1961 - WEST SIDE STORY, in 70mm on the big screen, accept no substitutes.

West Side Story is part of a 70mm film series that is being screened at our revival theater The Heights located in Columbia Heights Minnesota prior to the release of The Odyssey.  The 70mm print was in very good shape and it played to a packed house.  The film definitely has it dated aspects but this is film making at a very high level.

The film was directed and produced by Robert Wise.  The choreographer Jerome Robbins received co-director credit but was fired during the production on the film.  Apparently somewhat of an arrogant perfectionist Robbins went a month over the allotted schedule.

 

This film was a high point in the career of Robert Wise an excellent director. He had one of the best production teams in Hollywood working on the film.  Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay, Daniel L. Flapp was the cinematographer, Boris Levin was the production designer,  Saul Bass was a visual consultant responsible for the titles and most importantly Thomas Stanford did an outstanding job editing this film.  These craftsmen were working at the top of their creative abilities. 

 

The film was an important role for Natalie Wood.  She had started her career as a child actress and moved into adult roles.  She was a total professional on about any film she worked on.  It's well known that she didn't like her leading man Richard Beymer during production but you would never know it watching the film.  Rita Moreno had been stuck playing stereotypical Hispanic parts early in her career.  This was her big breakout but it didn't really do much for her career.  Russ Tamblyn was more an acrobat than dancer but he didn't seem to have any problem with the strenuous musical numbers in this film.

 

West Side Story was a big commercial and critical success and an award winning film during it's initial release.  Viewed 65 years later what really stands out are the impressive musical sequences.  Steven Spielberg for some reason remade West Side Story in 2021.  It was a critical success but a commercial failure.  I suppose I'll have to give his version a look.

The running time is 152 minutes 

2025 - NOW YOU SEE ME NOW YOU DON'T, the 3rd in the magicians turned crime fighters series

Amazingly another in this magicians turned do-gooders film series. The gang known as the 4 Horsemen specializes in elaborate and improbable large scale magic tricks.  In the first film Now You See Me (2013) they showed up where I believe they were sort of bad guys who eventually saw the light.  That film made a lot of money.  The Horsemen returned in a sequel called naturally Now You See Me 2 in 2016.  This time they had to stop evil Michael Caine and that guy from those Harry Potter films from doing something bad.  That film also made a lot of money.

Well it's been 9 years since the last film and the original gang is looking a little long in the tooth so some hip, younger and more importantly sexier magicians are now recruited to this magical gang.  This time they are going to steal a diamond from evil Rosamund Pike.  Rosamund Pike has carved out a career in the entertainment business playing criminals.  It seems like she is in a lot of streaming shows where she is naughty and eventually gets what's coming to here. 

 

For the most part these movies are all okay if very repetitive.  They all follow the same formula, lots of chases, some elaborate if very improbable magic tricks and finally many and I mean many plot twists kind of like in The Sting.  By now these films are what they are entertaining and very undemanding time killers.   

 

Why do these films keep getting made?  Well because they still make money, what else.

This film was written by Michael Lesslie, Paul Wernick, Rhett Reese and Seth Grahame-Smith.  These writers specialize in this kind of light weight story telling.  The running time is 112 minutes. 

2004 - IKE: COUNTDOWN TO D-DAY is an acceptable version of the D-Day story

TV star Tom Selleck is General Eisenhower in this version of the events leading up to the World War II invasion into Normandy.  Selleck has given interviews in which he has stated that this is the performance he is most proud of.  For the most part his portrayal is decent I guess.  Frankly the problem I have with Selleck is that every time he's on screen all I can think about is Magnum P.I. goes to war.  I kept looking for Higgins and the "Lads" to show up.  

This film gets it's facts reasonably straight. It refers to the training debacle in England called "Exercise Tiger" that cost the lives of over 700 soldiers conducted prior to the invasion.  It also focuses on General Henry Miller who got drunk in a restaurant and blurted out the time and location of the invasion.  The film also covers Eisenhower's message to the allies that had him taking blame if the invasion failed that fortunately was never needed.  It's all fairly well known history stuff.  

 

The film has the usual World War II celebrities.  Winston Churchill turns up, George S. Patton gets yelled at by Eisenhower and British General Bernard Montgomery is here in all his arrogant glory.

The production of this film was on the modest end.  It was apparently filmed in New Zealand in 10 days. The film is an okay if kind of boring version of a major World War II event. 

The film was written by Lionel Chetwynd who has done a lot of these docu-dramas.  The running time is 89 minutes. 

