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.   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 meta 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 some clevernes...

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 then kidnapped to keep them from going to the authorities. But in all other respects 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), which is too long. It culminates in the murder in broad daylight of a Frenchman Louis Bernard who Ben and Jo had go to know.    The dying Bernard whispers to Ben that a foreign statesman will be assassinated in London and that Ben must tell the ...

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 when the robbery takes place, 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.  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 it's clear who will win but it’s fun to watch him come up trumps.  At...

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 that it was derivative, given that it has very strong echoes of both 'Shane' and Eastwood's own 'High Plains Drifter' - the essence of the 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 pros...

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 mist and thunderstorms aplenty, all the buildings are cold and oppressive, the countryside is bl...

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. So much so that 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 is by 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, such as the way he manages ...

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.  C...

I find that writer/director Edgar Wright’s films tread a very fine line between being either  exhilarating or annoying, depending on how his  kinetic and ultra stylised approach lands with me.  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 characters in the film evidently do.   In my case I find the idea of someone who immerses himself in music 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, who 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 e...

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 well 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 to once more save the day more-or-less singlehandedly. 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 beats arising from their disparate ages and life experiences. I also appreciated that the series of action stunts, which become ever more extreme, culminating with McClane in a truck battling a jet fighter, have a minimum of CGI, so that there's a nice practical feel to them. McClane's ...

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 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, would be infinitely great.   At a stretch maybe you could extend the arg...

The opening scene to this 1968 Western is terrific.  Clint 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, but thankfully his innocence is quickly established, and the judge for the entire Oklahoma Territory offers him a job of Marshal.  Cooper accepts simply because he will now have 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 judge...

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...

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.  The most ridiculous thing that happens in the original film is Maverick saying he wants to become a Top Gun teacher.   Yet here we are a few decades later back at the Top Gun school, this time with some real stakes, where Maverick is indeed a teacher, 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 but short scene of them both on her yacht, but o...

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 ultimately it's just a piece of skilful manipulation, because of course the death of a young child is bound to be upsetting.  Well, I would argue that to create something so emotionally shattering (and yet also uplifting) is no mean feat, 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 simply with Hamnet's death, heart-breaking though that is, I might reluctantly have agreed that this film does nothing which is that exceptional.  What really elevates it are...

The fact that it has taken me some forty years to get around to watching this Tony Scott blockbuster 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 I 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, and it's not helped by a l...

In the 1940s Barbara Stanwyck starred in a string of hit films, two of which are timeless classics ('The Lady Eve' and '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 fr...

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 science fiction classic 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 ...