Quick Note for Future Posts.

Writing out synopses is boring. From now on, I'll include a link to the film I've seen and if you want to know what it's about, follow it. :)

Entry Fourteen

Fierce Creatures: A follow up to the hilarious A Fish Called Wanda, starring and made by the same cast and crew. A multi-national corporation takes over the running of the zoo, and instructs the existing managers and keepers that they must make a 20% profit or the zoo will be sold. While it's nowhere near as good as their previous effort, it does have some inspired moments, usually featuring the ever reliable John Cleese.

A Fistful of Dynamite: Slightly rambling, but thoroughly entertaining western about two men who are drawn into the mexican civil war. Directed by perfectionist Sergio Leone, it frequently looks spectacular with a couple of standout set-pieces, such as an assault on a bridge or the round-up of suspected insurrectionists. James Coburn and Rod Steiger are decent as the leads, though struggle a little with their accents, but it's a pleasing couple of hours.

How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Yer Ass: Also known as the slightly simpler 'Badasssss', this is Mario Van Peebles biopic of his own father's making of the seminal Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which opened the door to the blaxploitation sub-genre and the idea of black actors being film leads. It's an interesting dynamic, further enhanced by the scenes involving Melvin and his son, Mario. It seems fairly faithful, and with a good cast, it's a fascinating documentation of a important film.

The Green Slime: This Sci-Fi flick is very silly, practically incompetent, but it's fun nonetheless. A meteor that's on a collision course towards earth is blown up but a mysterious slime is transported onto a space station which grows into green monsters and attacks the inhabitants. Directed by Kinji Fukasaka of Battle Royale fame, it's a standard cheapie from Japan, only notable for its English speaking cast.

Green Light: 30s melodrama starring Errol Flynn as a doctor who covers for a friend when their patient dies, only to fall in love with the deceased woman's daughter, who harbours a hate against the man who supposedly killed her mother, who unknowingly falls in love with him. I hope that makes sense. It's not bad, as these things go, with a surprisingly good performance from Flynn.

The Search: Powerful drama about children returning from internment camps after the end of the second World War. One boy, after years of abuse and neglect, is mistrustful of the American authorities trying to relocate his parents and runs away, he eventually bonds with an American GI (Montgomery Clift in his first screen appearance) who teaches the boy English. Filmed in 1948 in Germany, it has the ring of authenticity that matches the naturalistic performances from the children.

Pigs: Also known as Daddy's Deadly Darling, this 70s horror movie is total crap. A woman arrives in a small town and is employed as a bartender. The owner of the bar is a crazy person, who keeps deadly pigs and is suspected of feeding them human corpses. The woman is hiding a secret, and improbably, the two bond, much to the mutual discomfort of the local townsfolk. The twists are obvious, most of the performances are appalling, and technically, it's cheap and amateurish.

Entry Thirteen

Robot Jox: Crazy 80s movie about a future world where war is banned (!) and conflicts are decided by a one on one contest between giant robots. An evil commie robot is battling a heroic American one for the rights to oil-rich Alaska, but an accident causes huge damage and sets up a climactic (and nicely handled) final show down. It's really very silly, but not unenjoyable with the effects - stop motion for the robots, rather than men in big suits - doing a decent job conveying the action.

The Strong Man: A silent comedy starring Harry Langdon. It's my first Langdon film, and while he may look a little like the silent partner in Penn and Teller, his act is purely Chaplin. It's also inferior Chaplin, with only the explosive finale raising any laughs.

The Heroes of Telemark: Bland war film about the Norweigan resistance movement during the second world war. It has a standout sequence in the middle where the resistance group silently infiltrate a Nazi factory, but can't follow it up physically or emotionally.

The Lusty Men: An excellent drama starring Robert Mitchum as a washed-up rodeo rider who helps an amateur in the rodeo circuit to buy a farm for he and his wife. It's pretty low-key, but assumes a convincing naturalism reflected in the excellent performances from Mitchum and Jane Wyman.

Gentleman's Agreement: 1940s drama starring Gregory Peck as a journalist who reluctantly investigates anti-semitism for a magazine by going "undercover" as a Jew and discovers the seething cauldron of hate or indifference to Jews. It's brave (for its time) but very didactic, and as such, comes off as little more than a slightly tedious lecture in How To Behave.

Driving Miss Daisy: Two excellent performances from Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy make this 80s drama stand out. Tandy plays an elderly woman who after a minor accident isn't allowed to drive anymore, while Freeman plays the chaffeur who has to drive her around. Taking place over 25 years, the film charts their growing friendship, while using the times the movie is set in to frame their relationship in larger terms.

