eltsr-1

IMDb member since August 2006
    Lifetime Total
    10+
    IMDb Member
    18 years

Reviews

The Adventures of Tintin
(2011)

Tin Tin is historically racist!
Belgian Congo's stolen soul imprisoned in King Leopold's museums. Spielberg knew that. Message to Obama.

The Saint: The Gadget Lovers
(1967)
Episode 23, Season 5

Burt Kwok takes his character to another level!
Burt's family lost their fortune when CCP drove them out of China to England, then Burt went to US. His portrayal of Colonel Wing in this episode is camped up as in his James Bond portrayals of pretty much the same expected character. In Pink Panther movies he ups the ante to Sellers' level of pure genius! His fervent exclamatory monologue delivered to Roger Moore in this episode of the smarmy Saint, is fantastic shout out to what was then known as The West. Stunning power of his very knowing portrayals of what were merely racial prototypes meant for Burlesque stage. Ultimate portrayal of his epic talent & profound genius. God Bless this great man, OBE seldom deserved. Burt deserved every withheld Hollywood honor as well....

The Prisoner
(1967)

It takes a DaDa Welsh village. And Patrick McGoogan to make an icon!
Amazon Prime brought this to me recently while I was dog sitting at my son's house. My tour in Vietnam, May 67-Jan 68, bifurcated the episodes for me, but it has always been my favorite TV Series! This is what television programming should be. Tons of brilliant London theatre actors & Welsh inhabitants of a still very real village as guests & extras provide both quaint & disorienting psychological simulacra for McGoogan raging against what?! An intelligence driven mandatory existence that made 1984 look like a garden tea party. 1960s was the decade to drop out, but McGoogan's character had no clue where his free fall would take him. A bad trip of beyond excellent TV production quality & technique that is always moving well beyond MACH 1. I watched ALL of the episodes offered & each was a tour d 'force of great dialogue ("You're paranoid!" replies McGoogan's nightmare malevolent prison warden after he accuses her of multiple homicides--that he both witnessed & personally barely avoided!) Very dark British humor but no shadows in a gleaming seascape enshrouding a Disney acid trip of the (cough!) happiest place -- on Earth? It's your call. In my experience it isn't necessary to watch all of these gems in sequence, over several weeks or like I did, with my favorite grand-dog amidst feedings, walks & naps. Better than I remembered it! Enjoy!

Catch-22
(1970)

Movies aren't novels.
Joe Heller had half this written work to induct the reader into the US ARMY. From pointless marching drills to the horrors of WW2 bombing missions, the written form gives him the time he needs to not only drill into the reader the monotony of war but its insanity. The movie picks characters that depend entirely on the casting which is great! If these characters were developed fully, the movie would be 5 hours long. Nichols made good choices & Buck Henry honed an equally good script. The youthfulness of the soldiers & airmen is made apparent. I thought the omitted scene in the novel where Nately & his whore ague shouting repeatedly at one another, "Tell your friends to stop ficky-ficking my friends!" regrettable, but generally Nichols choices were OK. I first read Catch 22 while still in traction after surgery recovering from combat wounds. It was easy to tell which bed ridden guy was reading it by the muted laughter & rattle of the traction equipment! A great book & good movie rendering. The B-25 action scenes & remote airfield scenes are spectacular!

The Golden Child
(1986)

