The best of 2016 version 2.0

Having now seen most of the 2016 releases I was interested in here is a revised list of the best films of that year.

10.Snowden
9.The Light Between Oceans
8.Zootopia
7.The Accountant
6.Indignation
5.Jackie
4.Weiner
3.Sing Street
2,Moonlight
1.Manchester by the Sea

Best of 2017 Version 1.0

Still a lot from 2017 to see, but here are the 10 best 2017 film releases I saw during the calendar year of 2017.

10.Our Souls at Night
9.All The Money in the World
8.Logan
7.The Big Sick
6.Columbus
5.Baby Driver
4.Get Out
3.Ladybird
2.The Florida Project
1.Wind River

Bird on a Wire (1990)

I remember my parents renting this back in the day, I came into the room long enough to catch some of the sequence at the run down motel, which might have been the part of the film least likely to catch the interest of the 10 year old me. This film is only okay, both Goldie Hawn and Mel Gibson are just costing, but Mel Gibson's better at doing that. **

John XXIII (2002)

A good enough overview of the life of the late pontiff born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, though I think it overstates the importance of his role in the Cuban missile crises. Joint Anglo-Italian production not always well dubbed. Edward Asner inspired casting as John XXIII. Not as good as the Pope John Paul II mini-series made about three years later. **1/2

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

I've been surprised by the amount of backlash The Last Jedi has gotten, I think a lot of Star Wars fans don't know what they want. I was favorably impressed on first viewing and having now seen it a second time I think the story really holds up, or at least it did for me. The film is true to the original Star Wars trilogy, there are certainly homages to The Empire Strikes Back and other films, but its not as slavishly devoted to re-creating them as The Force Awakens was. In fact "let old things die" was an explicate theme of this film, and some of the plots developments in it recast The Force Awakens as a master misdirect. There are some moments in the film that I am genuinely very glad I got to see, there are low key elements to it as well that help to offset the temptation to always try to top what came before in terms of spectacle. This movies also got a good sense of humor, and leaves off in a place where I genuinely do not know the shape the next movie will take, and I'm thankful for that, let me be surprised. ****

Specter (2015)

I watched Specter again as part of my recent viewing of all the Bond movies. I still think Bond #24 is the weakest of the four Daniel Craig films, but is still okay. I love the opening sequence in Mexico City, there must have been tens of thousands of extras in that thing. I actually think Christoph Waltz might be my least favorite Blofeld, the casting was almost too obvious. Léa Seydoux character was more substantive then your typical Bond girl. Exotic locations Mexico City, London, Rome, Austria, Tangier and the Sahara. Good title song performed by Sam Smith. ***

Of the Bond movies as a whole I enjoyed them more then I thought I would, and I'm glad I watched them in fairly close succession. Maybe 2 to 4 of the movies might reasonably be called bad, but I thought for the most part this was an unusually strong franchise, and I enjoyed watching the tone and approach to the material ebb and flow and how the different movies and performances reflected the times in which they were made. I may get around to attempting a ranking in the near future.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

After the mixed response to the 1976 King Kong remake, setting ones Kong film in the 1970's seemed a bit of an odd choice, but here it paid off. Kong: Skull Island is the second film in Legendary Entertainments 'MonsterVerse' after the 2014 Godzilla, the film is an enjoyable revisionist take on the giant gorilla story. In 1973 a group of solders returning home from the Vietnam War and commanded Samuel L. Jackson accompany a group of scientists lead by John Goodman, a photojournalist (Brie Larson), and an expert tracker (Tom Hiddleston), on an expedition to the mysterious and uncharted Skull Island. On the island the team encounters Kong and various other giant animals and gets scattered into smaller groups, they also run into John C. Reilly, a downed fighter pilot who has been stuck on the island since World War II. The film melds its genera's well, and makes strong homage to Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness in plot, settings, and character names, Hiddleston's master hunter is called Conrad. This movie was a bit of surprise, an enjoyable watch that was both smarter and funnier then I was expecting. Stay tune at the end for the rather self aware post credits scene. ***

Skyfall (2012)

Skyfall, Bond #23, is the last entry in the franchise that I had not previously seen. This film continues the pattern of the Daniel Craig Bond films of not essentially reverting to status quo at the end of the movie, which the franchise had more or less done since Sean Connery left the second time. The plot here concerns a MI6 agent gone mad (Javier Bardem, who is really good in this, a memorable villain) and his revenge plot against M (Judi Dench) who he blames for letting the Chinese capture and torture him 15 years earlier. The movie itself starts with Bonds presumed death, he of course survives but goes underground, thinking he may have found a way out of his dangerous life, only to re-emerge when he feels he is needed. Ralph Fiennes as Gareth Mallory, Naomie Harris as Miss Moneypenny, and Ben Whishaw as a young Q are all introduced in this movie. Bérénice Marlohe is a Bond girl, Albert Finney is the games keeper at the Bond family estate (there is probably more Bond back story in this film then in any previous movie). Exotic locations include Istanbul, London of course, uncertain but tropical, Shanghai, Macau, island near Macau, and Scotland. The theme song performed by Adele will nicely root this movie in its time for future audiences. ***1/2

The Disaster Artist (2017)

The Room, an independently made film from 2003 written, produced, directed and staring the enigma that is Tommy Wiseau is widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made. The Disaster Artist, a film based on a book of the same name by Tom Bissell and The Room co-star Greg Sestero, and produced, directed and staring James Franco, well that's a pretty good movie. Giving its subject matter the Ed Wood treatment The Disaster Artist is a good spirited look at what it is to make a bad movie, and that sometimes even a horrible film can be kind of a good thing. The movie is just loaded with celebrity bit parts, many playing themselves such as Bryan Cranston and Judd Apatow. Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas, and June Diane Raphael, actors who co-host a podcast about bad movies call How Did This Get Made all have roles in the film. James Franco in his role as Wiseau gives a performance that works both as caricature and portraiture. This begs the question, can one do an Oscar worthy performance of a Razzie worthy performance? Dave Franco plays Wiseau's friend and co-star Greg Sestero. Wiseau himself, a man about whom shocking little biographical information is known even now, has a brief appearance in a post credit scene which may be worth staying for if your curious. A funny and surprisingly warm movie which is already getting awards buzz. ***1/2

Zoolander (2001)

Nope, I'd never seen Zoolander before. Though seldom laugh out loud funny this movie is consistently amusing. One of the most endearing things about the film is the odd specificity of its satire, who know American audiences in 2001 were ready for a comedy about male models, Ben Stiller, that's who, a visionary. That's Stiller's real life wife Christine Taylor as his love interest. Early film appearances for Judah Friedlander and Patton Oswalt. Will Ferrell's Jacobim Mugatu, fittingly strange. ***

Krampus (2015)

Tonally a little odd, but ultimately enjoyable, Krampus starts out as a vaguely National Lampoon style tale of family dysfunction at Christmas time, but after a young lad loses the holiday spirit, he inadvertently invites the vengeful Germanic spirit Krampus to wreak vengeance on his kin. Paired down some I can totally see this plot being an episode the 80's anthology series Amazing Stories. **1/2

The Children's Hour (1961)

The Children's Hour is a story about the destructive power of gossip and innuendo. A bored young girl overhears a conversation related to two teachers at the private school she attends, she passes this information onto her grandmother, who misinterprets it and spreads it. Before long the two teachers, played by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine are roundly believed to be lesbian lovers, endangering the formers engagement to a doctor (James Garner) and threating to shut down their school. While such allegations would in no way have been helpful to teachers in 1961, the scale of the reaction seems perhaps more appropriate to 1934, the year the Lillian Hellman play on which this is based was first staged. None the less this is a powerful film with strong performances, particularly Ms. MacLaine's, and far darker and less life affirming then is typical of the work of its director William Wyler. Tonally reminiscent of Tennessee Williams. ****
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Quantum of Solace (2008)

The most direct sequel in the history of its movie franchise, Bond #22 Quantum of Solace picks up just after the events of Bond #21 Casino Royal, by perhaps as little as a few weeks. The story tries to recapture the On Her Majesties Secret Service / Diamonds are Forever revenge arc, while the plot concerns the intelligence communities gradual awaking to the existence of Specter. Mathieu Amalric is an evil energy company executive, Stranger Things David Harbour a CIA Station Chief. Olga Kurylenko and Gemma Arterton are the Bond girls, the latter with the Bondian name of Strawberry Fields. Exotic locations are Italy, the UK, Haiti, Austria, Italy again, Bolivia, and Russia. Highlight sequences include the opera meeting and the stuff that happens at that weird hotel in the desert. Jack White and Alicia Keys perform the theme song. ***

Justice League (2017)

A poor mans Avengers. Despite what I thought was a strong build up with Wonder Woman and Zack Snyder's two Superman films (the lesser Suicide Squad being more of a side story) Justice League was a disappointment. For one thing I'm tired of that 'alien conquerors want to turn our world into their world' plot (Man of Steel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2), come up with another plot please. Like the Marvel movies Thanos, the villain here is a giant CGI alien, only instead of searching for six magic stones he's searching for three magic boxes. Also the bad guys name is Steppenwolf, yet at no time does he express the desire to take anyone on a magic carpet ride. That's a let down.

