McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

This film is a perfect example of director Robert Altman being Robert Altman. It's a meandering tale, more interested in characters and moments then traditional narrative. Based on a 1959 novel by Edmund Naughton titled simply McCabe, I can't help but wonder how much of the original novel made it to screen, as Altman seem like he's so organic a director that the source material would be little more then a seed, I know Stanley Kubrick was notoriously that way. Anyway the film stars then lovers at the height of there popularity Warren Beatty (as McCabe) and Julie Christie (as Mrs. Miller), interestingly even with these two staring, and Altman fresh off of the success of M*A*S*H, this movie was not a hit.

Set in Washington state circa 1900 the films takes place mostly in a zinc mining boom town at the beginning of its boom. The town is named Presbyterian Church in honor of the structure at its center, which will end up playing an important part in the story. A small town was actually constructed for this movie up in the Canadian Rockies, it starts out with just a few structures but more get built over the course of the film, which I would estimate is suppose to cover a period of around  9 months. McCabe is a gambler who comes to the town to essentially to take it over and build himself a little empire. Part of this empire is a whore house he builds, and which he eventually puts an experienced prostitute Mrs. Miller in charge of. However McCabe gets so successful that he attracts the attention of a business syndicate who attempts to buy him out now that he's really gotten the town started, McCabe refuses and this results in on the most atypical 'show down' sequences that I have ever seen in a film, one which makes it so that this movie is worth seeing for its last 25 minutes alone.

I just must point out this films astounding supporting cast, many of them at there beginnings of what would prove to be long careers, Rene Auberjonois, Michael Murphy, Shelley Duvall, Keith Carradine, William Devane and John Schuck all appear in this film. Altman tends to make product that very much isn't for everyone, and this "anti-western" certainly isn't, but its an almost heartbreakingly beautiful looking film, with an unusual sense of  verisimilitude. McCabe and Mrs. Miller doesn't so much feel like a western movie story as it does like a real story from the old west. Though fictional I could totally buy this as really happening, the kind of tale that might warrant a historical plaque for visiting tourists. I thought it was a movie well worth visiting. ***1/2

Night of the Lepus aka Rabbits (1972)

This is that giant killer Rabbits movie. Based on the 1964 novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit, which apparently has some interesting things to say about ecology, nationalism, and capitalism, Night of the Lepus on the other hand  is just a bad horror movie with cheesy special effects and weak acting. The movie was produced by A.C. Lyles, a man who spent most of his long career producing westerns for film and television, and he brought in westerns director William F. Claxton, and western actors like Stuart Whitman and  Rory Calhoun, and even set the whole thing in Arizona. Perhaps they should have all just made another western together, but if they had then we wouldn't have a monster movie featuring giant rabbits. This film might have worked had they played it for laughs, like Eight Legged Freaks did for giant spiders, but instead it tries to play it straight, and its clear that nobody involved in this film knows how to make a movie like this. Really with its premise this movie at least shouldn't be so dry and a slog to sit through.*

Interstellar (2014)

Director Christopher Nolan's apocalyptic ecology tale come metaphysics laced space adventure. Interstellar certainly looks great, is well written, performed, has some pretty big names in relatively small parts, and is generally smarter then the average block buster. All that being said its a little bit Shyamalan, it feels a little bit overdone, the tricks draw too much attention to themselves like a Shyamalan twist, and I still have mixed feelings about the ending. This movie was trying to awe but fell just a little bit short, perhaps its just a matter of Nolan being unable to keep up with unrealistic expectations inflation, I'd be curious to see him do a smaller scale film again. Still it looks kind of awesome and defiantly has its moments. ***1/2

Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955)

Walt Disney only agreed to do his first television show for ABC as a means to advertising and raising money for the theme park he was building in California. Disneyland was too itself be divided into four themed "lands", Frontier Land, Tomorrow Land, Adventure Land, and Fantasy Land, and likewise the Disneyland TV show was to be divided into these four lands, each week featuring a story the corresponded to one of them. Early on the Disney people realized they didn't have a lot of existing product that corresponded with there Frontier Land theme, so they set about making more. Walt wanted to capitalize on existing American folk heroes and Davy Crocket was an obvious choice. So a script was written, the story cast, and a crew sent out to the American south east to film it. What resulted was an astoundingly popular song 'The Balled of Day Crocket', three very popular episodes for Walt's TV program, and a bona fide pop culture phenomenon. So popular in fact was Disney's Crocket  that the company had the TV episodes reedited and released as a theatrical film, additionally too prequel episodes of Crocket's story were later made for television, and those were also re-edited and released in theaters. It really worked out that while these shows were originally filmed for television Walt had them all shot in color, which doubtless helped add value for fans who paid to see in theaters what they had already seen for free on TV.

