Advice to the Lovelorn

Christmas TV - Reviews #95

2012-01-02T18:21:00.010Z

A lightning-paced round-up of the three 'Christmas TV' things I bothered to watch, then loads of films, some stuff to do with Johnny Cash and a review of Pushing Daisies. This'll be the last post for a bit, as I've got a lot on, but there are hopefully plenty of things already on the blog that you can explore. Thanks for reading.

CHRISTMAS TV

Downton Abbey Christmas Special 2011 (Brian Percival, 2011) - A bit blah, and the Bates story is boring already, but I liked the bits I always like: Matthew, Mary and Maggie Smith. And the snow, obviously. They dispensed with Christmas mystifyingly quickly. There's a review of the second series here. (2.5)

Timmy's Christmas Surprise (Jackie Cockle, 2011) - I found this a bit hard to follow, considering it's aimed at three-year-olds, but it was very Christmassy, quite funny and rather moving. Suffice to say, it warmed my cockles. Boom! (3)

Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia (Paul McGuigan, 2012) - Just amazing. I can't remember the last time I saw anything as good as this on British TV. Arch, clever, hysterically funny and as warm as that toasty fire at 221B. There's a short thing about the first series at the bottom of this post. (4)

***

FILMS

Win Win (Thomas McCarthy, 2011) is another very interesting film from the awesomely talented writer-director McCarthy, if not quite the masterpiece that his previous two films were. A desperate lawyer (Paul Giamatti) takes financial advantage of an old client with dementia (Burt Young), then finds himself feeling protective towards the man's grandson (Alex Shaffer), who keeps saying "a'ight”. Dealing with McCarthy's pet theme of an outsider connecting with unlikely soulmates, it's an intelligent, unsentimental and extremely entertaining movie, though it's ever so slightly baggy and the treatment of Shaffer's drug addict mum (Melanie Lynskey) isn't very clear. (3.5)

See also: McCarthy's twin triumphs - The Station Agent and The Visitor. Win Win came in a little late for my Top 10 of 2011, but with Hugo and Source Code, it would have been vying for the #10 spot.

***

Mirage (Edward Dymtryk, 1965) - Gripping thriller from the pen of Charade scribe Peter Stone, with amnesiac Gregory Peck trying to piece together his life whilst fleeing from an ominous man called "The Major" - and sidling up to this mysterious kingpin's wumon (Diane Baker). The leads are a bit stiff, and Peck's encounters with a psychiatrist are clumsily scripted, but Walter Matthau is all kinds of awesome as a smartarse PI and the story is so fascinating, the telling of it so slick and welll-paced, that such an obvious shortcoming scarcely matters. (3.5)

***

The Truth About Cats & Dogs (Michael Lehmann, 1996) - Sweet romantic comedy that suffers from an unrealistic story, an obtrusive soundtrack and a wooden leading man, but gets by on the strength of Janeane Garofalo's lovely central performance. She hates it, apparently. (3)

***

Bad Santa (Terry Zwigoff, 2003) - The first hour of this one-joke Christmas film is just too nasty for me - the odd good gag aside ("What are they gonna do, drop you on someones else's head?") - but the last 40 is pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you amazing, with a pay-off apparently inspired by one of my favourite ever endings: that of the Chester Morris/Walter Brennan Three Godfathers. The pleasant but unnecessary coda borrows from Taxi Driver. (3)

***

The Treatment (Oren Rudavsky, 2006) - Eloquent little indie about an English teacher (key Whit Stilman and Noah Baumbach collaborator Chris Eigeman), his Freudian analyst (Ian Holm, having fun as an aggressive Argentine) and his cack-handed forays into romance with widower Famke Janssen. Its characters' viewpoints aren't always made sufficiently clear, but it's an intelligent, grown-up film with strong performances and a handful of big laughs. (3)

See also: Chris Eigeman starred in the gobsmacking Barcelona and the excellent - though not as excellent - Kicking and Screaming.

***

Sarah Palin – You Betcha! (Nick Broomfield, 2011) – Typically shambling, entertaining Broomfield doc featuring the director's trademarks of lively interviews, a voiceover complaining that no-one will talk to him and a finale in which he shouts loudly at his subject, who is trying to ignore him. It's not up there with Biggie and Tupac or his Aileen Wuornos films, but nor is it another Kurt and Courtney or Tracking Down Maggie (thank goodness). Yes, the opening 15 is a touch shaky, with a lack of focus or detail, but the film quickly becomes utterly engrossing, through a combination of rare footage (much of which has "Viewing Copy” stamped across it), a fascinating subject and a wealth of interesting material, even if Broomfield's approach to this hunting enthusiast is more scattergun than sharpshooter. (3)

***

Mystery Men (Kinka Usher, 1999) - Appealing but underwhelming film about five ineffective, self-styled superheroes and their attempts to save Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear) from superbly-named supervillain Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush). Sounds, erm, amazing, doesn't it? But it's not. Not quite. It's rarely less than entertaining and the strong comic cast (Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, William H. Macy, Paul Reubens, Eddie Izzard and Tom Waits) is game, but there aren't enough good jokes (though the argument about whether Captain Amazing is the same person as billionaire Lance Hunt is great) and - as with the similarly-themed Kick-Ass, the action climax forgets to be funny. (2.5)

***

Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller, 2008) – OK action comedy about a bunch of contrasting actors and what happens when their war movie turns horribly real. There's already a great movie about this and it's called The Stunt Man. This one has a cracking opening 20, stuffed with movie in-jokes, and a decent final five, but little in between. Robert Downey, Jr. and Steve Coogan are both good value (Coogan saying "... What?” is somehow the funniest joke in the film), but Jack Black and Danny McBride are dreadful. (2.5)

***

Fred Claus (David Dobkin, 2007) - Witless but watchable Christmas film about Santa's brother (Vince Vaughn), full of set-pieces that serve no purpose other than to pad out the running-time, and pitched at a young audience who understand what an efficiency expert is. There are a few nice, sentimental moments, the prologue is very well done and Paul Giamatti is quite fun as the big man, but this is far too bitty, lazy and mechanical to really score. There's an impressive supporting cast - including Kevin Spacey and Miranda Richardson - but they're given nothing to work with. (2)

***

Four Christmases (Seth Gordon, 2008) - Strange, joyless festive film about commitment-free couple Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon visiting their four divorced parents over Christmas Day, and finding that connecting with these often dislikeable people makes them distrust each other. Happy Christmas! There are four writers and only three jokes, so goodness knows what the other guy was doing. For what it's worth, the supporting cast includes Robert Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Kristin Chenoweth off of Pushing Daisies and Jon Voight (when was he last good on screen?). (1.5)

***

MORE TV

Pushing Daisies (Seasons 1 and 2, 2007-9) - Astonishingly original in subject, Jeunet-ish in style, this romantic-comedy-detective-series tells the simple story of kind-hearted, lonely Ned (Lee Pace), who makes pies and wakes the dead. Usually, he then touches the dead again within a minute, sending them to everlasting sleep - but he can't quite do it to childhood sweetheart Anna Friel, so she's going to be sticking around. The catch: someone else has died in her place, and he can never touch her again. Whilst navigating the difficulties of such a relationship, and politely declining the advances of waitress Kristin Chenoweth, Ned also continues his role as a sidekick to acerbic PI Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) - he of the "Oh, hell no!" catchphrase - handily able to enquire of the victims who exactly bumped them off. I was really lucky with TV last year but, even so, only Veronica Mars and My So-Called Life occupied the same rarified bracket as this moving, marvellous concoction from Wonderfalls co-creator Bryan Fuller. The four leads are all incredibly good, the vivid visuals are complemented by some of the snappiest, heightened dialogue ever put on the goggle box and it's got more heart than just about anything I've seen. (4)

***

THINGS ABOUT JOHNNY CASH

Walk the Line (James Mangold, 2005) – Pretty good Johnny Cash biopic: somewhat cliched, but intelligently framed and blessed with a few special moments (particularly the letters-from-Folsom sequence) and a flatly amazing performance by Reese Witherspoon as June Carter – the singer's second wife. Joaquin Phoenix is conflicting as the lead: his acting isn't bad, but it's hard to ever believe that he is Cash, as he doesn't look or – more importantly – sing like him. Or all that tunefully. For all the film's strengths, the video to Hurt crams more emotion into those four shattering minutes than this manages in 136. (3), just about.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (Jake Kasdan, 2007) - I've a very low threshold for spoofery, but this is one of the best I've seen: a spot-on spearing of musical biopics that plays out in flashback, as "Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays". Admittedly momentum begins to slow before the end, but for the most part this is absolutely hilarious, and dozens of the jokes come out of left-field: of course the six-year-old Cox becomes a natural as soon as he picks up a guitar, but he also sings in the voice of an 80-year-old black man. Then there's John C. Reilly (excellent in the lead) playing his 14-year-old self, and Cox's dad sweeping up his barn whilst singing a song about how Dewey should have been killed instead of his brother. The musical parodies are also tuneful and deliciously well-observed. Producer Judd Apatow's best film? Improbably, probably. (Though I'm a big fan of Drillbit Taylor, too.) I laughed, hard. (3.5)

TVM: Johnny Cash! – The Man, His World, His Music (Robert Elfstrom, 1969) - Insightful, very enjoyable no-budget documentary mixing home video footage with handheld in-concert recordings, and containing much of both the man and his music. Wow as he secures an audition with Columbia Records for a Canadian singer-songwriter! Thrill as he walks on stage at the Country Music Awards to a big band version of Folsom Prison Blues! Feel slightly confused as he sings a song to an injured crow that's just bitten him! Great fun and a must for fans of The Man in Black (not Will Smith), especially for that scintillating live version of Five Feet High and Rising. (3.5)

Scorsese scores, Gervais bores - Reviews #94

2011-12-28T17:28:00.014Z

I've got to go back to my holiday in a moment, but here are a couple of reviews:

Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011) - Little Martin Scorsese (Asa Butterworth) rescues the reputation - and happiness - of neglected, balding film titan Michael Powell (Ben Kingsley) in this heartwarming, Truffaut-ish love letter to the early days of cinema, set around Montparnasse train station. The film is unapologetically episodic, plays by its own rules (breaking off for oodles of back-story more than once) and hits the target most of the time, thanks to the fascinating subject matter, Scorsese's vivid direction - incorporating spectacular use of 3D - and a cast that does broad in a way that works. It's easily the best thing Scorsese has done since Goodfellas - excepting No Direction Home, of course, on the grounds that it doesn't really count. (3.5)

This is a late entry to this year's Top 10 of the Year, at #10.

***

*REVIEW CONTAINS ONE INSTANCE OF ANGRY SWEARING*
Life's Too Short (S1, 2011) - Shortly after making the first series of The Office, Ricky Gervais was asked about his favourite sitcoms of all time and, waxing lyrical about Cheers, said the most impressive thing was not pushing boundaries of taste, but making shows that - while inoffensive and of the mainstream - were of exceptional quality. Unfortunately he seems to have forgotten that, as this over-familiar mockumentary, mining the comedy of embarrassment via reheated stock situations and populated with boring celeb cameos, is full of tedious, laboured taboo-tickling shit, even if its treatment of dwarfism is generally quite sensitive)*. Warwick Davis is good value in the lead, playing a hideous spin on himself, but the supporting cast is mystifyingly poor (with the honourable exception of the excellent Rosamund Hanson) and the material, while containing moments of genuine inspiration (the sight of our hero pretending to be the Lord of the Dance in a hotel room will live long in the memory), is terribly spotty: predictable, obvious and frequently unfunny, particularly in the underwhelming final two episodes. I'm a conventional, sentimental sort, and my favourite comedies generally leave me feeling uplifted and fulfilled. After a fun start, this one made me angry, deflated and disappointed - especially on behalf of Davis, who gives his best and is clearly a decent comic performer. Apparently the series is coming back in 2013, but I don't think I'll be rejoining it. After all, life's too short. Arf. Somebody probably already did that one. (2)

*I'm not saying that there isn't a place for that kind of comedy, done well - of course there is. It's just bizarre that Gervais seems determined to carve a niche there, as he's really not very good at it.

Advice to the Lovelorn: Review of 2011

2011-12-20T07:13:00.032Z

Man of the Year. Time Magazine went for "The Protestor", but I don't remember him being quite so buff. And even The Protestor came out for Gosling - possibly in that way. All together now: "Five, six, seven, eight, Ryan Gosling's super great."

Tedious pre-amble

What a year it's been. The Arab Spring, someone or other winning X-Factor, a woman putting a cat in a bin (was that last year?) and possibly an election of some kind? But more importantly: films! I've seen 319 movies in 2011 (because I am cool), including 32 released this year. So amongst the usual tea-stained ruminations on motion pictures that came out in the 1930s, I've put together a Top 10 of the past 12 months, with a #1 that you won't see topping many lists - but which you must see. Unless you hate scallies. If you hate scallies, it's unlikely to win you round. It's not Arthur Christmas, incidentally, however much I enjoyed that. Aardman have yet to make a film with a scally as the hero.

Elsewhere, there's a round-up of the good, the bad and that time I rather unwisely watched Mamma Mia!, 15 truly great movies I hadn't seen before 2011 - stretching from 1926 to 2010 - and a short sentence about pizza. This post is also my annual concession to a load of boring stats, so please bear with me/humour me/don't injure me. If you want to see last year's somewhat briefer review of the year, it's available here. Now, first up, my top 10 of 2011...

***

TOP 10 OF 2011

1. Attack the Block

Director: Joe Cornish
Starring: John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Luke Treadaway, Alex Esmail and Nick Frost
We said: "A vital horror-comedy ... an incredibly assured debut, with unpredictable plotting, stylised dialogue and characters you really care about, once their frailties are laid bare ... a thrilling counterpoint to establishment fare like The King's Speech, with the best final five minutes of any film in recent memory."
Please also note: "The standout performance unquestionably comes from John Boyega as gang leader Moses, with his sullen expression, Adidas-three-stripe-style facial scar and burgeoning understanding of his growing responsibilities."

2. Never Let Me Go

Director: Mark Romanek
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley and Andrew Garfield
What we said: "From eerie opening to gutting denouement, it’s the feel-bad film of the year."
Please also note: "Its world may be chilly but Never Let Me Go is anything but, thanks largely to a quietly electrifying performance from Carey Mulligan."

3. Blue Valentine

Director: Derek Cianfrance
Starring: Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams
What we said: "An intense, insightful, semi-improvised indie about the death of a relationship, starring perhaps the two best young actors in the world."
Please also note: "There are fragments of warmth and love, and even a couple of very Gosling-ish jokes ("That's a funny name"), but the overall effect is like being whacked in the face."

4. Submarine

Director: Richard Ayoade
Starring: Craig Roberts, Noah Taylor, Paddy Considine and Sally Hawkins
What we said: "What a refreshing, distinctive and arresting film this is: a hysterically funny portrait of teenage life in Britain as it's really lived and a film we've been waiting for, without really knowing it."
Please also note: "This is a brilliant debut: moving, original and dazzlingly cinematic, its singular feel augmented by dreamy Super 8 segments, eye-catching credits and a great song score from Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner. And I laughed almost constantly."

5. Bobby Fischer Against the World

Director: Liz Garbus
Starring: Bobby Fischer, David Edmonds and Anthony Saidy.
What we said: "Gripping, thrilling and ultimately gutting documentary about the US chess prodigy, who dropped out of the public arena at the peak of his powers and spiralled into insanity."
Please also note: "It’s an extraordinary story and this film does it justice: masterfully-constructed, with articulate eyewitness accounts, remarkable archive footage and a superb middle-section."

6. The King’s Speech

Director: Tom Hooper
Starring: Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter
What we said: "Brilliant stuff ... stirring, funny and riotously enjoyable, with super support from Bonham Carter, Rush and the ever-underrated Anthony Andrews."
Please also note: "As my girlfriend said: 'I thought Colin Firth would be Oscar-worthy, but I didn't know he'd be good as well'."

7. Kung Fu Panda 2

Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Starring: Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Gary Oldman and Dustin Hoffman
What we said: "This is a beast every bit as rare as a panda that can do kung fu: a superior sequel. Fast, funny and fleshing out its story with emotional wallops, Kung Fu Panda 2 is a total triumph - and knocks even its predecessor into a conical hat."
Please also note: "The film looks incredible, packed with sumptuous landscapes dominated by vast mountains, dappling rivers and towering pagodas. Few modern movies have realised the possibilities of the big screen in such an assured, ambitious manner."

8. Drive

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston and Oscar Isaac
What we said: "It’s a near-classic, a potent fusion of actioner, crime flick and doomed romance that needed just a stronger script to nudge it into that top bracket."
Please also note: "With its neon credits, synth-led song score and obscenely hip lead performance from Ryan Gosling – another movie psychopath from whom we can all take fashion tips – Drive is an instantly iconic film ... another key credit for an actor who’s proving to be infallible."

9. Crazy, Stupid, Love

Directors: Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
Starring: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon
What we said: "This is probably the best mainstream romantic comedy since Just Like Heaven."
Please also note: "Funny, romantic, surprising and with a knockout performance by the mighty Ryan Gosling as a womanising slickster who decides to teach the cuckolded Steve Carell - also excellent - how to pick up girls. Is there anything Gosling can't do? Apparently not."

10. Source Code

Director: Duncan Jones
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga.
What we said: "A supremely entertaining sci-f movie that cuts Groundhog Day down to eight minutes and then shoves it into thriller territory."
Please also note: "Source Code is slick, imaginative and well-executed."

Also worth a mention: The Adjustment Bureau (Director: George Nolfi), The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick), Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (David Yates), Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011), The Fighter (David O. Russell); Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky); Melancholia (Lars von Trier).

Did you enjoy that? Good. Next up, premieres...

***

TOP 15 PREMIERES
... being a ragtag collection of classics that had evaded my grasping clutches before 2011, but which weren't released this year, instead being released in years like 2007, 1926 and 1972 (I could go on, but I won't). 1945. (Sorry, I had to do one more.) This is out of 260 such movies, so only the best will doodle-do, as that annoying breakfast cereal ad used to say. To learn more about the film, just click on the name. They're in descending order of sublimity.

Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck, 2006)
The Enchanted Cottage (John Cromwell, 1945)
My Childhood (Bill Douglas, 1972)
The Lookout (Scott Frank, 2007)
The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed, 1948)
King of the Hill (Steven Soderbergh, 1993)
For Heaven’s Sake (Sam Taylor, 1926)
Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010)
The Shepherd of the Hills (George Cukor, 1941)
Ah, Wilderness! (Clarence Brown, 1935)
The Station Agent (Thomas McCarthy, 2003, pic above)
The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, 2007)
Män som hatar kvinnor (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009) (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009) aka The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; review of the Extended Edition here
The Other Guys (Adam McKay, 2010)
Along Came Jones (Stuart Heisler, 1945)

***

And now, because you've been very good this year, here's a quick rundown of the year's highlights (and bad bits). Mostly in terms of movies. I do some other stuff too, but it's not as interesting, so I've put that at the very foot of the post.

FILM
Crazes: Ryan Gosling, Harold Lloyd, Judy Holliday (pic above), Robert Rodriguez.
Continuing preoccupations: Fairuza Balk, John Cusack, Dorothy McGuire.
Revelations: That, in Carey Mulligan, Michelle Williams and Jennifer Lawrence, there are three young actresses worth getting excited about. That DreamWorks can make mighty fine animated films: Kung Fu Panda 2 is not just a superior sequel, it's a veritable visual feast, with an involving and exciting story.
A few performances that stuck with me: Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson, Noomi Rapace in the Millennium trilogy, Carey Mulligan in Never Let Me Go, Willard Robertson's unexpectedly uber-hip turn as a sardonic bounty hunter in Along Came Jones. And - yeah, why not? - Amy Adams in the lovely Enchanted.
Stuff I caught up on: The entire works of Robert Rodriguez, pretty much. The Harry Potter films. And a lot of TV shows.
Happiest surprises: Woody finding his mojo with Midnight in Paris, The Other Guys being so utterly hysterical when I bobbed it on Sky Player one Sunday afternoon; Harold Lloyd's For Heaven's Sake; Synecdoche, New York pushing the boundaries in a way I'd never seen before, whatever its flaws; being able to catch Les enfants du paradis at the cinema.
Biggest disappointments: In terms of this year's animated crop, Rango and Tangled were both a bit of a letdown. I'd heard that The Hangover was funny, but it was just obnoxious. Twinkle, Twinkle, Lucky Stars spent most of its time with a load of shit comedians, rather than awesome martial artists, which was an error. For all the majesty of its score, My Fair Lady is flawed beyond belief.
Worst films: The Aristocrats was hateful, Mamma Mia! was dreck, and Woody's Cassandra's Dream was just incredibly embarrassing.
Some favourite moments: Judy Holliday murmuring: "I know, s'alright" in Bells Are Ringing. It's slight, it's gone in an instant, but it's so real and affecting. The smile at the end of Attack the Block, Ken Marino pitching up - and getting chased away - in The Baxter, and the dancing in the train smoke in My Childhood. The plays within Les enfants are wonderful; watching them on the big screen made them doubly so.
Favourite jokes: "Tuna vs Lion" and the ballet/stripclub mix-up in The Other Guys were amazing, the Civil War "battle" in Harold Lloyd's Grandma's Boy was risky but pulled it out of the fire and the chase sequence in his For Heaven's Sake was just hilarious. Special mentions to the gag-heavy rickshaw set-piece in Kung Fu Panda 2 and the high-tech present-drop scene near the start of Arthur Christmas for the intensity of invention. A rewatch of The Apartment meant another chance to see the look on Jack Lemmon's face as it dawns on him just what his boss is asking him to do. I saw Buster Keaton's The Cameraman again, too - the bit where he hops on the side of the bus is inspired.
Best film I saw at the cinema: Les enfants du paradis. Then Attack the Block.

***

And for those who simply can't get enough stats (just me then?), here's my top 100 of the year, taking into account rewatches, first watches (shown in bold) and brand spanking new movies.

TOP 100 FEATURES(>40 mins)

1. Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001, pic above) (4)
2. Les enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945)
3. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
4. Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
5. Return to Oz (Walter Murch, 1985)
6. Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck, 2006)
7. Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950)
8. Thank Your Lucky Stars (David Butler, 1943)
9. The Enchanted Cottage (John Cromwell, 1945)
10. The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)

11. The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick, 1928)
12. My Childhood (Bill Douglas, 1972)
13. The Lookout (Scott Frank, 2007)
14. The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed, 1948)
15. King of the Hill (Steven Soderbergh, 1993)
16. For Heaven’s Sake (Sam Taylor, 1926)
17. Attack the Block (Joe Cornish, 2011) (Cinema)
18. Barcelona (Whit Stillman, 1994)
19. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Frank Capra, 1936)
20. Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010)

21. Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek, 2010) (Cinema)
22. Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
23. The Shepherd of the Hills (George Cukor, 1941)
24. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010)
25. Ah, Wilderness! (Clarence Brown, 1935)
26. Three Men on a Horse (Mervyn LeRoy (uncredited), 1936)
27. The Talk of the Town (George Stevens, 1942)
28. The Station Agent (Thomas McCarthy, 2003)
29. The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, 2007)
30. Män som hatar kvinnor (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009): Extended Edition (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009) aka The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

31. Sweet and Lowdown (Woody Allen, 1999)
32. Submarine (Richard Ayoade, 2010) (Cinema)
33. I Know Where I’m Going! (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945)
34. The Other Guys (Adam McKay, 2010)
35. Along Came Jones (Stuart Heisler, 1945)
36. Spy Kids (Robert Rodriguez, 2001)
37. Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)
38. Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)
39. Thieves Like Us (Robert Altman, 1974)
40. Bobby Fischer Against the World (Liz Garbus, 2011)

41. Grandma’s Boy (Fred C. Newmeyer, 1922)
42. It Should Happen to You (George Cukor, 1954)
43. Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007)
44. Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (Robert Rodriguez, 2002)
45. The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010) (Cinema)
46. It Happens Every Spring (Lloyd Bacon, 1949)
47. Team America: World Police (Trey Parker, 2004)
48. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)
49. Inside Job (Charles H. Ferguson, 2010)
50. Shi di chu ma (Jackie Chan, 1980) aka The Young Master

51. The Last Days of Disco (Whit Stillman, 1998, pic above) (3.5)
52. Gas, Food Lodging (Allison Anders, 1992)
53. Kung Fu Panda 2 3D (Jennifer Yuh Nelson, 2011) (Cinema)
54. De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté (Jacques Audiard, 2005) aka The Beat That My Heart Skipped
55. Il Postino (Michael Radford, 1994)
56. Valmont (Milos Forman, 1987)
57. Boys Town (Norman Taurog, 1938)
58. Let Him Have It (Peter Medak, 1991)
59. The Hoax (Lasse Hallström, 2006)
60. The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass, 2004)

61. Invincible (Ericson Core, 2006)
62. Kicking and Screaming (Noah Baumbach, 1995)
63. The Americanisation of Emily (Arthur Hiller, 1964)
64. My Way Home (Bill Douglas, 1978)
65. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004)
66. Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004)
67. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)
68. Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011)
69. The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007)
70. El Mariachi (Robert Rodriguez, 1992)

71. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)
72. The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola, 1997)
73. Phffft! (Mark Robson, 1954)
74. The Male Animal (Elliot Nugent, 1942)
75. Crazy, Stupid, Love (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2011) (Cinema)
76. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)
77. La grande séduction (Jean-François Pouliot, 2003) aka Seducing Doctor Lewis
78. The Adjustment Bureau (George Nolfi, 2011) (Cinema)
79. Vozvrashchenie (Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2003) aka The Return
80. Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984)

81. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2010)
82. My Ain Folk (Bill Douglas, 1973)
83. Quick Change (Howard Franklin and Bill Murray, 1990)
84. While You Were Sleeping (Jon Turteltaub, 1995)
85. Panique au village (Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, 2009) aka A Town Called Panic
86. Après Vous (Pierre Salvadori, 2003)
87. Dan in Real Life (Peter Hedges, 2007)
88. Le dîner de cons (Francis Veber, 1998)
89. A Lawless Street (Joseph H. Lewis, 1955)
90. Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)

91. Despicable Me (Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, 2010)
92. Manderlay (Lars von Trier, 2005)
93. 2 Days in Paris (Julie Delpy, 2007)
94. Monsters (Gareth Edwards, 2010)
95. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet, 2007)
96. Bells Are Ringing (Vincente Minnelli, 1960)
97. Paper Heart (Nicholas Jasenovec, 2009)
98. The Baxter (Michael Showalter, 2005)
99. Small Town Girl (László Kardos, 1953)
100. Two Guys from Milwaukee (David Butler, 1946)

***

TOP 5 SHORTS(> 40 mins)

1. The Goat (Buster Keaton and Malcolm St. Clair, 1921, pic above) (4)
2. Cops (Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton, 1922)
3. The Boat (Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton, 1921) (3.5)
4. Orientation Day (Kyle Balda and Samuel Tourneux, 2010)
5. Banana (Kyle Balda and Samuel Tourneux, 2010)

*Lists correct as of December 20

***

TV

I saw a heap of great series this year. Here are the 10 best:

1. Veronica Mars (2004-7, pic above)
2. My So-Called Life (1994-5)
3. Edge of Darkness (1985)
4. Party Down (2009-10)
5. Parks and Recreation (2009-)
6. Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000)
7. Arrested Development (2003-6)
8. Millennium (2009)
9. Bored to Death (2009-)
10. Sherlock (2010-)

These people made me happy. And sometimes sad, but in a good way: Bob Peck, Kristen Bell, Jason Dohring, Adam Scott, Lizzy Caplan, Martin Starr and Noomi Rapace.

