With a Song in My Heart (1952)

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)

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)

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)

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...

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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

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)

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)

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)

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.