Movie review - "Joseph Andrews" (1977) **

 Tony Richardson returns to the Henry Fielding well that served him so lucratively in Tom Jones but the public didn't go for this one. Richardson liked the film and said he felt the film was unfairly marketed as Son of Tom Jones when it wasn't really. Richardson argues it was more a pastoral love story than a romp. Look, it's half romp and half love story.

It lacks the energy of Tom Jones. People like Peter Bull, Hugh Griffith and especially Ann Margret play it in high old style - Ann margret is great value as Lady Booby, caked in white make up, lusting after Peter Firth. Firth is a bit of a nothing in the lead - he has none of Albert Finney's dash, he sort of plods along. It's hard to care. Natalie Ogle is dull as his love interest.

It's not a bad movie, and I went with it for a bit, but it became dull over time. The last third was especially hard.

Movie review - "Operation Finale" (2018) **

 Decent enough version of the Albert Eichmann capture story, which has been filmed a lot. I'm not sure if this adds much that is new (though I haven't seen those earlier versions so I could be wrong). It feels dragged out at 2 hours and isn't that exciting. The material is inherently interesting but we don't seem much of the complexity of the time - Argentine and US involvement, for instance. Ben Kingsley and Oscar Isaac are fine. I liked Nick Kroll as an Israeli intelligence op and that burly bald guy.

Movie review - "Carnal Knowledge" (1971) ****1/2

 I liked this when young but it means more to revisit in later years once you've you had more experience in relationships. So much was all too familiar, either personal or observed - young men chatting about what they can "get" out of women, passing various obstacles to get what they want, putting women on pedestals or treating them purely as sex objects, the hatred Jack Nicholson's character has for women, the rationalised abuse, in a way.

Some of this was electrically good - the fight between Nicholson and Ann Margret, the dialogues between Nicholson and Art Garfunkle.

The film is a triumph of casting, acting and directing (not that the other bits aren't good too). Jack Nicholson became a great but remember he was relatively new to stardom. Art Garfunkle, who is excellent as the passive, timid Sandy, was known as a singer (and remains mostly known as a singer). Candice Bergen and Ann Margret were both regarded as jokes; both are superb particularly Ann Margret in the more spectacular part, yelling, flashing her breasts, committing suicide and so on. Bergen's part is more tricky because you keep wondering why's she with Garfunkle and Nicholson. The Cynthia O'Neal part is maybe a little sketchy - she's with Garfunkle but wouldn't mind a shag with Nicholson and is mean about Ann Margret.

Mike Nichols' direction is perfect - clinical and full of insight. The original script is here. You can tell it was envisioned as a play - it's mostly two handers -  but it has been rendered cinematically.

At times watching this I wondered how influential it had been for Woody Allen films. Allen always goes on about Bob Hope, Bergman and Fellini, but this felt like later Woody Allen - Husbands and Wives but also things like Annie Hall; even the music score with tracks like Mood Indigo was familiar.

Movie review - "The Return of the Musketeers" (1989) ***

 I remember the general lack of excitement when this came out - the 1973 and 1974 films were hits but it wasn't as though they were hugely iconic, I mean there were lots of other versions of the tale that kept playing on TV. 

Still, I didn't mind it - and I don't mind it now. It's a shaggy dog sort of movie, ambling along with its various subplots the way that, well, the 1973-74 versions did. It does lack the big emotional undercurrent of the original Musketeers - there's no Milady killing D'artagnan's Constance, and then being captured and executed, with Athos being Milady's ex. 

It has some good ideas - having the villain be Milady's daughter Justine, adding a new spunkrat (C Thomas Howell) to be Athos' son, and introducing Cyrano de Bergerac, Louis XIV, Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell.

It's the serious moments here that works best - the killing of Milady's executioner, the death of Charles I, Richard Chamberlain and Oliver Reed getting heavy with Philippe Noiret. It's a shame there wasn't something else of more emotional weight to match the death of Milady or Constance - like say one of the Musketeers. Lester/George MacDonald Fraser clearly couldn't bring themselves to kill off Justine.

The band don't get back together until the end - it's York and Finlay for a bit, then York, Reed, Finlay and Howell, then Chamberlain comes in at the end. But that's dramatic.

