#114: CLIFFHANGER (1993)

 

STARRING: Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Michael Rooker, Janine Turner, Leon Robinson, Paul Winfield and Ralph Waite. Screenplay by Michael France and Sylvester Stallone. Directed by Renny Harlin. Budget $70 million. Boxoffice taking $255 million. Running time 113 minutes. Originally released in 1993.

How funny, last night I watched I Play Rocky and tonight I'm watching Cliffhanger back in our cinemas for one night, not sure why, but what the heck, they don't make films like this anymore and it's been probably 30 years since I last saw it.

The plot sees Park Ranger Gabe Walker (Sylvester Stallone) blame himself for the death of his best friend, Hal Tucker's (Michael Rooker) girlfriend's death who plummets to her pancake demise after a climbing accident. Anyway Gabe is still grief stricken a year later when former British military intelligence officer and psychopath Eric Qualen (John Lithgow) and his motly crew of heavily armed crimbos hijack a US Federal Mint aircraft in midflight and lose $100 million in three suitcases across the very mountains Gabe and Tucker work in, thus triggering a frantic pursuit to find the suitcases before Qualen executes all his men in punishment for not killing Gabe. Before a final showdown to the death between the two men. 

Look, screw the plot, it's stupid, it's got more holes than a Swiss cheese, and it's built on a foundation of coincidences, happenstance and kismet. Stallone spends most of the film in just a vest to out Willis Willis and has bigger arms than Arnoldt. The film directed by one-time golden boy, Renny Harlin, once the poster boy for action films was green lit by the following elevator pitch, "It's Die Hard but on a mountain." The film is generic, derivative, and mindless. Harlin directs it very well and it's not stymied by shaky-cam or overly frantic editing. The soundtrack grates, but it's the scenery and action that makes it fun. As is watching all the henchmen kill themselves or get killed. Gabe goes from being just a great climber to a one man killing machine and takes to it like duck to water, within minutes he's stabbing, hacking, or impaling people on stalactites with no sign of PTSD, in fact he soon makes Rambo look like a goddam boy scout. Anyway the generic band of baddies are reduced to one, the big boss leading to the end level big boss fight and a happy goodbye for our three plucky heroes, Sly, his once best pal, now best pal again, and girlfriend, then ex before being girlfriend again. Oh, and if you want to see where Christopher Nolan got his idea for the jet plane heist in that awful third Battyman film, Bane in the ass, look no further. 

Not a totally terribly bad way to spend a Saturday night, great to see it on the big screen, the scennery really deserves it. And good to see Stallone settling into his macho man hero personna, but I'll take First Blood anytime over this. 

7/10

#113: I PLAY ROCKY

 STARRING: Anthony Ippolito, AnnaSophia Robb, Toby Kebbell, P.J. Byrne, Jay Duplass, Matt Dillon, Stephen James and Tracy Letts. Written by Peter Gamble. Directed by Peter Farrelly. Running time 128 minutes. 

The true rags to riches rise and rise and rise of Sylvester Stallone and the making of Rocky, the film that literally catapulted him into the stratosphere of celebrity and how he came to write it, act in it, and write the theme tune too. And it's all true. Actually it is. Well, apart from that last bit of course.

We join Mike Stallone (Anthony Ippolito - an extraordinary performance) on his uppers sleeping rough on the bitterly cold streets of New York as he attends audition after audition before taking a part in a soft porn skin flick. Then it's off to Hollywood with girlfriend, soon to be wife Sasha (AnnaSophia Robb) and his massive Mastiff, Budkiss in tow to park cars and keep searching for that lucky break. In comes after Sasha convinces Mike to change his name to Sylvester and write a script for himself, which he does after watching a boxing match. It takes him three days to write according to the legend and when he shows it to producers Irwin Winkler (P.J. Bryne) and Robert Chartoff (Toby Kebbell) and finds himself at the centre of a bidding war between himself and Sandy Maddox (Tracy Letts) the head of United Artists. Sly turns down the initial offer of £20,000 telling 'them' that "He (I) play Rocky." Sandy refuses and so begins to bribe Sly with offers that finally reach £300,000 which would have made him the most successful script writer of all times if he'd accepted. Naturally he doesn't and he wins the gig and so begins the filming of Rocky. Shot guerrilla-style in the streets of Philadelphia using a steadi-cam the production battles valiantly overcoming numerous obstacles before it opens and goes on to be nominated for 10 Oscars winning two for screenplay and Best Picture and the rest is history. 

