Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983), The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958)

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life

A return to their roots for the Monty Python team, instead of a semi-coherent story like Holy Grail and Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life is a collection of short skit-like segments arranged around a general thematic journey from birth to death. Some times I think Python is brilliantly funny and surprisingly smart, and I can admire the audacity of the idiosyncratic humor and their  multi-million dollar movies largely made for their own amusement, and then sometimes their just juvenile and gross. This is a little of column A and a little of column B, I think it works better as a film them Life of Brian, but Holy Grail will always be there most iconic work. This movie simultaneously has both the most cross-dressing and the most breasts of any Python film. It boasts some dang catchy music, as well as some surprisingly good effects in places, and Terry Gilliam's 17 minute "supporting feature" The Crimson Permanent Assurance is one of the great vanity projects of all time (it should have been a cartoon, so he did it live action). **1/2

The Thing That Couldn't Die

The funniest thing about many a vintage sci-fi/horror movie is the absurdity of their plots, that is certainly the case here. On a struggling dude ranch in southern California a young "water witch" (Carolyn Kearney) warns her aunt (Peggy Converse) and the visiting archeology student she's in love with (William Reynolds) against digging up a 400 treasure chest she locates on the property. She is of course ignored, and before long two hired hands on the ranch have freed an animate, telepathic severed head (Robin Hughes) of a wayward member of the Francis Drake expedition. Said head wants to find his body which was also buried in the vicinity and if he has to break-up some other guests engagement, kill a few people, and get Carolyn to start dressing like a member of an interpretive dance troop to do it, he will. But will he succeed.... kind of, but on the whole no. Really its the absurdity that gets you through this movie, that otherwise has very little budget, and very bland talent (but a lot of hutzpah). **

White House Down (2013), The Man (1972)

White House Down

I was genuinely surprised how much I enjoyed this movie. For the kind of film it is, its just about perfect. Action, a little bit of comedy, which seemed to have been enjoyed more by the audience I was in the theater with then myself, but no matter, decent twist, good performances, and all in all Roland Emmerich trying to make up for Anonymous. The film follows the directors tried and true general contours, wreaking monuments and a strained father child relationship that must be healed. Jamie Foxx is Barack Obama, Channing Tatum is action lead, and James Woods is most fun when he's evil. ***1/2


The Man

Another black president movie, perhaps the first. Adapted by Rod Serling from the novel of the same name by Irvin Wallace, this was originally a made for television production but apparently did get some theatrical distribution. When the President and Speaker of the House are killed in a building collapse and a critically ill Vice President demurs the position, the black President pro tempro of the Senate Douglass Dilman (James Earl Jones) is elevated to the Presidency (at the time the President of the Senate was elected to that position by his colleagues, today it goes to the longest serving member of the majority party in that body).

Now there are a lot of ways a film with this set up could go, but this movie choses to focuse on how President Dilman deals with a young a black American (George Stanford Brown) who may or may not have attempted the assassination of the South African Defense Minister, and whether or  not to honor that notoriously raciest regimes request for extradition. Dilman handles himself admirably on this point, though it takes him a while to really assert himself in his new office. A mildly though provoking little curio of its time, though it might have worked better as a TV series. ***

Man of Steel (2013)

Superman is given the Zack Snyder treatment in this franchise reboot that aims to add some grit and darkness to the all American character. Dark Knight franchise director Christopher Nolan produces, and you can see what they are going for, but Superman is an inherently lighter creature then Gotham's masked detective. The film tells the origin story of the last son of Krypton, and while watching I couldn't help but wonder how many times we are expected to pay for the same story. Don't get me wrong, this is probably the most substantive and well-thought out version of  Kal-El's origin, we spend more time on Krypton then ever before, and I like the look of the place, and the fully spelled out context of Krypton being a civilization in decline that has become obsessed and dependent on Eugenics actually provides a much better motivation for General Zod (the always interesting Michael Shannon) the chief villain of the piece (no Lex Luther here, I guess they are saving him for the sequel).

