Movie review - "Scoop" (2006) **1/2

Minor league Woody which you might have resented paying $15 for at the cinema but at home free on TV it's fine. The one real dash of inspiration comes when Ian MacShane dies (off screen) and pops up on the ferry to the land of the dead... then he drops his knowledge off to Scarlett Johansson and kind of plops out of the movie. It's Scarlett playing Nancy Drew with magician Woody Allen.

Like many later Woody movies there's elements from his earlier ones - Manhattan Murder Mystery in particular but also New York Stories (the magic segment). Romola Gorai pops up to suggest young Scarlett have an affair - and that's it. Seriously that's her role.

Scarlett is winning and pretty - as is Hugh Jackman, who plays the main suspect. It has pleasing locations and photography and Woody isn't bad. Admittedly my expectations were so low after hearing so many bad things about this but I enjoyed it.

Movie review - "Red Sun" (1972) **1/2

In the 70s this film was help as as an example of the most international of international co productions - with its Europudding finance, and casting including Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune, Alain Delon and Ursula Andress... something for everyone, except maybe Americans, where the general public didn't take to it.

It's not much of a movie. There is a great novelty in the basic idea - outlaws in the American west pinch a samurai sword intended for the President Grant so Mifune, who was assigned to look after it, goes after him. And it's a good complication to have him accompanied by an outlaw, Bronson, seeking to take down his treacherous deputy, Delon. There is, as you could expect, plenty of star power. Andress goes topless and is lively. Capucine even pops up as a hooker who sleeps with Bronson.

But Bronson and Mifune don't make a good team - both are stoic, silent types but because Mifune's English is so poor, Bronson is forced to be chatty. The film is at heart a buddy movie between these two but I never got a firm grip on their characters. 

Maybe more could've been done with Andress, who accompanies them. Delon's part isn't very big - he's a strong villain, I wish he'd had more to do.

The action scenes are patchy - this is frustrating. It also lacks suspense. I mean, this movie is okay... it's not a disaster. It's more dull. I kept feeling opportunities for culture clash (comedic, whatever) were missed. Action scenes are only so-so. 

I'm glad it exists, though!

Movie review - "Anthony Adverse" (1936) **1/2

I remember enjoying this as a kid watching it on Bill Collins back in the day - even though I'd never read the book, you could feel it was adapted from one: a prologue leading to the birth of a title character, scenes of his childhood (including meeting a childhood sweetheart), adventures in exotic climes, a nemesis, rags to riches, etc, etc. It remains enjoyable if you can handle some melodramatic over the top acting.

It gets off to a strong start with Anita Louise married to nasty Claude Rains but in love with Louis Hayward (in the role that got him noticed in Hollywood), which results in Rains killing Hayward in a duel and Louise dying in childbirth. The resulting kid is dumped with nuns, and falls for a fellow girl. He then grows up to be the not very exciting Frederic March (I wish they'd cast Errol Flynn), though the girl is the delightful and charming Olivia de Havilland.

There's a very good support cast: Donald Woods as a random best friend, Edmund Gwenn as a kindly benefactor (very coincidentally March's real grandfather), Steffi Duna as a brown face native girl who has hot pants for March, Akim Tamiroff hamming it up outrageously as a slave trader. Most of all there are Claude Rains and Gale Sondergaard as a pair of villains.

I really like Eric Wolfgang Korngold's score and several of the scenes remain etched in my memory: March meeting his son, realising de Havilland has become Napleon's mistress, March talking to his son and them going away together, the death of Hayward. It badly misses a come uppance for Rains and Sondergaard.

Movie review - "Custer of the West" (1968) *1/2

Terrible version of the famous general, which is big screen but looks cheap and feels like a mess. Its historical crap which would be alright if at least replaced with some decent drama but there isn't. I didn't realise Robert Shaw was then considered a big enough star for an epic, but I guess From Russia with Love was a hit...

In the opening scenes he has a maniacal glint in his eye and I thought maybe this could be interesting even though Shaw is English... playing Custer as cray cray. But his character is all over the shop - one minute decent, then drunk, then liberal, then killing people.

Indians are persecuted and the film is full of late 60s white guilt but they still have the capability to take over an entire town and de-rail and entire train off a bridge. Scenes are inserted to show off Cinerama without making sense dramatically - a soldier going down a long shute of water, train falling off a bridge, etc. A sequence involving Robert Ryan as a deserting soldier feels inserted solely to give Robert Ryan a brief showy part. Other scenes feel like "ideas" shoved in which might have worked in a more cohesive piece but which here are annoying - such as Custer seeing himself depicted on stage.

