It's a shame you're in the USA, @Gymkata - tonight the UK's Talking Pictures TV is showing Confessions of a Pop Star - that should be on your list, too!
I've never before seen this Akira Kurosawa's classic samurai movie, but tonight I finally did. The story is based on Shakespeare's Macbeth. Sometimes the lines are pretty much identical while other times we can get only one "Wyrd Sister". Obviously the story has been moved from Scotland to Japan. At first glance the countries may seem similar, but if you look closer there are som subtle differences. 😉
The acting style is different from what we usually see in movies. The reason is the director's interest in Noh theatre. I don't know a lot about Noh culture, but we all know what a Noh mask looks like after Safin modeled one to great effect in NTTD. In spite of the unfamiliar acting style I liked the acting. I also enjoyed the battle scenes. My friend who I saw it with liked "Throne of blood" too, but he missed colour. Now the plan is to watch Ran next.
Following the Second World War theme set down by The Best Years of Our Lives, I decided to watch the D-day adventure Overlord.
It is about a group of American paratroopers whose mission is to take out a German radio signal on top of a French church ahead of the invasion. The opening flight scene amidst anemy flak is pretty good actually, quite gruelling.
Not sure how historically accurate it is, in particular when they stumble across a Nazi laboratory in the base of the church where they are experimenting on locals. Actually, I'm talking in jest because this is a Nazi zombie movie but the joke falls flat because of course the Nazis did experiment on people. That you have a zombie film based around real-life events such as D-day is tonally a bit iffy but there you go.
There are inconsistencies and the Bond in Spectre thing where someone is physically put through it in a lab but in the next scene is a-okay. The soldier says that three weeks ago he was mowing the lawn back home and now he's in all this - not sure how long they think their basic training was! Or was he on leave? Anyway, weren't they flying over from Britain, having been stationed there for the last couple of years or so?
I enjoyed it, it's good to watch something out there at times. Good acting but it's a quality B-movie for all that. nobody famous in it. Not quite sure how it makes its money back. Someone on this thread did recommend this a while back after I raved about Nazi zombie flick Dead Snow which I'd like to see again!
Funny how when Captain America is made into an eternal superhero it's okay but when the Nazis try to do it... double standards!
I remember you mentioning this before. I attempted a similar feat many years ago. I don't think I finished. You have some interesting movies to see:
THE BROADWAY MELODY - old fashioned extremely dated musical
CIMARRON - impressive epic sweep, looks good but the acting is a bit ropey
GRAND HOTEL - very good ensemble cast with a good screenplay
THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA - of its time; worthy; good performances
YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU - hated it; not funny at all
MRS. MINIVER - never got around to this
THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES - ditto
THE OX-BOW INCIDENT - ditto
GOING MY WAY - one of the worst best pic winners ever; stereotypes all around
MILDRED PIERCE - never seen it
GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT - see my comment for Going My Way
ALL ABOUT EVE - superb satirical drama
DR. ZHIVAGO - beautiful film, well condensed version of a huge book, Julie Christie is simply gorgeous - it's a no-brainer
ELMER GANTRY - intense
BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ - Telly Savalas out acts Burt Lancaster
CABARET - one of the best adaptations of a stage show ever put on screen; Liza Minelli is mesmerizing; Maybe This Time is one of the most poignant and powerful musical statements ever put on screen; the undercurrent of Nazism is ever present and malevolent among the jollity and the doomed romances; you must watch this
DOG DAY AFTERNOON - Pacino and Cazale are superb in this film; one of the best films of the seventies; subversive, gripping and emotionally wrenching. I hope you enjoy this. It was never going to win the Oscar, it's not their sort of film, but it is brilliant.
A tasteless hash up of thriller and pop video tailored specifically for a youthful market. A dull private security guard is hired to watch over an egotistical superstar actress and singer. Cue misunderstanding and loathing. Of course, the two fall in love and he saves her life. Cue songs of excruciating vocal force but no nuance of phrasing. A bit like the acting. Kevin Costner was at the top of his career tree at the time and could virtually do no wrong. Ditto singer Whitney Houston. Very wooden, even the thrills seem to creak like weary floorboards. Sparkling in look and diverting after a fashion. Lawrence Kasden has written much better than this and once you learn it was originally envisaged as a vehicle for Steve McQueen and Diana Ross you begin to see its origins and pitfalls in measure. The soundtrack sold millions.
One of Broadway’s most popular and oft-revived musicals, Hello Dolly! Is an advert for an older star and as such Barbara Streisand was too young to fill the role of Dolly Levi, the know-it-all Jewish widow created by Thornton Wilder for his short story The Matchmaker. It isn’t that she’s bad in the role. No; La Streisand is efficient and likeable, it is simply that Jerry Herman’s lyrics don’t suit her. She’s too elegant, fresh and young to play an aging, meddling matriarch. The songs have a resonance of age in the lyrics and as good as La Streisand is at delivering them you simply don’t believe her version of Dolly has been married, been the talk of the town, widowed and carved out a career as a romantic liaison officer for rich and poor alike. When the staff at the Harmonia Gardens welcome her back after ‘all these years’ you sense La Streisand hasn’t been absent at all. The producers went for the hottest property in movie musicals of the time and after her Funny Girl Oscar the previous year, La Streisand was it. That doesn’t mean she was suitable. Mary Martin [Larry Hagman’s mother] who bagged the role in a 1965 West End run would have been perfect and it would have been a great record of a great stage actress in full swing. Carol Channing was Broadway’s original, but after the debacle of Thoroughly Modern Millie, she had probably burnt her boats in Hollywood, although she continued to play Dolly Levi on stage for decades.
The other casting is well-off the mark too. Walter Matthau is suitably grumpy as Dolly’s unresponsive amor Horace Vandergelder, but he can’t sing. Britain’s Michael Crawford is too light an entertainer to carry the romantic moments which his character inhabits. Much better is Marianne McAndrew who plays the second love interest, Irene Molloy, a role significantly expanded from the stage show. Unfortunately her singing voice is dubbed. Louis Armstrong pops up to join in the title song, a track he made famous with a number one single and album in 1964. The rest of the performers are an uninteresting bunch, corralled by an uninterested Gene Kelly, who directs with his choreographer’s head switched off. The whole thing is flat and remarkably dull, staged on grand unidentifiable sets which must have cost a fortune yet add nothing. Even the dance numbers seem inanimate. Kelly was perhaps trying to make up for lost opportunities: he’d turned down Ernest Lehman’s request to direct The Sound of Music. Unfortunately the producer, director or choreographer [Michael Kidd] hasn’t got a decent hold on the material and it turns into a bloated spectacle with no emotive heart.
While Hello Dolly is the showstopping number, the best song is given to Crawford’s Cornelius Hackl – similar to On the Street Where You Live being farmed out to Freddie Freemont in My Fair Lady. However, Crawford can’t handle the theme and It Only Takes A Moment falls flat. It does of course sum up Dolly Levi’s personal ethos as she waits for an idealistic heaven sent signal and Horace in turn makes an instant and completely contrary proposal. I was reminded of those Shakespearian comedies where a happy ending for all has to be contrived however daft the notion.
The movie was a hit, but was almost as expensive as Cleopatra and hence didn’t turn a profit. You can't even see the spend on the screen for this one. Like many latter-day movie musicals it stutters, uncertain of its ability to entertain when the kids could get their kicks at gigs by likes of Janis Joplin, CSN and the Grateful Dead. It was one of the last authentic Broadway adaptations made in Hollywood. Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret were still to come, but this genre was a dying breed and you can sense it in the lack of inspired casting and playing, as if the performers already know they are taking part in a homage to something great not creating something great on their own.
Blimey! That's a good review. Never quite seen the film, it never draws me in. Like a lot of those musicals it seems heavy going before it starts; Sound of Music and Mary Poppins were long too of course but were largely light on their feet and had charm a plenty. Matthau seems to have Connery's DAF toupee in this.
If you are not familiar with the Carry On franchise, you have a lot of catching up to do. This much loved British film comedy series spanned the swinging sixties and was still churning them out in the permissive and seventies. Thirty films encompassed the first twenty year run, from 1958 – 1978, and a final effort [Carry On Columbus] arrived in 1992. While that was not well received, it is fair to say by the time that entry hit the cinemas the Carry On films were critic proof and the quality, good or otherwise, is fairly immaterial.
Carry On Doctor was a big hit on its release in early 1968 and its blend of naughty inuendo and cheeky social comment is obvious from the off, a series of subtitles referencing the nation’s black humoured suspicion of hospitals and health services. The patients and staff are more concerned with seduction or avoiding it. Sid James and Frankie Howerd’s hen pecked husbands reside in wards beside amorous singletons like Bernard Bresslaw and Dilys Laye; nobody seems to be sick, unless you count those a bit sick in the head, such as Charles Hawtrey’s hilarious father-to-be with a sympathetic pregnancy, Kenneth Williams’ health fanatic Chief Surgeon or Hattie Jacques' obsessive, scheming Matron. Jim Dale is the accident prone Dr Kilmore who romances Anita Harris’ pleasant Nurse Clark and gets mixed up in Barbara Windsor’s silly games. Ms Windsor seems to inhabit a totally different film to everyone else, skewing the gentle fun and games towards ridiculously caricatured smut.
