1945 - A GAME OF DEATH, decent remake of "The Most Dangerous Game."

A Game of Death is a remake of The 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game which was in turn based on a short story by the author Richard Connell.  The story is a very entertaining melodrama about a famous hunter Don Rainsford stranded on a remote island who becomes they prey of a nutcase hunter Erich Kreiger who is bored with killing animals and has resorted to stalking and killing humans instead.  So the chase is on in this fast paced film.

Robert Wise directed this version after working with producer Val Lewton on his legendary series of horror films.  It's competent and decently made but I miss the flamboyance of the earlier film with it's over the top Max Steiner film music and it's really fast paced structure.  It's now a film making legend that The Most Dangerous Game was simultaneously filmed on the same jungle sets as King Kong with several of the King Kong actors primarily Faye Wray and Robert Armstrong in roles. English actor Leslie Banks in a very flamboyant performance was the crazy hunter who in this film is called Count Zaroff.  It's a very fun 1930's film.

 

The remake is not without it's merits, John Loder plays Rainsford and he gives a good competent performance.  Playing the madman hunter Erich Kreiger is the actor Edgar Barrier who was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury theater.  He may not have been as over the top as Leslie Banks but he gets the job done as a creepy menacing character.

 

This man hunting man plot has been so durable that it's been filmed many times.  I originally read this story in high school although I suppose it's not exactly a  P.C. kind of story anymore.

 The screenplay was by Norman Houston, the running time is an efficient 72 minutes.

1961 - THE GREEN ARCHER aka DER GRUNE BOGENSCHUTZE

This is a crime thriller set in a creepy old mansion which features a masked man dressed in green like Robin Hood running around a castle killing people with arrows.  The overly complicated plot involves a corrupt American businessman played by German actor Gert Frobe who when he isn't yelling at people he's holding people prisoner in a secret room, harassing his niece, planning to flee the country with his fortune and seeking revenge on his brother who took the woman he loved from him.  And that's just the beginning of this film. Where does The Green Archer fit into all of this?  I was never entirely sure, the archer is either trying to kill Frobe or is working for him.

To get an idea of the goofy nature of this film, one of the other characters in the film is a reporter who frequently breaks character by talking directly to the audience.  What soon becomes obvious during this film's running time is that the whole film has it's tongue firmly in it's cheek and the dead pan acting of the rest of the cast is really part of the joke.  The exception to playing it straight is Gert Frobe whose performance can only be described as so over the top I couldn't even figure out where the top is.  Frobe is chiefly remembered as the James Bond villain Goldfinger and that larger than life villain can't touch Frorbe's crazed bad guy performance in this film.  The female lead is played by Karin Dor another James Bond villain alumnus.  Dor was Helga Brandt in You Only Live Twice who ended up getting eaten by piranhas.

 

This film was based on a book by an English writer named Edgar Wallace who worked in the 1920's and 30's pumping out these overly complicated crime thrillers.  This story is clearly very dated and the filmmakers probably made the right decision to just spoof the crime/mystery aspect of this film.

 

The Green Archer entertains by virtue of its absurd plot and Gert Frobe's crazed performance.  The film is set in London but it's a German production with German actors gives it's a very surreal feeling.

Written by Wolfgang Schnitzier and Wolfgang Menge, the running time is 93 minutes. 

1963 - CHARADE, excellent romantic thriller

This is an excellent and very entertaining comedy thriller made by Hollywood professionals at the peak of their abilities.  It starred Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn and who ever had the inspired idea to team them up as a romantic couple should have gotten a big bonus.  Here are two stars who really deliver the goods.  Cary Grant had done enough Hitchcock films so he knew how to balance the comedic and suspense elements in this story.  Audrey Hepburn was no slouch either.  She had also performed in romantic comedies and dramas with great success.  These two performers were very experienced actors when it came to making films and they really knew how to deliver the romantic couple goods.

 

The director Stanley Donen had worked at MGM during it's peak period when they were producing stylish musicals.  Donen along with Gene Kelly had created an impressive body of work with films like On The Town, Singing In The Rain and the underrated It's Always Fair Weather.  On his own he directed Seven Brides For Seven Brothers and Funny Face.   As the musical genre wrapped up Donen focused on sophisticated comedies and in this case romantic thrillers.  Charade was one of his best films.