***

MISC

Best gigs: Suede doing the first two albums at the Brixton Academy(pic above).
Best day: When I got all engaged.
Best meal: Seafood pizza.

***

EDIT (03/01/12): These things came in too late for consideration, but Hugo and Win Win would have vied with Source Code for the #10 spot in the film list, with Pushing Daisies crashing in at #3 in the TV round-up. To read more about them, just click on the names.

Les enfants, Bob Peck and It Happened One Night 2 - Reviews #93

2011-12-19T18:56:00.018Z

There's the usual heady blend of history, bad jokes and swearing in this latest set of reviews, which find me enjoying one of my favourite 10 movies at York's City Screen cinema, and then plonking myself down in front of the telly to watch some romcoms. And a bleak, seminal eco-thriller.

*MASSIVE SPOILERS*
CINEMA: Les enfants du paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945) –There are six or seven films so vast in their ambition, so surefooted in their execution, so utterly perfect in every way, that they just make you shiver and gasp and grin. Amongst this exalted group – Remember the Night, Colonel Blimp, Hoop Dreams, The Searchers, Ghost World and Diary for Timothy – stands Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's Les enfants du paradis: the towering achievement of French cinema. Jean-Louis Barrault stars as Baptiste, the first great mime, who rises to fame at the Théâtre des Funambules but is tormented by his unflinching, draining love for flighty carnival-worker-cum-socialite Garance (Arletty). Even after he's married, he pines for her, while she hops from rakish thief Marcel Herrand to caddish actor Pierre Brasseur and aristocrat Louis Salou. Filmed during the Nazi Occupation of Paris, drawing on half-imagined events in 1830s Paris, and populated by a cast of stage titans, Resistance fighters and the odd collaborator (Arletty, I'm looking at you), it's a portrait of a vanished world, a hymn to the art of acting and an allegory about France – many try to tame or cage the worldly Garance (Arletty, ironically enough), but she is forever free, and none but the people (represented by the pure, Chaplin-esque mime Baptiste) can hold her heart. And all the while, a detestable, amoral shit of a clothes man – reviled by Baptiste – skulks around. That the film contains one of the great screen romances, we know. It's also clear on first viewing, no matter what size the screen, that in the performances of Arletty, Barrault and his quivering, obsessive wife (María Casares), it boasts three of the finest performances ever committed to celluloid. And its high spots are so far above just about anything else you'll ever see that it's faintly absurd: Baptiste sparing Garance from arrest with an impromptu mime, recreating the shattering of his heart as an audience looks on, transfixed, from "les paradis” (the "Gods” of the theatre), standing between his two lovers at the climax of the first half, or fighting against a tide of carnival-goers as an expressionless Garance leaves him again, and perhaps forever. But despite all that, seeing it on the big screen is something else entirely. Everything is magnified; we are placed in the front-row of the theatre, or else amidst its whooping, cheering audience. The atmosphere of the Boulevard du Crime leaps to vivid life – the exquisite staging of the sparingly-used external sequences pervading the whole – and Pierre Brasseur's irrepressible performance as the eternally irreverent ham Frederick is a delightful sideshow to the gutting central narrative. I think you can also see Arletty's nips in the tub, so strike one up for digital restoration. Carné's handling is breathtaking, Prevert's script is so clever, witty and worldly-wise it just makes me want to give up, and the timeless story seems to grow in strength and resonance with each passing year. The greatest. (4)

***

*SPOILERS*
The Baxter (Michael Showalter, 2005) – You know that guy who always gets left at the altar in movies? Yeah, the one who’s played by Ralph Bellamy. Well, this movie is about him – mostly. And with its time-shifting narrative, plethora of genuinely inventive, surprising gags and spectacular supporting cast, it’s a little gem. Showalter is decent in the lead, Justin Theroux makes an amusing nemesis and Michelle Williams is simply lovely as the girl our anti-hero should be dating – rather than tedious Elizabeth Banks – but it’s the bit-players that really make it, from Paul Rudd to Peter Dinklage, Joe Lo Truglio and Ken Marino. The two surprise gags at the death are sublime. (3.5)

***

Franchot Tone (left), doing his "one eye" thing.

Love on the Run (W.S. Van Dyke, 1936) – In 1934, MGM punished its hottest male star, Clark Gable, by loaning him out to ickle-wickle studio Columbia, for a screwball romance called It Happened One Night. The film, based on a script by Robert Riskin that had been sniffed at in earlier incarnations by anyone with half a brain, went on to be one of the biggest successes of its decade, scooping all five major Oscars – a feat unmatched until 1991. As you might imagine, MGM - America’s juggernaut of a dream factory - was a big peeved, so it spent the next few years trying to recreate the success of that film, looking to capture lightning in a bottle the only way it knew how: by making movies that were quite a lot like It Happened One Night. This one is even billed in the trailer as “It happened... in 77 hours”, which makes it sound less, rather than more, romantic. It’s fun, though: another screwball comedy romance starring Gable, pitting him against Joan Crawford for the seventh time - she’s the tabloid fodder his scheming reporter just can’t do without. There’s a bit of intrigue in there too (though it’s rather incidental to proceedings) and Franchot Tone, Crawford’s then-husband, is cast as the third wheel and butt of Gable’s numerous practical jokes. Gable is fun as a kind of amoral, Lee Tracy-ish reporter – this ends up as something of a dry run for the tremendous Too Hot to Handle – and Tone is as appealing as ever in a role that Ralph Bellamy must surely have lobbied hard for, even if he does keep closing one of his eyes in an odd way that I think is supposed to suggest he's cross. Crawford is perhaps the Hollywood legend I have the least time for – she’s too abrasive to warm to but lacks Bette Davis’s raw power, and features in the two worst dance numbers I have ever seen – but aside from a couple of strops, she’s at her most likeable here. The script is a little bit all-over-the-place, and it can’t sustain the film’s brilliant start, but with this level of star power, William Demarest as an irascible editor and Donald Meek doing a little dance in front of an imaginary dog, it’s got to be worth a look. (3)

***

I’ll Take Romance (Edward H. Griffith, 1937) – By-the-numbers comedy musical, with Melvyn Douglas romancing Australian opera star Grace Moore as he tries to get her to sing in Buenos Aires. The film has a few nice arias, a couple of standards and Douglas’ typically deft performance to recommend it, but the script isn’t up to much. (2.5)

***

TV: Edge of Darkness (1985) - Bob Peck's performance - as a tough, smirking, bereaved, hallucinating, hand-stroking, dildo-kissing cop investigating his daughter's murder - is perhaps the most exciting and revelatory I've seen since catching Jason Robards in A Thousand Clowns two or three years ago. And this resolutely adult eco-thriller just about matches it, even if the last two episodes aren't quite as a precise, pungent and flat-out phenomenal as the first four. The scene in which Peck and CIA man Joe Don Baker sing an uneasy barroom duet of Willie Nelson's 'Time of the Preacher' is fucking incredible. The score, co-written by Eric Clapton, is a masterpiece. Liked this a lot, lot, lot. (4)

Arthur Christmas, investment bankers and the most fun you can have while laughing* - Reviews #92

2011-12-14T20:42:00.008Z

*I'm paraphrasing Woody Allen, and quite poorly at that. This batch of reviews is a veritable grab-bag of diverse stuff I found lying around in my room or at the cinema: a new movie, an old favourite, heaps of shorts (by which I mean short films), a romcom and a film in which Steve Coogan attacks someone with a swivel-chair. I think I've sworn a couple of times in a desperate bid to get in with the cool kids, so if that's likely to offend, please do proceed with caution.

CINEMA: Arthur Christmas 3D (Sarah Smith, 2011) - This is Aardman’s best full-length film to date, trumping Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (disappointing), Chicken Run (annoying) and Flushed Away (set down a toilet). It’s a great mix of myth-making, heart and visual humour that sparks into life with a spectacular early sequence showing a high-tech present drop by hundreds of highly-trained elves. Fast, funny and inventive, it sets the tone perfectly. Writing to Santa, six-year-old Cornish girl Gwen has asked a few tricky questions, but the film is happy to answer them, creating a cleverly-devised, believable world that features a whole family of Father Christmases: past, present and future. There’s 70-year-old Santa Claus (Jim Broadbent), who’s just going through the motions, his father (Bill Nighy) – a crotchety old sexist – and his two sons: good-hearted, clumsy Arthur (James McAvoy), and Steve (Hugh Laurie) – solid management material, if a touch unfeeling. Steve’s finely-tuned, tech-savvy Christmas Eve operation is something to behold, but when he accidentally overlooks one child – Gwen – it’s up to Arthur and a ragtag band of festive misfits to save the day.

It’s an unusual film, in that it has no love interest and no real baddie. But, co-written by director Sarah Smith and Peter Baynham – who has had a hand in landmark comedies from Fist of Fun to The Day Today and Borat – it’s deft, amusing and imaginative, with intelligent plotting and the odd concession to pitch-black humour, taking in the Blitz, the Cuban Missile Crisis and possible death in the desert. Not that it’s a dark film: quite the opposite. It’s simply joyous, glowing with a love of Christmas (like Arthur’s slippers), stuffed full of jokes (like a stocking) and – aside from the word “cookie” (they’re called biscuits) – possessing that certain idiosyncratic Britishness we’ve come to expect from Aardman (like Wallace and Gromit). The frenetic set-pieces are a wow, the sentimental message is never mawkish and the voicework is very impressive, particularly from Broadbent and the scene-stealing Jane Horrocks. Indeed, all of the elves are unfailingly hilarious, while rarely has a film generated so many laughs from the combination of old man and dustbin. (3.5)

***

Thank Your Lucky Stars (David Butler, 1943) is perhaps the most purely entertaining movie ever made. A slight plot – songwriter Joan Leslie tries to help crooner Dennis Morgan land a benefit gig with egomaniac Eddie Cantor – is simply an excuse for a glut of brilliant Loesser-Schwartz songs, star cameos and specialty numbers. Dinah Shore does threeslumbers, including The Dreamer, Morgan and Leslie duet delightfully on I'm Riding for a Fall, and a host of Warner Bros stars turn up for unlikely guest spots. Bette Davis sings (and briefly dances) to They're Either Too Young or Too Old, Jack Carson and Alan Hale perform the vaudeville-flavoured North, and Errol Flynn – sporting a fantastic handle-bar moustache – dances the funniest jig you've ever seen, as a drunkard outrageously overstating his war record in That's What You Jolly Well Get. S.Z. Sakall and Edward Everett Horton buzz about fretting, Cantor does a couple of tunes while playing a dual role as himself and a tour guide who hates Eddie Cantor, Ann Sheridan pops up in a nightie, Bogart gets bullied by Sakall and uses the phrase "movie fans” and George Tobias, Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland are introduced as if they're about to provide some highbrow entertainment, before launching into a pig-Latin version of The Dreamer. There's also Spike Jones playing a song on some pans, Alexis Smith whirling around in a nightclub, John Garfield performing a tongue-in-cheek Blues in the Night full of gangster patter, a walk on from director Butler and maverick producer Mark Hellinger, and Hattie McDaniel and Willie Best doing an energetic, Harlem-set number about a cool would-be bride called Ice Cold Katy. Two hours of pure joy. It's as much fun as you can have with a DVD player. (4) (I had this in my last top 100, at #100.)

Bugs sort of half kind of does his bit for the war effort.

The "Warner Night at the Movies” feature is a wonderful DVD extra, providing the full programme (minus a B movie) that you might have seen with a film upon release: a smorgasbord of fun-size curios. They're usually amazing, though this one was a little below par, perhaps because they're mostly tub-thumping things about the war. The Vintage Newsreel (1.5), about the Hollywood Canteen, is shot from too far away and had no sound, though I did see Joan Leslie in the distance at one point. Three Cheers for the Girls (Jean Negulesco, 1943, 3) is a fun short that nabs some footage of chorines from various Warner musicals – most directed by Busby Berkeley – then frames it with (supposedly) the same girls sitting in their dressing rooms singing about their status. The excerpts are just that – they miss out key passages of the numbers – but it's still good fun, and a welcome reminder of just how brilliant the staging of that solitary song in Fashions of 1934 is. At the end it goes all propaganda-y in a way that makes no sense. The United States Navy Band (Jean Negulesco, 1943, 1.5) is pretty weak as these things go, with unmemorable music and lots of stock footage of Washington a. Food and Magic (Jean Negulesco, 1943, 2.5) is a fairly entertaining public information film, with Jack Carson explaining that a woman in the audience has wasted several billion tonnes of bread. I think she's emblematic of America, because it seems unlikely that one person could have done that, or that she wouldn't be in jail if she'd done so during a war. Falling Hare (Robert Clampett, 1943, 2) is a disappointing cartoon pitting Bugs against a malevolent little gremlin who likes to wreck aircraft. The story doesn't really make sense – it seems to be a propaganda film without a message – though it's notable for one eerie bit where the plane flies over an American city, and heads directly for two twin skyscrapers.

***

This man is about to look like a twat.

Inside Job (Charles H. Ferguson, 2010) - Excoriating polemic about the recession, explaining in crisp and clear detail what went wrong, who was to blame and what happened next. It's brilliantly-researched, cleverly assembled and forcefully-argued, though there is a slight issue with the selective and possibly disingenuous editing used to stitch up some apparently deserving interviewees. While it's revealing to see the dean of Columbia Business School drop his mask and spit: "You've got three minutes, so give it your best shot", I'm not exactly sure what the ethics are regarding that. Still, it's a vital film: passionate, infuriating and darkly funny, while serving as required viewing for anyone who still has the merest vestiges of trust in the financial sector, or indeed economics itself. "I had to revise a textbook" must be the worst excuse ever for leaving a key post at the Federal Reserve during a financial meltdown. (4)

***

The Parole Officer (John Duigan, 2001) - Pedestrian comedy-thriller that marked Steve Coogan's starring debut on the big screen. He's the title figure, who recruits some newly law-abiding ex-cons for a bank job after he's framed for murder. It's amiable enough, there are a handful of smile-worthy moments (the fight scene using office equipment is good value) and the film generates some suspense by taking its story surprisingly seriously, but the characters are poorly defined - aside from Stephen Dillane's bent copper - and that rollercoaster set-piece is just crap. It's always funny when future stars turn up in bit-parts and you wonder just how hard the producer is kicking himself about not giving them more to do. Here, Simon Pegg has a walk-on as "deflated husband", while Olivia Colman appears for all of 10 seconds, and isn't allowed to speak. (2.5)

***

Only You (Norman Jewison, 1994) - Pleasant "Rome-antic" comedy (yeah, I'm good) that's rather less than the sum of its parts. Marisa Tomei is a hopeless romantic who's held out her whole life for a man she's never met: Damon Bradley. Aged 11, she got his name via a ouija board, then had it confirmed by a plump mystic. When - 14 years later - she finally buckles and gets engaged to a foot doctor, she's congratulated on the phone by one ... Damon Bradley, and hotfoots it to Italy hot on his trail. It's a fun idea, but the film isn't particularly funny or romantic - it should have spent far more of its 100+ minutes on the relationship between Tomei and charming man-about-town Robert Downey, Jr. (who is wearing more make-up than her) - and its screwballish plotting is largely predictable. It does have some virtues, though: Tomei's extremely likeable, atypically sensitive characterisation, slick direction from Moonstruck helmer Jewison and photography by the legendary Sven Nyqvist, shooting in Venice, Rome and rural Italy. And Downey, Jr.'s impression of Gregory Peck made me laugh. (2.5)

***

He's behind the eight ball. If you don't know what that means, you haven't watched enough old movies.

SHORT: So You Want to Wear the Pants (Richard L. Bare, 1952) - Another outing from the Joe McDoakes series, which couldn't be more '50s if it starred Stanley Matthews as a Teddy Boy and Korean War draftee with a stack of Bill Haley 45s and a crush on Marilyn Monroe. It doesn't, more's the pity. Instead, George O'Hanlon has a row with his wife about who works harder, then they wake up in each other's bodies and a minimal lack of hilarity ensues. It's kind of bleak, though the way this series can take a promising premise and then accidentally mislay it on the way to the credits is truly remarkable. (1.5)

***

Something amusing but quite hard to fathom is about to happen.

SHORT: Terrier-Stricken (Chuck Jones, 1952) - Passable Tom and Jerry knock-off, which never bothers to introduce its characters' relationship, meaning that we're rather at sea when they start playing tricks on each other. Kind of alright. (2)

Bobby Fischer, Disney princesses and a talking horse - Reviews #91

2011-12-07T22:42:00.000Z

I've been having a great time. Here's why. (Reviews contain periodic adult content: swearing, smugness... that sort of thing.)

Bobby Fischer Against the World (Liz Garbus, 2011) – Gripping, thrilling and ultimately gutting documentary about the US chess prodigy, who dropped out of the public arena at the peak of his powers and spiralled into insanity. It’s an extraordinary story and this film does it justice: masterfully-constructed, with articulate eyewitness accounts, remarkable archive footage and a superb middle-section in which it accessibly deconstructs the key plays of the Cold War grudge match that was Fischer vs Boris Spassky, lending each significant game within the match a cool-as-flip title like ‘The Poisoned Pawn’ or ‘Son of Sorrow’. That pivotal encounter takes up a fair slab of the running time and this outstanding documentary is one movie that I would happily have watched another two hours of – skipping as it does fairly quickly through Fischer's troubled upbringing and horrific, anti-Semitic meltdown – but even in just 90 minutes it does a superb job of pinning down the elusive, reclusive Fischer, building up his status as a genius, while attempting to comprehend his actions, and nature, as a man.

Particularly insightful is the passage about paranoia being an essential part of chess – that is, trying to anticipate your opponent’s moves (Kasparov comments that there are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible scenarios in a chess game, equivalent to the number of atoms in the solar system) – but a catastrophic approach to take into one’s life. Alas, for Fischer, chess was his life. The only bit I didn’t like was the use of an offensive, apparently shit silent film to illustrate Fischer’s crumbling psyche: an unusually crass misstep in what is otherwise a sensitive, extremely insightful portrait. BBC4 inexplicably screened this under the markedly inferior title of Bobby Fischer: Genius and Madman, presumably sating the audience switching over from My Head Is a Piece of Toast on Channel 5. (4)

***

Enchanted (Kevin Lima, 2007) - This is lovely, a superb subversion of Disney's princess films, by Disney. Amy Adams is the redheaded cartoon heroine kicked into the live-action world - and modern-day New York - by evil witch/Queen/potential stepmother Susan Sarandon. She's followed by conceited beau James Marsden, but finds herself falling instead for divorce lawyer and single parent Patrick Dempsey. Villainous, snivelling Timothy Spall also turns up every so often, mugging like a low-rent Charles Laughton. It's a funny, charming and surprisingly sharp movie, with winning performances from Dempsey and - particularly - the beguiling Adams, and two brilliant musical set-pieces. The second is a giant, meticulously-choreographed production number in a park, while the first (and best) sees her cleaning an apartment with the help of her animal friends: flies, cockroaches, pigeons and rats. One of my highlights of the year, that. The film's special effects climax is pointless and incongruous (see also: Young Sherlock Holmes), but it's the only real shortcoming here. Enchanted is an exceptional family film, shorn of the saccharine and emotional pretentiousness of so many Disney movies, trading instead on genuine heart, humour and invention. It was what I thought Tangled might be like, but then categorically wasn't. It made me feel all happy and warm inside. (4)

***

A Town Called Panic (Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, 2009) – Anarchic, uproarious stop-motion animation about housemates (and plastic figurines) Cowboy and Indian, and what happens when they accidentally order 50 million bricks for their friend Horse's birthday. A unique film of relentless energy, full of inspired visual gags, with plotting that's impossible to second-guess, even if the scattergun approach means that not every gag hits the mark. Perpetually-yelling neighbour Steven is one of the funniest characters I've encountered: the scene where he eats a gigantic breakfast being the absolute highlight here. (3.5)

***

Monsters (Gareth Edwards, 2010) - A (photo)journalist (Scoot McNairy) takes an engaged heiress (Whitney Able) back to her tycoon father, but must first navigate perilous rivers and jungles beset with a few fucking massive octop-aliens. Yes, it's It Happened One Night meets Apocalypse Now meets a film about fucking massive octop-aliens, with a poignant romance at its centre - comprising a trio of truly touching scenes - an atmosphere of near-constant suspense, and an assured style that creates a fully-realised apocalyptic world through sumptuous handheld visuals. There is one scene, upon the couple's arrival in a ghost town, where both the scripting and the acting suddenly break down, but otherwise it's first-rate all the way. Despite that bit where I said it was like two other films, this is actually a really original movie: tonally, dramatically and in terms of those fucking massive octop-aliens. (3.5)

***

TV: Wonderfalls (Created by Bryan Fuller and Todd Holland, 2004) - Like My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks, Wonderfalls belongs to that elite, unfortunate band of quality American dramas cancelled by their network after a single season. Or in the case of Wonderfalls, four episodes, screened in the wrong order. Caroline Dhavernas is Jaye, an aimless 24-year-old Gen Y-er, who lives in a trailer-park and works at the Niagara Falls gift shop. She's a sardonic, quick-witted, selfish man-eater, or at least she was, until souvenirs with the faces of animals - any animals - began telling her what to do. Now she's saving lives, restoring reputations and serving as matchmaker for her lesbian sister, while engaging in a tricky, appealing, on-off relationship with barman Eric (Tyron Leitso), whose wife just sucked off a bellboy. Dhavernas is terrific: adept at the put-downs (if occasionally too mannered) and unexpectedly excellent in the quieter, more reflective moments, particularly in the moving final episode. There's a scene with her sister in the back of the gift shop where she breaks down in tears that got me all choked up. She also pronounces "stoopid" in a wonderful way, wrinkling up her face like a young Myrna Loy. She'ss supported by a decent ensemble, with concerned, intrigued brother Lee Pace and sassy confidante Tracie Thoms (the especially annoying one from Death Proof) the pick of the bunch. There are also a few notable guest appearances, including one from Nurse Ratched. The series is directed with particular flair - series co-creator Todd Holland helmed a few, while Heathers director Michael Lehmann did the last one - with a singular style that memorably utilises the round-edged "viewer" gimmick as part of its arsenal of visual weapons. Later episodes also incorporate that welcome old stalwart: the slo-mo sad sequence cut to a pop song. And the theme song itself, by Andy Partridge, is very cool in its jaunty, boop-boop-boopy, "wonder-why-the-Wonderfalls" way.

It isn't a terribly consistent series. The first two episodes are flat-out phenomenal, but the next five - whilst enjoyable in themselves - are largely self-contained, with little or none of the character development necessary to elevate a comedy-drama from the good to the great. Episode eight, Lovesick Ass, gets it back on track in considerable style, a total triumph that marries the smaller and larger picture to spectacular effect, with the introduction of a 13-year-old compulsive liar who falls in love with Jaye. The next two are similarly superb, but episode 11 is overly melodramatic, while the penultimate outing is a bizarre anomaly that takes us out of the main story completely, with some fairly entertaining but completely ridiculous supernatural gubbins about Native Americans. The final chapter goes all Press Gang on our collective asses, as Jaye, her sister, her bowl-haired schoolboy boss and a fat security guard are held hostage by a gunman. That plot is only so-so, but the way it plays into the resolution of the main story is smartly-handled, and the whole thing has a sweet and satisfying pay-off. A good job really, since the two follow-up seasons that were planned never transpired. Contemporary TV seems littered with such (relatively) sad stories. (3.5)

***

TV: Bored to Death (S2, 2011) - Jason Schwartzman returns as the shambling, unfulfilled, pot-obsessed PI in the second season of Jonathan Ames' cult comedy, one of the most idiosyncratic series of the past decade, even if one can broadly sum up its appeal by scribbling 'Wes Anderson does film noir'. Schwartzman is joined once more by bearded, easily-stung comic-book maestro Zach Galifianakis and eternally rutting sexagenarian Ted Danson. This is a wonderful eight-episode cycle, a real step up, making its characters clearer and more sympathetic, and adding an undercurrent of subtle sentiment to each episode. It's clever, funny and with a wordy, articulate script. The break-up scene between Galifianakis and boozy moll Kristen Wiig is just amazing. Roll on season three. (3.5)

The meaning of life: revealed. (Plus: John Lennon) - Reviews #90

2011-11-30T23:32:00.005Z

Welcome (back?) to Advice to the Lovelorn, my own little corner of the internet. In this update: the only review of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life with jokes in it, a good film about John Lennon, a less good film about John Lennon and a couple of other things I had lying around. Thanks for reading - comments are always impossibly welcome below.

