I’ve been on a bit of a Hammer trip recently simply because a load of them have turned up on the BritBox streaming service.
I saw this many years ago and didn’t think a great deal if it, and once again my thoughts are as before, an excellent performance from Christopher Lee, as usual, but a rather chaotic film which descends into hysterical parody. It’s a mainly fictionalised version of the infamous Russian mystic who integrates into the Romanov court.
Would Christopher Lee have been able to make this film today, or would the actor have to be Russian to avoid cultural appropriation?
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
@caractacus potts - Thanks, somehow it had escaped my notice that Niagara is the Monroe film featured on the billboard outside Krilencu's gaff in FRWL. When last I read that novel I hadn't yet heard of the movie Niagara, so it didn't really lodge itself in my memory.
They walked on down the boulevard, keeping close to the wall. After ten minutes, they came in sight of the twenty-foot-high hoarding that formed a facing wall to the T intersection at the bottom of the street. The moon was behind the hoarding and its face in the shadow.
...
Bond rested his forearm against the door jamb and raised the tube to his right eye. He focused it on the patch of black shadow opposite. Slowly the black dissolved into grey. The outline of a huge woman's face and some lettering appeared. Now Bond could read the lettering. It said: NIYAGARA. MARILYN MONROE VE JOSEPH COTTEN and underneath, the cartoon feature, BONZO FUTBOLOU. Bond inched the glass down the vast pile of Marilyn Monroe's hair, and the cliff of forehead, and down the two feet of nose to the cavernous nostrils. A faint square showed in the poster. It ran from below the nose into the great alluring curve of the lips. It was about three feet deep. From it, there would be a longish drop to the ground.
...
Out of the mouth of the huge, shadowed poster, between the great violet lips, half open in ecstasy, the dark shape of a man emerged and hung down like a worm from the mouth of a corpse.
In the movie, the poster is replaced by one for Call Me Bwana, a recent film starring Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg, a bit of cross-promotion for another EON product. I doubt many recall Call Me Bwana today aside from that billboard in FRwL!
I tried to do a google search for the poster Fleming is describing. None of the results really fit, because the actual posters are rightfully highlighting Monroe's magnificent hourglass bod, not stopping short at her lips. But its also specifically a Turkish language poster, so may be an original design unique to that market (it also names the accompanying cartoon). I wonder if Fleming actually saw such a poster when he was in Istanbul attending the Interpol conference in 1955 (the real life experience that inspired the book)? or could be entirely out of his own imagination
Gene Kelly was in An American in Paris. I believe The Red Shoes was the top US box office hit of 1948. It also got a best picture nomination and lost out to Olivier's Hamlet. A good year for British movies.
I've seen it before but I watched The Man Who Would Be King yesterday. It has become one of my favourite films starring two of my favourite film stars, Sean Connery and Michael Caine. I'm sure everyone here has also seen it it but if not, then you must. You will not be disappointed.
I didn't know that the part of Roxanne, the woman who Sean Connery's character tried to marry, was Michael Caine's real life wife.
Before The Man Who Would Be King was The Billion Dollar Brain. I'm afraid I am not a fan of the Harry Palmer films. I have seen The Ipcress File but the others do not entertain me enough to watch all way through.
starring Dirk Bogarde, Sylva Koscina, Robert Morley, Leo McKern, and Roger Delgado
I'm using the handy list of fifty 60s Spyfilms from Mikey Richardson's Guns, Girls and Gadgets: Sixties Spy Films Uncovered to find new films to watch. This is only the first nonBondFilm on his list and I've never heard of it. So obviously I still have much to learn!
This is a variation on the Innocent Recruited type plot, with Bogarde as an out of work writer sent by the Employment Office for an unwanted job interview with Robert Morley, who represents himself as a glass merchant with business dealings in Czechoslovakia. He sends Bogarde to Prague with nothing but a tourguide and a password, on pretext of a business meeting, without informing him he is now a spy and will be returning with Top Secret documents. Everybody in Prague knows Bogarde is a spy except for Bogarde.
Bogarde is assigned a driver, played by Koscina. I know Koscina from Deadlier Than the Male (1967) where she stole the film in a double act with Elke Sommer. She's mighty good here too, an icy Communist who is secretly sexy. The two characters quickly grow intimate, but she fails to tell Bogarde she is the daughter of the local Secret Police chief (McKern). There is a scene involving a gauze curtain that I think may be the sexiest Cold War kiss ever.
After a variety of farcelike misunderstandings, Bogarde finally twigs as to what he has to do and meets with his contact: a men's room attendant with whom he has to make awkward conversation in order to give the password, giving the secretive spywork an additional incriminating twist. Once he finally has the Secret Document, Bogarde must now make his way to the British embassy, just across the street, but is hampered by the fact he was the last one to know what his job is and the Embassy entrance is blockaded by local Secret Police types. Some good Hitchcockian suspense here as we watch him try to solve that problem.
I usually avoid subjective value judgements in these Film reports of mine, but I will say that this is a quality production, in contrast to a lot of the SpySpoofs that would follow. This is a variation on the typical Hitchcock spy thriller with an additional dose of farce, rather than a reaction to the first two Bond films. But... before Bogarde is introduced, we see a new recruit is needed is to replace an actual agent who had been killed just before the Secret Document was to be handed over, and we see the dead agent's file being closed, and the file number reads... 007!
Last night I watched THE PROTEGE. That guy, Martin Campbell, can put together a dandy action film. This one has terrific fight scenes, good performances by a largely veteran cast--Michael Keaton gets to show that when he dons Batman's cowl again he won't need a walker, and Maggie Q finally gets a good starring role--and a good sense of humor. It's nothing we haven't really seen before, but that's OK. Campbell has shown himself to be pretty good at introducing new actors to play Bond. . .and I think there could be a job opening for him soon. . .
