Sixty years ago, the Beatles were starting to conquer England and Europe with their hit music. She Loves You would be the best-selling single in U.K. history (until Beatle Paul McCartney would outsell it in 1977 with Mull of Kintyre). This caused United Artists to consider the idea of getting the Beatles to be in a film. Not because they cared about the film, but because they wanted an album to have on their record label. UA really didn’t care about the film, so really the film could’ve been anything. It’s a good thing that the people who actually made the film ended up making a really good film. Although the soundtrack (not the UK version, but they US version, which had 8 Beatle songs (the 7 featured on the film and I’ll Cry Instead) and 4 instrumentals from George Martin’s film score) is great too.
PLOT
Plot? I guess there’s a plot. Really, it’s kind of a fake day in the life of the Beatles. Day and a half really. The Beatles are chased to a train station, catching a train to London to film a TV concert. Paul is already at the station while John, George and Ringo are chased there. They get on the train, and the other Beatles meet Paul’s other grandfather, John McCartney (Wilfrid Brambell, popular in England at the time for playing Albert Steptoe on the TV sitcom Steptoe and Son [which was adapted in the US as Stanford and Son starring Redd Foxx). Paul says his grandfather is a troublemaker and is always coming up with schemes to make money and getting friends to fight with each other. We also meet the Beatles’ managers Norm (Norman Rossington) and Shake (John Junkin), based on Neill Aspinall and Mal Evans. Stuff happens on the train, they piss off a stuffy enger, Paul’s grandfather gets Norma and Shake bickering and the Beatles preform I Should Have Known Better for some schoolgirls (the blonde is played by Pattie Boyd, who would marry George in 1965, then marry Eric Clapton in 1979 and have many songs written about her [Layla, Wonderful Tonight]).
They go to a hotel, where the Beatles are forced to write return letters to fans, sneaking out to dance while Paul’s grandfather goes to a casino and gets in trouble again. The next day, they go to the TV studio and annoy the director of the special (Victor Spinelli, who would also be in Help! And Magical Mystery Tour) and practice their music (three songs are preformed) and sneak out to run, jump and stand still in a field (Can’t Buy Me Love plays over this). After all this, Ringo is forced to watch Paul’s grandfather, who convinces him to pursue other interests and walks out of the studio.
Ringo wanders around London but gets arrested. Paul’s grandfather also gets arrested but outwits the Bobbies and gets the others to get Ringo, which they do and arrive at the studio in time to film the TV special.
SYNOPSIS
While the movie wouldn’t sell without the Beatles themselves, the other factors in this film make sure that a Beatle movie didn’t turn into an Elvis movie. Richard Lester was an American who worked with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan on a short called The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, which the Beatles were fans of (Sellers and Milligan also recorded an album with George Martin before he worked with the Beatles). Screenwriter Alun Owen spent several days with the Beatles and basically wrote a film about how even in the early days of Beatlemania, they were already prisoners of their success (unable to go out in public to do regular things, like shopping and sightseeing). Paul’s grandfather’s line about being in “a train and a room and a car and a room and a room and a room,” was basically what the Beatles told Owen what being on tour was like. Owen’s screenplay was nominated for an Oscar for Original Screenplay, losing to Father Goose.
The film was basically a rush, starting with the Beatles recording six songs for the film in late February after their trip to the U.S. (Can’t Buy Me Love was recorded in Paris in January), then production started in March and finished in April. The film was released in July in England and August in the U.S. The whole project took four months, cost £189,000 (about $250,000 and adjusted for inflation of about $5,000,000). It made £11,000,000 in the U.K., about 55 times its budget even before the U.S. receipts.
The Beatles’ producer George Martin also wrote the film score, arranging several Beatles songs as orchestral instrumentals, including covering This Boy and turning it into Ringo’s Theme, which played over the follies of Ringo’s day away from the Beatles. Martin also received an Oscar nomination for Best Score (Adaption or Treatment), losing to My Fair Lady.
Although it received two Oscar nominations, none of the songs featured in the movie were nominated for Best Original Song. I mean all of these songs were better than “Chim Chim Cher-ee, right?
INTERESTING TIDBITS
During the nightclub scene, Jeremy Lloyd is seen (he’s the very tall guy). He would star in the BBC comedy series Are You Being Served and Allo! Allo! Also seen in the nightclub is Charlotte Rampling making her film debut at age 16. The train enger who berates the Beatles is Richard Vernon, who was also in Goldfinger, who gives Bond the gold bullion bar. He also portrayed Slartibartfast in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV series and appeared on Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister. During the TV concert, there’s a quick crowd shot which features a 12-year-old school boy named Phil Collins, who would become a drummer for the band Genesis and having a very successful solo career, becoming the third artist to sell 100 million records as a group and solo artist (the others being Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney).
During the film, three of the Beatles get their own solo scene, but Paul didn’t. They did film a sequence featuring Paul, but the sequence didn’t work, and it was cut. It was the only real deleted scene but it has since been lost.
Originally, the song I’ll Cry Instead was supposed to be used during the field sequence, but Lester thought the song’s lyrics were too down for the sequence. In 1982, a prologue featuring a photo collage of the Beatles was added with this song being used. The first time I saw this film, on VHS in the late ‘80’s featured this. It was removed in later showings.
You Can’t Do That, which was the B-side to Can’t Buy Me Love was also recorded during the TV special sequence but was cut due to length. It was shown on the Ed Sullivan Show to the film and was shown on the 1994 making of documentary hosted by Phil Collins, which is on the Criterion Collection set.
CONCLUSION
This movie is easily the best rock ‘n’ roll movie of all time. Every element works with no issues, the movie really moves with lots of quick dialogue and great music. At 87 minutes, it’s the perfect length and doesn’t drag at all. I actually rank this as the 5th best musical of all-time.
STRONG RECOMMEND

Watched on Thursday May 25, 2023.

Watched on Thursday May 25, 2023.

This review may contain spoilers.

1936's Best Picture Oscar went to the biographical musical drama The Great Ziegfeld. Musicals were very different in 1930's Hollywood than they will be in the next few years. This was just before Arthur Freed reinvented the movie musical to be more like the story-driven Broadway musicals when he adapted The Wizard of Oz. Ziegfeld was more like a backstage musical, where the musical numbers don't actually progress the story, but show what the music in his world was like. One sequence featuring Luise Rainer singing as Anna Feld, three musical numbers based around the Ziegfeld Follies (the annual show of musical numbers, comedians, entertainers and others that ran from 1907 to 1931) and a number to showcase Follies star Fanny Brice (who would have a Broadway musical, Funny Girl, made about her in the sixties, which starred Barbra Streisand and made her a star and won an Oscar when it was adapted to film). A three hour musical with only about 35 minutes of music (Not counting about 8-9 minutes of overture and intermission music).
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Plot
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Florenz "Flo" Fiegfeld Jr. (William Powell, basically being William Powell) really wants to make a major mark in show business. He starts off by promoting Eugen Sandow at the Chicago World's Fair. He succeeds for a time, even though he's labeled a fraud. He manages to snag French singing star Anna Feld (Luise Rainer, in an Oscar winning part) and makes her a star, mainly by making up stories about milk bath treatments and other factors. After she finally achieves success, she and Flo marry (real story much more complicated, more on that later).
But Flo can't just rest on her laurels, he creates the Ziegfeld Follies, which starts three musical numbers that take about 20 minutes (with the intermission in the middle of it). The opening sequence is "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody." It features 180 performers on a huge wedding cake. The sequence is amazing, especially at the end when the camera pulls back to show the entire set. This sequence won an Oscar for "Best Dance Direction," which was only a category for three years. Strangly, the most famous musical choreographer of this era, Busby Berkeley, was nominated all three years, but lost. Also, one of Berkeley's Broadway works, Whoopee! was produced by Ziegfeld.
After the intermission, there's two more musical numbers, one featuring Ray Folger, who would play the Scarecrow in Wizard of Oz. Earlier in the film, he's a janitor for the theater, and when asked about his dancing skills by Flo, Folger responds about his heart not being in cleaning. Flo responds that he's been working without a heart. Ironically, Folger was originally supposed to be the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz, the character without a heart.
Held isn't happy because Flo is spending too much time with the Follies. After catching Flo with Follies star Audrey Dane (based on Lillian Lorraine), an alcoholic, in a weird position, she leaves him. Luckilly, Flo meets Broadway star Billie Burke (Myrna Loy, Powell's frequent co-star. This is their fourth of 14 films together). Burke in real-life was a technical advisor and wanted to play herself. She would also be in the Wizard of Oz and Glinda, the Good Witch. Loy is second billed, but her entrance is two hours and 15 minutes into a three hour and five minute film. Loy was in six films in 1936, so I'm sure she didn't care that much.
In 1927, Flo gets his biggest achievement yet, having four plays on Broadway be huge hits. He invests $1 million in the stock market, only to lose it when the market crashes. Shaken by the losses, his health fails, but still dreams of reviving his Follies. He died in 1932.
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Real-Life Follies
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The names mentioned in the film are real. Eugen Sandow was a well-known wrestler and strongman. Anna Feld was a major star during the turn of the century, but her marriage with Ziegfeld is very different. Feld was actually married to Uruguayan playboy Maximo Carrera and her relationship to Ziegfeld was a common-law marriage. They split up in 1913, five years after she divorced Carrera. Ziegfeld married Burke in 1914.
Burke, according to one source, was upset that she couldn't play herself in the film. Another source said she wanted Miriam Hopkins instead of Loy. Burke was 51 during filming and it was more likely not casting her was because of her lack of film credits at the time. One thing I noticed was that Loy's hair seemed lighter looking than other films of hers during that time. Burke was a redhead, but Loy was also a redhead (red hair is very tricky in black-and-white films. If you've seen I Love Lucy, or Katherine Hepburn movies, redheads look more brunette-like), so why is her hair more blonde than before? And without saying, Rainer and Feld don't look anything alike, but MGM was giving Rainer a boost in just her second Hollywood film, and it worked.
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Academy Awards
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The Great Ziegfeld was nominated for 7 awards and won 3. Picture, Actress for Luise Rainer and Dance Direction.
Like now, there were 10 nominees for picture. Including Ziegfeld, I've seen 8 of them. The only ones I haven't seen are Anthony Adverse and Three Smart Girls. In my opinion, the best film of 1936 wasn't nominated for picture, although it did recieve 6 nominations, including 4 acting nominations, one for each acting category (Powell, Carole Lombard [actress], Mischa Auer [ing actor] and Alice Brady [ing actress]). I'm talking about My Man Godfrey, a hilarious comedy by Gregory La Cava. Why it wasn't nominated for picture is beyond me. There were three comedies nominated in 36 (Libeled Lady [also starring Powell and Loy, they also starred in the second Thin Man film, After the Thin Man too], Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and the aformentioned Three Smart Girls), so it can't be that.

