2006 - PARIS, JE T'AMIE, aka PARIS I LOVE YOU

If you like love stories set in Paris this is the film for you. The catch is that they are only about five minutes long which brings the number of love stories featured in this film to eighteen.  It's safe to say that if you don't care for one short love story another one will come along in a bit.  This film was shot all over Paris by a number of very good directors so it's also a nice tour of the districts of Paris.  My understanding from the special feature included on the DVD is that the directors only had about two days to film their segments but were allowed creative control.

 

This film is well cast and why wouldn't it be.  No actor was stuck on location for months at a time and hey they were in Paris.  It's a mixed cast of British, American and French actors, some I recognized and some I didn't.  The directors were also a mixed bunch as well but they clearly were careful to not let the Parisian landmarks overwhelm their stories.

As far as these love stories go, generally they are pretty good.  Joel and Ethan Coen contribute a short film set in the Paris metro which is one of their typical sourpuss plots with Steve Buscemi as their star/victim.  German director Tom Tyker has a very stylized love story which involves a young Natalie Portman as an actress in love with a blind Parisian student.  Wes Craven of all people does a decent job telling the story of a young woman in the Père Lachaise Cemetery who is infatuated with the writer Oscar Wilde much to her fiancee's irritation.  You get the picture.

 

There is a vampire love story from the underrated but very talented Vincenzo Natali .  Probably the only short film I didn't enjoy was the one about mime artists but I believe it is an accepted fact that nobody can stand mimes.  Towards the end of the film Ben Gazarra and Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes's wife and close friend have a nice bit in a restaurant where they are waited on by Gérard Depardieu. Alexander Payne summons the film up at the end with a touching story.  Actor Margo Martindale plays a middle aged woman visiting Paris for the first time as she narrates a voice over about her love for the city.

A entertaining if unconventional way to tell a series of love stories but considering the production challenges, very well done.  The producers turned this concept into a series of  films set in New York, Berlin and Rio using the same short story approach with apparently diminishing results.

This film has written by Emmanuel Benbihy with input from the various directors.  The running time is 120 minutes.

1962 - TARZAN GOES TO INDIA, very entertaining adventure film

Jock Mahoney is Tarzan No. 12 if someone is keeping count.  Tarzan Goes to India was now being produced by Sy Weintraub who had the novel idea of actually filming a Tarzan film in jungle locations.  The director was Englishman John Guillermin who was apparently a real tough guy on a film set.  Guillermin had a long career in England and America.  His strength was filming adventure and action films.  Guillerman had previously shot Tarzan's Greatest Adventure on location in Africa.  For Tarzan Goes to India, Guillerman filmed in India, a big change from the usual studio back lot phoniness.

In this adventure (no. 24 in the Tarzan series if for some reason you are keeping count), Tarzan flies into India jumps out of the plane into a lake swims to a palace where he meets the daughter of of an old Indian friend who is trying to save a herd of elephants.  It seems the elephants are in a portion of a hydroelectric dam flood zone which some evil Westerners are building.  When the water is turned on it will flood out the valley and kill all the elephants.  You know these Westerners are evil since one of them is played by perennial bad guy Leo Gordon at his bad guy snarling best.

 

This film is essentially non stop action with Tarzan fighting off Leo Gordon, poison snakes, rouge elephants and man eating tigers, all while running around barefoot.  The film is an excellent "boy's own" adventure film with no silly romantic plot to distract the story.  Overall a very fast moving film with nice on location photography and lots of elephants stepping on stuff

The film was written by Robin Hardy Andrews and John Guillermin, the running time a brisk 88 minutes.

1977 - HIGHWAY RACER, exciting Italian Poliziotteschi film.

In this Italian action film cars go flying through the air, crash into each other and generally create complete mayhem on the streets of Rome.

The who really cares plot involves a police officer out for revenge after his partner is killed in a car chase with some fast driving bad guys. Our cop hero Marco Palma soups up a Ferrari and the film is essentially one crazed car chase after another.

The film is particularly noted for a chase down of all places one of Rome's most famous landmarks "The Spanish Steps." One can only wonder how they got permission for this chase and where in the hell did they put all the tourists, since this Roman attraction is usually loaded with people.

The film lists in its credits Remi Julienne as the stunt coordinator,  Julienne had a long career staging car chases and some amazing stunts.  He was the go to guy when it came to car chase scenes for many years. Incredibly he worked until 2017 and ended up dying of Covid of all things after risking his life behind the wheel for years.

