Hollywood needs a new Raiders Of The Lost Ark, not a new Indiana Jones movie

I remember the movie era when Raiders of The Lost Ark was released. The big action franchise was Bond, and the latest Bond films with the very old looking Roger Moore and the returning Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again looked incredibly creaky and fake. Their stunts were a joke, plots were comedy contrivance, and they had the dusty reek of movies from a previous epoch.

And we heard Spielberg and Lucas, our fave directors of hot, sharp funny hip scifi movies were taking time out to do a mundane adventure movie set in the 1930s. WTF? (We might not have expressed ourselves that way)

Then Raiders opened and made the 1930s as fresh and real as exciting as anything in the Star Wars universe. Real stunts and locations with a sharp cool funny young actor and great cast. Add that to a thrilling supernatural sub plot and a magnificently ambiguous ending that has never been topped. Suddenly the Bond franchise looked as dead as a door-nail*.

Of course the Indiana Jones sequels followed all commodifying Harrison Ford as the center of the franchise, eventually moving it to the 1950s and now 1960s. I found myself thinking the other day how I would have felt if I'd been told in 1981 that they'd eventually make an Indy film set after 1940. I would definitely have said "wow that will be crap"

But that key 1930s setting is a bit of a distraction, vital as it is. It's nice to imagine a series of Raiders films not following Ford but following Marion, or Brody, or Belloq or even the Ark itself, but the truth is Ford had the mega star power, and it's inevitable that the sequels to Raiders would be vehicles around Indy.

But tied to Indy they have become the thing they once looked to replace. Dial of Destiny is Harrison Ford's Octopussy/Never Say Never Again. And the scary thing for Hollywood right now the nearest thing to a new equivalent of Raiders of The Lost Ark is... 

Mission Impossible 7 starring 61 year old Tom Cruise.

*What was the other new movie franchise making Bond look decrepit at this time? Deadly cool new actor Mel Gibson in white line nightmare that was Mad Max 2 (The Road Warrior in the US). 

Imagine seeing Roger Moore's latter era Bond, then Raiders of the Lost Ark and then Mad Max 2 in the same year. 

Maybe Dial of Destiny has got it easy after all. 

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (1968) is more than just the best Edgar Allan Poe adaptation

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (1968) is more than just the best Edgar Allan Poe adaptation

Its a gateway drug to European New Wave cinema, which never forgets to idolise the great American writer, while having some weird relevance to motorcycle and car enthusiasts.

A week after I saw this 50 year old movie I was still buzzing. I'm not a hater of the other Poe movie adaptations.. but this forgotten European omnibus movie, by three genre resistant New Wave 1960s directors, covering only one of the well known Poe stories (William Wilson) still, for me, blows all the other Poe adaptations away.

Ostensibly an adaptation of the short story collection Tales of Mystery and Imagination, it only gets to three of the tales and two of those are quite obscure. Doubtless they are away the major works are amply covered by Vincent Price and co. As Corman's Poe films were barely over an hour long, and these three segments are 40mins + each the are perhaps better regarded as a trilogy or even a mini-series rather then segmented parts of a whole.

They are;

(plots)

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Roger Vadim's METZENGERSTEN : A Haunting, Erotic, Poe-etic precursor to Easy Rider

A sadistic European countess finds her cousin in a neighbouring dukedom is a moralistic man who melts her delusions of what life really is. When a jealous courtier arranges his death in a stable fire she adopts one of the surviving horses and develops an unhealthy obsession with it.

Metzengersten is completely Fondarific. This is the only movie in which brother and sister counter culture icons Jane and Peter Fonda appear together and they are both mesmerising for different reasons. Jane is completely convincing as an Elizabeth Bathory aristocratic sadist, Peter nails it as her enigmatic, moralist cousin.

It is slightly jarring initially seeing two iconic American actors in what is is apparently a very European set and told story, until you are forced to remember this is at heart an American tale told by an American writer. The presence of the Fonda's reminds us we are seeing Europe through the 19thC Bostonian's twisted prism.

It looks incredible. Vadim's stylish eroticism is on full show as as the leading actress is his wife of the time and it is comforting to know she is (presumably) happy with what she is asked to do. (Warning - some of this is soft core porn.) I've never seen Jane play the villain before and she is horribly convincing. Her eventual pangs of conscience are more affecting than Delon's similar evolution in the second installment.

Jane Fonda also shows off some pretty impressive horse wrangling skills in this movie. This is ironic.

While on the set for Spirits of the Dead, Peter Fonda and writer Terry Southern started working on a script would would eventually become EASY RIDER.. and seen in that light the doomed ending to that classic movie does have more than a touch of Poe. That fact that obsessive riding, of horses and motorcycles, is a major plot point in both Metzengersten and Easy Rider seems more than coincidence.

Four years before Fonda's co-star in Easy Rider, Jack Nicholson, starred in the 1963 adaptation of another Poe film, The Raven. Two years later in 1970 a chopper riding Poe, with Lost Lenore and a Raven riding pillion, would feature in Roger Corman's Gas-s-s-s.

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Louie Malle's WILLIAM WILSON : Brunette Bardot's card sharp pricks the conscience of Delon's Doppleganger

In one of Poe's most famous tales, William Wilson  (Alain Delon) is an immoral villain who cheats and abuses his way through life, but is haunted at every step by a person who appears to be an identical version of himself, who exposes every filthy murderous deed.

If Louis Malle's William Wilson is the least of the installments in the movie at least he has one of the most obsessive and haunting Poe stories, and he makes probably the best adaption of it.

The tiny cameo of Bridget Bardot gets big billing but she does make quite an impression. The card game is a centerpiece of the plot.

