Acclaimed bittersweet drama in which the 1930s cinema comics reunite decades after their heyday for a low-budget tour of Britain. There they find themselves playing to empty seats and up against the modern day competition such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, who are cleaning up.
There's a bit of baggage between the two, and it becomes clear that Jerry is carrying his partner somewhat, especially as Tom is not in the best of health - his back legs have gone and his tail has gone a bit mangey. There's bad blood also from the time Tom went off to do a Rentokil commercial by himself. He also spends time gambling, betting on dog fights (this features a cameo from Spike the Dog.)
It's not bad, though it's not quite plausible that the pair should be able to recreate their skit with the piano (Tom is clearly not playing the instrument as Jerry bops up and down around the piano keys) and the shots of the audience doubled up with laughter seem a bit laid on (the film seems to have been in debt to the Tom and Jerry foundation) but otherwise this works quite well.
Stan & Ollie...an absolutely wonderful, touching and heartwarming film...both leads are superb...but you will know this if you’ve seen it...and if not...why not?
Glorious -{
I popped in here to see if anyone had seen it. I'm going to wait till it's out on dvd/online but I'm looking forward to it. I have a real soft spot for Stan and Ollie.
Coogan is a surprisingly good actor even if his Bond impressions area little dodgy.
I watched the Bruce Willis remake of Death Wish recently. Not as bad as I thought it would be. Quite watchable in a Bruce Willis shoot 'em up kind of way.
Stan & Ollie...an absolutely wonderful, touching and heartwarming film...both leads are superb...but you will know this if you’ve seen it...and if not...why not?
Glorious -{
I popped in here to see if anyone had seen it. I'm going to wait till it's out on dvd/online but I'm looking forward to it. I have a real soft spot for Stan and Ollie.
Coogan is a surprisingly good actor even if his Bond impressions area little dodgy.
I saw it just yesterday, in an exclusive showing. It was exclusive because I was the only one in the auditorium! Well, their loss. This is an absolutely beautiful film--it's about the kind of love only real friends can have--and Coogan and Reilly entirely lose themselves inside their roles. Even if you're not a Laurel & Hardy fan, this is a film to be cherished.
It opens with a furious chase, in which our heroes Tom & Jerry are both pursued by the cops and an angry black maid with a broom, and unexpectedly ends when a huge fridge crashes down on them both, and promptly explodes.
Left behind are Mrs Tom and Mrs Jerry, who are about to face eviction for their late husbands' crimes. They decide to hatch their own spin-off show and carry on where their partners left off.
It's not bad but becomes less credible as it goes on, as it's not quite believable that they could assume this criminal cartoon lifestyle so seamlessly. Plus, we never saw the old Tom and Jerry use getaway cars, the action was mostly confined to the house.
Pretty solid, no frills thriller. It's not very action packed but what IS in there feels authentic, which is refreshing.
Clooney plays an assassin/arms dealer in Europe. After the opening sequences, he ends up in a small town in Italy brokering an arms job for a customer. He faces fallout from what happened in the opening sequences and also deals with some friendships/relationships that he fosters in this small town.
I like films that show the process of how things get done, and this film does a lot of that. You see Clooney doing some spycraft, and you also see him physically do things like acquire a rifle, make modifications to it, test it out...essentially, you get to see 'how the sausage gets made'. I find that stuff fascinating, and it all comes off as being 100% legit.
I also have to say, the main female in this movie is...GORGEOUS. Played by Violante Placido, she's just...wow. Too bad that we never got her as a Bond girl/woman because she would have been amazing.
Recommended if you like a slower, more deliberate kind of thriller.
Up there with my favourite films, and one I revisit, totally agree with you about Violante, the scenery is stunning and the pace is just perfect for a real get your teeth into movie.
Tibbet's in this one! he plays Sir Denis Eton-Hogg, president of Polymer Records.
I think it's his fault the cover of the latest Tap album is rejected and their career goes down the drain.
Robert Redford send-off, ironically not dissimilar to a late film by his Butch Cassidy co-star Paul Newman, which co-starred Linda Fiorentino.
It's okay, like the protagonist it asks a lot but ends up not giving much in return. It asks you to believe a hold-up man who looks like Redford and is 80 if he's a day would not draw much attention or reputation as he goes about his bank hold ups, assisted by two accomplices, as well as the lack of observational powers by the bank manager and tellers, and the most lackadaisical detective in heist movie history.
These films don't have the big name stars, CGI special effects or pop song soundtrack but surely they have a great script, emotional maturity and realness that they don't have, except even with Stan & Ollie, I found there is a bit of an ersatz thing going on, it's not quite reality either, and a classy TV series might be smarter and have more emotional hold over you.