Luise Rainer was an Austrian actress brought to Hollywood by MGM and Ziegfeld was her second Hollywood film. She's third billed, but has three-times as much screentime as Loy does (she's first shown around 35 minutes in and last scene is at the 2:20 mark and has emotion to burn through. Now it's easy to say that Rainer is overacting in these scenes, but sound films are not even 10 years old yet and acting like that is still fairly common in Hollywood. It's definately memorable and it's easy to see why she won the Oscar.
William Powell is basically playing the same part he always plays in movies at this time. He's suave, sweet talking and naturally funny. In my mind, Rainer is acting like she's in a drama, while Powell and Loy are basically doing their Nick and Nora vibes (especially since they just filmed the second movie earlier) and acting like they're in a comedy.
The musical numbers really feel like they're seperate from the story, mainly because they are. If you like the music, there's no complaints. But if you aren't into the music and like the story, it will be a hinderance. That's the way musicals were back then. There's 35-40 of musical numbers and about 135-140 minutes of the plot and story. That seems like the right amount of story. In fact, a TV version of Ziegfeld was made in 1975 and was 150 minutes before commercials. I haven't seen it yet, but I think I would go for this version too, more so if the musical numbers are smaller.
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Conclusion
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Comparing The Great Ziegfeld to the other '30s Best Picture Oscars, it's clearly in the better half. Much better than Cimmaron, Cavalcade and You Can't Take It With You, much weaker than It Happened One Night, All Quiet on the Western Front and Gone with the Wind.

This review may contain spoilers.

Bombay Inspector: “Good heavens! Four o’clock. Time for teatime.”
Fix: “Yes I know, but this is a crisis.”
Bombay Inspector: “Crisis or no, nothing shall interfere with tea!”

