@chrisno1 , yes the stage play gets a mention in the credits. The Spanish version I think is a better movie, though the absence of Lugosi is sorely felt. And that of Dwight Frye, too.
I too liked Red Sparrow. Tom Cruise has never done a cynical spy thriller, so it's not really comparable. The premise could've ended up a sleazy exploitation movie, but it became a smart spy thriller instead. I've read the three books. They're good even though the ex-CIA author is convinced Finland is in Scandinavia.The lead character doesn't plan everything from the start. She's more like a chess player, changing and adapting plans as conditions change. Her plans aren't based on lots of lucky like Silva's escape that gambler on Q to hook up his PC just then, so the train passer at just the right moment and his henchmen gave him the uniform just at the right moment so he could attack the hearing that day. In Red Sparrow she adapts plans to what happens, she doesn't hope extreme luck will make her original plan work.
It's also funny to see just how much of the recent BLACK WIDOW film cribbed from [Red Sparrow]. I hope the producers of RS got a check in the mail to avoid any sort of plagiarism lawsuit.
presumably without the skin-flaying. Ugh, that made me nostalgic for nice films, like the brains scene from Hannibal.
number24 said:
I've read the three books .,. The lead character doesn't plan everything from the start. She's more like a chess player, changing and adapting plans as conditions change.
yes I wonder how the twist ending was conveyed in the book, where the author has the option of Internal Monolog to let us know what a character is thinking. Film is inherently an opaque medium, and Lawrence was giving a particularly opaque performance. I assume that sort of deadpan expression is necessary to survive in such an arbitrary police state, but she really worked it to her advantage throughout. Like does she ever really let her guard down, or is it all part of the Sparrow's skill: to be who the other person needs you to be? and though we want to sympathise with her as victim/hero, she herself is capable of shocking violence with nobody pushing her to do so, like her revenge on the rival ballerina. As her creepy uncle says, they are kind of the same. Which does make me wonder what happens in the next exciting adventure!
A sleazy little number from director John Lemont and writer Leigh Vance set in London’s gangland. Herbert Lom plays a crooked accountant who spies a way to boost the city’s ruling mob barons’ incomes. Alfred Marks is his deputy, a slimy nightclub owner with a protection racket on the side. John Gregson is almost non-existent as the police inspector who tracks them down. The film is of most interest for showcasing Sean Connery in a large supporting role as cat burglar Paddy Damion, whose loyalties are tested and whose eye wanders from sensible cookie Sadie, to exotic, alluring Anya, a seductive Yvonne Romain.
The movie is notable for its script which doesn’t pull any punches, referencing sexual matters and disturbing acts of violence. Three instances of the ‘b’ word were excised from this print. Connery is watchable already in a pre-Bond role which demonstrates he would most likely have become a star even without OO7. The dialogue is sparky enough to allow him to wrestle his double-entendre chops with Yvonne Romain and take part in two marvellous one-to-ones with Herbert Lom, forerunners of those Bond-meets-Blofeld type scenes we all know and love. He’s cool, tough looking and rather charming. The edges haven’t been smoothed away by a tuxedo just yet.
The movie doesn’t do much, but gives a solid account of itself, being brisk and to the point. Desmond Dickinson’s photography gives the thing a noirish black and white coating. The Frightened City compares favourably to American movies of the ilk and era, the kind of thing you’d see Richard Widmark or Glen Ford in, and British fare like Hell is a City or Hell Drivers. These blunt gangster / crime flicks were aligned beside those British kitchen sink dramas, focussing on a corrupt, downtrodden world the British cinema-going public rarely saw. It precedes the British gangster phase of the late sixties early seventies, Performance and Get Carter, et al.
Norrie Paramour, band leader and Cliff Richard’s producer wrote the dark, jazzy score and the Shadows had a big hit with the theme tune.
Immediate sequel to the Lugosi "Dracula"- and I do mean immediate. After 90 years and God knows how many remakes, sequels, reboots, etc, I don't suppose it's too much of a giveaway to say that the earlier film ended with Van Helsing staking Dracula. This one starts from that point (pun not intended) with Van Helsing (curiously here called Von Helsing) being arrested for Dracula's murder. Edward Van Sloan plays the part in both movies.
The otherwise unknown AFAIK Gloria Holden plays Drac's daughter, who turns up to claim her father's body, a wax effigy of Lugosi. Otto Kruger, father of Hardy, does fine as the nominal hero. There's a hint of lesbianism, odd for the times. Holden has an other-worldy quality perfect for the part, but the film is a weak sequel- too much wordy nonaction not involving the principals, and poor comedy relief from two policemen.
The Matrix Resurrections: it does PRECISELY what the trailer promises, while simultaneously making the trilogy that preceded it pointless, along with making the film itself pointless.
Honestly, if you're a fan of the trilogy, you don't need to see this one; you've seen it. Literally. You have seen this entire film.
If you've always wanted to see a Matrix film but never had time for the trilogy...check it out?
Big budget version of the type of low budget monster fare which used to go straight to video, but now comes to cable, usually starring once popular personalities such as Tori Spelling, Dean Cain or Debbie Gibson. All stereotypes and genre action cliches are fulfilled. Everything is so obvious they should have simply called it Megashark Vs Jason Statham and saved me the bother of watching it.
In 2017, I spent the afternoon encamped in screen 9 of the Empire Leicester Square cinema watching the rather wonderful sci-fi epic Blade Runner 2049. I was very pleased to revisit the movie over Christmas. I’m not fond of sequels as they tend to be unnecessary extensions of a good idea, but this one works really well. It helps writers Michael Green and Hampton Fancher have created a framework of much emotional depth and intellectual insight. The action often feels over the top and out of place among the thoughtful phrasing of the characters. It is rare these days to find an intelligent science fiction film and Denis Villeneuve has achieved that in spades.
Like Ridley Scott’s 1982 original this is a movie about the creation of memory, or if you like, of genuine identity. That it is also about love, personal, emotional, physical and familial, may come as a surprise. Some aspects of the wider story don’t work. It meanders and ponders a little, but Villeneuve keeps a strong enough hand on the tiller and doesn’t lose focus from the central theme of the secrets of memory. The narrative twist which removes our expectation of the lead character’s origin is good and although the film descends into more traditional fare by its end, Villeneuve is clever enough to provide a coda of some emotional impact.
It’s worth shaking the hand of the cinematographer, Roger Deakins, designer Dennis Gassner and the composer Hans Zimmer, who all do sterling work in emulating and expanding on their forebears with magnificent sets, rain soaked cityscapes and a lush synthesised score that pays handsome tribute to Vangelis.
Ryan Gosling’s replicant Blade Runner K is pretty good too, for once his stock-in-trade expressionless countenance works in his favour. The gentle developing relationship between him and Ana de Armas’ Joi is one which touches us, despite its implausibility. Harrison Ford crops up as Deckard and although I had vague images of Peter Ustinov in Logan’s Run, an old man alone in a deserted city, Ford retains an air of steely passion which balances nicely his confrontation with K, who is similarly driven. Once more, the battle of human against replicant is well-played; the outcome is pitched to involve us in both K’s and Deckard’s shared aim so it does lose some of the impact Ridley Scott provided in the original by having the real villains arrive.
The biggest down side are those villains. There are several of them, coming at K and us from several angles, and they share no shred of humanity. Without that counterpoint the bad guys are hopelessly bland. It’s telling the most human character appears to be the android, K. The writers seem to paint humanity as being very black, with no white, or even grey. But I can forgive all that. Compared to so many other recent sci-fi flicks – does anyone want to remember The Last Jedi? – Blade Runner 2049 is thought provoking and immaculately presented. It loses something on telly though, those wide landscapes do need the benefit of a cinema screen to create wonder.