*REVIEW CONTAINS CHILDISH YET ADULT CONTENT*
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) - Explosions! Dinosaurs! Brad! Malick's gone all mainstream. No, of course not. On closer examination those crowd-pleasing staples turn out to be housed in a thoughtful, wriggly and sometimes overpowering 138-minute exploration of the meaning of life, as if Python hadn't already put that one to bed. Our main story sees disconnected, grunty middle-aged Sean Penn reminiscing about the death knell of his innocence, and a coming-of-age spent in the shadow of an authoritarian father (Brad Pitt), amidst the tended lawns and playful hoses of '50s America. There's something about the film - a universality, a realisation of sense-memories both gutting and exalting - that you rarely see on screen. The narrative is only really comparable to The Long Day Closes or Terence Davies' American film, The Neon Bible, but this is a more restless movie, shifting endlessly from one snapshot of joy, fury or guilt-ridden sexual awakening to the next. In many ways it's utterly extraordinary: completely nailing the complex, intense feelings of growing up, as if we'd all forgotten, and only Malick really remembers. Between jolts of ecstacy - becoming increasingly infrequent - Jack (Hunter McCracken) laments his ghostly, lovely mother (the excellent Jessica Chastain) for being weak, grows to despise his father, and nicks a nightdress from a local milf, which, shaking with fear, he buries and then throws in the river. One bittersweet scene - to which our narrator is an outsider - sees Pitt underscoring another son's guitar-playing with some gentle piano. It reminded me of perhaps my favourite sequence in all of cinema: Annie Laurie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

It's only when Malick diverts from this central story early on - and again near the end - to show us the enormity of creation, the crux of the "nature vs grace" quandary and the possible insignificance of human life, that the movie risks being - what is the word? - oh yes, boring. The curious, breathy, abstract voiceover that runs through the film is actually as well done as I have ever heard it: again, Malick has a firm grasp of his themes, he's not just being a portentous dick, but after a triumphant explosion of spacy visuals, scored to some fucking awesome choral music (excuse my ignorance), he does go on a bit. There are also pacing issues, in so much as the film covers 65 million years in a matter of nanoseconds, then spends ages dealing with the mid-1950s. And the dinosaurs weren't scary at all. #jurassicfail Still, Malick has come closer to articulating the human experience from a trio of contrasting angles than most directors I know, and both Pitt and McCracken are absolutely superb. Their climactic two-hander, in which Bradders apologises for alienating his son and says that his life beyond the family amounts to nothing, is an absolute gem; as good as the comparable scene in Shaun of the Dead - and you can't get much higher praise than that. All-in-all, it's a fascinating, occasionally infuriating film. (3.5)

***

Two doses of John Lennon:

Backbeat (Iain Softley, 1994) - Emotionally interesting but stylistically unconvincing drama about the relationship between the fifth Beatle, Stuart Sutcliffe (Stephen Dorff), his intense, gobby pal John Lennon (Ian Hart) and mop-topped German art student Astrid Kirchherr (Sheryl Lee), whom they meet during the band's Hamburg sojourn. While Hart spews epithets effectively as the bruised, bilious Lennon, his subject's looks and vocal mannerisms are so familiar that it's hard to ever forget that this is just a film - even if the guy playing Paul really does look like Paul. Dorff, a less gifted actor than Hart, fares better simply because we don't really know the real Sutcliffe beyond the soulful eyes and razor-sharp cheekbones of those famous black-and-white portraits, while Lee is an adequate Kirchherr. The film, inexplicably included in the Guardian's "favourite films" strand (well, inexplicable aside from it being one of their journalists' favourite films), is fairly entertaining , but the production values are more in keeping with a TV movie - right down to the artificial encounters with German arty types - and the potentially fascinating story fails to ignite. We could also have done without the crap song-title jokes. (2.5)

*MAJOR SPOILERS*
Nowhere Boy (Sam Taylor-Wood, 2009) - This John Lennon flick is a portrait of the artist as a brooding, troubled adolescent, torn between the uptight, unsmiling aunt who raised him (Kristin Scott Thomas) and the redheaded free spirit of a mother who sails back into his life (Anne-Marie Duff). Aaron Johnson makes a decent fist of playing Lennon - though it's by no means a flawless turn - but the film is really worth seeing for the amazing performances by Scott Thomas and Duff, their characters negotiating the line between mirth and misery, but in very different ways. The script is strong - particularly in the guitar-buying scene, which is delightfully-done and ends with the owner grinning: "Just don't shoot me", one of those clever once-removed jokes that doesn't do the work for you - though the "Freudian mystery" aspect of the film seems unnecessary. Taylor-Wood's direction is impressive but unobtrusive, typified by that familiar opening chord, the way she recreates the famous back-of-a-lorry Quarrymen shot by opening up the whole fete with sweeping shots, and the manner in which she deals with the moment of Duff's death. There's some clunkiness in the forming-a-band subplot (though I liked Lennon's riposte to the question: "What's your band called?" - "Do you care?"), but this is still an enlightening and intelligent movie, with a couple of truly superb performances. (3)

See also: Want to read about a George Harrison documentary? Well, it beats watching one.

***

Upside Down: The Creation Records Story (Danny O'Connor, 2010) - Serviceable party-line biopic of the drug-fuelled label that gave us The Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub, My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream, Ride, Super Furry Animals and, yes, Oasis. Professional bullshitter Alan McGee dominates proceedings - appearing as a monochrome talking head - which are presented in a one-second-attention-span whirl of crashing visuals, in an apparent ruse to cover up an alarming paucity of footage beyond music videos and photos of magazine articles. Perhaps everyone was tripping too hard to actually film any of the bands live. Much of the music is extraordinary and there are genuine insights - Bobby Gillespie suggests that My Bloody Valentine's Loveless was the last rock record that tried to push boundaries and take us somewhere new - but this is really a whistle-stop version of modern history that tends towards hagiography and only grazes the surface of its subject. The obscure, self-congratulatory Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle-ish inserts don't help. Incidentally, has anyone noticed that (What's the Story) Morning Glory? has, at most, three good songs on it? (2.5)

***

The Castle (Rob Sitch, 1997) - Affable Aussie comedy that hammers away at the same joke for the opening 15 minutes (narrator says something, then actor repeats it), but is ultimately quite deft, funny and quotable, as it traces the travails of a working class family fighting to save its home from an airport expansion plan. Hopeless lawyer Dennis Denuto (Tiriel Mora) provides the biggest laughs, though Michael Caton is also good value as the lead. A chunky Eric Bana appears in support. (2.5)

The Fighter, Natalie Portman and a man repeatedly saying "Ravi" - Reviews #89

2011-11-27T21:42:00.004Z

The Fighter (David O. Russell, 2010) - Conventional, sometimes muddled, but very entertaining and well-acted boxing drama about fighter Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) taking a last crack at the big time, as his brother (Christian Bale) just takes a load of crack. I'm a big fan of Wahlberg, but here he's blown off the screen by a trio of supporting players who are given far more interesting roles: Amy Adams, as the tough college dropout with whom he falls in love, Melissa Leo as his ferocious chain-smoking mother and - best of all - Bale as the self-destructive dreamer who once knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. It's not up there with remarkable boxing movies like Body and Soul and Raging Bull - or even Champion - but it's the right mix of slick and gritty: the powerful mockumentary inserts underlining the most remarkable fact of all - that it's all based on a true story. (3)

***

*MINOR SPOILERS*
Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) - A ballerina, caught in a love triangle, loses her mind as she takes on an impossible role. Yes, it's The Red Shoes II, with Aronofsky spinning the dance film into psychological thriller and body horror territory, as Natalie Portman's driven, frigid perfectionist begins to fall apart, both mentally and around the fingernails. Portman is excellent in the lead, Barbara Hershey works wonders with a cliched part as her mother and the whole piece is a triumph of directorial invention - vivid visuals and eerie soundscapes combining to chilling effect in fragments of black fantasy - but it's all to service a story that's a bit old hat and difficult to engage with. Mila Kunis and Vincent Cassel (who can only act in French) offer a whole lot of nothing in support. Having seen many '30s musicals, I'm sure putting on a show used to be a lot more fun. (3)

***

The Distinguished Gentleman (Jonathan Lynn, 1992) - Underrated comedy that drops Murphy's familiar, wonderful, on-the-make persona into that old chestnut about a first-time congressman inspired by a sexy wumon to expose corruption, a story first filmed in 1932 as Washington Merry-Go-Round and popularised seven years later in Mr Smith Goes to Washington. It's predictable, then - and not nearly as biting as it could be - but great fun, with a handful of laugh-out-loud moments: the speech to the poultry moguls, the "she got her shoe back" gag and a scene where Murphy poses as a member of the NAACP. Indeed, most of his impressions get a run out at one stage or another. Lynn, who directed and shared writing duties here, was the co-creator of Yes, Minister, but had by this stage undergone a subtlety bypass, as evidenced by his revelling in the name 'Dick' and allowing Murphy to spout off about "homos" and keep threatening to kick people's ass. And, yes, while the impressive-looking supporting cast does include a nice bit from James Garner as a randy congressman, the star is really the whole show. But that's fine by me; at this stage Murphy was still firing on most cylinders - even if he's not quite another Jimmy Stewart. Or a Lee Tracy. (3)

***

*BIG SPOILERS*
Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010) - Michelle Williams, Moaning Myrtle and Nina from Bored to Death head off the beaten track in this incredibly ambitious, halfway-successful attempt to make an uber-realistic wagon train Western, which then compromises that raison d'etre with a weird, ambiguous ending. The photography is full of wonderfully-composed images: scorched earth, white skies and muddied faces. The land itself is the most striking character, which is a good thing, as only a couple of the others are really fleshed out. The ever-exciting Michelle Williams is good as an individualistic, compassionate frontierswoman, and Bruce Greenwood does quite well as the grizzled old racist of the title, who could be heading for a lynching if he can't lead the gang to water. Paul Dano is oddly crap in support - he's done very little of note since that astonishing turn in There Will Be Blood. This genre effort, shot in the Academy ratio of pre-1953 oaters, is too distinctive and original to dismiss completely, but too muted - and sometimes too tedious - to be fully embraced. John Ford did a similar thing a whole lot better with the peerless Wagon Master. (2.5)

***

*MORE BIG SPOILERS*
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008) - "Aaaauuuuuunnnnnnggggggh." Clint gets in a lot of good-quality growling in this simplistic but effective message movie about a bitter, bigoted old widower - whose worldview was shaped by the Korean War - bonding with the Hmong-folk next door. The ending cleverly and attractively inverts the Dirty Harry/Unforgiven fascist bloodbath pay-off, though the supporting cast is pretty wooden. (2.5)

***

*ONE INSTANCE OF SWEARING*
George Harrison: Living in the Material World (Martin Scorsese, 2010) - Oddly repetitive, annoying documentary about the Pretentious Beatle, who seems to have only written three great songs, all of them in 1968-9. Dishearteningly, Scorsese appears to have forgotten how to assemble a musical biopic in the five years since the remarkable No Direction Home, chasing passing leads with the enthusiasm and negligible attention span of a toddler: the Beatles are in Hamburg, then they're doing Sgt Pepper, then they've split up. If you don't already know the back-story, you're going to be stumped. The rest of it is all "Ravi" ... "mantra" ... "spiritualism" and Shankar twatting about on a sitar, which quickly palls. (2)

Nine things I like about movies - Part One

2011-11-26T20:41:00.013Z

... in which I shine a big fat light on films, scenes and movie folks deserving of greater recognition, with the help of words and videos. Nine at a time. I'm not sure why it's nine. This first instalment features backflipping, the Depression and a couple of policemen trying to decide who would win in a fight between a tuna and a lion.

Why not tell me your own below? Oh go on, it'll be fun.

1. The Nicholas Brothers
You know Fred Astaire? That guy who was the finest hoofer of all time? He thought the Nicholas Brothers' Jumpin' Jive routine in Stormy Weather was the greatest dance number ever filmed - and who am I to disagree? (Well, I'm Rick, and I think Fred was being modest. Let's Face the Music and Dance is the best.) This astonishingly athletic duo - real-life brothers Fayard and Nicholas - debuted in early-30s shorts, when Harold was just 11, then made a name for themselves through extraordinary routines that typically began with some rhythmic shuffling, then built exponentially, until by the end they were skipping with handkerchiefs, leaping over each other's heads while doing the splits, or backflipping. Fox, who held their contract in the early-'40s never incorporated the pair into the plots of their films, meaning they could snip the stand-alone scenes from musicals when they played in racist areas of the South. Yes, you read that right. If you've got a few minutes spare some time this week, you should really check out these numbers - three of their best - as they're just about the most amazing thing ever to happen on a cinema screen.

Things for you to watch and enjoy:
Chattanooga Choo Choo (also featuring Dorothy Dandridge), from Sun Valley Serenade
Down Argentine Way from Down Argentine Way
Jumpin' Jive from Stormy Weather.
Be a Clown from The Pirate. If you recognise the tune, it was purloined - uncredited, I believe - for the Make 'em Laugh number in Singin' in the Rain.

***

2. Frank McHugh
"Haaaaaerh... haaaaerh... haaaaerh." The best laugh in the movies (referred to by fans as the "one, two, three") belonged to the best character comic of the Golden Age - though McHugh did star in a couple of features: He Couldn't Say No, opposite an improbably-smitten Jane Wyman (they generally occupied different strata in the star stakes), and Three Men on a Horse. McHugh, much admired by contemporary and friend James Cagney, could play it straight as well as most - check out his moving performance in the teary One-Way Passage - but it was as an affable, often confused comic foil that he excelled. Who else could have kept up with William Powell's tour-de-force in I Love You Again? McHugh did - and perhaps even surpassed him - with that drunken phone call to Edmund Lowe. And he's just bloody amazing leading a superb ensemble in Three Men on a Horse. In fact, you could argue that the three funniest comedies of the '30s and '40s all feature McHugh: that, I Love You Again and Blessed Event.

Become an instant fan here:
From McHughTube, lol lol lol, a funny moments montage with lots of spoilers.

***

3. Three Smart Girls (Henry Koster, 1936)
The pinnacle of Deanna Durbin's career: a blissful mix of comedy, romance and lovely music. Canadian child star Durbin - an ordinary kid with an extraordinary operatic voice - was a simply terrific performer and she's in her element here: powering a sentimental, wonderfully entertaining movie that's a bit like The Parent Trap, but with songs instead of twins. Though he sometimes claimed otherwise for propaganda purposes, Durbin's breakthrough film, One Hundred Men and a Girl, was Churchill's favourite movie. Both are available as part of various box-sets, or on their own.

For your delectation:
The trailer.

***

Decent quality pics in short supply, I'm afraid.

4. How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Love You, When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life (from Royal Wedding)
The MGM number with the longest title of all, and one of my favourites. Hilarious, invigorating and exhilarating, especially when the beat speeds up and Fred starts striding around the stage, being all awesome. It's from Royal Wedding, which has four or five of the greatest musical interludes of all time, but devotes too much of its running time to Winston Churchill's daughter Sarah (Fred's worst leading lady), rather than the excellent Jane Powell.

Because I am nice:
The full routine in all of its considerable glory.

***

5. Joan Leslie
The most purely likeable actress ever to grace the screen - a fine actor, brilliant reactor, top dancer, great singer and master of the cartoonish expression later popularised by Debbie Reynolds. She starred with Gary Cooper, Cagney and Astaire, and even played herself - as a romantic lead - in wartime flagwaver Hollywood Canteen.

Now see her in action:
Joan performing A Lot in Common with You with Fred in The Sky's the Limit.

***

6. Remember My Forgotten Man (from Gold Diggers of 1933)
The production number to end them all: a jaw-dropping crystallisation of Depression-era America in which the myriad ills and marauding malaises afflicting the Land of the Free are paraded across the screen for seven whole minutes. Crippled soldiers sold out by their nation, gaunt, starving widows and bereaved old women take the place of chorus girls, before the massed ranks of the proletariat march relentlessly towards the camera, like something out of a Communist propaganda film. Astonishingly bold and confrontational, it could only have been made by one American studio: Warner Bros, where writers and directors injected searing social comment into the most innocuous-looking entertainments - in this case, a Dick Powell musical. Kudos too to musical director Busby Berkeley for scoring a key passage with a bluesy vocal by a black singer, Etta Moten. Remember My Forgotten Man is remarkably powerful, deeply moving and - aside from The Grapes of Wrath, a remarkable translation of Steinbeck's book crafted by John Ford and noted union-basher Daryl F. Zanuck in 1940 - remains the most striking, outrageously left-wing bit of film ever to emerge from mainstream Hollywood.

See it here:
And be astounded.

***

7. Mickey Rooney really acting
He's much maligned, our Mickey, and sometimes with good cause. There's that, err, questionable performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's ("Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, Miss Gorightery!"), lacklustre turns in films like Pulp and a tendency towards absurd caricature in pictures that I nevertheless delight in: Boys Town, the Andy Hardy series and those other musicals with Judy Garland that helped make him a star, the pick of them being Girl Crazy. There's a lot more to Rooney, though, namely the dramatic chops that saw him described by Tennessee Williams as "the greatest actor of all time". When he was encouraged - perhaps even forced - to dial it down, Rooney displayed a simple style, emotions never far from the surface, that was devastatingly effective. In The Human Comedy he plays an adolescent forced to grow up ahead of time, as the ravages of work take their toll on his home town. In National Velvet, he's unforgettable as the gifted, mysterious, duplicitous horse trainer fighting his demons as he primes a gelding for the biggest race of its life. They're two of the most affecting, revelatory performances in cinema history. A few impressive roles followed, Rooney wrestling memorably with the fictionalised difficulties of Lorenz Hart in the musical biopic Words and Music - which couldn't mention that Hart's main problems related to being gay - but he seemed to lack a handle on exactly what his strengths were, overplaying terribly given the merest whiff of a chance. It'll probably take him shuffling off this mortal coil to get the credit he's always deserved, but you can beat the rush by checking out these twin peaks of screen acting, in which the biggest box-office earner of 1939, 1940 and 1941 briefly turned into the best actor in America.

Watch this:
Rooney's Homer delivers a telegram to the mother of a soldier in The Human Comedy.

***

8. Tuna vs Lion (from The Other Guys)
For a change of pace, here's one of my favourite scenes from The Other Guys, among the funniest - and most underrated - comedies of the past few years. Will Ferrell is an unsmiling, officious cop whose commitment to keeping his job desk-bound raises the ire of his partner, the perpetually furious Mark Wahlberg.

Watch it here:
Tuna vs Lion.

***

9. Jojo (from Etre at avoir)
Here's perhaps the cutest movie character of all-time - and he's real. Jojo is the undisputed star of the 2002 documentary Etre et avoir, the simple story of a small primary school in rural France. He can't wash his hands properly, he can't work a photocopier, but he has just seen a wasp. Awwwwwwwww.

See this:
Jojo has trouble getting his hands entirely clean.

The Lookout, Christmas and Downton Abbey - Reviews #88

2011-11-20T22:36:00.001Z

*SEVERE SPOILERS*
The Lookout (Scott Frank, 2007) - This is a truly exceptional character-study-cum-crime-thriller about a former high school hockey star (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) trying to put back the pieces of his life, four years on from causing a car crash that took his girlfriend's left leg and killed two friends. Without a short-term memory, subsidised and patronised by his family, he works nights as a janitor in a bank, sequencing his days in biro. Then he meets charismatic, gaunt Matthew Goode, who introduces him first to a red-haired Luvlee (Isla Fisher) and then to some big plans. Gordon-Levitt's performance is absolutely astonishing - from his odd, shuffling walk (the legacy of his physical injuries) to the pained way he forces out sentences, and his guilt-stricken emoting, articulated partly through an unusually effective voiceover. For me, he's one of the best two or three actors of his generation, and I have never seen him do anything comparable to this - not even Brick.

Like another masterpiece of recent years, Winter's Bone, the film knows what its strength is and zeroes in on it: a compelling protagonist forced to trudge through a swamp of moral degradation in search of the money to ease their burden. The noir-literate script by Out of Sight scribe Frank is extremely eloquent and precise, there are solid supporting turns from Goode, Fisher and Jeff Daniels - playing Gordon-Levitt's blind flatmate - and the chilly cinematography from Alar Kivilo adds to the atmosphere of isolation and quiet desperation pervading this extraordinary directorial debut. The Lookout is what I hoped Memento would be like. It doesn't trick or abuse its hero. It doesn't rely on gimmickry. It shows the human cost of a fleeting error of judgement, the devastating fall-out from one moment of idiocy. And then a second. It's a compassionate, incisive drama so real, so sure-footed, so devoid of cliche, that it just blew me away. (4)

***

*MINOR SPOILERS*
Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009) - This is a modern sci-fi masterpiece, reminiscent of Silent Running in its intelligent story, retro visuals and atmosphere of loneliness and melancholia. Sam Rockwell is a Moon-based technician, nearing the end of a three-year contract harvesting energy for Earth, who starts to believe that he's not alone. Is he going mad, or is there more to his mission than meets the eye? Rockwell is absolutely stunning in a perilously difficult, demanding part, Kevin Spacey does a great job voicing his robotic colleague (whose changing "emotions" are hilariously detailed via a little yellow face) and the superb Clint Mansell score effectively soundtracks the dizzying narrative as it traverses through confusion and heartbreak to potential salvation. There's also a bit where Rockwell does a funny dance. (4)

SHORT: Whistle (Duncan Jones, 2002) - Prior to Moon, this was the sum of Jones' directorial career: a short notable for its ludicrous story - a hitman lives in a house way up a mountain, assassinating political leaders with his computer thanks to a long-range missile - poor acting, and one glimmer of brilliance: that arresting final shot. How on earth did he get clearance to use David Bowie's Subterraneans on the soundtrack? Oh I see. (1.5)

***

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet, 2007) – Lumet’s final film is a densely-plotted heist film, rich in misery and human drama, about a pair of brothers – sweaty, arrogant Philip Seymour Hoffman and twitchy, babyish Ethan Hawke – who decide to knock off their parents’ jewellery store. The time-shifting script is cleverly assembled and Lumet’s handling is typically meticulous: the movie’s cumulative power amassing by the minute as it did in the his seminal cop-corruption drama, Prince of the City. Hawke is very good, Albert Finney gives one of his better turns of recent years as the pair’s father, and Marisa Tomei does her best in a slightly muddled part, but Hoffman blows them all away with an astonishingly effective, multi-layered performance. His flailing real estate salesman appears at first glance to be an utter shit, but people rarely occupy such extremes, and after nearly two hours in his company, you see the hurt, the flecks of human decency amidst the amorality, violence and bitter desperation. A few scenes go on a little long and those featuring a camp, unsympathetic drug dealer (“My mom’s dying”, “Bummer”) seem to have been shoehorned in for the sake of plot convenience, but this gripping film – full of anger, compromise and regret – is a fitting swansong to Lumet’s brilliant career. (3.5)

***

Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993) - Linklater's breakthrough is less pretentious than the films he made either side - Slacker and Before Sunrise - with the characters living and breathing, rather than acting as conduits for his assorted philosophical musings. It's a low-key, well-acted ensemble drama about freshmen and seniors celebrating the last day of school in 1976, with a few good jokes and a cast of stars-to-be, including Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey, Milla Jovovich, Joey Lauren Adams and Parker Posey. Some characterisations are better and more detailed than others, the standouts being Jason London's "Pink" - a compassionate, forthright star-quarterback-turned-stoner - and Wiley Wiggins's awestruck Mitch, embarking on his first all-nighter. It's always nice to see Adam Goldberg too, playing a nebbish questioning his place in the world. With its period high school setting, sympathetic look at dropouts, and themes of anti-authoritarianism and personal honour, it's clearly a key influence on Apatow and Paul Feig's Freaks and Geeks. More importantly, it's an enjoyable and insightful film on its own terms, a handful of memorable male characters making up for the periodic dramatic lulls (there are a few scenes in which people just drive past each other shouting) and underwritten female roles. (3)

See also: Goldberg went on to appear in the two best episodes of Friends, Terence Malick's The Thin Red Line and Julie Delpy's: 2 Days in Paris.

