The first week of the New Year passes. Australia burns. 500 milion animals dead. On the beach, there is only one way out. Put on a life jacket and swim into the ocean. Assassinations and charades. Looking back at the alternte reality satire, Winter Kills, from a novel by Richard Condon, author of The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May. Vilmos Zsigmond is the DP and the cast includes John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Jeff Bridges, Dorothy Malone, Toshiro Mifune, Richard Boone, and an uncredited cameo by a reclusive legend that is like a desert after a twelve course meal. Winter Kills is one of the best movies of the seventies and does not even boast a star director. William Richert is an unheralded maverick whose career never went anywhere, but shows here that he can direct as well as any of the decades superstars. He also wrote the astoundingly good screenplay.
Aside from throwing golden bones to their pet dog Quentin Tarantino, the Golden Globe awards were fairly distributed, at least among the actors, all of whom were deserving. Rene Zellweger, Joaquin Phoenix, Cate Blanchett, Ana de Armas, and Brian Cox were all justifiably honored. As for the television shows and special awards, I could care less. Ricky Gervais was hilarious, though, the best host of any awards program since the rise of the plebeians.
I have failed in three attempts to watch The Lighthouse, which is immediately boring and after five minutes I am in mental paralysis. I have been nodding out midway through most movies, but usually wake up for the endings, and dont feel my brief naps have deprived me of anything pressing, so therefore I have not bothered to go back to find what I had missed. Hammer’s 1961 inheritance mystery, Scream of Fear, with Susan Strasberg and Christopher Lee, may well deserve a second, more complete, look at some point. And I ddnt sleep at all throughout the thoroughly excellent Knives Out, boasting a cast any member of which is deserving of an Oscar. This is a return to the high concept, star studded murder mysteries of times remembered.
On the other end of the entertainment spectrum is a silly, childish thing from South Korea called The Beautiful Vampire. Why did I keep watching? What was I expecting?
Cinema Afterlife 