5-25-77 (2022)

"Utterly Charming SF Fan Biopic"

Writer-Director Patrick Read Johnson's endearing biopic, detailing how he went from movie-obsessed fan to Hollywood film-maker, is getting a digital release from 101 Films.

From the moment nine year old Patrick (John Francis Daley) sees Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY in a cinema with his parents, all he wants to do is make movies. He's aided by his parents buying him model kits and a movie camera, and by family and friend eager to join in with his hobby.

But it's much more than that. Patrick becomes obsessed with film-making, and with his film-making idols, in particular video effects wizard and SILENT RUNNING director Douglas Trumbull. He resolves to get to Hollywood and become part of the industry he loves, but he lives in a tiny town (population 750) in rural Illinois so how is he to achieve his dream?

A phone call from his mother (Colleen Camp) to the editor of American Cinematographer magazine and Patrick is on a flight to LA, where he gets to meet not just Trumbull but Steven Spielberg on the set of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. And as if that wasn't enough, he's the very first member of the general public to see an early rough cut of a film called STAR WARS. But when he returns home he finds it more difficult than he thought to decide whether he wants to go remain there or go back to California.

Apparently a true story, 5-25-77 refers to the date STAR WARS was released, and while that film features prominently, fans of other SF movies of the period, especially 2001, will have a blast with this and see part of themselves in Patrick's enthusiasm and frustrations. At 132 minutes it's perhaps a little overlong but it's a film that can stand proudly in the subgenre of 'movie about movies', and especially those about movie fans. It's at its best when it's being honest about the burning all-consuming passion so many fans have for cinema, and there are several passages of dialogue that hit home and sum up perfectly why so many people have so much love for the movies. If you're an SF movie fan you'll want to see this and if you're not it will go a good way to explaining why so many people are. Here's the trailer:

Patrick Read Johnson's 5-25-77 is out on digital from 101 Films on Monday 1st May 2023

The Last of Robin Hood (2013)

  This remarkably (and at times perhaps inappropriately) restrained biopic about the final two years of the life of Errol Flynn, and of his final relationship with underaged Beverly Aadland, gets a release in time for Christmas courtesy of Metrodome.

Teenage Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning) is a chorus line girl rehearsing for a new Hollywood musical when she’s spotted by Errol Flynn (Kevin Kline) and invited ‘back to his place’. Approaching fifty, and already infamous for his penchant for girls far younger than himself, Flynn soon finds himself hopelessly smitten with Aadland, pursuing and seducing her with intentions of helping her in her movie career.

These intentions do not go unnoticed by Beverly’s scheming, one-legged, horn-rimmed spectacle-wearing mother Florence(Susan Sarandon). A willing collaborator in Beverly’s organised rise to fame, Florence agrees to accompany Flynn and Beverly on their trips to New York and elsewhere as ‘chaperone’. Florence’s  husband leaves her in disgust, and when Flynn’s driver recognises Beverly as having attended his school and informs Flynn that she can’t be any older than fifteen, it just adds to Flynn’s problems of fading popularity and ailing health from a life of excess. 

Told in flashback, THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD is a reasonable stab at a non-judgemental, sympathetic look at the Hollywood star’s final years. Unfortunately, a bit of extra bite is just what this movie needed to elevate it above the status of an average TV Movie of the Week. There’s a fine, glossy feel to the picture, with everything shot in bright pastel colours. However, while watching it you cannot help but feel that the subject of an underage affair with a girl with a domineering mother whose own dreams of stardom were dashed when she had to have her leg off really deserves a more lurid, and perhaps lunatic, approach. One wonders what John Waters might have made of it all.

The casting is pretty good. Susan Sarandon (in a role one wishes Divine had been alive to play) manages to strike a fine balance between concerned mother and ruthlessly opportunistic hag, with the latter eventually winning out. Kevin Kline does a good job of being womanising, boozing, drug-taking Errol Flynn and still making him the extremely likeable kind of chap he obviously must have been. The only bum note is Dakota Fanning, pale and uninteresting, who looks in need of a good meal and perhaps a blood transfusion, or even some of the pep pills Flynn must have been consuming by the barrel-load at that time. 

Metrodome’s DVD contains no extras. LAST OF ROBIN HOOD is by no means a bad film, and if you’ve any interest at all in the Hollywood of this period, or if you’re fan of any of the three main stars, you’ll definitely want to give it a watch. Everyone else hopefully knows by now whether or not they need to catch up with it.

THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD is out on Region 2 DVD from Metrodome from 14th December 2015