Saturday 19 November 2016

2000's + 2010's Pages Updated

Movie-Viewing Experiences  14/11/16 - 19/11/16     
A+ = Adored Masterwork   A = Excellent   A- = Very Good   B+ = Good   B = Nice Try   B- = Tolerable   
C = Seriously Flawed   D = Pretty Awful   E = Truly Dreadful: Looking Into the Void   F = Vile & Offensive: The Void



PROOF (2005)
A-   FIRST VIEWING
d: John Madden
CAST: Gwyneth Paltrow; Jake Gyllenhaal; Anthony Hopkins; Hope Davis
> another mathematics + madness movie (like 2001's A Beautiful Mind) and again I was a reluctant viewer at first but soon became absorbed by the story; Gwyneth is lovely and totally convincing as the daughter of a maths genius whose mind is rapidly deteriorating... she commits herself to him and puts her own young life on hold as a result...and worries that she has the same mental illness; fortunately for all us normal people, the movie doesn't waste time dribbling out maths-speak...it's all about human stuff like trust, wellbeing and independence; an interactional character study, it rarely drags and is engaging throughout
Award-Worthy Performance
Gwyneth Paltrow



MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES (1957)
B+   MOVIE JUKEBOX
d: Joseph Pevney
CAST: James Cagney; Dorothy Malone; Jane Greer; Jim Backus; Roger Smith
> difficult to explain my fondness for this biopic of actor Lon Chaney, so numerous are its faults (terribly soapy at times & the support cast aren't all they should be & the make-up effects aren't up to the standard of Chaney's originals & it takes too long to get to Lon's Hollywood years) but the two major assets (the wonderful performance of Jimmy & the opportunity to see him do his one-of-a-kind dancing) are major indeed; the depiction of living with deafness is well done (far better than in, say, Children of a Lesser God); and the movie sticks reasonably close to the truth of Lon Chaney's struggles, rise and too-soon departure
Award-Worthy Performance
James Cagney



THE TAILOR OF PANAMA (2001)
B+   FIRST VIEWING
d: John Boorman
CAST: Pierce Brosnan; Geoffrey Rush; Jamie Lee Curtis; Brendan Gleeson
> a John le Carre spy movie, so it is complex, quick-paced and full of abominable people whose actions have international ramifications; Pierce plays an absolute shit of a spy who is sent to Panama and uses the opportunity to get his hands on big money & Geoffrey is his willing stooge who just wants to get ahead and not have his life-lies revealed...and so the wheels turn...; both actors are obviously enjoying their change-of-pace roles (Pierce was still Mid-Bond at the time); the story is suitably engaging...but I expected / wanted more of a sleazy Callan / Smiley feel to it all...this comes across as more of a heist movie than an espionage thriller; well done overall, but a little too aloof to completely hook me



FIRST LADY (1937)
B+   FIRST VIEWING
d: Stanley Logan
CAST: Kay Francis; Preston Foster; Walter Connolly; Anita Louise
> a light-hearted look at Washington drawing-room politics from a 1930's woman's point of view; obviously based on a stage play, the film is very chatty, but fortunately the clever dialogue is a mixture of both era-specific and for-the-ages zingers; Kay is fun in this (she was a huge star in the 30's but gradually vanished as WWII started) but she looks a little unsteady at times without a strong leading man to bounce quips off...still, her bitchy ever-so-polite machinations are enjoyable; not a drop of reality in the whole thing of course, but so what...it's an entertainment of the old kind when audiences revered wit as much as spectacle and sensation (P.S. Good luck America)



KHARTOUM (1966)
B+   FIRST VIEWING
d: Basil Dearden
CAST: Charlton Heston; Laurence Olivier; Ralph Richardson; Richard Jordan
> another one of those British Empire movies where the native inhabitants of the occupied lands are exploited then abandoned by their conquerors; let's see...an American plays an Englishman and an Englishman plays an Arab and the Arabs play the close-up extras who get shot; Charlton is actually pretty good as Gordon of the Sudan (although the General's troubled sexuality is understandably left-out of the portrayal); the real star of the movie is the superb cinematography...the vistas are luscious and the spectacle is truly impressive if you can see it on a biggish screen; an epic which is considerate enough to stay around the 2 hour mark and only have a couple of dull spots which involve subdued talking inside tents; ignore the historical inaccuracies for maximum appreciation



FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM (2016)
B+   FIRST VIEWING   IN-CINEMA
d: David Yates
CAST: Eddie Redmayne; Katherine Waterston; Dan Fogler; Colin Farrell; Ezra Miller 
> obviously #1 of a franchise-to-be, this is yet another wizards 'n' warlocks SFX extravaganza; the setting of 1920's Art-Deco New York adds an extra design attribute to the story, helping it not to stay too firmly in the territory of seen-it-all-before; apart from the visuals (which are...hohum...stunning...), the film's biggest asset is the performance by Eddie...his lopsided, slightly crumpled stance with a gaze that never quite meets other people's is wholly endearing and helps to camouflage the film's over-length...gets my vote as the best performance ever given in a modern fantasy film; nice-looking creatures too
Award-Worthy Performance
Eddie Redmayne



IT HAPPENS EVERY SPRING (1949)
B   FIRST VIEWING...POSSIBLY SECOND
d: Lloyd Bacon
CAST: Ray Milland; Paul Douglas; Jean Peters; Ed Begley
> a good example of the sort of forgettable fluff which Bill Collins used to show as the second feature in his "Golden Years of Hollywood" series, Saturday nights, Channel 10, during the 80's in Australia...I watched them all; this has something to do with a college professor who discovers a Flubber-ish formula which makes baseballs "adverse" to wood...so he becomes a pitcher; Ray is too old to be this guy (at 40, you can almost hear his joints click) but he is amusingly supported by Paul (it's not a real baseball film without him or William Bendix); curious that at no point is there any comeuppance dished out even though this is chemically-enhanced cheating in America's national sport; a trivial way to burn 90 minutes



DIRIGIBLE (1931)
B   FIRST VIEWING
d: Frank Capra
CAST: Jack Holt; Ralph Graves; Fay Wray; Roscoe Karns
> doncha love blimps / dirigibles / zeppelins / airships?; this is an adventure / disaster movie which features these floating marvels but, unfortunately, isn't really about them; kicks off with some impressive aerial stunts between biplane & airship, then dwindles down into a romance-anguish subplot and a gung-ho race to the South Pole...the expedition plane crashes & the survivors attempt to walk 900 miles back to base camp (which was so far-fetched for 1931 that it was considered a science-fiction tale!); worst feature is some of the acting (Ralph is just plain bad and usual-comic-relief Roscoe starts sooking just because he gets his frost-bitten foot cut off); still...a dirigible comes to their rescue, which is pretty cool...



THE WATER HORSE: LEGEND OF THE DEEP (2007)
B-   FIRST VIEWING
d: Jay Russell
CAST: Alex Etel; Emily Watson; Ben Chaplin; Brian Cox; David Morrissey
> fairly anemic kids film about a boy in 1942 Scotland who finds an egg in the sea...it hatches and out pops a cute-as-the-dickens baby sea dragon; from this point on, it really is a copy of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (some scenes are even staged in a similar way...creature creates chaos inside the home & the family dog chases it & it's pursued by the military etc etc); Alex is instantly appealing as the boy (as he was in 2005's Millions) and the adults are the usual frustrating don't-understand-wonder types; the tie-in with the famous Loch Ness Monster photograph is clever; for little kids who don't really care what they watch as long as it isn't a part of the real world and it contains sweetness and a couple of laughs



THE NIGHT DIGGER aka THE ROAD BUILDER (1971)
C   FIRST VIEWING
d: Alastair Reid
CAST: Patricia Neal; Nicholas Clay; Pamela Brown; Jean Anderson
> Hitchcockian sex-killer thriller which veers between the shock of Psycho and the sleaze of Frenzy before settling for the psycho-explanations of Marnie; script by Roald Dahl + music by Bernard Herrmann + lead acting by Patricia Neal should have delivered something more affecting than this...young man moves into old house to become groundskeeper for blind widow and her spinster daughter; first third is suitably creepy and foreboding (with some delicious twisted humour which I'm sure Roald just couldn't resist), then the first murder is shown in unemotional detail and it staggers around from there; last third heads into totally-unexpected and bizarre territory...the sad serial killer just wants to be loved...