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 Federico Fellini's TOBY DAMMIT : Terence Stamp takes Withnail To Hell 

A 1960's actor escaping from swinging London attends an awards ceremony in Rome's film city of Cinecitta. Terence Stamp's Toby Dammit is a man who has lost all respect or enthusiasm for the gift of life. Someone is waiting to relieve him of his burden.

By now, half way through this substantial movie, you are due for a light rest from period shenanigans and literary heavyweight adaption, and the prospect of another 45 mins might seem too much. And that's when you are hit right in the eyes by  Federico Fellini's absolutely dazzling, climatic segment.

Seeming to be barely any kind of Poe adaptation until the final shocking twist, this is a mesmerising riff on Rome in the swinging sixties, with a genuinely wasted looking Terence Stamp playing a role which would today be best described as Withnail Goes to Hell.

Visually this is mindblowing and if you are as ignorant of the work of  Federico Fellini as I am you may feel a little ashamed at note paying more attention before. Vadim is obviously a great artist of scene and mood and Malle gets a lot from his actors but the only visual experience can compare to this final segment on an imaginative level is the best of Terry Gilliam or Wes Anderson.

This swinging, psychedelic bombardment has a real purpose - by the end you have completely forgotten it has any links to Poe, making the final reminder all the more effective.

It opens with an obviously LSD affected English actor (Stamp) trying to process his arrival at an Italian airport.

The only hint here of a Poe theme is that Stamp might have some kind of death wish. An addled Stamp then has to deal with an increasingly bizarre Italian movie awards ceremony which to be fair would shake anyone's grip on reality. (I'm sure the director is delivering a lot of well aimed digs at his own movie industry here)

And then the end arrives, and you recall this is a Poe adaption with one of the most genuinely shocking twists I've seen in some time.

Final notes
Terence Stamp shows off some pretty impressive car wrangling skills in this movie.

I can only assume hefty danger insurance was in place for Stamp and Fonda as they both push their respective horses and car as far as it will safely go. An alternative take on Spirits of The Dead is that Jane Fonda and Stamp took these largely unhindered by Hollywood safety regs movie roles just to make their stunt doubles in Hollywood up their game. (Delon in his story, doesn't have this level of danger but does have to deal with Bardot).

Based on the end you would think Ferrari drivers would worship this movie like VANISHING POINT or BULLIT. Perhaps Ferrari drivers just aren't the all knowing cognoscenti of fashion and style that out bling obsessed culture makes them out to be. The Golden Ferrari  (SPOILER IN LINK) is beautiful and it is driven like a demon in this movie, one more reason to watch it.

For those who care Metzengersten is entirely in English, William Wilson segment is in French, and though most of Toby Dammit is in English some is Italian and some maybe.... extraterrestrial.

A FACE IN THE CROWD is classic Black Mirror... from 1957

Elia Kazan's unrecognised 1950s classic is That Waldo Moment via The Twilight Zone

There is a Black Mirror episode, That Waldo Moment, which fearsomely predicts the effects of social media on politics.

Several news reports, including one by Chris Cillizza, political reporter for The Washington Post, compared Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign to the episode. In September 2016, episode writer Charlie Brooker also compared the Trump campaign to "The Waldo Moment" and predicted Trump would win the 2016 election. ...... On the night of the election, at the hour when Trump's victory was becoming clear to the nation, Black Mirror sent out a tweet proclaiming: "This isn't an episode. This isn't marketing. This is reality."

A Face In The Crowd is a fantastically entertaining movie from the 1950s with a very similar premise, warning not about social media, but mass media. It's skipped recognition until recently for what was perceived to be a nauseatingly cynical tone. Post 2016 it looks like an absolute classic, with elements of contemporary movies such as Sweet Smell of Success and later classics such as Network. It is as sharp and acerbic and bitter as Fight Club, with a powerful ending weirdly reminiscent of Scarface.

"You gotta be a saint to stand all the power that little box can give you."

A Face in The Crowd been getting some long overdue recogntion over the pond (for reasons which will be obvious) but seems mostly unknown in the wider world. A shame as this could be a story about the rise of Jeremy Clarkson as anyone else.

A travelling radio show run by a roaming archivist/music producer finds herself in a jail in rural Arkansas where she comes a showman of the highest order in the form of a drunken folk guitarist. She takes him from small time radio, to television personality to the highest political circles before realising the monster she's unleashed.

I learned of this movie listening to a Slate podcast
that in an earlier article called it
The Best Movie About Television That You've Never Seen

"Is it possible for a movie to be selected for the National Film Registry and still be underrated? Everyone who owns a TV set needs to know that A Face in the Crowd is unsurpassed as the great American story about television. "


and that was in 2009.

The director, Elia Kazan, had a history of socially conscious movie making such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954) which brought him the attention of the McCarthyite anti communist witchhunt of the 50s. When making this movie he was filled with disillusionment, having seen so many of his ideals betrayed by Stalinist purges in the USSR. It shows.

Director Stanley Kubrick called him, "without question, the best director we have in America, capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses." For all it's non recognition in that year's awards ceremonies and since, this movie must have launched a thousand careers as all the acting parts have a familiar face.

In an era of perfectionist actors such as Marlon Brando, for the lead role A Face in The Crowd, as the mesmerizing con-man personality Lonesome Rhodes, Kazan picked a standup comedian. Andy Griffith is dynamite, and it's almost a tragedy that after this movie he become entombed in folksy straight version roles of the evil creep he plays in this movie. (I'm underplaying this because I'm the wrong generation to appreciate it... the truth is After A Face in The Crowd Andy Griffith became perhaps the most beloved tv personality on US tv for four decades.)

