Shameless Self Expression

Antonio Banderas stars as a surgeon who has come up with a new artificial skin for use in transgenesis skin grafts. Unbeknownst to the outside world, he has a young woman named Vera (Elena Anaya) locked-up in his basement to conduct illegal experiments on. The only other person who knows about this is housekeeper Marisa Paredes, but her jewel robber son (Roberto Alamo) is about to come into this bizarre situation, after his latest heist. From here, secrets are unveiled, involving Banderas’ dead wife Gal, their young daughter Norma, and a young creep named Vicente, who attempted to rape Norma.   Aside from his tedious first film “Pepi, Luci, and Bom” and the more recent “Volver” , Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar (whose films also include “High Heels” , “Talk to Her” , and “Dark Habits” ) has yet to make a boring film that I’ve seen. However, his films tend to be extremely uneven and I always end up admiring the raunchy excess of parts of the film rather than actually li...

Sailors Michael Paré and Bobby DiCicco take part in a US Navy experiment in invisibility (i.e. Make ships undetectable to foreign radar), but something goes screwy and they have to abandon ship as the ship is contaminated with radiation. Somehow, this results in the pair of 1940s sailors ending up being transported to 1984. Now in a future America that is somewhat foreign and scary to them, in addition to the fact that they just frigging travelled through time, the duo find themselves trying to get back home, enlisting the aid of a random woman (Nancy Allen) to help them flee authorities who are after them. Eric Christmas plays the elderly version of the scientist behind the experiment...and he’s still trying to perfect it!   Well, here’s a fun little B-movie I was quite pleasantly surprised by. Directed by Stewart Raffill (the notorious “Mac and Me” , which I kinda liked as an 8 year-old idiot), this 1984 sci-fi movie is a perfectly enjoyable time travel yarn, only s...

Businessman Sean Connery falls in love with his employee of the title (Tippi Hedren), finds out she’s an habitual thief with deep psychological problems, and tries to cure her. Diane Baker plays Connery’s protective sister-in-law, Louise Latham is Marnie’s stern and unfeeling mother. A young Bruce Dern can be seen in a key flashback, and yes, that’s a very young Melody Thomas Scott (Nikki on “Y&R” ) in a brief part. This 1964 Alfred Hitchcock ( “Strangers on a Train” , “Vertigo” , “The 39 Steps” , and “Spellbound” being among his best) near-miss is one of his more thematically complex films, for sure. Unfortunately the intriguing title role is left in the truly incapable hands of miscast Hedren, who single-handedly drops the film down a peg. Connery is excellent and charismatic (in my view he’s an especially underrated actor, just watch him in this, “The Hill” , “The Untouchables” or the little-seen “The Offence” ), and Baker shows so much more talent in her support rol...

In 2018 the US, run by a Palin-esque President (Stephanie Paul) launch a moon expedition, but the shuttle ends up landing on the dark side of the moon. The two astronauts emerge from their shuttle to a startling discovery; a colony of Nazis has been in place on the dark side of the moon since 1945, and are (slowly) planning to come back to Earth and take over! One of the astronauts is killed, while another named Washington (American-born Aussie resident Christopher Kirby) is captured, interrogated, and has his black skin bleached white by orders of the ‘Moon Fuhrer’ (veteran cult actor Udo Kier)! Meanwhile, back on Earth, Presidential campaign manager Peta Sergeant seems to be incorporating awfully fascistic speech material. Julia Dietze plays the schoolteacher daughter of Nazi scientist Prof. Richter (Tilo Prückner), who is engaged to Fuhrer-in-waiting Klaus Adler (former Bond henchman Götz Otto, perfectly cast), but seems to have a soft spot for the African-American Washington, t...