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Friday 25 July 2014

Blue Jasmine (2013)

If you suspect that I am about to give this Woody Allen film a rave review, you couldn't be more wrong. I have, over the years, written about how much I usually enjoy his movies, even when he is going through one of his frequent unfashionable periods. I admit that there have been one or two films in the last maybe twenty years that have proved the exception to the rule, but Allen can usually be relied upon to furnish a good time (at least for me).

Had I not been incapacitated last autumn when this movie was released, you can bet that I would have been off to the cinema to see it at the earliest opportunity -- but that was not to be. Subsequently the film has been so hyped, especially for Cate Blanchett's Oscar-winning lead, that I was hoping for something really special when I finally caught up with it this week. There is no denying that she gives a barn-storming performance as the psychologically fragile spoiled wife who is forced to come down in the world when her husband (Alec Baldwin) is arrested for financial fraud. As others have pointed out, the movie is a case of 'Woody does Streetcar Named Desire', as Blanchett's Jasmine (nee Jeanette) moves from her high-flown New York life-style to her non-biological sister's seedy San Francisco apartment. Sister Ginger is played gormlessly by Sally Hawkins -- an actress who usually manages to irritate me -- and her new boyfriend is the abrasive Bobby Cannavale. Ginger's ex (they both lost all of a lottery win care of Baldwin's devious tactics) is played, surprisingly straight, by ex-potty mouth comedian Andrew Dice Clay.

Allen adopts a flash-forward, flash-back structure to contrast Jasmine's previously spoiled life style with her penniless current position, but this becomes a little disconcerting after a while, since it is abundantly clear from the moment her first-class (!) flight lands in San Francisco, that we are dealing with a damaged, erratic, and irrational personality, one who is unable to adapt to the realities of her new life. We get the message, without the unnecessary rubbing in, that her way of life in the good old days in New York was supremely shallow and materialistic. She nourishes pipedreams about her potential future as a stylish interior decorator or fashion designer, without any firm game-plan or the necessary finance to achieve these goals. She thinks she has struck the mother-lode when she meets wealthy Peter Sarsgaard, who harbours political ambitions and who is looking for a trophy wife (which she appears on the surface); however the shallowness of his supposed 'love' is evident when he becomes aware of the many lies she has proffered to protect her false image. and drops her like the proverbial hot potato.

Hawkins, meanwhile, always subservient to Jasmine has been convinced to try to 'better' her prospects and starts an affair with a married liar, before realising that Cannavale is the 'one'. In the end, Jasmine packs up her designer suitcases and leaves for an uncertain future. There is no implied resolution to her problems -- in fact there is no ending whatsoever. The film just stops. The irony of course is that Jasmine is the author of her own sad situation, since it was she who shopped Baldwin to the FBI in a fit of pique over his infidelities, despite always claiming that she knew absolutely nothing at all about his business activities.

The problem with this film is, that despite Blanchett's bravura performance, there are no likeable characters, not even the hint of a Woody chuckle, and a drama that is both downbeat and depressing. This is not the kind of good time that I count on Allen to provide.      

Friday 18 July 2014

The Sadist (1963)

A few weeks back I wrote about the book "Bad Movies We Love" which made me to watch films which I might otherwise have ignored. Another book which has encouraged me to seek out oddities is the beautifully named "Slimetime" which sells itself as 'a guide to sleazy, mindless, movie entertainment'. It started life as a 27-issue fanzine in the late '80s by its author Steven Puchalski, a self-confessed lover of bizarre and generally unheralded flicks, and his lovingly researched movies were collected into book form in 1996.

It would be both wrong and unfair to lump all of his collected films as B-movies or Trash , since a number of them are true genre classics and cult favourites, such as "El Topo" "White of the Eye", "Wings of Desire", "The Abominable Dr Phibes", and many more. However the collection also includes some pretty dire bottom-of-the-barrel titles that you would never want to see more than once (if at all), and I must admit to having sat through most of these. However some of his choices were unfamiliar to me, piquing my curiosity and earning a place on my fabled 'must see' list. The above title was one of these.

Anyone who knows anything about the provenance of this movie -- to say nothing about its exploitation title -- would approach it with doubts and caution, but come away completely convinced that it is something of a near-classic. Inspired by the success of Hitchcock's "Psycho", the hack actor/producer/director Arch Hall Sr, continued his hopeless attempt to make a film-star of his supremely untalented son, Arch Hall Jr. Junior was thrust into the limelight originally in Dad's 'masterpiece' "Eegah!", where he and his girlfriend discover a caveman who has managed to survive all these years in California living in his cardboard cave. (As one interesting footnote to movie history, the giant barbarian was played by Richard Kiel, latterly Jaws in the Bond movies). Junior also had the opportunity to display his non-existent vocal talents in this film and his next "Wild Guitar". Do yourself a favour and don't try to find this pair of time-wasters.

