Matthew Vaughan had coproduced Guy Ritchie’s smart, super violent and extremely comic crime capers Lock, Stock… and Snatch. He made his directorial bow with this piece of sassy, slick criminal enterprise, where Daniel Craig’s unnamed antihero finds himself up to more than just his knees in a nasty London syndicate of cocaine dealers and a million-plus horde of dodgy ecstasy pills ripped off from a Serbian cabal in Amsterdam. If that sounds confusing, watch the movie.
Nothing quite makes sense, but that doesn’t seem to matter in this, the most true form of a modern noir you are likely to see, a film where impressions, the darkness and the light, the testing of loyalties, the hidden pasts, are laid bare by a brilliantly performed cast and ripped apart by the gawdy brightness of both the day time and the night time photography. Craig’s character XXXX surveys all around him in natty suit jackets, tight jeans and a series of colourful shirts, while taking disaster, success, fists and boots on the chin. The film isn’t particularly violent, which is a bonus, and leans more towards the convoluted plotting and its gravelly, pecked up, beaten up characters to develop its sinister undertones. Michael Gambon crops up as the crimpled old style gangster spouting glorious prophetic lines like: “I’m off to the opera. The Damnation of Faust. A man sells his soul to the devil. Always ends in tears.”
The story zips along seamlessly. The editing isn’t as flashy as that in Ritchie’s movies, but it neatly springs us from point to point and aspect to aspect without so much as a blink. The background pop music panders to our expectations of breezy gangsterism, a sort of British version of Goodfellas. The dullard Essex mobsters may be a little over the top, but it’s a small price to pay. The sex scene (or not) with Sienna Miller has all the hallmarks of some of Craig’s tenure as James Bond – sensual, slow and unfulfilled. If this really was the film that made Barbara Broccoli decide Craig was her man for the OO7 job, the writers of his first couple of films must have taken note of how prompt this movie is in finding his zeitgeist. The scenes where XXXX ponders his options have an air of Bond to them; there’s a moment mid-film where XXXX attempts to forget a committed crime by drowning his sorrows in booze and pills, suddenly materialising in a mirror, recovered, dressed in jacket and tie – a sequence replicated of a kind by Craig in both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
Odd slices of James Bondery aside, Layer Cake is a very successful modern crime noir, almost as good as Jonathon Glazer’s Sexy Beast, certainly on a par with Ritchie’s two, and far better than the many imitators that followed.
BASIC INSTINCT (1992)
There’s a hint of noir in Paul Verhoeven’s tribute to all things trash, Basic Instinct, a thriller whose thrills come in the over-the-top in-bed performances of Sharon Stone and Micheal Douglas, who cavort in a manner unlike anything seen on screen before or since. Take the sex stuff away and there’s a fairly decent thriller peeking away beneath the sheets of joe Eszterhas’s script. Douglas plays a wayward cop with addiction issues who falls for Stone’s nymphomaniac writer, Catherine Tramell, who happens to be the prime suspect in a murder case – he thinks she did it, then he doesn’t, then he isn’t sure – and that’s got a big hint of noir. So too has death by ice pick: ouch! All shadows and sweaty mayhem. The other hint is the presence of not just one but three femme fatales – Ms Stone, Jeanne Tripplehorn’s psychiatrist and Leilani Sarelle’s lesbian chick, Roxy, who is in love with Miss Tramell. We are spared a lesbian love scene, replaced by some dancing and snorting cocaine in a nightclub, but not the voyeuristic undercurrent – of which Roxy is not alone: all the male characters seem intent on peering into one another’s lives, at least those of Douglas and Stone anyways. The film is a merry old dance and isn’t particularly thrilling unless you really want to include the bedroom antics. Recent reassessment has tried to justify the gratuitous nudity and base sexual morals as some kind of cinematic female emancipation, but that’s claptrap. Basic Instinct is cod porn for boys too scared to make the real thing. Typically double standards are on show throughout [we never see Mr Douglas full frontal, or even swinging low from behind, maybe they taped his johnny up to preserve his tiny dignity] and the whole exercise has a tawdry, cheap atmosphere, despite all the millionaire surroundings, exemplified by scenes set in chicken joints and backstreet bars.
The soundtrack to Basic Instinct if very good, of course, it's right up there.
For years I was titillated by the memory of the opening scene, made before porn was legal in the UK, and in particular the sexy curve of Sharon Stone's tanned foot on the bed as she straddled her man and they writhed against each other in contortions...
Many, many years later I was watching this on telly late at night and sat bolt upright... the sexy foot belonged to the man!
Red Eye (2005)
Wes Craven's short, slick airplane thriller with Cillian Murphy, Rachel Adams and a small role for Brian Cox, who being younger than his current self tipped me off that this movie is - gulp! -20 years old but it's aged well because it hasn't dated, quite the reverse in fact given today's political climate in the US.
20 years old! 2005! I shouldn't harp on, but that was before Mum even went in a care home, she was living at home then, I could have taken her to see it. Ah well. Not that I bothered to see it myself at the time, this was my first viewing. And only about 75 mins long! You get to go to bed early even though it starts at 9pm.
Very popular swashbuckler in its day, The Black Swan is a tad dated now with its over acted performances and over-cranked sword fights. Tyrone Power is Cpt Jamie Waring, a privateer trying to turn over a new leaf who falls out with George Sanders’s hilariously hairy and unrepentive Cpt Leech and falls into love with Maureen O’Hara’s rather beautiful damsel not-quite-in-distress. A lot of fun and quite good looking, although the sets seem strangely bare, lacking the opulence one might expect, and the photography – which won an Oscar for Leon Shamroy – has faded badly over the decades. Rousing music, plenty of fights and cannons and seafaring derring-do. The film is based on Raphael Sabatini’s 1932 bestseller so we can blame him for the misleading title: The Black Swan is actually the villain’s ship; Power’s is called The Revenge.
A horror satire that exposes modern America’s liberal elite for harbouring an underbelly of racist attitudes; a veiled statement made perhaps with good reason, perhaps not, depending on your politics, culture, financial or career prospects, among other markers. The film raises issues of tokenism, political colour blindness, ultra liberalism, sexual trophy hunting and psychological experimentation, wrapping them neatly into a half-comic, half-sinister expose of traditional American values.
Chris Washington is a black photographer who joins his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage, on a weekend trip home where he meets not only her bizarrely creepy family, but also the strange neighbours, who behave like zombies, spout idiocies and show a distinct uneasy interest in the young, attractive newcomer. Hypnotised by Rose’s mother, Chris begins to feel uneasy and manipulated. As his suspicions grow about the family and its intentions, it suddenly becomes too late to flee the household and the genteel family turn against him in a vicious manner, revealing a horrific secret in the basement.
By incorporating the best recognisable horror motifs and blending them with an undercurrent of gentle satire, the kind that harks back to fluff like The Stepford Wives, debut director-writer Jordan Peele enthuses his film with dark humour and a gradual rising tension which reimagines the best of Hitchcock [who was never a horror director, always a satirist] and Corman [who understood shock-horror] as well as more modern auteurs such as John Carpenter and Wes Craven, directors who all share the ability to draw an audience into stories and revelations through obscure – yet realistic – landscapes for their characters [and us] to journey through.
The same effect is present here, as Peel presents us with an interracial, although normal, loving couple and a supposed typical nuclear family, if perhaps one that tries a little too hard to demonstrate their liberal views, and wraps them in a coddled society of similar loving attention, the effect overbearing and distinctly odd. Chris, the protagonist, questions the curious behaviour around him, but is blinded by love and respect, and also by the need for acceptance, to be valued on his own terms and merits. It is these values that are of primary interest to the cabal of white folks living in the sleepy New York suburb. Light relief is provided by a running commentary from Chris’s friend Rod Williams, an airport security guard, who sees nothing good in the visit from the outset.
