Pretty Pink Patty's Pictures

The First Born (1928)

2012-02-01T09:44:00.001Z

The above silent film was recently restored from an old nitrate print in the BFI's Archives fleshed out with missing footage from a George Eastman House 16mm print and it premiered at the last London Film Festival. We thought about applying for tickets, but our experience with previous similar premieres put us off -- namely waiting for ages while all the invited so-called VIPs drifted in to take the best seats and then suffering through a plethora of self-congratulatory speeches before the film was actually screened. So we waited for its first subsequent showing at the National Film Theatre. Even so, the trio providing the music wandered in some many minutes late and we were then 'blessed' by some nearly inaudible remarks from one of the curators, which seemed to go on ad nauseum. How one must suffer for one's pleasures -- ha!

Anyhow, how was the film? The answer is interesting but more than a little flawed despite the hoo-hah on its re-emergence. The film was co-written and directed by Miles Mander, based on his own novel and play. Mander was a colourful character who enjoyed a varied selection of careers, from sheepfarming in New Zealand in his twenties, then novelist, aviator, radio journalist, playwright, would-be politician, and actor. He is probably best known as the latter when he relocated to Hollywood in the late 1930s and took on a number of showy roles often as a somewhat slimy villain. The other two leads in this movie also went on to Hollywood careers: Madeleine Carroll -- here dark-haired but best known as the blonde female lead in "The 39 Steps" (1935) -- and John Loder amongst the more wooden handsome leading men of his day.

The film's co-writer was Alma Reville, aka Mrs. Alfred Hitchock, and a flawed case could be made that this movie is on a par with Hitchcock's own early films. It isn't! Mander's directing debut has occasional inventive touches in the telling with the odd effective use of the camera, but by and large it is statically lensed in the old theatrical style. The story concerns wealthy cad Mander married to Carroll; he goes off to Africa in disgust because she has been unable to provide him with a yearned-for man-child and enjoys his liaisons with dusky maidens. In his absence she begins a flirtation with Loder and is encouraged by a vampish friend to do whatever might be necessary to furnish an heir for Mander and re-win his affections. As luck would have it, her manicurist is 'in trouble' having been left in the lurch by the fellow who claimed he would marry her and Carroll convinces her to let her pass off the newborn child as her own. Mander is immediately enthralled with the news and rushes back to the family home. Even after the couple subsequently manage to produce a second son, he is only interested in 'his' first-born.

However he is far from a reformed character and soon begins an affair with their mutual vampy friend, who knowingly hints that he may not be the child's father. Despite his decision to stand for Parliament in the area's "safe" seat, he and Carroll become more estranged and things come to the breaking point just before the election. His sudden death down an open elevator shaft after an argument with his mistress is just about the only jump-in-your seat moment in this fairly stodgy film. Carroll still refuses Loder's overtures thinking that Mander did truly love her in his heart of hearts, until the final (not unexpected) twist drives her into his arms.

This was another film-going experience in the category of "glad to have seen it, but once is enough". One major problem is that despite his many would-be talents, Mander was just too inexpressive an actor to rise to the role he had written for himself -- fine in support, but not good enough for a lead. Carroll was adequate, if not exciting, in the skimpy role provided, while Loder was well just Loderish. Stephen Horne who wrote and performed the new score for the film showed his usual talent for bringing the silent screen to life -- except in this instance it was all just a bit too fortissimo and distracting to make the perfect merger of sound and image.

The Boy Friend (1971)

2012-01-25T09:45:00.001Z

Since his death a few weeks ago, the BBC (but not any of the other channels) have shown several films, two of his brilliant musical biopics made for television, and a documentary in tribute to the flamboyant British director Ken Russell. I have had mixed feelings about his feature films, previously only having acquired copies of "Billion Dollar Brain" (1967), "The Devils" (1971), and "Tommy" (1975) from his best British period, plus two unusual and fascinating movies from his brief flirtation with Hollywood: "Altered States" (1980) and "Crimes of Passion" (1984). I did, not long ago for curiosity only, acquire a copy of "Lisztomania"(1975) which I found nearly unwatchable. He remained prolific, against the odds, but unfortunately most of his more recent output, like "Fall of the Louse of Usher" (not a typo!) in 2002, was underfunded and amateurish. However I took the opportunity during the recent showings to revisit "Women in Love" (1969) -- Oscar glory for Glenda Jackson -- and the above film which I'd not seen in years.

Gosh I was pleasantly surprised. On its release the critics turned against him en masse, accusing him of not only ruining Sandy Wilson's nostalgic, period stage musical (the breakout performance for Julie Andrews), but of singlehandedly jeopardizing the progress of British filmmaking. It's actually a fine piece of work, as Russell opened out the original script to incorporate his own peculiar tribute to Hollywood musicals in general. One reviewer on IMDb said that this movie is to musicals as "Blazing Saddles" is to westerns -- a good analogy. The basic story of a fourth-rate seaside troupe in the 1920s performing their cliched drama to a scant audience is supplanted by dreams of the lavish production that it might have been under the eye of someone like Busby Berkeley. One critic went so far to criticise having Berkeley-like extravaganzas with their synchronised patterns in a period before they were 'invented'. What nonsense, since Russell's dipping into the Busby heritage is nearly every bit as good as the work of the Master.

MGM originally acquired the rights to the stage show for a straight movie adaptation which was never made and no one was prepared for what the imaginative Mr. Russell could do with the same basic material. While possibly a little too long with one too many musical numbers (the film was cut by nearly half an hour for its original release -- now thankfully restored), it is vintage and typical Russell with blazing wit and ultimately charm. He was also criticised for his choice of cast, but model of the day Twiggy is actually remarkably good with a fine singing voice and not overly clumpy dancing when accompanied by the Royal Ballet dancer Christopher Gable, who also did the choreography. The larger than life stage actor Max Adrian is great fun as a has-been pompous performer. The charismatic (normally villain) Polish actor Vladek Sheybal -- also showcased in "Women in Love"-- plays a visiting Hollywood producer whom the players strive to seduce with their not-so-remarkable talent. The long-legged American dancer Tommy Tune is here part of the minor cast which also includes a number of British stalwarts, with only 'National Treasure' Barbara Windsor being a grating presence. Finally as favour to Russell, having refused a role in "The Devils" Glenda Jackson has a priceless cameo as the injured diva whose accident gives the assistant stage manager cum understudy Twiggy her first stage role. You know the saying -- "go out there a youngster, but come back a star" or somesuch.

All of the 30s musical cliches are present and correct, but Russell gives them such a cheerful spin that the movie ranks with his very best. The man was capable of taking nearly any subject and presenting it in ways that would just never occur to lesser talents. He may have been somewhat underestimated and dismissed in the past, but I think his creative reputation will continue to grow.

Cold Fish (2010)

2012-01-18T10:06:00.001Z

If you go back in my archives you will find a review in June 2011 for director Shion Sono's previous film "Love Exposure". http://pppatty.blogspot.com/2011/06/not-in-english-language.html

I said at the time that I had only previously seen the director's weird 2007 flick "Hair Extensions" about mutant murderous hair (!) and that I really needed to explore his back catalogue, especially the well-thought of "Suicide Club" from 2000. Well, I never did do anything about this, although I made a point of finding a copy of the above movie which carries on his particular brand of especially Japanese weirdness. If the story were not loosely inspired by actual events, namely the so-called "Saitami serial murders of dog lovers", one would not begin to believe the perversities on display.

Instead of dog-lovers, tropical fish enthusiasts have been substituted -- which is pretty strange for starters. Our so-called hero Shamoto lives with his teenaged daughter and second young wife, whom he hastily wooed and married after his first wife's death; other than fish, his main interest is in the peace and tranquility that the local planetarium provides. The two women hate each other with a vengeance and periodically come to violent blows. They live and work in a small tropical fish store which Shamoto's wife faithfully tends, while the surly daughter shows her contempt both for the 'whore' that her father has married and for her dad as well. One evening they receive a call that the youngster has been caught shoplifting and they hie off to the shop to try to resolve this embarrassing situation. The shop manager is intransigent that the police should be called, but a persuasive customer called Yukio Murata convinces him to show lenience. Murata is the proprietor of a rather swish tropical fish emporium and insists that the family, there and then, come with him to view his spectacular new species. Partly because they are grateful that he has intervened on their daughter's behalf and partly because they are genuinely interested, they go with him. And so begins a very bloody saga of manipulation and intimidation by the imposing and charismatic Murata.

For a start he convinces the pair to let the daughter come to live and work at his emporium together with an assortment of scantily-clad wayward young girls, looked after by his own attractive and nubile wife Aiko. He next not so much seduces but rapes Shamoto's ripe wife, who it turns out actually likes a bit of masochistic violence. He tells her that he can make her husband rich if he becomes a partner in his enterprises, and eager to please her, Shamoto arranges to meet with him. At his office he finds Murata's slimy lawyer and a would-be client whom they convince to give them 10 million yen for a very exotic specimen. Although the client is dubious, he is impressed with Shamoto's appearance and earnestness and hands over the dosh; no sooner is this done than Aiko brings in a poisoned drink and the four of them stand by and watch the punter slowly die in agonising pain. Shamoto is horrified, but he is too weak a character and too intimidated by Murata's threatening behaviour, that he not only does not contact the police, but timidly helps to wrap the body, load it in his car, and drive Murata and Aiko to their family cottage in the woods (loaded inexplicably with Christian religious statuary and icons). There he watches in horror as the two of them joyfully dismember the corpse in rivers of blood, strip and burn the bones to ash, and cut the flesh into meat-size chunks (a treat for gore-whores) to feed to the fish in a nearby stream -- making the corpse "invisible" according to Murata, who adds that this is the 58th time he has done this.

Worried for his wife and daughter he is truly at Murata's beck and call, and again assists with the disposal of the murdered lawyer (he had become too greedy) and his driver, who are dispatched after Aiko lures the fat and ugly man into an extended session of kinky nooky which the driver is ordered to watch. On the return journey -- after feeding the local fishes -- Murata forces Shamoto to have sex with Aiko. As he climaxes, something snaps and he stabs her in the neck, then turning the force of his repressed fury on her husband. He returns the wounded woman to the cottage to dispose of this new corpse in the usual bloody way. He goes home a changed and violent man, forcing himself on his wife knowing that she has been with Murata and bashing his daughter about, before telling the police to meet them at the cottage for the film's thundering and gory denouement.

I was not at all familiar with any of the actors, but they all gave themselves over to the perversities called for with apparent abandon. I have never seen so much gratuitous nudity in a mainstream film and somewhat unusually both of the lead actresses were more generously endowed than one expects Japanese ladies to be and the director merrily exploited their buxomness. I do not think that this movie could have been made in anything but its Far Eastern setting, so a Hollywood remake is thankfully unlikely. However, I must confess that the film certainly worked its perverse charm for me, despite its leisurely running time. I really MUST look more closely at the director's other work...

Hereafter (2010)

2012-01-11T10:19:00.000Z

One hardly knows what to expect from a Clint Eastwood-directed film. The 81-year old director seems to have no trouble keeping up his incredible pace of roughly one new movie per year -- but unlike his earlier output of westerns and thrillers, he now seems eager to try his hand on a surprising variety of subjects. Since his geriatric comedy "Space Cowboys" in 2000, he has given us the impressive Pacific war diptych of "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima", a Nelson Mandela biopic "Invictus", and now this meditation on mortality -- possibly not a surprising subject for a man of his years. It has, however, proved to be something of a disappointment to his faithful fans, being a leisurely and somewhat flawed examination of the afterlife, presented with a minimum of mysticism and a maximum of matter-of-factness.

The film reunites Eastwood with one of his previous film's leads, the ever-so-busy Matt Damon, who plays blue-collar worker George in San Francisco, running away from his previous notoriety and troubling career as a pyschic able to communicate with the past and the deceased. Meanwhile in Paris, we have hotshot television journalist Marie, Cecile De France, becoming increasingly troubled by her miraculous escape from death during a Far Eastern tsunami while on holiday with her lover/producer, where she experienced visions of near-death. While in London we have the sad tale of devoted young twins Marcus and Jason, trying to avoid being taken into care as they scheme to protect their beloved drug-addicted mother. When Jason -- the more voluble of the two -- is killed by a car trying to escape from a street gang after his mobile phone, Magnus is placed with foster parents.

Meanwhile back in San Francisco George is made redundant and is pressured by his brother, Jay Mohr, to resume his lucrative career as a psychic. In Paris, Marie is encouraged to take leave from her stressful job to write a book -- purportedly on Mitterand but ultimately on her fascination with life after death. And in London poor little Magnus wants to reconnect with his dead brother, but finds no help from the psychic charletons that abound. About the only thing that keeps this film moving is wondering how in the world the three strands of the tale will ever merge, and Eastwood certainly takes his time doing this -- which is where he lost so many of his viewers who found the procedings tedious. For example, we follow George's attendance at a evening-school cookery class where a potential romance with fellow student Bryce Dallas Howard becomes something of a McGuffin after she pesters him for a psychic reading and he reveals parts of her past which she would prefer to forget. Marie becomes totally absorbed in her research, driving off to Switzerland to interview Marthe Keller's clinician, and ultimately finds that her publishers are not the least bit interested in the book that she has produced and that her boyfriend has found a new squeeze in the meantime. And Magnus who keeps running away from his foster home, finds himself narrowly escaping a bombing on the London Underground when Jason's hat which he has taken to wearing blows off on the crowded platform and in his need to retrieve it just misses getting on the fatal carriage.

So how does this all pull together after some 100 minutes of exposition? George escapes from his greedy brother's scheme and uses his redundancy money to visit London, it previously having been established that he is a big Charles Dickens fan. Claire finds an English publisher for her manuscript and goes to London to promote the volume at a major book fair, which George is also visiting to hear Derek Jacobi read Dickens. And poor old Magnus is dragged to the same venue by his foster parents to see one of their previous foster children who is now a successful author; there he recognizes George from the photo on his defunct website and follows him back to his hotel, standing outside in the cold until George takes pity on him, touches his hand, and gives him the will to carry on living without Jason. The grateful child uses his computer skills to find out where Claire is staying in London, having observed that George was very taken with her at the fair, and sets up the final action for a boy-gets-girl happy ending -- all something of a dramatic contrivance from the writer of the original screenplay, Peter Morgan.

While it is largely an intelligent movie, which held my interest despite its longeurs, on balance it seems like something of a misfire from Eastwood, who also composed the film's not so special music. He makes interesting use of the locations in the three cities, particularly in London, although he slightly ruined the reality for us natives by fabricating a non-existent entrance to the tube station at Charing Cross -- which incidentally was not one of the stations hit by terrorist explosions. After some impressive early scenes of the devastating tsunami (played out in French with subtitles!), the action slows down to a leisurely stroll into the problems of our three geographically separate protagonists and I can understand why only the more forgiving viewer would stick with the slow plod toward the movie's denouement.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

2012-01-04T09:56:00.002Z

Having seen the original Swedish film from 2009 twice, as well as the two sequels, and having read all three books, I expected David Fincher's American remake to verge on the superfluous. I must confess, however, that he has made a thoroughly enjoyable film. I have liked but not gone overboard on his previous films, with the possible exception of "Benjamin Button" in 2008, but he has brought a professional gloss to this remake which was somehow lacking in the Swedish original. The first film was very involving and completely entertaining, but as I said at the time not exactly a particularly fine example of moviemaking -- rather more like a long and definitely superior television movie. What Fincher has accomplished is to bring his cinematic skills to the tale's exposition, as well as providing a product for those cinema-goers who either don't like reading or who definitely don't like reading subtitles.

His version often benefits from having more recognizable actors in the main cast. Frankly, while he does a perfectly adequate job, Daniel Craig -- despite his James Bond popularity -- brings nothing new to the lead role of Blomkvist the disgraced journalist hired to solve the Vanger family mystery. Rooney Mara, on the other hand, gives a daring spin to Noomi Rapace's excellent punk hacker Lisbeth Salander -- not that she was widely known before this role -- and it should be a career-boosting performance. It is with the major supporting roles that familiarity helps, particularly with Stellan Skarsgard's snarling villain, as well as starry turns from Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright, and Joely Richardson. Interestingly enough Fincher chose to film the flick in its original Swedish setting, rather than moving the action Stateside, and the bulk of the supporting cast are indeed Swedish, although there is little consistency amongst the large cast as to who would and who would not speak the dialogue accented.

Fincher and his screenwriter Steven Zaillian have taken certain liberties with the original text, which need not upset the purists in the audience. In particular they have ignored the fact that Blomkvist is awaiting a prison sentence for libel. Secondly they have included some add-nothing scenes with the daughter from his dissolved marriage -- apparently as a result of discovering that one of the actresses on set was the real daughter of the original lead Michael Nyqvist. Most importantly they have changed the ending of the mystery, although surprisingly this does not seem to detract in any way. They could also be accused of having glammed up the locations -- the Millennium magazine offices in particular are a heck of a lot swisher than the rather basic original setting. They have also included some rather more explicit sexual scenes than are perhaps needed, but together with the flashy cutting between scenes of the ongoing action, these keep the viewer riveted to the exposition. The only complete misfire was the strange attempt to link the serial killer's victims to anti-Semitism, since not only Jewish females have biblical-sounding names.

I understand that the movie has been doing patchy business in the States and may not be considered sufficiently successful to warrant the two sequels. In a way this is a shame, since Fincher has done a commendable job at liberating the story from its arthouse audience. Part of the problem seems to be that the movie was released during the run-up to Christmas, where less black and more family-friendly films are the popular norm. It is also possibly too long for holiday viewing and suffers from an absence of big marquee names to draw in the punters. A different release date might have found the wider audience that this movie definitely deserves.

A review of re-views

2011-12-30T11:42:00.001Z

Since there was so little new of interest on the box I found myself re-watching a number of previously seen flicks with surprisingly mixed reactions -- some movies seem to age reasonably well (and not just the so-called 'classics') while others are even more boring the second time around. Let's consider one from each category:

Love Actually (2003): I asked my house guests if there was any one movie from my sprawling collection that they would like to see and the l2-year old in the party asked for this title which I gather she had seen previously at a friend's house. It turns out that the film actually has a 15 certificate and should not be viewed by anyone under that age. Ha! One forgets that most 12-year-olds nowadays are 12 going on 25... Incidentally her younger sister put on a pair of earphones to block out the many 'naughty' words.

Anyhow the film has held up reasonably well although in the great scheme of things it could be considered a contemporary movie. Like so many subsequent and lesser films like "Valentine's Day" and the dreadful "New Year's Eve", it is a compendium of a number of 'love' stories in the broadest sense of the term; we follow the paths of the various characters as they cross and interact in the run-up to Christmas week. Some of these stories are far better than others and one or two were so dreary that I had forgotten about them completely like the nude couple pretending to make love in increasingly convoluted positions for a sex education video. (Not what I would have selected for l2-year viewing). Some tales verged on the stupid like the sex-starved Australian who decides to spend the holidays in Milwaukee where he thinks all the nubile young American chicks will fall for his 'cute English accent'. However there were sufficient strands amongst the balance to make happy viewing.

In particular, veteran actor Bill Nighy found a break-out role as a washed-up pop singer trying to flog one of his old hits as a potential Christmas Number One. Each time his story was picked up smiles were guaranteed. Then there was the rather sweet tale of writer Colin Firth discovering that his live-in girlfriend has been having it away with his brother, going off to write at a cottage in Provence, and falling for his Portuguese housekeeper -- and she for him although neither could communicate in the other's language. Amusement too could be found in the strand of floppy-haired Hugh Grant's newly-elected bachelor Prime Minister falling for one of his staff but appalled to catch her in an embrace with the visiting U.S. President -- Billy Bob Thornton eschewing Bill Clinton. Then there was another heart-warming tale as recently widowed Liam Neeson bonds with his young son who is desperate to make an impression on a girl in his class who is about to return to America. Not all of the stories were light-hearted: there was Emma Thompson discovering that hubby Alan Rickman has succumbed to the office minx and poor old Laura Linney desperate to connect with one of her co-workers but forever at the beck and call of her mentally ill brother. On balance, however, this was an inspired choice for all of us -- except probably the children!

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964): I have never been terribly taken with any of the run of Epic sagas that were spawned in the '50s and '60s as the studios' response to the threat of television. Their theory was to look to historical subjects on the wide, wide screen, with lush costuming, big music, extravagant set pieces, and a cast of 1000s. Initially such films did well and were considered suitable viewing for a family day out, but as tastes changed and movie-going gradually became the preserve of the younger generation, the studios began to find diminishing returns. A notorious example was the out-of-control cost-spiraling extravaganza that became Elizabeth Taylor's "Cleopatra" (1963). The crunch finally came with this movie which cost somewhere between 16 and 20 million dollars (big bucks in those days) and took a mere 2 million at the U.S. box office.

However with a cast that includes Alec Guinness, James Mason, Omar Sharif, and Christopher Plummer, I thought to myself 'how bad can it be?'. I noted that it was directed by Anthony Mann who was responsible for a wonderful run of James Stewart westerns and normally a very reliable helmsman. Well, all I can tell you is that it was something of an overblown snorefest. Despite having one of the largest sets ever built and inhabiting it with a gazillion extras (real people in the days before CGI crowds), it was about as exciting as watching gladiators fight a flock of sheep or goats rather than lions. Added to the distinguished names above whose histrionics ranged from superb (Guinness) to autopilot (Mason and Sharif) to towering over the top (Plummer's new Caesar declares himself to be an infallible god), we have Sophia Loren substantially out of her depth as the virtuous love interest and the ever-so bland Stephen Boyd as our goody-two-shoes hero, very much the poor man's Charlton Heston (and I even find Heston hard to take). No point my going into the ins and outs of the story except to say that it took some three hours to relate and left me thankful that the Roman Empire was very definitely about to fall. Hopefully forever...

On a cheery note, let me close with my best wishes for a happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year with a lot of more satisfying movie-viewing to come.

A Killer in the Family (1983)

2011-12-21T10:19:00.003Z

In my neverending attempt to view any movie not previously seen I get through a silly number of films made for television. However even I can't face the myriad Christmas-themed movies being flogged at this time of the year on dedicated so-called 'Christmas Channels', although I will make an exception for the delightful Doris Roberts in the Mrs. Miracle flicks. And while many TVMs are pretty disposable, occasionally one finds something really worth seeing like the above title.

For a start back in the 80s, established old-time film stars did make the occasional small-screen film appearance and there are some wonderful television movies starring the likes of Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, and James Cagney. This film was one of a few TV outing for the iconic tough guy Robert Mitchum, which in itself is a sufficient recommendation, but it was also fascinating to discover early outings for recognizable faces who would become more and more visible on the big screen in the years following. Like many a TVM this is based on a harrowing true story and I gather the producers stuck pretty close to the facts.

The film opens with a family picnic -- Mitchum, his loving wife, and three late teenaged sons enjoying their afternoon outing. It is only when the camera pulls back that we realise that the family are eating together on the Arizona State Prison grounds during visiting hours. Mitchum plays Gary Tison, a career criminal who has spent much of the previous twenty years inside and who has little hope of early parole. So he spins a song-and-dance line to the boys that his life is in danger from another inmate, convincing them to help him break out and flee to Mexico. Two of the sons are James Spader and Eric Stoltz (the third Lance Kerwin is unknown to me -- but you can't expect breakout success for all TV actors). They take guns and other paraphenalia with them on their next visit, hold the guards at bay, and allow their dear dad to escape with his pal Stuart Margolin ('Angel' from the iconic James Garner TV series "The Rockford Files".)

Nothing goes according to plan and the five of them find themselves on a frantic run from pursuing lawmen, constantly having to find new vehicles and to camp out in the wild. The boys, especially Spader the eldest (previously a promising law student), rapidly discover that Dad is not the loving father he feigns, but a cold, selfish and hard-hearted psychopath, who was in no danger whatsoever from the other inmates who indeed feared him. This all becomes blatantly clear after Mitchum and Margolin coolly assassinate a young family of four whose car they want to appropriate. The boys, while technically good people, are now accessories to murder and Spader is unable to convince the other two to escape while they can and hand themselves over to the authorities. Stoltz in particular can not fathom that Mitchum is not the beloved parent he imagined. The end credits let us know just how awful the outcome actually was for the doomed five. Needless to say, Mitchum doesn't need to stretch his acting chops to play a cool killer. Screen acting was always so easy for him that the nuances in his many performances are often overlooked.

In addition to the above-named actors, the keen-eyed viewer can also spot Arliss Howard as the father of the murdered family and Catherine Mary Stewart as Spader's college sweetheart before all hell breaks loose for him. There are also juicy roles for veteran actresses Salome Jens and Lynn Carlin. All in all an involving scenario, even if an ultimately unpleasant tale.

I did sort of promise last time to make some Christmas viewing recommendations from the boring UK terrestrial schedules, where the premieres on offer include such crud as "Beverly Hills Chihuahua"! OK, if you've not seen it, "Tropic Thunder" has its moments, but "Young Victoria", "Bruno", "Defiance" and "Step Brothers" didn't shake my world. Apart from some minor animations, there is repeat after repeat after repeat -- which is only fine if you haven't seen the films in the first place or are eager to see them again. (And chances are if you like them that much you might even own your own copy!) The best bets are actually some black and white oldies from director Fritz Lang and some splendid B-chillers from producer Val Lewton. Finally on Christmas Eve Channel 5 is showing the best Scrooge of all time, Alastair Sim, in, it is rumoured, a colourized version of this classic. Watch his definitive performance by all means, but turn the colour down! I'll be back some time before the New Year...meanwhile, Seasons Greetings to all.

Vive la France

2011-12-16T12:33:00.003Z

It sometimes feels as if the majority of the foreign language films I view are French, but this is really not the case, since I also seem to be attracted by many Far Eastern movies in a variety of languages plus a fair assortment of flicks from other nations. The French factor is also slightly on the wane at the moment since the CineMoi channel that I have raved about previously has not managed to premiere more than two new offerings since the summer -- and yes, I have had a moan at them for their very boring schedules. However today I shall be considering two wonderfully entertaining French films made, as it happens, some eighty years apart!

Le Million (1931): This film from director Rene Clair has been on my 'must see' list forever and fortunately friend Richard got hold of a copy for a showing in his wee garden cinema. As with a number of movies that had become legendary to me without having ever seen them, including previously Clair's silent "The Italian Straw Hat", the eventual viewing was a little anticlimactic. One is expecting so much more than the film actually provides. This is not to say that it was not a jolly affair and quite advanced in many ways for an early talkie studio-bound production. The plot concerns a poor artist (Rene Lefevre) beset by his creditors who discovers he has won the lottery, making his creditors his new champions. Unfortunately he has left the winning ticket in the worn jacket that he has left with his fiancee (Annabella) to mend; piqued by his flirtation with one of his sultry models, she gives the jacket to a crook called Grandpa Tulip who is on the run from the police. And so begins a merry chase across Paris as Tulip sells the jacket to a visiting opera singer who needs the tattered rag for a role.

Clair plays on the merry mayhem that ensues as Tulip and his mignons, Lefevre and his best pal, and an assortment of opera hangers-on chase the elusive jacket, ending up at one stage in a frantic rugby match with the jacket as the ball, reminiscent of a Marx Brothers farrago. Throughout, the various characters break into song without rhyme or reason; there is one lovely bit where the estranged lovers hide in the scenery echoing the words that the opera singer and his Wagnerian partner are spouting in a cod grand peformance -- consistently a virtuoso early use of sound. I felt that the film was slow to get going, but was still enchanted by the opening rooftop scramble, achieved through forced perspective and miniatures, finally focusing on the celebrating dancers below a skylight who relate the night's adventures. This was a remarkably flowing bit of camerawork, quite uncommon in such an early film. Despite some clever bits of business, the story is more farcical than funny, but in the end it leaves one with a bouyant feeling of bonhomie. However, Clair certainly went on to make a number of more interesting films.

I was unfamiliar with all of the cast apart from Annabella -- here a brunette rather than the platinum blonde of her later Hollywood roles. She started in movies when selected at the age of sixteen to appear in Abel Gance's "Napoleon" (1927) and tried her luck in America in the mid-thirties. Her 'luck' included marrying my handsome hero Tyrone Power for a while, so she didn't do too badly all things considered. Clair also settled in America during World War II, a period which produced some of his most memorable movies.

Romantics Anonymous (2010): Clair actually shot "Le Million" in 1930 and here we have, 80 years on, another charming French trifle. This movie reunites the lovely Isabelle Carre with Belgian actor Benoit Poelvoorde -- last seen together as Carre's estate agent finds a flat for serial killer Poelvoorde in an earlier film. Here they play emotionally stilted chocolatiers, bound together by their love of chocolate-making but tongue-tied and socially inept in romance. Their mutual attraction is blatant, but each of them does their best to avoid commitment. In one scene on their first dinner date, Poelvoorde excuses himself every ten minutes to change his sweat-soaked shirt for a fresh one from a suitcase that he has stashed in the mens' room, re-appearing at one stage in a frilly dress shirt completely at odds with his earlier garb. The movie plays with their romantic constipation to the extent that Carre attends a self-help group of other emotional cripples. However the viewer knows full well that these two charmers will find a way of getting it together by the end of the movie. Mind you the film's final shots let us know that their way will never be quite the expected way of coping with life. All in all this was a slight but throughly enjoyable movie thanks to the sweet playing of its leads (with their believable chemistry) and the strong supporting cast of chocolate lovers.

For the last six years I have tried to give some viewing tips from the Christmas television schedules, but the terrestrial choice is so dire this year that there is not much to say. If I can raise myself from the despair that they have created in me, I will try to make a few more positive recommendations in my next pre-Christmas entry.

Hugo (2011)

2011-12-08T11:35:00.001Z

Martin Scorsese truly deserves the plaudits that his latest film has been garnering and there is so much that is truly wonderful about it. However it is not a perfect 10 on my scoreboard.

For a start, I think his use of 3D techniques in the film's creation is quite possibly the best use of this format ever -- even James Cameron's "Avatar" falls into a close second place. Unlike so many recent releases where the aim seems to be to throw as many objects at the viewer as possibly, harking back to the ping pong bat in 1953's "House of Wax", Scorsese achieves a majestic flow in his filming. The opening scenes in the inner workings of the Paris rail station clock where our young protagonist Asa Butterfield lives, is one of the most bravura and realistic sensations of sweeping flight that I have ever sensed in a film. Occasionally the director doesn't get it quite right with some of the crowd scenes in the station concourse more closely resembling a kiddie's pop-up picture book, but much of the filming is breathtaking. Of course it is unfortunate that this part of the film's brilliance will be lost to subsequent viewing until such time as we all are 'blessed' with 3D televisions. (Not that I've seen it but I would guess that the 2D "Avatar" verges on the tedious).

Fortunately the film has much more to commend it. Much has been made of the fact that this is the first time that Scorsese has embraced a film suitable for children, rather than his trademark gangster movies and literary recreations; however it is not really a movie that all youngsters will enjoy and it is really more like the director's heartfelt love letter to early cinema. The movie begins as an adventure movie for youngsters, as we learn how young Hugo came to reside in the mechanical innards. After the death of his clockmaker father, a very brief turn from Jude Law, his drunken uncle Ray Winstone (another mercifully brief turn) abandons him there, to take on the work for which the old sot continues to be paid as he chases bender after bender. Hugo does his work and lives from hand to mouth by stealing the odd croissant, all the time trying to avoid the unwanted attention of the station's security in the shape of Sacha Baron Cohen, who with his fearsome mouth-snapping doberman, has it in for all orphans. His main concern is to finish the automaton man that his father was working on at the time of his death, convinced that it will be able to write a final message from his father from beyond the grave.

He also steals mechanical parts from the station's toy kiosk until he is finally caught by the old man who runs it (Ben Kingley) and his precious notebook is confiscated. He enlists the help of Kingsley's young and sheltered ward (sweet-faced Chloe Grace Moretz -- miles away from "Kick-Ass") to regain it, and the two begin a series of adventures together. This is somehow where things begin to slow down for the younger viewer, but pick up dramatically for the film buffs in the audience. It turns out that 'Papa Georges' is actually an embittered Georges Melies, one of the great and most imaginative pioneers of early cinema, long believed dead in the
Great War and whose previously popular short films have gone out of fashion. This gives Scorsese a platform for a subject close to his heart and he uses the film to teach a potted history of moviemaking's first days. He launches into a tour of Melies' original glass studio and recreates the making of "A Trip to the Moon" and other magical fripperies in a most believable way. Movie Nirvana for someone like me, but I suspect a little wasted on younger children or older ones expecting continuous action. Finally through the intervention of an enthusiast played by Michael Stuhlbarg (the only American other than Moretz in the main cast), Melies is drawn out of his self-protecting shell, given the honours due him...and Hugo finds a home.

Based on the graphic novel "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznick, Scorsese has wisely shortened the film's title and given us a loving and colourful recreation of Paris in the 1930s. Most of the cast including of course the soulful Buttefield are British and the director has unexpectedly found roles for the always reliable Christopher Lee as a book dealer, Emily Mortimer as a flower-seller (worshipped from afar by Cohen's would-be comic villain), and character actors Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths as a pair of aging, dog-loving romantics. Even (Sir) Ben -- not the most likeable of actors -- is very good indeed as the disillusioned Melies, quite possibly his best role since his Oscar-winning Gandhi.

