Movie review - "Ensign Pulver" (1964) **

 Joshua Logan sooked a lot about the film version of Mister Roberts but got a chance to make his own version, this sequel without Roberts who died in the original. He assembled some promising names but stuffed up with Robert Walker Jnr in the lead, a gawky Jim Hutton type who isn't up to Jack Lemmon. Burl Ives seems too fat and old and not scary for a captain.

The story is dumb. Burl Ives bullies, Walker wants to be a doctor (boring), Tommy Sands' child dies so he goes a little mad, there's an interlude on an island with Millie Perkins as a nurse, Ives and Walker are on a raft. The story misses Mister Roberts but it's also not good. I did like Ives realising he's not fit for command, that's a bit different.

It's interesting to see people like Jack Nicholson, Larry Hagman and James Coco as sailors.  Walter Matthau is strong as the doctor. Pretty photography.

But the film was just annoying. Walker too. 

Movie review - "None But the Brave" (1965) ***

 Frank Sinatra's one movie as director is surprisingly gutsy - anti war, very sympathetic to the Japanese, long scenes of Japanese chatting. Some Japanese are stuck on an island - Americans crash. They fight then form a bond then fight. There's a lot of camraderie and men on opposite sides making eyes at each other.

Sinatra is in it but the biggest role goes to Clint Walker who is bland and solid. Tommy Sands is terrible - he made a choice to use a silly voice and it sinks his performance. The Japanese actors are strong. Nicely shot.

I don't think Sinatra was Charles Laughton but this impressed me. 

Movie review - "The Hunted" (2003) **1/2

 The last of William Friedkin's four Sherry Lansing movies came and went in theatres quite quickly but is a decent action thriller with Benicio del Toro going on a killing spree and his mentor Tommy Lee Jones being called in to track him down.

The movie's main problem is aching familiarity. del Toro is tormented and Jones is tormented and one chases after the other and there's Connie Nielsen as a plucky FBI agent and a couple of red shirts to be killed and some girl ni del Toro's past.

A few of the fight scenes in the bush are well done  - maybe the whole film needed to be set in the bush, but they capture del Toro and he escapes in the city.

This was fine. 

Movie review - "The Guardian" (1990) ***

Often called Friedkin's worst movie but Deal of the Century is far worse, and I enjoyed it. It's silly, of course, a druid sacrificing babies to trees, and random rapists who appear in the forests to die, and you can tell Friedkin was going through a custody dispute with its emphasis on the father, the untrustworthy nanny, etc (though it's not as divorced dad a movie as Rampage). Still it works on a certain level.

I loved the way the movie was shot, there's effective scenes of the house at night with a late night DJ talking (playing Aussie songs from The Triffids and Not Drowning Waving), and the tree is creepy. Memorable sequence with that architect character tracking Seagrove in the forest and regretting it.

I think the movie should have been more about the mum, Carey Lowell - who is required to scream and look dumb too much (though she is allowed to fight at the end). Seagrove should've seduced the husband (played by someone caled Dwier Brown) who should've died. 

Jenny Seagove has a high old time running around nude covered in much.  The climax is a lot of fun with Brown chainsawing the tree and Seagrove duking it out with Carey Lowell.

Full of plot holes and places it needed to be tightened but I had a good time. 

Movie review - "Rampage" (1987) **1/2

 I think William Friedkin was a dumb person who read a few books so people thought he was smart. This is about the capture and trial of a serial killer. We get scenes of the killer murdering one family (middle aged woman and her parents) then another (mother and small child) which have power to shock and Friedkin then proceeds to stack the deck in favour of the death penalty by showing the killer to be a complete psycho who giggles and smiles and kills three more guards to rub it in, and kills a kid, and calls the prosecutor at home. And the psychiatrists let him out and lie on the stand - I think Friedkin was going through a custody dispute at the time.

The court arguments and look at the legal system feel dumb, with Michael Biehn invoking the Nazis and lots of yelling. Did the author of the book on which this is based, a lawyer, have a say in those scenes?

Michael Biehn isn't much - he was effective in support movies but on his own he shouts. Deborah Van  Valkeberg has nothing to do as his wife, except cry about their dead daughter - she could have been cut out of the film, and probably should have been.

None of it feels real. I will say that the movie had a compulsiveness to it - it's not boring like The Brinks Job or Deal of the Century. It's nutty Friedkin jumping up and down and yelling at clouds. 

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 - "Deal of the Century" (1983) *

 Having shown he couldn't do comedy in The Night They Raided Minsky's and The Brinks Job William Friedkin showed it again with this flat satire of the arms industry. People who work in that arena are inherently unlikeable but they can be made compelling - but Friedkin directs sluggishly, Chevy Chase is miscast, Sigourney Weaver flounders.

When Wallace Shawn shoots himself it perks up briefly. That's what the movie should have been - real stakes. 

It's bad. Flat. Unfunny. You don't care. Greg Hines could be cut out of the film. Not drama. Just odd.