The film builds brilliantly to its reveal and then doesn’t quite understand what to do with it, preferring a paradoxical slasher ending which doesn’t endear the hero to us. Perhaps a little less bloodletting would have worked better here. The story has a tremendous number of plot holes and the premise is as absurd as Rod’s own take on an all-white community. What it does do is actively engage and intrigue and thanks to a superb cast [David Kaluuya, Alison Williams, Catherine Keener and Lil Rel Hewery are all excellent] allows the story and all its undercurrent silliness to breathe. This was the trick Corman pulled off relentlessly, allowing the surface glamour to intrigue and mystify so the daftness of the piece never shows. In a way, Jordan Peele is enacting on celluloid the crafty, griping and rather stupid premise of his own characters, a gang of white middle class serial killers by any other name.
Well photographed and edited with a number of brilliant ‘jumps’ that really do make you jump, Get Out is a thoroughly enjoyable modern horror that sits just the right side of gory to be taken seriously and is relieved by the blessing of satirical humour to propel its dialogue and peculiarities.
This movie by director Joachim Trier has gotten fantastic reviews. it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes where it got a 20-minute standing ovation and then went on to win at other film festivals. It has a much more than respectable 95% in Rotten Tomatoes and BBC is not alone in predicting Sentimental Value will be Oscar nominated for Best Movie (not just Best Foreign Language Movie). Not bad for a Norwegian movie.
Did it live up to the hype for me? How could it? Just like Trier's last movie "Worst person in the world" it stars Renate Reinsve as a theater actor named Nora. Stellan Skarsgård plays her mostly absentee father Gustav who's a famous movie director who hasn't made a movie in 15 years. He now turns up from nowhere (Sweden) and offers her the lead in his new film project. She rejects the offer, mostly because he's been a very bad father. He then gives the role to Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). Other major character are Inga Ibsdotter Lilleås as Nora's sister Agnes and their house (playing itself). Seriously, the house can be counted as a one of the main character in the movie even though it has no lines and doesn't really do much. As you may have guessed from the cast list the movie is mostly in Norwegian with some Swedish and English. No problem - you can read.
This is a drama/comedy and it's not a spoiler when I say there are no explosions, murders or car chases. Characters and story takes center stage. I have to say the script and the acting is top notch in Sentimental Value. Renate Reinsve was the breakout star of "The worst person in the world" and again she delivers a fantastic performance. Several reviews has said Stellan Skarsgård delivers one of the best performances of his career here. Jesper Christensen who we know from a couple of Bond films has a good supporting role. The house does a better job than many actors in some other movies I could name. But to me Sentimental Value doesn't quite reach the heights of "The worst person in the world". In fact 95% at Rotten Tomatoes for Sentimental Value versus 96% for "The worst person in the world" seems about right to me.
Renate Reinsve is the right type of actress to cast in Bond26. At 37 she's a bit too old to be a Bond girl together with a first time Jame Bond actor, and while she's beautiful and a fashion icon she's not quite attractive enough either. But she's a rising star, a fantastic actress and she would knock it out of the park as a henchwoman, Miss Moneypenny or a number of other parts, including the villain.
One of the more enjoyable sitcoms of the early seventies was the BBC’s Roman era set Up Pompeii, a coarse excuse for Frankie Howerd to do his schtick under the pen and ink of Carry On writer Talbot Rothwell. The 13 TV episodes (1969 – 1970) were bawdy, fun and definitely of their time. This movie version followed with a completely new cast other than the star but retaining the gutter level humour and inserting a prerequisite number of bums and boobs, just to show the thing was permissive as well as naughty. Double-entendres come thick and fast, rolling off Howerd’s tongue like a schoolboy’s kiss. The film is mightily enjoyable despite being obviously cheap to produce, which is part of its charm. So too the script. Too many good lines to mention. I was chuckling away within a minute and only stopped by the time the tiresome steam bath chase elapsed. Perhaps we should just remind ourselves of the character names: Lurcio, Ludicrus Sextus, Ammonia, Nauseous, Erotica, Voluptua, Scrubber – you can see immediately where this movie is going.
The story of Up Pompeii didn’t quite end in 1971. A second film Up the Chastity Belt, featuring Howerd as a medieval knight’s page Lurkalot, and also rather good, followed. A third film Up the Front set during the First World War [Private Lurk] was not so good. The BBC revived the TV show for a one off special in 1975 called Further Up Pompeii!. A second return, in 1992 and this time for ITV [also called Further Up Pompeii, without the exclamation mark] was successful, but Howerd’s death saw any hope of a series cancelled. 1982’s Second World War themed Then Churchill Said To Me remained untransmitted by the BBC until 2000. Here Howerd’s character bore all the hallmarks of Lurcio. It was shelved due to the Falkland’s War as the subject matter was deemed inappropriate. Watching Howerd in his role of Lurcio and you can see all the facets of his stage craft coming to bear, especially when he breaks the fourth wall. It was probably this film more than the series that spawned his cult university following in the late eighties.
Look, Up Pompeii is of its time. I like it. It made me laugh a lot, even if it is crap around the edges. The role suited Frankie Howerd down to the ground. You wonder if Talbot Rothwell used up some of his best gags on the show instead of the declining Carry On series. [In fact, the film is not written by Rothwell, but by his collaborator Sid Coln].
Go on, watch it and have a little giggle.
“Avé! Saluté! Naughty, naughty! Up Pompeii!”
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,873Chief of Staff
Yea, I love those movies too - you know exactly what you’re getting and that works for me ☺️
Did Talbot Rothwell stick with Howerd because he got paid more than for the notoriously cheap producer of the Carry Ons? Or did that only apply to the cast and not the writers?
Some top info there @chrisno1 I didn't know that about Howerd's output.
Thanks @CoolHandBond@Napoleon Plural@Sir Miles I neglected - because it was late and I was tired - to mention the 1973 series WHOOPS BAGHDAD which reset Howerd's Lurcio as a servant to the Wazir in an Arabian Night's style Persia. I think the character was called Ali Oompha or something. Despite not being quite as good as Up Pompeii, it is still worth a look., although very very much of its time.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,873Chief of Staff
Whoops Baghdad just about scrapes by…although Then Churchill Said To Me is best avoided…no wonder it sat on the shelves for years 👀
YNWA 97
Silhouette ManThe last refuge of a scoundrelPosts: 9,316MI6 Agent
edited September 2025
Thanks for that great write-up on the Up Pompeii film, @chrisno1. I didn't know that there were so few episodes of the TV series. That seems to be the way with British sitcoms. Just this evening they were discussing The Young Ones on BBC Radio 4 and it was revealed that there were only 12 episodes of it altogether. The same was true of Fawlty Towers. Back in the year 2000 I remember recording an episode of The Nazis: A Warning from History on BBC 2. After that programme was over the recording had run on and taped an episode of Up Pompeii. I can't remember the episode title but I do remember him giving the fingers and saying "Salute" throughout! And also always trying to deliver "The Prologue" but being constantly interrupted. I think he did that bit in every episode though? Anyway, I remember finding it very funny. I've liked Frankie Howerd ever since. I really need to buy the series and the film spin-offs. Frankie's very charming in Interviews. He's self-deprecating like Roger Moore, which I've always found an admirable trait. Here's an example in the TV news interview posted below:
Yesterday I took in THE LONG WALK. It's been long time such I had such a violently mixed reaction to a movie. It's very well-made, it's suspenseful, and the two lead actors are great characters you really care about (Mark Hamill is appropriately cartoonish as the villainous Major). But you spend most of 110 minutes waiting for each character to get killed, and it's just a bummer. No surprise, really, that it's tanking at the box office.
Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields and Bob Fosse’s 1966 Broadway success Sweet Charity does not translate well onto film, which is both a shame and a lesson. A shame, because it is a good musical, bitter sweet and full of decent songs and ripe for innovate choreography. A lesson because Fosse, as director, did not later repeat the same mistakes he makes here: a miscast star, stop-start musical numbers and a confused look. Flashy editing does not always do favours to musicals, where the songs are important and need to breathe; if they are buried under paraphernalia the point is lost. Shirley MacLaine, as hostess dancer Charity Hope Valentine, does okay, but her singing voice is ordinary and her acting is too demonstrative – as if Fosse told her to play to the back seat of the cinema not the camera. Here, his innovative ‘jazz’ choreography simply doesn’t work, most notable in the horrible sequence at the Pompeii Club. The constantly moving cameras and splashy edits do not aid our enjoyment. Fosse includes old silent movie tropes, like chapter boards and montage, or sixties quirks like still shots or slow motion, and the film becomes a curiosity rather than an entertainment. It’s as if Fosse has taken everything that ought to be important in the presentation of a stage musical and ripped it to pieces, shovelling in instead unimportant facets of surface cinematic glimmer. Poor John McMartin, the only actor to reprise a role from the New York stage, doesn’t even get to sing his songs. Words taken away from him, his romantic lead loses all presence. So too then the romance. The big numbers – Big Spender, If My Friends Could See Me Now, Where Am I Going – are hustled and frigged about with to the point of becoming nonsense. The whole thing ends up being gawdy and gutter snipe tacky.
