Reviews

`What one loves in life are the things that fade…' runs the tagline to Heaven's Gate. One can hardly imagine that Michael Cimino; director of the multi Oscar winning The Deer Hunter, loved his career after 1980, because it faded pretty quickly after this monumental flop. Heaven's Gate was an industrial joke, costing anywhere from $35 to $50 million from an original $7.5 million, was lambasted by the critics, made back just $2 million and sunk the United Artists studio. Naturally, it's not that bad. The critical panning was quite uncalled for, but it's still a failure, made worst by the frequent flashes of isolated brilliance that indicate that somewhere in this shapeless slug of a film, there was a slice of cinematic brilliance trying to get out.

`Now why do we do anything?' Kristofferson asks at one point in the film. Cimino would have been wise to ask himself that same question, because at the end of the day, Heaven's Gate simply lacks all motivation behind both plot and characters to work satisfactorily as a whole. There's actually nothing in it that would make you cringe in disbelief. It starts well, with Kristofferson and Hurt graduating from Harvard in 1870, sniffing the promise that the future holds. 20 years later, both men are living in Wyoming; Hurt as a drunken member of the Stock Growers' Association and Kristofferson as a Johnson County Marshall (although that doesn't become apparent until hour in), who sort-of tries to help the Wyoming immigrants who are under threat from the Association. This could have been a brilliant study of the greed and ruthlessness that built the West, but instead Cimino foolishly concentrates on relatively minor details, only occasionally expanding on the story. Thus he digresses into a love triangle sub-plot between Kristofferson, prostitute Ella Watson (Isabelle Huppert) and gun fighter Walken, padding out the film with irrelevant scenes and incidents that slow it down without either the plot nor characters developing at all. Who are these people? Why are they doing what they are doing? Why is Hurt now a drunkard and why does he stick with the ranchers if he opposes them? Why is Kristofferson only half-heartedly helping the immigrants? Instead of explanations we get a series of authentic scenes and incidents, without anything at all happening: a roller-skating sequence, a cock fight, endless crowd scenes and the immigrants debating about what to do about the rancher's in their native tongues, so we cannot tell what on earth is going. As many critics have said, it's all too much and not enough. And when the final shootout comes, it's so immersed in smoke, dust and poor editing, that we can't see who is shooting whom.

The film is certainly very beautiful with Vilmos Zsigmond's photography, David Mansfield's great score plus the massive sets certainly lend the film an authentic western feel. But much of production that added millions to the budget, like the sets Cimino had torn down and rebuilt are on screen for all of 20 seconds. The performances are generally solid, (although Walken is miscast), but again because Cimino's script is so flat, the actors do little but give one-note performances. Frustratingly, Heaven's Gate has some brilliant moments, such as an immigrant woman hauling a cart along with her dead husband on top, Walken explaining to Huppert that newspaper on his cabin walls `civilises the wilderness' and the deeply ironic and tragic final scene. All of them suggested that this could have been a great film if Cimino had concentrated more on the big picture and not just the little details. For a 3-½ hour film, Heaven's Gate has an incredibly sketchy plot and characters.

However at least the full version makes some sense. After the New York press panned the film and no one turned up to the commercial release, UA pulled the film from release and cut it by an hour at Cimino's request before the rest of the world saw it. The 140 minute piece of celluloid that came out four months later simply reduced an already confusing plot to a series of scenes with little or no relevance to one another, with little of Cimino's ambition shining through. The biggest irony in all this is that the film has such a great concept and so many great moments, that it begs a remake that would correct the many wrongs of the existing film. The result would be utterly superb given the right director, though I doubt whether any producer could to ever be drugged enough to give the green light.

