Red Tent, The (1969) aka Krasnaya palatka

Back from the dead!

A product of odd circumstances certainly, The Red Tent features Peter Finch, Sean Connery, and Claudia Cardinale in an enormous, impressive film directed by the Soviet director Kalatozov and co-produced by the Italians. In an attempt to settle his guilty conscience, the restless General Umberto Nobile conjures up the ghosts of his past to try him for his actions during a disastrous dirigible expedition he led to the North Pole forty years ago. The film flits between the discussion/trial and the retelling of the expedition. Connery (who should have been in OHMSS) has a lengthy cameo as Roald Amundsen, the famous North Pole explorer. The film runs 158 minutes and aside from a few odd romance scenes between Claudia Cardinale and Eduard Martsevich, never drags. Worthy of note is the spectacular Arctic photography by Leonid Kalashnikov and the incredible production values considering the location and production circumstances--on top of the Arctic snow and ice, they managed to throw a blimp (presumably a real one or a large model) around in heavy gusts and then convincingly crash it. The story strikes the right level of adventure and terror, and Finch, Connery, and Martsevich's performances are all delivered with a level of conviction that makes it easy to believe in the sense of honor and hubris, selflessness and sacrifice that they bought into to go on these dangerous, seemingly heroic missions. Highly recommended, if not a bit hard to find.

9/10

A note on the different versions: The most readily available version is the 120-minute International Cut featuring the original English dialogue for the (mostly) English cast, and dubbed-into-English dialogue for the International cast members. It also features an excellent score by Ennio Morricone. Despite all this, I must recommend the original 158-minute Soviet cut as it is the fuller, deeper, and more thoughtful version of the film. The Italians' International Cut doesn't appear to excise any of the crucial elements, but it lacks the subtlety and elegance of the Soviet cut. The Soviet score by Aleksandr Zatsepin, while not as good as the Morricone score, is no slouch and could easily be mistaken for minor Morricone.

The International Cut is available on DVD in the United States. The Soviet Cut is not. If you're dying to watch the Soviet cut, message me and I'll try to help you.

One final technical note about the film: The film was originally shot in Sovscope 70, Soviet Russia's 70mm process at the time. Neither available home video version reflects this as the Italians cropped to 1.66:1 for its release in the 60s and for some bizarre reason, the Russian DVD is in what appears to be an open matte 4:3. I can't even begin to imagine how incredible this film would have looked in 70mm back in 1969 on its release in Russia, and think that this film deserves a careful restoration from the original elements. Criterion?

Runaway Train (1985)

I never thought I'd be writing a genuinely positive review for a film produced by Cannon. Runaway Train stars Jon Voight and Eric Roberts as cons who escape from an Alaskan maximum security prison and get caught on a train that loses control through the tundra. Voight plays Manny, a rough, misanthropic convict who may have completely gone sour. Roberts plays a not-so-smart but enthusiastic young buck who tags along because he sees Manny as a kind of hero. What's so striking about the film is that while the characters face the obstacles you would expect out of a suspense/action film involving runaway trains, a good portion of the time is spent just with the characters as they hash out their problems, their insecurities, their jilted worldviews. In the face of possible death at the hand of circumstance, they're forced to confront themselves. Voight overacts and gets a ton of kind of weird off-the-cuff monologues, but they were entertaining and not terribly distracting. They spoke more to the nature of his character than any relevance to the plot. Roberts' character was pretty spot-on podunk dummy who means well. Based on a Kurosawa script (which is maybe why it's a cut above the usual Cannon ilk), and directed by Andrei Konchalovsky who I know very little about, the film, despite some major flaws in the third act, lives up to its critical reputation. An excellent Cannon film is a mythical thing, and Runaway Train doesn't disappoint. Highly recommended.

8/10

Big Gundown, The aka La resa dei conti (1966)

The Big Gundown is often considered the best non-Leone western by spaghetti western experts, and I'm inclined to agree. The film is slick and stylish, with an excellent performance by Tomas Milian and a solid one from Lee Van Cleef. Jonathan Corbett (Van Cleef) is a bounty hunter reluctantly wooed towards politics by a fat cat. After clearing the county of criminals, he takes it upon himself to hunt down Cuchillo (Milian), who is accused of raping and murdering a young girl, but Cuchillo proves to be a bigger challenge than Corbett anticipated. The Big Gundown paces itself slowly until everything comes to an epic showdown (the big gundown!) during the final moments of the film. Just like Once Upon a Time in the West, the ending makes everything worth it. The climax is multiple "hell yeah" moments that compound on top of each other. It was that cool. The buildup was never boring, but it also wasn't particularly noteworthy either. I did enjoy how the religious characters were portrayed not as idealistic fools, but rather trying to get by like the rest. Another interesting inclusion was the Austrian sharpshooter and Von Stroheim look-a-like. The film teases this guy's ability from beginning to end, and it pays off. Finally, Ennio Morricone's score is excellent as usual. I think this particular score is a bit overrated and doesn't stand well on its own like The Great Silence (the other best non-Leone spaghetti western) or The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly, but nevertheless it supports the film quite well. The Big Gundown was a treat, and it makes me wish more spaghetti westerns were actually good films, and not just good as far as spaghetti westerns go.

