Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

In ‘Jaws’, his third film, Steven Spielberg provided a masterclass in suspense, but in ‘Duel’, his debut feature, he had already given ample proof of his proficiency in this genre. Taking a short story by Richard Matheson, Spielberg wrings every last ounce of jeopardy from a conflict between a car driver and a truck driven by a virtually invisible driver. It’s a primal battle with an almost mythic air about it, a stripped down battle with no fat on its bones. The unfortunate driver is David Mann, a salesman played by Dennis Weaver. In an early scene he phones his wife to try to clear the air after an argument they have had, because he didn’t do enough, as she sees it, to ‘defend her honour’ at a party. This short conversation, showing us that he is henpecked, together with his surname, suggests that a subtext is going to be his need to prove his manhood. This interpretation is supported by the fact that throughout he is ineffectual in his dealings with people, and that he is not treate...

This 1950 Western starring James Stewart and directed by Delmer Dave’s is a landmark film in terms of its sympathetic portrayal of Native Americans.  Admittedly the main Native American characters are played by white actors but hey, Rome wasn’t built in a day. It’s loosely based on real events, mainly the negotiations that ended the Apache Wars. It is narrated by Stewart who plays Tom Jefford, who played a key role in those negotiations through his friendship with the Apache leader Cochise. A film about peace negotiations may not sound riveting but it did enough to hold my interest. It helps of course to have Stewart at the centre as someone weary of killing, and who is prepared to put up with accusations of being a traitor to white Americans or an ‘Apache-lover’. There are some action sequences because whilst the negotiations are in progress there’s still a war going on; and once the peace treaty is signed there are people on both sides who still want to fight. To add to the drama...

The only Rambo film I had seen prior to this was the fourth (confusingly entitled 'Rambo') which is nothing to write home about, but I felt I should give this first film in the franchise a go since it was a huge commercial hit and the critics didn't hate it. Assuming this film is accurate it was a shock to me how badly Vietnam veterans were treated at this time (early 1980s).   John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) trudges weary and hungry into a Pacific Northwest town (ironically named Hope) somewhat downhearted because he’s just learned that an ex-comrade he was hoping to reconnect with has died of cancer. You might think the locals would be friendly, but no, no t a bit of it - straightaway the  sheriff makes it clear ‘his sort’ is not welcome by driving him to the town limits and telling him that there’s a diner 30 miles up the highway. When Rambo then starts back into town he’s arrested on a made-up charge, and then abused at the local station. This triggers his PTSD, causi...

This 1939 film is the first collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, so  I was quite prepared for it to be a bit odd, but I didn't expect the first half of it to be quite as disorientating as it was. The year is 1917, and the two main characters are a German U-boat commander, Hardt (played by Conrad Veidt) and Fräulein Tiel (Valerie Hobson), his contact in an espionage plot to destroy a significant proportion of the British Fleet at Scapa Flow. She is pretending to be a schoolteacher,  Miss Burnett, on the Orkney Islands, and her home forms a base for a few days for her and Hardt, plus a disillusioned Royal Navy officer, Ashington, who is prepared to betray his country. As I was watching this I was thinking, wow, am I really supposed to be rooting for them to succeed?  Surely not, especially since there is a sinister bit of business early on where German agents drug the real Miss Burnett and then throw her off a cliff. Admittedly Hardt seems a de...

I   was wanting to watch an undemanding action film to take my mind off a toothache I was suffering from, and this unnecessary addition to the Bourne franchise was made to order. It has the familiar formula: Jason (Matt Damon) is simply trying to find out more about his past, but the CIA director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones, at his most gnarly) is so worried that Jason will release incriminating info about the CIA's latest blackop projects that he will stop at nothing to have him killed. The film has two major new characters.  There is Alicia Vikander as Heather Lee, the CIA head of Cyber Ops, an ambiguous figure who ends up helping Jason for her own reasons.  And there is 'the Asset', a CIA assassin who blames Jason for being captured and tortured in Syria (played by Vincent Cassel). There's also a bit of a subplot which ends up not adding a great deal, wasting Riz Ahmed as a Mark Zuckerberg-type character. The main plot is kicked off by Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) ...

