2013 - BEAUTIFUL CREATURES , gothic southern teen love story stuff

We're south of the Mason Dixon line in South Carolina where sensitive teenager Ethan Wate is about to fall in love.  How do we know he's sensitive?  Well he's reading Charles Bukowski and Kurt Vonnegut and it's not even on the assigned reading list for his high school English class.  Into his life comes transfer student Lena Duchannes from the far way land of New York City.  Ethan is immediately smitten with her and vice versa.  But Lena has a big secret she is secretly a "caster" (witch) who has magic powers.  When she turns 16 she will either become a good caster or an evil caster.  Can Mason stop Lena from turning into an evil caster?  He will have to fight the powers of darkness to keep this from happening.  I guess that means Mason needs to read more Charles Bukowski novels or something.

 

So what we have here is a variation on the Twilight series except this time it's a girl with supernatural powers instead of a boy.  The viewer has to sit through a lot of mumble jumble about casters, reincarnation, magic spell books and mysterious magic people who secretly co-exist with us mortals.  I am reluctant to say this film reminds me of the old Elizabeth Montgomery TV series Bewitched because that would be wrong.  However it does remind me of the spinoff to Bewitched, Tabatha who was Elizabeth Montgomery's witch daughter. 

 

The cast of this film is the usual bunch of actors in their 20's trying to pass for 15 year old teenagers.  Somehow Jeremy Irons, Emma Thompson and Viola Davis also got roped into this foolishness and they really should have known better.   The writer/director Richard LaGravenese was the one responsible for this southern gothic young adult fiction nonsense.  He's usually a competent writer but in this case he should have known better.

 

Beautiful Creatures stumbles through it's contrived teenage love story trying to create it's magical world  but in the end the world building is just tiresome and dissatisfying.  Beautiful Creatures is part of a four book series and clearly the intention was to make another Twilight series.  But the movie was an under performer and that put an end to the studio's money making dreams.  My advice would be to dig out your copy of The Wizard of Oz and watch that again.

The running time of this film is 124 long minutes.  

1982 - WE OF THE NEVER NEVER, drama about living in the Australian Outback is really boring

Good intentions in a film about a do gooder do not a good movie make.  You actually have to have a compelling story to maintain a viewer's interest.   This is not one of these stories even though it is apparently true. We Of The Never Never was an acclaimed novel which was a thinly disguised true story which the author modified by replacing the names of the actual people with fictitious names.

In brief, this film follows the story of a woman named Jeannie Gunn who marries a man who is relocating to a cattle station (ranch) in the Australian Outback circa 1902.  After a difficult journey Jeannie is confronted by the drovers (cowboys) who work at the station and think that a woman has no place in the Outback.  Jeannie also decides to befriend the Aboriginals living at the station much to the disgust of the drovers who are a bunch of wouldn't you know it racists.  Will Jeannie win over the drovers and the Aboriginals at the station or is she setting herself up for failure?  Well it's fairly easy to guess which way this plot is heading if you've every seen an episode of Little House On The Prairie. 

 

We Of The Never Never is actually decently acted.  The main role of Jeannie Gunn is performed by an Australian actor named Angela Punch McGregor who plays her like a regular down under version of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  She's basically the whole show as she struts around the cattle station doing good deed stuff.

 

This is frankly a very boring film.  It is so low key there's nothing actually dramatic that happens in it's very long running time.  The best thing the film has going for it is the cinematography.  The Australian Outback may be a hell hole but it is certainly a very photogenic hell hole. We Of The Never Never is available on YouTube for your viewing pleasure and is a great way to fall asleep for insomniac viewers.

The film was written by Peter Schreck, the running time is 134 minutes.  

1942 - YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, Cagney brillantly plays George M. Cohan

James Cagney usually remembered for gangster roles had been a "song and dance" man in his early days in show business.  He can be seen in the Busby Berkley film Footlight Parade performing with lead footed Ruby Keeler.  Yankee Doodle Dandy is the high point in the dancing part of his career.  This film is very loosely based story on the legendary Broadway performer George M. Cohan with Cohan's best songs integrated into the plot.

