Some cause must have created all this, but what caused that cause?

The Black Hole

(1979)

The big failure here isn't so much the greatest hits package script as Gary Nelson's utterly unimaginative direction and the lackluster editing (rammed home all the more forcefully with John Barry's attempting-to-be-exciting score over the top - although his music over the titles is superb).

Whenever the female lead mentions her ESP I kept thinking of Garth Merenghi. Maximillian Schell is marvellously OTT and many of the design elements are very good (certain effects, such the meteor rolling down a tunnel are still highly impressive, as is the final shot of Max in purgatory).

It's just a shame that it's all put together so unstylishly, because for a kid's film it is laudably chock full of weird-arsed ideas and eerily metaphysical suggestions.

***

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Mondo bizarro. No offence man, but you’re in way over your head.

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Schnell, you stinkers! Come on, raus!

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Isn’t it true, it’s easier to be a holy man on the top of a mountain?

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It’s not as if she were a… maniac, a raving thing.

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My Doggett would have called that crazy.

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You have done well to keep so much hair, when so many’s after it.

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I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.

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You’re a disgrace, sir... Weren’t you at Harrow?

Our Man in Marrakesh aka Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966) (SPOILERS) I hadn’t seen this one in more than three decades, and I had in mind that it was a decent spy spoof, well populated with a selection of stalwart British character actors in supporting roles. Well, I had the last bit right. I wasn’t aware this came from the stable of producer Harry Alan Towers, less still of his pedigree, or lack thereof, as a sort of British Roger Corman (he tried his hand at Star Wars with The Shape of Things to Come and Conan the Barbarian with Gor , for example). More legitimately, if you wish to call it that, he was responsible for the Christopher Lee Fu Manchu flicks. Our Man in Marrakesh – riffing overtly on Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana in title – seems to have in mind the then popular spy genre and its burgeoning spoofs, but it’s unsure which it is; too lightweight to work as a thriller and too light on laughs to elicit a chuckle.

The best thing in the world for the inside of a man or a woman is the outside of a horse.

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Look out the window. Eden’s not burning, it’s burnt.

Reign of Fire (2002) (SPOILERS) There was good reason to believe Rob Bowman would make a successful transition from top-notch TV director to top-notch film one. He had, after all, attracted attention and plaudits for Star Trek: The Next Generation and become such an integral part of The X-File s that he was trusted with the 1998 leap to the big screen. That movie wasn’t the hit it might have been – I suspect because, such was Chris Carter’s inability to hone a coherent arc, it continued to hedge its bets – but Bowman showed he had the goods. And then came Reign of Fire . And then Elektra . And that was it. Reign of Fire is entirely competently directed, but that doesn’t prevent it from being entirely lousy.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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