2010 - THE LOSERS or the assembly line

An undercover team of commandos are after a drug lord in Bolivia (where else).  They are betrayed by their leader and now seek revenge.  Teaming up with a hot chick who is good with weapons they shoot a lot of people in their quest for justice,  etc.

Chick with a weapon 1

Nine count them nine writers were involved in adapting this comic book into yet another cookie cutter action film complete with washed out color, computer generated explosions jumpy editing, lots of smart ass one liners and lots of slow mo shots of the team walking around looking looking like bad "mo fo's."

Chick with a weapon 2

The Losers has dialog and plotting in that A Team like way.  In fact it's safe to say that The Losers is basically The A Team, not the film but the TV show version.  The cast is a group of actors I have never heard of playing characters I have seem in action films all my life.

Chick with a weapon 3

It's very comforting watching The Losers.  You know exactly where it's going from the first five minutes of the opening gunfight to the last five minutes of the ending gunfight.

97 minutes, written by credited writers Peter Berg and James Vanderbilt.

1953 - IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE - another not so classic science fiction film

Space "we mean no harm to your planet," aliens have landed on earth after their spaceship breaks down.  While attempting to repair it they set into motion all sorts of problems "in 3D"  for the local residents of some hell hole town in Arizona.

The future auteur of Gilligan's Island, Jack Arnold and apparently uncredited writer Ray Bradbury decided to approach this science fiction film with the premise that space aliens don't want to hurt anyone.  Instead the aliens approach is to bore everyone to death.  There is absolutely no tension in this film with the exception of a bunch of silly 3D effects that are supposed to keep an audience's interest by scaring them with smoke coming out of the screen and empty clothes hangers sticking out at the audience, so much for the clever use of 3D.

The aliens can disguise themselves as people and one of them assumes the form of the girlfriend of science fiction stalwart Richard Carlson our hero.  Her clever disguise to fool him is to put on a cocktail dress and parade around the desert in high heels.

Even with a short running time, this film really outstays it's welcome.  However the space aliens are worth a little bit of a laugh.  It Came From Outer Space was released the same year as Invaders From Mars, Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, War of the Worlds and the seminal classic Robot Monster.  All these films are a lot more fun to watch than this turkey.

81 minutes

2005 - MR AND MRS SMITH, is slick commercial junk.

A married couple are spies working for rival intelligence agencies.  Unknowningly, they have been hired to kill each other or something like that.  This is an action comedy which some critics thought was a metaphor for modern marriage.  In reality this is just another high concept soulless Hollywood film.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith has the glamor couple of Pitt and Jolie who brought a lot of their personal baggage to the production but probably pushed it over the top money wise with all the publicity they got with their off screen romantic antics on this film.

The director Doug Liman was the guy who kicked off the Bourne series with The Bourne Identity.  Liman knew his way around an action scene and they are all well done.  The problem is there are way too many of them particularly an extended shoot em up in a department store that makes this long film seem even longer.

An OK time killer that seriously wears out it's welcome after about an hour, the one joke premise would have played better at about 90 minutes or probably less.

120 minutes

1952 - RED SKIES OF MONTANA, only you can prevent forest fire films

Smoke jumper Dick Widmark and his team of smoke jumpers jump into a forest fire, all of them die except for Widmark who has that dreaded movie disease amnesia and can't remember what happened.  The rest of the film involves Widmark having to prove he wasn't responsible for the deaths of his men etc.

If you can sit through this boring drama you get to see some cool forest fire footage with lots of trees exploding and burning.  This kind of stuff is always fascinating to see since the film was shot in the early 1950's which means no computer imagery and involves actually sticking actors in the middle of a burning forest.

The film is also interesting for a lot of on location early color filming in rural Hicksville USA also known as Montana.  Lots of cool old cars and buildings to look at.

Widmark was always a bad ass but the story in this film is very lame.  However the spectacular fire  fighting sequence towards the end is very impressive

99 minutes

1963 - THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER good murder mystery with a stupid gimmick

Iconic American actor George C. Scott plays British detective Anthony Gethryn in this decent murder mystery.  John Huston directed this film, and considering the talent involved in this production this really should have been a better film, but it's not bad.

