'CAN-CAN'......WE'RE WITH NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV ON THIS ONE.....

 Can Can (1960)......this movie's primary claim to fame was being the only big-budget Hollywood musical that entertained a visit from the notorious Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev.....the Commie Boss of Bosses. 

               We Americans viewed Russian leaders as pretty much what they were...... real life Bond villains, forever up to no good.  And Nikki K. was the practically type-cast for the role...... a few years after this movie came out, he more than lived up to the part by arming Cuba with nuclear missiles and almost touching off an H-bomb mano-e-mano with our new young President, John F. Kennedy.

               But enough of that trivial backstory.......we're here to discuss what's really important.....

              ......mainly Khrushchev's utter disdain and disgust at long legged chorus girls, Shirley MacLaine and Frank Sinatra.

               Who knew this bloviating, would-be Blofeld was such an astute film critic?   (And of a movie he didn't even get to watch in its entirety.....)

               Yes, we're with the old, tubby totalitarian in this opinion.

               The movie stinks. 

               The idea here was to capture some of the Gallic magic and charm of Vincente Minelli's Academy Award winning Parisian musical 'Gigi' which enchanted everyone in 1958. 

                Well, nobody associates Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine with Gallic magic and charm, but nevertheless, they get shoehorned into the movie, alongside those smooth, suave 'Gigi' veterans Louis Jourdan and Maurice Chevalier.

                 Also thrown into this ungainly mess are a pile of Cole Porter songs, some of them from the heavily re-worked Broadway show and others just imported from other Porter shows........

                  None of this fits together and the movie lumbers along like a tired vaudeville show where the performers haven't heard the breaking news that vaudeville died years ago.

                  A few bright spots pop up here and there.......the presence of Juliet Prowse, a spectacular dancer and stunning beauty......(and later romanced by Sinatra and co-starring with Elvis Presley in "G,I. Blues", his first post-Army musical.  

                  And we couldn't help chuckling at the now wildly inappropriate 'Apache Dance' number with five or six guys smacking around Shirley MacLaine and hurling her about like a crash-test dummy. The  woke crowd would go into cardiac arrest at the sight of this.

                  As far as the title dance.......it's a bevy of girls rustling yards of costume material while shrieking as if they know in advance about the gendarmes bursting in to arrest them. 

                  We'd say skip it altogether......tedious, ridiculously miscast and staged like everyone had one eye peeled on the lunch wagon.

                  Khrushchev and this movie deserved each other. 1 star (*)

                  

'DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER'.......HOW THE FLABBIEST, CAMPIEST BOND HEALED BQ'S BROKEN HEART.....

 Diamonds Are Forever (1971)    Anyone who's stopped in to visit this blog even casually knows of our great passionate love for all things James Bond.....(and the one and only ultimate Bond, Sir Sean Connery)

                 We still re-visit this one every year but not because it's one of the best of the series.....

                 In fact, we more than agree with fellow Bond fanatics that it's one of the worst.....(followed by "The Man With The Golden Gun".....)

                  But 1971 found us suffering from a crushing romantic break-up and we embraced "Diamonds Are Forever" as break-up comfort food, gorging on it multiple, multiple times.....(the same way jilted girls in rom-coms are seen been binging on tubs of Haagen-Dazs)

                   We did take enjoyment from the movie, .even though there were whole chunks of it looked pathetically weak, slack and indifferently staged.......

                    We could hardly believe this sloppily made entry into the series came from the same production team who created the beautiful, action-packed near perfect Bond film "On Her Majesty's Secret Service"

                   'Diamonds' had to heavily depend on the enormous good will that all the previous Bond films had built up over 10 years........but in reality, it was a pick-up-the-paycheck deal for everybody involved..

                    Sir Sean, only 40 years old at the time, looked overweight, out of shape and only mildly interested in playing 007.  What he most resembled most was the fake-boozer Dean Martin wandering through the imitation-Bond 'Matt Helm' movies.

                     The film surrounding Connery unfolded like a bizarre collection of tired, spoofy skits directed at a pokey, lackadaisical pace by Guy Hamilton. 

                     It's fitting that almost half of it takes place in seedy, gaudy pre-theme park Las Vegas......the entire film plays like an exhausted stand-up comedy routine from a jaded, dissolute lounge comedian......(and Bond actually encounters a jaded, dissolute lounge comedian in the course of the story......)

                     And no one can escape discussing this film without dealing with the the gay killers, Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd, played by the hammy, campy Bruce Glover and the deadpan, non-acting jazz musician Putter Smith......(Guy Hamilton apparently thought the mere sight of Smith was hysterical......it wasn't....)

                      Well, we'll give the movie this much credit......unlike other films of that era (including Martin Balsam's mincing, lip-pursing gay in Connery's "The Anderson Tapes"), "Diamonds" uses the limp-wristed, flouncy-bouncy gay shtick sparingly....)

