June 20th, 2008
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Ian W |
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As promised a few weeks ago, today is Horror Day on Mine Was Taller and, from around 12 Noon I, along with my friend Dipa, will be watching a selection of scary movies and blogging about them as we go.
The running order should be something like this –
12pm – The Wolf Man (1941)
1:45pm – Purana Mandir (1984)
4pm – Night of the Lepus (1972) followed by the short film Night of the Hell Hamsters (2006)
6pm – From Beyond the Grave (1973)
7:45pm – Brain Damage (1988)
9:30pm – Silence of the Lambs (1991)
12am – Inside (2007)
June 9th, 2008
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Ian W |
DVD Viewing Journal |
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The Killers
Lee Marvin Vs Ronald Reagan. Deemed too violent for TV when it was made, Don Siegel’s thriller may seem tame by today’s standards but the performances have stood the test of time. Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager are a great double act as two hitmen looking to score some stolen loot, Angie Dickinson hits all the right notes as a duplicitous femme fatale but the surprise is Ronald Reagan. I’ve never been a fan of Reagan but he’s outstanding here, his portrayal of a double-dealing crook is so convincing it’s little wonder he had a successful career in politics. Siegel was hampered a little by John Cassavetes, who plays the doomed race car driver, because the actor couldn’t drive, even the go-cart race with Angie Dickinson is all rear projection for Cassavetes shots, while Dickinson seems to be having a ball. Siegel transcends his limited budget and delivers a minor classic.
Cat Ballou
Lee Marvin Vs Lee Marvin. This was a favourite of mine as a kid but it’s not stood the test of time too well. The songs from Nat ‘King’ Cole and Stubby Kaye are still fun, Jane Fonda looks great in her pre-serious actress period and Marvin is good value for money in twin roles, essentially playing two aspects of his personality, the tough guy and the drunk. The laughs however are few and far between.
June 2nd, 2008
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Ian W |
DVD Viewing Journal |
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That line from Dead Man’s Shoes pretty well sums up the feelings on many of the lead characters in this weeks DVD viewing round-up.
Dead Man’s Shoes
Very violent yet intensely moral at its core, Shane Meadows film is as good an exploration of vigilante justice as you’ll probably ever see. It’s hard not to sympathise with Paddy Considine’s ex-soldier as he hunts down the people who victimised his brother (shades of Get Carter) but the film doesn’t make him out to be a hero. The twist towards the end won’t come as much of a surprise but this isn’t a film that relies on cinematic sleight of hand for its power.
Thriller: A Cruel Picture
A bit of Swedish sleaze as Christina Lindberg, after being hooked on drugs and forced into a life of prostitution, wreaks vengeance on the people responsible. The slow-motion violence isn’t exactly a Sam Peckinpah-style bullet fest, coming across as overly static and staged and the addition of hardcore footage adds nothing to the film, particularly as it isn’t even Lindberg in the inserted shots. The movies biggest claim to fame is that it was a big influence on Tarantino’s Kill Bill, and it’s the sort of film only QT could love.
May 28th, 2008
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Ian W |
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…or so the saying goes, and with that in mind I’m making a few alterations to Mine Was Taller. Since the start of the year I’ve been posting almost every day and, while it’s been fun, it’s starting to feel like a chore rather than a pleasure. With that in mind I’ve going to return to the original DVD Viewing Journal format, with brief opinions on each of the films I’ve watched on DVD. There will be links running through each week’s films, be it star, director, or a shared theme, and the first one will feature vigilante movies.
This will free me up to write some other pieces, both here and for the newly established Eurocritics Magazine,including reviews of the summer’s blockbuster cinema releases and the return of ‘Films I Want on DVD’ which I originally planned as a series back in July 2006 but never got past number one - Rituals, a film that’s since been released on DVD (although I doubt my article had anything to do with that).
The TV Tomb series of reviews of classic (or in some cases just old) television shows will continue, with the American WWII show Combat the next up followed be Fortier, a Canadian detective series (in French) that most of you probably haven’t heard of but which inspired/was ripped off by Tim Minear’s excellent 2005 FBI show, The Inside.
May 18th, 2008
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Ian W |
Movie Reviews, Westerns |
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This is an overtly political spaghetti western from Damiano Damiani and, with its anti-American intervention message, it’s still very relevant today. The story deals with an American who falls in with a group of Mexican bandits in order to get close to a revolutionary General, and forms a mutual friendship with their leader, El Chucho.
The film is a feast for the eyes as well as the brain, with Antonio Secchi’s cinematography making the most of the Spanish locations, but it’s the script by Salvatore Laurani and Franco Solinas that puts this among the best of the Italian westerns. The characters are well rounded and develop over the course of the film, there’s plenty of humour to balance the action, and it builds to an impressively restrained yet emotionally powerful climax.
Gian Maria Volontè, a familiar face to anyone who’s seen A Fistful of Dollars or For a Few Dollars More, plays El Chucho. The character develops from a loud, greedy and somewhat obnoxious killer into a fledgling revolutionary, a true man of the people and Volontè brilliantly portrays that transformation, turning in a performance that is far more complex than your standard western, be it Italian or American.
By contrast, Lou Castel, as the American Tate, is restrained and emotionless. It’s a performace that may not be to everyone’s taste but for me it served as a nice counterpoint to Volontè, American reserve paired with Latin fire. Tate isn’t explored anywhere near as much as Chucho, his motivation is money, but his chalk-and-cheese friendship with the bandit adds some colour to the character.
