Wasn't Lorenzo Semple, he of the Batman series and early Never Say Never Again draft, behind that? If so, I recall his saying in Starlog how the original King Kong was very simplistic in terms of special effects, only for someone to write in and say that having a bloke running around in a monkey suit was hardly any better!
Liam Neeson plays ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills whose daughter is kidnapped by Albanian people traffickers in Paris. He sets out to rescue her and chaos ensues on a monumental scale.
Taken is a power drive of a movie. Little subtlety, gory action sequences and a grotesque narrative speed by like a speeding bullet and take us on the ride with it. The movie proves stupendously tense during the kidnap Bryan witnesses over the phone, climaxed with the unforgettable line: “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.” The film loses its way a little after this, preferring violent incident to any semblance of explanation. Bodies, alive and dead, are left all over the place. The murky real life existence of criminal gangs like these is forgotten in favour of brutal fights and noisy chases and blood splattered gunbattles.
Neeson looks suitably exhausted by the end of it all. In fact the almost bulletproof hero seems only to suffer injury during his final confrontation, so he was probably exhausted as well. Vividly directed by Pierre Morel, scripted with bare bones by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and edited to within an inch of its life by Frederic Thoraval. Maggie Grace is the too childish daughter. Famke Jansen the estranged ex-wife and mother.
Like The Transporter series, if you leave your brain at the door, Taken is more than decent entertainment despite the nastiness. If I’m honest, with a bit more exposition and the introduction of a love interest, this is the sort of no-thought thrill ride I would prefer my Bond films to be like. All that introspection should be left at the door. Rather like my brain.
Several sources say some Americans have decided not to go to Europe because they believe the risk of getting kidnapped is too great, all because of the movie Taken. I don know if this should make people laugh or cry.
I saw this a couple of nights ago; I agree about the tone being uneven- it really doesn't know what it wants to be: satire, action, comedy, drama, it tries a bit of everything and ends up as none of them. I thought it started out fun but lost its way in the final act really badly and became quite dull and muddled. And that's before an ending which just felt unearned and as if you're watching another film. The Arnie one is much dumber, but I'd say it knows exactly what it wants to be and sticks to it, plus it manages to hit just as many satirical points as this one does even though it's got an opera-singing guy in a little cart wearing fairy lights as one of the baddies. This one has a really unfunny Kardashians pastiche which is entirely pointless as far as I could tell: what was the actual joke?
I'm not totally down on it as it's perfectly watchable and entertaining, even if by the ending it did start to strain my patience, but I wouldn't want Wright near a Bond film on this evidence, I just don't think he's good enough.
Liam Neeson has talked about it himself: Americans thanking him for "warning them" against Europe by making Taken. Even a teacher who couldn't get her class to travel here because they'd seen Taken.
This movie is toilet; a hapless, rubbishy enterprise from the very beginning to the very end. For a top line blockbuster of the world’s most enormously popular cinematic franchise Star Wars 9 is a travesty of storytelling narrative from tip to toe, a simply appalling exercise in plotting and exposition. Everything and anything is chucked at the screen and it all comes tumbling down like the Tower of Babel, languages, nations, conflicts, friendships, cliches and all. Whenever the chance arises the writers / director / whoever chucks in a laser battle / sword fight / explosion as if mere sound and fury will keep the audience happy. You need more than that. You need an identifiable story line and Star Wars 9, if it ever had one, has seen its narrative go missing in action. I didn’t have a clue what was happening from the scrolling credits to the explosive climax. Despite all the noisy, flashy SFX, my overriding impression of the film wasn’t awe and wonder, but why Jedi heroine Daisy Ridley, whatever her circumstances, wears an expression of permanent constipation. I may be put at a disadvantage having not watched Episodes 1 – 8 for a good while, but I don’t think I have been. This movie is absolute toilet. Complete and utter toilet. I urge you never to watch it.
Fair enough, but I'd still say these are outliers, and not true of enormous swaths of the country. You'd be surprised how many things about dumb Americans aren't true--one that comes to mind is the title of THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III being changed to THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE because Americans would think it's a sequel to movies they hadn't seen...nope.
One can never say that all Americans are a certain way. I know there are many millions of Americans who are smarter than I am and some of the best universities in the world are in the USA. Having said that I'm not alone in having the impression that many Americans show a lack of interest and knowledge of the world outside their borders. You can say a lot about the empires of the modern world such as Britain, France and the USSR, but I suspect adults who had gone to school could place the countries they went to war against on a map. I know YouTube videos and talkshows are far from science, but they seem to have no problems finding people on the streets who can't even find the USA on a map! Americans who didn't go to Europe because of Taken must be a very small part of the total population. Few Americans travel abroad, many want to go other places than Europe and of those who seriously considered going to Europe a percentage less than 100 didn't go because of that movie. I hope those who come are welcome to enjoy their visit on a continent that has crime, but is generally safer than where they came from.
One thing to consider is that popping off to Europe is a lengthy and expensive proposition for us (I get to go to England frequently because my job pays for it), so we're not a country filled with globetrotters. But, God knows, there's a lot of ignorance here, not just of Europe but our OWN country. (You can see interviews with people not being able to say who we fought in the American Revolution, who Abraham Lincoln was, etc.) Then again, one time when I was in England an Englishwoman who was at least well into her twenties was stunned when I told her that the "Keep Calm and Carry On" expression originated in London during the Blitz!
OK, enough of this. Seen any good movies lately, folks?
Kevin Costner gives a star making performance as Eliot Ness, leader of the crime-busting ‘Untouchables’, a branch of the U.S. Treasury Department charged with breaking organised crime, specifically the Chicago mobsters who ruled the bootleg drinks industry during Prohibition. Brian de Palma directs with a seasoned eye to the action, the politics and the domestic. The three seamlessly combine as Ness juggles family and career, sees his colleagues murdered and justice seen to be done. The film scores marks for not being ambivalent towards its violence: Eliot Ness does not want to break the law, but feels duty bound to do so if it creates a longer term peace; the foursome of law enforcers are all reluctant heroes; death, when it comes, is unpleasant and bloody. The film is based on a TV show based on a book based on real life and shares authenticity alongside fantasy.
Sean Connery famously won an Oscar playing an Irishman with a Scot’s accent, but he deserves it for a fine portrait of an older man seizing the opportunity to right all the wrongs he has stored. He is hard-as-nails and rough as sandpaper, yet there is a dignity and stateliness to his orations and actions. Costner already inhabits the bearing of a future President, his pared back performance fully charging Ness with both vulnerability and an inner steel. Andy Garcia and Charles Martin Smith do decent work as George Stone and Oscar Wallace, the lesser pair of Untouchables. Robert De Niro piled on the pounds to play Al Capone, sneering and glowering with equal contempt. If he eventually bursts into caricature, it seems to suit this version of Capone who almost believes his own hype, outlaid in the movie’s opening monologue.
The story doesn’t bear close examination as it delivers only potted highlights of the true history, but they are great highlights, a series of action sequences that also allow the characters’ motivations to be revealed and their emotions to breathe. David Mamet’s screenplay, while remaining terse, has depth and empathy. We feel for these men, we welcome them almost as everyman heroes so identifiable they are. Hence, the deaths, when they come, are shocking and powerfully delivered. The film looks good, with super photography, unfussy edits and excellent production values. Ennio Morricone’s music score is suitably elegant, occasionally hinting at his spaghetti western offerings, suggesting the old west has come to Chicago. In fact, de Palma films much of the action as if they are western gunfights – including one with Mounties on horseback – which also provides a visual familiarity. The movie ends on a satisfying note, does not outstay its welcome and leaves us panting a little for more. Unlike today’s blockbusters, no sequel was ever envisioned and quite right too.
The Untouchables is excellent entertainment and was rightly nominated for a clutch of awards around the globe. Very, very good stuff.
Is that definitely untrue? I know they added the ‘King’ as ‘George III’ is more obviously a King to UK folk than outside, but I don’t know if the III definitely wasn’t removed because people might think it was a sequel.
I caught much of The Untouchables the other night; of course the main character who has the bearing of a future Present as @chrisno1 puts it is Robert DeNiro's Al Capone, whose finger wagging manner and aggrieved put upon nature while talking to the press very much anticipates Donald Trump, ironic that DeNiro hates Trump.
This time around I felt for the first time that Costner was playing up the nerdish side of Ness, and that Connery's Irish accent really didn't cut it as and when he tried to wheel it out, ironically like Attenborough's Scottish accent in Jurassic Park. Of course they have to have Andrew Garcia as part of the gang to make it seem less anti-Italian.
I’ve always loved the Untouchables, it’s full of great moments from beginning to end; it had a really fun (and gory!) video game too!
Armani did the outfits, and Garcia and Connery both get some pretty neat duds.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,889Chief of Staff
Frankenstein (2025)
Written & directed by Guillermo del Toro - well, re-written by him at any rate 🤨 but then it’s a story that’s been filmed multiple times and I guess he has to try and bring something new to the table.
This isn’t Frankenstein as I know it - admittedly I haven’t read the book 🤗 It’s visually stunning though, but I’m not sure who this film is aimed at…? The direction is excellent and it’s very well acted but, for me, it’s just lacks…soul?
At 2hours 29 mins it’s rather long…but I didn’t feel the movie actually dragged…this is definitely a movie where del Toro was allowed to do whatever he wanted - and it shows. You’ll have to make up your own mind if that’s to the movies benefit or not….
I’d rather watch the 1931 James Whale version any day…
Tom Gries’s career as a director was mostly spent helming episodes for television shows, stuff like Batman and The Westerner. Occasionally he branched into cinema. Will Penny is his masterful western. It stars Charlton Heston as the titular fifty year old cattle drover who accepts the chance to spend his winter riding the line for the Flat Iron Ranch in the mountainous southern Rockies. His two pals, Dutchy and Blue, stay in a flea bitten town because the former has been injured during a shoot-out with the Quint family, a gang of violent, uncouth rawhiders led by a wild eyed preacher, Donald Pleasance. Bruce Dern and Gene Rutherford are suitably despicable as the sons. While running the line, Will is again attacked by the Quints and this time left for dead; he miraculously returns to the Lineman’s shack only to find it occupied by homely squatters, a mother and her child, Catherine and Horace Allen. As he recovers, an affection grows between the mismatched Will and the squatters. As winter draws their domesticity is ruptured by the chaotic, violent reappearance of Preacher Quint.
Heston is superb as the rugged and hardy hero, a man of his time, yet seemingly outside of it. He struggles with affection and communication, is reluctant to commit to a long term plan, and sees his life disappearing faster than he can live it. He isn’t an uproarious figure, which makes him far more believable, and his attitude to violence is mostly cautious: he uses it when threatened and no more and not always to kill. The film lacks a happy ending, which is both emotionally satisfying and a little sorrowful; one’s heart goes with Catherine and her quiet passion, but one’s head stays with Will Penny.
Tom Gries wrote and directed this elegant and well-observed film, adapting it from a TV show. It is beautifully photographed by Lucien Ballard and has some great support performances to compliment Heston’s less demonstrative central character. Joan Hackett as Catherine, Lee Majors as Blue and Ben Johnson as Alex [the Flat Iron foreman] are all excellent; Majors in particular offers a surprisingly nuanced and compassionate performance and one wonders on this evidence why he wasn’t cast in True Grit as John Wayne’s young foil. For us, Clifton James and Anthony Zerbe both feature and do not disgrace themselves. Donald Pleasance’s Preacher Quint is so over the top he almost tips the film into parody territory, but there is something genuine in his wildness, the constant recitation of Biblical verse making him far more menacing than he would be if he simply shot people and galled them with insults. One cowers from the religious fervour of his violence and his sordid ideals which turns ridiculous behaviour into something far more menacing. The crazily devout never cease to believe in their sense of right.
Will Penny is rightly regarded as a classic western of the sixties, some would say the whole oeuvres, although that might be a push too far. The character depth and the understated manner of their reveal is extraordinary for this kind of genre picture and Heston offers a career best performance to engage our interest and sympathy. 1967 was a great year for lead actors and Heston was overlooked when it came to awards, but he wasn’t alone [Sidney Poitier, Richard Burton, Lee Marvin, all suffered] and that might have offered him some comfort. The man himself considered Will Penny to be the finest film he ever made, and that’s some compliment when you look at his filmography.
The Choral, Alan Bennett's film directed by long-term collaborator Nicholas Hytner.
It's great to see these old timers' work back onscreen, not to mention actors such as Alun Armstrong, Roger Allam and Mark Addy, so its three cheers for many of them still being alive. It's about a conductor who has relocated to the Yorkshire village of wherever it is and is asked to be the choirmaster putting on their local production of The Passion, he has lived in Germany for the last few years so much of the more entertaining drama comes from the locals' suspicion about his sympathies, though this strand is not extended for the rest of the movie, and that is one of the disappointing aspects - ideas are picked up, put down, other ideas are then picked up, there isn't much follow through.
It looks great and is never boring. But it felt inauthentic. And it had moments of crassness. Deliberate or otherwise, I don't know. We have a lead black cast member who is a member of the Salvation Army. Her blackness is never ever mentioned. When in a village like this or anywhere in 1915 or thereabouts, all anyone would say to them is 'Heya blackie!' Does it matter? I don't care if someone wants a black Henry V in Shakespeare or something, it's just acting. But here you want to believe in it, and that the young lads are really about to be going off to war, for the full poignancy. Or are we meant to be colour blind? Do I want to sit watching a film thinking, well, am I racist for thinking this, or historically exacting?
An early scene has a young lad delivering telegrams from the King to unlucky families, this can never not be moving. One mother bursts into tears and hugs and kisses him. 'You're well in there,' observes his friend, who is tagging along with his bike, staying out of sight. 'It's the grief, you can capitalise on that!' It just feels crass and you're not sure if it's Bennet being like that or the character, and many of them don't really engage your sympathies quite. The lads seem like they're taken from The History Boys, another Bennett film. Can gay writers be sexist towards their own sex? It's like they're primarily strapping young lads - or is that any less a valid perception of how they actually are?
All the acting is good, it looks great as I've said, but... Fiennes is good in it but doesn't surprise, he's not called upon to surprise really, the whole thing could be Alan Bennet as written by AI. One scene towards the end comes from a Bennet-penned Talking Heads as recollected by Thora Hird. But really, in this all the stereotypes are present and correct.
Also there is the question of whether I like Alan Bennett or not, I like his memoirs but his films, there's always something queasy or uneasy about it that brings out in me the side that Bennett seems most eager to send up, I feel a bit Maggie Smith about it all. it feels more a drama about Alan Bennett rather than real life. There just feels something wrong about this, the way the war is represented given the year it's set. It all feels with the benefit of hindsight too much.
Breathless, hyper violent spy thriller starring Angelina Jolie as a CIA operative fingered as a Russian terrorist. Can she prove her innocence before a series of political assassinations destabilise the relationship between the White House and the Kremlin? Salt won’t surprise anyone. The film is as grim as a reaper. There isn’t an ounce of humour or irony to the script and the whole two hours passes in a blur of sickening bloody incidents. Well presented, sure, in an ugly fashion, but repetitive, implausible and even somewhat laughable. Philip Noyce has made a clutch of good movies over his long career [Dead Calm, anybody?] but he isn’t suited to this kind of picture, which lacks all tension and relies on thrills to keep us excited. After the first hour, the endless fighting just become boring. A solid product, but a little more thought might have brought higher artistic reward.