The earliest Carry On movies were contemporary fare written by Norman Huddis. They used guest stars like Bob Monkhouse, Ted Ray and Wilfred Hyde Whyte to boost the cast and draw attention to the whimsical plots. After Sid James’ revelatory turn in Carry On Constable, the formula became more see-through, the jokes more risqué and the cast of regulars barely changed. After seven modern day enterprises, Talbot Rothwell was hired as script writer and in 1963 the franchise embarked on a run of well received genre pieces, which are probably the apex of its achievements. Carry On Doctor is still a welcome return to the modern day. The film’s original title was Carry On Again Nurse and while it is an obvious remake of the earlier instalment Carry On Nurse – Frankie Howerd even remarks “Oh no you don’t, I’ve seen that film” when presented with a daffodil – it comes across as a well-meaning and satisfying romp. Surprisingly, unlike some films in the series, it mostly hasn’t irretrievably dated.
Not the best of the franchise, but entertaining without being hard work.
I've watched this one three or four times before, but I only just noticed Blue Velvet surely owes a debt to this film.
There's the setting of the too-good-to-be-true small town Americana; the protagonist on the cusp of adulthood naively solving a mystery and losing her innocence; the foul cynical villain corrupting the protagonist with horrific nihilist speeches, every word tearing through the fabric of hokey small town values. There's even a scene at a bar where he gives such his most hateful speech of all.
The reason I started noticing these comparisons this time is because that Thornton Wilder small town has always bugged me, I never bought it. Hitchcock is usually cynical from the very first scene, this idealised setting is unusual for him. I always thought such cornball setting was pure propaganda, only ever existing in films, never in reality. Now I think that's the point.
The last couple of Gerard Butler films I've watched have been very disappointing and this one was no different. It must have been done on a budget of about £100 and Butler has obviously thought he's had enough of that running around and action malarkey.
Enjoyed the Carry On Doctor review - filmed shortly after another good one, Carry On... Follow That Camel which was around the time of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper. But I always thought the daffodil reference was to the maudlin comedy drama Twice Round The Daffodils which I think starred Shirley Eaton, the idea that seriously sick patients (maybe they had TB) had to make their daily walk round the park or something to be on their way to recuperation.
I enjoyed the comedy superhero film Shazam! on telly, hard to place this in the Marvel or DC Comics universe though there's a jokey reference to Superman. It's not as far out and irreverent as Deadpool, kids can see it. It shamelessly riffs on the Harry Potter themes - in this, the powers come not by screwed-up scientific experiment or the power of the universe or a tidy inheritance, though childhood trauma gets a look in - it's more mythical alternate universes and stuff. Shazam also takes the Tom Hanks film Big as inspiration - there's a five-second nod to the film you may pick up on - plus all those mythical comedy yarns - growing up in the 70s we had Big John Little John as a series, you've also got that film with Judge Reinhold (Vice Versa was it?), y'know kid occupies adult body and so on, hijinks ensue.
As with many a coming of age film, a problem may be what you do with it after that, the gags are based around a kid finding his new powers and his playing around with them, trying to discover what he can and can't do as a superhero. The public accept it and take selfies with him, seeing it as just another form of celebrity, it's not the kind of film were the FBI try to find out about him or in fact take any interest at all really.
There's a kind of Jewish humour going on here which makes it different. The way it plays out in the end is highly unusual and it skirts or rather totally avoids the issue of whether a kid really wants to be a superhero - a non-returnable situation usually with plenty of downside if you think about it. Rather like adulthood, you might say. One problem with the film is the kid star will grow up quickly and so will his foster family, so it's not clear how that will translate, I mean the second movie should be out now but I'm not sure this one did great business.
Shazam! is DC. I thought Superman made a cameo in the cafeteria at the end?
originally known as Captain Marvel, and published by rival Fawcett Comics (first appearance Whiz Comics 2, Feb 1940), Captain Marvel was the most popular superhero comic throughout the 1940s. DC sued for copywrite infringement (because Captain Marvel wore a cape and was bulletproof and could fly) and Fawcett eventually gave up on the comic book business in the early 50s when sales no longer were enough to cover legal bills.
Twenty years later DC licensed the rights to the character from Fawcett (who were now a paperback publisher) and started putting out new and reprinted adventures under the title Shazam! These early 70s Shazam! comics are great for the reprints, especially the 100 page issues, the new stories are pretty lame.
DC couldn't use the name Captain Marvel though, at least not as the title, because Marvel Comics in the meantime had introduced their own character with the same name and secured the trademark. (I know the character in Marvel's film doesn't look like this, but that's even a longer less interesting story)
It was a big irony that Marvel put out their own Captain Marvel film the exact same time as DC put out the Shazam! film. These behind the scenes legal issues are why the character has no actual superhero name in the film. Too bad because Shazam! was the better film.
Enjoyed the Carry On Doctor review - filmed shortly after another good one, Carry On... Follow That Camel which was around the time of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper. But I always thought the daffodil reference was to the maudlin comedy drama Twice Round The Daffodils which I think starred Shirley Eaton, the idea that seriously sick patients (maybe they had TB) had to make their daily walk round the park or something to be on their way to recuperation.
@Napoleon Plural as I'm sure you know, it's referencing the final scene of Carry On Nurse where Wilfred Hyde Whyte's obnoxious patient believes he is having his temperature taken rectally, but is actually skewered by a daffodil. And yes, Follow that Camel is another belter! Thanks for the compliments. I try.
The daffodil scene was in Carry On Nurse. Twice Round The Daffodils was made 3 years later, based on the same play by Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale, which is where I think your memory has mixed up the two films @Napoleon Plural Producer Peter Rogers used the same technical crew as the Carry On series for this, presumably to get his moneys worth from the fee he paid for the stage play rights. Juliet Mills played the sexy nurse. Jill Ireland and Joan Sims were in both films, Shirley Eaton was in Nurse.
Don’t Lose Your Head and Follow That Camel were originally released without the Carry On prefix as producer Peter Rogers had transferred to the Rank Organisation for finance from Anglo-Amalgamated and they had refused permission to use the Carry On title. When both films had reduced takings from the earlier Carry On’s, Rogers did a deal with Anglo to use the Carry On title and both films were re-released with the Carry On… prefix to greater success and the continuation of the franchise.
Carry On Doctor is one of my favourites of the series, I’m a fan of Frankie Howerd so that’s a big plus for me.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The whole Marvel saga makes the Fleming/McClory thing look pretty simple. So there are some fans who know Captain Marvel as the guy in the red suit and white cape, while others have a different thing in mind?
I didn't know about the finale of Carry On Nurse with the daffodil so it seems I've been laughing at the wrong joke all these years!
Death on the Nile
Snippy references to Twitter abound, saying it's the 'original' and I thought, well, who cares if ITV did a version a few years back with Suchet as Poirot? Then I recalled the Branagh version, I never saw that.
DOTN is great Christmas viewing over a bottle of wine and chocolates, it goes very slow and languid, it's a film for not being in a hurry. Ad breaks are best avoided as it goes on forever anyway. Of course it has its Bond nods - like its predecessor on the Orient Express which had Connery, there's another Bond in this, albeit David Niven, reunited with the writer and co-star of his wartime drama The Way Ahead (they would have been re-united for Pink Panther but Sellers stepped in for Ustinov). We also have Moonraker's Lois Chiles as Holly Goodnight, I mean the rich wife. What I forgot was just how much time is lavished on this preamble in the English stately home, all the build up. It must be an hour before the first murder is committed.
Isn't Lois Chiles reunited with her Great Gatsby co-star Mia Farrow in this?
I first saw this aged 8, we went out to see it for Mum's birthday but tickets were sold out so we wound up seeing Superman: The Movie instead! When it finished, there were tickets for Death on the Nile so we saw that too! But both films are very long and epic, so that was a big deal, then again one did that in those days, the cinemas were a kind of refuge and one would often be allowed to stay over and see a film again. How on earth that worked given there's a finite number of seats I simply do not know.
My sister spent most of the time admiring the costumes, even those of the late Angela Lansbury. The look of the film is great and of course there's the scene of the falling boulder in Egypt used in The Spy Who Loved Me, though it was in Christie's book so maybe they nicked it.
Ruddy stupid denouement but brilliant in its own way. One quibble - it shouldn't have been shown on a double bill with Evil Under the Sun given the villain's method and motive in both are near identical. Someone shot and they all tend to the person who did it, and leave the wounded victim to his own devices for five minutes or so.
Murder on the Orient Express is on today, they seem to be running them non-chronologically.
