Category Archives: Film-Makers

The Magnificent Seven

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A small farming community is being terrorised by a band of thieves and murderers, led by the charismatic but ruthless Calvera (Eli Wallach, previously only known to my girlfriend as the elderly neighbour in The Holiday). He and his gang steal almost everything worth taking from the villagers, leaving them just enough to carry on farming for another year, at which point Calvera will return and repeat the process over again. Sick of this injustice, three villagers head to the nearest saloon and recruit someone to either train or protect them, finding Yul Brynner’s Chris as the perfect fit for the role after he volunteers for something that could get him killed, and offers no reward – a situation very similar to that of defending the village. Chris then goes about assembling a team – you can probably guess how many – of similarly minded men based on Chris’ previous dealings with them or their reputations. 

The line-up has since become a member of the great pantheon of Pub Quiz Questions – I can never remember Brad Dexter or Horst Buchholz, but I’ve won a DVD by naming James Coburn before. The remaining members are Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn and, of course, Steve McQueen, who all have various reasons for signing up, be it running from the law, spotting a money-making opportunity or just plain boredom.

This is one of those films that I remembered through a rose-tinted haze as being a far greater film than it turned out to be. It’s not a bad film, not at all, it’s just not the stone-cold classic I had remembered. My main problem was in the amount of time it took for the Seven to assemble, and the attempts to shed doubt on whether certain members will join or not. It’s clear from the very title of the film that there will be a group of seven defending the village, but the group isn’t together until about halfway through the film! Also, I felt that for the most part enough screentime was given to each of the seven, except for Buchholz’s Chico being given far too much time as the young rookie looking to prove himself, and Coburn’s stoic knife-throwing Britt barely getting a look in after receiving the best introduction of the guys. I’m especially sore about Coburn because he’s my favourite character (and accent) in The Great Escape (coming soon), and he voiced Waternoose in Monsters, Inc. Most of the seven are given some kind of arc of character trait, but Britt’s appears to be just falling asleep under any available tree, and being completely unable to hide behind cover whilst shooting.

Based on The Seven Samurai, I had hoped to watch Akira Kurosawa’s classic epic before seeing The Magnificent Seven again, but alas my Steve McQueen adventures and requests from my weekly movie night made this impossible, but hopefully I’ll get to it soon. What I hadn’t realised is that this film was also remade (not as Battle Beyond The Stars, I haven’t seen that yet), but as A Bug’s Life. Granted, the plots aren’t identical, but there are some startling similarities. I’m not entirely sure how happy Charles Bronson would be to know he’d been recast as a ladybird.

There are some gloriously over the top death sequences, and the finale is a great shoot out, though it doesn’t compare to some other classic ones. It’s a very enjoyable film, but alas it’s not the one I remembered. Still the best Steve McQueen film I’ve seen so far on this journey.


Choose film 7/10

Holy Smoke

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Hurrah, another Jane Campion film. I can’t say I was much of a fan of The Piano, so I wasn’t much looking forward to this, the next available film featuring Kate Winslet (Hideous Kinky and Faeries are as yet out of my reach).

Winslet plays Ruth, a young Australian girl (with a distinctly English accent) who has travelled to India to find herself. As well as finding that, she discovers and becomes willingly entangled in a mass marriage/suicide cult, and her understandably concerned family would rather she just came home. After Ruth’s mother (Julie Hamilton) manages to persuade her daughter to come back to Sydney with her, utilising a fake illness for her father and a very real asthma attack for her mother, the family bring in P. J. Waters (Harvey Keitel), a professional ‘exit counsellor,’ an expert at convincing people to give up their new found cultish beliefs and return to their previous lives.
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Blackmail

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Hitchcock, now with added sound! Yes, we’ve moved on from Hitch’s silent pictures (until I can find the ones I’ve had to skip) and onto his first to use audible dialogue, as well as the first I’ve seen that doesn’t appear to have been filmed entirely on a set, although knowing the director built the entire apartment block set of Rear Window inside a studio, you never can tell with Hitchcock.

