1977 - GRAND THEFT AUTO, Ron Howard's feature film directorial debut

The Orson Welles of lame stogy Hollywood films made his directorial debut with this redneck car chase comedy that is fun to watch because they wreck a lot of cars.

The film was produced by Roger Corman, the great exploiter of young talent.  Howard and his father Rance Howard wrote the story which pretty much consists of cars chasing each other.  Ron Howard found a part for his brother Clint Howard and loaded up some of the smaller parts with some of his Happy Days co-workers.

This film is not really anything special.  Howard directs everything in a two shot which is kind of understandable since he is stuck in a car for almost the entire film.  But considering that Howard had been a working actor his entire life he sure doesn't seem to know how to direct the rest of the cast.  Everyone is completely over the top except for Howard and his costar Nancy Morgan who are very bland.

Probably the best thing in the film are the car chase scenes which I doubt Howard directed since that is usually 2nd unit stuff.  However Grand Theft Auto made a lot of money for Roger Corman and helped Howard get better films since in Hollywood making money rules all.


1977

84 minutes.

1999 - LIGHT KEEPS ME COMPANY, documentary on Sven Nykvist

A documentary on the life and career of Sven Nykvist made about seven years before his death.  Sven Nykvist was the cinematographer who was as responsible for the look of an Ingmar Bergman film as much as Bergman himself was.  As the film opens, Nykvist is retired and suffering from a rare form of dementia that has made it difficult for him to speak.

 

The documentary is short and zips through his life and career with the primary focus on his work with Bergman and even that part of the film only looks at a few of their films.  Nykvist was apparently a very private person so the usual collection of "talking heads" and film clips are featured. 

Nykvist apparently had a rather messy personal life.  He had an affair with Mia Farrow on the set of The Hurricane.  The writer Nora Ephron made a witty comment that she was "the only woman in Hollywood who hadn't slept with Sven Nykvist" is unfortunately not interviewed.  She probably had a story or two.

The film ends on a kind of moving note showing Nykvist spending time with his family and childhood friends, not a movie star in sight.  The final shot of the old and ill photographer still able to load a camera magazine is touching.  This is a film that will probably interest film buffs for the most part.

75 minutes.

2003 - LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE, another sequel

It's all about the franchise in the movie business.  Paramount was hoping to get a female Indiana Jones type of series going with the Lara Croft character so they tried again after Lara Croft Tomb Raider.

What they got was essentially the same film as the first one with Angelina Jolie again playing Lara Croft.  Jolie is supposed to be tough and sexy but still comes off as more scary than sexy.  This time they gave her a boyfriend who's a real hard ass.  When we are introduced to him, he's doing push ups upside down on the ceiling of his prison cell.

Instead of chasing after some silly time control gadget in the first film.  Lara Croft is now after Pandora's Box.  Yet another blatant steal from the Indiana Jones films.  Along with cribbing from Spielberg films, the film was edited by Spielberg's long time editor Michael Kahn but he can't spin much gold out of this mess of a movie.

At almost two hours long this film was even a chore to get through on the treadmill since it took a week to watch.

117 minutes, written by Dean Georgaris.

2009 - THE MILLENNIUM SERIES, is 9 hours long by the way

The three book series is turned into a three film series.  The films focus on the character of Lizabeth Salander, the rather strange goth/bisexual/computer hacker. The Millennium Series is essentially the three theatrical films based on the books with additional scenes added to each film to pad out the running time.

The first film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo introduces the character of Lisbeth Salander probably one of the most put upon characters in the history of Swedish drama.  Raped and molested by her guardian, neglected by the state, Salander is really damaged goods.  However Salander is also a brilliant computer hacker who in one of those lazy plot devices can break into anyone's computer.  In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Salander teams up with a Bob Woodward like investigative reporter called Mikael Blomvkist to investigate the death of a woman over 40 years ago.  The rather contrived plot features fascists and serial killers. 

The second film, The Girl Who Played with Fire focuses on the background of Lizabeth Salander who is starting to come off as some sort of super hero who would probably fit in with the gang in The Avengers.  In addition to her computer hacking skills, Salander now has fighting skills and can survive being shot several times.  The story in this film has something to do with women being sold into some sort of sexual slavery while Blomvkist unravels Salander's previous life which leads into some sort of vast government conspiracy.