Anyway as you know Kal-El is sent to Earth from the dying Krypton by his benevolent (but still kick-ass) father Jor-El (Russell Crowe, who kind of steels the movie with only twenty or so minutes of screen time). On Earth Kal-El is found and raised by the Kansas based Kent family (Ma Diane Lane and Pa Kevin Costner, who is just the physical incarnation of mid-western values) as their son Clark. Clark has great parents but a difficult childhood, being an alien trying to find his way in the world and all, and instead of tacking the typical CK rout straight to the Daily Planet, he kind of drifts around in an increasingly Northerly direction helping people until he comes upon his version of the Fortress of Solitude (an old Krytonian spaceship buried in the arctic ice). Activating the ship however alerts the exiled Zod and his followers to Kal-El's whereabouts and they make for Earth.

Lois Lane (Amy Adams, not a burnet by she's Amy Adams so we forgive her) stumbles upon Clark while doing a story on the military arctic dig in Canada, see's what he can do, and manages to trace his origin back to Kansas. Clark manages to prevail upon her to keep his secret, which is a refreshing because it doesn't require the award winning investigative reporter to be, well stupid when it comes to Superman's identity. But Clarks not Superman yet, but he becomes so over the course the film, which features a lot of good action sequences, and does in my estimation more damage to Metropolis then The Avengers did to New York. There is brief coda in the film where Clark goes to work at the Daily Planet that I didn't really think was necessary, I liked where the film deviated in a sensible direction from the established mythology, but there are places where it doesn't fell confident to deviate too much.

On the whole this is a very solid version of this story, but its still this story that has been done so often before that it can't help but feel kind of redundant. Sequels will obviously occur however and I do feel director Snyder has things going in a direction which will be fun to watch, if not really surprising or ground breaking. ***1/2

The Raven (1963), Vice Raid (1960), The Golden Gong (1987)

The Raven

Simultaneously a continuation and a send up of producer Roger Corman's Poe cycle, unlike the other Edger Allen Poe inspired films of this period staring Vincent Price, The Raven isn't a ruminative horror, but rather a tongue-in-check excursion based not so much on the titular poem, as just a string of lose references there to. Price does narrate some from the poem, and it does have a raven (actually Peter Lorre turned into a raven) as well as a lost Lenore (Hazel Court), other then that great liberties are taken.

Vincent Price is  Dr. Erasmus Craven, a 15th century European sorcerer still mourning the lose of his second wife Lenore (note: Erasmus has a grown daughter from his first marriage played by Olive Sturgess, I wonder if he gave her mother equal despair time.) Anyway one evening a Raven flies into his parlor and revels himself to be in fact Dr. Adolphus Bedlo, a wizidaring colleague of Dr. Cravens, but not quite as adept as him. Bedlo was turned raven in a contest with rival Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). Erasmus turns Bedlo back into his roly-poly self and then for reasons I forget agrees to accompany him to Scarabus castle. Scarabus at first plays nice, but is in fact out to learn the secrets of Dr. Cravens hand-movement based magic which he was taught by his late father, a former head of some kind of wizards professional organization.

Surprise turns out Lenore is not dead, but rather faked her death so she could hook up with the seemingly more promising Dr. Scarabus. Bedlo was actually working with Scarabus as part of rouse to lure Dr. Craven to the formers castle. Scarabus however turns on Bedlo, and Bedlo's son Rexford (played by Jack Nicholson in an early, oddly wooden performance) helps to rescue Craven's daughter Estlle when Scarabus takes her hostage to use against Erasmus. It's an odd picture, not funny, not scary, but Price and company seem to be having a fun time in an 'I can't believe we are actually getting away with this' half-assed kind of way. Good for them. **


Vice Raid

My first Mamie Van Doren movie. Here the low rent Marilyn Monroe plays a prostitute (though I don't think they ever actually use the word) brought to New York from Detroit to help "The Syndicate" smear a troublesome, incorruptible cop on the vice squad they just can't shake. "The Syndicate" is running their "pleasure girls" out of front modeling agencies located throughout the city. When Police Sergeant Whitey Brandon (Roger "Captain Video" Coogan)  busts Van Doren's Carol Hudson for solicitation, she counters with chargers that the Sergeant demanded a bribe from her, charges which Brandon's secretly on the take partner Dunton (Joseph Sullivan) substantiates. This forces Brandon off the force, but his old superior officer Capt. William Brennan (Frank Gerstle) who never believed the chargers against him, agrees to help Whitey in his continuing efforts to bring down boss racketeer Vince Malone (Brad Dexter).

