Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

In 2019 ‘Knives Out’ managed to create a murder mystery in the style of Agatha Christie, but updated for the twenty-first century.  It was so successful that it raised the bar for any other film fishing in the same pool, which arguably this 2022 comedy mystery is.  Given that I didn't find it very funny or the murder mystery that interesting, I would say that it fell short by some distance.   That being said, as an aficionado of the classic age of detective fiction I found it passably entertaining. It is set in 1952, when Christie's play 'The Mousetrap' has just completed its first 100 performances.  To give it a modern angle the story is narrated by an unlikeable US film director who is going to direct a film adaptation of the play, who then turns out to be the murder victim.  A neat touch is that there is an early flashback in which he visualises how he wants the film to end, complete with action and gunfire, which is then how this film ends. So there is ...

This is a remake by Hitchcock of a film he made in 1934.   The highlight of the earlier version is an assassination attempt during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, so it's no surprise that Hitchcock keeps this in the remake.   He also keeps the underlying premise, of a normal couple who accidentally learn of a plan to commit a political assassination, whose child is kidnapped to keep them from going to the authorities. But in all other details the two films are completely different. This one starts in Morocco, where Ben and Jo McKenna, with their son Hank, are on holiday.  Given that this portion of the film is simply there to set things up it goes on for a surprisingly long time (at least 45 minutes).  It's too long in my opinion, but eventually Hank is kidnapped, and Ben and Jo desperately go to London where their only lead is a man (so they think) by the name of Ambrose Chappell. In fact Ambrose Chapel is a church, where they meet again the Draytons, ...

This is (to me anyway) a rather obscure thriller set in Canada, from 1978. The story is based on a neat (if improbable) premise.  Miles, a senior bank teller played by Elliott Gould, becomes aware that his bank will be robbed.  Being a clever fellow with not a surfeit of morals he realises that he can safely steal a load of dollars since their loss will be blamed on the bank robber.  Of course, for this subterfuge to work Miles needs to delay setting off the alarm so that the robber (who is dressed as Santa Claus!) can escape, which he does. All well and good, and in a nice touch Miles stores his loot in one of the bank’s safety deposit boxes. The trouble is that the real thief, played by Christopher Plummer, is not best pleased and being a nasty and violent piece of work he starts threatening Miles. What ensues is a battle of wits. Since Miles is a smart alec we know who will win but it’s fun to watch him come up trumps.  At one stage he plays a very neat trick to g...

After the catastrophic failure of 'Heaven's Gate' in 1980, it was a brave move by Clint Eastwood to produce, direct and star in another Western a few years later.  He was rewarded with a commercial and critical hit, although I'm at a bit of a loss to explain its success.   I agree with the critic quoted in Wikipedia who thought it was derivative, given that it has very strong echoes of both 'Shane' and Eastwood's own 'High Plains Drifter' - the basic story is of a community under threat which is saved by a mysterious outsider, who may well be a ghost. When you are referencing two such strong films you need to bring something distinctive to the table but this is where 'Pale Rider' falls short. Sure there are some variations.   Instead of a young lad who idolises Shane we get a teenage girl, Megan, who would quite like to lose her virginity to the stranger. Instead of farmers, the community at risk consists of a bunch of gold prospectors and th...

Although this 1942 film adaptation of a Graham Greene novel is usually described as a film noir it could equally be described as a wartime espionage thriller.  In fact it doesn't really succeed as either, and I was not surprised to read in Wikipedia that one of the screenwriters later said that "it doesn't stand up at all and I just don't know why it was so successful in the way it was." Well, the simple reason why it was successful was the performance of Alan Ladd, as the hired killer Raven, and his onscreen chemistry with Veronica Lake. Ladd had been in small parts in films for eight years, but this was his breakout role, even though nominally he was only fourth billing.  The studio was so excited about his performance during production that they lined him and Lake up together for another film ('The Glass Key') even before this one was released. Ladd and Lake certainly carry the picture, which has a creaky plot and undistinguished direction from Frank T...

