Stately direction from John Ford, luminous photography from Winton C. Hoch and a growling, grizzled and grandly hostile performance from John Wayne are three reasons to enjoy The Searchers. Unfortunately, once the movie has [almost] delivered a slow burn promise of illicit love between a mother and her brother in law, a brutal Comanche raid and sideways look at racism and the Native American Indian, The Searchers shrivels its way to nothing more than an episodic pursuit movie of aching slowness and much old-style Fordian physical humour. The scenes encompassing the Jorgessons, a Swedish family, are played almost exclusively for laughs, disturb the distressing subject of child abduction and add nothing to either the romance or the revenge. In these sections, some of the acting is Texan gawd awful. I won’t name names, just take my word for it.
The film looks ravishing. The exteriors of Utah’s Monument Valley enshrine the narrative in cathedral like outdoor splendour… but oh those studio bound, soundstage mock ups for cabins and campfires and teepees – well, let us simply say they date the piece horribly and become a distraction by themselves. One does wonder how anyone could ever live and farm in the barren beauty of Monument Valley, so the various pleasantries in the domestic set ups seem overtly romanticised. The longer the film went on, the less interested I was in the plight of kidnapped child Debbie Edwards and the more interested I was in what became of old Moses – did he ever get his own rocking chair? It’s that kind of film, where one situation takes over the other and to the detriment of both.
The Searchers has a dark theme and director, writer and actors seem to miss [or ignore] this altogether. So, sure we understand that Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is an old fashioned bigot – he constantly reminds us he fought for the Confederate South – and we get he decides to kill his niece once she is of childbearing age as she would have been ‘infected’ by Indian blood – I think he used the phrase “passed from buck to buck” which is quite provocative for the fifties. The good naturedly humour, the willingness of folk to not challenge Ethan rankles. In fact, even though young Marty is a quarter Cheroke, his fiancé [Vera Miles, very good] insists Ethan is right to want to kill his abducted niece. A harrowing scene of adducted survivors, scarred with a wailing form of PTSD, reinforces the idea Debbie may be damaged. She is nothing of the sort, of course. She is Natalie Wood, young and beautiful and with her pretty head screwed firmly on. Meanwhile, Wayne just looks and acts like a bigoted chunk of granite stone.
Oh, I don’t know.
Roger Ebert had similar reservations. Contemporary reviewers were kind, but not fulsome in their praise. Foreign directors waxed lyrical over it. For my money, The Searchers lacks ambition and drive. It doesn’t tackle the subjects it wants to with any sense of proportion, morality or ethics, preferring to humiliate, implicate or placate depending on the players and the scenes. The seven year Odyssean journey is a cliched as a hangman’s knot. Even the opening shots are stolen from Shane. The movie drags by for two hours and at the end, the door of a friendly family homestead closes on Ethan Edwards, darkening the screen to black, and all the big critics and film theorists go “ahhhh…” And I just wished they had run the opening titles against a black background to bookend the action appropriately. It is that kind of half-arsed effort.
You can argue it, but I won’t be swayed. The Searchers is not a great western. It is average with some exceptional moments – the opening scenes where Ethan meets his in-laws after eight years are particularly good, all those long doe-eyed glances between Wayne and Dorothy Jordan’s Martha Edwards tell us everything we need to know about their relationship. Debbie is eight, so you can do the math. This explains a lot, but it is only implied, never said and – forgive me – it bloody well ought to have been and sod the censor. The Searchers is an adult movie with adult themes but it treats them with children’s gloves and kittenish metaphors.
Very disappointing.
Note:
On a James Bond point, Lana Wood plays Debbie as a cheeky nine-year-old; Lana is of course Natalie Wood’s real life sister. She was also very cheeky in Diamonds Are Forever.
1939 was a great year for great movies, and main Oscar contenders included Rhett and Scarlett, You've Had Your Chips, Coward of the County and What's She Gonna Look Like With a Chimney On Her? Shortened to just Chimney on movie theatres, it's thought the unwieldy title did it for the charming musical which took many years to be reappreciated.
Wuthering Heights (taken from the Emily Bronte pulp fiction Depression-era classic from that decade, You Stay Away From That Man!) stars Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as the ill-fated couple, our own David Niven, Flora Robson and almost our own Leo G Carroll, who is the M-type head of UNCLE in The Man from Uncle and played a similar role in Hitchcock's North by Northwest.
Oddly, it's the music that gets you going from the off, it's very moving and it's just as well because it doesn't let up throughout. Was it by the same composer who did that year's, erm, Rhett and Scarlett? I don't suppose it's too close to Bronte's novel (she's billed as Bronté with an acute accent in the credits, that's not right is it?) but then again Great Expectations with John Mills glosses over his newfound snobbery with just a couple of scenes when I understand it's a bigger factor in the book, making his shame when he discovers his actual benefactor more deep-seated. I still love Great Expectations, though, especially the soundtrack.
Ironically, given Niven's role as a strait-laced cuckold, in real life he and Oberan had a scandalous affair that nearly got them ditched by the studio, I think. He relates it in his memoirs but doesn't name her. That reminds me of how his Guns of Naverone co-star Richard Harris related how he got to sleep with Merle Oberon, presumably some decades after Niven, and felt compelled to ask her to turn the lights on, explaining 'Otherwise I may as well be a young lad back in Limerick playing with myself...' She complied.
Probably best to see this on a BBC channel where the lack of ads help preserve the mood, on Sky Arts they crashed the emotional finale with an inane trailer for some other programme, that should be outlawed.
It's said' that when Bronte attended the premiere of Wuthering Heights, she was all smiles until she saw the final print and then got very drunk and started abusing the normally imperturbable Olivier; eventually Ms Oberan broke a bottle against the side of a table and waved it at her, screaming 'Get back to the library b*tch, you're on my turf now!' The studio had to hush it all up.
CRIME 101 with Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Storm, and other good actors.
The premise: Thor is a thief in California who steals from jewelers who are close to the 101 Freeway (which he uses to clear the area when done). He's meticulous in his process, scrubbing himself thoroughly before a job so as to eliminate any traces of DNA being left at the scene. Hulk is a cop who has a theory about this thief. Most of his colleagues think that the heists are unrelated but he sees a pattern. Storm is an insurance adjuster for high profile clients who gets wrapped up in the plot as it progresses. Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barry Keoghan, and others are mixed up in the affair.
After a really strong start (a heist), the film kinda gets bogged down in subplots. The acting is good from everyone but these subplots aren't all that compelling...you want to see another heist. Unfortunately, you have to wait. And wait. The wait isn't worth it as the climax is extremely underwhelming.
There's a good car/motorcycle chase in the middle of the film to add some zip to the affair but it's otherwise a whole lotta talking. It's trying to be HEAT or even THIEF but coming up very short. It's not a BAD film per se, just dull. It's also too long...the film could lose 20 minutes pretty easily.
It's worth a watch when it hits streaming but lower your expectations.
I wonder about the advice of spending time with a map. To me this seems wise. I remember reading FDR asking Americans to have a map ready for at least one of his "fireside chats" on radio. Seems incredible today.
College sweethearts Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and Jane Martin (Aneta Corseaut) observe a meteorite hit the ground. Inside this meteorite is some weird ectoplasmic goo kind of organism that starts eating up the people in the town.
The police don't believe a word the youngsters say.
Who would...till the time the goo becomes so big, it becomes a menace.
-------------
A breezy and charming film, which is a joy to watch for fans of the sci-fi genre.
Recommended.
(Directed by Irvin Shortess Yeaworth Jr. - 86 minutes)
A highly advanced military computer system 'COLOSSUS' developed by Dr. Charles A. Forbin (Eric Braeden), fuses its networks with a Russian supercomputer 'GUARDIAN' and assumes full command over earth.
In order to achieve world peace, this superintelligence is willing to stop at nothing.
Based on Commander D. F. Jones novel, Colossus: The Forbin Project is a remarkably prescient sci-fi film and is one of the best films made on Artificial Intelligence.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,869Chief of Staff
Man on the Run
Saw this at the local cinema last night…it’s fabulous…do fans learn anything new…?…not really…but it’s great to be able see the home movie footage as we go from December 1969 to early 1981…the breakup of the Beatles, his marriage to Linda, the kids and the formation - and different incarcerations - of Wings, their tours and recording of the albums…with a poignant stop off for December 1980, for which I struggled to hold back the tears…you also get brief glimpses of Paul’s diaries.
There aren’t any ‘talking heads’ as such but every member of Wings is heard from, a couple of producers and some of Macca’s kids.
I would have liked the chronological order to have shown the album covers and years of release, but I’m just nitpicking.
It’s a fairly honest look at this decade of Paul’s career…it’s actually quite funny too.
Definitely worth going to the cinema for…it’s extremely enjoyable…and I’ll be watching it several times again on Amazon Prime.
There’s also a little piece after the film with Macca and director Morgan Neville…Macca can still (just about) fit into his stage jackets from those years 😮😁
My wife isn’t particularly a Beatles or McCartney fan - although it’s seeping in through osmosis 😁 - and she found it really entertaining too!
The era of the great swashbuckler movie encompassed the Hollywood Golden Age and lasted well into the 1950s, hoisted initially by British Empire stars like Ronald Colman, David Niven and of course Errol Flynn. Tyrone Power raised the flag for the USA in several blockbusters of the period, this being the first. The Mark of Zorro was directed by Rouben Mamoulian for 20th Century Fox and is a brilliantly presented story of a Robin Hood style bandit robbing the rich to help the poor, this time in Spanish occupied California. Alfred Newman’s splendid score keeps us enthralled throughout, pacing the film a tad slower than the on screen action elapses, which is key. Director and composer seem to both understand the romantic and comic possibilities as well as the swash and buckle, of which there is actually precious little until the final reel.
Based on a short novel by Johnston McCulley, The Mark of Zorro sees superb swordsman Don Diego Vega recalled from a life of luxury in Madrid to his father’s estates near old Los Angeles. His father has been deposed as alcalde and his replacement is the greedy and corpulent Don Luis Quintero. Quintero is making life a misery for the rich and poor alike, taxing them to the bone and pocketing the excess. Along with his shifty aide Cpt Pasquale [another villainous turn by Basil Rathbone] and his henpecking wife Inez [Gale Sondergard] Quintero is having a ripe old time of it. Diego immediately senses all is amiss and affects a fey, disinterested air to deceive his hosts as well as his family and allies. Learning of the grimness of the local situation, he invents a masked avenger called Zorro and embarks on a life of undercover banditry while romancing Quintero’s niece and plotting to reinstate his father as the alcalde.
The movie is wonderfully erudite and a joyful experience. Power is youthful, goodlooking and exuberant [he was 26 years old] in displaying the best of his acting talents, a trick he would repeat in the next year’s Blood and Sand. The movie pounds along with barely a pause for breath yet never seems rushed. The comedy is clever, the romance smart, boosting but never overwhelming the intrigue, and Power manipulates the audience as well as his fellow actors with sublime turns of phrase and expression. Linda Darnell makes a lovely heroine [the second of three consecutive movies she made with Power] and it’s always a pleasure to have Eugene Palette in support of the stars. Here he is a friar wrathful for his flock, a dab hand with a rapier too. The headline sword swishing confrontation between Power and Rathbone is excellent. The climatic rousing rebellion is a mite confused, but it doesn’t hurt anything much.
The Mark of Zorro is an old time movie, but it doesn’t feel like it. Perhaps only the rushed pacing dates it, oh and the black and white photography, which looks grand but would have been super in early Technicolor. They remade it a couple of times, most recently in a vastly altered story with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas, but this film shares an effervescence missing from most of the subsequent versions.
A slow burn of a thriller that explodes midway with a stupendous Bond-style shoot out in New York’s Guggenheim Museum. The International stars Clive Owen as a reckless, driven Interpol agent, late of Scotland Yard, who has a penchant for abrasiveness and a keen eye for detail, on financial spread sheets, computers or pounding the streets of the Big Apple, Milan, Berlin, Istanbul or anywhere else he trips up. Globetrotting around the world, Owen gradually looks more dishevelled as the tension mounts and his troubles increase alongside them. A lonely man, he at least has no anxieties about a homelife, or even women [“When did you last have sex?” asks Naomi Watts’s concerned American attorney – an odd question for an impromptu well-being session in an elevator – Owen’s character reckons so too: “Why are you offering?” he rasps with all the desire of an itchy rash]. This man prefers fine detail and corpses.
The International Bank of Credit and Commerce is under discreet investigation for money laundering and Lou Salinger [Owen] thinks he has a lead. Unfortunately, both his witness and his witness’s handler are killed within 24-hours of each other, leaving Lou puzzled, frustrated and just a tiny bit angry. How he keeps that anger in check is quite some feat, because it seems to be boiling underneath his fair skin with every second, his bleak dark stares, hooked shoulders and deep, clipped voice suggesting he’s going to break down or break out at any moment. Poor Eleanor Whitman [Watts, lovely, but frankly unnecessary] doesn’t know how to control her errant agent and gets tied in as many knots as he does attempting to extricate herself from legal and corporate mischiefs. A host of decent, low-grade European or American actors fill out the creepy, svelte looking cast of nasty characters. Even the good-guys seem slippery.
An unusual choice for German director Tom Tywker but he handles the tension and the intrigues brilliantly. The film is remarkably restrained and wonderfully designed. The Guggenheim rotunda was copied brick for brick for the marvellous shoot out, which is somewhat mindboggling in context but worth the wait. The climax, which has early echoes of Taken 2, is suitably enigmatic and a title scrolling coda hints at what we all know: that financial greed translates easily across businesses and business men.
The International is well worth a look. I enjoyed it. It is certainly more interesting than that 1970s Morris West adaptation, The Salamander, or Coppola’s The Godfather Part III, which both take a look at avaricious banking secrets. Owen certainly would have made an interesting Bond, but it was all a bit late for him by the time Craig talked about giving up the Walther PPK.
Judi Dench stars as Joan Stanley, a chemist enlisted into the UK’s wartime Tube Alloys project who has communist and pacifist sympathies. Through misplaced love and loyalty, she offers atomic frisson secrets to Soviet activists she met at Cambridge, unaware of how wide the network spreads or who will be unravelled as traitors in the future. Red Joan is a slightly dull spy story set in the 1940s but flashing forward to the 1990s and while it seeks to be relevant with its open-minded anti-war message, it ends up being rather blasé about war, love and treachery. Dench is okay [when isn’t she any less than okay?] but she has only got a supporting role; most credits for keeping us interested should go to Sophie Cookson as the young titular Joan, initially bashful and naive, but later on assertive and clearheaded. Pretty too. Dench’s elderly Joan has to merely look confused and infirm. An average script is directed with little excitement by Trevor Nunn. The characters are cliches one and all.