Fosse learnt his lesson and when he brought Cabaret to the screen, he cast it brilliantly, let the songs speak for themselves, let the dancing become an intricate part of the action and the story progress fluidly and with bitter pathos. Sweet Charity simply struggles with all four cornerstones crumbling. The misplaced ‘hippy-****’ doesn’t help, immediately dating it. Disappointing.
I haven't seen this action classic for years, and I've never seen the director's cut before. The movie is a classic for reasons - it's very well made. The mismatched cops going after drug gangs isn't very original, the X factor is Mel Gibson's performance as the suicidal Riggs. It's a shame Gibson has gone from playing the crazy Riggs to being a real right-wing nut, because he's very talented. But everyone's good in this and Shane Black's script is excellent. The movie's even darker than I remember even though there are lighter moments too. If memory serves the main director's cut extra is a school shooter sequence. It's really good, but tragically that sort of thing has become common in the US and I don't think any action movie would've even shot that sort of a scene today. In my opinion the sequels became too comical even though they are good too.
American Fiction is worth a watch, it stars our own Jeffery Wright and while I didn't care for him as Felix Leiter, very dour like the Craig films, for me he is a revelation in this and shows all the empathy and intelligence his Leiter lacked, he really seems like a different person so that is a compliment for his acting, I guess.
It's about an author who finds his books aren't selling as they might were he to play up to black American tropes, so to send the thing up, he pens a spoof novel under a pseudonym and sends it off via his agent - only to find it's a big hit with the publishers who write big cheques.
It's similar in a way to that Spike Lee film from some years ago where the black guy imitates a white guy's voice over the phone to the KKK, in a way it's a well-worn idea. That said, it's based on a book called Erasure by Percival Everett who I am interested in because he's done a pastiche on Twain's Huckleberry Finn written from the perspective of the slave, that I mean to read this year, after I've read HF. So Everett may have got there first.
American Fiction drew me in because the lead is sympathetic but flawed and has to deal with his ageing mother who is starting to lose her marbles, also his siblings, his brother and sister. Much of it is based around this early on and the script is funny. One snag, the writer meets with his family after time away and they say how he's overweight or fat, but Wright the actor really isn't. He seems in better shape than in a long time - this seems to be a new trend, almost related to the trans issue one could argue, where someone is what they say they are and you'd better not argue - one critic got into trouble for saying an actress wasn't hot enough to play the role she was in, when it seems she really wasn't but you aren't allowed to say that. They also talk about the colour of blackness in a person's skin - but Wright's 'brother' in the film has much darker 'black' skin than Wright, so is that a thing or are we meant to overlook it after they've drawn attention to the issue?
It's cast very well. The main issue of it for me was that the writer's ruse of sending out his fake novel didn't seem convincing, the gullible white folk were done stereotypically as if to make a point - but I think this plot was meant to be the nub of the film, not his domestic problems. So as this plot line went on, the film weakened a bit. The ending is a bit meta too, which may annoy some people. Some who've read the book say it's a bit disappointing because of the misplaced emphasis of it, so I may order the book in.
A 1973 film with Maggie Smith and Timothy Bottoms as a mismatched pair who hook up in Spain. He being the student almost drop out, she being a 'prim spinster' as the I button listing puts it, which dates it. This is very low key, it's sort of a comedy but in my view Bottoms doesn't have the comic chops for it, he isn't innately funny. The opening scene earns goodwill as it puts one in mind of The Graduate which of course was a few years earlier. Without the family established goodwill and laughter associated, such films don't always get appreciated by the modern viewer. I admit I had a couple of G+Ts before this began and had been listening to some singles so maybe wasn't quite a reliable reviewer but scenes did sort of just unfold in a make of it what you want kind of way. Not quite clear how Bottoms jettisoned his cycle tour of Spain to get on Maggie Smith's tour bus and how he is on the group register in the next scene and how or if he is paying for it. A key plot point regarding Smith's physical state is mentioned according to imdd in the first 20 mins but I missed it and the rest of the film doesn't reference it much if at all until the end. I'm glad Talking Picture TV show this sort of thing but I didn't make much of this and while Smith is good you might not bother with any of it if you didn't know it was her, and know and appreciate her other stuff.
See How They Run is a whodunnit based around Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.
Saoirse Ronan demonstrates her comic capabilities as an overenthusiastic rookie Police Constable. Sam Rockwell does his best as her uncooperative senior partner. Both are ordered to investigate the death of Adrien Brody’s obnoxious American film director, and one senses this is because neither of them is regarded very highly – one for being a woman, the other for being an alcoholic. None of this is specified, only implied. Similarly, the closer we get to the reveal of the murderer, the more clues seem to be implied and not specified, which is the opposite of a Christie whodunnit.
The film is mildly amusing, looks good and is for the most part quite enjoyable. The cast seem to be enjoying themselves anyway. Sadly, there isn’t enough intrigue to the mystery nor enough laughs to the humour.
Disney’s live action remake of its own animated classic of Beauty and the Beast doesn’t reimagine the story to any significance, nor does it borrow from the successful stage show that has been running for decades in various guises around the world. What is does do is remain reasonably faithful to the classic fairy tale, albeit with some generous nods to twenty-first century societal expectations. Emma Watson inhabits a bookish, empathetic and sympathetic heroine, Belle, who is termed ‘fearless’ and generally proves it in her go-getting attitudes. The rest of the cast sort of drift by without any real excitement, although Kevin Kline does alright as her Dad. The main problem is that while the CGI and Animatronics give us special effects and characters previously unimaginable, something of the magic has somehow dissipated. These traditional fairy stories seem to work better as animated films, reminding us of their unreality and removing us from the real world even while the underlying themes remain central to human [romantic] interaction. This live action version just doesn’t have the ‘magic’ you’d expect from a fairy tale.
But let’s not be under generous. The songs are revisited well enough, with much elaborate staging. There is humour, action, romance – it looks grand. There is nothing to be ashamed of liking or anything to disappoint. Putting personal views aside, Beauty and the Beast is a phenomenally good family film musical and that is rare these days. It is not as good as the 1991 version, but that’s one of the Disney Company’s outstanding achievements, so it’d be hard to emulate that, but by golly it is a treat for the eyes and ears and just about a treat for the intellect. Bill Condon directs assuredly. The production design, costuming, etc, is immaculate and spectacular.
A ponderous space opera from future Bond director Dennis Villeneuve that adapts to enormous length the first segment of Frank Herbert’s well-regaled 1966 sci-fi blockbuster Dune. I have not read the novel, so my only impressions of Dune and the worlds Herbert created come from David Lynch’s disappointing 1984 movie. Lynch’s problems stemmed a lack of funding, which made some of the movie look cheap, and a general malaise around the script, which I felt condensed too much, my evidence mostly relying on an annoying tendency to have his characters think and explain through voice-over soliloquys what we do not see or comprehend on screen.
Villeneuve and fellow screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth do the opposite, over indulging in the scenarios as presented by the author – I am assuming much here based on which scenes and characters recur from Lynch’s movie – and veering towards something that looks better than grand [Dune won a slew of technical Oscars] but fails on an emotional and intellectual core. Like Lynch’s version, Villeneuve struggles to explain the characters and where they sit in the narrative, particularly the seemingly all-powerful mentoid sisterhood the Bene Gesserit and the powerful hallucinogenic and mechanical properties of the drug Spice, and instead relies on his visual splendour to drive the narrative. It’s certainly splendid, but the movie, big and blustering as it is, reminded me of those huge 1960s historical epics where spectacle replaces screenplay and the characters wander about fighting and scowling and not getting anywhere fast. The fact Dune needs a sequel rather justifies my point. As beautiful as the thing looks, Dune is as soulless as a black hole. Did I care about anyone on an emotional level? No. Did I care about the story on an intellectual level? No. Did I find myself embroiled in the unfolding civil war story? No. The machinations of the Baron’s, the Emperor’s and the Duke’s court? No. The plight of the Fremen? No. The low-level romance of its two adolescent lovers [who don’t even meet until the final fifteen minutes]? Not one iota.
