Archive for December, 2007

Denver has run dry of whiskey and, with a predicted hard winter ahead, things look bad for the miners. The town purchases 40 wagonloads of the stuff, more than enough to survive the winter, from Frank Wallingham (Brian Keith) but can the wagon train make it through treacherous country that not only holds Indians but also Cora Templeton Massingale (Lee Remick) and her Women’s Temperance League? Colonel Thaddeus Gearhart (Burt Lancaster) tries to keep the peace but finds his hands full with Cora, a woman of forceful conviction and obvious feminine charm.

I’m a big fan of John Sturges, he made some true classics like The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, and even some of his lesser known films like Last Train from Gun Hill and Hour of the Gun are personal favourites of mine. Someone should have told him though that “epic” and “comedy” don’t go together.

And Epic comedy is just what The Hallelujah Trail tries to be, and with a running time of 150 minutes (complete with entrance, intermission and exit music) it certainly has the length. Robert Surtees’ gorgeous cinematography and Elmer Bernstein’s rousing score ensure it also looks and sounds the part but it falls down when it comes to the script.

There aren’t many laugh out loud moments in John Gay’s screenplay, at its best it manages to elicit a feeling of mild amusement, but spread across such a inflated running time it’s stretched too thin. The film could easily loose a third of its running time and be all the better for it. Instead it sprawls across two and a half hours seemingly because Sturges wanted to make a BIG picture.

In rural England a body is unearthed when a farmer is ploughing a field but this is no human or animal corpse. It’s not long before the local children are led astray by Angel Blake, a young girl seemingly possessed by Satan, and they begin harvesting transformed body parts from local villagers in order to make some sort of patchwork devil.

Perhaps Tigon was hoping to recapture the glory of Witchfinder General with this tale of 17^th Century Satan worshippers but if so they fell way short of the mark. The story is even sillier than it sounds and by the climax, with the Judge, played by Patrick Wymark, waving his ridiculously long sword about, you’ll be laughing or crying, maybe both. It doesn’t help that the budget seems to have run out resulting in a final confrontation consisting of still shots and blurred slow-motion which is completely at odds with the style (and I use the term loosely) of the rest of the film.

Still there’s some fun to be had in spotting familiar faces in decidedly different parts from those that made them famous. Wendy Padbury, ex-Doctor Who companion, gets raped by the Satan worshippers while future Master, Anthony Ainley turns up as, of all things, a Reverand, who’s so good he even resists the charms of Linda Hayden, said charms being fully on display for the viewers pleasure. Then there’s Frank Spencer’s missus Michele Dotrice as a Satan worshipping floozy. “Ooh Betty” indeed.

Holmes is called in by the government to solve the mystery of German radio broadcasts that detail acts of terrorism in England almost as they happen.

It’s pretty clear right from the onset that there’s something very different about the third film to feature Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and his trusty companion, Doctor Watson. Not only has the super sleuth travelled from Fox to Universal, he’s also jumped forward about fifty years to World War II era England.

The Rathbone/Bruce double act is as entertaining as ever. They’d continued to play the parts on radio in the years between the Fox and Universal films and by this point they had them down pat. Of course there were some cosmetic changes; Bruce has given up on the Grecian 2000 in favour of his natural grey and Rathbone had gone for the, no doubt extremely trendy, windswept look, as well as dispensing with his trademark deerstalker hat. But in all else this is business as usual, with Holmes one step ahead of the viewer and Watson a couple behind.

While the stars may be as good as ever the production lacks the class of the Fox films. It’s not just the look of the film but the jingoistic war rhetoric that pervades it, with even criminals uniting against the Nazi menace. I’ve got nothing against patriotic war movies but it does serve to date the film, whereas the two Fox pictures are timeless classics. In fact it dates it far more than the contemporary setting, as Hollywood’s version of London’s Limehouse and its denizens looks like something you’d see in a Jack the Ripper film. Or a Fox Sherlock Holmes film come to that.