Difficult to know if one should criticise this classic western. It regularly tops lists of favourite films thanks to a dominant sprawling cast, plenty of action and a fantastic music score from Elmer Bernstein whose opening theme is virtually unforgettable once you’ve heard it. Ernest Gold’s score for Exodus won the Oscar, and it has a good theme, but who the hell remembers that?
Great photography. The script retains just enough of Akira Kurosawa’s philosophising original Seven Samurai and litters it with plenty of rowdy genre themes to make sure we stay in the Old West.
Eli Wallach’s dastardly bandit Calvera is threatening a poor Mexican village. The place barely looks worth saving, but the desperate farmers persuade seven gunmen to come to their aid, essentially for board and lodging and pin money. Yul Brynner heads the Seven, Steve McQueen mumbles away James Dean style as his sidekick. Charles Bronson is probably the best of the rest. James Coburn is as cool as they come, while Robert Vaughn, fresh from gaining great notices for The Young Philadelphians, has the most dramatic character arc. Death, glory and a little bit of love abound.
Some critics think the movie dips a bit after the first showdown, but the scene between Brynner and Wallach, when the bandit turns the tables on the heroes is a brilliant slice of suspenseful quiet. Director John Sturges cuts from close up to close up, then expands to the watching gunmen, back to the sweaty farmers; we expect a gunfight, yet it never comes. The surrender hurts us because we don’t expect it. The gunmen’s ultimate return isn’t based on the farmer’s plight, but on the disrespect meted out by the overconfident Calvera. These men are not quitters or cowards and they won’t be treated as such. The makers of those spaghetti westerns must have watched this movie very closely, for all of the Seven are antiheroes of a type, excepting possibly Charles Bronson’s O’Reilly. Each finds some redemption, although not always for the reasons we’d expect.
That’s a great review @chrisno1 long time members will know how i boringly harp on about The Magnificent Seven as being my favourite film of all time, I’ve certainly watched it more times than any other movie. I first saw it as a re-release at the cinema in 1965 aged 9 and the whole thing just blew me away. I pestered my dad for the theme tune on a record and as the OST was not available at that time he got one of those compilation theme tune LP’s that were all the rage at the time - I think it may have been on one of Stanley Black’s FilmSpectacular albums. I’m not blind to some of the failings of the film, the editing is a bit slipshod at times and at least one scene was cut before release to bring it down to a 2 hour running time, which made the narrative a little clunky, but John Sturges serves up a film full of action and coolness and no film before or since has so many quotable lines.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
An excellent adaptation of a book I’ve never read [see my review for the 2017 version, above p.403, for that story].
Albert Finney portrays Hercule Poirot exactly as Vanessa Redgrave’s character describes him: “A funny little man.” He’s more like a penguin than the Batman’s adversary the Penguin. Hands flapping, head bobbing, mouth barking instructions, a horrendous hawking laugh, no truck with anybody, no kindness, a self-centred, myopic, fastidious, angry and tetchy individual. He hates the food in Istanbul, dislikes almost all the passengers on the First Class carriage of Orient Express and reluctantly helps his friend Sr. Bianchi, perhaps only as a favour for the put upon Italian giving up his first class berth. Frankly, Poirot is insufferable and much the better for it. Peter Ustinov’s later portrait seemed too cosy and David Suchet, while probably the best physical interpretation, lacks any defining character traits. Finney is as verbally rough on his friends and suspects as a 1930s East End policeman might be. He deduces clues quickly and emphatically. If anything, despite the film’s length, he’s almost too good and swift at his job. You wonder how he managed to piece it all together. The main oddity is how, since he’s awake most of the night hearing the preparations for a murder in the cabin beside him, he fails to waken when the stabbing actually takes place.
Well, it’s not really important how Poirot solves the case because we’re really watching Murder on the Orient Express to witness a clutch of actors go to town with a literate, clever script and working for a director who knows a thing or too about extracting maximum effect from limited surroundings. Sidney Lumet famously helmed Twelve Angry Men and he’s got a dozen or so characters to deal with again in this outing. Paul Dehn [one of ours from Goldfinger] condenses the novel effectively and, unlike Kenneth Branagh’s recent version, his script gives ample time to each suspect, so we get to understand them a little before Poirot brings them into line and down to the cess pit he’s constructed for the composite murder. Geoffrey Unsworth was a great photographer and he doesn’t disappoint with the shadowy train-bound goings on or the lovely landscapes; the sunset over Istanbul was very beautiful. Anne Coates edits efficiently without losing sight of the necessity to clarify, not confuse. Richard Rodney Bennett provides a lush romantic score to underpin the action, one that uses the motion of train pistons and wheels as a central motif, so he can slow it down when the Express pulls away or is stuck in a snow drift and raise the pace when the train is in motion, all the time never losing his theme and its slightly playful lilt.
It’s rare for a British film to attract so many great stars and it has to be noted that, excepting perhaps a few war films and historical epics, a better assembly of thespian magic hadn’t been unleashed on the cinema screen since the days of MGM’s More Stars Than There Are In Heaven: movies like Dinner at Eight and Grand Hotel, which featured long cast lists of big name players attempting to out act each other in scene after scene. It is worth regaling them all:
Albert Finney, Martin Balsam and George Coulouris are the investigators; Richard Widmark, the victim; Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Colin Blakely, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sean Connery, John Geilgud, Rachel Roberts, Anthony Perkins, Dennis Quilley, Vanessa Redgrave, Wendy Hiller and Michael York, the suspects. Bergman famously won her third Oscar for a small supporting role; Finney was nominated; of the others Perkins’ nervous secretary, Quilley’s jovial Italian car salesman and Hiller’s extravagant turn as a Russian dowager princess prove the most watchable.
The ending is compact and while Finney’s monologue doesn’t quite match Lionel Barrymore’s A Free Soul speech for length – Finney is interrupted, Barrymore isn’t – it is probably more compelling. Who-done-its had been a staple for cinema since the early days of sound, but they’d tended to be swift affairs, like the Charlie Chan cycle, or the Miss Marple adaptations. Hitchcock occasionally experimented with the genre [e.g. Rope] but he had a much more gloomy, psychological outlook which veered toward black humour. There’s nothing so obtrusive here, Orient Express is a gem of a joyful who-done-it with barely a moment of wasted screen time and a cacophony of performances to revel in. It looks slightly old-fashioned now, but benefits from that: the 2017 revision muddied the waters with modern tropes that Christie’s narratives struggle to accommodate.
A great film in a year of great films [1974]. Probably one of the best British movies of the 1970s, certainly in terms of generous entertainment value.
This is of course the sequel to Knives Out, also starring Daniel Craig as the famous detective Benois Blanc. Just like Knives Out this is a smart and funny movie with interesting characters and a good plot. This time rich people are made fun of, something that's usually welcome. I'm happy there's room for movies like this in today's world. If you enjoy this movie and Knives Out you'll probably like 'See how they run" too.
It's nice to see Craig in a new film series where he's clearly having fun and he isn't in much danger of getting hurt on set. I don't think I'll say much more than: highly recommend!
There was always something slightly camp about Flash Gordon, both in the original comic strips and the famous 1930’s serials starring Buster Crabbe, an actor who really couldn’t act. In that regard, producer Dino di Laurentis got his casting of Sam J. Jones spot on. Here’s another dumb beefcake who makes acting look difficult indeed. There are moments where he makes our hero vaguely believable, but mostly he’s a good looking stooge for the events which surround him, incidents that don’t carry enough tension to make us and the protagonists sweat or enough humour to make us see the funny side. The whole project is woefully off-kilter, which oddly makes Flash Gordon an even more enjoyable viewing experience.
Most of the acting honours go to the baddies; Max Von Sydow’s dastardly Ming the Merciless is a villain for all times; Ornella Muti’s impetuous over-sexed Princess Aura is divinely sensual; Peter Wyngarde’s gold crusted android Klytus lusts after the princess and the death of Flash with equal relish; Mariangela Melato’s bullish General Kala lusts after the death of Prof Zarkov. This quartet of untrustworthy demons keep us watching when the nice guys fail to interest us. They bicker and fawn over each other and amongst themselves with a verve and a dash and a sly wink to the audience. They know the film’s not going to plan, but they won’t let it spoil the fun.
Of the good guys, Brian Blessed will be forever associated with his role as Vultan, Prince of the Hawk Men, and rightly so. He’s hilarious, an outer-space version of Sir Toby Belch, ably assisted by his Andrew Aguecheek, Biro. Timothy Dalton plays it too straight. You sense this was his problem with James Bond as well; I note a glimmer of condescension crossing his eyes when confronted with his colleagues’ antics, the same one I noted when he deals with Koskov or Kamran Shah. He has moments to shine, yes, but too often he looks lost, a man in green tights among men with wings, gold face masks and goatee beards. Topol – that’s three of our future stars in one movie – overacts from the off. Melody Anderson is lovely as Dale Arden, who suddenly develops karate skills and dispatches red-robed guards with some aplomb.