...Egon (Harold Ramis) took off from New York with all of the GB gear about 20 years or so ago. He went to the middle of Oklahoma and became knows as the crazy dirt farmer...
did they somehow include "new" footage of Harold Ramis in the film? he must have past away nearly a decade ago...
Not a film but I've just finished watching the series 'Chernobyl' on DVD. It is the best thing I have seen for a long time. I'm sure everyone here has already seen it but I cannot recommend it enough if you have not.
What is it with the French and lesbian love stories on film? This one has recieved very good reviews and I can see why. The story takes place in Bretagne late in the 18th century. The artist Marianne is called to the island by a woman to paint her daughter Héloise. The painting is to be sent to her future husband in Italy. The problem is Héloise refuses to sit for the painting, the only way she can protest against an arranged marriage. Because of this Marianne has to pretend to be a servant who follows Héloise on her walks on the shore to secretly study her for the painting. An emotional relationship develops. Unlike "Blue is the warmest colour" (starring Lea Seydoux) this movie doesn't use the male gaze (translation: we don't get scenes of hot scenes of sapphic sex).
Only late in the movie did I discover two things: There's no film score, only source music. Of cource this makes all the music important and impactful. Second, only one man delivers one line. All the other speaking roles are female. The reverse of most war movies in other words.
The movie is beautifully shot, every scene is like a painting. The acting is also very good. Interestingly the director Celline Sciamma had a romantic relationship with Adele Haenel (Héloise). There are many themes to look for such as fire (obviously), water, the role of the muse and the old Orpheus and Euredice.
I concur. One thing about it is that - and I belatedly picked up on this - is that it's really an allegory for modern times. I mean, it's a comment on what's happening now re the cover up of everything. One character says, it doesn't matter what you say, they just deny it. This can be read as comment on Putin today - like Bond's rueful comment in GoldenEye along the lines of how regimes change but the lies remain the same - but also on, well, the UK as some of us unlucky enough have found out.
The writers seem to be using this event in recent history to pass comment on our rulers today.
Antony Hopkins plays a man named Antony who's increasingly suffers from dementia. This is possibly the best acting I've seen Hopkins do, and that's dating something! He swings from charm to confusion to paranoia to anger and on to fear just like dementia patients can do. His daughter Anne (Olivia Coleman) tries to take care of him, but it's hard for her. Antony's increasing confusion is often shown from his point of view. The director uses techniques such as time jumps, repeated scenes, imaginary scenes, even an actor playing different roles or actors sharing a role. But also small things like paintings changing places or subtly changing colours. The movie is very well written and directed, full of great acting performances and very moving. No wonder it won several of the most Presthus awards.
Watched the excellent The Day of the Jackal again. First and foremost, the look of the film, the shots of early 70s Paris (okay, depicting early 60s Paris) are just superb, it almost conjure up soft porn magazines of the era and I think you'll agree there is no higher praise. The cinematography is by Jean Tourraine who also lensed Moonraker so wonderfully, it just has a look about it. Of course, Michel Lonsdale who plays the detective trying to track down the Jackal assassin before he gets to De Gaulle went on to play Drax in the Bond film.
The film is so good, so agreeable that I do tend to pick up on its flaws as they re so few. It seems they try to make Lonsdale seem older by giving him white hair at the sides and his quiff, but it doesn't really convince and isn't consistent. A minor gripe. Edward Fox is excellent as the Jackal - and doesn't he have big hair - but frankly with said big hair, good looks, posh manner, slight build and cravat, he must be the most conspicuous looking assassin in the Western world. The idea that the assembled French Cabinet don't realise that Bastille Day is due, and the event De Gaulle cannot or will not duck out of, until two days before, is frankly preposterous. It disappoints because the rest of the film is so convincing, employing a strange almost documentary style throughout.
It also seems to feature a every British supporting actor in the early 70s, everyone from Timothy West to Terence Alexander to Derek Jacobi... What is odd is that some of these play French characters but with no discernible attempt at any accent, while others do attempt the accent and do quite well. Nonetheless, it all meshes quite well. We see much the same in Secret Army, now being reshown on Talking Pictures TV, some try to be French and German, others don't bother.
Scarlet Johansson plays an almost mute alien who trawls the streets of Glasgow looking for men to seduce. She’s very picky. Determined not to be caught, she asks intimate personal questions of her potential suitors that suggest she is promiscuously available, reassuring her conquests. Yet the men’s fate is to be immersed naked in a strange room of dark matter, their life held in an uncertain balance.
The film is itself best watched as a fully immersive artistic experience: I had the lights off; surround-sound effects would be brilliant with the strange string-based soundtrack, part-music part-sound effect, which itself feels as though the Johansson character is listening to the thoughts, appeals and pain of the men she has personally and provocatively ‘immersed.’ Has she absorbed something of their life-being? Is she learning about the human race?
Initially it isn’t even clear she is an alien. Only the other-worldliness of her white room – where she strips a dead girl for her clothes – suggests it. We are led to believe that white is the colour eeriness, of alien worlds and imaginations, like Kier Dullea’s room at the finale of Kubrick’s 2001. The room turns pitch black for her seduction scenes, the pristine white becoming an all-gathering oil-slick, as though the viscous, slippery, suffocating atmosphere of life has taken her over in these moments of mock love.
As she develops human behaviour, Johansson’s alien takes pity on a disfigured victim, lets him escape and then attempts to escape herself. She becomes fascinated by her reflection, her individuality, which – like an adolescent – she begins to understand has an amorous effect on men, learning this through the touching of hands, her first intimate experience. Touch plays a huge part in the alien's learning process. We first see her playing with an ant, its feelers stroking her palms. It is through touch the alien begins to understand desire and hurt.
