is it his worst movie to date? I think I can say without taking a breath, absolutely yes. But it surprises me that that’s the worst thing I have to say about it. I think even if I weren’t a Kevin Smith fan at all, I’d struggle to find a bad thing to say about it, especially in a year (yes, I’m probably gonna keep on saying it till I see some more good) that has been so disappointing. It made me laugh, it made me feel a little cosy with its cheesy happy ending (no tears though). Seth Rogen is the biggest surprise of all, perhaps – basically turning in an almost spot-on imitation of Smith himself (I adore his fascination at the reunion that gay people “fight, like real people!”), I could hardly believe this warm character was the same guy I hated people for loving in things like Knocked Up and Superbad.

(oh my god, somebody put balloons up – I think I got my writing brain back!! ROFL)