Movie review - "Irma La Douce" (1963) ***

 Billy Wilder's last box office blockbuster was based on a hit musical though he removed the songs. Considering the racy subject matter it's no surprise Wilder thought he could get away with Kiss Me Stupid - Shirley Maclaine is a prostitute, who is actually shown soliciting and seeing clients, loved by policeman Jack Lemmon. I think maybe audiences accepted this more because it takes place in France and a toy town France at that - it's set on the backlost. For all the prostitutes - and there are a lot including Tura Satana - there is an aura of unreality about it, with hammy acting, and Lemmon pretending to be a British client of Maclaine and so on.

Also it's a love story, albeit an unhealthy one - cop Lemmon falls for hooker Maclaine and she loves him but she insists on seeing customers, so he pretends to be customers so she'll only sleep with him.

It's long. So long. Two hours and seventeen minutes. Lemmon and Maclaine are in good form but jeez...

The film has undercast support players - Lou Jacobi is in a role intended for Charles Laughton and does very little with it, Bruce Yarnall is also not memorable as Maclaine's former pimp. James Caan and Bill Bixby can be glimpsed as sailors. Cliff Osmond has a small role - this started a long association with Wilder.

Movie review - "The Bob's Burgers Movie" (2022) ***1/2

 I've never seen an episode of this but I got the idea very quickly. It's a joyful, funny film, packed full of gags that bespoke a writers room and has a strong enough idea for a spin off i.e. investigating a murder. Some strong guest names like Kevin Kline, Zack Galifianakis, Paul Rudd, Jordan Peele. Clever, funny, a good time.

TV review - "Tokyo Vice - Ep One" (2022) ****

 Directed by Michael Mann, so I wanted to see it. Starts off great, thrown into story, with all this stylish photography and look and Ansol thingy looking like Chris Hemsworth looking like Val Kilmer looking like Peter Strauss. The authenticity is so powerful and it feels different that it's not until 40 minutes in the lack of story got to me. I mean, things happen, it compelled, I just sensed tap dancing towards the end. Will this hold for eight eps?

Movie review - "Kiss Me Stupid" (1964) ***1/2

 The turning point in Billy Wilder's career. Up til then he was on a hot streak - after this he could barely put a foot right. Would it have made a difference had Peter Sellers stayed on? Or if Jack Lemmon had stepped in?

Dean Martin is marvellous playing a version of himself. The film is wonderfully structured. It's very clever. Gorgeously shot. Naughty. I mean Ray Walston has sex with Kim Novak and Felicia Farr has very, very willing sex with Dean Martin... that's adult. Very French. Too much for Americans though. obviously.

It doesn't quite work. I wanted to like Kim Novak and she tries but she felt wrong. Right look, silly deep voice - imagine Marilyn Monroe or Shirley Maclaine in that part. Walston acts his butt off, is full of energy - still, I would've preferred to see Sellers or Lemmon (who wanted to do it if Wilder could delay)... they are stars, Walston isn't, and I would've bought them more easily scoring Felicia Farr, who is gorgeous and fun. I watch it and think "you've got no right to be jealous mate she's that much more hotter than you, you should be grateful for what you've got." Still, I think Novak is more of a debit.

Movie review - "The Fortune Cookie" (1966) ***

 Walter Matthau became a film star with his memorable portrayl of Whiplash Willie, one of the all time great cinematic shonky lawyers. The film itself wasn't a big hit, but was profitable. I get why it wasn't a big hit - it starts off brilliantly, sets up all the characters, but can't pull through.

Jack Lemmon is the ostensible star who is injured by footballer Ron Rich while filming a game. Matthau is his brother in law. 

Three key roles go to newcomers: Rich, Judi West as Lemmon's treacherous ex, and Cliff Osmond as the investigator tailing Lemmon. Wilder was a big supporter of Osmond and gave him plenty of juicy roles but he never broke through.

Rich does well enough in a thankless part - he constantly apologises to Lemmon, calling him "my buddy" and generally acts wet (imagine Jim Brown, who played for the Cleveland Indians, in this part instead - a different dynamic, no?). This goes on and on... Rich acting as Lemmon's servant and basically being a dog. It's really uncomfortable after a while to watch. I mean, good on Wilder for giving a role to a black man but I didn't believe it, white or black. Why would he feel so guilty? Why would he feel so sad? Why would he like Lemmon? Why would he be driven to drink? Maybe if Wilder had made him worried about a law suit... but he's not given the same reality as other players.

