1990 - THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE, possibly a comedy.

The comedian Andrew Dice Clay is the star of The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.  But before we get into the movie a few sentences regarding Andrew Dice Clay.  Clay was a comedian who was hot for a while in the late 80's and the 1990's.  The comedic character he portrayed on stage was a persona called The Diceman.  The Diceman was basically a character who offended people by telling dirty jokes and making up dirty nursery rhymes.  In essence Andew Dice Clay was a shock comedian.  He was extremely popular for a while but his jokes about "homosexuals" and women finally wore out their welcome as public tastes began to change.

While Clay was popular, the producer Joel Silver put him in a movie where he played his Diceman character called in this case Ford Fairlane. The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is about a rock and roll detective on the trail of the murderer of a heavy metal rock star.  Ford is Mr Cool,  a man who is quick with his fists and is good a bedding the babes.  Ford Fairlane spouts a series of one liners regarding the size of his penis, the size of women's breasts and lots of offensive material about "fags."  It's all supposed to be hilarious and maybe with a better approach could have been funny.

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Clearly the plan of the writers, the producer and the director Renny Harlin was to make a raunchy hip comedy.  But this kind of stuff takes a lot of skill to pull off.  You have to know the fine line between hipness and stupidity something the production team really couldn't get their minds around with their screenplay.  Andrew Dice Clay is kind of a "Johnny One Note," playing a lowlife New Jersey or Philadelphia "Guido."  After a while the sex jokes and the leering at women gets to be extremely tiresome.

 

Of note, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane has what could only be called a nightmare cast.  Wayne Newton, Priscilla Presley, Gilbert Gottfried, Morris Day and "Freddy Kruger" himself Robert Englund an amazing collection of oddballs gathered together in one unfunny movie. If anything The Adventures of Ford Fairlane is  a time capsule of a peculiar moment in popular culture in this country.

The film was written by David Arnott, James Cappe and Daniel Waters.  The running time is 102 minutes.     

1969 - THE SOUTHERN STAR aka L'Étoile du sud)

The Southern Star is supposedly based on a book by Jules Verne although I doubt Verne wrote any bathing scenes for Ursula Andress back in 1884.

The plot has American George Segal who is engaged to Ursula Andress in pursuit of a legendary diamond in West Africa.   Through a lot of rather contrived plotting they are on the run from a corrupt police official and his officers.  Things come to head when everyone ends up at a camp run by a corpulent Orson Welles in another "where's my paycheck," performance.

 

This is not a great movie but I guess if you are in the mood to watch a movie shot on location in Senegal with lots of wild animals running around and Ursuala Andress doing a nude scene, this is the film for you.  George Segal plays it light and loose with an attitude of I know this movie is preposterous.  Orson Welles probably turns in the most amusing performance he was always a real scene stealer in other director's films.

The director was Sidney Hayers who had extensive experience in TV and film with action scenes.  The oddest thing about this film is the involvement of legendary cameraman Raoul Coutard.  Coutard has always been associated with the French New Wave working with Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and later with Costa-Gavras.  I guess even Coutard had to make the house payment just like everyone else which can be the only explanation for his involvement in this film.

 The film was written by David Pursall and Jack Seddon. The running time is 106 minutes.

1994 - THE REF, 2/3's of a great comedy

The Ref starts out with smarmy comedian Denis Leary as a burglar robbing upscale homes in Connecticut.   After almost getting caught by the police Leary takes a married couple hostage in order to hide out at their house on Christmas Eve.  Little does Leary know this is not just an ordinary married couple but a married couple with severe marital problems. As played by Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey they are at verbal war with each other and throw insults around like they are grenades. Leary ends up trying to keep the peace between them while planning his escape. 

There's lots of funny stuff going on here.   The mother in law played by British actor Glynis Johns is a nasty old battleaxe of a woman.  The son who is in military school is blackmailing school officials, the rest of the family that descends on the home for Christmas Eve dinner is a collection of upper class weirdos.