What we get instead is a sort of emotional shorthand, some strings on the soundtrack and the sense that if you've paid your money you pretty damn sure ought to find it moving.
One plot point that puts the detective on the trail is dealt with in five seconds and easy to miss - annoying too when most of the film unfolds in slo-mo.
Redford is okay, and he and Spacek are very watchable, as is the film even if slow moving, but two decades ago we might have bought into the whole, wow, this is an old cove, a charmer, doing his own thing rather than a narcissistic drifter addicted to larceny like some are addicted to the bottle.
Brozzer has done a few of these B-movie/straight to DVD/airplane film fodder fare in recent years, and some of the titles get mixed up in my mind.
That said, he's working and as it's going to be what, four, five years? between Bonds for the supposedly brilliant Daniel Craig, you have to ask what he's committted to celluloid in the meantime - a small role in a comedy heist movie. You'd think he'd be knocking it out the ball park in that time - a Wild-Geese style ensemble piece, perhaps, a decent North London-set gritty drama like Enduring Love, I don't know.
November Man is sub-Bond but seems to work as a sort of sequel to GoldenEye and there are nods to that but it is set in the Bourne world. Brosnan is good at shaking of the shackles of Bond and plays it well, that said much of his charisma did get a leg up from the Bond association. He's not as watchable as Neeson, of course.
At one point his character does deliberate damage to a wholly innocent character with no comeback at all, it's not meant to be a shift in your sympathies, it seems.
QoS's Kurylenko pops up, and her imdb shows she really has had a good career since then, unlike the fate of many Bond gals.
I did enjoy this movie, but the cinematography was a bit plain, it lacked that visual magic.
Score, a documentary about soundtrack composers, shown on BBC4.
Some good stuff, though overshadowing everything was the revelation (to me, anyway) that composer Hans Zimmer, who was behind Chris Nolan scores such as Batman and Dunkirk, among others, was the keyboardist on the 1979 smash hit Video Killed the Radio Star, and seen looking sheepishly handsome in the video:
I thoroughly recommend the astonishing documentary, Three Identical Strangers.
This is about how an American lad turned up to college on his first day, to be cheerily greeted by complete strangers. Turns out he has a double, born on the same day as him... it builds from there, and to reveal more would be to give away spoilers, but this is an increasingly bizarre and dark movie. On Channel 4 last night, so look out for it.
I watched Mads Mikkelsen in a Netflix original, Polar. I have to say, I got this confused with another MM film, Arctic, which has gotten some good reviews. As for Polar. . .Mads is only the good thing in this nasty concoction. Everyone is a hitman or hitwoman, and pretty much everyone dies in a horrible way--and Mads is on the receiving end of a torture scene that makes what he dishes out in Casino Royale look like a child's game of tickling. My opinion of humanity was considerably lowered by this dreck. . .and a film that can do that to a viewer is not good.
Layer Cake.. Not watched it for 10 years and forgot how thrilling and entertaining it is. Craig is great and looking back now at this movie it's easy to see how this performance landed him the role of 007.
PS.. Hi to the 2002 originals who may remember me, Hardyboy and Napoleon Plural.. hope you're doing good guys. I'm looking forwaed to the Bond 25 press conference which should be coming this month. Hope Bond 25 is better than Spectre, haven't re-watched that since I saw it at the cinema on release )
PS.. Hi to the 2002 originals who may remember me, Hardyboy and Napoleon Plural.. hope you're doing good guys. I'm looking forwaed to the Bond 25 press conference which should be coming this month. Hope Bond 25 is better than Spectre, haven't re-watched that since I saw it at the cinema on release )
Wow. . .Christmas Tounes. I remember you as a little kid! (Then again, I'm now an old man.) Anyway, don't want to take up time here. Why not drop by Comings and Goings and re-introduce yourself?
BODYSLAM
Dirk Benedict plays a music manager who combines rock with wrestling. Great music intro and co stars Tanya Roberts, Roddy Piper and Billy Barty.
"You're in the wrong business... leave it to the professionals!"
James Bond- Licence To Kill
Very boring Carol Reed movie. Has James Mason, Claire Bloom, set in post-war Berlin so looks good but... Knife-throwing twins and a fight on top of a steam train might have livened things up.
Mandy
Not the mad Nicholas Cage film of late, but a classic 50s film about a young deaf girl and the opportunities or lack of them back then. Bit of a choker really. Shown on the Talking Pictures channel, natch. It's known as 'Crash of Silence' in the States and imdb.