  

A big part of Charade's success is the screenplay by Peter Stone and Marc Behm which balanced the comedy, romance and suspense elements.  The cinematographer Charles Lang was one of Hollywood's top cameraman who had worked with John Sturges, Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. With this kind of talent Charade could hardly miss.  It was a critical and commercial hit. 

 

The running time is 113 minutes.  

2026 - SHELTER, this year's Jason Statham film

With the inevitability of a returning season this is the yearly Jason Statham action film no better or no worse than any of his other films.  In Shelter, Statham is a man living alone on a deserted island with an abandoned lighthouse on it.  Washing up onto the beach is a teenage girl who has survived a ship sinking.  It turns out Statham is an ex special ops agent skilled at killing a lot of people all at once or one at a time.  His cover is now blown and so the chase is on.   Will Statham be able to stop the army of assassins sent out to kill before he can save the girl and get her to safety?  Have you guessed the very obvious answer to that question?

The teenage girl is played by somebody with a tongue twister of a name called Bodhi Rae Breathnach she interacts with Statham fairly well.  Award winning actor Bill Nighy (as in what am I doing in this film) is the leader of the assassins and since this a Jason Statham film you know he's going to get it.

 

The director Ric Roman Waugh was a former stuntman who had worked on The Last of the Mohicans, The Last Action Hero and the bizarre meta universe film The One, so he knew his way around staging the action scene stuff which is for the most part fairly well done. 

 

Shelter is the usual time killer of a film.  It keeps the viewers interest from beginning to the end or at least until the next Statham film comes rolling along in 2027.

The film was written by Ward Perry, the running time is 107 minutes.

1992 - FULL CONTACT, Ringo Lam's stylish action thriller

Ringo Lam's crime film is stylish, dirty, violent, soulless, and very entertaining for the action junkie crowd looking for lots of shooting and fighting without any of that morale compass stuff.

Chow Yun-fat plays Gou Fei a tough guy criminal along with his friend Sam Sei who get mixed up with an outrageous criminal gang looking to hijack a bunch of weapons.  Well one thing leads to another and there is betrayal, killing and lots more killing as a wounded Gou Fei nurses himself back to health all the while training and exercising himself into a one man killing machine and kill he does.

 

Ringo Lam was one of the best action directors working in Hong Kong, in Full Contact he's on location in Bangkok where he proceeds to blow and shoot up the town.  There's some dirty stuff as well one of the gang members is a woman who is shall we say a little oversexed another is a scary monster of a man called Deano as in not Dean Martin.  Gou Fei has a wife who seems like a nice bring her home to meet the parents kind of gal.  Her occupation appears to be exotic dancer so in between all the mayhem we get lots of dirty dancing.

 

It's always good to see Chow Yun-fat in his prime, he was a very charismatic actor.  Another Hong Kong mainstay is Anthony Wong who frequently showed up as a weaselly bad guy in a lot of these crime films.  The actor Ann Bridgewater who played Chow's wife actually got out of the film business and became an occupational therapist.

Full Contact is exactly what it is a well made film with absolutely no purpose to it other than to have Ringo Lam stage a bunch of impressive action scenes.  

The film was written by Nam Yin, the running time is 104 minutes. 

1948 - THE AMAZING MR. X, is a fairly good little thriller

This not bad thriller about spiritualism has a nice gothic atmosphere to it mostly due to the cinematography of John Alton.  Alton bathed the film in lots of creepy light and shadows.  Alton was a pro he had photographed a very successful series of films working with director Anthony Mann.  They certainly brought out the best in each other with films like, T-Men, Border Incident, Devil's Doorway, Raw Deal and my personal favorite Reign of Terror. 

