DAMIEN RILEY, world musician and performer

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  • Creature from the Black Lagoon

    Watching a horror film in black and white can hypnotize your brain to believe the creature is real and the production is modern. It’s an odd thing. What’s more, if you make the tiniest effort to examine the sets, the wardrobe, and the creatures in the feature, you just might find that the movie makers of that time (ie; 1954) put more effort into their craft than many horror movies in modern times.

    Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
    G | 1h 19min | Horror | 5 March 1954 (USA)

    A strange prehistoric beast lurks in the depths of the Amazonian jungle. A group of scientists try to capture the animal and bring it back to civilization for study.
    Director: Jack Arnold
    Writers: Harry Essex (screenplay), Arthur A. Ross (screenplay) (as Arthur Ross) | 1 more credit »
    Stars: Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning

    One powerful aspect of the films in this series is the music. It needed to be, to create suspense. By today’s standards, it is nothing subtle but again, after you suspend your sense of disbelief a little, and let the film hypnotize you, you don’t pay attention to what the music is doing. I love the sets in this film because they are mostly on the water and boat. Like the music, they bring the film alive.

    I have to comment on the creature suit. When he/she/it is out of water, he opens and closes his mouth like a fish. It’s effective. There were times I forgot there was an actor inside. The creature was a CREATURE and that is quite a feat for an old B&W film. Make no mistake, there are some cheesy parts that could have been made better but who’s counting?

    Like King Kong, the creature will not hurt the woman. That adds a nice element of empathy for him. Nonetheless, he is a killer and must be dealt with as such. This is a barrel of monkeys, I recommend it to all horror fans (and other genres that circle those wagons).

    7/10

  • Jackie

    The 1960’s were a mixed bag for women. On one hand, they were getting more rights and respect by the year and on the other hand, the age old discrimination and confines were not budging for any woman, even the first lady. This film shows how Jackie Kennedy ran the White House and dealt with the assassination of her husband.

    Jackie (2016)
    R | 1h 40min | Biography, Drama, History | 2 December 2016 (USA)

    Following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy fights through grief and trauma to regain her faith, console her children, and define her husband’s historic legacy.
    Director: Pablo Larraín
    Writer: Noah Oppenheim
    Stars: Natalie Portman, Peter Sarsgaard, Greta Gerwig

    Natalie Portman does a great job here. Clearly she studied the mannerisms and accent of the first lady while working on the movie. Most the time it seemed as if she was Jackie Kennedy. There is a scene with an interviewer where he asks her questions that seem confining to her role as a woman. You see her inner strength come out and it is very telling of what women were putting up with from men in that decade. The scene from the assassination is played out graphically. She had to sit there and take what was happening with no one to comfort her. I had never thought of that until I saw this film.

    The final scene of the movie is very well made. As she exits the White House you get to see and maybe feel if you’re open enough, the barren emotions she had likely been feeling. We know her husband had affairs, now he was gone and she had to leave her home, the White House. There were several parts I thought were a bit dull but I chalked that up to being a historical film. It did lose some points for that though. It was a vey well made “case study” of a slice in time. I do recommend it, especially for women to see the types of treatment women once endured.

    6/10

  • Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967)

    This film shows Martin Scorsese and Harvey Keitel in their infancy as filmmakers. Scorsese is using his usual conventions to illustrate Italian traditons and youth in America. It’s funny to see how he made movies decades before films like “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas.”

    Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967)
    I Call First (original title)
    R | 1h 30min | Drama, Romance | 20 January 1978 (Finland)

    A young man struggles with the fact that his girlfriend was once raped.
    Director: Martin Scorsese
    Writers: Betzi Manoogian (additional dialogue), Martin Scorsese
    Stars: Harvey Keitel, Zina Bethune, Anne Collette

    Martin Scorsese directed films I love like “Taxi Driver,” “Mean Streets,” “After Hours,” “Raging Bull,” and many more. He’s like a machine that can only put out hits. This film starts out in a familiar way. You see a group of Italian young men, most notable the protagonist played by Harvey Keitel, a frequent actor in Scorsese’s films.

