1970 - ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER another odd musical disaster

Another big budget musical disaster from queen Barbra.  On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is a film directed by Vincente Minnelli who clearly didn't have a clue how to make this interesting.   Barbra Streisand is at at her Drag Queenie best. 

On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is a musical about ESP, reincarnation, telepathy and hypnosis.  These subjects would be better suited for an episode of Star Trek.  The film was produced and written by Alan Jay Lerner, part of his three picture deal with Paramount.  Lerner's other film for Paramount was the disaster, Paint Your Wagon.  On A Clear Day You Can See Forever is one of those one hit musicals, where only one song in the entire score had any kind of popularity, this was kind of a dubious way to spend millions of dollars, witness Hello Dolly.

Yves Montand was another in a line of European film stars who attempted off and on to start a Hollywood film career.  After taking on Marilyn Monroe's diva like behavior in Let's Make Love he apparently was looking for a rematch with super diva Barbra Streisand.

No one would ever say that Barbra Streisand can't sing, but she really belts out every song.  She also repeats her Fanny Brice neurotic Jewish bit from Funny Girl, just not a lot of subtlety in her.  Full credit should be given to the cinematographer Harry Stradling, an old MGM cameraman, who knew how to take a woman like Streisand and photograph her very carefully.

A very expensive production, back when studios believed that musicals were going to save Hollywood. With the exception of Mary Poppins, most of these musicals were mediocre rehashes from Broadway like Song of Norway, Camelot, Sweet Charity and Man of La Mancha.

129 minutes, screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner.

1981 - LOOKER Michael Crichton film is interesting and inept

An evil corporation is killing supermodels and then digitally recreating them for TV advertisements.  It's up to a heroic plastic surgeon and one of his supermodel patients to solve the mystery and stop this evil plan. 

Looker is a Michael Crichton techno thriller which probably might have worked a little better as a novel.  The idea of digitally creating people was 29 years ahead of it's time.  Using good looking women who are models was a great idea to hang the film on.  Crichton used a similar approach in Jurassic Park with his DNA created dinosaur island which really didn't make much sense when you think about it. 

The problem for Looker is that Crichton didn't work out his story ideas very well.  The evil Digital Matrix company is killing the models off and that doesn't make any sense.  If they wanted to keep their digital imaging process a secret, this just calls attention to them. 

Crichton is also not much of a director, he seems to struggle with staging the action scenes throughout the film.  The final shootout during a digitally recreated television commercial is supposed to exciting and funny, but the staging is so inept, it ruins the action climax of the film. 

Looker certainly has an interesting cast.  The great British thespian, Albert Finney plays the plastic surgeon turned action hero and he seems really uncomfortable in the role.  Susan Dey is his hot model girlfriend and she is definitely not unattractive.   The film also has James Coburn who one critic pointed out was doing an imitation of director John Huston. Heo at least brings a little energy to a kind of lifeless film. 

94 minutes.

1957 - NOT OF THIS EARTH, Roger Corman, science fiction, cheap production = entertaining

Paul Birch is an alien from another planet here to see if he can enslave the human race and drain them of their blood for his alien race.  Birch has weird eyes that can zap people dead or hypnotize them into submission. 

The always smiling in interviews, Roger Corman, blasted this one out probably fairly quickly shooting with no budget and on location.  As with a lot of Corman cheapies, Not Of This Earth isn't half bad.

The film also stars Beverly Garland, who shows up in a lot of these early Corman films, and must have been his girlfriend or something at the time.  Corman also has bits for Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze, who I guess are supposed to be the comedy relief in the film. However the real comedy relief is a goofy monster/mosquito that Birch unleashes towards the end of the film. 

What this film has going for it is Paul Birch, the guy looks a little short in stature, but he definitely has that "Man in Black" look down and he's certainly a lot more interesting than a lot of this film.

67 minutes.

