1942 - THE DOVER BOYS AT PIMENTO UNIVERSITY OR THE RIVALS OF ROQUEFORT HALL & 1944 - HELL-BENT FOR ELECTION two short films by Chuck Jones

Two of animator Chuck Jones more interesting cartoons that are unlike anything he did for Warner Brothers. 

The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall is one of his funniest cartoons.  A spoof of The Rover Boys series of books about some morally upright young lads whose fiancee Dainty Dora Standpipe is kidnapped by the evil Dan Blackslide.

The animation is more stylized than usual for a Warner's cartoon.  This is a spoof of a boys own adventure series like The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.  Very different from the typical Merrie Melodie cartoons that Warners was producing.  What really counts is that The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall is hilarious.

9 minutes.

. 

Hell Bent for Election is a campaign film that Jones made for the presidential campaign of 1944.  It's amazing how much of the same liberal vs conservative stuff is still being argued about even today.  The film was made at the early incarnation of the UPA group, the animation studio that specialized in stylized and minimalist backgrounds.  This is an excellent example of using film as a piece of propaganda.

Hell Bent for Election lays out its point of view very effectively using the metaphor of the modern democratic and rickety republican trains in a race to see who will win the presidential election. 

13 minutes

1953 - ISLAND IN THE SKY, good little aviation drama

The weekend John Wayne film fest ends (thankfully) with Island in the Sky, which was probably the best of the four films I viewed.

John Wayne actually looks scared for a change,  an acting emotion that was probably new for him.   The film is about the search for an air transport plane lost in northern Canada that has to be found before the survivors freeze to death.

The writer Ernest K. Gann adapted his book into a mediocre screenplay.  More importantly the director is William Wellman  a former World War I fighter pilot for the French and a guy who got his start in silent films.  Wellman knows planes and pilots and was apparently a real no nonsense filmmaker who didn't take a lot of crap from actors.  This is the kind of direction that John Wayne responded best to, working with a strong willed filmmaker who could get him to push himself a little harder as an actor and not coast on his movie star persona.  

Island in the Sky has nice on location photography where Wayne and the cast actually spent some time in the snow freezing.  This helps give the film some authenticity.  The aerial photography by William Clothier is impressive considering he actually went up in an airplane and filmed these corsairs. 

I don't want to overrate this film because what we have here is a well made decent little adventure film that is modest in scope, but tells an interesting story.

109 minutes.

1963 - MCLINTOCK! John Wayne's comedy western

John Wayne's western remake of The Taming of the Shrew has lots of broad comedy, slapstick, speechifying about American values and some really sexist stuff.

McLintock! is the kind of film that audiences preferred John Wayne in, light weight entertainments with out all the heavy handed jingoist patriotism that the Duke could inflict on his audiences at times.  Wayne sometimes had trouble figuring that out but McLintock! is a painless time killer.

The film is a who's who of early 60's actors with people like Maureen O'Hara, Yvonne de Carlo, Stefanie Powers,  Jack Kruschen,  Chill Wills,  Jerry Van Dyke,  Edgar Buchanan,  Bruce Cabot,  Perry Lopez,  Michael Pate,  Strother Martin,  Leo Gordon,  Hank Worden and Bob Steele.  All these actors showed up in film after film during the 1960's.

McClintock! is an odd film in some ways.  For a film from the conservative Wayne, it has an interesting liberal viewpoint about the exploitation of the native American.  The film also has yet another slapstick mud fight similar to the one in North to Alaska.  In fact the whole idea of John Wayne in a comedy is odd to begin with.

A film where men are men and women better do what they're told and like it damnit!

127 overlong minutes, written by one of Wayne's cronies,  James Edward Grant.

2010 -THE KING'S SPEECH, there will always be an England especially in the movies

The future King of England has a bad stammer, he hires Professor Henry Higgins an Australian speech therapist to get over his stuttering.

