Reviews

'The Bridge At Remagen's problem is that it came towards the end of a long slew of epic WWII movies (Where Eagles Dare, Heroes Of Telemark, Guns of Navarone, etc), and suffered as a result. I well remember the 'Daily Telegraph' film critic tearing it to bits. In actual fact it ain't half bad. It's reasonably realistic, sticks to the story, and is competently acted. It's a film worth watching more-but not much more-than once. As I have said on this site more than once, a ten line minimum review limit is nonsense. As a practising Yorkshireman, I expect and deliver succinctness. Let's leave shrill expansiveness to effete southerners!.

What upset me about this film was its serious omissions. Allow me to elaborate:-

The Royal Family eating off gold plate while a starving populus looks helplessly on.

The Queen ordering her Prime Minister to get the Hussars to sabre the miners marching on the Palace in protest at their 18hr working day.

The Irish, too weak to resist on their diet of blighted potatoes, forced to contribute their savings to allay the expense of the Royal Wedding.

Beefeaters preventing the ragged girl with the twisted foot from entering Parliament to get some money for her operation.

Worst of all, no mention of how the 7th Cavalry saved Prince William when his helicopter got into difficulties over Afghanistan.

Apart from these few minor gripes an excellent film.

Cinema is littered with great stage plays turned into poor film. This is not one of them. I've seen this film twice- unfortunately each time from 30 minutes in- but the 2nd viewing was better than the first.

Harvey Keitel is a first-rate actor. I've never seen a better performed drunk. Was he plied with a half bottle of whisky before the scene with the Russian was shot?. The moral dilemmas of the main characters are beautifully displayed, as is the sheer grimness of life in post WW2 Berlin.

Enough said. Why a Yorkshireman should have to write ten lines when he can say everything he wants in in five is beyond me.

I maybe shouldn't be reviewing this film, as I came in half way through, but if I'd seen it from the start I'd have turned it off.

To start with, this is a fantasy-flick. A Brit wins Wimbledon? Oh puleeze! Unfortunately it's on the night we lost to Germany in the World Cup, which doesn't help.

This is one of those Britflicks whose production values are designed to appeal to American audiences in the feeble hope that the film will make some money. This rarely comes off. We are a hard hearted unpleasant cynical race who ought to leave schmaltzy sentimentality to the Americans who are expert in it. British films made for British tastes occasionally strike it lucky over there, but in a completely unpredictable fashion. I have no idea whether this one did, but I doubt it.

Look at the storyline involving the little ballboy hit on the head. Our Hero shows him a little care and tenderness. How unbritish! In a true Britflick nobody would have cared if he'd been carried off stone dead.

This film, like so many we make, falls quite expertly between two stools. If it's on again I'll watch 'The day after tomorrow' instead. A pretty grim load of sentimental unscientific tosh, but it beats this. Or I might dig the garden.

There's an awful lot of dross in TV drama these days. That's why it's so easy to miss a pearl like Mad Men.I only came across it in series two,but was immediately hooked.Unlike the usual staccato monotone screeching that is the standard TV dialogue, these people talk in sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes intelligent conversations go on for several minutes.It is very easy to empathise with the characters, in particular the slightly lonely, sad, but intelligent and sensitive Peggy. I was a teenager in the 60's,and for me this series evokes the period really well. The dialogue crackles. The spirit of Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan lives on! (Across the pond ,anyway). Some say it is a bit too slowly paced. Rubbish! You can rush a McDonalds, but never a gourmet meal.

Some predictions for series 3. (No spoilers- I've not even read the synopses).

The libidinous Don Draper comes a terrible cropper over some woman, and gets chucked off the Board. His already dotty wife goes completely crackers and ends up in the loony bin.

The aforementioned Peggy, with her copy writing skills,takes Don's place on the Board.

As the 60's advance, the gorgeous and amply talented Joan appears prominently in every episode and takes to wearing shorter and shorter mini-skirts and skimpier and skimpier tops. This culminates in her turning up to work one day in a topless dress. Stirling Cooper (and myself) go into meltdown and the series ends.

Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh Dear. Twenty seconds of watching Joan Crawford walking around with a bucket of dead fish was enough. This film(presumably like the fish) is a stinker.She was not the first Big Hollywood Star to enter the actor's graveyard of British film-making. Lon Chaney Jr. tried it in Hammer horror. He was dead within a year. She was lucky to last 5. Hardly a cure for alcoholism is it? Anyway I've said enough. I'm turning it off. God knows why I'm supposed to write a minimum of ten lines about this nonsense, but I'll try anyway. I always thought that brevity was a virtue but not, it seems, on an IMDb comments page. I think I've made it. I'm off to bed.

Michael Caine was on the box a few weeks ago-he said there was every intention of producing a sequel, but the original flopped so badly in the US they couldn't get the finance to do it! It was shown on tv again recently -presumably to coincide with the remake-it's not aged one bit!