What was the last movie you saw?

"Escape from Alcatraz" (1979) - Rated "15" UK / "PG" USA

Director Don Siegel teams up with Eastwood for the final time to make one of the more interesting prison-break films of the last 40 years.

Supposedly based on a true story concerning lifer Frank Morris (Eastwood) and the Anglin Brothers (played by Fred Ward and Jack Thibeau) escaping from the notorious Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay. There isn't much backstory or depth towards the lead characters, so it makes the viewer wonder if we should really care if they escape or not. But because its Eastwood we assume that he is a good guy and therefore is perfectly entitle to escape.

The film is split between the drudgery of prison life, the punishments handed down from the sadistic prison governor (wonderfully underplayed by Patrick McGoohan), and the slowly piecing together of the prison escape by our three cohorts and their versatility in using every day things like nail clippers, spoons and wooden wedges as tools to effecting their escape.

The actual escape is finely done, and the conclusion to the story is open-ended because no one for sure knows if the men truly escaped or not. Eastwood is stoic but also wooden. There's barely any emotion other than complete calm and extreme anger, but little in-between.

A good film full of suspense and intrigue, but pales compared to the more character-driven "Shawshank Redemption" and the exceptional French film ""Le Trou"

3/5
 
Professionals, that's what they aren't, just fakin' it cos' dad's in the biz types. Tons now, ridiculous bad bad movies out there, they won't be funny B movies in 30 years, like the 50s stuff was, because they certainly aren't made by professional anythings. Sames people call themselves musicians all the time, have recordings out, but no discernible reason why, then they soak up part of the $ pie, and everyone hates them and they disappear while anyone good is studiously kept away from the $. Happens all the time./ ) ALL the time.(
Alcatraz was decent Eastwood beause he had a tailor-made plot to work with. Le Trou may not work for everyone because of the ending.
 
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Shield for Murder (1954)

Pretty good film noir with Edmund O'Brien (who also co-directed) as a cop who kills a bookie in cold blood in order to grab the huge wad of cash he's carrying. He covers it up as an accidental shooting while the guy was trying to escape arrest. Not only do a couple of sleazy "private detectives" (hired thugs) try to get back the money for their crime boss employer, there was a deaf and dumb man who witnessed the murder, and O'Brien's honest partner (B favorite John Agar) conducts his own investigation of the case. Lots of familiar character actors show up. Moves along briskly, with some intense, if not explicit, violence, and an extended chase sequence near the end, partly involving a running gun battle in a crowded gymnasium/swimming pool. The only unbelievable element is that the rather sweaty, doughy O'Brien not only has a gorgeous girlfriend twenty years his junior (B favorite Marla English) but also gets picked up at a bar/Italian restaurant by the always striking Carolyn Jones, with platinum hair here. She steals the picture and has some of the best lines, but I'll admit she has nothing to do with the plot.
 
"Ronin" (1998) - Rated "15" UK / "R" USA

A bit of a mixed bag of a film, never sure whether its an actioner in the James Bond meets Mission Impossible mode, or takes itself on a higher intellectual plane as a clever espionage thriller with more twists than an expensive cocktail by throwing "ronin" in the title.

What we have here is an eclectic bunch of failed hit-men doing some dirty work for an IRA outfit in order to steal a mysterious metal case before it gets sold off to a Russian Agency.

The principle "bad" guys in this gang consist of Robert De Niro, Jean Reno, Natascha McElhone, Stellan Skarsgard and Sean Bean, who tour the towns & villages of France in souped-up performance cars in search of this wonderful big case, whose contents we're never really told about.

De Niro is the token American with the sharp one-liners & pearls of wisdom; while Reno is the Frenchman who knows how to get things; McElhone is the female leader of the gang with a very severe Irish accent; and Bean is the sullen Englishman who is way out of his league & pretends to be tough when in actual fact is quite the opposite. And bringing up the rear is Skarsgard: the scheming Austrian with a hidden agenda!

The mix of characters & actors doesn't quite gel, apart from Reno & De Niro, who do hit it off as good buddies. However, like the script, the actors just don't really seem to believe in what they're supposed to be doing. Bean especially, looks totally out of place and only slows the film down as an unnecessary distraction.

The inconsequential script has more holes than a Swiss cheese and soon loses its appeal in order to make way for a few decent car chases, which although very stylishly done, all becomes rather boring and drawn out after awhile.

And to be honest I didn't really care if any of this mob lived or died (including De Niro), because we should remember that these people are nothing but cold-blood terrorists killing innocent bystanders in pursuit of this mythical case (One such example was a failed ambush in a small town where bombs, machine guns & cars go off in all directions killing loads of people!)

