The Green Man is one of those movies that used to get a good deal of play on PBS stations but now seems to have disappeared. Too bad. It's a very funny example of wicked British black humor. The always excellent Alastair Sim plays an assassin attempting to blow up a fatuous politician who has found a hide-away for a tryst with his timid secretary. Raymond Huntley (perhaps best known as the family lawyer in "Upstairs, Downstairs") delivers the most hilarious soliloquy ever heard on the practices of English gastronomy in general and chopped toad as a delicacy in particular. Colin Gordon, familiar as one of the few actors to appear twice as Number Two in The Prisoner, does a send up of a rather precious poet who resembles T. S. Eliot. Wish this would appear on DVD.
Reviews
4 Reviews
The List of Adrian Messenger
(1963)
Silly, but always enjoyable. The fun of making it comes through.
22 June 2000
As is mentioned in the IMDB entry for actor Paul Frees, he often relooped other actors dialogue in the fifties and sixties. If you have a good ear you'll hear his voice throughout this movie, although he's not in the credits. It's not surprising that he was called upon to do the voices for some of the cameo stars who appear in disguise, but what is really bizarre is how his voice will appear, sometimes in mid-monologue for actors like Jacques Roux.
Sweet Smell of Success
(1957)
The most beautiful black-and-white film ever lensed!
3 November 1999
This film is justly famous for its acting, script and direction but if it had none of those qualities it would be noteworthy for James Wong Howe's magnificent high-contrast black & white cinematography. So many dazzling shots I hardly know what to single out - but the shot looking down on Broadway lit up at night is awesome. These things are hard to quantify, but if someone put a gun to my head and asked me to correctly name the most beautiful cinematography in American film, I'd have to go with this.
The Straight Story
(1999)
A beautiful, gentle film that, nevertheless, is indelibly a David Lynch movie.
29 October 1999
Richard Farnsworth, in an outstanding performance, plays Alvin Straight who is so determined to patch things up with his estranged brother (Harry Dean Stanton) he leaves his Iowa home and travels to Wisconsin on a riding lawn mower. This absurd situation must have appealed to Lynch's penchant for the bizarre, but Lynch plays it, well, straight. Basically a picaresque tale of Alvin's journey and the people he meets along the way and how he affects their lives. Most moving is a late night campfire chat with a pregnant runaway, a harrowing exchange of WWII horror stories, and the brief but poignant brotherly reunion. Lynch manages to make the material his own: odd industrial-noise sounds appear, twin brothers feud and even Everett McGill makes an appearance. Really a lovely film
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