The final film The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest has a plot that would rival a John Le Carre  novel with spies spying on other spies who are spying on other spies.  The film features an evil genius and a deadly and unstoppable henchman.  These guys would easily fit into a James Bond film.

 Was watching this series worth the time?  Well the acting is pretty good, the films are well made. The biggest liability seems to be that the story gets more convoluted and unbelievable as the series progresses.  I will admit that the films kept me watching but at times all the physical and sexual abuse heaped on the Lizabeth Salander character got to be a little too much.

540 minutes.

1979 - THE BLACK HOLE, good looking science fiction film

Disney's attempt to grab some of the Star Wars money came up short.  The Black Hole has impressive special effects and production design like Star Wars.  It also had some of the worst aspects of that series, comical robots and lots of laser blasts. 

Disney also kind of blew it with their cast.  There was nothing particularly wrong with hiring Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, Yvette Mimieux, Robert Forrester, Timothy Bottoms and Maximilian Schell as a retread Captain Nemo character. However casting a bunch of middle aged actors wasn't going to seem very hip and cool to the targeted teenage audience.

The story was also very derivative as well.  The original Star Wars film may have borrowed from about every film that George Lucas could think of (Triumph of the Will, The Searchers etc) but at least he was able to steal and reuse ideas from those films in sort of clever ways.  The Black Hole's problem was that it was stealing ideas from Star Wars, so you had a situation where a film was stealing ideas from a film that had stolen ideas from other films.

Still the film looks good and has enough action and special effects to pass the time.  The robot battles are pretty lame with some very stiff robots shooting it out with our space heroes.  The comical robot V.I.N.C.E.N.T. gets all the good lines in the film and was voiced by Roddy McDowell who for some reason didn't receive any screen credit.  The voice of the robot B.O.B. was Slim Pickens in probably the only real clever joke in the film.

Written by  Gerry Day and Jeb Rosebrook the running time is 98 minutes.

1959 - THE GIANT BEHEMOTH, more of the same

Another monster is on the loose full of radioactivity in this very derivative science fiction film that steals from about every plot and situation from every other previous giant monster on the loose film up to this time.

The main films that this lack of monster inspiration seemed to borrow from are Godzilla and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.  The director/writer Eugene Lourie was also the director of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms so he was essentially stealing from himself in this film.

Some of the special effects particularly the monster rampage in London were done by Willis O'Brien the special effects guy behind King Kong.  However the very cheapness of the film particularly the monster who never moves his mouth really kill any effective moments the stop motion animation might contribute to the film.

The film has as it's lead Gene Evans one of Sam Fuller's regulars.  Evans usually played dog face soldiers but here he's a clean shaven marine biologist it's all very odd.  Well I've seen worse films.

80 minutes

1970 - FIVE DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON, more Mario Bava Eurotrash

 Mario Bava's film is a direct ripoff from Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians.  Stick a bunch of people on a remote island than have one of them bump them off the rest one at a time.   

This is not one of the better Bava films but it does have it's moments.  The hanging of the dead bodies in the walk in meat locker, the usual graphic and kind of sick killings and the general Eurotrash vibe throughout the film are worth a one time look

As with some of these later films Bava, the inspiration and lack of creativity seems extremely apparent.  Perhaps the lack of originality in the story just couldn't get Bava to work up much enthusiasm.   He had been making these mad killer movies for about 15 years.

On the positive side, the film is nice and short.

78 minutes, written by Mario di Nardo.

1963 - COME FLY WITH ME - the old single girls on the make for a husband film.

Talk about a personal nostalgia wallow, Come Fly With Me, was a film that seemed to be in constant circulation on the CBS Thursday Night Movie when I was growing up.  I have seen pieces of this film many times.  The film was produced by Anatole de Grunwald who seemed to specialize in these multiple cast, multiple story films like The V.I.P.s and The Yellow Rolls Royce.  This cast isn't as star studded as those films, it's sort of the B squad of starlets and TV actors.

