Movie review - "The Big Heat" (1953) ****

 Everything clicked for Fritz Lang - Glenn Ford in a great performance, a strong story, very good script from Sydney Boehm. Simple story - Ford investigates murder of cop - has punch from the all to believable depiction of corruption in society particularly the higher up cos who are always encouraging people to give up.

Ford's wife is sappy and the kid an annoying boomer but the wife's death has real kic and the minor parts are superb - the slimy bar owner, the mob boss, the sad hooker. Most of all there is Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame - who I was surprised to see don't really appear much til the last act. 

But the relationship between Grahame and Ford is powerful and I loved how Ford's army veteran mates helped. 

Movie review - "Amongst Friends" (1993) **

 Almost a caricature of Gen X indie cinema - genius auteur, gangsters, Scorcese, misogyny, characters talkin tough and hard to differentiate. Mira Sorvino is sweet. I liked the tubby guys. But I wanted the film to end sooner than it did.

A better movie would be the story of the making of this and Rob Weiss going full Hollywood - but I guess they did that with the Billy Flynn arc on Entourage. 

Movie review - "The French Connection II" (1975) **

 The first film set it up for a sequel - capturing Fernando Rey - and this had the decent idea of turning Popeye (Gene Hackman) into a junkie. So he's blundering around France when he's kidnapped and injected. 

The film thus doesn't have the legenday New York touch of the first movie but it has scuzzy France and a director who'd lived in that country, John Frankenheimer. 

Look, I appreciate they tried to do something different with it being in France. By having Popeye be a fish out of water meant there was no fleshing out of his character not really - he's mostly befuddled. He has a French cop he clashes with (Bernard Fresson) though that feels like squabbling.

There's some action - chases (one on foot at the end - not as exciting as a car), gun fight, a flood. I just didn't much like it. Felt padded with chases, scenes of Hackman being given drugs and going into detox.

Fun to see Cathleen Nesbitt as a druggie old lady. Nice location filming.

Not sure what else they could've done. More interaction with French people definitely. More Hackman and Fresson. Maybe another American in there, to give Popeye someone to talk to. 

Movie review - "Some Like It Hot" (1959) ***** (re-watching)

 Just fun. Sexy. Cynical. Broad. Marilyn worth the hassle. Tony Curtis should've worked with Wilder again.

Movie review - "Midnight Run" (1988) ***** (re-watching)

 Just perfect. Astonishingly great script full of strong characters, revearsals, logic, bits of business. Everyone is allowed to be smart. Also dumb. But dumbness is motiviated. Perfect score. Perfect casting - all the little roles (people in diners, etc). Heartbreaking moments like the stuff with the daughter and the ending.

Movie review - "The Big Combo" (1955) ****

 Fantastic film noir from director Joseph Lewis and writer Phil Yordan, made for Yordan's company in association with Cornel Wilde's. The movie established Wilde as a producer which extended his career; he gives one of his best performances too as a cop driven to take down Richard Conte (replacing Jack Palance at the last minute but Conte's superb). Jean Wallace is excellent as Conte's traumatised wife, while Helene Stanton almost steals the movie as Wilde's sexy, lonely girlfriend, aware her boyfriend is hung up on Wallace.

Very strong support cast - Brian Donlevy as henchman number one, with Lee Van Cleef and Earl Holliman as henchmen two and three (who sleep in the same room).

Beautifully shot, dynamically directed. Amazing sequences such as Wilde being tortured and Donlevy being shot. Did Yordan actually write this one? If so he should be very proud. 

Movie review - "The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond" (1960) ***

 Decent A minus gangster biopic, done with pace by Budd Boetticher. I'm not a huge Ray Danton fan but he's fine. Karen Steele is bad as his dim true love. Elaine Stewart is fun as a minx. Dyan Cannon is really fun as a moll, Warren Oates strong as Danton's brother, Richard Gardner excellent as Mad Dog Coll ditto Robert Lowery as Rothstein.  It's got some "Psychology" (he pushed everyone away!) but it holds dramatically.

Movie review - "The French Connection" (1971) ****

 William Friedkin's background was in documentary but his first four movies comprised of two musicals and two play adaptations before he was given a documentary style story: the tale of busting a heroin ring. Luck fell his way - the perfect star Gene Hackman, an ideal producer in Philip d'Atonini, a story that suited him (violent, grime), Ernest Tidyman knocked the story into shape (though Friedkin downplayed the result but Friedkin wrecked too many scripts to take him overly seriously).

