1997 - FAST CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL, meet four very interesting people

This is film maker Errol Morris at his peak with this incredibility fascinating film about four men and the unusual occupations they have.  Superficially they have nothing in common but the film is so well edited and paced, this documentary begins to interconnect their lives as you watch it.

Dave Hooper is an animal trainer who works with what they call big cats i.e. lions.  He apparently got the bug as a young man and has spent his life performing in a circus with these frankly scary and dangerous wild animals.  His stories of dealing with these lions in the ring are hair raising.

 

George Mendonca is a topiary gardener who is responsible for a large park in Rhode Island called the Green Animals Topiary Garden which has around eighty sculptured trees.  Mendonca kind of stumbled into the job when he married the daughter of the previous gardener.  This is a guy who has devoted his life to making plants and trees look like animals.  He works on these trees with a zen like devotion to trimming them.

Ray Mendez is a man who has devoted his life to studying a creature called the naked mole rat, mammals who live in underground tunnels and have a highly developed social system.  They are apparently resistant to cancer and can live almost without oxygen.  Mendez has built a complex of tunnels in his basement to observe them and he believes they are at times observing him.

 

Rodney Brooks is an MIT scientist who builds robots and studies how they interact with people and the environment.  He observes how they react to moving around as it relates to hand and eye coordination, sound, and vision which he feels also can explain how the human brain functions.

The fact that Errol Morris can take this stuff and make a really compelling film about four such different individuals is really a tribute to his skill as an interviewer.  The film was photographed by Robert Richardson who later in his career was associated with Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone and Martin Scorsese.  Fast Cheap & Out of Control is one of the best films I've seen this year. 

The film was edited by  Karen Schmeer and Shondra Merrill, the running time is 82 minutes.

1990 - SHE SHOOTS STRAIGHT, female cops kicking butt

Another Hong Kong action film from the early 90's.  There isn't really a whole lot that's new story wise but the film's fight scenes are exciting since they were staged by the director and action choreographer Corey Yuen who was an expert at arranging this stuff and there is a lot of action in this film.

 

The plot involves a family of police officers most of whom are women with the exception of Sammo Hung who plays one of the brothers in the family and Tony Leung who plays the other brother.  When Leung marries police Inspector Mina Kao (played by Sammo Hung's wife Joyce Gondenzi) jealously rears it's head in the family.  The action in this film kicks in with a vicious gang of Vietnamese thieves during a robbery that are confronted by the family of cops.  The result, lots of gun play.

 

The story is a little absurd but it's full speed ahead for the most part with the exception of one ridiculous scene where the Vietnamese gang ambushes the cops with an elaborate series of traps reminiscent of that scene in Home Alone where the little kid assaults Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern except in this film a lot more blood and guts are spilled.

 

The big spin in this film is having these police women beat the crap out of almost all these bad guys.  Hong Kong films have had women in action roles before but I can't recall them fighting and beating up people to this extent.  As is typical with these Asian action films the actors in this case Joyce Gondenzi practically do as much stunt work as the actual stuntmen.  She Shoots Straight is a standard but entertaining action film.

The film was written by Corey Yuen, Barry Wong and Yuen Kai-chi, the running time is an efficient 94 minutes. 

2026 - SOLO MIO, okay romantic comedy

Unlikely leading man Kevin James is a school art teacher who proposes to his long time girlfriend.  The plan is for them to get married in Rome.  During the wedding she leaves him at the alter and he is understandingly depressed.  He meets the owner of a coffee shop named Gia who he bonds with.  Do I have to paint a picture about how this plot is going to end up? 

This is a very mildly pleasant rom-com.  The actors are decent, Kevin James has spent years on TV sitcoms so he has his comedy sthick down fairly well.  The actor playing Gia, Nicole Grimaudo is likable even if she does overdo the excitable Italian woman character thing a bit too much.

 

Really the best reason to see this film is the on location filming in Rome and the Italian countryside actually the only reason to sort of sit through this thing. This is one of those films that was made for streaming at home, you don't need to have any emotional investment in the story.  All right I'll say it, it's the perfect film to watch with your significant other.

 

The film was barely written by the directors, John Kinnane, Dan Kinnane and Kevin James, the running time is a brisk 96 minutes. 

