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The Man From Snowy River - (1982)

Revisiting this George Miller-directed Australian classic after so many years, there were a few things about it that felt bizarre - not the least of which is the prominent use of Kirk Douglas, who gets lead billing and actually plays two twin brothers.

We're all taught about Banjo Paterson in school, with his poem "The Man From Snowy River" taking prominence - but I don't remember being led through the entire thing, because it's quite a lengthy piece of work for a poem and feels more like a short story written in prose. For it to be adapted into a feature film felt novel at the time, and in the years since the only thing about it that has lived on is it's score - it's most attractive feature, although the landscape is a cinematographer's dream and is made excellent use of. Despite being as Australian as Australian can be, Douglas seems to swoop in and steal all of the limelight - first as the goofy prospector Spur, and later in the film as Spur's twin brother and ranch owner, Harrison. The two characters feel more typical to American Westerns, which makes Snowy River all the more unusual for an Australian film.

The romantic hero role has Canadian-born Tom Burlinson being introduced - not the find of the century, and not someone who's career took off in later years. His love interest is played by the more substantial Sigrid Thornton, who had a significant Australian career, but never transitioned to the U.S. like so many Australian actors do these days. Also in the cast is Jack Thompson. It sticks pretty closely to the 'young man proving himself' arc - Jim Craig (Burlinson) sees his father die in an accident (that he's pretty much responsible for) and is thrown off his land, despite owning it. He finds work at Harrison's ranch, falls in love with his daughter, and spends much of the film showing everyone that he's really good at horse riding, rustling, whip-cracking, kissing, knot-tying, pouting, wood chopping and carrying a tea set. The climax involves the hunting down of a mob of horses to get Harrison's prize colt back - as per the poem. Great music and landscapes, along with many breathtaking shots of horses galloping - but the human drama aspect is somewhat cloy, with Burlinson and the screenplay not working for me.

I'd be interested to know what non-Australians think of it. It has a solid 7.2/10 on the IMDb, with a little more average 3.4/5 on letterboxd and a quite healty 85%/89% on Rotten Tomatoes.

6/10

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My sister swears by TMFSR. I finally watched it based on her repeated recommendations and thought it was earnest and enjoyable. Given that it's over 40 years old I thought it aged pretty well. The horse riding scenes were outstanding.

THE FIRST GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY 1978 Michael Crichton - (75/100)

1h 50m | Adventure | Crime | Drama | Thriller | Comedy
Writer: Michael Crichton
Cast: Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, Lesley-Anne Down

Yeah flawed here and there but overall had a lot of fun with this one.
It's literally 'great', added to my top 25 best ever heist films.

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The '70s was an exploratory time for filmmakers. It led to a lot of all-time classics. It also brought us Shriek of the Mutilated.

Don't be fooled by the intense title, Shriek of the Mutilated is a hilariously bad Yeti movie. A college professor named Dr. Prell takes his students to a remote wooded island to search for the legendary creature. Students were killed on previous trips, but this has seemingly made Prell even more determined to capture the Yeti.

This is one of those movies that conflates the Bigfoot and Yeti myths. The creature lives in the American woods like Bigfoot, but is called a Yeti and is all-white. It looks a lot like the gremlin from the Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. TZ is my favorite show and I love that episode, but that is not the look you want to scare an audience. I thought it was a cool touch though to make the Yeti's heartbeat so loud that you can hear when it's nearby.

Not content to be a typical creature feature, Shriek of the Mutilated takes unusual plot turns and has eccentric characters show up. It devolves into complete absurdity in the climax and I love it. The acting is bad across the board, but there are some great scenery-chewing monologues. The creators took some chances and it paid off in a noteworthy bad movie.

Loved it. Saw it twice & yes I did cry a wee bit, but such is life.



Sweet indie movie. Nothing memorable - not familiar with any of these people, but not bad at all.

