A few reviews

[TM2YC]

@mnkykungfu Here is another potential rival "twin films" pair, both from 2014 but they are docs:

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films (2014)
Acclaimed, unauthorised Cannon Films retrospective 'Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films' by schlock-doc maestro Mark Hartley is one of the most entertaining films-about-film you're likely to see. 'The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films' is the rival authorised/official documentary and it's not very good. It's generally pedestrian and all the interviews to-camera with Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus are just a bit depressing. Full access to the subjects has it's downside as we hear Director Hilla Medalia ask Golan to discuss the failures of his bankrupt Cannon company and he looks cross and says "there were none". It's disappointing and surprising, given that this is the authorised documentary, that virtually all the movie clips shown appear to be low-bitrate transfers taken from VHS tapes they found in a ditch. The badly written subtitles (on the Amazon stream at least) added some unintended humour, e.g. "A door off of Wilshire" is translated, from English-to-English, as "The door off a wheelchair" and numerous other examples. The doc frequently cuts to fake newspaper headlines, with obvious spelling mistakes like "21st Centuty" (an error which is even in the trailer below) and the use of lorem-ipsum about Baby Bell? The film concludes with Menahem and Yoram sitting in a cinema pretending to reminisce about their best movies which are half-heartedly superimposed onto a blank screen. It's kind of fitting that this Cannon doc should sometimes be a low-quality sham, which fails to deliver on it's potential.

Re-watch this instead:

One more twin film possibility. I remember watching 1990's 'Meet the Applegates', then later 1993's 'Coneheads' and thinking "WTF, this is the exact same movie!" although I haven't seen either since the 90s to 100% confirm that. Both are 'Edward Scissorhands'-esque satires exploring what happens when a family of aliens/mutants attempt to assimilate into a cliched suburban American neighbourhood. I recall 'Meet the Applegates' being much better, with blacker humour but neither was as good as 1996's TV series '3rd Rock from the Sun'. There are crossovers between the three properties, of actors, writers and Seinfeld cast members.

 

[mnkykungfu]

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films (2014)
It's kind of fitting that this Cannon doc should sometimes be a low-quality sham, which fails to deliver on it's potential.

Exactly my thought, lol. Those do indeed seem like twins!

 

[Gaith]

I've always been uneasy with the third act of Starship Troopers. On the one hand, I recognize that the rah-rah, apparently successful battle sequence fits cleanly with the rest of the movie's winking propaganda tone, thus making for a consistent film overall, and it's hard to fault any film for that. In this one particular case, however, I always wish there'd been a swerve into a downbeat, grim, war-is-hell conclusion. I wish this partly to ensure that no ignorant chest-thumping types are able to enjoy the movie from start to finish, and partly because, after the witty satire of the first two-thirds, I just find yet another battle against the bugs to be a dull, one-note finish.

 

[TM2YC]

That's a confusing stance to me... if we want them to win, it's not fictional propaganda. We as an audience are endorsing what they're fighting for. It is then real propaganda, to me.

It's fictional propaganda about a fictional future, a fictional war, on fictional planets, so until humanity actually does wage war on an insectoid alien race, it's not going to do any real-world harm, rather the opposite, as it's a useful allegory. We can learn from Verhoeven's object-lesson and be more aware of intentional, or accidental propaganda tropes in other hi-octane action/war movies we enjoy... that are worryingly similar to 'Starship Troopers'.

An element I forgot to mention in my review was that the interstitials in 'Starship Troopers' repeat the phrase "Would you like to know more?", which more than half of the time feature a mouse cursor moving across the screen and selecting picture-in-picture options. To me, these things clearly frame the movie as a recruiting tool that we (the supposed in-universe recipient) have been given to educate/indoctrinate us into support for the MI program. You can easily imagine the fictional scenario where the viewer is a school kid who has been handed the interactive 'Starship Troopers' DVD by a recruiting official, to take home, watch and rewatch and get us pumped up with adrenaline.

