2026 - DISCLOSURE DAY, Steven Spielberg at 79

I guess you can add Spielberg's Disclosure Day to the list of films made by old guy directors. Hitchcock's Family Plot, John Ford's 7 Women and Fritz Lang's 10000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse come to mind.  What all of these films have in common are that these oldesters make not exactly uninteresting films but clearly are not at the peak of their film making abilities.

 

Disclosure Day is frankly an ungodly mess of plot points and muddled ideas.  Mixed up in this film are UFO's, space aliens, ESP, mind control, magic crystals, World War III, invisible man type magic tricks, nuns and stuff about god.  To say this film doesn't have a clear narrative is an understatement.  Spielberg fires it up for a couple of decent action scenes and at one point he breaks out the old razzle dazzle light show stuff towards the end.  It kind of reminded me of his similar and frankly a lot better alien encounter film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  However it all seems a lot less this time.

With a Spielberg film the production values are top notch.  The cinematography is once again by his go to guy Janusz Kamiński.  Kamiński and Spielberg like to favor photography where the color is sort of de-saturated giving this film a documentary look.  There is also a lot of camera movement in Disclosure Day, the camera zooms in, pans left, pans right and zips around with that hand held effect that's become a cliche in every action film today.  It's annoying and after a while distracts from the narrative. 

This film was a big summer tent pole release for Universal Pictures.  Their marketing department did a good job with creating anticipation primarily using Spielberg's reputation to sell it.  However this was not a joy ride summer film the audience probably expected.  In short it's not an Indiana Jones film because it never was intended to be.  Unfortunately nobody bothered to tell this to the audience.  For Spielberg those days are past. The film probably would have played better if it had been released in the fall or winter where expectations for films are kind of low.  Disclosure Day also would have benefited from a more streamlined story.  This film is an unending two and a half hours.  There are a few good things in the film but overall it's a disappointment.

The screenplay was written by Spielberg's frequent collaborator David Koepp, the running time is 145 minutes.   

1966 - FAME IS THE NAME OF THE GAME - TV pilot for a series

More film junk from my wasted youth watching televison when I should have been playing softball.  Fame Is The Name of the Game was a TV pilot for a series called The Name Of The Game.  Briefly The Name of the Game revolved around Glenn Howard played by Gene Barry who published two weekly magaiznes, "People" (no relation) and  "Crime."  Robert Stack was the editor of "Crime" and Tony Franciosa who was their top reporter.  Franciosa played reporter Jeff Dillon in the great tradition of Hildy Johnson from The Front Page a smart ass wise guy.

The TV series was unusual in that instead of being the typical 60 minute drama it ran 90 minutes.  Each week a story with feature Gene Barry, the next week it was Robert Stack and then the following week the show would feature Tony Franciosca.  I suppose it should be mentioned that actor Susan Saint James played a "girl Friday" character who showed up in most of the episodes to bring a little consistency to this rather unwieldy format.

 

Well it all started as it usually does with this Universal TV series pilot.  Universal was big on these pilots it helped them decide if the show should be turned into a series.  Fame Is The Name of the Game was essentially a murder mystery with Franciosca wise cracking his way through the plot as his assistant Saint James playing straight man (woman?) to his silly jokes.

For a show produced by Universal Studios in the 1960's this TV movie had a fairly decent cast. Jack Klugman was a bad guy mobster.  Jill Saint John played her usual femme fatale sex kitten and love interest for Franciosca.  Character actor George Macready was originally the publisher Glenn Howard but when the show went to series he was recast in favor of the more sexy Gene Barry.   

This film actually had a fairly good director in Stuart Rosenberg and the producer/writer was old Hollywood pro Ranald MacDougall.  With a decent cast and some good talent behind the camera you would have thought this film would have turned out a little better than usual for Universal Studios.  However Fame Is The Name of the Game is the typical mediocre Universal production.  The camerawork is that boring flat look that every Universal film had.  The sets look like sets and the whole thing just looks cheap in general.  Tony Franciosa was always a likable if intense actor and he carries the show about the best that he can.

The running time is 100 minutes. 

1919 - WAGON TRACKS, a Willam S. Hart silent western, it's short but not uninteresting

One of the early stars of silent westerns William S. Hart was the very idea of the good guy western hero riding tall in the saddle doing the honorable thing.  Having not seen a lot of William S. Hart silent westerns or a lot of silent westerns in general I assumed Wagon Tracks was typical of his type of film.

In this film Hart is one of those frontier scouts who lead wagon trains across the prairie in search of the promised land as they like to say.  The complication in this rather simple plot comes from a couple of men and a woman who are involved in the death of Hart's younger brother.  Hart determines to get to the truth of his brother's death so to get a confession he ties up the two men and marches them out to the desert where he denies them water and starves them until they admit their guilt.

