The Yakuza (1974)
When his daughter is abducted by a Japanese crime syndicate, an old army buddy asks Harry Kilmer (Robert Mitchum) for help, because Kilmer was deployed in Japan during the post WW2 occupation, therefore knows Japan and used to be involved with native Eiko, the sister of a Ken Tanaka (Ken Takakura), a former Yakuza himself. Reluctantly, Kilmer travels to Japan and his old past and gets involved in a situation, which turns out to be more than he can handle alone.
This Japan-flavoured action thriller, capably directed by Sidney Pollack, is based on the first script by legendary screenwriter Paul Schrader. Its main selling point is the portrayal of some aspects of Japanese culture, in particular of the Yakuza (i.e. “Japanese Mafia”), which must have been exotic and fascinating to an early 70ies Western audience, but, when viewed today, has a “been there, done that” feel to it. It’s not too difficult to catch an original Japanese crime thriller these days, and other Hollywood movies (the inferior ‘Black Rain’, for instance) have mined similar territory. Nevertheless, ‘The Yakuza’ is an okay movie. It takes its time to flesh out the characters, which are three-dimensional, and benefits from it when past secrets are revealed and the characters must make moral choices. The involvement of Robert Mitchum underlines a certain noirish quality to the film. The action scenes are allright and the final showdown, naturally involving Samurai swords although Mitchum’s character unsportingly uses a shotgun, is violent and memorable. Overall, ‘The Yakuza’ isn’t bad at all, but it is also not special enough to be good. Mediocre - 5/0

On the Town (1949)
Three all-singing, all-dancing navy sailors (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Jules Munchin) are on a 24 hours shore leave in New York and are looking for sex.
‘On the Town’ is considered one of the better classic MGM musicals made by Arthur Freed’s production unit (just like ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and ‘An American in Paris’) and, indeed, its light hearted sense of joie de vivre is infectious. It also has a lot of very funny bits, not least due to the sexual innuendo of most of the dialogue and songs. “Innuendo” may actually be the wrong term, as some of the lyrics are rather explicit: There is little room for misinterpreting “I want some prehistoric dick” or, when referring to sailors on the sea, “they like polishing the knobs”. The dancing, by Gene Kelly in particular, is at times spectacular. On the downside, ‘On the Town’ is decidedly leightweight and has little to no substance. Also, the musical numbers (some of which are composed by Leonard Bernstein) are of a varying quality. And my most important reservation: I don’t really like musicals, because my suspension of disbelief comes to a screeching halt whenever somebody just breaks into song for no other reason than this being a musical. Still, I liked ‘On the Town’ on the whole, which should make it mandatory viewing for aficionados of musicals. 6/10

I like musicals, so i give On the Town another star. We're on the same page, though.

Let's get obscure!

Mr. Robinson Crusoe is a Douglas Fairbanks oddity, in which he plays a wealthy man who bets his shipmates that he can live on an uninhabited tropical island for two months, starting off with just a toothbrush and the clothes he has on, and be living the high life by the time his companions return. The island is one they are passing, and is good-sized and lush, which makes you wonder why it's uninhabited in the first place. Especially since it soon turns out there are monkeys, bananas, pineapples and goats on the island, which were surely brought by visitors. Maybe it's a Polynesian nature preserve.

Most of the film is Fairbanks living like Robinson Crusoe, making axes, spears and progressing to Rube Goldberg type inventions that are a lot of fun. At one point a native drops by the island and Fairbanks captures him* and tries to make the native his man Friday but the native isn't willing to be a slave and flees. In the process of chasing him, Fairbanks hears the alarm from one of his traps and discovers he has trapped a native girl (Maria Alba), who is fleeing an arranged marriage and finds living with Fairbanks much more appealing

This is a trifle that reminds me a bit of those short films you see between the movies on TCM, but it's 76 minutes long. Since Fairbanks is alone for much of the movie, he's talking to the dog and a very talented monkey. (It milks goats, for example.) This was filmed on location in Tahiti, Fiji and Samoa and I wondered sometimes if Fairbanks was taking a vacation and decided, "Hey, let's make a movie!"

