Movie review - "Wrong is Right" (1982) **1/2

 Charles McGarry was a spy novelist in the 1970s - this is one of his books which got a satirical treatment from Richard Brooks, not known as king of comedy but full of outrage and spirit.

Connery is a swashbuckling journalist who  gets involved in some terrorists who steal nukes. The guts of the story is a procedural - who killed Katherine Ross - but the movie is mostly done in a Strangelove style that doesn't quite work. Brooks displayed little flair for comedy in his career. 

Connery commits - it's the sort of movie you can imagine he enjoyed making because it's so random. George Grizzard is the president, Leslie Nielsen a nutbag politician, Robert Conrad a nutbag general, John Saxon a nutbag CIA op, Hardy Kruger an arms seller, Rosalind Cash the vice president, Jennifer Jason Leigh as a girl in a reality TV show who wants to kill her parents.

The movie takes a big swing though. Not dumb. Would've been better played straight I think though.

Movie review - "The Harder They Fall" (1956) ****

 Bogart's last movie was as good as any to go out on - a tough, cynical look at the fight game with bogie as a promoter who works for crooked Rod Steiger in pushing dodgy fighters.

Phil Yordan wrote a tough, fast script full of cynicism and bite, from Budd Schulberg's novel. Mark Robson's direction is full og energy - the fight scenes, locked rooms, behind the scenes machinations.  Steiger is excellent as is Bogart. I wish a better actor had played the dodgy fighter - Yordan wanted Victor Mature.

Jan Sterling is a good actress, she plays Bogart's wife. Doesn't have that much to do but she's effecitve. I love the punch drunk fighter. 

 I liked this movie, It stayed with me.  

Movie review - "Night Editor" (1946) *** (warning: spoilers)

 This was meant to be a series but you can kind of see why it didn't result in one - it's low concept (journalists read out stories). Fine for radio anthology, not for recurring series.

This has a strong story - William Gargan is a cop cheating on his wife with a dame. They see a murder. He has to investigate it. He can't reveal what he saw.

That's strong. So is Janis Carter as the married rich woman, aroused by violence, who stabs Gargan. The film really should have ended with him dying.  Gargan isn't quite handsome enough for his role but plays pain well. Jeff Donnell (a female) does what she can as the ever lovin' wife.

Some decent support players wonderful photography. Columbia's B section was strong. The device of using journalists talking about it wasn't necessary. 

Movie review - "The Corpse Came COD" (1947) ***

 Comedy mystery based on a novel by a Hollywood columnist so it's set in the Hollywood world - a dead body turns up in the house of a movie star (Adele Jurgens) who calls in a journalist friend (George Brent) who tries to find out who did it. Joan Blondell is a rival reporter, the best of the cast - Brent is more of a lug though he's amiable. 

Henry Levin keeps it at a fast pace. I like this sort of movie, it was fun. 

Movie review - "Lonelyhearts" (1958) *1/2

 Terrible. Dore Schary at his worst. I was going to give it two stars due to the professionalism of Myrna Loy, Robert Ryan, Dolores Hart and Maureen Stapleton but it's just too annoying.

Monty Clift's performance is full of ticks and eyes. He seems wasted. If Schary had leaned into that this might have worked.

Smug views. Everything heavy. Subplots about Ryan tormenting Loy because she once had an affair - she could've been cut out of the film. Lots of talking about reading letters. Terrible journalist characters crapping on. So much reportage. Only one story dramatised - Stapleton's husband is impotent in the war, she's horny, Clift roots her, doesn't want to to do it again, he pulls a gun... the one exciting bit. But doesn't kill Clift. Clift should have died.

Hart pines. Her dad tells her to stop looking after him and go and get married to Clift. You know like a real option. Even after Clift's lied about his dad being in prison (for shooting his cheating wife - this film is consistently misogynistic). And Clift has shagged Stapleton.

Hart tries. Ryan has a nothing character. 

I hated this film. 

Movie review - "True Crime" (1999) **1/2

Solid, not that well remembered Clint Eastwood journo drama where he's rescuing a black man on death row. There's people like Denis Leary and James Wood in it along with Mary McCormack. Clint shags a woman and there's talk of him shagging other women.

The plot is an episode of a TV series really - race against time, innocent man, etc. Some affecting death row stuff but that's about it. 

