2006 - SMOKIN' ACES, violent garbage pretending to be an action comedy

 Usually I enjoy writer/director Joe Carnahan's type of action/crime film.  He's basically Quentin Tarantino on speed lots of speed as it turns out.  He also likes lots of cool talk and everyone is constantly yapping away. However this mess of a film was not very good.  Basically the film is about an informant that the FBI and the mob want to get there hands on before he can testify in court about his relationship to a mob boss.  Smokin' Aces involves lots of hit men and law enforcement officers chasing after the informant either to kill him or keep him alive.

The movie has one of those everyone is in it casts.  The bigger named stars get killed off right away and by the end of the film the body count has significantly reduced the main actors.  Just to name a few, Ben Affleck, Ryan Reynolds, Alicia Keys, Chris Pine, Common and Andy Garcia are beaten, shot or stabbed.    This helps the viewer sort out who is doing what to whom as the various killings help shrink the number of actors one has to keep track of in this very convoluted plot.

 

Even for Joe Carnahan the plot is ludicrous with improbable situation after improbable situation piled on top of the viewer until it is all resolved by shooting every conceivable actor who has a credit in this film.  I suppose if you like lots of violent action you can enjoy this film.  But the action doesn't seem to have much context when it comes to moving the story along it's just there to titillate the action junkie 

 

The running time is 109 minutes.

1980 - FLASH GORDON, campy remake of the old serial

George Lucas had wanted to remake the 1936 Flash Gordon serial.  He was unable to obtain the rights from producer Dino De Laurentiis who controlled them. Instead he went ahead with his own idea for a science fiction/fantasy film, Star Wars, or so the story goes. DeLaurentiis went ahead and British director Mike Hodges who seemed like a very odd choice for this kind of material was hired.  De Laurentiis also brought on Lorenzo Semple Jr. to write the film.  Semple specialized in campy films and TV shows like, The Green Hornet which introduced American audiences to Bruce Lee, the Adam West Batman series and the remake of King Kong with Jeff Bridges.

Probably the most important contributor to this version of Flash Gordon was Danilo Donati, an Italian costume and production designer usually associated with Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini.  Donati's fingerprints are all over this film from the crazed sets to the costumes.  Taking a chance De Laurentiis assembled a couple of performers without a lot of performing experience.  Sam J. Jones as Flash and Melody Anderson.  Physically they look like the comic book characters and they are adequate.  Also showing up was Swedish actor Max Von Sydow as the evil Asian emperor Ming, and Topol as Dr. Hans Zarkov.

Universal studios clearly looking for a Star Wars type of hit financed the film.  However the box office returns and the reviews were only so so.  No sequels to this film.

 

For a camp fest like this, Flash Gordon plays fairly well.  The photography is colorful, the special effects have a kind of charming retro feel to them and the whole film moves along fairly well.  Just for the look of the film alone, Flash Gordon is worth watching. 

The running time is 114 minutes.

1966 -THE GOLDEN BAT, comic book Japanese stuff

It's easy to sneer at this film.  The bad special effects, the goofy subtitles, the laughable villain and finally our weird superhero The Golden Bat.

The Golden Bat looks like it was primarily made for kids because as an adult I was a little embarrassed to be watching it.  The plot has something to do with an evil guy known as "The Ruler of the Universe," out to destroy the world.  To the rescue comes superhero The Golden Bat, who has one evil laugh when he's taking on the bad guys.

 

Sonny Chiba, who I knew as "The Street Fighter" in that very violent series is a heroic scientist who is working with The Golden Bat to save the planet earth.

 

That's enough on this film.  One can laugh at this goofy stuff, but is it that much different than the crap D.C. and Marvel are subjecting the audiences to these days?  Silly superhero junk is still junk regardless of when it was made.

The running time is a brisk 73 minutes, the film was written by Susumu Takaku.

1941 - ONE FOOT IN HEAVEN

The life of a Methodist minister, William Spence.  The film chronicles his early days as a minster to his assignment in Denver CO. to a church which shall we say is very set in its ways.  Mostly the story shows how Spence's innate good nature has a positive influence on the church despite some of his character flaws.

This is an excellent studio film.  The screenplay by Casey Robinson, the direction by Irving Rapper, a studio guy who was good with actors.  Above all the performance of Frederic March one of Hollywood's consistently best actors really pulls the film together.
 

The scene that usually stands out for a viewer is Spence's attendance at a William S Hart western with his son.  Spense has been convinced that movies are an unsavory force in the world.  As Spense watches the film he begins to enjoy it and eventually changes his opinion.  But the the film really has many fine scenes overall.

 

The film's ending is quite moving, if the Christian religion had more ministers like William Spense...

The running time is 108 minutes.  Again, a very good film.

1932 - F.P.1 ANTWORTET NICHT, or Floating Platform 1 Doesn't Answer.

This large scale science fiction picture from German studio UFA is a fairly fascinating and still reasonably watchable story.  It seems in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean a company has built a floating platform for want of a better term a runway in the middle of the ocean for airplanes to refuel before finishing their trip across the Atlantic.  Into this comes a saboteur determined to sink F.P.1.  

