Quatermass (1979)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Quatermass (1979) – P. Haggard

Writer Nigel Kneale’s final outing for Prof. Bernard Quatermass finds the elderly rocket scientist (now played by Sir John Mills) in the bleakest of dystopian futures. Society has completely broken down (think Children of Men or Mad Max) and youth gangs are rampaging everywhere. Quatermass is brought out of isolation in Scotland by the disappearance of his granddaughter, who has seemingly joined a cult of Planet People who travel to mystic locations such as the Stonehenge like Ringstone Round awaiting a mystic force to take them to another world. When a force really does appear, Quatermass and a small group of space scientists realise that it may not be a force for good.  Across four episodes, the team attempts to figure out what is happening and try to stop it – meanwhile all of the world’s young people are being rapidly depleted (including 70K people in Wembley Stadium).  Shot on an extremely low budget, the four-part series is nevertheless very effective (perhaps as a result of the low budget) and even though you can’t always trust Quatermass, as played by John Mills he is always charismatic. The (often elderly) supporting cast – who you can’t count on to stay alive – do a solid job in support.  This is easily the grimmest of the Quatermass releases but worth tracking down.  

 

Home Alone (1990)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Home Alone (1990) – J. Hughes

No, I had never watched this John Hughes movie until now – after all, I turned 23 in 1990, so why would I? But now I was encouraged by 9-year-old Amon to give it a spin – and it wasn’t quite as cloying as I had feared. Instead, it had enough slapstick comedy (the kind where comic buffoons get hurt in outlandish ways) to keep Amon cackling away next to me.  Of course, this action doesn’t really get going until the film’s final third.  Before that, we meet Kevin (McCauley Culkin) and his nuclear and extended family who are all going on a trip to Paris (they are very rich, it seems, and live in an upscale part of Chicago). We also meet Joe Pesci who is casing their house disguised as a cop.  Later, with Daniel Stern, he attempts to burgle the residence only to be foiled by Kevin and his various Rube Goldberg contraptions. A subplot finds Kevin teaching his once-scary older neighbour about the value of family and overcoming conflicts. I think a little bit of Culkin goes a long way but Pesci and Stern do approach their roles with gusto and this makes all the difference.

 

The Mummy (1959)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Mummy (1959) – T. Fisher

I agree with those who have noted that the 1932 Boris Karloff version of The Mummy is superior to this Hammer remake. The plot has been varied a bit, giving Christopher Lee as Kharis, the guardian of Princess Ananka’s tomb (aka The Mummy), less to do, as he only appears in flashback or in muddy bandages rather than in modern dress as Karloff did. Instead, George Pastell plays the worshipper who organises for the Mummy to attack and kill the three members of the archaeologist team that desecrated the tomb, including Peter Cushing. Yvonne Furneaux plays Cushing’s wife, who resembles Ananka (though there is no suggestion that she her reincarnated form). As per usual, Hammer does a nice job with the sets and costumes but there is no sense that the original film has been advanced upon here. Still, it’s fun for an escape.

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) – M. Flanagan

I haven’t read The Turn of the Screw (Henry James, 1898) in a long time -- but I have watched Jack Clayton’s excellent film of it (The Innocents, 1961) many more times. This mini-series sequel to the 2019 mini-series The Haunting of Hill House (both developed by horror afficionado Mike Flanagan) takes the James story as its starting point (and includes many of the actors, playing different characters, from the first series).  Of course, it is hard not to compare this version to the earlier version – but soon it is clear that the ambiguity of the novella and the other film would be left in the dust. Here, the spirits are real.  But also not exactly scary.  Instead of the governess (or au pair; Victoria Pedretti) being more or less alone in her struggle against (imagined or real) ghosts, here we have an array of other characters living or working at the old manor. Together they discover the mystery of the children’s strange behaviour and together they wrestle with the implications.  I won’t say more other than that what at first seemed an expansion on the original story, bringing it up to modern times and embellishing the backstories of all the characters (and added characters), quickly turned into something else, something very convoluted, possibly a merger with other ghost stories by Henry James (which I have not read). Unfortunately, this caused the mini-series to tank.  Worse, the final two episodes seem disjointed from the rest, with explanations coming out of nowhere and loose ends being gathered together to try to give every character a final resting place (the framing story that winks at us in closing is simply awful). That said, some of the actors did manage to create people that felt real and charismatic.  But I would save your 9 hours for something else.

A Run For Your Money (1949)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Run For Your Money (1949) – C. Frend

Charming tale (from Ealing Studios) of two Welsh men (Donald Houston and Meredith Edwards) who travel to London after winning £200 and have a variety of comic misadventures. Director Charles Frend keeps things moving at a brisk pace as the lads get separated almost immediately, with one falling into the hands of a beautiful con artist and the other meeting up with a long-lost friend and harp player from the old country. Alec Guinness, an Ealing favourite, plays a gardening columnist (for the newspaper that sponsored the contest) charged with tracking them down and writing a human interest story about them.  Not exactly madcap but gently humorous – unless you are from Wales when apparently the many stereotypes on display are thought to be in bad taste. Perhaps not up there with Ealing’s greatest but enjoyable nonetheless.