Another film from the same year, also set in the same area, is much more substantial: F. W. Murnau's Tabu: A Story of the South Seas. (Also like Tabu, you get to see some native breasts under the National Geographic Exception.) Still, this was fun enough to give it 6 of 10, while acknowledging that it seems like vacation pictures a lot of the time. [Tabu is 8.5 of 10 and truly gorgeous.]

*To be fair, the native did try to kill him first.

Rest assured, I am near to running out of Douglas Fairbanks movies. You can get Mr. Robinson Crusoe on Amazon for a penny plus shipping, so I figured, what the hell...

Of course, once I get done with those, I have a bunch of John Barrymore movies. I've already seen Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Twentieth Century, Grand Hotel, Dinner at Eight and Romeo and Juliet, all of which are well worth watching. Twentieth Century and Dinner at Eight are two of my favorite films, although the latter is more because of Lionel Barrymore and Marie Dressler.

Asides: Marie Dressler was almost always the best thing in any movie she was in, and that includes movies also featuring John Barrymore. A notable exception is Let Us Be Gay, where she was matched by Norma Shearer. Shearer often is underestimated because she did her best work in the Pre-Code era. Watch her in A Free Soul or The Divorcee to see what she could really do. I always considered it a travesty that Lionel Barrymore won the Oscar for chewing the scenery in A Free Soul while Shearer lost for what was the best performance of her career, including The Divorcee, for which she did win the Oscar. She lost to Dressler for Min and Bill, which has not stood the test of time very well. Dressler was far better the next year in Emma and of course lost (to Helen Hayes, who may have deserved it) and it's a challenge to find the film these days.

If there had been supporting actress awards from the beginning, Dressler should have won for Anna Christie, where she's much better than Garbo, and Dinner at Eight.

The Marie Dressler Emma is not based on the Jane Austen novel. Emma is a housekeeper who raises a professor's children after their mother dies. The last child, born at his mother's death, is her special child who she raises like her son. Finally, after twenty years, Emma decides to take the first vacation of her lifetime. The Professor accompanies her to the station, and realizes that in his absentmindedness, he needs her to remind him to take his medication, and finally realizes he should marry this woman. Unfortunately, he quickly expires, willing Emma the management of the estate, which means his neer-do-well children have to go through Emma to get any money. Since this is intolerable (and nothing Emma wants), they decide to use dubious evidence to convict Emma for murder. How sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child.

It does work out in the end, because it becomes obvious that Emma loves these serpents' teeth to distraction, and it eventually becomes obvious to the serpents' teeth. (The youngest kid, who realizes how exceptional Emma is, flies home immediately, which doesn't work out too well.)

The end of the film is perfect. One of the great soap operas of the 1930s.

This movie has no right to be funny, but for me it was the funniest I've seen in years.

I'd put this on par with "Sean of the Dead". Loved it and almost wet myself more than a few times.

Been fairly busy but still had time to take in a few flicks: (I tried to avoid plot spoilers)

Serenity Fairly decent sci-fi movie. While I enjoyed it, it had a distinct made-for-TV feel to it. I didn’t research this one, but it was obvious to me that the exterior scenery shots and almost every shot with an actor had a small-screen appearance. Now I only have a 27” TV and much of the rendering looked on par with a late 90’s video game, so I can't imagine what it would’ve looked like larger. Every shot of character dialogue was conventional TV framing with the camera popping back and forth to each speaker. While the plot was pretty solid and I enjoyed the actors, I thought Whedon could’ve made a better transition to the big screen, as it looked like a slightly higher budget TV show. -maybe that was the point, as I’ve never seen “Firefly”, the story upon which this world was based.