The ending is a bit if a damp squib too, although a sequel would be nice especially if it retained De Niro, Reno & McElhone, if only to flesh out the characters a bit more: something so sadly lacking in this uneven & relentless film.

2/5
 
Cathbad said:
London Has Fallen (2016)
Click to expand...

The producers are probably lucky it came out last year - even after the Manchester & London attacks, I don't think the general plot would cause mass upset, Brits, at least those of us in our 30's and older are well used to terror attacks, having grown up when IRA bombs were exploding every week. But the level of incompetence and corruption shown in the UK Police would likely have caused massive anger in the media and population.

Given the bravery recently shown, both off unarmed off duty Constables, and on duty ones armed only with an ASP Baton, tackling terrorists armed with knives, with several officers having died on duty trying to protect the public recently.

There's kind of a meme in the press now about UK Territorial Police Constables "they are the ones who run towards the danger when everyone else is running away"

And whilst you might, if very lucky manage to get 1 of your guys into the Police, to get dozens would be impossible, the producers showed total ignorance of how things work here. When you apply to become a Police Constable, its not just you and your character that is checked, they also look at the people closest to you, siblings, parents, aunts, uncles. The guys at the church, given all the HOS's in attendance will not have been Authorised Firearms Officers, which every territorial Constabulary has (ordinary officers, on ordinary duties but are either armed with a Pistol, or when required can open a gun safe in patrol car or station armoury and arm themselves) but SCO19.

SCO19 are the Metropolitan Police's Special Forces unit - they are so good, so tough, and so busy & experienced, that SAS Troopers, (generally considered the best "Tier 1" special forces troops in the world) serving in that Regiments Counter Terrorism Wing (an SAS Troop is on permanent duty in their Hereford base, training and waiting for a Terrorist incident, they can be fully armed/armoured and in the air heading for London say in 10 mins) are deployed into SCO19 to gain experience in Hostage Rescues, Building Assaults, you name it.
In a general way, SCO19 are kind of the Met's version of a US PD's SWAT unit, or the FBI's HRT, but given they work and train with the SAS, and SAS Troopers get put into SCO19 to gain experience and learn, they may well be even tougher/better.

To get into something like SCO19, after you have been a normal Beat Constable for a few years, you will have to undergo even more rigorous checks and assessments than when you applied to join the Police. It would be impossible to so severely infiltrate it as in London has Fallen. A close relation of mine graduated from Uni 3 years ago, with a first in Comp Sci, and a Central Government Organisation based in the West Country ;) headhunted him, practically out of the final exam room. At one point 3 MI5 Case Officers came to Aberystwyth (it wasnt MI5 he would be working for, but as the Domestic Intelligence Agency, they are responsible for doing the rigorous checks on people likely to work for certain government depts, SCO19, the SAS etc, thats how serious and how deep the checks I talk about go) and they went around, spoke to most of his living family, old bosses and colleagues from when he worked for Ceredigion County Council, old school teachers, uni lecturers, they even got a list of friends, not just from my relation, but from friends he had listed for them and made home and workplace visits, that shows how hard it would be to get 1 person in to something sensitive, getting dozens? no way.
I was actually surprised he passed and was offered a job to be honest:D My Mother and Southern Irish Stepfather used to run a Pub that was renowned as a serious hotbed of Welsh Nationalism specifically and was also home to General Celtic Nationalism, you could go in and find yourself chatting to a Breton Nationalist for example, a priest who used to be in the IRA, and even Basques and Catalans. (my Mother and Stepdad know very well, the leader of the Basque Separatist Group ETA's Political Wing - like how Sinn Fein are the political wing of the Provisional IRA)

SCO19 seem to have an awesome if unusual looking uniform for their counter terror role recently released to the public!

1.jpg
 
Contamination (1980)

Italian-West German co-production which mixes Alien with spy movies. A freighter heading to New York City turns out to have no living crew aboard. Investigators find out the ship is carrying large green eggs that produce slimy goo that causes people to explode. The cop who survives this debacle winds up working with the movie's heroine, who has the rank of Colonel in some kind of government agency. They have a shootout at the warehouse where the ship was heading with the Bad Guys and eventually track down the main Bad Guy at a South American coffee processing plant. It seems that during the one and only manned mission to Mars (this must be the future, although there's no other sign of that) one of the two guys claimed to have seen an ice cave full of eggs, while the other one denied it and said the first guy was crazy. The first one was right, of course, and the second one got his mind controlled by the Big Alien. It all leads up to a final confrontation between the Good Guys and the Big Alien. Lots of gory, if not very convincing, body explosions and spy stuff. As in any Bond film, you have to wonder how the head Bad Guy gets so many disposable minions to work for him.
 
