Film Reviews by Steve

This stunning looking film noir has a classic genre premise about a war hero who loses his memory in combat and drifts back to Los Angeles to piece together his past. Where he discovers that he was a tough racketeer involved in illegal gambling and implicated in a murder. He has a wife who doesn't want to know him and his former gang intends to rub him out.

Admittedly, this was done better in 1946 as Somewhere in the Night, but it's still a foolproof formula. However... although Robert Florey is a stalwart genre director, he really doesn't make the most of the setup. There's a lot of low-watt tough guy dialogue which never gets close to B-picture poetry and the rambling narrative lacks imagination.

It suffers most because of John Payne's impassive performance as the conflicted veteran; though as the amnesiac won the silver star, we know how this will end. His absence of charisma delivers a void into the heart of the film. But as none of the cast give much impression of why all this matters, maybe the trail leads back to the director.

Still, it's an LA noir and there's a typical portrayal of the lonely fall guy who walks the mean streets of the city at night. Florey is usually good at atmosphere, and has legendary noir cinematographer John Alton to work the lights. This is about as dark as the frame can get. And it's the definitive noir look which is the best part of the film. 

Bleak, hardboiled crime film with Sterling Hayden as the tough, laconic detective in pursuit of a pair of escaped jailbirds/cop killers who stage holdups for spending money; then move in on a parolee because the criminal code means ex-cons may be leaned on by the bad guys at any moment. They are never really free.

Gene Nelson is going straight with a good job in research and a beautiful wife (Phyllis Kirk) who believes in him. They are taken hostage by Ted de Corsica and Charles Bronson who plan one last job before they scoot. Postwar B-pictures are routinely tagged low budget, but the poverty of this one imposes the whole aesthetic.

The edits are long and there's zero noir lighting. It was completed in under two weeks and uses footage from other films. Everything feels threadbare. But there is a good script and an interesting cast, particularly Hayden as another cynical, world-weary cop. This time, he's on edge as he's given up smoking. See it just for him.

This is a brutal, macho underworld of victims, stooges and thugs. Among the supporting cast, Jay Novello makes an impression as a struck off alcoholic doctor always on call to take bullets out of gangsters. He isn't free either. The story is routine but its aura of tawdry despair and strip lit insomnia gives it an identity. 

Stylish genre pile up which includes elements of the '90s road picture, with the transient, nocturnal locations (motels, bars) and guitar atmospherics. Also the contemporary western, as it is set in the wreckage of what mankind did to Wyoming. But most prominently this is a neo-noir which is sure to appeal to fans of classic noir because it is a conscientious homage to its motifs.

Nicholas Cage is the hard-up male dupe back from war who gives way to temptation when a small town Sheriff (JT Walsh) offers him $5000 to murder his unfaithful wife. Lara Flynn Boyle plays the femme fatale who doubles the amount to eliminate the husband instead. And Dennis Hopper is the psycho-killer who was hired to carry out the hit in the first place. But got lost on the highway...

Cage isn't much of an actor but he makes an okay clueless fall guy. Obviously there's plenty of David Lynch there. But the conventions go back further. We know the beautiful wife is lying to entrap the corruptible drifter, because that's what happens in '40s noir. And it's the sort of parable about fate that those films often were, because of the Production Code.

The lovers fleeing their destiny will never make it to Mexico. They are trapped. They can't even leave town. This didn't make money on release but became a sleeper hit with a cult following. Of course, the plot is predictable to aficionados, and implausible to everyone. But there's a new twist along every few minutes and besides, this is all about the gloomy noir fatalism.

William Wyler elevates a standard range wars western into an epic memorial to the vast American frontier. Not so much to the settlers, as the land before it was changed by them. The big country is magnificently photographed (by Franz Planer) in widescreen colour. Gregory Peck as the recently arrived sea captain can't help but scan the horizon of his brave new world.

He intends to marry Carroll Baker, the daughter of the powerful landowner (Charles Bickford) who makes the law in the territory with his loyal ranch hands and their six guns. Particularly his foreman (Charlton Heston) who locks antlers with the newcomer, including a monumental fistfight. Jean Simmons co-stars in a lesser romantic role.