Superman of course is brought back to life in this movie, though it never really gets into the after effects of his rebirth like this and previous films had dealt with the aftermath of his death. Also a lot of the heroes in this film a very lose with their own, as well as others, secret identities. Ezra Miller's Flash got the most laugh lines, he's a different take on the character from what I remember of previous versions, here he is presented as a neurotic Jew, and this is certainly an odd cultural moment to introduce a superhero who is reminiscent of Woody Allen. **1/2

Casino Royale (2006)

Casino Royale, Bond # 21, is a hard reboot of the franchise and features Daniel Craig as a Bond early in his career, earning his double-O status in the pre-credit sequence. The plot focuses on international money laundering for war lords and the like, and gives us our first hints of the existence of Spector since the Sean Connery era. We also learn, I think for the first time, that Bond is an orphan. The films high stakes Texas hold'em card playing sequences are surprisingly gripping. Mads Mikkelsen is one of the more believable Bond villains as Le Chiffre, Eva Green is a nicely matched love interest for Craig. An unusual amount of exotic locations this time, Prague, Uganda, Madagascar, The Bahamas, Miami, Montenegro, Venice, and I think Switzerland. This film really breaths new life into the franchise like no film since The Living Daylights and takes its self mostly seriously. W. Bush era cell phones sure seem quaint now. Jeffrey Wright makes his first appearance as Felix Leiter. ***1/2

End of Days (1999)

Millennium exploitation flick in which atheist cop Arnold Schwarzenegger must prevent 'The Devil' (Gabriel Byrne) from impregnating Robin Tunney with the anti-Christ, which for some reason can only be done between 11pm and midnight on the eve of the millennium. Recycled and derivate Omen and Rosemary's Baby fair, this film manages to not only waste the talents of Rod Steiger, but even of Kevin Pollak. Udo Kier on the other hand, is used appropriately. *1/2

Die Another Day (2002)

Die Another Day, Bond #20, is Pierce Brosnan's final appearance in the role and the only one of his four Bond films I had not previously seen. In the pre credit sequence Bond is captured while on assignment in North Korea, interspersed in the opening title sequence he is tortured there, and shortly after that he is released. This is all said to occurred over a 14 month period, but after his release Bond is almost instantly on his A game, and other then one brief sequence, (where James is ending a year plus of forced celibacy and accordingly enjoying it much more then usual) his time in the North Korean prison camp seems to have had no effect on him. Brosnan is completely unconvincing playing a man just out of a long, tortious prison experience, however I suspect the next Bond Daniel Craig could have played that arc convincingly. This film features an invisible car, a space based heat ray, and a "DNA therapy" that can change a persons race, so basically this movie out Roger Moore's Roger Moore. The films two Bond girls are (now) either Oscar nominated (Rosamund Pike) or Oscar winners (Halle Berry). Madonna performs the title song and has an uncredited cameo. Exotic locations include North Korea, Hong Kong, Cuba, and Iceland. **1/2

Our Souls at Night (2017)

Our Souls at Night is the Netflix film adaption of the novel by Kent Haruf. With Robert Redford retiring this could well be his final film appearance, and its a nice note to go out on, reteaming him as it does with thrice previous co-star Jane Fonda. Redford plays a widowed teacher living in a small planes state town, whose boring life is reinvigorated when a widowed neighbor he has known for decades (Fonda) asks him if he'd like to sleep with her. This isn't a sexual thing (at least not at first), rather she is just asking if he would like to sleep in the same bed with her, talk, and generally recapture the sense of casual intimacy that has been missing form each of their lives since the deaths of their respective spouses. This is a nicely low-key movie, much of it consisting simply of conversation, from the mundane to the heartbreaking, as each shares with the other the joys and heartaches of their long lives. There is a subplot involving Fonda watching her young grandson over the summer, but for much of the film very little really happens, and that's what's great about. Watching these old hands late in their careers quietly ruminate on the variability of life. ***1/2

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

RKO's lavish mounting of the 1831 novel by Victor Hugo. Charles Laughton anchors the film with his simple but soulful portrayal of the titular lopsided 15th century bell ringer. I also really liked Harry Davenport as the liberal minded Louis XI, I have no idea if the real Louis was this magnanimous a type. This movie was also Maureen O'Hara's American film debut. The scenes of throngs of extras viewed from the bell tower are still impressive, this movie is a great example of 'Golden Era' Hollywood spectacle at its finest, and with literary merit to boot. ****

The World is Not Enough (1999)

The World is Not Enough, Bond #19, is the last Bond film of the 20th century and the final of Desmond Llewellyn's 17 appearances as Q. It's a little surprising that it took the franchise this long to get to a plot centered around an oil scheme, this on involving threats to pipelines near the Caspian Sea. While I liked it well enough when I saw it theatrically, I would now have it say its one of the weakest Bond, with nothing much memorable to commend it. While I liked the boat chase up the River Thames the first, now it feels forced and a little hokey. John Cleese is introduced as Q's ultimately short lived replacement R, Robert Carlyle is an anarchist terrorist, and Denise Richards is hardly credible as a nuclear scientist. Robbie Coltrane returns as Valentin Zukovsky. Exotic locations include Spain, Scotland, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkey. The opening title song is garbage, or rather it is performed by the band Garbage (I don't know who they are either). **

100 Rifles (1969)

100 Rifles was a less successful attempt to do the kind of gritty, revisionist western done by such contemporary films as The Wild Bunch and Once Upon a Time in the West. Set in Mexico in 1912, black lawman Lyedecker (James Brown) crosses the boarder in pursuit of half-Indian outlaw Yaqui Joe Herrera (Burt Reynolds) who is supplying the titular number of riffles to Sarita (Raquel Welch) and an Indian resistance against General Verdugo (Fernando Lamas), who is himself assisted by a smarmy railroad agent (Dan O'Herlihy) and a German military 'observer' (Eric Braeden). The film felt both overstuffed and in need of direction, though it is for the most part watchable. Chiefly notable for the then provocative interracial love scenes between Brown and Welch (who reportedly hated each other). Filmed in Spain. **

Lady Bird (2017)

Lady Bird is one of the best reviewed movies of the year, with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomato's and A. O. Scott of the New York Times describing the film as "perfect". Written and directed by the actress and writer Greta Gerwig (a growing favorite of mine) and at lest partially inspired by her real life, Lady Bird stars Saoirse Ronan as Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson, and follows the senior girl over the course of the 2002-2003 academic year at a Sacramento area Catholic high school. The film is about relationships, between the self christened "Lady Bird" and her best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein), her two successive boyfriends, nice guy Danny (Lucas Hedges) and the causally pompous Kyle (Timothee Chalamet), as well as her teachers, her brother, her father, but chiefly her Mom (Laurie Metcalf in a very strong understated performance). Lady Bird is going to be remembered as one of the great mother/daughter movies, with its complicated, strained, but ultimately loving central relationship. The film is witty, observant of human foibles, but kind about them. The characters are all quit human, and this film is generous to that humanity, whether it be in the form of a secretly sad priest, or a quietly grateful Goth girl. It is a film where you watch characters slowly change and grow and it feels enriching to do so. ****

Child of God (2013)

Child of God, Cormic McCarthy's 1973 novel about a necrophiliac serial killer in the rural east Tennessee of the early 1960's is probably the most disturbing work of fiction I have ever read, and James Franco's 2013 film version isn't pleasant going either. While nicely shot, and capably acted the film alternates between the disturbing and the boring, and frankly the latter quality feels worse. The source marital is not a natural fit for a movie, and Scott Haze's portrayal of Lester Ballard invites some sympathy for the character, and he's a monster, I don't want to feel sympathy for him. I understand that Franco made this film as a sort of trial run, with the ultimate intention being to adapt McCarthy's better regarded novel Blood Meridian into a film, and the actor turned director does demonstrate sufficient talent here to make me curious what that movie would be like. One of the things that I did like about this film was its use of multiple, documentary style narrators, which I thought was clever and added to the film. Unfortunately this story is just not one I really want to see depicted on screen, and the films total felt less then the substance of its parts. *1/2

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Tom Holland, the third cinematic Spider-Man of the 21st century was well received by audiences when introduced in Captain America: Civil War, and was quickly given his own movie, Spider-Man: Home Coming. Unlike some previous Spider-Men Holland actually looks age appropriate in the part, and is good both as the slightly awkward Peter Parker as well as the over enthusiastic hero. While in many ways an unnecessary project, we already have plenty of Spider-Man films, and this movie does little to advance the overall MCU storyline, and in fact its chronology seems a little off, I enjoyed Spider-Man: Homecoming. Better and more coherent then the presence of six credited screenwriters would suggest, this film doesn't feel like a retread, and thankfully doesn't waste time on the origin story again.

I liked that the movie gave Parker a friend who is on his secret, Ned, likably played by Jacob Batalon. I like that Michael Keaton played yet another winged costumed figure, The Vulture, and I liked that this was a character I didn't really know before and that his super villain name flowed so logically from his origin story, being a kind of salvage expert. I liked that the under used Martin Starr from Freaks and Geeks was in this as a teacher. I was confused as to why Tyne Daly was in this if they weren't going to do anything with her. I'm looking forward to seeing what the creative powers at Disney do with Spider-Man in the future. While we are on the subject of Disney, now that the Avengers Tower has been sold Disney should 'lease that space' and have some company pay to put their logo on the building in future films. ***

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Tomorrow Never Dies, Bond # 18, is the most Roger Moore like Bond movie since Roger Moore. It's plot is a more restrained variation on that of The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, a megalomaniacal billionaire (Jonathan Pryce) tries to remake the world to his likening, in this case by provoking a war between China and the U.K., and Bond  must team up with a female agent (Michelle Yeoh) of a foreign power (China) to stop it. Teri Hatcher is an obvious choice for a 90's Bond girl, and Vincent Schiavelli is a professional assassin. Joe Don Baker returns as Jack Wade. Exotic locations include "The Russian Border", Hamburg, Hong Kong, and the South China sea. Sheryl Crow sings the theme song. This movie feels nicely rooted in its time. A serviceable Bond film ***

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

In 1974 Sidney Lument directed a star studded adaption of the famed Agatha Christie mystery novel Murder on the Orient Express featuring a lot of old Hollywood players, in 2017 Kenneth Branagh takes a similar approach to the same material, though the caliber of his stars shine maybe not quit so bright. I have not read the Christie novel so my point of reference for this new cinematic version is just the earlier film, and this Orient Express opens up the martial quite a bit, adds some CGI shots, mixes some of the characters around and updates them for modern sensibilities (gone is Sean Connery's solder of the old empire, replaced with Leslie Odom Jr's black doctor), and adds some frankly unnecessary action sequences, including a chase on a rickety railroad bridge. While I was fine with the teaser mystery added to the beginning of the film, meant to establish Poirots investigative prowess for audiences less familiar with the character then those of a half century ago, I felt that while this movie was good, it was trying too hard to seem relevant. This film is overtly emotional, while the previous film was more restrained. One of the things I liked about the previous movie and Christie's work more generally is that it feels rather musty, musty is an appropriate things for it to be, this film was trying too hard to not be that. This is fine I suppose, and I enjoyed the film, but its not to my preferred taste. Josh Gad is no Anthony Perkins. ***