Entry Twelve

The Creature Walks Among Us: Third and final "Gill Man" film, which began with The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Here, the Gill Man is captured by biologists but is badly burnt in the process. which leads the Gill Man to change slowly into a land animal, though he's caged in a compound for further study. It's odd that most of the drama hardly involves him, rather in how the creature shouold be treated, and making thin parallels between the creatures "humanity" as opposed to man's "inhumanity". It was done before, and better, in the Universal Frankenstein movies.

Ugly Duckling and Me: A European animated movie that utilizes third-rate Pixar creations in a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's story. Ratso (a rat, surprisingly) is a wannabe theatrical promoter who wants to use the Ugly Duckling in a freak show act. It's limited budget shows in the rather bland visuals, and the limited talent shows in the lack of laughs in the script. Kids might be entertained, but adults won't be.

The Incredible Pertrified World: Really lame Sci-fi movie about a group of deep sea divers who get trapped in an experimental diving bell deep under the sea. Managing to escape into some nearby caves - conveniently ignoring the pressure of the ocean, though the movie comments on it - they discover a whole network of caves and wander around in for a bit, then they get out and then the movie ends. Basically nothing happens, and when it does, it happens very slowly, making even the hour of movie onscreen seem thing. In a word: rubbish.

Vampire Diary: An English horror movie filmed in the style of the Blair Witch Project, with two women relentlessly recording their lives. They fall in love, but one's a vampire, and begins to feed on her friends, and things become more and more desperate. It's pretty bad, and the choice of the Blair Witch style becomes sporadically absurd, with silly reasons for the camera to be kept on. The two female leads are decent, but have to choke down some seriously awful dialogue.

The Last Days of Pompeii: A blacksmith who loses his family to financial circumstance becomes a cold-hearted gladiator, reasoning that money is the only thing that makes a man matter. His belief is shaken by the adoption a boy of a man he kills in the arena, and his meeting with Jesus. It all ends in a (literally) explosive climax, when disaster strikes the Roman city. It's pretty bland stuff, only enlivened with the brief fight scenes and the ending. The rest is dull moralising.

Entry Eleven

The Assassination Bureau: Pretty dry attempt at mixing black comedy and action in this 60s movie, starring the reliable Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg. Set just before World War I, Rigg plays a woman desperate to become a respected journalist, and who manages to track down the leader of an international syndicate of assassins, headed by Oliver Reed. When she hires his firm to assassinate him, he accepts and tells his colleagues that unless they kill him, he will kill them. This leads them on a chase through Europe as both parties try to kill one another. Despite the game performances from the two leads, this is predictable, and at times, dull stuff, with Rigg almost disappearing in the final 20 minutes for Reed to deal with the bad guys on his own.

Volver: Pedro Almodovar's latest film revolves around a family of women, headed by Penelope Cruz as a newly single mother trying to start a new business while dealing with her past. It's engaging stuff, with Cruz radiant in a role that the camera positively leers at, with shots of her bountiful cleavage the norm. And despite the inherent darkness in the plot, there's a light and airy feeling to the movie, which seems to alleviate the the whole proceedings. Cruz can sing, too.

Career Girls: British film about two women who meet again 6 years after they parted from University and the film flashes back between their present day reunion and their lives together previously. I enjoyed the film, and while I thought the performances were on the whole, good, felt that that the portrayal of the women as students was a little too eccentric, and slightly hard to reconcile with their slightly more mature counterparts. It's a film of decided warmth though, and has some very funny moments. The DVD also contains a short film by director Mike Leigh, Short & Curlies, starring David Thewlis as a man who seems to be only able to communicate by jokes, and his relationship with a Pharmacy countergirl. It's quirky, though probably not to everyone's taste.

Thief of Bagdad: Tremendous Arabian adventure movie from the 30s in glorious technicolor. A prince who's overthrown by his evil vizier meets a thief in jail (played by Sabu) and they escape to Basra where the prince falls in love with the princess, only to be blinded by the vizier who has come to claim the princess' hand. He and thief (who has been turned into a dog) then set about finding the princess, which takes them on a series of mystical adventures, and features some fine special effects, some 20 years before Ray Harryhausen delighted audiences with them. The photography is superb, and though the film took over 2 years to make and involved 6 directors, suprisingly coherent. It's a perfect escapism film, and shows just what the British film industry could do and it's zenith.

Get Smart: This updated version of the noted 60s series is funny and entertaining, and rests entirely on the back of the considerable talents of Steve Carell. When the entire roster of Control's agents' identities have become known, it falls upon former Control analyst Max Smart and recently returned Agent 99 to discover what their mortal enemies, Kaos, are up to. Despite it's lull into sub-Bond action towards the end, there are some genuinely hilarious moments in the movie (such as Smart's attempts to free himself using his Swiss Army Knife Crossbow attachment), and Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, and Alan Arkin all provide able support.