I'd only recently finished listening to Sylvester Stallone's autobiography narrated by the great man himself so watching this not that long after somewhat enhanced the experience enabling me to fill the blanks and to add more texture to the mix. Obviously for a bio-pic there is much that has been amalgamated, including characters to fit into a two-hour story structure, elements and events that Stallone was able to mumble over an hour or so are here dispensed with in a matter of minutes. It's a fascinating story, the making of Rocky and film is very successful when charting its story, the rest of it though is a tad middling. It's only thanks to the utterly extraordinary performance of Anthony Ippolito as Stallone that this film is something far more wonderful than a generic Hollywood biopic, in fact so good is he that you actually accept him 100% as Stallone. He is electric and his performance which is never an impersonation is truly mesmerising, he simply is Stallone. I wish they would hire him to remake some of his other films for a modern audience. 

I loved all the film making aspects of this film, but got a little bored by the domestic aspects, it would seem that there were no hardships or true drama outside and that Rocky, Stallone, just sort of strolled into success, which just isn't the case. Often thought of as a figure of fun, listening to the great man speak you realise how driven, how focused and how determined he was to succeed. He is quite the inspiration and proves that age old adage of 'it's not what you know, it's who you know.' and 'Make sure you're in the right place at the right time.' to be absolutely 100% true. 

As to this, an entertaining if slightly white-washed bio-pic more in the vein of The Glenn Miller Story than say, 8-Mile.

7/10 

#112: WICKER

 

STARRING: Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgard, Elizabeth Debicki, Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizawan, Richard E. Grant and Richard Dinklage. Screenplay by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson, based on the The Wicker Husband by Ursula Wills. Directed by Alex Huston Fischer and Eleanor Wilson. Budget $10 million. Running time 105 minutes.

Magic realism thy name is Wicker. Mocked and ridiculed by what seems like every member of her village – and in particular the Tailor's Wife (Elizabeth Debicki), who rules the small unnamed village somewhere in the middle ages, filled with a veritable smorgabord of ethnicities, fantastic haute couture from another era, and deeply anachronistic modern dialogue – tired of life as a lonely spininster, Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman) goes to the Basket Weaver (Richard Dinklage) and asks him to make her a husband. He does and a month later, the Wicker Husband (Alexander Skarsgard) arrives and the pair are married, leading to a schism in the close-knight community that leads to drama and fiery confrontation, with accusations of infidelity, wicker babies, jealousy, and betrayal. 

A strange film to be sure, although when one considers it features a man made of wicker it's difficult to wonder how else it could be. It's not set in the real world, that's for sure, this is a world where the appearance of a man made of wicker doesn't cause screams of 'witchcraft' but rather complete acceptance. What isn't acceptable is the change of the Fisher Woman from bullied ridiculed spinster into vital, energised and sexually satisfied woman of confidence. Her husband is like no other man in the village as he tends to his wife's needs, carnally, domestically and emotionally and in doing so makes himself the unwitting enemy of every man in the village and the target of lust by every women. This is a world where all the men, apart from the Basket Weaver and obviously the Wicker Man are oafs, buffoons and useless, although the women aren't that much better.

An intriguing film that I found myself fascinated by but not loving, it's well made, well acted and looks very good, but it's also jarring, the music an uncomfortable mix of folk and industrial begins to grate, the fashions look so out of place that you find yourself trying to place it in a sort of time period and get drawn out of the story as you marvel at the fabrics, and needlework skills involved. Even though this is a fairy tale in a far off land a long time ago you find yourself trying to date it. And the dialogue is often far too clever for its own good, especially when Dinklage is talking to himself, it doesn't feel real, but rather written, you could imagine the writers patting themselves on the back at their own cleverness, but all this achieves is to once again pull you out of the narrative. But enough negatives, special mention must be made about the special effects and make up, which are truly magical, there are times where the sunlight shines through the Wicker Man's body and it's a marvel, as is the sound effects of his creaking and cracking of his body completely convince. 

The story behind it is an intriguing one and yet characters, particularly the Fisher Woman who acts in ways that seems utterly implausible when her husband is accused of shagging the women folk of the village, and only there to propel the plot. Her Wicker man is so painfully honest and open that it's hard to believe she would so readily accept the accusations of infidelity and then to act in such a horrific maner. It sadly pulls you out of the film and leaves the plot having to pull a last minute fairy tale twist in the story.

