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Brooksider100
Reviews
The Hill (1965)
Standing the test of time, the mark of quality
I first saw Lumet's masterpiece on release in 1965. I used it as a management training aid from 1978 to 1989 and I recently watched it again.
Some movies improve with age like good wine. This is one....and there are many other black and white examples of this phenomenon- Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 12 Angry Men, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Fountainhead and High Noon plus Citizen Kane and The Longest Day to name but 9.
Is this the best film with an all male cast ever made? The film has more themes than fleas on a mangy dog. Make a list of them. You will find more than a dozen. This was the best 'punishment' film for nearly half a century until the magnificent Shawshank came to us.
Is this a film about bravery or cowardice? Authority or power? Justice or the lack of it? Brutality or triumph? Rules or rebellion? Hope or despair? Few films have a better ensemble cast all of whom are at the 'top of their game'.
Lumet's best effort? Maybe? Connery's best effort? Maybe? Bannen, Hendry, Kinnear and Lynch at their character acting best. Harry Andrews - just following orders or mindless automaton thug? Disturbing, uplifting, horrific, sadistic,dramatic and above all REAL. Totally believable story augmented by authentic performance of the highest calibre. Brilliantly shot and impactful from first frame to last.
Outstsanding
Love Actually (2003)
Written in Britain - a country with a 1000 year old comedy writing history.
George Bernard Shaw (Irish) once said 'Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language'.
The differences are more than linguistic. USA now has 403 years of its own 'Anglo influence', Jamestown, Virginia preceding Plymouth Massachusetts as the first English settlement in 1607. USA also has the literary history of Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, West Africa and its own indigenous Native population (although the latter two are soaked in enough blood to fill Chesapeake Bay). Malcolm X - 'Plymouth Rock landed on US'.
The fundamentalist Christian right and the Muslim extremist right both have ONE thing in common - 9/11, the beginning of Armageddon, the looked for proof that Nostradumus was right, the start of the final Jihad?.
We find ourselves sharing a planet where increasing strife abounds. Many say 'Can we have the Cold War back, please?'. Was it only 21 years ago that the seeds of destruction were still in the comparatively safe hands of USA, USSR, China, France and UK? Yes it was! History teaches us that nations have a 100 year old childhood and then a 100 year old adolescence before they emerge into maturity. In UK, if one takes 1066 as being the start point of modern Britain, the period of childhood and adolescence was nearly 600 years - William 1 to Elizabeth 1 and the 'Golden Age'.
Then Britain dominated the planet for nearly another 400 years until Yalta in 1945. Since then Britain has been in steady decline as a political force and a world power.
USA had 2 World Wars, Korea and Vietnam in its own adolescence. Then came WWW1 - The World Wide Web and everything speeded up and telescoped into the 'global village. Every village has an idiot - whether it be Blair, Bush or Bin Laden - or maybe earth has become a singularly unlucky village and simultaneously had 3 idiots.
Ideology - demagogue - polemic - fundamentalism - fascism - jihad - Armageddon.....words to strike terror into the soul.
The sane reasonable religions of the world all preach LOVE - actually.
We need love more than an addict needs heroin. 'Love makes the world go round' 'Love is a many splendoured thing' 'All you need is love' 'Amor Vincit Omnia' 'Love one another' 'Love your enemy' So it doesn't matter whether it's the creepy Jerry Maguire (We live in a cynical world, a cynical world) saying it to the execrable Rene Zellwegger (You had me at 'hello')or the magnificent Jimmy Stewart in 'Wonderful Life'or Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy in the dust of San Francisco, or Meryl Streep finally settling for Pierce Brosnan or The Lady and The Tramp or the 8 couples in Love Actually - the message is the same and without it we are nothing.
So nit pickers - elevate your thoughts above the mundane - stop chasing a buck for 5 minutes - find some joy - find a smile - cuddle your loved one whether thats heterosexual, homosexual, multi-sexual or your pet gorilla.
Apocalypto (2006)
Mel Gibson - twisted man, actor, director, producer?
From Mad Max to Edge of Darkness via The Amazon, The New Testament, 'Great Coffee' with Julia Roberts, the single handed factual rape of British History (Braveheart), four helpings of Riggs, three helpings of Max and Fletcher (Extremely Catholic) Christian.
