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  • chrisno1chrisno1 LondonPosts: 3,177MI6 Agent

    THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1960)

    The first of eight Roger Corman directed Richard Matheson scripted Edgar Allen Poe adaptations made for American International Pictures in the sixties, The Fall of the House of Usher is an undeniably dark and bleak experience.

    The film focusses on two themes, most notably its main protagonist’s insanity. Vincent Price is splendid as the mad and dangerous Roderick Usher, a man who believes his whole family is doomed, a plague of souls on the barren land which surrounds his dilapidated mansion. He’s ably supported by Myrna Fahey as his sister, Madeleine, who may have a chance of happiness, but whose own sickness creates confusion for both Roderick and his unwanted guest, the suitor Philip Winthrop [Mark Damon]. The film tactfully ignores the catalepsy theme until it is almost too late and this brings the tragedy to a melodramatically satisfying apex. The film is tremendously creepy at its beginning, with the butler [Harry Ellerbe] being our early point of empathy. Corman and Matheson cleverly keep us guessing by switching sympathies and compassionate representations of each character and playing them against an opposite.

    Fine Les Baxter music and lurid photography from Floyd Crosby add class. The sets are a bit cardboard cut-out but do the job mainly by being shot mostly in the dark. The climax is gripping and Corman’s closeup visuals of crazed faces and eyes and blooded hands work wonders considering the paltry budget involved.

    Excellent. 

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985)

    I watched this on the Cinemax cable channel and it’s the best print I’ve ever seen of this movie, absolutely crystal clear, well done Cinemax and Cignal TV for getting such a brilliant version.

    This is the one where Rambo finds Vietnam POW’s still being held captive. As a pulp action movie this stands right at the top of the tree, there is action galore, over the top characters and it has a relentless pace.

    I love this sort of movie, sit back in the recliner, bottle of ice cold beer and a slice of pizza, a perfect hour and a half.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • ThunderpussyThunderpussy Behind you !Posts: 63,792MI6 Agent

    Moonfall ...... Crap!

    "I've been informed that there ARE a couple of QAnon supporters who are fairly regular posters in AJB."
  • ACACIA_AVENUEACACIA_AVENUE UKPosts: 1,774MI6 Agent
    One of us smells like a tart's handkerchief.
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    Bullet To Beijing (1995)

    Michael Caine returns as Harry Palmer after decades away from the part. Nowhere near as good as the 60s films but I enjoyed it more than the last time I saw it.

    Co-starring Jason Connery (there's a running joke about who his father is) and Burt Kwouk (more than one of ours).

    A car chase in St Petersburg early on uses some of the same locations as GE.

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

    Elvis.

    Really loved it. Austin Butler is amazing. Not sure about Tom hanks as I felt is was a bit of a caricature but I don't know anything really about Colonel Parker so it may have been spot on.

    Can't believe he was only 42 when he died. What a waste of a phenomenal talent.

  • SpectreOfDefeatSpectreOfDefeat Posts: 404MI6 Agent

    CAPE FEAR (1991)

    A remake of the 1962 original. Robert De Niro gives one of his darkest turns here as a psychopath determined to wreak vengeance on the lawyer he believes did not do enough to prevent his incarceration, in this middle-tier Scorsese picture. Nick Nolte is suitably desperate and despairing as the lawyer caught in the criminal’s plans, while Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis are loyal and headstrong respectively, as Nolte’s wife and daughter. Bond alumni Joe Don Baker appears as a smug yet ultimately incompetent sidekick, and there’s a small role for 1990s action stalwart (and US Senator!) Fred Dalton Thompson, but the film belongs to Robert De Niro’s Max Cady, an utterly vicious and chilling antagonist whose sadistic demeanour and repulsive backstory terrifies both Nolte and the audience. This is an action film which sets out to scare rather than thrill the viewer, which it achieves fairly effectively. Recommended. 

    "The spectre of defeat..."

  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    As is often the case with remakes, the stars of the original make small appearances. Here, they play characters on the other side of where they were in the original- Robert Mitchum (for my money better than de Niro in the original) is a policeman while Gregory Peck is a lawyer defending Cady (de Niro).

