A good soundtrack can make a huge difference to a film, all of my favourite films have soundtracks I love. They just go hand in hand together to complete the package.
@caractacus potts, if you really want to get technical about it, you could argue that The Naked Time (the 4th episode to air) had the first use of time travel since the maneuver the Enterprise uses at the end to escape its decaying orbit also creates a time warp that sends them two days back into the past. The same maneuver was later used in Assignment Earth, another time travel episode, when the Enterprise travels back to the late 1960s to observe events of the Cold War.
It’s hard to know what to say when a film so blatantly wants us to believe it is telling the story as the original author wrote it, yet it has so blatantly decided not to tell that story.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a mess from start to finish. Director Francis Ford Coppola clearly hadn’t done any research into what makes a horror movie successful. He’s gone for huge operatic scenes and sets and a romantic across-the-centuries fairy tale love story. Place these against the rather good make up and creature effects and the embarrassing sexual subtext – which should always be there, but isn’t a subtext at all here, more a dominant in-your-face theme – and your struggling to find a heart and soul. Is Dracula a despicable devil or a suave hopeless romantic? Is Mina a devoted fiancé or a young woman lusting after a foreign prince? It doesn’t help that the script can’t decide who the story is about, so the point of view changes from Harker, to Mina, to Lucy, to Dracula, to Van Helsing with annoying rapidity. Eventually it settles on Mina, just about, but even then Anthony Hopkins' maniacal Professor of the Dark Arts overwhelms everything. He’s just awful in this. So too Keanu Reeves, who looks about as uncomfortable as you’d expect him to look; this is not an actor who can do costume drama – I remember Dangerous Liaisons. Sadie Frost, terrible. Cary Elwes, terrible. Billy Campbell, terrible. Richard E. Grant, terrible. Winona Ryder, bearably terrible. Gary Oldman, occasionally terrible. Tom Waits, not bad.
The story is jumbled all over the place, doesn’t take account of time and distance, has its characters make some preposterous decisions and even has the temerity to relocate the action to London. So definitely not Bram Stoker’s Dracula then. There is some good stuff. Dracula licking blood from a razor was itching. The scenes shot from a wolf’s point of view were eye-catching. The film doesn’t have the claustrophobic tension of the best horror movies and despite some bloody moments, it lacks genuine shock appeal. Most of wickedness on display has been seen before. Latterly, the movie turns into a western. Odd. Overall, it’s a long-winded uncomfortable view.
The photography doesn’t help matters. At times it looks unreal, so overloaded with primary red and greens. It’s tremendously dark. Probably the intention, but it isn’t clear why this should be so. The music is a thunderous drawl, not helped by a dull Annie Lennox song. To illustrate how poor this production is, during a seduction scene, it is quite clear that Winona Ryder is wearing flimsy white bikini slip panties under her nightgown, an article of clothing which simply didn’t exist in 1897. If you’re going to go all-out for big operatic detail, you need to get every specific right or you just end up looking lazy.
ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA (1977)
A film which gets a terrible rap from most critics, but isn’t as bad as all that. There’s a black mark against the American actors who play the Romanian characters and can’t even be bothered to put on an accent, but otherwise this is a sturdy, if unattractive, horror movie set in Bear Lake, California.
Jose Ferrer has fallen a long way from his Oscar winning days, but he gamely plays Inspector Branco, expert on the supernatural who is called in when the Romanian military accidentally uncovers Dracula’s tomb. He arrives too late: a vampire servant and a devil dog have been freed by an unsuspecting sentry and fled the scene. Branco knows the only surviving linage to the Count is Michael Drake, orphaned and sent to live in America. Drake is not aware of his vampiric roots, but he has some memorabilia which stir vivid flashbacks. Unfortunately, he’s taken his family on a camping trip at precisely the moment Zoltan and his Master tip up demanding his jugular.
If putting kids and little puppies in danger is your kind of thing, this is right up your street for an hour, then it turns gamely vicious on us as a horde of snarling hounds attack Branco and Drake in a fisherman’s cabin. This was an effective piece of action which has atmosphere and menace seeping through every second. Escaping with their lives, Branco and Drake are later attacked in their car – a scene which has all the terrifying nightmares of being caught in a lion feeding frenzy at a safari park. Very good stuff, bloodily resolved.
Gore a plenty. The excellent sound effects are by Sam Shaw. Albert Band directs with speed and efficiency.
An over-repeated treat, but as I hadn’t watched a really enjoyable movie for a while, I thought I’d dip an idle toe into the water. The word iconic gets overused, but this light as a feather caper movie really does have a trio of authentic movie moments which are never forgotten, oft-imitated and rarely bettered.
First is a car chase through the streets, sewers, lakes and rooftops of Turin featuring three colourful Mini Coopers and a host of stunts which at the time put almost every chase to shame except those in Goldfinger and Bullitt. We see these sorts of sequences often now, and this version looks distinctly tame in comparison, but it wasn’t so in 1969. The ground-breaking nature of the scenes, with their stunts, comic asides, shifting landscapes and sheer length is what makes the movie required viewing. The project looks as if the producers went on holiday to Turin and said: “You know what, I could film a brilliant car chase here.” Without dwelling on it, the sequence is fun and innovative.
Then there’s the cliff-hanger ending, which had probably been done before, or a version of it, but never so elegantly and with such an uplifting music score to boot. Quincy Jones came up trumps here. For an American, he seemed to hit the British and European pulse on the button, serving up a jazz and soft-blues influenced soundtrack which touches on traditional British patriotic songs and climaxes with the cast singing a cockney knees up Get A Bloomin’ Move On (a.k.a. The Self-Preservation Society). The ridiculousness of the thieves situation is highlighted by the song and also allows the audience to leave with a smile, even though the predicament is unresolved. I must add too that the opening titles play out over Matt Monro singing the classic lounge ballad On Days Like These – one of Don Black’s best lyrics, one of Monro’s best vocal performances. They of course are both ours.
So car chases and music, big tick. Script doing well, tick. The final dialogue is brilliant, but throughout Michael Caine gets to deliver a series of one-liners which seem designed to reinforce his Alfie image as a cheeky, sexually available, street smart chappie. “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” became so associated with Caine he even used it for the title of his autobiography. His performance is one of his best and most, dare I say it, iconic. It has been parodied and impersonated so many times, and many times by Caine himself, that the beauty of his original star turn has been virtually forgotten. He’s only hampered by the curtailed script. A host of supporting performances from the world of British and Italian thespianism give him more than capable assistance. Noel Coward’s imprisoned gangster Mr Bridger is the highlight – surely the inspiration for Peter Vaughn’s Harry Grout in Porridge – but Benny Hill is a delight and John le Mesurier and Irene Handl step in when necessary. Raf Vallone brings a touch of seriousness to proceedings as a Mafioso.
The film looks lovely, especially in widescreen, all those Italian Alps, beautifully photographed by Douglas Slocombe. It has a comic appeal as well as an adventurous one, which all the best capers do, and every circumstance has a gentle humour exercising itself in the fore or background. The film doesn’t overstay its welcome. Yes, there are obvious plot holes, but sometimes these things just don’t matter. Writer Troy Kennedy Martin created Z Cars and this feels a world away from that dreary television existence. Peter Collinson was an up and coming director at the time, but he never quite made it as big as he ought to have done. This is his best and most accessible achievement hands down.
