rate the last movie you saw

[Paul MacLean]

I recognize of course that no one on the sub was still alive, but my goodness we don't know this when the film begins, and when you're going to force me to care about these characters and the stupid on the rocks relationships of Harris and Mastrantonio, you'd better give me characters who have a little more basic humanity in them!

I only ever saw The Abyss in the cinema -- have never revisited it since. I admit I was bowled-over by the film's visuals and epic scope (which are certainly impressive on the big screen), but on reflection, the message of the film was utterly simplistic and didactic -- humanity is on the brink of being annihilated by an advanced undersea race because we're such terrible people. But they relent because Harris and Mastrantonio -- the people you (rightly) point out as being venal and unconcerned about the sub crew -- exchange a few sentimental words.

For all its dazzling visual and underwater technical viruosity, it's really not much more than a mash-up Close Encounters and Grey Lady Down.

[Eric Paddon]

And to add to that, no one stopped to ask why the aliens endangered the sub if they were so brilliant. You might have gotten some REAL dramatic tension if Coffey and the SEALS had objected to treating the alien so kindly if to them, it was the thing responsible for basically murdering 150 of their fellow servicemen just because they got in the way.

[Paul MacLean]

And to add to that, no one stopped to ask why the aliens endangered the sub if they were so brilliant. You might have gotten some REAL dramatic tension if Coffey and the SEALS had objected to treating the alien so kindly if to them, it was the thing responsible for basically murdering 150 of their fellow servicemen just because they got in the way.

I think Cameron is a great director -- but not a great writer. His scripts are often not well-though-out. Spielberg and Lucas, in contrast, have been wise enough to enlist other writers to help realize their stories.

[Eric Paddon]

"Titanic" also proved what an awful writer he is. When a film that wins 11 Oscars can't even get *nominated* in the Best Screenplay category, that says a lot. Ben-Hur failed to win the screenplay Oscar only because Christopher Fry wasn't given screen credit for basically perfecting the work.

[Eric Paddon]

Peter And Paul (1981) 6.5 of 10

-I ordered an OOP DVD of this obscure 1981 miniseries during my Easter week viewings, because I wanted to see how this subject of the early Church and the Book of Acts was tackled, and with a heavyweight like Anthony Hopkins as Paul. The three hour plus end result was a case of a very rough beginning that got better after the first hour, but never completely overcame its poor start.

-The chief problem with "Peter And Paul" is that its ultimately a misnomer. It's really more about robbing Peter to pay Paul in terms of divvying up the significance of who helped Christianity to spread the most in the first generation after Christ. Combine that with Hopkins incredible big-screen presence and the fact that Peter is played by Robert Foxworth, an actor not even remotely in Hopkins' class, and the end result is an imbalance that rings totally false to what the book of Acts actually records. "Peter and Paul" essentially gives us the story of a new religion that is floundering for several *years* after Jesus and shows Peter as inept until along comes Saul/Paul following his conversion on the Road to Damascus to singlehandedly get to the root of the problem by breaking the new faith out of its Jewish origins and broadening it to the Gentiles with no strings attached regarding earlier Mosaic law for Gentile converts.

-It is certainly true that Paul was responsible for the ability of Christianity to spread rapidly in the Gentile world through the Greek communities and ultimately in Rome itself where he met martyrdom. But the idea that this wasn't being done at all before Paul and that the Church was in a floundering state before that on the verge of extinction is nonsense. "Peter and Paul" completely leave out the developments of the Church as established in the first chapters of Acts prior to Paul's conversion and following the Ascension of Jesus. That means disregarding one of the most important events in Christianity, the day of Pentecost, 40 days after Christ's Ascension when the Holy Spirit came upon the Disciples and they found they had the ability to speak in tongues to carry out the message. The coming of the Holy Spirit empowered Peter and the others in the Jerusalem Church and also led to the martyrdom of Stephen, which was approved by Paul in his pre-conversion days. And outreach had been done with the Gentile world as was seen with the accounts of Philip the Evangelist converting the Ethiopian (Acts Chapter Eight) and Peter converting the Roman centurion Cornelius. Paul's gift was *perfecting* the ability to reach out to the Gentile world. And he acted because the Holy Spirit that came down at Pentecost to the original Disciples ultimately filled him when he was struck on the road to Damascus.

