Kanpong Banjongpinit co-wrote and directed Night of the Killer Bears. The story follows five teenage friends who live in Bangkok—a long time has passed since they’d seen each other. They decide to vacation together at a quiet, low-end retreat isolated from the city.
Matters turn dark because each friend has a secret, which becomes revealed while someone outside the group watches them.
The brutal murder of one friend motivates the survivors to accuse each other of being the murderer. Yet they consider the possibility that the murderer is not one of them. Someone else in their midst, observing them. If that is the case, they all are in danger.
Killers in bear costumes swing sabers and bisect teenagers while slashing off heads with vicious slices. It’s a bloody mess.
Possibly Banjonginit movie is a play on the franchise horror slasher Scream.
It’s funny but too campy for my taste. With the English subtitles, you’ll get by with the simple and sparse dialogue.
The cast includes Sananthachat Thanapatpisal as Aim, Patchata Jan-Ngern as Win, Khemanit Jamikorn as Som, and Chanagun Apornsutinan as Tony.
Enjoy two hours of genuine laughs when you pop this Munsters DVD in your player. You’ll watch some rare shows and featurettes about a silly family on a TV show.
The series aired in the 1960s and continued with a decade of reruns. Do you remember where the Munsters lived?
Mockingbird Lane is where the Munsters entertained audiences of all ages. Sure, the episodes were spooky in a fun way. Kids and parents could relate to the innocence of being a silly monster family — some family members are not too bright.
For the first time in a long time, long-lost television appearances of the cast—Fred Gwynne (Herman), Yvonne De Carlo (Lily), Al Lewis (Grandpa), Pat Priest (Marilyn) and Butch Patrick (Eddie) are available to be enjoyed again in this historical and hysterical collection.
Marineland Carnival & More Lost Treasures with the Munsters TV Show Cast Members have arrived. The DVD includes the hour-long Marineland Carnival 1965 special starring the Munsters. Next is a 1966 full-color Munsters-themed “episode” with Fred Gwynne as Herman on The Danny Kaye Show.
I found the other rare skits and vintage talk show interviews funny while learning a little about the actors.
An all-new featurette called Munster Memories with Butch Patrick is fascinating. Watch before you watch the episodes if you need to become more familiar with The Munsters.
Also included is the hit music from the New Christy Minstrels. And there are guest appearances by legends Edie Adams and Joey Bishop.
This short is not on the DVD but shows the human side of The Munsters.
As a dark comedy of heavy-handed and trashy entertainment, this Christmas horror movie may make you wonder if some of its laughs are intentional or a bit off the rocker. You’ll see buckets of blood, along with bellies full of laughter.
Filmed on location in South Lake Tahoe for just 13 days, the low-budget production comes through with a talented cast that’s stiff and nightmarish.
Written and directed by Sean Nichols, Red Snow follows Olivia Romo, played by Dennice Cisneros, as a struggling vampire romance novelist holed up in South Lake Tahoe. Here, she’s forced to defend herself against real-life vampires during the holidays.
It all starts with an injured bat named Luke, played by Nico Bellamy, who becomes a handsome vampire after slamming into her living room window.
Unbeknownst to Olivia, she takes pity on the wounded animal and places it in her garage. She nurses the bat a bit, and the next day, the little creature transforms into a real-life Edward, a full-size vampire.
Olivia knows when opportunity knocks, so she makes a deal with Luke. Read her unpublished manuscript, and he can stay a few days in the garage to heal from an unpleasant wooden stake injury. She keeps him satisfied with microwaved pig blood in a mug. In return, he gives his feedback on the manuscript.
Luke is your typical vampire, but he takes a liking to Olivia. Their relationship barely flourishes when Olivia’s suspicion of Luke’s true intentions surfaces as his deadly past catches up with him.
The humor takes hold with a rather odd private detective, played by Vernon Wells, who acts more like a voyeur, spying on her and rummaging through her garage.
The evenings become sinister with pale figures dressed in black visiting the cabin, who turn out to be Luke’s vampire friends, played by Laura Kennon and Alan Silva. They want Luke to return to their brood, of course, after they help themselves to the blood of Olivia.
More romance and less terror, sticking with the Edward and Bella theme, might have saved the movie in the long run.
Thank you, The Guardian, for the information about the movie.
“To the moon, Alice” is a familiar phrase of Jackie Gleason, as Ralph would say to his wife, played by Audrey Meadows. The Honeymooners was one of the first situation comedies of the 1950s. A half-hour show began as a segment on Cavalcade of Stars, then emerged even better on The Jackie Gleason Show in 1955.
The show developed with cast leavings, cast changes, and edited versions of close to 70 incarnations of what we call The Honeymooners. The series ended in 1971. If you look over the show’s history, you’ll realize it wasn’t a show, but it had stamina — popularity that people still recognize. So, it became a TV Sitcom.
