Yaphet Kotto Top Ten

 A great actor

1) Midnight Run (1988)

2) Alien (1979)

3) Blue Collar (1978)

4) Truck Turner (1974)

5) Live and Let Die (1973)

6) Across 110th Street (1972)

7) The Running Man (1988)

8) Raid on Entebbe (1976)

9) Fighting Back (1982)

10) Bone (1971) 

Great Unmade British films - a random selection

* Alex Korda - I Claudius (started filmin), War and Peace (with Orson Welles!)

* Hammer - I am Legend (yes, more but that's the main one)

*Kubrick - Napoleon, The Aryan Papers

* Hitchcock - No Bail for the Judge, Greenmantle 

* Alistair Maclean - HMS Ulysses

*Mistress of the Seas

*Mary Queen of Scots from Alexander Mackendrick 

*Tom Paine by Richard Attenborough

*The Knight by Ridley Scott

*Barnado Boys, Feathers of Death and The Long Loud Silence from Bryan Forbes at EMI

*Nat Cohen - the Nat King Cole Story yes, remake of Kind Hearts and Coronets with Dick Emery no

 *Lawrence of Arabia from Terence Rattigan

*the Lewis Collins Falklands film 

Book review - "The Future was now" by Chris Nashawaty

 Not bad look at key films from 1982 - ET, Poltergeist, The Thing, Blade Runner, etc. I didn't learn anything new and some of the prose was a little purple but it passed the time.

Movie review - "Gladiator 2" (2024) **

 Dumb. Badly written. Stuffs up a potentially great story. Paul Mescal is not a star. Denzel is. Why not start with the kid being whisked away with his mother. Great twin Emperors but they are wasted. Full of stuff that exists to be "cool" - baboons fighting etc. Makes no sense. Lazy.

Movie review - "Alien: Romulus" (2024) ***1/2

 The first decent Alien film in a long time - made by a director who clearly knows what he's doing. Sets up a strong world, and flows it through logically. The Easter eggs for fans are a little annoying. Some excellent acting.

Tony Scott Top Ten

 1) Spy Game - I've never forgotten this especially the ending

2) Revenge - ditto - flawed but memorable

3) Domino - another spectacular Scott ending

4) Crimson Tide - a great macho movie

5) The Last Boy Scout - always thought this was terrific

6) Enemy of the State - feels forgotten now but very slick very fun

7) True Romance - the best Tarantino film not made by QT (I know that's not a big category)

8) Top Gun - too campy and well done not to include

9) Unstoppable - silly fun

10) Man on Fire

Compare with with a Ridley Scott top ten

1) Alien

2) The Duellists

3) Blade Runner

4) Thelma and Louise

5) Black Rain

6) Gladiator

7) Black Hawk Down

8) House of Gucci

9) The Martian

10) American Ganster 

Movie review - "Napoleon" (2023) **1/2

It's good where you would expect - the battle sequences: siege of Toulon, grapeshot, Austerlitz, Moscow, Waterloo, Pyramids. 

It's weak where you would expect as well - exposition being doled out, Napoleon and Josephine. 

The acting isn't great - Joaquin Phoenix is... fine, Vanessa Kirby does great pout but that's it, Rupert Everett seems all wrong as Wellington. I liked the guy who played Alexanda.

It looks terrific, the story is a littie monotonous, it focuses on the lead couple but doesnt give us much insight. 

The historical inaccuracies are fine. Sorry, that might be too dismissive of me for the nerds, but the film's other problems are more serious.

Movie review - "Legend" (1985) **

 I get the cult. It looks terrific. No one went to see it. Lots of imagination. Tom Cruise before having his teeth fixed. Mia Sara. Goblins.

It's simple and also confusing. Cruise is fine but anyone could've played the role. Mia Sara is pretty but again generic. 

Maybe I should see it again. I don't really want to. This isn't a useful review is it? But it's an honest one.