The film is hopelessly fractured between its narrative and its visuals. Intimate scenes are framed in enormous rooms, leaving the characters isolated and the audience uninvolved, so busy are they looking at the whole scene rather than the point of interest. Explanations come thick and fast. Some relationships seem too chummy, as if the cast had just stepped off their skateboards and onto the set in full costume. The battle scenes are preposterously huge, so much so it is impossible to decipher what anyone is hoping to achieve. I am not certain they tell us anyway, so we have to guess. For such a bold and breathtaking looking enterprise, Dune is simply a big sandy bore. Sci-fi fantasy turns me cold and despite all the deserts and the sunscapes, this film was as wintery as Christmas Eve in Poland. I almost fell asleep during a bizarre sequence where the hero and his mother are escaping the villains by trudging through the desert, hiding in buried tents and he gets high on Spice and freaks out. Later on a secret rebel base turns out to be a monumental piece of engineering architecture buried in a rock face and so large it could never have been concealed; I just shook my head at the inanity of it all. The editing was grim and Joe Walker, I assume under the direction of Villeneuve, hacks about with tension gripping scenes to give the impression of parallel occurences. This does not raise tension, but lowers it. I was trying to remember if Villeneuve did this on Bladerunner 2049 or Arrival. It is a peculiarly modern trick that forgets how to propel a story with pace and excitement.
Hans Zimmer’s music score is equally huge, seeming to run throughout the entire film. I checked. There are three soundtrack albums of different named tracks totalling over three hours of music; the film itself is only two and a half hours long, so I may be right. The music, however, is probably the best thing about the movie, underpinning the bulky narrative and inserting emotional responses when the cast fail to deliver any. The performances are uniformly ordinary.
I respectfully disagree. Yes, the movie is grand and beautiful. But I was impressed when I saw Dune of how well and entertainingly Villeneuve tackled alien cultures, interesting characters and a plot that seemed too adult in the age of Marvel. The action was really well done in my opinion. The choice of filming location for Paul's home planet was excellent too! 😁
I faced a similar choice to ChrisNo1, between Dune and The King's Man (2021-2) and opted for the latter because it promised more laughs and interest, and ended sooner. Both have Bond connections but the latter wears them on its sleeve - it is surely (goes to check) scored by Brosnan composer David Arnold, and there are those familiar motifs - two characters talking then a cut to an spectacular aerial panoramic, lifted by the orchestral swell.(Turns out in isn't Arnold, it's done by two composers, one who worked on The Kingsmen.) There's Bond wannabe director Matthew Vaughan, Craig's M Ralph Fiennes and QoS's Gemma Artherton.
I enjoyed it a lot, I was drawn in the by the almost steam punk but not quite aesthetic - the modern CGI approach to the telling of the story makes it interesting and it depicts real-life events with some accuracy; it's the background behind them that suggests secrecy and conspiracy, like shadows acting behind the scenes. This seems of its time given what I read in Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps a couple of months ago, the real sense that the actions of real statesman are in fact being coordinated by hidden forces.
It looks good and has some crisp dialogue for Fiennes' lead, such as 'Reputation is what people think of you, character is what you are' - maybe they had the same script doctor as Spectre working on it. The cast really is all-star, we also have Tom Hollander as King George (and the Kaiser Nicholas), Rhys Ifans as the Rasputin, Charles Dance as Kitchener...
I didn't see this on its release - I really didn't much like the first sequel; an early scene in which a victim is turned into a burger really was horrible and it lacked the fizz of its predecessor, unsurprisingly because that was a coming-of-age film, and I think the sequels to those often suffer, as if to say, well, we finished that character development, now what? Kick Ass 2, Superman 2, Robocop 2 and Quantum of Solace suffered in this way imo.
Also, the poster doesn't sell it - it implies Rasputin is one of The King's Man, which is off-putting! (He isn't, he's the enemy.)
There are other snags suggesting why this didn't make big box office. Ralph Fiennes is the star but I'm not sure he can carry a movie by himself and I guess he isn't expected to here; even Conclave had a lot of other actors in it, it's an ensemble. He's in stricken, grim mode of M in No Time to Die here. He lends gravitas but not really fun, not like Colin Firth did in a similar sort of role in the first one. You don't warm to him quite, you are outside of him when you watch. You can't imagine him doing the Darcy role in Brigitte Jones, he lacks that essence of comedy that can make things go with a swing.
In fact, the closest thing Fiennes has been in to this is The Avengers, the box office turkey that had nothing to do with the Marvel comics and really you could imagine that Steed and Mrs Peel belonged to the same world as The Kingsmen, it would take no stretch, but that film bombed with him in the lead, admittedly it was done badly and this one isn't. Another film it slightly resembles is the one with his Avengers co-star Sean Connery, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is better than The Avengers but still didn't do great box office.
Much of The King's Man also put me in mind of The Assassination Bureau (1968) with Oliver Reed and OHMSS stars Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas, a film set around the same time that I have never seen from start to finish and have no urgency to do so, so again not good.
Another admittedly facile reason for The King's Man's lack of clout is there is zero love or sex interest in it. Gemma Artherton is a decent character in a Daphne Moon from Frasier sort of way but there is no crumpet in this nor expectation of any... this is okay in that it again echoes the times; Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps shares that outlook (the film doesn't), but every little helps. Also, there's a fair bit of plot but not a huge amount of dialogue that allows development or rapport between the characters as the film progresses. Now I think of it the last two Bonds were like this too. I guess this follows the format of Wonder Woman in that it's set in World War I, but it neatly sidesteps the fact that our heroes did Sweet FA to stop World War II happening with its grim abandon.
As a kid at school I dissolved in helpless mirth when I read one fellow student's essay on the end of World War I... a poor pupil and desperate to pad things out onto two pages of the exercise book, Latimer had thrown in a couple of lines that, well, might have been true: 'In the ruins of the war, the Kaiser elected a man who would lead Germany back to the greatness of its former glory. His name was Adolf Hitler.' The schoolteacher had written in red ink block capitals 'RUBBISH'.
Sadly, the scene during the end credits propositions this very idea, which is indeed rubbish and while this film was likely set up to be a new franchise, it is hard to see how they could have pursued this one, given that it verges on very bad taste to take liberties with the truth when it comes to Hitler, especially as I'm not sure The King's Man is so egregious in that regard.
Anyway, I mostly very much enjoyed this something-for-nothing free movie on an evening with a glass of wine.
An enthralling Cold War spy film directed by John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle and Treasure of the Sierra Madre) and based on the novel of the same name written by Noel Behn.
Lt.Cdr Charles Rone, a United States Navy officer is recruited by an OSS syndicate headed by 'The Highwayman' to retrieve a letter of crucial importance to the United States from Russia. Aiding him in this operation are a team of unique talents, who must foil Russian counterintelligence in order to extricate the letter.
Starring Max von Sydow, Richard Boone, Bibi Anderson, Dean Jagger, Orson Welles and Patrick O' Neal as Lt.Cdr Rone, 'The Kremlin Letter' is a realistic take on the world of Cold War espionage and makes for a suspenseful viewing experience.
Comments
Double header last night:
LAYER CAKE (2004)
Matthew Vaughan had coproduced Guy Ritchie’s smart, super violent and extremely comic crime capers Lock, Stock… and Snatch. He made his directorial bow with this piece of sassy, slick criminal enterprise, where Daniel Craig’s unnamed antihero finds himself up to more than just his knees in a nasty London syndicate of cocaine dealers and a million-plus horde of dodgy ecstasy pills ripped off from a Serbian cabal in Amsterdam. If that sounds confusing, watch the movie.