                       What it doesn't spare are especially spectacular, grisly deaths for Wint and Kidd, designed to send audiences out with a big laugh and a feeling that they've see a satisfying James Bond movie.......

                     No, they didn't. Not even close. 

                     We could go on and on about this........Charles Gray's oddball portrayal of Blofeld as some kind of snobby, cross-dressing Oscar Wilde sophisticate (we kept wondering, if Blofeld's now such an epigram-spouting pseudo-aristocrat, why's he still dressing like Chairman Mao?)

                      And then there's good-ole-country-boy singer and sausage king Jimmy Dean as a character supposedly modeled after the eccentric, reclusive Howard Hughes.......(again, we wondered about how the obviously garrulous, effusive Dean ,more or less playing his own public persona, is supposedly some kind of mysterious, Hughs-ian recluse.....)

                    Then we come to the worst edited and staged action sequence in any Bond film.  'Goldfinger' established what had become a reliable Bondian finale trope, a full force military-style attack on the villain and his minions....(repeated in "Thunderball", "You Only Live Twice" and "On Her Majesty's Secret Service")

                     "Diamonds" attempt at this sequence is beyond painful to describe in its awfulness....a helicopter assault on Blofeld's oil-rig lair........poorly staged, slowly edited and littered with that singularly terrible special effect of using cartoon animation for copter explosions.

                      Yet Connery enjoyed making the film, which he forced producers Broccoli and Saltzman to make on a swift, efficient schedule or run the risk of paying him massive overtime bonuses).  As for his sorry physical appearance, simply compare him in this film to how more fit and healthy he looked 13 years later in the 'renegade' Bond film "Never Say Never Again"

                       And you can compare the advances in special effects with a side by side viewing of 'Diamonds' with 2002's 'Die Another Day'. Both films feature the villain deploying an orbiting satellite to shoot frickin' laser beams at the earth.  The 'Diamonds' sequences are woefully cartoonish up against the relentless CGI of 'Die'.

                    Script-wise, we'll never know why Connery was to taken with the film's co-writer Tom Mankiewicz', who  peppered the screenplay with lame, unfunny non-sequitur  gags that sounded cribbed from terrible TV sitcoms. (Mankiewicz went on to pen "Live and Let Die" and the wretched "The Man With The Golden Gun", equal to 'Diamonds' in its low energy and pathetic attempts at humor.)

                       Having gotten all this off our chest......we admit to watching it every year during every holiday season (when the film was first released)........with all its myriad faults, we've never forgotten how much this ridiculous, low-grade excuse for a James Bond film somehow  calmed and soothed our wounded heart......

                      But even as bad as the movie turned out, we grinned as widely as any Bond fanboy during its few high points.....the terrific one-on-one brawl in the tiny elevator, the car chase down in the middle of downtown Vegas (yes, even with the infamous tilted car flub)......and Bond's first real encounter with female empowerment in the gymnastic amazons Bambi and Thumper........

                       Will we watch it again next year?  You bet. But we'll never rate it any higher than deserves.....1 &1/2 stars (*1/2).

'CHRISTMAS ON THE SQUARE'.......PARTON IS SUCH SWEET SORROW......

 Christmas On The Square (Netflix-2020_    If this didn't have Dolly Parton's imprint all over it, as producer, star and songwriter, we would've thought it was an elaborate skit from the gang at Saturday Night Live........

                ......because it plays like a howlingly outrageous. over-the-top spoof of Broadway shows, TV Christmas specials, Hallmark Movies, Children's theater, and a fractured mash-up of "It's A Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Carol".

                 And it becomes funnier and funnier (and even more entertaining) when you realize that the creative team behind this was NOT kidding around.

                  We'll not question their sincerity........(otherwise, they'd have to be coldly cynical to the max if we thought they conceived this as a satirical put-down of  every Christmas movie and song we've ever encountered in our life.

                    Whatever the intentions, this movie is like no holiday offering we've seen since "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians" and the original Star Wars Holiday Special.

                  Which means it's virtually destined to takes its place as an official cult classic......... 

                  Where do we even begin here?  Director-choreographer Debbie Allen sends teams of spinning, twirling dancers across an indoor gingerbread-like replica of a cozy town square. The frenzied dancers carry on as if they're performing an excerpt from their hit show on the Tony Awards.

                  (Come to think of it, this opening number reminded us Disney's 1961 musical "Babes In Toyland"......we'll be sure to cover that one this holiday season)

                   Then Dolly drops in as an angel (and in this show, you know it's only a matter of time before she sprouts wings.)  She's there to to supervise the redemption of the heartless big biz-woman (Christine Baranski) who's evicting the entire town to make way for a giant mall. 

