2010 - IRON MAN 2 - finally got around to seeing this thing.

Been putting off watching this thing, it ended up being what I expected.  This is the same film as the original Iron Man except they just jacked it by being bigger, noisier and more expensive.  In the last film Tony Stark ended up fighting a guy in another Iron Man suit who was more powerful than him.  In this film he fights a whole bunch of bad robots instead of just one robot guy.  In the previous film, Tony Stark is a drunk and a playboy.  In Iron Man 2 he's drunker and a bigger playboy.  You get the picture. 

Not much of a plot mostly a bunch of random incidents.  Iron Man fights some Russian guy with electronic whips, Iron Man fights him again, Iron Man fights his robots etc.  The secret spy organization SHIELD is mixed up in this so called story.  Some agent named Black Widow has infiltrated Tony Stark's company for reasons I was not entirely sure of except that she wears tight clothes and beats up lots of guys.

Everything wraps up with a big action climax with Tony Stark and his friend wearing some robot armor that shoots missiles.  Lots of computer images blow up.  No picture needs to be painted for this movie.

As far as the cast goes, Robert Downey does his little cute playboy thing again.  Gwyneth Paltrow is probably grateful she is in a hit movie series, ditto Scarlett Johansson.  Mickey Roarke plays some brilliant Russian scientist who builds the evil robot army which is kind of amusing considering Roarke looks like he can barely groom himself. 

125 minutes

1948 - HAMLET, Laurence Olivier version

Shakespeare's tragedy if performed complete can run about 4 hours.  For his film of Hamlet, Olivier cut major chunks of the play but it still logs in at about 2 1/2 hours which is a lot of time watching a film, especially a film based on a Shakespeare play which requires a lot of concentration in this ADD cinema watching age.

This version of the play could probably be called the "watch before I have a test on Hamlet in school." .  The performances are from the classical tradition with actors parading around in big costumes and reciting as if they were playing in a theater.  It's not bad acting, it just seems a little dated.  However Olivier is good as Hamlet he was a very good screen actor with an impressive presence.

This production unlike Olivier's version of Henry the V, is not in color but gloomy black and white.  At times parts of the films are so dark I don't think anybody even bothered to build a set for some of the scenes.  I know this play is a tragedy but things couldn't been that dark and depressing in Elsinore Castle all of the time.

Being the great Shakespeare critic that I am I must say I have always found the finale of Hamlet to be a little contrived.  All that poison sword tip business and poison chalice stuff seems like an easy way to wrap up a very long play.  I think the Bard probably could have used a little bit or a rewrite towards the end.

155 Minutes

1946 - THE OVERLANDERS, World War II Australian cattle drive western

During World War II, the Australian government wanted to promote their contribution to the war effort.  Great Britain's Ealing studios usually a provider of genteel English comedies featuring Alec Guinness, decided to take up the challenge.  Ealing sent director Harry Watt on a research trip to figure out a story.  The end result was a film about a cattle drive from northern Australia to the south to prevent the cattle falling into the hands of the Japanese in case of an invasion.

Tbe Overlanders was filmed on location by Watt with Australian actors and a camera crew in some fairly rugged locations.  The film has an epic scope and impressive photography, it is also a rather boring film story wise.

The main problem with The Overlanders is that the cattle drive film has been done to death.  Dressing it up by filming it in Australia can't really change or improve on the typical troupes of this genre. Still the film moves along it's only 91 minutes and is actually fairly unpretentious.

 

Written by Harry Watt and Ralph Smart.

1976 - FELLINI'S CASANOVA - the life of Casanova as rewritten by Fellini

Critics at the time of release commented that Fellini didn't seem to like his main character Casanova which was rather odd since the film was supposedly about the life of Casanova.  Fellini's Casanova is a rather empty film especially for a director like Fellini whose films are usually the "life is a carnival" thing.

Fellini's Casanova was his follow up to Amarcord which had been a big commercial and critical success.  Where that film was upbeat and funny this is one dour and cold film.  It probably didn't help Fellini's Casanova that the film was shot entirely in the studio.  This gave the film a phoney but I will have to say an interesting look.   Fellini always had the best cameramen and set designers working on his film. 

As was the process with a lot of Fellini's later films, the actors didn't actually have dialog to speak, the were instructed by Fellini to just say numbers after which he would dub in the dialog.  Fellini frequently worked from a story outline with out a fully prepared script which tended to make his later films more a series of episodes rather than a fully realized story.