TV series' have always provided a tempting subject matter for Hollywood, yet only a handful of film spin-offs, such as The Fugitive are any good. The rest often turn out to be unqualified disasters. The Avengers or Wild Wild West anyone? Philip `Dead Calm' Noyce helmed this effort starring Val Kilmer as the man with the halo and while its not quite the travesty that many critics claimed, it's still a poor adaptation of the ‘60s TV series based on the books by Leslie Charteris. Kilmer's Simon Templar bears little resemblance to either. The scriptwriters have attempted to re-invent him as a Bond type hero with a troubled past and have injected the concept of him being a master of disguise. Sadly this doesn't work at all. Kilmer's stints under various makeup jobs are at first amusing in a pantomime way, but soon become tiresome, mainly because he is really a ham actor impersonating racial and social stereotypes rather than a master of disguise. The plot has our hero goes globe trotting in his attempts to steal a formula to create free energy for an evil Russian megalomaniac, from unworldly researcher Elizabeth Shue. All of this is featherweight in the extreme and doesn't make much sense anyway. To make matters worse, all Noyce seems to be doing is pointing the camera at the actors with minimal interest or conviction and for an action flick this is surprisingly dull. A few more action set pieces would have been welcome. Shue as the innocent scientist with a heart condition is easily the film's best asset. Looking perfectly lovely, she gives a performance of naïve charm, without ever turning into a run-of-mill annoying love interest, however unlikely a cold fusion expert she may be. Nevertheless there's nothing here that saves the film and any episode of the Roger Moore TV series is far more more entertaining that this mess.

Escape from New York was not one of John Carpenter's best films, but it's a masterpiece compared to this utterly dreadful sequel, made 15 years later with the benefit of CGI technology and a budget of $50 million, compared to the original's tiny $6 million. Where did all that money go? Feeding the film crew on caviar and champagne? It certainly isn't up on the screen. In fact Carpenter managed to produce an infinitely superior film in Escape from New York on that tiny budget. Plot wise, LA is nothing more that a tired rehash of the first film. Kurt Russell repeats his Clint Eastwood impression as Snake Plisskin, who is given a few hours to go into LA, now a prison, to retrieve a doomsday device stolen by the President's daughter, before a virus injected into his body kills him. Sound familiar? Wait till you see the actual film because the script lifts dialogue, characters and even entire scenes from the original film. Carpenter has clearly attempted to satirise the action genre and the eclipsing of democratic rights in America, only he horribly misjudges the film with a fuzzy plot, dull characters, unspeakable dialogue and one of the most risibly lame endings in years. Add that to the awful special effects, the balsa wood sets (I can't believe Blade Runner's Lawrence G. Paull designed them) and the poor photography and you've got an unexciting mess that cannot even be enjoyed as camp. My review of Escape from New York at IMDb queries why Carpenter didn't start making films on higher budgets. After seeing the abomination that is Escape from LA, I think my question has been answered.

Before 1981 and Escape from New York, John Carpenter had already scored huge hits and all time classics with Dark Star, Assault on Prescient 13 and Halloween. Why on earth he didn't opt for higher budgets is anyone's guess, because Escape from New York squanders a brilliant premise on shortages of budget, imagination and action. Kurt Russell impersonates Clint Eastwood as Snake Plissken: a convicted criminal who is sent into New York in 1997, which is now America's one and only maximum security prison, to rescue the President (Pleasence) whose plane has crashed. The film plays like a futuristic western, with Lee Van Cleef overseeing the operation from the control room, making the film's roots in Sergio Leone apparent. To be fair to Carpenter, he manages a lot on the $6 million budget: a great, dark look to the film, a panoramic cityscape, good special effects, impressive sets, a couple of effective action sequences, a script laced with black humour as well a great main theme. As a whole these elements make the film reasonably enjoyable. However it simply isn't enough. The film never fulfils its ingenious premise by not making use of Snake's time limit to complete the mission until the very end and as a result it spends a long time just not going anywhere. There's not enough action and the bad guys are a bunch of lacklustre convicts, lead by Isaac Hayes. Carpenter fans may lap it up as B-movie hokum, but for the rest of us, this should have been a serious slice of action cinema. 5/10

