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Relentless (1948)
The usual Western manhunt for an innocent man, but there is a girl with a horse family
It's actually the horses that save this film. It's a beautiful touching story of affection between horses and their superior wisdom to men, who just fight and kill each other for their greed. Roland Young comes to town with nowhere to sleep, so someone offers him to sleep in the straw of a barn, where two old gold diggers are heading who just found an affluent mine, but when they reach the barn they are gunned down by two others who steal their maps, and later on these two scoundrels split and one kills the other. Roland Young gets the blame for all three murders. Fortunately there is Marguerite Chapman coming by on her own, selling kitchen utensils and other riff raff, she helps him on, while a great posse is gathered to hunt him down, and so the circus begins. It's a great western in a small way, it is definitely worth watching and following to the bitter end, Marguerite does as well as she could, so does Roland Young against all odds, but on the whole they manage well. The photo and the music is excellent, the story has it s flaws, but on the whole it's quite acceptable and enjoyable.
The Disappearance of Flight 412 (1974)
A UFO situation
An aircraft finds three unidentifiable objects on the radar screen that seem to be persecuting the aircraft, the crew report this to the ground base, and two jets are sent up to deal with the situation. These jets disappear without a trace, and so do the three unidentified flying objects. When the aircraft returns to the ground the crew are held for investigation against their will and under protest, but those in charge simply want to squeeze every detail of the matter out of them. When they have been grilled enough they are let out and allowed to continue their careers. Glenn Ford is their military chief, he can't accept the situation, so he goes out in the desert to the desolate place where his men are held and refuses to leave without them. Finally he gets them out, but that's not the end of the story, The question remains what happened to the two jets that just disappeared. That question is finally answered but only leads to more difficult questions. It's an interesting film well written and acted (especially by Glenn Ford) and the argument remains constantly actual. This is just something of an effort to chart the mentality of covering up what you are afraid to get to know too much about.
Dilemma (1962)
Doing all the things you must not do when you find the dead body of a stranger in your bathroom
This is absolutely brilliant. There is not one dilemma here, but they tower up in piles that can't just be pulled down. They will stand as a perpetually immanent threat of a massive avalanche that just has to come tumbling down - fortunately it happens after the film has ended. There are so many wonderful details here, the nosy neighbour as a constant most annoying disturbance, the mother coming for a visit at the worst possible moment to demonstrate her mothercare, the nuns with their overwhelming good will and sanctity, the scenes in the neighbour's kitchen where the husband suggests that their nice neighbour is burying his wife, the riddle of the "snow", the intolerable brat coming for his piano lesson and playing hideously out of tune, the wonderful Mr. Thatcher as the blind piano tuner almost stumbling into an open grave, and so on. A thousand dilemmas rise to impede our poor protagonist of an honest normal man when he goes at any length to protect his beloved wife and what he believes she has done, while the only natural thing to do from the beginning would have been to phone the police at once. Well, he didn't, and thus there is an insurmountable mountain of consequences.
August Falls (2017)
A young mother wallowing in her grief for her lost son
This has nothing to do with the month of August, but August is a boy of twenty who lives alone with his mother and falls to his death from some balcony for no evident reason at all - it looks like suicide, but he had no dark thoughts or sides but was gay, which his mother learns after his death and never suspected. Many loved him, both men and girls, so he had absolutely no reason to kill himself, so someone could have pushed him, and the murder theory starts growing in the mother's mind. But he had some risky contacts as well, connected with the drug business, so it's the usual mess of possibilities with no loose thread to start pulling at. Of course the police are never consulted on the case as they should have been from the beginning, so the whole film is just vague hints. We never learn how he fell or from where, he just partied and was gay, and that was all. All loose threads without any end to any of them, and that's how we are finally left, rather disappointed and worn out by a mother's constant grief and her dreams about her lost son, whom she never knew.
The Lineup (1958)
"You don't understand a criminal's need of violence."
