2024 - CONCLAVE, the pick a Pope film

With the passing of Pope Francis and the upcoming conclave of Cardinals to pick the new Pope for the Catholic Church.  People are streaming Conclave the "pick a new Pope" film.  In my case,  monkey see monkey do.

Conclave is a film thriller set in the Vatican.  The film stars Ralph Fiennes as the Cardinal in charge of running the three ring circus that is the process of picking a new Pontiff.  Briefly, stick the Cardinals in the Sistine chapel, have them cast secret ballots until there is a clear favorite candidate.  Burn the ballots in the Sistine Chapel fireplace. White smoke means they have a winner, back smoke means back to the drawing board. This stuff has been ingrained into every Catholic kid as the will of god.

The drama comes from all the political and personal intrigue going on with the Cardinals. There are lots of buried secrets, payoffs to other Cardinals, unwed mothers etc.  If you are looking for a film about the issues the Church has to confront, women as priests, birth control, treatment of LGBTQ, the conservative wing of the church vs the liberal wing, forget it.  This is strictly soap opera Dallas or Knots Landing stuff.  

 

You certainly can't fault the acting, Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci are very good.  John Lithgow shows up but he's about in every film or TV show these days. Isabella Rossellini is a nun who is in charge of housekeeping for the Cardinals which come to think about it is about the highest a woman can rise in the Catholic hierarchy.   

 

Conclave is a reasonably entertaining film, but the location of the Vatican is just a gimmick.  The film could have been easily set at a University, major Medical Center a World Bank or some place like that. 

The film was written by Peter Straughan, the running time is 120 minutes.

1969 - THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, outer space invasion with a twist

An invasion from outer space from an extraterrestrial life form.  In this film the twist is that they are micro organisms, captured by a United States space probe.  When the probe lands in a small town in Arizona it ends up killing most of the residents of the town.  The Department of Defense has a secret laboratory built for studying bio weapons where the organism is transported.  The drama in this film is created by a team of scientists who must study this organism and identify how to control it.

This is the director Robert Wise's second shot at the science fiction genre.  Wise was responsible for the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still, and he brought all of skill as a filmmaker to what is essentially a film about scientists looking at stuff under a microscope.

 

Wise carefully cast the film with character actors instead of movie stars to give the film some verisimilitude.  The film's secret germ laboratory set was designed by production designer Boris Leven who early in his career had designed the impressionistic sets for that 1950's science fiction classic,  Invaders From Mars.

 

The Andromeda Strain is an excellent film from one of Hollywood's old pro's who in his 50's could still make interesting and entertaining films in many genres,

The film was written by Nelson Gidding, the running time is 130 minutes.

1953 - SAADIA, another exotic film drama from the exotic Albert Lewin

 It's kind of amazing the director/writer Albert Lewin even had a career as a film director.  This was a guy who the phrase "high brow" films was synonymous with his name.  Saadia is a strange adventure/love story epic filmed in Morocco with an eccentric cast.

Rita Gam is the mysterious Saadia who is controlled by a witch who for 1953 clearly has repressed lesbian desires for her.  Mel Ferrer plays a French doctor in love with Saadia and Cornel Wilde in another odd ball piece of casting is the ruler of Morocco who is of course is also in love with Saadia.  It's sort of a four sided love triangle.

 

Throw in some middle eastern bandits who want to overthrow the kingdom of Morocco and you have kind of an action climax.  Frankly I don't know what this film is even remotely supposed to be about.  However it looks great thanks to Christopher Challis the cinematographer who had a long association photographing the films of  Powell and Pressburger.  

 

An interesting but weird film.  Unsurprisingly the film lost money.

Written by Albert Lewin, the running time is 82 minutes.

1974 - THE FOUR MUSKETEERS, aka The Revenge of Milady

The conclusion of The Three Musketeers story directed by Richard Lester.  The original film The Three Musketeers was clearly intended as an epic film with a lengthy running time however for what ever reason the producers split the film in two and re titled the remaining film The Four Musketeers much to the annoyance of the actors who thought they were only signing on for one film.

The conclusion of the story more or less follows the plot of the Alexandre Dumas book which frankly is kind of depressing.  Milady De Winter played by Faye Dunaway schemes to get her revenge on the Musketeers for defeating her plans during the first film.  All the expected sword fights and the Richard Lester slapstick touches are here but overall the fun and hi jinks of the first film are missing.  Frankly this film is kind of a downer. I recall one critic at the time speculating that the splitting of the original film was deliberate because all of the fun stuff was in the first film.

