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  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    JOJO RABBIT (2019)

    A ten year old member of the Hitler Youth who fantasises that his best friend is the Fuhrer begins to question his allegiances when he discovers his mother has been hiding a sixteen year old Jewish girl in the attic.

    Polarising comedy drama with two good central performances from Roman Griffin Davis as the titular Jojo and Thomasina McKenzie as Elsa, the girl. The film tackles a difficult subject badly from a comedic angle. Transposing 21st Century ideals and modern sensibilities onto a serious subject for humour, even as satire, is a hard trick to pull off. Despite being based on a well-researched book, this film is inadequately scripted for the task. It’s ham-fisted attempts at hilarity insult the intelligence of the audience, treating the war as something akin to mercilessly parody. It is badly miscast, the two young leads excepted. For me, this was not a gratifying experience. It’s a shameless arthouse daube that handles its themes without subtlety or pathos. Mostly, until the final quarter, it’s simply awful. I suspect a lot of people loved it

    I often have problems with films of this kind [witness my review of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood]. While I understand we should not forget the painful lessons of the past and I laud the refrain of comprehension gained by active communication, the spoken or written word – there’s a promising allusion to the poet Rilke which is treated half-pat – it is almost impossible to separate what I am watching with what I know. Some of the war time depictions are fairly accurate, many are not. I was particularly squeamish about the suggestion the Americans made it to Berlin at the same time as the Soviets, a convenient distortion of history that allows the director to not dwell on one of the less edifying episodes of conflict. Berlin was a Russian victory and Elsa, a pretty young thing, would most likely have been kidnapped and raped by the Russians, who were not discriminating. In fact, there’s little suggestion of atrocities on any side, just a few unsubstantiated hangings and a mention of trains and places you never come back from. The Nazi characters are all played softly for laughs and they don’t make us laugh, at least not on this sofa. Commentators have said this is a child’s eye view, and that kids of the moment saw the war, indeed saw the Third Reich, as a playful exciting time. I agree there are elements of this truth represented, but even as the scales drop from Jojo’s eyes, we sense his realisation has been buried under too much strained mirth.

    What irks most, is how filmmakers seem to want to make a political and societal point about the plight of the afflicted, yet they are still harking back to the holocaust. And why glamourise the impact with humour? Lazy prejudices abound: the Nazis are all dumb and ineffectual; the Jewish girl is more competent than anyone; the kids are agog at the possibility of a real war on their doorstep. The fact there is no guiding hand for Jojo, no mentor figure, leaves a gaping hole for explanation about anything that was really happening in spring 1945. His mother is there, but she’s an unsympathetic fantasising drunk, a closet communist who has failed to educate her fanatical son. His father figure is an ineffectual, posturing Hitler. All the usual comic notes are trooped out whenever this fantasy figure is on screen. There is no sense of the real Hitler’s mesmeric character or his fall into delusion and despair. I’m not seeing anything new here; it is just dressed up in the Emperor’s Clothes from Saturday Night Live, or wherever.

    Why does writer / director Taika Waititi feel compelled to rehash the same oppressive order we’ve seen over and over? Why isn’t he discussing something more contemporary – Afghanistan, perhaps, or Putin’s Russia, or the Right to Bear Arms Brigade in the U.S., or society’s historical treatment of the Māori culture in his native New Zealand? During the war years, filmmakers made satires about the Nazi regime – famously The Great Dictator and To Be Or Not To Be – and made them incisive, relevant and amusing. Yet why is a modern auteur avoiding the world’s and society’s difficult contemporary subjects now, delivering nothing more than a sickly saccharine version of Anne Frank?

    Cliches abound throughout. Jojo is a remarkably self-aware kid for someone who is clearly as dumb as a post. The fantasy sequences with his best mate Adolf simply don’t work and topple the exercise into high farce. This isn’t helped by the fantasising of Jojo’s mother and of the boy himself as he pretends to write love letters to Elsa from her fiancé. It is as if the only way to survive the war was through make-believe. Most people were subsisting into a dreadful reality. This truth only rears its ugly head late on in the narrative. The scene where Jojo scavenges for food is good. So too a remarkable encounter with the Gestapo where Elsa impersonates Jojo’s missing sister. Unfortunately it misses the element of genuine danger. The scenario is as see-through a water.         

    As it stands, modern idioms and idiosyncrasies abound and the ending is heavily romanticised. Tacking on David Bowie’s Heroes for the closing credits is overkill of the most brutal kind, a song whose sentiments aren’t even relevant until the 1970s. I don’t know what to make of this at all. I am seeing more and more of this kind of bleakly personal, off-kilter and introspective work in the cinema these days. I understand Spielberg’s latest is an autobiographical comedy drama homage to his mother, so goodness knows what that’ll be like. I’m just not entertained by these outings, not even the idea of them.

    There was a brilliant book and film about the holocaust, communication, the misunderstandings and empathy of youth called The Reader and I suggest if you want to understand the nuances of extremism, the simplicity of young love and the effect of war on individuals, you watch or read that instead of this childish piece of hand wringing. 

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    I really had nothing to do this weekend:

    THE MUMMY (1959)

    Hammer Pictures 1959 remake of Universal’s The Mummy has all the prerequisites which made Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein so successful: Terence Fisher directing, Peter Cushing in the lead, Christopher Lee as his monstrous support, a Jimmy Sangster script, decent sets, lurid colour photography. What is lacks is a sense of purpose. This really does feel like a remake for the sake of it. There’s nothing very different happening here than happened in any of Universal’s Mummy cycle and, other than the aforementioned colour photography, it doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. Perhaps the intellectual showdown between Peter Cushing’s Egyptologist and George Pastell’s Mehemet Bey, which hints at the moral dilemma faced by all tomb raiders. Horror-wise, there really isn’t much you can do with a man in bandages. The 1932 original figured this, and took its protagonists out of his wrappings, but Hammer prefers the Abbot and Costello route. Christopher Lee’s lumbering monster can’t frighten anyone cinematically. There’s an interesting moment of pathos towards the end of the film which reimagines the humanism of Frankenstein’s monster and is a worthy moment of emotional pull, but generally the film is very leaden and uninspired. Peter Cushing does well and I suppose we should be thankful somebody is acting a part.  


    THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1964)

    Dreadful sequel from top to bottom, starting with its title, which combines two of Universal’s own Mummy movies in one hoary epitaph. Woefully plotted and scripted, third rate acting and appalling design work, topped off by some quite obvious dubbing. The suspenseless exercise has too many flashbacks and features an unintentionally hilarious mummified Egyptian prince committing slow murders in London’s nicest drawing rooms. Most of the shocks involve severed hands. The atmospheric climax in the sewers strives to remedy what came before, but even that medicine can’t raise a flicker of interest, let alone the dead.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    Still nothing to do:

    MUPPETS MOST WANTED (2014)

    Following the outstanding Muppet’s Christmas Carol, the puppet franchise took a severe dip and looked like it would never recover. Muppets Most Wanted is a return to something like the old form. Sensibly the writers return the Muppets to the theatre where they were always best. We watch their already appalling show deteriorate even further as Kermit’s evil look-a-like Konstantin takes over, romances Piggy and neglects his onstage entourage. Fuzzy Bear is as hilariously confused as ever, Gonzo decides to run with the bulls with Salma Hayek , Miss Piggy sings with Celine Dion – a vocal match made in some sort of farmyard hell – and Ricky Gervais perfects a series of jewel heists as the Muppets World Tour circles the globe. Meanwhile, the real Kermit has to produce the Annual Gulag Review.

    Plenty of wholesome family fun. A series of great comedy routines familiar and new, all peppered with much acerbic wit. Like all the Muppet films, Most Wanted outstays its welcome a tad, but I can’t fault the entertainment value. The long list of human guest stars starts with Gervais and Tina Fey and rolls on and on and on. Curiously, the climax takes place in a helicopter above the River Thames. Guess who was doing that in the following year’s Spectre?

    Very good indeed.   

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    so can we expect an encyclopedic episode-by-episode Muppet Show review thread next? please? don't forget the Muppets were making appearances on the Ed Sullivan show in the mid60s

    the last Mupper Special I saw was a Moulin Rouge parody, so twenty years ago. That one featured an absinthe-hallucination GreenFairy muppet, for the kiddies to ask their parents about

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    Try "Blood From The Mummy's Tomb" (ignore the generic title). It's far better. Based on a Bram Stoker novel and featuring Bond alumni. It's not as good as it should be, owing to the death of the director before shooting finished leaving the producer to do what he could to wrap things up. There were other problems behind the scenes (eg Peter Cushing's wife died after he had only just started filming, so he had to be replaced at short notice by Andrew Keir), but it beats "Curse Of..." easily.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    @Barbel I have seen it, but not for a couple of decades. My memory is that it was rather good. I'll try to look it up.

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    "The woman king" is how you make period movie with strong black women in the leads and still keep it reasonably historically correct. Not by giving them roles they couldn't have in that time and place and pretend they did, just to be the other kind of correct.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    An episode by episode Muppet review thread - now, there's a thought....

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

    actually better not attempt any detailed prehistory, because you'd then also have to cover Sesame Street and that show ran daily five days a week since 1969 up til this very day. unless of course you're up to that challenge.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    The Muppet Show?

    "It was great!" "It was terrible!"

    "It wasn't that good". "There were parts I liked"

    "Bits were awful!". "Some of it wasn't bad!"

    "Boo!". "Hooray!"

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,644MI6 Agent

    Sounds like a real curate's egg of a show then. 😉

    I lent a DVD of that film to my friend once some years ago (having not seen it myself) and he actually said that it wasn't as good as he thought it would be. It's good to know the reasons why that was!

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    It had great potential, and some of that can still be seen through what was pieced together after the director's death, but it's still the best Hanmer Mummy movie other than the first which @chrisno1 discussed above (and I'm sure I did too long ago).

    @Silhouette Man I was attempting to do Waldorf and Statler, the two old guys from "The Muppet Show". You'd have to have seen them to get the joke.

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,644MI6 Agent

    Yes, I think I know them. That's the two older men who sit up in the theatre gallery and criticise everything?

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    One criticises, the other praises, then as they talk they switch positions.

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,644MI6 Agent

    Ah, I see. I think I've seen clips of them in action before but not seen much of the show itself. I also remember seeing them parodied with latex faces on the truly mad Bo' Selecta! 🙂

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,907MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    were they meant to be based on Siskel and Ebert? who had their own teevee show round the same time and a rapport much as @Barbel is describing.

    you know there were a couple of early80s season premieres of Saturday Night Live where the real Siskel and Ebert sat in the middle of the studio audience and delivered brutally honest live reviews of the show in progress as it was broadcast? maybe every show should incorporate critics as part of its content, Like what if No Time to Die had inserts of Waldorf and Statler or Siskel and Ebert at the end of each Act? "worst Bond ever! Bond has a license to kill, not be killed!" "well I think CraigBond had it coming to him, since frankly all his films stunk!"

    sounds like we need an episode-by-episode Muppet Show review thread just to educate @Silhouette Man !


    EDIT: theres a Muppet Show wiki, heres the entry for Waldorf and Statler

    (and I'm mad at that site because it wont let me imagelink to it!)

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962)

    Stately black and white John Ford mini-epic about the mythology of the American west and by extension the legitimacy of the western movie genre.

    James Stewart is Ransome Stoddard, an idealistic lawyer who arrives in Shinbone and begats a war with the cattle ranchers and their enforcer, the rustler, stage robber and psychopath Liberty Valance. Lee Marvin scowls his way impressively through every scene as the titular villain. John Wayne is Stewart’s rival in love for Vera Miles’ Swedish waitress. The two leads were flattered by the monochrome photography which allows them to appear thirty years younger than their respective ages (53 and 54). Fordian support is provided by Woody Strode’s dignified black ranch hand, Andy Devine’s hapless Sheriff and Edmond O’Brien’s town drunk. Many similarities with Destry Rides Again, but for the most part played deadly serious.

    The film evolves through a series of eight tension building extended scenes: the prologue, the stage robbery, the Swedish cantina, the schoolroom, the vote, the showdown, the reveal, the epilogue. Each scene delves deeper into the characters’ make-up and relationship, but there’s something missing from the overall landscape. Perhaps it is in Stewart’s motives, which seem to be coiled in anger. He claims to want peace through the rule of efficient, proactive law, but never once appears to recognise the town has an ineffectual Sheriff. Instead he takes up gunslinging, badly, and puts his life in danger seeking a duel with a man clearly more disposed to the rule of the gun. We know he’s doomed. His escape, through chance, is well drafted and complies with the other western ideal of self-sacrifice, but it’s all very bitter by the end. You wonder, if Vera Miles’ entrenched silences are because she knows all along she’s married to the wrong man.

    The film’s epitaph “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend” seems apt as reinterpreting fact is basically what the western genre has attempted to do on film since the earliest days of cinema.

     

     

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    DON’T BOTHER TO KNOCK (1952)

    Curious vehicle for Richard Widmark, Marilyn Monroe and Anne Bancroft. Everyone feels miscast. Widmark plays a pilot whose romance with Bancroft is under strain due to his obvious indifference. When he gets dumped, you don’t feel sorry for him. So when he spies Marilyn Monroe parading in her smalls across the hotel courtyard, his intentions are distinctly creepy. When Monroe’s overtly sensual behaviour begins to unravel, what started as a rebound flirtation develops into an evening of unhinged tension.

    Monroe’s very good as the damaged young woman, but it’s not a role you’d immediately associate with her. She’d been on a run of mostly light comedies and this was an opportunity for her to shine in a big, dramatic leading part. She doesn’t disappoint, but I can imagine early fans being unsettled. I was too, and I knew about the movie and its plot.

    British director Roy Ward Baker helms the show and does a competent job, ranking the suspense up at the appropriate moment. Black and white, noirish photography helps immensely. There’s a fine section late on when the child who Monroe is charged to babysit becomes physically threatened and Baker, along with Daniel Taradash’s sparse screenplay, ratches up the suspense and darkens the palette. The subject matter is quite upsetting and the film as a whole is a very uncomfortable experience, touching on child abuse, rape, neglect, bereavement, trauma, mental instability, suicide and murder. These adult, intensely difficult themes, are not given sufficient depth. Having presented them, the script does a runner in the last quarter and turns conventional on us. The over-simplified ending doesn’t do justice to what came before. The story which almost veered to the preposterous, suddenly becomes so ordinary all those intense flavours are lost.

    Despite this, I’d urge people to watch it, chiefly to see Marilyn Monroe acting outside of her comfort zone.