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,646MI6 Agent
    edited August 2022

    Funnily enough I was talking to another member at the other place and when I mentioned the 1960s Harry Palmer was my favourite film trilogy they asked me if I'd seen the two 1990s Harry Palmer films and what I thought of them.

    I've seen both these films after taping them off the TV years ago. I remember them being just OK. They weren't a patch on the 1960s films of course and it seemed like Michael Caine was playing a different character as Harry Palmer in them. That said, I'd certainly like to see Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in St. Petersburg again as I only saw them both once each well over a decade ago. I'm not sure if they're commercially available or not but if they are I'll have to track them down.

    "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

    There you go, SM-

    (1) Bullet to Beijing 1995 Michael Caine Full Movie HD - YouTube

    Be aware that this is the shortened version (Sue Lloyd only gets a voiceover during a phonecall)

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters
    edited August 2022

    I've got both Bullet to Beijing and Midnight in St Petersburg on DVD, but I've yet to watch the former.

    I saw Midnight in St Petersburg about 10 years ago - vaguely remember getting some enjoyment from it, but it was definitely average at best.

    As for Bullet to Beijing, I do mean to find the time to watch it, but my motivation to do so is not particularly high, especially since I discovered that my DVD is also the version sans Sue Lloyd. 😕

  • Silhouette ManSilhouette Man The last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 8,646MI6 Agent
    edited August 2022

    Thanks, Barbel. Will have to give it another watch. I think I saw Midnight in St. Petersburg back in 2005 and Bullet to Beijing in 2010 so it's been a long while since I saw either film. I remember Sue Lloyd had a brief cameo as Jean Courtney in the first film. Pity that it's cut in some prints.

    "The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette." - Ian Fleming, Moonraker (1955).
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    Luc Besson's Anna.

    I just knew this film would be my cup of tea when I saw it was coming up on Film4 but that fact I'd never heard of it should have rung alarm bells. It's some kind of Nikita/Lucy hybrid, I guess some of his films are based on names aren't they, Leon is another... what snags it is it's a series of episodic five years earlier/two years earlier scenes about a woman drawn into being a spy for mother Russia while doubling as a top fashion model, it's too much hokum really given her violent line of work and there's a glaring lack of taste somehow early on in the film. Maybe Scarlett Johnannson was lined up to play the lead role but bailed, the star here is okay but a bit of a blank.

    The film is very hard to get into or even want to, that said it gets better as it goes on and Helen Mirren is good as a Russian Rosa Klebb type operative, Cillian Murphy turns up as a CIA man taking an interest in her. Eric Serra does the score, it's a bit better in the action than GoldenEye but this is about 20 years later. Ultimately you don't care too much about anyone in this and it's not even clear what the denouement is in the fullest sense. But there are nice shots of Moscow and Paris. One good thing about how the lead character has no attachments, she is regarded by the KGB as less use as an operative as they have no leverage on her - can't threaten to bump off family members etc. This is in contrast to Craig's Bond, whose appeal as a signing was precisely that he was an orphan with no attachments. It does tap into the idea beloved by the British State it seems to me that if they have dirt on you, you are an asset, and if you know the dirty secrets you're an asset too, so long as it's clear you won't spill the beans.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

    Roger Moore 1927-2017
  • Napoleon PluralNapoleon Plural LondonPosts: 10,239MI6 Agent

    What's more, it gave me unpleasant dreams.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

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

    Really? Hmm. I thought Anna was substandard Luc Besson. I wrote a review of it somewhere on here which is similar in reaction to yours. Can't be bothered to track it down right now. Helen Mirren was okay in it. The idea if the spy being a fashion model had legs [!!!] But overall it's a weak entry in the espionage genre.

    Have any of these female spy films been more than of passing interest? Red Sparrow, Atomic Blonde, Salt, this one, the one with the teenaged girl avenging her dad etc, even the Stig Larsen stuff, all seem to want to be ultra violent Bond imitators instead of attempting something more thoughtful, intuitive and charismatic. Which is what I'd expect from a woman. Maybe I demand too much.

