The Return of the Pink Panther (1975)

Compared to Clouseau, Attila the Hun was a Red Cross volunteer. The famous jewel and national treasure of Lugash, the Pink Panther, is stolen once again in a daring heist with only the trademark glove as evidence. Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) is rehabilitated from his demotion to the street beat by Chief Inspector Dreyfuss (Herbert Lom) of the Sureté and sets off on a mission to nab the notorious thief who is probably Sir Charles Lytton (Christopher Plummer). But when Clouseau carries out surveillance at his house in Nice he encounters his resourceful wife Claudine (Catherine Schell) who leads him on a wild goose chase to Gstaad… There’s something about a wife – even with a beard. Marking the return of both writer/director Blake Edwards (writing with Frank Waldman) and star Sellers to the series following a misguided iteration with Alan Arkin in 1968, this succeeds due to some fabulous slapstick set pieces with all kinds of ordinary things defeating the brainless Inspector – a blind bank robbery lookout with his minky (a scene that is actually gasp-inducing), a telephone, a vacuum cleaner, his own moustache and a fake nose. Great visual gags involving tiny vehicles (á la M. Hulot), an unfortunately located swimming pool, in-house martial artist Cato (Burt Kwouk) and some very funny verbals including Sellers’ horrific mangling of the French language make up for the deadening miscasting of Plummer in the role previously handled effortlessly by David Niven. Sellers is so hilarious as the anarachic disaster-prone idiot he had Schell giggling uncontrollably – and those takes are in the final cut! There’s also the priceless running joke of an increasingly deranged Lom and his gun lighter. If it’s in the first act … well, you know your Chekhov. Seriously funny at times with extraordinary titles designed by Richard Williams. With friends like you, who needs enemies?

Never Say Never Again (1983)

They don’t make ’em like they used to. An aging James Bond (Sean Connery) makes a mistake during a routine training mission which leads M (Edward Fox) to believe that the legendary MI6 spy is past his prime. M indefinitely suspends Bond from active duty. He’s sent off to a fat farm where he witnesses SPECTRE member Fatima Blush (Barbara Carrera) administering a sadistic beating to a fellow patient whose eye she then scans. She and her terrorist colleagues including pilot Jack Petachi (Gavan O’Herlihy) successfully steal two nuclear warheads from the U.S. military for criminal mastermind Blofeld (Max Von Sydow). M must reinstate Bond, as he is the only agent who can beat SPECTRE at their own game. He follows Petachi’s sister Domino (Kim Basinger) with her lover and SPECTRE agent Maximillian Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) to the Bahamas and then befriends her at a spa in Nice by posing as a masseur. At a charity event in a casino Bond beats Largo at a video game where the competitors receive electric shocks of increasing intensity. Bond informs Domino Largo’s had her brother killed … There’s an incredible motorbike chase when Blush captures Bond and a really good stunt involving horses in a wild escape from the tower at the top of a temple in North Africa but this isn’t handled as well as you’d like and some of the shooting looks a little rackety:  inexperienced producer Jack Schwartzman had underestimated production costs and wound up having to dig into his own funds. (He was married to actress Talia Shire who has a credit on the film – their son is actor Jason;  his other son John is the film’s cinematographer).  With Rowan Atkinson adding comic relief as the local Foreign Office rep,  Von Sydow as the cat-stroking mad genius and Brandauer giving his best tongue in cheek as the neurotic foe, this is not in the vein of the original Bonds. It’s a remake of Thunderball which was the subject of litigation from producer Kevin McClory who co-wrote the original story with Ivar Bryce and Ian Fleming who then based his novel on the resulting screenplay co-written with Jack Whittingham before any of the films were ever made. (This is covered in Robert Sellers’ book The Battle for Bond). It thereby sideswiped the ‘official’ Broccoli machine by bringing the original Bond back – in the form of a much older Connery in a re-run of his fourth Bond outing which had been massively profitable. Pamela Salem is Moneypenny and is given very little to do;  while Bernie Casey turns up as Felix Leiter. With nice quips about age and fitness (as you’d expect from witty screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. but there were uncredited additions by comic partnership Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais), good scene-setting, glorious women and terrific underwater photography by the legendary marine DoP Ricou Browning, this is the very essence of a self-deprecating late entry – particularly in the wake of Roger Moore’s forays and he wasn’t even done yet: Octopussy came out after this. Fun but not particularly memorable, even if we’re all in on the joke.

Ronin (1998)