Movie review - "His Girl Friday" (1940) *****

 I've read the two most influential Broadway comedies where What Price Glory? and The Front Page - certainly it's easy to see the influence of the latter on journalism movies. This remake would be highly influential on rom coms.

Every change improves it - making it a romance, giving the journos more humanity, bringing in Walter and Hildy to start.

Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell have the time of their lives, Ralph Bellamy is perfect. Wonderful cast and film. The Nazi-Soviet pact at the time meant the anti-commie jokes could be kept.

Play review - "The Front Page" (1928) by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (1928)

 Walter Burns doesn't appear til half way but when he does this really flies because he's so irredeemibly sociopathic - but you don't mind because the evilness of the mayor and sheriff are established they're willing to let someone die so anyone against them is good. Finale solved by deux ex machina. Takes a while to get into gear then flies. Lot of cynicism and racism.

Movie review - "The Naked Truth" (1957) **1/2

 I wanted to like it more than I did because it was so great to Rank making a black comedy, a spoof of scandal mags with Dennis Price's publisher blackmailing some lovely actors, including Terry Thomas, Peter Sellers and Shirley Eaton. There's a few too many characters - some consolidation would not go astray. Sellers is fun, ditto Eaton - and everyone really. It doesn't quite nail it but is fine.

Movie review - "Kostas" (1979) ***

 Early Paul Cox film benefits from simplicity - a romance between a Greek immigrant cab driver (Takis Emmanuel) and an Anglo (Wendy Hughes). It helps that Emmanuel and Hughes can carry the screen - Hughes is so gorgeous and Emmanuel a solid performer.

His character's backstory is interesting, as we see him being beaten up by Greece for his politics (he was a journalist). So the film has an edge.

Appearances from what would be Cox's stock company - Norman Kaye (a BBC expat), Chris Haywood (annoying man at dinner party), Graeme Blundell. Kris McQuade is in it too.

A bit rough but I liked it. Cox doesn't over-reach, the Greek milieu is well depicted, he knows what he's making a movie about.

Book review - "Fletch" by Gregory MacDonald (warning spoilers)

 Never read this. Lots of dialogue. Funny. But not Chevy Chase funny - not as funny as that. Chase did his own version. But the Underhill account is in here. Solid mystery. Everyone wants to have sex with Fletch - like, everyone. He's a Vietnam War vet, a hero. Alan is a lot more sympathetic here - like not a villain.  Story broadly the same. I didn't get the joke he was playing on his two ex wives. To get them to move in and he lied? Sorry is that funny? Easy to read. There's a fourteen year old hooker Fletch befriends who dies who I think he might be sleeping with.

Script review - "Fletch" by Andrew Bergman

 Not the final transcript bc there are some key admissions (narration, some famous lines, the legendary "I billed it to the Underhills" line). But the core of it is all there and many famous lines were scripted. First rate mystery. Great villain - the scary cop. Charming relationship with Gail. Colourful characters. Escape sequences. It's a series of encounters but it's well plotted out.

Movie review - "The Sound of Fury" (1950) ***1/2

 Cy Endfield's best known American film. The story of two crooks - Frank Lovejoy, Lloyd Bridges - who commit a crime.

Kathleen Ryan from Odd Man Out is Lovejoy's woman. Lovejoy does his craggy 40s/50s ugly leading man thing. Bridges gets to act up a storm. Richard Carlson is a rabble rousing journo who has an unconvincing change of heart after he talks to Ryan and gets lectured to by a dull European. There's lots of talks about ethics.

But the drama is well done. The seediness, the descent into crime, the sad eyed look of women, the power of the final lynching.

Movie review - "Scoop" (2024) ****

 Great fun. Journalists digging at a story - really, it's all about the "get". Like a lot of British stories it's about class - the place of the royals, Prince Andrew's place within the royals (declining), his privelege (calling his mother "mummy" bringing up the Falkland Islands), but also within the BBC where Billie Piper is treated a little disdainfully and Gillian Anderson's presenter has been around the block.  Keeley Hawes' big sad eyes work a treat, because they make you wonder whether she did throw Andrew under a bus... or at least decided to expose some sunlight... I also loved how Hawes was a little star struck about Anderson. The costuming for the people who work in TV is spot on, especially Piper with her long hair, boots and keep cup. Rufus Sewell is very good in a tricky part but so is everyone.

