Lionheart (1987) Review

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(More customer reviews)This movie can be interpreted as the triumph of a righteous dream over many obstacles. Our Hero wants to join King Richard the Lionheart (hence the title) on crusade. His father wants him to remain at home. He is brought to a battle and realizes the horror of war, and winds up getting lost. No longer having his father to hold him back, he tries to find King Richard on his own and soon has a following of children, each with their own special talents. They triumph over various obstacles, most significantly a former crusader knight who has lost his faith and wants to capture the kids and sell them into slavery. There is a predictable showdown and feel-good reconciliation at the end.
The idea of a children's crusade is based on true history, but the real story wasn't quite as pleasant. There is a character of a young woman who wants to be a knight and wins a tournament. While there are examples of warrior women in history, this particular character seems based more on the modern Tatum O'Neal in "Bad News Bears" concept.
The costumes and armor, for the most part, only slightly resemble period patterns. The one-on-one fights are alright as such things go, but the battle scene seems oddly half-hearted. When we finally get to meet King Richard, for some reason we never get a good look at him. We hear his voice and watch the people watching him, we see him in a long shot, and one medium-profile, but why, if this is the guy we've been waiting for, don't we get a good payoff, like in "Robin Hood" or "Ivanhoe"?
These weaknesses kept the movie from really appealing to me much. The film maker's message that if you really believe in something and follow that belief it will all turn out right in the end does come through, but it does force an ending that seemes a little trite. I imagine younger and less demanding audiences will find it enjoyable enough and absorb that message.

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The Winds of War (1983) Review

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(More customer reviews)Herman Wouk wrote an absolute masterpiece. Winds of War is without a doubt the very best historical novel in the war genre. Dan Curtis equally directs the benchmark that mini-series will be measured by for years to come.
Casting for Winds of War was perfect when it came to matching Wouk's characters. Despite the age differences Ali McGraw and Jan-Michael Vincent were absolutely perfect as the independent and fickle Natali Jastrow and the bull-headed Byron Henry. Robert Mitchum is the glue that holds the story together in a flawless performance as Victor "Pug" Henry, the man that meets everyone that is anyone in his role as a Naval Attache stationed in Berlin in the pre-World War II years. One of the best ever ensemble casts include stand-outperformances by Polly Bergen as Pug Henry's hard-drinking wife Rhoda, not to mention Topol, David Dukes, Victoria Tennant and John Houseman.
Winds of War has become a semi-annual event for our family. It is simply so entertaining that it never grows tiresome. The historical value alone makes it worth having in your home library.

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Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 4 (Act of Violence / Mystery Street / Crime Wave / Decoy / Illegal / The Big Steal / They Live By Night / Side Street / Where Danger Lives / Tension) (1950) Review