Judi West is quite fun and beautiful though I think I'm with Walter Reisch who felt that a star should've played the role. Also her part should be bigger - she's set up as Lemmon's main motivation for doing this but we don't see her until the last third. I wanted her and her dodgy boyfriend (only glimpsed) causing havoc. Teaming up with Matthau is done a little but she feels like unrealised potential.

It is long. Two hours. Didn't need to be. Beautifully shot. Osmond is just a bit dull. Ray Walston wold've been more fun.

Script review - "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" by Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond

 The original script for the film is here if you want to read it. It does not improve the film. That was not a butchered masterpiece. This takes forever - 224 pages - I can imagine it clocks in at over three hours (and Wilder once considered songs!).

It's atypical to his other work being a series of episodes. It starts includes a really, really long scene where Watson's ancestor opens a box containing the stories from Watson (well it's not super long and has a cute character, a big time Holmes fan but it takes him until page 10 to do something that could be done in one). 

There's a section on a train where Holmes deduces something about an Italian, "The Curious Case of the Upside Down Room" where Holmes and Watson help Lestrade figure out a mystery of an upside down room, flashbacks to Oxford etc during the main story, "The Dreadful business of the naked honeymooners" a sketch where the duo on a ship investigate a death that turns out to be not a death, and an epilogue where Lestrade asks for help finding Jack the Ripper.

I don't mean to be rude but it's all very pointless. This must have been agony to sit through. It's basically an attempt to do a slight tweak on Holmes - made with love, fun, I get it, but at heart this is a glossy TV series.

Movie review - "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1970) ***

 Made with love, affection, intelligence and care. Oh and plenty of money and talent - it looks wonderful. Acting very strong. The big budget is up there on screen - big set for Baker Street and the submarine and places like that.

But it is long at two hours even in its cut down state - it is episodic.

The big flaw is it doesn't pick a lane. Holmes is smart but also outsmarted by a German spy and also Mycroft. This is unsatisfactory. Good on Wilder for trying to subvert the hero, but maybe not on such a big scale. (And if songs had been added... urgh.) The first chapter, a particularly pointless one where a ballerina wants Holmes to impregnate her, hints Holmes is gay for Watson. Now either of these concepts would've made a fine film - Holmes as a dad, Holmes as gay - but Wilder ignores the first and hedges on the latter. Having hinted at Holmes being gay Wilder then has him in the next section deal with a woman who he's supposed to fall in love with.

Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely are fine in the leads as is Genevieve Page in the female lead but the film would've been more fun with stars (Peter O'Toole and Peter Sellars were originally considered). Christopher Lee for instance livens up his part through star power as well as acting ability.

Worth watching, just flawed and you can see why the public didn't go for it.

Movie review - "Ace in the Hole" (1951) ****

 Billy Wilder's best known heel was William Holden but Kirk Douglas does just fine in this tough, gripping account of a journalist who exploits a cave in for success. Jan Sterling offers excellent support - actually everyone is good except for maybe the thankless part of the young kid.

It perhaps lacks another subplot. The wife is bad, the sherrif is bad, they set up a fun fair at the site, the editor is good... I don't know, I hate to script edit Billy Wilder, just mentioning it. Maybe it was too predictable or something. Or maybe Douglas is too passive- he does the one dodgy thing and then it sort of drifts along. Maybe that's it.

I did like how when Douglas decides to do the right thing it was too late. And that last shot is wonderful. That photography is beautiful.

Movie review - "Bad Guys" (2022) ***

 Bright, perky comedy from a book by an Aussie. It has well etched characters and gags and quite a lot of sexual tension between the wolf and the fox. A decent second act twist and solid line up of voice talent (Sam Rockwell, Awkwafina, etc)

Movie review - "Emil and the Detectives" (1931) (Emil Und die Detektive) ***

 The showiest credit from Billy Wilder's German film career, apart from People on Sunday. I saw this without subtitles but it wasn't that hard to follow what was going on. Emil is a kid, son of a single mother who gets conned on a train on the way to Berlin and loses money he has to get back. A little like Jack and the Beanstalk.