Anyway the story, two sisters living together in one of those expensive ocean side homes which they couldn't possibly afford believe they are being haunted by the ghost of the older sister's dead husband.  They consult a spiritualist who may or may not be the real thing but is definitely a smooth talker.  The spiritualist is played by some actor named Turhan Bey who is certainly a slick looking dude.  Also in the cast are femme fatale Lynn Bari, Cathy O'Donnell who was always a "girl next door" type and the ever reliable Richard Carlson who is probably remembered mostly for his science fiction films It Came From Outer Space, Creature From The Black Lagoon and Valley of the Gwangi. 

 

If this film has a flaw it's probably due to the improbable ending.  The filmmakers set up a fairly interesting situation but apparently couldn't figure out how to resolve it.  But this isn't the first film that had a messed up ending and it won't be the last one. 

The film was written by  Crane Wilbur, Muriel Roy Bolton and Ian McLellan Hunter, Hunter was a front for blacklisted writers during the Hollywood blacklist.  The running time is 78 minutes. 

1934 - BRITISH AGENT - confused romance/thriller

Leslie Howard is the very British agent working to undermine the Russian Revolution.  He hopes to bring a more sympathetic government into power that will support the British during World War I.  Kay Johnson is a Russian revolutionary who Howard falls in love with.  Unbeknown to Howard, Johnson is a double agent who will betray Howard in order to advance the cause of the Communist Revolution.

This is one confusing mess of a film.  The screenplay is so convoluted it's impossible to tell if this film is pro Russian Revolution or anti Russian Revolution.

Kay Francis the love interest for Leslie Howard playing the Russian agent is an interesting choice.  She might have been a little miscast. Francis was from Oklahoma and she didn't even attempt a European accent.  Future "Joker" villain Caesar Romero from the original Adam West version of Batman is a diplomat working with Howard.  The rest of the cast is made up of  the usual Warner Brothers stock company.

The film was directed by filmmaker pro Michael Curtiz but even he couldn't do much with this confusing mess of story elements and mismatched actors to make it coherent.

The film was written by Laird Houston Doyle and Roland Pertwee, the running time is a short 81 minutes.

1952 - THE BEAST MUST DIE - excellent crime thriller

From Argentina comes this excellent crime thriller.  The Beast Must Die concerns the fate of a writer who after his son is killed in a hit and run, attempts to find out who the responsible driver was.  Going undercover, his investigation causes a series of major complications.

The film was directed by Román Viñoly Barreto who worked during what is now considered the classical era of Argentina's film industry which ran from the 1930's to the 1950's.  The Argentina cinema at one point was releasing approximately 40 films a year in spite of political pressures from the Peron government and the Church.  In fact one of the performers Libertad Lamarque managed to earn the enmity of Evita Peron probably not a real healthy situation for her.

The Beast Must Die actually originates as a detective novel from a British author, Cecil Day-Lewis.  The director Claude Chabrol was so impressed with the story he also made a French version.

In spite of my digression on this post, I would emphasize again that this is an excellent thriller. 

This film was written by Narciso Ibáñez Menta and Román Viñoly Barreto, the running time is 95 minutes.

1987 - STAKEOUT, popular comedy thriller from the 1980's.

This buddy cop film was very popular at the time of release.  The critics gave it fairy decent reviews and it made good money for Disney Studios.

The plot is sort of a mash up of Hitchcock's Rear Window. Two cops played by Richard Dreyfuss and Emilo Estevez are on a stakeout at the home of a former girlfriend of a dangerous escaped convict.  The girlfriend just happens to be a real knockout and the Dreyfuss character manages to meet her and eventually sleep with her.  The last part of the film is an action climax with the cops taking on the escaped convict.

Richard Dreyfuss was at the peak of his career as a movie star.  He essentially played a cocky smart ass in film after film.  Emilio Estevez was probably at about the height of  his popularity and was considered a member of "The Brat Pack," a group of young actors that the press usually heaped scorn on.  In this film they both wear what can charitably be called "porno star mustaches."  The female lead was played by an actor named Madeline Stowe who naturally has to show some skin.

The film was produced by Disney's Touchstone division which released mildly R rated films without the Disney label on them.  A clever trick.  The director John Badham was a good studio craftsman who had bailed out Saturday Night Fever a film that was in chaos during production.  Needless to say Saturday Night Fever was very popular.

