The Dog Stars (2026)

Ridley Scott's newest pic, The Dog Stars, is as close to a western as he ever did get to do. A post-apocalyptic story, it's a very slow and intimist film, 1 character, a dog, two characters, three characters, that's it. Oh, and a Cessna 1956 plane. Major character. 

Jacob Elrodi (frankenstein) replaced Paul Mescal as Hig, the pilot. Josh Brolin who worked previously with Scott on American Gangster is the cynical Bangley. They represent opposite views, opposite worlds, one missing his old world, the other one adapting, full survival mode. 

Supporting are Margaret Qualley (OUTiH, Poor Things, The Substance, Kinds of Kindness, Drive-Away Dolls, How to Make a Killing), in her most normal and romantic role (up to now) as Cima and Guy Pearce as Pops (Pearce was the old Peter Weyland in Prometheus). Benedict Wong is also here (he was in Ridey's The Martian) and an Ewen Bremner cameo that works as a red hering. He also worked for Scott in Black Hawk Down.

Now if you already read the reviews which I can't understand...? Worst ever for a Scott film??

Worse than Gladiator II and Napoleon which were painful to sit through? Anyway, this is not that biggie of a film, compared to the scale of these two baaad juggernauts...

The film is very slow and it builds atmosphere gradually. The three acts are separated smoothly. The landscape, the nature is another silent character, the green, the mountains vs. The Wasteland.

Incredibly the whole film was shot in Italy, with the Grand Junction sets built at Cinecitta. DOP is Erik Mesermschmit, David Fincher's later collaborator, here in his 1st cinema fare with Scott (he worked before with RS on TV's Raised by Wolves and The Dope Thief).

Comparisons with The Last of Us or The Walking Dead are wrong, closer is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. 

The Dog Stars is based on the 2012 book by Peter Heller and the script is by Mark L  Smith who wrote The Revenant.

Harry Gregson-Williams composed the score, which is part elegiac, part menacing, it's his 7th for a Scott film.

The soundtrack has also dramatic value, it's folkish and rockish, from the opening credits with Hozier ( Like Real People Do), that gets replayed at the end of the film, to Van Morrison (Tupelo Honey), to Caamp’s “By and By” (on headphones), Dean Martin (Memories are made of This), to the end in The Chieftains and Mick Jagger. (The Long Black Veil). Featuring also Charmaine written by Lew Pollack, Erno Rapee performed by Jack Nitzsche, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Fly Me to the Moon, sung by Allison Janney on screen. 

There is a most poetic scene at the end with the "mormons"/ mennonites countryfair that transcends Ridley Scott's cinema, an optimist message in a post-apocalyptic world. I sensed in the interraction betwwen Hig and Bangley could be a sort of tribute to Ridley's late brother, Tony....

To be seen on the Big Screen.

The IMAX thing is a gimmick tho.

3 1/2 out of 5, 7 out of 10 !

The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024)

The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024) id the 2nd film of New Zeelander James Ashcroft. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: meets Bubbahotep (without the mummy ;) and Misery. Rush and especillay Lihgow are a blast, one of Lithgow's best. Stellar acting. Not for the faint of heart ;)

TBC 

RIP Tim Curry

Tim Curry aka Dr Frank-N-furter, on stage since 1973 !

Curry was 80, he had a stroke in 2012 and sice then did mostly voiceover work.

Quintessential as Dr. Frank-N-Furter the Transexual Vampyre from Transylvania in the cult movie that invented the Midnight Movie Madness, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), also featuring Meat Loaf. 

also:

The Dark Lord in Ridley Scott's superb Legend (1985), under heavy prosthetics make-up (over 6 hours if work).

Long John Silver in The Muppet Trasure Island

Wadsworth in Clue )1985)

The clown from It (1990), the original Pennywise

Dr Petrov in The Hunt for the Red October opposite Sir Sean Connery...

And the infamous Romanian con Herkemer Homolka, 'at last freed from Ceausescu's chains' from the very bad guilty pleasure movie Congo (1995, Frank Marshall).  I guess the neme came from Oskar Homolka ?

"While filming Congo, I sat on top of a Volcano talking to Tim Curry..." - Bruce Campbell said about sitting on top of a volcano talking with Tim Curry.

Curry earned three Tony nominations and a Daytime Emmy and released three musical albums in his career.

RIP Dolly Parton

 The great and unique Dolly Parton is gone...The 'Queen of Country" was 80 ! 

She did 9 to 5 and beyond....

Her last album was also her first Rock album, at 77 in 2023. entitled of course, Rockstar, with many famed collaborators and evergreen Rock songs . It made my Top Albums of 2023 list.

RockStar. as a true one she was...

All album listening party here.

found out this:

and now this:

She had a huge hit with Kenny Rogers in 1982, composed by the Bee Gees, called Islands on the Stream. 

On Rockstar there is the Bygones song, sung together with Rob Halford from Judas Priest.

Coming Home in the Dark (2021)

 Coming Home in the Dark

another New Zeeland bleak vision of a world gone f888d...

debut

 A Gem 

one of the best i've seen recently...

