Depressing and upsetting little film about a thirteen year old girl who makes online vlogs about boosting your self-confidence to give her own shallow ego a boost. They are watched by nobody. Kayla’s life revolves around her mobile phone, her lap top and an uneasy relationship with her single parent father. Friendless and awkward, she attempts to navigate the last few days of middle school and learns stark lessons about growing up.
Having recently watched the family friendly, cleverly comic and pleasantly heartening Are You There God? It’s Margaret, Eighth Grade came as a total downer. OK, so there’s an uplift or two at the end of the drama, but considering the movie is written by a comedian, it rarely shows a comic touch and has to rely on swearing and embarrassment for laughs, which is a low blow and doesn’t do anything to endear the lead character to its audience. I just felt permanently sorry for the poor mite. Elsie Fisher is very good as Kayla, appearing as she does in every scene, but she’s swamped by the morose storyline which – unlike Margaret – lacks fun and laughter.
Critically like popular, but I didn’t like get it, or maybe like I’m not the right kinda generation like to get jokes about like snapchat and stuff.
I meant to comment on this before but didn’t have the time. This is a great review of a great movie. I think Newman missed out on 3 Oscars in the 60’s, TheHustler, Hud and CoolHandLuke. All three winners of those years turned in weaker performances than Newman did - for some reason he didn’t gel with the “In-Crowd”.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
An adventurous trip into the safaris of Africa for Howard Hawks, who otherwise makes exactly the same film he would in the wild west or a news room or a detective investigation. Hawks’ films are always about people and the relationships they form, break and reform and there is nothing different here bar the setting. In fact, it’s the landscapes which make the movie as the interpersonal stuff is humdrum at best, enlivened by the occasional worthwhile comic skit.
John Wayne is a big game catcher eking a dangerous living in Tanganyika, whose ranch and life is turned upside down by the arrival of a free-spirited Italian wildlife photographer. Elsa Martinelli, a free spirit herself, embodies his confusion and his desire as the photographer. They are surrounded by a large and capable international cast who provide all the necessary action, adventure, romance and tomfoolery you would expect from this kind of family entertainment. In the days before insurance and stunt men, the scenes of safari hunting were filmed by the cast for real, lending authenticity to the proceedings, as well as broken bones and many profanities. Wayne rarely appears without a fag or a drink, perhaps taking Humphrey Bogart’s advice to heart [when filming The African Queen, Bogart famously claimed to avoided illness by drinking nothing but bourbon and ginger ale]. Many of the talky scenes look improvised - and the ones that don’t seem too clearly scripted to appeal to the modern ear. There’s a distinctly unsettling inter-generational romance between Red Buttons and Michele Giardon that simply doesn’t work. He also seems to think running around like he’s wearing a nappy is amusing.
Otherwise, the film is very enjoyable. Henry Mancini provides a low-key score with a popular theme Baby Elephant Walk. Co-star Hardy Kruger loved the ranch so much, he bought it.
Excellent heightened violent drama about one night in a small Texas oil town whose inhabitants drink, fornicate and cause trouble for Marlon Brando’s embattled Sherriff Calder. The arena is hot, sticky and tense. Thrown into a combustible mixture of adultery, bigotry and contempt is Robert Redford’s escaped prisoner Bubber Reeves, returning by accident and fate to his hometown and his unfaithful wife.
The local men and women, fuelled by the intoxicating pleasures of alcohol and lust, turn vigilantes and the put upon Sherriff attempts to calm their enflamed passions while searching for the escapee. His disdain for the townsfolk – and their suspicion of him – is exemplified by Brando’s hunched appearance, a big, dignified man brought down to the level of dogs and pigs, dirtier than the soil he once toiled. He’s seen as being in the pocket of the local oil tycoon, Val Rogers [E.G. Marshall], who owns everyone because he also owns the bank and the land. His acts of philanthropy mean nothing to the drunken rabble, who only want to climb on his coattails. Calder, a man aware of his responsibilities beyond what Rogers thinks he owes him, tires of the pettiness. He wants to maintain law and order, but his efforts spiral out of his control once a group of angry husbands decide – with some justification – he’s aiding the fugitive. Meanwhile, the population watches on stupefied with increasing horror…
A fine Lillian Hellman screenplay was hacked about to make it workable, but you sense some of her good work eking out of the remainder. Playwright Horton Foote wrote the original for the stage. A divisive movie, it’s hard to know where to begin when appraising the worth of The Chase, for director Arthur Penn disowned it and Brando considered his role beneath him. Odd then, that the atmosphere Penn creates and the weariness Brando exudes are the chief contributors to the movie’s overall success. The sections that perhaps disturb most [Calder’s vicious beating, the blackjacking of an innocent black man, the use of the N word, the overly contrived performances of some of the cast, the foolishness of the Sherriff’s plan of action, the dumb actions of Bubber Reeves] are also the catalysts for the audience’s most intense reactions. Racism, segregation, the carrying of handguns, vigilantism, death, adultery, covetousness, pride – there are almost too many themes to be authored effectively without jarring the narrative. The fact from half an hour in everyone bar the police seem to be out to cause one another some sort of physical, emotional or mental harm is – like life – both unsettling and distinctly realistic. There’s no point of conscience in The Chase, even the Sherriff has little compassion for the eminently dislikeable townspeople [well, why would he?], and everyone makes bad decisions which contribute to the swirling fiery climax.
Perhaps, above all, the film – or more accurately the screenplay – is about the attention, retention and abuse of power by individuals on others and on society. Val Rogers has a superiority complex that blinds him to his inadequacies as a father and an employer. His son, Jake [James Fox], has inherited the disease. Jake has used his wealth to seduce, ensnare and mislead Jane Fonda’s Anna, who has betrayed and always betrayed her husband Bubber. Everyone’s at that game and if they are not, they want to be. As Janice Rule’s adulterous Emily Stewart sneers “They can’t shoot you for being unfaithful. Half the population would be gone.” Other rich folk, like the benign, watchful, parasitic Mr Bridges [an excellent Henry Hull] prey on the weak, such as the Reeves’. Even here, Mrs Reeves [Miriam Hopkins] is the dominant player in a failing relationship, more concerned for her errant son, who hates her, than for her doting husband. Robert Duvall’s Edwin Stewart is a frightened individual seeking to feather his nest, but unable to wrest himself from the demands of his salacious wife, ignoring her affairs even as she parades them in his own living room. The unwelcome racist undertone slips uneasily into the fire, but that would have been an extremely potent theme for the late sixties and I applaud the filmmakers for not dodging it.
Nor do they hold back on the violence which, when it comes, is shocking and dominates proceedings perhaps to the detriment of the human cost. Damon Fuller [Richard Bradford] is a man in thrall to his lusts for women and hatred of authority. He gazes with extreme intent on the young skimpily dressed teens strutting down the street or partying late night. They don’t hold back in returning the attention either – everyone in this town is bored and permissiveness, physical indulgence as it were, is their shared weakness. Fuller exhibits the same infectious, gratuitous look while taunting a black mechanic or, eventually, when he assaults Calder. This is a society raised and then torn by its own unseemliness. By the end, Jane Fonda has lost both a lover and a husband, but she’s left all alone outside every facet of society. So too beaten up Sherriff Calder and his wife Ruby [Angie Dickinson] who abandon the shitty town to its own spoils.
There is a huge cast with great pedigree and the production values are high. For us, Clifton James has a supporting role, so too Bruce Cabot. Maurice Binder did the montage titles. John Barry wrote his first American movie score, which at times displays hints of OHMSS – every time Redford is on the run, Barry prefaces the action with the same horn break that introduced the 1969 ski chase.
I guess, if you like it, you like it – as I do – and if you don’t, well, there you go. Marlon Brando’s sixties output is often derided, but he made interesting and varied choices throughout the decade and many of them, while not appreciated at the time, have aged far better than some of his 1950s films, feeling more contemporary by inviting an audience to be divided and assess a film, its character and themes, from diverse, alien angles. The Chase does that and Brando’s central, commanding performance demands it.
