September Films Update 1

Ten films I watched earlier this year

****

1. Hello Dolly!

Widow Dolly Levi is a matchmaker in 1890 New York; matchmaker and also tutor for things like dancing and etiquette to improve oneself (for courting presumably). Everyone knows her. She travels to Yonkers (now a suburb of New York City, then more rural) where Horace Vandergelder, a rich merchant, is searching for a wife.

Things become complicated. Vandergelder intends to propose to milliner Irene Molloy, though Dolly is having second thoughts on the suitability. Meanwhile artist Ambrose Kemper wants to marry Vandergelder’s niece Ermengarde, which Vandergelder opposes, as he isn’t financially stable. In addition Vandergelder’s two clerks are dissatisfied with spending all their time working at the store, and never leaving Yonkers.

Dolly arranges for them all to go separately to New York. After a lot of complicated messing about (this is a romantic comedy musical) she manages to get the two clerks, pretending to be rich, to take Irene and her assistant to the Harmonia Gardens; also there are Ambrose and Ermengarde; and she arranges a bad date for Horace. Somehow in the chaos a happy ending emerges.

Despite the efforts to add a little emotion and pathos – Dolly asks her late husband for a sign if she should marry again – this is very silly and weightless. Horace doesn’t want his niece to marry a poor man; Irene is mostly interested in him for financial stability. Because of, and also despite, Dolly’s best efforts, people end up with someone they actually love AND get financial stability. Why didn’t they think of that to begin with, we could have managed without all this singing, dancing and farcical misunderstanding.

Watch This: Bright, energetic period romantic comedy musical
Don’t Watch This: People sing, lie, get up to hijinks

2. The Sword Of Sherwood Forest

Notorious bandit Robin Hood discovers an injured man in the forest. The sheriff of Nottingham (Peter Cushing) attempts to take over the estate of a deceased lord, but is stopped by the Archbishop, who intends to put the matter to the king. The sheriff attempts to hire an assassin to kill the Archbishop, but it turns out it’s Robin Hood and he doesn’t.

While this is going on Robin has encountered Marian, the two flirting. She’s trying to get a man who was murdered by the sheriff’s men pardoned, so his family can be released and they take his farm as inheritance. She gets Robin to meet the sheriff, but realises that the sheriff is bad; later she tries to get the Archbishop to intervene.

To be frank what I got from the plot was that it was there to get Robin and companions to various setpieces, shooting arrows, flirting, daring escapes, swordfights, the odd chase and being mistaken for someone else. I might be wrong but it all slid out of my head after watching, leaving just a few disjointed action scenes. Sorry about that.

Watch This: Enjoyable nonsense as Petter Cushing is evil and Robin shoots, fights and fools people
Don’t Watch This: So lightweight as to fly out of my head

3. Taxi (2004)

Belle Williams (Queen Latifah) is a bicycle courier who finally gets her New York cab license; her cab is specially tricked out with hidden ultra fast modifications (also changes the license plate). Her first ride wants to get to the airport in 15 minutes for a hundred dollars and she makes it, leaving him shaken. Arriving at the airport are a team of female Brazilian bank robbers who all look like models (played by models Gisele Bündchen, Ana Christina de Olivera, Ingrid Vandebosch, Magali Amadei).

Meanwhile detective Andy Washburn (Jimmy Fallon) tries to apprehend some robbers, crashes a car into a corner shop. This makes the news and is apparently not the first time he’s had driving trouble. His lieutenant (Jennifer Esposito) who is his ex-girlfriend bans him from driving and sends him out on foot patrol. Hearing a call about a bank robbery he flags down Belle’s taxi. They chase the bank robbers, only to lose them and have Belle’s taxi impounded.

Washburn, off the case, makes a deal with Belle to get her cab back if she helps him catch the bank robbers. She recognised them from the airport. They’d vanished; as we the audience saw they changed the colour of the car and changed into shorts and bikinis. They’d still been stopped and searched, but the stolen money hadn’t been found. Belle and Washburn do some personal subplots (Belle’s missed several dates with her boyfriend who does not appreciate her bringing this weird white guy home; Washburn’s drunk mum tells all his embarrassing driving stories).

Belle and Washburn figure out how the robberies work; they rob the banks on garbage day and dump everything to be collected. They’ve kidnapped the garbage man’s wife; rescuing her they capture the loot. The police set a trap at the next (last) bank, but inevitably they get away leading to a spectacular car chase and Washburn getting over his driving problems through the power of song.

