Movies

Kurt Turns Evil (2008) Norwegian 3DCG animation. Kurt is a forklift driver who wants to be respected, like the braggart doctor next door, or the huge-breasted Prime Minister. When he comes into a gigantic amount of money he Turns Evil, and it's only when he proves himself as a great forklift driver that he can find true happiness. Extremely eccentric, witty, well-designed and entertaining. Outstanding comedic timing, but just a wee bit too fast for my aging brain to drink in all the glorious offbeat detail. 9/10

Anime

9 (2009) Post-apocalyptic 3DCG adventure makes the standard error - all the energy was put into making every single thing intensely detailed and totally, totally "cool" looking, and none was left over for making the plot anything other than a string of cliches, or making the dialog anything other than meaningless noises meant only for effect. A few days later I had completely forgotten that I had seen it. 2/10

Umi ga Kikoeru [The Ocean Waves] (1993) I have read that this was a project meant to give the younger artists and animators at Studio Ghibli an opportunity to do their own feature film. It's essentially a high school melodrama, but it develops some real thoughtfulness and sensitivity by the end of the story. The art and animation are of the highest quality and it is inoffensive overall. 5/10

De Profundis [From the Sea] (2007) Spanish-made art film - extremely beautiful, long, slow and soporific. So much so that I have been unable to finish watching it. Most of the animation is computerized morphs back and forth between two or three drawings, with some cutout motion thrown in. It becomes, stylistically, very repetitive and ultimately unwatchable. 0/10

Doggy Poo (2003) Korean stop-motion animation, half an hour long, about a small dog turd lying in the road and what he learns about the world from a blob of mud, a drifting leaf, a chicken and a dandelion. Simultaneously touching and hilarious, a strange and unique work of pure genius. Everyone should see this. 10/10

Movies

Murder, She Said (1961) Margaret Rutherford is Miss Marple in this adequately entertaining film. Its only real peculiarity is its harpsichord/twist theme song. 7/10

Movies

Il Bidoni [variously The Swindle, or The Swindlers] (1955) Co-written and directed by Federico Fellini. Broderick Crawford is a con man running cruel swindles that rob poor people of their life's savings, and Richard Basehart appears as one of his associates. This shows the beginnings of his stylistic separation from the realist school and the development of his wandering narrative style. The more freakish aspect of his later work is undeveloped here, but characters and settings are slightly skewed. Interesting and entertaining overall, especially as one begins to think Crawford's character may be developing a conscience. 7/10

Movies

Julie and Julia (2009) If I had known before I sat down to watch this that it was written by Nora Ephron I probably would not have. This is a kind of stupid movie mashed together with a very stupid movie, and just when you start enjoying or really hating one, they switch over to the other and you can hate or enjoy it for a while. Then it seemed to go off a cliff and every moment was torture and I knew I couldn't sit there watching that for even one more minute. So I made it through over an hour, and I thought Meryl Streep was great, and was sorry Meg Ryan can no longer play 30 year olds, because this was really a Meg Ryan movie but the substitute wasn't bad. Anyway, I thought it kinda stunk and don't give a damn how it turned out. ?/10

Movies

The Man Without a Body (1957) I believe this is the strangest of all "head on a table" movies. Millionaire with a brain tumor wants to have his brain replaced with the brain of Nostradamus. That alone is just ridiculous. The ancient mummy head of Nostradamus is revived and kept living on a table, then transplanted whole onto a living body, held on with a huge blocky plaster cast, making it the craziest head transplant monster ever since being transplanted to a body makes the previously talkative and erudite Nostradamus Head into a shuffling incoherent stranglemonster. Grand finale is astonishing, leaving me literally slackjawed in amazement. Completely nuts in that boring "head transplant movie" way. 8/10

The Beatniks (1960) Radio actor and voice artist Paul Frees wrote and directed this rock/crime exploitation cheapie. Familiar face Peter Breck gives one of his multitudinous crazed oddball performances as Mooney the beatnik psycho. Adequate. 6/10

Movies

A Serious Man (2009) A Donna movie, about a guy whose life keeps getting worse and the only time it seems to get better is when it is just about to get a whole lot worse. Kind of more interesting to see than to think about afterward - I remember being very entertained at the time, but now I am not entirely sure why. Coen Brothers movies are a hit and miss thing with me and even when they hit I am not really their target audience. Interesting to see all that hyperjudaic suburbanism, and I liked the way the story kept seeming like it was going to veer off into some kind of crazy genre adventure but always yanked itself back to the grim reality of crushing the protagonist under the weight of the world. Extremely well-made, yet their films don't seem to leave much residue in my mind, the way many more trivial things do. 7/10