     

     

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,644MI6 Agent

    What else would one come to AJB for if not to be educated on the Muppet Show?

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent
    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    I like to think I am ahead of the Prince Charles' game !

    Spent the day with friends and the kids wanted to watch this:

    THE PIRATES! IN AN ADVENTURE WITH SCIENTISTS! (2012)

    What fun!

    I’m not predisposed towards animation movies, there are too many of them and I sense some of the magic has gone. I can’t understand why essentially life-affirming stories need to be played out by fish, toy cowboys or freezing princesses.

    Occasionally though, one does strike gold and this brilliant British made tale of daring-don’ts on the high seas is a full-on treat with excellent animated characters, fun situations that do not make you roll your eyes in astonishment and a crackling script, sparklingly voiced by Hugh Grant, Matin Freeman and Imelda Staunton among others. There’s also Bobo the Monkey and Polly the Dodo, so the kids can keep up if the adult dialogue loses the their attention.

    And what a villainess we have in Queen Victoria – that rapacious carnivorous collector of extinct animals!

    Aardmann has rarely been better, perhaps only in The Wrong Trousers. I haven’t laughed so much at a film in ages. Or maybe it was the beer.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    OPERATION CROSSBOW (1965)

    The mid-sixties was an era of big war movies, but Operation Crossbow doesn’t feel quite ‘big’ enough, despite a starry cast and some superb visuals. Based on fact but highly fictionalising actual events, the movie relates a tale of resistance espionage and undercover heroics in and around Germany’s Peenemunde Air Research facilities, relocated from the Baltic to Holland for narrative convenience.

    As D-Day approaches, Duncan Sandys [Richard Johnson, putting on an authentic limp] is worried about a change in Nazi tactics from short range bombing to long range missile attacks. Proved right he initiates a response, initially bombing raids on the V-1 ‘ski ramps’, which are mostly unsuccessful. This is all embellished truth, as is the later horror of the ‘silent’ V-2 rockets launched in early 1945. An interesting [unrecognised] fact is that Britain’s last official civilian fatality of the war was the sole casualty of the last V-2 rocket which exploded in Orpington 27/3/1945. Cinematically it is more interesting to follow the fictional adventures of George Peppard, Tom Courtney and Jeremy Kemp as they infiltrate the underground research and launch facility for the ‘New York Rocket’.

    While there is evidence of German research into the A9/A10 two stage rocket, experiments never got as far as we see here. The filmic set up is much more like a prototype James Bond movie, with huge underground cavernous sets, murder, betrayal, double-agents and heroic derring-do. The great Emeric Pressburger contributed to the script and director Michael Anderson studiously studied the subject to obtain some authenticity. They do a splendid job recreating the period and an atmosphere of fear, loathing and desperation is well captured. Early suspense is created by a well filmed test launch of a piloted V-1, when Barbara Rutting’s Hanna Reitsch discovers the trim flaw in the rocket design. Reitsch was a real person, a famed German test pilot, but the trim fault was detected on the non-piloted V-2 not the V-1. Still, it’s unusual for a war film saluting Allied victory to treat the triumphs of the Axis with integrity and some excitement. This is tempered, of course, by an air raid during the celebration soiree. Other points of genuine insight are when the S.S. take over Peenemunde, which really happened, as well as the ruthlessness of both sides in the war game. The grit of the spies under pressure is finely tuned, although the nuances of dread displayed by Kemp and Courtney might have benefitted Peppard’s far less complicated performance.

    It’s always good to have characters speaking in native tongues, although apparently Paul Henreid’s accent was so bad they cut most of his scenes. Anthony Quayle is particularly good as an S.S. interrogator who snaffles Tom Courtney’s low-key heroic spy. Lili Palmer won European awards for her small role as a tough Dutch resistance agent. Sophia Loren is a support player with lead billing specifically employed by producer Carlo Ponti to boost the film’s profile. Ponti was also Loren’s husband, so you can figure the math. Loren shines as the wife of Erik Van Ostabeck, a dead scientist whose identity Peppard is using. Their brief flirtation and her last scenes have genuine emotional pull, which can’t be said of most of the action, stuck as it is in the committee rooms of Blighty. Things pick up almost too fast in the final quarter and it all ends in something of an unlikely, albeit exciting rush.

    An underrated war film, Operation Crossbow has been one of my favourites for many years because, despite its defects, the film attempts to tap into the machinations of war and the difficult decisions reached by individuals in the service of their country. Like A Bridge Too Far, it takes some pain to point this out and while Crossbow ends on a more optimistic note, the film has some of the same epic sweep and understanding of its subject that, coupled with unexpectedly good performances and tension racked scenes keeps an audience watching.   

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    Operation Crossbow is one of the few wartime sequels, as Ice Cold in Alex stars reprise their roles - Anthony Quayle's Nazi - emboldened by having pulled the wool over the eyes of the gullible British soldiers, who later freed him - now infiltrates the English to find out how how much they know about their secret rockets. Sylvia Sims's character is reassigned to desk duty and discovers there is something fishy going on with the Germans' aerial plans. John Mills' dogged work in the desert earns him a promotion - though he's behind a desk again.

