Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This is one of the most successful British films ever, based on audience numbers ,and whilst it’s no classic I can readily see its appeal.  It’s a ripping yarn, set in the late seventeenth century, which is well directed and acted, and which must have been a tonic to audiences when it was released a few months after the end of World War II. I wonder what young British women who went to see it, many of whom had had their first experience of independence and responsibility during the war years, made of the titular character. Were they taken with her free spirit, with her refusal to accept what society expects from her, and with her pursuit of love wherever it takes her and whoever it hurts? Or were they repelled by her selfishness and irresponsibility, which does degenerate into true wickedness well before the end? She, Barbara, reveals her true nature from the outset, when she steals her supposed best friend’s fiancé, Sir Ralph, simply because of his wealth and social standing, not ...

I was expecting this 1962 World War II movie directed by Don Siegel to be lean, mean and exciting.  Which it is, towards the end, w hen a US company attacks a heavily protected German pillbox.  But before then, the film is very much a curate’s egg with some surprising elements, not least Bob Newhart doing a variation on his comic monologue routine. It takes an unusual approach for a war movie of this period in zooming in on an insignificant incident, based on the experience of the screenwriter Robert Pirosh duirng the war, when a mere handful of US soldiers in France in 1944 are given the suicidal job of trying to defend part of the Allied line.   Being woefully undermanned, at first they find some creative ways to give their German opposite numbers the impression of having greater numbers.  This buys them some time but eventually they decide their only hope is a desperate attack on said pillbox. After this fails, reinforcements arrive, leading to the exciting and su...

In this action comedy Hutch (played by Bob Odenkirk) is on the face of it a real sad sack of a nobody. The state of his marriage to Becca is summed up by the rolled up sheet she has placed as a barrier between them in their bed. His job is a monotonous accounting-type gig with a small business owned by his father-in-law, who doesn’t hold him in high regard. But guess what? It turns out that back in the day Hutch was a formidable assassin working for the US government, until he tired of it and developed a yen for a conventional marriage and suburban lifestyle. When a couple of inept burglars tangle with Hutch the worm finally turns, and not before long he is beating up five young punks on a bus, in an enjoyable fist fight that is well choreographed and makes creative use of the available fixtures and fittings.   Best of all, Hutch doesn’t have it all his own way (after all, it is five against one) and comes out of it with a fair amount of bruising as well as a stab wound. ...

The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther criticised this 1961 Western, Sam Peckinpah's directorial debut, for moving "at the pace of a hearse". Which is only as it should be given that the story centres on the transportation of a corpse, that of a young boy, who is shot dead accidentally during a shootout in the middle of town (an occupational hazard in those days, I guess). His mother Kit (played by Maureen O'Hara) arrived in the town a few years earlier, pregnant and without a husband.  Despite her claims that her husband had been killed, she's a single mum of dubious morals as far as the town is concerned, and so she's ostracised and has had to make a living in the music hall. Due to her treatment from the town she rejects the idea of a funeral for the boy there, and instead she's going to take him to be buried with his father.  There's one small problem: it means a journey through Apache country and none of the townsfolk feel like escorting her.  ...

I have to confess that I struggled to get through this 1966 comedy spy thriller, and my attention was increasingly going AWOL as it went on. It’s directed by Stanley Donen as the follow-up to his successful effort in the same genre in 1963, ‘Charade’.  That film is set in Paris, stars Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, as well as a strong supporting cast, and has an entertaining plot.  Donen, who is best known as a director of musicals, was able to take these ingredients and make them into a charming soufflé of a film. In the case of Arabesque the ingredients are less promising: Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren, not much of a supporting cast, and a plot which most critics found confusing. The result for me was less a soufflé, more a rubbery omelette. Cary Grant turned the project down which suggests he knows a bad script when he sees it.  He may also have wondered whether he would have made a convincing professor of Egyptology (spoiler alert: he wouldn't).  Although Gregory...

In 2019 ‘Knives Out’ managed to create a murder mystery in the style of Agatha Christie, but updated for the twenty-first century.  It was so successful that it raised the bar for any other film fishing in the same pool, which arguably this 2022 comedy mystery is.  Given that I didn't find it very funny or the murder mystery that interesting, I would say that it fell short by some distance.   That being said, as an aficionado of the classic age of detective fiction I found it passably entertaining. It is set in 1952, when Christie's play 'The Mousetrap' has just completed its first 100 performances.  To give it a modern angle the story is narrated by an unlikeable US film director who is going to direct a film adaptation of the play, who then turns out to be the murder victim.  A neat touch is that there is an early flashback in which he visualises how he wants the film to end, complete with action and gunfire, which is then how this film ends. So there is ...