Pursued by a mysterious Watcher, who rides a motorcycle, covers up her murders and is enthralled by her, even though he may be less of a guardian and more of a superior, the alien attempts a mute relationship, but her inability to effectively communicate leads her to self-imposed exile in the forests and a certain tragic end.
The film is beautifully photographed, spell-binding in its paucity, and directed with the minimum of bravura by Jonathon Glazer – he of Sexy Beast. It can be viewed on many levels; especially as a comment on exploitation and sexual power in the wake of #MeToo. Personally, I saw it as an allegory for the immigrant, the loner attempting to fit in, misunderstanding, developing a second skin, while underneath the real person still festers even as assimilation takes grip.
The lack of communication between the characters encapsulates the fear both parties share of the unknown. The ending hints at the latent passion and the unbridled hostility that conflicts within an indigenous population, fascinated by but unable to fathom the nature of the foreign beast. Scarlet Johansson’s stellar performance in particular highlights the constant fear of discovery, the occasional bewildering joy of companionship, the despair of unknowing. A beautiful, thought provoking movie.
Sometimes it is simply impossible to claw back the two hours you wasted watching a movie. Watching The Spy Who Dumped Me felt as if I was clawing back seven hours. This is terrible from start through middle to finish.
Perky Mila Kunis plays a thirty-something woman who is useless in love and life because she acts like a thirteen year old. Kate McKinnon – who apparently is a sophisticated satirical comedian – plays her annoying best friend, who also behaves like a thirteen year old. McKinnon is meant to be the comic to Kunis’ straight gal in a buddy caper, but watching her trying to raise a laugh is like raising the dead. Impossible. Cue vagina jokes, dick jokes, girl power, girl bonding, screams, clothes, hair, disorientation, stupidity, and lots of long sequences of fighting and running – except these girls can’t fight or run, they sort of bounce all the time, with aching expressions of fear on their faces. Probably worried about the box-office returns. There is a plot about a lost flash drive; they didn’t make me care about it. Writer, director and executive producer Susanna Fogel, is a mystery to me; she is juggling too many jobs. Direction’s lame. Script is terrible. Europe looks pretty.
I don’t know if I’m too old for this kind of crap, or just the wrong gender, or simply a killjoy, but I found it witless in the extreme, exceptionally violent, thoughtless plot-wise, lacking character development, lacking humour-some situations. If the best laugh is when a German backpacker takes a s*** you really know a film is struggling. I didn’t actually laugh, it’s just an example of the low-brow humour on display. Films like this make No Time To Die look like genius. A waste of everyone’s time and money and my seven, sorry, two hours.
The way I remember the movie I think they could've removed most of the jokes, made it a straight up spy movie and it would've worked better. The voilence is far too brutal for a comedy anyway. And Sam Heughan pretty much auditioned for Bond in it and made a good impression on me.
directed by Luc Besson, 1990, starring Anne Parillaud
Nikita is a childlike junky with a Patti Smith haircut, when captured by the police turns out to be capable of deadly violence, even maiming courtroom security as she is led away after her sentencing. She has killed a policeman and is to be executed by lethal injection. instead she wakes up in a top secret facility to be trained as an assassin, as the powers that be see potential in her fighting prowess and complete lack of empathy or morals. Once training is complete, she is released into the real world as a sleeper agent whose skills may be required any time. She is told if she refuses there is already a gravestone with her name on she will go back to. These people she works for are just as morally repugnant as herself during her junky days but far more despicable due to their official status. Despite the conditional security of her new job, once clean and sober and given a second chance she finds she enjoys a normal life and healthy human relations for the first time, leading to the complications of the final act.
hella-good stuff, directed by Besson whose earlier films were guilty of MTV-ish style-over-substance. This is just as superficially beautiful as Subway but a very chewy story with its uber-cynical variation on the innocent-recruited type plot structure, and a bravura performance from Parillaud. Intense opening act is reminiscent of Clockwork Orange, up til the lethal injection scene, after which it slows to a more hypnotic pace as Nikita is given her second chance with conditions. Besson would go on to direct gorgeous bande dessinée inspired films like The Fifth Element and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, both of which I've seen and enjoyed, I may have to explore his filmography more systematically.
so considering this is a variation on the spy-fantasy (and an extreme and wacky one at that), is it fair to say the eurospy was doing better than than the anglospy at this point? where were our Bond films? this would have been just after Dalton's more-violent-than-usual second and before his never-to-be-made third. Just try to imagine Dalton's Bond in this world. Never mind the violence and the style, Dalton thinks he's so Shakespearian projecting his motivations to the backrow, his overacting would be completely overshadowed by the emotional roller coaster performance Parillaud gives here as Nikita: extreme to the point its painful to watch yet completely credible and recognizable even to those of us who've never been a junky or an assassin. Just that one scene where she learns to smile for the first time is more real acting than anything I've ever seen "weepy" Dalton do. Maybe that's one reason they couldnt do a third DaltonFilm, when something like this is competing on the movie screen next door?
(semi-related trivia note: looking at wikipedia, I see in the 1993 American remake Harvey Keitel played the Mr Clean character who hides the bodies in the penultimate scene: he would go on to play an almost identical but better known character the next year in Pulp Fiction!)
This movie is based on a true story. Saroo is a five year old boy living in poverty in a village in India with his mother, older brother and younger sister. One night the Brothers go out to somehow get money. The older brother disapears and Saroo gets accidentally locked in an empty train carriage and ends up in Kolkutta (Calcutta). The city is thousands of miles from home, his family can't read or write, another language is spoken and like many kids his age Saroo don't know enough to get home again. After a time living on the street Saroo gets adopted by a good family in Australia. Nicole Kidman playes the Australian mother. When we see Saroo again as an adult he's played by Dev Patel. He discovers Google Earth, and based on the few distant memories he has of his birthplace he begins searching methodically for his birth mother....