Movies

Only Yesterday [Omohide Poro Poro] (1991) Mature and intelligent animated film from Studio Ghibli. A young woman's summer visit to a farm in the country coincides with her recall of incidents from her fifth-grade school year, bringing up ideas about how our experiences and memories affect our later lives, the development of personality, and the way we treat others. A grown-up movie for adults, it just happens to be a cartoon. Sweet and romantic at times, and an all-around well made film. Well worth looking for, especially if you dislike the formulas of conventional anime. 8/10

A Town Called Panic (2009) Silly, crazy Belgian film made in a deliberately simplified stop-motion style. The sort of story a child would invent - Cowboy and Indian try to build a barbecue for Horse's birthday gift but they accidentally order 50 million bricks instead of just fifty, and end up destroying their house entirely. Then it really gets nutty. No message or socially redeeming qualities whatsoever - just uniquely inventive fun for its own sake. 9/10

Movies

Keep It Clean (1956) Hawk-nosed comic Ronald Shiner stars in this Britcom as a hustling ad-agency employee (this is not Madison Avenue, but a sort of hole in the wall operation) who is trying to scare up a wad of cash for his brother-in-law's robotic super-cleaning machine. It's all very complicated, and what was most suprising to me was how extremely fast everyone spoke and moved. (I have been listening to a BBC documentary series Laughter In The Air, on the history of BBC radio comedy, and learned that this sort of rapid-fire comedy only appeared on the air there after the introduction of American radio programs during the war.) There are a number of scenes of music/dance performances in a Burlesque theatre, which you ought to know by now is something I really like to see, and Joan Sims makes a brief but frighteningly sexy appearance. This film is also a manifestation of the British cultural fascination with window cleaning. One of George Formby's most popular songs was his 1936 hit "When I'm Cleaning Windows," Norman Wisdom is a window cleaner in Up In the World (1956), and Val Guest directed the smash hit film of Britain's sleazy '70s, Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974). Something in the national psyche seems every twenty years or so to find irresistable the hint of voyeurism combined with the comic potential of a man on a ladder with a bucket of water. This is not the best film on the subject, but I was glad to have an opportunity to see a film from the 2nd or 3rd string Nettlefold Studios (Walton-on-Thames). 4/10 This may be the most educational post ever to appear on this blog.

Movies

Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969) Robert Ryan seems an odd choice for Nemo in this Anglo-American Verneian fantasy, but he carries the stern misanthropy well. Chuck Connors is one of the people saved from a shipwreck by Nemo's gilded-age scuba divers, and his only desire is to escape from the domed city, with Luciana Paluzzi tossed in as temporary love interest. Large and elaborate sets with lots of gold paint and colored lighting, and nice models almost make up for the blatantly stupid script. They were clearly trying for the Disney Adventure Film audience, so they dropped a kid and a kitten in for no other purpose. The story is episodic and incoherent, and I soon saw that asking why and how about anything would be pointless. There is a giant mutant devil-ray called Mobula, and familiar face Allan Cuthbertson takes the "Dr. Smith" role - hysterically flipping out and frenetically wrecking things for everyone - to a self-destructive extreme. All that said, it was still kind of fun to watch, and I saw it long ago in its optimal environment, a Saturday afternoon kiddie matinee. At least there was a kitten. 5.5/10

Movies

Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (1960) George Sanders gives a decidedly un-gallic twist to this sensationalized version of the story of misogynist serial-killer Henri Landru. Takes place in that half-french world where a few main characters, and all police officers, clerks and taxi drivers speak with French accents. Sanders is always immaculate and impeccable, and this is a good showcase for his appealing villainy. Moderately entertaining. 6/10

George Sanders: "I'll be with you in a moment, my dear."

