Category: Film Review

Death of Pilgrim (2013)

IMDb meta-data is 3 hours and 53 minutes in four episodes, rated 7.0 by 866 cinematizens.  

Genre: Krimi.

Verdict: A slow burn. 

One of the most thoroughly investigated murders in history occurred at 11:20 pm on downtown street in Stockholm on the night of 28 February 1968.  While leaving a movie theatre with his wife, Olof Palme, incumbent prime minister of Sweden, was shot dead.  

In this film a senior police officer nearing retirement agrees with a cabinet minister in his last term to review the case decades later, and so begins the research into the files, parking tickets, the few photographs before smart phones, the endless and contradictory witness statements, thought experiments to re-act the crime, timing of comings and goings, sifting the thousands of reports seeking the reward, sorting out the reliable from the unreliable, testing witness chains, and the growing feeling that someone has obstructed the effort when…. (where did parking ticket receipt go?)  

 Layered over all that is another investigation into neo-Nazi influence in the police and security services though it evaporates from the story.  It is complicated, and yet it is also simple: Someone pulled the trigger.

It is full of references to unnatural practices with reindeers and Lapplanders to give it Swedish authenticity.  Viewer discretion is advised.     

In one marvellous scene a disagreeable police officer whose alcoholism has seen him relegated to manage a warehouse of lost property until he can be retired, realises the best place to hide something is….right there in the lion’s den. But will anyone listen to this slovenly sodden man?  That is capped by the last lingering camera shot at the end. Stay with it.  There is no padding in this production: every word, every look, every shot integrates into the story. 

By the way, ‘Pilgrim’ was a Security Service codename for Palme.  

In all it is brilliantly produced, directed, and acted, but sometimes hard to follow with the cross-cut timelines, and cryptic dialogue. Miss a title card with the date, and you are lost. Still such an uncompromising approach made this viewer pay attention. 

For those who must know, the solution is banal. No vast conspiracy. Just one angry man who latched onto a chance opportunity, and had the means to do so.   

By following a piece of string, I have been reading a lot about Sweden lately and was reminded that I had seen this series, so I went looking for it, thinking I could watch it again and get more out of it now that I know some of the context from the reading. I did and I did. 

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1984)

IMDb meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 45 minutes, rated 8.0 by 4727 cinematizens.  

Genre: Sherlockiana.

Verdict: Inert.

Hound of the Baskervilles (1983)  

IMDb mea-data is runtime 1 hour and 40 minutes, rated 6.6 by 1129 cinematizens.  

Genre: Sherlockiana.

Verdict: Foggy.

The Hound gets another workout in this misty production with little to remember from it. 

Ian Richardson as Holmes is condescending and superior.  Donald Churchill plays Watson as Nigel Bruce without the avuncular charm.  Brian Blessed injects some energy into a still life of a movie.  

The major characters of The Moor and The Hound are obscured by the fog machine run amok.   

But notice this, in Holmes’ study at Baker Street 221B there hangs on the wall near the door a picture that seems to be of a Turk in uniform.  A very similar picture is to be seen in many episodes of the Jeremy Brett productions, including that of the Hound of 1988.  I found myself more interested in this coincidence than in the narrative.  

Cloak without Dagger (1956)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 9 minutes, rated 5.6 by 126 cinematizens.

Genre: Spy

Verdict: energetic

Post war a woman sees a man she encountered during the war and knows to be a spy.  Impetuously she sets out to tackle him with the subtlety of sledgehammer.  She is aided by a hotel house detective who is comic relief, well, comic anyway, and also a former boyfriend counter spy. The boyfriend is too good to be true, but is. 

The spy is after the plans — is it always plans? — of an atomic-powered tank, which mercifully we never see.  Ever reliable West Australian Allan Cuthbertson plays a by-the-book soldier toward the end. Cuthbertson had served the RAAF during the war in Air Sea Rescue in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea campaigns. After that playing solider must have been a lark.   

I rather hoped the title indicated a bit more wit than slapstick, but not to be.

Castle Sinister (1948)

IMDb meta-data is runtime the longest 49 minutes ever recorded, rated an astounding 3.6 by 137 monkeys at keyboards.

Genre:  Old Dark House.

Verdict: Fail.

In a remote, suitably gloomy Scots castle our cast gathers to read the script with growing disbelief.  Because most of the chaps are in uniform it must be wartime, but you’d hardly know from the dialogue.

Soon enough the number of guests at Castle Gloom decreases and the simple working class retainers blame the Phantom, which is never explained, but we do see someone lurking about in a robe and cowl with a skeleton mask waiting for Halloween.  

