Photographer Rico fantasizes himself a 1960s Paris gangster. An outsider using his camera like a gun, he searches for reality to fulfill his dreams until falling in love disrupts the delicat... Read allPhotographer Rico fantasizes himself a 1960s Paris gangster. An outsider using his camera like a gun, he searches for reality to fulfill his dreams until falling in love disrupts the delicate balance of his imagined world.Photographer Rico fantasizes himself a 1960s Paris gangster. An outsider using his camera like a gun, he searches for reality to fulfill his dreams until falling in love disrupts the delicate balance of his imagined world.
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The good thing first: Deborah Harry is in this movie from minute 9 to 12. She sings a nice song and will not reappear. In 1976 she and her band "Blondie" were still unknown outside of the punk scene of New York.
"Unmade Beds" (1976) is unabashedly epigonal. It's posers from New York posing as posers from Paris. They pretend that New York - that looks very ugly - is actually Paris. They also try to recreate pictures from Nouvelle Vague films. For moments, Duncan Hannah, who plays the lead Rico, nearly looks like Jean-Pierre Léaud and even Alain Delon. It's especially Jean-Luc Godard, who Amos Poe is trying to imitate, and even someone, who doesn't like the dated films of Godard, will have to admit that this is much, much worse. There is no story. The dialogues are pathetic poetic trash talk. This is amateur hour, without ambition, important only for the ones involved.
The flavour of Poe's next movie, "The Foreigner" (1978), is no longer Nouvelle Vague, but New Wave. It's very much the same as "Unmade Beds": The vaguest of stories, no real characters, a scene with Deborah Harry singing (from minute 52 to 54), heavy posing by bored, boring people. The avant-garde of tediousness: For more than 10 minutes the title character, played by Eric Mitchell, runs away from a car that chases him, completely ignoring the rule number one in this situation: Get off the street! Is this stupidity satire, a parody, a parable? Mr. Poe running even out of the lamest of ideas?
Third time's a charm. Poe's "Subway Riders" (1981) features some scenes that might be considered worth watching, strange (and seedy) characters, strange (albeit still nonsensical) story lines. It's not not boring. It is. But at least it's not just some bogus amateur stuff, it can be called a real underground movie. As the subway and its riders play only a minor role, this pun was quite likely intended by Amos Poe. His wit was so avant-garde.
"Unmade Beds" (1976) is unabashedly epigonal. It's posers from New York posing as posers from Paris. They pretend that New York - that looks very ugly - is actually Paris. They also try to recreate pictures from Nouvelle Vague films. For moments, Duncan Hannah, who plays the lead Rico, nearly looks like Jean-Pierre Léaud and even Alain Delon. It's especially Jean-Luc Godard, who Amos Poe is trying to imitate, and even someone, who doesn't like the dated films of Godard, will have to admit that this is much, much worse. There is no story. The dialogues are pathetic poetic trash talk. This is amateur hour, without ambition, important only for the ones involved.
The flavour of Poe's next movie, "The Foreigner" (1978), is no longer Nouvelle Vague, but New Wave. It's very much the same as "Unmade Beds": The vaguest of stories, no real characters, a scene with Deborah Harry singing (from minute 52 to 54), heavy posing by bored, boring people. The avant-garde of tediousness: For more than 10 minutes the title character, played by Eric Mitchell, runs away from a car that chases him, completely ignoring the rule number one in this situation: Get off the street! Is this stupidity satire, a parody, a parable? Mr. Poe running even out of the lamest of ideas?
Third time's a charm. Poe's "Subway Riders" (1981) features some scenes that might be considered worth watching, strange (and seedy) characters, strange (albeit still nonsensical) story lines. It's not not boring. It is. But at least it's not just some bogus amateur stuff, it can be called a real underground movie. As the subway and its riders play only a minor role, this pun was quite likely intended by Amos Poe. His wit was so avant-garde.
Admittedly I have no idea what happened in this film, or if anything actually happened or if it was just the lead character's fantasy. The film opens with a woman seemingly explaining all the events we are about to see. This is probably the only film I've seen that has done that aside maybe from silent films. The initial narration didn't make anything particularly clear to me. That's fine. I don't demand discernable plot from movies. I love films that recreate a dream state. For me however this film is tiresome. It is focused on Rico a young man obsessed with French New Wave who lives in NYC and pretends it is Paris. I've watched little French New Wave and I'm not sure if this film pays homage to it or is a satire. Either way, the film seems intentionally pretentious and to me very annoying.
But I'm glad I sat through it. It's only a little over an hour long and I appreciate anyone making a film with a limited budget. I'm not blaming the filmmaker for me not getting it.
But I'm glad I sat through it. It's only a little over an hour long and I appreciate anyone making a film with a limited budget. I'm not blaming the filmmaker for me not getting it.
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- ConnectionsReferenced in Dining with Panthers (2006)
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