Spare a Copper (1940) George Formby is a police reservist who becomes entangled with a gang of saboteurs trying to blow up a new battleship. Directed by John Paddy Carstairs, who also directed some Norman Wisdom films, it's nonsensical throughout, but quite amusing. The songs are good and sufficiently frequent, the humor is less crude slapstick and repetitive chasing around than some of the other Formby films I have seen recently, and he comes across as a charming character at times rather than an irritating idiot. There is a climactic chase sequence that becomes bizarre and dreamlike as George drives a miniature car around a carnival's Wall of Death and launches it out the top to drive across the rooftops. For this sort of all-purpose comedy it is really rather good. 8/10

Movies

Terror from the Year 5000 (1958) Made-in-Florida sci-fi cheapie makes the most of what it's got. Scientific experiment brings back objects, and eventually a person, from our horrible radioactive future. Entertaining. 5/10

Movies

Persona (1966) Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Two people in a lonely place - one won't talk, the other won't stop talking. Guess which one flips out. I have been saving Bergman for when I was older but I don't think I will ever be old enough. I like the early ones that are more like a regular movie but this is the sort of thing that just makes me say, "What the hell is this even supposed to be?" and I end up feeling like a dope. I guess I kind of get it in a way, but it's not really what I am looking for in a movie. 3/10

Movies

It's In The Air (1938) George Formby finds that putting on someone else's uniform and going to an air base causes a certain amount of confusion. If I had known how quickly a cute girl will fall for a complete idiot I would never have tried to be so smart. 4/10

Movies

I See Ice (1938) George Formby invents a bow-tie camera that gets him involved with ice skaters, and eventually puts him in the middle of a hockey game with his head stuck in the back of the net and pucks striking him repeatedly on the butt. There are certain misunderstandings that cause him to be chased around, and he also sings a few songs. 5/10

Chungking Express (1994) A pair of loosely linked stories about romantic relationships is the last thing I would normally want to see, but this was made in China, mostly at night or in street markets. Interesting characters and events as well as the details of daily life that I enjoy learning about - just seeing what normal people's apartments look like in China is fascinating to me. It looked like it was all shot on location, not on sets. One guy has a pedestrian slidewalk right outside his window and people are moving slowly by behind frosted glass all day. Friend Jim Cser showed me this on his Hi Def Blu Ray machine, and my eyes freaked out at first from all the defs and rays and things but I got used to it pretty rapidly. I know I would enjoy the movie as much on our old TV. 8/10

Movies

50 Million Frenchmen (1931) Poverty Wager comedy - millionaire must live without resources for two weeks and win the girl. Distractions by comedy team Olsen and Johnson, but the best contribution is by Helen Broderick as a jaded spinster who wants to see Paris from the inside, to be shocked and insulted. 6/10

Helen Broderick - quite exasperating.

Do You See Seoul? (2008) Korean "wonderful teacher" weeper. Young teacher revisits his rural home and recalls the wonderful teacher who meant so much to them all. I chose this to see because I wanted a depiction of fairly normal daily life that wouldn't have explosions or torture or any kind of crazy stuff. Good choice for that, not all that fun otherwise. 4/10

Movies

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase (1939) A bit more like an actual Nancy Drew story than the previous effort, but they really seem to be trying to "girl" her down for this, keeping her dressed way too young and giving a lot of the effective action to her chum Ted Nickerson. It seems like Bonita Granville was growing out of the role even as the film was shot. If you must see a Nancy Drew movie, see the first one, Nancy Drew, Detective. 5/10

Let George Do It! (1940) Because he plays the ukulele, George Formby is mistaken for a Nazi spy. Songs range from his standard music-hall folk style to a full-band swing number, and are all quite enjoyable and well-integrated into the film, not just plunked in at a slow spot. Good dream sequence in which he beats the hell out of Hitler must have been very satisfying to the viewing public at the time. The catch-phrase "It's that man again," appears repeatedly. Adequate entertainment. 6/10

Movies

Come On George! (1939) Because George Formby is a pure fool, he is the only one who can get close to a dangerous race horse, so must ride it to victory in the big race and on the way perform a few tunes and get launched through the roof of a circus tent by a troupe of acrobats. Certain misunderstandings cause him to be chased around. At one point a song is brought in by the simple expedient of having a character say, "How about a song while we are waiting?" That covers it, really. Nothing going on in the story so throw in a song. Horse race movies usually turn out pretty much the same way. Pretty flat and literally forgettable - this morning I couldn't remember if I had watched it all. 4/10

