1972 - GET TO KNOW YOUR RABBIT, De Palma's first Hollywood film

This is the usual story of a Hollywood studio luring a hip, hot filmmaker from New York in this case Brian De Palma, to make a film that would appeal to a younger audience.  Not liking the approach De Palma took,  the studio and the producer Tommy Smothers, proceeded to interfere with De Palma so much that the end result was a poor comedy with a couple of inventive visual touches.

The story has something to do with a businessman who drops out of the corporate culture and decides to be a dancing magician with the help of his teacher played by Orson Welles of all people.

 

Along the way Smother gets involve with Katherine Ross playing a character called "the beautiful girl," and realizes that he has just traded one corporate straight jacket for another type of straight jacket.  There's probably a decent idea or two rolling around in this film but it's all for nothing, the film just doesn't work.

 

Written by Jordan Crittenden the running time is 92 minutes.

1970 - WATERLOO, large scale recreation of the famous battle

This is a large scale film with literally a cast of around 15,000 people, (in this case the Russian Army) in a re staging of Napoleon's defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo a town located in Belgium.  Probably only one person, Sergei Bondarchuk the director of the large scale Russian version of War and Peace and his team could have pulled off the impressive battle scenes in the last half of the film.

The film for all of it's impressive physical production had some huge problems.  Chiefly, the very poor story and screenplay by H.A.L. Craig which does not do a good job of explaining the importance of the battle or the strategies of Napoleon and his counterpart the Duke of Wellington.  The characterization of the two commanders is also not really developed very well and you don't get a sense of who these men were and what their motivations were before and during the battle.

 

The film also has a big problem in the casting of Rod Steiger as Napoleon.  Steiger and actor from New York gave a real over the top performance and certainly doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word subtle with his portrayal of the "Little Corporal."  On the other hand we have Christopher Plummer who doesn't give much of a performance as Wellington.  If Steiger is loud and obnoxious, Plummer is so stiff and uncomfortable it's hard to get a handle on his character.

 

What the film has to recommend it are the spectacular battle scenes and they are something to see.  The money on the production was certainly well spent on the staging of these scenes.  Of course with current film making techniques these battle scenes would all be created digitally.  Still there is something to be said for seeing actual people reenacting this famous battle.

Screenplay and story by H.A.L. Craig, Sergei Bondarchuk, Vittorio Bonicelli, and Mario Soldati.

2013 - JOURNEY TO THE WEST: CONQUERING THE DEMONS, has everything but the kitchen sink thrown in.

 This film by one of Hong Kong's best filmmakers is a large scale epic which combines horror, comedy, drama and fantasy.  In other words this is an extremely ambitious film from Stephen Chow.

The crazed story line has a Buddhist monk in training, Tang Sanzang battling all sorts of monsters(demons), while attempting to reach spiritual enlightenment.  Along the way he meets another demon hunter Duan who competes with him in the monster hunting business and after a while decides she is in love with him.

 

Only someone like Stephen Chow could mix all of these genres and come up with a very entertaining film which in some ways is almost one of it's kind.  The high voltage action scenes blend fairly well with the computer effects.  The comedy may get a little silly at times but it certainly doesn't affect the entertainment value of the film.

 

Stephen Chow, Derek Kwok, Xin Huo, Yun Wang, Fung Chih Chiang, Lu Zheng Yu, Lee Sheung Shing and Y.Y. Kong worked on the story and screenplay, the running time is 110 minutes.

2021 - NO TIME TO DIE, hopefully the final Daniel Craig Bond film

This James Bond film, supposedly the last one with Daniel Craig had a lot of production problems.  The film lost it's original director Danny Boyle who left the project over the usual "creative differences." The replacement director Cary Joji Fukunaga who was brought in faced the task of trying to get a decent screenplay out of the 7 different writers that took a pass at the script.

Daniel Craig hurt his ankle during filming which required surgery.  The film's original composer was replaced with Hans Zimmer who contributed an unmemorable score with the highlights basically reused bits from old John Barry/Bond films.  The film was further hampered by the Covid  panademic which had it's release date pushed out 3 or 4 times.

This is another James Bond film that runs over two hours and in this case almost topped 3 hours, that's a lot of time for any film much less a James Bond film.  The film tried to tie together plot threads from the previous Craig/Bond films but this just seemed to muddy an already confused mess of a storyline which has Bond mad at his current girlfriend for some reason.  Throw in final and gratituous appearances from Bond characters Blofeld and Felix Leiter and the film ends up with an overstuffed approach to this Bond adventure.

 

As far as the cast goes, frankly Daniel Craig always seemed to play the character as a street thug instead of Ian Fleming' gentlemen secret agent.  Attempts to update the Craig series always had a kind of desperation about them.  Q is now gay and Moneypenny is black.  The only character that received any kind of positive comments was Ana de Aramis as the CIA agent Paloma, she's the one person who seems to be having fun because Craig isn't a who lot of laughs.

 

The film has a couple of plot twists that don't really work and frankly the action has a kind of been there done that feel to it. 

The mess of a screenplay was credited to Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, Cary Joji Fukinaga and Phoebe Waller-Bridge but there were clearly others involved.  The running time is a deadly 163 minutes.

2004 - THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK - the second in a science fiction series

The second in a science fiction series staring Vin Diesel who was probably hoping to set up another franchise similar to his The Fast and Furious series.  The first film Pitch Black was a decent little science fiction action film with Diesel as a tough guy names Richard Riddick who can see in the dark but needs cool sunglass/googles to keep from destroying his eyes with too much light during the day.

 

Pitch Black was a surprise hit and the go ahead was given to make another film with the Riddick character called The Chronicles of Riddick.  Everything about this film was big, the special effects, the action, the sets.  They just forgot one thing, a coherent script. The film's plot jumps between Riddick trapped on some sort of prison planet and some scary bad guys called Necromongers who take over the peace loving planet of New Mecca.  Somehow Vin Diesel playing Riddick jumps back and forth between these two story lines.

The very few compensations the film has to offer are the set design and strange costumes the Necromongers wear.  I guess sticking the actor Thandie Newton in really tight outfits has to compensate for any kind of love interest in this film.  Judi Dench is also in this film playing some kind of spirit who hovers around but doesn't seem to add anything to the plot,  I'm guessing the film was easy money for her.

 

If you take away the science fiction setting, the film is just Vin Diesel playing the same character he plays from film to film.  Nothing special here.

 

Written by David Twohy the running time is 135 minutes (directors cut).

2006 - SOMETHING NEW, an interracial romantic comedy

This is a modest but enjoyable romantic comedy about the love life of a high achieving career driven African American woman.  Urged by her friends to do more with her life than just work, Kenya McQueen accepts a blind date with a handsome landscape architect, Brian Kelly who just happens to be white much to her surprise.

The film charts the course of their romance as they negotiate their different social standings and navigate the challenges of their romance.  For a story set in a fairly worn out genre the film does make some good points about the place of African American women in this country's workplace.  Of course it's going to have a happy ending since that is the nature of the beast in these kind of films.

 

The film has a very attractive couple playing the leads.  Sanaa Lathan is the driven accountant and Simon Baker is the laid back landscaper she becomes involved with.  They manage to work up a decent amount of couple's chemistry between them.  

 

Something New was notable for having three African American women behind the camera, Sanaa Hamri the director, Kriss Turner the writer and producer Stephanie Allen, the running time is 99 minutes.