Patricia Neal plays the producer who discovers Rhodes, and who promotes him into the wider media world while being unable to keep him out of her bed. Neal was unforgettable as the Mary figure to Klaatu's Jesus in The Day The Earth Stood Still (she was also Mrs Ronald Dalh). She has to be tragic and smart and the character could have stepped straight from a modern drama set in the era such as Mad Men. Scenes where she is still covering and making a excuses for Rhode's, when he’s treated her and everyone she respects like dirt I'm sure will be familiar to many.

Along with the modern political signifance this is also a period #METOO story told with compassion. The scene when she is preparing for her marriage to Rhodes, only to be confronted with the first wife, is heartbreaking stuff

"... he thinks he has to take a bite out of every broad he comes across. Then he calls them a tramp, drops them, and there's all sort of psycho something-or-other, you know. I caught him red-handed with my best girlfriend. He broke my jaw."

Shortly after this Rhodes appears from a trip to Mexico with a completely different wife (played by a very young Lee Remick, yet another star making performance)

Walter Matthau fans should definitely check out what is effectively his his star maker role as Mel Miller, an initially mild mannered writer for Rhodes who comes to see him for what he is and hate him with everyone else. The loathing initialy includes himself, for not being yet another Alpha Male in Rhode's pack of jackals. As he unloads to Neal's character;

"Didn't you know? All mild men are vicious. They hate themselves for being mild, and they hate the windy extroverts whose violence seems to have a strange attraction for nice girls."

Mocked for his education as “Vanderbilt ‘44” by Rhodes, he eventually gets to deliver a delicious coup de gras.

But it's Andy Griffith's Lonesome Rhodes who will haunt you afterwards. On his journey towards "Secretary for National Morale" he utters a whole series of quotes which would thrill a MAGA crowd.
There is a whole internet industry drawing current political significance from this movie.

How Andy Griffith And Elia Kazan Predicted Donald Trump’s Rise (And Fall?) Way Back In 1957’s ‘A Face In The Crowd’

The movie that foretold the rise of Donald Trump

Not even a movie as cynical as A Face In The Crowd could predict Donald Trump

But for all the apparent similarities personally I think we may have gone beyond a point where this great movie is predictive.

<SPOILER>


Rhodes is brought down by a recording. This is difficult to imagine currently. With the knowledge we have now, we know Rhode's supporters would laugh off any recording as Fake and any opposition as Lonesome Rhodes Derangement Syndrome.

But A Face in The Crowd does have one final moment of relevance in it's minor Twilight Zone twist. At the end Patricia Neal's character actually apologises to Rhodes, coming to realise that she is the originator of the problem, as the person who took him from deserved obscurity into the homes of the nation.

I've been saying for a while now, the real problem isn't with the scumbag opportunist. It's with his enablers.

AMC's period Arctic monster fest, THE TERROR, makes The Walking Dead look like a summer holiday (mild spoilers)

During the fabulous summer weeks of the 2018 World Cup I thought my only exposure to cannibalism would be Uruguayan footballers. How wrong I was.

It's over a week a week since I finished watching AMC's THE TERROR and I'm still constantly reminded of some of the horrible images and contents within. Last Saturday, in the middle of the England v Sweden World Cup semi final, I found myself describing The Terror as the scariest, most harrowing thing I've ever seen with Ridley Scott's name on it, including the original Alien.

Had I seen Alien in 1979 I probably would not have said that, and I have to say Alien : Covenant and Prometheus I both loved. But nothing so far this year, even to my astonishment Westworld S2, has hit me like AMCs follow up to Walking Dead.

Imagine the 'highlights' of six seasons of Walking Dead boiled down to ten taught episodes in a gripping setting, with engaging, believable characters, magnificent script and world class performances. I'm a massive fan of Jared Harris since he defined the movie version of Professor Moriarty (in Game of Shadows) he is absolutely magnificent in The Terror, presenting a character that could almost be a variation on his character from MAD MEN, another love struck disaster heading for his doom.

I would like to pick out other actors but honestly the entire cast is stellar and will make you marvel at British and Irish acting talent. If I had to pick favourites, Ian Hart as Blanky and Paul Ready as Goodsir are merely the most inspirational characters but I couldn't even call them standouts from a stunning group performance. It's tough. Over ten episodes, you will see most of the 100 men depicted die individually, in horrible circumstances. I'm still too affected by the fate of individual characters to praise one actor above another.

I could pick out two non Brits, two actresses, Greta Scacchi and Nive Nielsen, who have to react against the obvious early doom of the crews and both provide a welcome relief but also a quiet reinforcing role in the narrative.

Fans of both The Thing (all of them) will love the setting. The Thing (1982) is my favourite movie.

Apparently there is a tradition at Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station of watching all The Thing movies at the start of each winter. I would urge them to think twice before The Terror. Perhaps first dig Cold Nights Death out instead if looking for widening your viewing diet. The Terror is bad for diet's generally.

While having plenty of the gore and body horror of a modern horror show The Terror carries with it plenty of old classic scares. It wreaks of Lovecraftian horror and is an obvious portal to a later adaptation of At The Mountains of Madness. It could almost be a prequel.

Episode 6, 'A Mercy', screams classic Edgar Allan Poe.

Those objecting to some of the fantastic elements in the Terror (I think it's an Inuit variation on The Wendigo) should be aware that this is an adaptation of Dan Simmon's novel, rather than any attempt to tell the real story of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. I'm now seriously thinking of picking Simmon's book up, and having now seen many Youtube history documentaries on HMS Erebus and HMS Terror I'm not sure the fantasy version of events is any worse than what probably happened in real life.

In what might be  my favourite bit of real detail from this disastrous expedition (which highlights the danger and remoteness of the original mission) the RN Discovery Service eventually sent two ships to look for the Erebus and The Terror in the uncharted Arctic. The two ships were HMS Investigator and the 10th HMS Enterprise. Of the four ships, only HMS Enterprise (1848) returned from the area.

