After deserting his duty, kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima slowly begins to rebuild his life in post-war Japan, only to have Godzilla show up and do what Godzilla does best. A surprisingly thoughtful and emotional exploration of Japan's national trauma following the Second World War that just happens to also feature a giant sea monster with atomic breath.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Philip Kaufman's remake stars Donald Sutherland as a San Francisco health inspector who discovers that everyone in the city is slowly being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates. Superior to the 1956 original in almost every single way, especially that unforgettable gut punch of an ending.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
In order to help Anya win a cooking competition at school, the Forger family travel to the northern country of Frigis in order to make a rare dessert, but while there get caught up in the plot of a rogue army officer looking to start a war. Like so many spin-off films from popular anime series, this is essentially a filler arc in cinematic form. It's fun, but utterly disposable.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Few films are as meta or as surreal as Federico Fellini's 8 ½ (named so because he'd directed seven and a half films by that point). Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a famous Italian film director who retreats to a luxury spa when he begins to suffer from creativity burnout as he is about to start work on his new film. I wasn't fan of the many flashback and dream sequences, especially the overlong harem scene; they just took too much attention away from the far more interesting character drama, like Guido's creative struggles and his crumbling marriage due to his frequent infidelity.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
The Naked Spur (1953)
James Stewart made eight films with director Anthony Mann between 1950 and 1955, five of them westerns that cast Stewart against type as more cynical and violent characters with a dark past. In this film he plays a desperate bounty hunter who is forced to team up with a prospector (Millard Mitchell) and a disgraced cavalry officer (Ralph Meeker) to escort a wanted killer (Robert Ryan) back to Kansas to collect a $5,000 reward. Janet Leigh tags along as the killer's innocent and naive girlfriend. The Stewart/Mann westerns always felt halfway between the classical and the revisionist, but never really completed the journey. This is more of a psychological thriller as Ryan's gleeful killer plays mind games with his captors to turn them against each other, but is let down by many of the genre's familiar trappings. With such a small cast, it is a rather claustrophobic story despite all that expansive Colorado scenery. One recurring problem with all these films is the main female lead is always a young woman, initially involved with the villain, who ultimately becomes little more than a prize the protagonist gets for doing the right thing. The obvious 20 year age gap between Stewart and Leigh just makes it all the more problematic here.
James Stewart made eight films with director Anthony Mann between 1950 and 1955, five of them westerns that cast Stewart against type as more cynical and violent characters with a dark past. In this film he plays a desperate bounty hunter who is forced to team up with a prospector (Millard Mitchell) and a disgraced cavalry officer (Ralph Meeker) to escort a wanted killer (Robert Ryan) back to Kansas to collect a $5,000 reward. Janet Leigh tags along as the killer's innocent and naive girlfriend. The Stewart/Mann westerns always felt halfway between the classical and the revisionist, but never really completed the journey. This is more of a psychological thriller as Ryan's gleeful killer plays mind games with his captors to turn them against each other, but is let down by many of the genre's familiar trappings. With such a small cast, it is a rather claustrophobic story despite all that expansive Colorado scenery. One recurring problem with all these films is the main female lead is always a young woman, initially involved with the villain, who ultimately becomes little more than a prize the protagonist gets for doing the right thing. The obvious 20 year age gap between Stewart and Leigh just makes it all the more problematic here.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Captain Blood (1935)
Wrongly convicted of treason and sold into slavery in the Caribbean, Doctor Peter Blood soon escapes his captors and becomes a notorious pirate. Errol Flynn's big break as a matinee star and effectively the beta version of The Adventures of Robin Hood, made by the same cast and crew three years later. Takes way too long to get going and lacks a credible central villain (Basil Rathbone shows up far too late, and has far too little to do to have any real impact).
Wrongly convicted of treason and sold into slavery in the Caribbean, Doctor Peter Blood soon escapes his captors and becomes a notorious pirate. Errol Flynn's big break as a matinee star and effectively the beta version of The Adventures of Robin Hood, made by the same cast and crew three years later. Takes way too long to get going and lacks a credible central villain (Basil Rathbone shows up far too late, and has far too little to do to have any real impact).
