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  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    TRANSPORTER 2 (2005)

    A frankly insane thriller that kicks off with a hair and eyebrow raising and fight in a multi-storey car park and doesn’t let up its relentless pace for the whole 90 minutes.

    Jason Statham returns as Frank Martin, the titular ‘transporter’ relocated to Miami and filling his time with the school run for an entitled little mite, the progeny of a big shot anti-narcotics politico whose having marriage difficulties. The wife turns to Frank for help when the son is kidnapped and a whole host of fights and car chases ensue, none of which make any sense narratively or logistically.

    Unlike the debut movie, this one has to use CGI and it’s ropey, cheap looking SFX at that. Pity. Louis Leterrier is the director, but exactly what his task is except to point the camera blandly at faces while the actors retrieve risible dialogue, I don’t know. The effects, stunt men and second unit guys are doing all the work on this one; there’s even a specific credit for original The Transporter director Corey Yuen as martial arts choreographer and the film certainly needed him. It wears a heart on its sleeve: 190 credits for stunts and effects, but only 5 for script and continuity. Statham is briefly united with his old mate from Lock, Stock… Jason Flemyng, as well as Francois Berleand playing the weary Insp Tarconi. Kate Nauta catches the eye as an assassin who wears nothing but lingerie.

    Hard on the eyes and ears, light on the mind because you just don’t care.   

     

    Note: Before making Transporter 2, Statham made a cameo as “Airport Man” in Michael Mann’s Collateral. Speculation abounds that Statham is playing Frank Martin. While it is fun to speculate, I don’t think the case is proven. Martin is always immaculately dressed when at work and never touches the package. In Collateral, Airport Man is not wearing a tie and is carrying the package. Also his hair is not so dramatically shaved. Nonetheless it’s fun to think of Michael Mann saying: “Just play it like you played the dude in Transporter.”

     

     

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    NO TIME TO DIE (2021)

    Records are meant to be broken, so after months of agonising whether to see NTTD before I’ve seen it in the cinema, I finally succumbed last night as this is now available to stream on Amazon free of charge. So, after 60 years of seeing Bond films in the cinema (I first saw DN aged 6 in 1962) due to the ongoing pandemic and with cinemas still closed here in Cebu, and me not even knowing if it will be shown when they do reopen anyway, I decided to watch it. I knew some spoilers, Bond and Leiter being killed and the new 007, for instance, and I don’t think it spoilt the experience.

    There are a lot of faults, it’s far too long, a good 30 minutes could be shaved off to pace it properly. What is it with today’s movies having to be so bum achingly long? All of Craig’s tenure has been spoilt by them being too long, even QOS, which is about 80 minutes too long 😂. The PTS is like a mini movie in itself and becomes boring long before we see the title sequence which is good but embellished with a humdrum song. The premise is ok but the emphasis on Bond’s personal life is overdone and it’s pretty much all we’ve had over the 5 films and it’s become boring, boring, boring. The death of Leiter should have been poignant but it wasn’t, as the relationship hadn’t had time to develop into a proper friendship. Where the film scores is the island base, this is proper Bond stuff and what we have missed over Craig’s tenure. The ending is kind of sad, but because this Bond MkII, or Earth-2 Bond, has only been around for 5 films it doesn’t really have that OMG factor, Craig’s Bond hasn’t got into my heart like the Connery-Lazenby-Moore-Dalton era did. And to use the OHMSS music is sacrilege 🙁

    Now that the 5 film reboot is over it’s time for a reassessment. CR is a brilliant film and stands alone as a genuine top Bond film in any era. QOS is a terrible movie, best forgotten. SK and SP are ok but too long and too much emphasis on Bond’s personal life. When I first saw SP I thought it was a fantastic entry but on further viewings it has paled somewhat. I think it was an experiment gone wrong. How much was influenced by Craig, I don’t know, he’s a decent actor but there has been far too much angst, I felt devastated for Lazenby’s Bond In OHMSS but cannot feel anywhere close to that for Craig’s Bond.

    Was it worth the wait? Probably not. It’s ok, and aside from CR, that’s all it is for what followed.

    I want Bond to have single missions, I want the villains to have nefarious plans to destroy the world, I want bases to be blown up at the end, I want Bond discarding lovers left right and centre, I want some fun back into the movies. Unless Amazon take it over I don’t think we will get it.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,052Chief of Staff

    👍👍👍👍👍

    Well said, CHB. Glad you finally saw the film, though- you've been waiting for a long time!

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent

    I'm impressed you had the strength of character to wait this long -I doubt I would!

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    @CoolHandBond You are not alone in your thoughts. Your last paragraph sums up my feelings exactly. I'm planning on taking in some of the Connery Bond films at my local Vue Cinema as an antidote to all this Craig-angst. SP and NTTD both have elements of Bond I love, but they have somehow contrived to ruin them both...

    Any reason you didn't want to post the review in the NTTD thread?

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent
    edited April 2022

    congratulations @CoolHandBond on finally seeing the new Bondfilm. And with that, you are now qualified to read Ye Olde and Improved version Nay, Time to Die!

    I've been encouraging others to use Spoiler tags for months because I knew you were the last regularly posting member who had not yet seen the film. But there are indoobitably a few lurkers out there who still dont know how it ends, so you might want to Spoiler tag some bits in your review

    coolhand said;

    ... Earth-2 Bond ...

    comic book reference! I approve! Perhaps in Bond26 we shall see CraigBond cross the dimensional barrier and team up with BrosnanBond to save the Multiverse, as the two Green Lanterns are doing in this classic scene. Except without the magic rings of course.

    chris said:

    Any reason you didn't want to post the review in the NTTD thread?

    just looking at that subforum, the Reviews With Spoilers thread has sunk almost to the bottom of the first page, with many more specialised threads rising to the top. it may be hard to find now that its become less active?

