Somebody reckoned that this idea looked good on paper, and I must admit that I thought the same when I read the distributors blurb. We are in low-budget territory here, that’s nothing new with independent filmmakers and so one has to expect somewhat lower standards than major movie companies have. It’s also expected that the quality of talent may not be top-notch, and the industry is full of people using friends and family as extras in their films, but when the ‘star’ of the film, Nana Gouvea, is a totally wooden ‘actress’ who also happens to be the Producer’s wife, you just know that there are barrels laying around with the bottoms scraped out. It’s nepotism at its worst.

For purely practical reasons I often dictate the review as I watch the film, it saves me a lot of time because following the dictation all I will need to do is to come back to this and edit it. A similar process usually happens in filmmaking, where the ‘rushes’ from that day get reviewed, which I can only assume didn’t occur with Black Wake. My reason for saying that is simply that even 12 minutes into this film it is already a tedious mess of poor protracted dialogue, bad pacing and unnecessary scenes.

Tom Sizemore, once a reliable backup for tough guy roles in many big Hollywood movies, does his best with a lacklustre script, although to be honest his acting these days isn’t up to scratch, even so, he still manages to elevate a few of his scenes in a dire film with his presence. Under normal circumstances an actor with the quality of Sizemore’s back catalogue wouldn’t be working in films like this, but alcohol and drug abuse have clearly taken their toll and his history of violence against women is similarly intolerable so my bet is that he’s glad of any work he can get. He has worked with Carlos Keyes before on the films Blood Circus and Killer Response (both of which, not surprisingly, star Nana Gouvea). However, exactly how long they will continue to work with Sizemore is debatable in the wake of this month’s allegations of him molesting an 11-year-old girl.

Regarding Nana Gouvea, in less than 20 minutes she has already proven her ability to overact into a web cam, it is also unfortunate that much of what I’ve seen so far is exposition from her character in streams of badly delivered dialogue. Her facial expressions are often at odds with what she is saying and considering that much of this film (in its entirety) is her talking, that’s not good.

Over the 20 minute stage and Eric Roberts makes his first appearance, now Eric Roberts has also had a heavyweight career, although a mixture of heavy cocaine use and a disfiguring car crash, both in the 80s, altered his trajectory. He has a reputation these days for never turning down a project with 74 movies in the bag last year alone. I will go on record here as being an Eric Roberts fan, I think he is capable of much better things than walk on parts in rubbish like Black Wake. I hope there will come a time when he gets that second bite of the cherry and can leave B-Movies behind, but for the time being he’s doing stuff like this, and that might well be good for him financially, but it’s bad for the rest of the cast as they all look far worse next to someone who can actually act.

From the distributor blurb:

“It has screened at festivals across the world, winning Best Horror Feature Film at the 2018 Phillip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival, Best Special Effects and Best Kill at the Independent Horror Movie Awards 2018 and the Special Jury Award at Brazil International Film Festival 2018.”

Maybe it’s just me; I’m always fascinated when something as bad as Black Wake wins awards. It makes me question the credibility of the awards to the point where I actually bother to research them to see if they have any validity. The Philip K Dick film Festival awards are in the sixth year, so perhaps not enough word is out for them to be sent good quality movies, I will give it the benefit of the doubt. The two awards from the Brazil international film festival seem hollow considering the somewhat limited field, so in my opinion, and it is only my opinion, I don’t see the awards as been that big a deal on the international forum. Sounds good for publicity reasons, just not a true indicator of any quality.

An hour into this is and it is finally getting better, for a film alluding to Lovecraftian darkness it’s taken its own sweet time getting anywhere near that, we now have scorpion-like bugs, uninspired zombies and a largely unseen monstrous mind-controlling shape in the sea, but still we monstly have Nana Gouvea mugging to the camera and explaining shit that we should be being shown to the point where I am now sick of the sight of her.

1:18 and we actually see what (some of) the shape is and then the end credits with the only part of the film worth watching, the mass of out-takes in the end credits.

To say that I didn’t enjoy this film is an understatement. To give you some idea of just how thrilling it wasn’t I started watching it three and a half hours ago and thanks to it being so boring for the first hour I was able to leave it every ten minutes or so and go do something more enjoyable such as emptying the bins, cooking and eating my lunch, doing the washing up, putting laundry in the machine, hell, I would even have de-wormed the cat except that I don’t have a cat. Anything would have been more enjoyable than… Ah fuck, I can’t even remember the name of this pile of shite now… THAT’s how good it is. Black Wake, that’s it, it’s called…. ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz

Having finished it I can only assume that those who give awards have probably watched the last ten minutes and assumed that’s representative of the whole, something like that anyway. Needless to say, I can’t recommend it.

