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1971

★★½ Watched 15 Jul 1977

BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE (1970)
Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbender

"Whore" is Cinema (as we all know) and this squirmingly autobiographical study of a film troupe stranded in Spain waiting for financing to continue making a pretentious murder meller with Eddie Constantine (playing himself, doing another Lemmy Caution role as in Godard's "Alphaville") is alternately deliciously and boringly accurate in the portrayal of the lower-echelon hack actors and technicians in "The Biz". A blondined Lou Castel is the shriekingly neurotic…

1969

★★½ Watched 15 Jul 1977

KATZELMACHER (1969)
Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbender

The fourth program (and fourth and fifth movies) in the five-program Rainer Werner Fassbender Festival are two slices of self-conscious cinematic strudel from Fassbender's early career, indicative of both the best and worst of what was to come from him.

"Katzelmacher" (an anti-foreigner epithet, roughly equivalent in Teutonic talk to a dago), in its low-budget black-and-white poverty-row way, recalls his better statement on Germans' bigotry "Ali--Fear Eats the Soul" (1974). This 1969 effort, only…

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1983

★★★★★ 4

RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983)
Dir: Richard Marquand

What is stronger than The Force? Well, for myself, it's the friendship (1964-present) and film-critic-peership (1972-present) between myself and Mr. William Frederick Margold, who-after 20th Century-Fox displayed early-in-year Scrooge-ship in the non-giving of a second press to "Return of the Jedi"-treated me, on opening day, to "Jedi" at the Egyptian. He raised his grade (see last week for review) from A to A+, the latter of which is also my grade.…

1977

★★★★ 1

SORCERER (1977)
Dir: William Friedkin

"Sorcerer" is heavy light-Summer fare, all sound and fury and signifying nothing. But nihilism is its main point--the futility of existence--and for those willing to spend $3.50 for 120 minutes (plus 5 minutes of overture) of grim adventure will be suitably rewarded by superior acting and direction, as well as location shooting that makes the gruelling "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" look like a bucolic picnic.

William Friedkin's first directorial effort since "The Exorcist" four…

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