 The chief problem with this film is that all it starts to run out of gas about 2/3's of the way through.  Obviously since this is a mainstream Hollywood movie set at Christmas everyone is going to work out their issues, but these resolutions come just a little to fast and the comedic situations just seem to run out of gas as things get sillier and sillier.  This is kind of disappointing for what started out as a pretty smart comedy. 

 

Still the film is mostly enjoyable especially when it is satirizing this upper class bunch of white losers.  Denis Leary is a kind of take it or leave it comedian but I thought he was funny.  Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey are a great married couple from hell. 

The film was written by Richard LaGravenese and Marie Weiss.  The running time is 97 minutes.

1929 - MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, an art film out of Soviet Russia

An arty silent film sort of a documentary from the Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertog real name David Abelevich Kaufman.  This film is a completely plotless piece and has no titles in it since there is basically no story.

The cameraman who appears throughout the film is Mikhail Abelovich Kaufman the brother of Dziga Vertog.  There is some interesting film making going on here involving split screen effects and very frenzied editing in fact lots of at times interesting optical stuff.

 

Apparently Vertog's film was fairly controversial when it came out.  Unsurprisingly considered this was Communist controlled Russia which wasn't a place that was all that hospitable to individual artistic expressions.  The film was shot around Moscow and in some ways this is the most interesting aspect of it since you get a look at life in Moscow before World War I. 

 

I would have to say that all of Vertog's photography tricks only goes to show that when it comes to film in many ways people are still creating 

films in much the same ways as they were back in the 1920's before sound came in, editing is editing after all.

The film was written by Dziga Vertog and the running time is around 68 minutes.  It exists on YouTube in  a fairly decent copy if you are so inclined.

1995 - DIE HARD WITH A VENGANCE, aka Die Hard 3

The third installment in the Die Hard series, In this film we follow Detective John McClane who is now on suspension.  He's being pursued by the brother of Hans Gruber the villain from the first Die Hard movie.  But all is not as it seems as McClane starts to piece together the real reason that chief bad guy Simon Peter Gruber is messing around with him.

I'll give them credit they approached this sequel with some new ideas.  This time McClane has a partner played by Samuel L. Jackson.  The main bad guy is played by Jeremy Irons in kind of a paycheck performance but a very witty paycheck performance.  The other main character is New York City.  A lot of Die Hard 3 was shot there and they did a pretty good job of capturing the vibe of the city.

Die Hard 3 also has a decent sense of humor with Willis tossing off the one liners while taking on the usual small army of terrorists.  The director John McTiernan is back at the helm of this film and he keeps things perking along from one action scene to the next.

 

The chief problem with Die Hard 3 is as usual it's length.  Once the action moves out of New York City the tension kind of dissipates and it's mostly a matter of the story going through it's paces so we can wrap it up with the now Willis signature line "Yippee- Ki-Ya..." etc as he takes down another elaborate bad guy plot.  This is the last Die Hard film that was any good.  The subsequent sequels had a major drop in the quality department.

The film was written by Jonathan Hensleigh with a little more wit this time.  The film runs an overlong 128 minutes.

1990 - DIE HARD 2, expected sequel to the first film

It's almost pointless to write something up about this film.  Die Hard made a lot of money for 20th Century Fox so of course they were going to make a sequel and this film showed up 2 years later. Most of the original cast is back, Bruce Willis as police officer John McClane or in this case they should have probably called him Superman since he defies the abilities of scores of terrorists to kill him.

Bonnie Bedelia is also back as McCane's wife in another thankless nothing part. William Atherton is the jerk reporter, Dick Thornburg.  Reginald VelJohnson is McCane's cop friend Sergeant Al Powell in what is essentially a cameo part.  The chief bad guys are Italian actor Franco Nero playing a South American General who is also a major drug dealer and William Sadler as a former army officer who is now a mercenary working to free Nero. Sadler works out in the nude but since this is a mainstream film no frontal nudity allowed.  There just aren't any great bad guy leaders in this film.  Alan Richardson from the first Die Hard film is sorely missed.