Danger Man is unavailable so this is a case for oxymoronic Army Intelligence. There is a confused and confusing love interest, an immature boy-soldier, a dour laird, an aloof and icy ladyship, and all those uniforms. With a touch of realism the AI investigator spends all his time in the local pub.  

Turns out one of the uniforms is a Nasty Spy who is – sit down and take a deep breath – the father of the youngest son. Wait, father!  How did that happen?  [In the usual way.]  And the son has in his possession secret plans for deep-fried Mars bars!  The Scots’ secret weapon!  

It gets worse. Much of the dialogue is spoken by the actors with their backs to the camera.  This is a technique that makes expensive synchronisation between audio and video unnecessary. When it is not used, it is apparent that the dialogue is indeed out of synchronisation. 

Released on 19 February 1948 with a thud, even as a quota quickie this must have been shelved.  None of the players is noted for anything else on the IMDb. Most of them have but a few credits and for several this is the only one.  Good career move. Quit.   

About half the run time is distance shots of the exterior of the heap and some murky interiors.  Dashed were my hopes for an Old Dark House with secret passages, cobwebs, sliding panels, spring loaded walls, and spy holes.  

Not to be mistaken for the lost 1932 film of the same title, though losing this one would be a service.

The Flight that Disappeared (1961)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 11 minutes, rated 5.6 by 446 cinematizens

Genre; Sy Fy

Verdict: Zzzzzzzzz

The cast assembles on a wide-bodied trans-continental jet passenger plane, as per the movie poster, only to discover it has propeller-driven engines!  Gadzooks!  

The identity problem of the airplane is only the first of their problems.  

This is the Otranto Airlines Flight 000 from LA to DC with no stops at SL on the way.  Remember overhead bins without doors?  Well, I do and it was nostalgic seeing them again, waiting for the rain of hats and coats which never came.  This film is too high concept for that old chestnut.  

The passengers board; everyone smokes.  Beau sits next to Belle and he is astounded to discover she can add 2 + 2.  That mathematicians for you.  He on the other hand is an engineer, motors and such, but the only oil is in his manner not in his pores and he does not have the one long finger nail mechanics need to get at screw heads, or so I have been told.  His engineering is done on the drawing board: ‘That should work!’  

Silently enduring an attack of the piles with many a grimace is a bearded man with a deep voice.  He has to be a professor what with the way he cannot find his ticket.  

Then there is the salesman stereotype played by the ever reliably irritating Roy Engel (aka as Engle)  and a middle-aged blind woman with her attentive but not very bright husband.  Yes he is a proto-GOP specimen off the petri dish who raves about Reds among the dust bunnies under his seat.  

Nailed it, this is a Cold War …, well, ‘drama’ seems too strong a word, let’s just say, piece, and leave the ‘of what’ to the imagination. The intentions are the only thing good about it.

Half the run time is assembling the cast.  The only drama is handled by the supporting actors in the cockpit and they do it well, when those prop wannabe jet engines take on a life of their own.  The pilot, co-pilot, navigator, and cabin staff up front play out a drama within the play in the few minutes they have the camera.  

Turns out Prof, Belle, and Beau are the brains of a new super-duper weapon that will vaporise THEM and they are travelling to DC to sign the death warrant for civilisation.  

After Husband jumps out of the back door, they realise that a higher force has rid them of that nuisance so that it can judge them for their about to be sins. Remember, it made sense to the screenplay writer.   

The plane is suspended at an impossible height and they exit through the same door — very gingerly — to meet a silent, youthful jury and a judge who lectures them on their destructive weapon while in the mist the jurors mutter. It is all allegorical or metaphysical or hermeneutical or something.  Scientists are held responsible, not the politicians and soldiers who might use such a weapon. Does that compute?  

STOP!

It has the seriousness, the sincerity, the drivel of a play written by a high school student.  If we changed the weapon to pollution and the scientists to moguls I might suspect an acned Al Gore!  It is that wooden, pompous, and vacuous.  

The dialogue is lifeless and there is no action.  Most of the players are more intent on finding their floor marks than projecting. Odd that since most are sitting down. Though there is a corker of a review on IMDb written by a full bo[o]r(e) GOPer.  Check it out.  It is easy to spot with its 10-point rating and incoherent spouting.  At least Husband had the grace to exit. He must have known what was coming.    

Once Sunday School is out, the three scientists get a reprieve to eat their notes instead of the airline food, which at the time was probably a better culinary choice. There will be no Yankee super weapon.  Kind of makes you wonder what THEM will do though. (Guilty, I had the volume so low it is possible that the lecturer covered that and I missed it.  Maybe he has a sibling lecturing away in Russian.)

The clue that it was a fantasy was that the airplane is so wide-bodied that three people could walk past each other in the aisle!   

