Silver River (1948)

I’ve got news for you – I think you’ve just gone into the gambling business. Unfairly cashiered from the Union Army Mike McComb (Errol Flynn) heads to Nevada and after running some card games gets into the silver business following an encounter with Georgia Moore (Ann Sheridan) whose husband Stanley (Bruce Bennett) is a mining engineer convinced that the nearby hills are full of silver. McComb lets him go out to the territory despite knowing the Shoshone Indians are on the warpath and his lawyer Plato Beck (Thomas Mitchell) cannot persuade him of the wrong he is doing – McComb is smitten with Georgia. By the time guilt overwhelms him he is too late to save Moore and ends up marrying Georgia and getting rich off the proceeds from the mine. His bank is using vouchers from the miners but when Plato shows up drunk at a housewarming dinner and tells the truth about McComb’s faults, the townspeople end up taking their savings from the bank, rival owners open other mines and he loses everything … His name marks our schools and our banks – and one day, maybe, our finish. Raoul Walsh liked both Flynn and Sheridan and this has a fantastically sparky script by Harriet Frank adapted from a story by Stephen Longstreet. He was a friend of Flynn’s and knew that by 1947 the star’s looks and acting were deteriorating, mainly from drink, possibly drugs and definitely from the financial and marital hurt inflicted by some wives. He says that both Flynn and Sheridan were drinking heavily on set and that director Raoul Walsh told him, ” ‘Kid, write it fast. They’re not drinking.’ It soon became clear that they were even if we didn’t see how. [Later on set] I went over and tasted the ice water. It was pure 90-proof vodka.’ ” What a shame. Because there are some great lines and exchanges here and the performances by the leads are sluggish, muted and dead on arrival for most of the film. The humour and ribaldry are fine, it’s the delivery that’s the issue. The irony that it’s about a man whose ability to lead is ruined by some intrinsic flaw cannot have been lost on Flynn. The references to King David, Bathsheba and the serpent’s egg by Mitchell are very clear Biblical analogies that point this up as a morality tale. What might have been, alas, in a film that is rather stillborn from such a paradoxically lively cast and a gifted director. Don’t let’s have a lynching

The Hustle (2019)

Men always underestimate us. Josephine Chesterfield (Anne Hathaway) is a glamorous, seductive British woman who likes defrauding gullible men out of their money. Into her well-ordered, meticulous world comes cunning and fun-loving Australian woman Penny Rust (Rebel Wilson) who loves to swindle unsuspecting marks. Despite their different methods, the two soon join forces to combine their talents for the ultimate score – a young and naive tech billionaire Thomas Westerburg (Alex Sharp) in the lovely Riviera town of Beaumont-sur-mer in the the South of France… My condition is 100% mental.  This remake of Bedtime Story (1964) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) coasts on the comic gifts of at least one of its leading ladies in this gender-reversed tale of cons.  Despite their best efforts and the intricate plotting it never really gets going. The original screenplay by Stanley Shapiro & Paul Henning was rewritten for the 1988 film by Dale Launer and is updated/flipped here by Jac Schaefer. Hathaway and Wilson have fun playing in this tale of opposites as the classy versus the low rent double act, Hathaway essaying Michael Caine while Wilson does Steve Martin’s role. There are a few good jokes and a meta reference to Hathaway’s Princess Diaries past when Penny ridicules Josephine’s Julie Andrews accent. Stupidly, this is never revealed as fake despite its evidently poor production:  if she had ironically been identified as an even lower class hustler impersonating a class act we might have got somewhere. The imperfect writing doesn’t play compellingly to the women’s obvious strengths – although at times it threatens to be breathtaking, it settles for the merely silly, denying its own potential for taking down the patriarchal dudes. At least there’s a good butler with Nicholas Woodeson as Albert. A theme song by Meghan Trainor doesn’t save it. Rebel Wilson produced and it’s directed in his debut by The Thick of It‘s Chris Addison. Why are women better suited to the con than men?