Lion is in many ways comparable to Slumdog Millionaire. Dev Patel plays an adult who lived on on the streets in India as a child. He uses a comercial product to find happines.
It's a very well made movie. It got nominated to the most prestigous awards and won some too. The little boy who plays the Saroo as a little boy really impressed me. The adults Are also good. Dev Patel spent some time lifting weights for this movie and doesn't look as thin as he usually does. Patel is a very good British actor who's 31 years old and 6'2'' tall. He's of medium fame and has the looks and charm to have a relationship with the gorgous Freida Pinto for years. I think EON should screentest him for James Bond.
LOVE AND MONSTERS, a neat little surprise--a meteor has transformed insects and reptiles into gigantic creatures that lay waste to the human population. . .and a common stumblebum decides to make the trek through the wasteland to reconnect with his old girlfriend. It's funny and has a sweetness to it that's never cloying, and the monsters are pretty darn cool. Plus, it's got one of the best performances by a dog I've ever seen.
Post-Watergate - just about - Francis Ford Coppola film about a private surveillance man who becomes obsessed with listening in on the couple he's been tasked to eavesdrop on. He's played by still-alive Gene Hackman, who's long retired from acting. I'd seen this film before.
It's odd - you always know it's Hackman in performance, you know it's him. But the character here is wholly different from Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. Or Lex Luther in Superman: The Movie.
He doesn't have a hairpiece in this one, for what it's worth. It seems to me that he had the kind of career in the 70s that Sean Connery was aiming for but didn't quite make happen. There often seemed to be a bit of joylessness about Connery's roles or his playing as if to be making a point that he's not James Bond anymore.
The Conversation is an eerie paranoia thriller with tinkly jazz music and a sense of alienation. I'd have to say the lead character does exhibit an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement in terms of protecting his material at one point, then again he may be out of his comfort zone, plus that's how the plot moves forward. I think Travolta's Blow Out by Brian de Palma is a more commercial treatment of a similar idea, that's a film that never gets shown nowadays.
Blow Out is less intense IMO. I don't enjoy watching The Conversation, it's a very tough couple of hours. Isn't Hackman's character having a breakdown or something? I could never figure out anyone's motivations. Blow Out works more like a traditional mystery thriller and is much the better for it.
To call veteran director Norman Taurog’s Elvis Presley vehicle Tickle Me a travesty is an understatement. This movie wasn’t so much made on the quick as barely made at all. An underachievement from everyone concerned, this studio bound episode features the King as a rodeo star on a bummer sidewinding it at a Texas spa ranch full of nubile women.
“We help the girls get in shape,” says female boss Julie Adams. “You’ve done a pretty good job,” grins Elvis as he admires Jocelyn Lane’s beautifully shaped backside. Cue jealousy and fights and songs from recent albums randomly inserted and performed without enthusiasm. Yes, this movie is so cheap it doesn’t even have an original roster of songs. Buried so far beneath the attempts at mirth is a faint plot about hidden treasure in a wild west ghost town. Cue ghosts and screaming and fights. It’s like Scooby Doo without the dog and the drugs. The songs disappear after an hour, if you can make it that far.
It’s very hard to understand who would have wanted to view this except the die-hard Elvis fan as it offers zero entertainment. The writers used to pen stage stuff for the Three Stooges and the material is decades old, even for the mid-sixties. The slapstick is embarrassing. Elvis just looks awkward. You know the whole project is doomed right from the start: the titles are accompanied by one of his best mid-sixties rockers Long, Lonely Highway – the only song which makes any kind of sense in its placement – but are superimposed right across the King’s face. To batter your star before the film’s even got underway is the height, or low, of inconsideration. There's no accounting for taste, mind. The movie was so successful it saved Allied Artists from bankruptcy.
Elvis and Taurog were not finished yet and made another four films together, all of a similar quality quota. The only way to enjoy Tickle Me is to marvel at the ineptitude. Terrible, really terrible.
Post-Watergate - just about - Francis Ford Coppola film about a private surveillance man who becomes obsessed with listening in on the couple he's been tasked to eavesdrop on. He's played by still-alive Gene Hackman, who's long retired from acting. I'd seen this film before.
...
The Conversation is an eerie paranoia thriller with tinkly jazz music and a sense of alienation. I'd have to say the lead character does exhibit an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement in terms of protecting his material at one point, then again he may be out of his comfort zone, plus that's how the plot moves forward.
There was a mainstream action film called Enemy of the State in the 90s where Hackman appears about halfway through essentially playing the same character. For some reason Will Smith is on the run and no matter where he tries to hide there's surveillance cameras, then he bumps in Hackman who is an expert in such matters.
Yes! I knew about Enemy of the State. However, it's a totally different kind of film and, really, without going into spoilers, Gene Hackman is playing the same kind of character, but... the guy in The Conversation is not very savvy, is he? While Hackman in Enemy is on top of things, mostly.
The Parallax View is another conspiracy thriller of the same era never on telly now.
Comments
I read somewhere that The Red Shoes inspired Fred Astair to make "An American in Paris".
RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK (1966)
I’ve been on a bit of a Hammer trip recently simply because a load of them have turned up on the BritBox streaming service.
I saw this many years ago and didn’t think a great deal if it, and once again my thoughts are as before, an excellent performance from Christopher Lee, as usual, but a rather chaotic film which descends into hysterical parody. It’s a mainly fictionalised version of the infamous Russian mystic who integrates into the Romanov court.
Would Christopher Lee have been able to make this film today, or would the actor have to be Russian to avoid cultural appropriation?