It’s a weird thing, watching a movie that won a Best Picture Oscar when you can look at the fellow nominees and realize it’s the weakest film. Although you can clearly see why this film did win back in the day. There was not really a film like it. A big movie full of Hollywood stars, although nearly all of them just cameos (a SAG rep commented to producer Michael Todd, “Good heavens Todd, you’ve made extras out of all the stars in Hollywood!), filmed in 70 millimeter Todd-AO and all the bells and whistles. Looking at it now, it’s very, very slow and the cameos and fine cinematography feel overdone or flat. A product of its time basically.
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Plot
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After an introduction featuring Edward R. Murrow (constantly smoking like always) and showing parts of Georges Méliès adaption of Verne’s A Trip to the Moon, English gentlemen Phileas Fogg (David Niven, a part he was clearly born to play) makes a bet with several fellow of the Reform Club (which is a real private member’s club in London) that he could circumnavigate the world in 80 days (something dumb I though of, but why that number? It’s technically 11 weeks and 3 days. It’s also two months and 19-20 days [the book places the timeframe as October 2 to December 21, 1872, so two months and 19 days in that case. The movie places no calendar like that.]) Along with his French-named, Spanish-speaking valet epartout (Mexican megastar Cantinflas) he starts his travels, going to Paris (where epartout doesn’t speak French, even though he’s supposed to be French, more on that later) and takes a hot-air balloon south. After shenanigans in Spain, they go to Italy, then Egypt. During this, Scotland Yard thinks that Fogg had robbed the Bank of England before the trip, leading Police Inspector Fix (Robert Newton) to go after him, disguising himself as a fellow traveler.
They arrive in India, where they rescue Aouda (Shirley MacLaine, with an accent and a long black wig, Whitewashing 101 here) from a drug-induced sati (being thrown into her late husband’s funeral pyre) and ing them in the trip. A lot of train trips, some boating, some British harumping, all the while Victor Young’s overbearing score plays, watches get checked (Fogg and mine) and Fogg goes from India to Japan and then to San Francisco. Taking the Transcontinental railroad to New York (with a stop in the Great Plains to watch Native Americans get attacked by the Calvary), Fogg bribes a ship to get them to England. Of course, the ship wasn’t supposed to go to England, so they basically gut the ship of all its furniture to get to Liverpool (rich man problems, right?).
When Fogg, epartout and Aouda get to England, Fix arrests him for the bank robbery. Thankfully, the real culprit was already arrested, but the delay apparently made them late. Fogg and Aouda arrange to be married, and epartout finds out that it’s actually the 80th day, not the 81st. Fogg forgot about the International Date Line (which technically the de jure line didn’t exist yet, Fogg really just didn’t note the date being a day earlier in newspapers in the U.S. apparently). They make it to the Reform Club just before the deadline.
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From Book to Film
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In my own speaking, Around the World in 80 Days is considerably weaker than Jules Verne’s earlier work, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and weaker than his later work, From Earth to the Moon. While Leagues takes you through a steampunk-like underwater world, 80 Days is just a travelogue written by a man who actually didn’t even leave while writing this. Verne was conscripted during the Frano-Prussian war and wasn’t paid royalties for his previous works, so he couldn’t have tried the trip even if he wanted to.
Film wise, Walt Disney’s 1954 production of Leagues is easily a much better film. The casting of that film is top notch and the movie is a visual feast (it won Oscars for Art Direction [Color] and Visual Effects). This movie has a unique look, but is slow and takes too long to tell its story, leaving long scenes of either scenery (which I’m sure looked great in 70mm) or drawn out comic scenes featuring Cantinflas or one of the 40 Hollywood stars in cameos.
The biggest flaw with 80 Days (in both the book and this film) is the Fix subplot. It feels unnecessary. There’s already tension from the schedule, from Fogg being delayed in Spain (leading to a funny but overlong bullfighting scene with Cantinflas) to Fogg and epartout being split up in Hong Kong. There could’ve easily been a delay in San Francisco, on the train to New York or somewhere else instead of Inspector Fix, going on a very vague description of the robber. I mean I know Fogg needs money to make this trip (he bet half his fortune, 20,000 pounds, on this adventure, using the other half on the trip), but robbing the bank is a very recognized act [it’s mentioned at the beginning of the film, before Fogg even dreams up the 80 day trip], and the way he flaunts his wealth during the trip, he’s not being sneaky.
David Niven is fine as Phileas Fogg, although this part isn’t exactly a hard acting part. He really just spends the movie acting like a rich British man who sticks to a schedule. Shirley MacLaine is in just her third film (the first two being Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry and the last Martin & Lewis comedy Artists and Models) and plays an Indian like I mentioned earlier. She’s there to make Fogg change his ways. MacLaine will obviously get better roles than this. Character actor Robert Newton plays Fix in his last role. Apparently he was a notorious partier and drinker (he was a role model for people like Oliver Reed and Keith Moon) and had to be sober for the film. Niven later wrote that his death before the release of the film was probably due to going on a binge after filming wrapped. Again, I find Fix to be unnecessary and Newton doesn’t make the film better or worse.
Cantinflas is really the only reason to watch the film. The first English-language film he made; he had turned down earlier films. His character in the book is French, but in this film, while he still has his French name, doesn’t speak French in Paris, and speaks to the people in the Spanish town in Spanish. I get that Cantinflas probably didn’t speak French, but the two languages have similarities. Some of his comic sequences are fine, but they’re too long. The joke usually gets repeated for takes too long to get the punchline. I do find it funny that epartout dresses like a Mexican, with a sombrero and all on the train in the U.S., leading me to riff about him dressing like a Mexican stereotype, expect he’s Mexican, so it’s okay, right? In all fairness, of the eight Oscars it was nominated for, Cantinflas should’ve been the ninth. He did win the Golden Globe for best actor in a comedy (even though the film won for best picture in the drama category). Lead actor? No, ing actor is a better fit, and equal to the other nominees, although I haven’t seen The Bold and the Brave, so I can’t comment on Mickey Rooney.
There are too many scenes that just go on too long. The train through India. Ballooning through the Alps. The Calvary and Indian sequence. I would’ve fast-forwarded through this if I didn’t feel like that would be cheating (although I did skip over Murrow narrating A Trip to the Moon).
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The Oscars
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Around the World in 80 Days received eight nominations, two less than Giant, and won five. Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography (Color), Film Editing and Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (a separate Oscar was awarded to Scoring of a Musical Picture [The King and I won that one]).
Did this movie deserve any of these? Maybe cinematography. I prefer this over The King and I, but it’s close when considering Ten Commandments and War and Peace. I’m not big on any of these films and I haven’t seen The Eddy Duchin Story to know about that one. The film editing is fine, although with the length, it doesn’t feel like there was editing, but I know that joke. It’s just that there’s no fancy tricks in this movie’s editing. On the screenplay, adapting a weak story doesn’t help its cause. Looking at the other nominees, I prefer Giant, Friendly Persuasion and Lust for Life. At least it’s better than Baby Doll, but I’m not a fan of Tennessee Williams.
On the score, I find it annoying and bland. Its main theme has an annoying call-and-response that gets on my nerves and doesn’t help me with this film at all. Again, Giant wins my vote.
Now for Best Picture, well, it’s complicated. 1956 is a big year for epic films, or maybe long films. The average length of the best picture nominees are 176 minutes. Three of them are three hours long (although 80 Days without intermissions would be under that). My outside pick for Best Picture would also be over three hours too. First off, let’s list some great 1956 American films that weren’t nominated for Best Picture: John Ford’s The Searchers, Laurence Olivier’s Richard III (released in the U.S. in 1956, even though it was released in the U.K. in 1955), Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind (it did win ing Actress for Dorothy Malone), Dalton Trumbo’s The Brave One and Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (which Kirk Douglas SHOULD HAVE WON Best Actor for his performance as Van Gogh).
There are also two foreign-language films that are also great films that could’ve been nominated for Best Picture: Federico Fellini’s La Strada was made in 1954 but released in the U.S. in 1956 and won the first official Best Foreign Language Film (earlier films, like Rashomon, were Honorary awards and not voted upon). Why a film with two recognized American actors (Richard Basehart and Anthony Quinn) took two years to get here is beyond me. The other is Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. I’m biased, since I think this is the greatest film of all-time, but it wasn’t even chosen to be Japan’s choice for the foreign language Oscar. That choice was given to Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp. Now I go think that this film is also great (even though Ichikawa’s other WWII film, Fires on the Plain is better in my eye), so it least it wasn’t a bad choice. Samurai was nominated for B&W Costume Design and B&W Art Direction.
Going back to the nominated films, I prefer Giant easily. I know Giant is long too, but I didn’t feel the length as much the last time I saw it in 2016. Adding American films of 1956, The Searchers and Lust for Life get my votes. With foreign films added, I must pick Seven Samurai. Michael Anderson directed a better film, 1984, earlier in the year in my opinion.
Compared to other Oscar films, it’s going to be very low. On my preliminary list, it sits near Oliver!, The Great Ziegfeld and Broadway Melody of 1929, although I really need to see all of Broadway Melody and Great Ziegfeld to get my real opinion.
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Remakes
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Around the World in 80 Days has been remade for both theatrical and television. Pierce Brosnan, Eric Idle and Julia Nickson starred in a 3-part TV miniseries in 1989 (Hey, they cast an Asian actress to play Auora). David Tennant starred in a 8-part series for the BBC and aired in the U.S. on Masterpiece on PBS. Michael Palin attempted the journey for real during one of his travelogue documentaries. In 2004, Disney made a loose adaptation starring Steve Coogan and Jackie Chan. This movie is only two hours long, but that’s too long. Awful and avoid at all costs.
Strange as it may seem, the best adaptation of 80 Days is The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze. Yes, it’s Curly Joe DeRita since Curly and Shemp died long before that, but as an adaptation, it actually solves some of the plot issues. In the case of the Fix subplot, Phileas Fogg III is basically tricked by his rival Randolph Stuart III (the great-grandson of Fogg I’s rival) to go on the trip to hide his robbery by tricking Scotland Yard into thinking Fogg III robbed the bank. Auora is replaced by an American woman, and the Fix character is now a Stuart lackey. Plus it’s only 90 minutes. It’s on Tubi (with commercials) if you want to watch it.
So watch the 1956 version for film history. I’d rather watch the Three Stooges one again.

This review may contain spoilers.

