2005 - A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, good Cronenberg film

 The old story about the criminal trying to go straight and start a new life but is dragged back into crime by his old gang is given a fresh update from  director David Cronenberg and the screenwriter Josh Olson.  Cronenberg was usually known for what were called "body horror films, " such as The Fly, The Brood and Rabid to name a few.  

Considering the amount of violence in this film, Cronenberg doesn't really glamorize it.  When people get hit by bullets, the end result looks pretty darn gruesome.  

Cronenberg also put together an interesting cast starting with Viggo Mortenson and Maria Bello as the supposedly ordinary middle class couple.  Ed Harris and William Hurt are the very scary bad guys and everyone is working at a high level of performance.

 

The film makes some interesting points about the ability of human beings to inflict violence on each other and Cronenberg doesn't shy away from making the point that the Viggo Mortenson character actually kind of enjoys killing people.

The film runs 96 minutes.

1958 - GIGI, an MGM musical about prostitution.

 Coming towards the end of MGM's dominance in musicals, Gigi was a very classy film with a lot of big time talent involved.  For starters lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Fritz Loewe were very hot with their hit musical based on Shaw's Pygmalion, My Fair Lady which was playing on Broadway at the time.   In addition, MGM producer Arthur Freed assembled a group of very talented people in front and behind the camera.

Cecil Beaton designed the costumes and sets and never meet a weird headpiece for a woman he didn't like.  Andre Previn adapted and conducted the music and most importantly Vincente Minnelli was assigned to direct the film.  In front of the camera were Leslie Caron, Louis Jordan, Maurice Chevalier and Hermoine Gingold.  Gingold and Chevalier were expert scene stealers and Caron and Jordan did make an attractive couple.

One of the oddest things about Gigi was the complete lack of dancing in this film, very unusual for a musical.  The other odd thing about this film was the story.  This is essentially a film about a young girl being trained to be a prostitute by her grandmother.  The girl manages to turn the tables on everyone and holds out for marriage.  

 

This film looks very good it was photographed by Joseph Ruttenberg in that MGM style where everything is very pretty.  Minnelli directed with his usual fussy precision spending as much time on the set design as he did on the actors.

 

For all that, the film does work and is very entertaining.  This is truly towards the end of the MGM musical run.  Freed went on to produce Bells Are Ringing which was his final musical film.

The film was written by Alan Jay Lerner, the running time is 115 minutes.

1985 - THE BLACK CAULDRON , large scale animated fantasy from Disney

 Looking to hit the animation jackpot, the Disney company purchased the rights to a five book fantasy series called The Chronicles of Prydain.  The Disney animators took the first two books in the series and reworked the story now called The Black Cauldron into an 80 minute film with very mixed results.

By the time the film was completed The Black Cauldron was considered to frightening for younger children so 12 minutes were cut from it after a management change at the studio.

Disney may not have been the best place to make this film.  The story of The Black Cauldron uneasily jumps from good action scenes to some very cloying humor particularly with the creatures Gurgi and Doli.  It's as if the Disney animators didn't have the courage to completely make the film an adventure fantasy without resorting to a bunch of cartoon creature silliness.

 

This was an expensive film for Disney coming in at 44 million dollars back when 44 million dollars meant something in the 1980's. The film made only about half it's cost back when released.

 

Of course considering the present climate when it comes to animated pictures the film plays pretty well.

Written by Ted Berman, Vance Gerry, Joe Hale, David Jonas, Roy Morita, Richard Rich, Art Stevens, Al Wilson and Peter Youn.  Lots of writers, never a good sign for a film.  The Black Cauldron runs 80 minutes.

1967 - BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN, third in the Harry Palmer spy series

 The third and last of the Harry Palmer series.  Michael Caine sort of plays the anti James Bond, Harry Palmer.  Palmer wears glasses and is basically a civil servant working for British Intelligence.  The first two films attempted to steer way from the elaborate James Bond type story lines of crazed rich madmen attempting to destroy the world for the most part.