  • Golrush007Golrush007 South AfricaPosts: 3,418Quartermasters

    I agree with your comment Gymkata: "The main thing to watch it for is George C. Scott." His performance is terrific, and another major attraction for me is Jerry Goldsmith's rousing Patton march and several other really enjoyable parts of the score. I have this soundtrack on LP and find myself listening to it quite often.

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    THE INVISIBLE MAN’S REVENGE (1944)

    After a conversation with @Barbel I was inspired to watch a Universal Monster movie, but which one, a classic or a lesser known one, so I chose The Invisible Man’s Revenge, one that I hadn’t seen for quite some time. It stars the marvellous John Carradine as a scientist who tests his serum on a psychiatric escapee who then goes on to commit several crimes.

    The invisibility effects are pretty decent and the revenge storyline is engaging. I’m very much a fan of the Universal Monster franchise and the Invisible series always strike a chord with me.

    Good.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • BarbelBarbel ScotlandPosts: 36,053Chief of Staff

    Glad you enjoyed it, CHB!


    Rope of Sand (1949) Dir: William Dieterle

    Like several other films of this era, this a movie trying hard to be “Casablanca”- three of the same stars (Peter Lorre, Claude Raines, Paul Henreid), similar locations (a lot of it takes place in a bar very like Rick's), etc. Burt Lancaster is the protagonist, and likeable as he always is (except when playing a villain, and even then you can see him struggling not to be likeable!) he’s not a patch on Bogart. The female lead is a charisma-free zone, which is probably why I can’t remember her name.

    The plot is to do with diamonds blah blah, double crosses blah blah, though it tries to rely on atmosphere so that the actual plot doesn’t matter much (like, er, “Casablanca”) but doesn’t succeed. 

    The director, William Dieterle, does his best with second-rate material. I hadn't heard of him so I checked him out and he had a distinguished career. The 1939 version of "Hunchback of Notre Dame" with Charles Laughton, the 1936 "The Maltese Falcon" (not the famous one- this is sometimes known as "Satan Met A Lady" and isn't a patch on the other one), and many others.

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    MEMORY (2022)

    Liam Neeson stars as a paid assassin who declines a hit on a teenaged girl and becomes a mark himself, he also has early signs of alzheimer’s. Capably directed by our own Martin Campbell this is a standard action flick that keeps the interest going. There’s an interesting cast including a couple of Brit’s from TV series and Guy Pearce, who was very good in the excellent LA Confidential, turns up as a detective.

    I don’t know if Leeson was ever considered to play Bond in his early days (he only really became an action star with Taken in 2008) but I think he could have made a decent stab at it instead of Brosnan.

    OK/Good.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Number24Number24 NorwayPosts: 21,704MI6 Agent
    edited November 2022

    Liam Neeson was offered the role for GE, but his girlfriend Natasha Richardson put a lot of pressure on him to decline.

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

    Thanks for the review. I have this earmarked for the weekend.

    The last couple of Neeson films I've watched I've turned off but saw Martin Campbell and Guy Pearce were involved so thought I'd give it a go.

  • CoolHandBondCoolHandBond Mactan IslandPosts: 6,033MI6 Agent

    You’ve surely seen Leeson in Bob Boy 😁😁😁

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

    I think you’ll enjoy it @Lady Rose a glass of Pinot Grigio will help 🥂

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

    Yes, the sword fight was terrific, a great movie.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Lady RoseLady Rose London,UKPosts: 2,667MI6 Agent

    I didn't watch Memory last night, I went for Downton Abbey: A New Era instead.

    Very watchable if you like Downton Abbey but they unashamedly stole the script of Singing In The Rain. I enjoyed it non the less.

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

    Empire of the Sun

    Steven Spielberg's oft overlooked 1980s adaptation of JG Ballard's semi-autobiographical novel about being a kid left behind in Shanghai when World War II kicks off, separated from his parents and forced to fend for himself.