1974 - THE CASTAWAY COWBOY, another mediocre live action Disney film

Another live action Disney film made after the death of Walt.  I really don't understand these live action films they are just so poorly conceived and executed.  It's like the Disney organization needed to keep the movie pipeline going.  For the most part they put very little thought into the screenplays of these films.  The actual film making is at best dull. 

 

The Castaway Cowboy is just so typical of these films.  James Garner is what else, a castaway cowboy. Garner washes up on the Hawaiian island of Kauai where he ends up on the farm of widow Vera Miles.  Naturally Miles has a son badly in need of a male authority figure.  Garner uses his cowboy skills to round up cattle for Miles who is going to lose the farm to evil businessman Robert Culp.  The sale of the cattle will help her pay off the mortgage on the farm.

As you can tell, this film has a fairly decent cast.  It was filmed on location in Hawaii but the plot is just so lame.  Garner has to train a bunch of natives to be cowboys and there's a cattle drive you have to sit through.  This whole film could have been set in Texas instead of Hawaii but then the actors wouldn't have had a nice vacation in Hawaii.

 

This film was directed by Vincent McEveety a proficient and for the most part decent television director.  However his feature films are mostly forgettable in particular his Disney films.  Disney live action films were always considered safe entertainment for the entire family.  However what kid ever wanted to go see boring family films with their parents?

The film was written by Don Tait, the running time is 91 minutes.  

2022 - SISU, apparently the first in a series of two films.

Probably should have watched this film first instead of Sisu: Road to Revenge.  However both films are essentially the same plot our hero kills a hell of a lot of people but he does it very creatively.  

As it turns out the guy's name isn't Sisu.  Sisu is evidently a state of courage or something. The film is set in Finland.  Our hero, Aatami Korpi digs up a load of gold.  Unfortunately for him a German patrol finds out about his stash of gold and we are off and running as Aatami fights them off with probably some of the most graphic violence possible.

Is Aatami tough?  Well at one point he takes off his shirt and his body is covered in very large scars.  He's also clearly been working out at the Helsinki YMCA because he is very buff and he's got a dog just like The Road Warrior.  Those German soldiers are clearly outclassed in the brutality department.

 

This mayhem is once again orchestrated by the director Jalmari Helander.  Heander is very skilled at staging the action stuff in his films.  He has an interesting sense of humor, the violence at times gets mighty ludicrous.

Sisu is recommended for the action movie fans who like it tough and fast.

The film was written by Jalmari Helander, the running time is 91 minutes.  

 

2026 - VOICEMAILS FOR ISABELLE, rom-com time

Zoey Deutch races around San Francisco like a "manic pixie dream girl" (do they still use that term?) bemoaning that she can't keep a boyfriend.  Never mind the fact that she looks like a movie star with makeup and a wardrobe that would be the envy of any single woman living on an assistant chef's salary.  At one point you want to scream at the television set and tell her to calm down and take some Adderall.

Well let's get the synopsis out of the way.  Zoey is a chef working for a Hitler like master chef.  She has a terminally ill sister who she talks to on the phone all the time.  When the sister passes away, Zoey continues to call her sister's phone and leave voicemails to cope with her grief.  Little does Zoey know that her sister's phone number has now been reassigned to a cute real estate salesman who listens to the voicemails and falls in love with Zoey.  He arranges to meet her and we get the usual falling in love montage between the two of them.  Will the cute guy fess up to Zoey about the voicemails so we can get to a happy ending as quickly as possible?

 

 While viewing this I could hardly believe Zoey Deutch was the same performer who did such a good job playing actor Jean Seberg in Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague.  Deutch's over the top performance would probably keep any normal guy from ever getting involved with such a disturbed nutcase.

  

The plot owes a lot to You Got Mail and the Ernest Lubitsch film The Shop Around the Corner.  I will give the writer/director Leah McKendrick credit for injecting enough humor and clever moments to make this film watchable.

The running time is 118 minutes.  

1967 - THE PANTHER WOMEN aka Las mujeres panteras

 Marching to the beat of it's own drummer is this Mexican horror film The Panther Women.  This is a very mixed bag of occult horror, female wrestlers, family curses, weird satanic ceremonies in underground vaults and for good measure a monster.

Our hero is a masked wrestler named El Angel who is clearly a copy of everyone's favorite heroic wrestler El Santo.  He even dresses like El Santo.  When El Angel isn't being called in to solve weird crimes he's in his laboratory experimenting with stuff in full wrestling apparel complete with a bulletproof and fire proof cloak he has invented

 

Well the plot is off and running as an evil sect of panther women want to destroy the heirs of a family that cursed them hundreds of years ago.  When I say panther women they are panther women, they turn into sort of panthers at 10:00 PM.   They have claws for hands and some nutty fangs in their mouths and a hair style that is supposed to look like panther ears I guess.   Frankly the makeup on the panther women is a little questionable.