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

The third Thor movie owes a lot to the Guardians of the Galaxy films in both tone (lighter) and space (as in that's where most of it is set). There are the increasingly obligatory cross over appearances, in this Hulk and Dr. Strange, these work for the film. Jeff Goldblum and Catch Blanchett are here as well, with the latter being particularly under used. Chris Hemsworth gets to be funnier and show more personality in the title role then he has in the past, and the whole movie felt freer, in large part because they were not trying to show horn Natalie Portman and her side characters into the film, and I don't think we will be seeing them again. Tessa Thompson is a welcome addition to the cast. There is a twist in this film that I didn't see coming and has the potential to really alter the trajectory of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Too many Marvel films feel like they are just connective tissue stringing together multi tired franchises, this film had more of a heft to it then I'd expected, and was still rather fun. ***

The Way Way Back (2013)

Coming of age comedy-drama about a 14 old boy named Duncan (Liam James) who spends a summer at a beach house (in the north east somewhere) with his mom (Toni Collette) and her jerk boyfriend (Steve Carell), meets a girl (AnnaSophia Robb), gets a job and a mentor (Sam Rockwell, ingratiating) at a water park and discovers his self confidence. Allison Janney gives a very enjoyable performance as a talkie, lush neighbor, Maya Rudolph, Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet round out the main cast. Co-writers and directors Jim Rash and Nat Faxon also appear as employees of the water park, in fact a lot of the staff of the water park is kind of old, mildly creepy. In fact the slightly mixed bag of messages this film has about inter sexually relationships might make someone a decent term paper. ***

GoldenEye (1995)

GoldenEye, Bond # 17, is the first entry in the franchise which I saw all the way through, in this case on a Blockbuster video tape circa 1996. The six year gap between License to Kill and this movie is the largest production gap in the history of the franchise, and no doubt part of that time was spent determining exactly what to do with Bond in the post cold war period. The opening title sequence, song sung by Tina Turner, depicts scantly clad women demolishing Soviet style statuary with sledge hammers, and the plot touches on both the seeming directionlessness of Yelstin era Russia, and the legacy of cold war era defense projects, in this case a space based EMP weapon named GoldEye (which is also the name of the late Ian Flemings Jamaica estate).

Bond is recast here, Pierce Brosnan, whose looks and charm had made him a top contender for the role since the success of his 1980's TV series Remington Steele. They give him a 'this time its personal' storyline involving the fate of a work colleague, 006 played by Sean Bean, and while Brosnan delivers the lines, I never really felt any sense of anguish and responsibility in his performance. This film also differs from the structure of previous Bond films in that we spend a good amount of times with one of the Bond girls (Izabella Scorupco) before she even meets James, which isn't bad, just different. Famke Janssen, Robbie Coltrane, Alan Cuming, and Jo Don Baker are in the cast, with the latter basically playing the Felix Lieter role, only for some reason they don't use that name, perhaps because the previous Lieter got a leg bit off in the last film? Judi Dench takes over as M, and exotic locations include France, Cuba, and throughout the former Soviet Union. I must say this film was disappointing compared with previous Bond movies. **1/2

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)

I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of Cameron Crowe, but I did quite like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which was directed by Amy Heckerling from a script Crowe adapted from his own book. While certain elements of the film are lightly stylized, such as how we never see any of the characters parents, the chief impression that I came away from the film with is that it "felt true." So I felt validated when I looked into it and found that the full title of Crowe's book is Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story, and is based on his 'undercover' observations of a San Diego high school at the dawn of the 80's, though the film is really more about 80's mall culture then high school cliques. It has a great period soundtrack and an impressive cast including a 20 year old Jennifer Jason Lee and 24 year old Judge Reinhold as siblings. This was also the film that made a young Sean Penn a star, the look on his face when teacher Ray Walston gives the pizza he ordered away to his class mates, its priceless. This film is smart, its funny, sometimes a little poignant, and impressively non-judgy. A great time capsule it's really an anthropological movie, a deserved classic. ***1/2

Can't Hardly Wait (1998)

I didn't watch the teen comedies of my teen years when I was a teenager, they held little interest for me at the time. I now have a mild interest in maybe seeing a few, out of nostalgia and a periodic desire to see the kinds of films I don't generally gravitate towards. Can't Hardly Wait was on TV earlier this week so I thought I'd give it a go. It's pretty good for what it is, not great but enjoyable enough. What impressed me the most was the shear number of recognizable names in the cast, which is actually pretty logical given that the film is chiefly about a high school graduation party with perhaps a couple of hundred people in attendance, so I'm sure that production was just scouring late 90's Hollywood for anyone who looked like they might pass as a high school senior. Here is a list of some of the recognizable people at said party, Ethan Embry, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lauren Ambrose, Seth Green, Jason Segel, Clea DuVall, Jamie Pressly, Freddy Rodriguez, Eric Balfour, Selma Blair, and Sara Rue. I'm glad I finally saw it. ***

Licence to Kill (1989)

Bond #16 is Timothy Dalton's second and final appearance in the title role, and you know I wish he'd done more of these, he brings a seriousness and internal life to the character that is fascinating to watch. This film may be the least Bond like of the Bond movies, at least in the first two thirds where it's a little bit revenge thriller, a little bit Miami Vice, though toward the end when the bad guy's secret base is falling apart it classic Bond with 80's flavoring. It' probably closet thematically to the arc that spans On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever involving the death of Bond's wife and his quest for revenge against Blofield. Here Bond is also taking things personally, after a drug lord (played by Robert Davi, who is also the villain in Goonies of all things) kills Felix Leiter's (David Hedison) new wife (Priscilla Barnes) and has a shark bit one of his friends legs off. As a result Bond goes rouge, loses his 'license to kill', but still benefits from the rare filed assistance of Q (Desmond Llewelyn) who gets the most screen time in any of his 17 Bond pictures. Exotic locations include the Florida keys and the fictitious Caribbean nation of Isthmus (shads of Panama, but filmed in Mexico). Future Mrs. Richard Gere Carey Lowell is the principle Bond girl, Everett McGill and Bencio del Toro have supporting roles. Wayne Newton is in this as a sort-of televangelist, while Gladys Knight sings the theme song, though the end credits number "If You Ask Me Too" performed by Pattie Label is better known. ***1/2

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Late entry in the 'classic universal monster' cycle, Creature from the Black Lagoon is from the 1950's rather then the 30's and 40's, it's also a better film then I thought it would be. You've likely seen its retreads, a group of scientists in the jungle looking for signs of a rumored ancient monster, this group is in the Amazon looking for bones from a half man/ half fish creature, and encountering the real, living thing. What chiefly makes this movie work is its not too long (less then 90 minutes), takes itself seriously but not too seriously, and has a good cross section of stock characters, including a love triangle between noble scientist (Richard Carlson), looks good in a swimsuit scientist (Julie Adams), and hungry for fame and fortune scientist (Richard Denning). Also in the cast are Whit Bissell, who was born to smoke a pipe, and Nestor Paiva as Lucas, the groups guide and boat captain whose best line has got to be: "There are many strange legends in the Amazon. Even I, Lucas, have heard the legend of a man-fish." The creature in the fish-man suit is played by Ben Chapman while on land and Ricou Browning when underwater, and ultimately he's just a lonely gill man, he built that dam because he wants them to stay. ***

The Florida Project (2017)

This movie is just heartbreaking. The Florida Project is about a distinctly 'Florida' version of 'The Projects', poor people who live in gaudy motels nestled among the tacky souvenir shops and abandoned condo complexes of the Orlando area. Brooklynn Prince is fantastic as Moonie, a happy, precious, and undisciplined girl who lives with her pretty, but vulgar and heavily tattooed mother Halley (Bria Vinaite, also very good) in a $35 a night room at The Magic Castle Motel in Kissimmee, Florida. Halley is consistently unemployed, getting food from friends, and high pressure selling cheap perfumes to tourists in the company of her young daughter. When not with her mother Moonie runs wild and free with other young children in similarly limited circumstances. The most stable figure in her life is Bobby Hicks (William Dafoe in a rare and appreciated nice guy role) as the slightly grizzled by empathetic manager of The Magic Castle, who in a fantastic sequence runs a suspected pedophile off the motel grounds. As Halley becomes more desperate for money she engages in increasingly risky behavior, and harsh realities slowly start to dawn on her young daughter, leading up to what I will only describe as a moving climax. An unexpectedly powerful film which has a lot to say about America's neglected underclass, trapped in destructive cycles both of circumstance and their own making. One of the best movies I've seen this year. ****

Rescue Dawn (2006)

Rescue Dawn is director Werner Herzog's scripted dramatic rendering of events he had previously covered in his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly. It is the story of Dieter Dengler, the German born U.S. pilot who was the first American to escape from a POW camp during the Vietnam War. His plane was shot down over Laos in February of 1966, he was captured, tortured, and placed in a POW camp along with two fellow Americans, three Thai's and one Chinese. The group staged a mass escape in the summer of 1966 but ultimately it was only Dieter who was able to make it out alive. Dengler had endured harsh conditions before growing up in Germany during and in the aftermath of the second World War, and his determination to survive served him well. After Vietnam Dieter worked as a test pilot and survived multiple other crashes before succumbing to Lou Gehrig's disease in 2001. Dieter is played affectively by Christian Bale in the film, though I wish he had at least tried for a German accent. Steve Zahn gives a better then expected performance as fellow POW Duane W. Martin. This is quite the story. ***1/2

The Living Daylights (1987)

Bond #15 is Timothy Dalton's first appearance in the role. Thought there is not a hard break here per say, The Living Daylights is where I would reset the chronology and divide the Connery/Lazenby/Moore Bond's from the Dalton (and presumably Brosnan) one's. Timothy Dalton is 16 years younger then Connery and 19 younger then Moore, so he's of a different generation and not buyable as a continuation of the previous continuity. Even age difference aside Dalton's Bond is of a different character then his predecessors, and of a more serious disposition, as is the tone of the film. A late cold war story of yet another rouge Soviet (played by Dutch actor Jeroen Krabbé'), this one colluding with an American arms dealer played by Joe Don Baker, who is this films biggest throw back to the camp quality of Roger Moore's Bond films. The rest of the film is fairly serious though, for a Bond film, and refreshing for being so. Exotic locations include Gibraltar, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Tangier and Afghanistan, this is a very late 80's topical Bond. Maryam d'Abo is a Bond girl, and the theme song is by A-ha, so now I know two A-ha songs. I really liked the sequence at the end with Dalton and Andreas Wisniewski fighting on rope net dangling from the back of a moving plane. John Rhys-Davies plays a Russian general. ***1/2 for reinventing itself.