The first time I watched this was in 1997, I didn’t like this movie. Not at all. I didn’t really understand what this movie was about, other than a movie about someone badly injured in a plane crash telling a nurse about his life. I ed nothing about this story being loosely based on a man named László Almásy, a Hungarian adventurer. And I do mean very loosely. Hell, Almásy didn’t die until 1951, seven years after his supposed death in this film.
Hana (Juliette Binoche, who won a ing actress Oscar, even though she’s billed second and has born screen time than the lead actress nominee of this film [I’ll get to that later]) thinks she’s snake-bitten. First, she finds out her boyfriend was killed in action. Then two fellow Canadian nurses are killed by a landmine in front of her. During this, she is taking care of a man (Ralph Fiennes) who is dying, badly burned and can’t his name, from a plane crash in Libya. After her friends are killed, she leaves the Army to take care of the man in a bombed-out monastery.
More people come along Hana and the man: the main ones being Kip (Naveen Andrews), a Sikh solider in the British Army who clears booby traps in the area and David Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a fellow Canadian who takes interest in the dying man. Caravaggio confronts the patient, saying he is László Almásy, and blames him for his capture in Cairo by undercover Nazi agents, who tortured him by cutting his thumbs off.
Almásy now tells his story over several flashbacks, detailing his time with a Royal Geographical survey of Egypt and Libya. During this we learn of Almásy’s love affair with Katherine Clifton (Kristin Scott Thomas), whose husband Geoffrey (Colin Firth) supplied a plane and lots of money for the survey.
Over time, Almásy and Katherine have to end the affair due to her fear of Geoffrey finding out and WWII starting. Caravaggio believes someone Almásy knows gave the Nazis the maps to infiltrate Cairo, leading to his torture. Almásy did supply the maps to the Nazis, but the story is complicated.
Again in flashbacks, Almásy explains that one day Geoffrey tried to kill him with his plane. He discovers Katherine in the plane, injured and Geoffrey dead from the impact. She explains that Geoffrey found out about the affair and was basically attempting a murder-suicide (a very weird way to do a murder-suicide, IMO). Almásy takes her to the Cave of Swimmers (which Almásy [in real life] discovered in 1933) and then tries to find help for her, but the British think he’s a spy (which in real life, he probably was, since Hungary was a member of the Tripartite Pact with ) and arrest him. He escapes and meets a German unit, who take him to where one of his friends from the survey days hid his plane. He exchanges the maps for fuel. Then takes off, gets back to the Well, and takes off with her, only to be shot down by different Germans, leading to the scenes at the beginning of the film), Katherine dying in the plane crash.
Caravaggio accepts his story and doesn’t kill him. Hana and Kip have had a romance while all this was going on, but Kip leaves after clearing out the traps in the area. Almásy wants to die now and Hana gives him a morphine overdose, reading Katherine’s letter she wrote while he was searching for help to him. Caravaggio and Hana leave the area too, with Hana carrying Almásy’s notes.
Backstory of Almásy
Watching this movie the second time, 25 years later, thanks to Wikipedia and IMdB, knowing the backstory of Almásy really helps this movie. I mean it’s not like most normal know who the Hell Almásy was. Does it help the movie to know about the man? Kind of. As I’ve said, Almásy’s real-life story is not this film (or the book). Almásy was a multi-talented adventurer who spent several years in the desert of Egypt and Libya and helped discover the Well of Swimmers in 1933. During WWII, his story is very complicated. As a Hungarian, he was basically thrown out of both Egypt (a British protectorate) and Libya (an Italian territory) and was thought to be a spy, which he would actually become after Hungary ed the Germans in 1940.
In 1942, Almásy initiated Operation Salam, which involved getting German intelligence officers into Cairo, which was occupied by the British at the time. The officers are basically depicted in the film as the men who tortured Caravaggio (one of them played by German actor Jurgen Prochnow. The famed codebreakers at Bletchley Park cracked their codes, but Almásy wasn’t captured and basically spent the rest of the war in Hungary. Despite his work his Nazis, he apparently rescued several Hungarian Jews in 1944, the year his literary and film clone died. He was tried by the communist government after the war but was acquitted, mainly because while he wrote about his experiences, the government had banned the book and the judge couldn’t read it to access the evidence. He did more exploring until he died in 1951.
Is the backstory better than the film in my opinion? A little bit. While I enjoyed the film this viewing, I cannot for the life of me call this the 56th best romantic film (AFI’s 100 Films, 100 ions list from 2002) or the 55th best British film (1999’s BFI Top 100 British Films list). It’s good, but there is a major issue with the film.
The center of this film is the romance between Almásy and Katherine. My problem is Kristin Scott Thomas. Yes, I said that I have almost never really liked Kristin Scott Thomas in a film. I looked at her filmography: Four Weddings and a Funeral (movie is overrated now [Richard Curtis made better films later]), Mission: Impossible (yes, she was one of the first IMF crew that died in Prague at the beginning), The Horse Whisperer (book was much better), Gosford Park (didn’t like, explains why I still haven’t watch any of Downton Abbey) and Random Hearts, where she fails badly playing a U.S. Congresswoman with a bad American accent. The only part I kind of liked her in was when he played John Lennon’s aunt Mimi in Nowhere Boy, but I can think of several other British actress that could’ve played that part better. Yes, I know one of her first acting roles was in Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon, but I’ve never seen that and don’t want to, so no verdict on that.
Fiennes is very good as Almásy. When Almásy, Katherine and the survey team are together on screen, the movie works well, with the art direction and cinematography proving their worth, but the romance just doesn’t work for me. I don’t feel a great deal between Fiennes and Scott Thomas. The little scenes between Binoche and Andrews worked better and I wish this was more the focus of the film.
Binoche shines and deserved the ing Actress Oscar. She really is the center point of the film, since we’re following her more than Almásy. He has to deal with Almásy and his injuries all while dealing with her fear that she’s cursed after losing her boyfriend and friends and afraid of connecting with Kip for fear that his job as a sapper could get him killed too.
Dafoe is fine, but I wouldn’t call his performance great. Good, but not unforgettable. Bruce Willis wanted the part (even fired his agent after the movie became a hit), so Dafoe was an improvement there.
The Oscars
The English Patient was nominated for twelve Oscars and won nine. I repeat, nine Oscars. I don’t get that. It’s not like 1996 was a bad year. Fargo is easily my favorite Cohen brothers film. Secrets and Lies is one of my favorite Mike Leigh films (although I didn’t like it when I first saw it, but it was my first Leigh film. Naked and Happy-Go-Lucky made me a Leigh fan). Shine is also a great film, even though it’s been at least 10 years since I last saw it. Jerry Maguire… A good film, but I’m not sure about that Best Picture nod.
The film won for Picture, Director, ing Actress, Original Dramatic Score (there were two score Oscars that year, Dramatic and Musical or Comedy [Emma starring Gwenyth Paltrow won that]), Sound, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design and Film Editing. It lost the Best Actor (Geoffry Rush beating Fiennes), Actress (s McDormand beating Scott Thomas) and Adapted Screenplay (Billy Bob Thornton’s Sling Blade won).
I’ll agree with ing Actress, Art Direction and Editing. Ignoring Picture and Director, the costume design Oscar feels like Oscar overkill. It beat out 4 costume dramas from earlier periods and this movie in a costume design since is more connected to Raiders of the Lost Ark than Emma, Portrait of a Lady or Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet. The cinematography is fine, but I would’ve chosen Roger Deakins for Fargo. He’ll have to wait for another 21 years to get his Oscar. On the score, it’s fine but I wouldn’t call it amazing. Weak year in my opinion. With the editing, this was the first Oscar winner to be digitally edited, since Walter Murch had a family emergency and needed to edit from home, but also had to deal with a movie with multiple timelines, was nervous about it.
So, on to arguing if this film should’ve won Best Picture and Best Director, I do believe Anthony Minghella was a very good, if not great director. His filmography is smaller than most great directors, only directing seven feature films before his death in 2008, and while I haven’t seen two of them, I might prefer his other films: Truly, Madly, Deeply, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Breaking and Entering than English Patient. I haven’t seen Cold Mountain since its home video release in 2004, so I’ll refrain from that one.
On the Best Picture, Fargo and Secrets and Lies are better movies to me. Jerry Maguire is fine but not what I would’ve put on the list. Shine is very good, and I would’ve chosen Sling Blade over Jerry as a Best Picture nominee.

A musical. A zombie apocalypse movie. A teen romantic comedy. A Christmas movie? Actually all of the above.
It's strange this movie isn't talked about more. I saw it on Epix last year, recorded it on my DirecTV receiver, watched it on Christmas Eve and loved it. So much I bought a Blu-Ray I believe was from Canada (I found it at popuppack.com. As of writing, it's available for $6.) So I'm watching it again and making it my Christmas Eve tradition.
I don't want to give a lot away, but I will note something. This movie has very similar plot points to another movie that came out two years before this movie. That movie was "Scout's Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse." They're both about kids fighting for their lives in a zombie outbreak. I recall hearing very bad reviews to Scout's Guide, but I thought it was good, but not great. I would rather watch this movie over the mountains of violent Christmas-themed horror movies (but I haven't seen Violent Night yet, and that I want to see). One mistake to make is to compare it to Shawn of the Dead. Nothing is like Shawn of the Dead. Don't make that comparison, there may never be a better Horror/Comedy than Shawn or Evil Dead 2, so let's compare it to lighter fare instead.
I really want to give props to Ella Hunt, who plays Anna. She's really good in this part and I'm surprised she hasn't done more since then. She was in Dickinson with Hailee Steinfeld, but has mainly been in British film and TV (and not Doctor Who? She'd be a great companion IMO).
Again, a good fun film that does its job quickly. Songs are good, although the only Christmas song is at the end.