Nothing quite makes sense, but that doesn’t seem to matter in this, the most true form of a modern noir you are likely to see, a film where impressions, the darkness and the light, the testing of loyalties, the hidden pasts, are laid bare by a brilliantly performed cast and ripped apart by the gawdy brightness of both the day time and the night time photography. Craig’s character XXXX surveys all around him in natty suit jackets, tight jeans and a series of colourful shirts, while taking disaster, success, fists and boots on the chin. The film isn’t particularly violent, which is a bonus, and leans more towards the convoluted plotting and its gravelly, pecked up, beaten up characters to develop its sinister undertones. Michael Gambon crops up as the crimpled old style gangster spouting glorious prophetic lines like: “I’m off to the opera. The Damnation of Faust. A man sells his soul to the devil. Always ends in tears.”
The story zips along seamlessly. The editing isn’t as flashy as that in Ritchie’s movies, but it neatly springs us from point to point and aspect to aspect without so much as a blink. The background pop music panders to our expectations of breezy gangsterism, a sort of British version of Goodfellas. The dullard Essex mobsters may be a little over the top, but it’s a small price to pay. The sex scene (or not) with Sienna Miller has all the hallmarks of some of Craig’s tenure as James Bond – sensual, slow and unfulfilled. If this really was the film that made Barbara Broccoli decide Craig was her man for the OO7 job, the writers of his first couple of films must have taken note of how prompt this movie is in finding his zeitgeist. The scenes where XXXX ponders his options have an air of Bond to them; there’s a moment mid-film where XXXX attempts to forget a committed crime by drowning his sorrows in booze and pills, suddenly materialising in a mirror, recovered, dressed in jacket and tie – a sequence replicated of a kind by Craig in both Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace.
Odd slices of James Bondery aside, Layer Cake is a very successful modern crime noir, almost as good as Jonathon Glazer’s Sexy Beast, certainly on a par with Ritchie’s two, and far better than the many imitators that followed.
BASIC INSTINCT (1992)
There’s a hint of noir in Paul Verhoeven’s tribute to all things trash, Basic Instinct, a thriller whose thrills come in the over-the-top in-bed performances of Sharon Stone and Micheal Douglas, who cavort in a manner unlike anything seen on screen before or since. Take the sex stuff away and there’s a fairly decent thriller peeking away beneath the sheets of joe Eszterhas’s script. Douglas plays a wayward cop with addiction issues who falls for Stone’s nymphomaniac writer, Catherine Tramell, who happens to be the prime suspect in a murder case – he thinks she did it, then he doesn’t, then he isn’t sure – and that’s got a big hint of noir. So too has death by ice pick: ouch! All shadows and sweaty mayhem. The other hint is the presence of not just one but three femme fatales – Ms Stone, Jeanne Tripplehorn’s psychiatrist and Leilani Sarelle’s lesbian chick, Roxy, who is in love with Miss Tramell. We are spared a lesbian love scene, replaced by some dancing and snorting cocaine in a nightclub, but not the voyeuristic undercurrent – of which Roxy is not alone: all the male characters seem intent on peering into one another’s lives, at least those of Douglas and Stone anyways. The film is a merry old dance and isn’t particularly thrilling unless you really want to include the bedroom antics. Recent reassessment has tried to justify the gratuitous nudity and base sexual morals as some kind of cinematic female emancipation, but that’s claptrap. Basic Instinct is cod porn for boys too scared to make the real thing. Typically double standards are on show throughout [we never see Mr Douglas full frontal, or even swinging low from behind, maybe they taped his johnny up to preserve his tiny dignity] and the whole exercise has a tawdry, cheap atmosphere, despite all the millionaire surroundings, exemplified by scenes set in chicken joints and backstreet bars.
Weirdly, I rather liked it.
The soundtrack to Basic Instinct if very good, of course, it's right up there.
For years I was titillated by the memory of the opening scene, made before porn was legal in the UK, and in particular the sexy curve of Sharon Stone's tanned foot on the bed as she straddled her man and they writhed against each other in contortions...
Many, many years later I was watching this on telly late at night and sat bolt upright... the sexy foot belonged to the man!
Red Eye (2005)
Wes Craven's short, slick airplane thriller with Cillian Murphy, Rachel Adams and a small role for Brian Cox, who being younger than his current self tipped me off that this movie is - gulp! -20 years old but it's aged well because it hasn't dated, quite the reverse in fact given today's political climate in the US.
20 years old! 2005! I shouldn't harp on, but that was before Mum even went in a care home, she was living at home then, I could have taken her to see it. Ah well. Not that I bothered to see it myself at the time, this was my first viewing. And only about 75 mins long! You get to go to bed early even though it starts at 9pm.
I enjoyed it, increasingly as the film went on.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE BLACK SWAN (1942)
Very popular swashbuckler in its day, The Black Swan is a tad dated now with its over acted performances and over-cranked sword fights. Tyrone Power is Cpt Jamie Waring, a privateer trying to turn over a new leaf who falls out with George Sanders’s hilariously hairy and unrepentive Cpt Leech and falls into love with Maureen O’Hara’s rather beautiful damsel not-quite-in-distress. A lot of fun and quite good looking, although the sets seem strangely bare, lacking the opulence one might expect, and the photography – which won an Oscar for Leon Shamroy – has faded badly over the decades. Rousing music, plenty of fights and cannons and seafaring derring-do. The film is based on Raphael Sabatini’s 1932 bestseller so we can blame him for the misleading title: The Black Swan is actually the villain’s ship; Power’s is called The Revenge.
GET OUT (2017)
A horror satire that exposes modern America’s liberal elite for harbouring an underbelly of racist attitudes; a veiled statement made perhaps with good reason, perhaps not, depending on your politics, culture, financial or career prospects, among other markers. The film raises issues of tokenism, political colour blindness, ultra liberalism, sexual trophy hunting and psychological experimentation, wrapping them neatly into a half-comic, half-sinister expose of traditional American values.
Chris Washington is a black photographer who joins his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage, on a weekend trip home where he meets not only her bizarrely creepy family, but also the strange neighbours, who behave like zombies, spout idiocies and show a distinct uneasy interest in the young, attractive newcomer. Hypnotised by Rose’s mother, Chris begins to feel uneasy and manipulated. As his suspicions grow about the family and its intentions, it suddenly becomes too late to flee the household and the genteel family turn against him in a vicious manner, revealing a horrific secret in the basement.
By incorporating the best recognisable horror motifs and blending them with an undercurrent of gentle satire, the kind that harks back to fluff like The Stepford Wives, debut director-writer Jordan Peele enthuses his film with dark humour and a gradual rising tension which reimagines the best of Hitchcock [who was never a horror director, always a satirist] and Corman [who understood shock-horror] as well as more modern auteurs such as John Carpenter and Wes Craven, directors who all share the ability to draw an audience into stories and revelations through obscure – yet realistic – landscapes for their characters [and us] to journey through.
The same effect is present here, as Peel presents us with an interracial, although normal, loving couple and a supposed typical nuclear family, if perhaps one that tries a little too hard to demonstrate their liberal views, and wraps them in a coddled society of similar loving attention, the effect overbearing and distinctly odd. Chris, the protagonist, questions the curious behaviour around him, but is blinded by love and respect, and also by the need for acceptance, to be valued on his own terms and merits. It is these values that are of primary interest to the cabal of white folks living in the sleepy New York suburb. Light relief is provided by a running commentary from Chris’s friend Rod Williams, an airport security guard, who sees nothing good in the visit from the outset.
The film builds brilliantly to its reveal and then doesn’t quite understand what to do with it, preferring a paradoxical slasher ending which doesn’t endear the hero to us. Perhaps a little less bloodletting would have worked better here. The story has a tremendous number of plot holes and the premise is as absurd as Rod’s own take on an all-white community. What it does do is actively engage and intrigue and thanks to a superb cast [David Kaluuya, Alison Williams, Catherine Keener and Lil Rel Hewery are all excellent] allows the story and all its undercurrent silliness to breathe. This was the trick Corman pulled off relentlessly, allowing the surface glamour to intrigue and mystify so the daftness of the piece never shows. In a way, Jordan Peele is enacting on celluloid the crafty, griping and rather stupid premise of his own characters, a gang of white middle class serial killers by any other name.
