THE NEPTUNE FACTOR: that awful sinking feeling

If 1973's THE NEPTUNE FACTOR director Daniel Petrie hoped to cash in on the positive vibe surrounding the previous year's smash hit 'The Poseidon Adventure' by casting one of its stars in his underwater thriller he was desperately deluded.
There is nothing that Ernest Borgnine could have done to rescue this water-logged turkey.  Not even Gene Hackman in full preacher-hero mode could have saved this film. It is truly one of the all-time worst disaster/sci-fi movies ever made. Borgnine is actually one of the few good things about this project. He has barely anything to do and very little to say but at least he doesn't embarrass himself, which is more than can be said for the rest of the cast or the production crew.
The story focuses on the rescue mission launched to save the crew of an underwater laboratory which has rolled into an apparently bottomless trench on the sea bed after an earthquake. The only vessel capable of diving that deep is an experimental US Navy mini-sub piloted by the arrogant Ben Gazzara. We know he's arrogant because he wears a perpetual mocking sneer on his face. It's an expression Gazzara reserved for projects he knew were a piece if crap and unfortunately he wore it a lot in the 1970s (and I write that as a huge Gazzara fan who ranks some of his films among my all-time favorites).
Despite his air of insufferable superiority (and equally atrocious Atlanta, Georgia accent) Gazzara allows diver Borgnine and Dr Yvette Mimieux to join him aboard the surprisingly spacious mini-sub (more Winnebago than cramped submersible) as they plumb the depths in a desperate race against time to locate the missing lab before the trapped men's air supply runs out. Along the way they encounter huge and terrifying fish, never before seen by man, which threaten to destroy their fragile craft and devour the crew.
Now if all of this exposition has given you the impression that THE NEPTUNE FACTOR is an exciting viewing experience I must apologise.

THE NEPTUNE FACTOR is excruciatingly dull. The story unfolds at such a leisurely pace that it's often difficult to discern forward motion, and the cast move as if heavily sedated. Gazzara may not be able to disguise his contempt but he's clearly not alone in recognising the fecal matter he's been given to work with. It's particularly sad to watch the venerable Walter Pidgeon (he was Mr Miniver for cripes sake!) struggling to summon the energy to deliver his next turgid line and repress the knowledge of what the film's doing to his reputation.
Not only is THE NEPTUNE FACTOR unforgivably dull it is also ludicrous.
Unable to match the budget for the special effects which had helped make 'The Poseidon Adventure'  such a box office hit, director Petrie is forced to improvise. Many of underwater diving scenes appear to have been shot in a swimming pool, and the terrifying monsters of the deep are actually blown-up (magnified) footage of the kind of small tropical fish usually found in a 10 year old child's bedroom aquarium. I believe the aquarium was also used for the long shots of the obviously toy mini-sub chugging along between the underwater weeds.
I wouldn't be surprised if the same 10 year old who supplied the fish also acted as the film's technical advisor. What else other than the innocent ignorance of extreme youth explains the sunlight streaming through the water FIVE HUNDRED FEET below the surface, and Borgnine's effortless ability to scuba dive at that depth without being crushed to death by the pressure (although it does have a slimming effect on the portly veteran actor, but I suspect that's mainly because the stuntman is half Borgnine's size)?
There's only one way to watch THE NEPTUNE FACTOR and that's on your own. Because it is just so bad that it's utterly impossible to justify to anyone else why they should sit through it with you. 

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN: this lad gives Damian a run for his money

If you're in a relationship and on the fence about starting a family this film will hurl you clean off of it and dump you in a heap on the side of not procreating.

At least with 'The Omen' and its sequels it was clearly understood that Damian was the spawn of the Devil and that there was, therefore, a clear motive for his evil behaviour. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN offers up no such clear cut explanation which makes it so much more troubling.
Eva (Tilda Swinton) and Franklin (John C.Reilly) are a fairly standard suburban married couple. They're not as close or empathetic as they could be but neither dabbles in nefarious practices or illicit drugs, so there's nothing to account for young Kevin's appalling behaviour.
As a baby he screams practically non-stop; in one particularly telling scene Eva stops by a road crew using a pneumatic drill, while pushing Kevin in his pram. An almost blissful expression washes over her face as the noise of the drill drowns out the sound of his wailing. As he develops into a toddler and then a young boy the crying is replaced by much more calculated acts of nastiness with Kevin taking every opportunity to push Eva's buttons and make her life a living hell. He's careful to target only his mother and present a much more positive image to his father who is, consequently, reluctant to believe his wife's wilder stories.
With each year the evilness of Kevin's behaviour becomes more vicious, to a final tragic point where it's clear there's something seriously wrong with him, but what is it? His parents never seek serious medical help, and it's too easy (and unfair) to place the blame solely on their parenting skills. Eva and Franklin are neither perfect nor terrible and their worst sin would appear to be failing to deal effectively with a clearly troubled child early on.
If writer-director Lynne Ramsay's intention was that this ambiguity would provoke debate over the relative importance of nature versus nurture in child rearing, then she fails because Kevin is so unambiguously evil without any exterior motivating force that the result is more horror thriller than psychological drama.
Essentially WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is a horror movie with pretensions to something more nuanced and sophisticated. It's certainly disturbing but it's not as adult as it desperately wants us to believe that it is. If this film were a child pleading it's case to be allowed to stay up past its usual bedtime it might succeed in convincing us to give it 5 minutes more but absolutely no more.