Well, there you have it - cinema attendances are down so why in hell some of them can't simply reissue movies like this from time to time so they can be caught in big screen glory. Gravity is another one that could do with the Imax reissue, I've never seen it and critic Mark Kermode has stated it's one film that would do best on Imax. Ditto Tenet, perhaps, which I've also never caught but don't fancy on DVD.
If nothing else, it would create a buzz, a bit of interest as if to say, it's not all about this week's big releases, here's something for cinema connoisseurs.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
I've written about this, haven't I? I don't know why it is Channel 4 have the rights to this now, when other times it's on the BBC. Who decides these things? It's almost always ITV who have the Bond rights (I think BBC4 showed From Russia With Love without ad breaks of course a few years ago, personally I think the film benefits from ad breaks!)
Spielberg long said that this was a response to Broccoli not letting him direct a Bond film, somewhat disingenuously given that he'd want a percentage of the gross as director, which they never really grant to any director. There are Bond touches aplenty in this film, albeit some that got swiped from the Bond series itself - the hero running into an old flame who gives him a slap is used in TND, of course. The line 'I was a child, you should have known better' doesn't hang too well given the recent conviction of Griswald Maxwell that very same day. Must admit I like the look and feel of Raiders, I never buy into it as a movie really, all that talk about Indy's mentor in Nepal, it loses me a bit. The villain in the white suit never catches my imagination, and there seem to be many such characters - who is the Tony Hadley Spandau Ballet lookalike, does he ever come to anything? Karen Allen is a great lead though, reminds me of Ford's charming sparring partner in American Graffiti. Oh, hang on, she's not with Ford is she, she's driving with Ford's racing rival from out of town.
Judy
Renee Zellweger's Oscar-winning turn as Judy Garland. She does it very well though she doesn't quite capture the jolie laird look of Garland. This film follows her late 60s London shows on the comeback trail, it follows much the same plot and dramatic trajectory as the acclaimed Stan & Ollie which I also associate with coming out at Christmas, a potentially depressing time of year. I think I preferred this from what I saw of it, I found the Laurel and Hardy movie a bit grating at times, the use of their wives not that convincing somehow. Both do have a slightly inauthentic feel about them that's hard to place. Films made around that time don't quite look like that, it's like being cinematic they have to jazz things up a bit so they're not to depressing or low-key. Anyway, both films do that thing of making you fear for the worst, then the old troupers pull it out of the bag, and the finale is a rousing, moving movie moment, not knocking it.
BBC4 followed it with a reshowing of Garland's A Star is Born. Most oddly, they showed a version with black and white stills inserted for missing and deleted scenes, something I've seen on my purchased copy of The Lost Horizon, but never on telly before. Garland's movie was hacked about to reduce its time, so imagine watching OHMSS with stills inserted of Bond's chase across the London rooftops around St Paul's, and dialogue running over the top!
Nice reviews @Napoleon Plural I too caught the Judy Garland biopic on BBC2, but I couldn't face 3 hours of A Star is Born. It's a great film. I don't need to watch it every time it's on.
JUDY (2019)
Renee Zellweger won an Oscar for her performance as an aging and unreliable Judy Garland, desperate to get her career off the skids by fulfilling and engagement at London’s Talk of the Town. Zellweger's good, although it feels more like an impersonation than an interpretation. I was more impressed with the wide-eyed teenager who plays Judy as a sixteen year old. These flashback sequences are filmed on vivid studio sets and have an ethereal, surreal quality, as if young Judy really is living inside the Hollywood dream. Later on, as an adult, she can’t escape the behaviours which have been impressed upon her in those formative years. The musical numbers are well-staged. Script’s a bit slapdash. The ending is sugar coated. Whilst true, the story isn’t dissimilar to the sort of fare rolled out by My Week with Marilyn or Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, but like Garland’s life, it’s a bit of a torturous ride. The movie lacks energy in the supporting roles and feels much longer than it is.
Finally got to see SPIDER-MAN: HOME ON THE RANGE, or whatever it's called. Wowy wow wow! This is as good as advertised. Of late superhero movies have been either dour or too wrapped up in their own mythologies. . .this one never forgets to be FUN. It's a fast, up-tempo movie that has a lot of good comedic bits and awesome action scenes, and of course it brings back a LOT of familiar faces from earlier films--and gives them substantial things to do. There are a couple of serious moments and even some touching ones as well, but on the whole it acknowledges that people dressed in Halloween costumes is the stuff of fantasy, not high tragedy.
They are, but it's basically on the level of "these are the bad guys they fought in their alternate universes and here's what happened to them there." It's not hard to follow.
Well, I'll make to catch that film for the sake of seeing a movie at the cinema; that said one has to time it in between the Omicron rates going through the roof and cinemas being empty as schools return, not not so long before schools send the transmission rate sky high.
The Sound of Music
Along with Some Like It Hot, this classic seems to be shown only once a year, which is fine by me, you don't want overkill - something that has arguably happened to the Bond movie repeats on ITV4.
I've already mentioned the strange appropriateness of having the authority figures - Plummer, Andrews, the Nuns - all with English accents while the morally dubious but good fun friends of Captain von Trapp are American, and the kids are all American, while all would have had Austrian accents. The Nazis however! Well, they all get their German accents. Nor do they get a song. The Baroness and Max in theory are crying out for a song together along the lines of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' in High Society but it's right they don't get one, however. There's the same kind of logic we see with Family Guy, where Stewie the baby can talk with Brian the dog, and the dog can converse with everyone but Stewie can't as he's the baby, only with the dog, I mean it's mad but it obeys the rules of its own universe, time machine and all. So see Max and the Baroness in song would wreck the suspension of disbelief, it also suggests they are not morally entitled to one.
This time round I realised that Max would normally be played as a gay guy, the woman's best friend, a gossip, a laugh with a slightly naughty inconsequentially immoral side, all the lines point to that but the actor does not play him that way at all and it's only decades down the line the thought occurs that he would be the Jack in Will & Grace character, or Rupert Everett in one of his romantic comedies.
Last year, just as BBC4 recently showed A Star is Born with printed inserts in place of where scenes had been deleted, its showing of The Sound of Music reinserted lost scenes - the Alpine shootout finale at the Nazi lair happened up on by the von Trapps, where the young kids are able to show off their Ninja skills and flame-flowing abilities, and the white-haired von Trapp house keeper has a particularly nasty Irma Bunt moment. I think there must have been a furore about that - traditionally here in the UK we prefer the closing shot of the Captain leading his family across the mountains to the strains of Climb Every Mountain, but it's all a matter of taste of course.
For those who don't know this is a version of Charles Dickens' famous story with Michael Caine as Scrooge and the muppets in most of the other roles. It's one of my favourite Christmas movies! Part of what makes it great is how the muppets do what they do best with songs, dance and jokes, but Caine plays everything straight as if he was on a theatre stage. "God bless us, every one!"
Documentary about sixties swinging London narrated by Michael Caine. There’s a few old interviews of Sir Michael and some of his chums, plus contemporary off-camera chat with icons of the age such as Twiggy, David Bailey, Roger Daltrey, Paul McCartney and Marianne Faithful. It doesn’t really tell you much you didn’t already know – unless, of course, you don’t know because you’ve never seen any other similar documentaries. It starts with all the drab 1950s British social class system, goes into the angry young man and woman period of the early sixties, through the mid-decade counter culture revolution and into the decline and fall, tactfully avoiding the real hedonists and not even touching on what it felt like to be an ordinary guy or gal on the street. It’s all very well Michael Caine discussing the sixties with his other successful pals, but what about the people who really lived and worked and grew up in it? That’d be a real story to tell, this one just regurgitates old stories and anecdotes we’ve already heard, dresses them up in pretty colours and adds music of the time, but not at the right times. Interesting, but not deep enough to be relevant.
