THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL

year: 1978
cast: Lawrence Olivier, James Mason, Gregory Peck, Steve Guttenberg, Jeremy Black

rating: ***1/2

Decent thriller about "modern" Nazis (in the seventies) hiding out in South America with a plan to kill a string of civil servants all within the age-range of 61 to 65. The mystery builds till we learn that pre-teen clones of Adolf Hitler exist and their fathers are the targets: Hitler lost his father, a civil servant, at a young age and the children will experience the same loss. But before the clones are discovered things builds nicely with over-the-top but eventually bearable acting by Lawerence Olivier as a semi-retired Nazi Hunter brought back on a tip from a creative upstart Steve Guttenberg, who's eventually the kind of "Janet Leigh in PSYCHO" initially important character killed by Nazi scientist Joseph Mengella played by Gregory Peck. From Guttenberg's lead... he calls Olivier right before he dies and tells him about the plot... Olivier visits the houses of the deceased men's widows and notices the cloned children: all artistic, black haired, blue eyed brats... the only thing missing are little mustaches. Once we learn the spoiler the film quickly ends, a good thing because the build-up is everything. Apt direction keeps the pulse on a steady beat throughout. A thriller wherein the body count aspect, who dies when and how, works best. And though Gregory Peck's performance was maligned from the film's opening to this day, he's not bad at all. He was hammy in MOBY DICK but keeps his cool here... for most of the time. 

VALKYRIE

year: 2009

rating: **

Okay, Tom Cruise is... Tom Cruise. That's it. Gone are the days of "Taps" when he could actually be another person, a character PLAYED BY Tom Cruise not TOM CRUISE as himself AS another character. This film is no different. He's Tom Cruise playing a guy who wants to overthrow Hitler. Now the intentions of this man (based on real life) and his comrades, all part of the Nazi party, in this film are to rid the world of Hitler to save lives, but historically they wanted to save Germany and Socialism (their brand of it anyway) and not LOSE the war but instead to END IT with their party intact (without being run by a madman). It's okay to turn these fellows into superheroes because killing Adolph would have been a super-duper thing... and director Bryan Singer has made a great superhero film (XMAN) and a really bad one (SUPERMAN RETURNS) so he can't be blamed for over-the-top heroics, right? A lot of the time, though, the modernized high-octane action just doesn't fit this film, which tries to be a "suspense packed with everything".

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

year: 2009

rating: **

There are so many problems with this latest Quentin Tarantino flick I'll just ask one question to begin: Why were the "Basterds" - the scalp-hacking Nazi Hunting American Jews the film is named after - merely extras? We don't see them train, see them hunt, see their missions, learn their quirks, mannerisms, fears, strengths... they're merely in the background of an overall muddled picture. The title should have been HANS LANDA, since he - the flitting Nazi villain played nicely by Christopher Waltz - is not only the best character, but seems to be the ONLY character in the movie. A subplot involving a french girl who survived her family being killed by Landa, running a movie theater in disquise as a Frenchwoman, goes nowhere, for one because I couldn't connect her as the little girl who survived the original massacre - we see her hiding under the floorboards only a few times in the opening which didn't carry on to her other scenes. I just didn't feel enough for her to really WANT the revenge she garners: involving her theater full of the top dog Nazis, including Adolf himself, once again played by an actor going way over-the-top. At this point in history we all know Nazis were evil, but... perhaps when making a film about Nazis being tortured a filmmaker should REMIND US SEVERAL TIMES of their evil more than just a swastika on their uniforms. Brad Pitt's character, the redneck leader of the Basterds, has no overall bearing (he just talks a lot), and other side-characters (a British officer; a German actress double-agent; and a knife-wielding German serial killer) are thrown in that we're supposed to care about but end up meaning close to nothing. Tarantino builds tension like a sleeping dog getting a fire up its ass: with either endless bouts of boring dialog (subtitled no less) that WAY TOO SUDDENLY become loud jarring massacres, with no in-between. And Tarantino ends up knocking himself off at times, for instance: a drawn-out scene in a tavern/pub involving a British officer imitating a German POSSIBLY being caught by a Nazi soldier for having a suspicous accent; then, towards the end of the film, before the climax when things REALLY MATTER, Brad Pitt, meeting the MAIN VILLIAN, pretends to be Italian (purposely not trying very hard) and it's played-out like something from a John Hughes film... which makes you wonder why the Tavern scene mattered in the first place. I'm afraid the great QT has lost his touch... see DEATHPROOF for more PROOF of this theory. Gone are the days of RESERVOIR DOGS and JACKIE BROWN (and, yes, PULP FICTION). Gads, even the beginning title sequence (something that Tarantino usually does so well) is plain boring: black screen with titles and a hollow slow-paced Spagetthi Western score. And the casting of Eli Roth as the bat-weilding "crazy" basterd is a complete joke. (Quentin, hire REAL actors, not your director-buddies, buddy.) And to note, there is a 1978 Italian film called INGLORIOUS BASTARDS which has only the title in common. That movie, starring Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson, unlike this mess ACTUALLY CENTERS on the characters the film's named after.

THE SERPENT'S EGG

title: THE SERPENT'S EGG

year: 1977

cast: David Carradine, Liv Ullman

director: Igmar Bergman

rating: *1/2

Since the death of David Carradine I've been catching up on the films I've never seen. This particular effort directed by the iconic Igmar Bergman ("The Seventh Seal") isn't something I'd recomend for Carradine OR Bergman fans. It's a boring, ponderous examination of Germany right before the full-scale Nazi rule; hence the title, relating to the egg before it's hatched the serpent, Hitler. Carradine's acting is wooden. He speaks in the same slow manner as "Caine" in "Kung Fu", which fits that show but not this movie. Carradine, a jewish trapez artist, wanders from one sad situation to the next in the wake of a friend's suicide, and soon realizes, as the Nazi reign progresses, that suicide wasn't such a bad idea. Too bad the audience feels the same way.

CROSS OF IRON

year: 1977

cast: James Coburn, James Mason, Maximilian Schell, David Warner

rating: *****

Follows a war-weary German corporal named Steiner, played wonderfully by James Coburn, who goes up against a pretentious commander played by Maximilian Schell, who wants nothing more than a cross of iron: a symbol of bravery in battle. And Schell, hiding in a bunker giving orders from under a table during attacks, will do anything to get one... that is, except fight. A scene involving Coburn's character suffering hallucinations after getting a concussion is perhaps the most incredibly edited scene in film history. There is plenty of action and a ton of Bloody Sam's famous slow-motion deaths, but what really stands out are the characters, dialog, and overall theme: that war is hell. This is Sam Peckinpah's last true classic film. He did so much with so little money. The mark of a true, legendary genius.