    Don't think they found a role for Harry Andrews' character.

    'Yes indeed!' Stromberg financier appears as the hotel factotum.

    Think Tom Courtney is the only one still alive?

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    As it happens I'm listening to an audiobook about Sverre Bergh who spied for SIS while he was a student in Germany. He actually saw the Penemünde facilty at a distance in 1941. Bergh sent a report to the UK, but his bosses ignored it and asked him to stop reading science fiction. When the Nazis started launching rockets the SIS changed their minds and told him to read "more of that science fiction".

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    HUSTLERS (2019)

    Tacky enterprise based on a tawdry true story about four strippers who exploit customers, stealing credit cards and drugging them with little remorse. Writer / director Lorene Scararia makes a low-rent existence appear entirely glamourous. I didn’t believe in either the good or the bad times as presented to me. The cliché of dollar bills being tossed at half naked dancers just isn’t inventive enough; worse, it’s all done in aching, semi-porn slow motion. This slice of a life in crime is used an extended excuse for female bonding of the most puerile kind: much dancing and drinking, extravagant present giving and endless hugs. It is such a woman dominated world the protagonists only give birth to girls, there’s not a male child in sight. Despite the luxury, the girls can’t help looking like hookers all the time which just adds to the expected formula. Too simply told in extended flashbacks, another filmic cliché, and featuring the barest of character development. A very ordinary movie which is not saved by a decent performance from Jennifer Lopez as the ring leader. 

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    FLASH GORDON (1936)

    Episode 1

    The Planet of Peril

    Blimey, this doesn’t hang about.

    Unlike the 1980 remake there’s no extended prologue. Two scientists watch the skies through a powerful telescope. A rogue planet is drawing steadily closer to Earth. They predict it will collide with and destroy Earth. Only Dr Zarkov has foreseen the encounter, but he has vanished along with his fabled rocket ship. One of the scientists is Professor Gordon and he receives a telegram from his son, Flash, who is flying to join him for the planet’s last days.

    That’s depressing.

    Flash Gordon himself is on a passenger plane experiencing the worst flight ever. Not only is the weather terrible, but he has to crane his neck to see the beautiful blonde sat two rows back. Dale Arden has no trouble inspecting him. The plane is struck by lightning and hurtles out of control. The pilot tells everyone to abandon the plane and parachute to safety. Flash and Dale discover there is only one parachute remaining and jump together. They land near Prof Zarkov’s rocket ship. Flash knows of the great man’s reputation and instinctively trusts him, agreeing to help him on his mission to the stars. Dale comes along for the ride.

    That’s the first five minutes done then.

    This is such a fast narrative I was chuckling at the silliness of it all. Things don’t slow down on the planet Mongo. There is a spectacular city on a mountain top. The surface of Mongo is a rock strewn desert inhabited by giant lizards who fight each other when it would be easier to eat the humans. The travellers are saved by a native rocket ship which resembles Zarkov’s rocket ship. Unfortunately, the crew are armour clad unfriendly space soldiers out to capture the humans.

    Flash puts up a fight and he doesn’t stop fighting from here on. Buster Crabbe may not be able to act, but he can throw a decent right hook and has the physique for an action movie star. As an Olympic gold medal swimmer he has the form and skills for the later water based battles.

    Charles Middleton is a scrupulous and intense Ming the Merciless. He’s hamstrung only by the contemptable script and a director who is interested in nothing more than propelling the story from one fight to another. Nobody uses guile and wit, it is fists and ire only. Flash is a very angry young man. During their first audience with Ming, he assaults Mongo’s Emperor and gets thrown into the Arena, where he battles three vicious Fang Men for his shirt.

    Meanwhile Princess Aura, an all buxom and brawn Priscilla Lawson, not so much alluring as frightening, has taken a shine to Flash and saves him from certain death. The more dainty Jean Rogers practices the first of many screams…

    Episode one ends on a cliff hanger of some success – but goodness it passes in a blur.


    Episode 2

    The Tunnel of Terror

    There is a miraculous escape from the arena. Aura hides Flash in her personal rocket ship. The hairy faced Lion Men attack the citadel in their Gyro Ships. Flash has studied the Mongo pilots, “just in case I need to fly one of these things”, and launches the rocket ship, going on the attack as he fears the citadel will be destroyed and he’ll lose Dale and Zarkov forever. The Lion Men are led by Prince Thun, who sports monumental hair and beard. Thun and Flash team up, hoping to defeat Ming, and access a temple complex via a secret tunnel.

    Meanwhile Dale Arden is being stripped for action – sorry, a wedding – and kitted out in a next to nothing bridal outfit. Jean Rogers looks stunning in the tiny bikini top and slinky sarong, hard nipples showing. She’s the only person dressed in white, a virgin angel among all these black garbed beasts. Saturday morning kids must have been having indecent fantasies throughout the summer of 1936.   