Between 1976 and 1978, Jackie Gleason and his co-stars, Art Carney, Audrey Meadows and Jane Kean, were filmed in color with a live audience. Four shows were produced and filmed in Miami, Florida. The Honeymooners: A Christmas Carol was the second one made. It’s now available for your Christmas movie library.
The show opens with Ralph boasting about taking a trip to Miami with Alice as a Christmas vacation. Until his boss, played by Gale Gordon, asks Ralph to find a director for his wife’s Christmas charity play. The money raised gives homeless cats in New York City a feline Merry Christmas.
Ralph has concerns that the guy who takes the director’s job gets bumped up to the traffic manager. So, he accepts the task and tries to convince Alice that the charity play is more important than going to Miami. Charles Dickens’ play, A Christmas Carol, comes to mind, and Ralph rewrites the classic. The result is hilarious as it’s nothing like the original when Ed takes on the job as the inexperienced director. The best scene is when Ed plays both Scrooge and Tiny Tim.
Bonus features include an interview with Jane Kean and an extra episode from the 1960s sitcom.
The release gives the younger generation a chance to see how clean and straightforward a television show is possible. The Honeymooners: A Christmas Carol is everything you’d expect from a live television show of the 1960s. But this 1977 most likely will not garner fans. But if you are familiar with the show, you are in for a special treat. “Recapture my youth? If I keep this up, I’ll lose my old age!”
Directed by Paolo Pilladi, Last Call follows Mick, played by Jeremy Piven, a successful story and estate developer. He returns home to his offbeat blue-collar Irish neighborhood in the shadows of Philadelphia, Darby Heights, for his mother’s funeral and must stay to ensure his parents’ ailing family business gets back on course.
Amidst all of this, he grows closer to his childhood crush, played by Taryn Manning, who is also back in town, while enduring the constant ridicule from his old hometown crew.
Mick reconnects with the neighborhood where he grew up, and he finds himself at the crossroads when forced to raze or resurrect the family bar. He needs to decide whether to develop a casino near gentrification or keep the tradition of neighborhood bars. If Mick pushes the casino through, it will destroy Darby Heights.
Unfortunately, the movie falls flat despite an impressive cast that includes Bruce Dern, Cathy Moriarty and Jamie Kennedy.
Thank you, The Guardian, for the additional information.
Kino Classics released some extraordinary German classic films from the silent era during the 1920s. Each one is available on Blu-ray or DVD. Presented in restorations by F. W. Murnau-Stiftung, I found each movie stunning and mesmerizing.
The films restored are The Great Leap (1927), directed by Arnold Fanck and starring Leni Riefenstahl, Paul Wegener’s The Golem (1920), G. W. Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), and F. W. Murnau’s Tartuffe (1925), starring Emil Jannings.
The Great Leap (1927)
I first watchedThe Great Leap, which features an audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan. The movie stars Leni Riefenstahl, who is infamous as the great documentarian of Hitler. Before all that, she was foremost an actress, and she is good in this movie. It’s super funny. Apparently, Riefenstahl was a popular actress who starred in several mountain movies directed by Arnold Fanck. They included The Holy Mountain (Der heilige Berg, 1926) and The White Hell of Pitz Palu (Die weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü, 1929) as dramas of romance and survival.
The Great Leap suggests was something different as a playful romantic comedy set high atop the Dolomites. Riefenstahl plays an Italian peasant whose simple life is upended when a series of urbanites invade the slopes for a ski vacation. This bubbly comedy (featuring Riefenstahl’s usual on-screen love interest, Luis Trenker) combines slapstick laughs with stunning footage of acrobatic skiing and rock climbing, making it perhaps the most entertaining but unique movie out of all the German mountain films.
The Golem (1920)
Then I watched The Golem that contains both a 4K restoration of the German release version with three musical scores by Stephen Horne, Admir Shkurtaj, and Lukasz “Wudec” Poleszak, including U.S. release version with music by Cordula Heth. A feature comes with a comparison between the German and U.S. versions, and audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas.
Hypothetically acknowledged as the source of the Frankenstein myth, the ancient Hebrew legend of the Golem provided actor and director Paul Wegener with the substance for an intriguing and adventure movie. Suffering under the tyrannical rule of Rudolf II in 16th-century Prague, a Talmudic rabbi, played by Albert Steinruck, creates a giant warrior, played by Wegener to protect the safety of his people. When the rabbi’s assistant, played by Ernst Deutsch, takes control of the Golem and attempts to use him for selfish gain, the lumbering monster runs rampant, abducting the rabbi’s daughter, played by Lyda Salmonova, and setting fire to the ghetto. The special effects for this time are impressive, creating the creation sequence with a dazzling blend of religion, sorcery, and the grand-scale destruction toward the end of the movie. The Golem was apparently an outstanding achievement from the legendary UFA Studios and remains an undeniable landmark in the horror’s evolution film.