I think you're probably right. Based on his filmography, I think V was well aware of the dangers of fascism and authoritarianism, and would never intentionally make a film that endorsed them. In fact, I think he may have been so in his own head, he failed to see the appeal of them to many people. His main character couldn't be more All-American, and he gets to go off and screw incredibly hot women, bro up with fellow dudes with ripped abs, shoot machine guns like Rambo and never deal with true bloodshed since the enemy doesn't even have the same blood. V never deals with race and the point that military service is directed at the poor and minorities (as it is in the US) in any way...he sidesteps the issue through his casting.
Basically, I think V intended it to be very cutting satire, but he never blinked.

I see it all as intentional on PV's part. It's supposed to be like "Rambo", to encourage you to question "Rambo" (if you didn't already).

It probably connected with you and yours better than Americans and much of the rest of the world in (I'm guessing) the same way a lot of dry British comedy is inaccessible to those people. It's just played too straight for the sensibilities of many, and even when people are told what the joke is, it's just not funny to them. I'm not trying to attack British comedy, there are for sure people in the US and abroad who are fans, but a lot of it remains an acquired taste.

I don't know about it being British humour but me growing up reading Judge Dredd comics definitely helps... but I suppose that is maybe at the dark, cynical, satirical end of British humour). Which is what 'Starship Troopers' writer Ed Neumeier based 'Robocop' on, the same tone but also the setting, specific lines, the costume etc, then it's a very similar brand of humour for their later ST film (
e.g. "Verhoeven wanted to direct 'Robocop' as a serious film... to explain the tone they wanted, Neumeier gave him comic books, including 2000 AD, featuring the character Judge Dredd"). Dredd is simultaneously the saviour and the tormentor of the people, who wields absolute power, yet is absolutely uncorrupted by that power, in an endless futile battle to maintain the vice like grip of authoritarian control, over a society where life otherwise goes on with no reference to rules, sanity, humanity, or basic logic. The hero/villain contradiction of the satire is one of the elements that makes it fascinating, thought provoking and very funny, the same goes for ST for me. Boths films/comics are co-authored by people who grew up under fascist rule, Carlos Ezquerra and Paul Verhoeven.

America is already such a ridiculous place that everything in the film only seemed slightly heightened.

Again I personally think that was exactly what PV was saying.

V never shows his hand to the audience, and he folds the cards with us never seeing whether or not he was bluffing.

It's was a bold move for sure.

I've always been uneasy with the third act of Starship Troopers. On the one hand, I recognize that the rah-rah, apparently successful battle sequence fits cleanly with the rest of the movie's winking propaganda tone, thus making for a consistent film overall, and it's hard to fault any film for that. In this one particular case, however, I always wish there'd been a swerve into a downbeat, grim, war-is-hell conclusion. I wish this partly to ensure that no ignorant chest-thumping types are able to enjoy the movie from start to finish

Like @mnkykungfu said, that would be showing "his hand to the audience", rather than the intended fictional hand of whatever kill crazy in-universe Director made this in the imaginary ST future.

and partly because, after the witty satire of the first two-thirds, I just find yet another battle against the bugs to be a dull, one-note finish.

I think there is enough going on to keep that part fresh, compared to the rest. Like the brain-bug and it hoovering out the brain of Carmen's douchey squeeze, it's now Rico in charge, we see Carl use his psychic powers, plus of course them actually "winning" for once, adds a sense of catharsis.

Now onto an actual propaganda film: Went the Day Well? (1942) Review

 

[mnkykungfu]

^I never noticed the mouse pointer. There are a lot of subtleties you're pointing out to the film that I think were just too subtle for me (and apparently a lot of others) to notice. I may have to give the film a rewatch, but I suspect based on some of the previous debates we've had that my film tastes just run more towards wanting a clearer indictment of immoral behavior. I mean, don't get wrong, I'm no Puritan and can love a deliciously evil or wrong character. I just want the director to indicate more clearly that they're not siding with them. Or to have the character more clearly indicate that they realize their actions were wrong/misguided (Rambo turning on his commander, for instance). But I'm watching unseen Verhoeven now, so maybe I can tack this on after the others and rewatch through different eyes.