Casino (1995)

There are three ways of doing things around here: the right way, the wrong way, and the way that I do it. You understand? Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is a Jewish handicapper asked by the Chicago Mob to oversee the day-to-day casino and hotel operations at the Tangiers Casino in Las Vegas in 1973. His childhood friend, mobster Nicky Santoro (Pesci), is a made man and makes life tricky for Ace. Ace falls for call girl and chip hustler Ginger McKenna (Stone) whom he eventually marries. They have a daughter Amy (Erika von Tagen) but Ginger gets into drugs and her behaviour becomes loud and difficult. Ace has problems getting a gaming licence despite keeping local politicos happy and the skimmed money is being skimmed by people he employs. All his relationship begin to break down and the FBI are closing in when Ginger runs away with her lover and pimp Lester Diamond (James Woods) taking Amy with them … When you love someone, you’ve gotta trust them. There’s no other way. You’ve got to give them the key to everything that’s yours. Otherwise, what’s the point? And for a while, I believed, that’s the kind of love I had.  At first glance it doesn’t seem elegiac yet this Scorsese collaboration with co-writer Nicholas Pileggi (from his Casino:  Love and Honor in Las Vegas) five years after Goodfellas operates as a long goodbye to a way of life essentially foreign, about strangers in a strange land. It’s adapted from the lives of Frank Rosenthal, Anthony Spilotro and Geri McGee. The mob were never at ease in the desert landscape and the story problem doesn’t end there because all the relationships here are uneven and mismatched:  Jewish and Italian, Ace and Nicky, Ace and Ginger, the Mob and Vegas. It starts audaciously: with a bomb. Yet the victim is one of the narrators. The competing voiceovers by Ace and Nicky are stark illustrations of the power plays beyond the gaming tables. The storytelling, spanning a decade to 1983 (and ‘many years before’) is a familiar one of bribery, corruption, murder, gambling, crooked politicians, prostitution, children, golf, drugs and great clothes, And the production design by Dante Ferretti lit up by Robert Richardson’s beautiful cinematography offers a stark contrast to the coarseness of these terrible people. It’s long and talky and horrifically violent and startling in terms of juxtapositions and acting. At the centre of the extraordinary soundtrack in this epic of marriages gone wrong is the score for Godard’s Contempt (Le mepris) by Georges Delerue, pointing our response in the correct direction. We are left to contemplate the magnificent, complete performance by Sharon Stone, one of the best in modern cinema, the cause and effect in this epic and tragic tale of the misbegotten. In the end it is a pitiless exploration of humanity. A lot of holes in the desert, and a lot of problems are buried in those holes

White Hot: The Mysterious Murder of Thelma Todd (1991) (TVM)

Just what this town needed – another gorgeous skinny dumb blonde. Los Angeles, 1935. When beautiful movie star Thelma Todd (Loni Anderson) is found dead in her car at the age of 29 it’s initially put down to suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning but Assistant DA Louis Marsden (Scott Paulin) hears her distraught mother Alice (Lois Smith) screaming, For God’s sake, what’s the matter with you? Don’t you know a murder when you see one? He pursues it with the supposed help of the DA in Los Angeles Buron Fitts (Dakin Matthews) and questions the people in Thelma’s life, putting together a picture of her as an actress but also the proprietress of Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Cafe at the beach where all Hollywood society likes to dine and which might hold the clues to her violent demise. He unspools stories that eventually reveal her ex Pat DiCicco (John O’Hurley) drove her into the arms of notorious Mafioso Lucky Luciano (Robert Davi) who wanted to use a room at her restaurant as a casino to blackmail the studio heads …… I want to buy you everything you ever wanted. A Rashomon-like approach to this Hollywood biopic pays dividends in this adaptation of the book Hot Toddy by Andy Edmonds, as Matthews pursues witnesses to a likely murder. As he questions her one-time married boyfriend Roland West (Lawrence Pressman) and business partner whose wife is putting up the money for their joint venture in a restaurant; Thelma’s mother; her movie sidekick Patsy Kelly (Maryedith Burrell); her ex-husband DiCicco (The Glamour Boy of Hollywood as this putative gangster associate and cousin of James Bond producer Cubby Broccoli was known); and Lucky Luciano’s henchman – we get a ripe picture of movie town and all the power players, locating the real people behind the silver screen at a time when the Mafia had most of the studios by the short and curlies via the unions. Smith gets some pearls to deliver as Thelma’s mother, a woman who finally shuts up when she realises the DA’s office is putting together the real story and her life could be at stake too. Todd is a name that’s little remembered now but she was a brilliant comedienne, enjoyed stardom (known as The Ice Cream Blonde) and as well as a lot of Hal Roach (played here by Paul Dooley) comedies (particularly with Queen of Wisecracks Kelly) she played opposite the Marx Brothers in Horse Feathers. Anderson might be a tad old for the role but it’s a spirited performance of a woman who apparently barely slept, surviving on a cocktail of diet drugs, uppers and champagne, high on life and longing for true love, eventually stepping way out of her league. It’s a loose interpretation of what is known, but it’s beautifully shot by Chuck Arnold with fantastic set design by Donald Lee Harris and Lee Vail, with simply gorgeous costumes for Anderson by Heidi Kaczenski (apparently most of the clothes were leftovers from The Untouchables, designed by Giorgio Armani). There’s a period-type score composed by Mark Snow, adding to the atmosphere of this impressive TV movie, directed by veteran Paul Wendkos. Adapted by Robert E. Thompson and Lindsay Harrison. Look out for an uncredited Ann Turkel as Gloria Swanson – coincidentally, Turkel’s mother’s name is Thelma!  Incredibly, this was broadcast as a double feature with Anderson doing headlining duty in The Jayne Mansfield Story too.  I understand the only basic law of human nature – love talks, money walks

