Film Reviews by GI

The 1950s were the 'golden age' of the American western, many of the greatest westerns were made in this decade and this is one of them. Director Anthony Mann made five westerns with James Stewart and this is the last of them. It's epic in scale, shot in beautiful technicolor and blurs the edges of genre convention. Ostensibly this is a revenge narrative but this has film noir overtones and the good guy/bad guy tropes are blurred and conflicted. Stewart plays Will Lockhart who rides into town with a team of wagons and stores for delivery to Barbara (Cathy O'Donnell) the local store owner. But Lockhart has another darker agenda, he's searching for the man responsible for selling rifles to the Apaches who are still running amok and are an ever present threat to the area. Lockhart's brother was a trooper massacred by Apaches with these guns and he's determined to kill whoever is responsible. This is where Stewart exhibits the light and greys of his screen persona. He's all Mr Nice Guy one minute and then seething with repressed anger the next. Soon he comes up against the Waggoman family, run by rancher and patriarch Alec (Donald Crisp), Alec's psychopathic son Dave (Alex Nicol) and the ranch foreman Vic (Arthur Kennedy) and the seeds of Will's investigation begin to take root. There's a pointless love interest with Barbara thrown in and even though by today's standards it's tame there is, for the times, some hard violence including a deliberate wounding of Will and a scene where he is dragged by rope. The narrative follows the classic plot line often found in myth and legend and utilised many times in the western. An outside 'force' arrives to unsettle a community, causes disruption in unraveling evil and then restores the stars quo, riding off with little reward if any. Stewart's Lockhart is the outsider who disrupts the status quo and forces the bad guy out into the open causing everyone's lives to be disrupted but ultimately left for the better. He leaves with no personal gain, in this case not even the love interest. There's much to admire in this film and it's worthy of close viewing to appreciate just how sharp and interesting it is.

There's a few entertaining moments to enjoy in this overly long superhero/comicbook film from the DC universe. But it doesn't take the genre anywhere new or original and builds up to the inevitable giant punch up. Most of the in jokes come from the references to previous DC films and, if you're a certain age, you'll get all these 'jokes' easily enough but I'm not sure younger audiences will and that's who this film is mainly going to attract. Perhaps DC hopes it will encourage their older movies to get a new audience. What is shamelessly on offer here is an attempt to meet the MCU on level grounds but it doesn't work here. The DC heroes don't comfortably sit together like the MCU ones do and consequently Batman, Superman etc fare better in films on their own and not joined up in a big gang. Here the quite minor character The Flash (Ezra Miller), alias Barry Allen, in an attempt to prove his father innocent of murdering his mother uses his super speed powers to go back in time but manages to change the past and finds himself trapped in an alternate universe where he has no powers, there are no other superheroes yet and the Earth is threatened by an alien invasion. Miller gets to play two versions of himself, mostly in a comic 'Dumb & Dumber' type situation and essentially gurns his way through the film. DC fans will applaud that we get a variety of Batmans from the past, the main one being Michael Keaton, and as the plot unfolds there are glimpses of various Supermans too. The cameos are amusing and some of the movie jokes too (the one about Back To The Future especially so) but the film lacks any real dramatic depth and follows the usual tropes of this genre, devoid of new ideas it's another mildly watchable family film that is instantly forgettable. Come on DC you nailed it with The Dark Knight Trilogy, almost nailed it with Man of Steel but otherwise it's mostly been a damp squib.

