Phoenix (1998) is a crime drama that takes place in an alternate universe where all the cops are corrupt, or are addicted to gambling and owe bookies and loan sharks. Our tale focuses on Ray Liotta, who is a compulsive gambler, but whose three partners are real winners. One is an enforcer for a lone shark, another works for a bookie, and the last one is married to Kari Wuhrer who is having sex with everyone in uniform. To get out of debt to the bookie, Liotta comes up with the bright idea of robbing the loan shark. Things do not go well.

IMDb readers have this at 6.3 of 10, presumably due to the credible cast and non-stop violence and action. Wuhrer shows breasts and buns in one of her sex scenes. Not my sort of film, but it is likely a C. Genre fans seemed to enjoy it. Note that there are other films by the same name with different naked women, a fact which has confused some popular Internet resources.

The Shout (1978):

Jerzy Skolimowski's The Shout is an adaptation of a short story by the noted classical scholar and pacificist poet Robert Graves (I, Claudius). The story caught the director's eye because of the prevalent "ambiguities and sense of the absurd." I have not read this story, but that comment surprises me because I've read "I, Claudius" and "Claudius the God", and found Graves's prose to be tidy and straightforward, and his narrative to be logical. I don't know if Skolimowski is correct about the source material, but I can attest to this much: the movie version of The Shout is certainly ambiguous and unapologetically absurdist.

There is a core story inside of the various bizarre non sequiturs, but even that is decidedly offbeat. John Hurt and Susannah York play two English provincials who seem to have an open relationship. Their quiet life in Devonshire is interrupted by a stranger (Alan Bates) who ends up accepting their hospitality, then insinuating himself into their lives and never leaving. He spins mad tales of having killed his own children, and of having learned powerful and dark secrets in fifteen years of living with the Australian aboriginals. Among his purported powers is the ability to kill with nothing other than a powerful shout. He gradually uses his Aboriginal magic to turn Susannah feral and take her away from John, but John learns some tricks of his own, and ...

Oh, who knows.

As Vincent Canby wrote in the New York Times:

The story starts off well, like almost any ghost story made up by a child, but then it becomes so full of loose ends, contradictions, cryptic symbols and close-ups of objects that, at the moment, have no meaning, that one eventually tunes out of the narrative, much as one does when the child's ghost story becomes too hopelessly muddled for even the child to unravel.

The time shifts from present to past, and there are flashbacks within flashbacks, and dreams within reality. Things happen in the present which inexplicably affect the past. Then there is a framing device in which the entire story is being recited by an inmate watching a cricket game at a mental health institution, and we see eventually that the husband and wife in the story are actually people from the crowd at the cricket game. So we think, at least momentarily, that perhaps the lunatic just made up a convenient story from the things he saw around him - except that ending is apparently not ambiguous or confusing enough, so there is also another framing device around that framing device, providing a completely different ending, and we aren't too sure what the hell that one means.

Sometimes the entire story just degenerates into silly romps. At one point it starts to rain during the outdoor game at the asylum, whereupon the scene on the cricket grounds makes a metamorphosis into complete chaos, with one man stripping off his clothes and dancing around while others blow up the scorer's hut, all of which has little or nothing to do with the story in Devonshire. The entire movie is consistently loud, shrill, and more than a little bit incoherent.

Some of the horror genre sites love this movie. DVD Maniacs wrote:

With its eerie electronic soundtrack (one hates to call it a score, as it's more of a compilation of odd noises and stings) and moody cinematography by Mike Molloy, The Shout remains a noteworthy thriller.

They are correct about the cinematography. It is absolutely a a great looking movie. There are wind-swept sand dunes, angry oceans, verdant country lanes, and picturesque countryside vistas, all integrated with the human forms in brilliantly artistic compositions.

I reckon you've heard enough to know whether you would like it. Even the positive reviews acknowledge that it is one of the oddest and vaguest films they have ever seen. I don't like The Shout at all, but I'm not a fan of surrealism or Theater of the Absurd, and you may be. One must acknowledge that the production values are excellent, and the actors are first-rate, so if you're up for something strange and deadly serious, this may turn out to be a favorite.

• Susannah York (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)

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Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

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MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

.Email Scoopy Jr. if suggestions for future polls.

Here are the results of our previous polls:
The Top 20 Nude Scenes of 2004
The Best Nude Film Debuts of the 80s
The Best Nude Film Debuts of the 90s
Which actress has been the most convincing playing a stripper.
Who has the best bum in Hollywood?
Best All Time Television Comedy
Best Nudity in an Oscar-winning performance
The Top 20 Best Straight Sex Scenes
Best Lesbian Love Scenes

Danielle Petty and Diana Kauffman

Luisa Ranieri
(1, 2)

Regina Nemni
(1, 2)

Kristin Scott Thomas video clip

BRAINS CAN BE LOADED INTO A COMPUTER
Ross Geller Already Predicted This - British futurologist Ian Pearson of BT telecommunications says IT technology is progressing so rapidly that by 2050, the entire contents of someone's brain could be "downloaded" into a supercomputer. Pearson said that person's memories and thought processes could live on through the computer indefinitely, so dying would not be a major career problem. However, it will be so expensive at first that only very rich people will be able to be immortal.

If you have your own site or blog, sign up today and earn some extra cash in 2005 by promoting the Fun House!