Thursday 13 October 2005

The missing movies - Part one

OK let's do some brief capsules:

Written on the Wind (1956):  Brother and sister Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone are a dipso and a nympho.  He gives up the booze when he marries Lauren Bacall but starts again when he can't make a baby. Malone fancies Rock Hudson who fancies Bacall.  A lot of people reckon this film; I reckon it's a melodramatic mess.

Kontroll (2003): This Hungarian movie is about life underground on the subways of Budapest with characters who never emerge to the light.  These include crack teams chasing fare-dodgers, a phantom spray-cream attacker and a shover onto the tracks.  Very weird and not a little surreal.

Deception (1946): High camp melodrama with Bette Davis finding her lost love, cellist Paul Henreid after the war but failing to tell him that she is being kept by Claude Raines' composer.  If anything Raines upstages Davis -- and that takes some doing.

Mr. North (1988): A rather sweet movie based on a Thornton Wilder short story featuring Anthony Edwards as an ambitious young man changing the lives of those about him on Cape Cod in the 20's, not least by his electric touch.  Directed by Danny Huston (son of John), Robert Mitchum takes the role intended for his too-ill father.

Arachnophobia (1990): A grade Z storyline upgraded to A-class status by high production values and good performances.  I normally find it hard to watch creepy-crawly films, but this one is good fun if you don't hide behind your hands too often.

More to follow....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I must say 'Kontroll' did look good on the previews, just never made it. There's always DVD I guess.