Not even Aristotle could figure out why the jumping husband was there in the first place and why the wife had to be blind. After he jumped she was written out.

The IMDb entry gives a release data of September 1961, but no further details. A cynic might suspect it was released into the wild and no one took it. No premiere location is given contrary to the general practice.  

The Candidate (2010)

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 19 minutes, rated 7.8 by 868 cinematizens.

Genre: Sy fy

Verdict: Corker.

The greasy pole of sales representatives in the corporate world looks just that: greasy.  Protagonist is slick, sleek, smug, and sure, but he is saddled with a bumbling, inept, ill-kempt Partner who holds him back. Partner is always late, cannot find the right room, PowerPoint remains a mystery to him, slovenly, confused, and a dead weight.

But the greater mystery which silently infuriates Protagonist is that Partner is well thought of in the firm despite his obvious ineptitude.  There is no justice in this world!  (Hands up everyone who has thought that sometime!)

All the while, Protagonist gets a string of texts, emails, letters, calls from Nobody who wants an appointment.  Protagonist has no time for appointments with nobodies and rejects these requests, until one day Nobody walks into his office and makes his pitch.  As a salesman himself, Protagonist is amused by this persistent, if diffident, approach of Nobody and condescends to spare him five-minutes.

Nobody then explains the procedure by which a person can be willed to death!  He has answers for all of Protagonist’s objections, what-ifs, and questions. All that is required a one-time fee of $50.   

SPOILER coming.  

Thinking of bumbling Partner, Protagonist has nothing to lose but a measly  $50 and says he will join up.  After all $50 is small change for him.  

But no, he has misunderstood the pitch…., Nobody explains.

Protagonist is the intended victim whose death is now willed and will occur. This was but a courtesy call so that he can get his affairs in order.  ‘Good afternoon,’ Nobody says, as he takes his leave.

In the last minutes Protagonist sees his world in a new light, and the sight transformations of the loyal receptionist, Partner, and others is sharp but subtle. Deft film-making indeed.   

It is a gem with plenty of the commotion of a big firm in the background, and Robert Picardo (aka Dr Hologram) as Nobody is perfect.  While in the cast there is also a princess royal answering the telephone in the outer office. (Figure it out.) Protagonist is reptilian and memorable for it.  

I came across it on DUST and I wanted to write it up so as to remember it.  Move over O’Henry.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (2002)

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 40 minutes, rated 6.6 by 2242. cinematizens.  

Genre: Holmes.

Verdict:  The moor!

The elder Baskerville dies out on the moor in peculiar circumstances, and his young heir arrives from Canada to assume the title.  But Dr Mortimer has seen that footprint and goes to Sherlock Holmes for advice.  This is a perfectly cast Holmes, though his attention to personal grooming is not Holmesian, but he crackles with intelligence and dominates proceedings even while off-camera.  

The cast of characters is assembled in the rambling and slightly ramshackle mansion near the moor.  The hound puts in a stunning, early appearance that stayed with me after I first saw this twenty years ago.  The staging is great but the inserted dialogue is pathetic in compassion.  Likewise the outdoor scenes on the moor are splendid but the accompanying dialogue is not, and too little of it comes from the original.  

The villain is obvious, since he is the only one we get to know, the others are ciphers and might as well be CGI.  Even the subplot with the butler and his wife is bleached into near nothingness.  But the villain, played by Richard Grant, is magnificent.  He switches on and off from maniacal to charming, from genial to menacing, from sincere to evil in a twinkle. Superb.  

The Jeremy Brett version was absolutely literal to Conan Doyle’s text and the poorer for it.  It did not make use of the sight and sound to do what ink on the page could not do to generate an atmosphere.  Ergo literary fidelity is not an end in itself, but in this 2002 version so many liberties are taken with the text that the air is let out of the plot.    

Watson is made a credible figure in the dialogue, though the actor in the role is far from convincing. He seems like a little boy trying to act like a big boy, even his hat seems too big for him. Underneath Dr Mortimer’s beard, side burns, straggling hair, and moustache is Inspector Barnaby who would have made a far better Watson.    

A casual search on the IMDb returns a dozen of more versions of the HotB, and there are others with altered titles.  I have seen Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Christoper Lee, Jeremy Brett, and Ian Richardson each in turn battle that dog, as well as Benedict Cumberatch, and now (again) Richard Roxborough.  

Danger Man (1960 +)

IMDB meta-data is 39 episodes of 24 minutes each, rated 7.9 by 984 cinematizens and then another fifty of 50 minutes each.  

Genre: Adventure

Verdict: Go! 