So let's get the historical accuracies out of the way first.
1. The Queen Mary was a British ship, so it would have been painted grey.
2. The nurses all seem to have their hairstyles based on Veronica Lake, even though she didn’t become a Hollywood star until 1942, not 1940.
3. Rafe couldn’t have been ordered to go to England and fight there. We weren’t at war with at that time. Rafe would have had to resign or go AWOL (absent without leave) and either the Canadian military or British army to fly there in 1940-41.
4. Single engine fighter pilots didn’t fly the bombers of the Doolittle Raid.
There’s a lot more, but let’s just get through this film now.
Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer’s follow-up to Armageddon was a massive, big budget telling of the attack on Pearl Harbor for its sixtieth anniversary. Bay, Bruckheimer and Disney spared no expense, planning a $200 million film, Bay actually got it under budget, probably for the only time in his career, but the movie under-performed, especially in critical eyes, even getting multiple Razzie nominations. Ironically, it is the only Bay film to win an Oscar, for sound editing.
There is a lot of this film that works, but some of it doesn’t work. While I think the romance between Rafe (Affleck), Danny (Hartnett) and Evelyn (Beckinsale) is a little heavy-handed and way too much of the first half, it’s mostly fine. It’s just that the romance conflicts with the war build-up that we see, like the fictional aspect colliding with the factual. It doesn’t help that the factual part is easily worse. It’s not fair to compare these parts to Tora! Tora! Tora!, but I would complain about this even if I had never seen the other film. Its biggest problem is that the cast here pales to the previous film. Casting Mako as Yamamoto and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa is more like “There’s Japanese, cast them.” Especially since they’re glorified cameos. Dan Akyroyd is a combination of the two intelligence officers in Tora, but I’ve always considered Akyroyd to be a weak dramatic actor and his presence distracts me. Colm Feore plays Kimmel, but he’s only given a couple scenes and they’re inaccurate on top of that. Kimmel was at home when the attack started and wasn’t given notice about the Midget sub sinking before the attack anyway. And Jon Voight as FDR. Ignoring the weird and not inspiring at all moment he tries to stand up, Voight doesn’t sound like FDR at all, was Edward Herrmann not available because of Gilmore Girls? This was a weird two-fer with Ali when Voight played Howard Cosell without sounding or looking like him (and somehow getting an Oscar nod for that?!), proving that Voight is a very overrated actor in my mind.
Thankfully, Cuba Gooding Jr. playing Dorie Miller, a messman who manned an anti-aircraft gun during the attack is done very well, although his part kind of feels shoe-horned in, almost as if it was added at the last minute and he gets one scene with Hartnell (during the boxing match) and one with Beckinsale where he talks about him being a cook instead of learning to fire a gun (wait, Evelyn is a nurse, not a counselor). Really, should this film have been about him instead?
Once December 7 comes, the movie does a good if messy reenactment of Pearl Harbor I’m watching the 2002 Director’s Cut DVD, which has a couple more violent scenes (including a sailor’s being beheaded) and some swearing (including “Fucking J*ps” and Dorie being called the n-word during the boxing match), which makes this movie R rated. Again the sequence overall is good, but several things hurt it. First off, since Rafe and Danny have to go to another airbase to get airborne, they’re dragging around a guy with a camera. He’s not part of Rafe and Danny’s squadron, he’s unnecessary and is really in the way the whole time until he’s killed. Secondly, the cinematography is annoying in two major ways: The scenes on the battleships are hand-held gave me a headache toward the end of the battle. But the worst part of this part is the decision to mainly have all the hospital scenes have a weird warped and disfigured lens on these scenes. Look I get that Evelyn and her fellow nurses are disoriented right now, but why should the audience be too?
The worst part of this is the score. I have never been a big fan of Hans Zimmer, but the choir at all the slow motion parts of the battle and the rescue efforts are overbearing and completely unnecessary. In Tora, Jerry Goldsmith had no score for the entire attack sequence, because it wasn’t necessary. The action is the score. Maybe this may be Bay’s biggest issue. His movies have no memorable scores. And no, I’m not counting Aerosmith in Armageddon.
I know it looks like I’m taking a pickaxe to this film, but you know what? This might be Bay’s best film. It needs a slight re-evaluation in my opinion. While I would rather watch Bad Boys or The Rock more, this is better than Armageddon and all of his films afterward. It’s all downhill from here. That being said, Tora! Tora! Tora! is still better by a long shot. While I probably won’t watch it again for a couple years, I’d rather watch this than his Transformer movies.

I’ve seen this film at least 15 times in my life, since I come from a military family (father, mother [met and married while in the Army] brother [Navy], and maternal grandfather [Navy at the very end of WWII]). It may seem a little weird to watch a movie about one of America’s biggest tragedies, but people watch Cameron’s Titanic multiple times, so there.
This time I watched it after watching a video by an Australian YouTube called Stem Fine, which compared Tora! Tora! Tora! And Pearl Harbor. It’s not easy to compare the two movies, because While Tora is about the attack on Pearl Harbor, Pearl Harbor is mainly a romantic drama with Pearl Harbor as a backdrop to it, almost like Titanic.
This first review is on Tora, a 1970 film that was a rare American-Japanese co-production, meant to show a fairly unique perspective of both the U.S. and Japan leading up to the attack. While this process was done several times in the 1960’s (The Longest Day, Is Paris Burning? and The Battle of the Bulge), this really is the best one in my opinion. While the other films mentioned seem to build on major stars with glorified cameos like Henry Fonda, Kirk Douglas and John Wayne, Tora goes with more character actors (Jason Robards, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore and Martin Bascom) playing the major characters at Pearl Harbor and mainly unknown to America, Japanese actors in their role (I only know Tatsuya Mihashi, mainly from High and Low and a spy film International Secret Police: Key of Keys, which Woody Allen re-edited and re-dubbed as What’s Up, Tiger Lily?). The Blu-ray I have even has an additional scene for Japanese distribution, which has a light comic scene with two cooks on the Japanese carrier (I’m sure these two were popular Japanese comedians).
It's strange that even though I’ve seen this movie multiple times, it’s still very suspenseful with the buildup to the attack. This is done with very calculated editing between basically two separate movies filmed by two different crews. I know about the history of this film, that Kurosawa was the original director of the Japanese sequences but was replaced after a couple weeks. Looking on Wikipedia and reading Richard Fleischer’s of what happened, I do agree with him. Kurosawa had never made a modern-day war film and had been self-producing and self-writing his films for years, so trying to make a Hollywood film, Kurosawa was very much over his head here. If there was a change I would’ve liked here, it was to have Toshiro Mifune come in and play Yamamoto, a part he played in two Japanese films and 1976’s Midway.
Personally, this is one of my favorite war films. It’s well made, the effects for 1970 still hold up, there’s no lag in my opinion and it’s a shame it kind of bombed at the box office back then. A strong, strong recommend.

Watched on Tuesday September 27, 2022.

I know I watched this movie years ago. Probably 1983 while my family was stationed in , but never since. That was probably for the better, really.
I saw this since I subscribe to Kino Cult, a free app which shows films for free with ads (or with a $5.99 per month subscription), and they now show this without ads on YouTube (https://youtu.be/WrSUdwEc7qA). Since I'm a big fan and defender of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, I'd figure I would watch this to compare it to MMMMW. Let's just say Scavenger is way, way behind that movie.
Multimillionaire Milton Parker (Vincent Price) dies, but since his relatives are mainly a-holes, he makes them go on a winner-takes-all scavenger hunt. Splitting into five teams, they all go through different, although mainly stupid and largely unfunny skits involving getting a toilet from a fancy hotel, a huge safe (which involves a elevator that works, then doesn't then does and then doesn't [I did kind of laugh at that, mainly because the repairman called Richard Benjamin a moron]), a fox tail from a motorcycle gang (lead by Meat Loaf) a medicine ball (thrown by Arnold Schwarzenegger, which causes Tony Randall to be propelled through a window outside) and other things which goes on way... too... long.
This movie is 117 minutes long. I was beyond bored with this at the 40 minute mark. I know this movie wants to be MMMMW, and follows it closely especially since in both movies the mass of people form five teams, with one team being composed of just one person (Richard Mulligan here, Jonathan Winters in MMMMW). The teams actually are kind of weird, since one team, Richard Benjamin, Cloris Leachman and Richard Masur, are the rich people, Leachman plays Parker's sister (Benjamin is her lawyer, Masur is her mentally challenged son). Another team is basically Parker's servents (Roddy McDowell, James Coco and Cleavon Little), Mulligan is a dim-witted taxi driver (why is he part of this? Because there were taxi drivers in MMMMW?) Tony Randall (Parker's son-in-law) and his kids are part of this, but are brought up so few times I forget about him until he shows up.
Seriously, 20-30 minutes really need to be cut out of the film. Maybe the team of Dirk Benedict and Willie Aames (Parker's nephews) could be cut out with no harm done (they steal a Jack head from a Jack-in-the-Box, an ostrich and laughing gas [ugh]).
Okay, I've written way too much about this awful, unfunny movie. Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has a couple issues, but even the messy Rat Race is a better MMMMW clone than this mess.
Free may not be worth it.