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    Nice to see that I’m not alone in my thoughts!

    @chrisno1 I didn’t really think about where to put my review - I might transpose it onto there as well.

    @caractacus potts Please don’t give BB any more ideas about a multiverse 😂

    I saw FRWL last night and this is probably old news but I’ve not noticed it before - in the PTS Morenzy says it took Grant 1 minute 52 seconds to kill the substitute James Bond, and that is the exact time of the real fight in the train, as I timed it!

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    An interesting double-header the other night. I think Barbel reviewed the first a couple of weeks back:

    KING KONG (1933)

    A film which virtually needs no introduction or explanation. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s classic stop-motion horror adventure still has the potential to thrill and delivers with some vibrancy and a healthy dose of technical sophistication. Bringing the monsters alive is the preserve of animator Willis O’Brien whose work inspired others, such as Ray Harryhausen. The magic is all up there on the screen. More modern viewers may find the whole rather quaint, but if you only wish to be entertained, rather than enthralled, King Kong works that magic all over again every time you see it.

    Robert Armstrong’s Carl Denham is a maverick movie maker who enlists a ship’s company and a beautiful out-of-luck damsel in an effort to film the Eighth Wonder of the World: King Kong a giant gorilla whose domain is an unnamed Pacific island, identified only by its skull-like mountain. The natives live in fear of this godlike beast and have built an enormous wall to keep it at bay. When the filmmakers arrive and disturb a sacrificial ceremony, the tribal chief demands Fay Wray’s Ann Darrow replace the young native girl to compensate for this heresy. The interlopers refuse and later that night Ann is kidnapped and staked out for the gorilla’s dinner – except the beast takes a peculiar shine to Barbie doll sized Ann. There follows an extended chase sequence where Bruce Cabot’s ladies’ man Jack Driscoll pursues the ape-monster through the jungle and the only thing slowing up Kong are his fights with a tyrannosaurus rex, a gigantic lizard and a pterodactyl.

    Rescue completed, Kong goes crackers and attacks the village hoping to find his fascinating blonde. Instead he’s gassed into unconsciousness and transported back to New York where, following a disastrous public unveiling, Kong runs amok, kidnaps Ann and climbs the Empire State Building where he’s finally brought to heel by a troop of flying aces who machine gun the poor beast to his doom.  

    Excitement galore, even if time-wise and logistics-wise the narrative makes no sense. The filmmakers famously claimed that the faster the picture moved the less likely an audience was to notice the continuity issues. They certainly succeed. Cooper was too meticulous, so his co-director insisted he only oversaw the miniature work – which took a year to complete – while Schoedsack himself dealt with the dialogue. They completed the live action work in a month and it shows. The performances are rushed and the characters underdeveloped. Chief among the raft of stereotypical players is Armstrong, whose Carl Denham is full of enthusiasm and brio, which might have been okay in 1933, but doesn’t work so well today when you just want him to shut up or slow down. He issues orders so fast you wonder how anyone ever understands what he wants them to do. It’s no wonder the expedition goes horrifically wrong.

    Far better is Fay Wray, who famously screamed in a recording booth for a whole day to produce the soundtrack for Ann Darrow who emits the loudest and longest series of shrieks, cries and whelps the cinema has probably [still] ever heard. She’s believably naïve and quite gorgeous in that winsomely flapper style which was de rigour in Hollywood in the early thirties. She even shows some pre-Hays code daring by having the monster monkey dispose of most of her clothes, baring naked shoulders and, during Denham’s on-ship screen test, donning a diaphanous evening gown while quite obviously not wearing a brassiere. Bruce Cabot, who later found lasting fame as a villain in a film called Diamonds Are Forever, one of a small franchise based on some books by Ian Fleming, is competent as the rough neck who falls for her. He got the gig late as Joel McRea’s agent demanded too much money to make this thrill ride and The Most Dangerous Game back-to-back.         

    The giant gorilla is the best performer in the whole movie, although the close-ups of his face and right hand, both huge part-manoeuvrable mock-ups, leave something to be desired. Where Kong doesn’t disappoint is in the long distance shots, where his fur bristles and his roar – another splendid special effect – animate him even more than O’Brien’s model work. [The fur bristling is a technician's mistake; they are in fact the thumb and finger prints of the animator as he rearranged the model for the next frame; still, extremely life-like.] The battle with the T-Rex is probably the film’s high point among many high points. The two behemoths pound, crash and snap at each other while Kong roars, the dinosaur hisses, Fay Wray screams and Max Steiner’s orchestral music score compete for and assault our aural attention, a clamour of noise that audiences in 1933 must have considered deafening. In contrast the scene where Ann Darrow is kidnapped from the deck of the ship is carried out in complete silence, a moment of high drama and suspense before the blood-curdling screams and violence kick in. 

    By the time the movie reaches New York, it’s almost run out of puff. Switching the action from the jungle to the metropolis only just succeeds by virtue of its relative novelty value. They’d do this sort of thing with much more destructive tenacity in 21st century films, but those have less charm. Here, our sympathies switch from the imperilled Ann and Driscoll, to the captive Kong, displayed like a circus freak, chained up in a Broadway theatre for entertainment. Frightened by the camera flashes, he breaks free with ease – well, of course he would – and creates sufficient mayhem to make New York his own modern jungle. The climax is unusual for retaining our empathy for the monster, who is after all being horribly mistreated and only wants to protect poor Miss Darrow from the attentions of the public, be they sailors, natives or newspapermen. Carl Denham’s closing line that “It was beauty that killed the beast” has a neat ring of philosophical incongruity to it; he’s really absolving himself of blame: it was you who engineered it all along, Denham, you cruel, heartless, freakshow ringmaster.

