Movie-Viewing Experiences 15/4/18 - 30/4/18
A+ = Adored Masterwork A = Excellent A- = Very Good B+ = Good B = Nice Try B- = Tolerable
C = Significantly Flawed D = Pretty Bad E = Truly Dreadful: Looking Into the Void F = Vile & Repugnant: The Void
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (1973) [2005 SPECIAL EDITION]
A SECOND VIEWING...FIRST OF THE REMASTERED VERSION
d: Sam Peckinpah
CAST: James Coburn; Kris Kristofferson; Bob Dylan
> despite numerous shootings (in slow-mo, of course), this is a pastoral, melancholic Western about how attached Death is to Life, and what does it really matter; Pat & Billy are the only two characters in it, with everybody else as cameos (even His Royal Bobness is barely there)... Sheriff Pat needs to catch and kill bad boy Billy, the fact that they're friends being irrelevant... 'cos a man's gotta do, y'see; fitted out with an assortment of classic faces (Chill Wills + Slim Pickens + Jack Elam + Jason Robards etc) and the greatest movie soundtrack (the only one I play at home for pleasure), this marvellous film is topped off with my all-time fave piece of dialogue: "You made me have a bowel movement in my trousers. I ain't never gonna forgive you for that."; this rejigged version is definitely the one to go for: a repaired masterpiece
PAID (1930)
A- FIRST VIEWING
d: Sam Wood
CAST: Joan Crawford; Robert Armstrong; Marie Prevost; Douglass Montgomery
> a rather neglected pre-code movie which deserves rediscovery; Joan is a factory girl who is unjustly convicted of theft...she spends three years in jail and plots revenge... upon release, Joan pals up with a band of nice small-time crooks, weds her ex-boss's son and is yet again falsely accused, this time of murder; this is the film where Joan proved she was more than just a flapper (and lap it up folks, 'cos once she started to believe her own guff, Joan's acting deteriorated considerably), and Marie is a memorable (and funny) old-school moll who is loyal to a fault; startling to witness the "questioning" techniques used by the D.A.; tough stuff
Award-Worthy Performances
Joan Crawford; Marie Prevost
THE DEATH OF STALIN (2017)
B+ FIRST VIEWING IN-CINEMA
d: Armando Iannucci
CAST: Steve Buscemi; Simon Russell Beale; Michael Palin; Jeffrey Tambor; Jason Isaacs
> ...and now for something completely different: the arm-wrestle for power after Joseph Stalin's death, portrayed as a very dark comedy (how dark? wanna see a guy shot and his corpse doused and burned while his ex-comrades stand around it to warm their hands?); I laughed out loud a number of times at the bleakest of circumstances (funniest was anything to do with the flippancy of murder) and the group of players is spot-on with the Dallas / Dynasty nature of the characters; but I struggled a little with this (it's Stalin's purges, man...I can't see much humour in the Holocaust either); I'm sorry, but Mr Creosote is about as comically out-there as I can get
Award-Worthy Performance
The ensemble cast
TELL NO TALES (1939)
B+ FIRST VIEWING
d: Leslie Fenton
CAST: Melvyn Douglas; Louise Platt; Douglass Dumbrille; Gene Lockhart; Zeffie Tilbury
> a fairly absurd power-of-the-press story which has been well-served by its director and its star...should be used in film studies to show how mediocrity can be transformed into something effective through craftsmanship; ethical newspaper editor loses his job and wants to finish with a bang...a big kidnapping story drops into his lap...he carries out a one-man quest to find the culprits; rather pat A-to-B-to-C plot line is enhanced by little dramatic codas (my fave: old man finds that his young wife has been carrying on...he warned her what he would do to her if there was a next time...wild eyes...end scene); Melvyn was always better at this straight stuff than light comedy (Theodora Goes Wild...ugh) and he gives a glimpse of the great character actor he became in his old age; a gripping second-tier movie that wraps it all up in 69 minutes
THE PARTY (2017)
B+ FIRST VIEWING IN-CINEMA
d: Sally Potter
CAST: Kristin Scott Thomas; Timothy Spall; Patricia Clarkson; Cillian Murphy; Bruno Ganz
> this is what you would get if you stuck a group of talented actors into a room, handed them a witty script and let them go; described as a dark comedy, it takes a while for it to sink in that that is what it is; friends get together for a dinner party to celebrate Kristen's rise-up-the-political-ranks...whilst there (even before the horderves are served), all hell breaks loose: infidelity + drugs + pregnancy + death + music + healing + politics + a gun; topped off with a punchline ending, this over-in-71-minutes show is the film version of speed-reading: you understand the general gist, but there is no time to savour any nuance; still fun though
