rate the last movie you saw

[Jedbu]

This also looks like one of the few movies where Harrison Ford actually seems to be enjoying himself onscreen-ever since SABRINA he always looks like he is really peeved about something, although I thought his turn in "42" was actually quite good and he was probably glad to have some make-up to hide behind. That growl in his voice fit the character of Branch Rickey very nicely, I thought.

[AndyDursin]

This also looks like one of the few movies where Harrison Ford actually seems to be enjoying himself onscreen-ever since SABRINA he always looks like he is really peeved about something, although I thought his turn in "42" was actually quite good and he was probably glad to have some make-up to hide behind. That growl in his voice fit the character of Branch Rickey very nicely, I thought.

He's so relaxed in WORKING GIRL -- looks like he really wanted to be there -- and the fact that he really never dabbled in a romantic-comedy again outside of SABRINA (where he didn't look so relaxed as memory serves, though I haven't seen that film in nearly 20 years!) always struck me as odd. The genre would've allowed him to use some of his natural charisma and he's really terrific in WORKING GIRL. It's an ensemble film and he plays off Griffith and Weaver perfectly.

I've always thought whoever guided Ford's career made an awful lot of misguided decisions about what films he should be doing. Here and there you'd have something like WITNESS and THE FUGITIVE (or popular box-office hits like WHAT LIES BENEATH and AIR FORCE ONE), but too often he languished in a lot of mediocre pictures, even working with good directors like Nichols (REGARDING HENRY, yuck), Peter Weir (MOSQUITO COAST), Alan J. Pakula (DEVIL'S OWN), etc. Maybe it was one of those situations where he didn't want to do another ensemble film and just chose the big starring vehicle instead, but it's a shame for every success he'd have a run of misfires (HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE, SIX DAYS SEVEN NIGHTS, and on and on).

[AndyDursin]

AN AMERICAN TAIL
6.5/10

I was 12 when I went to see this in theaters, and by that point, was much more interested in James Bond and ALIENS, so you can understand why this has never been a favorite movie of mine.

That said, I caught it on HDNet Movies this morning and felt it was pretty much in line with my original recollections. While a perfectly serviceable movie for children, AMERICAN TAIL isn't very appealing from either a story or animation standpoint, working in hackneyed characters and formula situations with Don Bluth animation that's not particularly pleasing from an aesthetic standpoint. James Horner's score is alright, and led to that damn "Somewhere Out There" song which I would hear, and turn off, for years on the radio for decades afterwards -- but otherwise has unmemorable songs and just okay thematic content.

While I understand the nostalgia some viewers may have for it, and I can see it being perfectly serviceable viewing for kids (Theo will probably enjoy it), I'd rank it with the bulk of mediocre early/mid 80s animated films (like GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE and OLIVER AND COMPANY) that were released to middling results -- before the Disney renaissance of the late '80s with THE LITTLE MERMAID.

[mkaroly]

RADIO DAYS - 10/10. Watched it at a friend's house - easily one of Woody Allen's best films. It romanticizes the Golden Age of radio while at the same time romanticizing the innocence of childhood. Great performances, great cast, and a great story that is in its own way moving and wonderfully nostalgic. Can't say enough good things about it.

[Eric Paddon]

Cry Terror (1958) 6.5 of 10

This was a blind buy (along with "Detective Story") in the Warner Archive 5 for $45 deal for me. It's an interesting, complex psychological thriller where psycho Rod Steiger has duped explosives maker James Mason into providing him with bombs to blackmail an airline, and then Steiger along with his gang (which includes the even more disturbed Neville Brand, a dark-haired Angie Dickinson and of all people Jack Klugman) kidnaps Mason, his wife (Inger Stevens) and five year old girl to force them to help carry the extortion plot further and keep the FBI off their scent. Steiger basically demonstrates for me once again that I can't ever buy him as anything but a disturbed psycho. It's a strange contrast seeing his methodical looniness on-screen with James Mason, playing the heroic family man lead.

After keeping me on my seat for most of the way, and also showing the FBI discover a chink in the gang's plan thanks to a clue that would be stolen 35 years later for a "Columbo" episode with Patrick McGoohan, the film abruptly falls apart in its climax with an action climax in a subway tunnel stemming from a plot conceit that makes no sense whatsoever, namely the fact that the press gets wind of an important development that gets printed in the newspaper that soon arrives at Steiger's door. The idea that the story would have gotten out is ridiculous and makes the professional FBI men we've seen up to this point who have played things so carefully and cautiously seem like absolute idiots for the sake an exciting story climax and IMO hurts the end of the film tremendously.

Inger Stevens gets forced into some harrowing moments when convicted rapist Neville Brand is showing interest in her. For the final climax in the subway, Steiger said years later that he and Stevens both passed out from carbon monoxide and supposedly Stevens, who would later take her own life a decade later tragically, was begging not to be revived.

This film was written and directed by Andrew L. Stone whose next film would be the realistic seagoing disaster film "The Last Voyage" which I have seen many times. There are three foreshadowings of that film in the presence of Jack Kruschen (an FBI agent here, the doomed Chief Engineer in "Last Voyage") and also the fact that the names of the airline president and the airline's security chief are the same as the Captain and doomed Chief in "Last Voyage"! (maybe Stone had friends with those names?)

Worth a look for the exciting first 75% and some good NYC location photography in the middle section but in the end it falls short. Still, an interesting look at Mason in an MGM production before the studio would then use him for "North By Northwest" the following year.