 

Stakeout is what you could call a crowd pleasing somewhat contrived studio production.  It has action, comedy and some leering sex jokes but it's all presented in a way so as to not offend the 80's audience.  It's kind of dated and really not that good, a time killer of a film for the most part.  Nothing special to see here.

The film was written by Jim Kouf, the running time is 117 minutes.

1998 - OUT OF SIGHT entertaining sexy crime thriller

Cast a couple of very hot stars, put them in a crime thriller, hire a top screenwriter and get a stylish director to blend it all together and you have the very entertaining Out Of Sight.

George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez are on the opposite sides of the law, he's a bank robber and she's a Federal Marshal.  After getting arrested for a failed robbery Clooney breaks out of prison and ends up being pursued by Lopez. One thing leads to another and Clooney and Lopez end up getting locked in the trunk of a stolen car.  Sure enough sparks fly between this hot couple and after her escape from the car Lopez is on the trail of fugitive Clooney who is planning a big heist in Detroit.

Out Of Sight was adopted from an Elmore Leonard story and it has the usual twists and turns he brings to his crime novels.  Leonard's stories always seem to have a bunch of odd ball characters who are usually cops and crooks and this story is no different.

Soderbergh is a clever director and he excels at these kinds of crime films  He knows how to show off his stars and he gets some great chemistry going betweenClooney and Lopez, like they needed any help.

 

A lot of credit should also be given to the screenwriter Scott Frank who has always been a talented reliable guy particularly in the crime thriller genre.  it's actually entertaining to see a group of talented people come together and create a smart and fun thriller for a change.

The running time is 123 minutes

1999 - THE LIMEY, entertaining revenge thrilller from Soderbergh

The director Steven Soderbergh and the writer Lem Dobbs put together this entertaining crime thriller about a hardened criminal from England who travels to Los Angeles to get to the bottom of his daughter's death.  The plot has been done before but this film takes the basic premise and spins it with some clever story telling and a really great cast.

 

In almost a nod to Hollywood's past history Soderbergh put together an excellent group of performers starting with Terence Stamp (General Zod) is the transplant from England.  Character actor Luis Guzmán who is always fun to see, is the person who helps Stamp. Lesley Ann Warren usually associated with singing and dancing roles plays an acting teacher.  "Blues" himself from The Wild Ones, Peter Fonda is a mysterious record producer mixed up in Stamp's daughter's death. Barry Newman is Fonda's lawyer.  Newman was the star of the car chase cult film Vanishing Point.

 

Soderbergh brought an interesting visual and editing style with flash forwards and flash backs to tell the story it gives the film a nice contemporary feel.  Terence Stamp was a big deal in the new wave British cinema of the 1960's and he gives an excellent performance thirty years later.  In fact the whole cast is working at a high level throughout this film.

The Limey was produced on a modest budget but unfortunately didn't make money. To bad, this is a quality film which is also a very entertaining one.

The running time is 89 minutes.

2025 - BLACK BAG a spy film or a domestic drama?

From Steven Soderbergh a filmmaker who's always game to film something different comes this story of two married spies one of who is suspected of being a traitor.

Michael Fassbender is the agent tasked with figuring out who the traitor is.  Cate Blanchett is his wife who he is deeply in love with but might be supplying a malware to the Russians that would cause a meltdown at a nuclear power plant.  To get to the truth Fassbinder invites all of the chief suspects for a gourmet dinner and drugs their food with truth serum as he interrogates them in a highly amusing scene.

I always enjoy Soderbergh's films he has a total command of the tools of film making and knows how to use them, he's not a showoff of a director.  However this film would seem like one of his more minor efforts.  It's kind of an interesting film but even with the threat of nuclear meltdown this crisis seems like a minor problem at best. The focus is mostly on the uninteresting marriage of Blanchett and Fassbender.

 

You can't argue with the casting, Blanchett and Fassbender are good.  One time Jame Bond, Pierce Brosnan  amusingly shows up as their spy boss.  The rest of the cast, Marisa Abela, Tom Burke, Naomie Harris and Regé-Jean Page are all very talented if somewhat unknown British actors.

