'Shadow of the Vampire'

I have long been heralding this movie as a horror classic. I absolutely love it and fail to understand how it's sort of has been forgotten and hasn't become a cult movie. The premise alone is so deliciously macabre. Dafoe who is always excellent gives the best performance of his career here.

It's becoming harder and harder to find. As far as I know it is on no streaming service and hasn't been released on home video since the initial DVD release twenty years ago.

 

Babylon 5: In the Beginning
A TV movie made between seasons 4 and 5 of the series, it's a prequel, but it's pretty good. Did you know that was possible?

 

TCM ran it not too long ago. It's an OK movie, but no way was it better than "The Quiet Man" or "High Noon".

 

Those are both classics.

 

I dunno if the concept of someone being "due" was motivating the Academy back in the 1950s, but it is a little convenient that it's DeMille's only non-honorary Oscar (and after the honorary one, at that) and was awarded right as he rounded the corner to 70.

 

Kong: Skull Island

Typical, bland modern blockbuster fare. Does have a decent enough cast even if their all poorly utilized.

 

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
Directed by: Stanley Kramer

It's too overstuffed for it's own good (the credits alone are roughly five minutes long), but when it works, it works like gangbusters.

 

That helicopter attack on Kong and the end fight were pretty cool though.

 

Did you watch the general release version, or the longer restored version? I prefer the longer version, if only for the coda after Jonathan Winters kills Ray & Irwin's gas station.

 

The Conspirators. A wartime movie trying to recapture that Casablanca energy, it has Paul Henreid as a Dutch resistance fighter trying to pass through neutral Lisbon, where he meets a resistance network that includes Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre (a delight to see them in unambiguously heroic roles) as well as Hedy Lamarr. He ends up having to root out a traitor. It’s pretty unremarkable stuff, with the traitor the most boring choice possible. It’s functional, but that’s about it.

 

Scorpio. A workmanlike, solid example of the cynical seventies spy thriller. Alain Delon is a hired assassin that the CIA sends to kill his CIA handler/mentor, Burt Lancaster. It’s not the best the genre has been done, but it’s pretty good, dragging out the reveal of why Lancaster is even being targeted, and dripping with so much cynical atmosphere that the accusation still seems doubtful even though the film throws out evidence for it and never musters any direct counter-evidence. With two good leads and solid execution, it’s eminently watchable.

 

I thought the fog bit was great, especially that little thing with the camera flashes.

EDIT: I mean, I guess I'll own up to liking the whole movie. But that fog bit was brilliant.

 

Soldiers Three (1951) starring Stewart Granger, Walter Pidgeon, David Niven; directed by Tay Garnett. I had fondly remembered this one from years back and well, the story was just okay but the scenery was better this time around. The story is based upon Rudyard Kipling's tales of three privates in the Raj circa 1880 whose exploits and temperamental outbursts coupled with their camaraderie I've enjoyed reading about. Granger's comedic talents go on display and IMDB says that Claude Rains coached him in his Cockney. Well done, Claude.

Garnett directed personal faves Bataan, The Postman Always Rings Twice, One Way Passage and Slightly Honorable so I expected a lot, maybe too much because this film was so-so overall. It's fruitful to compare Soldiers with Gunga Din from 1939: Din had a love story, which Soldiers does not; Din had Cary Grant, which Soldiers does not, although Granger gives it his best shot with mugging and manic energy that Grant portrayed in Din! What I liked second best about the film is that Kipling's origins of the three soldiers held up to show the army's broad personnel base: Cockney, Irish and West Country [although in the book, West Country is replaced by Yorkshire].

Now for what I liked best: the setting. Corriganville Movie Ranch served as western US setting, Indian foothills setting and when it was used in Star Trek, outer space setting. Gosh, the familiar fort and looming snowcapped peaks of the mountains near Simi Valley started a smile. So many films and TV series filmed there that I knew every rock. Corriganville Movie Ranch is now no more, but it left hoofprints on scores of viewers' hearts. I'm sure to have driven by it numerous times on I-5, too. Here's what it looked like:

 

Agree, saw this in 3D at the cinema and I thought it wasn’t even as good as the Peter Jackson version. One of the problems I find with monster films is that the monster can’t articulate anything, so it’s up to the human cast and the story to drive it along and draw me in to make me feel invested. I can only think of Jaws that works on that level in a monster film. Very few monster films get close to those heights.

 

The Hunger Games (2012)
It's been years since I last saw the original movie. I still think it's good, with good direction and a great star turn from Jennifer Lawrence. The changes from the book, however, hurt the film. Deliberately wimping out Peeta really messes up the dynamic between the two rivals/lovers, and it becomes difficult to see him as a genuine threat with the way he's presented in the film. His amazing ability to use make-up skills in order to blend in with his surroundings is, however, ridiculous enough to elicit a giggle.

Anyway, I still enjoyed it.

 

The Founder

Watched this for a second time as Michael Keaton gives a great performance as the infamous Ray Kroc. The story of how he took control of McDonald's from the 2 brothers who actually founded it is surprisingly interesting and is a cautionary tale about how some people conduct their business.

The cast is good overall and the movie is shot in a pleasing way.

