This dreamlike fairytale captures the coming-of-age of a young Czechoslovakian girl. The film portrays the heroine as living in a disorienting dream, seduced by priests, vampires, men and women alike. receiving a pair of earrings, strange things begin to happen to Valerie. As her burgeoning sexuality sparks even more haunting escapades, Valerie must contend with an explosively world that challenges and inspires her. Jaromil Jires' film is a surprisingly sensitive and visually spectacular.
Recommended and reviewed by a good friend of Carne and Queso, Sir Vinnie Sanchez.
The teenagers of yesteryear were a little more authentic than the bleached and clean cut modern youth of today. They also had installed suburban youth mental institutions for the bad seeds, black sheeps, and wolves that planned to reform and moralize the kids. The kids are alright. Its their adult world that made everyone weird and misunderstood in the first place.
Its all here from the teenage neverland: bad times drugs damaged girl who lives with single mom who drives a sports car into a swimming pool, 80s gang bangers in a new wave era when they had teen clubs back in the day. This is a dive into youth from the black hole. A cinematic slap in the face of every educational shit hole and community youth teen center that sucked your soul.
Watch this on VHS and finger that plastic boxed protection case that Blockbuster used to provide you with before they went pulseless in the era of Generation Y teens who have no idea or have probably never even held one. A Beastie Boy makes an appearance in it with a drunk Donald Sutherland as his anchor in a mixed up world. For teenage fuck ups.
An adventure-packed action film about the sexiest street gang ever to brandish switchblades. The Dagger Debs and the Silver Blades (their gang brothers) run the local high school like a junior Mafia... complete with prostitution in the bathroom, a protection racket and drug sales. The action heats up when a rival gang leader and his boys are transferred to their school. After an attack on one of the Silver Blades by the rival gang, the Blades declare war. What ensues is the wildest, girl gang gun fight on roller skates to ever hit the big screen. -- rottentomatoes.com
I was going to ride the recent 90s nostalgia bubble and compile a list of of 90s distopian sci-fi movies that were set in the 2000s. Then I was going to make witty comparisons about the disparity between the grunge-raver fantasies and our modern reality. Then I remembered blogging don't pay shit and I have more important things to do then spend 4 hours writing and compiling something a handful of bored internet denizens would see.
So instead....
the best 90s dystopian Sci-Fi movies you probably have already seen a million times (without any time-period contextual commentary). The nexus where cyber-space, roller-blades, the Prodigy, lazor guns, CGI cyber sex, evil mega-corporate overlords, fake computer interfaces, genetic mutation and oaklies sunglasses were expertly milked for future-sploitation glory.
Enjoy, and if you have teenage kids make them enjoy for the sake of our past-future that never could be but kind of happened probably and might be realized through them in a new collective retro-future tomarrow.
Lawnmower Man (1992)
In 1992, The Lawnmower Man was hailed as a CGI (computer-generated image) breakthrough. It's fascinating to consider it in a historical context, knowing it came just a year after Terminator 2: Judgment Day and was followed by Jurassic Park a year later. Written and directed by Brett Leonard,The Lawnmower Man focuses on a scientist (Pierce Brosnan) trying to utilize technology for governmental gain. As with all top-secret government projects in the movies, it goes horribly wrong. Forced to progress from a chimp to a human subject, Brosnan secretly recruits local backwards boy and lawnmower pusher Jobe (Jeff Fahey). The increases in intelligence are alarming. He learns Latin in two hours, becomes an object of sexual desire (apparently all it takes is cowboy boots), and then develops telepathic and telekinetic abilities. What the film ought to be remembered and appreciated for are the visuals, which undoubtedly advanced the arcade and home computer game industry. --Paul Tonks
The year is 2021, and half of the Earth's population is suffering from the disease known as Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS). Johnny, a mnemonic data courier, is hired to carry 320 gigabytes of crucial information (stolen from the nefarious Pharmakom corporation). Pursued by Yakuza agents and a crazed cyborg, Johnny must deliver the data to avoid death within twenty-four hours.
A young boy is arrested by the US Secret Service for writing a computer virus and is banned from using a computer until his 18th birthday. Years later, he and his new-found friends discover a plot to unleash a dangerous computer virus, but they must use their computer skills to find the evidence while being pursued by the Secret Service and the evil computer genius behind the virus.
The film is a story about two men, one an evil crime lord and the other a risk-taking police officer, who are cryogenically frozen in the year 1996 and reawakened to face each other in 2032. Los Angeles, now called San Angeles following an earthquake that destroyed most of contemporary Los Angeles and San Diego, has become part of a planned city where violence is eliminated from mainstream society.