Movies

The Public Cemetery Under the Moon (1967) This Korean melodrama of supernatural vengeance was of great socio-anthropological interest to me in its presentation of idealized settings and circumstances. A maidservant schemes to poison and replace her mistress, with most of the action taking place within the confines of a wealthy household during the Japanese occupation of Korea. It begins with a pleasantly hokey spook spectacle with the late wife rising out of her cloven grave mound to protect her infant son from the plotting poisoner, then tells the tale from the beginning, winding up with more lurid and rather violent and atrocious scare stuff in the end. All the women wear traditional attire throughout, and the sets seem rather intricately garish and overdecorated. It's not enough for the protagonist to be miserably poisoned, she is eventually driven to suicide by false accusations of adultury, and the scene of her last testament and suicide note being sung over her coffin, surrounded by weeping mourners, was fascinating and stirring. The production values are quite good but the scare technique is primitive, often relying on intercutting lurid random ghost shots with a series of terrified reactions. Run over here, and there's a blue-lit close-up of the ghost with blood-dripping fangs. Scream and run over there and cut to the ghost backlit in medium shot with her hair down and blowing. Et cetera. What appears to be a cultural tendency toward misery and suffering is shown strongly here with the middle section of the story a drawn out depiction of the victim's decline and compounded sufferings, and the husband is at one point tortured by the Japanese for no reason which contributes to the story. Very educational for me but not what I would call a whole lot of fun. 5/10

Traditional upper-class Korean setting and attire.

Nancy Drew, Trouble Shooter (1939) The third Nancy Drew film and a very poor one, a cynical cash-in quickie with a bad script. It takes almost half the movie for them to really get going on the mystery, working up to it with too much focus on the characters, resulting in a lot of sitcom and slapstick. Bonita Granville is cute and bright, and is set off in charming costumes with pleated skirts or loose draped slacks, and nice fedora-style hats. The film's most notable feature is a negative one - Willie Best's role as Apollo Johnson, a perfection of the stereotype of shiftless chicken-stealing childishly superstitious moronic Negro. I am accustomed to the standards of that day, and can be fairly tolerant of the universal depiction of any ethnic character through stereotypes, but this is a nadir point for African Americans which I found saddening and very hard to watch. I felt saddest for Mr. Best, for having done this terrible thing. I feel it might not have been too bad for this film to have been lost, but the best thing would have been for it not to have been made at all. 1/10

Anime

I don't review anime among regular movies unless they really merit it, but I do watch some. Mostly the movies stick with certain clear formulas, being about kids or at least young high school students. What I have done recently is check out the list of award winning films to try to get caught up with recent work.

Summer Wars is this year's top anime award winner in Japan, and it's pretty interesting and exciting at times. It's cyberpunk lite - an escaped hacking bot gets loose in the digital infrastructure and it's up to a high school boy with the ability to perform rapid high-level mental calculations and an eccentric and resourceful family to stop the multiple countdowns that threaten to crash the internet and drop a space probe on a nuclear plant. Some of that world-saving involves making virtual-world avatars punch each other in the face. If you can get into it, it's pretty fun, with elaborate virtual scenes and beautiful rural realworld scenes. Also gets quite touching and everybody learns the value of family. 7/10

Tales of Earthsea is a recent Studio Ghibli production based on Ursula K. LeGuin's creations. The character design is recognizably Miyazaki but I didn't really look at the credits. Two young kids, two grownups, a bad guy and some lackeys. Quite beautiful and elaborate at times, there's some magical conflict and dragons, and the obligatory dangling one-handed over an abyss. No big surprises, just good workmanlike anime. 5/10

Summer Days with Coo is about a schoolboy who finds a kappa, an amphibious water spirit, who has been hibernating for a hundred years. Pretty much follows what might happen if that occurred, with photographers surrounding the house, TV appearances, etc. Again no big surprises - quite long at almost 2 1/2 hours, takes you through the whole experience of happy, sad, then sadly happy that they like to do in these. 5/10

Oblivion Island - Haruka and the Magic Mirror - the previous films used 3DCG for certain things - effects, vehicles and landscapes, but they kept it all looking pretty cel-animated. This one is full 3D and they go all out. A schoolgirl ends up in the place where fox spirits take forgotten things, trying to find the hand mirror her late mother gave her, but it's the most magical mirror there is so it's complicated getting it back from the bad guy. The Island of the Forgotten is built entirely out of stuff - everything is intensely layered, colorful and detailed, and there are often hundreds of moving characters or objects. It's all so elaborate it soon becomes a blur of excess detail and sometimes gets too complicated even to decipher. In addition, there is a great deal of roller-coaster action with lots of sparks flying and zooming through tunnels and screaming and almost crashing into stuff. Since it's about a girl, her dead mother and widowed father it gets super touching at times, and then there is suddenly a lot of chasing and crashing. Too much detail and excitement for me. 4/10