Lucky (2017)

While Frank and Ava, a fourth coming film about the tempestuous relationship between Frank Sinatra and the actress Ava Gardner will be Harry Dean Stanton's final film credit, his penultimate film Lucky is the perfect spiritual benediction to the long career of this great character actor, who passed away in September at age 91. A pleasant amble of a film, not much plot wise happens in Lucky, which simply depicts around five days in the life of its titular nonagenarian protagonist. Wearing a cowboy hat and a plaid shirt (he has a wardrobe containing a number of such identical garments) Lucky shuffles along the streets of the small Arizona desert town where he lives, and interacts with various locals.

Lucky seems to be a generally beloved resident of his little community, though we don't get much in the way of direct backstory, such as how he ended up in this town. Most of the biographical information we get about this character are things he shares with the actor portraying him, Lucky is a never married atheist originally from Kentucky who was a cook in the navy during World War II. While occasionally cranky there is something just very endearing and likable about him, and while he may seem to posses little in life we learn that his name is a perfect summation of what he feels himself to be.

From an original screenplay by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja, Lucky is capably helmed by the actor John Carroll Lynch in his directorial debut, his style is for the most part simple and straight forward, save for one late night bar sequence I have not been able to fully figure out. The film is packed with likable supporting roles and nicely cast, including Ed Begley Jr., Tom Skerritt, Beth Grant, James Darren in his first film appearance in 16 years, and Stanton's friend and semi-frequent director David Lynch as a widower in search of his lost tortoise. I found it all rather enjoyable, and very low key. ***1/2.

A View to a Kill (1985)

The "real" Bond # 14 is Roger Moore's last. The plot starts out being about race horses and ends up about computer chips.  Christopher Walken plays an industrialist and Soviet sleeper agent gone rouge, super model Grace Jones is his chief henchwoman. Former TV spy Partrick Macness from The Avengers assists Bond for a bit, and Tanya Roberts, now best known as Midge Pinciotti on That 70's Show is a Bond girl. Exotic locations include Siberia, France, and the San Francisco Bay area. There is a scene where the bad guys start a fire at San Francisco City Hall, to be able to film this scene the production had to coordinate with the then mayor Dianne Feinstein and she and Sir Roger Moore became friends, true story. Duran Duran did the theme song. This is a better movie then Octopussy. ***

Never Say Never Again (1983)

Sean Connery returns to the role of James Bond for the second and final time in the appropriately titled Never Say Never Again. A continuity orphan Never Say Never Again was not produced by the Eon group like the rest of the films in the James Bond franchise, and accordingly is not generally "numbered" among them. So while this is technically Bond #14 so is A View To A Kill which came out 2 years later. The reason this movie even got to be made is do to a legal dispute involving Kevin McClory, a writer and producer on the 1965 Bond film Thunderball, which resulted in his retaining remake rights to that story, which is essentially what Never Say Never Again is, a remake a Thunderball. In fact the first 40% or so of the film is such a near beat by beat repetition of the earlier movie that I found it kind of grating, though it starts to vary more significantly from the original in the second half which is the better part of the film, even with its interestingly odd 'video game' competition between Bond and villain Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Exotic locations include an English heath resort, the Bahamas, the south of France, and north Africa. A 29 year old Kim Basinger is a Bond girl, and Mr. Bean himself Rowan Atkinson is in this for some reason. Max von Sydow is wasted in a brief cameo as Blofield. While it was nice to see Connery back I wish he had been given new material. **1/2

Octopussy (1983)

Octopussy, the 13th James Bond movie is easily the worst so far. The first two thirds were surpassingly dull, the last third however was pretty good. The plot is a little confusing, its actually two plots, one involving the forging of Faberge eggs and the other the smuggling of a nuclear weapon. Exotic locations include wherever that pre-title sequence is supposed to be set (I'm at a loss, maybe Mexico?) both sides of Berlin, Russia, India, and more then the usual amount of time in Britain. Two Swedish born Bond girls here, Kristina Wayborn and Maud Adams, the latter a repeat from The Man with the Golden Gun, but here playing a different character. The very white French star Louis Jourdan plays an exiled Afghani prince. "All Time High" sung by Rita Coolidge may be the best of the lesser known Bond theme songs. **

The Big Sick (2017)

Inspired by events early in the relationship between Pakistani born comic Kumail Nanjiani and his North Carolina born wife Emily, who co-wrote the screenplay together, The Big Sick is an unusually smart, even effecting comedy, and doubtless one of the best films of the year. Directed by the actor Michael Showalter and produced by Judd Apatow, this film has all the heart and wit of the latters best work, but is far below its median in terms of crudity. After having a fight and breaking up over Kumail's unwillingness to tell his very traditional Pakistani parents that he is dating a white girl, Emily (Zoe Kazan, adorable) falls into a coma, leaving Kumail to help guide her parents (perfectly cast Holly Hunter and Ray Romano) through this very trying situation. While there is obviously an air of While You Were Sleeping about the proceedings, The Big Sick is far from shy on its own merits. Nanjiani is a revelation, funny, a really sweet seeming guy, I only hope he can find or create more film properties worthy of him. A real treat of a film. ****

Columbus (2017)

The city of Columbus, Indiana, in addition to being the home town of current vice president Mike Pence, is also home to an unusually large concentration of modernist architecture, to the point that its a bit of a tourist mecca to a niche crowd of architecture nerds. The plot of the new film Columbus,  like the town in which it is set, revolves around architecture, and there is something architectural about the way it is filmed by video artist Kogonada. The framing and composition of the shots is modernist, removed, maybe slightly off center, but the emotional core of the film is quite strong, with subtlety effecting performances throughout, particularly by the young Haley Lu Richardson, who is making a strong early impression with her work here and in The Edge of Seventeen, one of last years better films.

Richardson plays Casey, a smart young woman just a year out of high school who is working at the local library and helping her single mother Maria (Michelle Forbes) for whom she seems nervously concerned. Casey has a love of the architectural treasures in her community, and it is this interest that first breakers the ice with Jin (John Cho) the son of a prominent architectural scholar, who has traveled to the small town from his native Korea after his father feel into coma while in Columbus conducting research. This unlikely couple, both lonely and dealing with complicated parental relationships, comes into each others lives at pivotal moments of self discovery, and help one another navigate their complicated feelings towards their parents.

The small supporting cast, chiefly Rory Culkin and Parker Posey do fine work here as well, but the movie belongs Cho and Richardson, both doing the best work they have ever done. A beautiful, profound little film that caught me by surprise and may be the best new movie I've seen all year. I just loved this. ****

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Bond number 12 means that I am half way through and finally inside my own lifetime. In a more serious and realistic (to the extent that James Bond movies can be called realistic) vain then the previous couple of outings in the series, the plot here concerns the sinking of a British spy vessel in the Mediterranean, and the cold war motivated race to retrieve sunken military technology there on. Exotic locations include Greece, northern Italy, Albania, and Cypress, or was it Crete? French model Carole Bouquet is the principle Bond girl, Israeli actor Topol (Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof) plays a prominent blackmarketer. For the first (and possibly only?) time M does not appear in this movie, as actor Bernard Lee died early in the filming process. This films pre-credit sequence feature the first appearance of Blofeld, though never seen head on and never identified by name, since we last saw him being slammed against the side of an oil rig in a helicopter attached to a giant magnet in Diamonds are Forever 10 years previously. Blofeld is apparently killed off in this little cameo, and frankly its a disappointing ending for him. Still *** Also good theme song.


Ranking the Bonds so far:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
Dr. No
Thunderball
Diamonds are Forever
You Only Live Twice
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
Live and Let Die
For Your Eyes Only
The Man with the Golden Gun

Pinaple Express (2008)

Seth Rogen and James Franco's "pot action movie" has a few good scenes (like Rogen's undercover process serving at the beginning, or him and Franco stoned in the woods playing leapfrog) but isn't really my thing. Somewhat notable for early appearances by Danny McBride and Amber Heard. **

Spielberg (2017)

HBO made documentary overview of the life and work of director Steven Spielberg. Even at nearly two and a half hours in length the film is not exhaustive, but all the high points are covered, and I got a pretty good sense of the family divorce drama that so effected Steven as a young man, and is especially felt in his early work. One common criticism of Steven Spielberg, and it is addressed in the film, is that his inauguration of "the summer blockbuster" "ruined" movies. I don't think that is a fair criticism, Spielberg is gifted, a master of smart, big tent entertainment, he can't be blamed for his lesser imitators or the profit driven nature of the film industry. He truly is one of the most remarkable directors in cinema history, and while there have been some misses in his career the overall quality of the bulk of his work is truly impressive. ***

Coriolanus (2011)

Adaptation of the lesser known Shakespeare play about the rise, fall, and quest for revenge of the 5th century BC Roman leader Gaius Marcius Coriolanus. This movie is done in the style of such other Shakespeare film adaptions as Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and Julie Taymor's Titus, where the setting is amorphously contemporized (Coriolanus is evocative of 1990's Bosnia) but the original Shakespearian language is kept, with Brian Cox and Vanessa Redgrave particularly good with the dialogue. The film stars Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus, this is also his directorial debut and he acquits himself quite well at it. Jessica Chastain and Gerard Butler also appear in this, and the latters presence begs the question of just how much the venn diagrams for Shakespeare fans and Gerard Butler fans overlaps. This is a good movie, I thought the adaption worked well, you can follow events pretty easily which is sometimes a little difficult to do with Shakespeare, especially when they use the original dialogue. I also thought that it helped my viewing that I wasn't familiar with this story, and its a pretty good story, I'd be curious to see another adaption. ***1/2

