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mazaldivar
Reviews
High School Gig (2010)
It all holds together somehow
The premise doesn't work. Mainly because we don't see the main character go through a transition. I can't buy that a normal girl can turn into a prostitute, over night mind you, just because of some financial woes.
The human mind doesn't work that way. Psychological turmoil was needed to convey the transition. Or, had she'd been the high school slut from the very beginning, and only now doing it for cash, then it might have flown.
Despite that major set back the film actually holds together quite well. The characters are too colorful to forget. The main villain is a guy you love to hate. In an age where movie villains are likable or funny this film's heavy is delightfully atypical. Every time he's on screen you just want to punch him in the face.
Jonah Hex (2010)
Gets progressively worse as it goes along.
Starts off as an excercise in mediocrity and cliché but manages to sink even lower as the film's (thankfully short) running time comes to a close.
What a shame. The original Neveldine and Taylor script (which I only read half of because I didn't want to spoil myself silly) was actually quite good. Episodic in the way that Hex gets himself into bizarre jams (much like the original 70's comic) on the road to the film's Macguffin.
One such jam being he runs into a town where the occupants have all been lobotomized.
Unfortunately, none of that makes it to the final film and although a lot of the film was cut down I don't believe they filmed even 90% of what was in that script.
What remains of the N & T script is the Gatling gun sequence (albeit without the gore) and the arena sequence (heavily reworked and, ultimately, uninteresting).
There are one or two shots where Hex is riding through the countryside at night. I'd like to know if any other IMDBers were having trouble making out what was going on in those shots. Poorly lit.
Have cinematographers forgotten to lens a night scene in westerns? All "day for night" jokes aside, this is terrible. I never thought I would see such an eye strainingly dim scene in a big budgeted Hollywood picture.
Shameful.
As for the charisma vacuum that is Megan Fox, she's surprisingly substantial in her introductory scene but falls into familiar territory, for her (empty expression/lifeless), shortly after.
The Big Sleaze (2010)
Very entertaining but a step back for WILD DOGS
With the release of Fredianelli's previous feature, THE MINSTREL KILLER, you began to see the beginnings of something very special. With THE BIG SLEAZE the spark is still there but there is hardly the same amount of effort.
THE MINSTREL KILLER is a period piece (set in the 70's) and the attention to detail is almost perfect. Also, there was an original score making it very easy to actually get distributed, in some form, due to there being no copyright infringement. THE BIG SLEAZE has MJ's "Billie Jean" play at one point.
For his next picture (and for the rest of his career) the director NEEDS to push forward and make something that can reach a mass audience without running afoul with the law.
In other words Mike, make something you can profit from.
With that said, THE BIG SLEAZE is a lot of politically incorrect fun. The film has a plot but it is merely there to pit its main character (played by the director) into a number of situations that get more outrageous as the running time goes on. Its episodic nature is what keeps the entertainment value up with few hiccups along the way.
In a lot of these underground films you find a lot of one situational type stories due to the micro-budgets these films normally have. Save that crap for television. This is supposed to be cinema! And I think THE BIG SLEAZE proves that Michael Fredianelli understands this.
The wack job characters our protagonist encounters would be very much at home in some Troma movie. Henry Lee (as a crazed Asian porn star in search for the holy grail of snuff films) and Robert Amstler (as a freelance Rouster who is a loony Toon character come to life!) are two actors who made the most impression on me when I watched it. Their comic delivery is impeccable.
There are few actors who aren't up to snuff with the others though. The protagonist's ex girlfriend and the eventual new girlfriend both aren't very convincing (especially when the latter has to start crying).
The show stopper is the film's pre-climax when our "hero" is hired to blow up Disneyland(!). Now that's something you're not likely to see in any type of cinema anywhere.
I originally wrote a much more detailed, and better, review for this Fredianelli outing but the powers that be on IMDb saw it fit not to publish it.
So, as a favor, I quickly jotted down this capsule of a review. Hope you found it helpful.
7/10
Une corde un Colt... (1969)
this movie is great. how dare they give this a 6.2!
cemetery without crosses(aka the rope and the colt) is one of the best spaghetti westerns out there. it is up there with THE GREAT SILENCE. wonderful film. i must warn u however... there is not a lot of shooting going on here like most spags. in fact the kill count is 16(which is unheard of in this genre). but the story is tight and it moves in a nice pace. one of the few spag westerns that actually feels like a Leone film(though a poor mans Leone). wonderfully shot. the main character hangs out in a ghost town. let me tell u this is the best ghost town i have seen in any film. the only thing wrong with the film is one scene where the main character is sitting at a dinner table and everybody starts looking at him. and this goes on for a while. until finally it is revealed as to why they were staring. it wasn't really worth the 2 minutes of silence just to get the "punchline". other than that a this is definitely on my top ten spag list, if not then an early teen list.