Category: Film Review

My Name is Bruce (2007)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 24 minutes, rated 6.1 by 24,146 cinematizens.

Genre: Bruce Campbell.

Verdict: for fanboys only.

Thinking it is a joke so he plays along, Bruce is lured into a confrontation with the Chinese god of bean curd! You read that right, bean curd. This is tofu is tough, not merely firm, all right! 

The Raimi family is, as always in this genre, well represented. The in-jokes, references to other Campbell films, snipes at SyFy mainstays, caustic representations of the NRA, merciless criticism of screenwriters, and self-deprecating humour come thick and fast in this slasher-fest.

The boys from Detroit are at it again!

Der Herr vom anderen Stern (1948)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 33 minutes, rated 6.2 by 68 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy.

Verdict:  Too little, too late.  

A man from another star travels the galaxy by concentrating his mind; as he passes Earth he loses focus and lands in a phone booth, well, in front of one, where he takes the form of a nearby shop window dummy, just as two Keystone Kops pass.  Having appeared from nowhere, he gets their attention. Worse, Alien has no papers and seems amused at being asked to identify himself, but he is only to glad to confess that he is a man from another star. 

Ach! What is a plod to do with an alien but take him to someone in higher authority.  There follows an interview with police chief who is left in a daze for this alien can create objects by thought alone, like a cigar or an ashtray.  Since he has no papers, the solution is to get him some, so chief has him escorted to the registry office, where he again performs his magic. He now has papers, but by this time the not so secret police are onto him and dog his steps.  

In and out of lines of petitioners at the police station and registry office, he meets Flora whom he quite likes and takes up with somehow mollifying her boyfriend with his concentrated thought.  Or maybe he is her brother and my ears blinked.  

Alien looks longingly at the stars but cannot summon the concentration required to travel, weakened by his attachment to Flora. He decides to stay and tries to fit in. That does not go well. Without his magic he has nothing to offer, but with it, he is suspect. He laments at man’s inhumanity to this man, himself. Both astronomers and astrologers seek him out for knowledge of stars, which he treats as a joke. Stereotypes descend on him, unscrupulous business men want his help, criminals see fortunes in his powers, politicians hope to use him to gain office, and so on.  

He is wined and dined, and there is the oddest dance sequence ever filmed.  Not even Busby Berkeley could have come up with this strange…. I don’t know what to call it.  It is so ludicrous that it is surprising it did not catch on.  

He rejects all these temptations, and for his trouble is imprisoned as a danger to society, whereupon he delivers a sermon to the fourth wall castigating, it seems, the audience for the crimes of World War II. While incarcerated he is able to concentrate enough to continue his travels.  

The premiss is neat and the magic scenes work well, but the pace is catatonic and the plot wanders around. It seems far longer than it is.

The city of Berlin is a compound of opulence, Weimar decadence, and post war technology with hidden telephones for the secret police on street corners, everyone has enough money to smoke cigarettes, alcohol flows freely, white dinner jackets with sashes are common place. That was certainly not life in 1948 Berlin.  

In outline it reminded me of Der Himmel über Berlin (1987) though not in execution.  Though this same actor was in the 1993 sequel, closing a circle of sorts.

Alien is Heinz Rühmann (1902-1994) who was Joseph Göbbels’s favourite actor and performed in many Nazi-sponsored films which were invariably lighthearted romances to distract viewers from reality, the last released in 1945. Like many other German performers of his age, he entertained troops on the Eastern Front. He was investigated after the war but not sanctioned and returned to the screen in this film, which some see as a mea culpa. Anne Frank (1929-1945) who had his picture on the wall in her hidey-hole did not live to such a ripe old age in the comfort he did.  

I watched it on You Tube in German with the German closed captions turned on to help.  Played nearly as broadly as a silent movie, it is easy to follow.    

Raumpatrouillet Orion (1966)

Space Patrol Orion

IMDb meta-data is 7 episodes of 1 hour each, rated 8.0 by 20,407 incredibly generous cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy; Species: West German

Verdict: Yawn.

