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  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent
    edited November 2022

    A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964)

    Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars is not the first spaghetti western – that was Gringo (1963) from director Ricardo Blasco – nor is it the most violent. It isn’t even particularly original, given the plot is a basic relocating of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) cluttered with many traditional western sequences and characters. What it is though, and what it does, is demonstrate the ability of a filmmaker to twist the mythology of the western genre and create a sub-genre that panders specifically to a captive contemporary market. American westerns of the late fifties and early sixties had begun to believe their own history. The ideas provided by movies like Shane, the white man with his white hat righting wrongs, or The Big Country, where progress can pacify and alter a host of wrongs, are debunked in a swift, violent and fetishistic manner.

    A Fistful of Dollars takes place in bandit territory near the Mexican border. Clint Eastwood’ s Joe [not a ‘man with no name’] may be the only white American on display among a cast of Latin actors, but he doesn’t dress like one: black jeans no chaps, spurs, a heavy poncho, a hat – yes, white – a smouldering cheroot, unshaven, squinting. He may be the hero, but he looks as unruly, unkempt and vicious as the men he fights. He even has the temerity to be introduced exactly how Alan Ladd’s Shane came off the prairie, from behind, slowly on horseback walking towards an isolated homestead, seeking water. This hero takes his water for free. Nobody is there to stop him or question him. He witnesses a small boy torn from its mother, the father abused by two bandits and banished into one building while she remains locked in the second. He watches. He squints. He does nothing. The lead bandit, Chico, stares at him. The man stares at the beautiful woman. What’s she doing here? the audience asks. When’s he going to intervene on the family’s behalf? The man does nothing. The only information the audience learns is this man shares his identity, his breeding, his expertise with nobody until it matters to him. There is nothing in the opening scene to concern him.

    Later, when he learns who Marisol is and the situation her family is embroiled in, Joe briefly becomes the hero with a white hat. His reasoning isn’t to do with justice, or fairness if you like, or even a Biblical sense of ‘thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife’. Joe’s reasoning is entirely personal. Freeing Marisol and reuniting the family, he urges them to flee: “I knew a family like you once and there was no one to help.” The implication, an excellent cinematic example of show not tell, is he was once a crying child and his mother too was the mistress of an oppressive overseer. Recognising the situation from the first scene, and allowing the audience to recognise it also, allows the moment of clarity – that Joe’s intention was always to help Marisol and not, as we might suspect, to seduce her himself – to reveal the hidden depths of his character. Heroes and villains of the American west don’t inhabit hidden worlds and fractured pasts; if they do, they keep them hidden under a surface veneer of black and white. Sergio Leone’s and Clint Eastwood’s vision is of something much more dirty, grey and forbidding. It’s telling us the west, or perhaps that should be the West, is much like the modern day and needs to lose its sacrosanct attitudes.

    To that end, death inhabits almost every frame of the film. It isn’t as relentlessly, ruggedly bleak as Corbucci’s Django, or as maniacally socio-political as Damiani’s A Bullet for A General, but death is there: right from title sequence of the silhouettes being exploded by bullets, right from the tolling bell which welcomes and bids farewell to every visitor, right from the dusty scar ridden deserts of Almeria, right from the cemetery so far from the town it is almost forgotten and all bar one of its inhabitants were murdered, right from the undertaker measuring Joe for a coffin. The notion a town has become so enamoured with killing that all the women are widows and all the men have a price on their heads, offers us no escape from the oncoming slaughter. Joe’s first action is pervert a gunfight with four of the Baxter Clan. Having won the battle, he offers his services to the opposing Rojos Brothers. Over the next few days, Joe plays one band against the other, until in a night of gargantuan bloodlust, the psychopathic Rojos Brothers burn the Baxter residence and murder everyone within it, including the scheming matriarch Consuela. Caught, but refusing to surrender the whereabouts of Marisol and her family, Joe has been beaten to within an inch of his life. When his friend Piripero is tortured, he reappears ready for a final confrontation.

    There isn’t anywhere near as much bloodlust as you would expect from the film’s reputation. It’s quite low on incident. What it does do is ensure that the violence stays with you, as all dark violence should, not to thrill us, but to remind us of the butchery and savagery of the West and implicitly, modern society. Leone, or his five writers, don’t seem to like modern mores much, even when they put them centre stage. The domineering Consuela orders her husband and son with a sharp tongue; she rules the Baxter Clan. The Rojos delight in killing what they consider a weak man and a superior, haughty woman. Afterwards, enemies exterminated, the brothers' expressions are blank, devoid of interest and excitement. Their life must find a new purpose. For Ramon [an excellent Gian Maria Volante, here listed as Charles Wells] that is to find Marisol by any means possible.

    The showdown is daft in the extreme, which is a pity. This is not Leone’s masterpiece. It would be easy to write pages about the editing, the iconic Ennio Morricone music score, the brutish direction, the laconic performances, the framing of the scenes, but it’d take me too long. The film has errors, especially regarding the passage or not of time, yet it continues to surprise with its intensity and courageousness. A Fistful of Dollars didn’t premiere in America until 1967 and reaction was snooty. Some filmmakers, Sam Peckinpah notably, understood what Leone was attempting to say and made his own revisionist western, The Wild Bunch, which takes traditional western themes and deconstructs them with an even more cynical air.