 

Octopussy (1983)

Englishman. Likes eggs, preferably Fabergé. Likes dice, preferably fully loaded. British MI6 agent 009 drops off a fake Fabergé jewelled egg at the British embassy in East Berlin and is later killed at Octopussy’s travelling circus. Suspicions mount when the assistant manager of the circus who happens to be exiled Afghan prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan), outbids 007 James Bond (Roger Moore) for the real Fabergé piece at Sotheby’s. Bond follows Kamal to India where Bond thwarts several ingenious attacks, kidnapping by Kamal and encounters Kamal’s ally, the anti-heroine of the title (Maud Adams), an international smuggler who runs the circus as a cover for her illegal operations. It seems that Orlov (Steven Berkoff), a decidedly rank and belligerent Russian general is planning to raise enough money with the fake Fabergés to detonate a nuclear bomb in Europe and then defeat NATO forces once and for all in conventional warfare… The West is decadent and divided. The thirteenth in the series and Moore’s seventh appearance as the sexy superspy as well as the first to feature Robert Brown as M following Bernard Lee’s recent death, this is derived from a number of Ian Fleming’s stories: the title is from his 1966 short story collection and there is a scene inspired by another story, The Property of a Lady (included in 1967 and later editions of Octopussy and The Living Daylights), as well as one brief bit of characterisation lifted from Moonraker; while the events of the titular story Octopussy form a part of the title character’s background which she relates herself; but the bulk of the narrative is original, the screenplay credited to novelist George MacDonald Fraser who suggested that it be set in India, series regular Richard Maibaum & producer Michael G. Wilson. In fact Moore had intended retiring from the role but was deemed the most profitable actor for the part when the rival production Never Say Never Again with former Bond Sean Connery was up and running at the same time: James Brolin was apparently due to take over from Moore – can you imagine! The perception of this as the weakest of Moore’s particular Bond films doesn’t hold up despite its apparently problematic heroine (her MO is a bit slight) but Bond’s seduction of a woman who is his equal is particularly well observed –  in fact they both have a death to avenge. The narrative is especially prescient – to have a nuclear bomb planned for Germany, at the time the centre of Cold War fears (see the TV show Deutschland 83 for a dramatic interpretation of the time), feels utterly relevant and Moore is given great space for both humour and action, pitched at a perfect balance here and decidedly lacking in camp. It’s probably the best written of all his Bond iterations. The chases (and there are quite a few) are brilliantly mounted, including trains, planes automobiles and elephants and there’s a great homage to The Most Dangerous Game when our man is the jungle prey. The climactic aerial stunts are some of the most astonishing you’ll ever see – utterly thrilling. Legendary tennis player Vijay Amritraj has a great supporting role as Bond’s MI6 ally in India and even Q (Desmond Llewelyn) gets in on the action with a fabulous hot air balloon! Jourdan makes for a suitably insidious villain and Berkoff (almost!) has a blast as the nutty military man who makes the KGB’s Gogol (Walter Gotell) look sane. There is a terrific performance by Kristina Wayborn as Kamal’s stunning henchwoman Magda – her exit from a night with Bond has to be seen! Adams had of course appeared opposite Moore in previous Bond outing The Man With the Golden Gun as Scaramanga’s doomed mistress and she gets to flex more muscles here albeit her entrance is not until the film’s second half. Watch out for former Pan’s People dancer Cherry Gillespie as Midge, one of Octopussy’s bodyguards.  It’s wonderfully paced, with each sequence superseding the action of the previous one and the flavourful locations are beautifully captured by Alan Hume’s cinematography: this has undergone a pristine restoration. Among the very best Bonds, an episode whose influence can clearly be seen in both the Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible franchises.  The theme song, All Time High is written by John Barry and Tim Rice and performed by Rita Coolidge. Directed by John Glen, the second of his five outings at the helm. Perfect escapism. Mr Bond is indeed a very rare breed, soon to be made extinct