Tamala 2010 - A Punk Cat in Space is more an indie comics art film with a distinctive and deliberately cartoonish style, super-simplified design, and most of it is in black and white. Abandons formal storytelling, but remains interesting to watch and is a thought-provoking experience. 8/10

Movies

The Cool Ones (1967) Hip mod comedy harnesses the star power of Roddy McDowall and Phil Harris in a boy meets girl, girl accidentally invents dance craze, show biz tale. Lots of zany hats, sunglasses and dancing, bright colors and moving shapes, with music by Lee Hazlewood and Billy Strange. Introduces the song This Town, recorded by both Frank and Nancy Sinatra, and even gets a sort of a demolition derby in before the show is over. Only the plot is uninteresting. Gil Peterson as the boy punctuates a lackluster film and TV career, Debbie Watson as the girl found greater fame taking over the role of Tammy on TV and the film sequel Tammy and the Doctor, and as Marilyn Munster in the spinoff film Munster Go Home. Best music is provided by psychedelic/garage band The Leaves, most entertaining performance is by Mrs. Miller in her only film role. For me, though, the best part of the movie was the continuous presence of luscious jewess Nita Talbot as eccentric millionaire starmaker McDowall's entourage/factotum. Not entirely fun. 7/10

Nita Talbot - and personality to boot.

Movies

Cherry Town (1963) Soviet romantic musical comedy with music by Dmitry Shostakovich, depicting the hopes and dreams of young couples trying to obtain apartments in a new housing development. More of a Light Opera than a musical in the modern style, it proceeds rapidly from one song to the next, with charming characters and colorful fantasy sequences. I was all starry-eyed and agog from beginning to end, as it is exactly to my tastes, though more discerning audiences might find it a bit tiring in its cheery hopefulness. Especially valuable in its historic depiction of how the society presented itself and its goals - having experienced that time period myself I recall that, despite the sociopolitical conflicts of the day there was a powerful hope for a better future supported by new technologies and modern ways of living. Bright, colorful, and entertaining throughout with appealing characters and kindly humor. 9/10

Dance fantasy of the Dream Apartment

Rise Robots Rise

From the 1967 Japanese-made film

Gulliver's Travels Beyond the Moon.

Movies

Nancy Drew, Detective (1938) The first Nancy Drew movie is just a lot of good clean fun. Bonita Granville is cute and peppy, the dialogue is often sharp and amusing, the pace is steady and the story is just enough to keep you interested. 8/10

Hips, Hips, Hooray! (1934) Comedy duo Wheeler and Woolsey are a pair of two-bit hustlers who get into the cosmetics business, accidentally stealing a bag full of valuable securites and winning a transcontinental road race. Utter nonsense with lots of crazy and elaborate action gags. Ruth Etting, America's Radio Sweetheart, gets third billing just for popping in and singing one song at the beginning. Love interests Thelma Todd and Dorothy Lee get a new outfit for every change of scene, and every one is absolutely amazing. This is the perfect way to get your brain to turn off for a while. 8/10

Testing lipstick is part of their job.

Movies

The Lady Vampire (1959) An uneasy mix of east and west directed by Nobuo Nakagawa. This director's greatest strength, from what I have seen, appears to be in staging calm, slow and beautifully chilling scenes of supernatural threat, and in creating elaborate spectacles out of an empty soundstage and minimal props. There is a bit of that here, with many elegantly framed and photographed tableaux, but when it comes to the climactic action sequences in the (male) vampire's underground castle - a painfully cheap looking expressionistic muddle of sets - that it becomes nonsensical and inane. It really seems as if it was handed off to an assistant, or used as a training ground for amateurs, like Corman's The Terror. Very unfortunate, but a job is a job and it had to get made and sent out the door by or before deadline. I did enjoy the nifty little two-tone Datsuns everybody was driving. Though it gets off to a nice start I really can't recommend this as anything but an exercise in schlock and inanity. 4/10

Wahan Ke Log (1967) Literally titled People from Mars - this is a very rare example of SF and technological motifs in Indian film. At almost 2 1/2 hours it has the requisite amount of chasing around and musical numbers in between the crazy sets and spy-type antics. It seems that people from Mars, aided by a power-crazed Mad Scientist, are coming to India to steal diamonds. There is a full-sized prop flying saucer, and quite a few space suits. The night club scenes are the best parts of course. It's a rather primitive production, looking more like an American film of ten years earlier. Notably, all the cars used are American, and they crash an old Dodge over a cliff. If you are as obsessed as I am with seeing every old science fiction film ever, you should see this. Otherwise just watch the clip below. 6/10