As I was watching the opening credits to this 1943 adaptation of the famous novel by Charlotte Brontë, I couldn't help but be impressed by the talent involved.  Besides Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles playing the lead roles (perfect casting it would seem), Aldous Huxley and John Houseman were involved in writing the screenplay, and Bernard Herrmann wrote the score.  The likes of Agnes Moorhead and a young Elizabeth Taylor get to play very minor roles. Admittedly I hadn’t heard of the director Robert Stevenson,  who was one of many screenwriters who eventually graduated to directing.  In Stevenson's case his most notable film was probably ‘Mary Poppins’, some twenty odd years later. I’ve never read the novel but I had a broad idea as to the main storyline.  It’s a Gothic romance, and this film certainly doesn't stint on the Gothic atmosphere: it’s in black-and-white, there’s plenty of mist and thunderstorms, all the buildings seem cold and oppressive, the countrys...

This thriller from 1997 has an admittedly ridiculous premise. No, not that a bunch of terrorists could board Air Force One so easily, but that the US President is as young, brave, decent and resourceful as President Marshall is here. In fact on this viewing the US triumphalism, although not as bad as in 'Independence Day' say, did irk me a tad. But that aside this is a superior film of its type, with all the working parts in synch. Harrison Ford and Glenn Close are fine as President and Vice-President but the real standout performance in the acting department is Gary Oldman, who is totally convincing (and scary) as someone so committed to his cause (Mother Russia) that he is prepared to commit any atrocity.  Director Wolfgang Petersen proves a dab hand at keeping things moving and making the action sequences exciting, aided by Jerry Goldsmith's propulsive and sumptuous score. The screenwriters do a great job of finding different ways for the President to outwit the bad guys...

If I was to compile a list of my favourite Unknown Westerns (and why wouldn’t I?) this obscurity from 1968, starring Charlton Heston, might well come out on top. It’s essentially a moving love story which also does a great job of conveying what life as a cowhand was like in the late nineteenth century, with some action thrown in. We start off with a cattle drive getting wrapped up, leaving Will trying to find gainful employment over the winter.  He tags along with a couple of other cowhands, until they tangle with psycho Donald Pleasence and his family, as a result of which one of them gets badly shot.    Leaving him with a local doctor, Will eventually is taken on by Ben Johnson to spend a lonely winter out in the hills looking after a herd. Complications ensue when it turns out that his dwelling place has been occupied by Catherine and her young son, who were travelling to California to reunite with Catherine's husband, but who have been deserted by their guide. Althoug...

I find that writer/director Edgar Wright’s films tread a very fine tightrope due to his kinetic and ultra stylised approach, which can either be exhilarating or annoying. In the case of this 2017 film he raises the stakes even higher by making the main character, ‘Baby’, someone who is going to arouse strong feelings one way or the other. I can easily imagine many viewers finding him as irritating as some of the other characters evidently do. In my case I find the idea of someone who immerses himself in music, as a way of dealing with past trauma, inherently appealing (which no doubt says something about me).  I can’t make up my mind whether the musical highlight is the exhilarating use of a song called ‘Hocus Pocus’ (by a Dutch band, Focus, I was heavily into in the 1970s) during the aftermath of a heist gone wrong, or the hilarious use of Barry White’s 'Never, Never Gonna Give You Up', during a tense moment towards the end of the film. But there's plenty to enjoy besides ...

This fourth outing for NYPD cop John McClane is a lot better than it has any right to be, given that it came out twelve years after the previous instalment, and that by 2007 Bruce Willis was into his fifties. Since we're now in the twenty-first century the plot concerns a massive cyberattack on the US, and would you believe it, it's down to McClane more-or-less singlehandedly to save the day (again)? But given that McClane knows diddlysquat about IT he needs the help of a young nerdy hacker, Matt, to do the clever stuff whilst John gets to do the action.   Matt is played by Justin Long (an actor new to me) and there's a nice chemistry between them amid the predictable comedic moments arising from their disparate ages and life experiences. I also appreciated that the series of action stunts which become ever more extreme, culminating in McClane in a truck battling with a jet fighter, have a minimum of CGI, so that there's a nice practical feel to them. McClane's daug...

Having watched 'Hamnet' at the BFI one afternoon I was hoping that this 1969 film by French director Eric Rohmer would be less draining, and indeed it turned out to complement the earlier film perfectly in that it has no emotional intensity but it entertains the intellect in a pleasingly Gallic manner.  It's a stereotypical French film in which the four characters sit around smoking and drinking and talking about the meaning of life and about love affairs.  They throw around terms like 'Jansenist' as though everyone will know what it means - I didn't and I consider myself reasonably well educated. There's a lot of discussion about 'Pascal's wager', which is something I had heard of.   Essentially Pascal argued that even if you thought that the probability of Christianity being true was very, very small it would still be rational to believe in it since the rewards if it were true were infinitely great.   At a stretch maybe you could extend the arg...