    I'd not seen this before, it passed me by a bit and never charmed me in but I was mighty impressed by catching this on the still low definition BBC4 last week, on my slightly larger widescreen telly. Many years ago my Mum said she and Dad had watched it and found the ending quite affecting, I guess as she was a wartime evacuee - sent to live with on a farm somewhere - I just realised that might have been a factor for her.

    I can see why this film might not reel you in if you caught it on telly by accident. The opening spiel is important because it tells how the English occupied Shanghai for decades and indeed built the city in their image so many parts of it looked like it could have been lifted wholesale from Liverpool or Surrey. This captured my imagination, because at once you see shots of Liverpool's famous waterfront and think, well, okay but why start with a flashback to Liverpool then? Then you gradually realise that indeed this IS Shanghai, ditto the shots of the apparent Liverpool Cathedral, which you assume it is until you see the Japanese faces there. This is a great bit of storytelling slight of hand by Spielberg.

    The staging of the fall of the city and the turmoil it unleashes is very well done, the director really captures the chaos and it looks magnificent too, you feel you're looking at a terrific epic, and there's a nod to 1939's Gone with the Wind and its similar events of turmoil with a huge poster advert of the film of that year on display.

    The film hold interest and just builds and builds. The kid is played by Christian Bale, and he's very good, not really a wrong note, though this is not a 'charming' performance and he is meant to be a bit of a brat, also belonging to a very well to do English family with a big house, chauffeur-driven car and servants. When, following riots, he returns to the eerily empty family home as instructed, it's not just the later presence of Joe Pantoliano that made me think of Joel in his empty house in Risky Business eating his lonely meal, someone with access to a big house and a 10-year-old kid could restage Cruise's famous scene in white shirt and Y-fronts dancing around the house to That Old Time Rock n Roll.

    Spielberg overplays his hand at times. One flourish repeated is to see the kid seemingly on his own or in limited company only for the camera to pan up and we see he is not, over the hill there is a large gathering, or a horde representing some threat - all very well but the kid would surely have heard the hubbub so it wouldn't be that much of a surprise.

    Stuff does go wrong. The character doesn't engage with the adults much. His parents seem anonymous, but this might be deliberate because later, when the boy says he can't remember their faces, it is more plausible whereas if his parents were played by famous actors or more personable, we'd imagine them later popping up, here is is not a given.

    The kid hangs out with John Malkovich, who is a scavenger about the city and depicted unsentimentally. A mistake by the kid sees him wind up in an internment camp but when the two meet up this is not referenced and there's a sense of scenes being cut. I think the whole thing might have worked better as a six-parter though I suppose we'd have Andrew Davies all over it. At the camp he meets an old family friend, a big deal given he's not seen any of them for - what, days or weeks? while he's been by himself in the city, It's not clear - but there's no 'Ah, there you are Jamie, what has happened to you?!' talk. Later a key adult disappears but we don't learn what happened to him. Some of this stuff works well because it does lend to the sense of bewilderment you'd feel in that situation, otherwise again it suggests scenes being cut for length.

    Worse, the key actors here - Leslie Phillips, Nigel Havers and Miranda Richardson - don't massively interact in a useful way with the kid. It's mean and wrong to say the film is a massive big budget trailer but there is something in that. It almost reminded me of Paul McCartney's Give My Regards to Broad Street, in which Macca just ables along through the film as if in his own universe. The kid doesn't get many setbacks, he isn't torn off a strip for any wrongdoing ever by the adults. In fact, even Joel in Risky Business underwent more of a learning curve in his parents' absence. I also contrast the film with the 1930s film Captains Courageous with Freddie Bartholomew and Spencer Tracy, here Bartholomew really does play a brat who is separated from his parents after falling off a posh cruise ship. But he learns the error of his ways thanks to Tracy's trawler fisherman. There's not much like this here and our hero seems to go from strength to strength, being a sort of fixer who can acquire items for various people about the prison camp, with nods to King Rat and other PoW films. But unlike these other films, Empire of the Sun doesn't quite settle as it's always on the move. One actor who could make an impression is Joe Pantoliano who is a welcome arrival for the kid in Shanghai - a wise guy Yank with a truck - but at soon as we meet his boss Basie - Malkovich - he is depicted as very much second fiddle and a lackey - all very well, but what happened to the charismatic welcome American we knew for five minutes or so? We don't see him again, instead he is there to be humiliated by young Jim it seems. Early on, Malkovich tries to sell young Jim , who despite being an assertive kid goes along with it, but fails because the kid is 'skin and bone'. Really? He's a rich kid with a larder full of food at home, how long has he been scavenging for? Some early scenes like this could have been jettisoned a bit I think, especially as we find not a lot comes from them.