 

[TM2YC]

Sharpe's Battle (1995)
The 2nd of a trilogy of 1995 Sharpe movies set in Spain. Lord Kiely is introduced as another idiotic upper-class British officer for Richard Sharpe to bring down a peg but in 'Sharpe's Battle' there is a lot more going on with Kiely. He's actually fearless, reasonably liked by his men, proficient in combat, comes to respect and trust Sharpe and has his own rather tragic backstory. Lord Wellington assigns Sharpe to Kiely's staff in order to whip his untested men in to shape (or get them all killed, either suits Wellington) but across the course of the film you see Sharpe moulding Kiely into a half decent officer too. Ian McNeice provides some great comic relief as a drunken, pompous, flatulent older Officer. The death of one of Sharpe's "chosen men" family, young Perkins (who has been with us from the beginning, across 7 movies) is powerfully acted. He calls for his mother and for Riflemen Hagman to sing him a tune as he dies, I got really choked up.

---

Sharpe's Sword (1995)
The final of three 1995 Sharpe movies set in Spain but it shares little or no narrative with the other two. Michael Cochrane's blackguard Sir Henry Simmerson reappears from the first film 'Sharpe's Eagle' and is enjoyably mocked and bested by just about everyone in the cast. I gather this adaptation changes quite a bit from the book, some of it doesn't quite come off. James Purefoy and Sean Bean have great chemistry, so it's easy to believe their characters are soon friendly but not to the "I'd die for you" kind of degree we are told about in the script. Unfortunately Sharpe is unconscious for most of the middle of the film but it gives his comrades a chance to rally round and do some code breaking and sword making in his absence.

 

[ArtisDead]

Halloween: The Doctor's Cut a fanedit by JNisch

Halloween has always held a special place in my movie lover's heart. It was the first movie that really scared me. I saw others later that did, as well, like Alien and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (original).

I never really got into the Friday The 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street movies (sorry ray). I was unable to suspend logical disbelief long enough to enjoy them.

There is something special about the idea that Michael could be superhuman just by the power of his own will. Several effervescent self help gurus have proclaimed that you can do almost anything if you put your mind to it. This very ideology puts Michael on a different level.

We get to see Michael's madness intimately and it looks a little different than a mindless serial slasher like Jason or Freddy. Michael seems to be called by a power greater than himself. That's extremely chilling.

JNisch travels a much different path than the editors before him with this edit. The idea of focusing on the dichotomy of Michael and his relationship with Dr. Loomis instead of Michael slash, slash, slashing his way to Laurie Strode is genius. There is a tumultuous relationship there. You can't help but think that Dr. Loomis almost admires the purity of Michael's single-minded murderous rampage. That is brought out magnificently by JNisch in this edit.

JNisch only excised what was necessary to drive his intended narrative. The segue from the first movie to the second was so well disguised that we had to watch it several times to determine where it was. And it works perfectly.

Using Don't Fear The Reaper in the beginning segment which is a black & white memory of Michael's first kill was downright unnerving. I kept restarting it so that we could feel the chill run up our backs and watch the hair on our arms stand up. It sets the perfect tone for what's to come. Right out the gate we experienced how intensely Dr. Loomis recognizes the evil that is Michael Myers.

The edit fired on all cylinders from that moment on literally leaving us breathless. By the time we got to the end and that very haunting cover of Don't Fear The Reaper by Keep Shelly in Athens, we felt like some sort of transcendent moment took place. And we were sober. This is our definitive replacement for the first two Halloween movies.

I've seen so many edits of the many iterations of Halloween. Some were very well done. One was absolutely chilling. None were quite like this one. I have watched it over and over again trying to figure out why this one had such an effect on me. I may never know. I do know that this feeling is the very reason that I love fanedits and put so much time into helping faneditors.

It's not a perfect edit and it won't be for everyone. Those of you who are like us are in for a rare treat.