The film sets up the clues, Scott figures them out one by one, 90 minutes later case closed, but it's presented in an entertaining if sort of unexciting way.

 The List of Adrian Messenger has two fox hunt sequences.  At this time in his life Huston was living in Ireland and was apparently quite taken with fox hunting.  These scenes are probably the most interesting parts in the film.  Huston himself is even in one of the hunting sequences.

Burt Lancaster?

The big gimmick in The List of Adrian Messenger was the appearance of five Hollywood stars in the film under very heavy makeup.  Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster and Frank Sinatra are supposedly under heavy makeup in their little cameos.

There was some question as to whether they were actually under all these rubber masks during the making of the film.  In any case these cameos are a cheap Hollywood stunt and kind of ruin the drama.

Kirk Douglas?

Even with all this movie star mask foolishness, George C. Scott still manages to out act the cast with his classy performance. 

98 minutes, screenplay by Anthony Veiller.

1938 - ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND, unending Irving Berlin musical.

A big budget musical drama from 20th Century Fox, a studio not known for their skill in making musicals.  Alexander's Ragtime Band really shows how popular taste in film has changed since the late 30's when this was released.

The film his directed by Henry King in the most pedestrian fashion possible.  King was a good reliable studio director throughout his career but getting a handle on this film seemed beyond his reach.  The musical numbers are strictly lock the camera down and let the actors perform like they were on the stage.

As the leader of Alexander's Ragtime Band, Tyrone Power announces, "I love ragtime music," and does he ever.  The film has a lot of Irving Berlin's songs.  Berlin wrote around 1500 songs during his lifetime and I think they performed almost everyone of them in this film.

The dramatic elements in this story are by the numbers, Tyrone Power's Aunt wants him to have a career in classic music, he wants to play ragtime music.  Power meets Alice Faye, who Don Ameche is in love with.  Faye becomes a famous Broadway star, Power and Ameche join the army and fight in World War I.  Who will Alice Faye choose, third credit name Don Ameche or first credit name Tyrone Power?

Alexander's Ragtime Band is an opportunity to see Alice Faye who was a very popular star in the 1930's and 40's.  Faye was what you would call a "full figured gal."  She was a pretty good vocalist.  Tyrone Power was one of Fox's biggest stars.  A pretty boy who it turned out actually had some talent.

Alexander's Ragtime Band was a big hit when it was released but is fairly unwatchable today.

106 minutes.

1966 - TEXAS ACROSS THE RIVER, dumb

What seems funny when you are 10 or 12 years old isn't actually funny in the bright light of adult reality years later.

Well lets see here, Frenchman Alain Delon plays a Spanish nobleman who is going to marry a southern belle.  Delon accidentally kills her former boyfriend by hilariously head butting him out of a two story window.  Delon on the run,  hooks up with cowboy Dean Martin and charter member of the rat pack Joey Bishop playing an Indian named Kronk.  Bishop is supposed to be playing a funny Indian but he's fairly offensive and his jokes are pretty dumb.

Strictly off of the Universal Studios assembly line.  Directed by some guy named Michael Gordon who did some Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies.  This film was clearly shot on the back lot and probably in that place called Griffin Park the go to location for westerns since the silent film days.

The film also features an actor named Rosemary Forsyth.  Forsyth was in about every TV show I wasted my time watching which included Mannix, Barnaby Jones, Days of Our Lives, Fantasy Island, T.J, Hooker, the list is endless.

Texas Across the River is pretty bad.  However it does have Dino.

101 minutes

1956 - WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS, one of Fritz Lang's final American films

One of the last films that Fritz Lang directed before he wrapped up the American phase of his career.  While the City Sleeps has some good and not so good stuff in it.  Lang had to juggle two separate stories, the search for a creepy serial killer and the machinations of a group of executives to gain control over a large Murdock like news organization.