1955 - THE SORCERER'S APPRENTICE, a Michael Powell short ballet film

Kind of a weird one off in the career of Michael Powell.  Hein Heckroth who had been the art director on a lot of Powell and Pressburger films.  He approached Michael Powell to film a version of the famous Goethe story which had also been the basis for Disney's Mickey Mouse segment in Fantasia.

There isn't a lot of information available about this short film.  It's a ballet performed for the Frankfort Opera.  It was filmed for a German television network and apparently broadcast for television.  This version has an English narration.

 

Besides art director Hein Heckroth, Powell's go to cinemagrapher Christopher Callis was part of the production crew.  Future cinematographer and horror director Freddie Francis was the camera operator.  The editor Reginald Miles had worked with Powell and Pressburger on The Tales of Hoffman.  Still it doesn't appear that Powell had a lot of input the film, probably he was just a gun for hire.

 

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is not without interest, the sets and wide screen photography are bizarrely interesting.  The film was originally 30 minutes long but for some reason it was cut by 16 minutes so who knows what was lost.  Still it is a film directed by Michael Powell and it's not without interest.  Powell usually knew how to combine music and photography into an interesting viewing experience.

The narration was written by Dennis Arundell, the running time is 13 minutes. 

1954 - DRAGNET, the feature film...

If anyone remembers a cop show named Dragnet which I kind of doubt, it began life as a radio show produced and starring Jack Webb.  Webb went on to adapt the radio show as a half hour television show in the 1950's.  Webb brought the show back from the grave in the mid 1960's mostly to make the American public aware of the dangers of drug use particularly marijuana.  This was kind of rich since Webb was apparently a pretty big boozer in real life.

Dragnet was known as a  police procedural with the emphasis not on gun fights and car chases but on LAPD detectives assigned to a case.  Webb and his cop partner would methodically run down each lead. If you were looking for crime fighting action this show was not for you.  Supposedly the episodes were based on true life stories and the end of each show had the narrator of each episode intone in a grave voice the results of each case with loud booming music in the background.   

 

Dragnet was no doubt an important and trend setting crime genre but time has not been particularly kind to this show. Webb's emotionless clipped delivery of his dialog and the almost next to nothing drama in each episode made this show ripe for parody.

 

Which brings us inevitably to the movie version Webb directed which was released in 1954.  About the only difference between the television show and the movie was that it was filmed in color.  Otherwise this was basically and extended episode of one of his shows with the same cheap looking sets and the same stock company of actors that Webb used over and over.

 

Dragnet the film is kind of an odd bird.  The LAPD basically violates every suspect's civil rights during their investigation of a gangland shooting.  Webb seems to have a particular disdain for the 5th amendment and at times seems to want the district attorney to bring the bad guys to trial without any evidence just because he says they are guilty.  I'm not even going to get into the illegal wiretapping business.  Webb certainly had an interesting point of view when it came to law enforcement

The film was written by Richard L. Breen, the running time is 88 minutes. 

2026 - DISNEYLAND HANDCRAFTED, how they built Disneyland

The granddaughter of one of Walt Disney's most important contributor's Ub Iwerks, has assembled this film about the construction of Disneyland in Orange County, California during the 1950's.  First off who was Ub Iwerks?  Well he was with Walt Disney at the very beginning helping to develop the Mickey Mouse character.  Iwerks was responsible for many of the visual effects that showed up in Disney's films in particular Mary Poppins, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Sleeping Beauty just to name a very few.  Iwerks also handled the special effects for Hitchcock's The Birds.

Anyway, Ub Iwerk's granddaughter Leslie got access to some rarely seen 16mm films on the construction of Disneyland that Walt Disney had commissioned during the building.  The films had for the most part had never been seen and were in perfect condition. They were edited into a narrative and are interesting to watch.

 

Disneyland was one of Walt Disney's most important creative endeavors and he spared no expense in building it.  Amazingly the park was constructed in one year,  a real pressure cooker of a time table.  The film has voice over narration from the actual participants in the construction of Disneyland and they clearly had their doubts about the whole project. 

Obviously this film is going to appeal mostly to nerds groupies of the Disneyland Park.  However it is kind of fascinating to see the construction of one of the seminal theme parks in the United States and the near perfect color films shot during the construction are pretty cool to look at.  This documentary can be viewed where else, on the Disney plus channel.

