Last film seen...

1376377379381382413

Comments

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    Thanks for that @Napoleon Plural

    MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL (2011)

    This is the one where Tom Cruise goes climbing around the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Spectacular stuff indeed.

    The script writers don’t try to be too clever here. This is a very straight forward chase film. An arms terrorist called Kurt Hendricks is attempting to obtain activation codes for the Russian nuclear fleet. He has pre-recorded his aims, delivering a speech to the U.N. where he expresses his belief that planet Earth and its inhabitants will be better off eking a life in a depopulated nuclear wasteland. Preposterous stuff and heavy going even for Ethan Hunt. We don’t see one mission here, we get to see four and none of them go according to plan. The team don’t use those fantastic masks once, which is a shame but just as well since every bad guy they come across rumbles them accept a for a masochistic sex mad Indian media tycoon. This Impossible Mission Force is impossibly useless and tremendously lucky. They even admit it themselves. I don’t think I’m spoiling anyone’s breakfast by telling you they succeed only by the skin of their teeth.

    Another series of great locations [Budapest, Moscow, Dubai, Mumbai, Seattle] get the run around and after a while the atmosphere becomes turgid, around about the time a sandstorm blows across the United Arab Emirates and fails to leave even a token of red dust on the creek. Great set pieces alone can’t disguise the leaden nature of the story which feels twenty minutes, or one mission, too long. Everyone is interconnected so closely you feel it can’t all be coincidence – and it isn’t. There’s a long coda which explains what we haven’t already figured out.

    Tom Cruise does his usual accomplishments perfectly well, grinning, running, being the daredevil and generally making sure the whole thing keeps us watching. Interestingly this wasn’t co-produced with Paula Wagner and I wonder if that’s the reason for the over emphasis on action at the expense of serious plotting. The thing tends to plod. The addition of comic book style cut-away humour doesn’t help. Instead it makes the experience too light hearted and that doesn’t sit well next to these stylised and gregarious set-pieces of violence and suspense, well done as they are. The whole thing is, well, impossible.

    Jeremy Renner joins the crew. Paula Patton has a revenge motive. Simon Pegg plays it like the joke it is. Tom Wilkinson is uncredited as the fourth boss of the I.M.F. Ving Rhames is missed; so too Michelle Monaghan; both have brief cameos, also uncredited. Lea Seydoux looks remarkably vacant as an assassin for hire whose easily bested. The villain is strangely obscure. Michael Nyqvist looks too old for this kind of affair and when he’s battling Tom Cruise along and around a mechanical high-rise car park, your belief simply has to be suspended, in more ways than one. As if that sandstorm wasn’t enough…

    An over-the-top extravaganza of a film. Eye candy for techno geeks, I guess. A soulless experience. Very successful at the box office      

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – ROGUE NATION (2015)

    The M:I series has always looked a little like James Bond with knobs on and the feeling is confirmed with this fifth instalment which takes as its template a nasty organisation called the Syndicate [a Quantum substitute] and Ethan Hunt has to go it alone to hunt its head honcho, ex-MI6 agent, Solomon Lane [signs of Skyfall]. Sean Harris doesn’t quite have the gravitas of Javier Bardem, but he does a competent enough job and convinces as a steely, slick, shadow figure, who manipulates rather than kills. He’s equally good at both mind. It’s noticeable that both this film and Spectre [released the same year, but at Christmas] end in night time London and with a companion strapped to a bomb. I wonder if the screenwriters are constantly idea swapping? After all, Skyfall nicked the idea of a NOC list, and No Time to Die’s nanobot thing is remarkably similar to M:I 2’s Chimera virus. Both series have pinched Hannibal Lecter’s sealed glass prison, so stealing isn’t only between franchises. The idea of the British secret service being corrupt is hardly new either, but Craig-Bond used that to death, so when Simon McBurney’s Atlee is found to have authorised a rogue organisation [the Syndicate] we’re not surprised. I was mildly amused McBurney bore a resemblance to that arch-Brexiteer and ‘no fan of experts’ Michael Gove; was that deliberately topical, I wondered?

