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ElNeilo
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Le salaire de la peur (1953)
Outstanding
There's not much else to add to what others have written about this superb thriller, which reminded me of another cracker, Ice Cold In Alex. If getting half crushed by a jeep and then almost drowning in quicksand is bad, imagine getting your bones broken by a lorry and then engulfed in crude oil. Vera Clouzot is stunning and all the guys are perfectly seedy, desperate and selfish
However, don't believe anyone who tells you that Friedkin's 70s remake Sorcerer is its equal or even superior, it doesn't come halfway close. For anyone to survive this hell is a travesty and the explanations of how the protagonists came to this pretty pass are downright contrived.
M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931)
M is for Murder...
... and H is for hype. For example, "I sat motionless during most of the film, hardly breathing, and my heart pounding; I was practically in tears at the end. This is one of the most terrifying films I have ever seen."
Terrifying? Deary me. This film has to be one of the most overrated in history. The plot, what there is, is pedestrian, the acting dreadful - lots of mugging to the camera from actors who've forgotten it's a talkie - and Lorre's histrionic speech at the end is so melodramatically bad it's almost funny.
The kangaroo court scene is perfunctory to say the least - a few clichés are duly trotted out about a madman not being responsible for his actions - the mob doesn't agree and prepare to lynch Lorre but then the cavalry arrive in shape of the hitherto flat-footed cops and he's saved. Finally some woman tells us to look after the kids and then, in darkness, that means all of us. The end. Righto, point taken.
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The Squirmometer hits 10
How NOT to do it. The Thin Red Line. Quite simply one of the worst war films I've ever seen. Nick Nolte overacting and bellowing all the time, Sean Penn, John Cusack, George Clooney, John Travolta for Chrissake and all the rest. I'd read very good reviews of this but it did all the wrong things. First, the intensely irritating quasi-philosophical monologues throughout the film like "Why do we do this to ourselves? Where does this hatred come from?", the endless shots of the sun through the ferns and the whispering grass, the horrible flashbacks to his girlfriend who dumps him in a letter - yawn - the hero that that gets killed, next shot is him swimming underwater with loads of kids, the dreadful men-dying-in-each-others'-arms scenes... mummy! Dire. Hollywood does it again. The thing about a good war movie is that it can be hours long like Das Boot or A Bridge Too Far and it still seems like no time has passed at all, crap like this you suffer every minute of its self-indulgent preachy saccharine 179 minutes. I was reduced near the end to fast forwarding in the hope of more battle scenes. Chronic.
Ascenseur pour l'échafaud (1958)
Dreadfully disappointing
I am a great fan of noir and thus was severely underwhelmed by this considering the glowing reviews. Jeanne Moreau looks great and the photography is suitably stylish and atmospheric but it's just that the story is so routine, so mundane, so ordinary. It looks like there might be a few clever twists but they never come, no, the clever cops work it all out and the silly chumps leave incriminating photos to seal their fate and by the way, who took the photos anyway? I hardly think they had selfies in those days, especially not on a spy camera, but rather indiscreet nonetheless considering the circumstances. However, justice is done, the bad guys get theirs and that's that. There is none of the moral ambiguity, nihilism or hopelessness that true masterpieces of the genre like Scarlet Street, Kiss Me Deadly or The Third Man have in spades. This plays out more like a routine episode of Colombo with all loose ends nicely tied up, thank you very much. A real disappointment.
Born to Boogie (1972)
Wasted opportunity
It's a pity that this couldn't have been just a live concert but no, Ringo just had to show what a jolly fanciful eccentric chap he was so half the film will make you squirm and wince. Him and Marc mugging at the camera and dissolving into peals of laughter at their own japery will have you reaching for the sick bucket.
That said, the live footage is great apart from the last tune which sadly degenerates into a total racket and confirms that Marc was no Ronno, while the acoustic versions of Spaceball Ricochet and Cosmic Dancer will make your toes curl with embarrassment.
The rest is the most pretentious self-indulgent "whimsical" claptrap you'll ever see apart from Magical Mystery Tour. Shoulda just shown the whole gig and left out the Mad Hatter's Tea Party crap and the rest.
