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Film7070 Week 7: 2004

By
Ian W
Published: March 18, 2011Posted in: DVD Viewing Journal, Movie Reviews, WarTags:

2004: Brotherhood

Brotherhood is an epic Korean war movie in the same mould as Saving Private Ryan. Like Spielberg’s film it features some shockingly brutal battle scenes but it also suffers from Ryan‘s biggest failing – an overly sentimental story.

The tale of two brothers who are pressed into the service of the South when it goes to war with North Korea is overly melodramatic. Before the war they’re living a poor but idilic life, one of the brothers is getting an education while the elder helps pay for said education by doing shoe repairs. War shatters their plans but the elder brother makes a deal with his commanding officer – if he gets a medal his younger brother will be allowed to return home. Thus big brother becomes a super soldier, singlehandedly wiping out half the North Korean army. What makes this cloying sentimentality bearable is the realistic battle scenes, there’s a randomness to the battlefield that really puts you in the thick of things.

Sadly the story takes a contrived twist towards the end that sees the two brothers fighting on opposite sides. It’s at this point the film lost me and any interest I had in the resolution of the siblings story evaporated.

Brotherhood is half a great war movie but it falls down with it’s central characters and thus the viewers emotional involvement. It also makes no effort to explore the politics of the conflict – Communists are bad is about as deep as it gets, although in fairness it does show that atrocities were perpetrated on both sides.

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Film7070 Week 6: 1961 & 1990

By
Ian W
Published: March 9, 2011Posted in: Drama, DVD Viewing Journal, Horror, Movie Reviews, WesternsTags:

1961: Tierra Brutal aka The Savage Guns

I had high hopes for Tierra Brutal. It’s a film that’s not easy to find, but, being a fan of Richard Basehart since watching him as Admiral Nelson in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea as a boy, the prospect of seeing him take the lead in what I’d heard described as a proto-spaghetti western (it was filmed in Spain) was hard to resist. So perhaps my expectation were a little high when I finally tracked it down. I was hoping to unearth a hidden gem, what I got was a fairly standard B western that has little of the style of the spaghetti westerns that were to come a few short years later.

Perhaps this lack of continental flavour shouldn’t have come as a surprise, the film was directed by an Englishman, Michael Carreras, a name that’s more familiar to horror fans than western aficionados. Michael was a producer and director with Hammer Films and the son of the studios founder Sir James Carreras. Not the sort of background you’d expect for a western movie director but he does a competent, if decidedly unspectacular, job.

Basehart does well as the gunfighter who’s looking for a place to hang up his guns (yes that old chestnut) but finds it’s never that easy to escape your past. The rest of the cast is made up of minor American actors, attractive Spanish ladies and a presumably hard up Fernando Rey. All of which leads to a frankly rather dull 90 minutes.
Rating: ★★☆☆☆

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Film7070 Week 5: 1957

By
Ian W
Published: March 2, 2011Posted in: DVD Viewing Journal, Movie Reviews, WesternsTags:

1957: The Tall T

I’ve often heard the classic westerns produced by Director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott spoken of with a reverence reserved for the likes of the Mann/Stewart and Ford/Wayne partnerships but until watching The Tall T my only experience of the pairs output was the superior revenge western 7 Men from Now. It’s fair to say that after watching The Tall T I’m now a fan and you’ll probably see a couple more of their films popping up in Film7070 in the coming weeks.

Several things set the The Tall T apart from the crowd of low budget westerns of the period, for starters there’s the script from Burt Kennedy. The first twenty minutes or so are spent establishing Scott’s character Pat Brennan, and it’s twenty minutes full of information – he’s a rancher, he works alone, he quit his previous job as a foreman on a larger spread to try his luck on his own, he’s unmarried and he’s not adverse to a gamble, the latter fact leaving him afoot when he wagers his horse against a prize bull. The result of all this is that we feel like we know Brennan in a short space of time, and we like him, he’s a happy-go-lucky kind of guy who takes the rough with the smooth and doesn’t bear a grudge, although he’s not one to be laughed at. The beauty of Kennedy’s script is that we get all this information from a few exchanges that never feel anything but natural, there’s no sense of forced exposition. This deftness of touch is apparent throughout the film as we are introduced to other characters.

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Film7070 Week 4: 2007

By
Ian W
Published: February 19, 2011Posted in: Action, Comedy, DVD Viewing Journal, Movie ReviewsTags:

2007: Hot Fuzz

Well if the idea behind Film7070 was to see how films have influenced each other over the years then I doubt I’ll find a film where the influences are easier to spot than Hot Fuzz. There’s no subtlety to Hot Fuzz’s filmic referencing, the characters talk about then, we see the videos on display and, just in case you’re a complete novice when it comes to the action movie genre, we even get clips from a couple (Point Break and Bad Boys II). It’s this OTT action movie lovefest that sets the film apart from the same creative teams superior Shaun of the Dead.

