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Reviews
LBJ (2016)
Bad Casting
An essential ingredient of historical dramas is a good likeness of the leading historical figure. Such films only work when the audience momentarily believes it is actually watching the character himself - not an actor trying his best to impersonate him. I have always had a tremendous admiration for Woody Harrelson; given the right role he aces his assignments with stunning talent and professionalism. Alas, in LBJ, Mr Harrelson seems woefully miscast, aside from being a Texan, he has nothing in common with the real-life Lyndon Baines Johnson; worse yet, he doesn't even remotely resemble the former president. The gold standard of inspired casting is Val Kilmer's portrayal of Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's "The Doors", a face and a voice that is eerily accurate. A close runner-up is the late Michael Gambon's superb portrayal of LBJ in John Frankenheimer's "The Path to War". Being a talented actor simply doesn't cut it if the face doesn't fit - as evidenced by Anthony Hopkins' lackluster portrayals of Richard M. Nixon and Alfred Hitchcock. I may be biased because I was born in 1951, so I remember seeing these historical figures frequently on televised news broadcasts; perhaps younger audiences don't care all that much..
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
I have more than a shadow of a doubt about the film script
Nobody seems quite sure why Alfred Hitchcock considered this piece of hokum to be his favorite film. As contemporary film critic Bosley Crowther pointed out, the film lacked any sudden twist in the plot; from the outset we know that Charlie Oakley is a shady character, the early suspense lies in wondering how and when the young & innocent Charlotte Newton will get wise to him. Shadow of a Doubt invites comparisons to Hitch's most commercially successful movie - Psycho. In both movies somebody is on the lam, with $40,000 ill-gotten dollars, and moves to a small, sleepy, California town. Shadow of a Doubt lacks Psycho's two vital plot twists (within 40 minutes it turns out that the film isn't really about Marion Crane, it's about Norman Bates; it later turns out that Norman's mother isn't the evil murderer, it's Norman himself). Shadow of a Doubt's main weakness is its underwhelming climax. The audience is asked to believe that in the final struggle, a teenage girl would be capable of overpowering a 36-year-old man and pushing him out of a moving train. It may be a historical fact that US President Theodore Roosevelt practiced judo in 1902, but it would be most unlikely that a young Charlie Oakley would have been able to enroll at a local woman's judo club in California in 1941; the boom in American judo didn't start until post-WW2.
I had to laugh at the scene where Charlotte arrives at the library at one minute past nine and the librarian lets her in for "just 3 minutes". It's my experience of librarians that they are about as flexible as cast iron; I'd have a better shot at sneaking into the bullion depository at Fort Knox than persuading my local librarian to let me see one of her newspapers after closing time!
Around the time this movie was made, a Brit named John Haigh was embarking on his career as a serial killer of wealthy women. Haigh's modus-operandi would have fascinated Herbie Hawkins (Hume Cronyn's loveable character), Haigh dissolved the bodies of his victims in baths of sulfuric acid. Alas, John Haigh wasn't caught until 1949, too late for Hitch to use the story in his movie (and perhaps too gruesome for the Hays Code to have allowed anyway). A glaring plot inconsistency is Charlie Oakley's attempts to eliminate Charlotte in ways rigged to look like an accident; if the broken step or the monoxide-filled garage are such great strategies, why didn't Charlie Oakley contrive to murder those wealthy widows in ways that would look like accidents? Strangulation is so obvious during a post-mortem.
Side Effects (2013)
After watching this I was immediately reminded of Pacific Heights
In the movie recommendations for 'Side Effects', why-oh-why hasn't someone recommended the 1990 John Schlesinger thriller 'Pacific Heights'?