    What really happens in this one, once we get over noticing the homages, is another globetrotter, from Belarus to London, then Havana, Vienna, Casablanca and finally back to London and Oxford. Tom Cruise kicks the action off with a ludicrous stunt hanging onto a plane [Octopussy, anyone?] and the pace hardly lets up. Writer / director Christopher McQuarrie has form for this type of convoluted thing having been responsible for The Usual Suspects. He’s never so subtle here, but manages to pull off a phenomenal effort which really does feel and look like the sort of James Bond film we wanted in 2015. Okay, it’s pinching scenes left and right [a trip to the Vienna State Opera being the most obvious] but the certain familiarity becomes rather endearing. It’s as if Cruise and Co are sticking a thumb up at OO7 and saying: “There you go, matey, match that.” Sadly, Spectre didn’t, chiefly because it too involves a rogue James Bond doing everything muscular himself and relying on techno geeks to get him out of trouble. This time, it was OO7 who looked the impersonator – was Craig actually Cruise wearing an I.M.F. mask? Ethan Hunt is aided by Rebecca Ferguson’s on-the-run and undercover MI6 agent Ilsa Faust, with whom he shares a familiar spikey relationship. Jeremey Renner and Ving Rhames return. So too Simon Pegg, who is given much screen time with Cruise as the two enact a sort of Butch and Sundance comedy act while the mayhem ensues all round them.

    The ad breaks made the film seem longer than it is, although occasionally one senses the hand being removed off the tiller and put on the throttle. There’s a big, watchable underwater stunt which apparently was done for real. I’m fairly certain only the easiest bits were done for real: if the power turbine had kicked in with the star in the water, I’m fairly certain he’d be dead by now. The fights are spectacular – by which I mean ridiculously over-the-top. More messing about in cars and on motorbikes keeps the pace rapid. Casablanca looks empty. So too London, unless you like pop-up restaurants. Belarus could be anywhere. The tension was best in Vienna with triple execution squads aiming to eliminate the Austrian Chancellor. The reveal scene in front of Tom Hollander’s British P.M. was the most exquisitely scripted, harking back to McQuarrie’s early days. He’s clever enough also to remember about inserting teasers into the rapid fire credits, which both J.J. Abrams and Brad Bird forgot. The incidental music is very good. A big cheery wave to composer Joe Kraemer.  

    By the end, I felt quite content. It ticks all the prerequisite boxes and comes out with a decent, low key ending, which almost mirror’s Spectre. You really do have to wonder if there was some screenplay-swapping going on. I doubt it, but the similarities are all too obvious. This movie, really, is where Quantum should have ended up after Skyfall, not as a component of a greater evil, but as Mr White’s evil all on his own. I mean how hard was it not to see that? I’m digressing, but that’s because compared to Spectre, M:I 5 or Rogue Nation or whatever you want to call it is a bloody marvel.

    Thoroughly enjoyed this.           

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT (2018)

    Still looking and feeling like a bits and pieces James Bond, the Mission: Impossible series continues on its merry way with the I.M.F. crew wreaking more untold havoc. This one’s a dour affair though, with hardly a moment of humour in it, so concerned is Christopher McQuarrie in tying up every loose end of the past three films. Several characters return, although Jeremy Renner is missing, replaced by a C.I.A. turncoat called August Walker [Henry Cavill]. He’s not a capable agent and Ethan Hunt rightly suspects him from the off. The film doesn’t do anything we don’t expect. Gun fights, fist fights and chases are de rigour. Every action sequence seems a bit too obvious and strung out way past the use by dates: three chases in Paris, one after another; a silly public fight at a charity bash; an elongated punch up in a gentleman’s washroom [clearly ripped off from Casino Royale]; another rooftop run around; another bomb defusing; another clever reveal; another rock face climb to salvation. This one doesn’t even have the expected break-in or break-out, so it’s low on spectacle until we get to the climax in Kashmir which then stretches our credulity to breaking point. Turning a fifteen minute countdown into thirty minutes of delirious action is elastic indeed.

