Visitor of a Museum (Konstantin Lopushanskiy, 1989)

8/10
It seems like in Russian arthouse cinema, generally there are three main pillars of discussion: early films by Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, Vertov, etc; recent films by Sokurov, Zvyagintsev, Balabanov, etc; and then a vast expanse in the middle seemingly dominated by Tarkovsky alone. Little talk ever seems to be made of his peers, but surely he wasn't the only one making progressive cinema in Russia at the time? The director of Visitor of a Museum, Konstantin Lopushansky, was a student of Tarkovsky and in fact assisted on the making of Stalker. Even though Visitor was released three years after Tarkovsky's final film, it certainly bears his influence at least aesthetically speaking.
If Stalker somehow anticipated the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, Visitor is fully conscious of it, even though it never directly references it. A man wanders a destroyed, trash-heap landscape populated by "degenerates" (actually portrayed by disfigured or physically handicapped actors and extras...can't imagine that flying these days), who are looked down upon by the remaining human survivors of this catastrophe. The man is attempting to reach the ruins of a museum, but along the way gets caught up in the degenerates' uprising and is made for a Christ figure for their revolution. These threads hang together pretty loosely - the film shifts from the journey to the museum to the degenerates' uprising in such a way that you wonder if the previous story was abandoned altogether, only for it to reemerge towards the end. What the film lacks in storytelling prowess it makes up for with visual style: like many of Tarkovsky's films, shots are sometimes completely monochromatic (usually a sickly red), takes are long and uninterrupted, and locations easily call to mind lesser versions of Tarkovsky's Zone in Stalker or the planet Solaris.
To be sure, the surrounding features may sometimes be more interesting than the movie itself, but if you appreciate oddities of cinema, this one has it all. And it's available to watch in its entirety with excellent English subtitles on Youtube.

Santa Sangre (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1989)

8/10
I liked this probably a lot more than I should have. Made in 1989 and more straightforward (though that's not saying much) than Jodorowsky's classic stuff, Santa Sangre plays almost like his take on a Dario Argento giallo. And like Argento's movies, Santa Sangre's failings are similar - spotty acting, corny dialogue, unintentionally funny special effects, etc. But the core of the movie is so earnest, so honest, and so foolishly charming that it won me over. Although my friend hated it and would have walked out if he went alone, so that gives an idea of the dividing power it has...

Road House (Rowdy Herrington, 1989)

7/10
I find it easy to like a lot of bad movies and Road House was no exception - it was something I was in the mood for when it came on MoviePix at 10pm the other night, and it was a lot of fun. If you can't have fun watching Patrick Swayze and his blonde mullet tear people's throats out...well what's the point? I'd watch it again if I were bored.

Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)

8/10
Good movie. Apparently of lot of white people come away thinking of Sal as the victim and a lot of black people come away thinking of Mookie as the hero...I was somewhere in between, I think neither were heroes and both were in the wrong and in the end, Mookie didn't do the right thing, which I think is what Spike Lee was trying to get across...but I don't know. The quotes at the end from Malcolm X and MLK muddle things too. Anyone else seen it have an opinion?