Dolores Hart is the cynical stewardess looking for a rich husband, she thinks she has scored with a European Baron played by Karl Bohm.  Bohn is actually an impoverished diamond smuggler.  If Dolores had watched more movies she would have known that Bohm played the crazed killer in Peeping Tom who stabbed women with his camera tripod.  Lois Nettleton is the stewardess who has been used and abused by married men and is staying away from nice guy Karl Malden in a very rare romantic lead part.  Nettleton was on about every TV show I every watched in the 60's and 70's.  Finally there is Pamela Tiffin who always seemed to get cast as the beautiful but wacky all American girl.  Tiffin spends most of the film trying to get Hugh O'Brian to abandon his loose moral playboy ways.

Well anyway the girls have lots of boyfriend problems as they are photographed on location in widescreen in Paris and Vienna.  Karl Malden probably comes off the best in this film.  Malden had been associated with Elia Kazan and I suppose Come Fly With Me is sort of a career comedown but hey he gets to romance a woman about 20 to 30 years younger than him.  Probably the best thing in the film is the Jimmy Van Heusen /Sammy Cahn title song but apparently they couldn't get the Frank Sinatra version so they settled for Frankie Avalon crooning away on the title track. 

Come Fly With Me was fun to watch because it is such an early 1960's film.  The weird attitudes about that sex stuff have to be heard and seen to be believed.  If a woman sleeps with a man before she is married no good will come of it.  In  Dolores Hart's case she may end up as a nun after sleeping with Karl Bohm. 

109 minutes, written by William Roberts.

2003 - THE HUNTED - a pretty good thriller from William Friedkin

A pretty decent "crazy psycho war vet on the run" film from William Friedkin who actually manages to restrain himself from his own excesses. 

Tommy Lee Jones is the guy who trains special ops soldiers for secret missions, Benico del Toro is one of his soldiers who turns out to be a nutcase who runs around killing deer hunters in northwest Oregon because he can.  It's mano a mano with some pretty tough fight scenes between the two of them.

For a director who never met an excess that he wouldn't put on film this is a fairly restrained film considering how violent it is.  The action is tough but realistic, and there are no apparent over done special effects with computer imagery.  Connie Nielsen is the hot looking FBI agent assigned to the case but Friedkin is having none of that lovely dovey stuff in his film.

The film is a fast moving hour and a half.

94 minutes.

2013 - DRINKING BUDDIES, will this be the future of movies?

Drinking Buddies is an independent feature made on a very low budget probably with a digital camera.  For a low budgeted film it has a high degree of polish mostly because digital technology has come such a long way now that a film can be shot and edited quite proficiently. 

 

 The cast is a group of actors that probably had a couple of weeks of free time and worked for minimum wage.  Their hope was that the film would find an audience,  give them a little serious actor cred in Hollywood and a piece of the profits if there were any to be made.

The film is about a couple of work buddies.  The woman played by Olivia Wilde is the secretary at a brewery.  She is best buds with a very hairy factory worker.  They eat lunch together, hit the bar together and generally do the work hangout thing.  Both of them have significant others.  She is involved with a nice intellectual boyfriend, the hairy guy is involved with a petite teacher with a nice butt.  I'm not sure what factory the writer/director Joe Swanberg every spent time in but I can guarantee you I was never in a place where there was a super hot administrative assistant with model looks who guzzles beer like a lumberjack.

What's kind of depressing about Drinking Buddies if you ignore the nonexistent and frankly uninteresting story, is the whole general vibe of this film.  As the film industry continues to fragment and digital delivery systems find their place in everyone's home we will probably get even more of this kind of stuff.  Films made to fill the increasing need to feed these on demand delivery systems to keep the general public loaded up with some sort of entertainment no matter how poor or mediocre it might be.  The film business is already drowning in lots of these sort of crummy movies with sort of low rent Hollywood actors

Written by Joe Swanberg, the running time is 90 minutes.

90 minutes.

2001 - AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS - sort of a hollywood satire and a romantic comedy.

Pretty poor film considering the cast who for some reason didn't read this script.  But the fact that the director Joe Roth managed to rope in this cast is a not inconsiderable accomplishment.  Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, John Cusack and Catherine Zeta Jones are the leading players in this so called romantic comedy.  Only Catherine Zeta Jones is any fun as a self absorbed movie star and the supporting players Christopher Walken and Stanley Tucci get whatever laughs they can find.

Billy Crystal co wrote the script but the jabs at Hollywood are pretty lame for a guy had been around the acting block a few times.  The various spoofs of the movie genres are too broad and the idea that the public would be so enamored of a movie star couple that they would make their lame movies a success just isn't how the entertainment business works anymore.

