1978 - INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, Tarantino's World War II film

Well either you like Tarantino or you don't like Tarantino because it's all here in his World War II fantasy. The violence, lots of talk and a really crazy story.

Tarantino, one of the few directors who can actually channel cinema history into something original was clearly influenced by Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen, Italian director Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards and The White Hell of Pitz Palu by German directors Arnold Fanck and G.W. Pabst.  I'm sure I missed a bunch of film references, but Tarantino knows his movies.

 

Tarantino's casting is equally entertaining. Brad Pitt as Lt Aldo Raine sporting a southern accent, horror director Eli Roth, Mike Meyers as an allied general and coming out of retirement actor Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill.  Other equally important performances are Christoph Waltz as a very smart Nazi officer, Mélanie Laurent as a Jewish woman out for revenge, Michael Fassbender as a film critic turned British commando and Diane Kruger playing an actress turned double agent.  

 

The plot has Pitt and his commando unit creating havoc behind enemy lines which somehow dovetails into an encounter with Adolph Hitler and his high command.  With Tarantino the fun isn't the climax but how you get to the climax.

One of Tarantino's most entertaining films. the running time is 153 minutes and as usual Quentin Tarantino wrote the screenplay.

1967 - HOMBRE, a fairly good western

Paul Newman is the title character Hombre a white man raised by native Americans who prefers their company over his own Caucasian race.  New York actor Martin Balsam plays a Hispanic character called what else Mendez.  Australian actor Diane Cilento is a woman running a boarding house.  Richard Boone is the bad guy and Cameron Mitchell is the corrupt sheriff.  All the character cliches are in order for this western.

Anyway,  everyone leaves on a stagecoach which is held up by outlaws.  The white guy hating white guys, Hombre played by Newman has to step up and save the lives of the other passengers.  The film was directed by good Hollywood liberal Martin Ritt and actually he does a good job moving the story along.  Paul Newman another good Hollywood liberal gives a very minimal performance in this film if he spoke over two hundred words in this film I would be surprised to learn that.  Newman wears a ridiculous wig as he is supposed to be channeling his inner Native American.  However no wig in the world is going to fool anyone that it's still famous actor Paul Newman.  Diane Cilento gives the best performance in the film even if she is stuck as the voice of compassion and reason in the film.

 

The film's plot is supposedly partially about the plight of the Native American, but there is hardly a Native American in it.  However it has great photography courtesy of legendary cameraman James Wong Howe.  Hombre isn't a bad film it's just such an obvious one.  It's the kind of film that well meaning Hollywood do-gooders turn out that in the end really isn't all that courageous or very relevant to the plight of Native Americans.

 

The film was written by a couple of writers who had worked with Martin Ritt in the past Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. another couple of good Hollywood liberals.  The running time is 111 minutes.

1947 - RAILROADED, early Anthny Mann film

 An early film made near the start of Anthony Mann's career.  The film was shot at the PRC studios (Producers Releasing Corporation), one of the cheap-o studios in the Hollywood that churned out second feature films.

 

Railroaded is apparently based on the same story that was filmed in 1948 as Call Northside 777 at 20th Century Fox.  The film has a very small budget but a fairly decent cast.  John Ireland is the unredeemable bad guy who robs a bookmaking operation and frames an innocent man for the crime.  

Hugh Beaumont is the cop on the case.  Beaumont didn't really gain popularity in the entertainment business until television took over as the public's major outlet for entertainment. Beaumont was chiefly remembered for playing the father, Ward Cleaver on the Leave It To Beaver series.  

  

Anyway Anthony Mann directed and if you are looking for some signs of his talent as a filmmaker you will have to look real hard.  The film isn't anything special and Mann probably had his hands full just getting the scenes filmed considering the next to nothing production budget.

The film was written by John C. Higgins and Gertrude Walker, the running time is a quick 72 minutes.

1937 - EASY LIVING, an excellent Preston Sturges comedy

Preston Sturges wrote but didn't direct this film but his humor is all over it.  Easy Living has all of the Sturges touches which include the screwball characters, the slapstick humor and the amusing dialog.   

Easy Living starts with a rich banker throwing his wife's mink out the window of his townhouse to spite her.  The mink lands on top of a woman heading to work at a magazine called "The Boys Constant Companion," an amusing reference to "Boys Life" magazine that was published by the Boy Scouts of America for many years.  Since it's a comedy and one written by Sturges the whole  plot leads up to near collapse of the American banking system.