If you are a fan of Soderbergh's films you should enjoy this, but it's an extremely lightweight thriller/drama.

Written by the talented David Koepp, the running time is 94 minutes.

2025 - ANOTHER SIMPLE FAVOR, late out of the gate sequel

The first film, A Simple Favor was an entertaining comedy/mystery with Anna Kendrick as a lifestyle vlogger who gets mixed up with and matches wits with a flamboyant woman (who dresses flamboyantly) played by Blake Lively.  Murder, attempted murder and insurance fraud all result with ordinary middle class mom Kendrick getting the upper hand with Lively and sending her to prison.  The film was an entertaining Hitchcock like thriller.

Seven years later this nobody asked for it sequel arrives with actors from the original cast recreating their roles from the first film.   In this film, the Blake Lively character is out of prison and getting ready to be married to a rich member of the Mafia (don't ask how this happened) in Sicily.  The Lively character persuades Kendrick to attend her wedding and be her maid of honor (ridiculously improbable).  Once again murder ensures with the viewer and the Kendrick character having to figure out what exactly is going on this time.

 

Another Simple Favor is to put it mildly a mess.   The convoluted plot turns and the foolish and at times unbelievable shenanigans of the characters finally defeat the film which clearly wanted to be in the tradition of the Hitchcock "beautiful people, beautiful places" formula. The last part of this film ends in a series of ridiculous scenes that would strain the most mediocre Agatha Christie story.

With the exception of Anna Kenderick who almost holds this mess together, it's completely forgettable and easy to see why Another Simple Favor went directly to streaming instead of getting a theatrical release.

The film was written by Jessica Sharze and Laeta Kalogridis and clearly no one actually read what they wrote before they filmed it.  The running time is 120 minutes.  

2024 - CONCLAVE, the pick a Pope film

With the passing of Pope Francis and the upcoming conclave of Cardinals to pick the new Pope for the Catholic Church.  People are streaming Conclave the "pick a new Pope" film.  In my case,  monkey see monkey do.

Conclave is a film thriller set in the Vatican.  The film stars Ralph Fiennes as the Cardinal in charge of running the three ring circus that is the process of picking a new Pontiff.  Briefly, stick the Cardinals in the Sistine chapel, have them cast secret ballots until there is a clear favorite candidate.  Burn the ballots in the Sistine Chapel fireplace. White smoke means they have a winner, back smoke means back to the drawing board. This stuff has been ingrained into every Catholic kid as the will of god.

The drama comes from all the political and personal intrigue going on with the Cardinals. There are lots of buried secrets, payoffs to other Cardinals, unwed mothers etc.  If you are looking for a film about the issues the Church has to confront, women as priests, birth control, treatment of LGBTQ, the conservative wing of the church vs the liberal wing, forget it.  This is strictly soap opera Dallas or Knots Landing stuff.  

 

You certainly can't fault the acting, Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci are very good.  John Lithgow shows up but he's about in every film or TV show these days. Isabella Rossellini is a nun who is in charge of housekeeping for the Cardinals which come to think about it is about the highest a woman can rise in the Catholic hierarchy.   

 

Conclave is a reasonably entertaining film, but the location of the Vatican is just a gimmick.  The film could have been easily set at a University, major Medical Center a World Bank or some place like that. 

The film was written by Peter Straughan, the running time is 120 minutes.

2016 - THE ACCOUNTANT, kind of absurd action thriller

With the internet suddenly full of movie trailer ads for The Accountant 2, it's probably time to take a look at the first film in what is apparently an attempt to turn future Accountant movies into an action series with Ben Affleck playing sort of an autistic James Bond.

Ben Affleck an autistic savant, is a wiz with numbers (he's an accountant).  He's also, a martial arts expert and an expert with firearms.  At times he works for the mob doing their books but at other times he's a secret high level informant for a member of the Treasury Department.  Affleck gets hired to check the books at a start up robotics company where he discovers embezzlement is going on.  This in turn leads to a group of hit men attempting to kill him and his female accountant helper in order to silence them of course. The female accountant is played by Anna Kendrick who looks like a midget standing next to accountant Affleck.   Little do these hit men know they are about to run into a real autistic killing machine.

