Movie review - "There's Always Vanilla" (1971) **

 Romero's least known film? A story of an fboi (Raymond Laine) who drifts around post-army, trying different jobs, annoying his dad, sleeping around, writing. He sleeps with Judith Laine, who is lovely (she was in Night of the Living Dead); she gets pregnant, he's tempted to sell out, can't do it.

This wasn't bad. It's the sort of movie that might play with a super charismatic star - Laine doesn't have that, he's not good looking enough for Laine.  

The movie has an intelligence, talks about big issues. It's indulgent but not terrible. It just lacks a charismatic star. 

Movie review - "Rules of Engagement" (2000) **

 The film starts strongly with two excellent battle sequences - one in Vietnam, then an embassy siege/massacre. William Friedkin directs with real flare. Then Samuel L Jackson is put on trial for war crimes and Tommy Lee Jones called in to defend him. 

The movie is set up to be an interesting account of what a war crime is. We saw what happened. The troops were shot at but Jackson went berserk. They fired into the crowd. There were other options.

But then slimy diplomat Bruce Greenwood orders tape suppressed that shows Arabs shooting at them and all complexity is thrown out the window. The fact that Jackson could have responded in different ways (shoot snipers, shoot over heads, etc) is barely explored.

This movie is just dumb. I think Friedkin was dumb down deep. I sense the original script you never saw the massacre which would've been interesting because you never knew what happened. But here we see it at the top of the film. So there's no suspense. No revelation.

I'm not sure Friedkin understood drama. 

Play review - "Swimming to Cambodia" by Spalding Gray

 Heard about these. Never seen one. Gray was a very good supporting actor that's all I know him from. Actors playing suppport characters in movies aren't that interesting but filming in Thailand and recapping the Cambodia conflict is interesting. David Puttnam and Roland Joffe come out of this very well. A bit too much about his sex life in Thailand. 

Jonathan Demme filmed this. 

Movie review - "Year of the Dragon" (1985) ***1/2 (re-watching)

 Mickey Rourke was born in 1952 so he could've served in Vietnam - I like his performance but his silly hair makes him seem old. And Ariane, I have affection for, but the fact is a really good actress in that part would've make it sing. John Lone is superb.

It looks gorgeous. Sweeping vistas. Extras.Burmese jungle. Hong Kong. Restaurants.  The action sequences are incredible - assassinations, shootouts in restaurants, people being shot on the road, beatings in nightclubs. So many great touches like the nuns translating bugged criminals and the mafia guy with a throat box.

They didn't have to make Rourke's character such an arsehole. When Ariane says she's been raped he grabs her and throws her in the chair and yells at her. When his wife is angry he took off at dinner he goes and sleeps with Ariane. He constantly makes racist slurs. This didn't have to be in the film. Neither did the rape scene - I wonder if that was Stone or Cimino both were partial to rape.

I like the bloke who played Rourke's old mate. The wife character is the standard Oliver Stone nag, but the actress does the best she can. Dennis Dun is moving as the undercover cop - at least he gets some time in the sun as does Ariane.

Really, Rourke's character should have died at the end - it feels wrong that Dun and his wife were killed and Ariane was raped and he got to live. 

Still, a really thought provoking movie. Not cookie cutter.

Movie review - "The Deer Hunter" (1978) ****

 A big deal in its day and the fame has lingered in part because of the notoreity of Michael Cimino. It's long - over three hours - so is probably best appreciated in the cinema. It looks gorgeous - the Pennsylvania steel towns, Vietnam and stuff.

There's New York actors pretending to be working class types and they mostly pull it off because they're excellent actors. The Russian Roulette stuff works brilliantly as a dramatic device. It's so homoerotic - the homophobia dialogue is accurate for the milieu but Chris Walken and de Niro seem to be in love and John Cazale accuses de Niro of not being interested in women and de Niro doesn't do anything in bed with Meryl Streep for a while. 

We see a deer actually be killed. There is Hollywood shenanigans in de Niro is in Nam, then runs into Walken and Savage, then they are all captured, then de Niro escapes by being super heroic then de Niro gets back and does a silly but highly effective final Russian Roulette.

John Cazale's part isn't much and I sense the roles of George Dzunda and Chuck Aspegren could be combined and Streep is the Girl and Savage's wife could've done something more but...

You know what? This is still a really good movie. It's gorgeous. The money is on screen. De Niro is superb. It's moving. Russian Roulete words a treat. The cuts are terrific. It tackles PTSD very well. It does like its characters.