Nevertheless this was a well made and entertaining film, it has moments of great humour and also strong drama and at a brisk 105 minutes didn't outstay its welcome and I'm beginning to realise I'll watch anything with Olivia Colman in it, she really is a mesmerising actor. 

8/10

#111: KEN RUSSELL'S THE DEVILS (1971)

 

STARRING: Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Reed, Dudley Sutton, Gemma Jones, Georgina Hale, Murray Melvin and Michael Gothard. Written and directed by Ken Russell. Cinematography by David Watkin. Production design by Derek Jarman. Budget $4.8 million. Originally released in 1971. Running time 115 minutes.

The film tells the harrowing story of 17th-Century Catholic priest Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) who was accused of witchcraft by Sister Jeanne des Anges (Vanessa Redgrave), the physically disabled head of a convent of sexually repressed nuns who was being used as a means of usurping Grandier by Cardinal Richelieu (Christopher Logue) and the Baron De Laubardemont (Dudley Sutton) for their own political gain. It does not end well, leading at first to accusations of demonic possession, to repeated exorcisms and culminating in a debaunched naked orgy in a cathedral that leads to the symbolic rape of Jesus Christ, to Grandier's conviction for witchcraft, interrogation and final brutal public execution at the hands of the Catholic church.

Originally released in 1971 this fantastically controversial film, perhaps one of the most controversial ever made, was banned in several countries (and remained banned in Finland until 2001) due mostly for its graphic portrayal of sex and violence and its intense religious subject matter. It was heavy edited and was roundly hated by most critics on first release. It wasn't until 2004 that a director's cut was finally released. Then in May of 2026 Warner Brahs premiered a fabulous 4k restoration at the Cannes Film Festival minted from the original negative and retitled Kenny Russell's The Devils to universal critical acclaim. What a difference 55 years makes. 

So, what of the film. What of the film indeed? It is raw, powerful and incredible. It is a film from that glorious era of film making, the 1970s, when original, unique voices could still be heard, where there were no test screenings or focus groups, where the nearest thing to a science fiction franchise were the first three films of the Planet of the Apes series, where James Bond was only 8 films in, and the nearest thing to the Marvel Cinematic Universe were the 22 films of the Carry On Canon. The acting from all involved is profound, Oliver Reed mostly known these days for his legendary drunken escapades is a pure tour-de-force, he commands the screen, his performance is deeply effecting, his character is a deeply religious man driven by his absolute faith, but who is also a man with strong carnal cravings, a man both devout who yearns to find true love, love that will confirm his faith. In complete contrast are the utterly sexually repressed craving of the Sister Anges as played by Vanessa Redgrave, who lusts, as do all the convent nuns, for Grandier. Her treatment at the hands of the Catholic church is truly brutal and Redgrave's performance is astonishing. It is so rare to see a film of such power, where its leads are allowed to act with such raw and unbridled energy. This is a film truly raw in tooth and claw. It is a hard film to watch, the violence is brilliantly directed by Ken Russell who must stand alongside Stanley Kubrick as one of cinema's most unique and instantly recognisable visual visionaries. Russell controls the chaos and the anarchy that explodes across the screen with complete mastery. It is also a film with much nudity, that seems quite shocking to the tastes of today's almost chaste cinematic audience. 

Indeed, it is a film that sits uneasily with a modern audience, or at least the audience I saw this with, an audience who thought nothing of arriving 10 minutes late into the film stumbling to their seats clutching wine and beer glasses and illuminated mobile phones. An audience who laughed constantly at the many scenes they found too difficult, or 'triggering, who seemed shocked by what they witnessed and emotionally confronted. And yet surely that was its purpose - to shock, to open our eyes to confront us, to make us uncomfortable, to question. It is a film about religion excesses and corruption written and directed by a man of faith, a man confident in that faith, a man not afraid to explore questions of faith and how religion corrupts as powerfully as any political cause. 

I found the film to be one of the most extraordinary and profoundly powerful that I have ever seen. I was moved by it's vision, its craft and the combined performances of its fearless cast. It was a film with a strong powerful message and scope that will stay with me for a very long time. And I'm sorry to say, it's the sort of film that will never get made again.