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
The Day of the Jackal (1973)
After failing to kill President Charles de Gaulle themselves, the leaders of the OAS, a right wing paramilitary group unhappy about Algerian independence, hire a foreign assassin (Edward Fox) to finish the job. Unlike the more sensational American remake (starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gere's questionable Irish accent) or the recent TV version, the original is a methodical thriller more concerned with the mechanics of how the assassin will carry out his plot and how the authorities (lead by a suitably laconic Michael Lonsdale) will catch him. The Jackal himself is an intentional enigma, whatever insight we might get into his character comes purely from Fox's performance, and he's giving barely anything away.
After failing to kill President Charles de Gaulle themselves, the leaders of the OAS, a right wing paramilitary group unhappy about Algerian independence, hire a foreign assassin (Edward Fox) to finish the job. Unlike the more sensational American remake (starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gere's questionable Irish accent) or the recent TV version, the original is a methodical thriller more concerned with the mechanics of how the assassin will carry out his plot and how the authorities (lead by a suitably laconic Michael Lonsdale) will catch him. The Jackal himself is an intentional enigma, whatever insight we might get into his character comes purely from Fox's performance, and he's giving barely anything away.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
All That Jazz (1979)
In 1974, while he was editing Lenny and choreographing Chicago, Bob Fosse suffered a massive heart attack that required him to have open heart surgery. He eventually turned that brush with death into this rather unflattering self-portrait. Roy Scheider plays Joe Gideon, a philandering director and choreographer struggling to edit his latest film as well as direct a new Broadway show, and juggle his many broken relationships, as his health rapidly declines. The line between fact and fiction is so thin that Ann Reinking, who plays Gideon's girlfriend, is essentially playing herself (a role Fosse still had her audition for). Like Fellini's 8 ½, it mixes fantasy with reality as Joe regularly converses with the angel of death (Jessica Lange) and pictures his loved ones performing Fosse-style dance numbers. But where I feel Fellini stumbled, Fosse succeeds by being more hostile, and less forgiving, towards his cinematic alter-ego.
In 1974, while he was editing Lenny and choreographing Chicago, Bob Fosse suffered a massive heart attack that required him to have open heart surgery. He eventually turned that brush with death into this rather unflattering self-portrait. Roy Scheider plays Joe Gideon, a philandering director and choreographer struggling to edit his latest film as well as direct a new Broadway show, and juggle his many broken relationships, as his health rapidly declines. The line between fact and fiction is so thin that Ann Reinking, who plays Gideon's girlfriend, is essentially playing herself (a role Fosse still had her audition for). Like Fellini's 8 ½, it mixes fantasy with reality as Joe regularly converses with the angel of death (Jessica Lange) and pictures his loved ones performing Fosse-style dance numbers. But where I feel Fellini stumbled, Fosse succeeds by being more hostile, and less forgiving, towards his cinematic alter-ego.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Pale Rider (1985)
Like High Plains Drifter, there's a suggestion that this film's nameless preacher/gunslinger might be a ghost, but Eastwood is more ambiguous here, perhaps too ambiguous. As such, Pale Rider ends up being just a conventional western about good hearted frontier folk being bullied by big business and the mysterious gunslinger who helps out. It's handsomely made, like all Eastwood's films, but ultimately offers nothing we haven't seen a dozen times before. It's practically a complete remake of Shane, right down to the ending. The worst part, though, is how all the female characters, including a 14 year old girl, fall head over heels for the ageing preacher, a clear case of Eastwood surrendering his storytelling instincts to his movie star vanity.
Like High Plains Drifter, there's a suggestion that this film's nameless preacher/gunslinger might be a ghost, but Eastwood is more ambiguous here, perhaps too ambiguous. As such, Pale Rider ends up being just a conventional western about good hearted frontier folk being bullied by big business and the mysterious gunslinger who helps out. It's handsomely made, like all Eastwood's films, but ultimately offers nothing we haven't seen a dozen times before. It's practically a complete remake of Shane, right down to the ending. The worst part, though, is how all the female characters, including a 14 year old girl, fall head over heels for the ageing preacher, a clear case of Eastwood surrendering his storytelling instincts to his movie star vanity.
