2009 - OSS 117: LOST IN RIO, further adventures of secret agent OSS 117

Goofball secret agent OSS 117 is back in another spy spoof and fortunately Jean Dujardin is once again playing him.  This time OSS 117 is in Rioon the trail of a bunch of Nazi's hiding out in South America.

With The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius cements his reputation as a rehasher of old genre films.  OSS 117:  Lost in Rio has a lot in common with The Artist mimicking the style of old films like The Artist did.  This film is loaded with 1960's split screen effects, Dean Martin music, women in mini skirts, lots of rear screen projection and guys in wrestling masks ( a nod to "El Santo" the cheesy Mexican wrestler series).  It all gets pretty silly towards the end of the film, Hazanavicius clearly was running out of ideas in this film and tries lots of visual dazzle that can't cover up was is essentially an empty film.

However what the film does have going for it is the return of Jean Dujardin as the handsome out of it goofball spy.  With his annoying laugh and clueless attitude about just about everything, Dujardin pretty much pulls this film across the finish line.  

101 minutes,  written by Jean-François Halin and Michel Hazanavicius.

1959 - THE 39 STEPS, remaking the Hitchcock classic...poorly

Remaking the Hitchcock film in color and setting it in contemporary late 1950's England yielded the expected results, the film sucked.

This redo of the seminal Hitchcock classic is a study in what separates a good director from an average director.  In the original version, Hitchcock along with his actors Robert Donet and Madeline Carroll were able to bring a lot of wit and style to the story.   Kenneth More was a decent actor and light comedian but he lacks the charm of Robert Donet and certainly the sex appeal.  The actor Tainia Elg is supposed to be the stand in for Hitchcock's cool blonde personality.  Elg's got the cool part down but not much else.

Even though they kept most of the plot situations and dialog from the original film while adding some on location filming, the director Ralph Thomas was such a plodder that the whole thing has absolutely no suspense or thrills.  Thomas was an odd choice to assign to this film,  he was mostly a director of mediocre British comedies most of which are unwatchable today.

93 minutes, written by Frank Harvey.

2003 - S.W.A.T., bash, bat, biff, bop, drub

Up scaling the TV show with lots of mindless big screen action and a plot that was probably from a left over story from the original series.  S.W.A.T. is another mediocre example of a film that the world really didn't need.

The film has a decent cast with the emphsis on Colin Farrell as the young cop who can face down the various hostage situations.  This is a film along with Miami Vice, The New World and Alexander among others that tried to turn Farrell into a movie star.  But for whatever reason none of these really caught on so he's been doing eccentric character parts for the most part. S.W.A.T. also stars everyone's favorite bad ass Samuel L Jackson but he's oddly restrained in this film.

The action scenes aren't much to get excited about and don't even elevate the film to the level of a good time killer.  Overall the whole film is a waste of time not even remotely fun.

117 minutes.

1943 - DESTINATION TOKYO, 40's war film is way too long

During World War II a U.S. navy submarine improbably sneaks into Tokyo Bay to radio information back to the Doolittle raid pilots for the first raid on Tokyo.

This is a war film that is over two hours long and is full of propaganda and talk, lots of talk.  Cary Grant is probably the handsomest submarine captain in the history of the Silent Service and the crew is the usual cross section of good old American stereotypes.  In other words this is a typical 40's propaganda piece with not one cliche left unused.

The film was written and directed by first time director Delmar Daves, who went on to have a good career directing westerns however Destination Tokyo is not a western.

Warner Brothers must have been pretty high on the script.  Cary Grant was one of the few freelance actors in Hollywood during the 40's so there was nothing cheap about his salary.  The film has high production values although the submarine sets are so big it looks like the crew is on some sort of underwater Carnival Cruise liner.

On the plus side, the sea battles are pretty decent, with cool models and miniatures zipping around in a studio tank.  Cary Grant gives a good restrained performance although he's still Cary Grant in a sailor suit. 

Still the propaganda aspects of the story and the long running time make Destination Tokyo mighty slow going.

135 minutes.

1980 - THE HUNTER, Steve McQueen's final film

Steve McQueen's final film is a pretty decent action film with a good sense of humor.

 

McQueen's an over the hill bounty hunter with a pregnant girlfriend and an old junker of an automobile hunting down people who jump their bail.  The film gets a lot of mileage out of McQueen's inability to barely parallel park his car much less drive it. 

The film has some good action and is supposedly based on the life of an actual bounty hunter names Ralph Thorson although that seems rather suspect. 

 The Hunter was capably directed by a TV director named Buzz Kulik who could usually be counted on to deliver high quality TV films like Brian's Song. But what the film has going for it is the charisma of Steve McQueen who was suffering from lung cancer when the film was shot.  McQueen kind of  looks in tough shape physically but he still delivers the goods.