Bright Hair on Talking Pictures TV. I like this channel, it shows little-known, offbeat stuff and this is from the 1990s with Emilia Fox as a rebellious schoolgirl whose area is beset by a killer who batters people, she stumbles across the first murder. It has nearly 'our' James Purefoy - handsome enough to see why he was considered to be Bond instead of Pierce Brosnan - and a good many recognisable faces from British acting. I recognised the uptight head mistress as the one in the same role in Channel 4's Skins all those years ago, but never realised it was the same actress who played uptight news anchor Sally Smedley in the sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey.
This film started well but did not reward attention, turning into absolute twaddle as it went on. A real shaggy dog story.
Awesome in its stupidity, relentless in its box-ticking. Two hours of my life I won't be getting back. For pure fun I preferred the 60 years older King Kong vs Godzilla
which probably cost as much altogether as the costume budget on this one.
Ah! King Kong v Godzilla. I remember longing to see that movie in about 1964 when I gazed at the movie poster outside the cinema…
…but the idiots at the BBFC had slapped an ‘X’ certificate on it - laughable when you see the film nowadays. I finally saw it in the 80’s at a monster film festival evening - I’ve forgotten the other movies shown, but it was worth the wait.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I remember buying the BluRay 3D version of this movie only because I was curious to see what the monster on monster scenes looked like in 3D (and for the record, they did look great). Beyond that pretty much every single scene involving a human was off the scale in terms of cringeworthiness. To this day I cannot remember the name of a single human character in the movie, which is sort of my litmus test for how well presented the characters are. I found the only way to watch it with any level of enjoyment was to fast forward over any dialog and treat it as a movie with no human characters in it at all.
I think @Barbel recommended this little number to me:
BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1971)
Chaotic, entertaining and perplexing late entry into Hammer’s Mummy cycle, this time featuring a female mummy, beautifully formed and with barely a bandage on her. In fact, as she lies in deep mystical, catatonic sleep in a gorgeous coffin, you can clearly see she’s got barely a stitch on: some silks and decorously placed jewels will do. She also, rather embarrassingly, has a habit of breathing. Valerie Leon occupies the dual role of Tera, a long dead Egyptian queen, and Margaret Fuchs, the young woman whose spirit has succumbed to the dark arts. Her father is a famed Egyptologist, obsessed with his greatest discovery, but also a man who recognises the evil residing in the miraculously preserved body he keeps hidden in the cellar of his mansion, a space he has decorated exactly like the Queen’s actual tomb. As the seven stars of the Plough align along the same astral plane as they did on the day Tera died, the evil queen’s lifeforce asserts itself over Margaret, and Fuchs’ colleagues suffer a series of bloodthirsty throat-slashing deaths. Only one man, the mysterious, intense, cane-wielding Corbeck seems to have the answers, but is he in the service of good or evil?
A troubled production history [no finished screenplay, a rushed construction, last minute cast changes, even a dying director] doesn’t seem to hurt this ninety minutes of mindlessness, which fails to make much sense however you view it. Best then just to go along for the ride, enjoy the slow motion footage of Valerie Leon pouting and wearing diaphanous nightgowns, wonder why it has been set in the modern day and forget it was based on a Bram Stoker novel, lest we burnish his reputation. Some shocking murders come and go, the permissiveness of the heroine is nicely allied to her doppelganger’s lust for power. One feels the gore content [and the sex content?] was on the up while the rest of the production values stayed rooted in banality. The murders owe much to Val Lewton and the epilogue owes much to Roger Corman.
A strong, strange effort which, with its emphasis on the paranormal, tried to do something ambitiously different to the typical Hammer output. Plenty of stylish camerawork and a good leading performance from Miss Leon paper over the creaking cracks in the script.
I caught Bad Boys 3 or Bad Boys Til We Die or whatever it was called a couple of weeks ago and all the reviews on imdb said how bad it was compared to the original, well sequels do have diminishing returns as a rule so I chilled the Peroni and settled down to this one this evening. Bad Boys? It's just bad. Action comedy where the action is by the numbers and the comedy, well, I think US politicians should watch this film to realise that some people reject the likes of Lethal Weapon for being too highbrow, too smart, this is like the Turner and Hooch to Lethal Weapon 2, is that the one with Sly Stallone and Kurt Russell or have I got the name wrong? Some folk just like crap is what I mean. Bad Boys is crap.
Will Smith is the rich trust fund playboy cop with a flash car, his buddy is a downtrodden husband with three kids who isn't getting any. The set up isn't bad in itself, but the idea the latter has to pretend to be the former to a scared witness to a drug killing because he's the only one she will trust is very contrived. There's an element of Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot to the relationship but that flatters it because the jokes just aren't funny, the way it plays out isn't funny. I found Lawrence an unappealing buddy or cinematic lead. It's like it's written by AI but that would need intelligence and this doesn't have any. I think clever smart gags are the only way to outwit AI, I just can't see how that would come up with that stuff, nor comic timing, but it could certainly come up with the plot to this. I gave up after about an hour, how it could last 2 and a half hours albeit with ad breaks I do not know.
This is a Swedish suspense movie with an English title where all the exterior shots are filmed in Norway. Why the original title is in English I can't say. Why is it filmed in the Lofoten islands in Norway then? To put it bluntly: Sweden looks nice, but you can't find nature even remotely as spectacular there. The Bond movies need to use Lofoten as a location as soon as possible, before MI uses that location first too!
I won't say anything about the plot other than it's a tight survival thriller focusing on two Swedish half-sisters diving at winter in northern Norway. The tension keeps building, the actors are really good and it's the best thriller I've seen this year. The trailer actually sets up the plot nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRIGPXB3Ya4
A nice lazy Sunday afternoon watching The Adventures of Robin Hood, followed by sections of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Both were excellent prints but the sound was not tip top, had to turn the volume up to hear the dialogue on the former, the music seemed buried in the mix a bit on the latter.
Odd that Errol Flynn was an Aussie or near enough, Tasmanian perhaps - his origins are a bit vague, he made out he was of Irish descent one time - and so is Lazenby but Flynn's film plays to his strengths while Lazenby's doesn't. Flynn just enters the villain's castle stronghold, bold as you please while the villainous King John - Claud Reins of course - does the Bond villain thing of inviting his nemesis to. sup with him, albeit only briefly! Robin only wears a disguise once, to infiltrate an archery contest but Lazenby is cursed in his debut by having to be in disguise for a fair bit of the movie. It's his bad luck to be in one of the films of the 60s that owed so much to Fleming's novel, it wouldn't be bent in his favour, even if the director had a point; I can picture Lazenby in YOLT even better than the bored overweight Connery and maybe even in DAF.
The chemistry between Flynn and deHavilland is very good, I mean if he'd departed with her only to have her struck in the eye like King Harold by an arrow, shot by a vengeful King John and Guy Gisbourne, that would have been a real downer. I don't personally buy the chemistry between Bond and Tracy, but that helps us get on with the next films more happily.
The Robin Hood one is like classic Bond, one classic scene after another, usually involving some one-upmanship between Robin and his Norman overlords, or some passing stranger easily won over to his side. I'm afraid OHMSS does get a bit involved and long-winded in one location for too long, there's a lot of back and forth.
Phenomenally successful advert for the Hawaiian Tourist Board starring Elvis Presley as a newly appointed tour guide down on his luck and saddled with a bevy of teenage beauties to chaperone. His mother doesn’t like it, his father doesn’t like his mother and his fiancé jumps to conclusions faster than he can surfboard. Stereotypes abound, including a truly dreadful one from Angela Lansbury as the King’s Southern Mama spouting a series of stereotypes all of her own making, and among the colourful views, smatterings of cultural highlights and comedic lowlights we even get some songs. Most of them have a gentle, sea-surf, slow-rolling Hawaiian flavour which simply doesn’t suit Elvis’ rock n roll credentials, even the title track is a cover of an old Bing Crosby hit. Elvis checks in for the major hit ballad Can’t Help Falling In Love and its double A-side Rock-A-Hula-Baby, which is one of the most outlandishly fun singalongs he ever released.
