Movies

[Rusty]

833 - The Ring Seller / Biya el-Khawatim (1965) - 8/10 - A nice musical about a village in Lebanon where the mayor makes up fanciful tales about a bandit named Rajeh. This goes on for some time and even has the villagers concerned until one day, a ring seller named Rajeh actually shows up at the village. The music is good and there is plenty of humor in the film.


834 - Fools' Alley (1955) - 8/10 -Taha is working hard to earn money so that he can marry his beloved Khadija. When good fortune seems to finally come his away and lift the monetary burden, several earlier turns of events come into play and disrupt the entire neighborhood, putting a number of people at odds with one another. This is perhaps a bit predictable, but is still well done.


835 - The Wife of an Important Man (1987) - 6/10 - A police officer fixates on a college woman and starts pursuing her until she agrees to marry him. He is ambitious and aggressively pursues promotion, seeing traitors everywhere and trumping up charges to get the desired outcome. However, he tends to neglect his wife and his methods eventually lead to his downfall, though his pride won't let him see that he did anything wrong. Unfortunately, the film is never really all that interesting.


836 - Neptune Frost (2021) - 7/10 - This africanfuturist tale features great songs and visual style. The plot (taking over the internet in Africa I guess) can be somewhat opaque at times, but just go along with it and enjoy the ride. It did make me think a bit about the writings of Nnedi Okorafor, a science fiction writer (and winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards) who often uses africanfuturism in her work. I recommend checking out her books if you enjoyed this film.


837 - Please Baby Please (2022) - 3/10 - An odd film that I didn't really enjoy.


838 - Same Old Song (1997) - 6.5/10 - The film revolves around two sisters (Odile and Camille) and some of the men in their lives. Odile is looking for a bigger apartment while Camille is a Paris tour guide who is also finishing her doctorate in history. A man starts taking her tours regularly because he is falling for her. An old acquaintance of Odile's is back in town after an 8 year absence. I think that I would have liked this a lot more if it had not been a musical. Characters spontaneously break into fragments of songs as sung by the original artists. I found this contrived and distracting.

[Rusty]

839 - Pulgasari (1985) - 6/10 - The king and his armies are making it difficult for villagers to survive so the villagers make use of a monster that starts out small, but grows quickly to battle the armies and save the people. It started out fairly well, but got kind of boring after a while.


840 - Tilai (1990) - 8/10 - Saga returns home after a two year absence to find that his father has taken Nogma, the woman Saga loves, as his second wife, making her his mother according to their traditions. Saga is not happy and builds a straw hut outside the village, later resuming his relationship with Nogma. This leads to a number of consequences. This was pretty well acted and is a nice film.


841 - Quartier Mozart (1992) - 5/10 -A local girl known as Queen of the Hood has a witch put her into the body of a man so that she can experience what it is like for the other side. The soundtrack and beginning are decent, but I didn't really care for the rest.

[Rusty]

842 - Manila in the Claws of Light (1975) - 8.5/10 - Julio is a young man who has traveled to Manila in search of his girlfriend Ligaya. She was lured to Manila by promises of work and a chance to get an education, but hasn't been heard from since. Julio works low paid construction jobs and searches all over Manila in his quest. We get to see lots of parts of the seedier side of the city. It's not a happy film, but it is very good.


843 - The Travelling Players (1975) - 6.5/10 - A long and meandering tale that mixes in Greek history from 1939-1952 with ancient Greek tales. A troupe of actors traveling around and performing the play 'Golfo the Shepherdess'. Lots of stuff happens along the way, but it all just kind of blended together and I didn't come to care for any of the individual characters at all.


844 - Faya Dayi (2021) - 5/10 - The film is shot in black and white that seemed a bit off to me, perhaps to help induce a dreamlike quality aided by the languid pace and music. The film is competently made, but I didn't really find it to be very engaging.


845 - Ekskursante (2013) - 7.5/10 - A 10 year old Lithuanian girl is being sent to Siberia on a train with her pregnant mother after WWII. She escapes from the train and starts making the long journey along the way. She runs into trouble a number of times, but also receives help from some kindly Russians as well and perseveres in her travels. The girl in the lead is very good and it is a nice film.


846 - The Blue Eyes of Yonta (1992) - 7/10 - Ze is a young man who is secretly in love with a beautiful girl named Yonta. Yonta is in love with Vicente, an older friend of her parents. Yonta receives an anonymous love letter and tries to figure out the author. We also get quite a bit of everyday life in Guinea-Bissau. The electricity isn't reliable and life can be hard financially at times. The film never really rises above the good level, but I did enjoy it.