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)

So-so low-budget monster flick from cult director Edgar G. Ulmer (The Black Cat, Detour.) The title character (Gloria Talbott, best known to me from the surprisingly good movie I Married a Monster from Outer Space) goes to her ancestral mansion on her twenty-first birthday, along with her intended (B favorite John Agar.) The kindly old doctor who is her guardian welcomes them, but soon reveals the dark secret of her father's experiments. (The monster theme gets weirdly mixed up here, as Jekyll is called a werewolf, but described in ways that seem more like a vampire.) Our heroine has nightmares of running around at night killing her victims. (These dream sequences are interestingly filmed, with another actress who resembles Talbott playing the evil side. It's also of note that her victims are young women; even when she tracks down a smooching couple, it's the woman she follows and attacks.) Has she inherited her father's curse? Notable for an oddly out-of-place scene near the end where a woman slowly and sensuously pulls on her stockings (her teddy and garters seeming somewhat anachronistic for the movie's early Twentieth Century setting) just before she's attacked. It's a laughable bit of softcore exploitation mixed into a typical old-fashioned Gothic chiller; and yet, during the same scene, the attack takes place as a jaunty ragtime tune is playing on the woman's Edison phonograph, and the contrast between the music and the violence is surprisingly effective. Worth a look for fans of this kind of thing.
 
"Fail-Safe" (1964) - Rated "PG"

Due to a "technical fault" a transmission is sent from the US military to a squadron of bomber warplanes to drop nuclear weapons over Moscow, Russia.

The military are aware of the error but because the bombers are no longer in their "fail safe" airspace the pilots have to ignore all incoming requests from all sources, included that of the military and subsequently the president of the USA (played with some aplomb by Henry Fonda).

So with the planes heading towards Moscow, Fonda spends the remainder of the film in a deep underground bunker speaking over the phones to his advisers and Russian ambassadors, with only a very young Larry Hagman as his translator in the room with him.

His War Cabinet discuss the merits of letting the warplanes bomb Moscow anyway, as a show of military might by the US, and which could stop any growing threat of nuclear war before it has even started. While others in the Cabinet feel that such a move would herald nuclear Armageddon for all.

Despite both US & Russian trying to shoot down the warplanes, it is quickly realised that at least one will get through to Moscow. The question is, what does the President do about it?

Everyone remembers Stanley Kubrick's "Dr Strangelove", but it is unlikely many of heard or even seen Sidney Lumet's "Fail-Safe", which was released within 9 months of each other to an American audience still recovering from the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Strangelove, took a more black-humoured approach to the possibilities of how a nuclear war could so easily start through a US army general slowly losing his marbles because he wanted to preserve his "natural bodily fluids!". And Kubrick, being Kubrick, he doesn't preach, or bludgeon audiences, or come up with positive conclusions to films such as this. Instead he relies on sophisticated, yet subtle humour to get his message across. Which he achieved so spectacularly with Strangelove.

Lumet's Fail-Safe, on the other hand, plays to our core fears. Of realism trumping idealism: that even with a superstar like Henry Fonda in command, there can be no happy ending; only one of compromise in order to keep the peace & preserve life on earth!

Kubrick's film looked at the frailties of the human condition, whereas Lumet considers the technical aspects of nuclear war, in that humans put too much faith & trust in computers & machines, and rarely consider infallibility.

There is absolutely no humour at all in this film. And neither is there much of a soundtrack of any note. The cinematography is very flat, but certainly adds to the mood & claustrophobic feel of the movie by having it processed in "pessimistic" black & white rather than "optimistic" colour.

The film generally is very good, but is cheapened somewhat by the small budget, the stock footage of aircraft and by the fact that the President would never sit in a drab little bunker with just one translator, and no personal protection.

But the lessons back then should remain with us even now, human & mechanical failure will always be with us. We place too much faith in our modern technology, always believing that it will keep us safe from harm, until something does fail either through a hack or one of those "technical faults" Lumet brought to our attention in this still very relevant film.

3.5/5
 
Northwest Passage (1940) Spencer Tracy stars as Major Rogers in this western adventure set circa 1759. Leading his band of men known as Rogers Rangers, they set out to wreak vengence on a tribe responsible for murdering frontier settlers in North America.