William Cameron Menzies was notionally a production designer, but he occasionally ventured into directing or producing. Invaders from Mars is a celebrated sci-fi movie from the McCarthy era of political upheaval and as such it slides into the ‘they live among us’ sub-genre of science fiction. It is remarkably elementary in narrative and execution with an uninteresting script lumbered with cliches and a Wizard of Oz ending which tricks us – or maybe not…? [watch the film, you’ll see what I mean].
What makes Invaders from Mars interesting is Menzies eye for interior design and camera framing. Menzies ensures the two work together to provide a theatre-style view of the action, with fore, mid and back grounds as well as an almost classical sense of proportion. Hence, rooms seem to be much larger than they appear, with walls and corridors stretching into the near or far distance and ceilings being high and out of eyesight. The planetarium scenes were filmed on enormous sound stages when the setting is merely an office. I feel Ken Adam must have noted this for his stupendous sixties designs for the Bond films and Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove share this sense of excess. The effect is so startling and obvious – once you spot it, you can’t look past it – that many film historians wrongly assumed Invaders from Mars had been shot for 3D, as the framing is so similar. The red and green hues given to the colour pallet merely aided the confusion. Daringly, Menzies directs with an eye to the bizarre angle, shooting from above or below the action and through windows and doorways, giving the audience the feeling they are physically involved in what unfolds.
I watched a badly faded and scratchy print, but the film still entertains on that elementary level. It is clearly a children’s film and panders to the expectations of its audience while allowing adults enough of interest to not turn them cold. It’s strictly B-movie fare, but does more than enough to lift it to the top of that bracket.
Federico Fellini tends to divide opinion. He straddles the post-war Italian realist and neo-realist movements and never seems to fall into either category. Fellini always seems more interested in a type of cinematic magical realism, with allusions to the psychological makeup of characters and their fantastical imaginations. That’s even hinted at in Nights of Cabiria, a melodrama of over-intensity and stagey acting, noisy and bustling, crisp and punchy, yet emotionally blunt. Cabiria, played in a theatrical Chaplinesque fashion by Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina, is a middle aged prostitute whose mistreatment by the men she meets never weakens her egotistical resolve. Having started in the trade from the age of fifteen – she tells us, to appease her mother – Cabiria has suffered more slings and arrows than most poor unfortunates. What makes her slightly unbelievable is her endearing stubbornness. You would think she might learn from all the dreadful experiences, yet a yearning for an ordinary life of domesticity, children and family constantly leaves her constantly open to the very abuse she so despises. Is that a Circle of Life? Quite possibly, for Cabiria ends the movie at exactly the same point we first met her, only worse – she hasn’t just had her purse stolen but her whole life’s savings. The curious life-affirming coda where the distraught Cabiria flickers a smile at the party goers in the street she walks on feels entirely inappropriate to one so desperately badly treated.
Let’s not be too hard on Masina, who as an actress seems flawed, given to demonstrative facial mannerisms and screaming. She makes the heroine dislikeable from the off and only succeeds in capturing our hearts at the final reel when all becomes lost. Perhaps all Italian prostitutes in Rome were dislikeable c.1957. One thinks not. Rare moments of pathos at least allow us to see inside the hard exterior, but it is tough going indeed, like chipping at concrete with a spoon. The love interest, Oscar, initially seems driven by genuine concern, but it is an exceptionally well-played ruse [Francois Perier, very good]; even the audience is deceived. I was thinking of all those people scammed out of cash by internet trolls – deception by love is obviously not a recent phenomenon. The moment of realisation however is as telegraphed as a car headlight, and the scales fall quicker from our eyes than they do from Cabiria’s, so there is no shock to her demise. It is a sign of Fellini’s solid practical approach to the subject. Perhaps a more flamboyant camera, a more restrained performance from the star, a less angry script might have deceived us more – for we don’t side with Cabiria, we tend to suffer her not suffer with her.
Nights of Cabiria is well regarded in the critical community, but it isn’t a happy film and it feels what it is: a sordid movie with sordid people in a sordid environment. It is no surprise to see that paragon of the poor Pier Paolo Pasolini turn up in the writing credits. He always loved a dirty story and probably dragged what was already an overcast tale into something even more terrible a burden. Pasolini’s time and redemption would come later with his political films; this social realism doesn’t suit him and doesn’t suit Fellini either. Hence the scene at the theatre where Cabiri is mesmerised by a hypnotist and displays some of her genuine self stands out as affecting and emotionally subjective, because to do so Fellini raises us into the realm of fantasy, or half-fantasy to be accurate, the same place his best movies took us, those dream worlds of 8½ and Juliet of the Spirits. The genuine dirt and grime of the slums of Caracalla really doesn’t make for sensitive, observant drama under Fellini’s hands. He seems to be waiting for something more personal to emerge and buries the story under tirades of noisy, unimportant dialogue until he can wield the prerequisite magical baton.
If I’m honest, Fellini’s previous movie, La Strada, feels more pure in character. Everything here has a grim Pirandello-esque tragedy to it, farcical elements without the humour. The scenes featuring Lazzari, a drunk film director, anticipate La Dolce Vita, but they don’t make us laugh. Nor do the prostitutes who argue, fight and curse with each other and carouse with scooter boys, disdainful of pimps, clients and the world. Even religion is spat at. The Vatican didn’t like it. The whole movie was reimagined as the musical Sweet Charity, and that’s an ugly affair as well; Pretty Woman is its antithesis and that, for all its straightforwardness, is far more agreeable. Maybe the topic of damaged prostitutes simply isn’t easily portrayable.
A middling success then, with good moments and some characterful insight, but ultimately unfulfilling.
I reviewed this movie before back in 2021. I watched it last night with my Dad, whose been laid up with replacement hip surgery, but I had to curtail midway as he got upset, settle him down with tea and sympathy in the other lounge and rejoin after ten or fifteen minutes. He got upset because the film reminded him of Mum. It is the kind of movie she used to make him watch.
😒😪😧
I can’t tell you how many times I have watched White Christmas. I hear stories from people famous and friendly who watch the same film every Christmas. Patrick MacNee said he watched Scrooge with Alistair Sim; a mate of mine told me he insists the family watch It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve; White Christmas would probably be mine, although I do not watch it every year.
A simple story, simply told with oodles of humour, decent songs, decent dance numbers and a bucket load of sweetness and Christmas good cheer. It is warm and heartfelt and truly a musical of magic moments. In many respects, White Christmas doesn’t deserve to be treated with such devotion. To be super critical, it isn’t that good, delivering a creaking production formula from the outset with an obvious studio set of a US Army camp, Christmas Eve, 1944. The only exterior filming are the shots at whatever railway platforms they used for Vermont Rail Station. Interiors are lush, impossibly lush and with impossible dimensions; the ski lodge hotel where the action takes place has no staff, looks very small yet can accommodate a whole division of soldiers and their families. The songs are numerously repeated and the dance numbers, with one exception, inserted to a) give Danny Kaye something to show off and b) add up the runtime. Some of the songs are not even that good.
So why is White Christmas so successful? Well, I think it boils down to two things, both hard to measure. Firstly, the gameness and attractiveness of the four leads. Bing Crosby [okay, a little old, but attractive in a cosy fashion], Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen are simply wonderful in the playing, understanding and acting up to not just the nuances of the silly romantic shenanigans but the quick fire humour which runs through almost ever single dialogue exchange. Individually, some scenes are miraculously good – Crosby and Kaye arguing as they undress in unison; Vera-Ellen proposing to Kaye; Kaye trying to set up Crosby with a vacant showgirl; the foursome meeting in the buffet car of a New York bound train – the standard of acting never drops from go to gone.