Movie review - "Three Hearts for Julia" (1943) **

 Comedy of remarriage, which like many such tales these days comes across as a bit creepy and rapey for all the charm of Melvyn Douglas and Ann Southern. He's a journo back from Europe to reclaim wife Southern who works in an orchestra. He's been away for two years so she's had the arse - he keeps taking off on trips, and wants to move on with Lee Bowman, rich guy, and Richard Ainley, critic. This is very sympathetic. But Douglas wants her back. And because it's 1940s MGM we'll know he'll succeed.

He tries charm and then inevitably "charmingly" kidnaps her. The issues of their marriage aren't resolved, it's her giving in.

The most interesting thing is Southern plays in an all female orchestra. The conductor is a refugee from the Gestapo and briefly struggles with the notion of an all female band but that's presented cutely. The all female orchestra would've been enough for a film - make it a three-girl movie, say.

Southern is sweet. Douglas has charm. Shirley Ann Richards is in it briefly as one of the gals in the orchestra.

Richard Thorpe directed. I'm sure it came in on time and under budget.

Movie review - "Players" (2024) **

 This starts brightly, Gina Rodriguez is a charming rom com hero and there's potential I guess in the concept of a team of friends who work at a paper using sports plays to get mates. This idea isn't really used and the film doesn't really have anywhere to go.

More problematic is that the actors don't have chemistry - Damon Wayans Jnr seems bored, he and Rodriguez don't seem to be friends, neither do the other members of the gang. There's three guys and a girl plus another girl who joins the group... that is very New Girl, Wayans' presence emphasises this, and I think the basic idea wouuld've made a decent New Girl ep only that would've had better characters and gags.

It's amiable, and nicely shot - I like the work the director did. The third act as a screenwriter type crisis ("you didn't read my piece" "you rewrote my piece").

TV review - "Succession - Final' Season" (2023) ***** (warning: spoilers)

Divine. Maybe loses a little invevitably with the death of Brian Cox. But it plays out weill. Dialogue so awesome you could swim in it.

Movie review - "Fever Pitch" (1985) **

 Richard Brooks' last film as a director is an odd duck, about a sports jouno who investigates gambling and bcomes addicted. It's filmed in a short of campy film noir style, I'm not sure it's unintentionally campy, sort of like Sam Fuller/Russ Meyer even, with voice over and some over the top acting.

It feels like it needs to be shot in black and white. Or directed by someone else. Or... just better. I don't know. It's a weird film. Doesn't work. But it is interesting.  It's not a dumb movie.

There's a lot of spouting of facts and figures which might've been better to cut out. Maybe Brooks needed a co writer.

Ryan O'Neal is actually very good in the role as a tormented journo. I'm sorry for him it didn't work out.

Movie review - "She Said" (2022) ***

 Solid account of the Weinstein case which maybe suffers from lack of star power and could have had twenty minutes or so cut out (did we need the baby scenes? husband scenes?). There's a lot of chatting on the phone, inevitable for a realistic film about journalism, and the movie doesn't have Gordon Willis, but as a story of journos painstakingly putting together a story, checking it with legal, it is effective.

(What's the equivalent at News Corp? "Oh that'll do - great!")

Builds to an appearance by Gwyneth Paltrow but doesn't show it - why not? Ashley Judd plays herself. Best moment is when Carey Mulligan tells that guy in the bar to f*ck off. Maybe a few too many moments of the leads and their kids/husbands (do we care?) and walking along with keep cups.

Movie review - "Confess Fletch" (2022) **1/2

 I love how John Hamm, for all his success on Mad Men, just wants to be a comedy star and he's done excellently in some films. It took me a while to get used to him as Fletch - yes the Chevy Chase factor but also this film feels as though it was written for a Chevy type wisecracker. I think Hamm has a more laid back persona. When he's playing laid back against more manic guest stars he's more effective. I also wonder if maybe he should've used voice over. Maybe I'm too hung up on the Chevy Chase factor.

I think people didn't go see this because it feels like an episode of a TV show. It's fun, a decent mystery, some funny bits - but it lacks the all star cast factor of the Ken Branagh Agatha Christies, or Knives Out. Have bigger stars and some more glamour then it could've worked. 

The actors are all fine - familiar types like John Slattery, Annie Mumolo, Roy Moore, etc.