Blackmail focuses on a young couple, John Longden’s Frank, a Scotland Yard detective, and Anny Ondra (yep, her again) as Alice, the daughter of a shop owner. Alice has become bored of Frank’s obsession with his career, and has eyes for another man, the irrationally posh artist Mr. Crewe (Cyril Ritchard). Crewe invites Alice back to his studio apartment one evening, and things don’t necessarily plan out how either of them would have expected, so Frank gets involved to try and help Alice out of the sticky situation she finds herself in.
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Red Surf

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Well, we’re still in George Clooney’s pre-E.R. days, so even if this film has a few more recognisable faces in some of the main roles, the fact that a then-no-name Clooney headlines this film should be some clue of how terrible it is. There’s still a few films to go before I get to From Dusk Til Dawn, the first film on his list that I know I like, so my hopes aren’t high for the films inbetween, but hopefully they’ll be better than this one.

Clooney plays Remar, a surfer/drug smuggler who, along with his small gang of friends, including Doug Savant, attempt to set up one last deal before heading their separate ways and going clean. The problem is, Remar is getting too hooked on the drugs, and his girlfriend Rebecca (Dedee Pfeiffer, Michelle’s younger sister) is pregnant, and doesn’t want him to do anymore deals. Also, one of Remar’s cohorts, True Blue (Philip McKeon, I swear it’s really Stephen Baldwin) has got himself arrested for dealing, and gives the cops the details of the guys they’re doing the deal with, who understandably want Blue dead. 
This film is a mess. There is little to no explanation for most of what happens, characters appear and disappear within the same scene and we’re never really introduced to any of our characters or their lives. The opening sees Remar and Savant’s Attila (also, the names are stupid) involved in a prank that doesn’t really go anywhere, but requires their car to be launched off a cliff and ultimately destroyed, for no real purpose. The supply of cocaine that Remar and the gang sell from appears to be stored in a buoy in the middle of the ocean – though where it comes from we never know. Characters behave stupidly and irrationally, generally at their own risks and with no regard for either themselves or their friends. After his arrest, Blue willingly gives up the names of the dealers, despite knowing that anyone who crosses the guy they are dealing with usually gets fed to the pit of wolves he keeps under a trapdoor in his house.

The dialogue is terrible (“You’re pregnant? That’s bitchin’!”) and the police behave in a manner completely unfitting to the situation, presumably in order to make them appear to be the bad guys over Clooney and his band of miscreants. There was a chuckle when the arresting officer told some criminals that they “have the right to do whatever I damn well tell you to do,” but it was only a small chuckle. I think most of the film’s budget went on skintight dressed (apparently, drugs and pretty girls go together, according to the script), sleeveless t-shirts, leather jackets and a seemingly endless supply of denim, as that’s all anyone wears in this film. Were loose leather waistcoats really ever in fashion? Also, for a film supposedly about surfers, there is only one, very short, scene featuring anyone even in the vicinity of a surfboard, and that’s not until 45 minutes in. 

Clooney has never been less likable than here, where is Remar is a selfish, pig-headed addict who wants to do right by his girl and unborn child, but in the worst way possible. He goes surfing instead of taking Rebecca to a doctor’s appointment, and he doesn’t really have any redeeming qualities, other than not wanting to kill the friend who got him into all this trouble in the first place. When he’s given a way out of this mess by his friends, with no risk and no responsibility put on him, he decides to go ahead and get himself in deep anyway.This results in one of the most poorly shot chases I’ve ever witnessed, involving a speedboat and jet skis in the middle of the night. It’s impossible to make anything or anyone out, and generally sees people spinning around in circles until someone explodes. 

The finale at the dealer’s house is clumsily staged and poorly choreographed, and his wolf pit seems to have magnetic powers, with people being drawn in despite being nowhere near it. If you really need a reason to seek this film out, it’s only passable blessing is that I’ve now seen Gene Simmons kill a man with his bare hands. There is literally no other reason to watch this film.

