Chicken Run marked the feature film debut for Aardman Studios, the animation house best known for the Wallace and Gromit shorts. It tells of a group of chickens desperate to escape the farm on which they live. Their attempts always fail, but the erstwhile leader, Ginger (Julie Sawalha) perseveres. When a hotshot […]
Casino Royale is the bastard step-child of the James Bond franchise. When Ian Fleming sold the rights to the first Bond novel, leading to its use on the TV show Climax! (where Barry Nelson was the first actor to portray the famous spy), he couldn’t have guessed that this would be one of the […]
Chariots of Fire is a somewhat fictionalized account of the 1924 British Olympic track & field team, their struggles (both personal and professional) and how they navigated these difficulties to bring home glory.
The focus is on two members of the eventual team, Irish missionary Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) and the Jewish Cambridge man Harold Abrahams […]
Dr. No initiated the James Bond film series and, while not the first appearance of the character*, it established many of the standard features that would carry the series for over four decades. That being said, there is much about this production that makes it more in line with the most recent film, Casino […]
Carry on Sergeant is the first in the series of “Carry On” films, but has very little in common with the series as it would come to be known.
Much has been made of the fact that one of the bawdiest series in film history began with this very straight army comedy. Starring William […]
Carry on Doctor finds the “Carry On” series in full swing. All of the major performers were in place and practically all of them are in this film. The only major omission is Kenneth Connor. In his place is a star turn by Frankie Howerd.
The plot revolves around a hospital (not suprisingly) […]
I know I’ve mentioned Valiant a few times since my original review. It’s the perfect example of a film that doesn’t impress too much on first viewing , but slowly, inexorably creeps into one’s consciousness.
At this point, I really like Valiant. Sure, it’s formulaic and lacks the polish and storytelling skill of a […]
What can I say about Monty Python and the Holy Grail that hasn’t already been said? Having exhausted the possibilities of television, the Mony Python troupe made the move to the big screen with this 1975 retelling of the story of King Arthur and his knights.
Now, as some of you may recall, I […]
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead is a brilliant film by writer/director Tom Stoppard based on his play of the same name. If you are unfamiliar with the work, the basic premise is that the film follows the activities of Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth) as they weave their way in and out […]
When the musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum crossed the Atlantic, the lead role of Pseudolus (originated by Zero Mostel) went to British comedian Frankie Howerd. After re-fashioning the role to fit his cheeky sense of humor, it was a huge success for him. In 1969, in an […]
The Hound of the Baskervilles is perhaps the oddest Sherlock Holmes film that is actually based on a work by Arthur Conan Doyle. It starts with the fact that Holmes is played by Peter Cook and Dr. Watson by Dudley Moore. Now, they were both fine actors when they tried and could have […]
There are three main events that launched the Beatles into the world-wide sensations that they were in the 1960s. First, was their arrival in America. The shock of their unparalleled reception made all of America aware of them. Next, their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show let the country (and eventually the […]
What made the classic Muppet films stand out is that, like the Muppet Show before them, they didn’t treat them as a puppet show. These were regular, normal comedies that just happened to have puppets in many of the major roles. This is never better represented than in the best of all Muppet […]
Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. is the followup to the successful Dr. Who and the Daleks. Like its predecessor, Invasion is based on an original serial from the BBC TV series Doctor Who, in this case, “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”. Also like the first film, this one is a condensation of a […]
Flushed Away shows that just because it says Dreamworks, that doesn’t mean it’s crap. Of course, Dreamworks and producer Aardman Studios (also of Chicken Run and Wallace and Grommit) parted ways with Dreamworks shortly after this film was released, so maybe Aardman realized that Dreamworks was not the place for them. I, myself, […]
Dr. Who and the Daleks is the big screen adaptation of the second Doctor Who serial, “The Daleks”. It takes a lot of liberties with the story, mostly with the characterization of the lead character, who is here known literally as “Dr. Who” (on the show, he is almost always called “The Doctor”) and […]
For a complete change of pace, I next watched what I consider to be one of the best (if not THE best) documentary of a music group, The Filth and the Fury. Filth tells of the rise and fall of The Sex Pistols, with the approval and involvement of the band. Much of […]
You know, I held off watching another film way too long out of some weird sense of not wanting to watch something “unworthy”. But as time has gone on, I’m settling in to watching what I would’ve watched anyway.
First of all, I’ve been on a huge “Hitchhiker’s” kick since last year, when my sister […]
Viewed December 25, 2006
This version of The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe was made for the BBC in the late 1980s as part of a series dramatizing C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. The series was then edited into three TV movies, beginning with this one.