Robert Siodmak's account of George Armstrong Custer has been all too readily dismissed as a self important, would-be epic hampered by the miscasting of Robert Shaw in the title role. In fact it is quite an interesting film that gives dimension this notorious historical figure. Shaw's English accent makes him essentially unsuitable for the role of the golden haired, arrogant soldier, but he turns in a typically sound performance that gives the film a solid centre. The script doesn't settle for the clichés of Custer as a brutal Indian hater nor the ridiculous Errol Flynn archetypes, but something in-between. Here Custer is portrayed as a reckless glory hunter and an obsessive fighter certainly, but also as a man who clung to his honour as a soldier. In any case he was an important instrument of the US government's policy of driving the Indians out of their lands to make way for the settlers. "You are paying the price for being backward", Custer explains to an Indian Chief. Robert Ryan's cameo as Mulligan defines Custer's attitude towards humanity while the scene where Custer is asked to endorse an armoured train affirms his honourable notions of a soldier's ideals. Bernado Seagall's music score is superb, performances, particularly Mary Ure as Custer's wife are excellent and there are several memorable scenes that put the events and the man into a wider historical context. Director Siodmak makes good use of wide screen photography, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn makes a poignant finale. The film may be slowly paced, yet it never bores and presents on the whole the film presents a worthy portrait of this infamous historical figure.

Before hitting international acclaim with The Silence of the Lambs, director Jonathan Demme cut his teeth making quirky comedies. This was one of them and like quite a few Oscar winning American comedies I could mention, it has a fine concept, is well paced, has great performances, a complicated romance. but it just simply isn't very funny. Pfeiffer is mob widow who moves to the city backwaters after her husband (Baldwin) is murdered. The crime boss who killed him (Stockwell) takes a fancy to Pfeiffer, his wife (Reuhl) is furious and to complicate matters Pfeiffer also falls for the cop who is trailing her. All of this should have been a laugh a minute. Pfeiffer, sporting a hefty wig is excellent as the widow, as is the hyperactive Ruehl and Modine is good too as the nice cop. But the script is simply devoid of one-liners, wit, humour or punch lines of the verbal or physical kind that this kind of film demands. The result is it raises smiles at best rather than guffaws. It oozes charm, but is tediously short on humour.

Irons plays a Jesuit priest who sets up a mission in the South American jungle which is then threatened by greedy merchants and political factions within the church with De Nero as a converted mercenary and slave trader. Roland Joffé's film looks superb thanks to Chris Menge's beautiful cinematography but has divided audiences and critics as to its content. It is true that the film moves along very slowly until the last half-hour and De Nero seems oddly detracted in his performance. However it never bores thanks to a sincere performance from the ever-excellent Irons and equal sincerity in Joffé's handling. Endlessly beautiful, the film evokes a true sense of period and setting with its production values, photography and Morricone's brilliant score. Although some will start fidgeting an hour in, the climax, when it comes, is deeply tragic and rewards all that has gone before and the film presents an interesting and provocative view about the hypocrisy of the church and the sheer brutality of human progress.

George A. Romero was the Orson Welles of zombie flicks. It also seems rather sad that 10 years after his debut, Night of the Living Dead, he was still making the same schlock. This sequel to his debut doesn't scare in the year 2000, but still possesses some threatening tension and eye-popping gore that keeps you watching as four people occupy a department store to shelter from the zombies that are steadily taking over the world. This in itself has been seen as an attack on American consumerism as the zombies return to a place that was so important to them while they were still `alive', but the main attraction is the bloodletting, limb eating and brain spurting that comes by the truckload. The film is overlong and rather draggy and dull in a few too many places but on the whole it's good gory fun. 6/10