In 'Side Effects' Jude Law plays a hard working, upwardly mobile professional who's life is almost destroyed by a psychopath - until he hits on a brilliant way to get even. In 'Pacific Heights', Melanie Griffiths played a hard-working, upwardly mobile professional who's life is almost destroyed by a psychopath - until she hits on a brilliant way to get even. Soderbergh.and Schlesinger have had similarly checkered directorial careers; each has made some truly great movies and quite a few clunkers. Even the greatest directors can't always be at the top of their game; after all, Hitchcock (unfortunately) made 'Under Capricorn', 'The Paradine Case' and 'Marnie' - but the good outweighs the bad.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)
Art Immitates Life
When he collaborated on the script, I wonder if Michael Cimino knew about the daring heist perpetrated nine years earlier by a ballsy Canadian? When I first watched this movie in 1974, I was somewhat skeptical as to whether you could shoot a big enough hole through a vault wall. I was especially dubious when Clint Eastwood only fired four rounds. Thanks to the Internet, my investigations have borne fruit. In the real-life robbery, described below, the gun used was not an Oerlikon and the reinforced concrete wall of the vault was only twelve inches thick. In March 1965, Jack Franck, a New York City auto mechanic, purchased two Lahti 20 mm anti-tank rifles and 200 rounds of armor-piercing ammunition at the Alexandria, Va., offices of Interarmco. He paid approximately $800 for the two 7-foot 109 pound cannons. On Oct. 23, 1965, 22-year-old Joel Singer, a native of Montreal, traveled with five accomplices, to Syracuse, N. Y., where they targeted the Brinks armored car facility at Lodi Street and Lemoyne Avenue. On the night of Oct. 24, Singer's gang carried out their break-in. It was suspected the team had a strong understanding of the layout of the building that enabled them to skirt the Brinks' alarm systems. Having opened the garage door, they were able to drive their DeSoto wagon into the building, carrying one of the Lahti AT rifles plus ammo and the rest of their burglary tools. The cannon had been modified for their purposes, it had a large canister-like suppressor attached to the end of the barrel and a special mount to help them blast through the foot-thick cement and steel reinforced vault wall. They also used several mattresses and heavy blankets to help muffle the blast of the 20 mm cannon. (The Lahti anti-tank rifle was later pulled by the FBI from the waters just off the shore of Garden City, Long Island.)
The shooter fired up to 33 armor-piercing rounds in a circular pattern through the vault wall, creating an approximately 18" x 24" hole. Although a tight fit, it was large enough for a small gang member to crawl through gather up almost $425,000 in cash, coins and checks. Evidence collected by police showed that the burglars had also brought along nitroglycerin, gas masks, welding equipment, and other heavy duty tools, some of which were marked "Made in Canada". The spent 20 mm shell casings were left on the floor when Joel Singer's gang drove away from the crime scene, amazingly their escape was unseen and unheard. Eventually, law-enforcement officers caught up with the perpetrator and he went to jail; it is not clear whether any or all of the money was recovered.
16 Acres (2012)
Too much bickering not enough engineering and construction
Sixteen Acres was the most frustrating, depressing, documentary I can recall having watched in a great many years. I'm not blaming Richard Hankin for this 95-minutes of tedium - Mr Hankin was only reporting accurately on the tiresome machinations of a conflicted bunch of politicians, bureaucrats and oppotunists. I'll give this documentary points for just one thing, it certainly cleared up the mystery of why the heck, with all the advantages of state-of-the-art computer design and 21st century construction technology, it took no less than 14 years to replace the twin towers! When I obtained a blu-Ray disk of this documentary, I was naiively hoping for a detailed guided tour of architect Daniel Libeskind's design, perhaps some brief analysis of the reasons competing designs were eventually passed over, and then on to the main event with plenty of boots-on-the-ground footage of the nuts and bolts and methodology of the Freedom Tower's actual construction crew. Instead I watched a long diatribe of assorted politicos and cognitively dissonant bureaucrats who were more intent on climbing onto soapboxes than making the necessary compromises to get the reconstruction underway. Did Rosaleen Tallon have something remotely like a functioning cerebral cortex - or just an enormous pair of lacrymal glands - as she stridently advocated for sixteen Green Acres of memorial garden, in a quavering, manipulative speech that might have caused even the late Elizabeth Taylor to blush with embarrassment.