***

The Angel Doll (Alexander Johnston, 2002) - Overly sentimental Christmas film set in 1950, with aspirations beyond both its budget and its talents. Parachuted in for the present day framing device, former Altman co-conspirator Keith Carradine is the patriarch looking back on his childhood - and his friendship with poor kid Whitey (Cody Newton), who dreamed of acquiring an "angel doll" for a younger sister dying of polio. There are some nice moments in a kind of sub-Stand by Me manner: storytelling around a campfire, bonding in a junkyard, ragging a burgeoning dickhead who then falls off his bike; and both the kids do a decent job, even if Newton has the voice of a 50-year-old homicide detective. But the supporting cast is less impressive and the script veers from the story I was quite enjoying (aside from the mawkish superimposition of the terminally ill girl in the play-within-a-film - bleurgh) to curiously underdeveloped subplots about race and tolerance. It's also saddled with a curious tendency to miss out parts of its narrative at key junctures and, having aimed for weepie territory with an ill-judged twist near the end, then entirely fails to provide the anticipated climax, as Carradine just lounges around, wittering about dolls. It's apparently based on a true story, though, so if that's the way things really happened, fair enough. A decent script editor and a couple of better grownups in the period scenes could still have made it flow a whole lot better. Michael Welch, playing the young Carradine, is apparently now an integral part of the Twilight universe. The film is dedicated to director Johnston, who died shortly after filming wrapped. (2)

***

DTV: The Littlest Light on the Christmas Tree (Anthony and John Gentile, 2004) - It's not really Christmas yet, but my fiancee had added this to LoveFilm and they just couldn't control themselves, so we watched it last night. It's a minor animation, very much for children, with primitive CGI, broad characterisation and a surprisingly large number of original songs for a 45-minute direct-to-video production. The visuals are so clunky that it would surely have worked better as a hand-drawn affair or a radio play, but its heart is in the right place and there is a good bit where the tree ornaments come to life - the quality of the animation suddenly ratcheting up a notch as a clown unicycles along a tightrope and some inexplicably nasty Christmas lights decide to duff up the eponymous figure. Not the best Christmas film I'll see this year, but so nice that being any harsher than that just seems mean. (2)

***

*ONE INSTANCE OF CHILDISH SWEARING IN THIS REVIEWS*
The Man (Les Mayfield, 2005) – Haha, this is rubbish! Eugene Levy plays a dental supplies salesman roped into helping tough cop Samuel L. Jackson bust a gun-running ring in this appalling action-comedy, which imagines itself to be Midnight Run, witlessly spoofs Pulp Fiction, but takes longer to watch than it apparently did to write – and only runs 83 minutes. There are a couple of OK human moments, but the “comedy” is unstintingly abysmal. Lol, he did a fart. Lol, he’s about to be anally violated by customs officials. Fuck me, it’s bad. (1)

***

*SPOILERS*
TV: Downton Abbey (Series 2, 2011) - Diverting but disappointing second series that lapses into ludicrousness on a dishearteningly regular basis. The good: Maggie Smith, Matthew and Mary. The bad: plotting straight of cheap melodrama, Brendan Coyle (whose line readings are all absolutely identical) and Daisy, who is just flat-out terrible. Fellowes is clearly more comfortable examining the minutiae of aristocratic life than he is dealing with the lot of the servants, whose stories are almost unfailingly uninteresting. There are effective dramatic scenes scattered throughout the series (the two utilising sentimental period tunes were really nicely done), the doomed romantic couple at the centre are great both alone and together, and Smith's waspish one-liners are a joy, but this decidedly erratic fare is ultimately undone by its stale, silly plotting and muddled execution. (2.5)

Source Code, Sixteen candles and six Bob Dylans - Reviews #87

2011-11-10T20:21:00.003Z

*IF YOU DON'T LIKE RUDE WORDS, SKIP THIS ONE*
I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007) – “What’s this shit?” as Greil Marcus memorably enquired of Bob Dylan’s 1970 album, Self Portrait. What indeed? The shape-shifting Dylan is split into six different personas, including a flirtatious, feline ball of wiry hair with no emotions (Cate Blanchett), an 11-year-old black troubadour called Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin), and a poetic, talking head Bob (Pingu from Nathan Barley), being quizzed by an unseen interrogator. They’re all pretty good while a section with a bland Richard Gere – as the old, incognito Billy the Kid – works nicely, but Keith Ledger is wasted in a boring story strand and Christian Batman is just rubbish, mistaking "leaning forward" for "being shy". Haynes' film is based on an intriguing idea and the results are generally entertaining, but it's nevertheless riddled with pretension and emotionally unsatisfying, especially when most of this story has been told so powerfully already in Scorsese’s coruscating, excoriating No Direction Home. (2.5)

***

Rango (Gore Verbinski, 2011) – OK animated feature about a chameleon posing as a hero in the town of Dirt, which works in extended spoofs of spaghetti Westerns and Chinatown, along with some excellent slapstick and a peculiar predilection for jokes about adult health complaints. Johnny Depp’s voicework is a bit strained and the story is bitty in the extreme, but there are effective stretches. Kung Fu Panda 2 was aces, but with this, Tangled and Cars 2, it hasn’t been a great year for animation, all told. (2.5)

***

*SPOILERS*
Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011) – Supremely entertaining sci-f movie that cuts Groundhog Day down to eight minutes and then shoves it into thriller territory. Jake Gyllenhaal is the disorientated war vet reliving the final moments of a commuter’s life in a bid to thwart a terrorist atrocity – whilst falling in love with the doomed acquaintance opposite. There may be plot holes and inconsistencies, while a saccharine pay-off alienated many, but this is so slick, imaginative and well-executed that I didn’t really care. With this, Never Let Me Go and The Adjustment Bureau, it’s been a good year for intelligent sci-fi with a bit of heart. (3.5)

***

Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984) - A sweet story about 16-year-old Molly Ringwald's disastrous birthday, her encounter with a horny geek and her mad crush on a soulful, chiselled jock emerges, shaken, from beneath a mountain of cartoonish gags, materialist moans and objectionable epithets ("fag", "retard", "spaz") in this textbook Hughes comedy-drama. The overwhelming impression is that he didn't trust the central story to hold interest for 100 minutes, or didn't know how to adequately sustain it, so just started furiously padding. Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall - as the nerd with a litany of fictional sexual conquests - are both very good in their realistic, star-making parts, and Justin Henry is funny as Ringwald's acerbic little brother, but the ratio of great scenes to disposable ones is about 50:50 (special mention for the terrible mafia subplot) and every moment Ringwald is off screen, it really suffers.

The film has attracted criticism for its supposedly racist Chinese character, but he's kind of a hero and - even taking into account the bit where he leaps out of a tree in traditional dress, shouting "Banzai!", which is hilarious - he's no more of a stereotype than the other characters, with the humour arising from his exuberant idiocy rather than his ethnic background. I should also mention for all John Cusack afficionados (and who could claim to be anything else and still expect to be taken seriously), that he has a fun part as one of Hall's even geekier pals. While Hughes' breakthrough film is maddeningly unfocused, at its heart is something really nice and tender: anchored by a new kind of screen teen. By the '90s and early-'00s, such adolescent angst would be boiled down to its emotional core in heartstopping shows and films like My So-Called Life and Ghost World. Here, as in so many "me decade" films, the universal themes are somewhat obscured by consumerist griping, gratuitous tits and misguided frat house-ry. (3)

***

*MILD SPOILERS*
Parks and Rec: Season 3 (2011) - What a wonderful programme this is. Warm, funny and - when necessary - razor-sharp, with an irresistible ensemble. It's great to see Adam Scott slotting into the cast so well: he gets the biggest laugh of the series with his spectacular meltdown on Ya' Heard? With Perd. (4)

See also: That review was rubbish, but don't let that put you off my review of Season 2.

Blue Valentine, Romain Duris and two days in Paris - Reviews #86

2011-10-30T20:37:00.003Z

*SPOILERS*
Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010) - Intense, insightful, semi-improvised indie about the death of a relationship, starring perhaps the two best young actors in the world: Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. He's a former removal man and ambition vacuum who drinks too much and twists around everything she says. She's a put-upon, busy nurse who thwarts his attempts at physical reconciliation and allows the family dog to get run over. The film doesn't make judgements about these flawed, very real characters: it just throws their story onto the screen and forces you to watch as something utterly beautiful disintegrates, until all that remains is malice, unhappiness and desperation. There are fragments of warmth and love, and even a couple of very Gosling-ish jokes ("That's a funny name"), but the overall effect is like being whacked in the face. One of the best I've seen this year. (4)

***

*SPOILERS*
The Beat That My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, 2005) – Audiard, Romain Duris is in trouble in this enigmatic collision of character study, thriller and piano concert. Did you get that? It was like "oh dear”. This star-making vehicle for one of Europe's most interesting, versatile, quiveringly-intense actors chronicles the travails of a low-level gangster and wannabe concert pianist negotiating the shadow of his father, who used to be a somebody in the Parisian underworld. It's a genuinely offbeat film: a collection of rough scenes in which Duris argues with his pops, sulks and rages at his fingers, boffs his associate's wife and later tries to beat someone to death with a briefcase. It's also largely brilliant, lit by Duris' shambling, megawatt persona and full of brilliantly-observed passages ruminating on such interesting subjects as family, honour and violence. It is a remake of the '70s American film, Fingers. I'm sick and tired of the French remaking American films, just because their audiences are too lowbrow to watch anything with subtitles. As observed recently by some otherwise insufferable bore on Radio 4, it's also an interesting companion piece to the recent Drive. (3.5)

***

2 Days in Paris (Julie Delpy, 2007) - Very entertaining portrait of a Franco-American couple (Julie Delpy and Adam Goldberg) who spar, bicker, quibble and sporadically make up while spending two peculiar days in the City of Light. Revealing, intelligent and directed with a truly original eye, meaning that you can forgive some false steps and a feeling - which soon vanishes - that you've already seen this, and it was called Before Sunset. Delpy and Goldberg are both superb. (3.5)

***

*SOME SPOILERS*
Outrageous Fortune (Arthur Hiller, 1987) is a very daft, very '80s but kind of enjoyable buddy movie starring Bette Midler and Diane off of Cheers. They're the chalk-and-cheese New Yorkers who – like Team America's Gary Johnson – have to use their acting powers to save the day, after two-timing boyfriend (Peter Coyote) turns out to be a Russian mole. This action comedy is a bit predictable – not dissimilar to Hiller's The In-Laws, which is much better – but for all its cheesiness and implausibility (why do they keep running away once they've knocked a lone bad guy to the ground?), I got quite into it. George Carlin turns up near the end as a faux-Native American tracker, if that's of interest, and there's also an appearance from Altman regular John Schuck. When he was born, I bet the doctor took one look at his face, turned to his parents and said: "Congratulations - it's a character actor!"(2.5)

***

Tangled (Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, 2010) – A princess with magic hair (Mandy Moore, whose voicework is terrible) is swiped from her cradle by a manipulative old bag and kept in a dock-off tower, but dreams of one day escaping. Then into her closeted universe (and ultimately her closet) comes cocksure thief Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi). Disney's spin on the Rapunzel legend has its moments of excitement and slapstick levity – not least the I've Got a Dream set-piece, in which a barroom of thugs reveal a more arty side – and an agreeably sly, passive-aggressive baddie. But it's let down by erratic computer animation, the mannered, stagey butchering of a pleasant song score and a second half in which the extremely entertaining comic relief – an expressive, Gromit-esque chameleon – largely disappears. But I suppose I should have expected that from a chameleon. As in so many of its lesser films, Disney applies a thick layer of hideously mawkish, sanctimonious, patronising sentiment to any sequence it possibly can. (2.5)

***

... and a couple of Judd Apatow films I'd missed:

Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green, 2008) - Process server Seth Rogen witnesses a murder and is forced to go on the run with his weed dealer (James Franco) in this paradoxically enthusiastic stoner comedy. Most stoner comedies aren't funny unless you're, well, on drugs (French Connection II was a particularly poor effort), but this one's a slight cut above, thanks to an appealing performance from Franco as the dazed dealer and a typically amusing one from Rogen - the pair reuniting after Freaks and Geeks, also produced by Judd Apatow. It's very minor, there aren't enough good jokes and the shift into action at the climax doesn't work, but it's kind of sweet in its muddled way and the leads make a nice pair. (2.5)

Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby (Adam McKay, 2006) - Unpleasant, self-indulgent but sometimes funny Will Ferrell vehicle, in which the star's insufferable speed freak takes stock car racing by storm, before crashing out in a ball of invisible fire (it'll make sense if you watch it) - only to rise again. It's directed by regular Ferrell collaborator McKay, but the improv approach that worked sporadically on Anchorman largely fails them here, as it would with Step Brothers. For every genuinely great line ("So when you say psychosomatic, you mean, like he could start a fire with his thoughts?") there are a half-dozen that just don't work, and the supporting cast of foul-mouthed kids, a grasping wife, a drug-dealing absent father and a neglected pensioner are more upsetting than funny. Ferrell readjusting to life in the fast lane by driving at 26mph made me laugh, and having him evade trackside flunkies by running in circles wearing only his pants is always going to work, but the film is ultimately too cold and cruel to engender any goodwill, which is what's needed when the material is as spotty as this. On the plus side, McKay and Ferrell's fourth collaboration, the cop comedy The Other Guys, is an unheralded classic - the improvisation augmenting rather than replacing a strong narrative and proper characters. "Gater needs his gat." (2)

***

*SPOILERS*
TV: Parks and Recreation: Season 2 (2009-10) - As anyone will tell you, this second season is a massive step up from the first: think the gulf between Tom Waits' first two records, or Buster Keaton's Three Ages and Our Hospitality. This time around the characters feel real, their low-level quandaries important, whether that means romantic entanglements, some misguided plan to sell unhealthy health bars at the city's parks or dealing with the fallout from marrying two gay penguins. The nominal lead is Amy Poehler - playing eternally positive workaholic Leslie Knope - while Aziz Ansari's desperate, perma-grinning Tom Haverford has garnered most of the critical plaudits, but it's three other members of the ensemble that really make this sublime, satirical series fly: lazy libertarian boss Nick Offerman, pleasant, witless shoeshiner Chris Pratt and sarcastic, deadpan intern Aubrey Plaza. It's just a joy. (4)

***

BOOK: Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing by Lee Server - Server can be a superb biographer, one of the elite crowd who are both diligent researchers and excellent writers (ex-tabloid hack Howard Sounes may have unearthed Dylan's financial records and his second wife, but I still have nightmares about the songwriter's lyrics being "like magic birds that fly into the ear of the listener"). In 2001, he published the definite Bob Mitchum tome, Baby I Don't Care, a fascinating story and brilliant character study told in an awesome prose style that aped Mitchum's own hip, jive-talkin' persona, full of the "hell"s, "man"s and "baby"s that littered the actor's vernacular. This follow-up, which curiously omits Gardner's supposed fondness for "golden showers" - mentioned in the Mitchum book - is a somewhat less compelling affair due to its often dislikeable heroine, events that seem to repeat themselves on an endless cycle and muted stylistic leanings that can probably be filed under "Diet Faulkner". It's still zippy and entertaining, with a particularly strong mid-section (from Gardner's arrival in Hollywood to her time filming Bhowani Junction) and numerous memorable anecdotes involving such supporting cast members as Frank Sinatra, Ernest Hemingway and Luis Miguel Dominguín - the best bullfighter in Spain. (3)

CLAIRE DANES SPECIAL

2011-10-22T08:00:00.001+01:00

That's a headline. She is. We like her. She's completely lacking in self-consciousness in a way that very few performers are and it makes her characterisations seem very truthful - which is probably the best thing you can say about an actor. We'll tell you more about that one day, but for now here are four reviews. You can read about Romeo + Juliet and Me and Orson Welles elsewhere on the blog.

TV: My So-Called Life (1994) - A phenomenal piece of television that swells with confidence and ambition as it progresses through a single 19-episode season. It begins as standard, sometimes humourless but insightful teen fare largely carried by Claire Danes' wonderful performance, then becomes ever more nuanced, adventurous and hard-hitting, lit by a brilliant ensemble (special mention for Wilson Cruz) and balanced by quiet sentiment and great little comic passages ("Are you Brain?"), leading to a note-perfect pay-off. The plotlines featuring the parents can't match the startling truth of those dealing with teen life, but then what can? Danes' tour-de-force remains simply one of the most important and arresting ever to grace the small screen. Her unconventional, give-everything form of emotional expression, and her innate understanding of how human beings develop and change meant she always deserved a great career. It's been a rocky, fascinating road since then, studded with curious gems; now with the critical acclaim afforded Temple Grandin and Homeland, it looks like she has it. (4)

***

*SOME SPOILERS*
Shopgirl (Anand Tucker, 2005) - It has a great cold neon look, a commanding central performance from Claire Danes and an impressive, oppressive musical score, but nothing about this oddly downbeat romantic drama, adapted from a Steve Martin novella*, quite fits together. Danes plays a lonely department store salesgirl who's looking for love, but finds only schlubby logo designer Jason Schwartzman. Then charming, aloof, slightly melted-looking middle-aged businessman Martin strolls into her life. There are a couple of cracking scenes - Danes asking "Why don't you love me?" will live long in the memory and her climactic chat with Martin is very well-handled - but Martin himself is a bit creepy (he's always been better at wacky than sincere) and Schwartzman's character - though amusing - is too dislikeable and ridiculous to be a credible romantic figure. It's not a bad film by any stretch, but it's a frustrating one, as every time it touches greatness it immediately falls away again into nothing. The committed way Danes cries: all snotty, with big puffy lips, sums up what a great actress she is. (2.5)
*What did Steve Martin say when he'd finished his book? "Ivor Novella." BOOM!

***

The Rainmaker (Francis Ford Coppola, 1997) - A powerhouse cast ignites this massively entertaining Grisham adaptation about an idealistic young attorney (Matt Damon) taking on the case of a poor leukemia victim whose insurance company is refusing to pay out. In a second, equally engrossing story strand, he also moves to protect a young woman (Claire Danes) hospitalised by her abusive boyfriend. The film slips into melodrama a couple of times and the last five minutes is sadly muddled, but everything else about this courtroom drama is first-rate. Damon is perfect in the lead, Danes scores big in a sensitive, affecting performance, and the support is a veritable who's who of top character actors, including Roy Scheider, Jon Voight (imposing if occasionally silly), Dean Stockwell, Mickey Rourke and Danny Glover. Best of the supporting bunch is Danny De Vito, playing a roguish researcher on the boundaries of the law. (3.5)

***

*SOME SPOILERS*
Stardust (Matthew Vaughn, 2007) - Simply lovely stuff. A post-modern fairy tale, riffing on It Happened One Night, that's stuffed with fun, invention and familiar faces (how on earth did they manage to assemble that cast?!). Charlie Cox is a touch callow in the lead and Pfeiffer's volte-face at the close makes precisely no sense, but those are minor quibbles in what is a tremendously enjoyable film. Claire Danes is cool. (3.5)

Woody finds his mojo, Lisbeth gets a mohawk and Peter Falk disses Albanians - Reviews #85

2011-10-19T20:41:00.004+01:00

*SPOILERS for Midnight in Paris and The Purple Rose of Cairo*
CINEMA: Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011) - He did it! He finally did it! Woody made a good film again! I actually want to give him a little hug. What a sweet, gentle, funny, winning, interesting, relevant, piquant, magical and thoughtful little film this is. So just as The Purple Rose of Cairo was a film that chose reality - for all its flaws - over fantasy, so this nostalgia trip has a few smart little observations to make about living in the past. Owen Wilson, typically excellent, is a Hollywood hack and aspiring novelist who travels to Paris with his shallow fiancee (Rachel McAdams). It's nice enough, but the city of which he fantasises is the Paris of the '20s - of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso and Dali. And out for a stroll one evening, that's exactly where he ends up, wandering into the past, where he converses with long-dead legends and sparks with artists' muse Marion Cotillard. There's the odd dry spot or antique celeb cameo too many, but this is still the best thing Woody has done since Anything Else - and arguably since since Sweet and Lowdown. Added to which, Adrien Brody is a superb Dali. "Rhinoceros." (3.5)

See also:

*SPOILERS*
Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986) - Allen's masterpiece begins with a little surface posturing (you've seen Ibsen, Woody? How terrific), but quickly reveals itself to be the most profound, perceptive and insightful of his many great films. Tracing the romantic fortunes of three actress sisters (Mia Farrow, Dianne Wiest and Barbara Hershey), its superbly-scripted episodes have a rare cumulative power, while the writer-director is at his nicest: understanding and empathising with his characters, and giving each a happy ending. This being Allen, we're not concerned only with love, but also with death - as hypochrondriac Woody (playing Farrow's ex-husband) wrestles with the big questions, flirting with Catholicism and Buddhism, before settling for the Marx Brothers - a subplot that contains the bulks of the film's laughs. A score of '30s standards creates the mood, while the exceptional ensemble nails every nuance of the dialogue: the cast boasting Golden Age luminaries Lloyd Nolan and Maureen O'Sullivan, Bergman favourite Max Von Sydow and Michael Caine. And how about that last line? It always makes me grin. And cry. (4)

***

*MAJOR SPOILERS, SOME OF THEM HAIR-RELATED*
Millennium Trilogy: Extended Editions (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009) - Being the original nine-hour TV extravaganza from which those three The Girl... movies were sculpted, complete with a tasteful, slightly spoiler-heavy animated credits sequence: the buzzing of a taser complete with lively music serving as a wonderfully cathartic metaphor. Dragon Tattoo (Parts 1 and 2) is obviously the best of the bunch, its frankly horrible mystery nevertheless providing a superlative showcase for Noomi Rapace as the endlessly fascinating Lisbeth Salander. Sequel Played with Fire (Parts 3 to 4) is a zippy, intriguing film that delves into her back-story and benefits from excellent acting, though it undeniably suffers from obstinately keeping Lisbeth and co-conspirator Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) apart for its entire duration. Once Salander's protagonist becomes a largely helpless victim in the final two-parter, the series loses something of its energy and its point. On the plus side, and for all its conventionality and fat, Hornet's Nest (Parts 5 and 6) remains an entertaining-enough final instalment: a conspiracy thriller mercifully light on horrendous sexual violence and blessed with a satisfying climactic half-hour. I fancy rocking a mohican if I'm ever hauled up in court due to the machinations of a shadowy organisation known as The Section. (4)/(3.5)/(3)

See also: Our review of the theatrical cut of Dragon Tattoo can be found here.

***

Manderlay (Lars von Trier, 2005) - This sequel to Dogville takes a good 10 minutes to get going - or else for one to acclimatise to its obdurant staginess - but once that's done, it's something pretty special: an exploration of American racism with an argument so incisive, so controversial and so cleverly arrived at that you've just got to marvel at von Trier's massive, swinging testicles. Bryce Dallas Howard is terrific in the Kidman role as gangster's daughter Grace, who pitches up at a plantation in 1933 to find that slavery is still in full flow. Taking over the property through a mixture of might and right, she attempts to turn it into a workers' co-operative, with mixed results, whilst feeling oddly drawn to proud, noble worker William (Isaac De Bankole). It's bracingly original and devilishly clever, with a denouement that's like being smacked in the gob. That's still nothing compared to the end credits: a montage of photos from American history - set once more to Bowie's Young Americans - including pictures of murdered Southern blacks, and a little baby in a Klan hood. (3.5)

***

Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, 2009) - George Clooney gives his best performance to date in this light-but-serious drama that uses the insular existence of a "downsizing expert" to examine the selfishness of modern America. As we learned from North by Northwest - which saw Cary Grant triumphantly arresting a desperate slide into mediocrity - that suntanned smug-suaveness is only interesting (and indeed bearable), if you rupture it, at which time it becomes heartbreaking. The film has something to say, and says it through singular iconography and a distinctive vernacular, so you can forgive it the occasional misfire or loose end. What's harder to take is Reitman leaving out the brilliant "spacesuit" dream sequence cut to Ricky Nelson's Lonesome Town, a perfect visual metaphor that would have lifted the film onto a whole other, ahem, plain, in the same way that heightened Mamas and the Papas climax elevated Morvern Callar to greatness. (3.5)

***

Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster, 2006) - Clever, Charlie Kaufman-esque comedy about an inland revenue agent (Will Ferrell) who begins to hear a disembodied voice (Emma Thompson) narrating his life - and predicting his death. Hoping to get to the bottom of things - and so thwart his impending demise - he enlists the help of literature professor Dustin Hoffman, who suggests he turn his life into a comedy by pursuing an improbable romance with tattooed baker Maggie Gyllenhall. The first half is simply brilliant, full of great jokes and outlandish ideas which are superbly realised, but the film doesn't deliver on that promise, failing to engender sympathy for Ferrell's plight and so appearing strangely aloof and detached as the gag-rate slows. It's still an interesting movie, and there are a couple of genuinely hysterical scenes - Ferrell repeatedly double-taking while brushing his teeth, and later being quizzed by Hoffman about his life ("Do you find yourself inclined to solve murder mysteries in large, luxurious homes to which you may or may not have been invited?") - but it's neither engaging enough to be another Purple Rose, nor bold enough to approach the warped, delirious mayhem of, say, Synecdoche, New York. (3)

***

*SPOILERS FOR FIRST 20 MINUTES*
Ghost Town (David Koepp, 2008) is a surprisingly successful attempt to turn Ricky Gervais into a Hollywood romcom lead (who's next, Dudley Moore? Oh right), conventional without appearing compromised, and agreeably lacking in lazy anti-Britishness. Gervais plays a misanthropic dentist who dies on the operating table and returns to life to find he can see ghosts - and they all want his help. The most overbearing is tuxedoed adulterer Greg Kinnear, who's desperate for him to break up the marriage of ex-wife Tea Leoni. There's a bit of Sixth Sense in there, a lot of Groundhog Day and a chunk of Amélie, but Ghost Town does ultimately carve out a small niche of its own, with a fair few laughs (the funniest bit has Gervais being continually interrupted by doctor Kristen Wiig) and some reflective moments from the star that provide the unexpected highpoints. Karl Pilkington said it was good. I should have believed him, but he's been wrong about things before. Like Stephen Hawking being an alien. "I'm not Stephen, I'm just a brain." (3)

***

*SOME SPOILERS*
John Grisham adaptation A Time to Kill (Joel Schumacher, 1996) isn't really in the same league as The Rainmaker, trappings of trashiness serving to blunt the impact of its essentially interesting narrative about race and justice in the Deep South. Matthew McConaughey is a Southern lawyer who springs to the defence of a black man (Samuel L. Jackson) accused of a double-murder, after he guns down the rednecks who raped his 10-year-old daughter. The crusading attorney - who has personal reasons for taking the powder-keg of a case - becomes a target for thugs, while assisted by the usual ragtag band of misfits: a liberal law student (Sandra Bullock), a brilliant old soak (Donald Sutherland in fine form) and a twinkingly immoral pal who deals only in divorce cases (Oliver Platt). McConaughey is very good - this was back in the days when he looked like he might become a really interesting actor - and he features in the film's four best scenes: talking to Bullock in the diner, to Sutherland in the courtroom corridor, to Jackson in his cell the night before summation, and finally to the jury - recounting the rape in sickening detail. The film's celebration of vigilante justice is unpalatable, and a subplot about the rebirth of the KKK is essentially just Mississippi Burning 2 (which no-one wants), but there is enough in the fast-paced narrative and typically strong cast to grip. (3)