Interestingly, the film is based on a true person, a secretary called Melita Norwood, who worked for the Non-Ferrous Metals Research Bureau during the 1940s and acted as a Soviet spy during the Cold War. The suburban and Cambridge University setting kept reminding me of those Le Carre spy stories with Oxbridge educated toffs bleating that you could solve the world’s problems by popping down to Whites or Boodles and sharing a cocktail with your enemy. I vaguely recall his novel Call for the Dead and its filmic adaptation The Deadly Affair saw a lot of posh spies living in leafy London suburbs.
A criminal mastermind calling himself 'Juggernaut' has placed 7 explosive devices onboard the ocean liner SS Britannic carrying 1200 passengers. A ransom of £500,000 is presented to the owner of the ship; only then would the instructions to diffuse the devices be communicated.
Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris) and his team of technicians are dispatched to neutralize the threat, while a thorough police investigation begins in order to figure out who this Juggernaut fellow really is...
A very well made suspense-thriller, with excellent performances by Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and Sir Anthony Hopkins. I really liked the photography and attention to detail put into this film.
A gem indeed @Sonero a film I've nit seen for ages. Didn't Lester have a man walking around the cruise liner and looking suspicious which was a classic red herring?
I belive the film is losely based on a bomb threath against the ocean liner queen Elizabeth II in 1972. A unit from the Special Boat Service and bomb disposal expert parachuted into the sea to get on board and defuse the bomb. It turned out the threath was a hoax.
@chrisno1 That detail escaped me...but thank you for pointing that out.
@Number24 Thank you for the background information. I did not know this story...but when I saw the whole parachuting scene in the film, I had a hunch that some of these folks might be SBS.
Speaking of the SBS...
THEY WHO DARE (1954)
Based on the real life 'Operation Anglo' (September 1942), 'They Who Dare' details the daring exploits of the Special Boat Service, whose operators are tasked with the dangerous mission of destroying air assets of the Luftwaffe in two air fields located in the island of Rhodes, Greece.
Not only do the team have to survive the rough terrain of the island and water shortages, they have to deal with a very strong presence of enemy soldiers on the island.
-----------
Filmed in beautiful technicolor and now remastered in high-definition by Studiocanal, 'They Who Dare' is a sight to behold on modern screens.
A realistic and engaging WW2 film that is very well made.
The Golem: How He Came Into The World (1922) Dir: Paul Wegener
The third part of Wegener's Golem trilogy, the other parts being lost apart from a few clips.
Wegener also plays the title role, a huge clay man brought to life by an alchemist rabbi to help the Jews of Prague against their oppressive Emperor. He's very good and avoids the excessive mugging of those silent times sadly apparent among the supporting cast. That includes his wife, whose character is involved in a Romeo and Juliet style romance which is perhaps the least interesting part of the story. In fact, delete "perhaps" - the story could proceed perfectly well without it.
Being a Frankenstein nerd, I've read often that this film was influential on James Whale and his 1931 version so ot was good to eventually get to see it. Yes, the influences are clear and I'm glad to have watched it.
This film sits neatly alongside the other masterpieces of 1920s German cinema (Metropolis, Caligari) and if the viewer can tolerate the inherent drawbacks there's much to entertain.
@Sonero I don't doubt you enjoyed They Who Dare, but it hasn't a great reputation. My interest in it stems from realising it was released a couple of years before Alistair MacLean wrote The Guns of Navarone. While I have no evidence to suggest MacLean had seen the film, the events of Operation Anglo may have been known to the general public. There are many similarities between fact and fiction here and I would find it surprising if MacLean hadn't got at least some of his inspiration from this.
I've actually visited the old synagogue in Prague where the Golem was made acording to legend . Rabbi Loew's grave is still there. It was very moody with fog and crows around the synagogue.
After …the Voice of Terror and …the Secret Weapon, Universal’s wartime Sherlock Holmes gets sent over the pond to Washington at the behest of the British Secret Service. A low level agent has gone missing and in his possession was a microfilm containing war program secrets the UK were sharing with the USA. Can Holmes and Watson discover the missing man’s whereabouts and retrieve the microfilm in time?
A bit of a ropey one this. Not being based on a Conan-Doyle story seems to somewhat limit the horizons of the filmmakers. It feels more like an espionage tale, which I guess it is, and although there is some sleuthing going on it all feels a mite, well, elementary. The writers have Holmes turn up and deduce things with barely a sliver of evidence or investigation. George Zucco returns from playing Moriarty in The Adventures of… to become super-secret- enemy-agent Stanley, although he may well have been called Moriarty for what it’s worth. Passable in the action and suspense stakes. Best moment? Probably the brilliant line about a cross-eyed carrier pigeon.
Excellent Hitchcock thriller and I've always found it's best to watch late night on the BBC, with no ad breaks - it acquires an eerie, sinister feel. It would almost be worth being falsely accused of murder to go on the run like Hannay - though I suppose you wouldn't want it to start on a Saturday night would you, fleeing by train you'd be caught up in Sunday's bus replacement service.
This runs like a modern thriller, not a moment wasted. Sure, I can now point out a few plot discrepancies - but I don't want to.
It was preceded by an excellent one-hour show of actor John Hannah reading Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps - abridged into 60 minutes via some magic. It missed out a few things (Hannay's speech at the hustings, which makes an amusing moment in the film but doesn't advance the plot of the book) but included a few aspects I'd overlooked in the book if they ever happened (Skudder faking his own death to foil his enemies by getting hold of a corpse with a strong resemblance and leaving it for the authorities to find in his room, I'll have to check that, also Hannay being from Scotland before his parents emigrated to Canada and so on).
Hannah didn't just sit there reading, his working of the autocue was exemplary and he sort of acted it a bit, changing garb and location (an elegant smoking room for part 1, a railway carriage for part 2 etc) to vary things up. Highly enjoyable, and because the film isn't too close to the book, the two complemented one another superbly. If you've enjoyed Hitch's film, don't neglect the book - I don't think it's as good, but it has some wonderful things in it that don't get used in the film, in particular how someone can disguise themselves by acting the part and providing context.