Lots of good acting from a bunch of English actors in yet another story about the trials and tribulations of the poor Windsor family.  According to this film the fate of England rests on the ability of an Australian actor to cure the King's stuttering.  In reality, King George VI presided over the breakup of the British empire but that would hardly have been the heartwarming story all of us bloody commoners were waiting to see.

There's nothing especially bad about The King's Speech.  It has two very good actors in Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush.  The photography is nice, it has some pretty scenery.  The issue is does anyone really care?

Well apparently a lot of people care because this film is a reasonable hit. This is the kind of respectable gush that everyone is comfortable giving awards to, a nice safe middle class film about their upper class betters.

To bad nobody broke out into "The Rain In Spain," during all those speech therapy sessions, at least that would have been worth a jolly good snicker or two. 

118 Masterpiece Theater minutes.

1969 - TRUE GRIT & 1975 - ROOSTER COGBURN

OK here we go lots of True Grit.

True Grit the John Wayne version.  This one hasn't stood the test of time very well.  The first 40 minutes were slow moving with lots of exposition before we get to the actual pursuit of the outlaws.  

John Wayne appears to be enjoying himself, Glen Campbell can't act, and the main catalyst for the story Mattie Ross, played by Kim Darby is just pretty hopeless and much to old to be playing a 14 year old girl.

True Grit is in a lot of ways a John Wayne western, but the pivotal character is the girl, if the audience can't relate to the girl the film can't really work.  The film pretty much has to fall back on John Wayne hamming it up as the drunken lawman Rooster Coogburn which was funnier in 1969 then it is today.

On the positive side, True Grit was filmed on some beautiful Colorado locations and once it finally gets going has some fairly decent action.

Re-watching this was somewhat of a disappointment.

128 minutes, written by blacklisted writer Marguerite Roberts.

Rooster Cogburn had the producer Hal Wallis and John Wayne back along with Katherine Hepburn for a sort of sequel.  This was never much of a film.

John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn supposedly directed themselves and it sure shows.  Watching these two legendary actors engage in the mutual butt kissing of each other gets really tiresome after a while.  Wayne shamelessly engages in even more hammy out of control acting then he did in True Grit and for almost 2 hours.   Hepburn is a little more controlled but not by much.  Apparently arch conservative Wayne got along very well with the liberal Hepburn, they were about the only two old time Hollywood stars still standing by the time Rooster Cogburn was filmed.

Since this is a Hal Wallis production, the film looks good with lots of on location filming in the state of Oregon.  Still not so hot as a film.

108 minutes, written by the producer's wife Martha Hyer.

1973 - THE OUTFIT, excellent crime thriller

 The writer/director John Flynn didn't make a lot of standout films but this and Rolling Thunder are probably his best.  Using the same source material as Point Blank.  Flynn put together a tough exciting and very will made crime film with an excellent cast.

Starting with the idea of teaming up Robert Duvall and John Don Baker as a couple of bank robbers who accidentally rob a bank owned by the mob. The film kicks into gear with a lot of great scenes and action.  The film has a list of character actors and in particular film noir character actors that make it really fun to watch for the film buff. 

The action is clean and fast, no slow motion, no buckets of blood flowing out of someone's gunshot wound and no scenes with characters being shot with thousands of bullets who are then still walking around as in the John Woo films The Killer  and Hard Boiled.

A very good film.

86 minutes, screenplay by John Flynn.

1974 - DARK STAR John Carpenter's science fiction parody

The space ship Dark Star is on a mission to destroy rogue planets whatever they are.  The director John Carpenter is on a mission to make something out of nothing with a next to nothing budget. 

Running the gauntlet from silly to stupid to almost sort of clever,  Dark Star is a reasonably funny film.  For a film with no budget Carpenter stretches a buck pretty well, in fact the obvious cheapness of the production probably works for it since it helps emphasize the silly jokes and situations that were created for the film. 

Besides the goofy beach ball alien the star of Dark Star is also the writer Dan O'Bannon as the put upon crewman,  Sgt. Pinback.  Pinback is pretty much the punching bag for most of this film's very silly humor which ranges from getting stuck in the floor of an elevator to being tickled by the space alien while hanging over the ledge of an air shaft. 