I took my kid & his friends to see it.
This movie reminded me of the OLD Hollywood factory studio action kid cliff hangers (Gasp! for air...) that I saw weekly when a kid myself. Except they were all chained together in one showing and it had a script: Cecil B. DeMille, D.W. Griffith. I mean MORE than just a shooting script & some stock old dependable tomes. It's production values are very high rather than just stunts to hook kids. Great special effects & story continuity of seemingly disparate characters, animals & even props. I like Eddie Murphy. I like his genius for letting us in on the joke. He can break the fourth barrier without hurting or stopping the movie and in fact emphasizing something important to the movie's if not his own POV. No small gift of acting talent: Buster Keaton. The movie as a story peaks frequently like a good serial but finally all at once without the genre's space-time deceptions. At times the writer says very important things about children & how adults should regard them. I've been to Asia & Nepal couple of times on military & diplomatic missions during war & just the Cold War. As an adult supervising my kid & his friends on a Saturday afternoon, several characters delivered lines about Murphy's actions that were distracting. A Buddha-like character said after Murphy diminished the importance of Murphy's character's defining actions during an action scene, "(Individual) Americans should be aware of how powerful they are in the world!" Like the Hollywood star: Eddie Murphy. God Bless the United States of America. My kid & his friends enjoyed it as well.

The King of Comedy
(1982)

Jerry Lewis: Accomplished Actor
A great movie about television late night celebrity that stays totally & brutally under control & within the small screen context of both its subject & medium. Achingly crafted by Scorsese with DeNiro conquering both stand up & talk show personality plus an epic, transcendent performance by the late great Jerry Lewis. Lewis' performance is one for the ages! I've always enjoyed his comedy, but it was expected--even the $ two billion bucks he raised for MD Research. He did it. It's a fact.This movie deserves every consideration as a beyond honest portrayal of America's The Medium is the Message. Brilliant! Jerry Lewis will never die because of it & his honest personal accomplished portrayal. God Bless.

Ghostbusters
(2016)

A psychic review of Ghostbusters 3
Please lie down on the couch. Place your head on the ample rest. Feel the soft touch of cool Italian leather begin where your Bermuda shorts and Polo short sleeves end. That's it. Take a slow, deep breath. Kick off your Sketchers. Exhale. Slowly.... We're almost ready to experience GB3. It will be a psychic viewing--not Remote Viewing! Don't get ahead of me! There now...that's better. We'll begin. Remember how great "Meet the Parents" and then the sequel featured Barbara Streisand? Stop jerking! Good. It's a little like shock therapy at first, but I'm just establishing a referential base line. Remember Michael Keaton as "Batman" twice, and then George Clooney showed up in the series? Your twitching will subside in a few seconds. Who played Robin in that one? Gritting your teeth doesn't help. Good. Just one more question before you experience GB3. Remember Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther series and then Steve Martin in the remake? Was that a gasp?! Perfect! Roll the credits. See them projected on the inside of your eyelids. See the blue-green glow effects? Feeling a little queasy? OK. That's normal. Do you watch and enjoy the current SNL? That's what I thought. The credits are almost finished and here's the show. When I snap my fingers you'll wake up. SNAP!!! If you realize two hours of your life is missing, then recovery from the procedure I've just performed will not end, like the movie, in a psychotic episode. If you're a 20th Century male, you've been castrated. If you're an empowered Boomer female, you're affirmed and just a little frightened. If you're of indeterminate sexuality, that's the ticket! Oh, and by the way--Donald Trump may be our next President! Nurse!!! Intubate!!! And does anyone here know how to call 9-1-1?!! Get my lawyer on the phone...I want my money back! After he deals with this mess....

The Lone Ranger
(2013)

It's strange but VERY true. Also funny!
Filmed great. Looks great. Great direction. Great action. Johnny Depp as Tonto. Hammer as The reluctant Lone Ranger. It is historically true that Indians mined silver to make bullets. Likewise, US mounted cavalry massacred Indian villages and local settlers killed their own and accused the Indians: PA Wyoming Valley Massacre by Pierce's Militia replicated all the way to Yosemite by others. Railroads and mining operations were colonial advancing foreign economic trade interests. Maniac Civil War militias roamed The West selling directed mob, criminal violence against the public good. All of that fills an action packed movie. Depp is crazy funny against all of the above. Hammer grows into the iconic role. William Tell was as reluctant hero as well. Against the same Euro clown tyranny and terror. Silver lends a timely hand. More Hi! Ho! than you can know. God Bless the United States of America and Hollywood.