The movie was originally envisaged as a direct sequel to G.I. Blues and was to have been called Beach Boy Blues, an effective number sung in a jail cell which gives rise to the funniest line in the whole film. It is also a blues number which lacks any of the down and dirty passion and dangerous vibrations present in songs like It Feels So Right, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, So Glad You’re Mine or Trouble. The beach party scene shows Elvis in good form, but for every muscular movement accompanying Slicin’ Sand, there’s a memory of the inglorious Ito Eats which immediately preceded it.
This is undeniably the moment Elvis Presley’s movie career went off the rails. Previously, attempts had been made to allow Elvis to demonstrate his acting credentials – and they didn’t stop immediately; witness the following year’s Kid Galahad – but this effort was so financially successful it became the template for almost every movie that followed for the next five or six years. As late as 1967’s Clambake, the King was still holding beach parties and trying to persuade his rich father he has a future.
Taken in the context of Elvis’ career at the time, Blue Hawaii can be seen as a necessary step in his commercial assault on the conscious minds of the fickle public. Quite unbelievably, the soundtrack album was the biggest seller of Elvis’ career during his lifetime, which shows his appeal in 1961 really was branching beyond moody rebellious teens, but this watered down, low-energy Elvis may as well be Bing Crosby he’s so unthreatening. A couple of years later the Beatles would trample all over him with their fresh brand of brash anti-establishmentarianism and A Hard Day’s Night.
Elvis’ nights were turning distinctly soft already. Even if he still had many a decent moment to come musically, cinematically the writing was on the wall as sure as the walls of Jericho came down.
Gerard Butler is the pilot on a New Years Eve flight from Singapore to Tokyo when the plane is struck by lightning and crash lands on Jolo Island in the Philippines, an area where rebels kidnap foreigners for ransom. A prisoner is one of the 14 passengers and he helps Butler fight off the rebels and try to lead the survivors to safety. This is an exciting action thriller without actually adding anything new to the genre. There is a lot of controversy here in the Philippines about the movie as the island is depicted as totally under rebel control and the armed forces are shown to be cowardly and so far it has not been released here. The actual facts are that the Sulu province is dangerous for tourists and inadvisable to visit but only a small area is affected by the Muslim contingent of rebels and the armed forces are certainly not cowards, they are as brave and competent as all other armies (my brother-in-law is a soldier and has been actively engaged in this area in Southern Philippines). But this is an action movie and should be taken in context. It was actually filmed in Puerto Rico.
Worth a look if you like the Stallone\Willis type of action movie.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
The Eiger Sanction - a Clint Eastwood vehicle from 1975, he directs too.
Never got round to watching this back in the day but I like it when BBC4 on UK telly shows these movies twice a week, usually in hi-def widescreen format so you revisit some classics in style. Sadly I missed the first 20 mins or so of this and it's a hard movie to really get the hang on if you don't see this - I got it that he's an ex Govt agent blackmailed into doing a job of sorts - but it's not clear what they have on him and what is at stake. The journey is amusing enough, you see Clint training for his mission with the help of some Native Indian woman, I like these things though really you would need more than just running non-stop, you'd need daily massage and so on to make it work. Clint's character professes to be 35 'give or take' actually give 10 years to look at him (he was 45 in fact). He does look lean and handsome which is just as well as in almost every scene there's some young dolly bird gazing at him, checking him out obviously like both Moore and Connery got in their 1983 Bond films.
Bond tropes are in order in this film - the latter parts of the movie on the Eiger, Switzerland, were relocated to Greece for the tail end of FYEO of course and one villain is left to a nasty death out in the desert like the one in the end of QoS, but I'm not quite sure what he did to deserve it and I felt you did need to see the set-up on that one! Otherwise Clint gets eyed up by lots of women and beats up some random blokes, there isn't much else going on. The climbing scenes at the end are excitingly done but the whole thing left a bit of a combination of 'So what?' and a bad taste. There's a lot of so-called political incorrectness that is laid on a bit thick, one forgets the culture wars were going on a fair bit back then too but it didn't have a big Brexit/Covid/Trump thing to hang it on at the time, it was more a kind of fashion thing, the prevailing trends of the time.
A not entirely successful comedy horror from Walking Dead writer/producer Robert Kirkman. Renfield, Dracula’s lackey, wants out, and in modern day America joins a self-help group to aid him to escape from his abusive master. There are some good early scenes mixing Dracula (Nicolas Cage) and Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) into vintage scenes from Lugosi and Lee films which sets up the plot. It’s a bit too gory for it’s own good but both leads are fine and the make-up impressive. Even though it’s quite a short movie at 93 minutes it still outstays it’s welcome by a good 10 minutes.
Worth watching, even if only for the introduction which Universal and Hammer fans will love.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
A starry cast headed by Will Smith and featuring our own Naomie Harris, who shines here.
A man has to come to terms with the death of his 6 yr old daughter, and isn't succeeding very well. His friends hire three actors to represent Love, Death, and Time who come calling on him and attempt to straighten him out. Or is that what is happening...?
The best acting I've ever seen from Smith (that isn't a backhanded compliment but a sincere one), aided by Dame Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet but neither Keira Knightley nor Edward Norton help much.
Our own Olga Kurylenko and Don Johnson, have opened an exclusive restaurant, the problem being is that Don has borrowed Mafia money for it and they want it back. Olga, the award winning chef, is an ex-KGB agent and when the Mafia try to set fire to the restaurant Olga gets her knives out and all hell breaks loose.
Its all standard action stuff but Olga does handle her action scenes very well. Don Johnson is pretty good as the husband. The Mafia don’t seem very capable to be fair and the boss has a useless son and heir who talks big and acts small. The comedic tone helps so we don’t take it all that seriously and it’s all over in less than 90 minutes so it’s a nice quick view while you eat pizza with a beer.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
This is the newest Wes Anderson movie. This means it's very stylized, quirky and funny. If you haven't seen any of his movies you must repent and change your ways immediately. I'm not the only one to like Anderson's movies. Just look at the cast list for this one: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, and Jeff Goldblum. Famous actors beg to be in Wes Anderson movies and work cheap to do so. This time the movie is about the production of a TV movie about an astronomy convention in the late 1950's in the desert town of Asteroid City. There is a bit of clever fourth wall breaking. Everything is brilliant (objective observation). For example there is a short Scarlett Johansson nude scene. Shockingly there is also a scene with a series of shots filmed with a tilted camera!! 😯😲🤯😵. I'm not joking - there really is. Obviously everyone should go and watch the movie.
Another shark attack movie, this time it’s a megalodon menacing a clapped out oil rig. The CGI is dreadful and the characters so devoid of any personality you’re siding with the fish.
Awful, makes Jaws 3D look like an Oscar winner.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I could have guessed the story before seeing it and it happened exactly like that. In fact, the trailers basically give the movie away nowadays, so I didn’t see anything new. The highlights were all in the trailer!
Bumblebee has hardly any screen time, and by the time the movie ended, I barely remembered there were other Maximals than Optimus Primal by the 3 seconds they were given on screen.
Story felt rushed, a generic story of a main character meets alien, the comedy friend who has no life, the other character that’s sole job is to provide information and push a button.
Only thing I won’t bash on is both Optimus’ voice actors. Peter Cullen and Ron Perlman give deep and strong voices to their characters. The rest were ok, but I hope to never hear Pete Davidsons voice as a Transformer again. He should stick to doing funny skits and being a weird rascal on his own time, not in a big budget movie where it sounded like he improvised every line he was given.
Im a sucker for strong character development and so many things were skipped that needed to be said about the Maximals, and so many things that were stupid that didn’t need to be heard.
Mirage and the main human character have NO DYNAMIC. It’s like they tried to recreate the Sam and Bee thing, and they failed to do so, mainly because it felt pushed and rushed.
