ace-150's Reviews

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

10/10

2 November 2022

Doug Fairbanks, who is not particularly imposing physically and 40 years old in this film, is the most dashing, swashbuckling actor ever to dominate the silver screen. It's hard to imagine Hollywood without him. The sets are vast --- and beautiful --- and yet he still holds your attention.

The stereotypes on view in the film are grating to modern eyes. Particularly the Mongol Lord and the maid (played by Anna Mae Wong), although they at least hired Asian Actors for the part. 30 years later, you'd still find John Wayne playing Genghis Khan.

If only Los Angeles had forced the studios to build sets to building code, I could be living in 1924's vision of medieval Baghdad today.

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The Gay Divorcee (1934)

8/10

The Continental is pure joy

20 August 2022

The film overall is a shade weaker than Top Hat, but the second half redeems it. The first half - the jokes are a bit flat and Edward Everett Horton isn't as well used as he could be. Night and Day is well sung and danced, but the staging doesn't yet show the supreme sophistication that would appear in Cheek to Cheek, nor is the opening Fred-only number in the same league with Top Hat, White Tie and Tails.

On the plus side, The Continental is everything that you could hope for in a 1930s musical. Partly because the delightful Erik Rhodes, who should have been a huge star, gets to sing a chunk of it. Eric Blore even does a bit of dancing. The sets are vast, the dancers innumerable and the costumes beautiful. Especially Ginger Roger's gown. You can't not be in a good mood when you watch this.

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Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries (2019–2021)

6/10

Soggy cheese

3 July 2022

The best thing about the original series was the amazing 1920s style, which was done beautifully. This series, which is supposed to take place in the 1960s, fails miserably in conveying a feeling for the era. They play 1960s songs..... any of which you might hear on the radio in 2022. They drive 1960s cars..... any of which you might see on the road in 2022, especially in Australia where roads aren't salted to melt winter ice. Her 1960s house and furniture? They've been back in style for the last 25 years and are common. Ditto for clothing and hair. If no one told you that this was supposed to be set in the 60s, you'd probably never notice.

The other failure is that, where the original series had a strong approach to story-telling, this has been overcooked into thin, formulaic gruel. It reminds me of The Lone Gunmen, whose producers took three great characters from The X-Files and then squeezed them into a canned sit-com format, killing what might have been a great program. The Adventuresses Club and its inhabitants are just tired stereotypes. They might as well be named Sidekick A, Sidekick B, and Sidekick C.

And for readers of the books, why did Peregrine inherit Phryne's estate? Jane and Ruth and Tinker would be in their 40s. Dot and Hugh would be in their 50s.

The one thing that is 100% successful is Joel Jackson as Detective Steed. He has the kind of charisma that Essie Davis and the rest of the cast brought to the original.

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Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

10/10

Worth The Hype

2 May 2022

Unlike Woodstock and Monterey Pop, which are concert films with a little bit of documentary footage, this is a real documentary with a lot of concert footage. Even though it would be entertaining just to watch the concert, the context and analysis are riveting. It puts the music in the midst of everything from assassinations to the moon landing. And calls attention to the many performers who were bringing their talents out of the church setting for the first time, embracing acid rock, and dressing and acting in a way that violated the longstanding rule for black artists of "don't scare the white people".

I hardly ever watch with commentary, but I watched a second time with it on and it was brilliantly informative. Not only about the changes in African-American culture happening on stage, but also the gossip about who got paid the most, who canceled at the last minute, and who was turned down to be in the festival.

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Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe (2007)

8/10

Misleading title

12 March 2022

This is really a history of Sam Wagstaff and his role in the history of photo collecting. As such, it's pretty interesting. Robert Mapplethorpe is in it only as part of Wagstaff's life story. It presents a variety of perspectives on Wagstaff's contributions as well as on Mapplethorpe's motivations. Basically, 'brilliant' to 'junk', and 'true love' to 'gold-digger'. If you're looking for gossip, as opposed to art history, not the film to watch.