The Wild Bunch Excellent Western set in the early 20th century. William Holden is solid as an aging robber in the anti-hero role. It’s a bit of “Butch Cassidy” meets “Oceans 11” meets “Kelly’s Heroes”. I enjoyed it, but it isn’t one I feel an immediate need to purchase. As far as Westerns go, this one ranks behind my favorites, but only because I like the others SO much. I was a bit startled when the next day Ernest Borgnine died. But, he was old.

Enchanted Okay, so the kids brought this home from the library. I didn’t want to like it. I tried not to like it, but it won. Amy Adams is just fantastic in this role. Menken’s music fits perfectly with most tunes making me want to whistle as I was working. How timeless they’ll be, I’m not sure. Damn cute movie with a predictable outcome but wonderful journey to arrive there. I will end up owning this one before long. Maybe a quick search at my favorite pawn shop on the way home…

Robot Monster Terrible movie in the so bad it’s good category. Alien with a gorilla suit (neck down) and a diving helmet wreaks havoc. Stunningly bad dialogue, acting, actors, wardrobe, pretty much everything. It does seem to lack a bit of the spit-takingly funny charm of “Plan 9” however. Very short at 62 minutes. This one was a lucky pawn-shop find at 2$ in pristine condition.

You make 'Mr. Robinson' sound like a lot of fun.

So 'Tabu' is worth watching? I've been reluctant to try to find it cause i always thought that it was a documentary with the typically condescending attitude towards 'primitive cultures' of the time.

Tabu's not a documentary, although nearly all the actors are natives to the Society Islands, particularly Bora Bora and Tahiti and it's filmed on location. In the plot, one of the islanders falls in love with a girl who is then declared "tabu," a maiden sacred to the gods.

Parts of it do have a documentary feel. Robert J. Flaherty, of Nanook of the North fame, co-wrote the script with Murnau. The film won an Academy Award for Cinematography and is in the National Film Registry.

The lead actress also had a bit part in The Hurricane and another actor had a bit part in Mutiny on the Bounty, which is fortunate for "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" fans.

Perfect Blue is an animated psychological thriller about a pop star who decides to become an actress, much to the dismay of her fans, one of whom is impersonating her on a website and knows entirely too much. A particularly sinister one is stalking her. Then the murders start. Good, weird movie, sometimes hard to follow because of how Satoshi Kon moves between scenes, and some scenes are dreams or hallucination. The R rating is well-earned.

Satoshi Kon only directed four films before his untimely death, all of which are well worth watching, and two, Paprika and Perfect Blue, are excellent. Perfect Blue sounds like a live-action film, and that was the original intent, but the studio was damaged in the Kobe earthquake, and it was decided to do it as an animated film. A live-action film was released in Japan in 2002.

Watch Millennium Actress, same guy. I'm not that big of a fan but everyone else is. You'll probably like it more than I did.

I've seen it. It's another odd film in that it seems like it should be a live action film. It's a bit weak on plot.The fourth film is Tokyo Godfathers, which is a Japanese take on Three Godfathers where the parents are an alcoholic, a transsexual and a preteen runaway. It's a Christmas story.

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

Yes, another superhero movie and yes, it probably came too close on the heels of Sam Raimi's films. Still, not a bad movie with enough action to mask a rather threadbare plot. Competently directed, but probably not as good as Raimi's first Spider-Man, despite looking more gritty. This time Spidey's love interest is Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) and he is up against The Lizard (and Gwen's police captain dad). They've also added more plot behind Peter's parents and how he came to be under Uncle Ben and Aunt May's care.

Andrew Garfield is OK in the role, though I much preferred the "transformation" of Tobey McGuire in Raimi's version; much starker "before and after" spider effects in the first incarnation. And for a "masked superhero", this Spidey sure loses his mask a lot in this version.

Still, despite being kind of "paint by numbers" in points, I wasn't bored. 3.0/4.0

I'm back from Europe! And I watched movies on the planey-planes!