    Zarkov is staring at the amazing equipment in Ming’s laboratories. Maybe he saw Frankenstein and remembered what it looked like. He learns that Ming can control the orbit of the planet. He also learns that Dale has been drugged by Ming’s superintendent to ensure she complies meekly to a marriage ceremony. My one burning question is: why are all the good guys forced to wear swimming trunks?

    Like the enormous, but empty, throne room we saw in episode one, the cave cut Temple of the Great God Tao is well designed, but this set feels too small for the action, too cramped.

    Flash and Thun become trapped in the tunnel by a fearsome dragon…

     

    Episode 3

    Captured by the Shark Men

    Tell it like it is.

    More fighting and chasing. Flash and Thun rescue Dale, but become separated. The fugitives accidentally enter the underwater realm of the Shark Men, through a trap door in the floor, naturally. There’s an impressive shot of the Shark Men closing in on Flash and Dale with a very aggressive breast stroke. That’s not a euphemism, they really are swimming the breast stroke. Captured, the twosome are taken to a submarine, which looks just like a rocket ship. The underwater trip passes by two warring gigantic Octo-sacs. Finally on dry land, or dry somewhere, Flash engages King Kala in one-to-one combat. Beaten and humbled, Kala offers them the run of his private quarters. We know something is up, because he separates our hero and heroine. Even Buster Crabbe manages a pensive little look about the arrangement. Too right, matey. Dale gets a big bed, diaphanous curtains and fluffy pillows. Flash gets thrown in a water tank.

    Suspicious, Dale creeps into Kala’s quarters and overhears him on the spaceograph with Ming. Flash has been imprisoned awaiting Ming’s wrath! As she watches, water is poured into the tank and an enormous sea beast engages our hero in a many tentacled underwater battle…

     

    Episode 4

    Battling the Sea Beast

    You have to hand it to the ingenuity of the writers and the designers who are working minor miracles with virtually no money. Ralph Berger’s sets are fairly impressive and the ambition is crazily off the scale. Hollywood was famous for making historical epics [Intolerance, The Sign of the Cross, etc] but they rarely ventured into sci-fi territory, if ever. Alexander Korda had the backing of a whole British film studio to make Things to Come. Impressive as that movie is to look at, the narrative is dull as ditch water. You can’t say that about Flash Gordon, although a little less aggression and a little more discussion might have made the telling less repetitive. The film people at Universal really do attempt to picture and present an alien environment and a vision of a ‘future’ with lasers, rocket ships and aliens. It’s a pity there’s no conciliation in outer space.

    Not much underwater either. Aura and Thun appear in time to save Flash and the jealousy between the two women in his life, blonde and brunette, rears its head again: Aura deliberately sabotage’s Kala’s undersea kingdom hoping to kill Dale. The silly so-and-so hasn’t banked on Flash’s chivalric instincts.

    Meanwhile Zarkov uses Ming’s laboratory equipment to contact Earth…

     

    Episode 5

    The Destroying Ray

    Less fist fighting than usual. Ming shows a compassionate streak, perhaps because his daughter is in Kala’s palace but more likely because he spies an opportunity to conquer the undersea kingdom for himself. He releases the magnet ray holding the palace underwater. As it rises to the surface, the fugitives escape. The dried out surrounds of the sea palace exactly resemble that of Mongo. They even have lizards. How did they survive underwater?

    I watched this episode in a colourised print. Not so much technicolour as techni-tint, but Jean Rogers looks delightful and the skyscapes are especially vivid.

    Prince Barin turns up, infiltrating Ming’s palace with commendable ease and absconding with Zarkov. Meanwhile, Thun and Dale have been kidnapped by marauding Hawk Men, whose first appearance sweeping through the mountains is quite striking. Jack Lipson’s King Vultan is a great villain, laughing and cracking inopportune jokes much like Brian Blessed. He menaces poor Dale with a beastly pet he calls Urso. She looks scared and curiously eroticised all at once. Vultan’s uniform has breast plates which actually make him look like he has breasts. They are bigger than Miss Rogers’, which might be upsetting for her, hence Dale’s likely curiosity. How does a birdman get such a large bosom? And why does he keep a striped bear as a pet? At least he keeps his hands to himself – unlike Prince Thun who is seen clearly grasping Dale’s left boob as they attempt to flee the Hawk Men.

    Ming knows Vultan will try to make Dale his bride – “it’s in his nature” – and flies to the Sky City to stop any impending nuptials.

    Meanwhile, Flash, Zarkov, Aura and Barin are speeding to the rescue, until Vultan’s melting ray strikes the ship and causes it to crash…

    (continued below...)

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    (continued...)

    Episode 6:

    Flaming Torture

    The gravitational influence of the Sky City saves Barin’s rocket ship, but everyone ends up in King Vultan’s custody. Flash, Thun and Barin are sent to the Atom Furnace where they feed uranium ore to the ovens which power the gravitational rays keeping the city afloat. Vultan wants Zarkov to discover a new method of propulsion as the uranium is running low. Aura persuades Dale to pretend she’s fallen for Vultan and initially the ruse appears to work as, during an elaborate feast, his attitude starts to soften.

