Reviews

Vikings running around the mountains and rain forests of British Columbia.

Crazy.

I didn't care for the desaturated colours very gloomy and blah. I should have at least been able to join the rainforest scenery - I didn't. Dialog, nothing stands out. The representation of the First Nations seemed phony to me, a witches brew from aboriginal tribes across North America.

I did like the representation of the Vikings, they were unworldy and very evil looking. Well done on the costuming there. The Vikings strategy of marching across Newfoundland? To destroy a village seemed ridiculous to me. Their demise seemed something out of the Three Stooges, almost slapstick worthy. Those silly Vikings, too dim to forsee what was coming boys.

Movie's not all that great, but if you're looking for a heavy metal type violent slaughterfest, this might be for you. Otherwise avoid.

The Northlander has perhaps the most inane dialogue I have ever listened to in a movie. The sound could have been shut off, or the movie shot as a silent and I would have followed the plot just as well.

I'm not really sure what this movie was about. There are nomadic tribes in a dystopian future. Cygnus the Hunter is sent on a quest to... I don't know what. Characters wax philosophical between poorly choreographed fight scenes, but the dialogue doesn't move the plot forward. It's all rather pointless.

Scenes don't seem to go anywhere. e.g. A tribesman is hauling in a fishing net from the river, he sees something horrible in the net, falls down screaming. While fallen over he spots a smoke plume on the horizon and yells to the tribe the bad guys are coming and scampers off in terror. But what the hell was in the fishing net? At least I assume he was fishing, no one eats or drinks in the year 2961, have humans evolved to live entirely on love? Well perhaps because the bad dudes can survive in the desert-like conditions of the badlands carrying no water or food.

One of the main reasons I went to see this was it is shot in the Drumheller badlands. And we see characters running up and down the clay hills and jumping on the hoodoos. Okay. The Alberta outdoor settings, prairies and badlands, I found disappointing - looks like it was shot in fall and filmed late afternoon each day casting long shadows and giving muted colours. Everything is brown, sepia coloured, drab. I've been there, in spring and summer it's quite colourful and beautiful. A chance lost by the film makers in my opinion, filmed the wrong time of year.

This movie appears to be a Mad Max ripoff, and unfortunately a poor one. The weaponry is likely purposefully goofy, you might get a kick out of some of the crazy spears and clubs carried by the warriors. Other than that, blech.

A curiously named movie, with no plains photographed at any time, all the movie locations are forests and mountains. "Francois of the Forest" or "Michel of the Mountains" might have been more appropriate, but whatever. Perhaps John Carroll is at least thinking of plains as he sings about his love for Saskatchewan at film's beginning and end.

The movie's complete nonsense, no surprise there really. Hollywood invents the "deputy" Mountie, a civilian lawman allowed to carry a six gun and shoot at people. This bit of hokum provides us with a heavy for the story. And then there is a fur trader who carries a six gun and tries to kill people, while making a living selling fire water to Indians. Pathetic script ideas for a movie set in 1940's Canada.

John Carroll is entertaining in the traditional American playing a French Canadian sort of way, with his "eh! babee" accent.

The movie's deserving of a one star rating, but gets a bonus star from me for providing Charles Stevens the opportunity to give us his, ahem, memorable performance as Crying Loon.

Honestly I'm not sure how to rate this movie. I was laughing so hard at times I had tears in my eyes.

Any movie that tries so hard to be hip, but has a banjo in every other song, is doomed to the ridiculous.

The Hootenany circus, the grand finale of the movie, is maybe the most bizarre staging of musical numbers I have ever seen in a movie. The Gateway Trio singing "Foolish Questions" while bouncing up and down on a trampoline is the epitome of square.

On the other hand, Judy Henske torches her two songs in the movie. Wow! There's several other really strong songs as well, and also a few that are snooze inducers. The choreography is a strange mix of early Rock n' Roll, Broadway, and Hee Haw. All rolled together, the dancing is kind of great.

The plot and acting are awful, the sets cheap as can be. But if you're in a silly mood and like folk music, it's quite a movie, and I'll recommend it to you.

Mann photographs the Alberta Rocky Mountains in a superb fashion, and Jimmy Stewart and Walter Brennan give enjoyable performances as they always seem to do.

