Film Reviews by Frank Talker™

Amusing movie about people without the necessary social context nor cultural perspective with which to give their unfulfilling lives meaning, reality or purpose; resulting in the ennui and existential despair which inevitably comes from possessing no deep-seated sense of personal, social nor cultural identity.

Darkly funny and accurate in its depiction of those whom have never been told "No", there is, however, no explanation as to why anybody would place themselves in such a lonely position nor of why it is so hard to break free from the emotional lethargy depicted - this, despite the characters not being so delusional that they cannot actually see how delusional and self-destructive they are.

All of the performers here are excellent and make the best of the not very insightful nor particularly original material here, which is clearly not derived from personal experience.

Well-written drama about the relationship between social origins and social outcomes featuring the always beautifully turned-out Raquel WELCH and a bunch of ageing outlaws wondering if their lifestyle could ever possibly come with a realistic retirement plan.

The outlaws muse much among themselves about whether or not a universal symbol of womanhood like WELCH would ever want to spend her days with any of the men-gone-wrong like themselves, despite having kidnapped her. And the theme of men protecting women in return for women civilising men is well-observed both in Dean MARTIN protecting WELCH from the more rape-oriented members of his gang as well as from the bandolero leader - along with much talk about the affect that bad mothering had on most of the unmanly men with which this movie is replete.

An intelligent tragedy that doesn't flinch from its theme in order to offer a final act fully in keeping with the almost-entirely immoral characters on display here.

Amusing movie about a wealthy guy whom, nonetheless, has an emotionally-empty life; leading to years of unsuccessful psychoanalysis.

The narrative contains no explanation for the central characters suicidal despair nor why the Jewish culture from which he emanates has both created his moral wretchedness while also offering no solution to it.

Barbara HARRIS steals the movie in the few scenes that she is in.

Complete nonsense, really - but never boring.

Replete with much better actors than an action movie really needs, Gabriel BYRNE is the best in a persuasive performance as the Devil.

Amusing comedy caper masquerading as an action movie with the usually reliable Charles BRONSON.

Jill IRELAND and BRONSON pretend gamefully not to like each other in a parody of a seven-year-itch type marriage, but you just know that they will win each other's trust in the end.

Jan Gan BOYD is especially effective as the sexually-energetic love interest of the hero with a very amusing and a very serious Electra complex.

Everyone in this film is quite excellent except the two leads, which almost destroys the movie since they are in most of its scenes.

MADONNA is a weak-but-attractive actress and Sean PENN has no genuine comedic sensibility despite being an otherwise superb dramatic actor.

Sadly, this screen pairing partly undermines the exemplary work of the rest of the cast in a well-written and a briskly-entertaining screenplay.

Superb action-comedy with the charmingly-amusing Jean-Paul BELMONDO, playing two characters, alongside the effortlessly-sexy Raquel WELCH showing us just how good at comedy she really was.

The fact that BELMONDO does his own stunts is always a plus - especially in a movie about a movie stunt-couple.

It really required a better dramatic actress than Raquel WELCH to make this film work well since she is unable to successfully get across to the audience the trauma of having had her husband killed and then being repeatedly raped by the killers.

The strong comedy element is exactly what one would expect from director Burt KENNEDY and is well executed by Ernest BORGNINE, Jack ELAM & Strother MARTIN as three hapless outlaws. But this is not a black comedy so it all seems rather tasteless in the context of the moral degeneracy on show here.

Stephen BOYD and Diana DORS are largely wasted in somewhat pointless cameos which fritter away their talent. But the always-dependable Christopher LEE manages to convince as a Mexican - albeit with a decidedly English accent.

Interestingly, if Paco DE LUCÍA had written the musical score for this movie, it would have justified his pleasing, but too short musical cameo here.

The best thing about this movie is the rather tragedic performance of Robert CULP. He gives the movie the dramatic depth which it otherwise lacks as an aging bounty hunter with none of the fulfilling emotional ties that he clearly longs for in his personal life.

A diverting exploration of the essence of all horror: The implied mental illness of often feeling that the real world is ultimately unknowable.

This theme makes little sense in the context of a predicted global apocalypse since it implies that there is no actual distinction between madness and sanity despite the actual events depicted here being clearly distinguished from the more fantastic and brilliantly realised on-screen apparitions.

Julie CARMEN is sexily sinister and Sam NEILL expertly conveys a strong sense of the world turning upside down - both inside his head and in the world at large.

Not entirely credible but beautifully-acted -written & -shot diamond-heist caper.

