The Man Between

1953 post-WWII thriller

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Former-Nazi Ivo Kern works for the Commies in post-war Berlin, aiding in kidnapping and transporting folks from the West to the East. They should have put a freakin' wall there or something! Kern wants out but finds it impossible. Meanwhile, Claire Bloom arrives from England to stay with her sister. A romance seems to develop, but Kern might be using the girl for shady reasons. Or will the two find love and hook up? Oh, those crazy kids!

I liked the second half of this film a lot better than the first, the part of the film where I had to think way too much. Things really get exciting when the characters are sneaking around the shadows of dilapidated Berlin buildings. There's a great score, brilliant cinematography with Third Man-esque broken-tripod camera angles, and terrific shots of a city landscape torn to pieces by war. The cinematography alone makes this worth the price of admission, but moody James Mason and innocent Claire Bloom are good leads. It all builds to one of those endings, a memorable final shot on a snowy street. The story, though parts are a bit confusing taken out of the historical context, is essentially a timeless one of love doomed by place and time. This isn't quite the film that The Third Man or Odd Man Out are, but Carol Reed sure knew how to make "man" movies. That's especially surprising since he had such a sissy name.

This movie supports my theory that films are better when the most of the shots are askew.

Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman

2000 horror-comedy

Rating: n/r

Plot: Well, apparently a mutant killer snowman from a first movie is brought back to life after a laboratory accident. He travels, naturally, to a beach resort to get revenge on some really boring characters. After travelling as water, he manages to collect a carrot and charcoal in absurd ways and eventually, I'm guessing since I couldn't finish the movie, becomes an entire mutant killer snowman.

This is not just a movie that I couldn't finish. This is a movie that forced me to wonder what the hell I'm doing with my life. After shutting this one down, I sat in a motionless, depressed funk for what I thought was a week and a half but turned out to be only seventeen minutes and twenty-three seconds.

Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman

2005 drama

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Efficiently proficient and prolific, Albert Pierrepoint followed in his father's bootsteps and hanged people for a living. When he's not delivering groceries, that is. And probably only people who had it coming. He didn't seem like the type to hang random people. Pierrepoint executed just over six hundred during his twenty-two years, and that was just when he was supposed to be delivering groceries! Eventually, the so-called "Babe Ruth of Hangmen" reconsiders his stance on capital punishment.

The director certainly takes a languid approach with this one, not only showing seemingly every meticulous detail in claustrophobic settings but showing these meticulous details over and over and over again. It delivers the point home and comes as close as I imagine it can come to helping a guy watching a television screen understand some of the feelings of the increasingly-troubled titular hangman, and Timothy Spall, without any of the pomp or tricks that people usually see in great acting performances, has a quiet magnetism. His performance is half the picture, and he gives Pierrepoint's story a realism and poignancy in a very natural way. Plus, I dig his cheeks and wonder if implants were involved. Still, this visually sucks you into a gloom, and after a while, the movie starts to seem much longer than it actually is. Its interesting subject matter and gripping internal conflict make this worth checking out.

The Man with the Golden Arm

1955 drug movie

Rating: 16/20 (Mark: 12/20; Amy 11/20)

Plot: Frankie Machine, a poker dealer just released from prison, dreams of drumming in jazzy night clubs to make ends meet and take care of his injured and whiny wife. He's got a friend who is half-man/half-turtle, a new suit, and his own brushes. He's also got the scrumptious Kim Novak. And pretty eyes. Oh, and a heroin addiction. I almost forgot about that one. When things don't work out with his drumming aspirations, mostly because he's not very good, he decides to become a James Bond villain and forges a gold cast around his left arm to use as a bludgeon.

I liked the way the camera moved in this one, a sneaky bit of style that never got in the way of the storytelling but added a little cool to the proceedings. Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak are fine; Eleanor Parker ain't; and there's an odd assortment of supporting characters who give this a quirky flavor, including a sluggishly-sauntering pedestrian extra with a hat who I swear I saw in nine different scenes. As a drug movie, this is understandably a little dated, but I still like it twice as much as most modern drug movies. Yeah, Requiem for a Dream, I'm looking at you. I thought the scene with Frankie Machine fighting through withdrawal rang true and liked the amount of edginess that they were allowed to have in this mid-50s production. This movie might also wind up winning the 2010 shane-movies award for "Best Use of a Dummy" which I'm sure would make Otto Preminger pee on himself in his grave. This movie goes on a little longer than it should, and I'm not sure I bought it all, but I definitely liked it a little more than I expected. Bonus point for some nice poker scenes.

Zatoichi and the Doomed Man

1965 Zatoichi movie

Rating: 15/20


Plot: Zatoichi meets the titular domed man in jail. The man, soon to be executed, informs him that he is innocent and pleads with the blind swordsman to get him some help once he's released. Zatoichi is sick of getting into trouble every time he helps somebody out, but eventually finds himself involved anyway.


