2025 - SISU: ROAD TO REVENGE aka SI2U

From Finland comes the second in the Sisu series a film about one really pissed off citizen from Finland. He's about to raise holy hell on some of the Russian military after (what else) his family is murdered by them.  Apparently in the first film he took on the Nazi's but I guess he's an equal opportunity killer.

 

The film's rather sketchy plot has our hero transporting what is left of his family homestead by semi-truck.  In hot pursuit are the Russians led by the man who killed his family naturally.  The first half of the film is a road chase that is very reminiscent of The Road Warrior except this film wants to really top that film by being a lot more brutal.

 

In the second half of this film, the Russians finally catch this guy, put him on a train to transport him back to Russia.  Bad mistake, this Sisu guy after being tortured escapes from his railway car prison cell and wreaks even more havoc if that's possible.

 

What can you say?  The film is extremely well made.  The mayhem inflected on the cast is considerable.  If you are looking for a lot of graphic bloody violence but well staged graphic bloody violence this film should satisfy you.  The ending seemed a little over the top but in reality the whole film was over the top.

Written by the director Jalmari Helander, the running time is a brisk 89 minutes.

1977 - CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND - on the big screen

Obviously re-released as a tie in to Spielberg's current fim Disclosure, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is almost 50 years old.  The film was made when Spielberg was in his early 30's and is an assured piece of work for a filmmaker at the beginning of his career.  Spielberg had finished shooting Jaws and was still something of an unknown quantity in Hollywood although people in the know recognized him as a potential major talent.

 

Spielberg was under enormous pressure during the making of the film.  The budget escalated from the initial estimates of 3 million dollars to 20 million dollars.  The studio Columbia Pictures was on very shaky financial ground and was constantly pressuring him to reduce the budget and wrap up the filming.  One of his producers had a significant drug problem and was apparently behaving erratically during the production.  But Spielberg stayed the course and remained true to his vision of the final film.

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind also benefited from some considerable behind the camera talent.  Vilmos Zsigmond was the very talented cinematographer Spielberg had worked with on his first feature The Sugerland Express.  John Williams composed the score.  Michael Kahn was the editor working with Spielberg for the first time and would go on to cut almost all of his other films.  Douglas Trumball who had worked with Stanley Kubrick was in charge of the pioneering special effects. 

 

 

I remember when the film was released the critical reception was for the most part good.  However some critics were looking for another shoot-em up Star Wars type of film but Spielberg was too much of a humanist to go down that road.  Spielberg even got one of France's greatest directors, Francois Truffaut to play the part of Claude Lacombe the French scientist in charge of the UFO project.  

 

 

In spite of some of some dated technology in the film (reel to reel tape recorders, paper maps, land line telephones), this film still plays very well and is certainly one of his best films.

Spielberg for the most part wrote the screenplay with the assistance of five other uncredited screenwriters.  The film exists in  three different running times, the 135 minute original release, the 132 minute special edition and the 137 minute director's cut.

2026 - OFFICE ROMANCE, standard rom-com stuff made for streaming

I watched this because why not.  Nobody is going to confuse this with a classic romantic comedy.  In fact nobody is going to confuse this with anything.

 

Jennifer Lopez at 56, still looks great in a two piece swimsuit but probably getting a little old for this stuff, is the head of an airline that is being sued for some reason.  British actor Brett Goldstein remembered for playing Roy Kent in Ted Lasso is the attorney who is representing her company in the lawsuit.  They fall in love, the road to a happy ending is sort of rocky but it will all work out.

 

Some of the jokes are funny most are not.  A few interesting actors show up like Bradley Whitford, Edward James Olmos, Amy Sedaris and Betty Gilpin.  They manage to steal the show from the two leads but that didn't take much.

 

For a "watch with your significant other rom-com" there is a level of raunchy and not particularly funny humor throughout the film.  The photography is pretty.  This film will slide into the abyss of streaming films that show up for a week and are then forgotten.

The film was written by Brett Goldstein and Joe Kelly.  The running time is 115 minutes is should have really been shorter.

1979 - CONCORDE AFFAIRE '79 aka The Concorde Affair

Released in the same year as the ridiculous The Concorde... Airport '79.  This film was a typical attempt by the Italian film industry to do what they do best rip off current American films. Basically stealing their plot lines and loading them up with past their prime American performers.   In this case instead of releasing just another crappy rework of an American film this is actually more entertaining than The Concorde... Airport '79, well go figure.