Manny, Sid and Diego return but having made it through the big freeze can they survive the big melt? This time our intrepid trio are joined by two opossums Crash and Eddie plus Ellie, a mammoth who thinks she’s an opossum.

The presence of a female mammoth adds a touch of romance for Manny, while Sid the sloth becomes an object of worship as the fire-king by a pack of mini-sloths. Sadly Diego the sabre-toothed tiger, one of the highlights of the first film, is underused. In the original the character had a little bit of an edge, we weren’t sure if he was a good guy or a bad guy, but now he’s firmly in the hero camp. So in place of that slyness we have a cute cuddly cat who’s afraid of the water.

As with the first film it’s Scrat, the sabre-toothed squirrel who provides the film’s funniest moments. In fact there are probably more laughs in the six minute Scrat short No Time for Nuts than there are in the entire running time of Ice Age 2.

The films not without its fun moments though and we get at least one memorable new character in Fast Tony, a giant armadillo, voiced by Jay Leno. He’s a bit of a wheeler-dealer, always on the make, and he adds a touch of slightly more adult humour to proceedings.

The exploits of the crackpot crew of the interstellar demolition ship Dark Star, whose mission is to blow up unstable planets and make space a safer place for colonisation.

John Carpenter’s cult classic is a bit like MASH in space, the crew of the Dark Star are as out of place (and time) as Hawkeye and Trapper are in Altman’s classic. It’s hippies in space and they have to cope with a beach-ball-alien and a talking bomb with a god complex.

I remember watching this for the first time over twenty years ago and finding it hysterically funny, with Dan O’Bannon’s confrontation with the alien in particular having me in stitches. Time hasn’t served it well, but I’m not sure if it’s the films age or mine that’s dulled the comedy.

It still manages to raise a few chuckles here and there and you have to applaud Carpenter and O’Bannon for what they accomplished with what amounts to a student film. The plus side of being older is that the nods to other films that went over my head those many years ago now add a little extra to the film, with Mr Kubrick coming in for some nice lampooning.

When a Mexican peasant is accused of the rape and murder of a 12 year old girl, Brokston, a powerful businessman, sends Jonathan Corbett after him. Corbett is an ex-lawman with political ambitions and Brokston has offered to aid him in becoming senator.

There’s a lot more to Sergio Sollima’s first spaghetti western than the usual revenge and/or greed motivations favoured by the genre. Political corruption and the ability of men of wealth and power to buy the law rather than be governed by it, with social status not evidence deciding who is guilty, all adds depth to this action packed western.

The film stars Lee Van Cleef as Jonathan Corbett, a fictional character who shares the same sort of legendary status as Davy Crockett. Swapping one Sergio for another, Van Cleef gets to show a little more humanity than he does in Leone’s films, with Corbett a more traditional hero type than anyone in Leone’s west.

Tomas Milian makes his first appearance as the Mexican fugitive Cuchillo, a part he would return to two years later in Sollima’s Run, Man, Run. Milian’s highly animated acting style suits the character, whose mouth is almost as quick as his wits. It feels like Sollima had a soft spot for the character and its not surprising that it was Cuchillo he decided to return to for the sequel.

Back in March I started Cinema Macabre over at Blogcritics, the idea being that some of the Blogcritics writers with a taste for the darker side of cinema could shout about their favourite genre flicks. The concept ran out of steam (or maybe that should be blood?) after only five “issues” with a lack of interest from most of the site’s writers being the main cause, but during its short existence Cinema Macabre served its purpose by highlighting some lesser known horror gems.

Which brings us to this weeks “Friday Night Fright”. The Last Horror Movie was featured in that first edition of Cinema Macabre (in fact it was my Brother Tony’s recommendation) and I made a point of picking up a copy. Now, just over eight months later, I’ve finally got around to watching it and I’m pleased to report that it’s every bit as good as Tony said it was.