My latest roundup of recently watched movies… had a nephew and niece over for a couple of days, henceforth some of these seen…
INVASION USA (1985) Chuck Norris single-handedly takes out a Russian invasion force in Florida. Ridiculous but enjoyable mayhem 2.5/5
PIRANHA (1978) Jaws rip-off directed by cult favourite Joe Dante. 2.5/5
MAJOR DUNDEE (1965) This is the restored version that was cut upon release much to the disdain of master director Sam Peckinpah. Charlton Heston’s title character leads a band of renegades chasing rogue Apaches. James Coburn and Richard Harris lend admirable support. Impressive. 4/5
DR TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965) The first of the Amicus portmanteau horror movies has Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee headline 5 stories of impending doom. Our own Bernard Lee acts with a very good straight face with a menacing murderous plant. Super stuff. 4/5
ANACONDA (2025) Jack Black and his cohorts aim to reboot the Anaconda franchise. Some fun and thrills. 2.5/5
THE TRIAL (1993) Franz Kafka’s posthumously published novel is confusing and this relates onscreen as well. Good cast and unsettling, but ultimately unsatisfying. 3/5
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1964) Truly a cast of thousands before CGI reared its ugly head. The machinations of intrigue begin the plot of title. Great cast, good battle scenes. 3/5
EXIT PROTOCOL (2025) Dolph Lundgren and a posse of the worlds best assassins trying to kill each other. None of them can shoot each other from a range of a few yards so I’d love to see how they became so highly rated. An extra half point for Lundgren. 1/5
THE FIRM (1989) Gary Oldman leads his bunch of football hooligans on a journey of destruction. Oldman is terrifying as the outwardly respectable estate agent in arguably his best performance. Visceral and insightful into the causes of hooliganism this is director Alan Clark’s masterpiece. 4.5/5
LAST FLIGHT OF NOAH’S ARK (1980) Elliott Gould takes Disney’s coin in this laboured lost on a desert island story. Kids liked it. 2/5
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE (2007) Over ambitious and overlong, there’s a reason why it’s a very good half hour show. 2.5/5
THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967) Kipling’s book is transformed into a Disney cartoon. Baloo and co are fun characters and he and King Louie are definitely on the puff 😂 A couple of decent songs make this the perfect film for kids and adults alike. 3.5/5
EASY RIDER (1969) So this is the sort of film that Lazenby’s agent made him give up Bond for? One long borefest of two bikers riding along some bleak but impressive scenery. I was happy when the redneck ended the movie. Jack Nicholson was good and that’s what the stars are for. 1.5/5
THE DAMNED UNITED (2009) Michael Sheen IS maverick football manager Brian Clough in this bio-pic of his early days of management. You don’t have to like football to enjoy this drama of the rivalry between Clough and Leeds United manager Don Revie. Colm Meaney as Revie and Timothy Spall as Clough’s assistant are both superb. 3.5/5
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Jurassic World is the kind of film I hate. Essentially a no-brainer remake of the original, with a few hints at its forebear and very little of the originality, this movie was phenomenally successful and launched a continuation of Spielberg’s groundbreaking trilogy, turning what had been a neat sci-fi idea with super-good-looking CGI into a franchise of Transformers-style inanity. Jurassic World is loud, proud, low on humour, high on action, non-sensical and ridiculously watchable. It is complete and utter tosh, from the huge size of the dinosaur monsters to the incomprehensibly small size of the Pacific island the beasties wander about in – to say nothing of the size of Bryce Dallas Howard’s high heels which she runs about on from start to finish, including a spell escaping velociraptors in the jungle. The music is good though, with Michael Giacchino threading John Williams’s classic theme throughout tension highs and lows. Chris Pratt is the stupefied looking hero who kind-of saves the day along with his pet dinosaur, Blue, who is given anamorphic expressions by the tech wizzes to make him more, well, human. Seeing a big lizard pull faces at you just isn’t realistic however you dress it up. The product – for that is what this kind of popcorn crassness really is – rambles on way past its bedtime and eventually drowns in its own snores. Before the snoozy climax, where a Tyrannosaurus Rex fights a genetically crafted Indominus Rex to the death destroying the snazzy new dino theme park in the process, there are moments of light-heartedness and a little cod politics and ethical conundrums thrown about. Not enough to divert us from the core plot of silly entertainment. The scene where the pterodactyls escape the aviary conjures memories of Hitchcock’s The Birds and was memorable by its pure insanity. Generally, the movie does provide a lot of fun, it’s just remarkably stupid – from the off basically, as we all know the premise is dumb and verging on pseudo-science. The big problem [bigger even than the Indominus Rex] is that we’ve seen it all before and every familiar scene evokes memories of what was once so good. Films like Jurassic World seem to cheapen their originals and themselves all at once. I can’t explain why I enjoyed the film, because it’s crap, but I suppose one shouldn’t argue with the dollar signs or with the man-eating dinosaurs.
A billion dollar earning pile of poo from the same team and stars that brought us the unfathomably popular Jurassic World. This time, three years on from Isla Nublar’s evacuation, the volcano island is set to erupt and all those pesky dinos will be wiped out. Can’t have that, says Toby Jones’s crooked arms dealer. He wants to locate the best of these genetically modified beasties and sell them to foreign militaries who can use the DNA to develop Dino-Warriors. That really is the plot. Complete bollocks, or whatever a dinosaur has for testicles.
This was awful. Just awful.
Not content with outrunning velociraptors, Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt now manage to outrun a pyroclastic eruption. Complete dino testicles. There’s a mischievous kid, who probably acts the best of all the summary creatures on display. The Emergency Ward 10 dino blood transfusion was hilarious because it was so silly. In the end, the bloody things end up roaming the world and Jeff Goldblum tells us we are entering a new phase of history. Yeh. And they couldn’t just nuke the bloody reptiles, could they?
Give it a rest. I can’t believe this franchise is still making billions and billions of dollars. Do audiences have no brains anymore? Oh, yeh, maybe: like the dinosaurs, the grey matter is probably the comparable size of a pea.
A fly on the wall documentary about the declining career of film star Nicolas Cage and his dysfunctional family and friends. Movie stardom clearly never suited this unstable actor, who displays schizophrenic tendencies and has a habit of quoting his own movies to make sense of his life. He’s struggling for work, hitting the bottle and can’t maintain a healthy relationship with his daughter and ex-wife. You can see why one left him and the other dislikes him. Cage is way too self-absorbed. Director Tom Gormican does not spare the shame.
Cage’s agent persuades him to take a million-dollar appearance fee from a Spanish gangster, essentially to pay off his debts. Turning up at the birthday bash turns out to be a ruse for the CIA to keep tabs on drug runner and kidnapper Javi Gutierrez, only they forgot to tell poor Nic. Once the ruse is rumbled, the film begins to resemble less the breakdown of Cage’s career and more one of the actor’s non-stop action thrillers. Quite how the director, photographer and sound people keep up with the set pieces and rapid changing focus of attention is remarkable to behold. Happy endings abide and the actor is reunited with his family once again. One feels as if Cage perhaps didn’t need to pay for expensive therapists, he really just needed a Jerry Bruckheimer sized adventure to get his mojo working again. I know the feeling.
Comments
Yeh, I am gonna miss it.
THE SEARCHERS (1956)
Stately direction from John Ford, luminous photography from Winton C. Hoch and a growling, grizzled and grandly hostile performance from John Wayne are three reasons to enjoy The Searchers. Unfortunately, once the movie has [almost] delivered a slow burn promise of illicit love between a mother and her brother in law, a brutal Comanche raid and sideways look at racism and the Native American Indian, The Searchers shrivels its way to nothing more than an episodic pursuit movie of aching slowness and much old-style Fordian physical humour. The scenes encompassing the Jorgessons, a Swedish family, are played almost exclusively for laughs, disturb the distressing subject of child abduction and add nothing to either the romance or the revenge. In these sections, some of the acting is Texan gawd awful. I won’t name names, just take my word for it.