Movie review - "House of Gucci" (2021) ****

 Grand old school melodrama. A modern day Bette Davis film. Lady Gaga is a star - she can act with her face without dialogue, she's open to the camera, emotive. Sure she's a bit hammy but it suits the part and she's matched in ham stakes by other actors: Al Pacino, Adam Driver, Salma Hayek (great to see her), Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons. Jack Huston scores heavily merely by being still and watchful.

Looks gorgeous with clothes and what not. Ex ad man Ridley Scott is at home showing male and female beauty.

Just a good old ripping yarn, well told, not dragged out over nine episodes.

Movie review - "Alien" (1979) ***1/2 (re-watching)

Got to admit - I wasn't that wild about this watching it years apart. It's slow - takes 30 minutes to collect the alien. Lots of lingering shots of the (admittedly impressive) art design and special effects.

It's not actually that scary/suspenseful. Ridley Scott's never been great at that. It was a tremendous authenticity - working class atmosphere for lack of a better word. It feels like a real ship and real people. Space is scary. But it felt long at two hours.

Some other random observations:
- very good acting
- having two female characters shows the benefits of having two of a minority because Veronica Cartwright can lose it and cry and be terrified and there is another woman who doesn't as a counterpoint
- Sigourney Weaver stripping down to her underwear does feel slsher film exploitative
- Weaver is a star with her role - so is the alien

You do wonder why Scott didn't bring back Walter Hill and David Giler on the new films.

Movie review - "Blade Runner 2049" (2017) ***1/2

The original wasn't very popular at the box office, you know! Just saying! Because it was confusing in a lot of places - even with the voice over (which I've got to say I liked) and often gloomy. It's reputation has risen and risen in recent years and it's now a classic.

So it was brave of them to tackle a sequel - and they did it very well. Harrison Ford is back, as well as Edward James Olmos and a re-enactment of Sean Young.

I liked Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, David Bautista, Lennie James and Ana de Armas as his fake girlfriend. Jared Leto was fine. I didn't like Sylvia Hoeks as the assassin replicant - her scenes felt tonally off, like they were from a more stock action film. Denis Villeneuve is a very good director.

There are some stunning visuals and scenes - the opening worm farm, the orphanage, the final battle. There were a frustrating amount of unanswered questions - no resolution to the fate of Leto, or the status of the revolution.

It's a very good movie, and there's much to be proud of. I never got wrapped up in it the way I did the original. It lacks a scene with the emotional power of Rutger Hauer's final moments, or the pace and suspense that comes from tracking down people who may or may not be robots.

Script review - "All the Money in the World" by David Scarpa

The central idea is really interesting - the kidnapping of J Paul Getty III. But it has problems - how do you sustain it? You've got a kidnapping sequence, cutting off the ear, grandad refusing to pay... then what? That's maybe half an hour?

So you've got the relationship between grandson and grandad - you bring in mum and dad as well. And that's all terrific. This gets off to a flying start - kidnapping, back story, illustrate the problems of the kidnapping.

Around half way through the script ran into trouble. Possibly inevitable. I mean some of it's interesting, but it's dead ends... thinking the mum might've had something to do with the kidnapping... but she didn't... Paul escapes... but he's recaptured... A dead body turns up... but it isn't Paul... Grandad refuses to pay... but he eventually does. There's no progression. No three act structure.

I think Scarpa didn't lick the problems in the material the way that say the writer of Sully did. Act one of that was "did I stuff up..." Act Two was the accident. Act three was him proving he didn't stuff up.

Here act one is the backstory. Act two the kidnapping. It doesn't really have act three. They try to jazz it up by having the kidnappers go to kill Getty but that feels fake somehow.

I'm not sure how that could've been fixed. Maybe focusing more on the impact of the kidnapping - I mean, dad cleaned up and had a decent ish life but the kidnap victim was a mess, had a stroke and was paralysed forever.  Maybe more into the characters - Gail the mum was plucky and Fletcher Chase was smart but that was about it. One of the kidnappers was nice - again that was about it.

I think the money was on the Gettys - Paul the victim, the hippie who grandad didn't like, who then married young after the kidnapping and was cut off. I think it was hampered by having make Gail and Chase active and heroic to attract stars.

