movie review – Page 29 – The Magnificent 60s

The New Interns (1964) ***

Columbia had turned this series into a glorified New Talent Contest. It didn’t spend much cash buffing up the sequel in terms of narrative or characters, so it’s mostly enjoyable to see just how well the studio was at spotting talent. In that regard this outing was as profitable as the original. This marked the debut of George Segal (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) who quickly became a major marquee name. Also brought into the mainstream was Inger Stevens (Five Card Stud, 1968). Receiving a welcome career boost was rising star Dean Jones, though Disney (The Love Bug, 1967) rather than Columbia took better advantage of his skills, and in the comedic rather than the dramatic vein.

Various stars reprised their roles including top-billed Michael Callan (You Must Be Joking, 1965), signed up to a long-term deal. But most of the others in this category made their names through television. Telly Savalas (The Assassination Bureau, 1969) was the cop Kojak (1973-1978); Stefanie Powers (Warning Shot, 1967) flourished as The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966-1967) and in Hart to Hart (1979-1984); and Barbara Eden went quickly into I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970).

The upshot is that, depending on your taste, you might end up talent spotting yourself, shrieking with glee at spotting an old favorite, or perhaps so many of them, in what was, effectively, an all-star (of the minor kind) cast and paying less attention to the various storylines.

Most of the narrative energy revolves around various characters coming together in romantic entanglement – Dr Alec Considine (Michael Callan), while more inclined to play the field, ends up with Nurse Laura Rogers (Barbara Eden); despite initially being at odds Dr Tony Pirelli (George Segal) and social worker Nancy Terman (Inger Stevens) hook up; and various other romances are short-lived.

Outside of this, newlyweds Dr Lew Worship (Dean Jones) and wife Gloria (Stefanie Powers) discover he is sterile. The more powerful sequence relates to Nancy being sexually assaulted by juvenile delinquents who grew up in the same tough neighbourhood as Tony. As you might expect, the thugs end up in hospital and cause a fracas in which Alec is injured.

Tony has all the best lines. Invited to chance his arm with the nurses, he snaps that he didn’t come to the hospital to “learn to kiss.” Pushed out of the way by resident Dr Riccio (Telly Savalas) he retorts that he didn’t come to deliver messages. And so on, the most driven of the new intake, and the most surly, his initial encounter with Nancy has him upbraiding her for crying in front of a patient.

Decent soap opera as soap operas go, but without the more challenging aspects of the original. In an era when the series movie was beginning to take shape – primarily in the espionage arena – you can see why Columbia thought this might run and run and eventually the studio had another go at the concept, but this time as a television series.

Directed by John Rich (Boeing, Boeing, 1965) and written by big screen debutant Wilton Schiller from the bestseller by Richard Frede.

George Segal and Inger Stevens are the standouts.

The Canadians (1961) ***

You ever wondered what happened to the Native Americans after they wiped out Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Well, they scarpered north to Canada, which flew the British flag, being part of the very powerful British Commonwealth, and where they were, effectively, out of reach of any pursuing forces. Any legitimate forces, that is. Nothing to stop an irate Yank rancher crossing the border to claim back a herd of horses he reckons the Sioux stole during their escape.

Otherwise, the Sioux would be relatively safe. But that safety was conditional. The might of Canada would not bear down on them as long as they didn’t resort to violence against that country’s citizens, as long as a rifle wasn’t shot in anger or a cartridge found beside the body of a white man.

*Sure is a misleading poster, suggesting some kind of full-scale cavalry attack, when the grand total of Canadians involved is three.*

So that was quandary number one. Quandary number two was that the unit set on enforcing this rule was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And though part of the uniform was a splendid leather holster, it was empty. They didn’t carry guns. They didn’t need to, as is sanctimoniously explained, because using weapons in law enforcement only caused more killing and, in fact, it was reckoned, there would be a lot less American outlaws if they had not been brought up in a society that worshipped guns.

And that lack of weaponry creates another predicament for the RCMP because rancher Boone (John Dehner) is going on the principle that killing a Native American is not a crime in his homeland and raids the Sioux camp, shooting people, including a two-year-old child, and kidnapping the child’s mother, an unnamed white squaw (Teresa Stratas). The kidnapping will justify any action he takes. Because if she’s been stolen from America, then it’s not a kidnap but a rescue, and that justifies any violence.

But RCMP leader Gannon (Robert Ryan), inevitably, in the only cliché in the picture, about to retire, reckons that’s up to a judge to decide. So with his two colleagues, the experienced McGregor (Torin Thatcher) and a rookie Springer (Burt Metcalfe) he’s intent on bringing them in. He’s helped in this enterprise by the Sioux acting as distant bodyguard.