The film looks ravishing. The exteriors of Utah’s Monument Valley enshrine the narrative in cathedral like outdoor splendour… but oh those studio bound, soundstage mock ups for cabins and campfires and teepees – well, let us simply say they date the piece horribly and become a distraction by themselves. One does wonder how anyone could ever live and farm in the barren beauty of Monument Valley, so the various pleasantries in the domestic set ups seem overtly romanticised. The longer the film went on, the less interested I was in the plight of kidnapped child Debbie Edwards and the more interested I was in what became of old Moses – did he ever get his own rocking chair? It’s that kind of film, where one situation takes over the other and to the detriment of both.
The Searchers has a dark theme and director, writer and actors seem to miss [or ignore] this altogether. So, sure we understand that Wayne’s Ethan Edwards is an old fashioned bigot – he constantly reminds us he fought for the Confederate South – and we get he decides to kill his niece once she is of childbearing age as she would have been ‘infected’ by Indian blood – I think he used the phrase “passed from buck to buck” which is quite provocative for the fifties. The good naturedly humour, the willingness of folk to not challenge Ethan rankles. In fact, even though young Marty is a quarter Cheroke, his fiancé [Vera Miles, very good] insists Ethan is right to want to kill his abducted niece. A harrowing scene of adducted survivors, scarred with a wailing form of PTSD, reinforces the idea Debbie may be damaged. She is nothing of the sort, of course. She is Natalie Wood, young and beautiful and with her pretty head screwed firmly on. Meanwhile, Wayne just looks and acts like a bigoted chunk of granite stone.
Oh, I don’t know.
Roger Ebert had similar reservations. Contemporary reviewers were kind, but not fulsome in their praise. Foreign directors waxed lyrical over it. For my money, The Searchers lacks ambition and drive. It doesn’t tackle the subjects it wants to with any sense of proportion, morality or ethics, preferring to humiliate, implicate or placate depending on the players and the scenes. The seven year Odyssean journey is a cliched as a hangman’s knot. Even the opening shots are stolen from Shane. The movie drags by for two hours and at the end, the door of a friendly family homestead closes on Ethan Edwards, darkening the screen to black, and all the big critics and film theorists go “ahhhh…” And I just wished they had run the opening titles against a black background to bookend the action appropriately. It is that kind of half-arsed effort.
You can argue it, but I won’t be swayed. The Searchers is not a great western. It is average with some exceptional moments – the opening scenes where Ethan meets his in-laws after eight years are particularly good, all those long doe-eyed glances between Wayne and Dorothy Jordan’s Martha Edwards tell us everything we need to know about their relationship. Debbie is eight, so you can do the math. This explains a lot, but it is only implied, never said and – forgive me – it bloody well ought to have been and sod the censor. The Searchers is an adult movie with adult themes but it treats them with children’s gloves and kittenish metaphors.
Very disappointing.
Note:
On a James Bond point, Lana Wood plays Debbie as a cheeky nine-year-old; Lana is of course Natalie Wood’s real life sister. She was also very cheeky in Diamonds Are Forever.
Wuthering Heights (1939)
1939 was a great year for great movies, and main Oscar contenders included Rhett and Scarlett, You've Had Your Chips, Coward of the County and What's She Gonna Look Like With a Chimney On Her? Shortened to just Chimney on movie theatres, it's thought the unwieldy title did it for the charming musical which took many years to be reappreciated.
Wuthering Heights (taken from the Emily Bronte pulp fiction Depression-era classic from that decade, You Stay Away From That Man!) stars Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon as the ill-fated couple, our own David Niven, Flora Robson and almost our own Leo G Carroll, who is the M-type head of UNCLE in The Man from Uncle and played a similar role in Hitchcock's North by Northwest.
Oddly, it's the music that gets you going from the off, it's very moving and it's just as well because it doesn't let up throughout. Was it by the same composer who did that year's, erm, Rhett and Scarlett? I don't suppose it's too close to Bronte's novel (she's billed as Bronté with an acute accent in the credits, that's not right is it?) but then again Great Expectations with John Mills glosses over his newfound snobbery with just a couple of scenes when I understand it's a bigger factor in the book, making his shame when he discovers his actual benefactor more deep-seated. I still love Great Expectations, though, especially the soundtrack.
Ironically, given Niven's role as a strait-laced cuckold, in real life he and Oberan had a scandalous affair that nearly got them ditched by the studio, I think. He relates it in his memoirs but doesn't name her. That reminds me of how his Guns of Naverone co-star Richard Harris related how he got to sleep with Merle Oberon, presumably some decades after Niven, and felt compelled to ask her to turn the lights on, explaining 'Otherwise I may as well be a young lad back in Limerick playing with myself...' She complied.
Probably best to see this on a BBC channel where the lack of ads help preserve the mood, on Sky Arts they crashed the emotional finale with an inane trailer for some other programme, that should be outlawed.
It's said' that when Bronte attended the premiere of Wuthering Heights, she was all smiles until she saw the final print and then got very drunk and started abusing the normally imperturbable Olivier; eventually Ms Oberan broke a bottle against the side of a table and waved it at her, screaming 'Get back to the library b*tch, you're on my turf now!' The studio had to hush it all up.
Within months, Europe was at war.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
That last sentence is the most spoilerish thing I've ever seen in a film review ..... 😱
CRIME 101 with Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Storm, and other good actors.
The premise: Thor is a thief in California who steals from jewelers who are close to the 101 Freeway (which he uses to clear the area when done). He's meticulous in his process, scrubbing himself thoroughly before a job so as to eliminate any traces of DNA being left at the scene. Hulk is a cop who has a theory about this thief. Most of his colleagues think that the heists are unrelated but he sees a pattern. Storm is an insurance adjuster for high profile clients who gets wrapped up in the plot as it progresses. Nick Nolte, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barry Keoghan, and others are mixed up in the affair.
After a really strong start (a heist), the film kinda gets bogged down in subplots. The acting is good from everyone but these subplots aren't all that compelling...you want to see another heist. Unfortunately, you have to wait. And wait. The wait isn't worth it as the climax is extremely underwhelming.
There's a good car/motorcycle chase in the middle of the film to add some zip to the affair but it's otherwise a whole lotta talking. It's trying to be HEAT or even THIEF but coming up very short. It's not a BAD film per se, just dull. It's also too long...the film could lose 20 minutes pretty easily.
It's worth a watch when it hits streaming but lower your expectations.
I wonder about the advice of spending time with a map. To me this seems wise. I remember reading FDR asking Americans to have a map ready for at least one of his "fireside chats" on radio. Seems incredible today.
N24
I have this beautiful polar azimuthal map in my study. (23 x 34 inches)
You can get a high definition version of this map on the internet archive. (Link below)
Coming back to the world of space aliens...
THE BLOB (1958)
College sweethearts Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and Jane Martin (Aneta Corseaut) observe a meteorite hit the ground. Inside this meteorite is some weird ectoplasmic goo kind of organism that starts eating up the people in the town.
The police don't believe a word the youngsters say.
Who would...till the time the goo becomes so big, it becomes a menace.
-------------
A breezy and charming film, which is a joy to watch for fans of the sci-fi genre.
Recommended.
(Directed by Irvin Shortess Yeaworth Jr. - 86 minutes)
Great map,but I seem to posted that comment in the wrong thread ...... 😳
COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970)
A highly advanced military computer system 'COLOSSUS' developed by Dr. Charles A. Forbin (Eric Braeden), fuses its networks with a Russian supercomputer 'GUARDIAN' and assumes full command over earth.