There is a conspiracy by a nameless corporation to sabotage the then fashionable faster than sound Concorde airplane.  They want to sell their own version of that plane by blowing up Concordes apparently. An investigative journalist played by American actor James Franciscus manages to locate the last survivor of  the latest Concorde plan crash played by actor Mimsy Farmer.  (Now there's a woman who had an interesting career).  Well the chase is on as the two of them have to avoid being killed by assassins so they can reveal the truth of these Concorde plane crashes.

 

The film was directed by Ruggero Deodato who in his film career made the very extreme horror film Cannibal Holocaust and one of the craziest science fiction action films ever made Raiders of Atlantis.  Besides Franciscus, Joseph Cotton and Van Johnson show up in the film as is the way with casting in these Italian productions.

 

This is an entertaining action film that zips along at a decent pace and as I indicated at the top of this post is a lot more entertaining and believe it or not more plausible than The Concorde... Airport '79 which frankly wouldn't take all that much. 

The film was written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Renzo Genta, the running time is 96 minutes. 

2019 - APOLLO 11, interesting documentary about the first moon landing

 Probably the high point for NASA and the race to beat the Russians to be the first to land on the moon, Apollo 11 is a very well made film about an amazing technical triumph that is now almost 60 years old.

The director Todd Douglas Miller had access to lots of footage of the Apollo 11 mission.  NASA was obsessive about filming every single aspect of the mission.  Miller and his team had the footage converted and enhanced to the digital format which gave the old film a really sharp look.  The decision was also made not to have a narrator droning away throughout the film.  This allowed the original film footage to let the story speak for itself.

What can you say about the Apollo 11 astronauts?  The leader of the team Neil Armstrong was very smart but not exactly a guy you would want to spend a weekend partying in Las Vegas with.  Apparently he was not a warm and cuddly kind of husband, his marriage fell apart after 38 years.  Buzz Aldrin the lunar module pilot was married four times and struggled with depression and alcoholism.  Command module pilot Michael Collins seemed to have been the most well adjusted of the team.  He went on to have a life after the moon mission advocating for the space program and working for the government in various roles.  Real life is kind of messy, especially after you've had the achievement of a lifetime.

 

Probably one of the biggest takeaways from this film besides the stunning pictures is of a program that literally employed thousands of people to achieve the goal to land on the moon which started in 1961 and took eight years to finish.  

 

This an interesting film about an event that was an exciting time in American history which is probably now starting to fade into the past.

No credited writer on this film, the pictures tell the story.  The running time is 93 minutes.  

1958 - INDISCREET, a polished production of a very slight story

This should have been an entertaining romantic comedy.  The leads were Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.  The producer/director was Stanley Donen a man of taste and style.  The writer was Norman Krasna an old pro at this romantic comedy stuff.  The cinematographer was F.A. Young who was usually associated with David Lean's super epics, it looks very pretty in technicolor.  The end result of all this effort is a very mild film with lots and lots of talk.

Bergman plays what else, a world famous actress who enters into an affair with rich banker Cary Grant who is apparently married. The film's contrived plot hangs on the premise that Grant actually isn't married but is pretending to be married to avoid having to get married, well something like that.  

 

This film was made under the Cary Grant, Stanley Donen production company Grandon.  It was the first of their three films which included The Grass is Greener and Charade.  The idea seemed to be to film sophisticated and very glossy entertainments of "the privileged class enjoying their privileges" as they liked to say.

For all the good looking clothes and impressive London locations the film just doesn't really come off with it's dumb premise.  Grant and Bergman make a good looking couple but they don't really have any genuinely witty dialog to work with.  They are supported by English character actors Cecil Parker and Phyllis Calvert who are much better at delivering Krasna's lame dialog and frankly when they are off screen they are really missed.  I guess if you are a fan of classic Hollywood stars like Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman the film is sort of enertaining.

The running time is an overlong 100 minutes.   

1937 - UN CARNET DU BAL aka Life Dances On.

This drama about a woman trying to make sense of her life after her husband dies is considered a film classic.  It's a part of the traditional French main stream film industry that was to be eviscerated by Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Godard and the rest of the "New Wave" gang looking to make a name for themselves by attacking traditional film directors in the 1950's and 60's.