 

There are compensations viewing this film.  The all star cast is fun.  The cinematography of David Watkin  looks great and the overall production is impressive with lots of on location filming in Spain.  

 

Thia film was a commercial success.  It gave Richard Lester the hit film he needed although his later films never seemed to live up to his earlier films.  Lester and most of the cast reunited for a sequel in 1989 called The Return of the Musketeers, but it was a disappointing rehash of the earlier films.

Written by George MacDonald Fraiser, the runing time is 108 minutes.

1933 - KING KONG, accept no substitute

 One of the most important adventure films ever made.  King Kong came out of the imagination of two remarkable filmmakers, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack.  These two men had made their reputations filming what can only  be called sort of documentary films.  Grass: A Nation's Battle for Life, was about an amazing caravan of nomads in search of pastures in what was then known as Persia for their cattle.  The film had some extraordinary scenes of the hardships that these nomads endured during their migration, Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness, was filmed in Thailand and featured a family trying to make a living in the jungle.  This film ended with an impressive elephant stamped.

Cooper and Schoedsack eventually ended up working for RKO, where Cooper pushed the studio to make a film about a giant gorilla.  Cooper was lucky enough to find Willis O'Brian, a stop motion animation effects technician to implement his idea and with a green light from RKO studio chief David O Selznick, King Kong was born.  The rest is they say is history. A few pieces of trivia about this film

The giant gate and wall that the natives of Skull Island use to keep Kong out of their village was eventually repurposed for the escape from Atlanta sequence in Gone With The Wind the wall was burned down as Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh made their escape.

It's well know that the character of Carl Denham the movie producer looking to shoot a film about Kong was modeled after Merian Cooper.  Jack Driscoll the sailor who rescues Ann Darrow from Kong was modeled after Ernest B. Schoedsack.   Although they never really acknowledged it Ann Darrow might have been based on Marguerite Harrison who had partially financed the making of Grass, and accompanied Cooper and Schoedsack on their expedition in Persia much to their annoyance.  Marguerite Harrison was a rather remarkable woman, she had been a spy for the allies during World War I and later went on to found the Children's Hospital School in Baltimore.

RKO's special effects team pushed the limit with what they could be done with camera trickery.  For a early 1930's film, a lot of the special effects hold up very well.  King Kong has frequently been criticized  for the amount of racism in the film particularly in the scenes with the natives of Skull Island.  The film has also been cited as a metaphor for racial tensions as the film is about the destruction of the black gorilla by white men.

It’s also well known that during the climatic fight between Kong and the Air Force, the pilot and co-pilot of one of the planes are Cooper and Schoedsack blasting away at Kong.  The director Peter Jackson in his 2005 remake and special effects and makeup expert Rick Baker are the pilot and co-pilot in that version.

King Kong was written by Edgar Wallace, James Creelman and Ruth Rose.  The running time is 100 minutes. 

1984 - FINDERS KEEPERS, disappointing comedy from Richard Lester

The gem of a decent comedy is kicking around somewhere in this disappointing film from Richard Lester.  Michael O'Keefe is a con man on the run from an Oakland, California sheriff. He's slept with the sheriff's wife and the sheriff is out for blood.  O'Keefe also gets mixed up with a couple of thieves who have stolen five million dollars and are transporting it by train in a coffin.  On board the train is Beverly D'Angelo ( with really big hair) as a would be actress with mental problems, David Wayne is an ancient conductor and Louis Gossett Jr. plays a friend of O'Keefe's who just happens to be another conman.

With all the complex character relationships and comedic situations this film should have been a lot funnier than it was.  The actors all seem to want to go for it, but Lester keeps everything clamped down not allowing the actors or the comedic scenes to develop their full potential.

Finders Keepers is Richard Lester in the later part of his career,  The one time innovator of madcap fims like A Hard Day's Night, Help, The Knack …and How to Get It and the drama Petulia seemed to have lost his touch.  Lester hadn't really made an interesting film since Superman II and a good portion of that film had been shot by Richard Donner until he was fired and replaced by Lester.  It seemed like time had finally made his 1960's anarchic comedy style obsolete. 

