#34 Altered States

My senses were so assaulted I was able to watch an entire episode of Fran Drescher's The Nanny, without cringing, immediately after this film.

I will preface these thoughts with the following statement:
I am a writer. This movie is overly visual and substantially aural, with little attention paid to the words, dialogue and storyline. Therefore, I immediately find flaw with what may be, to some, an incredible film (although I doubt it).

That said, I found this movie to be ... interesting and weird. Which is not to say it wasn't fun to watch. I like interesting and weird.
I think I'll just launch into the problems I have with this movie. It feels like it is meant to stimulate your senses above all else. The dialogue uses a lot of big words, which shows you that the characters are intellectuals, but really has no more use in the film than that. In fact, a good portion of the dialogue is nothing but empty words. So much so that there are times it is unintelligble, either due to other noises, or layers of people talking over each other.

The actors do a good job, pushing the story along through a lot of expression. Not that there is much of a story. I mean once I removed all the imaging and sound and cut this movie down to it's basic storyline, it's incredibly weak.
A man experiments with hallucinations to the point they become externalized and he regresses into a caveman state, physically and emotionally.
*spoilers*
Then he takes it a step further and regresses into the time before man. All this is surrounded by a really lame story about a man and a woman who get married, are getting divorced, and then end up with each other in the end.
*spoilers over*

Verdict
2.5 stars
I almost liked it. I think it would have been better without all the noise. The visuals were interesting, although very dated now, and overused. The scene when the man regresses into a caveman and heads to the zoo is incredibly hilarious. Although it wasn't meant to be. I think that scene alone made this movie get that extra half a star, cause I could watch that scene over and over again.

Awards
Nominated for 2 Oscars - best original score and best sound.
Disagree and agree. I didn't even notice the score much, so I can't really agree that it was worthy of an Oscar nomination.
I did read that this movie was using some sort of new sound system developed by Warner and placed in certain theaters, so for the time the sound was probably all very exciting. Now though, it's all pretty much noise compared to the subtle use of surround sound that can be so artistically employed nowadays.
Nominated for a Golden Globe - New star of the year for William Hurt.
Agree. I thought his performance was subtle, yet perfect for the film. It's his acting that allows a viewer to stay with the movie throughout the assaults of image and sound.

Box Office
This movie must have had some sort of good word of mouth surrounding it. It was initially released in 3 theaters and went on to gross almost 20 million dollars, which seems pretty impressive for this style of movie. I'd love to dig up what it was that caused so many people to seek this movie out. My guess is a lot of drugs, but who knows.

#35 Song of the South

This was re-released in 1980. It is not widely available for good reason, and I didn't feel like hunting it down. I feel no loss skipping this film.

#36 Cruising

Al Pacino is Cruising for a killer.
That's the tag line to this one. And it pretty much sums it up, once you know what they mean by cruising.
Pacino is a low-on-the-totem-pole police officer who gets a chance at detective by doing some heavy undercover work. He is thrown into the Hardcore S&M homosexual scene due to his looks in order to catch a killer.
This movie has a LOT of men and a LOT of leather.
Supposedly this was very controversial when it came out due to it's portrayal of gay men, but I think, like the disclaimer said at the beginning of the dvd, this is simply one type of group the movie is portraying, not anyone as a whole.
Unfortunately, I found Pacino's acting to be sub-par for him. Which is still better than most, including the rest of the cast.
The storyline was good enough to keep me intrigued and some of the visuals were pretty stunning.
Verdict
3 stars
I liked it. Might even watch it again someday, but I don't think I could really recommend it to anyone. If you're a big Pacino fan though you wouldn't want to skip this one.

#37 The Octagon

Sit tight and wait for the fight.
This movie starts off slower than molasses dripping uphill. But I suppose the filmmakers wanted this to be more than just an action flick, so they try really hard to set the movie up and introduce the characters. Unfortunately, if they'd have just kept it all about the action it probably would have been a lot better.
The star of this film is definitely Chuck Norris. It was probably written for him to show off some skills and draw in the fans.
Not much to say for the plot. Secret Ninjas killing people. Norris must fight someone from his past. Pretty standard stuff. The movie ends strong when we finally get to see some really good fighting.
There is a lot of fun to be had with this movie though. Some pretty cheesy lines and ridiculous inner monologues
Visually it's hard to comment on this movie. I watched it on AMC. And while the visuals weren't bad, it seemed very dark,, and overly grainy for this time period, as if it was shot this way on purpose. if it was it didn't seem to add anything to the film.
Verdict
2.5 stars.
It wasn't bad, but it didn't offer much past mild entertainment. Although if I watched this with some friends the rating would probably go up, as I could see having a lot of fun with this one.

#38 The Aristocats

Good music, cute kittens, and characters that actually develop throughout the film...
still can't add up to a movie I'd be excited to show my child.
The Aristocats is definitely not a bad movie. But it's nothing too special either. It has a pretty good swingin jazz soundtrack. A good story about an upper-class mother and her three kittens that are saved by a lower class alley cat.
Unfortunately with the good things this movie had, it moves along far too slowly to keep me interested.
It's hard for me to judge the animation of this movie because I'm not that familiar with other animation of the 70s but this one seemed very stale, and didn't help with the pace.

Verdict
2.5 stars
If my daughter is really into cats or jazz I will show her this movie someday, if not I think it would bore her out of her mind.