I don’t really have to comment much more, I already feel as if I have overstayed my welcome, as you probably don’t need me to tell you how good this movie is. There was no need to remake it and the 2003 version wasn’t any better; different, but not better.
Directed by Michael Tuchner, 'Villain' sits very much in the shadow of 'Get Carter'. It's half way between that film, Mike Hodges' epoch-defining masterpiece, and TV's 'The Sweeney' in exploring British post-industrial ennui through the lens of crime drama. A groggy looking Richard Burton plays Vic Dakin, the cockney London gangster who's like a composite of the Krays, devoted to his old Mum but brutally cutting up grasses and indulging a sadomasochistic gay relationship with bisexual underworld chancer Wolfe (Ian McShane).
Scripted by writers better known at the time for TV comedy, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the film boasts a supporting cast of fine British character actors of the period, including Nigel Davenport and Colin Welland as the detectives, Donald Sinden as a corrupt MP, Joss Ackland, T. P. McKenna and Tony Selby as villains and James Cossins (TMWTGG's Colthorpe) as a disgruntled clerk, the inside man on a robbery job.
A point of trivia for Ian Fleming fans. There's a scene where Burton's Dakin is sitting on Brighton pier, on a day out with his Mum. Sidekick Selby has just bought her a carton of fresh whelks and Davenport and Welland are about to move in to arrest Dakin. The book he's reading as he's relaxing on the pier? A dog-eared Pan paperback of Fleming's 'The Diamond Smugglers'. Excellent reading material for a villain!
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Decades on, it occurred to me that they don't really have to do that stunt where the minis go up the ramps and into the coach while on the move. As they're not being chased at that point they could just stop the coach and do it that way.
I had to switch to watching this on Channel 4 rather than C4 HD where the sound wasn't quite right.
A movie continuation of the BBC TV series has detective John Luther chasing wealthy serial killer David Robey into the frozen Norwegian wastelands (actually filmed in Iceland). This plays out as the series did but with an added geographical location as it’s a movie. I liked the series and this keeps up the standard. Andy Serkis is terrifyingly good as the killer. Idris Elba has made the Luther into an interesting character over the years, he’s a good actor but him being touted as a future James Bond is laughable.
If you haven’t seen the series then it’s not worth watching, those who have will enjoy another episode in Luther’s life.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Intense psychological drama about an aspiring female disc jockey who, unable to get her music mixes played on the college radio station, takes up with the unorthodox all-girl acapella singing group and wreaks personal havoc for the team as she sleeps her way through the opposition, causing friction with her supposed girlfriends, who each want a piece of the action. Dad issues, girlfriend issues, boyfriend issues, all raise their ugly heads, each solved in turn by a bout of positive energy singing. A Harold Robbins inspired piece of fiction based around the real exploits of a college singing star. Phenomenally successful and controversial thanks to the full frontal shower and lesbian sex scene between Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow, as well as the copious drug and booze fuelled party antics of Rebel Wilson. Anna Camp is the damaged blonde bulimia victim forced to reconsider her leadership role as spunky Miss Kendrick rises to prominence on the back of, well, her back. The climax as the girls gyrate to Don’t You Forget About Me has all the subtlety of a night at the Hustler Club. Made on the cheap with actresses well past college age but lucky enough to still look college age, and with a soundtrack of dozens of popular songs, the film rode the waves of success and spawned too sequels of similar distaste.
I love Anna Kendrick, I really do.
This film has officially ruined The Breakfast Club for me.
This was journeyman director Vernon Sewell’s last film and spotting well known faces becomes the only enjoyable thing in it. Starring Derren Nesbitt (WhereEaglesDare) as Burke to Glynn Edward’s (Dave the barman from TV’s Minder) Hare as the real life grave robbers collect corpses for a doctor played by Harry Andrews ( TheHill ). Edwards’ real life wife Yootha Joyce (George&Mildred TV series) plays his wife here and Hammer film stars Yutte Stensgaard and Robin Hawdon turn up along with veteran actor James Hayter (The 39Steps). The totally inappropriate theme song and CarryOn style music does not help at all. The film is completely studio bound and the sets are the best thing in it. Some reasonably gory set pieces and lots of sex scenes in a brothel try to keep the viewer interested. The actors seem to be having a good time, so not all bad.
Interesting, for all the wrong reasons.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
A part-way relaunch of the Star Trek movie franchise that swiftly ushers in the cast of sequel television series Star Trek: the Next Generation which ceased transmission earlier in the same year after seven successful seasons.
That’s a show I never watched and this is a movie I thought I’d never seen, but as it progressed, I became more and more familiar with it and the final confrontation on a desert mountain top flickered through my imagination like the memories William Shatner relives inside the Nexus temporal distortion.
Yes, Captain Kirk is still in it. In fact, the film is probably at its best during an extended prelude that shows the destructive force of the Nexus field as it destroys two transport craft and damages an updated model of the Enterprise. During the mercy mission, the revered James T. Kirk finally meets his maker. Or does he?
Well, I’ve let the cat out of the bag now. The rest of the film is padded beyond belief and overstays its welcome by about an hour. This is basically nothing more than an extended episode of the television show and you can see where all the padding is: holodeck silliness, the android Data struggling with his emotions microchip, a Klingon infringement, even the inclusion of Kirk and all that stuff on the Nexus ‘planet’. The story hasn’t got the legs for such a long enterprise [sic]. Having said that, Malcolm McDowell is a passable villain and Patrick Stewart display much superiority and superior acting as Jean Luc Picard. Shatner does as Shatner always does. The film has humour and excitement as slight as its narrative.
I couldn’t understand why the scenes on board the Enterprise were so dark: do they not have light bulbs on board these 24th Century star cruisers? They used to in the 23rd century.
STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996)
Now this one really does interfere with history, for the benefit of the Federation of course. The Nexus temporal vortex featured in Generations is not alone in its time bending properties, evil cyborg empire the Borg project themselves through a homemade warp speed temporal vortex and end up orbiting Earth in the 21st century. The Borg aim to conquer the human race at its most weakest, following World War Three, and thus prevent the development of interstellar travel for humans and the proliferation of peace throughout the galaxies. Or something.
The Enterprise follows them through the wormhole, destroys their ship but inadvertently allows the Borg Queen to transport aboard and begin to wreak havoc. Captain Picard embarks on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with his arch-nemesis. Meanwhile an Earthbound posse led by Commander Riker is trying to sober up the drunken genius who discovered warp drive, lest the future cease to exist.
I’m not familiar with Next Generation lore, but having watched a lot of Dr Who recently, I can vouch there’s nothing new here, even the Doctor used to meddle and make quick getaways. The Borg do seem to be a more ruthless version of the Cybermen albeit with some central symbiotic intelligence. Nasty. Hats off to Dr Who then for providing both the villain and the time travel impetus for this movie.
