1971 - A NEW LEAF, pretty funny

Here's an example of a film studio taking a film away from it's creator and probably saving it.

The writer and sort of director Elaine May filmed a story about a selfish rich man who finds himself broke from overspending.  He devises a plan where he will marry a rich clueless woman so he can maintain his present lifestyle.  Walter Matthau plays the broke playboy who sets his sights on a professor of botany.  May's character is a real klutz and the film is about their marriage. 

On to the good stuff, Elaine May went 3 million dollars over budget and after a year of editing delivered a film that was 3 hours long and had Walter Matthau murdering 2 people.  Paramount took the film away from May and cut it down to it's present length of under 2 hours and eliminated the parts with Matthau killing people.  It's hard to blame them.  The film is essentially a funny and pretty good natured comedy and having one of your lead characters start killing people off towards the end of the picture would have seemed pretty jarring. 

 

Walter Matthau is as usual the master when it comes to performing comedy.  Elaine May is also very good as his goofball wife.

A New Leaf is a good picture but I doubt a 3 hour running length would have ever worked for this film.

1967 - THE WAR WAGON, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas

Here's an oddball John Wayne film.  The War Wagon is one of those big caper films where a team is assembled and a big heist is planned and executed to a carefully constructed plan.  This film is unusual in that it's set in the west and has John Wayne and Kirk Douglas as it's stars.

Clair Huffaker who had been responsible for writing one of Wayne's worst films, Hellfighters wrote the screenplay but it was director Burt Kennedy's supposed uncredited rewrite that saved the film.  Kennedy apparently added the humor to the film which really upped the entertainment value of The War Wagon. 

As with Robert Mitchum in El Dorado, John Wayne works very well with a strong actor like Kirk Douglas.  Wayne couldn't push a personality like Douglas around unlike a lot of actors who he easily dominated.  Douglas is as good at hogging a scene as John Wayne is. At this stage in his career John Wayne would no longer play love scenes with leading ladies because he felt he was age inappropriate.  However he and Kirk Douglas definitely have a love hate romance going on throughout the film which is highly entertaining. 

Although there was an attempt to try something new plot wise in a Wayne western, it's still a Wayne western.  The audience gets a saloon fight, gunfights, and Indian fights although none of it is taken very seriously. 

This film is probably how audiences liked John Wayne best, in undemanding entertainments, which is what The War Wagon is, nothing wrong with that.

96 minutes.

1973 - THE CAT CREATURE, trying to recreate a 1940's B movie horror film in the 1970's made for TV B movie environment

The director Curtis Harrington and the writer Robert Bloch, pay homage to films like The Cat People and The Leopard Man.  The film has a great cast of has been actors even for 1973.  People like David Hedison, Stuart Whitman, and Meredith Baxter an actor whose career never went much past working on TV shows and made for TV films.  Baxter was Hollywood's idea of the kind of actors people wanted to see on TV, blond, sort of pretty and completely uninteresting, but she probably was good about showing up to the set on time.

Harrington cast a lot of old Hollywood actors in bit parts and supporting roles, Keye Luke, Gale Sondergaard, John Carradine and Kent Smith star of The Cat People.  Then there are also some real oddball performers in here like Milton Parsons and John Abbott, go ahead and look them up on IMDB.  All these actors are really part of the fun of this film. 

A short inconsequential film about Egyptian vampire mummies, killer kitty cats, and magic amulets.  The film also does an OK job at capturing the 1970's Los Angeles atmosphere in all it's cruddy glory.

72 minutes, written by Mr Psycho himself, Robert Bloch.

1966 - PERSONA Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece walks the line between great and pretentious

Whatever Bergman was up to in this enigmatic puzzle will probably continue to be a mystery as long as this film is viewed.  Bergman's film technique reminds the audience that they are watching a film.  At one point in Persona, the film literally begins to burn during the story. 

Liv Ullmann is a stage actress who has a nervous breakdown during a performance.  Since this is a Bergman film, the play is Electra.  Ullmann decides not to speak anymore and the film focuses on the relationship of Ullmann and her nurse Bibi Andersson, who confides in the mute Ullmann in what are extended monologues.

At first the film seems to be about Ullmann as an artist and her inability to relate to the turmoil of the real world around her.  The film then veers off into an examination of the character of the nurse. There is a particularly erotic scene as the nurse relates to Ullmann an encounter she had with two teenage boys on a beach. Andersson apparently did an uncredited rewrite on that scene.