Apocalypto could lay a reasonable claim to be his best work so far. I am not a Gibson devotee but giving credit where it is due separates the rational from the oft hysterical and overblown hyperbolic compilers of these reviews.
It's breathtakingly quick and the direction of unknowns is virtually faultless. I have an unerring judgement yardstick for movies - is there somebody in the film that I care about and want to see triumph? Am I emotionally bonded to a character or characters? Jaguar Paw, his pregnant birthing pool wife and his little boy all initially gripped my attention and my emotions. Unfortunately from the moment of the child Oracle followed by the fortuitous eclipse of the sun I thought the outcome was inevitable so the 'edge of tension' was undermined. Jaguar Paw's karma was that he would triumph....although we are left with the inevitable conclusion that the Spanish will get him, not the Mayans. Does Gibson have Apocalypto 2 on the horizon one wonders?
I have never minded sub-titles if it's a strong story and carry no brief on this re:Apocalypto.
This is an 'eyes' movie, virtually all the acting is 'eye'acting - and it is high quality.
The accompanying musical score is never intrusive unlike most action movies. I have lived in tropical countries and u can feel the humidity and the heat reflected in both visual image and soundtrack.
Gibson is a great plagiarist when he needs to be and gets a quicksand near-drowning AND a wading through corpses sequence within 5 minutes of each other (Killing Fields and Ice Cold In Alex revisited). And just a slight echo of Francis Ford Coppola in some of the violence - a short step from Apocalypse to Apocalypto. And a further echo of Last of The Mohicans - in fact I would wager that Gibson made his male lead watch it before filming started.
'Time well spent' was Apocalypto - to the extent that I almost forgave Gibson for 'Braveheart' (but unforgivable remains unforgivable).
A Tale of Two Cities (1958)
Bogarde or Coleman?
Pretty boy Bogarde or movie star Coleman? I always thought Dirk Bogarde (Bogarde NOT Bogarte) was a lightweight actor with occasional flashes of excellence.
I always thought Ronald Coleman was a great movie star who could act a bit.
Having said that I prefer Coleman's version of 'Lost Horizon' to the others and I think his performance as Carton shades Bogarde. Bogarde's best performances were in 'The Night Porter' and 'The Victim'
There was, however, a version of this movie (maybe made for TV) with John Mills playing Carton - easily the best.
12 Angry Men (1957)
Ed Begley
I agreed with the vast majority of the remarks made in the critiques of this great movie - I think you are on safe ground when you call this film a 'classic'.
It has always been a source of surprise to me that Henry Fonda had to wait until he was almost dead before the Academy Award voters finally got the wool out of their collective heads and gave him the Oscar he had deserved for 30 years.
Fonda is the only real 'star' out of this movie but I have always been a fan of Jack Warden - a really excellent supporting character actor.
E. G. Marshall is another of my favourite support actors - finishing his career in big time movies with an excellent cameo in 'Absolute Power' - the only David Baldacci book to successfully translate to big screen, thanks to Marshall and the excellent Gene Hackman.
None of the reviewers mention much about Ed Begley - not the greatest of actors but good in this and also in 'Million Dollar Brain' playing a megalomaniac with KKK overtones.
Victory (1981)
Escape to Victory
There are some movies, few in number, which start off as turkeys in the public consciousness and acquire greatness over time. Some achieve notoriety rather than fame. Some are so awful they fascinate the viewer - a bit like seeing a huge naked woman climb out of the bath (or a huge naked guy if you're a female).
Escape to Victory is a bit of all of these - it's a wonderful movie for trivia buffs (boys night out). Just the concept of Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, Max Von Sydow and Pele in the same movie is almost incomprehensible.
This is 'The Great Escape' meets 'Match of the Day' and a bit like 'Godzilla meeting King Kong'. What saves it is the football - the action sequences are generally really well done.
I suspect that 99% of blokes secretly like this movie and 95% of women hate it - another reason for it being a classic of its type.
It came on TV late one night about three months ago. As it was announced my brain went 'Oh No'! I watched it all the way through and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Oscar Wilde said of the death of Little Nell - 'You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh'. Esacpe to Victory is a bit like that - its conceptual awfulness is so far outweighed by the sheer exuberance and camaraderie of the action.