Last Movie You Watched.

Election - appalled by the thought of overachieving student Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) winning the high-school student body president election, social studies teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) sets out to sabotage her ... and from there things develop into a witty satire on high-school politics/politics in general.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Election - appalled by the thought of overachieving student Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) winning the high-school student body president election, social studies teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) sets out to sabotage her ... and from there things develop into a witty satire on high-school politics/politics in general.  

I do love that film, right blind of wackiness throughout and that final moment with Broderick's thoughts culminating with him hurling his milkshake. Witherspoon is perfectly irritating.

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The Program

I got into cycling roundabout 1993, in those days until about 1999, Channel 4 showed the Tour de France highlights at 6/6.30pm and that was of course every single day. Now it's countless repeats of stuff. Anyway, Channel 4 used to produce the official mag and my mum brought me a copy. I went through the team lists endlessly. I had started watching it as my Dad did and my Dad used to choose a footy team in every div to sort of back. So I looked for a team to back and chose Motorola. Being American it was the closest to a British team and I saw a rider called Lance Armstrong, as I had an interest even then in the space race I said to myself this guy would be my favourite rider (I was 8).
Flashforward several years and he's cheated death. Comes back in a blaze of publicity and destroys the opposition all the way to 2005 winning an unprecedented seven tours. My friend not long before he died got a certificate from the Livestrong foundation saying he was a cancer warrior and it looked, even if the letter was pre-printed, the signature was authentically Armstrong -I had gotten my friend into cycling purely by insisting I saw the latest Tour stage one year and then we could go out. Next thing he got the lycra and everything...more of a cyclist than I ever hoped to be (and I cycled a lot until 2017). My friend died believing Armstrong was a great hero.

And then of course it all blew up and this is what the film shows. Incredible attention to detail (I never thought I'd see Motorola on film say), nearly perfect blending of actors and live footage from the day and it shows the galling methods and manner that Armstrong/Bruyneel and USPS/Discovery had 1999-2005. Like it shows the anti-doping checker from the ICU turning up at the bus and as he waits, Armstrong is doping. He was that arrogant. They all were.

I'm not too sure on the Landis portrayal, that he had regrets or hesitations or doubts. He doped in 2006 and 'won' (later stripped). If he did fine but certain interviews I've read over the years with him, he doesn't seem entirely repentant and nor is Armstrong of course. You can see his argument, as you see in film, that when he started everyone was doping and were all the way through. I remember the '98 Tour when Festina were kicked out then all manner of teams and riders quit through doping and something like 70 riders out of the usual 190/200 finished. Armstrong returns in '99, it felt like the good days were back. Man cheated cancer and blows them off the road and I still remember seeing him surge up the mountains like everyone was standing still...

Anyway, it's al done well and guess what, imagine my utter surprise when Michael G. Wilson shows up as Lance's doctor in 1996. I had no idea MGW had acted outside of his Bond cameos.

As for cycling, in spite of it all, I still follow the Tour and other races (the beauty of the internet/TV is now I can follow all of it better than I did as a child/teenager).

Thunderbolt And Lightfoot - eh, maybe one of Eastwood's Westerns would've been a better choice for a Sunday afternoon than this road-movie crime caper ... my attention started wandering about halfway through this, and from then it was one eye on the flick and one on my phone.

It is 1966, spymania is at its peak. James Bond now has been in five adventures, we've seen the advent of Harry Palmer and gritty realism of John Le Carre. One of the pretenders comes along, a seeming flash in the pan...

The Quiller Memorandum

Based on a book (originally The Berlin Memorandum) by Elleston Trevor under one of his many aliases, Quiller sneaks in under the radar. It's nothing too flash and yet there is an appeal.

For a start it is West Berlin of the sixties. Suitably long enough after the war to still feel the effects, to have many who lived, even fought through it and yet long enough that by now it has revitalised itself as this shining beacon of the West. By now West Berlin has become spy central, firmly entrenched as such (if only Bond had visited West Berlin sooner than 1983).

There is the beautiful Senta Berger, the first film I saw her in and since joined by the likes of Major Dundee and Cast a Giant Shadow. Bit of a knockout.

