Shameless Self Expression

An elite squad of American operatives (Jorge Rivero, Andrew Stevens, Isaac Hayes, Kevin Bernhardt) are sent to the Middle East to protect a progressive politician (Louis Jourdan) currently under threat by an extremist Dictator (Robert Forster). Kabir Bedi is a relative of the Dictator, who is deployed to handle things on the ground, with Hugo Stiglitz playing a creepy assassin in an Iron Maiden shirt. George Kennedy turns up as the superior officer of our protagonists.   Low-rent 1988 mixture of “The A-Team” and “The Delta Force” , this Jose Antonio De Lama ( “Killing Machine” with Lee Van Cleef, Richard Jaeckel, and Jorge Rivero) cheapie even features two of the latter film’s co-stars, George Kennedy and Robert Forster. The results aren’t any good, but they’re probably slightly better than you expect. You’d swear this was another Cannon film, recycling one of their own films and featuring two of the same actors, one in essentially the same role. We even get one of the worst s...

Set in a genetically engineered future where you can eliminate all sorts of impurities, Ethan Hawke plays one of the few to have been born ‘naturally’. Thus in a society where genetic perfection is given privileged status, his station in life is relegated to boring menial professions like cleaning toilets (hello, Ernest Borgnine as Hawke’s boss). Being higher-minded than that, Hawke decides to look for an alternative, no matter how underhanded. He enlists the aid of cynical Jude Law, a genetically superior being who unfortunately is rendered physically disabled due to an accident. Hawke will impersonate Law, who in turn supplies Hawke with necessary blood and urine samples for him to pass security checks at the space institute. Now Hawke’s dream of space travel can become a reality…that is until there’s a murder at work. Enter hard-nosed detectives Alan Arkin and Loren Dean who look into matters, matters which seem to be pointing in Hawke’s direction. Uma Thurman plays co-worker, Gore ...

After a long ago Themyscira-set prologue, we flash-forward to 1984 America, with Diana Prince (Gal Gadot), AKA Wonder Woman working at the Smithsonian as a cultural anthropologist where she and mousy, awkward gem specialist Barbara (Kristen Wiig) make fast friends. There’s a new supposed ‘dreamstone’ Barbara has been looking into, one that as the name suggests grants wishes. Diana wishes to be reunited with her WWI soldier love Steve (Chris Pine), Barbara wishes to be confident and powerful…just like Diana. Then there’s sleazy loser businessman Max Lord (Pedro Pascal) who has been snooping around the stone and wants it for nefarious purposes. You see, while Diana and Barbara assume the stone’s powers are fiction (why would a superhero not believe in a mystically powerful stone?), Max Lord knows differently…and benefits from its powers greatly. Wonder Woman’s gonna have her hands full here, which is unfortunate because while Max and Barbara become more powerful, she seems to become weak...

A paleontological expedition up the Amazon hopes to find the source of a fossilised claw dated somewhere between early aquatic and land-based life. And they certainly do just that, only that the creature that the fossilised claw belongs to…is still very much alive. Richard Carlson and Richard Denning are rival doctors, whilst Julie Adams, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell form the other major members of the expedition. It’s Adams to whom the creature seems to take a fascination in particular.   One of the landmark ‘Creature Features’ and one of the films in the Universal cycle of horror films, this 1954 film from director Jack Arnold ( “The Incredible Shrinking Man” , the blaxploitation western “Boss” ) and writers Harry Essex ( “It Came From Outer Space” , the dreadful “Octaman” ) and Arthur Ross ( “The Great Race” and a lot of TV work) kinda gets forgotten about in favour of “Dracula” , the “Frankenstein” films and so on. That’s a shame because it’s terrific fun and frankly ...

Fact-based epic drama set in late 1300s France, with Matt Damon playing experienced knight and vassal Sir Jean de Carrouges, whose friendship with libertine vassal Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver), slowly starts to fray. It doesn’t help that Sir Jean feels that Jacques is favoured by their liege, the egotistical Pierre d’Alençon (Ben Affleck), but things completely fall apart when Sir Jean’s lovely wife Marguerite (Jodie Comer) accuses Jacques of raping her. Jacques denies it of course, and since Jacques is backed by Pierre d’Alençon, Sir Jean has to take things as high as the King of France. Eventually the matter is to be decided by a legally (and supposedly God-ly) sanctioned duel between the two men…deciding the truthfulness of a woman’s testimony.   This 2021 historically-based Medieval “Rashomon” from director Ridley Scott ( “Alien” , “Black Rain” , “Gladiator” ) is a near-miss. For the record Mr. Scott, I’m not a Millennial, and I don’t believe the box-office failure of you...

