1948 - HAMLET, Laurence Olivier version

Shakespeare's tragedy if performed complete can run about 4 hours.  For his film of Hamlet, Olivier cut major chunks of the play but it still logs in at about 2 1/2 hours which is a lot of time watching a film, especially a film based on a Shakespeare play which requires a lot of concentration in this ADD cinema watching age.

This version of the play could probably be called the "watch before I have a test on Hamlet in school." .  The performances are from the classical tradition with actors parading around in big costumes and reciting as if they were playing in a theater.  It's not bad acting, it just seems a little dated.  However Olivier is good as Hamlet he was a very good screen actor with an impressive presence.

This production unlike Olivier's version of Henry the V, is not in color but gloomy black and white.  At times parts of the films are so dark I don't think anybody even bothered to build a set for some of the scenes.  I know this play is a tragedy but things couldn't been that dark and depressing in Elsinore Castle all of the time.

Being the great Shakespeare critic that I am I must say I have always found the finale of Hamlet to be a little contrived.  All that poison sword tip business and poison chalice stuff seems like an easy way to wrap up a very long play.  I think the Bard probably could have used a little bit or a rewrite towards the end.

155 Minutes

1946 - THE OVERLANDERS, World War II Australian cattle drive western

During World War II, the Australian government wanted to promote their contribution to the war effort.  Great Britain's Ealing studios usually a provider of genteel English comedies featuring Alec Guinness, decided to take up the challenge.  Ealing sent director Harry Watt on a research trip to figure out a story.  The end result was a film about a cattle drive from northern Australia to the south to prevent the cattle falling into the hands of the Japanese in case of an invasion.

Tbe Overlanders was filmed on location by Watt with Australian actors and a camera crew in some fairly rugged locations.  The film has an epic scope and impressive photography, it is also a rather boring film story wise.

The main problem with The Overlanders is that the cattle drive film has been done to death.  Dressing it up by filming it in Australia can't really change or improve on the typical troupes of this genre. Still the film moves along it's only 91 minutes and is actually fairly unpretentious.

 

Written by Harry Watt and Ralph Smart.

1976 - FELLINI'S CASANOVA - the life of Casanova as rewritten by Fellini

Critics at the time of release commented that Fellini didn't seem to like his main character Casanova which was rather odd since the film was supposedly about the life of Casanova.  Fellini's Casanova is a rather empty film especially for a director like Fellini whose films are usually the "life is a carnival" thing.

Fellini's Casanova was his follow up to Amarcord which had been a big commercial and critical success.  Where that film was upbeat and funny this is one dour and cold film.  It probably didn't help Fellini's Casanova that the film was shot entirely in the studio.  This gave the film a phoney but I will have to say an interesting look.   Fellini always had the best cameramen and set designers working on his film. 

As was the process with a lot of Fellini's later films, the actors didn't actually have dialog to speak, the were instructed by Fellini to just say numbers after which he would dub in the dialog.  Fellini frequently worked from a story outline with out a fully prepared script which tended to make his later films more a series of episodes rather than a fully realized story.

 Fellini's Casanova seems to be primarly about the sex life of Casanova, but in this film all the silly sex scenes aren't presented as much fun.  The point seems to be that Casanova's hedonistic lifestyle was extremely unfulfilling and empty.  Well whatever, the film does have a few interesting scenes and it does look good.

155 minutes.

2011 - TRANSFORMERS: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, or more crap for the treadmill

Unbelievably 2 hours and 30 minutes of robots bashing and busting each other and anything else that gets in their way.  This is the third in the Shia LaBeouf trilogy not to be confused with the Apu trilogy or Pagnol's Fanny trilogy.

The appeal for Michael Bay seems to be in staging elaborate scenes of improbable mass destruction while slobbering over the latest female flavor of the moment Rosie Huntington something or other.

The third film in this series is basically the same as the first two films no better or worse than the previous films.

154 minutes.

2011 - HAYWIRE, an attempt to update a 1960's spy film

Quirky director Steven Soderbergh and the writer Lem Dobbs seem to have a few ideas on their minds for this film.  They want to make an action star our of a mixed martial artist named Gina Carano, they are attempting to update the serious spy thriller which was usually competing with the James Bond series to a more contemporary time period and finally they are trying to make the action scenes in this film a little more realistic.

Since Carano had limited acting experience, Soderbergh put together a fairly high powered cast to support her.  Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Channing Tatum and Ewan McGregor are essentially supporting characters for Carano.

This is a modest but good action film.  The fight sequences are staged as realistically as possible and whatever Gina Carano lacks in acting ability she is certainly in very good shape physically when it comes to the running, jumping, fighting and shooting stuff.

As with all of Soderbergh's films this a technically well made and competent film that avoids a lot of overblown director's "touches."

93 minutes.

1953 - I CONFESS, one of Hitchcock's very underrated films.