    Unfortunately, Flash’s tendency towards violence interferes with Aura’s schemes. He initiates a riot in the Furnace Room. His punishment is electric zap torture. Dale can’t suffer the scene and breaks down screaming, revealing her true emotions. Flash can’t take it either and faints…

    James Pierce plays Prince Thun. He was the fourth man to play Tarzan [Tarzan and the Golden Lion, 1927]. He’s pretty terrible. Frank Shannon is Zarkov. He’s terrible too. James Alexander’s Prince Barin is probably the worst of the lot. Given Buster Crabbe’s continued woodenness, this episode really allows the ladies to shine. Dale attempting to seduce Vultan with her blonde hair and big eyes [it has to be eyes, the best of her isn’t big enough to challenge Vultan] is a hoot and Aura’s nefarious plans show no sign of wavering. I’m enjoying Jack Lipsom’s boisterous bird monarch too.

    The Sky City is a great design, much more impressive than the similar looking undersea palace. It is supported by searchlights. There’s an exotic floor show taking place at the far end of Vultan’s state dining room. I’m not certain but, like the music which was pinched from The Invisible Man, I have the impression this art deco designed dance number has been culled from a different movie altogether. [I checked later, it was, The Midnight Sun, 1927.]

     

    Episode 7

    Shattering Doom

    A change of pace, thank goodness.

    A little respite for Flash, who survives the torture thanks to Aura’s timely intervention and the resuscitative properties of a electroscope, which resembles a futuristic oxygen tent. Dale is presented with new clothes and jewels and treated to a shadow play by the ever laughing Vultan.

    When Flash rejects Aura’s overtures, she attempts to blind him with a blow torch [yikes!] but can’t go through with it. Perhaps her heart is not as dark as her hair after all.

    Meanwhile, Ming lands on the Sky City and Vultan parlays for peace. Zarkov boobytraps a shovel and Flash uses it to ignite the Furnace Room in a ball of fire…

     

    Episode 8

    Tournament of Death

    And back to the rough stuff…

    As the Sky City lurches off its pedestal, Zarkov bargains with Vultan: free Flash and his friends and he’ll activate the new electric ray which will save the city. Vultan agrees, but once the city is rebalanced, Ming activates his right as Emperor to only allow the fugitives freedom if they engage in the Tournament of Death. Flash is nominated as their Champion. The other swordsman turns out to be Prince Barin, forced to take part by Ming, and hoping to prevent further fighting by producing a satisfying but non-fatal victory. Instead, Flash wins the duel – and refuses to continue once he realises it is Barin beneath the mask. Shamed, Barin believes he has lost the love of Princess Aura for good. Meanwhile Flash re-enters the arena barehanded to battle the giant Orangapoid. After playing Tarzan, Buster Crabbe ought to be used to fighting men in ape suits – or was that Johnny Weissmuller? – I forget. An all action episode of little merit other than to remind me how much more sense the Flash v Barin conflict made in the movie.

     

    Episode 9

    Fighting the Fire Dragon

    It’s the same man in a dragon suit we saw in episode 2 and 3, only this one breathes fire…

    Flash kills the Orangapoid, thanks to Aura’s intervention. She keeps saving him and keeps not getting her reward. You’d think she’d learn. Ming turns all magnanimous in defeat, but nobody trusts him an inch – except poor naive Flash who reassures Dale “it’ll be alright” – about as reassuring as standing in a tunnel occupied by a fire dragon.

    The High Priest of Tao gives Aura a forgetfulness drug which will put Flash to sleep, allowing her to ferret the Earthman to the Sacred Palace of Tao, where she can start a secret life with him. A second drug will wake him, but his memory will be empty. The movie played a similar scenario, but at the opposite end of the drama. There is much mugging and astonishment in every scene. Director Frederick Stephani isn’t doing much with his actors. You sense the money was spent on the detail. The acting got third billing behind the designers and the effects crews. The assembled cast really tries, but it’s like watching mud dry. Painfully slow.

     

    Episode 10

    The Unseen Peril

    “This Earthman has disturbed the affairs of my empire too long,” declares Ming the Merciless. Too right.

    Aura attempts to quell his ire, but to no avail. Zarkov again attempts to contact the Earth. Meanwhile, Flash, having lost his memory, spends most of the episode looking distinctly glum. The fact he vanishes into thin air by the end of it seems highly appropriate…   

    (continued below...) 

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,176MI6 Agent

    (continued...)

    Episode 11

    In the Claws of the Tigron

    Zarkov has saved Flash from an execution squad using his invisibility machine. Blessed with a sudden power of invisibility, Flash exploits the situation and threatens Ming, before freeing King Vultan. Universal’s special effects teams have had fun with this scenario before and Jack Lipsom’s Vultan enjoys it as much as they do.

