Health.

Review #2061: Health.

Cast: 

Carol Burnett (Gloria Burbank), Glenda Jackson (Isabella Garnell), James Garner (Harry Wolff), Lauren Bacall (Esther Brill), Paul Dooley (Dr. Gil Gainey), Donald Moffat (Colonel Cody), Henry Gibson Bobby Hammer), Diane Stilwell (Willow Wertz), MacIntyre Dixon (Fred Munson), Alfre Woodard (Sally Benbow), and Dick Cavett (Himself) Directed by Robert Altman (#900 - Nashville, #1433 - M*A*S*H, and #1890 - The Delinquents)

Review: 

"HealtH could have only been made when it was made, and that was the end of the Carter era."

Somehow, at the end of this little blurb about talking about a film that did not get a proper release is a joke. But I'm sure you already came into that with a film made by a director as noted as Robert Altman that has the dubious achievement of having never received a proper home video release. You may or may not already know that Altman was an interesting presence amongst filmmakers you could say have their own style of filming. He may not have had the best of times with his initial feature efforts such as The Delinquents (1957), but his lengthy time spent in television work would shine well when he got to do regular film work after the massive hit of M*A*S*H (1970). Over the next ten years he would direct in a variety of genres that went from the Western (McCabe & Mrs. Miller) to horror (Images) to psychological drama (3 Women). Some films ended up better than others, as evidenced by Quintet (1979). Altman had at least one film released from the year of 1969 to 1980 that went from That Cold Day in the Park (1969) to Popeye. Now back to this film (sometimes referred to as HealtH or H.E.A.L.T.H.): it was shot in the Don CeSar Beach hotel in St Petersburg Beach, Florida for a number of months in 1979. He rushed the film to production just to make sure that it could be done for 20th Century Fox while Alan Ladd Jr was still around. He wrote the script in collaboration with Frank Barhydt and Paul Dooley. It was planned for a released in the winter of 1979, but changeover at the studio led to shuffling for test previews in the spring of 1980 with ideas of getting it seen in full by the summer (the aforementioned Popeye film somehow went better despite being filmed in 1980 for release in the winter, incidentally). It did not end well, and Altman had a falling out with personnel, particularly with one that didn't return his calls for weeks on end that led to being labeled as "scum" by the director. Long story short, there was no public release of the film until New York’s Film Forum showed in 1982, but there were enough film festival showings to account for a knowing of it. It certainly did not come from 20th Century Fox, who had decided the film was not commercially viable enough for release in 1980. So, what did they decide was a better candidate for release than an Altman film? Oh! Heavenly Dog.

I can't promise you a good punchline for the end of this review, but I thought it tickled me. There are two sides that can come with talking about a film not appreciated in its time: the part where you call it a hidden gem that deserves your attention or one that you believe was best left to rest in the dustbin. This is a film that at least one person liked watching on the Fox Movie Channel enough to record it and try to put it online. As for me, I enjoyed it about as much as I thought would happen for an attempt at a satire of politics of the time that is a frenzied hodgepodge of observations that come from looking at a health food convention that really is looking at the conventions that come with America. In other words: showmanship has run amok, and one can still see the carnival atmosphere that we call politics now more than ever. Granted, it isn't exactly packed with a developed story, and it definitely isn't on the same level as, say, Nashville (1975), but it really did deserve an audience to judge it for themselves rather than letting it being thrust into the shadows (for the decade of the 1980s, Altman was left with making films on small-scale budgets, with varying respect). To me, the movie stumbles around two timelines to make light of: the end of the Jimmy Carter era (beaten in a landslide by Reagan in the fall of 1980) and the Dwight Eisenhower-Adlai Stevenson elections of the 1950s that incidentally saw the candidate with vast media drawing Powe win each time. Life is messy, and Altman made a whole movie about the odd carnival of hucksters in health and beyond. The film isn't really wrapped in an involving plot of note, so it really does verge its entertainment on just how much you like the people involved in said film. This namely involves folks who can be pegged to sentence-descriptions such as Garner and his general huckster observer persona or Jackson in a spry and uptight impersonation of Stevenson right down to the speeches. Of course, those 50s elections didn't have a third-party worth mentioning, so Dooley is more just there as the ignored option, but I like Dooley and his huckster self that seems too much for these fellow hucksters, so it shouldn't surprise me that he had a hand in writing this. Woodard is probably the only sane observer of said proceedings, which includes a man of great bluster in Moffat or the always enduring presence of Gibson. Burnett is basically there as the wishy-washy presence that is mildly funny in tension, but one wonders if there was more one could do with this role (this reflects perhaps most on Cavett, who might as well be trying out a mild sedative). At least Bacall and her slogan-happy presence of feeling oneself is amusing in just how much of a puppet one can be with slogans (in being used and using others). It is interesting to make a film about two women running for president and have one of them go on to win to form a new leadership of sexless strength. As a whole, the movie is merely fine, but 20th Century Fox should have known better than to think that it was going to work out nicely to skip over releasing this film (one that cost $6 million!). It isn't a great sort of missing gem or far from easy to ignore, instead falling along the middle with a few amusing moments that with a proper release would've nurtured a possible cult favorite. As it stands now, the only way to enjoy it is for those who enjoy digging further into Altman films or for those who like to watch bootlegs.  But hey, don't take my word for how the film worked when it came to satire and its targets, take it from Ronald Reagan, who was reported to have seen the film in 1982 and called it "the world's worst movie". That I think tells you all you need to know about Health.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