At this point in his career Lang was sick of the film business, tired of dealing with stupid producers and studios.  Lang was always a dictatorial difficult personality to deal with on a film set and like Orson Welles struggled to play the game.  Lang's film budgets got less and less as he descended into "B" movies.  While the City Sleeps isn't exactly a "B" film but it does look kind of cheap.

The film has a good old school Hollywood cast, Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell, Ida Lupino and Howard Duff.  If they weren't exactly on the "A" list they were all seasoned professionals. 

Lang was still good at the crime stuff, the creepy serial killer with a "mama's boy" fixation, the actual killings, a good chase in the subway chase scene.  What Lang seems uninterested in is the board room drama of who will control the news corporation which takes up the major part of the film.

Also, kind of dramatically suspect is the behavior of the reporter played by Dana Andrews who goes out of his way to provoke the serial killer through his news stories.  At one point Andrews even uses his fiancee as a decoy to draw out the killer. 

The amount of drinking that goes on in this film is amusing to watch,  people are constantly drinking and drinking a lot, Andrews goes out to lunch and just doesn't have one drink he has about four, it's hard to believe anyone could even function at their jobs during the afternoon.

In spite of its flaws, I would still put While the City Sleeps a lot higher than the overrated The Big Heat.

100 minutes

1946 - THE BLUE DAHLIA, not classic film noir

Raymond Chandler's only original screenplay is a disappointing mess which highlights the worst aspects of his writing, improbable plotting in a completely confusing mystery that makes absolutely no sense.  Chandler was good at characterization and hard boiled dialog but even this seems pretty second rate.

This film is so out of it we get one of the lamest cliched scenes in mystery films, gathering all of the suspects in one room while the police sort out who did what to whom.

Raymond Chandler was a notorious alcoholic and Hollywood legend has it that the director George Marshall and the producer John Houseman had to keep him liquored up in order to get him to finish the screenplay.  This story is probably close to the truth, The Black Dahlia is disappointing compared to other film adaptations like Murder My Sweet and The Big Sleep.

The Black Dahlia was known for the re-teaming of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake a screen team for Paramount in 1940's film noir.  The film also stars William Bendix a popular character actor as a World War II vet with a few mental problems a character done to death in films.

Veronica Lake is kind of interesting to look at however The Blue Dahlia is one of those "classic" films that really doesn't deserve it's classic status.  The film is essentially a mediocre murder mystery.

Pretty worthless film.

96 minutes.

1973 -THE SPOOK WHO SAT BY THE DOOR an amazing cultural relic from the 1970's

A call to militant revolution for black Americans, The Spook Who Sat By the Door advocates an armed uprising against the United States Government no less.

This film was asking for trouble.  Apparently it was pulled from distribution almost as soon as it was in the theaters.  The film is somewhat difficult to see but it's out there if you know where to look.

 

The director Ivan Dixon worked from a screenplay by the author of the book Sam Greenlee.  I was expecting some complete rabid propaganda junk but this a highly intelligent piece of film making on a very low budget.  The film does have a point of view, not necessarily one I would agree with but it makes it's political arguments very well for the most part.  

It's unfortunate the director Ivan Dixon will probably be remembered for his supporting role on Hogan's Heroes.  He had a successful career directing lots of television shows with lots of white actors.  The Spook  Who Sat by the Door and Trouble Man show that Dixon did have some talent making feature films.

102 minutes

1955 - IL BIDONE or THE STEAL, barely seen Fellini film.

The story of a small time conman.  Il bidone is a series of episodes in his life as Fellini aims for some type of story telling that invokes a sense of tragedy about his life.

This is a little seen and barely discussed Fellini film that came after La strada.  I guess this would be called a minor Fellini film in his canon.   I suspect people today don't have a lot of patience for any of Fellini's self indulgent, slow moving and interesting films if they are even watched at all anymore.

When you think of director/actor combinations, names like John Ford and John Wayne, or Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock come up.  However one would be hard pressed to find the team of Broderick Crawford and Frederico Fellini in the annals of film history.  But there's Crawford is in all his big lug glory playing a con man disguised as a priest no less.  Nothing like unusual casting in a Fellini film.