847 - Atlantics (2019) - 7.5/10 - Ada is about to marry the wealthy Omar in an arranged marriage, but she is in love with Souleimane, a poor construction worker. Souleimane and his coworkers haven't been paid for months so they decide to go to sea to migrate and find a better place to earn money. Strange things start happening on Ada's wedding night. The film is shot nicely and I liked the performances of the lead and her friends.

[Rusty]

848 - Barbie (2023) - 8/10 - Greta Gerwig's Barbie is very entertaining. Margot Robbie is perfect in the lead role and Ryan Gosling is excellent as her Ken. There are some nice dance numbers and the use of music is also pretty good.


849 - Baara (1978) - 6/10 - The manager of a factory is one of the focuses of the film. He helps get a man a job at the factory while also having to deal with worker unrest due to poor pay and treatment by management. It wasn't really all that interesting, but was okay.


850 - Everyone's Child (1996) - 6/10 - When his parents die, Itai travels to the city to try and earn some money, but falls in with a bad group of young men. His sister Tamari remains behind to care for their two younger siblings, but has to deal with mounting debt and the advances of a lecherous shop owner and very little help from others. I liked the music, but it was not always appropriate for the story. The acting is also somewhat amateurish, but I still thought the movie was decent enough.

[Rusty]

851 - Divine Intervention (2002) - 7.5/10 - The film starts with Santa Claus running away from a group of young men, presents spilling everywhere. A couple lives on different sides of an Israeli checkpoint and find ways to meet. There are quite a few short scenes with various comedic elements, often of the absurd variety. One man starts his day by taking out the garbage and tossing it over the wall into his neighbor's garden. A balloon befuddles the guards at the checkpoint mentioned earlier, and so on. I enjoyed it, though the superhero bit near the end may have been a bit much.


852 - Where Do We Go Now? (2011) - 7/10 - In a small Lebanese village, the women are tired of war. The village has lost a number of men in the past and they do what they can to hide the news of further strife from the men in the village. The film is a mix of comedy and drama and can be a bit odd at times, but I did like it.


853 - El kalaa (1988) - 6/10 - The adopted son of a man in a small Algerian village is lovestruck by a married woman and flirts with her to the shame of his father and angering the husband. The son is a bit odd in other ways as well, but the father pledges to have the son get married by the end of the day to resolve the issue. The film has a good ending, but otherwise was kind of boring.


854 - Oppenheimer (2023) - 9/10 - The film is three hours long, but flows very well and I didn't really think it lagged. It could maybe have had some of the runtime trimmed, but the film worked for me. It's well acted and interesting throughout.


855 - Life is a Bed of Roses (1983) - 6/10 - There are three stories here - a fantasy about killing a dragon, the building of a castle in the 1910s/1920s, and a school conference at that castle in the 1980s. I didn't really care for the first two parts with only the school conference being one that I liked. The other two parts were kind of strange.


856 - Let George Do It! (1940) - 6.5/10 - George Formby is a ukulele player who accidentally gets separated from his group, ends up in Norway, and is mistaken for a spy. I preferred Come On George, but this had some fun songs and moments. George even (sort of) gets to punch Hitler. The second half of the film is better than the beginning.

[Rusty]

857 - Mascarades (2008) - 7.5/10 - Mounir lives with his wife, son, and sister in an Algerian village. Mounir has a decent life, but his sister's narcolepsy is a thorn in his side in terms of getting the respect he thinks that he deserves. One night when he is drunk, he tells people that he has found a husband for his sister, even though it isn't true. The story ends up getting bigger and bigger and Mounir is reveling in the increased respect and admiration he is receiving from the people of the village. This is a pretty funny romantic comedy.


858 - Omar Gatlato (1976) - 7/10 - Omar is a fairly typical Algerian man who has a good job, but lives in a crowded apartment with his parents, grandparents, sister, and her kids. He hangs out with friend, enjoys music, and so on. His friend sets me up with a woman whose voice he has heard only on a recording. It wasn't bad


859 - The Winds of the Aures (1967) - 6/10 - After losing her husband killed in a raid by French soldiers and her son arrested for no reason, an old woman goes off in search of her son, chicken in hand in case she needs to pay for the information of where he is held. It takes her quite a while to track him down and then she spends each day outside the camp for a chance to see him. It's interesting, but not really a great film.


