Stewart Lee, Stories We Tell and extremely melancholy whores − Reviews #250

We're at a quarter millennium of reviews, but they're not getting any better. This time: autobiography, corrupt cops and more (but worse) Huey Long.

LIVE



Stewart Lee: Content Provider at Leicester Square Theatre (02/12/16) − A show with all the virtues and vices of a remarkable, occasionally infuriating stand-up. It's been marketed as Lee's first full-length show in five years, but that's semantics: it's simply that he's no longer honing half-hour segments for a TV show, since that TV show's been cancelled. As he pungently points out, though, the BBC does still have the resources to fund a reboot of Are You Being Served?, which given the demise of the British department store should rightly be filmed in an Amazon warehouse, where Mrs Slocombe makes various oblique references to her cat, as a collection of Eastern Europeans look on in confusion.

And really it's no more coherent or cohesive than his previous shows, perhaps less so, without the through-line that his intro (or sporadic meta-commentary) suggests. He pitches it as a commentary on the life of the individual in this social media age, or says it would have been if Brexit and Trump hadn't got in the way. To be honest, that's to his advantage, as he's superb on politics, great at providing a dual-level experience − utilising a constructed persona who's vain, arrogant and contemptuous of his audience and his peers − and able to corral his audience's anger and angst into catharsis, without giving it an easy ride.

But whereas he deliriously, hilariously dismisses Game of Thrones without having seen it, his lack of understanding of modern technology critically undermines his deconstruction of it. There are many things wrong with social media, but if your starting point is that you don't understand the point of Twitter and you think Tinder is a paid-for app where you tick boxes about your interests, then you're fatally undercutting the significance of anything you have to say on the subject. That's the starting point of a Grumpy Old Men audition, not the bleeding edge of British comedy.

That hobby horse also powers a never-ending routine about homemade S&M equipment in the '30s, which extends a throwaway bit from his last tour into an interminable rant about the easy availability of everything in the modern world. I like the idea of alighting on something so perverse and obscure, I admire comics who play with the very rules of stand-up, and I know Lee's repetition, recounting and belabouring of a point are as integral to his work as the principles that underpin it, but the routine doesn't work. If he'd done something as conventional as tying it to an indictment of nostalgia, it might have, but as it is it just sort of lies there, a hollowness at its centre. I feel it's also beset with a pretentiousness that can stop Lee's shows stone dead, jettisoning much of the audience while giving a few of them the chance to show very loudly that they understand the joke; it was the same in January when he brought an unbearable joke about anarcho-syndicalists.

There's material here that's as good as anything anyone is doing right now. Surrounded by dozens of £0.01 DVDs from less-acclaimed, more popular comedians, he revives his assault on Russell Howard by seizing on a TV trailer in which the younger comic says that after running out of loo-roll he wiped his arse on a sock. Lee seizes on this faux-proletarian utterance by declaring it "observational comedy from a Victorian mental hospital", launching him into a superb juxtaposition of chummy Live at the Apollo-style stand-up and horrific human rights violations.

He follows it with an extended bit about other comics' reactions to his taunting of Howard (the sentence: "Why you say those things about Russell Howard, mate?" said perhaps 80 times, Lee's face and voice horrifically contorted) which is daring, inspired, stupid, clever, very funny and deceptively deep, while recalling interviews with Howard, John Robins and others about Lee's thin skin and yet how impervious he is to the idea that he might be genuinely upsetting young comics who idolise him by destroying their reputations in public. (I should add that I've met Stewart Lee a couple of times (once after a show and once on the street) and he was really nice and weirdly shy.)

He's now in an exalted position and I'm glad, because he's an artist who takes chances, someone with a distinctive, doggedly unconventional style, and I think that pretension is often merely what happens when your ambition overtakes your ability or the boundaries of the form, boundaries that are moved over time. But that doesn't mean you can't point out shortcomings in his work, even if he tends to obliterate anyone who does so in a whirlwind of blistering sardonism and repetition. (3)

***

FILMS



Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012) − If you're ever worried you might be oversharing, watch Sarah Polley's immaculate 2012 documentary, Stories We Tell, in which the incisively intelligent, staggeringly honest writer-director of Take This Waltz lays bare her family's history while telling the story of her late mother, Diane.