I will let others pick it apart technically. I loved it too much to even consider doing it myself. I gave it an arbitrary 9 in both categories for that reason.

Two very very enthusiastic thumbs up!

 

[TM2YC]

Prey (2022)
Like me, I'm sure a lot of people could say "Hey I had this idea for a Predator sequel years ago" (https://forums.fanedit.org/threads/a-few-reviews.9937/post-316446) because it's pretty obvious but not obvious enough for the past writers of this woe begotten franchise. It's taken them 3-decades to remember that "Just stick a Predator in it" is the key to making these stories, not "Er so what kind of convoluted story can we build around the Predator mythos?". They've so poisoned this brand in the eyes of it's audience that the Director of this new film didn't even want to market it as a Predator movie and has dropped the name of the franchise from the title. Normally the name is what matters most. If this works out, I can see the next Terminator film being called just "Time" .

The intriguing Comanche language track was a let down. I'm not the only person to have been confused by the marketing into thinking they'd actually shot a special version in Comanche. The dubbing wasn’t great, the subtitles were distracting closed-caption only and were a direct translation of the anachronistic American-English script, so we’ve got a 300-year old Comanche warrior speaking his authentic language but the subtitles say “that is some crazy shit!” like he’s a Californian teenager. Disney+ in a misguided attempt to highlight this special version put it as a bonus feature, which not only effectively hides it behind an option tab but it appears to be at a lower resolution and so doesn’t have the normal resume feature, which was very irritating when I had to slowly scan through an hour of the film to find my place again. The other 11 language options and array of subtitles are conveniently selectable on/off as normal from the main movie viewer.

I always quite liked 'Predator 2' and 'Predators' was alright, so I'm not going to automatically say 'Prey' is the best Predator movie since the original, in a 'Resurrections' is the best Matrix sequel by default type of way. 'Prey' is good but not perfect and fails to live up to the full potential of it's concept... but at least it was reaching for potential. I hated the narrow focal range and narrow contrast look, it looks cheap and fan filmy. I didn’t care for the pointless fiddling with the established Predator design, like it’s got green blood but not the same shade of green because?? Where ‘Prey’ truly excels is in the way it takes the time to display the Comanche culture and cleverly, yet effortlessly, draws the viewer toward comparing the behaviours of white European fur trappers with the Predator. Our hero Naru is shown encountering the advanced and brutal weaponry of both invasive hunters and being shocked by their wanton and bloody destruction of nature.

As much as I liked it, please do not make a sequel to this Disney, make another different Predator film, in a different place and time, with a different challenge for both adversaries. Here's an idea you can a have for free... Make a bleak WWI trench warfare movie but "Just stick a Predator in it", with the Predator hunting in no-mans-land. The skinned remains of it's victims could be misinterpreted as atrocities committed by the other side, which they've read about in propaganda news papers. Eventually the two sides have to team up against it using carrier pigeons, mustard gas, whiz-bangs and razor wire and then it can end with them having a football match using the Predator's head .

---

Thirteen Lives (2022)
This is one of the more clear examples that I can think of, of a movie being made for the cinema experience but getting dumped on a streamer (due to Amazon's acquisition of MGM). The way Ron Howard films the dark, cramped, underwater cave diving and uses the immersive soundmix was strong enough to make one feel "claustrophobic" from the comfort of the home sofa but in the dark of the cinema, I know it would have been so much more intense. Plus Howard has focused more on making this a non-stop thriller for a theatre audience, rather than investigating the lives and personalities of the real people, like in the superior 2021 'The Rescue' documentary (my 4th best film of last year). The casting is pretty good, they didn't go "full Hollywood" but Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell and Joel Edgerton are a little too rugged to capture the nerdy awkwardness of the real guys. The mundane appearance and somewhat anti-social behaviour of the heroic divers, is one of the things that made them so impressive in the documentary. Some of the tensions and lost tempers between the various factions working at the cave rescue camp also seemed toned down, in service of dramatising the dive. I didn't care for Howard's adding an implication that God had saved one of the divers, while also removing his strongly felt atheism from the story. Sahajak Boonthanakit does a terrific job portraying the Thai provincial Governor, he doesn't have as many lines as the others but you can feel him being weighed down by responsibility. One aspect it does have over the documentary is that we see more of the surrounding efforts to divert water and flood fields, plus more of the Thai Navy Seals and the trapped boys themselves. So both films compliment each other nicely.