8/10

Gorgon, The (1964)

One of the finest Hammer Horror films, The Gorgon tweaks the formula and adds a shade more depth to the usual Hammer fare. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing star, but their roles are reversed--instead of Lee as the heavy and Cushing as the kindly protagonist, Lee plays a kind of swaggering sleuth/professor and Cushing plays a jealous doctor protecting a dark secret at all costs. The German town of Vandorf has been plagued by a series of mysterious murders over the last five years that none of the townsfolk want to acknowledge. The victims are all found turned to stone. An investigation by unwelcome outsiders reveals that the spirit of a mythological Gorgon roams the surrounding forest, and they must discover how to destroy it. What gives the film its layer of depth though, is the way the relationships of the characters play out--an entire town colluding based on fear, two family deaths leaving one son left, a tragic romance. It's not that these are all deep threads within the film, but they add something to it, a bit of tragedy and ambiguity perhaps that is lacking in many of the ol' good vs evil romps that Hammer was known for. The medusa-head effects, infamously criticized by Christopher Lee, are pretty terrible, but that's really the only negative. The remainder of the production is very polished. A top-notch, enjoyable adventure from Hammer. If nothing else, watch it for Cushing and Lee together.

8/10

Quatermass II aka Enemy from Space (1957)

Professor Bernard Quatermass returns for the second of three films by Hammer, and it's a minor improvement over the first film. Not only is Donlevy's performance as Quatermass smoothed out, the production values and storyline are both refined. After nearly sixty years, the plot seems like a rather cliche variation on the body snatcher premise, but considering its contemporaries, I'd say Quatermass 2 does a fairly good job keeping it fresh. Quatermass encounters a woman rushing to the hospital after her boyfriend got burned from touching a meteorite. When he returns to his research base, he discovers that his aides have discovered a barrage of meteorites in the area. Further investigation reveals mind control, a government conspiracy, a mysterious factory base, and an alien plot to take over the world. Quatermass is not as rushed and forceful in this film as in the previous installment, but he still sticks out as the brazen American among an all-British supporting cast. He lacks the compassion of Andrew Keir's characterization of Quatermass, my personal favorite. Val Guest manages to keep the tension high and budget from showing. The special effects department pulled off some good work involving matte paintings, puppets, miniatures, and some almost undetectable composite-work for 1957. The film feels familiar because the plot structure doesn't differ whatsoever from the first (or the third film, really), but it's a slightly more involved and polished outing this second time around.

7/10

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

YEEEAAAARRRGH! The how-is-this-not-direct-to-video remake of John Milius' 1982 sword and sorcery staple is mind-numbingly bland, a miserable combination of "cool" action and no character development. If you like seeing people get gutted, stabbed, sliced, punched, smashed, flipped, burned, or any number of other methods of dying at the hands of a character-less slab of meat, then this film is for you. The plot isn't much different from the original 1982 film in that it's a basic fantasy revenge plot, but the devil's in the details. The '82 film, while not perfect, posed some questions regarding morality, strength, and the philosophy of war. Not only that, the '82 film had fantastic sets, crunchy action sequences, a fascinating villain, and a masterpiece of a film score. Even if I stopped comparing this to the original film, Conan '11 fails to live up to even the basic standards of filmmaking. There is not a single aspect of the film that could be called "redeeming." Not even the only thing it focused on--the fight scenes--could be called noteworthy. I was so unimpressed and bored by this film that by the end, I was making "think checks," asking myself if I had thought anything about the film in the last few minutes. I thought Silent Running was pretty bad, but at least I was thinking about something during it. Conan the Barbarian '11 made my mind blank harder than I think it has in years. Stay away.

2/10

Silent Running (1972)

Silent Running is one of the most boring, abysmal films I've ever seen. An attempt at cerebral, psychological science fiction, it drifts along at glacial pace, lacking the elegance of something like Tarkovsky's Solaris and ignoring important elements like plot. The film starts off by introducing us to four unlikeable characters (Bruce Dern included), then fists an environmentalist message down our throats so hard I had ham coming out my ass. Dern and crew are ordered to leave ship and blow up their biodomes for no reason at all--a mystery that was never resolved. Dern, a curmudgeon, refuses, kills his crewmates, and steers the ship away into the outer reaches of the solar system. The problem with the film is not its politics, it's the lack of anything interesting happening. Character motivations are shallow and underdeveloped, the dialogue is painful, and you're given absolutely nothing to work with mentally. The main question I had throughout the entire film was not about the details of the plot but rather about what the plot actually was. I cared little about Dern's actions, motivations, or mental state. I found his acting to be awkward and hammy and his struggles to be inconsequential. I think maybe the film was so boring because Dern's character was so bored--he did barely anything the entire time. The special effects are often praised, and for 1972 they are good, but they're just not good enough to warrant sitting through this messy, monotonous trash.

2/10