Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

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. 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 entertaining series of esca...

This is the third film in the Knives Out series of murder mysteries, and having been disappointed by Benoit Blanc's second outing ('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.  Due to his charisma he 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 committ...

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 the film 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, as Loretta's mothe...

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. 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. 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 he's not a doctor as such, treats Hester after her suicide attempt that kicks things off. He seems to have an uncanny knack for 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. Despite some efforts to ope...

Yes, it's another of the five Westerns directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, this time playing  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 m...

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 Greek island of Navarone, so as to enable British destroyers to rescue some 2,000 soldiers trapped on another nearby island. In a film like this the enjoyment level is crucially 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 wif...

It’s  always a pleasure to rewatch a well nigh perfect film. Yet again one gets 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 detona...