TBC

RIP Nick Glennie-Smith

 RIP Nick Glennie-Smith 

The Rock with Hnas Zimmer & Harry Gregson-Williams

point of no return -American Nikita 

etc....

RIP Frank Beard

Frank Beard, the ZZ Top drummer for 57 years (!) has died at 77. The Texas power-blues band was formed in 1969 and stayed together until Bass player Dusty Hill died in 2021. It's still the longest running band in history with the original line-up (51 years!!!). 

Then Billy Gibbons and Beard continued with a new bass player. 

Frank Beard was the only ZZ Top member to not have a beard, well he wore one on his name... RIP...

more here.

                                                                   I Thank You...

Last In, First Out / L'ordre et la sécurité du monde (1978)

Last In, First Out / L'ordre et la sécurité du monde (1978)   

Claude d'Anna is an obscure (pardon my French;) arthouse French director. I have not seen any film of his until this one. I guess this is also a curio in his filmography, it is obvious this is not a thriller / genre director at work here. 

Youtube just put this film in front of me (scroll down), with a cover still of Dennis Hopper. So, obviously I took a look...it's dubbed in French. Some small passages though, his real voice can be heard...(he does not talk much ;)

A very ecclectic cast: Marie-France Bonin (as Laure Dechansel, also co-writer, her real job) , she is the lead and the weakest element of the ensemble, Bruno Cremer (picked probably after Friedkin's Sorcerer). Gabriele Ferzetti, Dennis Hopper, Donald Pleasence (his part is barely a cameo), Joseph Cotten (petty cool as the big boss), Michel Bouquet (mosltyl on the phone), Pierre Santini and Vernon Dobtcheff as the Receptionist ! The names of the characters are cool too, Richter, Herzog, Rothko, Medford, Lehman, Muller, Kauffer and Foster Johnson (Cotten), serious names if you ask me, but you don't ;) 

Cool pre-credits intro, also interesting title sequence, after which you would expect more to come, but... 

A time capsule, some of it very tiring, heavy verbally plotted- An African nation, American companies, banking, capitalism, industrial espionage, colonialism, natural resources, . Mostly talking heads, people on telephones, train trips, based on a premise of mistaken identity -pasports swap- and a McGuffin of a secret dossier. 

The train goes Zurich -Belfort-Paris. There's a chase between Cremer and Hopper, pretty well done. That's about all the action you get. And a downbeat ending, very much a la maison in the French, Italian films of that time. 

Most interesting of course today to see for Hopper, who is at his most menacing as Medford, the mercenary in pursuit of the dossier. He sits many scenes on the train, in the back, a silhouette, chain-smoking.

He looks like a psycho, black leather jacket, cool haircut, and nasal spray. He's a like a younger version of Frank Booth. Hopper did some European fares at the time (The American Friend), then he went to do Apocalypse Now in the Philippines. 

#Music by Claude Nougaro and Maurice Vander, with a cool (but sad) song on the end credits (Nous n'avons pas de passeport).

                                                           All the film here !

3 out of 5 / 6 out of 10 !

What a Way to Go! (1964)

 What A Cast!... What A Past!... What A Show!...

Plot: A widow (Shirley MacLaine) discusses her past four marriages with her shrink. All of her four husbands got incredibly rich and died abruptly because of their money driven goals. 

 What a Way to Go! is a zanny 1964 comedy, ahead of its time. A combo of genres, parodies, witty script and great cast, plus Edith Head's costumes and gowns. Glorious CinemaScope (2.35.1), a very expensive film at the time.

You can say it was a leftie film, the idea of money can't bring you happiness, really , right? ;).

Screenwriters: Legendary Broadway duo Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

The director is Brit J. Lee Thompson, that is mostly known for thrillers (the original Cape Fear), war movies (The Guns of Navarone), Planet of the Apes sequels (he was supposed to direct the original), westerns (Mackenna's Gold), a weird reincarnation film (The Reincarnation of Peter Proud) and many Charles Bronson vehicles. But in the 60's Thompson did a couple of off-beat comedies, next on John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! written by William Peter Blatty, also with Shirley MacLaine. 

Coincidentally I finished the new Cape Fear series, after much wanting to see again the original, on J. Lee Thompson's birthday, August 1st (he was born in 1914!). 

Shirley MacLaine was hot after Billy Wilder's Irma la Douce (1963) but this was originally Marilyn Monroe's film. After Monroe died Elisabeth Taylor was supposed to be in th lead. That's why you have all kind of Cleopatra puns. 

Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (color) and Best costume design. 

Gene Kelly won an award in Locarno !

Seconds: Paul Newman, Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Gene Kelly, and Dick Van Dyke.

psychiatrist: Robert Cummings. 

Best bit imo: the Lush Budgett film parody. In 1966 an LA band took the name of Lush Budgett !

Oh, I forgot, you can see the film on youtube here. It's a very good copy. By Lush Budgett.;)

4 out of 5 ! 8 out of 10 !!!

RIP Vincent Pastore

Pussy is no more...Vincent Pastore played most famously Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero on the HBO drama series The Sopranos, for which he got a Screen Actors Guild Award. 