Career Opportunites (1991)

John Hughes wrote, but did not direct (and in fact expressed some disappointment with the finished product) what feels like a lesser cousin to Ferris Bueller. Frank Whaley plays Jim Dodge, a 21 year old big talker from the Illinois suburbs who is still living at home and going nowhere in life. Fired from a string of jobs Jim eventually takes a position as the "night cleanup boy" at local Target store. On his first day Jim ends up locked in the store overnight with his high school crush Josie McClellan (Jennifer Connelly) a typically Hughesian story of adolescent wish fulfillment. Also rather Hughesian are the two bumbling robbers who end up breaking into the store. A "good enough" movie Career Opportunities is understandably not numbered among Hughes better films. Much of the movie was filmed at night inside a Georgia Target store which is fun to look at, remember cassette tape racks? There were only around 400 Target stores when this movie was shot in 1990, today there are over 1,800. While that chain has faired far better then similar ones like Shopko and Kmart, which were more successful then Target at the time this film was made, Career Opportunities is not one of the reasons for this. In fact the store this movie was filmed in actually shut down a few years ago and is now owned by a protestant mega church. **1/2

Moonraker (1979)

The 11th James Bond movie Moonraker is essentially a remake of 10th James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. The villain is Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale) an aerospace billionaire who has enhanced the toxic power of a rare Amazonian orchard and intends to use it to wipe out all human life on Earth (the toxin is human specific and has no effect on plant and animal life). Drax plans to keep a specially selected sample of the best of humanity alive in space until the pollen clears, and I'll be honest his plan is much better thought out and plotted then Karl Stromberg's similar efforts from two years earlier. Further paralleling Bond 10 Bond 11 sees the return of Richard Kiel's Jaws, and again teams the British Bond with a sexy foreign agent, this time Lois Chiles as a CIA operative named Holly Goodhead. Exotic locations include California (and kind of France), Venice, Brazil and outer space. A more refined version of its immediate predecessor, its maybe not quite as much fun but is better put together. ***

Ranking the Bonds so far:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
Dr. No
Thunderball
Diamonds are Forever
You Only Live Twice
The Spy Who Loved Me
Moonraker
Live and Let Die
The Man with the Golden Gun

The Dark Tower (2017)

There is a scene in The Dark Tower where Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) is looking for a back exit from an Manhattan gun shop where he is being menaced by evil forces, he finds his escape behind a pin up of actress Rita Hayworth, an obvious homage to The Shawshank Redemption. This little moment, which pays tribute to a truly great Stephen King film adaption, only further serves to remind the audience what a piss poor one this is. Now I've not read any of the (currently eight) books in Stephen Kings Dark Tower Series, but I know they are generally well regarded, and even from this film one gets a sense that there is an interesting mythology here to explore. Unfortunately director Nikolaj Arcel and the screen writers blow through it all for a 95 minute mediocrity which is perhaps the worst movie I've seen theatrically all year. Were that this was at least interestingly bad, instead its lifelessly generic. Elba does the best he can in this situation, while the films technical lead character Jake Chambers (Tom Tyler) is just kind of there. Matthew McConaughey's villain 'The Man in Black' is hammy and never really given a chance to develop or seem truly menacing, even while he employs his mind control powers in ways that could have had quite the creepy effect if better handled. This should have been the start of a series of films with a slow burn approach to the material, instead its disposable and the length of a TV pilot. Sad. *

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

After touching on such 70's topical themes as heroin smuggling (Live and Let Die) and 'the energy crisis' (The Man With The Golden Gun) its back to maniacal Blofeldian schemes in the 10th Bond picture The Spy Who Loved Me. Curd Jürgens plays an oil baron and Germanic variant on Aristotle Onassis named Karl Stromberg, whose new advanced submarine tracking technology is a prelude to a plot to trigger World War III and start humanity over under the sea. I could go on at length at how ill-conceived and poorly thought out Stromberg's scheme is here, even if he really wanted to do this thing he is nowhere near ready logistically to keep a viable human genetic base alive, yet he goes ahead anyway. Exotic locations include Austria, Egypt, Sardinia, and the deep blue sea. This film is more overtly Cold War then a lot of Bond movies, with James partnered with his female and Soviet equivalent Anya Amasova, played by future Mrs. Ringo Starr Barbara Bach. This is also the movie that introduces who I think is the only recurring henchman in the Bond franchise, Richard Kiel's metal mouthed giant "Jaws". This is ridicules but fun. Also one of the better Bond theme songs.***

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)

Bond movie #9 has 007 in the crosshairs of the worlds greatest assassin, the conveniently never photographed Francisco Scaramanga (Christopher Lee). The wonderfully 70's plot concerns nefarious efforts to corner the market on a new solar cell technology, one vital to confronting 'the energy crises'. Exotic locations include Beirut (on a sound stage), Macau, Hong Kong, and other islands off the Chinese coast, as well as Thailand, where Sheriff J.W. Pepper (Clifton James) from Live and Let Die makes an unlikely reappearance in an unlikely car chase by an AMC Hornet of an AMC Matador Coupe (I hope that cross promotion paid well). Britt Ekland, who interestingly appeared on screen with Lee the previous year in the cult horror film The Wicker Man, is a dimmer then average Bond girl. Hervé Villechaize is Lee's assistant Nick Nack. Nick Nack's chief function is to assist a tall man who likes to wear white suits on an exotic island, and thus The Man with the Golden Gun can be viewed as, and I would argue should be viewed as, that one time Mister Roarke let Tattoo go on a Fantasy Island vacation. ***

Ranking the Bonds so far:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service
From Russia with Love
Goldfinger
Dr. No
Thunderball
Diamonds are Forever
You Only Live Twice
Live and Let Die
The Man with the Golden Gun

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

This is the latest film from director Luc Besson, perhaps best known for the 1997 feature The Fifth Element. Based on the French science fiction comic book series Valérian and Laureline, which ran from 1967 to 2010, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Plants shares the crowded visual sense of The Fifth Element, though perhaps the best point of comparison might be the 1968 movie Barbarella. Both films were directed by Frenchmen (Roger Vadim in the case of Barbarella), based on French comic books from the 1960's, depict crowded, trippy, and not always coherent futures centuries hence, and made points of emphasizing the figures of their female leads, who play outer space secret agents, in Barbarella Jane Fonda, in Valerian Cara Delevingne.

Delveingne is Laureline and she is partnered (logically) with Valerian (Dane DeHaan), a notorious ladies man who is constantly trying to convince Laureline he would give it all up if she would marry him. The two spar continuously throughout the film, though the chemistry is not very strong and you'll likely find you don't care much if they end up together or not. For plot the couple become involved in a case that ends up related to the genocide of a peaceful, Polynesian-type alien race, and the subsequent cover up. They do most of their sleuthing on Alpha, a kind of Babylon 5 on steroids whose origin story, depicted at the beginning of the film, is its most interesting part.

I found the movie entertaining enough, I was never really bored, though I have serious doubts about the films re-watchability. Clive Owen and Ethan Hawke are in this, and John Goodman voices a CGI character. Rihanna appears as a shape-shifting alien "performer" and does a pretty suggestive dance so this movie isn't really for kids, though to be honest I'm not sure who it is for. **

Live and Let Die (1973)

Despite having one of the more memorable title songs of the franchise, Live and Let Die is my least favorite of the Bond movies yet. Roger Moore took over the lead in this eight installment and so far I'm not particularly impressed, this Bond feels like a slightly different character then the one played by Connery and Lazenby. We are starting to move more into the realm of self parody here, though the movie still takes its self mostly seriously. A 21 year old Jane Seymour is the main Bond girl and gets a well deserved "Introducing" credit. Yaphet Kotto is the main villain and the "exotic locations" are New York City, New Orleans, and a fictional Caribbean Nation called San Monique. This film could be considered as part of the Blaxploitation sub genera popular at the time, though for awhile late in the film it essentially becomes Smokey and the Bandit on boats. ***

Ranking the Bonds so far:

From Russia with Love
Her Majesty's Secret Service
Goldfinger
Dr. No
Thunderball
Diamonds are Forever
You Only Live Twice
Live and Let Die

Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

All the back of the DVD box bothers to say for plot description on this one is that: "The fourth installment of the hugely successful Resident Evil franchise, Resident Evil: Afterlife is again based on the wildly popular video game series." Not that it matters but there is actually a lot of plot here, Alice and her clones take out Umbrella Corp headquarters in Japan, she loses her powers, goes to Alaska to try and find the group she was with in the last film, then makes her way down LA and hooks up with a group of survivors hold up inside a prison, which they eventually break out of with the help of Wentworth Miller of all people. The film ends in yet another cliff hanger, but you won't care. *1/2

Diamonds are Forever (1971)

Sean Connery returns to the role that made him famous in Bond movie number seven, Diamonds are Forever. Feeling more like a coda to the last movie then anything else there is a brief pre title sequence where Bond seemingly dispatches Blofeld (this time sporting hair and played by Charles Gray) presumably in response to his murder of Mrs. Bond at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The main plot concerns the hording of South African diamonds for nefarious purposes, and the chief exotic locals in this are Holland and Las Vegas, where a reclusive Howard Hughes type Billionaire plays a major part. Jill St. John is the main Bond girl, a diamond smuggler named Tiffany Case. There is also a literal 'couple' of gay hitmen in this, and I'm not sure if that's progressive or retrogressive. My chief takeaway from this film is that I want to visit 1971 Circus Circus. ***


Ranking the Bonds so far:

From Russia with Love
Her Majesty's Secret Service
Goldfinger
Dr. No
Thunderball
Diamonds are Forever
You Only Live Twice

Army of Shadows (1969)

A film about the French Resistance in World War II directed by one member of the French Resistance (Jean-Pierre Melville) adapted from a novel by another member of the French Resistance (Joseph Kessel) and based on the true experiences of yet other members of the French Resistance. You can't do much better for authenticity on its subject matter then Army of Shadows, a film that depicts the actions of the Resistance as brave, but far from glamorous.

