1943 - DESTINATION TOKYO, 40's war film is way too long

During World War II a U.S. navy submarine improbably sneaks into Tokyo Bay to radio information back to the Doolittle raid pilots for the first raid on Tokyo.

This is a war film that is over two hours long and is full of propaganda and talk, lots of talk.  Cary Grant is probably the handsomest submarine captain in the history of the Silent Service and the crew is the usual cross section of good old American stereotypes.  In other words this is a typical 40's propaganda piece with not one cliche left unused.

The film was written and directed by first time director Delmar Daves, who went on to have a good career directing westerns however Destination Tokyo is not a western.

Warner Brothers must have been pretty high on the script.  Cary Grant was one of the few freelance actors in Hollywood during the 40's so there was nothing cheap about his salary.  The film has high production values although the submarine sets are so big it looks like the crew is on some sort of underwater Carnival Cruise liner.

On the plus side, the sea battles are pretty decent, with cool models and miniatures zipping around in a studio tank.  Cary Grant gives a good restrained performance although he's still Cary Grant in a sailor suit. 

Still the propaganda aspects of the story and the long running time make Destination Tokyo mighty slow going.

135 minutes.

1980 - THE HUNTER, Steve McQueen's final film

Steve McQueen's final film is a pretty decent action film with a good sense of humor.

 

McQueen's an over the hill bounty hunter with a pregnant girlfriend and an old junker of an automobile hunting down people who jump their bail.  The film gets a lot of mileage out of McQueen's inability to barely parallel park his car much less drive it. 

The film has some good action and is supposedly based on the life of an actual bounty hunter names Ralph Thorson although that seems rather suspect. 

 The Hunter was capably directed by a TV director named Buzz Kulik who could usually be counted on to deliver high quality TV films like Brian's Song. But what the film has going for it is the charisma of Steve McQueen who was suffering from lung cancer when the film was shot.  McQueen kind of  looks in tough shape physically but he still delivers the goods.

97 minutes, written by Ted Leighton (actually a pseudo name for the writers Richard Levinson & William Link) and Peter Hyams

1979 - REAL LIFE, Albert Brooks very funny/strange/intense mock documentary

Comedian and filmmaker Albert Brook's first film is about a filmmaker named "Albert Brooks" attempting to document the life of a "real family" in the city of Phoenix.

This is a film with some seriously funny and weird stuff in it.  It  anticipates the "reality TV " shows  that plague just about every cable TV network.  It's creepy and prescient how much Brooks got right about this deplorable genre of TV shows.

The film is well cast with a funny standout performance from Charles Grodin who is kind of a forgotten actor today.  Grodin's really got the pathetic upper middle class character down as he schlumps his way through Brook's ridiculous documentary.    

Real Life depends on the comedic personality of the bull**** artist "Albert Brooks" character Brooks has perfected.  Brooks is very funny but also very obnoxious and after a while it gets to be somewhat of an endurance contest to sit through this film.  A montage sequence with the family at the Phoenix zoo could have been easily dropped from the film.

Real Life is satire of American media and life at a very high level.  

99 minutes, written by Albert Brooks, Monica Johnson and Harry Shearer.

1987 -RADIO DAYS, Woody Allen nostalgia

 Woody Allen reflects on growing up in Queens, New York.  A large part of this trip down memory lane is Allen reflecting on the radio programs he enjoyed as a kid.  

This is a very minor Woody Allen film, sort of funny, episodic and completely forgettable.  Allen seems to be in a very nostalgic mood.  He's loaded the film up with old music from the 1940's.  He's also stuck in some of his favorite actors from his previous films, like Jeff Daniels, Tony Roberts, Dianne Wiest, Julie Kavner and his former leading lady Diane Keaton.  

The film has beautiful photography from Carlo Di Palma who had worked with Antonioni and the art direction and production design are of a very high quality, the film looks like it was actually filmed in the 1940's.  One of the enjoyable things about Woody Allen films is that they look good and are extremely well made. 

 

The problem with Radio Days is that is is a nothing film.  The comedy in the film are vignettes with no real thread holding them together.  The film is nothing more than a time killer which at least has the benefit of being short if not sweet.   

85 minutes.

1961 - BANG YOU'RE DEAD, 1962 - I SAW THE WHOLE THING, a couple of Hitchcock TV films

Bang You're Dead is a Hitchcock directed episode from his half hour anthology series.  The story is about a little boy pretending to be a cowboy who manages to get his hands on a real gun and bullets.  The suspense is created by having the boy walk around his neighborhood pretending to shoot his neighbors.  Will he actually pull the trigger of the real gun?  This is a well done short film from Hitchcock using his Spellbound POV trick, an over sized prop of a hand and a gun pointed at people to ramp up the tension.

