Movie review - "End of Days" (1999) **1/2

 Dumb. Loud. Arnie has too much dialogue.  Rips off so many films - The Terminator, Rosemary's Baby, Braveheart. Unpleasant story basically about stopping Gabriel Byrne raping Robin Tunney.

Tunney is good in these wide eyed innocent roles. Byrne is good in these evil devil roles. Rod Steiger eats scenery. Miram Margoyles adds camp value. High death toll. Peter Hyams photography and editing - quick cuts, etc. Random sexy scene with Byrne sleeping with Udo Kier's wife and daughter. 

Still there's always something happening and plenty of action. Logical finale.

Movie review - "Dead for a Dollar" (2022) **1/2

 Good to see Walter Hill back in the saddle. This is a tight, unpretentious riff on The Professionals with Chris Waltz a bounty hunter hired to retrieve the wife, Rachel Brosnahan, of a wealthy man who has run off with a black man to south of the border. He's accompanied by another black man, a Buffalo soldier.

This gets off to a strong start but becomes bogged down in the middle has they hang around a town. But picks  up towards the end with plenty of gun play - including some by Brosnahan who looks as though she's having fun. So too do Willem Dafoe as a horse thief and Benjamin Bratt as a Mexican baddy.

I missed Ry Cooder and this being shot on film but it's a decent tale.

Movie review - "Stay Tuned" (1992) **

 High concept 90s comedy - TV viewers get sucked into a television - with presale TV stars (John Ritter and Pam Dawber). Odd choice for Peter Hyams but presumably he wanted a change of pace. I guess there are many nods to old Hollywood (swashbucklers, gangster films) so that's in his wheelhouse.

There's a double conceit here - the lead couple are dragged into a TV but not regular TV rather spoof of current TV. I wonder if it wouldn't have been more effective just being sucked into normal TV.

Some clever moments. It's well plotted. But also annoying. Has 90s curio factor with its jokes about Northern Exposure, Thirtysomething and the Salt n Pepa cameo with Ritter skirting with blackface.

The cast try. Eugene Levy is fun. Jeffrey Jones reminds us of another bloated sfx comedy Howard the Duck.

Movie review - "Odongo" (1956) **

 A Warwick adventure set in Africa, like Safari, but this is not typical of their normal output. For one it's got two American stars, not one, and has no British lead. For another it's not action/adventure it's a dull romance between big game hunter MacDonald Carey and doctor Rhonda Fleming. Fleming is at least gorgeous, too hot for Carey. There's some tired conflict between them over killing vs keeping animals alive. Carey's character is unpleasant, Fleming swims in a lagoon, plus a cute kid called Odongo.

The leads have no chemistry. It's not interesting. They throw in a black villain to capture Odongo and throw him off a cliff. There's an annoying white family with a kid who befriends Odongo - it reminded me of the Desmond Tester-Sabu relationship in The Drum. But the kid isn't Sabu.

John Gilling directed.

Book review - "Somehwere Out There: My Animated Life" by Don Bluth

 Bluth's had an interesting career, definitely carved out his own niche as the animation guy who wasn't Disney. He was Disney, and was being fast tracked to take over, but got jack and set up his own shop making The Secret of Nimh. He cough and spluttered along afterwards, never seemed to really crack it but also managed to make eleven films, including An American Tail, Land Before Time and Anastasia.

Bluth wanted to be an animator from an early age but still took a lot of detours - he got a job at Disney then quit it to be a Mormon missionary in Argentina (he's still a Mormon), he went back to Disney later, set up his own shop later.

Bluth refers to some young romances but never got married and never talks of girlfriends. This is odd for such a memoir.

The book is at its best discussing the films - at least that's what I'm most interested in. The dealings of Disney in the 70s, the emergence of the CalTech kids such as Brad Bird, John Lassiter and  Tim Burton (a powerhouse of talent) who Bluth says didn't like him (I'd like to know more about this), moving out on his own, going into video games, the comfort and challenges of Spielberg, moving to Ireland, difficulties with writers, eventually going bust, being rescued by Fox then going bust again.

Where does Bluth stand in cinema? He had a the soul of an artist. Made a lot of films people are fond of. Was independent in animation when that was really brave (I guess it's brave now). Maybe he didn't have the talent to match his dreams but he had the dreams and enough talent to go his own way. As he himself admits his greatest legacy is probably providing Disney with some competition and independent operators such as Pixar with someone to emulate.

Movie review - "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" (1956) *** (warning: spoilers)

 I saw this after the Peter Hyams remake. It's still a little too silly but is better in part because it's simpler. In the remake Jesse Metcalfe wanted to bust Michael Douglas for faking evidence by faking evidence... here Dana Andrews is doing it to show how the death penalty can cause the wrong people to be convicted (the same thing as The Life and Death of David Gale). It's a simpler motivation.

I also believed the final twist more, even though Lang disliked it. Here it feels more organic that Andrews wanted to take out a former lover - he used the opportunity.

Joan Fontaine is adrift in a hopeless role. Dana Andrews does his solid Andrews thing. There's some colourful burlesque girls in support and you can imagine Lang having a high old lechy time around them.

Definitely one of the better 1950s RKO movies. Not a masterpiece but interesting.

Movie review - "Hanover Street" (1979) **

 Look I get what they were going for - old style war time sob story - but I don't think Peter Hyams studied them enough. Or was forced to compromise.

It's not his fault Harrison Ford and Lesley Ann Down have no charisma, or Down can't emote despite her beauty. I know he originally cast Kris Kristofferson and Genevieve Bujold. Harrison Ford isn't bad.

It is his fault that he had them meet and get it on with her married to a man who is not only played by dashing Chris Plummer, but he's shown to be kind and caring and a lovely father (to Patsy Kensit who shines in a nice little scene). He's also got a sexy job - training spies. I mean, that's not dull.

It's also his fault they don't give Down anything sympathetic - some vague nursing scenes. She's not even that involved a mother.

You got why Celia Johnson cheated in Brief Encounter. She was dull, had a dull husband, never fell in love before, found this guy and bang.

You don't get Down and Ford here. She's hot and glamorous and so's her husband. So she just wants to root Ford for a wartime thing. Which is fine, but that's not what the movie should be.

It's Hyams' fault they pull focus to Ford and make the last third an action film - not a bad one either, with Nazi undercover scenes reminiscent of Ford and Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Ford again as someone who can't speak English). And it's heart this is really an action /spy movie - there's spy training sequences with Plummer, talk of a spy. It even rips off The Great Escape motorcycle chase.

They get away with Plummer happening to go on a mission with Ford - not so much with convenient flak whiping out everyone on the plane except for them.

The cast includes reliables like Alec McCowen, John Ratzenberger, Shane Rimmer and Richard Masure. There's  fat person in it - Hyams films often had them. Ford's co pilot is Michael Sacks from Slaughterhouse Five. Lush John Barry score.