Wilder rewrote a screenplay by the original novelist and Emeric Pressburger. It's quite adult in a way - the baddie drugs Emil on a train - and also a film of its time: Emil and his cronies run around a city unsupervised. Lots of location footage of Berlin, nice acting, high spirits.

I'm sure I missed some jokes but it was fun enough.

Movie review - "What a Life" (1939) **

 The first in a series of films about Henry Aldrich, Paramount's answer to Andy Hardy. Here he's played by Jackie Cooper though Cooper bailed after the second film. It was written by the team of Brackett and Wilder though it's not among their finer works.

There's a variety of subplots with a lot of focus on Henry's teachers. Betty Field is a "homey" girl hot for Henry; some smooth kid is Henry's rival; John Howard is a handsome teacher; there's a pompous headmaster; Hedda Hopper is Henry's mother.

The actor who plays the headmaster, Bradley, is terrible - lines dragged out and all heavy. The direction is slow movie and sluggish. There's no high spirits. Henry is a whiner. Betty Field is very good. John Howard's teacher is remarkably accepting of the fact that Henry did cheat. Reliable Lionel Stander steals some scenes as a director.

This was painful to watch at times. Not content just so slow and un-fun. Too many adults. I wish it had just focused on the kids.

Movie review - "Without Remorse" (2021) **

 Tom Clancy's novel was an interesting shaggy dog - a John Clark origin story, it was part stock get- revenge-against-drug-dealers-who-killed-his-lady, and then in his spare time he was off doing a Son Tay Raid type mission. Presumably this explains why a sexy concept - John Clark origin! - took to so long to be made because it's two stories not always easily co existing. The strength of the novel was the Vietnam section - Clark took part in a mission which failed but also it didn't - it was unexpected and fresh while the killing drug dealers was more standard. John Milius was going to make it in the 90s - it doesn't sound that exciting, but I'm sure it would've been more Clancy.

This loses so many key things in the book. For instance the book had Clark suffer the doubly whammy of losing his pregnant wife then a new love. This one just has the wife. The double whammy works gangbusters look at John Wick. Also no Vietnam setting robs the point of a man's frustration against the system, the power of the Russians, the decline in the military.  And it had nice touches like meeting Jack Ryan's dad.

This one has Clark's team knocked off one by one after a mission - which just didn't seem real. Would they really bother with it? Guy Pearce's oil politician is too obviously a villain. Jamie Bell is very good as a scowly intelligence guy.

The action scenes are same-y - darkly lit, bursts of gun fire. It lacks tension and to be honest it's hard to care. There were stakes in wanting ro rescue Vietnam POWs but not here. This is just revenge.

Some nice flashback moments to Clark's wife. That's about it.

Movie review - "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" (1938) **

 Early credit for the writing team of Brackett and Wilder had Ernst Lubitsch to direct plus Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert to star so got off to a strong start. I'm not a massive Cooper fan but he's not bad here, ideally-ish cast as a stiff American millionaire who falls for Colbert after they both try to buy pajamas (the most famous scene in the film). I know it's more a Rex Harrison part but I bought Cooper in the part - it helps that Cooper was still young and attractive here as opposed to the ageing near death figure he was in Love in the Afternoon. And there's plenty of awkward womanising American millionaires eg Howard Hughes.

I guess the plot does have Cooper harassing Colbert, though it plays a little better because she seems to be having fun. David Niven is terrific as a friend of Colbert's who is hired by Cooper to work as a secretary. Also good is Edward Everett Horton and Francis Pangborn.  Coopre sings a song.

In fact it's done with such high spirits that it takes a while to sink in that the film doesn't have any story but once that happens the film becomes annoying and when Cooper goes all Petruchio on Colbert it's more than that because slapping and hitting is just not that funny. And then it becomes less funny and fun as it goes on with Cooper in the mental hospital and jokes about violence at the end. I'm sounding like a cranky old man aren't I? I just didn't find it funny. It got worse as it went on. The actors are fine. I mean, even Cooper commits. I just think there was no story.

