As noted elsewhere on Shuker In MovieLand, I've been watching a fair few movies lately (especially during the various Covid-incited lockdowns experienced spasmodically here in England since March 2020 to July 2021) – far too many, in truth, to be able to devote full-length reviews to all or even most of them. However, certain ones definitely deserve at least a mention by way of a mini-review, so here is a further six-pack of them, covering another diverse selection, and which I hope will do those movies justice, albeit of an abbreviated kind.
STARDUST
It's only taken me nine and a half years (I know, because its original shop receipt, dated 15 January 2012, was still inside its box), but on 11 July 2021 I finally watched my DVD of the fantasy movie Stardust. Directed, co-produced, and co-written by Matthew Vaughn, based upon fantasy author Neil Gaiman's eponymous 1999 novel, and released by Paramount Pictures in 2007, it stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert de Niro, Claire Danes, Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais, and young Keanu Reeves-lookalike Charlie Cox among many others.
It's all about a young man named Tristan (Cox) who enters the magical kingdom of Stormhold in search of a fallen star to give to the feckless young woman Victoria (Miller) he loves in the hope that he will win her love in return, only to discover that the star is also a young woman (Danes), named Yvaine, whose heart is desired by an evil trio of witch sisters led by the aptly-named Lamia (Pfeiffer) as well as a devious, murderous prince. Also becoming involved in the proceedings are the secretive captain (de Niro) of a skyborne pirate ship who is not exactly what he is expected to be, and an insufferably garrulous fence (Gervais) from the criminal fraternity who receives a deliciously apt punishment from Lamia. Tangled times ahead!
Stardust is a thoroughly charming, engaging movie, very reminiscent in style of The Princess Bride, which can only be a good thing. So I'm glad to have seen it at long last – and it even features a unicorn! My cinematic cup runneth over, forsooth! Click here to view a mind-blowing official Stardust trailer on YouTube!
THE CONGRESS
On 10 July 2021, I watched The Congress, a 2013 live-action/animated hybrid movie directed by Ari Folman and starring American actress Robin Wright as a fictionalised version of herself.
The first half of this movie, which is live-action, does at least make sense, in which Robin signs a contract permitting a major film studio to create a computerised version of herself to act in all future movies while she retires with a hefty pay-off cheque to care for her ailing son. The second half, in which she enters an animated version of reality in order to attend a film congress but where everything is hallucinatory and illusory, makes little if any lasting sense at all, very trippy visually, but also very disjointed and at times totally unintelligible. Ralph Bakshi did this much more effectively many years earlier with Cool World, starring Brad Pitt.
The Congress is an unusual, undeniably distinctive movie, and once the animated half of the movie began it held my attention because of its fantastic, fascinating visuals, but plot-wise it was a mess. Overall, therefore, it is disappointing, at least in my opinion, but if you click here, you can watch an official trailer for it on YouTube and make up your own mind.
THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES
My interest in the more unusual, little-known fantasy/sci-fi movies out there means that sometimes I've never got around to watching certain cult or classic examples from these film genres, but I am trying to make amends, one movie at a time. On 3 November 2020, for instance, I finally watched for the very first time the much-lauded UK comedy-horror movie The Abominable Dr Phibes, famously starring Vincent Price in the starring role.
Directed by Robert Guest, and released in 1971, its plot concerns the deadly revenge inspired by the 12 biblical plagues of Egypt that concert organist and theologian Dr Anton Phibes mercilessly exacts upon those surgeons and associated persons whom he blames for the death upon the operating theatre table of his beloved wife Victoria, following a terrible car crash that had left her severely injured and him hideously disfigured, unable to speak, and forced to wear a mask in order to conceal his fleshless skull-like face. Notwithstanding the horrific means by which Phibes's victims respectively meet their maker, this is a very tongue-in-cheek movie thanks as ever to Price's famously droll delivery, and is visually sumptuous – especially the scenes inside the bad doctor's mansion.
However, by the very nature of his character no longer possessing a recognisable face, only a virtually immobile mask, viewers are robbed of much of Price's characteristic and priceless facial expressions and mannerisms, especially when speaking (because his mask's lips do not move, his voice emerging from a tube in his neck instead), which normally so greatly enhance his films and augment his singularly distinctive, expressive voice.
Nevertheless, The Abominable Dr Phibes is still a very good if gory film, as silkily showcased with grand guignol glee in the official trailer that can be accessed here on YouTube. I now need to watch its 1972 sequel, Dr Phibes Rises Again; and also Theatre of Blood, released in 1973, which is another Vincent Price horror movie featuring a vengeful lead character taking revenge upon his enemies in a melodramatically murderous manner. Incidentally, I love the black-comedy tagline used in posters and other publicity material for The Abominable Dr Phibes (being a merciless parody of the infamously slushy one used just a year earlier for the 1970 Ryan O'Neal/Ali MacGraw weepie Love Story): Love means never having to say you're ugly!
