1961 - LA NOTTE, interesting study in modern alienation.

 Antonioni continued his study in modern alienation with this story of an Italian novelist and his wife who seemed completely cutoff from their society and ultimately each other.

 

As always with an Antonioni film it's all about the images with cinematographer  Gianni Di Venanzo providing some stunning black and white photography and composition.

A dark serious film but very worthwhile.  The performances from  Marcello Mastroianni and Jeannie Moreau are very good. incidentally La Notte translates into English as "The Night."

Michelangelo Antonioni along with Ennio Flaiano and Tonino Guerra wrote the film, it runs 122 minutes.

1952 - BEND OF THE RIVER, 2nd in the Anthony Mann James Stewart western series

Within the restrictions of a typical western film plot, this is a good tough film from Anthony Mann and James Stewart.  Anthony Mann liked his actors out in real locations, he felt it contributed to the overall feeling of the film.

Stewart abandoned at lot of his usual acting ticks and played an actual tough guy for a change. Arthur Kennedy was a good foil as Stewart's friend/foe.

A good western however you cut it.  Mann was an underrated director but when it came to staging scenes on location he was the equal to John Ford and John Sturges.

Borden Chase an expert in writing interesting westerns was the screenwriter on this film.  The photography on location at Mount Hood and the Columbia River is a real plus.  The film runs a brisk 91 minutes.

 

1983 - PAULINE AT THE BEACH, the 3rd film in Rohmer's Comedies and Proverbs series.

Another Eric Rohmer talk fest but the talk is good.  Pauline and her cousin Marion are vacationing off of the coast of France.  Here they meet several men who they fall in and out of love with throughout the film.

This is a typical well thought out Rohmer film,  The women are beautiful, the men are kind of stupid, the scenery is nice and the dialog and situations are rather clever.

As usual the cast responds well to Rohmer's screenplay which believe is a real yak fest. 

Rohmer wrote the film,  Néstor Almendros did his usual good job with the cinematography.  The film runs 94 minutes

1939 - GUNGA DIN, one of Hollywood's best adventure films.

This is director George Steven's really coming into his own as a filmmaker with this adventure film set in India during British rule.  The film has an outstanding cast with Victor McLaglen an actor usually associated with John Ford films playing Sgt MacChesney.  Douglas Fairbanks Jr is Sgt. Thomas Ballantine and Cary Grant is Sgt. Archibald Cutter.  Grant's casting is interesting in that he is actually playing himself for a change, a cockney Archibald Leech (his real name).  

The film was originally supposed to be directed by Howard Hawks but Stevens was brought in because it was felt Hawks was to slow a director, little did they know.  The methodical Stevens took his time, reworked the screenplay adding jokes from his silent film days (Stevens had worked with Laurel and Hardy) and opening up the action.

The result was a one of kind action/adventure film with lots of clever comedy bits added in throughout the film.  Even today the film is still influential.  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom used the Thuggee murder cult from this film as their chief bad guys and the Star Wars film, The Last Jedi was apparently greatly influenced by Gunga Din as well.  If the film has any issues it's probably the patronizing attitude the film as to the Indian people.

 

 The film was written by Joel Sayre, Fred Guiol, Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht.  The running time is 117 minutes.

1975 - THE MAN FROM HONG KONG, excellent action film

The director Brian Tenchard Smith's first film is an action and stunt movie overload.  The plot is the simple hook of sending a fish out of water Hong Kong cop to Australia to take down an a drug kingpin.

 The film's star Jimmy Wang Yu was kind of the replacement for Bruce Lee who was planned as the original star.  Wang Yu is quite a character in his own right a tough actor with a short temper not afraid to get in a brawl with anyone in real life.

Anyway, back to the film.  Since this was Trenchard Smith's first film  he loaded it up with lots of shooting, fights, car chases etc.  The film doesn't have a dull moment.  Surprisingly the film didn't do that well commercially.  This was attributed to the amount of female nudity which apparently limited the viewing audience. 

 The cast is loaded with Australian actors chiefly Hugh Keays-Byrne and Roger Ward from the first Mad Max film.  One time James Bond George Lazenby is the villain.

The film runs 106 minutes and was written by Brian Trenchard-Smith.