Shaun payed tribute to it’s zombie forbears with a nod and a wink, and if you missed it in didn’t matter, the film worked perfectly well without. Shaun was a horror comedy while Hot Fuzz is a spoof, and as a spoof it requires you know what’s being spoofed, because if you don’t the film doesn’t work. This may sound like a complaint, and to some degree it is, but a good spoof can still be an entertaining film, just look at Airplane or Blazing Saddles. It’s also something that’s very hard to do well, just look at…well pretty much every other spoof.

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Film7070 Week 3: 1970

By
Ian W
Published: February 7, 2011Posted in: DVD Viewing Journal, Horror, Movie ReviewsTags:

1970: The Dunwich Horror

This early attempt to bring the work of H.P. Lovecraft to the screen owes as much to Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby as it does to the master of cosmic horror. There’s little of the Old Ones here, the focus of the movie is Wilbur Whateley’s attempt to seduce innocent Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee) over to the dark side and in so doing put a devilish bum in her virgin oven.

Producer Roger Corman may have been the antecedent of Asylum, modern purveyors of direct-to-dvd knock-off trash, but at least when Corman did it he did it with class. He also knew talent when he saw it, with many great filmmakers getting their start with him and The Dunwich Horror features an early screen credit (as writer) for future Oscar winner Curtis Hanson.

The Dunwich Horror is no classic, but it does have some things to enjoy. Dean Stockwell’s creepy Wilbur (could there be a less menacing name for a villain?) ranks at the top. There’s a perverse malevolence to Stockwell’s performance and he’s always good value for money in villainous roles.

Another plus is the films restraint when it comes to showing Wilbur’s monstrous sibling. Rather than show the obligatory craptastic monster, it keeps it hidden, either offscreen or behind a very sixties psychedelic light show, making the viewer add the details from their own imagination. Whether this is down to a stylistic choice by the filmmakers or to the fact the monster was so bad they dare not show it I don’t know but it definitely works in the films favour.

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Film7070 Week 2: 1978

By
Ian W
Published: February 1, 2011Posted in: DVD Viewing Journal, Fantasy, Horror, Movie ReviewsTags: , , ,

1978: The Shout

What to make of The Shout? Well this late seventies attempt at art house horror was, for me at least, a disappointing failure. It doesn’t lack for quality acting talent, Alan Bates is as broodingly demonic as only Bates can be, while John Hurt does a decent job as the philandering husband who’s household Bates insinuates himself into, although sadly the late Susannah York’s talents are underused, she’s little more than a symbol for the two men’s power struggle and not a fully fleshed out character. The concept is also not uninteresting, Bates character utilising mystical powers he’s learned while living with the Aborigines in the Australian outback to exert his influence over York and Hurt.

Or does he? The structure of the film leaves you wondering just how much of what you’re seeing is actually real, the film being told by Bates while an inmate in an asylum. This too works in the films favour, giving it an element of mystery that means you’re never sure where the film is heading, always a plus in this age of by the numbers plotting.

No, what ultimately disappointed me was the films climax, for it felt as if not only did the viewer not know where the film was heading but neither did the director. After a slow and purposeful buildup the film hurries headlong into a frenetic, madcap and, frankly, downright silly final ten minutes. It felt as if all concerned had grown bored with the films concept and decided to wrap things up as quickly as possible. While there were certainly things I enjoyed about The Shout, ultimately it’s the feeling of dissatisfaction the ending engendered that has stayed with me and it’s left me with little desire to seek out any of Jerzy Skolimowski’s other films.
Rating: ★★½☆☆

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10 Films that made me Laugh, Cry and Squirm in My Cinema Seat in 2010

By
Ian W
Published: January 28, 2011Posted in: Rants & RavesTags:

So now that we’ve covered what I missed and got those that under-performed out of the way it’s time for my top ten films of 2010. Just to qualify the list before we start – these are the ten films I enjoyed the most at the cinema this year, I make no claims for their artistic merit. They provided me with a good time at the cinema and it’s in order of my level of enjoyment that I’ve listed them in here.