Movie review - "A Street to Die" (1985) ***1/2

 An film that's impossible not to admire. Bill Bennett was fired up by a newspaper article which showed a street of Vietnam vets having major health problems due most likely to Agent Orange. He brought his journalist skills, made it in the street, with the involvement of the family.

Chris Haywood is terrific in the role of a life time as the ocker, irreverent Colin Simpson, who runs, smokes 20 cigs a day, develops a rash and eventually terminal cancer. The best scenes are of him visiting doctors (initially dismissive), then finding out he's really sick (his wife is told twice before he finds out, one time the doctor calls the wife from the next room), then dying. Jennifer Cluff is strong as the wife.

The understated presentation is hugely effective.  Structurally the film has problems because Haywood dies 66 minutes or so into the film. Then there's 25 minutes of funeral and a hearing. Which is kind of interesting but just lacks emotional power.

I sense the material here really ran for 60 minutes and was better as a TV play - the last bit feels like padding, important as it was to society. The other way to have done it would have been to do a subplot.

The evocation of 70s/80s life is strong - union reps, smoking, street cricket, backyard BBQs. This was my childhood so it was moving.

Book review - "Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine " by Andrew Roberts and David Petraeus

 A look at various Western conflicts after WW2 - Vietnam, Oman, Korea, Malaya. Amazing how much failure. The bits on Iraq and Aghanistan are especially upsetting because they were so pointless, and expensive. Smart book. All the conficts needed political solutions. Just depressing.

Movie review - "Twilight Zone The Movie" (1983) **1/2

A film totally overshadowed by the accident, which is fair enough, people died (though more people die on films than you might think).

Interesting people constantly pop up in the cast - Steven Williams from Jump Street, John Larroquette as a Klan member. 

The Landis segment is in the spirit of the show - heavy handed but effective, and Vic Morrow is very good. The Spielberg one isn't very much - he does his tricks, all that, it's just meh. 

Joe Dante's with the powerful kid is better, even if Kathleen Quinlan seems bored. The George Miller segment is, as commonly agreed, the best, helped with the strongest story, John Lithgow going for it, and high stakes.

Movie review - "The Destroyer" (1986) **

 Richard Hill and Katt Shea from Deathstalker are reunited in another Corman financed film from the same director, only this one is set in present day. He's a Vietnam vet - his old commanding officer is killed in a small town by some baddies who beat up Hill who then get his old comrades together to kick ass. 

Some interesting characters are set up among the ex soldiers but not much is done with them (burly idiot, driven guy, sort of rich guy).

Shea and Hill have one of thse awkwardly shot sex scenes like we saw in Ciro Santiago's Cocaine Wars.

I didn't mind the film. It looked as though it had some budget and there were lots of explosions. I wish - as I so often do with these 80s Concorde movies - that a little more time was spent on the characters. Just a little more. It would've made the action stuff mean more.

Movie review - "Casualties of War" (1989) ***1/2

 Props for Michael J Fox trying to expand his range the moment he became a star - he went into Light of Day, Bright Lights Big City and this. The public liked none of them.

Props also to Brian de Palma for blowing his Untouchables chits on this.  Just think maybe he should've made it for less money - pulled back on the battle sequences.

Gosh this is full on. American soldiers lose a man, so kidnap a Vietnamese girl for their sex slave, repeatedly rape her, then go to execute her... it seems several times she might escape but she doesn't get there... and she dies. 

Sean Penn is excellent as an all too believable hill billy thug as is Don Harvey as his sidekick and John C Reilly and John Leguizmo as the easily influenced. Fox is very fine as well. All the acting is good. Thu Thuy Le is mostly required to scream and look scared but she's very effective. The rest of the Vietnamese are the standard Hollywood Vietnam War extras, either screaming or wailing.

I remember not liking this movie at all when I first saw it. My opinion is higher now - I guess I know more people like the characters, I certainly met enough at school. Ditto the officers whose instant reaction is to cover things up. This was all too believable.

The speech Fox gives after Cherry is killed is whiffy. The scene where Fox smacks Harvey in the face with a shovel is very satisfactory.

Movie review - "Greetings" (1968) **1/2

 Brian De Palma in groovy mode with its Brit cinema and French new wave cinema influences on its sleeve. It has bright colour, homophobia, racial slurs delivered "satirically" and a lot of energy.