Lady I never walk into a place I don’t know how to walk out of.  IRA woman Deirdre (Natascha McElhone) assembles a team of ex-special ops men turned mercenaries in Paris to carry out a heist on a briefcase carrying some mysterious material. They include ex-CIA agent Frank (Robert DeNiro), Larry (Skipp Sudduth) and French op Vincent (Jean Reno). They are joined by Englishman Spence (Sean Bean) and German Gregor (Stellan Skarsgaard). Each has a special gift to bring to this party. Spence immediately thinks he knows Frank from somewhere and the narrative die is cast:  as each member of the heist team begins to distrust the other, the body count mounts and this travelogue (through the south of France) speeds at an exhilarating pace with amazing car chases punctuating the stylish action around Arles and Nice. Deirdre meets secretly with fellow IRA op Seamus (Jonathan Pryce) and while she is double-crossing the team their numbers are dwindling at the hands of the Russian mob whose path they cross. Added to the mix is the ice skater Natacha Kirilova (Katharina Witt) whose showcase becomes the venue for the penultimate showdown. J. D. Zeik’s story and screenplay received a major rewrite from David Mamet under the name Richard Weisz and this super smart heist thriller benefits from shrewd juxtaposition of action with gleaming character detail. Add to that beautiful cinematography, some of the best car stunts outside of Bullitt (with Sudduth doing most of his own driving) and spot-on performances and you have a cracking genre entertainment which at the time marked a major comeback for the amazing John Frankenheimer.  The francophile was making a return to the south of France for the first time since French Connection II.  It’s great to see Michael Lonsdale as a fixer whose interest in samurai supplies the story behind the title. The final revelation is both surprising and satisfying. And the contents of that briefcase?  Well you’ve seen enough Hitchcock films to figure it out for yourself in this homage to To Catch a Thief (the locations, natch). Fantastic stuff, brilliantly directed.

Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016)

With Bridget Jones back in our lives like it was 2001 all over again, surely it was time for those other old drunk birds Patsy and Edina to re-enter the fray, this time on the big screen. The Four Js are back and it’s much as before – a small idea stretched too far but with enough funny moments to make you realise you missed them. Edina (writer/creator Jennifer Saunders) is no longer a hot London PR – she’s only got Lulu, Baby Spice and a boutique vodka to her name and her memoirs are rubbished by a prospective editor. Patsy  (Joanna Lumley) hears from her editor Magda (Kathy Burke) that Kate Moss needs new representation so Edina uses her half-African wealthy granddaughter Lola (Indeyarna Donaldson-Holmes) as bait. Unfortunately it goes wrong and Edina ends up pushing the world’s most famous model into the Thames. Threatened with prison for manslaughter and the pariah of the whole world and not just the world of PR/fashion, she and Patsy decide to go on the run to the South of France (bien sur) where Mother (June Whitfield) is partying, with Saffy (Julia Sawalha) and her boyfriend DI Nick (Robert Webb) on their tails as they come up with an ingenious idea for a profitable marriage and a whole new life of luxe involving a drag act … Aside from the usually silent and Garboesque La Belle Moss, there are as many slebs here as you’ll find in Vivienne Westwood’s diaries:  models, designers, actors (with a couple of great cameos) as well as the usual suspects and a brilliant opportunity (not used enough IMHO) to see the inside of Pierre Cardin’s fabulous bubble (a propos…!) house in Saint Tropez. It’s as rackety as the series always was, Joanna Lumley the whole show with her deathray stare – but weirdly (given the plot) no reference to a famous episode when she admitted to a sex change in Morocco back in the day. For cult TV afficionados Wanda Ventham (Sherlock’s mum) makes a welcome appearance and for the yoof there’s Glee’s Chris Colfer and the cool factor is supplied by Jon Hamm reliving his de-virginizing at Patsy’s hands:  he’s stunned she’s still alive. There’s not much new here and the story is as coke-thin as a supermodel, nor is it well directed by TV veteran Mandie Fletcher, making just her second film, paired once again with Jane Horrocks (Bubble) from Deadly Advice two decades ago.At its essence this is a movie about two women who are best friends lumbered with people who don’t want to have fun any more. However in a year of few good films this fashion flick is like water in a desert. And I gasped at the Botox injection scene (yikes!) Welcome back, ladies. God I miss the Nineties!

Once Upon a Crime … (1992)

Eugene Levy is best known as Jim’s Dad in the American Pie series but the comedian has a sideline as a director and this was his theatrical debut after some TV movies. He got Charles Shyer and Nancy Meyers to rewrite an Italian film from 1964. They had used him to play a small role in Father of the Bride and he would have a larger supporting role in I Love Trouble a few years later. (Steve Kluger also gets a writing credit – it looks like they rewrote his adaptation). One of the great luxuries of watching movies is visiting places you now have exceeding difficulty in reaching because you have to strip off and wait for 2 hours at every airport you enter. The travelogue film really took off in the 60s but the title sequence is misleading: that and the first 5 minutes of this take place in Rome and the remainder of the story in its entirety takes place in Monte Carlo. So far, so good, but it’s shot kind of flatly and the meet-cute over a lost dachshund between Richard Lewis (you will know him from TV’s Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Sean Young never really materialises in the antic humour you might expect. There’s a murder, compulsive gambling and some serious eye candy in the form of Ornella Muti. There are Levy’s colleagues from SCTV – Jim Belushi and the late, great John Candy – Cybill Shepherd, George Hamilton. Giancarlo Gianinni and even the wondrous Elsa Martinelli in the opening sequence – but it’s just not the comedy you want it to be, even in that fabulous setting, despite the efforts of a very game cast. When Patrick McGilligan asked Meyers what she recalled of the script, she claimed it was a rewrite she couldn’t remember. I have written a book about Meyers, the most successful woman filmmaker in American history. You can get it on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Pathways-Desire-Emotional-Architecture-Meyers-ebook/dp/B01BYFC4QW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481117503&sr=1-1&keywords=elaine+lennon.