Li'l Duce's Reviews Palace

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Eight days a week (2016) Some recording one may have missed, good colorization of old b&w  very well known material and good  editing of pics. Usual very well known facts in the new interviews. But of course is strictly fans material.  8/10

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Bronson (2008) I thought it was a crime movie but it is only the portrait of a psycho (and so the story has little to say: a good hour is made up of repetitions of the first prison experience). I kept wondering why the british authorities (but most of all the prison guards) put up with such a scum for so many years and always gave him a chance to start all over again. In a USA jailhouse he would have lasted, maybe, a month. Over here, without any question,  a couple of days. I watched it through just to see if anything different happened, but it doesn't: so one can see the first 20 minutes and turn off. 4/10

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All Women Are Bad (1969) At IMDB somebody hinted at noir elements, but this is just a piece of sexploitation, boring as hell, not redeemed by a good dose of boobs and buns by not beautiful females. Only point of interest might be the supposedly first appearance on film of Gerard Damiano. 3/10

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Geißel des Fleisches  (1965) Austria's contribute to sexploitation, it has a good beginning, with quality display of boobs and buns, but after the scene with the hitchhiker the plot goes stretched, boring, with interminable going nowhere trial and cop scenes. A pity. Herbert Fux is good as usual, though the premise of his character is moronic: he kills women because they find his looks repulsive (!). 6/10

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Winter Kills (1979) Another '70's conspiracy thriller, a self-proclaiming re-reading of the Kennedy's murder, which manages somehow to keep you interested in spite of unexplained plot twists (the multiple attempts on Bridges life). Not as good as Parallax View or Condor, but well worth a watching, especially for the final scene with Bridges and Huston, which alone could raise the rating to 8/10..

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Okasareta hakui (Violated Angels) (1967) Hadn't realized how much furnished were jap girls backwise. This is a T&A sexploitation flick I had wanted to watch, but didn't manage to, since the early '70's when it was shown in a small cinema over here. But I had no idea that it was about a serial killer and quite disturbing at that. Still at not even an hour of lenght it is 15' too long, trying to give some reason for the psycho's behaviour. 7/10

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Pasazerka (Passenger) (1963)

Considered by many the best movie on concentration camps, it is certainly a remarkable movie but it suffers, maybe, from its not having been completed by the prematurely dead author.  What doesn't work, for me, is its not making clear the game the protagonist plays with her victim (is she a lesbian?): but maybe the subtitles translator didn't make her/his work fine. On the other hand, the recreation of daily life in the camp it has all the force of a documentary. And the absence of whatever trace of melodrama gives it a 7-8/10.

[cigar joe]

Vivre sa vie (1962) This has got to do with prostitution as much as Inside Llewyn Davis with music. A pity because at the start it seemed that Godard wanted to make a movie. The story it's interesting until the girl gets herself a pimp: from the on it's all a waste of time. Michel Legrand signed probably his worst OST. I give it 6/10 because of the exteriors of Paris.  

Saw this last night agree a 6/10

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Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) A half of it is a noir and, at the same time, a reflection about it. The other half is the usual Allen's boring crap. 7/10

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Deadline - U.S.A (1952) As formulaic as can be, you've seen and heard it all before. Famous last lines, which contradict though the main plot which shows that press, far from being unstoppable, actually can be stopped by money. Anyway, it gets worse and worse. 5/10.
On youtube.

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Lola rennt (1998) Thrice-told tale Rashomon-like in Tarantino's style. A time-waster with no pretensions. 6/10

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In the Heat of the Night (1967) What would have been the choice had GBU been entered in the Oscar race of 1968? Namely, what would have been the choice between Steiger and Wallach? Anyway this gets 8/10.

[cigar joe]

In the Heat of the Night (1967) What would have been the choice had GBU been entered in the Oscar race of 1968? Namely, what would have been the choice between Steiger and Wallach? Anyway this gets 8/10.

Wallach for me.

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Ustinov's Six Poirots

For a Ustinov fan of course they're all mandatory viewing. Ustinov is not playing Poirot but Ustinov, which is an advantage: the character comes up as sympathetic and sometimes funny, the opposite of what the Christie's original concept was. But of course the problem is the screen time devoted to the non Ustinov scenes. In the first two movies the locales and some of the actors manage to save you from boredom, but the following three tv movies, in spite of actors like Dunaway or Curtis, just can't make it. Oddly (or maybe not, as it is a Golan-Globus production), in the last movie (Appointment with Death) though the cast and locales are comparable to those of the first two movies, the screenplay is weak and even Ustinov is a bit dull.   

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Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) I don't think this is so much worse than the chronologically - storywise - first three episodes. But it's hard to fill up 150'. And then the casino locale was a good idea but it wasn't exploited at all. But the worst thing is the casting. Do people at Disney thing that by choosing ugly actors (the chinese girl makes my skin cringe even more than the artificial monsters) audiences can sympathize or identify themselves more easily? 5/10