Talbot Rothwell’s first Carry On script is a welcome return to form after a couple of duff episodes that halted the reign of screenwriter Norman Hudis. Rothwell’s frothy concoction of a script is based loosely on the stage play Call Me A Cab by Morecambe and Wise writers Dick Hills and Sid Green. Sid James and Hattie Jacques play a couple whose marriage hits the rocks due to Sid’s preference of working as a taxi driver to caring for his wife’s social ambitions. To make matters worse, he owns the Speedy Cabs firm and they live above the fleet’s yard. After yet another anniversary ends in disaster, Hattie decides to set up a rival firm – using her husband’s money which he invests for safe keeping in her bank account but never spends. She calls the company Glam Cabs and employs an all-female, all-gorgeous driving team, including Amanda Barrie as a saucy model who knows her way around both cars and men. Cue a battle of the sexes. In fact, this theme started much earlier in the movie, with Kenneth Conner’s rather good mechanic attempting, poorly, to seduce Liz Fraser’s love-wise charlady. This kind of working place set-up and the corresponding gags wouldn’t be featured again until Carry On at Your Convenience (1971); there's even an over-officious trade union representative. Black and white photography gives the film a quaint nostalgia, as do the already out-of-date-looking Speedy Cabs. Plenty of cheerful amusement although the resolution is longwinded. While Carry On Cabby is plenty cheeky, it isn’t as smutty as later additions and there is an undercurrent of seriousness to the domestic arrangements even if characters and their actions must be nominally silly to serve the plot.
While filming Cabby, Sid James accepted the role of Sid Stone in the BBC comedy-drama Taxi! Stone and Cabby’s Charlie Hawkins are extremely similar.
I’ve waited 52 years to see this western and unfortunately it ended up being a disappointing watch.
William Holden and Ernest Borgnine team up again after their exploits in the wonderful TheWildBunch. Holden’s family are massacred by a bunch of renegade Indians led by two white men, and Holden goes off in search of revenge. He recruits a band of men from the local prison to help him. Taking the plots from ReturnOfTheSeven and TheDirtyDozen, director Daniel Mann fails to bring to this western the same style he did so well with the Bond spoof OurManFlint. The film is in urgent need of WildBunch action and blood letting but all we really get is old fashioned battles with lots of explosions and horse falls. The ending falls flat as a pancake, I suppose it was meant to have some biblical meaning of forgiveness, but up to then it had little substance to say it was going that way. It was nice to see Jorge Martínez de Hoyos from TheMagnificentSeven in a big role, now that was a proper western.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
@CoolHandBond I saw The Revengers when I was a teenager [late night TV] and like you, I kept expecting a sort of Wild Bunch impersonation, but it never happens. A very ordinary western.
Halliwell’s rates this latter day entry into the Carry On series quite highly. In fact, for the opening half, it isn’t too bad, but gradually the good ideas run out as we become familiar with the relationship dynamics between all the various couples who interact around Kenneth Connor’s muddy-looking caravan site. Filming in late March doesn’t lend a spring air to any kind of British movie and there are many ridiculous scenes with girls prancing around in bikinis when the weather is clearly overcast and the temperature hovering around the low centigrade figures. At the climax there is a thunderstorm which floods the camp, an ending that seems almost entirely appropriate.
So, what do we have? In terms of comedy, the usual domestic one-twos and a clutch of jokes which revolve around Elke Sommer’s accent. One thinks Ms Sommer’s role was probably written with Barbara Windsor in mind, but you can’t envisage Babs as a Russian archaeologist, or her tempting Kenny Williams into bed. There is a distinct shine to this uncommon pairing, although the script swings between Kenneth trying to be his usual prissy self and being an unusually earthy know-all. The former wins out, but Ms Sommer ensures she gets her man the earthy way. Bernard Bresslaw and Patsy Rowlands are the best turn, playing a husband and wife both hen-pecked by her mother [Joan Sims]. Ian Lavender and Adrienna Posta make Carry On debuts as a couple hen pecked by their Irish wolfhound. Windsor Davies and Jack Douglas are married men on a fishing trip – fishing for girls, that is. A talking mynah bird provides some amusement. The scenarios are overfamiliar.
The long cast list mostly features actors from television shows. The only other Carry On regular is Peter Butterworth, playing a hopeless handyman. Everything ends well for everybody. The title – along with Regardless the least informative title of the series – is explained towards the end of the movie. This was the first Carry On for thirteen years and twenty films not to be written by Talbot Rothwell and initially it doesn’t seem to hurt, and may even be an improvement on recent efforts, but Dave Freeman’s screenplay runs out of steam. Freeman, who wrote extensively for the sitcom Bless This House, might have fared better had that show’s star Sid James been slated to appear. What he writes instead simply ends up repeating jokes he’s already used, via a series of contrived confusions: in the showers, with the dog, with a stripper, with a tent, with the mynah bird, with a doctor, with Russian accents… it’s all confusion, confusion, confusion and repetition, repetition, repetition and no fun, fun, fun.