He was also in Scorsese's Goodfellas and the HBO film Gotti. He was 80...

In Bruges (2008)

 Romanian version here. 

I was aked to to piece for the TIFF 25 retrospective in AperiTIFF and here it is. 

"They're Filming Midgets..."

Heaven, hell or purgatory? It's Bruges!

An extraordinary debut by Irish filmmaker Martin McDonagh (Seven Psychopats, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri), In Bruges is one of the very best films of 2008—and much more than that. A cult film par excellence, it becomes more valuable every time I revisit it. I am still astonished that, after premiering at Sundance, it failed to win any major awards there. It did go on to win Colin Farrell a Golden Globe and earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay, a category it won at the BAFTAs.

I like to think, however, that it did for tourism in Bruges what Roman Holiday did for Rome!

I, for one, spent a day there in 2014, and my impressions matched Ray's point of view exactly, as opposed to Ken's.

The Colin Farrell/Ray – Brendan Gleeson/Ken pairing is fabulous, and McDonagh reunited them fourteen years later in another extraordinary film, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022).

And Ralph Fiennes as Harry is impeccable, ferocious—an irresistible character.

You can tell that McDonagh is also a playwright, and that his literary influences stem from the Theatre of the Absurd, yet the film remains intensely cinematic.

First and foremost, it owes a great deal to Harold Pinter's 1959 play The Dumb Waiter. In turn, Pinter's play was inspired by Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953). Add a touch of British gangster cinema—Irish, in this case—a hint of Bruegel landscapes in Bruges, nihilism, a fatal trauma, an improbable love story, and black, absurd humour turned up to eleven.

Other clues: Touch of Evil, Don't Look Now, Carlito's Way, the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

Carter Burwell's score most likely came into McDonagh's world via the Coen Brothers (see Fargo in the same TIFF retrospective of black comedies), with whom McDonagh began a wonderful collaboration that continued throughout all of his subsequent films.

Like Fargo, In Bruges was never released theatrically in Romania at the time.

Alin Ludu Dumbravă

Cape Fear (2026)

Beware !!! (literally stay away from this Fake Fear)

Max Cady is Back ! And this time he is Javier Bardem with a goat-e and Udo Kier type of Blue Eyes -actually Green lenses!)

The new Cape Fear is here...on Apple Tv + (premiered June 5th) 

Episodes 1 and 2 were cool and atmospheric, but  will it have enough breath to do Ten ?

we'll see...

well, now it's over and what was originally published on June 8th overstayed its welcome -as expected !!! here are the August 1st conclusions of this bloated overbearing season !

Bardem, best thing about him, his Panama hat (which he took from Mitchum's Cady, but Mitchum had a cooler one-and in black and white)- does not get even close to his Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men or even the blonde eyed psycho Silva from Skyfall. No my faved, his best psycho and most fun is the one from Perdita Durango, Romeo !. Basically Bardem is ripping off De Niro's Max Cady at a nec plus ultra grand guignol style. Efficient but pastiche...

Very little from the original book John D. MacDonald's The Executioners (1957) stays on.

Also not much of the 1962 J. Lee Thompson original adaptation as Cape Fear in glorious Black and White.

cool tittle lettering, cool ideas from the Scorsese 1991 remake and homage (the shots on the negative, camera moves), and most of all the music stays the same. Bernard Herrmann's score, now redone by Jeff Russo. This is the only asset imo, I think I watched it for the score alone, this being one of the best I ever heard, and tops some of Herrmann's work with Hitchcock. 

Exec prod by Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and showrunner Nick Antosca.

Wasted Ted Levine and Ron Perlman in the obvious baddie daddy roles. 

***

1st episode, 'Fingers and Toes' directed by Norwegian Morten Tyldum (Headhunters, Passengers). 

Ep. 2 'Why Would I Want to Hurt You?' directed by  S.J. Clarkson (Jessica Jones, Madame Web), features a cameo by screenwiter Wesley Strick (who wrote the 1991 remake of CF).

Ep. no. 3 on June 12th:  Phantom Sensations

already feeling the nausea

Ep. 4 Pierced. June 19th.

some lgbtq happens before the two daughters. 

ep.5 Faith -June 26.

loss of breath, mambojambo and a sinister Juliette Lewis. 

Ep. 6 Possum -July 3rd.

that's when I feel like quiting, don't really wanna see how they're gonna mangle this beyond belief. 

Ep. 7: Mongrel -July 10th

by episode seven it's becoming such a grand guignol caricature with storytelling of a bad telenovela,  I switched it of. They take a road trip and ouch, and the soundtracks goes from BOC's Don't Fear the Reaper to Alice Cooper's Eighteen. 

Ep. 8 ∙ Los tiempos de Dios son Perfectos -July 17. Telenovellas quickens. 

Ep. 9- The Scar -July 24. More mambojambo, rednecks and swamps. We don't need a bigger boat ;)

Ep. 10: The Executioners. July 31th. Hurricane arrives. Leaving open season two ? C'mon !!!

2 out of 5, 4 out of 10 !