1996 - LONE STAR, excellent drama about a Texas town

 The director and writer John Sayles is a master storyteller skilled at interweaving several stories into one compelling narrative.  Lone Star highlights his strengths as a writer with strong characterizations and an interesting story line.

The film's hook is a mystery story.  What happened to Charlie Wade the corrupt sheriff who vanished years ago in the town of Frontera, Texas?  This plot line is just a hook to look at the interactions between the White and Hispanic residents of Frontera.  Sayles does this with a lot of insight and fairness to the issues raised moving back and forth in time with a series of flashbacks.

The large cast is excellent and the film is told in a straightforward way without any of the usual fancy camera tricks directors seem to want to indulge in.  A very good film.

Running time, 135 minutes.

JESUS OF NAZARETH, TV miniseries is very long

The 3 year public life and preaching of Jesus as presented in this miniseries.  Jesus is a white guy with deep piercing blue eyes. The large cast is made up of a bunch of Hollywood and English movie stars.  The miniseries is very long. All of the above points were major criticisms of George Steven's The Greatest Story Ever Told.  However this film got good reviews, go figure.

Robert Powell plays Jesus with a lot of soft spoken sincerity but at times kind of comes off as a creepy cult leader.  He speaks in the usual biblical platitudes probably more a fault of everyone having to hear the same New Testament stories over and over in Sunday school

The director Franco Zeffirelli moves along from one biblical event to the next. We get the feeding of the crowd with the loafs and fishes, casting out the money changers from the temple, the last supper etc.

Jesus of Nazareth is not without of it's good points but it's a long slow crawl to get to the resurrection. Frankly this miniseries is pretty boring.

Besides Zeffirelli the writers included Anthony Burgess and Suso Cecchi d'Amico,  The film comes in at a whopping 374 minutes.

1961 - EL CID, hugh epic filmed on an epic scale

The director is Anthony Mann, the producer is Samuel Bronston.  The film is huge.  A cast literally of thousands, real castles and massive battle scenes.

Charlton Heston is the legendary Spanish knight fighting to save his country from the Moors while dealing with a worthless King. Sophia Loren is his impossibly beautiful wife and the rest of the cast is the usual bunch of British actors hired to class these kind of films up.

They don't make them like this anymore and they never will again.  Viewing the film just for the large scale production values is certainly worth it.  The film also has a very memorable ending.

 

The film was written by Philip Yordan, Fredric M. Frank and Ben Barzman.  It has an epic running time of 184 minutes.

1958 - JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY, a documentary on the Newport Jazz Festival

 The photographer Bert Stern filmed this concert during the Newport America's Cup yacht races. But probably the real star of the production was the editor Aram  Avakian who not only did an impressive job assembling it but had to sync up the sound that was recorded separately.

It's a good film but apparently Bert Stern the director didn't know a whole lot about jazz so he let the producer George Avakian select the acts that were filmed.  This led to some strange omissions.

Performers like Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Ray Charles were left out.  Instead we get a whole lot of Louis Armstrong and I mean a lot being interviewed and playing what else, The Saints Go Marching In.

The film runs 85 minutes and is still an impressive achievement even with the exclusion of some of the best jazz musicians who were performing at the festival.

1982 - WRONG IS RIGHT, uneven satire on the media has it's moments

 The writer/director Richard Brooks took a shot at criticizing the modern news media in this very uneven film to put it mildly.  Sean Connery is the roving celebrity journalist with a mobile camera in one hand ready to report or make the news where he travels.  The plot is set in motion when 2 suitcase size atom bombs are stolen and the terrorists responsible threaten to blow up New York City with them.

The film certainly has an impressive cast.  Besides Connery there's Katherine Ross, George Grizzard, Leslie Nielsen, John Saxon, Hardy Kruger, Robert Webber and cult movie favorite Henry Silva.  All these actors play exaggerated characters in the political and television world.  Brooks seems to be saying that governments don't control things only the media as if this is some big insight.

This would be satire wants to be like the film Network but Brooks has written a script that's incoherent and confusing at times.  Still for a film that came out in 1982 it's unusually prescient about the state of reported news and how it interacts with the world. Besides any film that has Sean Connery ripping off his toupee at the end of the film can't be all bad.

The film runs 117 minutes

1957 - FORTY GUNS, crazy Sam Fuller Western

 Barbara Stanwyck is Jessica Drummond the owner of a large ranch and the ruling power in the county. She has a gang (harem?) of 40 riders who zip around on their horses scaring the crap out of everyone.  Stanwyck also has a worthless brother who's a drunk and a coward and not adverse to a little back shooting so you know he's gonna be trouble.

Into this setup comes Barry Sullivan and 2 of his brothers playing thinly disguised versions of Wyatt Earp and his brothers.  Let the gun play and perverse situations begin after all this is a Sam Fuller film.

Fuller never met a weird camera crane shot or closeup he didn't like.  He got his director of photography Joseph Biroc a cameraman who would go on to be associated with Robert Aldrich to enable him in his passion for at times outrageous photography.

Is the movie any good?  Beats me. But it's certainly flamboyant as only Sam Fuller can do.  Fuller wrote the screenplay. The film runs a brisk 80 minutes.

2003 - BAD BOYS II, it's another Michael Bay film

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are the stars in a sequel to Bad Boys a film that probably nobody wanted or needed to have a sequel .  But the real star of this movie is the director Michael Bay.  

Bay indulges himself with over the top action scenes in let's face it a story that absolutely no one could ever care about.  Smith and Lawrence are Miami cops trying to stop a big drug gang.  But they really are just a couple of pawns in Bay's action chessboard of a film.

At 147 minutes this crime/action stuff is probably way to long for it's own good.  But if you're in the mood for Bay's brand of film making, well there are worse ways to waste your time.

 

 

The so called screenplay was by Ron Shelton and Jerry Stab.

1932 - LOVE ME TONIGHT, outstanding film musical

This musical is one of the best film musicals I can recall seeing in a very long time.  The director Rouben Mamoulian used about every cinematic trick in the book,  The score is by Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart.  

 The story is certainly musical silly, Maurice Chevalier is a tailor who gets mistaken for a European nobleman.  He falls in love with a princess played by Jeanette MacDonald before she signed with MGM,  the studio that promptly sucked the sexiness out of her. 

The rest of the cast is a compendium of 1930's stars.  Myrna Loy, Charles Ruggles, Charles Butterworth and in a rare singing part C.Aubrey Smith of all actors.  Ernest Lubitsch was usually considered the master of the Paramount musical but I would have to say that Mamoulian and his production team easily topped him.

 

The screenplay was Samuel Hoffenstein George Marion Jr., and Waldemar Young.  The film runs 104 minutes. 

1951 - OPERATION PACIFIC, a typical John Wayne war movie

 It's World War II, we are in the Pacific theater of action and big John Wayne is commandeering a submarine and taking on the Japanese navy when he's not rescuing nuns and orphans off of some Pacific Ocean island.

Wayne's love interest is Patrica Neal one of the few female performers who could stand up to him on screen.  Ward Bond, Wayne's drinking buddy has a big part and movie buff favorite Jack Pennick is the crew chief.  

 This film is pretty standard war movie stuff but Wayne as usual seems to be able to pull this kind of story off.  It is sort of entertaining in a crazy way.

 

 

George Waggner directed and wrote the screenplay.  Waggner also directed the nutty Pentagon anti commie film Red Nightmare.  But make no mistake Duke was the guy in charge on this film.

111 minutes.

1920 - THE MARK OF ZORRO, a big jump forward for the Hollywood adventure film

 Silent superstar actor Douglas Fairbanks produced this film which was a real leap forward for the action film.  Fairbanks is the Robin Hood of old California Zorro. Fairbanks was known for doing his own stunts and in this film he is extremely impressive zipping around outwitting the evil colonial army.

In many ways this is still a very exciting film.  The action scenes still stand the test of time and Fairbanks along with Chaplin was one of the early superstars of Hollywood.  The screenplay was by Johnston McCulley.  Fred Niblo the director of the original Ben Hur was behind the camera. 

The film runs a fast paced 90 minutes.

1995 - THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, Sam Raimi's eccentric western

Sam Raimi's hyped up visual style is applied to this western about a contest to see who is the fastest gun in town.  Sharon Stone stars and gets a producer credit on the film.  Stone isn't really playing her usual sexy self for some reason, she's rather sullen throughout the film.

I will say this about the film is has an amazing cast.  Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pat Hingle, Lance Henrickson, Keith David and in his last appearance on film Woody Strode.

