ptb-8

I have no idea why this film exists, nor what audience it was intended for. This 1955 Republic drama in widescreen looks terrific and allows for some great L. A. background of the era. Adele Palmer costumes are good and the cast are quite effective, especially Ben Cooper. The film almost exists just to make a good trailer, which is well worth seeing how they salvaged the best bits for that. So much of the information is not shown, eg that Ben is a hot rod driver, so they just tell us. Also I have never seen a film end so abruptly. They just tell us what happened and cut to the fade out. I really enjoy Republic titles especially mid 50s but this one plays like Television in Cinemascope and contrives scenes and locations just to make a good trailer glimpse. The snow tractor on the poster is only there for 30 sec. I wanted to like this more but was continually shortchanged by the film just being cheap and silly. However days afterwards I kept thinking about it and how I now now want to see it again. Republic made about a dozen of these really cheap widescreen action dramas at the time and whilst each are interesting in their low budget way, they really are a suburban time capsule of their time. I have no idea who would go to see these in any cinema when first released. SNOWBOUND HOODLUMS would have been a far better title.

Here is a quietly profound polite new film set in Sydney 1959 about New Australians from Europe having the start of an effect that allowed Australia to blossom into a superb Multicultural era of the 60s and 70s. Hungarian fashionista Magda befriends studious teen Lisa at Christmas 1959 in a snazzy department store. This opens the eyes ears and world of this lovely clever teen whose backyard world reflects the cosy Anglo suburbia of the British Australian post was conservative 50s era. The ongoing revelation of this group of store and home characters is the repression of their former lives, whether under Nazi and Communist rule in Europe of the banal lawn existence of the Sydney suburbs and the small mindset and 'we won the war' superiority instilled by the cardigan politics of the 50s. Everyone has a new world to see or a lost world to them. One particularly satisfying subplot is between the two shop counter 20 year olds who show appalling narrow-mindedness towards education books and New Australians without it even registering at first. The other great subplot is the shy husband who becomes sexually overwhelmed by his gorgeous wife one night then cowers from his exposure which he believes would have disgusted her. His sexual repression of teen and childhood is hinted at enough for his sexual confidence to be beautifully harmonised and his marriage blossoms. This is an utterly gorgeous generous funny film with excellent satire and a very smart view of a welcoming country which had no idea it was rude to strange people, and Emigrants who found Australians equal measure funny and endearing. I absolutely loved it, and especially for its educated wit and good heart. Everyone must leave their repressed past and enter the 1960s future. This is just great.

Apparently Errol Flynn was a swashbuckling Indiana Jones type in New Guinea in1930. This new 2018 film is treading the same territory as the 1993 FLYNN which starred a more suitable Guy Pearce as Errol. IN LIKE FLYNN has a KING KONG Jack Black start which lurches into some Indiana Jones jungle chase and straight into a KITTY AND THE BAGMAN Sydney sequence. Once aboard a yacht it becomes RIDDLE OF THE SANDS with a Robert Shaw JAWS character. Many many images and ideas from other films. Nice young actors and some good photography and some not good acting and clunky dialogue. As it went on I found it all irritating. Also the early action scenes are far to violent and gruesome for what should be a PG movie. It's a R. Costas Mandylor appears, finally freed from SAW D list hell. I want to recommend IN LIKE FLYNN but alas, it is a misguided project, haphazardly executed and not the fun it should be. Why the violence and slashing and brutal deaths had to be so graphic is very disappointing.