Choose life 2/10

Hamlet

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There are some films on the List that I’ve no idea when I’ll get to them. These films fall into three categories – the ones I absolutely adore but have no clue how I’ll even start writing about them, the ones I desperately do not want to watch (but am too much of an anal completist to ignore) and the really long ones. This four-hour-plus cut of Hamlet obviously falls into the latter, but fortunately for me, my girlfriend opted for Kate Winslet as her Film-Maker of choice, and seeing as I’ve reached that point in Winslet’s career in which she appeared in Hamlet as Ophelia, I can cross off Kenneth Branagh’s opus from the Empire 5-Star 500. As for the unspeakable films I don’t want to see, whenever LoveFilm drop Salo through my letterbox it shall not be a good day, though I could pull an In The Realm Of The Senses and bottle it when I’ve taken as much as I can stand.
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The Manxman

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Pete Quillam (Carl Brisson from The Ring) is a penniless fisherman. His best friend, Philip Christian (Malcolm Keen), is a hot-shot lawyer. The two have been inseparable since birth, being raised as essentially brothers despite their wildly different lifestyles. They’ve even found a way to combine their various career paths, with Philip pushing through a petition that will prevent steam trawlers from encroaching on the fishermen’s haul, but when they meet Kate Cregeen (Anny Ondra), the barmaid daughter of the local pub The Manx Fairy, they both instantly fall for her. Pete, the more headstrong and forward of the pair, is the first to make a move, so the loyal Philip hides his feelings for the sake of his pal. But when Pete heads to Africa to make his fortune to win over Kate’s father (Randle Ayrton), things get complicated when Philip is asked to look after Kate in his absence. 

You cannot imagine how shocked I was to discover that this film has an almost identical central plot to Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor. I was in no way expecting any similarities between a film made by Alfred Hitchcock and what many believe to be the worst film made by one of the worst blockbuster makers working today, but plot-wise they are pretty much spot on, so I managed to guess almost every element that happened within the first hour of the story. It’s interesting that the love story in Pearl Harbor – a triangle between Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett’s Army Air Corps pilots and Kate Beckinsale’s nurse – was widely regarded to be the most superfluous and tedious aspect of that film, but here it is the primary – and often sole – focus, and it is handled far more deftly and in depth in Hitchcock’s 80 minutes than Bay’s 3 hours. This is probably because no-one goes to see a Michael Bay film for a tepid, mopey love story, especially when said film is about one of the most momentous events in the history of international warfare that’s literally made from explosions, so those of us who found ourselves having to wade through the hours of treacle to find nowhere near enough shiny fireworks to keep us entertained for even half the film’s length were of course disappointed – a feeling I’ve since become familiar with from Bay’s output. How exactly did this review of a 1929 Hitchcock silent film become me slandering Bay’s 2001 nadir? The two weren’t even made in the same century!

Anyway, The Manxman. The most interesting thing I found about this film was that at the start, the story seemed to be entirely about Philip, and the woes he would endure withholding his unrequited love for the promised bride of his best mate. The story is mostly told from his point of view, which is generally the case of the hero, yet as the plot progresses and the three points of the love triangle become further entangled with one another, it becomes clear that he is not the hero of his own story, but the villain, or at least the antagonist, of Pete’s. Though Philip and Kate never intend to do anything untoward against Pete, they still effectively destroy his life by doing what they believe is right at the time. Pete, meanwhile, is nothing but a lovable, earnest oaf, whose only crimes are an obliviousness to his friends clear affections for a girl, and his shame at believing himself not wealthy enough to be an acceptable husband or son-in-law.

There are no decisions made throughout that can really be judged against, as everyone always acted with the best possible intentions – initially at least – which makes it very easy to empathise with and feel sorry for almost everyone involved, and at times it’s all a bit of a downer. There’s some elements of Cyrano de Bergerac in there as well – Pete asks Philip to put in a good word for him with Kate and her father, because he has a way of making things sound better.

In terms of Hitchcock-ness, there wasn’t anything that stood out thematically or cinematically, although I did like the use of Kate’s diary entries and the way she referred to Philip – Mr. Christian, Phillip and finally Phil – to indicate her growing affection for him and the increasing closeness between the two. That was a nice touch. Also, the climax was delectably tangled, even if it was clear how everything was going to unravel.

