Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This 1949 thriller is a real obscurity, which made little impact upon its release, but it's directed by the highly regarded Max Ophüls, it stars James Mason and its reputation is on an upward curve.  And it's only 82 minutes long. Mason though is absent during the first 30 minutes, during which the focus is on his co-star Joan Bennett, who plays Mrs Harper, a wife and mother in an affluent Californian household.  Husband Tom is away for a prolonged period doing some engineering work in of all places Berlin.  So Mrs Harper has to run things on her own. Top of her to-do list is to try to put an end to the developing relationship between her 17-year old daughter Bea, and a much older man, a dodgy art dealer called Mr Brady. As any parent will tell you trying to stop a teenager doing something only makes them dig their heels in, so it's no surprise when Bea has a clandestine night-time rendezvous with Mr Brady in the family boathouse.  But when Mr Brady makes clear he's ...

This 1957 Western has a great pedigree: Anthony Mann directed it, Dudley Nichols wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay, Elmer Bernstein wrote the score, and Henry Fonda stars.  Intriguingly Anthony Perkins co-stars, in one of his earliest roles. As with 'High Noon' the sheriff here (Ben, played by Perkins) can't rely on his local townspeople in a crisis.  Unlike Gary Cooper, Ben is new to the job and young and inexperienced, and the crisis takes some time arriving.  The film starts with a bounty hunter, Morgan (Fonda) coming into town to claim his reward, having killed a wanted man.  Everyone is a bit snooty about it, they wanted the bad guy brought in alive so that they could try him - which is ironic given where the film ends. Anyway Morgan has to hang around to collect his reward, and finds lodging with a local widow who is a bit of an outcast owing to her husband being an Indian, and her having a mixed race son, Kip.  Racism is an undercurrent throughout, which...

I  normally steer well clear of the horror genre but since this well-reviewed film stars Hugh Grant I felt confident that I would enjoy it, or at the very least it wouldn't freak me out. It's a simple enough setup: two young women (Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton) who are Mormon missionaries make the mistake of visiting the home of Mr Reed.  The entire film, bar the first few minutes, takes place in the house, and there is only one other credited character, who plays a very small role in the story. Mr Reed starts off as seeming just mildly eccentric but it doesn't take long before the two Sisters realise they are in deep trouble. For the last ten years or so Hugh Grant has been enjoying a late-career renaissance, often playing against type.  Here he is very effective as a suave and sinister obsessive who it turns out is simply quite evil. There is a very effective scene midway through the film where a new (uncredited) character is introduced, and the film takes quite a su...

Winning multiple Oscars is no guarantee of quality but this 1967 film which won five Oscars (including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay) is a timeless classic, beautifully directed by Norman Jewison, who picked up one of his three nominations for Best Director here. Given that it’s about racism in the Deep South one might wish that it has dated more than it has. Still, I am sure a lot of progress has been made - surely a Virgil Tibbs would not now be treated as disgracefully as he is here? Tibbs (or should I call him Mister Tibbs?), played by Sidney Poitier, is a homicide detective from the North who just happens to be passing through Sparta, Mississippi when a murder happens.  Naturally, being black and a stranger he is arrested. Once he has demonstrated his innocence to the  local police chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger),  everyone in Sparta, including Tibbs himself, wants him to leave, but events conspire for him and Gillespie to work together, albeit v...

My only reason for watching this unenticing film was that it was featured on the ‘War Movie Theatre’ podcast. At the time of its release (1985) its main selling point was the stellar cast.  Richard Burton!  Richard Harris!  Roger Moore!  Hardy Krüger!  Stewart Grainger!   Plus a tank load of character actors such as Frank Finlay, Barry Foster, Ronald Fraser, Kenneth Griffith, Patrick Allen, Jack Watson.  But although I am very much in the target demographic for this sort of thing (white bloke in his '60s) I found this film a real slog, all 134 minutes (134!). It’s loosely based on real events, about a group of mercenaries trying to rescue an imprisoned African leader. The early scenes which set things up, by introducing us to the mercenaries and to Mr Merchant Banker (Grainger) who is financing the operation, are tedious and seem to go on for ever. Things don’t improve much when we move on to some supposedly amusing scenes of the mercenaries going...