***

Sons and Lovers (Jack Cardiff, 1962) - Three of the most idiosyncratic and interesting actors in movie history combine for this fascinating but flawed D.H. Lawrence adaptation. Dean Stockwell doesn't go near a regional accent, but does do a good job in the overwritten part of a sexually-charged young artist from Nottingham troubled by familial responsibility and the sexual repression of his true love. Trevor Howard overdoes it a bit as his eternally bellowing coal miner father, who "acts low because thee think I'm low" (or words to that effect), apparently having wandered in from an altogether different movie. I just kept thinking of the cleverly inverted Python sketch, Working Class Playwright. So the film belongs to Wendy Hiller in one of her sporadic, effortlessly devastating big screen appearances, incorporating a couple of little breakdowns that made me whimper. Which other actress has ever made you feel - actually feel - something of the loss of a child, or the ruination of another? The script is often too long-winded and thematically jumbled for the film to approach greatness, but there's no questioning the power of individual scenes and the whole thing is wonderfully-shot by Jack Cardiff - a couple of hideous back-projection shots aside. (3)

***

*SPOILERS*
Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest, 1996) is a bit overbalanced by Guest's obvious turn as a camp theatrical producer, but this tale of am-dram hopefuls waiting for a Broadway bigshot is quite nicely done, especially in the opening scenes, which have a Parks and Rec feel. It also avoids turning the climactic show into a series of calamities - a clear pitfall - building up goodwill through some clever, throwaway jokes and its gallery of likeable schlubs. Its main failing is that it can't ever hope to touch the Bilko episode that also deals with the staging of a small-scale historical play - probably my favourite ever. I think Guffman is supposed to be a mixture of Godot and a MacGuffin. (2.5)

***

Clerks II (Kevin Smith, 2006) - I saw this more out of hope than conviction - a director notable for his diminishing returns, revisiting the only great film he's ever made? - but it wasn't bad. Well, the inter-species erotica was appallingly unfunny, Randal is too much of a bully in the early exchanges and much of the best stuff is locked away in the deleted scenes, but there are a handful of neat routines, the bit in the jail is genuinely touching and the set-piece about Randal's grandmother is one of the funniest things I've seen all year. Smith also seems like a thoroughly nice chap, which makes me feel bad about disliking so many of his movies. (2.5)

***

*SKIP THIS REVIEW IF RUDE WORDS OFFEND*
Equilibrium (Kurt Wimmer, 2002) - Very silly but largely entertaining sci-fi yarn about a world in which emotions are banned (yeah, I know). It all looks and feels oddly amateurish, though it moves at a fair clip, and the action sequences, Christian Bale's performance and the scenes with his kids are pretty effective. I only really watched it for the titan that is Emily Watson - she doesn't have much screen time and is doing a very quiet Irish accent, but offers a couple of nice moments amidst a large amount of complete and utter fucking nonsense. (2.5)

***

Bowfinger (Frank Oz, 1999) - Pretty good comedy about a down-at-heel wannabe movie producer Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) whose plans to make alien flick Chubby Rain are shot down by superstar Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy). Undeterred, Bowfinger begins to follow him, staging scenes around the terrified star, who becomes convinced he's the target of pod people. When Ramsey checks into a cultish rehab centre, Bowfinger needs a Plan B - and turns to dorkish Ramsey lookalike Jiff (Murphy again). It's scattershot stuff but there are a few inspired moments of silliness and some decent satirical barbs, while Murphy gives probably his best performance of the decade in a dual role. Martin's pretty good too, though just when you think he's not going to indulge that unfortunate penchant for terribly unfunny mock-kung fu, he gives in. (2.5)

***

Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008) - Meh. This was what all the fuss was about? Still, it turns out that weapons launched by the Americans never harm innocent civilians. I suppose that is news. Gwyneth Paltrow always seems to land these old-fashioned, appealing characters (see also: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), but lacks the smarts or the spark to do anything with them. (2)

***

Yeah, the excellent period detail doesn't really come across in this poster.

Tune in Tomorrow... (Jon Amiel, 1990) - Radio soap opera writer Peter Falk helps (or hinders?) the course of true love between news writer Keanu Reeves and his sort-of-aunt Barbara Hershey in this '50s-set comedy. Falk is actually quite annoying, Reeves' New Orleans accent is terrible and the plot is very hard to understand, though the relationship between the leads is sweet, there's period atmosphere in spades and it has spoken opening credits - very cool. A subplot about Falk's hatred of Albanians starts off amusingly, then becomes markedly less so as its language becomes horribly reminiscent of anti-semitic Nazi propaganda. (2)

Melancholia, Ryan Gosling and the boy who lived - Reviews #84

2011-10-18T08:21:00.018+01:00

Here are some of the things I've been watching lately. For some reason I've started swearing (I think it's for attention), so if that's likely to offend, don't read on. Otherwise, buckle up for the destruction of planet Earth...

*SERIOUS SPOILERS*
CINEMA: Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011) – We start at the end – the end of the world, and a series of surreal, dreamlike images, set to Wagner, depicting the possible final moments of two sisters, a young boy, a few dozen birds and a horse. One sees Kirsten Dunst's Justine with her hands pointing skywards, spindly tassles of electricity crackling from her fingers – among the most arresting moments of the year. Another, which shows Charlotte Gainsbourg's legs disappearing into a golf course, is less successful. You imagine these passages will also close the picture, but they don't – they seem to belong to a parallel universe. This is a von Trier film after all, and he's a contrary bastard. He's also got a handheld camera fetish, and no sooner has he wowed us with those painterly, uber-ambitious snapshots, than he snaps back and we're in firmly Dogme-ish territory.

The first half – titled "Justine” – is set at the character's wedding, where the fantasy nuptials are interspersed with her decidedly erratic behaviour. The napping, sobbing and selfishness nails the banality and exhaustion of clinical depression, but while there is no rationalism in mental illness, a sex scene with a stranger in a golf bunker seems fraudulent and thrown in for attention. The director's barbs at the PR industry, amusing as they are, also distract from what should be the focus: the relationship between Justine and her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who suffers from depression's own stressy sister: anxiety. All in all, the wedding contains several very powerful scenes, including a heartbreaking sequence in which Dunst unthinkingly abandons a symbolic gift from her husband, but also too many plot threads that lead nowhere and a general feeling that we've been here before – not at the end of the world, but at the wedding of a troubled young woman (Breaking the Waves), peopled by a family that hate each other's guts (the superb Festen). This lengthy set-piece is anchored by an impressive performance from Dunst. I don't think she's perfect – for one thing, there's a gaping chasm between her tremendous visual expressiveness and her vocal delivery, which is passable at best – but the dialogue-light screenplay suits her, and the manner in which Justine's mask slips and then evaporates is poignantly, effectively realised. Like George Cukor and William Wyler, von Trier is a great director of actresses – Emily Watson, Björk and Nicole Kidman have all done their best work for him – and Dunst's meaty characterisation is an eye-opener, if not a complete triumph. He also draws a fine, though less showy, performance from Gainsbourg, and while John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling are a touch underused (neither is on top form anyway, so perhaps that's no great loss), there's some unexpectedly strong work from Kiefer Sutherland as Gainsbourg's wealthy, secretly fretful husband.

The second half – "Claire” – is like a Bergman film, if Bergman had a thing about horses and was a Neanderthal, though the often uninspired domestic wranglings are lifted by strong acting and a handful of masterful scenes: Justine beating her cherished stallion to within an inch of its life, a harrowing, realistic sequence in which her depressive is flatly terrified of taking a bath, and a neat bit of gimmickry that sees the approaching Melancholia looming large over a homemade "are we all going to die?” device. Yup, looks like it. Whatever flaws the film has, and there are clearly many, they're compensated for by a final 15 minutes that's extremely memorable, and a final 10 seconds that might be the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen in the cinema: the incoming planet dominating the horizon, dwarfing the three figures in the foreground, before a wave of fire rolls in, obliterating the land and finally swallowing up the screen. Not a great film, then, but a film with truly great moments. (3)

***

*LOTS MORE SPOILERS*
CINEMA: Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011) – With its neon credits, synth-led song score and obscenely hip lead performance from Ryan Gosling – another movie psychopath from whom we can all take fashion tips – Drive is an instantly iconic film. It’s also a near-classic, a potent fusion of actioner, crime flick and doomed romance that needed just a stronger script to nudge it into that top bracket. Gosling is a Hollywood stunt man and getaway-driver-for-hire whose lonely life is changed by a chance meeting with neighbour Irene (Carey Mulligan). He falls for the doe-eyed waitress and develops a cosy rapport with her son, Benicio. But when her husband comes home from prison and finds he’s still in debt to some bald gangsters (one of whom looks really like White Power Bill from Arrested Development), Gosling decides the only way he can protect the woman he loves is by going vroom-vroom for the hoods. Fuck me, that’s a good set-up. The comparisons to Shane have been made, but there’s another obvious parallel with Taxi Driver – seemingly referenced in the poster – as it slowly dawns on us that this guy we’ve been driving around with is a bit unhinged, and the plot also borrows from ‘70s classic Charley Varrick, another film in which our anti-hero accidentally swipes laundered money and finds that the mob is quite annoyed.

Drive is a great experience – with a matchless feel, a killer performance from Gosling (simply the best actor around today) and fine chemistry between him and Mulligan. It intelligently mirrors his shifts between coldness and warmth, while containing frenzied bursts of the old ultra violence – I’d never seen anyone offed with a knife and fork before. But the film is undermined by its comparatively uninteresting subplots featuring Bryan Cranston (who’s good in a clichéd part), Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks and Christina Hendricks, and the central character’s muddled code of ethics – bleeding into bloodlust – which can make him hard to side with, even when he’s chewing that toothpick in such a cool way. But if it’s not quite the masterpiece I was greedily anticipating, it’s still one of the year’s best and another key credit for an actor who’s proving to be infallible. All together now: “A real human being, and a real hero...” (3.5)

***

CINEMA: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (David Yates, 2011) – I only just caught up with the series and missed them all at theatres, so I hopped on a train to see the last one on the big screen. In 3D. On my own. My first solo cinema trip ever, I think. I'm not sure it's as streamlined or as adept at juggling the disparate elements as Azkaban or The Order of the Phoenix, but it offers one excellent set-piece after another and considerable emotional clout thanks to Rowling's touching plotting and some fine work by Rickman, Maggie Smith and Ciaran Hinds. Asked to carry the piece, Radcliffe oscillates between profundity and am dram-level scowling – what a strange actor he is. Fiennes fiennally gets it right as Voldemort (though the way he holds his wand above his target has always been a ingenious little detail - nailing the character's arrogance, contempt and malice, and making him look that bit more threatening). For all its flaws, I've got a lot out of this series. Including a free poster. Go me. (3.5)

Harry Potter: Films 1 to 7 (Various directors, 2001-2010) - I never saw these, as I didn't want my imagination colonised by the films before the books had all come out. A few thoughts:
- Chamber of Secrets is underrated as both a book and film.
- Using Ron as a kind of idiot comic relief in the earlier movies is a hideous error of judgement that completely undercuts the central friendship.
- All the kids playing Riddle do a fine job.
- Azkaban is the best both on page and screen, though Kloves excises several of the most potent passages and ideas.
- Richard Harris is a fantastic Dumbledore. Gambon is lacklustre in the role - a weakness as the series progresses.
- Order of the Phoenix is the second best picture, but hampered by a fucking ridiculous giant that looks like it's been made out of plasticine.
- Half-Blood Prince is a poor adaptation but a very good film.
- Radcliffe and Watson turn into halfway-decent actors; Rupert Grint doesn't. He does, however, turn into Mickey Rooney when he's fed a love potion.
- Oldman and Thewlis are both pretty good, belying the notion that they were replaced by replicants in 1993.

***

CINEMA: Crazy, Stupid, Love (Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, 2011) - I really enjoyed this. Don't be put off by the terrible title, it's probably the best mainstream romantic comedy since Just Like Heaven (shut up, you are wrong): funny, romantic, surprising and with a knockout performance by the mighty Ryan Gosling as a womanising slickster who decides to teach the cuckolded Steve Carell - also excellent - how to pick up girls. Is there anything Gosling can't do? Apparently not. (3.5)

***

CINEMA: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011) - Well, it's not as multi-layered (or as good) as the TV series, but then how could it be? Well, they could have cut out all the footage of Smiley just walking around, which is still in there. The good news: Gary Oldman has remembered how to act! Repeat: GARY OLDMAN HAS REMEMBERED HOW TO ACT. He underplays brilliantly, then cuts (slightly) loose in three wonderful scenes. Best of the lot: his monologue about meeting Karla, employed less effectively as a flashback on the small screen. All in all, it's an extremely well-directed thriller with a deliciously chilly atmosphere. The only real shortcomings: Tom Hardy's curiously wooden performance as Ricki Tarr, changing Connie's line about Empire to something about WWII (oh look, there's the point all the way over there) and an explanation of the culprit's motivations that's far less memorable than in the series. A high (3).

***

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Niels Arden Oplev, 2009) - An unforgettable character study channelled into a gripping mystery, as the eponymous figure (Noomi Rapace) - a damaged young woman with myriad gifts - helps a crusading journalist re-open a 40-year-old murder investigation. The whodunit is interesting and cleverly uncovered (even if the culprit is a tad too obvious for fans of the genre), but where the film really excels is in Rapace's phenomenal characterisation. Her portrait of a woman plagued by unstinting mental anguish is shockingly real. She entertains, enthralls and beguiles, while emerging as perhaps the strongest symbol of female empowerment ever to grace the screen. It's a while since I was so shaken up by a performance. If only they'd rolled the credits as she exited the prison - the coda seems to have wandered in from Oceans Twelve or something. Still, I'll be getting hold of the sequels as a matter of urgency. (4)

***

William + Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996) – The central premise – updating the setting while keeping the dialogue – works well, DiCaprio is dynamic (I don't think he has ever delivered on the promise of his '90s work, despite being taken more seriously nowadays) and once more Claire Danes displays that wonderfully idiosyncratic, unselfconscious acting style, exploding in moments of sudden and complete emotional expression. She's a terrific actress. In other news: Mercutio is shit until he stops dressing as a woman, at which time he becomes quite good. That speech about the hazelnut is still utter drivel, but it was early Shakespeare, so we'll let him off. Luhrmann overdoes the stylistics to begin with, then settles into a more steady, less distracting pattern, making the later concessions to bombast much more effective – particularly DiCaprio's dash to the church, which is fantastic. Good stuff. (3)

***

American: The Bill Hicks Story (Matt Harlock and Paul Thomas, 2009) - The odd unearthed clip aside, this documentary is a strangely unilluminating affair, utilising a pretty amateurish effect that brings old photos to unconvincing life. You'd be better off reading the Cynthia True book and picking up the records and DVDs of Hicks' act instead. His routines are still pretty damn great; well, when he's not babbling on about subjective consciousness like a stoned adolescent. The film itself isn't bad, just kind of ordinary. (2.5)

***

My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) - Distressingly mediocre rendering of the Lerner and Loewe musical (based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion), with an artifical atmosphere, unimaginative staging and a critical absence of heart. Rex Harrison makes a good Professor Higgins and a couple of the best numbers remain largely unscatched (Wouldn't It Be Loverly, On the Street Where You Live), but Hepburn is completely miscast - the dubbing of her vocals is infuriatingly distracting - and Stanley Holloway, who I'm usually rather fond of, is unbelievably irritating as her dad. Still, while I'm Getting Married in the Morning might be the most boring and annoying thing I've seen this year, the biggest letdown is I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face, an absolute gem of a song that's just tossed away. I shouldn't imagine I'll ever sit through this again. Not while there's the glorious Howard/Hiller Pygmalion out there. (2.5)

***

Step Brothers (Adam McKay, 2008) - I have no idea if this is any good. Probably not. Adam Scott provides most of the the best moments - he really is a wonderful comedian; Ferrell offers a few laughs. John C. Reilly's not very funny. It's all a bit too nasty and stupid and unfocused. (2), or something.

***

The Aristocrats (Paul Provenza, 2005) - Shit joke, shit film. (1)

The Fallen Idol, the Great Depression and Woody being wonderful - Reviews #83

2011-10-10T12:49:00.006+01:00

I've been at it again. Watching films, then reviewing them. Here are another 11 write-ups:

"Baines!"
The Fallen Idol (Carol Reed, 1948) - The other Graham Greene/Carol Reed collaboration is arguably even better than The Third Man, as little Bobby Henrey suspects that his hero - butler Ralph Richardson - may have just committed murder. A gutting, slyly witty story about the destruction of childhood innocence, it's brilliantly scripted and directed, with an exceptional performance by Richardson, great work by Henrey and notably ethereal support from the legendary Michèle Morgan, the best actress ever at being photographed through a window (see also: Le quai des brumes). (4)

***

King of the Hill (Steven Soderbergh, 1993) - Dazzling, episodic coming-of-age story, as a quick-witted, kind-hearted 12-year-old (Jesse Bradford) tries to stay one step ahead of school authorities, hotel staff and an anti-semitic cop when he's left to his own devices during the Depression. Soderbergh's third film is like nothing else he's done: moving, funny and truly evocative of the period, the horrors of which are not glossed over. It's similar in texture to both Altman's superlative Thieves Like Us and Terence Davies' The Neon Bible - but even more sure-footed and engrossing. Bradford is flawless in the lead, while the excellent ensemble includes Lauren Hill, a young Adrien Brody and an even younger Katherine Heigl. I've wanted to see this for years and it didn't disappoint. In fact, it exceeded even my ludicrously high expectations. (4)

***

Sweet and Lowdown (Woody Allen, 1999) - Woody's last (and final?) masterpiece. I'm not sure how it would play without Samantha Morton's phenomenal supporting characterisation, but that's something we need never worry about, as she's in it, lending immeasurable heart to this potentially minor drama-mockumentary about a self-centred jazz guitarist (Sean Penn). It's original, it's funny and the ending packs a Purple Rose-esque punch. (4)

***

The Young Master (Jackie Chan, 1980) - Jackie's first film as writer-director remains perhaps his greatest movie, with the slight plot a springboard for numerous incredible fight scenes and bits of stuntwork. It's pretty funny too, as these things go, and there's a notable supporting performance from the star's friend and regular foil Yuen Biao - their battle-of-the-benches being the highlight of this richly enjoyable work. (4)

***

Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005) – A fascinating story and Strathairn's typically superb performance are undermined by iffy pacing (we reach the dramatic climax halfway through), the idiotic framing of the story as being the battle between two models of TV – rather than two models of America – musical interludes that add atmosphere but completely disrupt the momentum of the narrative, and a mystifying subplot featuring Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson. It's entertaining, well-acted and glorious to look at, but a botched job nonetheless. (3)

***

U Turn (Oliver Stone, 2007) is a grisly, nihilistic neo-noir, laced with black comedy, that sees small-time hood Sean Penn stranded in the small town from hell. The storyline is familiar and the worldview is bleak beyond belief, but there's some flavourful dialogue, Penn and Jennifer Lopez make an interesting team and the supporting cast is first-rate, with Billy Bob Thornton, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Danes and Nick Nolte excelling in memorable supporting parts. (3)

***

Mogambo (John Ford, 1953) - Hollywood adventure films generally appear hilariously outdated and offensive today. This one's alright, thanks to the director and his central trio of Gable, Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner, though it retains that unfortunate "Oh look, flamingos" affliction caused by trying to include every last frame of hard-won second unit nature footage. (2.5)

***

*ONE RUDE WORD, BUT IT IS ABOUT JOAN CRAWFORD DANCING, SO THAT'S FINE*
Dancing Lady (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933) - So LoveFilm really do own a copy! Well-worth seeking out this one, not least because it was Fred Astaire's first screen appearance (and the final one of his musicals I tracked down, incidentally). It's based on the false premise that Joan Crawford can dance (she is a fucking horrendous dancer and responsible for the two worst dance numbers I have ever seen: the one they show with a smirk in That's Entertainment! and the hideous blackface number from Torch Song), but it's really stylishly directed by Leonard - some of his gimmicks, like lightning-paced wipes, are way ahead of their time - and the risque script is a real rarity for MGM, even in those Pre-Code times; far more akin to amoral Warner fare like 42nd Street. There's also a top cast making the most of a somewhat tired plot, including Gable, Franchot Tone, Robert Benchley, May Robson (whose role is pretty stupid) and of course Astaire. Ostensibly playing himself, Fred has two numbers and though really he's coasting, it's just great to see him. The next time he graced the screen it would be over at RKO, creating fireworks with a young blonde hoofer by the name of Ginger Rogers, in Flying Down to Rio. (2.5)

***

The Thorn in the Heart (Michel Gondry, 2009) - Largely pointless home video about Gondry's aunt that seems to disprove the idea that every life would make an interesting film. The problem isn't necessarily with the material, though, but the lazy execution. (2)

***

The Killer Elite (Sam Peckinpah, 1975) - This confusing, incredibly cynical actioner is a weak point of its director's oeuvre. The plot sees CIA pawn James Caan double-crossed by his partner (Robert Duvall), then getting the chance for revenge while guarding an Asian politician. The script is all over the place, with clumsy dialogue and characters that make little sense, though Peckinpah's outlandish editing elevates the shoot-outs and Caan earns his pay cheque with a charismatic lead turn. The kung fu sequences are just terrible. (2)

***

Rush Hour 3 (Brett Ratner, 2007) - A bit tired, though Chris Tucker is still hilarious. No he isn't. (1.5)

Review: Ruth Notman at The Old Ship Inn, Lowdham

2011-09-15T19:47:00.024+01:00

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

What I did on my half-day of holiday. Left to right: Folk hero Ruth Notman, an excitable hoodie, and fiddler and singer Bryony Griffith.

"The moral is: 'When you get out of prison, have a wash before you go to a brothel.' It's one I've lived my life by." - Ruth Notman introduces the song Limbo

Pre-amble

Anyone who's been near my ears these past couple of years will know that the two records I've listened to more than any others have been those of Ruth Notman, the Nottingham-born folkie who shot to fame in 2006's BBC Young Folk Award, before strolling into my consciousness a full three years later (the pulse of popular culture has a restraining order against my finger).

For me, a 30-second blast of comic song Johnny Be Fair on a Mike Harding podcast was enough to peg her as another Sandy Denny or Anne Briggs. Her voice was full, one-of-a-kind and overflowing with an infectious, intoxicating joie de vivre. You could hear her smiling as she sang. Further investigation revealed her to possess the single greatest pronunciation of the word "love" in popular music. I snaffled up Threads (2007) and The Life of Lilly (2009), stuck them on my iPod and listened to little else for months on end, lost in a pair of records humming with unbridled joy, interspersed with moments of tenderness, frailty and sorrow that rob the breath from your body.

This blog isn't heavy on hyperbole, but she is, simply, one of the most gifted and singular artists I've encountered. An original in a world of few. A talented writer and a song stylist capable - like Judy Garland and Billie Holiday - of effortlessly articulating precise and piercing emotion.

Alas, being stuck in the 1840s (I did just use the word 'alas') and saddled with both a massive environmental bonnet-bee and a miniscule bank balance, I don't own a car, which has made heading to Ruthie's irregular gigs at often inaccessible venues an unenviable challenge. But, after 18 months of waiting for her to play the Co-op up my street, I relented, snapping up tickets for a pub gig 70 miles away and meticulously planning the eight-hour, eight-train round trip, complete with an overnight stay in a room above the venue. Yeah, I really like Ruth Notman.

So upon arrival, nursing my now ever-capitulating back, dosed up to the eyeballs on sleep-inducing painkillers I was countering with lovely caffeiney Coke (sorry to moan; just setting the scene), myself and my considerably superior half headed right for the good seats, snagging a couple of front row spots.

The gig

In a whirl of perfume and self-deprecation, Ruth and stand-in accompaniest Bryony Griffith of The Demon Barbers (playing fiddle) take to the small stage in the bar area of Lowdham's Old Ship Inn. It's a sell-out, with just the other three front-row seats unoccupied, a gaggle of visiting folkies choosing instead to lean on a well-stocked bar.

Beginning with an ebullient Billy Don't You Weep For Me - the first cut from her first record proper - Ruth proceeds to craft a simply brilliant show that juxtaposes heart-stopping music and charmingly spontanteous repartee. During the two-hour performance, she'll giggle a lot, offer a half-dozen off-the-cuff stories and off-kilter observations ("My Skoda isn't 'bullet grey', it's blue", she says, apropos of very little) and claim to have a "diva-ish" voice that doesn't like hot rooms or carpets. Battling both tonight, as she alternates between keyboards and guitar, it shows no ill effects.

The highlights of the first half are flatly astonishing readings of ballads Lark in the Clear Air, Fause Fause and closer Caledonia - an intensely moving tale of flowering, nostalgic love that somehow tops her versions on record and on YouTube. Elsewhere, the complex syncopations of Limbo get an airing, alongside a capella knockout The Young Banker and A-level composition When the Lonely Day Dies, now shorn of its Westlife-style key-change, as Notman grinningly observes. Little Boxes, made famous by Pete Seeger and definitively recorded for Radio 2 by Ruth, is an unexpected inclusion, delivered in exalting fashion.

Though they've known each other for years, Notman and Griffith have never played together in public before - the accompaniest learning the tunes for this gig from CD. For the audience, it's a real one-off, a chance to hear these familiar songs underscored by violin, rather than accordion or cello, and to hear Ruth harmonising strikingly with Griffith's deep, unorthodox and powerful voice. The guest even does a well-received solo vocal at the keyboards.