The early 1950's maxim that a camel is a horse designed by a committee certainly does not apply to any committee of 21st century New Yorkers; alas, that prototype camel would have died of old age while committee members still continued to bicker back and forth over "one hump or two", the most tasteful colour scheme for the camel's hide, or whether or not Salvador Dali should design its legs.
By historical contrast, despite its reliance on 1920s technology, the Chrysler Building at 405 Lexington Avenue got started in May 1929 and was completed only twelve months later. The Empire State Building, at Number 20, West 34th Street, began on March 17, 1930 and was completed in a record-breaking 1 year and 45 days. Even allowing for the systemic decay and indolence that afflicted New York by the nineteen-sixties, Minoru Yamasaki's twin towers broke ground in 1966 and averaged two-to-three stories completed each week. Not too shabby. Anyone who makes excuses that the financial meltdown of 2008 delayed the Freedom Tower project, should remember that the Chrysler and Empire State buildings were constructed in the aftermath of the worst financial disaster in American history.
Given that attacks on the Pentagon and the twin towers were acts or war, requiring bold, pragmatic, decisive responses, let's try this thought experiment:
How would Donald Trump have gotten this whole rebuilding project off the ground?
Here's my suggestion of a 7-pillar approach:
1. Construct an enormous roulette wheel with 1776 slot positions.
2. Put out request-for-tender to the world's leading architectural firms.
3. Select 10 of the most promising design submissions, then disseminate architects' drawings and building specifications over the internet.
4. Allow the public ninety days to air their differences, then hold a referendum.
5. Allocate segments of roulette slots to each of the 10 designs in direct proportion to the number of votes each design received.
6. Spin the wheel and see where the ball lands.
7. The wheel's decision to be FINAL - no boycotts, appeals, or legal challenges allowed!
The reality - that tragic, divisive mess dragging on and on until the tower finally opened to the public on June 11, 2018, is UnAmerican; it does not bode well for America's future as a world power.
Many comparisons are made between September 11, 2001 and December7, 1941. The USS Arizona is now a national monument and a war grave, but it did not officially become so until 1962. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was an act of war that required America's immediate response - unhampered by emotion or petty political bickering. The Arizona was allowed to remain at her final resting place only because the magazine explosion had damaged her hull beyond economic repair. Had this not been the case, the battleship would have been refloated and towed to a repair shipyard, like her sister ships Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee. The 1,177 officers and crewmen of USS Arizona deserved to be treated with all due respect and the bodies of the deceased deserved burial with full military honors. But the inescapable fact remains, you don't launch a global war by immediately declaring your most strategic naval base to be a sacrosanct shrine, solely to commemorate 2,403 fallen Americans in perpetuity.
Fast-forward 70 years. Suppose that second aircraft, the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175, had failed in its mission to destroy the South Tower. Would the eventual response have been to retain the South Tower as is, while using minor revisions of Yamasaki's original design to rebuild the North Tower? Or would the decision have perhaps been made to demolish the South Tower as well and start over from scratch?
In conclusion, I can't help but wonder if the signing of the Instrument of Surrender aboard USS Missouri would ever have happened if isolationists and conscientious objectors - the Rosaleen Tallons of that epoch - had still held sway over the Press, Congress, Oval Office and Pentagon?
Heat (1995)
Mann Works much the Same Blueprint he used for "Thief"
At two hours and fifty minutes, this film is overly long and borrows too many ideas from Mann's 1981 effort "Thief". Pachino's homicide detective character, Vincent Hanna - a smart, nihilistic yet brutally honest cop with too many personal deamons - was a vast improvement over the fat, greedy, corrupt, slob, Sgt. Urizzi that James Caan's character had to contend with in "Thief". Mann displays an earnest, grinding, attention to technical detail and long-winded backstory character development; this made heavy demands on my attention span without rewarding it sufficiently. This is probably the main reason I didn't finish watching the VHS video when I rented it in 1995. The idea of an obsessive police officer treating an ultra-smart career criminal more like a challenge to his professional skills than a dangerous sociopath that society needs to be protected from. The fireworks between Al Pachino's and Robert De Niro's characters in "Heat" somewhat reminded me of the convoluted cat and mouse game between Bruce Dern's and Ryan O'Neal's characters the Walter Hill cop drama "The Driver" (1978). The main difference between these two movies is that the characters in Hill's "Driver" are shallow cardboard nameless charicatures in a simplistic plot; in Hill's movie the anti-hero walks in the final scene while his cop tormentor does a faceplant; in "Heat" our anti-hero pays the ultimate price for letting a personal grudge undermine his professional detachment. I suspect neither movie is even remotely true to real life situations where criminals are rarely as smart as De Niro's character and cops are almost never as recklessly irresponsible as Bruce Dern's character.