Car mechanic Mickey Rooney borrows twenty dollars from the cash register to take out a good time gal played by James Cagney’s sister Jeanne. Intending to repay it a few days later before the register is audited, he is forced into a decision to buy a watch purchased on credit and pawn it so he can repay the money early as the auditing has been brought forward from its usual day. Things start to spiral out of control as the original twenty dollars increases to hundreds and then thousands of dollars and potential murder.
This is a good piece of film noir, a morality tale with some decent performances (especially Peter Lorre as an arcade owner).
Certainly worth watching.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
William Holden stars as Eric Erickson, an American born Swedish oil executive, who is coerced by Allied Intelligence (Office of Strategic Services - OSS) to become a Nazi sympathizer and work with them to build an oil refinery in Sweden.
After winning their trust, Erickson makes repeated visits to Germany to inspect their synthetic oil plants and provides detailed information about these facilities to the Allies, which is later used in bombing campaigns against them. He is aided in his espionage operations by Marianne Möllendorf (Lilli Palmer), a fellow spy with whom he develops a romantic relationship.
Though initially reluctant, Erickson sees the atrocities committed by the Gestapo and fully commits to the mission on moral grounds.
Based on the novel written by Alexander Klein on the real-life exploits of Eric Erickson, 'The Counterfeit Traitor' is a tense espionage thriller with excellent acting, beautiful locations and a great story.
This is a movie about Vidkun Quisling who was the leader of the Norwegian nazis before WWII and headed the collaboration with the occupiers during the war. Look him up - his in the dictionary!
The main sources of the movie is the diary of the Peder Olsen who was appointed to be Quisling's priest during his trial after the German surrender and Olsen's wife's diary. Olsen actually came from the nearest town from where I live.
We do get to know a bit about Quisling's very interesting life. He was the military attaché in st Petersburg during the revolution and a few years later he had a key role in humanitarian work during the famine in the USSR. But the focus is on the months after the war. The priest tried to get under Quisling's skin, understand his motivations and especially to find if he had any regrets or introspection at all. In many ways the movie works as a psychological thriller. We also get some interesting theological discussions.
The psychological tension is shown with unsettling colour schemes and music, but mainly the very good acting and script. Gard B. Eidsvoll plays Quisling. His father was in the resistance during the war and was tortured by the nazis, so the actor had moral issues taking on the role. Thankfully he accepted the role, because Eidsvold is superb!
If you ever get the chance to see this movie I think you should. If you're interested in history, psychology or theology this movie will be up your alley.
A good looking, muggy thriller set in southern France around Beaulieu-sur-Mer, helmed by our own Terence Young and starring Charles Bronson, who at the time was on his European sojourn. A backwards and forwards plot involves Bronson’s Joe Martin evading his dodgy ex-army pals, who are seeking to reach Algiers with a cache of drug money. James Mason is their ringleader who changes sides and meets a gruesome end. Liv Ullman is Bronson’s wife, while his real wife Jill Ireland plays Mason’s squeeze. Jill’s too old to play a hippy chick and Mason is too old to be in this kind of hip fare. A decent thriller with a rather good car chase towards the end, Bronson plays a family man drawn back into a murky world he thought he’d left behind, but a man who has lost none of his skills. The early scenes are better, particularly a stand off in Joe Martin’s kitchen with a gun wielding heavy that increases in tension minute by minute [Cold Sweat? Hmm, perhaps] until a sudden burst of violence. Director Terence Young cleverly hides the neck breaking scene with a swaying door. The remainder is ho-hum stuff but quite enjoyable for all it is; the scene on the boat with the flare gun has been done both before and after, but rarely better. The star’s persona for his future career is well established already, strong, silent, thoughtful, violent. Jill Ireland had only just returned to acting following a divorce from David McCullum; for the rest of her career she supported her husband by acting in almost all his movies. Bronson frequently insisted on it.
I had the chance to see the Paul McCartney and Wings documentary One Hand Clapping at the local Epsom Picturehouse - well, it's local to me, because I live in Epsom.
It's filmed in 1974 just after the Band on the Run success. It's funny because I think Macca had long hair for most of the 1970s and his time in Wings, so mostly he looked like a different guy to the one in the Beatles, similarly Cliff Richard looked different in the 70s to the matinee idol type of the late 50s and 60s simply because of his hair style.
Then, come 1980 and the end of Wings, he gets his hair cut as if to say, okay, some Beatle-type standards now, such as Waterfalls, Ebony and Ivory, The Pipes of Peace and No More Lonely Nights.
Anyway, being a 'founder member you get your name on the wall' of the Epsom Picturehouse since July I went along there to see this for free! However, I was informed by the ticket saleswoman that because it was a Sky Arts release it didn't qualify for a free ticket, however I could get a members discount so it would be £15. I didn't fancy paying out that for a one-hour documentary so I walked home and saw...
The Big Sleep (1946) - it's amazing the amount of slack you can cut a film when it's got Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in their near prime, great photography and it's entertainment of your parents' generation. Great witty lines but all kinds of plot holes, it seems and it's a convoluted plot - perhaps the film Diamonds Are Forever was written that way as a short of homage to these gumshoe thrillers - it does seem Connery's Bond trades the same kind of quipping with his American ladies, and don't tell me Charles Gray's self-satisfied suave villain with a white cat wouldn't fit right in to Philip Marlow's world, you could see them trading quips.