I bought this film because I recalled viewing it as a youngster. Even now, I found it an enjoyable piece of cinema. The DVD transfer was nothing fancy with a quality poorer than normal, but still quite watchable. :)
 
"Duel" (1971) - Rated "PG"

A directorial debut for Steven Spielberg, and already we can see the beginnings of one the most influential and successful men in Hollywood.

A very simple premise of a salesman (Denis Weaver) driving hundreds of miles across California for a sales meeting with a client. A very mundane journey until he gets stuck behind a gas-guzzling, exhaust-spewing truck. Weaver overtakes and carries on with his mundane trip. But the truck suddenly appears in his rear-view mirror and quickly overtakes him again.

Mildly bemused Weaver bites, puts his foot down and overtakes for a second time. And all of a sudden things start to take a slightly sinister step as the truck driver slowly antagonises, threatens and almost pushes Weaver off the road. And as the film moves on, so does murde the murderous intentions of this unknown driver.

We are never told exactly why the truck driver took an instant disliking to Weaver. After all, halfway through the film the truck is seeing helping a bus driver start his bus full of kids by intentionally pushing it from behind. So at least the driver isn't some kind of psychotic murderer hell-bent on killing all and sundry. Instead he has it in for our meek little salesman.

Spielberg doesn't offer us much backstory for Weaver either, other than through one phone to his wife, apologising for a big argument the night before. But she quickly puts the phone down on him when he starts raising his voice. So clearly he is a little hen-pecked at home. But that's all we know of this guy, yet because he is being taunted and threatened by a big truck we feel empathy for him.

The only motivation for the truck driver doing what he does, is probably far more apparent on our roads today - that of road rage. Some people resort to just mouthing off, or giving The Finger; others honk their horns; and some turn to tail-gating. But our truck driver ramps it up a little higher with thoughts of murder!

A great suspense film, especially for a TV-movie; and this tight direction from Spielberg would become even more polished 4 years later when he gave the world a fear of the oceans through "Jaws"

3.5/5
 
Gerald's Game (2017)

A married couple attempts to reignite the romance over a weekend in a secluded country home. Things go terribly wrong, quite quickly.

Starring Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Henry Thomas... and an unnamed dog.

This movie is a visual and psychological horror film. Those two aspects are blended quite well in this movie, while most horror flicks can't even get one right! It is also a study in how to make a dramatic piece, with a minimal number of characters. Excellent acting all around, even the little girl, who is only seen in dream sequences.

I refuse to give anything away about this movie, but more than recommend you see it! If you're a fan of horror, thrillers or psychological theater, this is a Must See!
 
Treasure Island (1972) Orson Welles stars as Long John Silver in this reasonably decent adaptation. My biggest criticism, however, is of the performance of Orson Welles himself. He mumbles constantly and attempts an English accent - which might be good for character but is murder for the viewer to try and work out what he's actually saying much of the time.

Apparently Welles was dismissive of this film and I got the impression he didn't really want to be involved.
 
Cathbad said:
Gerald's Game (2017)

A married couple attempts to reignite the romance over a weekend in a secluded country home. Things go terribly wrong, quite quickly.

Starring Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood, Henry Thomas... and an unnamed dog.

This movie is a visual and psychological horror film. Those two aspects are blended quite well in this movie, while most horror flicks can't even get one right! It is also a study in how to make a dramatic piece, with a minimal number of characters. Excellent acting all around, even the little girl, who is only seen in dream sequences.

I refuse to give anything away about this movie, but more than recommend you see it! If you're a fan of horror, thrillers or psychological theater, this is a Must See!
Click to expand...
Based on the Stephen King novel?
 
From Beyond the Grave (1974, dir. Kevin Connor; starring Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasance, Ian Carmichael, Diana Dors, Nyree Dawn Porter and a flock of other familiar British actors, not least a small role for Lesley-Anne Down shortly before her career took off)

Whatever happened to the anthology movie? Perhaps they're as much a part of the 1970s as bell-bottoms.

Anyway, this one, from Amicus, includes four stories based on those of R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Tying the stories together is Cushing as The Proprietor, the owner of an antique/junk shop that each of the main characters enters and from which purchases something. Since all but one cheats The Proprietor, all but one meets a messy fate: The hen-pecked husband who finds his wife isn't his worst enemy; the antiques collector who should have known not to buy that mirror; the man with an "elemental" attached to him; the purchaser of an oddly carved door who hangs it with the expectation of finding his closet behind it -- well, that doesn't quite work out.

Not a great horror movie, but an enjoyable way to wile away an hour and a half or so.


Randy M.
 
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