@caractacus potts - Thanks, somehow it had escaped my notice that Niagara is the Monroe film featured on the billboard outside Krilencu's gaff in FRWL. When last I read that novel I hadn't yet heard of the movie Niagara, so it didn't really lodge itself in my memory.
here's the passage from the book
Fleming wrote:
They walked on down the boulevard, keeping close to the wall. After ten minutes, they came in sight of the twenty-foot-high hoarding that formed a facing wall to the T intersection at the bottom of the street. The moon was behind the hoarding and its face in the shadow.
...
Bond rested his forearm against the door jamb and raised the tube to his right eye. He focused it on the patch of black shadow opposite. Slowly the black dissolved into grey. The outline of a huge woman's face and some lettering appeared. Now Bond could read the lettering. It said: NIYAGARA. MARILYN MONROE VE JOSEPH COTTEN and underneath, the cartoon feature, BONZO FUTBOLOU. Bond inched the glass down the vast pile of Marilyn Monroe's hair, and the cliff of forehead, and down the two feet of nose to the cavernous nostrils. A faint square showed in the poster. It ran from below the nose into the great alluring curve of the lips. It was about three feet deep. From it, there would be a longish drop to the ground.
...
Out of the mouth of the huge, shadowed poster, between the great violet lips, half open in ecstasy, the dark shape of a man emerged and hung down like a worm from the mouth of a corpse.
In the movie, the poster is replaced by one for Call Me Bwana, a recent film starring Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg, a bit of cross-promotion for another EON product. I doubt many recall Call Me Bwana today aside from that billboard in FRwL!
I tried to do a google search for the poster Fleming is describing. None of the results really fit, because the actual posters are rightfully highlighting Monroe's magnificent hourglass bod, not stopping short at her lips. But its also specifically a Turkish language poster, so may be an original design unique to that market (it also names the accompanying cartoon). I wonder if Fleming actually saw such a poster when he was in Istanbul attending the Interpol conference in 1955 (the real life experience that inspired the book)? or could be entirely out of his own imagination
Gene Kelly was in An American in Paris. I believe The Red Shoes was the top US box office hit of 1948. It also got a best picture nomination and lost out to Olivier's Hamlet. A good year for British movies.
This thread may be of interest- Your favourites from Hammer Films — ajb007
Edit: I haven't read through the whole thing to see if you know about it or not, please forgive me if you do.
Thanks, Barbel. I did know about this thread, I posted a comment about the OnThe Buses trilogy 🥺
I love most of the Hammer output and revisiting them from time to time is always a joy.
I've seen it before but I watched The Man Who Would Be King yesterday. It has become one of my favourite films starring two of my favourite film stars, Sean Connery and Michael Caine. I'm sure everyone here has also seen it it but if not, then you must. You will not be disappointed.
I didn't know that the part of Roxanne, the woman who Sean Connery's character tried to marry, was Michael Caine's real life wife.
Before The Man Who Would Be King was The Billion Dollar Brain. I'm afraid I am not a fan of the Harry Palmer films. I have seen The Ipcress File but the others do not entertain me enough to watch all way through.
Hot Enough for June, 1964
starring Dirk Bogarde, Sylva Koscina, Robert Morley, Leo McKern, and Roger Delgado
I'm using the handy list of fifty 60s Spyfilms from Mikey Richardson's Guns, Girls and Gadgets: Sixties Spy Films Uncovered to find new films to watch. This is only the first nonBondFilm on his list and I've never heard of it. So obviously I still have much to learn!
This is a variation on the Innocent Recruited type plot, with Bogarde as an out of work writer sent by the Employment Office for an unwanted job interview with Robert Morley, who represents himself as a glass merchant with business dealings in Czechoslovakia. He sends Bogarde to Prague with nothing but a tourguide and a password, on pretext of a business meeting, without informing him he is now a spy and will be returning with Top Secret documents. Everybody in Prague knows Bogarde is a spy except for Bogarde.
Bogarde is assigned a driver, played by Koscina. I know Koscina from Deadlier Than the Male (1967) where she stole the film in a double act with Elke Sommer. She's mighty good here too, an icy Communist who is secretly sexy. The two characters quickly grow intimate, but she fails to tell Bogarde she is the daughter of the local Secret Police chief (McKern). There is a scene involving a gauze curtain that I think may be the sexiest Cold War kiss ever.
After a variety of farcelike misunderstandings, Bogarde finally twigs as to what he has to do and meets with his contact: a men's room attendant with whom he has to make awkward conversation in order to give the password, giving the secretive spywork an additional incriminating twist. Once he finally has the Secret Document, Bogarde must now make his way to the British embassy, just across the street, but is hampered by the fact he was the last one to know what his job is and the Embassy entrance is blockaded by local Secret Police types. Some good Hitchcockian suspense here as we watch him try to solve that problem.
I usually avoid subjective value judgements in these Film reports of mine, but I will say that this is a quality production, in contrast to a lot of the SpySpoofs that would follow. This is a variation on the typical Hitchcock spy thriller with an additional dose of farce, rather than a reaction to the first two Bond films. But... before Bogarde is introduced, we see a new recruit is needed is to replace an actual agent who had been killed just before the Secret Document was to be handed over, and we see the dead agent's file being closed, and the file number reads... 007!
HOME SWEET HOME ALONE (2021)
Another rehash of Home Alone. This is so listless it defies description, Truly, one of the worst films I have ever seen.
Last night I watched THE PROTEGE. That guy, Martin Campbell, can put together a dandy action film. This one has terrific fight scenes, good performances by a largely veteran cast--Michael Keaton gets to show that when he dons Batman's cowl again he won't need a walker, and Maggie Q finally gets a good starring role--and a good sense of humor. It's nothing we haven't really seen before, but that's OK. Campbell has shown himself to be pretty good at introducing new actors to play Bond. . .and I think there could be a job opening for him soon. . .
