1992 SHADOWS AND FOG - Woody Allen makes a UFA film

Woody Allen's tribute, or spoof or whatever film that attempts to invoke the feeling of a German Expressionist film kind of like something Fritz Lang would have directed for the famous German film studio UFA GmbH, usually called UFA.  

The film has the rich atmosphere of a European 1930's film which Allen further emphasizes by shooting in black and white with lots of movie fog floating around on his sets.  The plot is about the hunt for a serial killer which a mob is on the trail of.  Allen is recruited by the mob and after one thing or another everyone thinks he is the killer.

 The film is full of Woody's usual one liners which kind of makes it a modern counterpoint to what is going on in the 30's setting.  However a lot of the dialog spoken by the actors seems rather stilted and forced.  Allen keeps a very tight grasp on the line readings of cast which comes off as very stagey.  Naturally Woody gets all the best lines after all he wrote it, and he delivers them  in his usual funny way.

 

At this point in his career just about every actor wanted to work with Woody Allen, so we have a string of grade A actors who show up in small bits.  Mia Farrow is also in the film she was still involved with Woody Allen when this film was made.

 

The film courted and achieved a status as one of his worse films.  The critics for the most part hated it and audiences stayed away, another major flop for Woody Allen.

The film has it's moments the production design and cinematography are excellent and nobody can put across a funny line like Woody Allen.

The running time is a brief 85 minutes

1976 - MOTHER, JUGS & SPEED - a comedy/drama about ambulance chasers

The director is Peter Yates a man who flipped between interesting pictures like, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and junk like For Pete's Sake.  The writer is Tom Mankiewicz the son of director Joseph Mankiewicz who specialized in standard light Hollywood entertainments like the James Bond movies and garbage like the movie version of Dragnet.  Mankiewicz was a go to guy when you needed your script doctored.  His hands are all over a lot of 70's and 80's movies and TV shows which he was not credited for.

 Mother, Jugs and Speed is a black comedy about an independent ambulance service in Los Angeles.  They are in competition with another another ambulance service to secure the rights to providing the city of Los Angeles with transportation to their hospital.  The film has lots of  bits of black comedy as they drive around dealing with sick people in need of their services.  The film is interlaced with dramatic scenes as a counterpoint to all of the comedy.  The film clearly wants to be the MASH of the contemporary 1970's Los Angele scene I guess.

  

Harvey Keitel is "Speed" a disgraced cop working for the service.  Where someone got the idea Keitel a rather intense actor from the Martin Scorcese school would be a leading man is kind of a head scratcher.  Raquel Welch is tastelessly nicknamed "Jugs." Her main duty is to apparently provide the sex in the movie.  Bill Cosby is "Mother,"  who does most of the heavy comedy lifting in the film.

 

Is the film funny? I guess so, but even for a black comedy it's awfully cynical.  This is a slick piece of product from the Hollywood studio system. No auteur stuff here thank you.

The running time is 98 minutes, apparently it made money.

1951 - TALES OF HOFFMANN, Powell and Pressburger at their most esoteric

 Alexander Korda who was running British Lion Studios was anxious to have Moira Shearer the star of The Red Shoes appear in another film.  This gave the opening that Powell and Pressburger were looking for to stage a version of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann as an exotic dance extravaganza. Be careful what you ask for.

The Tales of Hoffmann is an amazing infuriating film.  The film's production design and cinematography are outstanding.  The cast is extremely well chosen along with Moira Shearer, Robert Helpmann a dancer and choreographer, Léonide Massine a dancer and also a choreograher as well and Ludmilla Tchérina a prima ballerina appear in the film.  Sir Thomas Beecham, conducted the score which was prerecorded prior to filming.

 

So what's the problem.  Well watching the film is an exhausting experience.  The film is so drenched in overwhelming color design and movement after a while it begins to get to be a bit to much for this viewer anyway.

 

It's amazing that Powell and Pressburger got away with making this film as the commercial potential for this film was not good.  Alexander Korda must have known he did not have another film of The Red Shoes on his hands.

 

For an exercise in extreme style this film is certainly something to look at.

 

Written byE.T.A Hoffman, Jules Barbier, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger and Dennis Arundell.  The running time is 133 minutes.