Good entry in the Zatoichi series has plenty of swordplay but also has a more comedic tone than most of them. It's been a bit since I've seen this blind mo-fo in action, and I'd almost forgotten how much I like watching his movements, not just in the swift sword swipes and pouncing pirouettes, but in Shintaro Katsu's actions portraying a blind guy. And this reminds me of a dream I had and immediately forgot about. In the dream, Shintaro Katsu, not as Zatoichi but as himself, rides to my front door in a rickshaw. I'm sitting on a chair that I don't have that is on a porch I don't have. I'm wearing booty shorts and smoking an absurdly large red and yellow pipe with a goat's head carved into it. Orange smoke billows from the pipe, and I keep wondering how bad I smell, so bad, I fear, that the neighbors across the street might be able to smell me. Katsu tells me not to worry about it and points with a cane (again, he's not Zatoichi but does still have his cane sword) at my shorts. He says, "Your worries lie in those tight, lime-green shorts." When I don't say anything, he explains. "Don't come crying to me if somebody tries to rape you." Then, just like in all these nocturnal meanderings of my subconscious, the dream ends with my dream self weeping uncontrollably and my real self waking up in a puddle of my own urine.

Man from the West

1958 Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Link Jones don't want to be an outlaw no more. But after being abandoned in the middle of nowhere with two others by the train they were riding following a failed robbery, he finds himself face-to-face with his old boss and forced to once again join the gang. He tries to balance feigned loyalty to his posse and concern for his fellow train passengers.

What a pleasant surprise this "man"/Mann Western was! I wasn't expecting much since I had never even heard of this one, but it's solid stuff. I've liked other Anthony Mann Westerns, but in this one, he's second to no one, not even Ford, in using landscape to help tell the story. Link, played stoically by a fatigued-looking Gary Cooper, is one of those characters who is in control in a situation there's no way he can control. As things look bleaker and bleaker, the landscape reflects that, becoming harsher and harsher--from civilized town to a rickety train to a dilapidated farmhouse to a ghost town to miles and miles of brown jagged rock. It's all beautifully photographed, as are the characters. Lee J. Cobb's Dock Tolbin looks like he just rolled off the set of a movie in which he's been shot at by Clint Eastwood while Leone looks on, and there's something raw and tense about his performance. I also liked Jack Lord as another of the baddies. They're definitely not the bad guys I expected to see in a late-50s movie. I think that's what I really liked about The Man of the West actually; it's not a glossy Hollywood Western but one not afraid to get some dust on the lens. There's a great scene with the death of one character. In other Westerns, other good Westerns even, this unfortunate character (second from the bottom on the cast list) would have caught the bullet, fallen down, and died. In The Man of the West, the camera follows him as he stumbles around and moans in extreme pain and then lingers on him from a few moments after he finally, almost mercifully, expires. Harsh stuff. There's another great scene with Julie London's character, a woman thrust into a damsel-in-distress type situation, in an uncomfortably humiliating moment, and Cooper, with a knife drawing a trickle of blood from his throat, forced to watch. Another Western would keep Link 100% chivalrous. Link would grit his teeth and curse the mean guys under his breath. But here, you read something else on his face. There's conflict, a part of the old outlaw Link who really might enjoy what is going on. There's a tense and introspective flavor and an unexpected darkness to The Man of the West that anticipates future Westerns. I liked it a lot.

The Man from Earth

2007 science fiction My Dinner with Andre

Rating: 8/20

Plot: At a professor's going-away party, he makes a startling announcement, revealing to his pretentious friends that he is 14,000 years old. They're not sure whether he's crazy or telling the truth.

Despite a fantastic, intriguing premise and the delivery of a science fiction movie without a single action scene or special effect, I hated almost every second of this movie. The biggest problem is probably that I just didn't want to hang out with a bunch of smarmy college uber-intellectual professor types for an hour and a half. There wasn't a single character I would want to spend any more time with no matter how many years they've lived on earth. Unfortunately, the actors playing them weren't very good either. It's probably unfair for me to criticize the production values of this thing, but from the opening shot, I thought I was watching a car commercial. Behind the dialogue, there's this nearly constant music, stuff that I would describe as light adult techno. The story's cool and the script is intelligent, but don't get me started on plot holes, plot holes that somehow manage to exist without there even being a plot. The dialogue is heavy with historical allusions, intellectual name-dropping, and after a while it gets tedious. By the time a bomb is dropped, the only reaction that makes sense is "Oh, puhleeeze!" I did enjoy some of this film's ideas, specifically the connections made between the teachings of Buddha and Jesus, but this should have been a lot better.

Our Man Flint

1966 spy spoof

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Controversial super-agent Flint is called upon to save the world from super-terrorists who want to use an earthquake machine to wreak havoc.