The whole thing is utterly inconsequential and one’s enjoyment or not is entirely based on whether you accept that as a meaningful base for a film to start from. The film is cited as a sci-fi camp classic, but that isn’t really fair. Yes, the overacting gives it a stagey, outrageous visual and verbal platform, but that’s to deny the film its comic and serial roots. The originals didn’t lack girls in skimpy costumes, silly confrontations, fist fights and daft cliff hangers. They revelled in them, and why shouldn’t a 1980s version? So convinced are the producer and director of their product they even hired rock band Queen to do the soundtrack – about as prolifically operatically camp as you can get without hiring Yes. The music is terrible, but that only highlights the silliness of proceedings, drawing our attention to the madness and making us stop and think: “Why am I enjoying this?” The answer is because it does resemble its forebears, in look, word and outlook.
The rocket ships, for instance, are an obvious update of the ones used in 1934, with their bug eyes, pointed prows, tiny wingspan and cackling engines. The sets are glamourous and also slightly cheap, a cheerful package of rainbow colours and art deco influences mixed with pastel skies and billowing chiffon gowns. The moons of Mongo are well presented and the special effects are decent without being so good as to be believable. Indeed, the climactic battle in the air is a thing to behold with raised eyebrows, so poorly disguised is the back projection and the soundstage used to film it on. Yet we don’t want to believe this, only giggle and smile along with the joke. Director Mike Hodges, famous for Get Carter, cleverly frames the episodes like comic strip boards, presenting the location, the characters, the scene, the action, the pay off each time; we never start a new scene with a close up, always a long shot and we zoom into the action, concentrating on characters at the expense of scale. It has to be small, mostly, for so is a comic strip. Lorenzo Semple’s script is jokey enough, what it lacks is any decent character development. If anything, the film is too short and we have to take a lot on authorial trust.
Meanwhile, among all this glitter, Ming the Merciless proves he is just that: a man prepared to destroy a world on a whim, torture his daughter for information, offer a star system to a strange earth warrior called Flash, execute the same man with a flick of his beard, seduce his concubines with the flap of his skirts. Max Von Sydow is wonderfully circumspect. To boot, has there ever been a more sensually aware villainess than Princess Aura, slinking about the throne room with her pet poodle, seducing with her deep blue eyes and husky voiced whispering; she’s so obvious it frightens us. Dale Arden too: “Hey, remember me?” she tells Flash, grabbing his hand when the poor lad gets distracted. Later the two girls have a pillow fight, watched with much merriment by a cohort of serving wenches dressed in little spangly bikinis and much make up. Dale triumphs, but you feel Aura wasn’t really trying to win, after all she’s only just learnt to cry. Poor Dale narrowly escapes a night of love with Ming, gets kidnapped by Vultan – who enjoys pinching her ass and spitting in her face – and almost gets married to the Merciless One. Only the timely arrival of Flash Gordon prevents his true love from a fate worse than the bore worms.
We enjoy the rivalry between General’s Klytus and Kala, sleekly black, the twin heads of the secret police with eyes everywhere. Dressed in leather fetish wear, these horrors are in a constant battle of one-up-man-ship, spurt forest green blood and deflate like a burst balloon when killed. Were they real at all, we ask, or some strange hybrid robot, like their eye-less police operatives? The Hawk Men and the Tree Men battle among themselves, so there’s no room for the Lion Men’s Prince Thun, who fails to fall on his sword for his emperor and is slaughtered in the most callous fashion by the psychopathic Ming. Von Sydow’s disinterested gaze turns to Dale Arden – why wouldn’t it? – and his senso-circlet hypnotises her, making her orgasm in front of the assorted gathering. Not unlike his own daughter, we are told by a mischievous Klytus; the suggestion of incest rife at Ming’s court raises its head for the first, but not the last time. We never saw that in the whole-hearted 1930s. Once again, Hodges’ direction highlights the overall view before switching effectively to close up. There are few half-body shots in the film. Hans Zarkov learns his own impetuousness has placed the Earth in imminent danger – an irony of some credibility.
Towards the end grandstand battle scenes replace miserly courtly conflict and the film becomes less stimulating at the point it ought to be gaining interest. Mocking Star Wars with your final scene of reconciliation feels like a cheap shot. Really though what Flash Gordon does even better than George Lucas’ space operas is bring back memories of Christmas week holidays when the BBC showed an episode of the original serial every morning, just before an Elvis movie. That’s an awful lot of awfulness for one morning but they are good memories and despite its haphazard outcome, Flash Gordon provides good memories too. It remains something of a cult classic and something of a family favourite.
Your far too smart and well made review made me think of how a modern, high budget re-make would be like. Most of all I thought of the cast of "Flash Gordon 2023":
Flash Gordon - Chris Hemsworth
Ming - Chow Yun-Fat
Dale Arden - Jennifer Lawrence
Prince Vultan - The Rock
Doctor Zarkov -Liam Neeson
Princess Aura - Alexandra Dodario (or possibly Angelina Jolie?)
Barin - Idris Elba
What do you think of the cast? Do you have alternatives? And who do you think should do the soundtrack this time? 😃
Just finished seeing Ad Astra, and I think it was a better Buzz Lightyear story than Buzz Lightyear. 😅 (Non-spoiler)
I came in thinking it was an Oscar magnet, just Brad Pitt doing Brad Pitt things but in a more bland way to get the attention of the film junkies and critics. Love his stuff, but the trailers made it seem like a cheap space movie, and I had seen a ton of those. Man, was I wrong.
The classic space hero goes off on an adventure with his crew to pioneer distant planets and look for alien intelligence, but instead of that story, we get the son's point of view.
He's a highly effective special forces spaceman, mainly because he has been following the footsteps of his father, who is recognized by almost everyone he meets. However, because he is so focused and does not allow for any distractions or time off, his relationship with his woman becomes estranged.
Now the premise of the story is there has been a catastrophic power surge in Space Command HQ that came from the place where his father was last stationed far away in deep space, and this is causing massive damage and death on Earth. He is then sent to "investigate", but he soon finds out that what he was sent out to do was not what he thought he was going to do in the first place, and there is another agenda at play from Space Command.
This plays out perfectly throughout the movie because not only does he have a certain connection to the situation, but he has not really been out of place in his life more than in this series of events.
This movie shows the power of obsession and its displacement among social and romantic relationships.
The search for truth, the absolute truth, can only be hindered if you allow doubt and a seemingly bigger force to hold authority over it. You must never give them a chance to hold you back, even if what you encounter will disappoint you and cause you suffering. You are hoping that this guy gets some closure and throughout the film, you wish for it even more and more.
It reminded me of the movie Sunshine (Chris Evans also starred in), not of the screenplay, but the showcasing of the vastness of space, the psychological toll of either being all alone or yearning for home on Earth with your loved ones, and the obsessive nature from one of the key characters in the end.
This film should only be watched on your own, I believe it speaks more to you that way, highly recommend it.
Say yes to that party once in a while, turn the TV on even if there are only bad but kinda funny shows on, and make the best out of a horrible situation by telling a joke about it. Looking back, you wish you would have had time to live, and love.
Still enjoy this, some great set pieces and it has a warmth and wit lacking from the previous year's GoldenEye. Funny how both franchises have kept going - Cruise still in the lead but Brosnan long gone and now Craig too.
I think the actor who plays Kittridge in this pops up in the next M:I film. But I think most of the actors who appeared in the first one are still alive, unlike their characters mind. Is Jon Voight still going?
It made me look up Brian de Palma whom we've not heard much of lately and what do you know, it appears he's on board to direct Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow's exciting account of taking on Harvey Weinstein. After the tepid She Said, which dealt with the same subject from a different angle, this might be worth watching - shame that De Palma of course had an unPC approach back in the day of course, with stuff like Dressed to Kill. BTW Elliot Ness's wife was in She Said.
Comments
It's a shame you're in the USA, @Gymkata - tonight the UK's Talking Pictures TV is showing Confessions of a Pop Star - that should be on your list, too!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Throne of blood (1957)
I've never before seen this Akira Kurosawa's classic samurai movie, but tonight I finally did. The story is based on Shakespeare's Macbeth. Sometimes the lines are pretty much identical while other times we can get only one "Wyrd Sister". Obviously the story has been moved from Scotland to Japan. At first glance the countries may seem similar, but if you look closer there are som subtle differences. 😉
The acting style is different from what we usually see in movies. The reason is the director's interest in Noh theatre. I don't know a lot about Noh culture, but we all know what a Noh mask looks like after Safin modeled one to great effect in NTTD. In spite of the unfamiliar acting style I liked the acting. I also enjoyed the battle scenes. My friend who I saw it with liked "Throne of blood" too, but he missed colour. Now the plan is to watch Ran next.
Following the Second World War theme set down by The Best Years of Our Lives, I decided to watch the D-day adventure Overlord.