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Jigokuhen (1969)

7/10

Ritualized drama

1 March 2022

There are a lot of reviews calling out the over the top performances, but it seems strongly inspired by ritualized drama forms like Kabuki and Noh. Just look at the Paramount Lord's eyebrows! It's just really traditionally stagey. What I found weirder is that the 'good guy' is much worse than the 'bad guy'. The scene with the snakes, let alone the business with the daughter, the artist is just horrrrrible.

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Bad (1977)

5/10

Warhol failing to keep up with the times

10 February 2022

It's impossible to watch Bad without thinking of John Waters. My first thought was that this film must have been an influence on him. But looking at the date, Waters had already made ten films, including some of his most famous. Or notorious. Bad tries to shock, but mostly bores. Of course, that's kind of the theme of most Andy Warhol produced films.

Carroll Baker does a great job as a deadpan, middle class housewife and electrologist who aspires to more via her murder&mayhem-for-hire service. And Perry King is a fine follow-up to Joe Dallesandro. But the over the top performances from the other actors make Bad seem like scenes from two different films spliced together into one mess.

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Making the Boys (2011)

9/10

Big personalities

12 January 2022

This was a great little film. If you're looking for a point, there isn't really one, but there are lots of interviews with interesting people with a lot to say about life pre- and just post-Stonewall. Edward Albee is unrepentant about having been an ill-tempered curmudgeon, but he does admit that he might have been wrong a few times. Christian Siriano comes off as a narcissistic imbecile. And Mart Crowley was really rocking a Wednesday Addams look when he was young.

The last third of the film talks a lot about how most of the actors' careers never quite got back on track afterward. Robert La Tourneaux ended up advertising himself for tricks with The Cowboy from BITB for $100. And it's also about how almost every one of the gay actors (the majority) died young. And over all, about how angry they were about both things.

This is a worthy addition to the body of films about the early days of the gay liberation movement.

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Nothing Ever Happens (1933)

8/10

Clever... if you know the original

28 December 2021

This is a very funny parody of Grand Hotel, but if you don't know the original film and more importantly, the actors in the original, you probably won't get it. The faux Lionel Barrymore is particularly brilliant.

If only modern hotels had kick lines of satin-clad bellhops following the guests around, the world would be a better place.

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Beast with a Gun (1977)

4/10

Keystone Cops Meet Marquis De Sade

14 December 2021

If the Italian police are really this incompetent, no wonder the mafia runs half the country. Over and over again, the police approach a psychopathic serial killer without bothering to draw their guns first. More poignantly, they know that he has a machine gun with him. And yet, over and over they seem to believe that they can just talk him into surrendering. In their defense, maybe they have no idea what's going on because the dialogue is so stilted.

The only thing that this film has going for it is that Helmut Berger chews up the scenery without holding anything back. He really nails the whole 'sexy sadistic killer' thing.

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The Pallisers (1974–1975)

8/10

Addictive

23 May 2021

I never binge watch series, but I ripped right through this one. It does a pretty good job of staying true to the books, and where it doesn't, it tends to improve the story. The books are worth reading, but not quite first rank. The Palliser Novels, which were known until recently as The Parliamentary Novels ramble through quite a few stories over about 25 years. The Pallisers themselves are not primary characters in all of them, but the series turns the tale into Plantagenet and Glencora's story. Which makes for much more entertaining viewing, but requires a massive change in book six.

Most of the casting is great. Susan Hampshire is first class as Glencora. The one absolute, incomprehensible disaster is Donal McCann as Phineas Finn. In the books, he's the tallest, handsomest man in the country, which drives his story. In the series, Glencora even refers to him as "seven feet tall and an Adonis." And then in trundles Donal McCann who's slightly portly, shorter than most of the actors and some of the actresses, and has a face like a dropped pie. In the books he's hopelessly sweet, his only fault being a habit of falling in love with every woman he meets. In the series, he's a sex pest and date rapist who picks fights with all the other characters. They should have cast Stuart Wilson, who plays the impossibly hot, mustache-twirling Ferdinand Lopez, in the far more important role of Finn.