                  Parton's songs, filled with moral lessons, erupt in every scene and unabashed sentiment flows through the entire show like a chocolate fountain that's exploded even more than Vesuvius........

                   We can't even bring ourselves to describe the final plot revelations........it's much better if you watch it with dropped jaw, like we did.....

                   It's impossible to rate something like "Christmas On The Square" based on its individual merits. This film is......how can we put it......a unique experience all its own.

                   You'll either find it so overwrought, riotously campy and nonsensical that you'll flee after the first few minutes.

                   Or you'll stay to enjoy it as the Guiltiest Pleasure Ever, savoring and reveling in the sheer audacious showmanship on display.

                  To be honest, we count ourselves among the latter......so we stayed. And we'll salute Dolly Parton for creating the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' of Christmas movies.  That takes a special kind of fearlessness and pure pizazz. 

                   3 stars (***) We can guarantee you won't see anything like it this holiday season.

                  

'TAKE HER, SHE'S MINE'......DADDY ISSUES......

 Take Her, She's Mine (1963)    Maybe fate took a hand when this movie opened a few weeks before the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination.......

               We suppose we could pontificate about how that day permanently ended America's era of innocence.......... and how "Take Her, She's Mine", a gasping, hoary 1950's relic posing as a 1960's film was a perfect example of a conservative, comforting American mindset that would never recover from 11/22/63........

                 Not that JFK's death and the national chaos that followed stopped the flow of dumb, hopelessly out of touch Hollywood comedies........

                 Those movies still rolled off the studio assembly lines. (And the Dream Factory's attempts to deal with  the baby boom generation's growing distrust and disillusion with once sacred, respected institutions (like government, military and parental control) were embarrassing and lame.

                    "Take Her, She's Mine" already looked 20 years out of date when it  stumbled into theaters in 1963.

                     The play it was taken from, by screenwriters Phoebe and Henry Ephron, was based on the couple's humorous anxieties over the supposed  college escapades of their daughter Nora. (Yes, that Nora Ephron, of "You've Got Mail", "Sleepless In Seattle" and "When Harry Met Sally"..)

                    The film clumsily traffic-managed by 20th Century Fox's in-house mediocrity Henry Koster, presents the stuttering, sputtering James Stewart as an exasperated dad coping  the antics of  his cutie-patootie college freshman daughter (Sandra Dee).

                    In a desperate bid for cheap meta laughs, Stewart's character is also plagued by people who mistake him for that.....er....film star fellow....Jimmy Stewart.  Later on, he grimaces when his wife (Audrey Meadows) suggests 'Que Sera, Sera' (whatever will be, will be) as a way to deal with  Dee's rocky romances and minor arrests at protest rallies.

                      Having heard Doris Day warble that song into the ground during "The Man Who Knew Too Much", Jimmy instead opts for full helicopter parenting........hopping on to planes every time he thinks Dee has fallen into the throes of beatniks, French Gigalos, and literary groundbreakers like author Henry Miller......

                     (This movie thinks it's the height of hilarity to show Stewart up all night, riveted by "Tropic Of Cancer", as if discovering the idea of unbridled sex for pleasure for the first time.....

                     The story than conspires to have the hapless dad either arrested and/or publicly humiliated as a campus protest sit-in, a French whore house, and a riverboat costume party cruising down the Seine.  (Oh right, did we forget to mention that right after Dee's kicked out of college, she nails a scholarship to study art in France?  That's Hollywood suburbia, folks.....)

                      We shouldn't even need to tell you that none of this stuff is even remotely funny....or bears any resemblance to any actual father-daughter relationships in real life.  It's simply lousy 1950's TV situation comedy gags  spiffed up in CinemaScope and Color By Deluxe.......

                       (Some sequences here, we have to admit, are priceless.......including the parade of howling, horny college boys rolling through Sandra Dee's all-girl college.......and Dee's painful attempts at the kind of rousing folk songs that permeated the country in the early 60's....check out our recent post on 'Ring A Ding Rhythm'..)

                        And if you read our 5/7/20 post on MGM's 1968 "The Impossible Years", you'll know that continued upheavals of the 1960's did nothing to improve or smarten up the generation-gap comedies that the Hollywood cranked out. 

                        Viewed again 57 years after its release, we did smile a bit at "Take Her She's  Mine".....the same way we'd smile at a Natural History Museum diorama of prehistoric life.........("Wow, did we really live like that?")    And there's some fun to be had spotting  beloved character actors like John McGiver and Robert Morley.....and even a young Bob Denver (of "Dobie Gillis" and "Gilligan's Island") as, what else, a beatnik.......

                       For entertainment value, though, this one's mainly for us tireless curators of the glossy, glitzy and foolishly goofy 60's cinema. 1 & 1/2 stars (*1/2)

                       

                 

'RUN'.....HELICOPTER MOM....WITH THE BLADES POINTED DOWNWARD.....

