Film Review Catch Up 1

I am grieviously behind on my reviews, so have five films in one big, indigestable lump.

1. Come Back To The Five And Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean 

On the 20th anniversary of the death of James Dean his fan club, The Disciples Of James Dean have a reunion at the five and dime store they met in. They’ve all changed, they all have revelations to come.

Based on a play, it’s all on one set, the store, and an entirely female cast, as Joanne has transitioned thirteen years ago. That’s a relatively early secret to come out, and they all take that on board in various ways to lay the foundations for further stories. There’s much more to come. 

Watch This: Robert Altman directs this in his almost-naturalistic style with characters interrupting and not engaging with the events in front of them, with a small self-contained story, and also some decidedly non-naturalistic flashbacks and events in the mirror
Don’t Watch This: If the reunion of James Dean fans in a small town holds no interest for you 

2. Frozen 2 

Did Frozen need a sequel? Did it deserve a sequel? Would these characters turn out to have more story worth telling? Would a sequel reveal that Frozen is just another Disney fairytale cartoon lifted by a truly extraordinary song?

None of this matters as Frozen 2 is here. Elsa is queen but wonders if her magic ice powers mean something more, she’s out of place and starts to hear a voice. Kristoff wants to marry Anna but can’t quite get the proposal together. Anna’s perfectly happy but knows there’s something off with her sister Elsa and her boyfriend Kristoff. Olaf is a magic snowman who’s concerned about change and insists water has memory (this is important). Sven tries his best but he’s just a reindeer who is occasionally voiced by Kristoff. 

Then as well as the voice, the elements are out of sync (that’s the earth, air, fire and water elements, combined with the 18th century uniforms and ships, the swords and shields used by the guards that look very medieval, photography that has apparently arrived in the kingdom sometime in the last 34 years and there’s some strangeness going on. No matter!). Anna and Elsa and Kristoff and Olaf and Sven go off to try and sort it out, which will take them to the enchanted forest and into the secrets of their past. 

There may be a fifth element* (which was an unrelated 1997 film with Bruce Willis, Mila Jovovich and Gary Oldman). 

Anyway none of the songs quite reach the height of Let It Go, but what does? Nothing, that’s what. 

Watch This: It’s a fun kid’s adventure that doesn’t quite get into how to put right the faults of the past.
Don’t Watch This: It’s just some singing cartoon women saving stuff with love, trust and ice magic
In Addition: Some other takes on The Snow Queen fairytale. 

* I have, of course, some ridiculous opinions on this.

3. Dr No 

The first Bond Film and of course they don’t know what a Bond film is yet. Still there’s a lot of what became staples of the series, Bond goes off to an exotic location where a sadistic villain has an island with a nuclear powered aluminium smelter that he occasionally uses to interfere with rockets being launched from Cape Canaveral. There’s a woman who is suspicious of Bond but he eventually gets on with. There’s the theme tune, though it’s part of a different weird jazzy piece and then goes on to incorporate two other songs. Clearly they thought the Calypso rhythms of Underneath The Mango Tree was going to be the stand out hit. They don’t have the Bond gadgets, but they still have the scene, except it’s the armourer giving him a new gun.

The fights tend to be broken up, over edited, but there’s a pretty great scene at the end where Connery and Andress move from close to the camera along a dock filled with running people, climb down to a boat, have a quick fight with the guys in it and then sail off. One take, a bold and probably expensive shot.

Watch This: For some fun thriller action
Don’t Watch This: Who cares about a more than 50 year old Bond film?

4. IT Chapter Two 

At the end of my brief review of IT I suggested that knowing the kids would grown up and have to fight the monster (“IT”) again in 27 years might be a weakness for the sequel. Well it isn’t. Not that this isn’t a weaker film. Kids trying to fight a monster that preys on their fears is simply a stronger story; when they succeed we cheer for them, when they fail, well, they’re kids, trying and failing is something kids do. 

Adults shouldn’t be dumb. They shouldn’t have forgotten (that’s part of the curse, IT’s powers). They shouldn’t split up even if they have to, to get tokens that mean something, which requires them to face IT on their own. They shouldn’t deny what’s in front of them on the weird hat thing that tells them how to defeat IT. They’re dumb and sad and broken. 

They’re dumb and sad and broken because of IT of course, but it’s a tragedy. 

The one who grew up to be a horror writer has bad endings, a common criticism of Stephen King, who cameos and tells James Macavoy his endings suck, which is nice I guess, and maybe the ending doesn’t quite suck, even if it’s all about reclaiming what happened when they were kids, which was horrible. 

Bower, the psychopath bully, doesn’t seem to get much to do. I seem to recall that as deputy villain he got more in the book and the mini-series**? 

Anyway, there’s some good setpieces, the ending is okay I guess, and one or two actually moving scenes. 

Watch This: A fairly good horror film with some excellent scenes, and an acceptable ending to the story
Don’t Watch This: Scary clown, maybe less scary, but still pretty scary 

** Pennywise tells Bower that he can kills the Losers whether they believe in him or not, which I guess gives away too much, or maybe is foreshadowing

5. From Russia With Love 

The second Bond film and they’re fairly close to figuring out what we might expect from a Bond film. We get a weird opening, with a (fake) Bond up against what will be one of his opponents***. We get Bond’s mission making no sense; to be seduced in order to get hold of a Russian code machine. And it makes no sense because it is actually a SPECTRE operation. 

Bond gets some gadgets, and makes a friend of a local contact, Kerim Bey. There’s a mirror-image cold war in Istanbul between the Russians who use Bulgarians as muscle and Karim Bey who works for the British with his Roma allies. This is fairly stable until SPECTRE got involved. 

The film is flawed in that it explains too much too early. We know exactly what SPECTRE’s plan is and how it works. The moves and countermoves have been planned in advance by Kronsteen, the chess Grandmaster and SPECTRE strategist. Of course this is 1963, the second film, we don’t know how a Bond film works. The pleasure is in seeing Bond swan about doing clever, interesting and violent things in an exotic location, which he does excellently. 

Watch This: A fun adventure film, with some dark and unpleasant moments
Don’t Watch This: If you want the fun of figuring things out 

*** This is, apparently, on “Spectre Island” which is also the setting of a now classic training sequence. On balance I would name my secret base something other than Spectre Island if I worked for a top secret criminal organisation called SPECTRE