This is hard-boiled and brutal to extremes, involving children (an entire class of them), a lonely mother, a virtuoso car chase up the Golden Gate Bridge and many brutal murders, one more cold-blooded and brutal than the other. It's all about heroin trafficking in San Francisco 1958, the same year as Hitchcock made his "Vertigo", and you will recognise many of the settings here from there, only Hitchcock's film was of an entirely different character, dealing only with women, while here you have whole companies of ruthless gangsters and policemen. Eli Wallach is the chief actor here, his eyes expressing more than any words or dialogue in the film, while all the other actors become secondary, although they all, policemen as well as gangsters, get desperate and hysterical about this horrible business. You get quite some Hitchcock felling in some of the scenes, particularly the one in the watch tower with the children coming with nuns to look at the harbour by binoculars, culminating in the most brutal murder of all, although there are so many, the film actually starting off with two of them. You will have to catch your breath but you won't have time for it until afterwards.
Screen One: Running Late (1992)
Always running late will never get you on time
Is this a comedy, a tragedy, a morality, a documentary leaf out of reality, something of everything of this, or what? It is very bizarre, as Peter Bowles as an established television profile with a rather notorious chat show happens to everything that he shouldn't, as he leaves a program discussing suicide where he was rather hard on the subject of the interview. He gets a message from his wife that she wants to see him on a matter of life and death, and when he goes to her indicated restaurant he is running late but has just time enough to see her leave with another man. She has left a farewell note at their home after 25 years of marriage and asks him not to try to contact her. Naturally that's the only thing he will try to do for the next hours, meeting only with other disasters that pile up on his way, increasing his stress syndrome to constantly higher maximum. This falling down can't of course end very well, but there is an odd twist in the end like providing a totally different development from the beginning, manifesting the relativity of time. Peter Bowles makes a virtuoso performance, perhaps his very best, and in the end he finally gets that detachment to his concerns which he should have secured from the beginning. Yes, it's a comic, tragic and somewhat philosophic morality which actually is all about love, to which you must never run late.
The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft (2022)
In the shadow of death to the bitter end
This is possibly Werner Herzog's most beautiful film, although he did not do it himself. It's a tender tribute to the volcanologist couple Maurice and Katia Krafft, who ultimately perished in the pursuit of the beauty of the natural force of volcanoes. The film begins with that last visit to a volcano on an island in Japan before the euption that killed them, so you learn the end of the story from the beginning. Then the story turns to the beginning of their quests, their story is told in documentary neutrality but with the personal voice of Werner Herzog making the long report poignant in its sensitive respect, intimate admiration and tender factual truthfulness making the documentary touchingly personal. What he has done is simply editing the Krafft couple's own documentaries from travelling all over the world in filming active volcanoes, from countries like Iceland, Hawaii, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Japan. So it's their own filming that Herzog has saved and made presentable in one comprehensive and accomplished form, and he has illustrated the final compelling film with exquisite music mainly from Requiems, never obtrusive or importuning but always discreetly almost quiet like providing an enchanting background of appropriate melancholy mood. I loved the film from the beginning and could hardly wait to watch it again. As the title clearly indicates it was intended as a Requiem for the brave couple, and as such it is one of the finest Requiem compositions ever made.
All I Need (2016)
A sick mind running amuck in macabre fanaticism,
The film presents a situation but does not solve it. You will have to guess for yourself the consequences of this absurd story of a very rich widow who will do anything to satisfy her urge for eternal youth as a compensation for the lost years of her life. She is beautiful, but you must suspect that she is rather off the handle. The situation is only revealed extremely slowly by the experience of one of her victims who finds herself kidnapped without knowing how or understanding why, waking up from some unconsciousness and finding herself tied up by hands and feet and gagged unable to do anything, but the she finds herself in the company of any number of other tied up and gagged beautiful young girls, and her next discovery is that some brutal man enters their quarters now and then to drag one of them out who is never seen any more. This is all of course totally improbable and absurd, but if you can endure watching this orgy of tension in suffering young ladies, you will understand the logic in the end, no matter how absolutely twisted it is. Will anyone be brought to account for this? This parallel to the vampire myth raises many questions, and the first and last one is: what's the meaning of all this - other than just causing revolting effects? That question and any question will be left unanswered.
