1990 - A MOM FOR CHRISTMAS, No. 2 in the Christmas film series

Two films into this month's Christmas film festival.   I am wondering if I have already hit rock bottom with this piece of crap that is so bad it barely mentions Christmas and certainly doesn't evoke the spirit of the holiday.  At least The Christmas Candle had that going for it.

Olivia Newton John is a store mannequin brought to life after a little girl wishes she could have a mom for the Christmas holiday to be with her and her widower father.  Almost immediately visions of one of the plots of The Twilight Zone come to mind.  But Rod Serling never had someone as vacant as Olivia Newton John to deal with.  In fact I think it's safe to say that Olivia Newton John actually plays her character with all the personality of a mannequin.

The comedy in this film is extremely forced and after a while the film features an incredibly tasteless plot turn where the living mannequin and the father fall in love with each other. There is just something very icky about a plastic mannequin being the obsession of a workahcolic male.  It's kind of like he got himself a sex toy or something.

The little girl is played by one of the most appalling child actors I have seen in a while,  Juliet Sorci.   Sorci whimpers and simpers throughout the film when she's not having temper tantrums. 

But fear not precious viewer.  Like Pinocchio, the mannequin becomes a real boy girl thanks to the magic of Christmas.  I guess I should mention this is another Christmas film with poor dialog, acting and direction which seems to be par for the course for these films.

96 minutes

2013 - THE CHRISTMAS CANDLE, 1st of the 12 films of Christmas project

The rules for the posts this month.  Only Christmas movies.  No movie can be one that is already considered a classic such as It's A Wonderful Life or White Christmas.  You have been warned.  Let's start with The Christmas Candle a piece of religious slop from last year.

Hot

In this film, an angel appears every 25 years to a candlemaker's shop and turns one of his candles into a magic candle which will grant wishes to whoever lights it.  The film is set in a town in jolly old England.  The town is run by a rich woman who seeks out a minister for her Church and who will buy into this magic candle stuff.  The town lives in a state of poverty but the lady "to the manor born" wouldn't think of giving money to anyone when she can get these people to run around chasing their tails looking for a magic candle.

Well into this cheery little scene comes a minister who has sort of lost his faith in God after his wife and daughter have died of consumption, a noted movie disease.  Guess who ends up getting the magic candle, gets his faith restored and for good measure gets the only hot chick in the village.  It really was a magic candle after all.

Not Hot

The film is a who's who of English actors who I have never heard of and don't have a clue about.   The exception is the very scary Susan Boyle that well known warbler of "I Dreamed a Dream." In this film she sings a song about a magic Christmas candle of course. 

There is nothing really all that bad about this film.  The problem is that there is nothing particularly special or good about it either.  I don't doubt the sincerity of the makers of The Christmas Candle  I just question their choice of material and the way they handled it.


100 minutes

2002 - THE SUM OF ALL FEARS - more spy vs spy stuff from Tom Clancy

An attempt to reboot the Tom Clancy/Jack Ryan thriller franchise with a new actor playing Ryan, Ben Affleck.  The role had previously been played by Alec Baldwin and then Harrison Ford.  Those films had been highly successful at the box office.  However the studio did not want to continue to payout the large sums of cash Ford was asking for with each successive film.

The Sum Of All Fears was like one of those Spider man films.  The studio pretended the first series never existed and just started the whole thing over with a different and cheaper actor.  So in The Sum Of All Fears, Jack Ryan is no longer the deputy CIA director.  This film takes him all the way back to being a desk bound intelligence analyst.

This film is watchable but a little lazy.  The bad guys are the movies favorite villains the ex Nazis.  They are attempting to start a new world order by tricking the United  States and the Soviet Union into going to war with each other.  This old standby of a plot has been used in just about every other James Bond film.

 

This is a perfectly acceptable B-flat thriller nothing special but watchable.

124 minutes, screenplay by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne.

1959 - THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII,

Muscle man Steve Reeves, is a Roman soldier returning to his old hometown of Pompeii after duty in Palestine.  He runs into a lot of political intrigue with some evil Pompeiians who are framing the Christians for murder and looting sprees.  Reeves gets to the bottom of things and figures out who is framing the Christians.

However the Christians are rounded up and sent to the arena to get eaten by the lions.  Just when things couldn't get worse Mt. Vesuvius erupts which resolves the whole mess by destroying everything in sight.

What we have here is kind of a cut rate version of I Claudius with some destruction stuff thrown in for good measure.  The volcano stuff at the end of the film isn't too bad the rest of the film is only so so.  This film is basically for people who enjoy these cheesy Italian "sword and sandal" epics/

100 minutes.

2010 - SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO - Space is the place

The live action version of the early Anime series known as Star Blazers in this country.  This film follows the story of the early anime film fairly closely and I have to give it credit it certainly is action packed.