May 18th, 2008
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Ian W |
Action, Martial Arts, Movie Reviews |
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This third outing for Sonny Chiba’s Takuma Tsurugi comes as something of a letdown. Gone are the insanely gory deaths of the first two films, replaced by a lot of ridiculous leaping about. The fight scenes feel watered down too, with director Teruo Ishii more intent of finding interesting angels to shoot from than actually making the fights exciting.
Shigehiro Ozawa, who directed the first two films, seemed to take great delight in making Tsurugi a character who was hard to like, but Ishii wants to turn him into some kind of Japanese James Bond, rather than the cold blooded mercenary we’ve come to know. He even gives us a totally bizarre bad guy who dresses like a Mexican bandit and fires laser beams.
A sad end to what had been an enjoyable series.
May 17th, 2008
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Ian W |
Horror, Movie Reviews |
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This sleazy little film was a lot more enjoyable than I was expecting. Director Pete Walker generates a fair amount of tension early on, and populates the film with some entertainingly bonkers characters, plus plenty of naked female flesh.
When the appropriately named Mark E. Desade picks up a young French model, Ann-Marie (played, with a surprisingly decent French accent, by Penny Irving) he soon displays a perchance for the perverse but it’s only when takes her home to meet his mum and dad that things really get interesting. Dad’s a demented old judge and mum’s a sadistic ex-prison warden and they’ve set up there own correctional facility for wayward young ladies, where even the simplest crime results in the ultimate penalty. The prison is staffed by a pair of matrons, one a butch older woman with lesbian tendencies, the other getting her pleasure from torturing the inmates.
It’s more thoughtful than you might think though, David McGillivray’s script portraying the would-be defenders of morality as the real perverts. Most of the torture isn’t explicitly shown and while early on some of the nudity is pure titillation, there’s little to get you excited once the story moves to the prison (unless of course you’re as twisted as the people who run it). It also displays a ruthless efficiency with its characters, leaving you wondering if anyone will survive to see the credits.
May 16th, 2008
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Ian W |
Action, Comic Book, Movie Reviews, Science Fiction |
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Christopher Reeve’s reign as The Man of Steel comes to a rather ignominious end with this, his fourth outing. Not that Reeve is bad, in fact he clearly still had a lot of affection for the character, and the basic idea is a good one - Superman taking on an almost godlike role in order to save mankind from itself – it’s the execution that lets it down.
Sidney J. Furie was once a director with talent, producing, amongst others, The Ipcress File, here though he displays none of the flare he once showed. The Quest for Peace is the work of a talentless hack, the Superhero equivalent of Plan 9 from Outer Space but without that films charm. Superman decides to rid the world of nuclear weapons and the world governments (and I mean ALL of them) say “gee thanks Mr Superman, without you to throw the nasty bombs into the sun we’d never have thought of getting rid of them”.
Rather than pit Superman against the world’s leaders, the filmmakers give us, once again, Gene Hackman as comedy villain, Lex Luthor. The problem is he’s just not funny anymore. Batman, Spider-Man, and The X-Men all get new villains in each new outing but it’s like Superman has only got one bad guy. Someone should really buy the producers of the Superman films some comics, after all Bryan Singer continued this preoccupation with the bald headed master of menace in Superman Returns.
May 15th, 2008
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Ian W |
Movie Reviews, Thriller |
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This spin off film from a Japanese TV series suffers on two counts, firstly it’s trying to be Die Hard in a hospital but hasn’t got nearly enough action to keep the audiences attention, and secondly it relies too heavily on viewers having seen the original series, something most western audiences won’t have done as the DVD release lacked English subtitles (makes you wonder why they bothered putting them on this really).
Picking up (I’m guessing) where the series left off, we find police officer Natsumi Yukihira visiting here daughter in hospital. It seems the kid was a victim of a car bombing, with Yukihira the intended target. It’s not long before the hospital is taken over by a mask wearing band of villains, who not only kidnap the a high ranking police official who’s receiving treatment at the hospital but also get there hands on some Anthrax that’s stored there. Why is Anthrax stored in a hospital? Simply because the plot requires it. Likewise there is only enough vaccine to cure one person because Yukihira’s daughter becomes infected and to much vaccine wouldn’t be dramatic enough. So it’s Yukihira Vs a gang of heavily armed terrorists, which may sound exciting (if derivative) but really isn’t. Yukihira isn’t much of an action hero, she only takes out a couple of the bad guys, with the bulk of the action (and there isn’t much) falling to fellow officer Yuji Kokubo.
May 14th, 2008
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Ian W |
Drama, Movie Reviews |
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I’m a bit of a Kurt Russell fan, in fact I get a bit of ribbing by family members over how big a Kurt fan I am. That’s not to say I think he’s the greatest actor to walk the earth, far from it, but he is consistently entertaining. In fact he’s been entertaining me since his Disney days (Now You See Him, Now You Don’t) and I have fond memories of his one season wonder western series The Quest (anyone else remember that?). He’s one of those actors, and there aren’t that many, who can be equally convincing as a regular guy (Unlawful Entry, Breakdown) and a tough as nails, cold hearted killer (Escape from New York). Plus he starred in one of my all-time favourite films, John Carpenter’s The Thing.
One thing Mr Russell can’t do though is make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Winter People feels like one of those Hallmark Channel TV movies, set in the ‘30s it features rugged environments that somehow still manage to look like greetings card pictures and beautiful people made up to look like they work outdoors, who look just that – like beautiful people made up to look like that work outdoors.
