1986 - THREE AMIGOS, an unfunny comedy to put it mildly,

A low point for just about everyone involved in this film.  Steve Martin, Randy Newman of all people and Lorene Michaels all known for their supposed comedy chops put together this unfunny story about three silent actors mistaken for gunfighters. Somehow they end up fighting off bandits in a small Mexican town. What we have here is a supposed comedy version of The Magnificent Seven.  

The director was John Landis was apparently past his prime as a hipster comedy director when he got involved in this mess.  What is hard to understand about this film is that everyone involved was just completely clueless about how bad the script was.  I can only assume the usual Hollywood egos were wrapped up in this production without the ability to critique their work. Probably nobody had the guts to tell all these so called big time comic geniuses that the film was a stinker.

 

This is the stuff that passed for comedy in the 1980's.  Get three supposedly hot TV comics and just assume they could do a bunch of funny stuff to make a funny movie.  

Highly not recommended.  

The running time is 103 minutes.

1985 - LEGEND, disappointing fantasy film

It's Tom Cruise in the silliest character role in his career,  a guy called Jack o' the Green. This is a very expensive and beautiful looking film from Ridley Scott a director who is always good for creating pretty pictures in his films at the very least.

Scott apparently had the desire to create an original fantasy film.  To that end the story was filmed on studio sets, in this case the giant 007 soundstage at Pinewood studios in England where he could completly control the atmosphere.  The story has something to do with unicorns keeping the balance between darkness and light or good and evil as it were. Into the forest comes the actor Mia Sara playing a character called Princess Lili, she manages to get one of the unicorns killed and is kidnapped by a demon called the Lord of Darkness.  To the rescue comes Jack o' the Green along with a ragtag band of elfish helpers.  The elfish helpers speak in ridiculously anachronistic dialog and Cruise just looks downright silly jumping and running around in his silly woodsman costume.

 The film has stunning cinematography from Alex Thompson, makeup effects from Rob (The Thing) Bottin and again some very impressive sets.  

 

Universal, the studio that financed the film must have realized they had a real turkey on their hands. They took the film away from Scott and reduced his 114 minute cut to 89 minutes.  In order to make the film feel more contemporary they replaced the Jerry Goldsmith score with one from Tangerine Dream.  All this tinkering was a waste of time, the film was a critical and commercial failure.

I viewed the 114 minute Ridley Scott cut of Legend.  The original film screenplay and story was by William Hjortsberg.

1970 - ON THE COMET - fantasy from Karel Zeman

 From Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman comes this adaptation of one of Jules Verne's more outlandish science fiction/fantasy novels.   A comet grazes the earth taking with it pieces of land from North Africa that includes a French fort and an Arabian Army.  As it hurtles through space the inhabitants of the comet  have to deal with a herd of dinosaurs and a sea serpent which are also roaming around the comet.

On The Comet has the usual clever blend of animation and live action as only Zeman can mix together.  A great deal of the running time in this film is devoted to a romance between a French army captain and the requisite beautiful young woman.  

 

The film probably isn't up to the high standards of Invention for Destruction or  The Fabulous Baron Munchausen.  Still it's a good film and contains that special touch Zeman had with special effects which still give his films  such a unique look.

Written by Zeman and Jan Prochazk, the running time is 73 minutes.

1965 - CRACK IN THE WORLD, good 1960's science fiction

 Scientists in Africa are drilling a hole in the Earth's core in order to release the magma which they will use to tap into an unlimited source of energy.  At one point they hit a barrier resistant to drilling so they decide to fire a nuclear missile into the hole in order to break through, bad idea as it turns out.

 This is a very good piece of what I would call mid 60's science fiction.  Obviously the effects are dated but the film still manages to whip up a decent amount of interesting visual ideas, i.e. "the crack in the world."

 

The characters in this film actually have a little character development for a change.  The older scientist played by Dana Andrews, in charge of the project is married to the former girlfriend of his chief geologist played by Kieron Moore.  Janette Scott is the former girlfriend who manages to get a lot of her clothes torn off by the end of the film, the cheesecake factor as it were.

Andrew Marton was a 2nd unit director a man usually responsible for the large scale action and battle scenes found in many movies.  Here Marton is calling the shots for the entire film.  Eugene Lorie was in charge of the production design and special effects.

The film runs 90 minutes and was written by Jon Manchip White and Julian Zimet and doesn't insult your intelligence.

1971 - THE DEVILS, Ken Russell's crazed film about god knows what.

The Devils is based on a historical incident involving a convent of nuns in 17th century France who claimed to be possessed by the devil.  Since Ken Russell directed it you can be sure he will really take his outrageous style to the extreme.  The movie was subjected to a lot of censorship and considering the scenes of sex and violence, its amazing the whole film wasn't repressed.

Interestingly enough the film does appear to follow the general historical situation of what happened in Loudon, France where a group of nuns accused the  bishop, Urbain Grandier of witchcraft.  Grandier played by Oliver Reed was apparently a rather independent fellow and had a lot of conflict with everyone's favoring Catholic villain Cardinal Richelieu.  Looking for an excuse to get rid of Grandier, Richelieu used the trumped up charge of witchcraft to ultimately have him burned at the stake.