Yeah. I got that out on DVD a while ago. It does sort of put the idea out that Swinging London was a small subset of London and not really anywhere else. The late 60s Carry On Camping intriguingly contradicts that notion, as our mates Sid and Bernie seek to sabotage a 'cool' festival taking place at an adjacent camping site, with the implicit assumption that the predominant working class audience would approve of our mates putting one over the fey and phoney hippy crowd, presumably fans of Strawberry Fields et al.
Caine was a bit older than that crowd... his flatmate Terence Stamp once indiscreetly suggesting in an interview much later that Caine was actually older than he made out by raising his hand a bit when his age was suggested. Which means he must be really old now. Perhaps Caine is like Dalton, it suggested in a TV Times magazine letter in the late 80s as The Living Daylights was premiered from a schoolboy contemporary of his echoing another letter that our Bond pal was more like 47 when he took over as Bond than early 40s as claimed. This point has never, ever been taken up by anyone ever since.
I recall the days when the movie premiere of a Bond movie would make the front pages of TV Times, with a programme on ITV devoted to it, with interviews with cast members. So it was with For Your Eyes Only, not sure if that happened after that. OP had a special documentary devoted to past Bond movies to crowd out the upcoming NSNA, although it was also a 21st anniversary thing.
I saw 'The Eagle Has Landed' the other day. Unfortunately tiredness meant I fell asleep at the part where Michael Caine met the American officer.
I did see an interesting film last night called 'Peanut Butter Falcon'. This is not my usual type of film but I fount it to be good and I recommend it to anyone who has not seen it before.
Thsi movie is about the disaster in the year 2000 when Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents sea. It shows what was done to save the survivors of the explosion, what their families experienced and what the survivors in the sunken submarine may have exprienced. The movie is directed by Thomas Vinterberg. The Danish director made Mads Mikkelsen known internationally in "The Hunt" and later made the excelent "Another round" with him. The main cast is European, but not Russian. Matthias Schoenaerts plays one of the men in the sunken sub. He's from Belgium and you may have seen him in movies like Red Sparrow, "A hidden life" and "The Danish girl". His wife is played by Lea Seydoux, who in my opinion delivers one of her best performances in this movie. She was pregnant while filming it and that's used in the movie. Colin Firth plays commadore David Russell, the British navy officer who organised the non-Russian efforts to save the Kursk crew. The movie was based on Russell's book. The accident happened not long after Putin became president of Russia and early scripts include him. Putin was written out of the movie, possibly to avoid the movie company becoming the target of hackers who definitely wouldn't be working for Russian secret service.
I think the movie is good and well worth being watched. The actiong is really good and Videberg tells the story well, especially the claustrophobic scenes inside the sunken submarine.
This is a prequel to the Kingsman movies set before and during WWI. It's directed and co-written by Mathew Vaughn, It stars Ralphe Fiennes as the nobleman Oxford, Dijimon Hounsou, Gemma Arterton and many others. I think a period setting fits the Kingsman consept well and the Kingsman movies really needed an origin story unlike many other franchises. In some ways this is the best Kingsman movie, partly because Vaughn has toned down the gross-out humour and focuses more on story. If he tones down his overactive camera tricks this bodes well for his chances as a future Bond director. I don't know if it increases his chanses, but Vaughn is now working on a movie about a "the world's greatest spy'Argylle' as he's caught up in a globe-trotting adventure". It's intended to start a franchise and the movie even stars Henry Cavill!
This movie certainly is fun and inventive, but it occationally finds the gravitas too. But it's ironic in a movie that wants to be a pacifist movie about a pacifist the heroes constantly works to involve more countries in WWI!
The 1930s version with Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara.
This is the kind of film that's never shown on telly these days - no idea why, it's brilliant. Hardly a dull moment in it, some great aerial shots of medieval Paris. Surprisingly topical too, perhaps making a point about itinerant Jews in 1930s Europe and comparing their lot with that of the Romanian gypsies depicted here, faced with barriers thrown up against their entrance into various countries. Some mixed messages about whether they're all as lovely as. young Maurueen, who plays Esmerelda, or actually a horde of thieves and vagabonds as their reputation suggests. Much comment on the fickle nature of the public, and the supposed attractions of the printing press (i.e. internet) for forming opinion, espoused by the French King who is made out to be a loveable, liberal old boy.
I recall this film being a real afternoon's entertainment on telly back in my youth, now you have to seek it out on DVD. I recommend you do so, the direction really is quite up to the mark, it's a lot more sophisticated than The Scarlet Pimpernel, shot a bit earlier and with similar settings, but dogged by slow direction sometimes and an absence of soundtrack (though
I do love that film, not least because of its three central players, Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon and Raymond Massey.)
Following up @caractacus potts splendid review [https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1032172#Comment_1032172] I thought I’d add my penny’s worth. I too am also visiting the movies on Mike Richardson’s list of fifty must-sees from his Guns, Girls and Gadgets. It’s a great read by the way. I had not seen Hot Enough for June for decades.
Dirk Bogarde encapsulated the English fish-out-of-water better than anyone at this period of his career. He’d played it so often in the fifties, starting with Doctor in the House, that he almost typecast himself. Luckily Joseph Losey’s brilliantly accomplished The Servant, one of the best British films of the sixties, stopped all that. Unfortunately, Bogarde still needed money, so despite reservations he teamed up again with the Doctor production team of Sidney and Betty Box and director Ralph Thomas for this slimline stroll of suspense and farce set in Eastern Europe.
Bogarde plays Nicholas Whistler, an unemployed writer handpicked by Robert Morley’s ponderous pontificator Colonel Cunliffe to be sent as a courier to Prague where he’s to collect secret stolen information. Cunliffe neglects to inform Whistler he’s a spy, preferring to let the hapless writer believe he’s landed a managerial position with an international firm of glass-blowers. Whistler’s given a huge salary (£2000, huge in 1964) plus expenses and sent to Prague with the password ‘Hot Enough for June’ and orders to exchange copies of a Czechoslovak guide book. Morley’s so off hand about it all, you almost believe him. The famous Hitchcockian McGuffin – here, secrets in guide books – obviously proves Whistler’s undoing. Not only does he know nothing about glass, he makes a fairly average spy, finding himself unable to locate his contact while not seeming to realise the situation he’s got himself involved in or its dangers. Cunliffe does; he doesn’t even expect him to come back: “There are openings all the time,” he cryptically tells his new employee.
The film is prefaced by a short scene during which John Le Mesurier deposits a bagful of personal possessions to a clerk. They all appear to be the tools of a working spy’s trade, including an automatic pistol, several passports and a shoe with a hollow heel. The clerk stores the bag and its goods in a locker marked OO7, but turns the card so it reads DECEASED. Exactly how the producers got away with this three-second snippet I’ll never know. Cubby Broccoli’s all-seeing-eye must have been temporarily blinded. In fact, the early familiarities do not end there. Whistler’s interview is in a building whose plaque reads STANDARD EXPORTS LTD – clearly a nod to Ian Fleming’s Universal Exports – and the secretary’s office is set up almost exactly like Moneypenny’s in reverse. Even the secretary shares some of Lois Maxwell’s candour. Cunliffe’s office is a bigger, brighter version of M’s, a huge desk, big windows; it’s all tremendously homely, very familiar, as if the filmmakers really are trying to rip off James Bond.
Padua stands in for Prague, but we don’t really notice. The humour, which had been light, starts to get laboured as Whistler encounters several red herrings at the glass factory. Luckily he’s aided by a sexy chauffeur, Vlasta Simenova, played with her usual slinky sensual skill by the beautiful Sylvia Koscina, who featured in several Euro-Spy thrillers of the sixties. She’s delightful here swapping comparisons between British and Soviet society with her attractive passenger. Their dinner scene jars, the farcical element once more proving a downfall. The scene starts elegantly. We’ve learnt Vlasta is an agent of the security services, but she’s ambitious and wants to entrap Whistler herself. She attempts to sit at a table which isn’t bugged – the microphone is in the floral display, a neat ruse reimagined from Fleming’s short story For Your Eyes Only and similar to the one we see in the 1981 film version – and later she pours wine on the recording system to foil her superiors. While I understand entirely what’s happening here, and the humorous intent, a little more sophistication of the kind Bond films display would elevate this scene to such a higher plain. As it stands, tipping the glass is treated as a heavy-handed comic highlight when it should be a gentle, knowing, enigmatic twinkle of fingers, eyes and lips.