The film run over 2 hours but it seemed like a quick 2 hours.  If the crew of the Yamato isn't blasting away at the "Gamilas" fighters in Star Wars type space dogfights the crew of the Yamato is mowing them down in hand to hand laser weapon fighting.  The special effects are actually pretty well done and the cast does manage to keep a straight face

This is one of those films that 12 year old boys will love.  It keeps that gross kissing and love stuff to a minimum and concentrates on the action.  Let's face is this film was never going to be confused with Kurosawa's Ran.

Given what this film is I was impressed by the semi downbeat ending the studio allowed the filmmakers to tack on to it.  Pretty well done considering the source material is from an old cartoon series.

138 minutes.

1985 - PHENOMENA - Another Argento gore film

A very attractive and very young Jennifer Connelly is the heroine of this Dario Argento film which features a lot of disgusting killings by a homicidal maniac, lots of gore and body parts everywhere.  That's entertainment I guess.  The twist in Phenomena is that Connelly has some sort of psychic powers that allow her to communicate with insects.  Connelly and the insect friends team up to track down the killer. 

Argento keeps Connelly dressed mostly in virginal white outfits and manages at one point to have her wandering around in her underwear.  It sounds exploitative and it probably is but in this film Connelly is a fairly tough little cookie facing down the psycho killer.  The big problem with casting Connelly was that she just couldn't act.  Connelly struggles to look like she is actually worried about all these disgusting killings of students at the all girls school she attends but she comes off like she lost some of her Barbie dolls instead.

I have to give it to Argento, even with all the gore and nasty killings he does bring a lot of style of the film.  I think the question is at what point does the film cross the line?  At times Argento seems like a nasty little kid whose idea of fun is pulling the wings off of live flies. 

Well there's never a dull moment in this Argento film and the soundtrack choices are very effective.  This giallo film is probably mostly for fans of the director and I am guessing his fans are a rather strange bunch if they get off on this stuff.  Stylish gory horror films are only going to get you so far in your film career.

110 minutes, written by Franco Ferrini and Dario Argento.

1946 - MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, another excellent Blu Ray from Criterion

A great disc from Criterion.  My Darling Clementine's photography really jumps out with it's stunning black and white images.

It's well documented that Darryl F. Zanuck ended up reworking the film much to Ford's displeasure but it appears that Zanuck got rid of a lot of Ford's cornball humor and indulgent character touches.  A pre-release version is featured on this new disc but it's no undiscovered Director's Cut of great scenes.

Henry Fonda had worked with Ford on Young Mr. Lincoln and his understated performance is very impressive.  Fonda was no John Wayne and the film really benefits from that.  The rest of the cast particularly Victor Mature as Doc Holliday was very good.

Ford directs, that's him on the floor staging the dance sequence he's between the flags.

This was the last picture on Ford's contract for Zanuck.  Zanuck made sure this was an "A" quality production.  The set for the town of Tombstone was actually constructed in Monument Valley to take advantage of the scenery.

Ford was a master of filming long shots.  His sophisticated visual scene is quite striking on My Darling Clementine.

97 minutes, written by Samuel G. Engel and Winston Miller.

2014 - THE GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, I think I've heard this same old song before

Doesn't anyone remember Star Wars Episode 4 anymore?  Guardians of the Galaxy borrows a lot from that film.  The green woman is a stand in for Princess Lea, Star Lord is Han Solo, the tree creature is Chewbacca and there's a couple of bad guys who are clearly modeled after Darth Vader and The Emperor.

A lot of drivel was written on the Internet about how this was Marvel Studio's phase 3 in their story arch series, but this film sure looks a lot like phases 1 and 2 to me.  There is an elaborate story arc connection with regard to some magic stones or something that has been in the works and referenced in the last several Marvel movies.  However I skipped the last Thor movie because I just didn't care so I don't know if the power stones were mentioned in that film or not.

This was the film that supposedly was to be loaded up with humor.  What passes for humor in the Marvel Universe is a talking racoon and listening to music mix cassette tapes from the 1970's.  Chris Pratt appears to have been hired to carry the comedic load and I guess he does about as well as can be expected with the script and story.  Speaking of the script the co-writer and director James Gunn plays it very safe in this film.  There is none of the subversive and sick humor that permeated his bizarre film Super.  I'm sure the studio wasn't about to go down any road that made fun of religious fanaticism. 

Come to think of it Guardians of the Galaxy also borrows from another classic film, The Dirty Dozen.  Assemble a team of people who barely get along with each other and have them work together to fight the evil Nazis Kree.  This is a very derivative film.

The audience I saw this film with loved it and this film made a lot of money.

122 minutes.