30's comedy legend Jean Arthur is the working woman who suddenly finds herself with a mink coat and the friendship of a rich banker played by another 30's staple actor Edward Arnold,  yelling his way through the film.  Arnold's son is played by Ray Milland in an early role and Luis Alberni plays some character named Louis Louis of the hotel Louis. You get the picture

 

The film was directed by Mitchell Leisen  who made some good films for Paramount and was the nemesis of then writer Billy Wilder who accused him of ruining his screenplays, a rather ridiculous charge.  The film is well paced and Leisen does bring a kind of elegant professional style to Easy Living.

 

Easy Living is definitely a high water mark for a 30's comedy and hold up very well during this recent viewing.

The running time is 88 minutes, a high recommedation.

1983 - WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND, aka THE NEW BARBARIANS

Well then there is this low budget Road Warrior rip off coming from who else, the Italians.  The Italian industry never met a popular American film genre they wouldn't steal from and this film fits their bill.

In the year 2019 after the nuclear apocalypse,  roving bands of drivers are zipping around the countryside killing any human life they can find.  Apparently they are part of a cult who feels it's necessary to purge the earth of the remaining human beings.  Into this situation comes the Mad Max like hero called "One" who takes them on.  "One" is assisted by actor Fred Williamson looking ridiculous with a bow and arrow set, he's called "Nadir."

 

There's lots of stunt work and crazy driving.  Cars blow up, people get beheaded, crushed and run over in very creative ways as befits a low budget and the imagination of the director Enzo Castellari.

 

 Castellari was one of Italy's best filmmakers when it came to stuff like this.  He could make something out of a nothing budget and frequently did.   Castellari was comfortable with thrillers, spaghetti westerns, and war movies, a very versatile guy for the most part.

Written by Tito Carpi and Enzo Castellari, the running time is 91 minutes.

1983 - SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE, more bad science fiction movies

Bad science fiction films continues with this odd piece of junk.  Television actor Peter Strauss, completely miscast,  is a Han Solo type who lands on a planet where some hot science fiction babes have landed.  Strauss must save the women from the evil ruler "Overdog McNabb,"  in order to claim some reward money.  Along the way Stauss teams up with a teenager played by Molly Ringwald in a very shrill and loud performance which is just about impossible to endure. Ringwald was on the cusp of her John Hughes teenage film series after she appeared in this film.

The director was Lamont Johnson a very talented television director who really never made a successful transition to feature films.  Johnson was good with actors and dramas but there was nowhere in his resume with the exception of The Twilight Zone that showed he had any understanding of the science fiction genre.

The film firmly has it's tongue in it's cheek but it's not enough to redeem this mess.  The action scenes are not bad.  There is a conscious effort to copy Star Wars right down to the sound alike musical score.  Clearly the makers of this film knew they kind of had a "dog" on their hands.  They deliberately waited until a week before The Empire Strikes Back to release it.

 

The film was produced by Ivan Reitman and was written by David Preston, Edith Ray, Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum.  The running time is 90 minutes.

1985 - ZONE TROOPERS, it's space aliens vs Nazis

Prepare yourself for this goofy film.  A platoon of American soldiers trapped behind enemy lines during World War II find themselves encountering a space alien being held prisoner by some Nazis. The Nazis are attempting to exploit the alien technology for their own nefarious ends in order to win World War II.

Character actor Tim Thomerson is the tough American sergeant named Sarge naturally.  The film has the green kid, the old timer and a war correspondent just so all the cliched soldier bases are covered.  There's lots of mowing down Nazis with machine guns and the final battle features the space aliens and American soldiers taking on the Nazis with laser guns.

 

Clearly none of this was to be taken very seriously and the budget for the film was obviously low as befits such a ridiculous premise.  The writers and director of this film had enough sense to play this film as a joke even though it's supposed to be sort of serious.  

 

Zone Troopers was a Charles Band company production under the name of Empire Pictures. They specialized in low budget horror films for the most part.  They were behind such film classics such as Trancers, Meridian: Kiss Of The Beast and Dollman vs. Demonic Toys to name a few. These cheapo films graced the shelves of many a VHS rental store in the 1980's when all of the good stuff was rented.  Nowadays these kinds of films with their ridiculous plots would be big budget entertainments from the major film studios.

 Written by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, the running time is 86 minutes.

1972 - PURSUIT, author Michael Crichton directs his first film

 Michael Crichton the doctor turned author was primarily known for the techno thrillers.  Kind of a mix of science fiction and the espionage genres.  Crichton had a successful career as a writer.  Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain were very popular.  He created the long running TV series  E.R.  At some point Crichton got it in his head that he wanted to direct.  Pursuit, based on one of his early novels called Binary was a modest made for TV film that was first time behind the camera.

