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What DVD / Video did you watch last night? (pt3)

Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi 2007) Engaging animated film about a young upper class womans coming of age in revolutionary Iran.
 
Captain Philips.

Although I'd heard good things about this it turned out to be nothing but a US navy propaganda piece.

And it's about 25 minutes too long.
 
Behind The Candelabra. Enjoyed it a lot. Worth watching for the hair alone. The plastic surgeon is great, too. Rob Lowe, I think, although he sort of looks like Michael Jackson after lots of surgery.
 
Goon - bizarre yet strangely likeable saga of a guy with no talents at all other than punching people in the face, who because of this becomes a valuable player on the Canadian ice hockey sporting scene. Lots of bone dry humour, Canadian injokes, eyewateringly foul language and ridiculous / but also pretty disturbing on-ice punchups. You probably have to be canadian to fully appreciate it but even non-canucks might find a laugh or two in it.
 
"Guru, The Mad Monk" (dir. Andy Milligan, 1970) - an entry into the "Witchfinder General"/"Mark Of The Devil" stakes by everyone's favourite Staten Island-based director, and it sure is a "unique" item indeed. This one concerns Father Guru (Neil Flanagan) - who actually is really a bishop, not a monk! - whose day-to-day activities involves rounding up various unfortunates, absolving them of their supposed "sins" (one gets absolved for the "sin" of peeping!), then performs various unpleasantries on them in the name of Christ. He's aided and abetted in all this by his right-hand foil Olga (Jacqueline Webb), who provides "glamour" and sleaze in equal measure, and Igor (Jack Spencer), a leprous hunchback, who seems to be loyal to Father Guru. Various victims come and go, and Father Guru (a dead ringer at times for UK actor Rodney Bewes) chews the scenery about sin, redemption and teaching them damn villagers a thing or two about the Good Lord. Ultimately, the victims wreak their revenge on the good Guru, and he ends up meeting a truly ridiculous demise at the hands of Igor. At this point the film crashes to a sudden halt and ends.

This film bears many of the hallmarks of an Andy Milligan effort - choppy, sometimes incoherent editing, some rather wobbly camera work, a script (put together by Milligan himself) full of ripe and ludicrous emoting and dialogue, and a large amount of random stock library music. The violence/gore scenes are truly inept - I can't believe that Milligan spent more than $10 on the special effects work - and the performances (by a group of unknowns, as per usual) range from the bored/confused to the rather deranged. At 57 minutes, the film oddly enough feels about the right length; any longer, and it really would have begun to drag out considerably.

You'd think that, going by the above, "Guru...." is a laughable, incompetent, grade-Z exploitation mess that deserves to be forgotten about, and indeed, 98% of film fans would agree with you. But Milligan's work has always held a fascination for me - his themes of repression, desire, conflict and ever-present violence run throughout his films, and whilst I'm never going to buy into the (utterly ridiculous) claims that Milligan was some type of zero-budget "auteur", he has shown thematic consistency throughout his career. In addition, Milligan's homosexuality (which he chose not to be open about, and he was also a frequenter of the NYC S&M scene) feeds into his work too - the sense of repressed guilt is present in this at times, and whilst he's no George Kuchar (and indeed, who is?), the gay angle of his film-making should be acknowledged. Tragically, Milligan passed away from AIDS in 1991, and spent the last couple of years of his life in considerable ill-health and poverty.

I've waited nearly 20 years to see "Guru, The Mad Monk", and was not disappointed. Milligan's films were nigh-on impossible to find in the UK for many, many years - the only one being distributed (by video) being "The Ghastly Ones" (under the re-titling of "Blood Rites") in the early 1980's, which itself ended up being clobbered under the Obscene Publications Act (for gore scenes reasons). It was only with the BFI Flipside DVD release of "The Body Beneath" a couple of years ago, that Milligan's work finally was available in general to a UK audience.

"Guru, The Mad Monk" most certainly is an acquired taste, to say the very least, but comes recommended to those interested in low-budget horror/exploitation cinema.
 
The Party's Over (1965), Cool 60s Brit film about an American trying to track down his fiance who has fallen in with a bunch of hard partying London Beatniks led by Oliver Reed. Directed by Guy Hamilton around the time he was making Goldfinger, it even has a very Bondish soundtrack by John Barry.
 
MellySingsDoom said:
"Guru, The Mad Monk" (dir. Andy Milligan, 1970) - an entry into the "Witchfinder General"/"Mark Of The Devil" stakes by everyone's favourite Staten Island-based director, and it sure is a "unique" item indeed. This one concerns Father Guru (Neil Flanagan) - who actually is really a bishop, not a monk! - whose day-to-day activities involves rounding up various unfortunates, absolving them of their supposed "sins" (one gets absolved for the "sin" of peeping!), then performs various unpleasantries on them in the name of Christ. He's aided and abetted in all this by his right-hand foil Olga (Jacqueline Webb), who provides "glamour" and sleaze in equal measure, and Igor (Jack Spencer), a leprous hunchback, who seems to be loyal to Father Guru. Various victims come and go, and Father Guru (a dead ringer at times for UK actor Rodney Bewes) chews the scenery about sin, redemption and teaching them damn villagers a thing or two about the Good Lord. Ultimately, the victims wreak their revenge on the good Guru, and he ends up meeting a truly ridiculous demise at the hands of Igor. At this point the film crashes to a sudden halt and ends.