Superb support from Tony Lo Bianco, Roy Scheider, Frenando Rey, Marcel Bozzuffi. Random scene where a TV star from France is interviewed. Popeye Doyle is very destructive and a not particularly competent cop. Visceral chase scene - Popeye really could call the next station (and you could cut the scene from the film story wise).

Simple story - padded out with chase scenes, and tailing scenes - is given life via energy, fresh treatment, actors. 

Movie review - "Equinox" (1992) **1/2

 The tale of two identical twins, separated - both played by Matthew Modine. One is a shy type the other is a gangster. Shy guy wants Lara Flynn Boyle, lives next to Marisa Tomei, has M. Emmett Walsh as a dad; gangster lives with Lori Singer (wasted), works for Fred Ward and with Tate Donovan.

The acting is strong across the board - Modine is excellent.  Lovely mood. Erratic middle. Interesting ending. I'm still thinking about it.

Movie review - "Mr Soft Touch" (1949) **

 The idea for this isn't bad - gambler on the run from cops seeks reguge at refuge run by a social worker. But it's not developed well. Glenn Ford is okay as the gambler but they don't give him a decent character to play - he needed to be an extravagant flash harry type, full of charm. Evelyn Keyes is all wrong as the social worker - this should be a sweet demure type to get comedy conflict but Keyes gives off the impression of having been around the block. Terry Moore, say, would've been better.

I didn't like this film. It wasn't funny or that charming, it felt confused, and with miscast leads. Dick Powell was once going to make it with June Allyson - that would've made a lot more sense. 

Movie review - "The Long Good Friday" (1980) *****

 Great, tough British gangster film which is based on solid concept - a gangster going legit finds himself threatened by the IRA. Its ace in the hole is Bob Hoskins - working class, tough, ,warm, funny, sympathetic. 

He's got solid support from Helen Mirren (an uptown girl slumming it), Bryan Marshall, Eddie Constantine, a young Pierce Brosnan, and others. 

One of Hoskins' gangsters is gay - there were a few of these in British cinema of the time eg Villain. 

Terrific music. Just really well done. 

Movie review - "Nuns on the Run" (1990) ***

 The last film, I think, from HandMade Films, at least its George Harrison-Denis O'Brien iteration, saw the company go out on a hit - and it was the type of movie the company probably should have made through the late 80s instead of all those quirky American pieces: a solid comedy with a former Monty Python. Eric Idle is the guy here, though the prime creative mover was Jonathan Lynn who wrote and directed it. 

Idle teams well with Robbie Coltrane and the jokes are obvious but funny. There's various plot machinations, a really sweet romance for Idle, Janet Suzman impresses as mother superior (but feels as though she needs a big scene or something the way Maggie Smith got in Sister Act  - that film felt as though it learned from this one). The pacing is occasionally off and some scenes feel re-shot. But it wants to entertain, the music is great, it's unpretentious. 

Movie review - "Bellman and True" (1988) **

 HandMade films had a success taking a film intended for TV and releasing it theatrically with The Long Good Friday. They tried it again with Song of Freedom and this one, neither succeeded.

This isn't a bad story - a computer expert is forced to assist in a crime  after his step son is kidnapped.

But it's just shot like a British TV drama with all that TV drama acting, and musical stings, and TV cutting. Which is fine on TV but not for a movie.

Bernard Hill is a decent actor but he's taciturn, tight - there's no warmth. The lead needed a star. Bob Hoskins would have made all the difference.

The characters of the criminals are interesting because they are more three dimensional than usual. More interesting than the lead. It picks up in the second half when the heist kicks in.

But the core relationship between the lead duo - the guy and the kid - is flat. 

Movie review - "Mona Lisa" (1986) ***

 Very simple effective story. Bob Hoskins is wonderfully cast. Sean Connery, the original choice, would have totally changed it.  Ambles a bit in the middle. It was fine, not magical Maybe the queer twist carried more weight in 1986. It's good, mind. 

Book review - "Slayground" by Richard Stark (1971)

 So much better than the film it's not funny. Brilliantly tight, gripping account which starts with Parker in a robbery - dodgy driver crashes, Parker seeks refuge in a fun park, is seen by corrupt cops and crooks who figure out he's got money so don't turn him in but go after the money. So it's a siege story.

Why didn't they film this instead of stupid stuff about killing a nine year old girl and being killed off one by one (here he kills a gangster which annoys a crime lord but that's so much better). In the film Parker (called Stone) was a whimp, an idiot, who only shoots one person. Here he's a complete bad ass.

I guess there's a lot of internal action but you could add a character for Parker to talk to. 

