1955 - THIS ISLAND EARTH, Universal's shot at a big time Science Fiction film

Universal spent money on a technicolor science fiction film called This Island Earth, and is it ever in technicolor the sets practically jump out with all the bright glossy colors.  The story involves aliens from the planet Metaluna capturing our nuclear scientists for their own nefarious purposes. In this case creating nuclear energy to help in their war with another planet called Zagon.

Understandably the special effects for 1955 don't seem so special any more and the big monster called a "mutant" lumbers around so slowly that it's hard to believe it could catch or scare anyone.  Still the film is entertaining and doesn't wear out it's welcome running only 86 minutes.  

 

The film is sort of a 1950's science fiction film classic and was written by Franklin Coen and Edward G. O'Callaghan.

 

Interestingly enough William Alland the producer had appeared in Citizen Kane as the reporter Thompson, trying to solve the mystery of "Rosebud."

2008 - BE KIND REWIND, a real quirky film

A real oddball of a film from an oddball of a film director Michel Gondry.  The film is really a time capsule of a different world.  Danny Gover owns a VHS tape rental store in Passaic, New Jersey.  He employs rapper Mos Def and Jack Black as employees.  One night Jack Black gets struck by lighting which causes his body to become magnetized.   He walks into the video store and erases all of the VHS tapes.  

 

Now he and Mos Def have to rerecord the tapes by re staging the erased films with somekind of a film process they call "sweded."  Essentially they reenact  the films Black erased using goofy costumes and sets and rent the films to the store's customers.  Unsurprisingly they become a big hit with Black becoming the star of the sweded films.  Throw in a tribute to jazz pianist "Fats" Waller for some reason and you have the the makings of a very strange film.

 

The director Michel Gondry has certainly not played it safe with his career and this is hardly the kind of film that gets you more offers to direct in Hollywood.  The very strangeness of the film kept me watching.  The recreations of films such as Ghostbusters, Driving Miss Daisy and Rush Hour 2 are funny.

 

The cast seems to be having a good time.  Written by Michel Gondry.  The running time is 98 minutes.

1962 - HATARI, or the world of the Howard Hawk's boys club

When film critics and scholars talk about the auteur theory they frequently point to one film maker, Howard Hawks.

 

Hawks stayed fairly consistent during his working career as a director.  He liked the world of men, especially professional men out doing a dangerous job and not acting like a bunch of crybabies about it when it got tough.  The women in a Hawks film are usually very good looking and just about as tough as the men they are involved with.

Hawks and his writer Leigh Brackett developed these themes in many different pictures, such as Rio Bravo,  El Dorado, Rio Lobo and Red River to name a few.  At his best Hawks was good at working with actors and providing the audience with one entertaining scene after the other.  For a number of years Hawks was a very dependable director of very good commercial films.

 

Hatari is very much a Hawks film in that is has practically no story.  Hawks is basically interested in hanging out with a group of very cool people.  The film's action highlights involve the group catching animals in Africa to ship to zoos around the world.  John Wayne is the leader of the group and at this point is his career was older and didn't care to do love scenes with younger women.  Hawks being Hawks sets up a romance between Wayne and the gorgeous Elsa Martinelli which Hawks enjoys mainly becasuse it plays on Wayne's discomfort in his scenes with her.

Hatari is a fun film which is overlong and probably could have used a few less animal capture scenes as the film runs 157 minutes.  Still if you are in the right mood Hatari is very entertaining.

1992 - A FEW GOOD MEN, slick courtroom drama

Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson are in full movie star mode in Rob Reiner's film version of Aaron Sorkin's slick military courtroom drama.

The film plays to Reiner's strength as a director.  Working with an excellent script, Reiner gets very good performances out of his entire cast and knows when to step back and let Cruise and Nicholson do their movie star overacting thing.

 

A Few Good Men is essentially an updating of an old Perry Mason TV episode dressed up with Sorkin's at time overripe dialog.  Reiner does a good job keeping the dialog from sounding like a big preachy mess which is frequently an issue with Sorkin's writing.

 

The film runs 138 minutes

1952 - THE NARROW MARGIN, excellent film noir

 Coming in at the beginning of the 1950's, this film is an extremely well made noir made on a low budget with a minimum of sets, and a cast of "B" actors which actually give a lot of verisimilitude to the film's plot.

Charles McGraw plays the tough cop transporting a mobster's spouse on a train so she can testify at an important criminal trial.  The wife played by Marie Windsor is one tough cookie who McGraw basically can't stand.  The action in the film comes from McGraw having to keep Windsor alive while a couple of mob hit men try to knock her off.  The enclosed space on the train which is imaginatively photographed and staged, creates a lot of tension.

The director is Richard Fleischer at the start of his career before he moved on to bigger budgets and more prestigious assignments. The screenplay is by Earl Felton who would go on to write Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and a good comedy called The Happy Time.

The running time is a tight 71 minutes.

1963 - SUNDAY IN NEW YORK, dated but very likable sex comedy.

 Jane Fonda said this was the film where she finally learned to enjoy the film making experience and it shows.  Fonda is extremely likeable as the sophisticated virgin holding off the advances of a boyfriend while falling in love with a stranger she meets on the bus in New York City.

The film is rather dated in it's attitudes about relationships, but the cast and the screenplay by Hollywood veteran Norman Krasna know how to find the right touch in what could have been a rather stupid romantic comedy.

 

In addition to Fonda the film has a fun cast.  Manly Rod Taylor, Cliff Robertson as Fonda's brother and Robert Culp as the boyfriend all seem to be having a good time. The film has lots of footage of early 1960's New York City which is also fun to watch.

 

Sunday in New York has lots of amusing and old fashioned talk about the relationships between men and women.  Norman Krasna was an old hand at this kind of film which was soon to go the way of the dinosaur.

The running time is 105 minuutes

1979 - 1941, attempt at a large scale comedy.

 Obviously the plan was to make a large scale comedy like It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.  The film's critical failure probably had more to do with the screenplay then Spielberg's direction which in many scenes was quite inventive.

Spielberg by this point in his career could do no wrong, so two studios ponied up money for this very expensive film.  The large cast included John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Robert Stack, Ned Beatty, Tim Matheson and Toshiro Mifune to name a few.  Belushi and Matheson had been in Animal House so I suspect audiences were looking for that kind of irreverent humor.  But if anything Belushi's tiresome slob shtick had gotten very old by this point in his career. The same holds true with Dan Ackroyd.  

1941 was not the huge moneymaker that Spielberg and the studios intended but I believe it did make it's costs back.  The film is an old school production in many ways, with models and miniatures used in the special effects and action scenes.

 

The film appears to have had a profound change on Spielberg's career.  He entered into a period of good but somewhat safe crowd pleasers like Raiders of the Lost Ark.  1941 is an interesting film probably worth taking a look at but it's biggest problem is that it's just not funny.

The screenplay was by Robert Zemeckis, Robert Gale and John Milius, the running time in the extended version is 146 minutes which plays a little better than the theatrical cut of 118 minutes.