Archive for March, 2008

I Spy: Goldfinger

By
Ian W
Published: March 31, 2008Posted in: Action, Movie ReviewsTags:

While I prefer From Russia with Love (more so with each viewing) there is no denying that this is quintessential Bond. Everything that would become a mainstay of the series is here – the pre-credit action sequence, the cool main titles, the evil mastermind (complete with henchman), a bevy of Bond girls (even though Bond fails to keep most of them alive), the bombastic score, and the big action packed finale (though it’s in Fort Knox rather than the evil masterminds secret base).

In fact I think it may be because From Russia with Love lacks some of those elements and doesn’t feel the need to be quite so BIG in scale that I’ve come to prefer it. Not that I don’t like Goldfinger, it’s great fun and finds Connery quite possibly at his peak as Bond, familiar enough to be comfortable in the role but not so familiar as to be bored with it. And in Gert Fröbe and Harold Sakata, as Auric Goldfinger and Oddjob respectively, the series has two of its most famous villains. Michael Collins deserves a mention too for providing the voice of Goldfinger, without him “No Mr Bond, I expect you to die” wouldn’t have quite the same delicious menace to it. It also makes a nice change to have a Bond girl who’s both voluptuous and can actually act, with Honar Blackman, fresh from TV’s The Avengers more than able to hold her own opposite Sean.

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SF & Fantasy Sunday: THX 1138

By
Ian W
Published: March 30, 2008Posted in: Movie Reviews, Science FictionTags:

George Lucas tries to fool the viewer into thinking this is art but art usually has heart behind it and this is a fairly shallow exercise that dresses up old ideas in new clothes, it’s Orwell’s 1984 bleached white. The idea of Lucas railing against a society that programs its citizens to be consumers is, these days, pretty ironic, this is the guy who makes Gordon Gekko look like a charity worker. Add a little to one line in the film and you pretty much get Lucas’ ideal world –

“Let us be thankful we have commerce. Buy more. Buy more Star Wars DVDs now. Buy. And be happy.”

You can guess what I added I think. And he may well have said this one to Spielberg about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull –

“Remember, thrifty thinkers are always under budget.”

Am I being a bit hard on Lucas? Probably but I’ve given this film a try twice now, once when I was much younger and now in its shiny new Director’s Cut form (actually the DVD cover proclaims it The George Lucas Director’s Cut as if we were expecting someone else’s). That first time I could put my dislike down to the fact it lacked the bells and whistles I wanted from my science fiction back when I was in my teens, this time though I’m older and more open to an intelligent piece of SF, but spending ninety minutes watching Lucas do the directorial equivalent of navel gazing while wasting the talents of two fine actors is not my idea of fun.

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The Weekend Western: Will Penny

By
Ian W
Published: March 30, 2008Posted in: Movie Reviews, WesternsTags: , ,

This is the old western-hero-hooks-up-with-mother-and-child tale that’s been done more than a few times before but what makes this so special is the central character of Will Penny. It’s as much a character study as anything else with the first half of the film dealing with his quest for work after completing a cattle drive and it’s only in the second half that the film becomes a love story, when he comes across Catherine Allen and her son Horace holed up in the line rider’s shack where he should be spending the winter.

Will Penny is possibly Charlton Heston’s finest performance, with the inveterate poser giving a rare understated performance. There’s a subtlety here that you don’t usually associate with big movie stars. Will Penny isn’t a larger than life hero, he’s a down to earth cowpoke who knows his best years are behind him and Heston plays him as such, allowing Heston the actor to overshadow Heston the Movie Star for a change.

Writer/director Tom Gries script gives the film an authentic, gritty feel that shows what a cold hard place the West was for aging cowboys like Penny, while Lucien Ballard’s cinematography lets us see that while it was a harsh place it was also a beautiful one.

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Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting: Zatoichi’s Cane-sword

By
Ian W
Published: March 30, 2008Posted in: Action, Martial Arts, Movie ReviewsTags:

Skipping number 14 in the series as it has yet to receive a DVD release with English subtitles (I’ve got an ‘unofficial’ DVD but decided to hold off reviewing it in the hopes that one day we’ll see a proper release) we reach Zatoichi’s Cane-sword. By now the series had established its formula and that formula has much in common with the American Western.

