Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

QUEEN & COUNTRY (2014)

Writer/director John Boorman set the bar impossibly high on himself in making a sequel to his WWII childhood memory pic, HOPE AND GLORY/’87.  Returning to his sentimental education after 27 years, the schoolboy from the earlier film is now a decade older, a self-portrait of a young man newly conscripted into the army. Korea looms for many, but Boorman’s alter-ego remains stuck in, of all things, a standard-issue service comedy. Hunting, much like today’s John Boorman, for fresh aspects to Quonset hut life & drill routine tropes Abbot & Costello might recognize; overseen by Captain Queeg-like petty officers. (And a regimental clock standing in for Queeg’s famous missing strawberries.) Fortunately, Boorman has the real life experience to quickstep past the hoariest bits, along with cinematic know-how & a topnotch cast. (Richard E. Grant’s C.O. even gets a bit of human nuance.) Halfway thru, the gags grow into something more specific, emotionally complex and conflicted. (Eccentric homelife is a major plus, though a tangent involving an upper class beauty feels tacked on.) A likely swansong for this sometimes demanding director, it ends with a 16mm camera grinding to a stop. But as one quoted reviewer says in an ad, ‘Leaves you wanting more.’ A line that cuts two ways.

DOUBLE-BILL: Obviously HOPE AND GLORY, but check out Neil Simon/Mike Nichols’ BILOXI BLUES/88 for a service comedy that finds new drama in old tropes.

No comments: