Lima

Already ridiculed in its day, this film is based on a derided novel by Maurice Sandoz, interesting perhaps only because it was illustrated in 1945 by Salvador Dali himself. It's hard to write about this film and not to spoil the plot twist at the end that is the only memorable thing about the whole film. Until then, or rather until the 'intermission' two-thirds of the way through (yes, even such a short film had its 'Intermission'), we are in a drab castle setting with five actors and only two bats on strings and one gimmicky view of a maze out the window to break us out of our lethargy. There's woefully little to work with here at all, we only see one entrance corridor for almost the entire film, but it's understandable, there wasn't much money involved (it was only 2 months from pre-production to final release). Well, at the end, a monster appears... well, let's say a monster, but one you won't forget till the end. Even in its time, which was rich in naive films, it provoked volleys of laughter from the audience. It may have been meant to be scary, I don't know what the filmmakers intended, but you want to feel sorry for it, hug it and pet it. That's all I'm going to say :o) The film was shot in simplified 3D, which was just beginning at the time, so in some scenes the objects and actors "throw themselves in your face" (the opening dancer, the bats, the monster jumping out the window). Summary? I'll give an overrated 3 stars, I actually miss oldschool naive B-movies like this nowadays. They don't scare or disgust you, they caress your viewer's soul

The main thing you will take away from this film is that Vittorio Storaro (Coppola's Apocalypse Now) was a grandmaster of the camera, a GRANDMASTER! Without knowing in advance who was holding that wonderful optics machine, I immediately noticed the amazing visual compositions, of which there are many, along with the congenial atmospheric music, and in fact the whole film stands on those two components alone. That's because the plot, while maintaining an interesting mystery for two-thirds of it, isn't the strongest element, which you realize especially at the end when the final sci-fi-tinged twist is revealed and it makes you want to bang your head against the wall. This can't spoil the mood, because until then you're floating along beautifully on the seductive mystery and enjoying the gorgeous imagery. And you also notice that Florinda Bolkan has a beautiful smile, it's just a pity about the androgynous hairstyle, she looked much better with a mane with Fulci

I'm going to say it, and I'm surprised myself. Even though I'm an old boomer who grew up on the first Planet of the Apes from the late 60s, and even though I'm not a fan of the CGI serendipity of today, the direction that Rupert Wyatt took 13 years ago, Matt Reeves continued, and now Wes Ball has followed up on, is very much to my liking. While the old Apes from the 70s was becoming a ridiculous parody of itself (and an ugly one at that) episode by episode (except for the legendary first one), and Tim Burton didn't take to it happily later on either, so the current tetralogy is beautifully paced, looks beautiful, makes logical sense in how the apes evolve and take over, and the current installment is such a natural evolution in the plot that the cards are already clearly dealt. It makes me happy that in this day and age we have a film franchise that has great references and works well, which is not the norm in contemporary Hollywood, where "rhyming" is done at the top of its lungs and it usually turns out badly.