The film was written by Gino Capone, the running time is 105 minutes.

1986 - CASTLE IN THE SKY aka LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY

Hayao Miyazaki temporarily abandons his themes of mankind's interaction with nature and children adapting to life in a complicated world in favor of this action packed fantasy adventure.

 Our hero Pazu,  is a young boy working in a coal mine.  One night he finds a strange girl named Sheta literally drifting through the sky while wearing a magic crystal.  The two young people team up to learn more about Steta's past life and the magic crystal.  This story features a series of amazing action set pieces that rival and at times surpass about anything that can be found in American action films.  The staging and animation are incredibly exciting throughout the film.

This is sort of a change of pace film for Miyazaki who would write and direct more contemplative films later in his career like My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service and Ponyo on the Cliff.  Castle In The Sky is actually kind of a throwback to an earlier fllm of his, Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro which I believe was his first major feature film and also featured a number of exciting action scenes.  In many ways Castle In The Sky has much in common with The Castle of Cagliostro.

 

Disney had cut a deal with Miazaki's home studio Gibli and reworked the  soundtrack replacing the original Japanese voice talent with American actors.  Anna Paquin is now Sheta, James Van Der Beek is Pazu.  Cloris Leachman is the leader of a group of flying pirates and Mark Hamill is the chief villain named Muska.  Disney was fairly careful creating the re-dubbed soundtrack even though at times it's a little jarring to hear American voices come out of Japanese characters.  Still for the most part it works fairly well.

 

Along with the stunning action scenes one has to point out the animation background design with it's  airships, floating islands and giant robots.  Visually this film is also a real treat to look at.  A stunning film.

The film was written by Hayao Miyazaki,  the running time is 124 minutes.

1975 - RANCHO DELUXE, western comedy about cattle rustling

This modern day (at least as modern for 1975) comedy is about a couple of cattle rustlers in rural Montana.  They have mostly been rustling from a rich cattle rancher named John Brown, one cow at a time.  The film involves Brown's attempts to catch the rustlers.

Rancho Deluxe is a comedy or to put it another way a very laid back comedy at times almost to laid back.  The film has been well cast with Jeff Bridges as a slacker cowboy, Sam Waterston as his Native American companion the typical white guy actor playing a role he shouldn't.  New York actor Clifton James is the Montana rancher John Brown and Elizabeth Ashley is his wife.  The actor who seems more like a western character than most of the cast in this film is Slim Pickens as a livestock detective.  Pickens is his usual amusing self.

 

There is funny stuff in this film but the humor is very low key.  The film has nice photography from William Fraker who was a top Hollywood cinematographer who excelled at filming in western settings.  The director Frank Perry was not a guy known for his comedic touch.  He had filmed David and Lisa, Doc, and The Swimmer.  Perry was also a director with a couple of camp classics in his filmography, Mommie Dearest and the insane Catholic priest drama, Monsignor two films that are certainly a lot funnier than Rancho Deluxe. 

 

Rancho Deluxe was written by the very quirky screenwriter Thomas McGuane the author of that weird Marlon Brando/Jack Nickelson film The Missouri Breaks. In the end for all of it's strangeness this film just doesn't quite hang together.

The running time is 93 minutes.

1969 - THE SECRET OF SANTA VITTORIA, interesting story, poor presentation.

Towards the end of World War II, the citizens of the small town of Santa Vittoria hide over one million bottles of wine to keep the German army from confiscating them,  The Secret of Santa Vittoria turns into a battle of wits between the mayor and the German Army Captain to keep the Krauts from locating the hidden bottles.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria was a well regarded novel by the author Robert Crichton.  Somehow producer/director Stanley Kramer acquired the rights to the book and got United Artists to finance it.  Kramer had made his reputation producing low budget message films early in his career. He was lucky to have decent filmmakers like Fred Zinneman, Richard Fleischer, Carl Foreman and Mark Robson work with him.  After a string of successes with Champion, Home of the Brave and The Men.  Kramer got it into his head that he wanted to direct as well as produce his own films.

 

Kramer turned out to be a film director who wasn't particularly good at directing.  Among the films that Kramer had a hand in were, The Pride and the Passion, a film about a bunch of guys dragging an enormous cannon around.  On the Beach the end of the world nuclear war film had more soap opera than message.  Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Kramer's sort of comedy film about interracial marriage and race relations was so free of conflict it's safe to say there was no conflict.  All of these films suffered from Kramer's inability to tell a story while at the same time bludgeoning the movie viewer with his sanctimonious liberal sentiments.  Kramer was reasonably successful for a while but as he moved into the 1960's his liberal themes seemed extremely dated.  Kramer actually thought the tepid Guess Who's Coming Dinner put him in the category of major directors like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.