It is therefore amazing what novice director James Landis has managed to achieve here. The 90-minute film is set in real time and concerns three school-teachers en route to Los Angeles to watch a baseball game when their car breaks down. They pull into an apparently unattended wrecking yard to attempt repairs, puzzled by the unfinished plates of warm pie in the office. Suddenly they are set upon by lumbering. simpering hulk Hall Jr, one of cinema's all-time unredeemable pyscho-killers. Inspired again by the true story of Charlie Starkweather and his teen-aged girlfriend, whose killing spree was immortalised in "Badlands", Hall plays one Charlie Tibbs on the run after his own mini-reign of terror. He is accompanied by his very childish, giggling girlfriend, played by his previous co-star Marilyn Manning, who has no dialogue but who spends most of the film wrapped around him, whispering sweet nothings in his ear, and encouraging his excesses. 

The three teachers are older, bespectacled bloke Don Russell (quickly tortured and killed), would-be action hero Richard Alden (the only one of the cast with any sort of subsequent film career), and the uptight but dishy female lead, Helen Hovey, who Hall enjoys pushing around and casually molesting. She is in fact the heroine of the movie (spoiler: the only survivor) and does a reasonable job. Pity she never made another picture -- I gather she was a Hall cousin roped into the enterprise. With its single set and minimal plot it is staggering that the suspense successfully builds. No relief appears when two motorcycle cops stop by for some cold cokes from the fridge (apparently played by off-duty policemen with their own machines); Hall blithely mows them down to the 'music' of the police radio in the background telling them to be on the look-out for the fugitives. One just doesn't know when the next bit of random violence will raise its head, right through the scary and horrifying final scenes -- guaranteed to provide nightmares for days to come!

The film also benefits from its magnificent photography, the first American job of work for Hungarian refugee Vilmos Zsigmond, subsequently one of the most lauded cinematographers of the 20th Century. He successfully captures the heat, agony, and hopelessness in this wasteland of wrecked cars. Despite itself, the film is something very special.  

Friday 11 July 2014

A Disappointment and a Surprise

I'm afraid it's been another one of those weeks where my film-viewing has been largely uninvolving, especially when you think that I sat through two longish documentaries on cycling-cheat Lance Armstrong. Ours is a keen cycle-race household -- well really Michael far more than me, so the two movies aired to coincide with the start of the Tour de France were required viewing for us. However one would have been more than enough, since although we are probably more familiar than most with the cast of characters and the historic footage, the two films were overwhelmingly repetitive. Armstrong does comes across in the end as the nasty do-anything-to win villain that we always suspected was lurking there under the surface, rather than the holier-than-thou cancer-survivor-becomes-Superman image he sought.

Anyhow back to the two films headlined above. From this week's selection of Sky premieres, we first watched the so called pick of the bunch "We're the Millers" which was a box-office hit -- and then, somewhat reluctantly, "Sunshine on Leith", a Scottish 'musical' which sounded potentially dire. The 'Millers' movie should have been cast-iron entertainment, especially since Jennifer Aniston films are usually guaranteed hits because of the goodwill the actress manages to retain. In this one she plays a stripper (woo-hoo! and is given the opportunity to display her well-toned 44-year old body), who needs money, and is recruited by her drug-dealing neighbour, Jason Sudeikis, to pose as his wife. The idea is to play 'Happy Families' for the border guards as they attempt to bring back a huge stash of drugs from Mexico -- something Sudeikis has agreed to do for local drug kingpin Ed Helms to get himself out of a financial hole. For the balance of the family group Sudeikis recruits another neighbour, dorky teenager Will Poulter (the British lad is having a surprisingly buoyant career in American flicks) and street-punk Emma Roberts.

This mismatched bunch set off on their naughty adventure and are forced to deal with nasty Mexican villains, a double-crossing Helms, and another RV-travelling family comprised of a jaded treasury agent, his uptight teenaged daughter, and his horny wife. Take it from me, very little in the way of jolly japes ensue. But of course our four main protagonists, despite their obvious differences, do end up as the happy family they have been pretending to be. Overall one big disappointment.

As for 'Sunshine', a low-budget movie from sophomore director Dexter Fletcher (better known here as an actor), this really turned out to be the proverbial ray of sunshine. Based on a 2007 stage production by a local Scottish repertory company and featuring the music of The Proclaimers (a pop-folk groups headed by the twin brothers Reid), the story concerns a pair of soldiers/friends returning to Edinburgh after a tour of duty in Afghanistan.  Davy and Ally are played by George MacKay and Kevin Guthrie, both totally unknown to me as was most of the remaining cast. The only 'big' names are Jane Horrocks and Peter Mullen, playing one set of parents, and it is just as well that there was a subtitle option since I never can understand a word that Mullen says and could well have had the same problem with the rest of the performers.