There's George Segal. This film has helped cement my admiration of him. Dispense the notion that technically he is an American playing what is meant to be a British spy and it works. He's not Bond but that's the idea in a way. These more serious spy films went largely their own way or tried to shake off Bond. Palmer is more technical, a gourmet cook, he needs specs to see. Le Carre's spies are bitter, drunks, homosexuals, cads, bounders etc. Quiller is a slightly weary spy trying to do a job and has flashes of humour whilst being savvy enough.

It has a plot that is often, as noted in 1966 feels a bit much but also complicated. I never quite follow it on viewings and yet the film bubbles along neatly. The gist is that there's a bunch of new Nazis waiting to strike and he's there to break it up. Who do you trust? is the theme also.

It has a John Barry score. Not his best, not his most notable but in parts it makes West Berlin, especially in the night scenes, atmospheric and deeper. The Wednesday's Child instrumental is somehow eerie in places.

The pity is that there was not at least one or two more. Would have been interesting to see Segal do Quiller some more. There was by the time Trevor died, nineteen Quiller adventures.

The Dam Busters

This is how you do a film. A documentarian feel to it, a decent script, plenty of stiff uppers, as realistic as you can get and no love story to fog the issue. When the film was made much of Operation CHASTISE was still hush-hush, so footage of the bomb test (actual footage from 1942-43), has the bomb sort of fuzzy. Nowadays the theme is seen as an unofficial anthem of this country and incited at footy matches but it is a world away all that nonsense. To this day it's debated just how much a difference to the German war machine the raids had, considering that the damage was repaired (including the dams) quite swiftly. (Also including the fact many PoW's, Russians et al, were killed in the floods).
Essentially, the Germans spent time, money and manpower rebuilding the dams, shoring up the defences (even though the British/Americans never came that way to do the job again) after the raids. Manpower that could've been used elsewhere to advance the war aim, materials that could have been used in rebuilding or building weapons and time desperately needed elsewhere to stop the Russians.

So in its way, it made a difference. It feels wrong to even suggest that the raid was pointless or had no effect when you consider the losses incurred by 617 that night.

Otherwise a veritable who's who of British faces of the time appear and a plethora of Lancaster's. Something you can't do nowadays.

Solid 5 stars.

The Reef - a group of young Aussies, a capsized boat and a prowling Great White ... eep. Jaws will always be the 'daddy' of shark movies, but this one manages to generate a fair amount of tension.

The 6th Day - Ahnult cloning-based sci-fi actioner that rattles along well enough, despite the at-times overly twisty plot machinations. With Robert Duvall, Tony Goldwyn, and Michaels Rapaport and Rooker.

The 6th Day was great. My favourite bit was when Ahnuld said something along the lines of: 'You should've cloned yourself... so you could fuck yourself!'

The Ipcress File

Verging on being my favourite non-Bond spy film. I have a fond opinion of it, more-so than some for various reasons. In the same year as Thunderball and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, it sits closer to the latter. Deighton might not have been in SIS like LeCarre but presented in the book (our hero is never named) the nuts and bolts of spying. This carries into the film well. The various bits of paperwork or actions branded with numbers and letters (encapsulated both with Dalby and Ross' first scene together and when Dalby chastises his opposite number at the warehouse), the regular feel of things and that it is also, like Bond's SIS, militarily based (indeed, Palmer is still in the Army). It feels dark and gritty, it never leaves London (in this, you don't notice, such is the way the plot works) and feels 'real'. It has splashes of humour, chiefly with Palmer but also Dalby and Ross.
Like Bond's HQ, Dalby's is under the cover of an employment bureau with secretaries out front. Unlike Bond, Palmer and his comrades are all Ministry Of Defence (I guess technically Bond is, if anything his cover story was a man from the Ministry).

I need to check if Fleming ever passed judgement on Ipcress File (the novel came out in '62, same year as OHMSS and by Fleming's death there were two more Unnamed Spy novels) but might have seen something in the book to admire. Deighton was always detailed in his research and so I imagine he had his sources somewhere in the MoD and elsewhere.

