Maps to the Stars (2014) - 9/10. Forget Hollywood Babylon. Welcome to Hollywood Abaddon. David Cronenberg is our Virgil, introducing us to a Child Star From Hell (Evan Bird), a Has-Been Actress From Hell (Julianne Moore), a Psychologist/ Motivational Speaker From Hell (John Cusack), and, in a cameo, a Carrie Fisher (playing herself) Who Just Looks Like Hell. And moving amongst them all is Mia Wasikowska, a burn-victim PA with a frightening agenda. They all see dead people, or most of them do . . . could it be because they are , you know, from Hell (or going there soon?). This is satire with real bite. Warning: children and dogs die in this film.
Also, I'm now among the group of people convinced he was the one behind the hanging scene in OUATITW.
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More precisely, the fact that the brother is on his little brother?s shoulder. That kind of creative cruelty feels a lot like what I?ve seen in Opera. So I think it was Argento?s idea.
Did Leone need Argento for creative cruelty? what about in GBU, when the soldier in "The carriage of the spirits" unable to say the name on the grave because his throat is so parched?
If I remember that correctly there exists one pretty unknown early Spaggie, which features a similar scene.
Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) - 10/10. Raul Ruiz's four-and-a-half hour HD adaptation of a famous 19th Century Portuguese novel. The decision to go digital must have been economically motivated (Ruiz shot it very quickly for Portuguese television), and the results, while generally appealing, reveal the shortcomings of the technology (especially on quick tracks and pans, where backgrounds tend not to read correctly). Nonetheless, there are a number of painting-like tableaux in the "film" that are the equal of anything in The Leopard or Barry Lyndon (but with much paler hues). The plot consists of not one but several interlocking tales about ill-fated love and abandoned children, and each is told in flashback. Structurally the movie resembles The Saragossa Manuscript, though with less whimsy and without recourse to supernatural explanations. Memory is the story's great theme. Of course, Ruiz has done an adaptation of Proust, but there were times during my viewing that I was reminded of that other masterwork on the subject, Once Upon a Time in America (especially when the camera lingers on clocks or the numerous doors). Even so, I was thunderstruck at the end when Ruiz, reaching for some kind of meta-literary statement to cap his work, virtually lifted the entire ending from Leone's film. Well, you should always steal from the best, so I can't really fault him for that. Ruiz soon died after making this, but went on to release several other films. The guy just can't stop!
Un maledetto imbroglio / The Facts of Murder (1959) - 7/10. A whodunit with a lot of laughs, with the film's director playing the lead detective. As the plot is rather complicated, I defer to the IMDb synopsis: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053039/ Lots of red herrings, which obscure--for a time--what turns out to be an obvious and not-very-satisfying solution. Great seeing another screen appearance of La Cardinale, of course.