The Love of Jeanne Ney came next and presents both the restored German release version with music arranged and orchestrated by Bernd Thewes, and the U.S. release version with music by Andrew Earle Simpson. It includes audio commentary by film historian Eddy Von Mueller.
The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927)
An epic of the Weimar cinema (Cinema of Germany), The Love of Jeanne Ney follows a young French woman’s struggle for happiness amid the political turbulence and corruption of post-World War I Europe. Directed by G. W. Pabst, who also directed Diary of a Lost Girl, Pandora’s Box, the film blends a variety of cinematic approaches as it weaves its complex narrative of moral chaos and political upheaval. Consider the use of the “American Style,” evocative of the Hollywood studio blockbuster; the avant-garde techniques of Soviet montage; and the eerie moving camerawork and shadowy perspectives are typical of German Expressionism. The result is a stunning cinematic experiment that never failed to surprise me with fast sequences that end with an exhilarating conclusion.
Tartuffe (1925)
Tartuffe includes both the German release version with a new score by Robert Israel and the U.S. release version with music by Giuseppe Becce, adapted by Javier Perez de Azpeita.
Tartuffe (1925)
Considered one of the most gifted visual storytellers during the German silent era, F. W. Murnau crafted works of great subtlety and emotional complexity through his absolute command of the cinematic medium. Known for such dazzling films as Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926), and Sunrise (1927), Murnau draws toward more intimate dramas exploring the dark corners of the human mind.
I had a prime interest in seeing Tartuffe, where Murnau Moliére’s fable of religious hypocrisy to the screen. The story follows a faithful wife, played by Lil Dagover. She tries to convince her husband, played by Werner Krauss, that their morally superior guest, Tartuffe, played by Emil Jannings, is in fact a lecherous hypocrite with a taste for the grape. Twisting the story to heighten the contemporary relevance, Murnau frames Moliére’s tale with a modern-day plot concerning a housekeeper’s stealthy efforts to poison her elderly master and take control of his estate.
First of all, the documentary is not one. It is called a mockumentary. Directed by Eric Notarnicola, who is passionate about cinema and documentary, the filming happened on location in the San Bernardino and the Los Angeles area. The production team used a mix of non-actors and actors, creating documentary techniques to fake the experience of an actual story unwinding in real-time. The actors improvised each situation, allowing their characters and the story to unfold naturally. The style worked. It was funny and kept me entertained throughout.
The story starts with Tim Heidecker in the final month of his campaign for district attorney. He is an underdog facing an uphill battle that evolves into a delusional, crazy study of Tim’s true motivations and controversial past, unraveling his candidacy.
The movie gets more interesting at this point because Tim has taken on the popular incumbent, Vincent Rosetti, also known in Tim’s mind as “Rosetti the Rat.” Rosetti found Tim and his inexperienced campaign manager, outmatched, low on funds, connections, and experience. Tim doesn’t even have enough signatures to run. He tries hitting the streets as a last-ditch effort to connect to the voters and promises to wipe out all the crime in San Bernardino, but with no avail, he doesn’t win over the community.
His campaign grows by word of mouth, and former friends of Tim warn the public with stories about bad business deals, strained friendships, and a failed court case in which he ended up accused of murder.
He is only days away from the election, and the campaign is free falling. He needs to confront the obvious of pursuing is a delusional dream. The clip below says it all about Tim and his unsuccessful pursuit for office.
Lisa D’Apolito directed the Love, Gilda documentary. The
movie boasts “In her own words…” I am quick to differ. Like most documentaries
today, the directors skewed them to generate a message based on the director’s
proactive. Sure. The movie shows her journals with words, but the director
takes them out of context.
Tender with personal interviews while highlighting Radner’s
talent, but the movie needed to share more of her happiness and successes. We
are all human and have problems. The director skews the fact that when she
visits the doctor, she is not responsible. But clearly, she is being
responsible for going to the doctor. It is how she handles those problems that
make her a survivor.
In her journals, the director pulls out passages from
comedienne Gilda Radner reflections on her life and career. Weaving together
her recently discovered audiotapes and rare home movies, Love, Gilda shares a
side of Radner that is honest and whimsical. Portions of her diary read by
well-known comedians. Each inspired by Radner’s talent and vivaciousness, Bill
Hader, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Cecily Strong read in awe sharing her
story.
The documentary includes interviews with original “Saturday
Night Live” cast and crew, such as Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, Paul Shaffer
and longtime friend, Martin Short. Throughout the movie photos of the younger
cast and crew are spliced within the story. With photos of the young cast, all
looking healthy and vibrant is worth watching the documentary.