 

[TM2YC]

Model Shop (1969)
I first heard of 'Model Shop' when Quentin Tarantino listed it as an important influence on 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' so I picked up the beautiful Arrow Academy blu-ray transfer but I've only now got round to it. It's the culmination of the JDCU "Jacques Demy Cinematic Universe", featuring Anouk Aimée reprising her role as Cécile/Lola from Demy's first film 'Lola', who is now washed up in LA after Michel (the man she left with at the end of that film, after she left Roland, who himself turned up in Demy's third film 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg') has divorced her in favour of Jackie, the female gambler from Demy's second film 'Bay of Angels'. In one scene Anouk actually leafs through a photo scrap book of the other Demy characters, underneath you can see a magazine with Demy star Catherine Deneuve on it.

That's all an extra layer of fun but the main focus is on Gary Lockwood's character George, a melancholy young architect, with no job and an impending Vietnam draft, who fills his days with driving round LA in a beautiful green 1950s MG T-type, which he can't afford to pay for. It's an LA hangout film, which is where the 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood' influence comes in, it's us spending time with George as he cruises the sunny LA streets, meeting counter-culture friends, admiring the architecture, generally soaking up the late 60s vibe and pondering his life. I loved it. The only weird thing is Alexandra Hay's supporting performance as George's soon to be ex-girlfriend. She's either so bad that it reminded me of Julie Hagerty's Elaine in 'Airplane!' but here it's not a joke, or she is delivering some kind of genius meta performance where because her character is a shallow, immature actor, she's playing the role, the way her character would play the role... so it kinda worked for me. Apparently Columbia gave Jacques Demy total creative freedom and final cut, except they vetoed his first choice for the lead, some totally unknown guy called Harrison Ford. '2001's Lockwood is fine but you can't help wondering what could have been with young Harrison.

---

Biggles aka Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986)
A film I loved when I was little but sadly not a classic to rediscover, although it does have some fun elements. Script development and budget problems are transparent, nobody except a wide eyed child would be convinced that London Docklands was New York City in the early scenes, especially when the rest of film is actually set in London Docklands. I could imagine the train of thought that went through the producers/writers minds:

“Indiana Jones is popular in 1981, so what other adventure properties do we have? What about WWI flying ace Biggles? Okay but now it’s 1985 and ‘Back to the Future’ is the hottest thing so let’s introduce a time-travel element. Okay but now it’s 1986 so let’s add on an almost satirically 80s soundtrack by the guy from Yes because we hear Queen are doing the score for ‘Highlander’. Okay but this now makes little to no sense, so let’s drag lovely old Peter Cushing off his death bed to deliver the exposition. We need his gravitas to say lines like “Biggles is your time-twin” with a straight face”.

I can’t however, imagine how they arrived at the protagonist being the young yuppie CEO of a celebrity themed TV-dinner company, did they pick words out of hat for that one? A better re-write would’ve been to have him be a nerdy teenager who is into history books, so gets bullied but when he gets flung back in time, his (fore)knowledge allows him to genuinely assist Biggles, go on exciting wartime adventures with this new inspirational/heroic surrogate big brother and learn to stand up to the bullies for when he returns to his own time… maybe even getting an endearing kiss on the cheek from Biggles’ girlfriend. It writes itself. Think ‘Time Bandits’ meets ‘The Goonies’.

I believe the battle scenes were filmed at the same crumbling gasworks, shortly before Stanley Kubrick shipped in some palm trees and shot ‘Full Metal Jacket’ there. The wing mounted biplane dogfight footage looks fantastic and in some shots you can see it’s the real actor in the passenger seat, looking like he’s caught between trying to stay in character and vomiting. Neil Dickson is perfectly cast as Biggles, he gets the humour of the larger-than-life gentleman flying ace he’s playing. His last line in the sequel teaser scene where Biggles and team are tied up in a huge cannibal pot “Quick untie us! Get us out of here before they start realising you’re not a God, you’re just an American” is very funny.