The opening scene to this 1968 Western starring Clint Eastwood is terrific.  Eastwood's character (Cooper) is wrongly accused of murder and theft by an angry lynch mob, who ignore his protestations and string him up on the nearest tree, leaving him for dead. Fortunately a Marshal is riding by (the always great Ben Johnson), who is able to cut him down and resuscitate him. Cooper will have to stand trial, except that his innocence is quickly established, and the judge for the entire Oklahoma Territory offers him a job of Marshal.  Cooper accepts simply so he now has the authority of the law in pursuing the nine members of the lynch mob. So everything looks well set up for an exciting revenge narrative. However the film only partially delivers on this promise, down to the direction, cinematography and music being undistinguished, and to a meandering screenplay that goes off in some odd and unsatisfying directions. For example, there is an ongoing tension between Cooper and the j...

This was the last remaining of the five Westerns directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart which I hadn’t gotten around to seeing. It’s an odd picture in that other for some unnamed Native Americans in an early scene there are just five characters. Stewart plays Howard who has been on the trail from Kansas to bring to justice Ben (played by Robert Ryan) who’s wanted for murder. Howard manages to capture Ben but only with the help of an old timer Jesse and an ex-army officer, Roy. The former is down on his luck, having been unsuccessful in his attempts to find gold. The latter has recently been discharged for having an 'unstable morality'. When they learn from Ben that there is a $5000 reward on his head they naturally demand a share which displeases Howard not a little since his only real motivation is the money. As the film progresses we learn that back in the Civil War a woman who Howard was sweet on defrauded him of his land, which he plans to buy back with the rew...

I have to say that the screenwriters here have done a great job of making a sequel which both honours and surpasses the original. All the elements of the first film are present and correct, but just done that bit better.  Yet again we’re back at the Top Gun school but this time there are real stakes, because Maverick is preparing ‘the best of the best’ to carry out an actual mission, to destroy a uranium enrichment plant that is in the hands of a rogue state. Dramatically speaking the only student of interest is Rooster, who happens to be the son of Goose, and who feels a lot of confused anger towards Maverick. There’s the obligatory love interest for Maverick, this time with single mum Penny. She’s played by Jennifer Connelly, who is a plus in any film. There’s a nice short scene with them both on her yacht, but overall there's not a lot to their relationship. It's nice that one of the pilots is a woman, but unfortunately neither she nor any of the other students get enough sc...

For anyone who has been living under a stone, this is the adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel about the death of the son of  Anne Hathaway and  William Shakespeare. Since the film is undeniably a powerfully emotional experience the main criticism that can be levelled at it is that it's just skilful manipulation, lacking in artistic merit, because of course the death of a young child is bound to be upsetting.  Well, I think that to create something so emotionally shattering (and yet also uplifting) is very difficult, which is why so very few films achieve it.  It requires at the very least the superlative level of craftsmanship on view, from  the towering performances by Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal to the exquisite score by Max Richter. Having said that, if the film had ended with Hamnet's death, heart-breaking though that is I might have agreed that this film does nothing that exceptional.  What really elevates it are t he final scenes at  the Gl...

The fact that it has taken me some forty years to get around to watching this Tony Scott blockbuster hit is an indication of my lack of enthusiasm for this kind of boys-with-toys action flick, but I was intrigued to watch the much lauded sequel, so thought I'd better check this out first. It gets off to a surprisingly good start, with an aerial sequence which is spectacular to look at, and which generates some dramatic tension. Sadly, it's all a bit downhill after this. Most of the film is taken up with the goings on at a school for elite pilots (Top Gun) in which the main thing at stake is which pupil is going to finish top of the class.  It's a battle between Tom Cruise as LT Pete Mitchell, whose call sign is 'Maverick', because, well, he's a bit of a maverick, and Val Kilmer as  LT Tom Kazansky, whose call sign is 'Ice Man', because, well,  he's ice cold when he's up in the air. It's not exactly riveting stuff, not helped by a predictable ...