Well photographed and edited with a number of brilliant ‘jumps’ that really do make you jump, Get Out is a thoroughly enjoyable modern horror that sits just the right side of gory to be taken seriously and is relieved by the blessing of satirical humour to propel its dialogue and peculiarities.
Very good.
Sentimental value (2025)
This movie by director Joachim Trier has gotten fantastic reviews. it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes where it got a 20-minute standing ovation and then went on to win at other film festivals. It has a much more than respectable 95% in Rotten Tomatoes and BBC is not alone in predicting Sentimental Value will be Oscar nominated for Best Movie (not just Best Foreign Language Movie). Not bad for a Norwegian movie.
Did it live up to the hype for me? How could it? Just like Trier's last movie "Worst person in the world" it stars Renate Reinsve as a theater actor named Nora. Stellan Skarsgård plays her mostly absentee father Gustav who's a famous movie director who hasn't made a movie in 15 years. He now turns up from nowhere (Sweden) and offers her the lead in his new film project. She rejects the offer, mostly because he's been a very bad father. He then gives the role to Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning). Other major character are Inga Ibsdotter Lilleås as Nora's sister Agnes and their house (playing itself). Seriously, the house can be counted as a one of the main character in the movie even though it has no lines and doesn't really do much. As you may have guessed from the cast list the movie is mostly in Norwegian with some Swedish and English. No problem - you can read.
This is a drama/comedy and it's not a spoiler when I say there are no explosions, murders or car chases. Characters and story takes center stage. I have to say the script and the acting is top notch in Sentimental Value. Renate Reinsve was the breakout star of "The worst person in the world" and again she delivers a fantastic performance. Several reviews has said Stellan Skarsgård delivers one of the best performances of his career here. Jesper Christensen who we know from a couple of Bond films has a good supporting role. The house does a better job than many actors in some other movies I could name. But to me Sentimental Value doesn't quite reach the heights of "The worst person in the world". In fact 95% at Rotten Tomatoes for Sentimental Value versus 96% for "The worst person in the world" seems about right to me.
Renate Reinsve is the right type of actress to cast in Bond26. At 37 she's a bit too old to be a Bond girl together with a first time Jame Bond actor, and while she's beautiful and a fashion icon she's not quite attractive enough either. But she's a rising star, a fantastic actress and she would knock it out of the park as a henchwoman, Miss Moneypenny or a number of other parts, including the villain.
UP POMPEII (1971)
One of the more enjoyable sitcoms of the early seventies was the BBC’s Roman era set Up Pompeii, a coarse excuse for Frankie Howerd to do his schtick under the pen and ink of Carry On writer Talbot Rothwell. The 13 TV episodes (1969 – 1970) were bawdy, fun and definitely of their time. This movie version followed with a completely new cast other than the star but retaining the gutter level humour and inserting a prerequisite number of bums and boobs, just to show the thing was permissive as well as naughty. Double-entendres come thick and fast, rolling off Howerd’s tongue like a schoolboy’s kiss. The film is mightily enjoyable despite being obviously cheap to produce, which is part of its charm. So too the script. Too many good lines to mention. I was chuckling away within a minute and only stopped by the time the tiresome steam bath chase elapsed. Perhaps we should just remind ourselves of the character names: Lurcio, Ludicrus Sextus, Ammonia, Nauseous, Erotica, Voluptua, Scrubber – you can see immediately where this movie is going.
The story of Up Pompeii didn’t quite end in 1971. A second film Up the Chastity Belt, featuring Howerd as a medieval knight’s page Lurkalot, and also rather good, followed. A third film Up the Front set during the First World War [Private Lurk] was not so good. The BBC revived the TV show for a one off special in 1975 called Further Up Pompeii!. A second return, in 1992 and this time for ITV [also called Further Up Pompeii, without the exclamation mark] was successful, but Howerd’s death saw any hope of a series cancelled. 1982’s Second World War themed Then Churchill Said To Me remained untransmitted by the BBC until 2000. Here Howerd’s character bore all the hallmarks of Lurcio. It was shelved due to the Falkland’s War as the subject matter was deemed inappropriate. Watching Howerd in his role of Lurcio and you can see all the facets of his stage craft coming to bear, especially when he breaks the fourth wall. It was probably this film more than the series that spawned his cult university following in the late eighties.
Look, Up Pompeii is of its time. I like it. It made me laugh a lot, even if it is crap around the edges. The role suited Frankie Howerd down to the ground. You wonder if Talbot Rothwell used up some of his best gags on the show instead of the declining Carry On series. [In fact, the film is not written by Rothwell, but by his collaborator Sid Coln].
Go on, watch it and have a little giggle.
“Avé! Saluté! Naughty, naughty! Up Pompeii!”
Yea, I love those movies too - you know exactly what you’re getting and that works for me ☺️
Did Talbot Rothwell stick with Howerd because he got paid more than for the notoriously cheap producer of the Carry Ons? Or did that only apply to the cast and not the writers?
Some top info there @chrisno1 I didn't know that about Howerd's output.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Love those Frankie Howerd movies and series. I must watch them again! Great write-up @chrisno1
Thanks @CoolHandBond @Napoleon Plural @Sir Miles I neglected - because it was late and I was tired - to mention the 1973 series WHOOPS BAGHDAD which reset Howerd's Lurcio as a servant to the Wazir in an Arabian Night's style Persia. I think the character was called Ali Oompha or something. Despite not being quite as good as Up Pompeii, it is still worth a look., although very very much of its time.
Whoops Baghdad just about scrapes by…although Then Churchill Said To Me is best avoided…no wonder it sat on the shelves for years 👀
Thanks for that great write-up on the Up Pompeii film, @chrisno1. I didn't know that there were so few episodes of the TV series. That seems to be the way with British sitcoms. Just this evening they were discussing The Young Ones on BBC Radio 4 and it was revealed that there were only 12 episodes of it altogether. The same was true of Fawlty Towers. Back in the year 2000 I remember recording an episode of The Nazis: A Warning from History on BBC 2. After that programme was over the recording had run on and taped an episode of Up Pompeii. I can't remember the episode title but I do remember him giving the fingers and saying "Salute" throughout! And also always trying to deliver "The Prologue" but being constantly interrupted. I think he did that bit in every episode though? Anyway, I remember finding it very funny. I've liked Frankie Howerd ever since. I really need to buy the series and the film spin-offs. Frankie's very charming in Interviews. He's self-deprecating like Roger Moore, which I've always found an admirable trait. Here's an example in the TV news interview posted below:
Yesterday I took in THE LONG WALK. It's been long time such I had such a violently mixed reaction to a movie. It's very well-made, it's suspenseful, and the two lead actors are great characters you really care about (Mark Hamill is appropriately cartoonish as the villainous Major). But you spend most of 110 minutes waiting for each character to get killed, and it's just a bummer. No surprise, really, that it's tanking at the box office.
SWEET CHARITY (1969)
Cy Coleman, Dorothy Fields and Bob Fosse’s 1966 Broadway success Sweet Charity does not translate well onto film, which is both a shame and a lesson. A shame, because it is a good musical, bitter sweet and full of decent songs and ripe for innovate choreography. A lesson because Fosse, as director, did not later repeat the same mistakes he makes here: a miscast star, stop-start musical numbers and a confused look. Flashy editing does not always do favours to musicals, where the songs are important and need to breathe; if they are buried under paraphernalia the point is lost. Shirley MacLaine, as hostess dancer Charity Hope Valentine, does okay, but her singing voice is ordinary and her acting is too demonstrative – as if Fosse told her to play to the back seat of the cinema not the camera. Here, his innovative ‘jazz’ choreography simply doesn’t work, most notable in the horrible sequence at the Pompeii Club. The constantly moving cameras and splashy edits do not aid our enjoyment. Fosse includes old silent movie tropes, like chapter boards and montage, or sixties quirks like still shots or slow motion, and the film becomes a curiosity rather than an entertainment. It’s as if Fosse has taken everything that ought to be important in the presentation of a stage musical and ripped it to pieces, shovelling in instead unimportant facets of surface cinematic glimmer. Poor John McMartin, the only actor to reprise a role from the New York stage, doesn’t even get to sing his songs. Words taken away from him, his romantic lead loses all presence. So too then the romance. The big numbers – Big Spender, If My Friends Could See Me Now, Where Am I Going – are hustled and frigged about with to the point of becoming nonsense. The whole thing ends up being gawdy and gutter snipe tacky.