 

All My Sons (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

All My Sons (1948) – I. Reis

Although sometimes categorised as film noir due to its dark themes and critique of the American Dream, Irving Reis’s film of Arthur Miller’s Tony award winning play (written just before Death of a Salesman) is better classified as an excruciating moral drama. Edward G. Robinson plays Joe Keller who runs a factory that makes aircraft parts. His son Chris, played by Burt Lancaster, is set to inherit the factory and hopes to marry the daughter of Joe’s former partner, Herb Deever (Frank Conroy), now in jail, convicted of knowingly selling faulty parts to the air force that led 21 pilots to die.  Joe was exonerated of the same crime, as he claimed not to know what Herb had done. The return of Herb’s daughter Ann (Louisa Horton) to the town opens old wounds and casts doubt on Joe’s innocence. Joe’s wife Kate (Mady Christians) defensively protects him from accusations by Ann’s brother George (Howard Duff) and seeks to break up Chris and Ann (believing Ann still pledged to her older son who never returned from the war). Although the family tensions are well-acted, the film best serves as an indictment of capitalism and the moral blindness that is created by the desperate need to make a profit to support a family or a lifestyle, leading to choices that privilege self/family over employee/consumer. It’s a timeless theme and echoed in the headlines year after year – only corporations don’t seem to ultimately accept their guilt as Joe Keller does.

Double Wedding (1937)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Double Wedding (1937) – R. Thorpe

Truly, Myrna Loy and William Powell made a great team, particularly in The Thin Man detective series, but also in a variety of other screwball comedies.  Unfortunately, Double Wedding is not one of their best – it falls strangely flat (over on imDb, a piece of trivia notes that Jean Harlow, girlfriend of Powell and friend of Loy, died of uremic poisoning during the shooting of this film, which had to be halted to allow the stars to mourn).  Nevertheless, you could see how the script could work: Loy plays an uptight businesswoman who is micromanaging her sister’s engagement to a very wooden John Beal; Powell plays a free-spirited wannabe movie director with whom the sister falls in love.  Of course, soon enough you can see the romantic tension between Loy & Powell and in no time he is orchestrating things so that they end up together. However, she never quite figures this out until he is about to marry her sister (Florence Rice).  Some wacky character actors join in the expected fun and confusion. Except, as I said, it is all a bit flat: Loy never quite attains the proper level of comic disdain and Powell seems to overcompensate as a result. The laughs don’t flow freely but you can sort of appreciate that maybe they should have.

 

City on Fire (1987)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

City on Fire (1987) – R. Lam

Chow Yun-Fat’s charisma is on display again here in this ‘80s Hong Kong action flick (yes, the one Tarantino used as an inspiration for Reservoir Dogs, 1992). He plays an undercover cop (Ko Chow) who can’t help bonding with the gangsters he is charged with arresting. After a previous case went sour, he wants to come in from the field but his old boss needs him to stay to do one last job – participate in a robbery of a jewellery store but tip the cops off so the baddies are caught red-handed. At the same time, Chow’s girlfriend is pressuring him to marry her and he is ready to do so, but keeps missing dates because either the cops or the crooks need him to do something.  As with other HK films of the era (e.g., those by John Woo), there’s a real emotional undercurrent here (scored by some wailing sax and Chinese blues): bromance between Chow and a central gangster (Danny Lee, who also duetted with Chow in The Killer), the father-son vibe with his old boss, and the tears associated with his girlfriend leaving him for a businessman. Director Ringo Lam expertly counterbalances this emotion with the adrenaline rush produced by some heavy-duty violence as the gang fights the cops with Chow caught in the middle. The result is pretty intense but Chow Yun-Fat never lets us down.  

 

Annette (2021)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Annette (2021) – L. Carax

I really enjoyed Leos Carax’s last film, Holy Motors (2012), which was strenuously weird and full of amazing images. So, I was excited to see his latest, which opened the Cannes Film Festival this year with music/libretto by Sparks and starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, as, respectively, a bad boy performance artist/comedian and an opera singer, who fall in love. It starts well – and weird – with the cast and crew singing the actors/main characters into the story which then diverges to show the separate worlds of Henry McHenry (Driver) and Ann Defrasnoux (Cotillard). We see their acts on stage and their lives offstage. Soon, they are married and have a daughter, Annette, who is played by a wooden marionette. Weird, yes, but the exhilaration of the film starts to dissipate as things take a darker turn when the script engages with #MeToo and domestic violence themes. This is topical and important but rather jarring as we lose the ability to identify with the characters onscreen. To be honest, things started to drag (I looked at my watch and decided that 140 minutes was too long) and I did not feel that the visuals or songs or weirdness compensated for the pacing problems. That said, Driver in particular gives everything he can to the film and the failure overall is not for want of trying.