Gymkata said:
GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE
...Egon (Harold Ramis) took off from New York with all of the GB gear about 20 years or so ago. He went to the middle of Oklahoma and became knows as the crazy dirt farmer...
did they somehow include "new" footage of Harold Ramis in the film? he must have past away nearly a decade ago...
Not a film but I've just finished watching the series 'Chernobyl' on DVD. It is the best thing I have seen for a long time. I'm sure everyone here has already seen it but I cannot recommend it enough if you have not.
Portrait of a lady on fire (2019)
What is it with the French and lesbian love stories on film? This one has recieved very good reviews and I can see why. The story takes place in Bretagne late in the 18th century. The artist Marianne is called to the island by a woman to paint her daughter Héloise. The painting is to be sent to her future husband in Italy. The problem is Héloise refuses to sit for the painting, the only way she can protest against an arranged marriage. Because of this Marianne has to pretend to be a servant who follows Héloise on her walks on the shore to secretly study her for the painting. An emotional relationship develops. Unlike "Blue is the warmest colour" (starring Lea Seydoux) this movie doesn't use the male gaze (translation: we don't get scenes of hot scenes of sapphic sex).
Only late in the movie did I discover two things: There's no film score, only source music. Of cource this makes all the music important and impactful. Second, only one man delivers one line. All the other speaking roles are female. The reverse of most war movies in other words.
The movie is beautifully shot, every scene is like a painting. The acting is also very good. Interestingly the director Celline Sciamma had a romantic relationship with Adele Haenel (Héloise). There are many themes to look for such as fire (obviously), water, the role of the muse and the old Orpheus and Euredice.
I concur. One thing about it is that - and I belatedly picked up on this - is that it's really an allegory for modern times. I mean, it's a comment on what's happening now re the cover up of everything. One character says, it doesn't matter what you say, they just deny it. This can be read as comment on Putin today - like Bond's rueful comment in GoldenEye along the lines of how regimes change but the lies remain the same - but also on, well, the UK as some of us unlucky enough have found out.
The writers seem to be using this event in recent history to pass comment on our rulers today.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The Father (2020)
Antony Hopkins plays a man named Antony who's increasingly suffers from dementia. This is possibly the best acting I've seen Hopkins do, and that's dating something! He swings from charm to confusion to paranoia to anger and on to fear just like dementia patients can do. His daughter Anne (Olivia Coleman) tries to take care of him, but it's hard for her. Antony's increasing confusion is often shown from his point of view. The director uses techniques such as time jumps, repeated scenes, imaginary scenes, even an actor playing different roles or actors sharing a role. But also small things like paintings changing places or subtly changing colours. The movie is very well written and directed, full of great acting performances and very moving. No wonder it won several of the most Presthus awards.
Watched the excellent The Day of the Jackal again. First and foremost, the look of the film, the shots of early 70s Paris (okay, depicting early 60s Paris) are just superb, it almost conjure up soft porn magazines of the era and I think you'll agree there is no higher praise. The cinematography is by Jean Tourraine who also lensed Moonraker so wonderfully, it just has a look about it. Of course, Michel Lonsdale who plays the detective trying to track down the Jackal assassin before he gets to De Gaulle went on to play Drax in the Bond film.
The film is so good, so agreeable that I do tend to pick up on its flaws as they re so few. It seems they try to make Lonsdale seem older by giving him white hair at the sides and his quiff, but it doesn't really convince and isn't consistent. A minor gripe. Edward Fox is excellent as the Jackal - and doesn't he have big hair - but frankly with said big hair, good looks, posh manner, slight build and cravat, he must be the most conspicuous looking assassin in the Western world. The idea that the assembled French Cabinet don't realise that Bastille Day is due, and the event De Gaulle cannot or will not duck out of, until two days before, is frankly preposterous. It disappoints because the rest of the film is so convincing, employing a strange almost documentary style throughout.
It also seems to feature a every British supporting actor in the early 70s, everyone from Timothy West to Terence Alexander to Derek Jacobi... What is odd is that some of these play French characters but with no discernible attempt at any accent, while others do attempt the accent and do quite well. Nonetheless, it all meshes quite well. We see much the same in Secret Army, now being reshown on Talking Pictures TV, some try to be French and German, others don't bother.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
UNDER THE SKIN (2013)
I recorded this months ago.
Scarlet Johansson plays an almost mute alien who trawls the streets of Glasgow looking for men to seduce. She’s very picky. Determined not to be caught, she asks intimate personal questions of her potential suitors that suggest she is promiscuously available, reassuring her conquests. Yet the men’s fate is to be immersed naked in a strange room of dark matter, their life held in an uncertain balance.
The film is itself best watched as a fully immersive artistic experience: I had the lights off; surround-sound effects would be brilliant with the strange string-based soundtrack, part-music part-sound effect, which itself feels as though the Johansson character is listening to the thoughts, appeals and pain of the men she has personally and provocatively ‘immersed.’ Has she absorbed something of their life-being? Is she learning about the human race?
Initially it isn’t even clear she is an alien. Only the other-worldliness of her white room – where she strips a dead girl for her clothes – suggests it. We are led to believe that white is the colour eeriness, of alien worlds and imaginations, like Kier Dullea’s room at the finale of Kubrick’s 2001. The room turns pitch black for her seduction scenes, the pristine white becoming an all-gathering oil-slick, as though the viscous, slippery, suffocating atmosphere of life has taken her over in these moments of mock love.
As she develops human behaviour, Johansson’s alien takes pity on a disfigured victim, lets him escape and then attempts to escape herself. She becomes fascinated by her reflection, her individuality, which – like an adolescent – she begins to understand has an amorous effect on men, learning this through the touching of hands, her first intimate experience. Touch plays a huge part in the alien's learning process. We first see her playing with an ant, its feelers stroking her palms. It is through touch the alien begins to understand desire and hurt.
