gjcannon

This is well-reviewed here but I want to add my pennyworth anyway.

There are many aspects that make this worth a view. Hawkins is ever-watchable and there are great characters, like the so very curious Welsh garage owner and the garrulous Irish daily help, but what I like most is the portrayal of police work as about method, legwork, a gradual accretion of fact and evidence. This compares to too many modern film and TV police investigations, which rely on either savant-like detectives or the liberal application of bullets.

Black and white really adds to the photography- the city streets, the Welsh hills, the cars and the steam trains puffing at rest in darkened stations...

Only the US seems to hold paid assasins in such fond regard. People who would turn up at your kids school and shoot their favourite teacher for a few dollars are somehow now to be seen as a cross between social workers and angels.

Or perhaps it's just okay when it's the State directing killers. When they have just killed several people on the first task, our heroes share a chuckle and chat about what's next, like they've just escaped a boring dinner party. Why are Russians with poisoned umbrellas not treated in this fashion by TV and film? Is it because those people are not upholding liberal democracy and the rule of law? Well, neither are Mr & Mrs Smith.

It's quite dispiriting when actors with a long career end up in this kind of trashy stuff. In this case. Richard Basehart as the lead at least gets to be centre-stage but Gloria Grahame hardly gets a line, she's practically an extra. The plot is pretty hackeyed. An eminent optoth, ophtmog, ....eye doctor who dotes on his only child, a daughter, loses his marbles when his atrocious driving results in an accident and her blindness. This inspires him to go rogue and start experimnting on whoever is handy to extract their eyes and pop them into his daughter, with variable results. Even a police detective has a close shave. The victims aren't knocked off but kept on hold in the basement as he intends to restore their sight once all the kinks in the process have been ironed out. To pass the time, they compete to see who can do the best zombie impression. It all doesn't end well. Or begin well. And the middle sucks too.

I came here to see if there was a name for this type of episode which seems to be a trailer for a possible series. The term 'book-ender' is mentioned elsewhere because Jessica introduces and wraps up the story and it says also that these were a way of giving Angela Lansbury a break, but I think that may just be a way of avoiding admitting that episodes like this one really were pilots, but that didn't get the nod. There are several with Keith Michell of this type but I think Barry Newman a cut above and that the character of Ballinger with his trusty student criminologists might have been good for a season or three.

The protagonists in both this and the sequel ate mercenaries, so they could just as easily be on the other side if the money was right. So why should a viewer root for them? In this film they are rescuing a gangster's son and kill dozens of police and soldiers, but that's all right because they are following the orders of corrupt leaders. But our 'heroes' are no better as they are working for a criminal also. Rake at one point refuses to sell out, but good business ethics are hardly enough to make him a good guy. And however much they emulate John Wick with the body count and close combat shooting, this just doesn't have the style of Wick.

I am the last person to dislike an 'Eat the Rich' satire, or even a 'Kill the Rich While They're Eating' one, but the premise here is simply too silly. Evidently the writer was inspired by visiting a restaurant on a private usland and how all the diners were trapped there, but so are the passengers on an aircraft. We are supposed to accept the chef as some kind of cult leader where his large staff are so in thrall to his crème brulee that they are prepared (!) not only to murder a group of people whose sins seem rather trivial ( one has simply appeared in a dodgy movie) but they are perfectly happy to self-immolate beside their lunatic leader. Obviously there are cults where people do exactly that but they tend to be based on religious mania or beliefs in aliens, travel to other planets, or the end of the world , not on how their boss's nouvelle cuisine is wasted on the uncultured palates of the undeserving rich. And Fiennes just doesn't come across as enough of a Svengali to inspire a fraction of the adoration he supposedly inspires in his staff/acolytes. So the whole dish just does not add up to a satisfying repast. Anya Taylor-Joy ispretty decent, tgough.

While watching this, at first it reminded me of the Finnish film 'The Unknown Soldier' but that film was actually made 2 years later than this Estonian one and is more conventional, perhaps simply because the situation in Finlamd and Estonia was different, more straightforward.