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Who Can Kill a Child? (1976, Narciso Ibáñez Serrador)

Given the positive reviews, I expected good things from this Spanish horror thriller, but found it to be completely disappointing—in fact, I kinda hated it. But not right away. Up until the moment the couple set foot on that island and start noticing the vague oddities, it's perfectly all right. But as soon as it gets down to business, and we begin to understand what's going on, it goes downhill pretty quickly. First off, the inexplicably stupid actions of the characters, particularly the husband, lack believability in such an egregious way it's just plain annoying. It takes them forever to figure out what's happening, and even then the lack of urgency is staggering. There were also question marks regarding the behavior of the children-turned-murderers, but I'll just leave it at that. Yeah, I get it, it's a horror film, and horror films can be dumb, but the problem is: a) this film positions itself as a "serious" horror film with a serious message and b) there's only so much disbelief you can suspend anyway. Secondly, (and of course your mileage may vary), aside from a couple of moments, it's not very scary, the children just aren't very creepy, and the atmosphere misses the mark — yes, there is some tension early on but the further the plot unravels, the more tedious it becomes. You just kind of slowly realize: this is it, and there's not going to be much else here. The opening titles sequence which uses horrific documentary footage of war atrocities is truly disturbing but it's far and away the most disturbing part of the movie, which is telling. Thirdly, as I noted earlier, the film is trying to convey a pretty profound political message, but does it in such an on-the-nose and heavy-handed (almost childish) way it fails to carry the weight and impact it could have had. Perhaps it would be more enjoyable if it didn't take itself so seriously.
To summarize: not all bad, but it did annoy me. A big heap of wasted potential.

The Mysterious Death of Casey Kasem

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After Yang - (2021)

I got pretty emotional watching After Yang, which makes me feel that some time in the future, some kind of A.I. is going to share a sad story about itself with me and I'm going to feel upset and sorry for it. Jake (Colin Farrell) gets to watch the memories of Yang (Justin H. Min) - a robot both he and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) use to babysit and teach their daughter Mika - after Yang breaks down. Inside is a whole inner life, including a previous incarnation of Yang. These are just recorded memories - but it's amazing how the memories themselves hint at some kind of consciousness and emotional core to Yang, or Gege as Mika sometimes affectionately calls him. When he hunts down a mystery girl from these recordings, all of this makes it hard for the family to do anything that might feel too undignified for this valued family member. This was a dreamy sci-fi drama that speaks to issues those of us in the future will confront more and more as time goes by.

7.5/10


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Machete - (2010)

I don't have an easy time with Robert Rodriguez films, and while Machete kept on threatening to be really good, in the end it fell short. This film should have gone full-absurd instead of going half-serious and half-silly wanting to have it's cake and eat it too. When we have moments that are Monty Python-like in their limb-chopping, "use someone's intestines for rope" insanity it's too hard for us to suddenly stop and treat other moments with sincerity. I'm looking at films like Black Dynamite and Hobo With a Shotgun and feeling like Machete wanted to be too cool to be able to match the tone of those two films - but it has moments that are brilliant and very enjoyable. It's a shame those moments are amongst a lot of "guns and bimbos" explosive stuff, which turns me off. The film's poster says it all. Steven Seagal as the bad guy, Robert De Niro and so many decapitations nearly makes up for it, but not quite.

5/10


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The Man From Snowy River II - (1988)

It was the '80s - so even films you'd think would never have sequels got sequels. To many non-Australians, this film is known as Return to Snowy River, and I was kind of surprised by the fact that it's not an outright bad film. I was expecting dreary nonsense, but Snowy River II has a decent plot, and once again wonderful cinematography and horse-riding stunts. Of course, bringing back the character of Harrison but having Brian Dennehy play him as opposed to Kirk Douglas hurts the continuity a lot - but as I said on letterboxd, "I was very skeptical, but came away respecting it." It's very earnest in not being a tacked on follow-up, and instead works as a full-fledged stand-alone film. Many fans of the first would have been well pleased with it - as long as they weren't expecting a masterpiece.

6/10

To Hell and Back (1955). Bought this on dvd today as part of a 10 film war collection. It's the true story of Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. and Audie Murphy stars in the film as himself. I thought this was a pretty good war movie. Audie Murphy did a fine job playing his younger self. The battle scenes were fairly well directed. Worth checking out.

Believe it or not, as an 11 year old boy I saw this picture in the theater when it came out. I loved it! And the public was very impressed and supportive of Murphy because he was a highly decorated genuine brave war hero.

He wasn't a bad actor. He had a genuine personable character about him. I recall him in a few westerns too. He was real big for about 15 years or so.

Breakdown (1997) -

This lean and mean late '90s thriller has been hanging around my watchlist probably since it came out and I'm very glad I finally got around to seeing it. Kurt Russell and Kathleen Quinlan are Jeff and Amy Taylor, a married couple who are relocating from New England to the opposite corner of the U.S. The titular event occurs in a remote part of the Southwest, and after a perhaps too kind trucker, Red (J.T. Walsh), stops and assists, Amy goes with him to wait it out at a diner. When Jeff goes to meet Amy, he finds no trace of her, and what follows doesn't match the thrills of semi-truck-based action of The Road Warrior, but it comes pretty close.