The whole thing is somehow on youtube in HD but I bought the blu-ray anyway:

 

[Gaith]

Space Force (2020-2022)

This two-and-done Netflix series is an odd duck. One would think that the subject matter would allow for all sorts of space-based military hijinks, but almost all of the action takes place at the ground HQ, and the military aspect of the show is more flavoring than backbone. When the show aims for big laughs, it often scores them, but it mainly focuses on gentle workplace comedy and feel-good family sitcom stuff. (Political satire, while present throughout the first season, is similarly lightweight, and almost entirely absent in the second season, filmed after the real-life change of presidents.) So, good clean family viewing, right? But it also features a surprising number of F-bombs.

The second season premiere mentions budget cuts for Space Force the organization, and it's hard not to view that as a Leaning on the Fourth Wall moment, as the space content (already minimal) and exterior sequences are dialed way back in S2's shorter, final run. Given the concept, and excellent pairing of Steve Carrell and John Malkovich, it'd be easy to lambast the show as an egregious waste of potential, but the series we did get is so likeable that it's hard to begrudge the underachieving result.

Grade: B-

 

[TM2YC]

Ed Wood (1994)
It’s long time since Tim Burton was making unique classics of this class and depth. His and Johnny Depp’s portrayal of Ed Wood (whether it’s true to life or not) is an outsider hero, a true believer in the magic of cinema. He’s irrepressible, optimistic, compassionate and flawed. He’s as blind to and excepting of, the flaws and foibles of his family of friends and comrades, as he is blind to the flaws of his own movies. Just as he believes every first take he does is already “perfect”, so he embraces his fellow humans for who they are. Bill Murray has rarely been better, his deadpan reply to a minister saying “Do you reject Satan and all his evils?” with “Sure.” is wonderful. The black and white filmography is mostly gorgeously noirish but Burton also subtlety echoes the sparse sets, awkward blocking and flat lighting of period 50s b-movies at points. The score cleverly weaves in a little ‘Swan ‘Lake’ (aka the Dracula title music) during some of the more tragic Bela Lugosi scenes. Martin Landau is unrecognisable and iconic as Bela, richly deserving that year's Oscar.

 

[TM2YC]

Get Carter (1971)
The 4K remaster in the new BFI box set looks fantastic, super sharp but keeping the muted, smoggy blue/brown industrial palette. Michael Caine’s performance is about slow-burn rage. It’s 42-minutes until the violence really begins with Carter slamming somebody's bloody face through a window but the threat of violence is always there in Caine’s eyes. He gives a chilling emotionless look as two laughing adversaries dump his car into the Tyne, even though he knows and we know, it's got the woman he just made love with trapped in the boot. Because ‘Get Carter’ has one of those dense noir mystery plots, I had the pleasure of not remembering exactly who was guilty of what and why. An iconic classic that has lost none of it's shock value.

 

[Jrzag42]

Happened to pick up Die Nibelungen the other day at a flea market with no idea what it was. Doing a quick search for it on the forums, I definitely wasn't expecting to find myself talking about it 3 years ago.

Die Nibelungen, from your description, sounds amazing, and I want to watch it.

 

[Wraith]

NOPE

YUP!

 

[It'sOnRandom]

Watched quite a lot of films recently and just wanted to leave my rating on each one. As there is quite a lot I really can not be bothered for making full-blown reviews on each one.

