'MY SWEET GIRL'......ONE SWEET TWIST......

 My Sweet Girl by Amanda Jayatissa (2021)   Psychological thrillers live or die depending on two key factors.......

             Factor #1 - Their readability.......does the author make the story urgent and compelling enough to make you to flip the pages at supersonic speed, even if it means keeping you up til 3 in the morning? Or does the book bog down in endless overly descriptive internal monologues that have you roll your eyes and start skimming through that dense forest of verbiage to get to the good stuff......

             Factor #2 - The Big Twists (or multiple medium-sized twists)   Does the author astound you with his or her cleverness and guile by detonating twists that you never saw coming or even hoped to guess and leave your jaw dropping to floor level faster than a Warner Brothers cartoon character?

               We're more than happy to report that "My Sweet Girl"  checks off both those factors......and does so with a freakin' vengeance. 

                Our narrator here is Paloma Evans a young woman who was adopted from an orphanage in Sri Lanka by a wealthy San Francisco couple who live a globe trotting life as child welfare activist-benefactors.

                But not quite a fairy tale life that you'd imagine - Paloma's lost access to her parents' funds while they're off on another world tour.......and Arun an illegal Indian immigrant she befriended and took in as a roommate, stumbled across her deepest darkest secret that relates back to her days at the orphanage.

               Arun's blackmailing her with this explosive information........that is until Paloma finds his dead, murdered body in her apartment, along with a sighting of a dreaded ghostly woman who supposedly haunted the orphanage she came from. 

                And in true Hitchcockian style, after Paloma flees the apartment and brings in the police......there's no body to be found, or even a trace of one. 

                 That's as much detail as you'll get from us, other than the continued gaslighting of Paloma reaches ever maddening heights......with alternating chapters that slowly but inexorably reveal a host of creepy, dangerous and downright horrific things going on during Paloma's childhood as an orphan. 

                 All of these unsettling events finally tie together in what we can only describe as far and way the best thriller BIG TWIST we've read in this or any other year.  It's unquestionably a guaranteed pop-your-eyes-out, jaw-to-the-floor, what-the-hell-did-this-book-just-do humdinger of a reveal.  You'll literally gasp......

                 And for that cherry-on-top that all thriller authors love to deliver on the last page, a nasty ironic (but not altogether surprising) stinger wraps it all up to perfection. 

                 For any reader who can't resist losing sleep over a book like this one,  either strongly suggest that someone put it on their list of holiday gifts for you......or just gift it to yourself right away......cause BQ's giving it 4 and 1/2 stars (****1/2)

'THE POWER OF THE DOG'.....A SURE SIGN OF AWARDS SEASON - CULTURE-VULTURE CRAPOLA......

The Power Of The Dog (Netflix-2021)    How much do we despise this movie?

             Oh let us count the ways.........

              A film like this is the first sign of upcoming awards season frenzy that finally comes to a close with the Academy Awards telecast......like those gathering black clouds of a storm cell before a killer tornado begins forming.......

              It's a prime example of unwatchable, unfit-for-human-consumption culture-vulture sludge that exists solely for one reason and one reason alone........

              .......to suck up all variety of awards and mountainous amounts of undeserved, unwarranted praise for its 'artistry' and powerful insights into the 'human condition'.......

               What  a film like 'The Power Of The Dog' is not designed to do is engage an audience on any level.......no normal human being could sit through it for more than ten minutes without either falling asleep or paying bills on their phones.  

                 Film critics who get paid to write reviews will duly watch it in its entirety without having their eyes pinned open like Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange"......after all, it's their job.

                 The rest of us can feel free to doze and believe us, when it comes to lulling us into La La Land, this film worked faster than chug-a-lugging a family size bottle of Benadryl........

                 But in our mission to provide beloved BQ visitors with the best, most honest reviews possible, we cowboy'd up, rewound the damn thing again and kept our eyes pinned to it til the bitter end.......

                  So......a few brief (and we mean brief) impressions......

                 Seems to be a half-assed amalgam of "Brokeback Mountain" and "There Will Be Blood" with Benedict Cucumber-Head or whatever the hell his name is heaving around like he's channeling his inner Daniel Day Lewis......

                  We've viewed oil paintings that moved faster than this film.......

                  The plot?  Suppressed homosexuality, way out west in 1925 Montana. (You can pick up the actual dreary details in a thousand other reviews, that is if you haven't read them already....)

                   And the ridiculous kicker......after the film has finally lurched to its much prayed for conclusion, it's revealed to be nothing more than a low grade murder story with an ironic twist......the kind of nasty-twist melodrama that the old "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" TV show use to achieve in 23 minutes......(as opposed to the glacial 126 minute torture-from-hell this film inflicts....)