Ken Russell thy name is genius.

10/10

#110: WILD HORSE NINE

 

STARRING: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey. Written and directed by Martin McDonagh. Running time 117 minutes.

In 1973 two Chile based C.I.A. agents, Chris Carlisle (John Malkovich) and Lee Chseterfield (Sam Rockwell) travel to Easter Island on the cusp of the Chilian coup that will see the military overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. The two men have worked as a team together for many years but all is not well, Chris is dying from terminal cancer and this trip to the island of Rapa Nui is his literal dying wish. Chris is a veteran agent having taken part in some of the most significant acts of espionage of the 20th Century, including the death of President Kennedy and the overthrow of several left wing, communist or socialist governments. He's addicted to morphine, he's lost all his filters, he's losing his memory, he's dictating his memoir into dicaphones and he's telling everyone he meets (including two young women also traveling to Easter Island, Monica and Alicia) that he's a C.I.A. agent, much to the chagrin of his partner and to his CIA bureau chief MJ (Steve Buscemi). Meanwhile, Lee is dealing with his disintegrating marriage to Marge (Parker Posey). And that's the plot in a nutshell because it really doesn't matter. What does matter is the extraordinary relationship between the two men, the beautiful dialogue and the note perfect black humour.

The script by director Martin McDonagh is a blissful delight, the man responsible for the sublime genius of Three Bill Boards Outside Ebbing, The Banshees of Inisherin and In Bruges unleashes here, perhaps his most polished work, the exceedingly funny script is pure perfection, his ear for dialogue is matchless, it's hardly surprising that he's received six Academy Award nominations. I can think of no other writer director alive who can create so brilliantly onscreen relationships between two men, usually men of violence, but somehow McDonagh manages to create worlds of true emotional depth, the humour never at the detrement of the drama. Lee and Chris are both deeply flawed men and yet there's something so human and relatable about them, their relationship is poignant and truly heartfelt giving this film a wonderful emotional core of true depth and emotion. 

I loved this film deeply, it's been a long time, indeed not since 2022's The Banshees have I been moved this much. I loved the characters, I loved the deeply nuanced script and the way to confounded expectations, several times I thought I knew how this would end and each time McDonagh found a way to surprise me. This is also an extremely funny movie with the humour coming from dialogue that zings with energy, indeed from the get-go this elicits laugh after laugh, mostly driven by a dead pan John Malkovich whose comedy chops are brilliantly played, matched by Sam Rockwell, an actor of extraordinary talent who seems happy to play the straight man to Malkovich. Similarly, Buscemi gruff and cantankerous CIA bureau chief is a delight. Damn it, everyone seems to be in on the gag! 

The ending left me genuinely touched and moved and I truly think I've perhaps found my film of the year. 

10/10

#109: PRIMETIME

 

STARRING: Robert Patterson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Matthew Maher, Phoebe Bridgers, Ana Faris and Alex Wynter. Written by Ajon Singh. Based on Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die by Luke Dittrich.  Cinematography David Bolen. Directed by Lance Oppenheim. Budget $14.5 million. Running time 109 minutes.

A powerful dramatisation of the rise and fall of both Chris Hansen and his TV reality series To Catch a Predator, which ran from 2004 - 2007. Each episode would see NBC journalist, Chris Hansen (Robert Patterson), his producer, Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), and the vigilante group, Preverted Justice headed by Matthew Maher conduct sting operations to snare paedophiles who targeted underage teenagers for sex. The men would be lured from online chatrooms to a 'bait house', where the police lay in wait, there the predators would be invited into the house by actors pretending to be underage children, either Dale Hardy (Phoebe Bridgers) or 'Decoy' Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo). Then Hansen would confront them, humiliate them on camera and film their capture. Chasing bigger ratings and an order from his masters to eclipse the success of Lost Hansen set out to enshare a big name or a 'whale' of a predator, which in reality culminated in the suicide of Assistant D.A Bill Conradt (Alex Winter) in a botched raid by Texas police. 