    A Fistful of Dollars is the film to which many westerns right up to the modern era of stuff like The English owe a tremendous debt. By being brave and bold and contemporary, Leone showed the western could outlive its customary cultural stereotypes.

    All hail, Leone, I say.    

       

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    THE GREAT RACE (1965)


    The 60’s was a decade full of bloated comedy movies, this being one of them (It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines were two others), but even though they were overlong this one is a lot of fun with great 😊 performances from Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk as the dastardly duo trying to cheat their way to winning the early 1900’s New York to Paris car race. Tony Curtis plays the The Great Leslie, a clean cut white suited hero with Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate and Peter Falk as his henchman sidekick Max Meen. Seven cars begin the race with lovely Natalie Wood as a journalist driving a sponsored car for a newspaper. As Fate and Meen attempt to sabotage the other cars the other drivers are involved in various subplots including a Prisoner Of Zenda spoof involving a massive pie fight.

    I enjoy the slapstick humour in this and the characters of Fate and Meen were morphed into the successful cartoon series Wacky Races as Dick Dastardly and Muttley. It’s certainly not the greatest comedy of all time as the poster proclaimed, but it’s worth staying the distance.

    7/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,060Chief of Staff

    GLASS ONION A Knives Out Mystery (2022) Dir: Rian Johnson

    It's difficult to say much about this without giving anything away! If you liked "Knives Out", chances are you'll like this. Daniel Craig heads a starry cast, puzzles abound, some things are not as they initially seem, there are a few surprise guest stars, and I'm looking forward to the next one (which is already confirmed, apparently). It'll be in cinemas for a week, then later reappear on Netflix.

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    The 1990s film Haunted on Talking Pictures TV last night gave me actual nightmares though I think the England game contributed to my mood that evening.

    It's a good one, bit hokey in a way, almost a bit Ken Russell, you could imagine Hugh Grant as the lead rather than Aidan Quinn who has his blue eyed Daniel Craig look down pat. He plays a sceptical professor of paranormal studies or something who is invited to a supposedly haunted house/stately home to disprove or clarify what is going on. He soon seems out of his depth with the posh young family there. It's set in the mid 20s.

    It's directed by our own Lewis Gilbert, one of my fave reviews on imdb has someone writing 'I look forward to seeing what else he's done' - got his work cut out there! Kate Beckinsale gets her kit off to good effect which surprised me, there's John Guildgud ('Sir' John on the poster if you please), Anthony Andrews too, the acting elevates it and some hokey stuff is explained later on, though the final 10 minutes also threw up a few 'Hang on a minute...' thoughts too.

    Honestly surprised to see it was based on a James Herbert book - guess that explains the sex but the story had a classy undercurrent that made me think it was based on a vintage tale.

    It's an engaging and affecting yarn nicely told - cinema goers might have felt a bit let down though.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,060Chief of Staff

    Sorry to disappoint you, Napoleon, but that's a body double rather than the delightful Ms Beckinsale.

    Anthony Andrews had wanted to play the lead but the backers insisted on an American star, so Andrews settled for playing Beckinsale's brother.

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Yet one more cruel twist...

    BTW, My sister is friends with a German nanny, whose charges are often the extremely rich. She told of a friend who was nanny to Kate Beckinsale when - of course - she was a child. Notwithstanding being an attractive child, she would forever go on about how fat she was, even though she wasn't, in an irritating way. Eventually, tiring of all this, the nanny replied complacently - and you have to imagine this being related in a downbeat German accent - 'Yes, you are rather fat...' She was fired the next day.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    THE WICKER MAN (1973)

    Its been a very long time since I’ve seen this celebrated movie. It regularly tops opinion polls as the finest British horror film ever made.

    Edward Woodward gives the performance of his career as a devout Christian police sergeant sent to a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a schoolgirl. Once there he discovers a community who worship paganism. His investigation is thwarted by the islanders and he is subjected to both temptations of the flesh and hostility as the policeman is led to the horrifying Wicker Man climax.

    Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland (pre-TMWTGG), along with Woodward, are simply marvellous in their roles, Lee as the island’s master and Britt as a sexy publican’s daughter who tempts Woodward. Diane Cilento (Sean Connery’s ex-wife) and Hammer beauty Ingrid Pitt co-star.

    I think the only downside to the plot is that Woodward’s policeman is so puritanically devout, it’s a little hard to believe in 1973 that someone is not tempted by a naked Britt Ekland!

    Im not sure why debut director Robin Hardy didn’t continue making films but the sketchy details I can find only lead to the fact that he went into directing television commercials, such a waste of talent.

    So, is it Britain’s finest horror? No, not quite, but it’s terrifyingly good.

    8/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent

    I'd agree with that review. It's a 'not quite'. Overrated I feel by its relative obscurity until the last 25 years or so. A sort of 'have you seen The Wicker Man' anticipation being more visceral than the actual finished product. Still a very fine film though.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent

    Collateral disappointed me last time out. It's a tick the box exercise in tension and the metro climax is unnecessary. Last of the Mohicans is excellent though.

  • Lady RoseLady Rose London,UKPosts: 2,667MI6 Agent

    I'd forgotten about this film. Very underrated if I remember correctly.

    I remember really enjoying it at the time and I was also a big James Herbert fan.

    I may have to look it up again.