Choose film 7/10

Return of the Killer Tomatoes

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There are some films where it’s impossible to go in with a completely open mind. Whether it’s because it’s a sequel to a film you’ve seen a hundred times, it’s the work of a director or actor you’re very familiar with or you’ve been bombarded with a relentless marketing campaign, there are many factors that can influence your opinion of a film before you go and see it. And, of course, there’s the title. The one inescapable truth about this film is that it’s called Return of the Killer Tomatoes, and is therefore not going to be anything even close to highbrow or arthouse, and might just about scrape the underbelly of being entertaining.


Now, unlike the last no-budget comedy-horror flick featuring George Clooney and starting with the word ‘Return,’ this one is actually a sequel, to 1978’s Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which I’m fairly sure doesn’t star anyone of note, so I’ve no intention of ever watching it. The 4.4/10 rating on IMDb doesn’t help either. Without doing any extra research (I’m on a deadline here, I need to go to sleep in an hour) I can tell from Return, in which they recap most of the plot and actually make a point of a viewer complaining about them recaping the original plot, that there was some kind of mysterious science plot in which monster tomatoes were created and vanquished using music. Something similar takes place in Return, but here the scientist (John Astin, I knew I recognised him, only just realised it’s from The Addams Family), Dr. Putrid T. Gangreen, is creating tomatoes that take on human form, any form, and he plans to take over the world by creating a tomato version of the president.

Since the first film’s plot, a whole new generation has grown up without knowing the glories of tomatoes, as they were outlawed by the government. There is a fairly healthy tomato racket on the black (or red) market, but the pizzeria in which our hero Chad Finletter (Anthony Starke) works makes pizzas by substituting the tomato sauce with raspberry jam or boysenberry, and accompany it with toppings ranging from gummy bears and peanut butter to something called the famous deep fried fish pizza, which sounds disgusting. Chad works as the delivery boy, and has the hots for Tara, the beautiful assistant/lover of Dr. Gangreen, but has never really been able to strike up the courage to talk to her. Also, she’s a tomato. That’s pretty clear from the start, seeing as she’s been created as the ‘perfect woman’ in every respect, apart from she hates music and bathes in fertiliser. Chad’s uncle Wilbur (J. Stephen Peace) owns the pizzeria (he’s the hero of the first film), and Chad’s room mate Matt (George Clooney) works there too, inbetween scams to have sex with every woman he comes across. 

In case you haven’t guessed, this film is pretty ridiculous. The plot is insane, the production value is non-existent and the acting equally scarce. There’s a creature called F. T. (which stands for either Furry Tomato or Freak Tomato) who is quite clearly a cuddly toy being wiggled by a stick or strings. But this all adds to the home-made feel, and in fact attention is brought to how terrible the film is by more meta than I can really handle. The film even begins by being shown in someone’s lounge (they initially start showing a film called Big Breasted Girls Go To The Beach And Take Their Tops Off, but thankfully this is stopped early on), and there are phone calls from viewers peppered through the film, and halfway through the camera pans out to find the director telling everyone they have to stop filming because they’ve run out of money. Ridiculously, there’s two more films in the Killer Tomatoes franchise; Killer Tomatoes Strike Back and Killer Tomatoes Eat France, both also directed by John de Bello and who appears as himself in at least Return, but I can safely say I won’t be seeing either of those films ever.

There were quite a few moments in the film that I can recommend though. Gangreen assistant, Igor (Steve Lundquist) is an aspiring news anchor who keeps on turning to the screen and saying things like “We’ll be right back, after this…” which I found to be consistently ridiculous enough to be entertaining, and the script contains such straight-faced gems as “I thought you were ketchup!” and “The girl of my dreams is a vegetable!” (at no point is the tomato correctly identified as a fruit). Some bits go a bit far into the stupid though – when Wilbur comes to the rescue, it’s dressed as a paratrooper with a deployed parachute that drags along the ground, along with a man permanently dressed in scuba gear who communicates with title cards even over the phone, and a severely overweight man in a Lone Ranger costume. 

It’s a very immature film that I would have doubtlessly enjoyed 10-15 years ago, but I’m proud to say I’m now too mature for it (when sober, at least). On a drunken Friday night with a group of mates it might be worth a punt, but seeing as I watched it at 7:00 am on Saturday morning it didn’t really hit the spot.

