1980 - THE LONG RIDERS, late period Western film.

 The director Walter Hill single highhandedly tried to keep the Western film alive long after the genre died out.  This is his version of the Jesse James/Cole Younger saga.  As with just about every film Hill was involved in the story has his usual meticulous care with the story and the staging of the action elements.

The big news in this film was the casting of the James/Younger gang with actors who were all brothers in real life.  Consequently you get the Carradine brothers, the Keach brothers, the Quaid brothers and the Guest brothers as the famous (notorious) outlaw gang.  

The Keach brothers were the primary instigators of the film.  They produced and developed the story.

The Keach brothers also take a writing credit along with Bill Bryden and  Steven Phillip Smith.  The film runs 99 minutes.

1993 - MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY, the return of Diane Keaton

 Manhattan Murder Mystery also known as "Annie Hall and Alvy Singer hit middle age," marks the return of Diane Keaton as Woody's leading lady.  They have not lost of any of their comic timing and they are chiefly the reason to watch this film.

The plot has something to do with Woody and Diane trying to decide if one of their neighbors has murdered his wife or whatever.  Woody Allen and Diane Keaton do have character names but lets face it they are playing Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.

The film has some amusing scenes and as is typical with a Woody Allen film the production looks very polished.

 

Woody Allen wrote the screenplay along with Marshal Brickman his collaborator on Annie Hall.  The film runs 107 minutes.

1995 - RUMBLE IN THE BRONX, Jackie Chan breaks into the American market

This film should probably be called Rumble in Vancouver instead of Rumble in the Bronx since the film was primarily filmed there.  You can see mountains in the background and cars with Canadian license plates.

 This film was a big deal for Jackie Chan.  He had been trying to break into the American film market for a while and this film finally did it for him. However this is not one of his better films.  It can't begin to hit the peaks of Police Story, Wheels on Meals or Project A to name a few.

 

Still the film is very entertaining. Jackie Chan is a superb athlete and the fights and stunts are staged with his usual dynamic action beats.  The film is loaded with nubile women and lots of cheap sentimentality.  The scenes of the little kid in a wheelchair are particularly grating to watch. However all is forgiven when Jackie Chan starts beating the crap out of a particularly nasty bike gang.

 

The film was written by Edward Tang and Fibe Ma who probably spent most of their time figuring out how to incorporate the stunts and fighting into some sort of coherent story. 90 minutes (the US cut).

1984 - UNDER THE VOLCANO, later John Huston film

 The last day in the life of an alcoholic British diplomat as he wanders around a Mexican town during the Day Of The Dead festival.  From that short description you can gather this will not be a feel good type of film.  Albert Finney is the diplomat Geoffrey Firmin. Finney plays Firmin as a completely wasted drunk stumbling from one bar to another while guzzling anything with alcohol in it.

 Into the mix arrives Jacqueline Bisset as his estranged wife Yvonne Firmin and Anthony Andrews as his half brother Hugh Firmin to join in all of this fun as the film marches to its inevitable conclusion.

The director is the legendary John Huston in the later part of his career.  Huston would work on crap like Annie and Victory and then manage to pull together more interesting projects like this.  However this time I don't think that Huston was able to fine the right tone for this project.  The audience never understood why anyone should care about Albert Finney's character.  Frankly a film about a drunk wandering around drunk isn't exactly compelling viewing.

 

Guy Gallo wrote the screenplay under Huston's supervision, the film runs 112 minutes.

1953 - WAR OF THE WORLDS - now a Criterion Blu Ray

 Criterion has released a 4k Blu ray enhancement of George Pal's 50's classic.  The film looks very good. 

The big news with the release is the removal of the wires that held the Martian War machine models up during the special effects sequences.  Controversial or not it looks very cool to see these creepy things floating across the landscape without wires.

War Of The Worlds was a rather modest production in terms of budget but the producer George Pal and the director Bryon Haskin packed a lot into it along with the awesome Paramount special effects team.

  

Still one of the finest science fiction films from the 1950's.

Written by Barré Lyndon the film runs an efficient 85 minutes.

2017 - ATOMIC BLONDE - a violent spy/action caper

Sort of a violent remake of Funeral In Berlin except this time Harry Palmer is an ass kicking female spy/assassin called Lorraine Broughton.  There are lots of shootings and beatings for the action fan to enjoy.  The film also throws in some exploitative lesbian stuff for the titillation of the male audience.

