migarsenio

Anyone looking at the poster for "The Witch who came from the sea" will believe they may be facing a fantastic horror movie or something similar. In fact the film goes far from that and much closer to those deeply bitter and disenchanted dramas of the seventies. Even with some sensationalism in the mix, "The Witch who..." demonstrates at least tremendous courage in the way it portrays the subject of sexual trauma. I don't remember many other films that do it with this frontality. Yet the 1970s also gave many authors the freedom to make this kind of bold and genre-defying films. "The With Who..." has some impact especially through its most shocking content, but it never gets to be more than a curious piece of bizarre cinema from the seventies.

Movies that are about nothing can also be about everything. The narrative structure of "Patrick Vive Ancora" is so vague and free that for a long time it is difficult to decipher what is going on or predict what will come next. It is known from an early stage that there is a sinister doctor who receives in his house two couples to visit, when in his office are also a few bodies in a comatose state. This idea of bringing together a few people in the same house, to spend a few days together, naturally has a lot to do with classic horror cinema, but its Italian branching, with its ceremonial quality, seems to have a special taste for exploring it. "Patrick Vive Ancora" contemplates the behavior of the people in the house, as they get to know each other and witness some strange occurrences, but for at least an hour, we are not entitled to very concrete information about what all those people are doing there. Fortunately the Italians have a formidable talent for their films to entertain even when there is not much happening. It's a talent that comes in pairs, if you know what I mean. Somehow, "Patrick Vive Ancora", like the most enigmatic Italian cinema, is an invitation to disconnect from that very bourgeois need to find an explanation for everything. I think the little I understood about it was decisive to have liked what I saw.

As much as I think that the Undertaker really was one of the best wrestlers of all time, this series shows a very slow-paced and not that interesting portrait of his last years as a performer. It has some good moments, but it also keeps on sweetening the pill concerning WWE. After watching two seasons of "Dark side of the ring", I found it kind of boring and rather long for something that could have been easily told in just one full feature. But they have to create contents for the network, so there it is: 5 hours of a man thinking about wether he should or not go on with his much loved role as a legendary wrestler. Oh, and the Undertaker is for sure the phenom as a performer, but not that interesting as a talker. Let's just face that.

This Toei gritty yarn starts with some thrilling heist scenes and a captivating storyline, but it somehow becomes a big mess of a movie. Really, I though the last chase scene was one of the most confusing I've ever seen with every kind of vehicles involved. I even laughed when a bike gang was thrown into the crazy crazy chase just for the sake of it. Somehow the relation between the gangster protagonist and the stripper remains interesting throughout this messy movie and ends up being rather effective and touching actually.