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Paul Schrader's Calvinist odyssey, and total batshit self-seriousness. Look, you'd probably think George C. Scott diving into the sexual underworld is a great concept, and you'd be right, but you'd also be right in saying that it's a bad idea. This movie works because of its commitment, not necessarily because of the material. It's why many, but not all, of Paul Schrader's greatest accomplishments were given life by Scorsese's direction (Taxi Driver, Bringing out the Dead, Last Temptation of Christ). This yearned for an objective lens, a participant detached from the hellish descent. Often, Paul Schrader finds himself impassioned by the very issues that he places his characters within, and certain films benefit (Blue Collar, First Reformed) while others…

June Scavenger: 4/30
#24: A film starring George C. Scott
http://letterboxd.com/scumbalina/list/alone-out-of-my-comfort-zone-june-scavenger/.

Sure, the plot sounds great but does it live up to what it promises? HELL YES. Absolutely holds no punches. I was expecting most of footwork to be done by Peter Boyle's character. I was expecting to go no seedier than strip clubs and "regular" pornography. I wasn't expecting George C. Scott to single-handedly beat the living shit out of the snuff film industry like a one man judge, jury and executioner. There is no more satisfying proof of Scott's talent than seeing him boil over into an explosion of parental rage directed at villainous sex trade scumbags.

On a side note, it invoked a memory of when I…

Hardcore is Paul Schrader’s lurid odyssey into the seedy underbelly of pornography and prostitution in 1970’s California. George C. Scott stars a conservative midwestern businessman who scours every street corner and dirty back alley in search of his missing teenage daughter whose been spotted appearing in underground porno films.

Coming off the success of writing Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece Taxi Driver, this film is essentially a B movie companion piece. Hardcore is a well written slow burn that has become slightly dated, but still manages to retain its potent commentary on the dark side of the City of Angels.

George C. Scott gives a tour de force performance as the religious calvinist Jake Van Dorn, Scott gives an earnest performance as…

From the opening moments of Hardcore you already have the world of Jake Van Dorn set up perfectly in front of your eyes, he is a single parent who loves his daughter very much. But in taking this seemingly ordinary image of an idealized American lifestyle, with the family’s own beliefs representing what already present themselves as so normalized by our own world, you have that world crumbling down rather quickly by the fact that another influence has entered the picture. Surely enough, you can already go ahead to point at Taxi Driver when thinking about another film that explores how the corrupted environment has slowly destroyed the world of Travis Bickle the way that we knew it, but what…

For the 3rd time, I have seen Hardcore, this time with a cousin. Paul Schrader has dared to give a sordid criticism to the conservative American ethics of those decades, to see how Scott's character is decomposing more and more deeply until reaching a point where madness makes him lose his temper, as well as to see part of his true identity, from seeing the traditional man at the beginning of the story ends up becoming a mean one as the story progresses. A tour de force drama that turns into a desperate madness in order to find his daughter who mysteriously disappears and is discovered to be practicing prostitution, with morbid scenes which serve for the spectator to try…

So I've more or less disappeared in recent months, I didn't even manage to finish Hoop-Tober properly (I just lost interest due to personal reasons). Well regardless of that, we're now into 2021, so I figured it's back to business as usual for me.

This Paul Schrader effort was kind of a blind buy for me, but the premise intrigued me, so I picked it up on Blu-ray and decided to gave it a shot. Funnily enough, this one is quite appropriate for the season, as evidenced by it's Christmas-set opening, but you quickly forget about that as things progress.

Jake Van Dorn (George C. Scott) is a Michigan businessman whose beloved daughter Kristen has left on a church-sponsored trip…

Although this film can certainly be called exploitative in it’s own right, it’s thoughtful and meditative compared to the successive 8MM. With Paul Schrader’s religionism, and the penultimate cries of “they didn’t make me do anything”, it’s also more humanist and life-affirming. Most striking is a didactic dreamlike quality that reminds, along with it’s Catholicism, of the later George C. Scott vehicle The Exorcist III.

Besides Scott, Peter Boyle deserves a fair amount of credit as the man who may be considered the film’s true antagonist. A cheerful Hades figure, he guides our hero through the underworld with precise care not to show him too much at a time, lest he break or suffocate— the fact that he isn’t a…

Niki: Look, how important do you think sex is?
Jake: Not very.
Niki: Well then, we're just alike. I mean, you think it's so unimportant that you don't even do it. I think it's so unimportant that I don't care who I do it with.

Jake - George C. Scott -, a conservative, deeply religious Calvinist middle-aged businessman sees her teenage daughter Kristen on the runaway and hires an unorthodox private eye Peter Boyle to find her, since the police won't do anything... and little did Boyle's character as well. So, after knowing she'd been involved in making a hardcore movie and kicking Boyle's butt, he goes "undercover" into the dark porno underworld.

Paul Schrader's film is fearless on its…