The Concorde... Airport '79 (David Lowell Rich, 1979)

One of the last airport disaster movies from the 70s. Probably also one of the silliest and thus quite enjoyable.

First thing to notice is that only one third of the movie actually takes place in the plane. It takes 35 minutes for that fucking Concorde to finally take off. Until then we are introduced to the few sub-plots about passengers and - more importantly - about a sinister plot to take this plan down in order to kill a investigating journalist carrying some incriminating documents.

But it is well worth waiting. Because what follows is acrobatic maneuvering of this giant plane (weighting almost 80 tonnes empty) in order to first avoid the high-tech guiding missile and then to avoid fighter jet that launches 5 more missiles. And this is where we see the best scene of the movie where pilot opens the window of the cockpit and fires a flare from a signal pistol so that its heat can confuse those rockets. At speed of 2 mach make no mistake! Shot pretty unimaginative using some very obvious plane model. Good old special effects, nostalgic and very funny. It has left me speechless and wanting more of such insanities.

There's another - almost equally absurd - situation later on when they manage to land this huge plane without any casualties in Austrian alps. Once again, great fun but not as much as those missiles.

Cast is not the usual "disaster movie" all star. Delon is its biggest name but he doesn't really have enough of screen time to be movie's main vehicle. He certainly doesn't seem to be even remotely interested in being one. Plus his buddy-buddy scenes with George Kennedy are quite hard to stomach, especially the usual family shit about his dead wife. There's a bit of chemistry between him and lovely Sylvia Kristel and to be honest, I think she does the best job in this flick.

6/10

Men at Lunch (Seán Ó Cualáin, 2012)

What a mess this movie turned out to be. Advertised as a documentary about this famous photo it made me a bit intrigued. Concept of making full length documentary about nearly 100 years old photography sounded original and promising. Lots of territory to cover by trying to track down portrayed workers, photographer, circumstances surrounding it, maybe some technical stuff etc. Lots of possibilities indeed, it can be made almost as a mystery/thriller kind of flick. I was pretty excited to check it out.

But then it turned out that movie gives roughly 10% of its time to this fucking photography and the rest of it is just some incoherent rambling and jumping from one pretty unrelated topic to another. We learn everything about history of New York, great depression, immigrants, construction workers, some personal stories etc etc etc. At one point it got really absurd. I needed to go piss and when returning to the cinema after few minutes there were scenes from 9/11 on the big screen. Come on, give me a break...

Just skip it, it's not worth the price of a ticket. And besides, you'll probably be able to see it on National Geographic in a few weeks time.

2/10

Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953)

Billy Wilder is one my celluloid gods, but Stalag 17 for some reason just doesn't work right for me. I see it every now and then and try to find something to make me like it more, but it still leaves me more or less cold. Don't get me wrong, it's okay but well below maestro's average. Certainly rest of his WW2 movies are much more interesting and easy to categorize. Five graves to Cairo is pure war movie and  Foreign Affair is a drama. Both masterpieces, both also having amazing casts!

And I think this is a root of my disappointment with Stalag. It tries and tries to find a balance between thriller and comedy and just keeps failing to do so. As far as a thriller part is concerned (finding a mole in the barrack) is too trivial and not suspenseful enough. Lighthearted portrayal of POW living also falls a bit flat and not too amusing. Especially that Animal character is annoying as hell and Preminger's character is shown almost as a clown. Holden is superb though. As he always was anyway.

6/10

Le Regine AKA Queens of Evil (Tonino Cervi, 1970)

Strange movie, not at all an Eurotrash I was expecting to see. It does have few beautiful chicks (my beloved Haydée Politoff among them), some nudity and a couple of fuck scenes but these are all just tools used for driving good and pretty coherent story.

We start with this free-spirited hippie wondering into the woods on his Suzuki where he ends up staying with three sisters living close to some mysterious castle. We suspect of course that they are not real siblings (if nothing else, see title) and also in a prior sub-plot it was hinted that the owner of a castle is a prince of, oh well - you know, the darkness. So our poor hippie falls for these witches and eventually sells them his free spirit (soul?) and even worse - he declares to them that he's "so happy he could die right away". Big fucking mistake of course, you don't need to second guess how they react to this statement, do you?

So, it's pretty fairytale-ish and cool thing about it is that overall atmosphere is totally in sync with this. Lots of shadows, weird shooting angles, night shots and some great background music (liked that church choir singing). Really creepy and sinister at times.

Needs to be said though that not much really happens in the first hour but it doesn't get boring. At that point I was afraid that movie will fall apart as things will start to unravel. So many of these bizarre European low budget horror movies follow this pattern and they just go crazy. Not this one, it's carefully and even elegantly conducted to its conclusion. Director seems to knew what he was doing and what he was trying to achieve. Hell, we even get some sort of moral preaching from the prince of darkness himself!

7/10