1948 - BEHIND LOCKED DOORS, getting it done in 62 minutes

A private investigator goes under cover at a mental hospital looking for a criminal.  This is an early Budd Boetticher film, which is not a western and was shot quickly on a small number of almost empty looking sets. 

Film scholars are always looking for signs of an auteur in the early films of directors, they would probably have to look pretty hard to find something in this film.  The story while not uninteresting does kind of suffer from the cheap production, and the cast is capable but doesn't light the film on fire. 

Richard Carlson is the private investigator, Carlson was a reliable B actor, who never really hit the big time, but was in some entertaining films like, King Solomon's Mines, The Creature From The Black Lagoon and the Elvis Presley/Mary Tyler Moore classic, Change of Habit.  The film also has one time MGM starlet/dancer Lucille Bremer whose career also never took off after a couple of decent opportunities.  Add to this mix, Tor Johnson, who appeared in a lot of Ed Wood films, as a crazy ex fighter, who beats the crap out of Carlson, in probably the film's best scene.

Technically a film noir, with lots of shadows and scenes filmed at night, this film is no masterpiece, but at 62 minutes who's complaining.

62 minutes

1977 - THE SERPENT'S EGG. grim, grim, grim, grim, grim

"Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here"

 

Close to the bottom of the barrel for the pessimistic films of Ingmar Bergman.  The Serpent's Egg is one of the few films where Bergman attempted to film in English.  He hired David Carradine to play an American trapeze artist stuck in pre Nazi Germany along with Liv Ullmann.  The film is almost two hours of unrelenting doom and gloom from the dour Bergman.

On the positive side, if there is a positive side, the production looks good, the photography by Sven Nykvist is excellent.  But people shouldn't have to watch films just to look at the sets and pretty pictures.  This film is for Ingmar Bergman scholars only and then I wouldn't even recommend it to them.

Towards the end of the film the actor Glynn Turman shows up as a jive spouting black guy in a "what the hell is he doing here" moment.  This is about the only funny thing in the film since his character is completely out of place in the film.

There is a mention of an "Inspector Lohmann" who is searching for a serial killer in Berlin, in what is a reference to Fritz Lang's M, a film that is a whole lot better than The Serpent's Egg.

However sitting through this film just to see these two pieces of interest is not worth anyone's time. 

120 this went into the garbage minutes.

1948 - THREE GODFATHERS, John Ford's Chrismas allegory is mighty sentimental

When John Ford mixes a lot of his patented sentimentality with a Christmas allegory story, watch out.

Three Godfathers is about three outlaws who find a baby in the desert and their efforts to save it.  Ford's favorite actor John Wayne is the leader of the outlaws and as usual John Ford has loaded up the rest of the cast with his favorites. the famous Ford stock company.

If this type of film isn't your cup of tea, (and believe me it has taken me three viewings to finally appreciate it), watch out.  However the film is very well directed and quite beautiful to look at.  Three Godfathers was filmed on location in Death Valley, California and was Ford's first film in color.  John Ford was always the master of the long shot and placing actors in them so the film is a pleasure to watch.

This is in many ways a "typical" John Ford film, it has John Wayne, beautiful visual compositions, a very sentimental story and lots of corny comedy and drama.  An impressive in many ways.

106 minutes, screenplay by Laurence Stallings, Frank S Nugent and Robert Nathan.

2010 - TRON LEGACY, the sequel nobody needed except the Disney studios.

Jeff Bridges is still stuck in the Tron world in the Disney Studio's attempt to kick start the moderately successful Tron into another franchise, like The Pirates of the Caribbean or the Lord of The Rings film series.

Everything is ramped up for this remake of Tron.  Tron Legacy is in 3D and they've punked it out visually, but the computer people are still throwing Frisbees at each other,  driving light cycles around at maniacal speeds and poking each other with lighted sticks.  

To appeal to the 2010 audience of nerds they've hired a couple of hot flavor of the month actors Olivia Wilde and Garrett Hedlund.  Pay close attention to those names, because after this film you will not be hearing much from them in the future.

