Friday, February 19, 2010
★★★½ LADY VENGEANCE
Chinjeolhan geumjassi
a.k.a. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, My Lady Vengeance, Shed Tears for Lady Vengeance, Kind-Hearted Ms. Geum-Ja
Directed by Chan-wook Park
cast: Yeong-ae Lee, Min-sik Choi, Tony Barry, Anne Cordiner, Su-hee Go, Hye-jeong Kang, Bu-seon Kim, Byeong-ok Kim, Shi-hoo
2005 - South Korea
112 minutes
Thursday, February 18, 2010
★½ THE JAIL: WOMEN'S HELL
Directed by Bruno Mattei (as Vincent Dawn)
written by Antonio Tentori
Cast: Dyane Craystan, Jim Gaines, Odette Khan, Mike Monty, Amelie Pontailler, Yvette Yzon
2006 - Italy
94 minutes
★★★ WOMEN OF DEVIL'S ISLAND (1962)
Le prigioniere dell'isola del diavolo
a.k.a. Przesluchanie , Island of Imprisoned Women, Women Prisoner's of Devil's Island
directed by Domenico Paolella
written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Domenico Paolella
cast: Guy Madison, Michele Mercier, Paul Muller,Marisa Belli
1962 - Italy | France86 minutes
written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Domenico Paolella
cast: Guy Madison, Michele Mercier, Paul Muller,Marisa Belli
1962 - Italy | France86 minutes
Saturday, February 13, 2010
★★½ SASORI
Directed by Joe Ma
Cast: Miki Mizuno, Dylan Kuo, Emme Wong
2008 - Japan
101 minutes
101 minutes
In this version, housewife Sasori (Miki Mizuno) becomes the victim of some psychotic thugs hired by a wealthy bioengineer to assassinate her father in-law. These thrill kill super villains like to get their kicks as well, so they force her to kill noodle-happy dad and the sister in-law while her cop husband (Dylan Kuo) watches. By some inexplicable comic logic, she never explains who forced her to do it and the husband never saw the four fashion foes standing in their house!
I have a sneaking suspicion that the end of this film was shot first then the production ran out of money. Other than the lighting, the first hour of Sasori looks like a 50 buck budget and contains so many annoying fading, zooming and dissolving jump cuts punctuated by loud sound effects it almost induces seizures. The prison sequence is so no-frills that the number designating Sassori as the infamous prisoner 701 appears to be written in Sharpie on a “Hello my name is” sticker! The last 30 minutes resembles a completely different film with a 500K budget and better crew. There are even plot revelations in the end that were never set up in the beginning, so they don’t make any sense. What the hell?!
Friday, February 12, 2010
★½ JOURNEY AMONG WOMEN
Written & Directed by Tom Cowan
Cast: June Pritchard, Martin Phelan, Nell Campbell
1977 - Austrailia
93 minutes
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
★★½ The Green-Eyed Blonde (1957)
BIG BUST OUT: The Green-Eyed Blonde (1957) Full Review
The inmates hide the toddler and form stronger bonds from the new responsibilities of motherhood and Betsy finally warms up to her kid, but the staff eventually becomes suspicious when the girls constantly break into loud group singing to cover the babies crying and Renie (Beverly Long) is busted burying soiled diapers made from the disappearing linen. The baby is found in the possession of Greeneye and taken to an orphanage resulting in a massive and quite impressive reform school riot.
For you Trekies out there, Susan Oliver went on to play Nina in the two part STAR TREK Menagerie episodes. Producer Martin Melcher would go on to squander Doris Day's money in bad investments, turn down the offer for old Doris to play Mrs. Robinson in THE GRADUATE (without her knowledge) and die right after signing his wife to a CBS TV series (without her consent). Obviously, Melcher liked to live up to the high moral codes of the pictures he produced.
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