    King Kong is a fantastic film. There are misfortunes, but it’s really a technicians film: the visual and sound effects, the cinematography, set design, music and editing are all well above par. I’ve seen it in the cinema, where it looks and sounds even better. It loses something on the small screen – Kong just looks too wee on telly – but the film never ceases to be captivating. I know they make lists of ‘best this and that’ all the time these days, but King Kong is undoubtedly one of Hollywood’s greatest ever films and retains its glory despite a series of poor sequels, rip-offs and remakes.  

      

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    Followed by this:

    THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)

    Part creature feature, extended allegory on the dangers of science dabbling in affairs it doesn’t understand – here the genus of an organic alien – in reality the discovery and exploitation of the nuclear fission – The Thing from Another World doesn’t quite succeed in being either. It gets fabulous retrospective reviews these days, but I found it distinctly underwhelming.

    The major issue for me, was the whip-crack fast overlapping dialogue, which was done for authenticity, thus resulting in a faster than fast pace, but also succeeding in not telling the audience what anyone is saying, thinking or doing. You can barely catch a sentence during most of the scenes. The movie is fairly typical of the era.

    Having just watched King Kong, I was fascinated to see James Arness’ ‘Thing’ appear in the silhouette of a broken doorway much how Kong is envisioned through the massive doors of the native’s island fortress wall. Arness is equally impressive, but isn’t in such an impressive film. The resolution is obvious. There’s no tension because the action is toilet: the notion this alien could just come and go into and out of the research centre without anyone realising is plain daft. John Carpenter’s 1982 reimagining of J.W. Campbell’s story Who Goes There at least retains the central premise, that the alien can take on the outward look of other life forms. The alien we have here is distinctly ordinary. He could just as easily be a big Russian.

    Over seventy years on, there is still debate about whether Howard Hawks directed the film or the listed helmsman Christian Nyby. It has the dramatic pacing and rapid fire dialogue of a Hawks, but seems to lack any of his wit and atmosphere. Russell Harlan’s photography is a treat though, making California look like the North Pole is a minor miracle. Good set design. Nothing more.   

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    Following a disastrous attempt to catch FRWL at the local Vue, I watched this sixties spy thriller instead :

    MASQUERADE (1965)

    Continuing my vain attempt to watch the fifty movies listed in Michael Richardson’s Guns, Girls and Gadgets [luckily I’ve seen half of them anyway, it’s the remainder which are proving difficult] this little number cropped up on Talking Pictures TV, which meant I could record it and watch it from the comfort of a sofa rather than at my desk from a laptop.

    Masquerade is based on Victor Canning’s 1954 thriller Castle Minerva. Canning was once one of Britain’s bestselling novelists. Like this film, he’s virtually forgotten now, but his output is probably due for reassessment. I’d like to suggest Masquerade is also. Not because it’s an outstanding thriller [it isn’t] but because it displays a certain eloquent vim which the much similar fare of the sixties spy genre miss by a long chalk. It’s primary crime isn’t the messy plot, or the lack of action, but the central casting of American Cliff Robertson as the hero David Frazer.

    The film is quite an early entry into the sixties spy subgenre, being released in April 1965, half a year after Goldfinger and another half before Thunderball. Compared to those archetypal gadget laden spy thrillers, Masquerade feels old hat. It hasn’t aged well, but part of the reason for that is Cliff Robertson, who is as charmless as a funeral procession. The film’s set up, its quintessential Englishness, the gently effervescent dialogue, the double, triple and quadruple cross demanded a lighter touch than his. David Niven was originally attached to the project and he would have been perfect for the part. You can detect it in the script. The damn thing was written for him! Apparently William Goldman was brought in at Robertson’s request to Americanise his role, but I can’t detect anything other than an offhand comment to the beautiful, abused Sophie: “You’re pretty kinky, baby, that’s a big bruise.” Robertson isn’t helped by being surrounded by a succession of competent British thespians and enthusiastic Europeans who make his efforts appear paltry in comparison. Chief among them are Jack Hawkins and Charles Grey, who act like, look like and sound like twins. It is no surprise to learn that when Hawkins’ throat cancer prevented him from speaking, Grey dubbed all his lines [see movies like When Eight Bells Toll]. Their ability to outshine one another and everyone else is the movie’s highlight.

    Not only is the dialogue not squared to the main performer, but turning him into an American has led to a series of rewrites which don’t always come off. This native comparison, the fish-out-of-water scenario should, surely, be the source of humour, but it’s laboured and incompetent, either badly written or horrendously delivered. When Robertson is seducing Marisa Mell’s gypsy moll Sophie in the cockpit of a speedboat, I couldn’t help thinking of Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Kinky isn’t the half of it. He later makes love to the nominal heroine in a circus truck surrounded by birds of prey. She turns out to be married, which raised my eyebrows; kinky and adulterous. Her husband doesn’t seem to mind and merely shrugs with indifference.

    Sophie’s been aiding our hero all along, but she’s not too hot at it. She’s simply hot. Her gang of circus gypsies have been charged with rekidnapping an Arab prince and hope to extract a high ransom from the Anglo-Media Oil Corporation. Anglo-Media need the young prince to sign an extension to their drilling rights in his middle east kingdom; the prince’s uncle, a scheming Roger Delgado, favours the Soviet Bloc and Britain fears losing a valuable primary commodity if the rightful heir is ‘deposed’. Drexel [Hawkins] has already hit on a plan to keep the prince safe from any attempted assassination and recruits Frazer to babysit the young lad for a fortnight. Frazer thinks it’d be easier to take over the little Emirati.