    The MacGuffin is a cache of three plutonium cores. Solomon Lane’s Syndicate has reformed as the Apostles [Spectre, anyone?] and is embarking on a ruthless terror campaign, which he appears to be orchestrating from his prison cell [No Time to Die, anyone?]. Their arch leader John Lark wants to spring Lane from prison, although it isn’t clear why: he’s doing a damn fine job on his own. Rebecca Ferguson returns as an MI6 assassin. Alec Baldwin, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames make up the I.M.F. team. Vanessa Kirby cuts a dash in evening gowns as the arms dealer and go-between cryptically called the White Widow. Even Michelle Monaghan puts in an appearance. Simon Harris is less effective this time as Solomon Lane. Henry Cavill proves he’s not really any good as a bad guy or an action star. Growing facial hair doesn’t inform your character; it only makes him standout like a prize bull in a sheep pen. His role as Walker – telegraphed as it is – is the weakest link in a generally weak film. For me, on this, he’s out as Bond.    

    Despite all the tough stuff on show, the film doesn’t succeed anywhere nearly as well as numbers 1, 3 or 5. Its steadfast lack of any humour can take most of the blame. Fallout, with its overarching pedantic themes of nuclear terrorism, mass murders, betrayal and trust is simply too heavy going for a good time, much like the action scenes. McQuarrie really should have taken a look at the 1996 original – or even the T.V. series – to figure out how to create a suspenseful story without extensive and unbelievable violent incident. This one doesn’t even have the benefit of a decent trick ending, that’s come half way. Instead we get a bland ‘hunt the thimble’ sequence and all the tetchy, ferocious silliness a production team can conjure in forty minutes.

    Too long and taking itself way too seriously. Time for a rethink, Tom.

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    SPARROWS CAN’T SING (1963)

    I’ve never seen this before, and wow, what a treat I’ve missed. Sailor James Booth returns to the East End of London after two years at sea to find his home demolished and his wife (Barbara Windsor) , with a new baby, living with a bus driver (George Sewell) who is separated from his own wife. There’s not much plot to the film, just Booth trying to find his wife and the ructions that happen when they meet at the local pub. The cast is amazing, lots of early turns from actors who would go onto to find fame in tv and films - Roy Kinnear, Brian Murphy and Yootha Joyce (George and Mildred), Murray Melvin, Arthur Millard and Queenie Watts (Romany Jones), Bob Grant and Stephen Lewis (On The Buses), Victor Spinetti, Harry H Corbett (Steptoe), John Junkin and Rita Webb, amongst others. Stephen Lewis (Blakey in On The Buses) wrote the script. There is extensive use of real locations including The Kentucky Club which was owned by the Kray twins. As a look at life in 60’s London it is wonderful, the knees-up at the pub with a live band and a stripper is evocative of the era, when I first frequented pubs as a teenager in the early 70’s this was still par for the course, great memories.

    Excellent.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    Sparrows gets one star out of 5 in the Radio Times - no idea why. My mum was a fan of it - a scene with Barbara Windsor, a pram and a two bridge tickled her. James Booth was great in it too and lots of British stalwarts. Written, as you say, by Blakey.... It's fun stuff. Booth had a way of the young Connery about him, I think they were taking notes off each other almost though.

    Booth turned up in last night's Robbery, directed by Paul Yates who was handpicked by Steve McQueen to direct Bullitt on the basis of the film's exciting opening car chase around London. Robbery is based on the actual Great Train Robbery of a few years earlier and stars Stanley Baker as the guy carrying out the heist, Booth is the police officer assigned to the case and possibly the blueprint for John Thaw's Regan in The Sweeney, There's little to connect him to Sparrows Can't Sing assuming I've got the right actor.