This 1948 film is a perfect example of the type of romantic melodrama that was made by Hollywood at its peak: take a fine piece of literature (a novella by Stefan Zweig), make a few alterations here and there to make it more palatable for its target audience and for the censor,  and then hand it over to  Max Ophüls, a director known for his lyrical visual style and for his affinity to romantic themes. It cannot fail to succeed, and broadly speaking it doesn't, provided one is in the right mood.   It's set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, where Stefan (Louis Jourdan) is about to flee in order to avoid certain death in a duel.  But then he gets side tracked into reading a letter from Lisa (Joan Fontaine), which is a cue for her to narrate the rest of the film in a series of flashbacks. She starts off as a teenager who develops a crush on handsome Stefan, a talented pianist who lives in the next-door apartment.  He of course barely notices her. She is so obsesse...

This was one of those 'must-see' classics I was forever putting off, mainly because I thought it might make for grim viewing.   And yes, the subject-matter, Algeria's fight for independence from France, is no laughing matter,  but there's always something rather exhilarating about watching a film that's as good as this one.   The Battle of Algiers turns out not to have been some massive street combat as I had imagined, but a series of terrorist attacks and reprisals over a period of 12 months in 1956-57.   The film mainly concentrates on this period although it also contains some footage relating to before and after.  Footage is an apt word because the director, Gillo Pontecorvo, pulls out all the stops to make us think we are watching archival material. Black-and-white photography, non-professional actors, documentary-style captions, a newsreel style, they’re all here. The two main protagonists are Ali la Pointe (a real person) who was one of the...

In 1949, 'A Letter to Three Wives' was released, written and directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz, which earned him two Oscars, one for Best Director and one for Best Adapted Screenplay. Then the very next year this masterpiece was released, and yes, once again Mr Mankiewicz won the same two Oscars. Quite an achievement. It's a long time since I first saw it, but the basic storyline had stuck with me: ambitious young actress Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter) supplanting aging actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis).  But I had forgotten that this film starts by giving away the ending, with an awards ceremony where Eve is the star turn.  We then get a series of flashbacks, narrated by different characters, which show us how we got to this point. By doing this the film removes some element of mystery (where is the film heading?) and replaces it with suspense (how will Eve's startling rise to stardom affect Margo and her friends?).  I'm sure Hitchcock would have approved ...

The Wikipedia summary makes clear that this is a polarising film - either you think it's a clever homage to Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None', or it's a ludicrous rip-off.   There was only one way for me to to find out where I sat on this spectrum. Over the opening credits we learn that Malcolm is a convicted mass murderer who is about to be executed, and we meet Dr Mallick (Alfred Molina), his psychiatrist. We also learn that because of some last-minute new evidence, an emergency hearing has been arranged in the middle of the night, for the judge in the case to decide whether to stay Malcolm's execution. After this preliminary scene-setting we then switch to an isolated motel where ten characters take shelter from a torrential downpour which has rendered many local roads impassable.   Then one by one they start to get murdered.   Here I had a minor niggle: together with the dodgy motel manager we have eleven potential victims rather than the te...

This is the third film in Richard Linklater's extraordinary 'Before trilogy', following 'Before Sunrise' and 'Before Sunset'. Each film is made nine years after the one before, and collectively they track a relationship between American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and French Céline  (Julie Delpy). The most remarkable thing about these films is that they don't have much in the way of a plot but include prolonged dialogue scenes between Jesse and Céline  which seem very natural. At the end of 'Before Sunset' Jesse and Céline  had rekindled their relationship.  Nine years on  they are still together, living in Paris, and are parents to beautiful twin girls.  Jesse is now a successful writer and Celine has her own career, something to do with environmental projects.   Does this mean that everything in their world is rosy? Well not exactly.  Jesse is worried that he doesn't see enough of Hank, his teenage son from a failed marriage, and wou...

This is yet another film I had been avoiding for no good reason, I just thought it was going to be a silly bit of sub-Freudian psycho-nonsense. I was reassured from the outset - the makers of this film are not content with simply a caption telling us that this is a real story, they have distinguished broadcaster and journalist Alistair Cooke on screen to tell us directly that this is the case, and have him provide voiceover narration throughout complete with the dates of each important event. The unfortunate person at the centre of the drama is a timid housewife and mother Eve White (played by Joanne Woodward) who, suffering from headaches and blackouts, becomes a patient of a psychiatrist with the sinister name of Dr Luther (played by Lee J Cobb). He uncovers a second personality hiding within Eve White, who is her opposite - extrovert, outspoken, flirtatious, etc, who naturally is dubbed Eve Black. Whilst Dr Luther is trying to find a way of curing Eve (whatever that might mean) she ...