860 - Wanderers of the Desert (1984) - 5/10 - A new teacher is assigned to a desert village where the children have never been to school. There is supposed to be a treasure buried in the desert and people who wander in the desert. The film is poetical, but didn't really hold my interest very well. I liked The Dove's Lost Necklace quite a bit more than this one.


861 - Wechma (1971) - 6.5/10 - An orphan boy is adopted by a couple and raised in a very strict manner. The boy is stubborn and seems to resent his adopted father's methods. The film then skips ahead many years to when he is a messed up adult, resentful and going from job to job. The middle portion of the film wasn't as interesting as the beginning and the last section. It is nicely shot, though.

[Rusty]

862 - Halfaouine: Boy of the Terraces (1990) - 7/10 - Noura is a 12 year old boy on the cusp of manhood. His mother still takes him to the women's side of the Turkish baths and he has become curious about the female body, eventually becoming bolder in his interest. This gets him into ome trouble, but his efforts may have their own reward as well. It's a decent coming of age story.


863 - Bab El Oued City (1994) - 6/10 - A young baker has trouble sleeping due to the loudspeaker on the roof of his building that broadcasts the imam's speeches. He steals the speaker so that he can get some sleep, but the brother of the woman he likes starts a hunt for the perpetrator with violence in the offing. This one was kind of mediocre - not really bad, but not that interesting either.

[Rusty]

864 - John Wick Chapter 4 (2023) - 7.5/10 - There is certainly plenty of action as John Wick tries to gain his freedom from The Table. Much of the film made me think of watching somebody else's gameplay from a first person shooter game. It was entertaining, but I wouldn't call it a great film.

[Rusty]

865 - A Girl in My Room (2022) - 6.5/10 - Hanzawa breaks up with his girlfriend and moves into a new apartment. It turns out that the ghost of a girl named Aisuke lives there. The two eventually become close over time. The film has an interesting premise, but seemed to lack energy. I still kind of liked it, but it was a bit dull.


866 - Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice (1972) - 5/10 - Hanzo is a police inspector with his own unique way of doing things, including self torture to understand what criminals go through when interrogated. There is also plenty of sex and nudity. Unfortunately, the movie isn't very good or interesting, except in a few places.


867 - Hanzo the Razor: The Snare (1973) - 5.5/10 - This was slightly better than the first one. Hanzo investigates bad money being coined which is increasing both inflation and poverty.


868 - Hanzo the Razor: Who's Got the Gold? (1974) - 5.5/10 - More Hanzo action. This one starts with Hanzo capturing a ghost and recovering gold stolen from the treasury. It's pretty similar to the first two films. The films generally have decent music at least.


869 - Destiny's Son (1962) - 7/10 - A female assassin is captured and executed by her husband. The husband sends their young son to be raised by a foster family and retreats to a shrine in the forest. The son grows up and eventually becomes an accomplished swordsman. When he learns of his true parentage, he sets out in search of his father. It's a decent film.


870 - The Tale of Zatoichi (1962) - 7.5/10 - A blind masseur loves to gamble and is also an excellent swordsman. He arrives in a town where a fight between rival yakuza gangs is brewing. This was pretty good and I liked Shintaro Katsu a lot more in this film than in the later Hanzo the Razor films.

[Rusty]

L'Imitation du cinéma (1960) (35 minutes)
Philips-Radio (1931) (36 minutes)
Elephants Dream (2006) (11 minutes)


871 - Looking for Langston (1989) - 5.5/10 - The music was okay and the film seems to have been competently made, but I didn't get much out of it.


872 - Wend Kuuni (1982) - 7/10 - A traveling salesman finds a mute boy in the desert. He suffered some sort of trauma and is now unable to speak, but can hear and can communicate in other ways. he is taken to a village where a local family adopts him. He now has two parents and a younger sister and they all work on the farm. A later trauma returns his ability to speak. It's a nice and fairly simple film.


873 - Finis terrae (1929) - 7/10 - Three fishermen set up camp on a deserted island where they plan to spend the next three months harvesting and burning seaweed because the ash is very valuable if done correctly. One man gets injured early on, but the others think him lazy when he doesn't disclose the injury.


874 - Tamako Love Story (2014) - 8/10 - In the sequel to the anime series Tamako Market, Mochizo finally works up the courage to express his feelings to Tamako. The two have been close friends since they were little, but Tamako was unaware of Mochizo's feelings, even though everybody else knew. The series was a lot of fun, but also had a lot more silliness due to the Dera character. This was also nice.


