Sinners

 

Oh this is easily the new film, I have enjoyed most this year

It is a Vampire movie set in prohibition era Deep South. The film is not perfect, in fact the final battle is confused. I think the ending was re-edited in post. That said this is a cult classic in the making

It looks beautiful. This is as I have mentioned a period piece, well cut clothes, classic cars, the heroes even carry a lugar. 

The sound track is great. The music is done well here

There is a strong cast. Jack O Connell from Harry Brown, Haile Steinfeld from the Coen brother remake of True Grit. 

So the story is simple two twin brothers, veterans of WW1 and the Chicago underworld buy an old mill somewhere down South. They wish to turn it into a juke- a dance hall. 

There is an dilemma  in the film, the brothers realize that their black clientele is too poor and too dependent on company scrip to pay real money. The characters debate turning people away unless they have real money. If they are too welcoming on opening night- then it will be harder as things go on.

Equally people have come to the juke after working 

Steinfeld plays a white passing girl. 

O'Connell as Remick the vampire steals the spot light. Playing like the devil, and one step ahead of everyone 

Speaking about deals at crossroads we also have the Twins cousin is a guitarist of sublime skill

Who is warned by his father about the Devil

The scenes where a succession of vampires try to get into the juke is well done. Cornbread-the bouncers confusion about what people do it  a nice touch. He ain't human anymore. O'Connell trying to guilt the black folk into letting him

All Human life and death is here. Even that which goes past that. Like the end of prohibition Sinners offers a chance to return to a deeper drink, a drink without the inhibition of race and sex and never have to worry about the morning 

Frankenstein 1931

 

This is rather brief it was not however bad

I note that the Medical School- where Fritz ( Not Igor) steals the brains from is co-ed

The father bringing his dead daughter to the town square- was well done

The scenes with the monster are generally good too. The monster seems a large child, often pathetic and helpless. Terrified of the flame and tormented by Fritz Frankenstein's servant

The finale scene with the monster being trapped and burnt alive in the windmill. I think was well done too

There is I think supposed to be a love triangle between Frankenstein and his fiancé's best friend. In modern parlance it looks like the friend is a simp. 

There is a bit of accent distraction here. The little girl, her father and several of the locals have Dixie or Country accents. I also noted that Frankenstein's old mentor had a strange accent. It sounded Welsh to me, but the actor is of German stock

There is one very pretty maid, in the final scenes. I wonder did she catch the director's eye like she did mine

Top Secret

 

Val Kilmer certainly had star quality, here he plays an action hero, and does a pretty good job as a singer. 

I understand now why the girls in UNC had such a crush on him, 

Maybe I should watch , Kilmer  play Jim Morrison in the Doors. 

Anyway. There is a lot less sex than the Kentucky Fried Movie 

This film spoofs war films, Spy films and beach blanket movies. Oh and the Blue Lagoon. Yeah admit to owning a DVD of that 

Oh, the young antagonist, who was washed up on the desert iisland   is the actor who plays a colonel in Sharpe's Siege. 

The person playing the German General also played a General in War and Remembrance

Jeremy Kemp - Wikipedia

The French language jokes for resistance members are great

I enjoyed it. Silly jokes, like this isn't the Howard Johnson. 

The Revenant

 

This reminded me of the Thin Red Line. Another Period piece, set during war-where the human beings are often in the background to the wildlife and the scenery

I remember well seeing the cinematography abandoned Mission. The tumbledown ruin on a white snowscape and the bright colours of a painting of the last judgement 

It is a cold clear, crisp wonder we watch,

The story is set in the Dakota territory sometime between the war of 1812 and the USCW. In flash back we see shako wearing US soldiers burning out Pawnee villagers. An Indian chief wishing to avenge the abduction of his daughter attacks American trappers. One of the party, the chief guide is attacked by a bear. His son is killed and he is left for dead by a rival. 

This film is a story of two parents out for revenge, and revenge is a dish best served cold. There are moments of triumph, Glass escaping the raiders, Glass surviving the fall. It is a long defeat though 

There is a lot of dialogue in Pawnee here

The bear attack on Glass-is terrifyingly well done. I note that it is established that Glass had strayed to close to cubs resting in a nest. The sheer size and weight of the beast was conveyed well (Glass is the trapper played by Leo )

There is one scene which made raise an eyebrow- the scene where Leo rides his horse of a cliff, and survives by the horse and a fir tree breaking his fall

I enjoyed this film much less than the Wolf of Wall Street. I found it empty, like the winter in the Dakota there is so little here. Glass was married to a Pawnee and was made a widower by the army of his nation. His mixed race son- A pawnee with an American father is told to be silent, until he is murdered. 