Secondly, as a whole the film is almost unfeasibly gentle, saccharine and light-heartedly elegant, a high sign of a confection of excellence. Now, some audiences won’t like this kind of fluff and I have reservations sometimes, but the attention paid to the content by those mentioned in point (1) above as well as the production team who clearly relished making everything look so pristine and perfect, ensures the quality never drops and the sweetness remains cloying and smile inducing. This kind of detail, an unquantifiable niceness, is so hard to achieve on film, theatre, radio, record, wherever, that when you find it, if it suits you, you cling to it. So pleasant a viewing is White Christmas, it’s hard to believe the film was directed by tough as nails Micheal Curtiz.
Anything else? I don’t really have to mention the title song, but I will. Just beautiful, and beautifully presented at the start [with melancholy, war and mud, far from home, as envisaged by Irving Berlin when he wrote it] and at the end [with snow, Santa, presents, family, food and home, as the song came to embody].
Look, I know it isn’t everyone’s cup of Christmas Cheer, but I unashamedly love it. White Christmas is the kind of studio controlled genre picture the film industry simply cannot make anymore; when they try it usually dips too far into farce, sentiment or misery. I have a soft spot for Christmas movies. They tend to deliver happiness like no other genre of film. White Christmas is one of the best.
That’s a moving “from the heart” review @chrisno1 Everyone has their own special movies that mean so much to them, may you and your dad enjoy White Christmas for many years to come.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Every Thanksgiving I watch THE WIZARD OF OZ, as kind of a tribute to my childhood (in those pre-cable days, it was always shown on Thanksgiving, and it was a big deal to us kiddos). Such a simple, beautiful film. The witch isn't the victim of anti-green prejudice. Glinda isn't an emaciated Mean Girl. The wizard isn't a dictator with a eugenicist agenda. Sometimes things need to be left the way they are.
Marlon Brando is brilliant as Terry Malloy, an ex-prize fighter slumming it as a longshoreman on the New York dock and doing dodgy favours for his brother Charlie who works for the corrupt union boss Johnny Friendly. If Brando is outstanding, he is matched by the heavyweight talents of Lee J. Cobb – never better than when scowling and growling – and Rod Steiger – an actor who was even more method than Marlon and is probably even more spell binding when he’s on screen. Karl Malden chips in with a typically robust turn as a sympathetic Catholic priest and Eva Marie Saint impresses as the waif-like love interest. The support cast is peppered with ex-boxers [Tony Galento and Abe Simon among them] and the atmosphere is like a boxing match itself with words, actions and vicious intent swung both wildly and with precision and timing. Director Elia Kazan revels in the dank watery and mist bound surrounds of the waterfront, using them as a visible metaphor for cloying corruption and suffocating surrounds. The waterfront workforce is notable for being multicultural at a time when America still had colour bars in some states. It is a tough story populated by tough people and it is surprising to discover the tenderness in Brando’s performance, manifesting itself mostly when he deals with pigeons, and occasionally in his confused wooing. Terry Malloy’s relationship with Edie Dolan [Eva Marie Saint], sister of a man whose murder preludes the main action, is a rough old love affair, bringing memories of the violent, possessive, yet honest brutality we saw in A Streetcar Named Desire.
In fact, while Bud Schulberg won awards for his screenplay, you rather wonder what Arthur Miller’s original effort resembled, or what a craftsman like Tennessee Williams would have made of it. While Schulberg ensures the action moves quickly and concisely, including several neat analogies towards the union-worker relationship, the wider circle of communism versus democracy, or the role of the church and religion in society, the message is heavy handed and the ferocious climax, when it comes, makes little sense. The action is a bit whirl-windy, veering quickly from place to place in the manner of a thriller when the story is more significant than that. As such, On The Waterfront fails as a love story or a political allegory and while it might be high on social comment, the resolution by violence seems unrealistic, for the reaction of Terry Malloy’s fellow workers is non-existent. They watch the action and refuse to be involved. Malloy fights the battle for all of them alone; they remain as static as they had been at the start. The eventual bonding only achieved via a feat of mammoth physical exertion. This is not a film for the intellect but one for the masochist. As if to stress the point, composer Leonard Bernstein provides a noisy, melodramatic music score which rears its ugly head at entirely inappropriate moments.
Critics and many actors hark on and on about Brando and in particular the taxi scene – which apparently the actor rewrote – but as the film world moves on and performances get reappraised, it is less and less riveting. Maybe it has been imitated and mimicked to the point of parody. Maybe it simply was never that good. If anything, it isn’t even Brando’s best scene in the film, that comes when he walks Edie back to her flat, their first conversation intimate and suggestive [the play with her glove is a masterpiece of controlled Freudian desire]; equally the early moments featuring Lee J. Cobb and his ghoulish mob have so much genuine power you can sense the fear, the intimidation seeping through the celluloid. Both Brando’s and Rod Steiger’s pensive performances bring this home brilliantly, but we don’t see that in the taxi, where the dialogue is too abrupt and doesn’t come naturally to the scene. It clearly hasn’t been written by the same author and that directly affects the performance, which suddenly becomes overwrought when it was once a coiled angry spring.
For all that, a worthwhile watch. Eight Oscars? Seems a lot. Maybe not in 1954. Oh well, I don’t know so much.
The management of this theatre suggests that, for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture, you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending of Witness for the Prosecution.
So read an announcement at the end of this brilliantly black comic court room drama which surprisingly originated as a theatre show written by Agatha Christie. In deference to the long departed Dame, I won’t be divulging anything about the plot. Suffice to say it is clever and befits Christie’s oeuvre. The role of ailing barrister Sir Lionel Robarts was expanded by writer/director Billy Wilder when he adapted the stage play. Here, Charles Laughton makes the lumbering, acute and caustically barb-tongued old bastard a loveable legal hero, a man we can both admire and admonish. His faults are numerous, but Laughton makes him appealing and intelligent. Elsa Lanchester [his wife in real life] matches him as the starchy nurse Miss Plimsoll, less a nurse than a verbal door mat. It’s a pity the ‘star’ is Tyrone Power, for he overeggs his part and almost tips the action into farce. There’s an amusing moment mid-film when, during a flashback scene at a cinema, his character watches the western Jesse James; Power starred in the film.
Witness for the Prosecution is mightily funny and has a decent twisty little plot. Laughton, Lanchester and a highly cliched Marlene Dietrich, who must have been fed up with playing German chanteuses by now, keep the whole thing together and it remains watchable even when the plot is floundering in the sea of its own trouble.
Last night I watched FLIGHT RISK, released earlier this year. All the time it was on I kept thinking of the SOUTH PARK episode where they were making a movie, and they bring in Mel Gibson as potential director. "Say what you will about him," one producer says, "the S.O.B. knows story structure." This movie proves it. Mel doesn't have anything superfluous in this film... you know that knife is going to come into play... you know she doesn't put on those sunglasses just because it's bright... she doesn't just open the medicine kit to get scissors... The result is a tight, fun suspense thriller, but don't be surprised if, when it's done, you're left saying "Wait, wouldn't they have made these precautions?," "Wouldn't this have been more logical?," etc. Another plus: Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg chews the scenery as an over-the-top hitman. Good way to kill time.
Comments
Wasn't Lorenzo Semple, he of the Batman series and early Never Say Never Again draft, behind that? If so, I recall his saying in Starlog how the original King Kong was very simplistic in terms of special effects, only for someone to write in and say that having a bloke running around in a monkey suit was hardly any better!
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That's very simple from Semple
TAKEN (2008)
Liam Neeson plays ex-CIA operative Bryan Mills whose daughter is kidnapped by Albanian people traffickers in Paris. He sets out to rescue her and chaos ensues on a monumental scale.