The Secret of Santa Vittoria is a very good example of a late in his career film. Written by his longtime screenwriting associate William Rose who in this case had certainly seen better days.  Kramer signed up and interesting cast to say the least.  Anthony Quinn who only had one performance level which was always over the top. Anna Magnani was a performer who could match Quinn for exaggerated and hysterical acting.  Hardy Kruger the German officer looking for the wine seemed frightened dealing with these bombastic actors.  The great Virna Lisi had a nothing part as Kruger's love interest.

 

The film is an overlong mess with Kramer indulging in that 1960's photography crutch, the zoom lens to drive home any plot point he had already driven home. It's unfortunate that a better filmmaker and writer weren't involved in this movie, the plot is actually kind of interesting.  But as they say it's how you tell the story that counts as well.  As one critic said about Kramer "he was a man directing a comedy who never understood how drama worked."

The running time is 139 minutes

2024 - MUSIC BY JOHN WILLIAMS, butt kissing tribute to the maestro

Steve Spielberg and count em (10!) producers pay tribute to film composer John Williams in this so called documentary that is a very quick journey through Williams's professional life while an endless stream of talking heads sings his praises.  

  

I don't think that anyone can argue that Williams isn’t important to film history.  His orchestral scores for Jaws, E.T., Star Wars and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the  Lost Ark certainly contributed greatly to the classic status of these films.  However I think there should probably be a limit to how many times someone should be called a genius and in this film he's called that over and over and over by the usual bunch of Hollywood hot shots.  Spielberg, Lucas, Ron Howard and J.J. Abrams, ad nauseam. They seem to exhaust about every superlative they can think of in their praise of Williams.  Spielberg can be justly proud of his collaboration with Williams, but after a while his fanboy blathering dilutes William's achievements.

This film would have probably been maybe a tad more interesting if usually competent documentary director Laurent Bouzereau spent a little time investigating some of the films he was involved in that weren't exactly a raging successes like 1941, Always, Amistad, Hook and The Terminal some of Spielberg's lesser films.  Williams may have been a major player in many commercially and critically successful films but his music in these disappointing films is about the only reason to watch them and might be interesting to hear how he tried to improve them.

 

Probably the person who comes off best in Music by John Williams is John Williams himself.  For all of his success he is a rather soft spoken and modest man.  Williams seems like a talented craftsman doing his best in about any project he's involved in which in it self is plenty impressive.

The film's running time is 105 minutes. 

1992 - YEAR OF THE COMET, attempt at a romantic action comedy

The Year of the Comet should have been a winner but for some reason the film just never came together.  The story is one of those couples on the run from bad guys in pursuit of something.  It's clearly trying to be an Alfred Hitchcock film.  While Hitchcock was working at Paramount Studios he developed a story formula called "beautiful people, beautiful places."  Put an attractive couple together, have them fall in love where the backgrounds are all beautiful locations in Europe or somewhere and you have an entertaining film.

The film was written by William Goldman who was considered one of the top screenwriters in the film business.  Peter Yates was the director.  The on location filming was in Scotland and France so all the ingredients were there for a entertaining rom-com but the film just doesn't work.

 

The leads were Timothy Daly who had been working on the comedy series TV series Wings so he knew how to put over a joke or humorous situation.  His romantic partner was a young woman named Penelope Ann Miller who had appeared in Kindergarten Cop, Biloxi Blues and The Freshman.  She also had a decent background in comedy.  But these two just didn't seem to have the chemistry to play a couple who fall in love.  If a film couldn't really work up any "juice" between the two leads it has a serious problem.

The director Peter Yates had made many fine films but  he just didn't seem to be able to make the story interesting.  Frankly a lot of the humor in the screenplay was kind of labored.  William Goldman may have been a great screenwriter but the comedic and chase scenes had a seen it all before feeling to it,

Probably the only interesting thing in the film is the actor Louis Jourdan who at the time was 71 years old and knew how to provide the light comedic touch the other actors were missing.   Although the critics really crucified it, The Year of the Comet isn't really a bad film, it's just kind of a mediocre film.

The running time is 91 minutes.

1964 - VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, 11 Days to Zero

Kicking around in my DVD collection is the first season of Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Let's take a quick look at the pilot episode for this series.