This is finally a movie of two parts which don't quite synch together. The children's fable gives way to Scorsese's cinema valentine but offers us assorted pleasures along the way. His recreations of Hugo's nightmares, including a runaway engine crashing through the station is a genius use of 3D, and another where the boy sees himself turned into another mechanical automaton is imaginatively done. By the end the movie is chokey, as Melies' sadness segues into a happy ending but I somehow don't know whether the film will have as wide an audience appeal as it deserves. Finally, as wonderful a filmmaker as he is, I suspect that Scorsese doesn't really possess a strong sense of humour and some of the film's attempts at laughs ring slightly hollow, especially Cohen's usual overplaying. However this is a minor fault in Scorsese's brilliant conception, leaving a thrilling cinematic experience for all of us and especially for your faithful film-fan PPP.

Island of Lost Souls (1932)

2011-12-02T12:13:00.002Z

While the list may vary from time to time, Charles Laughton always features amongst my top five favourite film actors. While he was never in competition with more 'beautiful' players, his infinite ability to lend shades and nuances to his characters makes him one of the most consummate of the many 'stars' who have graced the silver screen. Unlike many other charismatic actors whose film personae seldom vary, each of his roles is subtly different. It is therefore possibly something of a heresy for me to write that his role as the fiendish Dr. Moreau is not one of his best. In his movies, he did occasionally reach the border line between subtle histrionics and hamminess, and his performance here does occasionally overstep the divide.

This is not to conclude that the movie is not worth seeing since it has so much to commend it. I saw it originally some years ago at a repertory theatre, but it has not been much in evidence on these shores. In fact, the movie was banned in Britain on its original release like "Freaks" and for much the same reasons. However Criterion have now issued the film on a excellently remastered DVD in the U.S., complete with fine extras, and Masters of Cinema have a UK release planned for the New Year, so there is no longer any excuse for its not being better-known, expecially since it remains a far better film than the two subsequent "Island of Dr. Moreau" remakes (1977 and 1996).

Because of the remakes the story is pretty well-known. Based on a novel by H.G. Wells (who incidentally hated Hollywood's first take on his tale), it tells of a 'mad scientist' who decides to play God by fusing animal and human DNA to create new humanoid life in his so-called 'house of pain'. The 1930s were a great time for horror movies and all of the studios tried to have a go after Universal churned out a string of now classic monsters. This film was Paramount's entry in the genre along with the Frederic March's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and the little-known but atmospheric "Murders in the Zoo" -- not a bad track record at all. The somewhat oaken Richard Arlen plays a seaman rescued from the wreck of his own vessel, but then cast ashore by the drunken captain of the steamer that found him. He lands with a cargo of exotic animals and a disgraced doctor, a nice turn from Arthur Hohl, on Moreau's tropical island. At first he is taken in by the luxurious surrounds and his host's gracious manner, but soon discovers that much is amiss and that Moreau harbours secret plans for his future.

He discovers the population of 'successful' mutants, as opposed to Moreau's 'failures' who man (without being men) the power treadmills, and their leader, the "Sayer of the Law" -- a nearly unrecognizably hairy Bela Lugosi. It is his job to regularly ask his flock the questions laid down as the island's laws by the unassailable Moreau, who loves to brandish his fearsome bullwhip, to which the final chant is always "Are we not men?". Well, the viewer can easily see that they are indeed not men thanks to the brilliant make-up effects from the legendary Wally Westmore. In fact it is rumoured that Randolph Scott, Alan Ladd, and Buster Crabbe in early roles are numbered among these animal-men, but I defy anyone to spot them. The only female on the island is the 'Panther Woman' Lota played by one Kathleen Burke who purportedly was chosen from some 60,000 contenders in a contest to win the role, not that she was ever offered more than other exotic roles during her brief subsequent movie career. Moreau is hoping to be able to mate her with the now stranded Arlen, but help is on the way courtesy of his fiancee Leila Hyams who has hired Paul Hurst's trawler. Once an animal is allowed to kill at Moreau's behest, one of the sacrosanct laws has been broken and the final uprising and revenge are inevitable.

The film's director Erle C. Kenton is not one of the great auteurs, despire having churned out some 140 largely-B titles since the silent days. However he has done wonders with the material here. Running only 70 minutes the film is an atmospheric marvel with genuine frissons of fear and dread, with nary a wasted scene. The film retains its power even today; I only wish that I could say as well that this was one of Laughton's best.

I'm hoping to see Scorsese's "Hugo" sometime next week, so hopefully that review will be my next posting.

Midnight in Paris (2011)

2011-11-26T07:15:00.001Z

It is no secret that I have a soft spot for Woody Allen's movies and I was therefore heartened that his most recent film has done record box office in America -- unlike most of his output over the last many years which have at best reached respectable but not particularly startling grosses Stateside. I will not deny that he has turned out the occasional clunker, but most of his films manage to sparkle on my moviemeter (I even liked "Jade Scorpion"). Perhaps this film's success is a growing resentment on the part of those audiences seeking grown-up entertainment in contrast to the likes of "Hangover 2".

This is Allen's second Paris-set movie and can be taken as a love letter to the City of Lights, both past and present. It begins as a romantically filmed three minute travelogue of typical and less typical Parisian views before introducing us to Owen Wilson's lead character Gil, a jaded Hollywood scriptwriter yearning to turn out his own Great American Novel. He is travelling with his fiancee Rachel McAdams (I prefer her as a brunette, not the shallow blonde she plays here) and her pushy, wealthy conservative parents. After running into her friends from home, Michael Sheen -- playing a know-it-all pedantic visiting professor -- and his pretty vacant wife, who try to organise their stay in the city with a selection of cultural and 'fun' outings, Gil baulks one evening preferring to walk back to their hotel rather than 'go dancing'. At the stroke of midnight he encounters a vintage car and its revelling occupants who whisk him into a time warp, landing him in the artistic Paris of the 1920s. There he meets the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his ditzy wife Zelda, Cole Porter, Picasso, Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein (who agrees to critique his nearly-completed novel), and other glitterati of the period. He also meets Picasso's latest sexual conquest played by Marion Cotillard who has boasted previous liaisons with Modigliani and Braque. Gil is growingly taken with her on his subsequent midnight rambles (none of which McAdams is prepared to believe thinking him unhinged) and is tempted to stay -- if he could -- with this new love and her remarkable circle of friends. However one evening the pair of them end up in yet another time period the Belle Epoque of the 1890s with the likes of Lautrec, Gaughin,and Degas; Cotillard elects to remain there, suggesting that all of us are capable of looking back and prefering idealised more attractive times.

The film is well-cast, but not as full of starry names as many of the Woodster's earlier movies, with a number of lesser-known British and French players. However among the star performances we have Kathy Bates as a less pompous and less masculine Stein, the heralded appearance of Carla Bruni (Mrs. Sarkozy) as a museum guide (a completely acceptable and attractive performance), and the lately growingly-annoying Adrien Brody in a here spot-on embodiment of Salvador 'Da-lee'. However the movie's main strength is Wilson's winning interpretation of the previous 'Woody Allen role'. Unlike earlier incarnations like Kenneth Branagh and Will Ferrell, Wilson is not striving for a Woody imitation, although one can almost hear Allen in his cadences, words, and obsessions (not surprising since Allen did write the script). However he makes the role his own with his winning combination of sweet reactions and innocent wonder.

I suspect the playing of this popular actor has much to do with the movie's relative success in the US, since the movie is charming rather than laugh-out-loud funny, apart from one truly delicious joke toward the end concerning the detective that McAdam's father has hired to report on Gil's midnight wandering. Perhaps I am underestimating the tastes and intelligence of the average American audience, but I suspect that a lot of the in-jokes possibly passed way over some of their heads. I doubt that many of the modern masses remember folk like Josephine Baker or can appreciate the sly conceit of Gil's suggesting to Dali's friend Luis Bunuel the outline of the plot of the latter's 1962 movie, "The Exterminating Angel", to that director's dismissive disbelief. Irregardless of this intellectual oneupmanship on my part, adult audiences have obviously warmed to the gist of Allen's time-travelling fantasy and they have shown themselves to be truly grateful for this sparkling and amusing entertainment.

Arcane Japanese 'Horror'

2011-11-21T10:24:00.000Z

I know I've not written for a week now. This was semi-deliberate as I wanted my next post to be a review of "The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen" (1938) for which we had tickets yesterday. I suppose I shall forever be tempted by the screening of oddities, although too often the net result is not as wonderful as I had hoped in advance. When I read that something called the Zipangu Festival at the ICA included this film which was described as a rare showing of an early Japanese horror movie, all of my buttons were pressed. I tried looking it up on IMDb but nothing was listed under this title. So I searched by the director's name (Kiyohiki Ushihara) and found a listing for "Kaibyo Nazo No Shamisen" but without any plot summary, ratings, or user reviews. Never mind, off we went, hoping for a film as exciting as the Japanese silent "Page of Madness" which we saw many moons ago.

It is not surprising that I could not locate the English title of this movie as I discovered that the film was subtitled for the first time for this showing. So far so good. However I am unable to tell you very much about this film. Maybe it was the heavyish, wine-accompanied lunch that preceded it or maybe it was the persistent discordant drone of the ever-present shamisens (three-stringed lutes), but I found myself drifting in and out of the action. As far as I could tell, a shamisen-player's dead sister appears to her in the form of a ghostly cat and it is incumbent upon her to avenge both that death and the death of her father. How they died and who the culprit was escaped me. Every time I surfaced she, having failed to 'lose' the tainted instrument, was playing at some sort of stylized performance involving a male dancer and another dancer in a monkey mask. It seemed to go on forever as she continued to hallucinate, the monkey mask morphing into a cat morphing into her sister's ghost. I expect these early special effects were indeed effective, but the film was hardly a 'horror' movie by even loose modern standards. If anything I may be making the film sound more interesting than it actually was, but it left me feeling distinctly 'blah' -- and don't tell me that was the wine!!!

So, since I have let the side down with the above review, let me think if there was anything more interesting amongst the other God-knows-how-many movies I have watched since I last wrote.
There were a couple of worthwhile documentaries "The Flaw" (2011) and "Cloud 9 - the Call Girl and the Governor" (2010), both very well done, but I tend to ignore docs in my reviews; 267- minutes' worth of Abel Gance's 1923 masterpiece "La Roue" (great creative filming of a very, very soppy story); re-viewings of previously reviewed films where I wanted to burn copies ("Monsters" and "Machete" -- still a guilty pleasure); the Indian movie "Hare Rama Hare Krishna" from 1971 (I am getting totally fed up watching these cheesy back entries in Dev Anand's filmography -- this time set amongst the hippies of Kathmandu!); a number of disposable TVMs and a selection of recent releases: "The Tourist", "Made in Dagenham", "Rabbit Hole" "The Resident", and "Never Let Me Go" (bad, well-done, boring, OTT, and very sad respectively); and three films unearthed from the cracks in the floorboards: Jarman's harrowing "War Requiem" (1999), Ben Affleck's 2006 "Man About Town" -- directed by the annoying hack Mike Binder, but not uninteresting -- , and a French flick also from 2006 "The Stone Council" with a very glammed-down Monica Bellucci and a brunette Catherine Deneuve (badly rated on IMDb, but I thought quite worthwhile).

And believe it or not, that's not all -- but it's all I'm going to go on about for today!

The Duel Project

2011-11-14T10:54:00.001Z

Once upon a time there were two Japanese directors having a quiet drink when an unusual challenge was presented to them. Each of them was to make a feature-length movie in one week, using a single set and as few actors as possible with the same theme: a battle to the death. This resulted in two very different yet equally interesting films released in 2003, Ryuhei Kitamura's "Aragami" and Yukihiko Tsutsumi's "2LDK". I wouldn't like to choose which is the better movie since both achieve interesting results within the confines of the challenge, but the latter proved to be the audience fave when the pairing made the festival rounds.

Kitamura remains the better known of the pair having had overseas breakout success with "Azumi" in 2003 and particularly with his 2000 film "Versus", a satisfying mash-up of the samurai and vampire genres done on a low budget. The title character's name Aragami translates as the 'raging god of battle''. He has nursed a gravely-wounded samurai back to health in his isolated Buddhist chapel; he is tired of the eternal round and seeks a worthy champion to end his immortality. Masayo Kato, as the demon, goads Takao Osawa to challenge him to a duel, dropping the tidbit of information that his recovery was hastened by feeding him body parts from his close companion lying dead in the next room. Observing this initially verbal battle is an inscrutable beauty who fetches food and drink, but who is more often to be found sitting between them as a cool observer. All of this builds up to a stupendous final swordfight between the two where we think at first that the samurai can never overcome his fearsome adversary; however (spoiler here) he is no longer completely human himself and ends up as the new demon of the temple, awaiting the swordsman who will release him in turn, and still watched over by the same strange beauty.

Kitamura does wonders with the one small set depending on atmospheric lighting to highlight the ornate (and slightly kitschy) carvings creating the illusion of space. He manages to stage the exciting cut and thrust of swordplay in this confined area by close filming and editing. It is all beautifully and excitingly staged.

"2LDK" on the other hand has a contemporary setting and manages to limit itself to only two players. The title is shorthand for small rental adverts offering 'two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen'. Sharing this (to my mind) rather spacious apartment are two would-be actresses the wide-eyed virginal Nozomi, fresh up from the countryside looking for big-city fame and fortune, and the vampish, more-knowing Lana, with her dyed hair and beauty queen background. Both are reading for the same movie part and, as it turns out, both are involved with the same man. Building on the petty grievances of flat-sharing such as Nozomi's anally marking all of her food (including each egg) in the shared refrigerator and Lana's casually using whatever she wants at the moment, we become witnesses to the growing hostility between them. This is largely achieved by their verbalizing their real thoughts about each other direct to the audience as they fruitlessly try to preserve the niceties of conversation. Nozomi views Lana as an over-the-hill slut, while the slightly unstable Lana (whose last chance is the pending role) views her flatmate as a talentless wannabe.

The action soon escalates from slapped faces to more and more violent attacks with a variety of weapons, from everyday household appliances and cleaning agents through icepicks, flame-throwers, swords, and chainsaws. (It is probably best not to wonder why an apartment occupied by two young ladies should have such an assortment of weapons available.) In the end, setting us up for the film's final irony, neither of them need worry anymore about becoming a film star.

Both directors responded imaginatively to the challenge given them, even if both films are relatively short -- between 70 and 80 minutes. Kitamura has the larger cast, but uses his very small set brilliantly. Tsutsumi manages to hold our attention with only two characters spinning relentlessly out of control, but does cheat somewhat by having the girls' impossibly spacious apartment as his battlefield. He remains the less internationally-known of the pair with only his 2008 movie "Twentieth Century Boys" (the first film in his own franchise) making any dent in overseas markets. Kitamura continues his relative success, although I'm not sure that making the English language "Midnight Meat Train" in 2008 with Vinnie Jones amongst others is worthy of too many kudos.

Patchy Premieres

2011-11-09T10:13:00.000Z

I'm back to having a wee moan about the weekly premieres on the main Sky film channel -- their other nine have a nifty line of repeats and more repeats. Unlike most weeks, there were actually a full five flicks this week that I'd not already seen, unlike last week when there were all of two, neither of which I particularly wanted to view. Of course, PPP being PPP, I did watch them both: "Africa United" a fairly sugary tale of three youngsters making their way the 3000-odd miles from Rwanda to South Africa to get to the Soccer World Cup (much of which I saw on fast-forward) and "Paranormal Activity 2". I can't begin to believe that this actually made money at cinemas -- which it did -- since the first film in this series was about as scary as corn flakes and this second one was a fine example of watching paint dry with absolutely nothing happening until the last five minutes. No doubt P.A. 3 is en route...

Anyhow, what about this week's five? As usual something of a mixed bag with not a lot to get excited about:

First up was a Hallmark Channel product called "A Dog Named Christmas". Given its origins, you would be right in guessing that it was a healthy, family drama with a feel-good punchline. A pleasant but somewhat intellectually-challenged young man living on a farm with his parents hears that the local animal shelter is urging the community to 'adopt a dog for Christmas' and not only manages to convince his folks to let him do so (father Bruce Greenwood has doggy-issues in his background), but also convinces the family's married offspring, their friends, and neighbours to do so as well. Naturally the chosen dog, whom he has promised to return to the shelter on December 26th, turns out to be a heroic charmer ultimately melting even Greenwood's hard heart. A totally watchable film, especially if you love dogs, but otherwise pretty yuck as cinema.

Then there was the "big" premiere of the week, director Tony Scott's "Unstoppable" starring the Denzel and Chris Pine. Based on a true incident from 2001 (but reminiscent of earlier movies), we have veteran train driver Washington and his novice conductor Pine risking their necks to stop a runaway train laden with dangerous chemicals from wreaking havoc on the communities in its path by preventing its derailing. To give Scott his due, there is no denying his skill at getting our adrenaline flowing and to make us savour the growing tension, but again it wasn't exactly brilliant film-making. Both leads did an adequate job, as did Rosario Dawson back in the control room, but there were a number of loose ends, especially with the subplot of a bunch of school kids taking an educational train ride, who were never actually in danger. Anyhow the end credits tell us that the Washington character who was working out his 90-days notice was told that he could keep his job. So there you go...another happy ending.

The week's third film was the one I actually liked best although it is something of an obscurity and a real mish-mash of talent: "The Warrior's Way", which advance reviews suggested would be abysmal. Produced and filmed in New Zealand, the movie is the first and only feature written and directed by someone called Sngmoo Lee (nor me) and stars a Korean, Dong-gun Jang, alongside Yanks Kate Bosworth and Danny Houston (as the big baddie), and Aussie award-winner Geoffrey Rush. Our hero is an invincible swordsman in exile with a small babe in America's 'wild, wild west'. He's hired by Bosworth as a laundryman but ends up teaching her fighting skills so that she can avenge herself on Houston and his murderous horde of outlaws who killed her husband and child. In this same small community we also have a stranded colourful troupe of circus artistes, amongst whom is Rush's perpetually drunken sharpshooter. What makes this movie so remarkable is the flair with which the director has staged the setting, with stylised sets reminiscent of von Trier's "Dogville" (2003), and his skill with the martial arts elements, especially with flocks of ninja warriors descending from the sky in pursuit of the rogue swordsman. In fact all of the action sequences are both brilliantly handled and exciting -- far more so than one would expect from this film's mongrel components.

As for films four and five, the fourth one "London Boulevard" was so forgettable that I had trouble remembering what it was called or what it was about within a day. Ex-con Colin Farrell is hired by David Thewlis as a bodyguard for Keira Knightley's actress superstar and must fend off the larcenous ambitions of Ray Winston's Mr. Big. Yawn... Number five, "Puncture", came across as a made-for-television effort, although with current flavour-of-the-month Chris Evans in the lead, this was possibly a 'real' film. Again based on a true story, it tells of Evans as hotshot lawyer Mike Weiss and his more grounded partner taking on the crusade of getting the hospital buying cartels to purchase a new type of life-saving syringes. Meanwhile druggie Weiss is fighting his own demons in the form of his uncontrollable drug habit (which eventually took his life) a la Gosling in "Half Nelson". Sorry...more yawns.

The annoying fact is that Sky manage to offer a pretty up-to-date selection of appealing movies on their pay-per-view Box Office, but many of these never make it to their regular subscription channels, where the weekly premieres tend to be padded out with made-for-TV dross. It's just as well that I'm not totally dependent on them for my viewing pleasures. Even if I do try to watch all of their new offerings, there is always a miscellany of non-Sky channels and the growing DVD backlog to enhance my choices. In fact, I never seem to catch up -- which is actually a good thing in this instance. Keeps me busy and off the streets!!

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee (2009)

2011-11-03T10:36:00.000Z

Many interesting flicks without big studio marketing bucks behind them struggle to get any sort of distribution, flicker brightly but briefly when discovered, and then are destined to fade into the misty realms of memory.

This movie written (based on her novel) and directed by Rebecca Miller -- daughter of Arthur -- is a good case in point. Since 1995, it is her fourth outing as a director of her own work; I have seen two of her three earlier movies, but I am pushed to recall much about them. She had an earlier brief career as an actress in bit parts and is also the co-writer of the screenplay for the rather dreary (and also non-memorable) "Proof" (2005). Taken with her first career outings in the graphic arts, she is something of a 'renaissance' women, but unlikely to be remembered as one of the cinema greats. I know it's early days yet since she is still under fifty, but her track record to date doesn't promise any sort of cinema immortality or any deep affinity for the genre.

In this film she has garnered a remarkably starry cast, many of whom have very little to do -- again burning bright in their small parts and then fading into the background. Stand up Julianne Moore in another lesbian role, Winona Ryder (getting hard to recognize) as the heroine's neurotic friend, Maria Bello as her hyperactive, speed-addicted mother, and the lush-bodied Monica Bellucci as a former wife of Mr. Lee (the always watchable Alan Arkin). However the movie belongs to Robin Wright (here still billed as Robin Wright Penn) playing Arkin's much younger wife and facing her own midlife crises as the couple downsize to a Connecticut retirement community after his three recent heart attacks. The screenplay focuses on the various traumatic events that have made her the woman she is today with her younger self played by Blake Lively (not really a believable young Wright). Bored by her new environment, with the height of excitement being pottery classes, and overly concerned with Arkin's health, she finds herself sleep-walking and sleep-stuffing-chocolate-cake-in-her-gob. She also has a slightly fraught relationship with her two grown children, especially her daughter who appears to hate her -- much as she grew to hate her own mother.

She finds some solace in the company of her neighbour Shirley Knight's ne'er-do-well son, played by a fairly competent Keanu Reeves, with a lifesized head of Jesus tattooed on his chest. Events come to a head when she discovers her supposedly devoted husband's ongoing affair with Ryder and his subsequent final heart attack. Part of the film's problems stem from combining the roles of mainly middle-aged players into a coherent whole. Wright doesn't seem quite old enough to have lasted through the best part of thirty years of marriage (to the extent that for a while I thought she was the stepmother of Arkin's kids), and we are asked to believe that Reeves is some fifteen years younger than she (when in fact he is all of two years older!). One is never bored in the company of these various characters and their self-absorbed problems, aided by some clever, sharp dialogue, but in the end one wonders if we really care about any of them. The simple answer is probably 'no'.

London Film Festival - Part Three

2011-10-29T12:59:00.002+01:00

As a postscript to my previous entry, I can not believe that I omitted mentioning the delightful dog in "The Artist". This Jack Russell terrier is as important a character as his master Dujardin, a crucial part of his screen persona and his best friend. His antics are incredibly amusing and ingratiating and he even gets the opportunity to display some Rin Tin Tin bravado when he saves the washed-up actor from his burning apartment. A more than worthy contender for the annual Cannes Dog (or d'og).

Now to the final four films or as it turns out the final three and a half -- explanation follows below:

First off, nothing but praise for the French film "The Monk" ("Le Moine") from the interesting director Dominik Moll. While his first two films were effectively modern thrillers, this one is a period piece based on Matthew Lewis' 1796 gothic novel. A well-cast Vincent Cassell plays the eponymous monk Ambrosio, a foundling raised by the brothers of an isolated Spanish monastery, renowned for his piety and unrelenting sermons. When a masked youth seeks the order's sanctuary, Ambrosio soon finds himself tempted by illicit love and the devil's growing mischief, until in the end he finds that evil is indeed more potent than godliness. Beautifully filmed in the stark desert wastes and with more than the occasional surrealistic touch, this film is not only well-cast but also impressively persuasive.

From there we went to the 'half-film' mentioned above. The Festival always features a so-called 'surprise' film in its programme and I have never been tempted to take my chances with their selection, although there have been some worthy UK premieres in the past. This year, as a membership reward, they offered a ballot for a free screening and I thought what-the-heck. After sitting in the auditorium for some thirty-odd minutes, my thoughts were more like 'why am I sitting through this rubbish?' The film in question probably sounded promising to the programmers, being the first movie for thirteen years from director Whit Stillman, who had a critical hit back in 1990 with "Metropolitan" followed by minor success with his second film "Barcelona". Thinking back these were both very 'talky' movies rather than plot-laden and his latest, coyly titled "Damsels in Distress" is more of the same with a vengeance. Set at a small college we are introduced to a group of friends and their rather uninteresting (and very talky) problems. The lead female is Greta Gerwig -- definitely an acquired taste from her mumbledore movies (or whatever they're called) and the lead male is the Australian actor Adam Brody. At roughly 28 and 32 respectively, they are both rather too old to play believable students and the balance of the completely unknown cast are only slightly more creditable. Boring, boring, boring to say the least -- so out we went and we were not the only walk-outs. Sometimes one feels that one should give a film a chance to see where it is going, but it was pretty obvious that this one wasn't heading anywhere of interest.

Number three was the fascinating Japanese film "Dendera". If you have seen either version of "The Ballad of Narayama" (and my pick would be the 1983 remake), you know the backstory of the small rural village that sends its old folk once they reach 70 up the mountain to die of exposure, thereby freeing the villagers from feeding and tending the elderly. Based on a novel by Yuya Sato, this film imagines an alternate scenario where the elderly women (but never 'scheming' men) are saved from death and incorporated into the all-female, self-sustaining settlement of Dendera founded some 30 years previously. The village's matriarch Mei, now over 100, dreams of the day when she can lead her people down to their old village to attack and kill the men in revenge for their harsh rules. The story begins for us when the 50th woman is rescued and Mei reckons she has sufficient womanpower for her plans. However she has not reckoned with the problems of a marauding ravenous bear and her cub which decimates their food supply and also decimates Dendera's numbers nor with a killer avalanche en route down the mountain. As the women's numbers decrease, each of the remainder attempts to find some solution to their problems and to guarantee Dendera's survival. All in all this was a fascinating tale, but I must admit some dissatisfaction with the film's rather abrupt and unclear ending.

Finally, number twelve, "Faust" from the director of the amazing "Russian Ark" Aleksandr Sokurov. This film won the Golden Lion at Venice this year and it was a movie that I really wanted to love -- but regretfully I was unable to do so. With a German-language screenplay, this is obviously a reworking of the Goethe masterpiece, forever immortalised to us in Murnau's silent film, but we found it nearly impossible to follow the ins and outs of the convoluted scenario as the impoverished and dour Dr. Faustus is seduced by the promises of the devil in the guise of a moneylender -- an interesting portrayal from Russian mime/clown Anton Adasinsky. The quasi-medieval world is mixed with some very modern CGI effects and the very long and very sinuous telling lost me along the way. This movie is the fourth in the director's tetralogy about the shortcomings of men in power and we had resolved to watch the first three movies which are coming up in the BFI's Sokurov season. These are "Moloch" (Hitler), "Taurus" (Lenin), and "The Sun" (Hirohito). However after the hard-to-watch "Faust", saved only by its majestic music, I'm beginning to wonder if I have the stamina to sit through those movies. Time will tell...

London Film Festival - Part Two

2011-10-23T12:21:00.004+01:00

Another four selections behind me now -- again producing some mixed reactions. In choosing which tickets to apply for, I usually opt for titles that are unlikely to obtain any sort of widespread release, films by one or other of my 'pet' directors like Takashi Kitano (absent), martial arts flicks, anything to do with cinema history, and films starring a favoured actor like Gerard Depardieu (nothing from him either this year). Maybe I should broaden my criteria, since for every 'gem', I usually manage to select a 'dud' as well, with the vast majority just falling into the 'pleasant enough' category.

First up was "Tales of the Night" (Les Contes de la Nuit) from the French modern master of animation Michel Ocelot. I'm not completely sure why I selected this which was showcased as the 'Family Gala' (i.e. suitable for the kiddies), but it sounded imaginative and I certainly liked his earlier animations "Azur and Asmar" and "Kirikou and the Sorceress" for their bright colours and very stylized design. This one had the added 'attraction' (?) of being made in 3D as well. Using a form of silhouette animation, not seen since the heyday of Lotte Reininger's 1926 "Adventures of Prince Achmed", against brilliantly and psychedelically-coloured backgrounds, this film is certainly a tour de force. However his telling of six different fairy or folk tales merged into much of a muchness after a while -- visually intriguing but dramatically lacking. I can certainly recommend this movie for its technique but not for much more for a mature audience.

"Let the Bullets Fly" is a joint China-Hong Kong production and apparently China's highest-ever grossing film. It is directed by and stars one of the country's most admired screen actors, Jiang Wen (see his 2000 film "Devils on the Doorstep"), who plays a ruthless outlaw nicknamed Pocky Zhang (despite his unblemished skin); he decides to pose as the new official for the hamlet of Goose Town with its high taxes and easy financial pickings, taking the place of conman Ge You whom he has ambushed en route, along with the wife of the now deceased real mayor-to-be. However they soon discover that the city is in the greedy, sticky hands of local ruthless warlord Huang, played by the one and only (coolest man in the world -- trademark) Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun Fat. Chow also plays his own body-double and great fun ensues as the three 'villains' strive to outbluff each other. It is all a lot of cheeky well-filmed fun, but at 132 minutes it begins to outstay its welcome being rather talkier than action-laden.

The third film of this quartet was the main disappointment. "Last Screening" (Dernier Seance), a French would-be thriller, should have been right up my street with its combination of a fanatic movie-buff as the hero who is also a deranged serial killer. Written and directed by Laurent Archard, it stars Pascal Cervo as the young repertory cinema manager made even more unhinged by its impending closure. We are given a certain amount of unhelpful backflashes to his relationship to his movie-obsessed mother, but little real explanation about why he goes about killing women, cutting off their ears with their dangling earrings, and sticking these on black-and-white photos of some of the screen greats. The film was poorly paced with some unnecessary longeurs, such as one of the victim's endless twirling routine, and even at 81 minutes felt ever so long and pointless. Something of a waste of time.

Had I been told that I could only choose one movie from the hundreds of films screening, it would have been the next one "The Artist", since I have been intrigued by it since I read about its Cannes premiere. It is a lovingly-crafted, beautifully shot in black and white, paeon to Hollywood of the silent era and its star, Jean Dujardin, walked away with the Best Actor gong at the French fest. I was first made aware of Dujardin, his co-star Berenice Bejo, and his director Michel Hazanavicius when I saw their "OSS 117: Cairo Nest of Spies" in 2006. I thought that spy-spoof of a movie a touch on the silly side and did not bother with its sequel. However, they are all delicious here. Dujardin plays silent movie idol George Valentin, undone by the coming of sound and Bejo plays young ingenue Peppy Miller, whose star rises as his crashes. It is not quite "A Star is Born" scenario, since there is ultimately an uplifting (and highly believable) happy ending. Despite its subject matter of the popularity of the coming of sound, the film is shot virtually as a silent with intertitles, apart from its score and the very occasional and very telling use of sound effects. Although it is a French film, it feels very American -- there are no subtitles anywhere, and well-known normally English-speaking actors like John Goodman, James Cromwell, and Penelope Ann Miller lend fine (silent) support. (Malcolm McDowell is also in the cast, but his scene lasts mere seconds). All in all this is a delightful concoction and having been taken up by the Weinsteins, its distribution is assured. Don't miss it!

The final four to follow anon...

London Film Festival - Part One

2011-10-18T07:31:00.001+01:00

Four down; eight to go...and so far it's been a mixed bag indeed: two watchable obscurities, one hilarious oddball destined to do little business, and one major disappointment from the prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike.

The obscurities both come from the "Treasures from the Archives" strand of the fest ('lost' and newly restored or 'rediscovered' classics) and it is a little unusual for us to watch two of these two days in a row. The first was "The Goose Woman", a silent feature from 1925 with impeccable credentials. It was directed by Clarence Brown who went on to direct a string of 30s and 40s classics and starred Louise Dresser (already into middle age when she made her movie debut a few years earlier), Jack Pickford (brother of Mary and not overly charismatic), and rising star Constance Bennett (sister of Joan who both were memorable in films of the next two decades). The story concerns an erstwhile famous opera singer who lost both her career and her voice when she gave birth to an illegitimate son many years earlier and who has become a drunken slattern on her run-down farm. She sees an opportunity to regain her celebrity when a rich neighbour is murdered and fabricates a story which unfortunately implicates her estranged son (who is of course romancing the successful actress Bennett). Dresser's version of the events is supported by the state prosecutor -- the wonderfully named actor Gustav von Seyffertitz, until true but long-suppressed mother love breaks through. The film as you may guess is something of a pot-boiler but a stand-out turn from Dresser just about saves the day. Showing with this 83-minute movie were two Vitaphone shorts featuring former vaudeville stars and each more embarrassing than the next.

The second 'treasure' was a little-known, obscure feature from neo-realist Italian director Roberto Rossellini, completely at odds with his other films called "The Machine that Kills Bad People" (1952). One just doesn't think of this director as being able to handle satirical fantasy which is what is on display here. Set in a small seaport town south of Naples where a broadly-drawn group of yanks have recently arrived to develop a hotel on the land of the communal cemetery, a photographer is visited by a strange old man who teaches him the secret of using his camera to kill those who just don't deserve to live. Taking a picture of a picture in his studio, the subject suddenly expires (in the same unmovable pose) in another part of town -- these range from the bumptious village policeman, a very noisy donkey, a rich old woman and her greedy relatives, and an assortment of corrupt town officials who wish to divert a recent windfall of funds from the government to their own selfish ends. The whole thing plays like some sort of peasant farce, striving to make its points about the deserving poor of the town (very Rossellini) versus the rich folk who live up the town's many steep staircases. It certainly had its moments of comic mayhem along with its attempts to make some serious points from the director's personal credo; its rediscovery is very welcome -- if only as a palliative to Rossellini's more humourless films. Showing alongside this was the newly remastered and re-colored Melies short, the familiar "A Trip to the Moon" which has been making the festival rounds, starting as the opener at this year's Cannes -- worth seeing for its historical importance, if in fact rather silly and crude.