What makes this different from other war films is the dimension of Estonians being conscripted into the armies of two superpowers invading from West and East, though there were actually also willing combatants too, either from pro-Nazi or pro-Communist beliefs. This film chooses to start with conscripts to the Waffen SS, though there are scenes where the Nazis and Hitler are held in derision. Other SS units in the area are Danish and Dutch. It mentions that the Wermacht did not raise units from occupied territories, only the Waffen SS, which is partly why those units were more easily sacrificed in hopeless assaults. I don't want to include spoilers so won't mention the badic element which makes this different to other war films. The action scenes are convincing if rather undermanned, with realistic looking close combat scenes of trenches (not just a WW1 concept) being taken and lost. The photography is good and the cast do a good job.

I wouldn't have put much store in yet another addition to the Predator franchise (horrible term) but I liked the trailer and thought the film very watchable. I suppose there'll be plenty of criticism (it's 'woke' they'll cry) for it being cast with Native American actors but it really added to the production and I enjoyed seeing faces not familiar from other productions and the cast were all good. There are some beautiful visuals and the pace is good. Not sure why the French trappers' dialogue wasn't translated into English in the subtitles.

From the start of these films I have always thought it unlikely that a species capable of developing FTL travel would not have evolved beyond such a primitive activity as trophy-hunting, but I still have enjoyed most of the films and this is a worthy addition.

Aliens who had the technology to cross interstellar space wouldn't need to depend on aerial dogfights ,mobile infantry and gunfire exchange to then impose their rule on the incredibly primitive humans once they reached Earth. This film goes down that route into small-town America, which is the hope of the world, apparetly. Unimaginative and pedestrian.

I'd never come across this before and it is well worth a look. I recognised the screenplay writer's name, J. Jefferson Farjeon, from the British Library's Classic Crime collection and I've enjoyed several of his whodunits. This has John Mills supporting and was edited by David Lean. The leads are fun, though unlikely that Lupino was only 15, more like 20, and I must admit that I didn't realise she was English. There are some racy jokes some visual, for the period, and the whole thing bobs along very merrily. I'm surprised that it hasn't featured on the TV schedules before now.

Plot, characters, dialogue, jokes, action- all rank rotten. An overwieght, corporate, cynical, dead-eyed pile of puke. Ninety million to make this!!! And it has inspired another sequel!!! Include me out.

So much to like about this film- a great plot, settings, dialogue and cast. Walter Matthau is great as are the rest of the cast, even the Parisian policeman is a treat. The main bugbear for me is the age gap between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, it's just too much, 25 years! She looks like she's snogging her dad! I love Grant but they should either have cast a younger actor, or older actress, or just cut out the romantic aspect between the leads. But maybe audiences in 1963 just wouldn't have accepted the leads being just good friends come the end of the film.

If ever there was an argument against 'colourisation' of black and white films, then this version showing in Amazon Prime would be an excellent example of why it shouldn't happen. A great cast and fun story ruined by a colour process that is sheer vandalism, the colours seem faded and variable acriss the screen with skin tones especially differing even on the same person. Its practically psychedelic. Really distracting and should never have been done to what I imagine was a nice black and white print.

They should have spent less on false eyelashes and more on decent writers. I suppose it keeps people in work, available for better things in the future.

Plenty of other have pointed out the failings of this clichè-ridden rubbish so I will just point out one that struck me, in Scotland, with an Irish background, and that is...the makers don't seem to know the difference between Scots and Irish. Of course there are people in Scotland called Sean and Michael and Murphy (the main characters), but I'm pretty sure the makers just think Scotland and Ireland are y'know, just the same thing. Maybe they just didn't know any Scottish names.

A couple of supposed heavyweight collectors drive around picking up money, 'taxes' on behalf of 'the big homeys' headed by Wizard, from L.A. gangs. Why these heavily armed gangs hand over money meekly is never apparent. One collector looks like a male model and the other is Shia LaBeouf as The Creeper, entirely unscary and totally unconvincing. A figure from the past 'Conejo' (Rabbit) turns up to challenge the status quo. The shooting scenes are poorly choreographed and the story plays out in a dull and unlikely fashion. Poor dialogue throughout. Give it a miss is my advice.