Banal, crass, slushy, unoriginal, expensive, only won 11 Oscars as a `thank you' because if it had flopped the entire Hollywood studio system would have collapsed etc etc… Yes all of these charges were and still are being laid against James Cameron's hugely expensive, multi Oscar winning epic. Times (and critics for that matter) never change because that is exactly the sort of thing people were saying back in the ‘50s and ‘60s with epics like Ben-Hur and look were they are in the cinema cannon. Having said that it is ironic then, Titanic is the sort of film people say they don't make anymore. It is true that some of Cameron's dialogue is not exactly Shakespeare, but everything else in the film more than makes up for it. DiCaprio and Winslet are perfect as the lovers crossing the class divide and bland lines aside Cameron's story is cleverly structured in developing the love story. From the dinner scene as Wisconsin boy DiCaprio holds his own against the snobs he's sitting with, to the detailing of the sinking itself. Cameron as director triumphs totally. At three hours long, the film feels more like 90 minutes, the recreation of the Titanic, both afloat and going under is brilliant, spectacular and thrilling. Cameron coaxes superb performances from his cast, with Zane the stand out among the supporting players as a nicely nasty villain and James Horner's beautiful music score enhances the mood of the film perfectly. Titanic hits all the emotional targets with more inspiration that is common among today's big budget films and the amount of effort that has gone into it, from the acting and not just the production is there for all to see. Even if you hated it, you can't deny that £200 million was up the on the screen.

I can scarcely believe it myself, but for once I entirely agree with something that Leonard Maltin has written. Indeed it was perhaps sadly inevitable that Hollywood's first film about AIDS would be an exercise in the politically correct that constantly watched its back. That is not to say that Philadelphia is a bad film. In fact is quite a good one. Director Demme should be credited for crafting an interesting and entertaining film that at least doesn't fall into the trap of being patronising to the point of insulting. Hanks is brilliant as the lawyer who is fired by his firm for having AIDS. In his first role after spending his career making comedies, he gives his `every man' routine its first outing, a style that he has been feeding off ever since with Apollo 13 to Saving Private Ryan. Washington too is great as the lawyer who loathes homosexuals, but worships fair play and eventually takes on his case. However the film stumbles over the script, which prevents its from reaching the great heights of profundity which it clearly aspires too. The characters are pretty much all caricatures. Hanks as the innocent, almost saintly gay lawyer out for simple justice from his evil heterosexual superiors (`He brought AIDS into our bathrooms!') while Washington as the nice black lawyer attempting to put the World to rights. We simply don't know anything about Hank's background, his family and lover Banderas are too good to be true and the fact that the audience even sympathises with him is testament to the dignity of Hanks' performance. The film works well given its limitations of the standard Hollywood courtroom drama. But 7 years on, the time is right for a more realistic and gritty portrayal of the issues at hand. 6/10

A lot of people have made a lot of fuss over Heat. After seeing it for myself I really can't understand why. Aside from the presence of the two leads Heat is essentially a cops ‘n' robbers saga given a little extra dimension and a lot of extra gloss. I can't fault Michael Mann's style. His stark vision of Los Angeles is excellent. The opening shot with the elevated train coasting past the camera with the haunting synth score is truly memorable. However, when the first shot of a film is the best part, you're in trouble. Mann as writer fairs much worse. His script (actually based on his 1989 TV movie LA Takedown) is a mess; padded his unnecessary subplots and characters; it substitutes intrigue for confused plotting. The near 3-hour running time is sheer self-indulgence, when the concept behind this film is complete mouse of idea: that cops and robbers are very much alike. In reality this so-called character development that Mann has put at the front of his film is just a story of male bonding between two highly unlikeable and unsympathetic characters. Pacino as the cop and De Nero as the robber are both well-worn clichés that are slightly deeper than normal. Pacino as an angst ridden cop, on his third marriage and De Nero as the calculating psycho criminal who plans his life so that he can drop everything and leave at 30 seconds notice when the heat is on. Both these characters are as unlikeable as the other is and this blunts much of the tension. A brilliantly staged gun battle on the streets of LA is wasted because we don't care which character comes off the better. The two leads don't do anything for their roles either. Neither gives performances that equal their best and the film's main purpose is simply to bring them on screen together. They appear twice together. Once in a coffee shop to discuss their morals and at the film's ending, which more than resembles that of Bullit. Clearly Mann has attempted to say that police and criminal are indivisible, and this is probably why we don't sympathise with either of them. This is such an unoriginal concept that has been explored as far back as the 70s with The French Connection and Serpico it also is the reason why, the film is overrated. Why should we spend 3 hours with two people we don't like?