Made during World War II, Yankee Doodle Dandy is an extremely patriotic film with the emphasis on extremely.  As much as it spotlights Cagney's musical numbers there is an awful lot of cornball flag waving throughout the film which you kind of have to roll with.  Still Cagney dominates the film with his great performance and that kind of weird stiff dance style he had.

 

The film was directed by ace studio director Michael Curtiz. At his peak Curtiz could make a film in about every film genre be it swashbucklers, horror films, gangster films and in this case musicals.  Curtiz was aided by a superb production crew.  James Wong was a legendary cinematographer especially when working in black and white film.  The film was edited by George Amy.  Editors never get enough credit for pulling a film together.  But above all Michael Curtiz really moved this film along.  Each scene is very well paced.  It's nice to see a filmmaker who actually knows how to make a film.

 

The cast is from the familiar Warner Brother's stock company.  Walter Huston is Cagney's father, Joan Leslie (age 17) plays Cagney's wife, Rosemary DeCamp, George Tobias, S. Z. Sakall (aka Cuddles Sakall) and film director Richard Worfe as Cohen's business partner all show up.  This bunch was in a lot of Warner Brothers films in the 1930's and 40'a.  Yankee Doodle Dandy is certainly a high point in professional Hollywood film making.

The film was written by Robert Busckner and Edmund Joseph, the running time is 126 minutes.    

2026 - SHELTER, this year's Jason Statham film

With the inevitability of a returning season this is the yearly Jason Statham action film no better or no worse than any of his other films.  In Shelter, Statham is a man living alone on a deserted island with an abandoned lighthouse on it.  Washing up onto the beach is a teenage girl who has survived a ship sinking.  It turns out Statham is an ex special ops agent skilled at killing a lot of people all at once or one at a time.  His cover is now blown and so the chase is on.   Will Statham be able to stop the army of assassins sent out to kill before he can save the girl and get her to safety?  Have you guessed the very obvious answer to that question?

The teenage girl is played by somebody with a tongue twister of a name called Bodhi Rae Breathnach she interacts with Statham fairly well.  Award winning actor Bill Nighy (as in what am I doing in this film) is the leader of the assassins and since this a Jason Statham film you know he's going to get it.

 

The director Ric Roman Waugh was a former stuntman who had worked on The Last of the Mohicans, The Last Action Hero and the bizarre meta universe film The One, so he knew his way around staging the action scene stuff which is for the most part fairly well done. 

 

Shelter is the usual time killer of a film.  It keeps the viewers interest from beginning to the end or at least until the next Statham film comes rolling along in 2027.

The film was written by Ward Perry, the running time is 107 minutes.

1967 - CHUKA, typical Western with an unusual cast.

Set in the American West it's the old story where the fort is surrounded by some savage Native Americans who the U.S. Army has decided to let starve to death.  Understandably the Native Americans are pissed.  Into this mess comes gunfighter Chuka and a whole bunch of other characters with lots of subplots to wade through.

Chuka has an eclectic cast to put it mildly.  He-Man Australian actor Rod Taylor is the gunfighter Chuka.  British actor John Mills is the weakling Colonel in charge of the fort.  Ernest Borgnine who was in a lot of films and TV shows (this guy liked to work) is the sadistic Army Sergeant.  Michael Cole the future "Pete" from The Mod Squad is a treacherous soldier.  Another busy actor James Whitmore is an alcoholic scout for the Army.

 

Well it gets better, Italian actress Luciana Paluzzi plays a Mexican Senora.  Paluzzi played Fiona Volpe a SPECTRE assassin in Thunderball which kind of typecast her.  Playing Paluzzi's niece is American model Victoria Vetri who would star as a scantly clad cave woman in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.