I am not that big a fan of courtroom drama but quite enjoyed this one, probably because of the decent cast, especially Milland in the lead. I see that it is based on a Broadway play but is transposed to London. I suppose British courts have a more pictorial value in the gowns and wigs than do American courts. Talkng of wigs, though, the one adorning Milland's head when out if court is no more real-looking than the lawyer's wig he wears in court !

Just watching this and a line by Duryea, ' imagine being around her all that time, all them days, nights. Just thinking on it gives me a way down shiver' almost echoes a line from 1959's Ride Lonesome and the character played by Pernell Roberts.

This largely fails for one main reason...the miscasting of Ian Carmichael as the main character. He never for a second persuades us that he is a thief, inept or not, belonging to a criminal family. His forte was middle-class, hapless twit and really nothing beyond that. The film has some great character actors and wastes them, the plot might have involved the family more, for example, and the gang from which Carmichael unwittingly steals forged money could have been used more and the hunt for Carmichael started more quickly. The fake reverend, played by Robert Helpmann (the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) is also under-used and too many scenes are solely based on Carmichael and Belinda Lee, neither of whom are that interesting, for all Lee's looks. There is also a totally unpersuasive element to the end, with Lee's conversion from the gold-digger she plays throughout.

Cliche-ridden hardly describes the dialogue.. it comes across as written by a 15 year-old Die Hard fan. The story is without interest and the characters flat. Gary Oldman does himself no favours in appearing in such 3rd rate material, maybe cold cash matters more now than his reputation as an actor.

In a pretty gory manner. I've read a couple of the Marek Krakewski thrillers the writer and director of this film uses as inspiration and think that the period setting of the stories better than a present-day setting but this is still worth a look. Certainly different from the usual Hollywood style of everyone looking unfeasibly attractive, though the main character's asymmetric haircut is extremely irritating, with half her face hidden most of the time. The setting of Wroclaw (once known as Breslau) is a change too from the usual city locations.

I don't mind unlikely scenarios and plot-lines, realism was never part of stories like Chesterton's and Agatha Christie, but it is very odd that a village in southern England in the 1950s seems entirely Roman Catholic and the poor old Church of England almost non-existent. I do also find it very unlikely that a police inspector would talk to any man of the cloth as Mallory does to Father Brown, 'keep your snout out of my business ' and 'sling yer 'ook". It just wouldn't happen. Deference may have been on its way out in the 50s but I just think such dialogue has nothing of the period to it and is far too contemporary with today. Its hardly as if they need to be medieval, I'm not asking for prithees and varlets, after all, but the main nod to the period seems to be the glamour of the attractive female cast members. That smacks of laziness to me and a lack of attention to detail. It also seems to miss the point of why people watch period material. If people are going to talk and act as they would today, then just set it in the present day and forget all the period stuff. If Holmes could battle Nazis, then Brown can be updated too.

I'm not familiar with the Lone Wolf series, but am happy enoufh to search out the others after this. I thought the cast a solid one, even if the lead sounds a little too Basil Rathbone as Holmes. The storyline about Nazi attempts to steal minefield plans was decent and I liked at least a couple of exciting scenes which I won't describe here. The finale was also well-handled and impressive.

I kept expecting the Mandalorian to appear and put David Spade back in his hovercradle. Spade needs to find sone new kind of role because the idea of this wizened baby Yoda in serial relationships with women well out of his league's not very convincing. The talent here is all in Lauren Lapkus's gross-out inappropriateness and even that is eventually dialled-down to one. Still, it's not my usual fare and lockdown makes us watch some stuff we'd normally avoid so I imagine there are plenty out there who'd enjoy this Sandler school of comedy film even if they do feel they've been transported back to the '90s.

As others have said here, this really doesn't compare with the 1935 version. It has had a very sort of English middle-class makeover- no vulgar music hall opening, no risqué female spy asking to go home with Hannay...and him taking her there! No political meeting but a lecture of boarding-school gels. But what strikes me about it is the paucity of Scottish characters in a film largely set in Scotland. From the schoolgirls to the truckers, the café owners to the 'big house', there's hardly a burr to be heard! It's as if the makers would much rather have preferred to have Hannay flee to the Cotswolds or the Mendips rather than Scotland, but couldn't change the story too much without negative reaction, so they Anglify it by populating Scotland with English people. Its almost like 2020!