Award-Worthy Performance
The ensemble cast
TWO-WAY STRETCH (1960)
B+ FIRST VIEWING
d: Robert Day
CAST: Peter Sellers; Lionel Jeffries; Wilfred Hyde-White; Bernard Cribbins; David Lodge
> basically a British version of Hogan's Heroes, with a Her Majesty's Prison standing in for Stalag 13 and jewel robbery replacing secret Allied missions; Peter & Bernard & David are prisoners living a very cosy existence in jail who are roped in by criminal mastermind Wilfred to carry out a heist whilst behind bars (the perfect alibi)...Lionel is the hard-nut Sergeant-Major-type guard (and hilarious with it) who knows that something is up; good collection of British comic actors really push this higher than the script warrants, although I would've preferred more Irene Handl (I always do); a typically enjoyable English comedy of the old sort
Award-Worthy Performance
Lionel Jeffries
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (2018)
B+ FIRST VIEWING IN-CINEMA
d: Anthony & Joe Russo
CAST: Robert Downey Jr; Chris Evans; Chris Hemsworth; Mark Ruffalo; Josh Brolin; Scarlett Johansson; Benedict Cumberbatch; Tom Holland; Chadwick Boseman; Elizabeth Olsen
> there is absolutely no point in going to see this if you haven't seen the vast majority of the other MCU movies...you'll never play catch-up; impressive action movie with terrific fight choreography and a minimum of shaky camera work (thank you!), this comes across as a cinematic jam session...loaded with characters who take their turn in the spotlight then step back into the group; Josh is the stand-out, primarily because he plays someone we haven't seen before, and his villainous motivation is quite unique (he wants to wipe out 50% of the universe so the other half can have things easier); as with many of the Marvel movies, I had a good time, but still think it's a little empty...watch Logan and you'll understand
ABOVE SUSPICION (1943)
B+ FIRST VIEWING
d: Richard Thorpe
CAST: Joan Crawford; Fred MacMurray; Conrad Veidt; Basil Rathbone; Reginald Owen
> an Anti-Nazi-swine film set in 1939 that tries its hardest to resemble an early Hitchcockian thriller (ref. The Man Who Knew Too Much and Foreign Correspondent) and is a fair homage to the master; Joan & Fred are newlyweds who are recruited by the British Secret Service to carry out an undercover operation whilst on their honeymoon in Germany (really? a honeymoon in 1939 Germany? how romantic...); passwords + codes + disguises + turncoats...yep, nothing particularly original here; Joan & Fred admirably attempt a comic repartee in the style of Nick & Nora, but the events swirling around them are far too grim to allow too much of that; while Hitch would have inserted more jokes and at least two memorably staged sequences (like a windmill spinning backwards etc), this remains an entertaining spy story
BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999)
B- FIRST VIEWING
d: Martin Scorsese
CAST: Nicolas Cage; Patricia Arquette; John Goodman; Ving Rhames; Tom Sizemore
> this is another one of those "Everybody's Crazy in New York" films, where drugs, violence and death are reacted to in equal amounts of horror and mirth; Nic is a burnt-out paramedic, cruising the mean streets, trying to rescue people from what they have done to themselves...Nic is also haunted by the spirits of those victims he couldn't save, and he steps closer and closer to sanity's ledge, leaning increasingly forward; my main gripe is the inconsistency of tone / intent...for example, a recurring song is Van the Man's "TB Sheets", which is a funky dirge: the perfect description of how the movie feels; while there are some very affecting images (mainly when Nic is either stoned or nuts), the narrative does a hellauva lot of meandering to arrive at one inarguable conclusion: "Big City Life Can Be a Bugger if You're Poor"
HOME AT SEVEN aka MURDER ON MONDAY (1952)
B- FIRST VIEWING
d: Ralph Richardson
CAST: Ralph Richardson; Margaret Leighton; Jack Hawkins; Campbell Singer
