Reviews

John Ford was a career director and did not see himself as a purveyor of "art" films, yet here he is making one. Looking at this film from a 21st century perspective, when the Mexican history in question is no longer in the public memory, we take this film less for it's gesture and more for what it is. It's a true story that tries to be "timeless" as the voice over introduction says, to the point of simplifying characters to a ridiculous degree, simplifying the story (it's based on what's probably a much better novel - by Graham Greene), and going to overkill with the "artistic" photography, symbolism and general sense of being anywhere but an historical period. Some of the shots of Dolores Del Rio hamming it up are very embarrassing. To the extent that the film allows him to do anything, Fonda puts in a passable performance. Pedro Armendariz is adequate. Apparently Ford liked this movie. Closet artist that he was.

Hero and the Terror is late Chuck Norris and consequently less action orientated. We see Chuck do a little bit of karate, but it's mostly narrative driven. But the narrative is not so hot. It's a murder mystery of sorts, and Chuck plays it straight, to the best of his abilities. To be quite honest about it, this is a boring film. This is not Chuck in his element. Dictatorially, it is wishy washy. occasionally pretentious. But the photography is top notch. What it amounts to is that Chuck is an action star, and this is not an action film. Disappointing.

Chuck Norris movies tend to be polarizing. The Chuck fans love them regardless of short comings, and everyone else thinks they're a waste of celluloid. An Eye for an Eye is competently directed by Steve Carver, a man with actual talent. It's well edited. The performances are good (Chuck does his best). But the story and some of the dialogue is a little lame in places. However, Chuck karate kicks the bad guys and that's what we all really want to see. It's not a great film, but it's unpretentious and entertaining.

Don't Look Now is a mixed bag. It has the hand-held camera work and zooms of which Nicolas Roeg is so enamored, which are just distracting. It's very gimmicky with the "red" motiff and the mirrors. But the performances are excellent and the story is interesting, if superficial. It's not a horror film, and it's certainly not scary. It's basically about grief, ESP, and a murder mystery in the background. The final shocker isn't so shocking, but it works. There is one gratuitous sex scene in the film. It has a function, but it didn't need to be that explicit or to go on so long. Why it's rated 15 on DVD in the UK instead of 18, I don't know. Flaws aside, it's an engaging film, considered a classic, but not quite.

Mary of Scotland's main selling point is it's fabulous black and white photography. John Ford really let Joseph August be as creative as possible. Some of the acting is a little bit artificial and dated. The film is based on a play but it's not bound too much to it's stage origins, however it is quite talk orientated. The story it's self is very much in the Hollywood mold. It's not a history lesson. If it weren't for the photography I'd give this a lower score.

This is film poetry, full of all sorts of symbolism and obscurity, with slow motion and reverse photography abounding. The plot is a bit thin, but a lot of the film is engaging. There are a variety of cameo's from Cocteau's famous friends which doesn't add or detract from the movie. It starts off a bit boring and stupid and but gets better as it goes along. What was it about? I do not know. Was it about something in the first place? Probably yes. It doesn't feel especially pretentious, just obscure.

The Big Kahuna started out as a play and is very theatrical in as much as almost the whole movie takes place in one room. This isn't a weakness though because the story and dialogue really holds the attention. It's mostly a comedy but for the last half hour it's very dramatic and has some very nice observations about life and religion. All three lead actors are uniformly good. There are two things in the film that maybe didn't work so well: the fantasy sequence where the three characters imagine what they'd like to have happen that evening (except for Danny Devito's fantasy. I won't spoil it). It distracts from the rest of the film and is actually a bit trivializing. Presumably this wasn't in the play. And, personally, I don't think the song at the end quite worked. Otherwise, however, there's literally nothing to complain about. You really get to know the characters and appreciate them as human beings. This is one of my favorite films.

Fellini's Roma is neither a documentary nor a narrative film. It is a collection of disconnected scenes that take place in Rome, a great deal of which is set in the fascist era. There is no social commentary, aside from a little bit of business tacked on at the end. Really, there's not much going on in this film. There's the vaudeville sequence, which is a run through of various lame acts in a theater in the 1940's. It's amusing but pointless. There are two scenes in a brothel, existing, to be honest about it, for no other purpose than to parade a lot of topless women. And there's another long scene of an ecclesiastical fashion show which is probably supposed to represent either decadence or superficiality. There's yet another long winded scene of Fellini and his camera crew driving about in heavy traffic filming, well, the traffic (and I don't mean a la Godard in Weekend, just boringly). Gore Vidal crops up at the end saying nothing particularly profound. This is a disappointing and boring film.