Next up was the hugely enjoyable and nearly impossible to categorize French film, "The Fairy", written and directed by three of its four leads: Dominique Abel, the Australian-born Fiona Gordon, and Bruno Romy. I have not seen the team's two earlier films, but will certainly seek them out if this one is anything to go by. The tall, skinny and gawky Abel plays the night clerk at a small seaside hotel, beset by interruptions as he tries to watch TV and eat his ketchuppy sandwich, particularly from a weird Englishman with his beloved Sealyham hidden in a plaid carry-all. In walks the equally tall and long-limbed Gordon who announces that she is a fairy and that she will grant him three wishes -- two of which he requests immediately but the third of which is still pending by the film's end. Romy's contribution is that of a more-than-short-sighted bar owner who keeps walking into the walls. The main delights however come from the characters 'Dom' and 'Fiona' as they pursue their weird attraction and love affair in a series of acrobatic dances and Keatonesque set pieces, including Fiona's magically giving birth to six-month old child virtually overnight. Hovering in the background are three black illegals who want to get to England and a pair of comic Keystone-ish cops. The innocent silliness is strangely infectious and while I do not see this movie doing much box office, I can certainly see it becoming a cult favourite.

On to "Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai" from Miike. His early films had a certain weird appeal in their crazy takes on the yakuza genre, but his later works were largely long-winded and rather tedious affairs. Last year's historical romp "Thirteen Assassins" seemed to imply a return to form and this movie, shot quite unnecessarily in 3-D, promised more of the same. Set during a peaceful period in the l7th Century and based on an earlier film, this opulent but slow-moving saga tells of the clash between traditional 'honour' and humanity. Out of work samurai have been approaching noble houses, asking their permission to commit ritual suicide in their courtyards, in the hope of being bought off with either work or a few coins. In this box within another box storytelling, an older ronin has come to the House of Ii to make such a request; there he is told the story of another younger man who foolishly did the same and who was forced to try to kill himself with a bamboo sword (having been forced to sell his real one) and who is then beheaded by the stern clan lord. Then he tells his own story -- turns out the youngster was this man's son-in-law whose death also resulted in those of his grandson and daughter, and he has come to seek revenge. While beautifully shot, with only the very occasional effective use of 3-D effects in the shallow and dark interiors, the story just creaked along and proved more exhausting than entertaining, with virtually no action at all before the final minutes.

More and hopefully a little more entusiastic reviews to follow in due course...

Skyline (2010)

2011-10-12T10:44:00.000+01:00

As forewarned, it is now over a week since my last entry and while I am not exactly experiencing withdrawal symptoms, I thought I had better touch base before my marathon London Film Festival viewing commences tomorrow. Since you ask, St. Petersburg provided a great if exhausting weekend. It was one of the very few cities remaining on my wish-list of destinations; I am happy to have finally been able to visit The Hermitage -- overwhelming in scope and size, even if the art collection itself was a little disappointingly underwhelming. As predicted I saw no movies during my stay, but did satisfy another passion: In a city where even a simple snack is wildly expensive, DVDs (and I am not talking about pirate copies of recent releases which are apparently a thriving industry there) are ridiculously cheap -- well under £4 each. Moreover, I was able to find copies of "Volga Volga". "Happy Guys", and Kin-Dza-Dza (all recently reviewed on this blog). So Pretty Pink is a happy bunny indeed.

The above load of rubbish is only one of two movies that I have seen since my return and I've already forgotten the title of the other dreary mess -- something about a deaf girl beloved by a young musician who is dying of cancer. (How do I sit through these?). "Skyline" on the other hand was not a disease-of-the-week flick but purportedly a mainstream cinema release from 'The Brothers Strause' (Colin and Greg) whose only previous feature was "Aliens vs. Predator -- Requiem" (2007), which may give you some idea of the level of their idea of entertainment. Both brothers have a long string of special effects credits from "The X-Files" forward and it is clear that whatever budget they had here went totally into the F/X in this alien invasion saga.

The money certainly didn't go into the non-existant script or acting talent. You can tell that a movie is scraping the bottom of the barrel cast-wise when the leads' main claims to fame are television series of varying degrees of popularity. Now I watch very, very little regular television, although I do get hooked by the occasional series, but I recognised the leading man (and I use the term very loosely), Eric Balfour as the druggy boyfriend from "Six Feet Under" many moons ago and the other semi-major male role as David Zayas, the Cuban detective from "Dexter". The three female leads Scottie Thompson, Brittany Daniel, and Crystal Reed obviously scraped beneath my TV radar as did the third male lead Donald Faison.

And they, Folks, were the core of the action, a pretty uninteresting little group of friends, plus Zayas as the building's 'security' serving as some sort of microcosm of what was presumably meant to be happening throughout the city, country, or world. The aliens have invaded without warning and we have little idea what they are after -- although sucking out brains seems to be part of the exercise; it is nigh impossible to avoid being drawn by their hypnotising little blue lights, as increasingly sizey aliens search the environment for more people to absorb. At one point 'the army' or something send in a fleet of planes which are swiped down like so many annoying little gnats. The message gets across: humanity is doomed, although we have not the slightest idea why. There is some totally unintelligible action at the end which may or may not suggest that Balfour and his pregnant sweetie Thompson may actually survive, setting up the possibility (God help us) of a sequel.

To give credit where credit is due, the special effects were generally pretty superior and I particularly liked Faison getting smashed with a heavy metal thump when he tries to escape in an open-topped car. Obviously, given the brothers' technical expertise, they spent their budget in a way to give us a showy spectacle. However we could have done with a more clear-cut storyline, some vague indication of hope for humanity, and some characters that we might actually care about.

The English Patient (1996)

2011-10-04T11:54:00.000+01:00

I can recall not being overly taken with the lengthy adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's equally sprawling novel when I first viewed it. However since it managed to capture nine Academy Awards out of its twelve nominations, making it one of the most successful movies in Oscar history, I decided to take a fresh look to discover what made it so award-worthy.

It might be useful to first examine the three categories where it did not win, namely best actor for Ralph Fiennes, best actress for Kristin Scott Thomas, and somewhat surprisingly best adapted screenplay. I have not read the original novel which I gather had been considered unfilmable, since it is apparently a collection of random thoughts and impressions. From this the film's director Anthony Minghella managed to script a coherent scenario of doomed, forbidden love between Fiennes' Hungarian Count Almasy and Scott Thomas' adulterous wife of poor old Colin Firth. Almasy was a real person who was indeed part of the loose group of colleagues exploring the desert in the 1930s, but since he survived World War II, dying in Austria in 1951 and was quite probably homosexual, the film's story is at best a piece of highly romanticized fiction -- not that it is any the less interesting for that. It was Fiennes' second Oscar nomination and there is no denying that his part is well-acted, especially as he lies horribly burnt and dying under Canadian nurse Juliette Binoche's tender care; however the award that year went to Geoffrey Rush for his much showier role as the mad yet talented pianist in "Shine". Scott Thomas lost to Frances McDormand in "Fargo" and I would not dispute the fact that she quite probably did not deserve to win for what was largely a mechanical and somewhat wooden portrayal.

The one acting Oscar went to Binoche for best female support, although I would argue that her role was as important, if not more so, than Scott Thomas'. This win was a colossal upset since the odds-on-favourite was Lauren Bacall for her first-ever nomination for "The Mirror has Two Faces"; everyone and especially the likeable Bacall expected a shoo-in as being 'her turn' (and I can still picture her teeth-gritting losing face), but there is little doubt in my mind that Binoche's dynamic turn was a worthy winner.

Of course the film won best picture and best director for Minghella, easily beating "Fargo", "Jerry Maguire", "Secrets and Lies", and "Shine". Considering these films in retrospect, I could picture "Fargo" -- a wonderfully entertaining flick from the Coen Brothers -- being the victor, but the overall impressive production values of "The English Patient" do on balance outshine the loser's. No doubt this is why the film also won for art direction, cinematography, editing, sound, and original dramatic score. The movie is brilliantly filmed, capturing the expanse and mysteries of the Sahara, with a majestic score to match. "Fargo" may well be the more enjoyable watch, but this film captures the epic scale required for romanticized storytelling, and one can admire the skill that went into its production without necessarily 'loving' the movie.

Oddly enough one category where the film was not nominated was best make-up and one might have expected some recognition for the face-distorting make-up that Fiennes must have suffered during large stretches of the scenario. It must have been good preparation for his hideous physiog as Lord Voldemort (although no doubt that was all CGI!)

By and large I am glad that I decided to watch this film again, although some of the smaller pleasures come from its supporting cast, particularly from Naveen Andrews as a Sikh bomb-disposal expert (and Binoche's unlikely lover) and a shifty-looking Willem Dafoe as a crook seeking revenge on Almasy's possible traitor. The screenplay is well constructed constantly moving between its now and then scenes, drawing the viewer into the motivations for the not-at-all-English patient's supposed memory loss, creating sympathy for him where possibly little is due.

A word to the wise: Entries will be rather sporadic over the next few weeks as I am going away for my birthday this long weekend and I don't think I'll be watching many movies in St. Petersburg -- not the one in Florida! When I return, I then have twelve sets of tickets for the London Film Festival beginning next Thursday. I promise to cover all of the fest's undoubted delights, but will need to do so when I am able to grab a few spare hours. Watch this space...

A bit of this, a bit of that...

2011-09-28T11:44:00.002+01:00

It's been another one of those fallow periods since I last wrote where I have seen the usual number of movies but haven't found one amongst them to tickle my fancy. (I know that statement could be made to sound rude.) So let's have a look at some of the 'offenders':

It's been what could be described as "Deficient Dad Week" on Sky Movies Premiere. For a change they have actually screened five films new to satellite rather than the scant four they've been getting away with, but by and large they were a sorry lot. What was meant to be the best of the bunch was award-winner "The Kids Will be Alright", where Mark Ruffalo was the deficient father, being the sperm donor trying to get to know his progeny after being contacted by the offspring of a happy lesbian couple, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. Bening of course won an Oscar for her role, but Moore as the flakier of the pair and the one who succumbs to shagging Ruffalo was every bit as good. The two teenaged sprogs were also fine, but I always have a hard time warming to Ruffalo who may be a decent enough actor but whose scruffy looks always manage to turn me off. This drama from lesbian/feminist director Lisa Cholodenko was certainly worthy, but frankly not particularly involving or for that matter entertaining.

Then there were what I would label the 'kiddies' films: Do the powers that churn out the schedules for Sky truly believe that the peak-time premiere of the week should be something like "Marmaduke", an oversized great dane voiced by Owen Wilson? Here dad's job forces the family to relocate to a dogocentric petfood park, and I ask if we are meant to be entertained by a plethora of CGI-created talking pooches plus one token pussy? I suspect the answer to both questions is a resounding 'no'. I like doggy-pix as much as the next chap, but this was beyond feeble. Then there was "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" (which has alreadly spawned a sequel, God help us) and "Ramona and Beezus" based on a popular children's book. Steve Zahn (enough said) was the wimpy kid's ineffectual dad and John Corbett, another actor who makes me grind my teeth, was the father in the latter -- not a hopeless dud-dad but rather worryingly out of work. My inner child often finds something to amuse in many movies intended primarily for kids, but both of these were not remotely aimed at an adult audience. Still I do know one little girl (stand up Lucy) who occasionally seems to watch the 'wimpy' movie on what seems a continuous loop.

Finally Sky 'treated' us to "The World's Greatest Dad" which has been reasonably well reviewed as a sparkling black comedy from director Bobcat Goldthwait (now there's a comic name!) It is probably labelled a comedy because it stars Robin Williams who will forever be thought of as a comic actor -- when he is not just being nauseatingly twee - but there was nothing remotely funny about this film. Williams, an uncharismatic high school teacher and would-be but unpublished author, is the single dad to bolshy and pretty obnoxious teenager Daryl Sabara. When his son accidentally dies during some autoerotic experimentation, Williams stages a false suicide scene and writes a heart-rendering suicide note to cover the situation. Lo and behold, suddenly Williams is the popular man of the hour and his awful son, whom nobody much liked, is the centre of a what-a-wonderful-misunderstood-genius-he-was cult. Of course it all falls apart when William eventually tells the truth. I suppose there is some latent satire here about society's false values, but there was little that was comic in the telling. Tragic more like.

Of course there is plenty of viewing outside Sky. This week's included a couple of oriental period pieces which were OK if not thrilling and a 2008 French flick called "Mark of an Angel" (or its UK title "Angel of Mine"). This one was fairly involving and starred Catherine Frot as a slightly neurotic woman undergoing a divorce from her husband of twelve years and contesting the custody of their son. Some seven years ago she lost her newborn daughter in a hospital fire and hasn't exactly been stable since. When collecting her son from a friend's party she spots a lovely seven-year old girl and decides there and then that she is her lost daughter. (How one is meant to recognise a child last seen as an infant is anyone's guess, but probably many mothers would think this feasible). So she begins to stalk the girl's family who are about to relocate to Montreal, turning up wherever they are and even pretending that she is interested in buying their house. The girl's mother is played by Sandrine Bonnaire, another fine actress -- even if she was looking terribly anorexic here. We are led to believe that Frot really is an obsessed nutter, until we gradually become aware that perhaps there is more to Bonnaire's protective behaviour than meets the eye. Supposedly 'based on a true story' this movie doesn't just stop dead in its tracks like so many French films, but actually proceeds further than necessary with its resolution, past the point that we need to know. As an acting masterclass the film was fine, but it's not one that is likely to become a classic.

Finally what should have been the highlight of the week was actually something of an anticlimax: a reconstructed 1922 silent "The Pharaoh's Wife" from the great Ernst Lubitsch before he left Germany for the States. The trouble is that much of the original nitrate print seems to have been lost forever and great chunks of the film were merely stills and title cards covering the story. What has been saved was lovingly restored and one can see the odd example of the famous "Lubitsch-touch" in the faces of some of the characters and the luscious and ornate Egyptian settings. The Pharaoh is hammingly overplayed by the great Emil Jannings, his maudit love of a Greek slave is actually attractive by modern standards, but her own love interest was unfortunately embodied in a kohl-eyed nerd. The Pharaoh is about to be betrothed to the hideous daughter of the Ethopian king (portrayed with his Court as a pack of fuzzy-wuzzies), and his rejection of her for a slave leads to war and ultimately tragedy all 'round. Although I am being at best lukewarm about this film, in truth I felt privileged to be able to view any cinema remnants from such a great director. I only wish they had been able to save rather more.

Gainsbourg (2010)

2011-09-23T14:25:00.002+01:00

I really had no preconceptions about this biopic of the multi-talented French musician-artist-writer-singer Serge Gainsbourg and like most 'foreigners' I was really only familiar with his scandalous "Je t'Aime" duet with Jane Birkin. However, after sampling a selection of his other songs during the course of this movie, I am not surprised that his musical style did not translate well outside France. and I did not emerge a converted fan. However, I was quite taken with the film itself, especially for the first half, before it seemed to peter out. Much like Gainsbourg's career I suspect.

A first feature by writer-director Joann Sfar's from his own graphic novel, it strives to give the viewer a shortcut into the mind of a man with something to prove, without giving us much idea of the timeline or much understanding of any real accomplishments. It starts in wartime Paris when young Lucien (as he was then called) and his Russian-immigrant parents manage to survive relatively unscathed, despite the anti-Jewish laws in force. The child actor Kacey Mottet Klein does a fine job of portraying the young boy as a precocious, yet charming troublemaker. He is sexually aware for his age and brags to his schoolmates of greater expertise than was probably the case. He has an alter-ego cum imaginary friend to protect him, called La Gueule (the mug) a larger than life Jewish caricature with an oversized semitic nose and huge ears, an externalisation of his own concerns about his appearance. This shadow accompanies him throughout his life, urging him on to greater and greater excesses and is an imaginative externalisation of his own conflicted mind. Parenthetically, La Gueule is played by Doug Jones, who has given us a fine line in fantastic creatures in films like "Hellboy" and "Pan's Labyrinth".

The adult Lucien-now-Serge is played by Eric Elmosnino who is appropriately homely in appearance, but who does not let his looks stop his ambitions as a lady's man. Unfortunately he does not project much personality and I found his portrayal less sympathetic than young Master Klein's. I rapidly lost interest in his affairs with Juliette Greco (Anna Mouglalis), Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta -- far too overblown), and Jane Birkin (Lucy Gordon, rather better looking than Birkin and an unfortunate young suicide during the film's editing). The man with something to prove managed to charm a number of women, but we have little insight as to why he pursued so self-destructive a course with his smoking, drinking, and womanising and even less insight into what talents he may have squandered along the way.

Sfar's film starts off like a house on fire, enchanting the viewer with his fanciful presentation, but he loses his way half way through and the movie tails off, losing our attention and interest as well. Had he been able to maintain the style of his novel throughout, his subject might have been far better served. As it is, we are left with a not too flattering portrait of an apparently not too nice man.

Jitterbugs (1943)

2011-09-18T16:25:00.001+01:00

The comedy team of Laurel and Hardy has entertained generations of children and adults and will probably continue to enchant many generations to come. Theirs was a simple world of affection and gentleness, strikingly at odds with the brash humour of modern times. Their antics and mishaps will carry on raising smiles as viewers continue to succumb to their special brand of silliness. From their early shorts back in the silent days to their classic features of the l930s, they are undoubtedly cinema greats. It is therefore a little unfortunate that their later movies do not consistently showcase their great talents, lumbering the boys with a miscellany of distracting co-stars. From 1941 when they did a production deal with 20th Century Fox for the fairly pedestrian "Great Guns", six of their last eight Hollywood features were produced under that studio's auspices and it is fairly clear that the aging team had lost much of their incentive for zany comedy. As for their very last movie "Utopia" made for a French studio in 1951, the less said the better. Still there is so much of their output for us to cherish.

"Jitterbugs" is one of their last movies to showcase them at their best with memorable bits of shtick and a relatively reasonable supporting cast. Despite the nominal 'romantic' lead of one Bob Bailey -- a very minor mainly radio actor, there are excellent turns from "The Maltese Falcon's" Lee Patrick as a would-be femme fatale, an early showcase for the then fresh-faced singer Vivian Blaine (who shall forever be the somewhat harder Miss Adelaide of "Guys and Dolls"), and in one of his 326 (!) film roles hissable villain Douglas Fowley. The boys play a travelling two-man jitterbug band with a Rube Goldberg assortment of instruments, who are roped into fronting for con-man Bailey's 'magic tablet to turn water to gas' during wartime rationing. They, of course, are far too innocent to work out that he might be a fraud. When Bailey becomes enamoured of small-town beauty Blaine and discovers that her dear old mum has been conned out of her house by a band of tricksters, he vows to help expose the villains and drags the boys into his scheme. Ollie is passed off as a wealthy Southern gentleman (a role not unlike his own background) to set up a situation where the baddies will be hoist with their own petard.

So we are treated to a scene of Ollie dancing with and romancing George, ever so beautifully graceful for a large man. We have the supposedly teetotal Stanley getting more and more sloshed as he hides under the lovers' chaise lounge, catching the seat of his trousers on a dislodged spring when he springs to escape. We also have one of Stanley's classic turns in drag as he poses as Blaine's 'rich aunt from Boston'. The film is far from Laurel and Hardy's finest, but it has enough memorable moments to make it worthwhile viewing. There is perhaps one number too many of Miss Blaine's warbling padding out the 70 minutes running time, but one advantage of DVDs is that you can fast-forward through the dross to get back to the misadventures of our sweet mismatched pair.

Room and a Half (2009)

2011-09-13T12:24:00.001+01:00

Had you told me in advance that I would be spellbound by a two-hour plus Russian language film by a director I don't know, starring actors unfamiliar to me, and being a biopic of a Nobel Laureate for literature whose name only rings vague bells, I probably would have told you to 'sit on it'. To prove how wrong preconceptions can be, this is one hell of a fascinating movie.

It's the first feature film from 70-year old director Andrey Khrzhanovskiy, better known as an animator and documentary filmmaker, who brings all of his skills to creating the world of poet/essayist Joseph Brodsky. It ends with the warning: "This film is fictional. Any resemblance to real persons or events is purely coincidental". However this is something of a conceit, since Brodsky was a very real person, constantly at odds with the authorities; he was first exiled within Russia, sentenced to 5 years' hard labour and then 'invited to leave' Russia at the age of 32. The authorities refused to recognize him as an 'officially-registered' poet and he was charged with 'social parasitism' (and the great crime of being Jewish as well). He went to the States where he was a visiting professor at various universities, became a naturalized citizen, won the Nobel Prize for his book of essays in 1987, and died in New York in l996 at the age of 55.

The film is 'fictional' in the sense that the director has taken certain artistic liberties in recreating his childhood and his relationship with his doting parents, his prurient teenaged and young adult 'bohemian' years, and the yearning of his later years. Khrzhanovskiy has done this by mixing black and white real footage and colourful dramatic reconstructions, with monochrome silhouette and conventional animation. Brodsky is represented as a lascivious cat (meow-talk was a running joke with his father) and his parents as two black crows, such as the two that he says suddently appeared in his garden after each of their deaths. The actors playing his parents (both of whom give wonderfully warm performances) do not age throughout -- since this is obviously the way he remembered them during his long overseas exile in America. In his childhood on his walks through St. Petersburg, his father would regale him with the histories of each elegant building and the stories of the families who lived there before the revolution. At the same time, his family is forced to move from their bourgeois flat to a communal apartment (the room and a half of the title), and threatened as Jews with iminent deportation to the Far East. An animated fantasy of their piano and other cultural musical instruments floating away to the East, as the barbarians flourish, is brilliantly conceived.

The adult Brodsky, again embodied as an unchanging middle-aged man, always wrote and dreamt about returning to St.Petersburg, but never did. He wrote, "Poets always come back, whether in flesh or on paper. I like to believe both." His parents, who claim never to have understood his poetry, can only watch the Nobel prizegiving on their small black and white TV (normally tuned to ice skating); they have tried in vain to get permission to visit him overseas, but are constantly told that "your journey is inappropriate". There is a touching scene near the film's end when the three of them are reuinited around the small table in their old flat in what is now obviously contemporary Russia, long after their respective deaths. They catch up on all the news and gossip, but they do understand that they are all dead -- or they could not be sitting together. The film's final dedication is "In Loving Memory of Our Parents".

This is a wonderfully warm and witty film and a bravura example of the filmmaker's art.

The Skin I Live In (2011)

2011-09-08T10:58:00.000+01:00

Pedro Almodovar's eighteenth film is a more than watchable fable, but one that finds the flamboyant director in a more solemn mode. Reuniting with his favourite 'chico', Antonio Banderas, twenty years after their last collaboration (of five), l990's "Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down", Almodovar revisits his familiar themes of sexual identity, passion, and revenge, but with a new and unfamiliar restraint. Gone are the gaudy colourways and histrionic performances; in their place are opulent but cold settings, underplaying, and overly-controlled hysteria.

The film is purportedly based on the French novel "Tarantula" by Thierry Jonquet, which I am about to read, but noting the back-cover blurb plus Almodovar's own comments on his film's source, it would appear to be a totally different tale to the one that he has written for the screen. The only common factor is that Banderas' character, Dr. Robert Ledgard, is an eminent surgeon, obsessed with finding a synthetic skin, even if this involves Frankenstein-like tampering with animal/human fusions. His initial motivation was brought about by his beloved wife's severe and life-threatening burns after a motor accident, which ultimately led to her suicide when she became aware of the full extent her disfiguration. In an upstairs locked bedroom we have the 'good doctor's' latest project -- the lovely Elena Anaya's Vera, in a full bodysuit covering up her creamy perfection. We learn that she has been there for six years since the suicide of his fragile daughter after a would-be rape, but to reveal Vera's true background would be too much of a spoiler here. It is enough to mention that what began as straightforward, if twisted, revenge by Dr. Ledgard has evolved into irresistible sexual yearning for the object of his tampering, especially after she has been raped by his criminally-sociopathic half-brother (decked out in a tiger suit for the local carnival).

Both the doctor and the 'tiger' are the illegitimate sons of housekeeper Marilia, portrayed by an Almodovar regular from earlier movies, now older and less glamorous, Marisa Paredes. Incidentally, she is not a character in the original novel. She loves both of her sons and tries to overlook the fact that both have become madmen in their separate ways. Talking about 'less glamorous', Banderas too is not the fresh-faced lust-object from the director's films of the l980s, but rather now an aging, leather-faced psychological cipher. Apparently, at the director's urging, he was instructed to play his part as expressionlessly and unemotionally as possible; unfortunately the net result of this underplaying is that his motivations become less and less understandable. His chosen life and work remain much of a mystery to us. As for Anaya who may be Almodovar's new muse after his five films with Penelope Cruz, she is the perfect choice for the captive Vera, lithe yet sensual; Cruz would have been a too lush-bodied presence for the role.

In many ways this is a cold film; while certainly an interesting one, taking its place in the canon of 'mad doctor' movies, it is difficult to get overly enthusiastic about it. Almodovar has made better and more entertaining movies and I am not too certain about the change of pace that is manifested here. However I suspect that it may grow on me -- like a second skin?

FrightFest 2011 Part Two

2011-09-03T12:39:00.002+01:00

Alright, Pat, take a deep breath and get on with the second half of this report -- although it's actually rather more than half, since there are still thirteen films left to plough through:

Compendia: There have always been worthwhile examples of multi-part horror movies going back to the superb 1945 "Dead of Night" and including a number of scary horror compilations from the 1970s. However the conceit of asking a variety of directors to contribute shortish sections to a single movie too often results in a severe case of the Parson's Nose -- the non-horror film called "Aria" (1987) being a good example. FrightFest scheduled two of these films this year, both in late, late night slots, and neither worth the effort to stay awake: "The Theatre Bizarre" and "Chillerama". The former was the brainchild of seven (!) directors including Richard Stanley, Buddy G, and F/X maestro Tom Savini, all held together by a weird framing narrative featuring the iconic Udo Kier as a human puppet. It was something of a mishmash and only the eerie story of a tourist being seduced by a lusty witch in provincial France could be described as 'not too embarrassing', while the final tale of death by gross overeating verged on the nauseating. The other film 'boasted' only four directors and was potentially the more imaginative example of bad taste. However after the idiotic story of a giant spermatazoa terrorizing the neighbourhood and a silly beach-party musical featuring gay lust, I gave up in the middle of the black and white, holocaust-set, 'Diary of Anne Frankenstein'. Sometimes enough is too much -- especially at 2 a.m.

Jokey horror: For some bizarre reason this sub-genre of gross-out splatter tickles my funnybone. "Deadheads" was amusing, but the least appealing of the three examples; we follow the cross-country roadtrip of a 'zombie' who is able to talk and reason, together with his new also-rational zombie bestfriend, and their strong-armed mute zombie muscle, as they go to find the sweetheart that he left behind. A second American entry in this category was the very clever and extremely chuckleful "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil". This film took the premise that all country bumpkins must be homicidal, redneck murderers and turned it on its head. Two relatively bright hicks, who only want to enjoy their new fixer-upper vacation cabin in the boonies, have to contend with a bunch of smartass college kids who fear the worse from these tame hillbillies and who largely end up as dead meat through their own stupidity. The third movie was the British "Inbred", which was not actually meant as a comedy; however the story is so far over the top in its gross-out effects that it squarely belongs in this grouping. Four teenaged offenders and their two care workers head out to the countryside for a community service weekend in a remote hamlet. So remote that most of the denizens appear to be their own grandpas and are largely inbred mutants, deriving their local entertainment from mutilating passers-by in gorily inventive ways. They congregate at the local pub called The Dirty Hole (the sign reads 'NOT meals served here') and one can foresee the dire consequences likely to follow. We're led to believe that there will be the usual survivors, but...

Miscellaneous American nasties: "Rogue River" was an effective bit of Grand Guignol as our heroine who only wants to spread her late father's ashes at a scenic beauty spot is waylaid by an apparently helpful local who offers a lift after she find that her car has been towed away. Since this kind samaritan is played by The Devil's Rejects' Bill Moseley we just know that she is in for some torture porn. She goes home with him and meets his equally 'normal' wife but soon discovers the various half-dead earlier victims kept in trunks in the basement. Still I prefered that film to "The Divide", a post-apocalypse tale of a group of miscellaneous survivors holed up in the basement apartment of their building's caretaker. It rapidly descends into an adult version of "The Lord of the Flies" as their quest for survival takes less humane turns. A lot of viewers rated director Ti West's "The Innkeepers" as one of the best of the fest. It tells of the last weekend before closing forever at a historic and possibly haunted New England inn. For my money it was such a slow-burner that the anticipated scares, when they finally did arrive, came solely as an anticlimax. The best of this lot was Lucky McKee's "The Woman", from the fiendish mind of author Jack Ketchum whose "The Girl Next Door" (2007) remains one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen at FrightFest. It is the story of a seemingly upright family man (but actually a tyrant to his submissive wife and kids) who comes across a feral female while out hunting, captures her, takes her home, and chains her up for his own fiendish ends. Scottish-born actress Pollyanna McIntosh gives a remarkable performance as this 'uncivilised' creature who can only communicate in her own language of meaningful grunts but who retains all of her animal cunning in dealing with her abusers.

The British contingent: Quite naturally the fest's organisers feel obliged to showcase new British productions, but traditionally these have been something of a mixed bag. We often choose to watch one of the 'Discovery' offerings rather than another amateurish version of zombies taking over the countryside. The four we did view were by and large intended to be the most commercial and professional offerings, but I just can't bring myself to enthuse over any of them. "The Glass Man" starred Andy Nyman as a man who has lost his job, but who can't let his wife into that secret, and who pretends that everything is normal despite his increasing financial concerns. One night hard man James Cosmo appears at his door threatening all sorts of dire violence if he does not come out and help him with his nefarious plans for the evening. Fine up to that point, but then it becomes just a wee bit too far-fetched and too draggy to really care what is actually going on in Nyman's increasingly unhinged mind. "The Wicker Tree", only the fourth movie from legendary writer-director Robin Hardy who gave us 1973's classic "Wicker Man" was a complete disappointment. Even reuniting him with that film's classic villain Christopher Lee (in all of a 90-second cameo) didn't make this new story of the 'old religion' in rural Scotland a patch on his first film. What next for him? The Wicker Shrub? The Wicker Bedding-plant? Then there was the most over-hyped movie of the fest "Kill List", which has just opened here and which has been garnering rave reviews as a 'new British cult classic'. Balderdash, says PPP; this muddled story of two buddies, supposedly ordinary suburban layabouts who are actually vicious hitmen, rapidly descends into a totally unbelievable satanic denouement. Apart from anything else, the film is unlikely to make ten cents in the States unless it comes with subtitles. I've lived here for most of my life and couldn't make head nor tail of the thick Yorkshire accents. Which brings me to the closing movie this year "A Lonely Place to Die", starring Melissa George, and I'm sorry to report another overdone and generally unbelievable thriller. It starts with her and her buddies climbing in the Scottish Highlands and discovering a foreign little girl trapped in an underground chamber. We later learn that she has been kidnapped for ransom and that two vicious killers are on the trail of George and her friends, gradually picking them off. Also in pursuit is a negotiator and his tough bodyguards employed by the girl's probably criminal tycoon of a father. It descends into a major bloodbath, but the screenplay's leaps of logic hardly kept this viewer on the edge of her seat. Then again, we all know that I'm something of a fusspot.

So, that's all folks, for another year -- although at this stage I am seriously considering giving the next marathon a miss. However a lot can happen in twelve months...

FrightFest 2011 Part One

2011-08-31T11:16:00.002+01:00

I know I said I would be back on the blog yesterday, but I was just too weary and bleary-eyed after this latest marathon of horror viewing; I needed the extra day to collect my thoughts.   Of a possible 27 viewing slots, we took in 24 films out of the thirty-odd available. Over a four and a half day period, I reckon that is pretty good going, especially with all of the added and often unexpected short films, trailers, and sneak-peaks that preceded some of the showings and the Q and As that followed them. (We skipped most of the latter, prefering to use the downtime, such as it was, for hurried nourishment -- no leisurely meals this year.)