Sling Blade (1996)
I was curious as to the time in which this movie was set
Movies can say a lot about the wrongs of a certain epoch and big box office movies have sometimes triggered social change. For instance, "One flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" led to improved patent care in American psychiatric facilities and "Midnight Express" led to a new and improved prisoner exchange program between the United States and Turkey. In Sling Blade we witness a mentally challenged man, who had been institutionalized for about 20 years, given just a few dollars and expected to fend for himself in the outside world. It was hardly surprising that Karl Childers came straight back the next day and asked to be readmitted. I sure hope that a discharged inmate of a State Mental Hospital would receive better community support today. This got me thinking about what year Mr. Thornton had in mind when he wrote the script for this movie. According to Wikipedia, the depicted events took place "in the mid-1990s" (i.e. Contemporary with the actual shooting of this movie). I beg to differ. Notice the complete absence of any desk-top computers in the administrative offices at the state hospital and the fact that nobody uses a cell phone at any point in this movie. I looked for other clues. The traffic on the road wasn't much help because a lot of people tend to drive older cars in rural areas. One clue was the scene at the "Frosty Cream" - a thinly disguised "Dairy Queen" - counterman "Deke" (Jim Jarmusch) quotes 60 cents for a regular size order of French fries and 75 cents for a large portion. According to the 2021 "Dairy Queen" online menu, a large takeout serving of fries in Arkansas today will cost you approximately $2.70. Using the United States Consumer Price Index for fast-food, I have estimated that a large order of fries could have been purchased for seventy-five cents back in 1978. Does that sound right? Could cans of potted meat "on special" at a convenience store in 1978 have been purchased for only a dollar a can?
Bullitt (1968)
Bullit set a precedent as a great cop movie; alas the Dirty Harry movies that followed it were dumbed down to a much less intelligent audience.
If the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt was filmed in and around San Francisco in late April 1968. It is certainly not late fall because we see all those trees with leaves on them. So, how come it is already dark when Bullitt and Delgetti were driving out to the airport to intercept Johnny Ross? He was booked on a 7 PM flight.
Another time anomaly occurred at the Hotel Daniels after the hit men arrived. Stanton calls Bullitt who says: "Chalmers at 1 -0- clock in the morning? No, don't let them in, I'll be there in 5 minutes". So how come when Bullitt drives up to the hotel entrance, Delgetti is already there with ambulances and police cars and large a crowd of onlookers? Another time anomaly is when Ross jumps out from his plane seat and makes a break for it. Bullitt is only about 10 feet away from him, so how the heck did Ross manage to get the plane's emergency door open and jump out before Bullitt could catch him?
The Cincinnati Kid (1965)
I don't believe a better movie about high stakes stud poker could have been made
It has been quite a while since I last watched Norman Jewison's "Cincinnati Kid"; I was a teenager when this movie was shown in movie theaters. One thing that always intrigued me was the scene in which the character Slade (Rip Torn) tells his children a bedtime story about Shooter's wife Melba Nyle. In this scene Slade's son is dressed in pink and his daughter is dressed in blue! I don't believe this ostensible gender reversal was a bedroom fashion statement in New Orleans during the 1930's (the epoch in which the movie is set). Was Norman Jewison or his wardrobe consultant trying to convey some subtle point? I also wondered if cock fighting went on at that time in New Orleans; if so, was it legal? Wouldn't it have been a hoot if the The Kid and Melba had instead gone to watch a bare knuckle brawl between Chaney (Charles Bronson) and Jim Henry (Robert Tessier)!