    It's a very decent low-key thriller, almost documentary style. You don't quite root for the cops or the robbers, though. Some interesting settings for discussing the crime - one at a football match, the other a two-minute jog around a park, one hopes the actors did it in one take or they would have to have been very fit!

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    That’s why I take no notice of professional movie critics - in general they all follow each other like a herd of sheep - scared of being different - I much more enjoy amateur reviews on here, whether I agree or not - that’s part of the fun - but for me Sparrows Can’t Sing was a wonderful piece of history reflecting a period of time that I grew up in. But at the end of the day movies are personal and everyone’s own critique is the only one that really counts.

    I haven’t seen Robbery for many years, but it’s a great film directed by Peter Yates - slip of the tongue @Napoleon Plural you said Paul Yates - who cut his directional teeth on The Saint and Danger Man tv series before finding fame in Bullitt, and the best ever car chase on film.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    SILVER STREAK (1976)

    Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor pair up for the first time in this marvellous comedy thriller. When Wilder sees a murder on a train, events escalate as Patrick McGoohan’s fraudulent art dealer aims to eliminate all the witnesses. Clifton James is excellent as a thinly disguised JW Pepper and Richard Kiel stars a henchman with metal teeth a full year before TSWLM - Cubby must have loved this movie 😁

    This is a really good movie, you could mistake it for a Hitchcock inspired film, it’s funny, thrilling and suspenseful. Excellent.

    I have no idea where the icon below has come from and I can’t delete it so please ignore 😂


    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,417Chief of Staff

    I watched this today, pretty much entirely off your recommendation, Lady Rose 🍸

    You are spot on…although it was a surprise to see Sharon Horgan in this 👀 and I really enjoyed it 👍🏻

    YNWA 97
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,701MI6 Agent
    edited August 2022

    The Batman (2022)

    This is very different from Batman & Robin, and that's a good thing. But is it too dark? The closest it gets to other movies in style and tone is The Joker and Seven. A popular fan theory says that Seven is set in Gotham before Batman, and after watching The Batman this makes a lot of sense. Paul Dano plays the Riddler as a very sinister serial killer and Batman and Jeffrey Wright's Gordon. I'd like to see Wright showing his range more often. He seems to play a brooding character who mumbles a lot in many movies, including here. It fits this character and movie, but I'd like to see him doing something very different. Robert Pattinson like Wright fits the character he's playing and the movie well, but the role as Batman doesn't offer many chances to show his range as an actor. Many would like to see him as James Bond, but I can't back him based on this movie. His Bruce Wayne isn't a charming playboy here, instead he's more of a reclusive goth. The fighting is brutal and more down to earth than other Batman movies, but it's hard to say if it's Robert Pattinson or a stuntman behind the mask. In my opinion The Batman is an interesting and well made version of the character, an experiment that shows Batman in a different (lack of) light. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure I want to see any sequels.

  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,417Chief of Staff

    I watched this yesterday too 🤣

    I thought it was tremendous…very much style over substance but I didn’t think that was issue…be very interesting to see where they go with this now…

    YNWA 97
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,701MI6 Agent

    I enjoyed it, but I enjoyed Nolan's trillogy more.

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters

    I saw this on TV in the mid 2000s and had a blast with it. I see it's just popped up on The Criterion Channel for a limited time so I will definitely be giving it a rewatch,

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


    Glad you enjoyed it. 😊

    I was surprised to see Sharon Horgan too. She pops up in some unexpected places.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    THE TROUBLE WITH GIRLS (1969)

    This is an oddity in the Elvis Presley canon. Late in his movie career he took a few strange turns: a spaghetti western in Charro, a swinging sixties acid fuelled sex comedy in Live a Little Love a Little, a rodeo rider in Stay Away Joe, etc. The songs became conspicuous by their relative absence and while the results were patchy, at least Elvis appeared to be stretching his acting chops a little. The Trouble With Girls is based on a novel Chautauqua, by Day Keene and Dwight Vincent Balcock. The novel was a crime mystery surrounding a murder at a Chautauqua travelling show. I don’t know what these are; some sort of strange travelling carnival. It’s set in 1927. It’s a seedy little number about the crooked fair manager, his shop steward love interest, a card sharp, a philandering pharmacist and two cute kids who win a talent show. Part Pollyanna, part Charlie Chan at the Circus, part all-round-disaster, no part successful, this tired exercise was a difficult watch. Several times I wanted to turn the telly off and walk out. I impressed myself by sticking through to the end.