-But you will see NONE of this in the early set-up to "Peter and Paul." Not only are the important events of Pentecost and the explosion of the faith in Jerusalem left out (which is why Paul the Fanatic tried to stamp them out. Because they were being EFFECTIVE), there is also a curious attempt on the part of the writers of this script to minimize the one thing that motivated the Early Church, and that was preaching the *Resurrection* of the Risen Christ. Yet incredibly a whole hour goes by before the matter of Christ's Resurrection is even mentioned. When we get a not well-written scene of Peter and Paul meeting for the first time in the Upper Room and Peter is skeptical of the new convert, he recaps events of the Last Supper and the arrest of Jesus.....but doesn't mention the Resurrection? This is the mark of a script writer that is so determined to minimize the miraculous (even the Road to Damascus moment is played like a natural phenomena that Paul could easily have "misinterpreted") that he minimizes the whole REASON behind the Faith. Eventually this clears up somewhat later when depicting Paul preaching before the Gentiles, because the writer quotes directly from Acts and can't avoid what Paul said then. But its not enough to overcome the damage of the poor writing at the beginning. Another example of this poor writing that tries to minimize the miraculous occurs when a scene from Acts in which Paul cast out the demon lurking in a woman who had been important to a tradesman selling idols is rewritten so that all he does is out her for throwing her voice so it comes out of idols and donkeys to fool people.

-Hopkins as I said is brilliant. It may be his best least known performance. But by contrast, Foxworth, a TV actor without real big screen quality gravitas, is an ineffective Peter hampered by a script that portrays him as weak and indecisive up until the final part of the film when he follows Paul to Rome and is himself martyred. Herbert Lom is great in the supporting role of Barnabas. Raymond Burr is utterly wasted in a pointless one-scene cameo as King Herod Agrippa I that was clearly done for TV trailer purposes. Another problem is the largely Greek location shoots fail to give us convincing stand-ins for ancient Judea at key points, and even worse is the utter cheapness of what stands in for Rome that betrays the TV budget too much. In the end, "Peter and Paul" while it has much going for it, sadly falls short of giving us a good telling of the Book of Acts. The 1985 miniseries "A.D." did a much better job in that area especially with the character of Peter.

[AndyDursin]

DINGO (1991)
7/10



Growing up I remember running into the CD "long box" of the soundtrack for DINGO, a 1991 Australian film with music by Michel Legrand and trumpeter Miles Davis. The album was everywhere. The movie...I don't ever recall running across it, any place, which was odd for a soundtrack that Warner Bros. Records picked up in the obvious hopes that the movie could be the next "Crocodile Dundee." I've always been curious about the movie, though, and I recently purchased Umbrella's Blu-Ray after an indie label released only a DVD of here in the U.S. last month.

This is a strange film about a young boy who gets exposed to a jazz superstar (Davis) after his plane lands in the Outback and he and his band give an impromptu performance for the locals. Decades later, that boy is a married Dad of two who plays the trumpet in the hopes he'll run into Davis' international star again -- he even sends him cassette tapes to his home in Paris -- and get to play with him.

Colin Friels plays the protagonist, "Dingo," while Davis -- not an actor -- credibly plays the jazz musician in a role that was intended for Sammy Davis, Jr., who bowed out when his health failed him prior to his death. "Dingo" is a visually impressive movie and some of Legrand's music is brassy and vividly textured -- at times the movie plays like a wildly colored, widescreen fairy tale of sorts, set to popish late '80s jazz fusion. Yet under the direction of Dutch filmmaker Rolf de Heer, "Dingo" isn't very "accessible" -- the picture is too stoic, too serious, not humorous enough, and maybe at a different time, that wouldn't have been an issue. But in the wake of the Outback comedy of "Crocodile Dundee," one could understand how a major American studio would take a pass on it, expecting it to have wider appeal and charm than it does.

That doesn't make "Dingo" a bad film at all -- just one that's hard to classify. If nothing else it's a watchable indie from one of Australia's prolific filmmaking periods, laced with good music and a unique personality that, these days, is hard to come by.

[Eric Paddon]

Greenland (2020) 5 of 10

-I decided to look at this on Amazon Prime (in effect this is the equivalent of renting a movie). The first half wasn't too bad. Focusing on one family's reaction to this end of the world event and leaving us in the dark about deeper specifics was an effective touch. But then the film started to go downhill for me when they got separated. We had to be subjected to some awful cliches and did anyone noticed the underlying wokeness? A black looter brandishing a gun is kind and compassionate and lets the mother and child go from the looted pharmacy, but then of course this means crazy white guy that they get a lift with is going to try to abduct the kid to get a chance to find space on the military plane but when Mom gets abandoned she's picked up by a nice and kindly Hispanic family. Hollywood proving once again that nobility and humanity can be based entirely on ethnicity and skin color it would seem.