The production values are high, but the video quality is a bit frayed. Not bad, just not equal to the quality of the series.

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The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet: Rick's Riding Lesson (1958)

Season 7, Episode 8

8/10

Is pathological lying hereditary?

22 August 2019

For reasons which defy understanding, Ricky pretends to be a horse novice in order to secure a date with a pretty riding instructor. He could have just asked her to the hayride. He could have just stood there being the beautiful Ricky Nelson and waited for her to flirt with him. But instead, he did exactly what Ozzie does in every episode. He concocted a tall tale to get her into the saddle and take her for a ride. Except for Harriet, these Nelsons never seem to tell the unvarnished truth as their first response to any situation. And this is supposed to be a paragon of wholesomeness. No wonder they live with their parents until retirement age.

And speaking of aging, there's a scene at the end in which Ozzie and Harriet are in bed together. I'm not sure why the Nelsons were allowed one bed when Rob and Laura Petrie had to have two some years later. Maybe Mary Tyler Moore was just considered more prurient than Harriet. In the scene, David and Ricky show up in their pajamas to say goodnight. They are both strapping, fully-grown men (ages 22 and 18) with obvious chest fur sprouting out of the tops of their PJs. And then they turn around and head off to their bedroom, which they still share. And which still has the same two child-sized beds in which they slept when they were eight and twelve. You don't see their room in this episode, but it shows up in the next one and it hasn't changed. Maybe Ozzie's been lying to them about their age.

This episode is only mildly entertaining, but has two songs by Ricky, which makes it worth watching.

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The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet: The Trophy (1958)

Season 6, Episode 13

9/10

Oh, Ricky!

20 August 2019

If you're looking for a Hot Ricky episode, The Trophy will do just fine. While David is still wearing the boxy clothing from the first five years of the series, Ricky has graduated to tight jeans and shirts. And where David is buttoned down, Ricky is just unbuttoned. The top three buttons, that is. Maybe he's trying to look sexy, or maybe he's just trying to prove that he's not a little kid anymore, but either way, he's showing a big wedge of thick chest hair. I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't have only been screaming teen-aged girls who tuned in every week to watch him. He completes his transformation by singing a remarkably raunchy version of "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On". Not at all the sort of thing that one expects to see on Ozzie & Harriet. But no complaints, either.

The Trophy sees Ozzie trying to prove his athletic prowess, which goes just the way that you would expect. The rest of the Nelson clan show themselves to be a talented family. Ozzie proves that doing nothing but hanging around the house, asking your wife for everything, and eating ice cream is not likely to win any Olympic medals.

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The Beverly Hillbillies: The Clampetts Meet Mrs. Drysdale (1962)

Season 1, Episode 4

7/10

Jokes already starting to get stale

22 October 2018

Given that the show is ONE 65 year-old joke, it's still remarkably funny. But at this point, they're still dragging some gags from episode to episode to episode. The Clampetts have been getting all their water by dipping a bucket into the cement pond. They make this clear to everyone they meet, meaning Mr. Drysdale and Miss Hathaway, in every episode. They complain about having to tote the water so far into the house. Jed moves the faucet back and forth and complains the the pump won't prime. But at no point does anyone walk over to the sink and turn on one of the taps. The Clampetts at least have an excuse for being clueless. How do these city slickers manage to run a bank if they can't even communicate how to use running water to a couple of hillbillies?

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Garden of Death (1974)

7/10

Mid-70s campfest

30 May 2018

Anyone who didn't enjoy this probably wasn't around to suffer through that era in television. Unintentional or not, this movie is an effective parody of late-60s through mid-70s 'horror'. All style, no horror. This film sticks to the conventions of pretty much every Movie of the Week and Night Gallery segment. That horrible music was in the background of every television movie of the era, whether it was a romance in Scandinavia or voodoo in New Orleans. Floor-length hostess gowns, towering wigs, boring marriages, too many cocktails, ethnic tokenism...... you name it, every trope from the era is in this film. Katharine Hepburn's niece follows in her aunt's footsteps by playing herself (try to find a Hepburn movie in which she doesn't play a madcap heiress.) Joe Dallesandro does what he does best, which is wandering around half-naked and saying as little as possible. NO ONE wears a pair of low-slung pants like Joe Dallesandro. It would have been much better if there were less horror (the special effects are dire) and more sex (which requires nothing but more Joe Dallesandro not talking.)