Taken is a power drive of a movie. Little subtlety, gory action sequences and a grotesque narrative speed by like a speeding bullet and take us on the ride with it. The movie proves stupendously tense during the kidnap Bryan witnesses over the phone, climaxed with the unforgettable line: “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.” The film loses its way a little after this, preferring violent incident to any semblance of explanation. Bodies, alive and dead, are left all over the place. The murky real life existence of criminal gangs like these is forgotten in favour of brutal fights and noisy chases and blood splattered gunbattles.
Neeson looks suitably exhausted by the end of it all. In fact the almost bulletproof hero seems only to suffer injury during his final confrontation, so he was probably exhausted as well. Vividly directed by Pierre Morel, scripted with bare bones by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen and edited to within an inch of its life by Frederic Thoraval. Maggie Grace is the too childish daughter. Famke Jansen the estranged ex-wife and mother.
Like The Transporter series, if you leave your brain at the door, Taken is more than decent entertainment despite the nastiness. If I’m honest, with a bit more exposition and the introduction of a love interest, this is the sort of no-thought thrill ride I would prefer my Bond films to be like. All that introspection should be left at the door. Rather like my brain.
Very good.
Several sources say some Americans have decided not to go to Europe because they believe the risk of getting kidnapped is too great, all because of the movie Taken. I don know if this should make people laugh or cry.
I'd take it with a grain of salt. Just talk to any European about how tired they are of American tourists.
I saw this a couple of nights ago; I agree about the tone being uneven- it really doesn't know what it wants to be: satire, action, comedy, drama, it tries a bit of everything and ends up as none of them. I thought it started out fun but lost its way in the final act really badly and became quite dull and muddled. And that's before an ending which just felt unearned and as if you're watching another film. The Arnie one is much dumber, but I'd say it knows exactly what it wants to be and sticks to it, plus it manages to hit just as many satirical points as this one does even though it's got an opera-singing guy in a little cart wearing fairy lights as one of the baddies. This one has a really unfunny Kardashians pastiche which is entirely pointless as far as I could tell: what was the actual joke?
I'm not totally down on it as it's perfectly watchable and entertaining, even if by the ending it did start to strain my patience, but I wouldn't want Wright near a Bond film on this evidence, I just don't think he's good enough.
Liam Neeson has talked about it himself: Americans thanking him for "warning them" against Europe by making Taken. Even a teacher who couldn't get her class to travel here because they'd seen Taken.
STAR WARS IX: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (2019)
This movie is toilet; a hapless, rubbishy enterprise from the very beginning to the very end. For a top line blockbuster of the world’s most enormously popular cinematic franchise Star Wars 9 is a travesty of storytelling narrative from tip to toe, a simply appalling exercise in plotting and exposition. Everything and anything is chucked at the screen and it all comes tumbling down like the Tower of Babel, languages, nations, conflicts, friendships, cliches and all. Whenever the chance arises the writers / director / whoever chucks in a laser battle / sword fight / explosion as if mere sound and fury will keep the audience happy. You need more than that. You need an identifiable story line and Star Wars 9, if it ever had one, has seen its narrative go missing in action. I didn’t have a clue what was happening from the scrolling credits to the explosive climax. Despite all the noisy, flashy SFX, my overriding impression of the film wasn’t awe and wonder, but why Jedi heroine Daisy Ridley, whatever her circumstances, wears an expression of permanent constipation. I may be put at a disadvantage having not watched Episodes 1 – 8 for a good while, but I don’t think I have been. This movie is absolute toilet. Complete and utter toilet. I urge you never to watch it.
Fair enough, but I'd still say these are outliers, and not true of enormous swaths of the country. You'd be surprised how many things about dumb Americans aren't true--one that comes to mind is the title of THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III being changed to THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE because Americans would think it's a sequel to movies they hadn't seen...nope.
One can never say that all Americans are a certain way. I know there are many millions of Americans who are smarter than I am and some of the best universities in the world are in the USA. Having said that I'm not alone in having the impression that many Americans show a lack of interest and knowledge of the world outside their borders. You can say a lot about the empires of the modern world such as Britain, France and the USSR, but I suspect adults who had gone to school could place the countries they went to war against on a map. I know YouTube videos and talkshows are far from science, but they seem to have no problems finding people on the streets who can't even find the USA on a map! Americans who didn't go to Europe because of Taken must be a very small part of the total population. Few Americans travel abroad, many want to go other places than Europe and of those who seriously considered going to Europe a percentage less than 100 didn't go because of that movie. I hope those who come are welcome to enjoy their visit on a continent that has crime, but is generally safer than where they came from.
One thing to consider is that popping off to Europe is a lengthy and expensive proposition for us (I get to go to England frequently because my job pays for it), so we're not a country filled with globetrotters. But, God knows, there's a lot of ignorance here, not just of Europe but our OWN country. (You can see interviews with people not being able to say who we fought in the American Revolution, who Abraham Lincoln was, etc.) Then again, one time when I was in England an Englishwoman who was at least well into her twenties was stunned when I told her that the "Keep Calm and Carry On" expression originated in London during the Blitz!
OK, enough of this. Seen any good movies lately, folks?
THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)
Kevin Costner gives a star making performance as Eliot Ness, leader of the crime-busting ‘Untouchables’, a branch of the U.S. Treasury Department charged with breaking organised crime, specifically the Chicago mobsters who ruled the bootleg drinks industry during Prohibition. Brian de Palma directs with a seasoned eye to the action, the politics and the domestic. The three seamlessly combine as Ness juggles family and career, sees his colleagues murdered and justice seen to be done. The film scores marks for not being ambivalent towards its violence: Eliot Ness does not want to break the law, but feels duty bound to do so if it creates a longer term peace; the foursome of law enforcers are all reluctant heroes; death, when it comes, is unpleasant and bloody. The film is based on a TV show based on a book based on real life and shares authenticity alongside fantasy.
Sean Connery famously won an Oscar playing an Irishman with a Scot’s accent, but he deserves it for a fine portrait of an older man seizing the opportunity to right all the wrongs he has stored. He is hard-as-nails and rough as sandpaper, yet there is a dignity and stateliness to his orations and actions. Costner already inhabits the bearing of a future President, his pared back performance fully charging Ness with both vulnerability and an inner steel. Andy Garcia and Charles Martin Smith do decent work as George Stone and Oscar Wallace, the lesser pair of Untouchables. Robert De Niro piled on the pounds to play Al Capone, sneering and glowering with equal contempt. If he eventually bursts into caricature, it seems to suit this version of Capone who almost believes his own hype, outlaid in the movie’s opening monologue.
The story doesn’t bear close examination as it delivers only potted highlights of the true history, but they are great highlights, a series of action sequences that also allow the characters’ motivations to be revealed and their emotions to breathe. David Mamet’s screenplay, while remaining terse, has depth and empathy. We feel for these men, we welcome them almost as everyman heroes so identifiable they are. Hence, the deaths, when they come, are shocking and powerfully delivered. The film looks good, with super photography, unfussy edits and excellent production values. Ennio Morricone’s music score is suitably elegant, occasionally hinting at his spaghetti western offerings, suggesting the old west has come to Chicago. In fact, de Palma films much of the action as if they are western gunfights – including one with Mounties on horseback – which also provides a visual familiarity. The movie ends on a satisfying note, does not outstay its welcome and leaves us panting a little for more. Unlike today’s blockbusters, no sequel was ever envisioned and quite right too.
The Untouchables is excellent entertainment and was rightly nominated for a clutch of awards around the globe. Very, very good stuff.
Is that definitely untrue? I know they added the ‘King’ as ‘George III’ is more obviously a King to UK folk than outside, but I don’t know if the III definitely wasn’t removed because people might think it was a sequel.
