THE CRANES ARE FLYING (1957)

[Update 04/12/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

The camerawork in this film is excellent. One jaw-dropping shot right after another. From what little I've read about cinematographer Sergei Uruseveky, he was a military cameraman during the war.  Also, director Mikhail Kalatozov was an admirer of King Vidor.

The story is about two young lovers in Russia. They plan to get married, but when war breaks out the boy enters the army and the girl is left behind heartbroken. Lack of communication and cowardly acts by the boy's cousin end up destroying the girl's heart and spirit. The boy has plenty of troubles of his own.

I liked this movie a lot. The direction and photography was masterful and the story was really good...right up until the end. I didn't like the ending. I wanted it to be much more depressing. To me the entire story was leading one direction and then in the last two minutes it spins around and goes off in the opposite direction. Maybe that's just me. Don't let my complaint turn you off, this movie is definitely worth watching.

The not often seen in movies "headbutt-to-the-ass" shot.

There's a lot of great shots in the movie, but I think the following 37 second uncut shot is the best. It starts inside a moving bus goes out onto a crowded street, down the street through the crowd then up into a crane shot of the entire street! Amazing! Here it is...

THE NEXT THREE DAYS (2010)

[Update 03/09/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

Simple everyday man Russell Crowe has his world rocked when his wife (Elizabeth Banks) is suddenly arrested and thrown in jail for murder. He cries and whimpers some, but when the last legal effort has been denied Russell puts on his biggest, baddest big girl panties and decides he's going to break her out of jail himself!

That's an interesting idea for a movie and for the most part it works, I was entertained, but I wish it had just been darker! There was a short moment (when he was getting money for his plan) that was dark and it was easily the best part of the movie. Another thing that bothered me is there were multiple rock montages. What is this a ROCKY movie? Also, the escape was way too easy. There wasn't any traffic on the roads. I'll run into more difficulty returning this DVD to the fucking video store than he did escaping the city with the police hot on his tail.

Those things aside, I enjoyed the movie. It wasn't anything special and a month from now I will have forgotten most of it, but it was a good lazy afternoon time-waster.

TRY AND GET ME! (1950)

Jobless Frank (THE HITCH-HIKER, IN A LONELY PLACE) Lovejoy has a wife and kid depending on him. His employment prospects are looking like shit and he's down to his last few bucks when he runs into Lloyd Bridges, a slick-talking small time hoodlum who's looking for a driver. Frank doesn't want to do it, but he doesn't really have a choice. They successfully pull off a couple of convenience store hold ups, but when a botched kidnapping turns deadly Frank is quickly eaten alive by the guilt. To make matters even worse a local newspaper man has whipped the local citizens up into a frenzy of bloodthirsty vigilantism.

It's a shame this movie is so hard to find, because even though the newspaper moments drag and are bogged down in simplistic social commentary, the rest of the film moves along smoothly and the ending was quite a shocker! Frank Lovejoy does a great job of portraying somebody riddled with guilt and Lloyd Bridges is scary as the balls to the wall criminal who will stop at nothing to get money.

Not the greatest noir that ever did noir, but it's a good watch.

APT. (2006)

Alright. So you got this big apartment building and awhile back this chick who's in a wheelchair (her legs don't work) and because of that, even though she's in her 20's, she literally does nothing but stare out the window. No job, no hobbies, nothing productive, just staring out that goddamn window.  Anyway, her parents die in a car wreck and her neighbors take her in. Sounds nice, except for the fact that they're assholes who beat the shit out of her and even rape her. Instead of simply leaving or calling the cops, she commits suicide instead and now her ghost (the standard head down with long, straight black hair and having a non-stop seizure variety) goes around every night at 9:56 killing people. Yawn.

A woman who lives in the complex thinks that it's odd that people die every night around 10 o'clock (come to think of it...that is kinda of odd), but instead of moving out, she investigates the murders on her own. Great idea! Eventually she tells the police, but they're useless.

If you're a time traveler from the past and you've never seen a horror movie before, APT. might come off as original and scary, but to everybody else it'll blow so hard all of your Nintendo cartridges will start working. [Edit 01/10/2021: that joke is so tired and horrible that I'm going to leave it.  Fuck, that was bad.]

Zero scares, unoriginal story, slow pace, weak kills (falling, more falling, yet even more falling, falling in front of train, eating to death, gunshot suicide, needle to neck).  I cannot think of one single reason to watch this movie. Skip it and never look back.

The scariest part about this movie is this fucking parking lot. How are the people in the middle suppose to get out?!

SEX IS ZERO 2 (2007)

Well, I still haven't figured out what the title SEX IS ZERO means, but I did like this movie better than the original. Most of the characters are back (there's even a new and improved main girl), a lot of the jokes are rehashed, very little nudity and the story is that same bizarre half funny/half depressing mixture, but for whatever reason I enjoyed this outing. Maybe the characters are starting to grow on me.

The dweeb from the first movie is still in school and even though he's a complete dork he has yet another hot girlfriend! She's beautiful, has a great personality and is completely dedicated to him, but her mother hates him and wants to set her daughter up with a handsome, successful lawyer instead. The other stories revolve around the guys training for a MMA tournament and the girls training for the swimming championship...there's also a new sexy swim coach that catches the eye of the guy with the psychotic girlfriend. That story was actually funny. On the depressing side of things, you have an attempted suicide, a really sad breakup scene and the even sadder accidental meeting afterwards.

Overall, a fun movie and I think the best improvement over the original was the new girl. The older girl was beautiful, but I really liked this girl's character and that added a new dynamic to the film: me actually caring what happened to the characters. One thing I did find disturbing was the repeated occurrence of guys sticking stuff up other guy's buttholes. What the fuck?

Part 1 - Sex Is Zero (2002)