As far as villains go, predicable as ever. The designs were good on all of them, but they didn’t seem as terrifying as depicted in the trailers.
I took in THE FLASH yesterday, mainly because I was feeling nostalgic about Michael Keaton as Batman. That was a big part of the film's appeal--Keaton's return is a treat (the film does nothing to hide the wrinkles around his mouth), and we also get the Danny Elfman theme, the '89 Batmobile and Batwing, and even The Joker's laughing bag in the bargain. This said, the film itself is a lot of fun--as Gymkata says, the multiverse thing is getting overplayed, but THE FLASH handles it well, with a lot of humor and even with a touching personal story. And to address the elephant in the room--it's hard to ignore the sliminess of Ezra Miller's real-life behavior, but if you can get past that you can see that they (to respect their chosen pronouns, even if I can't respect their chosen activities) put in an absolutely fantastic performance. . .especially as the Keanu-Reevesish younger version of Barry.
I think I've asked this before about another movie you review @Hardyboy but can The Flash work as a standalone movie? I'd like to see a blockbuster and of course I've seen Keaton's Batman but will I be lost watching this?
Risen (2016)
Biblical saga about the Roman tribune called Clavius I think who is tasked by Pontius Pilate with investigating the missing body of Jesus Christ after he's been crucified, to avoid rumours of resurrection destabilising the Roman Empire.
Clavius is played by Joseph Fiennes who is not quite one of our own but ought to be, he has a gravitas and here looks not unlike Ipcress File actor Nigel Green. He exhibits the same impatient, no-nonsense look about him.
Pilate is played by the guy who played Harry in Brit spy series Spooks, Peter Firth. He is very good.
The film works because it is played as a political thriller. It's directed by Kevin Reynolds who did Waterworld. It is gritty and exciting, the locations are used well. It leaves it open for as long as possible what you are meant to believe. It's odd because a film like this for many of us brings about feelings of 'What am I getting into here?' like you're being asked to attend a lecture by the Church of Scientology but then again every Easter we get these traditional biblical epics and we just go along with that without question. Then you realise that Star Wars employs a lot of the same themes ('You kill me, I become more powerful, my force is everywhere etc') and people go along with that so why not this?
The film loses its way a bit when it has to encounter the disciples who do tend to live down to Beatle John Lennon's incendiary criticism, and Jesus himself who looks Jewish of all things when we all know he's meant to look like Robert Powell or Max Von Sydow... okay okay, Powell went off with Babs from Pan's People and Von Sydow went on to play Blofeld so they're not the holiest of characters. The actor who plays Jesus (I know Jesus was Jewish) - never referred to by that name in the film - is okay but neither he nor the disciples exhibit that otherworldly holy aura, admittedly the casting agent was restricted by having to cast actors, not necessarily the most enlightened bunch of people around. It suffers from the way these things do - cast a biopic of a star and you an't help thinking, 'Yeah, but they don't actually look as good as the Beatles/Marilyn/Elvis etc'
Still this was a better than average time passer and I don't know why Fiennes doesn't have a bigger career in movies. His acting is very good here.
Hey, Nap--The Flash is completely stand alone. . .DC movies, for whatever you may think of them, aren't like Marvel: one colossal saga. And, since you've seen the Keaton films, you should appreciate the Easter eggs.
I’m no fan of films that go a long way past the 120 minute mark but this one running at 169 minutes flies by so fast that it’s hard to believe that it’s nearly 3 hours in length. This one continues on from part 3 and John is out for revenge on The High Table. A series of balletic style fights ensue and it seems that hundreds of people are slaughtered by guns, knives, swords and assorted other weapons. Clancy Brown joins the cast as a high ranking member of The High Table, and very good he is too.
Totally ludicrous, of course, but entertainingly captivating. If you liked the others then this one is essential viewing.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
This movie is directed by Robert Eggers (The Witch, the Lighthouse) and stars Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Cleas Bang, Ethan Hawke and more. I'll give you the headline first: This is the best and most historically accurate viking movie (or TV series) I've ever seen!
The plot is based on the old Norse saga of Amleth. If you read the rest of the plot and also re-arrange the letters in Amleth you'll know what famous story this saga gave birth to. Amleth (in the movie) is the young son of a chieftain Aurvandil (Hawke) and his queen (Kidman) on Iceland. Fjølnir who is un-legitimate brother of Aurvandil kills the chiftain and takes his brother's wife as his queen, but Amleth manages to escape while saying his new mantra: "I will avenge you, father! I will save you, mother! I will kill you Fjølnir!". Twenty years later Amleth is a berserker in Kievan Rus (Ukraine). There he meets the local sorceress Olga (Taylor-Joy). There Amleth hears the Norwegian king has deposed Fjølnir and Amleth's mother is still alive. He goes to Iceland to achieve his three stated life goals.
Eggers is known for his very historically accurate movies. The physical accuracy is great. The clothes are what vikings really wore, not the medieval biker gang/Wagnerian opera costumes we see in the TV show Vikings and other places. The same with ships, houses etc. But Eggers also focuses on mental and cultural accuracy. What did people think and believe? There are no characters who wants equality between the genders and the end of slavery in this movie! Religion plays a big role in Egger's movies. We see valkyries and the gates of Valhalla, but are they real or dreams and hallucinations?
But even though I'm impressed by the historical accuracy in the movie, there are some problems. The vikings can't row correctly here! You use your whole body when you row an heavy ship, you don't just use your arms to show off your bodybuilder physique. Burial mounds didn't have huge hollow spaces where the chieftain sits on a throne. Viking chiefs and kings were often buried in their longships, but they were lying down. With the possible exception of the wooden "tent" around the dead body, the ship was filled with stones and earth. The cast speaks in an accent inspired by modern Icelanders speaking English, but Nicole Kidman uses an "American" R, and it is distracting. In some scenes the characters sing or speak in languages used at the time, mostly Old Norse and Old Slavic. But in one scene two people are singing in modern Swedish! Why on earth is this done? What is far more important is the way Amleth chooses to travel undercover back to Iceland. I won't give it away, but no person of his social status would even consider doing this, and I really don't see the need for it either.
We know very little about some rituals from back then, so I don't think anyone can say if some of them are historically correct. In my opinion they're taking the berserker thing a bit too far. There are also scenes that seem far fetched (especially the final fight), but this movie plays around with reality, myth and dreams. I'll give it a pass.
So is it a good movie? Yes, it is! It's entertaining, it's very well shot, the acting is great and the plot is good. "A wise man goes to watch The Northman. An unwise man watches Vikings on HBO instead, condeming himself to the Hel of ignorance " (real viking proverb 😁)
No, not the ones with Brendan Fraser. The really old, b&w, Universal horror series.
Starting in 1933 with Boris Karloff and ending in 1944 with Lon Chaney, except for the obligatory meeting with Abbott and Costello.
The plots (or perhaps I should say "plot", singular) revolve around a reanimated mummy and his reincarnated love, no surprises here. Karloff was as excellent as always in the first one, and Chaney didn't have much opportunity to do much behind a plaster mask.
These are short films, usually about an hour long, and apart from the first have a flashback sequence that eats up as much as ten minutes or so- budget saving at its most obvious!
The first is recommended,the others a matter of taste.
Oh, and just to be clear - it's Lon Chaney Jr in these films although he's simply billed as "Lon Chaney". Another example of the dead coming back to life in Universal movies!
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EIGHTH GRADE (2018)
Depressing and upsetting little film about a thirteen year old girl who makes online vlogs about boosting your self-confidence to give her own shallow ego a boost. They are watched by nobody. Kayla’s life revolves around her mobile phone, her lap top and an uneasy relationship with her single parent father. Friendless and awkward, she attempts to navigate the last few days of middle school and learns stark lessons about growing up.