This film bears many of the hallmarks of an Andy Milligan effort - choppy, sometimes incoherent editing, some rather wobbly camera work, a script (put together by Milligan himself) full of ripe and ludicrous emoting and dialogue, and a large amount of random stock library music. The violence/gore scenes are truly inept - I can't believe that Milligan spent more than $10 on the special effects work - and the performances (by a group of unknowns, as per usual) range from the bored/confused to the rather deranged. At 57 minutes, the film oddly enough feels about the right length; any longer, and it really would have begun to drag out considerably.

You'd think that, going by the above, "Guru...." is a laughable, incompetent, grade-Z exploitation mess that deserves to be forgotten about, and indeed, 98% of film fans would agree with you. But Milligan's work has always held a fascination for me - his themes of repression, desire, conflict and ever-present violence run throughout his films, and whilst I'm never going to buy into the (utterly ridiculous) claims that Milligan was some type of zero-budget "auteur", he has shown thematic consistency throughout his career. In addition, Milligan's homosexuality (which he chose not to be open about, and he was also a frequenter of the NYC S&M scene) feeds into his work too - the sense of repressed guilt is present in this at times, and whilst he's no George Kuchar (and indeed, who is?), the gay angle of his film-making should be acknowledged. Tragically, Milligan passed away from AIDS in 1991, and spent the last couple of years of his life in considerable ill-health and poverty.

I've waited nearly 20 years to see "Guru, The Mad Monk", and was not disappointed. Milligan's films were nigh-on impossible to find in the UK for many, many years - the only one being distributed (by video) being "The Ghastly Ones" (under the re-titling of "Blood Rites") in the early 1980's, which itself ended up being clobbered under the Obscene Publications Act (for gore scenes reasons). It was only with the BFI Flipside DVD release of "The Body Beneath" a couple of years ago, that Milligan's work finally was available in general to a UK audience.

"Guru, The Mad Monk" most certainly is an acquired taste, to say the very least, but comes recommended to those interested in low-budget horror/exploitation cinema.
Click to expand...

I really like your reviews, mate. I doubt I'd like any of the films much but I do like your enthusiasm for your particular niche.
 
Haxan - Danish 1922 drama doc on witchcraft - memorable images.
London Rivers - 2 people searching for loved ones during the London bombings. Very moving.
The Guard - Brendan Gleeson & Don Cheadle take on Galway gangsters. Sublime.
 
Rare outing to the cinema to see the new Captain America film.

Pleasantly surprised, some good performances and a decent amount of screentime for the supporting players, as well as some well-directed action scenes and an interesting story with actual implications for the future of the Marvel films (or at least the Avengers sequel)

Popcorn, but tasty popcorn.
 
Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Looks like a pretty ordinary superhero movie but with some pretty dark stuff about surveillance, warmongering and fascism woven into it. Sadly the script doesn't quite do justice to the ideas and by the third act everything's gone back to good guys vs bad guys, ticking clocks, boss fights and wisecracks. It's still a lot better than the first Captain America movie though.

The winter soldier storyline is a bit of a non-sequitur, and without him the film might have had more time to explore the actual plot instead of chasing after some kind of emotional payoff which, thanks to the pretty boring lead character, was never really gonna happen.

Robert Redford was good, Samuel L Jackson was dependably Samuel L Jackson (there's a great little in-joke at his expense right at the end) and Scarlett Johansson was good value despite the occasionally patchy script.

I love superhero movies, but they could be so much better if they focussed a bit less on having a more epic final battle than the previous superhero movie and a bit more on stories and ideas. This movie, entertaining as it was, is a case in point.
 
Kid Cannabis. True story film about a weed importer just starting out. Basically the stoner version of Scarface. I really enjoyed it, we'll worth a watch.
 
Before she and her granny headed home yesterday, we made the niece watch Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Indiscreet. A good movie purely on the basis of the chemistry between the two stars, but also one that has to resort to some psychologically incredible manouevres to stay on the right side of the Hays code.
 
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.


2/10. Nephilim in the modern day who dress all gothy and have cool runic tatts battle against demons and vampires to find the Mortal Cup given to the Shadowrunner order by the Angel Raziel etc etc, avoid
 
Letter from an Unknown Woman - 1948 b & w "women's picture" which is supposed to be a highbrow classic. Couldn't see the classicness myself ... it's a weepie with a plot that's pretty repellent to modern sensibilities - basically, young woman martyrs self through a destructive affair with a musician who couldn't care less about her and ruins her life. She bravely brings up their child alone, then finds another rich guy to marry, but stays obsessed with the muso until the very (early) end of her days. And this is romance? It looks good - not amazing - and I suppose it IS interesting that the story is the woman's, rather than the man's, making her, the ignored "nobody" the central character, instead of him the big star. It's based on a novel by highbrow Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig and said to conjure the very essence of fin de siecle Vienna. It might do, I dunno. (Don't really think so). Some very nice frocks, though...
 
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Inspecteur Lavardin - 1986 Chabrol film, big fan of Chabrol but I have to say that this is the first film of his that I haven't liked. It's really just a rather ordinary police procedural, which is quite strange as it was made after, and shares the same lead detective as, Chabrol's previous film Poulet au Vinaigre, which is a much more interesting piece of work.
 
Not seen them - they're on KG. I didn't bother after the 2nd on in the lavrdin film series (the one you didn't like). You've another film to go in that series yet as well.
 
ploughed through a load of early Sopranos. Strange to see gandolfini looking so hale as opposed to seeing him so old in Killing Them Softly
 
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