It’s the second of five archiveable “early funny films” from Woody It’s really his take on the Marx brothers duck soup and he uses a stand-in (contemporary for the time) Cuba and Castro instead of

After lost in translation (and largely because it came after that masterpiece) this was viewed as a major disappointment upon initial release but it’s a visually stunning film. Sofia was given a larger budget for

WarGames got a deserving screenplay nom for updating fail safe and Strangelove for the 80’s Broderick’s skill shows both intelligence and mischief- two qualities that he would do again (and more successfully) in ferris bueller’s day off Like Strangelove- we have

The comic writing by judge is superb—we may be touching the boundaries of “taste” here but I find this film to be superior, with its polish and crafted writing, too much uneven improvisation in the 

woefully underrated by the critics- 47 on mc but I have it in the archives The critics, rightly so, have a really hard time with some of the hokey courtroom stuff—the film would’ve been better

Certainly borrows equally from the sixth sense and jack clayton’s the innocents from 1961—Kidman, like the Kerr character- dominates the film which is a horror film with a young boy/girl combo Kidman is so genuine

The film starts with two stunner sequences- the car chase and the singin’ in the rain- like tracking shot Influences are a’ plenty from overt ones like goodfellas and fight club to homages to bullet

The first thing to praise is the use of natural lighting and intermixed exterior shots of the garden and house- it’s stunning photography from beginning to end and you need the full film to realize.

Many similarities in the artistic form with both Siegel’s dirty harry (also from 1971) and eastwood’s outlaw josey wales in 1976. All three are shot by Bruce Surtees (lenny 1974) – like Dirty Harry and

I had forgotten how polarizing the reviews were- I thought it was closer to like 78-85 with universal praise but it has a 70 on mc with 5 (12% 100’s which is quite high for