A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER: tight and teasing and very alluring

A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER is a deceptively tight and genuinely gripping thriller which will keep you guessing almost until the very last moment.

It's deceptive because the opening few scenes are less than promising. Most are set in large, over-lit, badly mic-ed rooms where the sound booms and the scenery swamps the characters. It exudes the look and feel of a cheaply made B-movie fronted by stars whose best days are most definitely behind them.
But as the story unfolds it also starts to tighten, the aimless chit chat takes on a new significance and the cast begin to dominate their surroundings.
By the film's mid point there's a definite whiff of film noir in the air.
And by the end I absolutely could not wait a moment longer to discover if Joseph Cotten's suspicions about his beautiful sister-in-law were correct or he'd completely lost his marbles.
It's difficult to figure out whether the transformation was an intentional part of the story's structure, or that it simply took writer-director Andrew L.Stone time to find his rhythm but frankly I'm not too bothered, Because the end result was total entertainment.
Cotten plays staid middle-aged oil industry executive Whitney Cameron who turns detective when he starts to suspect that the stepmother (Jean Peters) to his late brother's two young children has poisoned one of them and is planning the same fate for the other in order to get her hands on their father's fortune. Complicating matters is Cameron's growing attraction to said stepmom. A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER was my first introduction to the exceptionally beautiful and alluring Miss Peters, and I can totally understand Cameron's dilemma. She has the kind of looks that would make the most street-hardened detective doubt his professional judgment.

Peters plays it right down the middle giving us no real clues to support or undermine Cameron's suspicions. She keeps her cool under pressure and smothers the surviving step-child with so much love that it's difficult to believe she could ever mean him harm. So what are we to believe - the evidence of our own eyes or the the circumstantial case her brother-in-law is building against her? And what is Cameron trying to hide?
All of this drama is packed into a scant 77 minute running time yet it never feels rushed. Director Stone makes the time to allow the tension to build incrementally, while also keeping the story moving fast enough to gloss over any implausibilities (like the hospital whose pharmacy closes at 6pm forcing its doctors to send prescriptions out to be filled at nearby drugstores when they need lifesaving medication after hours).
A BLUEPRINT FOR MURDER is undeniably a B-movie but it's an excellent example of the genre and considerably more exciting than many A-movies with twice the budget and stars in their prime to spend it on.

HELL ON FRISCO BAY: watching the star try hard to wreck his own film

A film noir shot in colour, in cinemascope, with scenes set mostly outdoors during daylight hours, and making ample use of San Francisco's picturesque landscape, starts out with several counts against it.
But contravention of most if not all of the conventions of the noir genre is the least of this movie's problems.
The biggest drag on the story is its star. Alan Ladd strolls through the plot like a Californian Redwood on legs. If it weren't a clash of materials, it would not be unfair to characterise his woodenness as robotic. There's not an ounce of enthusiasm or conviction in his performance as Steve Rollins, an ex-cop wrongly convicted of manslaughter, who leaves jail vowing vengeance on the gangsters who framed him.
Ridiculously attired in a linen suit that never creases or stains despite several bare knuckle dust ups, he fearlessly provokes corrupt waterfront boss Victor Amato (Edward G Robinson) into a showdown that can only result in death or victory.
Along the way, just to demonstrate what a straight-up, honorable guy he is, Rollins rebuffs his wife (Joanne Dru) for a moment of weakness while he was in jail (but only after he'd refused to let her visit him for three years) and comes to the aid of a nightclub singer (Fay Wray) whose life Amato is threatening. All of which Ladd achieves without once moving a facial muscle.
Thank god for Edward G.Robinson!
He singlehandedly saves HELL ON FRISCO BAY with a performance that is considerably better than the film deserves. Robinson's career was in a slump in 1955, mostly as a result of the anti-communist blacklist, and he was no longer getting A-list parts, but he never stopped giving his best to whatever work came his way. He's as great here as he was in 'Little Caesar' and 'Key Largo.' His Victor Amato is a fully-rounded, believable and disturbing character, a psychopath who can charm the parish priest one moment and order the murder of his own nephew the next. When Robinson's on screen it's almost possible to forget he's inhabiting the same story as dreary lifeless Alan Ladd.
Credit is also due to Paul Stewart who makes the most of his underwritten part as Amato's put-upon right hand man, and watch out for an uncredited but instantly recognisable Jayne Mansfield in her last bit part before exploding into America's consciousness with 'The Girl Can't Help It' a few months later.
HELL ON FRISCO BAY is a decidedly mediocre tale but a fine example of an actor proving himself better than the material he's given to work with. Watch this and you may well be put off Alan Ladd for life but you'll definitely want another serving of the wonderful Edward G Robinson.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE: it's what you don't see that's so scary