Finally the film enters into some very strange territory with Bergman adding a doppelganger theme as he begins to merge the personalities of the women together, literally and visually. 

Bergman reaches deep inside himself with images and thoughts that only he could have explained but as far as I know never did,  perhaps he didn't understand them himself.  Persona's fascination comes from great photography, excellent acting, particularly from Andersson and brilliant direction.

Bergman directs Persona

A mystery of the mind put on film.

85 minutes.

1948 - EASTER PARADE, the top moneymaking film of 1948

 A real ordeal to sit through and an Academy Award winning film ( best screenplay).

This was the big film of 1948, the top grossing picture of the year.  Fred Astaire stepped in to replace Gene Kelly after Kelly broke his leg.  Judy Garland was at the peak of her popularity.  Irving Berlin was hired to write some new songs for the film and the picture was filmed in Technicolor.  There were complaints about the age difference between Astaire and Garland, the least of the problems with Easter Parade. 

The whole film, sickeningly bland. As they say, no one watches musicals for the plot but this love story was even more vacuous than usual for this genre. Astaire and Garland play a dance team who fall in and out and in and out of love.  Fred's old partner Ann Miller dumped him to be a big star in the Ziegfeld Follies, you get the picture. 

There are some good Irving Berlin songs in this film.  Still, you also have to sit through the music and lyrics of classics like, "Snookey Ookums, The Ragtime Violin, When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam,"  and "The Girl on the Magazine Cover" and the songs just keep coming at you. 

The color photography is really garish even for a color film from this period.  A blazing purple couch,  glowing flowers and red lipstick.  Towards the end there is a fashion show where they really pump up the ugly color look of the film.  

One scene in a restaurant where a waiter tosses an imaginary salad for Judy Garland and her date has to be seen to be believed, its not even remotely funny and it just never ends.

Judy Garland's OK but what saves this film is Fred Astaire's smooth dancing. 

The whole film is an interesting look at what people in 1948 considered to be wonderful entertainment, audiences just kept coming back to see Easter Parade again and again.  Rent That's Entertainment and watch the excerpts from Easter Parade to save time or just skip the whole thing.

107 minutes.

1935 - THE 39 STEPS, Hitchcock's masterpiece of entertainment

Kicking the quality level back up after the last 5 posts with this classic comedy/thriller from Alfred Hitchcock. 

Not much I can add re-watching this film.  Robert Donat, as Hanney the man on the run from spies and the police is perfect.  Madeline Carroll, now considered the first of Hitchock's "cool blonds" matches him almost as well.  Hitchcock was always labeled as a director who didn't like working with actors to get performances, but it's pretty clear he was in sync with Donat and Carroll.  They set the standard for this kind of thriller for years to come. 

One of the things Hitchcock liked about The 39 Steps was how fast paced the film was.  It certainly rushes along from one clever situation to another, the political rally, the encounter with the head of the enemy spy ring, and in one of his cleverest touches the character Mr. Memory. 

Hitchcock's visual inventiveness is on display throughout the film but never at the expense of the actors or the story.

This film is considered a classic for very good reason

2010 - MACHETE, B movie wanna be

Straddling the line between garbage, nauseating violence, female exploitation and social satire, it pains me to admit I enjoyed this junk.  Loaded with enough inside movie jokes,  its clear this isn't to be taken seriously.

What bothers me is that this film will probably be about the only movie that comes out that actually takes on the problem of illegal immigration in the United States.

When this film started and as I watched all the impaling and beheading of many of the actors,  I wondered  if I had thrown away my matinee money for some utter garbage.  But, I started to enjoy it. 

Wow what a cast.  Lindsey Lohan plays a variation on herself, a tramp.  Cheech Martin a priest with a church that's more like an armory.  Jeff Fahey  good as a businessman exploiting the illegal immigration problem. Tom Savini, the famous makeup artist responsible for Romero's zombies shows up as a hit man. And surprising even me,  Jessica Alba and Steven Segal in probably the two better performances in the film, and I hope I never write that in a review again.

Robert DeNiro plays a Texas state senator trying to exploit the immigrant issue for political gains,  DeNiro at times drops his accent Texas twang and reverts back to his New York dialect at times, he appears to be amused with himself in this film.   In one of the film's sickest jokes, he's shot by washed up actress Lohan. 