Brass Monkey (1948)
Hullabaloo murders around show business
The logic is not quite watertight here. We all know who the murderer is throughout the film, and then in the end it proves that he isn't, instead it is the least probable of all the actors. So it is better to disregard this for its criminal credits to instead appreciate it for its brilliant entertainment value. The comedy enters with Avril Angers, the distracted secretary of the lead Carroll Lewis, who instead of being the lead is actually reduced to a supporting part. To avoid problems at the customs, Max Taylor, a weird type, gives over a brass monkey he has stolen to his fiancée Carole Landis, who carelessly puts in her purse to later give it to her manager Lewis, who entrusts it with his distracted secretary, who places it at a safe place which she later can't remember. Then people start murdering each other for this small insignificant brass statue, and it's impossible for anyone to get the head and tail of anything. The confusion in this monkey business is considerably magnified by the show having to get started, the best scene is the one in Lewis' office where everyone is waiting for him to give them a chance, including Terry-Thomas, who makes a formidable entry and practically steals the show. The finale of the film is the entire show staged for a radio broadcast, with brilliant performances by Avril Angers and other music hall artists, during which the police manage to sort things out. The mystery of the murders is resolved but hardly to any satisfaction to anyone.
Screen Two: They Never Slept (1991)
Pièce de résistance of the French resistance
This ride will require anyone to fasten more reliable seatbelts than any straitjacket, for it will instantaneously sweep you off your feet and keep you hovering between life and death for the entire duration of the film which isn't long but will feel like a nightmare of eternity. Poor corporal Merriman has no idea what she is getting herself into when she merely applies for a simple service as a driver to at least contribute something in the war effort, but Edward Fox as the commander under whose authority she accidentally happens to land in immediately thrusts her into the espionage service of the French resistance, where she mildly speaking gets awfully knocked about. She rises up to her job though and even starts firing back at her bullies but in contrast to many else succeeds in staying alive, while the number of casualties in this context reaches enormous numbers as they are constantly piled up in heaps. There is great humour though, with the stiffest of upper lips Edward Fox delivers incredible displays of managing impossible situations without moving a finger or mien, and it's just for you as an audience to follow the whirlpool of events and ultimately laugh at them all.
Institute for Revenge (1979)
Swindling a swindler
This is an odd criminal comedy but curiously reversed, the story being victims of rackets joining together to get at their victimiser, and their union is this Institute for Revenge which is admirably computerised, their great computer keeping track of everything that goes on and on the great victimiser (George Hamilton), a kind of billionaire with an airplane of his own like Air Force One. The film is very stylish with a number of very beautiful young women, all exquisitely well dressed, there are a number of posh cocktail parties with elegant guests, of course there is a fine swimming pool, everything boasts of infinite loads of money in infinite assets, so it's a film of matchless luxury. The script is brilliant, the players keep up the pace, old Robert Coote dominates the institution with his good humour, Leslie Nielsen is Hamilton's henchman, and although a new experiment for Ken Annakin and his first film in America he handles the confusion of business transactions and high pressured characters well, and they are all good looking, the more so the younger they are.
Escape Route (1952)
Manhunts in London
George Raft was possibly the dullest of all established Hollywood stars, like a wooden dummy with a deep bass grating voice, a totally expressionless face never moving or betraying any human feelings, stone cold and usually in very unsympathetic roles. What saves this film is Sally Field, prominent in many films, here slightly past her prime, and it is hard to understand why she should fall for such an unlikeable statue. What saves the film even more is the wonderful sceneries of London, you see all London from only most favourable aspects actually bringing out the very character of London, and for this only the film is worth watching. The story isn't bad but rather artificial, you never learn anything about the other vanished scientists, so it is a rather cheap cloak-and-dagger intrigue with some exciting moments, chases and fisticuffs, but it is definitely not watchable for the sake of George Raft.
One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942)
The Archers at their best from the start
Everything is perfect about this film, the realism, the story, the characterisations, the humour and wit, the camera work, there is only one thing missing, and that is the music. There is no music in this film, and that is extremely rare. Nevertheless, there are some musical details, like the Dutch boy carrying records to the German headquarters by the request of a Quisling, excellently played by Robert Helpmann, which when the Germans play them prove to be Dutch national hymns, which brings an avalanche of awkwardness among the occupying Germans. All the major British actors of the 40s are here - Pamela Brown as the most prominent one as the Dutch hostess for the British refugees, Eric Portman, Hugh Williams, Bernard Miles, Godfrey Tearle among the crew, Peter Ustinov as the Dutch priest and so on, they all speak fluent Dutch as well as German, so the realism is absolute. It is both exciting, entertaining, visually and dramatically enjoyable with marvellous acting all the way, so it basically couldn't be better, even with music.