 Charlize Theron joins the ranks of other women who are carving our pieces of the traditionally male dominated action genre.  She's in there kicking and shooting and punching with the best of them in the great tradition of Linda Hamilton and Angelina Joli.

 

 

The film has a rather subdued color scheme to it as if the production wanted to emphasize the chilly nature of the location and the violence.  The film was directed by a 2nd unit and stunt coordinator named David Leitch who certainly knows how to arrange a scene for maximum violent bone crunching content.

Is this film any good? Beats me, but it did keep me awake.  The plot is one of those complicated spy vs spy things but I basically lost track of who was doing what to whom after about 45 minutes.

 

The writer was Kurt Johnstad who did the screenplay for the equally violent 300.  The film is on the longish side, running about 115 minutes.

1996 - FREEWAY, a good black comedy

Freeway was known as a white trash remake of "Little Red Riding Hood."  For the first half hour I had some serious doubts about finishing this film.  But this film really has something going for it, Reese Witherspoon.

This is a don't screw with me version of Red Riding Hood. Kiefer Sutherland is the sex pervert serial killer (The Big Bad Wolf) who tangles with her and doesn't come out in the best shape to put it mildly.

Looking for something different, this is it.

102 minutes written by the director Matthew Bright.

2003 - THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN a real piece of crap.

The film that drove Sean Connery into retirement.  This is one pile of garbage trying to call itself an action movie.  The film draws from Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's graphic novel.  The graphic novel (comic book) in turn used about every famous Victorian character that the authors could think of.

Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Mina Harker (from Dracula), Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer, Dr. Jekyll and Professor Moriarty. 

I've read the comic book and I can report that his film didn't use any of the material from that source.  Instead what we have is a hodgepodge of CGI action scenes that are more to be endured than enjoyed.

110 minutes, written by James Dale Robinson but I'll bet there were a lot of hands in the cookie jar in this film.

2001 - FULLTIME KILLER, lots of shooting the Hong Kong way

Star and producer Andy Lau plays an up and coming hit man deciding to take on the challenge of unseating the current top hit man.  The results are gun battles, lots and lots of gun battles all directed with a certain amount of skill by Johnnie To.

In spite of all the shootings there really isn't a whole lot to this film but if you are feeling the need to watch a lot of people getting shot, well nobody does action better than the film making gang in Hong Kong.

The film runs 102 minutes.

1967 - FESTIVAL, a very good concert film.

Much to my surprise or lack of knowledge or just plain avoidance of anything that has to do with folk music this turned our to be a very good documentary on the Newport Folk Music festival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This a film that completely escaped my notice.  Filmed over a three year period Festival captures an era as they like to say is now gone.  A lot of musical acts are included but the film does a good job with not wearing out it's welcome and runs just a little over 90 minutes.

Along with the usual big name acts like Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan are a number of interesting groups which I with my lack of knowledge of this genre have never heard of but enjoyed none the less.

My favorite moment in the film is an interview with Joan Baez saying how much she likes her fans but wishes they would bath a little more often.

1958 - SOME CAME RUNNING, another 1950's small town melodrama

There were several  challenges for Vincente Minnelli. He had to take a 1000 page novel and condense it into a coherent narrative and put up with hot tempered Frank Sinatra a performer only interested in shooting 1 or 2 takes in his scenes.  That Minnelli could pull this off is somewhat of a tribute to his skill as a storyteller.

Some Came Running is one of those stories that wants to eviscerate the sleazy underside of small town American life.  Sinatra is a supposedly sensitive author returning home after his service in the army.  He hooks up with cardsharp Dean Martin playing a character called "Bama" who holds women in such low regard he calls them pigs to their faces.  Shirley MacLaine is the trampy women who has a big crush on Sinatra and Martha Hyer is the frigid prude who is enamored of Sinatra's writing talent but doesn't want to sleep with him.  

 

 

Stir this mess of characters up and you've got one fairly stylish Peyton Place of a film.  Minnelli was a director who primarily made his reputation as a director of musicals, but he was pretty good at filming comedies and dramas.  The film is famous for it's crazed carnival scene towards the end of the film where Minnelli and his cameraman William Daniels pull out all the stops.

 

 

 

The screenplay was by John Patrick and Arthur Sheekman.  It runs a rather longish 136 minutes.  This film is for lovers of exaggerated melodrama.