I caught much of The Untouchables the other night; of course the main character who has the bearing of a future Present as @chrisno1 puts it is Robert DeNiro's Al Capone, whose finger wagging manner and aggrieved put upon nature while talking to the press very much anticipates Donald Trump, ironic that DeNiro hates Trump.
This time around I felt for the first time that Costner was playing up the nerdish side of Ness, and that Connery's Irish accent really didn't cut it as and when he tried to wheel it out, ironically like Attenborough's Scottish accent in Jurassic Park. Of course they have to have Andrew Garcia as part of the gang to make it seem less anti-Italian.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I’ve always loved the Untouchables, it’s full of great moments from beginning to end; it had a really fun (and gory!) video game too!
Armani did the outfits, and Garcia and Connery both get some pretty neat duds.
Frankenstein (2025)
Written & directed by Guillermo del Toro - well, re-written by him at any rate 🤨 but then it’s a story that’s been filmed multiple times and I guess he has to try and bring something new to the table.
This isn’t Frankenstein as I know it - admittedly I haven’t read the book 🤗 It’s visually stunning though, but I’m not sure who this film is aimed at…? The direction is excellent and it’s very well acted but, for me, it’s just lacks…soul?
At 2hours 29 mins it’s rather long…but I didn’t feel the movie actually dragged…this is definitely a movie where del Toro was allowed to do whatever he wanted - and it shows. You’ll have to make up your own mind if that’s to the movies benefit or not….
I’d rather watch the 1931 James Whale version any day…
WILL PENNY (1967)
Tom Gries’s career as a director was mostly spent helming episodes for television shows, stuff like Batman and The Westerner. Occasionally he branched into cinema. Will Penny is his masterful western. It stars Charlton Heston as the titular fifty year old cattle drover who accepts the chance to spend his winter riding the line for the Flat Iron Ranch in the mountainous southern Rockies. His two pals, Dutchy and Blue, stay in a flea bitten town because the former has been injured during a shoot-out with the Quint family, a gang of violent, uncouth rawhiders led by a wild eyed preacher, Donald Pleasance. Bruce Dern and Gene Rutherford are suitably despicable as the sons. While running the line, Will is again attacked by the Quints and this time left for dead; he miraculously returns to the Lineman’s shack only to find it occupied by homely squatters, a mother and her child, Catherine and Horace Allen. As he recovers, an affection grows between the mismatched Will and the squatters. As winter draws their domesticity is ruptured by the chaotic, violent reappearance of Preacher Quint.
Heston is superb as the rugged and hardy hero, a man of his time, yet seemingly outside of it. He struggles with affection and communication, is reluctant to commit to a long term plan, and sees his life disappearing faster than he can live it. He isn’t an uproarious figure, which makes him far more believable, and his attitude to violence is mostly cautious: he uses it when threatened and no more and not always to kill. The film lacks a happy ending, which is both emotionally satisfying and a little sorrowful; one’s heart goes with Catherine and her quiet passion, but one’s head stays with Will Penny.
Tom Gries wrote and directed this elegant and well-observed film, adapting it from a TV show. It is beautifully photographed by Lucien Ballard and has some great support performances to compliment Heston’s less demonstrative central character. Joan Hackett as Catherine, Lee Majors as Blue and Ben Johnson as Alex [the Flat Iron foreman] are all excellent; Majors in particular offers a surprisingly nuanced and compassionate performance and one wonders on this evidence why he wasn’t cast in True Grit as John Wayne’s young foil. For us, Clifton James and Anthony Zerbe both feature and do not disgrace themselves. Donald Pleasance’s Preacher Quint is so over the top he almost tips the film into parody territory, but there is something genuine in his wildness, the constant recitation of Biblical verse making him far more menacing than he would be if he simply shot people and galled them with insults. One cowers from the religious fervour of his violence and his sordid ideals which turns ridiculous behaviour into something far more menacing. The crazily devout never cease to believe in their sense of right.
Will Penny is rightly regarded as a classic western of the sixties, some would say the whole oeuvres, although that might be a push too far. The character depth and the understated manner of their reveal is extraordinary for this kind of genre picture and Heston offers a career best performance to engage our interest and sympathy. 1967 was a great year for lead actors and Heston was overlooked when it came to awards, but he wasn’t alone [Sidney Poitier, Richard Burton, Lee Marvin, all suffered] and that might have offered him some comfort. The man himself considered Will Penny to be the finest film he ever made, and that’s some compliment when you look at his filmography.
Excellent.
The Choral, Alan Bennett's film directed by long-term collaborator Nicholas Hytner.
It's great to see these old timers' work back onscreen, not to mention actors such as Alun Armstrong, Roger Allam and Mark Addy, so its three cheers for many of them still being alive. It's about a conductor who has relocated to the Yorkshire village of wherever it is and is asked to be the choirmaster putting on their local production of The Passion, he has lived in Germany for the last few years so much of the more entertaining drama comes from the locals' suspicion about his sympathies, though this strand is not extended for the rest of the movie, and that is one of the disappointing aspects - ideas are picked up, put down, other ideas are then picked up, there isn't much follow through.
It looks great and is never boring. But it felt inauthentic. And it had moments of crassness. Deliberate or otherwise, I don't know. We have a lead black cast member who is a member of the Salvation Army. Her blackness is never ever mentioned. When in a village like this or anywhere in 1915 or thereabouts, all anyone would say to them is 'Heya blackie!' Does it matter? I don't care if someone wants a black Henry V in Shakespeare or something, it's just acting. But here you want to believe in it, and that the young lads are really about to be going off to war, for the full poignancy. Or are we meant to be colour blind? Do I want to sit watching a film thinking, well, am I racist for thinking this, or historically exacting?
An early scene has a young lad delivering telegrams from the King to unlucky families, this can never not be moving. One mother bursts into tears and hugs and kisses him. 'You're well in there,' observes his friend, who is tagging along with his bike, staying out of sight. 'It's the grief, you can capitalise on that!' It just feels crass and you're not sure if it's Bennet being like that or the character, and many of them don't really engage your sympathies quite. The lads seem like they're taken from The History Boys, another Bennett film. Can gay writers be sexist towards their own sex? It's like they're primarily strapping young lads - or is that any less a valid perception of how they actually are?
All the acting is good, it looks great as I've said, but... Fiennes is good in it but doesn't surprise, he's not called upon to surprise really, the whole thing could be Alan Bennet as written by AI. One scene towards the end comes from a Bennet-penned Talking Heads as recollected by Thora Hird. But really, in this all the stereotypes are present and correct.
Also there is the question of whether I like Alan Bennett or not, I like his memoirs but his films, there's always something queasy or uneasy about it that brings out in me the side that Bennett seems most eager to send up, I feel a bit Maggie Smith about it all. it feels more a drama about Alan Bennett rather than real life. There just feels something wrong about this, the way the war is represented given the year it's set. It all feels with the benefit of hindsight too much.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
SALT (2010)
Breathless, hyper violent spy thriller starring Angelina Jolie as a CIA operative fingered as a Russian terrorist. Can she prove her innocence before a series of political assassinations destabilise the relationship between the White House and the Kremlin? Salt won’t surprise anyone. The film is as grim as a reaper. There isn’t an ounce of humour or irony to the script and the whole two hours passes in a blur of sickening bloody incidents. Well presented, sure, in an ugly fashion, but repetitive, implausible and even somewhat laughable. Philip Noyce has made a clutch of good movies over his long career [Dead Calm, anybody?] but he isn’t suited to this kind of picture, which lacks all tension and relies on thrills to keep us excited. After the first hour, the endless fighting just become boring. A solid product, but a little more thought might have brought higher artistic reward.
