Book Club

 

 

 (imdb)

MADAME YANELOVA'S FINE LITERATURE CLUB-2017-I didn't know what to expect from this Israeli production with Hebrew dialogue. It's interesting but nothing special. Librarian Sophie belongs to a secret book club. Once a week she must attend a reading party accompanied by a man she picks up. All the other members must do the same. After the reading the men are bound and examined. The woman who brings the best man is given an award. Then the men are killed and made into hot dogs and sold nearby. If Sophie gets one more win, she will have hundred awards and be elevated to an upper echelon of the club. It's getting more difficult to achieve this as she gets older. She also has competition from the younger stuck up snob Lola. When her friend Hannah, a cleaning woman at the club, runs away, Sophie is put under surveillance by Reiza, one of the older decrepit women in charge. At the library one day Sophie meets Joseph who is interested in the works of Agnon on who Sophie is an expert. Eventually they seem to fall in love but all isn't as it seems. 

This seems like it would turn into a real horror movie but never does. It's more like some Kafkaesque mystery romance. It's alright but I was disappointed with the direction it took and the resolution. This was the debut film of Venezuelan born director Guilhad Emilio Schenker.

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Van Cleef vs. Palance

GOD'S GUN-1976-Sam Clayton (Jack Palance) and his gang stop over at the town Juno after a bank robbery. One of Clayton's men kills a man and they take off. The sheriff (Richard Boone) wants to let them go but the local priest (Lee Van Cleef) goes after them. He brings the killer back to the jail but the gang breaks him out and shoots up the town and the priest is killed. A young boy named Johnny (Leif Garrett) who helped the priest around the church goes to Mexico to find the priest's brother Lewis (also Van Cleef). It seems the trauma of the killing leaves him mute but he finds Lewis and they go back to Juno. Along the way we get a flashback to the last time the two brothers met. Meanwhile Clayton's men molest the womenfolk until Johnny's saloon owner mother (Sybil Danning) reveals that Sam is her son's father. A flashback shows that as a Union soldier he raped her. Sam's pretty happy about this but before anything can happen Lewis returns in his brother's robes and some of the dumb outlaws think he's come back from the dead. Lewis gets his vengeance in a gun fight and Johnny gets his voice back. 

Great cast, terrible drawn out movie. Boone left before filming was completed so he only shows up sporadically with a dubbed voice that sounds like it's on helium. Palance usually makes anything he's in worth watching and his elation at finding out he has a son is the movie's highlight. 

This Italian-Israeli production (filmed in Israel) was directed by Gianfranco Parolini/Frank Kramer had early made THE RETURN OF SABATA with Van Cleef.

Also known as DIAMANTE LOBO.

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Hippies

AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL-1972-Mike (Asher Tarzafati)), a hippie from NYC goes to Israel to “bum around” after a bad experience in Vietnam where he was turned into a “murder machine”. While hitchhiking he meets Elizabeth (Lily Avidan), a rich actress who rants and says “you fools” a lot. After they have sex, Elizabeth goes hippie too and she and Mike rollick around town. They meet a bunch of “local hippies” and decide to go to an isolated island and “be free” but their freaked out love-in is disrupted when two white faced guys in suits and top hats machine gun everyone but Mike and Elizabeth and 2 remaining friends. Mike has a strange dream where people do weird things and he fights two figures that have reel to reel tape recorders for heads! The foursome buy a lamb and have sex in a car. They eventually go to a deserted island and skinny dip and dance. When their raft disappears they are stuck on the island and begin to see that “being free” isn't all it's cracked up to be. They quickly turn into savages, fight over the lamb and with each other. They all die and the white faced men drive away in their car. I think director Amos Sefer saw EL TOPO and LORD OF THE FLIES too many times! Filmed in Israel and Egypt.

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