875 - Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (1955) - 8/10 - A samurai and his two servants are traveling and meet a number of people along the way - an entertainer and her young daughter, a young boy who wants to be a spear carrier like one of the servants, a policeman, and so on. Things take a bit of a serious turn toward the end and it is a nice film overall. The two leads are very good.


876 - The Tale of Zatoichi Continues (1962) - 6.5/10 - It's been a year since the event in the first movie and Zatoichi returns to the village from the previous adventure. He gets into a number of fights, befriends a beautiful young woman, etc. It's not as good as the first film, though it is okay and has a few nice moments.


877 - Go, Go Second Time Virgin (1969) - 8/10 - A 17 year old girl is gang raped by 4 men on a rooftop. We later learn that this is the second time that he has been gang raped. She befriends a strange young man who watched the rape without interfering. He has his own trauma that has affected him. This was pretty well done and on a low budget as well.

[Rusty]

878 - Zatoichi Challenged (1967) - 7.5/10 - Zatoichi takes charge of a young boy after the boy's mother dies. He takes the boy to meet his father, but later discovers that the father is being forced to work for a yakuza boss on an illegal project.


879 - Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival  (1970) - 7/10 - This one seemed kind of all over the place, but was still fairly entertaining. There's a fight in a bathhouse, a young pimp who wants to be a yakuza, multiple attempts to kill Zatoichi, and so on.

[Rusty]

880 - Daimajin / Majin the Monster of Terror (1966) - 6.5/10 - The lord of a remote village is killed in a coup. His surviving children take shelter in a nearby mountain that houses a giant stone statue which is said to be the protector of the area and is capable of coming to life. The peasants of the village are forced to work by their brutal new rulers. Daimajin doesn't really make an appearance until the last 20 minutes or so. It's not a bad film, but is kind of boring through much of it.


881 - Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters / Yôkai hyaku monogatari (1968) - 7.5/10 - A group of thugs arrive at a shrine and inform the caretakers that their boss is having the shrine and accompanying tenement house torn down to build a brothel. There is resistance on the part of the locals, but they are no match on their own for the thugs. The thugs do not do a necessary purifying technique, though, and the local yokai take their own revenge. It turned out better than I expected after the opening segment.


882 - Adventures of Zatoichi (1964) - 8/10 - Zatoichi becomes involved with a couple of young women - one who is looking for her father, the headman of a village who is missing and another who works at an inn and is trying to help her brother. We have a local boss and his thugs plus a swordsman who thinks he may be the equal of Zatoichi. This is my favorite of the Zatoichi films that I've seen so far.


883 - Body Melt (1993) - 4/10 - Unethical scientists are testing out a new drug that affects the body on unknowing residents of a town. The drug causes gross changes plus hallucinations and other issues. The film didn't do much for me. I didn't think the story was very good.


884 - Baby Blood (1990) - 7/10 - A snakelike parasite invades a pregnant woman and takes over the fetus she is carrying. It talks to her and forces her to kill men to satisfy its craving for blood. It was better than I expected and pretty funny at times. It's a nice comedy of manners.


885 - Hyppolit, the Butler (1931) - 7.5/10 - A somewhat wealthy family hires a butler who used to work for a Count. He soon takes over the household, running it the way he did for his previous employer. The family find themselves giving in to his assumptions about diet, having a mistress, etc. rather than risk embarrassment at not measuring up.

[Rusty]

886 - Aimless Bullet (1961) - 8/10 - A fairly bleak look at a family struggling to survive in postwar Korea. An accountant with a constant toothache has to provide for his wife, kids, sister, brother, and mother. His mother appears to be suffering from PTSD and just lies on her mat occasionally exclaiming "Let's Go, Let's Go". The brother is a veteran without luck finding a job. The sister's former fiancé was crippled in the war and won't return to the relationship because he doesn't want to be a burden. It's a downbeat film, but is interesting and well made.


887 - The Ghost Breakers (1940) - 7/10 - When a woman (Paulette Goddard) inherits a supposedly haunted mansion on an island near Cuba, she sets out to see what it is like, even though she receives a mysterious message warning her off. A radio announcer (Bob Hope) ends up tagging along with his partner (Willie Best) and the three of them try to find out what is going on. The film is mildly amusing.


888 - Terror in a Texas Town (1958) - 7/10 - When oil is discovered on Swede Hansen's farm, it doesn't take long for a gunslinger hired by a local oil magnate to show up and eliminate the farmer. His son's arrival in town throws a wrench into the magnate's plans, but he has his bully boys try to work it out.