Also showing up in the film are Richard "Admiral Nelson" Basehart, and Fellini's long suffering wife Giulietta Masina as Basehart's wife

The big issue with the film is the script which is very episodic.  Fellini also seems to have had problems getting a handle on Crawford's conman character.  It's as if he can't decide how sympathetic he feels towards him.

Il bidone does contain a lot of good scenes and has that special feeling Fellini could bring to a film.  Some of the landscapes are very striking and the acting is pretty good.  Compared to some later Fellini films like the super indulgent Satyricon or And the Ship Sails On this is a very good and very watchable Fellini film.  Certainly worth a look.

109 minutes.

2010 - HEREAFTER, drama about the supernatural is mighty low key

Three stories about people interacting with the supernatural.  Matt Damon is a psychic who can't handle his psychic powers.  Some kid in London sees his brother killed and then wants to communicate with him from beyond the grave.  In the third story, a French reporter survives the 2004 tsunami and has a near death experience where she sees ghostly images.

This film was directed by Clint Eastwood and it's so low key and quiet that all the supernatural stuff doesn't have a fighting chance in the film it's hard to see what the big deal about the afterlife is when the afterlife is so damn laid back and low key.

If you are going to make a film about the supernatural it would be nice if there was actually a little more interaction with the supernatural.  At the very least the humans could have interacted with Fatso, Stinky, and Stretch from Casper the Friendly Ghost,  which would have introduced a little action to this film.

Gratuitous tsunami victim picture

Clint Eastwood has been a prolific filmmaker since he started working behind the camera,  32 films since he started directing in 1971.  They have all been of very variable quality.  For every Unforgiven the viewer has to sit through 5 of 6 films like Space Cowboys or Hereafter.

129 minutes, written by Peter Morgan.

1974 - THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS, early good Spielberg film.

Spielberg's road epic about a couple of dim witted white trash Texans who take a state trooper hostage is unlike anything he ever made since.  The film is full of humor and car chases all well handled.

Goldie Hawn a real acquired taste as an actor is perfectly cast as the stupid wife married to her equally clueless husband.  Ben Johnson one of John Ford's actors, is the Texas lawman in pursuit of them.  This is a rare Spielberg film where as much attention to characterization is given as are the meticulously staged action scenes.

In a way this film is an aberration in Spielberg's career.  His next film was Jaws and he's been chasing that three ring circus ever since.

The excellence of The Sugarland Express also owes a great deal to Vilzmos Zsigmond the cinematographer.  Zsigmond was one of the most important filmmakers of the 1970's.  He was responsible for the photography on Deliverance, The Deer Hunter, Heaven's Gate, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and McCabe and Mrs Miller

110 minutes, written by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins.

1976 - FAMILY PLOT, Hitchcock's last film is a real talk fest.

Hitchcock's final film was written by Ernest Lehman who had worked with him on North by Northwest.  The expectations were high for a film of that caliber, what the audience got was a very low key television type mystery thriller.

The elaborate plot about jewel thieves who get mixed up with a phony psychic and her boyfriend is a complicated thriller which coasts along on dialog heavy scenes.  The film lacks the visual touch that Hitchcock in his prime could bring to a story.  Only a couple of scenes look like Hitchcock even directed them particularly the car chase.  The film seems to really run out of gas towards the end with Hitchcock phoning it in with a very unmemorable climax.   

A lot has been written about Hitchcock's lack of interest during the filming of Family Plot.  Years of eating a steak a day for lunch had finally caught up with hm and he was in poor health throughout the filming.

Whatever energy the film has comes mostly from Bruce Dern (smoking a pipe) and Barbara Harris.  Apparently when he wasn't acting in front of the camera Bruce Dern spent his time off screen attempting to motivate Hitchcock into actually directing the film. 

