The World's End (2013)

THE WORLD'S END  (2013)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Edgar Wright
    Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman,
    Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Rosamund Pike,
    David Bradley, Michael Smiley, Pierce Brosnan
This starts out being one kind of movie, and then becomes another kind of movie, and then becomes something else again by combining the first two and throwing in a bunch of other stuff besides. It's about five old friends, all closing in on 40, who get together to recreate an epic pub crawl they failed to complete 20 years before. 12 pints in 12 pubs in a single night. Good luck with that. The instigator and ringleader, then and now, is seedy-looking, trench-coated Gary King (Simon Pegg). The others have all moved on to respectable, middle-class lives, but not Gary, who's still clinging to and hoping to relive that night in the increasingly distant past when he and his mates made their legendary assault on the "Golden Mile". Nobody else thinks repeating that night is even a good idea - one of the guys hasn't had a drink in 16 years - but then the old camaraderie kicks in, or what's left of it, and nobody can say no to the King. So they're off. That takes care of the first part of the movie. There's an abrupt gear shift about 30 minutes in that will surprise nobody who's familiar with the previous work of fanboys Pegg, Wright and Frost. It's the third entry in their "Cornetto" trilogy, and arguably the most ambitious. There might be fewer genre-parody laughs than in "Hot Fuzz" or "Shaun of the Dead", but despite its ragged structure and throw-it-all-at-the-wall approach, "The World's End" holds up fairly well as a genre piece on its own, and there's more room for the actors, especially the desperately keyed-up Pegg, to slip into the lives of their characters. You don't quite know where it's going to go, but with these guys tapping the lager and throwing back shots from one watering hole to the next, you know you'll be in good hands getting there. 

The 300 Spartans (1962)

THE 300 SPARTANS  (1962)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Rudolph Maté
    Richard Egan, Diane Baker, Ralph Richardson,
    Barry Coe, Donald Houston, David Farrar
When King Xerxes of Persia invades Greece with an army of 20 thousand, Richard Egan and a few hundred Spartan warriors head him off at the pass. A straightforward retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae, and a fairly typical early-'60s sand-and-sandal epic. The battle scenes are clumsy and you never get a coherent sense of the terrain, but in its storybook simplicity, it's at least as entertaining as some later, more ambitious movies dealing with ancient Greece. If you sat through Oliver Stone's "Alexander", you know what I mean.

300 (2007)

300  (2007)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Zack Snyder
    Gerard Butler, Lena Headey, David Wenham,
    Dominic West, Michael Fassbender, Rodrigo Santoro
In the 5th century B.C., young Spartan boys train to be hardened warriors. The future King Leonidas wins a standoff with a ferocious wolf, using a tactic that will come in handy later on. The Persians invade Greece. Cut to the Battle of Thermopylae. Things happen just about that fast in this battle epic, which doesn't waste much time getting around to the stabbings, bludgeonings, impalings and beheadings its target audience has paid good money to see. It's a rousing celebration of the glory of war, aimed at people whose notions of war come primarily from comic books. And you know what? It totally works. The good guys are heroic, the villains are despicable, the action's exciting, and the Spartans look dashing and buff with their rippling abs and shaved chests and cocky grins and perfect teeth. The Persian king Xerxes has more piercings than a fetish queen, and any soldier who marched into combat in briefs and a cape (as the Spartans do) would be carved up in seconds, but this is history according to Frank Miller, not Herodotus. It's also a movie that demands to be seen on a big screen, the bigger the better. If you watch it only on video, you'll be missing something. 

300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE  (2014)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Noam Murro
    Sullivan Stapleton, Eva Green, Lena Headey,
    Hans Matheson, Callan Mulvey, David Wenham
Brave, hunky Greeks charge into battle against the invading Persians led by wicked warrior vamp Eva Green. This isn't really a sequel to the first "300" movie as much as it is a meanwhile, letting you know what the Athenians were up to around the time the Spartans were defending Thermopylae. Turns out they were busy splitting skulls and severing heads and slaughtering Persians, too. So it's more of the same, a lot more, the main difference being that these are naval battles. It's exciting, gory and outlandish. It moves real fast. It looks and sounds great. It's a 21st-century animator's view of ancient war: a thousand ships on a digital sea turning red with computerized blood. Like it or not, the guys who made it knew exactly what they were doing. And if anybody could bring an army to its knees, paralyzed by her reptilian glare, it's Eva Green. 