Though naturally it’s only a matter of time before the Americans try to escape, especially as it soon transpires that Boone is lying when he says he knows the woman and has come north expressly to bring her back.

And this would be quite a curiosity, given the only real tension is how the RCMP can hold onto their captives for the week it takes to reach a town, and whether the Native Americans might reckon justice won’t be served and hand it out their own way.

You might remember the audience shock when Henry Fonda gunned down a young boy in Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), those baby blues turned steely. Well, that brutality has its unexpected precedent here, although, except for the mourning mother, not so much is made of it.

With the Canadians outnumbered – there’s three other Americans, all of the outlaw persuasion, Greer (Jack Creley), Ben (Scott Peters) and Billy (Richard Alden) – and unable to use weapons, you’re thinking how in heck is this going to last the pace. But, in fact, though presented as some kind of western, it’s a character-driven piece.

Gannon is an unlikely singleton, but he’s got too high hopes for a lawman and never found a woman he wanted to settle down with, and he’s got that principled look about him so he’s probably not one for one-night stands or creeping around brothels. The squaw’s child wasn’t the result of rape. Although initially trying to escape captivity, she fell in love with a Native American because he looked at her in a way no white man had, since she was so physically unprepossessing, and a bit like Lin in The Green Berets (1968) knows that she is likely to be ostracized by her own people if she returns to her home town.

You have to feel sorry for Boone, too. He’s not some kind of entitled whelp who inherited land and wealth. He saved up his hard-earned cash working as a ranch hand and bought one horse, then its mate, then started breeding, building up his herd the slow way, and he can’t afford to lose upwards of forty horses.

But the one you would extend most sympathy for is Greer. Being a legal outlaw – employed for gunslinging skills on a legitimate enterprise – is not his long-term goal. He repeatedly asks Boone for a job back at the ranch when this task is complete, only to be turned down with utter contempt. And he has a code. He won’t kill an unarmed man. Boone will, and an unarmed female to boot. Ben has no such code and reckons any woman is ripe for the taking and attempts to rape the squaw.

So the tension is mostly wondering how this is going to end, with the Canadians outnumbered and only able to call on their fists as weapons, and you soon work out there’s not enough time left in the picture to get to that destination and go through all the malarkey of a trial, or for the lonely Gannon to strike up a romance with the woman.

The Sioux come to the rescue once the Yanks have escaped and killed the woman. And it’s a peach of a solution. Remember, they can’t fire a shot. So they don’t. They get a herd of wild horses, for all we know the ones Boone is looking for, to do the dirty work. They stampede the horses and drive the bad guys over a cliff.

Very interesting debut for writer-director Burt Kennedy (The Rounders, 1965). Rare starring role for Robert Ryan (Ice Palace, 1960) who makes the most of it. Teresa Stratas was an opera singer so gets to sing. Otherwise, Jack Creley, who had a long-running role in the Marvel television series in the 1960s, is the pick.

Much better than I expected.

Unstoppable (2010) ****

Fitting swansong for director Tony Scott (The Hunger, 1983). Throwback to the disaster movie of the 1970s when something enormous is going to be decimated, and lives, in this case three-quarters of a million citizens, are put at deadly risk. Distant cousin to Speed (1994), which bears no comparison in the potential mayhem department, since an ordinary bus carries a fraction of the power of a train with 30-odd train cars (carriages to the English) filled with deadly toxic cargo barreling along at 60mph. Basically, “a missile.” And while other trains can be sidelined to get out of its way, it’s headed for an unavoidable obstacle, a piece of raised track in a major city which bends so sharply it can only be safely negotiated at 20mph or thereabouts.

And while said train is a wrecking ball when it comes to anything that happens to be on the track at the same time, the tail end of another train for example or a horse-box, it runs not so much on action as character. The various explosions are just there to remind us how dangerous the damn thing is and to raise tension by perilous degrees.

On board are two opposites, veteran driver Frank (Denzel Washington) and entitled surly know-it-all rookie Will (Chris Pine), who’s the train conductor and technically, I guess, in charge. Not quite open hostility but not far off it.

Frank’s a widower with two daughters who work, as he shamefacedly admits, in Hooters (look it up) while Will has been slapped with a restraining order from his wife and lucky not to be facing a jail sentence for pulling a gun on a cop. On top of that, in a money-saving ploy, Will’s the kind of employee recruited by the company to replace Frank, who, it turns out, is only three weeks away from enforced retirement. So that’s a twist on the gangster trope of the character planning one last big job.