I Saw the Whole Thing has Hitchcock working with his Trouble With Harry star John Forsythe again.  Forsythe is a writer involved in a court trial where he as been accused of being a hit and run driver.  This is yet another version of Rashomon with the writer attempting to discredit each of the witnesses by showing how they all saw different versions of the accident.  Hitchcock had done a similar TV show called Incident at a Corner, the nature of truth was obviously a theme that interested him.

However,  I Saw the Whole Thing doesn't really have any special Hitchcock touches and falls back on John Forsythe to carry the film.  This is mostly a standard courtroom drama with the expected twist ending that his TV shows always had.

30 minutes,  Bang You're Dead.

60 minutes,  I Saw the Whole Thing.

1975 - HUSTLE, sleeze from Robert Aldich

Another old school Hollywood director struggles for relevance in 1970's Hollywood.  Robert Aldrich coming off his success of The Longest Yard with Burt Reynolds teamed up with Reynolds again for this "sleazy slice" of Los Angeles life.

Aldrich was always a director with a blunt hit you over the head technique but this story set a new low for him.  Cynical cop Burt Reynolds is shacked up with high class hooker Catherine Denevue.  Reynolds investigates the drowning of a girl who was involved in the sex trade business in L.A.  Meanwhile the dead girl's father wants revenge as the cliches pile up higher and higher.  Hustle is either a criticism of the lack or morality in a corrupt American culture or a big time Aldrich wallow in slime.

Aldrich cast some of his old actor buddies like Ernest Borgnine and Eddie Albert and he had his usual cinematographer Joseph Biroc with him but it's not much help.   Borgnine and Albert seem like they should be in another film preferably something set in the 1950's and for a film showing the grimy aspects of Los Angles, Biroc made the whole thing way too pretty.

The crappy screenplay was by a hack writer with pretensions named Steven Shagan who let everyone down for this film.  

120 minutes.

2012 THE NEWSROOM , another Aaron Sorkin blabberfest

With all the carrying on about the new Aaron Sorkin series The Newsroom, nobody bothers to mention that this is just a remake of Sorkin's earlier and better series Sports Night.

Tiresome TV news anchor Will McAvoy has a meltdown in front of a college audience Q and A.  This brings a lot of soul searching and a realization that it's time for him to be a real newsman instead of a talking head.  McAvoy's boss improbably hires McAvoy's former lover MacKenzie McHale to be his new executive producer.  Their first big story is the Gulf Oil spill, where they scoop the competition and reveal the truth of the extent of the catastrophe.

The best I can say for this talky motormouth show is that it finally got better after about a 1/2 hour of endless unceasing chatter.  People just don't talk like this.  But in the world of Aaron Sorkin nobody has an opinion without launching into a windy tirade about the indifference and evil of you name it.

HBO likes to make quality original programming.  They try to attract people like Martin Scorcese, Michael Mann and in this case Aaron Sorkin.  In Sorkin's case, he is the creator,  executive producer and writer of this show.  Sorkin is a half decent writer but nobody apparently was able to tell him that what he was producing was a lot of long winded rubbish.

Shows like The Newsroom are the result of letting a semi talented person run amock creatively with no one around to tell him no.

75 minutes.

1983 - NATE AND HAYES, 1980's pirate movie

Nate and Hayes is an action adventure film in the style of Spielberg's Indiana Jones series.  The film was not a success.  

The film looks good, has some magnificent New Zealand scenery and some decent action set pieces. Tommy Lee Jones is a semi charismatic lead and an actor names Jenny Seagrove as the "damsel in distress,"  is pretty good given the limitations of that part.  The 2nd lead Michael O'Keefe is a complete stiff who can't seem to work up any chemistry with either Jones or Seagrove.  He brings the film down big time.

Among the writing credits are John Hughes the author of Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club and other teenage ilk films that were popular for a while in the 80's and 90's.  I'm not exactly sure what he brought to the table.

Nate and Hayes is no better or worse than any of the Indiana Jones films, and is short enough not to wear our it's welcome, essentially  it's a time killer.  The scenery is nice.

96 minutes, the film was written by John Hughes and David Odell

1987 - DJANGO 2 or DJANGO RIDES AGAIN or DJANGO STRIKES AGAIN

The actual sequel to Corbucci's Django is a mighty big letdown. Django's been in a monastery trying to make up for his gunfighter ways.  But a film about a guy in a monastery would be very boring to watch so after some contrived story line business about his daughter being abducted by bad guys we are off and running with another blood bath.

 

 

Franco Nero is back and so is the machine gun.  Nero shoots about as many people as he did in the first Django but this film completely lacks any of the style of the first film, it's just a mediocre Italian western.

About the only thing of interest is the actor Donald Pleasence showing up in yet another Italian film.  He may be cashing a paycheck but he's always fun to watching playing another quirky character, his specialty.

