The Deep (1977)

A couple vacationing in Bermuda find some objects while scuba diving. One of the objects is an ampule which arouses the interest of a local drug dealer. They hire an experienced diver to guide them in a new visit to the site.

Perfectly anodyne adventure, filled with thrills of a predictable nature. It is expertly filmed, though.

Rating: 40

My Blue Heaven (1990/I)

An ex-mafioso decides to testify against his former colleagues and is put under government protection in a small town. He becomes a sort of mentor to his FBI custodian.

A naive comedy which oscillates between mildly funny and mildly annoying. Certain reverberations are felt in Find Me Guilty (2006).

Rating: 38

Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975)

English title: Seven Beauties.

The life story of an Italian man living in the Mussolini years. He kills his sister's pimp and fiancé, feigns madness, goes to war, deserts, is made a prisoner by the Germans.

A poor film, in every aspect but the acting. A sort of portrait, I think, of the "common man" of Italy, with his political ignorance, his sexist worldview, and, perhaps most basic of them all, his survival instinct. The mise-en-scene is at times awkward, the tone is highly caricatural, not my idea of fun, really.

Rating: 35

Tango & Cash (1989)

Two cops operating in Los Angeles are very different in style: one dresses slickly and is a kind of wealthy dilettante, and the other dresses very casually and is more of a working class type. The two happen to be on to the same drug case and are set up by the drug dealer who is behind the criminal operations. They end up doing time in the same prison.

Low-brow cop action drama, which has a minimal amount of entertaining value.

Rating: 33

Ernest Goes to Jail (1990)

Ernest is a janitor in a bank. He is summoned for jury duty. The defendant's boss is a prison inmate and Ernest's dead ringer. A switch is planned.

Both screenplay and direction are moderately competent. The Ernest persona is here explored to a certain amount of comicity.

Rating: 38

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)

The life story of a man. He marries, joins the police force, finds out he is adopted, divorces, becomes a fulltime homosexual, quits the force, resorts to fraud for increasing his income, goes to prison, finds a new lover, etc.

A good film made of comical proceedings which weave a dramatic story. The paradox of the con man is that he chooses to be an outsider in order to be within the system (cf. Catch Me If You Can).

Rating: 60

Los Borgia (2006)

English title: The Borgias.

Historical drama about the notorious family of the Renaissance consisting of Pope Alexander VI and his children, the most remarkable of whom was Cesar, who intended to be the first king of Italy.

Dreadful compilation of a miniseries. Do not waste your time with this chopped-up monster. As for the complete miniseries, I wouldn't count on it being much better, based on this sample.

Rating: 11

Jade (1995)

The gruesome murder of a millionaire has as main suspect a psychologist who apparently leads a hidden sexual life.

Second viewing of this not very attractive thriller. It is competently made, though.

Rating: 41 (up from 40)

Spanglish (2004)

A Mexican woman with a small daughter is hired as housemaid to a dysfunctional family.

Insipid dramedy, which I saw for the second time.

Rating: 30 (up from 15)

Water (2005/I)

In 30's (I think) India, a child is considered a widow whose promised husband dies. She is obliged to perpetual chastity and is sent to a house where widows live.

Conventional drama about the retrograde customs of India.

Rating: 30

El ángel exterminador (1962)

English title: The Exterminating Angel.

A group of people gathering for a dinner is not able to leave the house, for no reason at all.

Second viewing. Interesting venture into absurdity. The style is a cross between Twilight Zone-ish and Buñuel-ish. I don't see the point of the elements apparently unrelated to the central situation, such as the bear, and the film's title.

Rating: 63

Tangshan dadizhen (2010)

English title: Aftershock.

A Chinese child is separated from her family after an Earthquake.

Melodrama without much interest. It is well-made, though.

Rating: 33

Extract (2009)

The owner of an extract (that's the name of a drink made of the juice of a fruit) manufacturing company hires a male prostitute to have sex with his wife, so that he may be guilt-free when pursuing extramarital affairs. His love target is a dangerous woman though.