The first season of this series was shown in black and white on television but the producer Irwin Allen was prescient enough to film it in color since the remaining seasons were broadcast in color.  Irwin Allen was what I guess you would call a character.  He was drawn to science fiction and fantasy themes but as an actual producer he was kind of a cheapskate.  Allen was known for reusing footage from other episodes of his TV series and any movie he could lay his hands on. The later seasons of his TV shows tended to get more ridiculous plot wise as the look of the series got cheaper.

For the pilot episode 11 Days to Zero, Allen actually cast interesting actors.  Richard Basehart was Admiral Nelson the inventor of the submarine Seaview.  David Hedison played Captain Lee Crane.  It should be a tribute to these two actors that they kept a straight face during the run of the series when faced with a series of ridiculous monsters.  Giant sea plankton, a giant manta ray, a giant jellyfish and who could forget the unforgettable heat monster that threatened the Seaview during the series run.

The pilot episode of 11 Days to Zero was written and directed by Irwin Allen himself.  A close examination of the episode shows that it was a rehash of Allen's 1961 movie version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  Allen cleverly loaded the story up with lots of stock footage from that film and stuck in a decent guest star, in this case Eddie Albert who was able to stir up a little character conflict.  The pilot is enjoyable mostly because it's fun to see how many scenes he lifted from the movie and stuck in this episode.

Probably the coolest thing about this series was always the submarine Seaview itself.  It has a pair of wings in the back of it and the famous windows in the front.  Inside the Seaview itself it's like living in a Hilton.  Everything is spacious and very bright.  I have no idea if this design is even practical but for a 10 - 12 year old kid it's probably the ultimate in cool.

 

Obviously Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was no Star Trek but as a simple and at times very silly adventure series it entertained.

The running time for 11 Days to Zero is 52 minutes.

1965 - CASANOVA 70, a very funny sex comedy.

Marcello Mastroianni one of Italy's best actors never had a problem appearing in films where he made fun of his image as the great Italian lover.  Casanova 70 is one of his best roles.  In this film Mastroianni is a NATO officer who can't get aroused with a woman he wants to screw unless he is in some sort of situation where he's in danger. The best solution his psychiatrist can offer him is maybe he should try men instead of women, apparently a non starter for Mastroianni.

One of the funniest parts of the film is Mastroianni's engagement to the stunning Virni Lisa who Mastroianni can't get aroused around.  Baring her failed engagement to Mastroianni, she has decided to join a convent and become a nun which she has already been in training for anyway, and so it goes in this film.  All of this stuff is orchestrated by the director Mario Monicelli who was one of Italy's top comedy filmmakers.  I'm familiar with Big Deal on Madonna Street his spoof of crime fllms and it's also a very funny film as well.

 

The film is well photographed by Aldo Toni who had worked with Visconti, John Huston, Fellini, and Roberto Rossellini.  The color is vivid but not garish.  Overall the film is very entertaining and has a lot to say about the male ego especially when it comes to their attitudes about women and sex.

 

The film was written by Mario Monicelli, Suso Cecchi d'Amico and Tonino Guerra.  All of them talented Italian film professionals.  The running time is 113 minutes.

1973 - THE FATE OF LEE KHAN, or Ying chun ge zhi Fengbo

A transitional figure in the Asian martial arts genre the writer/director King Hu was extremely influential in bringing the rather primitive film making processes of the early martial arts genre towards a more sophisticated style.  The Fate of Lee Khan is also known for Hu's focus on his female characters instead of the usual male head busting protagonists that are found in this genre.

 

The Fate of Lee Khan chronicles the attempts of some rebels to stop the notorious General Lee Khan and his daughter who are ruling the country like a couple of martinets.  The film is primarily set in an inn owned and operated by Wan Jen-mi and her female staff.  There's lots of intrigue during the first part of the film and it all leads up to an extended action climax.

 

KIng Hu was apparently working on a tight budget but it certainly looks good and is well staged.  The acting is at a high level with the actor  Li Li-hua as the clever Wan Jen-mi the owner of the inn, working to defeat General Lee Khan.  Also in the cast is Angela Mao who in the world of these wuxia films went on to be considered one of the best martial artists working in Hong Kong cinema.

Overall a very entertaining and well made marital arts film.

The film was written by King Hu and Chung Wang, the running time is 105 minutes.

