1974 - RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER aka Satsujin-ken

The first sequel to The Street Fighter is a very lazy film even as crappy sequels go.  The first third of the film's running time is taken up with flashbacks to the original film and has unending scenes of martial arts students training.  The film finally settles down into the story which is essentially the same plot as the first film, not unexpected I guess.

Sonny Chiba is back as Terry Sugury, who is still a Kung Fu tough guy ripping out his opponents eyes or throats, or kidneys or any other body part that he chooses.  I've yet to figure out if The Street Fighter is a good guy or a bad guy.  One minute he's killing off some guy for a Tokyo gangster and the next minute he's wreaking havoc on the American Mafia. 

I fully realize that this film was never going to be on the level of  Kurosawa's Yojimbo or Sanjuro.  But this is pretty crappy film making even for what is essentially a B level action film.   At least the first Street Fighter film was entertaining for it's over the top violence and Sonny Chiba's constant sneering. The best I can say for this film is that Sonny Chiba is still his very scary sneering self.

 

The film was written by Hajime Koiwa, the running time is 85 minutes

2017 - LOGAN LUCKY, an amusing heist film

The director Steven Soderergh must have a thing about making heist films, because he has sure done enough of them.  Oceans 11, Oceans 12, and Oceans 13 are the three that come to mind and Logan Lucky would be on a list with those films.  However Soderbergh manages to tweak the heist genre with  some amusing ideas.

The film is set in West Virginia as I recall and the plot involves two southern brothers played by of all actors, Adam Driver and Channing Tatum. The brothers conceive of a plan to rob a NASCAR racetrack during an actual race.  They recruit a convict called Joe Bang played by of all people British actor Daniel Craig to help them execute their plan.  Joe Bang has a couple of goof ball red neck brothers who also get involved in the heist as well. Also a quick shout out to Riley Keough (Elvis Presley's granddaughter) playing a hair dresser who appears to specialize in big hair styling at her beauty salon. The overriding joke in this film is that these supposedly stupid red necks are actually a lot smarter than they seem. 

Soderbergh is good at setting up the mechanics of the NASCAR heist and he has his cast play the whole thing in an amusing deadpan southern style.  Soderbergh is also a good director and a great story teller.  He never lets the camera get caught up in stylistic tricks at the expense of the film's story.  The film is very entertaining.

 

The film was written by Rebecca Blunt, the running time is 119 minutes.

1999 - 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU, a cult teenage rom-com

I'm a little to old for this film and I was definitely not the intended audience.   The film was marketed under the Touchstone production banner which was the Disney's studio's way of separating their so called wholesome family films from some films of what they felt were more adult in nature. As if this harmless film was  some kind of a version of Last Tango In Paris.

This film was  inspired by Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew.  But to put it carefully it is very loosely inspired  by that Shakespeare play.  Julia Stiles is the mean older sister to Larisa Oleynik.  Oleynik can't go on dates unless her older sister dates per their traditionalist father, a rather ridiculous premise for a film set in the 1990's.    Joseph Gordon Levitt in one of his early roles,  persuades bad boy Heath Ledger to romance Stiles and since this is a rom-com surprise surprise they fall in love.

What this film has going for it is the casting, we get a lot of young actors at the start of their careers and you can definitely see their talent shine though. Unfortunately the actors all speak like they have rom-com writers following them around because they sure don't talk like high school students.  Certainly not any high school students I hung around with.  It's a tribute to these actors that they make these constant smarmy one-liners seem sincere.

I can't say that this film isn't fun because it is.  What the film has going for it is the performance of Julia Stiles as the shrewish older sister.  At the beginning of the film she comes off as a major bitch but as the story progresses her character grows and the audience comes to understand why she behaves the way she does.  It seems that Stiles should have really been a bigger star on the basis of this film but that's the way it goes.  Stiles carved out an okay career for herself for the most part but doesn't appear to be obsessed with all the Hollywood star ego bullshit.

 

The film was written by Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith, the running time is 97 minutes.

1935 - THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII - entertaining 1930's epic

This tale of the ancient Roman Empire has it all, volcanoes erupting, gladiators, Christians being led to the slaughter and the typical epic cast of thousands.  It also has special appearances by Pontius Pilate and Jesus himself although he is never actually called that.