97 minutes, written by Ted Leighton (actually a pseudo name for the writers Richard Levinson & William Link) and Peter Hyams

1979 - REAL LIFE, Albert Brooks very funny/strange/intense mock documentary

Comedian and filmmaker Albert Brook's first film is about a filmmaker named "Albert Brooks" attempting to document the life of a "real family" in the city of Phoenix.

This is a film with some seriously funny and weird stuff in it.  It  anticipates the "reality TV " shows  that plague just about every cable TV network.  It's creepy and prescient how much Brooks got right about this deplorable genre of TV shows.

The film is well cast with a funny standout performance from Charles Grodin who is kind of a forgotten actor today.  Grodin's really got the pathetic upper middle class character down as he schlumps his way through Brook's ridiculous documentary.    

Real Life depends on the comedic personality of the bull**** artist "Albert Brooks" character Brooks has perfected.  Brooks is very funny but also very obnoxious and after a while it gets to be somewhat of an endurance contest to sit through this film.  A montage sequence with the family at the Phoenix zoo could have been easily dropped from the film.

Real Life is satire of American media and life at a very high level.  

99 minutes, written by Albert Brooks, Monica Johnson and Harry Shearer.

1987 -RADIO DAYS, Woody Allen nostalgia

 Woody Allen reflects on growing up in Queens, New York.  A large part of this trip down memory lane is Allen reflecting on the radio programs he enjoyed as a kid.  

This is a very minor Woody Allen film, sort of funny, episodic and completely forgettable.  Allen seems to be in a very nostalgic mood.  He's loaded the film up with old music from the 1940's.  He's also stuck in some of his favorite actors from his previous films, like Jeff Daniels, Tony Roberts, Dianne Wiest, Julie Kavner and his former leading lady Diane Keaton.  

The film has beautiful photography from Carlo Di Palma who had worked with Antonioni and the art direction and production design are of a very high quality, the film looks like it was actually filmed in the 1940's.  One of the enjoyable things about Woody Allen films is that they look good and are extremely well made. 

 

The problem with Radio Days is that is is a nothing film.  The comedy in the film are vignettes with no real thread holding them together.  The film is nothing more than a time killer which at least has the benefit of being short if not sweet.   

85 minutes.

1961 - BANG YOU'RE DEAD, 1962 - I SAW THE WHOLE THING, a couple of Hitchcock TV films

Bang You're Dead is a Hitchcock directed episode from his half hour anthology series.  The story is about a little boy pretending to be a cowboy who manages to get his hands on a real gun and bullets.  The suspense is created by having the boy walk around his neighborhood pretending to shoot his neighbors.  Will he actually pull the trigger of the real gun?  This is a well done short film from Hitchcock using his Spellbound POV trick, an over sized prop of a hand and a gun pointed at people to ramp up the tension.

I Saw the Whole Thing has Hitchcock working with his Trouble With Harry star John Forsythe again.  Forsythe is a writer involved in a court trial where he as been accused of being a hit and run driver.  This is yet another version of Rashomon with the writer attempting to discredit each of the witnesses by showing how they all saw different versions of the accident.  Hitchcock had done a similar TV show called Incident at a Corner, the nature of truth was obviously a theme that interested him.

However,  I Saw the Whole Thing doesn't really have any special Hitchcock touches and falls back on John Forsythe to carry the film.  This is mostly a standard courtroom drama with the expected twist ending that his TV shows always had.

30 minutes,  Bang You're Dead.

60 minutes,  I Saw the Whole Thing.

1975 - HUSTLE, sleeze from Robert Aldich

Another old school Hollywood director struggles for relevance in 1970's Hollywood.  Robert Aldrich coming off his success of The Longest Yard with Burt Reynolds teamed up with Reynolds again for this "sleazy slice" of Los Angeles life.

Aldrich was always a director with a blunt hit you over the head technique but this story set a new low for him.  Cynical cop Burt Reynolds is shacked up with high class hooker Catherine Denevue.  Reynolds investigates the drowning of a girl who was involved in the sex trade business in L.A.  Meanwhile the dead girl's father wants revenge as the cliches pile up higher and higher.  Hustle is either a criticism of the lack or morality in a corrupt American culture or a big time Aldrich wallow in slime.

Aldrich cast some of his old actor buddies like Ernest Borgnine and Eddie Albert and he had his usual cinematographer Joseph Biroc with him but it's not much help.   Borgnine and Albert seem like they should be in another film preferably something set in the 1950's and for a film showing the grimy aspects of Los Angles, Biroc made the whole thing way too pretty.

The crappy screenplay was by a hack writer with pretensions named Steven Shagan who let everyone down for this film.  

120 minutes.