This 1977 Scorsese flop is described in Wikipedia as a 'romantic comedy musical'.   I must have been watching a different film. The only attempts at comedy come in the early scenes in which saxophone player Jimmy (De Niro) is pestering singer Francine (Liza Minnelli) because he wants to get her into bed (or failing that the back of a cab), or is trying to get out of paying his hotel bills.   If De Niro possessed the comic timing and charm of Cary Grant maybe these scenes wouldn't seem so laboured and maybe I wouldn't be thinking she should give him a good slap, a thought that persisted throughout the next two hours. There's no romance, or chemistry, between the two but I'm not sure that Scorsese is even trying for this.  But then again what was he aiming for? I think I read somewhere that he wanted it in part to be a tribute to old MGM musicals, but there's scarcely any of that as far as I could see, save for a musical-within-a-musical near the end, which an...

Every now and then you come across a film that’s so good and so daring that it fair takes your breath away.  This is one such film. The central character is Jackie, a CCTV operator who doesn’t seem to have much of a social life other than having occasional unsatisfying sex with a married man in his car.  Gradually we learn that her husband and daughter died some time in the past and that this tragedy is connected in some way with a recently released prisoner who she spots during her surveillance.  This leads her to start stalking him which involves some extremely tense scenes especially when she starts to develop something of a relationship with him.  This leads to an extraordinary scene which I thought might be on the cards but even so it's so audacious I was knocked over when it happens.  All credit then to everyone involved, especially Kate Dickie who plays Jackie and gives a terrific performance, and Andrea Arnold who wrote and directed it.   Wikip...

This is Kurosawa’s adaptation of ‘the Scottish play’, which I persuaded myself to watch even though I’m not Shakespeare’s biggest fan.  After all, Kurosawa is one of cinema’s greats and having studied (if that's the right word) the play at ‘O’ level I have a pretty good grasp of the basic plot, although admittedly  I can’t be sure exactly what detailed changes Kurosawa made. I’m pretty sure though that in the play Lady Macbeth doesn’t get pregnant and then give birth to a stillborn child.  In this adaptation she doesn’t go in for any sleepwalking but we do get the very disturbing scene where she is endlessly washing her hands (with or without water) to get rid of non-existent blood.   Not that she gets any sympathy from me given how sinister she is earlier, filling her husband’s head with paranoia about Banquo’s Miki's intentions as well as encouraging his ambitions which have already been stirred by the prophecies of a spirit creature (which has replaced the t...

This 1950 film by the Japanese director Kurosawa is widely regarded as one of the greatest ever made, so it was something of a surprise to learn that it wasn't universally loved when it was released, especially in its home country.     It is about the violent death of a samurai whose body is found in a forest, some time way back in early Medieval times.   During the course of the film we are presented with four conflicting accounts of what happened, told in flashback by a different narrator each time.   All we the audience know for sure is that a bandit tied the samurai up with rope, before raping his wife.  What then ensued is not at all clear. The first three accounts are by the bandit (who is on trial), the wife, and (via a medium) the dead samurai.  According to these accounts either the bandit killed the samurai with his sword, or the samurai committed suicide with his wife's dagger.  In each case the narrator behaves in accordance ...