A survivalist thriller that gets away with the sheer implausibility and ridiculousness of the story because it's all done so very well. Shunning the expense of green screen and CGi director Scott Mann opts for in camera stunts and the edits work so well you'll struggle to see any of the joins. This makes for a really tense and compelling drama even though the ending feels a little anticlimactic but is made up for with a great plot twist. Best friends, Becky (Grace Caroline Curry) and Hunter (Virginia Gardner), are adrenaline junkies but after a mountaineering accident kills her husband Becky has fallen into grief stricken depression. Hunter arrives one day with a plan to snap her out of this and suggests they climb an abandoned 2000 feet high TV tower in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Becky reluctantly agrees and off they go without telling a soul where they are going or taking sufficient supplies, such as water, with them. Once you forgive this as necessary for the drama to work the film gets quickly into the suspense as once at the top the ladder gives way trapping them with apparent little hope of rescue (no phone signal you see). But like this sort of narrative often is their predicament is a puzzle for them to unravel and it's intriguing as to how they go about it. As I say there are a couple of good plot twists one of which is pretty obvious and the other a neat way of keeping the drama moving. Overall an entertaining film, not for those who don't like heights as some of the shots are very effective, but worth checking out.

An impeccable cast, a fantastic script based on a celebrated play and a story that invokes the nuances of politics and law as manipulated by power hungry wannabes makes this historical drama a fantastic film that deserves a resurgence. With Robert Shaw as Henry VIII (Oscar nominated), Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More (Best Actor Oscar), Orson Welles as Cardinal Wolsey, Leo McKern as Thomas Cromwell and other greats such as John Hurt, Vanessa Redgrave, Susannah York and Nigel Davenport this is a cast to die for! This is the story of Sir Thomas More who was Chancellor of England and a devout catholic who refused to take the oath of allegiance to Henry when he renounced Rome and set himself up as the Head of the Church of England in order to secure a divorce and marry Anne Boleyn. But More cleverly stands on his principles without incriminating himself. But a reluctance to go against the King's wishes by the court and betrayed by a liar he is nevertheless condemned. What's remarkable about this film is how it resonates with politics even to this day with the casual use of lies and innuendo, a lack of morality and sycophancy that drives the characters to get what they want. This is a wonderful film and one to really savour time and time again, it thoroughly deserved it's 6 Oscars, 7 BAFTAs and 4 Golden Globes. If you missed it then I urge you to seek it out.

Director Christopher Nolan's first feature is an intriguing film. Shot in pasty black and white it has the feel of a British 50s or early 60s drama and has the shifts in time in order to tell the story and keep the viewer hooked. A down on his luck aspiring writer (Jeremy Theobald) begins following strangers around the city in order to get material for characters in a project he wants to start. After awhile this becomes an obsession until a man he has been following rumbles him. This is Cobb (Alex Haw) who is a house burglar and takes the writer on his crimes and teaches him the tricks of the trades. One of their victims is a young woman (Lucy Russell) with whom the writer begins a relationship but is everyone who they say they are? The films structure is quite neat and compelling as you get hints of future events that are left unexplained until later in the story. It's well edited and acted throughout although most of the cast are unknowns. The seeds of Nolan's later epic films and his complex story structures are all here to see. If you're a fan of his films then this is one you should check out.

A supernatural psychodrama that boasts some great performances and has a very intriguing narrative but ultimately loses itself and leaves a feeling that something is missing. Even the eerie final image fails to leave you with a sense of completeness with this film even though it has some really fascinating elements. Set in a picturesque French town near to the Alps it concerns Joanne (the always excellent Adèle Exarchopoulos), a swimming coach who is unhappily married to Jimmy (Moustapha Mbengue) and with whom she has a young daughter, Vicky (Sally Dramé). Mother and daughter are very close although Vicky seems to shun anybody else and she's racially bullied at school. Joanne discovers one day that Vicky has a heightened and bizarre sense of smell which Joanne thinks is strange but it's not until her husband's sister, Julia (Swala Amati) comes to stay that Vicky's 'gift' comes to the fore and she can fall into trance that allows her to witness events in the past that affected her parents. This brings out old wounds and issues that affects them all. I'm not convinced that the strange events of the film work well enough but this does keep you watching.

Classical Hollywood at its finest and the quintessential Chandleresque detective story although the original book is by Dashiell Hammett. Director John Huston's first effort from his own screenplay and although intended for George Raft the film sets the movie persona of Humphrey Bogart. He's the dry, cynical and very craggy Sam Spade who along with his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) is hired by a beautiful woman (Mary Astor) to find her younger sister and get her away from a man called Thursby. When Miles and Thursby are both murdered Sam sets out to find out what's going on especially as he's become a suspect of the police for the murders. A conspiracy soon emerges involving the woman, a dandy named Cairo (Peter Lorre) and a sinister businessman (Sydney Greenstreet) over a valuable statuette called The Maltese Falcon. It's a sheer delight of a story, full of twists and turns and the events, for the most part, are controlled by Spade who always seems to know or suspect what is going on. Bogart plays him as a very dark, almost malevolent character and certainly one who will sacrifice anyone for the end result. It's definitely one of his finest roles. The camerawork and narrative plotting are all typical examples of classical Hollywood filmmaking but with extra panache and whilst the script has the characters overexplain things which occasionally jars the flow of the film by todays standards this is still a private eye film masterpiece.

Slow burning, stylish noir thriller with Michael Fassbender as a samurai like assassin forced onto a journey of revenge when a 'hit' goes wrong. Cold and professional hitmen litter the cinematic world from Alain Delon in Le Samourï (1967) to Tom Cruise in Collateral (2004) and here we have a philosophical killer who narrates his life all the while trying to convince himself he's not breaking his own rules. The film starts quite slowly with the assassin holed up in an office with a sniper rifle patiently waiting for his target to appear. When, despite all his careful preparations, the job goes suddenly awry he finds he becomes the target and he calmly and ruthlessly tracks down everyone involved, globe trotting from Paris to the Dominican Republic to USA in order to do so. There's some brutal violence along the way. It's all totally absurd but strangely compelling basically because Fassbender and director David Fincher approach the film with absolute conviction and create a certain disquiet as we follow the killer on his mission. And the great Tilda Swinton supports and consequently it makes for a rather enjoyable experience.

Well this is an oddity. A satirical, vaguely comedic and certainly avant garde and surrealistic look at art for art's sake....possibly!! Set in a big country house where a performance art trio have secured the gig of producing 'sonic cooking' where, to an audience, they create sounds mixed with food preparation and thrown into this weirdness is a story about alimentary ailments. I didn't get it and I suppose only real fans of writer & director Peter Strickland are going to. I can't say it even intrigued me much even though I understand the deliberate absurdity and unrealness of it is designed to bait the viewer.

An iconic 80s film and one of the best life affirming comedies. It holds up pretty well today mainly because its key message is still relevant....if not more so. Basically it's that life is what happens to you while you're doing other things so enjoy every moment and everyday. And as a teen comedy it's really hilariously funny. Ferris (Matthew Broderick), a very confident high school student, goes to elaborate lengths to bunk the day off from school luring his best friend Cameron (Alan Tuck) and girlfriend, Sloane (Mia Sara) to join him and take off into Chicago in Cameron's Dad's prize classic Ferrari. Only the school principal doesn't believe Ferris' sick story and is determined to catch him out. With a great musical number set piece and score along with various scrapes and close encounters with his adoring parents and very jealous sister (Jennifer Grey) this rattles along at such a neat pace, constantly enjoyable and fun all the while ridiculing mind numbing education systems and accepted norms of society. Broderick has the charm and cheeky glint of the eye making him perfect casting as Ferris, a role that is probably his most famous and Jeffrey Jones as the hapless principal is hilarious throughout. A bit of a cult favourite this is of its time but still worth checking out if you've never seen it.