Like her earlier film, it's a movie that talks about things we know and recognise and are terrified by, and yet rarely discuss: the centrality of sex to everything, the difficulties and disappointments of relationships, and the often irresistible attractions that threaten to sever those crucial ties, perhaps irreparably. It's a film about secrets, about stories, about a search for identity, about the way we manufacture narratives to make sense of our memories and our lives.

At the start of the film, one of Polley's relatives asks why she's making it, since who else could be interested in this story? The answer, I think, is everyone. Because if you’re honest, you'll surely recognise parts of yourself in some of these characters, and perhaps in all of them. And all of them are honourable in some ways, spitefully selfish in others, wrestling with agendas and virtues and tragedies.

I don't want to say any more about either the subject or the style, as to do so would numb the impact of its surprises, but it is a remarkable film: haunting and bravura and with a genuine ovaries-out bravery that knocked me sideways. (4)

***



The Seven Five (Tiller Russell, 2014) − The apparently shameless Michael Dowd waves his arms about a lot as he explains how he made thousands of pounds committing robberies and drug deals as a New York cop in the 1980s. This is basically Cocaine Cowboys but not set in Miami and a bit more nuanced, thanks to a minor but appreciable grasp of morality and a central bromance as Shakespearean as the relationship between Paul and Frances in last week's Apprentice. (2.5)

***



Tight Spot (Phil Karlson, 1955) − A clunky, unconvincing crime film, with hapless lurches in tone, about luckless model Ginger Rogers sitting in a hotel room talking, as she tries to wriggle out of testifying against an underworld kingpin. Edward G. Robinson is the tough, plain-talking DA., with Brian Keith an irascible, sweaty cop who starts to warm to her.

For an hour, it's exceedingly stagy, its mannered script cursed with a uniquely irritating sense of humour; though there is one really sweet scene in which Rogers and Keith dance to a song on the radio, and the thaw sets in. Then finally the film judders into real life, transcending its origins to set up for a tense climax with a couple of really nice little touches in both the script and direction.

I've only ever seen Rogers give one great performance, in Gregory La Cava's dazzling comedy-drama Stage Door and she's all over the shop here (as is her accent), in a role that would have best suited a 1933 Barbara Stanwyck; for all that, she has odd moments of clarity and believability, and as a HUAC cheerleader doubtless cherished getting to state the case for informing. Keith isn't bad, if rather too hulking and obvious, so it's left to Robinson to take the acting honours, as assured as ever, in easily the least interesting of the three parts. (2)

***

TV



Huey Long (Ken Burns, 1985) − A poor documentary about one of the most fascinating figures of the American century: the rabble-rousing Louisiana radical (and spit of Frank McHugh), Huey Long, who wielded more power over his state than any politician in history and was gearing up to run for president when he was gunned down in 1935.

I've just read T. Harry Williams' phenomenal, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography and, next to that, Ken Burns' film seems embarrassingly trite and shallow, conspicuously lacking in a coherent narrative voice. Williams got to the crux of every matter: from charges of fascism and racketeering to laying bare Long's extraordinary qualities and his acts of petty-minded vindictiveness. Here, one person says one thing, another says the opposite, and you've no idea which of them is telling the truth.

I was interested to see Robert Penn Warren interviewed, as Long is mostly remembered today (if at all) as the inspiration for his book, All the King's Men − twice adapted as a film − but his only telling contribution is to read a couple of excerpts, the second accompanied by a touching montage.

It's slim pickings all round, really. Long's son Russell provides the best of the insights − including the memorable contention that by subverting democratic institutions and safeguards, his father actually promoted democracy, because for the first time people got what they had voted for − Randy Newman sings a nice song over the closing credits, and there are a few choice archive clips, but just read the book. (2)

***

BOOK



Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel García Márquez (2004) − More profound and moving than any novel about a 90-year-old hiring a 14-year-old prostitute for his birthday has any right to be. Its language like silk or sand, its narrator pitiful and poetic and precise, his moments of nobility and beauty offset by a pestilent past and a pitiless self-awareness, as he moves from voracious self-involvement to reflective idealism and finally a cagey understanding of the same. Some of its grace notes (like citing numerous books I could hardly break off to read) seem perversely obscure, as does Márquez's starting point, as if he's trying to prove that he can fashion something rhapsodic, pure and mature out of the most offputting material. Or he's just a bit sexist. I'm new to his work. (3.5)

***

Thanks for reading.

