The Writer's Poke

I like War movies, but I probably like War movies that spend more time and effort asking, "What are we fighting for?"  There's gotta be some sort of balance. I don't like War movies that go so far over the line the other way that everyone is just dying to end the war and get home. If there's a war, then let the people fighting it have a reason to fight it, and let them be into fighting it, sure. But don't give me 100% propaganda, either.  As I watched this film, I started thinking: Maybe the problem is that this is more propaganda film than war film. It was made right in the middle of World War II, and while the Allies were "winning" the war in 1942, maybe they didn't completely realize that yet.  After all, Hitler has entered Paris, and the British are being bombed and they've had to evacuate Dunkirk...  This film mentions details like that, but it's more interested in following the lives of a few men who have survived having their vesse...

I guess you call this a family bi-op. It's under 2 hours, so it doesn't quite qualify as an epic. And the actual period of time it covers is very strange. The World Wars are there as almost bookends, but the film doesn't use them as the bookends. Rather, it uses the period of time the family spent in their flat as the beginning and ending points.  So much happens in this family in roughly a 20-year period, because that's all there is, 20 years. It honestly feels like it should be a 30- or 40-year period. It feels that way because Frank and Ethel Gibbons (Robert Newton and Celia Johnson) age much more than 20 years, and Frank is on the brink of retirement, which should put him closer to 60 than 40.  Overall, I guess I like that focus on the family rather than on world events. Of course the family is impacted by what's going on in the world around them, but the drama of their day-to-day lives is what matters most. They are aware of Hitler and the prospect of a new war...

Why is Charles (Rex Harrison) so blithe? I guess that's the question I never get answered. He's married to a woman for about 5 years, and she dies unexpectedly of a heart attack. Seven years later, he's married to another woman, and things seem to be fine.  Then, I guess for fun, they and another couple invite over a weird older woman for a seance. You know she's weird because she rides a bike. Anyway, she doesn't really know what she's doing, and somehow Charles's dead wife crosses over.  This starts what I guess is supposed to be a bunch of funny shenanigans, a hilarious lovers' triangle. And maybe it's serious. Maybe the dead wife is trying to kill the husband so she can have him back on the other side?  I don't know. The humor is 1940s British, but even so, it just doesn't work for me. The female ghost is green, for reasons I never figure out. And while he can't touch her, she can touch and move physical objects. She can even drive a ...

Rose (Rosalind Russell) is a vaudeville mom. Her goal in life is to make her kids stars. Actually, she wanted to be the star. She wanted to fulfill her dream through her kids. Louise (Natalie Wood) eventually gets her mom to admit it, but that's way late in the film, after Louise has basically said, "I'm not you. I'm going to do burlesque, because that's what pays the bills." The movie is an odd musical. I didn't count the number of times characters broke out into songs, but it felt like just a few times, with it mainly being Rose doing the singing. I could 100% be off on this, because Russell didn't keep my interest as an actor, but I'm not sure even Marilyn Monroe in her part would have kept my interest in this film. I get the plot, but the movie felt overly long. It goes for almost 2 1/2 hours, and I'm thinking it deserved about 90 minutes. The musical numbers were not memorable at all, and they felt somewhat off the cuff -- no rhythm, no r...

Yeah, not a surprise, but the real problem with this franchise is that it's a one-hit wonder. Is the idea novel and somewhat interesting the first time? Sure, but when you go five sequels deep, you should have developed something more than what they ended up developing.  Now, what claims to be the "final" final destination is separated by 14 years from the last sequel. That's 14 years for them to try to figure out something a little bit better, and I have to admit, I was hopeful. The opening sequence and even the first half of the film did feel slightly above the average Final Destination fair.  Over the course of the film, we get to see that maybe all of the films were "related." My man Bludworth (Tony Todd) even gets a full name in this film, and we learn just a smidge more about him -- he was the little boy at the beginning of this film...  Brief note about Tony Todd: He looks horribly thin in this film. He's bald and gaunt. I didn't know until I ...

Based on the ending death montage, I'm guessing that the writers really did think this one was the final movie in the series. And compared to the previous film, this movie did seem to have something going for it. The formula is the same as always: A major accident, with a few younger people surviving, only to realize that you cannot outlive death.  Each time, one person has the vision, and then they start to figure out there's a "pattern," and deaths start to occur in the order in which they "should have occurred." This time, we also get the wrinkle that if it's your turn to die, someone else can "take your place" which returns death's balance. The problem is: you only end up with as much time as that other person was slated to live. If you kill the wrong person and they had an extra day to live, then that's all you get.  Maybe I was most happy to see Bludworth (Tony Todd) return to the series, after being absent in the 4th film, He act...