1984 - STOP MAKING SENSE, the Talking Heads concert show

 David Byrne the lead singer of the Talking Heads jumps, struts, shakes and runs around like a mad man possessed in this film version of one of their concerts that features most of their hit songs up to this point in the band's lifetime

It's all here the songs, Psycho Killer, Burning Down The House, Once In A Lifetime, Take Me To The River and Byrne running around in his famous big suit.

 

The concert film was directed by Jonathan Demme a big rock and roll fan who's major contribution was probably just turnin on the cameras and letting the Talking Heads do their thing.  Stop Making Sense is certainly a lot less pretentious than Martin Scorcese's The Last Waltz which practically patted itself on the back with all the big name talent they had for that film.

 

A very enjoyable film, however six years later Byrne walked away from the band.  Byrne didn't even bother to tell the band they were breaking up, they had to read about it in a newspaper article.

The film was written by the Talking Heads and Jonathan Demme, the running time is 88 minutes.

2007 - DAN IN REAL LIFE, likable rom com

 A very well chosen cast and a few attempts at making the film's characters a little more three dimensional,  make this rom-com an entertaining viewing experience.  Steve Carell is Dan Burns a widower (what else) raising three daughters with various degrees of success.  On a long family reunion weekend he meets a French woman named Marie in a bookstore.  They hit it off almost immediately but as it turns out she is currently dating Dan's brother Mitch.  As in all rom-coms complications occur.

  

I'll give credit to the co-writer and director Peter Hedges, he does a pretty good job juggling the usual rom-com tropes.  The romantic comedy genre is extremely difficult to pull off as the very nature of the story line is usually a forgone conclusion as it marches towards it's traditional ending.

 

Besides Carell, Juliette Binoche not an actor known for her likable funny side does a very credible job as the woman who is torn between Dan and his brother Mitch. Steve Carell who usually played wacky comedy roles at this point in his career tones it down and is actually a realistic character for a change.

This isn't the type of film to win awards or make critics top ten lists, but it is a perfectly enjoyable entertainment.

The film was written by Peter Hedges and Pierce Gardner, the running time is 98 minutes.

1942 - ORCHESTRA WIVES, entertaining musical drama

Naive groupie Ann Rutherford falls for the rather dense trumpet player George Montgomery a member of the Glenn Miller Band which in this film is for some reason is called the Gene Morrison Band.  Instead of just sleeping with the guy and getting him out of her system she ends up marrying him instead.  This brings her into conflict with the other wives of the band who turn out to be a bunch of back stabbing women.  And so it goes with the plot of this film.

Ann Rutherford played Scarlett O'Hara's sister in Gone With The Wind and was in the popular Andy Hardy series as Mickey Rooney's girlfriend.  George Montgomery the trumpet player was never a big star but had a long career in B-movies.  The rest of the cast is interesting, glamour girl Carole Landis, Cesar Romero probably best remembered as The Joker in the Batman TV series, Jackie Gleason and especially the very talented Nicholas Brothers who dance up a storm in the final number.

Frankly, if it wasn't for the interesting cast and the great Glenn Miller music this film would probably be something of an ordeal to sit through.  The private lives of a touring big band musicians aren't that interesting or I should say as presented in this story not interesting at all.

 

Still the music is great.

Written by Karl Tunberg and Darrell Ware, the running time 98 minutes.

1974 - PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE , a Brian De Palma musical

 It doesn't appear that most critics knew what to make of De Palma's take on The Phantom Of The Opera and Faust. It also seems like the studio releasing it was equally clueless when it came to selling the film to the public, audiences stayed away.

However, this is one of the best of the early De Palma films that for a change wasn't heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock. Brian De Palma wrote the screenplay and cleverly mixed a lot of film genres.  His lead actor Paul Williams, a man probably more known for his songwriting than acting put together a very amusing score which parodied a lot of different pop music styles.  Williams is also entertaining portraying the crazed music producer who has made a deal with the devil.  

The film follows plot lines from Faust and The Phantom Of The Opera but De Palma keeps things interesting with his clever camera work and his staging of the musical acts that range from a Beach Boys type of group to a goth/heavy metal band.

 

The rest of the  cast is well chosen with William Finney as the helpless composer turned phantom, Jessica Harper as his love interest and De Palma regular Gerrit Graham as one of William's crazed musical performers.

A very entertaining film, it runs 91 minutes.

1969 - JUSTINE, an odd mess of a film

Justine was one of those troubled projects.  The film was based on a series of novels called "The Alexandria Quartet," which was condensed into one film by the screenwriter Lawrence Marcus. The original director Joseph Strick wanted to shoot the film in Morocco.  He was canned by 20th Century Fox and veteran director George Cukor was brought in to finish,or in this case salvage the film.

 Cukor did what he could with this film.  He had a lot of issues with Anock Aimee as the title character Justine.  Aimee was apparently fairly difficult to work with.  He didn't care for the leading man Michael York who he thought was too bland.  He was also stuck with the footage Strick had filmed and the studio wanted the production brought back to Hollywood where they could get some control over the final version.  That Cukor was able to finish this mess and turn it into a somewhat coherent fiom was probably a tribute to his professionalism.

 

Well the plot, Justine has something to do with an enigmatic woman who every guy is enamored with. She is married to a banker living in Alexandria, Egypt but having an affair with the Michael York character.  There is some kind of subplot about the Coptic religious sect running guns to Israel to aid in their struggle with the British.  But it's rather hard to understand exactly what is going on.

 

The film has a fairly good cast, beside Anock Aimee.  Dirk Borgarde,  Anna Karina, Philippe Noiret and "Dean Wormer" himself John Vernon.  George Cukor knew how to stage scenes so the film looks good.  Fox gave the production a healthy budget but the final result didn't really get any love from the critics and the audience stayed away.

The running time 116 minutes.

1954 - ADVENTURES OF HAJJI BABA, 1950's mainstream eroticism.

The producer of this film, Walter Wanger who was associated with filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz had a second career churning out potboilers like Arabian Nights, Night In Paradise and Salome, Where She Danced, popular popcorn films for the most part.

Wanger had an interesting life to put it mildly. He was part of a major scandal which involved him shooting his wife's lover in the testicles.  Wanger ended up spending time in jail and basically had to restart his career at cheapo studios Allied Artists.  Going back to what he knew best Wanger mounted The Adventures of Hajii Baba and basically drenched it in as much sexiness and eroticism as he could get away with in the mid 1950's.

 

The plot, not that it matters has John Derek as Hajji Baba leading a spoiled princess played by Elaine Stewart to safety as they escape Arabian Bandits.  They meet up with a tribe of what else, Amazon warriors. There are lots of dancing slave girls and scenes of Stewart in bondage to appeal to the boys in the movie theater.

 

I will say that Elaine Stewart is a real looker and the whole thing as silly as it sounds is very colorful and doesn't outlast it's welcome. Nat King Cole sings the ballad of Hajji Baba which is repeated throughout the film and is very effective.

The film was written by Ricard Collins and the running time is 94 minutes.

1958 - VARAN THE UNBELIEVABLE, Ishiro Honda's remake of Godzilla

Even for Toho studios which was never above reusing footage from their previous kaju films this is a mighty lazy film.  Varan The Unbelievable is essentially a quick remake of Godzilla with some King Kong story line stuff thrown in. 

It's the same old thing,  some scientists on a remote island stumble onto a monster living in a lake.  The monster gets pissed off and starts stomping on people and wrecking stuff.  The military is called in but can't seem to find a weapon that will kill it until the last moment when a scientist develops some kind of explosive or something that will finally finish off the monster.

Even for Ishiro Honda who was always the good company man this film is mighty derivative.  Apparently it started out as a TV show and was expanded into a feature film.  Whatever the background story, the whole who thing just seems mighty tired story wise and special effects wise.

The film was written by Shinichi Sekizawa who is the author on many of these kaju films notably, Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Mothra and the insane fantasy Latitude Zero among many others.

The running time is 101 minutes.