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(More customer reviews)This collection is the DVD debut for all ten of these films, and I don't even know if any of them are available on VHS. I've only seen them thanks to Turner Classic Movies playing them at odd hours, along with other cable channels presenting them over the years. They are excellent but not well remembered film noirs. I would rate them all between 4 and 5 stars. I thought I would list their descriptions, stars, and special features below, not in any particular order:
Crime Wave: (1954) Starring Sterling Hayden and Gene Nelson. An ex-con is trying to go straight, but circumstances force him into crime one more time. Gene Nelson plays a hard-nosed cop. Note a young Charles Bronson playing a minor role.
Commentary by James Ellroy and Eddie Muller
Crime Wave: The City is Dark
Theatrical trailer
Decoy: (1946) Starring Gene Gillie and Edward Norris. Sci-Fi meets Film Noir in this story of a woman who will stop at nothing to retrieve 400K stolen in a robbery. Gillie would make Barbara Stanwyck proud as she chews up man after man in her quest.
Commentary by Stanley Rubin and Glenn Erickson
Decoy: A Map to Nowhere
Theatrical trailer
Illegal: (1955) Starring Edward G. Robinson and Nina Foch. Robinson plays a D.A. whose upwardly mobile career faces a train wreck when a man he convicted is executed and then found to be innocent. After he hits bottom he resurrects his legal career, this time as a criminal attorney. The plot can be hard to follow, but Robinson's performance is great.
Commentary by Nina Foch and Patricia King Hanson
Illegal: Marked for Life
Behind the Cameras: Edward G. Robinson
Theatrical trailer
The Big Steal: (1949) Starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. The lead duo from "Out of the Past" trade wisecracks and insults in a cross-country chase over a suitcase full of stolen money. For once, Mitchum is actually not the bad guy. Almost too much fun to be considered Film Noir.
Commentary by Richard B. Jewell
The Big Steal: Look Behind You
They Live By Night: (1948) Starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. The story of an escaped convict trying to live a normal life with the help of his girlfriend. Granger plays the convict who isn't entirely bad, but not entirely reformed either.
Commentary by Farley Granger and Eddie Muller
They Live By Night: The Twisted Road
Theatrical trailer
Side Street: (1950) Starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. Granger plays a struggling husband trying to make ends meet when he spots some cash lying around in an office one day. He takes the money, but finds out it is much more than he thought. When he tries to return the money, he gets caught up in a murder mystery. Hitchcock-like in its twists and turns.
Commentary by Richard Schickel
Side Street: Where Temptation Lurks
Theatrical trailer
Where Danger Lives: (1950) Starring Robert Mitchum and Faith Domergue. The plot is somewhat unbelievable, even for Film Noir, but Mitchum gives a strong performance that makes it worthwhile. Mitchum plays a doctor who becomes taken with a patient. Due to a concussion, his judgement becomes clouded and he believes he has murdered the patient's husband. He and the woman go on the run, have some strange adventures, and then Mitchum realizes what kind of illness his new girlfriend was being treated for in the first place.
Commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini
Where Danger Lives: White Rose for Julie
Theatrical Trailer
Tension: (1950) Starring Richard Basehart and Audrey Trotter. Basehart plays a mild-mannered man whose salary and disposition are not enough for his wife. She leaves him for a tough and wealthy man. Why Basehart would want her back is anyone's guess, but he does and plans to murder his wife's new boyfriend. The tough guy is murdered, but not by Basehart's character.
Commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward with Audrey Trotter
Tension: Who's Guilty Now?
Theatrical Trailer
Act of Violence: (1948) Starring Van Heflin and Robert Ryan. Van Heflin plays a family man trying to adapt to life after the war and internment in a prison camp. Enter Robert Ryan, who plays a man with Terminator-like determination in his quest to murder Heflin's character for something that happened during their joint stay in the German prison camp.
Commentary by Dr. Drew Casper
Act of Violence: Dealing With the Devil
Theatrical Trailer
Mystery Street: (1950) Starring Ricardo Montalban and Sally Forrest. Montalban plays a detective who, working with a forensics expert, tries to solve a murder case and exonerate the lone circumstantial suspect. One of the first films I know of to use science to help solve a murder decades before DNA made this aspect of crime solving so interesting and important.
Commentary by Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward
Mystery Street: Murder at Harvard
Theatrical Trailer

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Ex-World War II pilot Frank Enley (Van Heflin) is a respected contractor and family man. Then his troubled, gimp-legged bombardier (Robert Ryan) shows up with a gun and a score to settle. Perhaps neither man is what he seems to be as director Fred Zinnemann (The Day of the Jackal) guides a searing Act of Violence, "the first postwar noir to take a challenging look at the ethics of men in combat" (Eddie Muller, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir). Murder lives on Mystery Street. John Sturges (The Great Escape) directs a revealing-for-the-era procedural about a Boston cop (Ricardo Montalban) solving a whodunit with the help of a Harvard forsensic expert (Bruce Bennett). Welcome to CSI Noir.