Much better is Whistler’s seduction of Vlasta, or is it the other way around?, the double entendres coming fast and loose and the sex sealed with an erotic kiss through a satin curtain, the analogy clear: the wall really is being torn down. After love, Bogarde’s character says exactly that. Some discreet rear-view and hip-high nudity is eye opening for an A-certificate in 1964. The two agents make a very sexy couple.
Unfortunately, Vlasta’s father is the head of the Czech Security Service. Colonel Simenova is played by a gruff and quite excellent Leo McKern. The scenes where he succinctly puts down his subordinates contrasts delightfully with the off-hand old school tie banter of Morley and Le Mesurier. Both chiefs are dealing with incompetence. When they meet in the British Embassy, Cunliffe flying out fearing he’s lost another agent, the two actors come into their own, drinking whiskey and dismissing the plight of their underlings with the toss of an ice cube. They are not dissimilar. Even their offices both feature a map with flags to represent the locations of their agents.
Whistler’s almost arrested, but escapes with some ingenuity. With Vlasta’s assistance, he goes on the run, finally making it to the British Embassy and safety. These scenes share an equal burden of suspense and humour and the film loses its way a bit, uncertain whether to be earnest or funny, eventually occupying the middle ground and not succeeding being either. Whistler is certainly more adaptable and capable than he initially appeared, but the situations the screenwriter puts him into skew the serious espionage towards spare jollity. Getting dressed up in Tyrolese mountain britches doesn’t help. Lionel Davidson’s original novel The Night of Wenceslas was deadly serious fare and he must have been tremendously disappointed. The film ends on a pleasant note of reconciliation for all. The McGuffin has been conveniently forgotten by everyone.
I enjoyed Hot Enough for June without ever being enthralled. It’s a solid product of the era, one of the earliest Bond spoofs, along with Carry On Spying, and is most interesting for alluding to James Bond, yet making no conscious effort to impersonate him, a liberal attitude to sex excepted. It’s a traditional affair with willing performances from the four leads and might have worked better as a more traditional espionage film. The humour works best when it’s in the dialogue. As soon as Bogarde is asked to pull faces and spit out passwords while numerous Czech’s admire his travel guide, you sense the film’s out of its depth, both as comedy and as thriller.
you probably already knew more about the history of these actors than I did, but did you find having Guns, Girls and Gadgets helped you better appreciate the film?
I don't think it did. The book is heavy on location, casting and production details including some historical context and very interesting because of it. However, it lacks an overall critical eye. There is little or no attempt to offer an authorial opinion on the films. There are short sections for each facet of a film and appreciative words are used where appropriate, usually by referencing other sources. I believe Mike's been extremely careful to avoid giving an opinion on how successful or not he personally considers each film. For instance, there's no indication Mike read the novel The Night of Wenceslas on which this movie is based. If he did, he doesn't offer any extracts or insight to compare the film and book, or suggest it is good or bad adaptation. There are Trivia and Awards sections, so you can judge some of the industry reactions to each movie. It's a very balanced book but can be a bit overwhelming at times. I perhaps might have preferred to see more evidence regarding the cultural impact of these movies, and he does touch on this, but at over 700 pages, the book is more an in-depth referencing guide and not a critical analysis. For that, we can always go elsewhere.
Since there's a new movie about Operation Mincemeat (Operation Mincemeat - Wikipedia) I was inspired to watch the first movie about this bizzare secret operation dreamt up by Ian Fleming himself. The 1956 movie is based on a book by Captain Ewen Montagu, RNVR, the man who planned the operation. But because of dramatic reasons and details that were secret until 1998 many aspects aren't hsitorically correct. However the raw bones of the operation are correct. Particularely like the scene in the morgue where the clothes, identity papers and personal effects of the "officer" are placed on the dead body while we can hear the bombing of London above. The many made up scenes don't bother me at all because they work so well.
There's some great trivia about this movie:
The real Montsagu has a camo as a vice admiral
Winson Churchill is voiced by a pre-stardom Peter Sellers!
The submarine is the same one that was used in the real operation.
The story about someone looking for a spy that doesn't exist inspired the famous Hitchcock movie "North by northwest"
In the early stages of D-day a corpse was found on a glider carrying detailed allied plans for the invasion of France. The plans were real, but the Germans were convinced they were fake and planted because of their experience with Operation Mincemeat.
so what did Connery do in his spare time at the height of BondMania?
The Hill, 1965
directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, etc). This film'll give you something to shout "Attica! Attica! Attica!" about.
Connery plays tank commander Sgt Major Joe Roberts, sentenced to military prison for punching an officer and disobeying an order. He felt his men were being sent on a suicide mission, and indeed his men were all killed after a different Sgt replaced him for the mission. Now he is being punished for cowardice and insubordination.
The prison is said to be in the Libyan desert, but the location is actually in the south of Spain, similar enough climate. The prisoners are forced to exercise in the extreme heat all day long, to crush their spirit and teach them discipline. For punishment, a manmade hill has been built in the middle of the yard which prisoners must run up and over again and again until they drop, then roused by a bucketful of water and forced to continue. The film opens with a spectacular long helicopter shot showing a prisoner collapse on the hill, then pulling out to reveal the prison yard and the hundreds of prisoners exercising as the various characters are introduced.
The thing is, from what I'm reading, Lumet was forcing his actors in real life to endure much the same extreme physical punishment as the fictional authorities were inflicting on the prisoners within the film.
Fifteen minutes in, after establishing the situation, new prisoner Connery arrives and is singled out for particular humiliation because of the nature of his crime. His cellmates are drunkards and scrappers and thieves, he's the only one who's challenged the command structure. His cellmates suffer alongside him merely by the chance of proximity, and initially resent him for it.
The same day Connery arrives, a new guard also arrives, played by Ian Hendy (Dr Keel from the first season of The Avengers), and is put in charge of Connery and his cellmates. A real bastard, he drives the weakest cellmate to his death, and this is where the general prison population begin to turn against their guards.
Best performance is from Ossie Davis, the one black prisoner in the cell, who endures racist abuse from both guards and cellmates until he strips off his uniform and declares he is henceforth a civilian and the military have no right to speak to him.
The ending is left to our imaginations in the middle of what should be a conventionally moral resolution, as defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory, yet it all seems inevitable in this sadistic and claustrophobic world. The chance of a happy ending was an illusion, safer not to hope.
This is an incredible escape from typecasting for Connery. Instead of enjoying a glamourous life carrying out missions on behalf of Her Majesty's Secret Service, here he is a career soldier declaring these rules and discipline should have gone out with Queen Victoria, challenging the official authorities and inciting mob riot. He brings his usual alpha male presence yet employs it for anti-authoritarian subversion. And he skipped the Goldfinger premiere to make this film!
The look of this film is about as far from a BondFilm as you could get. There is not a note of music, and dialog is often muffled by the ambient noise of the hundreds of prisoners continuously exercising in the background. Film is in black and white, with extreme unflattering close ups of the characters, drenched in sweat and covered in flies. And though the location is very large, as explored in the opening shot, it is essentially a one set play.
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Dracula v Nosferatu... Nosferatu
Dracula v Nosferatu... Nosferatu
@chrisno1 , yes the stage play gets a mention in the credits. The Spanish version I think is a better movie, though the absence of Lugosi is sorely felt. And that of Dwight Frye, too.