I normally avoid finding out anything about a film I am going to watch.  As a result, when I had finished this 1958 crime picture directed by Don Siegal I had a few unanswered questions.   Why were the San Francisco police detectives so dull?   Why was the SFPD shown in such a positive light the film seemed like a promotional video?   Why the title when the only line-up was shoehorned in and was completely irrelevant to the plot? The answer to all these questions came courtesy (yet again) of Wikipedia. This film was a spinoff of a successful TV series, called 'The Lineup', so naturally the actors from the series get to play the same parts in the film (although of course that didn't happen in the case of 'Miami Vice'), and naturally there has to be a line-up. So anyway the first half-hour or so is fairly dull as we follow the dull detectives getting to grips with a plot whereby tourists from the Far East are unwittingly smuggling drugs into the US. Thin...

If you're into cattle this 1948 Western should be just the ticket, since it's about a fictionalised cattle drive along the Chisholm Trail.  Highlights include a spectacular stampede at night, and the crossing of the Red River itself. But there's a lot more to this film than just cows. We start off with a series of short scenes that together form a prologue of sorts that introduce us to three main characters: Tom Dunson (John Wayne), his friend Groot (Walter Brennan doing what Walter Brennan does best), and Matt, a young lad they pick up along the way. Incidentally, between 1936 and 1940 Walter Brennan managed the extraordinary and unique feat of winning no less than three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor. Anyway, these early scenes establish that Dunson is a single-minded individual intent on establishing a large cattle ranch.  He's so focussed on this that he somehow manages to resist the impassioned plea of Fen, the love of his life, to be allowed to come along with h...

I have a strong childhood memory of reading a picture-book version of this Alexandre Dumas story, maybe in the 'Look and Learn' magazine. Given that this latest film adaptation runs to nearly 3 hours yet is described as a streamlined version, what I read as a boy must have been very abridged.   That it has stayed with me all these years is a testament to the power of what is the ultimate revenge narrative: i nnocent man is framed for a crime he didn't commit, is left to rot for the rest of his life in an island prison, manages to escape and acquire a massive fortune, enters high society under a new identity, and avenges himself on the three men who were responsible for his incarceration.  It's a terrific tale, and this sumptuous adaptation does it full justice, provided you overlook that the writers have made wholesale changes to the original. Rest assured, I'm not going to even begin to try to enumerate all the changes, most of which I am sure are justified. Howev...

I was lucky enough, some 30-odd years ago, to see the acclaimed National Theatre revival of this classic play by JB Priestley.  And I saw it again, some 20 years later, when it went on a national tour.  It was an  unforgettable theatrical experience, the perfect marriage of play and production design.  In comparison this 1954 film adaptation might at first glance seem staid and wooden, not helped by the fact that my recording off the TV was rather fuzzy to look at. But once Inspector Poole appears (a few minutes in) it's impossible not to be captivated and not to watch the drama play out right to the end. Looking at the different actors who have played Inspector Goole (as he is called in the play) on stage over the decades there's been quite a range, from Ralph Richardson, to Tom Baker, to of all people Graeme Garden. However having seen this film it's impossible not to think that Alistair Sim is the definitive inspector.  He simply has a unique commanding manne...

John Carpenter, the director of this 1983 Stephen King adaptation, needed a job after the failure of 'The Thing' even though he didn't think the story, about a supernatural car, was sufficiently frightening.   But whilst some critics indeed thought that the car wasn't scary, and Stephen King himself said the the film was boring, I found quite a lot to enjoy. For starters I liked the way the early scenes do a good job of establishing the main teenage characters.  There's Arnie, a nerd who becomes obsessed with restoring the 1958 Plymouth Fury (the titular Christine), his close friend, likeable Dennis, and Leigh the very attractive new girl who every boy wants to date, and of course the inevitable gang of bullies. The film is also very pleasing on the eye. For example in the scene at the drive-in where Leigh is choking to death in the car, the way the interior of the car is lit up against the surrounding darkness is quite stunning.  Best of all, because we are pre-CGI...

