Film Reviews by JM

As some of you will know, the majestic Robert Duvall celebrated 92 years on this planet. Maestro Duvall has long been a great favourite of mine, possessing as he does a screen presence that’s both powerful and all his own, whether playing good or bad, to the point that I don’t hope for the best with him, I EXPECT it!

So it was with high expectations that yours truly watched BADGE 373, in which Maestro Duvall plays hardboiled NYPD cop Eddie Ryan hellbent on avenging the murder of his ex-partner GiGi Caputo (Louis Cosentino), who’s been found in his car with his throat cut. Trouble is that Ryan’s found himself suspended from the force after throwing a drug-peddling associate of local crime boss Sweet William (Henry Darrow), plus it doesn’t help that he’s a racist boor to boot, and generally treats his lady friend Maureen (Verna Bloom) like crap. But if you think that’s going to stop him…

Directed by the veteran Howard W. Koch, BADGE 373 is a film I’ve long wanted to see, plugging as it does a sizeable gap in my Duvall viewing and that it hails from the 1970s, which is the golden age of the movie thriller in my book…damn shame the film didn’t live up to my lofty expectations! Maestro Duvall is his usual eminently watchable self here, giving the film its drive, but overall it’s MEH! There’s great moments, terrific location shooting by Arthur Ornitz, but ultimately it’s a symphony of perfunctory, with broad performances that manage to be achingly dull when they’re not bordering on stereotypes, plus an underwhelming JJ Jackson soundtrack and general lack of drama. All of which just about killed it for me.

One for the Duvall completists amongst us…and them alone! 

I have read some reviews of this, in which some have described it in rather negative terms, but I quite liked this. A lot.

Based on a novel by the great John Le Carre, THE RUSSIA HOUSE tells the story of boutique publisher Barley (Sir Sean Connery) who gets involved with mysterious figure Dante (the great Klaus Maria Brandauer), who Barley meets whilst on business in the USSR, and it turns out that Dante happens to have secrets to share…and about which no more should be divulged. Don’t want to ruin it for you!

But, make no mistake, I think it’s a belter! Some have criticised the film for slowness, but I thought that was one of its strengths; the tale unfolds in an impressively novelistic fashion and I found this utterly gripping. Credit to Aussie director Fred Schepisi and screenwriter Sir Tom Stoppard for that. Great performances add extra fuel to this particular fire. Sean Connery is IMHO perfectly cast as the grizzled Barley, a Jazz-loving souse who comes to wonder what the hell he’s got himself mixed up in, but somehow the whole enterprise eventually gives him a new lease and outlook on life. Even better is Michelle Pfeiffer, who proves revelatory in her role as Katya, an ordinary government worker bee who acts as Dante’s go-between. Oscar-worthy, in fact. That could apply to this cast as a whole. It’s all killer and no filler!

Touted at the time as the first western film to be mostly shot in the USSR, the film is a delight in sight and sound. Sumptuously shot in the high-resolution Technovision film format by the very excellent Ian Baker (a longtime Schepisi collaborator), I could only marvel at how beautifully he made Moscow and Leningrad (as it then was) look, even when viewing the film on a plain old DVD playing on a 4K TV. And don’t speak to me about the music! The legendary Jerry Goldsmith (PLANET OF THE APES, ALIEN) provides an amazing Jazz-inflected score, featuring the aural firepower of master Saxman Branford Marsalis, which gives the film added emotional juice and then some. It’s almost an extra character in the film. Suffice it to say, it’s well done in every direction.

So, these are my thoughts on THE RUSSIA HOUSE, a thoughtfully wonderful film that was an unfortunate failure back in 1990, and one that had far too many sterling qualities to deserve such a fate. In fact, I consider this almost as good as the 2011 TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY and even THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and that’s not praise I give out lightly. 

A few nights ago, I saw LAST NIGHT IN SOHO, by the one and only Edgar Wright. Here's my thoughts...

 To start with, I was blown away by the look and feel that Maestro Wright achieved in the film. London, whether in the present or the 1960s, never looked so good! It made me wish I was there. Pity I couldn't say the same about Thomasin MacKenzie in the lead. She started brilliant but was ultimately a blandola, outacted and outgunned by the rest of the cast - Anya Taylor-Joy, Terry Stamp, Matt Smith, et al, wiped the floor with her.

Owing to her near-constant presence, this also conspired to make the film a bit of a chore to watch: I became somewhat aggrieved that Maestro Wright took two hours to tell a story that the old JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN and HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR TV shows told more succinctly, more powerfully, in less than an hour. But what's this? The denouement is a doozy! It almost - almost! - saves the film from oblivion, but not quite. Still, it's quite the memorable scene, and one not to forget in a hurry. But not enough to make one forget the hour and fifty minutes I had to sit through!

Maestro Wright, go back to Simon Pegg...

Having spent my weekend watching the legendary “lost” Aussie movie WAKE IN FRIGHT, my take on it is this: it certainly wasn’t uninteresting and it kept me watching all the way through, but it wasn’t exactly flawless viewing. Although he had effective moments, I thought Gary Bond was a touch blah as the main protagonist Grant and I wanted for someone with a bit more vitality and presence. That said, he got better as it went on.