 The story concerns a blacksmith in Pompeii played by Preston Foster.  Foster's wife and child are injured by a runaway chariot of course.  Unable to pay for a doctor they die.  The grieving Foster decides to become a gladiator to gain as much wealth as possible.  Along the way he adopts an orphan boy who he raises as his son. How does Jesus fit into all of this?  Well Foster and his son travel to Judea to see the most important man in the world.  Thinking the man is Pontius Pilate, played by a curly haired Basil Rathbone (the best performance in the film). They encounter Jesus who performs a miracle on Foster's adopted son who has been injured and almost dies.

It's back to Pompeii where Foster is arranging one of those big gladiator showdowns in the local amphitheater.  A Christian sect has been captured and is about to become fodder for a bunch of blood thirsty gladiators.  Foster's adopted son has secretly become a Christian and he ends up in the amphitheater as well.  Just as things are about to get really bad, Mount Vesuvius erupts and brings the film to a rousing climax of death and destruction. It's a lot of story to be told in 90 minutes.

 

The filmmakers are Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, the men behind the original King Kong.  Cooper and Schoedsack had been explorers in the 1920's and got into show biz where their films were what would be called high adventure.  Besides King Kong, they filmed She, Mighty Joe Young and The Most Dangerous Game.  No drawing room comedies for these guys.

 

The special effects were by stop motion animator Willis O'Brien and Vernon Walker and expert at creating optical effects. In the case Walker expertly blending actors with O'Brien's stop motion effects. 

This is a very entertaining 1930's film. Between the story and the big action finale you really can't go wrong.  Cooper and Schoedsack were always about putting on a good show.

The screenplay was by Ruth Rose, the running time is 96 minutes.

1951 - WESTWARD THE WOMEN , unusual but good western film

This film is about the 1851 journey of a group of women on a wagon train to meet prospective husbands in California.  The film's original story was written by Frank Capra who at one time wanted to make it.  Fortunately the film ended up with tough guy William "Wild Bill" Wellman directing.  God knows what kind of sentimental mush Capra would have turned it into.

For a film released in the early 1950's it has an unusual feminist slant which for the most part isn't compromised in the story telling.  The film was photographed in Utah on what looks to be like fairly harsh locations.  William C. Mellor was the cinematographer, he was usually associated with George Stevens. but working with Wellman he went for a very harsh look to the photography.

 

Robert Taylor is the lead and he's very good.  In one scene he dishes out some tough justice to a cowboy who has raped one of the women.  Taylor had started his career as a pretty boy at MGM.  As he got older he grew into more interesting roles.  Still the focus of the film is on the women in a series of interesting vignettes.

 

William Wellman was considered a guy's director, but he had a successful collaboration with Barbara Stanwyck and was the director on the first A Star Is Born film.  Wellman was from the John Ford school of film making.  He had a no nonsense visual style and also didn's put up with a lot of nonsense on his set.  Westward The Women is an exccellent film and one of Wellman's best efforts.

The screenplay was by Charles Schnee, the running time is 118 minutes.

1974 - THE STREET FIGHTER, a Japanese martial arts film

 The bone crunching, blood flowing and general body harming Japanese martial arts film featuring the actor Sonny Chiba.  Chiba plays a brutal martial arts fighter called Terry Sugury also known as The Street Fighter.

If you are looking for the Bruce Lee Kung Fu style which is probably more elegant, don't expect that in this film.  Chiba is an intense brutal guy especially in the fight scenes and he's not about dancing around his opponent unlike Bruce Lee, he's here to beat the crap out of anyone who gets in his way.

 

The film's plot for what it's worth has Terry Sugury guarding the heiress to an oil company.  Apparently the Japanese Yakuza wants to move in and take over the company, big mistake.  Terry Sugury plows through these gangsters with his fighting skills like he was kneading bread dough.

There's plenty of blood spilling and ripping of organs out of bodies and if you are looking for action you should be satisfied.  The film was so popular that it spawned sequels and spinoffs with the words Street Fighter in the their titles.  

 

This film, is a big favorite of Quentin Tarantino. Although I haven't heard him talk about it lately on the podcasts he appears on. Sonny Chiba passed away in 2021 from complications derived from the Covid virus.  The Street Fighter is entertaining for what it is.

The film was written by Kōji Takada and Motohiro Torii, the running time is 91 minutes.

1976 - THE TOUGH ONES - Italian Poliziotteschi film

A fairly decent Italian police thriller set in Rome.  Inspector Tanzi, a character clearly modeled after Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry character is on the trail of a tough gang of French guys.  Tanzi also has to deal with a creepy killer hunchback played by the Italian actor Tomas Milan who I think was in about every Italian movie ever made.