I like the camera angles, the various bits with shadow or out of focus. For instance the punch-up behind the Royal Albert Hall, filmed from a distance through a phone box or Dalby and Ross' first scene at the former's office.

I was tempted to say if only Guy Doleman did a Bond, but of course he did the same year as IPCRESS. He played the first No.2 in the Prisoner -somewhere between the two could've been a Bill Tanner or M performance.

Barry's score is of course the opposite of Thunderball. No brassy tunes, no loud song, just a short score that does the job well. It doesn't seem to be on the album but that opening music accompanying the scientist's journey to the railway station (my London station funnily enough) is incredibly good. Nothing flash on the surface but it feels like it's under your skin.

Michael Caine is superb. Apparently Deighton had to show him how to make the instant coffee properly or some such but that was Deighton (he's with us still, 91 but I refer back in the day), a gourmet cook and knew his stuff about things. Caine gives you the illusion of a man who looks like he could snap in strong wind but he can handle himself. There's something in that moment where he fights behind the Albert Hall when he removes his spectacles. But this is Sir Michael, there's some 'typical' intonations such as when he's being tortured: "My name IS...'arry PALM-er!"

Supporting cast is solid, the ever reliable Nigel Green, good old Gordon Jackson and so on.

And London in 1965. World away to where we are now. Corona or not.

5 stars

Been thinking of giving this a rewatch soon. Great film, indeed.

Hilly wrote:

The Ipcress File

Barry's score is of course the opposite of Thunderball. No brassy tunes, no loud song, just a short score that does the job well. It doesn't seem to be on the album but that opening music accompanying the scientist's journey to the railway station (my London station funnily enough) is incredibly good. Nothing flash on the surface but it feels like it's under your skin.

Heh, really? I remember getting Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang vibes from the score. A subdued, more grounded version perhaps?

Well, to my tuneless ears it sounds dulled down a little ha. I can see the KKBB inferences. Being done the same year probably helps. By this point of course, I imagine Sir Michael had moved out of John Barry's flat.

That'll Be The Day - late 50s/early 60s-set coming-of-age tale in which bright, young rock-n-roll obsessed Jim Maclaine (David Essex) ditches a promising university career for deckchair attendant/fairground/holiday camp work, all while chasing as many girls as possible and dreaming of rock stardom.

The likes of Ringo Starr, Billy Fury and Keith Moon feature in the cast and the soundtrack is stuffed with rock-n-roll classics. A nice slice of simpler-times nostalgia, sort of like a less angry Quadrophenia.

Kong : Skull Island - Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, Sam L Jackson, John Goodman and John C Reilly gamely try to distract themselves from the thought that most people are probably gonna turn up to see a giant gorilla duke it out with 'copters and various CGI nasties, rather than them.

Deighton had to show how to do the one handed cracking of eggs and it is rumored it's his hands in the cooking closeups.
I still haven't mastered cracking and separating an egg one handed.

IPCRESS is one of those few films that so obliterated me it got into my very consciousness. Just the combination of hard core spying, paranoia, conspiracy, no frills working class, the lone underling up against the system, British to the point of being near indecipherable to modern US audiences, many of the Bond production team, a brilliant plot, a brilliant ending, Barry's astonishing score, more than just a touch of Greene and The Third Man feeling and all surrounding a spy with glasses who was always up against it.

Kino Lorber is releasing a new 4K scan on Blu-ray this year which thank god has finally happened. It's been out of print in the USA since 1999. Funeral in Berlin just got dumped out on BD by Paramount so that means the whole trilogy is finally in HD.

Ah, the new blu-ray sounds appealing. I watched it on blu-ray in this instance but the quality seemed patchy. Seeing IPCRESS in something that sharp would be quite something. Otherwise you're on the money about the film, Boots. I need to find Funeral in Berlin again, give it a proper watch.

Diamonds Are Forever - the series entry with which EON thought 'Whatever the '67 Casino Royale can do, we can do better' perhaps? There is admittedly a decent amount of fun to be had if you go with it, and highlights include the elevator scrap (do like the 'mano a mano' confined-space confrontations, see also FRWL and GE) and Jill St John. Gray's urbane, drag-favouring version of Blofeld is easily the series' least threatening version of the character (and I'm including Waltz in that).