Jeremiah Johnson (1972)
Me make um heap good biscuits boy
I knew we were doomed from the moment I heard the toe-curling ballad at the opening of the film about JJ and his decision to become a mountain man. Yawn. It was almost as bad as the refrain from a mercifully little-known Robert Mitchum western/comedy called The Good Guys and The Bad Guys which ran, "Marshal Flagg, Marshall Flagg, beneath his shirt, his shoulders sag".
This film clearly has the sentimental appeal to some kind of mythological long-lost past that so many Americans seem to hearken back to. Look at this comment from another reviewer. "It reminds me of my days when we used to go on hikes in the woods and we would sing the theme song with me in my little coonskin (it's fake for all you animal lovers) cap". Oh dear...
The film is crammed with the most agonizing Hollywood clichés you'll ever come across. The savage dumb injuns - oh, apart from the one who speaks French - the compliant injun squaw who manages to learn the word "yes" thanks to our hero and gets her face all roughed up by her paramour's manly beard, bless her - this of course is the perfect excuse for him to shave it off so the ladies can go all weak at the knees when they see Redford's lumpy old face in the flesh at last - the grumpy old timer whose only purpose in life is to hunt grizzlies and who excruciatingly refers to Redford as "pilgrim", the bald geezer who manages a nonchalant sense of derring do even though he's been buried up to his neck in sand by the injuns, the orphan shocked into muteness and the woman driven to distraction by the horrors they've witnessed, the hilarious wolf fight complete with cuddly toys, it just goes on and on.
Yes, of course the scenery is fantastic but this is hardly a saving grace. You can thank nature for that not Pollack simply pointing a camera at and panning across it.
Der ewige Jude (1940)
Sickening yet fascinating
I watched this film to see how truly low the human psyche could sink and concluded there seems to be no limit.
This so-called documentary is a vile ugly squalid farrago of lies and hatred yet its fascination is that it brings to the forefront again the baffling mystery of how the German people could swallow and ultimately embrace the message espoused by such tripe.
Didn't ordinary decent German citizens think there was something seriously wrong with their country when faced with images of Jews interspersed with swarms of rats or saw their streets patrolled by an ever-increasing army of men wearing black uniforms with a skull and crossbones on the cap?
The film was made in 1940 but the German people had long before then begun their tragic headlong rush into mass insanity and this relentlessly grim movie is an eloquent testament to the depravity and amorality of the Nazis, traits they with no sense of irony whatsoever ascribe to their victims.
Jews are terribly cruel to cattle and the Nazi government, we are proudly told, has banned their barbaric method of ritual slaughter, which we are shown in lengthy and disgusting detail. However, no mention is made and we are not treated to film of the barbaric ritual slaughter of human beings herded shaved and naked into vans and chambers and summarily gassed. Oh wait a minute, I forgot. Jews are subhuman, no better than rats, so that doesn't count.
The film is so preposterous that you might even think a dismissive laugh or two is in order. But laugh you won't.
Valkyrie (2008)
Oh dear...
I wonder if in the history of cinema there has ever been such woeful miscasting. The British contingent - Nighy, Stamp, Branagh and even Eddy Izzard, for Pete's sake - were so stiff upper lip it was a little tough for me to keep a grip on the fact they were meant to be German officers and not British officer POWs in a German stalag, accents apart. Many critics have incidentally criticized the latter in this film but there really is no choice unless we revert to the bad old Hollywood days of evil-sounding "you English pigdog, ve haff vays off making you talk!" Nazi accents or make the film in German with subtitles, which is inconceivable in a Hollywood crowd puller such as this.
But the ever young-looking Tom Cruise as Stauffenberg?! Now that's just silly. Every time I saw him I had to stifle a giggle, especially when he popped that daft glass eye in. Forget the fact that he can't act for toffee.
It's a pity that such a heroic and tragic tale had to be reduced to this. The Nazis foul revenge was only glossed over at the end, well, Tom was lying there dead, wasn't he, so that was that.
But for other reviewers to even mention this film in the same breath as the masterly Downfall is laughable. This story could have done with similar treatment and then it might have been a serious piece of cinema.