Another couple of classic noirs from 1947 for me. Both featuring a super cool Bob Mitchum.
Crossfire (Dmytryk / 7/10)
Out of the Past (Tourneur / 8/10)
Both are excellent and Crossfire must one of the few noirs which had academy award nominations but the second is the best for me and fares well with repeated viewings.
And three more from 1947. This time all British.
Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressberger / 7/10)
The Shop at Sly Corner (King / 6/10)
Brighton Rock (Boulting / 8/10)
Black Narcissus had the makings of a good Nunsploitation flick but was hamstringed by its times. Has some good moments though. Brighton Rock is the pick of the bunch and still holds up well today. Richard Attenborough was a terrific actor and plays the nasty little hoodlum of this piece to a tee.
I watched âBack to Bataanâ (1945) today and it has all the flaws you would expect from a film of this type and time but it was much better then I was expecting it to be going in!
This is a better then average world war 2 film from the 1940s starring John Wayne that features some great action set pieces and flashes of shocking acts of violence for a film of its time!
I also really enjoyed the filipino kid characterâs performance played by child actor âDuckyâ Louie who according to IMDB is still alive and must be in his 90s at least now!
Iâm watching this one later todayâŚso thanks for your thoughts on it. 
Finished off my 1947 journey with a couple of Hollywood A lister vehicles.
Possessed (Bernhardt / 5/10)
The Bishopâs Wife (Koster / 6/10)
Possessed is a Joan Crawford flick where she is a schizophrenic and is ok but not one Iâll be returning to I expect. The Bishopâs Wife is a cross between Miracle on 34th St and Itâs a Wonderful Life but doesnât really get remembered as fondly it seems. Cary Grant is his usual charming self and I actually quite enjoyed it for a Christmas movie. In comparison to a bunch of other films from 1947 though it does pale a bit. These early post war years really were strong in cinema and Iâm enjoying the journey.
1948 is next obviously and Iâm particularly looking forward to some first rate westerns released that year. Red River, Fort Apache, Yello Sky and Blood on the Moon. Fair to say that westerns really grew up after the war.
Oh, and 3 Godfathers too. I forgot that one.
The john Wayne Christmas movie?
Withnail and I is a classic film, I used to watch it on the beach in Brighton Sussex. An enjoyable evening
The other night, a friend of mine and I watched Eileen (2023) with Anne Hathaway, New Zealand actress Thomasin McKenzie, Shea Whigham and Marin Ireland. My friend is more knowledgeable about newer movies whereas Iâm more familiar with older ones. He told me that he heard good reviews about Eileen on one of his movie podcasts. That itâs film noirish in style and substance. Being a film noir fan, I was excited.
McKenzie plays a mousy and sexually precocious young woman who works at a prison for male juvenile offenders in early-1960s Massachusetts. She lives with and takes care of her thankless alcoholic police chief father (Whigham). Eileen feels stuck in a rut with her life. When Rebecca (Hathaway), the new prison psychologist becomes friends with Eileen, Rebecca leads her on a road of sexual discovery, self-realization, shocking scandal and murder. Both Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway give fantastic performances. Hathawayâs Rebecca is like a cross between Katherine Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. My only problem with the movie is that it isnât long enough!
Whether heâs your cup of tea or not itâs pretty difficult not to admit that 1948 was a pretty good year for John Wayne in terms of westerns. He made two with âPappyâ Ford and one with Howard Hawks and theyâre all still well worth a watch today.
3 Godfathers (Ford / 8/10)
Fort Apache (Ford / 8/10)
Red River (Hawks / 8/10)
Fordâs sentimental side hits a perfect balance for me in 3 Godfathers with the tough bank robbers turning into nursemaid guardians of an infant. Itâs funny and warm without being mawkish which isnât an easy thing to achieve. In parts it is genuinely funny too.
Fonda steals the show in Fort Apache but then the story really belongs to his character more than Wayneâs. Iâve never liked the ending much as it quite brazenly takes the path of âit doesnât matter how incompetent you are or how many men you drag to their unnecessary deaths, if youâre an officer and you die theyâll make a hero of you in the army.â The rest of the film makes up for this though in my opinion.
Red River is another tale of a tyrant leader pushing his own narrow world view on those around him but this time sanity and his younger counterpart win out. Great performances all round with Walter Brennan playingâŚwell, Walter Brennan to perfection and Montgomery Clift being surprisingly convincing in a western role. One of Wayneâs best performances for me.
Yesterday, I treated myself to viewing a trio of 50âs films that have truly earned the label of âClassicââŚ
They really donât make 'em like this anymoreâŚGorgeous reminders of yesteryearâs Silver-screen, that are near perfection in every respect.
1951
1953
1954
I wouldnât put, âI Confessâ in the same league as, âThe African Queenâ and âOn the Waterfrontâ, which are absolute belters, even after 70 years.
Has anybody seen âThe Last Stop in Yuma Countyâ? I saw the trailer the other day. It feels very much like classic Tarantino/Rodriguez, almost a mix of the opening in From Dusk Till Dawn and the diner sequence from Pulp Fiction.