Jeff Bridges in the quasi role of Obi Wan Kenobi,  Kevin Flynn.  He must have cashed a very big paycheck for this film.

 

 

What Tron Legacy is really about is a cynical attempt by the Walt Disney Studios to make money without so much as a providing the audience any type of original and exciting entertainment.  The film is just a mash up of borrowed scenes from the Star Wars film series.  They probably should have called the film Star Wars Legacy.  Jeff Bridges in a dual role is the Jedi Master and Darth Vader, Oliva Wilde is Princess Leia, Garrett Hedlund is Luke Skywalker.  

Tron Legacy steals copies a lot of scenes from the Star Wars series.  The space dogfight, the clone soldiers, the father son conflict the pseudo mumbo jumbo about the force, etc.  All that's missing is the stupid robots. A very worthless film.

127 very long minutes. Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz wrote the screenplay.

1972 - GARGOYLES, the golden old made for TV movie watching days

Gargoyles and humans have been at war with each other for hundreds of years so speaks the narrator of this made for TV horror epic. 

This film has it all, people running around in rubber monster suits, a 70's chick (pre gym workout days ) running around in a halter top, has been actor Cornel Wilde, a bike gang and the chief Gargoyle spending the last half hour of the film slobbering over the chick in the halter top.

The director B.W.L Norton and his crew did a pretty good job stretching a buck for this low budget film.  They filmed on location in New Mexico, a lot of the action was staged pretty well and they kept their tongues in their cheeks. 

I'll take this over Eat Pray Love anytime

74 entertaining minutes

1982 - TRON, still looks pretty good from a visual standpoint

Ace computer hacker Jeff Bridges gets sucked into the Internet or a computer or a computer program or something and has to do battle with the evil "Master Control Program."  He gets help from a program called Tron.

Tron was Disney's attempt to break out of their middle of the road Kurt Russel type comedies and lackluster animation efforts like The Great Mouse Detective and Oliver and Me.  Disney hired writer/director Steve Lisberger and had a lot of input into the story.  As usual with a ground breaking film coming out of the Disney studios, they didn't have the courage to make something really original, the same problem that plagued Fantasia.  The story Tron finally ended up with was kind of dumb and didn't make sense in certain parts.

 The actors with the exception of Jeff Bridges and David Warner were a pretty colorless bunch.  Bridges had to carry the film but for some odd reason he pretty much checks out of the final battle with the evil "Master Control Program."  The uninteresting Tron, played by the uninteresting actor Bruce Boxleitner gets the final confrontation scene. 

Tron was considered one of the first computer generated films, but it has a lot more traditional animation in in than computer animation.  However these techniques do help give it a unique look.  That ends up being the best thing about Tron, the unique visual look of the computer world.  The light cycle chase still looks pretty cool, and the spaceships and tanks have interesting minimalist designs that are based on the look of old style computer games. 

Which brings us to 2010 and Tron Legacy...

96 minutes.

1968 - THE GREEN BERETS, John Wayne's right wing fantasia on Vietnam and Communism

The Green Berets was a controversial film when it was released in 1968, the country was very divided by the Vietnam War and super right wing patriot John Wayne was looking to rally audiences with what was a piece of political propaganda.  Wayne's approach was to redo the same type of war film he had made during World War II in films like, The Fighting Seabees or Back to Bataan.

Wayne also seemed to be channeling his film The Alamo at certain times with a heroic group of Americans defending their base from the onslaught of the enemy.  Wayne even repeated a lot of the same camera setups that he had used in The Alamo during the climatic siege. 

A very old fashioned film in its outlook.  Wayne focused on the cost of life for both the United States soldiers and the Vietnamese people, but the film had a larger purpose.  Wayne an ardent and vocal anti-communist wanted to push his political point of view regarding the danger of a complete communist takeover of the world.