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Ryan's Daughter (Two-Disc Special Edition) (1970) Review

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(More customer reviews)I first saw this film when it came out, it haunted me for days. The score9 by Maurice Jarre) and the photography(Freddie Young won a most desevred Oscar for) is breathtaking and Sarah Miles is so beautiful she takes your breath away. Set in Ireland during World War I and the British occupation of Ireland. Rosy Ryan( Sarah Miles) sets her cap for the local school master played by the great Robert Mitchum. They marry and her life is not what she expects until a British Officer enters it while she is tending bar. The chap is played by Christopher Jones who was the Colin Farrell of his day. The scene in the pub when they meet is one of the most tender loving scenes ever filmed. The affair that follows brings heartache to all. The villagers in this small Irish town gives lynch mobs a bad name. The pleasure they exact from teasing the village idiot(played by John Mills and may I add with beauty and heart) and later taking their revenge on an innocent person they believed to be the traitor. I don't want to give away the ending ot the story but I just purchased it and watched it for the first time in thirty years and was reminded what a storyteller David Lean was. Candace Serviss

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Lovely, headstrong Rosy (Sarah Miles) cannot forsake her passionate romance with the handsome British officer (Christopher Jones). Yet there is a greater love ? the devotion of her reserved schoolteacher husband Charles (Robert Mitchum), who stands by Rosy when her illicit affair leads to a charge of treason. Two honored alumni of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago director David Lean and screenwriter Robert Bolt frame this brooding tale within the expansive beaches, craggy cliffs and heathered hills of Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. Freddie Young's lush cinematography and John Mills' memorable portrayal of a town simpleton won Academy Awards.* The remarkable movie containing them casts a haunting spell. DVD Features:Audio Commentary:Commentary by: Lady Sandra Lean, Sarah Miles, Trine Mitchum (Robert Mitchum?s Daughter), Assistant Director Michael Stevenson, Second Unit Director Roy Stevens, Art Director Roy Walker, Assistant Editor Tony Lawson, Location Manager Eddie Fowlie, Stuntman Vic Armstrong, Biographer Stephen M. Silverman, Directors John Boorman, Hugh Hudson and Richard SchickelTheatrical TrailerDocumentaries:Vintage Documentaries: Ryan?s Daughter: A Story of Love; Film Night: We?re the Last of the Traveling Circuses Documentary:The Making of Ryan?s Daughter (A 4-Part 35th-Anniversary Documentary): Storm Rising, Storm Chaser, Storm Catcher, The Eye of the Storm

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El Dorado (1967) Review

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(More customer reviews)Director Howard Hawks and John Wayne would essentially remake the same story three times: first as RIO BRAVO in 1959, then as EL DORADO in 1967, and finally as RIO LOBO in 1970. Caught between the popularity of the first and the dismal failure of the third, EL DORADO is something of a neglected film--but for my money, it is easily the best of the three.
The story is the stuff that Western myths are made of. Aging gun-slinger John Wayne is offered a job as hired gun in a range war, but he discovers that acceptance of the job would place him on the wrong side of the law--which in this case is old friend and small town sheriff Robert Mitchum, who has made himself a laughing stock by drinking his way to the bottom of every bottle he can find. Wayne accordingly drifts into town, whips Mitchum into shape, and with the assistance of crotchety deputy Arthur Hunnicutt and youngster James Caan they set about cleaning up the town.
Although EL DORADO has a leisurely tone, but it never feels in the least slow--largely due to an unexpectedly witty script that crackles with memorable dialogue (at one point when Mitchum asks Wayne what he's looking at, Wayne responds "A tin star with a drunk pinned to it") and unexpected situations (such as Caan's unfortunate way with a shotgun.) The entire cast handles both humor and old-west action with equal skill, and both Wayne and Mitchum offer some the best work of their impressive careers here; James Caan (in his first major success), Arthur Hunnicutt, Charlene Holt, and Michele Carey are equally memorable.
There are a great many westerns more critically acclaimed than EL DORADO--RED RIVER, THE SEARCHERS, and STAGE COACH to name but a few. And I enjoy them. But EL DORADO is like meeting an old friend whose company you always enjoy. Strongly recommended.

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AN OLD GUNFIGHTER, A DRIFTER AND A DEPUTY SOBER UP A SHERIFF TO TRACK DOWN KILLERS.

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