If I were only allowed to review this movie with once sentence, I would say that if Alfred Hitchcock made a thriller set on the open roads of the American Southwest, it might have resembled this movie. For one, Jeff Taylor exemplifies an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances. From Escape from New York to Miracle, I'm used to seeing Kurt Russell play characters who are expected to take charge of every situation, and while his outfit suggesting he starts every conversation with "did you see the game last night" helps, he takes very well to the role of man whose every move seems like he's shooting in the dark. All the same, the movie would not work - or at least not as well - if it weren't for J.T. Walsh, whose steely gaze and talent for exuding sleaze made me loathe and love Red equally, not to mention lament the actor's early passing. M.C. Gainey is also a welcome sight as someone who I would be scared to death to cut off in traffic. Then again, it may be the stunt team who deserve all the credit, especially when you consider the scene where Jeff hangs on to the undercarriage of a trailer as the truck towing it barrels down a highway. Whoever the MVP may be, it ends up being a movie that remains exciting and suspenseful to the very end that is bound to make you wonder how far you would go and how much outside your comfort zone you would venture for your loved ones. While it may not be the deepest or rich in surprises as others in its genre, it proves that a movie does not need to be either to be great.

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The Harder They Come - (1972)

Rough, but brilliant - in much the same way as a film like Sunday Too Far Away. The Harder They Come was a breakout film for Jamaica, being the first film from the country to tour the film festival circuits picking up rave reviews. It's not hard to see why. With it's exciting soundtrack (a simple joy to listen to) and enthusiastic invention, I was carried away by it. Ivan Martin (Jimmy Cliff) moves to the city after his grandmother dies determined to record music - but the corruption rife in the industry has him heading towards becoming a gangster instead. Martin was a real counterculture hero and notorious outlaw, gunned down by police in a last stand - it seems every country has one of these figures. I don't know what I was expecting with The Harder They Come, but watching it was electrifying and very enjoyable. Subtitled when the Jamaicans lapse into a strange English hybrid, and full of neat tricks as far as editing and cinematography goes, it's a proud addition to my DVD collection.

9/10


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The Serpent and the Rainbow - (1988)

This was something of a return to form for Wes Craven - what I think is his best film since A Nightmare on Elm Street four years previously. I don't know why I haven't paid more attention to it - perhaps back in the day it was a little too slow and steeped in Haitian culture and politics, whereas I hear "Wes Craven" and I think non-too-subtle horror. Watching it last night, thought it was a pretty decent horror/thriller with multiple themes and narrative strands - whenever the movie started to slow down, something would pop up and impress me. It's not a masterpiece or anything, but there's enough freaky imagery and voodoo lore to make for a nicely unique and interesting hundred minutes. Being buried alive with a tarantula also makes for one hell of a nightmarish sequence - as if being buried alive alone wasn't enough!

7/10


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The Man With One Red Shoe - (1985)

No. I didn't like this much at all, and I was always pretty close to turning it off before finishing - but I slugged it out. The Man With One Red Shoe is a commercial mainstream comedy with a serious lack of laughs and a convoluted storyline about Richard Drew (Tom Hanks) - a regular schmo who is pointed out as a spy to distract a senate committee investigating CIA director Ross (Charles Durning). The film also features Carrie Fisher and Jim Belushi, but founders as pratfalls and violence substitute for clever comedy. Boring, with little to redeem it.

4/10

I watched several of Audie Murphy's western movies when we did the Westerns Countdown, and I thought he made some good movies. No Name on the Bullet (1959) was my favorite, and it even made #3 on my list.

To Hell and Back (1955) was one of the movies that I put on my watchlist as soon as it started to look like War movies could be the next countdown.

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HOW TO STEAL A MILLION 1966 William Wyler (60/100)

2h 3m | Comedy | Crime | Romance
Writers: George Bradshaw, Harry Kurnitz
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Peter O'Toole, Eli Wallach

Her Affair to Die For 2023

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https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8innrf

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Tag min hånd 2022

The comfort-seeking Maja tries to regain control over her life following her recent divorce. 'Take My Hand' is a romantic comedy with all the drama that follows when our perceptions of love are turned upside down.
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Blessed Boys 2021

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12 Desperate Hours

It centers on Val who finds herself and her young children held hostage by Denny when he forces his way into her house after committing murder that day.

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