Viva Las Vegas (1964)

Aka Love in Las Vegas. The legendary pairing of The King with Ann-Margret is literally the whole show in a town full of them. Even for an Elvis film the storyline is surprisingly weak but the eye-poppingly colourful scene-setting by supreme stylist George Sidney mitigates the problem. Elvis  is Lucky Jackson, a talented singer and driver whose luck has run out so he’s in Vegas to raise money to take part in the Grand Prix. He sees dancer and swimming instructor Rusty (A-M) and is smitten. But so is his rival, Count Elmo Mancini (Cesare Danova). Lucky and Rusty do some sightseeing around the Hoover Dam – nice helicopter views – and we learn a little about Nevada and her good relationship with her father (William Demarest).  Lucky winds up losing all his money in the hotel pool and having to earn his living as a waiter which leads to some nice slapstick serving Rusty and Elmo. Then his luck turns and there is the climactic race across the desert which is pretty well shot and there are some disasters along the route … The songs are terrific and the sequences of the city and casinos are wonderful. You can see Teri Garr in a bit part as a showgirl at one point but the most surprising element is that this was written by Sally Benson, responsible for Meet Me in St Louis. And then there’s the real-life romance between Elvis and Ann-Margret! In the film they marry at the Little Church of the West, the oldest wedding chapel in Vegas.

Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

The second of Guy Hamilton’s outings as director (he did four altogether) this is James Bond verging on self-parody and hugely entertaining it is too. Sean Connery returns looking the worse for middle age. At the heart of it is some strange goings-on in the diamond market leading our favourite spy to Amsterdam (via Hovercraft!) where he encounters the smuggler Tiffany Case (Jill St John, the first American Bond girl). It seems evil criminal mastermind Blofeld (Charles Gray) is up to his old tricks, this time stocking up to use a killer satellite. Touching on real-life themes of nuclear weaponry, strong women (look at those bodyguards! Never mind Lana Wood as Plenty O’Toole!), cloning and plastic surgery, the American obsession with death (pace Jessica Mitford and Evelyn Waugh) leading to some hilarious (kinda – unless you’re keen to be in a coffin) scenes in a mortuary and great use of Las Vegas locations, this is also the one with those fabulously fey henchmen Mr Wint and Mr Kidd ( Bruce Glover  and  Putter Smith) and there’s an ending straight out of Road Runner. As close to a cartoon as Bond would ever get,  you’ll have forgotten that Bond is out to avenge the murder of his wife (in OHMSS) in the first few minutes: this is simply great entertainment. And what about that song! Adapted from Ian Fleming’s 1956 novel by Richard Maibaum and Tom Mankiewicz.

Un moment d’egarement (1977)

Aka In A Wild Moment/One Wild Moment. Auteur Claude Berri a fait un cycle de films sur la masculinité au début des années 1970 et c’est probablement l’un des plus fantastiques, un conte de deux hommes fortysomething en vacances dans la Riviera avec leurs filles adolescentes. Jacques (Victor Lanoux) est le père de Françoise (Agnes Soral) qui aime soudainement le divorcé Pierre (Jean-Pierre Marielle) et le séduit à la plage après avoir été invité à un mariage. Il est très pénible de voir une jeune fille de quinze ans grimper au-dessus d’un homme d’âge moyen résistant, mais après son premier choc, il ne fait rien pour apaiser sa poursuite agressive. Sa propre fille Martine (Christine Dejoux) suspecte que quelque chose soit écoulé. C’est certainement plus dramatique que la comédie. Il y a de bonnes scènes: quand Françoise avoue à son père, elle a dormi avec un homme de quarante ans, c’est bien écrit et crédible et elle ne lui dira pas qui c’est. Dans un casino, il pense qu’un chanteur est le coupable et l’attaque dans les toilettes pour hommes. Quand Pierre voit que Françoise disparaît avec un garçon de son âge, il est clairement jaloux de ce qu’il interprète comme un rejet. Le désespoir de Jacques est total et la scène où Pierre est propriétaire des incidents (quelques fois – ce n’est pas une affaire) est rafraîchissante à la profondeur de leur amitié. La dernière scène, quand Pierre rencontre Françoise, est un cliffhanger: il n’y a pas de conclusion réelle, bien que nous puissions probablement l’écrire. Il est facile d’oublier, compte tenu du calibre de l’écriture et de la performance, qu’il s’agit effectivement d’une histoire d’exploitation sexuelle assez choquante. On lui a donné un remake d’Hollywood comme Blame It On Rio.

Hell or High Water (2016)

Call it white man’s intuition.  Taylor (Sicario) Sheridan writes a great screenplay so this was bound to be thrilling one way or another. Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) are brothers carrying out bank heists in west Texas to retrieve the family land, in foreclosure by the local bank two weeks after their Mom’s death. Tanner’s not long out of prison, Toby is divorced and wanting to do right by his sons:  he’s found oil on the property so he knows it’s crucial to get the ownership in order and there’s no way out now he’s lost his job and is behind in child support. Tanner carries out a third robbery after Toby is befriended by a waitress in a nearby diner and it’s the first bank to have CCTV that works. Texas Ranger Marcus (Jeff Bridges) who’s mere weeks from retirement gets the bit between his teeth and decides to take them down if he can figure out who they are by a simple method of deduction as the brothers rob the remaining banks in the chain – to repay the same bank  … Crafty, wise, mordantly funny and unbearably tense, this has two parallel male friendships – Marcus’s partner Indian-Mexican Alberto (Gil Birmingham) is the target of his ongoing race jokes –  winding around each other like DNA. This contemporary western has a great socio-political background (mass repossessions after the 2008 crash) and a wonderful setting:  look at those empty roads and desert and big skies. All four are convincing in their acutely interesting roles, everyone with something to lose and clearly defined by both action and dialogue. It reminds me of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, another outing with Bridges but with him on the other side of the law four decades later. It asks questions about right and wrong and family and friendship and being a western it must have a logical conclusion – with a shootout. And then some. Brilliantly balanced storytelling that’s really well directed by David (Starred Up) Mackenzie, a Brit who clearly relished being let loose in all that big scenery.

The Love Lottery (1954)

Long before George Clooney thought of it, matinee idol Rex Allerton (David Niven) decamps to Lake Como to escape the hordes of girlie fans who besiege him everywhere he goes, even in his dreams:  this commences with one such nightmare when he’s torn to pieces at a premiere by the adoring mob who all look like Peggy Cummins. He falls for mathematician Anne Vernon who’s doing the calculations for gangster Herbert Lom that blackmail him into being the prize in a worldwide raffle. This mild satire from Ealing has some ambition but the writing doesn’t really hold up – the story by Charles Neilson-Terry and Zelma Bramley Moore was written by Harry Kurnitz and producer Monja Danischewsky. There are some good scenes and Niven does a lot with thin material with Vernon making hay as the clever woman who eventually falls for his charms. The attempt to marry his lady love in church is good but the payoff gag with Cummins isn’t really done as well as it could have been. There are a lot of short dream sequences which detract from the narrative momentum but on the plus side it’s beautifully shot by Douglas Slocombe and edited by Seth Holt, directed by Charles Crichton. And Humphrey Bogart does everyone a favour by showing up in a cameo.