Sense and Sensibility, Kate Hepburn and whatever the opposite of a miracle is - Reviews #203

I read a book and went to a couple of shows, but you're here - if at all - for the film stuff, right? Film stuff:



*A FEW SPOILERS*
CINEMA: Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995) - It’s one of the defining scenes of ‘90s British cinema: a star on the cusp of supernova, accompanied by a stunning Patrick Doyle score and Michael Coulter’s sumptuous cinematography, all of it capturing a very old-fashioned sort of English vision. Kate Winslet’s Marianne walks purposefully, forlornly through the driving rain to a hill overlooking her lost love’s house. “Love is not love,” she says, leaning on Shakespearean sonnet in her hour of need, “Which alters when it alteration finds/Or bends with the remover to remove:/O no! It is an ever-fixèd mark/That looks on tempests and is never shaken…” Then the poetry dries up and she just breathes: “Willoughby, oh Willoughby... Willoughby... Willoughby.”

Perhaps the most surprising thing about the sequence is that it doesn’t appear at all in Jane Austen’s source novel. Marianne doesn’t walk to Willoughby’s, and she’s never swept up by a similarly sodden Colonel Brandon; her dalliance with death is inspired by sheer morosity and listlessness, not a second, unwise walk on the wild side. It’s one of innumerable smart creations and clever excisions made by screenwriter Emma Thompson, who spent five years on this – her first script – and subsequently scooped one of the more deserved Oscars of recent years. I asked her about her conception of the scene at a Q&A event held on Sunday to celebrate the film’s 20th anniversary, and she said this: “That just seemed obvious to me. What would be more natural than going to the place where your lover is and just repeating his name? That’s what love is”, adding self-mockingly of Marianne’s subsequent malaise that “people weren’t as sturdy then – it was ‘Oh, I’ve got a bit wet, now I’m nearly dead’.”

As well as scripting, Thompson also stars: she is Elinor, a detached, unfailingly proper 19-year-old, who with flighty, tempestuous younger sister Marianne (Winslet) experiences love and loss in a vivid, irresistible Austenian world peopled by rogues, unhappily conflicted gentlemen and the odd thoroughly decent chap. In the past year, I’ve become a huge Austen fan, but Sense and Sensibility isn’t her best book: it’s romantic, clever and full of her usual understated wisdom, but its wit is so relentless – and so caustic – that at times the tone borders on smug superiority, and the pacing of the story is far less assured than in works like Pride and Prejudice, and Persuasion.

Here, though, thanks to Thompson’s intelligent and exhaustive approach, its flaws becomes virtues: the flabbiness of the book allows her to slice away without losing much of real value (Willoughby’s fantastic monologue bites the dust, but its job is done by a line from Edward and a magnificent shot near the end), and her inventions both comic and dramatic succeed in matching the tone of what remains, ramping up the emotional resonance, retaining the dryness of the humour, and occasionally allowing the more caricatured comic elements passages of free rein, with hilarious bit-parts for Hugh Laurie (as the immortal Mr Palmer) and Imelda Staunton.

The cast is just about perfect: a who’s who of contemporary British talent, with Thompson giving arguably her finest performance, Winslet nailing Marianne’s combustible, impulsive nature – and eventual maturity – Hugh Grant displaying his astonishing comic timing (I’ll say it again – he’s a light comedian to match Cary Grant or Bill Powell) and Greg Wise rocking the cape, pointy sideburns and pouty, feckless caddishness you dream of when you read Austen’s words. Alan Rickman isn’t given a huge amount to work with as Colonel Brandon, but creates a handful of truly glorious moments, usually standing in doorways. And Imogen Stubbs? In the nicest possible way: what a bitch.

As I sat down to watch the film for the first time in almost 15 years, it took me a little while to settle into it. The opening scene seemed like a Comic Relief sketch, the villainess was played too broadly by Harriet Walter, and as the minutes rolled on, the film seemed oddly and unfortunately aloof. But with the arrival of Grant, it all clicks, then begins to build in resonance, before a succession of elegant emotional gut-punches to rival anything in director Ang Lee’s diverse and wonderful career. And it ends in the only way you’d ever want to, with Thompson playing the ending for both pathos and laughs, as she dissolves in wracking sobs. “Are you going to do that all the way through my speech?” asked Grant crossly on the set. “Yes,” Thompson replied. “It’s funny.” (4)

***



"The calla lilies are in bloom again..."
CINEMA: Stage Door (Gregory La Cava, 1937) - I could only stretch to one movie in the BFI's current (and long overdue) Kate Hepburn season, so I plumped for this one, a long-time personal favourite.