Total Recall (1990)
Douglas Quaid is haunted by a recurring dream about a journey to Mars. He hopes to find out more about this dream and buys a holiday at Rekall Inc. where they sell implanted memories. But something goes wrong with the memory implantation and he remembers being a secret agent fighting against the evil Mars administrator Cohaagen.
Set in the near-future, eXistenZ depicts a society in which game designers are worshipped as superstars and players can organically enter inside the games. At the center of the story is Allegra Geller whose latest games system eXistenZ taps so deeply into its users fears and desires that it blurs the boundaries between reality and escapism. When fanatics attempt to assassinate Allegra, she is forced to flee. Her sole ally is Ted Pikul (Law), a novice security guard who is sworn to protect her. Persuading Ted into playing the game, Allegra draws them both into a phantasmagoric world where existence ends and eXistenZ begins.
Explorer takes viewers into the disturbing world of surveillance technology and scans the latest and future technologies used to even spy on the private lives of citizens. From London's CCTVs to infra-technology equipped helicopters that search the streets of New York City, the documentary shows the inner workings of these surveillance systems.
People & Power: Interrogating a Torturer
In the past decade torture has never been very far from the headlines but the recent outbreak of protests across the Middle East has put the issue right back in the spotlight. People & Power revisits the dramatic meeting between a torture victim and his former interrogator from the former Argentinian dictorship of Jorge Videla.
If.... Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not ripping off this movie when they shot up Columbine high-school, then they seriously missed out in how unoriginal their plot to kill, maim and destroy the students and faculty of their school was. Take the following excerpts from a description of the if.... plot and a description of the Columbine massacre...
"Although the act of placing the bombs was not recorded, once the new tape was started the bags could be clearly seen. Each shooter then returned to his car to wait until the bombs exploded. They intended to open fire on students fleeing the school through the main entrances once the cafeteria bombs detonated."
"At the end, in a surreal sequence, they discover a cache of automatic weapons, and revolt against the establishment. On Founders' Day, when parents are visiting the school, they start a fire under the hall, smoke out the parents, staff and boys, and open fire on them from a rooftop."
--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If....
That said, this movie is not just interesting for it's similarity to a real life school massacre by any means.
if.... is a 1968 cult film by British director Lindsay Anderson about
an armed rebellion at a British public school. The film is associated
with the 1960s counterculture movement; it was filmed at the time of
the student uprisings in Paris in May 1968, and it includes controversial
statements such as "There's no such thing as a wrong war.
Violence and revolution are the only pure acts" and features surrealist
sequences throughout. On its release in the UK it was given an X rating.
The film follows three young men and their time spent in the French suburban "ghetto," over a span of twenty-four hours. Vinz, a Jew, Saïd, an Arab, and Hubert, a black boxer, have grown up in these French suburbs where high levels of diversity coupled with the racist and oppressive police force have raised tensions to a critical breaking point. During the riots that took place a night before, a police officer lost his handgun in the ensuing madness, only to leave it for Vinz to find. Now, with a newfound means to gain the respect he deserves, Vinz vows to kill a cop if his friend Abdel dies in the hospital, due the beating he received while in police custody.
One of my favorite movies of all time. It reminds me of a French, more serious Do the Right Thing, except in La Haine the movie starts with a riot instead of ending with one. Keep an eye for the director who makes a cameo as a natzi skinhead.
"While on the lam in Mexico, Irish Republican Army demolition expert John Malloy (James Coburn) hooks up with Juan Miranda (Rod Steiger), a crass, stogie-chomping bandit with designs on the Mesa Verde Bank. Reluctant partners with differing agendas, they find themselves caught up in the turmoil of the Mexican revolution when their heist nets more than gold in director Sergio Leone's sprawling 1971 Western."
CARNE AND QUESO excreted this sappy little sack of movie poo from the film VIPER. In this explosive scene rogue agent Dad is leaving his little peanut and who knows when she'll see him again. Enjoy!