After a 20-minute break in which the impossibly friendly star turn accedes to my various grasping requests - signing CDs, telling me about her next project (which will feature a 12-piece band) and listening to my travelling itinerary - the duo returns for more. As a bonus for particularly nosey front-rowers (specifically myself), there's a hushed, backs-to-the-crowd run-through of Johnny Be Fair beneath the hubbub of interval chatter before the show restarts.

Indeed, it's that glorious gateway drug that gets us back underway - a tale of possible incest delivered with a boisterous sense of glee. The jaunty number is followed by an audience request at the keyboards, Ruth pitching us into the emotional torment of Geordie lament Waters of Tyne, with her unforgettable handling of that gobsmacking opening salvo: "I cannot get to my love if I would die..." The Hedger and Ditcher is less fraught thematically, but Notman's sensitive, knowing vocal nails both the song's uncertainty and its wry humour.

Once more, such heartfelt, slower fare is offset by catchy, sing-along tunes: Celtic standard Rory O'McCrory (a song that leans on Ruth's heritage; her Irish mother is in the audience) and a fast, increasingly raucous But Still I Love Him, one of the highlights of Threads - and indeed of the past decade, all told. Here the narrator suffers at the hand of a bad boy, who carouses on her cash, tears up his presents to her and refuses to tuck in his shirt. When Ruth mentioned at university that she thought the song was funny, a classmate told her: "You're sick." Apparently there's an alternate version where the man beats the girl to death.

After a spectacular duet on Life of Lilly climax Hold Back the Tide - sans accompaniment - Griffith treats us to a trio of reels (and Ruth joins us on the front row), before the pair reunite for Country Life, which is categorically "not about the butter". (Shame. Sandy did a killer butter ad - the wonder of the vocal only slightly undercut by the sound of my soul crying - and even John Lydon's had a go. Who's next? I would personally welcome Lou Reed.) Forgotten lyrics and all, it's a joyous end to a show spotlighting Ruthie's myriad virtues: strong songs, a fine line in between-numbers goofing, and the most exciting voice I've heard in 10 years. She was really lovely too - we went and bothered her again at the end, for a photo. There it is at the top.

Freaks and Geeks, Our Town and "Ben Affleck" - Reviews #82

2011-08-20T07:48:00.033+01:00

TV:

Freaks and Geeks (1999-2000) - A superlative comedy-drama from Paul Feig and Judd Apatow, set in 1980, about a pair of teen siblings (Linda Cardellini and John Francis Daley) and their respective groups: pot-smoking, rock-listening burnouts, and sci-fi-loving, bully-fearing nerds. It takes a little while to strike the right tone, but by episode five (Tests and Breasts) it's flying and the rest of the series is a triumph of complex character development, believable, inventive scenarios and brilliant jokes. It reaches a peak with the penultimate episode, The Little Things - as perfect a 44 minutes of telly as I've seen. The cast is excellent right across the board, from Linda Cardellini - as a straight-A student knocked sideways by the death of her grandmother; right onto the smoking patio - to brooding, manipulative James Franco and intense, permanently-stoned John Bonham-worshipper Jason Segel. Best of the lot is Martin Starr, who strolls off with every scene as the goofy, gangly, absent and permanently happy geek, Bill. His one-liners are a delight ("You look a little bit like my grandpa," Daley's Sam tells him; "Oh, is your grandpa super cool?" Bill replies) and his dance routine is the funniest ever. It makes Ricky Gervais's one in The Office look like Ricky Gervais doing it at that memorial concert.

The cast is filled with familiar faces doing fine work: Seth Rogen comes centre-stage towards the close, while everyone from Tom Wilson (Back to the Future's Biff Tannen), Jason Schwartzman, Ben Stiller, and pre-fame Lizzy Caplan, Shia LaBeouf and Percy Daggs III appear in supporting roles. I've found Apatow's subsequent films frustratingly flawed: funny and entertaining, but too long, too unfocused and loaded with unnecessary sentiment. Freaks and Geeks is the antithesis of that, deft, perfectly balanced and with genuine emotional weight beneath the supremely-strong comedy. Vote fans will be glad to know that it's the third highest-rated comedy series on IMDb (after Arrested Development and The Angry Video Game Nerd, since you ask) and incredibly that doesn't feel too wide of the mark. Fantastic credits sequence too - with each character summed up in two seconds flat. (4)

By the way, there's a terrific episode-by-episode guide to Freaks and Geeks on Alan Sepinwall's blog, which makes me feel hopelessly inadequate.

***

*MINOR SPOILERS*
Party Down (Season 2, 2009-10) - "Well it's good to keep all your eggs in one place where you can really keep an eye on them." Yes, it's the return of the cult catering comedy, a delicious mix of stunning scripting and inspired improv still boasting the series' twin virtues: that coruscating Adam Scott-Lizzy Caplan interplay, and Ken Marino, graduating from being whacked in the genitals to being horse-shoed in the back. Not that there's a weak link in the returning cast, which also spotlights Martin Starr (Freaks and Geeks' Bill) as the sardonic, possibly talentless writer Roman, and emoish Ryan Hansen (Veronica Mars' Dick Casablancas), whose ambitious idiot Kyle might just be about to make it big on the big screen. The material is incredibly inventive, subversive and offensive (yup, that good), but it's the syncopated, disjointed, offhand delivery - like nothing else I've ever heard - that really makes it. I had to hit pause a couple of times an episode, as I was just laughing too hard. I'm not sure this second season is quite as impressive an achievement as the first - its opening trio of episodes don't reach the usual stunning standards and Megan Mullally (pretty good value in Will and Grace) is a below-par replacement for Jane Lynch (herself a little annoying) - but its final two-thirds are just dizzyingly good: the home run, the flappers, the pot of sperm and Kyle's song. The absolute highlight of this run is the second play reading at Steve Guttenberg's house, as failed actor Henry (Scott) resolves to act his on-off girlfriend (Caplan) right off the stage. It's funny, dynamic and romantic, but underscored by hopelessness and frustration - Party Down to a tee. (4)

***

MOVIES:

Six incredibly short reviews for your delectation.

The Notebook (Nick Cassavetes, 2004) - An old-fashioned romantic drama, albeit with a framing device about dementia. The main draw is the strong period atmosphere and Ryan Gosling's appealing performance, though curiously he botches the dramatic climax. Rachel McAdams is a bit too modern, but she and Gosling are unquestionably good together. The bit with James Garner looking at pictures of his younger self in a photo album is magnificently confusing. (3)

See also: Gosling went on to star in Half Nelson, one of the best 10 films of the last decade. And Lars and the Real Girl, which is reviewed below.

***

Ice Age: The Meltdown (Carlos Saldanha, 2006) - A real step up from the first, with better jokes, strong new characters (I'm thinking of the possums) and a muddled-but-well-meant message. (3)

***

Our Town (Sam Wood, 1940) - A slightly disappointing adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, too episodic and hampered by William Holden's callow, wooden performance (it wasn't until Sunset Blvd. that he moulded a real persona and sparked into glorious life), though there's a strong supporting cast, Martha Scott is absolutely terrific bringing her stage role to the screen and the final 10 minutes is so utterly stunning that you can forgive the rest of the film just about anything. The DVD is perhaps the worst I've ever seen. (3)

See also: To see the polar opposite of Holden's ineffectual showing in Our Town, check out his vital, muscular pyrotechnics in the showy '50s melodrama, Picnic.

***

Lars and the Real Girl (Craig Gillespie, 2007) - Interesting indie about a lonely man (Ryan Gosling) who orders an anatomically-correct doll from the internet and treats it as his girlfriend. Not the comedy you might expect (there are only a couple of laughs), but a well-acted examination of how treating mental illness with compassion might just be the answer. (3)

***

Role Models (David Wain, 2008) - A salesman in meltdown (Paul Rudd) and his party-hound colleague (Seann William Scott) are forced to mentor a role-playing game geek and a foul-mouthed boob-fiend - or else go to jail. The sweary kid gets a bit tiresome after a while (though his referring to all white people as "Ben Affleck" is a thing of genius) and the plotting is too formulaic, but it's very, very funny. Co-scripters Wain, Rudd and Ken Marino - who has a small role - later worked together on the superb sitcom Party Down. (3.5)

See also: Rudd plays another white collar worker on the brink in How Do You Know.

***

*CONTAINS ONE RUDE WORD AND VERONICA MARS SPOILERS, ESPECIALLY IN THAT LINK BELOW*
When in Rome (Mark Steven Johnson, 2010) - Well, this is... thin. And too preposterous to really serve as escapism. Though no worse than Three Coins in the Fountain. An art gallery curator (the fabulously talented Kristen Bell) pinches five coins from Rome's Fountain of Love and finds that the chaps who chucked them have all fallen madly in love with her. Including, it seems, the rugged ex-American Footballer with whom she's smitten (Josh Duhamel; go on Logan, kick his ass). And Danny DeVito. There's nothing objectionable about the film, besides its predictability and paucity of ambition - but it'll be a crying shame if Bell ends up being shoved into and sidelined by these standard, simple romcom roles, as she's a very special performer. And despite starring here, she has virtually nothing to work with. The film's few laughs come from SNL regular Bobby Moynihan, clearly crowbarred in to provide an Apatow vibe. I must be off now, as I have a sudden, unshakeable urge to visit New York's Guggenheim Museum. (2)

My 100 favourite movies of all time

2011-08-04T08:10:00.001+01:00

From October 2009, I counted down my 100 favourite movies on the Harrogate Advertiser website, with little blurbs and everything. Changes to the site mean the list has since lost its formatting, but the text is all still on there if you're interested, beginning here and concluding here.

The other day I decided to freshen up the list, throwing in 21 new entries. There's no Godfather, Detour, Cry Danger or In Bruges, but then space was tight.

My 100 favourite movies of all time

1. Remember the Night (Mitchell Leisen, 1940) - pic above
2. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
3. Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)
4. Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001)
5. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
6. Les enfants du paradis (Marcel Carne, 1945)
7. Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings, 1945)
8. Cinema Paradiso: Director's Cut (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988/2002)
9. Metropolitan (Whit Stillman, 1990)
10. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Elia Kazan, 1945)

11. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)
12. It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
13. Stars in My Crown (Jacques Tourneur, 1950)
14. Blessed Event (Roy Del Ruth, 1932)
15. The Dead (John Huston, 1987)
16. Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
17. Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
18. The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
19. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
20. Sherlock, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)

21. The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927) - pic above
22. How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1940)
23. The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)
24. The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992)
25. Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio de Sica, 1947)
26. Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
27. My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991)
28. The Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke II, 1934)
29. Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, 1942) - SHORT
30. Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, 2009)

31. Spare Time (Humphrey Jennings, 1939) - SHORT
32. A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. 1944)
33. Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939)
34. A Thousand Clowns (Fred Coe, 1965)
35. The Snowman (Dianne Jackson and Jimmy T. Murakami, 1982) - SHORT
36. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
37. Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941)
38. Return to Oz (Walter Murch, 1985)
39. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
40. Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)

41. Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty, 1948) - pic above
42. In My Father’s Den (Brad McGann, 2004)
43. I Love You Again (W. S. Van Dyke II, 1940)
44. The Silent Village (Humphrey Jennings, 1943) - SHORT
45. Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes, 1961)
46. Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1963)
47. The Wind (Victor Sjostrom, 1928)
48. Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950)
49. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
50. The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992)

51. Les quatre cents coups (Francois Truffaut, 1959)
52. A Room with a View (James Ivory, 1986)
53. One False Move (Carl Franklin, 1992)
54. Becket (Peter Glenville, 1964)
55. Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
56. Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962)
57. Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)
58. The Railway Children (Lionel Jeffries, 1970)
59. City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
60. Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)

61. The Killer (John Woo, 1989) - pic above
62. A Star Is Born (Vincente Minnelli, 1954)
63. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
64. The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1984)
65. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (Henry Hathaway, 1935)
66. Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988)
67. Broadway Melody of 1940 (Norman Taurog, 1940)
68. Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
69. Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
70. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

71. The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973)
72. Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952)
73. The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls, 1969)
74. Charlie Chan at the Olympics (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1937)
75. Kiss Me Kate (George Sidney, 1953)
76. Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck, 2006)
77. Pixote (Hector Babenco, 1981)
78. Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)
79. Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges, 1944)
80. Three Smart Girls (Henry Koster, 1936)

81. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) - pic above
82. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
83. The General (Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1926)
84. Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)
85. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
86. On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
87. The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston, 1975)
88. Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
89. Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950)
90. Judge Priest (John Ford, 1934)

91. Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
92. Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)
93. Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942)
94. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
95. Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 1976)
96. Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
97. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
98. Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948)
99. Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953)
100. Thank Your Lucky Stars (David Butler, 1943)

Goodness me, I really like films.

***

Some stats:

Decade-by-decade breakdown
1910s - 0
1920s - 5
1930s - 11
1940s - 27
1950s - 12
1960s - 11
1970s - 7
1980s - 11
1990s - 9
2000s - 7
2010s - 0

Most represented directors: John Ford (7), Humphrey Jennings (4), Ernst Lubitsch (3)
Number of foreign-language films: 10
Number of musicals: 8
Number of documentaries: 7
Number of films in which Humphrey Bogart plays himself and uses the phrase "movie fans": 1
Number of films starring Eddie Bracken: 1

Bridesmaids, Cars 2 and scintillating chemistry - Reviews #81

2011-07-29T08:42:00.000+01:00

CINEMA: Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) is a fresh, funny and insightful look at middle-aged malaise, dressed up as a knockabout comedy. When unlucky-in-love Annie (Kristen Wiig, who co-scripted) finds her childhood pal Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is getting married, she’s delighted - if a little envious. But as she becomes engaged in a running war with Lillian’s infuriatingly perfect new best friend (Rose Byrne), Annie’s life proceeds to fall apart, with not even the attentions of thoughtful traffic cop Chris O’Dowd helping her to see sense. Like many comedies from the Judd Apatow stable - including Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Superbad - Bridesmaids is a little unfocused and sentimental. But it’s also agreeably honest and very entertaining, with some spectacularly funny scenes. A gross-out sequence in a bridal shop toilets had the packed screening room shaking with laughter, though most of the highlights belong to Wiig: a meltdown on a plane, a row with a gobby teenager and a hysterical parade of car-related silliness. This is a terrific showcase for the actress, who handles the dramatic material well, spits out some cracking one-liners and displays a tremendous flair for visual comedy; the appealing centre of a very likeable film. (3)

***

CINEMA: Cars 2 3D (John Lasseter and Brad Lewis, 2011) - Pixar's latest is good fun, but conspicuously lacking the magic of their finest fare. A follow-up to the folksy-but-flashy 2005 film - the weakest of the studios’ 11 features, but a merchandising goldmine - this sequel is an international spy caper that throws rusty tow truck Mater (voiced amusingly by Larry the Cable Guy) centre-stage. It’s zippy, quite inventive and boasts some vivid visuals, including intoxicating recreations of Paris and the Italian Riviera. Michael Caine is a nice addition to the cast as a secret agent with a pencil moustache and an array of gadgets, John Turturro is a riot voicing on-track nemesis Francesco Bernoulli and there are bravura passages, including a super opening set-piece. But after that stunning run of WALL-E, Up and Toy Story 3, the film’s lack of an emotional punch is obvious and its moral of friendship and staying true to oneself appears too heavyhanded and mechanical. Perhaps the peculiar universe, populated only by vehicles, makes it hard to really engage. Improbably, DreamWorks’ newest offering - the superlative Kung Fu Panda 2 - leaves Pixar’s trailing in the dust. (2.5)

***

TV: Party Down (Season 1, 2009) is an incredibly funny comedy from those brilliant minds behind Veronica Mars, about a catering firm made up of frustrated actors who take on a series of diverse assignments, only for their personal lives to rather get in the way. It's inspired farce in the Steven Moffat vein - each episode building to an uproarious, often unexpected climax - shot in a handheld, faux-realistic style and blessed by Ken Marino's wonderful tragi-comic performance as team leader Ron and that scintillating Adam Scott-Lizzy Caplan chemistry. Mars fans will enjoy the host of guest appearances, including a naked Keith dive-bombing into a swimming pool, Logan Ecchols as a young conservative politico and Veronica herself playing a hard-ass boss from rival company Valhalla. Her "thank you" to Scott in that final episode is as lovely a piece of acting as you'll see all year. This whole series is just note-perfect, right down to its non-catchphrase: "Are we having fun yet?" (4)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The reviews of Bridesmaids and Cars 2 3D were written by Rick Burin and appeared on Page 30 of the Harrogate Advertiser, July 29, 2011.

Half Nelson, oldsters and Paul Merton on Hollywood - Reviews #80

2011-07-22T08:21:00.010+01:00

Half Nelson (Ryan Fleck, 2006) - Inner-city history teacher Ryan Gosling may be a crack addict, but "one thing doesn't make a man", as he tells the 13-year-old student (Shareeka Epps) who finds him lighting up and falling down in the school toilets. Half Nelson is a simply brilliant drama about loneliness, self-destruction and mutual reliance, boasting two of the most remarkable performances I've ever seen. As the hollow-eyed lost soul stumbling from one catastrophe to another, Gosling offers a method masterclass that blends quiet tragedy with wry black humour. Epps is the perfect antidote: completely naturalistic, straightforward and unschooled, as her damaged, impressionable teen reaches out for some hand to guide her and finds only a hopeless case and an unrepentant dealer (Anthony Mackie). The writing is intelligent, subtle and devoid of cliche, while Fleck's handheld camera creates some truly arresting imagery: Epps on her bicycle, winding her way through a city block; our protagonists glimpsing one another through a science park slide; and Gosling crouched, red-eyed in a doorway, as the film reaches its powerhouse emotional climax. The best first viewing I've seen this year, and a shoo-in for my next all-time top 100. (4)

***

*SOME SPOILERS*
Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937) - When Leo McCarey won the Best Director Oscar for 1937's The Awful Truth, he had some harsh words for the judges. Right filmmaker, he said. Wrong movie. And if The Awful Truth - also written by Viña Delmar - is the funniest film ever made, then McCarey's preferred movie is one of the saddest. Just ask Orson Welles. "It could make a stone cry," he said, which is, like, impossible. Victor Moore and queen of the character actresses Beulah Bondi play an old married couple whose house is taken by the Depression - and by the bank manager he stole her from all those years ago. Bondi goes to live with their eldest son (the impressive Thomas Mitchell, cast against type as not a drunk judge), while Moore moves in with intolerant, insecure daughter Cora (Elisabeth Risdon). All concerned find the age divide impossible to overcome. The first half of the film is pedestrian, stilted and not always enjoyable, but that's rather the point. Bondi and Moore are so used to one another's company, one another's rhythms and foibles, that with others she seems self-pitying and lacking in self-awareness, he closed-minded and possessing little faith in youth. It's only when they reunite that they make sense. There are many wonderful and timeless moments, a few scattered through the first hour (Bondi facing facts, a poignant letter and Mitchell's rueful line about being mighty proud), but most in that dazzling third act, as the couple's load is lightened - if just for an hour or two - by acts of kindness, before a gutting, brilliant ending. (We'll skirt over some decidedly dubious back-projection.) The leads are superb. Bondi, aged just 49 but playing 70, produces another memorable, nuanced, utterly human characterisation, while Moore - who elsewhere did just the one thing, playing affable and absent-minded in comedies like Swing Time, Louisiana Purchase and Star-Spangled Rhythm - shows that there's a great actor under all that strangle-voiced umming and aahing. In support, Fay Bainter is formidably cold, though Barbara Read is a bit one-note as the shallow granddaughter, while the severely-limted Minna Gombell does her patented "massive bitch" routine. There are very few films about oldsters, but this deeply moving humanist drama - semi-remade by Ozu as Tokyo Story - is kind of the last word. (4)

***

Those groundbreaking special effects.

Spider-Man 2 (Sam Raimi, 2004) - The first one is rubbish, but since Roger Ebert (the fella who reckons Hoop Dreams is the best film of the '90s and Ghost World is a cast-iron classic) said this sequel was the best comic book movie since 1978, I thought I'd give it a tumble. And I'm so glad I did. The fight scenes are still a bit jerky and cartoonish, there's too much slapstick in the early reels and Raimi's horror background can result in gimmickry, but the story is incredibly interesting - as Spidey (Tobey Maguire) struggles to juggle his responsibilities to family, friends and his public - with a real emotional pull. Maguire is unexpectedly excellent in the lead, both wide-eyed and world-weary, and the train sequence is an absolute wonder: bringing a lump to the throat as it comprehensively triumphs over the portentous paraphrasing of the same idea in The Dark Knight. Special mention also to the fire rescue, for its simple sentiment and the way that's undercut by the bleak pay-off. Alfred Molina is fairly weighty as villain Doc Ock (though he's been better elsewhere) - I like the way we can hear him before we see him, a sign of Raimi's horror roots working in his favour - and Kirsten Dunst is good in a role that requires her to play both ethereal and girl-next-door. Despite its flaws, a minor classic. (3.5)

***

Bells Are Ringing (Vincente Minnelli, 1960) represents the end of an era. This was the last film for MGM's musical producer Arthur Freed (the guy behind Singin' in the Rain, The Band Wagon and The Wizard of Oz), director Vincente Minnelli (responsible for masterpieces like Meet Me in St Louis) and star Judy Holliday - the greatest female comic of the Golden Age by a country mile. An adaptation of a Broadway show that ran for three years, it was her only colour movie (save the last scene of The Solid Gold Cadillac, more of which below) and her only musical. In a role written especially for her by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Holliday plays an operator at answering service Susanswerphone who tries to solve the problems of her many clients (including a boozy playwright, a short-tempered theatre director and a dentist-turned-songwriter), while falling in love and trying to avoid the government agents who're convinced she's a hooker. There's not much plot and nor is it developed by the songs - beyond articulating the characters' emotions or the atmosphere of falsity at a society party - but what there is is nicely handled. Similarly, while the hoofing isn't of the standard you'd get in a Fred and Ginger picture, or one of Freed's movies with Gene Kelly, the Jule Styne tunes (including The Party's Over and I'm Going Back) are both complex and catchy, and they're performed with tremendous feeling. Indeed, the acting is far better, not to mention more central and more important, than in most MGM musicals. Since it's Judy. Yep, she's just brilliant again, leaning on that recognisable persona while doing something entirely new. Despite the familiar delivery, she's not playing dumb, just terribly sweet. There are two small moments that sum up what a special actress she was. With anyone else, the first would be a nothing line amidst much exuberant comic playing - in her hands it's perhaps my movie moment of the year so far. Her squeeze (Dean Martin) explains that he needs to greet (i.e. kiss) a number of pouty ladies from his past. In a moment of beguiling tenderness, understanding and encouragement, Judy just murmurs: "I know, s'alright". Later, she embarks on a spirited cha-cha-cha and, rather than break her stride, greets Martin by just mwah-mwah-mwahing him in time. Such moments of sensitivity, vulnerability and hilarity are offset by sequences highlighting her facial expressiveness and gift for mimicry. A couple of neat comic sequences ended up on the cutting room floor (the one in which she spins a tale of woe for investigator Dort Clark is a gem) and as co-scripter Green acknowledges, this outing could have been a bit more cinematic, but it's a lovely film regardless, with a simply wonderful performance at its centre. (3.5)

Trivia note: Look out for '30s and '40s crime and comedy regular George E. Stone (Runt in the Boston Blackie series), playing a blind bookie in the steamship number.

***

*SPOILERS*
The Solid Gold Cadillac (Richard Quine, 1956) is a solid comedy celebrating the small shareholder and the self-made man. Judy Holliday is a minor shareholder at a major business who creates so much trouble at meetings that she's given an office, a secretary and a pretend job. When she finds out that the new heads of the business are total crooks, it's up to her to save the day, and the legacy of founder Paul Douglas. The material isn't Broadway legend George Kaufman's best - the stakes aren't that high and it's not that funny - but the film is lifted by Holliday's usual charm, charisma and comic smarts, playing both capitalist crusader and romantic matchmaker. Incredibly, her part was originated on stage by spherical character actress Josephine Hull. A couple of minor gripes: the final scene is in eye-popping colour, but it's dramatically and thematically incongruous and you can barely make out the actors, and while I'm aware that the film is essentially a fairytale, rudimentary calculation suggests Holliday would have had to stall the meeting for almost two weeks to make the climax possible. The Solid Gold Cadillac is a fun ride, but compared to other Holliday vehicles, it's more a [insert name of slightly above-average car] than a [insert name of very expensive car]. Sorry, I know nothing about cars. (3)

Trivia note: This was Holliday and Douglas' only film together, though they'd previously been teamed on stage in the production of Born Yesterday that made Judy's name. When it transferred to the screen, he was replaced by Broderick Crawford. A similar fate had befallen Crawford himself in 1939, when Of Mice and Men was made into a movie, only for Lon Chaney, Jr. to take on the role of Lenny, which Crawford had originated on Broadway.

***

"Monogamy!"
How Do You Know (James L. Brooks, 2010) - Dismissed on release, this romantic comedy-drama from Brooks - who makes features so rarely that each one feels like an event - is no classic, but it's sprightly and engaging, lit by three of the most appealing mainstream actors of recent decades. Reese Witherspoon is a pro softballer coming to terms with missing the national team cut, while trying to decide between perma-grinning ballplayer Owen Wilson and tender, trusting, slightly odd financier Paul Rudd, the subject of an FBI investigation. The characters' actions don't always make sense and Jack Nicholson (who has a wobbly, out-of-proportion body like a Pixar character) keeps taking big bites out of the scenery, but there are some nice ideas and one-liners, Rudd is terrific in his tricky part and Wilson is just hysterical. When he took to commentating on his own life, with asides like "Good phone call", I had to pause the film to catch my breath. With three lesser performers, this mightn't have added up to much - as it is, I enjoyed it a lot. (3)

***

The Big Bounce (George Armitage, 2004) - A laid-back, ramshackle adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel, transplanted to Hawaii, with Owen Wilson as a small time housebreaker lured into a big play by the leggy, deeply annoying Sara Foster. There's virtually no plot, aside from an astonishingly dense five minutes of confusing exposition near the end, but Wilson is reliably amusing as he ambles towards disaster and Morgan Freeman has a nice supporting part as a pipe-smoking district judge. (2)

***

The film is precisely this funny.