    In fairness, the main drift of the film seems to be how the kid reveres the Japanese fighter pilots and their planes, despite their being officially the enemy now, and Spielberg is interested in depicting how his youthful attitude bridges such divides. This allows for some moving and affecting moments. But there is little corresponding between our young hero and his British adult friends so he doesn't quite seem to relate to anyone much in the film. Time Out magazine reviewed how the film is meant to depict how you have to be a right so-and-so to survive but I don't seem the kid cross the line much if at all. I never lived through a war, stayed at my private school and have more to regret about personal transgressions though in the end neither the police, Derby and Joan club nor the local crematorium opted to press charges.

    Spielberg overplays his hand by trying for a few David Lean scenes towards the end. One doesn't quite make sense to me, the refugees enter an open-air stadium full of luxury items from the elite English bygone days - one moment anticipates another from Schindler's List - but it isn't quite credible how all this plunder got stored here and why. I must say at the time watching this wash over me late at night, it was all highly affecting and impressive. In some ways the film reminds me of Kenneth Branagh's Belfast of last year in that really bad things keep threatening to happen but never quite do. But the kid in Belfast does seem to interact with the adults more, it's in many ways a better movie though the scale can't be compared. In other ways, some scenes remind me of Spectre - sort of emptily epic and visually impressive but it could leave you cold if you haven't bought into it.

    One suspenseful scene has young Jim creeping about behind barbed wire outside the prison camp behind enemy lines but I have no idea what he was doing here or trying to achieve. Another has our young choir singer creating a moving impromptu moment for prisoners and enemy both and one sees why Spielberg was later so annoyed with Life is Beautiful which contained a similar scene and bagged a few Oscars while his earlier movie got none.

    One senses the screenplay writer - Tom Stoppard, who helped with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade I think - wanted a chillier ending with the kid not able to relate to his key adults at the end but as with his Kubrick sci-fi adaptation, went another way. I may seek out my copy of Ballard's book, I think I have it somewhere but I haven't read it.

    Empire of the Sun is well worth catching if you have not seen it. Despite some perceived flaws, it is affecting to watch a movie that is so determined to enthral, move and entertain, and so often succeeds.

    "This is where we leave you Mr Bond."

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

    SEVERANCE (2006)

    A company selling arms sends a group of workers to Hungary on a team building exercise where they encounter poachers who set out to kill them. Tim McInnery and our own Toby Stephens are pretty good in this and Danny Dyer is um….Danny Dyer. It’s violent and strangely watchable, it’s a damned sight better than it should be and that’s down to Christopher Smith’s pithy direction.

    Good.

    Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
  • Shady TreeShady Tree London, UKPosts: 2,965MI6 Agent

    I enjoyed 'Prey' a lot. Tbh, Naru and her world are interesting enough that the film could almost have done without a Predator pitching up. The bear attack and face-off with the mountain lion are at least as scary as the 80s sci-fi monster, and there may have been enough drama for an entire movie in Naru's efforts to establish her place as a hunter in a patriarchal community and in the threat posed by the French Canadian trappers. Still, it's inspired me to take another look at the 1987 movie, '2' - and I've heard that 'Predators' was a good one, as well.

    Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
  • Bond fan from OzBond fan from Oz Posts: 88MI6 Agent

    Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

    Not the best SW installment, but it's my favourite of the 9 Skywalker movies. The droid BB-8 easily steals the movie.

    I give it 7/10.

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