 

Purple Noon. This 1960 adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley stars Alain Delon as Ripley. Sixties French cinema and Ripley are a good match, and the film is really beautiful, smoothly going through the web of lies this ambitious sociopath builds. It’s a bit less of a thriller than the well-known American adaptation, more atmospheric. Both are great films, of course, and it’s a great example of how you can get two substantially similar yet very different-feeling films out of the same material. I enjoyed it a lot. It was also interesting to note the fact that American characters were being played by French-speaking, French actors. We’re quite used to the inverse, obviously, but I think this is the first time I’ve seen that trick pulled the other way, and it was interesting — not distracting, just interesting — to have that experience turned around.

 

Elf (2003)

 

I do have a region free Blu-ray player but haven't really utilized it much. My hope is that it catches the attention of Scream Factory or a niche distributor like that

 

Skyjacked. One of the things you have to love about TCM is that when they’re focusing on an actor, they’ll usually play their biggest hits, but they’ll also throw in forgotten nonsense like this. I don’t know if it’s just because the rights are cheap, or because somebody in their programming department is a fan, or what.

This is a pretty good example of the kind of disaster film Airplane! was parodying. An airliner is hijacked by a mystery man who leaves a message saying there is a bomb on board. Stoic captain Charlton Heston leads the crew and passengers, which include a senator, a large friendly guy with a cello, and a pregnant woman, through the ordeal. There’s some potential early on, as the film has a sort of procedural focus on the flight before things go wrong, but it doesn’t live up to it. Even when the hijacker is revealed and it gets more thrillery, it’s a pretty inert sort of thriller, ponderous and TV-movieish. The supporting cast is weak, with nothing interesting about any of the passengers or crew, and the attempts to create subplots too halfassed to work. An aging Walter Pidgeon is nice to see in a very minor role as the senator, but there’s nothing notable there. As the hijacker, James Brolin has a thankless role, playing a mentally ill, disgruntled soldier with delusions of grandeur. He’s convincing as a wild-eyed lunatic, but it’s also a fundamentally silly role, and only furthers the post-Vietnam film convention that veterans are all dangerous, violent psychos. Heston is always a great presence, but he’s wasted in a dully conventional role. And the wheels fall completely off by the end, in which Heston finally tries to play the hero at exactly the time at which he no longer, in any way, needs to. Pedestrian direction and a lousy script make for a rote, uninteresting thriller.

 

Hero: The Rock Opera (2003) – Ed DeGarmo

Hero: The Rock Opera is a weird beast, even in the world of Christian multi-media. It’s a sung-through rock/hip-hop musical that retells, if we’re being generous, the story of Jesus Christ, set in a modern-day inner city New York. Although, it’s actually an alternate universe since, you know, Christianity has never existed in this world and so it’s obviously a dystopian state under a fascist one-world government. I told you it was weird. This is also just a recorded version of the stage production, not a “movie” movie, if you know what I mean. I mean, that’s fine, but it adds to the weird vibe. Michael Tait, formerly of dc talk and currently, if I’ve been keeping up, which I haven’t, of The Newsboys, stars as Hero, the Jesus figure of the story and I’ll give the production props for casting a Jesus of color. I will also say that this entire thing is not, surprisingly, aggressively stupid. It doesn’t work most of the time, but it’s not offensive to me as a Christian or as a fan of musicals. The worst element by far is Michael Quinlan as the Judas figure (creatively named “Jude” here); he gives a truly terrible performance. There are a couple of good songs here. Rebecca St. James is on hand as the Mary Magdalene of the story and she gives a great performance of a Latin-tinged Madonna-esque dance number called Secrets of the Heart. Raised in Harlem features a blistering guest performance by a rapper named T-Bone who genuinely spits some fire as part of a fist-pumping anthem. And Not In Our House is an aggressive punk number that finds Jesus and the High Priest clashing over what goes on in the Temple; I liked the way it dramatically explicated the moral outrage on both sides, Hero outraged over the commercialization of faith and the Priests outraged by Hero’s false doctrine.

For all its flaws, I still found myself kind of shocked near the end by the image of the “crucified” Hero; his dead body has been hoisted up and tied onto a street sign in an image that feels incredibly powerful in the obvious resonances to lynching that it evokes. So, there are moments of boldness here, adding the name of Christ to the list of black bodies murdered by a racist American society. But those moments are painfully few and far between, buried under a lot of mediocrity. I kind of get what they were going for, but they didn’t get it. And at nearly two-and-a-half hours, it’s far, far too long. And just for the record, it whiffs in its depiction of Christ, making him a painfully bland figure who fails to explicate any of the most radical and powerful teachings in the Bible or invest him with even the slightest charisma. This is a weird artifact and I’m not exactly sorry I watched it, just for that reason. But neither Christians or non-Christians are going to find much here to hold their interest beyond the novelty factor. Kudos for trying something different, I guess. I guess. 2 stars.

tl;dr – weird rock opera reimagines life of Christ in an inner-city setting; there are a few moments that work, but it’s mostly very mediocre and over-long. 2 stars.

 

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Revisit of The Fifth Cord (1971) Absolutely gorgeous-looking, leisurely paced giallo, naturally filled with gorgeous people. Some of whom die because the killer was enraged his would-be male paramour is a straight man who was just engaged. If you want to watch a giallo tackle gay themes with an inventive tweak, please watch A Lizard In A Woman’s Skin.

Franco Nero nails his perf as the alcoholic reporter / armchair detective Andrea Bild, he’s fun to watch stumbling around for clues and scraps of forgiveness from his former flame (played by Silvia Monti). Outside of Nero, the real star is the stunning cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. As much as people fawn over the cinematography in Suspiria, The Fifth Cord deserves some of that love too.

This was my first giallo and I found it boring, but as I’ve revisited I like it more.