In the 1940s Barbara Stanwyck starred in a string of hit films, two of which are timeless classics ('The Lady Eve', 'Double Indemnity'), so that at one point she was one of the highest earning women in America. So it is something of a mystery as to why her career fell off quite so badly in the 1950s, other than maybe her age (she was in her forties) limited the parts that came her way. Anyway 1957 finds her starring in this strange and low budget black-and-white Western written and directed by Samuel Fuller, a filmmaker who can be best described as a maverick. The film wasn't a commercial hit but has plenty going for it in its own peculiar way, and Stanwyck of course dominates every scene she is in, admittedly not difficult given that the rest of the cast is not exactly A-list. The forty guns of the title refer to the hired hands who belong to the wealthy and domineering Jessica (Stanwyck), who is powerful enough to protect her wayward younger brother Brockie from s...

The omniscient narrator to this film makes it clear early on that we're going to be taking in the whole of the life of logger Robert Grainier, although most of the focus is on the period immediately following his marriage to Gladys, towards the end of World War I, when Robert is in his early thirties. We see Robert and Gladys build a cabin in the wilderness by a brook, and start a family with daughter Katie.  It's an idyllic life, beautifully portrayed, except that Robert has to leave them for long periods to earn a living. Tragedy strikes when Gladys and Katie die in a fire (although their bodies are never found) and Robert never really gets over his grief.   He struggles to adjust to changes to the logging industry and so later on he makes a living transporting people and freight with a horse and cart. Robert is an unsophisticated soul who doesn't have a lot to say, and his life is ordinary and undramatic in many ways.  In this respect it reminded me of the novel '...

I saw this when it first came out but have resisted a rewatch until now on the grounds that watching Richard Dreyfuss playing around with mashed potatoes didn't hold a whole lot of appeal.  But then again there must be more to this film than that sequence, even if it's the one that has stuck in my head the most. In the hands of a lesser director than Spielberg the opening scene wouldn't be much, just the discovery of some old World War II planes in the middle of an African desert, but in the hands of the master it is a dramatically effective opening, immediately establishing that mysterious things are afoot.  And it looks gorgeous too - the colour of that sky! We soon then get introduced to the three major characters.   There's  François Truffaut as Claude Lacombe,   a French government scientist in charge of UFO-related activities in the US.  It's Truffaut's only acting performance in an English language film, and his presence makes the film a little ...

Film critics often talk of films having three acts. I'm sceptical that all films can be so neatly divided but in the case of this 1950s drama starring Timothée Chalamet the three acts are so clear as to be visible from space. Act One introduces us to US table tennis player Marty  Mauser (Chalamet), who goes to London where  he finishes runner-up in the British Open.   There he meets rich businessman Mr Rockwell and  persuades him of the marketing opportunities in table tennis, given its popularity in Japan. Unfortunately when  Mr Rockwell suggests that Marty take part in an exhibition match in Japan against the new British Open champion and local favourite, but only if Marty deliberately loses, Marty's pride prevents him from going along with it. End of Act One. Act Two begins with an amusing montage of Marty participating in some goofy exhibition matches in different cities around the world.  But then we are back to gritty New York, for an entertainin...

This is the third film in the Knives Out series of murder mysteries, and having been disappointed by the second outing for Benoit Blanc ('Glass Onion') I was hoping for better things this time around. The setting is a small community which seems to revolve around the local church and the larger-than-life priest there,  Jefferson Wicks, played by Josh Brolin.  He's a charismatic guy who has established something of a c ult-like following with a small group of parishioners, and he is not best pleased when a young trainee priest, Jud, is foist upon him, played by Josh O'Connor. Inevitably Wicks is murdered, Jud is the main suspect, and Blanc turns up to try to identify the real killer.   This film harks back to the classic detective tales of the 1920s and 1930s (think Agatha Christie) but the mystery of Wicks' murder falls short in several ways. Although we do have a small group of suspects (an important requisite), ideally each should have a strong motive for committi...

I finally got around to watching this big hit of a movie, and yes it's the charming and warm romantic comedy which I expected, but it did contain some surprises. Mainly, I didn't expect that the romance between Cher's widow Loretta and Nicolas Cage's Ronny would go as smoothly as it does.   Normally quite a few obstacles are thrown in the path of true love, but here they meet, they almost immediately jump into bed, they go to the opera together, she then makes a half-hearted attempt to resist his advances, and then whoosh, we reach the happy ending where she can dump Ronny's older brother, played by Danny Aiello (1987's version of Ralph Bellamy). So given that all this doesn't take up that much screen time, a surprising amount of time is taken up with a second storyline, about the infidelity of Loretta's father, which I found as interesting as the Loretta-Ronny romance, thanks to an Oscar-winning performance by Olympia Dukakis. One might baulk at Cher al...