However Julien Duvivier the director who was making films in the 1930's was a superb director and had an understanding of how to use the camera to tell a story.  You could probably put Duvivier's filmography next to any of the "New Wave" directors and it would more than hold it's own.

Duvivier spent some time in Hollywood during World War II where he had a mixed career.  The interesting Flesh and Fantasy and Lydia used the same episodic story telling structure as Un Carnet Du Bal.  However the ridiculous The Great Waltz which was supposedly based on the life of Johann Strauss II The Waltz King and probably one of the silliest films ever made about a composer.

  

Un Carnet Du Bal is one of his best films.  Duvivier and his writers fashioned a story that revolves around a woman remembering her coming out ball when she was sixteen years old where she was pursued by seven suitors.  She decides to find out what happened to each of these men and begins a journey to locate them.  From the beginning of the film with it's impressive memory waltz scene of her first dance to her final realization of the reality of her life, the film is actually quite a moving portrait of one woman.  

This is certainly a high point of 1930's French film making and cinema. 

The film was written by Julien Duvivier, Henri Jeanson, Yves Mirande, Jean Sarment, Pierre Wolff, and Bernard Zimmer.  The running time is 144 minutes.

202 - NORMAL, another shoot em up with more of a sense of humor than usual

Normal is sort of the third part of a Bob Odenkirk action trilogy.  Odenkirk is an unlikely action hero for this stuff.  In a previous incarnation he was a comedian the first part of his career.  He hit his stride as sleazy attorney Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and it's spinoff  Better Call Saul.  Odenkirk pivoted into the action film franchisee with the Nobody series about a retired government hit man.

Normal finds Odenkirk as a a temporary sheriff in a small Minnesota town called Normal.  As it turns out the town of Normal is actually a holding area for gold and money that the Yakuza have been using to launder their ill gotten gains.  To make matters worse the entire town is in on the money laundering scheme and is armed to the teeth to keep their secret safe.  Let the shooting begin and there is a lot of shooting to be sure.

 

Odenkirk takes a producer credit on the film along with a story credit.  The director is Ben Wheatey a Brit who is an expert at staging shoot outs which he twists around with lots of bizarre violent humor.  He's found his perfect partner in Odenkirk who contributes his own brand of unconventional humor.  It's a match made in action movie heaven. 

The film is entertaining it does have a really warped sense of humor between all the gun play and body counts.  Odenkirk's wry sense of humor is definitely and asset.

The screenplay is by Derek Kolstad, the running time is 91 minutes.

1945 - A GAME OF DEATH, decent remake of "The Most Dangerous Game."

A Game of Death is a remake of The 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game which was in turn based on a short story by the author Richard Connell.  The story is a very entertaining melodrama about a famous hunter Don Rainsford stranded on a remote island who becomes they prey of a nutcase hunter Erich Kreiger who is bored with killing animals and has resorted to stalking and killing humans instead.  So the chase is on in this fast paced film.

Robert Wise directed this version after working with producer Val Lewton on his legendary series of horror films.  It's competent and decently made but I miss the flamboyance of the earlier film with it's over the top Max Steiner film music and it's really fast paced structure.  It's now a film making legend that The Most Dangerous Game was simultaneously filmed on the same jungle sets as King Kong with several of the King Kong actors primarily Faye Wray and Robert Armstrong in roles. English actor Leslie Banks in a very flamboyant performance was the crazy hunter who in this film is called Count Zaroff.  It's a very fun 1930's film.

 

The remake is not without it's merits, John Loder plays Rainsford and he gives a good competent performance.  Playing the madman hunter Erich Kreiger is the actor Edgar Barrier who was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury theater.  He may not have been as over the top as Leslie Banks but he gets the job done as a creepy menacing character.

 

This man hunting man plot has been so durable that it's been filmed many times.  I originally read this story in high school although I suppose it's not exactly a  P.C. kind of story anymore.

 The screenplay was by Norman Houston, the running time is an efficient 72 minutes.

1954 - THE MAGGIE, aka High and Dry aka Highland Fling

A production from the famous Ealing Studios in England made during their top period which ran from the late 1930's to the end of the 1950's.  Ealing was noted for it's modestly budgeted but well written and directed comedies primarily set in England.  The pictures they produced were usually at a very high standard technically and creatively.