    Ming decides to wreak vengeance, but as no one can see the rogue Earthman the task is impossible. Ming’s patience is running low, if it ever had a high. He even snaps at his daughter, who still desires Flash despite every sign he isn’t remotely interested in her. Sensing danger, Barin takes Dale to the safety of the catacombs. Aura sets a trap using the sacred Tigron. While Vultan holds off Ming’s troops with his enormous bulk and breast plates – much to Zarkov’s astonishment – Flash and Barin rush to Dale’s rescue. Too late! The tigron has already leapt to the attack…

    And it looks like a real tiger too.

     

    Episode 12

    Trapped in the Turret

    Flash arrives in time to save Dale. He slaughters the sacred tigron with his bare hands. Goodness. But you wonder what happened to Prince Barin, he was right behind him when they entered the catacombs. Still, a swift word in Aura’s ear changes her attitude. Flash seems as gullible as he was earlier. He must stop trusting people, it’ll get him into whole heaps of trouble.

    Ming too has yet another change of heart, which seems unlikely. He appears to be temporarily forgetting the previous few episodes and returning the stage back to where we were in Episode 8: Tournament of Death. After that experience, Flash, amazingly, is learning not to trust the Merciless One. Zarkov makes contact with Earth, although Ming hasn’t promised to call off any attack.

    Aura finally comes through, agreeing that it would be safer to stay in Vultan’s Sky Palace as her father can’t be trusted. Charles Middleton lowers his voice like all good villains and ponders his next moves while sitting on his enormous oyster shaped throne. Prince Thun, who hasn’t shown his face since Episode 8, turns up on the spaceograph and agrees to bring help. Barin tells Flash and his friends to meet them in the Turret House, but their conversation has been overheard by Ming’s spies…

    Probably the dullest chapter of the serial so far. A genuine filler of little quality and lots of plot holes. Given that Zarkov’s rocket ship has been loaded with power batteries, it must be nearby, so why is Prince Barin having to fetch his own rocket ship? And if he can walk to it, why is everyone else not walking to it also? Hopeless. 

     

    Episode 13

    Rocketing to the Earth

    Escaping Ming’s trap, Flash sees Barin being transported to prison. While Thun and his Lion Men attack the citadel with his gyro ships, Flash, Dale, Zarkov, Barin, Vultan and Aura are captured. Ming finally reveals himself as utterly merciless. Revealing his true colours, even Aura recognises the evil in her father. As the battle rages, Ming decides there is only one way to escape the rebels…


    The history of Flash Gordon is long and complicated, like most cultural fictional heroes. It is astonishing to learn the comic strip, which started in 1934 as a Sunday paper strip to rival Buck Rogers, was still being drawn in 1993. Its influence on science fiction, along with those seminal novels by Verne, Wells and Burroughs can’t be underestimated. While this serial certainly entertains and contains much material featured in the earliest stories and reused in most future versions [mostly television adaptations], it is decidedly creaky. The acting in particular is wooden. Where it wins is the design and the energy of the narrative. A lot of thought clearly went into how to best translate Alex Raymond’s fantasy images from newspaper to celluloid. The studio producers opted for broad strokes, with big sets and an array of dazzling effects [dazzling for 1936]. Occasionally, it touches on visual brilliance and is certainly inventive. It hasn’t exactly stood the test of time, but it remains entertaining and an important landmark in cinematic history. The public liked it. The serial was Universal’s second biggest money spinner of the year.

    The chapters are easy to track down on You Tube if you want to get all nostalgic about an era very few of us will remember first hand. If nothing else, it’s fun to spot where the 1980 movie version and the serial coincide.

     

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent
    edited February 2023

    Banshees of Insherin (2022)

    This Irish movie is written and directed by Martin McDonaugh who also did "Seven psycopaths", "In Bruges" and "Three billboards outside Ebbings, Missouri". He is also married to Phobee Waller-Bridge. This is a man who delivers brilliant and original stories.

    Banshees is about two seemingly lifelong friends on a fictional Island off the coast of Ireland one hundred years ago, played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. Farrell's character is a happy and simple. The other one is a fiddler. In the first scene the fiddler has decided not to be friend with his less smart companion. He even threathens to cut off one of his fingers for each time his simpelton ex-friend talks to him. Why, and how does this develop? I won't say, but I can say the movie is moving, funny and dark. You know those movies about grumpy old men who gradually learns to be open and love the world? (from Scrooge to the recent "A man called Otto") This isn't one of those movies. It's different and better. Banshees has been nominated to nine Oscars, and I can see why. Everything is done well here in my opinion, perhaps especially the script and acting. Colin Ferrell has rarely been better. Kerry Condon plays Farrell's sister. I can't recall seing her in anything before, but I would really like to see her as Miss Moneypenny.

    In a time when so many movies seem to be made for twelve year olds and look like computer games, it's nice to experience quality movies made for adults.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    @chrisno1 , I am always amazed at the breadth of your choices.

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