The film's biggest weakness in Machete,  Danny Trejo as Machete.  I don't object to the fact that this 60 year old plus character actor playing an action hero and gets all the hot young babes, that's actually kind of funny.  But Trejo himself just doesn't seem like an interesting actor.  He also moves like he's 66 years old which they cover up with a lot of frenzied editing.

The director Robert Rodriguez, is his usual one man band film making machine.  He writes, directs and shoots in Texas to keep his budgets low.  The guy seems to have some talent, but he still hasn't figured out that maybe all this excess violence might be a bit of a turn off for a general audience.  Apparently he doesn't appear to care. 

Loved the guy in the El Santo mask.

1968 - WHERE EAGLES DARE, still entertaining Alistair Maclean war film

The producers of Breakheart Pass hired Alistair MacLean to write an original story and screenplay.  Where Eagles Dare a typical Alistair MacLean mix of action and improbable if clever plots.  This film had a larger budget than Breakheart Pass, a better cast and managed to balance the tone between seriousness and improbability pretty well.

Yakima Canutt, the famous stunt man was responsible for the action scenes, particularly the unnerving cable car scenes with stunt men actually dangling around in mid air, rear screen projection for the actors of course.  Most of the film was shot in the "day for night" process with filters being used to fake the night scenes, pretty understandable considering all of the complex action and explosions throughout the film.  

The composer Ron Goodwin was hired to write one of his "typical" British war movie scores.  Goodwin always seemed to have a knack for this kind of war music, his score adds a lot to the film.

Where Eagles Dare has a very good cast, Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, Mary Ure and resident Hammer horror chick Ingrid Pitt.  Burton's good and does most of the acting work playing it serious and at times not very serious.  Clint Eastwood doesn't say much but he gets to shoot a lot of Germans,   which was one of the major criticisms of the film when it came out, the high body count.

 
 Mary Ure had worked with Burton on the classy British drama Look Back in Anger, about the British working class, this film had a little different theme.  Alistair  MacLean never knew what to do with women in his books, so Mary Ure doesn't do much, although she does seem to know what end of the machine gun she should hold before slaughtering Germans.

The end of the film has a clever twist to it after all the action.  You have to give Alistair MacLean credit.  What ever his worth as a writer, he was certainly very good at putting together a story like this.

Running time, 155 minutes.

2001 - AVALON, interesting live action Japanese anime film

What came first Avalon or The Matrix?  The Matrix was released in 1999,  2 years before Avalon.  The filmmakers of the Matrix films always said they were influenced by the Japanese anime film Ghost in the Shell.  Ghost in the Shell and Avalon were made by the same filmmaker Manoru Oshii.

Avalon is a virtual reality (VR) environment in which people enter and play to different game levels where they receive money or some kind of reward.  One of the players has begun to believe there is more to this virtual reality world then they are being told.

An odd if interesting film shot in Poland by Japanese filmmakers.  There isn't a lot of action and the film mostly focuses on the mystery of the higher game levels in the VR world of Avalon. 

The film looks good and has an intriguing story.  I suppose you could say in some ways it's a souped up episode of the old Twilight Zone TV series.  It's also a science fiction dork dream come true with a good looking woman blowing up tanks and aircraft in a virtual reality game world. 

Considering it kind of treads on the same themes of the Matrix trilogy I was more engaged with the film that I should have been.  Worth a look.

2009 - ASSAULT GIRLS, more VR foolishness in Avalon

More VR nonsense from Mamoru Oshii.  This must be some kind of a joke,  I hope....

Three Japanese girls in the virtual world of Avalon fight giant virtual reality sand worms for game points. 

 Or as some blogger wrote, "its Dune with hot Japanese chicks."

Thankfully only 65 minutes long.  Really pretty stupid although the stupidity appears to be intentional.

1975 - AT LONG LAST LOVE, trying to be fair to this film

Peter Bogdanovich in the 1970's attempted to revive a 1930's type of musical with At Long Last Love. This film was the second of three films along with Daisy Miller and Nickelodeon that really finished off his career.  Critics compared it to an inferior Astaire and Rogers musical, but watching this film after 35 years, it's clear he was actually imitating an early Ernest Lubitsch musical, probably one of the musicals Lubitsch did in 1930 or 1931.

Some critics today now call this film an under appreciated masterpiece.

