041 - Hombre

Synopsis: White man raised as an Apache is first despised and then relied on by fellow stagecoach travellers held up by outlaws.

Director: Martin Ritt

Actors: Paul Newman, Martin Balsam, Richard Boone, Frederic March, Diane Cilento

Date: 1966

How viewed: Bought (region 1 DVD) via Amazon

Rating: 4/5

David Meyer says:

The tension in Newman's portrayal matches the building tensions of the script, and delivers strong, old-fashioned western satisfaction.

I say:

Excellent stuff. Newman exhibits an almost zen like quality (he sits, he waits, he watches, he says little) as the unemotional white man raised by Apaches, with his disdain for the white's caring attitudes. He finds himself taking a one-off stagecoach to the next town with a motley crew of travellers (surely he would have just taken a horse and ridden there!), and I'm sure the reason given that the regular stagecoach route had been closed down was that the railroad had arrived - why didn't they all take the train? Oh well, never mind the plot. Anyway the travellers take against Newman's pro-Indian stance and insist he travel outside alongside the driver instead of inside with them, but then when they are held up (one of the passengers turns out to be the leader of the band of outlaws), it's Newman who first shoots 2 of the gang, and then (somewhat against his will) guides them to relative safety (across the scorching hot desert, etc). There's the inevitable standoff with the remaining members of the gang, and under pressure, Newman's character softens and he puts himself on the line for the group. I really liked the slow pace of the film, the opening sequence with Newman and his Indian pals trapping wild horses, and Newman's stillness alone makes the film worth watching.

040 - 49th Parallel

Synopsis: Stranded U-boat landing party make their way across Canada to get to the (then) neutral America

Director: Michael Powell

Actors: Leslie Howard, Anton Walbrook, Laurence Olivier, Eric Portman, Findlay Currie, Glynis John, Raymond Massey

Date: 1941

How viewed: Lovefilm rental

Rating: 3/5

David Meyer says:

The joys of this film almost contradict one another: thrilling action, intelligent dialogue, riveting chase scenes, and a revealing portrait of the filmmaking mentality of another era.

I say:

Clearly a propaganda film to encourage America to join the war, but interesting for its inclusion at the time of 'good' Germans. U-boat survivors find themselves stranded in Hudson Bay and the only way to avoid capture and internment is to get to America, which was, at the time, neutral (the 49th parallel by the way is the circle of latitude separating Canada and the US). The group of 6 take over a trapper's house, 5 of them escape on a small sea-plane, 4 survive the plane crashing and turn up at a Hutterite community, 3 steal a car, get a train to Winnipeg at the time of Indian day, 2 struggle across the Rockies, and 1 hops a freight train and eventually reaches Niagara and finally (though not for very long) gets to America. The film is episodic in nature, and at each point the varying communities extol the virtues of democracy (freedom, equality, racial harmony, etc) and the Germans, through their words or actions, highlight how all these are destroyed by Hitler's vision. The film works well as a travelogue of Canada, and the plane, train and u-boat scenes are great, but everyone speaks with impeccable English accents (except Laurence Olivier who plays a French-Canadian trapper with a weird sort of European accent which reminded me of Chico Marx!), and I was quite disappointed in a scene with Leslie Howard canoeing across a lake, that the Monty Python gang didn't appear out of the tress singing 'I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK, I sleep all night, and I work all day....'

039 - 92 in the shade

Synopsis: Young guy sets up as fishing guide in competition to the 2 regulars

Director: Thomas McGuane

Actors: Peter Fonda, Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton, Burgess Meredith, Elizabeth Ashley, Margot Kidder, Sylvia Miles

Date: 1975

How viewed: Bought from J4HI.com

Rating: 3/5

David Meyer says:

.. dark daring wit, stellar understated performances, and the director's gift for capturing American rhythms of speech. It's a cult film for adults: smart, loose, funny, and too ironic for its own good. 