James Stewart is Will Lockhart, the man from Laramie, in this 1955 Western,  He arrives in a town called Coronado with supplies he is delivering, and so  as to avoid returning home empty-handed he and his men are loading salt from some salt flats when they are interrupted by a local hothead and a load of cowhands.   The hothead, Dave, summarily has Lockhart's wagons burned and his mules shot dead. So OK this is now going to be a film about how Lockhart gets revenge, right?  Well, not exactly.   It is indeed a film about revenge but not in the way it first appears.  The real reason why Lockhart has come to Coronado is to find the person who sold rifles to the local Apaches, because those rifles were used to massacre a cavalry troupe, including Lockhart's brother. This does rather beg the question of why Lockhart needed to come to the town with supplies, and then seemed to be planning to go straight back to Laramie, but best not to worry, the plot i...

Superman is very dear to me as a character because for a few years in the mid-1960s I was heavily into the comics (as well as Batman, Justice League and The Legion of Super Heroes) - I even used to read the Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen spin-off comics. I also treasure the first two Christopher Reeve films.  And I am not a great fan of the James Gunn sensibility as manifested in 'Guardians of the Galaxy' - it seems quite glib and cheap, and I'm not convinced he can direct a dramatically powerful scene. So despite the generally positive reviews I went to see this latest iteration of the Man of Steel with some trepidation, but I'm pleased to say that, although my view of James Gunn wasn't much changed, some two-and-a-bit hours later I did walk out the cinema with a spring in my step.   And that was despite the fact that a lot of the comedy beats fell flat for me, and that I wouldn't say the film includes any memorable dramatic or exciting moments.   And the least said...

After watching 'The Enforcer', the third in the Dirty Harry series, which is little more than a shoddy TV movie, it was a relief to watch this, its predecessor.   Right from the get-go it's clear that the direction, cinematography and score are of a high quality. San Francisco has never looked more alluring than in this film I would suggest; for example, at one point we are treated to a gorgeous view from the top of a high apartment block, of the Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.    There's no need to worry about the screenplay either, credited to the intriguing pairing of John Milius and Michael Cimino. They have the neat idea of taking Harry's unconventional approach to policing to its logical conclusion.  There is a cop, or someone pretending to be a cop, killing (or rather, executing) criminals who have evaded the normal justice system. At first both we and Harry suspect a long-time friend of his on the force, Charlie, who's definitely displayi...

This 1988 period thriller was a box-office bomb, but so what?  It stars Jeff Daniels and Kelly McGillis, and is directed by Peter Yates, all capable of good work.  Plus there's Mandy Patinkin and Jessica Tandy, and an intriguing story about smuggling Nazi scientists into the US.  And some critics, such as Roger Ebert, did like it. But oh boy, what a disappointment this farrago is. In the first scene, Emily Crane (McGillis) is before a Senate committee, being interrogated by prosecutor Ray Salwen (Patinkin).  Because she refuses to cooperate, the FBI, in the form of Joe Cochran (Daniels) and his partner, are told to carry out surveillance on her.  She also loses her job so instead she gets one reading for an old lady (Tandy). And then, would you believe it, whilst in the old lady's garden, she conveniently overhears a sinister conversation in the next house, involving none other than Salwen! It's an absurd coincidence, which is the first sign that this story...

This is the third film in the Dirty Harry series, and diminishing returns have set in despite some attempts to freshen up the formula. The pre-credits sequence where we meet the Chief Bad Guy (a psycho killer, what else?) is OK, as far as it goes.   We then get the obligatory sequence, immediately after the credits, where Harry deals with a random crime he stumbles upon by behaving totally unprofessionally, in this case driving a car into a liquor store where hostages are being held, and then being affronted when he is bawled out and transferred to Personnel. So far, so predictable. Then to shake things up we and Harry are introduced to of all things a woman (Kate) who absurdly is applying to join Homicide despite no on-the-street experience. She's played by Tyne Daly who's great in the part and the main reason to watch this film, because she's actually taking the role seriously.   Harry of course gets reassigned to Homicide with Kate as his partner. She's replacing ...