I guess it's nice to see a Bogart film like this that doesn't rely on Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, the usual regulars. Then again, his adversaries in this don't seem especially compelling, competent or memorable. The opener, set in a tropical glass house, is good stuff and gets it off to a memorable start - but we never see the General who recruits Bogart again, do we, which seems odd. It all feels made up as it goes along and as with similar Bond films, it helps if the script is witty - and here it is. I'd be in no hurry to see it again but I enjoyed it.
THE BIG SLEEP is my very favorite Bogart/Bacall team up, but yeah...that plot doesn't make a whole lotta sense. You gotta kinda just slide into the vibe of the film and just roll with it. Fantastic dialog.
Was Liv Ullman as miscast in this movie as as it sounds like she was? She normally sounds (now I sound like Higgins talking about Dalton, other than I have a point 😆) like she's seconds away from breaking out in tears ....
I agree - it's a hidden gem! Thanks for the heads up. I like how the focus is on story, characters, ethical questions and tension. Eric Ericson's story reminds me of Sverre Bergh who was a student and a spy in Germany during the war. He too worked on getting intelligence on the German jet fighter. Some day i'll write and post his story in The True Stories thread. Anyway, I really liked the movie.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 27,749Chief of Staff
I saw it last night in my local cinema in Victoria - Silver City cinema….the tickets were $14.99 CAD - around £8.30, so I thought that was ok.
Yes, it’s just over an hour long…you also get a couple of minutes introduction from Macca himself before the feature, and then a couple more minutes to introduce The Backyard…the extra 20 min film of him in…well…The Backyard at Abbey Road 🤗
I thoroughly enjoyed it…and it’s great to see Macca round this period…he’s clearly got his mojo back after the success of Band on the Run…and he’s in somewhat of a playful mood throughout this…although the other members of Wings do get a look in and few mins here and there, you are left in no doubt this IS a Paul McCartney production 🤣
His voice is great on these songs…and I loved the recorded version of Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five shown here…plus Live And Let Die is a great take as well 😁
Is Macca a control freak or just a perfectionist…? You can see both sides of that here, especially when he’s with saxophonist Howie Casey and orchestra conductor Del Newman…but after playing several of the songs it’s often said another take was better, but the ‘lesser’ one stays in…so 🤷🏻♂️ not that there is ‘much lesser’ about the take used…and all this was recorded by Beatles sound engineer Geoff Emerick, another safe pair of hands for Macca.
The sound for this was remixed by none other than Giles Martin - he’s not going to rock the boat or disagree with anything Macca says…but his audio mix is fabulous all the same.
The Backyard is Macca, a guitar and a couple of cameras…and you can clearly see Macca is LOVING this…he rattles through some standards of his rock-and-roll youth and he opens with Blackpool, one his little ‘noodling’ songs - but omits Blackbird, which is a real shame…
Paul Newman and Robert Redford team up again with director George Roy Hill four years after their smash hit ButchCassidyandtheSundanceKid. This time they are grifters setting up a long con, called The Wire, to sting our very own Robert Shaw out of a half million dollars. A lot of money now, let alone in the period setting of 1936 America. Everything is great fun, with a dangerous undercurrent feeling of violence as the tension is racked up to a riveting finale.
It’s been too long since I last saw this, always a great watch. Great performances from all concerned.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
From the great spy-fiction author John le Carré, comes a tale of deep espionage and deceit.
'The Deadly Affair' starring screen legends James Mason and Ms. Simone Signoret.
MI5 officer Charles Dobbs (James Mason) gets embroiled in a tricky investigation when a man he had interviewed on suspicions of being a Communist, a Foreign Office official by the name of Samuel Fennan commits suicide.
Dobbs visits Fennan's widow Elsa (Simone Signoret) and discovers a lie in her narrative.
He privately enlists the help of retired police inspector Mendel to aid him in solving the case.
Dobbs and Mendel discover an East European espionage ring behind Fennan's murder...but as they progress deeper into this investigation, certain facts emerge that shake Dobbs world to the core.
Beautifully filmed and masterfully acted, with one of the best sound tracks ever recorded...'The Deadly Affair' is a great spy film.
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) with Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and Burl Ives. An oft overlooked Hitchcock classic in which Taylor plays the titular cat burglar who - born as white trash - feels no compunction about breaking into luxury mansions in New Orleans and stealing expensive jewellery - Paul Newman is the police officer assigned to go after her, Burl Ives is the indulgent plantation owner who befriends her and has his suspicions, which he is prepared to overlook given his disregard for his wife, a victim of said theft. Taylor's slightly shaky backstory attempts a cursory bit of pop psychology to explain her thieving compulsion - this would be taken up by Hitchcock later on in his film Marnie, of course.
The film didn't do great business on its release - theories range from the fact that Hitch didn't really care for non-blondes, which affected his directing, and some argue that Marilyn Monroe would have been better as Maggie, certainly one salivates at the thought of the iconic blonde in a more proactive, action role than her usual. Then again, given Hitch's problematic attitudes to his leading ladies, and Monroe's difficulties in the industry, it's a pairing probably best avoided. Watching the array of acting talent on display, you do sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been better to see them get their teeth into something really meaty and dramatic instead.