INVADERS FROM MARS (1953)
William Cameron Menzies was notionally a production designer, but he occasionally ventured into directing or producing. Invaders from Mars is a celebrated sci-fi movie from the McCarthy era of political upheaval and as such it slides into the ‘they live among us’ sub-genre of science fiction. It is remarkably elementary in narrative and execution with an uninteresting script lumbered with cliches and a Wizard of Oz ending which tricks us – or maybe not…? [watch the film, you’ll see what I mean].
What makes Invaders from Mars interesting is Menzies eye for interior design and camera framing. Menzies ensures the two work together to provide a theatre-style view of the action, with fore, mid and back grounds as well as an almost classical sense of proportion. Hence, rooms seem to be much larger than they appear, with walls and corridors stretching into the near or far distance and ceilings being high and out of eyesight. The planetarium scenes were filmed on enormous sound stages when the setting is merely an office. I feel Ken Adam must have noted this for his stupendous sixties designs for the Bond films and Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove share this sense of excess. The effect is so startling and obvious – once you spot it, you can’t look past it – that many film historians wrongly assumed Invaders from Mars had been shot for 3D, as the framing is so similar. The red and green hues given to the colour pallet merely aided the confusion. Daringly, Menzies directs with an eye to the bizarre angle, shooting from above or below the action and through windows and doorways, giving the audience the feeling they are physically involved in what unfolds.
I watched a badly faded and scratchy print, but the film still entertains on that elementary level. It is clearly a children’s film and panders to the expectations of its audience while allowing adults enough of interest to not turn them cold. It’s strictly B-movie fare, but does more than enough to lift it to the top of that bracket.
NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957)
Federico Fellini tends to divide opinion. He straddles the post-war Italian realist and neo-realist movements and never seems to fall into either category. Fellini always seems more interested in a type of cinematic magical realism, with allusions to the psychological makeup of characters and their fantastical imaginations. That’s even hinted at in Nights of Cabiria, a melodrama of over-intensity and stagey acting, noisy and bustling, crisp and punchy, yet emotionally blunt. Cabiria, played in a theatrical Chaplinesque fashion by Fellini’s wife Giulietta Masina, is a middle aged prostitute whose mistreatment by the men she meets never weakens her egotistical resolve. Having started in the trade from the age of fifteen – she tells us, to appease her mother – Cabiria has suffered more slings and arrows than most poor unfortunates. What makes her slightly unbelievable is her endearing stubbornness. You would think she might learn from all the dreadful experiences, yet a yearning for an ordinary life of domesticity, children and family constantly leaves her constantly open to the very abuse she so despises. Is that a Circle of Life? Quite possibly, for Cabiria ends the movie at exactly the same point we first met her, only worse – she hasn’t just had her purse stolen but her whole life’s savings. The curious life-affirming coda where the distraught Cabiria flickers a smile at the party goers in the street she walks on feels entirely inappropriate to one so desperately badly treated.
Let’s not be too hard on Masina, who as an actress seems flawed, given to demonstrative facial mannerisms and screaming. She makes the heroine dislikeable from the off and only succeeds in capturing our hearts at the final reel when all becomes lost. Perhaps all Italian prostitutes in Rome were dislikeable c.1957. One thinks not. Rare moments of pathos at least allow us to see inside the hard exterior, but it is tough going indeed, like chipping at concrete with a spoon. The love interest, Oscar, initially seems driven by genuine concern, but it is an exceptionally well-played ruse [Francois Perier, very good]; even the audience is deceived. I was thinking of all those people scammed out of cash by internet trolls – deception by love is obviously not a recent phenomenon. The moment of realisation however is as telegraphed as a car headlight, and the scales fall quicker from our eyes than they do from Cabiria’s, so there is no shock to her demise. It is a sign of Fellini’s solid practical approach to the subject. Perhaps a more flamboyant camera, a more restrained performance from the star, a less angry script might have deceived us more – for we don’t side with Cabiria, we tend to suffer her not suffer with her.
Nights of Cabiria is well regarded in the critical community, but it isn’t a happy film and it feels what it is: a sordid movie with sordid people in a sordid environment. It is no surprise to see that paragon of the poor Pier Paolo Pasolini turn up in the writing credits. He always loved a dirty story and probably dragged what was already an overcast tale into something even more terrible a burden. Pasolini’s time and redemption would come later with his political films; this social realism doesn’t suit him and doesn’t suit Fellini either. Hence the scene at the theatre where Cabiri is mesmerised by a hypnotist and displays some of her genuine self stands out as affecting and emotionally subjective, because to do so Fellini raises us into the realm of fantasy, or half-fantasy to be accurate, the same place his best movies took us, those dream worlds of 8½ and Juliet of the Spirits. The genuine dirt and grime of the slums of Caracalla really doesn’t make for sensitive, observant drama under Fellini’s hands. He seems to be waiting for something more personal to emerge and buries the story under tirades of noisy, unimportant dialogue until he can wield the prerequisite magical baton.
If I’m honest, Fellini’s previous movie, La Strada, feels more pure in character. Everything here has a grim Pirandello-esque tragedy to it, farcical elements without the humour. The scenes featuring Lazzari, a drunk film director, anticipate La Dolce Vita, but they don’t make us laugh. Nor do the prostitutes who argue, fight and curse with each other and carouse with scooter boys, disdainful of pimps, clients and the world. Even religion is spat at. The Vatican didn’t like it. The whole movie was reimagined as the musical Sweet Charity, and that’s an ugly affair as well; Pretty Woman is its antithesis and that, for all its straightforwardness, is far more agreeable. Maybe the topic of damaged prostitutes simply isn’t easily portrayable.
A middling success then, with good moments and some characterful insight, but ultimately unfulfilling.
WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954)
I reviewed this movie before back in 2021. I watched it last night with my Dad, whose been laid up with replacement hip surgery, but I had to curtail midway as he got upset, settle him down with tea and sympathy in the other lounge and rejoin after ten or fifteen minutes. He got upset because the film reminded him of Mum. It is the kind of movie she used to make him watch.
😒😪😧
I can’t tell you how many times I have watched White Christmas. I hear stories from people famous and friendly who watch the same film every Christmas. Patrick MacNee said he watched Scrooge with Alistair Sim; a mate of mine told me he insists the family watch It’s A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve; White Christmas would probably be mine, although I do not watch it every year.
A simple story, simply told with oodles of humour, decent songs, decent dance numbers and a bucket load of sweetness and Christmas good cheer. It is warm and heartfelt and truly a musical of magic moments. In many respects, White Christmas doesn’t deserve to be treated with such devotion. To be super critical, it isn’t that good, delivering a creaking production formula from the outset with an obvious studio set of a US Army camp, Christmas Eve, 1944. The only exterior filming are the shots at whatever railway platforms they used for Vermont Rail Station. Interiors are lush, impossibly lush and with impossible dimensions; the ski lodge hotel where the action takes place has no staff, looks very small yet can accommodate a whole division of soldiers and their families. The songs are numerously repeated and the dance numbers, with one exception, inserted to a) give Danny Kaye something to show off and b) add up the runtime. Some of the songs are not even that good.
So why is White Christmas so successful? Well, I think it boils down to two things, both hard to measure. Firstly, the gameness and attractiveness of the four leads. Bing Crosby [okay, a little old, but attractive in a cosy fashion], Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen are simply wonderful in the playing, understanding and acting up to not just the nuances of the silly romantic shenanigans but the quick fire humour which runs through almost ever single dialogue exchange. Individually, some scenes are miraculously good – Crosby and Kaye arguing as they undress in unison; Vera-Ellen proposing to Kaye; Kaye trying to set up Crosby with a vacant showgirl; the foursome meeting in the buffet car of a New York bound train – the standard of acting never drops from go to gone.