[Eric Paddon]

The Great Race (1965) 7.5 of 10

-Got the Blu-Ray and it looks terrific! For the first time I could read clearly the words in the titles after more than probably a dozen viewings over the last 30 plus years. Still IMO rates as the best of the "epic comedies" of this period for a more compact storyline not weighed down by a too-big all star cast like in Mad Mad World or some of the others. Lemmon's performance is still outrageously funny with each viewing. The swordfight between Curtis and Ross Martin used to bore me as a kid but its brilliance by being played absolutely straight for as long as it goes and then ending with the punchline of Martin crashing into the boat when he dives out the window now stands out for me.

-Seeing Natalie Wood look so beautiful offers another sad reminder of how she should have still been living now.

[Jedbu]

Have loved THE GREAT RACE ever since I saw it when I was a kid-have owned the laserdisc and the DVD but the Blu-Ray is breathtaking (as is Natalie Wood). The colors are the best I have seen in years and as Eric said, you can actually read the credits clearly this time. This is actually my favorite performance by Lemmon-he never stops yelling!-and the byplay between him and Falk is priceless ("Hey professor-rise and shine." "RISE AND SHINE??!! WHEN YOU RISE-YOU SHINE!!") and even if the pie fight is not the greatest one ever done, anyone who does not laugh when Falk gets hit with what seems like a dozen pies in rapid succession ("Hey-professor! POW-POW-POW-POW...")-which I would love to know just how many takes they needed to get that just right-just does not have humorous bone in their body.

[AndyDursin]

I agree it's the best of those all-star comedy extravaganzas. Love the score, Natalie Wood is gorgeous -- but there's really no reason it has to go on for 3 hours. Still, it was a "different time" as they say. lol

Falk as Jeff said, was also genius!

It'd be nice if they released a proper soundtrack that was mixed the right way -- that ancient LP split up vocals and orchestra into separate channels and sounds pathetic. Someone could do a very nice remastered job on a lovely Mancini score.

[Eric Paddon]

Two hours forty minutes actually or did it just only *seem* like three hours?

Think of what Lemmon had to go through doing the pie fight since he had to get assaulted as two different characters! My two favorite Lemmon moments are when he strikes a match against his teeth in the saloon and his ensuing reaction and then later "Until the water reaches my lower lip and then I'm going to mention it to SOMEBODY!"

[Jedbu]

Re: a proper OST release of THE GREAT RACE-considering that HATARI! was finally released in that fashion, I hope that the same people that did that might have the ability to do the same with the Edwards comedy. I would love to have all of those different versions of the "Professor Fate" theme, which is one of my favorite Mancini pieces.

FATE: "Leslie escaped?"
GENERAL: "With a small friar."
FATE: "Leslie escaped with a chicken??!!"

[Eric Paddon]

For some reason the way Natalie Wood corrects Leslie on such a trivial point so forcefully always manages to crack me up.

"You handcuffed Hezekiah to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe----"
"It was the SOUTHERN PACIFIC!"

[Eric Paddon]

The Night Stalker (1972) 8.5 of 10

=The qualities that make this a classic of TV movies explain why the concept of Kolchak could not IMO work as a regular series. The realism in the location shooting, the effective use of silence in place of music for moments like the dead opening of Kolchak listening to the tape player of what he's dictated or when he's going through Skorzeny's lair (plus the wise move of not letting us hear the vampire speak even though dialogue establishes he has done so to others) makes one believe Kolchak's "could it really happen?" question to the audience. When you tried to copy this format on a week to week basis, the sense of chilling reality goes out the window completely.

=McGavin of course makes the part his own from the get-go and he is helped by a great ensemble too. Maybe if it had been a two hour TV movie instead of a 90 minute one (as so many in the early 70s were) we might have gotten a little more fleshing out of the characters like Simon Oakland's Vincenzo or Carol Lynley's underutilized role as Kolchak's love interest which I think is the script's only blemish. Interesting trivia in that Kolchak's only ally in the official ranks is FBI agent Bernie Jenks, played by Ralph Meeker. Both Meeker and McGavin shared the distinction of playing Mike Hammer in the 50s (Meeker in one movie, McGavin in a two season TV series).

[Monterey Jack]

-Criminal Law (1988): 3.5/10

Dull legal thriller about a defense attorney (Gary Oldman) who exonerates a man (Kevin Bacon) accused of a brutal rape/murder...only to see the same murder pattern reoccur several times, causing him to question his client's innocence. Despite a good cast (including a brash detective played by Joe Don Baker...Mitchell!) and a slick visual presentation courtesy of director Martin Campbell and cinematographer Phil Meheux, it's all rather routine and logy, not helped by a sleepy, droning electronic score by Jerry Goldsmith, one of his most boring "80's drum machine" efforts (Link, for all its oompa-oompa circus obnoxiousness, at least had some orchestral passages, and energy).

[Paul MacLean]

...not helped by a sleepy, droning electronic score by Jerry Goldsmith, one of his most boring "80's drum machine" efforts (Link, for all its oompa-oompa circus obnoxiousness, at least had some orchestral passages, and energy).

For me personally, Goldsmith's all-synth efforts from the 80s are not nearly as good as those of Maurice Jarre. I will say that I think Criminal Law's end title is quite nice though.

[Monterey Jack]

I'm not a fan of any all-electronic scoring from the 80's, save for the occasionally effective passage from Tangerine Dream. It was fine as backing for the pop music of the decade, but as dramatic underscoring, it was the "Team Zimmer" music of its day...any idiot can create "tension" by holding down a note on a keyboard for several minutes. That's why Jerry's run from 1985 through '89 is my least-favorite period of his. His "keyboard lullaby" early 90's period isn't any great shakes either, but I'd rather listen to something like Medicine Man or Dennis The Menace than Criminal Law or Extreme Prejudice.