Having recently watched Terence Davies’ exquisite adaptation of this Terence Rattigan play I was intrigued to compare it against this 1955 version, which stars Vivien Leigh and Kenneth More as Hester and Freddie. Given that it was adapted by Rattigan himself I imagine it’s closer to the play than the more recent version. The main difference which I spotted was a bigger role played by a couple of  neighbours, especially Mr Miller who is the one who, though not a doctor as such, treats Hester after the suicide attempt that kicks things off. He seems to have an uncanny knack of understanding human nature, and it is he who in this version prevents Hester from attempting a second suicide attempt at the end of the film, and manages to persuade her to give up Freddie for good. I must preface my comments on this version with the acknowledgment that the print I watched on TV was of poor quality in terms of the crispness (or lack of it) in the cinematography. Despite some efforts to open up ...

Yes, it's another of the five Westerns directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart.   This time Stewart is Glyn McLyntock, who is helping a party of settlers get to Oregon.  Along the way they pick up Cole (Arthur Kennedy) who seems like he got up to some bad stuff during the Civil War.  Cole and McLyntock have heard of each other, suggesting that the latter too might have a history to live down, but if so the settlers are unaware of it. Baile, the leader of the settlers, doesn't trust Cole but his daughter Laura takes a shine to him. Anyway, the plot meanders on until we get to the crunch point, when McLyntock and Cole are overseeing the transportation of vital supplies to the settlers in their new settlement. The problem is that a nearby camp of gold miners are prepared to pay a small fortune for the supplies.  This provides a strong incentive for the unruly hired hands who are working for McLyntock to rebel and take the supplies to the gold miners....

The setup for this World War II action film is that a group of six men are sent on a seemingly impossible mission, to sabotage some enormous large-calibre guns on the fictional island of Navarone, so as to enable British destroyers to rescue some 2,000 soldiers trapped on another Greek island. In a film like this a lot of the enjoyment is going to depend on the six characters and who plays them, and to be honest it's a mixed bag. Leading the team is Anthony Quayle as Major Franklin.  His nickname is 'Lucky' so it's no surprise that he suffers a bad injury early on and spends the rest of the film on a stretcher. He is replaced as leader by Captain Mallory, played by Gregory Peck.  He's one of the world's best mountaineers, which is useful since the group is going to have to get up a vertical cliff face on Navarone. Mallory has a sticky relationship with two of the team.   Greek Colonel Stavros (Anthony Quinn) blames Mallory for the death of his wife and three chi...

It’s  always a pleasure to rewatch a well nigh perfect film. Yet again I get to admire the consummate skill with which director John McTiernan and co-writers Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza manage all the moving parts in terms of both the plot and the character beats.   All the dialogue scenes between McClane and  sergeant  Al are on the money - McClane saying to put $20 on him to survive (‘I’m good for it’) makes me chuckle almost as much as it does Al. And even though I know exactly what’s coming, the action sequence starting from when McClane checks out the roof and ending with him on the end of the hosepipe, shooting out the window, is still as thrilling as hell. This time around I thought I would put my nit-picker glasses on and see if I could find any flaws, but I didn’t find much. The early scene in the lift shaft does involve McClane doing some things which seem physically impossible; it's rather c areless of McClane to drop the bag containing the detonator...

The best argument that this first film in the franchise is the best is how well it covers all the bases. There's the iconic heist sequence in which Ethan steals whatever happens to be the MacGuffin (the NOC list, as if we care). There's the bonkers finale, which includes a helicopter lashed to a train in the Chunnel, which only director Brian de Palma could get away with. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s oodles of old school twisty espionage stuff including an atmospheric and shocking mission in Prague at the outset that goes horribly wrong, in which most of Ethan's team gets killed, leaving Ethan on the run because he appears to be a traitor. The only major failing is the lack of a strong female character.  We get Emmanuelle Béart who doesn’t get to do a lot.  She plays Mrs Phelps, and throughout the film neither we nor Ethan are sure she can be trusted. It is heavily implied that she and Ethan sleep together, which makes no sense. She’s meant to be a grieving widow, so ...