Entry Ten

The President's Analyst: Odd 70s comedy starring James Coburn as a psychiatrist who's brought in to help unburden the president but finds himself the victim of several foreign agencies' attempts to kidnap him in order to learn what he knows. It may start off relatively straight, but soon takes a turn into the truly strange with the involvement of the bantering spies and the sinister Phone Company. It's pretty good, though probably not to everyone's taste, and features a nice performance from Coburn.

Anaconda 3: A Sci-Fi original movie displaying no originality and precious little else. A big snake, which has been drugged to find a cure for cancer, but ends up growing larger with a horn on its tail (I'm not making this up) escapes when someone shines a light on its tank and makes it angry. It escapes, and then another snake, in the relatively human form of David Hasslehoff, tracks it down. It may have some kitsch value for bad-movie fans, but it's too new and lacking in charm for me to enjoy it that way.

My Neighbor Totoro: Absolutely wonderful Japanese animation film from the masterful Hayao Miyazaki. The story is simple: a family moves to the country and the two daughters encounter the spirits of the forest. What's missing from that sentence is the charm, originality, and tenderness (though without any of Disney's sometimes overbearing sentimentality) that the director employs. It's the sort of film that kids and adults will love.

The Parallax View: Interesting, and at times very tense, mid 70s thriller starring the permanently bemused Warren Beatty as a journalist trying to piece together the mystery of an assassination of a presidential candidate. I'm not really a big fan of Beatty, so I wasn't entirely keen on watching the movie, but it eventually won me over in it's chilly depiction of an unfathomable conspiracy and an investigation that reveals only questions. I'm still unchanged on my opinion of Beatty, though.

Change of Heart: Bland melodrama from the 30s about a group of young hopefuls who go to New York to seek their fortune. Ginger Rogers co-stars, and she's the highlight, but her brassy performance is pushed to the side to make way for the interminable mooning of the main characters' and their dull romance.

Entry Nine

Miss Pettigrew Lives: Marvellous period comedy starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. McDormand plays a British governess in London on the brink of World War II who lies her way into a job with Amy Adams' aspiring actress, who proceeds to disrupt Miss Pettigrew's expectations throughout the course of an entire day. Of course, there's a terrific pair of performances from the lead actresses, McDormand is alternately confounded and cunning in equal measure, and Adams is postively effervescent as the ditzy, but sensitive actress. It's a really beautiful little film, that should deserve more notice than it's received.

The Waterhorse: A fine children's film, that while perhaps may not have much going for it on the surface is carried through with some fine performances and a nicely judged balance of tone that will appeal to adults too. Angus is the son of a Lord's housekeeper during World War II and has recently lost his father in the conflict. Wiling his ways on the beach, he discovers a mystical egg that hatches and reveals the titular Waterhorse, whom Angus begins to take care of while trying to keep it secret from his mother and the local army garrison billeted at the house. I didn't like the ending, which was little too much of a downer, but it's resistance of a superficial "cuteness" and "modernity" that would annoy is admirable.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall: Pretty decent romantic comedy with a TV show music composer hilariously breaking up with his girlfriend, but while on holiday to get over her, finds that she is visting the same resort with her new boyfriend. Jason Segel writes and stars, and is very good (and brave) with the funny and the Puppet Vampire Musical he devises in the movie is something I'd pay to watch. Also, it stars the very pretty Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell, and the best scene involves both of them, as they lampoon Bell's previous IRL movie Pulse.

Brute Force: Tough crime drama starring the newly minted star of the mid-40s, Burt Lancaster as an inmate who desperately wants to escape so his fiancee will have the operation she needs to save her life. The movie pits him against the cruelty of the Captain of the guard, Munzie (Hume Cronyn in fine, lizard-like, form). There's some unnecessary flash-back sequences, which dispels some of the atmosphere, but it's pretty good, nonetheless.

Silent Night, Deadly Night: Terrible horror movie, which is actually unintentionally funny in places, as a boy grows up in fear of Santa and when he's forced to don the Father Christmas outfit, begins to kill people he determines are "naughty". Its first half-hour is an attempt to make the subject matter serious, detailing the boy's origin and his tragic background, but in the end, it really all boils down to a psycho in a Santa suit murdering nubile young teens.

Entry Eight.

Go Fish: Mid 90's lesbian comedy/drama that has a suitable look for it's low budget roots, and boasts an earnest interest in "what lesbians really think about", but is far too interested in its own navel gazing to entertain. Max is in a 10 month dry spell when she meets Eli, whose been in a relationship for 3 years, but only seen her girlfriend twice during that period. They meet, and they seem interested in each other, but can they overcome their respective hang-ups to make the connection? Sure they do, and there's a few nice scenes involving their tentative attempts at beginning a relationship, but it's interspersed with some truly awful philosophical rumblings with some dire performances from a mostly amateur cast.