Having recently watched the family friendly, cleverly comic and pleasantly heartening Are You There God? It’s Margaret, Eighth Grade came as a total downer. OK, so there’s an uplift or two at the end of the drama, but considering the movie is written by a comedian, it rarely shows a comic touch and has to rely on swearing and embarrassment for laughs, which is a low blow and doesn’t do anything to endear the lead character to its audience. I just felt permanently sorry for the poor mite. Elsie Fisher is very good as Kayla, appearing as she does in every scene, but she’s swamped by the morose storyline which – unlike Margaret – lacks fun and laughter.
Critically like popular, but I didn’t like get it, or maybe like I’m not the right kinda generation like to get jokes about like snapchat and stuff.
It really does sound like this.
I meant to comment on this before but didn’t have the time. This is a great review of a great movie. I think Newman missed out on 3 Oscars in the 60’s, The Hustler, Hud and Cool Hand Luke. All three winners of those years turned in weaker performances than Newman did - for some reason he didn’t gel with the “In-Crowd”.
Thanks for the compliment @CoolHandBond
HATARI! (1962)
An adventurous trip into the safaris of Africa for Howard Hawks, who otherwise makes exactly the same film he would in the wild west or a news room or a detective investigation. Hawks’ films are always about people and the relationships they form, break and reform and there is nothing different here bar the setting. In fact, it’s the landscapes which make the movie as the interpersonal stuff is humdrum at best, enlivened by the occasional worthwhile comic skit.
John Wayne is a big game catcher eking a dangerous living in Tanganyika, whose ranch and life is turned upside down by the arrival of a free-spirited Italian wildlife photographer. Elsa Martinelli, a free spirit herself, embodies his confusion and his desire as the photographer. They are surrounded by a large and capable international cast who provide all the necessary action, adventure, romance and tomfoolery you would expect from this kind of family entertainment. In the days before insurance and stunt men, the scenes of safari hunting were filmed by the cast for real, lending authenticity to the proceedings, as well as broken bones and many profanities. Wayne rarely appears without a fag or a drink, perhaps taking Humphrey Bogart’s advice to heart [when filming The African Queen, Bogart famously claimed to avoided illness by drinking nothing but bourbon and ginger ale]. Many of the talky scenes look improvised - and the ones that don’t seem too clearly scripted to appeal to the modern ear. There’s a distinctly unsettling inter-generational romance between Red Buttons and Michele Giardon that simply doesn’t work. He also seems to think running around like he’s wearing a nappy is amusing.
Otherwise, the film is very enjoyable. Henry Mancini provides a low-key score with a popular theme Baby Elephant Walk. Co-star Hardy Kruger loved the ranch so much, he bought it.
THE CHASE (1966)
Excellent heightened violent drama about one night in a small Texas oil town whose inhabitants drink, fornicate and cause trouble for Marlon Brando’s embattled Sherriff Calder. The arena is hot, sticky and tense. Thrown into a combustible mixture of adultery, bigotry and contempt is Robert Redford’s escaped prisoner Bubber Reeves, returning by accident and fate to his hometown and his unfaithful wife.
The local men and women, fuelled by the intoxicating pleasures of alcohol and lust, turn vigilantes and the put upon Sherriff attempts to calm their enflamed passions while searching for the escapee. His disdain for the townsfolk – and their suspicion of him – is exemplified by Brando’s hunched appearance, a big, dignified man brought down to the level of dogs and pigs, dirtier than the soil he once toiled. He’s seen as being in the pocket of the local oil tycoon, Val Rogers [E.G. Marshall], who owns everyone because he also owns the bank and the land. His acts of philanthropy mean nothing to the drunken rabble, who only want to climb on his coattails. Calder, a man aware of his responsibilities beyond what Rogers thinks he owes him, tires of the pettiness. He wants to maintain law and order, but his efforts spiral out of his control once a group of angry husbands decide – with some justification – he’s aiding the fugitive. Meanwhile, the population watches on stupefied with increasing horror…
A fine Lillian Hellman screenplay was hacked about to make it workable, but you sense some of her good work eking out of the remainder. Playwright Horton Foote wrote the original for the stage. A divisive movie, it’s hard to know where to begin when appraising the worth of The Chase, for director Arthur Penn disowned it and Brando considered his role beneath him. Odd then, that the atmosphere Penn creates and the weariness Brando exudes are the chief contributors to the movie’s overall success. The sections that perhaps disturb most [Calder’s vicious beating, the blackjacking of an innocent black man, the use of the N word, the overly contrived performances of some of the cast, the foolishness of the Sherriff’s plan of action, the dumb actions of Bubber Reeves] are also the catalysts for the audience’s most intense reactions. Racism, segregation, the carrying of handguns, vigilantism, death, adultery, covetousness, pride – there are almost too many themes to be authored effectively without jarring the narrative. The fact from half an hour in everyone bar the police seem to be out to cause one another some sort of physical, emotional or mental harm is – like life – both unsettling and distinctly realistic. There’s no point of conscience in The Chase, even the Sherriff has little compassion for the eminently dislikeable townspeople [well, why would he?], and everyone makes bad decisions which contribute to the swirling fiery climax.
Perhaps, above all, the film – or more accurately the screenplay – is about the attention, retention and abuse of power by individuals on others and on society. Val Rogers has a superiority complex that blinds him to his inadequacies as a father and an employer. His son, Jake [James Fox], has inherited the disease. Jake has used his wealth to seduce, ensnare and mislead Jane Fonda’s Anna, who has betrayed and always betrayed her husband Bubber. Everyone’s at that game and if they are not, they want to be. As Janice Rule’s adulterous Emily Stewart sneers “They can’t shoot you for being unfaithful. Half the population would be gone.” Other rich folk, like the benign, watchful, parasitic Mr Bridges [an excellent Henry Hull] prey on the weak, such as the Reeves’. Even here, Mrs Reeves [Miriam Hopkins] is the dominant player in a failing relationship, more concerned for her errant son, who hates her, than for her doting husband. Robert Duvall’s Edwin Stewart is a frightened individual seeking to feather his nest, but unable to wrest himself from the demands of his salacious wife, ignoring her affairs even as she parades them in his own living room. The unwelcome racist undertone slips uneasily into the fire, but that would have been an extremely potent theme for the late sixties and I applaud the filmmakers for not dodging it.
Nor do they hold back on the violence which, when it comes, is shocking and dominates proceedings perhaps to the detriment of the human cost. Damon Fuller [Richard Bradford] is a man in thrall to his lusts for women and hatred of authority. He gazes with extreme intent on the young skimpily dressed teens strutting down the street or partying late night. They don’t hold back in returning the attention either – everyone in this town is bored and permissiveness, physical indulgence as it were, is their shared weakness. Fuller exhibits the same infectious, gratuitous look while taunting a black mechanic or, eventually, when he assaults Calder. This is a society raised and then torn by its own unseemliness. By the end, Jane Fonda has lost both a lover and a husband, but she’s left all alone outside every facet of society. So too beaten up Sherriff Calder and his wife Ruby [Angie Dickinson] who abandon the shitty town to its own spoils.
There is a huge cast with great pedigree and the production values are high. For us, Clifton James has a supporting role, so too Bruce Cabot. Maurice Binder did the montage titles. John Barry wrote his first American movie score, which at times displays hints of OHMSS – every time Redford is on the run, Barry prefaces the action with the same horn break that introduced the 1969 ski chase.
I guess, if you like it, you like it – as I do – and if you don’t, well, there you go. Marlon Brando’s sixties output is often derided, but he made interesting and varied choices throughout the decade and many of them, while not appreciated at the time, have aged far better than some of his 1950s films, feeling more contemporary by inviting an audience to be divided and assess a film, its character and themes, from diverse, alien angles. The Chase does that and Brando’s central, commanding performance demands it.
Brilliant.