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent
    edited November 2022

    THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT (1974)


    Clint Eastwood’s seasoned bank robber teams up with Jeff Bridges’s young chancer and two of Eastwood’s old gang to recreate his infamous bank heist by using a cannon to blow the safe. Thuggish George Kennedy clashes with the youngster while inept robber Geoffrey Lewis provides a lot of laughs. A young Gary Busey gets a role here along with many of Eastwood’s stalwarts that he relied upon throughout his career. Michael Cimino writes and directs in his debut and his assured handling of the movie led to The Deer Hunter four years later.

    The cast is excellent and the film mixes hard boiled action with comedy nicely and a surprisingly touching ending makes this a real worthwhile watch. Bridges got an Oscar nomination for supporting actor but Eastwood gives a brilliant performance in this which would be recognised years later in Unforgiven.

    This is one of my all-time favourites so henceforth it’s a high…

    9/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent
    edited November 2022

    BETTY BLUE (1986)

    (aka 37.2º Le Matin)

    Jean Jacques Beineix’s drama Betty Blue (1986) is probably more famous for the faintly erotic title and iconic poster which plastered many a student wall than it is for its cinematic content. That’s probably because most audiences at the height of the VHS hire fad were not renting the film for its storytelling but more for the sequences of nudity and sex that regularly accompany the narrative. These may or may not be exploitative moments, but in context they certainly aid the telling of an obsessive love story in a naturalistic and passionate manner.

    Zorg, a piano playing failed writer, has sought solace at a beach front shack when into his world walks Betty, an exuberant, unconventional, unpredictable waitress, whose lust for life hides an internal conflict which she and Zorg struggle to control.

    At times the film is wistful, at others uplifting; it is equally shocking or funny, disturbing, carefree and frequently emotionally draining. The writer-director is at pains not to explain much; simple dialogue statements suffice. Gabriel Yared’s effortlessly circuslike music provides linking motifs which hint at the couple's dreams, fulfilments and disappointments, the cycle of life repeating, the carousel turning.

    While Jean-Hugues Anglade’s Zorg is the audience’s lynch pin, the film belongs to Beatrice Dalle, who as Betty delivers a contradictory and impassioned performance as an obsessive compulsive. Her portrait of the heroine’s descent into madness is heart breaking, intensified by the director’s insistence the audience – like Zorg – become absorbed by her forceful nature. She never welcomes our sympathy, sometimes rejecting it, and Zorg’s. We, as watchers have to earn that right by understanding what she is not telling us. Early on we believe it is merely an exceptional appetite for life which leads to Betty to sudden impetuousness, but as these outbursts begin to metamorphose into unpredictable self-loathing, we sense there is something untold in her life, a hidden past no one, not Zorg, the audience or possibly Betty herself has uncovered – and the possibilities sprawl through low self-esteem, OCD, mental breakdown, depression, abandonment, rape and abuse.

    If the film veers erratically to the edge of melodrama or teeters on the verge of a French farce, this is balanced by the strong, committed and believable central performances, which draw out the underlying darkness of the narrative and never escapes our notice, either by the music, the shadows or the pensive expansive silences.

    If the poster was absolutely brilliant, the film is even better.


     

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (1974)


    Peter Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein is now working in a lunatic asylum and a new inmate, who is a doctor accused of sorcery, is quickly taken under his wing as they experiment in making a new creature. This was the final entry in the Hammer series of Frankenstein films and also Terence Fisher’s final film as director. In the 17 years that Cushing had played the role he had hardly aged at all and the film limps along retreading old ground without much inspiration. Madeline Smith looks lovely as a mute assistant and future Star Wars actor Dave Prowse plays the monster.

    Hammer films were heading towards their final curtain at this stage and the lack of originality and inability to embrace the new horror tropes look glaring in retrospect, but it still has enough old school charm for Hammer fans like myself to make it worth watching.

    5/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,709MI6 Agent

    Death on the Nile (2022)

    This is of course Kenneth Branagh's second Poirot movie. I'm not going to dwell on the plot, the title tells you everything you need to know going in. Instead I'm going to say what I liked and what I didn't like. I think too many scenes were obviously CGI: I don't mind subtle use of CGI to help the story, but this movie goes too far. There is also a backstory for Poirot's famous mustache (!) that I find unnecessary. In recent years there's been a tendency to "blackwash" period movies by casting non-white actors in roles that "coloured" people didn't have at the time and let everyone else in the movie pretend it was absolutely normal. I understand why. One wants to give non-white actors parts according to their talent and people in the audience who happens not to be white someone on screen they can easily relate to. This is the case in this movie too. There's even a scene where a upper-class Englishman who mentions the reasons why his mother won't accept his new love interest. He never mentions that the woman is black! But at least the black characters are (blues) musicians, and it's one of the few reason I can picture rich Englishmen who were unusually broad-minded for their time could treat black people as equals. One of the black character also refers to racism at one point. That's a plus.

    What else do I like? the movie has a sense of adventure, drama and fun. it's also nice to look at, especially Gal Gadot and Emma Mackey are fabulous to look at. There are also many really good actors, and again Mackey impresses, A star in the making I think. All in all the movie is an example of star-studded entertainment with action, mystery and beautiful locations. I like that!

