THE DANMAN CAN

Director  Michael Curtiz  made a lot of classic films but  Casablanca   (1942) is undoubtedly the most classic. It moves at a blistering pace throughout but never feels rushed. It's romantic without being sappy—it shows love in the true sense of the word, where a man is willing to make sacrifices for something greater than himself (or maybe just because he's a “rank sentimentalist,” as Claude Rains puts it). It has wonderfully sly touches of humor (mostly via Rains). It has Max Steiner ’s rousing and sweeping score. It has Arthur Edeson ’s beautiful and stylish cinematography (love those quick pans). It has the impossibly gorgeous Ingrid Bergman , whose eyes sparkle and charm. It has perfect performances. Even beyond the most recognizable quotes by Humphrey Bogart , the dialogue throughout is brilliant. There are many reasons why Casablanca is so beloved—it’s the definition of a classic, an exquisite blend of entertainment and politics, above reproach. Michael Curt...

Crawlspace (1986) never quite turns up the exploitation factor to a satisfying level to deliver the goods, instead wallowing in a middle ground where nothing is too shocking, considering the subject matter (that of a "crazed son of a Nazi doctor obsessed with trapping young women and slowly torturing them to death"). It's obvious that it's a Charles Band production from the budget, production values, and editing, though it's competently made overall (and good for some laughs in a number of spots). The on-set tensions  are more interesting than the finished product, as any film buff knows that Klaus Kinski was a singular actor and a true cinema madman.  

It's the 16th day of the month, so, as is  D B Mix Series  tradition on that day (at least twice a year), we've got two new music mixes for you! Read on to delve into  DB Mix Series 15 – Body Of Music ! For those unfamiliar with these music challenges—my cousin Bryan and I alternately choose a concept, we each choose the allotted number of songs (from our MP3 collections), make a playlist, share with each other, then I mix the playlists, design the album art, and share with everyone! You can check out the previous  DB Mixes  here . The concept this time was chosen by Bryan—a body of music. The rules were set as follows:  - Song titles that include body parts - 22 tracks - Each body part can only be used once - The word "body" may be used in a title once - No restriction on the types of albums where the songs originate (singles, EPs, soundtracks, etc.) To recap our main rule—we never tell each other which songs we are going to pick, so the other's mix is alw...

As with Jeremy Saulnier 's two prior films,  Blue Ruin  (2013) and  Green Room   (2015) ( review ),  Hold The Dark   (2018)   is another violent tale of vengeance and survival, but the tone is moodier and bleaker than ever. Saulnier's constant collaborator (as actor)  Macon Blair  penned the screenplay (and has a small role) in this story of a wolf expert ( Jeffrey Wright ) called to Alaska by a mother ( Riley Keough ) to track down the wolves who took her son. Her husband, played by  Alexander Skarsgård , returns from the Iraq War and he's all kinds of disturbed. Fun connection: Alexander's father  Stellan  starred in the excellent 1997 Norwegian crime thriller  Insomnia   which Christopher Nolan repurposed to Alaska for his  2002 version  ( review ). Without spoiling anything, when a key plot point happens early on in  HTD , the film goes in a different direction than expected. Yet nothing in...

Sidney Poitier 's directorial debut,  Buck And The Preacher   (1972), is a Western buddy film in the vein of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid  (1969), only with a better score (by Benny Carter ) and Black liberation at the forefront of its story. The picture challenged the notions that Hollywood had always portrayed in regard to the absence or minimization of Black people in the Western. Poitier and Harry Belafonte  have a wonderful chemistry—the former delivering both stoicism and charisma and the latter much scraggly comic amusement. BATP  does a nice job of providing antiheroes that you want to root for, constructing an entertaining yarn about displacement and  Exodusters , and displaying both the solidarity and tension between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. A very cool film that sits somewhere between the  Blaxploitation  and Italian Western  genres—it makes a point without getting too serious or overwr...

I really appreciate that Brian Yuzna  went in a different direction for 1993's  Return Of The Living Dead III  (especially after revisiting  Return Of The Living Dead Part II  (1988) [ review ] just prior and being a bit let down). Its low budget roots show in some of the action scenes and a few of the cheap effects shots, but the gore and makeup on the whole are great. Yuzna brings familiar elements from  Re-Animator  (1985) [ review ] (which he produced) and Bride Of Re-Animator (1990) (which he co-wrote and directed) to ROTLD3  that suit this Romeo And Juliet  zombie tale well. The comedy is dialed back and the melodrama is turned way up and it works.  Melinda Clarke  really sells her role—you can tell she understood the trauma of the Julie character and she's a total babe. ROTLD3  only has tangential connections to the original  1985 film  [ review ] and is of course nowhere near the cult classic t...

Return Of The Living Dead Part II  (1988) is not quite as good as I remembered. It's not a bad film per se—there is some fun gore and prosthetics but also some pretty cheesy f/x. Most of the humor is too goofy and falls flat, and there is never a real sense of peril for the largely unremarkable characters. Its nice to see James Karen and Thom Mathews return and while they provide some laughs in their early scenes, it wears thin as they basically just replicate their performances from the 1985 film  ( review ). Something I either missed or don’t understand is why those two characters get sick in this film, as they were never exposed to Trioxin. Overall, ROTLD2 is half as good as the original (which is a bonafide cult classic)—it rehashes scenes from its predecessor and its new ideas don't really deliver. That poster rules though.

Atom Egoyan ’s Calendar (1993) makes a compelling companion piece with the director’s  Exotica  ( review ), released the following year. Both films present nonlinear stories with repetitive scenes of characters coping with loss by performing rituals that are more detrimental to their health than they perhaps realize. While Calendar is decidedly more breezy and comedic, and even has a bit of a “student film” feel at times, it makes interesting use of displacement (both in terms of time and diaspora), juxtaposition of sound, and different video formats.

Atom Egoyan 's Exotica  (1994) is a beautifully hypnotic and darkly engrossing exploration of grief and obsession, with wonderful, vulnerable performances, superb cinematography and production design, and a seductive score. Information about characters is withheld in satisfactory ways, leading to a denouement that feels less like a shocking revelation and more like a natural conclusion to this nonlinear slow burner.

The New Kids (1985) is a cool little revenge thriller with a nasty streak and plenty of redneck scumbaggery. Sean S. Cunningham uses his horror chops from Friday The 13th (1980), which, combined with a taut score by the legendary Lalo Schifrin , create some solidly tense scenes. There's also some great  fist-pumping , toe-tapping ‘80s hard rock jams to appreciate.  James Spader is a suitably creepy baddie in one of his earliest roles. In my opinion there is not enough  Tom Atkins  though (fortunately this was remedied the following year with  Night Of The Creeps  ( review )).