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE is a viewing experience which rewards the patient.
I'm not referring to someone lying in a hospital bed but a film watcher who's willing to give this story some time to warm up. Because it is cold, lifeless and uninviting at the start, offering very little reason to stick with it.
But those willing to invest the time will be rewarded with a slow-burning, increasingly disturbing psychological thriller that will haunt the mind long after the final credits have crawled across the screen.

A very impressive Elizabeth Olsen (younger sister of the Olsen Twins) plays Martha, a young woman who turns to her sister and brother-in-law for shelter after running away from the rural upstate New York hippie commune where she's been living for the past two years.
Her reappearance is a surprise to her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson), as Martha's had no contact with her since moving to the commune, but it's not half as shocking as the disturbing behaviour Martha exhibits and her refusal to talk about her time in the commune.
Piece by tantalizing piece, writer-director Sean Durkin (in his feature film debut) reveals to the viewer the truth about what happened to Martha, while keeping Lucy in the dark, which only serves to ratchet up the tension as she struggles to help her sister with no understanding of what kind of support Martha needs.
The cross-cutting between life on the farm and the present day in Lucy's spacious lakeside house only serves to heighten the confusion as it's not always clear in which locale the events are taking place, or even whether they're real or just figments of Martha's tormented imagination.
What's so impressive is that Olsen and Durkin achieve so much with so little. The emphasis throughout is on understatement. The fear builds as much from the power of suggestion as from what's actually shown on screen. There's no jarring jump-cuts to the accompaniment of screeching violins, no hands looming out of the darkness to grab the unsuspecting heroine's shoulder, no screaming histrionics, and no blatant depictions of terror, horror or evil. It's the unseen and the half-seen which generates the anxiety.
In retrospect it's clear that the uninspiring opening is essential to creating the tone of the movie. It's the mundane way in which Martha's nightmare comes about that makes her story so genuinely chilling. So stick with it and you'll be glad (if slightly terrorised) that you did.

THE MOONLIGHTER: a 3D disaster - dreadful, dreary and demoralising

I can't recall the last time I watched a film that so poorly served its stars.
I can only imagine that Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray went home every evening, locked the door, pulled the shades and bawled their eyes out over THE MOONLIGHTER. It's a truly demoralising viewing experience so I can only imagine how terrible it must have been to actually work on it.

Writer Niven Busch has given them practically every cliche in the Western genre to mouth, and he's so intent in cramming in every last hoary phrase that he doesn't even bother to ensure that it at least makes sense. In too many scenes Stanwyck and MacMurray appear to be talking across one another, reciting lines that have very little to do with what the other just said to them.
This 1953 film is a tragic comedown for two stars who had set the screen alight 9 years earlier with their unforgettable portrayals of a weak willed insurance salesman and a murderously cold-blooded femme fatale in 'Double Indemnity.'  If they'd never done anything else that film would assure them of a place in movie history, and after scaling those heights it can be difficult to understand why they would willingly plumb the depths with this sub-standard turkey.
The answer, I'm guessing, is money and the need to earn a paycheck. In the early 1950s westerns were often the last stop before the despised medium of television for film stars on the slide (even Claudette Colbert made a western!). Neither Stanwyck nor MacMurray were box office hits anymore and I imagine they were grateful to accept the script when it was offered to them.
One senses they both went into the project with the best intentions but neither of them sounds remotely convincing regurgitating the abysmal dialogue and there's absolutely no sense of the smoldering passion supposedly burning between them. MacMurray speaks mostly in a high pitch monotone while Stanwyck operates on autopilot. Given that this is the great Barbara Stanwyck it's high quality autopilot - better than many other actors on their best day - but still far beneath what's she's capable of.
This black and white movie was originally released in 3D but it's hard to tell (I watched it in 2D) just how much use director Roy Rowland made of the special effect. Nothing comes flying out of the screen and there's few shots that would have benefited from the extra depth that 3D offers. My best guess, based on the slightly unusual lighting in some medium close up scenes of the two stars in a clinch, is that they would have appeared to be in front of the screen with the background further behind them than it actually was. If I'm right, it's really not worth the price of a pair of 3D specs.
Unconvincing, implausible, boring, cliched, embarrassing, demoralising and just downright bad, THE MOONLIGHTER is truly terrible in every regard and a stain on the reputation of its illustrious stars. The only saving grace is that it is almost completely forgotten today. I only wish I could erase it from my memory.