Quote File / Take 7

Some lines from the movies of Christopher Lee:

"I have good news for you, my lord. War has 
  begun."
  Lee in "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones"

"I've got to get hold of that skeleton somehow."
  Lee in "The Creeping Flesh"

"I like a girl in a bikini. No concealed weapons."
  Lee in "The Man With the Golden Gun"

"Once again, the world is at my mercy."
  Lee in "The Castle of Fu Manchu"

"All I can say to you is keep away from the skull of 
  the Marquis de Sade."
  Lee in "The Skull"

Horror of Dracula (1958)

HORROR OF DRACULA  (1958)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Terence Fisher
    Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough,
    Melissa Stribling, John Van Eyssen, Carol Marsh
The first Hammer Dracula movie, with Christopher Lee in the title role and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. So get out the garlic and keep a crucifix handy, and it can't hurt to have a few sharp wooden stakes within reach, either. What's striking about this version is the elegance of its set design and costumes, and Lee's iconic performance as the count. Bela Lugosi might've set the vampire standard in 1931, but Lee took it over with this film, adding the fangs and bloodshot eyes to go with his own sinister grace, and paving the way for numerous Dracula movies to follow. For a generation of moviegoers, at least, Dracula will always be Christopher Lee.

Christopher Lee

(1922-2015)

Five Golden Hours (1961)

FIVE GOLDEN HOURS  (1961)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Mario Zampi
    Ernie Kovacs, Cyd Charisse, George Sanders,
    Dennis Price, Finlay Currie, Ron Moody
Ernie Kovacs plays a professional mourner who makes a comfortable living by ingratiating himself with wealthy widows at the funerals of their newly deceased husbands. When a gold-digging countess played by Cyd Charisse crosses his path, he hatches a much crazier but potentially more lucrative scheme. An offbeat comedy, not entirely black, maybe, but still pretty dark around the edges. Kovacs was a comic surrealist whose most innovative work was in early television. Movies never caught up (or caught on) to what he could do. He died in a car crash at 42, the year after this film's release.

Ron Moody

(1924-2015)

Desert Island Women

      The Movie Buzzard would watch these women 
      in anything at any time, almost, for reasons 
      that aren't entirely cinematic. 

                          Charlotte Gainsbourg
                          Judy Davis
                          Parker Posey
                          Marion Cotillard
                          Karen Allen
                          Sally Hawkins
                          Molly Parker
                          Toni Collette
                          Emily Mortimer
                          Juliette Binoche

A Coffee In Berlin (2012)

A COFFEE IN BERLIN  (2012)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Jan Ole Gerster
    Tom Schilling, Friedrike Kempter, Marc Hosemann,
    Andrea Schröders, Katharina Schüttler, Katharina Hauck
This movie opens with a scene straight out of "Breathless". A guy's getting dressed in a small flat in some European city. There's a girl on the bed, just waking up. The girl's got close-cropped hair and has on shorts and a striped pullover, but she's not Jean Seberg and the guy's not Belmondo, though they are being filmed in black and white, and as you learn incidentally later on, they have spent time in Paris together. The girl stirs and sits up and asks the guy where he's off to. He says he's got a couple of appointments. She asks if he'll be back around later. He says he's got a million things to do. She asks what some of those things are. He says nothing, but the look on his face says it all. He's leaving. The guy doesn't know it, but he's about to have one of the most fucked-up days of his life, one of those days when the ATM eats your credit card, and some crooks in the subway try to shake you down, and an old schoolmate turns up out of the blue and she's gorgeous and she comes on to you but she's a nutjob, and no matter how hard you try, you just can't get a cup of coffee, and on a day like this one, you really need some. Some days are like that, I guess. Some days, if you're lucky enough to wake up with a girl who looks like Jean Seberg, you should just stay put. Some days, you're just spinning your wheels, and your life isn't going to go anywhere anyway. Some days, a cup of coffee can wait till tomorrow, even in Berlin.

Conflict (1945)

CONFLICT  (1945)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Curtis Bernhardt
    Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith, Sydney Greenstreet,
    Rose Hobart, Charles Drake, Grant Mitchell
Crime and punishment, with Bogey as a man who murders his wife and then starts cracking up, plagued by guilt and obsessed with bringing the killer to justice. Bogart's portrayal of bitterness and paranoia anticipates Captain Queeg. Dostoevsky should probably get a story credit on this.