889 - Body Parts (1991) - 5.5/10 - A criminal psychologist loses his arm in a car accident, but a doctor at the hospital talks his wife into an experimental surgery to transplant a donor arm in its place. Things seem to go well until the arm starts to display violent tendencies and the psychologist learns where the arm came from. It's kind of a dumb premise and the film isn't that great, though it does get better toward the end and has a decent finish.


890 - Evil Dead Trap (1988) - 5.5/10 - A woman who hosts a late night talk show receives a home video showing a woman being tortured and murdered. Does she report it to the police? Of course not. Instead, she gathers a crew to go and investigate the abandoned factory where the film was made and her crew slowly gets murdered in a variety of ways. An odd and gory film.


891 - Singing Lovebirds (1939) - 7/10 - A lighthearted musical about a gullible umbrella salesman who is always buying questionable antiques, forcing him and his daughter to eat barley instead of rice. He runs up some debt and is offered the chance to get out of debt if he lets a wealthy man take the umbrella salesman's pretty daughter as a mistress. The daughter wants no part of that.


892 - Outlaw Killers: Three Mad Dog Brothers (1972) - 6.5/10 - Two rival groups of yakuza vie for control of a city's underworld. Gondo is a very violent foot soldier in one of the organizations. He kills the boss of the other group and then serves a 6 year prison sentence. When he gets out, he expects his group to be in charge, but sees that the two groups have made a truce and no longer come into conflict with each other. Gondo's violent ways soon cause tension and threaten the truce. There is a lot of violence and none of the main characters are very sympathetic, except for one woman who was kidnapped and forced to prostitute herself by Gondo. I thought it got a little better in the second half of the film.

[Rusty]

893 - La Libertad (2001) - 5/10 - A man cuts down trees in the wilderness and later sells the wood before returning to his camp. Definitely not the most exciting film that I've seen.


894 - Out of Life (1991) - 7.5/10 - A French journalist is kidnapped while covering the war in Lebanon in the 1980s. He is frequently blindfolded and suffers occasional beatings along with issues with sanitary conditions and food. It's pretty well acted.


895 - Target for Tonight (1941) - 6/10 - The planning and execution of a bombing raid on a priority target in Germany is shown here along with the return of one of the bombers and the after action report. This was a rewatch and didn't improve the second time around. It's fairly dry.


896 - Djeli, conte d'aujourd'hui (1981) - 7/10 - Fanta and Karamoko are in love and want to get married eventually. There is resistance from the elders on both sides due to caste prejudice. They have more sympathy from people their own age. It may seem a bit amateurish or preachy on occasion, but I liked this one.


897 - Twist à Popenguine (1994) - 7.5/10 - A man narrates his story of growing up in a coastal town in Senegal during the 1960s. There are a couple of rival groups of teens, but nothing too serious. One group tries to make money by throwing parties or other events, but something often goes awry. The kids and their interactions and activities are often the focus, but we also have the story of the white school teacher from France who longs to go home, but feels out of place in France and in Popenguine. He does get along pretty well with everybody in town, though. There isn't any high drama and the comedy aspects are somewhat muted, but it's a nice slice of life/coming of age film.


898 - Zan Boko (1988) - 6/10 - A city expand its borders and infringes on a small traditional village, impacting the lives of the villagers. People from the city insist on painting numbers on the buildings of the village, developers want to buy their land, and so on. It's an interesting idea, but much of the film is kind of dull. The ending was okay, though.


899 - Africa, I Will Fleece You (1992) - 8/10 - This documentary details the history of colonialism in Cameroon and is especially critical of the French. A good portion of the film takes place in the modern era, though, and shows how the effects of colonialism were still entrenched in their society. Access to books in the country is somewhat limited and the books in schools and libraries are dominated by foreign publications. Opportunities for people from Cameroon to get their books published and widely read are pretty low. I thought it was a pretty effective documentary, though it did get a bit bogged down during some of the parts covering the 1950s.


900 - Guimba the Tyrant (1995) - 6/10 - The story of a village ruler and his dwarf son. Their cruel ways eventually lead the villagers to fight back.

[Rusty]

901 - Kaii Utsunomiya tsuritenjô (1956) - 6.5/10 - Ryutaro is a samurai investigating assassination threats to the Shogun. There's a businessman with some sort of plot brewing and his thugs who seem to have free rein in the town, including one swordsman who keeps his face hidden. It's not bad, but is all rather generic.