GET CARTER (1971)
d: Mike Hodges
CAST: Michael Caine; some other people who appear on British TV a lot
> Michael Caine in right-bastard mode...therefore, at his best; still gotta be the greatest of all British gangster movies; while Michael has many tough scenes (with the nude shotgun bail-up being the highlight), my favourite is the single tear running down his cheek as he watches the depths his beloved niece has been forced into; can you believe that people actually live in ghastly industrial conditions like these...grimy tenement blocks which look like they've been stamped out by some brutal machine; perfect ending
Award-Worthy Performance
Michael Caine
SOMERSAULT (2004)
d: Cate Shortland
CAST: Abbie Cornish; Sam Worthington; Lynette Curran
> essentially sweet film about a sexed-up teenage girl who is clearly somewhere on the Autism Spectrum; runs away from home after doing something very naughty and ends up in the Snowy Mountains town of Jindabyne; makes friends, falls in love, loses friends, loses her love; part way through I became worried that the film was going to wind down with a violent, bleak ending, but I was spared; something just as rare though - forgiveness and growth; Abbie is simply stunning in the lead and Sam manages to do something with a question-mark of a role; an impressive and rewarding movie which just happens to come from Australia
Award-Worthy Performance
Abbie Cornish
McCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971)
d: Robert Altman
CAST: Warren Beatty; Julie Christie; Rene Auberjonois; Keith Carradine; Michael Murphy
> I know that this is universally regarded as a 70's masterpiece but I've always admired it from arms-length; much to appreciate of course: bitterly cold frontier backdrop & Julie's tough 'n' tender performance as the madam with brains & Leonard Cohen & fascinating faces & the stunning final stretch; but Warren comes across as too modern a man (and a bit too sappy) & while the pace is purposefully languid, that equates to draggy & the incessant chatter becomes an annoyance; still, it is an affecting movie, just not powerfully so
Award-Worthy Performance
Julie Christie
BLACK LEGION (1937)
d: Archie Mayo
CAST: Humphrey Bogart; Erin O'Brien-Moore; Dick Foran; Ann Sheridan
> social lesson about a working-class machinist who loses a promotion to a "foreigner" and joins KKK kopykats to get his revenge; Bogie makes an unconvincing ordinary family man but a very convincing terrorist; good little performance by Erin in the thankless role of the wife who wrings her hands while her hubbie is out with the bad boys; Nice Scene: Bogie gets a gun and suddenly seems small and pathetic; Wonderful Scene: Bogie hits his wife and she immediately takes the kid and splits; film is a little hysterical & exaggerated, but that's OK
Award-Worthy Performance
Erin O'Brien-Moore
THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY (1949)
d: Anthony Pelissier
CAST: John Mills; Betty Ann Davies; Megs Jenkins; Finlay Currie
> very British comedy (based on a H.G. Wells novel) about the life adventures of a hopeless dreamer who is determined to enjoy himself; John overdoes his funny little man routine (he was never as good at it as Alec Guinness) and his mannerisms (walk & talk especially) are too blatantly an artifice to make the character endearing; for some reason, his choice of expletive ("little dog") really annoys me; not a comment on class (like Kipps) or a sci-fi tale, it is a peculiar choice to be the first ever Wells novel to be filmed; tries for a vague Charles Dickens feel but the side characters aren't eccentric enough to qualify; pleasant & mild but it doesn't hang around for long afterwards
CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS (1937)
d: H. Bruce Humberstone
CAST: Warner Oland; Keye Luke; some other people
> I always enjoy the Charlie Chan movies as lightweight entertainment, on the same level as Jessica Fletcher or Father Brown; preferred Warner's Mr Chan over Sidney Toler's (Sid always seemed stoned) although I think most of the really good films were during Toler's run; this one isn't too bad though: some twaddle about a remote-controlled aeroplane thingy being stolen by spies and taken to 1936 Berlin; Mr Chan gets to float in The Hindenberg to Germany which is pretty cool; doco footage of 1936 Olympics woven in but not a single swastika in sight; Sadly Ironic Moment: minor fist-fight breaks out and a German policeman actually says "Things like this cannot happen in Berlin"...1936 and counting...
LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH (1971)
d: John Hancock
CAST: a group of people who I have never seen before and probably won't again
> crude chiller that throws too many seen-a-hundred-times elements into the horror mix: ex-mental patient + creepy old house with a secret + mysterious stranger + weird local townsfolk + scary legend + vampires + mind control + incessant whisperings + drownings & stabbings + headstone etchings + a dead mole; I'm not taken with the "natural" style of acting from all concerned which comes across as First Year Drama Class; good use of sound & music effects; overall, it is effective in making you feel ill at ease right from the get-go and never letting up, but the build-up is too slow and even when things get cranked up, it canters rather than sprints
THINK FAST, MR MOTO (1937)
d: Norman Foster
CAST: Peter Lorre; Virginia Field; Thomas Beck; Sig Ruman; J. Carrol Naish
> this was the first in the Twentieth Century Fox rip-off of the successful Charlie Chan series; Hungarian Peter is uneasy as the Japanese sleuth (apparently he HATED the role) and the series was understandably shut down when WWII cranked up; Moto is more action hero than Chan (the jujitsu fight scenes are pretty nifty...although not much more than someone being thrown around) but they share the usual-for-the-times Asian inscrutability and cunning; Peter only really grabs your attention when he turns facially cold just as he is about to kill someone (he seems to be a little short in the scruples department) and I love his picket-fence teeth; a passable motion picture version of the detective radio plays much enjoyed in their heyday
WITH SIX YOU GET EGGROLL (1968)
d: Howard Morris
CAST: Doris Day; Brian Keith; Barbara Hershey; Alice Ghostley
> harmless piece of fluff with a couple of laughs in it; Doris + sons & Brian + daughter do a scaled-back Brady Bunch with much exaggerated hilarity etc; day-glo colours & an English Sheepdog & The Grass Roots in a discotheque add that plastic Sixties feel; never been much of a Doris fan but I always thought she improved as she got older, certainly in her light-comedic touch (this was her last film before she moved into TV); Brian was one of the great under-utilized actors of his time and his trademark underplaying is very appealing here; the kids are a fairly dreary bunch; not as good as Yours, Mine & Ours, released in the same year; you gotta catch Klinger & Father Mulcahy as the grooviest of hippies!
CREATION (2009)
d: Jon Amiel
CAST: Paul Bettany; Jennifer Connelly; Benedict Cumberbatch; Jeremy Northam
> Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle and the purchase, civilization and return of three Tierra del Fuegian children are two of my very favourite stories from history; unfortunately, this film instead focusses on the mental illness suffered by Darwin after the death of his daughter; tragic stuff of course, but hardly riveting 2-hour material; I would've preferred a more straightforward narrative to this dream-sequence laden hodge-podge; the doomed daughter is mere presence to us, so when she finally goes she is not missed...in fact, her constant popping-up becomes annoying; Paul is pretty much the whole show and his numerous agonies are monotonal and ultimately boring; handsomely filmed though
AN AMERICAN ROMANCE (1944)
d: King Vidor
CAST: Brian Donlevy; Ann Richards; Walter Abel; John Qualen
> rather pedestrian movie which starts off with the American migrant experience (circa 1890's) and expands into an epic of family, the steel industry and the glories of capitalism; has no connection to reality whatsoever; Western Europeans are the usual Hollywood bumpkin types; Brian is bland with a fluctuating accent and John does his tedious Swedish routine AGAIN; broad comedy + patriotic self-congratulations + really, really nice folk; a father loses his first born son to WWI and then opts to manufacture bombers for WWII???; King Vidor made The Crowd (1928) and Our Daily Bread (1934), both truly wonderful and both anti-capitalism films, so why did he choose to make this red, white & blue schmaltz?
THE DEVILS (1971)
d: Ken Russell
CAST: Oliver Reed; Vanessa Redgrave; Gemma Jones
> gets my vote as the silliest movie ever made; Plague-Years priest is accused of Satanic sex with a bunch of nuns and is given the usual tortures; this is obviously the Great Lost Monty Python Movie; Vanessa is absolutely awful as the hunchback Mother Superior who starts the whole kerfuffle (and comes out with what is quite possibly the worst laugh ever committed to celluloid); the exorcist looks like he just walked out of Jefferson Airplane; a number of truly revolting scenes with Vanessa sticking her tongue into Ollie's gaping gashes particularly retch-forming; graded leniently due to covert hoot-factor; they sure knew how to throw a wild party back in those days
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