Other problems? I suppose another was that, having heard of fellow filmgoers talk about this “lost film” in awed, hushed tones like it were discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls or the cure for Cancer, I’m willing to concede my main problem with it might be myself. Having been hyped to Hell and back, I must say I was disappointed with the end product; ‘roo shootings aside, I’m supposed to get excited about a foppish skoolteacher and his miscreant outback buddies tearing up the place everywhere they went? Really? For anyone trying to convince me otherwise, I say try a Glasgow night out! An epic Glasgow booze cruise is an edifyingly existential experience that’ll run you the emotional gamut, to say nothing of teaching you how to live in the moment forevermore (I should know, I’ve had enough such happenings to last me several lifetimes, saying no more than that). Next to that, the protagonists of WAKE IN FRIGHT are - apologies, cat friends of mine - a bunch of pussies in comparison! Incidentally, that Bundanyabba is awfy big for an outback town…

Still, it was terrific to see Donald Pleasance onscreen again (it’s been far too long…) and the bluray is awesome, with terrific special features, plus it does more than ample justice to the stunning cinematography by the very excellent Brian West, with the heat and aridity of outback Australia almost threatening to burst through the TV! Pity it all couldn’t have been in support of a better film… So that’s my thoughts on WAKE IN FRIGHT, a watchable but flawed film that didn’t measure up for me in the end. Back to my life I go…

Denis Villeneuve’s DUNE is (mostly) a delight, closer to the excellence of ARRIVAL and SICARIO, even if it doesn’t reach the same heights. Still, having previously expected this to be an opera of unintelligibility (to say the least), it’s something of a triumph for Maestro Villeneuve that I never ran into any scenes that had no rhyme or reason to be there, unless you’d read the source work, as can happen in movie adaptations. I understood it all the way, and I really love it for that.

The visual implementation of the script is (mostly) excellent too; Aussie eye Greig Fraser, PD Patrice Vermette and VFX Supervisor Paul Lambert team up to bring Arrakis to joyously impressive life, while ace composer Hans Zimmer and the sound team of Theo Green and Mark Mangini make it sing like Beethoven’s 9th. They rock and rule here…mostly. More on that later.

Same goes for the cast. The casting here is uniformly superb, I certainly appreciate it considerably more than the Lynch version - never quite bought Kyle McLachlan and Sir Patrick Stewart as Paul Atreides and Gurney Halleck. Timothee Chalamet and Josh Brolin are more convincing, IMHO. Indeed, the casting here beats the Lynch version to a royal runny pulp overall. Even Rebecca Ferguson, who struck me as a touch too young to be Chalamet’s Mom, is superb!

 You may gather I approve, and I do. So what’s with all the “mostly”? Well, while the cinematography is otherwise superb, at times it severely impaired my enjoyment. Like one or two David Fincher films, it was much too dark visually for my taste, even on a 4K home theatre system, and at times unwatchable, most notably the long sequence at night where Paul and Lady Atreides meet the Fremen in the desert after their escape in the Ornithopter. Simply poor. Still, DUNE is a worthwhile experience generally and one I recommend. My only complaints are the visuals, plus that October is far, FAR too long to wait for part two…October 2023 that is! The rest I can live with happily.

Apologies from the outset that I’m not actually going to talk about this film, except to say that what I saw of it was intriguing and I definitely wanted to see more…but I had to quit.  Just so you know, I am afflicted with significant hearing loss, which necessitates me using subtitles as and when.  Unfortunately, the quality of the subtitles on UNTAMED was rather poor that it put me off the film.

I had great difficulty reading the player-generated subs against the colour and light of the film.  I got so tired having to pause and rewind to read them that I just gave up.  What’s gone wrong here?  When I started out in DVD, we frequently had either yellow and/or shaded subtitles that made it a damn sight easier, so to speak.  But UNTAMED is the latest of a number of discs I’ve seen where it would appear standards are slipping, with white subs for everything, no consideration paid to what’s on screen, making them harder to read.  Ineptitude, pure and simple.

Come on, video companies, sort it out! 

Saw THE COMMUTER with the great Liam Neeson and, as some have said, it's NON-STOP on a train indeed, but nowhere near as good. It's very technically impressive, but the direction and pace is more ponderous with a big splashy scene at the end that slows everything to a crawl, plus there's also plot holes big enough to drive the whole fleet of Coca-Cola Christmas Trucks through. And yet, in spite of that, Liam Neeson's magnetic screen presence kept me watching - he could read the phone book and I'd listen to it. But, of all his collaborations with Jaume Collet-Serra, this is the one I like least...

Honestly, it was par for the course with videogame movies. In other words, it was drivel.

It certainly looked the part. Man, did it look like a billion dollars and did it ever get that part of the games right. I liked all the references to the more recent TOMB RAIDERS game-wise. It only had one problem, and alas it's a killer, in that Alicia Vikander was a blandola as Lady Croft. Pity, considering how superb she's been up to now. Though there's plenty to say about the Angelina Jolie versions, she nonetheless had the fire and charisma that Maestra Vikander sorely lacked. Shame, you coulda been a contender!

Hmmm, VALERIAN is certainly ample proof that the one and only Luc Besson has outstanding visual sense that's all his own and has style to burn, plus I appreciated that it had a sense of grandeur and ambition to it. However, the plot seemed to meander and piss about a helluva lot - when I could keep track of it - and I don't like obvious plot holes, like the desert bazaar sequence. Hate it when filmmakers do that…

Plus I thought De Haan and Delevigne had their moments, but they were ultimately miscast, more so the former. And yet, for all that, Maestro Besson’s potent sense of style kept me going with it, and nobody quite orchestrates an action scene like he can. And, hey, a film with Herbie Hancock in the cast can't be all bad! But, as a diehard Besson fan, it's definitely one of his lesser efforts. And, with a track record like his (NIKITA, LEON, THE FIFTH ELEMENT), I had hoped for more…no, strike that, I EXPECTED more.