    “These days we only invade a country when we’re invited or when the American’s allow us,” answers au fait spymaster John Le Mesurier, a line which sound remarkably prescient to modern ears. Le Mesurier’s role is virtually identical to his turns in Hot Enough for June and Where the Spies Are – he’d have suited very well with James Bond, if the producers could have squeezed in his brand of diffidence – at the end of the movie he exonerates one bad guy’s diabolical behaviour by remarking: “We trained him, you know.”

    In fact the whole oil, middle east, US, UK stitch up is a familiar historical context, which stretches further back than the 1960s and 50s. The suspicion Charles Grey’s Benson has of Frazer also has its roots in the old imperial school tie. And the Britishers behaviour towards the frankly over indulged and downright obnoxious prince has all the earmarks of colonial superiority written over it. So too the upright batman’s attitude towards his American co-host: “They weren’t thinking of you, Sir,” he says bluntly when Frazer expresses his pleasure at the surrounds of the beautiful exotic Spanish villa, “I understand we’re expecting royalty.”  

    Drexel has the measure of everyone. A weary secret agent, he despises modern espionage as “passionless and practical.” He’s more a man of action, but recognises he’s falling far behind the times: “I can’t spot the bad guys anymore. That’s why I miss the war. All the bad guys were visible then.” This sounds very much like a line lifted directly from Canning’s novel and as the movie progresses and cross and double cross becomes triple and recross, you begin to see his point. Equally confused, Frazer has a fine time separating good from bad and ends up in fix after fix once the prince gets captured.

    There’s great tension at a grand dilapidated coastal castle as Frazer goes mountaineering around its crumbling battlements and some rather fine visuals from photographer Otto Heller who mists the camera lens when Frazer drunkenly explores the fortress, so we see everything through his intoxicated eye, confused, disorientated and off-kilter. The masquerade begins to unravel for Frazer when he discovers Drexel is double dealing. Hawkins delivers a brilliant soliloquy musing on the spy trade: “I had scruples, but believe me they had to go… The jobs they put me to. What’s a patriot, David? I think I’m one, but I’ve killed patriots like me, just because they are on the other side. Sometimes I don’t think I know who’s right or wrong anymore. I had to lose my scruples and what did I get: a pat on the back.” Later on, with full understanding, Frazer bitterly points to Drexel’s unconscious, treacherous form, “There’s your patriotism.”

    Towards the end of the film, as events spiral out of control for the gypsies, their leader intones of the ‘heroes’: “I hope they all kill each other.” This seems highly appropriate, although in Frazer’s case this is only because poor Cliff Robertson is undermining the film almost every time he’s on screen. The adventure ends in a moment of redemption for all and high excitement for the audience with a gun battle and the rescue of the prince atop a half constructed dam.

    Filmed in 1964, the film isn’t anything like the later outrageous sex and spying escapades of Matt Helm or the more down market Euro-Spy flicks, it’s trying to be suave and sophisticated, but it’s star is neither and it shows. A little scene where the prince is reading the movie tie-in of Goldfinger and says “A little farfetched, don’t you think?” seems to hint at where director Basil Dearden and producer Michael Relph wanted to take the story, but it never quite gets out of third gear, spending most of the time trundling in second. It’s a good natured, but a grumbling second.

    I’d seen Masquerade once before, on it’s TV premier I think way back in the late seventies, and it gets extremely rare outings on any sort of channel these days, so I was pleased to be able to revisit the movie. I was slightly disappointed, as I remembered it being better than this, but when you’re ten, it probably seems a better than okay kind of film because you’d miss the jarring tones. The movie was marketed as a comedy thriller, but it isn’t funny enough and conversely not serious enough either so it rather falls into a metaphorical chasm, like the one the heroes flee across at the denouement. Still, a worthwhile effort and a more valiant and valid attempt at an espionage thriller than some.  

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    TRANSPORTER 3 (2008)

    Flashy and fast, Transporter 3 reverts back to the template of the original by virtue of performing all its stunts for real, putting some of the recent OO7 fare to shame. There is a final car jump which is both preposterous and impossible to perform without grandiose SFX, but they hide it very well.

    The film has had mixed to poor reviews from the public, chiefly because it doesn’t utilise Jason Statham’s martial arts expertise enough, preferring endless car chases. That doesn’t bother me. I was more interested in the rapid fire editing and scene shifting, the stuttering camera work and the wholly incompetent plot, aspects of filmmaking which normally annoy the hell out of me, but seem not to matter here. I mean, it’s tosh, we all know it, and Transporter 3 really is a better experience if you leave your brain at the door.

    There’s plenty to enjoy including Natalya Rudakova’s much maligned but provocatively slinky Valentina, the ‘package’ Statham’s Frank Martin has to escort to Odessa via Budapest. Rudakova’s been roundly heavily criticised, but the poor girl’s a novice and director Olivier Megaton doesn’t exactly help her, preferring moody glances out of car windows to any sort of character development. I rather like the way she softens towards the transporter as he gets her into and out of various scraps. Exactly why he’s escorting her isn’t made entirely clear – the biggest narrative error is the fact a transporter isn’t required – but it’s a boy-girl buddy movie thing and the two leads sparkle quite well with each other, although the strip tease in the meadow has to rank as one of the most uncomfortable erotic viewing experiences of recent years.

    Good mindless fun.