Endure (2010)
Saving one life and losing another
This film deals exclusively with circumstances around life and death with life constantly at risk and a fierce chase going on to save life before it is too late. It is actually too late for quite a number, but you don't find them before it is way too late. One is saved though, she is the main female lead in the film although she almost says nothing, or rather can't say anything because of the circumstances, but she is constantly there anyway all the time, since the lives of all the others are desperately occupied with her case, except Judd Nelson's wife, because of other circumstances which she is dying of. It's a horrible story of sexual derangement and its extremely weird ways of expression, this is in the same department as "The Silence of the Lambs" but possibly worse, since there are more victims than one. You will never see this film again. The script is easy enough to remember forever, while of course it's not a story worth remembering.
The System (1964)
Drifters at large in Torquay
Oliver Reed Is the leader here of a bunch of wanton youths, all around their 20s or below, looking for kicks among the girls on the beaches of Torquay. It's not a very remarkable film, but it gives a nice view of life among young people in the early 60s and has quite some charm with a touch of melancholy as well, like Fellini's "I vitelloni", a story of the same kind of irresponsible youngsters, while Oliver Reed actually makes a fascinating performance, a very odd character in many films, usually of the wrong kind, gangsters and bullies, but here he is still perfect. Just to listen to his language is quite an experience. The music is typical of the early 60s, shallow and noisy, while one female character sticks out: Jane Merrow as Nicola, the girl who makes Oliver Reed lose his bearings, a part originally intended for Julie Christie, but she was busy elsewhere. It's an interesting documentary entertainment with great photography but, like the drifters, leaving nothing behind.
The Painted Smile (1962)
The difficulty of disposing of unpleasant rubbish
It's only a regular B feature, but Lance Comfort had the knack for keeping even the shabbiest B plot interesting and fascinating. Of particular interest is the awkward scene of the discovery of the body, as Liz Fraser comes home with a drunken lad from her hooking club and gets that horrible phone call from 'Kleinie' who tells her to get rid of the rubbish in her bedroom. She has no idea what he is talking about and naturally gets curious, while her hooked visitor Tom follows her in and they stumble over a dead knifed body, while Tom in his besotted state grabs the knife and pulls it out, and that finishes the perfect set-up of awkwardness. All the rest is just mad chases for the truth, for the merry gentlemen at the pub where one of them got hooked by both the police and 'Kleinie's' hoodlums, and the rest will just be too obvious. One of Tom's merry companions at the club is a very young David Hemmings, while Kenneth Griffith as 'Kleinie' takes the prize in yet another of his uncanny characters of meticulous evil.
Baarìa (2009)
Personal impressions of life in Sicily through half a century
Tornatore's answer and parallel to Fellini's "Amarcord" offers a sumptuos abundance of impressions and fragment memories of his childhood and adolescence from his hometown Bagheria in Sicily, close to Palermo, and if you are familiar with these parts you will recognize the landscape, the feelings, the moods, the mentality and everything as it is all very persoanlly felt and experienced, it's Tornatore himself who opens the book of his life with overwhelming impressions. This is not Vittorio de Sica, and the music is not Nino Rota, but the humour and the music and above all the mentality is more than next to it. It is an enjoyable party all the way with crowds of people and personalities and their narratives, often in incomplete episodes, in a mosaic of wonderful genuine Sicilian life. The concept of the script is also ingenious, ending up in timelessness biting its own tail, like a continuous perpetuum mobile of very human destinies. Morricone's music is almost more Nino Rotaesque than Rota himself, the ebulliance of good humour and inexhaustible humanity transcends Fellini, and all the actors are wonderful, especially the children. This is a masterpiece of invention, of form, of humanity, of brilliance of cinematography, putting Bertolucci to shame and underscoring the tradition of Vittorio de Sica with overwhelming emphasis.