Danger : Diabolik - cult 60s Italian 'master thief' comic-book adaptation ... groovy, baby! The influence of the Adam West Batman and Bond on this is pretty clear (and indeed Thunderball's Adolfo Celi stars as a gangster). A new adaptation of the character was apparently announced in 2018.

Punisher : War Zone - 'Violent escapism that's entertaining in a trashy way' said my listings magazine of choice ... yep, that pretty much covered it. This does at least seem closer in spirit to the character than the plodding Thomas Jane flick that preceded it.

In and around late 1996, early 1997, James Bond took a trip out to northwest USA, butting heads with local bureaucrats, his own boss and a dastardly volcano minus a lair...

Well.

Dante's Peak

I preface this thing by saying back in the late 90s, this was one of these films that I ended up seeing a few times partly on the back of it being one of these films one of my parents took to liking. For instance, another was Volcano (which both parents, who never really agreed on something, agreed that Tommy Lee Jones was good and we should see more films of his...saying we were knackering the MIB VHS around that time too), or Independence Day. I mean we did watch a stack of other films besides these or DAF or VTAK or Final Countdown but memory makes things...weird.

Anyway, after the split, I didn't see Dante's Peak till 2017 and then until now. Let's get it out of the way, in 2017 it was on C4 during the day about 1pm-ish, today on Film4 at 4.40...so it's edited. And when I say edited, the gory bits. And not even, by today, that gory. Now I suppose the first one isn't missed, Brozzer's girlfriend taking a projectile to her head (giving our hero his emotional backstory), or the discovery of the fried teens in the springs now acidic with sulphur but they took out Gran's aftermath of leaping into the acidic lake (thus sacrificing herself). Now, if I recall, the camera pans down to her rather chewed legs but that was it. The edit takes out from when she reaches shore to suddenly Brozzer clasping her now dead body to him anguished. So...what emotion there is, gone.

Anyway (you may thank Don Rickles for me prefixing sentences this way, this often), the edits don't quite detract but somehow the film feels a little off as a consequence. Like watching Bond's on ITV.

It's not a bad film, it's a classic disaster movie which presently earns itself 5.9 on IMDB so I guess some folk don't care for it. It's not the best ever made but it's somehow engaging and bubbles (forgive me) along nicely. Like all good disaster flicks of the 70s at least, Dante's sets it stall out. Brozzer loses his girlfriend (as mentioned) during a volcanic eruption and is broken, swiftly cuts to four years later, Brozzer is dour faced, never takes a vacation, has a determined boss (who's not a bad chap really, just, he's the boss) and gets on with his mates. He's sent to check out Dante's Peak in Washington State (now, before I lose myself, we now have in 1985 Tanya Roberts as a geologist and then twelve years later a Bond actor as a geologist...imagine a film together. Dante's Peak II: Revenge of the Magma).

Dante's Peak is a beautiful town, there's a lake, there's the peak towering over everything all snow capped, everyone's mostly friendly, the mayor runs a coffee joint (that few people go to by the looks), there's things to do for the kids, you see the town in action down to the abandoned mine (take a note kids).

So there, in the tradition of that halcyon decade of disaster flicks, it's all laid out for us. All this film needed was Irwin Allen, John Williams, Ernie Borgnine, Fred Astaire, two hot girls (one who dies), a corny yet somehow attractive song and an annoying little kid (Er, it has two actually, ed.)

As I say it builds steadily to that fantastic moment Brozzer is about to hop on the good foot and do the bad thing and is interrupted by little kid two wanting water as she can't sleep. Zut alors the water's up the sprout. Hmm, sulphur...Shit!
Now, for all my tongue in cheek, it's not a bad moment somehow when it all kicks off at the emergency meeting (that is to say, when Dante's Peak does its Vesuvius impression). There is that split second where an admittedly edgy, critical crowd suddenly loses their collective rag and want to get the hell out of Dodge pronto. Within a few minutes it really has gone to pot. Cars are bashing together, bridges collapse, the church goes, buildings are going, kids abandoned on the porch and amidst it all, Brozzer is taking the love interest and kids to safety.