The movie is filled with anti-mercantilist political points about greed as a substitute for genuine trade and the fact that capitalism in the West is little more than a facade for a rigged system designed to benefit only a few Caucasian males. This all made me root for the lower-class central character as he attempts a convoluted revenge against the world of global corporate exploitation-for-profit.

The clever twist in the middle of the film is quite surprising and forces you to reassess what is really going on here in thematic terms. All of which helps enforce the point that there is more to life than an all-too-necessary materialism.

White culture lives-off delusions of genetic superiority and, thus, White people frequently imagine that they would be singled-out for special attention by extra-terrestrials.

This White racialised wishful-thinking leads to the Caucasian gullibility we witness in this documentary "Mirage Men". With little evidence for the reality of flying saucers, White people are almost always the ones reporting a belief in the reality of such UFO phenomena.

This neurotic neediness ties-in with the White cultural belief in such things as White supremacy, the inferiority of White women, endemic homophobia & rigidly-hierarchical societies. Such attitudes make the believer feel distinctly superior, but without evidence, and this is much like the attention-seeking ploy that the loneliest kids in the school playground used to play: "I know something that you don't!"

Turned-out they didn't know anything of substantive value and that underneath all of their feigned excellence there lay a yawning inter-personal emptiness which seeks fulfilment in a belief in that which does not properly exist and a corresponding belief in themselves as the ones chosen to allegedly-enlighten others about that which does not exist. A blind faith which attempts to replace a similarly-blind religious faith because the latter was never genuinely practised by them to begin with for thousands of years.

Scientific rigour and self-respect are distinctly lacking here and helps explain why Western governments find it so easy to engage in disinformation operations - in order to conceal their actual behaviour and intent - by carefully implying to the unworldly among them exactly what the latter want to hear.

A well-written thriller, with an interesting premiss and a superb cast which suffers from lifeless direction by the male lead, Ralph RICHARDSON.

The thought of a successful marriage crumbling for no apparent reason should grip our emotions more readily than it does - especially given Margaret LEIGHTON's nuanced and subtle performance. But this film fails to really ignite, emotionally - unlike the original stage production in 1950. Perhaps explaining why it was RICHARDSON's only directorial credit.

Subtle spoof of adventure thrillers that - on the surface at least - appears very much an example of the movie genre being spoofed.

Once you realise, however, that the movie has no real hero nor heroine, you can sit back and enjoy the first-rate actors pretending to be characters whom are pretending to be otherwise than they are. (This makes it also something of a satire on the Hollywood film-production system and its combative egos, sexual perversion & illegal-drug abuse.)

Christopher NOLAN has run out of ideas. He now has to resuscitate concepts that are twenty years' old in order to keep his career going, rather than retire from being a creative himself and then to produce the works of the next generation of film directors.

The rampant egomania and intellectual arrogance here is emotionally depressing and distinctly un-entertaining as we witness an above-average talent reduced to hack work.

The characterisation is poor, the ideas ridiculous and the cast not always well-chosen. But the biggest problem is a script which gives little for the actors to do to enable them to breathe life into their characters. This lack of any possibility for audience identification leaves us with a psychologically-barren spectacle which occurs for no really-valid reason.

A waste of time.

Very funny movie about a White culture so neurotically obsessed with social conformity that social behaviour becomes largely a pretence in which observing others becomes a form of social control wherein everyone is watching everyone else for signs of non-conformity.

In this scenario, personal relationships are inevitably faked, with a concomitant preoccupation with physical appearance and smart dress - along with emotionally-repressed behaviour. The characters know whom they are and what their actual natures are, which tell them what to do, yet most are openly resentful and overtly jealous of anyone courageous enough to actually love themselves for themselves - no matter the potential for social censure.

The funniest parts of the movie concern affectionless upbringings which leave many of the characters with a great difficulty in creating meaning in their lives and, thus, any kind of personal fulfilment. They become physical adults yet remain emotionally-immature in repeating the same psychologically-conditioned and emotionally-conditioning mistakes of their parents. Only the ethnic-minority characters have any genuine and expressive sense of life for us to contrast with the idiosyncacies of the White ones.

Underneath all of this simmering self-alienation is a desire for the kind of impassioned sex which helps us to understand ourselves with greater clarity and others with greater insight. Rhys IFANS' hilarious attempts at sexual congress with objects and strangers (which lead to mild electric shocks administered by the disapproving and his subsequent immersion in the world of prostitution) makes this point brilliantly. But the focus of so many of the characters on science, as opposed to intuition, as a means of self-realisation means few succeed at developing a full sense of their own humanity.

Despite it being as sexually coy, this movie is an eloquent plea for the essential humanity of humanity, which still does not endeavour to explain why White culture is so enamoured of the emotional repression shown here.