Shameless Self Expression

Isabel Jeans is stuck in an abusive marriage with husband Franklin Dyall, who accuses her of an affair with artist Eric Bransby Williams. A violent incident occurs, someone is put on trial, and another commits suicide. The entire mess leaves Jeans divorced but branded a woman of ‘easy virtue’. Fleeing to France she falls for Robin Irvine, but eventually her sordid past and reputation threaten to derail the entire thing. Ian Hunter plays a lawyer.   For this 1927 film, director Alfred Hitchcock ( “The Lodger” , “The 39 Steps” , “Strangers on a Train” ) and screenwriter Eliot Stannard ( “The Lodger” , “The Manxman” ) chose to make a screen adaptation of the Noel Coward play. Mistake. This is boring, static, and the wrong choice of material for a silent film. Perhaps he might’ve gotten more out of it with sound, but as is it’s one of Hitchcock’s worst films. I haven’t any connection to the original material but I suspect this film doesn’t greatly either, because it’s far too borin...

Twenty years ago, Joan Crawford was committed to an asylum after taking an axe to her younger, philandering husband and his mistress. She has now been released and taken in by her grown daughter (Diane Baker). Re-integration doesn’t come easy. Leif Erickson plays Crawford’s brother, while George Kennedy turns up as a dirty-looking farmhand.   A brilliant twist that I didn’t see coming saves this 1964 shocker from schlock filmmaker William Castle ( “The House on Haunted Hill” , “I Saw What You Did” ). Scripted by Robert Bloch ( “Psycho” , “Asylum” , “The House That Dripped Blood” ), this is essentially Castle’s own “Psycho” (with a bit of “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte” thrown in) there’s some fun moments throughout, but some thumb-twiddling too. Joan Crawford definitely isn’t miscast here, Castle was shrewd enough to use Crawford appropriately in this melodramatic role. She’s a lot of fun. The always underrated Diane Baker is lovely as ever playing Crawford’s long-suffering daugh...

Set in the 1930s, three friends (Christian Bale – doctor, John David Washington – a lawyer, Margot Robbie – a nurse) witness a murder and get themselves caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow the American President. Andrea Riseborough plays Bale’s partner, Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy play Robbie’s kooky brother and his wife, whilst we also get turns by Zoe Saldana, Taylor Swift, Robert De Niro, and the oil-and-water pairing of Michael Shannon and Mike Myers as a couple of spies, among several others.   A big-name cast is assembled by writer/director/bully David O. Russell ( “Three Kings” , “The Silver Linings Playbook” , “American Hustle” , “Joy” ) for this 2022 flop. And they’re wasted, in what amounts to an empty, messy, shaggy dog mystery-comedy. It seems like Russell watched a lot of Coen Brothers movies and mistakenly thought he could make one himself. The film has some appealing moments, but it takes about 80 minutes for it to even finally be about something. By then ...

Ralph Bates is the arrogant, amoral but highly intelligent young Dr. Frankenstein, who finds his university studies most tiresome. What he’s really interested in is reanimating the dead and creating life. He enlists the help of sloshed grave robber Dennis Price and his wife Joan Rice in digging up enough corpses to use as body parts in his experiments. David Prowse, as The Monster, is the result of these experiments, and naturally he’s not a very co-operative subject. Veronica Carlson is the gorgeous local girl whom Bates never shows much romantic interest in, despite her obvious interest in him. But then, when you murder a girl’s father just to acquire his brain for your fiendish experiments, you probably have a hard time looking the innocent lass in the face, I guess. Kate O’Mara is the family maid and former lover of Frankenstein’s father, whose ‘services’ the young doctor also enlists from time to time. Jon Finch is Lieutenant Henry Becker, an acquaintance of Frankenstein’s, who be...

On the coldest night of the year, well-meaning Ohio librarian Emilio Estevez gets involved in a sticky situation when a group of homeless people (ostensibly lead by Michael K. Williams) refuse to leave the premises after closing time. Jena Malone is Estevez’s faithful assistant, Jeffrey Wright is Estevez’s conflicted superior, Taylor Schilling plays Estevez’s neighbour, Alec Baldwin is a rational police negotiator, Gabrielle Union plays a soulless reporter, whilst Christian Slater plays a smarmy, self-serving lawyer-turning-politician.   Look, I’ll happily defend “Men at Work” any day, but let’s be honest: Emilio Estevez is not a terribly good filmmaker or storyteller. He’s a guy with a bleeding heart and a lot of well-known friends. Here he takes on both directing and screenwriting duties and wastes a pretty damn good cast and a good message. A preachy, message movie version of “Mad City” , Estevez’s heart is in the right place but he’s not good enough of a writer or director...

Still troubled by a nervous breakdown suffered in Africa, teacher Joan Fontaine accepts an English country village teaching position at a private school. Before long she notices strange things occurring and starts to suspect witchcraft being involved. Alec McCowen plays a priest-of-a-kind, who hires Fontaine, with Kay Walsh as his sister who helps run the school with McCowen. Leonard Rossiter plays a doctor, Duncan Lamont is a cheerful local butcher, and Michelle Dotrice one of the kids.   Unless Angela Lansbury or Anjelica Huston are involved, witches and witchcraft don’t tend to be my kind of thing. This 1966 effort from Hammer Studios is nonetheless well-done, though the more mysterious first half engaged me more than the unravelling in the second half. Directed by Cyril Frankel (who directed Hammer’s terrific “Never Take Sweets From a Stranger” ), it’s really creepy stuff and overall quite solid though the editing is a bit crude at times. Scripted by Nigel Kneale ( “Quaterm...