I should point out that thanks to a lazy employee, this is a runaway train, no driver on board, air brakes unconnected, other safety elements unharnessed, nothing to stop it picking up speed and heading straight to hell. Luckily, it’s not full of passengers. I’m being a bit cynical here because a trainload of shrieking passengers and back stories to take account of would have dissipated, rather than increased, the tension.

But there’s also in the back office boss Connie (Rosario Dawson) trying to do her job in the face of the corporate greed, money-grabbing chief executive Galvin (Kevin Dunn) more concerned about the $100 million the company will lose if this goes belly-up, not to mention the catastrophic effect on the share price, so he’s full-on in on barmy schemes to stop the train, including parachuting someone onto the train and trying to bring it to a halt in a much smaller town which can be more easily evacuated than one with a 750,000 population.

Needless to say, none of these dumb ideas work, but it’s fun to watch the high-ups get egg on their faces and watch the cost of the collateral damage escalate. All the while, this being Tony Scott, we’ve got helicopters whizzing around, a huge flotilla of cop cars on blue light duty, uniforms everywhere, and that amazing technical trick that Scott has mastered of having the camera racing past characters who are stock still.

Frank and Will operate like a tag team when it comes to saving the day, Frank hopping from car roof to car roof having come up with the great wheeze of applying the brakes on each individual train car (carriage to you English) and Will at a lower level engaged on similar hazardous enterprise and then not just leaping from a train doing 60mph to a vehicle racing alongside doing 60mph but leaping back onto the train from said car going at an even higher speed.

Denzel Washington (Gladiator II, 2024) – who had been train bound the year before in Scott’s remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) – and Chris Pine (Don’t Worry, Darling, 2022) are on top form. As too is Rosario Dawson (Trance, 2013), for once given a decent role rather than just as a sidekick/love interest/femme fatale.

Written by Mark Bomback (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, 2014). It’s worth noting that actors looking for career longevity could do worse than follow the example of Denzel Washington who, since he became a top-billed star, has worked consistently with three directors, Tony Scott, Ridley Scott and Antoine Fuqua.

A cracker.

Theatre of Death (1967) ***

Takes considerable brass neck to treat master of the macabre Christopher Lee as nothing more than a red herring. A very slow slow-burn with a pinch of the vampiric, quartet of characters with a mysterious past, Grand Guignol Parisian setting, some decided sleight of hand and a series of murders staged to huge audience delight (in the titular theater, you understand) turns this into a more interesting venture than you might expect. In more literary hands, the incident on which this pivots could well have turned into tragedy.

Impresario Darvas (Christopher Lee) has launched The Theatre of Death, a show comprising a series of highly realistic sketches in which characters appear to be brutally killed. At a first night party he hypnotizes neophyte actress Nicole (Jenny Till) into nearly burning star Dani (Lelia Goldoni) in the face with a branding iron during a sketch about witches, disaster prevented by the intervention of Dani’s boyfriend Charles (Julian Glover). He’s a police surgeon called in to help investigate a series of murders with vampire overtones. Just as sinister is hypnotism which apparently can be self-imposed.

Charles begins to suspect Darvas. And small wonder the audience does too. Darvas has a lair, trap doors, secret passageways, concealed voyeuristic viewpoints and the kind of cat that only a villain strokes. Darvas clearly believes Nicole is more than just a protégée but a tool in his hands who can be called upon to act “when your conscience is asleep,” and given his predilection for brutality, even if apparently only staged, you have to think she will be called upon to do more than act. There’s even a suggestion that he might be able to inhabit her body.

Everyone has secrets. Darvas’s father disappeared in mysterious circumstances, Charles can’t operate following an unspecified accident, Dani spent two years in a mental asylum and Nicole barely survived being trapped in an avalanche in the Alps. Darvas humiliates Dani and promotes Nicole.

The murders switch from a trio of young women to men. Inspector Micheaud (Ivor Dean) is baffled. Naturally, he doesn’t want to risk the public ridicule of announcing there is a vampire on the loose in Paris (though some decades later, as you will be aware, a werewolf, of American origin, was roaming free), setting aside the fact that the French capital had been the scene for various nefarious acts in locales as varied as the Rue Morgue, Notre Dame and the Opera.

Darvas remains the obvious suspect until director Samuel Gallu (The Limbo Line, 1968) pulls a Hitchcock – or should that be, after A Poppy Is Also A Flower/Danger Grows Wild (1966), a Terence Young – and kills off his star halfway through. Initially, Darvas is reported as missing, but his cloak is found covered in blood. Naturally, we are led to believe he is going to turn up, and be identified as the killer.

But nope, in a considerable coup de theater (or coup de cinema), he’s been done away with by the real killer who is cleverly covering their tracks by getting Dani to write a suicide note before killing herself.

It’s certainly a shock to discover that the killer is Nicole, who is very partial to blood after being fed the blood of her brother while trapped in the avalanche. Quite why she has managed to conceal her thirst for so long is never revealed. However, there’s an unforeseen ironic twist which prevents her terrorizing the Parisian citizens any further.

Christopher Lee (Dracula, Prince of Darkness, 1966) is in Hamlet mode, hair combed forward, eyes bristling with intensity. Julian Glover (Alfred the Great, 1969) doesn’t really have enough dramatically to do. Neither Lelia Goldoni (Hysteria, 1965) nor Janet Till (A Challenge for Robin Hood, 1967) does much to burnish their reputation. Written by Ellis Kadison (The Gnome-Mobile, 1967) and Roger Marshall (Invasion, 1966).

Works very well by playing with audience expectation

I Thank a Fool (1962) ***

One of those bonkers pictures whose nuttiness is initially irritating but ends up being thoroughly enjoyable once you give in to the barmy plot and overheated melodrama. Murder, suicide, madness, illicit sex, blackmail – and that’s just the start of this farrago of nonsense. And set in Liverpool before The Beatles made it famous.

Christine (Susan Hayward), a doctor, is jailed when she kills her married seriously ill lover in a mercy killing. She’s not convicted of the murder but of the lesser crime of medical malpractice, but after serving an 18-month sentence finds she is unemployable, even in more lowly professions where her prison stretch counts against her.

When she is hired by the attorney Stephen (Peter Finch) who prosecuted her to look after his mentally ill wife Liane (Diane Cilento), the audience will already smell a rat given that Christine has changed her name and therefore the lawyer must have made considerable effort to track her down. His argument is that since she is no longer a qualified practitioner, she cannot advocate to have his wife committed to a mental institute, as a proper doctor would be required to, since Liane is clearly a danger to herself and other people. Your immediate suspicion is that Christine has been hired to take the rap once Liane is bumped off.

And it doesn’t take long for Christine to work out that not everything adds up. Liane is given enough rope to hang herself, access to a car to cause an accident, access to a horse which could easily bolt or fall.

Liane has been told her Irish father died in an accident where she was driving, the incident that triggered her madness. But when we discover the father, Captain Ferris (Cyril Cusack), is very much alive that’s the cue for a slew of unlikely events. When Liane finds her father, he’s not in the least a candidate for canonization, but an alcoholic. That triggers further mental trauma. And another accident, self-inflicted. After Christine administers pills, the young woman is found dead.

*Bit of a stretch to compare it to the movies*
*mentioned in this poster.*

Naturally, an inquest brings up Christine’s past and suspicion falls on her. And that would be par for the course, and it would be up to the condemned woman to find a way to prove her innocence. But that takes us into even murkier depths.

There’s bad blood between Capt Ferris and Stephen and the inference that this was only resolved by the father offering his underage daughter to the lawyer to be followed by the unscrupulous father blackmailing Stephen. Then it turns out there’s no case to answer and that Christine is innocent because, blow me down, Liane committed suicide.

But what should have been a straightforward, if unlikely, murder plot comes unstuck because it can’t make up its mind what it wants to be. Too many ingredients are thrown into the pot and the result is a mess.

Even the queen of melodrama Susan Hayward (Stolen Hours, 1963) can’t rescue this. And the pairing with Peter Finch (Accident, 1966) doesn’t produce the necessary sparks. Despite a variable Irish accent, Diane Cilento (Hombre, 1967) comes off best as the wayward deluded young woman.

Robert Stevens (In the Cool of the Day, 1963) directs from a screenplay by Oscar-nominated Karl Tunberg (The 7^th Dawn, 1964) adapting the bestseller by Audrey Erskine-Lindop.

Had every opportunity to be a star attraction in the So Bad It’s Good sub-genre but fails miserably. Still, if you enter into the swing of things, remarkably tolerable.

The Gauntlet (1977) ****

Clint Eastwood the dumb schmuck. Never thought I’d be writing that. But our hero has parked his Dirty Harry persona and channelled much of his inner James Stewart or Tom Hanks, the upright fella who may be a bit of a jerk but is a decent guy underneath.