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent

    THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (1970 / 2001)

    Dennis Sanders directed the original cinema release of That’s The Way It Is and I’ve been lucky enough to view that on the big screen where it looked fabulous: Elvis Presley in concert in his post-movie gig prime, swinging those hips and rattling off the tunes with all the gusto he can manage and more. There was a big host of backstage rehearsal footage and a clutch of scenes for fans’ comments. It felt like a prestige event film which added to the Presley mythology by emphasising his natural style and flamboyance both on and off stage. The documentary type footage dragged a bit, but generally I was impressed.

    Not so this time out.

    In 2001, the movie was reedited. This is the version I watched tonight. More concert footage has been included and many of the rehearsal scenes have been shaved. The movie is shorter by ten minutes, which is unusual for recuts. Thus, strangely, a few songs associated strongly with the movie and its accompanying LP have been excised, most notably I Just Can’t Help Believing. It’s one of Elvis’ better albums, but to be fair, most of the tracks on it are not the same as the versions seen on screen. However, even given that, for me this 2001 ‘remix’ is missing a few highlights. A 2007 2-disc DVD includes both edits, but the original is only in mono not stereo. This messing with Elvis Presley’s back catalogue feels as callous as the treatment meted out on the King’s product by his over-zealous manager Colonel Tom Parker, a man whose good promotional ideas ran out quicker than a chicken on the run. Parker knew nothing about music and interfered nefariously in Elvis’ releases, demanding unnecessary mixes to over-showcase his meal-ticket’s voice, even after Elvis and producer Felton Jarvis had mixed them specifically to sound gritty and earthy.

    There is a hint of what some of Elvis’ seventies output might have sounded like in the stage version of Polk Salad Annie which has Elvis slurring and blurring his words – he forgets some and needs a prompt – the bass and drums cracking louder than loud, no choral accompaniments, a driving, rolling, pulsating rhythm; he moves those hips like a demon too. He sounds and acts down and dirty, which is what we and he want. While the over excited chorus of voices does sterling work on The Wonder of You, You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling and In The Ghetto, you do get the impression there’s a competition going on between the high notes of the Sweet Inspirations and Elvis’ roaring emotional deliveries. It doesn’t always work and tips over badly during the rehearsals for Bridge Over Troubled Water. Watching Elvis trying to squeeze a unique harmony arrangement for an already classic song looks and sounds like folly. It’s not a great track on the album and it was one of the smarter moves to edit the live performance out of the new film version.

    Lucien Ballard’s photography captures the gaudiness of the King of Rock n Roll standing out under spotlights in his white jump suit slashed to the navel. Set against the dull backgrounds of the Las Vegas Hilton International Concert Auditorium he’s like an angel banished from heaven for misbehaviour. In rehearsals he makes reference to oral sex while singing One Night and tits about bawdily with his entourage. At times, even on stage, he acts the clown and occasionally looks bored by the whole experience. A high-speed traipse through Heartbreak Hotel lacks any of the energy, danger and vigour of 1956 or even the 1968 T.V. Special cut. The forum doesn’t help.

    The Hilton’s concert arena is basically a huge lounge bar with tables in the stalls and standard seats in the upper circle. It looks nothing like how you’d envisage a venue for a rock performance in 1970. I watched Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen recently with its warts and all touring chaos and enormous stadium stages, a band out of control and a singer lapping up the fan worship. I’m thinking too of Woodstock and Gimmie Shelter, those documents to the decline of Flower Power and the Tune In Drop Out generation, how those events drew enormous crowds and the performers responded.

    Elvis, even while once again producing number one singles and albums, simply isn’t drawing the same audience. He’s still adored. We do see a few screeching women. The moment where Elvis ventures into the audience to greet them face to face is something I can’t imagine most stars doing today or even in 1970. Yet, there’s something old fashioned about the show; something watered down and sweetened. He comes out with swagger and power: the movie credits are played over the medley Mystery Train / Tiger Man and he’s shaking and slithering all over the stage [the 1970 version utilised better footage from the Memorial Coliseum shows in Phoenix, Arizona]; when the concert starts the re-edit emphasises the past and it’s 1950s all the way, sped up and balls of fun, Elvis even clicks his tongue nonchalantly during I Got A Woman, as if he’s back in Sun Studios jamming with the boys. But why is he tied to his guitar through these rip-roaring numbers? The effect the same as watching him play at mannequins back in Girl Happy. He’s so safe, it’s no wonder he gets bored by Heartbreak Hotel.

    The once great and founder King of Rock n Roll is now playing to Sammy Davis Jr and Cary Grant, for goodness' sake, men from a different era and style altogether. After the comeback of 1968/69 – in fairness Elvis hadn’t been away, just distressingly poor musically – I’d expected something more extravagant and snarling, something in-your-face, contemporary, relevant and threatening. At the time, Elvis was not much older than the rock stars making and performing ground-breaking pop, soul and rock. As if to demonstrate his contemporary appeal, Elvis seamlessly blends Little Sister with the Beatles’ Get Back and the middle section of the concert is taken up predominantly singing other artists’ material. For all that, there’s something anodyne in the presented footage. The best performances [Polk Salad Annie, Suspicious Minds, I Can’t Stop Loving You] seem to jar because they demonstrate the side we all wanted to see and see prosper following that great ‘in person’ show filmed for the 1968 TV Special. But here, not once does he interact with his band beyond some risible joking about. I’m expecting Elvis to sing back-to-back with lead guitarist James Burton, like Freddie Mercury might with Brian May, or Jagger with Richards, maybe even strum his own six-string while Burton, John Wilkinson, Charlie Hodge and Jeff Scheff rock out with him. There’s nothing.