Fosse learnt his lesson and when he brought Cabaret to the screen, he cast it brilliantly, let the songs speak for themselves, let the dancing become an intricate part of the action and the story progress fluidly and with bitter pathos. Sweet Charity simply struggles with all four cornerstones crumbling. The misplaced ‘hippy-****’ doesn’t help, immediately dating it. Disappointing.
Lethal weapon - director's cut (1987)
I haven't seen this action classic for years, and I've never seen the director's cut before. The movie is a classic for reasons - it's very well made. The mismatched cops going after drug gangs isn't very original, the X factor is Mel Gibson's performance as the suicidal Riggs. It's a shame Gibson has gone from playing the crazy Riggs to being a real right-wing nut, because he's very talented. But everyone's good in this and Shane Black's script is excellent. The movie's even darker than I remember even though there are lighter moments too. If memory serves the main director's cut extra is a school shooter sequence. It's really good, but tragically that sort of thing has become common in the US and I don't think any action movie would've even shot that sort of a scene today. In my opinion the sequels became too comical even though they are good too.
I didn't know there was a Director's Cut of LW.
American Fiction is worth a watch, it stars our own Jeffery Wright and while I didn't care for him as Felix Leiter, very dour like the Craig films, for me he is a revelation in this and shows all the empathy and intelligence his Leiter lacked, he really seems like a different person so that is a compliment for his acting, I guess.
It's about an author who finds his books aren't selling as they might were he to play up to black American tropes, so to send the thing up, he pens a spoof novel under a pseudonym and sends it off via his agent - only to find it's a big hit with the publishers who write big cheques.
It's similar in a way to that Spike Lee film from some years ago where the black guy imitates a white guy's voice over the phone to the KKK, in a way it's a well-worn idea. That said, it's based on a book called Erasure by Percival Everett who I am interested in because he's done a pastiche on Twain's Huckleberry Finn written from the perspective of the slave, that I mean to read this year, after I've read HF. So Everett may have got there first.
American Fiction drew me in because the lead is sympathetic but flawed and has to deal with his ageing mother who is starting to lose her marbles, also his siblings, his brother and sister. Much of it is based around this early on and the script is funny. One snag, the writer meets with his family after time away and they say how he's overweight or fat, but Wright the actor really isn't. He seems in better shape than in a long time - this seems to be a new trend, almost related to the trans issue one could argue, where someone is what they say they are and you'd better not argue - one critic got into trouble for saying an actress wasn't hot enough to play the role she was in, when it seems she really wasn't but you aren't allowed to say that. They also talk about the colour of blackness in a person's skin - but Wright's 'brother' in the film has much darker 'black' skin than Wright, so is that a thing or are we meant to overlook it after they've drawn attention to the issue?
It's cast very well. The main issue of it for me was that the writer's ruse of sending out his fake novel didn't seem convincing, the gullible white folk were done stereotypically as if to make a point - but I think this plot was meant to be the nub of the film, not his domestic problems. So as this plot line went on, the film weakened a bit. The ending is a bit meta too, which may annoy some people. Some who've read the book say it's a bit disappointing because of the misplaced emphasis of it, so I may order the book in.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing
A 1973 film with Maggie Smith and Timothy Bottoms as a mismatched pair who hook up in Spain. He being the student almost drop out, she being a 'prim spinster' as the I button listing puts it, which dates it. This is very low key, it's sort of a comedy but in my view Bottoms doesn't have the comic chops for it, he isn't innately funny. The opening scene earns goodwill as it puts one in mind of The Graduate which of course was a few years earlier. Without the family established goodwill and laughter associated, such films don't always get appreciated by the modern viewer. I admit I had a couple of G+Ts before this began and had been listening to some singles so maybe wasn't quite a reliable reviewer but scenes did sort of just unfold in a make of it what you want kind of way. Not quite clear how Bottoms jettisoned his cycle tour of Spain to get on Maggie Smith's tour bus and how he is on the group register in the next scene and how or if he is paying for it. A key plot point regarding Smith's physical state is mentioned according to imdd in the first 20 mins but I missed it and the rest of the film doesn't reference it much if at all until the end. I'm glad Talking Picture TV show this sort of thing but I didn't make much of this and while Smith is good you might not bother with any of it if you didn't know it was her, and know and appreciate her other stuff.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
SEE HOW THEY RUN (2022)
See How They Run is a whodunnit based around Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.
Saoirse Ronan demonstrates her comic capabilities as an overenthusiastic rookie Police Constable. Sam Rockwell does his best as her uncooperative senior partner. Both are ordered to investigate the death of Adrien Brody’s obnoxious American film director, and one senses this is because neither of them is regarded very highly – one for being a woman, the other for being an alcoholic. None of this is specified, only implied. Similarly, the closer we get to the reveal of the murderer, the more clues seem to be implied and not specified, which is the opposite of a Christie whodunnit.
The film is mildly amusing, looks good and is for the most part quite enjoyable. The cast seem to be enjoying themselves anyway. Sadly, there isn’t enough intrigue to the mystery nor enough laughs to the humour.
Worth a look, but don’t hold your breath.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (2017)
Disney’s live action remake of its own animated classic of Beauty and the Beast doesn’t reimagine the story to any significance, nor does it borrow from the successful stage show that has been running for decades in various guises around the world. What is does do is remain reasonably faithful to the classic fairy tale, albeit with some generous nods to twenty-first century societal expectations. Emma Watson inhabits a bookish, empathetic and sympathetic heroine, Belle, who is termed ‘fearless’ and generally proves it in her go-getting attitudes. The rest of the cast sort of drift by without any real excitement, although Kevin Kline does alright as her Dad. The main problem is that while the CGI and Animatronics give us special effects and characters previously unimaginable, something of the magic has somehow dissipated. These traditional fairy stories seem to work better as animated films, reminding us of their unreality and removing us from the real world even while the underlying themes remain central to human [romantic] interaction. This live action version just doesn’t have the ‘magic’ you’d expect from a fairy tale.
But let’s not be under generous. The songs are revisited well enough, with much elaborate staging. There is humour, action, romance – it looks grand. There is nothing to be ashamed of liking or anything to disappoint. Putting personal views aside, Beauty and the Beast is a phenomenally good family film musical and that is rare these days. It is not as good as the 1991 version, but that’s one of the Disney Company’s outstanding achievements, so it’d be hard to emulate that, but by golly it is a treat for the eyes and ears and just about a treat for the intellect. Bill Condon directs assuredly. The production design, costuming, etc, is immaculate and spectacular.
Despite my reservations, I rather liked it.
DUNE (2021)
A ponderous space opera from future Bond director Dennis Villeneuve that adapts to enormous length the first segment of Frank Herbert’s well-regaled 1966 sci-fi blockbuster Dune. I have not read the novel, so my only impressions of Dune and the worlds Herbert created come from David Lynch’s disappointing 1984 movie. Lynch’s problems stemmed a lack of funding, which made some of the movie look cheap, and a general malaise around the script, which I felt condensed too much, my evidence mostly relying on an annoying tendency to have his characters think and explain through voice-over soliloquys what we do not see or comprehend on screen.
Villeneuve and fellow screenwriters Jon Spaihts and Eric Roth do the opposite, over indulging in the scenarios as presented by the author – I am assuming much here based on which scenes and characters recur from Lynch’s movie – and veering towards something that looks better than grand [Dune won a slew of technical Oscars] but fails on an emotional and intellectual core. Like Lynch’s version, Villeneuve struggles to explain the characters and where they sit in the narrative, particularly the seemingly all-powerful mentoid sisterhood the Bene Gesserit and the powerful hallucinogenic and mechanical properties of the drug Spice, and instead relies on his visual splendour to drive the narrative. It’s certainly splendid, but the movie, big and blustering as it is, reminded me of those huge 1960s historical epics where spectacle replaces screenplay and the characters wander about fighting and scowling and not getting anywhere fast. The fact Dune needs a sequel rather justifies my point. As beautiful as the thing looks, Dune is as soulless as a black hole. Did I care about anyone on an emotional level? No. Did I care about the story on an intellectual level? No. Did I find myself embroiled in the unfolding civil war story? No. The machinations of the Baron’s, the Emperor’s and the Duke’s court? No. The plight of the Fremen? No. The low-level romance of its two adolescent lovers [who don’t even meet until the final fifteen minutes]? Not one iota.