I doubt its an obvious reference but there is also an element of 'Alien' horror, which sits well with Ridley Scott's credit as Exec Producer (this is a Scott Free production*). I've said before part of the nightmare of the first few Alien films is the loss of authority (Captain Dallas dies early on in Alien,  Lieutenant Gorman is shockingly ineffectual in Aliens, Charles Dance goes early in III). The real horror in The Terror is seeing such an ordered environment as a Royal Navy crew slowly devolve into animals.

This is of course part of the power and tragedy in movies about the Titanic. The disaster is bad enough as it is but seen against the doomed stiff upper lips in A Night to Remember and James Cameron's movie the events are all the more shocking.

I'n a regular reader of Patrick O'Brian novels and nothing shipboard in terms of dialog or detail looked out place in The Terror. I would go so far as to say this is the most realistic portrayal of "wooden ships and iron men" since Peter Wier's masterful Patrick O'Brian adaptation Master and Commander. It's all the more shocking and upsetting that The Terror goes in such a different but yet convincingly different direction.
(Quite what they are doing with Congreve Rocket's on this expedition I'm not sure, but much like the flamethrower in The Thing, I'll put it down to .. movie spectacle).

Reservations? Some of it seems a little studio bound. Personally I would have liked the ice flow scenes to be on location rather than set bound but I know what John Carpenter's cast and crew went through filming in Alaska on a much smaller scale, so I will give them a pass on that. The two ships, Erebus and Terror, and the arctic hell around them are magnificently presented and you would be forgiven for thinking this was a far bigger production than it actually is.

If you are stuck in a heatwave and need chills it is a handy place to go.. but be warned it may be a difficult to escape.

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* Plenty of other great creative people have passed in the last five years or so, but I'd just like to acknowledge Tony Scott.. whose dazzling, eclectic movies I'm really starting to miss.

Darkest Hour (2017) vs Dunkirk (2017) & the Australian movie we need about the Abdication Crisis

Unlike Nolan’s Dunkirk, current Oscar bait Darkest Hour (2017) barely made a ripple in U.K. movie going conversation - I can see why. It's just embarrassing, and easily the worst film I’ve seen so far this year. This is awful Oscar bait by numbers, as many have said, and despite some good acting work makes Netflix's The Crown look like an edgy masterpiece of popular history.

Lets get the history out of the way first. I'm sure there is some detail in which this movie is very accurate. (I've read the book on which this screenplay appears to be based - Five Days in London, May 1940, by John Lukacs). Dates and timings appear to be spot on along with, some, of what was said.

Beyond that.. What will immediately annoy history buffs is the first scene in the House of Commons, which dumbs down and paraphrases one of the most dramatic and consequential debates in the entire 400 year history of the House of Commons; The Norway Debate.

An entire, brilliant movie could one day be made just covering this debate, as it results directly in the removal of Chamberlain, the final renunciation of appeasement and the installation of Churchill. But Darkest Hour really is only interested in Churchill, and as he is not present for this debate we a given a brief caricature of events. Clement Attlee would serve as the (first) Deputy Prime Minister throughout World War II and would defeat Churchill in the 1945 election. The film off-handledly admits in several places that Churchill is only considered at all for Prime Minister in 1940, against the ruling party, because of pressure from Attlee and the rest of the opposition. Attlee seen in the opening first few minutes of Darkest Hour and then barely mentioned later.

The Norwegians and the Norwegian Campaign which prompted this debate are barely featured, as it would confuse the Nazis-charging-through-the-collapsing-French narrative. Darkest Hour is not alone in disregarding the Norwegian Campaign and this is common to nearly every movie covering the period. Since a large portion of the German fleet ends up on the bottom of Norwegian fjords as a result of this campaign, making the subsequent sea invasion of Britain a virtual impossibility, you would think it would get more attention. The Norwegians have not forgotten it.

This paragraph below shows another another potentially brilliant scene dumbed down and pushed aside by this movie, in favour of a cut down paraphrased scene at an airport. Did they refuse permission to shoot in Paris? Christoper Nolan was allowed to use half the French Navy to shoot Dunkirk..

(From wiki)

Churchill flew to Paris on 16 May. He immediately recognised the gravity of the situation when he observed that the French government was already burning its archives and was preparing for an evacuation of the capital. In a sombre meeting with the French commanders, Churchill asked General Gamelin, "Où est la masse de manoeuvre?" ["Where is the strategic reserve?"] that had saved Paris in the First World War. 
"Aucune" ["There is none"] Gamelin replied. After the war, Gamelin claimed his response was "There is no longer any."
Churchill later described hearing this as the single most shocking moment in his life. Churchill asked Gamelin where and when the general proposed to launch a counterattack against the flanks of the German bulge. 
Gamelin simply replied "inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of methods".

There is vast tragedy in the nation which beat the Germans at Verdun succumbing to the Germans of 1940 but (as usual with this kind of movie) we only seem to get French resignation without any nuance beyond that. Similarly, the possibility of talks with Mussolini's Italian fascists looms large over the later stages of this movie, could it not drag itself out of Churchill's bunker for one scene showing an actual Italian?

My frustration here really comes down to missed potential. What a great conspiracy story could be made of this - instead we have an increasingly laughable human interest drama with a political dimension.

Again as usual for this kind of movie it makes no mention of Commonwealth and Empire forces  (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, British India - not inconsiderable) which declared war alongside the home country almost immediately without reservation.

I'm heavily into movie scores at the minute, still going back to Jerry Goldsmith's forgotten epic score to The Blue Max.  Dario Marianelli's score to Darkest Hour.. I wish I could say it's forgettable but it actually distractedly melodramatic; managing to overdramatise some of the most dramatic moments of the last century is really some feat. Try listening to this next to Hans Zimmer's incredible score for Nolan's Dunkirk. You'd struggle to believe they were written in the same century. Darkest Hour's soundtrack belongs in an Ealing Studios movie.