> terribly British murder-mystery which kicks off with a good gimmick: a man comes home from work Monday night, only to find that it's really Tuesday night...he has lost 24 hours; the plot scoots along at the start then dawdles, as if losing interest...which is what happened to me a couple of times; Ralph the actor has always seemed to be a rather odd film performer, always better in supporting roles than lead, and his mumbly dithery ways here make his underplaying slightly irritating; still, the story holds on because you can't quite figure out how it's going to wrap up (I was convinced that it was all masterminded by the wife, but I guess that's too much of an American ending); if you can accept everybody being ever-so-polite while they drink tea and discuss gardening (oh, and try to catch a killer), you'll get along with this fine
EXPLORERS (1985)
C FIRST VIEWING
d: Joe Dante
CAST: Ethan Hawke; River Phoenix; Jason Presson; Amanda Peterson
> a far, far-fetched and ultimately banal kids sci-fi flick; this screams out "The Eighties"! (E.T. / Goonies / Neverending Story...like that) and contains the expected ingredients but it never entirely coheres...a kids' fantasy story that lacks wonder; 3 x 12 year old boys, through computer geekery and shared dreaming, build a spacecraft and use it to make a housecall on some nearby aliens; while Director Joe's love of 50's trash / pop culture is woven all through this, some of it will never be the same again (do you really wanna hear the titanic voice of Little Richard coming out of a creature that looks like a reject from HR Pufnstuf?..it's a life-changer, I can tell you); the kids are an instantly likeable bunch, with a special nod to Ethan, but they really aren't called on to do much; the parent/child punchline at the end is the script's highpoint
IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD (1939)
C SECOND VIEWING
d: W.S. Van Dyke
CAST: James Stewart; Claudette Colbert; Guy Kibbee; Nat Pendleton; Edgar Kennedy
> the potential of this film must have looked really good on paper as it was passed around to the MGM execs: screwball comedy with a murder-mystery twist + a script written by masters Ben Hecht & Herman Mankiewicz + directed by surefire WS VD II + starring fan faves Jimmy & Claudette + with fun character actors Guy & Nat & Edgar...how could it miss?; with whole scenes cribbed from classics like It Happened One Night, The Thin Man, The 39 Steps and Nothing Sacred, this turned out to be an uninspired dud, with an absolute zero amount of star-chemistry between its two leads (did they even like each other?)...Claudette is all air with no head and Jimmy switches between bullying and sappiness with no neutral; worst of all, the film thinks that dumb is the same as funny; a production line malfunction
Go something you want to tell me?
GO RIGHT AHEAD: masted59@gmail.com
PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (1973) [2005 SPECIAL EDITION]
d: Sam Peckinpah
CAST: James Coburn; Kris Kristofferson; Bob Dylan
> despite numerous shootings (in slow-mo, of course), this is a pastoral, melancholic Western about how attached Death is to Life, and what does it really matter; Pat & Billy are the only two characters in it, with everybody else as cameos (even His Royal Bobness is barely there)... Sheriff Pat needs to catch and kill bad boy Billy, the fact that they're friends being irrelevant... 'cos a man's gotta do, y'see; fitted out with an assortment of classic faces (Chill Wills + Slim Pickens + Jack Elam + Jason Robards etc) and the greatest movie soundtrack (the only one I play at home for pleasure), this marvellous film is topped off with my all-time fave piece of dialogue: "You made me have a bowel movement in my trousers. I ain't never gonna forgive you for that."; this rejigged version is definitely the one to go for: a repaired masterpiece
PAID (1930)
d: Sam Wood
CAST: Joan Crawford; Robert Armstrong; Marie Prevost; Douglass Montgomery
> a rather neglected pre-code movie which deserves rediscovery; Joan is a factory girl who is unjustly convicted of theft...she spends three years in jail and plots revenge... upon release, Joan pals up with a band of nice small-time crooks, weds her ex-boss's son and is yet again falsely accused, this time of murder; this is the film where Joan proved she was more than just a flapper (and lap it up folks, 'cos once she started to believe her own guff, Joan's acting deteriorated considerably), and Marie is a memorable (and funny) old-school moll who is loyal to a fault; startling to witness the "questioning" techniques used by the D.A.; tough stuff
Award-Worthy Performances
Joan Crawford; Marie Prevost
THE DEATH OF STALIN (2017)
d: Armando Iannucci
CAST: Steve Buscemi; Simon Russell Beale; Michael Palin; Jeffrey Tambor; Jason Isaacs