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CARNE AND QUESO
HAUSU (HOUSE)1977 -Nobuhiko Obayahshi
"So Sam Raimi, Dario Argento, Russ Meyer and Roman Polanski all walk into a bar …"
The previous sentence was a title to a review I read of the movie Hausu (House). I was going to copy and paste that review here but... for shits, giggles and a wanting to practice writing I'm going to carry out that metaphorical preamble as far as I can. "So Sam Raimi, Dario Argento, Russ Meyer and Roman Polanski all walk into a bar after splitting 2 ounces of mushrooms. All were enthralled by a gaggle of teenage girls in school uniforms singing 60's bubble gum pop tunes on a karaoke machine and the lights pulsating neon light into every corner of the room. The directors in their psychedelic hypnosis did not notice the Japanese witch in a kimono float over the bar until she swung a long curved sword and lopped off Russ Meyer's head. Blood shot from Russ's severed neck until the bar floor was knee deep in blood. Roman Polanski screamed and sloshed his way towards the girls singing karaoke in the corner. The girls kept singing in Japanese even as they pulled his body apart and started to dance with his severed limbs. Sam Raimi backed up into a piano on the wall. The pianos keys started playing on thier own accord and the piano opened up in such a way that the keys appeared to be teeth. The piano swallowed Sam Raimi whole and sent streams of blood firing in every direction as the ghostly keys kept playing. So much blood was filling the bar at this point that Dario Argento was treading to keep afloat, he was spitting streams of blood so as not to swallow it. Finally as he was pressed against the ceiling by this inconceivable torrent of blood, guts, and severed limbs he thought to himself "Nessuno me lo ficca in culo!".
"Sex without religion is like cooking an egg without salt. Sin gives more chances to desire." Luis Buñuel was born in Spain in 1900. During his career as "the father of surrealist cinema" he made films in Spain, France, the United States and Mexico. His amazing and large body of French, English, and Spanish language films were plagued by censorship and controversy every step of the way.
He moved to France in 1925 and made "Un chien andalou" with Salvador Dali. He then moved to revolutionary Spain to make movies about the changes taking place in his native land. As the Spanish Civil War looked to be a victorious for the Franco and the fascists he fled to the America. He continued to make films in Hollywood until the Red Scare began a witch hunt of intellectuals and film makers with leftist leanings. His next flight from persecution took him to Mexico in 1946. He spent the latter part of his life travelling between Mexico, the United States and France. He died in Mexico City in 1983.
The following three films made by Bunuel were described by him as a trilogy that embody the main themes of his work; religious hypocrisy, surrealism, sex, upper class vapidness and bizarre symbolism.
The Milky Way (1969)
In the film, two men travel the ancient pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela and meet embodiments of various Catholic heresies along the way. These religious events are based on actual historical documents. For instance, the archbishop whose corpse is exhumed and publicly burned is based on Archbishop Carranza of Toledo. The film ends with the following text:
"Everything in this film concerning the Catholic religion and the heresies it has provoked, especially from the dogmatic point of view, is rigorously exact. The texts and citations are taken either direct from Scripture, or modern and ancient works on theology and ecclesiastical history." wikipedia
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
A surrealist film directed by Luis Buñuel and written by Jean-Claude Carrière in collaboration with the director.The film was made in France and is mainly in French, with some dialogue in Spanish.
The film concerns a group of upper class people attempting — despite continual interruptions — to dine together. The film received the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and a nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
A satire on social mores and class hypocrisy that takes place in a very dark, funny, bizarre and sexually dysfunctional middle class setting.
The Phantom of Liberty (1974)
Bourgeois convention is demolished in Luis Bunuel’s surrealist gem. Featuring an elegant soiree with guests seated at toilet bowls, poker-playing monks using religious medals as chips, and police officers looking for a missing girl who is right under their noses, this perverse, playfully absurd comedy of non sequiturs deftly compiles many of the themes that preoccupied Bunuel throughout his career – from the hypocrisy of conventional morality to the arbitrariness of social arrangements.
Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., an engineer from Malden, Mass. decided to become the Florence Nightengale of Death Row — a humanitarian whose mission was to design and repair, electric chairs, lethal injection systems, gallows and gas chambers, . In 1988, Ernst Zundel, publisher of "Did Six Million Really Die?" and "The Hitler We Loved and Why" commissioned Leuchter to conduct a forensic investigation into the use of poison gas in WWII Nazi concentration camps. Leuchter traveled to Auschwitz and illegally took brick and mortar samples for analysis in order to "prove" that the Holocaust never happened.
Leuchter fully expected his involvement with Ernst Zundel to be the crowning achievement of his career, but instead it ruined him. Reopening the doors to this century's keystone atrocity. Morris bypasses a more obvious discourse on bigotry to examine instead the origins of evil in vanity and self-deception. (FROM errolmorris.com)
Innocent people are being brutally murdered on the streets of New York City by a uniformed police officer. As the death toll rises, Detective Frank McCrae heads the investigation. Jack Forrest, a young cop, finds himself under arrest as the chief suspect. He and his girlfriend Theresa, along with McCrae then set out to solve the mystery before the Maniac Cop strikes again.