GREEN ICE
30-odd years after taping it off the TV, on 14 August 2021 I finally got round to viewing the 1981 heist-themed movie Green Ice. Directed by Ernest Day, it stars Ryan O'Neal as American chancer Joseph Wiley who, as a result of giving attractive young woman Lilian (Anne Archer) a lift in his car while driving through Mexico, gets drawn into an exceedingly dangerous racket smuggling precious emeralds – the green ice of this movie's title – out of Colombia. Omar Sharif plays their inestimably wealthy gemmological nemesis Meno Argenti.
Green Ice is a somewhat disjointed movie inasmuch as it never seems sure about whether it is a comedy thriller or simply a thriller thriller – sadly, however, what I am sure about is that it is far from thrilling. Indeed, by the time that the climax to this movie's interminably drawn-out plot finally arrived, I had already lost all interest in discovering how it played out, though having spent more than 90 minutes waiting for it to arrive, I did watch it, if only so as not to have wasted all of that invested time.
But perhaps you may find it more captivating – so click here to watch its James Bondesque opening titles or here to watch the entire movie for free (albeit in less than ideal viewing quality) on YouTube, and see if it's your kind of movie.
AEON FLUX
My early evening movie watching on 26 May 2021 was the live-action film version of the cartoon franchise Aeon Flux. Directed by Karyn Kusama, and released by Valhalla Motion Pictures in 2005, it stars Charlize Theron in the title role as a warrior-type fighter trying to discover just what is truly happening in her hyper-secretive post-pandemic world in which only 1% of the former human population survived the pandemic 400 years ago, and they did only as a result of a cure finally being created. Everyone now lives inside an intensely-monitored walled city, the last city left on Earth, where people keep disappearing and everyone is suffering more and more with strange memories of things they've never done and people they've never met – or have they?
Moreover, the pandemic cure had a major side-effect ruthlessly concealed from public knowledge by the city's rulers, one of whom created the cure – it rendered everyone infertile. Consequently, women have been covertly implanted with embryos produced clandestinely by cloning in order to keep the population going. But what if all of this subterfuge should one day become public knowledge? Let's just say that there is a notable faction out there intent upon that radical possibility never happening, plus an opposing rebel faction fighting for liberty but without realising just what is really happening, not to mention some seriously serious fraternal rivalry.
In short, it's all very cloak-and-daggerish, augmented by some exquisitely beautiful CGI effects. This movie version of Aeon Flux is basically a sci fi comic rendered as live-action, but it is certainly no less spectacular - great fun! So be sure to check out an official trailer for this movie here on YouTube and view for yourself a selection of the visual dramas and delights that it holds in store.
THE ABYSS (Special Edition)
On 25 May 2021, I watched the Special Edition of the sci fi movie The Abyss, directed and also written by James Cameron, and released by 20th Century Fox in 1989, which contains more than 20 minutes of footage deleted from the cinema-release version.
This movie's storyline centres initially upon the desperate attempts of a US SEALS team, utilizing a requisitioned underwater drilling platform and its reluctantly-assisting crew, to retrieve a sunken US submarine from the sea bottom before approaching Soviet ships can seize it, but the team is severely hampered in their efforts by a hurricane. Moreover, this is not all that they face, when a hitherto-unsuspected but immensely-advanced alien civilization inhabiting the ocean depths makes contact with them.
A big chunk of the Special Edition's extra footage shows the drilling platform's foreman, Bud (played by Ed Harris), in the luminescent ocean-bottom city of the undersea aliens, where they are showing him film footage of our species' heinous reputation for wars, killing one another, atomic bombs, etc. This is followed by their own species sending a chilling message to ours on the surface in the form of mega-tsunamis rising up out of the oceans all over the world, poised to flood the land and sweep everything away. But instead of doing so, they fall back harmlessly into the oceans again. It was a warning sent by the aliens, a demonstration of what they could do if our species persists in its recklessness and wickedness.
Cameron should definitely have left this footage in the cinematic release of The Abyss, because it is just as valid today, more than 30 years later, as it was back then, and gives the movie additional purpose and gravitas. The Special Edition also contains more close-up footage of the aliens themselves, resembling angelic gelatinous beings with opalescent manta-like wings, which is absolutely beautiful and again totally deserving of inclusion in the cinema-release version. At least, however, all of this additional material was retained and incorporated in this aptly-named Special Edition – for it is indeed special, and should certainly be watched by everyone who enjoyed the original, edited release. Click here to view an official trailer for The Abyss on YouTube, and here to view a spectacular, revelatory excerpt from the additional material contained in the Special Edition.
To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
The Abyss is a well done drama, little sci-fi though.
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