Anyhow we follow the lads as they attempt to adjust to civilian life, physically unscarred by their military duty unlike their badly-disabled buddy in the local rehab unit. They look for work and love, all of this punctuated with The Proclaimers' catchy tunes. I confess I knew nothing of their music prior to watching this film, but it is joyful and infectious -- and the group's hits such as 'Let's Get Married', 'Letter from America', and 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)' are slotted into the action without too much contrivance. Unlike recent big budget musicals like the over-hyped "Les Mis" and the over-the-top "Mamma Mia", this film is small, unbloated, and nearly perfectly formed. The final scene at the rail station is reminiscent of the happy conclusion to "Slumdog Millionaire", but writ large with what seems to be half the population of Edinburgh in attendance singing. Even if true love doesn't work out for one of the pair, it's a really feel-good movie. 

Friday 4 July 2014

The Pleasure Seekers (1964)

Once upon a time there was a really nifty film magazine called Movieline. It tread a fine line between those artsy-fartsy dry highbrow film journals and the more populist fare favoured by teenagers and fan-boys. I recall with fondness that their letters page said that they welcomed correspondence from readers who could spell! It was a hip joy to read and had some really literate and amusing writers on its staff, like the irrepressible Joe Queenan. Needless to say it has been out of business for years, failing to move successfully from print to the internet.

One of the magazine's best features was a regular column called 'Bad Movies we Love' and in 1993 these were collected in a paperback edited by Edward Margulies and Stephen Rebello, with a forward by Sharon Stone (many of whose own movies were featured). The columns continued after the book's publication and together they formed the basis of one of my many lists -- 'bad' films that I had yet to view, knowing that most of these would fall into the category of 'so bad, they're good'.

The above title is one of their featured movies although rating only one star out of four, their top rating being 'so wretched and so lovable that you should get your hands on it right now'; this one was more in the make your own mind up category. Directed by Romanian-born Jean Negulesco, his is not a name that one immediately associates with top-flight movie-making, although he had a long and busy career and can boast some pretty good pictures in his filmography -- movies like "The Mask of Dimitrios", "Johnny Belinda", the l953 "Titanic", and "Daddy Long Legs".

He then had a run of successes as a 'trio of starlets' specialist with hits like "How to Marry a Millionaire", "Three Coins in the Fountain", and "The Best of Everything". Some bright studio ideas man had the brilliant thought of updating 'Three Coins' by moving the action from Rome to Madrid and "The Pleasure Seekers" is the hilariously bad result. The trio in this instance are Carol Lynley, Pamela Tiffin, and Ann-Margaret. The movie is largely a showcase of sorts for the latter, who at least has maintained a reasonable career over the years. Lynley is unbelievably still working but has done nothing particularly memorable in these 50 (!) intervening years. Tiffin, so perfectly-cast in the 196l romp "1, 2, 3", gracefully retired in the l970s.

Anyhow, we are now largely in Madrid although the film plays like a promotional travelogue for Spain with side-trips to Toledo and Malaga and lovingly photographed close-ups of Velazquez' "Las Meninas" and various El Greco paintings, actually filmed in the Prado. We are invited to follow the ups and downs in their love lives, Ann-Margaret with a handsome young doctor who has nearly run her down with his motorcycle, Tiffin with rich playboy Tony Franciosa, and Lynley torn between a young reporter and her aging boss, Brian Keith, in the publishing office where she supposedly works. Her work seems to consist of pouring coffee for Keith each morning.

Still the three seem well enough off to share a sprawling flat, where they spend most of their time prancing around in bath-towels, baby-doll nighties, sexy undies, or long sweatshirts, always with high heels and full make-up, even when they have just woken up. Ann-Margaret is  the most worldly and sexually experienced of the three, with Lynley and Tiffin coming off as professional virgins. A-M is given a selection of soppy songs to belt out including one appearance at a high-class party where she comes on stage after a professional flamenco dancer has 'entertained' us for what feels like hours; she's in flamenco gear too but her dancing is far more bump and grind. She's a curvy minx but the wide-screen cinemascope ratio makes her look rather chubby, and part of her so-called 'character development' is stuffing her face at every meal.

Naturally the course of love does not run smooth and all three are ready to pack up and go home before the obvious happy endings. Lynley is particularly upset when Keith's wife, an ill-used Gene Tierney, has the nerve to call her a little tramp. Tiffin's beau suggests that they should become intimate to decide whether they are compatible (the nerve of some people) and the worthy doctor 'can't afford me' moans Ann-Margaret.

It's not the trashiest of movies nor is it worthy of a higher accolade in Margulies and Rebello's wonderful book, but it's sufficiently silly that you could have a good time watching its various excesses, giggling to yourself merrily.