-But that isn't the film's only problem. I had a LOT of trouble buying the fact that roads were not impossibly jammed as the now reunited family made its way further north and had a lot of time on open roads. Then we got the goofy sequence of their truck able to outrun all the little comet impacts around them. By then, the film had degenerated into something very predictable. In the end, not a wholly bad film but a reminder to me that films of this type were made better in an earlier age. (other than Scott Glenn's small part, I have no frame of reference for any of these actors so I can't comment on them).

[Edit-I initially stuck this in the wrong thread. Fixed that]

[Eric Paddon]

The Hunter (1980) 4 of 10

-I went through the Imprint release. Last time I saw this was on VHS in the late 80s I think. When you realize McQueen's body was already at this point ravaged with cancer (which he didn't get diagnosed until after production was over) it's amazing that he did as much stunt work as he did. Overall, the film is something of a hodgepodge mess in which we have a couple of great action sequences in the latter part of the film that are looking for a better movie to be part of. The real problem with the film is that it's storyline is a disjointed set of unconnected set pieces in which we see modern day bounty hunter "Papa" Thorson bringing in different bail jumpers, and then after the big set piece chase in Chicago through the Marina Towers parking garage we get an anti-climactic bit of action involving a whacked out revenge minded past acquaintance of Thorson's who kidnaps his pregnant girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold). Directed by TV veteran Buzz Kulik, the film's real problem is it plays more like a pilot for a TV series in which we're being shown the various things Thorson goes through and we're practically being given characters who could easily be "regulars" in a series (the pregnant girlfriend, the bail bondsman he does jobs for, the police captain friend, the poker pals who drop in, and Levar Burton as someone he brought in who he now lets work for him around the house). The fact it has closing credits done more in "TV style" (a series of still images and credits on each still rather than the usual cinematic scroll) only further drives it home. What salvages the movie is the location stunts in Chicago and also the chance to see McQueen in his last film and showing what he was ready to transition into had he lived. McQueen is willing to poke more fun at his past image and show comic timing that I don't think he'd shown in a film since the early 60s. But the film itself is still a narrative mess in search of a gripping storyline and it shifts too much in tone as well.

The commentary track for the film is excellent. The production info and the details about McQueen are handled perfectly and I was especially impressed by how it didn't shy away from the matter of McQueen's conversion to born-again Christianity in the last year of his life, but dove into it quite extensively and respectfully. That alone makes the disc worth owning.

[AndyDursin]

TOP GUN MAVERICK
9/10

I wept like a child at the end of this movie. I'm not ashamed to say it.

[Paul MacLean]

Rogue Male (8/10)

Obscure but very good BBC television film from 1976, directed by Clive Donner. Peter O'Toole stars as a high-born Englishman on a hunting holiday in rural Germany, when he suddenly discovers he is only a a few hundred feet from Adolf Hitler, who is enjoying an afternoon picnic. Seizing the opportunity to erase a rising despot, O'Toole is about to assassinate Der Fuhrer, when he is caught by the SS.

I don't want to give too much away but the ensuing film is a suspenseful "cat and mouse" story, in which the protagonist resourcefully calls on his experience as a hunter to shake-off his pursuers.

The only problem is that the version I watched on Amazon Prime is the worst transfer I've ever seen. Apart from being standard definition, it looks like a telecine transfer from the 1970s (which it probably is), the color grading of the print shifts at irregular intervals and in the last 15 minutes the actual frame-rate drops to what looks like 18 FPS. The film is so good one can look past these issues, but not without some difficulty.

What is especially aggravating is that the trailer (which can be seen on Amazon Prime) looks ten times better than the actual film...

[AndyDursin]

BRIDGES AT TOKO-RI
7/10

Picked this up for $10 via Deepdiscount and hadn't seen it in many years. I certainly enjoyed the flying sequences and the authenticity I believe was used in the production, both from the aerial photography and effects work (which look really outstanding even today) and the shots of Mickey Rooney and Earl Holliman being hoisted from one ship to another. The story I wasn't as keen on, the movie being a downbeat war drama about William Holden's PTSD-afflicted pilot who doesn't want to be fighting again...I know it was adapted from a James Michener book but the film feels awfully formulaic (at least outside its ending), right down to the Grace Kelly section that just seems to be eating up space. Overall, not a classic movie and probably not one I'd watch again, but I still was happy I bought it and saw it in HD.