Probably the only real fun in the film Christopher Walken doing his weirdo film director bit otherwise the film is just pretty lame.

102 minutes.

1980 - CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, The Village People Musical

Of course it's bad, it's a musical with The Village People top billed it couldn't be anything else but bad.  Besides the Village People, the film also stars Valerie Perrine who looks great until she opens her mouth, Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner who unsurprisingly can't act but can get away with wearing a tank top and Steve Guttenberg star of the Police Academy series. The film also features Tammy Grimes, Barbara Rush a former 1950's ingenue and June Havoc the sister of legendary stripper Gypsy Rose Lee.

The producer Allen Carr had been associated with the success of the film Grease.  Hollywood though Carr had the Midas touch which allowed to produce a couple of musical flops like Grease 2 and this film.  Carr hired Nancy Walker, a comedian who had directed a few TV sitcom episodes but never a motion picture.  The Village People had been popular in the 1970's during the disco craze but this was 1980 and disco was dying on the vine like the Commodore 64.  It was the perfect storm of creative failure.

To address the "gay thing,"  yeah it's there and not even in some kind of subtext but right in the open particularly during the YMCA number featuring a chorus of men executing some of the same moves as the Busby Berkley bathing beauties of the 1930's.  Even Valerie Perrine in short and tight clothes couldn't disguise this stuff. 

 

The bottom line even as gay camp the film kind of stinks with it's crappy original songs, strange casting of middle aged actresses and the sight of the Village People running around in their persona's of cowboy, Indian, construction worker etc.

124 minutes, written by Allan Carr, Bronte Woodard

1978 - MESSAGE FROM SPACE, Japanese Star Wars ripoff

Released a year after the very first Star Wars film, Message From Space rehashes a lot of the same situations and characters as that film while throwing in a few silly ideas of it's own.  The film is clearly no Star Wars and can't even hit the lunatic heights of Latitude Zero. 

The planet Jillucia has been attacked by the Gavanas Empire.  The Gavanas warriors all look like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.  The Emerald Princess of the planet Jillucia sends eight Liabe Seeds into space to find eight warriors to save what's left of her people.  The Liabe Seeds look like walnuts and glow when they find the chosen warriors.  The seeds end up with a Space General played by Vic Morrow of all people and a couple of hot shot fighter pilots clearly standing in for Luke and Han.  The seeds also happen to find a guy to provide comedy relief and a feisty gal named Meia.  Sonny Chiba star of the Streetfighter series also shows up as a space guy with a sword.  This is essentially the plot of The Magnificent Seven (Seven Samurai).  If you've seen Star Wars you know where this is going and it doesn't disappoint.

The space ships literally look like ships and the special effects are miniatures hanging from wires while they are whisked across miniature landscapes.  The weapons used are ray guns and swords and the film is dubbed and daffy as they like to say.

Overall, Message From Space is probably a waste of time although I wasted my time watching it.  Kinji Fukasaku the director should have really known better.

105 minutes, written by Hiro Matusda. 

1977 - DAMNATION ALLEY or cheesy science fiction film time

A quick 90 minutes for a silly end of the world science fiction film.  Damnation Alley has a low rent cast consisting of George Peppard, Jan Michael Vincent and Dominique Sanda.  Sanda was a French actor who had worked with Vittorio de Sica and Bernardo Bertolucci.  Seven years later she was stuck in crap like this working for studio hack Jack Smight, I wonder what happened to her career?

The real star of the film was the armored personnel carrier the "Landmaster."  It's kind of amazing this goofy thing even ran at all since it looks like it was made out of leftover corrugated boxes.  The plot of this film has the three actors driving down some corridor of the United States that doesn't have high levels of radiation in search of other people after the end of World War III.  They pick up a kid on their journey because in films like this there is always a kid that tags along.

The film definitely has a late 70's vibe to it with it's optical printer special effects of the sky on fire and the large fake scorpions that wander around the desert.  The film is also known for Peppard's famous line, "This whole town is infested with killer cockroaches." 

But perhaps I am being a little two hard on this film.  Damnation Alley does meet the 10 year old boy requirement when it comes to movie viewing.  It has a cool car gizmo, monsters and enough action to keep their interest.  The film does move along and it doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is, a "B" movie.

91 minutes.