> ...and now for something completely different: the arm-wrestle for power after Joseph Stalin's death, portrayed as a very dark comedy (how dark? wanna see a guy shot and his corpse doused and burned while his ex-comrades stand around it to warm their hands?); I laughed out loud a number of times at the bleakest of circumstances (funniest was anything to do with the flippancy of murder) and the group of players is spot-on with the Dallas / Dynasty nature of the characters; but I struggled a little with this (it's Stalin's purges, man...I can't see much humour in the Holocaust either); I'm sorry, but Mr Creosote is about as comically out-there as I can get
Award-Worthy Performance
The ensemble cast
TELL NO TALES (1939)
d: Leslie Fenton
CAST: Melvyn Douglas; Louise Platt; Douglass Dumbrille; Gene Lockhart; Zeffie Tilbury
> a fairly absurd power-of-the-press story which has been well-served by its director and its star...should be used in film studies to show how mediocrity can be transformed into something effective through craftsmanship; ethical newspaper editor loses his job and wants to finish with a bang...a big kidnapping story drops into his lap...he carries out a one-man quest to find the culprits; rather pat A-to-B-to-C plot line is enhanced by little dramatic codas (my fave: old man finds that his young wife has been carrying on...he warned her what he would do to her if there was a next time...wild eyes...end scene); Melvyn was always better at this straight stuff than light comedy (Theodora Goes Wild...ugh) and he gives a glimpse of the great character actor he became in his old age; a gripping second-tier movie that wraps it all up in 69 minutes
THE PARTY (2017)
d: Sally Potter
CAST: Kristin Scott Thomas; Timothy Spall; Patricia Clarkson; Cillian Murphy; Bruno Ganz
> this is what you would get if you stuck a group of talented actors into a room, handed them a witty script and let them go; described as a dark comedy, it takes a while for it to sink in that that is what it is; friends get together for a dinner party to celebrate Kristen's rise-up-the-political-ranks...whilst there (even before the horderves are served), all hell breaks loose: infidelity + drugs + pregnancy + death + music + healing + politics + a gun; topped off with a punchline ending, this over-in-71-minutes show is the film version of speed-reading: you understand the general gist, but there is no time to savour any nuance; still fun though
Award-Worthy Performance
The ensemble cast
TWO-WAY STRETCH (1960)
d: Robert Day
CAST: Peter Sellers; Lionel Jeffries; Wilfred Hyde-White; Bernard Cribbins; David Lodge
> basically a British version of Hogan's Heroes, with a Her Majesty's Prison standing in for Stalag 13 and jewel robbery replacing secret Allied missions; Peter & Bernard & David are prisoners living a very cosy existence in jail who are roped in by criminal mastermind Wilfred to carry out a heist whilst behind bars (the perfect alibi)...Lionel is the hard-nut Sergeant-Major-type guard (and hilarious with it) who knows that something is up; good collection of British comic actors really push this higher than the script warrants, although I would've preferred more Irene Handl (I always do); a typically enjoyable English comedy of the old sort
Award-Worthy Performance
Lionel Jeffries
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (2018)
d: Anthony & Joe Russo
CAST: Robert Downey Jr; Chris Evans; Chris Hemsworth; Mark Ruffalo; Josh Brolin; Scarlett Johansson; Benedict Cumberbatch; Tom Holland; Chadwick Boseman; Elizabeth Olsen
> there is absolutely no point in going to see this if you haven't seen the vast majority of the other MCU movies...you'll never play catch-up; impressive action movie with terrific fight choreography and a minimum of shaky camera work (thank you!), this comes across as a cinematic jam session...loaded with characters who take their turn in the spotlight then step back into the group; Josh is the stand-out, primarily because he plays someone we haven't seen before, and his villainous motivation is quite unique (he wants to wipe out 50% of the universe so the other half can have things easier); as with many of the Marvel movies, I had a good time, but still think it's a little empty...watch Logan and you'll understand
ABOVE SUSPICION (1943)
d: Richard Thorpe
CAST: Joan Crawford; Fred MacMurray; Conrad Veidt; Basil Rathbone; Reginald Owen