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The Room (2003)

1/10

This is why the microwave won't work with the door open

18 November 2017

Imagine that you're driving along a deserted road at night and you see a cat that's been run over but isn't dead yet, and you stop to help, but there's no point in scraping it up and taking it to the vet because it's going to die anyway and you'll just cause it more pain, but you can't quite bring yourself to get the tire iron out of the trunk and put it out of its misery. That feeling is the feeling that you feel while you're watching The Room. At least if you're stupid enough to watch it sober, like I did.

I had gotten the impression that The Room was about a non-actor who tries to act and fails spectacularly. But The Room is actually about a non-human who tries to pass himself off as one of us and doesn't fool anyone. There are plenty of movies with actors who can't act in them. But with the rest of them, you figure that when they're not in front of the camera, they can probably order a burrito without needing some kind of Star Trek universal translator device. If you manage to sit through even a few seconds of the interview with Tommy Wiseau in the Special Features, you'll soon realize that, when he's acting in The Room, he's actually at the peak of his ability to communicate articulately. His incomprehensible 'Schwarzenegger in Hercules in New York' grunting and bellowing is Tommy Wiseau with a crew of 40 professionals backing him up.

And remember when using your microwave oven --- SAFETY FIRST!

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Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966)

8/10

Highly entertaining campfest

24 November 2015

This was much more entertaining than I expected. The overacting is in a class of its own. The actress who plays Frau Frankenstein chews up the scenery, but the actress who plays Juanita is even more over the top. The wide-eyed reaction shots are beyond what you could expect from even the worst street mime. The fact that her makeup was applied with a wide-tip Sharpie helps. And the vengeful cowboy is no slouch either when it comes to hamming it up. The production values are obviously not high-quality, but better than you'd expect thanks to getting the lab equipment from the original Frankenstein films. The Frankenhouse is the absolutely worst matte painting that I have ever seen. Cal Bolden is everything that you could want in a giant, zombie, muscle slave. When Frau F says, "Igor, go to your room!," she really should have said, "Igor, go to MY room!" And in the scene when she's bitterly complaining about being romantically spurned by Mr. James... and standing next to a musclegod who obeys her every whim... and there's a bed in the background... she really needs to sort out her priorities. I watched it without Mr. Briggs commentary and had a blast.

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Ludwig (1973)

8/10

Beautiful but bloated

11 February 2015

A little bloated, but fantastic performances by Helmut Berger, who chews up the scenery, and Silvana Mangano, who just sits there looking beatific. The music, which seems meant to reinforce Ludwig's obsession with Wagner, is somewhat intrusive. The sets, of course, are Ludwig's own constructions, and quite beautiful in a too-fabulous-to-live way. The costumes tend to overwhelm the actors, making the whole thing a bit costume-drama-ish. The lighting, which is much too bright, unfortunately reinforces the costumeyness. It would be interesting to send it to the lab and give it a more historical lighting tone. Visconti doesn't put any gloss on Ludwig's love for handsome, mostly-naked young men, who make up the bulk of the extras. Fairly daring for 1972, but maybe that was part of Helmut Berger's pay package.

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The Pirates of Penzance (1994 TV Movie)

5/10

Too much slapstick

29 September 2012

The director seems to have been trying to replicate the mood of the Kevin Kline/Rex Smith film version of PoP but ended up turning it into a carnival rather than a musical. The Fabulous Singlettes as General Stanley's daughters was a good gag. They turn their songs into DooWop numbers. They sit around the stage smoking and cackling. They look more like hookers from a Fellini film than the usual bevy of Victorian maidens, but it works.