My Top 10 Films of 2010

10. Date Night – That this is the only comedy on my list probably shows that it’s not my favourite genre. Having said that I do like a good laugh, although my sense of humour may not be considered normal (I find Jerry Lewis funny and I’m not even French). 2009′s top grossing comedy The Hangover barely raised a smile so the fact that Date Night is on here may mean it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I loved it. Steve Carell and Tina Fey share wonderful onscreen chemistry and perfect comic timing making a convincing married couple and the film moved at a brisk pace so if any jokes did fall flat you didn’t have long to wait for another. There were also some amusing cameos from James Franco and Will i Am, not to mention Mark Wahlberg sending up his beefcake image.

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Film7070 Week 1: 1955 & 1965

By
Ian W
Published: January 21, 2011Posted in: Drama, DVD Viewing Journal, Movie Reviews, ThrillerTags:

What, you may be asking yourself, is Film7070? It started off as a challenge Dan Auty (aka MondoDan) set himself for 2011 – watch 70 films, one from each year from 1940 to 2009. There are a few rules – you can’t have seen the films before, you have to watch at least one film from every continent (with the exception of Antarctica), you can’t go back to a year until you’ve completed all seventy…you get the idea.

Word spread on Twitter and others took up the challenge – eatsleepjordan, gilesedwards, MrWengWeng, KYUSS123, emilybwebb, moviedan to name just a few. Some set up their own additional rules – doing the films in chronological order in eatsleepjordan and moviedan’s case.

Always up for a movie watching challenge I jumped in too, like most of the Film7070 crew I saw it as an opportunity to fill in some gaps in my cinematic education, watch some neglected classics that have been sitting on a shelf gathering dust and, at least in my case, spread my horizons a little further afield than my regular viewing, for example I’ve got some Czechoslovakian SF lined up for 1963. Which brings us to this post. Rather than just watch the films and tweet about them after I decided I wanted to write a little more, not a full review but more than the 140 characters Twitter allows, so this is the first of my weekly Film7070 journals where I’ll express my feelings about the films I’ve watched that week.

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Cinematic Disappointments

By
Ian W
Published: January 13, 2011Posted in: Rants & RavesTags:

Apart from how many I’d missed (see previous post) the other thing I noticed when looking through 2010′s cinema releases was how many of the films I did see turned out to be major disappointments. That’s not to say they’re bad, well not all of them anyway, but they didn’t live up to the expectations their stars/directors/hype engendered. So here’s the second top 10 of 2010 -

The 10 most disappointing films of 2010 (once again in no particular order)

Ninja Assassin – I really enjoyed James McTeigue’s V for Vendetta, a film with more depth than the usual action blockbuster. I excused him for The Invasion on the grounds that it wasn’t his film, he was just brought in by the studio after Oliver Hirschbiegel failed to give them the film they wanted (although taking the job was perhaps not a great career move). But Ninja Assassin, that he carries the can for. Despite some entertainingly gory fight scenes McTeigue managed the near impossible task of making ninjas boring.

Edge of Darkness – What should have been the triumphant return of Mel Gibson to the big screen after a seven year hiatus proved to be anything but, although given later real life events it wouldn’t really have mattered if this was a five star classic, Mel’s career would still be in the toilet. Edge of Darkness also featured some of the most obvious stunt doubling I’ve seen in a film for a long time, so even if Mel does manage a comeback with The Beaver it’s definitely time for him to give up on the action hero roles, or at least find a decent stunt double.

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Top 10s, New Year’s Resolutions and all that jazz…

By
Ian W
Published: January 7, 2011Posted in: DVD Viewing Journal, Rants & RavesTags:

Over two years since my last post! No prizes for guessing what my New Year’s resolution was. Apart from a couple of guest reviews over at Blogomatic 3000 this is the first thing I’ve written in all that time, so I apologise if I’m a tad rusty and for the lack of new content. If things go to plan (and resolutions don’t get broken!) I promise (threaten?) there’ll be something new here at least once a week. There’ll also be a bit more focus than in the past, with the key ingredients being reviews of low budget horror movies and classic western TV shows, a strange combination I’ll grant you but hopefully both will find an audience.

It’s traditional as the new year starts to look back on the previous twelve months and pick your favourite films, and that was my original plan here, but as I was looking through the list of films that garnered a cinema release last year I realised how many of the year’s more critically acclaimed films I’d failed to see. And not just critically acclaimed films either, there were more than a few films that were never going to be the critics’ darlings that nevertheless had been high on my list of ‘must see’ films but, for one reason or another, they’d passed me by (and still do, despite many now being out on DVD and Blu-ray). So, I thought, why not do a ’10 films I wish I’d seen in 2010′ list? That way people wouldn’t think I just didn’t rate Shutter Island as highly as the films in my top ten, they’d know I just hadn’t seen it.

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