One point of interest: the kindly grandfather in the film I recognised as Godfrey Tearle, the 'kindly' local luminary and pillar of the community in whom Robert Donat's Hannay confides when he makes the long trip to Scotland, only 20 years or so earlier.
Story of Alex Honnold and his attempt to "free solo" Yosemite's El Capitan -- i.e., climb a 2,000+ foot vertical granite wall without support of any kind. Honnold is a quirky guy, and it spoils nothing to say that he is still alive, but the film is not only about him. It's also about those close to him, including the filmmakers themselves, and the toll his quest takes on them.
Recent Oscar-winner for Best Documentary Feature, and well-deserved. The filming is spectacular. If you're like me, your fingers will be sore from gripping the armrest tightly at numerous points. Highly recommended.
Afraid I'm with the critics on this one. I know someone a few pages back praises it to the hilt, so hats off to the casting director who picked great lookalikes for the band, that said the beautiful Freddie Mercury would sue if he could see how he's portrayed - as the diminutive Prince, basically.
A bunch of gormless lads led by an effete type with his mind on cultural things, why, at times this plays out like The Inbetweeners without the laughs.
And that's a shame, because if it was played as more of a comedy I could get along with it. But the script is awful and the direction is leaden. It forgets the rule of 'show don't tell' but also falls into the trap of most of these songwriting musicals - we trace the genesis of the song like we're supposed to be really excited about it, but of course it's just like telegraphing a joke.
As for Freddie bringing the band back together to help the kids in Africa... I suppose the script skirts around this a bit but according to the band at the time, he didn't give a damn about charity, it only got sold to him because it was the music event of the decade, so how could Queen not be there? Anyway, I'm no Queen expert but if they had fallen out, how come they were playing Radio GaGa, a single from the previous year, and I Want to Break Free was from 1984 too?
Also, a strange kind of homophobia in the film, I mean surely Freddie had some gay pals during his hedonistic days who were not snakes? It seems a deeply conservative film and in all the wrong ways. Or most of the wrong ways, anyhow.
That said, the Live Aid finale was done extremely well.
Pretty good though I saw this at the cinema on the cheap, I might have felt a bit miffed paying full whack. It has its own thing going, a few snags however. I'm not sure a concert audience would be chuffed to have a slot given up for the main man's squeeze even if she has a better set of pipes on her than Yoko. The story is timeless, not least because it's now been filmed four times (originally under a different name in the 30s I think) and much of this could have been set at any time, aside from the references to YouTube and Alec Baldwin.
Lady Ga Ga is a very good actress, nothing wrong there. Her character is a bit young for Cooper of course, and that's never really touched on. Well, more than a bit young if she's supposed to be early 20s and Cooper looks all of 40. That said, Ga Ga has aged very well, she looks young.
Till Death Do Us Hart (1993). Dwight Schultz plays David Davis, a man who marries into a semi wealthy family and ends up covering the death of his wife. Basic standard film but as usual top performance from Schultz.
"You're in the wrong business... leave it to the professionals!"
James Bond- Licence To Kill
The Tremors film series could have been better had they been released theatrically instead of on dvd. Michael Gross and Fred Ward became cult actors because of these films.
"You're in the wrong business... leave it to the professionals!"
James Bond- Licence To Kill
Beneath Us :
Enjoyable horror/thriller. Set in America a small group of
Immigrant workers, are hired to work for a couple. It soon
Turns in to a nightmare for the workers ..........
"I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
Comments
Acclaimed bittersweet drama in which the 1930s cinema comics reunite decades after their heyday for a low-budget tour of Britain. There they find themselves playing to empty seats and up against the modern day competition such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, who are cleaning up.
There's a bit of baggage between the two, and it becomes clear that Jerry is carrying his partner somewhat, especially as Tom is not in the best of health - his back legs have gone and his tail has gone a bit mangey. There's bad blood also from the time Tom went off to do a Rentokil commercial by himself. He also spends time gambling, betting on dog fights (this features a cameo from Spike the Dog.)
It's not bad, though it's not quite plausible that the pair should be able to recreate their skit with the piano (Tom is clearly not playing the instrument as Jerry bops up and down around the piano keys) and the shots of the audience doubled up with laughter seem a bit laid on (the film seems to have been in debt to the Tom and Jerry foundation) but otherwise this works quite well.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I popped in here to see if anyone had seen it. I'm going to wait till it's out on dvd/online but I'm looking forward to it. I have a real soft spot for Stan and Ollie.