...And Justice for All (1979)
This movie was unbelievable - unbelievably awful!
I can't believe a director of Norman Jewison's caliber would make a movie this bad. The acting is terrible and the script is ridiculously over the top. The movie is more uninspired slapstick than courtroom drama. Name me a single incident in history where a judge fired his revolver at the ceiling instead of using his gavel to silence his courtroom?
The Ruins (2008)
Flowers propagate seeds
A horror movie quite a few notches above the usual affair. An innocent looking vine that has the virulence of a cordyceps fungus is quite a novel idea. However, a plot flaw - in my opinion - was the reasoning behind those brutal methods employed by the Mayan villagers to keep the lethal vine contained. The vine clearly had red flowers, so it would not have relied on infected humans to spread itself beyond the confines of the pyramid and invade new territory. Flowers are not there to make plants look pretty, they exist solely to be pollinated by insects, bats, hummingbirds . . whatever, germinate and then scatter their seeds to the four winds. Besides, wouldn't any fauna that pollinated those flowers become infected and fly away from the ruin before succumbing to the parasite?
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Typical B Movie That Got Promoted to an A through Lavish Budget
This big budget romp was concocted to a borrowed formula: 1/3 Groundhog Day 1/3 Starship Troopers 1/3 Minority Report Most of the movie's droll humor comes from the smart mouth of Bill Paxton who plays the hard-ass master sergeant. Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt give creditable performances with their mix of acrobatic skill and body chemistry; a duo who defy the odds and carry the day. The premise of this movie violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but this was not a movie intended for an audience of physicists, as the plot unwinds you have to suspend disbelief and cut it a little slack. It's a long time since I visited Paris, but isn't I.M. Pei's glass pyramid in the Louvre courtyard, so the crippled aircraft crossing the Seine would have had to crash through the main building in order to reach the omega?
Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
The All Star Cast is a Departure for a Mamet Film
Most of David Mamet's movies have been better scripted and relied on far fewer star actors. I wonder why this movie got the star treatment when other Mamet movies have done fine with the usual stalwarts - Ricky Jay, Rebeca Pigeon, William H. Macy, etc? The casting is unusual in having no women in the sales office (since female real estate agents far outnumbered male real estate agents back when the screenplay was written). For the movie Mamet added the Baldwin character, so theoretically he could have added a hard, aggressive bitch to the sales team to spice things up. The dialog is typical Mamet fare, it adds punch and pizazz but in real life I've never ever witnessed people verbally exchange like that! There are some plot events that simply don't make sense. The hapless Jack Lemon thinks he's hit the sales jackpot only to be deflated when told that the couple who signed his $80,000 sales contract have a history of being insolvent wackos; office manager Williamson (Spacey) already knew all about this, yet he assigned Shelley a complete time-waster. Why? managers are supposed to optimize business efficiency not sabotage it. Did Williamson do it out of malice or carelessness? We later learn he and Shelly intensely disliked one another? Most people (myself included) would rather clean toilets for a living than face that bleak future of endless sleaze, stress and abuse on all sides, but as this DVD's supplementary piece "Always Be Closing" showed, there are real-life real estate saleswomen who actually love cold-calling! It takes all kinds to make the world turn.
Drive (2011)
A Homage to the Walter Hill film
The violence throughout this movie was sudden and visceral - deliberately crafted for maximum shock value. We see driving stunts that defy the audience's credulity if not the laws of physics. In one chase scene the driver flips his car 180 degrees and speeds away in reverse from his pursuer. I would not have believed that remotely possible, had a friend of mine not assured me that Burt Reynolds once performed the exact same stunt; apparently it's difficult to execute safely and extremely hard on a car's transmission, but nonetheless possible. In a later scene we first see the driver rear-end a car and then T-bone it so violently that the car flies upside-down off a sand dune to land on the beach below. Amazingly, having delivered so much kinetic energy to the target car, the front of Ryan Gosling's car seems virtually undamaged and still has both its headlights working! A tank might have performed that stunt, but no car that I've ever heard of. Our hero seems to have a bizarre code of ethics, rather like the Javier Bardem character in "No Country for Old Men". We try to understand what makes him tick and we fail. Ryan Gosling is a much better actor than Ryan O'Neal, but this movie lacks a Bruce Dern bad-cop character.