The film has a rather interesting cast with Peter Lorre in an early role as some kind of reporter.  Probably the most fascinating actor is a gentleman called  Hans Albers a leading actor in German cinema in the 1930's.  Albers was married to a Jewish woman and spent his career during the Nazi years skillfully avoiding being associated with the Nazi party, no small trick in those years.

 

Obviously the film suffers from 1030's special effects but for the most part the set design is rather interesting and if F.P.1 looks like its something they built and floated in a bathtub at times well that's the way it goes for an effects heavy film shot in the early 1930's.

 

The film runs 114 minutes and was written by Walter Reisch and Curt Siodmak two gentlemen who ended up working in Hollywood after the Nazi's came to power.

1937 - LOST HORIZON, Capra's Waterloo

 The director Frank Capra had been on an impressive run of critical and commercial films for Columbia pictures.  Tough guy studio head Harry Cohn who Capra had a beneficial but rather rocky relationship with OKed Capra's dream project, a film version of a successful novel called Lost Horizon.

Lost Horizon is a fantasy about a hidden valley which is a utopia for those lucky to be living in it.  The valley is ruled over by a mysterious Lama who lives in a monastery overlooking the valley.  Into this valley comes Ronald Coleman playing a diplomat named Robert Conway along with Conway's brother and some other survivors of a plane crash.  It seems that Conway has apparently been kidnapped and brought to the valley for some mysterious purpose.

The story clearly appealed to Capra's innate belief in the goodness of mankind and Capra's hope that people would eventually come together to create a better world.  Today these Capra themes seem rather quaint if not downright ridiculous, the world is a very complex place.

 

As this was Capra's dream project in spite of the large budget a small studio like Columbia pictures gave him, Capra's quest for perfection allowed the film to run way over schedule.  Capra's initial cut was 6 hours long which was totally unworkable.  Studio head Harry Cohn stepped in and began cutting it much to Capra's dismay. 

 

Capra had made some of his most best films under Cohn but the mess that Lost Horizon turned out to be seriously affected their working relationship.  Capra's longtime screenwriter Robert Riskin also fought with Capra during and after the production of the film about the tone and final outcome of the fim.

It would be nice to say that Lost Horizon turned out to be a commercially successful classic but audiences were rather indifferent to the final film and it took years for the film to break even.  The lesson learned here is that sometimes it's best to keep a dream project just that, a dream.  The film is in many ways an impressive achievement just not the classic everyone working on it hoped for.

The current running time is 132 minutes.

2001 - BLACK HAWK DOWN, spinning victory from the jaws of defeat

 If there is one thing they are good at in the movie business, it's taking a true story and twisting it around.  In this case it's the Clinton Administration's plan to send the Delta Force and the Rangers into the midst of the Somali Civil War to capture the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.  The mission was basically a disaster, 18 American soldiers died and several Black Hawk helicopters were lost.  

However leave it to Hollywood to somehow spin this into a quasi victory.  The director Ridley Scott stages a lot of for lack of a better term excellent and intense battle scenes.  It's amazing the Delta Force mission failed since in the film it looks like they wiped out most of Aidid's army.

 

What can you say about this film?  If you like war movies Black Hawk Down gets the job done I guess.  The film doesn't shy away from the blood and guts of a modern war but the whole film seems to just a little to "gung ho, rah rah"  for my taste.  It's the kind of movie John Wayne would have been proud to be a part of. 

 

The film was written by Ken Nolan and the running time on the Blu Ray disc is 144 minutes.

1957, THE TIN STAR, disappointing Western from Anthony Mann

 I'm not sure what happened with this film.  The screenplay was by a reliable old pro Dudley Nichols, Henry Fonda gave a good performance as a former sheriff turned bounty hunter.  Fonda has to teach a very new and green sheriff played by the interesting actor Anthony Perkins before he gets shot up by the town bully.  Unfortunately the film just kind of goes through the motions.

This is rather surprising, the director Anthony Mann was a master of the western genre and certainly knew a thing or two about filming in widescreen.  But for some reason Mann didn't seem to be able to work up the interest or enthusiasm for this film.  It's clear they were attempting some sort of "adult" western to compete with all of those TV westerns that were all over the early television networks.  But The Tin Star is just not interesting.  Even the action scenes are somewhat of a dud.

 

Mann had filmed all of those great James Stewart westerns so maybe he had lost interest in the genre by the time this film rolled around.

 

Running time, 93 minutes.

1964 - THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY, an excellent romantic comedy about war

Given a good script, journeyman director Arthur Hiller could really shine.  With The Americanization of Emily, Hiller had the benefit of the writer Paddy Chayefsky.  In truth Chayefsky was probably more of the driving force behind this movie than the director.  You have to give credit to the producer Martin Ransohoff.  It was pretty gutsy to make an anti-war film during the Vietnam War but Ransohoff  never ducked tough and interesting projects.

