Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This film is set on Jersey but we’re a long way from cosy Bergerac country. For a start there’s a nasty serial killer on the loose. But although this film is described as a psychological thriller it is more of a drama, the hunt for the killer being a backdrop to the main story. We begin with Moll’s birthday party, who cuts an isolated and unhappy figure.  Her mood is not improved when her mother orders her to fetch champagne to celebrate the news that Moll’s sister is pregnant.  After a small act of self harm in the kitchen with some broken glass Moll hightails it to a club for some all-night revelry.  This eventually leads her to meet handsome Pascal with whom she starts a passionate love affair. Pascal has his own business as a craftsman with some illegal poaching on the side, so he doesn't meet with the approval of Moll's mother or of her wider family.   Moreover the mother (well played by Geraldine James) is the cold and controlling type, so she doesn’t appr...

This is an obscure British film from 1962, an adaptation of an American police procedural crime novel, transposed to Brighton. The film starts with a woman who is having an affair being murdered by her lover, and the film then shows us the police investigation over the next couple of days which culminates in the arrest of the guilty party.   Given that the investigation itself is not inherently dramatic the film needs the murder mystery to be memorable (it isn't) or the lead detective to be someone we want to spend time with (he's played by dull Jack Warner, so that's a 'no') or the writer and director Val Guest to find ways to make the story dramatic (he doesn't). To be fair, the screenplay does its best to make the various members of the public who come into view interesting and Guest does find ways to keep the story moving along at a decent clip.  In fact part of the problem is that the film's pace is quite relentless - a few pauses here and there so that...

Having   recently watched a dull British police procedural (‘Jigsaw’) released in 1962, I then went to the opposite end of the quality spectrum with this Japanese police procedural from 1963, by the great Kurosawa. With a running time of nearly two-and-a-half hours it’s really two films in one, with the  second half homing in on the police investigation of the kidnapping of a child. The first half, all of which takes place in one apartment, is a masterpiece of blocking, i.e. moving the actors around in a relatively confined space.  The apartment belongs to Mr Gondo, a rich and successful company executive.   I would say that it belongs to Mr Gondo and his wife , except that he doesn’t seem to see it that way.  At the beginning of the film we learn that he is taking a huge financial gamble in order to take full control of the company, a decision he has made without consulting his wife at all.  If the gamble fails they will be ruined so you’d think he might c...

This 1966 Western, written and directed by Richard Brooks, was well received and has a decent cast.   But halfway in I was feeling rather underwhelmed. For starters the initial setup had been perfunctory: rich old man hires four guys to rescue his wife who has been kidnapped.  I'm supposed to believe that a guy well into his '60s is married to a Mexican beauty half his age, and that she has been kidnapped by a revolutionary-turned -bandit? What was she doing in Mexico in 1917 anyway, when the Mexican Revolution was still a thing? Some of the dialogue didn't land well with me, being a mixture of heavy-handed and pretentious.   And the action scenes were too contrived for my liking. The rescue team comprises a restrained Lee Marvin (the leader), Burt Lancaster (explosives expert), Robert Ryan (good with horses) and Woody Strode (good with a bow and arrow). Only Lancaster, as a cynic and womaniser, has much of a personality.   Anyway I am pleased to repor...