Pursued by a mysterious Watcher, who rides a motorcycle, covers up her murders and is enthralled by her, even though he may be less of a guardian and more of a superior, the alien attempts a mute relationship, but her inability to effectively communicate leads her to self-imposed exile in the forests and a certain tragic end.
The film is beautifully photographed, spell-binding in its paucity, and directed with the minimum of bravura by Jonathon Glazer – he of Sexy Beast. It can be viewed on many levels; especially as a comment on exploitation and sexual power in the wake of #MeToo. Personally, I saw it as an allegory for the immigrant, the loner attempting to fit in, misunderstanding, developing a second skin, while underneath the real person still festers even as assimilation takes grip.
The lack of communication between the characters encapsulates the fear both parties share of the unknown. The ending hints at the latent passion and the unbridled hostility that conflicts within an indigenous population, fascinated by but unable to fathom the nature of the foreign beast. Scarlet Johansson’s stellar performance in particular highlights the constant fear of discovery, the occasional bewildering joy of companionship, the despair of unknowing. A beautiful, thought provoking movie.
THE SANTA CLAUSE (1994)
After Santa has an accident on Tim Allen’s roof, he unknowingly accepts the position of the new Santa.
This has a new angle on the hackneyed “Santa is real” theme, and is enjoyable in an undemanding way.
THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME (2018)
Sometimes it is simply impossible to claw back the two hours you wasted watching a movie. Watching The Spy Who Dumped Me felt as if I was clawing back seven hours. This is terrible from start through middle to finish.
Perky Mila Kunis plays a thirty-something woman who is useless in love and life because she acts like a thirteen year old. Kate McKinnon – who apparently is a sophisticated satirical comedian – plays her annoying best friend, who also behaves like a thirteen year old. McKinnon is meant to be the comic to Kunis’ straight gal in a buddy caper, but watching her trying to raise a laugh is like raising the dead. Impossible. Cue vagina jokes, dick jokes, girl power, girl bonding, screams, clothes, hair, disorientation, stupidity, and lots of long sequences of fighting and running – except these girls can’t fight or run, they sort of bounce all the time, with aching expressions of fear on their faces. Probably worried about the box-office returns. There is a plot about a lost flash drive; they didn’t make me care about it. Writer, director and executive producer Susanna Fogel, is a mystery to me; she is juggling too many jobs. Direction’s lame. Script is terrible. Europe looks pretty.
I don’t know if I’m too old for this kind of crap, or just the wrong gender, or simply a killjoy, but I found it witless in the extreme, exceptionally violent, thoughtless plot-wise, lacking character development, lacking humour-some situations. If the best laugh is when a German backpacker takes a s*** you really know a film is struggling. I didn’t actually laugh, it’s just an example of the low-brow humour on display. Films like this make No Time To Die look like genius. A waste of everyone’s time and money and my seven, sorry, two hours.
The way I remember the movie I think they could've removed most of the jokes, made it a straight up spy movie and it would've worked better. The voilence is far too brutal for a comedy anyway. And Sam Heughan pretty much auditioned for Bond in it and made a good impression on me.
so? lets watch a good film
La Femme Nikita
directed by Luc Besson, 1990, starring Anne Parillaud
Nikita is a childlike junky with a Patti Smith haircut, when captured by the police turns out to be capable of deadly violence, even maiming courtroom security as she is led away after her sentencing. She has killed a policeman and is to be executed by lethal injection. instead she wakes up in a top secret facility to be trained as an assassin, as the powers that be see potential in her fighting prowess and complete lack of empathy or morals. Once training is complete, she is released into the real world as a sleeper agent whose skills may be required any time. She is told if she refuses there is already a gravestone with her name on she will go back to. These people she works for are just as morally repugnant as herself during her junky days but far more despicable due to their official status. Despite the conditional security of her new job, once clean and sober and given a second chance she finds she enjoys a normal life and healthy human relations for the first time, leading to the complications of the final act.
hella-good stuff, directed by Besson whose earlier films were guilty of MTV-ish style-over-substance. This is just as superficially beautiful as Subway but a very chewy story with its uber-cynical variation on the innocent-recruited type plot structure, and a bravura performance from Parillaud. Intense opening act is reminiscent of Clockwork Orange, up til the lethal injection scene, after which it slows to a more hypnotic pace as Nikita is given her second chance with conditions. Besson would go on to direct gorgeous bande dessinée inspired films like The Fifth Element and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, both of which I've seen and enjoyed, I may have to explore his filmography more systematically.
so considering this is a variation on the spy-fantasy (and an extreme and wacky one at that), is it fair to say the eurospy was doing better than than the anglospy at this point? where were our Bond films? this would have been just after Dalton's more-violent-than-usual second and before his never-to-be-made third. Just try to imagine Dalton's Bond in this world. Never mind the violence and the style, Dalton thinks he's so Shakespearian projecting his motivations to the backrow, his overacting would be completely overshadowed by the emotional roller coaster performance Parillaud gives here as Nikita: extreme to the point its painful to watch yet completely credible and recognizable even to those of us who've never been a junky or an assassin. Just that one scene where she learns to smile for the first time is more real acting than anything I've ever seen "weepy" Dalton do. Maybe that's one reason they couldnt do a third DaltonFilm, when something like this is competing on the movie screen next door?
(semi-related trivia note: looking at wikipedia, I see in the 1993 American remake Harvey Keitel played the Mr Clean character who hides the bodies in the penultimate scene: he would go on to play an almost identical but better known character the next year in Pulp Fiction!)