Synchronic (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Synchronic (2019) – J. Benson & A. Moorhead

It must be challenging to think up good material, if you’ve decided to cultivate a certain kind of psychedelic WTF cinema (with or without twists in the plot). So, I must give credit to Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead (directors of The Endless, 2017): they’ve come up with a fairly novel spin on an otherwise tired plot device (time travel).  And as with the best science fiction, fantasy, or horror films, these filmmakers take an outlandish premise and have their characters treat it as real, using logic and intelligence to deal with irrational events. However, there is a lot of half-baked philosophising here too and the film takes a long time to get to the good bits. Anthony Mackie (“Steve”) and Jamie Dornan (“Dennis”) play paramedics who encounter some grisly emergencies and begin to realise that they are all connected to a new designer drug, Synchronic. When Dennis’s 18-year-old daughter goes missing after taking the drug, Steve does some investigating of his own, including buying a smoke shop’s remaining supply and going on a few trips from/to their home base of New Orleans, in an effort to rescue her.  Ultimately, the central conceit works, although the emotional pay-off is muted at best – we don’t care enough about these guys to feel it – but they are our ticket to WTF-ness and it is worth the price of admission (this time).

 

The Italian Job (1969)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Italian Job (1969) – P. Collinson

Yes, this is the famous heist movie where the gang escapes with the gold bars in three Mini Coopers and the chase scenes where the hapless Italian police chase the Brits in Minis is the reason to see this film.  Before and after the chase, the film is decidedly odd – we watched because it was rated G (in America) but there are some things that are hard to explain to a 9-year-old. Michael Caine takes over the planning for the heist (robbing an armored truck in a crowded city square in Turin, by orchestrating a major traffic jam) after the original plotter is killed by the Mafia – but he needs British gangster Noel Coward’s assistance. My problems began when I had to explain why Coward seemed to run everything even though he is in prison and why the guards let him have special favours (uh, corruption?).  We sort of ignored Caine’s womanising (and Benny Hill’s professor who likes big butts!) but there was no way to explain the film’s bizarre ending (“Is that it?”) other than to say that criminals are not allowed to win in movies of this sort because what sort of message would that send? There was grudging acceptance of this but it didn’t win the movie points overall, some feeble attempts at slapstick comedy notwithstanding.   

 

The Dry (2020)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Dry (2020) – R. Connolly

I don’t think it’s cultural cringe to say that even though it is great to see Australia and its issues up there on the screen, there’s something that still feels amateurish about some of our output, including The Dry. Eric Bana is the brooding Federal cop who returns home to regional Victoria from Melbourne when an old childhood friend dies in a murder-suicide. Soon, he can’t help himself from investigating the crime (to discover whether his friend really was the killer) and we learn through fleeting flashbacks and the angry reactions of long-time residents that Bana’s character was also a suspect in a possible murder years earlier. The interweaving of the past and present is expertly managed by director Robert Connolly but the plot soon descends into a standard whodunit with an array of suspects and red herrings from which to choose. I didn’t guess correctly myself, expecting that the synergies between past and present would play out as predicted, but the film takes a turn into much darker territory instead. A better film might have interrogated that darkness more but it’s good that The Dry is willing to broach the subject and a few additional problem areas as well. We need more films to do this.

 

Red Rock West (1993)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Red Rock West (1993) – J. Dahl

Nicolas Cage is particularly subdued as a drifter with integrity who finds himself mistaken for a hitman (“Lyle from Dallas”) when he pulls into the small Wyoming town of Red Rock. His integrity doesn’t stop him from taking the 5 Gs from Wayne (J. T. Walsh) but instead of killing his wife (Lara Flynn Boyle), he warns her. His integrity also doesn’t stop him from taking another 5 grand from her to kill Wayne, but he leaves town instead. Of course, he doesn’t get far and this dryly humorous neo-noir proceeds to subject him to a number of unexpected twists in the plot from which he can’t seem to extricate himself because he is such a nice guy. Naturally, Lyle from Dallas soon appears in the guise of Dennis Hopper in full-on Blue Velvet mode and he makes short shrift of everything. As directed by John Dahl, there are echoes here of the Coens’ Blood Simple (not David Lynch, despite the cast) and a twangy instrumental score that tilts things toward the Western. It’s solid genre film-making and worth the price of admission.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) – L. Milestone

More melodrama than film noir (although the shock ending does tilt things in the direction of the bleaker genre). After a long preamble with child actors that sets up the three central characters and the basic plot dynamics, we join Sam Masterson (Van Heflin) as he re-enters Iverstown for the first time in 17 or 18 years. He meets cute with Toni Marachek (Lizabeth Scott) and decides to use his old childhood connections to help her out of a legal jam. So, he asks D. A. Walter O’Neil (Kirk Douglas in his debut film) to pull some strings to help Toni out; however, O’Neil is worried that Masterson is actually prepared to blackmail him and his now wife, heiress Martha Ivers (Barbara Stanwyck), over a past event that he may or may not have actually witnessed.  The melodrama comes in because Martha still loves Sam and feels she was manipulated into marrying Walter, just as Walter feels trapped in their marriage and bullied into doing what Martha requires him to do. Sam can only look on in pity and plot his escape with Toni.  It’s funny because none of the four principals plays a wholesome character – they’ve all got checkered pasts – but certainly Heflin seems the most level headed and clear thinking of the lot. But, my, there is a lot of drinking as a coping strategy in this film – it doesn’t seem to work.