And that's some cast, even before mentioning Burl Ives' (slightly baffling) Oscar for best supporting actor, as Bickford's rival who wages a long feud over territorial water rights. The resolution is anti-western. The impasse is not breached through violence, but mediation. With Peck in the saddle, it's like Atticus Finch goes west. And his star identity of implicit honour is a huge bonus.

So much so, that the film diminishes when he is offscreen. But there is always that mythic panorama of the Arizona landscape, energised by Jerome Morass' famous score. This is 166 minutes long and it loses impetus in the final act. But Wyler tells the story with his usual expertise. There is a very familiar western scenario, but revitalised by a great director. 

The second- and best- of three Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies which now seem to define an image of conservative America between the Eisenhower boom and the permissive society. An industrious, straight-arrow female designer attempts to take down a rival advertising executive/playboy who gets his contracts by offering bachelor friendly add ons.

Like Pillow Talk (1959),  it's a comedy of mistaken identity as Rock pretends to be a sexually naive nerd in order to sabotage Doris' plans to ruin him. And it's the usual candyfloss about sexual propriety as the virginal career woman truly imagines sex outside marriage is a fate worth than death. Though naturally, it's ok for the man to play around...

All the Day-Hudson pictures benefit from Tony Randall in support, here as Rock's skittish Madison Avenue boss. The main interest is the period feel of Manhattan in the golden age of advertising.  Plus the upmarket locations,  the chic fashions, the bachelor pad set decor and the dayglo colour scheme. As was the vogue, DD sings the title song over animated credits.

This was once a date night picture for middle class married couples; predictable, but not without wit. Now it's mainly nostalgia. What's most unexpected is all this froth is directed by Delbert Mann, who came from tv and is known for edgy social realism. Maybe in 1961, the studio thought portraying a woman as a competent self-reliant professional was avant-garde!

This is the sequel often cited as an actual justification for sequels. Like The Godfather, it won the Oscar for best film, but this time, also best director for Francis Ford Coppola. And it is even more elaborate and epic. The costume and set design are more sumptuous. Mysteriously, the gloomy sepia of Gordon Willis' gorgeous photography wasn't nominated.

This is the resumption of the bloody dominion of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) but woven into the origins story of his father. Young Vito is played by Robert De Niro, who also won an Oscar. But the dual storyline doesn't cohere, and very slowly becomes cumbersome and unfocused. This was later addressed when the two films were recut for tv as The Godfather Saga.

But the main problem is the script, which is bloated with uninteresting digressions. The director seems more interested in using up his improved budget than telling a concise and exciting story. This is even longer than the original, and far too much screen time is spent dwelling on Pacino's impassive introspection. Yet other significant characters barely feature...

Which means some important dramatic moments hardly register. Coppola relates the story with little discipline, and indulges in extravagant excess. Apparently there was a difficult production and maybe some faults have been overlooked in the universal critical acclaim. Unforgivably, at times this feels like a nostalgic memorial to sociopathic murderers.

There have been vigilante pictures going back as far as the dawn of the western, which usually also share a conservative agenda. But this is surely the source of the present day surge in urban revenge fantasies. The agencies of the state are corrupt- and unmanly- and the only way the self-reliant individualist can protect his family is with the gun, and his own moxie.

And it inspired four sequels of its own. Charles Bronson plays a middle class/aged pacifist whose faith in liberal democracy is demolished by the sexual assault on his daughter and murder of his wife. So he fights back against the junkie inferno of 1970s New York. Naturally he guns down the muggers and rapists with his old wild west style Colt revolver.

There is that grim/gritty location photography suggestive of New York during the bin strikes, scored by Herbie Hancock. Plus it's the role that made Bronson an international star. But the script is a foolish polemic which doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It pushes the buttons with such fatuous reasoning that it becomes more idiotic than an emotive, voyeuristic crowdpleaser.

OK, this is an entertainment which isn't in search of realistic solutions. The tide of feral delinquency is the stuff of right wing nightmares, and its pro-gun propaganda will land better with that kind audience. But for everyone else, the simplistic manipulation eventually feels insulting. The social protest films made at Warner Brothers during the depression are far more sophisticated.

This was controversial in France on release for showing another side of the nation under occupation. It is a study of those who sided with the Nazis in the Vichy south. In this small rural community, many of the citizens accept their new reality and may even make use of their oppressors to settle local disagreements. Or target common enemies.