But  Billion Dollar Brain is actually more in line with a James Bond movie fantasy.  The plot concerns a rich American played by Ed Begley in a scenery chewing performance,  attempting to start a revolution that will overthrow Communism.

 The film has a very good cast.  Besides Caine the always reliable Karl Malden plays a sneaky ex CIA agent, Oscar Homolka is Colonel Stok back from the previous Harry Palmer film Funeral In Berlin and the stunning Francoise Dorleac is the sort of love interest.  This was Dorleac's final film, she died in a car accident five weeks later.

 The film was directed by Ken Russell who wasn't particularly interested in the story.  However Russell did a very good job taking what by this time had become a bunch of spy movie cliches and putting a new spin on them.  

 

The photography in Finland is at times stunning and filming in the snow was probably no one's idea of a good time. This is an enjoyable espionage film.

Written by John McGrath running time 111 minutes.

1948 - CALL NORTHSIDE 777, mixing fact with fiction

 The true story of a reporter's attempts to free a man found guilty of murder.  Set in Chicago and filmed primarily on location this type of film helped start a trend of on location filming getting Hollywood out of the studios.  The film appears to be a mixture of fact and fiction, although the basic story seems accurate.

James Stewart plays the reporter in reality actually a composite of two reporters working for the Chicago Times newspaper.  Stewart is on screen practically the whole time and gives a strong understated performance.  Probably legendary tough guy director Henry Hathaway had something to do with keeping his "aw shucks" mannerisms under control.

 The film's photography from Joe MacDonald is impressive considering it wasn't exactly and easy thing to film on location in the late 1940's.

 

Audiences today would probably find the film a little slow and lacking action, but this is really more of a procedural story with Stewart slowly unraveling with happened the day a policeman was shot and how an innocent man was arrested and sentenced for the crime

Written by  Jerome Cady, Jay Dratler, Leonard Hoffman and Quentin Reynolds.  The running time is 111 minutes.

1959 - HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, classic French new wave film holds up very well.

This film was a big deal when it came out in 1959, as it was considered one of the best of the French New Wave films.  It was the director Alain Resnais first feature film and he demonstrated an impressive use of film technique.  

Hiroshima Mon Amour is carefully and elegantly made, this isn't some foreign film where Goddard and his cameraman Raoul Coutard are running around Paris shooting on the fly, the camera work, editing and staging are carefully and deliberately considered.

The story is about a French actress involved in a one night stand with a Japanese architect while making a film in Hiroshima. The time spent with the architect triggers memories of her own involvement with a German soldier during World War II.

 

Emmanuel Riva plays the actress and she has quite the striking presence whether interacting with her lover or just wandering the streets of Hiroshima at night. Riva was apparently a private person and didn't do a lot of films, focusing on a stage career instead.

A key film when one talks about "foreign art films."  The screenplay was written by Marguerite Duras and runs 90 minutes.

1963 - FLIPPER, the love story between a boy and a dolphin

What passed for family entertainment back in the early 1960's.  Producer Ivan Tors in an attempt to do the Disney family movie thing put together this very mediocre film.  The story was co authored by Ricou Browning a man known for wearing the "creature" suit in the the Creature From The Black Lagoon film series.

 

Manly Chuck Conners is the a fisherman and Dad to a a young actor played by Luke Halpin who made a career out of acting next to a dolphin in two Flipper movies and a TV series.  After finding an injured dolphin Halpin nurses the mammal back to health and forms a bond with it.  Along comes Chuck Conners who wants his son to get rid of the dolphin (now named Flipper) as it will eat all of his catch of fish.  After a few adventures with include Flipper leading Chuck Conners to a bunch of fish and fighting off a shark to save Halpin from being eaten, Chuck finally  sees the error of his ways.

 

There is so much to say about this film outside of the fact that the story is pretty lame, the direction almost nonexistent and the acting fairly flat for the most part.  The fact that a highly intelligent creature like a dolphin could be treated as some kid’s pet only good for doing tricks is highly questionable and kind of offensive.