It should be said the craft of writing here is fine - the scenes, dialogue,etc. It's more the story and the characters.

Movie review - "Exodus: Gods and Kings" (2014) ** (warning: spoilers)

Ridley Scott isn't the strongest on story - when he's got ready made material he knocks it out of the park eg Thelma and Louise - but if he's got something that's inherently tricky he often stuffs it up eg Prometheus, this.

I thought he was on safer ground because the story of Moses is so great, and has been filmed several times before so it's easy to see what works. But he stuffs it up. (Maybe other people were to blame but really Ridley Scott if a "giant ape" director, to use the William Goldman term - he does what he wants and the buck stops with him).

First of all they don't show the baby Moses story - one of the all time awesome origin stories, which sets up the world. the ruthlessness of the Egyptians, humanises the Jews, has great characters in Moses' mother, sister and adoptive mother. But this is thrown away so when we meet his mum and "sister" later on we don't care - they're these random people we get to spend two scenes with.

Instead we start with a battle against the Hittites - nicely enough done, but I think is Scott throwing back to Gladiator. (We never see Hittites again - all this does is set up rivalry between Christian Bale and Joel Edgerton, which could have been done some other way.)

The movie also wastes opportunities wholesale with its supporting characters: Sigourney Weaver is set up as this interesting person, Edgerton's mother who hates Bale and tries to have him killed... then does nothing with her; we get all these scenes with Bale's super bland wife, who has nil character apart from "why are you never home"'; Ben Kinglsey is set up as going to be important, he delivers some exposition about Moses' birth... then nothing, he doesn't even have a point of view to the action; Aaron Paul's wide eyes indicate that maybe his characterisation of Joshua will be worth watching but he hardly does anything (I don't even think he has an argument with Moses); Moses' brother Aaron is introduced, and he's bitter about Moses and you think "oh here's some drama" - but nope, nothing their; the actress who plays Edgerton's wife looks similar to the one who plays Bale's and she has a nothing character either (make her a religious fanatic, or super stupid, or sexy.... but use her please); we never seen Moses' adoptive mother again, or his sister.

The Cecil B de Mille 1956 film, for all it's flaws, was infinitely superior in terms of crafting story and interesting characters. For instance, the pharaoh's wife was in love with Moses.... so, bang, right there, you've got conflict. Edward G. Robinson played an Uncle Tom Hebrew - conflict again. It put Moses at the forefront of the action - here, Christian Bale disappears for most of the plague sequences. Why not touch on the Hebrews disappointing God in their behaviour after deliverance? (It's implied but not shown.) Newcomers to the story will be confused as to whether Moses ever reached the Promised Land, and what happened to the commandments. I couldn't help thinking that at times the film was too clever by half ("well we don't want to be obvious and spell all that out") and as a result disappeared up it's own backside.

Let's take a walk on the sunny side. I felt the concept of God as a small boy worked, and visually it was (as per all Scott's films) superb: the plagues, the partying of the Red Sea, the battles, the costumes. Ben Mendelsohn is marvellous as a villain, Joel Edgerton was pretty decent as the insecure pharaoh, Dar Salim impressed as Bale's old Egyptian army 2IC. It's a genuine spectacle. I just wish they'd done the story justice.

Movie review - "Prometheus" (2012) ** (warning: spoilers)

In space, no one seems to have heard of quarantine - at least not until the mid point. Until then you've got people on a strange planet taking off their helmets because they can breathe air, not caring about anything, bringing back to the ship willy-nilly. Two workers don't want to be around creatures but then later one of them reaches out to touch a creature. No one seems excited at the prospect of going to a planet to discover life. After they discover aliens the captain and his crew seems bored. People knock out others, run around the ship, and no one seems to notice or care. There are lots of pop culture references to things like Lawrence of Arabia and Stephen Stills (because you know people today make pop culture references all the time about the 1880s).