     

     

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent
    edited July 2022

    Red Heat (1988)

    This Arnold Schwartzenegger actioner is better than I remember it from the VHS days of old. I suspect writer/director Walter Hill (The Long Riders, , 48 Hours, Extreme Prejudice) can be thanked for this. In many ways this is a gritty thriller with some action and dry humor. Schwartzenegger plays Ivan Danko, a Moscow police officer figthing a brutal organized crime that barely existed officially in the Soviet Union. He follows a criminal to the US where he teams up with the sweary cop Art Ridzik (Jim Beluchi). Lawrence Fishburn and Gina Gershon got early roles in Red Heat. We get a silenced revolver (!), punches that sound like cannon shots and Arnie, but generally the movie is pretty down to earth. With small changes Danko could've been played by Rutger Hauer, Stellan Skarsgård or Peter Weller. I also like how the Russian characters speak Russian to each other. Not a single word of English is spoken in the first 15-20 minutes. I enjoyed Red Heat.

    Red Heat (1988) full movie English : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    C'mon @chrisno1 after your attempt to infiltrate Prince Charles Cinema to see OHMSS - about as sucessful as blondie's attempt to blag his way up to Piz Gloria - I can't be the only one who wants to know how you didn't make it to see FRWL when the cinema this time is just down the road from you...

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    A brilliant non-review, @chrisno1 - but the quote format is horrible, I have to read it in a fog of grey.

    Was it a large screen or one of those that seem to seat only 30? I'd have thought the Vue in Sutton was closer to you, but I'm put of by that one and Odeon Epsom because the screens are a bit pokey.

    Where did you see Masquerade, on DVD or online?

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    It's an Empire at Sutton. I think the screen seats about 60. Masquerade was on Talking Pictures a couple of weeks ago and I recorded it. You can view it on ok.ru, if you're okay accessing Russian websites.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    ALIEN (1979)

    You can read tons of stuff about this movie online. Ridley Scott’s successful science fiction suspense film reinvents the monster movie for the Star Wars generation. Wonderful set design, initially hugely expansive and then noticeably claustrophobic. Well edited. Splendid photography. Good music. Fantastic effects. The monster isn’t as enormous as it seemed in later sequels, which makes sense as it has to fit inside air conditioning ducts. A good ensemble cast. Ian Holm as a calmly deranged scientist is the pick.

    Having just watched The Thing from Another World, I detect distinct similarities, particularly in the enclosed setting and the scientist proving the root of all evil. The film also serves as a sort of ‘And Then There Were None... in space’. Durable, entertaining with a couple of masterly shocks and an intense ending. You wonder why the humans care so much about the cat when it isn’t remotely important to the plot. A nice nod to Hitchcock, that. It isn’t as chaotically violent as any of the sequels; there seems to be a genuine attempt to understand the alien, not just destroy it, and the tensions between the characters – Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and Holm’s Ashe the most aggressive – keep the thing watchable even if the gore and shock quotas are slim.

    Very good.  

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    Late night on the PC a Sumuru double-header:

    THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU (1967)

    A cult classic. One of those Harry Alan Towers movies which is so bad it’s almost good. If you want thorough detail, I can refer you to Michael Richardson’s Guns, Girls and Gadgets. If you want my take, read on.

    Sax Rohmer, who invented Fu Manchu, also created Sumuru, the female equivalent. He wrote a radio serial for the BBC which ran for eight episodes and which he later turned into a novel, variously titled Sumuru, The Sins of Sumuru or Nude in Mink, depending on where you bought it. While the literary Sumuru was a deadly Chinese villainess, the cinematic version was a Caucasian, played with much devilish abandon by our own Shirley Eaton.

    Two CIA agents are on vacation in Rome when the British Secret Service head Sir Anthony Baisbrook approaches them with details of a clandestine operation, one which the CIA owes him [for James Bond’s adventures no doubt]. Wilfred Hyde Whyte enjoys himself as the manipulative old man. Frankie Avalon and George Nader are also having a lark, but they don’t have Hyde Whyte’s theatrical training and are as bad an acting double act as you’ll see, on a par with Cannon and Ball in The Boys in Blue. They are not helped by a script which is determined to favour laughs over thrills, which seems odd as the humour quota is low and the action content passes quite acceptably, even turning nasty on occasion.

    Sumuru lives on an island off Hong Kong with her army of beautiful women [sound familiar?]. Hero Nick West manages to get himself kidnapped by her and put to use getting in contact with businessman Klaus Kinski, the last of a dozen billionaire industrialists Sumuru’s harem have gotten close enough to execute her deadly plan. I never figured out what her operation was about, but it’s dangerous and will threaten the world. Avalon’s Tommy Carter springs to his mate’s rescue.

    The opening scenes establish the army of women as a fey lesbian society, all lips and hips and tits and miniskirts, eyes watching each other, as Louise [Patti Chandler] strangles a prisoner to death between her thighs [sound familiar?]. Aided by Sumuru turncoat Helga [Maria Rohm] and several women who can’t bear to be without a man, West and Carter foil Sumuru’s crazy plan in a hail of bullets and a prison full of love and a bullwhip torture chamber.

    While the lead actor acquits himself with no dexterity, the women save the movie by being beautiful to look at, like constant fresh window dressing. Director Lindsay Shonteff understands their purpose and puts them front and centre at every opportunity. The movie’s cheapness is shown up at its frayed edges. Frankie Avalon is so far out of his depth that at one point, when he asks “I wonder if this is where I’m supposed to sing?” you wonder if he hasn’t adlibbed the line.

    A product of its time and no worse than the latter Christopher Lee Fu Manchu’s or any of the other Harry Alan Towers productions which hinted at quality but rarely provided it. The movie is fascinating in its awfulness. As I watched it, I could see the oodles of potential melting away. Poor Shirley Eaton must wonder how it all went so wrong after Goldfinger. Perhaps Sumuru’s most endearing moment is the vigorous attack on the private island at the film’s climax: I kept thinking: how come this is so much better than Octopussy’s circus girls attacking the Monsoon Palace? Completely unexplainable, except, as I said, it’s a cult classic.