I am not by the way an unabashed worshiper of Dunkirk (2017), it has major major issues on a historical level as well but as just a movie event it makes Darkest Hour look quite laughable.

This is the first Joe Wright film I’ve seen and I’ll avoid the rest. Every flashy CGI camera moment and directorial flourish you can imagine and then some. Without wanting to be too harsh this is the nearest British equivalent I can think of  to Micheal Bay’s execrable Pearl Harbor. Darkest Hour  even has a similar CGI shot showing a bomb dropping off a plane and followed down to the target. Oh and for added fakeness, the glimpse of CGI Little Ships against the CGI White Cliffs of Dover  must have had Nolan's cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema absolutely rolling around with laughter.

Darkest Hour's now infamous Churchill on the tube scene is every bit as Disney-embarrassing-ridiculous as you’ve been led to expect. At a pivotal point in the movie the Grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough decides to take a tube train, alone, to get a Vox Pop of working class opinion. By far the most believable detail in this scene is the British Caribbean gent in the hat. That I can believe. Beyond him - Is that Dick Van Dyke's chimney sweep and Mary Poppins in the background?

There is no scene in Marvel’s Captain America : First Avenger less believable than Darkest Hour's tube scene, and for all the previous acting special effects the movie never recovers, simmering just above Comic Strip Presents : Operation Dynamo.   You certainly will get more of an idea of the real 1940s Britain watching Supersizers Go Wartime.

The positives :  The cast is obviously very good. I'm a massive fan of Gary Oldman, and just about everyone else  here, so writing this has not been easy. I’d rather watch a whole movie about Kristin Scott Thomas's Lady Churchill, or even Stephen Dillane's Halifax, than go into this subject matter again.

Ben Mendelsohn is fantastic again as George VI. With Guy Pearce's magnificent cameo as Edward VIII (and Geoffrey Rush as Lionel Logue) in The King's Speech , can we hope the Australian film industry is just a step away from the movie about the pivotal Abdication Crisis that we deserve? They'll push Kate Blanchett or Naomi Watts as Wallace Simpson but give Margot Robbie a go - she deserves it. (I recently saw I, Tonya three times in the space of a week.)

Perhaps let Gary Oldman redeem himself as Stanley Baldwin.
For those not aware of the Abdication Crisis featured briefly in The King's Speech , Stanley Baldwin is the British Prime Minister who essentially sacks the Head of State when members of his family are found to be colluding with a hostile foreign power. I would say this is probably a more relevant story right now than yet another bloody movie about Winston Churchill.

As someone with an education, not living in an old people's home, I'm probably the wrong demographic for Darkest Hour. It's a cosy Xmas drawing room drama written for Hollywood grandparents and uncomplaining Baby Boomers,  and such it's an almost diametric opposite to Nolan's Dunkirk which for all its issues does at least put to put you on the beaches and challenges your conceptions of storytelling.

Nolan's movie is a trans-national, inspirational story about survival which notably includes the French and the Dutch and is so aware of war mongering nonsense since 1945 it only refers to the Germans as 'The Enemy'. By contrast Darkest Hour is a laughably told, inward looking hagiography of a great man (and forgotten internationalist) already unfairly idolised by some of the most ignorant, backward looking people on Earth.

I saw the incredible Russian anti-war film Come and See (1985) the same day I saw Darkest Hour, which seems to exist in a different universe. Come and See has some valuable lessons in how to dig up the past.

Is THE BLUE MAX (1966) Imperial Germany's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA?

The story of a morally conflicted, nonconformist WW1 antihero gets the full 1960s epic movie history treatment. But there is not a spec of sand in sight.

You know you are watching a 1960s epic movie when you get a blank screen and several minutes of gorgeous score before the movie has even started (The Overture). John Guillermin's 1962 WW1 air war epic is obviously a 'follow up' to David Lean's  1962 desert WW1 classic , how does it compare?

I am very much appreciating THE GREAT WAR on Youtube right now. It stands out on several levels:

• Accessible, fun, history teaching that isn't dumbed down
• It's honest, fair and doesn't necessarily follow accepted opinion
• It is repeatedly anti-war at a time when a slow drum beat, particularly in the US and Russia, seems to be starting up

and perhaps most of all

• It reminds us why the internet, and the interaction it creates, is a bonus for humanity and not a hate machine

I was so impressed with this free 200+ episode history show I sent them a list of my favourite WW1 movies. It contained the obvious ones such as Stanley Kubrick's Path's Of Glory (arguably the best Stanley Kubrick film), and not so obvious ones, such as Zeppelin (1971), the almost contemporary, The Battles of Coronel and Falkland Islands (1927) and a strange but fun movie about the war in Africa, starring Roger Moore and Lee Marvin, Shout At The Devil (1976)

The list also included John Guillermin's The Blue Max, prompting me to watch the movie again, for the second time in less than a year. It's an interesting movie for 1966, obviously in the shadow of its major influence, but heavily anticipating much more politically conscious and critical movies to come in subsequent decades.

Set in a tired and increasingly insane Germany in the climatic final year of World War One, the German air force is so desperate for pilots it is recruiting the Middle Class (horror!) straight out of the trenches. New recruit Bruno Stachel is certainly made of different stuff, with a flexible attitude to honour and a fanatical ambition to win the greatest military award, the Pur Le Merite, The Blue Max.