> an Anti-Nazi-swine film set in 1939 that tries its hardest to resemble an early Hitchcockian thriller (ref. The Man Who Knew Too Much and Foreign Correspondent) and is a fair homage to the master; Joan & Fred are newlyweds who are recruited by the British Secret Service to carry out an undercover operation whilst on their honeymoon in Germany (really? a honeymoon in 1939 Germany? how romantic...); passwords + codes + disguises + turncoats...yep, nothing particularly original here; Joan & Fred admirably attempt a comic repartee in the style of Nick & Nora, but the events swirling around them are far too grim to allow too much of that; while Hitch would have inserted more jokes and at least two memorably staged sequences (like a windmill spinning backwards etc), this remains an entertaining spy story
BRINGING OUT THE DEAD (1999)
d: Martin Scorsese
CAST: Nicolas Cage; Patricia Arquette; John Goodman; Ving Rhames; Tom Sizemore
> this is another one of those "Everybody's Crazy in New York" films, where drugs, violence and death are reacted to in equal amounts of horror and mirth; Nic is a burnt-out paramedic, cruising the mean streets, trying to rescue people from what they have done to themselves...Nic is also haunted by the spirits of those victims he couldn't save, and he steps closer and closer to sanity's ledge, leaning increasingly forward; my main gripe is the inconsistency of tone / intent...for example, a recurring song is Van the Man's "TB Sheets", which is a funky dirge: the perfect description of how the movie feels; while there are some very affecting images (mainly when Nic is either stoned or nuts), the narrative does a hellauva lot of meandering to arrive at one inarguable conclusion: "Big City Life Can Be a Bugger if You're Poor"
HOME AT SEVEN aka MURDER ON MONDAY (1952)
d: Ralph Richardson
CAST: Ralph Richardson; Margaret Leighton; Jack Hawkins; Campbell Singer
> terribly British murder-mystery which kicks off with a good gimmick: a man comes home from work Monday night, only to find that it's really Tuesday night...he has lost 24 hours; the plot scoots along at the start then dawdles, as if losing interest...which is what happened to me a couple of times; Ralph the actor has always seemed to be a rather odd film performer, always better in supporting roles than lead, and his mumbly dithery ways here make his underplaying slightly irritating; still, the story holds on because you can't quite figure out how it's going to wrap up (I was convinced that it was all masterminded by the wife, but I guess that's too much of an American ending); if you can accept everybody being ever-so-polite while they drink tea and discuss gardening (oh, and try to catch a killer), you'll get along with this fine
EXPLORERS (1985)
d: Joe Dante
CAST: Ethan Hawke; River Phoenix; Jason Presson; Amanda Peterson
> a far, far-fetched and ultimately banal kids sci-fi flick; this screams out "The Eighties"! (E.T. / Goonies / Neverending Story...like that) and contains the expected ingredients but it never entirely coheres...a kids' fantasy story that lacks wonder; 3 x 12 year old boys, through computer geekery and shared dreaming, build a spacecraft and use it to make a housecall on some nearby aliens; while Director Joe's love of 50's trash / pop culture is woven all through this, some of it will never be the same again (do you really wanna hear the titanic voice of Little Richard coming out of a creature that looks like a reject from HR Pufnstuf?..it's a life-changer, I can tell you); the kids are an instantly likeable bunch, with a special nod to Ethan, but they really aren't called on to do much; the parent/child punchline at the end is the script's highpoint
IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD (1939)
d: W.S. Van Dyke
CAST: James Stewart; Claudette Colbert; Guy Kibbee; Nat Pendleton; Edgar Kennedy
> the potential of this film must have looked really good on paper as it was passed around to the MGM execs: screwball comedy with a murder-mystery twist + a script written by masters Ben Hecht & Herman Mankiewicz + directed by surefire WS VD II + starring fan faves Jimmy & Claudette + with fun character actors Guy & Nat & Edgar...how could it miss?; with whole scenes cribbed from classics like It Happened One Night, The Thin Man, The 39 Steps and Nothing Sacred, this turned out to be an uninspired dud, with an absolute zero amount of star-chemistry between its two leads (did they even like each other?)...Claudette is all air with no head and Jimmy switches between bullying and sappiness with no neutral; worst of all, the film thinks that dumb is the same as funny; a production line malfunction
Go something you want to tell me?
GO RIGHT AHEAD: masted59@gmail.com
