2005 - A SOUND OF THUNDER, B movie time.

A mighty disappointing adaptation of the very good and maybe even classic Ray Bradbury short story about time traveling hunters who journey back to the Cretaceous Era to hunt dinosaurs.  The catch is that the hunters cannot interfere in the natural development of evolution as they might cause changes to their present day time period.  Bradbury cleverly works this out and shows the consequences of interfering with history. 

What could have been the basis for a good science fiction adventure story ended up as a cheap B movie looking mess.  Apparently the budget was cut during the production of the film and it sure shows with some very poor special effects.  This is the price of computer generated imagery done on the cheap.

That said, the film stuck in some kind of B movie hell hole is actually kind of watchable.  Ray Bradbury's basic plot is such a strong one even a film as poor as this can't entirely ruin it.

What to say about the cast, really not much.  Independent filmmaker Edward Burns is our sturdy scientist hero trying to fix history and because there has to be a girl some British actress named Catherine McCormack is his little scientist helper person.  Only Ben Kingsley as the head of "Time Safari" the time traveling company is any fun as the oily head of the company who wants to make a buck, time travel history interference be damned.

110 minutes.

1962 - HERO'S ISLAND - a very odd pirate film maybe?

Well the cast is certainly interesting and unusual.  James Mason, Rip Torn, Neville Brand, Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton and some actor named Kate Manx who was the wife of the writer/director Leslie Stevens.  The plot of this film has something to do with a family trying to start a new life on an island off of the Carolina coast.  They become involved with some poachers, a pirate and Neville Brand as some kind of bad ass.

Frankly this film is weird and kind of a mess.  Leslie Stevens was the creator of The Outer Limits and the auteur behind the very strange horror film Incubus a film with the dialog spoken entirely in "Esperanto" an odd ball auxiliary language.  So the viewer should know what they are getting into.

I guess this is a pirate movie since James Mason plays a pirate.  The acting is kind of stiff, the film looks like it was filmed on location the action is spotty and not particularly well staged.   Frankly Hero's Island is a real muddle.  What keeps the film going is the interesting cast at the beginning of their careers.

I can remember seeing this film at a Saturday matinee for kids of all places.  I didn't understand it at the time and 40 plus years later the film still doesn't make any sense.

94 minutes.

1994 - THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE, yes another film about the British royals

Yes, it's another film about British royalty which means powdered wigs, women's gowns with lots of major bosom uplift and lots of uniforms and starched pants.  The film is adapted from the play of almost the same name.  The play is actually called The Madness of King George III.  For some reason they dropped the roman numerals in the screen version.

 

 

The film is a character study of England's King George The III the monarch who saw the American colonies gain their independence from England.  Apparently George The III had a few mental problems which is the story line of the play.  The drama comes from seeing if George will get his marbles back before the British Parliament strips him of his powers and gives them to his indolent son.

The cast is one of those only in England can we find this bunch.  Ian Holm, Rupert Everett, Rupert Graves, Amanda Donohoe, Geoffrey Palmer, Helen Mirren (with her clothes on for a change) and Nigel Hawthorne recreating his stage role as the nutty King.

The film is a good character study and very well acted although George the III is so extremely dislikable when he's sane that it's a little hard to work up much sympathy for him when he is trying to recover from his mental illness.  In any case the film is probably best enjoyed by that certain bunch of people known as Anglophiles.  Frankly, you can see this kind of stuff on public television Sunday nights often.

107 minutes, written by the playwright Alan Bennett.

2005 - THE PRIZE WINNER OF DEFIANCE, OHIO - an OK middle class drama.

"Based on a true story" says the title card at the beginning of the film and who will ever know how true this is.  In order to support her large family because her alcoholic husband is blowing every paycheck on booze.  Evelyn Ryan enters lots and lots of contests and wins enough stuff to keep the family afloat financially.

Julianne Moore plays Evelyn Ryan and she has the look down and gives a very good performance.  The film has a few clever bits with characters breaking the 4th wall and talking directly to the viewer.  The production is modest but decent and the film has an upbeat ending with a message of sort of 50's female empowerment.

