Goldbeater

Bogdanovich recorded and captured the essence of the environment and time, the joys and pains of individuals, and you watch their story tensely and with bated breath as if it were happening right in front of your eyes. There's a strange, sad gust of nostalgia. Like a moment of life recorded on a black-and-white polaroid image, which has long been blown away by the wind and today lies beneath the dust of faded memories. An incredibly lively spectacle that definitely grows stronger with each new viewing.

A distant cousin and precursor of the modern slasher horror, in which a masked psychopath disposes of unsuspecting victims in abandoned houses in the middle of a ghost town. The locations and atmosphere should have hit the jackpot, but in the end, it feels like a confusing tangle of random scenes. The mise-en-scene is really solid and the killer has some eccentricities which are way ahead of their time, but it falls short of being a solid average.

Nothing against a low budget and a purely fan-based approach to the material (That's what the whole web series is about), but I have one big problem with this movie - where the hell did the classic Angry Video Game Nerd go? Most of the time you only get a glimpse of James Rolfe, his characteristic swearing and sarcastic remarks hardly occur. Instead, most of the time you just get a series of uninteresting supporting characters with screen/speaking time you couldn’t give a crap about. This stew of a movie has something of everything in it, except the most important ingredient, the all-commenting angry AVGN character from the web series.

The Untouchables is a neatly filmed story of a few individuals who fight the rotten system. At the end, the film is not afraid to show that for a greater cause, you sometimes need to creep over the line of what the law allows for. Director Brian De Palma is on top of his game and Sean Connery in his best. A captivating flick which contains all the magic ingredients of a film I want to watch over and over. And that music by Ennio Morricone always gives me goosebumps!

Blood of Dracula’s Castle is a low-budget crap which tries to surf on the exhausted wave of the classic Dracula horror films, except the titular ‘castle’ is more akin to a regular Californian hovel. And the absence of any atmosphere and lack of visually interesting scenes are not helping at all. At the end of the ’60s, this concept couldn’t have scared even the most naive viewers.

A trash story about a Vietnam veteran who has become asocial due to PTSD and retreats into his house in the middle of the Florida swamps, having venomous snakes as his only company. He tries to protect the animals from local poachers who are after snake skin, but since those want more than just the snakes, an unpleasant fight takes place. Stanley has a certain trashy charm and a solid atmosphere of sordid villages, but also stagnates as much as the surrounding water in terms of pace and these 108 minutes are way too much for such a simple story. Moreover, despite the fact that the flick seeks to promote a peaceful coexistence of humans with wild venomous reptiles, the explicit violence it shows towards these creatures undermines the global image of the film (the creators could and should really have done without it).

Indonesia comes with yet another demonic showcase of gore scenes and heavy dark images, to what I say, ‘Bring it on!’ Kimo Stamboel and Joko Anwar drew on the Indonesian horror classic The Queen of Black Magic (1981), changing and updating its theme to a great extent, thus leaving only a few elements from the original, the rest being an entirely new, enhanced adventure. A group of old acquaintances get together in a secluded orphanage to remember the old days, but the past turns out to be much more horrifying than what they want to admit. The horror side of the flick works very well and brings a few seriously disturbing visions. I could maybe just complain about the abusive use of digital effects (those computer-generated insects are really painful); otherwise the atmosphere is very powerful, at times downright hellish.

The Indonesian classic horror film The Queen of Black Magic concerns an aggrieved young lady who, by falling into dark schemes, turns into the titular queen of black magic and exacts revenge against the villagers who had unduly sentenced her to death. The flick is relatively inconsistent. On the one hand, it contains a rather melodramatic story with family entanglements that – especially towards the end – somewhat evoke a Latin American soap opera, while infusing the main character with an excessively naive nature. On the other hand, it comes with enchanting fantastic scenery and gusts of surprisingly bloody scenes that culminate with the mad ripping off of a head, which then levitates all around. Considering that the Indonesian cinematography of the early ’80s was behind in terms of genres, this is definitely a memorable piece of filmmaking. From a more cosmopolitan point of view, however, one needs to be quite indulgent while watching this.

Night of Death has a cosily uneasy atmosphere characteristic of gothic horror films from Europe. There’s a clear perception that the main heroine is alone in this adventure, with no one to help her. What’s more, Isabelle Goguey’s performance in the main role has a very friendly aspect to it, despite her character being predominantly naive. In contrast, the screenplay reveals all its secrets too early, so you learn everything about the nature of the local evil forces during the first twenty minutes, then have to endure a never-ending hour (in which almost nothing happens), waiting for some strong outcome which, finally, doesn’t bring anything new. Unfortunately, that middle part of the film felt to me like the week before receiving your paycheck, and managed to make me sleepy. Those 95 minutes were quite exhausting and it wouldn’t hurt to somehow thicken the sauce of the storyline.

Vamp is a horror comedy with a distinctive touch. A group of students sets out for a seedy striptease bar which, unfortunately for them, turns out to be full of vampires. The creator of this film is Richard Wenk, known as the screenwriter of some very memorable action movies produced in the recent years (16 Blocks, The Equalizer I-II, The Expendables 2). On the artistic side, the use of pastel colours reminiscent of neon lights give the film a genuine 80s feel and, at the same time, compensates in various ways for a flick that would otherwise feel flimsy due to a somewhat fragmented plot and predictable script full of dry humour (the latter is fine, though). Now, if you’re after some easy teenage vampire comedy à la Tom Holland’s Fright Night, you’re on the right path!