In order to achieve world peace, this superintelligence is willing to stop at nothing.
Based on Commander D. F. Jones novel, Colossus: The Forbin Project is a remarkably prescient sci-fi film and is one of the best films made on Artificial Intelligence.
Recommended.
(Directed by Joseph Sargent - 100 minutes)
Oh, yeh, that's a good one @Sonero
Man on the Run
Saw this at the local cinema last night…it’s fabulous…do fans learn anything new…?…not really…but it’s great to be able see the home movie footage as we go from December 1969 to early 1981…the breakup of the Beatles, his marriage to Linda, the kids and the formation - and different incarcerations - of Wings, their tours and recording of the albums…with a poignant stop off for December 1980, for which I struggled to hold back the tears…you also get brief glimpses of Paul’s diaries.
There aren’t any ‘talking heads’ as such but every member of Wings is heard from, a couple of producers and some of Macca’s kids.
I would have liked the chronological order to have shown the album covers and years of release, but I’m just nitpicking.
It’s a fairly honest look at this decade of Paul’s career…it’s actually quite funny too.
Definitely worth going to the cinema for…it’s extremely enjoyable…and I’ll be watching it several times again on Amazon Prime.
There’s also a little piece after the film with Macca and director Morgan Neville…Macca can still (just about) fit into his stage jackets from those years 😮😁
My wife isn’t particularly a Beatles or McCartney fan - although it’s seeping in through osmosis 😁 - and she found it really entertaining too!
THE MARK OF ZORRO (1940)
The era of the great swashbuckler movie encompassed the Hollywood Golden Age and lasted well into the 1950s, hoisted initially by British Empire stars like Ronald Colman, David Niven and of course Errol Flynn. Tyrone Power raised the flag for the USA in several blockbusters of the period, this being the first. The Mark of Zorro was directed by Rouben Mamoulian for 20th Century Fox and is a brilliantly presented story of a Robin Hood style bandit robbing the rich to help the poor, this time in Spanish occupied California. Alfred Newman’s splendid score keeps us enthralled throughout, pacing the film a tad slower than the on screen action elapses, which is key. Director and composer seem to both understand the romantic and comic possibilities as well as the swash and buckle, of which there is actually precious little until the final reel.
Based on a short novel by Johnston McCulley, The Mark of Zorro sees superb swordsman Don Diego Vega recalled from a life of luxury in Madrid to his father’s estates near old Los Angeles. His father has been deposed as alcalde and his replacement is the greedy and corpulent Don Luis Quintero. Quintero is making life a misery for the rich and poor alike, taxing them to the bone and pocketing the excess. Along with his shifty aide Cpt Pasquale [another villainous turn by Basil Rathbone] and his henpecking wife Inez [Gale Sondergard] Quintero is having a ripe old time of it. Diego immediately senses all is amiss and affects a fey, disinterested air to deceive his hosts as well as his family and allies. Learning of the grimness of the local situation, he invents a masked avenger called Zorro and embarks on a life of undercover banditry while romancing Quintero’s niece and plotting to reinstate his father as the alcalde.
The movie is wonderfully erudite and a joyful experience. Power is youthful, goodlooking and exuberant [he was 26 years old] in displaying the best of his acting talents, a trick he would repeat in the next year’s Blood and Sand. The movie pounds along with barely a pause for breath yet never seems rushed. The comedy is clever, the romance smart, boosting but never overwhelming the intrigue, and Power manipulates the audience as well as his fellow actors with sublime turns of phrase and expression. Linda Darnell makes a lovely heroine [the second of three consecutive movies she made with Power] and it’s always a pleasure to have Eugene Palette in support of the stars. Here he is a friar wrathful for his flock, a dab hand with a rapier too. The headline sword swishing confrontation between Power and Rathbone is excellent. The climatic rousing rebellion is a mite confused, but it doesn’t hurt anything much.
The Mark of Zorro is an old time movie, but it doesn’t feel like it. Perhaps only the rushed pacing dates it, oh and the black and white photography, which looks grand but would have been super in early Technicolor. They remade it a couple of times, most recently in a vastly altered story with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas, but this film shares an effervescence missing from most of the subsequent versions.
Very good indeed.
THE INTERNATIONAL (2009)
A slow burn of a thriller that explodes midway with a stupendous Bond-style shoot out in New York’s Guggenheim Museum. The International stars Clive Owen as a reckless, driven Interpol agent, late of Scotland Yard, who has a penchant for abrasiveness and a keen eye for detail, on financial spread sheets, computers or pounding the streets of the Big Apple, Milan, Berlin, Istanbul or anywhere else he trips up. Globetrotting around the world, Owen gradually looks more dishevelled as the tension mounts and his troubles increase alongside them. A lonely man, he at least has no anxieties about a homelife, or even women [“When did you last have sex?” asks Naomi Watts’s concerned American attorney – an odd question for an impromptu well-being session in an elevator – Owen’s character reckons so too: “Why are you offering?” he rasps with all the desire of an itchy rash]. This man prefers fine detail and corpses.
The International Bank of Credit and Commerce is under discreet investigation for money laundering and Lou Salinger [Owen] thinks he has a lead. Unfortunately, both his witness and his witness’s handler are killed within 24-hours of each other, leaving Lou puzzled, frustrated and just a tiny bit angry. How he keeps that anger in check is quite some feat, because it seems to be boiling underneath his fair skin with every second, his bleak dark stares, hooked shoulders and deep, clipped voice suggesting he’s going to break down or break out at any moment. Poor Eleanor Whitman [Watts, lovely, but frankly unnecessary] doesn’t know how to control her errant agent and gets tied in as many knots as he does attempting to extricate herself from legal and corporate mischiefs. A host of decent, low-grade European or American actors fill out the creepy, svelte looking cast of nasty characters. Even the good-guys seem slippery.
An unusual choice for German director Tom Tywker but he handles the tension and the intrigues brilliantly. The film is remarkably restrained and wonderfully designed. The Guggenheim rotunda was copied brick for brick for the marvellous shoot out, which is somewhat mindboggling in context but worth the wait. The climax, which has early echoes of Taken 2, is suitably enigmatic and a title scrolling coda hints at what we all know: that financial greed translates easily across businesses and business men.
The International is well worth a look. I enjoyed it. It is certainly more interesting than that 1970s Morris West adaptation, The Salamander, or Coppola’s The Godfather Part III, which both take a look at avaricious banking secrets. Owen certainly would have made an interesting Bond, but it was all a bit late for him by the time Craig talked about giving up the Walther PPK.
RED JOAN (2018)
Judi Dench stars as Joan Stanley, a chemist enlisted into the UK’s wartime Tube Alloys project who has communist and pacifist sympathies. Through misplaced love and loyalty, she offers atomic frisson secrets to Soviet activists she met at Cambridge, unaware of how wide the network spreads or who will be unravelled as traitors in the future. Red Joan is a slightly dull spy story set in the 1940s but flashing forward to the 1990s and while it seeks to be relevant with its open-minded anti-war message, it ends up being rather blasé about war, love and treachery. Dench is okay [when isn’t she any less than okay?] but she has only got a supporting role; most credits for keeping us interested should go to Sophie Cookson as the young titular Joan, initially bashful and naive, but later on assertive and clearheaded. Pretty too. Dench’s elderly Joan has to merely look confused and infirm. An average script is directed with little excitement by Trevor Nunn. The characters are cliches one and all.