Apparently itâs not in cinemas where I live (yet? Or anymore?), and I couldnât find a European Blu-ray of it.
It looks intriguing. Itâs showing a U.S. release date of May 10th but itâs available on Amazon Prime over here. I hadnât heard a peep about this one. Thanks for sharing.
I felt like something familiar yet meaningful this morning so I pulled out an American classic.
Despite the overall serious and meaningful message of this film, I always find myself watching the majority of the movie with a smile on my face. Despite the tragedy that befalls Brock Petersâ Tom Robinson, the movie with all of its elements included, still propels one back to a more simple time and a more simple world. It is nice to live vicariously through Scout, Jem, and Dill once more and spend some time viewing the world through that innocent lens.
Though my childhood took place some 40 years after the story told in the movie (and novel), I can still relate to the experience of growing up in a small town where the only time your parents saw you after breakfast on those endless summer days was when you came home for a sandwich at lunch and then you were off again until it was time for dinner. Life was an endless adventure.
This is probably one of the most meaningful yet wonderful films ever made. It manages to convey a fundamental message on racism and prejudice of all sorts without blatantly shoving it down your throat. The message isnât so much a condemnation (as so many âpreachyâ movies nowadays are) but a plea for an understanding of others who might be different than you, regardless of what those differences might be.
As Atticus Finch said, âYou never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of viewâŚuntil you climb inside of his skin and walk around in itâ. I will have to admit though that the âwalking around in someone elseâs shoesâ analogy is a bit less gross. 
Despite the horrible atrocity of justice at the core of the movie, it is about so much more so that you finish the movie not awash in depression but with a feeling of hope and a longing to return to the innocent happiness of youth.
The Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (1964)
For a movie with the title âThe Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummyâ this is not wall to wall Aztec mummy fighting antics as you might expect, in fact a large chunk of this movie deals with a off brand Fu-Manchu type of villain trying to find the aztec mummyâs treasure while the wrestling women try to stop him!
That being said the last 1/4 of this movie is exactly what you would want out of a movie with a title like this and contains what might be one of the best looking low budget mummy costume ever put to film!
Good genre film fun from Mexico that has a bit of everything in it tbh even if that takes away from the mummyâs screen time!
Some films have âqualityâ stamped all over them from the very first reelâŚâMockingbirdâ is one of them.
Last night: Godzilla Minus One (Yamasaki, 2023), on Netflix (UK).
Even speaking as a fan of Hollywoodâs mega-budget, brain-free, increasingly kiddie-friendly Legendary Pictures âMonsterverseâ franchise, I have to say that this latest by Japanâs Toho Studios - Godzillaâs true home - is superior in just about every way to its American blockbuster counterparts. And on a relative microbudget, too.
The key to this is that Toho have finally cracked the problem of the human element in a giant monster movie. See, the appeal of a Kaiju film is watching 200ft mutant nightmares kick the shit out of one another, and any nearby tower blocks, conurbations or military installations. But, because no studio trusts that weâll happily watch wordless monster destruction for two hours straight with no rhyme or reason (I definitely would), there always has to be an adjacent human storyline. And itâs almost always a dreary, barely coherent pile of auld sasquatch, usually involving some irritating kid whoâs developed a psychic bond with Godzilla or Kong or Mothra or Gamera or whoever, and always for reasons that stink of cat ploppies.
Godzilla Minus One, set in the immediate aftermath of Dubya Dubya Two, has a decent and interesting human story about a traumatised kamikaze pilot, Shikishima, who backed out of his suicidal duty, and his survivorâs guilt - exacerbated by his newly-acquired pariah standing amongst those closest to him - causes him to freeze up upon encountering The King of the Monsters, leading to more deaths for which he feels responsible, until he finally reaches his own line in the sand and determines to snag an old kamikaze plane, get an engineer to ready it for battle once more, and fly that kite right into Big Gâs cakehole, whereupon heâll blow himself up. Banzaiiiiiiii!!!
Still, thatâs easier said than done, especially when every resource not vaporised by Godzilla has already been vaporised by Uncle Sam. Plus of course Godzilla is, like, really hard to kill. Can Shikishima do what the tattered remnants of Japanâs beaten navy couldnât, and kill Godzilla? Can he at least restore his honour and go down in the blaze of glory for which he was once destined?
Iâve been a bit flippant above but, tbh, Godzilla Minus One deserves better than that. As with Ishiro Hondaâs original classic from 1954 and 2016âs Shin Godzilla (Anno/Higuchi), G-1 is deadly earnest about its subject matter; both the surface issues of an enormous sea beast full of radiation, fire and fury kicking an already decimated Japan to pieces, plus the deeper issues upon which the movie touches, such as loss, trauma, honour, war, and how all of that fits now into the collective psyche of a shell-shocked and defeated nation, still flat on its back. And the movie is all the better for its more serious tone.
Helps as well of course that the special effects folk have performed relative miracles with their meagre finances and presented us with, imho, the best-looking Japanese Godzilla film by far. Indeed, they won the Special Effects Oscar at this yearâs Academy Awards ceremony.