Her adventures before SNL have her marrying a sculpture,
moving to Canada, and divorcing. She meets her boyfriend and longtime friend,
Martin Short. She receives a phone call
from John Belushi and tells her “We need a girl.” Off Radner goes to Chicago,
being the token girl for Second City comedy group. The photographs show young
Dan Aykroyd and the late Harold Ramis.
Gilda Radner puts a smile on the faces of people who
remember watching her as one of the original cast members of SNL where she
created and portrayed now-classic comic characters such as Roseanne
Roseannadanna, Emily Litella, and Lisa Loopner. She rose to fame winning an
Emmy, starring in movies and on Broadway.
Though the director uses Radner’s words and her voice by working with the Radner Estate, D’Apolito picks her favorites from a collection of diaries and personal audio and videotapes. Documenting her childhood, her comedy career, her life with Gene Wilder and her struggle with cancer, the D’Apolito allows Radner to voice her story through laughter and tears. The never-before-seen footage and journal entries form the narrative spine of the documentary. Again, D’Apolito spins a tale of Radner trying to get Wilder to marry her. Yet, I distinctly recall, Wilder in interviews saying of how much he loved Radner and missed her so much after her death from cancer. Anyone who watches this documentary will see the love Wilder shared with Radner.
My favorite words from Radner, which I am paraphrasing, is how she mentions she just did what she loved to do, kept taking jobs, and ended up famous.
Directed by Michel Hazanavicius, who won the Best Picture Oscar for The Artist, which I totally recommend that you see The Artist if you haven’t seen it yet. It is brilliant.
With, that Hazanavicius brings us another brilliant movie called Godard Mon Amour. The movie is a true story of Jean-Luc Godard at a turning point in both his own groundbreaking career and in the art of cinema.
Just like the movie The Artist, which was set in the silent film era, Hazanavicius again tenderly transfers moviegoers back to a unique time and place in cinematic history. Known as France, in the late 1960s. We meet a Young actress Anne Wiazemsky, played by Stacy Martin, who achieved instant fame as the teenage star of Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar. She finds herself juggling political protests and artistic challenges in her married life with Jean-Luc Godard, played by Louis Garrel.
Goddard, for those who don’t know who he is, is the fearless, innovative and significant director of Breathless, Band of Outsiders and Contempt. As Wiazemsky country undergoes enormous cultural change, so too does her dynamic with her husband, as the great director becomes absorbed in the political and cultural moment and less emotionally available to his wife.
Nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and four César Awards, including Best Actor and Best Director, and co-starring Bérénice Bejo of The Artist, Godard Mon Amour is a global sensation – both as a tribute to a crucial moment in cinema history and as the resounding artistic triumph in its own right.
Ed Potton of The Times of London said Godard Mon Amour “manages to be a biopic, postmodern comedy, stylistic homage and poignant relationship study all at once.”
“Garrel is wonderfully dead-on as the director,” said Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly, adding, “Martin manages to convey some of the heartaches in watching the man you love turn sour.”
Donald Clarke of The Irish Times called the film “occasionally disrespectful and hugely amusing … It’s carried off with an irreverence that would delight Mel Brooks.”
Such a wonder of just about two hours spent enjoying filmmaking and filmmaker Goddard, I hope you get a chance to see Godard Mon Amour because it is a great movie for any movie aficionado.
Directed Mike Birbiglia, Don’t Think Twice follows a member of a popular New York City improv troupe catches the big break forcing the group to reevaluate their success and confront their fears in the hilariously honest movie.
This is a bittersweet movie about the behind-the-scenes look at the lives of six best friend comedians. If you have ever been with an improv group, like I have, you will find this to be one of your favorite films to watch with friends of the same persuasion. It is a funny movie about the angst of chasing aspirations.
I recommend taking a look at the behind-the-scenes featurettes. They add to the hilarity of the movie with a concept of what it takes to bring this whole movie to life. A movie about a six-person comedy team known as The Commune, working together for 11 years, has killed it onstage while waiting for their big break. Without warning, the team finds itself at a crossroads when one of the members becomes a solo success and the rest of the group realizes they may not make it big after all.
The featurette selection also includes Don’t Think Twice: The Art of Improv. It is a brilliant and enlightening piece about the love of improv, which is the heart of the movie. In this featurette, you will be able to explore the philosophy that inspired the world and comedy found within the movie.
My first thought, that is an entertainer’s nightmare. Success is great, but when other members are left out, it can feel like a long drop into the abyss of being no one.
The movie talented, funny and honest cast includes Keegan-Michael, Gillian Jacobs, Mike Birbiglia, Kate Micucci, Chris Gethard, and Tami Sagher.