Love on the Side: Predictable, but pleasant nonetheless, this romantic comedy stars Marla Sokoloff as an overweight(!) waitress who dreams of becoming an artist and hooking up with the town stud when a beautiful woman from out of town arrives and shows a romantic interest in her. While there's some nice comedy to be mined from the awkwardness, all the complications that might arise from such a situation are readily glossed over and turned into a more palatable plot for mainstream audiences. It also has some silly plot contrivances that make sure everybody ends up happy and in love.

Charge of the Light Brigade: 30's action/drama starring Errol Flynn as the man in charge of that fateful military assault where a bunch of light cavalry charged against Russian guns during the Crimean War. It's complete historical nonsense, of course, with everything given a "motivation" other than War, and there's some eyeball rollingly stupid melodrama involing Flynn, his fiancee and his brother. The action is nicely handled, but when you learn that almost 200 horses died during the making of the movie, it's a little tainted.

The Ballad of Josie: Tired western comedy with Doris Day as a recent widower trying to make a go of it on her own with a ranch and finding that the men won't let her. I suspect the movie would be hugely inoffensive if it weren't so unmemorable, with the main point of the movie seeming to be "women are only independent when they can't find a man, but when they do, they'll give up everything, even their rights!" And Day's buffoonery just doesn't have the charm of her earlier films.

This Kiss: Australian drama about two high school friends who reunite with each other after 15 years after an incident which tore them apart (hint: it's in the title). It has the look of an amateur film, with a cheap camera and some naive mistakes from the director, but the performances are good, and it's pretty short (a plus when it comes to watching every film ever made).

Entry Seven

Common Law Cabin & Good Morning...and Goodbye: I'm rating these together as they're much of the same. Both are directed by Russ Meyer, and feature the beautiful and vicious Alaina Capri in the leads. Common Law Cabin centres on a group of people who clash when they visit a "special attraction" in the middle of nowhere, while Good Morning is about a couple who's failure together in the bedroom has led the wife to seek comfort elsewhere, leaving her cuckolded husband at home. Good Morning is the best of the two, featuring some genuinely witty dialogue, though gets a little strange with the feline/mystic/witch woman who gives the husband back his mojo. Common Law Cabin has some interesting stuff between the father and daughter (however creepy) but its lack of humour is its downfall, and becomes a little tiresome after a while.

The Alien Factor: This one falls into the "so bad it's good" category. Obviously a home town, amateur effort, this concerns a beast from outer space ripping inhabitants of a small town in the US to shreds while the police force and a mysterious man from out of town investigate. It's unremittingly awful, with incompetence abounding on all fronts. However, it's extremely funny too, with absurd line-readings, a silly, moralistic ending, and truly diabolical special effects adding to the fun.

Stranger on the Third Floor: Peter Lorre may only be a bit-part player in this 1940 quickie, but he's clearly the star, walking away with the picture from it's slightly bland lead. John McGuire plays a ruthless reporter, whose newly found career success hinges on his testimony at a murder trial, effectively convicting the man on a paucity of evidence. The doubts about his case assail him until a chance meeting with Lorre convinces him that he's put the wrong man in jail, but when his next door neighbour dies, he's also a suspect for both killings. It's an interesting little film, with even some allusions to Kafka's The Trial in McGuire's paranoia-induced dream sequences, and as mentioned previously, Lorre is superb, and in just one major scene convinces as a psychotic, child-like killer. It wraps itself up too neatly, but that's perhaps a by-product of the pre-noir era.

Anna Christie: Greta Garbo's first talkie in 1930 was based on a play by Eugene O'Neill, and features a great performance from the lead as a battered prostitute reuniting with her father since she was a girl and finding new love. I found the supporting characters a little too much, taking some of the focus away from Garbo, and the central drama doesn't perhaps convince as totally as it did on release, but it's a decent film, nonetheless. It was also filmed concurrently in German, and I'll be seeing that version soon enough.

The Anniversary: Bette Davis is at her caustic best/worst as a harridan of a mother who delights in controlling her hapless sons and torturing the women who they've chosen to marry. One the anniversary of her wedding, her sons come home for a dinner party, though the youngest has brought a prospective bride home too, determined that he'll not suffer his mother's comments again, though of course, he does, and more too, as she plays games with her charges as easily as a cat would with a mouse. And Davis is great here, though perhaps only playing a less maniacal version of her Baby Jane character, she utterly commands the movie and as such, we even root for her a little, even while she destroys the lives of her children with a smile on her face.