    The conflict comes when Keitel’s character finds out his fiancee had been rapes in the past. He jst can’t calm down about it. I think this behavior could be acceptable in 1967 when this film was made but it looks ugly through modern glasses. Apart from the authentic banter between the Italian men, this film fell flat with me. He starts calling his girlfriend a whore for no other reason than for the rape that happened to her. I found his character disgusting for that. Hasn’t the woman had enough to work through without getting this from him? Because his character made me very uncomfortable with his unbridled acts of jealousy, it lost points.

    6/10

  • Call Me By Your Name

    This is the infamous “gay movie” I’d been hearing about months before seeing it. I learned it isn’t a gay movie but rather a movie about how lives cross in time and sometimes we find a spark: gay or not. As a heterosexual male, I enjoyed that aspect of this film very much. After all, there are also hetero relationships in the film and some very beautiful actresses. I’ve concluded this is more about summer relationships gay and straight than it is about revealing what it means to be gay. That may let down some people but there are other films out there that qualify as gay films.

    Call Me by Your Name (2017)
    R | 2h 12min | Drama, Romance | 24 November 2017 (USA)

    In Northern Italy in 1983, seventeen year-old Elio begins a relationship with visiting Oliver, his father’s research assistant, with whom he bonds over his emerging sexuality, their Jewish heritage, and the beguiling Italian landscape.
    Director: Luca Guadagnino
    Writers: James Ivory (screenplay by), André Aciman (based on the novel by)
    Stars: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg

    When people have a spark between them, it’s wonderful. We think of two young men as knees and elbows and as awkward creatures less capable of romance. This is film is kind of nice as we are in an open time of acceptance for gays and bisexuals. They just feel it. Why do some begrudge them love they desire? There were a few parts that dragged a bit. Overall though, this is a brave film that shows the value of love’s spark, over the spanse of one Summer, in Italy. I recommend it. Your thoughts are invited in the comments.

    9/10

  • Seven Psychopaths

    Ensemble cast of psychopaths? Yep, exactly right! In this gem we have Colin Farrell playing an uninspired script writer who gets involved with some organized crime psychopaths in the writing of his movie.

    Seven Psychopaths (2012)
    R | 1h 50min | Comedy, Crime | 12 October 2012 (USA)

    A struggling screenwriter inadvertently becomes entangled in the Los Angeles criminal underworld after his oddball friends kidnap a gangster’s beloved Shih Tzu.
    Director: Martin McDonagh
    Writer: Martin McDonagh
    Stars: Colin Farrell, Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell

    We get to experience pure comedy gold in this hitman tale. Juxtaposed against that immorality, we see some of these killers have weak spots for a Shih tzu. In a huge cast, Sam Rockwell is my favorite and arguably the most crazed of all the psychopaths. He enjoys telling the movie ideas all too much to the writer. Colin Farrell is our anchor of sanity but then again, what sane person would hang out with these psychopaths. He has quite a few close calls. The Shih tzu belongs to Woody Harrelson’s character and he is truly side splitting the way he pines over it.

    Basically this film is funny but there are many shoot-outs and scenes of full-out violence. It’s a comedy not to be missed. Most of it takes place in the Southern California Desert.

    9/10

    At time of reviewing this, it was streaming on Amazon Prime.

  • Leviathan (1989)

    Undersea monsters are nothing new to film. The ocean is a lot like outer space as a background in Alien. Here, we aren’t in outer space but rather probing the depths of our own ocean space. A hapless crew works out, snaps towels on each other, and one by one encounter a life form that is growing.

    Leviathan (1989)
    R | 1h 38min | Adventure, Horror, Mystery | 17 March 1989 (USA)

    An American deep-sea mining colony stumbles upon a sunken Soviet vessel hiding a horrific secret.
    Director: George P. Cosmatos
    Writers: David Webb Peoples (story) (as David Peoples), David Webb Peoples (screenplay) (as David Peoples) | 1 more credit »
    Stars: Peter Weller, Richard Crenna, Amanda Pays

    An impressive star-studded cast develops a far-reaching sense of fear aboard a deep sea submarine. It feels scientific but soon we start feeling there is something evil on board. The effects aren’t great but good enough to scare. Questions of what this thing could be are raised an different answers are given.

    It seems fairly early on that the entire cast may be wiped out. The final scene has the aura of a Die Hard ending. That’s probably because in 1989, most action films were as such. This film is great fun for its time and I highly recommend it. It’s far from perfect but it has all the elements needed for an engaging, entertaining, undersea, sci-fi horror.

    8/10