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The film is essentially a series of gunfights staged by Raimi with about every bit of visual craziness he can muster.  Gene Hackman basically recreates his Uncle Billy character from Clint Eastwood's The Unforgiven.  Russel Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio were still fairly new in their film career.  

 

The film is a lot of fun to watch mostly for the crazy gunfights and Hackman's scenery chewing performance.  The Quick and the Dead was written by Simon Moore and runs 108 minutes.

1986 - ON WINGS OF EAGLES, clunky retelling of a true story

The supposed true story of businessman Ross Perot and his efforts to free some of his executives detained in Iran just as the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power.  Perot was the president of EDS (Electronic Data Systems) which had a contract with Iran to set up data processing systems.  Two of his executives were detained by the Iranian government in a contract dispute with EDS.  

Burt Lancaster plays the ex millitary officer, Bull Simmons who Perot hires to lead a team of company executives who travel to Iran to plan an escape.  Simmons was a legendary special forces operative who knew Perot.  The miniseries revolves around the efforts of Perot and Simmons to escape from Iran and travel cross country into Turkey and safety.

 The miniseries was filmed in Mexico and also features Richard Crenna hilariously miscast as Ross Perot and the usual bunch of TV actors that rotated from one series to another.  Andrew V McLaglen directed and for him the film has a little more pace and verve then usual.  Lancaster was 73 years old and was definitely in the the twilight of his career.  Television was kind of a last stop for aging Hollywood superstar actors.

Ken Folliet the author of the book and Sam Rolfe adapted the book into a screenplay and the story seems a little clunky and frankly kind of unbelievable.  The miniseries runs 241 minutes.

1928 - THE TRAIL OF 98, a spectacular silent film

Clarence Brown's spectacular epic about the Klondike gold rush was filmed on a large scale.  Almost every scene has a large scale quality to it.  The story involves a group traveling to Alaska in search of gold and encountering many hardships along the way.

 

The film was also a hardship to make behind the camera.  Thousands of men were employed in a spectacular scene climbing a mountain pass in -60 degree weather.  Another scene involved a river rapids stunt which ended up killing 4 stuntmen.  Watching the out of control river with boats sailing down it is impressive and rather frightening.

The film stars early Harry Carey and Dolores Del Rio.  Carey went on to be associated with John Ford early in Ford's career.  Del Rio was one of the most beautiful women to grace the screen.

This silent film has that weird synchronized sound track where there is music and background noise but no actual actors mouthing dialog.  Still, this is an extremely impressive film which ranks up there with other epic film.

The screenplay was by Joseph Farnham. Benjamin Glazer, Robert Service and Waldemar Young, the film runs 97 minutes.

1933 - SON OF KONG, the follow up to the original King Kong.

 File this under the "what the hell were they thinking?" department.  Well obviously they were thinking that they could squeeze a little more money out of King Kong.  

The production team is basically made up of the same bunch he filmed King Kong.  They even cast Robert Armstrong and had him play his original character of producer Carl Denham. But everything is played for laughs this time.  Denham is being sued by about every person in New York City where Kong went on his rampage.  He meets up with Captain Englehorn also played by the same actor Frank Reicher.  Off they go back to Skull Island in search of buried treasure.  Naturally they run into King Kong Jr.  Little Kong rolls his eyes and acts pretty damn goofy throughout the small amount of time he is on the screen.

Well anyway the film is mercifully short it runs 69 minutes.  The animation is decent for the most part. The film is no classic but it is relatively harmless and short.

The screenplay was by Ruth Rose who contributed to the original King Kong.

1987 - THE UNTOUCHABLES, mainstream success for De Palma

After a couple of less than successful box office pictures.  Brian De Palma came roaring back with this remake of the popular late 1950's early 1960's television show.

This was a large scale production,  The screenplay was by David Mamet, Ennio Morricone composed the score and the cast had the soon to be very hot actor Kevin Costner.  Sean Connery had a supporting role as an Irish cop and he certainly brought a lot of authority to his performance.

  

The movie has a lot of De Palma touches, from the use of overhead shots to long tracking shots.  The expected De Palma violence was toned down but there are still a couple of fairly graphic scenes.  The outstanding scene is obviously the train station shoot out which was apparently improvised by De Palma to save time and money.

The film couldn't miss and it didn't it was a big box office hit when it came out that summer. 

119 minutes.