 

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) – T. Fisher

Although Peter Cushing makes a fine Holmes and Andre Morell is solid as Watson, it is impossible not to compare this version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s novella to the 1939 version starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Intriguingly, the 50s version has some different aspects to the plot (most obviously, Stapleton has a daughter who attracts Sir Henry’s romantic interest rather than a sister) – a quick look at my Complete Sherlock Holmes suggests it is the 30s version that is more faithful. The story is simple: Sir Henry’s father, Sir Charles, has died, potentially killed by a “hound from hell” in line with a curse that was placed on his family due to a very evil ancestor, Sir Hugo (his evil acts shown in detail and colour in this Hammer Studios version). Of course, Holmes will have none of this line of deduction and sets out to solve the mystery on the Moors and to save Sir Henry from suffering the same fate. Cue some red herrings. Too bad Hammer did not pursue further Holmes films but this one is certainly solid enough, if not exactly horror nor as fun as the more famous film.   

The Silent Partner (1978)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Silent Partner (1978) – D. Duke

Elliott Gould plays Miles Cullen, the head teller at a Toronto bank who figures out in advance that his branch is about to be the target of a stick-up. Opportunistically, he puts most of the bank’s cash in his own bag, letting the thief, Reikle (Christopher Plummer), get away with only a paltry sum. Soon however Reikle rings up demanding the rest of the loot from his “silent partner”. Although seemingly mild-mannered, Cullen outsmarts the sadistic Reikle every step of the way. At the same time, he romances co-worker Julie (Susannah York) as well as his late father’s young nurse (Celine Lomez). In fact, everyone seems to underestimate Miles. Of course, suspense builds from the cat-and-mouse game between him and Reikle – and it isn’t all fun-and-games: there’s a shockingly violent scene suitable for an exploitation flick to cap it off. Apparently the film won a number of awards in Canada (John Candy also works at the bank) and it holds up fine as a middle of the range seventies thriller. If you appreciate Gould, check it out.

Symptoms (1974)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Symptoms (1974) – J. R. Larraz

With only the rain and a big old country house in rural England, director José Ramón Larraz establishes that very spooky mood that is so well-known from haunted house films in this period (early ‘70s). There are enough shots outdoors, in the nearby pond or the lush overgrown yard, that this might even qualify as folk horror. Helen (Angela Pleasance, daughter of Donald) lives alone in this house but the film begins as a friend, Ann (Lorna Heilbrun), arrives to stay for a few days – it isn’t quite clear how well the two women know each other. Pictures of another female friend who visited earlier are placed prominently around the house. The only other person on the grounds is the handyman, Brady (Peter Vaughan), who seems to be snickering or leering at Helen who steadfastly ignores him. But we can see that something is not quite right with Helen (beyond the headaches she complains about) and after she spies Ann talking with Brady from a window, she sinks into a nearly catatonic depression. Ann wants to help but she is also getting creeped out, thinking there is some other presence in the house. The film proceeds to play out as it probably should (although not perhaps how viewers may have hoped), leaving us with feelings of sympathy amidst the horror.

 

Under the Silver Lake (2018)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Under the Silver Lake (2018) – D. R. Mitchell

Really, the only interpretation that explains this unusual movie is that Andrew Garfield’s Sam is having a psychotic break from reality!  But it takes a while to come to this conclusion. At first, he might be just a little lost, not unreasonably attracted to Riley Keough’s mysterious Sara, who invites him for a tryst and then suddenly disappears. He turns detective -- and the film echoes other wacked out L. A. neo-noirs, such as The Long Goodbye (complete with topless neighbour out on the balcony) or The Big Lebowski. However, the clues that Sam uncovers begin to take on some serious conspiracy theory overtones: mysterious messages embedded in the lyrics of songs by a local rock band, someone sending signals via hobo codes, the strange beliefs of a zine artist (played by Patrick Fischler, seen previously at David Lynch’s Winkie’s diner) that prophesise events that may come to pass. Then, David Yow (from the Jesus Lizard) appears as the Homeless King and Sam stumbles on clues that make no objective sense which are nevertheless co-opted into the growing narrative and incomprehensibly validated by what the camera shows us. Given a bizarro solution that fails to add up or to reveal any deeper themes (except to Sam, perhaps), some reviewers complained that this makes the film essentially meaningless. That may be true but if you are willing to follow Garfield’s slacker anti-hero from party to party, “random” encounter to encounter, you may enjoy the film, even if you end up discovering that you’ve just wasted your time trying to figure it out.  Intriguingly, a quick google search suggests that director David Robert Mitchell (It Follows, 2014) has embedded some hidden messages in the film itself – but chasing these may lead you down rabbit holes not far from those entered into by those slipping into the netherworld of psychosis.   