A ill looking Hitchcock with Bruce Dern

Family Plot wraps up a career from a master filmmaker who made eight great films, eight good ones, three bad ones and thirty interesting if not successful films, a very good record in the film business.

121 minutes.

1966 - TORN CURTAIN Hitchcock hits the bottom

The intention of Hitchcock in Torn Curtain was to mix Notorious with The 39 Steps.  Paul Newman is the scientist involved in cold war spy stuff.  Julie Andrews is his fiancee. 

Apparently if it could go wrong for Hitchcock it did go wrong, the actors couldn't work up any chemistry, the production was almost entirely shot on sound stages with phony sets.  Hitchcock was unsatisfied with Bernard Herrmann's score and had him replaced.

The chief disaster in this film was the script which everyone seemed to know was a problem.  Hitchcock went through several writers and everyone of them tried to get their name off of the project.  Torn Curtain is a collection of spy cliches with guys running around in black trench coats and secret messages being passed around in bookstores.  Even the big escape sequence from the East German spies involves a getaway on bicycles of all things, this really wasn't the same guy who directed North by Northwest.  

Universal Studios insisted that Hitchcock use Julie Andrews as his leading lady.  But if he was attempting to sex her up in the same way he had done with Ingrid Bergman, Eva Marie Saint and Grace Kelly he failed,  Andrews is her usual sexless self.  Hitchcock also had a lot of problems with Paul Newman who probably wondered how he had signed onto such a cut rate production.  It seemed everyone knew they had a "turkey" on their hands.

Torn Curtain is the low point in Hitchcock's career.  Marnie failed mostly due to the inability of Tippi Hedren to act her way out of the proverbial paper bag she was shoved into for that film.

However Torn Curtain is a complete miscalculation on the part of Hitchcock and certainly represents the bottom of the barrel of his Universal pictures although he really has only himself to blame.

128 minutes, written by Brian Moore although Moore said the credits should have read written by Alfred Hitchcock with an assist by Brian Moore.

1932 - VAMPYR, classic vampire film is still pretty creepy looking

The great aesthetic of film,  Carl Theodor Dreyer makes a vampire film and it's a creepy slow moving artistic take on the horror genre.

Dreyer shot the film entirely on location as a silent film and added the soundtrack in post production.  Most of the cast was  made up of nonprofessional actors.  The cinematography was by Rudolph Mate who captured some very eerie images using light, smoke and shadows.

Even at 74 minutes, this is a very slow moving film.  The story is difficult to follow at times and you  have to pay fairly close attention to understand exactly what is going on.  In other words this is a European art film.

Nobody ever went to a Dreyer film expecting a slam bang action epic.  But this is an interesting film, primarily due to the mood and the creepy atmosphere that runs throughout Vampyr.

75 minutes

1960 - THE UNFORGIVEN, racism is bad.

Based on a book by Alan Le May, who wrote The Searchers.  The Unforgiven is essentially the same story flipped around.  A western family adopts a Kiowa Indian baby as their own child which causes all sorts of trouble when her actual Kiowa family wants her back. 

The director, John Huston appears to be trying to make a statement about racism but it looks like he had his hands full dealing with his all star cast (Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn, Audie Murphy, Lillian Gish and John Saxon).  The Unforgiven was produced by Lancaster's production company and distributed by United Artists.  With all the fish crowding into this little puddle the end result is just another western. 

The Unforgiven looks good, the cinematography was by Franz Planner who shot it widescreen, the wild west looks very flat and dry  Dimitri Tiomkin wrote one of his typical overblown scores although this one isn't as fun as usual.

Audrey Hepburn is completely miscast as the Kiowa Indian girl, Burt Lancaster gives his usual overblown performance and Audie Murphy's inexperience as an actor shows through in every scene he is in.  Only Lillian Gish manages to give a decent performance. 

John Huston was a director who made a lot of good films and a lot of bad ones, The Unforgiven is one of his not so hot films.  About the only thing that the viewer can enjoy in this film is the Indian attack at the end of this film which is fairly exciting.

125 minutes, screenplay by Ben Maddow and David Wolff.