The action is good.  There are some exciting car chases and shootouts.  The actor Maurizio Merli  who plays Inspector Tanzi, handles the usual rouge cop stuff well.  As with a lot of these cop movies he shouts and screams about the "system" and letting these "slime" get away. But fear not street justice will prevail.

 

The version of this film that I saw was dubbed into English which made Tanti's rants about the lack of law and order sound even more intense.  As was usually the way with these films an American actor in this case played by Arthur Kennedy is in the film for reasons I don't exactly understand.  Apparently Italian filmmakers liked to stick American's in what are essentially rip offs or remakes of American cop films.

 

Anyway the film is entertaining and you get some good views of Rome circa the 1970's when people aren't being shot or run over by bad guys.

The film was written by Dardano Sacchetti who has a long list of films he worked on such as The Cat o' Nine Tails, Bay of Blood  and 1990: The Bronx Warriors to name just a few. The running time is a brisk 95 minutes.

1955 - THE AFRICAN LION, one of the Disney True Life Adventure films

File this under the "I'll watch anything" department.  The African Lion is part of the Walt Disney True Life Adventure series which ran from the late 1940's until the early 1960's before finally wearing our it's welcome.  The Disney company would purchase films from nature photographers and turn around and give them the Disney touch.  A folksy narrator , a music score which at times could get fairly silly and a story line.  I guess the films for the most part would be called documentaries but they are unmistakably Disney influenced documentaries.

The African Lion is considered one of the best in the series.  It was filmed on the Serengeti plains with Mt Kilimanjaro rising in the background.  The film proposes to be about the life of the lion but it incorporates lots of footage of the other species living on the plains.  Filmed in technicolor,  there are many impressive scenes of the animals.  Probably the worst thing you can say about the film is at times the narration by Winston Hibler gets to be a little to much.

 

The film was written and directed by James Algar, but the real stars of the film were the husband and wife team of Albert and Elma Milotte who literally followed the animals around for three years in a specially designed truck to photograph them.  

 

Obviously time has kind of taken the freshness off of this wildlife documentary.  Advances in photography have made the art of wildlife photography easier.  Still this is an impressive achievement and it is from a time when Africa was still a somewhat mysterious place.  

You can make some valid criticisms about Walt Disney and the product he put out while he was in change, but you can't argue that he occasionally was willing to try some new approach to story telling.  Today the Disney company seems to only be in the business of live action remakes of its classic cartoons or unending super hero movies.

The film was written and directed by James Algar who clearly organized the Milotte's animal footage into a narrative.  The running time is a brisk 75 minutes.

1936 - AFTER THE THIN MAN, the 2nd in the series

This is the second in the The Thin Man series or make that the first sequel.  The Thin Man had much to the surprise of MGM studios been a big hit.  The series combined comedy with a mystery and had the advantage of two MGM stars who were extremely proficient at the sophisticated comedy business, William Powell and Myrna Loy playing Nick and Nora Charles.  That film made a lot of money for MGM so the original writers, director and stars were back with  Another Thin Man two years later.

The original film's formula was carefully followed for the most part but this time there was even more  emphasis on the comedy elements of the plot.  Nick and Nora Charles had a dog called Asta and you have to sit through a lot of his shenanigans which sometimes stops the film cold.  The supporting cast is a list of 1930's actors, James Stewart (finally starting to get good roles). Elissa Landi, Sam Levene, Joseph Calleia and George Zucco (as usual planning a mad doctor).  All these actors are at the service of Powell and Loy.

 

The mystery plot for the most part is kind of a "who cares who killed who" story. The entertainment value in the film really belongs to William Powell and Myrna Loy, friends in real life. They play off of each other to perfection.  They are quite amusing together as a married couple who like to have fun while solving this murder mystery.

The film has the usual MGM big studio polish, none of that socially conscious stuff for this studio.  It was always about glamorous stars and glamorous settings.

The film was written by two of MGM's top writers, Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich.  The director was the infamous W. S. Van Dyke.

1994 - REVENGE OF THE MUSKETEERS, aka La fille de d'Artagnan)

This is an adventure story based on characters from Alexandre Dumas the writer of The Three Musketeers.  This original story has the Musketeers now older and in retirement.  The daugher of  D'Artagnan, Eloise D'Artagnan  is essentially the main focus of this story as she uncovers a plot to kill the King of France and his advisor Cardinal Mazarin by a group of French aristocrats who want to take over France.

Eloise enlists the help of her father and a poet who has fallen in love with her and helps reunite the retired Musketeers.  There's lots of sword fight action, a rather amusing comedy of errors type plot and the whole film is on the light hearted side for the most part.