And in particular, a boorish, uneducated teenage boy who has no obvious interests other than killing small animals*. But he finds fellowship and status among the collaborators, which unlocks his latent malice. He relishes the authority to control ordinary people though fear. He has no reason to hate, but finds it is useful to him personally.

Which leads him to intimidate and exploit a vulnerable Jewish family. This is an interesting and persuasive sketch of the useful idiots of extremism. Most are driven by petty motivations. There is no philosophy to their bigotry; their hate is an excuse for their own faults and problems. Which still has value as a representation of intolerance.

Pierre Blaise is an amateur actor in the central role. Louis Malle coaches an effective performance and directs with imagination. And he co-wrote the script, which is insightful but never really coheres into moments of dramatic heft. He covered similar themes more impressively in his WWII masterpiece, Au Revoir les Enfants (1987).

* warning- animals are actually killed.

Jean-Pierre Melville's final release also brings to a close a trilogy of crime films with Alain Delon, after Le Samouraï (1967) and Le Cercle Rouge (1970). Though this lacklustre heist story is the least of them, which is maybe betrayed by the desultory title(s). This time the star is on the right side of the law, though hardly honest. 

The cop will employ any means to bring down a ruthless criminal mob led by the ultra-rugged Richard Crenna. He has sex with the gangster's moll (Catherine Deneuve) beats up the suspects, blackmails the informers... all to suggest his emptiness; the existential sterility brought on by his round the clock exposure to felony.

This pessimism gives it some neo-noir atmosphere, though there is little visual style. Or much suspense. The familiar genre motifs don't connect. The two main action scenes are humdrum, especially compared with Hollywood crime films of the period. Many of which were influenced by Le Samouraï...

And it's disappointing that Paris, the home of chic, looks so unfashionable. The crooks are dressed for '40s film noir. The most engaging feature is Delon's numb, morally exhausted cop, cruising the city at night; which for him is just a sprawling crime scene. But this is standard in '70s police dramas. Sadly, Melville ends with a dud.

This sometimes gets labelled an uncredited rip off of John W. Campbell's 1938 sci-fi-horror novel, Who Goes There? But heck, it's an alien invasion picture. Genre riffs are a feature, not a bug. And besides, this Spanish production has plenty of interesting ideas of its own. I actually prefer it to the official screen adaptation, The Thing from Another World (1950)...

Partly because this stars a pair of horror legends as the sparring Edwardian adventurers. Christopher Lee discovers the frozen skeleton of an early humanoid in snowy Manchuria. When he foolishly transports the specimen to Moscow by rail, Peter Cushing joins forces with his scientific rival to investigate why passengers are dying, violently.

The train is fully booked with evasive, enigmatic travellers played by pan-European character actors, like a low budget Shanghai Express (1932). Then Telly Savalas turns up in the final act as a hot tempered Cossack! The solution is contrived, yet imaginative and wholly enjoyable. And then the climax unexpectedly mutates into a zombie picture!

There's a decent period design. This is 1906, though the occasional psychedelic flourish is more suggestive of the 60s-70s. The alien effects are crude, yet still spooky and the ominous soundtrack rescues some ludicrous science and improbable plot twists. Which hardly matters anyway, as the whole thing moves forward like... well like a speeding locomotive!

This was initially received mainly as a condemnation of the death penalty, adapted from Ludovic Kennedy's polemic on the Christie murders- and Timothy Evans' tragic hanging after a miscarriage of justice. And there's an ultra-realistic recreation of the period- set in authentic locations with dialogue lifted from transcripts.

Many years later I found the foul depravity, the dismal viciousness of John Christie- by way of Richard Attenborough's astonishing portrayal- had swallowed the film whole. His cruel, hypnotic psychosis was nearly all I could see. The actor said he was contaminated by the role... 

Richard Fleischer creates a grim, claustrophobic environment for the serial killer to operate in; a phlegmy slum in which this spider traps, murders and rapes his ignorant, innocent victims. The director seems to indict the poverty and lack of education which allows Christie to thrive in the darkness.

While the haunting, repulsive lead performance eclipses the support, John Hurt is memorable as the unsophisticated fall guy. There's a career standout for Judy Geeson as Evans' murdered wife. This seems to have gained status in recent years. It's not really entertainment; but an overwhelming and horrifying experience.