 

True as a Turtle (1956)

You’re in a taxi rank, skipper! Newly married Tony Hudson (John Gregson) offers his young wife Jane (June Thorburn) a cruise on a yacht as a honeymoon trip with his rich industrialist friend Dudley Partridge (Cecil Parker) who is sailing with his family, insurance man Harry Bell (Keith Michell) and his wealthy landlubber girlfriend Ann (Elvi Hale). Jane suffers from chronic seasickness but agrees and they go on board the Turtle, a fine ketch which initially has difficulty leaving port. A lot of misadventures await – including Partridge’s niece Susie (Pauline Drewett) catching German measles, crossing paths with a counterfeit gaming chip scam when they arrive at the French port of Dinard and then dealing with a real pea-souper fog that just might scupper their return … I hate boats. Don’t you? Jack Davies, Nicholas Phipps and John Coates adapted Coates’ novel, a marital comedy involving a lot of messing about in boats while the newlyweds really navigate their relationship. Gregson’s casting tips the wink that this is a kind of reworking of the beloved Genevieve, with Kay Kendall’s role being taken by Hale; while there are more than a few riffs on the plot of Brandy for the Parson but director Wendy Toye has a light touch and the intrigue and setting give this its own particular charm. It’s nicely shot on location in Dorset, Hampshire, London and France by Reginald Wyer. Look out for Clement Freud playing a croupier. You’ll soon get used to things being wet

Appointment in Berlin (1943)

That’s the whole point of Secret Service – to prevent people suspecting. In 1938 disillusioned and recently disgraced RAF officer Wing Commander Keith Wilson (George Sanders) risks his life in Berlin by broadcasting pro-Nazi propaganda as a cover for counter-espionage. His broadcasts have a military code enabling British manoeuvres. He falls in love with Ilse (Marguerite Chapman) sister of a high-ranking Nazi Rudolph von Preising (Onslow Stevens) and forges links with journalist Greta van Leyden (Gale Sondergaard) who is actually a spy as well and when a message needs to be taken to Holland he’s the only one left standing … If you are going in at the deep end you may as well do it for England. In a rare tragic role, Sanders scores as the officer whose disgust at Britain’s politically neutral stance prior to WW2 leads him to become a pariah – lending him handy cover when England expects. The question of identity hovers over every scene here as Ilse’s transformation is nicely nuanced whereas Sondergaard’s situation is more extreme and her ending is well staged. There’s an amusing double act from a pair of American neutrals whose constant haranguing of supposedly treacherous Wilson adds humour to proceedings – inevitably they assist in his time of need. Nice references to Goebbels and his role in the manufacturing of truth. An interesting propaganda picture of pre-war problems and the reason why cross-border co-operation was required. Michael Hogan and Horace McCoy wrote the screenplay based on B.P. Fineman’s story.  Directed by Alfred E. Green. It’s finally happened

Havana (1990)

