Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This film made a name for itself for being a quantum leap forward technically in how it seamlessly combines real action with animation, and it's a testament to the care and expertise deployed that some 30-odd years later its visuals still hold up. On this second watch I was well entertained throughout - who wouldn't be?   To take one example, the newspaper headline relating to the kidnapping of Donald Duck's nephews had me hooting with laughter. And yet, as with the first time I saw it, I was left with a feeling of dissatisfaction.  Ultimately it's a film I admire and enjoy, rather than love. Part of my dissatisfaction stems from the story about Toon Town being at risk and how Roger Rabbit gets to be framed for a murder.  I wasn't grabbed by it, and long before the end I had lost interest in the fate of someone's last will and testament (don't ask me whose).  We don't get to spend enough time in Toon Town for me to be emotionally invested in its fate. ...

Rather embarrassingly I sometimes confuse this film with ‘The Eagle Has Landed’. Admittedly they are both classic WW2 adventures with similar titles - but even so. This film is described by Wikipedia as an ‘’action adventure war thriller spy film" which hints at why it is so beloved - over its 155 minutes it manages to span three or four popular genres. Which is not to say it needs all that runtime - it would be easy to cut 20 minutes or so.  For example, the sequences after  the moment when the chief goal of the mission has been accomplished could surely be trimmed. It is a measure of Richard Burton’s star power in the mid-1960s that all he needed to do was express a wish to be the lead in an action film (for Elizabeth Taylor’s children to enjoy) and hey presto a film studio makes it happen. I had assumed that this film was an adaptation of an existing Alistair Maclean novel but in fact he wrote the screenplay to order, in just six weeks (he then converted it to a novel). Giv...

I’ve no idea why it took me so long to get around to seeing this beloved 1987 film but it was well worth the wait. Mind you it’s a bit of an oddity in having no real story arc as such.  We simply follow the drunken escapades of struggling actors Withnail and "I" - mostly  fish-out-of-water adventures in the depths of the countryside where they have ventured in order to take advantage of the generosity of Withnail’s Uncle Monty. Alcoholism really isn’t a laughing matter but Richard E Grant’s performance is a comic tour de force which is well nigh impossible to resist.  I hope I never get so stuffy as to not find funny the scene in the tearoom, which features the immortal line “We want the finest wines available to humanity! We want them here and we want them now!".   Actors considered for the role of Withnail included Kenneth Branagh, Daniel Day-Lewis and Bill Nighy.  I'm sure they would all have been good in their own ways but really it's hard to imagine anyone...

Raymond Chandler is one of two authors whose stories enraptured me when I discovered them in my teens (the other being Philip K Dick).  I think ‘The Big Sleep’ was probably the first of his novels that I read. This adaptation is very fine although the ending has been changed to make it more dramatic and to provide a happy conclusion to the romance between Marlowe and Vivian (there is no such romance in the novel, just some sexual tension). This film has a reputation for having an impenetrable plot.  I beg to differ, although it's true I have the advantage of having both read the novel and watched the film several times. It struck me on this latest viewing that there are really two plots, the one concerning Geiger that is at the forefront in the first half and the one concerning Regan that is the focus of the second half.  In writing the novel Chandler cannibalised two short stories he had already had published, and I dare say they correspond to these two plots. The bigges...

I hadn’t heard of this film until it cropped up in the Screen Drafts list of best Classic Christmas films (i.e. those made before 1960).   The setup sounds very much like a repeat of 'It’s A Wonderful Life', released the previous year - an angel comes down to earth to save someone at crisis point at Christmas. Except in this case the crisis is far less compelling than that of Jimmy Stewart on the verge of suicide - here we have David Niven as the eponymous bishop (Henry) struggling to raise money for the building of a cathedral without compromising his principles.  Although his real problem is that he is neglecting his wife (Julia) as a result.  Given that Julia is played by Loretta Young, a fine actress but one lacking charisma, this film could have been very forgettable.  Except thankfully the angel (Dudley!) is played by Cary Grant of all people. How he is going to help Henry get the cathedral built seems low on his priority list since he spends most of the film e...