It's got two of the least believable characters in science fiction films in recent years - Holloway, played by a Billy Zane imitation, who is meant to be an archeologist but seems to have wandered in from a media studies course, doesn't seem remotely interested in the discovery of alien life (because they're dead, as if it wasn't enough); and the captain, who doesn't seem interested in what's going on either, then at the end we're meant to believe he's going to make this big sacrifice on nothing more than a hunch (and his two other pilots, about whom we know practically nothing).

The characters in the first three Alien films all felt real - they were doing their jobs, worried about overtime and their health, bitched about their boss, wanted promotions, defended their surrogate daughters; they were cowards and/or stoic, gung ho, some were in over their heads, others got religion. No one seems real here. No one. No one worries about quarantine, or health, or the fact they've discovered an alien civilisation. No one's particularly professional or good at their jobs. It's a bad script, with lousy character work, and the sort of confusion that comes from far too much talking about it.

The spaceship in the first three movies all felt realistic - cramped, dirty, battered. Prometheus here is like a flying hotel with massive corridors and rooms. Who is the crew? What are they doing? Do they have an attitude to the incredible events taking place? Where is the emotion?

The movie is also disastrously undercast. Noomi Rapace is one of the least memorable female leads in recent years - it's a great role but she does nothing with it. Logan Marshall-Green and Idris Elba do what they can with their roles, which are awful. Charlize Theron isn't that great either although at least she does push ups in her underwear. Michael Fassbender comes off best as the android - but wouldn't he look at a more recent film than Lawrence of Arabia in 2093?

Some positives - the murder scenes are exciting and well done, the storm is terrific, it looks amazing. The variation of the chest bursting scene with Rapace perforing an abortion on herself is gripping if not very logical. If Ridley Scott had gotten his head out of his backside and realised he was making a "discover nasty alien"movie and just concentrated on making the best one he good then he was in with a chance. But I think they waffled too much about what sort of film they were doing, shying away from being too Alien-like, and so instead of giving pulpy material A-grade treatment, they gave waffly material pulp treatment, with swishy visuals and effects. Did Walter Hill or David Giler have anything to do with this? If not, it's a bit cheeky for them to be credited as producers.

Book review – “The Men Who Would Be King” by Nicole Laporte

Anyone with a half-decent knowledge of Hollywood history would had treated the hype that greeted the formation of Dreamworks with scepticism – how much would they really be able to change? Based on the track record of other companies, the most we could expect would be a handful of decent films and the inevitable folding – that happens with all mini studios, such as Seven Arts, Hecht Hill Lancaster and Embassy. (The exception is something like United Artists in the 50s which pioneered a genuinely different way of doing things). And that’s what happened with Dreamworks.

 

It’s a tale worth telling – not an epic struggle like Eisner vs Katzenberg or Cimino at United Artists, but worth knowing about. The three principals actually didn’t have that much to do with each other – David Geffen seemed removed from the company most of the time except for Dream Girls, Katzenberg was stuck in animation, Spielberg floated in and out of the company. The driving force of the live action studio in the early days were the husband and wife team of Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, about whom I’d heard little – charismatic, smart, troublesome, with a great track record.

 

There are cameos by people such as Mike de Luca, Stacey Snider and Terry Press, and interesting tidbits like Rita Wilson sulking because she didn’t get cast as the mother in Almost Famous (Rita Wilson thinks she has that much pull??) The person who comes off best is Katzenberg – he founded the studio to get revenge on Disney only to have running the studio taken away from him and put into animation; he took it like a man, buckled down and worked his arse off.

 

The main problem with Dreamworks is they couldn’t figure out what they wanted to be. They could have been an artistic hot house a la American Beauty provided they kept their budgets down (eg Almost Famous cost a fortune) – or they could be a commercial mini studio (they made Transformers and had a good relationship with Paramount). The could identify talent – just not keep the bills down.

 

Laporte writes in a journalistic style, which means over emphasis on things like Oscar campaigns, box office results, and ridiculous personal feuds (eg Brad Grey making a faux pas), and little on the quality of the movies. She also makes silly errors such as claiming films rarely get a standing ovation at Cannes. But it’s entertaining.

