Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
#40 in my ranking of Clint Eastwood's films. Clint Eastwood takes on yet another popular contemporary novel, and this is the least of the bunch. I have not read the source book written by John Berendt, but from what I've read the appeal of it was the lurid and somewhat fantastical reality that was this… Continue reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
#39 in my ranking of Clint Eastwood's films. This feels like another effort to create an American James Bond, this time from director and star Clint Eastwood, and I think he fumbles it. Eastwood's cool directing style seems ill-fitted for an international espionage thriller, especially when he prefers to keep a languid pace throughout the… Continue reading The Eiger Sanction
#12 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. The incoherence of late Peckinpah continues with this new effort to find a commercial hit. Based on the popular song and in an effort to replicate the financial success of Smokey and the Bandit, did eventually become financially successful, the most successful of Peckinpah's career. However, the… Continue reading Convoy
#22 in my ranking of the Classic Universal Monster movies. The first Creature from the Black Lagoon was something of a hodgepodge of quality with a central monster that seemed accidentally sympathetic. I wasn't expecting that kind of happy accident in the sequel. What I got was a more standard monster movie with more boring… Continue reading Revenge of the Creature
#23 in my ranking of the Classic Universal Monster movies. Without James Whale or a solid literary source, it seems like Carl Laemmle really didn't know how to put together a winning monster movie. Using bits and pieces from previous, more successful, efforts Laemmle had produced, he brought in a small host of writers and… Continue reading Werewolf of London
David Vining, Author 