Bright Hair on Talking Pictures TV. I like this channel, it shows little-known, offbeat stuff and this is from the 1990s with Emilia Fox as a rebellious schoolgirl whose area is beset by a killer who batters people, she stumbles across the first murder. It has nearly 'our' James Purefoy - handsome enough to see why he was considered to be Bond instead of Pierce Brosnan - and a good many recognisable faces from British acting. I recognised the uptight head mistress as the one in the same role in Channel 4's Skins all those years ago, but never realised it was the same actress who played uptight news anchor Sally Smedley in the sitcom Drop the Dead Donkey.
This film started well but did not reward attention, turning into absolute twaddle as it went on. A real shaggy dog story.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Godzilla vs Kong 2021
Awesome in its stupidity, relentless in its box-ticking. Two hours of my life I won't be getting back. For pure fun I preferred the 60 years older King Kong vs Godzilla
which probably cost as much altogether as the costume budget on this one.
Ah! King Kong v Godzilla. I remember longing to see that movie in about 1964 when I gazed at the movie poster outside the cinema…
…but the idiots at the BBFC had slapped an ‘X’ certificate on it - laughable when you see the film nowadays. I finally saw it in the 80’s at a monster film festival evening - I’ve forgotten the other movies shown, but it was worth the wait.
Really, an "X" certificate? 😂😂😂😂
I remember buying the BluRay 3D version of this movie only because I was curious to see what the monster on monster scenes looked like in 3D (and for the record, they did look great). Beyond that pretty much every single scene involving a human was off the scale in terms of cringeworthiness. To this day I cannot remember the name of a single human character in the movie, which is sort of my litmus test for how well presented the characters are. I found the only way to watch it with any level of enjoyment was to fast forward over any dialog and treat it as a movie with no human characters in it at all.
I think @Barbel recommended this little number to me:
BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1971)
Chaotic, entertaining and perplexing late entry into Hammer’s Mummy cycle, this time featuring a female mummy, beautifully formed and with barely a bandage on her. In fact, as she lies in deep mystical, catatonic sleep in a gorgeous coffin, you can clearly see she’s got barely a stitch on: some silks and decorously placed jewels will do. She also, rather embarrassingly, has a habit of breathing. Valerie Leon occupies the dual role of Tera, a long dead Egyptian queen, and Margaret Fuchs, the young woman whose spirit has succumbed to the dark arts. Her father is a famed Egyptologist, obsessed with his greatest discovery, but also a man who recognises the evil residing in the miraculously preserved body he keeps hidden in the cellar of his mansion, a space he has decorated exactly like the Queen’s actual tomb. As the seven stars of the Plough align along the same astral plane as they did on the day Tera died, the evil queen’s lifeforce asserts itself over Margaret, and Fuchs’ colleagues suffer a series of bloodthirsty throat-slashing deaths. Only one man, the mysterious, intense, cane-wielding Corbeck seems to have the answers, but is he in the service of good or evil?
A troubled production history [no finished screenplay, a rushed construction, last minute cast changes, even a dying director] doesn’t seem to hurt this ninety minutes of mindlessness, which fails to make much sense however you view it. Best then just to go along for the ride, enjoy the slow motion footage of Valerie Leon pouting and wearing diaphanous nightgowns, wonder why it has been set in the modern day and forget it was based on a Bram Stoker novel, lest we burnish his reputation. Some shocking murders come and go, the permissiveness of the heroine is nicely allied to her doppelganger’s lust for power. One feels the gore content [and the sex content?] was on the up while the rest of the production values stayed rooted in banality. The murders owe much to Val Lewton and the epilogue owes much to Roger Corman.
A strong, strange effort which, with its emphasis on the paranormal, tried to do something ambitiously different to the typical Hammer output. Plenty of stylish camerawork and a good leading performance from Miss Leon paper over the creaking cracks in the script.
Bad Boys with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.
I caught Bad Boys 3 or Bad Boys Til We Die or whatever it was called a couple of weeks ago and all the reviews on imdb said how bad it was compared to the original, well sequels do have diminishing returns as a rule so I chilled the Peroni and settled down to this one this evening. Bad Boys? It's just bad. Action comedy where the action is by the numbers and the comedy, well, I think US politicians should watch this film to realise that some people reject the likes of Lethal Weapon for being too highbrow, too smart, this is like the Turner and Hooch to Lethal Weapon 2, is that the one with Sly Stallone and Kurt Russell or have I got the name wrong? Some folk just like crap is what I mean. Bad Boys is crap.
Will Smith is the rich trust fund playboy cop with a flash car, his buddy is a downtrodden husband with three kids who isn't getting any. The set up isn't bad in itself, but the idea the latter has to pretend to be the former to a scared witness to a drug killing because he's the only one she will trust is very contrived. There's an element of Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis in Some Like It Hot to the relationship but that flatters it because the jokes just aren't funny, the way it plays out isn't funny. I found Lawrence an unappealing buddy or cinematic lead. It's like it's written by AI but that would need intelligence and this doesn't have any. I think clever smart gags are the only way to outwit AI, I just can't see how that would come up with that stuff, nor comic timing, but it could certainly come up with the plot to this. I gave up after about an hour, how it could last 2 and a half hours albeit with ad breaks I do not know.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Breaking surface (2020)
This is a Swedish suspense movie with an English title where all the exterior shots are filmed in Norway. Why the original title is in English I can't say. Why is it filmed in the Lofoten islands in Norway then? To put it bluntly: Sweden looks nice, but you can't find nature even remotely as spectacular there. The Bond movies need to use Lofoten as a location as soon as possible, before MI uses that location first too!
I won't say anything about the plot other than it's a tight survival thriller focusing on two Swedish half-sisters diving at winter in northern Norway. The tension keeps building, the actors are really good and it's the best thriller I've seen this year. The trailer actually sets up the plot nicely: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRIGPXB3Ya4
A nice lazy Sunday afternoon watching The Adventures of Robin Hood, followed by sections of On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Both were excellent prints but the sound was not tip top, had to turn the volume up to hear the dialogue on the former, the music seemed buried in the mix a bit on the latter.
Odd that Errol Flynn was an Aussie or near enough, Tasmanian perhaps - his origins are a bit vague, he made out he was of Irish descent one time - and so is Lazenby but Flynn's film plays to his strengths while Lazenby's doesn't. Flynn just enters the villain's castle stronghold, bold as you please while the villainous King John - Claud Reins of course - does the Bond villain thing of inviting his nemesis to. sup with him, albeit only briefly! Robin only wears a disguise once, to infiltrate an archery contest but Lazenby is cursed in his debut by having to be in disguise for a fair bit of the movie. It's his bad luck to be in one of the films of the 60s that owed so much to Fleming's novel, it wouldn't be bent in his favour, even if the director had a point; I can picture Lazenby in YOLT even better than the bored overweight Connery and maybe even in DAF.
The chemistry between Flynn and deHavilland is very good, I mean if he'd departed with her only to have her struck in the eye like King Harold by an arrow, shot by a vengeful King John and Guy Gisbourne, that would have been a real downer. I don't personally buy the chemistry between Bond and Tracy, but that helps us get on with the next films more happily.
The Robin Hood one is like classic Bond, one classic scene after another, usually involving some one-upmanship between Robin and his Norman overlords, or some passing stranger easily won over to his side. I'm afraid OHMSS does get a bit involved and long-winded in one location for too long, there's a lot of back and forth.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
BLUE HAWAII (1961)
Phenomenally successful advert for the Hawaiian Tourist Board starring Elvis Presley as a newly appointed tour guide down on his luck and saddled with a bevy of teenage beauties to chaperone. His mother doesn’t like it, his father doesn’t like his mother and his fiancé jumps to conclusions faster than he can surfboard. Stereotypes abound, including a truly dreadful one from Angela Lansbury as the King’s Southern Mama spouting a series of stereotypes all of her own making, and among the colourful views, smatterings of cultural highlights and comedic lowlights we even get some songs. Most of them have a gentle, sea-surf, slow-rolling Hawaiian flavour which simply doesn’t suit Elvis’ rock n roll credentials, even the title track is a cover of an old Bing Crosby hit. Elvis checks in for the major hit ballad Can’t Help Falling In Love and its double A-side Rock-A-Hula-Baby, which is one of the most outlandishly fun singalongs he ever released.