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Michael Moore's IQ was at a low ebb when he did this movie
I'm generally an admirer of Michael Moore's work, but his film-making IQ was at a low ebb when he did Bowling for Columbine. I'm not going to spend too long expressing my disgust with Moor'e sleazy "got-ya" attack on Charleston Heston; by posing as an NRA member he cynically took and advantage of an aging man's mental confusion as Heston succumbed to Alzheimer's disease. Moore creates ridiculous fantasies, as he suggests Canadians don't bother to lock their doors at night (if Moore seriously believes that break-ins and burglaries don't occur often in Canada, he should try living in Vancouver's DTES or the North End of Winnipeg. Another ridiculous assumption is that Canada is not a nation of gun owners.
Instead of doing such ridiculous comparisons of the US with Canada Moore should have chosen Japan as his field of study. Japan has the lowest rate of gun crime in the world. In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US. What is the secret? If a Japanese wants to buy a gun in Japan the applicant must attend an all-day class, take a written exam and pass a shooting-range test with a mark of at least 95%. The applicant must also undergo mental health and drugs tests, a criminal record check and police will look for links to extremist groups. Then authorities check the applicant's relatives and work colleagues too. And as well as having the power to deny gun licenses, police also have sweeping powers to search and seize weapons. That's not all. Handguns are banned outright. Only shotguns and air rifles are allowed. In most of Japan's 40 or so prefectures there can be no more than three gun shops, and Japanese gun owners can only buy fresh cartridges by returning the spent cartridges from their previous visit. THAT's why Japan has near zero gun crime. Japanese culture is at the apex of human civilization, and they wisely shield their society from the influx of riff-raff from less enlightened parts of the world.
Spectre (2015)
Will the Film Industry Ever Go Green?
This movie has been awarded a Guinness World Records title for the Largest Film Stunt Explosion in cinematic history. Producer Barbara Broccoli, Daniel Craig and Léa Seydoux, accepted the record certificate in Beijing, China on behalf of winner Chris Corbould, who served as Special Effects Supervisor on SPECTRE. The explosion was filmed in Erfoud, Morocco and used 8418 litres of fuel and 33kg of explosives. Isn't it heartwarming to see how sensitive the film industry has become to environmental and global warming issues. No doubt some ambitious film producer is amassing a cache of high explosives that will blow Spectre out of the water!
Mulholland Falls (1996)
Quite a few bloopers and continuity errors
I've often wondered why Bruce Dern chose not to be credited with his appearance in this movie. The green glass at the test site emits enough gamma radiation to fog the x-ray photograph of Allison Pond's foot. Nick Nolte scoops up a handful of the same green glass shards and wraps them in his handkerchief, yet a few minutes later he is stopped at a road block where an MP scans him with a Geiger counter which doesn't get any reading. How come? Continuity error at Ellery Coolidge's funeral, the three surviving members of the police squad place their hats on Ellery's coffin as a mark of respect, yet in the very next frame Nick Nolte is seen wearing his hat, did he bring two hats to the funeral?
Merchants of Doubt (2014)
The director overreaches when he pans climate skeptics
I had no problem with much of this documentary, but I cannot agree with its conclusions on global warming. Publications such as Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery's "Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years" is a well researched book that has been well received by the scientific community. The earth's climate has in the past been much warmer and much colder than it is today and many of these shifts occurred back when the human race numbered less than one million people. What is truly alarming is that the most vitally important fact finding mission ever conceived got shelved by the George W Bush Dick Cheney administration in 2000. The Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite (Triana) was finally launched this February, after 15+ years in mothballs. At long last we will have precise measurements of the earth's climate budget - the amount of the sun's radiation earth receives and how much energy it radiates back into space - ergo a quantitative measurement of the greenhouse effect. This will finally determine whether we can believe the climate skeptics or the eco-terrorists. I find this sort of science far more satisfying than the study of growth rings of Moroccan Atlas cedar trees, or a stalagmite formation that grew in a Scottish cave beneath a peat bog. I find organizations like the David Suzuki Foundation and Greenpeace to be far more culpable of yellow journalism and the dissemination of misinformation than any of the so-called merchants of climate doubt.
