Movie-Viewing Experiences 12/10/17 - 27/10/17
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 & Repugnant: The Void
THE HUNTED (2003)
A- FIRST VIEWING
d: William Friedkin
CAST: Tommy Lee Jones; Benicio del Toro; Connie Nielsen
> a superior manhunt movie; a US secret-super-soldier finally snaps and hides out in the wilds of Oregon where he butchers anyone who he thinks is out to get him...his survivalist-trainer is roped in by the FBI to bring him in; most critics bagged this film, branding it a Rambo rip-off, but that's just lazy; clearly anti-war (the opening sequence in Kosovo is one of the best "Hell is War" depictions in cinema) but entirely pro-action, this condensed (94 minutes yay!) rush is brutal without ever being ugly; the fight choreography is snappy with the camera held solid throughout so you can see what is going on; great location choices, natural & urban, and the two actors certainly earned their pay running around in them; not sure what Johnny Cash is doing here, but at least we weren't asked to feel sorry for anyone...just excited
HOLD BACK THE DAWN (1941)
B+ FIRST VIEWING
d: Mitchell Leisen
CAST: Charles Boyer; Olivia de Havilland; Paulette Goddard; Walter Abel
> highly-regarded soapie about a gigolo/cad/swine fleeing WWII-Romania to the USA via Mexico...his only way to gain entry to the Promised Land is to marry a US citizen...so Charles turns on the charm and bags a naive schoolteacher...and ends up falling in love with her for real; engaging enough film with 3 flaws which knock it down a peg or two: #1=it is overlong for such melodramatic/romantic slosh + #2=Paulette as the conniving bitch is just plain awful (and a supposed Polish-Australian mongrel...HA!) + #3=the side-story which bookends it is pretty silly and definitely needless; the two lead actors lift it up again...both are wonderful
Award-Worthy Performances
Charles Boyer; Olivia de Havilland
THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA (1937)
B+ FIRST VIEWING
d: William Dieterle
CAST: Paul Muni; Joseph Schildkraut; Gale Sondergaard; Donald Crisp; Louis Calhern
> The Dreyfus Affair has always held a fascination for me (so blatant and arrogant was the cover-up by the French military); this film, although proclaiming to be about the writer Zola only really kicks in emotionally when dealing with the case of Dreyfus...the build-up (struggling passionate artist finally breaks through) and the aftermath (exiled artist returns home and dies by accident) are barely interesting; while this performance of Paul's is not as hammy as so many of his others, it still baffles me how he ever came to be highly regarded; still, this is a 2 hour movie which holds an 80 minute load of riveting film (as long as you don't mind major historical tampering...and the words "Jewish" or "anti-semitism" never being mentioned)
THE SNOW WALKER (2003)
B+ FIRST VIEWING
d: Charles Martin Smith
CAST: Barry Pepper; Annabella Piugattuk; James Cromwell
> survival film set on a tundra in the Northwest Territories of Canada, 1953; ex-WWII pilot crash lands in the white wilderness with a young female Inuit suffering from tuberculosis...she takes care of him until he is able to take care of himself; absorbing story with engaging characters which teeters on the edge of samey-samey but keeps it brief and adds asides (nasty rivalry + relationship stuff + war flashbacks) for spice; the scenery is flat and bleak and monotonally-coloured so, while it looks majestic & vast, it adds little in the way of dash...but at least it helps to restrict the usual "Perils of Pauline" approach to these kind of stories
Award-Worthy Performances
Barry Pepper & Annabella Piugattuk
LONDON BELONGS TO ME (1948)
B+ FIRST VIEWING
d: Sidney Gilliat
CAST: Richard Attenborough; Alastair Sim; Wylie Watson; Stephen Murray; Susan Shaw
> begins as another slice of pre-war London life of the common people, but surprisingly turns into a crime movie; doesn't seem to entirely have made its mind up as to which endpoint it wants to arrive at...passing through romance, kitchen-sink drama, light comedy, farce, murder & manhunt (the assault is actually quite brutal), family conflict and social commentary...with a touch of impending WWII jitters thrown in; pretty much works though, primarily due to the competent cast (Richard plays a softer version of his young spiv persona + Alastair does his bewildered faux-toff bit + the supporting players carry on as their trademark characters); pleasant British stuff of the good old kind...just try not to mind too much as it hops about
THOR: RAGNAROK (2017)
B FIRST VIEWING IN-CINEMA
d: Taika Waititi
CAST: Chris Hemsworth; Tom Hiddleston; Cate Blanchett; Tessa Thompson; Mark Ruffalo
> the second-funniest Marvel movie (Guardians of the Galaxy still holds the #1 spot); hugely entertaining I admit but, to this unabashed purist, Thor Vol. 3 is chockablock with too many comedy routines, too many character alterations (Thor does NOT say "shit" or "piss" or "arse" + Odin does not wear the clothes of a country squire + Loki is not just a naughty scamp + Valkyrie should be blonde and not a drunk) and too many storyline compressions (Planet Hulk has now been ruined...and probably World War Hulk too); Cate, while not as OTT as she was in Indiana Jones IV and Hanna, still proves that she cannot do essence-of-evil characters without being Charles-Laughton-hammy; having griped about all that, I still had a good time (the battle scenes are awesome and the SFX are...well...y'know...); but, yet again...once it's over...
BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017)
B FIRST VIEWING IN-CINEMA
d: Denis Villeneuve
CAST: Ryan Gosling; Harrison Ford; Ana de Armas; Sylvia Hoeks; Robin Wright; Jared Leto
> not so much a sequel as another way to ask the same two questions: what determines human-ness? + is reality necessary?; ridiculously long (length allowing you to stamp "EPIC" on a film) with far too much brooding & talking and not enough moving & moving, this is an intellectual exercise which owes more to Stanley Kubrick (esp. 2001 / The Shining / even A.I.) than Ridley Scott (or even Philip K. Dick); designed around a colour palette of dirt, bleach and grey (which is more Arty than amazing), the film still manages to intermittently impress despite its over-reach and bleak view of our future; humour only appears once (appropriately when Harrison turns up) to give us a break from the dourness; undeniably great questions though, which, in critical hindsight, may be enough P.S. Are women ALWAYS going to be objectified?
THE MISSING (2003)
B- FIRST VIEWING
d: Ron Howard
CAST: Cate Blanchett; Tommy Lee Jones; Evan Rachel Wood; Jenna Boyd
> like whittling a stick, this Western starts off with something solid (young girl is kidnapped by rogue Indians...mum & grandpa & sister doggedly carry out a search and rescue) but becomes lesser and lesser as it goes on; a dreadfully long watch (nigh on 140 minutes), this movie dithers around with father-daughter stuff (y'know...he deserted the family & she can't forgive him), adding yeah-yeah natural mysticism (spirits + witchcraft + ghost bushes) and the usual gunplay, stretching out the quest to the limits of interest; redeeming features include beautiful cinematography of a rather brutal landscape, to-be-expected quality performances by all and an early scene of the immediate aftermath of an attack which is quite creepy and stays with you; most likely a victim of the "This Is Gonna Be An Epic, Godammit!" mentality
NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE (1964)
B- FIRST VIEWING
d: Don Owen
CAST: Peter Kastner; Julie Biggs; Claude Rae; Charmion King
> a landmark Canadian film, this B&W cinema-verite (ie docu-fiction with low budget, handheld camera and amateur actors) movie wants to make you melancholy about a young guy who makes bad choices, but I just felt mad at the arrogant little snot; released 3 years before the Summer of Love and the whole drop-out / turn-on movement, this story affected me the same way Sean Penn's 2007 Into the Wild did (y'know...the true tale about the young guy who dropped out of society to find himself and ended up dying in an old bus in the Alaskan wilderness)...I mean...whaddya expect, dummy?; saving grace is the ensemble of mostly one-shot actors...the improvised dialogue they come up with is impassioned and believable; bloody kid...you scrimp and fret and this is the thanks you get...he ends up stealing your car and playing a banjo...