It's to bad because some of the comedic situations in the script are actually very clever.  After all how many films have you watched that has a scene with a runaway house.  Jim Carrey shows up in what was a very early role for him and I'll say he's consistent, he plays the same obnoxious character at the beginning of his career that he's played throughout his entire acting career.

The film was written by Charles Dennis, Ronny Graham and Terence Marsh.  The running time is 96 minutes.

1973 - THE THREE MUSKETEERS, large scale production of this often told story

The director Richard Lester who had not exactly been hitting it out of the box office park with his recent films was hired by the producer Ilya Salkind to film a large scale version of that old war horse of a story The Three Musketeers.  Lester signed on for this film and brought his usual bag of cinematic tricks with him. Lester was known for adding comedic touches and slapstick scenes throughout his films along with a kind of a frenzied editing style. Viewed today, Lester's films are in many ways period pieces of a certain film making style of the 1960's and 1970's.

You have to give the producers of this film credit, no expense was spared. On location filming was in Spain and the stunning photography came from a frequent Lester contributor David Watkin.  Watkin gave the film a beautiful glowing look.  The action scenes in The Three Musketeers were staged by a fencing master named William Hobbs.  Hobbs toughened up the sword fights with an anything goes approach to the fencing instead of the usual gentlemanly rules found in those old Tyrone Power and Erroll Flynn movies. The Musketeers just don't fight with swords, they kick, hit and at times bite their opponents.

The interesting cast was a mixture of British and American actors, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee in yet another villain role and Faye Dunaway as the evil Milady de Winter.  Raquel Welch was hired to bring more sex appeal to the film as the love interest of Michael York.  However Richard Lester got the inspired idea to have her play her part like a complete fool,  Welch is the victim of most of Lester's goofy gags as she is constantly getting knocked over or thrown around like a punching bag.  Needless to say the critics proclaimed Welch a comedic genius although it was all Lester's doing.

 

The Three Musketeers is an entertaining spectacle and it is also notorious as the film that the producer decided to split into two parts from it's original lengthy running time.  It's safe to say the actors were not amused by this since they had only signed up to act in one film not two.   Needless to say it was bring out the lawyers time when the second film now called The Four Musketeers was released.

The Three Musketeers looks great in it's Blu-Ray presentation and to give credit where credit is due Richard Lester did a very good job freshening up a story that had already been told many times.

George MacDonald Frasier wrote the screenplay the running time is 105 minutes.

1999 - FANTASIA 2000 - sort of a follow up to FANTASIA

Fantasia 2000 was made due to the involvement of Roy Disney, the nephew of Walt and a major shareholder in the company.  To say that the other Disney executives were not enthused about this project would apparently be an understatement.  Still Roy Disney was a big deal at the Disney company so this film which was basically an update of Fantasia went forward.

Once again the Disney company marshaled their creative and technical staff.  The format was to be the same, musical segments were based on compositions from classical composers such as Beethoven, Respighi, Gershwin, Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Dukas, Elgar and Stravinsky.

 

The plan this time was to hire a series of performers to introduce each segment to make the film seem more "hip."  Steve Martin opens the film with a rather tiresome comic bit.  Quincy Jones shows up in his introduction for Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  Magicians Penn & Tellar do an already dated magic trick.  "Darth Vader" himself James Earl Jones gets a bit and finally Bette Midler introduces some segment which I can't recall.  Sticking all these actors into this film smacked a little like desperation.

The animation was at a very high standard.  When the Disney Corporation put their minds to it, nobody could produce more stunning traditional animation and in his case aided by computer enhancement, than this talented group.

 

This film like the previous Fantasia also did not do especially well with the general public.  The film lost money.  The critical reviews were all over the place and it was clear this wasn't going to be the animation masterpiece Roy Disney had hoped for.  The problem with Fantasia 2000 was that it was for the most part a very boring film.   No amount of elaborate and stunning animation was going to help this film.  Nice try but no cigar as they say.

The film's running time is 76 minutes.

1940 - FANTASIA, Disney's classic animated concert film.

Fantasia was two years in the making. Walt Disney along with conductor Leopold Stokowski decided to aim very high with an animated film that consisted of musical segments created by the Disney organization's talented artists and craftsmen.  The musical segments were to be drawn from  a selection of classical music composers.  At this point the Disney company was at the peak of it's creative powers.  Fantasia was an expensive production with perfection set as the goal.  It was a big ambitious risk for Walt Disney.  