The Contender (2000)
The gold standard against which all political thrillers will be judged.
Wow! No matter how many times I watch this movie I am still mesmerized by Rod Lurie's spellbinding script and brilliant directing. Lurie brought out the best in his cast, Joan Allen was great but it was Gary Oldman's depiction of the complex and enigmatic Shelly Runyon that was truly masterly. Even classics like "All the President's Men" are eclipsed by this movie. When making comparison's I suppose one must also consider Otto Preminger's 1962 effort "Advise and Consent", a movie not even discussed in The Contender's bonus materials. Despite a remarkable cast and a heralded director, Advise & Consent, alas, deserves the relative obscurity it enjoys today, (it bombed in 1962) I had trouble staying awake through the turgid performance of an ailing Charles Laughton. Political dramas are not easy to pull off, cinema audiences are much more savvy and sophisticated today. "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" seems so naive it's hard to believe even 1939 audiences bought it. As far as The Contender's realism is concerned, wouldn't it be great to hear the opinions of Washington insiders like Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and Condoleezza Rice? assuming they took time out to watch this movie. One thing I just can't get my head around is why such a brilliant filmmaker as Rod Lurie would waste his talent on a remake of "Straw Dogs". Unbelievable!
Billion Dollar Brain (1967)
What a Huge Embarrassment for British Cinema
1967 was a bad year for British Cinema. As if Casino Royale wasn't ludicrous enough, Ken Russel made this clunker his debut on the big screen. In their heyday, cinemas used to hand out cardboard face masks with red and green lenses; alas in 1967 there were no usherettes issuing clothespins that the hapless audiences could clip on their noses. Speaking of noses, one of the film's saving graces was the miscasting of Karl Malden with that hilarious nose with a tip shaped like a woman's butt, Malden was the only actor who could make Jimmy Durante look handsome. Having never had the misfortune of reading Len Deighton's novel, I'm not sure whether to blame him or John McGrath for the awful script. However often producers rely on an audience's ability to suspend disbelief, facts are still facts. YOU CAN'T BREED DEADLY VIRUSES OUTSIDE A HUMAN HOST, CERTAINLY NOT IN EGGS OR PETRI DISHES. The film's other saving grace is the casting of Ed Begley as Gen. Midwinter, an over-the-top demagogue, who seems to be a hybrid of Barry Goldwater and H. Ross Perot with a generous dash of T. Boone Pickens. LOL
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
Meticulously accurate production design, but sloppy historical accuracy in the plot.
In my view, the one good thing that came out of this mess was the revival of traditional shipbuilding skills in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia for the reconstruction of an enlarged version of the original 1787 Royal Navy sailing ship HMS Bounty. I seriously doubt if anyone could recruit shipbuilders with the requisite skills today. Tragically the ship sank off the coast of North Carolina during Hurricane Sandy on 29 October 2012. Since MGM went to such trouble and expense to reproduce the ship accurately I wonder if similar pains were taken over other aspects of historical accuracy. The (mis)casting of Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian certainly enhanced Brando's reputation as box office poison. The casting of Trevor Howard as Captain William Bligh is interesting. Depicting a 50-year-old man receiving his first command of a ship would strongly suggest he did not have the right stuff. In point of fact, William Bligh was only 33 when appointed Commanding lieutenant of HMS Bounty in 1787. Bligh was later promoted to commodore and Governor of New South Wales, hardly the career path of an incompetent martinet.