Zatoichi’s like the weary gunfighter who comes into town hoping he won’t have to use his gun again but, when he encounters a damsel in distress, he knows he’s going to have to take on the local cattle baron (or in this case Yakuza boss) . Of course gunfighters aren’t normally blind and they tend to leave fewer corpses behind than Master Ichi but you get the idea.

This time around Zatoichi’s got sword troubles. An ageing alcoholic swordsmith tells him that his cane-sword is on its last legs – one more fight and it will snap. What’s a blind swordsman to do? Hang up his gun sword of course. Ichi tries to live a normal life in a boarding house, taking a job as a live in masseur but when a Yakuza boss attempts to take over the town after murdering his rival, Zatoichi steps in to defend the murdered boss’s daughter.

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The Friday Night Fright: Grindhouse

By
Ian W
Published: March 29, 2008Posted in: Action, Horror, Movie ReviewsTags:

In a break from routine this week’s Friday Night Fright was seen on the big screen. The Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino Grindhouse project is on tour at selected cinemas around the UK in its original form, complete with fake trailers, and I caught it last night at the Vue in Leicester.

I’d previously seen Rodriguez’s Planet Terror segment, along with the fake trailer for Machete, at the FrightFest All-nighter back in November but it anything I enjoyed it more second time around. It’s an insanely gory and utterly demented homage to trashy zombie flicks that totally embraces the Grindhouse concept. Hilariously bad dialogue, over the top performances, a crazy and completely illogical plot and more gore than you’ll see in the rest of this year’s movies combined add up to a thrill ride that doesn’t pause for breath until THE END appears on screen and we hear the last notes of the greatest score John Carpenter never wrote.

High points? Josh Brolin’s mad doctor is a superb scenery (and thermometer) chewing performance. It’s also nice to see Michael Biehn and Jeff Fahey in something other than the straight-to-DVD trash they’re normally wasted in these days. The films only weak performance comes from Naveen Andrews, maybe it’s because I’m so used to seeing him as Sayid in Lost, but he seems out of place here and doesn’t really get into the real grindhouse spirit of things.

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Comic Tales: Daredevil – Theatrical Cut

By
Ian W
Published: March 27, 2008Posted in: Action, Comic Book, Movie ReviewsTags:

Matt Murdock was blinded as a child in a freak accident that heightened his remaining senses and gave him a new one, a ‘radar’ sense that allowed him to ‘see’ what was going on around him. This, along with the murder of his father, a boxer who refused to throw a fight, sets the course of Matt’s future – by day he’s a lawyer, defending those no one else will, by night he’s the masked vigilante called Daredevil. Into his dual world comes the beautiful Elektra Natchios and Matt is smitten at first ‘sight’ of her. But Elektra’s father has links to Wilson Fisk the ‘Kingpin’ of crime and, when he attempts to sever his ties, Fisk hires Irish hitman Bullseye to eliminate both him and his daughter.

Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil gets so much right it’s easy to forgive its failings. The ‘origin’ section of the film is a pretty faithful adaptation of the original comic story, with David Keith playing Matt’s pugilist pop and Scott Terra doing a pretty good job as the young Murdock. He’s particularly good once he’s been blinded and starts learning to use his newfound abilities. The main problem with this section is it’s a little rushed but that’s to be expected – this isn’t a film about a child coming to terms with a disability, it’s a superhero action movie and the audience wants to see grownups beating each other up, not kids.

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Watching the Detectives: Boris Karloff is James Lee Wong in Mr. Wong in Chinatown

By
Ian W
Published: March 26, 2008Posted in: Movie Reviews, ThrillerTags:

Going to Mr Wong for help is like wearing a red shirt on an away mission in Star Trek, it’s a sure sign you’re not long for this earth. This time the victim, a Chinese princess, expires in Wong’s own home and attempts to aid the master detective by writing what one assumes is the name of her killer. All she manages though is Captain J, now you might think that would be enough but as luck would have it there’s both a Captain Jackson and a Captain Jaime with ties to the deceased.

Karloff makes his third appearance as the venerable detective and gives a solid performance in what was a very cheap and formulaic series. He’s ‘aided’ once again by Grant Withers as the loud, belligerent but not completely inept Police Captain Street. This time the pair are joined by Marjorie Reynolds as nosey reporter ‘Bobbie’ Logan, who adds some glamour and (in theory) some laughs as well as saving Wong from an exploding taxi.

