u/Wu_Tomoki

From an interview with Josh Horowitz

Special Mission Lady Chaplin is a Eurospy movie (a genre of european spy b-movies heavily inspired by james bond) that is actually fun and stylish with an apparent budget way bigger than other movies in the genre.

It's about atomic missiles being stolen and a secret agent trying to find them, the plot is very similar to Thunderball with multiple locations arround the world and a lot of sea and submarine scenes. The titular villain played by Daniele Bianchi is the real star of the movie she is like a master assassin that have the charm and wits of a gentleman thief, she can desguise and infiltrate any place to kill, sabotage or steal anything. In daylight she is a world renown fashion stylist and the interesting thing is that her good taste reflect on her assassin job, everything she does is stylish and cool, it's one of the spy movies to better justify why a cold killer character has a glamorous and elegant lifestyle. There's an incredible train heist were you see all the planning and execution by lady chaplin; And a ship hijacking on sea trough helicopters that is as well made as any james bond set piece in the 1960s.

The movie manages to be campy but in a cool and stylish way, something I can't say about most eurospy movies, and honestly there's 10 or 12 actual james bond movies that aren't as good as this one. If you like this kind of movie give it a chance, there's no blu ray available but you can find on Youtube and other places.

I'm on a spy thriller kick recently and was presently surprised by with how much I liked this 1959 remake of The 39 Steps directed by Ralph Thomas, sure it's not as good as the Hitchcock original but it manages to have a good sense of humor, it's tone is more in line with North by Northwest almost like a farce. My main complaint is that the ending goes a little too fast, more 5 minutes wouldn't hurt. You can watch it on Tubi.

Curious that just like Thomas Crown every 20-30 years there's a 39 steps movie: the 1935 original, this 1959 remake, the 1978 more faithful adaptation of the novel and the 2008 TV movie

House of Secrets (1956) directed by Guy Green is a Spy thriller about a guy who is chosen to infiltrate an international crime organization that's creating counterfeit money.

The plot have many twists and turns, the suspense comes from the main character having to juggle his relationship between different crime associates, it's a little bit like Yojimbo or A Fistful of Dollars (or the bond movie License to Kill which is inspired by these two movies). The movie has good moments of spy process, how it is to impersonate someone (really good double agent stuff) and the main character is not invincible, if something goes wrong he needs to think quick in how to keep his disguise.

House of secrets is almost like a prototype for james bond (it's released 8 years before Dr. No), it has similar intense fistfights, it has the glamour of international cities like Marseille and Paris, it has a third act involving an airplane that is very Bond as well. The style is similar to Hitchcock's spy thrillers like The man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and North by Northwest (1959), a person getting caught in a massive conspiracy. There's one or two plot points that are not that well explained with some of the female character lacking development, other than that I liked a lot.

Just like these Hitchcock movies it was shot in VistaVision, a new 4K restoration would make this movie look incredible. However the movie is forgotten, I don't even know who has the rights or copyright, it's not available on blu-ray or digital/streaming, the only way to watch is to find a lower quality versions on the internet there's an ok version on Internet Archive.

Everyone knows how James bond in it's inception lifted some aspects from Hitchcock movies like To catch a thief, The man who knew too much remake and specially North by Northwest.

What I recently found out is that there's a spy/noir movie released arround that same time in mid to late 1950s that was also shot in VistaVision and it's pretty much a proto james bond movie, it's about a guy infiltrating a crime organization that's producing counterfeit money, the movie is House of Secrets (1956) directed by Guy Green. It's like if Licence to Kill was made in 1956, I really liked it.

Unfortunatly the movie is forgotten, it's not available in a high quality blu ray or digital version to appreciate the VistaVision Cinematography. You can find a bootleg tv version on Youtube and Internet Archive. This movie needs a 4k restoration, I wish I could contact somebody about it.

Edit: You can find it on the Internet Archive

Maybe it's the whimsical flair or the childhood wonder aspect but I've alsways thought that, I'm really glad I've seen this for the first time when I was around 12 years old because it was the right age and it is still one of my favorites from scorsese. Also looking in retrospect there's some fabelmans parallel with george melies being in the movie.

I find the Tarantino Idea of only doing 10 movies as a constructed career really redundant because auteur directors, if they can follow their creative impulses (aka don't get lost making paycheck jobs), will have connections and themes that unify their filmography. I don't understand why Tarantino (who never did a paycheck job as director) is so afraid of making a bad final film if he makes more than 10 movies.

Some of the best examples of directors with unified filmographies are Wes Anderson, James Gray and Christopher Nolan, in some ways each of their movies are sequels of one another. James Gray for example:

Little Odessa, the yards and We own the night are a trilogy of crime and family stories. Then Two Lovers feels like exploring the romance parts we didn't see in The yards and we own the night, some parallels with the characters of charlize theron, eva mendes and gwyneth paltrow.