The Great Escape.

Review #1412: The Great Escape.

Cast: 
Steve McQueen (Captain Virgil Hilts), James Garner (Flight Lieutenant Robert Hendley), Richard Attenborough (Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett), Charles Bronson (Flight Lieutenant Danny Velinski), James Donald (Group Captain Ramsey), Donald Pleasence (Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe), James Coburn (Flying Officer Louis Sedgwick), Hannes Messemer (Oberst von Luger), David McCallum (Lieutenant-Commander Eric Ashley-Pitt), Gordon Jackson (Flight Lieutenant Andrew MacDonald), John Leyton (Flight Lieutenant William "Willie" Dickes), Angus Lennie (Flying Officer Archibald "Archie" Ives), Nigel Stock (Flight Lieutenant Dennis Cavendish), Robert Graf (Werner), and Jud Taylor (Second Lieutenant Goff) Directed by John Sturges (#427 - The Magnificent Seven and #1395 - Gunfight at the O.K. Corral)

Review: 
"He had great faith in the actor. He would storyboard everything. He never talked to me about character or about anything. What was in the script was what was shot; what was on the storyboard was the way it was shot."

You can't get much bigger in escapism in entertainment with war dramas like The Great Escape. It has certainly left a mark on popular culture with all of the homages that have been done in the near six decades since the film's release. It was loosely based on the 1944 mass escape of POWs from the German prison camp Stalag Luft III, which Paul Brickhill (who was in the camp but not allowed to be part of the escape due to claustrophobia) wrote an account of in 1950. NBC subsequently adapted it into a live drama episode of The Philco Television Playhouse the following year. Sturges had been interested in the book immediately after reading it, describing it as "the perfect embodiment of why our side won", a presentation of people from different countries with their own makeup that found a way to defeat the Germans with their own organization. It took a few years for Sturges to find producers interested in doing the film (with his attempts at selling it to MGM failing due to a lack of interest in material that would have a downbeat ending), but eventually he found interest with The Mirisch Company (comprised of three brothers in Walter, Marvin, Harold), who produced numerous hits in the late 1950s and 1960s such as Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Magnificent Seven (1960).

The film started production without a fully completed script. Obviously there are differences between the real-life account of the escape and the film, with requests to omit details about help from home countries of ex-prisoners of war about tools in gift packages being a noted example, with another being in making composites based on real people for the characters of the film (the number of escapees however is the same as the events in 1944 with three, which also includes the details of how they successfully made it home). Although James Clavell and W.R. Burnett are credited with writing the screenplay, numerous revisions were made throughout production (with Walter Newman asking to not have his name credited due to disputes with Sturges, which also occurred a few years prior with The Magnificent Seven). Even showing the daily rushes after a few weeks of filming didn't help much, since McQueen (who had made a request accepted by Sturges to feature him in an extended motorcycle chase) felt his character was underdeveloped. It mattered especially for McQueen, who had made a name for himself over the past few years after starting his career in 1953 that gradually led to starring roles like The Blob (1958) and Wanted Dead or Alive (1958–1961), and this sealed his reputation as a "King of Cool". Interestingly, he wanted his character to be the hero without doing anything overtly heroic that contradicted his detached demeanor.