The running time is 79 minutes. 

1984 - SONGWRITER, entertaining showbiz drama with a country western background

Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson are a couple of singer/composers in this very entertaining comedy/drama.  Kristofferson is a love em and leave em guy bedding one groupie after another.  Willie Nelson is a performer and songwriter trying to reunite with his first wife. Nelson's also trying to get out of a contract he had signed with a promoter some years earlier who now owns the rights to his songs.

Into this mix comes Leslie Ann Warren as a recording artist Nelson is promoting while ghostwriting songs for her.  Warren is also mixed up with a shady character played by everyone's favorite scary actor Rip Torn.  With the exception of Warren and Melinda Dillion playing Nelson's ex-wife, all of these male singer/actors are amusingly playing thinly disguised versions of themselves.

 

The film has a nice laid back feel to it from director Alan Rudolph.  Rudolph was a protege of Robert Altman and uses the same approach to working with actors that Altman did, a naturalistic kind of improvisational method. 

 

This film is highly entertaining, Nelson was not a trained actor but he was a very natural performer in front of the camera.  He was close friends with Kris Kristofferson and they play off each other very well.  The songs in the film were mostly written by Kristofferson.

The film was written by Bud Shrake, the running time is 94 minutes. 

2026 - PROJECT HAIL MARY, it's really long

Extreme over length finally kills what could have been a good science fiction story.  The directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have been very good providers of crowd pleasing entertainments with films like 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and The Lego Movie. They were fired off of the Star Wars spinoff Solo because they thought they were hired to make a comedy which apparently isn't what Disney wanted.  Believe me considering how Solo turned out their approach would have made a much better movie.

 

For Project Hail Mary they were working with a big budget based on a novel from the author of The Martian.  They mounted a very elaborate science fiction epic with a screenplay by a top writer Drew Goddard.  Ryan Gosling was cast as the hero astronaut who has to save the planet earth.  Current flavor of the month German actor Sandra Huller is the scientist in charge of Project Hail Mary  She plays the usual stoic who secretly has a heart of gold.

 

Even with all the elaborate and at times dazzling visual effects, Ryan Gosling is the whole show.  He has to virtually deliver a monologue throughout the whole film and act next to some kind of puppet rock creature.  He does this very well and keeps the film watchable for about an hour.

 

However Project Hail Mary is cursed with all of the problems these current big screen films have.  It has a very meandering script with a lot of plot exposition.  In this case there's  lots of jumping back and forth in time and a whole lot of screen time hanging out with the space alien.  This finally drags the film into major boredom.  It also has one of the worst issues all these recent big budget films have as well, the inability to know when to end the damn story.  There are at least three endings in the last half hour.  This film isn't bad it's just tedious.

Project Hail Mary runs 156 minutes. 

2011 - FLYING SWORDS OF DRAGON GATE - sort of a remake of Dragon Gate Inn

Filmmaker Tsui Hark's sort of update of Dragon Gate Inn which came out in the mid 1960's and was directed by one of the best wuxia filmmakers King Hu.  Tsui Hark brought his usual vigorous staging over the top action and crazy visual effects while updating the plot to fit his style of storytelling.

 

Hark cast Jet Li who was pushing 50 when this film came out.  Li still was pretty agile of course it didn't hurt that he was assisted by the wild wire work that the Asian stunt arrangers like to use during the action scenes.  As usual with Hark the film was loaded up with not one but in this film three gorgeous Asian female actors, Zhou Xun, Chris Lee and Gwei Lun-mei.  As in many of Tsui Hark's films the women are equally as good at  sword fighting as the men.

 

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate involves the Emperor's main consort (mistress) attempting to eliminate the Emperor's harem in order to retain power.  One of the harem's consorts flees into the desert where she ends up at the Dragon Inn and is protected by Jet Li.  Throw in a roving gang of outlaws, soldiers loyal to the main consort, a mystical desert dust storm which threatens to blow the Inn off the face of the earth and you have a lot of opportunities for Tsui Hark to top one action scene after another.  Just for good measure there is also a hidden city buried in the desert made out of gold for the outlaws to loot when the pacing of the film slows down which it never does.