Shotgun (1955)
Conventional western with all the necessary assets: murder, revenge and a beautiful girl
There are very few westerns that aren't built up mainly on a theme of revenge, the western avengers on films must be innumerable, and they are always bold cold-blooded heroes, and there is always some beautiful girl waiting for them. Yvonne de Carlo here though has plenty of skin on her nose, and although Sterling Hayden doesn't exactly treat her as a gentleman, she is after all a good match for him, after all the obligatory fights, fisticuffs and gunfights, including a formidable bunch of Apaches. Any western fan will buy all this and enjoy it even with relish, because of the splendid photo and equally splendid music by Carl Brandt, but it is still a rather conventional piece of routine very far from the more hardcore rough settlements of for example Sam Peckinpah. This is all right, you will enjoy the three great leading actors and their issues, you will even more enjoy the landscapes and the music, but it is hardly a film you would need to watch another time.
The Brigand (1952)
One of those dashing swashbuckle films of the early 50s.
In spite of its superficiality and general pastel character, there are a few assets here that should be noted. First of all, the music by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco is brilliant all the way and gives the film a certain refined polish that cannot be denied. This stylishness is further augmented by some wonderful dance performances, the dialog is also in style with this, the costumes and the settings of course, and the fact that it is a travesty of the 'prisoner of Zenda'-story is not disturbing. Actually Alexander Dumas must have been first with this idea, while it is hardly credible that Anthony Hope borrowed it from Dumas - it has happened before in literature that two authors have invented almost the same plot. Here though the plot takes a different turn to the satisfaction of at least one of the ladies, while Anthony Hope deserts them both. It's a great and likeable entertainment with plenty of dashing performances of dancing and fencing and of course some obligatory fights. Anthony Dexter is doing fine, so is Anthony Quinn as usual, and there is nothing wrong with the script. In brief, superficially it is a perfect film, but you will quickly forget it.
A Small Killing (1981)
A criminal comedy from the gutter perspective of bums and bag ladies.
I have seen Jean Simmons in most of her roles but this is a special treat. She was great already as a child actress ('Estella' inDavid Lean's "Great Expectations") but proved with the years to have almost an infinity of variety of roles, from the slave girl (in Startacus') to an abused mental patient (in 'Home Before Dark'), constantly varying her repertoire and always being excellent without ever winning an Oscar. Here she is the perfect bag lady joining hands with bums and other undesirables, one of them turning out to be a cop in disguise, masquerading to get at a gang of dangerous drug dealers. When one of the bag ladies gets murdered (Sylvia Sidney) in a brief but splendid performance, she decides to join hands with that cop bum just for the sake of Sylvia Sidney (which the entire gang of bums and bag ladies join in for her sake) risking her life, but there is still room for some wonderful comedy moments - Jean Simmons is seldom seen smiling on the screen, but here that smile is beaming. It's part thriller, part social documentary, part comedy and an interesting gutter view of New York, it is uplifting in spite of the serious trouble and argument, which no audience could possibly mind.
Panic (1963)
Waking up totally bewildered with a dead body and remembering and understanding absolutely nothing
Everyone gets into a panic here, except one, who gets all the worst beatings, but at least he knows how to fight back. Janine Grey is a Swiss secretary at a diamond business company and beautiful as such, but unfortunately she has the wrong kind of boy friend, who decides to use her position to make a heist together with two other bandits. The heist fails completely in a blundering fiasco, as the bank manager gets shot to death by one of the villains, who now are wanted for murder, while Janine, knocked unconscious by the robbers when trying to interfere, wakes up in a state of shock with a total amnesia. Her efforts to put her mind together again is not entirely successful, but fortunately she gets a defender at an old shabby café, a former boxer, who still know how to fight. The complications pile up in a tremendous confusion for everyone involved, while gradually the police gets into the mystery to be able to sort it out. The film ends at the top of the confusion, and you can only hope that the general panic gradually will end.
The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre (1964)
Sobbing ghosts calling from the other side of the grave - for serious?