A ponderous epic all-round, enlivened by the marvellous Borg creature effects and Alice Krieg’s turn as the nasty Queen. Among an unattractive cast, she’s the sexiest thing in it, which is peculiar, or maybe just peculiar of me. The humour doesn’t work. The action is tiresome. It feels what it is: two adventures for the price of one, overlapping and both as dull as each other.
theyre actually both former Shakespearian actors, Shatner used to perform at Stratford Ontario! I guess thats the way us colonists interpret Shakespeare so far from the source, styles having diverged over the centuries, having almost evolved into a whole separate skillset only barely resembling acting as you Brits know it
lets all watch the classic SNL parody Star Trek The Last Voyage, its probably better than these latter day movies
Belushi does an excellent Shatner (Chevy Chase as Spock and Dan Aykroyd as McCoy in case someone doesnt know the original SNL cast)
wow, I dont know Kevin Pollak but he's a spot-on impressionist! that Jack Nicholson was especially good. I didnt recognise who he cast as Scotty though.
in comparison, Belushi isnt really trying to do Shatner's voice, I dont think he ever really tried to do voices except for Brando. But he prided himself as an actor, and he's capturing Shatner's mannerisms. Aykroyd is very good with funny voices, and does both Scotty and Bones. And Chase is barely trying to do Spock, I dont think he was very good in the ensemble sketches, he was best in solo pieces when on SNL (and was usually just playing himself, even if billed as Gerald Ford).
Movies and television shows set during the latter days of the British Raj in India were all the rage in the early 1980s. Gandhi won a shed load of Oscars and rather spoilt it for everyone else. David Lean’s stately, longwinded and hopelessly miscast A Passage to India came along in 1984 and almost killed the historical cinematic subgenre off. In between those two epics of pomp and grandeur came this far more satisfying movie from the American director James Ivory and the Indian producer Ismael Merchant. Their regular collaborator was screenwriter and novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabwala. She’d won the 1975 Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust, and it was no surprise that Merchant-Ivory would eventually adapt it. Given the paltry budget, the movie is a miracle of photography, design, character, editing and narrative, essentials for the success of any movie.
Julie Christie plays Anne, a BBC researcher on sabbatical investigating the story of her great aunt Olivia Rivers. Olivia is the central figure of a 1920s society scandal involving the Nawab of Khatm, the nominal prince of Simla, a province in central India. Oliva, played with some reserve by Greta Scacchi, arrives to accompany her husband, Douglas Rivers, an Assistant Commissioner, but soon falls under the spell of the Indian community and its most prominent person, the Nawab. As Anne pursues the story, we flash backwards to her taped interviews with Harry Hamilton, and even further back to the events themselves. These stories become reflections of Anne’s own personal growth and strained relationships. Both women – great aunt and niece – share the same capacity for warmth, intrigue and lust, both also exhibit restraint and fortitude. While they are seduced in different fashions, they visit the same locations, citadels, mansions, holy places, cemeteries and gardens of Simla; and these evoke similar emotions in the tortured pair. They are both seeking their freedom from the conventions impressed upon them; conventions, and the people that support them, which have fundamentally let them down.
The film cross cuts the three strands effectively, although the narration perhaps overloads us too much. It does begin to feel like an editing device to shorten the runtime. Hamilton’s interview occupies us more and more when it really ought to occupy us less. This is just about forgivable, especially when the performances are universally so good. Julie Christie is as magnetic as always, displaying Anne’s vulnerability and neurosis with much fragility. As life and nature educates her, she becomes determinedly independent. We don’t see Olivia’s volte face so clearly. Greta Scacchi portrays her as an innocent abroad, yet she’s clever enough – and the director is clever enough – to make her deceptions less obvious; we feel her confusion. The Nawab’s out of tune piano becomes a metaphor for her own conscious, toying with her, out of tune with the Empire society. Scacchi displays this well. Sashi Kapoor is fine as the arrogant, flirtatious and mesmeric Nawab, who may or may not be in league with separatists. He’s certainly not fond of the English. Christopher Cazenove, Nicholas Grace, Julian Glover, Barry Foster, Jennifer Kendal, Susan Fleetwood and Patrick Godfrey inhabit these stiff-upper-lip types to perfection. Godfrey in particular demands attention, the epitome of the racist attitudes of the time, an outlook he also bestows with relish on the young Olivia Rivers: “She’s not right for this place.”
The scenes in modern India, all dust and chaos and poverty, reflect unfavourably against the relative calm and stability of the Raj, but the personal freedoms are apparent, which is what counts. Anne is as much an outsider as the English of the 1920s. An American Buddhist enters Anne’s world, but he’s sent home by the Indian doctor with as much of an admonishment as Olivia is given by Dr Saunders. These people, who want to assimilate, simply don’t belong. Anne, who doesn’t want to, is drawn irrevocably to the people and places the meets. Eventually, she too, like Olivia, finds a reason to stay.
The film plays without subtitles, allowing Indian actors to perform without being stilted. Some of the best scenes come when the English and the Indian dialogue overlaps and, as in real life, the characters and the audience have to feel their way around what is happening.
Heat and Dust is beautifully presented. Costumes and sets are superb. Many genuine locations are used or reimagined with dignity. The set design and attention to detail is marvellous, highlighted by Walter Lassally’s bright and craving photography. Humphrey Dixon’s editing demands our attention as he cuts back and forth between story arcs without so much as a by-your-leave. It’s a shock when the film concentrates for twenty minutes on the 1920s setting, one that lulls us into the period and the rising heat of disturbed latent passion, countered by the similar occurrences in the modern day. The screenplay perhaps isn’t brave enough – although it won awards – and those long voice overs at the end really should have been cut, but James Ivory directs with a steady, watchful hand and draws out a series of fine performances from a long cast. Only Charles McCaughan’s Chid hits a bum-note.
The film is engaging on an intellectual and an emotional level, while playing its sensational cards close to its chest. The film may be a visual treat, but Ivory and Jhabwala sensibly withdraw from many scenes leaving us itching for the invisible. The strength of the film lies in what is unspoken and unseen, what we, like Anne, have to interpret from between the lines and letters, between Harry Hamilton’s words, the unsaid sentences between Olivia and the Nawab in Kashmir, the cracks and crinkles at the colonial museum, the prayers at the temples, the silence of a smoking cigarette, the stillness of the nights, the pallor of heat and dust.
Oh, I don’t know, is this one that bad? Yeah, it probably is.
Insurrection kicks off with Data going robot crazy on an idyllic planet, observed by Federation spies. It all looks distinctly shifty and pretty soon Captain Picard is uncovering a secret operation to relocate the peace-loving Ba’ku and use the life extending properties of the planet’s solar rings to help save a renegade race known as the Son’a. These grey skinned aliens are distinctly low par. The bizarre make-up is extremely unrealistic, especially considering what we eventually learn about them. The story sorts itself out quite nicely. Rudimentary special effects suffice. Picard is provided with a chaste love interest. There’s a scene where, full of the joy of youth once more, he dances a samba and you can feel Patrick Stewart’s animated alter-ego Avery Bullock [from American Dad] screaming to be released. Meanwhile, Commander Riker and Counsellor Troi get it on in a bath full of soap suds. Yikes. Licence to Kill’s Anthony Zerbe crops up as a Federation Admiral and meets another horrific death at the hands of the villain. The underlying theme of diaspora is raised and then promptly forgotten among the laser battles and star ship combat. The whole exercise, despite a movie-sized budget feels like a television show.
Well, I watched it, I suppose.
STAR TREK: NEMESIS (2002)
One of ours wrote this. John Logan, he of Skyfall and Spectre, crops up on the screenplay credits. That aside, there isn’t must to interest us other than laser battles, star ship collisions, weapons of mass destruction and an evil clone of Jean Luc Picard. For good measure, there’s also a double of Brent Spiner’s android Data. In fact, despite the presence of the full Next Generation crew nobody other than Spiner and Patrick Stewart seems very interested. This might be down to a screenplay that can’t give enough for them all to do. One of the beauties of the Original Series was the focus on the trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy; the other characters willingly supported this central axis. Here, even more so than the previous few entries, that trio doesn’t exist and the cast is floundering in space, just like the stricken Enterprise.