I first saw Santa Claus when I was about 6 and we'd watch it every Christmas for a few years. Now I'm 17 I saw it again last Christmas. I have to say that it was not as bad as I had read in the years between, certainly not a cynical marketing ploy but certainly no Christmas classic. I especially remember with fondness the truly magical beginning and first half. Unfortunately I was reminded too that from halfway through things start to go down. The main problem is that Santa Claus is an extremely vague legend and the two halves of the film to not really cohere into a satisfactory whole. The magical beginning occurs when a woodcutter and his wife get lost in a blizzard and after awakening, who knows how long after, they are escorted by a group of elves to the magical kingdom at the North Pole. The pair are given immortality and the old man takes up the mantle of Santa Claus: destined for all time. This part is excellent Hudelston is perfect as Kris Kringle and everything is very convincing. However things go awry when it tries to develop into a plot in the second half. One of the elves, Patch (Moore) runs away after some shoddy toys are sent back and goes to America. There he innocently joins up with nasty toy tycoon Lithgow to make magic lollipops while Santa meets a poor homeless boy (Christian Fitzpatrick) and a poor little rich girl (Carrie Kei Heim). Here things go badly wrong. The two young stars are dreadful and the story descends into unbearable schmaltz and saccharine. One is inclined to think that things would have better if the story had followed Santa on one Christmas Eve. Instead the film attempts to preach the meaning of Christmas in an incredible silly and ham fisted way, as Lithgow hatches an evil plan that would destroy Christmas. The sets and special effects are top notch, but I couldn't help agreeing with those who claimed that the film had spoiled Christmas.

There are quite a few films that I could mention where the lead characters are wholly unlikeable and because they have no audience appeal, the film suffers greatly. Raging Bull is NOT one of those films. Robert De Nero puts in one of the best performances of his career as middleweight boxer Jake LaMotta. And LaMotta is not a nice chappie at all. Arrogant, rude, abusive, paranoid and obsessive are just some of the more complementary words I can think of to describe him. Yet extraordinarily this enhances rather than detracts from the film. Rather than hating him we feel deeply sorry for him because he was a man who had everything and then lost it through his own selfishness and personal insecurity. Director Scorsese's camera work is brilliant, with the boxing scenes some of the most vivid (not to mention graphic) ever filmed, all impeccably edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. The performances are all superb: Pesci as LaMotta's brother and Moriarty as his wife but especially De Nero as the self-destructive LaMotta himself. Raging Bull is the first Scorsese film that I have seen to date. On this basis I shall be seeing many more.

Sean Connery really should give up doing action films, because on the basis of Entrapment, it's no wonder why Gidgets and Geezers (old men being cast with babes) won Worst Movie Trend at the Golden Raspberry Awards this year. Entrapment is not a bad film, but it stumbles in its romantic pairing of a crusty old man with the young and lovely Catherine Zeta-Jones. (Art imitating life here?) The plot has Zeta-Jones as insurance agent, Gin Baker pursuing master thief Robert MacDougal (Connery) after an art-heist. To get near him she poses as a thief and follows him on a heist to trap him. There are a barrage of twists in the script as to the real purposes of both characters, except after a while, they become rather tedious and predictable and by the time they are resolved, the plot has already run out of steam. As well as that, Connery's resolution not to get involved with his partners is forgotten as soon as he sees Zeta-Jones in a tight lycra suit, curving her bottom to avoid security beams. The supposedly suspenseful heists and computer disk downloads, don't really produce much tension, with the scene where the pair dangling off the World's tallest building easily the standout from a mainly mediocre lot. So what of the relationship between Connery and Zeta-Jones? Well, it has to be said that the massive age gap doesn't produce much sexual chemistry. Connery is still looking fairly good for his age and the pair's sparing certainly induce winces in the audience; in fact they do make a half-decent team. Yet one can't help thinking that Connery is really too old for action films now and should start going for character roles like Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman are doing in their old age. British director Jon Amiel handles the film with style and slickness and I have to admit that Entrapment never bored me. Yet this doesn't compensate for Entrapment's flaws and Amiel would have been better served with a more intelligent script and more appropriate casting.