Our patsy, Phoenix, Arizona, detective Ben Shockley (Clint Eastwood), unshaven drunken bum, is dumb enough to imagine he’s been selected for a special mission because he’s the kind of cop who gets the job done, rather than because he’s the one most likely to fail. He’s sent off to Las Vegas to collect a witness for a trial. No big deal. Two-bit witness, two-bit trial. As soon becomes par for the course, people are apt to make fun of him, in this case a Las Vegas cop turning him away for asking for a guy by the name of Gus Mally. Guffaws all round till the cop takes pity on Shockley and informs him the witness is a woman (Sondra Locke), a feisty sex worker, who spends pretty much the whole of the movie making fun of him and every other sonova.

Shockley’s kinda disturbed to see that someone has made a book on Mally reaching Phoenix, the opening odds of 50-1 soon lengthening to 100-1. But he’s a trusting sort of fella (translated as dumb schmuck) so he thinks it’s a joke but everywhere he goes he gets ambushed and it takes a helluva long time – and only with Gus’s constant nudging – to realize that every time he phones back his position to his boss Commissioner Blakelock (William Prince) there’s awful consequence.

The firepower at everyone’s disposal – both Mob hoods and the cops – is so fearful that cars and houses are destroyed in a ferocious hail of bullets. The only time Shockley comes into his own, cop-style, is when he hustles some Hell’s Angels down and steals a motorbike. But guess what, the bad guys are still not just one step ahead, but in a different class altogether when it comes to pursuit, calling upon a helicopter armed with a sharpshooter.

Shockley even quails when another cop, co-opted into giving them a ride, starts making creepy sexual remarks to Gus, not realizing she can more than take care of herself as if she’s been dealing with hecklers all her life. Gus is quite a character. When she’s not screaming her head off to gain sympathy from Shockley, she’s trying to seduce him, or taking the piss out of him or just plain mocking his ineptitude and trusting personality.

She’s got better weapons at her disposal than he’ll ever have, a tongue that could strip paint, and a body she’s not frightened to use to get herself out of a sticky situation. Or in one particular instance, to save Shockley’s hide. It’s only after this that Shockley gives her any respect. And they come to more than a mutual understanding, as she begins to show genuine feelings for her escort, and we end up with the kind of relationship that’s always going to be raggedy around the edges because, as you’ve guessed, he’s one for keeping his emotions in check and makes do with a catchphrase, “Nag, nag, nag.”

Just what her purpose is in said trial you couldn’t care less about, she’s just a Maguffin to bring opposites together, soften her hard edges and toughen up his unsuspicious nature. There’s a heck of climax as they ride into town in an armor-plated bus and straight into the same kind of fusillade as they previously endured until between them they manage to nail the corrupt bad guys.

This is a hell of a ride, great concept, terrific believable characters, she’s sharp and sassy, and he’s toned down the arrogance. There’s genuine charisma between Clint Eastwood (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968) and Sondra Locke (The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, 1968), helped by the fact they were already in an adulterous relationship, and in between falling into difficult situations it’s a blast watching them getting out of them.

Despite the virtual non-stop action, it’s a change of pace for Eastwood, a shift away from the screen persona on which his commercial attraction was built, and in some senses, even counting in the violence, it owes more to the dynamics of the screwball comedy than anything else, especially when the more practical woman is called upon to save the out-of-his-depth man. Written by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack (they teamed up again for Pale Rider, 1985).

Ably directed by Eastwood, a belter.

Of Love and Desire (1963) ***

As contemporary as you could get with the core theme of a sexually independent woman picking and choosing her men. Otherwise, a smorgasbord of talent. Star Merle Oberon (Hotel, 1966) hadn’t appeared in a movie in seven years, for co-star Steve Cochran (Tell Me in the Sunlight, 1967) the screen absence was two years, Curd Jurgens (Psyche 59, 1964) was still very much a jobbing actor restricted to playing good and bad Germans, and director Richard Rush (Psych-Out, 1968), in his sophomore effort, was as erratic in the early part of his career as he would be in his later (six years between Freebie and the Bean, 1974, and The Stunt Man).

Of course, this being a somewhat mealy-mouthed decade, psychological mumbo-jumbo was required to explain the woman’s actions rather than the notion that a woman could enjoy being sexually unrepressed and free of desire for marital security. So if you manage to separate the actual movie from the required fitting-in to moral standards, it’s a darned interesting examination of the kind of free spirit later exemplified by Darling (1965) or Modesty Blaise (1966).