All our problems have been solved in this futuristic adventure short-lived serial. There are no nations and no states, only humanity. Resources are infinite and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is a museum piece. Space flight is faster than light. Orion 8 has an ostensibly multi-national crew all played by Aryans. Only the names indicate plurality: McLane must be Anglo, Monti is Italian, Shubashi is Asian, Legrelle French, Sigbjörnson Nordic, and Jagellovsk Slavic. It premiered in West Germany in the same week that Star Trek was first shown on television Stateside.

The money went for the sets which are excellent; far better than Star Trek. The direction is lifeless. The broadcast were in Black and White. The scripts clichéd to say the least.

The first episode is ‘Angriff aus dem All’ (‘Attack from Space’) and the tension turns on that old German chestnut – Ein Befehl est ein Befehl. (Immanuel Kant has a lot to answer for.) Our renegade and disobedient captain who knows better than anyone else, reluctantly obeys orders for once, and consequences follow because he was right — sort of — all along. It is all about him. Though there is a crew, they are only there to reflect him. There is no teamwork.

Episode 2. ‘Planet ausser Kurs’ really should be called shoot the messenger rather than ‘Planet off Course.’ As the world is about to end senior management argues about lines of reporting to shift blame down the line in a touch of realism. McKinsey management at its best. Meanwhile, Captain Intrepid once again saves the day single-handed. By the way the recurrent villains are called ‘Frogs.’ Get it?

In every episode Commissar Tedious contradicts the well-jawed Captain, while the ageing crew members act like adolescent schoolies. There is no character development. She starts out an automaton and stays that way. He starts out a jerk and stays that way. Of course they will become a couple. Back at Headquarters the senior staff act like stereotypes

3 ‘Hüter des Gesetzes’ Three laws of robots are mentioned but not Asimov. The robots look like balloon version of mute Daleks when they go on strike. The tech is not to be trusted.

4 ‘Deserteure’ (Desertion) everybody wants to go to AA – 05-0189. There are always a lot of numbers bandied about but this episode tops that chart. Ditto as above.

5 ‘Der Kampf um die Sonne’ The last one to leave turned out the Sun. It has to be rebooted and Orion 8 has just the foot to do it. Despite all the claims in previous episodes, in this one the Captain encounters extraterrestrial HUMANS! Well, that is new and news, but wait, there is more. This world in run by women! He doesn’t believe! He can’t believe it! He won’t believe it! It’s unbelievable! That takes 45 minutes. It turns out through a slip of the scriptwriter’s typewriter that the Captain and the Leaderess know the same literature and so establish a decorous rapport. A good book is truly universal. Since Earth and the planet have never met before this coincidence is occult.

6 ‘Die Raumfalle’ The Space Trap. The script writer comes on board; it doesn’t help.

7 ‘Invasion’ (Guess!). Always the Frogs. This is the most Cold War of the episodes with the enemy within, The Heidelberg 10.

Der Ende! (This became my favourite German phrase at this moment.)

The cardboard characters, the repetitive Commissar, and the snail pace make for uphill viewing… That 8.0 rating must have an external explanation, perhaps the never-seen Frogs like it. (But then that turgid 12-part ABC Sy Fy serial of the same era ‘The Stranger’ (1964) is rated 8.1.) The sets are certainly arresting, and either at the beginning or end of each episode shows the crew relaxing from their arduous duties of standing motionless on the floor marks with dance sequences almost as odd as that in ‘The Man from Another Star’ discussed earlier. See below.

More retrospective specials 18 on TVDb than original programs 7.

The 1950 serial of the same name set in the 30th Century had Commander Corey whizzing around zapping bad guys with the Paralyzer, and then reprogramming them to be nice with the Brainograph. My mother wanted one of those, Now that was entertainment. Check it out on You Tube.

The Enemy Below (1957).