This time out there is a rarely seen foray for the Romulans, but Nemesis is really all about Picard and Data and their buddy-buddy relationship, one which mirrors that of Kirk and Spock. Here, Data confirms his understanding of the human natures known as duty and self-sacrifice, but not before saving the life of his captain three times. There’s some decent support from Tom Hardy as the clone Shinzon. He at least attempts to add gravitas to the proceedings, but it is hard going.
This entry into the series seems to want to take a leaf out of George Lucas’ latter-day Star Wars book and labours meticulously over the action. Luckily, humanity remains the central core theme of Star Trek, not some kind of ethereal ‘force’. The movie rumbles along without any major hiccups. The usual plot holes abound. It takes an age to get going, but once the climax arrives it delivers on its promises far better than most of the recent adventures.
A portly Russell Crowe terrorises a young mother after she antagonises him in an innocuous incident whilst driving. If you can suspend your disbelief in the lack of police reaction to the ongoing narrative then this pulpy thriller will pass 90 minutes nicely. It doesn’t add anything new to the genre but it’s all done competently.
Average.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
XXX 2: The Next Level (2005) should have starred Vin Diesel and been directed by Rob Cohen, who helmed the impressive XXX, but both dropped out to be replaced by Ice Cube and our own Lee Tamahori. It is a loud, noisy disaster that does what you would expect but is hampered by an atrocious script and an array of dodgy CGI stunts – and you’d think Mr Tamahori might have learnt something from Die Another Die.
Twelve years on we get XXX: The Return of Xander Cage which made a fortune off the back of a returning star in Vin Diesel, but it also has the benefit of lodging a tongue firmly in its cheek and mocking its own ridiculousness – chiefly by suggesting Brazilian soccer star Neymar could become a member of the XXX brigade. Over the years it seems Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr Gibbons has recruited a lot of special agents with special talents for disruption, infiltration and kick-ass chaos. A total of nine put in appearances here and the movie is a right royal festival of fighting, chasing, blowing stuff up and ogling barely naked women [especially Hermione Corfield…] Yippee!
A whole load of trash talk, a completely pointless plot about a satellite hijacking thingmajig, an incomprehensible twist in the tail, and a movie that repeats almost verbatim the scenarios we saw in the first instalment, but a whole load of giggling fun nonetheless. The climatic gunbattle labours a bit, but has the benefit of a neat cameo to save the day. Nobody really cares too much about how good or bad a job they do. This is one for the CGI guys too, but things have moved on a lot from 2005 and the effects here are primed for our astonishment. The skateboard and bike surfing stunts are simply amazing, even though we know they are fake, and the fight on the freeway above, on top, below and alongside fast moving cars is a highlight of fantastic combat choreography and heart in your mouth shocks. Hats off!
Look, I don’t think anyone is expecting to take this very seriously, so don’t. An outrageously enjoyable, good looking and hopelessly daft 100 minutes of utter blind mayhem. A healthy round of applause!
I've always liked this series more than most of the rest of the MCU. The movie is inventive, playful, irreverent and has a little bit of seriousness. The music is great. The anti-testing on animals message is just a side story, but still manages to be too heavy-handed. I also found the movie to be a little too long and the ending too saccharine for this series. I can still recommend the movie and in my opinion it's still better than most of the MCU.
While I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy I've been tired of superhero movies for a long time now. Popcorn movies are fine, but where are the big dramas? In the past we had movies like Philadelphia (AIDS), Platoon (Vietnam), Dead man walking (the death penalty) and The Dictator (the rise of Hitler). Why don't the best screenwriters, directors and actors tackle issues like the opioid crisis, the migration issue and the politically divided USA? There are a few examples ("Don't look up!"), but I'd like there to be more.
Exactly right. There aren't any movies I fancy seeing at the cinema these days. They used to do gritty, sexy state-of-the-nation flicks, or seemed to. There isn't much choice now.
Absolutely. A smart comedy about the device politics, a social drama about opioid addiction, a multiple point of view drama from both sides of the border. It could be great if it was made by the right people. In the meantime some of the best actors are churning out superhero movies .... 😒
A long, long time ago an exploration spacecraft from a galaxy far away crash lands on Earth, 65 million years ago. Coincidentally, this timing corresponds with the exact time that the huge asteroid that decimated the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs is about to strike. Can the surviving pair of astronauts make their way to an escape pod on a nearby mountain in time, evading the prehistoric animals in their way?
I’m being a bit harsh with the summary as Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt are pretty good in what is virtually a two-hander movie. The effects are fine but there is a strange lack of tension. But it moves quickly enough and there are dinosaurs, so what’s not to like?
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The Man From UNCLE boss Leo G Carroll is a scientist experimenting in rapid growth nutrients to help feed a growing world population. We see large rabbits, hamsters, rats and a tarantula spider. Why he’s experimenting on these largely inedible creatures (ok, people do eat rabbit) isn’t explained, but when the spider escapes and keeps growing, it goes on the rampage. Director Jack Arnold was no stranger to these sort of films and always delivered a decent movie. This movie has become famous for including Clint Eastwood in an early role as an Air Force pilot sent to destroy the spider. The special effects are good for the period and it all runs at a fast pace.
An enjoyable 80 minutes.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Nigel Kneale, British television’s foremost science fiction writer, penned the screenplay for this adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel concerning elementary space travel. His original screenplay was doctored by several others before special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen was satisfied he could work with it. The result is ham-fisted, not so much laced with crass humour as ladled with it. Chief culprit is Lionel Jeffries as Joseph Cavor, a dotty professor to send up all dotty professors. He’s created an anti-gravity compound called Cavorite and plans to use it to coat his space sphere and propel it all the way to the moon. He’s lacking funds, so dim-wit playwright Arnold Bedford [Edward Judd] mortgages his house and contributes to the cost, thinking it will make him rich and famous. He forgets to mention he doesn’t own the house. Kate, his girlfriend, is not happy with that and accidentally ends up berating him at take-off, resulting in three people making it all the way to the moon. Poor Martha Hyer, saddled with co-stars who are either overacting to the degree they become exceedingly irritating or play a character so dishonest and uncouth you wonder why she fell for him. The first hour of this slice of fantasy Victoriana is almost unbearable. Things brighten up considerably once the journeymen make it to the moon and uncover the civilisation of the insectoid Selenites. Some of these creatures are men in suits, some are Harryhausen creations. An anti-war theme develops as Cavor gets all serious and attempts to understand the aliens, while Bedford turns action man, decides to rescue his girl and make a quick getaway. The effects are good. Many of the visual ideas were taken from NASA and RAF research into space flight. The film is bookended by an imaginary well-designed multinational moon landing, and initially it made me think First Men in the Moon would be better than it is.
Comments
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A good soundtrack can make a huge difference to a film, all of my favourite films have soundtracks I love. They just go hand in hand together to complete the package.
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
THE NANNY DIARIES (2007)
Bridget Jones for childcare workers. One more word: garbage.
It sounds it. They'll print anything these days! 😉
@caractacus potts, if you really want to get technical about it, you could argue that The Naked Time (the 4th episode to air) had the first use of time travel since the maneuver the Enterprise uses at the end to escape its decaying orbit also creates a time warp that sends them two days back into the past. The same maneuver was later used in Assignment Earth, another time travel episode, when the Enterprise travels back to the late 1960s to observe events of the Cold War.
