POMO

With the atmosphere of its Australian outback in a realistic (i.e. non-fantasy) post-apocalyptic form with a lot of bleak social goings-on, The Rover is a superbly engaging thriller. Furthermore, I really like these reticent opuses in which we get to know the characters just a bit at a time. But the more sophisticated The Rover gets, the more futile it seems in some of its would-be philosophical dialogue, and the more unsatisfying its ending becomes. It’s as if it admitted that it was shit (and considered that to be its creative strength).

The motivation for the transformation from a committed skinhead into a good guy who starts to understand the evil that he has perpetrated is not sufficiently shown in the film. And the need to protect a single mother, with whom he becomes involved, arises too quickly. The screenplay could have used some stronger events leading up to this. Or it could have emphasized his doubts right from the beginning instead of having him do hateful fascist evil immediately in the opening scene. You spend the first half-hour wondering why you’re watching a film with such characters in it. Otherwise, however, the actors are good, the gang of Nazis and their behavior give rise to real goosebumps, and the film benefits from the fact that it’s based on actual events.

Angel Warriors is a dull drama about a biker gang of bad guys versus three good-guy bikers versus a group of hippies, among whom tensions arise in a remote ghost town. Murder, false accusations, bullying... It's not exploitation – one bare breast is not enough for that – and it works only on a primitive level as a drama about injustice and satisfaction through revenge and subsequent redemption. In terms of picture quality, the film is borderline unwatchable (apparently no remaster even exists), as you can’t make out the characters’ faces in the night scenes, at least one of which is crucial and takes place in extreme darkness.

Produced by Roger Corman, this lesser-known B-movie variation on Bonnie and Clyde is crazy and wildly amoral. Angie Dickinson is a top MILF, and it’s no wonder that Tom Skerritt seduces her first and then both of her daughters (at the same time). I’d join them in the car too (and elsewhere). As a comedy, Big Bad Mama is quite infantile and as a crime flick, it’s laughable. The relationships are utterly silly and not very realistic. But that Angie is a knockout!

Turkey Shoot is an action-adventure B-movie with a high-octane plot and a surprisingly big budget. Its subject matter is reminiscent of Battle Royale / Hard Target, but not as a rip-off, but as those films’ bold predecessor. Its violent and coarse, and shockingly politically incorrect by today’s standards. Mainly, however, it is well cast. The prison guards and the warden, the hunter “visitors” and each of the prisoners on which the film focuses fit superbly into the jigsaw puzzle of malevolent and supportive relationships that gradually increase in tension and finally explode – figuratively and literally. The film is actually well written, with unexpected scenes and a little surprise. Only the directing, though dynamic, smacks of 1980s B-movie quality, particularly in the unrealistic and “blind” shootouts, when the characters shoot like idiots into the ground instead of at the target.

The Words has a great subject with Oscar potential, the possibility of a multi-layered idea and a great acting opportunity for the cast. It’s not that it didn’t succeed, but it didn’t do as well as it deserved to do. The flashbacks, which were meant to let the viewer feel the pain of Jeremy Irons’s character, are done in a kitschy way that weakens the whole foundation of the film. But the “in the present” level works, as we understand the decisions that Bradley Cooper makes in his situation, and he does a fine job of portraying the subsequent feelings of guilt and the effort to make everything right. The superstructure with Dennis Quaid attempts to summarize the ideas in hindsight and even playfully relativize them intellectually, but I found that somewhat unnecessary, at least in terms of its benefit for the story.

Werewolves on Wheels is a case crappy filmmaking, which was perhaps due to the amount of weed smoked by both the actors and the crew. From the shots of the gang riding motorcycles on desert roads, it’s completely obvious that it was inspired by Hopper’s Easy Rider. However, the film’s cast is a bland bunch of bumpkins led by Adam, who is not a charismatic badass, but just an insipid dolt with a big ego. Even a supporting character, an Indian named Tarot, is more interesting because he has intuition and is the only one in the film who actually thinks. More should have been done with the werewolf motif, which comes into play late in the plot, and the would-be horror scenes don’t have even a bit of charm in any of the paramaters of horror (i.e. they are not scary, disgusting nor made in a formalistically interesting way). In a few weeks, my only memory of the film will perhaps be the pretty naked biker chick dancing in an occult ceremony. And in a few months, I will remember nothing of Werewolves on Wheels.

Someone shot some footage and then edited it into something. The subject matter has something to it, as it is likably bizarre and some viewers may even see it as a critique of capitalism (the protagonist’s machismo and his roots in a rich family give him a sense of superiority, while other people are just objects for him to play with). But in terms of directing, it’s a straight-up B-movie and the editing is almost Ed Woodian. Like the cuts to the titular amphibians jumping in the grass in the horror movie Frogs, shots of hundreds of meowing cats in a large cage are edited into the plot wherever possible, even when the main character is flying a helicopter or his sexy prey is lying by a swimming pool. However, the filmmakers’ goofy and in some ways creative fantasies combined with the trashy poetics make this an entertaining and rather unpredictable obscurity that could have been an exemplary exploitation flick if it had contained some sex scenes, grittier murders (not just strangulation) and gore (dismembering victims before feeding them to the cats).

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the new millennium? Not a chance. Midnight Special is rather like an average episode of The X-Files. Though it is well cast and the plot is well paced, the film is emotionally flat (with only a succinct depiction of the characters), not very clever (a boy is able to knock a satellite out of the sky through force of will, but he can’t stop a car in which he is being kidnapped by two old men?!) and, in working with the genre, it merely repeats familiar motifs without the slightest update or surprise. The climax reaches for narrative grandeur, but it doesn’t offer even a fraction of the awe or intellectual depth of similarly conceived genre climaxes (The Abyss, Arrival, Annihilation). For Nichols, this must have been just a routine studio commission; I don’t believe that he made Midnight Special for creative gratificaiton. Two and a half stars.

Except for two lapses in logic (the gardener’s groundless threats / the probability of using spray) that are utterly obvious in an otherwise decently written screenplay, this is a solid thriller with a precise form and a well-cast main character.