From there it goes full bore with effects. Curiously on that VHS, there was a special feature after the end credits if I recall and it showed how they collapsed that bridge (model), or the bridge swamped by the swollen river. If I remember the USGS van model accidentally surged forward hitting the second Hum-vee. Though I guess in the film it looks like it was helping the stuck Hum-vee out.

One but I never envied Brosnan doing was the mine sequence where there's a cave-in and he's left with about an inch of space around him. Indeed, I noticed that on the mountain when he and his chum are winced to safety that A) Brozzer does indeed go flying up and B) he is shouting "Go, go, go" with what might be some nerves (yes, his mate is wounded, the chopper is there to rescue him, but if he wasn't mad on heights, Brosnan, I can't say I blame him).

Anyway, there we go. The director, Roger Donaldson, went on to direct Brosnan again over a decade later in November Man.

Seem to remember Broz's character sustaining a compound fracture in the movie too ... if they edited out those other things, I assume that didn't make it either?

Never been a fan of movies shown at 'the wrong time' for their content, thereby necessitating 'content edits' ... this is a prime example you've cited, Hilly (at the other end of the scale Film 4 has shown Stargate at 9:00 pm recently and it's a PG-rated movie :/ ).

I recorded Spaceballs from Comedy Central yesterday because I've never seen it ... now although it again is PG-rated, it started at 11:30 am so it's possible that it's had the odd gag deemed unsuitable for that time removed. And I won't know.

I think that was gone too. As I say I hadn't seen it for over fifteen years until 2017 and it was edited then, so fair bet it was last night.

I remember LTK was once shown on ITV at something like 2pm, I didn't watch it but I bet it was cut to bits. Now that I think of it, they even edited a "shit" out of Dante's Peak yesterday when one character is cursing out that robot.

One reason nowadays I seek films out on DVD or whatever. I never understand schedulers.

A Brosnan and Stacey Sutton film... What an idea! Throw Pola in there, too. "The lava burns my... Tchaikovsky!"

BI wrote:

Gray's urbane, drag-favouring version of Blofeld is easily the series' least threatening version of the character (and I'm including Waltz in that).

Hmm. Gray had a space laser and was blowing up rockets. Waltz had...... C?

I know, and yet ... Pleasance has some chilling line deliveries, Savalas seems like he'd be perfectly capable of beating the shit out of you and even Waltz drilled into Bond's head.

Just find all that 'worse' than Gray poncing round an oil rig .

Used Cars - car-lot rivalry forms the basis of this Kurt Russell and Jack Warden-starring black comedy, directed and co-written by Robert Zemeckis and exec-produced by Spielberg (back when him doing that actually meant something). Pretty funny.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation - Mel Gibson ends up in a Mexican prison (which operates more like a ghetto) and 'The Gringo' sets about planning his escape, helping out a 10 year old he's befriended and setting the wheels of revenge in motion against his robbery partner who betrayed him. Grittier than the sort of thing you might have seen from Gibson in the 80s and 90s, this still has a nice streak of humour and well-staged action.

Triple Bill...

Berlin Express

first saw this on Beeb 2 lunchtime afternoon, weekday when I was at secondary school and it grabbed me. In the sense it just bubbles along with this rather simple plot. Perhaps one of the first Cold War films (being 1948) or at least a notable one. Aside from Robert Ryan and Merle Oberon it's a low-key cast (though dear Roger Coote does feature in things like Matter of Life and Death etc). The real star, if that's the right expression, is postwar Berlin and Frankfurt. Both still bearing the scars of war. You see in on-location footage, men still showing their wounds of war. At the end our US, British, French and Soviet heroes all part in different directions never to meet again.

