Anvil: The Story of Anvil (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Anvil: The Story of Anvil (2008) – S. Gervasi

A couple of times, toward the beginning, I had to check to see whether this was a mockumentary (a la Spinal Tap) or an actual documentary.   It was the latter and although at first I thought the “joke” about dumb heavy metal dudes was too old or dated – it turns out that the deeper truths available in the story of Anvil became palpable and were more important than the failed tour or unmarketable album that this old metal band experienced.  The deeper truth probably resonated more with this 50-year-old because it is about keeping the dream alive after many years, about living with your past success (they played with Bon Jovi and others in Japan in the 1980s) even as your present success pales in comparison.  It is about rejuvenating yourself in your 50s and giving it a go, even if the world has changed and maybe passed you by.  It is about coming to terms with yourself and your context.  Of course, these lessons can be applied to all of us but for those of us who thought about music (if not metal) across these years, there are other insights to be had here from Lips and the Anvil gang.  I think about my friend who gave up his psychology career, post-50, to get his old band back together and put out CDs and tour Europe multiple times.  Surely, he’s enjoying himself a hell of a lot more than being stuck in the bureaucracy of academia.  So, is it worth it to take a risk to follow your dream, even if it is obvious that it won’t pay off in dollars and cents? I’d say yes.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) – S. Lanfield

One of the first and best of the Rathbone-Bruce Sherlock Holmes mysteries, produced by Twentieth Century Fox before the series moved to Universal and continued to a total of 14 films.  I watched this with my two boys, aged 8 and 6, and the large cast of possible suspects and the twisty plot may have confused them – the oldest was particularly convinced that the killer was the old peddler (who turns out to be Holmes in disguise).  Of course, we also needed to discuss the supernatural elements – a ghost dog and a seance to speak to the dead Sir Charles Baskerville – which we agreed were not true things.  (Fortunately, no questions were asked about Holmes’s final words in the film “Watson, the needle!”).  To recap the plot:  Holmes is recruited by a Dr Mortimer to protect Sir Henry Baskerville, nephew of the now dead Sir Charles who passed mysteriously with footprints of a giant hound near his body, when he returns to his inheritance in lonely Dartmoor, England.  At once, he is subject to spooky goings-on and the threat of death; all of his neighbours are suspects, as are the suspicious house staff.  Dr Watson is left to guard Sir Henry while Holmes uses all of his wiles and powers of deduction in secret.  Of course, the killer is eventually outed once all the pieces fall into place.  Atmospheric and fun (and a bit scary if you are six).

Blonde Crazy (1931)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Blonde Crazy (1931) – R. Del Ruth

Jimmy Cagney is larger than life here, just a few movies on from his breakthrough in The Public Enemy (also 1931), as a bellboy turned big stakes grifter, travelling from hotel to hotel working his cons.  At the start of the film, he picks up his partner, Joan Blondell who all the men leer at (in this pre-code film) but who provides a ready slap to anyone who gets too frisky.  Together, they swindle Guy Kibbee (stock dirty old man of the 1930s) and then hope to use the proceeds to make more money by teaming up with old hand Louis Calhern – who promptly tricks them out of it along with his own blonde partner Noel Francis (the lure for Cagney).  The rest of the movie is spent trying to get back at Calhern with a big con of their own, while Blondell falls in love with heel Roy Milland, leaving self-centered wisecracking Cagney on his own. Although the film seems largely a comedy, we get a few nods to the gangster genre where Cagney made his biggest splash – but he still moves like the dancer he longed to be.