Pursuit has a clever plot which is about a government agent tracking a rich right wing industrialist who appears to be planning a terrorist act during the Republican convention in San Diego. Crichton or whoever his casting director was put together a good cast.  Ben Gazzzara is the government agent, E. G. Marshall casting against type is the industrialist, Martin Sheen shows up in a small part and  "Dr No" himself, Joseph Wiseman is one of those scientist types who are basically around to clear up plot points for the audience.

 

Pursuit maintains interest basically by focusing on Crichton's narrative as the government starts to piece together Marshall's plan.  For a first effort behind the camera Crichton does okay.  As a film director he was always a little on the mediocre side.  Basically he was a point and shot kind of filmmaker. He lined up the actors and got the scenes filmed.  In fact Crichton's career behind the camera is really noting special from a visual standpoint, but there was no question he was good with clever stories, witness films like Westworld, Coma, Looker and The Great Train Robbery.  Although Runaway his out of control robot film is kind of stupid. 

 

Pursuit is a good story and has good actors pulling the film across the finish line in spite of indifferent direction. 

The screenplay was by Robert Dozier, the running time was 74 minutes.  The film has the usual breaks in the narrative where advertising was inserted during the network showing.

2015 - VETERAN - a great Korean cop film

Well every one who has watched a cop film has seen this plot before.  An innocent man is almost killed by a vicious crime lord who wields so much power he is able to stop the police and the media from investigating it. But a loner cop who doesn't mind breaking the rules is on the case and through hell or high water he's gonna solve it.

Veteran is almost a throwback to the American police actioner films of the 1980's and for that matter the 1990's.  Films like Lethal Weapon, Beverly Hills Cop, To Live and Die in LA etc.  Hollywood just doesn't seem to be able to make these films anymore for whatever reason.

 

Veteran picks up the slack.  If has lots of smart and exciting action set pieces along with some clever comedy bits.  The film also has a very hissable bad guy who you know will get what's coming to him.  The film even has an exciting car chase and when was the last time anyone saw a good recent car chase?  The Koreans have been producing excellent cop films like Memories of Murder, Mother and I Saw the Devil, maybe time for Hollywood to step it up a bit. Again a very enjoyable crime/action film.

 

The film was written by the director Ryoo Seung-wan who apparently specializes in these types of films. In fact he sticks in a tribute to Walter Hill's The Warriors.  The running time is 123 minutes,

1971 - A BAY OF BLOOD, Bava's murder classic

Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood kills a lot of actors in fact it's safe to say the entire cast. The film set a new standard for grisly killing and was obviously important to the modern slasher movie which if that group of filmmakers didn't downright plagiarize from it were certainly influenced by it.

The gory killing effects were courtesy of Carlo Rambaldi who later on would build the cute little E.T. creature for Steven Spielberg amongst others.  The story such that it is involves people getting knocked off at a home on a bay.  It all comes down to a will that would leave property to whoever is left alive in order to build a luxury resort. Oh and whatever you do don't have sex in this movie if will not have a happy conclusion,

 

If you are looking for a serious catharsis of violence in your life this is probably the film for you, after 84 minutes of people getting their heads chopped off or spears run through their bodies or axes dismembering body parts you probably won't have a violence impulse for a while, at least a week anyway.

 

A Bay of Blood is some kind of classic I guess.  Bava a talented cinematographer and director was obviously attracted to this genre and he clearly had a lot of influence on many filmmakers.  The ending is actually kind of sick but seems to work for the film.

2019 - AD ASTRA, visually stunning science fiction film

 This science fiction film is one of the best photographed films of it's type that I have seen in a long time.  The special effects were obviously designed and executed with care.  Brad Pitt gave a subdued performance.  I would say the only issue with the film is a rather muddled screenplay by the director James Gray, the plot line could have been a little clearer. 

Pitt plays an astronaut who is the son of a man who traveled to the planet Neptune almost 30 years ago on a spaceship called Lima.  The earth is suddenly attacked by some sort of energy source which seems to be coming from the Lima.  Pitt attempts to journey to Neptune and find out if his father is still alive and investigate the source of the energy source. The film involves Pitt's efforts to avoid being stopped by the military who just want to send a nuclear bomb to blow the Lima up.

 

The film has a good cast, Tommy Lee Jones plays Pitt's father, the talented actress Ruth Negga,  Donald Sutherland shows up as well and blink or you'll miss her Liv Tyler is in it.  Primarily the focus is on Pitt as he reflects on his relationship with his wife and father during the flight to Neptune.

