Posted by
zacharythax May 27, 2009 -
592 views
Bridge on the River Kwai
MGM (1957) D: David Lean
P: Sam Spiegel
S: Michael Wilson, Carl Foreman
Spectacular locations in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and seeing Obi Wan Kenobi (the
original one, kids) Alec Guiness as the overzealous Colonel Nicholson make this
great. I feel like a complete douchebag for not having watched this sooner. It was
on cable all the time in the 80's (when the print was restored) Not exactly like the
book (by the same French guy who wrote Planet of the Apes) but the changes
make a lot better movie.
The U.K. is ordered to surrender to the Japanese and the POW's have to build a
bridge in a strategic location in the middle of the jungle. Their leader wants them
to remain soldiers and NOT become prisoners, so he tries to exert stricter
discipline on them that the Japanese Colonel does. The problem comes when the Jap
commander (Saito) tries to make the Brit officers work on the bridge, too. Obi Wan
calls him on this in front of the whole camp that this is a violation of the Geneva
convention. To save face Saito throws the convention on the ground and shuts
Nicholson up in "The Oven", a corrugated iron box.
The whole story is about the power struggle and how each manages to compromise to
save face. It turns out the Japs are clueless as to how to actually engineer and
build a bridge. Col. Saito it is revealed has to commit hari kari if the bridge
isn't built on schedule, so Nicholson offers his assistnace in return for Saito
conceding to the Convention.
Soon the stolid limey becomes obsessed with the project of building the bridge on
schedule. The troops try to fug off and put a wrench in the works until a long
meeting is called and Nicholson MAKES them do the job right.
Meanwhile the American Navy officer Shears (William Holden) pulls off a daring
escape from the camp and has a swingin' time at the beach with a sexy WAC until the
Brits catch up with him and find out that he's not who he says he is, and so
strongarm him into a mission back to the very POW camp he escaped from in order to
blow up the bridge. Murphy's Law, of course kicks in and the water level in the
river goes down after they lay the plastic explosive charges on the piles, making
them visible to an astute observer.
With the train whistle in the background, Nicholson and Saito both follow the
detonator cable down to where the kid is hiding with the plunger box. The Yank tries
to swim across in time but gets shot. The kid efficiently knifes Saito. Nicholson
isn't about to let anyone blow up the bridge that he's so proud of and that became
his obsession in the previous weeks. He fights the kid. The American pops a couple
of caps in him, he dies, falling on the detanator plunger and the brige blows up
taking the supply train with it. The end.
This is a manly thinking man's movie. Not merely like a Clint Eastwood shoot 'em up,
but a story that says tons about duty, honor and power. It won 7 Oscars including
Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Music (by
Malcolm Arnold) and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.
Two of the screenwriters were blacklisted at the time and were awarded posthumously
in 1984.With Jack Hawkins, James Donald, Geoffre Horne and John Boxer
Bitter End of A Sweet Night AKA Amai yoru no hate
(1961) D: Kiju Yoshida P: Takeshi Sasaki
S: Yoichi Maeda, Kiju Yoshida
Mom would be proud of me now. I own more than one suit, drink wines that don't have screw tops, go to concerts that don't require ear protection, read the stock market reports and watch Japanese movies that don't have any giant rubber monsters. Hey, sometimes in life if you're not careful, you can grow up. It happens to the best of us.
This dark and inscrutable film about a department store clerk, Tezuka, who looks like an Asian Sal Mineo. He plots and schemes his way out of repeated humiliations at the hands of women. Like a heavy existential Russ Meyer flick, Tezuka gets more crap poured on him at the hands of broads than John Cusak does in High Fidelity
After his hot girlfriend dumps him, the couple get waylaid by a traffic accident and he hits on the first girl he sees--a waitress, Harumi. who he's determined to help career-wise. He sets her up working at a bar owned by his boss' daughter. They sleep together and he tries to put the moves on her but she rejects him like a screaming cat. No big deal because there's the widow of an oil magnate and a bar owner MILF who form an uncomfortable love polygon that you just know has to end badly.
He has a lot of (offscreen) sex and goes for motorcycle rides on an incredible abandoned racetrack. The jazz score and excellent cinematography may remind some viewers (not to sound like one of those those snooty art-house critics but...) of Goddard. As of this writing (May 28, 2009) the whole thing is up on YouTube in 8 parts(!)