In this second film by Rose Glass, who wrote and directed it, there are two main characters: Lou (played by Kristen Stewart) who is gay and works at her dad's gym, and Jackie (Katy O'Brian), who is a bisexual bodybuilder just arrived in the town en route to a contest in Las Vegas. Lou and Jackie hit it off straightaway, launching into a torrid love affair.   There's only one fly in the ointment: Lou's brother-in-law Dave is a scumbag with anger management issues who beats up his wife from time to time.  When he hospitalises her, Jackie, who has her own anger management issues (maybe exacerbated by the steroids Lou has introduced her to) goes around to his house and kills him in an uncontrolled fit of rage. Although Lou despised Dave she's not exactly thrilled at this turn of events, not least because she and Jackie now need to dispose of the body. At this point complications rapidly ensue.  These mainly arise from the fact that Lou's father (Ed Harris, with very...

Although I am as exhausted with superhero films as the next person I've always had a bit of a soft spot for these particular characters (not sure why, I was not into the comics) so I paid my money and took my chances with it. Like the recent 'Superman' we skip over the origin story - here at the outset we get a very brief recap in a short montage sequence  -  they go into space, radiation changes their bodies, they come home.  Fine by me, let's get to the action!  That action takes place on Earth-828 (not ours) so that the backdrop to the story is the kind of retro futuristic world which people in the early part of the twentieth century thought the future would be.  It's a set design I liked a lot.  Maybe it was my imagination but even the CGI special effects had a nice retro feel to them - I especially liked the look of the Human Torch and the Silver Surfer.   The casting of the Four is fine: in particular Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby make for ...

This is the directorial debut by  the Wachowskis,  a neo-noir erotic crime thriller.   According to Wikipedia they took inspiration from Billy Wilder, which led me to think I might be in for a lesbian variation on 'Double Indemnity', but that isn't the case so I guess the Wilder influence is a broader one.    Never mind, this film is plenty entertaining as long as you don't take it too seriously. The story centres on three characters - Corky and Violet who fall madly in love with each other (played by  Gina Gershon and Jenni fer Tilly respectively), and Violet's Mafia boyfriend Caesar (J oe Pantoliano) who has no inkling as to Violet's real sexuality.  All three give terrific, slightly stylised , performances that are in keeping with the overall tone. There's a sex scene between Corky and Violet early on which is something special, maybe because  feminist writer and sex educator Susie Bright was involved as a consultant. The film was shot on ...

I don't know which is more remarkable - this film or that it got made at all. It's about an Iranian family and the consequences for them of the protests of 2022-23. The head of the household Iman is a judge who has just been promoted which means more money and a bigger apartment.  There are a few downsides though. The first is that the job requires him to issue death sentences without him being able to exercise his own judgment.  This problem of course gets worse when the court becomes  inundated with arrests once the protests are in full swing.  Iranian judges aren't popular so he needs to keep a low profile, so low that his own two daughters don't seem to know much about what he does.  Then again they scarcely interact with him at all given that he comes home after they have gone to bed and leaves for work early in the morning.  This again is a problem that only gets worse when the protests get into their stride. Upon his promotion he is issued with a gun...

This is the first of what was a hoped for franchise starring Tom Cruise.   To start on a positive note the plot to this film (based on a Lee Child novel of course) is a good one.   We start off by seeing a sniper kill several apparently random people; and then he is identified and arrested  very easily (too easily?). The alleged sniper, James Barr, wants his defence team to find Jack Reacher.  This is usually quite a challenge but surprisingly the elusive Reacher then turns up.  He has a personal interest in Barr, an ex-army sniper who evaded justice out in Iraq for a crime he committed, a wrong which Jack wants very much to right. So it's a strange turn of events that then Jack takes on the job of assisting the defence by reviewing the case against Barr, and would you believe it, Barr's been set up?  But why? Reacher's appeal as a character is that besides being a super-effective fighting machine he is also a super-smart investigator, and it's go...

This 1964 film is about one of my favourite subjects, US politics.  It is an adaptation by Gore Vidal of his own play, set in a party convention which has to choose the man who will contest the Presidential election.  It seems to be everyone's assumption that whoever is the successful nominee will win that election, so there's a lot at stake. The two front-runners represent two strands of US politics, elitism and populism. In the elitist corner is William Russell, played by Henry Fonda in his most principled mode.  He's rich, clever, never short of a literary quote, but has a fragile marriage possibly due to some past affairs of his.  His mental health might also be fragile given that we learn during the film that he once had a nervous breakdown so bad that it hospitalised him for a while. Vidal based him on the Democrat politician Adlai Stevenson, who lost two Presidential elections. In the populist corner is Joe Cantwell, played by Cliff Robertson. Cantwell is base...