Interestingly, the film is based on a true person, a secretary called Melita Norwood, who worked for the Non-Ferrous Metals Research Bureau during the 1940s and acted as a Soviet spy during the Cold War. The suburban and Cambridge University setting kept reminding me of those Le Carre spy stories with Oxbridge educated toffs bleating that you could solve the world’s problems by popping down to Whites or Boodles and sharing a cocktail with your enemy. I vaguely recall his novel Call for the Dead and its filmic adaptation The Deadly Affair saw a lot of posh spies living in leafy London suburbs.
JUGGERNAUT (1974)
A criminal mastermind calling himself 'Juggernaut' has placed 7 explosive devices onboard the ocean liner SS Britannic carrying 1200 passengers. A ransom of £500,000 is presented to the owner of the ship; only then would the instructions to diffuse the devices be communicated.
Lt. Cmdr. Anthony Fallon (Richard Harris) and his team of technicians are dispatched to neutralize the threat, while a thorough police investigation begins in order to figure out who this Juggernaut fellow really is...
A very well made suspense-thriller, with excellent performances by Richard Harris, Omar Sharif and Sir Anthony Hopkins. I really liked the photography and attention to detail put into this film.
A hidden gem.
Recommended.
(Directed by Richard Lester - 110 minutes)
A gem indeed @Sonero a film I've nit seen for ages. Didn't Lester have a man walking around the cruise liner and looking suspicious which was a classic red herring?
I belive the film is losely based on a bomb threath against the ocean liner queen Elizabeth II in 1972. A unit from the Special Boat Service and bomb disposal expert parachuted into the sea to get on board and defuse the bomb. It turned out the threath was a hoax.
https://www.royalmarineshistory.com/post/bomb-threat-on-the-qe-ii-parachuted-into-the-atlantic
@chrisno1 That detail escaped me...but thank you for pointing that out.
@Number24 Thank you for the background information. I did not know this story...but when I saw the whole parachuting scene in the film, I had a hunch that some of these folks might be SBS.
Speaking of the SBS...
THEY WHO DARE (1954)
Based on the real life 'Operation Anglo' (September 1942), 'They Who Dare' details the daring exploits of the Special Boat Service, whose operators are tasked with the dangerous mission of destroying air assets of the Luftwaffe in two air fields located in the island of Rhodes, Greece.
Not only do the team have to survive the rough terrain of the island and water shortages, they have to deal with a very strong presence of enemy soldiers on the island.
-----------
Filmed in beautiful technicolor and now remastered in high-definition by Studiocanal, 'They Who Dare' is a sight to behold on modern screens.
A realistic and engaging WW2 film that is very well made.
Recommended.
(Directed by Lewis Milestone - 107 minutes)
The Golem: How He Came Into The World (1922) Dir: Paul Wegener
The third part of Wegener's Golem trilogy, the other parts being lost apart from a few clips.
Wegener also plays the title role, a huge clay man brought to life by an alchemist rabbi to help the Jews of Prague against their oppressive Emperor. He's very good and avoids the excessive mugging of those silent times sadly apparent among the supporting cast. That includes his wife, whose character is involved in a Romeo and Juliet style romance which is perhaps the least interesting part of the story. In fact, delete "perhaps" - the story could proceed perfectly well without it.
Being a Frankenstein nerd, I've read often that this film was influential on James Whale and his 1931 version so ot was good to eventually get to see it. Yes, the influences are clear and I'm glad to have watched it.
This film sits neatly alongside the other masterpieces of 1920s German cinema (Metropolis, Caligari) and if the viewer can tolerate the inherent drawbacks there's much to entertain.
@Sonero I don't doubt you enjoyed They Who Dare, but it hasn't a great reputation. My interest in it stems from realising it was released a couple of years before Alistair MacLean wrote The Guns of Navarone. While I have no evidence to suggest MacLean had seen the film, the events of Operation Anglo may have been known to the general public. There are many similarities between fact and fiction here and I would find it surprising if MacLean hadn't got at least some of his inspiration from this.
I've actually visited the old synagogue in Prague where the Golem was made acording to legend . Rabbi Loew's grave is still there. It was very moody with fog and crows around the synagogue.
Thanks for that, N24. It does look as you say. Here's a scene from the film to compare -
I should have mentioned that the version I watched was restored and reassembled from various elements. There's still some 10-15 minutes missing.
That's exceedingly well copied.
@chrisno1 Indeed.
I actually have not read Mr. Maclean's masterpiece and this movie is motivation enough to start.
'They Who Dare' closely depicted the actual events of Operation Anglo, bar a few tactical details, and I appreciate the simplicity of the film.
Thank you for the info.
SHERLOCK HOLMES IN WASHINGTON (1943)
After …the Voice of Terror and …the Secret Weapon, Universal’s wartime Sherlock Holmes gets sent over the pond to Washington at the behest of the British Secret Service. A low level agent has gone missing and in his possession was a microfilm containing war program secrets the UK were sharing with the USA. Can Holmes and Watson discover the missing man’s whereabouts and retrieve the microfilm in time?
A bit of a ropey one this. Not being based on a Conan-Doyle story seems to somewhat limit the horizons of the filmmakers. It feels more like an espionage tale, which I guess it is, and although there is some sleuthing going on it all feels a mite, well, elementary. The writers have Holmes turn up and deduce things with barely a sliver of evidence or investigation. George Zucco returns from playing Moriarty in The Adventures of… to become super-secret- enemy-agent Stanley, although he may well have been called Moriarty for what it’s worth. Passable in the action and suspense stakes. Best moment? Probably the brilliant line about a cross-eyed carrier pigeon.
Ah, well, it passed an hour or so.
The 39 Steps (1935)
Excellent Hitchcock thriller and I've always found it's best to watch late night on the BBC, with no ad breaks - it acquires an eerie, sinister feel. It would almost be worth being falsely accused of murder to go on the run like Hannay - though I suppose you wouldn't want it to start on a Saturday night would you, fleeing by train you'd be caught up in Sunday's bus replacement service.
This runs like a modern thriller, not a moment wasted. Sure, I can now point out a few plot discrepancies - but I don't want to.
It was preceded by an excellent one-hour show of actor John Hannah reading Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps - abridged into 60 minutes via some magic. It missed out a few things (Hannay's speech at the hustings, which makes an amusing moment in the film but doesn't advance the plot of the book) but included a few aspects I'd overlooked in the book if they ever happened (Skudder faking his own death to foil his enemies by getting hold of a corpse with a strong resemblance and leaving it for the authorities to find in his room, I'll have to check that, also Hannay being from Scotland before his parents emigrated to Canada and so on).
