FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

JohnWelles "Billion Dollar Brain" (1967), directed by the iconoclastic Ken Russell, in the 1970s a firebrand of British cinema. This was the third and final Harry Palmer spy film, following "The IPCRESS File" (1965) and "Funeral in Berlin" (1966), based on Len Deighton's popular novels, Palmer had been pitched as an anti-James Bond. Michael Caine as the bespectacled and cockney hero was certainly far away from the suave glamour of Sean Connery's Bond movies and seemed to inhabit a recognisable Swinging Sixties London. Yet after the dour realities of the previous two films, which are closer to le Carré than Ian Fleming, Russell makes a spy film that is as much a parody of the genre as it is a thriller.Caine looks consistently bemused by the intrigues and betrayals after encountering his old friend Leo Newbigen (an excellent Karl Malden who conveys his character's unease and unreliability). Once Midwinter's plot emerges (Ed Begley who overacts outrageously), the entire facade of the film threatens to crumble. Russell constantly undercuts our expectations: the Soviet authorities, represented by a faintly ridiculous Oskar Homolka, are seen as essentially reasonable and as keen as MI5 to avert World War Three, while Midwinter's base, run by a giant computer that is coordinating his plan, is so over the top that it could be production designer Syd Cain commenting on his own work for "From Russia with Love" (1963). Russell extends the none-too-serious tone with Caine getting beaten up and knocked out more than everyone else and the entire climax is a replication of Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky" (1938) ending, with its battle on a frozen lake. There's no denying the skill with which Russell directs the whole farrago, particularly the scenes with Caine stumbling across the frozen Finnish landscapes, benefiting enormously from shooting on location.Other treats are Billy William's elegant cinematography, the entire title sequence with its elaborate computer motifs and Richard Rodney Bennett's thundering, highly romantic piano score, borrowing liberally from Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky, strangely fitting the action on screen and helps maintain the tension when it seems as if Russell is engaged with other tangents such as the subplot of Françoise Dorléac and her ambiguous relationship with Karl Malden. The film as a consequence, isn't brilliant, its energies dissipated by too many digressions, but "Billion Dollar Brain" still provides a lot of entertainment, partly as it playfully rejects so many of the clichés of the genre that it's nominally a part of.

jjnxn-1 Enjoyable if dated, they are still using punch cards to program their computers!, espionage thriller with a solid cast. Caine is cool as ice as the reluctant protagonist casting a jaundiced eye on all the shenanigans going on around him. Francoise Dorleac is a lovely mystery woman although her character seems to vanish at several key points in the film when it feels like she would be there. This might be because she was killed in a traffic accident while the picture was still filming necessitating a rethinking to still make her completed work usable. She's quite magnetic, her resemblance to her sister Catherine Deneuve is striking, and her death cut short a career that was already very successful in France and was starting to expand worldwide. Ed Begley also stands out, having a great time as a crazy old coot. Subtle he ain't but memorable for sure.

jzappa Michael Caine's Harry Palmer is found as his messy London office is rummaged by a white-gloved POV, a Bogie picture next to a Dolly Read centerfold. Col. Ross quickly ships him to Latvia on assignment, the lure is a Thermos bottle full of powerful eggs, the Richard III opener is used as code word. The wild pile-up effect is the intention of Ken Russell, who occupies the spy franchise and scoffs at its proud conventions, Karl Malden nude in a snowed-in sauna cackling "Don't be so British!" to his reserved company. It's not an issue of carving the genre for art's sake or tenaciously decomposing it into simplicity, but of conceding its comic book cheekiness and whooshing through, playing up every gag. Pop culture's glam-Russkies are the key aim early on, from the packaged introduction to the Crusade for Freedom Organization trying to misrepresent a Beatles record before posturing for snapshots at a wayside heist.The second half is a cowboy barbecue by Leni Riefenstahl and Ed Begley's gallant, visionary fire and brimstone as a derisive, hilarious caricature of right-wing Texas oil millionaires, killing for freedom, "with God on our side." Oscar Homolka, a Lenin relic from Hitchcock's Sabotage, sobs to Shostakovich to rebut notions of Russell's "impersonal" attachment. Additional evidence is given in the path of bawdy engravings leading up to a body with a frost-bitten face, and the enormous ice-breaking climax through which an Eisensteinian take-off happens en route to Romancing the Stone. Where the Bond films flash dispassionately with excellence, Russell here knocks the Get Smart frills into a fragmentarily unconventional flurry, preferring the crash-diving instinctual human trends over the clanging mechanical brain: If not art then "momentary interest," as Homolka says.Writer John McGrath keeps the plot leisurely in advancing and when unraveled feels unintelligible, even for this Bond brand of spy film, merging mass-produced visual commodities with creative storytelling, where plot is usually considered extraneous. Nevertheless, the whole cast is excellent, and the film perseveres with ample deceptions, revelations and amusingly eccentric idiosyncrasies.

MrOllie I enjoyed both The Ipcress File and Funeral in Berlin but not Billion Dollar Brain. Whilst the first two films in the trilogy had a feeling of realism about them, Billion Dollar Brain felt like it was just a send-up of the spy world(which maybe is was meant to be). From the opening James Bond type titles I felt that it was being played tongue-in-cheek. We even have a wild eyed maniac type character who wants to take over the world in the form of Ed Begley. Perhaps if Ipcress and Funeral had not been serious visits into the espionage world than Billion Dollar might be viewed differently.Finally, the soundtrack to this film is pretty bad, which is a shame as it was written by the usually excellent Richard Rodney Bennet who wrote the wonderful soundtrack for the Julie Christie film 'Far From the Madding Crowd'.