Ivan Tors, whose studio was based in Florida went on to produce another epic TV series about another boy's love for a big scary black bear called Gentle Ben.  Well when you're hot you're hot I guess.

The screenplay for Flipper was written by Arthur Weiss, the film runs 87 minutes.  The Flipper theme song was very popular for a while.

1980 - STARDUST MEMORIES, Woody Allen apes Fellini

I saw this when it was first released in the theaters At the time I thought it was some kind of masterpiece.  Now I'm not so sure.  Obviously Fellini's 8 1/2 is the inspiration for this film.  It's photographed in black and white by Gordon Willis who was a master cinematographer.  It borrows the opening of Fellini's picture and the film in general is about a famous comedic film director who doesn't what to make funny films anymore much like the character in Sullivan's Travels.

The character of Sandy Bates the film director is clearly modeled after Woody Allen.  This isn't the nebbish character he played in his films but a guy who knows his way around a film production and how to deal with studio executives.  In addition, Sandy Bates is something of a lady's man who doesn't seem to have any problems getting together with beautiful women,  probably a character closer to the real Woody Allen.

 

Stardust Memories also had the reputation as the film where Woody Allen announced to the world that  he hated his fans, something he has denied.  However watching the film with it's grotesque Fellini like  gargoyle faces it's hard to argue that he certainly doesn't seem to like them very much.

 

For a meticulous filmmaker like Woody Allen who spends most of the film setting up his character's extensional and emotional angst he gets to the end of the film and clearly doesn't know how to resolve it.

Woody Allen is a talented guy but I'm not sure copying other filmmakers is the best way to make films even if it's a "loving homage."

The running time, 85 minutes.

1966 - DUEL AT DIABLO, tough violent western

James Garner is the frontier scout on a mission to find the men who killed and scalped his Native American wife, Sidney Poitier is a former Army Sergent who is now some kind of gunslinger, Bill Travers is the army lieutenant looking to make a name for himself, Dennis Weaver is the racist owner business man looking to make a buck and Bibi Andersson is Weaver's wife who was kidnapped by native American Indians.  That's a strange cast to put it mildly.

Besides the tough violence, the film was noted for Poitier's color blind casting and the odd sight of Ingmar Bergman regular Bibi Andersson showing up in a western of all things.

 

The film wants to make a reasonable statement about the treatment of Native Americans but it basically descends into just another shoot em up western, although a well done shoot em up western.

 

The film was shot on impressive Utah locations, the rather strange score is by Neal Hefti of The Odd Couple fame.

The film was written by Marvin H. Albert and Michael M. Grilikhes the running time is 103 minutes

1996 - ESCAPE FROM L.A. - the sequel to Escape from New York

This film was a big payday for the star Kurt Russell and the director John Carpenter.  Paramount paid out the big bucks for Russell to repeat his Snake Plissken character and for Carpenter to basically revisit his previous film.  The results were rather unspectacular.

 

This time Plissken is dropped into Los Angeles which is now a penal colony controlled by a fascist police force and a crazed president played by Cliff Robinson.  Plissken has to recover a device that will shut down the entire infrastructure of the world.  Escape from L.A. is basically a rehash of Escape from New York without some of the the cleverness and creative invention of the first film.  Russell and Carpenter take a lot of the trends and fads that Los Angeles is known for and attempt to satirize them with limited success.

 

For example Peter Fonda is a hot shot surfer cruising over the sunken ruins of parts of Los Angles, Bruce Campbell is an out of control plastic surgeon, there's a bike gang and a basketball game where the players have to win or they are killed.

Most of the entertainment value is in the supporting cast that was hired for the film, Peter Fonda, Stacey Keach, Michelle Forbes, Paul Bartel and Pam Grier to name a few.  All of these actors are associated with "B" or cult films.

 

The action in the film is okay, the film is basically a time killer without the social satire that the filmmakers were apparently aiming for.

Written by Kurt Russel, John Carpenter and Debra Hill.  The running time is 100 minutes.