Probably not as funny as it could have been, Dark Star is short and kind of wears out its welcome but is entertaining enough.

83 minutes.

1981 - SOUTHERN COMFORT, Deliverence meets a Vietnam War metaphor

Manly filmmaker Walter Hill the director of such manly films such as 48 Hours, Hard Times, The Driver, The Warriors, Extreme Prejudice and Red Heat, released this little gem about some National Guard soldiers the "Weekend Warriors" training in the Louisiana Bayou.

These good old  boys get themselves into a whole heap of trouble with the local Vietcong Cajuns.  Since the film is set in 1973 the comparisons to the Vietnam experience which was still pretty fresh in every one's mind were obvious.

Hill's a get right to the point kind of filmmaker, the action scenes are tough and his male characters either measure up or they don't.  Hill doesn't have a lot of time for all that sissy female stuff when there's people to shoot or shove a knife into or slug in the face.  In the extreme world of Walter Hill you either measure up or you'll be pushing daisies.  Hill is like Howard Hawks with an overdose of testosterone, a big overdose of testosterone.

Southern Comfort's a good action film but I'm not certain what point it actually has to make about the Vietnam War.  By the time the United States pulled out of Vietnam it was pretty much assumed that we really had no business being over there and didn't exactly know what the hell we were doing there in the first place.  Then again many people in this country has been trying to rewrite the history of that war to show it in a more favorable light for years.  Southern Comfort is not really concerned with these kind of sensibilities. 

Still, this film is extremely well made and well acted.  It certainly held my interest till the end.

The on location filming in the Louisiana Bayou country in what looks to be winter or fall is pretty impressive and must have really sucked for the actors and the technicians behind the camera.

105 minutes.

2008 - MAMMA MIA, I give up or why don't we all just give up

From TBS this weekend a horror film marathon.  Mamma Mia the musical was run three times over three nights, it couldn't be avoided.  The film stars would be musical comedy sensation Meryl Streep chewing more scenery than is available on the Greek island they shot the film on. 

The idea is to put together a film that's good campy fun.  Well they got the campy part right.  Middle aged Meryl and her equally middle aged friends and ex boyfriends sing a lot of ABBA songs.   24 to be exact, I didn't realize that Björn Ulvaeus, and Benny Andersson had been so prolific.

Since the filmmakers have hired a cast of non singers and dancers to perform the songs, lots of frenzied editing is used to cover up their inability to sing and dance.  Everyone is encouraged to run or skip or jump around like preschoolers at recess.  This lets the audience know how much fun they are having.

Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire would spend months perfecting dance routines for their films, Meryl and her cast of merry music makers probably gave it 5 or 10 minutes of thought during the after filming happy hours they must have been having.

A lot has been made of John Wayne's ridiculous performance as Genghis Khan in the Conqueror, but 16 time Academy Award nominee Meryl can certainly give him a run for his money.  She runs around acting like a hysterical nutcase for most of the film.

When she isn't acting like a hysterical nutcase she's singing like a hysterical nutcase the rest of the time. Meryl's idea of performing ranges from her subtle interpretation of a raging psychotic to her method actorory singing performances which channel an epileptic having continuous grand mal seizures.

Mamma Mia made a lot of money but artistically the film is a complete failure.  It's hard to believe that there could be a musical worse than, Hello Dolly, Star or On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, but this could be the nadir for film musicals.  Mamma Mia makes At Long Last Love look like a masterpiece.

110 minutes

1975 - BRANNIGAN, John Wayne's fish out of water or is it bull in a china shop cop movie, whatever

Looking for a change of pace and trying to capitalize on the cop movie craze, John Wayne played a Chicago cop on assignment looking to arrest a dangerous gangster in yet another example of what is called "by the books" film making. 

Wayne's looking about as tired and disinterested as this film is.  He walks through the scenes but doesn't seem particularity engaged.  The same can be said about the film.  The plot concerns an elaborate kidnapping and extortion scheme with twists and turns that are obvious 30 to 45 minutes before they happen.