    The King is on his throne and sucking up the adulation, alone and almost bewildered. Several times Elvis looks out at the throng and seems barely able to believe it. He’s almost lost for words between songs and sometimes during them. His asides are strained, even in rehearsal; Elvis doesn’t have any wit – he prefers self-depreciation of the most infantile kind, prat falls and see-through double-entendres. He almost seems lost among the orchestra and chorus, fans and audience. At the end, Dennis Sanders films from the rear of the stage and Elvis is a tiny white figure at the bottom of the screen, arms outstretched Christ-like, absorbing the applause from the multitude, but the curtain is already coming down.

    That’s The Way It Is probably takes the award as the best of Elvis’ seventies concert films, chiefly because he occasionally demonstrates his agility and physicality, but I’m not sure the 2001 remix has done him any favours. If you can, find the original edit, it might be better; at least it still features I Just Can’t Help Believing.  

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent

    ELVIS ON TOUR (1972)

    Excellently presented footage of Elvis Presley on a fifteen city tour in mid-72 makes up for some of the pedestrian nature of the preceding rockumentary That’s the Way It Is.

    Ken Zemke’s split screen editing was overseen by Martin Scorsese; it delivers an energy generally lacking in the King’s performances thanks to multiple angles of Elvis, the band and audience reactions mingling together in a confusion of sound and vision. Sometimes it is difficult to know which image to concentrate on. Luckily, the songs just about hold up to scrutiny. The film probably looks and sounds better on a big screen than a small. The footage was captured with ten hand held 16mm cameras. The film stock was blown up in the lab to 35mm for the split work or 70mm for the full screen. It must have been a painstaking process and it is disappointing to see the results don’t contain any truly vintage Elvis routines. His actual performances veer from the powerful to the laid back to the vibrant. Lots of audience kissing. He seems most at home in the rehearsal theatres jamming out gospel standards. On stage he carries an air of bejewelled yet flawed excellence, disguised under Bill Belew’s sequined jumpsuits and capes.

    Directors Pierre Adidge and Robert Abel were reluctant to take on the filmic task. They helmed one of the genre’s best, Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen, but didn’t rate Dennis Sanders’ That’s the Way It Is, chiefly because they reckoned the star was faking it and playing up to the camera, both on and off stage. Watching these low key behind the scenes sequences, narrated by Elvis himself from an interview he delivered specifically for the movie, you can see the difference. He’s much less cooperative to the filmmakers, bordering on the introverted. His dark gaudy sunglasses rarely leave his face until he hits front of stage; instead he shuffles awkwardly, nervously between Joe Esposito and Red West, drinking water, fiddling with his sleeves, searching for a scarf. The military entrances and exits to the shows are disturbed by Esposito’s instructions to Elvis in the Green Room regarding the position of the spotlights and the depth of the stage. It becomes apparent the King hasn’t visited the venue, performed a sound check or a lighting rehearsal. That might be a 1970s thing – tours were notoriously fast during the era and not just for Elvis – but it does suggest a slapdash approach the act. Elvis contradicts this lack of preparation by revealing he suffers bouts of stage fright, so incredibly appreciative that people have travelled such distances and spent hard earned dollars to see him, and that it might be the only chance they get, he is almost petrified lest he cannot deliver the best possible performance.

    True to the contradiction, the live tracks are a mixed bag. Four shows were taped and none of them replicate the swagger of the 1968 TV Special or even the intimate reverence of the Las Vegas shows. Elvis seems already to have engaged in a parody of his own showbiz character. The misplaced religious iconography of The American Trilogy is a case in point, all those Christ-like arms, the cape floating like an eagle’s wings. At the opposite end, the dreadful Bridge Over Troubled Water – dropped from the reissue of That’s the Way It Is – is included here. Elvis just can’t do the song any kind of justice, bawling the lyrics with little grace; If I Can Dream it is not. He shatters the rhinestone illusion again during a breakneck rendition of Burning Love which he sings from a lyric sheet. During Love Me Tender a montage of kisses from his movie career proves diverting and also hints at what we are missing, a semblance of naughtiness and fun. The clips inserted from The Ed Sullivan Show demonstrate his glorious past and Elvis’ older self compares badly to the younger. Perhaps what the directors catch best is the frightening intensity of the fans. They scream, cry and wail exactly how they did in 1956 and recite whole histories of their ‘love affair’ with the King, listing every moment and item of his career which resonates to them. They are a mixture of women who grew up with Elvis and those who clearly couldn’t, including young teenagers. The number of men in attendance is testament to an enduring cross-over appeal.

    Colonel Tom Parker is conspicuous by his absence from proceedings. The Memphis Mafia looks after Elvis on the road. His manager just counts the cash. A planned vinyl double album was binned as the release date of the movie (November 1972) was so close to the televised concert Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite and its own accompanying record (January 1973). Indeed Elvis had already released the excellent As Recorded at Madison Square Garden earlier that year and the soundtrack here encapsulates material included on both recordings: See See Rider, Proud Mary, Never Been to Spain, Funny How Time Slips Away, I Got A Woman, You Gave Me A Mountain [brilliant, but not as good as the ’73 version] etc.