I mentioned the score at the top. This genre of movie throws up the soundtrack as a major highlight, with an opening Overture before the movie has even started, then a special soundtrack portion just for the Interval. You need some great music to carry this kind of thing off and in Lawrence of Arabia you have Maurice Jarre's masterful theme, which may be the best movie music of all time. The Blue Max has a score by Jerry Goldsmith. Personally I'm a huge fan of this composer, his incredibly effective theme to Ridley Scott's original Alien may be the most under-regarded uic soundtrack ever. Goldsmith's music for Blue Max is not one of his very best but does it's job with an air of doomed military funeral grandier.

But let's get the main issue with this movie out of the way early on - George Peppard really isn't any kind of Peter O'Toole. I've never been a fan of this actor. He has a sort of galling smugness that reminds me of a porky James Franciscus. He belonged in tv, and was destined for a semi-comic role n something like the A-team. Many scarred veteran watchers of The A-Team might find it difficult to take George Peppard seriously.
Yeah. I'm right with you.

That said, his character in the movie, Bruno Stachel, is an overly ambitious slimeball with a chip on his shoulder. He's meant to be even more of an anti-hero than O'Tool's Lawrence and, if you are expecting not to overly sympathise with him, Peppard plays this quite well.

Ursula Andress isn't really attempting any acting Olympics but remains Ursula Andress, a 60s movie star of the highest rank. She doesn't have to do a great deal but convinces as an aristocratic Kaiserine 'wife'who is more aware of what is going on in the real world than any of the men.

James Mason seems to excel in playing military Germans, at least for Brits. His character, Count von Klugermann, is a long way from the role as Erwin Rommel that he became famouse for in two movies in the 1950s. Klugermann is a real relic from the world before 1914 (on all sides), a military fanatic who only lives to promote the 'German Officer Corps'. Time he could be spending with Ursula Andress he actually spends playing tabletop war games with someone elses wife. There is no character in Lean's epic like this (Jack Hawkin's General Allenby is probably closest) but there probably should be, for all the magnificence of Lawrence of Arabia there is little discussion of why men are being sent to die and kill in Palestine and Iraq when the real enemy is in France.

The supporting players in Stachel's squadron, such as the Heidemann's and Corporal Rupp, are all sympathetic realistic human beings, and much like the opening sequence in Battle of Britain (1969) you wish the movie had spent more time on their banter.  One thing it does have in common with Battle of Britain is the advanced age of the pilots, who all seem at least one generation older than the boys who actually lived and died in these planes.
The generally woeful Red Baron (2008)at least got that right.

Flying sequences genuinely are epic, and the movie is impressive in its historical accuracy.
The charge into Aqaba is the big action set piece in Lawrence, and The Blue Max has it's own, when Stachel's squadron are sent into action against ground troops to try and stem the beginning of the Hundred Days, the giant Allied counter Offensive which would eventually prompt a cease fire. Previously we've seen the squadron celebrate what the German's hope desperately will be there war winning push, only for it to collapse in exhaustion near Amiens.

Stock footage, props and planes from this movie would be reused in inferior productions (such as Roger Corman's Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) for the next couple of decades.

For the serious aviation nerds, they obviously built one or two 'hero' planes to closely replicate the machines of 1918 and padded these out with lightly dressed up Tiger Moths. The SE5s and the Fokker Triplanes look spot on to me. Apparently Peter Jackson later acquired these for his aero museum. Allegedly he lists the film as one of the top six World War I movies.

Dublin stands in for Imperial Berlin. I've been to both places (though not in 1918) and I was fooled. The rural locations look suspiciously green and lumpy but they are hardly unpleasant to look at. Douglas Slocombe might look familiar in the credits. One of the great British cinematographers, Speilberg chose him to lense the first three initial Indiana Jones films.

In summation David Lean's Law is obviously a  much better movie, and this cash-in, and many others like it (55 Days at Peking, Kartoum) might never even have existed without Lawrence. For all it's merits though Lean's film is a complex biopic about a complex man which really fails to land any wider political point beyond "Don't trust the British and the French,  - even if you are British and French".

The Blue Max, for all it's issues, goes squarely at the class system, the change from chivalrous combat to Total War, and the insanity of the military industrial complex. Despite his glory hunting and insubordination, which often puts his own squadron at risk*, Stachel is quickly seized on as a propaganda asset to boost Germany's collapsing home front. There is a hint of this in Lawrence with the interview with the American reporter but in this movie it is the main plot thread, driving toward a climax of cynical political expediency.

You could make an argument to say none of these characters are bad beyond the main character himself. They are merely trapped in an insane machine grinding their society and the rest of Europe into dust. In this respect you can see the mid-1960s progression from Lawrence, much more of a biopic, made in 1962.

Much of the credit for this can probably be traced to the novel of the same name on which the film was based by Jack D. Hunter. The theme of the fanatical quest to receive a German medal at all costs might seem familiar as it is the central theme of the classic Eastern front WW2 movie Cross of Iron. Cross of Iron is itself apparently based on a a novel of 1955, The Willing Flesh So perhaps Hunters novel, published in 1966, got the inspiration here and swapped one medal and one war for another. I notice James Mason seems to be paying a very similar roles in both both The Blue Max and Cross of Iron.

1966 was still an era for jingoistic war movies, particularly concerning WW2. In picking an unfashionable war, an unfashionable side to that war and an unlikable main character Blue Max bridges the historical epic to the far more anti-war tone of films in the 70s and 80s.

---

* Stachel is such an idiotic threat to his own fellow pilots he reminds me of Poe Dameron in THE LAST JEDI. 
 The scene I would most like to see in a directors cut of Last Jedi;

 After his pointless and stupid “bombing run”. Poe Dameron marches onto Rebel cruiser and, after wiping out his own Air Force, he mouths off at the leader of the Resistance, General Leia (as per movie)
but instead of smiling Carrie Fisher calls him an insubordinate, incompetent prick and Force strangles him to death (like her father) in front of assorted nice people with purple hair
 “APOLOGIES ACCEPTED GENERAL DAMERON”

I loved I,TONYA

THREE BILLBOARDS and BLACK PANTHER may be getting all the movie attention right now but you would be remiss to miss I, TONYA, which is much better than some of the reviews suggest in my opinion.