1979 - HOME MOVIES, Brian De Palma's home movie

Home Movies is certainly an unusual film to put it mildly.  As has been noted De Palma was teaching a film class at his Alma Matter, Sarah Lawrence college and got it into his head that he would give his students actual hands on filming making experience by producing a low budget film.  De Palma managed to get Kirk Douglas to do an extended cameo playing a film character called "The Mastro," apparently George Lucas invested in the project and De Palma cast his then wife Nancy Allen as what else, a prostitute who is the object of his protagonist's affection in a part played by Keith Gordon one of The Mastro's students.  De Palma regular Gerrit Graham also shows up as Gordon's brother and Allen's fiance.

The film is apparently somewhat autobiographical, Gordon follows his father around as he tries to expose his philandering and De Palma's mother was apparently known for emotional outbursts. Throughout the film Kirk Douglas keeps harping on Gordon to "not be an extra in your own life."  Nancy Allen for some reason has a hand puppet of a bunny which she talks to in a plot device which seems reminiscent of Michael Redgrave's story line in Dead Of Night.

 

Then there's Gerrit Graham who really hams it up as some kind of health food nut who is teaching a course in "Spartanetics" a course on macho manhood.  The title of the course is a not so subtle joke about Kirk Douglas's film Spartacus.  Graham also appears to be playing some kind of repressed homosexual character which probably would not be looked on very kindly today.

If all this sounds sort of funny it's really not.  It's more weird than funny.  The film is probably a must for De Palma's biggest fans.  Not to say the film doesn't have it's moments but they are rather scattered throughout the running time. This is after all a student film made by a bunch of college kids.

The film was written by Kim Ambler, Dana Edelman, Robert Harders, Stephen Le May, Charlie Loventhal and Gloria Norris.  The running time is 90 minutes

2016 - TRAILER TRAUMA 2: DRIVE IN MONSTERAMA, more of the same from the previous Trailer Trauma films

Almost three and one half hours of film trailers for exploitation films, crummy action films and cheap horror films circa the 1970's and 80's.  Trailer Trauma 2: Drive In Monsterama is a stroll down a film world that has pretty much gone away now since the demise of the drive-in and the ascendancy of the streaming world.

 If you have a lot of time to kill and there are a lot of sleazy trailers to watch in this compendium,  this film might be for you.

 

203 minutes.

1969 - THE PASSION OF ANNA, aka "A Passion"

I suppose there is a "been there seen it" aspect to this film,  However Ingmar Bergman was one of the greatest writer/directors in the history of cinema, so what we have here is an excellent film about alienation and loneliness made by a master.

 

On the island of Faro, Max Von Sydow plays a man living alone after the failure of his marriage.  He becomes acquainted with another couple played by Bergman stock company regulars 'Bibi Andersson and Erland Josephson.  They in turn introduce him to a friend of theirs whose husband and son died in a traffic accident.  She is played by Bergman muse Liv Ullmann.  The acting is at a very high caliber with that cast.

Throughout the film the actors step out of character and discuss their characters in a Brechtian distancing technique that sounds pretentious but actually works rather well as a dramatic device.

 

If you are familiar with Bergman  you can see a lot of his themes played out in this film.  Loneliness, emotional stress, the failure to connect with other people etc.  I don't want to make this sound like an "eat your vegetables" film.  One of Bergman's great skills was to take serious themes and present them in an interesting and engaging way.

Written by Bergman as usual, the running time is 101 minutes.

1999 - THE MUSE. Albert Brooks bites the Hollywood hand that feeds him.

Albert Brooks is a screenwriter trying to get a film project off the ground in that den of thieves called Hollywood.  Unable to get anywhere with the studio brass he learns of a woman who is a "Muse" for  people in the entertainment world suffering from creative blocks.  Brooks engages her to help him write a new screenplay and close a deal to get his film made.   It turns out that maybe the Muse might be a little bit crazy.

 As with many Albert Brooks comedies, The Muse is a very subtle and at times a very funny comedy.  Brooks has assembled a great cast which includes Sharon Stone as the muse, Jeff Bridges as his successful screenwriter friend, Andie MacDowell as his cookie baking wife and in two very amusing cameos from superstar directors James Cameron and Martin Scorcese.

 

I suppose this film will mostly appeal to fans of Albert Brooks, most people probably can't relate to  satirizing Hollywood or the problems a successful screenwriter is having getting a movie made.  For the most part I enjoyed it.

 

Written by Albert Brooks and Monica Johnson, the running time is 97 minutes.