1962 - THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, disappointing Hammer prouducion.

Well at least it's short because this is a slow moving version of the old melodrama that's been kicking around for years.  You think that The Phantom of the Opera would be perfect for the Hammer treatment but the director Terence Fisher seemed to get bogged down with the opera segments and the mystery of the Phantom.

The film has a decent cast, Heather Sears, Herbert Lom and Michael Gough.  They are certainly up to the Grand Guignol aspects of the story.

Universal took a shot at remaking The Phantom of the Opera in 1943 and it had a lot of the same issue as this version.  It had to many opera sequences and the mystery of the Phantom took forever to solve.  A boring film.

84 minutes.

1960 - BRIDES OF DRACULA, where's Dracula?

A very dumb French school teacher releases Baron Meinster, a vampire and all hell breaks loose.  It's up to Dr. Van Helsing to stop Meinster and his vampire brides.  

Apparently Brides of Dracula had a lot of censorship and script problems.  The film was rewritten by the producer, Jimmy Sangster,  Hammer's top screenwriter and Peter Cushing.  Major parts of the story at times just don't make any sense.  You can see there must have been some issues since Dracula isn't even in the film but has his name is featured in the title. 

Still for all the script problems, nobody knows how to do battle with vampires like Peter Cushing. His confrontations with Baron Meinster are definitely the high points of the film and the final battle in an abandoned windmill is very entertaining. 

Coming in under 90 minutes, this is a film that does not push it's luck.  An entertaining B-movie from Hammer studios.

85 minutes.

1963 - PARANOIAC, sort of implausible horror thriller from Hammer

Hammer's go to screenwriter Jimmy Sangster borrowed from a couple of Hitchcock films to put it mildly.  There are traces of Vertigo and Psycho in this heavily plotted film.

The film is well directed by Freddie Francis who was a top cinematographer in England for many years.  Photographed in high contrast black and white Paranoiac looks very good.

But probably the standout in this film is the performance of Oliver Reed.  Talk about over the top.  Reed plays the potential alcoholic heir to a family estate and he really "lets er rip," as the British like to say.  Whether he is slugging down a bottle of brandy, driving his car through a flower garden or  playing a pipe organ in the basement of the estate, Reed's over the top acting is really fun to watch.

I don't think anyone would mistake this film for some sort of a classic thriller, this is a Hammer production after all.  However, there are enough plot twists and overacting by a scenery chewing cast to make this a very enjoyable time killer.

100 minutes.

1964 - MARNIE, Hitchcock loses the light.

 Marnie is a Hitchcock film that has it's defenders but I wonder if these defenders have actually watched this film recently.  It's not very good but very fascinating.  Exactly what Hitchcock ever saw in this story completely escapes me.  Hitchcock had been critical of Spellbound a film that he felt had a lot of psychological mumble jumble.  However Marnie has as much pseudo psychological garbage in it as Spellbound.

If there is any insight to be gained in Marnie, it's mostly watching Hitchcock load the film up with loving closeups of the actor Tippi Hedren.  She is carefully photographed in about every conceivable way and clothed and gowned to the "nines".  It's been well documented that Hitchcock had an almost pathetic infatuation with Hedren needless to say this situation did not end well.  The problem with Tippi Hedren was that she couldn't act her way out of a paper bag.  At least Spellbound for all its issues had Ingrid Bergman an actual performer.  About the only one who survives this mess is Sean Connery who at least turns in a real performance.

The other major problem with Marnie was the terrible script that Hitchcock put together with the writer Jay Presson Allen.  Hitchcock always claimed he was a visual director but almost every actor in this film yaks away in scene after scene.  Marnie would probably have worked better as a stage play than a film.

Marnie marks the end of Hitchcock's association with Bernard Herrmann.  Hermann wrote a very melodramatic score for the film.  Apparently Herrmann felt that Tippi Hedren was completely miscast in the film and tried to boost the film with a lot of over the top music.  Hitchcock was  not pleased with the score.

Hitchcock's previous film The Birds had it's issues but at least it was an interesting film.  Marnie marks the beginning of Hitchcock's very depressing decline at Universal Studios.

130 minutes.

1975 - OVERLORD, D-Day from the infantry soldier's point of view.

The director Stuart Cooper decided to tell a story about a World War II recruit training for the Normandy invasion.  He ended up mixing actual war footage and carefully filmed black and white recreations.  It's an impressive accomplishment I just wish I would have liked the film a little better.

Cooper should get a lot of credit for sorting through a bunch of World War II footage and picking out film clips that weren't beat up and scratched to hell.  The cinematographer John Alcott used old cameras and camera lens to match the lighting of the actual war footage and except for a couple of scenes it all looks very seamless.

The problem I have with this film is the central story that revolves around the young recruit and his premonition of death that he has throughout the film.  The actor playing the recruit drains all the emotion out of the character which makes it extremely difficult to work up any sympathy for him.  I can appreciate that Cooper didn't want to load the film up with a lot of overblown drama but I don't think it would have hurt to have a little emotion in the film especially from the central character.

Overlord is an impressive technical achievement but it doesn't have much heart to it.

85 minutes.

2013 - MACHETE KILLS, a failed B-movie spoof

Hispanic filmmaker Robert Rodriguez can't seem to let go of the Machete character he created for the Grindhouse film he and Quentin Tarantino directed in 2007.  The first film Machete was over the top with it's silly violence and comedy bits.   But the film also had a bizarre cast which included Lindsey Lohan, Cheech Martin, Steven Seagal and Robert De Niro of all people.

Going back to the well with the same silly formula as the first film just shows how tired his exaggerated B movie concept has become.  Rodriguez pulled together another eccentric cast and has lots of over the top violence but it all seems kind of stupid this time. 

As the lead Rodriguez again uses Danny Trejo an actor who is so physically stiff he seems like he can barely walk across the set much less hack people to death with a really big knife.  Rodriguez managed to talk Mel Gibson into appearing in his film and talk about how the mighty have fallen.  At least Gibson managed to inject some humor into this turkey but it's kind of painful to see him in this "bow wow" of a film at all. 

Toward the end of Machete Kills, Rodriguez steals the plot of Moonraker with a space station in orbit ready to start a new world order.  It was at this point in the film I finally realized what I was watching was a very cut rate James Bond film.

108 minutes, written by Kyle Ward.

2014 - MONUMENTS MEN, interesting and disappointing.

Kind of a letdown.  Considering the subject matter and the cast this should have been a much better film.  George Clooney starred, directed, co-wrote and co-produced this film and he probably took on more than he should have.  The film at times really strains to get from point A to point B.

Clooney put together a real charismatic cast, Matt Damon, John Goodman, Bill Murray, that guy from Dowton Abbey Hugh Bonneville, Bob Balban and smiling Frenchman John Durjadin.  Cate Blanchett is also in the film as a French art historian but I'm not really sure why.  She doesn't really bring a thing to the film and her subplot could have been easily cut out of the film.

The whole idea of a group of middle aged art scholars rushing across Europe during World War II to prevent the Nazi's from destroying the cultural history of Europe seems like a great idea for a film.  However the screenplay can't seem to establish a clear story line and and splitting the group of art historians up for some mini adventures just dilutes the film.   

 But, this is a film that is certainly very watchable.  The actors are all very enjoyable  and I have to admit that George Clooney does have a lot of screen presence.

118 minutes.

2012 - CLOUD ATLAS, decent attempt at trying something different

At least everyone involved was trying for something different this time.  From the opening of the film where it is announced that no one likes stories that jump back and forth in time the film proceeds to do just that.  You get five interconnected stories and a prologue and epilogue.  The film also has a cast that plays multiple roles throughout the film. 

The film is clearly ambitious.  It wants to say something about the inter-connectivity of man throughout time.  Frequently this comes off as a lot of philosophical babble and is somewhat of an ordeal to get through.  But when was the last time a big budget film even attempted to be about something?

Cloud Atlas is extremely well made from a technical standpoint.  When in comes to integrating special effects in a film, The Wachowskis have the drill down.  There was a lot of criticism of the makeup effects used on the actors playing the multiple roles.  But I believe the idea was not to disguise them beyond the point of recognition.

This is an interesting film that for once does not feature a Marvel superhero.

Written by  Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski and Tom Tyker.  The running time is 172 minutes.

1972 - BAD COMPANY, a very dour western

Robert Benton and his writing partner David Newman had written the script for Bonnie and Clyde. With the success of that film, they had enough clout to get one of their personal projects made.  They chose to film a cynical western about a group of young men heading west during the Civil War.  They hired a decent cast in particular Jeff Bridges who was always a likable actor.   The cinematographer Gordon Willis who shot Bad Company had been associated with urban dramas like The Godfather and many of Woody Allen's best films.  The result was a well acted but depressing film story wise and visually.  

Gordon Willis was known for pushing the limits when it came to filming in darkness and shadows and he really pushed it here.  Scenes set inside houses are so dark at times it is almost impossible to tell what is going.  Even when the film goes outdoors filming on some arid Kansas prairie, Willis smothers the film in sepia filters and you still can't see anything.  Bad Company is a pretty ugly looking film.

Bad Company is one of those revisionist westerns.  The film wants to show what the west was really like.  While that is all very good it doesn't actually make for a lot of fun when you have to sit down and watch it.

Bad Company does have a rather amusing in-joke.  The character actor David Huddleston plays an outlaw called "Big Joe."  Big Joe is based on film director Joseph L Mankiewicz who Benton and Newman had worked with on There Was A Crooked Man, another revisionist western.

93 minutes.

2013 - FROZEN, a minority opinion

Vomit.

No sale.

102 minutes.

2012 - DJANGO UNCHAINED, more Tarantino more of the same

Guess I wasn't in the mood for another Tarantino genre mash up.  This time Tarantino mixes spaghetti westerns with blaxploitation films in a tale of a bounty hunting ex-slave searching for his wife somewhere down south before the Civil War. The slave Django hooks up with another bounty hunter a German speaking dentist.  They shoot a lot of guys before the even more  bloody climax at some southern plantation called "Candyland. 

As usual Tarantino has loaded the film up with lots of actors most of them who are past their prime.  These actors starred in the exploitation junk that Tarantino grew up on.  Tarantino also has lots of his hipster dialog and situations that he has channeled from watching LOTS of other films.  Tarantino seems to be making some point that slavery in the old South was bad, like I needed to be told that.

The problem I had with this film was the constant over the top violence.  People just don't get shot they get shot and erupt in geysers of blood.  I mean really?  Although it can be fun listening to good actors delivery his dialog, there were long stretches where some of these dialog scenes seemed unusually indulgent even for him.  I'm starting to wonder if Tarantino has finally hit the wall rehashing genre films.

Django by the way is also a restaurant in Des Moines, Iowa,  They specialize in a sort of French cusine, but I looked at the menu and it looks like a mash up of French food, Italian food and burgers. It's kind of like Django Unchained.

165 minutes.

1969 - AGE OF CONSENT, Michael Powell's final feature film

Michael Powell's final film is probably remembered for Helen Mirren's topless scenes.  Mirren is an actor who apparently never had a problem undressing for the camera.  But Powell was too much of an artist who I doubt was interested in filming nude scenes of Helen Mirren just for the sake of it.  

It appears that Powell and James Mason the actor/producer of Age of Consent were interested in exploring the emotional state of a successful painter who is trying to stay relevant and meaningful to his work.

Apparently Powell and Mason's solution to this artistic crisis is to have the painter Bradley Morahan take up residence on a South Pacific island which just happens to have a young buxom blonde girl running and swimming around half nude a lot of the time.  Let's face it the script for this film is not so hot.

Age of Consent isn't a total failure.  It has beautiful photography of The Great Barrier Reef and certain scenes in the film do have some of that old Michael Powell touch.  It sure could have done without the comedy relief that Mason insisted that Powell stick into the film.

106 minutes, written by Peter Yeldham.

1951 - ACE IN THE HOLE, Wilder's tribute to the worst in mankind.

Finally got around to watching this film.  Billy Wilder's very cynical take on just about everything is still really tough stuff even now.  It's kind of amazing this film even got made.  Didn't the studio read the script and realize that the film has almost no redeeming characters in it.  Wilder somehow must have had enough clout to get this film made.  However just watching Ace In The Hole you can't help but realize that it's commercial prospects were going to be very dim.

 

Wilder cast Kirk Douglas as the reporter Chuck Tatum.  Douglas plays him as a clever guy with a nasty sense of humor.  Throughout the film Douglas exploits the situation of the man trapped in a cave to rebuild his career as a reporter and Douglas plays him as a guy with almost next to no problem caring about the situation he has created.  It's a very tough tricky performance.  There clearly was no room for a William Holden or Jack Lemmon type in this Wilder film.

What you really come away with in Ace in the Hole are the crowd scenes and carnival atmosphere that arises as one man's personal tragedy is exploited by just about everyone.  Watching the masses of people get off the train and the line of cars driving to the cave in to be a part of the action is kind of intense.  Did Wilder really think Americans were that horrible?  Apparently so.

Billy Wilder had made some tough films before Ace in the Hole, like Double Indemnity and The Lost Weekend. This film actually did serious harm to his career.  Wilder pivoted over mostly to comedies for the remainder of this career and never made another film like this.

111 minutes, written by Billy Wilder, Walter Newman and Lesser Samuels.

2014 - GODZILLA - a fun Godzilla film.

Yeah it's kind of a mess of a film.  The script has some big plot holes and doesn't make sense at times.  A very good cast was hired for the film and wasn't really used to it's full potential.  The film is too long.  But, this is a very entertaining reworking of Toho's original Godzilla. 

If you use the Leonard Maltin "rate o meter"  this is definitely a 2 1/2 star film.  But a 2 1/2 star film can be just as entertaining as a 4 star film.  How many times can someone sit through 12 Years A Slave?

The director Gareth Edwards and the special effects team did a good job on the epic scale action scenes.  Edwards clearly decided to hold off on showing Godzilla until the last half of the film.  This has been somewhat criticized by the Godzilla movie nerds, a select group of individuals that have watched way too many of the Toho films.  But I think Edwards made the right choice, there is only so much suspension of disbelief you can bring to this kind of story. 

Produced by the same studio that tried out another big monster film last year Pacific Rim, for some reason this film worked as a crowd pleaser where that one didn't.

123 minutes