Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This was a small screen rewatch for me, having seen it in the cinema when it first came out. It has to be the most visually impressive work of animation I’ve experienced, especially in the way it  manages to combine 3D computer animation and traditional 2D comic book art.  As someone who enjoyed reading comic books back in the 1960s (admittedly DC rather than Marvel) I was really into this.  First time around it took me a while to get to grips with the key fact that this Spider-Man story is not taking place on this Earth but on one in which Peter Parker/ Spider-Man is not the main protagonist and indeed dies halfway through.   (This time around I did spot the occasional clue that this is not our Earth, such as the NYPD becoming the PDNY). Instead we follow the coming of age of a certain  Miles Morales who also gets bitten by a radioactive spider (what are the odds?) The main villain of the piece is Kingpin whose plan is to use a Super Collider to pull versions o...

This classic from Ridley Scott scores 80% on Rotten Tomatoes which sounds good until you realise that it means that one in five critics couldn’t bring themselves to give it a positive review. My memory of seeing it on the big screen was of a visually impressive revenge epic with stellar performances, iconic lines, a fine last role for Oliver Reed, plenty of spectacle and a soupçon of political intrigue. It was somewhat to my surprise therefore that I found myself on a rewatch (admittedly on the small screen) acknowledging that the dissenting critics did have something of a point. One critic decried the “lack of joy” whilst another called it “glum”, so goodness knows what they made of Scott’s later take on the Robin Hood legend, also starring Russell Crowe. It is true that although the story ends with Maximus avenging the murder of his family it’s not exactly a triumphant finale, what with him heading off to the Elysian Fields, although to be fair to Scott this downer of an ending is fo...

I'm not a huge fan of broad comedy and so I found the jaunty comedic music at the outset of this acclaimed film a little off-putting. But I needn't have worried, since once the film (directed by David Lean) gets into its stride it's perfectly fine. It's an adaptation of a play written in 1915 and even then the phrase 'Hobson's choice' was a well-established one, to mean a situation where superficially there might be a choice but in reality there is only one sensible or possible option. The setting is Salford circa 1880 where Henry Hobson is a successful owner of a boot shop.  He's a widower who is perfectly content with his life - both his shop and his domestic household run themselves with little help from him, leaving him plenty of time to get tipsy at the local pub, the Moonrakers, with his mates. He has three daughters and the story starts with him deciding that the the two youngest should be married off, the only obstacle being that he isn't pre...

This adaptation of a Broadway comedy wasn’t known to me despite it being a hit in the year it came out, 1969. The main reason I watched it was that it gets the thumbs up from the usually reliable “Sunday Times Guide to Movies on TV”,  plus I was intrigued by the combination of Walter Matthau, Ingrid Bergman and (in one of her first film appearances) Goldie Hawn. Matthau is Julian, a dentist who for the last year has been enjoying a dalliance with Toni, a much younger woman (Hawn).  To keep her at arms length he has pretended that he is married, a stratagem that has worked well until now when he decides it would be a good time to settle down and marry her. This necessitates a further lie, that he is now divorcing his fictitious wife, but c omplications ensue when Toni wants to meet his wife. This is a classic comedy setup from this era, and in the wrong hands it could end up being laboured or silly or both. Fortunately the  play was adapted by I.A.L. Diamond, best known fo...

Basically the story here (from an Alistair Maclean novel) is of a race against time between the good guys (Yanks and Brits) and the bad guys (the Russkies), to get to the Arctic and secure a vital film that has been dropped there from a Russian satellite.  To spice things up further it's a  Maclean story so you know there's going to be a traitor somewhere along the line.  This might sound exciting on paper, but on film (well, this film anyway) it's terribly dull.  Problem number one is that we spend what seems an interminable amount of time on an American nuclear sub (under the command of Cdr. Ferraday, played by Rock Hudson at his most wooden).  For a long time nothing much happens (until the inevitable act of sabotage) other than being introduced to the other main characters. There's British intelligence officer Jones (Patrick McGoohan) who spends a lot of his time on board drinking scotch.  His only character trait is that he's acerbic to all and sundry,...

The only reason I watched this 1971 British thriller was that it gets the thumbs up from 'The Sunday Times Guide to Movies on TV' by Elkan and Angela Allen, but for once my ‘bible’ badly let me down because this is a quite dreadful film. It starts with the rape of a teenage schoolgirl in some woods near her school, which leaves her so traumatised that she can’t speak and therefore cannot help the police. And the police in the form of DCS Velyan (Frank Finlay) certainly needs help because he goes through the film displaying less interest than if he was dealing with a motoring offence. Two months later (and very implausibly) another schoolgirl goes to the same woods after school for no apparent reason, and is raped and murdered.  Her art teacher Julie West (Suzy Kendall) goes into the woods searching for the girl and manages to catch a glimpse of the killer but not sufficiently to be of much help. However Miss West has the bright idea of making herself bait by planting a story in...