The fest has now been running for twelve years and this is my seventh summary since I started blogging in 2005, although we were regular attendees before that. Where does the time go? Don't answer that!   Anyhow, rather than report my reactions chronologically film by film as I have done previously, I shall try to group the features into several categories in the hope of getting through the reviews in two extended blog entries:

The kick-off opener: "Don't be Afraid of the Dark" came with a lot of baggage in tow since it was produced and co-written by genre fave Guillermo del Toro, who claims that the original 1973 television movie scared him rigid and deserved a big screen resurrection. If I ever saw the TVM, I certainly don't remember it, so I came without any preconceptions. What we have is divorced architect Guy Pearce (phoning in his performance) and new squeeze Katie Holmes (in her secondary role as an actress rather than her main role as a celebrity wife) renovating a 19th Century New England mansion in the hope of making a financial killing. His young daughter -- a fine performance from youngster Bailee Madison -- comes to stay and soon unearths the fearsome miniature, malevolent gremlins that lurk behind the grate in the basement. These hobgoblins want her for their own, as they claimed the house's previous inhabitants, and are vicious in their pursuit. While the creatures are very well-done with the CGI tools now available, the movie itself is something of a drag and a little short on shocks and starts. Only the heightened sound effects manage to contribute to the occasional foreboding. First-time feature director Troy Nixey tries his best, but I can't help thinking that it would have been a better film if Del Toro had taken over the reins.

3-D horror: Like too many other recent American releases, this technology, now beginning to fade in its audience appeal, has been brought to the horror movie: "Final Destination 5 - 3D" and "Fright Night 3D". These two movies actually showcase 3D's strengths and pitfalls. Its use in the fifth 'Final' film has actually revitalised the franchise; the splatter and pointy weapons are displayed with verve and humour. The set pieces of Death catching up with those who have cheated him are as inventive as usual, but all the more effective with the dangers literally 'coming at you'. The remake of the 1985 classic however would have been no better or worse in the usual two dimensions. The original featured two timeless performances from Chris Sarandon (given a cameo in this version) and Roddy McDowell, but Colin Farrell as the vampire next door and David Dr. Who Tennant as the would-be vampire killer do not quite cut the mustard, while the young lead Anton Yelchin is only adequate. His nerdy ex-best friend Christopher Mintz-Plasse, vampirized early in the procedings, is pretty good value. The movie was too dimly lit in places for the 3-D to be effective. As for the 're-imagining' itself Farrell's is a far nastier and less charismatic vampire than Sarandon's and all the flashy special effects in the world do not make up for the differences between the two films.

Foreign Horror: One of the treats of FrightFest is the culling of suitable movies from around the world. There was a dearth this year of entries from the Far East, but there were interesting selections from Norway ("Troll Hunter"), Germany ("Urban Explorers"), Holland ("Saint"), Switzerland " (Sennentuntschi: Curse of the Alps"), and Israel ("Rabies"). It is particularly interesting that the last two films are the first-ever genre productions from these two countries and that even 'foreign' horror films have never previously found an audience in Israel. The Norwegian and German movies were passing fair but not great, although the formidable trolls in the first film's 'found footage' were well conceived; the German film started off as English-speaking as some adventurous tourists pay to explore Berlin's underground tunnels, but then moved into German dialogue (and the production company omitted to send a print with subtitles!). The Dutch movie from Dick Maas, the man behind "The Elevator" and "Amsterdamned", turns the Netherlands Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas, into a murderous fiend, a bishop-turned-pirate, who kills adults and abducts children when there is a full moon on his December 5th Saint's Day, aided by his zombiefied Black Peters. Well done gory fun! The Swiss film was something well out of the ordinary based on folklore. When lonely mountain men crave female companionship, they can build their ideal woman from a straw broom and some rags. Lo and behold, a desirable beauty appears, but they find that she will take her murderous revenge for the crimes against her kind over the years. As for the Israeli entry, the story has nothing whatsoever to do with rabies, but rather with the rabid and irrational behaviour that can manifest itself in the most ordinary of folk; most of the ten main protagonists (two yuppie couples, a park ranger and his girlfriend, an incestuous brother and sister, two mismatched cops) meet bloody and unexpected ends, while the local maniac-at-large is not responsible for their deaths and is one of the few characters to walk away from the debacle.

The Israeli film was actually one of the alternatives from the fest's small 'Discovery' screen and proved so popular a selection that a third screening had to be scheduled for the first time ever. We watched three other movies at this venue for independent cinema and they were a mixed bag, although all had something going for them. "A Horrible Way to Die" should have been subtitled 'A Horrible Way to Make a Movie'; its director took what was actually a very clever premise of an escaped serial killer's ex-girlfriend trying to build a new life under the witness protection programme and Alcoholics Anonymous, but finding that there are those who actually revere the prowess of her former boyfriend, and weakened the narrative by employing some artsy-fartsy camera shots through fairy lights. "My Sucky Teen Romance" was an accomplished bit of mayhem comedy written and directed by an 18 year-old Texan gal; while obviously extremely low-budget filmmaking, she successfully captured the yearning and traumas of teenaged infatuation, especially if your crush is on a newbie vampire. "The Caller" was an an interesting American indie set in Puerto Rico of all places (home of dengue fever -- in joke!). Strongly cast with Rachelle Lefevre, Stephen Moyer, and Luis Guzman, the newly-divorced heroine moves into her new apartment and starts receiving threatening phone calls from someone's past; we gradually discover that it is impossible to work out what constitutes her reality and what is the product of her overstressed imagination.   All well done -- but why Puerto Rico for a largely non-ethnic cast?

Guess what...I've run out of steam. I had intended to include two compendium movies in today's digest, but will hold these for my second summary, along with three jokey horror movies, and the remaining eight assorted American and British premieres. In the words of you know who, I'll be back...

Kin-Dza-Dza (1987)

2011-08-23T12:37:00.000+01:00

Every time I look in despair at what's showing at my local multiplex or what is forthcoming on television -- finding nothing that I am in any particular hurry to view, I need to remind myself that there is a whole world of worthwhile cinema experiences out there. One just needs to find them. This Russian film is apparently a cult item in its native country, but it is relatively unknown in the West. I believe discs have previously been available Stateside and clips are available on You-Tube and the like, but this is a supreme instance of a movie that deserves to be better known.

From a popular director Georgi Danelia and starring a quartet of well-known actors (Stanislav Liubshin, Levan Gabriadze, Yevgeni Leonov, and Yuri Yakovlov -- no, me neither!), this is a hugely imaginative and enjoyable sci-fi/comedy romp. Its 135 minutes running time passes swiftly, despite what appears to the Western eye as cheapjack movie-making. It is a futuristic, post-apocalyptic fantasy achieved with little recourse to the special effects which dominate our films today. It is also, if one can picture oneself in the pre-glasnost/perestroika era, a brave satire on communist society of the day; it's a wonder that the movie wasn't banned.

Two strangers on a busy Moscow street try to help a barefoot man who is either lost or drunk and accidently find themselves teleported to the barren planet of Pluk in the Kin-Dza-Dza galaxy. They are temporarily befriended by two untrustworthy natives in a primitive flying machine, whose sole dialogue consists of two words: Koo and Kyoo (the latter is their expletive). However the planet is technologically evolved and they can read minds and converse in Russian. Pluk has become the slum area of the universe; all of its resources have been exhausted -- its rivers have dried up, its terrain is one sandy waste, and its cyberpunk inhabitants live largely in holes in the ground. A wrecked sailing ship and a totally incongruous skeleton Ferris wheel are the few remaining hints of a once flourishing culture. The land is moribund and its population faces extinction.

While our two mismatched heroes (a family man and a student trying to return a valuable violin to one of his professors) try to find a way home, they are exposed to the rottenest of class systems. They are of course considered part of the lower caste; they must wear distinguishing nose-rings, must address their so-called superiors from cages, and must bow extravagantly whenever addressing one of the 'masters'. Only their possession of a box of matches gives them any bargaining cachet. Mysteriously these vitually inexpensive items from our world are treasured in Pluk's strange society, a world without hope or a future. The most its lesser inhabitants can look forward to is to be transformed into plants on an adjacent planet, which is potentially better than being boxed up in a bed of nails should they fall foul of the planet's lazy and inept superiors. To raise funds in the local currency to ease their journey, the two attempt to serenade the locals with their versions of popular songs and the odd American pop standard., accompanied by the now semi-destroyed and glued together violin.

I think you get the idea. This is one very weird movie and one that could be recommended to the pickiest of sci-fi fans. Unfortunately, however, it is not that easy to find, but well worth the search.

It's that time of the year again! We are off to our FrightFest weekend running this Thursday through Monday, so there will be nothing from me until Tuesday the 30th at the earliest. However I promise you then a thorough report on what's new and exciting in the realms of horror and fantasy and what to watch out for over the coming months.

Disappointments

2011-08-18T12:20:00.001+01:00

If you scroll down to my 29 July entry, you will find that I was disappointed in my attempt to see Rutger Hauer's "Hobo with a Shotgun" (2011). So when it eventually reappeared at the Prince Charles, off we went -- to find that it was even more disappointing to actually see this Canadian-made rubbish. Unfortunately even Hauer's screen charisma is not enough to save this splatterfest. He plays the hobo of the title who rides the rails into a corrupt and lawless town where even the Chief of Police is a baddie. The town is run by a sadistic Mr. Big, who with his two amoral sons (looking like overgrown Tom Cruise clones) delights in decaptitating his enemies, amongst other jolly tortures. Good old Rutger is himself mutilated and especially horrified when the local women (most of whom seem to be prostitutes) are threatened. He grabs a shotgun (with a neverending supply of ammo) to mete out his idea of justice and revenge, becoming some sort of local hero in the process. All he really wants, mind you, is an electric lawnmower so he can start his own grass-cutting business! The screen runs red with the gore effects, but the film is so amateurishly made with so hopeless a supporting cast that the net result is waste of time.

So once again in the hope of compensation and loftier film-making, I turned to two foreign-language films which have been loitering on my hard-disc. Both appear to be extremely well-thought of, but I found both to be over-rated disappointments, easy enough to watch but strangely unfulfilling. Could be it's me! Anyhow here goes:

Still Walking (2008): This Japanese film received numerous Asian filmfest awards for its director Hirokazu Koreeda and other gongs for some of its ensemble actors, but it was rather slow-going and uninvolving. The film tells of one day in the life of a family; a surviving son and daughter, together with their respective spouses and offspring, have reluctantly come to visit their elderly parents to commemorate the death of the eldest and favoured son some fifteen years earlier. Grandpa, a retired doctor, sulks most of the time that no one has followed in his medical footsteps. Grandma fusses over the food, her children, and her rather noisy grandchildren. The daughter wants to move her family back to her parents' home to supposedly look after them in their dotage -- a suggestion that fills her mother with despair. The son is an art restorer who barely scrapes a living and he has married a widow with a young child -- none of which sits well with the elders. Then the now very fat and gormless young man, whom the beloved dead son drowned whilst saving, arrives to pay his respects, adding to the air of gloom in the household. It is all very Ozu-y in feel, but not a movie to lighten one's heart and it is too pedestrian an effort to enchant.

Mid-August Lunch (2008): I was quite looking forward to seeing this Italian film whose supposed charm preceded it. Written and directed by and starring Gianni Di Gregorio (the screenwriter for the much better "Gomorrah" of the same year), it is not exactly a vanity piece but it is an ever-so-slight confection. He plays a middle-aged man called Gianni who lives with his aged mother (a grotesque played by 93-year old Valeria DeFranciscus) and who pursues a shiftless hand-to-mouth existence. His landlord threatens eviction for non-payment of rent unless he agrees to look after his aging mother and aunt over the holiday weekend when everyone wants to leave Rome. He is then lumbered with another old dear foisted upon him by his doctor. The film focuses on his attempt to feed and accommodate the various ladies, their gripes, and their interaction. The raw material was there to create a charming and amusing scenario, but somehow it didn't seem to mesh, and even at a scant 75 minutes, I had a surfeit of their company. I gather DiGregorio has just released another movie "The Salt of Life" where he plays a different Gianni and again co-stars with the now even older DeFranciscus. It's had mildly lukewarm reviews, but I won't be queuing up to sample its probably dubious attractions.

I hope to be more positive next time!

The Bedroom Window (1987)

2011-08-13T11:38:00.001+01:00

Somewhere I accumulated a DVD of this movie which I had not watched again in over twenty years, since from memory there was nothing particularly amazing about it. Viewing it again was not an unpleasant experience in any way -- in fact it was moderately enjoyable, but it did get me thinking about the transient path of so many acting careers. It is the story of a love-struck executive having an affair with his hot-shot employer's wife. On the night the relationship begins, she witnesses a brutal attack in the park opposite his bedroom window and her screams and the sight of her naked body cause the culprit to flee, saving his immediate victim but priming him for another murderous attack soon thereafter. The mistress has had a good view of the assailant, but is too concerned with her marriage and infidelity to contact the police, so our feckless hero pretends that it was he who had witnessed the outrage and who could identify the perp. Of course nothing goes as intended and he soon finds himself the main suspect in several related murders. It is a kind of sub-Hitchcock farrago with its themes of voyeurism and an innocent man on the run, desperate to clear his name as the evidence against him mounts. The film was the first mainstream feature from writer-director Curtis Hanson, whose career has continued an upward trend, although possibly it peaked with "L.A. Confidential".

The three leads are Steve Guttenberg, Isabelle Huppert as the adulteress, and Elizabeth McGovern as the attackee in the park. How very different the courses of their respective careers have been. Guttenberg first came to one's attention as part of the ensemble in "Diner" (1982), and went on to headline the first four "Police Academy" movies, the reasonably entertaining "Four Men and a Baby", and the geriatric fantasy "Cocoon". However his career since the late eighties has gone rapidly downhill and while still in evidence in disposable TV movies, he has done nothing to write home about since. In the above film, however, while no Cary Grant, he plays a likeable enough romantic leading man trying to become an action hero in fraught circumstances just beyond his control. It is quite possibly the only role that has stretched his acting chops in his long 'career' and it might even be his best.

French actress Huppert, on the other hand, has had an increasingly illustrious career both in film and on stage, and is the most-nominated actress for France's Cesar award. She has occasionally dabbled in American movies since her appearance in 1980's "Heaven's Gate". She had an interesting role in Hal Hartley's "Amateur" (1994) and an incomprehenisble one in "I Heart Huckabees" (2004). Why she agrees to these overseas roles when she is such a venerated art-house darling in her native country is a very good question, which probably has little to do with financial rewards given the movies in which she has featured. Oddly enough her role in the film under consideration here was really nothing special and could just as well have been played by a number of American actresses of the day, but nowadays she seems to go from strength to strength.

As for McGovern, she was a fine young leading lady throughout the 1980s, starting with her debut in "Ordinary People" and giving memorable performances in "Ragtime" and "Once Upon a Time in America". However she is rarely seen on the big screen nowadays, although she is still working, having married a British television producer/director in 1992 and relocated to London, where she has appeared in numberous TV offerings. She does take an occasional small part in mainstream movies (most recently "Kick-Ass"), but the superstar potential seen in her earliest features has been shelved for the possibly more fulfilling role of wife and mother. In this film her feisty and brave performance complements Guttenberg's, making him look all the better.

This movie is far from one of the world's greatest contributions to cinema, but it holds up reasonably well these twenty-odd years on. So why, I ask you, is it being remade for 2012 by Kevin Williamson? I can't begin to imagine how he plans to revamp this relatively pedestrian thriller or how in the world he thinks he can improve upon it. Answers on a postcard, please.

Departures (2008)

2011-08-08T09:34:00.003+01:00

There has been an official Oscar category for best foreign film since 1956 when the winner was Fellini's "La Strada". Between 1947 and 1955, a foreign language film was selected for an honourary Oscar. I have seen most of these sixty-odd movies and have copies of quite a few that I particularly liked, although there have been several that were watchable but not 'keepers' in my book, like the soppy "Life Is Beautiful" (1998). Then there have been a number that have eluded me: "Walls of Malapaga" (1950), "Gate of Hell" (1954), "Black and White in Color" (1976) to name a few. However while I don't bend over backwards to find showings for all of them, I am always happy to tick off another one from the winners' list.

This recent Japanese winner seems an unlikely choice in a year with crowd-pleasers such as "Waltz with Bashir", but since the eventual winner can only be selected from those Academy members who have actually seen the film, the voting numbers are potentially low. One reason that it seems a surprise winner is its theme of death -- and the very Japanese way of dealing with it. Our hero, Masahiro Motoki, (an actor unfamiliar to me) is a cellist in a second-tier symphony orchestra which plays beautifully but which attracts a scant paying audience on its provincial tour. When the owner disbands the orchestra, Daigo knows he is unlikely to find another musical position and moves back with his young wife to the small town where he was raised and into the house left to him by his recently deceased mother. He sees an advertisement in the local paper for an inexperienced young man to assist with 'departures'. Thinking this is some sort of travel agency work, he applies and is immediately hired by the firm's boss who explains that there was a typo in the want-ad and that the work involves the departed. He reluctantly accepts the position since the money is good, but is ashamed to tell his wife what he is doing, since there seems to be a widespread prejudice against dealing with the deceased -- as if death were contagious.

It is a Japanese custom to wash and prepare the dead body in front of the grieving family, being careful to expose no flesh, as a way of helping them accept their loss. This is not done by the undertakers but it is a niche market into which Daigo has fallen. At first the movie appears to be a comedy and is played for occasional laughs, such as the scene when our hapless hero reaches under the shroud of a young female suicide and discovers that 'she' is a 'he' or when he is instructed to play the corpse in a training video. However it takes a more serious turn as the film progresses. Having discovered the nature of his work, his ashamed wife leaves him and his friends in town jeer at his occupation. However when she discovers that she is pregnant, she returns and gradually realises the tenderness and compassion in what he does when a family friend dies. Finally he prepares the body of the father who deserted his mother when he was six and who has not been in touch over the years, finding a reconciliation with his past that has previously escaped him.

The movie is very chokey without being depressing, but the subject matter is unlikely to lift the audience in any 'feel-good' way. Although it is all very tastefully done, it is not a film which would encourage multiple viewings. I'm glad to have seen it, but once is enough. The film's director, Yojiro Takita, has had a long career which includes the recent movies "The Yin Yang Master" (2001) -- a fantasy and "When the Last Sword is Drawn" (2003) -- a samurai saga, so this Oscar winner is something of a complete change of pace. Some might find the film slow and the subject matter a little offputting, but one must acknowledge the genuine sincerity with which this unusual story is told.

Good Intentions

2011-08-03T15:36:00.001+01:00

Foiled again! I had planned to write a learned dissertation on John Huston's 1970 flop, "The Kremlin Letter", which has only now belatedly been released on DVD. All that I could recall of my television viewing of this movie some many years ago was that George Sanders appeared in drag. Well, yes he does -- very briefly -- before reverting to a somewhat camp character in what is actually a throwaway role in his penultimate film. However having seen the film again yesterday, I am at a loss to frame a positive review. It is a very dense, nearly literal interpretation, of Noel Behn's political Cold War thriller, very hard to follow, understand, or get caught up in. You might think that with a cast that includes Max von Sydow, Orson Welles, Bibi Andersson, and a bleached blonde Richard Boone, to say nothing about Nigel Green, Dean Jagger, Lila Kedrova, Raf Vallone, Michael MacLiammoir, and nominal leads Patick O'Neal and Barbara Parkins, that the acting alone might redeem this movie. Unfortunately it doesn't, with few of them given the opportunity to shine. Perhaps it is one of those films which demands another viewing to start getting into the hopefully involving intrigue, but I can see it being a while before I can face this dense screenplay again.

Something's Gotta Give (2003): So once again for a change of pace I shall revisit this Diane Keaton/Jack Nicholson rom-com. I would have taken bets that I had reviewed it previously in my old blog -- but can't seem to find it; nevermind, let's look at it afresh. This confection from writer/director Nancy Meyers, a follow-up to her 2000 breakthrough "What Women Want" and a precursor of 2009's charmer "It's Complicated" is not just a movie for the 'older woman' but more generally a rib-tickler for mature viewers of either sex. Keaton is a divorced, self-sufficient, and highly thought-of dramatist whose 30-year old daughter, Amanda Peet, turns up with her latest beau, a 63-year old Nicholson -- playing the perennial bachelor well-known for his flings with young women. When a near heart attack lands him in Keaton's care at her beach house, sparks begin to fly and they end up in bed together. However after a few days' idyll, Nicholson returns to his erstwhile life as a swinger in the Big Apple, and Keaton having found room in her life once again for both sex and love, reacts like a heartbroken teenager at his apparent rejection. If anything she over-reacts and therefore slightly over-acts. In the meantime the young heart surgeon played by a relatively mature and non-doofus Keanu Reeves is smitten with Keaton and makes his move, despite the vast difference in their ages. Without going too far into spoilers (although it doesn't take much nous to guess how things resolve themselves), one actually begins to feel sorry for nice Doctor Keanu and his puppy-like devotion.

Keaton's next Broadway hit is a 'comedy' about the disastrous results of a woman falling for her daughter's boyfriend, killing off the swine at the end of the second act. Nicholson realises that he has become a mockable figure of fun and that his has been a full but unfulfilling life, causing further medical 'episodes'. His new doctor tells him to avoid stress and to re-evaluate what is really important. Part of the denouement revolves around his seeking out old girlfriends to discover what has gone wrong with his life (a plot device stolen in toto by Jim Jarmusch's 2005 showcase for Bill Murray, "Broken Flowers".) His growing insight into what really matters is handled both cleverly and skillfully by the actor, even while it plays upon Nicholson's own playboy rep. Apart from Keaton's brief OTT heartbrokeness, her comic timing remains superb, and there are also some nice turns from Jon Favreau, Paul Michael Glaser, Rachel Ticotin, and Frances McDormand, but the acting honours belong mostly to Nicholson.

One small detail that puzzles me. When I first saw the film, in the scene where Nicholson inadvertently wanders into Keaton's bedroom and finds her in the nude, the focus of his attention was her unmaintained and bushy lower parts -- a symbolic difference between many older women and the bimbos that he has been dating. In the version I just watched, this is missing and the emphasis is on her bare breasts -- almost certainly a body double's. It seems a strange bit of re-editing! But if Spielberg can delete the guns from "E.T.", all sorts of political correctness can abound, most of it for no good purpose.

Seraphine (2008)

2011-07-29T10:57:00.001+01:00

I had every intention of writing today about "Hobo with a Shotgun", the newly released spin-off from the cod "Grindhouse" trailers. I know that's pretty lowbrow on my part, but I have a lot of time for viewing gory trash -- I even liked "Machete", and Rutger Hauer remains a favourite actor, even if he has travelled a long way downhill since his charismatic early appearances in Dutch movies like "Keetje Tippel" and "Soldier of Orange". However when we turned up at the Prince Charles repertory cinema, the movie's only showcase, we found that the showing had been cancelled for technical reasons -- whatever that means.

So for a complete contrast, let me tell you about the above French-language arthouse flick, about as far removed from sewer cinema as it is possible to travel. I have developed a great affection for the middle-aged, Belgian-born, character actress Yolande Moreau. Like Gerard Depardieu with whom she starred recently in "Mammuth", she has no 'side' as we say here. That is she has no false vanity about appearing dowdy or even unashamedly and unattractively naked. In this film which opens in 1914 and which finishes in the mid-l930s, she plays a low-born cleaner and washerwoman in a parochial French town. She is very much her own woman without many expectations from life, nor many social skills, or even much intellect. However after a spell living with the local nuns, she heard a call from a 'guardian angel' ordering her to paint. She gathers materials from natural plants, butcher's blood, and cathedral candle wax to create her first small wooden panels of vibrant flowers, motifs drawn from Nature -- the fields, streams, and trees with which she feels a kinship.

Living in the area is a German art critic and collector -- amongst the first to purchase Picasso and the 'discoverer' of Henri Rousseau's fauve paintings, Wilhelm Uhde (played by Ulrich Tukur -- the Baron in "The White Ribbon"); he stumbles across her work and recognises a burgeoning, singular talent with primitive power. He begins to purchase her paintings and to encourage her output, until he must hurriedly flee back to Germany with the outbreak of war. Move forward to the late 1920s and Uhde is back in France, living in a different town. He makes no attempt to find Serpahine -- assuming her to be dead -- until a chance newspaper article draws him to an exhibition by local artists in her hometown of Senlis and there are two new and more ambitious works by the peasant woman. Apparently this gap in their relatioship is historically correct, even if it is a little hard to fathom. Anyhow he soon becomes her patron giving her a monthly stipend to concentrate on her strange paintings which he promotes to the art world. However, this influx of cash turns an already slightly deranged mind into one craving the trappings of wealth. Seraphine begins to lose touch with reality -- especially after she is chastised for her unbound spending, and a promised Paris exhibition is postponed by Uhde in the parlous financial times of the early 30s. These are circumstances that the simple Seraphine is unable to understand and the strain of her perceived rejection results in such erratic behaviour that she lands in a mental asylum for the remainder of her days -- no longer painting, although Uhde does fund her final years when she once again finds some peace in Nature. He, on the other hand, has continued selling her paintings and finally delivers the so-desired exhibition after her death, launching the powerful works of the now-named Seraphine de Senlis into art history.

This film from writer-director (and erstwhile actor) Martin Provost is slow, but involving. It is lovingly photographed as we follow the unusual life of Moreau's Seraphine. She is in nearly every scene and we want so much for her life to take a happier course. Still, there is pure joy in her simple religious faith as she sweetly sings to the saints while creating her oddly vivid paintings. The 55-year old Moreau gives us yet another powerful performance to savour.

Serendipity

2011-07-24T15:39:00.000+01:00

If my viewing life was not so blessed with occasional happy surprises, I doubt I would be so obsessive at viewing nearly everything that comes my way nor being as prepared to grant even the most dubious offering an even break. While this results in my seeing a lot of dreck -- to put no finer point upon it, the occasional gem is found glittering amongst the morass.

Some of the so-called 'movie channels' on satellite television are actually nothing more than an old-folks home for aging television movies and made-for-cable films and mini-series. Some of these are reasonably watchable, as long as one doesn't apply rigid cinema criteria, and it is always a kick to see no longer available actors, like Lee Remick or Jason Robards, in their small-screen appearances. However, every so often, what I would term a 'real film' finds its way into the knacker's yard of these minor channels and makes me realise that I have struck gold.

Voices from a Locked Room (1995), aka Voices: I knew absolutely nothing about this movie and must assume that while not made for television, it never received any sort of distribution in the cinema. It is a absolutely riveting biopic of the pseudonymous, modern progressive British composer Peter Warlock -- if one ignores the fact that the story being told bears little resemblance to the realities of his own short life. The movie is set in a faithfully rendered London of 1930; Jeremy Northam plays a respected newspaper music critic, Philip Heseltine, whose bete noir is what he considers the derivative or 'stolen' output of the reclusive, yet fashionable, composer. It might be considered a 'spoiler' to reveal the twist, although the conclusion soon becomes apparent to the viewer, but Heseltine and Warlock are one and the same person; the protagonist's increasingly violent and irrational behaviour is the product of a bi-polar, disturbed mind. Heseltine is a wealthy man about town, courting a talented American night-club singer -- a strong role for Tushka Bergen, while Warlock works from a Battersea slum and warns her against the hated critic. They function as two discreet, yet obviously dependent personalities, and each of them indulges in life-threatening ploys against the other. There is some cockamamie backstory that Heseltine was traumatised as a child when his wicked stepfather set his grand piano alight -- I bet! At any rate, Northam is absolutely brilliant at playing these Jekyll and Hyde characters at war within himself.

Although the film is based on a novel, it is barely factual and a great deal of poetic license has been taken in bringing the source material to the screen. The only fact that is inarguable is that Warlock/Heseltine died in mysterious circumstances in his gas-filled flat at the age of 34. However the story of the self-loathing critic and the tortured genius existing in a single body has gifted Northam with an actor's tour-de-force that deserves to be rescued from its satellite graveyard.

Whatever Works (2009): I am well aware, as I'm sure I've written previously, that Woody Allen is definitely out of fashion, and as each year's offering appears, regular as clockwork, one or two critics will write that he is back to "the old Woody". To those of us who have been faithful fans over the years -- a diminishing breed I think -- each of his movies is approached with anticipation. Apart from his sub-Bergman period, I have more than tolerated all of his films and found some not-so-elusive charm in most of them. The only exception I might make is for the dire "Hollywood Ending" (2002) which I saw on an airplane and which has never even had a DVD release in Britain. However, I was in no particular rush to see this one, since Larry David is just a name to me; I have never watched "Curb your Enthusiasm" on TV and have only seen the rare "Seinfeld", so any built-in attraction was missing.

Having said that, however, and remembering that David is not really a film actor, he does a splendid job of inhabiting the misanthropic character of Boris Yellnikoff, a man who considers himself a genius (he nearly won the Nobel Prize!) and most of the rest of the world as cretins. Into his life comes Southern teenaged runaway Evan Rachel Wood in a role totally at odds with the bitchy daughter she plays in HBO's "Mildred Pierce" which I am also currently watching. Her impressionable and extremely grateful Melody is soon mouthing his sarcastic and bitter sentiments and is convinced that he is the man for her, despite the difference in their ages, backgrounds, and intellectual ammunition -- and so Beauty and the Beast marry to the astonishment of all his friends and Boris himself.

This is not one of Allen's star-packed ensembles, with only Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley, Jr. being well-known among the supporting cast. They play Melody's fundamentalist and prejudiced parents, who have separated, and who have each gone in pursuit of their 'missing' daughter. Horrified when they first find her with Boris, each of them is subsequently transformed by their exposure to the Big City (I should add it is great having Woody back in New York for a change). They each discover the inner keys to the happiness which has eluded them in the past. This movie may be a little alienating at first when the main emphasis is on Boris' intolerant and selfish behaviour, but by the end sunshine and mellowness break through. We are left with an optimistic message: grab whatever love you can find and everything will 'work'. Fortunately this message comes to us courtesy of Woody's smart and witty scripting.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part Two (2011)

2011-07-19T12:34:00.001+01:00

Did you honestly think for one moment that I would not be going to watch the eighth film in the most successful franchise of all time on the big screen? We were having lunch down West yesterday and decided to pop over to the Warner's flagship cinema for the afternoon showing. The line for tickets wasn't enormous, but it seemed to be moving at a snail's pace and when we got to the front, we discovered that they were charging the best part of £20 per ticket -- 3D glasses extra! So we turned tail and went to our local multiplex just in time for one of their multiple screenings of the day. They weren't exactly giving the tickets away (and the auditorium wasn't exactly full), but I felt better at not over-contributing to Warner's already enormous profits. Yes, the films have been a moneyspinner for all concerned; I don't begrudge this, since they have given so much pleasure to so many -- and not just those children in the age range that grew up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

However, you probably don't wish to know any of the above, but rather what I thought of the movie. I have been a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the series and had read all of the books before watching the films, which is just as well, since I think any non-believer coming to this last film cold would be lost trying to follow much of the action. It is still a slam-bang production, full of imaginative sequences, which could entertain the casual viewer, but much of the nuances of the saga would be lost . As is, bringing the final story to the screen did scrimp on some of the storytelling. Even being familiar with the book, I could not recall the relevance of the new ghostly character played by Kelly Macdonald. In particular, I felt that the sad, true story behind Alan Rickman's villainry as Severus Snape was muddled in its presentation, leaving the viewer to wonder why Harry would name a future son after him or claim that he was the bravest man he ever knew. Rickman has been one of the many continuing treats of the series (along with Maggie Smith) and his fate just didn't have the impact or gravity that one would have hoped. Similarly disposing of arch-villains Helena Bonham-Carter and Ralph Fiennes by having them appear to dissolve into a cloud of confetti seemed anticlimactic after pitched confrontations. The deaths of some of the other much-loved characters during the Battle of Hogwarts were skimmed over and not given the respect due them.

Still this final film is a vast improvement on Part One of the Deathly Hallows which was too leisurely by half. Director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves have produced an action-laden finale for the fans and have made certain that nearly all of the beloved characters from over the years are given their brief curtain calls. The only character who is actually given more to do in this final film is Matthew Lewis, who has been playing inept sidekick Neville Longbottom in a fatsuit for some years, but who emerges as one of Hogwarts' truest heroes in this installment. As for the trio of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, and Emma Watson, they continue to be likeable and have grown into their roles without any problems; however, they are still a little light on thespian talent. It will be fascinating to discover where their respective careers go from here. All of them are so financially secure that they would need a deep love of the profession to persevere with acting and to fight the fact that they will probably be forever typecast. By the way, the long-awaited first kiss between Ron and Hermione, coyly shot from behind his back, comes across as a definite non-event here.

I suppose I should comment on the 3D technology, which was fine, but which didn't really add to the film's entertainment value in any meaningful way. The movie would have been just as satisfying to its fans in the 2D version. The eight Potter films may be the biggest financial success of all time, but this has not been reflected in Oscar nominations or wins. Of course there is the legacy of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy where all of the possible awards were garnered by the last film in the series. Despite some probable nominations, I would be very surprised to see this movie following suit as Best Picture, etc. Award-laden or not, many of us have enjoyed this saga of the "boy who lived" and will miss his adventures, his friends, his teachers, and his many acquaintances. The series may have gone out with a bang, but it will not be easily forgotten.

The Tree of Life (2011)

2011-07-13T09:53:00.001+01:00

Confession time: I am not one of those movie buffs who believe that the elusive director Terrence Malick is the best gift to cinema and the world since sliced bread. I really loved his first film "Badlands" (1973) and have watched it many times since. His second "Days of Heaven" (1978) was beautifully elegiac, but just didn't hold my attention. There was then the famous twenty year gap before 1998's "The Thin Red Line" which completely alienated me, but then again I've written before that war movies -- however poetic they may be -- turn me off. That film was followed by "The New World" in 2005, a beautifully filmed, historically realistic, yet dreary Indian 'love' story made for an unknown audience. Now we have this year's Palme d'Or winner from Cannes, rapturously received by many and demanding to be seen on the big screen.