Regarding Henry is the kind of shamelessly manipulative pap that really should have remained true to its `Disease of the Week' TV Movie roots. Harrison Ford plays a hotshot lawyer who has little time for his wife and daughter but has to start his life from scratch after being shot and brain damaged. And when I say from scratch, I mean as if he has just been born! He has to learn to identify colours, learn to walk, learn to speak and then rebuild his life and career. The plot employs every single cliché that you could thing of. There's a nice black physiotherapist, his daughter teaches him how to read again, his partners at work don't like him anymore and a few skeletons emerge from his and his wife's lives. But that won't matter because Henry realises that his life before he was shot wasn't so great. He cares for his family much more now and many of the big cases that he won previously, he did so by lying and cheating. And that was very, very wrong damnit!! By now you'll be thinking that I giving this film 1/10, but no. I'm actually giving it 6/10, because for all this calculating schmaltz, Regarding Henry is an entertaining and even compulsively watchable film. This mainly because of the star clout that is involved in it. Ford, away from his action man charisma is surprisingly convincing as the brain damaged Henry, Annette Bening is simply wonderful as his compassionate and sympathetic wife and Bill Nunn is great too as Bradley, Henry's physio. Director Nichols has made far better films both before and after this with The Graduate and Primary Colors, yet he handles the film well enough and Hans Zimmer has produced another great music score. You get the feeling from all the effort put into the film, that these people honestly thought that they were making heavy and profound. On that score they are seriously deluded. But all the same, Regarding Henry is quite an effective family drama and if you ignore how cheap it is, you could even have a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye.

Loathed by the critics, but a huge hit at the box office, this updating of the 1930's Karloff classic provides solid entertainment at the cinema. It's not as good as The Matrix (although the plot is easier to understand), but far better than The Phantom Menace, The Mummy owes more to Indiana Jones than Karloff. Fraiser plays French Legionnaire Rick O'Connell who is rescued from death by Evie (Weisz) and Jonathan (Hannah) Carnahan to help them search for the Lost City of Hamunaptra. Unfortunately they end up awakening The Mummy of the title (a CGI clad Vosloo) who naturally causes havoc. Sommers' script is rather flawed. There are a few too many jokes about smelly Arabs and for the most characterisation and a bumpy romance between Fraiser and Weiez has been sacrificed to the action. This is certainly no Lawrence of Arabia as well, as there is a distinct lack of atmosphere to the film. Hannah is badly cast as Evie's work shy brother. Although he does get quite a few laughs, he is never convincing as a stuck up toff. Frasier is charismatic enough to carry the film and makes a good hero, although he's not a patch on Harrison Ford. However any flaws are more than compensated by the action which is superb, thrilling and spectacular as Sommers piles on the effects, the explosions, and the fights. These include a sandstorm, thousands of bugs, a recreation of Plagues of Egypt, plus the CGI Mummy itself. It you check you brain at the door, then The Mummy is good harmless fun.

Every so often a superhero emerges from the pages of a comic book and onto the big screen in the hope to repeat the massive success of Superman and Batman. Unfortunately this one gets off on the wrong foot by choosing a hero who is virtually unknown and rather dull anyway. A pre-Titanic Billy Zane is the superhero in question: The Phantom. He is the latest descendant of a long family line of men who have taken up the mantle as the hero to fight crime etc. etc. with Patrick McGoohan making intermittent appearances as the ghost of his father. Treat Williams is a Howard Hughes type villain looking for three magical skulls to take over the World. Will our hero be able to stop him? Erk! The film's main problem is that The Phantom himself is more fop than hero: riding around on a white horse in a purple lycra suit and mask with two pistols as his weapons. Call me crazy, but all this just isn't as heroic as Superman flying to rescue to stop an avalanche, or Batman using one of his various cool gadgets to stop The Joker. The film also doesn't know where its convictions lie. It isn't funny or self-mocking enough to be enjoyed as camp, nor is it serious enough to top Batman or Robocop in the "darkly heroic" stakes. There are a few action sequences, although nothing is very exciting and it will probably appeal to (undemanding) children most. However there is no disguising that this is one of that this is one of those projects that the studio doesn't really care about, suggested by the brief running time and by the casting. Zane and Catherine Zeta-Jones have gone on to bigger things, but in 1996 they were not big stars and surely there are better villains than Williams around. The script also, is far too brief. Zane's romance with Kirsty Swanson never really catches fire and his secret identity as Kit Walker is certainly not as vivid as Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne. Director Simon Wincer handles things well. Although his visual style doesn't convey a sense of period, he keeps things going at a brisk pace. It's just a shame he wasn't served with better material and a bigger budget.