This is a very hard movie to really describe. There's only a very light amount of plot: One car, a modified Chevy 150 with three characters that are never given names (The Driver: musician James Taylor, The Mechanic: Beach Boy Dennis Wilson and The Girl: Laurie Bird [each making their film debut, Taylor and Wilson never acting again, with Bird having two minor roles before dying in 1979]) are driving cross-country from California on U.S. Route 66 when they meet another driver, GTO (character actor king Warren Oates) driving a Pontiac GTO. They decide to to a race to Washington D.C. but they basically get sidetracked. Really it's tricky to write a plot summary for this kind of film.
Monte Hellman is a unique filmmaker with a varied filmography. He made several films with Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates, mainly did westerns, was a second-unit director on RoboCop, filmed that made-for-TV prologue for A Fistful of Dollars with Harry Dean Stanton and co-wrote and directed Silent Night, Deadly Night 3: Better Watch Out!
Monte hired James Taylor after seeing a billboard for his 1970 album Sweet Baby James (featuring Fire and Rain) and hired Wilson literally days before shooting. Despite the younger leads having no acting experience (and Hellman not letting them read the script until the day a scene was shot), they do well with the minimalist dialogue. Warren Oates is great in what is probably his best performance (equal to his lead role in Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia). Again this is the kind of movie where everything is smaller.
While this film is similiar to Easy Rider, Vanishing Point and Electra Glide in Blue, I feel this movie also influenced Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive. Maybe that's just me.
The film bombed when it was released in July 1971. Esquire hyped it as the film of the year months before, then didn't even review it. It was unavailble on home video mainly due to the movie using a Doors song, but was finally released on DVD in 1999 and Criterion has released DVD and Blu-Ray versions (Number 414, I own the DVD with a copy of the screenplay added).
I would definately recommend this film, but it's a tricky watch. Don't do anything else, turn your phones off and watch alone if possible.

Just received the 60th Anniversary 4K UHD Blu-Ray copy of this film, and of course the film looks and sounds great. This movie is easily a Top 5 film (behind Seven Samurai, M, and ahead of Godfather I & II.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was Dario Argento's first directorial effect and at least on the giallo front, it might be his best. An American writer (Tony Musante) in Rome witnesses a brutal attack in an art gallery and starts investigating the attack and subsequent murders, despite calls from the attacker telling him not to do.
Argento is ed by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and composer Ennio Morricone, creating a great directorial debut and basically providing the template for giallo. Great in both English and Italian, be warned that many Argento documentaries might spoil the ending, but this movie and Deep Red are defiantly his best giallo films.

Watched on Saturday April 16, 2022.

Watched on Thursday May 12, 2022.

Watched on Friday June 10, 2022.

This review may contain spoilers.

The was my fourth viewing, but the first in ten years. In that amount of time, I have become a much bigger fan of racing, and especially Formula One in general. I have watched most of the F1 races since 2013, watching them live when the timeframe fits (after all most races are in Europe and come on at 3 a.m. in California.) or using DVR for the others. I had also just finished Go Like Hell, the book after Ford trying to win the Le Mans race in the 1960’s that Ford V. Ferrari was based on, and this movie had a bit of crossover with the racing world in 1966.
Speed became a major part of American culture in the 60’s, with Ford introducing the iconic Mustang and challenging Ferrari by creating the GT40 to challenge Ferrari’s dominance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in . Hollywood also responded by making several films about motor racing. While Grand Prix isn’t the first (Howard Hawk’s Red Line 7000, starring a young James Caan [Paul Newman, a racer in real life and who also owned an IndyCar team, starred in Winning in 1969, and Steve McQueen was trying to make a racing movie, but ended up making a different film Le Mans in 1971]), but Grand Prix is the best of these early racing movies.
The movie centers around a typical Formula One season and centers on four drivers. Pete Aron (James Garner) drives for Jordan with Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford, who actually couldn’t drive, so F1 superstar Jackie Stewart drove for him [you can tell by his helmet, which has a tartan pattern on it), but after a bad crash at Monaco that injures Stoddard, he is fired but then brought in by Izo Yamura (Toshiro Mifune in his first American film, dubbed by Paul Frees) to help his stagnant team, which hasn’t won a race yet. Also featured are the Ferrari team, Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand) is a multiple time champion, but nearing the end of his career, and the younger Nino Barlini (Antonio Sabato).
During the season, the drivers not only deal with the racing and each other, they also deal with women. This part of the film is the weakest part, mainly because it’s a long movie and the romances are not very interesting to me. First off, Stoddard is married to Pat (Jessica Walter), but later flirts around with Aron. She claims to hate Stoddard racing, but Aron races too. Stoddard does confront her and says that she like Aron but loves him.
Meanwhile, Sarti is unhappily married but starts and affair with an American fashion magazine writer (Eva Marie Saint). Barlini is a basic ladies’ man who tries to who a French woman named Lisa (Francoise Hardy). These are the weakest part of the film, but not horrible. This is probably Montand’s best English language role in my opinion. In other English films, he seems still and uncomfortable, but he’s much better here.
The season goes on with Stoddard returning from his injury and each driver winning several races, leading up to the Grand Prix of Italy, the home of Ferrari. During the races, Sarti’s car has spectacular crash, killing him instantly. Barlini pulls out of the race to honor Sarti and Aron beats Stoddard to win the Driver’s Championship.
The racing scenes are great. Many of the shots in the film where filmed during actual F1 races in 1965 and 1966 with Ford GT40s following the cars with Super Panavision 70 cameras. There was also racing scenes in which cameras where actually mounted on the actual racing cars, which led to putting cameras in the racing cars during television broadcasts, which are still used today (with much smaller cameras). Garner, Montand and Sabato did most of the driving in this movie too.
I think that if you are a racing fan, this movie’s racing scenes make this a must watch. Yes, Ron Howard’s Rush (2011) and Ford V. Ferrari (2019) are better, but without Grand Prix, those movies would never have happened.

This review may contain spoilers.

Re-making a classic story is a tricky proposition. In 1997, Academy award-winning director William Friedkin directed a updated version of Sidney Lumet’s production of 12 Angry Men for Showtime. Reginald Rose, the writer of both the original teleplay and the 1957 film, adapted his story with some changed dialogue and a couple new scenes that fit into the more modern timeframe.
First off, four jurors were changed from Caucasian men to African American men. Jurors 1, 2, 5 and 10. The judge of the case at the beginning of the film is now a woman, played by Mary McConnell. Personally, even in 1997, not having several women in the jury and calling the film “The Jury” was a bad idea. Rose said that if he added women, "Then the title would have to be changed to '12 Angry Persons,' and it wouldn't be as effective." Again, “The Jury” has a ring to it. I checked Wikipedia and while there were two series (one in the UK and one in the US), there were after this. The 1996 adaptation of A Time To Kill was called The Jury in some countries (although it didn’t say which ones).
Rose’s modernization of the script mainly changes the way the accused would be executed. Instead of 1957’s electric chair, he would be lethally injected. There are two new arguments that, if you’re a person who has watch the original many times, stick out oddly. One is a discussion about who did kill the accused’s father if he didn’t do it. Clearly this was a connection to the O.J. Simpson case, since who else would kill this person other than the accused. It’s weird since that’s not something that is prevalent to the case. The second addition is discussing that a physiatrist testified about the accused’s mental state. This leads to a comment by Juror #10 in which he says, “I wouldn’t give a wooden nickel for what that physiatrist says.” That’s a weird saying coming from a 30-year-old, black or white. Then, just a moment later, he tries to use what the physiatrist says to prove his bigoted points, only for #8 to point out his earlier point. It’s unnecessary since we already don’t like this guy, but earlier when he criticized the accused’s “he don’t speak good English” Juror #11 points out “He doesn’t even speak good English.”
Let’s get Juror #10 out the way. In 1957, he’s played by Ed Begley Sr. and plays him as a pushy, loud-mouthed bigot who rails against the accused because of his poor upbringing. In 1997, Mykelti Williamson (Forrest Gump) plays him as a former Nation of Islam member who is prejudiced against the accused because of his poor upbringing but also goes into a diatribe about Hispanic immigration, trying to get the other African American jurors to go along with him. While Williamson is good in the part, it’s jarring, and not in a good way. It doesn’t help that Juror #11 is played by Edward James Olmos, who is Mexican-American (born in East L.A., by the way) but when Jurors #7 (Tony Danza) and #11 have an argument, #7 refers to #11 as an Eastern European. I know #11 was Easter European in the 1957 version (George Voskovec, who was the only person from the 1954 teleplay to be in the 1957 film, was from Czechia and became a American citizen just before the 1957 film), but why cast Olmos in this part? He’s good in this part, but it’s just odd.
The casting is overall great. The only change I would have made is to have Jurors #6 and #7 switch parts. 6 is played by pre-Sopranos James Gandolfini and #7 is Tony Danza. Danza does work in his part as the sports fan who doesn’t care about the case and wants to go to a Yankees game, but Danza isn’t an especially good dramatic actor and is the only actor that doesn’t match his 1957 counterpart. Jack Warden’s wisecracks and attitude feel more authentic and fits with his personality in his later films. I had just watched him in Heaven Can Wait (1978) and he deserved that Oscar nomination.
I would go over each actor’s role and compare it to their counterpart, but that would take way too long. Besides Danza, #12, played by Willliam Petersen, must deal with a weak character and even the same bad puns Robert Webber did. Rose apparently couldn’t modernize all the dialogue. But we need to compare #3 and #8 since they’re the most important characters. Any version of 12 Angry Men will fly or die based on these two.
Jack Lemmon steps into the shoes of his Mister Roberts co-star Henry Fonda as Juror #8. Most people probably know Lemmon from his comic roles with Walter Matthau, but he’s a great actor in any role and he fills Fonda’s role perfectly.
George C. Scott takes Lee J. Cobb’s loud, bombastic role and delivers the best performance in both films, winning both a Golden Globe and Emmy for ing Actor in a Miniseries or Film. Hume Cronyn, 86, also tops his ’57 counterpart as Juror #9.
So, 1997’s version is just a step below the 1957 version. The only thing I have to complain about is that Reginald Rose's modernization is very creaky at times. The new scenes don't really work and he didn't change a couple characters dialogue at all, leaving them to say things that nobody would say in 1997. Maybe a new version could pop up in a couple years with a couple women in the part and be equal to both films. If you’re the type of person that doesn’t like old black and white films, you can definitely watch this movie, although you’re missing something if you don’t watch 1957 too.
Note: I rate the 1957 12 Angry Men as a 5-star movie.