Besides pushing animation to a high level of artistic creativity, Walt Disney also developed an early stereophonic sound system to go with the film which further drove costs  up.  A lot of money was spent on a sound system that had to be installed inside theaters showing this film.  Again, Disney wanted nothing less than perfection for the finished soundtrack in the animated segments.  The excellent live action color photography of Fantasia was photographed by one of Hollywood's top cameramen, James Wong Howe who is surprisingly not credited for his contribution to the film.

The end result was a unique film which featured visual interpretations from composers, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dukas, Stravinsky, Ponchielli, Mussorgsky and Schubert.  If not all of the musical segments come off (the Beethoven Mount Olympus segment is kind of silly), they are all  spectacular with the animation and special visual effects perfectly blended together.  

 

The plan for the release of the film was to add and replace musical segments every few years which would keep the film in circulation.  Unfortunately the film was so expensive that the initial run didn't really bring in the box office results Disney was looking for.  World War 2 didn't help things as it closed off a lot of foreign markets that would have generated revenue.

Still even with CGI and all the latest technological mumbo jumbo junk that the entertainment industry can muster today.  This film is an amazing achievement when you compare it to the current cookie cutter animated films that are released.

The story credit is given to Joe Grant and Dick Huemer although you can be sure this film is also the result of input from the creative artists and the producer Walt Disney as well.  The running time is  126 minutes.

2011 - SALMON FISHING IN THE YEMEN, entertaining romantic comedy

This is a very likable romantic comedy with two very attractive leads. The story is really featherweight. An Arab sheikh who happens to be a devotee of fly fishing decides he wants to populate a river in his country with salmon. To accomplish this he hires a fishery specialist who is assisted in this mission by a financial planner.  Because if you are going to raise fish who is better qualified than a financial planner.

The fishery specialist and the financial planner are played by Ian McGregor and Emily Blunt and you can’t get much more charming and charismatic than these two.  However this is a rom-com and there are few obstacles that stand in the way of true love before the end of the film.  One of the most entertaining characters in this film is Kristen Scott Thomas.  She plays the very tough Press Secretary to the British Prime Minister who is looking to exploit the fishing project for political purposes.  Thomas's character gets all the good dialog and she has razor sharp scene stealing comic timing.   

This type of well made romantic comedy really doesn't show up in movie theaters these days.  This genre has been taken over by streaming services that can pump out modestly budgeted love stories with no expensive A list actors.  They usually run about 90 minutes and are so poorly made and insubstantial that when one of them ends up being halfway decent film critics jump all over themselves blathering on about how good they sort of are when generally they’re not.

Getting back to the film.  It's well paced by the director Lasse Hallström it has some nice visual touches and good dialog.  What more can you ask for?  Yes this is the kind of film where you can say "I've seen it all before."  but usually it's not this well made.

The film was written by  Simon Beaufoy, the running time is 107 minutes.

1992 - MALCOLM X, way too long biography

I had to sit through a lot of Malcolm X's childhood and formative years before I finally got to the meat of the drama, Malcolm X's conversion to the Muslim religion. This early stuff unfortunately takes up half the length of the film,  Terrorized by racists as a child who also killed his father, Malcolm X ends up in prison where he begins to focus on the racial injustice propagated  against African Americans.

I'm not saying this isn't interesting or important information but the writer/director Spike Lee should have worked a little harder to telescope the events of Malcolm's early life.  A film that is pushing close to four hours is a lot for a viewer to sit through.  Probably the two dance numbers Lee staged could have been cut to start with since they add nothing to the narrative.

 

Denzel Washington is excellent as Malcolm X (you only have to watch some video clips of the real Malcolm X to see how good he is) especially when he begins preaching the teachings of The Nation of Islam. The film follows his pilgrimage to Mecca, his struggles with the leadership of the Nation of Islam, the perceived threat that white people have of him and his controversial comments about the JFK assassination this film finally become interesting. 

 

You can't fault the cinematography by Ernest Dickerson or the physical production of the film which really captures the look of the 1950's and 1960's.  Spike Lee had to deal with a really tight budget during the production of this film but he did give the film an epic quality.

The film was written by Spike Lee and Arnold Perl, the running time is 202 minutes.