My Father, the Hero (Steve Miner, 1994) - Witless comedy about an intensely annoying 14-year-old (Katherine Heigl) who tells a hunky guy at a beach resort that her oft-absent father (Gerard Depardieu) is actually her lover, and a career criminal. Depardieu gives his best, and there's a neat cameo at the close, but the potentially amusing premise is torpedoed by awful plotting that mixes idiotic slapstick sequences with tasteless jokes about prostitution and drug addiction - in what's supposedly a family film. And if you think a camera moving lecherously up a pubescent girl's legs is acceptable, then why not pick up a copy on your way to prison? (1.5)

***

*CONTAINS ONE NAUGHTY WORD. I'M WARNING, NOT BOASTING*
TV: Paul Merton's Birth of Hollywood (2011) is a highly watchable series on early American film, but very much a personal journey - and a polemical one. If you're expecting a detailed history, you'll find it maddeningly incomplete and slim in scope. There's also the Griffith problem. The first episode deals with the roots of Hollywood, focusing on Thomas Edison and his bully boys, Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Birth of a Nation director D. W. Griffith. The second seeks to rescue the reputation of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, whose career was destroyed by scandal, while examining censorship and the elegant perversion of Cecil B. DeMille. The final instalment concerns itself with commerce-versus-art, profiling MGM's wunderkind producer Irving Thalberg and the egomaniacal, teutonic part-time ventriloquist Erich Von Stroheim, the chap who turned in an eight-hour film (1924's Greed). The series features a great range of clips. Many of the excerpts from features are in astonishingly good shape, considering they're almost a century old. There's Griffith in his acting debut (Rescued from an Eagle's Nest), examples of Mary Pickford's subtlety as a silent actress, and footage of the supposedly humourless von Stroheim smoking and drinking, while talking through a puppet. Merton and his researchers go as far as to match clips with fascinating contemporary spoofs, and serve up great little nuggets (both visual and otherwise) alongside the rehashed facts, including the blacklisted Arbuckle's split-second cameo in Buster Keaton's Go West. The snippets of behind-the-scenes footage are beyond great. The best of the lot is the only existing film of Chaplin directing: coaching his leading lady almost toe to toe, as she apes his mannerisms into the camera. Great stuff. These sequences are sometimes augmented by reconstructions, which can be effective, but are a little overused. The Arbuckle ones are genuinely eerie because of their nature, and the sequence showing "Griffith" behind the camera is worthwhile, but a reconstruction of Thalberg dying in a hospital bed is perhaps a bit much.

Where the series comes unstuck is in its construction and its spotty editorialising. Weirdly, it seeks to diminish the role of D. W. Griffith, the appalling bigot and pioneering visionary who effectively created the modern movie. It disingenuously ridicules selected scenes from his phenomenal one-two of The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance and says - in an offhand manner - that his reputation as a trendsetter is undeserved, as European filmmakers really made the innovations credited to him. That's not really borne out by the facts. John Ford, who based his directing style on Griffith's after working as an extra on the Klan-promoting Birth of a Nation, regarded him as the father of film. Chaplin called him "the teacher of us all". Orson Welles believed: "no art form owes so much to a single man". Yes, Griffith was arrogant, racist and grossly irresponsible, and it would be nice if the creators of cinema-as-we-know-it were progressive, tolerant sorts, but you can't dismiss his achievements on those grounds, and it's offensive to try. The idea that it was Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries that gave The Birth of a Nation its grandiosity and power is frankly utter bollocks and the facile illustration of that nothing point is laughable, pointless and doesn't actually work. Merton also heaps superlatives upon Mary Pickford, but declines to even mention the influential, incomparable Lillian Gish (an ally of Griffith), though she is shown, with our host taking the piss out of the film in the voiceover. She was, simply put, a genius.

Now, on to Merton. He's a talented chap, has done a lot to promote silent film and is an avuncular, passionate presenter. Here, his narration is accessible but fairly detailed, some of his observations about unconvincing props and lookalikes are funny (though there are perhaps too many gags at the expense of silent film, as if he's a little embarrassed by what he's doing) and it's fun to see him touring the studios, Ellis Island and still-standing locations from films like Greed. But he isn't a natural interviewer - appearing not to understand the purpose of such inserts - and his nodding shots are like a parody. These problems come to a head in the unilluminating chats with the ubiquitous Carla Laemmle (a B-movie actress in the '30s and the niece of Universal's production chief). On those grounds you could argue that the dearth of interviews is for the best, but the archive talking heads like King Vidor work nicely, and really we needed more. Without them, the series feels light on eyewitness testimony and insight.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this: it was consistently entertaining, the rare footage was a treat and I appreciated the BBC, and Merton, devoting time and money to such an endeavour. But it seemed a bit short, a touch thin, a little hurried and a lot subjective. Will someone please put out Kevin Brownlow's near-mythic 15-part Hollywood series on DVD? Thank you. (3)

Rick's O2 Media Awards Adventure II: Return to the O2 Media Awards

2011-07-15T08:22:00.014+01:00

Diss me gettin' stiffykert from faymus orfuh G. P. Taylor. And actually I have great hair, so shut up.

Being a hopelessly self-aggrandising sort, I indulged in yet more of my endless boasting the other day. The reason: I was off to the O2 Media Awards for Yorkshire and the Humber, having been shortlisted in the features and digital categories.

Well, last night was the ceremony, held in the picturesque surroundings of York Racecourse. The sun was setting and we sat on the balcony watching hot-air balloons taking off from the field below, like something out of Northern Lights.

I didn't win the awards - Martin Smith and Graham Walker of The Star, Sheffield took top honours - but I did get two nice certificates with the words 'highly commended' emblazoned across them. "Ever the bridesmaid," people say when they see me, but only because I giggle a lot and wear a dress.

The judges said:

Rick Burin of the Harrogate Advertiser impressed judges with a portfolio that also demonstrated his ability to appeal to readers across different mediums, from print to those who sourced their information on-line. This was someone with a deft touch, a writer with the skills to make you read on and be glad you did. (Feature Writer of the Year - Highly Commended)

Rick Burin is a journalist who knows how to write for a digital audience and is just as comfortable writing blogs and Tweets as he is at filing copy for his weekly paper. He brings some refreshing personality and irreverence to his online writing which he demonstrated well in his live General Election blog. (Digital Journalist of the Year - Highly Commended)

Good, eh? Unfortunately I got there much later than I did in 2010 and had to go a bit early to catch the last train from York to Harrogate (22:11 - thanks Northern Rail!), but what with the hot air balloons, free food and people saying nice things about me, it was a really fine evening.

PS: I did say I'd tell you what food there was. Pilau rice and stir-fry veg, with granary bread.

Love, Heathers and big blue heads - Reviews #79

2011-07-13T20:04:00.002+01:00

I've spent much of the past few weeks with my eyes glued to wonderful, wonderful Veronica Mars. 'Seen a few films though, so here they are, beginning with a couple of my favourites back from when I was feckless and 15:

Il Postino (Michael Radford, 1994) is a sweet, low-key comedy-drama detailing the improbable friendship between famed Chilean poet Pablo Naruda (Philippe Noiret) and the simple Italian postman (Massimo Troisi) who wants his help romancing a girl. The pacing is a bit off and the film borrows too liberally from Cinema Paradiso, but the performances from Noiret and Troisi simply sparkle and the collision of genuinely funny character comedy and bleak, even tragic subject matter is wonderfully realised. (3.5)

***

*MINOR SPOILERS*
Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1988) - A couple of high school rebels dress up a series of murders as cultish suicides in this dark comedy. Perhaps you have to be sufficiently youthful to buy into it (I'm a carefree 27), perhaps I've been spoiled by Ghost World and Veronica Mars, or perhaps Daniel Waters' last word on teen flicks is just paling with age. Because Heathers isn't as sharp, spiky or amusing as I've thought on a half-dozen previous viewings. The gallery of extreme characters is there, there are some brilliant jokes ("Let's kick his ass!") and one-liners ("My teen angst bullshit has a body count"), and the soot-black premise is inherently snicker-some, but those virtues and a couple of strong lead performances from Winona Ryder and Christian Slater can't fully compensate for a confused viewpoint and a cop-out ending. Someone better go and tell the teenage me to shut up about it. (3)

***

Megamind (Tom McGrath, 2010) - A supervillain with a big blue head (voiced by Will Ferrell) accidentally kills his superhero arch-enemy (Brad Pitt) and finds that he's now massively bored. So he decides to create a new nemesis, turning immature news cameraman Hal (Jonah Hill) into the formidable Titan. DreamWorks' spin on the Despicable Me template is unexceptional but very diverting, with decent animation, good jokes and notably effective voicework from Ferrell and Hill. A very pleasant surprise. (3)

***

*I'VE QUOTED A RUDE WORD - PLEASE SKIP IF IT'S LIKELY TO OFFEND*
Separate Lies (Julian Fellowes, 2005) - A middle-class couple's picture-perfect marriage is torn apart by a mysterious death, in Fellowes' directorial debut. The story is too familiar (adapted from a 1951 novel), the dialogue is positively riddled with cliche (odd for Fellowes) and as the other man Rupert Everett gives what may be the most nondescript performance I've ever seen, but Tom Wilkinson and the incomparable Emily Watson are both extremely good, producing moments of emotional clarity and intimidating rawness amidst much tritely-scripted tedium. The moment in which Watson smashes a plate, screams and then bursts into tears is deeply affecting on an instinctive level and a scene where Wilkinson's stiff upper lip evaporates on account of some booze and he repeatedly barks "Fuck off" at his wife feels unexpectedly insightful. Terry Gilliam's Baron Munchausen, John Neville, also shines in a small part as Everett's father. The scripting of his second and final scene is so universal as to be almost banal, but his barnstorming sense of conviction lights it up. The subject matter of crime and guilt, the way in which the film abandons its thriller-ish concerns in deference to human drama and the presence of Wilkinson unfortunately recall Woody Allen's later Cassandra's Dream, though this is nothing like the career apocalypse that was. It's just a frustrating little film, loaded with overbearing symbolism (get a load of the Fellowes-does-Blue-Velvet opening), but partially rescued by a trio of impressive turns. (2)

Veronica Mars - Complete series review

2011-07-11T08:42:00.007+01:00

A bit of telly for ya...

Yes, I stopped watching films for long enough to watch a TV series. I've tried to keep the *SPOILERS* to a minimum, but there are a few in there (including photos of the Season 2 and 3 line-ups), so if you haven't seen Veronica Mars, do that without any further hesitation, then clicky back on over here.

Veronica Mars - Season 1 (2004-5) - Aaaaaah... thump. That sound is my jaw dropping. What an utterly fantastic, incredibly engrossing, staggeringly entertaining series this is: a succession of superb mini-mysteries, wrapped up in one big series-long conspiracy. Veronica (Kristen Bell) was the golden girl of Neptune High. But when her best friend Lily Kane (Amanda Seyfried) was murdered, her sheriff father (Enrico Colantoni) became convinced Lily's internet age billionaire father was involved - setting Veronica against the wealthy in-crowd, including her boyfriend, Lily's brother Duncan (the disappointingly wooden Teddy Dunn). So our uber-cool outsider - and prospective PI like her pops - becomes a part-time hero-for-hire, dissing the deserved as she tangles with the Kanes, moneyed bad boy Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) and biker gang leader Weevil (Francis Capra). Series brains Rob Thomas creates a fully-rounded universe in which it's a sheer joy to lose oneself and the performances from Bell and Dohring are just spectacular. Their chemistry, and Bell's rapport with Colantoni, is magical. With the caveat that I'm more versed in celluloid matters than small-screen, this is one of the best things I've ever seen on TV. (4)

Best episodes: Pilot (#1), The Wrath of Con (#4) for the punchline, Weapons of Class Destruction (#18) for the kiss.

***

Veronica Mars - Season 2 (2005-6) - Somehow, this is every bit as good. No sooner has Veronica brushed the dirt from her clothes, changed boyfriends and got a job in a restaurant, than a school bus goes careering off a cliff and a former stuntman washes up dead with her name written on his hand, plunging her into a new mystery. The cases are still surprising, the character development is intelligent and the larger narrative is completely absorbing, while Bell, Dohring and Colantoni are reliably brilliant and each of the supporting players deftly drawn and given a distinct voice. Ryan Hansen, as the uncomplicated Dick Casablancas, is given greater prominence and is genuinely hilarious ("I'm not a smellologist," he memorably protests at one point), though his apparent behaviour in Season One does colour proceedings somewhat. His shy, put-upon brother Beaver (Kyle Gallner) also comes centre-stage, after sporadic appearances last series. Touching, laugh-out-loud funny and devilishly clever, this super sequel of a series is gloriously-written, flashily-shot and extremely well-acted, building to an unforgettable climax. (4)

Best episodes: Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner (#7) for Lamb's one moment of empathy, Never Mind the Buttocks (#19) for Weevil's return, Not Pictured (#22) for the Usual Suspects-style revelation of those two simple words.

***

Veronica Mars - Season 3 (2006-7) - They said it couldn't be done. And they were right. This third series can't quite touch the first two instalments. The main problem is that, obsessing over audience figures and kowtowing to boneheaded execs, the creators tinkered with the format, changed their original plot and were then deprived of a (richly-deserved) fourth season anyway. That said, the series is still phenomenally enjoyable, picking up after an uncertain start in which the college setting takes a little getting used to. The performances are largely stunning, the mysteries remain intriguing and tricky to second-guess, and the balancing of comedic and dramatic elements is as sure-footed as ever, while incorporating some neat nods to the crime genre, including vintage Bogie noir, Charlie Chan and Nancy Drew. The larger crimes this time involve a series of rapes (a narrative continued from Season 2) and a college murder, with a third, reportedly mind-bending plot dropped in case it deterred potential first-time viewers. While one can bemoan the shattering of the familiar ensemble, some repetitiveness in the on-off central romance, a few loose plot threads and a distinct lack of closure, this remains a compelling and invigorating third helping: 13 hours more in the company of these remarkable characters. There's a massive hole in my life where Veronica Mars has been this last couple of months. (3.5)

Best episodes: Spit & Eggs (#8), in which the knot in our communal stomach gets tighter and tighter, Postgame Mortem (#13), which is just really sweet and nicely played, The Bitch Is Back (#20), in which we say goodbye, and Logan gets the send-off he truly deserves.

Summer round-up 2011 - Part Two - Reviews #78

2011-07-08T07:55:00.002+01:00

Get off the beach at once and go and watch some movies.

Since you've been so good this year (at least so far), here's the rest of the summer round-up, including a strongman, a midget, four clones and a mad scientist. They're all in the same film.

Elsewhere, I heap praise on DreamWorks' latest, go all gooey over a Steve Carell comedy-drama and quickly tire of Bulldog Drummond, the world's worst detective. He makes Inspector Clouseau look like Charlie Chan.

Actually, Neil Simon made Inspector Clouseau (or at least Peter Sellers) look like Charlie Chan. In Murder by Death. Not a good film, the wonderful Eileen Brennan aside.

Ready? I was born ready, myself...

CINEMA: Kung Fu Panda 2 3D (Jennifer Yuh Nelson, 2011) - This is a beast every bit as rare as a panda that can do kung fu: a superior sequel. A mix of heart, humour and action, the first outing raked in $600m at the box-office, so here’s a follow-up, helmed by first-time director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, who devised the original’s striking opening sequence. Po, voiced by Jack Black, is the Dragon Warrior - a kung fu master and perpetually hungry panda. When a villainous peacock (Gary Oldman) looks to wrestle control of his valley via a dock-off cannon, our hero is sent to face him down, accompanied by his trusted cohorts, the Furious Five. The first thing to say is that the film looks incredible, packed with sumptuous landscapes dominated by vast mountains, dappling rivers and towering pagodas. Its 3D is rarely used to fling props at the audience, but rather to provide depth to its vividly-realised world, allowing the viewer to wallow in that sheer opulence. Few modern movies have realised the possibilities of the big screen in such an assured, ambitious manner.

Perhaps even more importantly, the film boasts an engrossing, engaging and affecting story that’s never worthy or, ahem, po-faced, and reveals just why Po was raised by a goose. Its humour is rich, intelligent and unpretentious, epitomised by a terrific set-piece in which a ceremonial dragon filled with our brave warriors consumes and dispels a series of baddies; the most heightened display of toilet humour you’ll ever see. And the other action sequences are similarly superb: vastly superior to those in the first outing, with tremendous variety and imagination. There’s a fight to save a village that throbs with energy and invention, a breathless, hilarious rickshaw chase and a quietly destructive cannonball climax. Such wizardry is augmented by effective voicework, a lovely score from Hans Zimmer and John Powell, and an unashamedly sentimental punch-the-air slo-mo moment in which Po turns to his buddies and simply yells: “I love you guuuuuuuys!” Fast, funny and fleshing out its story with emotional wallops, Kung Fu Panda 2 is a total triumph - and knocks even its predecessor into a conical hat. (3.5)

Just to refresh your memory:

Kung Fu Panda (Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, 2008) - A rotund, clumsy panda (Jack Black), obsessed with martial arts, is selected to be the mythical Dragon Warrior, setting him on a collision course with a psychotic, power-hungry snow leopard (Ian MacShane) who's planning to lay waste to his valley and see off his former father figure, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). The film begins in striking fashion with a manga-ish dream sequence, stutters for a while, then judders back into life around the half-hour mark, courtesy of an intensely moving flashback. After that it never looks back. It isn't perfect, but it's a fun mix of gags, fight scenes and pathos with an impressive visual sense and a very strong second half. (3)

***

Dan in Real Life (Peter Hedges, 2007) – There’s a lovely feel to this offbeat picture, which mixes family comedy, human drama and broad farce to unexpectedly effective, affecting ends. Steve Carell is a newspaper columnist, widower and father-of-three who visits his parents for the holidays and falls for a girl (Juliette Binoche) in a bookstore – only realising later it’s his brother’s new love. As he struggles to contain his feelings, he awaits news of possible syndication and faces the slings and arrows of outrageous daughters, who want to drive, date boys or just have his attention for a moment. The jumble of elements gels surprisingly well, thanks to neat scriping, Carell’s excellent performance and a fine ensemble that includes John Mahoney and Dianne Wiest. It’s an extremely satisfying movie. (3.5)

***

The Cheyenne Social Club (Gene Kelly, 1970) – Cowboy Jimmy Stewart arrives in town to collect his inheritance and finds his brother has left him a brothel, in this very funny Western comedy. The picture’s a little stagy in its mid-section and there’s the odd joke that misses the mark (a couple just don't make any sense at all), but the story is involving and amusing, there are a dozen big laughs and the chemistry between Stewart and tactless, chatty pal Henry Fonda is a joy to behold, old pros and real life best buds that they are. Elements of tension, action and human drama are also incorporated quite elegantly. After all, what would a Western be without a gunfight or two? (3)

***

Give a Girl a Break (Stanley Donen, 1953) – Three girls compete for the chance to headline a Broadway show in this trim, straightforward MGM musical. The simple story is just something to be diverted from – and the frequent numbers are a treat, particularly two each pairing Marge and Gower Champion, and Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse. The latter pair made The Affairs of Dobie Gillis the same year, which is a minor classic. (3)

See also: Did I mention that I met Debbie Reynolds? Yes I did, several times. MGM had a plan to remake all of Fred and Ginger's films, starring Marge and Gower Champion. They only managed one, turning Roberta into Lovely to Look At.

***

Run, Fatboy, Run (David Schwimmer, 2007) works as far as it does - and that's a lot further than you might think - on the strength of Simon Pegg's performance. He's excellent as a hopeless schlub trying in vain to ingratiate himself with the heavily-pregnant fiancee he left at the altar five years ago. His solution: to tackle the marathon her new fella is about to take on. The plot is overly formulaic - though the race is cleverly conceived - the material variable and the product-placement excessive, but Pegg is a brilliant comic actor, wringing laughs out of almost every situation. (3)

***

Shallow Hal (Bobby and Peter Farrelly, 2001) is the ultimate in high-concept romcom shenanigans (yep, I said shenanigans), as superficial skirt-chaser Jack Black's perception of the laydeez (yep, I said laydeez) becomes based entirely on their inner self, causing him to fall heels-over-head for morbidly obese charity worker Gwyneth Paltrow, whom he sees as a slimline hottie. The film's a little confused in places, relying on fat jokes whilst peddling its "appearances aren't everything" message, but its heart is in the right place and it's frequently both sweet and funny. At least until the Farrellys indulge their old bodyshock fetish with all that stuff about a tail. The film's main virtue is Black's sparring with similarly misguided buddy Jason Alexander, which works really nicely. Alexander's timelessly juvenile one-liner may be my favourite of the year so far (I am really sorry): "You're right. l'm probably more immature than you, but at least l have a bigger willy." (3)

*I.e. a film based on a one-line premise; "high-concept" makes it sound clever and admirable, which it rarely is.

***

The City of Lost Children (Mark Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1995) – A gaggle of misfits – a brain, a midget, four clones and a mad scientist – take to stealing children in order to experience the one thing their creator could never give them: dreams. On their trail is good-hearted, taciturn circus strongman One (Ron Perlman), who’s looking for the perpetually-hungry little brother they swiped from his caravan. The big guy is accompanied by Miette (Judith Vittet), a streetwise orphan who’s fallen in love with him. This fantasy is disjointed, muddled and almost self-consciously peculiar, but worth seeing for a knockout opening sequence, a couple of very special performances from Perlman and Vittet, and an astonishing visual sense. (2.5)

***

Catch-22 (Mike Nichols, 1970) – As an attempt to film an unimpeachable, untouchable, unfilmable book, it’s OK: a meeting of the sublime and the ridiculously useless in both scene and characterisation, with a passage of utter dullness to offset each sequence that works, and a lot of yelling to contrast with every bit of spot-on comic anguish. Alan Arkin is superb as Yossarian and Jon Voight makes a suitable Milo, but Martin Balsam is all kinds of shouty wrong as Col. Cathcart. (2.5)

***

Bulldog Drummond Escapes (James P. Hogan, 1937) – Lively entry in the comedy-adventure series, with a slightly manic Ray Milland (in his only appearance as Drummond) looking to rescue damsel in distress Heather Angel from beardy villain Porter Hall, who’s got the young heiress locked up and drugged. The plot’s nothing new and the staging can be a little static, but the young Milland’s eager, slightly over-ripe characterisation keeps proceedings buoyant and there’s fun support from series regulars Reginald Denny and E. E. Clive. Kudos also to the writers for creating a bolshy love interest who’s not averse to whacking someone over the head. Sometimes even the right person. (2.5)

A film so poor that even J. Carroll Naish is bad in it. He's still impressibly unidentifiable, though.

Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (Louis King, 1937) – The first Drummond entry starring John Howard starts off terrifically, with vengeful crooks swiping his girl and promising a series of riddles he must complete to save her life. Sadly they’re incredibly tedious and not even the great John Barrymore, whose role consists of trying on some fake noses and pretending to be Scottish, can save this one. (1.5)

You see how this isn't very good?

Bulldog Drummond’s Bride (James P. Hogan, 1939) – As a devotee of '30s and '40s mystery-comedies, I've been pretty unimpressed by this series, even while acknowledging that it's a serial-like affair placing the accent on adventure. This entry is poorly-written, with misguided comedy interludes and a one-note performance from Reginald Denny, while Drummond (John Howard) is a simply awful detective, boasting the sole virtue of persistence. (1.5)

See also: To see how this sort of thing is really done, check out the Michael Shayne series. The last film in the series was Time to Kill.

***

Shorts (Robert Rodriguez, 2009) looks like it was made by kids, as well as for kids, with plenty of elements that will appeal to the nine-year-old in your life, but a shaky grasp of narrative and a staggeringly misguided chapter about a giant, murderous bogie. Perhaps realising his story wasn’t up to scratch, Rodriguez split it into sections and shuffled them, so it’s essentially like Pulp Fiction, if Pulp Fiction was a disappointing film about a magic rock. There are crocodiles that run on their hind legs, tiny, destructive aliens and a contraption that makes the iPhone look like a calculator watch, but the lacklustre plotting, heavy-handed moralising and sometimes wooden acting mean it’s a bit of a letdown. The best gag, with the aliens and that much-maligned bogie, is saved for the credits. (2)

See also: Rodriguez used to make great kids' films, like Spy Kids and Spy Kids 2. I'm afraid he also made Spy Kids 3. He also makes kids for grown-ups. You can read about his Mexico Trilogy here.

***

Happy Feet (George Miller, Warren Coleman and Judy Morris - let's name and shame them, 2006) - It's as if March of the Penguins had been remade by Satan. This is an embarrassingly ill-conceived animation about a community of singing penguins and the travails of one plucky little member (his plumage like an evening suit, his face and voice reminiscent of Elijah Wood), who's tone deaf but can dance. The makers seem to have no concept of storytelling, the visuals are dull and undistinctive, and without wanting to sound like Mary Whitehouse (a sure sign that I'm about to), a lot of the material is just incredibly inappropriate for kids. Would you pay someone to stand in front of your beloved, toddling offspring and talk about booty and - well - sexing? Because I probably wouldn't. The Amigo Penguins are pretty funny and the first chase sequence is exciting, but the rest of this is just absolutely excruciating. (1.5)

Summer round-up 2011 - Part One - Reviews #77

2011-07-05T08:21:00.019+01:00

Like films? Like short reviews? Then you'll just about be able to stomach our customary summer round-up, presented here in two parts, as it's quite big. Last year's guide is here, he said tenuously.