 

Chuka is a film that has a fairly sympathetic view of the Arapaho Indians but that doesn't seem to slow down the number of Indians that Chuka shots with his trusty six shooter.  The film was directed by Gordon Douglas who had a long career it not a particularly distinguished one as a filmmaker.  Rod Taylor has a producer credit on this film.  Chuka is kind of the same old Western film stuff for the most part, been there done that.

The film was written by Richard Jessup who authored the original story, the running time is 95 minutes.

1974 - WINTER SOLSTICE, somebody's idea of a bad joke

I've heard of avant-garde filmmaker Hollis Frampton who made lots of experimental films in his career and shot on 16mm film no less.  So being a lover, nerd of film this seemed like the time to check one of them out.  I chose to inflict upon myself Winter Solstice.

Winter Solstice was apparently filmed at a steel mill and consists of a lot and I mean a log of shaky camera work of stuff on fire, stuff burning and vats of molten steel bubbling away.  I suspect Fampton's footage is so shaky because he was trying to avoid getting burned.  Apparently he never learned from his parents at a young age to keep away from hot stoves.

 

Did I mention the film is silent?  Well it is in color although the primary color is yellow as the bright burning materials of the steel mill literally burn into the 16mm negative.

 

I hate to say this since this is a quote i despise from the legendary film team of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert but "this is 33 minutes of my life I will never get back."  The best way to sum it all up is that this  is really boring. 

2025 - DUST BUNNY, a fantasy horror film for the kids.

It must be the weekend for strange films.  Dust Bunny has been described by it's writer/director as a "horror film for the family" and that's probably not far from the truth.  The plot has a little girl convinced that a monster is hiding under her bed.  Unsurprisingly there is a monster under her bed and it proceeds to eat her parents.  To stop the monster, she robs from a collection plate during a Catholic Mass and uses it to hire a hit man who just happens to live in the apartment across the hall from her to kill the monster.

The film mixes the fantasy elements, action scenes and the budding relationship between the hit man and the little girl quite well.  The director Bryan Fuller is an experienced hand at this kind of storytelling.  He's written for the television shows Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, Star Trek Voyager and Deep Space Nine.  I think it's safe to say he knows his way around macabre stuff like this.

 

Dust Bunny has a great cast.  Mads Mikkelsen is the hit man and when I think of him he's usually an unrepentant bad guy.  Sigourney Weaver is Mikkelsen's contact for hit man jobs.  She first played an action hero in Alien and 40 years later she's still kicking butt.  The young girl Sophie Sloan was about 10 years old when she acted in this film and she gives a very droll performance.  Mikkelson and Sloan work very well together in this film.

 

Dust Bunny is another off the wall film that really should find an audience it's a lot of weird fun especially for fans of the fantasy genre.

The running time is 106 minutes. 

2025 - GOOD LUCK, HAVE FUN, DON'T DIE, amusing science fiction comedy

A time traveler from the future (where else) arrives at a diner in Los Angeles to save the planet earth.  He believes that some of the customers at the diner can help even though this is his 117 attempt at averting disaster.  What is exactly menacing earth?  Well Apple cell phones and AI of course.

This is an entertaining film coming from a very quirky filmmaker Gore Verbinski.  Verbinski had some big hits with his horror film The Ring and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films aka "the good ones."  The writer Matthew Robinson is an equally quirky guy.  He's written The Invention of Lying and Love and Monsters.  Unsurprisingly this is one odd ball of a film.

 

The cast is odd as well particularly Sam Rockwell as the man from the feature and Haley Lu Richadson whose job is to dress up as a sort of Disney princess to entertain little girls at birthday parties.  In a key plot point she has an allergy to cell phones.

 

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die is an eccentric film that the studio dumped with a release in February.  Nobody at the studio clearly knew how to market it.  What a disappointment, this film really deserved to be seen by an audience. Hopefully it will be rediscovered in the streaming world.

 The running time is 134 minutes. 