Sam Peckinpah was a visionary director and is often misunderstood today or relegated to just a man who made violent films. But looked at closely Peckinpah's films reveal a genius at work. Major Dundee was a big budget almost epic western and Peckinpah had a unique vision for the film but like much of his work it was savagely interfered with by a misguided and panicked studio. Columbia Pictures was expecting a Fordian style Cavalry vs Indians action film but what they got was a serious study of two complex men, pitting themselves against each other and involving battles with French lancers, extended scenes of character angst and a narrative that required some real thought and understanding. As a result they ruthlessly cut the film and Peckinpah disowned it despite star Charlton Heston's personal backing. Luckily a restored Peckinpah cut has reached us and it's a flawed masterpiece. Heston is the titular Major Dundee, a cavalry officer who's stubbornness has earned him a lowly command of a fort cum prison camp in New Mexico in the closing months of the Civil War. A marauding Apache and his band massacre the troop Dundee sends to suppress them and so Dundee, against orders, gives chase into Mexico. To achieve this he has to bargain with the Confederate prisoners to help him and their leader is Ben Tyreen (Richard Harris). Dundee and Tyreen have history and their relationship is the centre of the narrative. It's a complex one, and despite a romance with Senta Berger thrown into the tale, it's the journey, that takes place over several months, that irons out the brotherly love/hate relationship that these two men have. Peckinpah had a cinematic love affair with Mexico, many of his finest films take place there, and he was also a great screenwriter managing to simplify language but add gritty realism to it at the sametime. In Major Dundee can be seen the seeds of his masterpiece The Wild Bunch (1969) and his unique (for the time) depictions of violence. Major Dundee is mostly restrained in that regard, we only see after the opening massacre is over for instance, but the final river crossing battle is brutal and exciting. But like all Peckinpah's films it's the flawed heroes that stand out, in all his films they are deeply contradictory in nature and drive and Heston's Dundee stands out as such a hero. A complex character driven by human frailty and emotional dysfunction; it's certainly rare for a film 'hero' to woo the beautiful woman only to turn to a lowly prostitute very soon after. Dundee does just this. He's one of Peckinpah's great anti-heroes and Heston is to be applauded for taking on such role. This is a film that is worth your time to seek out and to watch with care. Indeed, it's one of the great westerns of the 60s.

After his brilliant study of the American porn industry of the 1970's with Boogie Nights (1997) Paul Thomas Anderson followed up with Magnolia. A complex drama that sets itself up with three introductory stories as a film about coincidence when in fact it's a film about connection, pain and regret. The action takes place over one day in the San Fernando Valley as several lives become intertwined and, for the most part, hurtle towards a final cataclysmic collision the like of which is completely unexpected. This is an ensemble piece with some quite remarkable performances. Jason Robards is Earl Partridge, a TV magnate, who is dying of cancer and has deep regrets over his past treatment of his first wife and the love of his life and their son from whom he is now estranged. Philip Seymour Hoffman (an actor that always raises the game when he appears in any film) is the nurse tending Earl and the only character that doesn't seem to be suffering from self-loathing. Then there's Linda (Julianne Moore) Earl's younger second wife who married him for his money but who has since fallen in love with him and feels no joy only utter anguish. Earl's TV company produces a tacky quiz show where children are pitted against adults. The host is Philip Baker Hall who loathes the job and is also dying but harbours a dark family secret which he hides from his living wife, Melinda Dillon but which involves his cocaine addicted daughter Claudia (the wonderful Melora Walters). To top all of these Tom Cruise excels as the slimy Frank TJ Mackey, a loathsome man who runs motivational speaking engagements called 'Seduce & Destroy' to teach weak men how to get sex by basically being downright misogynistic to the women in their lives. It's a brave performance with real depth. Linking all this together is a very profound narrative that is complex and very powerful and with biblical references liberally sprinkled throughout for the keen viewer to spot. This is a highly original film and on first viewing it may baffle but it's worth repeated looks as the thrust of the ideas soon start to reveal themselves. The surrealistic ending is certainly unique in a film like this.