                    Any redeeming qualities?  One - the Kirsten Dunst performance. Remarkable, quietly, effectively powerful and the one and only thing in this movie worth rewarding.......if only it were in a movie worthy of it. 

                    For Kirsten Dunst alone, we're tempted to hand out at least 1 star.......

                    Nah......but hopefully the awards she'll no doubt gather up for this film will open the door to roles in films equal to her talent. 

                      There's no way in this world or any other that we'd hand "The Power Of The Dog" even 1 single star.....

                     It's a gold plated, bona fide, full fledged AFH....,an Abomination From Hell.  Approach it only if you're a dedicated, die hard awards season completist.....

                     And keep that family-size Benadryl handy.....you'll need it. 

                   

'TARGET: THE GIRL'.....A FIERCE SURVIVOR TAKES ON 'THE PAPER CHASE'......

Target: The Girl by Dorian Box (The Emily Calby Series, Book #3) (2021)     We could barely wait to fill you in on this new thriller, the third in what's joined our list of  all-time favorite series.  So right away, know that you do NOT want to miss out on this one, a 5 star (*****) must read.....       

        Once again,we're floored, breathless, and sleep-deprived from racing through yet another harrowing and heartfelt adventure in the ever dangerous life of young Emily Calby.

         The survivor of a childhood forever altered by the horrific, senseless slaughter of her family, Emily has also endured and prevailed through an equally calamitous adolescence. If you've read the previous two books in this series, "The Hiding Girl" and "The Girl In Cell 49B", then you already know what we're referring to. If you haven't, you should dive into Emily's life ASAP, though "Target: The Girl" still functions well as a stand alone....(And for more info, check out our 4/22/21 review of "The Girl In Cell 49B" to see if that convinces you to dive into this exciting series ASAP....)

           This new book finds Emily now 20 years old and starting her first semester of law school. And she's still a fiercely independent force to be reckoned with and and if endangered by those who mean her harm, she'll become a take-no-prisoners, fairly merciless avenging angel.

            She's aided and sometimes scolded whenever necessary, by her always formidable mentor/father-figure guardian angel Lucas, a former gang member criminal. who's had her back since her childhood escape from psychotic murderers.

            And now she's facing two massive challenges..........taking on the grueling study load of a fledgling law student while dealing with a host of new and potentially lethal adversaries - sick, twisted stalkers who are either attracted or repulsed by her fame and notoriety (If that isn't enough on her plate, she also grapples with the task of trying to rescue her elderly curmudgeon law professor from a pair of evil con-artists....)

           What unfolds here is an infectiously entertaining mixture of that law-school movie "The Paper Chase" combined with a fearless, yet heart-breakingly vulnerable heroine who's every bit the equal of Lisabeth Salender from the 'Dragon Tattoo' books. As with Emily Calby's previous two stories, we zipped through the pages at light speed.

           It's never been easier for us to rate a book a 5 star FIND OF FINDS and the only downside to finishing this one is the anxiety of wondering how long we'll have to wait for the 4rth book in the series. It can't come soon enough .We would declare our undying affection for Emily, but  most definitely wouldn't want her to get the wrong idea and mistake us for a stalker......

'THE MUTATIONS' (A.K.A. 'THE FREAKMAKER').....A MASTER OF LIGHT AND COLOR GETS HIS FREAK ON.......

 The Mutations (A.K.A. "The Freakmaker") (1974).......at long last, the kind of movie we live to unearth since we started this blog.....

             By that we mean a movie that's so fallen between the cracks, we practically need construction equipment to dig it out of obscurity........a movie, so weird, so off-the-wall in its conception, casting and execution that we can only stare at it open-mouthed and every so often mutter, "What the actual ****??"

              BQ visitors, we proudly present a film that more than fulfills all those criteria.......and incredibly, among the last of  the small handful of films directed by one of world cinema's most brilliant gifted cinematographers, Jack Cardiff.

               That's right, this screwball descent into hell was directed by the man who so deftly painted the screen with light and color......such as the brilliantly realized images of classics like "The Red Shoes", "Black Narcissus", "The African Queen",  "The Prince And The Showgirl", "The Vikings" and so many others.

                "The Mutations" first stands apart as one the few independently produced British horror films of its time period. Almost all Brit horror of that era came out of either the world renowned Hammer company(already starting to fray at this point) and its scrappy rival Amicus Productions, headed by Max Rosenberg and Milton Subostky.

                Seemingly inspired by Tod Browning's notorious 1932 classic "Freaks", the film throws literally everything into its bubbling stew of craziness........a mad scientist (Donald Pleasance) a hulking, monstrously deformed black cloaked creepizoid (Tom Baker, on the eve of his stardom as "Dr. Who"), a collection of real life performers afflicted with various deformities (headed by the talented dwarf actor Michael Dunn, who passed away shortly after the film wrapped),.....and naturally, a group of young actors playing the hapless college student victims.......some of whom get unwillingly transformed into horrifying carnivorous plant creatures by the loony Pleasance, who hopes to create a human-plant hybrid.

               The film's off and running with an eye-popping opening credits montage featuring time-lapse footage of sprouting plants, accompanied by other-worldly music....(it almost look like some extra stuff that Stanley Kubrick might have edited out of '2001's Dawn Of Time sequence).

                 Pleasance, our bonkers biology prof, then promises his university class  a host of coming wonders from his experiments, even hinting at cloned Hitlers (a la "The Boys From Brazil") and lab engineered dinosaurs (a la "Jurassic You Know What")......wow, talk about a movie being ahead of the curve.......

                Being  several cans short of a sixpack, Pleasance makes use of self-loathing carnival freakshow producer Baker, promising Baker he'll fix the sorry shmuck's Elephant Man complexion if he supplies Pleasance with fresh young bods for experimentation........bad news for a couple of Pleasance's students, abducted by Baker ,then horribly freak-isized in the loony tune lab and  tossed back to Baker for display in his carnival tent. 

                   As you'd more than expect and demand in a film like this, things go awry for pretty  much everybody, especially Baker, Pleasance and some poor homeless bum who ends up as plant food for one of the students turned into an ambulatory, people-eating Triffid.  And for anyone who's ever encountered the legendary Tod Browning film, yes indeed, the carnival crew does quote from that immortal mantra..."one of us.....one of us...."

                  We'd love to report that Jack Cardiff brings some of  his visual genius into play here, but the film's routinely shot and despite all the sensational goings-on, the pace stays plodding. throughout. But fans of cult movies will dig the oddball casting choices, including Hammer bombshell Julie Ege (of "Creatures The World Forgot" and a Blofeld babe in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"....and.the familiar Eurotrash side-of-beef Brad Harris, star of sword 'n sandal muscleman epics, spaghetti westerns and spaghetti Bond knock-offs. 

                   The two people you won't want to take your eyes off of here......that imposing hambone Tom Baker (the Ron Perlman of his day), managing to overact even through the pounds of extra bulbous flesh added to his face......and the amazing Willie "Popeye" Ingram, playing one of the carnival folk and capable of bulging his eyeballs almost entirely out his face......on second thought, you feel the need to take your eyes off him.....

                    For those who live and dream of taking in a film like this, "The Mutations" is a true 4 star (****) discovery.......for everyone else........well, we'd recommend the time-lapse credits at least.....but soon as the movie proper starts, flee for you lives....far, far away.

FRIDAY & WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL "MERRY-MAKING WITH TRUMP" EDITION......

             Because, as always.......the madness never ends......

Parents of school shooter charged with involuntary manslaughter.....and immediately flee.....oh my, what a surprise......uh....not.  Maybe around this time next year, the whole family can enjoy the holidays together....in a cell.....at least til baby boy, their monstrous larva of a son is returned to his hopefully lifelong solitary confinement......

Donald Trump revealed to have COVID-19 before he began the Presidential debate with Biden......this falls under the category of the non-shocking, un-surprise of the year......except to anyone who can't face the cold hard truth.....that Baby Orange was not only the worst U.S. President in American history, but the most rock-bottom, despicable human being ever to con his way into high office.  Think of this news as a sneak preview of the untold horrors that would await us if he were re-elected.

Donald Trump brags about the crowd size of the Jan. 6th rally he incited to overthrow democracy.....and we don't blame him one bit for the boasting. Never in the history of the United States has one individual assembled so many traitors, psychopaths, racists, Nazis, thugs and assorted brain dead imbeciles in one place.......at least not since Hitler's Nuremburg rallies...

..

Kayleigh McEnany promises  a 'merry-making Christmas party with Trump for $10,000 a ticket......we've heard this stellar affair also features Clorox cocktails to ward off COVID, and an advance galley copy of McEnany's upcoming memoir...."My favorite press conterence lies".....(reputed to be 987 pages and the first book in series.....)

             Forget these horrors and have a great weekend everyone!

Bret Kavanaugh and other conservative justices send out a special tweet to Senators who believed them when they said Roe Vs. Wade was settled law at their confirmation hearings......the message reads and we quote....."Suckerrrrrrrrsssssssss!!!!"

