Movie review - "Free and Easy" (1941) **

 Interesting collection of elements. The feature directorial debut of George Sidney. An MGM cheapie so it's still pretty glossy. C Aubrey Smith. Based on an Ivor Novello play. Still feels English. Bob Cummings and Nigel Bruce are son and dad (?), fortune hunters - they love each other which is sweet. Cummings strikes up a nice relationship with Judith Anderson who is rich but falls for Ruth Hussey who he thinks is rich but is poor. Bruce gets gambling debts so Cummings gets engaged to Anderson. It's resolved too quickly.

It clocks in at 55 minutes. Maybe it needed songs. Hussey has no charisma no chemistry with Cummings who has to do all the heavy lifting. There is warmth in the Cummings-Anderson scenes and the Cummings-Bruce scenes.

Movie review - "Woman of the Hour" (2024) ***1/2

 The story is fascinating - woman meets serial killer on a dating show - but doesn't really have legs because she had the meeting and that was it. So the writer cleverly expands it by adding a woman in the audience who recognises the guy but is ignored, and there are flashbacks to other attacks, which are done well - including quite a sizeable role for Autumn Best who plays a runaway (this character is shown to be responsible gor getting the guy and good on Anna Kendrick for not hogging this role for herself0. 

It's all done very well. A most impressive directorial debut.

Top Ten Monty Python Linked Films

 (excludes TV which means no Ripping Yarns, Fawlty Towers)

1) A Fish Called Wanda - at his best Cleese really worked hard on scripts and it paid off brilliantly which is why Fierce Creatures is so hard to understand

2) Brazil - Terry Gilliam's brilliant take on 1984 a reminder of what he once could do

3) Yellowbeard - look I haven't seen this since I was a kid but I loved it as a kid

4) Clockwise - a stressful movie in many ways but very well done

5) Nuns on the Run - funny drag comedy that was a big deal in Oz when released but seems to have been forgotten

6) The Adventures of Baron Munchausen - intense, wondrous, imaginative - I pick it over Time Bandits

7) Labyrinth - the script is too simple but it was a wondrous element to it

8) Personal Services - untypical film, very well done

9) The Missionary - naughty and sweet, like Michael Palin

10) A Private Function - another strong effort from Palin

TV review - "Territory" (2024) ****

 Good, solid soap. Intergenerational. Plenty of different motivations and clashing parties. Gorgeously shot. Pretty good acting. Some slightly smelly scenes that reek of pointless rewriting but the basic story holds really well.

Movie review - "Gaolbreak" (1962) **

 One of the last leading roles from Peter Reynolds who is top billed. You'll recognise some of the other cast including Carol White. 

Reynolds is part of a crime family. They're planning a job. They have to bust a brother out of prison even though he's not that keen to do it being with Carol White.

Reynolds lacks a little of his old humour and was looking puffy but he holds the screen I love that mum was part of the gang.

It's not bad. Feels like an ep of a TV series really but done with some pace.

Movie review - "The Osterman Weekend" (1983) **1/2

 Sam Peckinpah's famously mediocre last movie. Dutch actor Rutger Hauer plays an all American TV host who hosts weekends for his old college friends. Then CIA agent John Hurt (a British actor) tells him that his friends are spies. The friends are played by Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon and Craig T Nelson.

Actually this film wasn't as bad as I thought it was. I felt it was easy to fix - they should have told the whole story through Hauer's eyes. The reveals come when he's revealed. Also more characterisation work please - I couldn't tell the difference in personality between Hopper, Sarandon and Nelson. 

Everyone had a blonde wife too - Hopper ( a sort of trashy hooker), Hauer (scary eyed Meg Foster who at least got to kill someone with a bow and arrow), Hurt (whose wife masturbates before being killed). Sarandon's wife was played by the woman who was Kris Kristofferson's sad eyed lover in Convoy.

 The action scenes are done very well. The voyeur stuff is irritating - the CIA watch everything on screens. How did they film everything? I got confused in a lot of places.

This actually should have been a character piece - dig into the notion of friendship.

But I didn't mind it. I guess my expectations were super low.

Movie review - "The Ipcress File" (1965) ****

 Harry Saltzmann's anti-Bond is still about a sexy agent who beds women, has some sophistication (he's a cook), outsmarts the bad guys and is cocky to his superiors - but he wears glasses, is unapologetically working class, and there's nice touches about filling out forms and bureaucracy.

It's very stylishly directed by Sidney J Furie, clearly loving having more of a budget. The music score is very James Bond-y as are Ken Adams' sets.

The plot was a little confusing but basically it's whether Nigel Green is the baddie or Guy Doleman is the baddy. You know that Gordon Jackson is going to be killed.

Some Aussies in the cast like Guy Doleman and Ric Hutton.

TV review - "The Westener" Ep 3 Brown (1960) **

 A saloon owner, John Dehner, wants to buy Brian Keith's dog, Brown. Bruce Geller wrote this. Peckinpah directed. 

Keith's character is drunk a lot of the time, Dehner is sly. There's plenty of production value - dancing girls and celebrations. It's not really funny.

Movie review - "A Dangerous Age" (1957) **1/2

 Sidney Furie got his start working for Canadian television and this debut feature - entirely financed by his dad - feels more like a TV play. It's a simple tale of a couple who want to elope - both less than 21. 

It's unpretentious, quite well acted. The adults come across as smug prats. We never get to meet the parents. Like a lot of films that feel like TV plays, it needed another key subplot.

Location filming helps as does the jazz score. Shane Rimmer, from many Hollywood films shot in the UK, is in it.

Movie review - "The Long Riders" (1980) ***1/2 (rewatching)

 My opinion of this film hasn't really changed over the years - it's episodic, a film of vignettes rather than a cohesive whole. But the pleasures remain. It looks terrific, wonderful production design and locations. Some superb performances - David Carradine is electric, Keith and Robert very good, Stacy Keach a superb Frank James, the Guest brothers are fun as are the Quaids. James Keach is a little stiff as Jesse. Pamela Reed is splendid as Belle Starr as are James Remar and James Whitmore.

Movie review - "The First Time" (1952) ***

 Frank Tashlin's directorial debut (as a feature) is a comedy about new parents Barbara Hale and Robert Cummings. Its a series of small vignettes - waiting for the baby to come, she even gives her will in case something goes wrong (not unreasonable at the time), scenes of grandmas and mid wives ripping babies out of mum's hands, struggle to get sleep, worries about finances which prompts Cummings to take a job he doesn't like

Tashlin's vision arrived pretty formed. There's lots of his touches, like jokes about sex (Cummings collects a hooker/floozy thinking she's a baby sitter), animation references (the family watch a cartoon)

I feel a third main character would have helped more - there's a nanny but even she's a little skim.

Still this is charming and sweet.