Yes, it is a film that deserves to be seen, but one which will sharply divide its viewing audience. There are those who will take away its amazing images and who will discuss its meaning ad nauseum. Then there will be those who will find it difficult to sit through 138 minutes of non-story, mixed with at times nearly inaudible dialogue and voiceovers. The film focuses on the O'Brien family of mother, father, and three young sons living in Waco, Texas in the 1950s. Dad, played by superstar Brad Pitt (here looking drabber than ever as a period paterfamilias), is a frustrated musician crushed by his 9 to 5 work, and a disciplinarian and martinet; he loves his boys, but is unable to maintain a loving relationship. He represents Nature in the Malickian canon while their mother, an ethereal turn from little-known actress Jessica Chastain, represents Grace. She is treated as some Holy Mother, an Angel of Mercy, and features in Malick's occasional magic realism, floating through the air or being seen in a glass coffin a la Sleeping Beauty. The film moves forward and back between its images of idyllic childhood days and the embittered memories of the now-grown eldest son, played by Sean Penn, who looks down from his office eyrie into the chasms of Dallas' tall towers and mourns the loss of his middle brother and his innocence.

Some twenty minutes into the film it switches from the story of these folk into nothing less than a visually striking explosion, exploring the evolution of the universe and life on earth, including some wonderfully rendered dinosaurs. These visual effects designed by retired FX master Douglas Trumbull and magnificently photographed by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki are nothing short of gobstopping to use the vernacular. However all too soon we return to the fragments of childhood of the O'Brien brothers. Mixed with lovingly shot vistas through the branches of majestic spreading trees, we view their days of endless summer, spacious lawns, and boys being boys. Just before the film's end we see the Penn character walking on what must be meant as the sands of memory, with the hundreds of characters from his life aimlessly promenading past, as he seeks his own redemption.

There is a good argument, but probably one that Malick would deny, that the film is a compilation of memories from his own childhood, scraps of remembered joy, love, loss, and forgiveness from his own years with his own brothers and his own parents in '50's Waco. The viewer is then urged to read what we wish into the conundrum of how any mundane family's dynamic meshes into the majesty of creation. Some critics maintain that his movie requires multiple viewings to discover and appreciate its many layers, but at this point my feeling is that once was enough and I really don't need to sit through this strange mixture of nostalgia and wonder a second time. I must say that I find it heartening that such a personal and in many ways incomprehensible movie can be commercially released to the unsuspecting public. I fear, however, that few of them will find it the consistent masterwork that its proponents loudly proclaim.

Arlington Road (1999)

2011-07-08T11:19:00.001+01:00

Every so often since I began blogging some six years ago, I have written that Jeff Bridges remains one of the greatest underrated Hollywood actors. Perhaps this is no longer the case with the recent Oscar nods that he has had for "Crazy Heart" and "True Grit", and he has certainly been a cult favourite since 1998's "The Big Lebowski". However, one can look back on his roles since 1971's "The Last Picture Show" and he has never been less than outstanding. He brings a genuine sincerity and believability to each of them and the above movie is another fine example.

I don't think I have previously revisited this one in the twelve years since its release, but it remains a gripping essay on our continued fear of terrorism and our growing paranoia. Bridges plays an academic, teaching his university class the facts of life about extremism. This is a particularly fraught subject for him, since his FBI wife was killed in the line of duty whilst investigating a 'flagged' suspect, devastating him and his young son. He is only just beginning to piece things together with a new young girlfriend, Hope Davis. Driving home one afternoon, he sees an injured boy staggering down the road towards him; it is only when he has taken him to hospital that he discovers that it is the son of his new across-the-road neighbours, who have been there for a few months but whom he has made no attempt to greet or meet. Enter Tim Robbins and his screen wife Joan Cusack, who appear to be the perfect suburbanite family with their model home and their three young children.

A series of inexplicable bits and pieces leads Bridges to begin to investigate and to conclude that the pair are not all they are cracked up to be and that they may in fact be dangerous undercover extremists. Davis thinks he is building mountains out of molehills to suspect such lovely folk, until a chance observation makes her change her mind. As she tries to phone Bridges, in one of the most jump-making sudden appearances in modern cinema, Cusack's friendly but now extremely frightening face hoves into view; it turns out to be the last thing Davis will ever see. It's a change of pace for Cusack as well as for Robbins, whose usually liberal credentials make him an unlikely villain, but a more chilling one for all that. The film brings home the message that we never really know our neighbours and that a plausible exterior can hide all sorts of sinister possibilities. There may not be mere cracks in the American dream, but gaping huge chasms.

One of the interesting questions posed by the film is whether the couple have been targeting the Bridges character since square one to provide the 'fall-guy' for their current plans, to the extent of even harming their son themselves to provide the initial lure. A previous atrocity in St. Louis where a number of children died (echoes of the real-life Oklahoma tragedy) pinned the blame on a 'single perpetrator' and with his own obsessions, Bridges may well be the perfect patsy tor the next outrage by the unseen extremists who move amongst us. Not really that far-fetched, but scary stuff.

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle (1992)

2011-07-03T14:43:00.001+01:00

I recently read a pretty rotten review for Rebecca DeMornay's most recent 'leading' role in a would-be horror flick called "Mother's Day", and it got me to thinking how short-lived many film careers are. Any number of promising stars come to brief prominence due to a showy role (or even a run of good roles) and then slide into some kind of oblivion; they may carry on working, but never seem to shine so brightly again. One was first aware of DeMornay as the streetwise prositute in Tom Cruise's breakthrough movie "Risky Business" in 1983, and she subsequently appeared in a number of featured parts, but it was as the lead in the above film that she peaked. Unfortunately it did sans-fairy-bubbletop for her career.

The nominal lead in the movie is Annabella Sciorra, another actress with a good run of movies who continues to work, but whose career faltered in the late 90s. She plays the mother of a young daughter, pregnant with her second child, who accuses her new paediatrican of inappropriate behaviour. Other patients support her accusations and, his reputation in tatters, the doctor commits suicide, leaving behind his own pregnant wife (DeMornay) who promptly loses her baby. In her mind Sciorra is the cause of all of her misfortunes and she sets out to extract her revenge by becoming the nanny for Sciorra's new-born son. Insinutating herself into the household as a loyal, friendly, and indispensible worker, she strives to alienate the children from their parents, seduce the husband (Matt McCoy, nowadays a stalwart of TV Movie dads), and generally destroy asthmatic Sciorra both mentally and physically. The other household worker is a mentally-challenged handyman played by Ernie Hudson, a great pal of the family's young daughter, whom DeMornay addresses as "retard" and whom she contrives to discredit as a paedophile after he inadvertently sees her breast-feeding Sciorra's son --an activity she has taken up with gusto, causing the over-full babe to seemingly reject his real mother's milk.

If the truth be told this is really a highly implausible and far-fetched B movie which just happened to find its audience through the combination of a thoroughly evil yet fascinating turn by DeMornay and sure-fired, confident direction by Curtis (L.A. Confidential) Hanson. The viewer is unsettled by and caught up in the nanny's easy malevolence; we can so clearly see her dirty work afoot, but we are unable to scream at the screen to warn the trusting family. Only the third or fourth female lead (if one allows that child actress Madeline Zima had the larger part), Julianne Moore playing a family friend sees something fishy in the 'perfect' nanny who is actually the nanny from hell; and only she of the entire cast went on from strength to strength for a longlasting career. Mind you, when I first saw this film -- in the cinema as it happens, I thought that Hudson was the best thing in it -- a far cry from his turn as one of the original Ghostbusters in 1984. He gives a thoroughly likeable performance as the handicapped simple soul, a role that is normally guaranteed Oscar bait, but his performance was totally overlooked. Watching this film again, I still think it's a bit of bravura acting from the under-rated Hudson.

With a Song in My Heart (1952)

2011-06-28T12:44:00.002+01:00

I wrote recently that 20th Century Fox was not known as a hotbed of musicals a la MGM, and here I am again complimenting them on a splendid musical film -- although this one is really a biopic of a famous singer of the time, Jane Froman, nowadays largely unknown. The popular singer with the contralto voice became swiftly successful on radio and in cluband and she introduced a treasury of the era's 'standard' classic ballads. Here she is personified by Susan Hayward, Oscar-nominated for the role, but the intense actress does more than just portray Froman; she studied and absorbed her body-language, her song phrasing, and her overall persona with the result that although she is in fact lip-synching the nearly 30 tunes that Froman provides for the soundtrack, you would place bets that Hayward is indeed doing her own singing -- that's how natural it all looks and sounds. The film's musical director Alfred Newman actually won that year's Academy Award and he was in competition with "Singin' in the Rain".

The story is relatively faithful to the singer's own life. Encouraged by her first husband, a musician well-played by David Wayne, her career takes off into the stratosphere, while his goes nowhere -- although the film is not any sort of riff on "A Star is Born". On her first air trip overseas to entertain the troops, the flight crashes and she was one of the lucky survivors. She was kept afloat by a pilot (played soppily by Rory Calhoun) portrayed here as the 'love of her life'. (They did indeed eventually marry, but soon divorced before her retirement and husband number three). Despite horrific bodily injuries requiring dozens of separate and painful operations, she kept up her spirits, encouraged by her down-to-earth nurse and companion Clancy, played by the always-memorable Thelma Ritter, and continued to entertain both at home and on the battlefield throughout the 40s, despite the wheelchairs and the crutches. There are two especially touching scenes containing an early role for the young Robert Wagner as she sings to him in a New York nightclub and then recognises him amongst the badly injured soldiers in a European hospital and draws him out of his shell-shocked silence. In fact the whole end scene with its American Medley celebrating the various hometowns and home states of the cheering GIs is as tear-jerking (in a nice way) as could be. Irresistible.

A final few words in praise of character actress Ritter: She was one of those players who managed to walk away with their scenes, starting with her first bit part as a disgruntled shopper in Macy's toy department in l946's "Miracle on 34th Street". She was Oscar-nominated both for her work in the above movie and for five other films ("All About Eve", "The Mating Season", "Pickup on South Street", "Pillow Talk", and "Birdman of Alcatraz"), but she never won. More's the pity, since she was one of those largely unsung actors who make even the most fantastic scenario just that little bit more real. Cheers, Thelma!

Bridesmaids (2011)

2011-06-23T11:22:00.000+01:00

The big trouble with movies which are hyped to kingdom come is that they often prove to be something of a disappointment when viewed or rather not quite as wonderful as rumours have it. Had I caught up with this film in due course rather than making a special trip to see it at the cinema, I might well have found it slightly more appealing and satisfying. It is being sold to the public as the movie that finally proves that women can be as "funny" as men, if "funny" is taken in its modern context as being bogged down in fart, vomit and sex 'jokes'. Coming from the Judd Apatow stable the movie is more or less what one expects from his past productions, only this time seen from the female prospective. On this level it is a film that might appeal to both young men and young women in its cruder moments, rather than being labelled a 'chick flick', but it is more interesting as a dissection of the meaning of friendship. Maybe you can accuse me as having had a humour bypass, since by and large I didn't find it particularly amusing (although one or two bits of business did make me laugh) and there was certainly a fair sprinkling of 'walk-outs' in the audience. There was not, on the other hand, what could even vaguely be described as 'roars of laughter' during its grosser moments.

The movie has been described as the breakout role for its star and co-writer Kristen Wiig. She plays something of a loser, Annie, whose bakery business has failed, whose finances are perilous, and whose love life has come down to a 'fuck-buddy', an uncredited Jon Hamm. When her last remaining single friend and best friend since childhood, Maya Rudolph, announces her engagement and asks her to be her maid of honor, the stage is set for the somewhat crude comic action. She wants to help make the day special for her buddy, but is not set for the interference created by rich-bitch Rose Byrne's Helen who undermines all of her plans and who wants to usurp the BFF role. Added to the mix are three other bridesmaids, two of whom bring little to the party apart from some bad language and some unnecessary girl-on-girl sex; the third, the groom's sister played by the massively overweight Melissa McCarthy is a breath of fresh air and very nearly (but not quite) the best thing in the film.

It does remain firmly Wiig's show. She begins a tentative relationship with a laid-back state trooper (although why this role was given to Irish actor Chris O'Dowd -- charming as he may be -- is a good question). She 'ruins' the proposed hen trip to Vegas by getting out of the control on the flight through a mixture of drugs and drinks (provided by Helen) with the result that the whole party are ignominously off-loaded en route and taken back home by bus. She loses her apartment and has to move back home with Mom, a flaky Jill Clayburgh in her last role. Finally she loses it completely at the Helen-organised over-the-top shower party and falls out with Rudolph. In the film's most talked about scene her choice of a dodgy restaurant lunch results in all of them bar Helen losing control of their bodily functions (from all ends) in a white-carpeted, hoity-toity bridal salon. Wiig's script is full of sharp one-liners and potentially amusing bits of business, but the film could have used a steadier hand from director Paul Feig and much tighter editing. It certainly dragged in places between the 'funny' bits and possibly could have spent more time on the real meaning of friendship which burst through in the end.

I thought the sub-plot of Annie's peculiar relationship with her flat-mate played by the strange British comic Matt Lucas, together with Rebel Wilson playing his fat slag of a freeloading sister, added zilch to the plot and could well have been dropped completely. This would have cut the over two hours running time to a more manageable and sharper whole. Finally you might ask if I found any one part of the shambles really amusing; yes, I thought it hilarious when I saw Rudolph modelling her much-vaunted Parisian original wedding dress -- a monstrosity to end all monstrosities. Maybe my sense of humour is weirder than I thought -- or just not sufficiently potty-based for modern sensibilities.

Rose of Washington Square (1939)

2011-06-18T15:00:00.000+01:00

This musical from 20th Century Fox, a studio not particularly associated with the genre, has so much going for it. For a start it was the third (and last) teaming of two of Fox's most popular stars, Alice Faye and Tyrone Power, after the success of "In Old Chicago" (1937) and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1938). Secondly it was the penultimate acting role for its third lead, Al Jolson -- a man not happy with playing third fiddle. Thirdly it finally appeared after both the studio and its three leads were sued for invasion of privacy or somesuch. Finally, I should mention that it manages to be very entertaining.

To deal with the scandalous part first, the story of a rising Ziegfield star (Faye) and her criminally inclined, no-goodnik boyfriend (Power) was a barely fictionalised riff on the Fanny Brice/Nick Arnstein love affair more familiar to the modern viewer from Barbra Streisand's "Funny Girl" (1968). The fact that Faye's character Rose Sargent was translated into an Irish shiksa and that Power was also wasped up into Barton DeWitt Clinton did not prevent Brice from suing all and sundry, especially as her best-known song "My Man" was used in the film's denouement. No contest --the case was settled out of court.

I could enthuse ad nauseum about my idol Tyrone-baby. While I seldom get too excited about an actor's looks, normally preferring to notice their talent or general screen appeal, there is no escaping the fact that Power was nothing short of gorgeous -- despite being described as too monkey-like at his first screen test. His looks coarsened somewhat with age, but he was still strikingly handsome before his untimely death in 1958 at the age of 44. Even in his last full feature, the marvelous "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957), he was still a talent to be reckoned with (he was after all a fourth-generation actor) and better looking than most. In "Rose" he was in his prime, all of 25 years old, and a beauty. Faye was a year younger and they make a fine couple -- even if he was the better looking of the two. Her swing singing style was very much her own, even when reprising the Brice classic and she could dance with the best of them. There is one remarkable number where she and her chorus line puff on cigarettes during their energetic dance, throw them down, and grab new lit ones out of thin air -- all before CGI.

As for Jolson, then in his fifties, he was under contract to the studio and Darryl F. Zanuck was anxious to get his money's worth, thus plunking him into his role here of Faye's ex-partner, mentor, and concerned best friend/spurned love interest. This didn't please him much (nor as reports have it Faye), but it did give him the opportunity to reprise his hit tunes: Toot-Toot Tootsie, Rock-a-Bye your Baby, Pretty Baby, Mammy, and California Here I Come for our delight and the record. OK, I know that his slightly hammy 'blackface' performances are now considered infra dig, but it was a convention of the 1920s when this film is set and one accepts the historic correctness.

The supporting cast -- always a treat for me in films of this period -- includes such familiar faces (even if you can't recall the names) as William Frawley, Joyce Compton, Hobart Cavanaugh (memorable as a drunken balcony-heckler during a Jolson performance and dragged into becoming part of his act), Horace McMahon, E.E. Clive, and even an early appearance from bandleader Louis Prima. Add to this a smashing speciality act (often a feature of early musicals) from dancers Igor and Tanya and one must conclude that director Gregory Ratoff -- far better known as a character actor -- was not too shoddy a choice when he convinced his pal Zanuck that he would like to direct as well act.

Happy Guys (1934)

2011-06-13T10:38:00.002+01:00

We very nearly didn't go to see this film which would have been a shame. I bought the tickets when I noticed it described in the BFI's advance programme as the first major Soviet musical, complete with "a manic energy and surreal absurdity that wouldn't disgrace the Marx Brothers". However on the afternoon of the performance it was positively bucketing down with rain and the thought of dragging our weary bones through the deluge was unappealing. In the nick of time, the sun broke through and we decided that wimping out was not an option. And a good thing too!

The film was absolutely wonderful -- a ray of sunshine in itself and I am thankful not to have missed it. The above title was given in the programme, but the actual title on the print was "Merry Fellows" and it is apparently also known as "Moscow Laughs". The movie is by the same director, Grigori V. Aleksandrov, and has the same female lead (later the director's wife), Lyubov' Orlova, as Joe Stalin's 'favourite film' which I enthused about last year (http://pppatty.blogspot.com/2010/08/volga-volga-1938.html). If anything, this one was even better. A shepherd, played by Russian jazz musician Leonid Utyosov, (very reminiscent of a Danny Kaye type) is mistaken for a renowned conductor and invited to perform at a swank hotel -- one is amazed that such places even existed in Stalin's l930s. Previously we had seen him musically leading his flock of sheep, goats, cows and pigs and engaging them in a roll-call by their individual names and national affiliations (for some reason 'The English' were a bunch of pigs -- should I be offended?). When he plays his pipe at the posh soiree, his animals hear his call and soon invade the premises with hilarious results. This is the first of a number of comic set pieces, all of them endearing, including his again taking the place of the renowned maestro at a concert and inadvertently 'conducting' a wild rendition of Ravel's Bolero, plus a concert performance by his new ragtag band where the instruments have become waterlogged and his bandmates perform their music a cappella, very like the "Comedian Harmonists" who recently charmed me. Throughout all of the performers were an absolute delight and the 'jazz' music from composer Isaac Dunaevskii was remarkably catchy.

This was the first full-length feature from the director, who as I have written previously started off as an assistant to the great Eisenstein, yet the movie nearly didn't seen the light of day. In those days all developing film projects has to be discussed by political committees and the director's "Jazz Comedy" as it was originally called was considered subversive and too 'American'. The Communist Youth newspaper, on the other hand, welcomed it and supported the director's intention to make 'cinema for the millions'. When accused of not dealing with the 'problematics' of Soviet doctrine, he retorted that he was trying to resolve the problem of laughter. Eventually Uncle Joe Stalin gave the movie his personal green light, saying "It's a very happy film. I feel as though I have been on holiday for a month. It will be useful to show it to all of our workers and collective farmers". And so one of the most popular films in Soviet cinema history finally received its debut. Ironically the man who was in charge of the Soviet cinema industry at the time and the man ultimately responsible for both this film and "Volga-Volga" was executed in the purges of 1938. So much for pleasing Stalin!

Unfortunately neither of these movies appear to be available on tape or disc so you would need to be as lucky as I have been to be able to view them. I would love to be able to see both of them again and can only hope that some enterprising person makes them available for our viewing pleasure some time in the not too distant future. I wonder if they are on Russian DVDs (without subtitles of course) -- I must investigate, since the physical comedy alone would make such a purchase more than worthwhile.

Not in the English language...

2011-06-08T10:22:00.002+01:00

For someone who thinks she has seen or will soon see nearly every English-speaking movie ever made (I'm aware that this is probably a gross exaggeration), I do enjoy delving into foreign-language films as a leavening. (There is also the factor that as my hearing worsens with age, I can often follow these films more easily with their subtitles, rather than trying to fathom the mumbly, mumbly vocal skills of some modern actors). We have recently just ploughed through a collection of five Brigitte Bardot movies which has been gathering dust on the ' DVDs waiting to be viewed' shelf. Ploughed is the operative verb as these movies made between 1955 and 1969 ranged between the tolerably coy and the extremely yawnful -- "Two Weeks in September" felt more like two months. Fortunately many of the foreign films we watch are far more rewarding; here are two from the last few days:

The Secret in Their Eyes (2009): This Argentinian movie was the surprise foreign film winner at last year's Oscars, beating the more highly fancied " The White Ribbon" and "A Prophet". Having only seen the former of those two at the time, I would have predicted that it was unbeatable; however it is not the first time (nor the last I wager) that my preferences were at odds with the Academy voters'. Having finally caught up with this film I am still not convinced that it is the more deserving of the two, but I can confirm that it is a smart, well-written and well-acted movie for an adult audience -- which in itself is refreshing nowadays. I am familiar with its lead actor, Ricardo Darin, from a number of recent gems like "Nine Queens" and "Son of the Bride" and know him to be a solid actor. Here he portrays a retired prosecuting attorney, still haunted by an unresolved case of rape and murder from some twenty years previous. The movie dips back and forward between the mid 70s and the mid 90s, following the story and its consequences on a number of the players touched by this violent crime. It mixes a detective film with more than one long-running love story with a not so subtle exposure of the miscarriages of justice blotting Argentina's past. All in all, this is a movie for grown-ups and in the end a worthy Oscar winner.

Love Exposure (2008): This Japanese movie could never have been nominated for many foreign language awards in the West, although it did well on the Far East festival circuit, largely because of its extreme length and offbeat (to say the least) subject matter. It is more than a little hard to justify any movie that is nearly four hours long and even more so when it is not a complicated historical saga like "Gone with the Wind" or a martial epic, but which spends its time on the perverse lives of three young misfits. Yet my attention was held throughout -- although I wisely chose to view it in two dollops to pacify the ants in my pants!! I have not seen any of the director Shion Sono's earlier films other than the strangely weird "Exte" about killer hair, but I now think that his back catalogue is worth investigating.

How to briefly summarise this odd movie? Our main hero Yu is the young son of a religious Catholic family; when his mother is dying, she gives him a statue of the Virgin Mary and makes him promise to let her know when he has found his own 'Mary' as an adult. Devastated by his wife's death, his father trains for the priesthood but moves from being a caring pastor to his flock to an unhinged martinet to his son, forcing him to confess daily to crimes he has not committed. (It does not help that the priest has become venally involved with a ditzy woman who has come to his service). In order to please his father with real sins, schoolboy Yu takes up with a group of street hoodlums involved in shoplifting and other petty crimes. He is introduced to a local mobster whose speciality is up-skirt knicker snaps, which Yu masters through grace, cunning, and his growing martial skills, and he trains his gang in this 'art'. I never cease to be amazed by new Japanese sexual perversions that I stumble across at the movies; I understand that there is as big a market there for this particular fetish as there is for tying up naked ladies in a series of artistically complicated knots. Despite the plethora of arousing photos that he has delivered, Yu is still a virgin and unable to achieve an erection, since he has not yet met 'his Mary'. All this changes when he lays eyes on schoolgirl Yoko's undies after her skirt blows up in the wind and the front of his trousers bulges up beyond reasonable belief. I did say upfront that this movie is a strange one...

However at the time of their meeting (when he is incidentally protecting her from being attacked by a gang of yobbos), he is in drag-- the result of losing a bet with his mates as to which of them has recently captured the best up-skirt shot. With his long black wig and sexy slouch hat, he introduces himself as Miss Scorpion (a homage to the four vigilante 'Scorpion' flicks from the l970s) and Yoko fancies herself in love with her 'female' saviour. To make matters worse she has become the would-be ward of the same very promiscuous woman who previously tempted Yu's father and who is now back in his life; Yu and Yoko are expected to live as brother and sister while he is besotted with her and she desires her would-be lesbian lover. (There is also Yoko's backstory of having severed her own father's member after years of abuse, but I won't go into that now). Into the tale comes our third main character, an immoral young woman who has been following Yu's photographic activities and who works as a temptress for a cult religion. She is looking for a nice Catholic family to bring into their fold for propaganda purposes and Yu, Yoko, the priest and his floozy fill the bill nicely.

And so it goes on for the best part of four hours... You don't quite need the patience of a saint to sit through these shenanigans (it is hardly Bela Tarr slow deadliness), since the movie manages to be amusing as well as outrageous. However a good dose of tolerance for the perversities of the world and a somewhat off-kilter sense of humour would serve you well. And do give yourself your own intermission halfway through!

Those Wonderful Movie Cranks (1978)

2011-06-03T10:34:00.003+01:00

No, there is not a film named in honour of Pretty Pink Patty and her like! There is however this somewhat obscure Czech movie from actor-director Jiri Menzel. Good old friend Richard (the one with the small cinema in a shed at the bottom of his garden) does occasionally turn up gems that were previously unknown to me -- and this is a rather sweet case in point.

Menzel who is probably best known for his "Closely Observed Trains" (1966), is one of the few well-known Czech directors who has not ventured further afield, i.e. 'Gone Hollywood'. While he has not directed any films since 2006's well-received "I Served the King of England", he still makes frequent appearances as an actor. In this lovingly conceived movie he creates a billet-doux to early cinema and its pioneers. The movie's alternate title is "Magicians of the Silverscreen". Set in 1907, the film's hero is a man who scratches out a living with his travelling picture-show, projecting his one-reel films on bed-sheet screens and thrilling his provincial audiences with 'moving photographs'. His dream is to open a full-time cinema in bustling Prague -- an ambition which everyone believes is doomed to fail, even if he could raise the necessary money and obtain the necessary permits. Somewhat of a lecher at the best of times, he pins his hopes on wooing and wedding a randy, rich widow.

Not only has Menzel created original one-reelers which capture the frantic pace and slapstick humour of the early, primitive flickers, but he has also shot the surrounding film in tones of sepia, thereby reconstructing a ravishing backdrop for the period. The director himself plays a young photographer with no economic ambitions, but a man who wants to capture his Prague of the present for posterity. I was not familiar with any of the cast, although the lead, Rudolph Hrusinsky, did indeed look familiar to me; apparently he has appeared in some 144 roles, so that's not too surprising. However most of the cast were charming, including the hero's long-suffering young daughter who provides the music for his showings, another fetching young lady whom he promised to look after following her father's death (who is foisted upon Menzel's character), and even the fusty widow-lady. There was also an actress protraying a grande dame of Czech theatre whose classic performances our hero wants to immortalise on film, a la Sarah Bernhardt, to make the medium appear more respectable -- even if no one can hear the histrionic speeches she is mouthing.

Unless one is willing to accept the film's nostalgic charm or is interested in cinema's origins, it would be difficult to recommend this movie to the average cinemagoer. There is not a great deal of action to involve the viewer -- and of course it is not, as far as I know a readily accessible title anyhow. However should the opportunity arise to view Menzel's labour of love, this movie is well worth knowing.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

2011-05-29T15:25:00.000+01:00

For someone whose favourite films date from 'ancient times', I seem to have been reviewing a ridiculous number of modern movies in recent weeks. Therefore to remind myself that "they don't make them like that anymore", I chose to revisit this film which is something of a cross between a Christmas staple and a classic 'screwball' comedy. It's not exactly one of the all-time greats, but it's as pleasant a way of wiling away the time as many.

Barbara Stanwyck plays a women's magazine columnist, sort of the Martha Stewart of her day, whose homey recipes and glorious tales of her husband, baby, and farm are loved by millions of housewives. The trouble is she is not a wife nor a mother nor a farm-lady, and she can't cook. When her pompous and irascible publisher, Sydney Greenstreet, involves her in welcoming a recovering war hero into her home for the Christmas holiday, she can't get a word in edgeways to escape this impossible situation. To make matters worse, he also invites himself. Fortunately, her persistent beau -- a full-of-himself boorish architect played by Reginald Gardiner -- has a gentleman's farm and can provide a borrowed babe that his housekeeper (Una O'Connor) looks after while its mom in on her war-factory shift; he'll save her job for her, if she is finally prepared to marry him. As for the cooking, there is her Uncle Felix, a Hungarian emigre and restaurant owner (S.Z. Sakall), who has been providing most of 'her' recipes anyhow.

When the young sailor, played by Dennis Morgan, arrives early, it is lust at first sight, and excuse after excuse must be found to avoid the marriage ceremony in front of the judge who has been stashed away in the library; meanwhile she and Gardiner must pretend to revel in domestic married bliss. Although Morgan -- never an A-list leading man, but always an adequate player -- was 37 when the film was made and Stanwyck 38, they both seem much younger and have terrific screen chemistry. In films since she was 20 and never a 'glamorpuss', Stanwyck is always down to earth and believable as a strong woman. Although she wasn't usually called upon for comic roles, she could show a fine comedic sensibility in films like "The Lady Eve" and "Ball of Fire" and her touch here is beautifully light. She gets great support from the rest of the cast. Morgan has the opportunity to show off his fine Irish tenor. Sakall, or "Cuddles" as he was affectionately known in Hollywood, plays his usual scatty and amusing European. O'Connor and Gardiner (his idea of romance is to drone on about heating pipes) also contribute to the farce. However, it is Greenstreet who provides the cherry on top. For someone who did not appear in movies before his 62nd year and who was pushing 300 pounds, he provided some indelible and highly memorable characterisations in what was only an eight-year career. At one stage Sakall refers to him a 'the fat man', a cheeky look back to his 1941 film debut in "The Maltese Falcon".

This film is remembered with fondness by many movie buffs, so it came as something of a shock when it was remade for cable in 1992, directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger of all people. (Fortunately he did not take any of the main roles and only appears in an unbilled cameo). However Dyan Cannon, Kris Kristofferson, and Tony Curtis in the Greenstreet role were pallid substitutes for the original players. I now learn that a remake is in development for 2012 with Jennifer Garner in the lead -- and I think once again, why can't these people leave well enough alone. As Sakall's Uncle Felix might have exclaimed, this is NOT "hunky dunky"!!

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011)

2011-05-24T15:07:00.000+01:00

Given the god-awful reviews this fourth entry in the franchise has received, you might well wonder what possessed us to go to the cinema to view it. Well, for starters, we did enjoy the first three movies, largely because of Johnny Depp's great likeability with his camp rendering of Captain Jack Sparrow, and we could see little reason not to expect more of the same jolly hijinks. Also I was curious to discover whether 3D would add anything to the entertainment equation, since all blockbusters now seem duty-bound to embrace this technology.

There is no denying that the film is something of an overstuffed, bloated, and lazily-scripted mess, but Depp continues to carry the viewer along with his cheeky charm and occasionally improvised jolly quips. It's a stand-alone entry in the series with the tiresome characters portrayed by Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom in the previous films written out -- and I for one am happy to see the back of them. The new star attraction is meant to be Penelope Cruz as Blackbeard's daughter and Depp's old flame, but I have never been enamoured of her English-speaking roles (for starters she is difficult to understand -- mumble, mumble) and I do not find her the beauty that some do. Ian McShane as her ruthless dad with his ship's crew of zombies is a welcome addition, but Geoffrey Rush seems to be coasting in his return as the now respectable Barbossa. The stretched-out plot is based on a race by the British, the Spaniards, and the various pirates to find the Fountain of Youth; this turns out to be something of a McGuffin, as the mechanics of the tale are nearly impossible to follow. The convoluted story is not aided by the useless mermaid/Holy Joe subplot which is simply filler or mulch, and when I would like to know did mermaids develop vampire fangs! Depp's role model Keith Richards returns for a welcome cameo, but Depp apart, there is little else to amuse one in all the frantic derring-do.

As for the 3-D, this worked well in the film's exciting opening scenes, as Sparrow escapes the gallows and is chased through London by a horde of redcoats. In the bright daylight and panoramic background, the third dimensional effects are startling; they are far less effective in most of the later gloomy settings. I honestly believe that the movie would have been no less entertaining without the added dimension, but we seem to be lumbered with the technology as something of a 'must' nowadays, and too often it adds zilch. Meanwhile we are promised at least another two P of C films to come. One can't help but wonder whether Depp will tire of the character before we do or whether he can continue to lure us into his increasingly tiresome adventures.

When I returned home I watched "Mary and Max", a 2009 Australian claymation (for adults) and found this a far more satisfying and intelligent experience. Unfortunately, small but charming movies will never find the same wide audience that the charismatic Mr. Depp continues to attract.

My Education vs. An Education (2008)

2011-05-19T10:12:00.000+01:00

Usually when I have made one of my pilgrimages to the National Film Theatre -- most often to view some obscurity in the furtherance of my cinema education -- I feel obliged to go into some detail and to record my thoughts for future reference. Unfortunately the film in question is sometimes something of a disappointment, especially if I have been reading about it for years before catching up with it. Such was the case with the Russian silent "Bed and Sofa" (1927). Banned here on its release (not that I was around then) because of its amoral subject matter, it is occasionally mentioned as an insightful glimpse into Soviet life of the time.