DANIEL (1983)
C   FIRST VIEWING
d: Sidney Lumet
CAST: Timothy Hutton; Mandy Patinkin; Lindsay Crouse; Ed Asner; Amanda Plummer
> a fail that's a real shame; an imagined account of the Julius & Ethel Rosenberg case, this is centred around their fictitious grown son called Daniel who is seeking the truth in his parents' lives; the film cuts in and out of this quest and Daniel & his sister's childhood & spoken-to-camera descriptions of different methods of execution...too many strands in the weave; the regal voice of Paul Robeson is heard during the 1950's sections which clashes almightily with the poppy protest-song-lite tune of the 1980's; some crucial scenes (the children visiting their parents in jail; buses full of left-wingers being attacked) don't work at all; no actor distinguishes themselves and a couple overdo their anguish; a worthy story, disfigured  



BABY, THE RAIN MUST FALL (1965)
D   FIRST VIEWING
d: Robert Mulligan
CAST: Steve McQueen; Lee Remick; Don Murray
> unsatisfying character study of a troubled rockabilly singer who wants to behave himself but his childhood won't let him; the two leads are good lookin' people but they have no chemistry (married? do they even know each other?); Steve's attempts at lip-synch-singing are woeful...it is so obvious that it's not his vocals coming out of his mouth that the effect is unintentionally hilarious; the film doesn't spend enough time filling in backstories (why was the kid abandoned? what horrors did his guardian dish out and why didn't anybody stop her?) so when some action / reaction takes place, you're not entirely sure why; while the scene where he stabs at the old bitch's grave in primal rage is affecting, the use of the recurring harpsichord theme reduces it to something out of Tales from the Crypt




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Sunday 13 November 2016

1942 Page Added

Movie-Viewing Experiences  5/11/16 - 13/11/16    
A+ = Adored Masterwork   A = Excellent   A- = Very Good   B+ = Good   B = Nice Try   B- = Tolerable   
C = Below Par   D = Quite Awful   E = Truly Dreadful: Looking Into the Void   F = Vile & Offensive: The Void



HACKSAW RIDGE (2016)
A   FIRST VIEWING   IN-CINEMA
d: Mel Gibson
CAST: Andrew Garfield; Sam Worthington; Teresa Palmer; Vince Vaughn; Hugo Weaving
> quite possibly the greatest WWII movie ever made; vastly superior in every way to 1941's much-heralded Sergeant York, with which it shares a central theme (conscientious objector wants to serve his country without killing); the film gets the balance exactly right between showing the overwhelming horror of war and the would-I-do-that courage of ordinary men who fight in it; the violence is appropriately graphic and confronting (although I could've done without the slow-mo sequences...they tend to glamorize carnage); don't care at all about Mel's personal problems or beliefs...he is an artist behind the camera
Award-Worthy Performances
Andrew Garfield; Hugo Weaving; Vince Vaughn



THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (1935)
A-   FIRST VIEWING
d: Stuart Walker
CAST: Claude Rains; Douglass Montgomery; Heather Angel; Francis L. Sullivan
> satisfying (and hard to track down) film of Charles Dickens' last and unfinished novel; unusual subject for a Dickens story: focusses on sexual obsession to the point of psychosis; film unfortunately lacks the to-be-expected eccentric & memorable side characters which are a Dickens trademark; Claude plays the murderer devilishly-well although the blatant contradictions in the character (opium addict + choirmaster for example) make it an actor's dream; well-staged with some shots reminiscent of early Germanic cinema; a bit of a find
Award-Worthy Performance
Claude Rains