Seven Samurai is a really professionally made film that is very entertaining. I've seen it half a dozen times at least over twenty years, and it's still fresh and exhilarating. This is not a film exclusive to foreign film buffs, this is for all audiences, as long as you can handle subtitles. It has romance, action, comedy, drama. it has a moral story with class system commentary. It has solid performances, knockout camera work that always serves the film and never the directors "artistic temperament". If anyone's reading this, I thoroughly recommend it. You can't go wrong.

The main problem with this film is that it is set in South Africa during the apartheid era, but fails to comment in any way on apartheid. Was this because it was filmed in SA and had to be neutral as a result of government restrictions? Did they water down the novel? Well the screenplay was co-written by the author of the original novel, Wilbur Smith. Was anything political removed from the final cut? The only half comment on racism is when Roger Moore knocks out a white mining expert for attacking a black South African guy. Did they film that in pinewood? You do get the odd glimpse of apartheid: black and white segregation at a football match; poor black kids watching on from the sideline as privileged white kids enjoy an open air Christmas celebration. But we're talking about two shots here that last a couple of seconds. As for the film on it's own terms: the mining footage is exciting, there's chemistry between Moore and Susanah York, and Ray Milland puts in a sterling performance. The opening credits by Maurice Binder are good too. It's entertaining enough, but it's a little uncomfortable as well due to the racial thing. Oh, there's a black South African character who is a miner of the year or something and he dies nobly to save other miners, but in a slightly mishandled cliched way. Not that he was a developed character or anything.

This is a review of the Directors cut from 2009 with a new narration and ten minutes less footage. And the narration works very well, reminiscent of Terence Mallick movies but without being pretentious. The production values are very high on this movie, and you can certainly see where the money was spent. It really evokes the era. The performances are all sound except for Richard O'Brien who camps it up as a sadistic British officer. Not everyone was in favor of the revolution and Al Pacino's character is one of those, an anti-hero who slowly comes round to the struggle. It's not a flag waver and maybe that's one of the reasons it failed to find an audience in 1985. The European location photography is fantastic, standing in for 18th century North America. The blood and guts of period warfare is shown realistically especially in the final battle sequence. The film is held together by the relationship between Pacino and his son, who he seeks to protect from the horrors of war. This is a fine film. It deserves some rehabilitation.

This is a very watchable and enjoyable film, which is a shame, because it shouldn't be. It's a case of the criminals as heroes and the law as villains. First of all we are asked to identify with McVicar and chums, then we are presented with that "one last job" and then finally we have some writing at the end to indicate he changed his ways; just a little fig leaf of an inscription after two hours of movie time. Let's just say that maybe the film-makers erred in a similar way to Scorsese with Goodfellas. Let's say they didn't mean to glorify gangsters, but they just made some wrong creative decisions. That's fair isn't it?

The Verdict is a fine film with an adapted screenplay by David Mamet. There are some brave editing choices where key moments are left to the imagination rather than shown, which is to say the audience is being treated like adults, so thanks for that one. Paul Newman is very good in this film. Charlotte Rampling, who has very little actual screen time, is fabulously understated with sheer screen presence. Jack Warden is as reliable as ever. The story is about a man seeking to redeem himself through the case he takes on, instead of settling out of court he decides to fight, much to the distress of his needy clients. Is he really being selfish? You decide. The photography was good too. A throughly decent film.

This should have been really good. It has all the elements in place. It was written by William Goldman based on his own novel. It was photographed by the great Conrad Hall. John Schlesinger directed. The actors are excellent. But there's something missing. It doesn't quite gel. Individual scenes are excellent, but the sum of it's parts is a little underwhelming. Maybe it needed to be a longer film.

This is a delightful film that can be seen over and over again. The screenplay is beautifully crafted by Truman Capote and Huston, lushly photographed by Oswald Morris. The acting is right on the nose. The editing is excellent. It's less about narrative push than the relationships between characters and how that develops, and it holds the interest very well. For me, this is the peak in John Huston's career.