The story is rather ludicrous, the action scenes are the usually shaky hand held camera mess and with the exception of Ben Affleck the characters are for the most part not really well defined.  The back story on how Affleck became a number crunching killing machine is essentially unbelievable.  Still when you take all of these things into consideration this is an entertaining action film even with all of this plot nonsense. 

 

The Accountant is blessed with a good cast even if a lot of their roles are small.  JK Simmons is Affleck's Treasury Department contact.  John Lithgow is the head of the robotics company, Jean Smart is his sister.  Jon Bernthal is a mysterious hit man and Jeffrey Tambor is a mob bookkeeper who teaches Affleck everything there is to know about sneaky accounting.  The Accountant is yet another example of a good cast really holding a movie together when the screenplay is not so hot.  Good actors have saved many a questionable movie.

The film was written by Bill Dubuque, the running time is 128 minutes.

1974 - THE TERRORISTS aka RANSOM

Mediocre movie watching continues with this film.  The batting average for good film watching has not been great lately.

In order to get Sean Connery back in the role of James Bond for Diamonds Are Forever, United Artists agreed to several of his demands,  Connery wanted one million dollars for his return and the right to produce three films of his choosing.  Connery didn't have much success with the films he chose, The Terrorists was one of these films.

 

In The Terrorists,  Connery with his Scottish accent and really stretching credibility plays Col. Nils Tahlvik, the head of security for a fictitious Scandinavian country called uncleverly "Scandinavia".  When the British ambassador is kidnapped by terrorists and a plane is hijacked at the same time, Connery has his hands full dealing with both terrorist acts and government ineptitude.  If this sounds like an interesting idea for a plot it sort of is.  Unfortunately the director Casper Wrede and the screenwriter Paul Wheeler can't seem to work up any tension or even interest in these conflicts for that matter.  The film plods along with lots of poor acting and an incredible mishmash of unbelievable English and sort of Swedish accents for a country called "Scandinavia."  

Even the photography by one of the greatest cinematographers in the history of film, Sven Nykvist looks like it was filmed as a TV show, clearly this was just a paycheck for him.  The film sort of has a twist ending and very little action.  The best you can say about this film is it looks like it's on the cold side since this was shot on location in "Scandinavia",  This film is just about a complete waste of time even for Sean Connery die hards.

The running time is 94 minutes.

2012 - LOOPER, very entertaining time travel thriller.

 The writer/director Rian Johnson is a very clever fellow.  Lately he's been concentrating on mysteries involving his character Benoit Blanc a apparently gay upscale private detective.  Looper was Johnson's third film and it was a combination of a science fiction time travel story and a thriller. 

The plot involves a criminal organization with a time machine who use it to send people they want killed back in time.  After the victim arrives in the past a hit man is waiting to kill him which will in effect erase him from existing in the future.  One of the hit men  played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt awaits his next victim who when he arrives back in time turns out to be his older self played by Bruce Willis.  Willis manages to escape being killed by his younger self and as they say let the fun of this elaborate plot begin.

 

Joseph Gordon Lewis is very good as the younger assassin trying to sort out this time travel paradox mess.  Bruce Willis is Bruce Willis as usual apparently his motivation in this film was hie ten million dollar paycheck.  There is a subplot involving Emily Blunt playing a mother with a son who has powerful if undeveloped  telekinetic powers that eventually figures into the plot as well.

 

Rian Johnson's inspiration for this story probably was Brian DePalms's Carrie, the very clever Spanish thriller Timecrimes and Shane Carruth's Primer one of the most complicated time travel films I have ever seen.  If I have a criticism of this film it's mostly because it turns into another tiresome Bruce Willis Die Hard type shoot-em up.  Was this in the screenplay?  Did Bruce Willis insist on a large scale action scene as was usually the case with his films?  Anyway annoying as the Bruce Willis bloodbath is it is it doesn't ruin the film.

The film was a financial success and led to Rian Johnson's next film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the only one of the recent trilogy that was any good.  Looper is a very good commercial entertainment that doesn't insult the audience's intelligence for a change.

The running time for Looper is 118 minutes.