    There’s a moment towards the end of the gig when the King lets J.D. Sumner and the Stamps Quartet take over the singing. Elvis takes a breather, absorbing the spiritual, bringing back fleeting memories of those impromptu rehearsals which he loves, which allow him to sing and praise without the need to entertain. When the final curtain call and escape run takes him to the waiting limousine, Elvis is crammed into a backseat, handed a glass of water and gloriously congratulated. Not a critical word is said. He stares out the window and seems completely isolated from those around him, perhaps wondering where that spirit has evaporated to.   

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent
    edited December 2022

    Bill Nighy in Living.

    For £15.50 a matinee ticket, imagine finding that it is filmed in 4:3 square format not just for the opening colour footage of 1950s London but throughout the whole film! As it's visually truncated, you'd think you'd get a price reduction! Mind you I made that point at the Prince Charles cinema when they showed the first three Bonds there - I know @chrisno1 will back me up here - but no dice, had to pay the same!

    Honestly!

    Anyway, this film is both brilliant and a bit exasperating. It's about a pen pusher for a Westminster Council I guess, head of his team, very much the bowler-hatted umbrella type you see in A Hard Day's Night being goaded by the Beatles and it's that kind of era, well before the Beatles really, Anyway, he has a life-changing bit of news that makes him revaluate things... problem is, the reviews made clear what he does that is key on this and that event doesn't happen towards the end of the movie so you keep wondering - if you've read the review - exactly when it's going to happen.

    The film is visually impressive, I follow a Twitter account called Yesterday's Britain, Yesterday's Better that posts all these nostalgic photos of 50s to 80s Britain, old high streets and so on and this film is like living in that. It's almost too authentic, it hurts. Everything gleams.

    Nighty is good although the way he is introduced doesn't quite match how the character is when he opens up. I suppose in another movie he'd play a repressed queen who decides to embrace his true self - Nighy would be good at that, I think Christopher Plummer bagged an Oscar for that kind of role didn't he?

    What nagged is that it didn't quite ring true a lot of the time and one wonders if it isn't almost deliberate as an emotional ruse. I don't know. Some of it made me tense for the wrong reasons. Some I couldn't understand which was infuriating for a very simple movie in terms of plot. Not much happens so I don't want to spoil it. But Nighy looks like he's 70 or so and I can't figure how that relates with his family, or even if the couple who live in his house are son and son's girlfriend or son and daughter. Other stuff doesn't make sense - he visits Brighton for an excursion of fun and says he 's taken out half his life savings... You spend the time worrying he's going to lose it. Other stuff just doesn't make sense, I won't bang on but if you see it you may agree. Or not.

    It's based on a Japanese film I think maybe it translated better there, maybe I'd see much the same stuff in the original and find it more credible then again a Japanese person might then have the same concerns.

    It's another of those films that wrong foot you - you think some specific thing is going to happen, then it doesn't. Maybe that's a metaphor for life?

    The ending gets you going and it's all very moving so I guess it worked its magic. Reminded me a little of The End of the Affair with Ralph Fiennes.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent

    @Napoleon Plural nice review. This movie was in the LFF this year. I was half inclined to give it a go, but the original is a Kurasawa classic and is so good I couldn't put myself through the potential disappointment. I'm not sure a European film would project the theme of post-war wasted civil loyalty so effectively.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    was it Ikiru? the plot sounds similar. One of the few nonSamurai films I've seen from Kurosawa, and I think Mifune isn't even in this one either

    Looks like it available for viewing on archive.org if you wish to compare

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent

    Yes, it is Ikuru. Takashi Shimura has the Bill Nighy role. Shimura played what would become Yul Brynner's part in Seven Samurai

    ii.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,709MI6 Agent

    The woman king (2022)

    I like movies who shows us a time and place we haven't seen before, and "The woman king" delivers. it's set in West Africa (modern day Benin) in the 1820's. The real-life Dahomey kingdom had an elite military unit called Agoije that was all female. This is the way to have women and non-whites in un-traditional roles in period movies, and not to pretend it was normal when it wasn't!

    Viola Davis plays general General Nanisca, the commander of the Agoije. She's plays a military leader with a lot of authority, but she isn't a two-dimensional "strong woman". Nanisca has doubts and fears, and Viola Davis does an impressive job at portraying a multi-dimensional character. Our own Lashana Lynch has found herself a niche playing warrior women, and here she plays a boot camp drill sergeant convincingly.

    The movie is honest enough to show Dahomey as a nation involved in the slave trade (as it very much was), but Nanisca realizes this is a dark road. A nation that takes and sells slaves slaves gets richer and gets guns and gun powder to defeat and capture other nations that don't. It's a vicious circle. The general suggests cultivating palm oil instead, but at the same time expanding the Agoije for the threats that are coming.

    The movie has a lot of good battle and action scenes, my only complaint being that the female soldiers hardly ever use guns. Why not?

    I liked the movie and I recommend it because it's well made and shows a fresh story from history. The plot may take a lot of artistic freedoms, but the same thing can very much be said about Braveheart. It's still a good movie.

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    I hadnt realised The Woman King was about the Dahomey.

    The Dahomey featured in the Flashman novel Flash for Freedom, one of the most vivid and disturbing chapters in the whole Flashman saga, one of the many bits where I thought "this cant be real", then looked it up and found it was true, just not history like we prefer it to be told

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    BIG NOTHING (2006)

    I’d never heard of this film before but it turned up on the BritBox streaming app so I gave it a go.

    Charlie gets fired on his first day at a call centre but colleague Gus asks him to help in blackmailing a local reverend who is using porn sites. They are overheard by a teenage girl who insists on getting in on the action. There’s a background story of a serial killer on the loose which ties into the ending. There are lots of twists and turns as the plot all goes wrong.

    David Schwimmer and Simon Pegg are good as the blackmailers. The film tries to be a bit too clever for it’s own good with the multiple twists that occur, but it rolls along nicely in a quick 90 minutes. It takes place in Oregon but was filmed in Canada, Wales and the Isle Of Man, presumably with some film foundation grant.

    It’s worth a look f you’ve got nothing better to do at the time.

    5/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    Flash For Freedom is the best in the series in my opinion. The mixture of fictional characters alongside real historical characters is never better realised in this series as it is here and man’s inhumanity to man is laid open to he bone.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent
    edited December 2022

    I have enjoyed the Flashman book and may enjoy them again - but I jumped ahead it seems, being 'clever' I read them in chronological order rather than publishing order. So Flashman and the Redskins starts off at one date, then flashes forward some decades - this part doesn't ring true. But what really put me off was that Flashy does something truly despicalble and sociopathic to one squeeze - not simply bounder-ish as we'd expect - and it put me right off the character. Perhaps, being a later book, the author had tired of the character by that point?

    Last night on BBC1 I stayed up for my first showing of Captain America: Winter Soldier, no ad breaks so no slog. It was a case of where has this film been all my life - I couldn't believe I hadn't got around to seeing this earlier. I caught the origins story a couple of years ago on telly I think. I sort of recall it, not bad, touch of the Wonder Woman about it, person from the past relocated to the present.

    Odd to see this film came out in 2014 and how long ago that was and what I was doing at the time. I suppose one reason I didn't see it was it was the beginning of getting tied up with the care homes my mother was in, it just went on and on so I didn't get to the movies that year much, she nearly died due to care home neglect, luckily she pulled through and the last film I ever took her to see was Spectre at the BFI Imax. But there were other reasons too - I hadn't caught the first movie, and this was a sequel plus the poster (above) doesn't really draw you in or do justice to the sheer slickness of the spectacle - it's like an old-style Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me on steroids.

    There are quite a few nods to Bond films in this but it moves along so quickly I can't recall them - however the climactic fight on the satellite dish between two men with a long-standing history is very much GoldenEye, it's just way ahead in terms of scale. The Bonds can't compete with this stuff at all. Lee Tamorahi was right when he said CGI was the way of the future if this is anything to go by, he was just 10 years ahead of his time and in the wrong movie. There isn't much difference one could argue between Die Another Day and this film, save this film is enjoyable and has real charm to it. And wit. And intelligence. And heart. Oh, and they know how to do water CGI this time round.

    The Bonds seem to have nicked from this though, the scene where Fury (Samuel L Jackson) is trying to escape in his car but is cornered and machine gunned etc was used in No Time To Die with Bond and the Aston, which isn't so original to me now, even if it is an Aston so has novelty value.

    I'm still confused about the Avengers world and who is in it. Deadpool isn't tied up with this is he? That's X-Man stuff because he mentions Wolverine disparagingly. But he might as well be. Spiderman is tied up with it, albeit the recent ones. Wonder Woman isn't though she might as well be - she's in with Superman and Batman, right? They made her film better by borrowing a fair amount from Captain America in terms of vision.

    The plot in Winter Soldier pretty good though it's the usual McGuffin - a shadowy organisation within the official State organisation, and bit of Mission Impossible-style hijinks. The last Bond film flirted with this but didn't take it there. The plot does work in this, I think the Bond films of late, struggle to sell their McGuffin. CR was - hey, it's a new Bond! It's Fleming again! It's a Bond Begins story! QoS had nothing. SF - hey, it's Bond again! Q is back - and Moneypenny! Spectre I loved but tbf it's main theme is that Spectre and Blofeld are back, without that it's thin on plot and NTTD is, hey, it's Craig's final film, hey it's been delayed but it's here at last and hey! Bond's dead. I don't think these are great plots that involve us, they' re gimmick-led, as Barbel suggests albeit only for his review of NTTD.

    Anyway, I'd far rather sit down with the family this Christmas with a DVD of Captain America and this sequel (though the title is misleading, there's nothing wintery about it) than a recent Bond film. This is all highly formulaic - to a fault some might say - but it works.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent

    napster said

    I'm still confused about the Avengers world and who is in it. Deadpool isn't tied up with this is he? That's X-Man stuff because he mentions Wolverine disparagingly. But he might as well be. Spiderman is tied up with it, albeit the recent ones. Wonder Woman isn't though she might as well be - she's in with Superman and Batman, right? They made her film better by borrowing a fair amount from Captain America in terms of vision.

    __________________________________________

    Wonder Woman's easy, as you say she's with Superman and Batman. They are all characters published by DC comics, and DC and Marvel have been rival publishing companies since the 1930s, litigious over their trademarks, copywrites, and intellectual properties

    The others you name are trickier because they are all from Marvel Comics the publisher. The thing here is the comic book company formed its own movie studio to produce Iron Man in 2008, and twenty odd sequels since then including Captain America movies.