The Loved One
MGM (1965) D: Tony Richardson P: Haskell Wexler
S: Terry Southern, christopher Isherwood
Who's in this? Who isn't in this? James Coburn, Roddy Mc Dowall, Jonathan Winters,
Yvonne De Carlo (she's actually hotter than Morticia in this. You can see that they
clearly uglied her up for The Munsters), Milton Berle, Dan Haggarty, Liberace (in an
appropriately creepy role), Paul Williams(who was 23 at the time), Rod Stieger, Sir John Giulgud,
I heard about this movie for years but the tape rotated out of my local videostore
before I had a chance to rent it. It was recommended to me during my brief stint as
a cemetary property salesman. I can't say a lot more that hasn't already been said.
Just see it.
Ultraman Next
Tsuburaya(2004) D: Kazuya Konaka
W: Kei'ichi Hasegawa
A great looking stop motion animation monster escaped from an Air Force base. A sexy
girl in a white lab coat is poised to shoot with a revolver with liquid filled
bullets but a man's face ripples frrom the side of the thing. She lets off the
trigger and the ugly scaly escapes into the sea.
We're introduced to an annoying little boy and two fighter pilots who see something
weird in the sky that looks like a fireball which one of them flies into and enters
this greenish ectoplasm like LSD trip tunnel and sees Ultraman form out of some red
blood vessels. He reappears and scared the shit out of an overfed couple by
appearing at their doorstep. It turns out he's the father of the kid (there must be
a law in Japan that all monster movies post Godzilla's Revenge have to have a whiny
tyke)
Not surprisingly, the millitary immediately gives the dude a CAT scan once he tells
his story and grounds his ass (I think)
Then he's at the fair with the fam and some chick in black clothes is stalking and
taking pictures.
The Millitary guys find a huge ship abandoned by the sea. Hmmmmm.
Then some dorky looking guy with his ball cap on backward and a girl in a pink
jacket come running up to a Cessna at a private airport. It looks like the former
Air Force guy is looking for other work in the private sector. He gets into one of
those civilian planes and HEY! it's the dark clothes chick who was taking pictures.
She kind of looks like Morticia with a hat.
She promptly proceeds to hijack the single prop with the aid of a millitary 'copter.
They take him to a private underground room and show him video of a guy turning into
that lizard monster we saw at the beginning.
He kind of has a seizure as he remembers something and they force him into a cell
there his eyes light up red and remembers stormy skies and pounds on the walls. Then
we see the dinosaur monster saunter in right outside. Damn that thing looks great.
Almost like the monster that Godzilla fought in the new post-Matthew Broderick one.
The army guys pop out with machine guns and mow the sucker down, but it opens its
eyes and comes back to life. It glows and a bunch of newts start crawling up its
toes. Then it explodes and turns into a bigger two-tones lizard thingy. I can see
where this is going. It bends down and breathes down the shirt of our black-clad
hottie but then, our hero busts out of his cell and the film turns all negative for
second. His eyes glow red again and then he turns into Ultraman. All right!
He of course gets into a big fight with the thing and hurls it through the wall, but
then Ultraman turns all silver except for a red glowing cross in the middle of his
chest like a heart beating, which is universal video game language for being
wounded. He turns back into a regular guy and goes into a hospital to recover his
hit points while he are treated to highlights of the last reel in the form of
flashbacks.
Then some sewer workers crap their drawers after encountering the super-sized
saurian which I guess warrants the Japanese Army to get called out again.
Something tells me this 97 minute full length motion picture could be easily
compressed into a half hour TV show because there are a lot of very talky scenes and
the pacing of this thing is just glacial.
The kid passes out at school and is rushed to a hospital. Dad escapes from the
millitary place. The Ghoul Girl shows up dressed commando-style and rushes the guy
in a car to an underground blue-green misty place where they find the guy who turned
into the lizard monster she shoots him but, holy shit! He's got stretchy arms like
Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four.
He then starts sprouting demon spines and demon horns and demon zits and turns back
into a hornier version of the dino-creature. The other guy turns back into Ultraman
and they kick the fug out of each other. His time a bunch of rats decide for no
apparent reason to crawl up the monsters legs and it bubbles and morphs into an even
bigger monster! Can you believe it?
Now it's building-stomping time. This new thing has a bunch of roaring heads
sprouting from it and breaths this sparkly blue stuff that turns into fireballs that
wreck buildings. Ultraman jump;s out and rescues a mother and little girl from a
VERY 9-11 looking tower collapse.
Ultraman and the monster duke it out and then Ultraman flies away. then a whole
fugload of birds meld into the thing and it grows huge 1000 foot wings and takes off
after Ultraman in the sky.
With the help of a fighter jet he cuts the thing's wings off, it plummets to the
ground and then he disintegrates it with his Ultraman ray.
BAck as a regular guy, he takes off in one of those wimpy private single engine
planes with son by his side.
End.
I watched this all in Japanese without subtitles.