Episodic in nature the film follows a handful of members of one resistance cell over the course of around six to eight months during the heart of the Nazi occupation, late 1942 and early 1943. Unlike a lot of other films about the Resistance Army of Shadows lacks that one big mission, blowing up a munitions base, or assassinating a General, things like that. Instead the Resistance spends most of its time trying to avoid capture, rescue captured associates, and hunt down traitors in their ranks. While they provide the British with some intelligence and help rescue some of their downed airman, Resistance effectiveness was limited. Effectiveness however was not the central point, the central point was standing up, something which this film makes clear most French people (understandably) did not do.

Army of Shadows is not the comforting story of the Resistance most French people liked to tell themselves, as a result the film was not particularly well received in France at the time it was released. In fact, taking their lead from French critics American distributers did not release the film in this country, that is until after it was 'rediscovered', the movie was released theatrically in the United States only in 2006 and made lots of years best lists, including being named as the Best Film of the Year by Newsweek, The New York Times, The LA Weekly, Saloon.com and others. This is a pretty amazing movie and defiantly worth seeing, despite being rather bleak. ****

It (2017)

A horrifying reimagining of Albert Lamorisse's 1956 French short film The Red Balloon. No actually It is the newest version of the story from Stephan King's 1986 novel of the same name, which was previously made into a television mini-series in 1990, with Tim Curry memorably playing the demon clown Pennywise. Set of course in small town Maine, but updated from the youth of the baby boomers to the 1980's, the film invites obvious comparison not just to its source material but to the Netflix series Stranger Things, as its protagonists are chiefly Jr. High level kids dealing with the paranormal, one of whom (Finn Wolfhard) is also on Stanger Things.

I'll say right up front that Stranger Things is better, but this is still good. I liked the young cast, of whom the vaguely Elle Fanning like Sophia Lillis has the most potential to grow in an Oscar worthy direction. Bill Skarsgård of course has some big shoes (pun intended) to fill as the movies It. He's creepy, does a good job, but Pennywise suffers some from diminishing returns do to his frequent appearances. This film takes it time, and makes sure everyone gets their little story line, but I can certainly understand why it was approached previously as a mini-series rather then a film. There is a good sense of ill ease permeating this movie, though often its most discomforting parts are the human rather then the supernatural.

Is it a spoiler to say there will be sequels? ***1/2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)

Bond number six is the George Lazenby Bond. When star Sean Connery opted to not re-up for this picture, the producers turned to a 29 year old Australian model who had never acted before. The opening credits this time are instrumental, no theme song (because how are you going to a write sexy song with "In her majesty's secret service" in the lyrics), and contains a montage of previous villains and Bond girls in an effort to reinforce continuity with the previous films in the series. I saw this as a bad sign, but I actually really liked Lazenby in this, he really should have made more Bond films, and he admits that in the special features on the DVD. In hind sight one of the reasons that Lazenby works so well is that unlike other actors who have played the part, you likely don't know Lazenby from anything else, he didn't have much of a career after this film and thus works as a kind of 'generic James Bond', the likes of which you might imagine if you'd never seen any of the movies and just read the books.

The foreign locations in this film are the Mediterranean and Switzerland, this is the Bond film with Blofeld's Alpine layer. I liked Telly Savala's seemingly younger, more charming and Lex Luther like Blofeld. Diana Rigg is the chief Bond girl in this, she comes with spy experience from three years on TV's The Avengers. **Spoilers** Bond actually marries her at the end of this film, though she is of course ill fated. I thought this plot crinkle worked however, and added a new dimension from what I'd seen before. This is already one of my favorite James Bond movies. ****

Ranking the Bond movies in order thus far:

From Russia with Love
Her Majesty's Secret Service
Goldfinger
Dr. No
Thunderball
You Only Live Twice

Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)

I was not expecting much from the this film but it really surprised and impressed me. From the previews I knew the story concerned the 1939 state visit of Britain's royal couple King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to FDR's family home in New York, a visit that played some part in paving the way for lend lease support of the UK against Germany, and later direct American involvement on the Allied side in the War. While that is a major part of the film it is not its central focus, rather that focus is on the, lets say unusual, relationship between sitting president Franklin Roosevelt, and his fourth cousin Margaret "Daisy" Suckely, here played by Laura Linny who really sells this whole film.

In fact I think a case can be made that this is the most rounded portrait of FDR in film. Which is made more surprising by the fact that Franklin Roosevelt is here portrayed by Billy Murray, who plays the part straight and does a much better job then I would have anticipated. We here see demonstrated the very admirable qualities of president Roosevelt, his perseverance in the face of adversity, such as his polio. His tremendous foresight about the coming war in Europe, and his subtle calculated manipulation of events to slowly nudge an isolationist United States in the interventionist direction he knew it needed to go. Yet the film does not shy away from the less reputable parts of FDR's persona, like his carrying on an extramarital affair with his cousin, and his secretary, and a DC socialite, all at the same. It also appears that these women were aware of, and even on good terms with, each other. Which caused me to realize midway through the film that Franklin Roosevelt, was for all intents and purposes, a practicing polygamist. Yet he was still a great man, and this film does a remarkable job of conveying that.

A deceptively low key film, large portions play like an unusually dry screwball comedy. While Franklin and his cousin Daisy are the primary focus of the film, plenty of screen time is given to the royal couple played by Samuel West and Olivia Colman, who are really just as interesting, and it was nice to see these "characters" again after the Kings Speech. I thought this movie was a real underappreciated find. ***1/2

You Only Live Twice (1967)

How to sum up the plot on this on this one? How about James Bond and a bunch of ninja's battle space piracy in Japan. Yes that sounds odd, but I'd say its an accurate description for this 5th James Bond picture. You Only Live Twice is also the Bond movie with the volcano base, has James don yellow face, and Donald Pleasence serve as the model for the look later appropriated by Dr. Evil. The screenplay here was written by Roald Dahl, which perhaps explains much of the strangeness. **1/2

Brigsby Bear (2017)

Brigsby Bear is far from the easiest movie to think of other films to compare it to. The best I can come up with is the 1999 comedy Blast From the Past, which really seems quite quaint now. Like that Brendan Fraser vehicle the central character in Brigsby Bear was raised alone by his parents in an underground bunker, believing the air above him to be poison, and with little real conception of the outside world. Only James (Saturday Night Live's Kyle Mooney, who also co-wrote the screenplay) parents aren't really his parents, they are a math professor (Jane Adams) and a successful toy designer (Mark Hamill, who is obviously having a blast with his part) who for largely unexplained reasons kidnaped James as an infant to raise in utter isolation. James only real connection with a world beyond his bunker is a campy, retro style children's program titled The Adventures of Brigsby Bear, which father figure Hamill has been secretly producing exclusively for him for the last 25 or so years.

James monotonous life is forever changed when a criminal investigation lead by a Detective Vogel (Greg Kinnear) manages to finally locate him and unite the confused young man with the biological family he had never known, consisting of father Greg (Matt Walsh), mother Louise (Michaela Watkins) and younger sister Aubrey (Ryan Simpkins). Do to the unique conditions of his upbringing James is a very weird guy, though to be honest I think someone really raised in a scenario like the one in this movie would be even odder. A social worker played by Claire Danes tries to help James family integrate their son with the wider world, and wean him off his obsession with Brigsby Bear, but to little success.

Having only recently become aware of the concept of movies, James wishes to use the recovered props and equipment from the criminal investigation into his faux parents to make a Brigsby Bear feature film. Though he is in essence celebrating the vehicle of his childhood manipulation, James efforts are ultimately therapeutic for him, and the aid he gets from his sisters friends, principally Jorge Lendeborg Jr. and Alexa Demie, helps him learn to socialize and relate with other people, as does leaked clips from Brigsby Bear going viral on the internet and furthering public fascination with James unique case.

This is a very unique movie that manages to walk a very tight tonal line for black comedy meets belated coming of age tale. The film is set in and filmed around Utah and I recognized a number of locations, including two local movie theaters. Brigsby Bear is currently flying mostly under the radar with a very limited theatrical release and a current box office total of less then half a million dollars, yet it seems destined for cult status. An oddball film which while sporting a rather original premise, still feels very much in sync with the nostalgia drenched pop culture of our time. If nothing else I recommend spending a little time looking up Brigsby Bear on YouTube.

Wind River (2017)

Though its two main stars are box office bonafide, Wind River can not be mistaken for Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch solve a murder. This somber crime drama is the third straight critical darling (after Sicario and Hell or High Water) from writer/director Taylor Sheridan, who prior to becoming the seeming "in" auteur of the moment, had been an actor with recurring roles on the TV series Veronica Mars and Sons of Anarchy. Sheridan's cinematic sensibility seems to be a blend of both film noir and western, with Wind River the story of  the investigation into the mysterious death of an 18 year old Indian girl on a Wyoming reservation. The girl Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Chow) is found dead in the snow by U.S. Fish and Wildlife agent Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) while looking for some mountain lions who have been praying on local livestock. Lambert is particularly effected by the young girls death as she had been a good friend of his own daughter, who had passed away under similar circumstances three years prior. Lambert aggress to aid the relatively inexperienced FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) who is dispatched from the Bureaus Las Vegas office to conduct a preliminary investigation into the death, they are assisted by the tribal police chief Ben, played to good effect by the great (but to often underused) actor Graham Greene.