Lion (2016)
This movie is based on a true story. Saroo is a five year old boy living in poverty in a village in India with his mother, older brother and younger sister. One night the Brothers go out to somehow get money. The older brother disapears and Saroo gets accidentally locked in an empty train carriage and ends up in Kolkutta (Calcutta). The city is thousands of miles from home, his family can't read or write, another language is spoken and like many kids his age Saroo don't know enough to get home again. After a time living on the street Saroo gets adopted by a good family in Australia. Nicole Kidman playes the Australian mother. When we see Saroo again as an adult he's played by Dev Patel. He discovers Google Earth, and based on the few distant memories he has of his birthplace he begins searching methodically for his birth mother....
Lion is in many ways comparable to Slumdog Millionaire. Dev Patel plays an adult who lived on on the streets in India as a child. He uses a comercial product to find happines.
It's a very well made movie. It got nominated to the most prestigous awards and won some too. The little boy who plays the Saroo as a little boy really impressed me. The adults Are also good. Dev Patel spent some time lifting weights for this movie and doesn't look as thin as he usually does. Patel is a very good British actor who's 31 years old and 6'2'' tall. He's of medium fame and has the looks and charm to have a relationship with the gorgous Freida Pinto for years. I think EON should screentest him for James Bond.
LOVE AND MONSTERS, a neat little surprise--a meteor has transformed insects and reptiles into gigantic creatures that lay waste to the human population. . .and a common stumblebum decides to make the trek through the wasteland to reconnect with his old girlfriend. It's funny and has a sweetness to it that's never cloying, and the monsters are pretty darn cool. Plus, it's got one of the best performances by a dog I've ever seen.
The Conversation
Post-Watergate - just about - Francis Ford Coppola film about a private surveillance man who becomes obsessed with listening in on the couple he's been tasked to eavesdrop on. He's played by still-alive Gene Hackman, who's long retired from acting. I'd seen this film before.
It's odd - you always know it's Hackman in performance, you know it's him. But the character here is wholly different from Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. Or Lex Luther in Superman: The Movie.
He doesn't have a hairpiece in this one, for what it's worth. It seems to me that he had the kind of career in the 70s that Sean Connery was aiming for but didn't quite make happen. There often seemed to be a bit of joylessness about Connery's roles or his playing as if to be making a point that he's not James Bond anymore.
The Conversation is an eerie paranoia thriller with tinkly jazz music and a sense of alienation. I'd have to say the lead character does exhibit an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement in terms of protecting his material at one point, then again he may be out of his comfort zone, plus that's how the plot moves forward. I think Travolta's Blow Out by Brian de Palma is a more commercial treatment of a similar idea, that's a film that never gets shown nowadays.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Blow Out is less intense IMO. I don't enjoy watching The Conversation, it's a very tough couple of hours. Isn't Hackman's character having a breakdown or something? I could never figure out anyone's motivations. Blow Out works more like a traditional mystery thriller and is much the better for it.
TICKLE ME (1965)
To call veteran director Norman Taurog’s Elvis Presley vehicle Tickle Me a travesty is an understatement. This movie wasn’t so much made on the quick as barely made at all. An underachievement from everyone concerned, this studio bound episode features the King as a rodeo star on a bummer sidewinding it at a Texas spa ranch full of nubile women.
“We help the girls get in shape,” says female boss Julie Adams. “You’ve done a pretty good job,” grins Elvis as he admires Jocelyn Lane’s beautifully shaped backside. Cue jealousy and fights and songs from recent albums randomly inserted and performed without enthusiasm. Yes, this movie is so cheap it doesn’t even have an original roster of songs. Buried so far beneath the attempts at mirth is a faint plot about hidden treasure in a wild west ghost town. Cue ghosts and screaming and fights. It’s like Scooby Doo without the dog and the drugs. The songs disappear after an hour, if you can make it that far.
It’s very hard to understand who would have wanted to view this except the die-hard Elvis fan as it offers zero entertainment. The writers used to pen stage stuff for the Three Stooges and the material is decades old, even for the mid-sixties. The slapstick is embarrassing. Elvis just looks awkward. You know the whole project is doomed right from the start: the titles are accompanied by one of his best mid-sixties rockers Long, Lonely Highway – the only song which makes any kind of sense in its placement – but are superimposed right across the King’s face. To batter your star before the film’s even got underway is the height, or low, of inconsideration. There's no accounting for taste, mind. The movie was so successful it saved Allied Artists from bankruptcy.
Elvis and Taurog were not finished yet and made another four films together, all of a similar quality quota. The only way to enjoy Tickle Me is to marvel at the ineptitude. Terrible, really terrible.
napoleon plural said:
The Conversation
Post-Watergate - just about - Francis Ford Coppola film about a private surveillance man who becomes obsessed with listening in on the couple he's been tasked to eavesdrop on. He's played by still-alive Gene Hackman, who's long retired from acting. I'd seen this film before.
...
The Conversation is an eerie paranoia thriller with tinkly jazz music and a sense of alienation. I'd have to say the lead character does exhibit an uncharacteristic lapse in judgement in terms of protecting his material at one point, then again he may be out of his comfort zone, plus that's how the plot moves forward.
There was a mainstream action film called Enemy of the State in the 90s where Hackman appears about halfway through essentially playing the same character. For some reason Will Smith is on the run and no matter where he tries to hide there's surveillance cameras, then he bumps in Hackman who is an expert in such matters.
Yes! I knew about Enemy of the State. However, it's a totally different kind of film and, really, without going into spoilers, Gene Hackman is playing the same kind of character, but... the guy in The Conversation is not very savvy, is he? While Hackman in Enemy is on top of things, mostly.
The Parallax View is another conspiracy thriller of the same era never on telly now.
Roger Moore 1927-2017