It's a series of adventures with three films one of whom is a young Robert de Niro in glasses, another who is Gerrit Graham who was in a bunch of de Palma films.

This was a hit relative to its low budget. It's in colour, and is simple ish to follow - just three dudes hanging out bantering. The attitudes would have been fresh and cutting edge at the time.

There's lots of long takes with the actors just talking and interacting - Cassavetes like which is different from what De Palma would later specialise in.

I think this would have meant more to people going through this at the time but it's of interest.

Book review - "The Last Valley" by Martin Windrow

 The story of the Siege of Dien Bien Phu, an epic saga, Exhaustively researched, intelligently written. I found the drama got weighed down by all the details and descriptions, especially the numbers of various units and what not. Some compelling incidents sneak through - the French officer who killed himself during the initial attack, the swashbuckling soldiers - but not enough.

Movie review - "Gardens of Stone" (1987) **

 For a filmmaker associated with operatic action films, Francis Ford Coppola made a lot of slow moving, well acted dramas which sort of amble along. This is one. It's about the guard unit of the army, the ones who do the funerals at Arlington. Sergeant James Caan wants to train troops for Vietnam, DB Sweeney is a young soldier who wants to transfer to Vietnam.

The cast is great. There's Mary Stuart Masterson as the girl Sweeney marries, Masterson's parents IRL Pete and Carlin Glynn as her on screen parents, James Earl Jones is one of this earliest "black military man" roles, fellow Some Kind of Wonderful alumni Elias Koteas as a clerk, Dean Stockwell as an officer, Angelica Huston as Caan's new girlfriend, Larry Fishburne as a sergeant, Lonette McKee as Mrs Jones, Sam Bottoms as a soldie.

Caan is particularly excellent. Sweeney is fine - there was a ten year period where Hollywood tried him as a leading man in films and then TV but it didn't work out apart from some minor hits (The Cutting Edge, Fire in the Sky)... Fishburne should probably have played this role.

There's some 80s boomer dialogue about Vietnam ("we'll never win"). Actually come to think of it a lot of the dialogue felt off.

The music drones and feels odd. It's dull. I didn't care about Sweeney's romance with Masterton. I think Sweeney just should've played Caan's actual son instead of Sweeney having an unseen dad and Caan an unseen son.

The turmoil Coppola went through on this film - losing his own son - is a compelling story, more moving that what is on screen. I found the movie dull.

Movie review - "The Odd Angry Shot" (1979) ***1/2

 Tom Jeffrey directed two films that did poorly at the box office then made this which was a hit so it's weird this was the last film he directed (he produced some others). This is his best movie, a lovely, moving account of SAS troops in Vietnam. It concentrates on the banter and jokes - there's a lot of comic actors in it - but doesn't ignore the power of death. This feels real.

The set design looks terrific. The cast is very strong though some look too old/fat/rich to be in the SAS - especially Graham Kennedy who is otherwise very good (his laconic presence feels spot on... it's just his size). Kennedy's character makes a lot of homophobic cracks. I had a bit of trouble buying Graeme Blundell too - nothing against him as an actor he's very good he just felt a little too old and La Mama.

Everyone is in this film - Bryan Brown, Richard Moir, John Hargreaves, Graham Rous, Frankie J. Holden, John Jarratt, Max cullen, Grant Page, Ray Meagher, Roger Newcombe (an actor who plays one of the Americans), Tim Page (bald dude from Young Doctors), Tony Barry. They look more like soldier types. Brian Wenzel is in it too.

My favourite bit was Kennedy telling Cullen to f*ck off for being a sack of sh*t - that was hilarious and felt very real. There's other tremendous sequences like the scorpion fight that lead to a brawl.

It's well produced, being focused on the base and in the jungle. Bryan Brown's mine injury is an effective cut - one minute laughing then the next being on the ground.

I wasn't wild about the music but this is  a very good film.

Movie review - "The Trial of the Chicago Seven" (2020) **** (re watching)

 Saw it again. Lots of fun. Bright dialogue. Didn't quite nail the ending. Excellent acting and period re enactment.

Play review - "Travelling North" by David Williamson (1979)

 Warm, funny, full of life and sadness. Williamson in Bergman mode, maybe. He's famed for his ability to write boomers but he also does the older generation well, never better than this one. It helps that the lead guy was based on Kristin's stepdad (I think).