The film is largely of a slow pace, a meditative character study that at times is difficult to watch, with the particulars of Natalie's death best left to experience on screen. This is a very strong, understated film, that feels deservedly destined for a best picture Oscar nomination. The movie also serves to raise public consciousness of the very real problem of missing and murdered women on America's Indian reservations. Worth seeing for those who can stomach a really tragic story. ****

Carol (2015)

Director Todd Haynes lesbian counter part to his tale of repression and male homosexual love in the 1950's Far From Heaven. Carol is based on the 1952 romance novel The Price of  Salt, published under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan by the author Patricia Highsmith, best known for her Tom Ripley novels and Strangers on a Train. The story concerns a middle aged woman named Carol (Cate Blanchett) who is going through a divorce and child custody fight, and the relationship she strikes up with a poor, sincere but ambitious shop girl played by Rooney Mara. The two leads give strong performances, both doing a fine job of keeping up the balance of implied and overt images and conveying the interact subtlety which was no doubt so central to the establishing of this kind of relationship in that time and place, the film being principally set in the Manhattan and New Jersey of December 1952. The supporting cast is strong as well and includes Sarah Paulson as Carol's long time friend Abby, and Kyle Chandler as her husband Harge. The production does an impressive job of conveying the period setting on a fairly limited budget. Obviously this film is not to all tastes, but I thought it was an empathetic and for the most part tasteful exploration of forbidden love. ***1/2

Logan Lucky (2017)

Logan Lucky marks director Steven Soderbergh's return to feature film making after a four year "retirement" which saw him direct 20 episodes of the Cinemax early 1900's medical drama The Knick, and serve as cinematographer on the sequel to his own 2012 film Magic Mike. Soderbergh, who is perhaps most famous for his highly successful Oceans film franchise, again tackles the heist comedy genera in what is essentially a redneck version of Oceans 11, and pretty much that same observational joke is made over the course of the film. Channing Tatum and Adam Driver play brothers who embark on a scheme to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway, and bring into the plot a cast of oddball characters including a explosive expert played by Daniel Craig, and their "hot sister" Mellie, played by Elvis's granddaughter Riley Keough. The films Name loaded cast also includes Katie Holmes, Katherine Waterston, Seth MacFarlane, Sebastin Stan and Hillary Swank. Country star Dwight Yoakam cameos as an incompetent prison warden. This movie is full of references to the blue collar south to add local color to a heist plot that is so complicated, that its doubtful these kind of knuckleheads could ever come up with it, let alone pull it off. Still the film is an enjoyable ride and I will be curious to see how well its plot intricacies hold up on repeat viewing. But for one viewing at least its worth your time. ***1/2

My Darling Clementine (1946)

The most gorgeously photographed black and white western I have ever seen, this movie would be worth seeing even with the sound turned off. My Darling Clementine is John Ford's take on the legend of Wyatt Earp and the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Ford renders the story in the suitably iconic manner you would expect of him. While the film is based on the writings of Earp biographer Stuart N. Lake, I have no doubt that large portions of this film are highly mythologized, or even just made up. Not looking into the history I have a hard time believing much if anything concerning Linda Darnell's character is real, and while Ford had stated that the depiction of the final gunfight is taken exactly as it was told to him by the real Earp decades earlier, who knows how reliable it really is. However none of that matters much, because as a film its most excellent, and as Ford himself would make the point the better part of two decades later:"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Fonda is great as Earp, and the lesser known actress Cathy Downs absolutely the perfect choice for Clementine, while the rest of the cast is strong as well. A picture very much deserving of its prominent place in the canon of the film western. ****

Speed (1994)

Yep I'd never seen Speed, the bomb on the bus movie that made Sandra Bullock a star, and she really is adorable in this. I didn't know, or had forgotten, that Jeff Daniels is in this as well, he is the ultimately expendable partner for LA cop Keanu Reeves. Watching this early Reeve's role one is reminded how much he really could not act, now he's not a great actor even today, but he's improved since this, noticeably. Speed works, perhaps ironically, because of momentum, there is really not a lot to this film, but its brisk pace is makes it a successes. Dennis Hopper is of course an obvious choice for the villain, but effective, and has a memorable death. There are far better 90's cop movies, like Heat, The Negotiator, and the 2nd and 3rd Die Hard, but Speed is still enjoyable and makes the list of iconic films for its decade. ***

Resident Evil Extinction (2007)

I found this third Resident Evil film mildly more watchable then the previous two, I think maybe that's because the characters were on the road rather then stuck in a confined place. Picking up 5 years after the previous movie left off, the viral plague of the first two films has further mutated and is gradually turning the Earth into a desert, so it might have been a more interesting choice to set the action in places that aren't already a desert anyway, as this film takes place largely in Utah and Nevada. Millia Jovovich rejoins the group of survivors from the previous film, and as usual for these there is way too much going on, Milla continues to develop her psychic powers, there are mutants, and zombies, and clones, and killer crows, and the Umbrella Cooperation is still up to no good. There are a few more human moments in this then previously, but (spoiler) basically all the characters except Milla are killed off in the end. I'll still watch the next one though, because I bought the DVD 4 pack and am going to get my $10 worth. **

Death Wish (1974)

Before the low rent Cannon Group turned Death Wish into what I can only assume is a series of exploitive, increasing bad franchise movies for Charles Bronson, the original Death Wish was a somewhat exploitive Charles Bronson vehicle that had a little something to say. Born of the "Mad as Hell" urban frustration of the 1970's, Death Wish is also resonate with Trump era rage, and in fact a remake with Bruce Willis is due out later this year. Bronson is Manhattan architect Paul Kersey, whose wife is killed, and grown daughter severely traumatized after a home invasion attack by three hoodlum's, one of whom is a young Jeff Goldblum.

Subsequent to the immediate aftermath of the attack being dealt with, Kersey's bosses send him on assignment to work on a housing development in Arizona, hopping a change of pace will do him good. Inspired by a wild west show, the words of a cowboy zen developer played by Stuart Margolin, and a new found knack with a handgun, when Paul returns to the city he becomes a vigilante, taking out muggers on the streets of New York. Kersey's anonymous deeds inspire fellow New Yorkers to stand up for themselves, decreases street crime, and leaves the D.A. and Police Commissioner in an awkward position, needing to stop Kersey, yet also grateful to him. Vincent Gardenia is the police inspector originally assigned to unmask the vigilante, a task later amended to get him to quietly stand down.

Bronson's transformation from low key liberal to night time avenger is intriguing, you get why he is doing what he is doing, you root for him, but once you remove yourself from the film you see his actions are more then a little problematic, though at the same time not entirely unwarranted. This movie is about venting, the acting out of rage, but is also nuanced enough to be thought provoking. Certainly better then I'd expected it to be. ***

Thunderball (1965)

Now that I've seen the fourth James Bond film I understand why Robert Wagner is wearing an eye patch in Austin Powers. In this movie Bond actually blackmails a woman into having sex with him, and she likes it, pretty gross. The undersea fight goes on too long. ***

Vanilla Sky (2001)

Director Cameron Crowe's stealth science fiction film. I anticipated that it would provoke a strong reaction from me, most likely negative, but possibly positive. Instead I found it kind of uneven, or middling. I used to think that I hated Cameron Crowe, but I've reassessed. I think that if Cameron Crowe and I had gone to high school together we'd have run in completely different social circles and been close to indifferent to each other. Then at some point I'd have found out he liked Billy Wilder movies and been like, 'well he's okay then', but we'd still never interact. ***

Batman & Robin (1997)

As bad as they say. This is a movie whose reputation is earned, and one that prompted a public apology from its director twenty years later. It is one of the most arrogantly lazy movies I have ever seen, and a fine example of the worst excesses of late 1990's big tent filmmaking (another good example of this is the 1998 Godzilla with Matthew Broderick). Nobody gives a good performance in this thing, though Michael Gough probably comes the closest he is hamstrung by the material. Alicia Silverstone is shockingly bad, Arnold Schwarzenegger's performance consists entirely of clichés, and Uma Thurman can't decide if she's channeling Mae West or Bette Davis. I have too much respect for Georgia Clooney to say much, but I offer that there is a reason why Chris O'Donnell is doing procedural TV and not making movies. Shameful. *

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

War for the Planet of Apes, the third film in the 2010's Planet of the Apes reboot franchise, brings to a close (mild spoiler) what could be referred to as The Caesar Trilogy. This movie contains some cleaver re-appropriation of iconography from the original 1968 Planet of the Apes movie, but not that image your probably thinking of. It's a satisfying movie that, again mild spoiler, gives an explanation for why humans lose the ability to speak, something the original franchise never properly explained. Beyond these musings I have little else to add because while War for the Planet of the Apes is a rather good movie, most of what it has to say is 'on the page' so to speak and requires little unpacking. If you liked the other two films in the series I recommend that you see this one, I'd say its the best of the lot. Oh and Woody Harrelson's in this. ***1/2

Tetro (2009)

In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1946 fantasy romance film A Matter of Life and Death (released in the United States as Stairway to Heaven) the sequences in Heaven are done in black and white, while the sequences set on Earth are presented in vibrant Technicolor, a deliberate inversion of how one might expect a bichromial film to render those two realms. In Francis Ford Coppola's Tetro the present is shown in black and white, while flash backs and fantasy sequences appear in color that looks like its from a 1940's film stock. This is one of two major tributes or homages in this movie to the work of the writing and directing team known collectively as The Archers. The other tribute is showing around a full minute clip from "the doll sequence" in P & P's 1951 film The Tales of Hoffman, and then later recreating that scene with contemporary actors.

The influence of mid century British art film combines with that of later motion pictures, largely indie, that used black and white film for artistic, and sometimes budgetary reasons, while the plot of Tetro barrows heavily from the dysfunctional family and angst of expectations motifs associated with the works of Tennessee Williams. Tetro (Vincent Gallo) the films title character is the son of a famed American orchestra conductor who flees to Argentina to escape from the oppressive presence of his imposing and difficult father. After years living mostly below the radar, shacked up with a lovely doctor (Maribel Verdu) and doing lighting work for a local theater troop, Tetro is visited by his much younger half brother Bennie (Coppola find Alden Ehrenreich in his film debut), who takes advantage of work being done on the cruse ship on which he is a waiter to see the sibling he idolized as a young child. Tetro isn't super happy to see him, and it turns out both brothers have a lot to work through vis-a-vis each other and their father.

There are a lot of really beautiful novelistic elements to this film, which is also rather routinely a work of character study as high opera. The film went in a number of directions I was not expecting but they mostly work. One of the most fascinating things about this film is comparing it to earlier works by its famous director, and how different it is from them, while at the same time still very much at peace in his criterion. Tetro would certainly seem dull going to many, and unexpectedly has a fair amount of nudity in it, something which historically Coppola hadn't gone that much in for. Still if you tend to enjoy filmmaking that is a little textually dense, you could be impressed, I was. ****

Ex Machina (2015)

Domhnall Gleeson (son of Brendan) plays Caleb Smith, both an every man and a tech genius, who is not so randomly selected at random as the winner of a weeks vacation with his world famous celebra-boss Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac) at his isolated estate in what looks like maybe Canada or Alaska. It's not really a traditional vacation of course, Nathan has selected Caleb to test if the state of the art, top secret android he built passes the Turing test, a theoretical behavior standard meant to determine if propertied artificial intelligence is really genuinely capable of thought and consciousness, or is just imitating those quality's. Nathan's android is named Ava (Alicia Vikander with CGI trimmings), she's lovely and charming, but what is really going behind her human like face and in inside her cybernetic brain.