Since this is a western there is a a tribe of Native Americans involved and I will have to admit how they are weaved into the denouement of the film makes for kind of an interesting ending.  Justice is served and Hart does not get the girl.  Incidentally the female lead Jane Novak worked into the early 1950's and was the author of all things a book called The Treasury of Chicken Cookery.

The legendary silent film producer Thomas Ince was involved in the production.  Ince was a major character in Bogdanovich's film The Cat's Meow.  He died under very mysterious circumstances.  The film was shot in Sacramento, California by cameraman Joseph August.  August was one of Hollywood's top visual stylists and had worked with John Ford and George Stevens. August was a major influence on Ford's technique.  Wagon Tracks is available on YouTube if you poke around a bit in a decent copy.

Wagon Tracks was written by C. Gardner Sullivan, the running time is 69 minutes. 

2005 - ANGEL - A, odd ball film from Luc Besson

From filmmaker Luc Besson a French guy who specializes in over the top action films comes this very strange film.  Naturally being a Besson film this change of pace story features yet another stunning blonde model turned actress.

In a what the hell is this story about set in Paris?  A crook and con-man Andre is starting to run out of luck.  He's in big trouble with a lot of people he owes money to and will be killed by a gangster before midnight.  Sensing his only solution is to commit suicide by jumping into the Seine.  As he stands on the edge of a bridge he happens to see a beautiful woman named Angela about to do the same thing.  They both end up in the water where he saves her and she tells him she will now help him get out of his money troubles.  Thus begins their series of adventures throughout Paris.  Things lead to a denouement where Angela reveals her true nature which forces Andre to make some decisions about his life.

This is a weird film even for Besson who had previously made a film about a guy holding his breath under water for a long time (The Big Blue).  Normally Besson favors his action films with a very flashy visual style.  The flashy video style is still here but Besson apparently was looking to film more of a character piece.   Or as much of a character piece as you are going to find in his type of film.  Besson elected to shoot the film in black and white with his frequent cinematographer Thierry Arbogast and it is a gorgeous film to look at.  Probably the best thing about this film is the photography. 

Well lets jump to the female lead thing that seems to be in all these Besson films.  The list of women in his films is fascinating and almost endless.  Mila Jovovich, Isabelle Adjani, Anne Parillaud, a jail bait 11 year old Natalie Portman, Scarlet Johansson and from The Family the tag team of Michelle Pfeiffer and Dianna Agron.  It's like an action movie modeling agency.   The woman in this film Rie Rasmussen is one tall drink of water with her mini skirts and very high heels.  Yes it is quite a contrast between the tall Rasmussen and the actor playing Andre which was obviously deliberate.

How's the film? Well it's okay for the most part it's only and hour and a half.

The film was written by Luc Besson.

2002 - THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE, is a disasterous remake of Charade.

When it was released this remake of Stanley Donen's Charade was considered a complete disaster.  In many ways it depressingly ended director Jonathan Demme's ability to combine off beat film making with commercial viability.  Demme had been having some decent critical and commercial success in his career.  Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia had performed very well for him.

However he stumbled badly with the Oprah Winfrey project Beloved which was a big commercial disaster.  Probably looking for a box office hit he decided to remake Stanley Donen's Charade as The Truth About Charlie.  Demme's approach was to film in Paris as a tribute to the French New Wave movement that had started in the 1950's.  He got financial backing from Universal Studios and was off and running. "Big Mistake" as Arnold says in The Last Action Hero.

About the only thing Demme got right was casting Thandie Newton in the role that Audrey Hepburn had created in the original film.  However things started to go off the rails with his Cary Grant replacement Mark Wahlberg.  In short Wahlberg was to put it very mildly no Cary Grant.  He looks completely ridiculous running around wearing a beret.  Someone should have told him that only tourists wear berets.  More importantly he had absolutely no chemistry with Thandi Newton which for a romantic thriller is kind of a problem.

Demme's idea to film this as a tribute to the New Wave was to shoot the film with hand held cameras.  The Truth About Charlie is a head ache inducing shaky mess and  the camera work a complete distraction to the story.  I suppose I could comment on the frenzied editing but what's the point.  

Demme also stuck some of the old French New Wave gang into this film.  Director Agnes Varda shows up in a couple of scenes and recreates the ending from Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black.  Anna Karina,  Jean Luc Goddard's one time wife and muse appears.  Charles Aznavour the star of Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player makes a couple of appearances crooning some songs.  Finally there is a shot of Francois Truffaut's grave in Montmartre Cemetery.  All these New Wave jokes and tributes get really tiresome when the rest of the film is an unwatchable mess.

The Truth About Charlie is the price movie studios and ultimately the audience pays when a quirky filmmaker is allowed to run amuck with his so called personal vision.   Demme had only himself to blame. He wrote, produced and directed this film. 