 

Die Hard 2 is essentially the same movie (duh) as the first one.  All of the major action scenes from the first film have been carefully studied and reproduced in this sequel. Willis is attacked by a lot of bad guys with machine guns and amazingly survives.  In fact they could probably have named this film "Machine Gun Porn."

 

The film is well made, the special effects and the overall production are at a high standard.  Renny Hardlin the director does a reasonable job putting this film together.  The film is in that category, decent time killer.  Die Hard 2 made lots of money as well.

Written by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson.  The running time is 124.   

1951 - CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER, pretty good seafaring flick

This is a film version of C. S. Forrester's Hornblower, series about a man who starts out as a teenager and joins the British Navy circa the 1800's.  The books follow Horatio Hornblower through his navel career which ends up with him becoming an admiral.

 Warner Brothers Studios chose to film a Hornblower story with him as a captain taking on the French and a Latin American dictator who calls himself "El Supremo." There are several exciting navel battles recreated with some impressive models and the director Raoul Walsh does his usual good job moving the story along.

Frankly I had my doubts about this film.  For the most part the cast was made almost entirely of British actors.  The film was shot on location in England and France which gave it a reasonable look of authenticity.  My chief worry about this filming was the casting of the leads  Gregory Peck and even more so Virginia Mayo.  Peck is obviously an American playing a British officer but this is Peck at his best.  He could bring a lot of authority to a performance and he actually pulls off his part acting like a British Navel Captain.

 

Virginia Mayo was kind of another story.  A stunning looking actor particularly in color with her flaming red hair, she is American through and through and was very good as the gangster girlfriend of James Cagney in White Heat.  Here she is supposed to play the sister of the Duke of Wellington.  Mayo doesn't even attempt a British accent. However for whatever odd reason she's reasonably effective as a British aristocrat.

 

The selling point for this film are the action scenes.  Walsh and his special effects and production team do an excellent job of staging battles between two ships which when you think about it are essentially just a couple of boats shooting cannons at each other.  Walsh is primarily though of as a director good with westerns and gangster movies but apparently he was also something of an Anglophile. 

The film was written by  C. S. Forester, Ivan Goff, Ben Roberts and Aeneas MacKenzie all seasoned Hollywood professionals. The running time is 117 minutes.

1982 - ACE OF ACES, another entertaining Belmondo film

Ace of Aces kind of follows a pattern of lightweight but entertaining Belmond films that sort of began with Cartouche.  Some of his other adventure films in this vein were That Man from Rio, Up to His Ears and Le Magnifique.  Theywere all directed by Philippe de Broca. Ace of Aces had  Gerard Oury as the director, he was also a good man when it came to directing comedy.  All of these films helped establish Belmondo as a great action hero.

Ace of Aces is a period piece which finds Belmondo as the coach of the 1936 French Olympic boxing team.  While in Berlin, Belmondo gets involved with smuggling a Jewish family out of Berlin literally right under the nose of the Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler himself.

 

There are fights, car chases and lots of goofy humor especially with an actor in the dual role of Hitler's  love starved sister and Hitler himself,  It's a rather amusing bit of casting.  Through it all the unflappable Belmondo easily defeats all of the obstacles put in his way by the German Police the Gestapo and finally Hitler.

Belmondo was close to 50 years old when he made this film and it's impressive that he was clearly doing a lot of his own stunts.  The romantic lead for Belmondo is the actor Marie France Piser who was ten years younger than him.  This is the kind of likable action film that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny should have attempted instead of the overlong mess that they released instead.

The running time is 100 minutes, the screenplay was by Gérard Oury and Danièle Thompson.,

1988 - DIE HARD. revisiting this 80's action thriller

Is it an action movie? Is it a Christmas movie? Does anyone still care about this silly argument that could only show up on social media?  It's been over 30 years since I saw this film in the theater. I was curious to see how it held up.  After viewing Die Hard again I would say it mostly still works but it's a little slow and creaky at times.  Present day audiences are pretty much conditioned to having their action movies kick into gear almost immediately after the credits.  Die Hard actually takes about 30 minutes before the big action scenes start.

 

 

The film is famous for the beginning of Bruce Willis's action hero character.  Willis was primarily a television actor but the producers had such a problem finding someone to portray John McClane, Willis  who was practically at the bottom of the list was hired.  He turned out to be a good choice to play the tough New York City cop taking on a bunch of European terrorists.  He was the every man who could shoot up a bunch of haughty bad guys out to mess with the American way of life.  It took a few movies before Willis descended into his snarky movie actor persona.  

 

Viewing Die Hard now I would have to say that I would give the real performing honors to British actor Alan Rickman. His very clever take on the lead terrorist Hans Gruber, the main bad guy taking on Willis is a real treat.  Rickman gives a very smooth and witty performance, the film really comes alive when he shows up.  Bonnie Bedelia was cast as Willis's wife and she wasn't a conventional Hollywood beauty.  She actually looks like she could be a wife and mother.  

 

As a movie Die Hard is rather overlong coming in at 132 minutes.  Towards the middle of the film the action and the story kind of slow down with lots of unnecessary personal issues among the main characters.  The story also gets very silly with the appearance of two FBI agents with the same last name, Johnson. 

For the most part Die Hard is still entertaining. The director John McTiernan  was at the top of his game staging the various action sequences and the whole film has that kind of superior professionalism that  Hollywood could bring to a big studio production.

The was written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza.

1968 - THE BROTHERHOOD, almost a warm up for The Godfather.

 Preceding The Godfather by a few years, The Brotherhood has a lot in common with that film since it deals with many of the same issues.  Briefly, Kirk Douglas in the head of a Mafia family which is part of a larger organization.  As the organization attempts to establish itself into more legitimate enterprises, Douglas resists the group's plans.  The film also focuses on Douglas's brother played by the actor Alec Cord who decides to be a part of the Mafia family business.  The conflict comes about as the old ways of doing things i.e. murdering informants clashes with the the organization's future business plans.

The director is Martin Ritt, a Hollywood craftsman who was always good when it came to working with actors and telling a story.  Kirk Douglas may seem miscast, but he's very good as the Don with a sense of honor about the good old Mafia code days.  Alec Cord I remember from a number of western films but he's also good as the conflicted brother of Kirk Douglas.  Irene Papas plays Douglas's wife but it's really not much of a part for this talented performer.

 

For the most part this is a fine film with an interesting story and an especially fascinating climax. 

The cinematographer was Boris Kaufman a guy who worked with Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet and going way back in time,  Jean Vigo.  Lewis John Carino, a fairly decent writer wrote the screenplay, the running time is 96 minutes.

2023 - THE BOY AND THE HERON aka How Do You Live?

Supposedly Miyazaki's last film however there are rumors that he is actually working on another project.  Hayao Miyazaki is 82 years old so who can say what is exactly going on with him.  The Boy and the Heron is in many ways a typical Miyazaki film if you can use the word typical when it comes to one of his films.  The film looks beautiful, the storytelling is interesting and the hand drawn animation is impressive.

 Prior to seeing this film I sat through the usual bunch of film previews which included two computer animation cartoon films.  One of them was about a bunch of ducks flying around New York for some reason and the other was the latest sequel from the once mighty Pixar studios, a company which seems to have lost it's way when it comes to making good films.  The point of all this is, the artistry of The Boy and the Heron really puts that computer animation junk to shame.