I too liked Red Sparrow. Tom Cruise has never done a cynical spy thriller, so it's not really comparable. The premise could've ended up a sleazy exploitation movie, but it became a smart spy thriller instead. I've read the three books. They're good even though the ex-CIA author is convinced Finland is in Scandinavia.The lead character doesn't plan everything from the start. She's more like a chess player, changing and adapting plans as conditions change. Her plans aren't based on lots of lucky like Silva's escape that gambler on Q to hook up his PC just then, so the train passer at just the right moment and his henchmen gave him the uniform just at the right moment so he could attack the hearing that day. In Red Sparrow she adapts plans to what happens, she doesn't hope extreme luck will make her original plan work.
gymkata said:
It's also funny to see just how much of the recent BLACK WIDOW film cribbed from [Red Sparrow]. I hope the producers of RS got a check in the mail to avoid any sort of plagiarism lawsuit.
presumably without the skin-flaying. Ugh, that made me nostalgic for nice films, like the brains scene from Hannibal.
number24 said:
I've read the three books .,. The lead character doesn't plan everything from the start. She's more like a chess player, changing and adapting plans as conditions change.
yes I wonder how the twist ending was conveyed in the book, where the author has the option of Internal Monolog to let us know what a character is thinking. Film is inherently an opaque medium, and Lawrence was giving a particularly opaque performance. I assume that sort of deadpan expression is necessary to survive in such an arbitrary police state, but she really worked it to her advantage throughout. Like does she ever really let her guard down, or is it all part of the Sparrow's skill: to be who the other person needs you to be? and though we want to sympathise with her as victim/hero, she herself is capable of shocking violence with nobody pushing her to do so, like her revenge on the rival ballerina. As her creepy uncle says, they are kind of the same. Which does make me wonder what happens in the next exciting adventure!
THE FRIGHTENED CITY (1961)
A sleazy little number from director John Lemont and writer Leigh Vance set in London’s gangland. Herbert Lom plays a crooked accountant who spies a way to boost the city’s ruling mob barons’ incomes. Alfred Marks is his deputy, a slimy nightclub owner with a protection racket on the side. John Gregson is almost non-existent as the police inspector who tracks them down. The film is of most interest for showcasing Sean Connery in a large supporting role as cat burglar Paddy Damion, whose loyalties are tested and whose eye wanders from sensible cookie Sadie, to exotic, alluring Anya, a seductive Yvonne Romain.
The movie is notable for its script which doesn’t pull any punches, referencing sexual matters and disturbing acts of violence. Three instances of the ‘b’ word were excised from this print. Connery is watchable already in a pre-Bond role which demonstrates he would most likely have become a star even without OO7. The dialogue is sparky enough to allow him to wrestle his double-entendre chops with Yvonne Romain and take part in two marvellous one-to-ones with Herbert Lom, forerunners of those Bond-meets-Blofeld type scenes we all know and love. He’s cool, tough looking and rather charming. The edges haven’t been smoothed away by a tuxedo just yet.
The movie doesn’t do much, but gives a solid account of itself, being brisk and to the point. Desmond Dickinson’s photography gives the thing a noirish black and white coating. The Frightened City compares favourably to American movies of the ilk and era, the kind of thing you’d see Richard Widmark or Glen Ford in, and British fare like Hell is a City or Hell Drivers. These blunt gangster / crime flicks were aligned beside those British kitchen sink dramas, focussing on a corrupt, downtrodden world the British cinema-going public rarely saw. It precedes the British gangster phase of the late sixties early seventies, Performance and Get Carter, et al.
Norrie Paramour, band leader and Cliff Richard’s producer wrote the dark, jazzy score and the Shadows had a big hit with the theme tune.
Dracula's Daughter (1936)
Immediate sequel to the Lugosi "Dracula"- and I do mean immediate. After 90 years and God knows how many remakes, sequels, reboots, etc, I don't suppose it's too much of a giveaway to say that the earlier film ended with Van Helsing staking Dracula. This one starts from that point (pun not intended) with Van Helsing (curiously here called Von Helsing) being arrested for Dracula's murder. Edward Van Sloan plays the part in both movies.
The otherwise unknown AFAIK Gloria Holden plays Drac's daughter, who turns up to claim her father's body, a wax effigy of Lugosi. Otto Kruger, father of Hardy, does fine as the nominal hero. There's a hint of lesbianism, odd for the times. Holden has an other-worldy quality perfect for the part, but the film is a weak sequel- too much wordy nonaction not involving the principals, and poor comedy relief from two policemen.
The Matrix Resurrections: it does PRECISELY what the trailer promises, while simultaneously making the trilogy that preceded it pointless, along with making the film itself pointless.
Honestly, if you're a fan of the trilogy, you don't need to see this one; you've seen it. Literally. You have seen this entire film.
If you've always wanted to see a Matrix film but never had time for the trilogy...check it out?
THE MEG (2018)
Big budget version of the type of low budget monster fare which used to go straight to video, but now comes to cable, usually starring once popular personalities such as Tori Spelling, Dean Cain or Debbie Gibson. All stereotypes and genre action cliches are fulfilled. Everything is so obvious they should have simply called it Megashark Vs Jason Statham and saved me the bother of watching it.
BLADERUNNER 2049 (2017)
In 2017, I spent the afternoon encamped in screen 9 of the Empire Leicester Square cinema watching the rather wonderful sci-fi epic Blade Runner 2049. I was very pleased to revisit the movie over Christmas. I’m not fond of sequels as they tend to be unnecessary extensions of a good idea, but this one works really well. It helps writers Michael Green and Hampton Fancher have created a framework of much emotional depth and intellectual insight. The action often feels over the top and out of place among the thoughtful phrasing of the characters. It is rare these days to find an intelligent science fiction film and Denis Villeneuve has achieved that in spades.
Like Ridley Scott’s 1982 original this is a movie about the creation of memory, or if you like, of genuine identity. That it is also about love, personal, emotional, physical and familial, may come as a surprise. Some aspects of the wider story don’t work. It meanders and ponders a little, but Villeneuve keeps a strong enough hand on the tiller and doesn’t lose focus from the central theme of the secrets of memory. The narrative twist which removes our expectation of the lead character’s origin is good and although the film descends into more traditional fare by its end, Villeneuve is clever enough to provide a coda of some emotional impact.
It’s worth shaking the hand of the cinematographer, Roger Deakins, designer Dennis Gassner and the composer Hans Zimmer, who all do sterling work in emulating and expanding on their forebears with magnificent sets, rain soaked cityscapes and a lush synthesised score that pays handsome tribute to Vangelis.
Ryan Gosling’s replicant Blade Runner K is pretty good too, for once his stock-in-trade expressionless countenance works in his favour. The gentle developing relationship between him and Ana de Armas’ Joi is one which touches us, despite its implausibility. Harrison Ford crops up as Deckard and although I had vague images of Peter Ustinov in Logan’s Run, an old man alone in a deserted city, Ford retains an air of steely passion which balances nicely his confrontation with K, who is similarly driven. Once more, the battle of human against replicant is well-played; the outcome is pitched to involve us in both K’s and Deckard’s shared aim so it does lose some of the impact Ridley Scott provided in the original by having the real villains arrive.
The biggest down side are those villains. There are several of them, coming at K and us from several angles, and they share no shred of humanity. Without that counterpoint the bad guys are hopelessly bland. It’s telling the most human character appears to be the android, K. The writers seem to paint humanity as being very black, with no white, or even grey. But I can forgive all that. Compared to so many other recent sci-fi flicks – does anyone want to remember The Last Jedi? – Blade Runner 2049 is thought provoking and immaculately presented. It loses something on telly though, those wide landscapes do need the benefit of a cinema screen to create wonder.
Very good.
Well, there you have it - cinema attendances are down so why in hell some of them can't simply reissue movies like this from time to time so they can be caught in big screen glory. Gravity is another one that could do with the Imax reissue, I've never seen it and critic Mark Kermode has stated it's one film that would do best on Imax. Ditto Tenet, perhaps, which I've also never caught but don't fancy on DVD.