Why on earth do screenwriters today think that an unfathomable plot will mean that a thriller will be more exciting? They should take a look at this masterpiece of suspense from 1973 and see how a simple plot can translate into nail-biting tension. Edward Fox gives a chilling performance as a professional assassin hired by the OAS to kill General de Gaulle. The French Police are soon on his trail and what follows is a superbly taut thriller as the killer stays one step ahead of his pursuers. The screenplay offers enough twists to keep you on the edge of your seat, but without you getting lost. The film has been criticised for a lack of characterisation. Granted, but this is actually an advantage rather than a flaw as director Zinnemann never pauses the action to indulge in what would have almost certainly been dull moralising. Besides, very soon you actually find yourself actually on the side of the ruthless killer rather than the police! As superb as the cast is, the most credit must go to Zinnemann, who never lets up on the suspense and plot and brilliantly judges the entire film to keep your palms sweating and your heart in your month right up to the thrilling climax. This is an object lesson in creating a thriller that does what it what it's made for: thrilling. It is also infinitely more exciting than the high-tech paranoia based pap that is the norm these days.

The critics always pan films that involve sex or stripping, probably because they're afraid of being called dirty old men and Striptease really isn't that bad. However it is certainly no achievement and doesn't deserve to be called `underrated'. A vote of 3.9 on IMDb at time of writing (3/2/00) sounds about right. The plot focuses on Demi Moore working as a stripper so she can get enough money to reclaim custody of her daughter from the hands of evil husband Robert Patrick. However sleazy Congressman Burt Reynolds (going incognito, but you can hardly blame him) falls for her and this sparks off events that lead to murder, which cop Armand Assante investigates. There are a good few laughs in here, such as Reynolds going to both Jewish and Christian fund raising events and covering himself with Vaseline. The film also contains solid performances from Ving Rhames as a tough but nice bouncer and the ever-excellent Assante. However the casting of Moore, who just isn't right for the role, dramatically or comically, fatally flaws Striptease. Director Andrew Bergman doesn't handle the film at all badly, but his script is a mess; failing to keep the courage of its convictions and unforgivably pulling its punches on the sleaze and satire. It just isn't funny enough, dramatic enough or compulsive enough to warrant more than a cursory viewing on television. For the record, Moore's (then) much hyped `assets' appear three times, but they like the rest of the film are strangely unerotic, probably because they look like the fake rubbery enhancements that they are. When the owner of the Eager Beaver confesses that he has been impotent ever since he opened the club, we can quite understand why.

I think that many of the voters and reviewers who have judged Demolition Man on IMDb, have somewhat missed the point. Demolition Man is not solely an action film, but also a blistering and funny satire on Political Correctness. Sly Stallone is cryogenically frozen in the 20th Century after botching a rescue attempt and is awakened in the year 2032, after arch-enemy Wesley Snipes escapes from his frozen prison. What follows are some highly impressive special effects and exciting action sequences but this is mainly an excellent satire on PC as Sly awakens to frighteningly bland Utopian future when under the rule of Nigel Hawthorne (another superb performance), everything from salt, to sex, to swearing is outlawed. There is even a President Schwarzenegger Memorial Library! And the name of Sandra Bullock's character, Lenina Huxley is a composite of a character in Brave New World (on which the city San Angles is clearly based) and the author's name, Aldous Huxley. Now THAT'S an in-joke! Snipes is nicely insane as baddie Simon Phoenix, Bullock works on the innocent charm (deemed by some as bad acting) that she perfected in Speed as Huxley, and even Sly manages to get a few laughs as John Spartan (which is more than he managed in his dismal 80s comedies). Denis Leary simply steals his scenes with essentially one of stand up routines on a film set. Visually, the film is similar Metropolis and perhaps Blade Runner, but that doesn't matter, because this is a cracking and witty satire that indulges in self-parody without compromising the action and makes you wonder, how dull the World would be if everything WAS perfect. An action movie with half a brain in its head. We need more like them.