At a little over an hour it doesn’t drag too much but of the detective series’ I’ve featured so far in Watching the Detectives (Sherlock Holmes, Mr Moto, The Thin Man) this is by far the least enjoyable.

Literally Speaking: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

By
Ian W
Published: March 26, 2008Posted in: Comedy, Drama, Movie Reviews, ThrillerTags:

There isn’t really a lot to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, two ageing sisters, a crippled former Hollywood icon, Blanche Hudson, and a child star gone to seed, ‘Baby’ Jane, live together in a rundown house. ‘Baby’ Jane is slowly going off her rocker and when she learns of Blanche’s plans to sell the house and put her into care her mental breakdown goes into overdrive with disastrous results.

What makes the film work isn’t the plot but the performances, with the inspired casting of fading stars Joan Crawford as Blanche and Bette Davis as the grotesquely comical ‘Baby’ Jane giving the film a far greater resonance than it would otherwise have. The two stars detested each other in real life and, while that must have made director Robert Aldrich’s task far from easy, it adds greatly to the performances, particularly Davis’s.

Davis’s ‘Baby’ Jane is a childlike version of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, resentful of time and an industry that thrives on youth and the presence of her invalid, and vastly more talented,  sister gives her someone to take out that resentment on. Davis it seems decided on the method approach for the scene where she brutally kicks Blanche unconscious, actually landing a kick to Crawford’s head that required stitches (Crawford allegedly retaliated by putting weights in her pockets for the scene where Davis drags her across the floor).

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I Spy: The Silencers

By
Ian W
Published: March 24, 2008Posted in: Action, Comedy, Movie ReviewsTags:

Dean Martin’s first outing as Matt Helm is less a movie and more an extended comedy sketch. I’ve never read Donald Hamilton’s Helm novels but I’d say it’s a fair bet that they bare little relation to what we have here.

Dean doesn’t so much play Helm as he does himself, or at least his Mr Smooth public persona, with an eye for the ladies or a bottle of booze, whichever comes first. It’s sporadically amusing, although time hasn’t been kind. What seemed cool to me as a kid doesn’t have the same charm now – a station wagon driving superspy? – but Dino oozes charisma and Stella Stevens shows off her ample charms as the comedy love interest. Add in some reworked Martin songs, a cameo by Cyd Charisse and the obligatory Frank Sinatra joke and you’ve got a painless way to spend a hundred minutes.

Like the superior spy spoof Our Man Flint that came out the same year, a trick gun has a major role to play in the climax (both films milk the idea a little too long) with Helm’s firing backwards while Flint’s had a time delay. On the music front Flint wins hands down, Elmer Bernstein’s score no match for Jerry Goldsmith‘s super cool Flint theme.

Producer Irving Allen, when partnered with ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, turned his nose up at Fleming’s Bond books but subsequently went in search of his own superspy franchise. The Helm series lasted four movies while Mr Bond is still going strong. Says it all really…

Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting: The Street Fighter

By
Ian W
Published: March 22, 2008Posted in: Action, Martial Arts, Movie ReviewsTags:

No not the Van Damme movie but rather Sonny Chiba’s first outing as Takuma Tsurugi, the badest of bad asses. Bruce Lee’s characters may have been tough but they had a moral compass, so long as you stayed on the straight and narrow you’d be okay. Tsurugi would think no more of killing you than he would of stepping on a cockroach. And he won’t just kill you either, he’ll kill you in the nastiest way possible, throats are ripped out, balls are ripped off, skulls are cracked open…even by today’s standards this is one violent flick.

Tsurugi is basically a hired gun (just without the need of the gun) and early on we see what kind of guy he is. When he breaks a man out of prison and the man’s siblings are unable to pay he kills the male and sells the female as a prostitute to a crime lord. He’s a psycho with a black belt whose only interest is the money and the violence.

Chiba commands the film, sporting a perpetual sneer he’s super-cool. He may lack the grace and style of Bruce Lee but he makes up for it in brute force, and the fight scenes have a gritty, down to earth feel to them, with unfeasible gymnastics kept to a minimum. Sonny’s gurning during the fights is at times amusing but the bone crunching action and copious amounts of ketchup splashed about ensure that he’s never a figure of fun.

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