ALL I WATCHED IN 2025

A very dark-brown looking movie with some epic location shots (grand canyon?). Richard Boone is enjoyable enough in a grizzly, Lee Marvin type role but the kid is a little bit lacking, as is their relationship. Its pleasures are more as a boy's own adventure than a Western. Essentially it feels like a TV movie that looks cinematic. Could rewatch.

Fascinating to see such characters from 'the it crowd' of yesterday having since evolved into such a world as this. Not so much faded glamour as unraveled glamour, to the point of becoming a public health hazard, literally. Beyond such grime lies eccentricity, humanity, stories. It's an important kind of documentary but watching can be stressful at times, lots of them shouting over each other. After half an hour or so, you get their dynamic. Beyond that it's just yet more examples of their emotional whirlpool while revealing more of their past. Wearing but kind of amazing though.

An unnecessary entry into the Sherlock Holmes canon but an entertaining enough bit of rainy Saturday afternoon fluff. Often fun to laugh at, especially Macnee's wheezing oaf of a Watson, almost like the Major from fawlty towers. Moore, in the midst of his classic Bond period, made this with woofed up hair. It's all rather woofed up in fact, Sherlock for the US, nice to look at though.

Last seen as a child, on VHS, probably about 1983, yet I still remembered the entire Bunyip song, including the minor piano parts. Still impressionable and effective spooky stuff, with all those cave paintings coming to life. However I had pretty much forgotten everything else about the movie. It was a pleasure to see it all again, the cartoons mixed with real footage worked well as did the music in general (folky Australian jazz mixed with squelchy synths and some warm, string-led, KPM style pieces) yet there were a few songs that were a bit baby-ish (quack quack quack etc). In all, a nice bit of tramping down memory lane.

The grelvith of bathmarog must return the temdels of burbok to salmenod, or something. Yet another attempt and still I can't seem to penetrate this Tolkein world beyond it's wordy brambles. However, this personal plot fog was compensated by a continuously inventive visual feast full of animated style (rotoscoping?) ahead of its time and anticipating early 1980s music videos and the like. Voices by John Hurt (naturally), Annette Crosbie, Norman Bird, Andre Morell and Anthony Daniels, no less.

So small I've forgotten it already. Has the typical Bluth feel of being formulaic with confected emotions yet with a certain good heart. Couple of songs not great but it's a christmas cartoon so one forgives.

A dark old state of affairs, with a storybook visual style and folk-gothic mood crafted so typically well in that part of the world. Wintry and hallowe'en-y, light vs dark, coming of age etc. Similar yet different from other Zeman films, the paper cut style reminded me of Postgate's Noggin the Nog. Kinda beautiful, you want to keep pausing certain frames.

The tone approaches that of a spaghetti Western but there's not much action or drama, it's almost a character study but it lacks even on that front. Walken drifts about weakly, looking very androgenous, Kidder does her best two English accents (lady and cockerny) but she isn't quite there either, her husband is a boring swedish sea captain or something, Lewis does his usual off-beat character support-actor bit and is the only one who seems committed to the project but he alone is not enough to carry this. The script and direction lack, the music is a mess and the HD restoration looks so artificial it serves only to enhance the film's weaknesses, perhaps a grainy/noisy print would at least evoke some atmosphere. Overall, pretty dire.

Better than expected, looks good and is well paced. Seller does two characters: his King is a bit of a 'pwedictable woyal wascal' but his Cabbie is enjoyably down to urf', played nicely straight; tastefully underplayed, even. Good bit of Lionel Jeffries and other classic faces. A cosy, sunday afternoon, period adventure-comedy with that warm, late 1970s feel.

6 is a bit generous, it's inoffensive but pretty simple romantic-historical fluff. In many ways quite forgettable yet it boasts two iconic musical standards: softly as in a morning sunrise and lover come back to me. JM is sweet as ever but is given too little to do here. NE kinda knows his limits yet saunters on regardless with honesty, doing his best, like an old dog on a long walk. Worst parts are the songs by troops of clean-cut, rowdy soldiers, bellowing on and on, marching over the studio-set landscape. Hmm. 5.5 really.

6.5 but i thought i'd bump it up, for now. The kind of plot (and sentiment) more typical of 1930s/40s movies, so it feels natural being set at that time. It's also pleasing to watch that kind of old-fashioned film but in modern, sumptuous colour aided immensely by the tasteful setting. Reeves does a good enough job playing the Jimmy Stewart/Joel McCrea type of 'honest soldier, troubled in love' role but I can't help always seeing him as teetering on the edge of spouting 'excellent!', my bad. The others are all fine, Anthony Quinn is quietly the rich clay that anchors and holds it all together. A hi-gloss TV movie in many ways but also quite a crowd pleaser, worth a rewatch.

Strolls like an oater but elevated by its female emphasis, given satin and sass from avenging angel Shelly Winters and Marie Windsor (cat fight in the bar), it also features Elsa Lanchester. McCrea is in decent form, dry as ever but able to show his subtle comic side thanks to a vein of wit that trickles through the script. Typical glossy 1950s Western: the usual casinos, loads of rowdy townsfolk etc but there is a soap-opera love triangle (square?) for a bit of sugar and spice. Not bad, quite fun really.

Towards the end i realised there was too much MC and not enough JMD, something I hadn't noticed earlier thanks to the amount of style and fun being had here. It's a treat from the start: some great photography as Paris chugs into life, the mosaic of sounds of the locals waking up and working, their combined rhythms resembling that of a steam engine or factory. The camera glides like Murnau or Max Ophuls' movies, the sets mix life with artifice reminding me of Wes Anderson, the comic tone resembled Lubitsch. Mix all that with a feel of early Disney classics (watch and imagine it animated!): the bustling townsfolk, the rhythm of speech and song, her light-operatic singing voice and the overarching sense of a fairy tale (the princess and her 3 godmothers/witches seem surely an influence on the 1959 Sleeping Beauty?). Songs are by Rogers and Hart, though aside from 'Isn't it Romantic' they are not the best (MC's 'I'm an Apache' being the low-light of the film). There is not enough build-up to the inevitable coming together of our two stars, so romantic depth is a little lacking when it happens but the movie is so inventive (speeding up and slowing down film, audio overlays etc) and with laced with such infectious gaiety that it's hard not to enjoy. Pretty amazing (and underrated) for 1932. Oh and a great cast too.

Some beautiful shots, inside and outside, filming actors through veils/curtains adds to the embroidered look and some of the countryside is magnificent on its own merits. The story is one of human drama, and of its time, yet compared to Ozu (how can you not?) the characters are quite one dimensional and melodramatic (her husband is nothing but brutish, she is forever swooning about), this is eased somewhat by the movie's main perspective occurring through the gentler eyes of the servant girl on her coming of age journey. It's fairly basic soap-opera stuff under all that Mizoguchi style. Lots to admire but not rushing to rewatch.