Hi-octane action film that is for the gaming generation with a fairly routine cops and robbers narrative wrapped around testosterone speed junkie gangs who get their kicks racing the streets of Los Angeles in specially adapted race cars. A hugely popular franchise gained its roots with this, the first film, which is bright, noisy and pretty clichéd throughout. The story, for what it's worth, is that a highly organised gang of hijackers using super speed cars, forces big trucks off the road and steals their loads. Into this world is sent undercover cop, Brian (Paul Walker), to try and find out who is behind it. He manoeuvres his way into the gang of Dom (Vin Diesel), falls for his sister, and eventually loses sight of whose side he's on! But really the story matters not because this is just really a showcase for muscled guys with their harem of female followers racing cars, having fights and occasionally shooting each other and generally having a good time. It's a popular series but this the first is a routine affair and if here had been no others I'm sure this would be quickly forgotten.

Director Martin Scorsese presents a really remarkable story here that echoes the genocide of Native Americans in a sordid tale of corruption, greed and murder, themes that Scorsese has repeatedly returned to in his films. This is epic in structure and has a quiet, deliberately slow pace that makes it all the more powerful. Based on real events in Oklahoma in the 1920s on the reservation of the Osage tribe who have become rich on the discovery of oil on the land. This brings about a serious anomaly for American culture where the whites are subservient to the wealthier Indians but still operate a control with corrupt laws that forces the Osage to have white financial overseers to control their money. Into this mix returns Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio), a needy and stupid man, freshly demobbed from the Army, who is given a job by his uncle William (Robert De Niro). William is one of Scorsese's most abhorrent villains, a man of deep resentment of the Osage but to whom he outwardly presents himself as a friend and benefactor all the while plotting to gain their wealth. He manipulates the useless Ernest to court and marry wealthy Mollie (Lily Gladstone), an Osage who along with her family are oil rich, to then control her wealth. Members of the tribe including Molly's family are gradually being murdered with little if any intervention by the local authorities. But eventually the newly formed Bureau of Investigation intervenes to get to the bottom of who is behind the deaths. The scenes of casual murder are shocking, all the more so by them being presented as almost idle chores by the odious white men under William's control. The racism exhibited here is central to the film's message and Scorsese does not hold back on his condemnations and in this I was reminded of the similar power of Mississippi Burning (1988). This true crime drama is a powerful film, a story of the bloody birth of modern America that is quite horrific. DiCaprio is excellent as the easily controlled weapon of De Niro's William Hale. Ernest is a man of complex emotions he cannot understand in himself, he carries out Hale's bidding without compunction but equally appears to really love and care for Mollie. Hale and Ernest' eventual downfall at the hands of the FBI (with Jesse Plemons excellent as the lead agent) is a mix of betrayal and conflicted loyalties. De Niro, DiCaprio and Gladstone are all superb here. An utterly absorbing film despite its length and certainly one of Scorsese's triumphs as a filmmaker.

It's surprising that this classic western was a box office failure in the US on first release and only its success in Europe gained it the reputation it still has to this day. Based on Seven Samurai (1954) this is an unpretentious pure genre 'professional' western with a great cast, a very famous rousing soundtrack and a full on action story. A poor Mexican village is plagued by a gang of bandits led by Calvera (Eli Wallach - fantastic with his gold tooth, wry and menacing) who regularly arrive and steal their precious food stocks. Desperate the village hires seven down-on-their-luck gunfighters led by Chris (Yul Brynner - a strange piece of casting but one that he exploited for years afterwards - see Westworld (1973) as an example, and including Steve McQueen in a role that pushed him into stardom, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn). As the fight against the bandits hots up the villagers have second thoughts and betrayal follows. The 60s and the 70s were the decades of the 'professional' western, stories of gunfighters whose skills and desperate nature drive the narrative. This is not a story about 'the West', or conquering the frontier, nor about Indians or the Civil war; this is a simple tale of mercenaries who lead a sort of non-existence, a life of violence and with no future nor hope and it set a standard for westerns for the future. It's a classic piece of American cinema and it holds up brilliantly today (unfortunately the 2016 remake was a poor film).