This movie about time travel has its own peculiar timeline. Evidently author John Varley based a screenplay on his short story "Air Raid" then wrote a novel based on the screenplay, fixing it so that the movie is technically based on the story while the events of the film in fact mirror those in the novel. So perhaps it's fair to say that this film is not a poor adaptation of the book, but that the book is an excellent adaptation of the film. Either way, of the three -- story, book, and film -- the movie is the least entertaining. That said, this is an okay adventure about what happens when a woman from the future whose job it is to snatch passengers from doomed airliners meets the NTSB man investigating the mid-air collision of two passenger jets. When a weapon from the future is lost aboard one of the jets, it sets up a potential paradox that could -- not to put too fine a point on it -- destroy all humanity. It's this story, with its shifts in point of view from the man (Kris Kristofferson) to the woman (Cheryl Ladd), that keeps the movie interesting; everything else just holds it back. Michael Anderson proves that the triumph of Logan's Run was in its production design rather than his direction, while production designer Rene Ohashi probably wished he had a bunch of pretty domes to create rather than an ugly, claustrophobic world of dying men, women, and human-machine hybrids. Then, too, both Kristofferson and Ladd do their part to keep this vehicle strictly in the middle of the road. Ripe for an expensive remake, based on the book.
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This movie about time travel has its own peculiar timeline. Evidently author John Varley based a screenplay on his short story "Air Raid" then wrote a novel based on the screenplay, fixing it so that the movie is technically based on the story while the events of the film in fact mirror those in the novel. So perhaps it's fair to say that this film is not a poor adaptation of the book, but that the book is an excellent adaptation of the film. Either way, of the three -- story, book, and film -- the movie is the least entertaining. That said, this is an okay adventure about what happens when a woman from the future whose job it is to snatch passengers from doomed airliners meets the NTSB man investigating the mid-air collision of two passenger jets. When a weapon from the future is lost aboard one of the jets, it sets up a potential paradox that could -- not to put too fine a point on it -- destroy all humanity. It's this story, with its shifts in point of view from the man (Kris Kristofferson) to the woman (Cheryl Ladd), that keeps the movie interesting; everything else just holds it back. Michael Anderson proves that the triumph of Logan's Run was in its production design rather than his direction, while production designer Rene Ohashi probably wished he had a bunch of pretty domes to create rather than an ugly, claustrophobic world of dying men, women, and human-machine hybrids. Then, too, both Kristofferson and Ladd do their part to keep this vehicle strictly in the middle of the road. Ripe for an expensive remake, based on the book.
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*** Small-town doctor is called home from a medical conference to attend to a rash of clamoring patients only to find when he returns that nearly all of them have cancelled their appointments. Later he finds out why: in the meantime, they've all been taken over by aliens. Like the novel by Jack Finney and the Collier's Magazine serial that preceded it (and on which this film is based), the mysterious, horror-themed first half is better than the more heavily science-fictional second. Unlike its source material, however, the film returns to horror at the end, giving it just the bump it needed to make it one of the best genre films of the 1950s. Suspensefully directed by Don Siegel and featuring a solid cast led by Kevin McCarthy as Doctor Bennell and Dana Wynter as his former college sweetheart, Becky Driscoll. The Monsters of Subtext Invasion of the Body Snatchers has been accused of harboring all sorts of subtextual meanings, most prominently that it is, underneath, an attack on McCarthy-era conformity. If so, it didn't come from Jack Finney, whose serial and novel instead celebrated the indomitable spirit of mankind. From Daniel Mainwaring, then, who wrote the screenplay? Vaguely affected by the Blacklist (he allowed his name to be used on an unproduced screenplay by a blacklisted writer), this sounds more reasonable. Mainwaring, however, wrote crime stories mostly and had an affinity for small-town America, which last may have been his primary interest in Body Snatchers. In any case, he began his career writing detective novels, about which he once said, "Those detective stories are a bore to write. You've got to figure out 'whodunit'. I'd get to the end and have to say whodunit and be so mixed up I couldn't decide myself" -- which doesn't sound like a man with an agenda. That leaves director Don Siegel who, 20 years later, claimed that "[t]he political reference to Senator McCarthy and totalitarianism was inescapable" but that he "tried not emphasize it." Rather, he wanted to show that "the world is populated by pods...people [who] have no feeling about cultural things, no feeling of pain, of sorrow." Whichever message he ostensibly intended, he evidently kept it a secret from his actors: Kevin McCarthy has stated that he saw nothing political about the film. Still, none of that means that some manner of subtext isn't in the movie, the collective product of the times and the people who made it. It just means you have to look for it really hard. *** Disparate group of ten people are lured to an isolated island and killed off one by one by their mysterious host who, they realize, is one of them. One of the best-selling books of all time, its genius lies in combining the premise with murders that follow the lyrics of a well-known children’s rhyme. That, and Christie’s scrupulous