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 38 minutes, rated 7.4 by 11,180 cinematizens.

Genre: War; Species: Submarine. 

Verdict: Age has not wearied it.

Two professional warriors square off, and tactical deadlock ensues. 

The same can be said of the movie itself – professional, and evenly balanced.  

It is directed with a sure hand by that song and dance man from Arkansas who managed to get the use of a US Navy ship and crew, and who recruited and funded great cinematography.  Never did CinemaScope look so good, even on a computer screen.  The blue expanse compares with the opening scene of Lawrence of Arabia that came a few years later.

The performances are effortless, and unencumbered with emotional backstories, wrung dry as they are these days, evidently, for a slow-witted audience.  Back stories are there, to be sure, but put to one side. Robert Mitchum, as always, seems born into the part; it fits him like an old glove.    

A sampling of the critics’ reviews linked to the IMDb page reveals more about the critics than the movie.  Their remarks are positive but guarded, as if the writer fears that praising such a simple, well-told tale somehow diminishes one’s status as a discerning critic, ergo many of the compliments are left-handed, needlessly qualified, and vague. 

Strange to say for a war movie but there is little violence until the last act. The teenage-boy pyrotechnics — think Greyhound — favoured by the arrested-development directors of Holly- and Pinewood are absent. Nor is any love interest forced into the story by flashbacks. Instead we have parallel character studies on the blue water as the two protagonists take one another’s measure by feint, manoeuvre, and, hardest of all, by waiting quietly for the other to blink. It does have some great special effects for the era, though not the eye-popping, bone-shaking of Das Boot.  

I came across it quite by chance while You Tube surfing, and remembering it fondly, if vaguely, from the Rivoli Theatre, started to watch the first few minutes…and 97 minutes later it ended.  

Dispel (2019)

IMDb meta-data is 14 minutes, rated 6.8 by 28 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy Fy 

Verdict: Chapeaux!  

A teenager girl is inspired by a televised science fiction program to face the monster upstairs.  Her older brother could only escape that devil by joining the army, but there seems no way out for Teen.  She communes with a regal Gina Torres, from the aforementioned television series and does what has to be done.   

The fiend at the top of the stairs is none other than Bro and Teen’s mother who has been possessed by demon rum. 

Superior to most of the two-hour long dreck from big names. Another winner on DUST via You Tube.   

Army of Darkness (1992)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 21 minutes, rated 7.4 by 176,000 cinematizens.

Genre: Bruce Campbell.

Verdict: CGI.

The ever droll Mr Campbell puts his foot in it and finds himself in 1300 A.D, with endless stream of CGI undead skeletons.  He goes on a quest to find the incantation that will return him to Homewares at K-Mart.  It sounds crazy, because it is, but Campbell is a force of celluloid and he battles on. Yes, he is A Detroit Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with a chainsaw and a 1978 Pontiac DeVille. 

The incantation turns out to be Klaatu barade niko.  (You either get it, or you don’t. No explanations.)

My attention wandered as The Bruce – Hail to the Chin – with teeth chemically whitened and muscles gym buffed battled CGIs, but the wit, energy, and pace kept me in contact with it.  Just barely.  

Bruce has continued his struggles with the CGI dead undead in a gaggle of other similar extravaganzas so that a New York Times reviewer suggested he had become himself a genre.  I liked that, so I used it above. This one of his films shows the many hands of the Raimi family – I counted three – who produced, directed, and played in it. The Bruce genre with the Raimi touch has also sired at least two television series.  

Even more entertaining is a 12.28-minute interview with him on Reddit Ask Me Anything.  Find it on YouTube.

The Smiling Ghost (1941 – 6 September)

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 11 minutes, rated 6.4 by 671 cinematizens.

Genre: ODH (Old Dark House).

Verdict:  Shiver and shake.

An impecunious but affable engineer agrees to fake engagement to a beauty (whose previous three fiancés have each met untimely ends).  He needs the money and the eye candy is Alexis Smith. Say no more; the answer is yes! 