Coogan is a surprisingly good actor even if his Bond impressions area little dodgy.
I watched the Bruce Willis remake of Death Wish recently. Not as bad as I thought it would be. Quite watchable in a Bruce Willis shoot 'em up kind of way.
I saw it just yesterday, in an exclusive showing. It was exclusive because I was the only one in the auditorium! Well, their loss. This is an absolutely beautiful film--it's about the kind of love only real friends can have--and Coogan and Reilly entirely lose themselves inside their roles. Even if you're not a Laurel & Hardy fan, this is a film to be cherished.
Heist move with a new slant.
It opens with a furious chase, in which our heroes Tom & Jerry are both pursued by the cops and an angry black maid with a broom, and unexpectedly ends when a huge fridge crashes down on them both, and promptly explodes.
Left behind are Mrs Tom and Mrs Jerry, who are about to face eviction for their late husbands' crimes. They decide to hatch their own spin-off show and carry on where their partners left off.
It's not bad but becomes less credible as it goes on, as it's not quite believable that they could assume this criminal cartoon lifestyle so seamlessly. Plus, we never saw the old Tom and Jerry use getaway cars, the action was mostly confined to the house.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Tibbet's in this one! he plays Sir Denis Eton-Hogg, president of Polymer Records.
I think it's his fault the cover of the latest Tap album is rejected and their career goes down the drain.
Robert Redford send-off, ironically not dissimilar to a late film by his Butch Cassidy co-star Paul Newman, which co-starred Linda Fiorentino.
It's okay, like the protagonist it asks a lot but ends up not giving much in return. It asks you to believe a hold-up man who looks like Redford and is 80 if he's a day would not draw much attention or reputation as he goes about his bank hold ups, assisted by two accomplices, as well as the lack of observational powers by the bank manager and tellers, and the most lackadaisical detective in heist movie history.
These films don't have the big name stars, CGI special effects or pop song soundtrack but surely they have a great script, emotional maturity and realness that they don't have, except even with Stan & Ollie, I found there is a bit of an ersatz thing going on, it's not quite reality either, and a classy TV series might be smarter and have more emotional hold over you.
What we get instead is a sort of emotional shorthand, some strings on the soundtrack and the sense that if you've paid your money you pretty damn sure ought to find it moving.
One plot point that puts the detective on the trail is dealt with in five seconds and easy to miss - annoying too when most of the film unfolds in slo-mo.
Redford is okay, and he and Spacek are very watchable, as is the film even if slow moving, but two decades ago we might have bought into the whole, wow, this is an old cove, a charmer, doing his own thing rather than a narcissistic drifter addicted to larceny like some are addicted to the bottle.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Brozzer has done a few of these B-movie/straight to DVD/airplane film fodder fare in recent years, and some of the titles get mixed up in my mind.
That said, he's working and as it's going to be what, four, five years? between Bonds for the supposedly brilliant Daniel Craig, you have to ask what he's committted to celluloid in the meantime - a small role in a comedy heist movie. You'd think he'd be knocking it out the ball park in that time - a Wild-Geese style ensemble piece, perhaps, a decent North London-set gritty drama like Enduring Love, I don't know.
November Man is sub-Bond but seems to work as a sort of sequel to GoldenEye and there are nods to that but it is set in the Bourne world. Brosnan is good at shaking of the shackles of Bond and plays it well, that said much of his charisma did get a leg up from the Bond association. He's not as watchable as Neeson, of course.
At one point his character does deliberate damage to a wholly innocent character with no comeback at all, it's not meant to be a shift in your sympathies, it seems.
QoS's Kurylenko pops up, and her imdb shows she really has had a good career since then, unlike the fate of many Bond gals.
I did enjoy this movie, but the cinematography was a bit plain, it lacked that visual magic.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Some good stuff, though overshadowing everything was the revelation (to me, anyway) that composer Hans Zimmer, who was behind Chris Nolan scores such as Batman and Dunkirk, among others, was the keyboardist on the 1979 smash hit Video Killed the Radio Star, and seen looking sheepishly handsome in the video:
Roger Moore 1927-2017
This is about how an American lad turned up to college on his first day, to be cheerily greeted by complete strangers. Turns out he has a double, born on the same day as him... it builds from there, and to reveal more would be to give away spoilers, but this is an increasingly bizarre and dark movie. On Channel 4 last night, so look out for it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
On D Day a small group of American soldiers discover a top Nazi research centre making undead
super soldiers, and things turn nasty.