You see a long time ago Brandon's sister got mixed up with a group like "The Syndicate" and died because of it, that's why he takes things so personal and can't be corrupted. The famously incorruptible Brandon decides to pretend that he's defected to the other side, and is setting up rival "modeling agencies", if you know what I mean. Now the bad guys, who have long experience with the uber-ernest Brandon should know better then to fall for this obvious fake out, but when Brandon continually demonstrates an amazing ability to get the cops to leave his agencies alone while they crack down on Malone's, the racketeers nervous out of town financel backers decide to take there business to the new guy. Oh and Van Doren turns on the bad guys because one of them rapes (and yes they use that word) her visiting kid sister Louise (Carol Nugent), so I guess this means she's redeemed. Disappointing, a surprisingly unsalacious little crime movie. **


The Golden Gong

Nice little documentary gives a survey course in the films produced by the Rank Organization in roughly its first fifty years of existence. You mostly likely know the Rank Organization form its iconic logo of a man beating a giant golden gong. The company was founded by J. Arthur Rank (1888-1972), the devoutly Methodist heir of a substantial flour milling business, who became perhaps the central figure in Britain's film industry for several decades. The Rank Organization, and the Pinewood and Denham film studios it owned are responsible for seemingly countless films, including the James Bond franchise, establishing directors such as Michael Powell and David Lean, and launching stars ranging from James Mason to Joan Collins. This is a fun little examination of the company and its legacy, with a good group of informative talking heads, many of whom are now dead, and it introduced me to a number of movies that I'd now like to see, I'd never even heard of 'The Doctors' or 'Carry On' films. While this doc is obvious a bit niche, and I did find it kind of hard to come by, it was still an informative and enjoyable 76 minutes. **1/2

World War Z (2013)

"Based" on the well received 2006 novel of the same name by Max Brooks (son of Mel), World War Z shares very little with its source material other then a couple of vinyets, a central protagonist who works for the UN, and a general interest in the soci-political implications of a world wide zombie plague. The original novel was subtitled "An Oral History of the Zombie War" and was presented as a compellation of accounts of various participants in this global struggle recorded for the UN years after it ended. Now this structure would be extremely unconventional for a summer block buster, if one were to seriously attempt it a better format would likely be as a miniseries, or even a television series. So instead this movie just takes some of the broader themes from the novel and splices them throughout what's basically just a standard zombie movie, only on a much wider scale. This results in what is not a bad movie, but one that certainly disappoints in relation to the book.

Brad Pitt plays a recently retired UN investigator name Gerry Lane, who is recruited by his old boss at the UN (Fana Mokoena) in the immediate aftermath of the zombie outbreak to search for both the origin and a solution to the zombie plague. Now if you've read the book you know that it has no "silver bullet" solution to the problem of zombies in it, other then a bullet to the brain, but again this movie is a very lose adaptation of the book. Lane travels around the world from the north east US, to South Korea, to Jerusalem, to Wales of all places. looking for the answers. People he talks to give him little monologues somewhat reminiscent of material from the book, and CG zombies are seen in unconvincing abundance. The siege of Jerusalem sequence, seemingly the films show piece, felt like it missed something, the ending was suspenseful enough but ultimately disappointing in its quick resolution, so ultimately it was the early parts of the film set in the US that felt most promising.

One can admire the desire here, the interest in the source material, but one feels the creative powers that be with this movie never knew quite what they wanted to do with it. In fact I've heard that the last forty minutes of the film was completely redone with a new ending after the original cut of the film was assembled, and it kind of shows. Taken on its own merits however the film is entertaining and intermittently just shy of insightful. There is room at the end explicitly made for a sequel, but I suspect little actual desire for one now that all is said and done. World War Z the book is the masterpiece of zombie literature (behind maybe the Walking Dead comics) but as a film it falls short of early Romero. **1/2