May 28 movie: When Eagles Dare. I remembered this as being a fun WWII action movie in the tradition of, if not quite as good as, The Guns of Navarone. This time Georg and I watched it together and it seemed like a hundred flaws jumped out at me that I had never noticed before. The most obvious problem is too much talking. Richard Burton especially spend lots of time Dr. Evil fashion, explaining to everyone what just happened and why and what he's going to do about it. Georg pointed out that this isn't actually a problem in itself, rather a symptom of a bigger problem: the plot is so complicated and arbitrary that no one could follow it if Burton wasn't constantly stopping the movie to explain it to us. It really doesn't make sense, and the twists come out of left field, with no foundation.
So I was a bit disappointed with this movie. Ah well, I'll just wait for The Guns of Navarone to come around on TCM again.
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