Movie review - "Slayground" (1983) ** (warning: spoilers)

 I get there's always a market for a thriller but it was odd EMI Films made this. Perhaps they were seduced by the name of Richard Stark/Donald Westlake - but really it needed a bigger name than Peter Coyote, even if he was coming off ET.

It's an odd duck - Coyote is Stone (Parker), a tough professional crim who works with an incompetent getaway driver who causes a crash that kills a nine year old girl. This prompts the girl's father to hire a killer to take out the crooks and the film turns into a kind of slasher with crims being offed one by one, and Coyote fleeing to England.

It was a mistake to have the accident kill a nine year old girl because I was all on the side of the father. The film tries to soften Stone by having him stop and inspect the dead body and express guilt about it but... sorry. If they'd killed a grown wife or something it would have propelled the plot just the same... I think killing off a kid just feels mean.

Stone never gets the chance to do anything tough until the end and even then it's mostly because the killer is being silly announcing himself. The killer acts as if he's in The Shadow and kills everyone who Stone helps - Mel Smith his friend (his death was a downer), a girl, his lawyer. Stone is toxic.

Why did EMI ever think this was commercial? 

Movie review - "Married to the Mob" (1988) ****

 Not a lot of actual laughs but full of good cheer, atmosphere and superb acting. Michelle Pfeiffer is very likeable as the mafia widow who just wants to have an honest life, Dean Stockwell is excellent (scary but very human), ditto Mercedues Reuhl (whose love for and pain about her husband is very real and affecting), Matthew Modine is charming as an affable FBI man.

There's appearances from people like Oliver Platt, Lady Carol, oh so young Alec Baldwin, an achingly pretty Nancy Travis. 

Lovely movie. 

Movie review - "Sinners" (2025) ****

 Terrific movie. Slow burn build up, which pays off in the second half with big character impacts - the deaths matter. Satisfying love story resolutions. Splendid production design, music, etc.

Movie review - "The Custodian" (1993) **1/2

 John Dingwall may have written a great script for Sunday Too Far Away but he wasn't flawness and he's not the best argument for writer-directors. This is an intense, florid, corruption tale with Anthony La Paglia as a cop who decides to dob in mates including Hugo Weaving to journo Kelly Dingwall.

Famel characters consistently bland - Essie Davis' perfect coffee girl who just wants to be there for La Paglia and invites him home and is basically nothing, Naomi Watts also nothing to play as Dingwall's girlfriend, and there's also La Paglia's trashy wife Joy Smithers, and Barry Otto's nothing wife who is murdered (the only kick of this piece), Weaving's got a wife who's just there too. Nothing wrong with actors, just nothing to play.

La Paglia is meant to be a top cop but we don't see him do anything except dob. It's actually not that much of a role. Weaving goes full scenery chewing. Barry Otto is the best in the cast.

I don't think there's been a film with so many female characters that are nothing - you could cut all out of the movie except Otto's wife and she only makes it because she gets murdered.

Just put a dead body in it and have an investigation.

Movie review - "Desperate Hours" (1990) **

 I think the theory was good - take a well worn story, which almost always works (siege/home invasion), and add a hot star like Mickey Rourke, some great actors like Mimi Rogers and Anthony Hopkins, and give it to Michael Cimino.

It's got 90s bloat which we saw in a lot of remakes around this time (eg The Getaway). I think Cimino struggles with cramped, indoor stories. His famous films - all of them until here - were basically oudoor stories. Even the indoor sequences felt spectacular eg Russian Roulette in Deer Hunter, the restaurant in Year of the Dragon.  The scenes set outdoors here - Kelly Lynch on the opening, for instance, or when David Morse escapes - has a life the indoor stuff doesn't.

Cimino struggles with character interactions. Desperate Hours should be full of them - we keep waiting to see humanity in Rourke towards Hopkins/Rogers/Smith... but don't. Sexual attraction/repulsion, an understanding, people realising stuff about themselves, interesting gang dynamics... none of that is really there. I kept waiting for a psycho convict to do something... no. There's a nice moment where a convict recognises a video game played by Hopkins' son and waited to see that relationship developed... No. Smith is a bratty teen and I waited to see a convict fall for her (or Rogers) - or threaten them. No. Yes, cliches, or tropes, but at least drama. Hopkins acts all tough, which is foolish when people have your family. He has a younger lover he left Rogers for who would be a great person to turn up... instead there's a real estate agent who is killed. Also Smith's boyfriend appears but they don't move there.

It's one of those films where maybe they were too afraid of cliches.  So they didn't do the cliches but they didn't replace them with anything.

The movie needed to be directed by, I don't know, John Badham or someone. That's no diss on Badham - I think that director was better with characterisation and more conventional material.