The acting is good. I enjoyed Michael York's ageing juvenile interpretation of D'artagnan, Oliver Reed is excellent as always as the moral but boozy Athos, Chamberlain so much fun I wish we'd seen more of him. Frank Finlay gets some screen time but struggles to make an impact - it may be his character. Kim Cattral is a lot of fun as the villainess and C. Thomas Howell at least looks the part as Raoul. It's said to see Roy Kinnear knowing he'd die making this. Bill Paterson is spectacularly good as Oliver Cromwell - the best depiction of that character on screen I've seen.

This film is always a little bit in second gear but I enjoyed it.

An aside: maybe this would've done better had it been a remake of The Man in the Iron Mask. A big role for a newer star, a more road tested source material, you could still have used the original stars. Just a thought.

Movie review - "CC and Company" (1970) *

 Roger Smith and Alan Carr revived the career of Smith's wife Ann-Margret with some shows in Las Vegas and TV specials. They then decided to go back into films, but were "choosy" turning down The Maltese Bippy and Song of Norway to do... RPM and this. (Then, to be fair, came Carnal Knowledge.)

Smith wrote the story and screenplay so one presumes he wanted to put his wife forward but actually this is more a star vehicle for whoever plays CC - and that's Joe Namath, the football star. This film might thus be of interest to people who remember him as a football personality - doesn't mean as much to Australians.

It's not a great role for Ann Margret - I guess she gets to wear different outfits but she's very much The Girl. In her opening scene she is almost raped by some biker friends of Namath (including the ever reliable Sid Haig) then Namath rescues her and she flirts with him as if nothing happened. Then later on she gets kidnapped (by bikers led by the even more reliable William Smith) and has to be rescued. Oh there's a romantic interlude.

Nothing wrong with putting Ann Margaret in a biker movie - it's a commercial genre and Ann Margret could ride a bike. Why not make something with her as a biker? Get her racing, doing stuff. Make her active. Have her do more dancing, more singing... show off your wife, Roger Smith!

 This film was so boring.

Book review - "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman (1974)

 Excellent sci fi novel, apparently written partly in response to Starship Troopers but also Vietnam. The stuff about homosexuality becoming standard in the future with straights as a minority doesn't age well but the rest does - the high tech descriptions, the time condensation, the depiction of the military, the disintegration of life at home, the matter of fact use of high tech and drugs such as suits that come to the rescue when you have a piece of you chopped off. It also works emotionally because at heart it's a love story and a very moving one. The deaths of various parents is also well handled. A very good book.

Movie review - "The Swinger" (1966) *

The film that killed Ann Margret's career as a film star, it would seem (she kept starring in films but I think Hollywood went off her as an A lister after this). It's fairly dreadful. 

I like Ann Margret, I like director George Sidney. I get what they were going for here - a wacky jazzy musical comedy in the vein of their earlier hit Viva Las Vegas. And the world of men's magazines has... okay inherent ickiness but possibilities of satire.

Only it's not a musical. There's some dance numbers (Ann Margret is a member of a dance troupe) and one or two songs but it's not a musical. Which is a big thing since the plot is so light. It's got the thinness of an Elvis plot only without songs. 

And without Elvis. Anthony Franciosa is the lead. He's a decent enough actor but why not get a guy who can sing? And dance? So they can do musical numbers together? Surely there were people around. He doesn't have any chemistry with Ann Margret.

The plot is thin and confusing. She's a girl who wants to get her stories published in a girlie magazine (why? it's a girly magazine). So she pretends to be a swinger to impress them (why? go to another magazine). And succeeds so much that editor Franciosa decides to teach her to be a good girl (why?) That's confusing and dumb and pointless.

Ann Margret wears a lot of different clothes. She's a great looking girl and is sexy and can sing and dance but the material defeats her. There's a striking scene where she is in a bikini thing gets covered in paint and rolls around on the floor, years before Tommy.

Robert Coote plays the owner of the girlie magazine. There's several scenes where he's chasing women around desks. This was considered comic at the time but it is kind of rapey. Yvonne Romain plays Coote's daughter who is Franciosa's fiance - meant to be a bitch for some reason.

I guess the final gag where the two leads crashed into each other and died, and then they replayed it was funnier.

But it's a terrible, terrible, incompetently made movie.