A similar sort of film, To Catch A Thief, was being filmed around this time in the South of France - given that this starred Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, who were Hitchcock regulars, one wonders if this wasn't another missed opportunity.
Actually, there is a Hitchcock link which surprised me... Judith Anderson who plays Big Momma in Cat On Hot Tin Roof, starred in Hitchcock's Rebecca - as Mrs Danvers.
The imdb page on Cat makes for interesting reading, in terms of trivia - the contrasting longevity of the actors and the other roles they played.
at least nobody sings "the hills are alive with the sound of music" in this latest film @napster has reviewed
in the Hitchcock/Truffaut book, Hitch says he wouldnt have hired Monroe: he might prefer blondes, but what he likes is the cool icy type who reveals unexpected passion as the story progresses. He doesnt like the earthy voluptuous type as there is no surprise when the characters passionate side is revealed
Nine years after the events of 1968's Space Odyssey 2001, in which the artificial intelligence computer HAL controlling the space ship 'Discovery One' terminated its human crew, a joint US-Russian team is sent to investigate the abandoned space ship, which is floating around Jupiter's moon Io, next to a mysterious black monolith.
After docking with the space ship and activating HAL, the crew discover the real reasons behind the aberrant behavior displayed by the artificial intelligence.
Directed by Peter Hyams, 2010: The Year We Make Contact is a commendable followup to the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece, featuring great performances by its cast and impressive special effects.
2010: TYWMC is much, much better than it has any right to be. Is it going to live up to 2001? No, but what can? Instead, it takes a more straightforward (less trippy) narrative that actually does a really solid job on building on the actual story of 2001. Solidly written and directed with impressive performances from everyone.
I saw the new take on SALEMS LOT last night. The miniseries from the late '70s scared the you-know-what out of little me, and it holds up today--it's very atmospheric and has some damn good actors from earlier eras, such as James Mason and Lew Ayers. This new film, though, crams the story into just under two hours... everything moves at such a fast pace that no sooner is someone introduced than they become a vampire. It's hard to be horrified when bad things happen to empty characters you have no chance to know.
The experimental energy grid system 'Project Flashlight' that he had been working on, has created a mass extinction event by destabilizing the sun.
The loneliness pushes Dr Hobson to the point of insanity, as he finds himself completely alone in the world.
Eventually he discovers two other survivors.
Dr Hobson fears 'the effect' might reoccur, triggering another cataclysmic event and decides to destroy the grid facility with the help of his friends.
Frothy/silly French comedy set in mid 30s Paris - but it's really the Paris of TV adverts, it looks good but kind of fake too, like you can't tell the CGI urban panoramas from what is real - perhaps a bit like Steve McQueen's Blitz, which is set not long after and was trailed before this movie.
It's all sort of screwball stuff, in which two penniless young women - one an aspiring actress, the other an aspiring lawyer, both sharing a flat and owing many months unpaid rent in that way which seems to only seem likely in movies - pool their talents when the actress is accused of murder. Whether she did it or not is left initially open to question, along with the 'are they actually lesbian lovers' subtext, for much of the film. Early scenes don't really seem very funny or witty, none of the characters are that appealing or plausible, it owes something to that Luc Besson film of some years back, set in 1912, The Adventures of Emily or something [Edit: The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, 2010), sort of screwball thing with a very sexy lead. This too has that feel of the mid 60s comedy, no bite, not quite credible but if you like that sort of thing... Hudsucker Proxy is another one a bit like this, but I never took to that. You could turn it into a musical and it might work better, or if the songs were not so good, make it worse - at least this film doesn't outstay its welcome and it gets better as it goes on.
I saw it for free as one of the five or so free tickets I get for being a founding member but I wouldn't have wanted to pay their price of a tenner per ticket, let along the prices of other cinemas. That said, at least I may have happier dreams tonight watching this, it's not nasty or anything. Isabella Huppert turns up in this btw and is good value as ever.
One thing I did notice is that there are virtually no people of colour in this movie which is highly unusual these days, even when it's a period piece. A slight problem with diversity in movies today is I find myself thinking, if I don't like this, am I racist, when it might more likely be I just don't take to modern movies; the ones trailed tonight just seemed a bit odd, they don't draw me in. I'd rather they try diversity with a better set of movies really.
Comments
She's great in the films and displays some very solid comedic chops.