The film underperformed at the box office and it's easy to understand why.  The problem was with the casting of Julianne Moore.  Moore is a fine actress but she is not really what I would call a star.  Nobody lines up to see the latest Julianne Moore film.  She may play to the art house crowd but she is nobody's idea of a commercial star.

This film popped up on Netflix and that's probably the perfect place for it.  The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio.  Plays perfectly well while sitting at home in front of the TV.

99 minutes.

2015 - MAX MAX: FURY ROAD, violent rehash of the previous Max Max films.

After a long pause Mad Max is back in a film that has a lot of kinetic energy and lots of cars and people getting smashed and flattened.  The director George Miller uses his old visual references and tricks from his previous films and if the viewer has seen these shots before in Miller's other car chase films, he sure knows how to use them.

Tom Hardy takes over for Mel Gibson whose presence is frankly kind of missed.  Charlize Theron wa very stunning woman is actually the star of the film and it's not a glamour babe part for her.  Miller has even perversely used computer trickery to remove one of her arms and put a prostethic gripper in it's place.  Next to Theron, Hardy is more of a reactor than driver in this film as she basically beats the crap out of him and any other man that gets in her way.

Fury Road has a lot of scenes and situations from the other films.  The chief villain, Immortan Joe is definitely a call back to The Humungous from The Road Warrior.  Immortan Joe's fortress, The Citadel is clearly Bartertown from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.  The car chases in this film are extremely well done, but they do remind me an awful lot of the final chase in The Road Warrior.  In fact the weirdo's in this film could be related to the other weirdo's that populated the first three films.

Probably the most interesting thing about this film is the strong feminist slant the runs throughout the film.  This is one of the few ''balls to the wall" action films where the women call all the shots fighting a testosterone dripping bunch of violent crazies.

120 minutes

1940 - FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE, third in the trilogy.

Watched the 90 minute edited version of this over 3 hour serial and I doubt I could have lasted much past 92 minutes if this was any longer.  It seems that the evil Emperor Ming is spraying earth with a purple mist that causes people to drop dead in the middle of the street.  To the rescue are Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Professor Zarkov flying off to the planet Mongo in their phallic spaceship. At the planet Mongo the ruler,  Emperor Ming, an oriental looking villain with a very western accent is behind this evil scheme.  I think it goes without saying that this Ming character is one of the most offensively racist characters in 1940's films.

For an action serial primarily aimed at the 1940's Saturday kiddie crowd these Flash Gordon stories have always had a very strange lack of action.  The spaceships fly around in circles held up by wires while the backdrop whizzes by.  The fights are more like two guys duking it out in a poor man's professional wrestling contest.  Finally the acting to put it mildly is poor.  I get that this is a low budget production and that the intended audience of kids probably aren't interested in subtle acting but come on.

I suppose in some way you can argue that Flash Gordon is the very poor relation to the Star Wars films.  Certainly all of the troupes of the genre are present, the evil empire, the evil emperor and the colorful worlds just ripe for the marketing of a line of toys for the kiddies.

Still, even for a serial this is mighty weak storytelling.

87 minutes.

2013 - 47 RONIN, is a weird mix of samurai and oriental fantasy film

Obviously looking to rehash some of Keanu Reeves Matrix moments and make some money at the same time.  Somebody dreamed up the idea of mixing the legend of the 47 Ronin with lots of monsters and mysticism.  As if the original idea of samurai warriors avenging their dead master wasn't dramatic enough this film adds lots of substandard CG monsters and witches to the mix. 

 Casting Reeves was an attempt to add some international box office insurance to what is a national legend in Japan.  However I would argue people don't line up to see Keanu Reeves films (if they line up at all for any film these days).  Studios who spend lots of money on elaborate fantasy films better know what they are doing.  There are any only so many Lord of the Rings epic type stories floating around out there.

The only somewhat redeeming feature of this film is the action stuff and after a while even that gets tiresome.  Obviously Keanau is going to defeat all of the phony looking monsters since a plot point is that Keanu can sense magic or in this case computer magic.

The film is trying for a sense of epic tragedy but it's only a tragedy of wasted time in front of the TV.

118 minutes written by Chris Morgan and Hossein Amini.