Movie review - "The Adam Project" (2022) ***1/2

 Entertaining and surprisingly moving time travel thing which benefits from the star power of Ryan Reynolds plus the backing of Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo and Catherine Keener. Lovely emotion and solid acting - the kid who plays the young Reynolds is great.

Movie review - "Bad Seed" (1934) **

 Billy wilder's first film as director, made during his brief stint in Paris before heading to the US. Its about a playboy Pierre Mindand, a skinny dued, who gets mixed up with car thieves. Dannielle Darrieux is the girl - she was very young, and plays the brother of one of the gang.

It's a cheapie but at least there's location filming as opposed to cheap studio work. It's rickety and feels made up on the spot with lots of scenes of people driving around but has its own nervous energy. There's a black actor amongst the gang. The plot involves the gang of thieves wanting a pay rise from their boss!

It sort of ambles along and then ends. Interesting to watch. Not terrible. But really only for Wilder completists.

Movie review - "Harold and Maude" (1971) ***1/2

 Have a lot of respect for this film, I absolutely recognise it has an interesting concept that is still so unique/rare you can invoke the title and people know what you're talking about. The casting is perfect and the Cat Stevens score is lovely. I just didn't love it.

There's about half an hour of story - it's padded out with the Cat Stevens music and repetitive gags (Harold commits suicide, mom freaks out, mom sets up Harold with crazy gal). It's made with love and care by Hal Ashby on the rise. It just didn't do it for me and never really has. Maybe I was over familiar with it before having actually seen it.

Not really typical of Colin Higgins' later work, incidentally.

Play review - "After the Fall" by Arthur Miller

 Controversial play - thought to be mean about Marilyn Monroe. Maybe it is a little, or too soft on the Miller character, but there is a lot of compassion and the character is terrific - messed up, insecure, confused. Not entirely smoothly shapen by constantly interesting.

Movie review - "Arise My Love" (1940) ****

 Brackett-Wilder script, Mitchell Leisen direction, superb Paramount production values. Ray Milland is a flyer based on Harold Dahl imprisoned in fascist Spain, Colbert is a journo based on Martha Gellhorn who helps him escape.

Romance and squabbles ensue with subtext about America waking up from isolationism. Cobert and Milland have the charisma to put this over.

The first act/sequence is screwball romantic comedy. It slows down in Paris where it's just banter and less life and death: this bit feels as though it needs a third party to pursue Milland or Colbert, or a baddy. Like to see George Zucco's fascist again or something. We do have Walter Abel's editor but he's not really into Colbert he just does some Front Page schtick. But the last section is brilliant when the war comes in, the film gets more serious and it tackles big issues. 

Very romantic, sensitive. Leisen did well by Wilder and Brackett even if he annoyed them.

Radio review - "Hound of the Baskervilles"

 LATW version of the classic Sherlock Holmes piece which I've always loved. Great mystery. A mythical threat turns out to be more realistic and just as dangerous. Solid twists. Wonderful atmosphere. Canadian romantic lead. Watson and Holmes in good form.

Radio play review - "Dracula"

 An LATW version of the great novel. Lots of fun. Diary entry format worked well though there were a few characters to keep track of. This is such a great yarn: Jonathan Harker at the castle, death of Lucy, Renfield, Van Helsing, the final confrontation.

Movie review - "Hold Back the Dawn" (1941) ****

 This one starts very meta with Charles Boyer arriving at Paramount to talk to director "Mr Saxon" (played by Mitchell Leisen who directed this), who is directing I Wanted Wings (which was produced IRL by Arthur Hornblow who produced this) and we see Veronica Lake being filmed, and Brian Donlevy watching.

Full of memorable bits: one refugee hangs himself in a room (briefly glimpsed), de Havilland's kids in the bus. It is stately paced, clocks in at nearly two hours. But it's of very high quality. Wilder was driven to directing by "script tweaks" on this film, but it is very well directed. Superb line up of stars: Charles Boyer was born to play a gigolo, and frequently did, ditto Paulette Goddard as the cheerful gold digger who loves Boyer and wants to move to New York with him, and Olivia de Havilland is perfect as the "plain" school teacher who finds love, and then who Boyer gets the horn for watching her in the surf.