L'affaire Dominici
(1973)

This movie was a warning that anyone could be reached.
Well cast, acted and even the wandering photography is OK. The point of view is tumbled and tossed for a reason because there couldn't be one. One moment the viewer is judge and jury; the next, a bewildered tourist; the next, a time traveler experiencing the Europe not shown in the travel brochures. (The review before this is very good at shortly defining this brief case of that.) It's worth seeing if you do your homework first: IT WAS World NEWS. The movie plays with that fact and it would have been much more entertaining had it risked (real risks) telling the greater story of espionage (the CIA was embarrassed by the media of that time linking it to the murders) a whiff of English nobility again horribly compromised--from the previous espionage-d Profumo Scandal; and The Cold War hanging like a cloud over the Atlantic--all the way to Hollywood. The 4 admitted producers represent that clouded reality. Their mere presence put real, enforced limits on a movie that deserved much better. That it was made at all during that time with gifted actors is perhaps telling us much, much more. Drink lots of cognac after your research and watch it unfold like an over edited surveillance tape. Well worth the effort. Good luck with that.

Point Blank
(1967)

One of the best Hollywood vengeance movies.
Lee Marvin was a WWII infantry combat veteran and it shows. Angie Dickinson was beautifully seductive and it shows. Andrew Sikking was perfectly cast and it shows. Carol O'Connor and Keenan Wynn are great actors in small parts in an equally great movie. It forever will give violence a good name. I was turning off the TV the other night and it started to play. I watched the entire movie. Who needs dreams?! The next four lines are of little consequence: It takes place in both San Francisco and El Lay; it superficially though accurately portrays both 60s mob and corporate venues at least in a visual if not procedural style (crime and violence worth watching is highly stylized); this movie can be felt like the title says -- Point Blank!

The Company
(2007)

Cold War wasn't Cold.
Aleksander Grigoryevich Kopatzky, Angleton's Sasha or Igor Orlov was chased into the Soviet Embassy and emerged with a Wash DC retirement in his own downtown picture frame shop. Angleton found his Sasha, but a greater world of lesser men humiliated "Jim" as the movie additionally depicts showing the electro shock therapy being crudely deliver to Frank Weisner after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. The Company is a Rembrandt painting of The Cold War era that accurately communicates the hard reality that bipolar world was trapped in. The movie could not say what I have said so directly and the real participants are melded and divided depending on what its history might betray or reveal. So forget about any truth you might witness and enjoy the experience. For the CIA participants it was all too real. Michael Keaton is as great an actor as Angleton was a man. Take some time to read Angleton's lying testimony to the Warren Commission: "Within the house of (espionage) are many rooms." "What I said to () after the Bay of Pigs was 'What is your fall back position if you fail?'" Reality what a concept! God Bless them all. and God Bless the United States of America.

Killdozer
(1974)

It's about land development in California.
Sure. It's ostensibly about a driver less Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer on the rampage. Go ahead and blame the gun! I guess if it had a driver the movie would be lacking a key plot device if not a title. Really? Like so many Hollywood tomes, "Killdozer" is prescient. It's the "China Syndrome" of over development...and more importantly, Clint Walker at least tried to show us how to stop it: by his God-like example. It's not Cheyene of the nightmare producing (in my 10-year-old case) made for TV "Night of the Grizzly". Clint barely put that humongous bastard down (the grizzly was badly burned in a forest fire as a cub, another unheeded environmental warning). But, I digress. Clint always met whatever threats or evils head on. He was quiet and determined--a lot reluctant and a little bit shy. A quiet smile and never a sound or complaint. Everone was drawn to him because of his heroic beauty and stature. He was the cast's and America's last and best hope. Unlike most of our heroes, he never let us down. And as an actor, Clint barely needed a script although he deserved a lot better ones than he got. In an episode of "Cheyene" he pushed a carload of ore out of a mine unassisted. My father was a coal miner who as a child drove mules that had the same relentless task. Life is cruel like that but Clint never was. It gave a kid hope. That was just enough. Thanks, Clint. God Bless you and God Bless the United States of America. That's what Hollywood can accomplish even when it's not trying. You made it look easy.