Unknown (2011)

☆ ☆ ☆

Unknown (2011) – J. Collet-Serra

There seem to be so many of these grim Liam Neeson thrillers around that I thought I should see one to see why Hollywood thinks they are worth it.  My reaction (to this one at least) is that these are by-the-numbers movies that try to include the main ingredients of other successful thrillers in order to win the box office jackpot.  However, something this formulaic and generic probably will never go down in the annals of film history as one of the greats because it is just too calculated (methinks).  Here, Neeson is a biotechnology professor who is in a car accident in Berlin that results in a four-day coma; when he awakes, without his passport, no one recognises him, even his wife, and there is some other dude claiming to be him.  In order to unravel this mystery, he finds the taxi driver, an illegal immigrant played by Diane Kruger, who was driving when he crashed, and also gains the help of a former East German Stasi official played by Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire).  Naturally, there are a few car chases, some hand-to-hand fighting, and a lot of dodging of bad guys who are stalking him.  And, a twist, a movie like this has to have a twist these days.  I’m not sure I’ll watch another of these Neeson thrillers – even when I’m too tired for a challenge, this just seemed too rote, or average, at best.

  

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) – C. Brabin

A time capsule from Hollywood history when being brazenly racist (in this case, against the Chinese) seems to have been A-OK.  But the film is so outlandish – and the Chinese baddies so unrealistic, that really they may as well have been alien invaders from outer space (perhaps I am thinking of Ming the Merciless?).  Still, it is disheartening to think that American audiences would have thrilled to a battle between the “White Race” and the “Yellow Peril”.  But let’s set that aside if we can and just see the baddies in the film as evil archetypes (who over the course of a century or two might switch their race/culture/subgroup in the popular American imagination but yet still retain their archetypal ways).  Boris Karloff plays Fu Manchu, the evil leader lusting for the power represented by Genghis Khan and his long lost mask and scimitar, and Myrna Loy (!!!) plays his sultry but sadistic daughter – both in bad Asian make-up (Karloff is nearly unrecognisable again).  The plot sees British archaeologists working for the British Museum racing to locate and excavate Genghis Khan’s tomb before Fu Manchu can get there and use Khan’s treasure to whip his followers up into a frenzy to begin a new empire.  The Brits do get there first but then Fu Manchu uses all of his diabolical tricks to abscond with the treasure and subject the heroes to terrible tortures (tying them under giant ringing bells, suspending them over hungry alligators, and subjecting them to slowly closing walls with huge spikes).  I’m sure the audience gasped!  And although the required happy ending is soon served up, one ends with the feeling that the heroes have been a little too bland and faceless and the almost campy over-indulgence of the evil side was the real drawcard of the film (hence the title).

A Study in Terror (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆

A Study in Terror (1965) – J. Hill

John Neville takes his turn as Sherlock Holmes (and Donald Houston is Watson) in this rather middling adventure.  It isn’t that the film is bad, it’s just that we’ve seen Holmes so many many times before (and since) and nothing much stands out from this new portrayal.  The case, however, is new (but not unfamiliar):  Holmes and Watson strive to identify and to capture Jack the Ripper.  The Victorian era and the Whitehall district of London are rendered suitably but unimaginatively – there is something dull about the mise-en-scene too, although it ticks the usual boxes (music hall/boisterous pub, prostitutes in allies, hansom cabs, period costumes). The script tosses up a few red herrings (and young Judi Dench!) but it isn’t too hard to figure out the culprit before he is apprehended by Holmes.  This is, by the standards of the day, a fine B-grade time-waster but I’ll take Rathbone and Bruce any day over these pale imitations! 

  

Don’t Breathe (2016)

☆ ☆ ½

Don’t Breathe (2016) – F. Alvarez

I’ve been trying to decide who is the target audience for this picture (it wasn’t me) and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a thrill ride meant for young people to watch in the cinema.  In retrospect, I can hear people gasping, ewwing, and perhaps even cheering during the action in the cinema – it would play better in a crowd than alone in headphones (which is how I watched it).  The plot sees three millennial thieves breaking into the house of an old blind veteran in a run-down Detroit neighbourhood after hearing that he has a few hundred grand inside.  Unfortunately for them, the old man is more than they bargained for and they are soon playing a game of cat-and-mouse -- where they are the mice scurrying through the basement catacombs in the creaky old house.  Director Fede Alvarez uses all the tricks of the trade to heighten the tension – but it really is all technique and virtually no plot here.  You’ve paid your admission and you have a 90 minute ride.  (My worry that this might turn into torture porn was fortunately groundless – but it has a few sicko moments for sure).  Not my thing.