My Week with Marilyn (2011) ***

Completely proficient, while never being great. Worth a watch for most of you, since movies about movies interest people like us, but not a DROP EVERYTHING type film.

The Vow (2012) **1/2

You know, I'm actually going to go out on a limb and support this movie a bit. It's not good, per se, but it's not the cinematic abortion JB described either. It's much more downbeat than most romances are, and the premise gives it a certain novelty, albeit not one that the screenplay exploits as much as it could.

2010: The Year We make Contact (1984)

This was going to be disappearing from Netflix instant soon so I figured I better knock it out. Set against the backdrop of a rising US and Soviet conflict in Central America, a joint mission is set 9 years after the events of 2001: A Space Odyssey with 3 American scientists (Roy Scheider, Bob Balaban, John Lithgow) joining a soviet crew aboard their ship helmed by a female captain (Helen Mirren) to travel to Jupiter and find out what happened aboard the original Discovery mission. This movie is more straightfoward than 2001, but we still get plenty of obelisks and questions about our place in the universe, and our old buddy the HAL 9000. The cold war of the 1980's certainly overshadows the events of the production.

Overall it was an OK outing. This was very much Peter Hyams baby as he wrote the screenplay (based on Arthur C Clarke's novel), produced, directed and handled the cinematography. The special effects on board the ship are OK, but pretty cheesy off. Also, Hyams has a really annoying habit in this film of advancing the story through voiceover messages back to Earth (official reports and messages to loved ones) that were pretty out of place. Underwhelming and not as ambitious as the first movie, but it moved along faster. A generous 2.5 / 4.0.

The Wicker Man

The movie with Christopher Lee, not Nic Cage. A police investigator arrives at a remote island, searching for a missing girl. He ends up finding a lot more than what he expected. This is a slow burner, and those who like their horror with lots of blood and gore will be disappointed. But for those who like horror with atmosphere, this fits the bill nicely.

Not to mention badass endings

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

This is one of those films that is as interesting to read about as it is to watch. It seems the experience of filming Aguirre bled into the movie itself. I won't talk about Kinski's madness or his relationship with Herzog; all of this has been outlined before. But I think there is one aspect of this movie that no one has mentioned yet.

Human Rain did a great job talking about Aguirre as a character and the meaning of his pursuit. However, he left out something crucial: the futility of everything that happens in the entire movie. I think Aguirre as a film is infinitely more depressing than anyone wants to admit. Apart from the disaster that was the expedition and the monstrous acts that were committed, the audience knows that ultimately, all is for nothing. Obviously, the film tells us that El Dorado is a myth. But in the drama of the film, it is easy to forget that this is so. While I was watching, I kept expecting them to finally make a logical decision that would ensure survival or that they would stumble into a European settlement. Neither of these things happened. Instead, as we witness Aguirre's final descent into madness, we realize that this was the only possible outcome. If it is true that we all have our personal "El Dorado", then this film should come as a warning.

I will be honest, I wasn't sure about Aguirre. It's been sitting in my Netflix queue (although it has been removed recently since Netflix now sucks) for quite some time. I've always been put off by the period dress and the crazy Kinski face. I'm glad I finally watched it. There really isn't anything else like it. I was amazed that it was made so early in the 1970s. The style is similar to a documentary or a reality series. I honestly couldn't believe some of the shit they did on that river. Knowing they had zero budget just verified my suspicions of jankyness. Overall, it just adds to the value of the film. The sense of danger just adds to the atmosphere and makes you think of European explorers doing the same thing.

Also, the music is great. I wish more films had a prog rock soundtrack.

Finally, I have to mention the beheading. It totally wrecked the mood, was completely unrealistic, and didn't belong in the movie. It was stupid and disappointing.

3.5/4

Aguirre has one of the great opening scenes of any movie, with everybody coming down that narrow steep path from the mountains to the jungle. Complete with cannons and two women in litters.

The last scene is also great.