Shane, of shane-movies, really has nothing to say about this movie. He apologizes for the inconvenience.

Man of Marble

1976 Polish movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A female film student works on her dissertation, a documentary about Birkut, a Polish bricklayer used in propagandii as a Socialist symbol. It's a swift rise and a painful fall, the filmmaker discovers as she interviews individuals from his past and searches for Birkut himself.

This is really long and as dry as marble, so a lot of patience is required. I suppose this could be a case where the movie is much better than I think it is, but I'm not Polish and I'm not a Communist and I'm not opposed to Socialism and therefore lack the context for this to make complete sense to me. I'm not qualified to write about most of the movies I write about, but I'm even less qualified to write about something like this. It do kind of like the structure, an almost Citizen Kane-esque gradual unveiling of a character. Except there's no sled. The scenes with the director aren't terribly exciting, but I do really like how much fake news footage, propaganda films, and other footage is mixed in. The stuff looks authentic, and the guy who plays the titular man does a really good job. It really gives it a sort of fake-documentary feel and a different flavor. So did the soundtrack, reminiscent of 70's blaxploitation funk. Some of the music is so bad that I'm sure there wouldn't be a lot of people who would oppose removing it and replacing it with something better. I'm far too lazy to look it up, but I do wonder how a movie this critical was even allowed to be created and shown to people.

Special shane-movies trivia: This is easily the least humorous Polish movie I've ever seen.

Nothing But a Man

1964 movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A transient black railroad worker decides to settle down when he falls for the daughter of a preacher man. Like a lot of black men living in the 1960s South, he struggles in his efforts for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The title immediately brings to mind of the line that is in most versions of the ballads and tall tales about John Henry, probably not coincidentally another black railroad worker. To paraphrase: "A machine's nothing but a machine, but a man is a man." Here, we have a moving and realistic portrayal of a man, a man caught in a machinery of racism and prejudice in the deep South, and I really like how honest that portrayal is. This isn't a platform for director Michael Roemer to whine about conditions for blacks in the South during the early 60s; instead, it's an honest examination of both those conditions and a flawed man trying his best to pursue happiness within that context. This has, I think thankfully, more to do with relationships between blacks living during this time period, pervading low standards and a lack of male role models. Duff truly is nothing but a man--working as hard as he can to get buy, desiring more, making mistakes, growing because of those mistakes, moving on. It's a hard look at a struggling young marriage and a father who has pretty much abandoned a son. This is low-budget, having the feel of a 70s or 80s television movie, and the acting is really raw. It gets in the way and keeps this from being a true masterpiece, but I did like and appreciate this one more than Killer of Sheep. I really liked opening shots of railroad work with harmonica accompaniment and a scene showing a wild church service.

Zebraman

2004 superhero movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Teacher and big-time loser Shinichi spends his nights perfecting a Zebraman costume, his tribute to a thirty-year-old television show that only aired for seven episodes but that he is nevertheless obsessed with. After meeting a new friend, he starts to develop actual powers. Just in time, too, since aliens are trying to blow us up. Can Zebraman stop them in time or will the little green guys kill us all?

This usually doesn't trip me up, but the special effects in Zebraman, especially the computer animated stuff in the final third, fill the screen with such ugliness and ineptitude that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Almost literally. I finished this movie, and it felt like I had eaten bad special effects. A ludicrous and incoherent climax combined with those awful colors, swirls of runny action, and garbled bombast stomps all over all the good stuff from the first two-thirds of the movie. And there is a lot to like in the first two-thirds. I always like Miike's sense of humor, here not quite as sick as in some of his previous work, and the almost-but-not-quite satirical quality kept me asking, "Is this for real?" Broken down, it's a pretty straight comic bookish superhero tale though. There's a lot of heart, a
likable protagonist, and an off-kilter funk that gave this a unique flavor, even when scenes showing the original Zebraman television show reminded me of the Power Rangers, and the low-key moments clashing with goofy action sequences reminded me of Big Man Japan. But then Miike makes us watch absurdly cartoonish bobbleheaded aliens and green newborns, and it all just gets gross. I'm probably aware that the grossness is intentional, but it didn't make it any more fun to watch. This was a great idea, but one poorly executed.

Man of a Thousand Faces

1957 biopic

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The life of silent film legend Lon Chaney, father of talkie film legend Lon Chaney Jr., from his childhood growing up with deaf parents to his career as a make-up maestro in Hollywood.