 Fellini's Casanova seems to be primarly about the sex life of Casanova, but in this film all the silly sex scenes aren't presented as much fun.  The point seems to be that Casanova's hedonistic lifestyle was extremely unfulfilling and empty.  Well whatever, the film does have a few interesting scenes and it does look good.

155 minutes.

2011 - TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, or more crap for the treadmill

Unbelievably 2 hours and 30 minutes of robots bashing and busting each other and anything else that gets in their way.  This is the third in the Shia LaBeouf trilogy not to be confused with the Apu trilogy or Pagnol's Fanny trilogy.

The appeal for Michael Bay seems to be in staging elaborate scenes of improbable mass destruction while slobbering over the latest female flavor of the moment Rosie Huntington something or other.

The third film in this series is basically the same as the first two films no better or worse than the previous films.

154 minutes.

2011 - HAYWIRE, an attempt to update a 1960's spy film

Quirky director Steven Soderbergh and the writer Lem Dobbs seem to have a few ideas on their minds for this film.  They want to make an action star our of a mixed martial artist named Gina Carano, they are attempting to update the serious spy thriller which was usually competing with the James Bond series to a more contemporary time period and finally they are trying to make the action scenes in this film a little more realistic.

Since Carano had limited acting experience, Soderbergh put together a fairly high powered cast to support her.  Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum and Ewan McGregor are essentially supporting characters for Carano.

This is a modest but good action film.  The fight sequences are staged as realistically as possible and whatever Gina Carano lacks in acting ability she is certainly in very good shape physically when it comes to the running, jumping, fighting and shooting stuff.

As with all of Soderbergh's films this a technically well made and competent film that avoids a lot of overblown director's "touches."

93 minutes.

1953 - I CONFESS, one of Hitchcock's very good films.

Alfred Hitchcock had a lot of problems making I Confess.  Warner Brother's studio found the story of a priest caught in a murder/love triangle a little too hot of a subject for their taste.  Hitchcock had to modify the story and change the ending of the film.  Hitchcock wanted to use Swedish actress Anita Bjork but Bjork had a rather messy personal life which the studio thought would have been fodder for the gossip columns.  

For his male lead, Hitchcock cast Montgomery Cliff a method actor who was also a very emotionally tortured person.  Hitchcock was a director who preferred actors who worked to his carefully preplanned visual pattern.  With Montgomery Cliff, Hitchcock had to wait for him to get into the mood.   But for all the problems Hitchcock had with Cliff, it is a very impressive performance

I Confess is one of Alfred Hitchcock's best directed films.  He shot much of the film in Quebec and brought a real feeling of atmosphere to the film.  This was a story that the Catholic director put a lot of himself and his feelings about religion into the film. 

I Confess is one of the few films that does not feature singing nuns or comical Irish priests but instead focuses on the individual's personal spiritual relationship to their religious beliefs.

92 minutes, written by George Tabori and William Archibald.

2001 - LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER - crap to watch on the treadmill

Lara Croft:  Tomb Raider is a little over 90 minutes long so that's about 3 / 30 minute workouts on the treadmill to make the time go faster during the morning workout.  The additional 10 minutes of running time is the fooling around part where you set up the speed of the treadmill and set the timer for the morning run.

The film stars Angelina Jolie as the video game character.  Jolie is kind of young in this film, she has big pouty lips and a padded bra.  Her face is hard looking because she is supposed to be a hard ass.  She has a very bad British accent.

This is basically Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones was a chick instead of Harrison Ford.  The big action pieces are rehashes of the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade scenes involving a mix of science and fantasy.  One scene is lifted from Ray Harryhausen's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad which the director just ramped up with more frenzied action and special effects.  The bottom line, this film is very derivative but then what do you expect from a video game turned into a movie.

100 minutes

2013 GI JOE: RETALIATION, absolute crap

A sequel to the previous GI Joe film, GI Joe:  The Rise of Cobra.  This film is just complete crap and a total waste of time. 

The actor known as "The Rock" Dwayne Johnson takes over as the lead and that's not saying a whole lot when you have a cast that is completely without any interest or chemistry.  But then again who really cares, this film is strictly a PG-13 action flick with lots of hand to hand fighting and shooting but no blood even though there are bodies strewn everywhere life is very cheap in this film.

The supposed highlight of this garbage is some kind of mountain climbing fight scene which is so loaded with computer generated GI Joe cartoon people and Cobra bad guy cartoon people that it just looks incredibly phoney even by the standards of lazy computer  action scenes.

Clever advertising and marketing helped this film make money but personally I am very sorry I wasted my time finishing this worthless excrement.


110 minutes.