Brannigan has a good cast.   Richard Attenborough is the Scotland Yard detective whose naturally doesn't like Wayne's brash American way of doing things.  John Vernon who usually played bad guys for Clint Eastwood plays a bad guy in this film.  Mel Ferrer a semi dependable leading man from the 1950's and 60's plays a crooked attorney and Judy Geeson a one time British starlet is Wayne's chaste love interest in scenes that are really uncomfortable to watch.

It's a decent cast but hardly inspired.  Hitchcock and David Lean always cast against type to make their films interesting.  It's a measure of this film's failure that everyone cast in this film is basically a stereotype of characters they have played in other films. 

The action is OK but as a friend once said to me there was always something not quite right about cowboy star Wayne running around in a suit and tie. As Wayne got older this seemed even more true

111 minutes

1987 - ISHTAR, is this funny?

Elaine May directing and writing a comedy inspired by the Bob Hope and Bing Crosby road films has a sense of humor so inside and weird it makes the Coen Brothers comedies look like sitcoms. 

Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman are aspiring untalented songwriters who get involved in middle eastern politics and intrigue all the while composing horrible but hilarious songs actually written by Paul Williams. For Ishtar, Paul Williams is working on a level so inspired it's awesome.  A partial list of the songs performed includes, "Wardrobe of Love, Half Hour Song, That A Lawnmower Can Do All That," and the immortal "Portable Picnic."

The film is very well cast, Jack Weston is their agent and Charles Grodin is a very goofy CIA agent.  Beatty's current girl friend at the time Isabelle Adjani was a classic French beauty. In a perverse sense of casting humor,  Elaine May has her play her part disguised as a boy throughout the film.  Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman were big stars at the time this film was made and it's fun to watch them  play a couple of fools. 

It's hard to convey the nutty nature of this film with its mix of bad songs, a blind camel and an incomprehensible plot line. 

The incredible weirdness of Ishtar was asking for trouble with film audiences and found it.  The film was a big box office disaster. Warren Beatty produced the film hoping to keep the eccentric Elaine May under control.  He failed, this film is funny but very strange.

107 minutes.

1975 - THE ROMANTIC ENGLISHWOMAN, snooty British drama wrapped in an enigma

Lots of high class British talent in one of those "what is reality" dramas that occasionally get made to appeal to the art house crowd and maybe win a few awards. 

The writer is Tom Stoppard and the director is Joseph Losey.  Glenda Jackson and Michael Caine in one of his roles where he's not trolling for a paycheck, are the married couple.  They are either having marital problems or Caine who is a writer, is making it all in his head as part of a screenplay he is writing. If this doesn't scream classy sophisticated drama I don't know what does.

This is one of those films where everyone sits around and sips sherry out of a decanter and spouts witticisms to show how erudite they are. Tom Stoppard is known for his way with clever dialog and there are some witty lines, but the whole thing seems rather artificial to me.  The fantasy scenes the writer creates between his wife and her lover are more silly than satirical, if satire was what the filmmakers were trying to achieve, hard to tell.

There is a Mr. Smartypants nature to this film where the people making it want to rub it into everyone's face with how clever they are with their fantasy vs reality crap.

115 minutes.

1932 - THE MISTRESS OF ATLANTIS, pointless adventure fantasy.

Two soldiers from the French Foreign Legion wander around the Sahara desert where they end up in the lost city of Atlantis which is ruled by the queen of Atlantis (played by Brigitte Helm, from Metropolis).

Believe it or not G.W. Pabst filmed this thing in three different versions, English, French and German.  The film has a somewhat choppy storyline to put it mildly. I don't think Pabst got a handle on what he was attempting in this film which seems to be  some sort of romantic fatalism.  Probably filming in multiple languages didn't help.

Pabst photographed some of the film on location in the desert and these are the best scenes.  Once the French soldiers arrive in Atlantis the film spends a lot of time on them aimlessly wandering around for reasons never really explained.