Alfred Hitchcock had a lot of problems making I Confess.  Warner Brother's studio found the story of a priest caught in a murder/love triangle a little too hot of a subject for their taste.  Hitchcock had to modify the story and change the ending of the film.  Hitchcock wanted to use Swedish actress Anita Bjork but Bjork had a rather messy personal life which the studio thought would have been fodder for the gossip columns.  

For his male lead, Hitchcock cast Montgomery Cliff a method actor who was also a very emotionally tortured person.  Hitchcock was a director who preferred actors who worked to his carefully preplanned visual pattern.  With Montgomery Cliff, Hitchcock had to wait for him to get into the mood.   But for all the problems Hitchcock had with Cliff, it is a very impressive performance

I Confess is one of Alfred Hitchcock's best directed films.  He shot much of the film in Quebec and brought a real feeling of atmosphere to the film.  This was a story that the Catholic director put a lot of himself and his feelings about religion into the film. 

I Confess is one of the few films that does not feature singing nuns or comical Irish priests but instead focuses on the individual's personal spiritual relationship to their religious beliefs.

92 minutes, written by George Tabori and William Archibald.

2001 - LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER - crap to watch on the treadmill

Lara Croft:  Tomb Raider is a little over 90 minutes long so that's about 3 / 30 minute workouts on the treadmill to make the time go faster during the morning workout.  The additional 10 minutes of running time is the fooling around part where you set up the speed of the treadmill and set the timer for the morning run.

The film stars Angelina Jolie as the video game character.  Jolie is kind of young in this film, she has big pouty lips and a padded bra.  Her face is hard looking because she is supposed to be a hard ass.  She has a very bad British accent.

This is basically Indiana Jones if Indiana Jones was a chick instead of Harrison Ford.  The big action pieces are rehashes of the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade scenes involving a mix of science and fantasy.  One scene is lifted from Ray Harryhausen's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad which the director just ramped up with more frenzied action and special effects.  The bottom line, this film is very derivative but then what do you expect from a video game turned into a movie.

100 minutes

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL - a slick action thriller

Got this one out of the way.

Same old same old with a couple of variations in the formula.  Cruise and Paramount hired Pixar animation director Brad Bird who was able to stick some humor into this series.  The film is still pretty darn shallow even for a lightweight entertainment.

The humor in this film comes from the failure of the high tech gadgets when the team needs them the most which is probably the main contribution of Brad Bird.  However I have to assume that Paramount and the producer kept a tight lease on Bird because the film is still essentially the same as the previous three films.

A very watchable time killer although I couldn't remember most of it and really didn't care.

Mission:  Impossible - Ghost Protocol is over two hours which is way to long for this kind of film.

132 minutes.

2013 - THE WORLD'S END, messy mix of comedy, science fiction and a little drama

After a disappointing shot at an Anime type teenage love story, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  The director Edgar Wright and his actor buddies Simon Pegg and Nick Frost try to return to form with a science fiction comedy.  The World's End is a step up from Scott Pilgrim but not a real high step.

The film is about a bunch of aging high school buddies bar hopping through a small town.  They just happen to stumble onto a space alien invasion of robots.  This film borrows from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Invaders from Mars and The Earth Dies Screaming.  The film also borrows some dialog from Roger Corman's The Wild Angels.  All this nerd hipster stuff gets a little tiresome but I have to admit a lot of this film is pretty funny.  Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are funny guys and the fights with the robots are well done.

Unfortunately there is an attempt to add some profound meaning to this film.  You have to sit through a lot of tiresome stuff about friendship, male bonding and growing up.  Simon Pegg and Nick Frost actually do a decent job with these scenes but it seems like a lot of heavy crap to add to a film that is essentially a goofy comedy.  The dramatic elements are really trite and I've seen it all before in many other television shows and movies.

The uneven mix of all these genres might indicate that Edgar Wright is struggling with what type of film he wants to make in the future.  I wonder how many more of these genre rehash films he can keep spitting out?   It's starting to look like Wright's television series Spaced, which was very funny but had interesting characters which mixed with the funny situations could be his career highlight. 

109 minutes, written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.

1952 - THE SNIPER, the psycho killer on the loose 1950's version.

An attempt to dramatize a story about a deeply disturbed Army veteran, The Sniper is finally done in by the conventions of 1950's attitudes about mental illness. 

Arthur Franz is the psycho shooter who has a real hatred of women. In fact he hates them so much he decides to get rid of them.  He's sort of an early version of Norman Bates without the stuffed body in the cellar.  The police have to get Franz before he pops more women which is probably the most interesting aspect of the film.  The on location photography in San Francisco and the police investigation of the killings are also quite interesting.

However the least successful element of the film is the very dated psychoanalysis of the killer's mind by a police psychologist attempting to help the police understand his motives.  At one point the psychologist makes an earnest plea for locking up anyone who even remotely has some kind of deviant thought.  If you think about it, that would be most of the population of this country.

For all the overblown pseudo psychoanalysis, the film actually ends on a tense and understated note.  It's unfortunate that the rest of the film couldn't have been used this approach.

87 minutes.

1943 - CRAZY HOUSE, from the guys that brought you Hellzapoppin'

Olsen and Johnson are back in another comedy for Universal Pictures.  Edward Cline who had directed W. C. Fields was in charge this time.  The results are disappointing.

For whatever reason the anarchaic spirit of Hellazpoppin' seems to be lost this time.  Olsen and Johnson are still up for any type of gag they can think of but their timing seems way off.  The film is also overloaded with musical numbers and singers, from Alan Jones to Count Basie.  There is also an extremely overbearing performer called Cass Daley who is featured in some very stupid specialty numbers

This Olsen and Johnson production actually has some sort of plot.  Having been kicked out of Universal Studios they set up a film at Miracle Pictures (If it's a good picture it's a Miracle).  The chance to take some major shots at Hollywood never materializes, the musical numbers just keep coming and coming and coming.

The film does have a few decent moments which come mostly at the end when they are previewing their picture for an audience.  Only in these scenes do Olsen and Johnson get to show their madcap vaudeville stuff.  Olsen and Johnson were comedians who appeared to work best without the structure of a formal script.

80 minutes.

1991 - HE SAID, SHE SAID - is another romantic comedy.

Writing a negative review of this film is mostly a "what's the point" post.  He Said, She Said is what it is.

The film has an elaborate flashback structure about a couple who get together, break up and finally get together again.  Probably the only interesting thing about this film is that it was directed by a man and a woman although you would never be able to tell if it wasn't pointed out.

The film follows the usual formula, she's a career woman who is kind of a cute ditz who in real life no guy would want to hang out with.  Naturally she wants to get married.  He's a good looking playboy who can have all the hot women he wants.  A one point he passes on a young and kind of hot looking Sharon Stone.  The guy has commitment issues of course when it comes to long term relationships.

Will they work out their relationship and get together in the end?  I wonder how it will all turn out?

115 minutes.

1962 - THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, boring remake of a silent film success.

This is an elaborate remake of a silent film success which started Latin type Rudolph Valentino.  No expense was apparently sparred by MGM.  The film lost a lot of money

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the usual miscast mess with Glenn Ford playing an Argentine playboy.  Ford's a member of a rich land owning family which has Lee J. Cobb as the patriarch giving a hammy and fortunately short performance.  Part of the family are European German's for some reason and since this film is set during World War II they are also evil Nazis.  Ford ends up partying in Paris during the war and falls in love with Ingrid Thulin a Swedish actress who was known for working with Ingmar Bergman.  Thulin plays a French woman of course, MGM glamored her up and also ended up dubbing her voice with Angela "Mrs Potts" Lansbury.  You can already see the train wreck coming.

 

Vincente Minnelli was under contract to MGM and was hired to direct.  Minnelli was known for stylish musicals and over blown if entertaining melodramas so he wasn't the worse choice for this film.  However Minnelli wasn't exactly on his game with this gfilm.  He clearly didn't respond to the actors and most of his interest seems to be in photographing very expense but phony looking sets and pretty on location shots of Paris.  

This film runs over two hours and seems to consist entirely of Glenn Ford and Ingrid Thulin walking around Paris and constantly talking that love talk stuff they liked to do in these old films.

 

 

An expensive big budget disaster that is a companion piece to MGM's other wreck of a remake, Mutiny on the Bounty.

153 minutes, written by Robert Ardrey and John Gay.

1969 - TOPAZ, another disappointing later period Hitchcock film

After flopping with Torn Curtain,  Hitchcock tried again in the spy genre with Topaz.  Hitchcock's plan was to make a "realistic Bond" film. 

This supposedly realistic James Bond thriller basically comes down too guys in suits sitting around talking about stuff, in this case the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.  A 30 year old political crisis with guys talking was just the sort of film that screamed "out of it."  Hitchcock once the master of providing entertaining films had really lost his way as he wandered around in some sort of film making senility.

The cast was made up mostly of unknown and character actors.  Hitchcock picked an unknown European actor names Frederick Stafford as his lead.  Stafford had the look of a James Bond type but his acting left a lot to be desired.  The rest of the cast was made up of French actors who just don't seem to click in the film.  The only recognizable name is John Forsythe not really much of a big name in the movies but an actor Hitchcock could probably get along with.

Hitchcock had a lot of personal and professional problems to deal with during the making of Topaz.  He never seemed to get a focus on the script and the film had enough plot for about 4 spy thrillers.

Some critics championed the film, Leonard Maltin in the video introduction on the DVD comes off more as an apologist than an actual critic.  But do not be fooled this is a very poor film.

143 minutes, written by Samuel A. Taylor.