Disney's Davy Crockett is based more on the legend then the real man, and made for a short time the largely unknown actor Fess Parker into a real star, at least to the younger set. Today we don't so much think of Davy when we think of Crockett as much as we think of Parker in that role. The movie is kinder to Indians then one might expect, and Crockett while lionized, is still shown as a flawed, not particularly bright person, so there is at least some nuance in this larger then life adventure story. The movie is very much an artifact of its time, but  even today still quite likable. You will recognize the unmistakable voice Hans Conried, the gambler Thimbelrig who dies with Crockett at the Alamo, as he was  the voice of Captain Hook in the 1953 Disney movie Peter Pan. ***

Sabotage Agent aka The Adventures of Tartu (1943)

Another UK made, WWII, British secret agent dons a Nazi uniform and romances a beautiful girl film. Known in the UK as  The Adventures of Tartu, but released in the US under the more banal title Sabotage Agent, the film stars then recent Oscar winner Robert Donat as British Captain Terence Stevenson, a chemical engineer who do to his expertise in his field, his fluent German, and having grown up partially in Romania, is recruited by his government for a special assignment. Stevenson is to assume the identity of a Romanian chemist and fascist Captain Jan Tartu, recently secretly murdered by the Romanian resistance, and con his way into Czechoslovakia's famous Skoda Works plant to sabotage a particularly deadly new poison gas the Nazi's are developing there. Donat gets to have extra fun in the film not only because he gets to romance the beautiful Valerie Hobson (who looks a lot like 'Toyota Jan') but because he gets to play in essence two characters, the noble Stevenson, and his cover persona as the flamboyant playboy Tartu.

This movie works well, Donat's performance is obviously the best thing it has going for it but there are more twists and turns here then I'd expected, multiple cases of mistaken identity, and Glynis Johns in full sympathetic mode gets to make a noble sacrifice for the cause of freedom. Somehow the ridicules coincidence laden script succumbs to the cast and crews efforts to earnestly plow thorough it, the results strain credulity but are still plenty entertaining. Before writing this review I did a little Google searching on the Romanian experience in the second World War, and that's about as crazy as this movie, I recommend checking both the film and the history out.  ***

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (2014)

The third and final Night at the Museum movie re-treads the well established ground of the first two films, museums exhibits come to life at night, there's a problem regarding the magic tablet the allows this, and humorously embarrassing things happen to Ben Stiller, only this time its set mostly in London. I didn't much mind the repetition, or the uber-reliance on formula, the variations of the basic theme here were adequate. Though what was most enjoyable about the movie for me was the sense which I felt it exuded that more then anything it was an excuse for friends to get together and have one last go at the franchise, that it didn't have to try that hard because it was a farewell film, and the cast had already been well endeared to the viewer. There are a few new additions to the cast as well, most notably Rebel Wilson whose purpose was largely just to rife, and kind of homage the 'I'm the new popular pudgy comedian thing' that Jonah Hill's presence in the previous film seemed there to emphasize. This movie was also the final screen appearance of both Mickey Rooney and (depending on how you count) Robin Williams, and its the latters presence that further hones the films sense of sentential parting. It does what it does as you'd want it to be done. ***

Escape from Hell Island (1963)

Escape from Hell Island is not a good movie. Besides that even its name is problematic, especially given the way its three act structure plays out. Now presumably Hell Island is Cuba, which the films hero Capt.. James (Mark Stevens) helps a number of people escape from in the first half hour of the movie. However the movie then goes on for an additional 50 minutes, including a stay on Key West  which Capt. James eventually leaves to sail a ship to Bermuda. So might Key West also be considered a potential Hell Island? I mean the Capt. leaves there on a boat, and I suppose the drinks there are overpriced and that might be something worth escaping from. The bad guy (Jack Donner) later takes over Jim's boat, so in a sense the boat becomes a Hell Island? It's so confusing. Perhaps the movie should be called Fleeing the Islands of Hell, or even Beyond Escape from Hell Island. However even with a name correction you'd still be left with what for the most part is a very weak movie, with only one really satisfactory sequence, the standoff for the boat at the end. So maybe watching the last 20 minutes of this might be worth your time, over all though *1/2.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

Kind Hearts and Coronets is an almost perfect black comedy. Set at the turn of the 20th century the plot is taken loosely from the 1907 novel  Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by British author Roy Horniman. The story concerns Louis D'Ascoyne Mazzini (Dennis Price, excellent), the son of the black sheep of the prestigious D'Ascoyne family. Louis mother (Audrey Fildes) had angered her family when she married for love to an Italian opera singer (also played by Price), but the man died young around the time of the birth of their only son. Though Louis's mother tried for years to enlist her family's help for herself and her son she was consistently rebuffed, she made due with what little she had, raised Louis, and when he came of age tried again to get her family's aid in assisting her son to get into a good profession, all to no avail. Her final request, to be buried in the family crypt, was also refused, and this last indignity prompted her son to set about on a murderous quest to eliminate the eight heirs who stood in his way to assume the family dukedom.

This dry comedy is carried very effectively by lead Dennis Price, who is so good in it that its an utter shame that he didn't go on to have a more successful career. Looking into Mr. Price it seems his major obstacles were likely his drinking, gambling, and tax problems, he was also a homosexual but so were many of Britain's greatest actors. The film has good supporting players, including Valerie Hobson and Joan Greenwood as Price's too competing love interests, character actor Miles Malleson also appears as a very polite hangman. But its Alec Guinness who pulls out all the stops playing a total of 9 D'Ascoyne family members, including a woman. Kind Hearts and Coronets is a jewel of a film, a stand out even amidst the golden period of post war British comedies. It's a rare comedy that warrants four stars, but this one does. ****