 

The Maggie was one of their best pictures directed by one of their best directors Alexander Mackendrick.  Mackendrick was an American who as a child had being raised in Scotland by his grandfather.  He eventually ended up in the British film industry where he worked his way up to directing.  He had what I would call a humanistic approach in film making concentrating on the actors and the story.  He was apparently a perfectionist which caused him to be fired off of several projects towards the end of his career, he ended up in California teaching film.

 

The Maggie is an extremely charming  and cleverly written film.  It's the story of a small just about broken down cargo ship about to be repossessed.  The captain manages to trick a rich American business man into letting him transport his cargo to a castle he has purchased.  The ship named the Maggie is in such a dilapidated condition it may sink at any moment.  The American discovering he has been tricked by the captain pursues him.  This all ends up in a series of clever and humorous encounters.

 

The film was well cast with Paul Douglas as the American businessman.  Douglas was probably nobody's idea of a leading man but he was an excellent actor and knew his way around performing in dramas and comedies. The ship's captain was played by the Scottish actor Alex Mackenzie in full "old sea salt" mode.  The encounters between these two performers are very amusing.

The Maggie is an extremely enjoyable film and highly recommended.

The film was written by William Rose one of Ealing's top screenwriters, the running time is 92 minutes. 

1967 - THE CAPER OF THE GOLDEN BULLS, an entertaining heist film

This is a very decent heist film but it's no classic like Rififi, The Killing or Le Cercle Rouge.  The cast is a collection of  character actors and if the leads weren't exactly at the top of the movie star list they got the job done.

I.E. an American living in Spain since the end of World War II served as a bomber pilot.  During the war he and his crew accidentally blow up a cathedral.  To make amends this group robbed a number or banks to rebuild the cathedral.   Now operating a restaurant in Spain the American is blackmailed into performing one last robbery.  He reassembles his crew and we get the usual master planning, execution of the robbery and some close encounters with the police.  This is all pretty standard stuff for this genre.  

The cast had a lot of "seen them all before actors" who had shown up in many movies.  Vitto Sotti seemed like he was in about every movie and TV show from the 1940's on.  If you needed someone to pay a stereotypical Italian, Scotti was your guy.  Henry Beckman had also been working in movies and TV since the 1950s, he was the definition of a working actor, no part was too small for him.  Leon Askin is chiefly remembered as General Burkhalter on Hogan's Heroes.  Walter Slezak early in his career had worked for Hitchcock in his propaganda film Lifeboat.  Frankly in this film the list of character actors is endless.

The leads were Steven Boyd as the American and Yvette Mimieux as his girlfriend.  Boyd's career started out strong with Ben Hur, Billy Roses' Jumbo and The Fall of the Roman Empire but kind of petered out after awhile.  Still he was always a reliable performer for the most part.  Yvette Mimieux was an attractive blonde who was groomed to be a star in the studio system.  The problem was that the Hollywood studio system was falling apart in the late 1950's and early 60's so her career kind of drifted off into television .  

 The Caper Of The Golden Bulls was never going to win any awards but it does entertain and the gorgeous on location filming in Pamplona shot during the running of the bulls makes it a very good looking film.  The film is fun to watch because the makers were smart enough not to take this story seriously.  I'm sure everyone had a very nice vacation filming this picture in sunny Spain. 

The film was written by Ed Waters and David Moessinger, the running time is 106 minutes.    

1961 - THE GREEN ARCHER aka DER GRUNE BOGENSCHUTZE

This is a crime thriller set in a creepy old mansion which features a masked man dressed in green like Robin Hood running around a castle killing people with arrows.  The overly complicated plot involves a corrupt American businessman played by German actor Gert Frobe who when he isn't yelling at people he's holding people prisoner in a secret room, harassing his niece, planning to flee the country with his fortune and seeking revenge on his brother who took the woman he loved from him.  And that's just the beginning of this film. Where does The Green Archer fit into all of this?  I was never entirely sure, the archer is either trying to kill Frobe or is working for him.