It's a wonderful work. The short scenes are effective here because so much time is covered. The support characters of the daughter, the doctor, the annoying neighbour are all sympathetically sketched. I wondered if perhaps it misses a reunion between Frank and his estranged son. The Brett Whitley comedy at the end is funny.

Movie review - "Saint Jack" (1979) ****

 This film completely worked for me - maybe I saw it in the perfect mood or something but it just clicked. Bogdanovich films are about rhythm and this one nails it. It helps he had Paul Theroux's source material, he was keen to explore brothels in the far east, he had a surrogate in Ben Gazzara, Howard Sackler worked on the script, the budget was low enough for him to have freedom (even though it was a tricky shoot). It's one of the best New World Pictures.

Gazzara gives a subtle, laid back performance as Jack a man who seems to have all the answers but often gets in over his head. He works for some locals and dreams of setting up his own brothel; he succeeds only to fall victim to the local triads (a terrifying sequence... Bogdanovich doesn't do nearly enough suspense and violence he has a gift for it).

It is the story of white men in Singapore but he's constantly bested by the locals and the British don't come off too well - boozy whoremongerers singing songs. The female characters don't get much of a look in - more could've been done with Jack's Sri Lankan love - but the many virtues outweigh the flaws: the matter of fact acceptance of sex (so much so that to blackmail a man because he's gay is what makes Jack draw the line), the atmosphere, the fact it captured a Singapore now gone, Bogdanovich giving one of his best performances as a CIA man.  George Lazenby is effective in a small appearance as a senator who is a blackmail target. Denholm Elliot is perfect as a sweaty accountant who comes to be Jack's one genuine friend.

There's reference to Jack replacing Aussie beef with American to feed American GIs on leave during Vietnam.

Play review - "Third World Blues" by David Williamson (1997)

 Williamson's re-do of Juggler's Three shores up the second half especially - the first scene seemed less impressive to me but that might be because I was more familiar with it, and also the original take had a ripped from the headlines quality. 

The second half tightens the structure and Graham becomes more of a driving force. The play is more sympathetic to him (he gets a big monologue towards the end) but it's still clear he's a horrible controlling nasty person, even before he went to Vietnam. 

A very good play.

Book review - "Chasing the Light" by Oliver Stone (2020)

 Entertaining but a little disappointing. Not as good as the 1995 bio on Stone - which Stone quotes several times oddly enough.

Stone's life was so action packed my expectations were high - exotic squabbling parents, Yale, Vietnam, drugs, sex, taxi driving, film school being taught by Martin Scorsese, screenwriting, etc. Maybe it' s better suited to being a biography.

Stone is an interesting person. Intelligent, self centered, sensual, aware, ambitious, not great with money.

He plugged away for a number of years - driving a cab, living off his first wife and writing two scripts a year. Robert Bolt was an early champion. He made his first feature quite early but little came of it. What got him going was the spec Platoon. That led to Midnight Express, his first assignment - a good one to have. He became a top screenwriter (Conan, Scarface).

Interesting trivia: Keanu Reeves was offered the lead in Platoon, he wanted Warren Beatty and Tom Cruise for Wall Street. There's fascinating insights into the making of Seizure and The Hand. The book only goes up to him about to start on Wall Street. His analysis of other directors like De Palma, Parker, Milius and Cimino is interesting.

The accounts of the making of Salvador and Platoon are exhausting.

Strong book but I can't deny I felt a little let down.

Play review - "Jugglers Three" by David Williamson (1972)

 I have memories of loving this play when I first read it at uni  - I had heard it was based on his real personal situation and was taken aback that someone could be so honest in its writing. Then I heard Williamson would run it down, and indeed he rewrote the play as Third World Blues, and was wondering if I remembered it wrong.

So on re-reading...

The opening is electric. Man turns up to the flat of his married lover. The husband of said lover is there, back from Vietnam. This is tremendous. Then it becomes apparent the Vietnam vet is going to kill the husband and tension is disappated. There's appearances from the woman they both love, the man's wife, the vet's old pal from Vietnam who has committed robbery. There's a cop similar to the ones in The Removalist and also another man in love with the main woman, Jamie, who feels like a surplus character - he could have been folded into the pompous Williamson surrogate.

Williamson can tell a story - I love how he gets out  of the armed robbery stuff by having the cop take the proceeds as a bribe. This is good writing.

Yet something about the piece is wonky. Too many characters or something. Or the way it's dealt with doesn't work. The stakes start off high and then go low. Maybe that's it.