    There are songs, somewhere, but the whole project appears ill-conceived. Apparently it had been mooted as a movie for Elvis as early as 1960, but various scripting and production issues had halted it. You can see why. Devoid of humour or subtlety, this is a dud from the outset. Elvis’ character Walter Hale, going rather against type, is described as a salesman with a forked tongue. He smokes, drinks and ogles the women in a sleepy Iowa town, although he only has real eyes for one: the union boss Charlene. Cue romance. I’d almost say Elvis is half-way decent, but he’s let down by everyone else, accept for a masterful five minutes from Vincent Price as Mr Morality, a sideshow entertainer. When the movie kicked off, I thought director Peter Tewksbury was being clever and showing us the story from a child’s eye point of view. But he dispenses with this after half an hour or so. Whatever charm The Trouble With Girls did possess, it lost it immediately after the switch.

    With about fifteen minutes to go and the film stalling in the projection room, there’s a sudden shift in camera work and style as Elvis sings Clean Up Your Own Back Yard, a decent slightly chilling blues which inhabits the same groove he’d occupied in the run up to and during the NBC TV Special, stuff like Big Boss Man and Guitar Man. The filming of it is totally sixties, all zooms, close ups, weird angles, disorientating blurry lights. It puts the rest of the camerawork for the film, hell, the rest of the film, period, to shame. Very odd.

    At the end, the train to Des Moines pulls out of the station, but to be brutally honest, this one’s a train wreck in anybody’s book.      

  • HardyboyHardyboy Posts: 5,882Chief of Staff

    I spent a few days in the UK, and a couple of days ago, on my flight back home, I took in a pair of films. First up was the critically roasted MORBIUS. It wasn't as bad as I'd heard--at least it didn't make me want to jump out of the plane--but it's not a particularly good movie. There is nothing in it I hadn't seen before (two characters raised as brothers, both with powers, one becomes good and the other beco. . .zzzzzz), and there was no sense of fun or adventure to at least make the familiar trip enjoyable. Next up, though, was a great surprise: BOILING POINT, with the always-great Stephen Graham as a chef on the edge. The film is in the "one continuous shot" format (like BIRDMAN) and follows everyone working at Graham's high-end restaurant. Surprisingly tense and probing. And then I landed--one day before my luggage.

    Vox clamantis in deserto
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,701MI6 Agent

    Very efficient movie reviewing, Gymkata!

  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,417Chief of Staff

    This was one of my options on my flight too…glad I gave it a wide berth now 👍🏻

    YNWA 97
  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,417Chief of Staff

    @Gymkata , thanks for The Northman review…I’ll check this out on my flight back - hopefully it will still be an option to view 🍸

    YNWA 97
  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,417Chief of Staff

    It was kinda what I expected without me actually having THAT much of an idea what it was 🤪🤣

    YNWA 97
  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,030MI6 Agent

    AIRPORT (1970)

    A big scale movie of its day, Airport relates a day in the life of airport manager Burt Lancaster. He contends with a serial stowaway, a snow storm, a problematic wife and a suicide bomber on a plane coming into the airport. Dean Martin is the pilot and Van Heflin is the depressed bomber who wants to leave his wife the insurance money when he blows up the plane. It’s a soap opera in the sky as back stories of the crew and passengers are explored. It’s all very slickly handled by director George Season and a great cast including George Kennedy, Jacqueline Bisset, Helen Hayes, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson and Lloyd Nolan. Three sequels of diminishing standard followed.