Its director Abram Room was apparently one of the leading masters of the 1920s, but he has since faded into obscurity -- and no, the name means nothing to me either. The original Russian title is sometimes translated as "Menage a Trois" which gives you some idea of the film's subject matter. Because of the housing shortage, a married proletariat couple take in a lodger -- an old war comrade of the husband -- who sleeps on the sofa, while they snooze on the (rather small) double bed behind a screen. When hubby is away on business, the friend inveigles his way into the bed, relegating the husband to the sofa on his return. An uneasy way of life follows with the husband and friend having a better time in each others' company than the wife and with occasional shifts in their sleeping patterns. But no, the wife doesn't end up on the sofa with the other two in the bed, which might have been even more shocking for the time. Instead, the wife becomes pregnant and, without knowing which of the two is the father, is encouraged to go to an abortion clinic (apparently these did a roaring trade then). Finally she leaves the pair of them in pursuit of the Utopian future promised for all by the country's ideological masters.

Although played broadly as potential comedy, I found little amusing about the tale -- although others in the theatre were chuckling away. The only really interesting bits were in the scene-setting shots of Moscow, aerial views of the workers hustling about like so many ants in their hill, and some dynamic montage of train journeys.

And so to the British film in which rising actress Carey Mulligan found her breakthrough role, "An Education". Despite its being hyped to the skies on its release, I had not seen it previously and was not at all certain what I would think. She plays a sixteen-year old schoolgirl, Jenny, whose upwardly-aspiring surburban parents push her to the academic dream of an Oxford degree. She has a 'cute' meeting with the much older David, played by Peter Sarsgaard (although not pointedly as an American), and is dazzled by his apparent worldliness. Together with his mate Dominic Cooper and his louche girlfriend, Rosalind Pike playing a true 'dimbo , she relishes their would-be sophistication with classical concerts, jazz sessions, nightclubs, swish restaurants, and dirty weekends in first Oxford and then Paris. Mulligan has vowed not to lose her virginity until she turns 17 and David is just the man to oblige. When he proposes, her parents eagerly encourage marriage to a man of whom they know little and who has pulled the wool over their eyes as well, thinking that this is even better than going to university in terms of securing her future. Only after she has dropped out of school before taking her exams, does she discover that dear David is a married family man with a run of affairs behind him -- but at least she is not pregnant, unlike several of his former lovers.

There have been indications throughout that Sarsgaard and Cooper are less than they seem, upper class 'wide boys' involved in art swindles, Rachmanism (dubious real estate fiddles), and more. However, Sarsgaard's David seems nearly as plausible to us as he does to Jenny and we are almost as unpleasantly surprised as she when the truth emerges. He has 'educated' her in the fripperies of the high life, but he has also shown her the meanness of the real world. Her loss of innocence is turned into an old-fashioned morality play.

The sharp script was adapted by Nick Hornby from a memoir by leading journalist Lynn Barber. The fact that she wrote this while her aging parents were still alive does suggest something of a mean streak on her part, since her submissive mother and her bumptious but unsure father, wonderfully nailed by Alfred Molina, come off as grotesque characters, The caricature of her bigoted headmistress, an unworthy role for Emma Thompson, is not any kinder. Only her spinsterish teacher, played by Olivia Williams, whom she had previously disparaged, comes off with any grace. All in all this is a solid film, probably worth viewing, but far from a great one.

Kanchivaram (2008)

2011-05-14T12:24:00.003+01:00

Although I bill myself as something of a film buff, there are certainly some great gaps in my cinema knowledge...like Indian movies for starters. Yes, I have seen many of the 'classic' films like "Mahal" (1949) and "Mother India" (1957) and I probably know all of Satyajit Ray's output. In addition I have viewed a number of the 'breakout' sagas of recent years that have received widespread distribution outside their own niche market, but I couldn't begin to discuss competently modern Indian cinema, its stars, and directors, and I have quite probably never seen a 'Bollywood' film on the big screen. Therefore when Channel Four does one of its occasional Indian film seasons (normally in the wee small hours to schedule the usually lengthy flicks), I try to watch a selection of these -- to watch them all might be more than even I can manage.

In the past few weeks I have notched up three of their offerings. The first was "3 Idiots" (2009), a rather jolly 'where are they now?' comedy of prankish school chums meeting after some years (and apparently one of the highest-grossing Indian films.) The second was the lushly lensed "Raavanan" starring ex-Miss World beauty Aishwarya Rai as the wife of a ruthless police detective kidnapped by the roguish bandit that he has been pursuing. However it was the above film, quite unlike many that I have seen, which left the most lingering impression.

For a start, unlike most Indian movies made in one of the major languages of the country (Hindi, Urdu, Bengali -- don't expect me to me any more knowledgeable) this one was scripted in Tamil, one of 22 recognized languages in the country and the first to be declared a classical language. Since it is spoken in a relatively small area of the subcontinent, the film received only a limited release. However, after it won the national awards for best film and best actor, Prakash Raj, it was finally scheduled for country-wide release. The title refers to a local city, formerly the center of the silk-weaving trade, where Raj's character Venkadam is one of the best artisans for the local bigwig. He and his colleagues normally receive only seven rupees for one of their intricately patterned saris which might in turn be sold for a thousand times that price.

Set in the period from the late 20s to the end of World War II, the film focuses on the statement that most Indians of the period coveted silk vestments twice in their lives -- for the bride when they marry and for the shroud when they die. However their labour was so exploited that they could never save sufficient to fulfill these dreams. Even Venkadam's father who was so masterful that he received commissions from a local king, was buried with only a small strand of silk connecting his big toes to ease his journey to the next world. When our hero brings home his bride, the villagers gossip that she wears only a cotton sari. Then when a daughter is born to them, he pledges (to his wife's dismay) that he will ensure that she is clad in silk on her wedding day. He explains to her that he has been scrimping and saving small coins all his life to prepare for the next wedding, but this is soon lost when his feckless brother-in-law implores a loan with the threat that he might otherwide need to return his wife to the family. So Venkadam begins stealing small skiens of silk (concealed in his mouth through the daily body searches) and spends his evenings in his barn -- off-limits to wife and daughter because of mythical snakes -- weaving the bridal sari to be.

All of this is told in flashbacks during the endless journey on a rickety bus from the prison where he has now been consigned. He has been granted compassionate leave for a few days to deal with a family tragedy -- what this is we only learn later and it provides the incredibly sad and tearful twist to the tale. However the film is first and foremost the history of the weavers' collectives that were formed in India from the late 40s onwards and which still exist today. The movie is not exactly an apologia for communism -- Venkadam and his co-workers are influenced by a visiting communist scholar who has taken refuge in their community during the period when communism was outlawed in India; our protagonist presents their demands to the intransigent 'master' and leads them into devestating strike action. Only his daughter's impending wedding forces him back to work-- and back to stealing -- since the promised sari is not yet finished. The movie is not a whitewashing of the growth of communism amongst these poor villagers, but it makes a strong case for the economic roots that ensured the ideology's appeal.

As I'm sure you know, nearly all Indian films are punctuated with extravagant song and dance numbers (which accounts for the length of these movies). If I am honest I will admit to you that I occasionally fast-forward through many of these, since my ear is not attuned to the sound. The refreshing thing about this particular film is that there are no such intervals relocating the action into colourful fantasy. The only song used is a traditional-sounding lullaby sung by a group of local women at the ceremony marking his beloved daughter's birth and reprised at the film's tragic end. The movie's director and writer, Priyadarshan, was previously best-known for broad Malayam comedies, ripped off from overseas movies. This film, whose subtitle is "The Tyranny of Silk", represents a significant change of pace into moving, intelligent drama.

Cedar Rapids (2011)

2011-05-08T16:12:00.000+01:00

So there we were in Newcastle with a few hours to kill and the local multiplex cinema beckoning. The only trouble was that there was virtually nothing being offered on its many screens that we particularly wanted to see. The above movie which has just opened and which received pleasant enough reviews (if not particularly scintillating ones) seemed to be the least offensive option and did indeed provide a pleasant enough timekiller. This is not to say that I would go so far as to commend the film to your attention, but if ever you need to kill a few hours, you could do far worse.

The director, Miguel Arteta, has made several gentle films like "Star Maps" (1997), "Chuck and Buck" (2000) , and "The Good Girl" (2002) -- possibly Jennifer Anniston's best movie, which showed potential talent for dealing with flawed and complex characters. This film continues his run. Ed Helms, whom I only know from "The Hangover" but who came to fame in the U.S. version of "The Office", stars as Tim Lippe, a naive and gormless insurance salesman from the back of beyond burg of Brown Valley. Wisconsin. He's involved in an energetic sexual affair with the older and more sophisticated Sigourney Weaver (who was his 7th grade teacher). From his viewpoint she's his potential fiancee and his one true love; from hers, six months after her divorce, he's one of several randy youngsters helping her make up for lost time. However Lippe is too inexperienced to understand this and totally relies upon her approval.

When the insurance company's best sales rep blots his copy book, Lippe's boss sends him to represent the firm at the regional convention, giving him a long list of 'dos' and 'don'ts', and entrusting him to obtain the Two-Diamond award for their office for the fourth consecutive year. The conference is being held in the eponymous Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which is hardly New York, London, or Paris, but which represents the height of sophistication to Lippe who has never before flown anywhere and who barely knows what a credit card is for. There he meets his 'roomies' earnest Isiah Whitlock, Jr. and John C. Reilly's sex-mad Ziegler, whom he was specifically instructed to avoid. Together with their gal-pal from other conventions, Anne Heche, they do their best not so much to lead him astray, but to unwind him. When the lifelong teetotaller is shamed into social drinking, he frantically scans the available bottles and ends up overdosing on cream sherry. That is just the start of the hijinks in which they involve him, including Heche-sex (and she's a married lady), drug-taking, fisticuffs, and having to bribe the regional Mr. Big (a supposedly upright and uptight Kurtwood Smith) to retain the big award. As an indication of how parochial the whole deal actually is, $1600 in traveller's cheques is sufficient to secure the coveted prize. We're not talking big time anything in Cedar Rapid's bright lights.

The film is mildly entertaining and completely watchable, without being hee-haw hilarious. Reilly does his usual shtick and helps to carry the action as poor little Tim finds himself getting in over his head. Of course, those of us who are actually good at heart (like him) will see their virtue rewarded in the final reel and the baddies will reap their comeuppance. One loose end, a sub-plot featuring a local whore Bree, is left dangling, when there was a strong suggestion that she just might be redeemed by our hapless hero. However this is soon forgotten as the movie wraps up its other strands in its attempt to leave us with a 'feel-good' resolution for its likeable players.

4, 3, 2, 1 (2010)

2011-05-03T12:55:00.001+01:00

The above film is the second as a director from actor and writer Noel Clarke. This 'great white hope' of British entertainment is actually a talented black man who won the Olivier Award in 2003 as the most promising newcomer (for acting) and the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2009 (for his film work). He wrote and was one of the main leads in the well-received film "Kidulthood" (2006), which dealt with a panoply of teen-aged problems on London's 'mean streets' and followed this with "Adulthood" (2008), which he wrote and directed, continuing the story of his character on his release from gaol six years on. Both films were relatively gritty ensemble pieces and were interesting, if not exciting cinema outings, technically with their finger on the pulse of what it is to be young and relatively disadvantaged in the metropolis.

In the above movie he uses a number of actors from the earlier films, giving them new characters, but still largely on the criminal fringe. However the story technically focuses on four girl friends and the title is meant to represent '4 Girls, 3 Days, 2 Cities, l Chance' which makes it all sound a little more clever than it actually is. The girls are Ophelia Loviband as the one puzzled by the break-up of her family and trying to find a note that her departed mother has left for her. Tamsin Egerton plays the rich and spoiled one whose parents have bought her a swish flat (complete with a panic room!), a talented pianist who is supposedly travelling to New York for an audition but who actually wants to use the trip to hook up with a chatroom boyfriend (and who loses her virginity to an impostor). Shanika Warren-Markland plays the black one in a boisterous white Brazilian family and the supposed free thinker who lets us watch her 'hot' girl-on-girl sex. Finally we have American starlet Emma Roberts trying to shed her earlier feisty, kooky teenaged roles as the dogsbody of a dysfunctional family who is forced to fill in on the night shift at a local convenience store in the place of her injured stepfather and feckless sister. (Why she is in this movie is something of a mystery). In the meantime there has been a major diamond robbery in Antwerp, seemingly covered non-stop on British television news, which involves some of the local yobbos, including Mr. Clarke.

Thw film is presented in four sections focusing in turn on one of the girls and rather cleverly wraps up their interaction over the the three days in the final scenes. However it is all rather a load of codswallop and not really terribly well thought out (or well-written) or convincing. There is far too much emphasis on the girls in their scanties and some carefully photographed nudity (where there is nothing to see). The diamond heist is used as a kind of McGuffin and adds to the film's lack of credibility as the stolen gems end up in a can of Pringles and in the hand of the now suicidal Loviband. All of the girls are OK in their roles but they make an unlikely band of faithful friends. Also on hand are unexpected and probably unnecessary cameos from Kevin Smith, Mandy Patinkin, and pop singer Eve, creating rather useless and underused additional characters.

The trouble here is that Clarke is trying to include too much in a way that doesn't fit well with his flashy cutting and has therefore not really succeeded in giving us a particularly memorable movie. Also someone should tell him that he is now getting too old to play one of the street kids.

Corridor of Mirrors (1948)

2011-04-28T15:08:00.001+01:00

I thought that just about every British movie -- even the most obscure -- has been shown on television here at least once, if not umpteen times, and I therefore was a little surprised that the above film has not been telecast -- at least not in the past 32 years that I've been keeping records (!). I noticed that a print from the BFI's National Archives was being screened on the South Bank yesterday and its description and credentials made me very keen to view it. So off we went...

It was definitely something of a curiosity, brilliant in part, but sadly lacking in one important area. Described in the BFI's programme as one of British cinema's weirdest 'noirs', the film does not slot readily into what I would describe as 'noir'. Rather it is a fine example of an atmospheric Gothic tale translated into the period in which it was made. It marked the debut of director Terence Young who went on to make the best-known Sean Connery Bond movies and it is a surprisingly accomplished piece of baroque story-telling from such an inexperienced hand. Eric Portman -- a stalwart among British leading men (with an ever-so-cultured voice) from the mid-thirties to the mid-sixties -- plays a wealthy eccentric with a love of beauty in all of its forms. He becomes obsessed with a woman he meets in a nightclub, who he believes is the reincarnation of a woman he loved in another lifetime. She is attracted in turn by his courtly behaviour, ornate mansion, and generous gifts, but avoids giving herself to him physically. There are wonderful baroque scenes as she follows a white cat down a long mirrored corridor, finding behind each door sumptuously gowned wax dummies, and eventually chancing upon an aging retainer (a scary turn from character actress Barbara Mullen) who spins tales of Portman's decadent dalliances.

The big problem with this film from my point of view is the nondescript performance from its lead actress, Edana Romney, who also had a hand in the screenplay. She previously appeared in minor roles in two early forties flicks and this is her one and only starring role in a film; her few subsequent appearances were on television, before she disappeared from the scene. She is neither much of a beauty nor much of an actress for that matter, and one can only conjecture how she came to be cast in this fairly lavish production. One wonders whose girlfriend she was...

Despite her disappointing turn, the film affords many pleasures and occasional chills, as the tale leaps forward and back to include a lavish Venetian costume ball in the grounds of Portman's estate, a sordid murder for which he is condemned, and a denouement nicely photographed amongst the wax denizens of Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. Comparisons have been drawn between this film and Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast" as well as to the role-grooming of "Vertigo", but despite its incidential pleasures "Corridor of Mirrors" is not in the same league as either film. Perhaps with a different female lead it might have become a more satisfying bit of sinister hokum.

Your Highness (2011)

2011-04-23T12:15:00.002+01:00

It would be a completely valid question to ask why I would go to see a film like the above or "Sucker Punch" (reviewed below) on the big screen, while I seldom seek out the majority of new releases at the earliest opportunity. Well believe it or not, it's not all about 'me, me, me' and occasionally we go to the cinema to watch a film that my other half is keen to see -- almost always as light relief. You can gather from these opening remarks that I didn't think much of the latest movie from director David Gordon Green.

Mind you, the man is an enigma to me. His first two films "George Wahington" (2000) and "All the Real Girls" (2003) were independent productions and generally critically acclaimed, if undergrossing at the box office. I didn't like them all that much myself, finding them slow moving and a little uninvolving, but Green was quoted as saying that he did not make films to please a wide audience, but to please himself. 'Good for him' I thought. It therefore came as a complete shock when his fifth film was the stoner comedy "Pineapple Express" in 2008. What a strange choice for him and how unfunny a film it proved, although it was more widely seen than his earlier work. His latest movie continues his downward spiral.

Reuniting the two Pineapple stars James Franco and Danny McBride, who co-wrote the jejune screenplay, it is a fantasy fairy tale for adults -- something along the lines of "The Princess Bride" or "The Dark Crystal" with the expletives NOT deleted. I suppose it is amusing to some to hear questing princes and abducted fair maidens liberally sprinkle their dialogue with the F-word, but that joke wears very thin very quickly. Franco plays heroic elder brother Prince Fabious who has returned from his most recent quest with rescued damsel Zooey Deschanel and he asks his ne-er do well brother Thadeous (McBride) -- an expert in dwarf-humping, masturbation, and lazing about -- to be the best man at his upcoming wedding, thereby alienating his previously loyal band of knights. When the wicked wizard Leezar, an eyeball rolling, OTT baddie played by Justin Theroux abducts the virgin bride for his own lascivious ends ("Let the fuckening begin"), King Charles Dance (slumming it again) instructs both brothers to ride off in pursuit.   And so their adventures begin...

Current opinion seems to be to cast Franco as some sort of modern Renaissance Man because of his widespread artistic interests, but his acting here -- where I assume he is meant to be sending up the idea of fearless nobility -- leaves much to be desired. He may be having some sort of fun with the role, but it is less amusing for the viewer. As for McBride his reluctant participation in the current quest is meant to make him into a man, but it is his natural inclination in the role that he has written for himself to remain a smut-loving, hopeless boor. First the brothers visit a CGI paedophile who gives them a magic compass and directions on how to destroy Leezar.  Then, deserted by their cohorts who have gone over to the dark side, they are captured by an evil transvestite (surrounded by a bevy of nubile, topless maidens of course) who unleashes his five-headed dragon against them. In the nick of time arrives a female warrior on her own quest, played by Natalie Portman, who delivers them; she then uses her feminine wiles to steal the compass from the idiotic Thadeous. Portman seems to be acting in a different film than the rest of the cast and one can only wonder why she agreed to the role; an antidote to the traumas of shooting "The Black Swan" is an insufficient reason. Anyhow we can agree that she has a very pert 'tush'!

To paraphase one of the reviews that I have seen for this film, McBride's script encourages his two-dimensional characters to speak their mind, but the result is a weird mess of mindless tosh. How a respected Indie director decided that churning out a movie barely fit for the 15-25 year old male market was the next step in his career path is a fascinating conundrum.

The Taming of the Shrew (1967)

2011-04-18T11:32:00.001+01:00

On a number of levels the above film seems a strange choice from the BBC to commemorate the recent death of Elizabeth Taylor, since it is not one of her award-winning roles nor one of her 'classic' performances. If the truth be known, it is probably one of her lesser-known movies, one of several many made with Richard Burton during the period of their tempestuous first marriage. These ranged from the highpoint of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" to the definite lowpoint of the disastrous "Boom". However it proved a felicitous selection to broadcast, insofar as it stands as a wonderful testament to Taylor's beauty and screen presence; it also gives the viewer a privileged peek at the real-life chemistry that existed between her and Burton. If you really want to know what is meant by "the look of love", you have only to watch those two here.

In his first proper theatrical film, the noted production designer for grand opera, Franco Zeffirelli, brings a colourful, luscious eye and some wonderful mise-en-scene to Shakespeare's bawdy tale. The film is less about the bard's words than about the opened-out Italianate romp that Zeffirelli provides. Taylor brings her full-bodied beauty and passion to the tempestuous shrew Kate, while Burton, who was known for his Shakespearian stage performances, creates a towering and crude Petruchio. Some might find his interpretation over the top or even a little hammy, but the character he portrays, who has come to 'wife it well' in Padua, is certainly meant to be larger than life. The fire burning in both performances is what makes this movie most memorable, together with its rich design and costuming and a remarkable score from Nino Rota.

No one would argue that Taylor was not a great 'movie star' and an unforgettable presence. It is a little more difficult to convince people that she was a great actress as well. She certainly made some very memorable movies, but her standard of acting could be variable. Certainly she is not one's first choice for Shakespearian dialogue and her occasionally squeaky, little girl voice is hard to temper. However as a spectacle for the eye, this movie reinforces her screen luminescence, and one barely notices the delivery of her lines when they are surrounded by such sumptuous staging.

The film's other delights include the incomparable Michael Horden as Kate and Bianca's father, Cyril Cusack as Petruchio's crafty servant, and Michael York in his screen debut as Lucentio. The film musical "Kiss Me Kate" may well be the most popular version of the oft-told tale, but this lovingly crafted, lusty version has so very much to commend it. So, yes, it was a wise choice after all to serve as the BBC's tribute to a Hollywood legend.

A Couple of Sweeties

2011-04-13T10:48:00.002+01:00

While I will always make a point of watching big-budget movies that I have not caught previously, the selection -- despite the various amount of hype which precedes them -- often leaves me with a 'so what' reaction. This week's choices included the weird Paul Bettany fallen angel flick "Legion" and Sandra Bullock's "Blind Side". While the latter was reasonably entertaining, if far from brilliant film-making, I did not really see any evidence of why she deserved a best actress Oscar for her role, other than the unkind reaction that it was 'her turn'.

On the other hand sweet surprises manage to arrive with happy frequency; otherwise I might give up my ambition to try to view any and all movies that come my way. Often these films arrive unheralded and I know little about their cinematic history or even much about many of the featured players. I read a lot of film reviews and criticism, both in print and on-line, but every so often I discover a totally delightful feature which had not prevously registered in my cinematic mind. A recent example was "Bunny and the Bull", a little-known and imaginatively presented British flick from 2009, which I will not discuss here, but would urge you to seek out. Two other films viewed within the last week were equally engaging:

The Rocker (2008): An American outing for director Peter Cattaneo, who was Oscar-nominated for "The Full Monty" (1997) and who has not exactly been prolific in movieland, this movie stars Rainn Wilson as a would-be rock star drummer, dumped by his band -- who have since made it big -- some twenty years earlier. Pretty much of a deadbeat existence and financial woes land him at the home of his sister, Jane Lynch, and filling in for the 'grounded' drummer of his nephew's garage band at the upcoming senior prom. Tasting the trappings of a lifestyle so long denied, he forces his continued participation on the other three dubious teenagers and tries to groom them in the wild, wild ways of life on the road. He is really an over-enthusiastic rocker who has never managed to grow up, but is happy to begin finding everything that he thinks he deserves -- after footage of his nude drumming appears on You-Tube and makes the group an overnight sensation.

Wilson looked vaguely familiar to me, but I could not place him until I discovered that he was the cheeky drugstore clerk in "Juno" -- a small but memorable role.  Two of his three band colleagues, were completely unknown to me -- Teddy Geiger playing the insecure but talented composer-lyricist and Josh Tad as the chubby, socially introverted nephew on keyboard. The girl member of the group, Emma Stone, has subsequently become something of a 'flavour of the month' after her role in "Zombieland" and she now has a slew of A-list movies on her filmography. Geiger's single-parent mom is played brightly by Christina Applegate and two-faced manager Jason Sudeikis rounds out the main cast. There is nothing overly special about the story but it is a good-natured satire on the foibles of the rock scene and the comeuppance of Wilson's previous band is more than a little satisfying. One of those musicians is played, incidentally, by a nearly unrecognizable Bradley Cooper.

My Last Five Girlfriends (2009): This movie was an even bigger unknown to me and I held out little hope for a British indie effort. The writer-director Julian Kemp is mainly active on TV, making this a rare cinema outing.   However despite its low budget and little-known cast (apart from a couple of high profile cameos, obviously called in as favours), it was an amusingly presented and imaginative riff on the standard rom-com. Contemplating suicide and downing a packet of pills washed down with vodka, young Duncan composes a note to his last five disastrous girlfriends outlining what has gone wrong with his life. I had never even heard of actor Brendan Patricks who took this lead, but he portrayed the pleasant, inoffensive, yet thoroughly likeable nerd with verve. Of his five exes -- very roughly the one who was using him as a stop-gap in her rocky ongoing relationship elsewhere, the unknowable one who forced him to eat some allergenic chocolate with nauseating results, the French one with whom he fell out over a pair of hideous shoes, the longstanding one who shared his inability to commit, and the 'ideal' one who ended up breaking his heart -- I only recognized two of the actresses. The second ex-flame was played by Jane March, previously known locally as "the sinner from Pinner" after her role in "The Lovers" back in the early '90s and virtually unseen since swimming nude with Bruce Willis in "The Color of Money" back in 1994. The other known player was the black actress Naomie Harris, who adeptly played Duncan's last, treacherous lover.

However the obscurity of the cast mattered little. What made this film outstanding was the gentle humour of the tale's presentation. Duncan's life was represented as a Duncanworld theme park where each bad relationship was shown as a ride that thrilled while it lasted, but then crashed and burned, with the park's customers adding their two cents' worth of sarcastic comments. There was also Duncan's backstory briefly illustrated by a panorama of Barbie dolls. Even his would-be suicide was used to create a totally false ending, before showing the viewer the potentially happy one that just might follow.

When you are on a strict diet of uninteresting blockbusters, a couple of sweeties are just what you need to compensate for the bad taste they leave.

A Bit of This and That

2011-04-08T15:20:00.004+01:00

For those of you who have been paying attention, which of course means all of you, when I reviewed "Liliom" (1930) last September, I mentioned that the lead actress, Rose Hobart, had been immortalised in a 1936 avant garde short. I admitted that I had never seen this eponymous film but said that it sounded fascinating. Well, now I have seen it -- and it was anything but! We attended a screening at the National Film Theatre under the pompous collective heading "Collage, Homage and Subversion" where "Rose Hobart" was one of three experimental films being shown. After a seemingly interminable introduction by a nearly unintelligible would-be pundit, this long-sought short was screened and it was not only something of a disappointment, but also a somewhat pointless exercise from the artist Joseph Cornell. He re-edited her appearances from the B-movie "East of Borneo" deliberately omitting any narrative continuity and altering the soundtrack to suitably portentious music; the result with its very faded print were not at all the experience I had anticipated.

The second film in the programme, "A Movie" (1958) from artist Bruce Connor, was also not as interesting as it might have been, as he cobbled together fairly familiar disaster footage -- collapsing bridges, the Hindenberg, and the atom bomb. The third film, a slightly longer Italian short from 1965 called "La verifica incerta", did have a certain strange fascination. It comprised brief clips from recognizable Hollywood scope films (shown elongated in the wrong ratio with noisy Italian overdubbing), intercut in inventive ways -- a series of doors or windows opening or shutting, heroes from one scene interacting with those in another, all done with an underlyingly sly sense of humour. It was fun in a way to spot Clark Gable, James Coburn, Susan Hayward, and many more in this creative mash-up. However I doubt I would be tempted to attend a similar programme in the future.

So what else have I been up do? For a start I have been working my way through a Gloria Swanson box-set and I still have a way to go. Although she is one of the 'great' names from the silent era, I was not as familiar with her output as I thought I was. I had previously only seen some of her dated shorts when she began filming as a teenager, the truly remarkable but incomplete "Queen Kelly" shot by Von Stroheim, and the rediscovered 'lost' film "Beneath the Rocks" (1922) which was frankly a little tedioso. Of course I was more familiar with some of her talkie flops in the 30s and her most iconic role of all in Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" (1950), which will guarantee her immortality. Anyhow I have now watched three of her movies from 1919 ("Male and Female", Don't Change your Husband", and "Why Change Your Wife") and "The Affairs of Anatol" (1921) -- all produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. I am now a little mystified by her silent super-stardom: she was neither a great beauty nor the intuitive comedienne that legend suggests; she was quite adequate in all four films but her performances fell short of taking my breath away. Far more interesting were Thomas Meighan in the first of these film's riff on "The Admirable Crichton" and the ill-fated Wallace Reid as Anatol (he died just over a year later from morphine addiction at the age of 33). In fact in all four movies Swanson came across as the spoiled and petulant woman that she quite probably was in real life. I'm happy to have watched these DeMille lightweight, racy-for-the-times sex romps and will persevere with the balance of the box set, but I am not convinced that Swanson deserves her place in the Hollywood pantheon -- "Sunset Boulevard" apart.

Of course the above is just the tip of the iceberg since I last wrote and I have also seen "Hot Tub Time Machine" (a waste of time from the normally reliable John Cusack), "From Paris with Love" (another forgettable outing for the bumptious -- nowadays -- John Travolta), and "Agora" (a strangely plodding story of old Alexandria with Rachel Weisz). We also managed at long last to clear from the backlog the 1979 Russian epic "Siberiade" -- 260 minutes of Soviet history seen through the eyes of two feuding and eccentric Siberian families, quirky, fascinating, and generally more than a little strange. And that's not all....but let's leave some of it for next time.

Sucker Punch (2011)

2011-04-03T12:48:00.013+01:00

For some time now we have been hearing about 'chick flicks' -- movies designed to lure young and older gals back to to the pictures, to which boyfriends and husbands must be dragged screaming. You know the sort of film; they are meant to attract 'wimmin' without those hallmarks of modern cinema -- bodily functions, coarse humour, and the flashy pyrotechnics that appeal to the current mainstay of cinema-goers: pubescent teenaged boys. I think the best name for their movie preferences would be 'dick flicks'. "Sucker Punch" illustrates this in spades. It is an adolescent male's wet-dream feminist fantasy -- hot girls kick ass.

The lead female Emily Browning (a little-known Australian actress with very limited emotive skills) plays a young woman called Baby Doll (think back if you can to Carroll Baker's classic character of this name), whose wicked stepdaddy has had her committed to an institution for the 'mentally insane' so that he can usurp her fortune. As she waits for her upcoming lobotomy -- a common practice of course nowadays! -- her mind fills with fantasies. Of course all of the other patients are nubile young totty and Baby Doll makes friends with girls with the equally unlikely names of Sweet Pea, Rocket, Blondie, and Amber. These roles are taken respectively by Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, "High School Musical's" Vanessa Hudgens, and TV actress Jamie Chung. Now Cornish is quite a decent versatile actress and Malone is no mean slouch either, but all five ladies, as well as the other inmates, are fetishized into lust objects with low cut tops, skimpy skirts, and mid-thigh stockings. The roles could just as easily have been filled by a selection of playmates of the month.

Director Zak Snyder has attracted some following with his successful films "300" and "Watchmen", but working here from his own original material he has created a big-budget slice of schlock. Browning's method of coping with the impossible situation in which she finds herself is to create worm-holes into various dreamworlds, where she and her pals battle an assortment of giant samurai, robot monsters, and zombie Nazis -- all of these straight out of the playstation of Snyder's mind. I will admit that these sequences are both imaginative and fairly well done, but they in no way compensate for the fact that the director has failed to provide us with a coherent screenplay or story or much in the way of acting talent.

Carla Gugino dressed like a brothel's madam, with a phony eastern-european accent, embarrasses herself as the facility's leading therapist, and a weathered Scott Glenn as the guru of Browning's escape fantasies is too laid back for words. It would be a mug's game to argue that the action is really very profound and meaningfully symbolic, as some of the movie's fanboys would have it. It is truly a case of not caring about the fates of the sleazy ciphers on display; the denouement (such as it is) with its offhand deaths, brutal mutilation, and a single escape makes as little sense as the preceding flights of soft-core fancy. Of course this grade-Z movie will probably make a load of cash -- but that's what 'dick flicks' are all about.

Kick-Ass (2010)

2011-03-28T11:09:00.030+01:00

I wasn't expecting too much from this movie about a would-be super-hero, but I was pleasantly surprised by its cheek, literacy, and off-the-wall humour and violence. When director Matthew Vaughn first turned his hand to directing with "Layer Cake" in 2004, after producing Guy Ritchie's quirky British gangster flicks, he gave us more of the same: flashy hardman action. Not my bag! However I should have suspected that he was capable of broader horizons with the very charming "Stardust" (2007) written with super-scribe Jane Goldman. The above movie is also the product of their continued cooperation and takes the gangster genre and turns it on its head by incorporating a comic book sensibility.

Aaron Johnson, who first came into the public eye with his lead role as the young John Lennon in "Nowhere Boy"(2009) and his romantic liaison with that film's director -- Sam Taylor Wood, 23 years his senior and now the mother of his daughter -- plays Dave Lizewski, a gormless high school comic book nerd who craves being a superhero, despite not being endowed with any special talents; he just wants to help humanity... So he sends off for a hideous diving suit which he dons and goes off in pursuit of adventure. His first attempt to find and return a missing cat accidentally lands him in the midst of gang violence, followed by an encounter with the local bully's knife, after which he is smashed to a pulp by a hit-and-run driver. As a result, every bone in his body needs steel reinforcements, which gives him more of an edge in standing up against wrongdoers. The You-Tube generation lands his exploits on the net and he becomes Kick-Ass, the masked hero of his dreams, even if he still does not possess any noticeable fighting skills.