Before he became Prisoner Number Six, he was Danger Man or was that Dangerman, or even Secret Agent, roaming the world as either American, British, NATOist, or Irish.  That is all part of the mystic. The initial opening credits show the US capitol dome and that has led most reviewers to conclude he was supposed to be American, but the earliest episodes occur in the ebbing British Empire and in the opening voice over the phrasing of the reference to NATO sounds like that is the one, while in later episodes he says he works for his country (whichever that might be), but then he also names NATO as his employer in another. He also says he is Irish-American. The man always has a cover story. By the way, NATO headquarters at the time was in Paris, not DC.  Later he becomes British if not English.      

The half-hour episodes zip along. The opening is a crime of some sort, and then our hero, Drake, John Drake, is dispatched to some obscure, exotic, distant locale to sort it out. The characters are set in motion without tedious backstories and get on with it. The narratives are models of construction, as opposed to the padded and wandering story lines that dominate bloated, wallowing films these days.  

Some of the scripts are very clever.  I particularly liked the seeing blind woman.  In another, Drake’s contact on site is a woman who is in effect his boss during the mission.  No fuss is made over that, it just is that way.  Ditto when a woman is the CEO of an African Airline.  Best might be Drake in a wheel chair.  Never seen that done before or since. Although there are clangers, even in the earliest episodes, say when a banker absconds with a ton of gold and stores it in a really big and really heavy box, which no one notices for some time, or the Swedish school teacher stereotype who trips over everything.    

Everyone smokes more or less constantly, even when lying in wait to ambush Drake, and no one is without a drink of alcohol in hand for more than two minutes.  There are many tuxedos as Drake moves among the elite where there is the most opportunity for corruption.  But then there is that leather pork pie hat he sports in some later episodes that takes the couture down to leagues club level. In early episodes he gets by on his wits and fists and audacity but as the series goes on more gadgets (cameras, microphones, drones, and other gizmos) and guns are added to the mix.       

Patrick McGoohan was more Roman Catholic than the Pope and made it part of his contract that the character would not bed women nor do anything immoral, like assassinate a target. While Drake is often compared to James Bond, the similarities end there.

The first two seasons were not a great success, but then Dr No created a demand for spy entertainment, and Danger Man was rejuvenated, re-newed, re-titled to Secret Agent, and extended to an hour.  To lure McGoohan back the episodes were expanded to one hour and he was given considerable creative input, often under pseudonyms. In these longer episodes he is clearly British right down to the Austin Cooper.   

The hour long scripts are repetitive and preachy all too often as Drake has become a more or less self-appointed, self-righteous, and cosmopolitan do-gooder. He spares no one his sermons, not even his superiors whom he takes to task regularly even as they sign the pay cheques. He is altogether insufferable. It is easy to see why he went to the Village.  

In the wake of Dr No there are also even more guns, girls, and gadgets.  

The hour long episodes are hard to watch and I find myself tuning out in a way that I did not do with the shorter ones, where to blink was to miss the action where Drake outsmarted is opponents rather than berated his superiors.

It is chance to see a host of performers in earlier days from Derren Nesbitt, Lois Maxwell, Donald Pleasance, Hazel Court, John Le Mesurier, Charles Gray, Mai Zetterling, Honor Blackman, Nigel Green, Ron Fraser, Burt Kwok, Sylvia Sims, and the list goes on and on.  Most, but not all episodes can be found on You Tube or Daily Motion and the DVDs are available from Amazon.    

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 5 minutes, rated 5.3 by 89 cinematizens.

Genre: krimi.

Verdict: Slow but ahead of its time.

Two middle age, middle class women die without any apparent case of death after attending a séance with a professional medium. For reasons not at all clear to this viewer the decision is to assign a female officer to investigate.  Ah, but there are no female investigating officers so the senior, female traffic warden, Mrs Pym, is summoned, and offered the assignment with the temporary promotion to inspector.  She agrees with an alacrity that surprises all.   

A male offsider is assigned to assistant and also to keep an eye on her. Nudge, nudge, wink. In fact, he quickly subordinates himself to her.  

She changes out of uniform and sets off.  First she tries to figure out the (ingenious and fantastic) means of murder, because it is murder!  Now I realise the suspicion that dogs have of vacuum cleaners is warranted. She also starts trying to identify, provoke, and trap the murderer.  She makes mistakes but keeps going. The plot is thickened because….SPOILER…there were two villains working on different agendas.   (Admission, I forget the details and it was just last night.)  

Mary Clare (1892-1970) was Mrs Pym. Most of her theatrical career was on the stage with a few supporting roles in films likeThe Clairvoyant (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938), and Oliver Twist (1948). This title was her only lead.  Her later work was in television.  I had rather hoped this was the first of a series, but not so.  

It was released on 13 April 1940 just before the Phoney War got real.