I suppose there’s no point in trying not […]
Viewed December 15, 2006
Village of Daughters is one of what seems like an infinite number of farces that British studios like Ealing were cranking out in the 1960s. It revolves around a salesman, Herbert Harris (Eric Sykes) who travels to Sicily and finds himself caught up in a scheme by the local priest, Don […]
Viewed December 7, 2006
King Arthur ’s subtitle is “The Untold True Story That Inspired The Legend”. By taking that stand, the film claims to portray the truth. And yet it gets an awful lot wrong. You can divide the wrongness into three distinct areas: failure against the Arthurian Myth (the least important), […]
Viewed November 18, 2006
GoldenEye is about as perfect an introduction to a new James Bond actor as anyone could ask for. The last Brosnan Bond that I needed to see, I finally sat down to watch it during the opening week of his successor’s first film, Casino Royale*. (I’m holding off watching that one […]
Viewed October 9, 2006
Lara Croft: Lethal and Loaded tells the story of the creation and rise to prominance of the lead character from the Tomb Raider series of video games. It has a bit of a cheeky tone, but hides a bit of depth behind its veil of fluffiness.
Overall, though, it’s a bit too […]
Viewed October 5, 2006
Clockwise is an attempt to take John Cleese’s immensely engaging screen persona and translate it to the big screen in a starring role post-Monty Python. Unforunately, the main character is neither as irritating as his classic Basil Fawlty, nor is he as appealing as the later Archie Leach from A Fish […]
Viewed October 1, 2006
Ever since I started this project I planned to watch a lot of horror movies during October. So, naturally, when the month rolled around, I promptly forgot and watched Sherlock Holmes in New York. Not that I mind, because I quite liked it. It’s just I had meant to […]
Viewed September 4, 2006
Cards on the Table is a recent TV Movie featuring David Suchet as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. Now, I’ve read plenty of Christie (and seen a lot of Suchet’s Poirot on his show and other TV movies), but I’m not familiar with Cards on the Table. A bit of digging […]
Viewed August 31, 2006
Tomorrow Never Dies is the second entry in the James Bond series to star Pierce Brosnan (and the third I’ve watched - I’m going backwards, remember?). Although the story and villain are quite weak for a Bond film, excellent performances from most of the major cast are able to elevate this […]
Viewed August 27, 2006
Another in the BBC’s line of “ShakespeaRe: told”, The Taming of the Shrew is much more successful than the last one I watched, Macbeth. I think this is partly because Shrew is a comedy and so therefore lends itself more naturally to adaptation than a drama that was based on historic […]
Viewed August 13, 2006
BBC America is currently showing a series of films under the banner “ShakespeaRE: told”, where classic Shakespeare stories are reworked into modern settings. This week, I watched Macbeth, and it couldn’t have been more wrong-headed if they tried.
First of all, they set the film in a restaurant. Joe Macbeth is […]
Viewed August 6, 2006
The number of things that go wrong with V for Vendetta are almost too many to count. It is wrong-headed from the get-go. Now, to be fair, I was never a fan of the original comic book on which this film is based. It seemed to me to be […]
Viewed July 10, 2006
I’m not going to lie to you. Movies like Nicholas Nickleby are not particularly high on my ‘to-see’ list. (I know, looking at what I’ve seen so far this year, you’re shocked.) It’s not that I have anything against “costume dramas” or anything. As Sense and Sensibility proved, […]
Viewed June 16, 2006
Morons from Outer Space is a rather ambitious undertaking from the British film industry at a time when it was in a bit of a decline. It is, obviously, a sci-fi comedy and the writers, Griff Rhys Jones and Mel Smith, come up with some decent bits of humor and the […]
Viewed May 8, 2006
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is one of the better videogame-to-film adaptations, but given the genre’s history, that’s not that great an accomplishment.
The story is typical of the loopy ones seen in the ‘Tomb Raider’ games, revolving around ancient magics with just a hint of archaeology. (Tomb Raider’s obvious aping of […]
Viewed April 24, 2006
I am a big fan of Rowan Atkinson and the promise of a film with him in a kind of “Maxwell Smart” role seemed like a great idea. Unfortunately, Johnny English just doesn’t come up to the standard set by Get Smart! or Atkinson’s best work, like the Blackadder series.
The premise […]
Viewed April 17, 2006
The Ripper is an interesting take on the Jack the Ripper story that follows on Inspector Jim Hansen (played by Patrick Bergin) as he tries to track down the killer, while being drawn to one of his potential victims, Florry (played by Gabrielle Anwar).
The focus is not on discovering who the killer […]
Viewed April 6, 2006
Sense and Sensibility is another one of those films that I haven’t bothered to watch, even though I don’t really have anything against it. Jane Austen just doesn’t really appeal to me. That said, I found this adaptation to be excellent.