PS.. Hi to the 2002 originals who may remember me, Hardyboy and Napoleon Plural.. hope you're doing good guys. I'm looking forwaed to the Bond 25 press conference which should be coming this month. Hope Bond 25 is better than Spectre, haven't re-watched that since I saw it at the cinema on release
7. LALD 8. TWINE 9. Skyfall 10. AVTAK 11. CR 12. TLD 13. YOLT
14. TMWTGG 15. Moonraker 16. TSWLM 17. Thunderball 18. FRWL
19. Dr. No 20. DAF 21. LTK 22. DAD 23. QoS 24. Spectre 25. NTTD
Wow. . .Christmas Tounes. I remember you as a little kid! (Then again, I'm now an old man.) Anyway, don't want to take up time here. Why not drop by Comings and Goings and re-introduce yourself?
Dirk Benedict plays a music manager who combines rock with wrestling. Great music intro and co stars Tanya Roberts, Roddy Piper and Billy Barty.
James Bond- Licence To Kill
James Bond- Licence To Kill
Very boring Carol Reed movie. Has James Mason, Claire Bloom, set in post-war Berlin so looks good but... Knife-throwing twins and a fight on top of a steam train might have livened things up.
Mandy
Not the mad Nicholas Cage film of late, but a classic 50s film about a young deaf girl and the opportunities or lack of them back then. Bit of a choker really. Shown on the Talking Pictures channel, natch. It's known as 'Crash of Silence' in the States and imdb.
One point of interest: the kindly grandfather in the film I recognised as Godfrey Tearle, the 'kindly' local luminary and pillar of the community in whom Robert Donat's Hannay confides when he makes the long trip to Scotland, only 20 years or so earlier.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Story of Alex Honnold and his attempt to "free solo" Yosemite's El Capitan -- i.e., climb a 2,000+ foot vertical granite wall without support of any kind. Honnold is a quirky guy, and it spoils nothing to say that he is still alive, but the film is not only about him. It's also about those close to him, including the filmmakers themselves, and the toll his quest takes on them.
Recent Oscar-winner for Best Documentary Feature, and well-deserved. The filming is spectacular. If you're like me, your fingers will be sore from gripping the armrest tightly at numerous points. Highly recommended.
Not as bad as I'd expected.
Afraid I'm with the critics on this one. I know someone a few pages back praises it to the hilt, so hats off to the casting director who picked great lookalikes for the band, that said the beautiful Freddie Mercury would sue if he could see how he's portrayed - as the diminutive Prince, basically.
A bunch of gormless lads led by an effete type with his mind on cultural things, why, at times this plays out like The Inbetweeners without the laughs.
And that's a shame, because if it was played as more of a comedy I could get along with it. But the script is awful and the direction is leaden. It forgets the rule of 'show don't tell' but also falls into the trap of most of these songwriting musicals - we trace the genesis of the song like we're supposed to be really excited about it, but of course it's just like telegraphing a joke.
As for Freddie bringing the band back together to help the kids in Africa... I suppose the script skirts around this a bit but according to the band at the time, he didn't give a damn about charity, it only got sold to him because it was the music event of the decade, so how could Queen not be there? Anyway, I'm no Queen expert but if they had fallen out, how come they were playing Radio GaGa, a single from the previous year, and I Want to Break Free was from 1984 too?
Also, a strange kind of homophobia in the film, I mean surely Freddie had some gay pals during his hedonistic days who were not snakes? It seems a deeply conservative film and in all the wrong ways. Or most of the wrong ways, anyhow.
That said, the Live Aid finale was done extremely well.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Pretty good though I saw this at the cinema on the cheap, I might have felt a bit miffed paying full whack. It has its own thing going, a few snags however. I'm not sure a concert audience would be chuffed to have a slot given up for the main man's squeeze even if she has a better set of pipes on her than Yoko. The story is timeless, not least because it's now been filmed four times (originally under a different name in the 30s I think) and much of this could have been set at any time, aside from the references to YouTube and Alec Baldwin.
Lady Ga Ga is a very good actress, nothing wrong there. Her character is a bit young for Cooper of course, and that's never really touched on. Well, more than a bit young if she's supposed to be early 20s and Cooper looks all of 40. That said, Ga Ga has aged very well, she looks young.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
James Bond- Licence To Kill
Japanese/American disaster movie with an international cast. One of interest was Cec linder
(Goldfinger )
James Bond- Licence To Kill
Enjoyable horror/thriller. Set in America a small group of
Immigrant workers, are hired to work for a couple. It soon
Turns in to a nightmare for the workers ..........
A wonderful performance from the great Alastair Sim, directed by Guy Hamilton, and
based on the book by J B Priestley.