Movie review - "And One Was Beautiful" (1940) **1/2

 Odd melodrama with two sisters in love with the same guy - sophisticated Jean Muir and "homey" Laraine Day with Robert Cummings as the gyy. Muir and Cummings go to a party he gets wasted and insists on driving - but then she does it, she runs over and kills someone. He takes the fall. That's not a bad drama set up.

The film stacks the deck against Muir - who actually had my sympathy. She lies, Cummings goes "no I'd remember running someone over" which isn't true, Day instantly suspects her sister... A little more work and this could've been a lot better.

Day is sweet, Muir good and Cummings charming - the acting is a reasonable standard. And it's got MGM gloss. Cummings seems remarkably chipper the whole time for someone who is up for murder. He's chipper in prison, and chipper when he finds out he's innocent. The family of the guy Muir kills are forgiving - plucky stock working class types.

The film covers a lot of ground.

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.