He thinks it is some kind of a joke. If it is then it’s on him because the plan is to use him as bait to resolve the jinx, hoax, curse. Little does he know.  Very little. 

A theme familiar from many other silver screens is the contrasting  appeals of a beautiful woman (Miss Smith above) and a feisty one.  While Engineer is intoxicated by Beauty, he realises that he cares about Feisty.  Often in this trope Beauty is a villain but not in this case for she herself is the victim. 

In addition, Willie Best does his best, and at times is treated as a friend rather than a stereotype though the latter prevails. There is also a sixgun toting butler who later captained the Minnow.

Spoiler alert!  There is a man in iron who plays a crucial part. Yes, you read that right. Indeed. 

The ODH has all the spooky  conveniences: Sliding panels, hidden doors, secret passages, cob webs, rubber masks, thunder and lightning, candles blowing out, an empty tomb, trap doors, revolving bookshelves, an apparition of the undead, all in all just like Delt house on Greek Row. Regrettably, it also has lacklustre direction and the wasted talent of Lee Patrick. 

Earlier a perennial film milquetoast – one Chester Clute – has a moment of glory when he topples the big engineer.  That was a nice touch.  

Engineer Wayne Morris was an amateur flyer who in 1941, soon after the release of this movie, enlisted in the US Navy and flew combat missions in the Pacific with seven kills and five ship hits. When he returned to Hollywood his heart wasn’t in it and his career languished, while he drifted into less demanding television work, though he was superb as the broken man in Paths of Glory (1957) released two years after his death at 45 of a heart attack while attending an air show.  

Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 32 minutes, rated 6.9 by 3,386 cinematizens.

Genre: Bio Pic with a kick.

Verdict: The Mummy returns, again. 

Spoilers follow.

A dyed and brainless JFK does a final service for his rest home with an impotent Elvis at his side. The Lone Ranger puts in an appearance.

Elvis ponders his misspent life, while Jack reads up on the undead.  

…..

The showdown between the geezer team of a bloated, bejewelled Elvis in a white jump suit hobbling behind a Zimmer frame and Jack in a dark blue suit and a red necktie on a wheelchair with Bubba Ho-Tep has to be seen to be disbelieved. But it is time for the these two to do what has to be done; what only they can do. Yes, there will be casualties.  

Droll does not begin to describe this foray into the absurd. Yet it conveys respect for The King even if he is decrepit, a respect which he in turn effortlessly extends to the black JFK down the hall. 

For those who need authority before they can like something, know that doyen Roger Ebert used the following terms in his laudatory review ‘wacky,’ ‘vulgar,’ ‘observant,’ ‘truthful,’ ‘sincere,’ ‘respectful,’ ‘ingratiating,’ ‘harebrained,’ ‘poignant’…..  

After enduring the assault of Elvis (2022) I needed a return to something grounded. 

The King’s Choice (2016)

IMDb meta-data is 2 hours and 13 minutes run time rated 7.1 by 8,900 cinematizens.  

Genre: Biography from Norway.

Verdict:  Uplifting.

At 2:00 am on 9 April 1940 the Germans came to help Norway, so they said, by sending the darkened battleship Blücher into Oslo harbour, where alert defenders opened fire. So began war between Germany and Norway that ended on 10 June 1940. As in Denmark and the Netherlands, the German plan was a swift and overpowering assault to capture the government and force immediate capitulation. That worked in small and compact Denmark but not in watery the Netherlands and not in attenuated Norway where manoeuvre, resistance, and flight were possible.

As shots rained down in the harbour, the duly elected cabinet government debated the situation.  Is it possible to negotiate? The German ambassador is keen to do so, but…before he can do anything the Wehrmacht arrives and proceeds to occupy the country, crushing resistance with overwhelming shock and awe, ignoring the ambassador’s efforts.  