If not the first blaxploitation film, this is the one that reached a global audience. It has the urban decay and street hustle typical of early 1970s crime thrillers, and the soul-funk soundtrack. Though the premise goes back as far as Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op. Shaft is a PI who must negotiate a mob war between the Mafia and black Harlem gangsters to locate a kidnapped child.

The plot unspools without any surprises, but the period genre motifs are relishable, with the shoeshine supergrass, the blind informer in a news kiosk... Plus the peeling tenements of New York in decline, under the thumb of the racketeers. All this metropolitan sleaze feels like a Don Siegel neo-noir, though the Harlem locations are novel.

The private dick knows everyone on the street, and how to stay alive. But his identity as a black detective isn't merely an afterthought. It is crucial to his underdog appeal, up against the man. Richard Roundtree is well cast in his screen debut, and he models Shaft's trademark leather trenchcoat with the poise of a former model.

The funk symphony of Isaac Hayes' Oscar winning 'Theme from Shaft' plays over the opening credits, and this is actually the best part of the picture! These characters soon became stereotypes and the situations standard on tv cop shows. But in 1971 this was a revolution and Roundtree the first black anti-hero in a mainstream hit.

Sometimes called the greatest film ever made. And for those with an interest in the malign pre-eminence of the New York Mafia after WWII, this is unsurpassed. There is a dense weave of various social and psychological threads, with excellent sets and costumes evocatively photographed (by Gordon Willis). All intelligently directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Quality soundtrack too.

But once curiosity in the mob's insidious infiltration of the US establishment is exhausted, there isn't much else. It's more of a drama than a crime film and the sluggish narrative doesn't conceal many surprises... Every ten years there is an insurgence among the criminal gangs for control of the city. This is set during one of these Darwinist bloodbaths.

Marlon Brando is famously unintelligible as the old school Mafia Don about to give way to his even more ruthlessly pragmatic successor, just as the US gets addicted to narcotics. Al Pacino is scarily convincing as he evolves from complicit observer to sociopathic murderer. There are fine ensemble performances. I enjoyed Sterling Hayden's cameo as a phenomenally dishonest cop.

But as the three hours slowly elapse, there is accumulating sense of sordid contamination. This is a journey through a worst possible hell, without hope or redemption.  It's a long time to spend with such irredeemable monsters. Whose biblical values are only remarkable for their entitlement, hypocrisy and violence. And stupidity. Maybe the intention is to provoke our revulsion. But that is all this does.

Some say great books make bad films, which is obviously untrue and this adaptation of L.P. Hartley's memory novel is a prime example. It becomes another quality, arthouse collaboration between director Joseph Losey and screenwriter Harold Pinter.

The narrative straddles the late Victorian class divide in rural Norfolk. A middle class boy (Dominic Guard) spends the summer at a country estate passing illicit romantic messages between an upper class beauty (Julie Christie), and an earthy farmer (Alan Bates).

But the 12 year old is too young to understand the essence of the relationship he enables, with lifelong repercussions. It is a slow, languid film set in the long summer of our distant pasts, which contrasts with the grey, cold reality of the present day.

Because the past is a foreign country.... There's an attractive period production and understated performances from an exceptional cast. It's yet another Losey classic; his filmography is like a red album of greatest hits (with Modesty Blaise his Yellow Submarine!)

This has a reputation as a cult-classic UK gangster film but that's only the first 45 minutes. James Fox is surprisingly good as a psychopathic Cockney heavy working for the London mob, who enthusiastically spreads fear and havoc among victims from across the social classes. 

The rest is a hallucinatory trip into his heart of darkness as he bunks up in the peeling Bohemian digs of Mick Jagger's fading hippy rock star. And it becomes an arthouse dreamscape about identity. The performers change under each other's influence, and their sexuality blurs.

All this owes more to Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) than the Krays. Though it is violent. Donald Cammell's quotable script seems to be written under the influence of Joe Orton, with its cheeky, threatening non-sequiturs. Nicolas Roeg was responsible for the psychedelic head-movie visuals.

The studio apparently expected The Rolling Stones version of A Hard Day's Night (1964) and were shocked by the realistic grime, sleaze and sexual content. And it is pretty scuzzy! This is Notting Hill well before gentrification. It's an ultra-hip period piece which has gained a devoted following over time.