The movie runs at 172 minutes with gradual pacing that builds its group of capable characters with fair precision that builds and builds towards its escape without becoming suffocated in any sort of way. There is plenty of starpower to see here, particularly since over half of them had at least some war experience (such as Bronson, who was also claustrophobic as his character, owing to working in coal mines as a child) and some even had experiences in a POW camp, such as Pleasance, who even produced and acted in plays for the entertainment of his fellow captives. Each of the main group excels in their own way, drawing presence and charm that inspires tension for what goes on. McQueen, whose screen-time increases as the film goes on, proves tremendous as a sardonic and charming presence, highlighted by the film's most celebrated sequence - a motorcycle chase over the countryside and one quick jump over a fence (done by McQueen's friend Bud Ekins) that is dazzling. At helm for the buildup to the escape is a talented collection of international presences such as TV star-turned star Garner and his honest resourcefulness or British star-director Attenborough and his steely commanding resolve or Bronson's resolved ambiguity or Pleasance's well-mannered dignity. Accompanying them with their own concentrated time is a reasoned Donald, a charming Coburn, and a resourceful Messemer and McCallum. There are plenty of interesting moments to highlight, such as a sequence involving homemade moonshine on the 4th of July (complete with drums), or its riveting sequence in the countryside with a view on various escapees trying to pull through by train, motorcycle and even planes that make its ultimate ending just as resounding. All of this makes for a capable entertaining film that invites one into adventure with plenty of interesting presences and intricate designs that stand as a classic to see at least once.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Space Cowboys.

Review #1252: Space Cowboys.

Cast: 
Clint Eastwood (Frank Corvin), Tommy Lee Jones (William "Hawk" Hawkins), Donald Sutherland (Jerry O'Neill), James Garner ("Tank" Sullivan), Marcia Gay Harden (Sara Holland), William Devane (Flight Director Eugene "Gene" Davis), Loren Dean (Ethan Glance), Courtney B. Vance (Roger Hines), James Cromwell (Bob Gerson), Rade Šerbedžija (General Vostov), and Barbara Babcock (Barbara Corvin) Directed by Clint Eastwood.

Review: 
This is one of those films that exists to deliver adventure for a certain kind of audience that surely is interested in seeing some entertainment without any rough challenges and a few visual winners. It runs at 130 minutes, but it sure seems to want to be familiar with predictable leanings that its main core four actors are up to making seem fun to sit with. After all, if John Glenn (fighter/test pilot turned astronaut turned U.S Senator) could be sent into outer space at the ripe age of 77, why not send four old pilots (with Garner being the oldest at 72 on release) into space to fix a secret satellite? Even the challenge of getting these folks up to speed with training (in 30 days, no less - for which publicity for this mission only comes in two weeks before launch) doesn't really seem to faze anybody in the film, especially not the audience. It does fall in the lines of a popcorn movie in that if you really wanted to poke a few jabs in its logic (the idea of sending an astronaut with terminal cancer comes to mind), you could, but I was at least entertained enough with what I saw to make this a winner by the margins, primarily because of its cast and effects. At least one cannot fault Eastwood for taking the script from Ken Kaufman-Howard Klausner and rolling with giving the film a bit of light charm in its journey without too many roaring bumps, essentially being the kind of film you could probably watch with your dad or mom and have a good time with (I remember my dad having interest in plenty of Eastwood films, nearly all of which in the bunch qualified as adventures like this), with even a Jay Leno cameo fitting the bill for what one could expect. It has a yearning for what was that certainly has aged a bit (particularly with the end of the Space Shuttle program) but will linger just fine with those who seek it. The effects-work from Industrial Light & Magic is well done as one could expect, capturing the essence of space and the moments that require some wonder and delivers pretty well, where one isn't taken out of the film and its shots of the shuttle or satellite in space because something seems too off-putting or ridiculous. As one would hope, it is the interactions between the core four that drive the film as forward as it wants, particularly when it is between Eastwood and Jones. Eastwood certainly is wiry enough to headline a last hurrah routine with a degree of persistence that only could come out in a mild adventure driven by Eastwood on both sides of the camera. Jones is just as wiry with plenty of rough charm that certainly gets its chance to come out plenty, whether when old wounds open up about who ruined whose shot at going to space or when doing some stunt piloting for an eager birthday man. Sutherland and Garner are both warm and engaging as the other useful cogs in this fairly oiled machine, fitting with what is needed just as one can hope. Harden, Devane, and Cromwell fill the other piece of the pie just fine, doing what needs to be done to further the film (whether it be exposition or occasional character moments with the main four) without bumps on the way. Dean and Vance are okay, but they feel a bit sidetracked when it comes to making any sort of comparison of the old guard (Air Force pilots) and the new type of astronauts, which might have been a bit interesting to go with. In the long run, what we have here is a film that aims for a tolerable standard blend of reality and movie-magic that will certainly feel par for the course in its execution but at least please its crowd just well enough to make things worth it, where the time goes by without too much waste to speak of.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Maverick.

