Film Reviews by sb

FILM & REVIEW Aka 5 Fingers Fascinating spy drama based on the true life WWII Cicero case. Mason is Deillo the valet to the British Ambassador in Ankara - Turkey being neutral during the war so both British and Germans intermingle. He has access to tthe Ambassador’s safe and in return for money he offers to photograph secret documents and sell them to the Germans. At first the Germans are suspicious that he is a British spy foisting false information but over time the documents are seen to be genuine. He used to be valet to a Polish Count whose widow (Darrieux) he is I love with but she is living in poverty with all her assets siezed. He entrusts her with the money while she arranges all the documents needed for both to flee to Brazil - until he discovers she has hot footed it to Switzerland with all his cash. He has no choice but risk one final plan involving the Allied plans for D-Day as the net is closing in on him Mason is superb in the role - in public subservient and obsequious but in private displaying a conceit and an overwhelming arrogance and a lot is filmed on location giving it an air of vérité. As mentioned it’s based on a little known case while at the same time one of the major British intelligence failure of the war. 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Aka - Unearthly Stranger Eerie and very effective British sci-fi - it opens with a man running panicked through the streets of nighttime London , arriving back at his office and dictating to a tape machine - by the time you hear this I will be dead.. He is Davidson (Nevillle) a UK scientist working on mind projection to enable humans to visit other planets without leaving Earth. His boss who was had cracked the formula is found dead with all the blood cells exploded in his head so the head of the project Lancaster (Stone ) promotes him. Davidson is newly married to Julia (Licudi) after a very brief whirlwind romance who raises the suspicions of head of security (Newell). Davidson himself has concerns as she never blinks and seems to know in advance about things about to happen. Slowly the suspicions mount that she may not be who she appears. Made on a minimal budget it’s really gripping with some unnerving scenes - at one point Julia is watching a school playground and all the children stop playing and slowly all walk backwards into the school and the way it’s shot and lit suggests a nightmarish quality. Strong performances with Newall giving a splendidly camp turn - it’s one of those great unknown British films of the era -4/5

FILM & SHOKTOBER Ti West’s final film in the trilogy picks up a few years after the first one finished. Having survived the massacre and dipped her toe (well rather more than her tie) into porn we find Maxxxine (Goth) a highly paid adult star who wants to break into mainstream movies. She auditions for a part in a straight to video horror sequel after impressing the director (Debicki) and hopes for fame. Meanwhile a seriel killer is carving up young girls and her past seems to catch up with her as a PI (a splendidly sleazy Bacon) is tailing her and leaving clues that current events and what happened in the first film are linked. Set in 1985 it’s got wall to wall needle drops and is very good at recreating the past with loads of knowing references to the period. Goth is very good in the part as is Debicki playing a director who wants to make great art but is stuck making video nasties and Bacon has great fun. It doesn’t stint on the gore and dresses the killer up straight out of a Giallo movie - the only thing I found was the ending was a bit of let down and less than convincing. So overall a good movie end to the series - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Raoul Walsh’s gangster picture that provided Bogart with his breakthrough role into stardom. He plays Roy Earl an aging bank robber who get a pardon from a corrupt Governor who has been paid to free him. Earl’s old boss needs him for a heist on a luxery hotel in the Sierra Mountains so he heads west to meet up with the rest of the gang. Thus includes Marie (Lupino) who wants he shot of but she persuades him to stay. He also gets involved with a family of farmers heading west with a granddaughter with a club foot who initially provides the romantic interest. Needless to say the robbery goes wrong forcing Earl and Maria to go on the run as the net closes with a cracking finale shot on location in the mountains themselves. Bogart is very good portraying Earl as quite a sympathetic figure with Lupino more interesting than the usual dame. The lame girl subplot just gets in the way plus there is one of the most annoying dogs in cinema to put up with but that aside it’s a fine later addition to the Warner Bros gangster cycle. - 4/5

 One of the odder films I have seen of late. It opens with a jogger collapsing and waking up in hospital and every time he comes around another limb has been removed . In the meantime in some Fascist state in Eastern Europe some military guy is murdering his superiors (including Peter Cushing who is in it for 5 minutes) while back in London someone is murdering girls he picks up in night clubs and draining their blood. All 3 stories run concurrently without any explanation on how they are linked until the final reveal. The killer is pursued by a splendidly world weary Alfred Marks who crosses paths with a surgeon ( Vincent Price) while a Whitehall manadarin (played by Christopher Lee) is trying retrieve a missing pilot. As I said none of any of this makes any sense in relation to each other and although the three leads get star billing only Price gets any decent screen time. There a car chase that ends up in a quarry and some grisly surgery and I suppose by the end it all just about hangs together but it’s a real hodge podge of a movie - 3.5/5

