| Jun. 4th, 2008 @ 05:21 pm Catch-up Post Time Again |
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I try to stick to my rule of "if I saw it over a week ago, time for a catch-up post". So some catch up from flicks of late:
Just Before Dawn: This one had been on my list for a very long time, part of my quest to see every slasher film made in the "Golden Age" of the sub-genre, 1978-1982 (sometimes I extend that out to 1984, when A Nightmare on Elm St. established a whole new set of rules). In any case, the internet buzz on this one was pretty positive, so I had some hopes. In the end the film is exceptional in only a few ways; one, they actually managed to hire some people who weren't terrible actors-Chris Lemmon (Wishmaster), Gregg Henry (Bates Motel), and George Kennedy (Demonwarp) may not be among the greats, but they all put in decent performances, a little above what you find in the average slasher. The rest of the actors are at all at least passable-I thought that Deborah Benson (Ghost Fever) did a plausible transformation from meek to nearly psychotic when defending herself, and the others are decent enough. Director Jeff Lieberman (Squirm) claims he never saw Friday the 13th or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the film comes off as a mashing together of the two regardless-we get a group of twenty-somethings out on a camping trip getting stalked and killed by local inbred rednecks after being warned not to go up there, not only by a crazy man, but also by George Kennedy's park ranger. The film isn't bad, by any means, but I found it to be just a typical also-ran in the slasher sweepstakes; it's higher quality in terms of direction, scenery and acting, but it's also kind of too meandering and while that might work with some films-Deliverance, for instance, here it fell flat. Still, it was interesting to see a slasher flick where there are four or five male victims to the single female one.
Zulu Dawn: A decent but not great war film, depicting the absolute folly and terrible defeat of the British when they initially invaded Zulu land. It's kind of a prequel to Zulu, the more famous film that chronicles the success of a very small unit of British soldiers in an isolated base against a much larger number of Zulu warriors. Here we get Burt Lancaster and Bob Hoskins as sympathetic officer and NCO respectively, with Peter O'Toole playing the absolutely callous Lord Chelmsford and Denholm Elliot as a completely befuddled officer who is unexpectedly faced with a huge force of enemy troops. It's a pretty good, but not great, flick, and it's reasonably even handed; the Zulu leader and his son come off much better than the greater majority of the Brits. |
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