It's a crackling feminist masterpiece that passes the Bechdel Test 90 times a minute, as a flawless ensemble cast trades blistering, bitchy, pitch-black wisecracks while hanging out in a theatrical boarding house for women.

Based on a Broadway melodrama by Edna Ferber and George Kaufman, in which the stage and screen battled for the souls of young actresses, La Cava and his writers chucked out everything except the character names and a couple of plot points, and devoted two weeks to improv-heavy rehearsal, creating in the process one of the fastest, funniest films of the 1930s, as well as the one that has the most profound emotional impact on me. Floods of tears. Floods.

Hepburn is Terry Randall, the well-off wannabe who turns up at the Footlights Club, hoping to turn her hand to acting. There she finds a multitude of cynical young women - among them Ginger Rogers, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball and a 13-year-old Ann Miller - hardened by Depression-era knockbacks and offended by her easy, affluent manner. The Footlights is also home to Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds), a painfully sensitive soul who a year ago was the next big thing.

A movie about a "different race of people" - actresses resistant to failure and oblivious to the charms of prospective family - it sees both Hepburn and Rogers in career-best form as the sparring, none-more-different roomies, and fosters a unique atmosphere, building to a genuinely gobsmacking climax that spotlights its stars to stunning effect, reaching an emotional apogee unparalleled in its era, and - to me at least - in cinema at large. (4)

***



"Whaddaya hear, whaddaya say?"
Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938) - One of the truly great films: a fusion of gangster picture and message movie, as career criminal Rocky Sullivan (Jimmy Cagney) returns to his old neighbourhood, where he reunites with his childhood pal - now a priest (Pat O'Brien) - and becomes an immoral mentor to a gaggle of impressionable adolescents.

The immortal Cagney is in the form of his life here, drawing on characters from his own, impoverished youth to create one of the indelible characterisations of '30s cinema. O'Brien too gives by far the best performance of his patchier career, exuding a Spencer Tracy-like essence of quiet authority that, coupled with intelligent writing, makes his character's speechifying immensely affecting, rather than patronising or heavyhanded.

For though Angels does present Sullivan as a sympathetic character - one to admire in some ways, and pity in others - it also shows the consequences of its hero's actions in a more explicit and far-reaching manner than any earlier crime classics attempted to; this is Warner holding its former glorification of gangsterism to account, without an ounce of the sanctimoniousness that sunk less assured productions.

The film is frankly littered with unforgettable sequences, from the gutting prologue to Cagney's reunion with O'Brien and his first meeting with the Dead End Kids, and if their cartoonish antics grate - and serve to stall the film's momentum - there's such greatness in the script, Curtiz's stylish, magnificent direction and the chemistry between Cagney and O'Brien, that you can forgive it almost anything. There's also iconic imagery to spare - not least in a shootout sequence strewn with sweat, bullets and exploding tear gas canisters - and an important early showcase for Ann Sheridan, as a bruised widow drawn to Rocky despite her better judgement.

It all leads, fatalistically, to a denouement forever etched on the mind of anyone who's seen it: an ambiguous climax that still engenders fierce debate, intense emotion and a sense of awe at the sheer artistry involved, whilst offering a treatise on redemption and making an enduringly relevant, humane argument about the manner in which criminals are created.

Yes of course Leo Gorcey is really irritating, but in this case that's honestly OK. (4)

***



Underworld U.S.A. (Samuel Fuller, 1961) - Sam Fuller's gloomy gangster tale deals with lowlife crook Cliff Robertson, who tangles with crime kingpins as he seeks to avenge his father's death. As with all of Fuller's films, it starts brilliantly - conjuring an atmosphere not experienced on screen since Warner's '30s crime wave - but sadly this one rather loses its way, due to a B-grade script and cast, despite a clutch of spectacular sequences in the director's familiar, sensational style.

On a personal note, I just upgraded from the secondhand TV I got in 2007 to a sleek Samsung widescreen thingymabob, so when Fuller was on form, it looked utterly delicious. (2.5)

***



The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986) - Earlier this month, I went to see Ennio Morricone in concert. Among the innumerable delights of the evening – which included bumping into Elizabeth McGovern mere minutes after hearing her Once Upon a Time in America theme song – was the performance of three numbers from The Mission, the 1986 film that boasts an erratic reputation but a devoted and sizeable following. As a huge Morricone fan, I've listened to the soundtrack many times over the years, but I'd never actually seen the movie, so I thought I better remedy that.

Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Robert Bolt (who went to my school, *high five*), it turned out to be an extremely slow, ponderous Aguirre/Fitzcarraldo hybrid (not *high five*), based on a true story, about a Jesuit priest (Jeremy Irons), who takes a lushly-bearded former mercenary (Robert DeNiro) under his wing, whilst running a remote South American mission. As the church moves to close the progressive outpost, violence returns to the jungle and DeNiro reverts to type in the defence of his adopted home. What could be beguiling and fatalistic is instead portentous and remarkably dull, as Bolt alternates between profundity when considering personal duty and the battle between church and state – subjects he dealt with in his legendary work, A Man for All Seasons – and complete ineptitude when trying to write anything else, including small talk. There’s also the issue of De Niro’s changeable accent, which moves between New York and generic “foreign”, the absence of insight offered into these pale characters, and a climax that manages to be completely underwhelming despite featuring fiery bows and arrows that you shoot with your feet, and Liam Neeson in a canoe chase.

There are utterly wondrous things about the film – De Niro’s facial acting, Chris Menges’ breathtaking cinematography and one of the finest scores ever composed – but they’re in the service of a script that manages to take a potentially fascinating story and bore you half to death. (2.5)

***



The Time Traveler's Wife (Robert Schwentke, 2009) - This glossy adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s staggeringly popular 2003 sci-fi romance takes a couple of ludicrous liberties and botches the central relationship, but has a handful of hugely persuasive moments all the same.

It tells the cyclical, ingeniously-conceived story of time-traveller Henry (Eric Banana) and the titular character, Clare (Rachel McAdams). She meets him for the first time when she is six and he is 38; he meets her for the first time when he is 28 and she is 20. And, as in the book, they fall in love, quarrel, search for a cure and try to conceive (cue the most unrealistic fake tummy of all time: it looks like a papier mache-covered balloon, then coloured in with a felt tip).

In a way, you’d think that film would be the ideal medium for a novel that had a great premise and some moments of real visceral, emotional impact, but a rather weak writing style, its clunky copy peppered with tedious detail about meals and outfits. Apparently not. One issue is that the meticulous plotting had to inevitably be picked apart in order to fit a 528-page book into 107 minutes, another is that the film opts for soft focus romanticism instead of kicks to the guts (even the way Henry disappears: gradually ebbing away rather than being dragged into another time-frame, arriving in a sea of vomit, is soft-pedalled), and a third is that the central relationship just doesn’t work.

I’m not one of those who fell head over heels for these characters, but they had a certain something on the page. Not here. The presentation is pure patronising chick flick, the leads are completely miscast (with McAdams lacking in any perceptible dynamism and missing Clare’s defining characteristic, red-blonde hair, while Bana rarely looks interested), and the script does a frankly risible job of articulating the depth of feeling between the pair that Niffenegger, for all her linguistic failings, gets dead-on. The writers’ lack of understanding about why the book works is evidenced by two idiotic inventions: in the first, McAdams essentially rails at Bana for grooming her as a child, in the second, the film manages to incinerate the novel’s famous coda, replacing it with a running-through-the-fields bit of faux-tearjerking nonsense that has no place in cinema at all, let alone in this film.

Where the movie does score, oddly enough, is in its articulation of the relationship between Bana and his mother (Michelle Nolden), who share one extremely touching scene that doesn’t appear in the novel, and in the sequences featuring Alba (no spoilers), which are often very moving. Sometimes it pushes too far, but mostly it works; ironically, the film even managed to make me cry – a feat the book didn’t approach. It’s a shame that those moments shine out like rare jewels in a wasteland. A glossy wasteland made of chick flick. (2)

***


Aled Jones and his bird.

Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951) - The Bicycle Thieves' silly little brother, incorporating a three-minute tongue-in-cheek remake of that earlier masterpiece, an endless parade of L'Âge d'Or-apeing surrealistic gags and almost no story.

There are a few laughs at the beginning, but it gets very old very quickly, its trivial, one-dimensional approach and gimmicky fantasy sequences failing to successfully spear any of its apparent targets, from supercilious capitalists to traitorous proles.