Draculas, good and bad, or maybe not so good...
BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992)
It’s hard to know what to say when a film so blatantly wants us to believe it is telling the story as the original author wrote it, yet it has so blatantly decided not to tell that story.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a mess from start to finish. Director Francis Ford Coppola clearly hadn’t done any research into what makes a horror movie successful. He’s gone for huge operatic scenes and sets and a romantic across-the-centuries fairy tale love story. Place these against the rather good make up and creature effects and the embarrassing sexual subtext – which should always be there, but isn’t a subtext at all here, more a dominant in-your-face theme – and your struggling to find a heart and soul. Is Dracula a despicable devil or a suave hopeless romantic? Is Mina a devoted fiancé or a young woman lusting after a foreign prince? It doesn’t help that the script can’t decide who the story is about, so the point of view changes from Harker, to Mina, to Lucy, to Dracula, to Van Helsing with annoying rapidity. Eventually it settles on Mina, just about, but even then Anthony Hopkins' maniacal Professor of the Dark Arts overwhelms everything. He’s just awful in this. So too Keanu Reeves, who looks about as uncomfortable as you’d expect him to look; this is not an actor who can do costume drama – I remember Dangerous Liaisons. Sadie Frost, terrible. Cary Elwes, terrible. Billy Campbell, terrible. Richard E. Grant, terrible. Winona Ryder, bearably terrible. Gary Oldman, occasionally terrible. Tom Waits, not bad.
The story is jumbled all over the place, doesn’t take account of time and distance, has its characters make some preposterous decisions and even has the temerity to relocate the action to London. So definitely not Bram Stoker’s Dracula then. There is some good stuff. Dracula licking blood from a razor was itching. The scenes shot from a wolf’s point of view were eye-catching. The film doesn’t have the claustrophobic tension of the best horror movies and despite some bloody moments, it lacks genuine shock appeal. Most of wickedness on display has been seen before. Latterly, the movie turns into a western. Odd. Overall, it’s a long-winded uncomfortable view.
The photography doesn’t help matters. At times it looks unreal, so overloaded with primary red and greens. It’s tremendously dark. Probably the intention, but it isn’t clear why this should be so. The music is a thunderous drawl, not helped by a dull Annie Lennox song. To illustrate how poor this production is, during a seduction scene, it is quite clear that Winona Ryder is wearing flimsy white bikini slip panties under her nightgown, an article of clothing which simply didn’t exist in 1897. If you’re going to go all-out for big operatic detail, you need to get every specific right or you just end up looking lazy.
ZOLTAN, HOUND OF DRACULA (1977)
A film which gets a terrible rap from most critics, but isn’t as bad as all that. There’s a black mark against the American actors who play the Romanian characters and can’t even be bothered to put on an accent, but otherwise this is a sturdy, if unattractive, horror movie set in Bear Lake, California.
Jose Ferrer has fallen a long way from his Oscar winning days, but he gamely plays Inspector Branco, expert on the supernatural who is called in when the Romanian military accidentally uncovers Dracula’s tomb. He arrives too late: a vampire servant and a devil dog have been freed by an unsuspecting sentry and fled the scene. Branco knows the only surviving linage to the Count is Michael Drake, orphaned and sent to live in America. Drake is not aware of his vampiric roots, but he has some memorabilia which stir vivid flashbacks. Unfortunately, he’s taken his family on a camping trip at precisely the moment Zoltan and his Master tip up demanding his jugular.
If putting kids and little puppies in danger is your kind of thing, this is right up your street for an hour, then it turns gamely vicious on us as a horde of snarling hounds attack Branco and Drake in a fisherman’s cabin. This was an effective piece of action which has atmosphere and menace seeping through every second. Escaping with their lives, Branco and Drake are later attacked in their car – a scene which has all the terrifying nightmares of being caught in a lion feeding frenzy at a safari park. Very good stuff, bloodily resolved.
Gore a plenty. The excellent sound effects are by Sam Shaw. Albert Band directs with speed and efficiency.
THE ITALIAN JOB (1969)
An over-repeated treat, but as I hadn’t watched a really enjoyable movie for a while, I thought I’d dip an idle toe into the water. The word iconic gets overused, but this light as a feather caper movie really does have a trio of authentic movie moments which are never forgotten, oft-imitated and rarely bettered.
First is a car chase through the streets, sewers, lakes and rooftops of Turin featuring three colourful Mini Coopers and a host of stunts which at the time put almost every chase to shame except those in Goldfinger and Bullitt. We see these sorts of sequences often now, and this version looks distinctly tame in comparison, but it wasn’t so in 1969. The ground-breaking nature of the scenes, with their stunts, comic asides, shifting landscapes and sheer length is what makes the movie required viewing. The project looks as if the producers went on holiday to Turin and said: “You know what, I could film a brilliant car chase here.” Without dwelling on it, the sequence is fun and innovative.
Then there’s the cliff-hanger ending, which had probably been done before, or a version of it, but never so elegantly and with such an uplifting music score to boot. Quincy Jones came up trumps here. For an American, he seemed to hit the British and European pulse on the button, serving up a jazz and soft-blues influenced soundtrack which touches on traditional British patriotic songs and climaxes with the cast singing a cockney knees up Get A Bloomin’ Move On (a.k.a. The Self-Preservation Society). The ridiculousness of the thieves situation is highlighted by the song and also allows the audience to leave with a smile, even though the predicament is unresolved. I must add too that the opening titles play out over Matt Monro singing the classic lounge ballad On Days Like These – one of Don Black’s best lyrics, one of Monro’s best vocal performances. They of course are both ours.
So car chases and music, big tick. Script doing well, tick. The final dialogue is brilliant, but throughout Michael Caine gets to deliver a series of one-liners which seem designed to reinforce his Alfie image as a cheeky, sexually available, street smart chappie. “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off” became so associated with Caine he even used it for the title of his autobiography. His performance is one of his best and most, dare I say it, iconic. It has been parodied and impersonated so many times, and many times by Caine himself, that the beauty of his original star turn has been virtually forgotten. He’s only hampered by the curtailed script. A host of supporting performances from the world of British and Italian thespianism give him more than capable assistance. Noel Coward’s imprisoned gangster Mr Bridger is the highlight – surely the inspiration for Peter Vaughn’s Harry Grout in Porridge – but Benny Hill is a delight and John le Mesurier and Irene Handl step in when necessary. Raf Vallone brings a touch of seriousness to proceedings as a Mafioso.
The film looks lovely, especially in widescreen, all those Italian Alps, beautifully photographed by Douglas Slocombe. It has a comic appeal as well as an adventurous one, which all the best capers do, and every circumstance has a gentle humour exercising itself in the fore or background. The film doesn’t overstay its welcome. Yes, there are obvious plot holes, but sometimes these things just don’t matter. Writer Troy Kennedy Martin created Z Cars and this feels a world away from that dreary television existence. Peter Collinson was an up and coming director at the time, but he never quite made it as big as he ought to have done. This is his best and most accessible achievement hands down.
I don’t really have to comment much more, I already feel as if I have overstayed my welcome, as you probably don’t need me to tell you how good this movie is. There was no need to remake it and the 2003 version wasn’t any better; different, but not better.