King Haakon VII is but a ceremonial figurehead, yet in this crisis many people looked to him for direction. He repeatedly defers to the government of the day, even as it disintegrates into squabbles, name-calling, blame-shifting, side deals,  and other adult pastimes. In Berlin, with a parvenu’s illusion that kings are important, Hitler offers King Haakon a special arrangement – he can remain king, if he will acknowledge Hitler’s  sycophant Vidkun Quisling as Prime Minister.  Don’t know much about Quisling?  Think of the Former Guy and you have it, a thin-skinned bully who loved rousing the rabble with idiocy to attack the defenceless. The king’s attitude is if Quisling had won a free and fair election, then so be it.  Until then, no.  

Neither will the residuum of the cabinet fleeing from the German advance accept Quisling who had repeatedly threatened them. End of movie.

Post scriptum.  Haakon and the cabinet went into exile to Great Britain. They took with them Norway’s sizeable gold reserves and instructed the considerable Norwegian merchant fleet to make for British waters. The cabinet also directed the destruction of facilities to impede the German occupation. Norwegian gold and ships became an asset in the Allied war effort.  The local resistance called itself H7 in honour of the king, who in the hour, showed the way by refusing to bow to the conquerer and insisting on Norwegian sovereignty.  

This resistance had strategic value far beyond its size and effectiveness because Berlin supposed it made Norway’s long coastline ripe for an Allied invasion, and even in June 1944 the Wehrmacht had 300,000 troops stationed there in anticipation of such an invasion. That made some sense because a Nordic Front would be at the rear of the German forces attacking the Northern Soviet Union and Leningrad. Sweden might then join the Allies, too. Moreover, if that happened, then Soviet supply convoys would also benefit by eliminating German submarine and airbases in those Arctic reaches.  

Aware of this German assumption, the RAF fed it with many reconnaissance flights, confirming the German belief that the second front would be Nordic, launched from Scotland. Hence the King made clandestine visits to Scotland in the hope that German agents would report his interest in this part of the United Kingdom. They did.      

The film is too long and a lot could have been cut (by 30+ minutes) without loss, and it verges on hagiography, but the staging, production, and acting are superb.  And the story alone is powerful.  

N.B. the German ambassador is played by Stockinger, an Austrian. Hardly likely. 

John Steinbeck’s terse novel The Moon is Down (1942) recounts a similar Norwegian story in microcosm.    

Watching this movie, reminded me that once I had a tedious argument with an ideologue who insisted that nothing changed with the German defeat of France in June 1940. His line was that the oppressors of the toiling masses changed in a circulation of elites. Nothing more. The interlocutor was disparaging of nationalism and laughed at the value of sovereignty. The Ruling Class, the Deep State, all oppressors are the same, according to him. He really should read more. 

Road to the Stars (1957)

Meta-data is 50 minutes. Not to be found in either IMDb or TVDb, but in Wikipedia. 

Genre: science fact and fiction. 

Verdict: Red moon rising.

A comrade got to the moon in 1957 (year of Sputnik) and kept his mouth shut about it in this excellent promotion of all things astro.  The special effects steal the show: weightlessness, moon dust, extra vehicle activity, a space station, takeoff recliner chairs, and the black vastness of space.  These are far better than any such effects in Yankee films of the period.  It seems it was part of an effort to stimulate interest in space science and exploration, particularly in youngsters.  It must surely have done that. 

In retrospect what is perhaps of greater interest now is that it also shows Soviet citizens to be ordinary folks, dressed as they like, laughing at silly mistakes, picnicking to watch spectacles, young women appreciating young men, senior citizens proud of their achievements, and being just plain folks. Not a stern commissar in sight and no picture of comrade number one over the shoulder.  No mass demonstrations like those staged in North Korea. No uniform like the Mao jacket. The party line seems to be let’s do this and have a good time while we’re at it! None of that fits with my image of the place and times.  Where is the lash? The whip? Where is the all-seeing Comrade Number One?  No where, that’s where.