CARRY ON CABBY (1963)
Talbot Rothwell’s first Carry On script is a welcome return to form after a couple of duff episodes that halted the reign of screenwriter Norman Hudis. Rothwell’s frothy concoction of a script is based loosely on the stage play Call Me A Cab by Morecambe and Wise writers Dick Hills and Sid Green. Sid James and Hattie Jacques play a couple whose marriage hits the rocks due to Sid’s preference of working as a taxi driver to caring for his wife’s social ambitions. To make matters worse, he owns the Speedy Cabs firm and they live above the fleet’s yard. After yet another anniversary ends in disaster, Hattie decides to set up a rival firm – using her husband’s money which he invests for safe keeping in her bank account but never spends. She calls the company Glam Cabs and employs an all-female, all-gorgeous driving team, including Amanda Barrie as a saucy model who knows her way around both cars and men. Cue a battle of the sexes. In fact, this theme started much earlier in the movie, with Kenneth Conner’s rather good mechanic attempting, poorly, to seduce Liz Fraser’s love-wise charlady. This kind of working place set-up and the corresponding gags wouldn’t be featured again until Carry On at Your Convenience (1971); there's even an over-officious trade union representative. Black and white photography gives the film a quaint nostalgia, as do the already out-of-date-looking Speedy Cabs. Plenty of cheerful amusement although the resolution is longwinded. While Carry On Cabby is plenty cheeky, it isn’t as smutty as later additions and there is an undercurrent of seriousness to the domestic arrangements even if characters and their actions must be nominally silly to serve the plot.
While filming Cabby, Sid James accepted the role of Sid Stone in the BBC comedy-drama Taxi! Stone and Cabby’s Charlie Hawkins are extremely similar.
THE REVENGERS (1972)
I’ve waited 52 years to see this western and unfortunately it ended up being a disappointing watch.
William Holden and Ernest Borgnine team up again after their exploits in the wonderful The Wild Bunch. Holden’s family are massacred by a bunch of renegade Indians led by two white men, and Holden goes off in search of revenge. He recruits a band of men from the local prison to help him. Taking the plots from Return Of The Seven and The Dirty Dozen, director Daniel Mann fails to bring to this western the same style he did so well with the Bond spoof Our Man Flint. The film is in urgent need of Wild Bunch action and blood letting but all we really get is old fashioned battles with lots of explosions and horse falls. The ending falls flat as a pancake, I suppose it was meant to have some biblical meaning of forgiveness, but up to then it had little substance to say it was going that way. It was nice to see Jorge Martínez de Hoyos from The Magnificent Seven in a big role, now that was a proper western.
@CoolHandBond I saw The Revengers when I was a teenager [late night TV] and like you, I kept expecting a sort of Wild Bunch impersonation, but it never happens. A very ordinary western.
Never seen that one, and now never will. Thanks for that.
Chris, having a great reading your "Carry On " reviews, please keep them ... er, coming.
And as if by magic .....
CARRY ON BEHIND (1975)
Halliwell’s rates this latter day entry into the Carry On series quite highly. In fact, for the opening half, it isn’t too bad, but gradually the good ideas run out as we become familiar with the relationship dynamics between all the various couples who interact around Kenneth Connor’s muddy-looking caravan site. Filming in late March doesn’t lend a spring air to any kind of British movie and there are many ridiculous scenes with girls prancing around in bikinis when the weather is clearly overcast and the temperature hovering around the low centigrade figures. At the climax there is a thunderstorm which floods the camp, an ending that seems almost entirely appropriate.
So, what do we have? In terms of comedy, the usual domestic one-twos and a clutch of jokes which revolve around Elke Sommer’s accent. One thinks Ms Sommer’s role was probably written with Barbara Windsor in mind, but you can’t envisage Babs as a Russian archaeologist, or her tempting Kenny Williams into bed. There is a distinct shine to this uncommon pairing, although the script swings between Kenneth trying to be his usual prissy self and being an unusually earthy know-all. The former wins out, but Ms Sommer ensures she gets her man the earthy way. Bernard Bresslaw and Patsy Rowlands are the best turn, playing a husband and wife both hen-pecked by her mother [Joan Sims]. Ian Lavender and Adrienna Posta make Carry On debuts as a couple hen pecked by their Irish wolfhound. Windsor Davies and Jack Douglas are married men on a fishing trip – fishing for girls, that is. A talking mynah bird provides some amusement. The scenarios are overfamiliar.
The long cast list mostly features actors from television shows. The only other Carry On regular is Peter Butterworth, playing a hopeless handyman. Everything ends well for everybody. The title – along with Regardless the least informative title of the series – is explained towards the end of the movie. This was the first Carry On for thirteen years and twenty films not to be written by Talbot Rothwell and initially it doesn’t seem to hurt, and may even be an improvement on recent efforts, but Dave Freeman’s screenplay runs out of steam. Freeman, who wrote extensively for the sitcom Bless This House, might have fared better had that show’s star Sid James been slated to appear. What he writes instead simply ends up repeating jokes he’s already used, via a series of contrived confusions: in the showers, with the dog, with a stripper, with a tent, with the mynah bird, with a doctor, with Russian accents… it’s all confusion, confusion, confusion and repetition, repetition, repetition and no fun, fun, fun.
Everybody tries, but it’s not enough.
QUICKSAND (1950)
Car mechanic Mickey Rooney borrows twenty dollars from the cash register to take out a good time gal played by James Cagney’s sister Jeanne. Intending to repay it a few days later before the register is audited, he is forced into a decision to buy a watch purchased on credit and pawn it so he can repay the money early as the auditing has been brought forward from its usual day. Things start to spiral out of control as the original twenty dollars increases to hundreds and then thousands of dollars and potential murder.