The movie was originally envisaged as a direct sequel to G.I. Blues and was to have been called Beach Boy Blues, an effective number sung in a jail cell which gives rise to the funniest line in the whole film. It is also a blues number which lacks any of the down and dirty passion and dangerous vibrations present in songs like It Feels So Right, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, So Glad You’re Mine or Trouble. The beach party scene shows Elvis in good form, but for every muscular movement accompanying Slicin’ Sand, there’s a memory of the inglorious Ito Eats which immediately preceded it.
This is undeniably the moment Elvis Presley’s movie career went off the rails. Previously, attempts had been made to allow Elvis to demonstrate his acting credentials – and they didn’t stop immediately; witness the following year’s Kid Galahad – but this effort was so financially successful it became the template for almost every movie that followed for the next five or six years. As late as 1967’s Clambake, the King was still holding beach parties and trying to persuade his rich father he has a future.
Taken in the context of Elvis’ career at the time, Blue Hawaii can be seen as a necessary step in his commercial assault on the conscious minds of the fickle public. Quite unbelievably, the soundtrack album was the biggest seller of Elvis’ career during his lifetime, which shows his appeal in 1961 really was branching beyond moody rebellious teens, but this watered down, low-energy Elvis may as well be Bing Crosby he’s so unthreatening. A couple of years later the Beatles would trample all over him with their fresh brand of brash anti-establishmentarianism and A Hard Day’s Night.
Elvis’ nights were turning distinctly soft already. Even if he still had many a decent moment to come musically, cinematically the writing was on the wall as sure as the walls of Jericho came down.
PLANE (2023)
Gerard Butler is the pilot on a New Years Eve flight from Singapore to Tokyo when the plane is struck by lightning and crash lands on Jolo Island in the Philippines, an area where rebels kidnap foreigners for ransom. A prisoner is one of the 14 passengers and he helps Butler fight off the rebels and try to lead the survivors to safety. This is an exciting action thriller without actually adding anything new to the genre. There is a lot of controversy here in the Philippines about the movie as the island is depicted as totally under rebel control and the armed forces are shown to be cowardly and so far it has not been released here. The actual facts are that the Sulu province is dangerous for tourists and inadvisable to visit but only a small area is affected by the Muslim contingent of rebels and the armed forces are certainly not cowards, they are as brave and competent as all other armies (my brother-in-law is a soldier and has been actively engaged in this area in Southern Philippines). But this is an action movie and should be taken in context. It was actually filmed in Puerto Rico.
Worth a look if you like the Stallone\Willis type of action movie.
The Eiger Sanction - a Clint Eastwood vehicle from 1975, he directs too.
Never got round to watching this back in the day but I like it when BBC4 on UK telly shows these movies twice a week, usually in hi-def widescreen format so you revisit some classics in style. Sadly I missed the first 20 mins or so of this and it's a hard movie to really get the hang on if you don't see this - I got it that he's an ex Govt agent blackmailed into doing a job of sorts - but it's not clear what they have on him and what is at stake. The journey is amusing enough, you see Clint training for his mission with the help of some Native Indian woman, I like these things though really you would need more than just running non-stop, you'd need daily massage and so on to make it work. Clint's character professes to be 35 'give or take' actually give 10 years to look at him (he was 45 in fact). He does look lean and handsome which is just as well as in almost every scene there's some young dolly bird gazing at him, checking him out obviously like both Moore and Connery got in their 1983 Bond films.
Bond tropes are in order in this film - the latter parts of the movie on the Eiger, Switzerland, were relocated to Greece for the tail end of FYEO of course and one villain is left to a nasty death out in the desert like the one in the end of QoS, but I'm not quite sure what he did to deserve it and I felt you did need to see the set-up on that one! Otherwise Clint gets eyed up by lots of women and beats up some random blokes, there isn't much else going on. The climbing scenes at the end are excitingly done but the whole thing left a bit of a combination of 'So what?' and a bad taste. There's a lot of so-called political incorrectness that is laid on a bit thick, one forgets the culture wars were going on a fair bit back then too but it didn't have a big Brexit/Covid/Trump thing to hang it on at the time, it was more a kind of fashion thing, the prevailing trends of the time.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
RENFIELD (2023)
A not entirely successful comedy horror from Walking Dead writer/producer Robert Kirkman. Renfield, Dracula’s lackey, wants out, and in modern day America joins a self-help group to aid him to escape from his abusive master. There are some good early scenes mixing Dracula (Nicolas Cage) and Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) into vintage scenes from Lugosi and Lee films which sets up the plot. It’s a bit too gory for it’s own good but both leads are fine and the make-up impressive. Even though it’s quite a short movie at 93 minutes it still outstays it’s welcome by a good 10 minutes.
Worth watching, even if only for the introduction which Universal and Hammer fans will love.
COLLATERAL BEAUTY (2016) Dir David Frankel
A starry cast headed by Will Smith and featuring our own Naomie Harris, who shines here.
A man has to come to terms with the death of his 6 yr old daughter, and isn't succeeding very well. His friends hire three actors to represent Love, Death, and Time who come calling on him and attempt to straighten him out. Or is that what is happening...?
The best acting I've ever seen from Smith (that isn't a backhanded compliment but a sincere one), aided by Dame Helen Mirren and Kate Winslet but neither Keira Knightley nor Edward Norton help much.
I'm sure you're all shocked to learn that the restaurant in The Menu is based on a restaurant in Norway the scriptwriter visited? 😵 😂
HIGH HEAT (2022)
Our own Olga Kurylenko and Don Johnson, have opened an exclusive restaurant, the problem being is that Don has borrowed Mafia money for it and they want it back. Olga, the award winning chef, is an ex-KGB agent and when the Mafia try to set fire to the restaurant Olga gets her knives out and all hell breaks loose.
Its all standard action stuff but Olga does handle her action scenes very well. Don Johnson is pretty good as the husband. The Mafia don’t seem very capable to be fair and the boss has a useless son and heir who talks big and acts small. The comedic tone helps so we don’t take it all that seriously and it’s all over in less than 90 minutes so it’s a nice quick view while you eat pizza with a beer.
Astroid City (2023)
This is the newest Wes Anderson movie. This means it's very stylized, quirky and funny. If you haven't seen any of his movies you must repent and change your ways immediately. I'm not the only one to like Anderson's movies. Just look at the cast list for this one: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, and Jeff Goldblum. Famous actors beg to be in Wes Anderson movies and work cheap to do so. This time the movie is about the production of a TV movie about an astronomy convention in the late 1950's in the desert town of Asteroid City. There is a bit of clever fourth wall breaking. Everything is brilliant (objective observation). For example there is a short Scarlett Johansson nude scene. Shockingly there is also a scene with a series of shots filmed with a tilted camera!! 😯😲🤯😵. I'm not joking - there really is. Obviously everyone should go and watch the movie.
THE BLACK DEMON (2023)
Another shark attack movie, this time it’s a megalodon menacing a clapped out oil rig. The CGI is dreadful and the characters so devoid of any personality you’re siding with the fish.
Awful, makes Jaws 3D look like an Oscar winner.
TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS (2023)
Worst Transformers movie I’ve seen.
I could have guessed the story before seeing it and it happened exactly like that. In fact, the trailers basically give the movie away nowadays, so I didn’t see anything new. The highlights were all in the trailer!
Bumblebee has hardly any screen time, and by the time the movie ended, I barely remembered there were other Maximals than Optimus Primal by the 3 seconds they were given on screen.
Story felt rushed, a generic story of a main character meets alien, the comedy friend who has no life, the other character that’s sole job is to provide information and push a button.
Only thing I won’t bash on is both Optimus’ voice actors. Peter Cullen and Ron Perlman give deep and strong voices to their characters. The rest were ok, but I hope to never hear Pete Davidsons voice as a Transformer again. He should stick to doing funny skits and being a weird rascal on his own time, not in a big budget movie where it sounded like he improvised every line he was given.