PIERREPOINT aka PIERREPOINT: THE LAST HANGMAN (2005)
A-   FIRST VIEWING
d: Adrian Shergold
CAST: Timothy Spall; Juliet Stevenson; Eddie Marsan
> necessarily grim but fascinating bio-pic about England's last public executioner, Albert Pierrepoint who, between 1932-1956, hanged 435 people; Timothy is pretty much the whole show in this and he is genuinely stunning...he lets you see the emotional tumult building inside; his portrayal is of an ordinary man (whose father and uncle were executioners too) who tries to convince himself that he is just doing a job the best he can; credit to all that at no point does the film get bogged down with displays of "opening-up" and "sharing" (until the very end); depressing as hell of course, but still riveting 
Award-Worthy Performance
Timothy Spall



NOCTURNAL ANIMALS (2016)
A-   FIRST VIEWING   IN-CINEMA
d: Tom Ford
CAST: Amy Adams; Jake Gyllenhaal; Michael Shannon; Aaron Taylor-Johnson
> a true mess-with-your-mind thriller which had me thinking of parallels to Hitchcock's Vertigo and Marnie; two different stories going on: 1) financially-successful woman wonders about her relationships with men (a little bland and ordinary) and 2) new novel written by the woman's long-ago-jilted ex-husband (violent and terrifying revenge story); Michael is fantastic as the Texan cop who wants to track down and punish the brutal offenders (in the novel); director Tom is in masterful control of the movie and of us...just like Hitch; PS...watch the opening credits and never eat another cheeseburger in your life
Award-Worthy Performance
Michael Shannon



HULK (2003)
A-   RE-EVALUATION   ORIGINAL GRADE: B
d: Ang Lee
CAST: Eric Bana; Jennifer Connelly; Sam Elliott; Nick Nolte
> far better than I originally thought, this is really a King Kong / Jekyll & Hyde hybrid in the garb of a superhero movie; more a DC-style than a Marvel-formula movie (no jokes...quite tragic), it is greatly enhanced by the topnotch job by the main cast (Jennifer is the definitive Betty Ross); this is a motion-comic movie, as effects such as split-screening, fancy wipes and editing choices make clear (even to the use of Comic Sans font); while the Hulk character doesn't look quite right (his legs are too short for starters), the SFX are better than I remember (particularly the transformations); great final line!; made 5 years before the MCU-starting Iron Man, this movie was clearly ahead of its time



ARRIVAL (2016)
B+   FIRST VIEWING   IN-CINEMA
d: Denis Villeneuve
CAST: Amy Adams; Jeremy Renner; Forest Whitaker; Michael Stuhlbarg
> multiple alien visitations send understandable shockwaves across the planet as a way to communicate with the guests is sought; the aliens look like dirty-water squid crossed with Thing from the Addams Family; standard near-catastrophic response from the usual aggressors: Russia / China / rogue element in the US military; Amy is warm and natural as the linguist who tries to establish an inter-species dialogue whilst grappling with Life issues (relationships / parenthood); a cross between Spielberg's Close Encounters and Malick's Tree of Life and a little pretentious with it, but not too bad 
Award-Worthy Performance
Amy Adams



LADY GANGSTER (1942)
B+   FIRST VIEWING
d: Florian Roberts (pseudonym for Robert Florey) 
CAST: Faye Emerson; Frank Wilcox; Julie Bishop; Roland Drew; Jackie Gleason
> a proud little B picture that punches above its weight; female bank robber is sent to prison...she has the "dough" safely hidden away which is actively sought after by her fellow inmates, her childhood sweetheart and her ex-gang members; Faye was one of the more striking-looking (and under-heralded) actresses of her day...she has a long, equine face which is exaggerated by having her hair brushed back off her forehead; baby-faced Jackie is surprising to see in an early serious role; a couple of stand-out scenes: male criminal in drag visits Faye in jail & the big finale punch-up...the staircase is totally demolished!; why director Robert "King of the B Movies" Florey camouflaged his name for this nifty movie is a mystery



THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS (2016)
B+   FIRST VIEWING   IN-CINEMA
d: Derek Cianfrance
CAST: Michael Fassbender; Alicia Vikander; Rachel Weisz; Bryan Brown; Jack Thompson
> old-fashioned romantic story which is slow in the telling...not that there's anything wrong with that; a bit Thomas Hardy Lite, so you get Passion, Human Frailty, Crime, Retribution and lots of interventions by Fate (or, as I like to call it, Amazing Coincidences); still, it's set, for the most part, on a lighthouse island (doncha love lighthouses?) just post-WWI and the ocean vistas are gorgeous to gaze upon (which you do often); one of the few films which really portrays in depth the agony of multiple miscarriages; Michael & Alicia are wonderful as the doomed lovers; brazenly goes for the heartstrings, but it's a tragic love story...that's its job
Award-Worthy Performances
Michael Fassbender & Alicia Vikander



THOR: THE DARK WORLD (2013)
B   FIRST VIEWING
d: Alan Taylor
CAST: Chris Hemsworth; Natalie Portman; Tom Hiddleston; Anthony Hopkins
> this is usually considered to be one of the subpar Marvel movies, but I'm not sure why...while it's not as good as Guardians of the Galaxy or The Avengers, it's better than Iron Man 2 and just as good as Ant-Man or Age of Ultron...it's about average as these things go; as with most fantasy world stories, I never know entirely what is going on but it all sure looks and sounds wonderful; smart use of side characters as comic relief; Chris & Tom are better in their roles in this than in the previous installments; always preferred Thor on Earth...my favourite comicbook image (Jack Kirby drawn, of course) is of Thor drinking a milkshake in a diner surrounded by adoring teenyboppers...ahh...I used to love my comics...



SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR (1942)
B-   SECOND VIEWING
d: John Rawlins
CAST: Basil Rathbone; Nigel Bruce; Reginald Denny; Thomas Gomez; Henry Daniell 
> the first of the "Let's Employ Sherlock Holmes to Fight the Nazis" movies; most of the traditional Holmes icons appear (violin & pipe & magnifying glass & "Elementary, my dear Watson") but the movie is not much more than wartime propaganda; sort-of based on Lord Haw-Haw with a swirl of Arthur Conan Doyle's "His Last Bow" Holmes story; not sure about the deliberate use of a "common girl" as live-in sex bait for a Nazi bastard (would Holmes really stoop that low?) and the use of underworld crime figures to help out dear old England in its hour of need is also suspect (and corny); Watson comes across in this as being too foolish and even cowardly and Sherlock needs a haircut; I guess it serves its purpose



MOONLIGHT AND VALENTINO (1995)
C   FIRST VIEWING
d: David Anspaugh
CAST: Elizabeth Perkins; Whoopi Goldberg; Gwyneth Paltrow; Kathleen Turner
> a film supposedly about grief but is more about sisterhood between weirdos; just like the incessant strength-of-strings soundtrack demands, this film is cynically designed to make you feel GOOD about your feelings, your fear of being different, your spiritual/sexual/emotional self; woman's husband unexpectedly dies and she is supported by her quirky sister, quirky best friend and quirky stepmother; we are manipulated to adore them because they are all so damned NICE; kudos to Gwyneth who is the film's performance-saviour...she is adorable; watch Million Dollar Baby or Old Yeller instead if you absolutely must have a cry
Award-Worthy Performance
Gwyneth Paltrow



NIGHT MONSTER (1942)
D   FIRST VIEWING
d: Ford Beebe
CAST: Bela Lugosi; Lionel Atwill; Don Porter; Leif Erikson; Irene Hervey
> a variation on The Old Dark House, this wannabe-thriller hands out yawns rather than frights; while Bela & Lionel are the headliners, they are barely in it; murderous creature is killing off doctors all of whom are conveniently staying in the creepy mansion of one of their "unfortunate" patients; poorly put together, the scenes have no flow into each other; a couple of effectively-designed scenes (love the enlarging shadow of the killer blotting out the victim and filling up the room) are the movie's only highlight; Leif is dreadful as the sleazy chauffeur and the other actors are barely adequate; no touches of humour anywhere (not even unintentional) which are a must in these kind of things; very not a lost horror gem 



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