'FUNERAL IN BERLIN'......AGENT DOUBLE-O DROLL......

 Funeral In Berlin (1966)  was the second in the feature film trilogy based on Len Deighton's espionage capers of  the snarky MI5 operative Harry Palmer  , again played by Michael Caine.....

               Produced by Harry Saltzman, the co-impresario of the Bond films, it's the most staid and conventional of the three films, coming after Sidney Furie's moody, visually arresting "The Ipcress File" (see post of 11/19/20) and Ken Russell's totally bonkers, cartoon-like "Billion Dollar Brain".(see post of 3//11/17)  

                  Directed by 'Goldfinger's Guy Hamilton without any flair, style or even much enthusiasm, the film's watchability depends entirely on Michael Caine's superb deadpan delivery of his dialogue, dripping with barely concealed contempt and mockery of what's going on in the plot. 

                   The Palmer series staked out its own grey area between the extremes of the spy genre......falling somewhere in between the superhero fantasy of the Bond films and the miserably grim gritty, John LeCarre  world of films like "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold".

                   Unlike Sean Connery's Bond, who carefully rations out his dry quips, Caine's Harry Palmer speaks fluently in them. And unlike Bond's comfortable father-son relationship with his boss 'M', Palmer and his boss, the imperious Col Ross (Guy Doleman) can hardly contain how much they despise each other.

                  Ross ships Palmer off to West Berlin to arrange the defection of the wily old Bolshevik spymaster Col. Stok (grandly overplayed by Oscar Homolka, who reprised the role in 'Billion Dollar Brain')  Palmer's already deduced that Stok's desire to switch sides is a blatant obvious con masking a hidden agenda......

                   To muddy the murky waters even further, Palmer also contends with the slick, duplicitous Johnny Vulkan (Paul Hubschmid), a shady character whose black market wheeling-dealing led to Harry's arrest and subsequent sentence to serve as an unwilling agent of Col. Ross. Throw in a drop dead sexy Israeli spy (Eva Renzi) and you've got a double and triple-crossing plot that becomes just a tad too complicated for its own good. 

                   Nothing much to shout about here......the movie has no great ambitions or intentions and it just efficiently rolls along to its droll, ironic conclusion.  But if you enjoy the sight of Caine having some deeply understated fun playing this character, then it's a sturdy 3 stars (***).....nothing less, nothing more......

'KAPO'......A YOUNG JEWISH GIRL SWEPT INTO NAZI HELL ON EARTH.....

 Kapo (1960).....was the first among the few feature length fiction films directed by famed Italian documentarian  Gillo Pontecorvo,  Six years after this brutal Nazi concentration camp drama, Pontecorvo would shake the cinema world to its core with his stunning "Battle Of Algiers", his gritty docu-like recreation of the Algerian rebels' war for independence against France.

             "Kapo" follows the hellish journey of Edith (American actress Susan Strasberg) a 14 year old Parisian Jewish girl who along with her parents, ends up transported to a concentration camp......where they're headed for almost certain extinction.

              Capricious fate intervenes, and Edith manages to stay alive by assuming the identity of  'Nicole' the kind of common criminal inmate who's consigned to the tortuous forced labor of the camp, where; she and her fellow women prisoners barely eke out an existence on the the scraps of food provided by their SS captors. 

                Under Pontecorvo's neo-realism, urgent direction, the ambitious film unflinchingly depicts the operation of a Holocaust Nazi death camp, with hundred of victims force marched, brutalized and routinely executed.    It doesn't take all that long to turn the gentle innocent Edith into a hardened and cold-hearted survivor, offering herself up as a sexual prize to German officers in exchange for some precious food. 

                 As an additional way to avoid death, Edith fully embraces the chance to become an infamous 'Kapo' those camp inmates who become assistant overseers to the SS guards, often tormenting and assaulting their fellow prisoners with the same cruel ferocity as the Germans. 

                   Stepping up to the enormous challenge of such a role, Strasberg, with her huge expressive eyes, make a haunting, memorable centerpiece to the film.  Her once warm heart turned icy, only love, in the form of a newly arrived Russian prisoner of war brings back her humanity.......and inevitable, horrific doom for the entire camp as she helps him organize a mass escape attempt..

                     It's a powerful piece of work that still demands attention today more than ever.........especially now with the ugly rise of hate-filled Trumpian authoritarianism infecting the USA and the world like an ever growing cancer.

                     Long forgotten in the history of foreign films, 'Kapo' can be viewed as one of the Criterion Collection's titles in their "Essential Art House" series. And essential it sure as hell is.....4 stars (****).