 

The plot of this film is difficult to summarize, it's loaded with symbolism and references to Japanese mysticism and culture.  There is the personal journey of a young boy who from what I can tell learns to be less selfish in life and starts to accept the role of fate for better or worse. But this is a very trite explanation of a very layered and complex film narrative.

 

This film is an impressive achievement particularly in animation.  Written by Hayao Miyazaki, the running time is 124 minutes.

1959 - OPERATION PETTICOAT, a World War II submarine comedy

Cary Grant's production company is behind this sort of kind of funny service comedy. Supposed comedy master Blake Edwards was hired to direct.   The then hot Tony Curtis was cast as one of Cary Grant's officers.  Operation Petticoat is set aboard a submarine called the Sea Tiger during World War II. 

After being damaged from a Japanese attack, Curtis plays that standard military character of the "scrounger" a guy who can lay his hands on parts legally or illegally that will get the Sea Tiger back into service.  After 30 minutes of this stealing the parts comedy stuff, the Sea Tiger finally goes to sea.  However on their first mission they end up rescuing a group of Navy nurses.  From this point on until the end of the film we get lots of mildly smutty sex jokes as the men of the Sea Tiger have to deal with buxom nurses squeezing their bosoms around the tight hallways of the submarine.  There are also lots of bra jokes as if sailors had never seen bras before.

Well the film was a big commercial hit when released but I would say it really hasn't stood the test of time. Blake Edwards has loaded the film up with his usual slapstick humor which doesn't really work all the well, most of the time it doesn't work at all.  The camera leering on the bottoms and chests of the nurses is kind of in poor taste. You just want to say I get it, breast jokes are sort of funny especially lots of them.

 

Cary Grant as usual brings his comedy timing and professionalism to the role of the captain.  Tony Curtis is the wheeler dealer lover boy and I guess he's alright.  Someone was smart enough to cast some decent character actors for the film.  Gene Evans, Arthur O'Connell, Virginia Gregg and Gavin McLeod are fun to watch.  The nurses are the usual bunch of Hollywood starlets as they like to say, Joan O'Brien, Madlyn Rhue, Dina Merrill and Marion Ross bring their shall we say "assets" to the film.

 

The film was written by a couple of comedy veterans, Stanley Shapiro  who specialized in early 60's sex comedies like Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back.  Shapiro shares a screen writing credit with Maurice Richlin who wrote silly sex comedies as well.  This film actually was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.  However Shapiro and Richlin won that year for another inane comedy the Doris Day, Rock Hudson movie Pillow Talk.  Interestingly enough Cary Grant was in one of Alfred Hitchcock's best films the same year as this piece of junk,  North By Northwest which won no Academy Awards.  Well that's showbiz I guess.

The film runs a whooping 124 minutes for what is essentially a very light weight comedy.

1971 - DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, Connery returns to Bond

With the incredibly stupid decision by George Lazenby not to continue in the role of James Bond after On Her Majesties Secret Service.  United Artists went into overdrive to get Sean Connery back into the fold.  Connery had gotten sick of the role and had not been happy with the money he was receiving from the producers Broccoli and Saltzman.  But after some negotiations Connery received one of he highest salaries an actor had ever gotten for a film at that time.  Diamonds Are Forever with Sean Connery was on.

The film had the old production team back, production designer Ken Adam, cinematographer Ted Moore,  director Guy Hamilton and writer Richard Maibaum. Since the film was primarily set in Las Vegas it was decided they needed an American writer.  Tom Mankiewicz son of legendary director/writer Joseph Mankiewicz also has screen credit.

 

In spite of the behind the camera talent and the usual good looking production the film has a messed up plot line caused by some rather severe editing that clearly went on after filming.  The other problem is that nobody takes anything seriously in this film.  Encounters with a couple of "women's lib" amazons kind of went nowhere and the casting of sausage king and singer Jimmy Dean really didn't work all that well

Even with the return of Sean Connery, the producers were taking no chances on this film.  Diamonds Are Forever has two comedic car chases a big shoot out on an oil rig and Jill St John running around in hot pants or a bikini.  Charles Grey brought kind of a detached amusement as Bond's nemesis Blofeld.  However the whole gangsters in Las Vegas plot line that leads into a science fiction plot which is really contrived. 

