INNOCENCE UNPROTECTED (1968)

From what I can tell (if the story is true) is that back in the 1960's, Yugoslavian director Dusan Makavejev took portions of the unreleased 1941 film INNOCENCE UNPROTECTED (written, starring, produced and directed by strongman/escape artist Dragoljub Aleksic) and cobbled them together with present day interviews with the cast and WWII newsreel footage!  He released the results as INNOCENCE UNPROTECTED (1968).  What a bizarre thing to do, but yet somehow it all comes together beautifully and the end results create a kind of roller coaster effect on the viewer.  One moment you're watching an almost campy 1941 melodrama and then the very next second you are looking at dust covered victims stumbling out of rubble or maybe the actors from the original movie (now 20+ years older) talking about their lives.

This is my third Dusan Makavejev film and so far I only have the utmost respect for his work.  Each film that I've seen (MAN IS NOT A BIRD, LOVE AFFAIR; OR THE CASE OF THE MISSING SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR and now this one) has been unique and totally captivating.  In this film I was really curious about the main guy, Dragoljub Aleksic.  He seemed to be such a fascinating person that I wish there was a full-length documentary just about him!  The vintage footage of him doing all kinds of insane tricks are cool, but then they cut to him 20+ years later and he's still doing them!!!  This guy must have lived a ridiculous life.  Based on the crowds at his earlier performances he appears to have been fairly popular, but then you see him living in a small rundown house (all alone?), clinging to his past glory and it's kind of depressing.  Life truly is strange and fragile.

Recommended for sure.

THE 5TH WAVE (2016)

I have a weakness for alien invasion stories and having recently finished reading Robert McCammon's awesome alien invasion novel "The Border" I was in the mood for a good alien invasion movie, so I sat down to watch THE 5TH WAVE and...I'm still in the mood for a good alien invasion movie.

Told in possibly the blandest way possible, THE 5TH WAVE is the bland story of a bland teenage girl who is living a bland life when some bland aliens invade and then not much happens.  She gives a brief narration about the first four "waves" ("waves" are ways that the aliens tried to wipe out humanity: lack of electricity, tidal waves, sickness, aliens looking like humans), but it's covered so quickly that it has zero emotional impact.  So the main chick ends up in a refugee camp with her family.  Her dad is killed and her little brother is taken away by soldiers.  She now has to walk to the military base to rescue her brother.  How exciting.

Boring aliens, children trained as soldiers, earthquakes chasing people, a tough female soldier wearing 40lbs. of eye make-up, piss-poor dialogue, soldiers creeping around at night with bright LED lights on their helmets, an open-ended ending that was a total disappointment, slow pace, PG-rated violence, Liev Schreiber's talents wasted, zero nudity, zero blood.  Honestly, I can't see why anybody over the age of 15 would ever want to watch this movie more than once.  It's not a bad movie, but it's just so soulless and unoriginal that it's pretty much nothing.  The alien mothership did look cool though...for the entire 45 seconds that it was in the screen.  Skip it.