    THE GIRL FROM RIO (1969)

    A follow up from Harry Alan Towers’ production stable, this time transplanting Sax Rohmer’s Chinese villainess from Hong Kong to Rio de Janeiro. She’s still played by Shirley Eaton, who cuts an above average figure in a well-below average film. In fact, female figures take strong precedence here. The movie is directed by Jess Franco, whose career dovetailed into pornography and you can see the early hints of his sadomasochistic fantasies as early as the bizarre pre-credit sequence where a semi-naked dark haired beauty appears to make love to a man until his heart expires. Ms Eaton watches over proceedings with a glint in her eye.

    Franco loves his women to the point of distraction. He has them wearing completely inappropriate space-age clothing, conducting conversations in showers, writhing in tortured agony, making lesbian love with equal anguish or hetero-love with studied disinterest, usually without any clothes on. Basically, if Jess Franco can squeeze in a nipple, a backside or a discreet nude, he will. Ms Eaton manages to escape the disrobing, although for some reason her hair changes colour from black to blonde with distracting regularity. This may be to do with a role she had in The Blood of Fu Manchu; the actress had no idea she featured in Blood of…, as Franco inserted outtakes and discarded scenes from this film into that movie on the quiet. Having not seen Blood of…, I have no idea how that turned out. The Girl from Rio, however, turned out horribly.

    Sumuru’s name is never mentioned here, even though Sax Rohmer gets a credit. For some reason she's called Sumitra. However, it clearly is her, chiefly because her never explained uber-plan from The Million Eyes of… is fully explained here: she’s kidnapping susceptible millionaires [not all men, some are rich women] and stealing their money. She’s extracting bank details etc from these poor unfortunates under a torture process which involves being seduced by nubile women and having your bones coddled by a ray gun. The latter looks suspiciously like a dental x-ray machine, so it must be shooting a form of ion radiation. I’m joking. I don’t think the production team have any idea what was really supposed to be happening. As if to confirm this, there’s a lilting, cheerful and completely inappropriate bossa nova incidental score. The location hunters however did find some interesting architecture to highlight Sumuru’s private city Femina. These look so crazily modernist, I wondered if they were filmed in Costa, Niemeyer and Cardozo’s swish new brutalist capital Brasilia. The credits don’t tell us. Rio doesn’t look anywhere near as interesting as it does in Moonraker or even Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die. Franco pads the film out with some extended shots of the Carnival, essentially to inject a semblance of tension into a floppy chase scene.

    Secret agent Jeff Sutton [Richard Wyler] has been sent to rescue teenage heiress Ulla [Marta Reves], but he’s thwarted not only by Sumuru, but also by George Sanders' ridiculous sugar-daddy Masius, a criminal who lives in a luxury penthouse apartment on a Copacabana high rise. Eventually there’s a bloody climax and Sutton escapes with not one, but three nubile temptresses. As the bossa nova beat fades over the credits, we see Sumuru escaping on a luxury cruiser liner. Shirley Eaton decided to escape the movie world too; this was her last performance. She does okay, but she’s hamstrung by having no decent or interested co-stars to work with and a director more interested in the visual images he can create, most but not all of them pandering to the erotic rather than the exotic. 

    Low brow entertainment at best.  

  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,699MI6 Agent
    edited November 2022

    The new mutants (2020)

    This movie is in many ways different from the other X-men movies. It starts with Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) waking up in some kind of psyciatric facility after some kind of event where her father died. Some other youth are locked up there too, including Rhane (Maisie Williams) and Illyana (Anya Taylor-Joy). Much of the movie is a psyclogical/supernatural thriller with horror elements. Their superpowers are less important than the psycology and horror, and I liked that. The tone in much of the movie is down to earth and gritty, the superhero movie it reminded me of was Logan. The young leads are good actors and the movie takes advantage of this.

    To me the movie falls flat in the third act where it turns into a fairly typical superhero with a CGI monster attacking them and whole scenes looking like they're made on the computer. That's where most most superhero movies lose me, and I had hoped The New Mutants would be different. Maybe I can recomend you stop watching when the big CGI monster appears, at least if you don't like that sort of thing?

  • TonyDPTonyDP Inside the MonolithPosts: 4,279MI6 Agent

    @chrisno1, with regard to your review of Alien (great summary of a great film BTW), try to check out Planet of the Vampires (aka Demon Planet) some time. It's an Italian sci-fi/horror movie from the mid 1960s that Alien borrows from quite a bit in its first half. It begins with a spaceship getting a distress signal from a seemingly lifeless planet, the landing is very similar, there's a derelict ship on the planet complete with giant fossilized alien. The second half of the movie focuses more on the horror aspect and the ending is one that Rod Serling himself might have written. The movie had a famously low budget so director Mario Bava had to get creative but it punches above its weight as it looks better than it has any right to. It's typically available thru most streaming services like Amazon Prime and Neflix and is worth a look for any fan of the genre.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent
    edited May 2022

    Thanks @TonyDP I'll add it to the never ending list of must-sees.

    Meanwhile...

    THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)

    James Whale’s shocker from 1933 about a scientist who has discovered how to make himself invisible. The unfortunate side effect is it also turns him into a homicidal maniac.

    Efficient and thoroughly enjoyable old-time sci-fi / horror from Universal, who were at the top of their game with this kind of fare in the early 30s. The effects are fantastic and compare well to the kind of stuff churned out hour after hour in your next Marvel Universe instalment. The script isn’t up to much, but it doesn’t really need to be. The opening scene in the Lion’s Head pub, was blatantly copied by John Landis for his An American Werewolf in London. Claude Rains is good vocalising the titular ‘Man’ we never see. Gloria Stuart is his lovely lady, who stands by him, even after he’s been on a monstrous killing spree. She’s easily pleased.