VILLAIN (1971)
Directed by Michael Tuchner, 'Villain' sits very much in the shadow of 'Get Carter'. It's half way between that film, Mike Hodges' epoch-defining masterpiece, and TV's 'The Sweeney' in exploring British post-industrial ennui through the lens of crime drama. A groggy looking Richard Burton plays Vic Dakin, the cockney London gangster who's like a composite of the Krays, devoted to his old Mum but brutally cutting up grasses and indulging a sadomasochistic gay relationship with bisexual underworld chancer Wolfe (Ian McShane).
Scripted by writers better known at the time for TV comedy, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the film boasts a supporting cast of fine British character actors of the period, including Nigel Davenport and Colin Welland as the detectives, Donald Sinden as a corrupt MP, Joss Ackland, T. P. McKenna and Tony Selby as villains and James Cossins (TMWTGG's Colthorpe) as a disgruntled clerk, the inside man on a robbery job.
A point of trivia for Ian Fleming fans. There's a scene where Burton's Dakin is sitting on Brighton pier, on a day out with his Mum. Sidekick Selby has just bought her a carton of fresh whelks and Davenport and Welland are about to move in to arrest Dakin. The book he's reading as he's relaxing on the pier? A dog-eared Pan paperback of Fleming's 'The Diamond Smugglers'. Excellent reading material for a villain!
Decades on, it occurred to me that they don't really have to do that stunt where the minis go up the ramps and into the coach while on the move. As they're not being chased at that point they could just stop the coach and do it that way.
I had to switch to watching this on Channel 4 rather than C4 HD where the sound wasn't quite right.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
LUTHER (2023)
A movie continuation of the BBC TV series has detective John Luther chasing wealthy serial killer David Robey into the frozen Norwegian wastelands (actually filmed in Iceland). This plays out as the series did but with an added geographical location as it’s a movie. I liked the series and this keeps up the standard. Andy Serkis is terrifyingly good as the killer. Idris Elba has made the Luther into an interesting character over the years, he’s a good actor but him being touted as a future James Bond is laughable.
If you haven’t seen the series then it’s not worth watching, those who have will enjoy another episode in Luther’s life.
PITCH PERFECT (2012)
Intense psychological drama about an aspiring female disc jockey who, unable to get her music mixes played on the college radio station, takes up with the unorthodox all-girl acapella singing group and wreaks personal havoc for the team as she sleeps her way through the opposition, causing friction with her supposed girlfriends, who each want a piece of the action. Dad issues, girlfriend issues, boyfriend issues, all raise their ugly heads, each solved in turn by a bout of positive energy singing. A Harold Robbins inspired piece of fiction based around the real exploits of a college singing star. Phenomenally successful and controversial thanks to the full frontal shower and lesbian sex scene between Anna Kendrick and Brittany Snow, as well as the copious drug and booze fuelled party antics of Rebel Wilson. Anna Camp is the damaged blonde bulimia victim forced to reconsider her leadership role as spunky Miss Kendrick rises to prominence on the back of, well, her back. The climax as the girls gyrate to Don’t You Forget About Me has all the subtlety of a night at the Hustler Club. Made on the cheap with actresses well past college age but lucky enough to still look college age, and with a soundtrack of dozens of popular songs, the film rode the waves of success and spawned too sequels of similar distaste.
I love Anna Kendrick, I really do.
This film has officially ruined The Breakfast Club for me.
I heard this was really funny but haven't seen it yet so have ordered the dvd double pack with the first sequel.
Good luck with that
BURKE & HARE (1972)
This was journeyman director Vernon Sewell’s last film and spotting well known faces becomes the only enjoyable thing in it. Starring Derren Nesbitt (Where Eagles Dare) as Burke to Glynn Edward’s (Dave the barman from TV’s Minder) Hare as the real life grave robbers collect corpses for a doctor played by Harry Andrews ( The Hill ). Edwards’ real life wife Yootha Joyce (George & Mildred TV series) plays his wife here and Hammer film stars Yutte Stensgaard and Robin Hawdon turn up along with veteran actor James Hayter (The 39 Steps). The totally inappropriate theme song and Carry On style music does not help at all. The film is completely studio bound and the sets are the best thing in it. Some reasonably gory set pieces and lots of sex scenes in a brothel try to keep the viewer interested. The actors seem to be having a good time, so not all bad.
Interesting, for all the wrong reasons.
STAR TREK: GENERATIONS (1994)
A part-way relaunch of the Star Trek movie franchise that swiftly ushers in the cast of sequel television series Star Trek: the Next Generation which ceased transmission earlier in the same year after seven successful seasons.
That’s a show I never watched and this is a movie I thought I’d never seen, but as it progressed, I became more and more familiar with it and the final confrontation on a desert mountain top flickered through my imagination like the memories William Shatner relives inside the Nexus temporal distortion.
Yes, Captain Kirk is still in it. In fact, the film is probably at its best during an extended prelude that shows the destructive force of the Nexus field as it destroys two transport craft and damages an updated model of the Enterprise. During the mercy mission, the revered James T. Kirk finally meets his maker. Or does he?
Well, I’ve let the cat out of the bag now. The rest of the film is padded beyond belief and overstays its welcome by about an hour. This is basically nothing more than an extended episode of the television show and you can see where all the padding is: holodeck silliness, the android Data struggling with his emotions microchip, a Klingon infringement, even the inclusion of Kirk and all that stuff on the Nexus ‘planet’. The story hasn’t got the legs for such a long enterprise [sic]. Having said that, Malcolm McDowell is a passable villain and Patrick Stewart display much superiority and superior acting as Jean Luc Picard. Shatner does as Shatner always does. The film has humour and excitement as slight as its narrative.
I couldn’t understand why the scenes on board the Enterprise were so dark: do they not have light bulbs on board these 24th Century star cruisers? They used to in the 23rd century.
STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT (1996)
Now this one really does interfere with history, for the benefit of the Federation of course. The Nexus temporal vortex featured in Generations is not alone in its time bending properties, evil cyborg empire the Borg project themselves through a homemade warp speed temporal vortex and end up orbiting Earth in the 21st century. The Borg aim to conquer the human race at its most weakest, following World War Three, and thus prevent the development of interstellar travel for humans and the proliferation of peace throughout the galaxies. Or something.
The Enterprise follows them through the wormhole, destroys their ship but inadvertently allows the Borg Queen to transport aboard and begin to wreak havoc. Captain Picard embarks on a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with his arch-nemesis. Meanwhile an Earthbound posse led by Commander Riker is trying to sober up the drunken genius who discovered warp drive, lest the future cease to exist.
I’m not familiar with Next Generation lore, but having watched a lot of Dr Who recently, I can vouch there’s nothing new here, even the Doctor used to meddle and make quick getaways. The Borg do seem to be a more ruthless version of the Cybermen albeit with some central symbiotic intelligence. Nasty. Hats off to Dr Who then for providing both the villain and the time travel impetus for this movie.
A ponderous epic all-round, enlivened by the marvellous Borg creature effects and Alice Krieg’s turn as the nasty Queen. Among an unattractive cast, she’s the sexiest thing in it, which is peculiar, or maybe just peculiar of me. The humour doesn’t work. The action is tiresome. It feels what it is: two adventures for the price of one, overlapping and both as dull as each other.
chrisno1 sez:
Shatner does as Shatner always does.