Im a sucker for strong character development and so many things were skipped that needed to be said about the Maximals, and so many things that were stupid that didn’t need to be heard.
Mirage and the main human character have NO DYNAMIC. It’s like they tried to recreate the Sam and Bee thing, and they failed to do so, mainly because it felt pushed and rushed.
As far as villains go, predicable as ever. The designs were good on all of them, but they didn’t seem as terrifying as depicted in the trailers.
I give it a 2/10.
I watched this last night and I said to my husband this script must have had 5 pages of dialogue and 300 pages of action!
I was exhausted by the end 🤣
I took in THE FLASH yesterday, mainly because I was feeling nostalgic about Michael Keaton as Batman. That was a big part of the film's appeal--Keaton's return is a treat (the film does nothing to hide the wrinkles around his mouth), and we also get the Danny Elfman theme, the '89 Batmobile and Batwing, and even The Joker's laughing bag in the bargain. This said, the film itself is a lot of fun--as Gymkata says, the multiverse thing is getting overplayed, but THE FLASH handles it well, with a lot of humor and even with a touching personal story. And to address the elephant in the room--it's hard to ignore the sliminess of Ezra Miller's real-life behavior, but if you can get past that you can see that they (to respect their chosen pronouns, even if I can't respect their chosen activities) put in an absolutely fantastic performance. . .especially as the Keanu-Reevesish younger version of Barry.
I think I've asked this before about another movie you review @Hardyboy but can The Flash work as a standalone movie? I'd like to see a blockbuster and of course I've seen Keaton's Batman but will I be lost watching this?
Risen (2016)
Biblical saga about the Roman tribune called Clavius I think who is tasked by Pontius Pilate with investigating the missing body of Jesus Christ after he's been crucified, to avoid rumours of resurrection destabilising the Roman Empire.
Clavius is played by Joseph Fiennes who is not quite one of our own but ought to be, he has a gravitas and here looks not unlike Ipcress File actor Nigel Green. He exhibits the same impatient, no-nonsense look about him.
Pilate is played by the guy who played Harry in Brit spy series Spooks, Peter Firth. He is very good.
The film works because it is played as a political thriller. It's directed by Kevin Reynolds who did Waterworld. It is gritty and exciting, the locations are used well. It leaves it open for as long as possible what you are meant to believe. It's odd because a film like this for many of us brings about feelings of 'What am I getting into here?' like you're being asked to attend a lecture by the Church of Scientology but then again every Easter we get these traditional biblical epics and we just go along with that without question. Then you realise that Star Wars employs a lot of the same themes ('You kill me, I become more powerful, my force is everywhere etc') and people go along with that so why not this?
The film loses its way a bit when it has to encounter the disciples who do tend to live down to Beatle John Lennon's incendiary criticism, and Jesus himself who looks Jewish of all things when we all know he's meant to look like Robert Powell or Max Von Sydow... okay okay, Powell went off with Babs from Pan's People and Von Sydow went on to play Blofeld so they're not the holiest of characters. The actor who plays Jesus (I know Jesus was Jewish) - never referred to by that name in the film - is okay but neither he nor the disciples exhibit that otherworldly holy aura, admittedly the casting agent was restricted by having to cast actors, not necessarily the most enlightened bunch of people around. It suffers from the way these things do - cast a biopic of a star and you an't help thinking, 'Yeah, but they don't actually look as good as the Beatles/Marilyn/Elvis etc'
Still this was a better than average time passer and I don't know why Fiennes doesn't have a bigger career in movies. His acting is very good here.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Hey, Nap--The Flash is completely stand alone. . .DC movies, for whatever you may think of them, aren't like Marvel: one colossal saga. And, since you've seen the Keaton films, you should appreciate the Easter eggs.
JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 (2023)
I’m no fan of films that go a long way past the 120 minute mark but this one running at 169 minutes flies by so fast that it’s hard to believe that it’s nearly 3 hours in length. This one continues on from part 3 and John is out for revenge on The High Table. A series of balletic style fights ensue and it seems that hundreds of people are slaughtered by guns, knives, swords and assorted other weapons. Clancy Brown joins the cast as a high ranking member of The High Table, and very good he is too.
Totally ludicrous, of course, but entertainingly captivating. If you liked the others then this one is essential viewing.
The Northman (2022)
This movie is directed by Robert Eggers (The Witch, the Lighthouse) and stars Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor-Joy, Cleas Bang, Ethan Hawke and more. I'll give you the headline first: This is the best and most historically accurate viking movie (or TV series) I've ever seen!
The plot is based on the old Norse saga of Amleth. If you read the rest of the plot and also re-arrange the letters in Amleth you'll know what famous story this saga gave birth to. Amleth (in the movie) is the young son of a chieftain Aurvandil (Hawke) and his queen (Kidman) on Iceland. Fjølnir who is un-legitimate brother of Aurvandil kills the chiftain and takes his brother's wife as his queen, but Amleth manages to escape while saying his new mantra: "I will avenge you, father! I will save you, mother! I will kill you Fjølnir!". Twenty years later Amleth is a berserker in Kievan Rus (Ukraine). There he meets the local sorceress Olga (Taylor-Joy). There Amleth hears the Norwegian king has deposed Fjølnir and Amleth's mother is still alive. He goes to Iceland to achieve his three stated life goals.
Eggers is known for his very historically accurate movies. The physical accuracy is great. The clothes are what vikings really wore, not the medieval biker gang/Wagnerian opera costumes we see in the TV show Vikings and other places. The same with ships, houses etc. But Eggers also focuses on mental and cultural accuracy. What did people think and believe? There are no characters who wants equality between the genders and the end of slavery in this movie! Religion plays a big role in Egger's movies. We see valkyries and the gates of Valhalla, but are they real or dreams and hallucinations?
But even though I'm impressed by the historical accuracy in the movie, there are some problems. The vikings can't row correctly here! You use your whole body when you row an heavy ship, you don't just use your arms to show off your bodybuilder physique. Burial mounds didn't have huge hollow spaces where the chieftain sits on a throne. Viking chiefs and kings were often buried in their longships, but they were lying down. With the possible exception of the wooden "tent" around the dead body, the ship was filled with stones and earth. The cast speaks in an accent inspired by modern Icelanders speaking English, but Nicole Kidman uses an "American" R, and it is distracting. In some scenes the characters sing or speak in languages used at the time, mostly Old Norse and Old Slavic. But in one scene two people are singing in modern Swedish! Why on earth is this done? What is far more important is the way Amleth chooses to travel undercover back to Iceland. I won't give it away, but no person of his social status would even consider doing this, and I really don't see the need for it either.
We know very little about some rituals from back then, so I don't think anyone can say if some of them are historically correct. In my opinion they're taking the berserker thing a bit too far. There are also scenes that seem far fetched (especially the final fight), but this movie plays around with reality, myth and dreams. I'll give it a pass.
So is it a good movie? Yes, it is! It's entertaining, it's very well shot, the acting is great and the plot is good. "A wise man goes to watch The Northman. An unwise man watches Vikings on HBO instead, condeming himself to the Hel of ignorance " (real viking proverb 😁)
"The Mummy" series.
No, not the ones with Brendan Fraser. The really old, b&w, Universal horror series.
Starting in 1933 with Boris Karloff and ending in 1944 with Lon Chaney, except for the obligatory meeting with Abbott and Costello.
The plots (or perhaps I should say "plot", singular) revolve around a reanimated mummy and his reincarnated love, no surprises here. Karloff was as excellent as always in the first one, and Chaney didn't have much opportunity to do much behind a plaster mask.
These are short films, usually about an hour long, and apart from the first have a flashback sequence that eats up as much as ten minutes or so- budget saving at its most obvious!
The first is recommended,the others a matter of taste.
Oh, and just to be clear - it's Lon Chaney Jr in these films although he's simply billed as "Lon Chaney". Another example of the dead coming back to life in Universal movies!