A pity because I think the setting is interesting and with more exposition, and time we could have had a better film

I will not rewatch this

The Prestige

 This was something of a late booking. I was looking after my father last night. I got back later than I intended. I noticed that The Prestige was due to leave Amazon Prime, and I thought why not

It is fine. I wasn't really as engaged in this as I should be

The film looks beautiful, even a Victorian prison looks clean

The cast is great. Bale, Johansson, Caine, and Hugh Jackman oh and Piper Perabo 

Oh and lots of famous faces- Gill from Frasier, and Morgan Sheppard

I see reading this that Rodger Rees, who stars in this film passed away in 2015. I am sorry to learn this. Having very much enjoyed his performances here, in The West Wing, and as Robin Concord in Cheers

This is a film of surprising accents. Christian Bale plays a Londoner- and he sounds odd. I don't know if that is because I hear London accents daily. A young and luminous Scarlet Johansson plays his assistant

Again  Scarlett doing a British accent Which surprised me. Her accent was not bad

This is a story of a feud between 2 century stage magicians - though really it is a steam punk fantasy. We even see Bowie play Tesla -doing a Croatian accent

I should give it more time. I wonder if it will be remembered more fondly that Nolan's Batman in the future

The Hill

 If the First Great Train Robbery was a look at Victorian England warts and all. As Connery tells us at one point Queen Victoria is dead. We are seeing the end of empire. Perhaps the of the values that created it  Then the Hill puts the Desert Rat under the microscope. Sean Connery plays a former RSM busted down to the rank of private for refusing to lead a tank attack and then busting a major's jaw. 

This is a reality of World War Two, we shy away from millions of men have been conscripted. The Army has to deal with deserters, spivs, and thieves. Indeed there were thousands of armed deserters at the end of the war.

When caught these men are imprisoned- in the a military gaol-A glass house. As part of their punishment, the prisoners are compelled to run up and down a man made hill in the Saharan sun

This is not a good war, in the good war. 

Rather we watch NCO's watching portly Arab women belly dance. Drinking contests between NCO's The base  Commandant leaving money on the dresser . There are ``French'' postcards For the unlucky there  is endless P.T, in an old fort reinforced with barbed wire. There are no Germans or Italians here in the Hill, not even occasional aircraft. We are a long way from the enemy. So the enemy we see are the non commissioned officers. The wardens of this jail. They are here to break down the bad characters, and rebuild them. The officers being absent or disinterested as in the case in Michael Redgrave's Medical Officer.  Oh and this is fighting done by a multi racial army. King one of the prisoners is West Indian. We see other black faces in crowd shots. This film has a lot of racist abuse cast at King. People watching it now would talk about the power imbalance between medical professional and working class blacks 

Not all soldiering is fighting. In Stevens we meet a desk clerk, who went AWOL and tried to get back to his wife. We have a hard drinking hard man in McGrath-who stuck one on a couple of red caps

Roy Kinnear plays a spiv- a fat man who can't climb the ropes. With cigarettes hidden in his boot. It is not a performance people will warm to, but he does a good job.`` I'm only looking out for number one ''Kinnear is apparently illiterate but canny and cruel. We notice that he is the first person to throw his weight around with Stevens-despite being the second smallest of the five

Connery is great. He won a BAFTA for this, and he looks very different somehow. He seems younger in scenes. This is a young man Connery is an old soldier trying to look after his men, but ultimately let down on him. Connery is singled out for extra punishment- he goes without grub on the first night

I had wanted to watch this for a while. Connery was an ex seaman and Harry Andrews is ex services. Interestingly Andrews was mentioned in dispatches during WW2. Indeed  Andrews was a gay man and the film was made before homosexuality was legal , and long before it was legal in the British Army. The film mentions a gay soldier being imprisoned - All human life is here.

Life is struggle. Connery represents the new. He is scornful of the British Empire, not interested in dominating King. Connery is a tanker, the wonder weapons of world war two

Oh and if you haven't  this film will not pass the betchel test

We watch then five cellmates struggle with their sadistic Sgt. Singled out for harsher attention because of Connery  A man transferred from Wormwood scrubs so another local lad into the Army. I don't know if this because the Sgt is ambitious, or so cruel he needs to dominate people, and is willing to put himself in harms way to do so. There is a difference between him and Andrews sgt. Andrews seems himself as professional soldier who wants to break people but rebuild them as soldiers. Everyone else might be timeserving, or indulging in their frustrations,  Andrews wants to do his job for the army. 

He like us is horrified to  see Stevens break and die.. This is a small perhaps even futile battle in a larger war. The stakes are still deadly. Men die, men are broken, trying to get up and over the hill

The First Great Train Robbery

 

This is should be a Netflix series. You could easily make a good 10 part series about this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gold_Robbery

Oh I note one of the robbers was a Shepherd's Bush Resident. 

It is a late 70s/ early 80s piece. Connery playing a Bond, who was never recruited into M16.  Indeed Connery did a lot of his own stunts. Donald Sutherland is playing his accomplice. Sutherland sounds Canadian- and that doesn't really fit with the cant he is supposed to speak. This film was based on a Michael Crichton novel. Which was very well researched. 

Wayne Sleep plays a cat burgular and does a spetacular stunt where he scales the walls of Newgate prison- Getting back to the research the events at Newgate happen as a female prisoner is due to be hanged. The crowd sing a taunting song. 

We see the pleasure garden outside the original Crystal Palace

There is a lot of victoriana here. The Irish language in the cant,  Coffins with bells. Oh and extended scene with ratting- You see Brian Glover as the MC.  Oh and a London where dead cats can be found easily. Couples riding together, a mother and a daughter playing on twin pianos

A trip to the past- and not a comfortable one