Choose life 4/10

Never So Few

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A Steve McQueen film set during World War 2 where at one point he talks about brewing his own alcohol? No, sadly I’ve not yet reached The Great Escape (one of my consistently top 5 films of all time), I’m onto Never So Few, the Frank Sinatra-starring final obstacle before I get to watch The Magnificent Seven again, when I’ll actually start to enjoy going through all of Steve McQueen’s films.

Never So Few sees Sinatra as Captain Tom Reynolds in North Burma during the Second World War. He and his band of highly trained men, including Peter Lawford’s be-monocled Captain Grey Travis and Charles Bronson’s Seargeant Danforth, are training the native Kachins to defend their land against their attackers, but the hardships of jungle warfare and the difficulties posed by his commanding officers – particularly the lack of an assigned doctor in his troop – begin to weigh on Reynolds.

Whilst on a short trip back to headquarters, followed by a two week adjourn for the two captains, Reynolds falls in love with Carla (Gina Lollobrigida), a voluptuously alluring partner to a foreign dignitary, and he also uncovers the beginnings of a plot that may or may not involve his superiors being in cahoots with their Chinese enemies. They also meet Bill Ringa (Steve McQueen), the resourceful driver for their Colonel, and soon recruit him to join their squad.

This film has some serious tone issues. Director John Sturges, yes of The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, cannot seem to decide whether he is making a war film – as I initially expected – a romance or a political thriller, as all three elements share roughly equal screen time, and the transition from one to another is often jarring. Styles change when Reynolds walks into a room, leaving the government corruption plot as the music swells to a bad daytime soap opera sweeping score as Carla rushes into his arms for a longing embrace. The three different elements seem only loosely tied together too – it could be justified as to having the war and conspiracy themes, as the subjects are at least related, but the romance could quite easily be lifted without affecting the other two, so tacked on is the feel. This was clearly added just to try and entice female viewers – or possibly more men with Lollobrigida’s Jessica Rabbit-like curves – but it always feels awkward and out of place with the rest of the film, just like Carla’s Spock-like eyebrows.

Speaking of tagged on, McQueen’s character is fairly superfluous too, other than adding someone engaging to watch and a mildly interesting character – plus a somewhat inventive fighting technique early on. I got the feeling that Sturges wanted to include McQueen in the film somewhere, and who can blame him? By this point McQueen had perfected the art of ‘doing something in the background’ when he wasn’t overly important in a scene, hence why he always managed to retain your focus by swatting a mosquito on his neck or playing with his gun, regardless of whether you should be looking at him or not. Sinatra’s Reynolds also has an amusing if distracting penchant for pithy one-liners that don’t necessarily make much sense (“He speaks English like he hates it.” “Inside my mouth tastes like the outside of a crocodile.”) or bizarrely successful seduction techniques in which he discusses the correct use of the word ‘hanker’. Some of the lines are great (“I’ll miss you; where I’m going nobody smells of soap”) whereas others raised a chuckle but would be worthy of a slap in real life (“I’ll be back; learn to cook.”). He also wears a cowboy hat whilst parachuting, which is only something Slim Pickens is allowed to do.

I loved Charles Bronson in the film, though his role is far too short. When his gun runs out of bullets during a Chinese attack on the camp, without hesitating he picks up a table and takes out three men with that instead. Genius. Look out for a young George Takei as a head-bandaged hospital patient complaining about the food and James Hong as a diplomat fairly late on. You may be as astounded as me to learn that Hong currently has 371 acting credits to his name, as diverse as Blade Runner to Kung Fu Panda, Airplane! to Chinatown. The guy’s been in everything.

The plot involves far too many talky scenes for a war film, with not enough actual fighting, despite a not-bad mid-film set piece involving the attack of a Chinese air base using hundreds on cans of gasoline, and a third act counterattack over the Chinese border. In spite of these, the film comes off as boring and overlong – 125 minutes – and the actual backbone of the conspiracy plot is almost impossible to fully comprehend. I’m still not entirely sure what was going on for most of it.