Bullet Train (2022) - 7/10
Where The Crawdads Sing (2022) - 7/10
Shut Up and Play The Hits (2012) - 8/10
Whiplash (2014) - 10/10
Good Luck To You Leo Grande (2022) - 6/10
Fresh (2022) - 6/10
Morbius (2022) - 4/10
Jurassic World Dominion - 4/10
Us (2019) - 7/10
Nope (2022) - 6/10
RRR (2022) - 8/10
Beast (2022) - 5.5/10
Me Time (2022) - 5/10
The Invitation (2022) - 4/10
Orphan: First Kill (2022) - 6.5/10
Fall (2022) - 7/10
Fight Club (1999) - 9/10
Snatch (2000) - 9/10
Inception (2012) - 9.5/10

Tryna make my way through the top 250 list on IMDB while also seeing everything that is being released in theatres.

 

[TM2YC]

The Hot Zone (2019)
I read Richard Preston's non-fiction Ebola book 'The Hot Zone' on a family holiday in 1995, it blew my teenage mind and I think I went straight back to the start and re-read it again and again. I still have the "well thumbed" faded paperback on my shelf. Then later in the year, Wolfgang Petersen's Ebola movie thriller 'Outbreak' came out on VHS, which I assumed to be a bastardised Hollywood adaptation of 'The Hot Zone'. I was disappointed at the time but I re-watched it a couple of years ago and thought it was actually very good. It was not in fact an adaptation of 'The Hot Zone' but was one of those rival movies that Hollywood studios make, which are designed to be as close as possible to the IP they've failed to purchase, without being sued by the copyright holders. It was so close that it's release and box-office success meant the genuine adaptation that Ridley Scott was planning got cancelled.

20-years later and National Geographic have finally made this mini-series adaptation, with Ridley Scott still named as an exec Producer. It's got all the recognisable scenes of the book and a pleasing fidelity to real-world events but occasionally it strays into incredulity and feels stretched over it's 6-episode, 4.5-hr runtime, with extraneous scenes to fill up the spaces. I thought it was lacking a bit on the scientific detail and the quite horrifying descriptions of how Ebola works from the book. Instead of that real-life, existential terror, it goes for a horror vibe, with (admittedly quite well animated) CGI monkeys that look too much like Blumhouse-esque monsters, jump scares and of course none of the lights work, so the main set looks like a haunted castle. Liam Cunningham is a brilliant as ever and Topher Grace is good too, main star Julianna Margulies' performance would've been perfect but I think she's had some distracting "uncanny valley" work done to her face, so I couldn't look at anything else. 'The Hot Zone' could do with some editing to it's pace, it's tone and the flashback structure didn't always gel but overall I thought it was very watchable and one of those shows where I found it difficult to not just watch one more episode.

 

[TM2YC]

The Duke (2020)
I was going to avoid this film on principle but I kinda got forced to watch it. It's a somewhat true story of a 1960s bloke who stole an expensive publicly-owned painting and held it to ransom in order to attack the way the BBC is funded. The film's underlying message seems to be that art for the masses is not worth spending public money on because culture should only be for the upper classes who can afford it. A few liberties are taken with the historical facts, mostly to take off some edges and make the characters more cuddly. It also felt like parts had been heavily cut down to get to around 90-minutes, as it features euphoric cheers from two supporting characters at the end, who only feature in enough earlier scenes to meet the barest requirement of them being people we recognise and sympathise with. Despite all that, I can't pretend that it wasn't funny and entertaining, with two winning lead performances from Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren.

The revelation that a scene in 'Dr.No' has a topical joke about this very crime caper was interesting (although they slightly screw with the real timeline in a way that makes the joke in Bond make no sense). At 1.22 into this clip:

 

[Wraith]

The Duke (2020)
I was going to avoid this film on principle but I kinda got forced to watch it. It's a somewhat true story of a 1960s bloke who stole an expensive publicly-owned painting and held it to ransom in order to attack the way the BBC is funded. The film's underlying message seems to be that art for the masses is not worth spending public money on because culture should only be for the upper classes who can afford it. A few liberties are taken with the historical facts, mostly to take off some edges and make the characters more cuddly. It also felt like parts had been heavily cut down to get to around 90-minutes, as it features euphoric cheers from two supporting characters at the end, who only feature in enough earlier scenes to meet the barest requirement of them being people we recognise and sympathise with. Despite all that, I can't pretend that it wasn't funny and entertaining, with two winning lead performances from Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren.

