Kontroll: A great one to start with. Gotta love a film directed by a guy named Nimrod Antal. He’s from Cali but lives and works in Hungary.
It’s about ticket takers, or controllers of the Budapest subway system. Everyone hates them and when passengers aren’t running from, arguing with or fighting them then the other control teams are. Literally never seeing the sun, Bulcsu, played by Sandor Csanyi, (say 3 times fast) decides to never leave the underground. He sleeps on empty platforms and eats from vending machines when he’s not working.
Theres a mysterious killer pushing people in front of trains, rivalries with other controllers, and a love story to boot. A metaphor about growing up maybe? Anyway . . . funny, sad, and grim all at the same time. Excellent film.
13 Tzameti: Another good Euro fiick about a poor roofer, Sebastien, who overhears a client talking about a letter coming with an opportunity to get rich.
When the client dies, Sebastien takes the letter and pretending to be the other guy, follows the instructions to a farm house where he finds out that to get the money he has to outlast other players in a winner take all game of russian roulette. A tense white-knuckle good film.
Now on a lighter note, Beerfest: I didn’t like these guys’ other 2 films, Supertroopers and Club Dread, but Beerfest was very funny.
It’s about an underground worldwide beer drinking contest. 2 brothers start an American team but get humiliated, so the only way to compete is to bet their Grandfathers secret beer recipe that he stole from his brother, the German captain. If you’re in the mood for silly fun, you could do worse.
Hopefully something will come to the theater soon that I’m interested in. The Simpsons or Sunshine. Till next time.
: Pretty good Scorsese film, but nowhere near as good as Goodfellas. It’s about the last mafia-connected guys who ran a Las Vegas casino. Robert Deniro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone star. Its an end of an era story with the usual mob action. Worth seeing even at almost 3 hours.
: I had high hopes based on the trailer, but boy was I disappointed. Some good visuals, the effects were good and the fight scenes were ok, but the long stretches of anti-war rhetoric slowed it to a crawl. Boring gibberish.
: Blue lagoon ripoff with Willie Ames and Phoebe Cates. They’re chased by Arabs thru the desert till they find love, happiness and a monkey by a cove. They swim, eat fish, and play with their monkey like a bad lifetime movie till the nudity starts. Ah, the old saving grace of skin. Personally, I think that a law should be enacted prohibiting male nudity in any form, but if I have to see a flash of Ames’s willie to get multiple scenes of full frontal Phoebe, then so be it. Why she married the star of the awful movie French Kiss, Kevin Kline, I do not know. Average film with above average Cates. A quick word about Satan. I understand Satan is busy and simply does not have the time to take corporeal form and jab me with his pitchfork every few days, so to torment me he’s sending small, old, leathery oompa loompa looking people to drive about 10 mph with cigarette smoke billowing and I cant seem to pass them. The underworlders got me 3 times this week. I think Satan takes a leather bag and fills it with nicotine scented meringue. Then adds 2 Chuckie doll arms and tosses them the car keys to wreck their psychic havoc on me. Maybe I’m paranoid. Well the lamp says I need to wrap it up, so till next time, keep watching the skies!