Now I want a shot. One shot. At a game I could never get in before. Christmas Eve 1958. On the eve of revolution, Navy veteran and professional high-stakes gambler Jack Weil (Robert Redford) arrives in Cuba seeking to win big in poker games. Along the way, he meets and falls in love with Bobby (Lena Olin), the wife of a Communist revolutionary Arturo Duràn (an uncredited Raul Julia) and gradually becomes convinced that the anti-Batista campaign is a cause worth fighting for… Nobody should be here. Redford’s seventh collaboration with director Sydney Pollack is their final work together and is a rather uneven experience once it veers away from its inherent genre identity of romantic melodrama. Perhaps the problem is inherent in the premise linked to previous Redford characters and his meta perception as an enigma:  the lack of commitment to a cause which reeks of Casablanca.  In truth it’s a problem with the screenplay which takes too many stances too quickly. This also suffers somewhat in comparison with treatment of broadly related subject matter in The Godfather Part II with Mark Rydell making an appearance here as Meyer Lansky and that film’s outrageous sex show is in another dimension from the tame act Redford brings American tourists Diane (Betsy Brantley) and Patty (Lise Cutter) to see, the foreplay to their inevitable threesome. In fact the role of ‘Rick Blaine’ is actually split between Redford and Alan Arkin who plays Joe Volpi, Lansky’s front guy. Then Arkin gets to essay a variation on Claude Rains in the penultimate scene with Redford adopting a more straightforward heroic stance, not that that was ever in any doubt because of how the story begins. It starts out with an ill-advised voiceover by Redford and gets right into action which involves his going out on a limb for no perceptible reason to help a total stranger escape the attentions of SIM (Batista’s secret police) onboard the Cuba-bound ship, forcing the meet-cute with Olin. Olin’s character is an out of work Swedish actress who was inspired by Garbo – shouldn’t it have been Bergman?! – while her former husband, a blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter got her exiled to Mexico and then marriage to Duràn, son of a well-connected Cuban family (we’re non-torturable, he explains). There’s talk about American citizenship. A lot of talk about moving to Miami. There’s a great character – a ‘fake fairy food critic’ called Marion Chigwell (Daniel Davis) and he is – what else – a CIA spook. Somewhere here there’s a great movie but it’s badly organised and the sub-plot with the journalist friend Julio Ramos (Tony Plana) seems under-explained. There are great poker scenes with the military chief Menocal (Tomas Milian) who of course is not what he appears. After Olin’s character loses her naturalistic diffidence in the first two-thirds it shifts into a different and more convincing gear. Even if we never believe Redford is in real trouble. Despite this there is an uncannily evocative atmosphere throughout and some great lines. Pollack was an inveterate messer with scripts, perhaps that explains it. There are major compensations in Owen Roizman’s cinematography (of the Dominican Republic, where this was shot) and the dreamy production design by Terence Marsh is something of a miracle. Written by Judith Rascoe (from her original idea) and Pollack’s usual collaborator, David Rayfiel. A fascinating work for students of Hollywood stardom as Redford edged into his mid-fifties. History is overtaking us

Thunderball (1965)

A poker in the hands of a widow.  Two of NATO’s atomic bombs are hijacked by the criminal organisation SPECTRE, which holds the world to ransom for £100 million in diamonds, in exchange for not destroying an unspecified city in either the United Kingdom or the United States (later revealed to be Miami). The search leads James Bond (Sean Connery) to the Bahamas, where he encounters Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi) the card-playing, eye patch-wearing SPECTRE Number Two whom he bests at the tables. Backed by CIA agent Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter) and Largo’s mistress Domino Derval (Claudine Auger) Bond’s search culminates in an underwater battle with Largo’s henchmen but time is running out … What strange eyes you’ve got. The one that caused the franchise a whole lot of legal issues in the ensuing years, this was also the one the audiences went bonkers for with Widescreen shooting, seriously glossy production values and slick underwater sequences that take up about a quarter of the overall running time which at two hours ten minutes was by far the longest in the series thus far. The legal issues arose because Ian Fleming’s 1961 novel was based on a story by producer Kevin McClory and was intended as the first in the series with a screenplay by them with Jack Whittingham. The new screenplay is by Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins and it commences with an ingenious escape from a surprising funeral. The cat and mouse relationship between Bond and Largo is consistently surprising and satisfying; Celi is particularly good in the role. The production design by Ken Adam is quite breathtaking, the women are among the most beautiful of the era – Auger (Miss France, voiced by Nikki van der Zyl), Luciana Paluzzi as femme fatale Fiona Volpe, Martine Beswick as Paula Caplan, Bond’s tragic CIA ally, Molly Peters as physiotherapist Patricia Fearing – and Bond is actually saved by a woman. The gadgets include water-firing cannon affixed to the rear of the Aston Martin, a jetpack and a handbag-friendly Geiger counter. It all looks glorious and the incredible underwater work is shot by Ricou Browning although it’s not always clear what’s going on. The theme song by composer John Barry (returning to the franchise) with lyrics by Don Black is performed by Tom Jones who fainted in the recording booth as he sang the final note. What’s not to like? Directed by Terence Young in his third and final Bond outing. Remade 18 years later as Never Say Never Again, with Connery once more taking the lead in what was his final Bond film. Was ever a man more misunderstood?