JAGGED EDGE (1985)
B- SECOND VIEWING
d: Richard Marquand
CAST: Glenn Close; Jeff Bridges; Robert Loggia; Peter Coyote
> within the first 15 minutes of this courtroom thriller you can see exactly what is going to happen in the next 90...so predictable is this thing that it is a wonder it can generate any tension whatsoever; a husband is accused of the brutal murder of his rich wife...he hires a female attorney and they have a lot of sex together while she gets him off (sorry...unavoidable); Glenn and Jeff are effective in their roles but Robert overdoes the grizzled & old-time investigator (enough with the potty-mouth already); they even use the done-to-death typewriter with the flawed key as the breakthrough clue; so, Director Richard must be congratulated on how well he still manages to maintain our interest (I did a crossword but kept looking up) while it plays out
INVADERS FROM MARS (1953)
C FIRST VIEWING
d: William Cameron Menzies
CAST: Jimmy Hunt; Leif Erickson; Helena Carter; Arthur Franz
> a quaint sci-fi movie of the paranoid U.S. everybody-is-out-to-get-us Cold War kind; kid sees a flying saucer land in a sandpit(!) one dark and stormy night...one by one, people he knows (Mom & Dad, The Girl Next Door) disappear and come back zombified; little quirk is that the spaceship buries itself underground and opens up holes to allow captives to drop down to them...which is admittedly pretty nifty; unfortunately for the movie (and us) we get to see what these Martians look like...and they look like us in dowdy costumes...apart from the alien-in-charge who is a gold head in a jar; luscious colour helps make it look nice, but it remains very silly; the sort of thing 10 year old boys used to watch while they waited for Marvel Comics to be invented
IT'S ALIVE (1974)
D FIRST VIEWING
d: Larry Cohen
CAST: John P. Ryan; Sharon Farrell; Andrew Duggan
> the only impressive thing about this schlocky horror show is that somehow the great Bernard Herrmann got roped in to do the music (he really must have needed the dough, bad); more ugly than scary, the premise of this thing is that a nice, ordinary married couple from middle-suburbia give birth to a mutant baby with fangs and claws that promptly sets out slashing anybody who gets in its way (all it wants is milk and Mum); while we are never privy to a full-blown view of the little dickens, the glimpses we do get are enough to cause uncontrollable giggles (my fave: what is obviously a plastic doll is pushed out of a sewer pipe as the cops get closer...peekaboo); graded leniently because everyone tries so very hard to make it work, but to no avail...it's just dumb; watch Rosemary's Baby instead if you need your maternal instinct suppressed
Got something you want to tell me?
GO RIGHT AHEAD: masted59@gmail.com
THE HUNTED (2003)
d: William Friedkin
CAST: Tommy Lee Jones; Benicio del Toro; Connie Nielsen
> a superior manhunt movie; a US secret-super-soldier finally snaps and hides out in the wilds of Oregon where he butchers anyone who he thinks is out to get him...his survivalist-trainer is roped in by the FBI to bring him in; most critics bagged this film, branding it a Rambo rip-off, but that's just lazy; clearly anti-war (the opening sequence in Kosovo is one of the best "Hell is War" depictions in cinema) but entirely pro-action, this condensed (94 minutes yay!) rush is brutal without ever being ugly; the fight choreography is snappy with the camera held solid throughout so you can see what is going on; great location choices, natural & urban, and the two actors certainly earned their pay running around in them; not sure what Johnny Cash is doing here, but at least we weren't asked to feel sorry for anyone...just excited
HOLD BACK THE DAWN (1941)
d: Mitchell Leisen
CAST: Charles Boyer; Olivia de Havilland; Paulette Goddard; Walter Abel
> highly-regarded soapie about a gigolo/cad/swine fleeing WWII-Romania to the USA via Mexico...his only way to gain entry to the Promised Land is to marry a US citizen...so Charles turns on the charm and bags a naive schoolteacher...and ends up falling in love with her for real; engaging enough film with 3 flaws which knock it down a peg or two: #1=it is overlong for such melodramatic/romantic slosh + #2=Paulette as the conniving bitch is just plain awful (and a supposed Polish-Australian mongrel...HA!) + #3=the side-story which bookends it is pretty silly and definitely needless; the two lead actors lift it up again...both are wonderful
Award-Worthy Performances
Charles Boyer; Olivia de Havilland
THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA (1937)
d: William Dieterle
CAST: Paul Muni; Joseph Schildkraut; Gale Sondergaard; Donald Crisp; Louis Calhern
> The Dreyfus Affair has always held a fascination for me (so blatant and arrogant was the cover-up by the French military); this film, although proclaiming to be about the writer Zola only really kicks in emotionally when dealing with the case of Dreyfus...the build-up (struggling passionate artist finally breaks through) and the aftermath (exiled artist returns home and dies by accident) are barely interesting; while this performance of Paul's is not as hammy as so many of his others, it still baffles me how he ever came to be highly regarded; still, this is a 2 hour movie which holds an 80 minute load of riveting film (as long as you don't mind major historical tampering...and the words "Jewish" or "anti-semitism" never being mentioned)
THE SNOW WALKER (2003)
d: Charles Martin Smith
CAST: Barry Pepper; Annabella Piugattuk; James Cromwell
> survival film set on a tundra in the Northwest Territories of Canada, 1953; ex-WWII pilot crash lands in the white wilderness with a young female Inuit suffering from tuberculosis...she takes care of him until he is able to take care of himself; absorbing story with engaging characters which teeters on the edge of samey-samey but keeps it brief and adds asides (nasty rivalry + relationship stuff + war flashbacks) for spice; the scenery is flat and bleak and monotonally-coloured so, while it looks majestic & vast, it adds little in the way of dash...but at least it helps to restrict the usual "Perils of Pauline" approach to these kind of stories
Award-Worthy Performances
Barry Pepper & Annabella Piugattuk
LONDON BELONGS TO ME (1948)
d: Sidney Gilliat
CAST: Richard Attenborough; Alastair Sim; Wylie Watson; Stephen Murray; Susan Shaw
> begins as another slice of pre-war London life of the common people, but surprisingly turns into a crime movie; doesn't seem to entirely have made its mind up as to which endpoint it wants to arrive at...passing through romance, kitchen-sink drama, light comedy, farce, murder & manhunt (the assault is actually quite brutal), family conflict and social commentary...with a touch of impending WWII jitters thrown in; pretty much works though, primarily due to the competent cast (Richard plays a softer version of his young spiv persona + Alastair does his bewildered faux-toff bit + the supporting players carry on as their trademark characters); pleasant British stuff of the good old kind...just try not to mind too much as it hops about
THOR: RAGNAROK (2017)
d: Taika Waititi
CAST: Chris Hemsworth; Tom Hiddleston; Cate Blanchett; Tessa Thompson; Mark Ruffalo
> the second-funniest Marvel movie (Guardians of the Galaxy still holds the #1 spot); hugely entertaining I admit but, to this unabashed purist, Thor Vol. 3 is chockablock with too many comedy routines, too many character alterations (Thor does NOT say "shit" or "piss" or "arse" + Odin does not wear the clothes of a country squire + Loki is not just a naughty scamp + Valkyrie should be blonde and not a drunk) and too many storyline compressions (Planet Hulk has now been ruined...and probably World War Hulk too); Cate, while not as OTT as she was in Indiana Jones IV and Hanna, still proves that she cannot do essence-of-evil characters without being Charles-Laughton-hammy; having griped about all that, I still had a good time (the battle scenes are awesome and the SFX are...well...y'know...); but, yet again...once it's over...
BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017)
d: Denis Villeneuve
CAST: Ryan Gosling; Harrison Ford; Ana de Armas; Sylvia Hoeks; Robin Wright; Jared Leto
> not so much a sequel as another way to ask the same two questions: what determines human-ness? + is reality necessary?; ridiculously long (length allowing you to stamp "EPIC" on a film) with far too much brooding & talking and not enough moving & moving, this is an intellectual exercise which owes more to Stanley Kubrick (esp. 2001 / The Shining / even A.I.) than Ridley Scott (or even Philip K. Dick); designed around a colour palette of dirt, bleach and grey (which is more Arty than amazing), the film still manages to intermittently impress despite its over-reach and bleak view of our future; humour only appears once (appropriately when Harrison turns up) to give us a break from the dourness; undeniably great questions though, which, in critical hindsight, may be enough P.S. Are women ALWAYS going to be objectified?