Mining engineer Steve (Steve Cochran) on a job in Mexico begins an affair with wealthy Katherine (Merle Oberon), half-sister of his employer Paul (Curt Jurgens). There’s nothing of the usual will-she-won’t-she in this romance, she virtually flings herself at him. Not only that, the morning after, she arranges for all his belongings to be shipped to her splendid mansion, proof of who is usually in control. Just as, more traditionally, males are instantly aroused by beautiful women, she is excited in the presence of an attractive man and makes no bones about it, not too bothered about consequent scandal even though she does her best to keep her activities discreet.

Paul isn’t so happy with the affair. He clearly prefers her unhappy and dependent on him for emotional support. And a bit like Julie in Steve Cochran’s later picture Tell Me in the Sunlight, there’s certainly an assumption that she jumps from man to man, though out of boredom rather than financial security.

So Paul sets out to sabotage the affair by putting in Katharine’s way previous boyfriend Gus (John Agar) who feels he is owed some sex and is determined she repay the debt. Although she almost succumbs and is subsequently ashamed of how easily her desire is inflamed, she resists and after he has had his way with her attempts to commit suicide.

But the question of rape is never raised and to Steve it appears she has merely resorted to type, falling into bed with the closest man. And in the time it takes to resolve the situation, we are treated to the psychological mumbo-jumbo which falls into two parts. In the first place, there has clearly been a strong sexual attraction between Paul and Katharine, and the strength of their emotional bond is in some ways a substitute for not indulging in incest. Secondly, her fiancé, a fighter pilot, was killed in the Second World War. Based on no evidence whatsoever, she has convinced herself that he committed suicide because she refused to have sex with him before marriage. To make up for that, she gives herself to any man who comes along. Yep, claptrap with a capital C. Which somewhat torpedoes the picture, which had been heading comfortably towards a feminist highpoint.

Merle Oberon almost turns the clock back a couple of decades to Wuthering Heights (1939) and her role there in physically expressing forbidden desire. You can almost feel her quivering with pent-up sexuality and she is unexpectedly superb, in what is essentially a B-picture, especially as the opportunity to tumble into melodrama – which she can’t escape in the final act – so obviously beckons. That the first two acts work so well is primarily down to her believable characterization. And Steve Cochran is no slouch either, shaking off the coil of his pervious incarnation as a tough guy. Curt Jurgens is creepy and sinister.

Director Richard Rush manages to hold his nerve until the end and then it all runs away from him into turgid melodrama. Screenplay contributions from the director, producer Victor Stoloff, Jacquine Delessert in his debut and Laszlo Gorog (Too Soon to Love, 1960, Richard Rush’s debut)

Nearly but not quite a feminist breakout.

Moon Zero Two (1969) **

Not much that’s redeemable from this British sci fi effort. Maybe the idea of the “dirty universe” clogged up by waste with salvage hunters retrieving bits of old satellites and space objects. Or maybe an early version of “unobtainium,” the rare mineral that’s going to make someone very rich, in this a solid block of sapphire and some mined nickel. Or maybe the colonizing of the Moon for gain rather than the advance of science.

But that’s about it. Takes about 30 minutes for a story to emerge, the rest of the time taken up with info dumps and character background, so we know that ace pilot Bill (James Olson) was the first man on Mars and wants to repeat the same feat for Mercury, Jupiter and other distant planets and would rather become a salvager than lower himself to become a passenger pilot. His girlfriend Liz (Adrienne Corri) is an officious official and threatens him with being grounded on safety grounds.

But that kind of bureaucracy is par for the course in British sci fi which liked to clutter up the narrative with accountants (The Terronauts, 1967, et al) and various levels of officialdom. And there’s another British trope. Take a well-known comedian and turn him into an unlikely tough guy of sorts – Eric Sykes as an assassin in The Liquidator (1965) would be in pole position but Carry On regular Bernard Bresslaw runs him close here as a gun-toting bodyguard.

Or maybe the Brits just like a hybrid. Stick some comedy into sci fi. Certainly the animated credits suggest this is going to major on comedy, which turns out not to be the case unless you were laughing at how inept the whole project is.

Especially when director Roy Ward Baker simply resorts to slo-mo to suggest loss of gravity in space. And when the space outfits look as if they were run up by someone’s ancient auntie. Just to show the bad guy is a bad guy, entrepreneur J.J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchell) wears a monocle. He hires Mike to go find the sapphire asteroid and bring it back to the Moon, where it can be dumped on the “far side”, well away from any nosey parkers, to make it look as if it had landed there on its own, thus bypassing Space Law.