    Heinz Roemheld’s incidental music was reused for several pictures in the decade, most notably the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials. Good photography and editing and model effects. Great, classic entertainment all round.   

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    THE MISFITS (2021)

    I only watched this because of Pierce Brosnan taking the lead role. I’ve liked most of Brosnan’s non-Bond work but this is a very lacklustre affair with no originality whatsoever. A group known as “The Misfis” plan a heist to steal a fortune in gold. It’s all ho-hum stuff with tropes to several other movies that were all done a lot better. Director Ronny Harlin either had an off day, or is tired of helming actioners, as this is underwhelming stuff compared to his heyday of Die Hard 2 and Cliffhanger. At least Brosnan is making an effort whereas Tim Roth and co. are just reading the lines.

    Not worth the effort.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent
    edited May 2022

    MAD DOGS AND ENGLISHMEN (1971)

    At the height of his success, Joe Cocker abandoned Britain for the delights of mega stadiums, school gym halls and Holiday Inn hotels, setting off on a gruelling, disorganised, madcap tour with Leon Russell and a cobbled together band of misfits, junkies, hangers on and their children, mongrels and a few musicians.

    Coming from an era of great rockumentaries, which started as early as 1959’s Jazz on a Summer’s Day, proceeded through those Beatles flicks, Don’t Look Back, Woodstock, Gimmie Shelter, Ken Russell’s amazing stylised reimagination of the Who’s Tommy and ending with Martin Scorsese’s magnificent tribute to the Band The Last Waltz, Mad Dogs and Englishman reveals early seventies tours in all their raw agony and energy. Nothing makes any sense, no one talks any sense, least of all the tour manager, and you sense things are out of control in the earliest of scenes as fans accost Joe in the street to beg for and get back stage passes. What started off as a tight knit band balloons into a 30-strong ensemble plus everyone’s mother in law. By the end of it all, poor Joe’s almost cocooned by the bodies on stage. When the over-large bosomy estate owner who cooked everyone a barbeque, suddenly arrives on stage dancing and banging tambourines to Honkytonk Women, Joe merely rolls his eyes in stupefaction. It’s amazing they got any decent music and live footage out of the tour at all.

    What is there, is not as comprehensive as the brilliant double album which accompanied it. In fact the songs on the record are not always the same versions featured in the movie as they all come from the two Fillmore East concerts. If you like Joe Cocker’s West Riding version of hard blues, you’ll probably enjoy this, if not tough. Classics like Delta Lady, Space Captain and With a Little Help from My Friends sit next to less well known jams such as Give Peace a Chance and Sticks and Stones. One of our own, singer Rita Coolidge, is among the backing singers. Rehearsals seem to take place in random back street studios and even a local bar. Everyone’s smoking and drinking. It looks like a wild ride which by the last footage, at the loathsome barbeque, everyone’s too worn out to partake in anything more than the simplest of entertainments. Potently for Joe Cocker, about half way through, following one successful gig, the camera follows him as various dead beats try and cosy up to the groupies and roadies et al, and no one pays him the slightest attention. The star is almost an afterthought in all the revelry. 

    We won’t see such uncontrolled tours like this again and we won’t see such unrestricted access to filmmakers either. Excellent.

      

  • caractacus pottscaractacus potts Orbital communicator, level 10Posts: 3,906MI6 Agent

    have you ever seen National Lampoon's Lemmings?

    its a stage show the magazine staged in 1973 satirizing Woodstock, with early appearances by John Belushi, Chevy Chase, and Christopher Guest. and it was filmed

    at 41:30 Belushi begins his infamous impersonation of Joe Cocker, which would be continued as a character on Saturday Night Live. Theres even an SNL where Cocker is the musical guest and Belushi joins him onstage doing all these moves and cocker tries to keep up with him

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters

    THE BATMAN

    I took advantage of a public holiday yesterday to go and see the new Batfilm, entering with a certain amount of dread regarding it's 3 hour running length. I tend to get annoyed when these sort of genre films stray much beyond the 2 hour mark. Bond included.

    Overall I liked the film. I'm generally not interested in comic book films but I do have a bit of a soft spot for Batman which dates back to catching Batman Returns on TV when I was in high school. The new film excels in creating a dark and mysterious atmosphere, and a good solid detective feel that reminds me of the likes of David Fincher's Se7en. Performances are excellent all round. I particularly enjoyed Jeffrey Wright, Paul Dano did a great job as The Riddler and I completely forgot that it was Colin Farrell under the makeup playing the Penguin despite reading about it in advance. Pattinson made a decent Batman, and I loved his voice over narration. I was less keen on him in the Bruce Wayne moments though, although I can't quite put my finger on why yet.

    So a good solid film, although after first viewing I wouldn't rank it as highly as the first 2 Nolan movies...and I wish they'd made it a bit shorter.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    A TWIST OF SAND (1968)

    Geoffrey Jenkins was a South African journalist and thriller writer who worked with Ian Fleming at The Sunday Times. Fleming praised his writing – you can look it up on Wiki, or just look at the attached cover blurb – and when the Master died, Jenkins was asked by Glidrose to continue the Bond novels. That’s what his Wiki entry says. The result was Per Fine Ounce, and if you look that up, there’s extensive material dedicated to the story.


    I mention this because Jenkins’ first novel was A Twist of Sand. It sold heavily, being translated into 23 languages, which I think is more than Casino Royale initially was. I haven’t read it. On the Book Covers Thread someone mentions A Grue of Ice, another of the author’s output, and recommended it. Apparently Per Fine Ounce was badly written. Watching A Twist of Sand, I find that hard to believe.

    A Twist of Sand is a little known British action adventure set in Malta and along the Namibian Skeleton Coast during the mid-1950s [the conflict in Cyprus is mentioned, which dates it]. Geoff Peace is an ex-navy submarine commander who’s supporting himself with smuggling cargo on his aging boat. The movie opens with the Malta police attempting to arrest him at sea, but Geoff has dumped his expensive Cyprus-bound military cargo overboard. He’s lost six-grand, but that night, while commiserating with his loyal engineer Davey, a figure from their past steals aboard and offers them the chance to make half-a-million pounds. The catch? It’s in diamonds and is buried in a shipwreck on the Skeleton Coast. Harry Riker, Geoff’s Number 1 on the submarine HMS Trout, knows his former skipper can navigate the rocks, channels and reefs, because he did it to destroy a hidden German U-Boat during the war.

    This is beautifully set up with a few startling flashbacks and a sweaty, steely confrontation over a chess board and a bottle of brandy. Richard Johnson underplays his hand a little as the hero; the lack of a love interest keeps the film quite brutal. His character seems to need a softer edge. Jeremy Kemp plays Riker as a manipulative, single-minded vicious piece of work; his accent is bizarre though. Roy Dotrice is fine as Davey, a sympathetic ear for Geoff. Peter Vaughan turns up as a mute Kriegsmarine with a past and Honor Blackman arrives as the dolly bird who has the last vital piece of information regarding the location of the diamond haul.

    There’s tension between the twitchy five-some, a fair scrap of biting dialogue and a bit of action as they negotiate the reef. It has all the atmosphere, twists and disfunction of an Alistair MacLean. Up to this point, I was really impressed, although the sea-escapade was a tad repetitive. The movie becomes a little obvious once they discover the shipwreck, which itself is a splendid image, stuck half way out of a shifting sand dune. Director Don Chaffey, who helmed Jason and the Argonauts, doesn’t have Ray Harryhausen to perk the screen up, but he does an efficient job with a work-a-day script and a fair cast, all acting their chops off for a product they know isn’t quite up to standard.

    I think it’s aged well and isn’t anywhere near as poor as some recent reviews on IMDB [that temple to unimaginative, biased criticism] suggest. I agree it could have done with a polish, but overall, as a decent ninety minute diversion, I enjoyed it immensely. 

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters

    @chrisno1 I didn't know that A Twist of Sand had been made into a film. I have the book here and was considering making it my next read. Knowing that there is a film version gives me even more cause to read it now and then see if I can track the film down.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent
    edited May 2022

    I watched it here, if you're okay with Russian websites. I'd be interested in your thoughts @Golrush007

    A.Twist.of.Sand.68 (ok.ru)

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters

    THE PLAYER (1992)

    Robert Altman's early 90s classic starts with a mammoth tracking shot to rival Orson Welles' opening of Touch of Evil. From there it becomes quite a enjoyable mysterym, while also being a great example of a film about the film industry itself. I've always had a taste for the subgenre of the film about film. In this case, the tale revolves around a studio executive who becomes the target of threats by a writer whose script he spurned. Besides the mystery element, I particularly enjoyed how the film explores the tension between the 'hollywood ending' demanded by the studios and the downbeat ending yearned for by the writers – Are the writers selling out by submitting to studio demands in order to get their films made? This is also one of those films for which the phrase 'galaxy of stars' could have been coined. Many famous faces play themselves throughout the film, so there is also a fun game of spot the star to be had. I highly recommend this film. It's probably the Robert Altman that I have enjoyed the most so far.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,172MI6 Agent

    TOP HAT (1935)

    If not the best, arguably the most effervescent of the Astaire – Rogers musicals from the 1930s, Top Hat was their fourth pairing and follows the usual pattern of misinformation and misconduct among the nouveau riche set in impossibly decadent art deco surroundings. Here it’s meant to be London and Venice, but they both look gaudy and frankly horrible; the Americans ruined French art deco by their pretentious extravagance and it shows in the production designs for most of these RKO musicals.

    Put the look of the thing aside and we have Fred Astaire’s show biz whiz Jerry Travers romancing Ginger Rogers’ model Dale Freemont. Meanwhile she thinks Jerry is the impresario Horace Hardwick, who’s married to European socialite Madge, who’s invited the wealthy Italian fashion designer Beddini to Venice to promote his gowns on Dale’s comely figure. Cue silliness and a few Irving Berlin numbers. Astaire is only a pleasant singer, Rogers merely decent. He dances really well, although some of his routines are so fast, especially the solos, that even he appears to lose control of his movements a few times. Rogers occasionally looks at her feet, which spoils the fantasy a little.

    The pick of the bunch are the reprise of No Strings, where Astaire sand dances everyone to sleep, the beautiful comic shadow play that accompanies Isn’t It A Lovely Day to Be Caught in the Rain conducted on a bandstand where we first register the couple might be falling in love, and the gorgeous instrumental section of Cheek to Cheek [forget about the preamble where Fred sings] where the two American Smooth away the night, Ginger in a glorious ostrich feather dress. The title song and the climaxing number The Piccolino are both a drag.

    The second act is less joyous than the first, but the cast can’t be faulted for their comedic interplay, which is a step up from the same actors’ efforts in The Gay Divorcee, some of it very cheeky indeed: Erik Rhodes exclaiming: “For the men – the sword!” to a startled Edward Everett Horton, for instance. Helen Broderick as Madge has all the best put downs. Curiously, while the two stars can certainly dance, their acting skills are not taxed much and they aren’t nearly as capable as they are in other films. Astaire in particular acts as expansively as he would on the Broadway stage. Perhaps, given the elaborate, theatre style sets, he thought he still was.

    The movie is quite of its time, but no less enjoyable because of it and you can’t argue with the box office; it was RKO’s most profitable film of the decade.

     

     

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