Today we can look back at this film and find that line of thought to be rather laughable.  However the reality, was that our government's main reason for involvement in Vietnam was to contain communism.  Wayne wasn't very far off in articulating the United States Government's involvement in Vietnam, although in John Wayne's case he was about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

The Green Berets was a very obvious propaganda piece first and foremost.  The characters and situations are all in support of driving home the anti-communist theme. There's  the liberal reporter who sees the light, the cute Asian kid adopted by the soldiers, the simple village people of Vietnam tortured by the Vietcong and NVA, it almost never ends.  The film has so many ridiculous lines and situations, it seems like it should be better known today as a cult film masterpiece.

What The Green Berets lacks is action scenes.  The film has one large scale battle towards the middle of the film that finally shows up, after a long haul through lots of scenes of political proselytizing.  After that's over we have to sit through a secret mission that Wayne and his troops go on that adds nothing but length to a very overlong film.

It's very easy to laugh at the anti-communist theme 40 years later.  However you could easily remake The Green Berets, by replacing the communists with Muslims, and still end up with the same kind of reactionary film that came out in 1968.

141 yes that is Mr. Sulu, minutes, written by James Lee Barret.  

1952 - THE BIG SKY, big Howard Hawks production in a melancholy mood

The adventures of a keel boat expedition heading up the Missouri river to trade with the Indians. 

This was a big expensive Howard Hawks production.  Kirk Douglas was the star of the film but The Big Sky was really a low key ensemble piece with the actors delivering most of their lines with Howard Hawk's famous overlapping dialog technique.

It's hard to know exactly what Hawks was trying for with this film, he has a number of scenes that are among the best he has every directed. He also has a lot of scenes that seem to go absolutely nowhere.  Hawks really indulges himself with comedy and little character bits throughout the film at the expensive of any kind of narrative.  He has one extended scene where Kirk Douglas has his finger amputated.  Hawks has Douglas play the entire scene as a comedy.

Even the music in this film is unusual for a Hawks film.  The composer Dimitri Tiomkin who usually specialized in bombastic film music wrote one of his most low key scores.

The Big Sky is Howard Hawks at his most laid back, barely bothering with a story, the film is even more plotless than Hatari or Rio Bravo.

There does seem to be an overriding sense of melancholy running throughout the film for people and a time in American history that has now vanished. 

The Big Sky is a beautiful black and white film, photographed on magnificent Grand Teton locations.

122 meandering minutes.

1944 - MEET ME IN ST LOUIS, very nostalgic sentimental slop from MGM extremely well done

Vincent Minnelli, working for the producer Arthur Freed and collaborating with one of MGM's biggest stars, directed this fantasy about upper middle class white people living in St. Louis.  This is the kind of film that MGM loved to make, a musical extolling the values of the American way of life if you happened to be fairly well off and Caucasian.

This was a big film for Judy Garland who was the very embodiment of Midwestern middle class virtues.  Garland had three hit songs and the film is very focused on her.  Judy Garland's major competition in this film was the actress Margaret O'Brien.  O'Brien was an intense child actress, who Minnelli would direct in the crying scenes by telling her he was about to kill her pet, she is very over the top.

Meet Me In St Louis, was a big MGM production filmed in the then still unique process of technicolor.  Technicolor required lots of light to look good on the screen so the film is very bright and very pretty.  Vincent Minnelli was one of the few directors who could film musicals and bring a great deal of sensitivity to what could have been a very over the top sloppy and sentimental film. 

This film is expert Hollywood product, impeccably made entertaining and almost completely lacking in any kind of substance.

113 minutes.

1980 - FROM THE LIFE OF THE MARIONETTES, Bergman film is not a comedy

Made in Germany during Ingmar Bergman's exile from Sweden, this is a fascinating failure.  The film follows a couple of secondary characters from Scenes From A Marriage and has an interesting story structure, jumping backwards and forwards in time. 

Peter and Katrina Egermann are one messed up married couple.  When the film opens Peter is seeing a prostitute who he ends up murdering.  The question for the viewer is why? 