For Your Eyes Only (1981)

Welcome to Remote Control Airways! After a British information-gathering vessel gets sunk into the sea, MI6’s Agent 007 (Roger Moore) is given the responsibility of locating the lost encryption device the Automatic Targeting Attack Communicator (ATAC) and thwarting it from entering enemy ie Russian military hands led by the KGB’s General Gogol (Walter Gotell). Bond becomes tangled in a web of deception spun by rival Greek businessmen Aris Kristatos (Julian Glover) who initially presents as Bond’s ally and Milos Columbo (Topol); along with Melina Havelock (Carole Bouquet), a British-Greek woman  seeking to avenge the murder of her parents, marine archaeologists working for the British Government … The Chinese have a saying: “When setting out on revenge, you first dig two graves”. This is the Bond that rather divides the purists. Culled from the title story in the eponymous collection along with another, Risico, plus an action sequence from Live and Let Die, this is back to basics and a down to earth reboot after the sci fi outing Moonraker. James visits late wife Tracy’s grave (from OHMSS) and has to live on his wits instead of Q’s (Desmond Llewelyn) gadgets – hence the Lotus exploding early on followed by a hair raising Keystone Cops-style chase through a Spanish village in a rickety little Citroën 2CV. It’s got to be one of the more visually pleasurable of all films, never mind in the franchise, with heart-stoppingly beautiful location shooting in Greece and Italy, and Greece standing in for some scenes set in Spain. Bouquet is a fabulous leading lady with great motivation – revenge – and she can shoot a very mean crossbow.  The action overall is simply breathtaking – that initial helicopter sequence around the abandoned Beckton Gas Works (which Kubrick would turn into Vietnam for Full Metal Jacket), the ski/motorbike chase and jump, the mountain top monastery that lends such a dramatic impact for the final scene, the Empress Sissi’s summer palace in Corfu that provides such a distinctive setting, the yachts that home the catalysing confrontations which include sharks! Glover (originally mooted as Bond himself, years earlier) makes for a satisfying ally turned villain after the jokey title set piece, the winter sports, and the use of the bob sleigh run are quite thrilling. Topol is very charismatic as the Greek helpmate Columbo, Kristatos’ former smuggling partner; and Lynn-Holly Johnson is totally disarming as the ice-skating Olympic hopeful and ingenue Bibi Dahl who has an unhealthy desire for inappropriate relations with a clearly embarrassed Bond. Smooth as butter with Moore very good in a demanding realistic production. What’s not to love in a film that channels the best bits of Black Magic and Martini adverts from the Seventies?! This boasts the first titles sequence in the series to feature the song’s performer, Sheena Easton, singing a composition by Bill Conti and Michael Leeson. Badass Cassandra Harris who plays Columbo’s mistress Countess Lisl Von Schlaf was visited by her husband Pierce Brosnan during production and the Bond team duly took notice. Charles Dance makes a brief appearance as a henchman of Locque (Emil Gothard), a hired killer deployed by Kristatos. Out of respect for the recent death of Bernard Lee, the role of M was put aside. The screenplay is by vet Richard Maibaum and executive producer Michael G. Wilson while long time editor John Glen graduates to the top job and does it wonderfully. Remarkably good in every way, this is one of the very best Bonds and even though it was the first one of the Eighties feels like it could have been made an hour ago. Don’t grow up. You’ll make life impossible for men