The film is hopelessly fractured between its narrative and its visuals. Intimate scenes are framed in enormous rooms, leaving the characters isolated and the audience uninvolved, so busy are they looking at the whole scene rather than the point of interest. Explanations come thick and fast. Some relationships seem too chummy, as if the cast had just stepped off their skateboards and onto the set in full costume. The battle scenes are preposterously huge, so much so it is impossible to decipher what anyone is hoping to achieve. I am not certain they tell us anyway, so we have to guess. For such a bold and breathtaking looking enterprise, Dune is simply a big sandy bore. Sci-fi fantasy turns me cold and despite all the deserts and the sunscapes, this film was as wintery as Christmas Eve in Poland. I almost fell asleep during a bizarre sequence where the hero and his mother are escaping the villains by trudging through the desert, hiding in buried tents and he gets high on Spice and freaks out. Later on a secret rebel base turns out to be a monumental piece of engineering architecture buried in a rock face and so large it could never have been concealed; I just shook my head at the inanity of it all. The editing was grim and Joe Walker, I assume under the direction of Villeneuve, hacks about with tension gripping scenes to give the impression of parallel occurences. This does not raise tension, but lowers it. I was trying to remember if Villeneuve did this on Bladerunner 2049 or Arrival. It is a peculiarly modern trick that forgets how to propel a story with pace and excitement.
Hans Zimmer’s music score is equally huge, seeming to run throughout the entire film. I checked. There are three soundtrack albums of different named tracks totalling over three hours of music; the film itself is only two and a half hours long, so I may be right. The music, however, is probably the best thing about the movie, underpinning the bulky narrative and inserting emotional responses when the cast fail to deliver any. The performances are uniformly ordinary.
There is a sequel, and another sequel.
Hmm. Can’t wait.
I respectfully disagree. Yes, the movie is grand and beautiful. But I was impressed when I saw Dune of how well and entertainingly Villeneuve tackled alien cultures, interesting characters and a plot that seemed too adult in the age of Marvel. The action was really well done in my opinion. The choice of filming location for Paul's home planet was excellent too! 😁
I accept that POV. I am well aware there was quiet a lot of love for Dune on this forum. Nothing like writing dangerously...
You're right. I just checked the constitution, and it says people are allowed to have different opinions and disagree. Strange thing. 😄
I don’t like the Dune movies either.
There's an exception for you in the constitution, CHB. 😁
😂
I faced a similar choice to ChrisNo1, between Dune and The King's Man (2021-2) and opted for the latter because it promised more laughs and interest, and ended sooner. Both have Bond connections but the latter wears them on its sleeve - it is surely (goes to check) scored by Brosnan composer David Arnold, and there are those familiar motifs - two characters talking then a cut to an spectacular aerial panoramic, lifted by the orchestral swell.(Turns out in isn't Arnold, it's done by two composers, one who worked on The Kingsmen.) There's Bond wannabe director Matthew Vaughan, Craig's M Ralph Fiennes and QoS's Gemma Artherton.
I enjoyed it a lot, I was drawn in the by the almost steam punk but not quite aesthetic - the modern CGI approach to the telling of the story makes it interesting and it depicts real-life events with some accuracy; it's the background behind them that suggests secrecy and conspiracy, like shadows acting behind the scenes. This seems of its time given what I read in Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps a couple of months ago, the real sense that the actions of real statesman are in fact being coordinated by hidden forces.
It looks good and has some crisp dialogue for Fiennes' lead, such as 'Reputation is what people think of you, character is what you are' - maybe they had the same script doctor as Spectre working on it. The cast really is all-star, we also have Tom Hollander as King George (and the Kaiser Nicholas), Rhys Ifans as the Rasputin, Charles Dance as Kitchener...
I didn't see this on its release - I really didn't much like the first sequel; an early scene in which a victim is turned into a burger really was horrible and it lacked the fizz of its predecessor, unsurprisingly because that was a coming-of-age film, and I think the sequels to those often suffer, as if to say, well, we finished that character development, now what? Kick Ass 2, Superman 2, Robocop 2 and Quantum of Solace suffered in this way imo.
Also, the poster doesn't sell it - it implies Rasputin is one of The King's Man, which is off-putting! (He isn't, he's the enemy.)
There are other snags suggesting why this didn't make big box office. Ralph Fiennes is the star but I'm not sure he can carry a movie by himself and I guess he isn't expected to here; even Conclave had a lot of other actors in it, it's an ensemble. He's in stricken, grim mode of M in No Time to Die here. He lends gravitas but not really fun, not like Colin Firth did in a similar sort of role in the first one. You don't warm to him quite, you are outside of him when you watch. You can't imagine him doing the Darcy role in Brigitte Jones, he lacks that essence of comedy that can make things go with a swing.
In fact, the closest thing Fiennes has been in to this is The Avengers, the box office turkey that had nothing to do with the Marvel comics and really you could imagine that Steed and Mrs Peel belonged to the same world as The Kingsmen, it would take no stretch, but that film bombed with him in the lead, admittedly it was done badly and this one isn't. Another film it slightly resembles is the one with his Avengers co-star Sean Connery, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is better than The Avengers but still didn't do great box office.
Much of The King's Man also put me in mind of The Assassination Bureau (1968) with Oliver Reed and OHMSS stars Diana Rigg and Telly Savalas, a film set around the same time that I have never seen from start to finish and have no urgency to do so, so again not good.
Another admittedly facile reason for The King's Man's lack of clout is there is zero love or sex interest in it. Gemma Artherton is a decent character in a Daphne Moon from Frasier sort of way but there is no crumpet in this nor expectation of any... this is okay in that it again echoes the times; Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps shares that outlook (the film doesn't), but every little helps. Also, there's a fair bit of plot but not a huge amount of dialogue that allows development or rapport between the characters as the film progresses. Now I think of it the last two Bonds were like this too. I guess this follows the format of Wonder Woman in that it's set in World War I, but it neatly sidesteps the fact that our heroes did Sweet FA to stop World War II happening with its grim abandon.
As a kid at school I dissolved in helpless mirth when I read one fellow student's essay on the end of World War I... a poor pupil and desperate to pad things out onto two pages of the exercise book, Latimer had thrown in a couple of lines that, well, might have been true: 'In the ruins of the war, the Kaiser elected a man who would lead Germany back to the greatness of its former glory. His name was Adolf Hitler.' The schoolteacher had written in red ink block capitals 'RUBBISH'.
Sadly, the scene during the end credits propositions this very idea, which is indeed rubbish and while this film was likely set up to be a new franchise, it is hard to see how they could have pursued this one, given that it verges on very bad taste to take liberties with the truth when it comes to Hitler, especially as I'm not sure The King's Man is so egregious in that regard.
Anyway, I mostly very much enjoyed this something-for-nothing free movie on an evening with a glass of wine.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE KREMLIN LETTER (1970)
An enthralling Cold War spy film directed by John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle and Treasure of the Sierra Madre) and based on the novel of the same name written by Noel Behn.
Lt.Cdr Charles Rone, a United States Navy officer is recruited by an OSS syndicate headed by 'The Highwayman' to retrieve a letter of crucial importance to the United States from Russia. Aiding him in this operation are a team of unique talents, who must foil Russian counterintelligence in order to extricate the letter.
Starring Max von Sydow, Richard Boone, Bibi Anderson, Dean Jagger, Orson Welles and Patrick O' Neal as Lt.Cdr Rone, 'The Kremlin Letter' is a realistic take on the world of Cold War espionage and makes for a suspenseful viewing experience.
Recommended.
(120 minutes)
One thing I found strange is how the heroes all the time work to keep nations in the "great" war or get them to join in on the slaughter.
The OSS was disbanded in 1945. Are you sure it wasn't the CIA since it's a cold war story?