Run (2020)    Hard to believe this nasty little triviality was meant for an international theatrical release....

              But now with its delusions of adequacy deflated, it sits on Hulu......to no doubt enjoy a long shelf life as trapped-at-home Pandemic fodder........an idiotic but entertaining gruesome guilty pleasure to consume after you've worked your way through all the other streaming sludge.....

              (And what a true shame that Lionsgate executives missed out on pulling off  their sick, sick joke..... by.opening this tale of matriarchal evil on Mother's Day......)

               Like the mini-series, "The Act", this film takes its inspiration from the bizarre, stranger-than-fiction case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard, whose demented mother raised her to believe she suffered from a massive amount of medical issues, imprisoning her as a mock invalid.

                "Run" condenses this lifetime of perpetual misery into a swift, trim 90 minutes of  "gotcha!" horror tropes.......filled with moments meant to make you drop your tub 'o buttered popcorn.

                To its credit (if you're grading this on a curve reserved for cheesy scare-fests), the movie wastes no time at all in setting up a desperate duel of wills and wits between the mad, mad mom (Sarah Paulson) and her terrified wheelchair bound 17 year old daughter....(Kiera Allen, who's actually wheelchair bound in real life.....)

                 With "Run" and her star turn in the Netflix series "Ratched", Sarah Paulson has quickly established herself as the Bette Davis of our era.......

                  Not the Hollywood Golden Age Bette Davis.......but the mid 1960's Bette Davis when the veteran actress re-invented herself as a horror movie Medusa ("Whatever Happened To Baby Jane", "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte", "The Nanny")

                   Yes, Paulson's that scary......and woe to anyone who turns their back on her.......

                   We can well understand why the film maintains its fever pitch throughout its 90 minute length........most of the suspense sequences and plot twists are so brazenly ridiculous, they require a total suspension of rational thought. 

                    And fittingly, the film's final shot closes things out with an unintentionally funny howler of a moment.......with Paulson decked out like the guy who chose the wrong Holy Grail cup in the Indiana Jones movie.

                    Depending on how desperate you are as we tumble into further plague hell  (Pre-vaccines), we'd normally recommend this only for hardcore horror fans........

                     .......but if you giggled your way through 'Ratched', you might find this an equal hoot and a half.......2 stars(**). 

'RING-A-DING RHYTHM' ('IT'S TRAD, DAD')......IT WAS JAZZ ONE OF THOSE THINGS.....

 Ring A Ding Rhythm (a.k.a. It's Trad, Dad) 1962 .......continues our never ending quest to dig up the strangest, nuttiest, most whoopsi-daisy movies of the 1960's.......

                As crazy as this movie is, it's overview of the early 60's pop music scene in Britain perplexed us.  

                 We most definitely grew up in that era, but on this side of the Pond, (the USA, that is) it was  folk music, not jazz, that became the temporary craze that gripped our nation.......(which you can view lovingly satirized in Christopher Guest's 'mockumentary', "A Mighty Wind")

                  Across the othe side of the Pond, apparently American Dixieland jazz, of all things, became some huge flavor-of-the-moment thing, along with a few Rock 'n Roll crooners.......(if you're thinking those two musical styles seem wildly out-of-synch with other other.......right you are...

                   Talk about musical diversity.......we don't know of any known universe that would feature the Dukes Of Dixieland  warbling and waa-waa-ing and then segue to our own beloved Philly boy Chubby Checker, twistin' the night away........

                   This movie barely qualifies as a feature film, it's more of a long, long, long parade of jazz and crooner acts thinly connected with a premise of two young adults recruiting acts for a small town concert.

                  We hardly feel qualified to judge the performers here......our dad had  a large collection of Dixieland jazz LPs and they sounded all alike to us.......(and watching them again in this movie, some 50 years later, they still all sound monotonously similar to each other....)

                   What caught our eye and held our attention were the some of the groundbreaking cinematic stylings of director Richard Lester.......who'd shortly thereafter shake up the film world with his two Beatles musicals, "A Hard Day's Night" and "Help"......

                    Lester dearly loved intricate physical gags, a la Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin and the movie's peppered with them. He also joyfully plays with cinematic conventions....(the film's offscreen narrator would at times engage with the actors to move along the storyline...)

                     And the best sequences of all involved Lester bending, warping and toying with the endless music sequences    (using split screens, and every variety of optical visual effect he could think of..,,,)

                     Essentially, Richard Lester more or less invents music videos on the spot.here......and he makes sure to throw slapstick shtick into any brief scene which fall to the actors......(and boy, does it ever help make the film far more tolerable to sit through....)

                    We've no idea how to recommend this one.......fans of Lester  and cutting edge 60's filmmaking will want to check it out.......but getting through 'Ring A Ding Rhythm' requires a very high tolerance for Dixieland jazz......so be forewarned.