Neither Olivier nor the whole cohort of big name actors featured in this film can live up to Shakespeare's dialogue. They render it boring and tedious. Because of that, while I like the play, I don't like the film. Olivier trys to make it cinematic with little bits of business with the camera and staging, and that's welcome, but even that clunks a bit. Overall it's a disappointing Shakespeare adaption.

Does this film have any substance? That's the question I kept asking myself all the way through, giving it chance after chance. The acting is good, the lighting is good, the story holds the interest. But what purpose does it serve? Is there some deep meaning that I missed? Is it just a very peculiar piece of entertainment? Pinter has a reputation, and I've enjoyed other plays of his before, particularly The Birthday Party, The Dumb Waiter, and One for the Road. The fist two of those are a bit abstract as well. He even won the Nobel prize. To be completely honest, I don't think this movie is about anything. It was more or less enjoyable, but pointless. It takes it's self seriously, and consequently had a sense of self-importance about it. But it's worth a watch to know what all the fuss is about.

This is a lovely film. Very entertaining. Unpretentious. There are an awful lot of musical numbers, so much so I had to take a break in the middle from fatigue. I guess that's a criticism, but the numbers were good. Jacque Demy doesn't do a lot with the camera, he's all about content not form, but he does keep it moving during the musical numbers. The acting is fine. It was a pleasure to see Gene Kelly crop up, albeit dubbed into French. You can see from his lips that he's singing in French. Apparently it was all filmed to play-back, very successfully. Unfortunately the subtitles weren't so great when it comes to the lyrics. Too many idiomatic changes and a general change of tone. You don't need much French to notice if you keep your ears and eyes open. But, aside from that, lots of fun. If you need cheering up, watch this film.

Well I don't know what it was about. Maybe there wasn't much going on. The wild grass must have symbolized something seeing as it kept cropping up all the time. The premise for the romance was interesting I suppose. There was a very playful element to the film, both in the form and the narrative. It's just an "art" film in the end. No excuses. Funny thing is, I really enjoyed it and couldn't take my eyes off the screen. Totally bizarre ending, which fit the film very nicely. I suppose it helps to come into the movie with low expectations. Don't get awed by the name Resnais (my god, but wasn't Last Year in Marienbad pointless? and compelling?). It's a fun little movie.

Just saw this for the first time in twenty odd years. It wasn't as good as I remembered. A bit too simplistic. There's no plot really. The characters developed very slowly. I laughed once. Alison Steadman was very good, and the the rest of the cast was adequate. This is not the great work of art some people are making it out to be. It's just ok. Still, it was enjoyable to watch the horror show of a party unravel and the middle classes being exposed as basically trash.

This film is very disappointing. First of all, it's a horror movie that isn't scary, probably because it's so calculated. Second, it's completely incoherent in terms of the supernatural. Especially the last shot of the film which renders everything that came before it stupid. Third, it's boring. This is late Kubrick, so expect a grandiose attempt to change the "form" of film with long drawn out takes where everything moves at a snails pace. Fourth, as Stephen King himself said, it's ice cold and emotionless. Fifth, it's misogynistic. Poor Shelly Duvall is like a mechanical doll rolled out to scream and show weakness. Sixth, like Kubrick, it's just not that good.

In an interview William Friedkin confessed an afinity to the world view of screen writer Tracy Letts and said that if he hadn't become a director he could well have ended up a serial killer, to which Letts, who was present, concured. What is the world view of Letts? Well, on the basis of this film, based on an old play by Letts, pretty negative and more or less encapsulated in the electric last half hour of the movie: human beings are perverted scum busy destroying each other. If you don't share that world view you might not like the movie, or at least that last half hour, which includes the infamous fried chicken scene which, if not exactly shocking, is certainly disturbing. It's all very well acted, especially Matthew McConaughey, and the photography is good. But to be honest, the first hour of the film was a bit boring. It's supposedly a black comedy, but there aren't many jokes, although there is an element of the absurd. I suppose what the film/play really wants to do is be shocking for the sake of it, there is no grand purpose to it, no intellectual meaning, or philosophy, until the sheer nihilism of that last half hour.