It is about a group of American paratroopers whose mission is to take out a German radio signal on top of a French church ahead of the invasion. The opening flight scene amidst anemy flak is pretty good actually, quite gruelling.
Not sure how historically accurate it is, in particular when they stumble across a Nazi laboratory in the base of the church where they are experimenting on locals. Actually, I'm talking in jest because this is a Nazi zombie movie but the joke falls flat because of course the Nazis did experiment on people. That you have a zombie film based around real-life events such as D-day is tonally a bit iffy but there you go.
There are inconsistencies and the Bond in Spectre thing where someone is physically put through it in a lab but in the next scene is a-okay. The soldier says that three weeks ago he was mowing the lawn back home and now he's in all this - not sure how long they think their basic training was! Or was he on leave? Anyway, weren't they flying over from Britain, having been stationed there for the last couple of years or so?
I enjoyed it, it's good to watch something out there at times. Good acting but it's a quality B-movie for all that. nobody famous in it. Not quite sure how it makes its money back. Someone on this thread did recommend this a while back after I raved about Nazi zombie flick Dead Snow which I'd like to see again!
Funny how when Captain America is made into an eternal superhero it's okay but when the Nazis try to do it... double standards!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I'm trying to watch all of the Best Picture winners that I haven't seen before as well as a bunch of other notable films that are highly regarded.
@Gymkata
I remember you mentioning this before. I attempted a similar feat many years ago. I don't think I finished. You have some interesting movies to see:
THE BROADWAY MELODY - old fashioned extremely dated musical
CIMARRON - impressive epic sweep, looks good but the acting is a bit ropey
GRAND HOTEL - very good ensemble cast with a good screenplay
THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA - of its time; worthy; good performances
YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU - hated it; not funny at all
MRS. MINIVER - never got around to this
THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES - ditto
THE OX-BOW INCIDENT - ditto
GOING MY WAY - one of the worst best pic winners ever; stereotypes all around
MILDRED PIERCE - never seen it
GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT - see my comment for Going My Way
ALL ABOUT EVE - superb satirical drama
DR. ZHIVAGO - beautiful film, well condensed version of a huge book, Julie Christie is simply gorgeous - it's a no-brainer
ELMER GANTRY - intense
BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ - Telly Savalas out acts Burt Lancaster
CABARET - one of the best adaptations of a stage show ever put on screen; Liza Minelli is mesmerizing; Maybe This Time is one of the most poignant and powerful musical statements ever put on screen; the undercurrent of Nazism is ever present and malevolent among the jollity and the doomed romances; you must watch this
DOG DAY AFTERNOON - Pacino and Cazale are superb in this film; one of the best films of the seventies; subversive, gripping and emotionally wrenching. I hope you enjoy this. It was never going to win the Oscar, it's not their sort of film, but it is brilliant.
speaking of Cabaret,
without Googling, who can name the actress who played Sally Bowles in the 1968 London stage production of Cabaret?
hint: she's one of ours
THE BODYGUARD (1992)
A tasteless hash up of thriller and pop video tailored specifically for a youthful market. A dull private security guard is hired to watch over an egotistical superstar actress and singer. Cue misunderstanding and loathing. Of course, the two fall in love and he saves her life. Cue songs of excruciating vocal force but no nuance of phrasing. A bit like the acting. Kevin Costner was at the top of his career tree at the time and could virtually do no wrong. Ditto singer Whitney Houston. Very wooden, even the thrills seem to creak like weary floorboards. Sparkling in look and diverting after a fashion. Lawrence Kasden has written much better than this and once you learn it was originally envisaged as a vehicle for Steve McQueen and Diana Ross you begin to see its origins and pitfalls in measure. The soundtrack sold millions.
Will you be checking out the Whitney bio movie in cinemas this Christmas then?
Roger Moore 1927-2017
HELLO DOLLY! (1969)
One of Broadway’s most popular and oft-revived musicals, Hello Dolly! Is an advert for an older star and as such Barbara Streisand was too young to fill the role of Dolly Levi, the know-it-all Jewish widow created by Thornton Wilder for his short story The Matchmaker. It isn’t that she’s bad in the role. No; La Streisand is efficient and likeable, it is simply that Jerry Herman’s lyrics don’t suit her. She’s too elegant, fresh and young to play an aging, meddling matriarch. The songs have a resonance of age in the lyrics and as good as La Streisand is at delivering them you simply don’t believe her version of Dolly has been married, been the talk of the town, widowed and carved out a career as a romantic liaison officer for rich and poor alike. When the staff at the Harmonia Gardens welcome her back after ‘all these years’ you sense La Streisand hasn’t been absent at all. The producers went for the hottest property in movie musicals of the time and after her Funny Girl Oscar the previous year, La Streisand was it. That doesn’t mean she was suitable. Mary Martin [Larry Hagman’s mother] who bagged the role in a 1965 West End run would have been perfect and it would have been a great record of a great stage actress in full swing. Carol Channing was Broadway’s original, but after the debacle of Thoroughly Modern Millie, she had probably burnt her boats in Hollywood, although she continued to play Dolly Levi on stage for decades.
The other casting is well-off the mark too. Walter Matthau is suitably grumpy as Dolly’s unresponsive amor Horace Vandergelder, but he can’t sing. Britain’s Michael Crawford is too light an entertainer to carry the romantic moments which his character inhabits. Much better is Marianne McAndrew who plays the second love interest, Irene Molloy, a role significantly expanded from the stage show. Unfortunately her singing voice is dubbed. Louis Armstrong pops up to join in the title song, a track he made famous with a number one single and album in 1964. The rest of the performers are an uninteresting bunch, corralled by an uninterested Gene Kelly, who directs with his choreographer’s head switched off. The whole thing is flat and remarkably dull, staged on grand unidentifiable sets which must have cost a fortune yet add nothing. Even the dance numbers seem inanimate. Kelly was perhaps trying to make up for lost opportunities: he’d turned down Ernest Lehman’s request to direct The Sound of Music. Unfortunately the producer, director or choreographer [Michael Kidd] hasn’t got a decent hold on the material and it turns into a bloated spectacle with no emotive heart.
While Hello Dolly is the showstopping number, the best song is given to Crawford’s Cornelius Hackl – similar to On the Street Where You Live being farmed out to Freddie Freemont in My Fair Lady. However, Crawford can’t handle the theme and It Only Takes A Moment falls flat. It does of course sum up Dolly Levi’s personal ethos as she waits for an idealistic heaven sent signal and Horace in turn makes an instant and completely contrary proposal. I was reminded of those Shakespearian comedies where a happy ending for all has to be contrived however daft the notion.
The movie was a hit, but was almost as expensive as Cleopatra and hence didn’t turn a profit. You can't even see the spend on the screen for this one. Like many latter-day movie musicals it stutters, uncertain of its ability to entertain when the kids could get their kicks at gigs by likes of Janis Joplin, CSN and the Grateful Dead. It was one of the last authentic Broadway adaptations made in Hollywood. Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret were still to come, but this genre was a dying breed and you can sense it in the lack of inspired casting and playing, as if the performers already know they are taking part in a homage to something great not creating something great on their own.
Blimey! That's a good review. Never quite seen the film, it never draws me in. Like a lot of those musicals it seems heavy going before it starts; Sound of Music and Mary Poppins were long too of course but were largely light on their feet and had charm a plenty. Matthau seems to have Connery's DAF toupee in this.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
CARRY ON DOCTOR (1967)
If you are not familiar with the Carry On franchise, you have a lot of catching up to do. This much loved British film comedy series spanned the swinging sixties and was still churning them out in the permissive and seventies. Thirty films encompassed the first twenty year run, from 1958 – 1978, and a final effort [Carry On Columbus] arrived in 1992. While that was not well received, it is fair to say by the time that entry hit the cinemas the Carry On films were critic proof and the quality, good or otherwise, is fairly immaterial.
Carry On Doctor was a big hit on its release in early 1968 and its blend of naughty inuendo and cheeky social comment is obvious from the off, a series of subtitles referencing the nation’s black humoured suspicion of hospitals and health services. The patients and staff are more concerned with seduction or avoiding it. Sid James and Frankie Howerd’s hen pecked husbands reside in wards beside amorous singletons like Bernard Bresslaw and Dilys Laye; nobody seems to be sick, unless you count those a bit sick in the head, such as Charles Hawtrey’s hilarious father-to-be with a sympathetic pregnancy, Kenneth Williams’ health fanatic Chief Surgeon or Hattie Jacques' obsessive, scheming Matron. Jim Dale is the accident prone Dr Kilmore who romances Anita Harris’ pleasant Nurse Clark and gets mixed up in Barbara Windsor’s silly games. Ms Windsor seems to inhabit a totally different film to everyone else, skewing the gentle fun and games towards ridiculously caricatured smut.