But come on Hollywood - a Mountie telling the people of Dawson City, Yukon to elect themselves a marshal (yes a marshal!) and to enforce the law themselves, then gunfighters battling it out on the streets for control of the town?

Nothing even remotely resembling that happened on the Canadian side of the border during the Klondike gold rush. Mr. Mann and company appear to have mistaken Dawson City for Deadwood, the Canadian North for the American Wild West.

Canadian viewers be prepared for a Reefer Madness type of enjoyable howl with this ludicrous plot, or, to shake your head in disgust.

Two famous personalities from Victorian England, and yet Hollywood can't be bothered giving them English accents. Laughton, despite his mutton chop sideburns and glowering demeanor, looks far too young to be Shearer's father (in actual life is only 3 years older than she). Well at least he adds some spirit to this rather stage bound, dull movie.

March didn't convince me he could write a line of poetry. The engaged cousin is a female Elmer Fudd, advewse to evew pwonouncing an R. Shearer's illness is not explained, perhaps she recovers from a bad cold, we don't know, in any event she appears remarkably fit at movie's end.

Maureen O'Sullivan, and Una O'Connor are good in supporting roles, and the costuming is well done.

I'll remember this movie for Laughton's valiant attempt at portraying a middle aged man, all the more ineffective having seen him as a middle aged man in his more recent films.

Clichéd characterizations, and a rather lifeless performance from Flynn made this film a disappointment for me.

Other low spots - mowed down 60 enemy troops in their big attack, killing them all instantly without wounding a single one. Two obligatory slaps at mosquitoes when they first walk thru the jungle, then strangely the mosquitoes disappear. Annoying is the only word I can use to describe the jungle bird calls. Terrible Japanese dialects from the Japanese troops. Digging in on a ridge line and standing up there, visible for miles when they're supposed to be hiding from the enemy.

The only thing I can recommend about the film is its score which was quite good.

If you enjoy seeing dirty Japs gunned down by machine guns, and blown up by grenades, then this is the movie for you, otherwise prepare for yawns.

Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse vacationed in Banff. There are snow capped mountains surrounding Fort Walsh in SW Saskatchewan. The Mounties had a gun battle with the Sioux, leaving many dead on both sides. You can travel by canoe from the Rockies to Fort Walsh in a day (quite a feat considering it's hundreds of miles, and there's no river).

It's all good.

Indian scouts making jungle calls to each other at night. Mighty Alan Ladd slaying men left and right, winning the heart of the beautiful woman, and never having to raise his voice or change it from a flat, dull monotone. That's the kind of men the Mounties were made of.

Best of all, Shelley Winters in a low cut dress, six gun in hand explaining "I was on my way to Battleford!"

10/10

Marvin and his Four Horsemen fight their way through North Africa, Sicily, D-Day, and the European campaign all the while in clean uniforms, and clean shaven.

The battle of the Kasserine Pass with 3 tanks, wow.

Crummy dialogue, poor special effects.

Hey, another new guy in the squad gets 3 lines - mildly entertaining trying to guess how soon he'll get killed.

Ludicrous scene in an insane asylum where a Resistance fighter feigns insanity, dancing about to phonograph music, slicing the throats of the German guards with a razor.

One of the worst war movies I've seen.

Very enjoyable musical, with Kelly and Garland dancing well together and singly nicely in harmony, too (particularly the title song). Also Judy does a really nice job of singing some WWI tunes while entertaining the troops.

Some tidbits about the movie from a Gene Kelly biography I've read:

• Fair bit of on set animosity between George Murphy and Gene Kelly. Murphy was a veteran song and dance man from many film musicals and felt he was deserving of the starring role (Kelly's) in the film. As he saw it, because it was Kelly's first film, Kelly didn't deserve the role.

• Gene coached Judy through the dance numbers, and Judy helped Gene with his acting. Apparently he received next to no acting coaching from the director or from the studio.

• If the ending feels sort of tacked on, it actually was. The original ending had Gene serve as entertainer overseas, then return home to get the girl. At a test screening, audience was 85% negative that a draft dodger should get the girl in the end, typical comment was George Murphy should get the girl, not some draft dodger. MGM re-shot it to give Gene's character a more heroic overseas tour of duty.