This review may contain spoilers.

Apologies in advance, but I do have to talk about the 1961 film along with the 2021 film.

I've had a complex history with the 1961 version of West Side Story. Growing up, I was in band in both junior and senior high school, and both teachers were big-time musicial fans and I saw West Side Story maybe 4 to 5 times in six years. I wasn't a huge movie fan then, so a lot of those musicials (Oliver! and My Fair Lady especially [I've mellowed on MFL but not Oliver!]) didn't go over well with me. So I don't think I watch WSS in full since junior year to about 2019. The WSS Blu-Ray was $5 at 7-Eleven of all places, and since I had watched lots of other musicials since high school (Sound of Music, Singin' in the Rain, Disney animated films, etc.) I gave it my first real watch. I did enjoy it, enough to call it a 10 top musical (#9 in my list I made last year) but there are two major issues that negated me from calling it a masterpiece.
1) Every makes a big deal about the opening "Prologue" being shot in the streets and alleyways of New York City. That's all well and good, but what about the rest of the film. The rest of it is all studio sets!
2) So much dubbing. Now I get at Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer couldn't hit those high tenor/soprano notes, Russ Tamblyn isn't g high, so he shouldn't have been dubbed, and dubbing Rita Moreno during "A Boy Like It' is beyond stupid.

So, when it was announced that Steven Spielberg was making his own version, I hoped he would fix the issues I had. He did.

This versoin has a more naturalistic feel with most of the movie using locations in parts of New York city and New Jersey. Having "America" be sung while going through the streets of New York is so much better than the 1961 version, where the background is an orange backdrop on a rooftop set. To me everything clicks in this version. The cinematography is great (although I do like the Oscar-winning cinematography from '61) the editing works better and yes I'm going to say that Justin Peck's choreography works better than Jerome Robbin's orignial. It feels more real, less ballet. Hell, I even liked "Gee, Officer Krupke" in this version, with the Jets tearing up the precient, instead of a boring back alley set like '61 and the play.

As for the cast, most of them hit their marks weel, Ariana DeBose is just as good as Moreno was. Rachel Zegler is an improvement over Natalie Wood (since she can sing those high notes) and David Alvarez is good as Bernardo. Ansel Elgort is well... fine. But that's the problem with Tony, or Romeo for that matter if you're going to look at it alongside Romeo and Juliet. Tony/Romeo is talked about as tough-as-nails street brawler, but he isn't shown that way. That was years (a year, 18 months at least) ago and they only time we see it is in "The Rumble" but even then, he's defensive and only acts when Biff is killed. It's why I don't like Romeo in R&J and wish the story was more based around Maria/Juliet, who has been shielded from the family/gang issues.

Looking at some of the complaints people have lodged, I'm going to note people complaining about Maria and the Sharks (Puerto Ricans" speaking Spanish occasionally and Spielberg not translating it with subtitles (since I used subtitles/SDH, it would say [MARIA SPEAKS SPANISH] instead of translating), I agree with his decision. I'm half hispanic from my father's side, and while he (and I) don't speak Spanish, his mother and his half-sister do, and they would so back and forth from English to Spanish all the time. Good on Spielberg and Kushner for doing that.

In closing, Spielberg has topped the 1961 version. The 2021 version will replace 1961 on my musical list and might move a couple places above the #9 I had placed the 1961 version. Definately grabbing the 4K blu-ray in a couple weeks.

This review may contain spoilers.

I wondered what this would be. I watched the Milla Jovovich/Paul W.S. Anderson series and while the first movie is good and close enough to the movie, the others veered far away and is probably 2 movies too long, really.
My hope was to be like the first game, in the mansion. That is what I got, but I also got the second game. Okay, not exactly what I wanted. I never pictured RE1 and RE2 happening at the same time. I it I never finished the original RE game, since I really hate the camera (which they didn't fix when Capcom remade the game on the Gamecube, unlike the RE2 and 3 remakes, which I have played [and loved]) so maybe I missed all that.
The cast is good enough for characters who don't have a lot of character in the game. I it that I thought Claire was a different actress for some reason, I've only seen Kaya Scodelario in the last Pirates movie and I thought she was Melaine Scrofano (from Wynonna Earp and Ready or Not). I don't know Robbie Amell, but I know Evan Jogia from Victorious and the Zombieland sequel and Hannah John-Kamen from Killjoys. And of course I recognized Neal McDonough and Donal Logue. My issues weren't with the cast though.
The movie definitely wants to be a horror movie, and that's good, but my issue was the this movie was way too dark. Now considering the CG in this movie is hit-or-miss at times, that might be good also, but at times in the mansion, the only light in my dark room was the LED strip on behind my TV it was so damn dark.
There were little moments I liked, like a room opening up when a piano is played, a nod to the puzzles in RE1. I don't know why they decided to make Kennedy a klutzy cop at the beginning, only for him to get it together later. A very weak character ark if you ask me.
I rented this from Redbox, I might buy it later on, maybe if they do a sequel, but I suggest they not cram RE3, Code: Veronica and 4 in one film, okay?

Since this is being remade my Guillermo del Toro, I figured I should watch the original first. I've wanted to watch this for a while, but my library system won't let me check out the Criterion version that came out last year (I don't know why, it's not at my local library and a couple of the libraries in the system aren't sending out items [probably because of the pandemic]). Thankfully the Criterion Channel app added the movie and all the extras (film historian commentary, interviews from other film historians and actress Colleen Gray).
I've watched a couple Tyrone Power films since my dad is a fan, but besides the 1955 film The Long Gray Line, I wasn't that big on him. This film was specifically chosen by Power to try a different part than the swashbuckling and action roles (The Mark of Zorro, A Yank in the R.A.F., Crash Dive). It was a good decision because he's great in the film as a morally questionable carnival barker who learns how to be a fake mystic and rises to popularity, only to be ruined by his own ego.
Audiences didn't agree though, since the film bombed when it first came out. It really took Tyrone Power's sudden death in 1958 for the film and Power to be recognized as a great film.
So after watching this, I looked up the remake. So the new film seems to be in the same era (post-WWII USA), so the movie won't be too different from the original. According to imdb, the original had a couple shots of the first "geek" killing animals that they had to cut because of the Hays Code, so that might be added. The remake is also half and hour longer than the original. I thought the original was fine at 110 minutes, so 139 might be too much maybe. My local theater doesn't look like it'll play the film here, so I'll have to wait for the home release to see it.

This review may contain spoilers.

This movie is definitely a nostalgia trip. Is it a little too much, maybe. I consider this movie to be level with Force Awakens, a soft remake of the classic 1984 film. Centering around kids could've been risky, but thankfully the child actors are very good in the roles, especially Mckenna Grace.
Since so much is connected with the 1984 film, I suggest you watch the 1984 film before watching this. Mainly so it'll be fresh in your mind, and because it's a great film.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT:
So the original Ghostbusters appear at the end of the movie, including Harold Ramis, even though he died in 2014. At the beginning of the film, Egon is presented in shadow (a body double) and he appears with the OG Ghostbusters as a CGI ghost.
So, I didn't have an issue with using a CGI Peter Cushing as Tarkin in Rogue One (the CGI Leia at the end was much weaker, but she's on screen briefly) so since Harold's family approved, I'm fine with it.

Watched on Thursday June 24, 2021.

Watched on Tuesday June 15, 2021.