What to make of this comedy action film (a remake of a French film of the same name)? Essentially it’s very hit and miss. The titular Taxi is ridiculous, many driving stunts good, some not so. The combination of gritty violence by carefree models who escape in skimpy outfits to appear innocent, while the leads fail to get anyone to listen to them and have to deal with the fallout to their romantic lives, well it doesn’t hang together. Perhaps interestingly is how, despite being moderately successful at the box office, it diverted most of the leads’ careers. Queen Latifah got an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in Chicago, got the lead here, and then went back to a lot of success as a supporting actor (some time later getting the lead on action TV series The Equalizer). Jimmy Fallon’s film career continued with very minor roles before getting his big break as a late night TV host. Jennifer Esposito went back to concentrating on TV. None of the models who played the robbers had big careers in film.

Watch This: Fast paced action car comedy
Don’t Watch This: Maybe watch the French version instead

4. Transformers One

The planet Cybertron, built from the legendary first machine Primus, is inhabited by robots. Some are Transformers with transforming cogs, others are not, and those are destined to work in the mines for the Energon they need to survive. When the Matrix Of Leadership was wielded by the Primes, the leading Transformers, Energon flowed but now it is deep underground, difficult and risky to dig up.

Mining bot Orion Pax handily learns all this while breaking into the archives; later he and his pal D-16 break protocol during a cave in. Their supervisor Elita-1 is demoted to waste management for this. Then the last Prime, Sentinel Prime returns to the city of Iacon from the surface. He’s been looking for the Matrix Of Leadership, missing since the war with the alien Quintessons. He declares a race. Only bots who transform can take part but Orion gets himself and D-16 in with jet-packs; they challenge the leaders but fail at the last moment. Sentinel Prime applauds them but the mining manager sends them to waste management.

Down there they meet B-127 and also Elita-1 and discover an old distress message from Prime Alpha Trion. There are co-ordinates on the surface. Orion convinces the others to go with him to find them, having lots of wacky adventures along the way. Reaching the site they discover that everything they know about their world is wrong.

It’s an animated Transformers prequel, where, interestingly, the ability to transform is not available to our heroes initially. Which is fine, fun robot adventures. Except these are not fun adventures. They’re the victims of a conspiracy since before they were born activated. And of course, they are also destined to be the leading Transformers that we know (and love) this prefigured several times even before they gain the ability to Transform and become more like their standard designs.

Watch This: Fun robot adventure with some dark twists and turns
Don’t Watch This: It’s just robots following their destined path to become adverts for toys

5. The Alpha Incident

A microorganism sample from Mars has been brought back to Earth. Dangerous and volatile it’s transported across America by train. The train guard is nosy, releasing the microorganism at a remote station. The agent transporting it puts everyone there into quarantine.

At first he does not tell them why, later they find out. It turns out they have been infected, and that they will die if they go to sleep, their heads exploding grotesquely. As time goes on some try to escape, some go to sleep despite their best efforts. At last it seems a vaccine is on the way, but is there another twist to the plot?

An SF thriller that reaches for a paranoid, claustrophobic atmosphere though it doesn’t get there to be honest.

Watch This: Sometimes tense film of people under pressure
Don’t Watch This: People hang out in a couple of rooms getting scared and annoyed

6. Greedy People

Will (Himesh Patel) has moved to the small town of Providence to work as a cop; he’s partnered with the lazy and corrupt Terry (Jospeh Gordon-Levitt). When Terry takes a break to have sex with a woman he’s having an affair with there’s a call and Will misinterprets the code number. Unable to get Terry’s attention he goes to what he thinks is a break in. Entering the house, the woman inside can’t hear him because of her earbuds; taken by surprise he shoots her and she attacks him with a knife; after a struggle he kills her.

When Terry catches up he’s appalled. The two try and cover it up when they discover a basket with a million dollars in it. They decide to take it, make it look like there was a break in, then leave. Terry pulls over a local, writing the time of the murder on the ticket to give them an alibi.

As police they’re on the inside of the investigation and immediately some odd things occur. The husband of the woman, a local seafood and fishery business owner, has some strange things in his statement. The money is never mentioned. It turns out that he’s hired a hitman, The Colombian, to kill her, as she controlled much of the business and he was having an affair with his bookkeeper. The hitman is unhappy, and threatens to reveal all and/or shoot him. But he doesn’t have another million dollars.