Review #619: Maverick.

Cast
Mel Gibson (Bret Maverick), Jodie Foster (Annabelle Bransford), James Garner (Marshal Zane Cooper), Graham Greene (Joseph), Alfred Molina (Angel), James Coburn (Commodore Duvall), Geoffrey Lewis (Matthew Wicker), Paul L. Smith (The Archduke), and Max Perlich (Johnny Hardin) Directed by Richard Donner (#355 - Lethal Weapon, #356 - Lethal Weapon 2, and #547 - Superman)

Review
The movie is based off the classic television show of the same name, which also had the late great James Garner in it. The movie uses a trio of actors that manage to do a great job together, especially Gibson and Garner, they share a really good act with each other and Foster is also excellent, very clever and very intriguing to watch. But what makes the movie just so awesome is how it manages to be not only a fine action movie, but also a good comedy as well, making for a really entertaining film. The supporting cast is delightful to watch, especially Molina and Coburn. They're practically irresistible to watch, even Coburn's beard. The card games are interesting to watch, even the riverboat is great to look at, it just looks so beautiful. This is a Western that just has fun, and it's a pleasure to see Garner and all of his charm in a film like this. It's a fantastic film that manages to not just a other adaptation of a TV show, it's a movie of its own that is just so fun.

On a sadder note, I would like to say rest in peace to James Garner, who died just two days ago. We will all miss James Garner, but we will always have movies (#559 - Grand Prix, The Thrill of It All, The Great Escape, Space Cowboys, etc) and TV shows (The Rockford Files, 8 Simple Rules) to remember him for, with his charm being especially one that will last forever.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Grand Prix.

Review #559: Grand Prix.

Cast
James Garner (Pete Aron), Eva Marie Saint (Louise Frederickson), Yves Montand (Jean-Pierre Sarti), Toshiro Mifune (Izo Yamura), Brian Bedford (Scott Stoddard), Jessica Walter (Pat Stoddard), Antonio Sabàto (Nino Barlini), Françoise Hardy (Lisa), Adolfo Celi (Agostini Manetta), and Claude Dauphin (Hugo Simon) Directed by John Frankenheimer.

Review

Grand Prix was filmed in Super Panavision 70 and the cinematography by Saul Bass and Lionel Lindon, directed by first timer on Movie Night, John Frankenheimer (most known for directing the original The Manchurian Candidate, French Connection II...and the Island of Dr. Moreau), with a blend of actors from all around the world, all for a grand epic that many people call the best racing movie ever. The cinematography is beautiful to look at, seeing the perspective of the cars racing at times is incredible to watch, even the crashes are spectacular to watch in all the spectacle. This movie captures the passion, the mood, and the excitement of racing effectively. The plot isn't exactly as developed, but at least the actors are good, especially James Garner (Fun fact: He did his own racing in this film while the other three only did close up shots), who is fun to watch. This is a movie full of fun that doesn't feel like 3 hours, it feels like a good ol' trip to the grandstand, crashes and all.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.