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But Pulp Fiction remains teh classic. :D
When one reads the opening credits of this movie, it appears to be star-studded...or at least to have become so over time because quite a few involved became stars afterwards (while others already were).
Directed by John Guillermin (later to direct the likes of The Blue Max, The Bridge at Remagen, The Towering Inferno and Death on the Nile), DOP: Douglas Slocombe (The Blue Max, Dance of the Vampires, The Lion in Winter, The Italian Job, The Great Gatsby [1974] ... as well as Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the first three Indiana Jones movies). Score by John Addison (Torn Curtain, Sleuth, A Bridge too Far).
Richard Attenborough plays Lauderdale, a kind of quintessential English sergeant major at a British outpost in a fictitious African country (Batasi), native troops and their barracks about to be handed over to the new African government upon independence. With Colonel Deal (Jack Hawkins) away, Batasian Lieutenant Boniface takes over the place by way of a mutiny against the appointed commanding officer, Captain Abraham (also a local national), because the latter supported the "wrong" party in the preceding revolution. Abraham manages to flee but is heavily wounded by gunshots. He manages to find refuge in the non-commissioned officers' mess, where Lauderdale has withdrawn along with his other NCOs. Also present are a left-leaning female MP from London, Miss Barker-Wise (Flora Robson), who has been touring the bases in Batasi, and a young UN employee, Miss Eriksson ("...and introducing" Mia Farrow) stranded in the nearby capital during the coup d' état.
Lauderdale tries to hide Abraham from Boniface to avoid him ending up before a firing squad. But Miss Barker-Wise thinks she can convince Boniface, who had been her protégé during his officer's training in Britain, to release Abraham into doctors' care, so she reveals his whereabouts. Boniface then demands that Lauderdale surrender Abraham and threatens to blow up the mess if he doesn't comply. Lauderdale decides to act.
I don' want to offer spoilers here. This is no war movie, with very little that could be considered "action", but it is a very tense drama that could probably easily be put on stage (maybe it has been, I don't know). Being stuck in the mess (pun intended) under the circumstances gives you a claustrophobic feeling. This is also great actors' cinema, most of all by Richard Attenborough, though the roles may be a little clichéd here and there: the strict and anachronistic but honourable sergeant major, the idealistic (and therefore naive) woman member of parliament who sees herself disappointed in her belief in good, the bantering sergeants. In spite of those reservations: highly recommended.
BOND CONNECTIONS (feel free to find more, which there probably are):
Douglas Slocombe was also DOP of NSNA. (For good or bad.)
Jack Hawkins lost his larynx and therefore his voice due to throat cancer and could only mime his roles after this movie. In his final films, he was therefore dubbed by either Charles Gray or Robert Rietty.
Bernard Horsfall (Sgt. Prideaux) later played Campbell in OHMSS.
Earl Cameron (Cpt. Abraham) was Pinder in TB.
The role of Miss Eriksson was originally intended for Britt Ekland, who had to pass when her husband Peter Sellers suffered a heart-attack, allegedly while they were having sex, and who took six months to recover.
21 Hours at Munich (1976)
Don't worry, this is going to be shorter than the last two (though not much, i'm afraid). This is a made-for-TV movie which was shown on ABC in the States, but theatrically everywhere else. My main problem is the perennial decision if the original version in the wrong language is the lesser evil compared to the German dubbed version. I decided it is. So I watched the events taking place in Munich 1972 (those leading up to what happened in Spielberg's Munich) having William Holden play Munich police president (commissioner) Manfred Schreiber speaking his own English with an American accent (rather than what originally was a Bavarian-tinted German), but I listened shortly into the German dubbing, and the non-Bavarian tinted high-German of the voice actor turned me off just as much.
I consciously followed those events in the press and TV at the time...after all, I was close to 16 years old. Added interest came from the fact that my father (a year before his retirement) was still a lieutenant colonel in the Bundesgrenzschutz (Federal Border Protection Force, BGS in short), now simply called Bundespolizei, and while he wasn't involved in any way in this particular matter (800 km away from where we lived), I certainly had more information about the events than the general public. We were on vacation when it happened, in Bavaria even, but that's it.
So accepting that everybody spoke some sort of English here, there isn't much to criticise with the movie. It claims to have been entirely made on the original locations (Munich, Fürstenfeldbruck), and that seems true. It manages to convey the impression that it mainly portrays the events as they were, with no glaring mistakes or goofs. The worst source of irritation I found was the clumsy way they but a sticker over the crane logo on the Lufthansa plane's vertical tail fin at the end (of the movie. Not just of the plane!) and turned it into something called "DEUTSCHFLUG", with everyone still knowing it was a Lufthansa 737. And as a German being aware of politics at the time, I failed to recognize prominent figures like Willy Brandt and Hans-Dietrich Genscher (interior minister then, but later foreign minister seemingly for eternity) without them being introduced. Fortunately, the filmmakers knew this would be even worse with the rest of the world, and introduced them through subtitles.
Still, not bad at all. No attempt to find Bond connections this time. Except maybe that Anthony Quayle played a general of the Israeli intelligence service. And Anthony Quayle was the first who, in an episode of The Saint, was the one to drive the DB5 registered as BMT216A on screen EVER...even though it wasn't painted "silver birch" at the time.
All time classic IMHO. Can't work out why Michael Mann is not more appreciated, a superb director. The last 8 minutes is up there with anything else in cinema history.
9/10
I'd say in the film industry Michael Mann is very appreciated.
Most of his films are very well reviewed.
It's only his later work that hasn't been as acclaimed. Public Enemies and Blackhat were mediocre by Mann's standards.
Agreed. I was expecting much from Public Enemies, but it was a big letdown!
Superman II The Richard Donner Cut, so much greatness in this film often on a very subtle level.
The look Jor-El gives Lois at the end
Did you like it?
I loved it. Maybe Herzog s best film.
I've actually only seen Nosferatu, which I loved.
I didn't mind Public Enemies when I first saw it but I started watching it recently and I found it very poor. Some of the dialogue is risible!
John Milius's Dillinger was far superior. And Warren Oates actually looked like him. Check it out if you haven't seen it @Mathis1 👍
One of the biggest missed opportunities in the history of superheroes. Donner and his crew should have at least finished Superman 2. The better cut by far.
MELISSA P (Luca Guadagnino, 2005)
Italian film about a pubescent girl, at times unpleasant.
I have seen Dillinger. Great movie! Director John Milius debut I think? Warren Oates is always worth watching!
Yes, it was Milius's debut 👍
The gags here range from very poor to very amusing. All in all a disappointment.
I’d say Toy Story 3/Goldfinger are the most satisfactory threequels, personally. Greatly enjoyable, in particular in the villain and suspense in the third acts for both.
Hard for me to think of any set of Bond films as a trilogy, though I love GF. I agree Toy Story 3 is one of the best threequels. Personally I’m also a big fan of Return of the Jedi and The Last Crusade.
I like ROTJ and The Last Crusade as well. They ended their trilogies on such high quality performances.
What exactly are you getting at? Keep in mind, these movies were filmed together and effectively just edited into three separate films. They weren't exactly going to be like a standard set of three films that are conceived and shot separately from one another.
A big part of what makes LOTR the most impressive trilogy is the consistency, and it shows since they were all filmed together. It’s one continuous epic story, just taking place in 3 separate films.