J.EDGAR: barely scratches the surface of a dark American political drama

Leonardo DiCaprio slathers on the prosthetic make-up to play legendary FBI director J.Edgar Hoover in this biopic which is as dry and institutional as the man himself.

While it's true that Hoover was perhaps the quintessential government bureaucrat, spending his entire working life developing and then maintaining an increasingly death-like grip on the levers of power, there is much that is fascinating and unique about his career but Dustin Lance Black's ('Milk') script never really gets to grips with it and, with the exception of the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby, fails to do more than just scratch the surface.
But the fault is not Black's alone. I certainly expected more from a director of Clint Eastwood's stature than this disappointingly unimaginative stab at the biographical genre. J. EDGAR chooses the 'character as an old man looking back at moments in his life which are illustrated with flashbacks' route to informing us just who Hoover was, rather than focusing on one period of his life which might stand for his entire life.
Admittedly there's way too much in Hoover's almost 50 year career as FBI director for a two and a quarter hour long film to explore in depth, but that's all the more reason to not try and cover all of it. Anyone who watches J.EDGAR without first reading one of the excellent biographies about him ('Official and Confidential: the secret life of JEH' by Anthony Summers, or 'Secrecy and Power' by Richard Gid Powers are both working checking out) is going to be left more than a little confused by all the references to scandals surrounding some of the 20th century's major American political figures (Martin Luther King, Lyndon Johnson, John and Robert Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Joe McCarthy) who get a namecheck but little more, in an effort to demonstrate the length and breadth of Hoover's power in Washington DC.
There's too many scenes of events that were to become part of history where the characters speak as if they're aware of the significance and feel the need to speak for posterity rather than as real people living in the here and now of these situations.

Just as he did as Howard Hughes in 'The Aviator' DiCaprio does an impressive visual job recreating a very recognisable public figure although he never gets Hoover's voice to sound old enough to be entirely convincing. And while the make-up gurus do a great job in convincingly aging DiCaprio from young hotshot to stodgy old institution, they appear to have handed over responsibility to the interns for doing the same to Armie Hammer as Hoover's lover (and FBI Assistant Director) Clyde Tolson. Although in real life he was five years younger than Hoover, by the end the film he looks 150 years old to Hoover's 77 years.
Dull and plodding, wordy, uninspiring and just way too dark, J.EDGAR is a major disappointment which promises much but delivers very little. There's a great political drama to be made out of Hoover's life but this film isn't it.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL: worth a watch but nothing more

If you're prepared to not simply suspend your disbelief but also hang draw and quarter it you'll probably get quite a kick out of this fourth installment in the Tom Cruise franchise.

Cruise returns as Ethan Hunt, the seemingly indestructible IMF (and, no, that doesn't stand for International Monetary Fund) agent who chooses to accept an assignment to stop Kurt Hendricks, a dangerous and highly sophisticated terrorist, from acquiring the Russian nuclear missile launch codes and starting a war with the United States by firing a missile at San Francisco.
After failing to uncover the true identity of the terrorist by infiltrating the Kremlin (on only 4 hours notice!) Hunt's search takes him and his small team (Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg) on a rollercoaster ride across the world, taking in Dubai and Mumbai and a series of mind-bogglingly exciting but implausible life and death situations.
Not surprisingly this is Cruise's show all the way. The opening titles leave us in no doubt about that, proudly announcing that this is "A Tom Cruise Production" and, consequently, everyone else is there solely to support the Tomster is his efforts to show that at 49 years old he's still got what it takes to be an action hero. This means Renner is rather wasted playing second fiddle as one of Hunt's gang, despite proving with his Oscar nominated turn in 'The Hurt Locker' that he's perfectly capable of carrying a movie. However Renner is a positive camera hog compared to Michael Nyqvist as Hendricks. Nyqvist who was so great as Mikael Blomkvist in the original Swedish versions of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo', 'The Girl Who Played With Fire' and 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest' is completed wasted in a part that could have been played by absolutely any actor with a slight Russian/Swedish/German/Polish/Eastern European accent.
Paula Patton gets the best break as fellow IMF agent Jane Carter who springs Hunt from a Moscow jail and then willing cedes power to him in return for the right to kick almost as much as ass while never breaking a sweat or mussing her hair. Brit Pegg does all that's required of him as the comic relief and looks suitably grateful throughout for the rare opportunity to share screen time with Cruise.
GHOST PROTOCOL is a welcome return to form for Cruise after the eminently forgettable 'Knight and Day' but there's still little to distinguish it from the slew of other action movies Hollywood has bombarded us with in recent years. At best it offers fleeting gratification, leaving you feeling like you've got your money's worth but without any desire to watch the film ever again.