Told in whiplash,self referential style like a Winter Olympics version of 24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE, Margot Robbie is very sympathetic as the doomed skater with amazing support from Alison Janney (CJ* in the West Wing) and Sebastian Stan (the Winter Soldier himself)

I TONYA may be described as a comedy by some, and it is funny, but it is also brutal and realistic in showing the effects of poverty and the class divide, even in a sport as apparently genteel and civilised as ice skating. The world in which Tonya Harding is from is shown in unflinching detail  - it’s no surprise to find Harding’s abusive poor as hell husband and his cretinous friends are working on a Republican election campaign...

One of the highlight for me is Tonya appalling the nice skating judges by choosing to ice dance to ZZ TOP

This is before things all start to go wrong for her, and the famous plot to cripple her rival skater would be laughed of the screen if it wasn’t so tragically real.

I usually avoid looking at award nominations but I’m very relieved Robbie and Janney have both been nominated in the major acting categories.

I’m sad now and I’m going to watch Margot Robbie again in the fake Dundee trailer leading a chant of ‘FREE BEER!’ she bangs her empty pint glass and a machete in on outback bar.

*CJ  Cregg is still high on my list as a preferred voice for my personal Alexa/Siri, (if we can just have Sorkin write the snarky responses)

Branagh is a great Poirot but a bad Agatha Christie storyteller

​Murder on the Orient Express 2017..would leave you with a very warm feeling about a potential Poirot movie franchise
IF​​
The classic 1974 version never existed
And
The first hour wasn’t so much better than the last hour

Like last years surprisingly watchable Magnificent Seven remake,this movie is crawling out from under a classic and though Branagh is a good director, he is no Sidney Lumet.

This is less of a problem in a dashing introductory first hour when (like the  Magnificent Seven remake) a smartly written take on the material and some sharp storytelling make this look like a new Sherlockian movie franchise in the making.

Branagh does a great job with Poirot breathing  real life into a character I had previously thought was a bit of a cold fish. You might say this reinvention is Robert Downey Jnrish without the martial arts. He manages to capture the difference between Holmes and Poirot - the |Belgian isn’t a deductive super computer but a sufferer of obsessive compulsive disorder who has turned it into a talent and a lifestyle.

As soon as it runs into Christie’s brilliant plot however (arguably THE whodunnit murder mystery, based on the most shocking crime of the 1930s) it falters. Lumets classic version in 1974 only barely holds the 6+ plot threads together but it does with hefty dopings of horror and tragedy.

Branagh, good as he is cannot do this level of juggling, resulting in a confused, rushed middle and then overstages the finale. Is this a common Kenneth Branagh as director thing? more interested in characters than plot? (based on this and the first Thor film you would have to say that's a yes).

In several earlier moments he has Poirot surveying crime scenes directly from above with the camera slowly descending from above into the room. It’s very subtle and effective - then we have a climax that looks right out of a bad DC superhero movie. Does it really need the Last Supper shot? That must be a hideous cliche by now. I loved it in Watchmen but please this material doesn’t need to play postmodern games with classic images - it should be classic images itself.

Performances are generally ok though some of the more senior cast seem to think they are playing alongside Peter Ustinov and Elizabeth Taylor.

It is definitely watchable and based on this I’d certainly watch the proposed Death On The Nile sequel but I would hope it has a different director. These books are from one of the premier female novelists of all time - so how about a female director - what is Patty Jenkins doing between Wonder Woman films?

One nitpick- if you can flawlessly create 1930s Istanbul and gorgeous mountain vistas with the wonder of CGI, could you not also add some cold breath effects to the actors supposedly standing around high up in a mountain range in huge piles of snow?

I saw this on a free screening with Searcys who have never served me a bad cocktail, and have always sent me away happy if not entirely sober.

Blade Runner 2049 : It's No Game

It's over a week since I saw BLADE RUNNER 2049 a second time and I'm still thinking about it a lot. The dam has just burst. Prepare for random thoughts.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 is not only better than the original, by having characters you actually care about, it makes the plot of the original movie 20% better by giving that slightly abusive Deckard and Rachel relationship some consequence.

Apparently BLADE RUNNER 2049 has been a box office flop. I'm neither shocked or disappointed by this because it means I'm not going to hear theories on it from some empty headed trendy who only went to see it for Ryan Gosling.

Gosling is brilliant, better than Ford in both movies (and Ford is pretty good in this one). Gosling seems to be playing a ghost version of his doomed character from DRIVE and his work with  Ana de Armas as Joi makes for a level of hearbreak we never get anywhere near in the cold, sometimes brutal original movie.

Officer K/Joe and Joi are just about the best screen couple I've seen all year. It's horrifying when Joi is destroyed and absolutely devastating when 'Joe' finds (or is reminded) that Joi is essentially a very smart App, and the important bond he has established with this 'woman' actually meant absolutely nothing beyond his own mind.
It was a nightmarishly relatable moment.

According to Slash Film podcast review, the hero of Kafka's The Trial is 'Joseph K', who thinks he is the center of a huge conspiracy, only to find is a minor functionary. Gosling's Officer K/Joe is an instant classic movie character, tragic on several levels. The narrative's flirtation with the plot twist from ANGEL HEART is all the more tragic and pathetic when it is revealed to be a cruel tease.

Wow that was a lot of spoilers wasn't it!
Tough. You should have paid to see the movie instead of waiting to see such a breathtaking cinematic experience on your shit television.