The pseudo-documentary style film is a cheap way for filmmakers to get a project in front of the cameras but to do it convincingly requires a great deal of skill. Director Julian Richards makes it look easy, giving the film enough of a professional feel so that it doesn’t come across as some amateur dramatics project but still keeping it rough enough to make it seem real.

If this were a comic book movie this would be the origin story, as Walter Mosley’s Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins goes from unemployed army vet to private detective.

Hired by DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore) to find a mayoral candidate’s missing girlfriend, it soon becomes clear to Easy that he’s sold his soul to the devil. Albright has a propensity for violence that could be dangerous to the health of anyone who doesn’t do what he expects of them, but Rawlins is too nice a guy just do nothing when it becomes clear that the girl he’s been hired to find is in danger from Albright and his cronies. The fact he’s in the frame for two murders is just another reason to keep digging until he gets to the bottom of the sordid Los Angeles political scandal.

With its political scandal, hidden familial relationships and, of course, the setting, it’s impossible not to draw comparisons with Chinatown, and while it falls short of that films classic status it does a great job of evoking the period (late ‘40s) and place. Carl Franklin’s direction isn’t given to flashy flourishes, preferring to concentrate on the story and the performances rather than dazzle the audience with technical expertise and that unfussy style suits the film perfectly.

Some actors look out of place in a period setting, just look at Josh Hartnett in The Black Dahlia if you want an example, but there are no such shortcomings here. Sizemore is perfect casting as the sleazy, violent Albright, a man who “does favours for people”, while Jennifer Beals has the dangerous sex appeal of a ‘50s femme fatale.

This heart-warming story of a mammoth, a sloth and a sabertooth tiger trying to return a lost human baby to his father may come from Fox but it pushes all the Disney buttons.

Our steadfast hero, Manfred the mammoth, and his annoying but endearing sidekick, Sid the sloth, along with the sly sabertooth Diego, journey through the frozen wastes, and along the way learn the true meaning of friendship.

The voice cast are well suited to their characters. Ray Romano of Everybody Loves Raymond plays Manfred, whose gruff manner hides a heart of gold but it’s John Leguizamo as Sid and Dennis Leary as Diego who capture their characters best. Leguizamo manages to stay just the right side of annoying (most of the time anyway) while Leary has fun as the devious Diego and the pair are responsible for some of the films funniest moments.

The character designs could best be described as quirky and it’s nice to see a computer animated film that really embraces its cartoonish elements. In fact, while the main thrust of the film is very Disneyesque, complete with suitably saccharine ending, the real star of the film owes far more to a different animation style altogether.

The character I’m referring to is Scrat the squirrel whose relentless quest for a nut breaks up the cuteness with some Looney Tunes style madness. In fact the films biggest failing is that there isn’t enough Scrat.

Next week: Ice Age 2 and hopefully more Scrat.

A couple of weeks ago I watched The Jacket, a time travel tale that cared nothing for the method of travel or even the potential repercussions, it was all about the characters and damn the consequences. Primer is the anti-Jacket , it’s a film that could well make your head explode trying to keep track of who went where when. It’s also bloody brilliant.

Four guys are trying to come up with a breakthrough invention that will make their name and their fortune. When one of them makes an unexpected discovery he teams up with one of the others to explore its potential, shutting the other pair out. Little do they realise that what they discover will lead to them building a time machine.

Said time machine lacks the fancifulness of H.G.Wells or Back to the Future though, consisting of some tubes, wires and…well it’s basically just a metal box. Once it’s operational the film poses the question – what would you do if you could nip forward in time? Our protagonists initially decide to use their invention to make some cash but they are also mindful of what could happen if they bump into themselves.  Of course things go pear shaped when they deviate from the routine and the pair’s friendship is tested to the limit as they desperately try to put things back in order.

The cast of unknowns are convincing as the nerdy wiz kids with David Sullivan and Shane Carruth spouting technobable like it means something (which given Carruth’s engineering background it probably does).