                     Great gags, though. And produced and written by, of all people, the Amicus Films future horror movie maestro, Milton Subotsky.......2 stars (**).

'GAMBIT'.......MACLAINE RAISES CAINE

Gambit (1966)    Throughout the 1960's Universal Studios adhered to a policy of grinding out feature films that looked exactly like the NBC TV shows that rolled off their assembly line.......

            Flat, bright lighting. Blatantly backlot sets. Supporting casts culled from the roster of reliable character actors who regularly populated assorted TV episodes.

             "Gambit" is afflicted with all these usual Universal sausage-factory components, but it's redeemed and lifted out of the ordinary by two factors.......

              Factor # 1:  A clever, clever script by Jack Davies and Alvin Sargent, who find a new, funny way to put a twist on the well worn "impossible heist" genre...

             Factor # 2:  The pure unadulterated star power of Shirley MacLaine and young Michael Caine, appearing in his first Hollywood movie after rocketing to international fame in "Zulu" and "Alfie".

             Together they're a wonderful oddball romantic mismatch......with Caine as a Cockney burglar/con-man and MacClaine as a kooky Hong Kong nightclub dancer he enlists for an elaborate caper.

              Caine's outrageous scheme involves using MacLaine to enchant and distract an Istanbul zillionaire (the always slightly sinister Herbert Lom), whose late wife MacLaine deeply resembles. 

              While Lom's all agog over MacLaine, Caine plans to sneak into Lom's heavily secured apartment and swipe Lom's prized possession, a statuette of a centuries old Eurasian princess.....(who also happens to resemble Lom's late wife and MacLaine....)

              The biggest plot twist detonates very early on....(one of the film's primary selling points) and serves to render the rest of the story even more delightful to watch unfold. 

                Maybe the final flurry of twists don't quite match up to the biggie at the beginning, but by that time, we found ourselves so charmed by the powerhouse Caine-MacLaine pairing, we didn't mind at all.

               And we even forgave the parade of cheap looking Universal backlot sets. The story and the stars carried us away.....(and let's not forget Maurice Jarre kicking in one of his trademark bouncy    sing-song scores...)

               "Gambit" won't stand as one of the all time great caper movies......but as a pleasant, time wasting diversion, it's still tops with us. 4 stars (****)

                And like the poster advises, whatever you do, don't spoil the beginning........

'SPUTNIK'.....FROM RUSSIA, WITH CGI.......

Sputnik (2020)   Watching this Russian imitation of a typical big-budget Alien-On-The-Rampage movie reminded us of a scene from Billy Wilder's "One Two Three".....

             Coca Cola executive (James Cagney) accuses Russian trade negotiators of trying to make their own cheap Coke knock-off...

              "Last year, you put out a cockamamie imitation, Kremlin Kola! You tried it out in the satellite countries.....but even the Albanians wouldn't drink it! They used it for sheep dip!"

               No, we're not that cruel about 'Sputnik'. It's way better than sheep dip. 

               It's professionally well made and acted just like countless other sci-fi/horror movies you can watch on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime or wherever. 

                The spindly, creepy crawly CGI alien creature scampers and scuttles around with just as much digital dexterity as the last 20 or 30 CGI monsters you watched in American movies........

                  What you will get here that's significantly different is that oppressive fatalism that's unique to Russia, even after it threw off the yoke of communism. 

                   And by that, we don't mean the usual sense of dread that permeates all these "Alien" carbon copies. We talking about the human characters here who've been carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders long before the Thing From Outer Space wreaked more havoc on their lives.

                    When you combine that with the standard tropes sci--fi horror movies, it makes for one dark, dingy depressing experience.......not the feel good movie of the year, for sure.

                    But we know sci-fi/horror completists will want to satisfy their curiosity about this one, so have at it, by all means.  We'll not discourage you. 

                   We didn't mind sitting through it......2 stars (**).  Nobody should have to use it for sheep dip.

BABY ORANGE AND GHOULIANI'S MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD TEA PARTY.......

 

                   So it's come to this.........

                   Baby Orange, his dirigible-sized ego finally deflated by his defeat, isn't going down alone.

                   He's decided suck the United States Of  America down the drain with him.......

                   To hell with the fair election, to hell with Democracy, to hell with the quarter million Covid victims who died gasping for their last breaths........

 

                    What's all-important here, above all else........Baby Orange got his feelings hurt.  And he must seek vengeance........

                     And what better way for him to do than totally surrender to his delirious, crazed fantasy that the Presidency was stolen from him.......and enlist his cult member minions to join him on his lunatic quest to thwart the will of the voters.......

                       Who better do join him and carry the banner for this demented crusade than the mad, mad maddest of his groveling sycophants.........the bug-eyed, big toothed, Ghouliani.