Vain, histrionic and aging theatre star Margo Channing (Bette Davis, in a case of art perhaps imitating life) is somewhat humbled by adoring fan Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), who has seen every show. However, Margo begins to regret taking Eve under her wing when the sweet, innocent (and much younger- a crucial point) woman starts to get a little too involved in her life and the lives of those closest to her. Celeste Holm is Margo’s loyal friend Karen, who treats Eve with kindness. Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe play Margo’s director fiancé and Karen’s playwright husband respectively, whilst sitting on the sidelines are insinuating, manipulative critic Addison De Witt, played by George Sanders in his signature role, and giving a bemused, cynical narration. Thelma Ritter is plain-speaking Birdie, Margo’s wise-acre confidante and costumer who has Eve pegged as trouble from the get-go. Marilyn Monroe has a bit part as an up-and-coming bimbo whom De Witt is attempting to mould.   195...

Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams are a husband-and-wife team of super-competitive board game players who host a ‘game night’ at their house regularly with friends. The usual players are husband-and-wife Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury, as well as single Billy Magnussen who brings a different hot-but-dumb date with him (not that Magnussen is Einstein himself). On this particular occasion he has brought someone a bit smarter in Irish-born Sharon Horgan, who spends much of the film entirely unimpressed with the himbo. A surprise turn-up comes in the form of Bateman’s more financially successful but jerk-y brother Kyle Chandler, who quickly proceeds to usurp the evening by organising a different kind of ‘game night’. It’s basically a form of ‘murder-mystery’ party game, involving someone getting kidnapped and the teams having to follow the clues to rescue them. On cue, some goons come along to whisk Chandler away, and the game is on. Only, when Bateman gets shot in the foot, he and McAdam...

Set in Louisiana in the early 80s, the film depicts molestation in the local Catholic church, as devout Catholic parents Keith Carradine and Blythe Danner find that their son (Michael Faustino, excellent under difficult circumstances) has been molested by a priest (David Strathairn). And it appears he’s not the only victim, though the church’s reaction to the allegations is pathetic at best. So the couple investigate legal avenues instead, eventually hiring swaggering Southern lawyer Claude Fautier (Jack Warden), who prepares the boy for what will likely be a gruelling experience on the stand. Bob Gunton plays the buck-passing local monsignor, Dylan Baker (several years before “Happiness” ) is a priest colleague of Strathairn’s who has mixed emotions and a dodgy past of his own, Robert Joy is perfect casting as the soulless head of the firm representing the Catholic church, and Mitchell Ryan plays the first lawyer the parents hire, with somewhat moderate returns at best.   I do...

Schizophrenic teenager Madison Iseman comes home from a psychiatric facility to her loving and supporting (but exhausted) parents Katherine Heigl and Harry Connick Jr. The problem is that Iseman’s schizophrenic episodes may have also come home as she starts to have hostile feelings and criminal suspicion towards her teacher (Eugenie Bondurant). Or does the teacher really have a missing kid imprisoned in her house? Israel Broussard (Who is visibly 27 years-old to Ms. Iseman’s young-looking 24) plays a nice kid at school who Iseman really likes.   What starts out as clichéd but fairly grounded, horribly goes off the rails quite quickly in this 2021 dud from writer-director Castille Landon (Any relation to director Christopher Landon? He made the “Happy Death Day” films co-starring Broussard). Exploring mental illness in a genre work is always a bit of a tightrope, and Landon trips and falls multiple times in this schizophrenia version of “Disturbia” (or “Rear Window” for us ol...

An apparent PR exercise has a group of German Jews expelled in 1939 sent off on a ship headed for Havana, with the Nazis knowing very well that they are unlikely to be allowed safe haven there. Max von Sydow is the dutiful, non-political captain who is simply doing his job. Helmut Griem is the most vocally Anti-Semitic crew member, a member of the Nazi party who constantly berates and mocks the passengers, inciting violence. He frequently butts heads with more sympathetic, young crew member Malcolm McDowell (one of his rare nice guy roles). James Mason, Fernando Rey, Denholm Elliott, and Jose Ferrer solidly play Cuban dignitaries of varying degrees of morality as the ship looks for a safe port to dock. Mason plays the most compassionate of the lot, with Rey and Ferrer by far the least sympathetic. Ben Gazzara plays humanitarian Morris Troper, trying his best on the ground to get the passengers safely docked somewhere. Children of the late 80s and early 1990s will want to take note of a...

Baron Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is thawed and revived, and now working on an idea to trap the soul of a recently deceased person, with his assistants Hans (Robert Morris) and Dr. Hertz (Thorley Walters). The idea being that he may be able to take that soul and put it into another dead body in order to revive it. Susan Denberg plays Christina, Hans’ lady love, who is paralysed and disfigured on her left side. Peter Blythe plays one of a trio of dapper but rotten young fops who cause a fracas one night at the in run by Christina’s father (Alan McNaughten), which starts a whole chain of events that eventually supply the single-minded Frankenstein with two freshly deceased bodies for his experiment.   After the disappointment of the previous “The Evil of Frankenstein” , I was sceptical going into this 1967 sequel from director Terence Fisher ( “The Curse of Frankenstein” , “The Revenge of Frankenstein” ) and screenwriter Anthony Hinds ( “The Curse of Frankenstein” , “The ...