Back in the early 1930's when musicals were being filmed,  sound recording was still being developed and understood.  It was not unusual to have the actors actually sing to a prerecorded sound track while performing.  Bogdanovich adopted this approach by having his actors perform to a prerecorded soundtrack connected to wireless radios with tiny earphones so they hear the music while they sang and danced.  While this was an interesting idea in conception, practically it robbed him of the ability to use modern sound equipment to enhance the singing of the actors.  Essentially he lost his ability to manipulate the sound in post production.

A bigger issue was his cast, with the exception of Madeline Kahn, John Hillerman and Eileen Brennan who seemed to understand where this film was going, Burt Reynolds and Cybil Shepard did serious harm to it.  Since Bogdanovich was having them perform their songs live, the film had to live or die on their performances, it died.

In the old Lubitsch musicals, Lubitsch had the advantage of using stage performers like Maurice Chavelier or Jack Buchanan, who could sing and dance.  Shepherd and Reynolds could do neither.   Reynolds has a smirk on his face, acting like the whole thing is a big joke.  Cybil Shepherd was a top model in the 1970's who turned to acting and while you can debate the relative merits of her acting ability, you can't argue that she's a very limited performer.  In At Long Last Love, she knows how to go for the closeup but for a fashion model,  she doesn't look very good in the 1930's costumes.

Bogdanovich  has to take most of the blame for this film, since he wrote, produced and directed it.  The story in these kinds of films is supposed to be non existent, but there really isn't a clever situation or witty line to keep the audience interested in.  The idea to have over a dozen Cole Porter songs was probably not so hot.  A dozen songs in a musical is a lot of songs, especially when sung by as cast that can't sing.

Gratuitous picture of Cybil

 

Bogdanovich never found the tone for the film.  He directs the cast to say their lines  in the overlapping dialog style that Howard Hawks used in his films.  Combining a Howard Hawks style with a Lubitsch style was a bad idea since these two directors were very different in their approach to film.   Bogdanovich who was a great admirer of Hawks should have realized that Hawks only directed one musical,  Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, and found out he had no feeling for this  genre.  In that film Hawks let his choreographer stage and film all of the musical numbers.  

After 35 years did At Long Last Love get better?  Well Madeline Kahn's better than I remembered and maybe a couple of the numbers aren't really bad but for the most part, no. 

At Long Last Love is available on You Tube in 13 parts. Not recommended

118 "amateur hour" minutes.

1975 - BREAKHEART PASS, good sit in front of the TV western

Alistair MacLean, adapts his western, thriller with Charles Bronson as the star.  A typical MacLean story, lots of double crosses, a mysterious main character and lots of action.  A 13 year old boy's dream movie come true. 

The producers did about everything right on this film.  Extensive on location filming, a very good cast, and top technical people behind the camera.  Probably their only miss was the director Tom Gries a guy who just never really hit the big time like a lot of people thought he would.

Breakheart Pass is really nothing very special when you get right down to it.  But it is fun to see this great cast of character actors. Guys like Ben Johnson, Richard Crenna, Charles Durning, Ed Lauter and David Huddleston.  As was the custom at the time a couple of washed up athletes show up,  Joe Kapp and Archie Moore.  It would  have been an interesting bunch to be on the set with. 

Then there's the star of Breakheart Pass, Charles Bronson.  A working actor until he hit his 50's he had a big box office moneymaker with Death Wish in 1974 and suddenly found himself to be a superstar in the 1970's.  Bronson had enough clout by this time to get his wife Jill Ireland hired as the female lead which was pretty typical behavior for him.  Bronson's kind of phoning it in with his performance in Breakheart Pass but he's still Bronson. 

Breakheart Pass is the final film for the famous stunt coordinator and 2nd unit director Yakima Canutt.  Canutt was pushing 80 when he staged the action for this film but he still had it.  There is a very exciting fight on the top of a snow covered train over a bridge and it's the real deal.

Nothing special except for the cast and the action scenes towards the end Breakheart Pass is a good time killer.

1950 - SEVEN DAYS TO NOON, brilliant thriller about nuclear terrorism

An excellent film about domestic terrorism in London.  A research scientist working in a nuclear arms laboratory steals an atom bomb which he intends to use if the British government does not abandon their nuclear weapons program.

This is a nearly perfect original thriller.  The film is cleverly divided into three parts.  The first part involves Scotland Yard's realization that the scientist has disappeared along with a nuclear weapon.
The second part of the film focuses on the scientist himself as he hides out in London.  The final section of the film concerns the evacuation of London and the search for the scientist by the government. 