During World War II,  James Garner is the navel procurement officer for an Admiral played by Melvyn Douglas.  He's good at finding the best food and women.  Garner is also an unrepentant coward.  He falls in love with a non singing Julie Andrews who plays a morally upstanding British driver for the military but not to upstanding she apparently doesn't have any trouble sleeping around.  

 

Anyway to get on with the story the Admiral decides that the first person to die on Omaha Beach during the D-Day Invasion should be an American sailor.  After a series of plot twists the cowardly Garner ends up on Omaha Beach.

 

The selling points in this film are the great Paddy Chavefsky speeches on war, romance and heroics.  They are almost a warmup for his films The Hospital and Network.

The film is well cast, James Garner was always a good comedian and it's probably Julie Andrews best not singing film if not her best film.  An excellent film.

The running time is 115 minutes.

1975 - PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, an enigma wrapped up in a puzzle

Australian director Peter Weir's, film based on a well regarded novel.  Picnic at Hanging Rock is a mysterious film that creates a special mood as the director really saturates the film in a creepy atmosphere amongst the beauty of the rural setting.

At a boarding school for young women in Victoria, Australia three of the girls and one of their teachers mysteriously disappear while on a picnic at a former volcano now something of a scenic location known as Hanging Rock.  The film involves the search for the girls and the attempts by the authorities to unravel what happened at Hanging Rock.

The film seems to focus around one of the girls the mysterious Miranda.  Miranda's roommate Sara has some kind of repressed love for Miranda and the film calls back to Miranda in repeated flashbacks.

 

As the search for the missing girls goes on things at the boarding school begin to disintegrate as the anxiety among the students and faculty increases regarding the situation.  Really to say anything more about the plot would spoil a very good and interesting film. Weir's skill really makes this film absorbing.

 

While he was working, Peter Weir was one of Australia's best directors. His body of work reflects an interesting group of films, The Last Wave, Gallipoli, The Year of Living Dangerously, Fearless and The Truman Show to name a few. 

The film was written by Cliff Green, the running time is 115 minutes.

1984 - WET GOLD, is a young Brooke Shields in a swimming suit.

You know you're in trouble when it takes two nights to finish a film like this. Anyway, a 19 year old Brooke Shields probably at the peak of her beauty stars in what is basically a remake of The Treasure of Sierra Madre set in the Bahamas.  Brooke is a waitress with a fabulous wardrobe,  particularly an assortment of swimming suits which she wears throughout the film. 

The film features Burgess Meredith in the Walter Huston role as the old guy who knows where there is a sunken boat full of gold bars.  Brooke and Burgess along with Brooke's no good boyfriend and a scuba diver head off to find the loot.  Naturally tension arises with Brooke dumping her boyfriend and falling for the scuba diver and as greed takes over the group violence arises.

 

But lets get this straight this is basically a girl watching film.  Brooke Shields looks fabulous but was always a very acting challenged young woman especially in her career.  For the life of me I don't understand how Burgess Meredith got mixed up in this film.  I can only assume the chance to take a free trip to the Bahamas where the film was shot must have been the reason.

 I would honestly have to say this film is so inane and full of stock situations that it became somewhat of a chore to sit through. Even as a "girl watching" movie it leaves a lot to be desired.  Sure Brooke Shields looks great but every time she opens her mouth her lack of basic acting skills is more than apparent.  She's at her best when she is just laying on the boat sun tanning.

 

The film was written by David Sherwin who was associated with Lindsay Anderson of all people and Otis Jones.  The running time is 91 long minutes.

2022 - THE FABELMANS, Steven Spielberg at 76

 At the age of 76, Spielberg is still making films and still quite prolific. The Fabelmans is different from his recent films.  It's clearly a very personal project since it is about his family and his embrace of film making.  Most critics and publicists have said it's based on his family, but Spielberg has gone on at great length about how this film is about his parents divorce.

For all of Spielberg's potent skill behind the camera I don't believe he really pulled his story off.  The film's box office was a disappointment.  Audiences just didn't seem to want to embrace his personal story.  Spielberg appeared to have a complicated relationship with his divorced parents.  In The Fabelmans he is clearly trying to present a positive portrayal of his mother and father even with all of their flaws.  The mother is the creative head of the family, she appears to be a frustrated artist unhappy about being a housewife and a mother.  But I feel the mother comes off as somewhat of a nut, probably not what Spielberg was aiming for.

As the Spielberg character Sammy moves into high school, he becomes even more proficient at making his little 16 and 8 mm films.  He falls in love with a very Christian girl which seems rather improbable for a high school film nerd.  He films his class on an outing to the beach and while editing makes the antisemitic blonde jock Logan the hero of the film.  Obviously demonstrating his ability to create a mythic hero.  Since Sammy has been shown to be harassed by the Jew hating Logan this seemed rather improbable and maybe a little offensive.

 

The film ends with Sammy's visit to the legendary Hollywood director John Ford played by David Lynch.  For most film nuts this is the high point of the film, Lynch does seem to capture the gruff and abusive nature of Ford.

 

But I think what really hurts this film is the running time.  2 hours and 31 minutes is a very long time for any film much less this one.  In fact I've heard a number of people remark that this film is very long and very boring.

The screenplay was by Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner.