Monthly Archives: March 2025

Movie

Don’t Torture a Duckling

Fulci seems to have an audience that adores him but also is considered boring by many. I fall into the second category, so don’t let me color your expectation.

As someone who is not emotionally invested in the director’s work, I find the critics who gush about him to be delusional. However, there are people who gush about Tarkovsky, who see things in the movies that I find simply mediocre. This means that I am stupid or the worshipers are out of their minds.

There was an episode of Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit” in which waiters (actors in disguise) served mere tap water, but they gushed about the fluid in the flowery language, making poems out of their personal evaluation. Customers tasted the tap water and agreed that the taste was exceptional. When I read critics praise Fulci, I feel like I am watching this prank. There is a bonus feature in the disc that has something like this.

When I was a kid, I hated detective shows. I considered them boring, but more importantly, I noticed that every episode had exactly the same structure. How could no one else detect that?

The Italian version, the giallo, is equally predictable. The most obvious culprit is not the guilty party, and the least likely is the villain. Such is the case with this movie. I should make bets how quickly I can guess in these types of movies.

Where some critics find important messages stitched into the story, I find mediocre writing and points that don’t need to be made in movies. Did Avatar really send a new message by stating that corporations are bad? Couldn’t all that money be used to communicate better ideas?

Let’s say that this movie is a social mirror, showing the male supremacy and superstitious nature of people. First, the point doesn’t have to be made. If you need someone else to point out these things, then you are too stupid to do anything but add to the problem.

On the surface, it’s praiseworthy to criticize such things as male supremacy. But why are there no solutions offered? Well, it’s dangerous when a person pulls an idea out of his ass and then immediately declares it the right thing to do. You have to test ideas on a small scale to see if they have any merit.

The point is that the weak and unnecessary point in the movie, if you even detect them, do nothing.

I went into this movie knowing that I would be bored and that I would predict things that were meant to be surprising. I considered it a waste of time, but I know that there are fans of this director and fans of the genre, but that also means that a review is unnecessary.

Movie, Uncategorized

Play it Cool

The synopsis was compelling, but when I watched the movie I felt like I was fooled like a person at a carnival who believed that for the price of a ticket I can see a six-legged sheep.

To put it bluntly, this movie is afraid of its subject matter. The synopsis warned of a scene in which a man violently forces himself on his stepdaughter, but the scene is so bad that it;s comical. The “violence” is him slapping her, which knocks her out. This actually made me laugh out loud, especially with the slapstick sound effect.

In case you’re not aware, this is a Japaneses movie, which makes the failure more ridiculous because there are many Japanese movies that handle this subject matter masterfully. The only visceral thing about this movie was trying to resist ejecting it from my player. That was a constant struggle.

The dialogue is so bad that you can derive more drama from an old Godzilla movie. I tried to imagine that the writing was stylized so as to give it a chance, but it was impossible. It truly seems like whoever wrote the screenplay had no social interactions in real life and definitely conducted no research into anything depicted in the movie.

I wasn’t kidding about the acting being so bad it was funny. The sexual scenes are hilarious, especially when an old man is trying to pleasure the young woman with a massage, and she looks like she is having an epileptic seizure, all while hiding her nipples and being engulfed in a blanket from the waist down.

In addition to desperately hide breasts at all costs by the characters themselves, the cop-out technique of having nudity obscured by objects in the scene being at the right place in front of the camera is aggravating, not artistic.

Nothing is accomplished through acting. Rather; dialogue replaces action. Instead of the woman being seductive, a co-start says. “You are seductive.” You can place the voices over two rolls of toilet paper side-by-side and you would have the same performance.

Every character is either a caricature or a a lifeless prop.

Don’t trust any of the sales points or the synopsis. It is pure deception.

Metal, Uncategorized

Scald – Ancient Doom Metal

This album reminds me of the first time I head Manowar, which was the “Into Glory Ride.” That is not to say that SCALD is in any way similar in style. It’s the feeling of discovering something amazing and being unable to shed the music from my consciousness.

Every song on “Epic Doom Metal” is solid, and much of it is so memorable that ear worms will haunt you for a long time.

The title is a bit of a misnomer because the musical style isn’t doom, although there is a bit of ’70s flavor and the spirit of the greats from that era.

I am unsure if the vocalist is a permanent member or a sessions player, but his voice is a major reason why these songs are extremely enjoyable. It’s hard for me to compare him to anyone else. Suffice it to say that the vocals are clean, with a notable passion that delivers the lyrics in a heartfelt performance.

Manowar unified many factions of metal, and this album will do the same, whether you favor Power Metal, Death Metal, Doom, or the myriad other styles. There is no way that you will fail to respect this music. I foresee that this album will become legendary.

Ancient Doom Metal is extremely recommended.