The Ghost Writer (2010)
One of polanski's best (spoiler)
Deft use of irony, suspense and economical story telling makes for a satisfying movie, well worth the cost of two tickets, a baby sitter and a restaurant meal with wine. I feel sure that Alfred Hitchcock would have admired it immensely. Hitch's weakness in his later years was his inability to find really good scripts; Polanski's instincts are much sounder. The Ghost Writer is slightly unusual Polanski fare in that a key villain gets his just deserts. Usually, in Polanski's sick and twisted film world, it's evildoers that dodge the bullets and live happily ever after while the righteous heroes suffer a cruel fate. Only in the final 10 minutes does Polanski bring his plot back into line with his time-honored "no good deed goes unpunished" genre. However, the ending is egregiously flawed. Ewan Gordon McGregor's character has a strong instinct for survival, evidenced by the astute way he gave his would-be assassins the slip on the ferry following his visit to Paul Emmett. Yet, in the film's ending, having decoded the hidden message in the original memoirs, he spills the beans to Ruth of all people, who of course relays this alarming development to her mentor, Paul Emmett. Not content with this piece of stupidity, our ghost writer then obligingly walks down a city street with his back to the oncoming traffic, thus making himself an incredibly easy target for a hit and run that follows. DUMB! Almost as bad is the contrived meeting with Eli Wallach. He just happens to shelter under the front porch of the one island resident who knows all about the tides and the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death if Mike McCara then he obligingly blabs them out to our protagonist right on cue. Not one of Polanski's most subtle plot contrivances! I'm amazed that Roger Ebert gave this movie 4 stars.
It Follows (2014)
The best supernatural horror flick I've seen in 40 years
Most critics allude to young writer/director David Robert Mitchell's gem as having "borrowed" from previous teen slasher movies such as Halloween etc. I beg to differ, I suspect the author marches to the beat of a very different drummer. Perhaps David Rose's 1988 "Paperhouse" was an influence, in the way its supernatural happenings follow a rigidly structured contextual logic? But I also wonder if the director ever read works by Dr M.R. James? I see many ideas from the late M.R. James's tales in the plot structure. "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad": a terrifying ghost comes after a hapless professor through an artifact discovered in the ruins of a templars' preceptory. "Canon Alberic's Scrap Book" a sacristan rids himself of a malevolent demon by selling priceless manuscripts to an unsuspecting collector. "Casting the Runes": the victim narrowly escapes death by surreptitiously returning the runic manuscript to its perpetrator. "A warning to the Curious": the vindictive ghost tricks his victim into following him to his doom by imitating his two companions. Few young authors get it so right so early in their careers; Mitchell has the keen instinct to avoid all the usual plot clichés, gratuitous boo moments and silliness that have ruined 99% of those unwatchable failures of this genre. I enjoyed this movie so much, I'm almost tempted to try my hand at writing a script of my own.
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
On the whole a good movie with a few flaws
There are times while watching this movie that you have to suspend disbelief. I could not believe that someone as smart as the Jackal would jeopardize the most important assignment of his career to have a casual affair with a married woman and then go back to her. Another flaw is the seemingly effortless murders of the forger and Madame Montpellier. Hitcock went to great pains to demonstrate how hard it is to take a human life in his film Torn Curtain, Fred Zinneman apparently never watched that movie. Last but not least, even in the stultifying bureacracy of the Elysee Palace, I refuse to believe the French Ministers were ever that incredibly stupid.
Proof (1991)
A very interesting plot idea. But weak character development.
A very interesting plot idea. Emotionally charged, superb acting some good humour All in all a very creditable effort on what have been a very limited budget. My main criticism of the film is the character development. Celia and Martin seem unresolved and don't quite add up / ring true. For instance, Celia lives in a fairly large house, drives a BMW, spends quite a bit of money on her hobby (photography) and apparently manages to pay for all this on the meagre earnings of a housekeeper. It's much the same with Martin, he doesn't appear to have a regular job; he seems so misogynistic I can't quite visualize him working with the blind. Martin eats out quite a bit and is an avid photographer. So, do we assume Martin balances his budget by collecting a disability cheque from the Australian government? Did he inherit his house? I'm not a details freak, but I find it hard to suspend disbelief when someone lives lavishly on social assistance, or menial housework