Script review – “Alien” by Walter Hill and David Giler (1978)

I didn’t really want to wade through all the different versions of this story, so I thought I’d read the draft I could find closest to the shooting date. It seems pretty close to the final film, with some changes – dialogue, in this person Ripley and Dallas are having an affair. It’s written in tough, terse Hill style – lots of short sentences – which suits the Alien universe.  

 

Whoever contributed what, this is a brilliant script, unfairly overlooked because of the stunning work from the filmmakers (Scott, Geiger, Weaver): it’s logical, believable (as Hill points out, truckers in space became a cliché almost immediately eg Outland), which builds in excitement. It’s a shooting gallery-And Then There Were None type structure, people being knocked off one by one, but there is sufficient freshness: the space ship setting, the chest bursting scene, discovering Dallas and the others in a web (this was filmed but cut), the twist of Ash being in cahoots with the corporation (a great second act twist – apparently this was Giler’s idea).

 

(NB I couldn’t resist looking at an O’Bannon draft - the crew was all male, the dialogue not nearly as good – I agree with Hill, it’s awful, the tone not as gritty, the plot and structure remains, and is very sound: landing on the planet, being attacked, the chest burster, knocking off people one by one, final survivor escaping in a pod with a cat and signing off. It doesn’t have the corporation conspiracy stuff - Hill and Giler should have gotten a credit but the WGA were probably hostile to them because they were also producers. They also might have been annoyed by little tricks like changing all the names of the characters. But O’Bannon did a tremendous amount of work.)

Book review - "Blade Runners, Deer Hunters And Blowing The Bloody Doors Off" by Michael Deeley

Deeley was a giant in the British film industry of the 1970s - kind of like being a fantastic cricket player for New Zealand... His name always seemed to be associated in various books with disasters and bitterness (eg Stanley Baker losing all his money after they sold a building and being in business with Deeley, re-cutting The Wicker Man) - so it was good to hear Deeley's side of the story. And when you look at it, his credits really stack up - as he points out, no sequels or crappy rip offs. Deeley obviously had a lot of get up and go, tenacity and an eye for talent. He also seems to have had a great ability to annoy people - he's not a particularly likeable raconteur. But the British film industry would have been better off keeping him in charge of EMI.

Some decent anecdotes: raising funds for the mega-flop Where’s Jack? ("the star of Zulu, the director of To Sir With Love, the writers of Point Blank equals a hit"); Warren Beatty trying to have the love scene cut from Don’t Look Down; David Bowie being anti social but professional on The Man Who Fell to Earth; Vanessa Redgrave was going to star in Robbery; adding Jason Robards to Robbery as the as the mastermind of the robbery at the request of Joe Levine (to appeal to US audiences) but then cutting him out because it was silly; Peter Collinson’s disregard for safety on The Italian Job, resulting in the near death of some of the crew; just missing a plane flight which blew up while shooting Murphy’s Law; Peter Yates turned down The Godfather; taking Convoy off the hands of Sam Peckinpah (a big box office name for distributors in the 70s); dealing with Michael Cimino’s arrogance on Deer Hunter and Noel Coward’s infirmity on Italian Job.

Deeley doesn't try to sugar coat himself. He was friends with Peter Yates, but that ended after Murphy’s Law; friends with Stanley Baker but that ended when Baker was turfed from British Lion; friends with Barry Spikings but that ended. He bags Julia Ormond for being a pain on Young Catherine; Christopher Lee for bagging him over the cutting of The Wicker Man; Lew Grade for his crap films; Michael Cimino for being an arrogant, lying prat. Very entertaining read if you're interested in any of his films or the British industry of the 70s.

Movie review – “Robin Hood” (2009) **1/2

Originally this was to be called Nottingham and have the Sheriff as the hero – which totally went against the DNA of what is one of the all time popular stories in the English language. Then they replaced it with a new story which also goes against that DNA.