 

Body Double (1984)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Body Double (1984) – B. De Palma

Brian De Palma’s obsession with Hitchcock reaches its logical conclusion in this extremely lurid pastiche of both Rear Window and Vertigo. Whereas Hitch managed to get us to identify with Jimmy Stewart’s “Scottie” (Vertigo) and “Jeff” (Rear Window) despite their unsavoury behaviours, De Palma makes these problems more explicit so that Craig Wasson’s Jake is more obviously a peeping tom and a stalker. Thus, even as we come to suspect that Jake is a pawn in somebody else’s plot (a la Vertigo), being encouraged to witness a murder and to draw the wrong conclusions, we can’t really feel as much sympathy for him. Sure, his weakness (claustrophobia in this case) makes him the perfect dupe but De Palma lets Jake cross so many conceivable lines of propriety (um, even becoming a porn star?) that the plot mechanics borrowed from the Master lose some of their effect in the trashiness of it all.  De Palma does a good job with the camera, using tracking shots to elicit a dream-like state as Jake trails Gloria around Hollywood (including stealing the 360 degree kiss from Vertigo), but Wasson is a bland everyman who seems to have never been relied on to carry another film after this. In contrast, Melanie Griffith does show a spark of charisma (in the final minutes of the film), despite being objectified for most of the film. Truly, De Palma’s films always seem to go too far in the direction of bad taste but Body Double is ultimately less enjoyable than Blow Out, Sisters, Obsession, and even Dressed to Kill (if I am remembering them correctly). I did not remember the music video for Frankie Goes to Hollywood embedded in the film but I did see them in concert around this time!

 

Night Moves (1975)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Night Moves (1975) – A. Penn

Gene Hackman is pretty soulful as private eye Harry Moseby who has problems of his own (his wife is cheating on him) that may cloud his judgment as he works on what should be a perfunctory missing daughter case. The daughter in question turns out to be a very young Melanie Griffith who has fled to the Florida Keys to escape her washed-up actress mother in Hollywood, as well as ex-boyfriend mechanic James Woods and recent fling stuntman Marv. She is shacked up with her stepfather (and his girlfriend Jennifer Warren). So Harry flies down there to bring her back. Initially, she doesn’t want to return but after they discover a downed plane underwater with a corpse in it, suddenly she is ready to go back. Harry isn’t quite satisfied to let the case drop at this point, but things aren’t very clear. He suspects Woods but is he missing the big picture? The title refers to a famous chess game where a grandmaster made a spectacular blunder when he could have won – this may also be Harry’s fate.  Neo-noir but loose and often seemingly directionless (probably by design) but it doesn’t rise to the level of something like The Long Goodbye (1973), which could be the difference between an Altman and a Penn, I guess.

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) – G. Lucas

I had other things to do 16 years ago, so I am only just getting around to watching this third film in the Star Wars prequel trilogy (thanks to my kids). Once again, it’s a bit disorienting to jump into the action after a lacuna between Episode II and III – who is this General Grievous anyway? Wait, the Chancellor has been kidnapped? By Count Dooku? I thought they were on the same side (assuming that we all know that Palpatine is really the future Emperor/Darth Sidious)? Eventually, however, the confusion settled down and amidst the various light sabre battles, we awaited the “facts” that would solve the various mysteries that explain how things in Episode IV (due to take place 16 to 18 years later?) ended up the way they did.  So, how does Anakin turn into Darth Vader – what makes him so angry at the Jedi? And, of course, how does he end up in that mechanical suit? And what about the Jedi – we know that Obi-Wan and Yoda make it to the next trilogy – but what about Master Windu or those other unnamed Jedi? Or Count Dooku for that matter? Or Luke and Leia’s mum? Yup, you guessed it.  So, basically, there’s no suspense and you just watch in a numb sort of way as the various pieces fall into place (and a lot of hands are sliced off – is there some symbology that I’m missing?). As Aito (aged 11) pointed out, we already know that the Sith win, so where’s the fun in that?

The Deadly Affair (1967)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Deadly Affair (1967) – S. Lumet

Based on John Le Carré’s first novel, James Mason stars as George Smiley (renamed here Charles Dobbs, for copyright reasons), the Mi6 spy who is more bureaucrat than Bond. Although Alec Guinness later embodied the character in two TV miniseries, Mason is no slouch and more than holds his own, portraying Dobbs/Smiley as at the end of his tether, as his wife, Anne (Harriet Andersson, of Bergman fame), has been cheating on him. What’s more, a man he had just interviewed (who had been dubbed a communist in an anonymous letter) has gone and committed suicide – or has he? Smiley is not so sure and when his boss urges him to close the case, he chooses to resign and pursue the truth outside the political constraints of the agency (with help from retired “just the facts” Inspector Mendel, played well by Harry Andrews, and agent Bill Appleby, played by Kenneth Haigh). Simone Signoret and Maximillian Schell round out the international cast.  Director Sidney Lumet and cinematographer Freddie Young purposefully washed out the colour stock to give the proceedings a suitably grey tone. I thought it held together pretty well (unlike so many spy stories) although I’ll admit that beyond Mason’s Smiley no one gets too much of a chance to develop their characters.

