RayB Reviews

Seven Days to Noon (1950)

A great fifties thriller.

[7/10 · 16 November 1999]

An absorbing tale, well-told.

The big picture - London being evacuated, Prime Ministerial meetings, military operations - are contrasted with the anti-hero's attempts to evade detection among the city's ordinary people. His encounters with a seedy land-lady (brilliantly played the late Joan Hickson), and a fading second-rate actress, are depicted in fine detail.

But the film never gets bogged down - whenever the pace threatens to slow-up the scene cuts to racing police cars, thundering army convoys, or shrieking steam trains.

Carefully photographed set-pieces, solid acting all round, and a tense climax. Top stuff.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Formulaic, but what a formula!

[16 October 1999]

All the classic Bond elements are present and correct: Megalomaniac with domination fetish; said maniac's hi-tech H.Q. (which of course gets spectacularly trashed); beautiful foreign agent who joins forces with Bond; Moneypenny, M, Q (astonishingly still played by Desmond Llewelyn), plus gadgets, guns and exotic locations.

On one level it all works very well. Brosnan is a convincing Bond - not as good as Connery, but better than Moore and Lazenby (and as good as the unfairly underrated Dalton). Pryce is great as the villain, the effects are mainly very good, and the pace is about right - not too manic, not too talky. The script even had some wit: Pryce as a lunatic media mogul creating his own 'news' is an accurate pot-shot at the equally loony global 'media' industry.

Also Brosnan is nicely ruthless -when the assassin in the hotel room pleads futilely for his life by saying 'I'm only doing my job' and Bond responds with 'And so am I' before pulling the trigger you know Bond is a man you don't mess with. Connery was like this, Moore wasn't.

But... But... Yes, all the familiar elements are there, and that's the problem - it's as if Bond films come in a box like a plastic model kit; all you have to do is glue the bits together, give it a lick of paint, and there you are. At one point (the motorbike/helicopter chase) I simply couldn't get involved - the whole Bond thing is so formulaic you know they're going to escape and that their pursuers will come to a sticky end; instead I started looking ahead of the motorbike and wondering where the special effects technicians had planted the charges to simulate the missile explosions! (This also probably means I've seen one too many of those 'The Making Of...' documentaries.)

But I guess I'm taking the whole thing too seriously. This is a great action film slickly put together. Worth watching for Bond fans and non-fans alike.

I didn't like the title song much, though...

Frantic (1988)

A good film which could have been great.

[10 October 1999]

Well, how would you react if your spouse suddenly disappeared from your hotel room? Much like Harrison Ford's character I would suggest. A great piece of acting - mild annoyance followed by bafflement, confusion, fear, anger. Unable to speak the language, reduced to a number being ground in the bureaucratic machine, and forced to interact with not only an alien culture but the underside of that culture, Ford's actions and reactions are completely authentic. The title sums up the first half of the film perfectly.

During the second half, however, the realism is gradually abandoned in favour of a standard thriller formula. Slick, competent, yes, but imagination is replaced by routine. It's as if the writers dreamed up the idea of a mysterious disappearance, had fun with it, but then struggled to come up with a rational explanation for it. The 'krytron' is a classic Hitchcock 'McGuffin', a single hook on which to hang the entire plot.

But the viewer's belief in Ford's character never wavers; he holds the two halves of the film together and is supported admirably by the rest of the cast.

A good film which could have been great; worth watching for the fine central performance.

The Driver (1978)

Entertaining while it lasts, but ultimately rather pointless.

[7 October 1999]

Mean cop Bruce Dern on the trail of cool get-away driver Ryan O'Neal. Pretty good, as these things go.

Both O'Neal and side-kick Adjani are not overly taxed by their roles - each maintains a fixed facial expression throughout the entire film and their characters' dialogue consists largely of isolated words or, occasionally, sentences - but their performances are adequate. Dern's cop could have been similarly spare but somehow he manages to inject some interest - even humour - into a character a lesser actor would have rendered merely unpleasant.