This is a fever dream of a movie, from the intensity of the acting, particularly Robert Patterson, who is electric, to the edgy frendziness of story and the superb cinematography of David Bolen who shoots the whole thing with elevated saturation that makes all the colours seem far too intense and with a camera that stays focused on severe close-ups. There's a palatable sense of implosion never far away, from Hansen's deteriorating marriage to Mary Joan Hansen (Ana Faris) - who is criminally underused - to the show's desperate desire for more ratings, to Hansen's impending exposé in the National Enquirer for infidelity. Meanwhile, struggling to control her leading asset is Hansen's long suffering producer Andie Weaver, and Skyler Gisondo's Dan Plum, an aspiring actor hired purely because he looked 13 when in actuality was 26.

I was surprised by how darkly funny this was, and I found myself laughing at a lot of what transpired. The film has a superb visual style, those saturated colours, the bleached out video whiteouts, the intense pore-deep close-up shots, and the multiple camera set-ups mimicking the use of hidden cameras, all helps to give the film a very personal feel, we truly are the voyeur of this drama, eager to see the capture of these vile predators, but secretly wanting the punishment to be more severe.

The acting in this film is profoundly good. Patterson is superb as Hansen, he holds your attention even as you realise that there's nothing really there beneath the Hansen's surface beyond the pursuit of ratings. For a film about stopping the exploitation of children it's an impressive feat that poor old Decoy Dan Plum is, in the cold light of day, nothing more than a victim himself, used by the production company as a lure based just on his youthful looks, and whereas poor Dan is desperate for 'notes' to improve his performance the sad realisation of what his role really is is heartbreaking. His desire to be a real actor despite the fact his role each and every week is just to act a tad gay in an effort to lure men into trap before flouncing out to let Hansen take the glory is cringingly sad, as is his  realisation to the fact he is in part responsible for Conradt's suicide. 

There's a fantastic shot near the end of the film, after the DA has killed himself that holds Hansen in close up and he considers the suicide, slowly, he backs out of the shot slipping from being the focus to become nothing more than a background blur, which for me, sealed the deal perfectly.

Overall this was a powerful, intense and dramatic film that satisfies. A worthy Oscar contender.

8/10

#108: GODZILLA MINUS ZERO

 

STARRING:  Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Min Tanaka, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Masami Nagasawa, Yuki Yamada and Kuranosuke Sasaki. Written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki. Running time 135 minutes. 

Running ten minutes longer than it's 2023 originator, Godzilla Minus One, this is not so much a sequel more than a continuation, picking up the action two years after the events of that extraordinary first outing that re-introduced Godzilla in a new and utterly terrifying new incarnation. It's 1949, the remains of Godzilla  lie at the bottom of the Sagami Bay and Postwar Japan has got on with rebuilding  itself, that is until a new and deadly monster named Ghidorah rears its angry dragon-like head and lays waste to Matsumoto City, leading to the Large-Scale Disaster Response Bureau lead by Kenji Noda to launch a counter attack against this new threat, which only makes things worse, much worse by a factor of three when the single headed Ghidorah is transformed in the triple headed King Ghidorah who proceeds to wreck a trail of destruction across Japan. Teaming up with Professor Kanji Murakami – a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing, Meteorologist Makoto Aoyama, kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima, his wife Noriko and the other surviving heroes of the first time to reunite and lead a fight back against King Ghidorah as Godzilla emerges from the depths to continue its reign of destruction. Now all the plucky human heroes have to do is somehow lure KG and Godzilla together for the mother of all fights, but at what cost?

Once again the visual effects for this astonishing film are breath-taking, the sense of scale bewildering and the scope defies exceptations. Somehow, yet again, the human angle of these two films is the brilliant beating heart of the action, it gives the film its drama it's humanity. You find yourself caring for these puny bags of flesh and bones as they somehow fight against these behemoth beasties. Visually this is a truimph and practically seamless. There's a dream sequence when Godzilla destroys New York City and it is simply staggering. 

And yet this just doesn't quite reach the same giddy heights of the first film. That first film was so fresh and unique that exploded with power, this time round takashi Yamazaki's scope has grown, as has his budget and it's clear he has a story arc in mind and that there's probably a third film in this arc that's eating away at him. And I hope so. These Toho Japanese Godzilla films of which this is the 34th in the Toho series and 39th in the whole franchise are so fresh and different from the panto nonsense of the Legendary films, those are fun and silly, but this is grown up, powerful and emotionally satisfying. 

An exhausting and dramatic film that drags you in with the promise of Kaiju action and then hammers you with some powerful human drama and relationships. Still, deeply satisfying. 9/10