    Prior to that Marvel Comics the publisher licensed its properties to existing studios like Fox or Sony. Fox had the rights to the X-Men and another series called Fantastic Four, they made those good X-Men movies in the late 90s/early 00s, and Deadpool was a spinoff. That's why Deadpool lives in the same universe as Wolverine.

    Sony owns the right to SpiderMan but reached a deal with Marvel that Marvel could include him as a character in Avengers movies but still make a share of the profits and be able to make their own movies. Theres been a couple Sony-made SpiderMan spinoffs that got lousy reviews. I'm not sure who actually made the last three SpiderMan movies, I dont understand the legalities. Hulk is also tangled up in some sort of deal like that.

    Marvel has recently bought back the rights to XMen and Fantastic Four. We should be seeing both groups of characters in upcoming Marvel films, though probably rebooted versions.


    None of which has anything to do with whether Winter Soldier is a good film. it is, its one of the best Marvel Comics films, and probably most of interest to spyfilm fans. It borrows a lot from the paranoid conspiracy thrillers of the early 1970s

    But I would say its the first Captain America film that borrows from the old Wonder Woman teevee series, whereas the Wonder Woman film had to revise its context to World War I to avoid comparisons to the Captain America film

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent

    @Napoleon Plural @caractacus potts Is that the one with Robert Redford in it? Quite good for a comic book if it was.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,179MI6 Agent

    MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017)

    I don’t really like Agatha Christie as a writer and I once attempted to read her books, but failed on every attempt. I gave up on Orient Express when I encountered a diagram of the sleeping car where the action purports to take place. It was like reading Cluedo.

    Still, Lucy Worsely’s excellent three-part television biography of Christie has whetted my appetite. Have I been too harsh, I am asking myself? At the time, I was reading Marques and Hemingway, Lorca and Auden, Graham Greene and Larkin, so perhaps Christie didn’t fit the frame of mind. So, disappointed by another England football failure, I skipped over the analysis by ITV’s trio of grumpy ex-players and partook of Kenneth Branagh’s entertaining and excellently presented film of one of Christie’s most celebrated novels.

    Branagh himself takes on the role of Hercule Poirot and delivers an exceedingly fine moustache. This bothered me less than I thought it would. My main disappointment was the chopping and changing of the investigation, setting Poirot’s interviews in odd locations [he takes tea outside in the freezing cold, for instance] and editing them to the bone, so whatever back story each suspect character has is not sufficiently explained, either to the audience or, more worryingly, to Poirot. When Branagh reveals his solution to the murder of the unlikeable American businessman Samuel Ratchett, he frequently says “I supposed..” or “I suggest” which gives the impression he’s guessing. This Poirot is more robust, more physical and appears to be suffering from a doomed romance as well as a severe case of obsessive compulsive disorder. Trapped on a train with a brood of people he doesn’t like, you almost feel he’s framed them all up.

    The big cast enjoys themselves. Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, Olivia Coleman, Penelope Cruz and Willem Defoe are decent, but like all Christie characters, they are essentially stereotypes. The inclusion of a black actor doesn’t bother me as much as the insistence on referencing his skin colour in a historical context, which draws an unnecessary attention to it. Ditto the moments of sudden violence, which are uncomfortable to watch and equally unnecessary. There’s some really poor CGI for the train journey and avalanche scenes. There really wasn’t a need to expand the film in this manner as it’s the claustrophobic atmosphere of the train carriage which provides half the drama.

    A decent shout, but the whole thing was better done in Sidney Lumet’s 1974 version, a prime piece of tension filled drawing room detective drama. Branagh’s not cutting any new cloth here and it shows.  

     

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    THE FOOTBALL FACTORY (2004)


    Nick Love isn’t what you would call a subtle film director (he also directed Outlaw and the remake The Sweeney) but he does direct with his finger on the pulse. He is the successor to Michael Winner (not a bad thing in my book) in churning out urban thrillers in the pulp fiction style of a Don Pendleton Executioner paperback.

    Tommy Johnson (Danny Dyer) is approaching 30 in a dead end job where he lives for the weekend which will involve drug, alcohol, sex, and most important of all, a fight with a rival group of football hooligans. Realising that his life is on a downward spiral he has a premonition of doom and tries to make sense of it all. Dudley Sutton plays his grandfather, a WW2 veteran who tries to get him to mend his ways as he prepares to emigrate to Australia with friend John Junkin. Meanwhile, the football “firm” that Johnson belongs to is planning a major fight with arch-rivals Millwall.

    The film is full of plot holes but it does have a raw energy that is surprisingly addictive.

    6/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent
    edited December 2022

    A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM (1990)

    This is one of those black comedies that I like to revisit every few years. Michael Caine is a veteran executive at an advertising company and unexpectedly he gets overlooked for promotion in preference for a younger man. His spendthrift nagging wife is devastated and continues to berate him for his lack of authority. In a fit of rage he pushes a beggar onto train tracks at the subway and gets away without being noticed. Gaining confidence from this he goes on a revenge killing spree, beginning with his wife…

    Caine is excellent as the put upon executive who begins to enjoy the power of getting away with each successive murder. The suspicions of a detective and a female colleague who Caine dates after the death of his wife, add tension to the narrative and the film keeps you guessing to how it’s all going to pan out at the end.

    Good fun.

    7/10

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
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