                 We've gotta hand it to Rudy........for sheer, batshit-crazy spectacle, he has no equal.

                  Spouting conspiracy gibberish for the entertainment of hardcore Trumpanzees.......while God-only-knows-what drips down his face........as if what's left of his rotted brain cells are beginning to ooze out of his head........

                  Since we've all become a captive audience to Baby Orange and Ghouliani's unreality show......let's not make any more jokes about what's going on here.

                  Let's call it by its name.

                  Treason. Traitors.

                  We don't know what else to call a sitting American president betraying the Constitution he swore to uphold and protect........

                   We don't know what else to call a direct attack on on the democratic institutions of America, seeking to destroy citizens' faith in a free and fair election.......

                    It's more than a mad, mad tea party, ruled by a Mad Hatter and attended by simpering, babbling subservient mice and rabbits.

                    It's an attack on the USA. Just like Pearl Harbor. Just like 9/11.

                    Here's hoping and praying we survive it.

                

'THE IPCRESS FILE'.....THE WORKING STIFF BOND.....

 The Ipcress File (1965),  separately produced by Bond bigwig Harry Saltzman offered an offbeat espionage alternative to Bondian capers in Harry Palmer, perfectly played by Michael Caine.

             The only thing Palmer shares with 007 is his unbridled libido......he never fails to glance at whatever mini-skirt crosses his eyeline.

              Other than that, he's a downtrodden civil servant, a British army sergeant whose black marketeering earned him not prison, but servitude as an MI6 spy for the imperious Col. Ross (Guy Doleman). 

               Ross generally despises Palmer for his deadpan insolence which Harry merely takes in his stride.  For our reluctant smartass agent's latest mission, Ross lends Harry to a rival spymaster, Major Dalby (the equally snobbish Nigel Green).  Dalby's on the trail of a lethal extortionist who's kidnapping top scientists and scrambling their brains before auctioning them off to the highest bidder.

              What proved a terrific combination here was Caine's ultra-dry underplaying of this working class hero along with director Sidney Furie's visually stylish filmmaking......filled with tilted angles and sequences shot with a casual, cold flair.

                Harry Palmer's spycraft, unlike Bond's, has more in common with an overworked police detective, running down clues and leads before returning home to cook himself a meal in his tiny apartment.  (To make Harry extra anti-Bond, he can hardly see a thing without his signature horn-rimmed glasses.)

                 When Harry's forced to fight one of the villain's thugs, we only see some it from the back window of his car. And unlike the perfectly choreographed Bond battles, Harry's punch-up looks like a real fight.......ugly, clumsy and inconclusive

                  Then add on a deft, jazzy John Barry score (no 'Goldfinger' waaa-waaa brass here) and you're transported to a spy world entirely different from the Bond fantasy universe, which had hit its all time peak the same year "Ipcresss File" hit theaters.

                   But if you're willing to go with it, the film's just as thrilling, humorous and entertaining as any of the Bonds........

                    And that's why it's still a 4 star (****) diversion for us. 

                    What's interesting about the three Harry Palmer feature films is that three different directors put their own stamp on each film.  That Bond-ian Field Marshall Guy Hamilton took control of the next one "Funeral In Berlin" and wild man Ken Russell brought his own over-the-top craziness to "Billion Dollar Brain" (see our post of 3/11/17 on that one)

                       (We promise to cover "Funeral In Berlin" in the very near future.....stay tuned...)

'SKYWATCHERS'......50'S KIDS CLOSELY ENCOUNTER....WHAT?

 Skywatchers by Carrie Arcos (2020)      You may well ask........what's rusty, crusty, dusty BQ doing with a Young Adult novel?

               How could we stay away from this one......it's chock full of jumbo chunks of our childhood.

                1950's Red scares!  UFO's streaking across the skies!  Imminent nuclear war threats! And who knows........maybe even ALIENS! ALIEN ABDUCTIONS! ALIEN INVASION!

                In short, everything that fascinated us while maturing into the immature state we've arrived at today......and still does, to tell the truth.. 

                So pardon us if we couldn't help pouncing on this book to re-live our old fears, enthusiasms, and still current obsessions.

                So travel back with us as we find four teens, two boys, two girls volunteering to sit in an old fire tower as observers of potential suspect aircraft........('cause you never knew when those damned Russkies were gonna lob over an atomic bomb at us......forcing us to 'duck and cover' to live through the blast)

                  Sure enough, brightly colored, odd shaped UFO's catch their eyes on night, as well as a glowing light coming from the middle of the forest that surrounds their tower. 

                  In true sci-fi/horror movie tradition, the kids bravely investigate......and promptly disappear. Days later, only three of them return from the woods, with absolutely no memory of what befell them  Whatever did happen to them has left them with some strange new abilities, like speaking Mandarin, playing piano and newly acquired self defense skills......