Apparently one of the soldiers falls in love with Brigitte Helm but  since she is barely in the film it's difficult to see how that happens.  She probably has about 10 minutes of screen time and about 5 lines of dialog.  If the film is called The Mistress of Atlantis,  you might want to put more of the mistress in the actual film.

81 confused minutes.

1933 - THE KENNEL MURDER CASE, complex, clever film mystery

A good adaptation of a murder mystery from the 1930's in all its 30's glory. 

The Kennel Murder Case, is a clever murder mystery directed at full speed by Michael Curtiz using just about every camera angle and visual trick he could muster to keep what is basically a drawing room mystery interesting to an audience. 

What the film also has going for it is one of Hollywood's smoothest actors William Powell,  playing the detective Philo Vance.  Most everyone remembers Cary Grant as the epitome of grace and elegance in classic Hollywood films but Powell is certainly right up there with Grant possessing an elegance that has vanished in mainstream entertainment.

An excellent example of a 1930's approach to a murder mystery, an interesting plot, memorable characters and good direction, all mixed together. 

73 minutes.

1959 - THE ATOMIC SUBMARINE, another lame Criterion would be cult release.

I'm going to spend as little time as possible on this one.  The Atomic Submarine is another of those Criterion discs, that is given the deluxe treatment in the service of turning it into a would be cult classic.

Like First Man Into Space this one was also not much fun.  The combination of cheesy special effects ridiculous submarine interior sets and past their prime cast should have made this an enjoyable time killer.  This is just a bad B movie.

As another blogger has pointed out, the one eyed monster was clearly the inspiration for those goofy aliens Kang and Kodos from The Simpsons.  That's about the only thing of interest in this film. 

As I've said before, Criterion needs to stick with the Powell and Pressburger film classics or some unwatchable Rossellini film like Blaise Pascal or Cartesius.  

72 time wasting minutes.

1939 - STAGECOACH, a few notes on the Criterion release

Criterion has probably done as good a job of restoring Stagecoach that can possibly be done with it.  The film was popular with audiences and critics when it was released but nobody thought to take care of the negative of the film.  There's still some visible wear and tear on the image but this is the best I have ever seen it.

John Ford benefited from having top behind the camera talent.  The producer Walter Wanger financed the film after every major studio turned Ford down.  This is actually kind of amazing considering Ford was considered one of the most important directors working in Hollywood in the 1930's.  He and the writer Dudley Nichols had considerable success with The Informer, which was an artistic high point in American film. 

This was John Wayne's second shot at a major film career.  The Big Trail, one of the first 70 mm films failed to make him a star.  Wayne and Ford were close friends but had a prickly relationship at times.   Ford would freeze Wayne out of his life for months and years at a time over some perceived petty slight. 

John Wayne introduced the cowboy/stuntman Yakima Canutt to Ford.  Wayne had worked with Canutt on a lot of those poverty row westerns (the ones you see in Target selling for $10.00 for a set of 10).  Canutt was responsible for the film's impressive stunts during the Indian fight at the end of the film.  Yakima Canutt went on to work on films like Ben Hur, Where Eagles Dare, El Cid, and Spartacus
staging the action scenes in these films, usually the best parts of those films.

In a lot of ways, the real star of Stagecoach is the character actor Thomas Mitchell, playing the alcoholic doctor.  Mitchell is in almost every scene and has much of the little comedy bits that Ford liked to stick in his films.  John Ford was known for verbally abusing actors while filming, he apparently met his match in Thomas Mitchell who gave as good as he got from Ford. At one point during the filming, Mitchell stuck it to Ford by ridiculing Mary of Scotland, one Ford's few flops.

John Ford hadn't made a western since Three Bad Men, and contrary to popular belief, he wasn't the first person to shot in Monument Valley.  Ford only filmed for about 10 days in Monument Valley.  A lot of Stagecoach was actually shot in southern California, which included the famous Indian attack at the end.

Still, when all is said and done, Stagecoach turned out remarkably well and certainly has earned its title as a classic American film.

96 minutes.