The screenplay is by Jonathan Demme, Steve Schmidt, Peter Joshua (the alias for Peter Stone when he knew he was working on a turkey like this), and  Jessica Bendinger.  The running time is 104 minutes.

2004 - THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB, I was expecting the worst.

Five women and a guy form a book club where they decide to read all of Jane Austin's novels.  The gimmick in this film is that each of the club members is living out one of Austen's plot lines.  What this film has going for it is a really good cast of women and honestly a not uninteresting story line interweaving their fascination for Jane Austen's books with their actual lives. 

Kathy Baker is Bernadette sort of the ring leader of the group who kind of orchestrates the whole shebang with the group which includes get mixed up in their personal lives.  Amy Brennerman is Sylvia a woman whose husband has walked out on her for a younger woman.  Sylvia still hopes for a reconciliation with her cad of a husband.  Brennerman who by the way looks way to young, has a daughter in her twenties who is a lesbian having relationship problems.

Emily Blunt with a really bad haircut, is Prudie a woman with an inattentive husband.  She finds herself falling for a high school student in the film's ickiest subplot.  Finally there is Maria Bello as Jocelyn a dog trainer who is ignoring the male member of the group who has a crush on her.  It's easy to see why that is.  He attempts to woo her by giving her science fiction novels to read for some odd reason.   

 The Jane Austen Book Club is one of the better films in this genre. This good cast and a fairly decent screenplay help make this a better than average romantic comedy.  These types of genre films have a preset list of scenes and "meet cute" situations that must always be followed. These boy meets girl stories do have the inevitable march to their happy ending.  In these types of films the entertainment value comes from how the director and writer can pull this bunch of cliches off.  In this case the makers of this film pulled it off fairly well. 

The film was written by the director Robin Swicord, the running time is 105 minutes. 

2026 - MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, a very strange film

This is not a good film, in fact it's a very stupid film.  Mattel owns the rights to the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe characters. They were looking for a studio to make a live action version of their cheesy syndicated cartoon series. Mattel managed to get MGM/Amazon to sign on to create a feature film.  And what brought this on?  Well one word Barbie.  Barbie another Mattel character made so much money that all these corporate interests thought they had a potential money source converting plastic toy doll characters into actual films. 

Unfortunately nobody seemed to understand the success of Barbie.  The film had an excellent screenplay, good direction and casting.  Barbie also pitched a message of female empowerment and you can rest assured Masters of the Universe really had no such message just a cowardly tiger called Cringer and a floating magic guy called Orko.

As poorly as this film turned out there was the gem of a decent idea in it.  Add the usual action and fantasy stuff but also stick in lots of self deprecating humor with a wink to the audience that all this sword and sorcery stuff is actually mighty silly.

Half the time the actors look like they can barely contain the smirk on their faces while playing these silly characters.  The action scenes are the usual bunch of overblown computer graphic animations. After a while it just looks so outrageous it ceases to be remotely believable even for a fantasy world.  But maybe that was the point. 

The director Travis Knight had primarily been associated with animated cartoons. I suppose he was considered to be a safe choice for what is essentially a live action animated cartoon.  But in the end the whole thing just came off as another  flop that ended up on streaming almost immediately after it was released.  If you are for some reason interested in the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe world I would recommend watching the Dolph Lundgren version.  Released in 1987 by the Cannon Group who at least recognized this was B-Movie junk instead of the wasted $170 million dollar budget that this film spent.

 The film went through a lot of screenwriters but only four got credit.  Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee and David Callaham.  The running time is 140 minutes for a film that is an updated toy commercial, 

2010 - TAMARA DREW, a good comedy from a graphic novel for a change

Gemma Atherton is Tamara Drew a woman returning to her small home town in Dorset, England to settle her mother's estate and generally create havoc with a lot of the men in the village.  

The director is the talented Stephen Frears who is a good storyteller and works very well with actors who in this case were carefully cast.  Frears is a filmmaker who manages to pick interesting projects throughout his career.  He hasn't allowed himself to get locked into one particular genre.  The Hit, Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters, The Van, The Hi-Lo Country and Tamara Drew  couldn't be more different but Frears manages to bring a lot of skill when it comes to making entertaining movies

Gemma Arerton is a very talented performer who has been attached to some interesting films but her attempts at some large scale Hollywood films like the stupid Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters and the unnecessary Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and The King's Men have not really been successful.  She appears to have carved out a career in some off beat interesting films.  Arterton comes off on screen as a very likable performer and her character Tamara Drew is not a particularly likable person.

The film was based on a graphic novel aka "comic book."  It was well written by Moira Buffini, the running time is 111 minutes. An entertaining film.