    Great entertainment.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Sir MilesSir Miles The Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 26,417Chief of Staff

    It was in the ‘new releases’ for me too…on Air Canada…not flying back for 20 days yet, but I guess that shouldn’t be an issue…cheers 🍸

    YNWA 97
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    I was going too see Bullet Train but I've heard it's rubbish, same for the Ryan Gosling film of a few weeks back. Not a great time for the movies.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    GIRL HAPPY (1965)

    Made during the period when the King’s career appeared to be on the edge of terminal decline, Girl Happy is an Elvis Presley movie by numbers. Unfortunately, they forgot to add the numbers up. This is a poor example of filmmaking on anyone’s watch. Boris Sagal was mostly a T.V. director, including things like The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. If he has a touch, it is heavy handed. The drama is tepid, the humour excruciatingly lame and the songs insipid and ineptly staged.

    Elvis plays Rusty Wells, a singer who volunteers to babysit his boss’ twenty-one year old college daughter in Fort Lauderdale, just so he can fulfil a contract he has at a dance joint in the town. Of course, things don’t go according to plan and the two week sunny sojourn becomes a mini-nightmare for everyone’s romantic inclinations. This was advertised as a beach party movie, the kind of thing which made the Beach Boys and Sam & Dave popular, but it's nothing of the sort and the cast looks way too old for romping around like horny teenagers. Among the stupidity, amazingly, Elvis does get to sing, although exactly what possessed people to write numbers as bad as this, I’ll never understand. I have the soundtrack somewhere. Puppet on a String is almost bearable. The rest are not. I think the album cover is the most stark of any of his images; a head and shoulders shot, brooding against a one tone, rust-red background. Grim indeed, like the movie.

    Elvis looks disinterested on the M-G-M backlot, which substitutes for Florida. There is a girl, a fight, a nightclub stage, a montage of holiday hijinks, some drunkenness, misunderstandings, a strip show [yep, you read that right, but I can’t explain it here without going into excessive detail, and I don’t want to] an irate parent, a happy ending. Shelley Fabares is in it, her first of three roles playing opposite Elvis. Poor girl.

    Nothing to recommend here. Nothing at all.  

  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,238MI6 Agent

    The strip show does, surely?

    The way you set it up makes it sound like Tarantino's Pulp Fiction - having to babysit the boss' daughter - interesting to see where the King's career might have gone, but that's long been the interest hasn't it. Good old Colonel Tom. Have you see the recent biopic, @chrisno1 ?

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    Thanks for the Elvis reviews, @chrisno1. I'm a huge Elvis fan but strictly of the music and you're reminding me why I don't watch his movies (other than a very few).

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    Thanks @Barbel . Got a few more to post in the next few days. These movies are hard going. I didn't get to see the Elvis biopic, just too busy at the time, which is a pity. It looked rockin'. Maybe it'll pop up again somewhere.

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    I enjoyed it, and commented above. Don't be looking for accuracy though! As has been said elsewhere, it's not a documentary.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    And just for you @Barbel ...

    GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! (1962)

    Released in late 1962, the Elvis Presley vehicle Girls! Girls! Girls! topped the U.S. box office on its release. The soundtrack album – his fifth – was a million seller and spawned a favoured hit in Return to Sender. I once sung this in a karaoke bar in Ibiza after drinking one too many tequila slammers and hilariously brought the house down by drunkenly falling A over T attempting an Elvis hip swivel; that whole ‘lad’s away so let’s play’ holiday is a story about as tedious and immature as this film.

    Set in Hawaii – but you’d never know it because they never tell you, only the mention of Paradise Cove pricked my geographical knowledge – Elvis plays Ross Carpenter, a tuna fisherman who gets on the wrong side of his boss, his ex-girlfriend and his new love in a hectic couple of weeks full of romance, fights, music and some annoying kids. The film could easily be described as messing about in boats with songs. The plot is a rather harmless case of deception which is easily resolved and in real life would never have occurred. Elvis films of course don’t inhabit real life.