It combines cynicism, sex, genuine romance. Walter Abel is fine as the dogged immigration inspector. The support players get a chance to shine.

Billy Wilder and his collaborators

 Brackett and Wilder

1. Bluebeard’s Eighth wife
2. Midnight
3. Ninotchka
4. Hold back the dawn
5. Arise My love
6. Ball of fire
7. Major and the Minor
8. Five Graves to Cairo
9. Lost Weekend
10. Emperor Waltz
11. Sunset Boulevard
12. Foreign Affair
13. What a Life

Brackett and Diamond

1. Love in the Afternoon
2. Some Like It Hot
3. The Apartment
4. One Two Three
5. Irma la Douce
6. Kiss Me Stupid
7. Fortune Cookie
8. Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
9. Avanti!
10. Front Page
11. Fedora
12. Buddy Buddy

Wilder and Others
1. Double Indemnity (Raymond Chandler)
2. Ace in the Hole (Walter Newman)
3. Stalag 17 (Edwin Blum)
4. Spirit of St Louis (Wendell Mayes)
5. Sabrina (Ernest Lehman)
6. Seven Year Itch (George Axelrod)
7. Witness for the Prosecution (Harry Kurnitz)

Brackett without Wilder (as producer mostly)

1. The Uninvited (1944)
2. To Each His Own (1946)
3. Miss Tatlock’s Millions (1948)
4. The Mating Season (1951)*
5. The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951)*
6. Niagara (1953)*
7. Titanic (1953)*
8. Woman’s World (1954)
9. Garden of Evil (1954)
10. The Virgin Queen (1955)
11. The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955)*
12. Teenage Rebel (1956)*
13. The King and I (1956)
14. D-Day the Sixth of June (1956)
15. The Wayward Bus (1957)
16. The Gift of Love (1958)
17. Ten North Frederick (1958)
18. The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1959) *
19. Blue Denim (1959)
20. Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)*
21. High Time (1960)
22. State Fair (1962)

(* means with Walter Reisch)

Movie review - "The Emperor Waltz" (1948) **1/2

 Brackett and Wilder earned a lot of kudos with The Lost Weekend which they blew on this expensive flop. It must've seemed like a sure thing - colour, romance, Bing Crosby, Wilder making an "entertainment" as opposed to something gritty, but it didn't work out that way. I'm not sure audiences were as interested in Hollywood versions of puffy Austrian romances as Austrian expats in Hollywood were in making them. (Though when they were Americanised it was a different story).

Bing is a gramophone salesman in old time Vienna, 1901 who falls for aristocrat Joan Fontaine. The Emperor Franz Josef gets involved.

The colour is lovely, the sets slightly over the top (this seemed to be a post war thing in a few Hollywood films). 

Some of this is really fun - the stuff with the dogs, Freud analysing a dog, Fontaine's shifty dad. Needed more of that. You could get a whole film out of Freud.

Neither Crosby or Fontaine seem entirely at home. It's not bad. Just clearly cost too much money. Didn't need to.

Movie review - "Love in the Afternoon" (1957) **

 Having struck gold with a really old actor a few years away from smoking related death playing a millionaire romancing Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Billy Wilder repeats that here only with Gary Cooper instead of Humphrey Bogart. Cooper is filmed through gauze with careful lighting. Hepburn is fine. Maurice Chevalier offers some pep as a private investigator, Hepburn's father.

The film's Paris locations really needed colour and the story needed an extra twist. It's not much of a tale though the meet cute is fine: one of Chevalier's clients, John McGiver, wants to shoot Cooper, who is a lover of McGiver's wife. Hepburn goes to warn Cooper and winds up rooting him. A year later he returns to Paris and they start up again. She lies about having experience so he hires dad to investigate her. Dad reveals truth and asks Coop to leave. He's about to but feels sorry for her at the end end and takes her on the train.

And that's romantic because...? She's inexperienced and he's a lechy sleeze who is controlling and they're going to have a horrible life. And dad doesn't seem to happy at the end.

Maybe this works if you love Hepburn and Cooper. Hepburn is fine, just so naive it's uncomfortable. And Cooper I know in real life was a sophisticated lady killer but in this is just this decaying old lech who is going to hire a private investigator on Hepburn. At the end I kept saying "don't get on the train don't get on the train".

