Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on July 16th, 2007
Synopsis
Dustin Hoffman plays Max Dembo, a burglar out on parole after serving six years. He initially makes a committed effort to reintegrate into society, getting a nowhere job in a can factory and dating placement agent Theresa Russell. But when parole officer M. Emmet Walsh unfairly targets him, Hoffman gives it up and returns to a life of crime, his violent and self-destructive urges making a bad situation that much worse.
Interestingly, the more unlikable Hoffman’s character becomes, ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 25th, 2007
Synopsis
An undersea earthquake leads to the loss of an undersea lab. There is, however, no sign of the wreckage, and so it is presumed that the lab slid deep into a trench. In the faint hope that there might be survivors, the submersible Neptune descends into the depths, where it encounters all sorts of gigantic sealife.
In my review of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, I said it was the most idiotic sub movie out there. I stand by that, but The Neptune Factor keeps the...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 21st, 2007
Synopsis
When Admiral Walter Pidgeon’s glass-nosed submarine (?) Seaview surfaces at the North Pole after an extended stay underwater, Pidgeon and crew discover the sky is on fire. It turns out the Van Allen radiation belt has caught fire (?!) and life on Earth will be incinerated once the temperature reaches 175 Farenheit (and not, apparently, a single degree less). Pidgeon and co-hort Peter Lorre come up with a plan to launch a nuclear missile into the belt and use the explosion to blow out ...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 20th, 2007
Synopsis
An overheated Cold War plot sees a scientist, crucial to American interests, felled by a blood clot. The only way of saving his life consists in shrinking a submarine and specialist crew to microscopic size and injecting them into the his body. They must make their way up the circulatory system to the brain and there destroy the clot. But on top of all the hazards they encounter in the body, there is also a saboteur aboard.
Who could this saboteur be? No way it’s heroic Stephen Boy...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on June 16th, 2007
I’m kicking myself. Martin Scorcese’s The Color of Money has long been a favourite of mine, but for some reason I never knew it was a sequel to The Hustler, a film 25 years older and three times better.
Starring a young Paul Newman (Road to Perdition) in a role that earned him his second Oscar nomination, The Hustler is about a cocky pool player hustling his way to the top. When “Fast Eddie” Felson (Newman) challenges undefeated straight-pool champ Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason,...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on June 6th, 2007
Synopsis
Gary Cooper is a writer who hit it big with his first book, but has been mechanically producing more of the same ever since while he and his wife booze it up in New York high society. When his publisher rejects his latest tossed-off effort, Cooper and wife (now dead broke) retreat to his old family home in the country. There he gradually falls in love with the daughter (Anna Sten) of his Polish neighbour. She herself is engaged (unhappily) to another man. The budding relationship is thus fra...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 31st, 2007
Synopsis
After a whirlwind romance leads to a quick marriage, Gary Cooper’s introduction to his new in-laws ends in fiery catastrophe. The marriage annulled, he returns to his small town home and an earlier romance despite the best advice of father-in-law-to-be Frank Morgan, who wants to save his friend from the horrors of marriage. But when a critical number of months later, Cooper receives word that he is to be a father, and that his former wife (Theresa Wright) is planning on giving the baby up fo...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on May 30th, 2007
Synopsis
Gary Cooper plays the title character, sent by his father on a perilous journey to the Far East to open up trade relations with China. Once in the court of Kublai Khan, he becomes involved in the palace intrigue, falling in love with the emperor’s daughter, and running afoul of evil councillor Basil Rathbone.
Cooper is hardly Italian, but in a film that offers us the spectacle of Alan Hale having his eyes narrowed by make-up to play a Chinese warlord, and Rathbone in shoe polish to...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Archive Authors on May 28th, 2007
Prior to Top Gun with Tom Cruise and long before The Guardian with Ashton Kutcher, An Officer and a Gentleman was the film about a hot-headed hotshot military trainee headed for glory or self-destruction.
Starring a youthful Richard Gere (Chicago), An Officer and a Gentleman follows the journey of Zack Mayo, a young man looking to find his place in the world, and to prove he can defy his chaotic, depraved upbringing. His avenue of choice is to become a navy jet pilo...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on May 23rd, 2007
Thieves Like Us was never one of Robert Altman’s better known films. It did rather poorly at the box office in 1974, and I suspect it will fare little better on DVD. Certainly there is a bit more interest in Altman’s films with his recent passing, but Thieves Like Us is not a great representation of his work. It is a wonderful period piece, but there isn’t anything worthwhile happening inside that marvelously created world. Altman admits there were extreme cuts, over 45 minutes, made to the film. Perhaps that foota...