 

The Panther Women is such a mixture of genres that it has already been ordained as a classic cult film which it certainly is.

The film was written by Alfredo Salazar, the running time is a brisk 88 minuts

1988 - MARRIED TO THE MOB, a gangster comedy

Michelle Pfeiffer has to play "straight man " to a bunch of eccentric performers in this gangster comedy.  She's married to a young Alec Baldwin who is working as a hit man for gangster Dean Stockwell.  But Baldwin is also having an affair with Stockwell's mistress which is a bad idea.  Stockwell kills Baldwin, but Stockwell's bigger problem is his very scary wife played by Mercedes Ruehl.  Throw in an eccentric FBI agent played by Matthew Modine who gets romantically involved with Pfeiffer.  Well it's funny stuff.

 The director is Jonathan Demme who learned his trade working for Roger Corman.  From Corman Demme learned how to mix comedy, violence and action.  He brought a light touch to this nutty version of The Godfather.  Married to the Mob was a turning point for Demme.  After this film he moved into more serious film making with The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia and the probably ill advised Beloved.  For the most part he really didn't make entertaining films like this later in his career.

 

For a woman who started her career as a beauty pageant winner Michelle Pfeiffer turned out to be a very good actor.  She manages to hold her own with this incredible cast.  Former child actor Dean Stockwell is the scary but goofy mob boss.  One minute he's hitting on Pfeiffer after her husband's funeral and the next minute he's putting down an attempted assassination.  Not to be outdone is Mercedes Ruehl who plays it very broad as Stockwell's extremely jealous wife and is definitely not a person to be trifled with.  Matthew Modine is the FBI agent keeping an eye on Pfeiffer and at times he's growling like a tiger in his pursuit of Stockwell for no particular reason.

 

This kind of story is extremely hard to pull off but everyone in this film was on top of their game.  A very funny film. 

The film was written by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns, the running time is 104 minutes. 

1936 - WIFE VS. SECRETARY, a typical 1930's MGM drama

In many ways this is a typical MGM drama from "the good old days," sometimes called a "women's picture."  Wife Vs. Secretary is the kind of undemanding stuff MGM regularly pumped out for the movie going public.  For the most part a high class soap opera with top production values, big stars and a really trite plot.

 

Here we go.  Clark Gable is a high powered magazine editor who is married to his wife played by a glamorous Myrna Loy.  Clark is a wheeler dealer who has a devoted secretary played by MGM's resident 1930's sex bomb Jean Harlow.  Through lots of plot contrivances people suspect that Gable is having an affair with Harlow.  But Clark is devoted to his wife.  How do we know this?  Well Clark sticks jewelry in her food which she fishes out which apparently demonstrates his love for her.

 

Also showing up in this film is a young James Stewart in a supporting role playing Harlow's fiance. He gets real jealous over the amount of time Jean is spending with Clark.  Well one thing leads to another and lots of misunderstandings later Myrna thinks Clark is having an affair and is ready to leave him by taking a boat cruise to Cuba or somewhere in the Caribbean. 

 

It all works out in the end because it's an MGM picture made for the middle class.  Clearly the plot should have been that Clark has an affair with Jean and then has to work out his issues with Myrna to fix his marriage.  But this is an MGM picture and they are not about to endorse infidelity and bad mouth marriage. The film is kind of silly stuff.  Clarence Brown was one of MGM's best studio directors so the film is at the very least well made.

The talented writers involved in this film were John Lee Mahin, Norman Krasna and Alice Duer Miller. The running time is 88 minutes and fortunately not a minute longer.

1980 - THE BLOODY LADY - aka Krvavá pani

An anti Disney princess movie if ever there was one.  The Bloody Lady is based on an actual individual Countess Elizabeth Bathory who along with her servants was possibly responsible for the deaths of 80 women.  These crimes turned into a folk legend that claimed she bathed in the blood of the women she killed in order to maintain her youth.

 This is an animated horror film with cute little furry animals in the forest and a virginal princess until it takes a turn to the dark side.  The animation is stylized and the backgrounds are minimalist for the most part.  The style of the film kind of reminds me of one of those Hanna-Barbara or Filmation cartoon productions that showed up on Saturday mornings but this one has plenty of exaggerated blood for the horror gang.

 

The director is a man named Viktor Kubal who was based in Slovakia and is practically unknown in the west.  There are some examples and completed cartoons of his work on YouTube which are worth a look particularly if you are a fan of animation.

 

The Bloody Lady is  available on YouTube in a complete and good transfer. 

The film runs 72 minutes and was written by Viktor Kubal

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.