88 minutes, written by Franco Reggiani, Nello Rossati, Dialogue: Anna Miserocchi.
Anna Miserocchi.

1966 - NOON WINE, Peckinpah's TV film

Sam Peckinpah wrote and directed this adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's short novel.  This is a Peckinpah film at it's most lowkey with the exception of Jason Robards giving his usual over the top performance.  The guy had a hard time with that subtle acting thing.

Katherine Anne Porter's story is essentially a character study of a farmer called Royal Thompson a big mouth small town braggart personality constantly running his mouth.  The actual story provides most of the interest in this adaptation it certainly isn't anything special in terns of film technique.  The film looks to be shot on video tape and is in black and white which gives it a very dated look.

Olivia de Havilland plays Robard's wife and she gives a good restrained and thoughtful performance.  Then again anyone would look restrained next to Robards.

48 minutes

1944 - THE UNINVITED, a serious ghost story

A brother and sister try to get to the bottom of a ghost haunting their home in Cornwall, England.

The Uninvited is a ghost story where the ghost is real for a change.  However the actual story is basically a mystery which borrows a lot from Rebecca.  Ray Milland is the star. Milland was always a reliable if kind of boring leading man in 1940's films.  He happened to luck into getting the main lead in Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's The Lost Weekend, which won him an Academy Award and gained lots of cred for him in the industry.  It's not surprising that the producer of The Uninvited Charles Brackett cast Milland in this film.

This is an interesting film, well made and written if a little stiff in the storytelling.  I would say this is a typical 1940's Hollywood film, trying to be a little different but not too different.

 

99 minutes.

1966 - WHAT'S UP TIGER LILY? silly Woody Allen movie

Woody Allen and some of his cronies take a Japanese spy film called International Secret Police:  Key of Keys and dub in a new soundtrack with a silly story and a bunch of half clever jokes.  The result is sort of funny and mighty stupid.   

 Akiko Wakabayashi

The producer took the finished film which ran about an hour and stuck in some songs by The Lovin' Spoonful and padded it out with some additional footage.  Allen ended up suing the producer for compromising his artistic vision?  When this dopey film made money,  Allen dropped his lawsuit.

The whole thing hardly seems worth the trouble. 

Probably one of the stranger things about the film is the involvement of the future stars of You Only Live Twice, Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama.  Between the two of them these two actors were chased around by King Kong, Godzilla, Ghidorah and James Bond.

 Mie Hama

What's Up Tiger Lily is about half hilarious with most of the real funny stuff coming in the first half of the film,  after that the picture seems to run out of ideas and just drags itself across the finish line.

80 minutes, written by Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Len Maxwell, Julie Bennett, Frank Buxton, Mickey Rose, Bryna Wilson and Hideo Andô.

1962 - RED NIGHTMARE, defense department film about commies ain't subtle

This one's been kicking around the Internet for a while.  Red Nightmare was a defense department propaganda piece about the dangers of communism.  The film is narrated by Jack Webb in his "Joe Friday" voice.

Apparently in the middle of the Soviet Union circa 1960, a replica of a typical Midwestern town is being used by the Russkies to educate would be spies and saboteurs about the American way of life for their own sinister purposes.  But enough of that fear mongering , lets get to the actual story.

Good old American citizen Jerry Donovan takes his family and his freedom for granted in some nondescript middle American town.  But he is about to learn a lesson.  One night AKA It's a Wonderful Life.  He finds himself living in a country controlled by commies.  Jerry races around small town USA and finds that the ordinary citizens which include his family are acting like a bunch of mind controlled robots.  Arrested by the secret police and put on trial, Jerry makes an impassioned speech about the loss of his rights.  As he is being executed by authorities, he wakes up to find it was all a dream.  Jerry has learned his lesson about liberty. 

Red Nightmare may have been produced by the Defense Department, but it is a Warner Brothers film all the way. The writer, director and actors were all from the studio and apparently the whole thing was actually supervised by Jack Warner himself.

Red Nightmare would be a great double feature with Warner's left wing piece of  propaganda film Mission to Moscow.  It would be a something for everyone kind of movie night for leftie nuts and right wing extremists.

25 minutes

1957 - DECISION AT SUNDOWN, Randolph Scott rides yet again

The second film in the Boetticher/Scott western series.  Randolph Scott is a cowboy on a mission of vengeance to kill the man who drove his wife to suicide etc.

The best of the Budd Boetticher westerns were shot on location, Decision at Sundown is strictly a filmed on the back lot thing with Scott trapped in a livery stable for a good piece of film.   For a western this looks pretty claustrophobic.

The cast is mostly a collection of "B" movie or character actors.  They look about as creaky as the plot.  The dialog is from the school of western cliches.

Disappointing.

77 minutes.