Lima

Poster tagline: WHAT PRIMITIVE PASSIONS… WHAT MAD DESIRES DROVE HIM ON? HE HELD THEM ALL IN THE GRIP OF DEADLY TERROR… NOTHING COULD KEEP HIM FROM THIS WOMAN HE CLAIMED AS HIS OWN!!! A kind of B-movie variation on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The "doctor" here is Professor Groves, who tries to prove to the scientific community, with general ridicule, that the ancient Neanderthals had a more developed brain than the present-day homo sapiens-sapiens, while Mr Hyde is his alter ego – a primitive Neanderthal in trousers, white shirt and a funny mask – into which he transformed after the injection of a special serum. The real fun starts after the middle, when the hairy Groves runs through the mountains, knocks out three men and a dog, kidnaps a screaming woman and finally fights a sabre-toothed tiger (his former cat, which he also transformed by injection). Location shots of the Sierra make up about five percent of the film, with the rest wandering around cheap sets with fake trees and the professor's house. Groves's prehistoric mask is not very good, and the illusion of a sabre-toothed tiger is created by shots of an ordinary tiger, probably borrowed from the circus, combined with about five close-up shots of a head mask with artificial incisors, and the two views don't fit together at all.

Poster tagline: TEST TUBE TERROR-BEAST AMOK ON COLLEGE CAMPUS! CO-ED BEAUTY CAPTIVE O A MAN MONSTER! STUDENTS VICTIM OF TERROR-BEAST!!! Neither silly enough to be fun, nor good enough to watch again. In any case, unworthy of the name of Jack Arnold, probably the best filmmaker of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. An average director of his time could have made this and the result would have been the same. The whole thing revolves around the last surviving prehistoric fish that Prof. Blake had brought to his lab. He gets infected from it three times (a cut, a splash of the fish blood from a pipe, and an experiment with an injection directly into a vein) and each time he turns into – well – a Neanderthal!! In the first transformation he kills his friend, in the second he kills the detective who’s after him, and in the last he runs like a Stone Age man across the countryside, with a torn plaid shirt and an axe in his hand, making menacing grunting noises, which is quite at odds with the rest of the film, where he philosophically ponders the narrow line between being human and being an animal. The make up effects deserve praise – neat prosthetics with hair – it’s a pity that the four minutes or so that we get to see it are not enough to fully enjoy it.

It reminded me a lot to The Incredible Shrinking Man. As a result of the revenge of mad scientist Dr Thorkel (who looks like a bald Himmler), a bunch of other visiting scientists are miniaturized to the size of puppets by a special device and struggle for survival in the inhospitable environment of a house and the jungle. Somehow, Schoedsack's films have become synonymous with special effects feasts and the Master didn't disappoint here. There’s plenty to watch, lots of functional rear/front projections, optical wizardry and especially the studio's evocation of the smallness of the main characters – there are countless larger-than-life models of everyday objects: giant scissors, a squid, a table, books, chairs, a briefcase, a rifle and many, many more. And in the jungle there are giant roots, a rock garden, plants and a giant boat by the shore. There is also an attacking cat, a crocodile and a dog that looks at its miniature master with an expression of confusion. Perhaps only the disposal of the main villain I could imagine more spectacularly, as promised by the games with a giant rifle, but otherwise I have no major reservations. A very nice sci-fi flick.

90 minutes of unbelievable emotion. The premise itself is pretty lame and the bland execution doesn't help the final impression, although the actors are obviously trying (the only interesting character is Forest Whitaker). But they are trying in a bad movie.

It's been a long time since I've enjoyed an acting performance as much as I have here in the case of Michelle Williams. She may lack the sexy sparkle of the real Marilyn Monroe, but she has perfectly nailed her gestures, poses and acting mannerisms, and the many film awards she has won for it are well deserved.

A very distinctive directorial imprint in the most depressing film in years. Perhaps it tries too hard. In any case, Tilda Swinton deserves an Oscar.

I like the big productions of old Hollywood, like David Lean and others, but this was just weak tea, not even close to Bondarchuk's version. The Soviet version surpasses the American version in everything: it’s incomparably more narrative (the difference between a few hundred Hollywood extras versus 120,000 Russian extras, mostly conscripted Red Army soldiers, is damn clear, not to mention the fact that it is still the most expensive film production of all time), it’s much more inventive in direction, more interesting, richer in terms of locations (the 168 locations where the Soviet version was filmed is in the Guinness Book). Compared to that, Vidor's version is stripped down, lifeless, passionless and emotionless. And while I love Audrey Hepburn, even she couldn't hold a candle to Lyudmila Savelya and her charm, passion and irresistible immediacy.

What I appreciate about this film is its unpredictability. Miyazaki completely breaks the stereotype of fairy tales or fantasy stories – you have no chance to guess what will happen in the next few minutes, you are constantly surprised, the differences between bad and good characters are blurred (the one who is the embodiment of evil at the beginning can become a good friend) and all this happens without any stumbles in logic. Moreover, Miyazaki is like a small child, blessed with a vivid imagination, throwing one obscure idea after another in front of him. The film combines the classic fairy tale world with the industrial age of steam, the classic world of magic with crazy war mechanisms. The viewer's senses are so overwhelmed that the final impression sometimes teeters on the verge of being cluttered (which is my only complaint).

The problems and strife of the "adult world" seen through the eyes of a little girl. Maria Procházková has inherited good screenwriting and artistic genes, and although her story is not groundbreaking and has been told before in many variations, she has imprinted her film with a unique artistic sensibility that makes it stand out when it comes to comparisons. It also excels because of its slightly naive and playful undertone, just like the inner life of a young child with a vivid imagination. It's a shame that it was such a flop in theatres.

Poster tagline: NATURE GONE MAD!!! A WORLD OF TERROR – IT WAS A MONSTER YET IT WAS A MAN! YOU’LL HARDLY BELIEVE WHAT YOUR OWN EYES SEE!!! At the beginning of his career, Bert I. Gordon was very much into mutations of all kinds (and he didn't really leave them until his death). He became famous for the escapades of the mutated giant Lieutenant Colonel Manning (The Amazing Colossal Man and War Of The Colossal Beast) and in the meantime he made this genre film where many things are mutated, from mice to humans. This is due to a radioactive rock that’s causing an enormous growth of local fauna on the Mexican plateau where the film is set. And it goes like clockwork – the heroes' fight for bare life, plus giant lizards, a giant mouse, a tarantula, a hawk, a snake and the highlight, yes, the female lead’s boyfriend, mutated into a giant about 10m tall with a disfigured face and one eye. If I wrote in The Amazing Colossal Man that the rear projections are quite adequate for the period, here almost nothing works, the proportions are horribly off, different in every shot, and the fight between the cyclops and the snake is so badly edited that even Ed Wood would blush with shame. But the way the film takes itself deadly serious makes it irresistible silly fun.