I usually enjoy Hark's films.  Watching one of his films usually guarantees you are in for a pretty entertaining time.  Hark is definitely one of the masters of the action genre and at age 75 he's still working.

This film was written by Tsui Hark, Zhu Yali and Ho Kei-ping.  The running time is kind of on the long side at 125 minutes, but it's never dull. 

1962 - CARPET OF HORROR, yes that is the title

As ridiculous as the title might sound this is really an old fashioned crime film in the tradition of the 1930's.  It has an evil mastermind, a criminal gang to do the mastermind's bidding, a heroic secret service agent and a damsel in distress.  The film is at times ridiculous and technically very competent film making.

Well lets get the story out of the way.  A secret agent back from India has information he intends to give to the police that will bring down a gang of criminals operating in London.  He is murdered by a drug that is dropped on to his carpet which gives out a gas that asphyxiates him, it's not as ridiculous as the title implies.  Jumping into solve this crime is another British agent who also happens to fall in love with the dead man's niece.  The British agent has a black sidekick who he almost treats as an equal although there is still a rather patronizing attitude too the black character.  

 

This is a film set in England but filmed by a German cast and crew.  The director Harald Reinl cast his then wife Karin Dor as the helpless damsel in distress.  Reinl was a good director for the most part and some of the scenes in particular a shoot out between the gang and the police in an underground tunnel is actually well staged.

 

What causes this film to be on the ridiculous side is just the atrocious dubbing of the performers from the German language to English.  You have to get past this horrible dubbing to watch this film.  Also for a film set in England it was clearly filmed in Germany.

The screenplay was written by Helmut Harun and Felix Lutzkendorf.  The running time is 92 minutes.n  

1957 - THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION - large scale epic about pulling a big cannon around Spain

Liberal producer Stanley Kramer had carved out a decent career making quasi goody two shoe films aka "message films" for Columbia pictures.  They were generally well made thanks to talented directors Kramer hired like Mark Robson, Fred Zimmerman and Richard Fleischer.  Kramer decided to move into directing as well as producing his own films and his skill as a director was to put it mildly uneven.  In 1957  Kramer really rolled the dice with a large scale production of a C.S. Forrester novel "The Gun" which was sort of a Bridge of San Luis Rey multi character story except instead of a bridge it was a really big cannon.

The film made considerable changes to the novel.  During the war with the French in the early 1800's the British send an officer who is an expert on field artillery to assist the Spanish guerillas.  The plot involves the guerillas hauling a huge cannon around the Spanish countryside in order to take part in an attack on a French fort.  The film ends with a large scale battle with the usual cast of thousands running around.  However the drama on this film was all behind the camera.

A very uncomfortable looking Cary Grant is the British artillery officer.  Grant did not usually take roles in period films as he felt he was more suited to comedy.  Grant apparently signed up for this film to escape from a troubled marriage in Hollywood.  Frank Sinatra was cast as the Spanish guerilla leader.  Well it can be said that Italian American Sinatra wearing brown makeup and a rather ridiculous wig was probably miscast.  Apparently Sinatra took the part to be near his then wife Ava Gardner also making a film in Spain, they were having marital problems as well.   

 

Finally there was Italian actor Sophia Loren who was trying to break into Hollywood.  This was about her second or third American production and her English was none to good.  The solution was to put her into lots of low cut blouses to distract from her dialog.  To top it all off Cary Grant decided he was in love with her and spent most of the film chasing her around.

 

All this foolishness with the cast was not going to help make this a good picture.  Stanley Kramer probably had his hands full dealing with these three actors and managing and expensive production. In spite of everything The Pride and the Passion is entertaining enough although it could have been a whole lot better.  The chief merits of this film were the excellent photography, interesting Spanish locations and the kind of viewing pleasure watching a large scale production with lots of large scale action scenes can provide.

The film was written and rather poorly by Edna and Albert Anhalt, the running time is 132 minutes. 

2026 - WAR MACHINE, science fiction action junk which is entertaining

The latest streamer action movie and there are a lot of streamer action movies is War Machine.  It's an entertaining time waster and no one will confuse it with Wild Strawberries.  War Machine is essentially a remake of Arnold's Predator action classic and it does have as it's star another man mountain Alan Ritchson.