______________________________________________________________
this sentence would read better with ellipses:
"Shatner does... as Shatner... always... does."
theyre actually both former Shakespearian actors, Shatner used to perform at Stratford Ontario! I guess thats the way us colonists interpret Shakespeare so far from the source, styles having diverged over the centuries, having almost evolved into a whole separate skillset only barely resembling acting as you Brits know it
lets all watch the classic SNL parody Star Trek The Last Voyage, its probably better than these latter day movies
Belushi does an excellent Shatner (Chevy Chase as Spock and Dan Aykroyd as McCoy in case someone doesnt know the original SNL cast)
wow, I dont know Kevin Pollak but he's a spot-on impressionist! that Jack Nicholson was especially good. I didnt recognise who he cast as Scotty though.
in comparison, Belushi isnt really trying to do Shatner's voice, I dont think he ever really tried to do voices except for Brando. But he prided himself as an actor, and he's capturing Shatner's mannerisms. Aykroyd is very good with funny voices, and does both Scotty and Bones. And Chase is barely trying to do Spock, I dont think he was very good in the ensemble sketches, he was best in solo pieces when on SNL (and was usually just playing himself, even if billed as Gerald Ford).
ah, OK I never saw that movie though i certainly know him form Foul Play, 10, his work with Peter Cook,, and his own SNL appearnaces
the first two were Robin Williams and Christopher Lloyd?
HEAT AND DUST (1983)
Movies and television shows set during the latter days of the British Raj in India were all the rage in the early 1980s. Gandhi won a shed load of Oscars and rather spoilt it for everyone else. David Lean’s stately, longwinded and hopelessly miscast A Passage to India came along in 1984 and almost killed the historical cinematic subgenre off. In between those two epics of pomp and grandeur came this far more satisfying movie from the American director James Ivory and the Indian producer Ismael Merchant. Their regular collaborator was screenwriter and novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabwala. She’d won the 1975 Booker Prize with her novel Heat and Dust, and it was no surprise that Merchant-Ivory would eventually adapt it. Given the paltry budget, the movie is a miracle of photography, design, character, editing and narrative, essentials for the success of any movie.
Julie Christie plays Anne, a BBC researcher on sabbatical investigating the story of her great aunt Olivia Rivers. Olivia is the central figure of a 1920s society scandal involving the Nawab of Khatm, the nominal prince of Simla, a province in central India. Oliva, played with some reserve by Greta Scacchi, arrives to accompany her husband, Douglas Rivers, an Assistant Commissioner, but soon falls under the spell of the Indian community and its most prominent person, the Nawab. As Anne pursues the story, we flash backwards to her taped interviews with Harry Hamilton, and even further back to the events themselves. These stories become reflections of Anne’s own personal growth and strained relationships. Both women – great aunt and niece – share the same capacity for warmth, intrigue and lust, both also exhibit restraint and fortitude. While they are seduced in different fashions, they visit the same locations, citadels, mansions, holy places, cemeteries and gardens of Simla; and these evoke similar emotions in the tortured pair. They are both seeking their freedom from the conventions impressed upon them; conventions, and the people that support them, which have fundamentally let them down.
The film cross cuts the three strands effectively, although the narration perhaps overloads us too much. It does begin to feel like an editing device to shorten the runtime. Hamilton’s interview occupies us more and more when it really ought to occupy us less. This is just about forgivable, especially when the performances are universally so good. Julie Christie is as magnetic as always, displaying Anne’s vulnerability and neurosis with much fragility. As life and nature educates her, she becomes determinedly independent. We don’t see Olivia’s volte face so clearly. Greta Scacchi portrays her as an innocent abroad, yet she’s clever enough – and the director is clever enough – to make her deceptions less obvious; we feel her confusion. The Nawab’s out of tune piano becomes a metaphor for her own conscious, toying with her, out of tune with the Empire society. Scacchi displays this well. Sashi Kapoor is fine as the arrogant, flirtatious and mesmeric Nawab, who may or may not be in league with separatists. He’s certainly not fond of the English. Christopher Cazenove, Nicholas Grace, Julian Glover, Barry Foster, Jennifer Kendal, Susan Fleetwood and Patrick Godfrey inhabit these stiff-upper-lip types to perfection. Godfrey in particular demands attention, the epitome of the racist attitudes of the time, an outlook he also bestows with relish on the young Olivia Rivers: “She’s not right for this place.”
The scenes in modern India, all dust and chaos and poverty, reflect unfavourably against the relative calm and stability of the Raj, but the personal freedoms are apparent, which is what counts. Anne is as much an outsider as the English of the 1920s. An American Buddhist enters Anne’s world, but he’s sent home by the Indian doctor with as much of an admonishment as Olivia is given by Dr Saunders. These people, who want to assimilate, simply don’t belong. Anne, who doesn’t want to, is drawn irrevocably to the people and places the meets. Eventually, she too, like Olivia, finds a reason to stay.
The film plays without subtitles, allowing Indian actors to perform without being stilted. Some of the best scenes come when the English and the Indian dialogue overlaps and, as in real life, the characters and the audience have to feel their way around what is happening.
Heat and Dust is beautifully presented. Costumes and sets are superb. Many genuine locations are used or reimagined with dignity. The set design and attention to detail is marvellous, highlighted by Walter Lassally’s bright and craving photography. Humphrey Dixon’s editing demands our attention as he cuts back and forth between story arcs without so much as a by-your-leave. It’s a shock when the film concentrates for twenty minutes on the 1920s setting, one that lulls us into the period and the rising heat of disturbed latent passion, countered by the similar occurrences in the modern day. The screenplay perhaps isn’t brave enough – although it won awards – and those long voice overs at the end really should have been cut, but James Ivory directs with a steady, watchful hand and draws out a series of fine performances from a long cast. Only Charles McCaughan’s Chid hits a bum-note.
The film is engaging on an intellectual and an emotional level, while playing its sensational cards close to its chest. The film may be a visual treat, but Ivory and Jhabwala sensibly withdraw from many scenes leaving us itching for the invisible. The strength of the film lies in what is unspoken and unseen, what we, like Anne, have to interpret from between the lines and letters, between Harry Hamilton’s words, the unsaid sentences between Olivia and the Nawab in Kashmir, the cracks and crinkles at the colonial museum, the prayers at the temples, the silence of a smoking cigarette, the stillness of the nights, the pallor of heat and dust.
Wonderful.
STAR TREK: INSURRECTION (1998)
Oh, I don’t know, is this one that bad? Yeah, it probably is.
Insurrection kicks off with Data going robot crazy on an idyllic planet, observed by Federation spies. It all looks distinctly shifty and pretty soon Captain Picard is uncovering a secret operation to relocate the peace-loving Ba’ku and use the life extending properties of the planet’s solar rings to help save a renegade race known as the Son’a. These grey skinned aliens are distinctly low par. The bizarre make-up is extremely unrealistic, especially considering what we eventually learn about them. The story sorts itself out quite nicely. Rudimentary special effects suffice. Picard is provided with a chaste love interest. There’s a scene where, full of the joy of youth once more, he dances a samba and you can feel Patrick Stewart’s animated alter-ego Avery Bullock [from American Dad] screaming to be released. Meanwhile, Commander Riker and Counsellor Troi get it on in a bath full of soap suds. Yikes. Licence to Kill’s Anthony Zerbe crops up as a Federation Admiral and meets another horrific death at the hands of the villain. The underlying theme of diaspora is raised and then promptly forgotten among the laser battles and star ship combat. The whole exercise, despite a movie-sized budget feels like a television show.
Well, I watched it, I suppose.