Some funny bits - Cooper is constantly accompanied by an orchestra and nice tunes but just yuck.

Movie review - "Avanti" (1972) **

 William Goldman tore into Sam Taylor's Broadway comedy in The Season but Billy Wilder liked it well enough to turn it into a film. Apparently it was changed slightly - the lead adjusted to make a role for Jack Lemmon. 

It's an example of low concept high concept - Jack Lemmon is a man who goes to Italy to pick up his father's corpse, dad having died in an accident. He discovered that his father had a mistress and then starts having an affair with the mistress' daughter, Juliet Mills - who has to endure comments about her weight.

Wilder thought the film would've had more kick if the dead father had been having it off with a guy. Maybe. I don't think that's the problem. The issue is more is takes two hours, when the film is almost over, for Lemmon and Mills to hook up - and we never see his wife to complicate things. Maybe if they'd brought in his wife, or her partner, or made their parents secretly alive.

 Instead we have all these shenanigans among Italians - vineyard owners, maids, stolen bodies. I didn't care for Lemmon's obnoxious American, whingeing about Italians, bossing them around. He didn't get a satisfying comeuppance or seem to genuinely fall for Mills. We didn't see him get liberated. I mean, maybe if he was henpecked or something. Mills is lovely. Maybe if the film had been from her point of view.

Nice shots of Italy. The nudity livens things up - Mills bares her breasts and Lemmon his backside. Edward Andrews is funny as the ambassador. 

But what's at stake? Lemmon's marriage? Who cares? The fate of his father's corpse? Who cares? The new relationship? Who cares? Maybe Mills' chance at happiness...?

The film has its fans.

Movie review - "The Front Page" (1974) **

 This had been remade brilliantly as His Girl Friday so why go back to the original and do it again? Well, I guess they had colour and the team of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau - and Billy Wilder needed a hit. I think it was. Well, ish.

It's nice that Wilder had such affection for the play and his writing but his love of its dialogue slows the pace... we hear every line when overlapping would've given it more pace. I mean, the play is good, not the Holy writ.

It's slow. Homophobic (the f word, David Wayne's prissy reporter), doesn't feel real - Walter Matthau yes Jack Lemmon no. Carol Burnett overacts, Susan Sarandon seems too young for Lemmon,. Austin Pendleton is good as Earl.

Howard Hawks cracked this there was no point to making this. I should add though that the set and costumes are first rate. Universal movies often look ugly but not this one.

Movie review - "Fedora" (1978) *1/2

 Billy Wilder's penultimate movie is an interesting bookend to Sunset Boulevard. It doesn't quite work - like later Hitchcock's it feels as though it needed to be shot on a proper soundstage in the 1950s but is done on a crappy soundstage with uninteresting 70s photography. William Holden is old and barks but at least is William Holden. Jose Ferrer adds some spice as a creepy plastic surgeon.

The film needed a movie star to play Fedora - Wilder wanted Dietrich but had to settle for Marthe Keller, originally meant to be in a double role then Hildergarde Knef stepped in.

Every scene with Keller feels wrong with overdubbed musci. Her flouncing around in the mansion talk tin Holden and Kneff, when the chauffeur puts her away.

Stephen Collins plays Holden in flashback. Keller plays Keller - she goes topless, and it's a shock to see that in a Wilder film, as it is too when she asks Collins/Holden if he's a f*g because he yawned... but at least it has energy and feels believable. A film about a bitchy producer trying to get a bitchy old star back on screen and bitching about Hollywood - that would've had some life, if mean spirited. This is just silly.

The mansion on Corfu should be creepy and atmospheric but it's shot blandly like a telemovie - this is a film lacking atmosphere (cf the mansion in Boulevard).  Also the central conceit is just silly - sorry but it's not believable that Kneff would look gorgeous in the 40s and then as gorgeous in the 70s, that's just unrealistic, even Cary Grant aged. I think you can get away with this conceit in a novel or on stage, but film is so naturalistic. Maybe it could've worked in the 60s in baroque blavk and white.