The earliest Carry On movies were contemporary fare written by Norman Huddis. They used guest stars like Bob Monkhouse, Ted Ray and Wilfred Hyde Whyte to boost the cast and draw attention to the whimsical plots. After Sid James’ revelatory turn in Carry On Constable, the formula became more see-through, the jokes more risqué and the cast of regulars barely changed. After seven modern day enterprises, Talbot Rothwell was hired as script writer and in 1963 the franchise embarked on a run of well received genre pieces, which are probably the apex of its achievements. Carry On Doctor is still a welcome return to the modern day. The film’s original title was Carry On Again Nurse and while it is an obvious remake of the earlier instalment Carry On Nurse – Frankie Howerd even remarks “Oh no you don’t, I’ve seen that film” when presented with a daffodil – it comes across as a well-meaning and satisfying romp. Surprisingly, unlike some films in the series, it mostly hasn’t irretrievably dated.
Not the best of the franchise, but entertaining without being hard work.
Shadow of a Doubt
Hitchcock, 1943
I've watched this one three or four times before, but I only just noticed Blue Velvet surely owes a debt to this film.
There's the setting of the too-good-to-be-true small town Americana; the protagonist on the cusp of adulthood naively solving a mystery and losing her innocence; the foul cynical villain corrupting the protagonist with horrific nihilist speeches, every word tearing through the fabric of hokey small town values. There's even a scene at a bar where he gives such his most hateful speech of all.
The reason I started noticing these comparisons this time is because that Thornton Wilder small town has always bugged me, I never bought it. Hitchcock is usually cynical from the very first scene, this idealised setting is unusual for him. I always thought such cornball setting was pure propaganda, only ever existing in films, never in reality. Now I think that's the point.
Last Seen Alive.
The last couple of Gerard Butler films I've watched have been very disappointing and this one was no different. It must have been done on a budget of about £100 and Butler has obviously thought he's had enough of that running around and action malarkey.
Come on Gerard, you can do better than this!!
Enjoyed the Carry On Doctor review - filmed shortly after another good one, Carry On... Follow That Camel which was around the time of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper. But I always thought the daffodil reference was to the maudlin comedy drama Twice Round The Daffodils which I think starred Shirley Eaton, the idea that seriously sick patients (maybe they had TB) had to make their daily walk round the park or something to be on their way to recuperation.
I enjoyed the comedy superhero film Shazam! on telly, hard to place this in the Marvel or DC Comics universe though there's a jokey reference to Superman. It's not as far out and irreverent as Deadpool, kids can see it. It shamelessly riffs on the Harry Potter themes - in this, the powers come not by screwed-up scientific experiment or the power of the universe or a tidy inheritance, though childhood trauma gets a look in - it's more mythical alternate universes and stuff. Shazam also takes the Tom Hanks film Big as inspiration - there's a five-second nod to the film you may pick up on - plus all those mythical comedy yarns - growing up in the 70s we had Big John Little John as a series, you've also got that film with Judge Reinhold (Vice Versa was it?), y'know kid occupies adult body and so on, hijinks ensue.
As with many a coming of age film, a problem may be what you do with it after that, the gags are based around a kid finding his new powers and his playing around with them, trying to discover what he can and can't do as a superhero. The public accept it and take selfies with him, seeing it as just another form of celebrity, it's not the kind of film were the FBI try to find out about him or in fact take any interest at all really.
There's a kind of Jewish humour going on here which makes it different. The way it plays out in the end is highly unusual and it skirts or rather totally avoids the issue of whether a kid really wants to be a superhero - a non-returnable situation usually with plenty of downside if you think about it. Rather like adulthood, you might say. One problem with the film is the kid star will grow up quickly and so will his foster family, so it's not clear how that will translate, I mean the second movie should be out now but I'm not sure this one did great business.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Shazam! is DC. I thought Superman made a cameo in the cafeteria at the end?
originally known as Captain Marvel, and published by rival Fawcett Comics (first appearance Whiz Comics 2, Feb 1940), Captain Marvel was the most popular superhero comic throughout the 1940s. DC sued for copywrite infringement (because Captain Marvel wore a cape and was bulletproof and could fly) and Fawcett eventually gave up on the comic book business in the early 50s when sales no longer were enough to cover legal bills.
Twenty years later DC licensed the rights to the character from Fawcett (who were now a paperback publisher) and started putting out new and reprinted adventures under the title Shazam! These early 70s Shazam! comics are great for the reprints, especially the 100 page issues, the new stories are pretty lame.
DC couldn't use the name Captain Marvel though, at least not as the title, because Marvel Comics in the meantime had introduced their own character with the same name and secured the trademark. (I know the character in Marvel's film doesn't look like this, but that's even a longer less interesting story)
It was a big irony that Marvel put out their own Captain Marvel film the exact same time as DC put out the Shazam! film. These behind the scenes legal issues are why the character has no actual superhero name in the film. Too bad because Shazam! was the better film.
Enjoyed the Carry On Doctor review - filmed shortly after another good one, Carry On... Follow That Camel which was around the time of the Beatles' Sgt Pepper. But I always thought the daffodil reference was to the maudlin comedy drama Twice Round The Daffodils which I think starred Shirley Eaton, the idea that seriously sick patients (maybe they had TB) had to make their daily walk round the park or something to be on their way to recuperation.
@Napoleon Plural as I'm sure you know, it's referencing the final scene of Carry On Nurse where Wilfred Hyde Whyte's obnoxious patient believes he is having his temperature taken rectally, but is actually skewered by a daffodil. And yes, Follow that Camel is another belter! Thanks for the compliments. I try.
@Napoleon Plural , @chrisno1
The daffodil scene was in Carry On Nurse. Twice Round The Daffodils was made 3 years later, based on the same play by Patrick Cargill and Jack Beale, which is where I think your memory has mixed up the two films @Napoleon Plural Producer Peter Rogers used the same technical crew as the Carry On series for this, presumably to get his moneys worth from the fee he paid for the stage play rights. Juliet Mills played the sexy nurse. Jill Ireland and Joan Sims were in both films, Shirley Eaton was in Nurse.
Don’t Lose Your Head and Follow That Camel were originally released without the Carry On prefix as producer Peter Rogers had transferred to the Rank Organisation for finance from Anglo-Amalgamated and they had refused permission to use the Carry On title. When both films had reduced takings from the earlier Carry On’s, Rogers did a deal with Anglo to use the Carry On title and both films were re-released with the Carry On… prefix to greater success and the continuation of the franchise.
Carry On Doctor is one of my favourites of the series, I’m a fan of Frankie Howerd so that’s a big plus for me.
I saw Glass Onion the other night. I found it pretty average to be honest.
The whole Marvel saga makes the Fleming/McClory thing look pretty simple. So there are some fans who know Captain Marvel as the guy in the red suit and white cape, while others have a different thing in mind?
I didn't know about the finale of Carry On Nurse with the daffodil so it seems I've been laughing at the wrong joke all these years!
Death on the Nile
Snippy references to Twitter abound, saying it's the 'original' and I thought, well, who cares if ITV did a version a few years back with Suchet as Poirot? Then I recalled the Branagh version, I never saw that.
DOTN is great Christmas viewing over a bottle of wine and chocolates, it goes very slow and languid, it's a film for not being in a hurry. Ad breaks are best avoided as it goes on forever anyway. Of course it has its Bond nods - like its predecessor on the Orient Express which had Connery, there's another Bond in this, albeit David Niven, reunited with the writer and co-star of his wartime drama The Way Ahead (they would have been re-united for Pink Panther but Sellers stepped in for Ustinov). We also have Moonraker's Lois Chiles as Holly Goodnight, I mean the rich wife. What I forgot was just how much time is lavished on this preamble in the English stately home, all the build up. It must be an hour before the first murder is committed.
Isn't Lois Chiles reunited with her Great Gatsby co-star Mia Farrow in this?
I first saw this aged 8, we went out to see it for Mum's birthday but tickets were sold out so we wound up seeing Superman: The Movie instead! When it finished, there were tickets for Death on the Nile so we saw that too! But both films are very long and epic, so that was a big deal, then again one did that in those days, the cinemas were a kind of refuge and one would often be allowed to stay over and see a film again. How on earth that worked given there's a finite number of seats I simply do not know.
My sister spent most of the time admiring the costumes, even those of the late Angela Lansbury. The look of the film is great and of course there's the scene of the falling boulder in Egypt used in The Spy Who Loved Me, though it was in Christie's book so maybe they nicked it.
Ruddy stupid denouement but brilliant in its own way. One quibble - it shouldn't have been shown on a double bill with Evil Under the Sun given the villain's method and motive in both are near identical. Someone shot and they all tend to the person who did it, and leave the wounded victim to his own devices for five minutes or so.
Murder on the Orient Express is on today, they seem to be running them non-chronologically.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)
Difficult to know if one should criticise this classic western. It regularly tops lists of favourite films thanks to a dominant sprawling cast, plenty of action and a fantastic music score from Elmer Bernstein whose opening theme is virtually unforgettable once you’ve heard it. Ernest Gold’s score for Exodus won the Oscar, and it has a good theme, but who the hell remembers that?