This is a good piece of film noir, a morality tale with some decent performances (especially Peter Lorre as an arcade owner).
Certainly worth watching.
THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR (1962)
William Holden stars as Eric Erickson, an American born Swedish oil executive, who is coerced by Allied Intelligence (Office of Strategic Services - OSS) to become a Nazi sympathizer and work with them to build an oil refinery in Sweden.
After winning their trust, Erickson makes repeated visits to Germany to inspect their synthetic oil plants and provides detailed information about these facilities to the Allies, which is later used in bombing campaigns against them. He is aided in his espionage operations by Marianne Möllendorf (Lilli Palmer), a fellow spy with whom he develops a romantic relationship.
Though initially reluctant, Erickson sees the atrocities committed by the Gestapo and fully commits to the mission on moral grounds.
Based on the novel written by Alexander Klein on the real-life exploits of Eric Erickson, 'The Counterfeit Traitor' is a tense espionage thriller with excellent acting, beautiful locations and a great story.
A hidden gem.
Quisling - the final days (2024)
This is a movie about Vidkun Quisling who was the leader of the Norwegian nazis before WWII and headed the collaboration with the occupiers during the war. Look him up - his in the dictionary!
The main sources of the movie is the diary of the Peder Olsen who was appointed to be Quisling's priest during his trial after the German surrender and Olsen's wife's diary. Olsen actually came from the nearest town from where I live.
We do get to know a bit about Quisling's very interesting life. He was the military attaché in st Petersburg during the revolution and a few years later he had a key role in humanitarian work during the famine in the USSR. But the focus is on the months after the war. The priest tried to get under Quisling's skin, understand his motivations and especially to find if he had any regrets or introspection at all. In many ways the movie works as a psychological thriller. We also get some interesting theological discussions.
The psychological tension is shown with unsettling colour schemes and music, but mainly the very good acting and script. Gard B. Eidsvoll plays Quisling. His father was in the resistance during the war and was tortured by the nazis, so the actor had moral issues taking on the role. Thankfully he accepted the role, because Eidsvold is superb!
If you ever get the chance to see this movie I think you should. If you're interested in history, psychology or theology this movie will be up your alley.
COLD SWEAT (1970)
A good looking, muggy thriller set in southern France around Beaulieu-sur-Mer, helmed by our own Terence Young and starring Charles Bronson, who at the time was on his European sojourn. A backwards and forwards plot involves Bronson’s Joe Martin evading his dodgy ex-army pals, who are seeking to reach Algiers with a cache of drug money. James Mason is their ringleader who changes sides and meets a gruesome end. Liv Ullman is Bronson’s wife, while his real wife Jill Ireland plays Mason’s squeeze. Jill’s too old to play a hippy chick and Mason is too old to be in this kind of hip fare. A decent thriller with a rather good car chase towards the end, Bronson plays a family man drawn back into a murky world he thought he’d left behind, but a man who has lost none of his skills. The early scenes are better, particularly a stand off in Joe Martin’s kitchen with a gun wielding heavy that increases in tension minute by minute [Cold Sweat? Hmm, perhaps] until a sudden burst of violence. Director Terence Young cleverly hides the neck breaking scene with a swaying door. The remainder is ho-hum stuff but quite enjoyable for all it is; the scene on the boat with the flare gun has been done both before and after, but rarely better. The star’s persona for his future career is well established already, strong, silent, thoughtful, violent. Jill Ireland had only just returned to acting following a divorce from David McCullum; for the rest of her career she supported her husband by acting in almost all his movies. Bronson frequently insisted on it.
I had the chance to see the Paul McCartney and Wings documentary One Hand Clapping at the local Epsom Picturehouse - well, it's local to me, because I live in Epsom.
It's filmed in 1974 just after the Band on the Run success. It's funny because I think Macca had long hair for most of the 1970s and his time in Wings, so mostly he looked like a different guy to the one in the Beatles, similarly Cliff Richard looked different in the 70s to the matinee idol type of the late 50s and 60s simply because of his hair style.
Then, come 1980 and the end of Wings, he gets his hair cut as if to say, okay, some Beatle-type standards now, such as Waterfalls, Ebony and Ivory, The Pipes of Peace and No More Lonely Nights.
Anyway, being a 'founder member you get your name on the wall' of the Epsom Picturehouse since July I went along there to see this for free! However, I was informed by the ticket saleswoman that because it was a Sky Arts release it didn't qualify for a free ticket, however I could get a members discount so it would be £15. I didn't fancy paying out that for a one-hour documentary so I walked home and saw...
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The Big Sleep (1946) - it's amazing the amount of slack you can cut a film when it's got Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in their near prime, great photography and it's entertainment of your parents' generation. Great witty lines but all kinds of plot holes, it seems and it's a convoluted plot - perhaps the film Diamonds Are Forever was written that way as a short of homage to these gumshoe thrillers - it does seem Connery's Bond trades the same kind of quipping with his American ladies, and don't tell me Charles Gray's self-satisfied suave villain with a white cat wouldn't fit right in to Philip Marlow's world, you could see them trading quips.
