Musical terrorists are on the loose in some unnamed Swedish city. These are not your typical musical terrorists they are percussionists to make matters worse. Assigned to stop them is tone deaf police officer Amadeus Warnebring.
This is a very funny and weird comedy, highly recommended.
102 minutes. Written by Ola Simonsson Johannes Stjärne Nilsson and Jim Birmant.
It's World War II. Marlon Brando is a German forced by British Intelligence to help the Allies capture a German ship full of rubber. Yul Brynner is the anti-Nazi captain of the ship. Trevor Howard in a small role is Brando's superior. The film is basically a battle of wits between Brando and the Nazis on board the ship.
Frankly Brando is the whole show here. He sneaks around like a cat burglar and plots to take over the ship. Brynner was always an interesting performer but he's really no match for Brando in the acting department.
The screenplay was by old Hollywood pro Daniel Taradash. The running time is 123 minutes.
Probably Michael Cimino's best film. It's certainly one of his more restrained films without the elephantiasis that set it on his later films. Cimino wrote the screenplay and at one point Clint Eastwood was going to direct the film. Instead Eastwood let Cimino direct but closely supervised Cimino to keep him on schedule and under budget.
The compact cast includes character actor George Kennedy, Eastwood crony Geoffrey Lewis and in a real scene stealing performance, Jeff Bridges In fact Bridges was such a scene stealer that he supposedly annoyed movie star Clint Eastwood.
The film has lots of action and some good comedy. It runs 115 minutes.
This large scale western/comedy wanted to be another Mad Mad Mad Mad World, but it's not really very funny. The Hallelujah Trail was a disaster for the filmmaker John Sturges who up to this point was considered one of the best directors of action films during the 1960's.
Although The Hallelujah Trail is generally considered a failure as a film I enjoyed it for the technical skill that the production team brought to the film. Nobody knows how to stage a film in the great outdoors like John Sturges.
This epic film has an epic length, 165 minutes. It was written by John Gay who usually wrote dramas.
How did the director Robert Wise, generally a man of taste get mixed up with this film? This is the classic story of Helen, queen of Sparta who falls in love with Paris, a prince of Troy. As in the Greek legend it all leads to the siege of Troy which goes on for years. The war finally ends with the Trojans dragging the Trojan horse into the city. The horse is full of Greek soldiers who sneak out and destroy the city from the inside. "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," says Cassandra and she's not kidding.
Anyway back to Robert Wise. Apparently he was looking to shoot a film in widescreen and decided to take this project on. Whatever, the film looks pretty good with the usual cast of thousands deployed for maximum movie carnage.
Helen Of Troy is entertaining in the usual way these big budget films are. Lots of extras, big sets and lots of large scale battles.
The film runs 118 minutes and was written by Hugh Gray, N. Richard Nash and John Twist although I don't think they put a whole lot of effort into the screenplay.
Young Billy Young was released the same year as Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch and these two films certainly are a contrast in where the state of the western film was at this time. One of the themes of the Peckinpah film involves the end of the west as the authorities hunt a gang of outlaws who have probably lived and robbed past their time. On the other hand, Young Billy Young is almost an attempt to keep pumping out the same type of western film the public had been watching for years. It is singularly lacking in any kind of interest or excitement
Robert Mitchum sings the title tune of this film, probably the only thing interesting about this dud.
A hard nosed action thriller about the search for gold in East St. Louis. Two firemen from Arkansas have a map of gold icons from a church that were stolen and hidden in a warehouse. The firemen decide to find it but run into a very tough street gang led by a guy names King James. The film becomes an extended siege as the gang takes on the firemen now locked inside a warehouse with the gold.
Trespass is probably not a date night film, but if you're looking for a hard nosed tough guy film this is the one for you.
The film has lots of clever plot twists and runs a tight 101 minutes without any padding in the story.
A project close to the heart of the star Bruce Willis. He gets a story credit along with playing the title character. Willis is Hudson Hawk a famous cat burglar who is forced to steal some crystals that were created by Leonardo da Vinci. The crystals will turn lead into gold. Into this mix is probably the scariest movie couple in this history of film, Darwin and Minerva Mayflower played by two very scary actors Richard E. Grant and Sandra Bernhard. Throw in James Coburn as a rogue CIA agent and Andie MacDowell as an undercover nun working for the Vatican. Starting to get the picture?