 

I think why Robin Hood always works is that every little boy (and girl) at some stage dreamed of living in the forest with your mates, robbing from the rich to give to the poor, and fighting in a good cause. Here Robin is an archer, getting on a bit in years, fighting for Richard in Europe – who pretends to be a knight in order to get home (shades of A Knight’s Tale, also written by Brian Hegeland), including hooking up with the dead knight’s wife (Cate Blanchett, who gives a good performance – but honestly who cares if Maid Marian is played by a good actor, it’s a waste). There’s only one incident of robbing from the rich to give to the poor – he doesn’t get outlawed until the very end. Richard I dies at the beginning so Robin isn’t fighting for restoration of the monarchy, but rather a bill of rights – the Magna Carta (used in Bandit of Sherwood Forest); as presented here it feels a bit tacked on. 

 

It’s hard to tell some of the support cast apart, although the quality of acting is strong (William Hurt makes a surprisingly effective decent noble). Mark Strong, a bald Andy Garcia look a like, is a good villain. Plenty of action including a brilliant final battle and Rusty is a great tough guy hero but it never quite comes alive.

Movie review – “American Gangster” (2007) ***

A film made by too many talented people to not be good, but it’s not very good. You can feel it trying to be a good movie, but it never gets there. The arteries are too clogged. There are too many scenes with different set design, and it goes too long. (Did we need to see all the stuff with Russell’s ex wife? Or with his ex partner? Or Denzel walking around?) They don’t go the obvious way and overly glamorise Denzel – while yes he’s a movie star and there are corrupt cops around, heroin is clearly a Bad Thing. The stuff with Russell Crowe being a stud seems a bit too much like “hey let’s write these scenes to attract Russell”, and the emotional link between him and Denzel is rushed at the end.

But there is lots to admire: not a bad performance in the film (wish we’d had more of Cuba Gooding Jnr and I never thought I’d say that – by the way what happens to his character>), stunning design as always in a Ridley Scott film, an exciting raid at the end, a great moment when Denzel gets into trouble only after breaking his code and dressing lavishly, the scene where Ruby Dee tells off Denzel.

Movie review - "Aliens" (1986) *****

A sequel even better than the original, with James Cameron in his element. It's an entirely different movie from the first one, which was basically a haunted house film in space - this one is mostly an action film. I always read this film as an indictment of American soldiers in Vietnam (or really any over confident world power in the third world): a bunch of cocky, gung-ho, heavily supplied soldiers get in totally over their heads in a hostile environment and get wiped out. The army here really aren't very good - they lack discipline, are poorly led, panic, and overly trigger happy. The film doesn't endorse these qualities (except maybe the "kill them all mentality" as it is espoused by Ripley) which is what makes it so entertaining (a sensibly led proper army surely would have found it easier to deal with the aliens - actually maybe I'm being a bit harsh: they do the right thing after the initial attack, they just have to deal with a traitor).

There is some excellent acting: Sigourney Weaver confirms she's a star with her lead performance (she's maybe not the best actor in the world, with some lines of dialogue she's a bit wooden, but she is charismatic and a half). Top support cast, too: Michael Biehn as the sensible Hicks, the dynamic Vasquez (a real find and its disappointing her subsequent career didn't come to much - one would have thought she'd at least made a solid made-for-video star), Paul Reiser in perhaps his best big screen performance as a slimy corporate yuppie (though not one without courage - no one credits him for that, he does show bravery at times), Lance Henrickson as the decent, kindly Bishop (a superb example of sympathetic underplaying) and most of all Bill Paxton as the quintessential 80s gung ho coward. Thrilling, explosive and logical. Maybe the final fight between the alien and Ripley in the loader is one too many.

NB the director's cut put back some scenes which I think was a mistake. I know the whole Ripley-finds-out-her-daughter-is-dead scene gives some extra resonance to her being asleep for so long and finding a new daughter in the form of Newt, etc but it wasn't really needed - the audience reads those things in anyway. Secondly the scene on the planet where we see Newt and her family first isn't really necessary either - it's a lot more effective to just land on the planet without knowing what or who is down there.