Category: 1975
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Recorded Live is a student film. So director, writer, and animator Wilson’s flat composition gets some wide latitude. He’s got this silly slapstick score on a sound picture, with John Goodwin getting hired to work at an already strange-sounding TV studio only to arrive there and discover a sack of clothes instead of a boss.…
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Most of You’re a Good Sport, Charlie Brown is a motocross race. There are a bunch of kids in the race–organized by Peppermint Patty (Stuart Brotman)–but the only two racers who matter are Charlie Brown (Duncan Watson) and Snoopy, “disguised” as The Masked Marvel. The race is beautifully plotted. Charles M. Schulz’s script is good…
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There’s not a lot of story in Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown. It’s almost Valentine’s Day and Charlie Brown (Duncan Watson) is anxious to receive some valentines. Meanwhile, Linus (Stephen Shea) has a crush on his teacher, much to the chagrin of Sally (Lynn Mortensen). Those plots are it. Everything else either supports Charlie Brown…
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The Stepford Wives puts in for a major suspension of disbelief request in the second scene–what is Katharine Ross doing married to Peter Masterson. They’ve gone from being a somewhat posh New York couple to a New York couple with kids and so they’re moving to Connecticut. Lawyer Masterson is going to take the train…
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The Man Who Skied Down Everest is a peculiar film. It’s straight, methodical narrative non-fiction. In 1970, Miura Yûichirô set out to ski down Everest. His expedition included a film crew. The resulting film doesn’t tell Miura’s story outside the present action–through narrator Douglas Rain, Miura’s diary entries tell the story in the present tense.…
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Monty Python and the Holy Grail is an excellent collection of very funny sketches on a theme. It’s really funny. It’s often exceptionally well performed–acted is a bit of a stretch–and it’s got a wonderful tone. It also lacks narrative momentum, which is kind of extraordinary since it’s about the quest for the Holy Grail.…
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The Day of the Locust is a gentle film, at least in terms of Schlesinger’s direction, Conrad L. Hall’s cinematography and John Barry’s score. The film’s softly lit but with a whole lot of focus. Schlesinger wants to make sure the audience gets to see every part of the actors’ performances. He also wants the…
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Terror of Mechagodzilla is an uncomplimentary mix of a sixties Godzilla movie with the production values of a seventies Godzilla movie. It’s got a lame monster with cool powers and a cool monsters with lame powers. The Mechagodzilla fight scene is mind-numbing. He shoots rockets at Godzilla. Explosions incur. Director Honda has all these resources–an…
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There are a number of things to talk about with The New Original Wonder Woman. It’s a TV pilot movie. It’s a self-contained narrative about Wonder Woman, amiably but not quite enthusiastically played by Lynda Carter, coming to the United States in the middle of World War II. It’s this weird, campy, ill-advised serious “silly…
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The Passenger is an odd mix of existential crisis and globe-trotting thriller. Director Antonioni does far better with the former than the latter, which has Jenny Runacre trying to discover what happened to husband Jack Nicholson. What happened to Nicholson is he assumes a dead man’s identity for no particular purpose in the film’s otherworldly…
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Smile is the story of the week of a regional beauty pageant in a northern California town. It’s not exactly the story of the pageant, though it does look at some of the contestants, but it also looks at how the event affects the locals. Bruce Dern gets top billing and he does tie most…
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Windows is exquisite. The short is a number of shots in a house, always out a window (hence the title), while pleasant harpsichord music plays. The music fits in later; Greenaway makes an exceptional amount of moves in just three and a half minutes with this one. Throughout the short, the narrator (also Greenaway) recounts…
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You’ve got to love a comic book with an apology in leu of a cliffhanger. This issue of Swamp Thing—Gerry Conway’s first—was supposed to be double-sized. Instead, they split it in two… and this one ends uneventfully. Stops might be the better term. Still, it’s a decent issue. Conway’s execution is stronger than the comic…
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In what’s easily David Michelinie’s best-written Swamp Thing issue, the gang (consisting of Swamp Thing, Bolt, Matt and Abby) run into a strange little town filled with insane old people. There’s some deception at first, but it’s really an occult thing—the old people want to capture young people and steal their souls to become young…
