1977 - GRAND THEFT AUTO, Ron Howard's feature film directorial debut

The Orson Welles of lame stogy Hollywood films made his directorial debut with this redneck car chase comedy that is fun to watch because they wreck a lot of cars.

The film was produced by Roger Corman, the great exploiter of young talent.  Howard and his father Rance Howard wrote the story which pretty much consists of cars chasing each other.  Ron Howard found a part for his brother Clint Howard and loaded up some of the smaller parts with some of his Happy Days co-workers.

This film is not really anything special.  Howard directs everything in a two shot which is kind of understandable since he is stuck in a car for almost the entire film.  But considering that Howard had been a working actor his entire life he sure doesn't seem to know how to direct the rest of the cast.  Everyone is completely over the top except for Howard and his costar Nancy Morgan who are very bland.

Probably the best thing in the film are the car chase scenes which I doubt Howard directed since that is usually 2nd unit stuff.  However Grand Theft Auto made a lot of money for Roger Corman and helped Howard get better films since in Hollywood making money rules all.


1977

84 minutes.

1999 - LIGHT KEEPS ME COMPANY, documentary on Sven Nykvist

A documentary on the life and career of Sven Nykvist made about seven years before his death.  Sven Nykvist was the cinematographer who was as responsible for the look of an Ingmar Bergman film as much as Bergman himself was.  As the film opens, Nykvist is retired and suffering from a rare form of dementia that has made it difficult for him to speak.

 

The documentary is short and zips through his life and career with the primary focus on his work with Bergman and even that part of the film only looks at a few of their films.  Nykvist was apparently a very private person so the usual collection of "talking heads" and film clips are featured. 

Nykvist apparently had a rather messy personal life.  He had an affair with Mia Farrow on the set of The Hurricane.  The writer Nora Ephron made a witty comment that she was "the only woman in Hollywood who hadn't slept with Sven Nykvist" is unfortunately not interviewed.  She probably had a story or two.

The film ends on a kind of moving note showing Nykvist spending time with his family and childhood friends, not a movie star in sight.  The final shot of the old and ill photographer still able to load a camera magazine is touching.  This is a film that will probably interest film buffs for the most part.

75 minutes.

2003 - LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE, another sequel

It's all about the franchise in the movie business.  Paramount was hoping to get a female Indiana Jones type of series going with the Lara Croft character so they tried again after Lara Croft Tomb Raider.

What they got was essentially the same film as the first one with Angelina Jolie again playing Lara Croft.  Jolie is supposed to be tough and sexy but still comes off as more scary than sexy.  This time they gave her a boyfriend who's a real hardass.  When we are introduced to him, he's doing push ups upside down on the ceiling of his prison cell.

Instead of chasing after some silly time control gadget in the first film.  Lara Croft is now after Pandora's Box.  Yet another blatant steal from the Indiana Jones films.  Along with cribbing from Spielberg films, the film was edited by Spielberg's long time editor Michael Kahn but he can't spin much gold out of this mess of a movie.

At almost two hours long this film was even a chore to get through on the treadmill since it took a week to watch.

117 minutes, written by Dean Georgaris.

2009 - THE MILLENNIUM SERIES, is 9 hours long by the way

The three book series is turned into a three film series.  The films focus on the character of Lizabeth Salander, the rather strange goth/bisexual/computer hacker. The Millennium Series is essentially the three theatrical films based on the books with additional scenes added to each film to pad out the running time.

The first film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo introduces the character of Lisbeth Salander probably one of the most put upon characters in the history of Swedish drama.  Raped and molested by her guardian, neglected by the state, Salander is really damaged goods.  However Salander is also a brilliant computer hacker who in one of those lazy plot devices can break into anyone's computer.  In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Salander teams up with a Bob Woodward like investigative reporter called Mikael Blomvkist to investigate the death of a woman over 40 years ago.  The rather contrived plot features fascists and serial killers. 

The second film, The Girl Who Played with Fire focuses on the background of Lizabeth Salander who is starting to come off as some sort of super hero who would probably fit in with the gang in The Avengers.  In addition to her computer hacking skills, Salander now has fighting skills and can survive being shot several times.  The story in this film has something to do with women being sold into some sort of sexual slavery while Blomvkist unravels Salander's previous life which leads into some sort of vast government conspiracy.

The final film The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest has a plot that would rival a John Le Carre  novel with spies spying on other spies who are spying on other spies.  The film features an evil genius and a deadly and unstoppable henchman.  These guys would easily fit into a James Bond film.

 Was watching this series worth the time?  Well the acting is pretty good, the films are well made. The biggest liability seems to be that the story gets more convoluted and unbelievable as the series progresses.  I will admit that the films kept me watching but at times all the physical and sexual abuse heaped on the Lizabeth Salander character got to be a little too much.

540 minutes.

1979 - THE BLACK HOLE, good looking science fiction film

Disney's attempt to grab some of the Star Wars money came up short.  The Black Hole has impressive special effects and production design like Star Wars.  It also had some of the worst aspects of that series, comical robots and lots of laser blasts. 

Disney also kind of blew it with their cast.  There was nothing particularly wrong with hiring Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, Yvette Mimieux, Robert Forrester, Timothy Bottoms and Maximilian Schell as a retread Captain Nemo character. However casting a bunch of middle aged actors wasn't going to seem very hip and cool to the targeted teenage audience.

The story was also very derivative as well.  The original Star Wars film may have borrowed from about every film that George Lucas could think of (Triumph of the Will, The Searchers etc) but at least he was able to steal and reuse ideas from those films in sort of clever ways.  The Black Hole's problem was that it was stealing ideas from Star Wars, so you had a situation where a film was stealing ideas from a film that had stolen ideas from other films.

Still the film looks good and has enough action and special effects to pass the time.  The robot battles are pretty lame with some very stiff robots shooting it out with our space heroes.  The comical robot V.I.N.C.E.N.T. gets all the good lines in the film and was voiced by Roddy McDowell who for some reason didn't receive any screen credit.  The voice of the robot B.O.B. was Slim Pickens in probably the only real clever joke in the film.

Written by  Gerry Day and Jeb Rosebrook the running time is 98 minutes.