Also the importance paid to Michael York in the film is just silly - why not have him play someone fictitious?

Why so much bad dubbing? I mean, the little kid....

I went with this for a bit but the second half was ridiculous.

Movie review - "Farewell to the King" (1989) **1/2

John Milius doing his Milius-y thing... war, honour, romanticism, gunfire. It doesn't quite work and the whole way through I was wondering why. There is much to admire - the stunning photography, sweeping music, location work in Borneo. Nick Nolte is ideally cast as the American deserter who becomes king. Maybe it's the direction - Milius was/is a better writer than director. But could Coppola have made it work?

The concept was an issue. I remember when this came out thinking it was late in the day to make a tale about a white man who becomes king over the natives. Milius came to fame in the 1970s jazzing up old fashioned concepts with a modern twist: Dirty Harry, Jeremiah Johnson, Apocalypse Now, Judge Roy Bean, Wind and Lion and so on all took stock ideas (man in wilderness, man on mission in war, woman kidnapped by Shiekh, vigilante cop) and added this satirical flourish. That's missing here - it's all done too straight.  I think in the 70s Milius would have done this better - he takes it too seriously. Maybe the lead needed to be more of a con man, a sly tpe.

The film lacks a character like Teddy Roosevelt in Lion or Kilgore in Apocalypse Now a true eccentric. There is General MacArthur who looks like he's going to be wacky and memorable but he's not - he has genuine praise for the King; ditto James Fox as a British soldier.

It also struggles to convey its relationships. Milius kills off the lead's wife, as he did in Judge Roy Bean and Jeremiah Johnson, but it doesn't mean as much here because Nolte never seems that interested in his wife, more in a bromance with Nigel Havers. Havers just sort of observes, and never seems to go on any sort of journey - maybe that's the actor's fault. Shouldn't Havers be really affected by what he sees? Havers has a wife - played by Milius' wife - and I get the sense the part is put in there to keep Mrs Milius happy though I might be mistaken.

The story lacks the simplicity of Wind and the Lion which was a kidnap and rescue story. This one is more over the shop - arrive, help take on Japanese, that gets hard, Japanese kill wife, goes crazy, then Nolte gives self up...It's a bit more all over the place.  Maybe it needed Nolte just to do the one specific task i.e. help attack bridge. I know that's less historically accurate but Kwai wasn't accurate.

Other observations:

- this has Aussies as baddies, in a way, kicking around Nolte in the end - but at least it references Aussies in Borneo which is more than the Oz film industry has ever done.

- Frank McRae plays a soldier in the Kings African Rifles which is cool - there's also a South African and an Australian in amongst the Allied soldiers who help Nolte and "go native".

-Gerry Lopez is very effective as Nolte's 2IC - Elena Oberon (Mrs Milius) less so as Havers' random woman.

- I think Havers is meant to be Jack Hawkins in Bridge on the River Kwai  - doesn't quite work. Who is Havers' character? What's he meant to be? He's so blank.

Movie review - "Vendetta" (1950) **

 One of Howard Hughes' most notorious projects, with plenty of hiring and firings, a number of directors (among them Max Ophuls, Stewart Heisler and Preston Sturges, though the film is solely credited to Mel Ferrer), a Hughes starlet in the lead (Faith Domergue), a Hughes leading man featured (no one remembered them because they didn't have big breasts and/or become famous but there were a few, George Dolenz is here). There is plenty of narration.

Domergue is a Corsican determined to avenge the murder of her father and... that's about it. This is a dull slog. It stumbles long, with lousy photography and amateurish acting. Some familiar faces are competent, like Nigel Bruce and Hilary Brooke, but too much lies on the inadequate shoulders of Domergue, Dolenz and Donald Buka. 

Remarkably unsexy - there's not even Hughes-esque low cut gowns. It just stumbles on, then stops. Other Hughes films are a lot more interesting.

Movie review - "His Kind of Woman" (1951) ***1/2 (re-watching)

 Legendary nutty film noir turned comedy which starts out as a Bob Mitchum-Jane Russell movie then becomes a comedy farce headed by Vincent Price. Slangy dialogue, Tim Holt looking puffy as an agent who winds up dead, Charles McGraw as another agent, Raymond Burr a gangster, a creepy torturing doctor, reshoots. Fascinating.

