Thursday, July 16, 2009

Old and Very Old Movies

I went to the library where they have VHS tapes on sale for 25c apiece. I picked up Oceans 11, Dr. No, Out of Africa, and The African Queen. Mini-reviews:

Oceans 11 (1960) turned out to be a heist film with an all-star cast and cameos, the legendary "rat pack" which was a little confusing with all those characters. Naturally things end badly for the rat pack and their larcenous ambitions since the Hays Office would never allow crime to pay on screen, even if it was at the expense of a gambling enterprise.





Dr. No (1962) was the first James Bond film to be made. He was not the gadgeteer he later became in these films as Agent 007 was only armed with things like a gun, hair from his head and the occasional shoe to smash poisonous spiders climbing up his arm while asleep. As no Jame Bond film would be complete without a femme, Ursula Andress was the nature girl, singing a calypso song and hunting for sea shells on a radioactive beach. Finally Dr. No was a mad scientist for whom motivations as to why he wanted to mess up the US space program were never really clear. He did have metal hands, which made him a little creepy.




Out of Africa (1985) was a mildly entertaining snooze fest where Meryl Streep and Robert Redford shared long meaningful looks but never saw eye to eye in the wild African paradise. All the coffee on Karen Blixen's plantation would not have kept me awake through this one.






The African Queen (1951) was a story of how a spinster missionary (Hepburn) and a drunken Canuck (Bogart) defeat Imperial Germany on a lake in 1914. It is no doubt the best of the lot.