The immigrant continues the idea of seeing the feminine perspective with a story of immigration in the 1920s and the American dream, the godfather films are criticized for not having good roles for women and The immigrant feels like a reversal on that. The lost city of Z takes place in a similar time frame in the beginning of the 20th Century and is almost an inverse of the immigrant it's not about immigration but colonialism, a story about a man having to live up to his father legacy but ultimately finding something more in the end.

Then Ad Astra takes the idea of exploration and colonialism to sci-fi space exploration as a film about not only a man living with his father's legacy but also as allegory of reaching your father in the sense of finding (or not) god, finding something more in life (just like lost city of z).

How do you follow up the sci-fi epic about finding your father in space? You tell your autobiographical story about your real parents, Armageddon time is the opposite of Ad Astra. In Armageddon time we look for the past to see how is shaping the present while Ad Astra is looking for the future to understand the present. Gray's next movie is Paper Tiger and that one started as a literal sequel to Armageddon Time, we can expect similar themes about family (and is a crime story so it will follow thing's from his first 3 movies as well).

I'm very glad I've binged most of Gray's movies in order because he is one of the best directors working today and his filmography is in constant evolution. James gray is like if the platonic ideal of 1970s american movies was a person, very inspired by Friedkin, Scorsese and (mostly) Coppola.

Now with Warner/Clockwork releasing The Devils in its original form is the full cut of THX 1138 (the one Lucas restored in 1977) the next big thing we should ask for?

The only thing released in Blu-ray is that horrible CGI sludgy director's cut of the film from 2004.

I'm currently watching the don bluth movies for the first time and is interesting how as a disney competitor some of his movies actually carries one of the main traits of the previous disney competitor fleischer studios: The perspective of tiny creatures in contrast with the human world.

The secret of nimh is a lotr style epic fantasy, but it's just rats in some farm. The cat is called dragon; harvesting season in the farm is like a great time of destruction where everyone has to move. The movie is full of this style of perspective worldbuilding, something ordinary for humans that for the rats has a different meaning and scale. An American Tail is similar, immigration story but from the perspective of the rats and their society.

Then there's Thumbelina which is Disney Princess meets Mr Bug goes to town, a clear homage to fleischer. I loved how bizarre this movie is, the animation is so detailed that sometimes it borders on that Zelda CDI creepiness, the bugs are all crazy and it has like 4 or 5 sub-plots happening at the same time, this is an insane movie I felt like watching speed racer for the first time.

The secret of nimh and An american tail don't have the visual style or cartoon logic of fleischer but Thumbelina is trying it's best to emulate that. From what I can remember the disney movies that do this style of tiny creature perspective worldbuilding are Cinderella and The princess and the frog, but even then it's not the main focus, the human perspective is more important.

I was completely surprised by this movie, the animation is so expressive and over the top with some of the most funny villains in this type of movie (the gags are even funnier than the ones in Pinocchio). I can't believe Fleischer studios only made two movies, the history of feature film animation could have been completely different if Fleischer studios had kept making movies.

A bug's Life, Antz and Bee movie are very similar to this movie, on the first go Fleischer nailed the worldbuilding of anthropomorphic bug society in one movie. Also If you have seen Secret World of Arrietty you can see the DNA of mr bug goes to town in the difference of the miniature people world and the normal human world, Miyazaki and Ghibli love this movie they have shown in their museum and helped the release of the DVD in japan.

Aside one or two visual gags with racist stereotypes (unfortunately very common at the time) I like everything about this movie, so great.

I've just seen these movies for the first time in regrettable quality, simply there isn't good restorations for Gulliver's Travels (1939) and Mr Bug Goes to Town (1941).

These are some of the first feature length animated movies, they are as important and pioneering as disney's snow white and pinocchio but it seems like nobody cares to make a good modern restoration and put it on blu-ray. They are in a gray area of public domain but paramount holds some of the copyright (and the original elements I assume). Mr bug in particular has such an impressive animation that it's baffling how there's no 4k blu ray available, watching this movie is like discovering movie canon you can easily see the trough line between it and A bug's life, Antz, Bee Movie and even Secret World of Arrietty (Miyazaki and ghibli are super fans, they even showed it in their museum and helped the release on dvd in japan).

Criterion is so rigorous with their release quality and valuing the cultural importance of the movie by itself that at this point they seem like one of the few companies that could do this properly, kino lorber announced a mr bug goes to town blu ray but it was canceled because the master paramount provided was in low quality. These movies need to be saved.