A short French film from Director Roman Soni

 
Many filmmakers produce short movies with varying results in terms of production quality, acting ability et cetera, some having very ill-conceived and poorly executed ideas, but I am glad to say this film by Roman Soni is not one of them. A shade less than 13 minutes long Strix begins with an unfortunate woman being attacked and murdered and a Venetian mask being left by her body. We then jump forward 12 years to an almost obligatory shower scene, rather than the usual woman taking a shower getting stabbed by an assailant this woman is actually able to finish her ablutions and get dressed. There is however someone at the door, that someone is wearing the same Venetian mask.

What could be a standard slasher flick takes a little diversion as the guy in the mask holds the woman hostage. Her husband and his friend arrive back at the house to find her with a knife being held at her throat, and they are told they must play a questions and answers game or she will die.
At this point you’re probably thinking that you can guess the rest, and if you manage to your better at this than I am because although I got some of it in advance it was clever enough to include a satisfying twist.

The stars, Corentin Cuvelier, Sebastien Wust, Emilie Gn, Yohan Desvaux and Juline Thibaut all add class to the proceedings with clear and credible performances.

The technical aspects are solid, the score near-perfect and special effects as good as anything out there.

Obviously with it being less than 13 minutes long there is not a hell of a lot of content to review, certainly not without giving major spoilers. So I will go no further except to say that it’s available on YouTube and worth 13 minutes of anyone’s time. It is in French, so you may need to toggle the subtitle setting.
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1EDk4jF_cU

 
 
I’m wearing my ‘Fanboy’ hat today; for once it’s not a case where I was unfamiliar with the subject of this biography as I have grown up watching Larry Cohen’s output. There’s a better than average chance that even if you are unfamiliar with Larry Cohen you’ll have seen, or at the very least heard of, many of his films. For the benefit of those who can’t quite place him here are a few of his ‘cult classic’ creations:
 
It’s Alive.
Maniac Cop.
The Ambulance.
Q (The Winged Serpent)
The Stuff.
A Return to Salem’s Lot.
 
Aside from those he is the man responsible for dozens of other films and TV series spanning several genres and fifty years, amongst which is the first thing which brought him to my attention, the TV series ‘The Invaders’ with Roy Thinnes as David Vincent, an architect who sees a UFO and spends 43 episodes trying to convince everyone that aliens walk among us. It’s classic TV and expands on the small town paranoia evident in America at the time as well as being bolstered by such things as the Twilight Zone episode ‘The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street’ from 7 years earlier.

His work output is something few can match, but aside from being prolific as both writer and film-maker there’s another aspect of Larry Cohen which is noteworthy in that he is a true renegade. Up until recently there have been relatively few people who have wrote/directed/produced their own projects, mostly as film studios have overbearing control of what their budgets goes into, although nowadays with modern technology making it possible to create an entire movie on a smartphone it’s more common to be an ‘indie film-maker’. Larry Cohen had one way of operating, and that was ‘his own’, he didn’t want what he was writing to be at the mercy of directors and producers who would bastardize his work and so he wore all of the hats required to get a project in the can. He also had a somewhat liberal attitude toward ‘getting permission’ for certain things such as filming street scenes and using particular buildings, and so he winged it for much of the time, setting up cameras and ‘stealing shots’. A fine example of pushing his luck would be having comedian/actor Andy Kaufman dress as a policeman and join a real NYPD Police Parade without telling anyone. The documentary is full of stuff Larry Cohen brazenly pulled off which if you were to try it today you’d probably end up doing hard time for, assuming that with today’s permit-centric society with surveillance on every street corner you were actually able to do something longer than the average ‘prank’. What Cohen did was, simply put, ‘Guerrilla Film-making’ at its finest.

For the addicts such as myself there are many clips of his finest works, such as the notorious ‘Window Cleaner’ scene from ‘Q’, and a wealth of interviews with John Landis, Martin Scorsese, Joe Dante, Fred Williamson, Rick Baker, Yaphet Kotto, Traci Lords, Eric Roberts, David J Schow, J.J. Abrams and Mick Garris to name a few, and of course the man himself who gives plenty of screen time packed with anecdotes, (some of which are typically disputable for such a roguish storyteller) of his life and times from his early days of wannabe stand-up comic turned writer and film maker, right up to his latest endeavours.