He soon meets up with two highly-trained fighting machines: Nicolas Cage as Big Daddy and his young daughter Chloe Moretz as Hit Girl. An ex-cop who has been framed for drug crimes and served prison time, Cage is out to avenge not just the honcho who put him there but any and all miscreants that cross his path. To this end he has trained Moretz in every kind of armed combat; together they are a whirlwind of mayhem. On one level theirs is simply a loving father-daughter relationship; it's just that their toys are knives and guns. For once, in contrast with his other recent roles, Cage underplays his obsessive avenger and is nearly likeable in his Adam West-like blandness. Moretz, on the other hand, in her purple wig and with her potty-mouthed dialogue is a dynamo in action. Despite the violence they engender, one wishes them well in their quest.

Their main quarry is the kingpin gangster icily played by Mark Strong. (I also saw him a few days ago as the big baddie in Russell Crowe's recent "Robin Hood" flick, although why we need another version, even as a prequel, remains a mystery to me). His wanna-be son who craves his dad's approval is played by Christopher Mintz-Plaisse, still something of a dweeb, but a long way from his McLovin in "Superbad". In order to please his father and bring down Kick-Ass, he gets Dad to bankroll 'Red Mist', equipped with all the modern gadgetry that money can buy, he becomes the new would-be superhero on the block.

The film has been criticized by many for its over-the-top bloodshed. If one accepts that this is really only comic book violence, not that different from Jerry splattering Tom, everything becomes so unreal that it becomes droll. Vaughn and Goldman have given us a fun-filled riff on the muscle-bound superheroes of other movies and one is fully aware that none of the violence is meant to be taken seriously. A sequel is on the cards, but how this would work with Johnson and Mintz-Plasse several years on and similarly an older Moretz is a moot point; and how would they cope with SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER Cage's no longer being available is a separate problem. I do look forward to finding out.

Limitless (2011)

2011-03-23T06:31:00.006Z

Some movies are like the proverbial Chinese meal: very tasty and enjoyable while you are dining, but leaving you feeling empty and unsatisfied shortly afterwards. We went to a preview showing for the above film which opens here this week and I didn't look at my watch once. In other words, it held my interest with its unusual storyline, flashily told by director Neil Burger in his fourth outing. His 2006 second feature, the excellent "The Illusionist", promised solid work in the future, and he certainly attacked the subject matter here with dizzying gusto, but whether the fancy camerawork was useful in providing anything other than mild nausea is something of a moot point. Several hours after viewing this concoction, its initial impact had faded and I was left pondering the implausibilities and logical plot-holes that had carried me along earlier.

The premise is intriguing. Having been told umpteen times that we all coast along using but a small proportion of our potential brainpower, what would happen if a simple pill could unlock our full capacity? Bradley Cooper plays Eddie Morra, a scruffy, non-achieving author with a severe case of writer's block. A chance meeting with his ex-brother-in-law, who has always moonlighted as a dealer (not in stocks and bonds!) gifts Morra with a simple transparent tablet, a designer drug called NVC. Immediately he is able to complete his book in four days, learn to play the piano, tidy his pigsty of an apartment, and bed his landlord's naggy wife who is dunning him for back rent. He finds the stash at the murdered dealer's flat and uses it to develop his 'four-digit IQ', amazing all and sundry with his remarkable abilities. He is now able to recall and adapt every piece of information to which he has ever been casually exposed, including being able to fight like Bruce Lee to see off a bunch of subway thugs! He moves from being a total loser to the bumptious best boy on the block.

This brings him to the attention of a ruthless financial tycoon, appropriately named Carl Van Loon, played by Robert De Niro on auto-pilot. Cooper, who has become omnipresent since his break-through role in "The Hangover" two years ago, does an adequate job, although nearly any youngish actor could have taken it on (although thankfully not Shia LaBeouf for whom the role was apparently originally intended). The two main female roles, Abbie Cornish as Morra's on-again, off-again girlfriend and Anna Friel as his ex-wife, are badly underwritten, leaving the two actresses as unformed ciphers. However, through Friel we learn that others who have toyed with the drug are generally dead or dying -- not that this deters Morra's growing dependency.

Thrown in are a number of idiotic sub-plots including that of a violent Russian money-lender who has found out about the drug, Morra's being framed for a murder that he may or may not have committed, and a mogul's mad and murderous P.A. pursuing Cooper and Cornish to get his hands on their supply. There's also evidence of Morra's growing paranoia as he hires bodyguards and rents a supposedly thief-proof apartment (which the Russians and his goons turn into confetti). It seems that half the world and his sister know about this remarkable drug and the ending, when it comes, is only satisfying in the very short term. Then, all the questions about what one has just watched start rearing their ugly heads. Enjoy the film for its 100-odd minutes' roller coaster ride, but don't think too much about it afterwards.

Potiche (2010)

2011-03-18T10:11:00.007Z

The above film from prolific director Francois Ozon was the opening movie of a 3-day French film festival here and we were immediately attracted to it by the cinematic reunion of its two stars: Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu. They have appeared together notably in the past, and since a new movie starring either of them is cause for excitement, seeing them together again was a strong incentive -- and, let me quickly add, a most enjoyable experience.

'Potiche' translates as an ornamental Japanese vase prominently displayed on a shelf, but is also used as the description of a trophy wife or trophy mistress. This is the fate of Deneuve, 30-years married to pompous and unfaithful Fabrice Luchini, who considers her late father's umbrella factory his dowry. They have a married daughter with two children, who bemoans her husband's constant business travel, and a vaguely bohemian son who has not yet decided what he wants from life, but who certainly has no interest in becoming an umbrella tycoon. The start of the film dawdles over Deneuve's relatively empty life, her childrens' indecisiveness, and her feckless husband's taking her happy hausfrau role for granted, while he has it off with all and sundry. When he is taken hostage by protesting workers at his factory, Deneuve enlists the help of his great enemy, the local left-wing mayor and MP Depardieu, who just happens to be a one-day romantic fling from her distant past. When the trauma of his deliverance from his workers' revolt causes Luchini to have a heart attack, Deneuve is encouraged to take over the factory's management in his absence. This she does reluctantly, but with the help of her kids and the legacy of her father's benevolence, she is a major hit with the workers, showing a previously unsuspected head for business as profits soar.

Set in 1977, the film's focus is firmly on the rise of feminism. Ozon's early movies concentrated on his own gay sensibilities, but his films since 2000 like "Under the Sand", "8 Women", and "Swimming Pool" show far greater versatility and seem to celebrate feisty, strong, determined women. Deneuve's blossoming as the factory's successful boss is resented by her husband when he returns to the scene, assuming that everything will revert to what was, including his casual nookie with his secretary. Fat chance, and Deneuve doesn't want to give up what she has accomplished. She only loses control when her daughter (firmly under the heavy thumb of her own husband) votes with her swarmy dad. Unfazed, Deneuve decides to divorce the swine and to stand as local MP in the upcoming elections, unseating Depardieu in the process.

The bare bones of this tale do not reflect the charming performances from the two leads. Still handsome and trim in her 60s, Deneuve is not the great beauty that she once was, but remains a skilled performer. There is a bit of business about Depardieu's possibly being the father of her son and he is chuffed as monkeys at the prospect, before she disillusions him with details of her many other liaisons. However before this revelation alientates him, they have a number of playful scenes together as he admits that she remains the unrequited love of his life. He may be a bit of a man-mountain physically nowadays, but their dancing together at the local, slightly risque, disco (where her husband would never take her) is as joyous as watching Oliver Hardy's unsuspected grace. Full marks to M. Ozon for reuniting these performers and giving them such well-rounded roles for their late careers.

Comedian Harmonists (1997)

2011-03-13T12:08:00.008Z

If you had asked me before I viewed the above German film yesterday whether I had seen it before, I would have said 'yes' -- but I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Reaching back into the dim recesses of memory, I am fairly certain that I have seen a documentary about the singing group in question -- a group of hugely popular, world-renowned entertainers, who came together in the late 1920s and whose careers ended as a victims of irrational Nazi mandates. I certainly had not seen this 129-minute reconstruction by director Joseph Vilsmaier of the remarkable group's rise and fall.

A young, impoverished actor and would-be musician named Harry Frommermann decides to put together a German version of the then-famous American a-capella group 'The Revellers'. He advertises for singers, but a pushy meeting with bass-singer Robert Biberti (arriving on his doorstep dressed as a monk, moonlighting from his work as a movie extra) sends off the no-talents queueing to audition; between them they find three other strong singers and a pianist. They hone their unique trademark of using their vocal talents to imitate various musical instruments, so that the audience hears not only some wonderful singing, but also the impression of a full orchestra backing them, and they became a runaway success. Immensely popular both in their homeland and abroad, warning signs begin to emerge as the Nazis consolidate their power.

It happens that two of the group are overtly Jewish and a third is deemed Jewish by the Hitler's controversial racial laws. Their pianist is married to a Jewish woman and a very Aryan woman has converted to Judaism to marry one of them. Despite their broad fan base amongst the German people and even amongst some high-ranking Nazi officials, they are eventually banned from performing in public. This occurs after a triumphant visit to New York from which they willingly returned to Germany (Harry less willingly than the others), thinking that their fans would never allow their persecution. Far too soon the three Jews are forced to flee the country for America, leaving the other three to try to pick up the pieces of their careers. I don't know what actually happened to the six in question in their later lives -- whether they had any subsequent success of not, but I intend to find out.

The director probably took a certain amount of poetic license in telling their story, such as creating an apparently non-existant triangle between Harry, Robert, and a young student for its dramatic effect. However, the movie carefully recreates the period, not stinting on the shadows and paranoia that will overwhelm Germany, mixing these forebodings with some wonderfully delightful re-created musical performances. I was not familiar with any of the lead cast, but they all did an excellent job of becoming the very believable, talented, and human harmonists. The only actor I knew from before was Gunter Lamprecht, here playing the small part of the impresario that gave the group their name (based on their comic bits of stage-business); he took the lead in the fantastic 1980 German TV series "Berlin Alexanderplatz" which also dealt with the fraught Germany of the past,

The film is not perfect and contains certain anachronisms (for example, the US armed forces were still segregated in those bad old days), but its heart is well and truly in the right place. If the group's final concert and their 'auf wiedersehen' song seems remarkably reminiscent of the Von Trapps' departure in the "Sound of Music", it still creates the necessary teary, chokey response in the viewer. On balance, this is a remarkably involving and largely enjoyable film about some legendary entertainers and I can highly recommend it.

I Love You Phillip Morris (2009)

2011-03-08T13:48:00.007Z

To someone of my generation, the title of this film suggests a testimonial or paean to a brand of ciggies, rather than a purportedly true story of gay love. Apparently the nearly unbelievable tale is based on reality, as told in the non-fiction book by Steven Vicker. Adapted for the screen by "Bad Santa" scribes Glenn Ficarra and John Requa and co-directed by them with a wonderfully light touch in their debut outing, the movie is far more entertaining than I would have imagined. Of this week's Sky Premiere debuts, I was expecting Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" to be the pick of the bunch, but I found it preposterously told, muddled, and unsatisfying; the above unheralded movie (with its subject matter limiting its wide release) was far more fun.

It is the story of one Steven Russell, immaculately played by Jim Carrey, who throws in his straight life as a cop, husband, and father to wallow in the hedonistic lifestyle that he believes his gay sensibilities warrant. As he soon discovers, a flamboyant way of life needs lots of ready cash, so he indulges in various cons and scams to finance living high on the hog. Think of "Catch Me if You Can" camped up. Of course he lands in pokey where -- across the room -- he catches sight of the would-be love of his life Phillip Morris, in the bleached blonde shape of Ewan McGregor. Soon he is pulling strings to get transferred into McGregor' cell and on his release to spring his lover through various paralegal shennanigans. Once they are both at liberty, Steven carries on with more outlandish postures and unashamed fiddles to provide a luxurious life for him and his beloved Phillip. When the law is ready to close in once again, Phillip is unforgiving and takes off in his shiny red sportscar (one of a matching pair Steven has provided). It is only through the most unbelievable set of actions that Carrey's conman manages to escape from jail and win back Phillip's affections. To say any more would be to spoil the surprises of the film's denouement -- but outrageous is the best and only description. It's harder than hell to credit that this is all based on truth.

I am hardly a great Carrey fan despite liking some of his early work; his later films are a little frenetic for my taste, although he can, when he tries, underplay to good effect. In this movie, he may be enacting a larger than life character, but his playing is believably grounded. As for McGregor, as I wrote elsewhere recently, he has been coasting through most of his latter-day roles without making much of a positive impression. In this film, however, he is remarkably good and one can believe in his very feminine and very needy character. Apparently some movie-goers were put off by the thought of two straight actors playing gay oddballs -- and the film does not stint on their sexual attraction and affection -- but this just proves that both Carrey and McGregor are better actors than I have previously believed. In short, I found it a far more enjoyable romp than watching Leonardo DiCaprio going crazy (sorry, Marty!).

True Grit (2010)

2011-03-03T09:32:00.007Z

While clearly a product of the Coen Brothers' quirky mentality, the above film is on the surface one of their more mainstream and accessible movies. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards -- and won none of them, so perhaps I should briefly comment on this week's ceremony and examine the film in respect of its failed nominations.

I must confess that I had seen very few of this years contenders before Oscar Night, but I have read sufficient reviews and commentaries and seen numerous clips of the various films to form some strong personal opinions. One movie I did see was "The Fighter" (reviewed below) and while I understand why Christian Bale's showy performance caught the voters' eye, I think that Melissa Leo's win was influenced by her previous best actress loss; for my money, the unnominated Mark Wahlberg gave a better performance than either of them.

But back to "True Grit": like a lot of people I have fond memories of John Wayne's crowd-pleasing performance back in 1969, which won him his only Oscar. While my memory of the film itself is now a little hazy (must watch it again, Pat), I do believe the Coen boys when they say that their version is far more faithful to the original Charles Portis novel (note to self: must read). Apparently great chunks of the film's dialogue were taken straight from the printed page, and that may be one reason why their movie lost out on the best adapted screenplay award (plus the fact that Aaron Sorkin's script for "The Social Network" was so timely). "True Grit" also lost in the sound editing and sound mixing categories -- one of these days I will understand the difference between these two and discover why they are even award categories. Further losses were for art direction and costume design, both of which were won by the very successful, colourful, and entertaining "Alice in Wonderland" from Tim Burton; however I can understand the movie's inclusion amongst the nominees. as the film's details possess a fine eye for time and place.

Moving on to the main awards, Hailee Steinfeld did a remarkable turn as Mattie Ross and was more of the right age than Kim Darby in the earlier film; if any of the characters demonstrated what 'true grit' really means, it was she, in a fearless performance. However first-timers seldom win the major awards -- although it has certainly happened occasionally in the past -- and one can only hope that we will see more of this fine young actress in the future. As for Jeff Bridges' nod for best actor, which would have made him a winner two years running, despite thinking that he is one of Hollywood's finest actors and something of an original, a win this year would have been a travesty. I was frankly not all that taken with his turn in last year's "Crazy Heart", but that role allowed greater versatility and pathos than his shambling, mumbling turn here. This is not to say that he wasn't both watchable and oft-times amusing (far better than Matt Damon's conflicted Texas Ranger), but it was hardly great acting in what was a very strong year.

Which takes us to the losses for Best Picture and Best Directing: while the two categories have occasionally provided wins for two different movies, one is back to the old conundrum of how can a best movie direct itself? It was clear from the get-go that the final contest would be between "The Social Network" and "The King's Speech", and I too would have opted for the winning latter. This British film will probably remain a timeless classic in the years ahead when Facebook has become something of an internet relic. On those grounds alone, the Coens' reworking of "True Grit" will probably also win the test of time.

This brings me to the movie's last Oscar loss: cinematography. The Coens' regular colleague Roger Deakins has been nominated by the Academy a total of nine times and has never won. I find it hard to understand why the filming of CGI-generated special effects in "Inception" was considered a greater achievement than the achingly beautiful and poetic cinematography on display here. He wuz robbed!!!

In summary, this new version of an old favourite may not have been an award-winner, but it is a major achievement and can proudly take its place with the brothers' finest films.

Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang (2010)

2011-02-27T10:27:00.005Z

In 2005 Emma Thompson wrote and starred in a film called "Nanny McPhee" which proved popular amongst the children at which it was aimed and which did respectable business worldwide. It was a period piece in which she played a hideously ugly and very strict governess, all warts and snaggle-toothed, who magically comes to the aid of widower Colin Firth and sorts out his unruly brood of kids, as well as the rest of his life. With each improvement, bits of her ugliness melted away; when she was back to a normal appearance, it meant that her job was done and it was time to move on. It was reasonably entertaining, even for the adult viewer, but a pale "Mary Poppins" clone and hardly one of the great kiddie flicks of all time.

I can only guess that the original movie's success inspired the talented Thompson to pen the above sequel, but I find it an ill-advised move on her part. Nanny ("little c, big P") is back, but the setting has jumped forward to World War II, to emphasize that the stern governess is an immortal, power-laden time traveller. Dad is away at war and Mum is struggling to raise her three kids, save the farm from failing, and taking on two spoiled brats from London -- relatives being sent to the country by their unfeeling parents to avoid bombing raids. To give you an idea of how obnoxious the two newcomers are meant to be, the little girl, whose expensive clothes have been dropped into the poo palace that is the farm's courtyard, appropriates the mother's treasured wedding dress as the only bit of clothing in the house worth wearing and promptly ruins it. Once again Nanny miraculously appears to save the day.

I imagine that Thompson (one of the producers as well) must have called in a lot of favours to get her cast and she has certainly done them no favour in turn; they have little for which to thank her. For some reason Maggie Gyllenhaal is playing the frazzled mother (although to be fair her English accent is reasonable). Maggie Smith plays a scatterbrained oldie who proves to be a link to the first film, who pours treacle into the drawers of the shop that Gyllenhaal runs in the village and whose idea of comfort at a picnic is to sit on a cow pat. Rhys Ifans is the brother-in-law who keeps at Gyllenhaal to sign away her interest in the farm and thinks that forging a telegram saying that her husband has been killed in action should do the trick, (really not funny, Ms. Thompson.) His character is so annoying and so much of a music-hall moustache-twirling villain that one wonders why kids would be amused by this. Also in the cast are Ralph Fiennes and in a blink-or-you-may-miss-him role Ewan McGregor.

The 'big bang' of the title refers to a rogue bomb which is unwittingly dropped in the middle of the farm's barley field and which the crafty children manage to defuse themselves after the slightly senile warden has fainted away -- again not really a humour-laden plot device. Nanny's pet raven assists by pecking away at the putty protecting the last wire (a substance that it is addicted to we are told) and then becomes so bloated that its enormous fart creates enough energy to reap and bale all of the barley. What jolly japes!! I must confess that I know at least one eight-year old who thinks this movie is a hoot and there are the odd bits of business that youngsters could warm to -- in particular piglets that fly (yes, pigs will fly!) and perform synchronised swimming. There is also the odd baby elephant that Nanny magicks up. However the overall concoction is in such poor taste and so horrendously twee that older children and adults should find this film impossible to embrace. Please, Ms. Thompson, spare us another sequel updated to our own times.

Midnight Mary (1933)

2011-02-23T09:40:00.007Z

Film buffs should really be grateful to the commercial instincts of the various DVD labels which, in their search for new product, have packaged some pretty obscure material. The big studio-linked labels can count on reasonable sales for the latest blockbusters (or would-be tentpole flicks), but, you may wonder, where is the motivation for churning out pristine copies of little-known and rarely-seen movies. While it probably all comes back to 'earning a crust', the expansion of the DVD market (far wider than the earlier VHS market) and the relatively low cost of those shiny discs has created a whole new generation of movie collectors. Don't tell me that it is easier to rent or cheaper to watch on-line; there is a great satisfaction in owning films which one can re-visit, in much the same way that bibliophiles build a library of print. To me, at least, it is comforting to know that they are there, ready and waiting.

There have been three collections now, churned out by TCM, of "Forbidden Hollywood" films concentrating on the so-called pre-code movies of the early 1930s, before the Hays Office put their kibosh on racy, sexual, or generally controversial films. Universal has followed suit and issued a six-disc set entitled 'Pre-code Hollywood'. Many of these movies now seem badly dated and don't appear terribly out of keeping with our modern morals, but they serve as a welcome reminder of how Hollywood might have evolved without its twenty-odd years of righteous interference. They also offer us the opportunity to watch early roles for some of the top stars of the 30s, 40s, and beyond: Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, and many more.

The third TCM collection focuses on six films directed by William A. Wellman, a veteran of Hollywood's silent days and a stylish workman who went on to direct a number of classics. The film under discussion is typical of these 'fobidden' movies. Loretta Young plays a woman who awaits the jury's return at her trial for murder and reflects back on the events which have brought her to that point. Young began appearing in films at a very young age and it is hard to believe that she was only twenty when this film was made; she is gorgeously gowned, a luminously beautiful woman (not a girl in any sense), and an accomplished player as well. After a spell in a reformatory for a crime of which she was innocent and the failure to find work on her release, she falls under the protection of gangster Ricardo Cortez (a Brooklyn native who changed his name to appear more dashing and exotic). It is clear that she is his mistress and that he is not just looking after her through the goodness of his heart. During a casino heist that he has planned she meets dashing, rich lawyer Franchot Tone, who is immediately smitten with her, admiting that he finds her sexually attractive, but who remains a gentleman. He helps her to find honest work -- something that evaded her earlier attempts -- and they soon admit their growing love for each other. However when it looks like she will be arrested for her link to Cortez, she selflessly dumps him to protect him and his family. Refusing to snitch on her former pals, she ends up in pokey, but takes up with Cortez again on her release (Tone having married his society fiancee in the meantime). After a chance meeting with the unhappy Tone (his wife is a flighty, selfish bitch), the sparks are still there, but the jealous Cortez decides to kill his rival -- forcing Young to shoot her lover to save her true love.

Even though the jury returns a 'guilty' verdict, the movie is given a happy ending when Tone decides to produce new evidence and to testify on her behalf. For a long time thereafter in Hays' Movieland, murderers and the sexually promiscuous had to be punished -- come what may. Both Tone and Young give wonderful performances, but much of the remaining cast, including the one-note Cortez, his gangster minions (Warren Hymer and Harold Huber), Una Merkel as Young's brassy and extremely common friend, and Andy Devine as a foghorn-voiced friend of Tone's, are frankly a little hard to watch and to stomach. Yet, taken in the right frame of mind, it is all good fun, and I particularly love the fact that even gangsters could boast butlers (the unflappable Halliwell Hobbes) or that even kept women would have a black 'lady's maid' (an uncredited Louise Beavers). At just over 70 minutes, Wellman keeps the action moving and throws in some bravura camera work to keep us happily engaged.

Hugo and Josefin (1967)

2011-02-18T09:35:00.006Z

I have occasionally mentioned my friend Richard who has a private cinema (only 13 seats) in his garden and his bi-monthly projection of rarely shown films. (If there is demand for a particular movie, he will always try to schedule a second showing.) He takes great care in choosing the films, needing to strike a balance between those regular attendees who want to be cinematically educated and those, like myself, who consider themselves more than cine-literate. In the past he has tried to obtain 16 mm prints, but as these become more and more difficult to purchase or borrow, he now relies on high quality DVD projection for some features.

He has been raving about the above Swedish film for years and it is indeed one that I was not familiar with. Apparently the only print previously available here has now been returned to Sweden, but he managed to obtain a Scandinavian DVD to present this month. While on paper the movie didn't sound all that promising, being a simple story of the friendship between a lonely girl and a force-of-nature young boy, I didn't want to let the side down and cry off going to see it. Thank goodness I didn't -- it is a truly wondrous film. It is the first feature by writer-director Kjell Grede, married to actress Bibi Andersson at the time. Grede has had a patchy career turning out only eleven subsequent titles, some of which were made for television, with only "Good Evening Mr. Wallenberg" (1990) being well-known outside of his homeland. (It was nominated for, but did not win, a Golden Bear in Berlin in 1991.)

Based on a number of children's stories by Maria Gripe, Grede presents the viewer with a series of scenes, rather than a strictly narrative tale. which beautifully capture what it feels like to be a child of tender years. Marie Ohman (who never appeared in another feature) as Josefin was actually nine when the film was made and Fredrik Becklen (who has only a second screen credit two years later) as Hugo was rising ten, but both of them are playing six to seven year olds. She is the imaginative daughter of the local priest living on an isolated farm, bemoaning that she has no one with whom to play. He is the son of a railway man, who must fend for himself when his father is jailed. When they meet through her family's occasional gardener, she finds someone with whom she can explore the wonders of the landscape, both in its natural beauty and in its industrial aspects. They are both due to start schooling, but she is badly bullied by the other kids, and he plays truant more often than not. Only together can they find the true magic and joy of childish inquisitive exploration. On one of their outings she leads him to an abandoned bicycle in an old cave; his rapid tottering on the huge penny-farthing through the countryside creates an indelible image that will be impossible to forget. I smile now just picturing it!

Running parallel to this is the relationship between Josefin's uptight mother and the carefree seasonal gardener. It is clear that they too were childhood friends, but she has become bogged down in the responsibilities of marriage and respectability. He on the other hand is still a big child at heart, who enjoys splashing through puddles, and who uses his summer earnings to go off on adventures during the rest of the year. When it comes time for him to pack up his meagre bits of furniture to move on, the heartbroken kids follow him cross-country. When he realises that some chairs have fallen off his van, he stops, turns back and finds the youngsters sitting on the chairs in the middle of the road. So naturally he offloads a tatty sofa to join his young friends, providing an impromptu farewell picnic of hard-boiled eggs (which must be eaten in one mouthful). Grede has a light and affectionate touch in creating his very real insights into a child's world and I must now join Richard in his crusade to make people more aware of the enchanting film.

Valentine's Day (2010)

2011-02-13T15:40:00.008Z

With tomorrow's 'holiday' nearly upon us, what more suitable movie to mirror our annual celebration of love and consumerism? Valentine's Day, the day, is no longer simply a hymn to romance; it seems to have morphed into a heart-shaped, pink, gooey lovefest, which pretty well describes "Valentine's Day" the movie. Were I asked to name films which manage to make us feel blessed to have found love or to praise its joy, a number spring to mind, but I'm afraid that this tacky concoction would be right at the bottom of the barrel.

The director Garry Marshall has produced some memorable film and television work in his long career, but he seems to have lost his touch with this portmanteau movie. I believe the film did well on its opening weekend with audiences being attracted by its galaxy of 'stars'. In alphabetical order the cast includes Jessica Alba, Kathy Bates, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Hector Elizondo (normally Marshall's good-luck charm), Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, Shirley MacLaine, Emma Roberts, her aunt Julia Roberts, and a bunch of other names that I recognize but which don't mean much to me. Well "scottie-wottie-doo-dah-day" as I used to say when totally underwhelmed. None of the cast are given much in the way of screen time, so their interlocking stories rapidly degenerate into a seen-it-before morass, leaving the viewer with a bloated, unimaginative, and uninspired mess.

The main focus is on busy florist Kutcher who chooses the morning of the 14th to propose to his popsy Alba, who then dumps him (and takes off with his dog). His best friend Garner is madly in 'lurve' with the deceitful married Dempsey. It needn't take two hours for us to figure out that Kutcher and Garner are really meant for each other. The other tales involve Emma R hoping to lose her virginity with her long time squeeze during school lunch hour, Hathaway moonlighting as a telephone sex worker, MacLaine and Elizondo as a long-married and mutually dependent pair of oldies, Valentine's Day-hating Biel throwing her annual bash for for other sceptics, and Julia R meeting seat-mate Cooper on a long-distance flight en route to a mysterious assignation. This last storyline created the only 'ooh-ah' of the plot, and no, it wasn't about a cougar finding some action. The rest of the ho-hum bits of business are too uninteresting to even mention. So, very little in the way of innovation here and certainly nearly nothing in the way of humour. The only bit of business which even mildly amused me was seeing high school athlete Lautner too shy to remove his shirt for a television reporter, after his muscle-flexing, buff rise to fame in the "Twilight" movies.

While it may not be one of the great romantic movies of all time, the British film "Love Actually" (2003) dealt with its eclectic mix of love affairs more entertainingly. Its success should have killed off this vehicle for a bunch of overpriced actors at the planning stage or at least inspired the film's writers to higher heights. No such luck!

You Don't Know Jack (2010)

2011-02-09T08:55:00.008Z

As most people in Britain must now know, the Sky satellite network has launched a new free channel for its subscribers called Sky Atlantic in a blaze of advertising. It is a blatant attempt to both retain current subscribers and to attract new ones from the chattering classes who normally wouldn't dream of owning anything so common as a satellite dish or to watch Sky's channels in alternate ways. It is largely a British home for HBO, featuring most of its popular series which have previously appeared on rival channels and for premiering its new programming. The star attraction and first feature at the channel's lauch was the Scorsese-produced "Boardwalk Empire" which had just won a Golden Globe for itself and its star, the very likeable Steve Buscemi. Of course this offering has been receiving rave reviews from the television critics. However I would guess that these have been based on preview tapes and not on the actual broadcasting, which is being shown in indigestible lumps, cut up with a plethora of ads.

The only sensible way of viewing this and anything else the channel chooses to offer is to record the programme onto the receiver's hard disc and to fast forward through the ads (or to watch the programme on 'Anytime' if it is one of the week's selected offerings). Sky's saving grace is that they do not interrupt the films shown on its multiple movie channels by any advertising, saving it for the space between films, which is something that no other British channel showing movies, (other than BBC and BBC2) can match. None of the other channels, either claiming to be film-only, like Film Four and TCM do this (although both were adless in the distant past) nor do those channels with mixed programming. My suggestion to Sky, if they really want to increase their appeal to all, would be to ditch the ad breaks on Sky Atlantic as they have successfully done for on their film channels and Sky Arts.

Having learned my lesson, I did not watch the live showing of the above superior cable movie, but viewed it from my recording. The net result is, I am convinced, a definitely more positive reaction. Also fresh from a Golden Globe win, Al Pacino does an amazing job of inhabiting the character of the notorious 'Death Doctor' Jack Kevorkian. A few years back there was a television poll to name the top film actors of our times and to my amazement Pacino was number one. I was, I must admit flabbergasted, since although Pacino has been magnificent in a number of early roles, he has also been a 'shouty' annoyance in many of his later ones. He definitely has regained the high ground here in playing the single-minded advocate of euthanasia, driven to help the terminally-ill who no longer have the will to live, inspired by humanity and not concerned with his wealth or liberty.

The film's title may be that we don't know Jack, but in fact we already know a great deal about him from the publicity he attracted back in the 90s. His determination to do whatever he could to relieve suffering, despite having his medical license revoked by State officials, is contrasted with the intransigence of the 'nutters' of the religious right who fought him every step of the way. Not much is shown in the way of a middle position, leaving the viewer free to cheer Kevorkian's determination to take his case right up to the Supreme Court. He never made it, having been eventually jailed for actually assisting one suicide rather than merely facilitating the act, but by then over a hundred people benefited from his mercy (shown without sugar-coating) -- or his role as a serial killer as the other side would have it.

Director Barry Levinson's casting is spot on, including Brenda Vaccaro as Pacino's sister, John Goodman as a dedicated helper, and Susan Sarandon as an activist who ultimately needs his services herself. Also impressive is the undervalued Danny Huston as his lawyer (in a comic wig), arguing for Kevorkian's rights for as long as it was politically expedient for him to do so. One side effect of watching these actors, including the very raddled Pacino, is to make the viewer aware of how they have all aged and to think about our own mortality in general. It helps one to evaluate whether Kevorkian was indeed a hero or the villain that many would prefer us to believe.

The Canterville Ghost (1986)

2011-02-04T10:23:00.010Z

Based on an Oscar Wilde novella, there have been at least eleven film versions of the tale, mainly as television movies, each of which tended to revise the original story to the period when the film was made and none of which were scrupuously true to Wilde. I have the three best-known versions in my collection: the original studio production from 1944 and the TVMs from 1986 (under the microscope today) and from 1996. The last of these arrived by default as part of a giveaway collection, but actually has much to recommend it, insofar as it is the most faithful rendering and boasts a sympathetic lead performance from Patrick Stewart.

It is also the lead turns in the first two films which warrant their ownership, despite any failings they may have. The 1944 movie stars the incomparable Charles Laughton as Sir Simon de Canterville and I would happily watch him in just about anything (even with Abbott and Costello). Unfortunately the basic story was turned into some sort of Hollywood wartime propaganda with a squad of American GIs (including Robert Young, Mike Mazurki, and Rags Ragland) being billeted at the haunted English castle, actually owned by the six-year old Margaret O'Brien. Together she and Young (who turns out to be a de Canterville descendent) must perform an act of bravery to release Laughton's spirited ghost from the charge of cowardice which has doomed him for some three hundred years. I've not viewed this film for a while, but know in my heart of hearts that Laughton's performance would more than compensate for any potential tweeness.

