BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT (1998)

"This is chaos!"

I love this movie. I've never had a desire to be an actual filmmaker, but BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT is pretty close to what I envision in my handsome brain.

Matko is a small-time swindler.  He lives in a large shack, with his teenage son, Zare, beside the Danube.  Matko is always coming up with (unsuccessful) ideas to make a quick buck.  His latest idea involves lying to a local mobster, Mr. Grga, to secure a loan to finance a train robbery.  He then involves another gangster, the psychotic Dadan (played by Srdjan Todorovic, in one of the funniest performances in movie history), to split the deal with him.  Unfortunately, Dadan double-crosses Matko and then demands repayment!  Being flat broke, Matko does the only thing he can do: agree to marry off Zare to Dadan's younger sister....but Zare has no plans on marrying Dadan's sister because he's in love with his girlfriend, Ida.

That's enough about the story. The real attraction here is the absolute insanity of this movie! It never lets up for a second. Right from the start, BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT blasts off like a rocket and it only get crazier as it goes! And yet, somehow, through all of the screaming and drug-fueled madness there is a sweet story of true love and family bonds.

I could talk much, much longer about WCBC (especially about Todorovic's absolutely brilliant performance or questioning why so many of the great actors involved with this film never appeared in anything else), but that would be unfair to anybody who hasn't seen the film.  Long story, short: BLACK CAT, WHITE CAT is an absolute masterpiece of storytelling and filmmaking, that deserves to be seen by anybody who loves Cinema.

Highly recommended.

THE CHILLING (1989)

Linda Blair works at a cryogenics laboratory. Dan Haggerty is their security guard. Forty-two minutes later, tinfoil wrapped zombies show up and boringly chase everybody around for the remainder of the movie. That's about it. It's not entertaining.  Everything is too dark, the budget was probably below $20,000 and one doctor had a giant sword in his office. You think all of that would add up to be a perfect recipe for a movie so bad it's good, but no. Outside of a few funny Dan Haggerty moments the entire movie was pretty tiresome.

The one highlight was towards the beginning when three bank robbers storm into a bank and start screaming at people. All the customers/workers are cowering in fear, when suddenly the armored truck guys barge in and yell for everybody to get on the floor. Immediately this one guy jumps up and announces loudly "I'm outta hear!" then bolts for the door. A bank robber shoots him in the back and the dude yells like he just jumped on a bicycle with no seat. "ACK!" He then grabs his back like an infomercial actor and falls down.  It was really funny.

Only for hardcore horror masochists and fans of wooden acting and badly written dialogue.

WHITE VALENTINE (1999)

As a teenager Ji-hyun Jun somehow (it's never explained) becomes pen pals with a soldier. He comes to visit her, but since she lied and said she was a older woman she chickens out. The correspondence stops.

Years later she's 20 and the man has moved to her town. He opens a bird store and by chance his favorite pigeon gets loose and lands on Ji-hyun's window. She doesn't know it belongs to him and slips a message in the pigeon's message holder and lets it go. It flies back to him. That is the start of their second relationship and you would think that might tell these fuckers they were meant to be together, but instead the movie just goes on and on without either one putting two and two together and hooking up. It was very frustrating.

Another thing I found irritating was the lack of close-ups on Ji-hyun Jun.  Yea, she might not be a star yet, but she's the lead in the film, so you'd think the director would fucking put two and two together himself and get some fucking close-ups! Grrrr.

Nice movie, but it left a lot to be desired. Worth watching if you like romantic movies, but don't expect too much.