I can't say I ever really bought this one. Cagney does an admirable job, and I liked the behind-the-scenes reconstructions of Chaney playing some of his most famous roles. But this never really feels like an accurate portrayal of the man, and so much of the film seems incomplete and boring because the director breezes over so much. The fact that I was far more interested in finding out more about the life and work of Lon Chaney before I started the movie than I was halfway through Man of a Thousand Faces is telling. Also telling--halfway through this, I started wishing I was watching a Lon Chaney Jr. movie instead, maybe Hillbillys [sic] in a Haunted House or Spider Baby, or the Maddest Story Ever Told. This is melodrama that never grips, and storytelling that rarely moves.

Teenage Caveman

1958 Corman clunker

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A twenty-something-year-old teenage caveman with a stylish haircut breaks his tribes rules by venturing beyond the river, meeting dangerous creatures and putting his people at risk. Oh, snap!

Teenage Caveman is a crappy movie, made with a budget of ten dollars and fourteen cents and a director who apparently had a time frame of four and a half days. Most people, I reckon, are going to be offended because Robert Vaughn as the "teenage" caveman has better hair than them. I didn't realize cavemen used hair products. Corman makes an attempt to give this some depth. There's all this talk about the three gifts to man that had me scratching my head, and there's a pretty nifty twist ending that, if you decide to see this, I might have ruined for you just by telling you there's a twist ending. There's also a classic Corman monster, one that rivals the muppet from Creature from the Haunted Sea. Heck, given the amount of footage that seems lifted straight from other crappy movies, Corman might actually have used the same monster. This probably isn't a B-movie I'd recommend to B-movie aficionados.

Big River Man

2009 documentary

Rating: 17/20 (Dylan: 20/20)

Plot: Fifty-four year old Slovenian national hero Martin Strel has swum the Danube. He's swum the Yangtze. And he's swum the Mighty Mississippi. Now it's the Amazon's turn. This documentary covers his 66-day swim of the almost 33,000 mile river with the help of two bottles of wine a day and a funky mask. Along the way, he loses his mind and enters the 4th dimension.

I learned a lot about Slovenia from watching Big River Man. They enjoy horse burgers there. Horse burgers are a little like chicken burgers but made from horse. Slovenia itself is shaped like a chicken. Slovenia is the DUI capital of the world. There's a "Learn the English Language" recording that teaches Slovenians to say "I am a drug dealer." This is a documentary you'll watch and wonder if it's real or not. Strel seems fatter than life, and the film just seems too funny to be legitimate. In fact, Dylan and I stopped watching this to do a little research and found out that the guy is real and has completed these amazing swims. He's just got more than the average amount of crazy, the type of fellow that Werner Herzog wouldn't mind following around with a camera for a while. This documentary blends hilarity and adventure so well. You get the impression that Strel's navigator, a guy with no real training in navigation, and Strel himself are hamming it up a little for the camera as they gradually lose their minds, but there's something eerie as well as hilarious in the way the swimmer's mind is completely gone in the last stages of his Amazonian swim and in the time following the feat. I still have no idea what he was talking about when he claimed he had entered and was stuck in the fourth dimension, and there are great scenes where he fashions a goofy mask to protect the skin of his face from the sun, runs off with his navigator and is later found naked and unresponsive on a beach, smears mayonnaise on his head and tries to use jumper cables to electrocute parasites that have attempted to burrow into his skull. He also references an Amazonian penis fish that enters the body via the urethra. And when they do, according to Strel, "no more penis." This is an adventurous journey into dementia with some nice hippie environmental messages built in, and it's one of the most bitchin' documentaries I've seen in a long time.

The Amazing Colossal Man

1957 man-who-changes-size movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Poor Lt. Col. Manning. After being exposed to radiation during a bomb test, he recovers but begins growing. And growing. And growing! Soon, he finds himself as a sixty-foot bald giant in a diaper. The growth disturbs his mind, and he begins terrorizing Las Vegas.

A Bert I. Gordon joint, and like the other movie of his on this blog (Earth vs. The Spider), it's almost exactly what you'd expect from this sort of 50s B-movie with only a few scenes that make it worth watching. The science doesn't make sense, and the plot goes exactly where you think it will,. It's a plot with some plot holes that are more colossal than the colossal guy's diaper! But the acting and special effects, with the exception of some transparent colossal man body parts, aren't as terrible as a lot of these cheapo affairs, and although it doesn't have as much of an existential subtext as The Incredible Shrinking Man, it does get moody and philosophical. Manning's growth and the parallel transformation of his mindset probably works metaphorically in the context of 1950's fears, but I watched this in 2010, a time when people don't have anything to worry about. I was left with one big question: There's a scene where Manning, big but not as colossal as he ends up, goes on a picnic with his wife. No, they don't "do it" afterwards, you perverts. But in the background, you can see an automobile that the couple apparently drove to the picnic site. However, there's no way Manning would have fit inside the car. These are the type of B-movie questions that keep me up late some nights because they inevitably lead to other questions. For example, how does Manning, big enough to be moved from a hospital to a circus tent, dispose of his fecal matter?