As remakes go, this one is not at all bad. As adaptations of classic novels go it is a total misfire. Peter Brook's 1963 was a rather amateurish affair and while this version is far better produced and acted, it fails on account of its script, that makes it ineffective. In the original novel, it was a group of British schoolboys, not army cadets who were castaways on an island. In some ways this makes their descent into savagery more believable, but on the whole it appears to be a tale of already foul-mouthed, psycho kids running amok without the supervision of their parents. The result is film falls down in the footsteps of the previous version, in that it too, fails to give any conveyance of the weighty themes of man's basic evil that Golding tackled in his original novel. It is watchable and entertaining to an extent and director Harry Hook coaxes some good performance from the three leads and his visuals along with Philippe Sarde's score lend the film a haunting quality. But to its detriment, the film remains quite unfaithful to the novel and is ultimately unrewarding, when it really should have worked far better. On wonders why Hollywood updates novels in this way, because the result is always the same: a flop.

I actually read William Golding's original novel at school and whereas it was quite dated in terms of language and mannerisms of the boys (the worst word Ralph knows is `bloody'!), it was still vivid and had many interesting things to say about the inherent evil of human nature. Unfortunately it does not transfer well to the screen and the boy's descent into savagery is rather unconvincing and at times risible. This is not helped by the unprofessional production. The performances of the boys are quite amateur, Brooks direction is bare-to-the-bones basic while his screenplay fails to convey Golding's underlying themes and messages and even dispatches with the bitterly ironic ending. Watchable but a big disappointment.

One of the most amusing and memorable pieces of professional criticisms for a film I have read was for Cocktail and you have to agree with whoever it was, because this film really is a `tale of co#k!' On paper it must have sounded like a perfect Cruise popcorn vehicle, but really! Turning fighter pilots into sex symbols, as in Top Gun is one thing, but to perform the same service for barmen is simply ridiculous. However if you disengage your brain for the running length, then it provides a reasonable, junk food night infront of the telly. It's funny in places and never bores but should have remained true to its (bad) soap opera roots. All Cruise's pearly white smiles and sexy looks could not save it from (deservedly) bombing at the box office and only his most loyal of fans could ever find it more than just mildly diverting.

I first saw The Man Who Would Be King years ago when I was about 10 years old and in many ways it was the first 5 star, 10 out of 10 film I ever saw, regardless that it contains little fighting or action. After seeing it again a few weeks ago, it has not only lost non-of its appeal, but it rewards occasional, repeated viewings. I also realize that its credentials in terms of acting, script, direction, photography are impeccable, but unlike many films that the critics rave about, these are matched by its entertainment value. Connery and Caine play two ex-British army sergeants who attempt to become kings of a small, unknown Asian country, but are eventually betrayed by their own greed and convey a strong sense of vanity to human endeavor as a whole. Yet these weighty themes are perfectly treated by Huston and Hill's script that makes the audience like and admire these two men, in spite of their deep immoralities. Their relationship is comic, but is not just a case of one-liner swapping, but a believable and ultimately moving bond that is enhanced but the perfect casting of Connery and Caine. The result is one the most memorable male screen partnerships ever. Huston as director keeps things moving along at an enjoyable pace and his camera work and visuals create a beautiful and epic scope to the story. In the end film succeeds on every conceivable level: as entertainment, as a comedy, as an epic and as a tragic fable.