CINEMA: X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn, 2011) – X-Men was good and X2 was phenomenal, but after the vile prank that was The Last Stand, I didn't even bother with 19th century-set prequel Wolverine. Now we've landed further forward in history, courtesy of the writer and director of Kick-Ass and original series director Bryan Singer, for a Cold War-era creation myth dealing with the formative experiences of Professor Xavier (James MacAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender). The former is an Oxford graduate, doing a dissertation on mutation and heading for the CIA. The latter is touring the globe in search of the Nazi (now something of a Commie-Nazi to use the McBain parlance), who shot his mum and unleashed his true potential. It's a superb set-up and the film benefits from two excellent central characterisations - backed by Jennifer Lawrence as Raven offering a Rogue-type subplot - but the second half is less impressive and interesting, culminating in an overlong, slightly boring action climax and several false endings. The principal henchman, Azazel, reminds me a little too much of the prankster Devil from Big Train. (3)

***

Winter's Bone (Debra Granik, 2010) - A teenage girl wanders around Missouri's Ozark Mountains asking people with pinched faces if they've seen her drug-cookin' dad, and they threaten to beat her up. Brilliant. (I should probably add that this incredibly low-key film has a rich, fascinating atmosphere, a striking visual sensibility and a stunning central performance from Jennifer Lawrence that culminates in the best silent screaming since The Spiral Staircase.) (4)

See also: An obvious touchstone is The Road: *SOME SPOILERS* greying beards, washed out colours and end-of-the-world bleakness giving way to faint hope. And then there's the other great Ozarks movie:

The Shepherd of the Hills (Henry Hathaway, 1941) is a genuinely remarkable drama with a heightened feel created by an extraordinary script, powerful performances and stunning direction from the erratic Hathaway. Harry Carey is the title figure, returning to his community having abandoned his wife and young child years before. His son (John Wayne), now all grown up, is hell-bent on revenge, believing it will rid his family of the "curse" that manifested in the death of his mother and the disability of his cousin. With all that plottin' and hatin', he can't imagine a future with the girl he loves, bare-footed Sammy (Betty Field). The film has a decidedly Fordian sensibility in its themes of family and redemption, its stylistics (long shots, doors used for framing, and even a scene at a graveyard filmed in the Ford fashion) and its use of his first (Carey) and most famous (Wayne) muses. But there's a feel, an atmosphere, a quality here that's entirely new, with staggering dialogue - both authentic and flavourful - in a language that's all its own and knockout performances from Carey and the incredible Field. Beulah Bondi, whose principal role is to poison Wayne's mind against his father, could play warm and good-hearted or worn and harsh with equal skill. She's just horrible here; really great, while in his first colour film, playing a complex, fascinating part, the underrated Wayne does another fine job. The film is full of wonderful touches, details and vignettes. It's meandering, unusual and distinctive. One of a kind. (4)

***

"That's right, but they never talk about that."
Barcelona (Whit Stillman, 1994) - Whit Stillman's follow-up to Metropolitan (comfortably one of my ten favourite films of all time) is a coruscating comedy-drama about love, anti-Americanism and fictional masochism, stuffed with glorious dialogue. Taylor Nichols is the sales director whose lonely existence in the Catalan capital is interrupted by incredibly sarcastic cousin Chris Eigeman, who keeps telling girls that Nichols is a keen follower of the Marquis de Sade, rather than the "bible-dancing goody goody" he really is. Meanwhile, a reprehensible lothario of a journalist lights a powder keg of anti-US sentiment... Despite only making three films (a fourth is finally on the way), Stillman is one of the best writer-directors America has ever produced, though I wish the deleted scenes on the DVD had been left in, adding further intrigue and excitement to the political subplot. (4)

See also: Stillman's last film to date was The Last Days of Disco, in 1998. There's a brief review in this round-up.

***

Ah, Wilderness! (Clarence Brown, 1935) is one of the best I've seen this year, an extremely moving, amusing adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's nostalgic play. Eric Linden is superb as a precocious, pretentious teenager whose stumbling forays into the fields of oration and love-making are observed by his kindly, concerned father (Lionel Barrymore, perhaps the most reliably wonderful performer of the Golden Age). Meanwhile, his uncle Sid (Wallace Beery) battles the booze, while trying to win back the woman he lost 15 years ago (Aline MacMahon). Moving seamlessly from comedy to drama - often within a single exchange - it's a timeless work, containing numerous telling sequences that receive rich treatment in MGM's Americana style, like Linden imagining his triumphant return to school, making up with his girl, or giving his father the assurance he desperately needs. Even the set-piece that doesn't work so well - a family dinner interrupted by a sozzled Sid - gets a gutting pay-off from a remorseful MacMahon. The self-satisfied, insecure protagonist was perhaps the template for Oliver Tate, the appalling, appealing centre of Richard Ayaode's recent Submarine. If you would like me to do my impression of Lionel Barrymore, that would be fine. "Young Dyoctor Kyildaaayur..." (4)

***

"Beat it, squirt!"
Three Men on a Horse (Mervyn LeRoy (uncredited), 1936) - I'm a big cheerleader for this ensemble comedy. In 2009, I wrote: "Sometimes all you want to do is laugh. And there are few films as purely, blissfully funny as this almost-forgotten 1936 gem, adapted from a big Broadway hit." That was from a blurb on the Harrogate Advertiser website, where I put this oft-overlooked film at #40 in an all-time top 100. In April this year, I included Frank McHugh's performance in my list of the 202 greatest performances in cinema. I can't help it, I just really like it. McHugh, the greatest character comic ever to walk the earth, plays a greetings card poet with an uncanny ability to pick the horses. He never bets - "it wouldn't be right, we can't afford it", he explains nonsensically - but gets it right every time. When he drunkenly stumbles into a cadre of gangsters led by Sam Levene (who transferred with the Broadway show and went on to appear in After the Thin Man and noir classics The Killers and Crossfire), they spot the chance to make a killing - if they can just keep their golden goose happy. McHugh had a wonderfully absent delivery, coupled to a sometimes impish sense of fun, and both virtues are to the fore here, as he childishly taunts his brother-in-law, repeatedly forgets that he's supposed to be helping out the hoods and accidentally seduces the ringleader's moll (the wonderful Joan Blondell). There are dozens of laughs, often in the most surprising places ("Remember what the parole officer said: no more homicides," stooge and embryonic Pesci, Teddy Hart, tells Levene), and the denouement is particularly agreeable. If you like classic Hollywood comedy, you simply have to get hold of a copy. It's only available on NTSC VHS, though, I'm afraid. (4)

***

Despicable Me (Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud, 2010) – Supervillain Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) adopts three little girls as part of a dastardly scheme to shrink the moon, only to find they have a mellowing effect. A fantastic first half gives way to a slightly less furious second, but this is still a super animated effort, with smart plotting, excellent characters (hurrah for the Minions... even if they are somewhat similar to Toy Story's aliens) and a host of genuinely brilliant gags. The sight of Gru and his sidekicks sitting forlornly on their tiny, shrunken plane will be one of the enduring film memories of this year. (3.5)

See also: The DVD features three Minion shorts: Home Makeover (Kyle Balda and Samuel Tourneux, 2010, 3), in which the girls prettify Gru's home, Orientation Day (3.5), where newly-recruited Minions are introduced to their responsibilities, and Banana (3.5), in which the little yeller fellas squabble over some fruit.

***

Teacher's Pet (George Seaton, 1958) is a romantic comedy on an interesting theme: real-world experience versus higher education. Clark Gable is the appallingly chauvinistic city editor (only some of his myriad flaws evident to the writers) who enlists in a journalism course to mock pert blonde teacher Doris Day, only to fall for her - and her message. It's quite well-written and played, with a strong presentation of newsroom life (it's not much like a Harrogate weekly in 2011) and a notable supporting turn from Gig Young as Day's sure-sighted intellectual collaborator. (3)

***

Mr. Jealousy (Noah Baumbach, 1997) – Substitute teacher Eric Stoltz starts a relationship with art gallery tour guide Annabella Sciorra, but is swallowed up by the green-eyed monster, becoming increasingly jealous of her past lovers - and then himself. This singularly unpromising premise is quite well-developed, with excellent turns from Carlos Jacott as Stoltz's complex pal and Chris Eigeman playing his arch nemesis, celebrated writer Dashiell Frank. The scenes in group therapy are very funny and a long-promised unmasking is hysterical, though the film still has some dull stretches and an extended ending that seems tacked-on. It's worth a look, but not in the same league as Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming. Or The Squid and the Whale, for that matter. (2.5)

***

Lady Be Good (Norman Z. McLeod, 1941) is the only musical I've seen with a framing sequence set in a divorce court*. The story about bickering married couple Ann Sothern and Robert Young isn't great (added to which, he's an absolute idiot) and the early numbers just consist of them singing round a piano, but the musical interludes get better and better as the film progresses, with the acrobatic African-American trio the Berry Brothers making a couple of appearances (they were rivals to the extraordinary Nicholas Brothers and engaged in a famous dance-off in 1938) and tap queen Eleanor Powell performing two routines. The first is a neat dance with a dog, but the second - with her in a glittery suit, hoofing to Gershwin's Fascinating Rhythm - is nothing short of astonishing. It was devised by Busby Berkeley, as you might expect, and is filmed in a palette of which silvery cinematographer Gregg Toland would have been proud. To see how it was staged and shot, check out That's Entertainment! III. Red Skelton's impression of Chinese people is a little bit racist. (2.5)

*Though Dancer in the Dark ventures into the criminal court.

***

Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935) - Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant made four films together. This is the other one, made a full three years before the commencement of that unmissable run incorporating Holiday, Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story. Before Grant debuted the persona that would define an entire era of America movie-making, in The Awful Truth. Here, Cary's a Cockney con man, Kate's a motherless waif posing as a boy and Brian Aherne is an artist of unclear morality, trying to give her a life lesson or two. The plotting is all over the shop, beginning with a parade of over-emoting that plays like a parody and recalls the worst excesses of silent melodrama, then going from knockabout comedy to improbable tragedy and back again in the blink of an eye. Several times. But it's rarely dull, Hepburn is mostly very good and the ending is nicely realised. (2.5)

***

Knight and Day (James Mangold, 2010) is a great trailer in search of a decent film. I've finally gotten around to seeing it and I still feel like I haven't. It's OK froth, beginning well with tongue firmly in cheek, but soon going awry in its gently incoherent, globe-trotting way. Tom Cruise is good fun in his ambiguous role; Cameron Diaz can't do comedy, drama, or anything else really, and looks weird and melted. (2.5)

***

Never Wave at a WAC (Norman Z. McLeod, 1953) - Pathetic addition to the "in the Army now" comedy ranks, with Rosalind Russell going from hideous socialite to hideous private. The story and script are unbearable and Russell - one of the most revered comediennes in the history of the movies, and of course His Girl Friday's Hildy Johnson - is just dreadful. The only bright spots come from Marie Wilson, doing her usual dumb blonde schtick. Bizarrely, this mess was directed by genre veteran McLeod, who was no stranger to manic masterpieces, having helmed the Marx Bros' 1932 classic Horse Feathers. (1.5)

O2 Media Awards 2011

2011-06-17T11:32:00.013+01:00

I'm a-freight this isn't the award I'm in the running for. (Sorry.)

Hello there. This is a short missive to let you know that I've been nominated for a couple of O2 Media Awards. I'm up for the Feature Writer of the Year and Digital Journalist of the Year gongs at the Yorkshire and the Humber ceremony on July 14.

Last year I was shortlisted as both a Young Journalist and Digital Reporter and invited to eat veggie sausage sandwiches at The Loft in Leeds. This year's event will take place at York Racecourse.

This very blog formed part of my digital portfolio, so thank you for reading, commenting and generally being awesome over the past year. Without your support (and I do mean YOU), there wouldn't be much point to me doing it.

I'll report back to you on July 15 with all the gossip from the evening. And by gossip, I mean what we had to eat.

The Visitor, the Army and filleting fish - Reviews #76

2011-06-14T13:42:00.005+01:00

The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, 2007) - After bit parts in Coen and Farrelly Brothers flicks, Richard Jenkins gets one of those once-in-a-lifetime roles, and gives one of those once-in-a-lifetime performances, in writer-director McCarthy's follow-up to The Station Agent. He plays a university professor coasting miserably, lazily through life and his infrequent lessons. Travelling to New York to present a paper he didn't even write, he's shaken from his stupor by a young Syrian drummer (Haaz Sleiman) who's been unwittingly living in Jenkins' city apartment. The film starts as a heartwarming comedy, as the pair bond over a shared love of music, then shifts into drama and tragedy after Sleiman is stopped by the cops in the underground.

McCarthy is a wonderful writer, with a great ear for dialogue, a complete resistance to melodrama and an ability to transmit hope and happiness in the face of hardship. There's also something of Jim Jarmusch in the way he celebrates humanity's common ground, rather than its petty and superficial differences. And once more he coaxes a startling turn from his lead actor, whose shift from moroseness to passion and compassion is a marvellous thing to behold, supported as it is by exceptional characterisations from Sleiman and screen mother Hiam Abbass. The Station Agent, with its pitch-perfect performances, distinctive visuals and level-headed script, was a tough act to follow, but McCarthy has done it, creating a mature, realistic and dramatically resonant movie that deals with the neglected subject of immigration whilst avoiding those diametric bugbears of triviality and worthiness. (4)

***

My Way Home (Bill Douglas, 1978) - "I want to die," repeats young Jamie (Stephen Archibald) over and over again, huddled on his bed in a Sally Army hostel, his tortured face smeared with dirt. "Thanks," he pipes up later, as a gay army pal kindly swaps their lunches, following Jamie's disastrous attempt to fillet a fish. They are the two key moments of release - one crippling, the other uplifting - in this unflinching portrait of internalised anguish and tentative hope, which completes director Douglas's astonishing autobiographical trilogy. The initial epiphany is a low: years of neglect and abandonment culminating in this flop-house breakdown, dominated by that bleakest of phrases. The second prefigures an upturn: a first friendship in a half-dozen years, and the undreamt-of possibility of a new home. All in all, this collection of scenes from Douglas's teenage years sees him indulge in apple-related larceny at a foster home, begin his first paid job by discarding his uniform in a public toilet and decamp to North Africa with the Army. Along the way there are fits of rage, fights with tedium ("I'm bored, I want to dae something," he repeatedly tells his army roommate; though he can never think quite what) and shards of solace. After all, why shouldn't he become a film director? Jamie might be out, but he's not down. My Way Home is the most technically accomplished film of the trilogy and, whilst never approaching the simple poetry of the extraordinary My Childhood, it's a better film than My Ain Folk, with a more coherent story and several simply wonderful vignettes. Knowing that this story was Douglas's own, and that Archibald himself wouldn't make it past 40, adds another level of poignancy to proceedings. As if that were necessary. (3.5)

Trivia note: The sudden switch to blisteringly hot climes foreshadows a similar jump in the director's only subsequent picture, the epic Comrades.

See also: The first two parts of Douglas's autobiographical trilogy are reviewed here.

***

America's Sweethearts (Joe Roth, 2001) is a thin but amusing mainstream comedy, as former couple John Cusack and Catherine Zeta-Jones are reunited at the press junket for their final film, helmed by pretentious megalomaniac Christopher Walken. Also along for the ride is Zeta Jones' newly-slim sister and put-upon PA (Julia Roberts), who's got a bit of a thing for Cusack. There are some very funny scenes and lines ("Siegfried and Roy are here?" and "So I hit him in the tray with my face" being particular favourites), Cusack is pretty good value - for me, he's one of the most likeable and most underrated actors of recent decades - and there's fine comic support from Hank Azaria, Seth Green (who knew?) and Billy Crystal, the latter co-scripting. (3)

***

*SOME MINOR SPOILERS*
City Hall (Harold Becker, 1996) - A former New York deputy mayor, two noted Scorsese collaborators and the scriptwriter of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest worked on the screenplay of this box-office flop. Perhaps that abundance of culinarians accounts for it being so muted, and so hopelessly muddled, with an uninvolving mystery and reams of faux-poetic rhetoric that doesn't really mean anything. Al Pacino's speech at the funeral of a six-year-old gun crime victim is a case in point. His performance is rousing, but the mayor's oration is not only completely self-serving and inappropriate, it's full of incomprehensible wordplay, bizarre syntax and metaphors that aren't metaphors. "That boy was as pure and as innocent... as the driven snow," Pacino yells. Innocent as the driven snow? That's not a real thing.

John Cusack, he of the fine back catalogue and improbably tiny mouth, plays the deputy mayor of New York. When a tough cop and a drug pusher with mafia links shoot one another - and then a six-year-old boy - Cusack and office veteran David Paymer start digging, and smell fish. There's the germ of a good film here, with an interesting insider view of politics and a mature final-reel treatment of back-room deal-making that avoids melodrama. There's also Pacino, who didn't do much of his best work in the '90s but is in commanding form, while Danny Aiello really does does look like a crooked politico. But the film never gets out of first gear - plodding along without tension, surprise or revelation - there's a terrible framing voiceover that has no relation to the actual picture and a risible, tacked-on romantic subplot with Cusack and lawyer Bridget Fonda, and the multitude of writers often seem to be copying wholesale from the Big Book of Political Quotations. (2)

From Harrogate to Hollywood - An interview with Christian McKay

2011-06-13T08:41:00.003+01:00

Christian McKay won acclaim for his big-screen role as Orson Welles. Now he’s coming to the district to perform a piano suite and discuss his career. He tells RICK BURIN about Orson, Spanish music and making his acting debut in a Harrogate panto.

Christian McKay in award-winning form, playing Orson Welles. The actor is also an accomplished concert pianist. (S)

HE’S worked with Woody Allen, played Orson Welles and shared a red carpet with George Clooney. But Christian McKay’s journey from RADA graduate to international screen sensation began on stage in Harrogate.

Playing a ghostly tree.

“My first job was a panto at Harrogate Theatre,” he says. “They gave me four parts, being cheap buggers, including an old man, Little John, Richard the Lionheart and a ghostly tree: Mandragora.

“I got caught in the trap door and carried on. It prepared me very well for the RSC.”

The date was November 2001 and the show was Babes in the Wood.

“Every audience for the panto is completely different - you have to get a feel for what they’re laughing at and play up to that,” he said at the time.

The Advertiser billed him as a concert pianist making his acting debut. It was his talent for music that had manifested itself first.

As a child, Bury-born McKay was a chorister at Manchester Cathedral and studied piano at Chetham’s, where the instrument became “the focal point of my life, through my Polish piano tutor screaming at me”. At the age of 21, he performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3.

RADA

Drama, meanwhile, was a hobby. Then, after musical courses at the University of York, the Royal College of Music and Queensland Conservatorium, McKay went for an audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).

“It was a kind of experiment,” the 37-year-old says.

He ended up spending three years there. “Suddenly the acting took over and my concerts dwindled,” he says.

Even so, he left a first year movement class (“doing all ridiculous things like being a tree”), telling his classmates he was visiting his parents, to catch a plane to the continent. “I played a festival on Saturday night and on Monday morning I was back at RADA, playing a snake, rolling around on the floor,” he says.

His big break as an actor came in 2007, when independent filmmaker Richard Linklater - the director of Before Sunrise and School of Rock - came to watch his one-man show, Rosebud.

Linklater was planning a film about Orson Welles and McKay was playing the booming polymath every night, at a small, off-Broadway theatre.

“Of course, I never wanted to play Orson. I wanted to play Churchill,” he says. “It just came about through unemployment. I was with a couple of mates, I had never played a real-life character and I thought: ‘How’s about doing a one-man show?’

“One of them said: ‘You’ve got a bit of a resemblance to Orson Welles’ and I said: ‘Oh no, not him, he’s a fat American. I don’t want to play him. I’m on a diet.’”

The 'fat American'

He considered Richard Burton (he breaks into a note-perfect impression), Peter Sellers or Alec Guinness, “but it always kept coming back to Welles”.

“I didn’t know anything about him, really, only the highlights,” he says. “But I kind of fell in love with the old man.”

When he received a script for Linklater’s film, Me and Orson Welles, he was sceptical.

“I took it with a big, down-to-earth, Lancastrian pinch of salt,” he says. “Then he turned up. I thought: ‘You can’t possibly cast me, I’m an unknown, I want to remain that way.’”

When Linklater spoke to big producers, they’d say: “Get rid of the limey.” “Right up until the moment he said ‘action’, I thought they would get somebody else,” McKay says.

“Of course they changed their mind, all of them, when the reviews started coming in and the awards nominations... in their dickie bows.”

McKay’s performance in the film is simply phenomenal. Whether seducing his players via sweetly-spoken flattery or heaping opprobrium on them, slotting cherished sections of The Magnificent Ambersons into a radio serial or lamenting his amorphous, shallow nature, McKay is Welles.

He twinkles, yells, guffaws, postures and roars. And in that one moment of heartbreaking self-awareness, his Welles reveals a compulsive need to play the chameleon, saying: “If people can’t find you, they can’t dislike you.”

Acclaim

McKay won three awards and was nominated for 13 others, as the wave of acclaim saw him rub shoulders with Hollywood royalty. “I was on the red carpet doing some interview and I looked around: on one side was George Clooney, on the other was Meryl Streep, and there was the Hollywood sign,” he says. “I thought: ‘This will probably never happen to me again.’”

Maybe not, given that he got bored during the ceremony and headed out the back to chat with the chauffeurs and cooks, almost missing his moment in the spotlight. He was returned to his seat by a gruff American, shouting: ‘You, the Orson Welles guy!’

McKay says playing Welles was “the most extraordinary rollercoaster”.

Having turned down four offers to revive the role on screen, he’s now planning a film about Welles’ later life. Is it easy to slip into the character? “I can’t,” he says. “I’ve completely lost him, which is good.”

The role hasn’t helped his career as much as he might have hoped. “I would go to auditions and they’d say: ‘We can’t have Orson Welles in the company’. I would say: ‘I’m not, I’m just a jobbing actor trying to get a job’,” he says.

Other roles

“In terms of personality, you couldn’t get two people more dissimilar. I met his daughter and she said: ‘You would have got on great with Dad’ and I always claim that we wouldn’t have got on at all. I think he would have despised me. I would have thought him very rude.”

Then, recalling his time playing Welles, he adds with a laugh: “But occasionally we’ve met and got on.”

Smaller roles have followed. McKay featured in the Howard Marks biopic Mr. Nice, as an MI6 operative who recruits the drug smuggler for some low-level espionage - and lives to regret it.

“That was lovely, because I met Howard Marks at the premiere and we were wondering whether the character I played might have snuck in,” he says.

Then he appeared in Woody Allen’s film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, as one of Josh Brolin’s poker pals.

“I was greatly looking forward to meeting the great man,” he says. But he blew his chances by crushing Allen’s hand as he went to shake it, then cracking a joke the director didn’t understand, “a better gag than anything in the film”. “After that the camera was on my shoulder,” he says.

Despite his limited screentime, he says it was “a very interesting experience”, especially working with Brolin and Slumdog Millionaire actress Freda Pinto.

Corrie

So how does he choose his roles? “When somebody like Mark Pellington - the director of the Mothman Prophecies and Arlington Road - rings you from America and says: ‘There’s a part I would like you to do’, you do it. You’re lucky to be asked,” he says.

“That’s the difference between American and British actors. A panto in Harrogate? Thanks very much, put me down. A couple of episodes of Coronation Street? Great.
“Perhaps it’s because we’re more versatile - that’s in our training.”

Speaking of Corrie, he’s particularly proud of The Road to Coronation Street, a BAFTA-winning drama about the soap’s origins, made by Brideshead Revisited director Charles Sturridge. “I just think he’s one of the greatest directors I have been lucky enough to work with,” he says. “It’s a lovely film.”

He has also completed a TV series about the Borgias. It’s a European production, not the American one starring Jeremy Irons. “I worked with his wife Sinéad at Stratford, though. I was her eunuch,” he says.

And then there is his labour of love: a film about the First World War Churchill, which McKay has begun writing, with an eye on a 2014 release date. “This is about when he failed and when he thought that his career was over,” he says.

“It would be wonderful to use all those lessons I learned about portraying a real person, because you don’t make an impression, you give the audience a flavour of the character, with little tricks and mannerisms.

“Winston Churchill had a lisp - and speech impediments are quite fashionable in terms of awards at the moment,” he adds with a chuckle.

Music

But first he has some “music time”, while he and wife Emily - who live near Kent - are also expecting their first child. “We’re looking forward to a luxurious summer of music and nappies, all being well,” he says.

McKay returns to the Harrogate district this month for the Northern Aldborough Festival, where he’ll talk about his career and perform Enrique Granados’ piano suite Goyescas. He has played concerts in Yorkshire before, being introduced as ‘Christine McVay’ by one confused compère.

He fell in love with Goyescas as a teenager at Chetham’s, last performing it in public 14 years ago, in Brisbane, Australia.

The piece has a poignant history. “The piano suite was so successful that Granados turned it into an opera, and paid for it with his life,” McKay says. After a successful debut in New York, the composer was invited to play a recital at the White House, but his boat was torpedoed and he drowned.

“It’s absolutely tragic, it was the summation of his career; he had written this letter saying: ‘I feel like I’m now beginning my work’,” McKay says.

“It’s an extraordinary, multi-layered piece of music, very like the story of Spain and based on paintings by Goya. Probably the reason I love it so much is it’s like an opera for the piano, with music and drama going along hand in hand - which is what I do.”

Christian McKay is at Aldborough Church on Tuesday, June 21 from 7.30pm. Tickets are £18. Call 01423 900989, email festival@aldborough.com or go to www.aldborough festival.com.
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This article was written by Rick Burin and appeared on Page 25 of the Harrogate Advertiser, June 10, 2011.