The film has a good cast with a delightful Sophie Marcel as Eloise D'Artagnan and that old warhorse of French theater and film Philippe Noiret as D'Artagnan.  The two of them play off of each other very well.  Bertrand Tavernier a distinguished director took over the direction from Riccardo Freda who apparently couldn't get along with the cast particularly Sophie Marcel.  This is fairly lightweight stuff for Tavernier but it is well photographed and well staged.

 

For the most part  Revenge of the Musketeers, is a fun film with enough action and humor  that should satisfy the viewer, Sophie Marcel really makes the film take off.

The running time is 125 minutes, the film was written by Michel Léviant, Bertrand Tavernier and Jean Cosmos.

2023 - AQUAMAN AND THE LOST KINGDOM, it's not good, it's not bad it's just what it is.

Coming in at the tail end of the superhero comic book cycle, this film was a big financial flop.  This was attributed to what is now called "superhero film fatigue," the audience was finally burning out on this genre.  The reality of this failure may be a little more complicated.  

The film slavishly followed the usual superhero formula.  A superhero takes on a really powerful bad guy as usual.  First he kind of whips the bad guys butt, then the bad guy comes back and really whips the superhero's butt and finally the superhero gets even more super and really really whips the bad guys butt.  Lots of butt whipping.

As usual the superhero is a wise cracking guy with a joke or a smart ass line for every dangerous occasion.  At times it seems like he would be at home doing stand up at a Los Angeles comedy club.  There's the usual female eye candy girlfriend and the action scenes are completely improbable since they have been created in a computer by probably dozens if not hundreds of computer nerds.  Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom slavishly follows this formula.

  

Jason Momoa is Aquaman and he handles the jokes fairly well, he certainly is pumped up either the result of an exercise regime or computer enhancement who can say?  The film is colorful enough since it's set under the sea and has lots of pretty colors of fish and coral reefs and stuff.

 

This film really isn't the disaster that the majority of the critics said it was, it's just unnecessary.  Looking back over all of these superhero movies from the last ten years or so it's pretty clear their lack of plot or interesting stories were covered up by lots of action and fast ADHD editing.  I watched this film as I was counting coins in my spare change jar and I can report at no time did I have trouble following the narrative since there is basically no narrative to speak of.  The film is for the most part competently made.

The film was written by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick but five people take story credit which includes Jason Momoa and the director James Wan,  always a bad sign.  The running time is an overlong 124 minutes.

1979 - YANKS, disappointing World War II love story

The love story is one of the hardest genres to make a good film out of.  YANKS would appear to have everything going for it.  The film had the then hot actor Richard Gere, Vanessa Redgrave was as usual no slouch in the acting department and John Schlesinger an Englishman of taste would seem the perfect person to direct a story about 1940's England during the war years. 

The film chronicles the romances between three American soldiers during World War II.  Richard Gere is the army cook who falls in love with a local girl who already has a fiance fighting the Germans.  Toothy William Devane get involved with upper class Englishwoman Vanessa Redgrave and Chick Vennera ends up marrying a local British woman. So much for a complicated story line.

An expensive production filmed on location in England.  It has good photography, a large scale cast and impressive production design. If all those things could make a great love story YANKS probably would have been a hit.  As it is the film moves along at a rather slow pace and good if understated acting and direction can't seem to generate any heat to make it a romantic classic,  everything is completely underplayed.

 

The major set piece in the film is a race riot at a dance hall between white and black American soldiers.  While this scene is interesting it  throws the entire picture out of wack.  It's becomes two different films at this point.  In order to teach the white American soldiers a lesson the British women end up dancing with the black soldiers.  However this really doesn't ring true, say what you want but the British are hardly what I would call that open minded when it comes to race relations.

 

YANKS  flopped badly,  John Schlesinger got one more shot at the big time with a dumb comedy called Honky Tonk Freeway which featured a water skiing elephant, another disaster.  That was it for him the A list projects dried up.

The film was written by Colin Welland and Walter Bernstein, the running time is an overlong 141 minutes.

1047 - BORN TO KIll, film noir with one fascinating performance

A lot of critics and film buffs are fascinated with this rather violent noir film.  It is an unusual film for gentleman director Robert Wise and looking over his filmography it does stick out as something different in his career. 

However for this viewer I found the film's plot ridiculous and the dialog rather stilted. Wise's direction isn't much to behold except for a couple of murder scenes when he rises to the occasion otherwise it's point and shoot for the most part.  Only in these kiling scenes does Wise show much enthusiasm for what he's doing and it could be argued that they are are very influenced by his former producer, Val Lewton.