Effective and quite creepy British SciFi has a drink driver knocking down a man in the middle of the road. He takes him to a local hospital where he is wearing a wierd rubber uniform and blood tests reveal he is not human. This attracts the attention of Dr Vernon (Judd) as well as two female aliens outside. The lead alien (Tani) tells his ship crashed taking two criminals to a prison planet but his story doesn’t quite ring true and it becomes apparent he is the criminal on the run. A force field is erected around the hospital causing tempatures to soar while Tani tries to escape his captors As always it’s made on a small budget but works well with more than a hint of Quatermass about it. Interestingly it’s written by Robert Holmes who go be script editor of the Pertwee era Doctor Who and some of the ideas here made into that periods stories..4/5

FILM & REVIEW Another of Aki Kurosmaki’s droll deadpan human drama’s. Pelonpaaa (one of his regular actors) plays Nikander a garbage man whose life isn’t going anywhere . His older truck driver has plans to set up his own company but has a heart attack and dies. Nikander responds by drinking even more heavily but meets llona (Outinen) who works a supermarket checkout and whose life is as empty, She gets fired but steals a cash box and they spend a weekend by the seaside but the police are called. Nikander manages to return the cash so all is ok and she moves in with him. He is very taciturn and the romance proceeds with fits and starts more off than on but they realise how much they need each other . As always with Kurosmaki’s films it’s the awkward silences and sideway glances that reveal far more than dialogue and Pelonpaaa has one of those of this faces and that can express loads by showing nothing….another little gem. - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Hammer is best known for its classic horror movies but they also diversified into other genres including the pirate one. They made Pirates of Blood River which wasn’t very good - budget meant it was all filmed in a park in Berkshire and it showed but this is much more like it . Set during the Spanish Armada it the tale of the pirate ship The Diablo captained by Robeles (Lee) who only signed up for plunder and with the Armada destroyed intend to return to their previous occupation. The ship is in need of repairs so lands near an obscure village and relying on the real news not having arrived yet claim the Spanish were victorious and the village is under the woke of the Empire. The locals are set to work but some suspect the truth and are aided by a proper Spanish officer (Warren) who wants no part in future piracy . It opens with a full bloodied sea battle out of Errol Flynn with enough brawls, swordfights, hangings and floggings to keep it rattling along. Lee is excellent as the black hearted pirate and said it one of his favourites to make with an solid cast of English thesps on board - it’s terrific stuff - 4/5

FILM & SHOCTOBER Obscure but effective British horror set on a remote fogbound lighthouse island. It’s opens with two sailors finding a severed hand, then it’s male naked bloody corpse, a naked female with a severed head , another male impaled to a door with a golden spear and a naked girl who stabs the older sailer to death…all in the first five minutes… The girl is committed to an asylum and using drugs recreate the events of the night. Meanwhile the golden spear has attracted the attention of a group of archaeologists who arrrive on the island looking for more gold - but of course whatever murdered the teenagers is still lurking somewhere. After the initial opening it builds slowly and it seems the locals who are hired as porters know more than they are saying as the body count mounts. It’s very well done on it’s small budget and it’s solid cast allows the action to proceed along various threads - well worth seeking out - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Superb, utterly demented Japanese heist movie. Sushido (who was in the equally insane Branded to Kill) plays Togawa a gangster sprung from jail early after killing a truck driver who paralysed his sister. The mobster who sprung him needs him to steal 120 million yen from an armoured car leaving a racetrack. We learn early on he intends to betray Togawa but the heist goes ahead albeit not in quite the way it was planned. Togawa has the money but a crew who can’t wait to betray their comrades but all becomes academic when the mobster send his henchman and a small army to retrieve the cash. What follows is double cross on triple cross with huge gunbattles and beatings as no is left sure who they can trust. The body count is off the scale as the film becomes more and more deranged - it may start as a riff on Kubrick’s The Killing but it becomes something else entirely by the end. An obvious major influence on both Tarantino and John Woo it has cult classic written all over it. - 5/5