 

As I said the special effects are very impressive, none of that cartoon like superhero film effects stuff that has barely been able to pass for good these days. The photography was by Hoyte van Hoytema a cinematographer usually associated with filmmaker Christopher Nolan.  In many ways Ad Astra is an excellent science fiction film

The film really deserved better commercial success than it got from the public. The running time is 124 minutes.

1948 - CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS, arty British drama full of gothic touches

This is an interesting film, kind of a cross between Hitchcock's Vertigo and Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast.  The film's plot involves an eccentric wealthy artist (what else) Paul Mangin played by Eric Portman.  He believes he has found his reincarnated lover whose name is Mifanwy Conway (whew).  He manages to lure her to his extravagant villa where I guess they become lovers although it's hard to tell since this is a 1940's film.  After lots of scenes of Mifanwy wandering around the villa she manages to break free of his influence and ends up with some boring British guy and settles in for a nice boring domestic life unfortunately.

The film has lots of artistic photography and some very elaborate sets.  There is a scene set at a party hosted by Mangin that is an elaborate reincarnation of something the Borgias would have given in Renaissance Italy.  The set is really something to see.  No arguing that this is a very good looking film.

 

As for the acting, Eric Portman is the eccentric artist and he manages to give a good performance without sliding into some weirdo overacting thing.  The object of his obsession Mifanwy Conway is played by the screenwriter of the film, Edana Romney.  Unfortunately I don't think Romney really had the acting chops to pull the part of the possibly reincarnated love interest off.  She saunters around the villa in a perpetual state of overacting anxiety without really being able to convey the characters conflicted feelings about Paul Mangin.  

 

 The film was directed by Terence Young who was primarily and action director. Young's place in film history was as the director of three James Bond films with Sean Connery.  These films defined the series which obviously continues to this day.

The running time is 105 minutes.

2013 - THE FAMILY, mix of action/comedy, make that black comedy

 Robert DeNiro and Michele Pfeiffer are a husband and wife who along with their two children are on the run from mobsters and hiding out in France as part of the witness protection program.  The ever scowling Tommy Lee Jones is the FBI agent in charge of watching over them.  The humor comes from the fact that DeNiro, Pfeiffer and their children are basically a bunch of hoodlums who have to integrate themselves into the gentile lives of a small French village.

The director is Luc Besson, you can find fault with a lot of the films he has directed, but you have to admit he is a good technician very good at staging action scenes.  However this film is all over the place.  There is some comedy, some black comedy and a very violent action finale.  It doesn't appear that Bresson ever found the right balance for this story.

The acting is decent,  DeNiro and Pfeiffer are professionals after all.  Tommy Lee Jones plays his usual grumpy guy character but he does play it fairly well.  There is a silly Goodfellas joke obviously stuck in the film because DeNiro was in that film.  Martin Scorcese of all people has an executive producer credit on the film, since this is basically a gangster movie and he's an expert on gangsters in the movies.  The Family is a well made but kind of hollow and silly film for the most part but an okay time killer.

 

The film was written by Luc Besson and Michael Caleo, the running time is 111 minutes.

1973 - THE LONG GOODBYE, Altman does Chandler

Quirky and mostly noncommercial director Robert Altman takes on the detective genre.  Altman was always game to try something different, so why not a Raymond Chandler mystery set in Los Angeles. Altman and his screenwriter Leigh Brackett updated the Chandler novel from the 1940's to the 1970's but kept Philip Marlowe as a more of a 1940's character rather than a contemporary private detective.

As always with Altman there was the usual cast of his favorite characters, Elliot Gould, Henry Gibson, Nina Van Pallandt and in a rather small part, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The director Mark Rydell played a very scary crime boss named Marty Augustine and Sterling Hayden an interesting actor was cast as an alcoholic writer which was apparently typecasting when it came to him.

The screenwriter Leigh Brackett had started her career working for Howard Hawks on 1946's The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart playing Philip Marlowe.  Brackett had been around quite a while but apparently she got along very well with Altman. 

This is a typical Robert Altman film with lots of improvisation, his famous multilayered dialog, an interesting visual style from the cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and music from mister Star Wars composer himself John Williams One of the best jokes in the film is the title song constantly repeating itself in different versions throughout the film.

 

This is one of Altman's best films.  The mystery is actually fairly easy to follow as long as you pay attention to the overlapping dialog in the soundtrack and it's probably as authentic a picture of 1970's Los Angeles that you are going to get.  But as usual with an Altman film it was a commercial failure. With the exception of MASH, Altman was never a guy you could count on to for a money making feature film.

The running time is 112 minutes.