2014 - THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN 2, is commercial filmmaking at its most cynical

The first reboot of the Spiderman series was no classic, the 2nd film unimaginatively called The Amazing Spiderman 2 manages to be even less successful as a commercial entertainment.  I lasted about 45 minutes to an hour on this turkey, skimming ahead to watch the final fight between Electric guy or whatever the villain's name is and the Green Goblin who shows up towards the end because you can't have enough action stuff going on unless you completely overwhelm the audience with noise and chaos.

The main leads in the film Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are supposedly to be playing teenagers graduating from school.  They are starting to look a little long in the tooth.  Garfield is 31 years old and Stone is 26 and the cuteness thing she had in the first film is looking a little rough around the edges.  The rest of the cast is clearly slumming in the great "where's my paycheck" school of acting tradition.  Particularly pathetic is Paul Giamatti who is supposed to play the villain "Rhino."  Giamatti shows up at the beginning of the film and the end of the film blathering in some ridiculous Russian accent.

The action scenes are the usual overdose of computer imaging Spiderman flying around New York looks like a cartoon character who would be at home in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  Spiderman is never in real danger because Sony Pictures had announced that there would be another film is this series with Spiderman taking on the Sinister Six, whoever they are.

Unfortunately for Sony, this picture was not the big blockbuster hit they had been hoping for.  The film made money but not the millions and millions of dollars they wanted.  Apparently the studio is spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to save this series from the ennui that seems to be settling in on these superhero films.

142 minutes.

2014 - EDGE OF TOMORROW aka Live Die Repeat

Edge of Tomorrow was the summer action film that received good reviews from most of the critics and failed to be the big blockbuster Warner Brothers Studio was looking for.  After watching this film I would include myself in the "why didn't this film take off" camp.  However, I will have to admit I did not rush out to see it this summer.

In spite of the good reviews, the thought of sitting through another Tom Cruise movie was just not very appealing.  It's unfortunate, because Cruise actually has to put in a little more work on his character in this film.  For a guy in his 50's he seemed to be getting slightly long in the tooth to be playing his usual smiling preppy character.  At least that was my thought anyway. 

I had no interest in putting up pictures of Tom Cruise again

Obviously the influence of Groundhog Day and video games is in this film.  But director Doug Lyman stages the film in such an entertaining way it's not a distraction but a clever way to tell the story of yet another alien invasion.   

Considering all the hard work that everyone obviously put into a fairly original film for a change Edge of Tomorrow should have done much better.  Unfortunately this film will only add fuel to the fire of promoting sequels and comic book franchise films.  Warner Brothers has learned its lesson and has announced that it will be making at least ten films based on DC comic book super heros.

Well in spite of all the baggage that this film carried, Edge of Tomorrow is a very good science fiction/action film.

113 minutes

2014 - LUCY, science fiction action thriller from Luc Besson

In this highly ridiculous but highly entertaining science fiction thriller from Luc Besson.  Scarlett Johansson is forced to consume large quantities of some weird drug by an evil Korean gangster.  This drug expands the powers of her brain while draining her of her emotions and humanity.  She becomes sort of a "Mr. Spock" crossed with "Carrie" combination.

The emotionless character Lucy is the perfect part for the monotone none acting of Scarlett Johansson.  Throw in "anything for a paycheck" actor Morgan Freeman, a bunch of nasty Koreans and some French guys and you have the perfect bizarre cast to keep you watching.

At times Lucy seems like it's trying to say something about evolution and the human condition.  But just when things are getting a little pretentious, Besson throws in a gunfight between the bad Koreans and the French police guys  This is all highly entertaining if violent nonsense put together in an enjoyable manner.

Luc Besson may have made a ridiculous film but he was smart enough to keep the running time down to less than 90 minutes.  A very tall tale like this film doesn't bare a whole lot of scrutiny.

89 minutes.

1973 - THE MACKINTOSH MAN, a spy thriller with Paul Newman directed by John Huston.

Paul Newman takes another shot at an espionage thriller 17 years after appearing in Hitchcock's spy movie disaster Torn Curtain.  The Mackintosh Man was directed by another veteran filmmaker John Huston.  

Newman is a secret agent undercover for British Intelligence.  He is supposedly on the trail of a notorious British traitor but as in all of these serious spy films, all is not what it seems. 

The Mackintosh Man is smoothly and efficiently directed by John Huston.  Maybe a little too smoothly for that matter.  The veteran director doesn't seem to have much interest in the film.  The action scenes are tossed off so nonchalantly it's as if they were almost a second thought. 

This is a good looking film, well photographed by Oswald Morris in Ireland and Malta.  The film has a good cast beginning with Paul Newman, James Mason and Dominique Sanda.  There are also many British character actors like Michael Hordon and Harry Andrews.  It's unfortunate that Huston couldn't bring any interest to the film.  However The Mackintosh Man is still very watchable for the most part.

98 minutes, screenplay by Walter Hill and William Fairchild.