Most of the credit goes to Emma Thompson, who not […]
Viewed April 4, 2006
The Prisoner of Zenda is, of course, a classic tale of monarchy, politics and derring-do. It tells the story of Rudolf V, prospective King of the fictional country of Ruritania. Drugged (and later kidnapped) by two of his rivals, he is impersonated by his cousin Rudolph Rassendyll, who happened to […]
Viewed March 31, 2006
Now that’s a Bond film! After watching the underwhelming Die Another Day (a.k.a. DAD) earlier, I had kind of held off continuing on my backwards trip through the Pierce Brosnan films. But the release of Casino Royale is only getting closer, so I needed to keep moving and sat down […]
Viewed March 30, 2006
So I had a strange realization a few days ago. I was browsing around the Wikipedia, reading stuff about Harry Potter (I’m on a bit of a Potter kick these days) and found a list of Potter parodies. Most are pretty lame (”Kill Harry” - a mishmash of Harry Potter […]
Viewed March 9, 2006
Oh my, what can be said about Merlin: The Return? I’m a big fan of Arthurian stories and can usually find something appealing about most of them. (For instance, I’ve been known to gush at some length about that episode of Thundercats where Mumm-Ra acquired Excalibur.) But Merlin: The […]
Viewed March 8, 2006
Carry On Screaming is a visually impressive entry in the “Carry On” series, but I found it’s substance to be quite lacking.
The plot is not unimaginative, with it’s mad doctor turning beautiful maidens into store mannequins. The characters are straight out of the Hammer horror films that were so popular at […]
Viewed February 27, 2006
It’s impossible for me to watch All Creatures Great and Small without thinking of the long-running TV series of the same name. Based on the novels by James Herriot (real name Alf Wight), the series was a staple in my house from its first airings on public television. The characters […]
Viewed February 21, 2006
Perhaps it is because it is the first “Harry Potter” film that is saw after having experienced the book, but Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the first film that I felt really missed essential elements of the story.
Mostly it was subtlety that went out the window. Director Mike […]
Viewed February 9, 2006
The “Carry On” gang tackle the American western in Carry On Cowboy and it proves to be a very entertaining entry, if not one of the best.
The main problem is, I must admit, the accents. Kenneth Williams does allright, as does Joan Sims. But Sid James’ accent is so bad […]
Viewed February 6, 2006
I, like many of my generation, first saw Sir Alec Guiness in Star Wars (1977). To me he was Obi-Wan Kenobi and it was quite a surprise to learn years later that not only did he have a long and distinguished career behind him, but that he had been a bona […]
Viewed January 31, 2006
Now Withnail & I is a film that I have been aware of for quite some time. Both my sister and her husband (hi guys!) have been trying to get me to watch it for years. But my interest was not really piqued until I found out that it starred […]
Viewed January 26, 2006
Roger Moore is, of course, known for his seven films portraying James Bond, from 1973’s Live and Let Die to 1985’s A View To A Kill. But that doesn’t mean that’s all he did during those years. Moore appeared in over fifteen films during his stretch as Bond, most of […]
Viewed January 23, 2006
With the release of the Disney / Pixar film Toy Story in 1995, the era of the computer generated animated film was born. Although films such as Beauty and the Beast (1991) and Aladdin (1992) had utilized computer imagry, it was Toy Story that proved that the technique could carry an […]
Viewed January 22, 2006
Carry On Cleo is considered to be one of the high points of the “Carry On” series. It certainly looks better than anything else so far. This is not only due to the fact that it is extremely well costumed, but because it was actually shot on the sets built […]
Viewed January 20, 2006
I have to admit that I’ve never really “gotten” Wallace & Gromit. Not that I haven’t found their previous shorts funny, just that they never really grabbed me. I still haven’t seen Chicken Run (2000), Aardman Animations’ previous feature which is supposed to be quite good, so I went into this […]
Viewed January 18, 2006
The tale of Sweeney Todd, the barber who killed his customers and baked them into pies, dates back to the 1800s, when stories began to appear in various publications. He caught the attention of the public and would have still been a popular figure at the time it was first […]
Viewed January 16, 2006
Now THAT’S a “Carry On”!
While the last film in the series, Carry On Jack (1963) was good on its own merits, I didn’t feel it had the proper atmosphere for a “Carry On” film. Carry On Spying is much more on target, due primarily to two people: Kenneth Williams and Barbara […]
Viewed January 15, 2006
So I was all set to watch The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001), when I stopped the film about five minutes in and noticed that a movie was starting on my local PBS station. That film, Mr. Moto’s Last Warning, was instantly more engaging than Scorpion (which I will finish […]
Viewed January 7, 2006
I’ve got a shocking admission to make. Before watching Die Another Day, I had never seen any of the Pierce Brosnan 007 films. Now, this is not something I can justify, since I am a big fan of the Bond films (and Bond in general), I’ve seen all the other […]
Viewed January 4, 2006
Carry On Jack is the eighth in the classic “Carry On” series of British comedies. Known for their wacky humor and bawdy jokes, the “Carry On” series ran from 1958 to 1978 and spanned 29 films (plus one more in 1992). The main draw of the series was the regular […]