But Mike’s already made the acquaintance of Clem Taplin (Catherine Schell) who’s hiked up from earth to search for missing geologist brother and once Mike’s located the sapphire he heads out into the far side of the Moon to find the brother. They find him all right but by this point he’s just a skeleton though he has uncovered nickel deposits. He’s been killed by Hubbard and the couple are ambushed and have to shoot their way out (the efficacy of bullets in space in never explained) in a manner that suggests, as the posters liked to proclaim, a “space western.”

Mike gets his revenge by stranding all the bad guys he hasn’t already killed on the sapphire in space.

It would have probably been okay if any of the actors had shown any screen spark. But they’re all lumpen, although perhaps you can blame the restraints of the space costumes, or maybe even just the script. Oddly enough James Olsen would make his mark in sci fi adventure The Andromeda Strain two years later, but that had both better direction (by Robert Wise) and a more intriguing script (from Michael Crichton).

You might as well have wrapped up Catherine Schell (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1969) in cotton wool for all the impact she was able to make. Warren Mitchell (The Assassination Bureau, 1969) looks as if he’s desperately trying to stifle a grin.

Hammer boss Michael Carreras (The Lost Continent, 1968) wrote the screenplay, and produced, so he should at least share the blame with Roy Ward Baker (Quatermass and the Pit, 1967).

The Accountant 2 (2025) **** – Seen at the Cinema

Rebirth of the semi-feel-good action movie. Take note, Steven Soderbergh et al, boring us to death, this is how to make an intelligent adult thriller. Of course, first of all, you’d have to recruit a writer as savvy as Bill Duque (creator of the Ozark series, 2017-2022) who can make characters come alive through the inconsequential, almost the inheritor of the Quentin Tarantino mantle for the memorably off-beat, who can also build on tetchy pairings – it would be a buddy movie if the main characters weren’t brothers – and throw in a just wonderful dance sequence that will become a classic. And that’s forgetting the setting up of a school where autistic children, with a different kind of a particular set of skills, can thrive.

But we’ve also got the super-smart deduction that’s the hallmark of the superior type of detection thriller, the working through a morass of details, the jigsaw that doesn’t fit, until our hero, having waited patiently for lesser minds to become flustered, steps in and shows it as clear as day.

So we start off with mystery and keep going with it for quite a long time, right down to the climactic pay-off involving the whistling of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Former top Government official now part-time private eye King (J.K Simmonds) is bumped off while trying to locate a family from El Salvador. Before he dies King scribbles on his wrist “Find the Accountant” sending Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), the chief of an obscure treasury department, off on a wild goose chase to find Christian Woolf (Ben Affleck) who solves part of the problem thanks in part to a code-breaking computer-hacking backroom team.

Woolf calls in estranged brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal), a top-notch hitman who lives out of a suitcase, and whenever the plot slows down this pair are at it with the bitching, settling old scores, creating new reasons for discontent. Soon they are tracking down Anais (Daniella Pineda), Braxton’s equal in the assassination department, at the same time as some thugs who want to kill her.

There’s a good few alleys to go down, some of them blind, while the brothers, to the despair of the devoutly law-abiding Medina, employ illegal tactics to uncover information from drug dealers, money-launderers, sex traffickers and pimps. But part of the joy of the film is that their tactics are always unusual, you never know what’s coming next.

Balancing this out is the bitching. Braxton is sore never to get a call and at having had to look after in his early days a brother who couldn’t conceive of showing gratitude. Christian constantly identifies flaws in his brother’s character, even to the point of determining that if he ever wanted a pet, he’d be better off with a cat rather than a dog.

There’s plenty action, fisticuffs and serious weaponry, and sometimes the bad guys get what’s coming to them and sometimes it’s the good guys. Both brothers are seeking emotional commitment without the foggiest idea how to achieve it, Christian making a breakthrough when after using his obsessive study of detail is rewarded by getting a girl’s name at a line dance, Braxton pure coincidence that they pick up a stray cat.

But this is mightily finely thought-out. We are introduced to Christian as he manages to game a dating club, ending up with all the candidates lining up at his table. For Braxton, we think at the very least he’s working himself up, Taxi Driver style, to face up to a killing or maybe at least an estranged wife until we discover that he, too, is trying to game the system, in this case desperate to buy a puppy ahead of schedule.

Braxton has two other distinctively-written scenes. In the first, we think he has lined up a sex worker, and he maybe has a reputation for violent sex, and that he’s getting a mite ornery, not realizing that she, being German, doesn’t quite catch what he’s saying. Eventually, her fear is explained as Braxton leaves and walks past the people he’s killed. The cat I mentioned, they’re sharing transport with a young boy and Braxton starts moaning that the child is getting to hold the cat more than him. Your heart bleeds. In case you were worried, the brothers do reconcile, all mysteries are solved and there’s a cracking final shoot-out.

