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LXXIV: Escape from Witch Mountain (John Hough, 1975)
Disney sf - two alien kids with apparently magical powers go on the run from Donald Pleasance and Ray Milland. Oh, and the police are corrupt. Surprisingly adult.
LXXV: Return to Witch Mountain (John Hough, 1978)
Disney sf sequel - alien kids return, to have a holiday in downtown LA (yeah right). One is kidnapped by Christopher Lee and Betty Davis and the other jins a gang. No, really.
LXXVI: The Island at the Top of the World (Robert Stevenson, 1974)
Vernesque Disney steampunk, hampered by large stretches having French accents or being in Norwergian, and some dodgy matte work. Donald Sinden's son has gone missing whilst searching for the place where whales go to die, so he heads north in an airship. Fine until they find the paradise in the Arctic, when number one son suddenly falls to the law of the father and Sinden finds his prospective daughter in law rather too attractive. There's a superfluous American, whose only function is to translate Old Norse, and who left acting soon after. The scriptwriter's grandson writes rather better dialogue.
LXXVII: Unidentified Flying Oddball (Russ Mayberry, 1979)
Holds up better than I'd expected - this is sort of Carry on Arthur, although fewer of the cast have been in Carry Ons than I remembered. It's hard to dislike a film that opens with a crap model shots, admits it is a model, and then later has a nearly as crap model shot. Nerd engineer builds android (an exact copy of himself) for dangerous space mission and both accidentally end up at Camelot. Better than Merlin, and perhaps the only Disney movie with a porn mag in it.
LXXVIII: The Black Hole (Gary Nelson, 1979)
Better than I remembered, and mostly ruined by the R2D2s/Dusty Bins/Henry the Hoovers. The use of telepathy seems to be lazy plotting, and the ending makes no sense. Is this really only a PG? This led Disney to set up Touchstone, a couple of years down the line.
LXXIX: Dog Tags (Damion Dietz, 2008)
Unlikely romance in which soldier about to ship out to battle and the emo son of a film star hook up and changes each others' lives for a couple of days. A little soft-focus rumpy pumpy, and it doesn't ring true. Or doesn't earn its challenging of stereotypes.
LXXX: The Land that Time Forgot (Kevin Connor, 1975)
Moorcock and Cawthorn adapt Burroughs for surprising British sleeper hit. I'd forgotten all the submarine stuff at the start, and look! that's the Master and that's Keith Barron. Passable puppetry effects rather than stop motion.
LXXXI: The People that Time Forgot (Kevin Connor, 1977)
Patrick Tilley adapts ERB - I was told his novels are seminal when I queried an essential stock for bookshops list which had five of his novels on it (a list of six books if I recall) - and not as good as the first one. Characters go in search of the cast of Land, and do more dances with neanderthals. The idea (yes, there was one) of Land seems to have been forgotten. Doug McLure takes the Charlton Heston attitude to sequels, although he was to appear for Connor in Warlords of Atlantis. The DVD loses marks for suggesting it's set in the Arctic.
LXXXII: The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
First of the various remakes of the 1956 classic and - look! - there's Kevin McCarthy and there's Don Siegel. There's no political subtext to argue over - as it is anti-Red or anti-anti-Red? - just a suspicion of self-help books, and turning into Leonard Nimoy. It's actually unsettling in terms of many of its choice of shots and camera angles.
LXXXIII: At the Earth's Core (Kevin Connor, 1974)
Oh dear - for a start that isn't where it's set. Peter Cushing and Doug McLure journey to the centre of the earth and meet giant parrots,Morlocks odd humanoids and English speaking primitive humans. Oh dear. Oh dear. The rubber suits. The sumo wrestling parroty-lizardy things. Oh dear. Make it stop.
LXXXIV: The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson, 2008)
Near-miss follow-up to the frankly superior Brick, and clearly sat on for a couple of years, although it's worth the price of admission for the one legged cat. Adrien Brophy and Mark Ruffalo are two conmen orphans, who are looking for retirement. With the largely silent Rinko Kikuchi, and the occasional help or hindrance from Robbie Coltrane and Maximilian Schell, they set out to con Rachel Weisz. It's never quite clear when the characters are conning or being themselves, and having characters named Stephen, Bloom and Penelope promises more than it delivers (and Icarus haunts the last third of the films). Needed to be shorter and sharper (like In Bruges), but enjoyable.
LXXXV: The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010)
Not for the first time, I felt that Winterbottom was a little disingenuous in his interviews, and I'm surprised this has been controversial. At the same time it's undeniably disturbing. The issue is sexual violence, and at the back of people's mind the sense that the BBFC does not like sexualised violence, and especially not characters enjoying it. Yes, Casey Affleck is an unreliable narrator, and it's another great performance from him, but I didn't get the sense the character was especially enjoying it. It seemed more of a chore than fun. And it didn't seem that graphic compared to, say, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, whose American remake will have to gut the original. There is a disturbing avoidance of the f-word (forensics - they surely had it in some form in the 1950s?), as you would have thought that whomever beat someone that hard would have a bruised fist. This is a nasty film, but that's partly the point.