Rating: ⭐⭐
Chimes at Midnight (1965)
Orson Welles directs and stars in this Shakespeare adaption about the uneven relationship between bumbling knight Falstaff' and Prince Hal, the wayward son of King Henry IV. Welles expertly condenses several plays into a single narrative, and is obviously having a whale of a time as Falstaff, but as it so often the case with the Bard most of the cast sound like they're reciting speeches than speaking dialogue. Wonderfully shot though, especially the muddy and messy central battle.
Orson Welles directs and stars in this Shakespeare adaption about the uneven relationship between bumbling knight Falstaff' and Prince Hal, the wayward son of King Henry IV. Welles expertly condenses several plays into a single narrative, and is obviously having a whale of a time as Falstaff, but as it so often the case with the Bard most of the cast sound like they're reciting speeches than speaking dialogue. Wonderfully shot though, especially the muddy and messy central battle.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Onibaba (1964)
Two unnamed women (a mother and her daughter-in-law) survive in war torn Japan by murdering lost soldiers, hiding their bodies in a pit, and selling their weapons and armour for food. Tensions rise when a neighbour returns from the war and starts a relationship with the younger woman. Kaneto Shindō's classic is a superbly shot, slow burn horror.
Two unnamed women (a mother and her daughter-in-law) survive in war torn Japan by murdering lost soldiers, hiding their bodies in a pit, and selling their weapons and armour for food. Tensions rise when a neighbour returns from the war and starts a relationship with the younger woman. Kaneto Shindō's classic is a superbly shot, slow burn horror.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Subway (1985)
On the run from gangsters, Fred (Christopher Lambert) takes shelter in the strange and hidden world of the Paris Métro. In the 1980s a new generation of French filmmakers emerged who valued style over substance. Film critic Raphaël Bassan later dismissively dubbed this movement as Cinéma du look. Subway was one of the films at the forefront of that movement. It wants to be a story of outcasts and oddballs, yet also cool and trendy, but just ends up not really being anything.
On the run from gangsters, Fred (Christopher Lambert) takes shelter in the strange and hidden world of the Paris Métro. In the 1980s a new generation of French filmmakers emerged who valued style over substance. Film critic Raphaël Bassan later dismissively dubbed this movement as Cinéma du look. Subway was one of the films at the forefront of that movement. It wants to be a story of outcasts and oddballs, yet also cool and trendy, but just ends up not really being anything.
Rating: ⭐⭐
Gone to Earth (1950)
Set in the Shropshire countryside in 1897, the film centres around Hazel Woodus (Jennifer Jones), a child of nature who settles down and marries sensible Baptist minister Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack), but finds herself drawn to brutish local squire Jack Reddin (David Farrar). This is a typically immaculate Archers production, with some of their finest cinematography, let down by Jennifer Jones' distractingly over the top accent and an unsatisfying ending. Producer David O. Selznick (also Jones' husband) didn't like the finished film and had it extensively reshot, re-edited, and renamed for its American release.
Set in the Shropshire countryside in 1897, the film centres around Hazel Woodus (Jennifer Jones), a child of nature who settles down and marries sensible Baptist minister Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack), but finds herself drawn to brutish local squire Jack Reddin (David Farrar). This is a typically immaculate Archers production, with some of their finest cinematography, let down by Jennifer Jones' distractingly over the top accent and an unsatisfying ending. Producer David O. Selznick (also Jones' husband) didn't like the finished film and had it extensively reshot, re-edited, and renamed for its American release.
I've never seen the entirety of All That Jazz but I do remember the heart attack number and being so confused haha. like...it's a musical heart attack?
ReplyDeleteImagine nearly dying and thinking "This gives me a great idea for a musical number".
ReplyDeleteI love Godzilla, so really should watch Minus One. I like both versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but Donald Sutherland is just amazing in this version. Both freaked me out as a kid back then!
ReplyDelete