 

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) – G. Lucas

I am pretty sure I fell asleep when watching this a couple of decades ago but there was no chance of that this time, as the kids howled and booed whenever a romantic scene (between Natalie Portman’s Senator Amidala and Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker) came on. In truth, these did slow the movie down. Aside from this, I still found it difficult to get my mind around the unfolding transition between the Republic, with the Jedi as its police force, and the evil Empire, now composed of the Trade Federation and a growing number of Separatist planets – led by Christopher Lee’s Count Dooku (really a stand-in for Darth Sidious who I think we can agree is also Chancellor Palpatine and later the Emperor). We were stunned when Jar Jar Binks entered a motion to allow the Chancellor to have unprecedented authoritarian powers – what a moron!  As for the Jedi, Ewan McGregor tries his best as Obi-Wan (left to keep the action going in scenes that alternate with the romance plot), Samuel L. Jackson still has nothing to do as Windu – or at least nothing that capitalises on his usual bad-ass charms, and Yoda is left to get the audience back on board (would have loved to hear a Christopher Lee commentary on that final battle – surely he was bemused to see this turn in his career). Now who ordered the army of clones and whether Yoda commandeered them for the big battle remain obscure for us. Not sure what to make of his suggestion that the Clone Wars have begun (did we need to do some background reading?). Boba Fett’s origin story is pretty confusing too.  At any rate, we are expecting that all will be resolved in Episode III, which has to be better than this, right?

The Great Train Robbery (1978)

 ☆ ☆ ½

The Great Train Robbery (1978) – M. Crichton

I had never heard of this Sean Connery-Donald Sutherland vehicle directed by Michael Crichton from his novel (and also starring Lesley Anne Down). And now I know why – it is deadly dull. It’s hard to say what went wrong – it must have looked great on paper. Crichton had already directed Westworld (1973) and Coma (also 1978), which were hits. Connery was done with Bond and making some odd films (Zardoz!) but still a big star. Sutherland was already very esteemed after MASH (in a number of foreign films and in the concurrent Invasion of the Body Snatchers remake). But despite the high production values (the film takes place in London in 1855) and a plot with numerous twists, as Connery (already a gentleman but also a thief) strategizes how to rob a moving train containing gold destined for Crimea (or perhaps coming from there), the film just doesn’t feel exciting. Even Connery doing his own stunts – walking on top of the train and ducking when it went under bridges – doesn’t add any zing. I’m sure this is only one of the many expected blockbusters cast by the wayside along the road to fame and fortune – I hope I don’t run into too many more.

 

Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (1999)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace (1999) – G. Lucas

I saw this (and dismissed it) twenty years ago but Amon (aged 9) was ready to check it out (after already watching eps 4 through 9).  We are deposited very quickly into a seemingly complicated dispute between the Trade Federation (run by some lizards) and the Planet Naboo (led by Queen Amidala/Natalie Portman). Two Jedi Knights (Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn and Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi) are dispatched to Naboo to stop what turns out to be a plot by the Federation (in conjunction with The Sith) to take over the planet, including its underwater minority group, the Gungans. In order to escape and regroup, the jedis take the Queen and a random accident-prone Gungan (Jar Jar Binks) to Tatooine where they meet slave kid, Annakin Skywalker, who wins a pod race to earn money to get them parts to fly their ship back to uh, I forgot, back to Naboo where they have to make a last stand against the Sith (and their main fighter, Darth Maul, who we were calling Darth Small last night) and an army of robots.  Annakin is strong with the force but Yoda and Samuel L. Jackson (a jedi master, so not just good at foot massage) are worried about what they sense is the possibility of the dark side in him (no duh). In the midst of this confusing plot, there is some razzle dazzle, a lot of CGI creatures, and some obvious and not-so-obvious foreshadowing.  But really, not much suspense because we know who can die and who cannot.  Liam Neeson is rather boring. I hope we don’t have to watch Episode 2 now because I fell asleep the last time.

 

Castle of Blood (1964)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Castle of Blood (1964) – A. Margheriti

As Mondo Digital suggests, this film may only be 10% plot as compared to 90% atmosphere – but the gothic atmosphere is well worth the price of admission. Alan Foster (Georges Riviere) accepts a wager to spend a night in a haunted castle on All Souls Eve, when the spirits of the dead are due to return and none who accepted the wager in the past escaped the castle’s evil spell.  I was genuinely creeped out when he got dropped off in front of the dark decrepit place, entered the gate, found an old torch, and opened the old wooden door. I wouldn’t want to be him!  Inside, things were just as spooky – shadows reflected in old mirrors, cobwebs on everything, paintings that seem ready to come alive. And then suddenly, Barbara Steele shows up, claiming to have been living in the castle all these years and putting the moves on Foster in a way he can’t (or doesn’t want to) resist.  Of course, it comes as no surprise that she’s no longer living – and we meet a number of other similarly dead residents of the castle who show Foster glimpses of how they met their fate.  Obviously, we know it will soon be his turn…  Beautifully shot in B&W and on par with the Hammer or Bava entries in the horror canon of this period. Check it out if this is your genre.

 

The Big Easy (1986)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Big Easy (1986) – J. McBride

I think it was Roger Ebert who said that he’d seen so many thrillers that he just didn’t care about the plots anymore – and it’s true that the (ludicrous) plot of The Big Easy does seem quite beside the point in terms of enjoyment of the film. Instead, its pleasures are found in the New Orleans locale and the sexual tension between Ellen Barkin’s district attorney’s office investigator and police detective Dennis Quaid (showboating with a broad and sometimes incomprehensible Nawlins accent). There may or may not be a gang war and the force may or may not be corrupt (including Quaid’s Remy McSwain) but it is definitely true that both McSwain and Barkin’s Anne Osborne are not really keeping their minds on their work.  Sure, his colleagues, including John Goodman and Ned Beatty, tease him about this but we come to believe that McSwain may be sincere in his feelings. In between the crime scenes, we get some New Orleans music (including Beausoleil, The Neville Brothers, Buckwheat Zydeco, and Professor Longhair), restaurants (Tipitina’s), and locales (not much French Quarter, really). Better than I expected.

Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Farewell, My Lovely (1975) – D. Richards

This third version of Chandler’s 1940 novel stars Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe, private detective, hired by Moose Malloy to find his lost love, Velma, who stopped keeping in touch while he spent 6 years in the can.  Although the Marlowe of the book is in his 30s, Mitchum was 59 and plays the character as world-weary – which is quite a contrast to the 1944 version starring Dick Powell (called Murder, My Sweet to avoid audiences thinking it was a musical, Powell’s original forté) where Marlowe is portrayed as a bit more full of zing, although still sardonic and cynical about human nature. I’ve practically memorised the 1944 noir, so I started to note the changes in this later version – until there were a bit too many (Florian’s is an African American establishment now, Amthor is a madame in a house of ill-repute, etc.). Later, I checked the book to confirm that although some of the changes made the ’75 film truer to Chandler, the majority did not and the ’44 film remains a more faithful rendition.  The plot is, as usual, complicated – Marlowe gets tricked into chasing the wrong Velma, kidnapped and held prisoner (all drugged up), and pursued by the law for murders that he did not commit. Young Charlotte Rampling has a brief turn as Velma. All told, this is a rather ordinary outing that feels like a made-for-TV movie with that awkward 70s doing the 30s falseness that rings hollow throughout (despite the presence of a genuine film noir star in the lead). Probably OK if you haven’t seen the superior 1944 film.    

 

The Hit (1984)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Hit (1984) – S. Frears

Stephen Frears’ first film of the ‘80s is a stylish “noir” shot beautifully in broad daylight in Spain where two hitmen, John Hurt and Tim Roth, finally catch up with Terrence Stamp who ratted out his bank robbing colleagues 10 years before. It’s also a road movie as we follow these three (plus hostage Laura del Sol) as they trek toward France where the gang leader, previously betrayed, awaits. (Deliciously, they are trailed by the cops led by Fernando Rey, of all people). Finally, it’s a mediation on death: Stamp declares that he is ready for it (reading a sonnet by John Donne to prove it) but others do not believe him. I guess it is a sort of existential threat to a hitman’s sense of meaning if death is not feared and John Hurt does seem to gradually lose his bearings across the film. Frears to his credit manages to keep the tension high even though the vibe is often “family vacation”. This is also essentially Roth’s debut (with blond hair) and you can see why Tarantino (a fan of this film) chose him for subsequent projects. Definitely worth a look.

 

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) – W. Ruttmann

More interesting as an historic artefact these days than as a fully enjoyable film (methinks), Walter Ruttmann’s hour-long montage of footage recorded in Berlin circa 1927 shows ordinary rather than extraordinary people and locales (no sign of the Brandenburg Gate). Of course, it is impossible not to think of the future that will unfold for these ordinary people, with Hitler’s rise just around the bend, but there is nothing in these scenes that hints at this eventuality. Indeed, the activities of the people of Berlin, shown from 5 AM through until night, could be the activities of people in any big European city (or perhaps even New York City). At times, these activities even seemed like the activities that people do today in any big city (sitting at a café). Ruttmann’s real contribution, aside from inaugurating the city symphony film, was to create a fully dynamic piece through editing and montage (and of course shots of people in action) – for a while, I counted the shot lengths, which ranged from 2 to 10 seconds or so, trying to ascertain whether there was a calculated rhythm being employed. My conclusion was that the shots were probably directly linked to the music (by Edmund Meisel), although otherwise the film is completely silent. As far as content goes, we do see a range of activities and people, rich and poor, happy and sad, mundane and more specialised; some shots are obviously staged for the camera whereas others are not. Ruttmann plays a few tricks on the audience, engages in visual poetry and other artistic cutting, and generally mixes things up to hold the audience’s interest.

 

Used Cars (1980)

☆ ☆ ☆

Used Cars (1980) – R. Zemeckis

I feel as though there used to be more of these raunchy comedies made for adolescents or guys who haven’t fully grown up.  They aren’t sophisticated (and I know that sometimes that’s what’s needed).  But some of these films find their humour in sexist ways or by making some people the butt of the joke. Of course, this can be done genially or with unpleasantness. Fortunately, Used Cars is really genial in its approach (only some T&A, as they used to call it, feels tackier these days than it did in 1980). That said, at its core, the film is pretty dark:  gentle car lot owner Luke (Jack Warden) dies of a stroke, leaving salesmen Rudy (Kurt Russell) and Jeff (Gerrit Graham) with hiding his death (cue Weekend at Bernie’s) as the only option to save the business from being taken over by Luke’s evil brother (also played by Jack Warden) and his competing car lot across the street.  As a result, an all-out battle for customers ensues between the two franchises (which even involves Lenny & Squiggy as hi-tech airwave pirates) until Luke’s estranged daughter (Deborah Harmon) turns up to throw a monkey wrench into the works. Of course, it all ends with a galvanising feel-good finish.  I can’t say I really laughed too much but the situations were humorous and your “mileage” may vary.    