The Imprint disc is one of their weaker efforts, Alan Rode's commentary is sporadic and the only other extra is marble-mouthed Kat Ellinger's photo essay on Grace Kelly. The transfer is decent, but could be improved upon by superior encoding/compression, or a newer master.

[Eric Paddon]

I did appreciate how Rode at one point plugged Frederic March's appearance on "What's My Line?" during this period because that showed the impact of the WML channel started by a FB group I belong to!

[mkaroly]

YOJIMBO (1961; 9/10)/A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964; 9/10) - Recently watched both of these films and re-discovered how much fun and how well made each film is. YOJIMBO tells the story of a masterless samurai (Sanjuro, played by Toshiro Mifune) who happens upon a village where two merchants (the sake merchant and the silk merchant) are each battling to dominate. Each merchant is protected by his own gang of thugs and ruffians; Sanjuro decides to stay in the town and instigate the factions to fight each other, offering his services to each faction at different times. In the midst of it all Sanjuro discovers that one of the merchants is holding the wife of a gambler captive because the gambler could not pay off his debts. Perhaps feeling it unjust Sanjuro sets out to free her and reunite her with her husband and child, but he pays a price for it. I really enjoy YOJIMBO - at times disturbing and at other times really funny, the film draws you in from the start and climaxes in a great showdown. Visually I love how Kurosawa makes everything more dramatic - from heavy rainfall to high winds blowing leaves and dust all over the place. And Toshiro Mifune is a ridiculously charismatic actor - impossible to look away from him when he is on the screen. Masaru Sato's score is also memorable. YOJIMBO is highly cinematic as well as good storytelling.

A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS is an unofficial remake of YOJIMBO and is wildly successful in transplanting Kurosawa's story into a 'western' genre context. Clint Eastwood plays the man with no name (though he is called "Joe" in the film) who wanders into a border town between Mexico and the United States in which two factions (gun runners and liquor runners) are fighting for control of the town. He decides to stay in the town and instigate the factions to fight each other, offering his services to each faction at different times. When he discovers that the beautiful Marisol (Marianne Koch) has been kidnapped and held hostage from her husband and child because one of the faction's leaders by the name of Ramon (Gian Maria Volonte) desires her, he sets out to free her and reunite her with her husband and child. Leone's film is extremely faithful to YOJIMBO and no less exciting. Clint's performance, like Mifune's in YOJIMBO, is the centerpiece of the film; both films have an epic showdown that delivers the goods, and both are visually/cinematically satisfying experiences. Morricone's score is quirky and captures the mood of the film. I don't really have any complaints about either film.

[Paul MacLean]

After Kurosawa saw A Fistful of Dollars, he sent Leone a letter which read "I’ve seen your movie. It’s a very good movie. Unfortunately, it is my movie."

Toho sued Leone, who settled out of court by handing over (reportedly) 15% of the the film's profits.

[AndyDursin]

AMBULANCE
7/10

Agreeable quasi-return to form for director Michael Bay, here remaking a 2005 Danish film to modest success. Working with a scaled back budget of $40 million, Bay puts his typical swirling camera and fast-paced editorial rhythms to good effect in this story of two L.A. criminals (Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahta Abdul-Mateen II) who pull off a score but then have to get out of the city in an ambulance where a courageous EMT (Eiza Gonzalez) is trying to keep alive a cop the duo accidentally shot.

Hopped up in an over-the-top performance recalling Bay's previous work with Nicolas Cage, Gyllenhaal provides ample bombastic energy while Abdul-Mateen II, as his adopted brother, serves up a more sympathetic protagonist – a military vet trying to get enough money to cover for his wife's operation. Gonzalez is also quite good but the real star of the show is Bay's work within the confines of a smaller-scaled production than the blockbusters of yore he once produced – though not a hit in theaters, “Ambulance” is exactly the kind of slick, watchable picture that's perfect for home viewing, even if the tone uneasily veers from lighthearted excessiveness to violent tragedy in its final third.

Universal's 4K UHD is dynamic with its Dolby Vision HDR usage – I started watching this on the Peacock streaming platform and got about 30 minutes in before Universal sent me the UHD for review. The difference between the two presentations is striking, as the UHD's visuals and colors are dizzying and so much more effective than the standard 1080p transfer. Dolby Atmos audio offers a throbbing, by-the-numbers Lorne Balfe score while extras include the Blu-Ray, Digital HD copy, and a number of special features.