Bettie Page Reveals All (2012)

BETTIE PAGE REVEALS ALL  (2012)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Mark Mori
There's a house I go by every time I ride the bus between Lake Forest Park and downtown Seattle. It's a gray, two-story house overlooking I-5, and the thing you notice about it, that you can't help noticing, is that painted on the side where it faces the freeway, 20 feet high, at least, is a mural of Bettie Page. It's unmistakably her, with her trademark bangs and lingerie, a horizontal strip of roofing strategically blocking out the parts of Bettie that passing puritans might not want to see. You wouldn't think a pinup model whose career ended in 1957 would be getting that kind of recognition today, but as the photographic evidence in this documentary shows, Bettie Page was no ordinary pinup model. She had an ease in front of the camera and a disarming sense of fun that couldn't be faked, even when she was gagged and strung up in bondage gear, or posing in nothing at all. Like Louise Brooks in the '20s, Page had a look, combined with an openly sexual persona, that transcended her relatively short time in the spotlight. This film won't be the last word on Bettie, or her influence on popular culture. It reveals a lot, but not all, and parts of it are annoyingly superficial. Page retired at 34 and spent the next 50 years mostly not being photographed, so Mori understandably zeroes in on her public heyday in the 1950s. Her life before and after that was anything but glamorous: a troubling cycle of abuse, mental illness, failed marriages and religious obsession. But glance at even a few of those modeling shots, at the girl with the bangs and the look and the body that went with it, and a couple of things become clear. No matter what people thought then or think now, she was a woman who loved her work. And she was good at what she did. 

To look at pictures of the Bettie Page House, google "Bettie Page House Seattle." To look at pictures of Bettie Page, google "Bettie Page."

Mister Roberts (1955)

MISTER ROBERTS  (1955)  ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy
    Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell,
    Jack Lemmon, Ward Bond, Betsy Palmer,
    Ken Curtis, Nick Adams, Martin Milner
A much-loved movie with a backstory that could make a movie all its own. It's based on a long-running play about a young Navy lieutenant who's stuck on a cargo ship in the Pacific and longs to get out from behind the lines and into the actual war, the war being World War Two. Henry Fonda had played the role on stage for something like four years, and got the part in the film despite the fact that he was a little too old by then. (Fonda was 49. Doug Roberts is supposed to be 26.) Josh Logan, who had launched the play on Broadway, was set to direct, but the studio, Warner Brothers, let Logan go and hired John Ford, who had connections and could get the cooperation of the U.S. Navy. Ford had the script altered to make it more broadly comical. Fonda hated that and said so. He and Ford argued, and the story goes that Ford threw a punch that hit Fonda in the face, knocking him back over some furniture. (That Fonda chose to retaliate with a shove instead of a fist was a lucky break for Ford.) Ford apologized almost immediately, but the clash effectively ended what had been a long, rewarding professional relationship. As the shoot went on, Ford drank, his behavior became erratic, and according to at least one source, Ward Bond took over behind the camera when Ford was too pissed to know what was going on. It all took a toll on Ford's health, and when he landed in the hospital to have his gall bladder removed and dry out, the studio replaced him with Mervyn LeRoy, who finished the picture. But not quite. Josh Logan came back in to shoot or reshoot some scenes, and the editors put together the best movie they could from all that mismatched material. Somehow it worked. The picture was a hit. Roberts became one of Fonda's signature roles. Ford recovered and went on to make "The Searchers", "Two Rode Together" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance". He never worked with Fonda again. "Mister Roberts" remains one of the most widely revered service comedies ever, partly because of the star-power casting of Fonda, Cagney, Powell and Lemmon, and partly because beneath all the goofing around, it takes the war seriously. It was William Powell's last film. 

Betsy Palmer

(1926-2015)

To find out more about Fonda, Ford and the making of "Mister Roberts", the Movie Buzzard recommends "The Man Who Saw a Ghost: The Life and Work of Henry Fonda" by Devin McKinney and "Searching For John Ford" by Joseph McBride.

Godzilla (2014)

GODZILLA  (2014)  ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Gareth Edwards
    Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ken Watanabe, Elizabeth Olsen,
    David Strathairn, Sally Hawkins, Bryan Cranston,
    Juliette Binoche, Victor Rasuk, Patrick Sabongui
A slimy, scaly, fire-breathing sea monster heads toward the Western United States, and the Western United States had better get out of its way. Yes, Godzilla's back, bigger and badder than ever. Unfortunately, not better than ever, at least in the script department, but the stuff with the monsters looks cool, combined with some industrial-strength sound effects. If you ask me, any movie that would kill off Juliette Binoche in the opening reel should have its head examined, but it's not like you carry a lot of high expectations into something like this. Maybe Juliette was the lucky one who saw what was going on, made her appearance, cashed a nice check, and got out while the getting was good.