STAR TREK: NEMESIS (2002)
One of ours wrote this. John Logan, he of Skyfall and Spectre, crops up on the screenplay credits. That aside, there isn’t must to interest us other than laser battles, star ship collisions, weapons of mass destruction and an evil clone of Jean Luc Picard. For good measure, there’s also a double of Brent Spiner’s android Data. In fact, despite the presence of the full Next Generation crew nobody other than Spiner and Patrick Stewart seems very interested. This might be down to a screenplay that can’t give enough for them all to do. One of the beauties of the Original Series was the focus on the trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy; the other characters willingly supported this central axis. Here, even more so than the previous few entries, that trio doesn’t exist and the cast is floundering in space, just like the stricken Enterprise.
This time out there is a rarely seen foray for the Romulans, but Nemesis is really all about Picard and Data and their buddy-buddy relationship, one which mirrors that of Kirk and Spock. Here, Data confirms his understanding of the human natures known as duty and self-sacrifice, but not before saving the life of his captain three times. There’s some decent support from Tom Hardy as the clone Shinzon. He at least attempts to add gravitas to the proceedings, but it is hard going.
This entry into the series seems to want to take a leaf out of George Lucas’ latter-day Star Wars book and labours meticulously over the action. Luckily, humanity remains the central core theme of Star Trek, not some kind of ethereal ‘force’. The movie rumbles along without any major hiccups. The usual plot holes abound. It takes an age to get going, but once the climax arrives it delivers on its promises far better than most of the recent adventures.
UNHINGED (2020)
A portly Russell Crowe terrorises a young mother after she antagonises him in an innocuous incident whilst driving. If you can suspend your disbelief in the lack of police reaction to the ongoing narrative then this pulpy thriller will pass 90 minutes nicely. It doesn’t add anything new to the genre but it’s all done competently.
Average.
XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE (2017)
XXX 2: The Next Level (2005) should have starred Vin Diesel and been directed by Rob Cohen, who helmed the impressive XXX, but both dropped out to be replaced by Ice Cube and our own Lee Tamahori. It is a loud, noisy disaster that does what you would expect but is hampered by an atrocious script and an array of dodgy CGI stunts – and you’d think Mr Tamahori might have learnt something from Die Another Die.
Twelve years on we get XXX: The Return of Xander Cage which made a fortune off the back of a returning star in Vin Diesel, but it also has the benefit of lodging a tongue firmly in its cheek and mocking its own ridiculousness – chiefly by suggesting Brazilian soccer star Neymar could become a member of the XXX brigade. Over the years it seems Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr Gibbons has recruited a lot of special agents with special talents for disruption, infiltration and kick-ass chaos. A total of nine put in appearances here and the movie is a right royal festival of fighting, chasing, blowing stuff up and ogling barely naked women [especially Hermione Corfield…] Yippee!
A whole load of trash talk, a completely pointless plot about a satellite hijacking thingmajig, an incomprehensible twist in the tail, and a movie that repeats almost verbatim the scenarios we saw in the first instalment, but a whole load of giggling fun nonetheless. The climatic gunbattle labours a bit, but has the benefit of a neat cameo to save the day. Nobody really cares too much about how good or bad a job they do. This is one for the CGI guys too, but things have moved on a lot from 2005 and the effects here are primed for our astonishment. The skateboard and bike surfing stunts are simply amazing, even though we know they are fake, and the fight on the freeway above, on top, below and alongside fast moving cars is a highlight of fantastic combat choreography and heart in your mouth shocks. Hats off!
Look, I don’t think anyone is expecting to take this very seriously, so don’t. An outrageously enjoyable, good looking and hopelessly daft 100 minutes of utter blind mayhem. A healthy round of applause!
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
I've always liked this series more than most of the rest of the MCU. The movie is inventive, playful, irreverent and has a little bit of seriousness. The music is great. The anti-testing on animals message is just a side story, but still manages to be too heavy-handed. I also found the movie to be a little too long and the ending too saccharine for this series. I can still recommend the movie and in my opinion it's still better than most of the MCU.
While I enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy I've been tired of superhero movies for a long time now. Popcorn movies are fine, but where are the big dramas? In the past we had movies like Philadelphia (AIDS), Platoon (Vietnam), Dead man walking (the death penalty) and The Dictator (the rise of Hitler). Why don't the best screenwriters, directors and actors tackle issues like the opioid crisis, the migration issue and the politically divided USA? There are a few examples ("Don't look up!"), but I'd like there to be more.
Exactly right. There aren't any movies I fancy seeing at the cinema these days. They used to do gritty, sexy state-of-the-nation flicks, or seemed to. There isn't much choice now.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Absolutely. A smart comedy about the device politics, a social drama about opioid addiction, a multiple point of view drama from both sides of the border. It could be great if it was made by the right people. In the meantime some of the best actors are churning out superhero movies .... 😒
65 (2023)
A long, long time ago an exploration spacecraft from a galaxy far away crash lands on Earth, 65 million years ago. Coincidentally, this timing corresponds with the exact time that the huge asteroid that decimated the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs is about to strike. Can the surviving pair of astronauts make their way to an escape pod on a nearby mountain in time, evading the prehistoric animals in their way?
I’m being a bit harsh with the summary as Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt are pretty good in what is virtually a two-hander movie. The effects are fine but there is a strange lack of tension. But it moves quickly enough and there are dinosaurs, so what’s not to like?
Everything gets better with dinosaurs!
TARANTULA! (1955)
The Man From UNCLE boss Leo G Carroll is a scientist experimenting in rapid growth nutrients to help feed a growing world population. We see large rabbits, hamsters, rats and a tarantula spider. Why he’s experimenting on these largely inedible creatures (ok, people do eat rabbit) isn’t explained, but when the spider escapes and keeps growing, it goes on the rampage. Director Jack Arnold was no stranger to these sort of films and always delivered a decent movie. This movie has become famous for including Clint Eastwood in an early role as an Air Force pilot sent to destroy the spider. The special effects are good for the period and it all runs at a fast pace.
An enjoyable 80 minutes.
FIRST MEN IN THE MOON (1964)
Nigel Kneale, British television’s foremost science fiction writer, penned the screenplay for this adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel concerning elementary space travel. His original screenplay was doctored by several others before special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen was satisfied he could work with it. The result is ham-fisted, not so much laced with crass humour as ladled with it. Chief culprit is Lionel Jeffries as Joseph Cavor, a dotty professor to send up all dotty professors. He’s created an anti-gravity compound called Cavorite and plans to use it to coat his space sphere and propel it all the way to the moon. He’s lacking funds, so dim-wit playwright Arnold Bedford [Edward Judd] mortgages his house and contributes to the cost, thinking it will make him rich and famous. He forgets to mention he doesn’t own the house. Kate, his girlfriend, is not happy with that and accidentally ends up berating him at take-off, resulting in three people making it all the way to the moon. Poor Martha Hyer, saddled with co-stars who are either overacting to the degree they become exceedingly irritating or play a character so dishonest and uncouth you wonder why she fell for him. The first hour of this slice of fantasy Victoriana is almost unbearable. Things brighten up considerably once the journeymen make it to the moon and uncover the civilisation of the insectoid Selenites. Some of these creatures are men in suits, some are Harryhausen creations. An anti-war theme develops as Cavor gets all serious and attempts to understand the aliens, while Bedford turns action man, decides to rescue his girl and make a quick getaway. The effects are good. Many of the visual ideas were taken from NASA and RAF research into space flight. The film is bookended by an imaginary well-designed multinational moon landing, and initially it made me think First Men in the Moon would be better than it is.