Totals: 85 (Cinema: 20; DVD: 53; Video: 1; TV: 11)
Disney sf - two alien kids with apparently magical powers go on the run from Donald Pleasance and Ray Milland. Oh, and the police are corrupt. Surprisingly adult.
LXXV: Return to Witch Mountain (John Hough, 1978)
Disney sf sequel - alien kids return, to have a holiday in downtown LA (yeah right). One is kidnapped by Christopher Lee and Betty Davis and the other jins a gang. No, really.
LXXVI: The Island at the Top of the World (Robert Stevenson, 1974)
Vernesque Disney steampunk, hampered by large stretches having French accents or being in Norwergian, and some dodgy matte work. Donald Sinden's son has gone missing whilst searching for the place where whales go to die, so he heads north in an airship. Fine until they find the paradise in the Arctic, when number one son suddenly falls to the law of the father and Sinden finds his prospective daughter in law rather too attractive. There's a superfluous American, whose only function is to translate Old Norse, and who left acting soon after. The scriptwriter's grandson writes rather better dialogue.
LXXVII: Unidentified Flying Oddball (Russ Mayberry, 1979)
Holds up better than I'd expected - this is sort of Carry on Arthur, although fewer of the cast have been in Carry Ons than I remembered. It's hard to dislike a film that opens with a crap model shots, admits it is a model, and then later has a nearly as crap model shot. Nerd engineer builds android (an exact copy of himself) for dangerous space mission and both accidentally end up at Camelot. Better than Merlin, and perhaps the only Disney movie with a porn mag in it.
LXXVIII: The Black Hole (Gary Nelson, 1979)
Better than I remembered, and mostly ruined by the R2D2s/Dusty Bins/Henry the Hoovers. The use of telepathy seems to be lazy plotting, and the ending makes no sense. Is this really only a PG? This led Disney to set up Touchstone, a couple of years down the line.
LXXIX: Dog Tags (Damion Dietz, 2008)
Unlikely romance in which soldier about to ship out to battle and the emo son of a film star hook up and changes each others' lives for a couple of days. A little soft-focus rumpy pumpy, and it doesn't ring true. Or doesn't earn its challenging of stereotypes.
LXXX: The Land that Time Forgot (Kevin Connor, 1975)
Moorcock and Cawthorn adapt Burroughs for surprising British sleeper hit. I'd forgotten all the submarine stuff at the start, and look! that's the Master and that's Keith Barron. Passable puppetry effects rather than stop motion.
LXXXI: The People that Time Forgot (Kevin Connor, 1977)
Patrick Tilley adapts ERB - I was told his novels are seminal when I queried an essential stock for bookshops list which had five of his novels on it (a list of six books if I recall) - and not as good as the first one. Characters go in search of the cast of Land, and do more dances with neanderthals. The idea (yes, there was one) of Land seems to have been forgotten. Doug McLure takes the Charlton Heston attitude to sequels, although he was to appear for Connor in Warlords of Atlantis. The DVD loses marks for suggesting it's set in the Arctic.
LXXXII: The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)
First of the various remakes of the 1956 classic and - look! - there's Kevin McCarthy and there's Don Siegel. There's no political subtext to argue over - as it is anti-Red or anti-anti-Red? - just a suspicion of self-help books, and turning into Leonard Nimoy. It's actually unsettling in terms of many of its choice of shots and camera angles.
LXXXIII: At the Earth's Core (Kevin Connor, 1974)
Oh dear - for a start that isn't where it's set. Peter Cushing and Doug McLure journey to the centre of the earth and meet giant parrots,
LXXXIV: The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson, 2008)
Near-miss follow-up to the frankly superior Brick, and clearly sat on for a couple of years, although it's worth the price of admission for the one legged cat. Adrien Brophy and Mark Ruffalo are two conmen orphans, who are looking for retirement. With the largely silent Rinko Kikuchi, and the occasional help or hindrance from Robbie Coltrane and Maximilian Schell, they set out to con Rachel Weisz. It's never quite clear when the characters are conning or being themselves, and having characters named Stephen, Bloom and Penelope promises more than it delivers (and Icarus haunts the last third of the films). Needed to be shorter and sharper (like In Bruges), but enjoyable.
LXXXV: The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010)
Not for the first time, I felt that Winterbottom was a little disingenuous in his interviews, and I'm surprised this has been controversial. At the same time it's undeniably disturbing. The issue is sexual violence, and at the back of people's mind the sense that the BBFC does not like sexualised violence, and especially not characters enjoying it. Yes, Casey Affleck is an unreliable narrator, and it's another great performance from him, but I didn't get the sense the character was especially enjoying it. It seemed more of a chore than fun. And it didn't seem that graphic compared to, say, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, whose American remake will have to gut the original. There is a disturbing avoidance of the f-word (forensics - they surely had it in some form in the 1950s?), as you would have thought that whomever beat someone that hard would have a bruised fist. This is a nasty film, but that's partly the point.
Totals: 85 (Cinema: 20; DVD: 53; Video: 1; TV: 11)
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