Entertaining comedy; I laughed several times through it. And it provides a snapshot about the current situation of capitalism in the U.S..

Rating: 61

Ernest Goes to Camp (1987)

A summer camp janitor aspires to be camp counselor. A mining company wants to buy the property.

Extremely low-brow comedy. One might compare its view of native americans with that of They Died with Their Boots On, and see they don't differ much.

Rating: 13

They Died with Their Boots On (1941)

A fiction very loosely based on the life of General Custer. First West Point, then the Civil War, then the Indian War and his defeat at Little Bighorn.

The West Point section has some interest and is entertaining; the rest of the film didn't really work for me as it seemed to be just a series of concoctions with the purpose of hiding the (for Hollywood standards) ugly truth.

Rating: 41

True Grit (2010)

A fourteen-year-old girl hires a bounty hunter to capture her father's murderer.

The Coens have by now proven that they can do any kind of picture. I wouldn't know the purpose of that, but I guess it would be for them to say, if it would be for anybody. Anyway there is nothing to drive a narrative like a good hunt. If there are killings in it (and you can bet there will be, in this kind of cinema) so much the better. Is there any evidence that there has ever been, in the whole history of the U.S.A., any real-life case of adults (let alone a child of 14) going to such trouble to bring "closure" (they like this word) to their lives? What does this all mean? Fiction here does not enact reality. Do they hope that reality will enact fiction? Or does this bring a higher sense of moral to the nation?

Rating: 65

L'amour à mort (1984)

English title: Love Unto Death.

A man is given as dead and resurrects after his girlfriend summons him back.

A film in two parts; they don't have much in common except the characters, apparently, and the death-related theme. It feels like an essay, or like a melodrama which was stripped of emotional excess. The film is thematically similar to La chambre verte (both had Jean Gruault as screenwriter), and to Portrait of Jennie.

Rating: 51

Victim (1961)

A respected lawyer gets involved in a blackmail case on account of his homosexual past.

This appears to be a much respected movie, a sort of heroic manifesto against the British anti-sodomy law, which, the lady in TV informs us after the movie, lasted another 6 years counting from the film's release (and this hardly speaks for the film's efficacy). Some viewers admit it is "dated", an obvious fact, but what few will admit is that it is outright absurd, and would be ignored if it weren't for its worthy cause. The premise is absurd (a blackmailer targeting the poorer end of a relationship, and the latter going to extremes to oblige him because of his devotion to a man with whom he hardly had anything going, and about whom he (absurdly) kept a news clips album); the investigation carried out by the lawyer is also absurd. Not to mention a fact which is rather common in "groundbreaking" films, namely that they are not all that groundbreaking and contain a lot of hypocrisy in the depiction of characters, especially in this case the protagonist (a struggling ex-homosexual who is moved by his would-be lover's quite implausible suicide).

Rating: 32

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)

An inventor buys an old car and fixes it, at the request of his two children. The rich daughter of a sweets maker is the romantic interest. They all go on an imagined journey in which the jalopy acquires new powers, such as flying and floating, and is coveted by an evil monarch.

Musical fantasy with excellent cast and excellent production design, but still a bit insipid on the whole. Certain narrative ruses are worth mentioning. One, the inventor is at a carnival and takes part in a music and dance number. This could be taken as following the specific conventions of musicals in which actors sing and dance even though their characters are not necessarily singers or dancers; here, however, we have a musical number which is part of the realistic context (a carnival), and furthermore the inventor uses the money received for his performance to buy the title car. Two, the core of the film's action is actually a story told by the inventor; the fantastic elements are present in this story-within-a-story only.

Rating: 50

The Hindenburg (1975)

The famous disaster of the Hindenburg zeppelin in 1937 is fictionally explained. The film consists of this and also the several characters who are more or less suspect.

Extremely baloney, extremely well-made fictionalization of a true incident. Entertaining yet childish.

Rating: 51