This review may contain spoilers.

I watched this thanks to the YouTube/Nebula History Buffs. I bought the Blu-Ray last year but I hadn't watched it partly because I thought it was some right wing/religious film. It turned out that isn't the case. The other reason I hadn't watched it was because I worried about the movie being similar to the 1976 film of the same name, which centered on a bland romantic subplot and hammy Charlton Heston.
I'm glad this movie chose to make a movie about the historical aspects of the opening 6 months of the United States entering WWII. It starts with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and shows the Doolittle Raid (unlike Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, it wasn't done by fighter pilots) and the Battle of the Coral Sea building up to Midway. It does a good balance of the pilots who do the deeds of Coral Sea and Midway, and the bureaucracy of Nimitz and the codebreaking aspects. All of the main actors are very good for their roles. Woody Harrelson as Nimitz, Dennis Quaid as Halsey, Aaron Eckhart as Doolittle and Patrick Wilson as Layton (the codebreaker) are great fits. Ed Skrein as Dick Best is easily his best part (not saying much, but it's a definite high) and Nick Jonas is memorable in his part. I also like that all the Japanese scenes are in Japanese, which gives it a more authentic feel and draws it closer to Tora! Tora! Tora!.
A definite recommend, even if it's a step or two below The Longest Day, A Bridge Too Far, Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora!. It is better than Is Paris Burning?

I don't know if I'm the minority or what with Last Jedi, but I thought it was the best Star Wars film since Empire Strikes Back. I don't know why Abrams and Terrio decided to say fuck it and give us this contrived bullshit storyline about Rey being the daughter of a Palpatine clone. Everything seems like things were going one way but then they changed them at the last minute (which explains the lack of a tie-in novel, a tie-in comic adaptation and the delay in the Lego Star Wars game).
I saw this twice in theaters (once on a IMAX-like screen and once in my rinky-dink theater), really I only needed to see it once, but I wanted to see if it was that bad. It really was.
I only watched it today because I have a RiffTrax featuring Mike, Kevin and Bill. It helped a little.
Sorry, this is the worst Star Wars feature film (not counting the Holiday Special).

This review may contain spoilers.

Yes, it's better than Annihilation, but almost everything is. But several things keep it from being better than 95. First off, it's weird that the cast is mainly unknowns. Louis Tan is somehow the star even though he is basically nothing and the movie doesn't think he's that much either, since he doesn't become Scorpio at the end. Only Josh Lawson's Kano stands out, but since I knew he would be a villain, I knew he wouldn't stick around for a sequel.
Second, there are times the graphics don't feel on par for a 2010-2020's film. It's good in some areas, but it's overall spotty with really bad spots.
1995's film is kind of a guilty pleasure that you can watch multiple times. Annihilation is mostly an "awesomely-bad" film. This sits in the middle and if I watch it again, it might be to remind me what this was before the sequel.
P.S. I'm for the Miz to play Johnny Cage. I mean that's his persona in the WWE, right?

Watched on Wednesday April 7, 2021.

Watched on Monday April 5, 2021.

Definitely in the top 5 superhero movies (Dark Knight is higher, probably equal to Superman). Great fun with a great performance by Downey. Jeff Bridges is slightly weak as the villian, but that's par for the course for Marvel villains.

Watched on Saturday March 27, 2021.

Okay, it's better than the theatrical cut, but Snyder's cut is really a workprint cut with SFX and a rerecorded score. Maybe take 45-60 minutes off and it would work much better. I mean the only problems I had with the first film was the Superman viral interview opening and throwing a family living near Chernobyl (really?) that needs to be saved. Thankfully the added Cyborg and his father plot helps develop his character a lot more than before. Personally, I'd rather not have more of the Snyder-verse.

I've watched this film probably 15 times since I saw it on Bravo in 1996 or 1997. Yes, it's 208 minutes long. Not one second needed to be cut. This is the perfect epic film.

Like most epics, the first half is stronger than the second. Really the first third. The gladiator school is easily the best part. While the other two-thirds is very good, it's not great. The Tony Curtis character really feels out of place, he doesn't cause the love triangle with Douglas and Simmons that the movie wants and since Curtis only shares a couple scenes with Olivier, the gay subtext doesn't work. I would still watch this over Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur though.

Is there a better "Musical Comedy" than this film. Maybe the two Beatles films, but there's so much here.

Watched on Tuesday January 19, 2021.

Watched on Saturday January 16, 2021.

• Tower of London
• Henry V
• Macbeth
• Julius Caesar
• Richard III
• Throne of Blood
• The Bad Sleep Well
• All Night Long
• Chimes at Midnight
• The Taming of the Shrew

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My rankings for Best Picture winners from 2020 on (to be fully finalized in 2030 when the 2029 Oscars occur.

• Everything Everywhere All at Once

  The first bullseye in the 2020's. Great film, great performances. A wild ride.

• Anora
• Oppenheimer
• CODA

  2021 has a more impressive list of best picture nominees, but this winning is weird. I would put this in the middle of the 10 nominees. West Side Story, Dune, Nightmare Alley and Belfast are above it. The other are basically the same rank except for Don't Look Up. Don't know why that was nominated.

• Nomadland

  2020 will forever be an outlier because of the pandemic. So many pictures were postponed to 2021 or 2022, so the nominees are hard to judge compared to other years. It's just that this movie just did nothing for me. I get that it's a true story, but not all true stories make good films. It's possible that the other seven nominees were better films, although I still haven't seen Mank yet .

1. A Hard Day's Night
2. Help!
3. The Beatles: Get Back
4. Yellow Submarine
5. The Beatles Anthology
6. Magical Mystery Tour
7. Let It Be
8. The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years

It's easier to rank the Best Picture winners by decade for now, then build the main list.

• It Happened One Night

  The best comedy (and really the only true comedy, without major dramatic elements) to win the Oscar.

• All Quiet on the Western Front

  An amazing film and still holds up as a stark, realistic look at war. The first masterpiece to win Best Picture.

• The Life of Emile Zola

  A very underrated movie. Paul Muni should've won his Oscar for the film instead of "Story of Louis Pasteur" and Joseph Schildkraut's performance as Alfred Dreyfus is amazing.

• Gone with the Wind

  A controversial film that I have issues with besides the obvious (the stereotypical African-American parts, even though Hattie MacDaniel's performance did deserve the Oscar). My main issue is that this should have been two movies. Although then I could skip most of the second half of the film. That second half loses all momentum for me.

• Wings

  The first Best Picture winner, although Sunrise won an Oscar for "Best Unique and Artistic Picture." Sunrise is a better film overall, but this movie, when it's in the air at least, is very good. The romance subplot is weaker, but better than "The Big Parade."

• The Great Ziegfeld

  A good movie overall, but a mishmash of romantic drama, screwball comedy and behind the scenes musical.

• Mutiny on the Bounty

  Overall a good picture, but historically inaccurate and everyone is overacting and can be grating. It was nominated for 8 Oscars but only won for Best Picture. The movie it beat on a lot of categories, John Ford's The Informer, is a hidden gem and a better film. Watch the 1984 film The Bounty with Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins for a more accurate take. Skip the 1962 version.

• Grand Hotel

  Only nominated for Best Picture, the is overall fine, but with most of these all-star movies, no one really stands out IMO. Garbo's famous "I want to be alone." line notwithstanding, there's no real standout performance. The Champ and Shanghai Express should've won instead.

• You Can't Take It with You

  A house full of crazy people. A young man with a rich and crazy family. A good film? Not to me. For me, Capra lost me with Mr. Deeds, and that and Mr. Smith were better films. Despite James Stewart and Jean Arthur starring, nobody impresses me here. Boys Town Jezebel, Pygmalion and Le Grand Illusion are easily better.

• Cavalcade

  Based on a Noel Coward play about a British family from 1899 to 1932, it feels like a filmed play. Nothing really special here.

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Casino Royale
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. From Russia with Love
4. The Spy Who Loved Me
5. Skyfall
6. The Living Daylights
7. Goldfinger
8. Octopussy
9. GoldenEye
10. Licence to Kill

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Seven Samurai
2. Yojimbo
3. High and Low
4. Ikiru
5. The Hidden Fortress
6. Throne of Blood
7. Ran
8. The Bad Sleep Well
9. Rashomon
10. Kagemusha

...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Le Cercle Rouge
2. Army of Shadows
3. Bob le Flambeur
4. The Silence of the Sea
5. Le Samouraï
6. Le Deuxième Souffle
7. Le Doulos
8. A Cop
9. Magnet of Doom
10. Léon Morin, Priest

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.