Ritchson plays a soldier who gets admitted to the Army Ranger training program although in real life he would probably be considered a little old.  Ritchson is suffering from PTSD from a previous tour in Afghanistan but he's still one tough SOB.  Anyway on the final test of his Ranger training he and his classmates get dropped into the middle of the Colorado woods although Australia is the substitute for Colorado.  They run into a robotic killing machine released from where else space aliens who apparently want to take over the earth.  So now the plot sequels into a rehash of that other space alien invasion epic Battle:  Los Angeles.

 

Lots of shooting, ray gun blasting and chases the usual stuff.  The War Machine seems unstoppable until Ritchson finally gets his hands on a bulldozer.  So now the film borrows from the climax of Aliens which had Sigourney Weaver battle it out in a mech suit with the prime Alien monster.  The War Machine looks a lot like the ED-209 from RoboCop by the way.

 

There are really no original ideas anymore or so it seems in the movie business.  Still this film does a decent job with the action stuff. Alan Ritchson has been kicking around the film business since 2004 until he finally hit the big time with the "Jack Reacher" series.  I'll say this for Ritchson at least he's young, it's getting a little hard to stomach all these geriatric action stars still working, I'm talking to you Arnold, Sylvester and Harrison.  Time to take your millions and maybe retire to a turkey farm or something.

War Machine was written by Patrick Hughes and James Beaufort, the running time is 107 minutes. 

1970 - ASSIGNMENT TERROR aka The Monsters of Terror or Dracula vs Frankenstein

This film is review protected especially from the musings of this little blog.

In Spain, space aliens revive the bodies of two deceased scientists bringing them back to life for their own nefarious purposes.  The leader of the space aliens was played by Michael Rennie who had come a very long way from his previous alien character "Klaatau" from The Day the Earth Stood Still.  German actor Karin Dor who is probably remembered for her appearances in You Only Live Twice and Topaz if she is remembered at all is one of the resurrected scientists.

Well the space aliens plans to take over the world involves them resurrecting all of the great movie monsters.  Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy and of course Frankenstein's monster.  All the monsters end up in a Spanish castle ready to go to work for the space aliens and waiting to pounce on an unexpected mankind.

 

Fortunately for mankind Inspector Tobermann of the Spanish police figures out what's going on and confronts the monsters in the castle.  Inspector Tobermann's main squeeze Ilsa Sternberg has been kidnapped by the space aliens and brought to the castle.  So now Inspector Toberman must rescue his girlfriend and fight off the monsters. 

Assignment Terror does have nice color photography.

The film was written by Jacinto Molina Álvarez who apparently played a lot of monsters in his career including, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolfman and the Mummy although not all of them in this movie.  The running time is a tidy 85 minutes. 

1955 - I AM A CAMERA, you know it as CABARET

This was previously a play on Broadway.  Julie Harris had a big success in the role of Sally Bowles the madcap American living in pre-war Berlin.  The inevitable transition to film did not go particularly well.

In pre-Nazi Germany force of nature Sally Bowles becomes mixed up with reserved (stuck up) wanna be writer Christopher Isherwood.  She ends up moving in with him and it's one crazy adventure after another.  There's a subplot involving a Jewish woman who is romanced by Fritz a friend of Isherwood's as the persecution of Jews begins to gather steam.

As in Cabaret, this film contains the basic plot lines of the story, Sally thinks she's pregnant, Sally gets mixed up with a rich wacky American, Sally parties a lot and on and on. 

 

I Am a Camera was a big success on Broadway but you sure wouldn't know it watching this film something clearly got lost when they decided to film it.  Laurence Harvey played Christopher Isherwood but he seems really miscast and exactly where did the filmmakers get the idea he was funny.  As for Julie Harris well it's safe to say her performance is larger than life and is it ever larger than life.  It's borders on hammy at times and her inability to control her character really makes watching this film an ordeal.  When it comes to acting in film less is more.

Apparently the woman who Isherwood based the character of Sally Bowles on was none to amused by her portrayal on Broadway or film. In real life she was a writer, advocate, a life long member of the Communist party and a war correspondent.  There's an implied reference to her and Isherwood having a sexual relationship but Christopher Isherwood was a very gay author.  Well that's the movie business for you.

The screenplay was written by John Collier, the running time is 98 minutes.