On first viewing the plot seems fairly involved and almost believable. On second viewing, however, it is apparent that there is less here than meets the eye. Dern's 'rogue cop' tactics aren't really credible, the O'Neal character's motivation seems confused, and Adjani appears to be along just for the ride.

The film does have style, though. The car chases are fairly exciting - particularly a low-speed cat-and-mouse sequence in a large warehouse. Dern gives value for money, and Adjani is very pretty.

But at the closing credits the viewer is left thinking 'is that it?' As is so often the case with seventies 'cop movies' it all seems - to be blunt - rather empty and pointless.

Predator (1987)

The Meat-Heads vs. The Thing From Space

[3 October 1999]

I saw this first on T.V. and initially thought it was simply another Rambo-esque live-action cartoon (2-D 'characters', mindless machismo, tedious gunplay, etc.). In fact for the first three-quarters of an hour my finger was hovering over the remote control - there was a programme about knitting on another channel which looked more interesting...

And then, one by one, the macho's started getting killed off. With every demise - I cheered each one - I got more intrigued, and I began to see the film's positive attributes: fabulous jungle setting, fine camera-work, great direction. And a story which was thankfully devoid of emotional/motivational clutter. It was just The Meat-Heads vs. The Thing From Space. And The Meat-Heads were losing! Hurrah!

Until finally we were left with King Meat-Head standing defiantly alone. From this point on the film soared. Human ingenuity pitted against alien ruthlessness (backed-up by some pretty impressive technology). Some great scenes - particularly when Arnie lit his torch and screamed Tarzan-like into the night. Superb alien facial design - for once an alien who didn't look like a human with a wrinkly forehead (Star Trek take note...)

I didn't want to like this, but in the end I couldn't help it. The first third of the film was boring nonsense (2/10), the middle third increasingly interesting (6/10), while the last third was mind-blowing (9/10)!

The Time Machine (1960)

If that machine can do what you say it can, destroy it!

[10/10 · 20 September 1999]

A fine version of (arguably) H.G.'s best book. Rod Taylor is perfect in the role of The Time Traveller - a very correct, square-jawed Victorian adventurer, but with a dash of the rebel.

His initial, tentative experimentation with the machine (a splendid creation) is probably the best sequence in the film. His brief exploration of 1918 and the meeting with his friend's son is particularly poignant.

However his emergence into the 1960's during an 'atomic air-raid' - a scene entirely absent from the book - doesn't quite work: the dialogue here is stilted, the silver suits seem a cliche, and footage of real volcanic eruptions sits uneasily with the fantasy feel of the film.

But it is a temporary lapse: The eerie world of 802,701 AD with its huge, abandoned buildings, strange succulent fruits, and dense mysterious woodlands with their weird sounds is well realised. The Eloi are suitably apathetic, the Morlocks suitably monstrous, and the action enjoyable. The scene in which the Traveller examines a long-forgotten library and a book falls to dust in his hands is memorable.

The finale with the Traveller's friend, Filby, as he realises the truth of the story is well done: The Traveller calling 'Goodbye' instead of 'Good night'; the sound of the Machine making its final trip as Filby attempts to batter down the door; and the missing books from the bookcase. Wonderfully evocative stuff.

Good script, good acting, great story. Perfect entertainment. And, if you were going to rebuild civilisation, which three books would you take?

Thunderbirds (1965–1966)

Find it, watch it, love it.

[11 September 1999]

An ancient kids T.V. show featuring string puppets and models suspended on wires. Nobody's gonna watch this, right? Wrong.

From the superb intro sequence on you'll be hooked! It wins in every department: music, production, direction; even the model sequences, dated though the techniques now are, work brilliantly (and so they should - the guy who supervised them was Derek Meddings, who went on to do the effects for several of the Bond films, as well as Batman and Superman).

Find this series on tape or scan your T.V. listings. You won't regret it. There were 32 fifty-minute episodes and each was a little gem. There were also two cinematic feature films!

Thunderbirds Are Go!