I say:

As I discovered when I used to spend too much time and money on obscure CDs, the reason some music (and some films) are difficult to find, out of print, unreleased, etc, is that they deserve to be! Admit it, there's very few undiscovered gems out there folks! This is a strange little film - the story, such as it is, involves Tom (Fonda) deciding that the only thing he's any good at is taking tourists out to fish in some Florida backwater, but the 2 guys who have the business (Oates and Stanton) take exception, and despite the fact that they're all friends, Oates threatens to shoot him (he's always fooling around with a pistol). Thomas McGuane wrote the script (he also wrote stuff like Tom Horn, Rancho Deluxe and The Missouri Breaks) but this was the only film he directed - and (from other reviews) it sounds like he and a bunch of his movie pals had a holiday in Key West and filmed this. So on the one hand it's always a pleasure to watch the likes of Fonda, Oates, Stanton, Meredith and the rest enjoy playing some crazy characters, but Fonda especially, sleepwalks through the whole thing, and there's no tension, no edge, no passion. The one moment that make you sit up is the ending, but the DVD also includes the alternative happy ending that the studio insisted on, which is just a joke! Anyway, the best scenes are those with Meredith (as Fonda's grandfather), William Hickey (as Fonda's father) and Miles (as Meredith's secretary) - because the one thing that McGuane does well is write good dialogue. Anyway, Brownie points to J4HI.com for making films like this available, even if they don't live up to expectations!

038 - Voyager

Synopsis: A series of co-incidences forces a 50's engineer to review his life

Director: Volker Schlondorff

Actors: Sam Shepard, Julie Delpy, Barbara Sukowa

Date: 1992

How viewed: Bought a region 3 DVD on ebay from guy in S Korea

Rating: 3/5

David Meyer says:

Among the saddest films ever made; a treatise on fate, synchronicity, self-knowledge, denial and love.

I say:

From reading other reviews (on IMDb) this is apparently a poor adaptation of a very complex book (Homo Faber by Max Frisch), which perhaps explains why you never really understand the characters. Walter Faber (Shepard) is an globe trotting engineer, a man, to quote the Latin literature (thanks Wikipedia), 'in control of his destiny and what surrounds him'. But then fate, or some rebellion against this control, takes over - on a whim, he decides to go with a fellow plane crash survivor to find an old friend, Joachim, but finds he's committed suicide (Walter got Hanna pregnant, before she married Joachim). Back in New York, on a whim, he boards a ship for Paris, and meets and falls in love with a young girl (Delpy). Mid-way through a conference in Paris, on a whim, he goes to the Louvre and they meet again, and, on a whim, to stop her hitch-hiking to Rome, he hires a car and they drive (all the way down to Athens). It all ends badly of course, they meet up with her mother (Hanna), he finds out she is his daughter, and she dies. The New York Times therefore suggests this is a variation on the story of Oedipus, and 'the Gods intervene to punish Walter for his earlier transgression'. So, should you make the effort to watch this (which will involve buying a DVD from abroad as it's not on lovefilm)? Well, the plot is predictable (given all the co-incidences), and in contrast to many others I just don't get Julie Delpy (more Dopey I think), but Sam Shepard is cool (he doesn't appear in enough good films), there are lots of great locations, and the highlight for me was the plane in the early sequence (a Lockheed Starliner, or Super Constellation), which (especially when they fire up those engines) is fantastic, so perhaps go watch a few clips on YouTube instead, and read the book!

037 - Delicatessen

Synopsis: Chaotic colourful comical caper involving clowns, cannibals and cellos

Directors: Jean-Marie Jeunet, Marc Caro

Actors: Dominique Pinon, Marie-Laure Dougnac, Jean-Claude Dreyfus

Date: 1991

How viewed: Lovefilm rental

Rating: 5/5

David Meyer says:

The weird angle action shots and the insane stunts suggest Spielberg on LSD, a childlike and goodhearted imagination run completely riot.

I say:
I recall seeing this around the time it came out, and not being overly impressed, but I've totally changed my mind - it's absolutely brilliant! It's Sweeney Todd meets David Lynch meets Terry Gilliam meets 'The Triplets of Belleville' meets Tom and Jerry, and then some. In a desolate land where the food has run out, new residents in the rooms above a butchers are slaughtered and eaten, but the butcher's daughter falls in love with the latest tenant and tries to save him from the chop, aided (naturally!) by the troglodytes who live in the sewers. The film is so full of invention - it's like a real life cartoon, with every actor a caricature, and extraordinary scenes, such a filling a room with water so that when the pursuers open the door they are swept away in a torrent, the old guy living in a room full of frogs and snails, which he is gradually eating, the woman constantly trying to commit suicide by the most contrived methods, and the classic scene of a couple making love in a bed with noisy springs and everyone else in the building doing something to the same rhythm. Thus, despite the somewhat gruesome storyline you can't help grinning all the way through it. Thoroughly recommended!