‘King’ Larry Cohen may not be a household name, and that is something I think is awful given his contribution to entertainment, but one thing is for certain, he deserves the title ‘King’ as he is the ruler of his own talent as well as a man who recognises the capabilities in those around him and enables them to give their best, something which has been for the betterment of an industry in which the strictures placed on creativity are overwhelming.
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‘King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen’ will receive a full theatrical run across the U.S beginning July 20 in L.A (with other cities in the weeks to follow), courtesy Dark Star Pictures. There’s no news as yet about distribution for the home audience, but when that happens I’m certain this will be a ‘must see’ for any genre enthusiast.
Definitely one to watch.
 

 
You must have 19 minutes to spare, surely you do. I mean, what can you do in 19 minutes? Cook a pizza? Or boil six eggs one after the other? Make love nine times? Whatever it is I doubt it will be as enjoyable as spending 19 minutes watching the ridiculously over-the-top Lunch Ladies.

As the title suggests it is indeed about a couple of lunch ladies Seretta Burr and LouAnne Burr (Donna Pieroni and Mary Manofsky respectively), who work in a somewhat seedy school cafeteria dishing out unpalatable slop to the masses while dreaming about becoming the personal chefs to Johnny Depp. It’s a big dream, and one they stand virtually no chance of achieving until, thanks to Cheerleader Alexis (Daisy Kershaw) they develop a recipe which changes everything for them.

It’s a very short and moderately low-budget production which is served in such a way that it could easily fit into a series such as Tales-From-The-Crypt. It has a double serving of gore and slatherings of humour and I found to be highly entertaining. At the time of writing this review, Lunch Ladies has won 11 awards, is not difficult to see why. If you have 19 minutes to spare and you’re not hungry or horny then you could do worse than to watch lunch ladies and have a good laugh.

Oh, and I forgot the mention the special guest appearance by…
Well, you’ll just have to watch it won’t you ;)

For more on Lunch Ladies go to:
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www.lunchladiesmovie.com
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Synopsis:  Christmas is coming. If that's not stressful enough, Lily (Brea Grant) has to contend with a clueless partner (Adam Egypt Mortimer) and an unexpected, inter-dimensional holiday guest who just wants two things — blood and cuddles.

If you have seven minutes to spare then watch this short film. If you Don’t have seven minutes to spare the FIND the seven minutes, trust me, I think it’s worth it.
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Brea Grant, perhaps best known for her role as the Speedster in Heroes is going with the flow in this tale of a creature making a nuisance of itself with eerie noises and a bloodthirsty demand. Her witless boyfriend fancies himself as a boxer and dons his gloves to battle the beast but all is not as it seems.
Written, produced and directed by Izzy Lee, My Monster is a glorious seven minutes.

A Serbian Film. (No, not THAT one).
 
We head into full-on Twilight Zone territory with Inkarnicija, a film from Serbia which is absolutely worth enduring the subtitles for. Our unlucky hero wakes up on a bench in a town centre street, he doesn’t know where he is or who he is and within minutes of the film starting he is being gunned down by masked men. So, he is dead, but this is only the beginning as he wakes up on that same bench with the same scenario being played out again, sort of like Groundhog Day for assassins but with bigger changes to the routine each time it is played out and no comedy.

He splashes water up his face but cannot see his own reflection properly, so looks in a shop window; his reflection is distorted, same with every surface he looks at. Still he is chased down and shot by the masked men. He awakens again, this time in a hospital where they discover something unidentifiable in his blood. Just as some sort of sense may be made he is once again confronted by the masked men who shoot him, this time he wakes up on the bench again.

The bench is at a crossroad, with four streets leading off from it, and each time he takes a different route from the one the assassins come from, and each time they catch up with him. Eventually he decides to go down the one they come from as he’s exhausted all other options.

Now it may seem as if it’s all a little dull, with the repetition of a situation, but each time he is facing new pieces of the puzzle and is becoming more aware of things, starting to remember, albeit slowly, the things leading to his predicament. He meets up with a Doctor and gains the info that he has been given a serum which has wiped his memory. Fans of films such as Memento will find this to say the least intriguing as did I, but more than that, it’s actually gripping.

Part of what makes it so good is that the whole thing, each differing scenario, is played out in public, with our hero waking on a bench amidst shops and the regular traders and people you’d usually expect to see. It continues with various chases around the locale, going in and out of various buildings only to end up being killed by the masked assassins again. I have no idea what the laws are about filming in Serbia, but to have masked men firing guns in a town centre high-street must have took some doing as it doesn’t give the impression that any streets were closed off or that many extras were involved.
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The ending is as illogical as the preceding events, even though there is an explanation after a fashion it doesn’t really satisfy, which I think is probably for the best because there are times when tying up a plot with a pretty bow just doesn’t work. Inkarnacija (Incarnation) works perfectly and piles on the suspense throughout. If you like foreign films, you can handle subtitles and don’t mind having to engage your brain while being entertained then this is the one for you.