2013 - PACIFIC RIM, the giant robot vs monsters film or calling Toho studios

Nice try but Del Toro didn't really get there. The film is basically an updating of one of those Toho Godzilla movies where all the monsters show up together to stomp on cities. For all the love and attention lavished on Pacific Rim by Guillermo Del Toro this film at times tends to meander with Del Toro spending a lot of time on character development to give the film a little more substance sometimes at the expense of the action.

The big issue at the time of release was that there have been three Transformers films so the giant robot movie genre has been kind of done to death. 

Running time 132 minutes. Travis Beacham and Del Toro wrote the screenplay.

1957 - NO DOWN PAYMENT, life in the suburbs circa the 1950's

That era of American conformity the 1950's is dramatized in this soap opera of a film about life in a housing development where four couples are probably a little too neighborly for their own good.

Since this is a film about the 1950's shot at 20th Century Fox during the 1950's the cast is a bunch of the studio's contract players.  The director is Martin Ritt a guy who was skilled at handling actors.  The screenwriter was Phillip Yordan a writer known more for large scale films like 55 Days at Peking or Fall of the Roman Empire than an intimate drama like this.

The film sets up some interesting situations the alcoholic used car salesman who's life is slowly coming apart, the World War II veteran who is suffering from what is now called PTSD, the manager of a hardware store dealing with racism and a husband who works as an engineer but acts like a wimp even after the veteran rapes his wife.  However it all descends into conventional soap opera histrionics.

This is definitely a missed opportunity to look at suburban life, the various plots are too easily resolved and while the actors give it their best shot, the need to wrap things up in under two hours hurts the effectiveness of the film.  Probably the best things in the film are the art and production design.  The homes and back yards had a nice burb vibe to them.

105 minutes

1975 - JAWS on the big screen

Two thumbs up, four stars, ten stars you name it Jaws really holds up for a 30 plus year old film.

Saw this film at a midnight showing in a neighborhood revival house it was in a very good digital copy that hadn't sucked all the grain out of the film.   Jaws looked a lot like I remembered it and I saw it a few times when it came out that summer.

Spielberg was a young guy when he filmed Jaws, he clearly worked his ass off.  Everyone knows that the mechanical shark gave him nothing but trouble and most of the film was shot on the ocean which escalated the cost and pushed the film from a five week shoot to a five month ordeal.   Spielberg was lucky that he had a couple of producers who had faith in the film and stuck by him getting him the best Hollywood talent available.  A lot of the production people on the film deserve credit for the success of Jaws.

Peter Benchley's book had the gem of a good idea which was basically a giant shark that seemed to be almost supernatural eating its way through a bunch of vacationers.  However as a work of literature the book was actually kind of crummy.  Benchley wrote the first draft of the screenplay but Carl Gottlieb, Spielberg the actors and lots of uncredited writers apparently added the humor and fleshed out the characters.  This is the prototypical summer entertainment that focused on characterization along with the exciting action scenes. 

124 minutes.

1960 - THE WACKIEST SHIP IN THE ARMY? , a war comedy from a different time.

Talk about a film made in a different era, The Wackiest Ship in the Army? is the polar opposite from MASH a film that came out 10 years later.  The plot has Jack Lemmon playing another Navy officer but nothing like his Ensign Pulver character from Mister Roberts.  Lemmon's the commander of a schooner trying to smuggle an Australian coast watcher onto a Japanese held island during World War II.

This film is filled with familiar TV and movie faces from the early 1960's chiefly Ricky Nelson playing the baby faced "rookie kid" assigned to help Lemmon.  Nelson's character is a lot more naive than his Rio Bravo character "Colorado" but that film was directed by Howard Hawks, this film is directed by someone named Richard Murphy.

Jack Lemmon is the major reason to watch this film he has to carry it almost entirely by himself.  This is Lemmon before he turned into "Jack Lemmon" a still fairly likable actor.  By the time he stars in Irma la Douce he essentially becomes a caricature of himself.

This film is reasonably funny with on location filming probably in Hawaii and a decent story to make it watchable.

99 minutes, written by Richard Murphy, Herbert Margolis and William Raynor.