A Russian version of an American or Spaghetti Western hybridized with a heroic Russian folk tale. The protagonist is a soldier of the Red Army named Sukhov who has been fighting in the Russian Civil War in what would be Turkmenistan today. Sukhov has been discharged from the Red Army and is crossing the desert to get home to his wife when he gets involved in some local bullshit. Sukhov is put in charge of escorting the harem of Basmachi guerilla leader (Abdulla) to a local seaport. Abdulla is wanted by the Red Army and left his harem behind because the women hindered his escape from them. Abdulla ends up posting up at the same seaport as well with his swarthy gang of Islamic bandit brothers. Hilarity, gun fighting, and drunken ballads ensue.
Russian cosmonauts ritualy watch The White Sun of the Desert the night before space launches. The movie also spawned many popular sayings in Russian including the following...
"His grenades are of a wrong system" - refers to or to comment upon any kind of excuse, particularly a pathetic one. The line wasn't scripted, but improvised by the actor.
"I'm writing to you again, my dear Katerina Matveyevna"… - used as a prelude to a letter humorously emphasizing its unusually high volume of detail or frequency of mail exchange.
"Customs gives the green light" - refers to any type of approval, especially reluctant approval.
The story follows con man Moses Pray (Ryan O'Neal) and young Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal), an orphaned daughter of a prostitute. Because Moses had once had an affair with her mother, there is speculation that he is in fact Addie's father (which he denies). Moses is charged with bringing Addie to her aunt's home. Along the way, Moses manages to con the man who hit Addie's mother with his car into giving him two hundred dollars, claiming it's for Addie. Addie overhears this conversation and later demands the money from him. Because he spent the money, Moses is forced to keep Addie with him until he has raised two hundred dollars to give to her. Addie soon learns how Moses makes his money - he finds recently widowed women and visits them pretending to be a Bible salesman who recently sold a Bible to the deceased husband. The widows then pay him for the book. Addie joins in the scam, pretending to be his daughter, which makes the widows more willing to pay (as it makes Moses seem more legitimate). As time passes, Moses and Addie become a formidable team and seem to forget about Addie leaving for her aunt.
French auteur Jean-Luc Godard continues his fascination with the crime genre--after BREATHLESS and BAND OF OUTSIDERS--with PIERROT LE FOU. After escaping his stale, bourgeois marriage, Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a man on the run, encounters a captivating woman, Marianne (Godard's then-wife, Anna Karina). Striking up an immediate connection, the two begin a freewheeling affair that leads them to the Mediterranean Sea. There's one slight problem, though. Marianne is being pursued by a group of bloodthirsty mobsters who have chased her out of Algeria. Making matters worse for Ferdinand is the unfortunate fact that she turns out to be as much of a headache as his wife was, constantly referring to him as "Pierrot," much to his disdain. As their relationship reaches its boiling point, the hit men arrive, threatening to terminate both their relationship and their lives. Based on Lionel White's OBSESSION, PIERROT LE FOU is an example of a filmmaker's lack of preparation actually working to his benefit. Godard has said that he had no script on which to proceed, forcing him to make up the film as he went along. It is this seemingly improvised, brisk pacing--in addition to the performances of Belmondo and Karina--that makes the film such a fresh and original twist on an oft-mimicked genre
The picture is considered a classic of the film noir genre. Director Dassin later confessed that he never read the novel the movie is based upon. In an interview appearing on The Criterion Collection DVD release, Dassin recalls that the casting of Tierney was in response to a request by Darryl Zanuck, who was concerned that personal problems had rendered the actress "suicidal," and hoped that work would improve her state of mind. The film's British version was five minutes longer, with a more upbeat ending and featuring a completely different film score. Dassin has endorsed the American version as closer to his vision.
"Jules Dassin's 1950 masterpiece was his first movie after being exiled from America for alleged communist politics, and the unpleasant ordeal seems to have infused his work with a newfound resentment and pessimism, as the film—about foolhardy scam-artist Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) and his ill-advised attempts to become a big shot—brims with anger, anxiousness, and a shocking dose of unadulterated hatred."
Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) is a London hustler with ambitious plans that never work out. One day, when he encounters the most famous Greco-Roman wrestler in the world, Gregorius, at a London wrestling arena run by his son Kristo, he dreams up a scheme that he thinks will finally be his ticket to financial independence. As Fabian attempts to con everyone around him to get his scheme to work, he of course only ends up conning himself. This is an interesting tale of blind ambition, self-deception, broken dreams, and how a man who always thinks he's ahead of the game ends up tripping himself very badly. Written by Alan Katz