THE MISSING (2003)
d: Ron Howard
CAST: Cate Blanchett; Tommy Lee Jones; Evan Rachel Wood; Jenna Boyd
> like whittling a stick, this Western starts off with something solid (young girl is kidnapped by rogue Indians...mum & grandpa & sister doggedly carry out a search and rescue) but becomes lesser and lesser as it goes on; a dreadfully long watch (nigh on 140 minutes), this movie dithers around with father-daughter stuff (y'know...he deserted the family & she can't forgive him), adding yeah-yeah natural mysticism (spirits + witchcraft + ghost bushes) and the usual gunplay, stretching out the quest to the limits of interest; redeeming features include beautiful cinematography of a rather brutal landscape, to-be-expected quality performances by all and an early scene of the immediate aftermath of an attack which is quite creepy and stays with you; most likely a victim of the "This Is Gonna Be An Epic, Godammit!" mentality
NOBODY WAVED GOODBYE (1964)
d: Don Owen
CAST: Peter Kastner; Julie Biggs; Claude Rae; Charmion King
> a landmark Canadian film, this B&W cinema-verite (ie docu-fiction with low budget, handheld camera and amateur actors) movie wants to make you melancholy about a young guy who makes bad choices, but I just felt mad at the arrogant little snot; released 3 years before the Summer of Love and the whole drop-out / turn-on movement, this story affected me the same way Sean Penn's 2007 Into the Wild did (y'know...the true tale about the young guy who dropped out of society to find himself and ended up dying in an old bus in the Alaskan wilderness)...I mean...whaddya expect, dummy?; saving grace is the ensemble of mostly one-shot actors...the improvised dialogue they come up with is impassioned and believable; bloody kid...you scrimp and fret and this is the thanks you get...he ends up stealing your car and playing a banjo...
JAGGED EDGE (1985)
d: Richard Marquand
CAST: Glenn Close; Jeff Bridges; Robert Loggia; Peter Coyote
> within the first 15 minutes of this courtroom thriller you can see exactly what is going to happen in the next 90...so predictable is this thing that it is a wonder it can generate any tension whatsoever; a husband is accused of the brutal murder of his rich wife...he hires a female attorney and they have a lot of sex together while she gets him off (sorry...unavoidable); Glenn and Jeff are effective in their roles but Robert overdoes the grizzled & old-time investigator (enough with the potty-mouth already); they even use the done-to-death typewriter with the flawed key as the breakthrough clue; so, Director Richard must be congratulated on how well he still manages to maintain our interest (I did a crossword but kept looking up) while it plays out
INVADERS FROM MARS (1953)
d: William Cameron Menzies
CAST: Jimmy Hunt; Leif Erickson; Helena Carter; Arthur Franz
> a quaint sci-fi movie of the paranoid U.S. everybody-is-out-to-get-us Cold War kind; kid sees a flying saucer land in a sandpit(!) one dark and stormy night...one by one, people he knows (Mom & Dad, The Girl Next Door) disappear and come back zombified; little quirk is that the spaceship buries itself underground and opens up holes to allow captives to drop down to them...which is admittedly pretty nifty; unfortunately for the movie (and us) we get to see what these Martians look like...and they look like us in dowdy costumes...apart from the alien-in-charge who is a gold head in a jar; luscious colour helps make it look nice, but it remains very silly; the sort of thing 10 year old boys used to watch while they waited for Marvel Comics to be invented
IT'S ALIVE (1974)
d: Larry Cohen
CAST: John P. Ryan; Sharon Farrell; Andrew Duggan
> the only impressive thing about this schlocky horror show is that somehow the great Bernard Herrmann got roped in to do the music (he really must have needed the dough, bad); more ugly than scary, the premise of this thing is that a nice, ordinary married couple from middle-suburbia give birth to a mutant baby with fangs and claws that promptly sets out slashing anybody who gets in its way (all it wants is milk and Mum); while we are never privy to a full-blown view of the little dickens, the glimpses we do get are enough to cause uncontrollable giggles (my fave: what is obviously a plastic doll is pushed out of a sewer pipe as the cops get closer...peekaboo); graded leniently because everyone tries so very hard to make it work, but to no avail...it's just dumb; watch Rosemary's Baby instead if you need your maternal instinct suppressed
Got something you want to tell me?
GO RIGHT AHEAD: masted59@gmail.com