1949 - BATTLEGROUND, award winning war film is mighty dated

During World War II, the German Army makes one final large scale attack on the Allies.  The Ardennes Offensive also know as The Battle of the Bulge was designed to take the U.S. Army by surprise by overwhelming them. General Eisenhower sends in one of the toughest regiments, the 101st Airborne also known as "The Screaming Eagles" to hold a key key city in the battle, Bastogone. 

The film Battleground is based on the siege of Bastogone.  The film was originally set up at RKO studio by Dore Schary.  When Schary took over as head of production at MGM studios he brought the Battleground script with him.  MGM under Louis B Mayer was primarily a studio that emphasized wholesome entertainments and musicals.  Mayer had no interest in a World War II film.  But Schary soldiered on as it were.   

William Wellman aka "Wild Bill"  Wellman a World War I veteran directed.  The story and screenplay was by a writer named Robert Pirrosh an actual veteran of The Battle of the Bulge.  MGM's contract players filled the roles of the foot soldiers and the film was released to good reviews and commercial success.  Viewed today the film while well intended looks mighty dated with only a few good scenes that convey the intense nature of the battle fought in the freezing winter.

The film was primarily shot on a large soundstage at MGM which gives it a very phony look. The award winning screenplay has the usual foot soldier troupes.  The green kid, the tough guy tobacco chewing sergeant, the scrounger and finally the sensitive newspaper reporter turned soldier.  In an obvious attempt to humanize and identify with the soldiers there is a lot of humor in the film and talk lots of talk.  It's amazing that the 101st had time to fight with all the chatter that went on in the foxholes.

Using MGM contract players to play the soldiers turns into a spot the star viewing experience.  Look there's 40's actor Van Johnson who usually played in romantic comedies and musicals.  James Whitmore a character actor and had actually served in World War II in the Marine Corps.  A personal favorite of mine character actor Richard Jaeckel had a long career in Hollywood and had been in the Merchant Marines.  Mr. Roarke himself Ricardo Montalban covered the ethnic soldier angle.  Finally James Arness, Marshall Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke had been at the Anzio invasion.  What these actual veterans must have thought about running around big phony soundstage battle sets playing soldier boys will unfortunately never be known.

For a war veteran and veteran director William Wellman's direction isn't very good. He doesn't seem to  be able to get across the intense nature of the Ardennes Offensive.  Probably shooting almost entirely on sound stages didn't help.  The pack of war cliches that film is loaded up with from Robert Pirrosh also seriously dates the film.  Pirrosh had better luck with his screenplay Hell Is For Heroes which was a lot tougher of a war film than this.  But really the film to watch about the foot soldier is A Walk in the Sun now that's a good war film.  Battleground gets a big gold star for good intentions but a big demerit for execution.

The running time is 118 minutes.   

2026 - THE LAST HOUSE, is B movie stuff

The B movie genre lives on particularly on these streaming sites.  The Last House has a reasonably decent idea for a story.  A family has to survive inside their suburban home.  The film sets up this situation but unsurprisingly can't really find a way to resolve it satisfactorily.

In brief, because the movie sure isn't.  A family starts their day by getting ready to leave their home.  The trouble is they can't get out of the house.  The doors won't open and windows won't open.  Even attempts to break the windows and doors down fail.  The family is trapped inside of their home without an explanation.  Not that I want to point it out but this is the same situation that arose in Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel.  However Bunuel's film was a satire of the upper class.  The Last House is strictly a science fiction film with horror moments stuck in it and yes there are monsters involved in the plot.

At first the idea of being permanently trapped in your house is kind of a clever one.  How do you survive when you start to run out of food.  How do you communicate with your neighbors?  How does this family keep from driving each other crazy?  More importantly what will they do when they lose access to the internet  Well you have close to two long hours to find out.

I  really don't have a problem with B-movies like this.  The premise can make for a fairly entertaining time killer of a movie.  What I do have a problem with is the drawing out of the premise.  In the good old days a director like Roger Corman could have taken an idea like this and knocked it out in 72 minutes.  The Last House just goes on and on until it finally has to find a contrived explanation of what is causing this phenomenon and then figure out a resolution for it.  I'm fully aware that with a high concept like this there will inevitably be a let down with the explanation of the story.  It's just the way these kinds of movies go.

The cast kind of does what it can in the acting department.  In films like this the dialog isn't exactly Shakespearean, we are in the B-movie tradition of very lame dialog. There's lots of talk about what it means to be a family and how this situation bonds them together even closer.  The Last House's family situation kind of reminds me of the Space Family Robinson from Lost in Space who only had each other to count on when they were trapped on an alien plane also loaded with strange monsters.

Is this film worth viewing?  Well probably not. As usual this is just another made for streaming movie that will end up in the abyss of all the other streaming films that are viewed once and never heard of again.

The film was written by Mathew Robinson the writer of Love and Monsters who in this case is really just reworking the same plot as that film.  The running time is 112 minutes.