1993 - GRUMPY OLD MEN, a couple of old comedians show how to steal the movie

If anyone should get the credit for this film is should be the casting director, Sharon Howard-Field.  Obviously Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau were the stars of this film but Sharon Howard-Field surrounded them with a strong supporting cast played by Ann Margaret, Buck Henry, Ossie Davis, Kevin Pollak, Darryl Hannah and Burgess Meredith.  All of these actors are in the service of making Lemmon and Matthau funny.

The film tracks the 30 year rivalry between Lemmon and Matthau as they attempt to romance free spirit Ann Margaret (and what could she possibly see in either one of these two old fuddy duddies) and a contest to see who can catch enough fish during a chilly winter on a frozen lake in Wabasha, Minnesota, a town by the Mississippi river.

 

Truth be told this isn't that hilarious a film but Lemmon and Matthau are such professionals they know how to milk every line for humor.  They also acted together in enough films which made their comedy timing with each other impeccable.

Probably the most interesting part of the film are the scenes set in Wabasha, Minnesota during the winter.  People are out shoveling, the snowplows are plowing and the proliferation of fishing huts on the lake is very funny.  Thirty years later climate change in Minnesota has taken it's toll.  There's hardly any snow during the winter and whatever accumulates melts because of unseasonably warm temperatures in January and February usually the coldest months of the winter in this state.

 The film was written by Mark Steven Johnson, the running time is 104 minutes.

1943 - GUADALCANAL DIARY, fairly good World War II film

For one of those rah rah World War II fighting films Guadalcanal Diary is a pretty good war film.  It doesn't hit the viewer over the head with the usual amount of government propaganda that the American public was saturated with during World War II.

The film is based on the United States invasion of Guadalcanal in 1942. The mission was to shut down a Japanese airfield that could have threatened Australia and New Zealand.  This film is a little unusual in that it keeps it's focus on a platoon of soldiers instead of the usual military officers barking out orders.  The soldiers are mostly character actors with not a major star in the group.  No Tyrone Power, John Wayne or Clark Gable which does add a little more realism to the story.  Power and Gable were actually serving in the armed forces during the war anyway.

 

Guadalcanal Diary has an interesting cast of actors some who could probably pass for real marines.   William Bendix, Lloyd Nolan, Richard Conte, Anthony Quinn, Preston Foster and Lionel Standler show up playing grunts.  Most of these guys were usually supporting players in "A" pictures or leads in cheapo B movies.  The film is also the debut of Richard Jaeckel a character actor who appeared in around 70 films until 1994 when he retired.

 

Guadalcanal Diary was mostly filmed on location and not on a studio sound stage if you can call filming at Oceanside, California on location I guess.  The film was written by Lamar Trotti and Jerome Cady.  The running time is 93 minutes.

2024 - FROM ROGER MOORE WITH LOVE, kind of odd tribute to Roger Moore

The actor Roger Moore passed away seven years ago.  Moore appeared in his last James Bond film almost forty years ago.  So it's kind of strange that this tribute film to Moore was made now.  Apparently the film aired on the BBC during the holidays.  This is the usual mixture of interviews and home movies.  Moore apparently liked to run around with a Betamax VHS camera of all things and filmed a lot of the guests who stayed at his home in Switzerland.

Moore started his career as a sweater model and was lucky enough to hook up with the director Brian Desmond Hurst who apparently mentored him when he entered the acting profession.  Moore never had the acting "chops" for heavyweight dramas and was dropped by MGM after a couple of less than outstanding performances in Interrupted Melody and Diane.  This film doesn't mention his time at Warner Brothers where he mainly did television shows like Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip. 

 

After his failure in America, it was back to England where he found his signature role in the popular TV show The Saint playing sort of a gentlemen thief.  After working in television for a while he was cast in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. He was James Bond number three during the 1970's.  Moore was blamed for bringing a lot of silliness to the James Bond franchisee but the reality was the series took a sharp turn towards goofiness with Sean Connery's last Bond film Diamonds Are Forever. 

If there is anything to be learned from this documentary and I use the term documentary very loosely it's that Roger Moore recognized his limitations as an actor and was able to turn these limitations into a film and television career.  Moore was apparently a very nice guy in real life.  He was never a prima donna on film sets and he apparently never turned his nose up at his fans.  Moore was also a very lucky man in his career.  Christopher Walken who never does these tribute interviews shows up and speaks very highly of him.

 

From Roger Moore With Love is about as lightweight as Roger Moore was.  It's a painless way to pass some time, sort of entertaining if you are a fan and in the end not remotely memorable.

The film is amusingly narrated by actor/writer Steve Coogan imitating Roger Moore's voice which Coogan has made a career of, the running time is 79 minutes.