A Shot in the Dark
(1964)

Elke Sommer is HOT!
Yeah, it's based on L'idiote and the Broadway play 1961 that Shat was in and Sellers is at his best and Burt Kwouk outdoes everyone by staying absolutely IN CHARACTER but Elke Sommer is beyond belief beautiful and sexy and profoundly comedic and naked and of course, innocent. Sommer in The Prize with Paul Newman was HOT! But Gawd! I took a date to this in high school and can't remember who..."It's green." "What?" "The light. It's green." "I was kidnapped by a hitchhiking transvestite!" (Quote from "Return of Pink Panther" Sorry!)It's all there, including Elke...did I say she was beautiful? The require 10 lines allow for an unnecessary tribute to Lom and Edwards and everyone's dad and mom, but Sommer remains one of the most beautiful creations in the history of cinema including pulpy Playboy!

The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.
(1953)

My mom took me to see this in 1953.
I haven't seen it since but here is what I remember. I knew all the Dr. Seuss books by heart (I could read). I was taking piano lessons from our Protestant minister's wife who resembled Hans Conreid. My mom and I went on the bus to a large, metropolitan movie palace and we were well dressed. We watched the entire movie and then went home on the bus. Hans Conreid was always one of my favorites and even more recognizable as a voice. Lassie was a fixture later on our home TV. I don't think the movie had any real effect on me except that the books and my dreams were a lot better. I listened to radio every night as a child. I sometimes dreamed in black and white like most of the movies I saw as a child. I remember many of the scenes described in the written reviews and trailers. I'll see it again sometime. I'll let you know.

Hastings Corner
(1970)

Also titled as "Honker House"
A Peyton Place send up that made theatre of the absurd look like an Alistaire Cooke production. Very, very inventive and funny! Great comedy writing and brutal satire. Of course, it was quickly canceled. Karen Black appears as a very sexy member of the Honker Family that drops their shrink off at his office by throwing him out the back door of their limo, upon which he rises from the concrete, dusts himself off and begins narrating the first episode of the series,"That was one of my patients dropping me off." The last episode ends in a court scene where the defendant, and nearly everyone else in court, appear in wheelchairs and remove their socks to show they have a mole on the bottom of their foot as evidence of what?! Every minute was filled with invective and directed at the nonsense that Peyton Place and other popular series of the time intoned. It's out there somewhere...go get it!

The Thomas Crown Affair
(1968)

The Gods walked amongst us...
When the aliens officially land (They'll all look like really good-looking Swedish guys!), they will require us all to post on our Twitter account what is the best example humanity has ever created of what they wanted the rest of the Universe to regard us by. If a majority of us vote for the 1968 movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" as that example, the aliens will watch it; stare blankly at one another for a few moments; and then return to their 10,000 gigantic spaceships and go home. They will have realized what everyone on earth should have realized when they first saw it in theaters: It is impossible for anyone to be as cool as that god-damned movie!

The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go
(1974)