Book review - "Garbo" by Robert Gottleib (2021)

 Entertaining enough biography which seems to rely heavily on other biographers. It breezes through her life, times and films - it feels like a long essay, which is fine. It includes an anthology of other writing on Garbo, including profiles by Ken Tynan and Lili Palmer, which seems like cheating. Goes into the dressing in clothes and possible bisexuality and all that. Garbo isn't that mysterious she just photographed well and honestly couldn't give a stuff. People go in raptures over her. It's odd.

Movie review - "Macao" (1952) ***1/2 (re-watching)

 Put this on again just for fun. Mitchum and Russell were a great team - tall, sexy, arrogant, sly - and it's a shame they only made two films together. This is fun in the backlot third world with the two coming up against Brad Dexter and William Bendix as an undercover agent. Makes a strong bill with His Kind of Woman. Russell is really attractive. I know that's taken as a given but it's worth saying again!

Movie review - "The Blue Lagoon" (1980) ** (warning: spoilers)

 Easy to mock and it deserves to be mocked but it does have its own integrity. Randall Kleiser made it from a place of love. I get the idea: Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Some wish fulfilment - cut off from everyone, free to make your own rules. Living in paradise with a fancy home. The film became iconic. Even now it's famous.

Chris Atkins and Brooke Shields are very beautiful. Direction very male gaze-y on Atkins. Their voices clang. Hard to listen to them talk.

I'm not sure the film would even be legal today. Shields looks older in some scenes but very very young in others, like when she's playing with their baby. She was 14. A body double is used. I don't think so for Atkins. Still, Shields is very sympathetic and charismatic - it was clearly the right decision to cast her.

Stunning photography on locations - it was worth it to go to Fiji and not the Barrier Reef, just looks more "Pacific".

Richard Franklin knew Kleiser at film school and helped production, organising many Aussies to take part in the crew (and cast such as Alan Hopgood).

Movie review - "Running Delilah" (1993) **

 Richard Franklin had successfully directed the pilot for Ron Koslow's Beauty and the Beast so was bought back to do another Koslow pilot, this one, which wasn't picked up for series. Kim Cattrall isn't entirely comfortably cast as a secret agent with handler Billy Zane; she's killed in the line of duty and brought back as a cyborg.

Billy Zane puts the hard word on Cattrall in their first scene together. The lack of strong bond between this duo is a big drawback. It's on the page but isn't on the stage. I think it's simply a matter of miscasting.

I get the feeling Cattrall was cast because she reminded the producers of Diana Rigg, who played a spy so well in The Avengers and who plays the controller here. But it doesn't work. I think Catrall could've played a flirty spy like Emma Peel but that's not the role ehre - that's of a woman who wakes up to find she's been turned into a cyborg.

None of it feels real - the cast, the spy agency, the tech, the relationship/banter between Zane and Cattrall. Beauty and the Beast, outlandish as it was, always felt real. This doesn't click. The action sequences aren't even that suspensful and the photography (at least in the copy I saw) not that great.

The cyborg angle isn't really exploited either. Everything she does on the mission could've been done by a good old fashioned real person.

Movie review - "Motorcycle Gang" (1994) ***

 One of the ten films Showtime made in 1994 based on old AIP films. This was John Milius' entry - a take on biker films with middle aged vigilantism thrown in. His wife at the time, Elena Oberon plays the sexpot wife of convservative Gerald McRaney and they have a blossoming sex plot daughter in Carla Gugino. Jake Busey leads the Indians/bikers who attack the gals and take away Gugino, Searchers style. McRaney goes looking for them. (Maybe this is Milius' version of Rolling Thunder.)

I thought mom would be killed and I'm sure that was considered but maybe that was too heavy - so she just kinds of hang around. McRaney only cuts loose one scene but it's a good one - some hand to hand combat where he takes out three bikers. I'd never seen that in a Milius film and it's very well done. I enjoyed the beatniks who ran the hotel they stayed at.

It lacks some flamboyance of earlier Milius works - I expected the biker characters to be bolder (a female biker would've helped) - but it was entertaining, albeit dodgy with its man reclaiming woman thing.