The Five Deadly Venoms (1975)
a/k/a The Five Venoms
Streaming free at YouTube
The Venom martial arts school has had only five students, and each has renamed himself after a venomous reptile — Centipede has impossibly quick fists and feet; Snake has fingers trained to stab through almost anything; Lizard can climb walls; Scorpion has muscular super-kicks; and Toad has skin that’s virtually impenetrable.Sadly, some of the Venom school’s graduates have used their powers for evil. To make up for this, the dying master sends his youngest student, Yang, to find the others, judge them virtuous or vile, and kill them if they deserve it. (Every school should be so thoughtful.)
The five Venoms all wear what’s basically superhero-supervillain garb, and the fights against and between them are jolly marvelous. It’s not entirely kung fu, though. The film is almost as much about the mystery of tracking down the five well-hidden Venoms, which is less exciting but still kinda cool.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Five Easy Pieces (1970)
Streaming free at YouTube
Streaming free at YouTube
This is a character study of a guy who’s not like most movie characters. It’s a movie that’s not like most movies.Bobby (Jack Nicholson) is an oil worker, with a sorta seedy apartment and life. Maybe things could’ve been different, but for reasons unstated, maybe unknown, he’s settled into a life he’s not too happy with. As do most of us.Bobby’s girlfriend is Rayette (Karen Black), and she’s nice, but not terribly bright. Bobby is impatient with her, and with anyone who can’t keep up with him.
It doesn’t help that he’s gotten Rayette pregnant. When he gets that news, his response is to find a woman he’d flirted with a few days earlier, and bang her.
Bobby finds out his father is dying, so he heads home to see him, one of very few times in the film when he does what society says you’re ‘supposed to do’. He’s trying to be a decent dude, but it’s not easy and he’s not trying too hard and he’s tired of trying at all. He knows what he doesn’t want, much more clearly than he knows what he wants.
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| NEVERENDING FILM FESTIVAL #269 [archive] MAR. 31, 2024 |
Five Easy Pieces is a bleak view inside this guy’s head, with an ending that’s perfectly optimistic and pessimistic at the same time.
Anyone who wants a popcorn movie should run the other way, same as Bobby’s running away from his past, present, and future. Me, I love it. Every time Bobby snaps at someone or walks off, it feels like an echo of my own life, which has usually been about distancing myself from everything, everyone.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Five Elements Ninjas (1981)
Streaming free at Daily Motion
Two kung fu schools battle to the death to decide which is better. Seriously, that’s what this is about. No time is wasted on giving the battles any bigger motivation than pride and testosterone.Everyone in the good guys’ dojo wears white flowing gowns, so you’ll know they’re the good guys. Good guys always win, but like the NBA playoffs, winning only means facing the next team.
Each team wears matching uniforms, which makes following the fights easy. There’s the baby blues, the golden gang, the reds, a team of burlap-clad ninjas, etc. In the middle of the movie there’s a lull, but otherwise it’s just non-stop fights, using everything from hook swords to spears to poles to Wolverine-esque claws. The battles are bloody ridiculous, and bloody, but a good time is had by all who survive (which aren’t many).
Leading man Cheng Tien Chi has very long hair that you’d think might get in the way during flips and jabs, but it never does. Never even gets mussed up.
Verdict: YES, for laughs.
♦ ♦ ♦
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Streaming free at Internet Archive
Ah, to be young and in love.Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is crazy about Summer (Zooey Deschanel), though she’s told him in so many words that she’s not looking for anything serious.
Exactly this happened to me in my 20s, and to a friend of mine in his 20s, so maybe it’s a universal experience of being young?
When Tom and Summer first meet, they’re amazed that they both like The Smiths. There’s not much more to their relationship than that, but again, that’s the way of love at that age. 500 Days beautifully captures the experience of drowning in shallow love, and first heartbreak. It makes for a fresh-feeling spin on romantic comedy, but Tom is so clueless he never figures out that he was the bad guy in all this.
It sucks when someone you love doesn’t feel the same, but she said she wasn’t looking for anything serious, ya schmuck.
It’s an excellent flick, but told entirely from the male perspective, and some time I’d like to see this story from the woman’s point of view.
“You’re still my best friend.”
Ouch.
Verdict: BIG YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
Five on the Black Hand Side (1973)
Streaming free at Vimeo
Streaming free at Vimeo
John Henry Brooks owns the barber shop, and runs both the business and his household as if he’s the Pharaoh, with overbearing rules and edicts for everyone. His wife Gladys has had enough, and with their daughter’s wedding in a few days, she decides it’s time to get a haircut and makeover — without John Henry’s permission.They’re black, but their eldest son is dating a white lady, their second son doesn’t approve, and their bride-to-be daughter just wants the family arguments to blow over before the wedding. They’ve all had enough of Dad, and it’s not the ’60s any more but revolution is in the air. There’s even picketing on the sidewalk in front of the family home.
Leonard Jackson (The Color Purple) as Mr Brooks is hilariously stone-faced, and as Mrs Brooks, everyone should have a mother so sweet as Clarice Taylor (The Cosby Show).
From the movie’s title I was expecting kickass action, so it took a while to warm up to this, but it’s a lighthearted and sometimes funny episode of Black Happy Days.
Verdict: YES.
♦ ♦ ♦
… and out of alphabetical order …
It’s Quieter in the Twilight (2022)
Streaming free at Tubi
Streaming free at Tubi
In 1965, scientists at NASA came up with an idea that boggled the mind, and still does. Using the slingshot effect, where passing close to a planet could use its gravity to add to the vessel’s forward thrust, America’s brainiest brains predicted that if they did the math right, the sky’s the limit, and this became the Voyager mission.Launched in 1977, two small, unmanned spacecraft were sent from Earth to Jupiter, where the slingshot sent them onward to Saturn. With different launch dates and different trajectories, Voyager 1 then went onward into deep space, while Voyager 2 was propelled to Uranus, then Neptune, and then far, far beyond…
45 years after the launches, both craft have had technical issues, but they continue exploring the unknown universe and making it the known universe, sending data back to Earth from about 14-billion miles away, and ‘a little’ farther every day.
It’s not an automated process, though. A crew of aging NASA scientists still work on the Voyager project, but there are fewer of them every year — attrition through retirement and death, as the decades roll along.
It’s profound to think about it. In distance at least, Voyager is the biggest concept humans have ever pursued, and these few men and women have spent their entire professional lives tracking and tinkering and kick-starting what’s now almost ancient technology, to keep it running. But which will flicker out first — the Voyager vessels, or the handful of now gray-haired people who understand its intricacies and keep it putt-puttering along?
Verdict: YES.
3/31/2024
• • • Coming attractions • • •
The Flame of New Orleans (1941)
Flap (1970)
Flash Gordon (1936)
Flesh (1932)
Flesh and the Devil (1926)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises
Flap (1970)
Flash Gordon (1936)
Flesh (1932)
Flesh and the Devil (1926)
… plus schlock, shorts, and surprises
— — —
‘Movie reviews’ that that simply recount the plot, paragraph after paragraph, suck. My pledge to you: I’ll only give the basics of a movie’s premise, with no spoilers after that.
— — —
Illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Arguments & recommendations are welcome, but no talking once the lights dim, and only real butter on the popcorn, not that fake yellow stuff.
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