 

Liquid Sky (1982)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Liquid Sky (1982) – S. Tsukerman

Rather strenuously outré, boho, taboo-breaking although not exactly in a comic vein like Waters but more straight-faced like Warhol/Morrissey (or perhaps it seems that way because it is set in Manhattan). It’s also a one-off early ‘80s curio that is now a time capsule for a scene that’s gone (weird fashion, spare angular music). Aliens in a tiny flying saucer arrive on the roof of a model’s building (she lives in a very art-decorated but also somehow trashy penthouse). According to a wandering scientist, they seek heroin (and there are a lot of junkies in this film) but soon they discover that chemicals in the brain during orgasm are even better and they start abducting (or maybe absorbing) people having sex.  The model at the nexus of all this (Anne Carlisle) also plays another male model (which results in some tricky camerawork/staging). But let’s face it, the plot is totally besides the point here and instead you get a melange of drug use, sex, sweary ranting, Altered States styled computer animation/modification, dancing, glow-in-the-dark make-up, and attitude, mixed with some boring dialogue scenes.  It probably doesn’t quite add up (and could be confronting) but it is certainly a thing to behold.

 

Women of the Night (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Women of the Night (1948) – K. Mizoguchi

It is rather surprising to see Kinuyo Tanaka in the role of a prostitute but the great actress easily pulls it off. She does begin the picture in a more typical role, downtrodden and then widowed wife and mother, and only later does she turn to prostitution. And now that I look back, I see that Tanaka played courtesans, geishas, and, yes, prostitutes throughout her career – the roles available to women may be few. So what is actually surprising here may be director Kenji Mizoguchi’s bluntness and the raw post-war milieu that the characters occupy (some have suggested the influence of Italian Neorealism). Mizoguchi was never one to shy away from showing men’s cruelty to women and their reactions to it: often stoic and determined and, in this case, vitriolic, as Tanaka’s Fusako seeks to spread syphilis to all men as revenge for the callous way she was cast aside by her boss in favour of her younger sister (this is after her husband and baby son died). There is a lot of melodrama along the way before we get to what may have been intended as an uplifting finale but which can’t easily wipe away the awfulness we have seen to that point. This is not the only film to document the social and economic problems of Japan at this time (1948) but it must be one of the harshest.

 

Popeye (1980)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Popeye (1980) – R. Altman

I loves me some Popeye and so, inevitably, I finally decided to watch Robert Altman’s live action musical based on the Fleischer cartoons of the 1930s (and Segar’s comic strip before that). Amon (aged 9) watched with me.  It is a well-known flop but Robin Williams (still starring as Mork on TV at the time) perfectly captures the Sailor Man and his constant under-the-breath muttering and poor pronunskiation and who else could play Olive Oyl except Shelley Duvall (also in The Shining released the same year)? Yet and yet, Robert Altman is an interesting choice for director – as in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, there is a large cast of characters (only some of whom have recognisable parts – such as Wimpy or Bluto) and they mill about the single set town engaging in business not quite directly for the camera and with the director’s trademark overlapping (and sometimes hard to make out) dialogue. The pacing is all wrong for the first third of the film – too slow and taking too long to develop the characters we know and love – but eventually it finds its groove and even the meandering pace feels okay as the characterisations take hold and the cartoonish action sequences appear. The plot seems an amalgamation of a few Popeye tales – his search for his Pappy, the discovery of baby Sweet Pea – laced with some really lackadaisical songs (by Harry Nilsson). So, not really a success, but a seventies-feeling oddball. At any rate, Amon laughed when Popeye finally ate his spinach and bested Bluto with a truly gigantic punch. 

Thunderball (1965)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Thunderball (1965) – T. Young

At a certain point during Thunderball (Sean Connery’s fourth outing as James Bond, immediately after Goldfinger, 1964), I started to realise that the film was not much different from a Hitchcockian chase film (such as The 39 Steps, Saboteur, or North by Northwest). It’s all about the editing and great credit goes to director Terence Young and his team – the plot is just a schematic frame to hang the action sequences on. So, Bond is after a MacGuffin -- some atomic warheads stolen by S.P.E.C.T.R.E. and its #2 man, Largo (Adolfo Celi, wearing an eyepatch) -- and he moves from setpiece to setpiece, action-sequence to action-sequence, with barely any character development or even deeper plot development, between them. By this fourth entry, the tropes of the series are already there – Bond suavely seduces all of the women (whether on the side of good or evil), he drops double entendres wherever he can (especially with M’s secretary Ms. Moneypenny), he is a lethal opponent in a fight (by fists, poker, speargun, whatever is available – including gadgets obtained from Q), and he swiftly draws conclusions about the location of the MacGuffin and carries out a plan to secure it.  This time, the action takes place in the Bahamas, so there are beautiful locales and a lot of underwater action (perhaps too much, as it is difficult to tell who is who in their scuba masks). It’s fun but basically hollow at its core.