To get an idea of the goofy nature of this film, one of the other characters in the film is a reporter who frequently breaks character by talking directly to the audience.  What soon becomes obvious during this film's running time is that the whole film has it's tongue firmly in it's cheek and the dead pan acting of the rest of the cast is really part of the joke.  The exception to playing it straight is Gert Frobe whose performance can only be described as so over the top I couldn't even figure out where the top is.  Frobe is chiefly remembered as the James Bond villain Goldfinger and that larger than life villain can't touch Frorbe's crazed bad guy performance in this film.  The female lead is played by Karin Dor another James Bond villain alumnus.  Dor was Helga Brandt in You Only Live Twice who ended up getting eaten by piranha's.

 

This film was based on a book by an English writer named Edgar Wallace who worked in the 1920's and 30's pumping out these overly complicated crime thrillers.  This story is clearly very dated and the filmmakers probably made the right decision to just spoof the crime/mystery aspect of this film.

 

The Green Archer entertains by virtue of it's absurd plot and Gert Frobe's crazed performance.  The film is set in London but it's a German production with German actors which gives it's a very surreal feeling.

Written by Wolfgang Schnitzier and Wolfgang Menge, the running time is 93 minutes. 

2026 - REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES - the talking octopus movie

In the great tradition of talking animal shows such as Francis the Talking Mule, Mr. Ed the talking horse and I suppose, My Mother The Car the talking 1928 car comes Remarkably Bright Creatures. It features a taking octopus as the narrator of this film.  I guess there is some precedent for this as Shakespeare had a narrative chorus in Henry the Fifth and Romeo and Juliet.  Into the Woods features a narrator as does The Big Lebowski.  Although there is only one voice in Remarkably Bright Creatures, I could have seen a chorus of octopuses (octopi?) telling this story.  The name of the octopus by the way is Marcellus.

The film follows people living in a small Pacific Northwest town with a particular emphasis on Tova Sullivan an old woman played by 79 year old Sally Field.  She is about to transition into a senior living facility and still dealing with the death of her son and husband.  She works at an aquarium where she pours out her troubles to Marcellus the octopus who listens attentively. 

Also featured in this film is Cameron Cassmore a young drifter who Tova meets and begins to form a bond with.  Cameron is played by Lewis Pullman the son of actor Bill Pullman.  Lewis Pullman gives a decent performance as a confused young man although this role is a big step up from his appearance in that Marvel film Thunderbolts where he played the idiot member of the team.

Frankly the drama and situations in this film are nothing you haven't seen in any other "relationship" film.  Let's bring a couple of very different people together and have them find things in common so they can "bond."  Secrets will be revealed and heartwarming lessons will be learned.  The talking octopus shtick is really just a gimmick and doesn't add anything to the story.  There's also a surprise twist towards the end of this film which as far as I'm concerned is also another plot gimmick.

 This film was based on a popular book and I guess Netflix should get some credit for making a film that doesn't feature aging action stars in some improbable "shoot em up" film.  Remarkably Bright Creatures is a nice safe and boring film to watch with grandma or an elderly aunt.

The film was written by Olivia Newman and John Whittington, the running time is 111 minutes. 

20126 - THEIR FINEST, there will always be an England especially during World War II

Their Finest is a film set in London during World War II.  Gemma Arteron is a woman who manages to get a job in the British Government's propaganda department as a secretary.  Being a bright young thing she works her way up as a screenwriter working on a film about the evacuation of Dunkirk. The film's plot involves the making of this Dunkirk film which is hampered by lots of story compromises and issues that arise from the British Government's interference in the film making.

 

Gemma Arterton is the main character the film focuses on as she manages her professional and personal life.  Bill Nighy is the hammy actor cast in the film, he gets all the funny stuff.  Richard E. Grant and Jeremy Irons play the usual stuffed shirt government officials trying to control the making of the film, you can't have an English film without them.  There's a love interest for Arterton and lots of amusing film making jokes for the movie nerds watching.  There's even a thinly disguised portrait of legendary Hungarian film producer Alexander Korda who relocated to England before the war.    

  

This is a modest and enjoyable film for the most part although I think the ending was kind of a mistake .  Gemma Arteron is really the glue that holds this film together with her understated and effective performance.  Arteron should really be a bigger star but her appearances in some big budgeted Hollywood films didn't seem to do it for her.  

 

Written by Gaby Chiappe, the running time is 117 minutes.