The debate used to be
IS DECKARD A REPLICANT?
It's now
CAN DECKARD'S MANGY DOG TALK?

This movie is worth seeing more than once. After the three way love scene, between K, Joi and Marriett you hear Mackenzie Davis (also great as a kind of Pris 2.0) say to Joi
"There is not as much to you as you think" .
The first time you hear it this is needlessly cruel.
The second time, when you know what Joi is, this is cruel, accurate and heartbreaking all round.

Apparently this and other scenes are getting flak for their portrayal of women. I'm not going to defend this movie from feminists because most feminists I know have a brain and won't be offended by this movie. Like the similarly devastating and disturbing HER, there is nothing in this movie that makes me think
"wow losing my emotions to an App controlled by a immortal, omnipotent, all powerful faceless corporate is a great alternative to some sweet but dozy bird I might find on Tinder".

Denis Villeneuve has instantly become, like David Fincher and Christopher Nolan, someone whose entire back catalogue now needs to be watched. I wasn't knocked out by ARRIVAL (or INTERSTELLAR for that matter) but SICARIO is a classic. I hope he's not bitten off more than he can chew with D U N E.

Another great scene, another great actress, Sylvia Hoeks as Luv, who isn't really a powerless male fantasy figure

Standing in for Bowie (see below), Jared Leto is actually great as Wallace, 2049's frustrated Tyrell. The Slash Film podcast  summed up Wallace perfectly;
"He's the CEO of Samsung coming on stage decades after Steve Jobs (Tyrell) has left and taken all his secrets with him".

As we know Denis Villeneuve is a D U N E fanatic did he cast Jared Leto because he wants Jared Leto as Leto?

I have had issues with the BLADE RUNNER since it was the crushing disappointment of 1982 but the more I see it on better quality medium the better it gets. The first time I saw the BLADE RUNNER FINAL CUT at my friend Rob's house in dazzling HD I had a genuine Philip K. Dick moment when I thought the characters in the Philip K. Dick movie looked more real than we did in the reality that was watching it.

DANGEROUS DAYS BLADE RUNNER DOC 1 The brutal love scene in original movie was more originally more tender according to Sean Young but it was cut to look like abuse. If they were "made to be together" as Sean Young says in one cut scene, this makes Tyrell even more of a cruel god.

The more I watch the original the more intriguing Edward James Olmos's character Gaff becomes as he is obviously some form of handler for Deckard, whatever he is.

For all my re-evaluation and late appreciation of BLADE RUNNER, if you want something genuinely Philip K. Dick from the 1980s, that also screams 1980s in all it's vulgar glory, Paul (STARSHIP TROOPERS) Verhoeven's TOTAL RECALL seems a little forgotten today.

C4's ELECTRIC DREAMS, a Philip K. Dick anthology show from the channel which originally brought you BLACK MIRROR. is worth a watch. A little patchy, the most mind bending thing I've seen it in so far is Benedict Wong's spot on Mancunian accent in the episode"Impossible Planet"
Benedict Wong is also in one of the BLADE RUNNER 2049 short films  (BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "2036: Nexus Dawn") so you know he's a Philip K. Dick fan.
EDIT: Benedict Wong has a spot on Mancunian accent because Benedict Wong was born in Eccles, Greater Manchester :-)

One of the other shorts, BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "Black Out 2022", should be a full length movie and I would guess will be one before long.

DANGEROUS DAYS BLADE RUNNER DOC 2 While doing painstaking model work to ensure that every microscopic light source in the cityscape for the opening of the orginal movie looks real,
Douglas Trumble's exhausted Special Effects crew gets a trip to director Ridley Scott's breathtaking actual sets. They are gobsmacked to find beautiful interiors like Tyrell's office with light dancing around like Midsummer Nights Dream from no realistic sources whatsover.
Later, graffiti on piece of  tiny modelwork is shown to say "RIDLEY IS GOD"

We speculated in the 80s that the ultimate cyperpunk accessory would be cybernetic eyes what would show you the world as if shot by the Scott Brothers. (You could have a dropdown that could switch between Tony and Ridley).

Anyway.. back to BLADE RUNNER 2049

When listened to on headphones. soundtrack to BLADE RUNNER 2049 by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch, just like the astonishing Vangelis soundtrack for the original, will put you right back in the movie, even when you are actually just queuing up for a flu jab at Boots.

Jóhann Jóhannsson was the original choice for the BLADE RUNNER 2049 soundtrack before Denis Villeneuve decided quite late on to go with Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch. (If we we got is a last minute rush job it is all the more impressive). Jóhann Jóhannsson is a brilliant modern composer  which means eventually we will get a probably excellent variant soundtrack for this movie before long.

The soundtrack for the BLADE RUNNER 2049 - "Black Out 2022" short, by Flying Lotus is also good and should be expanded to album length. (While we wait for the live action movie of these events).

Bowie was the original choice to to be Wallace because Denis Villeneuve and Ridley Scott considered him to be hugely influential on Blade Runner and cyberpunk aesthetic.
As I've mentioned elsewhere cyberpunk was coined as a term AFTER Blade Runner to describe the look and concept. So what Bowie music inspired Blade Runner?
Diamond Dogs? - no, too 1970s, too glam
Outside? - no, a response, a reflection back from the 1990s

You'd need something from the big technological/style bang of the 1980s as it sloughed off the 1970s, something like this.

This is the sound of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, and eventually literary cyberpunk being born screaming into life


**UPDATE** Now I come to think of it Bowie's 'Heroes' and 'Low' are much more influential on both actual movie soundtracks.


One final note.
When Denis Villeneuve needed a location to show a defunct dying Las Vegas he chose a Stock Exchange (in Budapest). I wonder how ironic and prophetic that will seem when we finally get to see BLADE RUNNER 2075?