                  Everything we've described, as well as the usual teen angst woes you'd expect in a YA novel, take over two thirds of the book's length......

                  In the final third, author Arcos unleashes her Big Reveal, and it's an ambitious doozy of a premise to try to cram into the last few chapters.  Most YA authors could build a three book series based on "Skywatchers" final revelations, but Arcos plunges ahead with her way-out-there explanation of what her characters encountered.

                  It makes for quite a rushed, somewhat abrupt finish, but we have to admire this author for her sheer audacity, originality and the skill she uses to keep it from sounding too ridiculous.  We can promise you this much.......the book will confound any attempts made to guess the mysteries ahead of time.

                   Definitely not what we expected (or even hoped for) but that's okay. "Skywatchers" takes its conclusion (and its readers) into wild, uncharted territory and a thrill ride you never saw coming.  And for us, that makes it a 4 star (****) blast from the 50's past.

'HENCH'......SUPERHEROES HAD THIS COMING FOR A LONG TIME......

 Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots (2020)      Let's just say that this novel may be the very best literary fiction treatment of the collateral damage wreaked by superhero battles........

           Yes, we realize it's possibly the only piece of literary fiction written about the collateral damage wreaked by superhero battles.......

           Which makes us love it all the more. 

           Zipping through the first few pages, the laugh-out-loud moments led us to believe this book was going to be an uproarious romp, a blistering but funny takedown of the glut of comic book characters now infesting our feature films and every other form of multi-media........

           Blistering, yes. A takedown, for sure. 

           But funny?  Not really, unless you count the book's withering, corrosively satirical depiction of superheroes, their sidekicks and the supervillains who oppose them......

            Okay, come to think of it, in that regard, it is funny.....in the driest, angriest ways imaginable.

            Speaking of villainy, our main character, Anna Tromedlov, is merely a temp worker trying to make a few bucks working as a 'Hench' for the villain Electric Eel. But the Eel's foul kidnap caper gets invaded  and destroyed by the all powerful hero Supercollider.

            In the course of the typical explosive battle that ensues,  poor Anna catches a backhand swipe from Supercollider, leaving her with a shattered leg........and a growing thirst for payback.

             A skilled statistician,  during her long healing process, Anna creates a blog detailing the ruinous destruction of innocent lives and property caused by superheroes. Her efforts  bring her to the attention of Supercollider's most dedicated and equally powerful enemy, Leviathan.

             Now installed as Leviathan's master strategist,(and given her own super-title, 'The Auditor') Anna successfully sets out to publicly humiliate, and  harass all the spandexed', supposed 'good guys', destroying their once solid reputations and derailing their careers.  This puts her on a direct, violent collision course with her ultimate target, (her Moby Dick, you could say).....Supercollider. 

              And the clashes between them are......well, damn super. 

              The author's own unique collection of comic book characters will put a huge smile on the face of anyone who's had to endure a 2 and 1/2 hour Marvel movie.......such as Melting, Point, Accelerator, Quantum Entanglement and many others.....

                 And in the final showdown between Anna and Supercollider, you can marvel (no pun intended) at the struggle for female empowerment over male privilege reduced to its absolute primal level.

                 "Hench" is like no other book we've read this year and it's a grand slam on so many multiple levels (action, satire and gut wrenching drama) that we're givin' it a Zap! Bam! Powie! 4 stars (****).

                  A fun, fascinating read. Pick it up and you may never look at a superhero move or TV show the same way ever again.

'THE VENETIAN AFFAIR' & 'DON'T LOOK NOW'......VENICE THE MENACE....

           

     

                We'd planned to cover these two very different films in separate posts......

                 But since they both take place in Venice......

                ........and they're a perfect example of the phrase, "going from the ridiculous to the sublime"....we decided on the 2-for-1 deal.....

                Let's start with the ridiculous 'The Venetian Affair' (1966), a cheapjack MGM quickie calculated to cash in on the still smokin' hot spy boom and the TV popularity of 'The Man From Uncle's' suave, Bond-ian hero, Robert Vaughn. 

                Taken from a Helen MacInnes espionage thriller, the film's ludicrous attempt to simplify MacInnes's convoluted plot renders it even more confusing. And the filmmaking here is in the bottom-of-the-barrel style of a rushed, shot-in-7-days TV episode.....deadly pacing and flat, functional camerawork.

                 No James Bond cavorting here.....Vaughn's forced to play one of these world-weary, disillusioned, reluctant spies......and he spends the entire film alternating between looking sharp and clean shaven or glooming around with  a 3 day beard growth.....( we' d swear he sometimes manages to sport both appearances within the same shot.)