Ben Affleck (Air, 2023) benefits from being withdrawn rather than showy. Jon Bernthal (The Amateur, 2025) is all scene-stealing at the outset but soon calms down. Cynthia Addai-Robinson (People We Hate at the Wedding, 2022) has a more cliché role, and having a thing about chairs doesn’t do much to build her character. Daniella Padina (Plane, 2023) is as kick-ass as they come. Wish J.K. Simmons (Red One, 2024) got more roles.

Directed with style and restraint by Gavin O’Connor (The Way Back, 2020).

Saw this in a double bill with Sinners – that’s what going to the movies is all about.

Terrific.

Sinners (2025) ***** – Seen (Three Times) at the Cinema

A great movie is more than the sum of its parts. There’s something indefinable, something as they used to say “in the ether”, or “hits the zeitgeist” or, more aptly “hits the spot” because the area in question can never be defined, yet somehow we know it’s there. A writer from several generations past came up with “only connect.” And that’s a pretty food summation. Audiences are not really interested in movies that connect with critics – we’ve been served up too much dross too often to trust critics, Anora (2024) a recent case in point. When movies scarcely drop any percentage of revenue at the box office in the second weekend it’s not because of a ramped-up advertising budget, but because movies have hit the spot, connected with audiences, acquired that elusive word-of-mouth quality. For sure, this is going to be an Oscar contender, which probably means all the fun will be knocked, as its supporters get all preachy on us about its importance as a social document.

But a great movie comes from nowhere and sets up its own tent, creates its world, its own logic. There were gangster pictures before The Godfather (1972), westerns before The Searchers (1956) or Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) and sci fi before Avatar (2009) but what such pictures owe to their genres is derivative in a minor key. And so it here, Sinners takes the vampire movie and tosses it every which way but loose.

You got the blues, the most appealing vampires you’ll ever come across (and not in the svelte style of another game-changer, The Hunger, 1983), the need for community, the duping of the poor through religion, music than can summon up Heaven and Hell, raw sexuality, belonging, mothers, orphans, genius, cotton, a world where African Americans who fought for their country discovered their country didn’t want to fight for them, where the white man is going to take your money and then, for sport, kill you, and the plaintive despair of never feeling the warmth of the sun again as long as you live – which is forever. And connections – there’s myriad connections that will hit home.

In fact, you might not be aware you’re watching a vampire movie for roughly the first half. You might imagine this is more akin to The Godfather Part II (1974) with gangsters trying to go straight. First World War veterans identical twins Smoke and Stack – I have to confess right till the credits I didn’t realize these were both played by Michael B. Jordan (Creed, 2015) – descend on a small southern town intending to make an honest buck from a dance hall, convinced they have acquired the necessary business acumen. The motley bunch enrolled in this endeavor include neophyte bluesman Sammie (Miles Caton), veteran alcoholic bluesman (Delroy Lindo), singer Pearline (Jayme Lawson), storekeepers Grace (Li Jun Li) and Bo (Yao), bouncer Cornbread (Omar Miller), Smoke’s estranged wife Annie (Wunmi Musaki), who has knowledge of the occult, and Stack’s ex-girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld). Coming a-calling is Irish immigrant Remmick (Jack O’Connell) recruiting new members for his vampire flock.

The movie doesn’t take flight so much in the unwinding of intertwined lives, or with the rocking action, as with two dance sequences that transcend anything you’ve seen before in the cinema, the first conjuring up music of the past, present and future, the second a routine by the vampires. Trying to save himself from vampires, Sammie begins reciting the Lord’s Prayer only to hear the sacred words echoed by the undead. A guitar is buried in Remmick’s head. And there’s a fascinating coda, if you wait through the credits.

Michael B. Jordan is the obvious pick, striding across both characterizations with immense aplomb (the Oscars will be calling) but Miles Caton in his debut, Delroy Lindo (Point Break, 2025), Hailee Stainfield (The Marvels, 2023), and especially the seductive blood-lusting Jack O’Connell (Ferrari, 2023) give him a run for his money,

Writer-director Ryan Coogler came of age with Creed and the Black Panther duo but this takes him into the stratosphere, a genuine original talent, not just with something to say but the visual smarts to match. He could have harked on a lot more. Too many worthy pictures have turned virtue-signaling into an art form, but one boring beyond belief. Coogler is much more subtle, he slips in his points.

But all the subtlety in the world wouldn’t count for a hill of beans if he couldn’t tell a story in way that connected big-time with the audience who wanted to tell their friends to go-see.