    Stella Stevens is the King’s spurned love, a nightclub singer who not only loses her man but appears to also lose her job after Elvis parades his stuff during a trial run as her support act. He did a better job than me at bringing down the house. At least he stayed on his feet. Elvis dances the twist mostly, which is very odd, and holds his arms like a marionette without strings, which is even odder. He only lets rip on the title track, which is a Lieber and Stoller cover of an old Coasters hit. The rest of the musical numbers are dreadful, a really poor selection and not aided by monumentally crass staging. Singing Earth Boy with two cheesy infuriatingly twee Chinese kids was a low point, but all the jolly fisherman songs seem thrown in just to increase the run time. They don’t aid the plot – none of the songs aid the plot except A Boy Like Me, A Girl Like You – and to a note they are annoying in the extreme. The one where Elvis sings while his beau’s apartment collapses around them was stupefyingly bizarre. ‘Open-mouthed’ doesn’t do my reaction justice.  

    Occasionally, just occasionally, you can see moments of the youthful pre-Army Elvis creeping onto the screen. The scene where he first kisses Laurel Dodge [played by enthusiastic newcomer Laurel Goodwin] is tinged with a little of that old arrogant swagger; so too the moment of their inevitable break up. Otherwise he’s saddled with fishing boats, kids and a boss as annoying as the children. In fact he has two bosses, one at the boatyard and another at the nightclub. Both exploit him and Ross Carpenter doesn’t seem capable of standing up for himself without hurting those he cares for. This is the angle which in the hands of a decent scriptwriter, an interested director and a producer who cared might have developed legs. Here everyone’s legs get seasick and the whole sorry mess climaxes in a sort of raucous beach party of excruciating vulgarity.  

    The film lacks any sense of the dramatic. Director Norman Taurog, a veteran who ought to know better, frames the opening moments with views of beautiful swimsuit-clad women relaxing on yachts or in the sea as if he’s making The Ziegfeld Water Follies. Elvis looks dumbfounded. Loyal Griggs photographs the thing in gaudy light. The film doesn’t get much better through its entire runtime. I had vague memories that this was one of his better movies, but it plainly isn’t. The rot was already setting in.

    Girls! Girls! Girls! was nominated for a Golden Globe as the best musical / comedy of 1962. Quite unbelievable.   

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    No, you're right @chrisno1 - this actually IS one of his better movies (there was much worse to follow). Not one of his very few good films, of course ("King Creole" is my pick as his best).

    He was never an actor. Even at his best he was never more than (metaphorically shrugs) passable. If surrounded by good actors such as Walter Matthau, Carolyn Jones and Dean Jagger (that's "King Creole", of course) then the focus is more on his role as singer which is obviously where his real strength lay.

    As the budgets went down (Colonel Parker, of course - smaller budgets equalled higher profits) so did the quality of the supporting cast and sadly the quality of the songs, too.

  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    @Barbel for a moment I thought you were suggesting G! G! G! was a good movie. Yes, I know there is worse - I've seen Tickle Me, remember? - and who can forget the almost unbearable Double Trouble?

    So, how's about this for a tonic?


    LIVE A LITTLE, LOVE A LITTLE (1968)

    It’s hard to believe the same director who helmed the last Elvis Presley movie I reviewed [Girls! Girls! Girls!] is the same man who orchestrated this one. Norman Taurog was a great director in the early days of sound movies, winning an Oscar and gaining a reputation for directing kids, comedies and musicals. His portfolio includes Boy’s Town, Skippy, Mad About Music and Girl Crazy. In the fifties he was Lewis and Martin’s go-to guy and in the sixties he was Elvis’. Live A Little, Love A Little was Taurog’s final credit and it isn’t at all bad. Well, it’s not anything like George and Ira Gershwin’s Girl Crazy, but it has a zany late sixties liberated social outlook and a clutch of decent performances. It’s strange Elvis never really played a mature, contemporary looking role until so late in his career. The liberated morality of this movie is something most of Presley’s films simply don’t aspire to – odd considering he partly ushered in the era of sexual liberation. The film is one of Elvis’ best efforts from the latter stage of his screen career and although it is an uneven piece, it entertains, is amusing and doesn’t bore you with dreary musical interludes.