If nothing else, it would create a buzz, a bit of interest as if to say, it's not all about this week's big releases, here's something for cinema connoisseurs.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
I've written about this, haven't I? I don't know why it is Channel 4 have the rights to this now, when other times it's on the BBC. Who decides these things? It's almost always ITV who have the Bond rights (I think BBC4 showed From Russia With Love without ad breaks of course a few years ago, personally I think the film benefits from ad breaks!)
Spielberg long said that this was a response to Broccoli not letting him direct a Bond film, somewhat disingenuously given that he'd want a percentage of the gross as director, which they never really grant to any director. There are Bond touches aplenty in this film, albeit some that got swiped from the Bond series itself - the hero running into an old flame who gives him a slap is used in TND, of course. The line 'I was a child, you should have known better' doesn't hang too well given the recent conviction of Griswald Maxwell that very same day. Must admit I like the look and feel of Raiders, I never buy into it as a movie really, all that talk about Indy's mentor in Nepal, it loses me a bit. The villain in the white suit never catches my imagination, and there seem to be many such characters - who is the Tony Hadley Spandau Ballet lookalike, does he ever come to anything? Karen Allen is a great lead though, reminds me of Ford's charming sparring partner in American Graffiti. Oh, hang on, she's not with Ford is she, she's driving with Ford's racing rival from out of town.
Judy
Renee Zellweger's Oscar-winning turn as Judy Garland. She does it very well though she doesn't quite capture the jolie laird look of Garland. This film follows her late 60s London shows on the comeback trail, it follows much the same plot and dramatic trajectory as the acclaimed Stan & Ollie which I also associate with coming out at Christmas, a potentially depressing time of year. I think I preferred this from what I saw of it, I found the Laurel and Hardy movie a bit grating at times, the use of their wives not that convincing somehow. Both do have a slightly inauthentic feel about them that's hard to place. Films made around that time don't quite look like that, it's like being cinematic they have to jazz things up a bit so they're not to depressing or low-key. Anyway, both films do that thing of making you fear for the worst, then the old troupers pull it out of the bag, and the finale is a rousing, moving movie moment, not knocking it.
BBC4 followed it with a reshowing of Garland's A Star is Born. Most oddly, they showed a version with black and white stills inserted for missing and deleted scenes, something I've seen on my purchased copy of The Lost Horizon, but never on telly before. Garland's movie was hacked about to reduce its time, so imagine watching OHMSS with stills inserted of Bond's chase across the London rooftops around St Paul's, and dialogue running over the top!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Nice reviews @Napoleon Plural I too caught the Judy Garland biopic on BBC2, but I couldn't face 3 hours of A Star is Born. It's a great film. I don't need to watch it every time it's on.
JUDY (2019)
Renee Zellweger won an Oscar for her performance as an aging and unreliable Judy Garland, desperate to get her career off the skids by fulfilling and engagement at London’s Talk of the Town. Zellweger's good, although it feels more like an impersonation than an interpretation. I was more impressed with the wide-eyed teenager who plays Judy as a sixteen year old. These flashback sequences are filmed on vivid studio sets and have an ethereal, surreal quality, as if young Judy really is living inside the Hollywood dream. Later on, as an adult, she can’t escape the behaviours which have been impressed upon her in those formative years. The musical numbers are well-staged. Script’s a bit slapdash. The ending is sugar coated. Whilst true, the story isn’t dissimilar to the sort of fare rolled out by My Week with Marilyn or Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, but like Garland’s life, it’s a bit of a torturous ride. The movie lacks energy in the supporting roles and feels much longer than it is.
Finally got to see SPIDER-MAN: HOME ON THE RANGE, or whatever it's called. Wowy wow wow! This is as good as advertised. Of late superhero movies have been either dour or too wrapped up in their own mythologies. . .this one never forgets to be FUN. It's a fast, up-tempo movie that has a lot of good comedic bits and awesome action scenes, and of course it brings back a LOT of familiar faces from earlier films--and gives them substantial things to do. There are a couple of serious moments and even some touching ones as well, but on the whole it acknowledges that people dressed in Halloween costumes is the stuff of fantasy, not high tragedy.
Hi @Hardyboy would I need to have seen the first Spidey film to understand this new one?
This question can also be answered by anyone else!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
No, not really. There are a few references to the earlier "Home" films and to the Avengers saga, but this is really a stand-alone film.
what about the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield films? I thought those were supposed to be relevant to this new film.
They are, but it's basically on the level of "these are the bad guys they fought in their alternate universes and here's what happened to them there." It's not hard to follow.
Well, I'll make to catch that film for the sake of seeing a movie at the cinema; that said one has to time it in between the Omicron rates going through the roof and cinemas being empty as schools return, not not so long before schools send the transmission rate sky high.
The Sound of Music
Along with Some Like It Hot, this classic seems to be shown only once a year, which is fine by me, you don't want overkill - something that has arguably happened to the Bond movie repeats on ITV4.
I've already mentioned the strange appropriateness of having the authority figures - Plummer, Andrews, the Nuns - all with English accents while the morally dubious but good fun friends of Captain von Trapp are American, and the kids are all American, while all would have had Austrian accents. The Nazis however! Well, they all get their German accents. Nor do they get a song. The Baroness and Max in theory are crying out for a song together along the lines of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' in High Society but it's right they don't get one, however. There's the same kind of logic we see with Family Guy, where Stewie the baby can talk with Brian the dog, and the dog can converse with everyone but Stewie can't as he's the baby, only with the dog, I mean it's mad but it obeys the rules of its own universe, time machine and all. So see Max and the Baroness in song would wreck the suspension of disbelief, it also suggests they are not morally entitled to one.
This time round I realised that Max would normally be played as a gay guy, the woman's best friend, a gossip, a laugh with a slightly naughty inconsequentially immoral side, all the lines point to that but the actor does not play him that way at all and it's only decades down the line the thought occurs that he would be the Jack in Will & Grace character, or Rupert Everett in one of his romantic comedies.
Last year, just as BBC4 recently showed A Star is Born with printed inserts in place of where scenes had been deleted, its showing of The Sound of Music reinserted lost scenes - the Alpine shootout finale at the Nazi lair happened up on by the von Trapps, where the young kids are able to show off their Ninja skills and flame-flowing abilities, and the white-haired von Trapp house keeper has a particularly nasty Irma Bunt moment. I think there must have been a furore about that - traditionally here in the UK we prefer the closing shot of the Captain leading his family across the mountains to the strains of Climb Every Mountain, but it's all a matter of taste of course.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
For those who don't know this is a version of Charles Dickens' famous story with Michael Caine as Scrooge and the muppets in most of the other roles. It's one of my favourite Christmas movies! Part of what makes it great is how the muppets do what they do best with songs, dance and jokes, but Caine plays everything straight as if he was on a theatre stage. "God bless us, every one!"
Speaking of Caine..
MY GENERATION (2017)
Documentary about sixties swinging London narrated by Michael Caine. There’s a few old interviews of Sir Michael and some of his chums, plus contemporary off-camera chat with icons of the age such as Twiggy, David Bailey, Roger Daltrey, Paul McCartney and Marianne Faithful. It doesn’t really tell you much you didn’t already know – unless, of course, you don’t know because you’ve never seen any other similar documentaries. It starts with all the drab 1950s British social class system, goes into the angry young man and woman period of the early sixties, through the mid-decade counter culture revolution and into the decline and fall, tactfully avoiding the real hedonists and not even touching on what it felt like to be an ordinary guy or gal on the street. It’s all very well Michael Caine discussing the sixties with his other successful pals, but what about the people who really lived and worked and grew up in it? That’d be a real story to tell, this one just regurgitates old stories and anecdotes we’ve already heard, dresses them up in pretty colours and adds music of the time, but not at the right times. Interesting, but not deep enough to be relevant.
