Off-duty film viewing only. Anything I'm working on, might be working on, or connected to anything I'm working on, won't be mentioned here.
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Submarine Alert 1943
The only submarines are in stock footage – this is a Feds vs. fifth columnists thriller (with bonus extremely ill young niece subplot) that feels like it's in too much of a hurry to have much purpose or intent behind making money, but manages to hit upon a few interesting, nearly noir tropes in the moody cinematography and casting Marc Lawrence as a dumb heavy.
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Young Buffalo Bill 1940
I'm convinced these Young [insert Old West figure] films with Roy Rogers picked their subjects out of a hat – even the rampantly self-mythologising Buffalo Bill would raise an eyebrow at the storyline here. But, for the viewer, that's no bad thing, as this is one of Roy's better period pictures. Even if, once again, he's the least interesting part of the whole picture. (Tho 'Blow, Breeze, Blow' is a lovely little ballad.)
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Dune 2021
Villeneuve has scale and volume, but, other than the exposition issues (which is partly solved here), the 1984 film did this better in almost every area. Whereas Herbert's novel prompted Lynch to take flight with odd, baroque ideas and colourful characters (and pugs!), here we get the 'realistic' treatment, which is all rather dour and exposes the silliness and simplicity (for all its complicated names) of the narrative. It also makes it more obvious that we are rooting for the…
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