Great photography. The script retains just enough of Akira Kurosawa’s philosophising original Seven Samurai and litters it with plenty of rowdy genre themes to make sure we stay in the Old West.
Eli Wallach’s dastardly bandit Calvera is threatening a poor Mexican village. The place barely looks worth saving, but the desperate farmers persuade seven gunmen to come to their aid, essentially for board and lodging and pin money. Yul Brynner heads the Seven, Steve McQueen mumbles away James Dean style as his sidekick. Charles Bronson is probably the best of the rest. James Coburn is as cool as they come, while Robert Vaughn, fresh from gaining great notices for The Young Philadelphians, has the most dramatic character arc. Death, glory and a little bit of love abound.
Some critics think the movie dips a bit after the first showdown, but the scene between Brynner and Wallach, when the bandit turns the tables on the heroes is a brilliant slice of suspenseful quiet. Director John Sturges cuts from close up to close up, then expands to the watching gunmen, back to the sweaty farmers; we expect a gunfight, yet it never comes. The surrender hurts us because we don’t expect it. The gunmen’s ultimate return isn’t based on the farmer’s plight, but on the disrespect meted out by the overconfident Calvera. These men are not quitters or cowards and they won’t be treated as such. The makers of those spaghetti westerns must have watched this movie very closely, for all of the Seven are antiheroes of a type, excepting possibly Charles Bronson’s O’Reilly. Each finds some redemption, although not always for the reasons we’d expect.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
That’s a great review @chrisno1 long time members will know how i boringly harp on about The Magnificent Seven as being my favourite film of all time, I’ve certainly watched it more times than any other movie. I first saw it as a re-release at the cinema in 1965 aged 9 and the whole thing just blew me away. I pestered my dad for the theme tune on a record and as the OST was not available at that time he got one of those compilation theme tune LP’s that were all the rage at the time - I think it may have been on one of Stanley Black’s Film Spectacular albums. I’m not blind to some of the failings of the film, the editing is a bit slipshod at times and at least one scene was cut before release to bring it down to a 2 hour running time, which made the narrative a little clunky, but John Sturges serves up a film full of action and coolness and no film before or since has so many quotable lines.
I was impressed with Bridge of Spies too @Gymkata a very good Cold War thriller, more drama than action and better for it.
MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (1974)
An excellent adaptation of a book I’ve never read [see my review for the 2017 version, above p.403, for that story].
Albert Finney portrays Hercule Poirot exactly as Vanessa Redgrave’s character describes him: “A funny little man.” He’s more like a penguin than the Batman’s adversary the Penguin. Hands flapping, head bobbing, mouth barking instructions, a horrendous hawking laugh, no truck with anybody, no kindness, a self-centred, myopic, fastidious, angry and tetchy individual. He hates the food in Istanbul, dislikes almost all the passengers on the First Class carriage of Orient Express and reluctantly helps his friend Sr. Bianchi, perhaps only as a favour for the put upon Italian giving up his first class berth. Frankly, Poirot is insufferable and much the better for it. Peter Ustinov’s later portrait seemed too cosy and David Suchet, while probably the best physical interpretation, lacks any defining character traits. Finney is as verbally rough on his friends and suspects as a 1930s East End policeman might be. He deduces clues quickly and emphatically. If anything, despite the film’s length, he’s almost too good and swift at his job. You wonder how he managed to piece it all together. The main oddity is how, since he’s awake most of the night hearing the preparations for a murder in the cabin beside him, he fails to waken when the stabbing actually takes place.
Well, it’s not really important how Poirot solves the case because we’re really watching Murder on the Orient Express to witness a clutch of actors go to town with a literate, clever script and working for a director who knows a thing or too about extracting maximum effect from limited surroundings. Sidney Lumet famously helmed Twelve Angry Men and he’s got a dozen or so characters to deal with again in this outing. Paul Dehn [one of ours from Goldfinger] condenses the novel effectively and, unlike Kenneth Branagh’s recent version, his script gives ample time to each suspect, so we get to understand them a little before Poirot brings them into line and down to the cess pit he’s constructed for the composite murder. Geoffrey Unsworth was a great photographer and he doesn’t disappoint with the shadowy train-bound goings on or the lovely landscapes; the sunset over Istanbul was very beautiful. Anne Coates edits efficiently without losing sight of the necessity to clarify, not confuse. Richard Rodney Bennett provides a lush romantic score to underpin the action, one that uses the motion of train pistons and wheels as a central motif, so he can slow it down when the Express pulls away or is stuck in a snow drift and raise the pace when the train is in motion, all the time never losing his theme and its slightly playful lilt.
It’s rare for a British film to attract so many great stars and it has to be noted that, excepting perhaps a few war films and historical epics, a better assembly of thespian magic hadn’t been unleashed on the cinema screen since the days of MGM’s More Stars Than There Are In Heaven: movies like Dinner at Eight and Grand Hotel, which featured long cast lists of big name players attempting to out act each other in scene after scene. It is worth regaling them all:
Albert Finney, Martin Balsam and George Coulouris are the investigators; Richard Widmark, the victim; Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Jacqueline Bisset, Colin Blakely, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Sean Connery, John Geilgud, Rachel Roberts, Anthony Perkins, Dennis Quilley, Vanessa Redgrave, Wendy Hiller and Michael York, the suspects. Bergman famously won her third Oscar for a small supporting role; Finney was nominated; of the others Perkins’ nervous secretary, Quilley’s jovial Italian car salesman and Hiller’s extravagant turn as a Russian dowager princess prove the most watchable.
The ending is compact and while Finney’s monologue doesn’t quite match Lionel Barrymore’s A Free Soul speech for length – Finney is interrupted, Barrymore isn’t – it is probably more compelling. Who-done-its had been a staple for cinema since the early days of sound, but they’d tended to be swift affairs, like the Charlie Chan cycle, or the Miss Marple adaptations. Hitchcock occasionally experimented with the genre [e.g. Rope] but he had a much more gloomy, psychological outlook which veered toward black humour. There’s nothing so obtrusive here, Orient Express is a gem of a joyful who-done-it with barely a moment of wasted screen time and a cacophony of performances to revel in. It looks slightly old-fashioned now, but benefits from that: the 2017 revision muddied the waters with modern tropes that Christie’s narratives struggle to accommodate.
A great film in a year of great films [1974]. Probably one of the best British movies of the 1970s, certainly in terms of generous entertainment value.
Glass Onion (2022)
This is of course the sequel to Knives Out, also starring Daniel Craig as the famous detective Benois Blanc. Just like Knives Out this is a smart and funny movie with interesting characters and a good plot. This time rich people are made fun of, something that's usually welcome. I'm happy there's room for movies like this in today's world. If you enjoy this movie and Knives Out you'll probably like 'See how they run" too.
It's nice to see Craig in a new film series where he's clearly having fun and he isn't in much danger of getting hurt on set. I don't think I'll say much more than: highly recommend!
FLASH GORDON (1980)
There was always something slightly camp about Flash Gordon, both in the original comic strips and the famous 1930’s serials starring Buster Crabbe, an actor who really couldn’t act. In that regard, producer Dino di Laurentis got his casting of Sam J. Jones spot on. Here’s another dumb beefcake who makes acting look difficult indeed. There are moments where he makes our hero vaguely believable, but mostly he’s a good looking stooge for the events which surround him, incidents that don’t carry enough tension to make us and the protagonists sweat or enough humour to make us see the funny side. The whole project is woefully off-kilter, which oddly makes Flash Gordon an even more enjoyable viewing experience.
Most of the acting honours go to the baddies; Max Von Sydow’s dastardly Ming the Merciless is a villain for all times; Ornella Muti’s impetuous over-sexed Princess Aura is divinely sensual; Peter Wyngarde’s gold crusted android Klytus lusts after the princess and the death of Flash with equal relish; Mariangela Melato’s bullish General Kala lusts after the death of Prof Zarkov. This quartet of untrustworthy demons keep us watching when the nice guys fail to interest us. They bicker and fawn over each other and amongst themselves with a verve and a dash and a sly wink to the audience. They know the film’s not going to plan, but they won’t let it spoil the fun.
Of the good guys, Brian Blessed will be forever associated with his role as Vultan, Prince of the Hawk Men, and rightly so. He’s hilarious, an outer-space version of Sir Toby Belch, ably assisted by his Andrew Aguecheek, Biro. Timothy Dalton plays it too straight. You sense this was his problem with James Bond as well; I note a glimmer of condescension crossing his eyes when confronted with his colleagues’ antics, the same one I noted when he deals with Koskov or Kamran Shah. He has moments to shine, yes, but too often he looks lost, a man in green tights among men with wings, gold face masks and goatee beards. Topol – that’s three of our future stars in one movie – overacts from the off. Melody Anderson is lovely as Dale Arden, who suddenly develops karate skills and dispatches red-robed guards with some aplomb.