Hannah didn't just sit there reading, his working of the autocue was exemplary and he sort of acted it a bit, changing garb and location (an elegant smoking room for part 1, a railway carriage for part 2 etc) to vary things up. Highly enjoyable, and because the film isn't too close to the book, the two complemented one another superbly. If you've enjoyed Hitch's film, don't neglect the book - I don't think it's as good, but it has some wonderful things in it that don't get used in the film, in particular how someone can disguise themselves by acting the part and providing context.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
My latest roundup of recently watched movies… had a nephew and niece over for a couple of days, henceforth some of these seen…
INVASION USA (1985) Chuck Norris single-handedly takes out a Russian invasion force in Florida. Ridiculous but enjoyable mayhem 2.5/5
PIRANHA (1978) Jaws rip-off directed by cult favourite Joe Dante. 2.5/5
MAJOR DUNDEE (1965) This is the restored version that was cut upon release much to the disdain of master director Sam Peckinpah. Charlton Heston’s title character leads a band of renegades chasing rogue Apaches. James Coburn and Richard Harris lend admirable support. Impressive. 4/5
DR TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965) The first of the Amicus portmanteau horror movies has Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee headline 5 stories of impending doom. Our own Bernard Lee acts with a very good straight face with a menacing murderous plant. Super stuff. 4/5
ANACONDA (2025) Jack Black and his cohorts aim to reboot the Anaconda franchise. Some fun and thrills. 2.5/5
THE TRIAL (1993) Franz Kafka’s posthumously published novel is confusing and this relates onscreen as well. Good cast and unsettling, but ultimately unsatisfying. 3/5
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (1964) Truly a cast of thousands before CGI reared its ugly head. The machinations of intrigue begin the plot of title. Great cast, good battle scenes. 3/5
EXIT PROTOCOL (2025) Dolph Lundgren and a posse of the worlds best assassins trying to kill each other. None of them can shoot each other from a range of a few yards so I’d love to see how they became so highly rated. An extra half point for Lundgren. 1/5
THE FIRM (1989) Gary Oldman leads his bunch of football hooligans on a journey of destruction. Oldman is terrifying as the outwardly respectable estate agent in arguably his best performance. Visceral and insightful into the causes of hooliganism this is director Alan Clark’s masterpiece. 4.5/5
LAST FLIGHT OF NOAH’S ARK (1980) Elliott Gould takes Disney’s coin in this laboured lost on a desert island story. Kids liked it. 2/5
THE SIMPSONS MOVIE (2007) Over ambitious and overlong, there’s a reason why it’s a very good half hour show. 2.5/5
THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967) Kipling’s book is transformed into a Disney cartoon. Baloo and co are fun characters and he and King Louie are definitely on the puff 😂 A couple of decent songs make this the perfect film for kids and adults alike. 3.5/5
EASY RIDER (1969) So this is the sort of film that Lazenby’s agent made him give up Bond for? One long borefest of two bikers riding along some bleak but impressive scenery. I was happy when the redneck ended the movie. Jack Nicholson was good and that’s what the stars are for. 1.5/5
THE DAMNED UNITED (2009) Michael Sheen IS maverick football manager Brian Clough in this bio-pic of his early days of management. You don’t have to like football to enjoy this drama of the rivalry between Clough and Leeds United manager Don Revie. Colm Meaney as Revie and Timothy Spall as Clough’s assistant are both superb. 3.5/5
Nice summaries @CoolHandBond agree with mist verdicts, although I'd have liked 4 stars for Fall of the Roman Empire 🙂
JURASSIC WORLD (2015)
Jurassic World is the kind of film I hate. Essentially a no-brainer remake of the original, with a few hints at its forebear and very little of the originality, this movie was phenomenally successful and launched a continuation of Spielberg’s groundbreaking trilogy, turning what had been a neat sci-fi idea with super-good-looking CGI into a franchise of Transformers-style inanity. Jurassic World is loud, proud, low on humour, high on action, non-sensical and ridiculously watchable. It is complete and utter tosh, from the huge size of the dinosaur monsters to the incomprehensibly small size of the Pacific island the beasties wander about in – to say nothing of the size of Bryce Dallas Howard’s high heels which she runs about on from start to finish, including a spell escaping velociraptors in the jungle. The music is good though, with Michael Giacchino threading John Williams’s classic theme throughout tension highs and lows. Chris Pratt is the stupefied looking hero who kind-of saves the day along with his pet dinosaur, Blue, who is given anamorphic expressions by the tech wizzes to make him more, well, human. Seeing a big lizard pull faces at you just isn’t realistic however you dress it up. The product – for that is what this kind of popcorn crassness really is – rambles on way past its bedtime and eventually drowns in its own snores. Before the snoozy climax, where a Tyrannosaurus Rex fights a genetically crafted Indominus Rex to the death destroying the snazzy new dino theme park in the process, there are moments of light-heartedness and a little cod politics and ethical conundrums thrown about. Not enough to divert us from the core plot of silly entertainment. The scene where the pterodactyls escape the aviary conjures memories of Hitchcock’s The Birds and was memorable by its pure insanity. Generally, the movie does provide a lot of fun, it’s just remarkably stupid – from the off basically, as we all know the premise is dumb and verging on pseudo-science. The big problem [bigger even than the Indominus Rex] is that we’ve seen it all before and every familiar scene evokes memories of what was once so good. Films like Jurassic World seem to cheapen their originals and themselves all at once. I can’t explain why I enjoyed the film, because it’s crap, but I suppose one shouldn’t argue with the dollar signs or with the man-eating dinosaurs.
JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (2018)
More mayhem! More dinosaurs!
A billion dollar earning pile of poo from the same team and stars that brought us the unfathomably popular Jurassic World. This time, three years on from Isla Nublar’s evacuation, the volcano island is set to erupt and all those pesky dinos will be wiped out. Can’t have that, says Toby Jones’s crooked arms dealer. He wants to locate the best of these genetically modified beasties and sell them to foreign militaries who can use the DNA to develop Dino-Warriors. That really is the plot. Complete bollocks, or whatever a dinosaur has for testicles.
This was awful. Just awful.
Not content with outrunning velociraptors, Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt now manage to outrun a pyroclastic eruption. Complete dino testicles. There’s a mischievous kid, who probably acts the best of all the summary creatures on display. The Emergency Ward 10 dino blood transfusion was hilarious because it was so silly. In the end, the bloody things end up roaming the world and Jeff Goldblum tells us we are entering a new phase of history. Yeh. And they couldn’t just nuke the bloody reptiles, could they?
Give it a rest. I can’t believe this franchise is still making billions and billions of dollars. Do audiences have no brains anymore? Oh, yeh, maybe: like the dinosaurs, the grey matter is probably the comparable size of a pea.
Just awful.
THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT (2022)
A fly on the wall documentary about the declining career of film star Nicolas Cage and his dysfunctional family and friends. Movie stardom clearly never suited this unstable actor, who displays schizophrenic tendencies and has a habit of quoting his own movies to make sense of his life. He’s struggling for work, hitting the bottle and can’t maintain a healthy relationship with his daughter and ex-wife. You can see why one left him and the other dislikes him. Cage is way too self-absorbed. Director Tom Gormican does not spare the shame.
Cage’s agent persuades him to take a million-dollar appearance fee from a Spanish gangster, essentially to pay off his debts. Turning up at the birthday bash turns out to be a ruse for the CIA to keep tabs on drug runner and kidnapper Javi Gutierrez, only they forgot to tell poor Nic. Once the ruse is rumbled, the film begins to resemble less the breakdown of Cage’s career and more one of the actor’s non-stop action thrillers. Quite how the director, photographer and sound people keep up with the set pieces and rapid changing focus of attention is remarkable to behold. Happy endings abide and the actor is reunited with his family once again. One feels as if Cage perhaps didn’t need to pay for expensive therapists, he really just needed a Jerry Bruckheimer sized adventure to get his mojo working again. I know the feeling.