Yeah. I got that out on DVD a while ago. It does sort of put the idea out that Swinging London was a small subset of London and not really anywhere else. The late 60s Carry On Camping intriguingly contradicts that notion, as our mates Sid and Bernie seek to sabotage a 'cool' festival taking place at an adjacent camping site, with the implicit assumption that the predominant working class audience would approve of our mates putting one over the fey and phoney hippy crowd, presumably fans of Strawberry Fields et al.
Caine was a bit older than that crowd... his flatmate Terence Stamp once indiscreetly suggesting in an interview much later that Caine was actually older than he made out by raising his hand a bit when his age was suggested. Which means he must be really old now. Perhaps Caine is like Dalton, it suggested in a TV Times magazine letter in the late 80s as The Living Daylights was premiered from a schoolboy contemporary of his echoing another letter that our Bond pal was more like 47 when he took over as Bond than early 40s as claimed. This point has never, ever been taken up by anyone ever since.
I recall the days when the movie premiere of a Bond movie would make the front pages of TV Times, with a programme on ITV devoted to it, with interviews with cast members. So it was with For Your Eyes Only, not sure if that happened after that. OP had a special documentary devoted to past Bond movies to crowd out the upcoming NSNA, although it was also a 21st anniversary thing.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I saw 'The Eagle Has Landed' the other day. Unfortunately tiredness meant I fell asleep at the part where Michael Caine met the American officer.
I did see an interesting film last night called 'Peanut Butter Falcon'. This is not my usual type of film but I fount it to be good and I recommend it to anyone who has not seen it before.
Kursk/The command (2018)
Thsi movie is about the disaster in the year 2000 when Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents sea. It shows what was done to save the survivors of the explosion, what their families experienced and what the survivors in the sunken submarine may have exprienced. The movie is directed by Thomas Vinterberg. The Danish director made Mads Mikkelsen known internationally in "The Hunt" and later made the excelent "Another round" with him. The main cast is European, but not Russian. Matthias Schoenaerts plays one of the men in the sunken sub. He's from Belgium and you may have seen him in movies like Red Sparrow, "A hidden life" and "The Danish girl". His wife is played by Lea Seydoux, who in my opinion delivers one of her best performances in this movie. She was pregnant while filming it and that's used in the movie. Colin Firth plays commadore David Russell, the British navy officer who organised the non-Russian efforts to save the Kursk crew. The movie was based on Russell's book. The accident happened not long after Putin became president of Russia and early scripts include him. Putin was written out of the movie, possibly to avoid the movie company becoming the target of hackers who definitely wouldn't be working for Russian secret service.
I think the movie is good and well worth being watched. The actiong is really good and Videberg tells the story well, especially the claustrophobic scenes inside the sunken submarine.
The king's man (2021)
I'm so brave I watched this movie in a cinema! 😁
This is a prequel to the Kingsman movies set before and during WWI. It's directed and co-written by Mathew Vaughn, It stars Ralphe Fiennes as the nobleman Oxford, Dijimon Hounsou, Gemma Arterton and many others. I think a period setting fits the Kingsman consept well and the Kingsman movies really needed an origin story unlike many other franchises. In some ways this is the best Kingsman movie, partly because Vaughn has toned down the gross-out humour and focuses more on story. If he tones down his overactive camera tricks this bodes well for his chances as a future Bond director. I don't know if it increases his chanses, but Vaughn is now working on a movie about a "the world's greatest spy'Argylle' as he's caught up in a globe-trotting adventure". It's intended to start a franchise and the movie even stars Henry Cavill!
This movie certainly is fun and inventive, but it occationally finds the gravitas too. But it's ironic in a movie that wants to be a pacifist movie about a pacifist the heroes constantly works to involve more countries in WWI!
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The 1930s version with Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara.
This is the kind of film that's never shown on telly these days - no idea why, it's brilliant. Hardly a dull moment in it, some great aerial shots of medieval Paris. Surprisingly topical too, perhaps making a point about itinerant Jews in 1930s Europe and comparing their lot with that of the Romanian gypsies depicted here, faced with barriers thrown up against their entrance into various countries. Some mixed messages about whether they're all as lovely as. young Maurueen, who plays Esmerelda, or actually a horde of thieves and vagabonds as their reputation suggests. Much comment on the fickle nature of the public, and the supposed attractions of the printing press (i.e. internet) for forming opinion, espoused by the French King who is made out to be a loveable, liberal old boy.
I recall this film being a real afternoon's entertainment on telly back in my youth, now you have to seek it out on DVD. I recommend you do so, the direction really is quite up to the mark, it's a lot more sophisticated than The Scarlet Pimpernel, shot a bit earlier and with similar settings, but dogged by slow direction sometimes and an absence of soundtrack (though
I do love that film, not least because of its three central players, Leslie Howard, Merle Oberon and Raymond Massey.)
Roger Moore 1927-2017
HOT ENOUGH FOR JUNE (1964)
Following up @caractacus potts splendid review [https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1032172#Comment_1032172] I thought I’d add my penny’s worth. I too am also visiting the movies on Mike Richardson’s list of fifty must-sees from his Guns, Girls and Gadgets. It’s a great read by the way. I had not seen Hot Enough for June for decades.
Dirk Bogarde encapsulated the English fish-out-of-water better than anyone at this period of his career. He’d played it so often in the fifties, starting with Doctor in the House, that he almost typecast himself. Luckily Joseph Losey’s brilliantly accomplished The Servant, one of the best British films of the sixties, stopped all that. Unfortunately, Bogarde still needed money, so despite reservations he teamed up again with the Doctor production team of Sidney and Betty Box and director Ralph Thomas for this slimline stroll of suspense and farce set in Eastern Europe.
Bogarde plays Nicholas Whistler, an unemployed writer handpicked by Robert Morley’s ponderous pontificator Colonel Cunliffe to be sent as a courier to Prague where he’s to collect secret stolen information. Cunliffe neglects to inform Whistler he’s a spy, preferring to let the hapless writer believe he’s landed a managerial position with an international firm of glass-blowers. Whistler’s given a huge salary (£2000, huge in 1964) plus expenses and sent to Prague with the password ‘Hot Enough for June’ and orders to exchange copies of a Czechoslovak guide book. Morley’s so off hand about it all, you almost believe him. The famous Hitchcockian McGuffin – here, secrets in guide books – obviously proves Whistler’s undoing. Not only does he know nothing about glass, he makes a fairly average spy, finding himself unable to locate his contact while not seeming to realise the situation he’s got himself involved in or its dangers. Cunliffe does; he doesn’t even expect him to come back: “There are openings all the time,” he cryptically tells his new employee.
The film is prefaced by a short scene during which John Le Mesurier deposits a bagful of personal possessions to a clerk. They all appear to be the tools of a working spy’s trade, including an automatic pistol, several passports and a shoe with a hollow heel. The clerk stores the bag and its goods in a locker marked OO7, but turns the card so it reads DECEASED. Exactly how the producers got away with this three-second snippet I’ll never know. Cubby Broccoli’s all-seeing-eye must have been temporarily blinded. In fact, the early familiarities do not end there. Whistler’s interview is in a building whose plaque reads STANDARD EXPORTS LTD – clearly a nod to Ian Fleming’s Universal Exports – and the secretary’s office is set up almost exactly like Moneypenny’s in reverse. Even the secretary shares some of Lois Maxwell’s candour. Cunliffe’s office is a bigger, brighter version of M’s, a huge desk, big windows; it’s all tremendously homely, very familiar, as if the filmmakers really are trying to rip off James Bond.