                   There are a few pluses here and there........Jerry Goldsmith's score (which you'll wish was in a better movie).....and the wildly disparate cast, a mixture of familiar character actors (Roger C.Carmel, Ed Asner) and an international contingent led by Elke Sommer, Luciana Paluzzi and Karl Boehm.  Boris Karloff even pops up in a few scenes, functioning as the film's 'McGuffin'.

                And we don't remember ever seeing an odder pairing than the tall goofy Carmel and firecracker Paluzzi as a pair of squabbling lovers.....

                 Don't get your hopes up. It's dreary and dumb all the way through, even with its pile up of corpses. And it manages to make the scenes shot in Venice look like the MGM backlot.   Strictly for spy movie completists, a waste of time for everyone else. Zero stars (0)

                  Moving on to the sublime, Venice becomes an ominous nightmare landscape in director Nicolas Roeg's visually stunning thriller "Don't Look Now" (1973).

                  This one comes from a Daphne Du Maurier short story about a married couple struggling to hold themselves together after the tragic accidental drowning death of their young daughter. 

                   Roeg, his cinematographer Anthony Richmond and editor Graeme Clifford transform this vaguely supernatural story into a visual feast, with sequences and shots that provide tantalizing clues to a storyline that seems to be heading toward something dark and terrible for the tormented couple played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie.

                  And does it ever.

                  We'll not reveal any plot points here.......if you've yet to see it, it's a film whose exquisite details should be savored as a first time discovery.

                   Alfred Hitchcock often spoke of striving for 'pure cinema', in which the storytelling and audience manipulation are achieved almost entirely by the skillful placement of the imagery.  "Don't Look Now" still stands as one the greatest example of pure cinema we've ever seen.....

                  .....and that means a sublime 4 &1/2 stars from us. (****1/2).......and an automatic 'don't miss' on anyone's list.

               

'CHICAGO PD' & 'LAW & ORDER SVU'......WOKENESS AND BLM LOWER THE BOOM......

Chicago PD/ Law & Order SVU (2020)    We stopped in to these two particular returning NBC cop shows for one reason.......

               Since they take place in current, real time, we couldn't wait to see how these very different sets of police folk deal with all the catastrophic events of 2020......

               And holy misery, where do we begin with that.......what with the Pandemic, the murders of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor, and the curious plague of 'Karens', hysterical racist women who seek to deploy cops on African Americans for no other reason.....than African Americans make them fearful.

              Even before all these events descended upon America (along with the phrases 'wokeness' and '#MeToo') the Chicago PD cops, under the the command of raspy-voiced, law-unto-himself Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) remained stubbornly un-woke.

              That was the show's raison d'etre.......watching Voight routinely hurl suspects into the precinct cage to beat the truth and/or confessions out of them......and sometimes exacting judge-jury-and-executioner justice on assorted 'perps', if the legal system failed his eye-for-eye standards.

                And throughout the show's seasons, those who sought to curb Voigt, thwart him, or even indict him for his numerous illegalities (and suspicious deaths) inevitably failed.

                This season, however, the new era landed on Hank Voigt like an avalanche. Evidence  collected during one his wild 'no knock' raids was thrown out of court.

                (And the Chicago PD's Deputy Superintendent (Nicole Ari Parker) had already warned Voight that any more of his bloody 'put-'im-the-cage'  confessions' will get him fired.)

                  With no cage torture and  no case to build against his perp, the killer of a small child, the enraged Voight, in typical fashion, sits parked outside the scumbag's house.......contemplating a Voight-style instant assassination.

                 Meanwhile, the black member of his squad Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) has the entire Chicago police force arrayed against him for ratting on a racist cop who was fond of stopping and beating black men for no other reason than.......well, you know how the rest of this goes....

               Stay tuned for further developments......

               Travelling east to New York City, the Law And Order: SVU gang never miss a chance to stage their own versions of whatever hot button issues and events are currently at the boiling point.....

             The show's writers and producers especially love jamming two real life incendiary incidents into a single episode......a sort of  'buy one controversy, get one free' deal......

               In true SVU style, the collision of an obnoxious 'Karen' with a the wrongful arrest of a black man for a brutal homosexual  rape leads to a miserable, tragic outcome for almost everyone involved (except the real criminal....

               Even when the squad finally captures the right perp (a simpering, smoothly lying white guy), the Grand Jury, disgusted, angry and fed up with police behavior, are easily suckered by the perp and refuse to indict him.

                And the squad's captain, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) finds herself in the crosshairs of Internal Affairs for neglecting to find out that the 'Karen', whose complaint started all this chaos was a serial false accuser. 

               Cue the standard Olivia Benson angst over another case that goes horribly awry for her. 

               As the shadows of George Floyd and Breanna Taylor loom over these TV shows, we can only wonder where the hurricane winds of change will blow these cops next.......for now, we'll give each of these episodes 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2) for their efforts to cope with this terrible year's upheavals.....

                We'll all stay tuned  for further developments........