Secondly, as a whole the film is almost unfeasibly gentle, saccharine and light-heartedly elegant, a high sign of a confection of excellence. Now, some audiences won’t like this kind of fluff and I have reservations sometimes, but the attention paid to the content by those mentioned in point (1) above as well as the production team who clearly relished making everything look so pristine and perfect, ensures the quality never drops and the sweetness remains cloying and smile inducing. This kind of detail, an unquantifiable niceness, is so hard to achieve on film, theatre, radio, record, wherever, that when you find it, if it suits you, you cling to it. So pleasant a viewing is White Christmas, it’s hard to believe the film was directed by tough as nails Micheal Curtiz.
Anything else? I don’t really have to mention the title song, but I will. Just beautiful, and beautifully presented at the start [with melancholy, war and mud, far from home, as envisaged by Irving Berlin when he wrote it] and at the end [with snow, Santa, presents, family, food and home, as the song came to embody].
Look, I know it isn’t everyone’s cup of Christmas Cheer, but I unashamedly love it. White Christmas is the kind of studio controlled genre picture the film industry simply cannot make anymore; when they try it usually dips too far into farce, sentiment or misery. I have a soft spot for Christmas movies. They tend to deliver happiness like no other genre of film. White Christmas is one of the best.
Superb.
That’s a moving “from the heart” review @chrisno1 Everyone has their own special movies that mean so much to them, may you and your dad enjoy White Christmas for many years to come.
I re-watched The Apartment (1960) last night. It's a classic, movie-wise.
Every Thanksgiving I watch THE WIZARD OF OZ, as kind of a tribute to my childhood (in those pre-cable days, it was always shown on Thanksgiving, and it was a big deal to us kiddos). Such a simple, beautiful film. The witch isn't the victim of anti-green prejudice. Glinda isn't an emaciated Mean Girl. The wizard isn't a dictator with a eugenicist agenda. Sometimes things need to be left the way they are.
Agreed @Hardyboy
ON THE WATERFRONT (1954)
Oh, I don’t know.
Marlon Brando is brilliant as Terry Malloy, an ex-prize fighter slumming it as a longshoreman on the New York dock and doing dodgy favours for his brother Charlie who works for the corrupt union boss Johnny Friendly. If Brando is outstanding, he is matched by the heavyweight talents of Lee J. Cobb – never better than when scowling and growling – and Rod Steiger – an actor who was even more method than Marlon and is probably even more spell binding when he’s on screen. Karl Malden chips in with a typically robust turn as a sympathetic Catholic priest and Eva Marie Saint impresses as the waif-like love interest. The support cast is peppered with ex-boxers [Tony Galento and Abe Simon among them] and the atmosphere is like a boxing match itself with words, actions and vicious intent swung both wildly and with precision and timing. Director Elia Kazan revels in the dank watery and mist bound surrounds of the waterfront, using them as a visible metaphor for cloying corruption and suffocating surrounds. The waterfront workforce is notable for being multicultural at a time when America still had colour bars in some states. It is a tough story populated by tough people and it is surprising to discover the tenderness in Brando’s performance, manifesting itself mostly when he deals with pigeons, and occasionally in his confused wooing. Terry Malloy’s relationship with Edie Dolan [Eva Marie Saint], sister of a man whose murder preludes the main action, is a rough old love affair, bringing memories of the violent, possessive, yet honest brutality we saw in A Streetcar Named Desire.
In fact, while Bud Schulberg won awards for his screenplay, you rather wonder what Arthur Miller’s original effort resembled, or what a craftsman like Tennessee Williams would have made of it. While Schulberg ensures the action moves quickly and concisely, including several neat analogies towards the union-worker relationship, the wider circle of communism versus democracy, or the role of the church and religion in society, the message is heavy handed and the ferocious climax, when it comes, makes little sense. The action is a bit whirl-windy, veering quickly from place to place in the manner of a thriller when the story is more significant than that. As such, On The Waterfront fails as a love story or a political allegory and while it might be high on social comment, the resolution by violence seems unrealistic, for the reaction of Terry Malloy’s fellow workers is non-existent. They watch the action and refuse to be involved. Malloy fights the battle for all of them alone; they remain as static as they had been at the start. The eventual bonding only achieved via a feat of mammoth physical exertion. This is not a film for the intellect but one for the masochist. As if to stress the point, composer Leonard Bernstein provides a noisy, melodramatic music score which rears its ugly head at entirely inappropriate moments.
Critics and many actors hark on and on about Brando and in particular the taxi scene – which apparently the actor rewrote – but as the film world moves on and performances get reappraised, it is less and less riveting. Maybe it has been imitated and mimicked to the point of parody. Maybe it simply was never that good. If anything, it isn’t even Brando’s best scene in the film, that comes when he walks Edie back to her flat, their first conversation intimate and suggestive [the play with her glove is a masterpiece of controlled Freudian desire]; equally the early moments featuring Lee J. Cobb and his ghoulish mob have so much genuine power you can sense the fear, the intimidation seeping through the celluloid. Both Brando’s and Rod Steiger’s pensive performances bring this home brilliantly, but we don’t see that in the taxi, where the dialogue is too abrupt and doesn’t come naturally to the scene. It clearly hasn’t been written by the same author and that directly affects the performance, which suddenly becomes overwrought when it was once a coiled angry spring.
For all that, a worthwhile watch. Eight Oscars? Seems a lot. Maybe not in 1954. Oh well, I don’t know so much.
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1957)
The management of this theatre suggests that, for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture, you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending of Witness for the Prosecution.
So read an announcement at the end of this brilliantly black comic court room drama which surprisingly originated as a theatre show written by Agatha Christie. In deference to the long departed Dame, I won’t be divulging anything about the plot. Suffice to say it is clever and befits Christie’s oeuvre. The role of ailing barrister Sir Lionel Robarts was expanded by writer/director Billy Wilder when he adapted the stage play. Here, Charles Laughton makes the lumbering, acute and caustically barb-tongued old bastard a loveable legal hero, a man we can both admire and admonish. His faults are numerous, but Laughton makes him appealing and intelligent. Elsa Lanchester [his wife in real life] matches him as the starchy nurse Miss Plimsoll, less a nurse than a verbal door mat. It’s a pity the ‘star’ is Tyrone Power, for he overeggs his part and almost tips the action into farce. There’s an amusing moment mid-film when, during a flashback scene at a cinema, his character watches the western Jesse James; Power starred in the film.
Witness for the Prosecution is mightily funny and has a decent twisty little plot. Laughton, Lanchester and a highly cliched Marlene Dietrich, who must have been fed up with playing German chanteuses by now, keep the whole thing together and it remains watchable even when the plot is floundering in the sea of its own trouble.
Excellent entertainment.
Last night I watched FLIGHT RISK, released earlier this year. All the time it was on I kept thinking of the SOUTH PARK episode where they were making a movie, and they bring in Mel Gibson as potential director. "Say what you will about him," one producer says, "the S.O.B. knows story structure." This movie proves it. Mel doesn't have anything superfluous in this film... you know that knife is going to come into play... you know she doesn't put on those sunglasses just because it's bright... she doesn't just open the medicine kit to get scissors... The result is a tight, fun suspense thriller, but don't be surprised if, when it's done, you're left saying "Wait, wouldn't they have made these precautions?," "Wouldn't this have been more logical?," etc. Another plus: Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg chews the scenery as an over-the-top hitman. Good way to kill time.
THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)
It was on, my Dad is laid up from a hip operation and he wanted to watch it.
No need for another review. You can read it here:
https://www.ajb007.co.uk/discussion/comment/1071880#Comment_1071880
Suffice to say, Caine is excellent, John Barry's music score excellent, everything all-round excellent.