This is the sort of film I feared wasn't getting made any more - a romantic comedy that's sweet and funny, and clever and original.  The two leads are trapped in a time loop à la 'Groundhog Day'. Nyles is played by Andy Samberg.  He was the best thing in 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine' - he's very likeable and charming, and just naturally funny (see his dance moves here in an early scene, for example).   He's fated to repeat the same day over and over; since it is at a wedding in Palm Springs it could be worse I guess but like Bill Murray the monotony and pointlessness of it all has driven him to try killing himself.  All to no avail, and so he keeps waking up with his boring girlfriend Misty and then having to find some way to entertain himself. Sarah, the half-sister of the bride, is played by  Cristin Milioti.  I'd seen her previously in the classic Black Mirror episode "USS Callister" where she also plays a character trapped in an endless loop of ...

Since this 1952 Western now has classic status it's something of a surprise to learn that it wasn't immediately embraced as such upon its release. Part of this was down to its unconventional structure and lack of action: most of the film concerns Marshal Will Kane's attempts to persuade someone (anyone!) in his town to help him fight a bad guy, Frank Miller, who is arriving on the noon train, where he will meet up with  his gang of three ne'er-do-wells. The story is told in real time and we have to wait for most of the 85 minutes to have elapsed before the train arrives and we get a shootout. But although most of the film is wordy (at one point we even get an abbreviated debate among the townspeople in the local church as to whether to support Kane) it's not at all boring, quite the opposite.   This is down to the excellent screenplay by Carl Foreman, which raises issues that have universal resonance even now, about how to maintain a decent society and whose respons...

I watched these two adaptations of the Chandler novel on consecutive nights, and then quickly raced through the book itself for good measure. As he was wont to do Chandler created the novel from short stories he had previously written, in this instance no less than three of them.  In the novel these stories become two cases  which Marlowe is working on which at first appear to be unrelated but of course turn out not to be.  It's to Chandler's credit that he manages to connect them in a way which doesn't rely on mere coincidence. In the more memorable case, Marlowe is helping an ex-con Moose Malloy track down 'his little Velma' who he is still in love with despite her not writing to him or visiting him whilst he was serving time. In the other case, Marlowe is trying to get to the bottom of two related mysteries: who killed a guy called Marriott, and who stole a jade necklace belonging to Helen Grayle, the young and beautiful wife of a much older, but rich, man. Marlo...

This might have been just another run-of-the-mill thriller about corporate greed, but for two things. Firstly, everything, from the writing and direction (by Tony Gilroy), to the cinematography (Robert Elswit), the score (James Newton Howard) and the acting are all top notch, making this a joy to watch.   Secondly, two of the three main performances are extraordinarily good. Tom Wilkinson plays Arthur, a senior litigator, or as he prefers to call it 'janitor' because his job is to clear up clients' messes.  The particular mess he has been working on for six years concerns the defence of U-North, an agricultural conglomerate, in a three-billion-dollar class action lawsuit, as a result of U-North knowingly selling a toxic weed killer, with fatal results.  The film covers four days, starting with Arthur having an extreme manic episode because he has stopped taking his meds.  Wilkinson gives an outstanding performance as someone who has reached the end of his tether...

This 1958 US submarine film was marketed as ‘Moby Dick’ meets ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’. Captain Ahab here is Commander Richardson  (played by Clark Gable) who demands to be given command of a sub a year after his previous command was sunk by a Jap destroyer, the Akikaze, in the Bungay Straits off Japan (quite how Richardson survived and got safely back to Pearl Harbour is glossed over).  As the film progresses it becomes clear that Richardson is determined to return to the Bungay Straits in order to sink the Akikaze despite explicit orders not to do so. Christian Fletcher here is EO Bledsoe (Burt Lancaster) who is aggrieved that he hasn’t been given command.   The mood of the crew, who are very loyal to Bledsoe, becomes mutinous due to endless drills (among other things) but Bledsoe is having none of it even when Richardson orders the sub to the Bungay Straits. Things then hot up considerably, what with an unsuccessful attack on the Akikaze, the US sub having to play dead, ...