Apparently, that wasn't enough comedy, because every character in the production plays their part with the broadest slapstick possible. I wouldn't mind .... except that they stop the music to do it. Almost every single song is stopped literally half a dozen times so that the singer(s) can do a pratfall or a gag. The actors playing Frederic and Mabel have very strong voices, and their duets are wonderful. The Pirate King and Ruth are clearly more comfortable with comedy than with singing. The Actor playing General Stanley was the worst. He does his whole part in a fake "old man" voice, and his physical schtick does not work. I actually left the room and washed my dishes while he was singing Major General. And I still didn't miss most of the song. This version is almost half an hour longer than the Kline/Smith version because they just keep stopping the musical to wink-wink-nudge-nudge at the audience.

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The Pirates of Penzance (1980 TV Movie)

9/10

The only thing wrong with this...

19 September 2012

...is that I can't take a time machine back so that I can be there for this performance. The tape is technically sub-par, but it's not that bad. There's a bit of a machine hum for a few minutes and there's a little gargliness in part of the finale. But it's absolutely worth it. I'm a big fan of the film version, but it's like the difference between a blow-up doll and a live person. Patricia Routledge gives a great performance. And in the live show, you realize that Rex Smith has a HUGE voice. This performance is so lively, and the audience is having such a great time. I rented it and then promptly went to Amazon and bought it.

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Lost in Space: The Lost Civilization (1966)

Season 1, Episode 27

Odd even by LIS standards

18 September 2011

Warning: Spoilers

The menfolk take the chariot to search for a water source. Of course, there's a fishing hole within walking distance from the J2 and we know that there's an inland sea. But they go hunting for water anyway. It's unclear how they plan to get this water back to the J2 since they don't have any containers. And they make it clear that if they don't find water, they're all gonna die. But they still go hunting for water anyway.

Now this particular planet has an odd orbit that means that the temperatures go up above the 120s. The intrepid castaways never go hunting for water when the temperatures are moderate. They always wait until just before the season of fiery death. Then they get into their all-Pyrex car and go water hunting.

Stock chariot footage from the meteor shower episode ensues, this time cut with stock footage of lava to denote a volcano. After this episode of volcanism, the robot announces that they're driving over an underground water source. So they promptly drive the chariot right up a hill because when you're drilling for water, you want maximum elevation.

The water turns out to be brackish, so they get back into the Pyrex car. When it gets really hot (because Dr. S has stolen the AC parts) they drive into a cave. Will requests and receives permission to wander aimlessly through an unexplored cave system per standard Robinson parenting. There is a planet-quake, exactly like the last time that they drove into a cave. The quake is bad enough to toss Will and the robot down a mysterious pit which looks like a circular well full of debris from the top and a cave system from the bottom. Dr. R and Maj. W fail to notice the planet quake.

After a few twists and turns, Will and the robot find themselves on Gilligan's Island, only underground and furnished and populated by old Flash Gordon sets and costumes. Dr. R and Maj. W follow them down the hole. During another quake, a boulder rolls toward them, so Dr. R throws Maj. W in the path of the rock while hiding himself under a ledge. Note to Maj. W: back off a little on the Judy thing.

Prodded by the robot, Will kisses a sleeping child. When she awakens, she turns out to be a princess with Ferengi teeth who learned her lines phonetically. They all go to the underground kingdom where Will is supposed to marry the princess so that her major domo Ming the Merciless can unleash a thousand generations of mini-dress clad warriors to conquer the universe, starting with earth. The warriors wield full height weapons, because nothing's easier to shoot than a cross between a floor lamp and a coat rack.

At this point, the show turns into a Benny Hill episode with all the characters chasing each other from the throne room to the torture chamber to the instrument room several times, but sadly without Yakety Sax accompaniment. Eventually, Ming fries, the princess goes back to sleep and the castaways somehow get a two-ton robot out of a vertical pit.

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The Swarm (1978)

8/10

Bees is bees.

28 June 2011

So many questions, so few answers.

The on-screen talent for this film, as of 2011, has ten Oscars. Why did they do this film? Michael Caine might have been early in his career, but Olivia de Havilland? Irwin Allen's resume consists mostly of Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. How do you go from Gone With The Wind to The Swarm?.....