Padua stands in for Prague, but we don’t really notice. The humour, which had been light, starts to get laboured as Whistler encounters several red herrings at the glass factory. Luckily he’s aided by a sexy chauffeur, Vlasta Simenova, played with her usual slinky sensual skill by the beautiful Sylvia Koscina, who featured in several Euro-Spy thrillers of the sixties. She’s delightful here swapping comparisons between British and Soviet society with her attractive passenger. Their dinner scene jars, the farcical element once more proving a downfall. The scene starts elegantly. We’ve learnt Vlasta is an agent of the security services, but she’s ambitious and wants to entrap Whistler herself. She attempts to sit at a table which isn’t bugged – the microphone is in the floral display, a neat ruse reimagined from Fleming’s short story For Your Eyes Only and similar to the one we see in the 1981 film version – and later she pours wine on the recording system to foil her superiors. While I understand entirely what’s happening here, and the humorous intent, a little more sophistication of the kind Bond films display would elevate this scene to such a higher plain. As it stands, tipping the glass is treated as a heavy-handed comic highlight when it should be a gentle, knowing, enigmatic twinkle of fingers, eyes and lips.
Much better is Whistler’s seduction of Vlasta, or is it the other way around?, the double entendres coming fast and loose and the sex sealed with an erotic kiss through a satin curtain, the analogy clear: the wall really is being torn down. After love, Bogarde’s character says exactly that. Some discreet rear-view and hip-high nudity is eye opening for an A-certificate in 1964. The two agents make a very sexy couple.
Unfortunately, Vlasta’s father is the head of the Czech Security Service. Colonel Simenova is played by a gruff and quite excellent Leo McKern. The scenes where he succinctly puts down his subordinates contrasts delightfully with the off-hand old school tie banter of Morley and Le Mesurier. Both chiefs are dealing with incompetence. When they meet in the British Embassy, Cunliffe flying out fearing he’s lost another agent, the two actors come into their own, drinking whiskey and dismissing the plight of their underlings with the toss of an ice cube. They are not dissimilar. Even their offices both feature a map with flags to represent the locations of their agents.
Whistler’s almost arrested, but escapes with some ingenuity. With Vlasta’s assistance, he goes on the run, finally making it to the British Embassy and safety. These scenes share an equal burden of suspense and humour and the film loses its way a bit, uncertain whether to be earnest or funny, eventually occupying the middle ground and not succeeding being either. Whistler is certainly more adaptable and capable than he initially appeared, but the situations the screenwriter puts him into skew the serious espionage towards spare jollity. Getting dressed up in Tyrolese mountain britches doesn’t help. Lionel Davidson’s original novel The Night of Wenceslas was deadly serious fare and he must have been tremendously disappointed. The film ends on a pleasant note of reconciliation for all. The McGuffin has been conveniently forgotten by everyone.
I enjoyed Hot Enough for June without ever being enthralled. It’s a solid product of the era, one of the earliest Bond spoofs, along with Carry On Spying, and is most interesting for alluding to James Bond, yet making no conscious effort to impersonate him, a liberal attitude to sex excepted. It’s a traditional affair with willing performances from the four leads and might have worked better as a more traditional espionage film. The humour works best when it’s in the dialogue. As soon as Bogarde is asked to pull faces and spit out passwords while numerous Czech’s admire his travel guide, you sense the film’s out of its depth, both as comedy and as thriller.
you probably already knew more about the history of these actors than I did, but did you find having Guns, Girls and Gadgets helped you better appreciate the film?
I don't think it did. The book is heavy on location, casting and production details including some historical context and very interesting because of it. However, it lacks an overall critical eye. There is little or no attempt to offer an authorial opinion on the films. There are short sections for each facet of a film and appreciative words are used where appropriate, usually by referencing other sources. I believe Mike's been extremely careful to avoid giving an opinion on how successful or not he personally considers each film. For instance, there's no indication Mike read the novel The Night of Wenceslas on which this movie is based. If he did, he doesn't offer any extracts or insight to compare the film and book, or suggest it is good or bad adaptation. There are Trivia and Awards sections, so you can judge some of the industry reactions to each movie. It's a very balanced book but can be a bit overwhelming at times. I perhaps might have preferred to see more evidence regarding the cultural impact of these movies, and he does touch on this, but at over 700 pages, the book is more an in-depth referencing guide and not a critical analysis. For that, we can always go elsewhere.
The man who never was (1956)
Since there's a new movie about Operation Mincemeat (Operation Mincemeat - Wikipedia) I was inspired to watch the first movie about this bizzare secret operation dreamt up by Ian Fleming himself. The 1956 movie is based on a book by Captain Ewen Montagu, RNVR, the man who planned the operation. But because of dramatic reasons and details that were secret until 1998 many aspects aren't hsitorically correct. However the raw bones of the operation are correct. Particularely like the scene in the morgue where the clothes, identity papers and personal effects of the "officer" are placed on the dead body while we can hear the bombing of London above. The many made up scenes don't bother me at all because they work so well.
There's some great trivia about this movie:
I enjoyed the movie a lot and I reccomend watching it. You can find it here: The Man Who Never Was 1956 - Clifton Webb, Gloria Grahame, Stephen Boyd, Josephine Griffin - Bing video
so what did Connery do in his spare time at the height of BondMania?
The Hill, 1965
directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, etc). This film'll give you something to shout "Attica! Attica! Attica!" about.
Connery plays tank commander Sgt Major Joe Roberts, sentenced to military prison for punching an officer and disobeying an order. He felt his men were being sent on a suicide mission, and indeed his men were all killed after a different Sgt replaced him for the mission. Now he is being punished for cowardice and insubordination.
The prison is said to be in the Libyan desert, but the location is actually in the south of Spain, similar enough climate. The prisoners are forced to exercise in the extreme heat all day long, to crush their spirit and teach them discipline. For punishment, a manmade hill has been built in the middle of the yard which prisoners must run up and over again and again until they drop, then roused by a bucketful of water and forced to continue. The film opens with a spectacular long helicopter shot showing a prisoner collapse on the hill, then pulling out to reveal the prison yard and the hundreds of prisoners exercising as the various characters are introduced.
The thing is, from what I'm reading, Lumet was forcing his actors in real life to endure much the same extreme physical punishment as the fictional authorities were inflicting on the prisoners within the film.
Fifteen minutes in, after establishing the situation, new prisoner Connery arrives and is singled out for particular humiliation because of the nature of his crime. His cellmates are drunkards and scrappers and thieves, he's the only one who's challenged the command structure. His cellmates suffer alongside him merely by the chance of proximity, and initially resent him for it.
The same day Connery arrives, a new guard also arrives, played by Ian Hendy (Dr Keel from the first season of The Avengers), and is put in charge of Connery and his cellmates. A real bastard, he drives the weakest cellmate to his death, and this is where the general prison population begin to turn against their guards.
Best performance is from Ossie Davis, the one black prisoner in the cell, who endures racist abuse from both guards and cellmates until he strips off his uniform and declares he is henceforth a civilian and the military have no right to speak to him.
The ending is left to our imaginations in the middle of what should be a conventionally moral resolution, as defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory, yet it all seems inevitable in this sadistic and claustrophobic world. The chance of a happy ending was an illusion, safer not to hope.
This is an incredible escape from typecasting for Connery. Instead of enjoying a glamourous life carrying out missions on behalf of Her Majesty's Secret Service, here he is a career soldier declaring these rules and discipline should have gone out with Queen Victoria, challenging the official authorities and inciting mob riot. He brings his usual alpha male presence yet employs it for anti-authoritarian subversion. And he skipped the Goldfinger premiere to make this film!
The look of this film is about as far from a BondFilm as you could get. There is not a note of music, and dialog is often muffled by the ambient noise of the hundreds of prisoners continuously exercising in the background. Film is in black and white, with extreme unflattering close ups of the characters, drenched in sweat and covered in flies. And though the location is very large, as explored in the opening shot, it is essentially a one set play.
@caractacus potts You can read my review of The Hill here. It's a great movie. https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1009586#Comment_1009586