Critics and the public hated the film when it came out but there is some very funny stuff here. Just the eccentric cast alone is worth a look. If you're looking for something different this may be it.
The film runs 100 minutes and was written by Steven De Souza and Daniel Waters. The film was such a disaster at the time that it did serious harm to the careers of Daniel Waters and director Michael Lehmann.
Three The Hard Way will never get confused with Persona, however this is a very entertaining blaxploitation picture which is a lot better than it has any right to be.
The film is about three bad ass dudes played by Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and kung fu guy Jim Kelly stopping a plan to kill every black person in American with some kind of drug that will be poured into the water supplies of major American cities. The leader of this scheme is Jay Robinson who played Caligula in The Robe so in a way it's kind of type casting.
Lots of action, cars blow up a lot, and a lot of white guys get shot or beat up. They were asking for it.
89 minutes. Written by Eric Bercovici and Jerrold L. Ludwig.
A return to the citizens of Archer City which had been the location for The Last Picture Show. Peter Bogdanovich is once again directing this sequel to probably one of his greatest critical and popular successes. However this time a very meandering script which Bogdanovich wrote pretty much sabotages the film.
Again, the problem is they kind of drift through a near plot-less picture. It's hard to tell exactly what is going on half the time and it involves some knowledge of the previous film to sort of understand anything that happens. Bogdanovich seems to struggle to mix the not very funny comedy with the drama.
The film version of the trend setting (at least for a couple of years) TV cop show that was filmed on location in Miami. The original executive producer Michael Mann directed the film in his usual meticulous style. As is the case with Mann the film has an amazing look to it.
Unfortunately the story that Mann constructed is a convoluted mess. It has something to do with drug smuggling, a bunch of Neo Nazi's and lets face it a very boring love story between our cop hero Sonny Crockett and the CFO of the drug ring played by Chinese actor Gong Li.
Still a very good looking dynamic film. It could have used a few more action scenes.
An attempt by the Disney studio to make the same kind of old fashioned adventure film they had success with in the past. The film kind of suffers from a rather low energy cast. However the film does have some fine special effects. The story involves a father's search for his missing son in the Arctic. The search involves using a rather cool looking airship called the Hyperion. The searchers stumble on to a lost Viking civilization and the last part of the film turns into an extended chase.
The selling point here are the now old fashioned special effects using matte paintings, models and optical printing. All of this is pretty well executed by the Disney special effects department.
Entrapment is meant to be a classy heist film with beautiful people and places. The film got the beautiful people and locations part right, what it didn't great right was a decent script for the actors.
This is an example of an entertaining film where the stars have to carry the whole film. The director and writers can't seem to come up with any interesting situations or even decent character development. The film is enjoyable in spite of itself. Probably the high point of the film is watching Catherine Zeta-Jones slither around in a really tight leotard.
Written by Ron Bass and William Boyles Jr.
113 minutes but really too long for such a lightweight film.
Movie nut Edgar Wright made this film a spoof of the 90's cop movies he grew up on. Films like, Heat, Thief, Bad Boys, To Live and Die in LA and of course Point Break.
Written by Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg
Running time, 121 minutes.
Critics didn't particularly care for this film when it was released. Since it was a Robert Altman film you could be sure that the thing was dead commercially. Still, it's an interesting film.
Altman's take on Buffalo Bill is probably a little obvious. Buffalo Bill is a braggart, conman and an honest to goodness American celebrity in this country's best tradition. Bill is running a wild west show that portrays the exploits of White Americans in a heroic manner. Never mind that the white culture was responsible for the eradication of almost all of the Native American population during America's pursuit of Manifest Destiny.
As usual with an Altman film there is a large cast. Paul Newman as Buffalo Bill is at the center of the film. However when it comes to an Altman film it's the fringes that are also interesting. One of Altman's skills as a director is moving actors around in an improvisational manner. The production looks great. The cinematography by Paul Lohmann really captures the Wild West Show and the surrounding Alberta, Canada area where it was shot. Final thought, I enjoyed this film a lot.
Altman wrote the screenplay along with Alan Rudolph.
Running time 123 minutes.
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