The Great Escape

in recent years the historical stuff got in the way of things. Largely as I read a book or two (one a newer detail of the Stalag Luft III escape itself and another on the chaps left behind at Dunkirk who were made PoW). But in spite of it's length (edging towards three hours), it ticks along nicely and is entertaining enough. Forget how the theme is now done tunelessly at footy matches, there's a decent cast (we'll, er, skirt James Coburn's Aussie accent) and the German actors are a mixed bag, for you have the sympathetic camp commandant (Man is no Nazi) to the rougher Gestapo mob (that legend of familiarity, Karl Otto Alberty who must've been in every WWII movie going from 1960 to 1980).
You still wince when Gordon Jackson gives himself away by responding in English to a Gestapo man's trick: "Good luck!", "Ach, thanks!" or Blyth's death and Hendley's wretched expression of pain and of course, the horror of the 50 being shot.

Otherwise the history is what lets it down. Fine, like Battle of Britain in '69, it had to compress people and events but some things feel big, if others are nitpicky. The camp, Sagan was in what is now Poland (forget but Upper Silesia I think) and they escaped into a harsh winter with snow on the ground and most found via barren woods etc. The Americans were in a separate and the escape was mostly British (something that emerged about ten or less years back was that there actually was a fourth tunnel, George).
Obviously there was no one the equivalent of Hilts' daring-do.

Hitler flew into a rage when he heard about the mass escape and ordered the murder. Artur Nebe, head of the German Criminal Police, effectively decided the names by writing them down, and placing those who lived in one pile, and those who died in the other.

The League of Gentlemen

no, no, not that what has been shitcanned by iplayer, netflix etc but the old chestnut of Jack Hawkins and co organising a bank job. The joke of course is that they are not strictly speaking gentlemen. Sure, all but two are gents in how they act, talk and so on but their deeds aren't exactly sporting.

I confess when I saw the posters last year, I thought that Ritchie film was a modern version but kind of glad it wasn't. Not that I want it remade, but it could work in a modern setting somehow. Could've worked in the 80s, Roger Moore say. Hell now, Sam Neill could be the Hawkins type and work your way through to whoever is the creme of the young crop nowadays.

Curiously, always something about the end that is quietly moving in a stiff upper way. Hawkins walking to the lorry, covered by heavy duty lights, army men with rifles, coppers and the music doing its slow march.

"All present and correct, Colonel.
-At ease...gentlemen."

I recently watched Master Z: Ip Man Legacy, with Michelle Yeoh and Dave Bautista recently. Michelle Yeoh is very impressive. At 57 she's still moving as if this was the TND bike shop fight in the '90s. Her physicality, even in the non-action scenes, is so powerful. She demands so much attention merely with her walk. So much grace and elegance. If you're a fan of martial arts films, I highly recommend the Ip Man films and this Master Z spinoff. Bautista produced the spinoff too, I recently discovered.

Spaceballs - this Star Wars (although there are Star Trek, 2001 and Planet Of The Apes gags too) spoof seems to be generally regarded as the point where Mel Brooks' send-up skills began to lessen, but it's amusing enough and its goofy amiability pulls it through.

Young Frankenstein - now, this (and Blazing Saddles) are Brooks at the height of his powers. A loving parody of the Universal horrors of the black-and-white era (Brooks even went as far as sourcing the lab equipment used in those Frankenstein movies) with the likes of Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman and Teri Garr giving it their all.

Film4 has its perks....

Miracle of Morgan's Creek

An insane little film really but when you consider that in 1943 this was quite a controversial film it has added merit. A woman miraculously gets pregnant akin to Mary in the Bible and all orts of hijinks start (represented brilliantly by Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff). Not a bad little film and fun in its way.

The Killing

As I was about to switch off, this came up and when I realised it was a Kubrick I stuck with it (other day I saw Filmworker about Leon Vitaly which is on All4 for those inthe UK). Hayden is the kind of actor who should've been in a Bond, a world weary Felix perhaps. It's put together well and seemed quite vivid so I wonder if it was restored.

Shane

Watching as I speak but I've seen it a couple of times. Surely one of the best films ever made. They say it's a Western but like The Searchers or say Man Who Shot Liberty Valance it transcends a genre. Great cast, scenery, plot etc. It shows much movie-making and movies in general have changed. Hard to imagine this film was made sixty-seven years ago.