1954 - FEAR, aka ANGST aka really dreary film

Well they can't all be neorealist masterpieces and this film from Roberto Rossellini is one tedious film.  The film stars Ingrid Bergman who was in a famously scandalous affair with Rossellini after being impressed with his post World War 2 Italian films made on location and with non actors. Bergman ended up leaving Hollywood and her husband moved to Italy where she collaborated with Rossellini on a series of so-so films.  Hey that's the power of films to influence people's lives I guess.

Fear is set in post war Germany during the reconstruction of Europe.  Supposedly Rossellini wanted to examine how reconstruction was affecting Germany but who was he kidding this is just a very dull marital drama.

 

In this film Bergman is a woman cheating on her husband with a younger man while also being blackmailed by the younger man's ex girlfriend.  Bergman is trying to keep her affair secret but the situation is slowly unraveling.

 

Rossellini as usual filmed on real locations to add some substance to this drama, but all the location filming in Germany wasn't going to bring this monotonous soap opera to life.  I've seen more interesting drama on General Hospital. 

Fear was written by Roberto Rossellini, Franz von Treuberg and Sergio Amidel.  The running time is 83 minutes.

1974 - ZANDY'S BRIDE, a western and a love story (maybe)

In the old west rancher Zandy Allen has decided he wants to marry.  He places an ad in a newspaper and Hannah Lund agrees to be his mail order bride.  It turns out that Zandy is a real misogynist and treats his new bride like a piece of crap as he looks at her like she's a breed mare.  It's battle of the sexes time as Hannah fights to earn respect from Zandy. 

The leads are played by Gene Hackman as Zandy Allen and Hannah Lund played be Liv Ullmann.  However I would have to say that Hackman is playing one of the most repellent characters I have ever seen in film.  Watching this film it's impossible to understand why the Liv Ullmann character would ever stick around to be mentally and physically abused by this guy.

 

The other issue with the film is the storytelling. With the exception of Hackman's larger than life asshole of a character this film is mighty low key storytelling. The director Jan Troell is a Swedish filmmaker trying to blend his  European filmmaker sensibility onto a simple American western.  Troell gets some very mixed results.  I suspect the American  settings might have been a little beyond his ability to get a handle on this Hollywood production.

 

The film was shot on location in the Big Sur area of California so the locations are mighty impressive to look at.  Jan Troell was always a very strong visual director particularly in his Scandinavian films..  The scenery is probably the best thing in this film but most film goers usually don't watch movies for the pretty pictures.  

The film was written by Marc Norman, the running time is 97 minutes. 

1963 - WINNETOU aka Apache Gold

An odd bird of a western film.  This is in many way a typical "Cowboys vs Indians" movie from an original story by a German writer author named Karl May.  It was filmed on spectacular locations in Croatia in wide screen and with gorgeous color photography, this film looks really good.  When one thinks of European westerns what comes to mind are the Leone Italian "spaghetti" westerns, however in this case these German movies are I guess "sauerkraut" westerns or something.

Winnetou is a native American who is trying to make peace between the "white man" and the Indian.  This is the first in a series of seven films featuring this character and the character is played by what else, a French actor named Pierre Brice and is he ever a noble "red man" he just oozes nobility. 

American actor Lex Barker is Winnetou's white guy friend.  Barker had played Tarzan in five films and eventually ended up in Europe where he showed up in Fellini's La Dolce Vita and about 40 other European films.  He turned out to be a very popular performer in Europe.  In the Winnetou series he's a character called Old Shatterhand because he's a good fist fighter.  Well anyway Winnetou and Old Shatterhand gallop around Crotia righting wrongs.

 

For an odd ball of a western this film is surprisingly well made.  The action scenes are exciting and it was clearly produced on a large budget.  It's a well told story and doesn't have a lot of slow spots.  Sure everyone speaks in the German language for a film set in the American west which is a little weird.  But I've watched plenty of films from England and between the regional accents and all the slang the "Limeys" utter in that country, believe me subtitled European films are a lot easier to follow.   

The film was written by Harald G. Petersson, the running time is 101 minutes. 

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 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.