As for the 1986 film, its saving grace and the reason for its place on my shelves is the presence of Sir John Gielgud as the mischevious, sonorously-voiced, and ultimately very sad ghost. His impish behaviour and his skill with a bit of throwaway dialogue outweigh the sappiness of the rest. An American family composed of husband and de Canterville descendent Ted Wass (who will forever be Danny in "Soap" to me), his new wife Andrea Marcovicci, and daughter Alyssa Milano (who progressed from television movies to an assortment of soft eroticism later on) come to live at the castle. If they can put up with the ghost's pranks for a fixed period of time, something that no one else in the family has been able to do, they can take possession -- and promptly flog the place to some upstart hotel developers who want to turn it into a 'quaint inn' for tourists. The 13-year old Milano is actually quite likeable here as she bonds with Gielgud's tormented ghost (having been doomed for killing his wife) and encourages him to continue his antics, in the hope of scaring away her hated new stepmother. More use is made of special effects (and in the later TVM) than in the first version; Gielgud's bodyless head on a silver platter spectacularly disrupting a dinner party provides particularly good fun, as do other bits of silly business technically less possible back in the 40s.

Undoubtedly, it is Gielgud who really makes this film cherishable. The English supporting cast is OK but the 1996 support outshines them, apart from possibly Lila Kaye as the hard-done housekeeper. As mentioned above, Milano does well as the unscareable youngster and I certainly preferred her age-appropriate turn to Neve Campbell's in 1996 (23 at the time, playing a teenager). However, with all three of movies, there would be little of lasting interest were it not for the three sparkling and memorable Canterville ghosties.

Random Thoughts on Random Viewing

2011-01-31T09:39:00.008Z

It's not that I haven't seen a number of films over the last few days, it's just that increasingly I find that I don't relish going into any depth on any of them. Perhaps the time has come, as the Walrus might have said, to talk of other things... However I shall perservere with this journal in the hope of finding renewed enthusiasm. In the meantime, here are a few random thoughts:

Green Zone (2010): War films fall just about at the bottom of my viewing preferences, however well thought of they may be -- although I seem to make an exception for subtitled historical epics, having happily sat through John Woo's lengthy two-part "Red Cliff" last week. Generally, however, that genre ranks even below boxing sagas and disease-of-the-week potboilers. Yes, I suppose Matt Damon was just fine as the increasingly-disillusioned soldier in Iraq unable to find any WMDs, but did I care? I suppose one of these days I shall 'have to' watch "The Hurt Locker" as well.

The Room (2006): Even though this French horror flick has a ridiculously low rating on IMDb, it sounded as if it might be worth a look. Well it wasn't. For a start it was appallingly dubbed, as if that might find this trash a wider audience, and it was full of artsy-fartsy staging. The saving grace for what it is worth, is the presence in the cast of the Down's Syndrome actor Pascal Duquenne, so very memorable in "The Eighth Day" (1996) with Daniel Auteuil. Gosh, was it really that long ago -- where do the days and years fly??

My Name is Khan (2010): This Indian movie starring Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan was cut by some forty minutes for its international release, presumably scissoring all of the usual song and dance interludes. Khan plays an Asperger's syndrome idiot savant at loose in post-9/11 America. While actually quite watchable, the movie was artfully contrived and tweely manipulative with its banner-cry of tolerance. His character (a Muslim) wants to redeem himself with his lovely Hindu wife, who is grieving after her young son is killed by prejudiced teenaged thugs; his goal is to meet the president and to declaim "My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist". It still took over two hours for him to accomplish this end in the face of bigotry and his own psychological shortcomings (and that was without the singing and dancing!)

Invictus (2009): I understand that Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort "Hereafter" is attracting a number of negative reviews along the lines of 'what in the world made him approach this subject?' (to which the obvious answer is that he is well aware of his own mortality). The same question might have been asked about this film which focuses on South Africa in the years after Nelson Mandela's release from Robbins Island and his success in partially reuniting the divided country by winning the World Rugby Cup, despite ingrained animosity against the Springboks amongst the majority of his black countrymen. A worthy subject, impeccably played by Morgan Freeman as the charismatic Mandela and Matt Damon (again) as the Boer team captain with his cod-Afrikaans accent, but a rather strange choice for the versatile Eastwood. However, at this stage in his remarkable career, he is entitled to go where his heart leads him.

Harry Brown (2009): This is one exceedingly nasty movie from the always watchable Michael Caine, but again a rather strange late career choice. After his wife dies and his one mate, Tom Bell, is terrorized and then murdered by yobs on their council estate, Caine goes into Charles Bronson avenging mode, but with rather less style than the now derided "Death Wish" films. Local police detective Emily Mortimer has twigged that Caine's senior citizen is responsbile for the rash of murders on her troubled patch, but her snooty captain has his own views on zero tolerance for crime. It takes a riot, her severe beating, the death of her partner, and a lot more murderous mayhem for Caine to remain at large -- but hopefully not to confront us with a "Harry Brown, Part Two".

That's it for today. I shan't comment on Auteuil as the Marquis de Sade (definitely not in the '96 flick mentioned above, but in "Sade", 2000) nor on the two '30s films I watched for light relief nor on a couple of clangers like "Ninja Assassin" which made me decide that bed was the better option. Happy viewing!

Run Lola Run (1998)

2011-01-26T06:12:00.005Z

I recall being impressed by this German film ("Lola Rennt") at my first viewing, but it has taken me all this time to go back for a reassessment. Yes, it is a very accomplished early feature from writer-director Tom Tykwer, who went on to make the absorbing English-language movie "Perfume" in 2006. He wrote it especially for his other half at the time, Franka Potenta; her memorable and literally colourful performance as Lola (with her bright red hair) produced a Sundance sensation and served as a calling card to Hollywood, landing her a major role in "The Bourne Identity" (2002) and its sequel.

The movie is a smart contemplation on the vagaries of life, attempting to reveal how our small actions and quick decisions impact on both ourselves and the world around us. When Lola fails to arrive on time at a pay-off meeting to collect her boyfriend and small-time crook Manni, played by Moritz Bleibtreu, the latter is forced to use public transport, carrying the bag of loot, prior to handing it over to the Mr. Big who is testing him. Nervous when he sees police approaching, he unthinkingly jumps off the train leaving the money on his seat; it is quickly appropriated by a tramp in the same carriage. When he and Lola finally make telephone contact at 11.40, he tells her that she has twenty minutes to find him the missing 100,000 marks or he will be killed, threatening to rob a nearby supermarket at Noon if she has not appeared.

The movie then seques into three near-enough real-time alternate 20-minute sections, as she runs through the city to find a solution. The first port of call is her rich, banker-father's office which produces startlingly different outcomes on each occasion, with the first two scenarios leading to the death of one of the two lead characters. The third sequence produces the necessary potentially happy ending for the mismatched couple. In each section, the timing differs by vital seconds, impacting on the flow of life both for Lola and her passers-by, brilliantly captured in 30-second flash montages, and small variations in different versions of the same scene.

Technically the film is superb. While Potenta and Bleibtreu are adequate in their roles, the real star is Tykwer's vision and camera work. The film melds colour and black-and-white photography, brief animated sequences, stills, and various speeds of slow and fast motion into a vast number of individual camera shots. The hectic pace to solve what should be an unsolveable problem is presented in a stunningly visual style. Whether the three scenarios are believable is less important than their involving presentation. The viewer is swept up in the whirlwind of Lola's determination.

The Fighter (2010)

2011-01-21T13:59:00.006Z

This film, apparently a hot contender in various possible Oscar categories, has yet to open here, but we went to a preview last night. Frankly, I am now rather surprised that the movie has been as well received as it has, since I find it hard to believe that it is justifiably in contention for Best Film of its year or for the numerous acting awards being considered for its lead cast of Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Melissa Leo or for its director David O. Russell.

This is not to dismiss the film out of hand, but for a start one needs be a fan of boxing movies -- of which there have been a huge number over the years -- and I don't really number myself amongst those who enjoy watching two men bash the living daylights out of each other. Based on real characters, the film has been a pet project of lead actor Wahlberg for many years, since it celebrates the life and achievement of one of his hometown heroes, the fighter 'Irish' Micky Ward. Ward, at the age of 31 has achieved very little under the tutorship of his older, ex-fighter step-brother Bale and the self-interested and overbearing management of his mother (Leo). With the encouragement of new girlfriend Adams, he breaks away from the family, especially since brother Dickie is in prison, and works with a new trainer to achieve his goals. However, as much as this is a movie about boxing, it is also a story about the strength, importance, and dynamics of family ties. Ward can not find the success he craves without acknowledging this factor

Bale has already won the Golden Globe for best supporting actor; since he is playing an irrepressible and irresonsible crackhead, it is the sort of showy role that attracts awards. It may indeed win Bale an Oscar, even if it is very hard to actually like his character. Leo, deservedly nominated for her role in 2008's "Frozen River", is equally unlovable in this film and I am not convinced that her acting here deserves recognition, as she rules the roost over her two sons and her seven harpy daughters. Similarly while Adams continues to show her versatility in playing the foul-mouthed girlfriend and is every bit as good as Bale in this lesser part, I don't see her walking away with a golden baldie either. In contrast to the various histrionics on display, Wahlberg comes across as a decent, solid but stolid chap. This is exactly the kind of man he is meant to be playing, but not the kind of character that wows critics.

I'm happy to have seen this movie, but I will not be amongst its cheering section when the Oscar wins are announced.

Suprisingly watchable 'bad' movies

2011-01-17T08:57:00.009Z

There are normally five new movies to satellite on Sky's Premiere Channel each week, as I have bemoaned previously -- the bemoaning generally relates to their overall quality and the fact that I have previously viewed most of the better ones. I hadn't seen any of this week's offerings, of which I have now watched four. One was a cheesy animation, "Planet Hulk (2010) -- the less said the better -- and the one which was meant to be the best of the bunch, "The Book of Eli" (2009) from the Hughes Brothers, starring the Denzel, was I found barely tolerable, with its post-apocalyptic sepia landscapes and equally muddled action; in fact I had all I could do to stay awake.

That left two 2009 films neither of which seemed the least bit promising: "Gentlemen Broncos" and "Did you Hear About the Morgans?" I knew virtually nothing about the former other than its being by the Utah-based director Jared Hess and unlike much of the world I found neither his debut film "Napoleon Dynamite" (2004) nor his second film "Nacho Libre" even remotely entertaining. Just because something is quirky doesn't necessarily mean that it is funny. Yet this effort -- and I've yet to work out the relevance of its title -- was albeit a generally awful movie, not without its amusing moments. Michael Angarano, whom I positively hated in the 2008 Jackie Chan/Jet Li confection "The Forbidden Kingdom" is actually pretty believable as the rather sweet high school would-be sci-fi writer whose (frankly amateurish) novel is swiped by a bumptious successful author in need of new material. That role is taken by Jemaine Clement, half of the popular New Zealand comedy duo Flight of the Conchords, playing a pretentious swine who is easy to hate. Angarano's mom is played by Jennifer Coolidge, a would-be nightgown designer of some of the unsexiest lingerie ever; she is no longer the original MILF, but still very likeable in her goofy sincerity. The rest of the eclectic cast including Sam Rockwell and Mike White are of disturbingly variable talent, but don't totally distract from the silliness of the plot. The fact that Clement's so-called improvements to the stolen manuscript result in equally remarkably awful science fiction -- the two scenarios are acted out in part during the movie, with Rockwell eschewing the ridiculous hero originally called Bronco -- add a layer of humour to the proceedings. I wouldn't choose to see this film ever again, but it was relatively painless.

As for the 'Morgans' movie, I had read a number of reviews, all of which seemed to agree that the film was really, really bad and that there was no chemistry whatsoever between its leads Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant. They play an estranged high-powered, New York-based couple who witness a gangland murder and who, as potential witnesses, are given protective custody in the back-of-beyond plains of Wyoming. The gist of the scenario is how their exposure to the simple delights and down-to-earthiness of the good folk there helps them to reconcile and to face up to their marital difficulties. Yuck, and double yuck. While I would be the first to agree that Parker and Grant make a totally unbelievable couple and while I find her preening presence more and more difficult to take seriously in her films, Grant retains the boyish charm with which he made his name. Although he keeps threatening to stop making movies -- especially ones as potentially stupid as this one -- his dry sense of humour and way with a sarcastic line still work and still make me chuckle. The local couple with whom the fish-out-of-water New Yorkers are billeted is played by folksy sheriff Sam Elliott and his gun-toting wife Mary Steenbergen, two remarkably likeable actors, and an additional reason why this film is not quite the disaster that it might have been. However, I can well understand why its reviews were as lukewarm as they were.

That leaves the fifth film to come, Andy Serkis as Ian Dury in "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" (2009). Can't say that I am looking forward to this with bated breath, but as the above comments prove, you never know in advance just how the mood will take you while actually watching a movie.

The Men who Stare at Goats (2009)

2011-01-12T07:47:00.008Z

I've seen this movie twice now and I am still undecided whether it is as good as some folk would have it. The basic concept is brilliant and supposedly based on "fact" as covered in the original book by Jon Ronson. It goes something like this: The rumour that the American army had a pyschological mind-training unit was picked up by the Russians, who then founded their own, forcing the U.S. to actually create such a unit. Selected soldiers were trained by Vietnam vet Bill Django to become 'psi-warriors', special Jedi soldiers who could actually prevent warfare through their mental powers. Taking this eccentric premise with Jeff Bridges in full "Dude" mode as the drug-riddled, hippy dropout Django, creating his own love-in with war, and George Clooney as the strongest of his trainees, the film plays as more of a series of scenes, many in flashback, rather than as a coherent story.

Adding to the above likeable cast -- Clooney is great at playing goofy and the Dude abides-- are Ewan McGregor and Kevin Spacey, as well as an assortment of eccentric minor players. McGregor plays a heartbroken Midwestern local newspaperman whose wife has left him and who wants to prove to her and the world that he is a fearless journalist. He craves to become embedded in Iraq but plays a waiting game in Kuwait until he meets Clooney's Lyn, who is about to enter the country on a 'mission' revealed to him in a 'vision' and who reluctantly takes McGregor along and into a series of mis-adventures. These include becoming stranded in the desert, being held by a group of minor criminals, and eventually coming across the remnants of the old unit, now headed by Spacey. The latter is the villain of the piece, jealous of being upstaged by more powerful talents and responsible for Bridges' earlier dishonourable discharge. After Clooney's own departure, he placed a death hex on him, which Clooney firmly believes with kill him (although possibly not for another 18 years!).

The film is full of similar improbable and often amusing scenes, including Lyn's actually killing a goat by staring at it (for which he is full of remorse), and some sharp dialogue which raises the occasional smile. However this first feature from actor-director Grant Heslov, promises more than it delivers. As mentioned above, Bridges and Clooney are good value in enbodying their offbeat characters, but Spacey remains something of a cipher and it is a mystery to me how McGregor has maintained the career that he has had, since his character both here and in many of his other movie forays comes across as flat. It is perhaps an unfair putdown to suggest that the movie is sub-Coen Brothers, since it does have its definite moments. What it does not have is a cohesive structure that engages the viewer's interest throughout.

Orphan (2009)

2011-01-07T10:20:00.007Z

Michael, in his comment on the post below, queried whether I would be writing about the rather super silent from director Marcel L'Herbier that we viewed recently, suggesting that it was superior to just about everything else seen over the holiday period. I do not disagree with his conclusion, but will forgo commenting until I have managed to view the whole film (if ever); unfortunately the setting ran about before the end of this longish epic -- some 175 minutes or so -- and although I could guess at the ending, I do need to see it first. The film in question is listed on IMDb as "Living Dead Man" (1926), but is a little better known under its French title, translated as "The Late Mathias Pascal". Based on a Pirandello novel and starring the eminent Russian actor Ivan Mozzhukhin, it tells of a man's 'second' life after he is believed dead. One of these days....perhaps.

Other recent viewings have been a variable batch, ranging from the well-done Sophie Marceau-starring WW2 "Female Agents" (2007) through a very strange and very long Bollywood fantasy "Krrish" (2006) to the nearly unwatchable sequel (or squeakquel as they would have it) to "Alvin and the Chipmunks". However, I have chosen to make a few comments on the above 'horror' movie, which is one that I have been meaning to see since its well-reviewed release. Generally falling into the 'evil children' sub-genre which dates back to "The Bad Seed" (1956) and which includes"The Exorcist", "The Omen", and "The Brood", as well as a long list of derivative B-movies, "Orphan" manages to be an interesting riff on this theme.

After losing their third sprog in childbirth, loving but troubled couple Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard decide to adopt an older child to join their son and hearing-impaired daughter. At the local Catholic orphanage they are strangely attracted by the reserved, talented Esther, supposedly a Russian-born tragic waif, and welcome her into their family. It is not long however before one begins to understand that something is strangely amiss, as she clobbers a bird that her new brother has accidentally shot or as she begins to insinuate herself into her new sister's life or indeed when she murders nun C.C.H Pounder, whom she sees as a threat between her and her wonderful new family. Played as a precocious 9-year old by the very able 12-year old actress Isabelle Fuhrman, the denouement does indeed hinge on the child's actual age -- but it would be too much of a spoiler to discuss this further.

With a literate script, fine acting all-round, especially from Farmiga playing the fragile and ex-alcoholic wife, who is more attuned to Esther's strangeness than the initially forgiving Sarsgaard, the film does indeed provide a series of shocks, becoming much more than a blood-soaked horror movie. The real horror here is more deep-rooted in the psychological and physiological quirks of the very scary orphan, so frighteningly portrayed by Miss Fuhrman.

Due Date (2010)

2011-01-03T10:19:00.007Z

Happy New Year to us all! I just did a count and was suprised to find that I actually viewed some 25 films (!) in the fortnight since I last wrote. I'm not counting those films shown for the entertainment of my younger guests, one of whom wanted to view "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" three days running, despite having been given a copy in her stocking at home. As for my own choices, not much stands out from the morass which included some stinkers like "All About Steve" (pitsville Sandra), "Post Grad", and "St. Trinian's 2". Two Jackie Chan movies "The Spy Next Door" and the rather better "Robin-B-Hood" were entertaining enough if you like Jackie, but hardly Chan classics. I didn't think that "Up in the Air" lived up to its hype and Julian Fellows' "From Time to Time" played more like a TVM than a big-screen directorial debut. Four French flicks were not overly wonderful either, although Romain Duris' "Arsene Lupin" was sufficiently stylish to make me want to dig out my 1932 version with Barrymore brothers, John and Lionel -- not that I've done that yet. As for the rest, including several oldies (but not particularly goodies), there is little to recommend.

But back to the film under discussion. Feeling rather housebound over the holidays, we had a cinema day out on New Year's Day. There wasn't much that tempted me amongst the available choices, but since a good laugh is always welcome, we chose the above-mentioned movie which seems to have tickled a few funnybones. Unfortunately I was only very moderately amused; perhaps I am losing my sense of humour in my dotage -- or perhaps it just wasn't that great a film. Mirroring the rather superior "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" from 1987, chronicling the cross-country journey of mismatched travellers Steve Martin and John Candy", this movie paired the usually reliable Robert Downey Jr. with flavour-of-the-month Zach Galifianakis. Directed by Todd Phillips after his breakout hit "The Hangover", which also starred Galifianakis, the studios were obviously hoping for more of the same.

Downey was probably miscast as the uptight executive trying to get back home before his wife is due to give birth to their first child, who finds himself lumbered, though rather contrived circumstances, to having to travel with shlubby pothead Galifianakis, after he finds himself on the airlines' "no-fly" list and without any money or identification. It becomes a road-trip from Hell insofar as just about everything that can go wrong, unsurprisingly, does go wrong. The rather simple Galifianakis fancies himself as an actor making it big in Hollywood -- the zenith of his ambition is to appear in "Two and a Half Men" -- and he is travelling with his late father's ashes in a coffee tin and his titchy pet dog. I'm tempted to say that the dog was the best thing in the film, were it not for the fact that we are treated to a shot of the animal "masturbating" in time with his master as the best way of falling asleep. As for the fate of his dad's ashes during a coffee break at the home of cameo-ing Jamie Foxx, don't ask!

Downey bears the brunt of the film's physical indignities, being bashed up in a car crash, beaten by a paraplegic, shot, and arrested by Mexican border control, while the chubby galumph just sails through the chaos. Naturally the two bond by the film's end, although one would have thought that the twain could never meet. However loveable one was meant to find Galifianakis, his would-be appeal was completely wasted on me. The one possibly unintended, although probably deliberate, bit of irony in the film occurs when Downey, having inadvertently switched cases with his fellow traveller, is arrested for drug possession. He swears to the authorities that he has never, ever, ever touched drugs. Ho, ho, ho, given the now clean Downey's checkered past -- now that's funny!

Films on TV for Christmas - 2010

2010-12-20T08:34:00.009Z

In the same way that I have written about in-flight movies throughout my blogging life, I have done a piece about the Christmas movie choice on British TV for the last five years. I must now reluctantly conclude that the time has come to draw a halt after this last diatribe. For while films on flights still offer the potential of discovering something new, irregardless of the fiendish viewing conditions, the Christmas TV schedules become more of a disappointment year by year. Like a kiddie awaiting Santa, I pant with enthusiasm for them to be published, only to discover that I have already seen nearly everything on offer.

We all know that I am something of a demon and devour as many films as possible day by day, but I do believe that the movies on offer on terrestrial TV must be a lacklustre selection for other viewers as well. If one concentrates on the scant dozen premiere offerings between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, the new-to-terrestrial choices are aimed mainly at the young viewer. Fair enough, except for the fact that most desperate parents have probably previously sat through cinema showings of these with their family in tow and have very likely invested in the DVDs to keep the kids amused while they sneak away for a few minutes peace and quiet. I'm talking about the like of"Cars", "Enchanted", "Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian", and "Shrek the Third". The only unlikely-to-have-been-seen offering for children is the rather twee French flick "The Fox and the Child" (BBC2 on the 24th), which may or may not involve reading subtitles!!

For the adults in the household, the feeble selection of premieres includes "I am Legend", "Elizabeth: The Golden Age", and the appalling "Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor". The only newbie I can hardily recommend is "Stranger than Fiction" (Channel 5 on Christmas Day). The rest of the schedules are loaded with the sort of re-runs that have been re-running for years. Granted these include a lot of old favourites, but just how many times does the non-movie buff want to see "Doctor Zhivago" or "From Here to Eternity"? If you do want to revisit some classic oldies, I would recommend "Born Yesterday" (BBC2 on the 23rd), "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (BBC2 on the 24th), "Edward Scissorhands" (Channel 4 on the 25th), and "The Man who Would be King" (BBC2 also on the 25th). Also, in the light of the soon-to-be-released remake of "True Grit" by the Coen Brothers, it might be a good idea to revisit the original with the Duke to refresh the basis for comparisons (Channel 4 on the 30th). Of course for sheer confusion, the sequel "Rooster Cogburn" is being shown earlier in the week. Finally to fully participate in the holiday joie de vivre (ho ho ho), do take another look at the Scrooge of all Scrooges, Alastair Sim (Channel 5 on the 24th). Finally, although it is outside my datewise remit and since there is no showing -- there seldom is -- of that Christmas perennial "It's a Wonderful Life", do revisit the original "Miracle on 34th Street" (Channel 4 on the 23rd).

So what will PPP be watching? There is only one terrestrial premiere which is new to me: "From Time to Time (ITV on the 26th), a somewhat dubious Downton-ish period piece. However since I excluded satellite showings from the above selections, I shall watch "Up in the Air", which I've not yet seen, on Sky. Most of that channel's other premieres over the period are already known or hardly worth viewing -- not that that will stop me, and I shall probably take the opportunity of copying "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" and Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland". Elsewhere there are a couple of French films on CineMoi and at least one Bollywood confection on More 4. Of course there's always the DVD backlog to fall back on.

Mind you much of the week will be taken up with cooking, eating, drinking, and generally rejoicing with visiting family, so it's just as well that there is not a plethora of must-see viewing for me in the wishy-washy schedules. Since I am unlikely to find the time to post again this side of the New Year, let me take this opportunity to wish you all a restful and satisfying holiday break and a peaceful and fulfilling year to come.

In-Flight Flicks 2010

2010-12-15T09:42:00.008Z

It serves me right for saying that this next entry would be about in-flight movies -- a subject I've avoided for the last two years, but one that used to be a regular feature when I crossed the Atlantic more regularly. On this trip I only managed to view two on the outward leg and a scant one on the return, but I've committed myself to their reviews:

Machete: This is a film that I would have been quite happy to view in the cinema, had it not rapidly disappeared from most screens apart from the odd late-night showing. Developed by the multi-talented director-cum-everything Robert Rodriguez from one of the cod trailers featured in "Grindhouse", it can best be described as a definite guilty pleasure. Nowhere else would the plug-ugly and aging Danny Trejo be given a lead role which he carries off with great bravado and aplomb. Rodriguez has managed to collect a eclectic powerhouse cast to underline his pet TexMex concern about so-called illegal immigrants. There are meaty parts for Robert De Niro (playing a nasty Bush-like politician), Jeff Fahey, Cheech Marin, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohan, Steven Seagal, and Jessica Alba, most of whom end up violently dead, with the most ironic fate of all saved for De Niro's slimeball. I never thought I'd see the day when Seagal allowed himself to play a villain or to actually lose in a macho fight. Maybe the fact that he now lumbers about like a pregnant elephant is the reality. Trejo's avenger acquits himself well and even gets to make love to the nubile, young Alba. He even mouths a line that could well go down in film history: "Machete don't text!" The end credits promise two sequels -- loosely 'Machete Kills' and 'Machete Kills Again', but I think it is fair to assume that this is another of Rodriguez' little jokes.

Shrek Forever After: Since I have been something of a fan of the first three films in this series, albeit with diminishing amusement returns, I thought I should have a look at this one as well. It's probably an improvement on the third entry, but lacks most of the adult-friendly wit of the earlier films. Still it is entertaining and undemanding enough for children of all ages. With a plot stolen from "It's a Wonderful Life", Shrek begins to regret his so-called domestic bliss, yearns for the days when he was a fearsome ogre, and enters into a Faustian pact with the evil Rumpelstiltskin. He ends up in a parallel universe where all of the familiar characters have morphed into other destinies -- Puss-in-Boots is literally a fat cat and neither Donkey nor his beloved Fiona knows him. The movie probably worked well in 3-D (not that this is a remote in-flight possibility when one has enough trouble viewing even two dimensions on the minute screen), but I think the franchise is beginning to outstay its welcome. Enough already!

Cyrus: I was hoping for something vaguely amusing on the return flight before trying to sneak in some needed shut-eye, but I can honestly report that I hardly saw this movie. The seat in front of mine was occupied by a younger version of Two-ton Tessie O'Shea and when she reclined her seat, not only was her seatback nearly touching my nose but the screen became dark and barely visible. Add to that some inordinate engine noise and turbulence and you can begin to picture the scene. Fortinately I vaguely knew the film's plot or it would have been even more of a wasted effort. As is, I think the would-be talents of John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Catherine Keener, and Jonah Hill were probably wasted anyhow. Divorced and lonely Reilly thinks he has met the woman of his dreams in Tomei, but soon discovers there is another man in her life, her needy, super-polite son, the chubby Hill. Hill doesn't want to share her with anyone -- in fact their relationship is so close that it's spooky -- but I guess everything works out in the end. I'll never know unless I see the film again some time in the future, because if the truth be told, I didn't really view it this time around.

So I can promise that there will be no more in-flight reviews in the foreseeable future. This is probably just as well, since as we all know it is hardly the best way to actually see a film, but only a means of trying to fill in those slow, boring hours.

Miracle in the Rain (1956)

2010-12-08T09:18:00.008Z

Some movies linger in the memory, not because they are classics of their genre or because they feature all-time great performances, but because they are satisfying on so many levels. To call such films 'nice' is to use an adjective that minimises their achievement, but I can think of no other word that concisely sums up their appeal.

This film stars Jane Wyman and Van Johnson, neither of whom feature amongst my great favourites. She was always a well-praised and indeed an Oscar-winning actress, but no great beauty and her characters were not always striking. Here she plays a mousy secretary with little outside life, forced to return home each evening to look after her sickly mother, who has developed into something of a hypochondriac since her husband walked out on the family years previously. One very rainy evening, as she shelters outside her office building, she meets Johnson's soldier on furlough (the movie is set during the early years of World War II). He sees her home and arranges to spend more time with her during the next few days, much to the annoyance of Mom who has warned her all about men and their unreliability. Johnson plays an ebullient and winning Southerner and Wyman soon falls for his genuine charm and his obvious attraction to her. Johnson, often associated with more lightweight fluff, is totally convincing as the loving suitor, despite what one has subsequently read about his actual sexual preferences. His unit is about to ship off, but he gives her his mother's ring, asks her to wait for him, and promises to return.

It is not quite a spoiler to say that he is killed in action, leaving Wyman in a spiral of despair. However the film moves into the realms of the supernatural to leave us with a slightly happier ending, involving a genuine Roman coin, bought at a shopfront cod auction for two dollars during the couple's first date. Yes, tears begin to swell behind the sentient viewer's eyes.

However the real miracle of this movie, written by super-scribe Ben Hecht, is the perfect thought given to even the smallest parts. The protagonists are surrounded by a wonderful collection of character actors, some of whom are not even marginally well-known, who bless us with a gallery of well-rounded, believable performances. Foremost amongst these is Eileen Heckert playing Wyman's older, spinterish workmate and confidante, who accompanies her shy friend on her first arranged meeting with Johnson (who insists that she accompany them all evening) and who takes her to St. Patrick's Cathedral during her grief. Josephine Hutchinson as the mother who resents her daughter's happiness and William Gargan as the wayward-pianist missing husband also inhabit their roles as in a well-tailored suit. Fred Clark plays the henpecked but womanising office boss. An important early role is inhabited by stand-up comedian Alan King, as a newly married, brash soldier that the couple meet in Central Park, along with his nightclub-singing floozy (but sweet with it) of a wife. Even the very smallest roles of a kind cathedral priest, a restaurant maitre d', the gung-ho office boy predicting the course of the war on a wall map, and the beer-guzzling, kvetchy old neighbour who helps look after Hutchinson are all fully-formed and totally real.

In short, this is a wonderful film -- not necessarily a great one, but very definitely a completely 'nice' one which will reward your viewing.

On a personal note I am away now for a short while, so there will be nothing new for about a week. However I shall then pen one of my infamous in-flight movies reviews which I've not done for a while. See you soon...

Kill Zone (2005)

2010-12-03T11:22:00.005Z

There was a time when I considered myself pretty au fait with Hong Kong movies, having seen and enjoyed a vast number of martial arts, swordplay, and fantasy films, along with heroic modern action dramas of the John Woo/Chow Yung Fat variety, and there were a number of actors (both male and female) that I really liked. However in the last decade the complexion of Hong Kong cinema has changed after the 1997 reversion to Mainland rule. A lot of the old reliables -- Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Michelle Yeoh amongst them -- found a new niche in Hollywood and/or China; the talent pool seemed to contract noticeably. In addition the old themes were seldom in evidence and there appeared to be an increasing reliance on modern day policiers like "Infernal Affairs". With the exception of some of Stephen Chow's flicks like "Shaolin Soccer" and "Kung-Fu Hustle" much of the fun disappeared.

This film from director Wilson Yip is something of a welcome throwback insofar as it combines the current police vs. Triads themes with a good dose of quick-moving martial combat and gives meaty roles to three of the old stand-bys: Donnie Yen, Simon Yam, and the wonderful Sammo Hung in an unusually villainous role. I must confess that it is a little slow to get going and is somewhat marred by an unnecessarily flashy stooting style, but it builds to an exciting climax with some spectacular action sequences along the way. Yam plays an about-to-retire detective who has been trying for years to get the goods on Triad boss Hung and he and his team are not adverse to a spot of larceny or falsifying evidence to get their man. Yam is leaving the force because a terminal brain tumor has been diagnosed and the by-the-book Yen is due to take on his job, initially disapproving of Yam and his men.

Yen is well-known for his fighting skills and he has a suitable opponent in Hung's assassin-for-hire Wu Jing. However it is Yen's final showdown with good old Sammo that lifts this film to greatness. For a fiftyish fat man, Hung is amazingly spry and graceful and the pair are evenly matched in fighting skill. When one is led to believe that that the good guy has finally triumphed and that the bad guy has finally met his match, there is a sudden bit of unexpected action which destroys one of the pair physically and the other one mentally. In fact the overall ending of the movie is believable yet incredibly downbeat, but none the worse for that.

The action is set just before and on Father's Day and each of the main characters can be viewed as a father or son or surrogate father. Hung has at long last just had a child with his beloved young wife (who had previously had a series of miscarriages), Yen became a cop because his father was and remained on the force after his dad's murder despite being begged to give up the life, and Yam has a sweet orphan that he has adopted after her parents (potential court witnesses against Hung) were dispatched by the gang boss's minions. Another of Yam's team has just been reconciled with the daughter he has not seen for many years, when Wu Jing makes short work of his newfound joy and his life. It's a busy film with a fair amount of bloodshed but this is all part of the tale rather than a gorefest. Oddly enough I discovered half way through that I had seen the movie previously, dubbed into German, but I think I must have been in one of my sleepy-gal modes since I remembered nearly nothing about it. Take it from me, it really is a memorable addition to Hong Kong cinema and I doubt that I will forget it this time around.