    Elvis plays photo-journalist Greg Nolan, whose life is turned upside down by a spoilt, endearing, kooky rich girl, Bernice, who after an initial introduction decides the best way to a man’s heart is to feed him LSD and interfere in every aspect of his life. Michele Carey is the stubborn, cheeky little chick and she sparks well with Elvis. The King also has a canine co-star to contend with and some of the best early humour involves Albert the mischievous Great Dane. There’s much to enjoy here, including trying to guess how much of wrietr Dan Greenburg’s original novel Kiss My Firm But Pliant Lips has been excised by Colonel Tom Parker to make it palatable for his perceived family audience. The Colonel really was a dunce; a man out of his time and depth; still that’s another story.

    Bernice [Carey] seems to take lovers at will – it is only implied by Elvis that she is sleeping with all the men in her life, it is not stated so by her or the men – and a difficult relationship history is hinted at which causes her to become overprotective and act in an eccentric fashion. She also appears to be a model for hire [e.g. a prostitute], but again it is only implied – she turns up at a Playboy style party and quips: “A pretty girl can get an invite anywhere.” Cue oodles of complications and plenty of amusing incident. I don’t think I ever belly-laughed, but it was a charming ninety minutes which at least felt like I was watching a romantic comedy, not the usual Elvis singalong.

    There are only four numbers and they are not at all bad. A Little Less Conversation became famous after being used in Soderbergh’s Ocean’s 11 and was remixed by JXL into a UK number one hit in 2002. Here, in the original version, it plays nicely as a sensual lure to a pretty girl at a party, but doesn’t have any of the powerful drum n bass of the remix. Instead it’s a slightly funky number. Writer Billy Strange also wrote the film’s score so there’s some cohesion around the songs for a change. He mostly uses a lounge swing jazz style. Almost in Love is described by Bernice as “cocktail music” and it really does sound like the sort of track Sinatra might have recorded with Antonio Carlos Jobin, a smooth slow Bossa Nova. Wonderful World could easily slot into The Andy Williams Show. The Edge of Reality, which encompasses a dream sequence of some skill, reminded me of Jefferson Airplane, with its angry chords and diffused vocals. Blended expertly into the narrative, these songs conjure up the time and feel of the late sixties, something that most of the King’s movie material at the time simply didn’t, stuck as it was in a 1960 rock n rolling rut.

    There is good thespian support too from Rudy Valee and Don Porter as competing ad executives, one conservative, the other liberal. There’s an amusing moment where Valee’s Mr Penrose is seen escorting one of Lansdown’s nude models on a date. Everyone sees it, no one breathes a word and the next morning Penrose’s attitudes to advertising have decidedly shifted to the liberated pantheons. Elvis himself juggles two jobs along with the ever more amusingly devious Bernice before finally realising he might just be ‘almost in love.’

    Taurog keeps the film sprightly – no, he really does, lots of interesting split screen techniques, zippy camera angles, slow cranking, Blow Up style fashion shoots, etc – and if it occasionally flounders that’s probably the fault of the screenplay. Elvis enjoys himself for a change. I was reminded of the gleeful fun he exhibited in G.I. Blues while romancing Juliet Prowse and nursing crying babies. Here he has to nursemaid Michele Carey, who ultimately turns out to be a much more accommodating bed mate. While Elvis was never a great actor, this material suits him, as it might have suited Cary Grant, or perhaps someone hip like Peter O’Toole. We got Elvis and it's a nice little film which deserves a bigger reputation.

    The critics were unkind and Live A Little, Love A Little flopped so badly in the U.S. the film was never given a worldwide release.

    Shame.      

Sign In or Register to comment.