The revelation that a scene in 'Dr.No' has a topical joke about this very crime caper was interesting (although they slightly screw with the real timeline in a way that makes the joke in Bond make no sense). At 1.22 into this clip:

When I saw this back in movie theatres in the 60s (as a double bill when You ONly Live Twice opened), my dad leaned over and told me the story about the portrait....SIGH!

So when I watched The Duke last week with my Mrs., I leaned over and told her that my dad told me...and so the cycle continues...

 

[Gaith]

Jason and the Argonauts: B+ Movie Edition (2021 fan edit of the 1963 film)

As someone who's seen imagery from this flick (mainly the fighting skeletons) all my life, but had never had a particular reason to seek it out, @The Scribbling Man's "B+" fan edit served as that long-awaited impetus. Since I haven't seen the original cut, this is a review of the fan edit as a flick in of itself, not a review of the edit as an edit.

Mr. Scribbling himself writes that the movie's script is "very weak," and, taking him at his word that almost no dialogue of consequence was removed, he wasn't kidding. The first act sets up a conflict that goes entirely unresolved, the Argonauts get just about zero character development, and the treatment of the love interest Medea... is about what you'd expect for a B-movie from the sixties.

Lead Todd Armstrong is quite charismatic as Jason, there's some beautiful location shooting, the classic Ray Harryhausen effects do still look great, and the overall spirit of adventure is a winning and rousing one. There's a lot to like here, so it's a shame the dramatic aspects are so rough. Can anyone recommend a vintage Ancient Greece mythic adventure movie that does hold up dramatically? According to Blu-ray.com, a 1954 Ulysses starring Kirk Douglas is pretty good, and on the more serious side, there's of course Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (also featuring Douglas) and Ben-Hur, but I'm wondering about magic-featuring popcorn flicks specifically. (For the record, I really enjoyed the 2010 Clash of the Titans the one time I saw it, though I haven't seen the original.)

Anyhow, thanks to Mr. Scribbling for the opportunity to check out something Completely Different. It's always fun to fire up the projector and just explore.

 

[TM2YC]

Benedetta (2021)
The phrase "Paul Verhoeven's lesbian-nun movie" engenders certain expectations and indeed the Director does indulge them with copious amounts of sex and nudity (as well as his trademark flinging around of various bodily fluids) but it's actually a cerebral examination of religion and obsession, akin to 'Black Narcissus', or 'The Devils'. Coincidentally, 'Benedetta' was released 1-week before the 50th anniversary of the release of Ken Russell's 'The Devils', a film so controversial that Warner Bros. still refuse to let people see it uncut 5-decades later (aside from a rare Mark Kermode curated Q&A screening at the BFI). There is at least one element of 'Benedetta' that is arguably way more provocative (and could be seen as "blasphemous") than the infamous banned portion of 'The Devils' and although 'Benedetta' has apparently seen a couple of small protests, I don't think they've gained much traction and I was not aware of them. If 'Benedetta' can be streamed uncut on Amazon Prime and pretty much nobody cares thee days, surely it's time that 'The Devils' was too.

'Benedetta' is endlessly fascinating, as I thought I knew who the heroes and villains were going to be based on the cliches of this type of film, then it flips round and I was totally sympathising with the opposite characters, then it keeps circling in a moral maze. Verhoeven isn't just exploring religious beilef in a time when a "miracle" was more likely to be believed than scoffed at, and where the plague was automatically seen as a judgement from god, he's looking at sexual inequality, sexual freedom and patriarchal systems of power. In the end, you aren't given definitive answers as to who is righteous, who is corrupt, who is lying, who is a true believer, who is mad, vain, jealous, or selfless and maybe everybody is a little of all of them. I loved the bit toward the end where one character asks if they will go to heaven and when the reply is that they will, they come back with the bitter "To the end, you lie". Oh and surprisingly it's based on a true story (like 'The Devils' was).