The Big Knife is one of those movies that’s been on my radar for ages, but that I kept putting off watching. It is a film noir and a cynical depiction of old Hollywood. It features a fierce performance by Jack Palance.
You can read my full review here.
Two of my favorite French actors are Alain Delon and Jean Paul Belmondo, so I’m always excited when I see them starring in a film together. Sadly, Borsalino did not live up to that excitement. It is still worth a watch. You can read my review here.
There is a company called Fathom Events that bring classic (and not so classic) films as well as live theater and other special events to movie theaters across the country.
I used to go to their events fairly often, but then COVID hit and other things happened and I stopped going to the theater all together. I’m hoping to get back to it a little more often and was thrilled when I saw Fathom was doing some John Carpenter movies.
I got to saw They Live and wrote a little thing about it for Cinema Sentries.
I’ve had several movies to watch and review for Cinema Sentries which explains why I haven’t been writing much for my Great British Cinema Series. I have watched several British films in the interim and will write about them soon. But for now I’ll catch you up on my Cinema Sentries writing.
For large swaths of my life I tended to stay away from what is sometimes derogatorily called Women’s Pictures or Chick Flicks. I wasn’t necesarilly a man’s man either, I grew out of action movies early in college. But emotionally charged films about women in need of romance and other such things held very little interest for me.
I can’t say that I am mainlining romantic comedies these days, but I’ve soften somewhat in this regard. As you’ll read in my review, I first saw a version of Little Women in college and didn’t much care for it, but I’ve come to rather love it. This version starring Katharine Hepburn is one of my favorites.
Olaf Bjorner, the Swedish researcher who tirelessly documented Bob Dylan’s performances has died. I didn’t know him personally, but everything I’ve read about him was that he was a kind, generous man. Certainly, his website is indispensable for Dylan fans.
You can read a little more about him in the Peter Stone Brown archives.
Rest now, good sir, the world is a better place because of your life.
I write the Pick of the Week for Cinema Sentries every other week and then on the off week, I just write it for this site. I keep forgetting to link over to my articles when I write them for CS.
This week a Rian Johnson murder mystery series comes out on Blu-ray. I’m a big fan of the director’s work so I’m excited to finally get to watch it. You can read all about it and what else is coming out this week by clicking here.
This is exactly the kind of film I was thinking about when I decided to dedicate September to British cinema. Night Boat to Dublin isn’t splashy, original, or all that imaginative, but it is well-constructed, solidly made, and darn entertaining. It is the type of jolly-good spy-thriller that only the Brits can make.
At the height of World War II British Intelligence Services fear someone is passing information about the atomic bomb to Nazi Germany. Two intelligence officers, Captain Grant (Robert Newton) and Captain Wilson (Lawrence O’Madden) board the titular night boat to Dublin hoping to sniff him out. Suspicion quickly falls on Paul Faber (Raymond Lovell), a shady-looking lawyer.
Captain Grant secures a job in Faber’s offices posing as a down-and-out military man who (as the story he’s created for himself goes) has secretly gone AWOL. When Faber learns of this he blackmails Grant into doing some illegal business for him. This includes marrying Marion (Muriel Pavlow) an Austrian desperate to become a British citizen.
It is full of fun cloak-and-dagger stuff including a wonderful finale at a grand gothic, cliff-side mansion and an underground cavern. None of it is groundbreaking stuff, but it is very well-made and quite entertaining.
I was cleaning up my office and found a bunch of old ticket stubs (both concert and theater productions). This isn’t everything I’ve seen, of course, just a really random selection. I don’t know if anybody is interested in this, but I wanted to scan them and decided to share them anyway.
Click here if you want to see them. Man, they do bring back memories for me. Kind of makes me sad that so many concerts don’t really give you physical tickets anymore.
On a remote island off the coast of Ireland, a man is found dead with his bones missing. He’s all squishy flesh. The film’s budget doesn’t allow us to see much of that but what we get – a rubbery, flabby face – is pretty great. Constable John (Sam Kydd) calls the island’s physician Dr. Reginald Landers (Eddie Byrne) but his skills are limited and after an autopsy doesn’t pull up much in terms of answers he scurries to London to discuss the matter with imminent pathologist Dr. Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing), who in turn calls on bone specialist Dr. David West (Edward Judd). He’s busy with his lady friend Toni Merrill (Carole Gray) who as luck would have it happens to have access to a helicopter that can take them to the island straight away (although it must return to London immediately after thus stranding them on the island for a few days.
After learning that a cancer specialist had set up shop on the island they go to visit him hoping to gain his help as well, but find him dead and boneless like the other guy. His lab assistants are all squishy as well. But the dude had a really nice lab which allows our heroes to do some nice science-y stuff. They do some autopsies and look at things under a microscope and say a lot of words that don’t make much sense even if you have a medical degree.
Eventually, they find the monsters. They look like slimy Jell-O molds with tentacles. They are impossible to kill and use the tentacle to inject their victims with bone-dissolving liquid. Our guys chop them with an axe, shoot them with rifles, torch them with Molotov cocktails, and even throw dynamite at them, but like I say those creatures are indestructible.
To keep the rest of the islanders safe they lock them all into one room which only causes mass panic when the lights go out. Meanwhile, these brilliant scientists finally decide that they should inject some cows with some radioactive fluid (I told you that the cancer guy had a well-stocked lab) figuring that the monster will eat the cows and then die of radioactive poisoning.
All of this is taken absolutely seriously by our actors and filmmakers. I love these old British horror films from the 1960s. They are so full of absolute silliness with ridiculous plots and poorly built monsters, but the actors perform like they are doing Shakespeare (and no doubt many of them are trained Shakespearean actors). It is wonderful. Just wonderful.
Bob Dylan just announced the release of a new live album, The Complete Budokan 1978 which includes two complete shows (February 28 & March 01) from newly remixed and remastered 24-Channel Analog Tapes.
You can read the full press release here and listen to “The Man In Me” from this set here.
I’m a big fan of Bob in 1978 and especially the Asian tour, so I’m very excited to finally hear these shows in pristine quality. I just dug out my audience recordings of those two gigs just to get me pumped up for its November release date.
themidnightcafe.org 