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The Michelinie curse continues. It turns out Swamp Thing didn’t just crash land on any Caribbean island last issue, but the one where evil mastermind Nathan Ellery has his secret base. Their new mission—make all the leaders of the world brain dead, so Ellery can take over…. But Michelinie doesn’t stop there. Abby and Matt…
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Some of this issue’s terrible decisions must be editorially mandated and not all Michelinie’s fault. I’m referring specifically to Conclave head honcho Nathan Ellery coming back from the dead at the end. He fell off a roof a while ago and Batman was going to investigate. Apparently, Batman got busy. Anyway, other stupid parts is…
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Oddly, as Michelinie moves away from the traditional Swamp Thing standards, such as Swamp Thing having a lot of thoughts, he does better. The issue isn’t exactly good, it’s just not as bad as the previous one. It’s bad, but it doesn’t fail at being a Len Wein Swamp Thing. Michelinie has some really goofy…
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And now Wein has left too, leaving David Michelinie to clean up the mess. The mess in question is Wein’s swamp monsters. It turns out they aren’t because of Alec Holland’s serum, rather because of a strange batch of toxic waste dumped in the swamp, which somehow interacted with the Holland formula. While Redondo’s art…
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I didn’t know what to expect from The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, other than some of the principals of Young Frankenstein to reunite. As it turns out, Smarter Brother is Frankenstein’s younger brother. For his first directorial outing, Wilder basically just mimics Brooks’s direction of Frankenstein. There are the constant fadeouts and the…
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Leonard Maltin calls Hustle pretentious. I think he’s referring to the spotlights Aldrich shines in people’s faces for close-ups. I think Maltin’s wrong about those shots and their pretense. Aldrich isn’t being pretentious, he’s just totally incompetent when it comes to directing a movie like Hustle. But I’m not talking about the story content–it’s a…
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Besides Al Pacino, there are other actors in Dog Day Afternoon. Some of them give fantastic performances too. But, even with those fantastic performances, every time Pacino is alone on screen, whether closeup or not, monologue or not, it feels like there’s no one else in the film besides him. He doesn’t command it or…
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The espionage genre has gotten so stupid over the last couple decades, it’s hard to even imagine how a mediocre entry could be good. Now, it’s watching the least worst. Three Days of the Condor is such a peculiar film, even though it’s wholly commercial–I mean, Dino De Laurentiis produced it. It’s not just a…
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Somehow, it’s impossible to find an actual Tarkovsky quote regarding 2001 online, just tidbits about Solaris being his humanist response to that film. Damn. I wanted to open with a comment about Norman Jewison sharing the opinion about the science fiction genre. Rollerball‘s a technical masterpiece. Jewison’s sense of composition and editing have never been…
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According to Wikipedia, Sergio Leone was so unhappy with Nobody’s the Greatest, he had his name taken off. He directed the first scene, which is a standard Leone Western opener and is quite good, he co-produced and he came up with the story. The movie’s a tedious, at times painful attempt at comedy–Terence Hill smiles…
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The Drowning Pool is a strange sequel. Not only doesn’t it continue Harper‘s attempt to make PIs hip and modern (more hip than modern, actually), it’s also doesn’t seem like the same character. In Drowning Pool, Newman’s Harper is the standard 1970s Newman character. He’s sick of the world, but he can’t quite give up…
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The first half of Jaws–before the boat, when it becomes a different film–might be the most perfectly made film ever. The second half isn’t less perfectly made, but it’s its own thing, not easily comparable to any other film; that first half deals in traditional filmic standards and does so with singular success. Verna Fields’s…
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Okay Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation about a WWI German submarine–but one taken over by Allied sailors, including American Doug McClure–gets lost at sea and finds its way to a lost eighth continent, where dinosaurs and cavemen still roam. The dinosaur effects aren’t great but they’re not distracting and they work in favor of the story.…
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Superlative mystery drama about L.A. private investigator Gene Hackman going to Florida on a case (to avoid his crumbling marriage to Susan Clark) and getting mixed up with stunt men, smuggling, and Jennifer Warren. Young Melanie Griffith is the missing person in the initial case. Exceptional performances from Hackman and Warren. Clark’s real good too.…
The Stop Button 