  Set in the late 70s, Ohio-born Dakota Fanning arrives in West Berlin in hopes of admittance into the Markos Dance Academy. Academy director Miss Blanc (Tilda Swinton) reluctantly accepts the novice, and soon enough starts to see something in her new pupil. Meanwhile, it appears several of the students have started to go missing, with rumours of witchcraft circulating as well. Mia Goth plays a fellow student, Chloe Grace Moretz plays a troubled former student, and Jessica Harper turns up briefly as well in a cameo.   No one needed a remake of Dario Argento’s iconic “Suspiria” . It’s not my favourite of his films (I prefer “Inferno” ), but it still works perfectly fine. It definitely didn’t need to be turned into a 2 ½ hour dance drama with psychological and supernatural horror elements, that’s for damn sure. While this arty-farty 2018 remake from director Luca Guadagnino ( “Call Me By Your Name” ) and screenwriter David Kajganich (the underrated “Blood Creek” and “True...

Wannabe crypto-currency entrepreneur and tech whiz Jesse Metcalfe visits his estranged dad Bruce Willis with hopes the old geezer will invest. Willis lives in a surprisingly hi-tech retreat for elderly citizens (which also contains the ultra hi-tech bunker of the film’s title) and isn’t overly invested in any father-son bonding, let alone crypto. However, before long father and son will have bigger problems on their hands. Armed mercenaries led by a figure from Willis’ past (Chad Michael Murray) storm the retreat. They’re looking for Willis…but why? Shannen Doherty plays a senior military figure (!), Michael Sirow plays a supremely annoying ranger at the retreat, Sean Kanan is a goon, and Kelly Greyson is an employee at the retreat.   Director James Cullen Bressack ( “Killing Field” ) and screenwriter Alan Horsnail ( “Midnight in the Switchgrass” ) combine to make one of the lesser of Bruce Willis’ recent output, which is really saying something. This cheap, uninspired 2021 fi...

Set in the late 1800s, surgeon Ronald Lewis is asked to venture to the castle of Baron Sardonicus (Guy Rolfe) by Lewis’ former lover (Audrey Dalton), now Mrs. Sardonicus. Sardonicus is afflicted with a certain condition which he believes Lewis can help him with. Once at the castle, Lewis witnesses servant Krull (Oscar Homolka) torturing someone, making Lewis wonder what on Earth he has gotten himself into. He then meets the facially-scarred Baron, who proceeds to tell Lewis the story about how he came to be afflicted with a ghoulish, permanently frozen smile. Erika Peters appears in flashbacks as Sardonicus’ first wife.   Director/producer William Castle ( “The House on Haunted Hill” , “The Tingler” ) and screenwriter/author Ray Russell ( “The Premature Burial” ) offer up a bit of a Price-Corman-Poe film with this enjoyable macabre 1961 film. Good-looking for the presumably low-budget, Castle is very well assisted here by B&W cinematographer Burnett Guffey ( “King Ray” , “B...

Captained by Kirk Douglas, an American aircraft carrier departing from Pearl Harbour gets caught in an unusual storm. Afterwards, they find they are unable to pick up any comms signals outside of outdated radio broadcasts and wartime coded messages. Further investigations reveal that ships that were destroyed during WWII are still out there in the ocean in the exact same location they were in the war. Yep, they’ve travelled back in time to 1941. What to do? And how in the hell will they get out of the 1940s and back to the present day? Martin Sheen plays a systems analyst on board the ship to observe its functionality. James Farentino and Ron O’Neal play Commanders, Charles Durning is a 1940s Senator, Katharine Ross plays the Senator’s aide, and Soon-Tek Oh plays a feisty downed Japanese pilot.   Perhaps if I hadn’t seen “The Philadelphia Experiment” (both versions) before this 1980 film from director Don Taylor ( “Five Man Army” , “Escape From the Planet of the Apes” ) I migh...

When an American photojournalist is captured and held hostage by a Bosnian war criminal (Eli Danker), the US response is to send in a six-man team of elite Special Forces bad arses, led by Major Harding (Marshall R. Teague) and including Tim Abell as his second-in-command. Scott Adkins turns up as a British SAS man on a separate but connected vengeance mission.   An early teaming of director Isaac Florentine and actor/martial artist Scott Adkins (later to pair up for the excellent “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing” and several other films), this 2003 special ops action film gives the B-grade action movie audience what it wants. Florentine knows what he’s doing and is damn good at it. This is for a niche audience, but it will satisfy that audience, an audience I’m a part of. Here Florentine is basically making a Chuck Norris movie (Nu Image/Millennium Films basically being the modern Cannon/Golan-Globus), except with more emphasis on teamwork than you’d ever find Chuck involved...

Arrogant 1920s tycoon John Phillips organises an expedition to Egypt to find the lost tomb of a Pharaoh. On the expedition are archaeologist Andre Morell, ancient linguist Maggie Kimberly, Phillips’ son David Buck, and a photographer played by Tim Barrett. Once they uncover the tomb, they are warned by local Roger Delgado to leave well enough alone. However, Phillips insists on bringing ‘his’ find back to Britain to put on public display, even going so far as to have Morell committed to an asylum so as to take full credit. Eventually the mummy (played by Christopher Lee’s stunt double Eddie Powell) is awakened and goes on the usual rampage. Elizabeth Sellars plays Phillips’ wife, and Michael Ripper turns up as an obsequious personal assistant.   Bottom-tier Hammer film from 1967 directed by the usually reliable John Gilling ( “The Gorgon” , “The Reptile” ) who co-wrote with Anthony Hinds ( “Captain Clegg” , “Taste the Blood of Dracula” ). It’s mostly well-acted by far too talk...