Meanwhile Will has told his pregnant wife Paige about this, only for Terry to tell him not to. Everyone has a piece of the puzzle and is acting on what they think happened, which makes more sense than what actually did. It turns out there are two local hitmen, and the other one, The Irishman, thinks The Colombian has been working in what they agree is his territory.

It's a dark comedy crime film. Is it a comic noir? There’s certainly some noir ideas, that everyone is in the dark, that there’s no justice, just whoever takes the fall. It’s a little slapstick, a little farce. The dark elements overwhelm that as it goes on. Yet it doesn’t have any satirical edge, it’s big fish in a small pond (town) grabbing for a prize, and yet it’s a small town with enough intrigue that there’s two hitmen. Which possibly makes it very cynical, a very depressing view of human nature.

Watch This: Occasionally very funny dark crime thriller with people attempting to betray each other and ending up betraying in a completely different way
Don’t Watch This: Treats violence trivially

7. Cuckoo (2024)

American teenager Gretchen moves to Germany with her father, stepmother and mute stepsister Alma. Her father is there to help build a holiday resort for Herr König. Gretchen gets a job at the hotel reception. Things are a bit weird, disoriented guests appearing, Herr König warning her not to bike home at night. Alma has a fit. Gretchen dreams of leaving, leaves messages on her mother’s voicemail.

On the way home she’s chased by a hooded woman. Henry, a detective, asks her about this. A new guest, Ed, arrives; Gretchen plots to leave with her. However there is a disconcerting shriek, they nearly hit the hooded woman, crash the car. Ed is in hospital, Gretchen confined to the resort.

Henry is investigating the death of a woman who choked on her own vomit after being disoriented, the hooded woman being involved. The two set watch on an isolated cottage with Gretchen’s co-worker, where the hooded woman arrives, makes the strange, disorienting shriek, and does something weird and slimy to the co-worker. When Gretchen confronts König she’s distracted by a box of her items that has arrived. Her mother’s house has been sold; in fact it's revealed she’s been dead all along. Gretchen retreats to her room and goes through the box. Within she finds the answer machine and Alma has left a text-to-speech message asking Gretchen’s mother to call back as Gretchen wants to hear from her.

The film now accelerates; her family has gone to the hospital with Alma who has suffered another fit. König offers to take Gretchen to the train station. However he instead reveals most of what’s going on. The hooded woman isn’t a woman, but a human-appearing creature. They use sound to disorient people (women) and then impregnate them with the new generation of the creatures, so they are brought up in the manner of a cuckoo. Eventually they come back to where they come from to join them; this is Alma. These creatures are greatly endangered so König is attempting to build up a population.

With this explained the rest of the film then plays out with Gretchen having to figure out how to deal with sound, fight the hooded woman, fight König, escape, find Alma and decide what she’s going to do about her. Meanwhile all of these, and Henry, are trying to stop her for their own reasons. As a film, when it was about a very weird woman attacking people and a teen trying to figure out her guilt and what she wants to do, the seriousness worked well. When it turns into human-cuckoo-sound monster running fight, the seriousness of this ridiculous concept falls apart and it’s just another creature film.

Watch This: Horror film with a good central performance and some interesting and bizarrely unpleasant monsters
Don’t Watch This: Too serious to be good pulp, too ridiculous to take this seriously

8. Warp Speed (1981)

A space ship has returned without it’s crew and no clue as to what happened to them. They send aboard Dr Trask, a psychic, who wanders around the ship having visions. Occasionally the crew monitoring her get concerned about the readings.

Initially the visions are disjointed, and interrupted by explanations of the mission and crew. They were all high-flyers, which continues with them competing against each other. Captain Lofton (Adam West) doesn’t seem to do much, in fact it’s very quiet on board. They take turns on the holodeck (essentially) and in between play cards in the recreation room. Perhaps unfortunately the low budget makes this recreation room look like and actual 1981 staff lounge.

Due to an accident they discover they need to jettison weight. To start with this is minor, but then the holodeck-ish machine has to go, and they still need to get rid of more. Eventually they decide to gamble for it. But as the stress rises the crew start to lose control.

The sets look bad and cheap, unlike the ship models which look adequate. The frame of the psychic looking back is okay, though not well used. Also not well used is the off-brand-holodeck. And the captain is ineffectual. There’s a subplot of an attractive crew woman who is teasing the male crew which seems unnecessary.