I guess it's nice to see a Bogart film like this that doesn't rely on Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, the usual regulars. Then again, his adversaries in this don't seem especially compelling, competent or memorable. The opener, set in a tropical glass house, is good stuff and gets it off to a memorable start - but we never see the General who recruits Bogart again, do we, which seems odd. It all feels made up as it goes along and as with similar Bond films, it helps if the script is witty - and here it is. I'd be in no hurry to see it again but I enjoyed it.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE BIG SLEEP is my very favorite Bogart/Bacall team up, but yeah...that plot doesn't make a whole lotta sense. You gotta kinda just slide into the vibe of the film and just roll with it. Fantastic dialog.
Was Liv Ullman as miscast in this movie as as it sounds like she was? She normally sounds (now I sound like Higgins talking about Dalton, other than I have a point 😆) like she's seconds away from breaking out in tears ....
I agree - it's a hidden gem! Thanks for the heads up. I like how the focus is on story, characters, ethical questions and tension. Eric Ericson's story reminds me of Sverre Bergh who was a student and a spy in Germany during the war. He too worked on getting intelligence on the German jet fighter. Some day i'll write and post his story in The True Stories thread. Anyway, I really liked the movie.
Wow…that’s expensive 👀
I saw it last night in my local cinema in Victoria - Silver City cinema….the tickets were $14.99 CAD - around £8.30, so I thought that was ok.
Yes, it’s just over an hour long…you also get a couple of minutes introduction from Macca himself before the feature, and then a couple more minutes to introduce The Backyard…the extra 20 min film of him in…well…The Backyard at Abbey Road 🤗
I thoroughly enjoyed it…and it’s great to see Macca round this period…he’s clearly got his mojo back after the success of Band on the Run…and he’s in somewhat of a playful mood throughout this…although the other members of Wings do get a look in and few mins here and there, you are left in no doubt this IS a Paul McCartney production 🤣
His voice is great on these songs…and I loved the recorded version of Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five shown here…plus Live And Let Die is a great take as well 😁
Is Macca a control freak or just a perfectionist…? You can see both sides of that here, especially when he’s with saxophonist Howie Casey and orchestra conductor Del Newman…but after playing several of the songs it’s often said another take was better, but the ‘lesser’ one stays in…so 🤷🏻♂️ not that there is ‘much lesser’ about the take used…and all this was recorded by Beatles sound engineer Geoff Emerick, another safe pair of hands for Macca.
The sound for this was remixed by none other than Giles Martin - he’s not going to rock the boat or disagree with anything Macca says…but his audio mix is fabulous all the same.
The Backyard is Macca, a guitar and a couple of cameras…and you can clearly see Macca is LOVING this…he rattles through some standards of his rock-and-roll youth and he opens with Blackpool, one his little ‘noodling’ songs - but omits Blackbird, which is a real shame…
I thoroughly enjoyed it!
THE STING (1973)
Paul Newman and Robert Redford team up again with director George Roy Hill four years after their smash hit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This time they are grifters setting up a long con, called The Wire, to sting our very own Robert Shaw out of a half million dollars. A lot of money now, let alone in the period setting of 1936 America. Everything is great fun, with a dangerous undercurrent feeling of violence as the tension is racked up to a riveting finale.
It’s been too long since I last saw this, always a great watch. Great performances from all concerned.
One of the rare movies that I'd call 'perfect'.
THE DEADLY AFFAIR (1967)
From the great spy-fiction author John le Carré, comes a tale of deep espionage and deceit.
'The Deadly Affair' starring screen legends James Mason and Ms. Simone Signoret.
MI5 officer Charles Dobbs (James Mason) gets embroiled in a tricky investigation when a man he had interviewed on suspicions of being a Communist, a Foreign Office official by the name of Samuel Fennan commits suicide.
Dobbs visits Fennan's widow Elsa (Simone Signoret) and discovers a lie in her narrative.
He privately enlists the help of retired police inspector Mendel to aid him in solving the case.
Dobbs and Mendel discover an East European espionage ring behind Fennan's murder...but as they progress deeper into this investigation, certain facts emerge that shake Dobbs world to the core.
Beautifully filmed and masterfully acted, with one of the best sound tracks ever recorded...'The Deadly Affair' is a great spy film.
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) with Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman and Burl Ives. An oft overlooked Hitchcock classic in which Taylor plays the titular cat burglar who - born as white trash - feels no compunction about breaking into luxury mansions in New Orleans and stealing expensive jewellery - Paul Newman is the police officer assigned to go after her, Burl Ives is the indulgent plantation owner who befriends her and has his suspicions, which he is prepared to overlook given his disregard for his wife, a victim of said theft. Taylor's slightly shaky backstory attempts a cursory bit of pop psychology to explain her thieving compulsion - this would be taken up by Hitchcock later on in his film Marnie, of course.
The film didn't do great business on its release - theories range from the fact that Hitch didn't really care for non-blondes, which affected his directing, and some argue that Marilyn Monroe would have been better as Maggie, certainly one salivates at the thought of the iconic blonde in a more proactive, action role than her usual. Then again, given Hitch's problematic attitudes to his leading ladies, and Monroe's difficulties in the industry, it's a pairing probably best avoided. Watching the array of acting talent on display, you do sometimes wonder if it wouldn't have been better to see them get their teeth into something really meaty and dramatic instead.