The story is really fairly conventional for sci-fi, we've seen it before in everything from The Bicentennial Man to West World, but its expertly and quite moodily handled here. I feel like I should have seem more of what was coming before I did, I too was distracted by the lovely magicians assistant, to borrow a metaphor from the film, and so interested in what was happing on screen that I never got around to projecting it forward to its likely ending. Special notice must go to Oscar Isaac's performance as Bateman, he is one of those phenomenal genius, business guru types, who is so well respected, rich, and all around successful that he has come to relate to lesser intellects with a detachment that echoes that of the artificial intellects he seeks to create. ***1/2

The Last of Robin Hood (2013)

Movie about the final romance in the life of notorious ladies man Errol Flynn, its was not so much May/December as March/December given that Flynn (Kevin Kline) was 48 when it started and his paramour Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning) only 15. We can give Flynn a little slack given that he probably didn't know Beverly's real age when the affair started, she had apparently been lying about it to get chorus line work at the studios, but he no doubt found out the truth rather quickly. Errol persisted in the affair anyway, enabled by Beverly's star struck mother Florence (Susan Sarandon) the couple carried on for two years, Flynn even making what looks like a truly awful pro-Castro movie with her called Cuban Rebel Girls, and then basically died in her arms on a trip to Canada. Flynn took such bad care of himself that his cause of death is literally two lines long on Wikipedia.

The story here is really pretty interesting and spilled into a big public scandle after Flynn's death. All three lead performances here are strong, especially Kline's which is deceptively good, he so naturally seems to inhabit Flynn that he hardly appears to be acting. The problem is the story doesn't seem to lend itself particularly well to a theatrical feature film, the substance is rather lite for the caliber of  the performers in it, the whole thing would have been best suited as a 1970's movie of the week.

The most interesting things about this story happen after the movie ends its narrative, Beverly had a rough decade or so including two failed marriages and a boyfriend killed in struggle over a gun in her apartment, but then she seemed to pull herself together and had a four decade plus long marriage before dying of diabetes and heart failure in 2010. Now a movie about that would probably have been time better spent. **

Trapped by the Mormons (1922)

Shown at the recent Sunstone Symposia in Salt Lake, Trapped by the Mormons is a 1922 British made silent film based on the 1911 novel of the same name by Winifred Graham. The movie is derivative of the 'Mormons as stock villains' trope of Victorian era dime novels. Isoldi Keene is the most successful Mormon missionary in England, this is do in large part to his hypnotic powers, powers which he uses principally on young women, with the intent of shipping them off to Utah to be plural wives.

Isoldi is particularly taken with the lovely young Nora Prescott (Evelyn Brent, the only performer in this movie whose IMDb page contains photographs) who lives with her mother and partially paralyzed father in Manchester. Isoldi strikes up a 'nodding acquaintance' with Nora on her daily walk to work, he eventually introduces her to Mormon pamphlets, fakes a miracle healing to impress her, gets her to invite her female co-works to listen to the missionaries, and hypnotically convinces her to break her engagement to good guy navy man Jim Foster. Suspicious of Nora's sudden and unexplained breaking of their engagement, Jim hires a private eye to help him get the bottom of it. The two quickly discover that Nora, only now realizing the trouble she's in, has become Trapped by the Mormons.

The nefarious Mormons hope to secret Nora out of the country and off to Utah, convincing her parents that she will be taking a trip to The Netherlands as the traveling companion of a lady novelist (actually a Mormon woman in disguise). Nora's father accepts this, thinking it will get his daughter away for the influence of the Mormons he knows she has been seeing, because as he says in title card dialogue "They don't allow Mormons in Holland."

Nora is actually taken to a hotel, which seems to be run by the Mormons, as they prepare for their journey. Jim and the PI track her there, Jim want's to go right in and bust her out, but the seasoned detective cautions they can't do that yet because, and they actually use this term in the title card, it's too much "red tape".  The good guys eventually find just cause to break into the hotel, there is a fight with the Mormons, but eventually the police arrive and all is set right.

This movie is actually pretty entertaining, and though it feels a little unnecessarily stretched out at the end, at 72 minutes in length it's quite watchable. The fact that the LDS Church had officially given up the practice of polygamy more then three decades before this film was released is casually glossed over in the plot with a line or two about how the Mormons are lying about that. The writer of the story obviously had enough exposer to Mormonism to work in a few distinctly Mormon phrases such as "pure and delightsome" and "time and all eternity", but in still more ways is widely inaccurate, including a depiction of a Mormon baptism consisting of a vaguely Catholic hand gesture of blessing and standing about knee deep in water.

The copy of the film I saw was mostly fair, but there were times when the actors facial features became indistinct, almost bleached, this 95 year old movie could do with a good restoration. For its historical novelty and strangely endearing oddness I give Trapped by the Mormons ***.

Jaws III (1983)

Jaws III seems to accelerate the aging of the Brody kids a little bit to make them the focus of this first Roy Scheider-less entry in the franchise. Well actually Mike Brody (here played by Dennis Quaid) is the principle focus here, he's in his twenties designing and installing various enclosures and underwater gates at Sea World (yeah, I don't know if I buy it either) while younger brother Sean (John Putch) just stops by for a visit, despite his understandable fear of water. Of course an aggressive great white shark makes it through the gate and Mike's marine biologist girlfriend Kay (Bess Armstrong) wants to save it, creole park manager Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett Jr.) wants to exploit it for profit, and the Brody boys know better from experience. It's kind of interesting that Sea World would agree to licensing their names use in this picture, given that its about a disaster at one of their parks, but I suppose the thinking was any publicity is good publicity, thinking that no doubt changed decades later after the release of another movie, Blackfish. A young, pre-star Lea Thompson appears as a bubbly love interest for Sean. If you see this movie you might notice that the film holds some subpar special effects shots for unusually long periods of time, that's because this movie was released in theaters as Jaws 3-D and wanted to give audiences time to appreciate its effects, which I doubt ever looked right. This film's not great, but honestly works better then it deserves to. **1/2

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Woody Allen's 2008 feature centers on two women, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and her best friend Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) who travel to Spain to spend two months staying with Vicky's aunt Judy (Patricia Clarkson) before Vicky's planed wedding to the reliable Doug (Chris Messina) in the fall. While in Spain the two friends encounter the roughish artist Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) whose seductive ways cause both women to question what they really want in a man. In fact Juan Antonio seems perhaps inadvertently skilled at unhinging women, as further demonstrated by his volatile ex wife Elena (Penélope Cruz, who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this role).

This is not the kind of subject matter I'm usually inclined towards, and the decisions made by some characters in this film made me feel further inclined not to like it. However the quality of the piece, especially the acting and writing, won me over. There is some serious literary merit here, and the film does a very fine job of wrestling with some ambiguous and contradictory elements of human character, especially as they concern love and relationships. Like Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point a major theme in this movie is getting away with something you know your shouldn't, and the effect that has on a person. Given some of the things that director writer Woody Allen has been charged with over the years, its interesting that this is a subject he keeps revisiting, but even the reason for that is ambiguous. ***1/2

Dunkirk (2017)

When I was standing in line for tickets to this movie there was an older man in line near me wearing a Marine veterans baseball cap, I would guess he would have served probably in the 1950's. He was having a conversation with other people in line and stated that he remembered following events in Dunkirk on the radio when he was a boy. That was his introduction to the story of  Dunkirk, my introduction was about 15 years ago when I first saw the academy award winning movie Mrs. Miniver. In Mrs. Miniver there is a sequence where Mr. Miniver (Walter Pigeon) sets off in a small boat to take part in the civilian evacuation of British troops penned in by the Nazi's at Dunkirk, a French resort town just the opposite side of the channel. From the time I saw that sequence I wanted to see a feature length film about that inspiring true story. I got something of that in the 2007 film Atonement, based on the novel of the same name by Ian McEwan, a good portion of that story also takes place at Dunkirk, and includes a truly moving panoramic sequence of how solders dealt with the stress of their situation in a variety of ways.

So when I first saw previews for Dunkirk around a year ago I was pumped. The film is directed by the very talented Christopher Nolan (who turns 47 today) and is best known for his Dark Knight trilogy, and films that have elaborately constructed trick elements, like Memento, The Prestige, and Interstellar. That history made him seem a somewhat counterintuitive choice to helm a film on this subject matter, a World War II battle, but Nolan works some high concept structural elements into the film. The movie is primarily three narratives, all of course associated with Dunkirk, and all operating on a different time scale, though we cut between them as though they were occurring at approximately the same time.

The first story line concerns an unnamed British private (Fionn Whitehead) trying to escape from Dunkirk, and the various solders and sailors he meets along the way. This story takes place over the course of approximately a week. The second story occurs over the course of around a day, and centers on a father (Mark Rylance, the Soviet spy in Bridge of Spies) his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney), his son's friend George (Barry Keoghan), and a stranded solder they pick up at sea (Nolan favorite Cillian Murphy). The final story takes place over the course of about an hour, and concerns some British spitfire pilots, principally one played by Tom Hardy. All of these stories intersect at the end.

The movie is of course reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan, both in part to similar subject matter, as well as the kinetic way in which they were filmed. Nolen also makes good use of the 70mm film stock he shot in, and this film is worth seeing on an IMAX screen for that reason. Like the steely nerve the British showed in this battle Dunkirk has a nicely underplayed intensity about it, there is a subtle effective evocation of sacrifice, fear and courage to it. It is an epic film, and at times a moving film, but not quite the emotionally stirring spectacle I was both expecting and hoping for. For that element turn to the previously mentioned Mrs. Miniver and Atonement, but for a realistic examination of events, whose true importance may not have been fully visible to the participants until some time later, see Dunkirk. ***1/2