Let's get to the cast, Claire Trevor is once again the femme fatale scheming to steal her step sister's inheritance.  Her step sister has married Lawrence Tierney who is a very bad guy to put it mildly, he kills a couple of people at the beginning of the film almost as a whim.  The great character actor Elisha Cook Jr shows up and you know he's gonna be toast.  There is a private detective played by Walter Slezak running around blackmailing everyone.  Slezak gives the best performance in the film.

 

I honestly don't think this is a very good film but it what it has going for him it is the performance of Lawrence Tierney who is as scary on the screen as he was in real life.  The guy is simply compelling to watch and considering his violent off screen shenanigans you almost expect him to attack and kill the cast and for that matter the production crew.  His performance alone in Born to Kill makes it worth having a look at.

 

The film was written by Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay, the running time is 92 minutes.

2007 - VAL LEWTON: THE MAN IN THE SHADOWS, modest documentary about famous Hollywood horror film producer

Martin Scorcese takes a producer credit and also narrates this documentary a brief overview of the film career of Val Lewton the B-movie horror producer who worked at RKO in the 1940's.  Val Lewton had been employed at MGM and hooked up with independent producer David O. Selznick for a while.  After the disaster that was The Magnificent Ambersons and Orson Welles getting kicked off the lot of RKO. Val Lewton was put in charge of their horror film division in order to make a quick profit on some of Welles existing sets.

Much to the surprise of the studio executives Lewton made some very good which in this case equals profitable, low budget horror movies using the existing talent at RKO .  Jacques Tourneur, did good work with Lewton.  Robert Wise and Mark Robson started their directing careers with Lewton and horror stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi appeared in his films.

 

What sets Lewton apart from other horror film producers is that he actually made very good films.  Stuck with titles like Cat People, Curse of The Cat People, The Leopard Man ,  I Walked With a Zombie and The Body Snatcher amongst others.  Lewton's production team turned out what at times very poetic films in the horror genre.  Many critics think that Lewton was a big influence on Alfred Hitchcock.  

 

How's this documentary?  Well it's all right I guess nothing special.  It made me want to revisit some of Lewton's films.  Scorcese narrates in a very soft almost inaudible voice.  To bad Scorcese didn't take away some of the lessons from Lewton's film making style.  Lewton rarely made a film over 90 minutes.  Considering the bloated running times of his last couple of films , Scorcese could have learned a lesson or two.

The film was written by the director Kent Jones, the running time is 77 minutes.

2013 - G.I. JOE RETALIATION, the follow up to G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Any movie based on a line of toys and a crappy limited animation cartoon series that ran in syndication is probably not going to be a very good one.  I believe this is the situation here. G. I Joe Retaliation is very stupid but is also very entertaining.  If it's a choice between Olivier's Hamlet or this, I believe I will come down on the side of the Joe's.

Picking up where the last film left off, the President of the United States has been replaced by an imposter from the evil organization COBRA.  COBRA plans to take over the world with a series of satellites that can shoot radiation beams or something at major countries around the world. This is essentially the same plot as in a couple of James Bond movies, Die Another Day and Goldeneye, so much for story originality.  The G.I. Joe team is betrayed and only three members survive, "Roadblock", played by Dwayne Johnson, "Lady Jaye" played by Adrianne Palicki and "Flint," played by some guy.  Meanwhile two Ninja guys battle it out in the Himalayas for some reason racing up and down mountain tops.  It's all clearly created with CGI but the scene is highly entertaining.

Well everyone shows up back in Washington D.C. where they team up with paycheck actor Bruce Willis phoning it in as usual.  There's lots of fights and goofy gadgets (more James Bond movie stuff ripoff).  The Joe's save the world with the exception of London and we are set up for yet another chapter in this series that apparently will never be made.

 

Okay what does this movie have going for it.  Well the action scenes for the most part are very entertaining.  Dwayne Johnson makes a good leader and the film does clip along at a decent pace.  The director Jon M.Chu is usually associated with musicals and there is kind of an approach to staging each shoot-em up like it was an old MGM musical number.  The film is a very entertaining time killer and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

Amusingly Channing Tatum was in the first G. I. Joe movie but wanted out probably after reading the screenplay so they killed him off towards the beginning of the film.  All the better, Dwayne Johnson is more than manly enough to take over his job.

The film was written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick who specialize in these kind of films, the running time is 110 minutes.