Great actors meet Asia head on
The movie "The Yin and Yang of Mr. Go", works on many levels. Here's mine barely on one level. James Joyce was as little understood in 1970 as Buddhism, the Far East (including Vietnam)and MKULTRA. Only MKULTRA notionally survived unscathed because CIA Director Richard Helms destroyed all agency records shortly after this film was made. It alone has escaped the brutal epiphany of the last 40+ years. "We had to destroy the village in order to save it." Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) did not publish "Remember, Be Here Now" until the year after the movie's release. Had he seen it? The Hong Kong Tourist Bureau which contributed greatly and nearly lost its soul to this film knew more about all of the above including James Joyce than anyone in or around the movie. Here are the facts: James Mason wears oral prosthetics and allows his then almost 2d wife (Clarissa Kaye-Mason) to administer a lesbian rape scene. Peter Lind Hayes (The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T)plays himself and appears in a violent homo erotic scene with a very young Jeff Bridges. Irene Tsu gives her acting and substantive all to everyone involved apparently including some Hong Kong hookers replete with excellent Number One Hong Kongs. Broderick Crawford plays the head of the CIA in what appears to be an unintended?, spliced-in unrelated Ed Wood production. He's Broderick Crawford, for Christ sakes! And he's wonderful! You will recognize Jay Adler and Jack MacGowran reprising themselves in roles that they had accomplished many times, but not this time. Buddha appears typecast as himself in Hong Kong tourist stills voiced over by Christopher Lee? as narrator. Oh yeah, Burgess Meredith stars and directed it if Buddha didn't. Rags Ragland composed the soundtrack and songs and I am sure Peter Lind Hayes influenced same with his immortal 1950s Chevrolet jingle. The music at times however, fractures into rather both authentic and thought provoking accompaniment including a brief oriental theme played with a bowed lute Ragland was an arranger for the Dorsey's and provided music for many 40s movies and then this one. There, I wrote it. For YOU!!!! James Joyce was writing--like Bridges says,"For the next 1,000 years." You can watch this prescient epistle throughout the next millennium if you need to. In 1970, the world needed to...

Morons from Outer Space
(1985)

Very, very smart and funny...did I say funny?!
This movie takes aim at both Hollywood and its alien flicks and more importantly, British cinema's unfortunate marketing subordination to same. The special effects, cast, acting and production values are excellent proving that big budget Hollywood can at least be replicated in a lampoon genre. Contrary to nearly every paid critic's review, it is well written. No American or British icon escapes unscathed. The US critics really killed it and frankly, I don't know what Hodges did to deserve that kind of undeserved malice. It's akin to the politically correct fallout from "A Fish Called Wanda". Feel free to go there if you will. It's one of those small British films that people who enjoy silly and dark humor; satire and understatement; and simply well-made, good looking spoofs--this is one of those. It is dead on-target. Enjoy the payback from a great unassuming film that Hollywood made sure was dead on arrival: they were right in the sense that it was and remains "dead on".

The Razor's Edge
(1984)

Bill Murray did another great job.
I had a hard time understanding the producer's reported anger at Murray for his portrayal of a WWI American war veteran. The producer allegedly said,"Bill Murray gives you nothing!" Although Bill is one of the most understated human beings on the planet, the character he portrayed is an American war vet -- a survivor of the worst carnage since the American Civil War. Even Robert Graves who was pronounced dead on the battlefield and notification sent to his family -- resigned from life, a wife and children, in "Goodbye to All That". It's resignation that the producer is misunderstanding? What an American brings to Nepal is the power of individual conscience and subjecting the consciousness to the cultural eternal. The character undergoes change in his inner understanding and outward conscious expression of that change. Bill Murray's only understatement is not surrendering to the temptation to make this character romantic instead of American. An initiate of war is initiated again in life. As a disabled Vietnam combat Vet who has seen and experienced what Murray's character experienced in the novel and movie, I commend Bill for having the discipline and courage to remain in character: a fearless American, an initiate of the last and best age.

The Ref
(1994)

Brilliant comedy writing
You have to experience the movie. I almost died laughing. The rest is to complete at least ten lines. You do not, I repeat, do not, have to like Denis Leary to watch this movie. It takes you so unawares that you had better hyperventilate before watching. I've had Christmas dinners like the one in this movie when a character like Denis's would have been welcome. I can't stress the constant excellence of the dialog and the "take" on Connecticut at Christmas. Even the cops are dead on. There's even a running gag that lites up from beginning to end. I can't think of anything that doesn't work except that at times you'll be laughing so hard that you'll miss something. I think that I've made my 10 lines so I'll shut up. Don't miss seeing this movie on DVD so you can pause in order to resume breathing and see it totally. Enjoy and don't hurt yourself.

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