Shameless Self Expression

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 ...

Dennis Quaid is Bowen, a once valiant knight ‘of the old code’ now an embittered rogue. Why embittered? Some time ago, he took a wounded Prince Einon to a dragon who saved the boy’s life. However, he became a thoroughly rotten, evil king (now played by David Thewlis), and Bowen blames the dragon. We the audience know that Bowen’s young pupil was an evil little shit all along. Years later the angry and disillusioned Bowen is now a mercenary who slays every dragon he comes across and is paid handsomely for it. That is until he meets a dragon who has a counter plan for profit: The dragon, whom Bowen names ‘Draco’ (voiced by Sean Connery) suggests a deal whereby he starts terrorising local villages only for Bowen to come along and agree to ‘save’ the town for some gold. They then engage in pretend battle, Draco (now supposedly the only living dragon) takes a mock fall, Bowen collects. Eventually the plot dictates that Bowen and Draco will need to team up to end Einon’s reign of terror, but...

A 2012 documentary from debutant Mary Kerr about eccentric New York personality Craig Castaldo, AKA Radioman. Everyone in the movie biz who has worked in NY seems to know Radioman, who wears a radio around his neck, and has managed to work as an extra on countless NY-lensed films for decades. We get interviews with the likes of George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, Meryl Streep etc., all talking about Radioman with varying degrees of convincingly genuine affection. We also get interviews with the man himself, talking about his life as an extra and all the famous people he has ‘worked with’. It gets tiresome very quickly, and at times I felt Radioman was been patronised and treated like an unfortunate, eccentric ‘mascot’ by a couple of the celebrities. Hanks is typically classy, Jude Law comes across surprisingly well, Robert Downey Jr. is clearly familiar with the guy too. Best of all, Robin Williams and Meryl Streep come across as genuinely kind-hearted people who se...