Dame Judith Anderson has the main part in this film, and the moment she appears you know she will dominate and lead the film to as bitter cataclysms as in "Rebecca" - she just is that kind of actress, and here she reenacts her ominous phantom-like presence with a vengeance. Martin Landau plays the rational inquirer who is called upon to do something about those ghost calls by a sobbing ghost, and he does get through with it. There is another housekeeper who is equally rational and down-to-earth who never for a moment would believe in any ghosts, but even she modifies her mind in the end. Diane Baker is the innocent victim who is married to the last scion of a wealthy family with a grand mansion by the sea, and her final surrender is difficult to melt and accept, as it is an unnecessary weakness. The film is really all about the unending and uncompromising influence of mothers, for good and for bad, giving life and sometimes with a lasting curse. Visually and artistically Joseph Stefano has made a masterpiece, but unfortunately it is rather muddled by all those artificial horror effects. The story could have been made better with less affectedness.
Strongroom (1962)
When you can't get out and others can't get in
In bank robbery films there is always something that goes wrong, it's infallible, but here you are in for a surprise, because what goes wrong is none of the usual things, mistakes committed, blundering foolishness, the human factor, one of the rogues betraying the rest, no, here everything is quite regular, except for the two delinquents getting distracted by the presence of some cleaning women, which makes them panic and make a desperate decision. In order to escape without complications they put two unavoidable hostages, the bank manager and his secretary locked up in the strongroom, and then what really goes wrong is nobody's fault: the third man with the keys gets smashed up in an accident, and there is no way for the two companions to get at the keys. When they desperately try it raises suspicions, the keys in question are traced, while the two poor perpetrators realise their locked up hostages will suffocate in the airtight strongroom, also they return in a panic not to become murderers also on top of everything. There will eventually be some gathering at the bank vault, but that's not the end of it: then some real trouble begins, the outcome of which will be impossible to guess. It's a great thriller on a very small scale, most of the film occurs in the claustrophobia of the strongroom which makes it reminiscent of a U-boat thriller, but this is even better. Don't bite your knuckles off.
Passions (1984)
Premature death is not to be recommended
Richard Crenna as a good father with established business and a nice wife (Joanna Woodward) and daughter has his life suddenly interrupted at 48 as he plays tennis and folds up. He is dead at the hospital a few days later without having explained anything to anyone because of his loss of speech. After his death it turns out he has had a mistress since eight years who has a boy, eight years old, his only son. Naturally Joanne Woodward when she learns about this goes mad. When people start to break things and go berserk at home smashing memories and even works of art to pieces you can't help despising these irrational outbursts of uncontrolled ire making no sense at all. This always happens in American films but for some reason never in British films, except rarely and occasionally. You can't appreciate Joanne Woodward's explosions of furious intolerance, but fortunately her daughter and the illegitimate son find each other and provide a safety line to redemption. Both Joanne Woodward and Lindsay Wagner give admirable performances, although Lindsay Wagner is more sympathetic. The frame of the film is rather Douglas Sirk-like, a slow melodrama with a reconciliatory end with really not much happening in between, apart from the settlement drama. It is well done but very conventional. Only Viveca Lindfors sticks out as a bizarre spice in the muddled up relationships.
Cone of Silence (1960)
"Everyone has his own private nightmares."
This is actually a true story although very much adjusted to the necessity of circumstances, since the failure of the Comet project, the first British jet air line airplane, was such a sensitive affair that it had to be hushed up as much as possible. Fortunately some who knew the truth survived and could gradually make it seep out in very well adjusted small portions and without any offensive realism. Nevil Shute was deeply initiated in these problems but dared not write about them openly. Bernard Lee is the old too well experienced pilot who gets into trouble because of one of the airplanes foundering without reason and with no fault of his, the best scene is the introductory one at the trial with George Sanders as the interrogator, and he will appear in two more scenes. Peter Cushing is the competitive pilot who believes the fault was with the pilot, while as far as possible no one could accept that there was something technically wrong about the construction itself. As it was proved, there wasn't actually, but as usual the human factor had failed to include some very serious circumstantial factors, like the weather, the temperature and other pure physical facts. The film is more exciting than a thriller in spite of all the technicalities, and the most spectacular scene is the aircraft's encounter with an unexpected hailstorm. There are more things in heaven than any aircraft engineer could imagine.