Bergman directs

From the Life of the Marionettes, has a fascinating look to it.  The film starts and ends in color. The middle section is in black and white.  The dream sequences are photographed with the Egermann's nude on a completely white background.  Bergman is also the master of the film closeup when it comes to emphasizing the psychological or emotional makeup of his characters.  This is a really well made film. 

The problem Bergman ran into with this film was in the character of Peter Egermann.  Bergman's explanation for Egermann's murder of the prostitute is that Peter Egermann is a repressed homosexual who has been dominated by women his entire life.  This seems a rather dubious notion to hang a brutal murder on.  I haven't spent anytime around repressed homosexuals dominated by their wives and mothers but I kind of doubt this leads to killing sprees.

An interesting failure for Bergman.  A couple of attempts at something new visually but a weak story idea for a psychological study.

104 minutes.

1970 - THE LOSERS, "Get It On" in Vietnam

Thoughtful exploitation trash extremely well assembled.  The Losers probably said more about the arrogant United States attitudes to nation building than Apocalypse Now or The Deer Hunter ever could.

Hired by the CIA to get an American spy out of Cambodia, a bike game parties, trashes, shoots and blunders its way through Vietnam and Cambodia, if that isn't a metaphor for the United States military interventions in other countries, then I don't know what is.

The head of the bike gang is William "Big Bill" Smith who is so macho he wears a very dangling earring in one of his ears.  The rest of cast is an assortment of slime ball bike gang members  who depressingly would probably be very comfortable serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. 

Directed by exploitation director Jack Starrett using the Roger Corman formula of a little sex, a little action and a little social commentary, there are enough fights in this film for about 10 biker movies.  Since this is a low budget exploitation film, the battles and bike stunts are the real thing. 

95  minutes baby.

1959 - FIRST MAN INTO SPACE, Criterion tries to mine the cult film culture

Like The Blob, First Man Into Space, is another attempt by Criterion to find a way to tap into the cult film market.  The First Man Into Space, is essentially a vampire film dressed up with the background of late 1950's space travel. 

Two brothers in the military are in conflict, one is a follow the rules kind of guy while the other is a hot shot pilot.  The hot shot pilot is trying to break the atmospheric barrier so he can be the first astronaut, instead his spaceship gets pulverized by space dust which sticks to him and turns him into a blood sucking monster. 

The film isn't the good silly fun is should be.  It plods along from plot point to plot point. Who is the mysterious killer lurking around the countryside?  Does it have anything to do the missing astronaut?  Will the United States military figure it out, etc?

The problem with First Man Into Space is Criterion.  The company is just too much of a class act to do this kind of film.  It gets the best print of the film possible, it finds the original cast and director and interviews them it puts together an outstanding disc.  However the film lacks any of the values of a cult film.  It's not "so bad its good" or has a premise and execution that is completely ridiculous.  Criterion can't quite lower itself to that level. 

 Criterion should stick to what it does best, producing boring dvd's of Bertolucci or Godard films.

77 lame cult minutes.

1966 - ISLAND OF TERROR, British Science Fiction at its cheezy best

Another dumb scientist messing with things they don't understand film.  In this case they are trying to find a cure for cancer on a remote island.  Instead they create "Silicates"  creatures that can't be killed and like to suck the bones out of people and animals. 

Coming to sort this mess out are scientists Peter Cushing and Edward (whatever happened to my career) Judd and Judd's tag along girlfriend Carole Gray, who is hot but also very whiny and hysterical and really has no business going to the Island of Terror in the first place.

Island of Terror is a B movie in the best sense of the term.  The acting is pretty good, the story and situations are interesting.  Peter Cushing actually shows a sense of humor for a change and the monsters are pretty dumb looking.  This film was directed by Terence Fisher who gets a lot of mileage out of all the old science fiction cliches, confirming the old adage, "it's not the story but how you tell the story that counts."

Island of Terror, is kind of a rehash of Day of the Triffids which had walking plants that ate people.  The Silicates also appear to be distance relations to the  "Graboids"  from Tremors.

89 minutes.