Lin-4

Many have already commented on the vapid plotline of this movie. I have to add my vote to that with the further remark that there is little if no characterization in Blair Witch. Not unless you like whining twenty-some-year-olds who adore using the "f" word a lot.

About half way through, bored out of my mind, I not only was rooting for the witch, but feeling aggressive myself. If there had been "kill Heather" or "kill Josh" buttons to push on my VCR, I would have punched them without an ounce of regret.

The only good things going for Blair Witch is that it would be fairly creative for a high school class project (if it were one) and that it attempts to create suspense without all kinds of overblown special effects. Still, if the writers/directors/etc. had read an article or a book on how to create horror/suspense, they would have developed characters with which the audience could identify (I hate to think about who DOES identify with this bunch) and who have more of a personal stake in finding out about the legend of the witch.

If you're really curious, rent this for 99 cents like I did -- though you may still feel cheated.

Red Angel is a very interesting and strange movie which could make the staunchest warmonger into a pacifist with bloody sights that might delight Mexican/American director Robert Rodriguez. A beautiful, sensual nurse named Nishi battles the 1939 war in China and her own repulsion to its inhuman violence by making love to an amputee and falling in love with a drug-addicted doctor. Be ready for the screams of surgery with no anesthetic and the sight of saws being used to cut off limbs. A little soft core, a lot of action, enough blood to make you happy the film is in black and white. Still . . . it's always worthwhile to take a look at the world through another culture's eyes.

Shanghai Express is another von Sternberg masterpiece, probably not appreciated in his day (no academy awards) and lesser known that it should be in this day. Film theory says this film was an attempt to shade degrees of blackness. At one point, Marlene Dietrich's face blooms like a white flower out of the shadows, then closes again.

Beautiful is not a big enough word enough to describe the cinematography in Shanghai Express. The plot is dreamlike and unrealistic (Sternberg hated realism), the costumes are excessive (impossible to contain in Dietrich's supposed luggage), the atmosphere is deliciously layered with decadence, exoticism (good part for Anna Mae Wong) and deterioration (broken walls, slats and fantasies), punctuated by von Sternberg's caprice (chickens wandering in front of the train -- a symbol of Dietrich's husband's profession as a chicken farmer?).

The storyline is basically a broken romance seeking to be healed between Clive Brook and Dietrich or "Shanghai Lily," the naughty lady who has sold her body the past few years to keep herself in glittery costumes and furs.

The real "story" is "Dietrich and von Sternberg visit China" on some movie lot, on their way from or to Russia (The Scarlet Empress), Spain (The Devil is a Woman), North Africa (Morocco), or somewhere in the U.S. (Blonde Venus).

Gorgeous and lots of fun!