The whole thing is utterly inconsequential and one’s enjoyment or not is entirely based on whether you accept that as a meaningful base for a film to start from. The film is cited as a sci-fi camp classic, but that isn’t really fair. Yes, the overacting gives it a stagey, outrageous visual and verbal platform, but that’s to deny the film its comic and serial roots. The originals didn’t lack girls in skimpy costumes, silly confrontations, fist fights and daft cliff hangers. They revelled in them, and why shouldn’t a 1980s version? So convinced are the producer and director of their product they even hired rock band Queen to do the soundtrack – about as prolifically operatically camp as you can get without hiring Yes. The music is terrible, but that only highlights the silliness of proceedings, drawing our attention to the madness and making us stop and think: “Why am I enjoying this?” The answer is because it does resemble its forebears, in look, word and outlook.
The rocket ships, for instance, are an obvious update of the ones used in 1934, with their bug eyes, pointed prows, tiny wingspan and cackling engines. The sets are glamourous and also slightly cheap, a cheerful package of rainbow colours and art deco influences mixed with pastel skies and billowing chiffon gowns. The moons of Mongo are well presented and the special effects are decent without being so good as to be believable. Indeed, the climactic battle in the air is a thing to behold with raised eyebrows, so poorly disguised is the back projection and the soundstage used to film it on. Yet we don’t want to believe this, only giggle and smile along with the joke. Director Mike Hodges, famous for Get Carter, cleverly frames the episodes like comic strip boards, presenting the location, the characters, the scene, the action, the pay off each time; we never start a new scene with a close up, always a long shot and we zoom into the action, concentrating on characters at the expense of scale. It has to be small, mostly, for so is a comic strip. Lorenzo Semple’s script is jokey enough, what it lacks is any decent character development. If anything, the film is too short and we have to take a lot on authorial trust.
Meanwhile, among all this glitter, Ming the Merciless proves he is just that: a man prepared to destroy a world on a whim, torture his daughter for information, offer a star system to a strange earth warrior called Flash, execute the same man with a flick of his beard, seduce his concubines with the flap of his skirts. Max Von Sydow is wonderfully circumspect. To boot, has there ever been a more sensually aware villainess than Princess Aura, slinking about the throne room with her pet poodle, seducing with her deep blue eyes and husky voiced whispering; she’s so obvious it frightens us. Dale Arden too: “Hey, remember me?” she tells Flash, grabbing his hand when the poor lad gets distracted. Later the two girls have a pillow fight, watched with much merriment by a cohort of serving wenches dressed in little spangly bikinis and much make up. Dale triumphs, but you feel Aura wasn’t really trying to win, after all she’s only just learnt to cry. Poor Dale narrowly escapes a night of love with Ming, gets kidnapped by Vultan – who enjoys pinching her ass and spitting in her face – and almost gets married to the Merciless One. Only the timely arrival of Flash Gordon prevents his true love from a fate worse than the bore worms.
We enjoy the rivalry between General’s Klytus and Kala, sleekly black, the twin heads of the secret police with eyes everywhere. Dressed in leather fetish wear, these horrors are in a constant battle of one-up-man-ship, spurt forest green blood and deflate like a burst balloon when killed. Were they real at all, we ask, or some strange hybrid robot, like their eye-less police operatives? The Hawk Men and the Tree Men battle among themselves, so there’s no room for the Lion Men’s Prince Thun, who fails to fall on his sword for his emperor and is slaughtered in the most callous fashion by the psychopathic Ming. Von Sydow’s disinterested gaze turns to Dale Arden – why wouldn’t it? – and his senso-circlet hypnotises her, making her orgasm in front of the assorted gathering. Not unlike his own daughter, we are told by a mischievous Klytus; the suggestion of incest rife at Ming’s court raises its head for the first, but not the last time. We never saw that in the whole-hearted 1930s. Once again, Hodges’ direction highlights the overall view before switching effectively to close up. There are few half-body shots in the film. Hans Zarkov learns his own impetuousness has placed the Earth in imminent danger – an irony of some credibility.
Towards the end grandstand battle scenes replace miserly courtly conflict and the film becomes less stimulating at the point it ought to be gaining interest. Mocking Star Wars with your final scene of reconciliation feels like a cheap shot. Really though what Flash Gordon does even better than George Lucas’ space operas is bring back memories of Christmas week holidays when the BBC showed an episode of the original serial every morning, just before an Elvis movie. That’s an awful lot of awfulness for one morning but they are good memories and despite its haphazard outcome, Flash Gordon provides good memories too. It remains something of a cult classic and something of a family favourite.
Watch it and smile.
Your far too smart and well made review made me think of how a modern, high budget re-make would be like. Most of all I thought of the cast of "Flash Gordon 2023":
Flash Gordon - Chris Hemsworth
Ming - Chow Yun-Fat
Dale Arden - Jennifer Lawrence
Prince Vultan - The Rock
Doctor Zarkov -Liam Neeson
Princess Aura - Alexandra Dodario (or possibly Angelina Jolie?)
Barin - Idris Elba
What do you think of the cast? Do you have alternatives? And who do you think should do the soundtrack this time? 😃
I don't agree on Dan Stevens, but I'm onboard with the rest of your cast list.
I think The Rock would've been great as Flash, but I think a more traditional casting with Hemsworth would've been even better!
Lilly james and Morena Baccarin as the two female leads are great ideas. Anyone else who wants to contribute?
AD ASTRA (2019)
Just finished seeing Ad Astra, and I think it was a better Buzz Lightyear story than Buzz Lightyear. 😅 (Non-spoiler)
I came in thinking it was an Oscar magnet, just Brad Pitt doing Brad Pitt things but in a more bland way to get the attention of the film junkies and critics. Love his stuff, but the trailers made it seem like a cheap space movie, and I had seen a ton of those. Man, was I wrong.
The classic space hero goes off on an adventure with his crew to pioneer distant planets and look for alien intelligence, but instead of that story, we get the son's point of view.
He's a highly effective special forces spaceman, mainly because he has been following the footsteps of his father, who is recognized by almost everyone he meets. However, because he is so focused and does not allow for any distractions or time off, his relationship with his woman becomes estranged.
Now the premise of the story is there has been a catastrophic power surge in Space Command HQ that came from the place where his father was last stationed far away in deep space, and this is causing massive damage and death on Earth. He is then sent to "investigate", but he soon finds out that what he was sent out to do was not what he thought he was going to do in the first place, and there is another agenda at play from Space Command.
This plays out perfectly throughout the movie because not only does he have a certain connection to the situation, but he has not really been out of place in his life more than in this series of events.
This movie shows the power of obsession and its displacement among social and romantic relationships.
The search for truth, the absolute truth, can only be hindered if you allow doubt and a seemingly bigger force to hold authority over it. You must never give them a chance to hold you back, even if what you encounter will disappoint you and cause you suffering. You are hoping that this guy gets some closure and throughout the film, you wish for it even more and more.
It reminded me of the movie Sunshine (Chris Evans also starred in), not of the screenplay, but the showcasing of the vastness of space, the psychological toll of either being all alone or yearning for home on Earth with your loved ones, and the obsessive nature from one of the key characters in the end.
This film should only be watched on your own, I believe it speaks more to you that way, highly recommend it.
Say yes to that party once in a while, turn the TV on even if there are only bad but kinda funny shows on, and make the best out of a horrible situation by telling a joke about it. Looking back, you wish you would have had time to live, and love.
A MAN CALLED OTTO Marc Forster (yes, that one), 2023
(1) Tom Hanks is excellent. Yes, of course he is, you know that before you even watch the movie.
(2) Two Bond alumni present here- Marc Forster (who does very well) and Thomas Newman (who does okay). There may be others that I missed.
(3) It's a remake of a Swedish film. I hadn't seen that, but reviews etc suggest it's very well done and better than this.
(4) It's a sentimental movie aimed at us oldies, I don't see many of the Marvel/DC audience wanting to see this or enjoying it if they do.
(5) If you've seen Gran Torino you know this film. Very similar in many ways, right down to specifics. Doesn't make it a bad film, though.
I liked Ad Astra, saw it at the cinema.
Mission Impossible
Still enjoy this, some great set pieces and it has a warmth and wit lacking from the previous year's GoldenEye. Funny how both franchises have kept going - Cruise still in the lead but Brosnan long gone and now Craig too.
I think the actor who plays Kittridge in this pops up in the next M:I film. But I think most of the actors who appeared in the first one are still alive, unlike their characters mind. Is Jon Voight still going?
It made me look up Brian de Palma whom we've not heard much of lately and what do you know, it appears he's on board to direct Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow's exciting account of taking on Harvey Weinstein. After the tepid She Said, which dealt with the same subject from a different angle, this might be worth watching - shame that De Palma of course had an unPC approach back in the day of course, with stuff like Dressed to Kill. BTW Elliot Ness's wife was in She Said.
Roger Moore 1927-2017