Why would passenger cars on a train explode when they rolled down a cliff? The cars are being dragged by the locomotive up front. Are all the passengers carrying thermoses full of nitroglycerine and napalm?.....

Why would the school principal allow the children to play outside when they knew that there's a swarm of bees who can kill with a single sting? Okay, I know the answer to this one: so that Olivia de Havilland can smash herself against the window and moan piteously......

Why would the two doctors in the room, when a teen-aged boy who's hooked up to monitoring equipment flatlines, respond by wailing rather than initiating CPR? On a related note, why, when the doctor who's vital to the project goes into cardiac arrest, would the other doctor leave the room for five minutes?.....

Why do Michael Caine and Richard Widmark, in every scene where they're together, yell at each other with three seconds of silence between alternate outbursts?.....

Setting aside the larger question of why you would decide to burn down an entire city to kill some bees - WHO CAN JUST FLY AWAY - why would you send flame-thrower teams to ride up and down the elevators in highrises, torching floors at random with no escape plan and no face coverings to keep the bees off? Okay, I know the answer to this one, too: after a while, it gets pretty boring watching people stung to death, so Irwin Allen decided that he should set them all on fire for the last 20 minutes of the film......

Why didn't Richard Chamberlain have a bigger career?.....

Did Irwin Allen slip LSD to the actors to get the interviews in the 'Making Of' special? Because both Michael Caine and Olivia de Havilland carry on a bit about how this film is really a public service documentary sort of thing because killer bees are real!!! And Olivia really sells it. Ben Jonson, on the other hand, actually says, "Bees is bees.".....

The Swarm is by far the most entertaining piece of inexplicable schlock that I've watched this year.

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Heavy Equipment (1977)

10/10

A seminal example of the filmmaker's art

18 September 2009

I saw this in San Francisco when it first came out, at one of the theaters on Market Street. The theater was packed, which was not, I think, the norm for weekday matinées of porn films. Needless to say, you feel like you're in danger of getting poked in the eye through the whole thing. Roger, in particular, almost hit the back wall of the theater. Although the stars were some of the most popular gay porn stars of all time, nobody in the theater seemed to regard it as an erotic experience. Everyone was laughing hysterically. When you see a regular film in 3D, you always have the impression that they've gone off mission by sticking things right into the camera and squirting things at it. It seems like the natural course of events in this film, so maybe it's time for a gay 3D porn renaissance.

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Don't Give a Damn (1995)

Oddly entertaining.

8 July 2008

On the minus side, it appears to have been filmed on a cell phone, the sound was processed in an underwater echo chamber (apparently the transfer process overlays Mandarin and Cantonese tracks) and the subtitles were created by someone who is clearly not a native English speaker. And there's a scene in blackface which keeps referring to African-Americans as negroes. On the plus side, Kaneshiro Takeshi. And it's a sort of charming window into lowbrow Hong Kong humor. Did I mention Kaneshiro Takeshi? It's more reminiscent of Benny Hill than martial arts. How else can you explain Sammy Ho being chased by the hot office chick? Interestingly, the final shoot-out, punch-out, knife-out turns seamlessly into the rap party. And Kaneshiro Takeshi is in it.

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Godmonster of Indian Flats (1973)

I like big sheep and I cannot lie.

6 July 2008

For the first, say, 85 minutes, I couldn't make heads or tails out of this film. It appears to be a lost episode of the Brady Bunch where they wake up and discover themselves in a lost episode of Gunsmoke where they all wake up and find themselves in a lost episode of Night Gallery. I get why the hookers wear Victorian get-ups, but why does the visiting financier wear a Wild, Wild West outfit while trying to close a business deal? Most realistic dump ever. Coolest movie monster ever. It looks like a huge plushie that got caught in a fan and half skinned. And sheepy got back! Somehow, the last five minutes of this extraordinarily aimless film turned it into an existentialist allegory and it all seemed perfectly sensible. Except maybe the white plastic casket at the dog's funeral and, of course, the pie eating contest.

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