The acting is very good throughout the film.  The scientist is given enough character so the viewer can understand  his reasons for detonating the bomb even though he still comes off as a naive nutcase.   His character, played as a rather mild mannered person makes him even more interesting and scary. 

However  the film clearly stays  on the side of the government.  The British knew what it meant to have their cities attacked since this film came out five years after the end of World War II.  The scenes of the evacuation of London are extremely well done.  The abandoned pets and people walking around with "end of the world" signs were a particularly clever touch.  When you consider this film was made way before the days of computer generated Titanic people the actual logistics of staging these evacuation scenes is impressive.  

This is not a perfect film.  There are a couple of plot points and situations that are not very credible, however good films are not always perfect films.   The filmmakers  John and Roy Bolting, brothers who usually specialized in comedy,  produced directed and edited this film.

A very impressive accomplishment.

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2001, 2002 - THE HIRE, glorified, car commercials.

The marketing department at BMW got the brilliant idea to hire 8 top directors and have them shoot short films with the actor Clive Owen racing around in different model BMWs.

AMBUSH, by John Frankenheimer, a good car chase film.  Frankenheimer had directed Grand Prix and Ronin so he knew how to film exciting chases.

CHOSEN, by Ang Lee.  Also a fairly decent car chase film.  Probably the only interesting thing in it, Lee's little inside joke about The Hulk his big budget flop was the next film he directed.

THE FOLLOW, directed by the artsy fartsy Wong Kar-Wai, aims to be a mood piece but is just boring.

STAR, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring his then wife Madonna.  Madonna looks pretty bad and the film is about the driver embarrassing and humiliating her.  Almost prescient considering how Madonna and Ritchie's marriage ended.

POWDER KEG, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu wallows in it's stylization and pretentiousness, no fun.

HOSTAGE, directed by John Woo, only goes to prove that Woo should stick to filming scenes with Chow Yun-fat shooting thousands of bullets into guys instead of staging car chases.

TICKER, directed by Joe Carnahan, probably the best short film of the 2nd season, to bad Carnahan couldn't have brought this kind of interest to The A Team.

BEAT THE DEVIL, directed by Tony Scott.  The most annoying of all these short films, an attempt at a supernatural/ comedy/ action short film.  Filmed as usual by Scott like he had irritable bowel syndrome.

 Ambush and Ticker are probably the only two worth checking out.  This series is kicking around on YouTube.

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1977 - HAUSU, Japanese haunted house spoof or complete put on

It is difficult to understand what the director Nobuhiko Obayashi exactly had in mind with what I believe is some kind of haunted house horror spoof.

The film starts out when a group of comely Japanese schoolgirls vacationing in the Japanese countryside at the home of an Aunt of one of the girls.  Once in the house the girls are attacked by the  house itself.  It turns out the Aunt is actually a ghost waiting for the return of her fiancee from World War II.  But really the plot has nothing to do with the film, its an excuse for Nobuhiko Obayashi to try out a lot of stylish tricks with the camera and particularly the optical printer.

This film has an oddball collection of scenes in it:

• A linen room where a girl is attacked by sheets and pillows.
• A well containing a head that bites one of the girls on the butt.
• A piano that bites the fingers off of another girl then proceeds to either eat her or sexually assault her.
• A man that turns into a bunch of bananas.
• A dancing skeleton that shows up for no particular reason.  
• A movie soundtrack that at times breaks into a mainstream jazz score.

Realism never appeared to be a consideration, every scene seems to contain some sort of stylistic trick, even the walk in the countryside to the house is a background of obviously painted mountains.

Whatever  Nobuhiko Obayashi had in mind for Hausu will probably be a mystery that only he can explain.  It does appear to me that the schoolgirls being assaulted by the house and literally dismembered with their body parts dancing around would tend to suggest a deeper impulse.

88 weird minutes.

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2001 - OCEAN'S 11, the remake

A film with a stylish, clever director in Steven Soderberg and a reasonably clever and witty script.

Ocean's 11 has an interesting cast.  George Clooney and Brad Pitt are very charismatic.  Matt Damon and Julia Roberts are sort of charismatic.

But Ocean's 11 is kind of time waster for talented director and cast. I have no issue with light film entertainment but just seems remaking the Sinatra Ocean's 11 is just setting the bar very for these people.

Written by Ted Griffith, the running time is 116 minutes.

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