 

Russell really pours it on in this film with lots of nudity, blood, torture and just plenty of sick stuff in general. The acting is very good.  Reed actually manages to create some sympathy for Grandier, and Vanessa Redgrave is just nutty as the head of the convent walking around with a hunchback of all things.

 

The Devils will never be endorsed by the Catholic Church  and I doubt it will ever be on a double bill with Going My Way.

Russell wrote the screenplay, the running time is 111 minutes

2003 - TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES, 3rd film in the series

Pointless 3rd film in the Terminator series.  Ever since Terminator 2: Judgement Day someone is always trying to turn these Terminator films into a franchise.  The 2019 film, Terminator:  Dark Fate was just the latest non starter in a series nobody apparently wants to see.

Terminator 3, is basically a rehash of the first two films. Amazingly it took three writers to cobble this script together which is essentially a bunch of action scenes tied together by a plot involving the computer system Skynet getting ready to destroy the world. 

 

The antagonist in this film is a female Terminator who is more powerful than Schwarzenegger's outdated  T-800.  There's lots of smashing, bashing and blowing things up. The actors, with barely developed roles do what they can to make things interesting but it's all kind of pointless in the end.

 

Even as a time killer the film really can't seem to deliver.

Written by John Brancato, Michael Ferris and Tedi Sarafian. The film clocks in at 109 minutes.

1962 - THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, big family movie fantasy in Cinerama

 MGM and the Cinerama corporation produced this widescreen film as a follow up to the Cinerama spectacular How The West Was Won. George Pal produced and directed the fantasy segments while Henry Levin shot the rather boring story of the brothers Grimm played by Laurence Harvey and Karl Bohm who are struggling to find acceptance as chroniclers of traditional German fairy tales.

This is a Cinerama film in every way with the usual gimmicks of enveloping the viewer's vision with shots of carriages racing down roads, tumbling down mountains and dizzying views of canyons making the viewer think he/she was about to fall into one.

Frankly the story is not so hot and George Pal has actually made better films but this is certainly an amazing viewing experience especially in the restored Blu-Ray version being released by Warner Brothers.

 

The film has a great cast, it just doesn't give them much of a story to tie the admittedly charming and entertaining fantasy sequences together.  The first sequence with the dancing princess has the athletic Russ Tamblyn and the beautiful Yvette Mimieux in a large scale musical number.  Tamblyn is a great dancer and acrobat, Yvette Mimieux is easy on the eyes but not so hot as a dancer.

The 2nd sequence is probably the best with George Pal's Puppetoons and the 3rd fantasy story has Terry Thomas and Buddy Hackett battling a dragon and Hackett battling a very poor English accent.

 

Overall this is an enjoyable film, however it could have been a better one .

 

Written by Charles Beaumont, William Roberts and David P. Harmon.  The running time is 135 minutes.

The new Blu Ray presentation is very impressive.

2010 - THE A TEAM, remake of the TV show

 I guess The A Team isn't really that good of a film, but it is an entertaining one.  The film has a fun cast with Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley and some bruiser called Quintin "Rampage" Jackson recreating the roles from the television series.  Jessica Biel is the Intelligence Officer assigned to catch this rogue team of Army soldiers and Jon Hamm shows up in a rather stupid cameo.

 The plot starts out fairly decent but descends into pointless confusion by the middle of the film.  It's hard to understand how it's going to resolve itself but you can be sure it will be in a big action climax like so many of these types of big screen action films usually did.

 

So what is there to recommend about this film?  Well the general light tone of the film with it's emphasis on comedy and character interaction.  The over the top action scenes and the silliness of the whole thing make this an acceptable no brainier entertainment. Some of the dialog is pretty funny.

 

The director Joe Carnahan wrote the screenplay along with Brian Bloom and Skip Woods.  These three guys have worked in the action genre where men are men and get to blow things up.

The running time is 119 minutes.

1975 - ROYAL FLASH, Richard Lester returns to the swashbuckler

Panned by the critics upon the release and ignored by the audience, Royal Flash does have a lot of the old Richard Lester touch at times.  The screenplay was by the writer of the Flashman books, George MacDonald Fraser.  Fraser's clever idea was to create a character who was for the most part a coward and a complete "cad" as they liked to say in Merry Old England and stick him in world changing situations like the American Civil War or in this case the political maneuvering of Otto Von Bismark.

Lester appeared to be aware that audiences would think he was making another version of The Three Musketeers, so he worked hard to find a new spin of the swashbuckler genre.  The cast was certainly interesting, Malcolm McDowell mister intense in films like If and A Clockwork Orange is the cowardly Harry Flashman, Florinda Balkin is the famous and real life prostitute Lola Montes and Oliver Reed is Otto Von Bismark.

 

There are lots of great British character actors throughout the film, Michael Hordern, Lionel Jeffries, Britt Eckland and Alister Sim to name a few.  Jeffries is particularly amusing.

The plot of the film borrows liberally from The Prisoner of Zenda to which Lester adds a lot of his famous visual gags. The film is funny if maybe a little slow at times but it is entertaining.

Running time 102 minutes.