Choose life 5/10

Jude

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I had a discussion with my girlfriend recently about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, instigated by my viewing of the unimpressive trailer for the new remake (in 3D, of course). When I explained the basic premise – a group of kids run into a family of skin-wearing cannibals – she was appalled at A) why someone would watch such a film, B) why someone would make it, and C) what kind of depraved soul would own such a monstrosity. I then answered questions A and C (she wouldn’t have cared that Tobe Hooper made it) by pointing to the copy of the film on my DVD shelf. Why do I bring this up? Well, though I’m not a massive fan of horror (I haven’t seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre since I bought it), I will occasionally watch a film for the same reasons I go on rollercoasters; they add a certain element of thrill and excitement – and terror – otherwise missing from my humdrum existence on this Earth. My question is, who would watch, make or own a film like Jude?
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Champagne

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There are some films that are just difficult to like, mainly because the lead is so detestable. Recent examples I’ve seen include Napoleon Dynamite, Vagabond and Transformers, and Champagne joins that far from hallowed list, although this time I feel that the lead, Betty Balfour’s simply named The Girl, is meant to be unlikable as she’s a spoilt little brat who only comes to realise she can be a good person when her father (Gordon Harker, Hitchcock alumnus from The Ring and The Farmer’s Wife) loses all his money and she is forced to take care of him.


The Girl, who at one point is referred to as Betty, so I’ll call her as such, is the kind of poor little rich girl who is accustomed to the world bending to suit her every whim. When Jean Bradin’s ‘The Boy’, her lover, is on a cruise liner from America to France, she commandeers a plane to land in the sea nearby, knowing a rescue boat will be sent out to save her and bring her aboard, and she doesn’t even thank the men who come to her aid. Whilst aboard said boat, she also catches the eye of the wealthy yet clearly sinister (he has a moustache and everything) ‘The Man’ (Ferdinand von Alten), and the two men then spend the rest of the film making awkward looks at one another as their affections for Betty wax and wane with such rapidity I’m surprised neither of them has whiplash. 

The overall story is fairly simple: Betty has done far too little with her life to justify the amount of her father’s money she is spending. When he comes to France to tell her he’s lost everything and they are ruined, she takes care of him in a tiny apartment, cleaning and cooking abysmally for him, but she learns to be a better person because of it. Except that she doesn’t, and the decisions she makes after this point are only made out of spite or for her own personal gain, so I can’t really see what the overall message is. The last minute reveals, of which there are a couple too many, are all fairly well signposted too, so didn’t come as much of a surprise, except for the final shots which added another layer of intrigue and deception into the mix, as to a character’s true intentions, which were basically the intentions we assumed he had before an earlier reveal, making that reveal a little bit pointless anyway.

If it all sounds confusing, it only slightly is, but there’s not a lot of point trying to wrap your head around it as this is definitely a lesser Hitchcock (as I fear most of his silents are going to be), so personally I’m not going to recommend it. Some of the messages and parallels are handled with too heavy a hand – Betty gets a job as a flower-girl at a swanky club where she looks longingly at the wealthy clientele, but still feels the need to underline that she used to pay to go to places like that, and now they pay her, which was pretty much the whole point of those scenes, so didn’t really need to be explained quite so succinctly. 

There are some nice moments of comedy – Betty giving her flowers out to the band because her boss told her to give them to men wearing eveningwear – meaning of course only the customers – but elsewhere it often goes too far, for example when she tries to make the bed by dragging the mattress over her father who is doing push-ups nearby. Before losing the money her fashion taste is also diabolical, with her dresses being far too elaborate and are frankly horrible, though that could be a product of the times more than anything, and I’ve never been too up on even today’s styles, so what do I know?

There’s good use of a swaying camera and actors to mimic seasickness – though I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Hitchcock utilising a swaying set instead – after all he built the entire apartment block from Rear Window inside a soundstage – but though the swaying wasn’t convincing it was at least a good touch. The early lifeboat rescue however looks like it was performed on a set previously used for a school play – even in 1928 – and I’m fairly sure in the first couple of takes the plane probably fell over.

Overall, not a lot to recommend here. A simple story unnecessarily overcomplicated and with terrible effects.

Choose life 3/10