integrity. What it lacks is atmosphere or humor: it’s clever, but it isn’t emotionally engaging. Rated as a novel; add an extra star if you’re just interested in the puzzle. *** Liberal, mild-mannered New Yorker (Charles Bronson) turns vigilante after an assault on his wife and daughter leaves the former dead and the latter in a catatonic state, becoming in the process a public hero and a police headache. Less restrained and more exciting than the Brian Garfield book on which it is based, but also somewhat less believable as a result. Still, this is satisfying escapism for anyone who is concerned about violent crime or who believes that self-defense is the answer. Includes a brilliant bit of adaptation (the screenplay was written by Wendell Mayes) that much improves an important trip to Tucson, where the city and a business client (smartly played by Stuart Margolin) put the finishing touches on the vigilante's psychological turn toward retribution. Followed by four sequels. *** Disappointingly episodic western loosely based on the outlaws Robert LeRoy Parker (Butch Cassidy) and Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid). Parts of it work marvelously well -- especially a long sequence during which Butch (Paul Newman) and Sundance (Robert Redford) are tracked by a group of lawmen with almost super-human powers of pursuit -- but that's the problem: it's a piecemeal effort without any overriding theme or story, other than a couple of guys on the run. Katharine Ross plays Sundance's girlfriend who also has a thing for Butch (accounting for the famous bicycle sequence featuring B. J. Thomas singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"), but again it leads nowhere. (A later musical interlude, this one featuring a lot of bah-buh-dum lyrics by The Swingtones is much less successful.) Great chemistry between Newman and Redford, however. In all, a could-have-been that later was, in another George Roy Hill film, The Sting. *** Early thriller, breezily written, about a fairly ordinary man, Richard Hannay, whose neighbor reveals to him the existence of a conspiracy to start a war (World War I, as it happens). The neighbor is murdered, leaving behind his cryptic notebook and, of course, the murderers, who naturally believe that Hannay knows too much and must be silenced. Wanted also by the police, who suspect him in the neighbor's murder, Hannay is forced to run for his life. What follows is an episodic cat-and-mouse game that isn't quite fair since Hannay gets one lucky break after another. It's a book that is probably best read one chapter at a time in an approximation of how it first appeared, as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine. It's light stuff: amusing at times, exciting at others, and Hannay himself is a pleasant everyman, more given to action than self-reflection. In most chapters he meets a Scottish local -- the "literary innkeeper," the "spectacled roadman," the "bald archaeologist" -- who either wants to help him or kill him. The "radical candidate" wants him to make a speech! Unfortunately, it all builds toward a rather disappointing climax. But Buchan doesn't take any of it too seriously, so if you don't either, you likely will be entertained. The basis for the Alfred Hitchcock adaptation of 1935, The 39 Steps, which is, in fact, much better. *** Another largely emotionless atomic age disaster movie, this time with flying saucers wreaking havoc on Washington and scientist Hugh Marlowe in charge of developing a weapon to defeat them. More ambitious, however, than most of its kind: along with the destruction of American landmarks, we see the ships inside and out, in flight and on the ground; mobile aliens in suits and one without its helmet; energy fields and death rays -- all admirably executed by Ray Harryhausen, whose stop-motion saucers are a highlight. Genuine science fiction, without the usual horror trappings. It's a pity the characters are so bland. Suggested by Donald Keyhoe's book Flying Saucers From Outer Space. *** First Fletch sequel picks up a year and a half later with the investigative reporter (now a freelance art critic) traveling to Boston in search of stolen paintings, finding murdered girl in his apartment. Not as satisfying as Fletch, perhaps because it isn't as personal, but a clever and enjoyable mystery in its own right, leavened with the character's usual dry wit. This time, however, Fletch isn't the smartest investigator in the book; that distinction belongs to Francis Xavier Flynn, the eccentric Boston cop in charge of the murder case, in which Fletch is the prime suspect. (Flynn would go on to star in his own series of novels.) A fast, pleasant, and amusing read. *** Entertaining fluff, but nothing more. One year after the events of Finding Nemo, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) searches for her parents, from whom she was separated as a child. The magic is gone, of course, and with it the vastness of the ocean: most of the action in this film takes place in and around California's Marine Life Institute. The humor, too, is more repetitive, with endless variations on Dory's short-term memory loss. But most significantly, the film lacks the gravitas of Nemo, as we discover that a quest to find one's self-sufficient parents is much less compelling than one to find a missing child, even when the journey is really one of self-discovery. Pleasant enough, though, on its own terms. *** Liberal CPA turns vigilante after his wife and daughter are brutally attacked in his New York apartment. Slow-starter (the hero doesn't even take a swing at anyone until the halfway point) that develops into a thoughtful, non-exploitative discourse on crime and self-defense. You know it isn't all about the killing when a large chunk of the climax is in the form of a psychological profile of the unknown killer. Ends well. Made into a movie in 1974 starring Charles Bronson. Followed by a sequel, Death Sentence, in 1975. |
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