There's "conflict" between Custer and his officers, bleeding heart liberal Jeff Hunter and hard core Ty Hardin. Lawrence Tierney growls as General Sheridan, Mary Ure (Shaw's real wife) is wasted in a nothing part as Mrs Custer (she doesn't have that much on screen chemistry with her husband).

Its a haphazard mess and really annoyed me as a film.

Movie review - "Last Days of Vietnam" (2014) ****

Interesting documentary about the final days of the Vietnam War, focusing on the Americans and their attempts to evacuate people from the city. The title gives the impression the documentary will range wider than it does - there's little on Cambodia, the North Vietnamese. It's really about people getting in helicopters, and throwing copters in the ocean, and forged papers and so on... Moving gripping stuff. The US Ambassador at the time cops it, Kissinger defends himself, talking heads say if Nixon had been in power the North Vietnamese might have held off but they felt empowered under Ford. Some great footage, and moving anecdotes.

Book review - "Just Tell Me When You Want Me to Cry" by Richard Fleischer

This isn't one of the famous director memoirs - at least, not that I'm aware - and it sat on my bookshelf for a long time unread, but it was good. Very self effacing for a work from a director - it doesn't talk about his life and times and career so much as encounters with crazy characters. They are certainly memorable: Howard Hughes at RKO making him shoot additional footage for His Kind of Woman; dealing with Orson Welles on Compulsion; Kirk Douglas on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Vikings; Rex Harrison on Dr Doolittle (making them hire Sidney Poitier, then quitting, then being replaced by Christopher Plummer and coming back again); Charles Bronson on Mr Majestyk; Daryl F Zanuck in thrall to Juliete Greco; ducking work with John Wayne on North to Alaska; Laurence Oliver on The Jazz Singer.

There's more affectionate reminiscences: working with the team of Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman; the hard-living polio-afflicted screenwriter Earl Felton (who I'd never heard of before); Gilbert Roland on Bandido; his early mentor, RKO hard man Sig Rogell.

It's all great fun. I wished that there were more on other films Fleischer made - there's nothing on Che! or See No Evil or Amityville 3-D or lots of other movies. But what's here is good.

Movie review - "The Hateful Eight" (2016) *** (warning: spoilers)

Tarantino has called this a "northern" because it's a Western set in the snow. I'd argue that really it's a Western set in the snow - Northerns being a specific sub genre of the Western set in Alaska (The Spoilers, North to Alaska, The Far Country, Call of the Wild) or Canada (mountie movies).

It's also a siege movie, in a way - a bunch of desperadoes holed up in a haberdashery during a blizzard - which could easily be adapted into a play. It reminded me of Reservoir Dogs (this too has Michael Madsen and Tim Roth in the cast).

Maybe it should have been a play - though it is cinematically interesting with its 70 mm cinematography and lush production design and movie stars. What it doesn't need to be is three hours long. Scenes drag on; dialogue is repeated by characters several times; exposition is repeated. The script needed a good edit. But I guess who was going to convince Tarantino of that.

He's given the Sergio Leone treatment to what is in its heart of hearts a good taunt Raoul Walsh B movie. There's a great cast of B movie stars - I don't use "B movie stars" in a derogatory sense... I mean the modern day equivalent of say Howard Duff and Edmund O'Brien: Samuel L Jackson and Kurt Russell as rival bounty hunters, Jennifer Jason Leigh as a femme fetale, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen as mysterious gun men, Walton Goggins as a redneck, Demian Bichir as a handyman, Bruce Dern as a Southern general.

The acting is very strong as usual in a Tarantino picture and all the leads get a chance to shine. Roth's humour was particularly enjoyable. Jackson gets perhaps the most shocking moment - describing to Dern what he made Dern's son do.

The most depressing sequence is the flashback where a gang wipe out a bunch of innocent people. We see one big for mercy before being shot; another bleeding to death pleading with their eyes before being shot. They are nice people too - it's not like seeing the leads be killed (they all play ruthless people who live life according to tough rules); they are just people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Good on Tarantino for conveying the horror but it also makes it really depressing. 

And he seems to really enjoy putting in scenes where people punch and abuse Jennifer Jason Leigh - I mean there's a LOT of moments where that happens. (While Tarantino is down with the hard luck black men had during this time in history he seems to have nil sympathy/empathy for what women had to put up with during this time.)