FILM & REVIEW So a plodding British sci-fi horror - a group of scientists are working on a remote island off the Irish Coast to create something that will eat cancer cells which unfortunately gets out of hand and eats them instead leaving them litterly boneless. Local doctor engages specialists Peter Cushing and Edward Judd who (accompanied by the latters dolly bird) and they set out to solve the mystery. It’s soon revealed that it’s silicite beings who absorb calcium to blame and the race is on to destroy them as they split and reproduce every 3 hours. I suppose the monsters are ok for the tiny budget and Cushing brings his normal charm and gravitas while Judd is heroic with quite a good finale as the village hall is attacked with a neat twist at the end but really expected more from director Terrance Fisher …3/5

FILM & REVIEW Cracking little small budget Noir - Ford plays Mike an engineer down on his luck who litterly rolls into town when the brakes fail on a truck he is driving. Charged with dangerous driving it’s a fine or 10 days in jail. He is bailed out by a local barmaid Paula (Carter) who has taken a shine to him but it’s soon revealed that she an ulterior motive as Mike is the same hight and build as her boyfriend Steve (Sullivan) so Mike is being set up. Steve is the VP of a local bank and has been embezzling funds into Paula’s safe deposit box and with the annual audit coming up the pair plan to flee with the cash. Only problem he will soon be tracked down - unless his car crashes and a badly burned body is found at the wheel - which is where Mike comes in. Unfortunately for Steve Paula begins to get other ideas …..then things get really complicated. Ford is as solid as ever with Sullivan all suave menace but it’s Carter who steals the film using her womanly charms to run circles around everyone. She never seemed to get any other major parts which is a shame as she’s really good - well worth tracking down - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Stray Dog - another one off my bucket list - Kusosawa’s superb and rare excursion into the cop genre. Mifume plays Marikami a rookie homicde detective in post war Tokyo. He looses his Colt 45 to a pickpocket on a crowded bus and overcome by shame offers to resign. His boss however assigns his the task of recovering it which initially plunges him into the underbelly of Tokyo and begins to see there is traffic in stolen guns. His is used in a robbery which ends in a wounding and he is assigned to that case with older more experienced Sato (Shimura ) and the hunt is on. They trawl through nighclubs, geisha bars and even a baseball ball game then discover the gun has been used again this time in murder. Each time Marikami is ever more riddled with guilt as this is all his own doing as the net closes. The whole thing is set during a blistering heatwave where everyone is tired, irritable and dripping in sweat that adds to the sense of oppression with a vital scene towards the end during a massive thunderstorm and torrential rain that breaks the heat. Mifume is excellent with a solid supporting cast and although it’s 1949 it’s remarkable how persuasive American culture already is with baseball, jazz and dancing girls. It’s interesting how it’s a cop procedural with an early example of the buddy cop movie that became such an important part of Hollywood movies - very good indeed- 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Fritz Lang’s slightly creaky melodrama has Ford as Warren a train driver back from Korea and back into his old job. One of his railway buddies who was also in Korea is Carl (Crawford) who drinks and is married to the much younger Vikki (Graham). He loses his job after a fight with his boss but gets Vikki to approach Owens who is a bigwig in the railways and she know before their marriage. She spends an entire afternoon with Owens and gets Carl his job back but he gets get to reveal quite what she had to do to secure this and flies into a jealous rage. He gets Vikki to write to Owens to meet on a train and stabs him making it look like a robbery and has the note she wrote tying her to him - and becomes ever drunker and jealous and beats her. She sees Warren as the way out of her predicament but tells so many lies even she can’t remember what she said and he begins to suspect he is being played. Based on a Emile Zola novel Graham is very good as the femme fatale manipulating others around her but Ford who is normally so good seems bemused by the whole affair and final third just peters out……bit of a shame - 3/5

FILM & WATCHED Been waiting ages for this to get a release and it may have been me but I found it a crushing disappointment. Loved all of Miyazaki’s films but this never seemed to engage -there is a narrative there but so much of it seems to be disjointed scenes that never seem to go anywhere . Characters are introduced then dissapear again and a lot of it is very confusing and borderline baffling. Even the animation seems to be a bit flat - you never get that sense of wonder as you do with the others. As I say I may be missing something but although I really wanted to connect with it - it just never happened. So because it’s Miyazaki 3/3……