Watch This: I don’t know, there’s a few good bits but they’re done better elsewhere
Don’t Watch This: What, you’re going to miss Adam West as a spaceship captain?

9. Raiders Of The Lost Ark

In 1936 American archaeologist Indiana “Indy” Jones (Harrison Ford) is narrowly beaten to an artefact by slightly less ethical French archaeologist René Belloq. Returning to his university two men from US Army Intelligence visit him. Apparently Nazi Germany has been acquiring various occult objects and has now set their sights on the Ark Of The Covenant, the container of the commandments Moses brought down from God. Some believe it has immense power but Indy is a man of science. An intercepted message from their dig in the lost city of Tanis mentions Indy’s old mentor Abner Ravenswood, who searched for the ark and had a medallion associated with it but never knew where to start. Indy is recruited and heads for Nepal, where Ravenswood was last seen.

In Nepal he meets Marion Ravenswood, Abner’s daughter, who he had an inappropriate relationship with, and learned that Abner is dead. She owns a bar and tells him to come back for the medallion as she considers the price. Then Nazis attack; Marion and Indy fight them off though not before one of them burns his hand on the medallion, making an imprint of the markings on it. Marion and Indy head to Egypt together.

In Egypt Indy recruits an old friend Sallah who lets him know that the Nazis have hired every digger they can, recruited Belloq to work for them, and have a replica medallion. In the map room in the city of Tanis, the crystal in the medallion will focus the sun’s rays on the Well Of Souls where the Ark is. When they take it to a scholar who deciphers the medallion they learn it has more instructions on the other side; they’re digging in the wrong place. However they are attacked and Marion appears to have been killed.

In a complicated bit of business, Indy and Sallah find the Well Of Souls, dig up the ark, but are discovered at the last moment. Marion, who Belloq captured, and Indy are sealed in the Well. They escape, seize the Ark, attempt to escape with it on a ship. A Nazi submarine ambushes them; grabs Marion and the Ark. Indy, having hidden, swims to the submarine and somehow hangs on until it reaches it’s destination, a secret Nazi base in the Aegean where Belloq intends to open the Ark to make sure it’s inside the box before presenting it to Hitler. On the island Indy and the rest will come to find the true power of the Ark.

The retro-styling of the film has helped it age relatively gracefully. The choice of a less ethical archaeologist working for the Nazis helps gloss over Indy’s frankly appalling tomb-plundering, his failures to help, support or protect Marion. (The film can’t decide if she’s a competent woman the equal to any man – their superior when it comes to drinking – or a damsel who needs saving). This is an exciting adventure film, which lightly hints at the possible supernatural events right up until the end where it dips briefly into horror territory.

Watch This: Spectacular and charming period adventure film
Don’t Watch This: Silly, over the top, full of stereotypes

10. Carry On Loving

Sidney Bliss (Sid James) and Sophie Plummett (Hattie Jakes) pretend to be married to run the “Wedded Bliss” marriage agency in which introductions and matches are made by a fake computer. A variety of Carry On regulars are sent on blind dates, with more than the expected number of misunderstandings and mix-ups.

What do they do with this scenario? There are a couple of silly but interesting ideas; Percival Snooper (Keneth Williams) is a confirmed bachelor and bad at his job as a marriage counsellor; he’s forced to get married to avoid being fired. This gets caught up with the Esme Crowfoot (Joan Sims) plot, a woman who Sid is trying to seduce on the side, despite her estranged lover, wrestler Gripper Burke (Bernard Bresslaw) returning on the scene. In addition Sophie has hired a private detective (Charles Hawtrey) as she suspects Sid of cheating on her.

Other stories revolve around three young women who share a flat, eventually they all become models. One mistakes a timid man who is seeking a partner for the photographer who will be taking saucy photos of her with obvious hilarious consequences. Another is initially met in her family home, dressed very dowdily and very demure, surrounded by elderly relatives. Possibly inspired by a farcical encounter with one of the men referred by the agency, she leaves, blossoms and is recruited to be a model by a photographer who needs a busty model.

Everywhere they go people keep encountering a snogging couple, in the lift, in a taxi, in a phone booth (the best use is the phone booth when a character has to ask them for change for the phone and they give him some without stopping their kissing). They’re carrying on loving, get it?

Watch This: A Carry On film that is about half a dozen romances blossoming, with a few good relationship jokes
Don’t Watch This: Ludicrous when it’s not exploitative or downright stupid