A similar sort of film, To Catch A Thief, was being filmed around this time in the South of France - given that this starred Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, who were Hitchcock regulars, one wonders if this wasn't another missed opportunity.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
🤣🤣🤣
Actually, there is a Hitchcock link which surprised me... Judith Anderson who plays Big Momma in Cat On Hot Tin Roof, starred in Hitchcock's Rebecca - as Mrs Danvers.
The imdb page on Cat makes for interesting reading, in terms of trivia - the contrasting longevity of the actors and the other roles they played.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Mrs Danvers was her classic role, but Trekkies know Dame Judith from a role some 40 years later.
at least nobody sings "the hills are alive with the sound of music" in this latest film @napster has reviewed
in the Hitchcock/Truffaut book, Hitch says he wouldnt have hired Monroe: he might prefer blondes, but what he likes is the cool icy type who reveals unexpected passion as the story progresses. He doesnt like the earthy voluptuous type as there is no surprise when the characters passionate side is revealed
2010: THE YEAR WE MAKE CONTACT (1984)
Nine years after the events of 1968's Space Odyssey 2001, in which the artificial intelligence computer HAL controlling the space ship 'Discovery One' terminated its human crew, a joint US-Russian team is sent to investigate the abandoned space ship, which is floating around Jupiter's moon Io, next to a mysterious black monolith.
After docking with the space ship and activating HAL, the crew discover the real reasons behind the aberrant behavior displayed by the artificial intelligence.
Directed by Peter Hyams, 2010: The Year We Make Contact is a commendable followup to the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece, featuring great performances by its cast and impressive special effects.
Well worth the 116 minutes.
2010: TYWMC is much, much better than it has any right to be. Is it going to live up to 2001? No, but what can? Instead, it takes a more straightforward (less trippy) narrative that actually does a really solid job on building on the actual story of 2001. Solidly written and directed with impressive performances from everyone.
I saw the new take on SALEMS LOT last night. The miniseries from the late '70s scared the you-know-what out of little me, and it holds up today--it's very atmospheric and has some damn good actors from earlier eras, such as James Mason and Lew Ayers. This new film, though, crams the story into just under two hours... everything moves at such a fast pace that no sooner is someone introduced than they become a vampire. It's hard to be horrified when bad things happen to empty characters you have no chance to know.
THE QUIET EARTH (1985)
Dr Zac Hobson wakes up into a nightmare.
The experimental energy grid system 'Project Flashlight' that he had been working on, has created a mass extinction event by destabilizing the sun.
The loneliness pushes Dr Hobson to the point of insanity, as he finds himself completely alone in the world.
Eventually he discovers two other survivors.
Dr Hobson fears 'the effect' might reoccur, triggering another cataclysmic event and decides to destroy the grid facility with the help of his friends.
Directed by Geoff Murphy and running at 91 mins, The Quiet Earth is a haunting sci-fi film.
Highly recommended.
The Crime is Mine or Mon Crime.
Frothy/silly French comedy set in mid 30s Paris - but it's really the Paris of TV adverts, it looks good but kind of fake too, like you can't tell the CGI urban panoramas from what is real - perhaps a bit like Steve McQueen's Blitz, which is set not long after and was trailed before this movie.
It's all sort of screwball stuff, in which two penniless young women - one an aspiring actress, the other an aspiring lawyer, both sharing a flat and owing many months unpaid rent in that way which seems to only seem likely in movies - pool their talents when the actress is accused of murder. Whether she did it or not is left initially open to question, along with the 'are they actually lesbian lovers' subtext, for much of the film. Early scenes don't really seem very funny or witty, none of the characters are that appealing or plausible, it owes something to that Luc Besson film of some years back, set in 1912, The Adventures of Emily or something [Edit: The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec, 2010), sort of screwball thing with a very sexy lead. This too has that feel of the mid 60s comedy, no bite, not quite credible but if you like that sort of thing... Hudsucker Proxy is another one a bit like this, but I never took to that. You could turn it into a musical and it might work better, or if the songs were not so good, make it worse - at least this film doesn't outstay its welcome and it gets better as it goes on.
I saw it for free as one of the five or so free tickets I get for being a founding member but I wouldn't have wanted to pay their price of a tenner per ticket, let along the prices of other cinemas. That said, at least I may have happier dreams tonight watching this, it's not nasty or anything. Isabella Huppert turns up in this btw and is good value as ever.
One thing I did notice is that there are virtually no people of colour in this movie which is highly unusual these days, even when it's a period piece. A slight problem with diversity in movies today is I find myself thinking, if I don't like this, am I racist, when it might more likely be I just don't take to modern movies; the ones trailed tonight just seemed a bit odd, they don't draw me in. I'd rather they try diversity with a better set of movies really.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Violent-Rome...4/6
nothing-special.....italian-DirtyHarry
(Violent-Naples-is-the-best-one,imo......