Well for better or for worse this is the transitional film with the departure of Connery and the entrance of Roger Moore as a more lightweight and jokey James Bond.  For all the problems with the film it's still fun to see Sean Connery back as James Bond, no one could deliver a clever quip like Connery and he has an undeniable movie star presence.

The running time is 120 minutes

2023 - MEG 2: THE TRENCH, stupid but kind of entertaining action film

It's hard to understand how a pretty good director like Ben Wheatley got mixed up in this sequel to The Meg, a film nobody was asking for.  The answer probably is that the first Meg movie made a decent chunk of money and Wheatley probably needed to work.  But for the most part this is a stupid summer action film with just enough violence to entertain the average movie goer.

The main lead Jason Statham is one of those action actors whose persona for the most part makes watching a lot of the poor action films he appears in watchable.  Would all of those Expendables movie be even worth a viewer’s time if Statham wasn't in them giving his usual intense action performance?

 

Anyway, The Meg 2: The Trench is one mixed up mess of an action movie.  The big shark from The Meg is back and just for good luck the film throws in a couple of more big sharks.  A great deal of the film is set at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean which has a secret mining operation going on surrounded by lots of prehistoric creatures with big teeth.  Into this scene comes do-gooder Statham and his team which consists of an adopted teenage girl (she saves the cute puppy), a jive talking black guy and a tough chick who's good with a weapon and kind of hot.  They all end up battling monsters, terrorists and greedy capitalists, it's one jumbled mess of a plot line.

The film's climax is set at a resort where everyone shows up, the heroes, the bad guys and the monsters.  It's only in these final scenes where Wheatley gets to crank up some ridiculously violent encounters that are actually kind of funny at times. Yes this is a stupid movie but kind of an entertaining one with scenes plagiarized from Jurassic Park, Jaws and that other man eating shark classic Deep Blue Sea.  

This film did well at the box office so I guess there will probably be a Meg 3.  Written by by Jon Hoeber, Erich Hoeber and Dean Georgaris.  The running time is 116 minutes.

1982 - STILL OF THE NIGHT, misfired tribute to Alfred Hitchcock

Probably one of the worst films I have recently seen.  This attempt at a Hitchcock type of thriller is a complete misfire.  The plot such that it is involves the  murder of Meryl Streep's lover.  Psychiatrist Roy Scheider sets out to find the killer all the time wondering if Streep is the murderer.

The director and screenwriter Robert Benton for some reason got it into his head that he wanted to pay tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's films.  There are references to Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest and Spellbound.  Benton has set up a series of clues for Scheider to solve and we dutifully sit there as he goes through the crime solving motions.  What Benton apparently forgot was that Hitchcock rarely made whodunits.  Mystery stories were not a primary interest for Hitchcock in his films.

  

Meryl Streep has been directed to play one of Hitchcock's famous "cool blondes."  She has gone on record as saying that this is one of her worst performances in a film, no argument here.  Scheider is I guess the Jimmy Stewart character. a man obsessed with mysterious Meryl.  But it's hard to understand what he sees in her bland and frankly uninteresting character. The fact of the matter is that the plot necessitates that he become involved in the murder mystery by falling in love with creepy Meryl even though it is never explained why he is so obsessed with her or exactly why he is even bothering to solve the murder.

The movie is so poorly directed that at the very least Benton could have  copied Hitchcock's visual style with some interesting camera angles but this film is shot almost like a TV show.  The cinematographer was Nestor Almendros who had done outstanding work for Eric Rohmer, Terrence Malik  and  Francois Truffaut, but you won't find anything special about his photography in this film.

Running time, 93 minutes.