If there's a point to any of it, then I'm afraid it rather escaped me. (2)

***

Thanks for reading.

Greta Garbo, Sherlock, and down-and-out like Flynn - Reviews #180

Here's some stuff I watched and read over the past couple of weeks. Let me know if I'm overselling it.

FILMS



One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961) - Wilder's second-to-last masterpiece - and Jimmy Cagney's penultimate picture - is a rapid-fire Cold War comedy that ranks as one of the funniest films ever made.

Caggers is a veteran Coca Cola executive, marooned in West Berlin, who's forced to call on every ounce of his resources - and every trick in the book - after he lets the boss's daughter (Pamela Tiffin) marry a card-carrying communist (Horst Buchholz).

After a slow but steady 15-minute set-up, a little light on laughs, it's just non-stop entertainment: clever jokes, silly jokes, Nazi jokes, Stalin sight gags, cross-dressing, satire, in-jokes and innuendo, with Cagney a whirlwind of chicanery, juggling crooked commissars, suspicious journos and a bum-wiggling secretary with an "ümlaut".

Back in his element after a decade of mostly misfires, the star effortlessly recaptures the Cagney of old, of Blonde Crazy, Jimmy the Gent and Torrid Zone. It's a performance so full of manic energy that he then had to lie down for 20 years, only re-emerging for 1981's Ragtime. He's supported by a fun and perpetually shouting Buchholz, and a little-known but faultless ensemble, from his matchlessly acerbic wife (Arlene Francis) - whose every utterance is a gem - to the effusive, impressionable none-more-Southern Tiffin, and a sidekick who claims he was too far underground to know what Hitler was up to (Hanns Lothar).

Lots of later filmmakers have tried to recapture the zany spirit of '30s and early '40s comedies, but few have succeeded. Since Wilder wrote most of the best - from Midnight to Ball of Fire - he's not paying homage, merely remembering, and this one's the true spiritual successor to the immortal Ninotchka, co-written by him and directed by his hero Ernst Lubitsch, with the same culture-clash comedy, and the same well-lubricated, well horny Russian emissaries.

Incidentally, while Wilder gave both capitalism and communism what for in Ninotchka (and in 1933 Cagney described Stalin as "the greatest man in the world"), here he sides quite clearly with the West, while loading the script with acidic references to Germany's recent past - a beautiful, almost saintly way to deal with the events that had so impacted upon his own life, his nuclear family having largely perished at Auschwitz.

Many actors and directors never retained or reclaimed the carefree sensibility of the '30s after the horrors of the war. Bomber pilot Jimmy Stewart swore off mere entertainments, immersing himself in murky Westerns. Comedy specialist George Stevens never made another after filming the liberation of the death camps. But after getting some of his angst and anger out with his moody 1948 film, A Foreign Affair, shot on the ravaged streets of Berlin, Wilder merely dug in and kept pitching, the political gags still flying, a film still a place where anything went and everything was good for a laugh.

His last masterpiece came nine years after this one: a butchered but remarkable riff on the Sherlock Holmes legend that was up there with the Brett adaptations as my favourite treatment of Conan Doyle's legendary detective... until Moffat and Gatiss went to work. (4)

Trivia note: The movie in-jokes here alone are worth the price of admission, with Cagney doing his grapefruit bit from The Public Enemy, Cagney doing Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (more of which below) and, best of all, a guy doing a Cagney impression at Cagney...!

***



The Man in the Iron Mask (James Whale, 1939) - A glossy, successful version of Dumas' timeless tale, very different in focus and feel to Doug Fairbanks' take on the story, The Iron Mask, but with the same Cardinal Richelieu (Nigel de Brulier appearing briefly his fourth time out) and that same classic closing shot.

Away from the realm of the star vehicle, the emphasis here is not on the ageing D'Artagnan - putting his life on the line for perhaps the last time - but on the title character, with Louis Hayward excelling in a dual role as the effete, pampered and murderous king, and his brave, empathetic, hounded brother - a finer man than he will ever be.

Hayward was one of the most talented and underrated leading men of his era, memorably playing The Saint as a smirking, hard-edged vigilante in the greatest ever incarnation of Leslie Charteris' hero, and he creates two diverse, contrasting and perfectly rounded characters here. Almost as soon as the film begins, you simply forget this is the same man, aided by the clarity of the writing, perhaps, but largely due to Hayward ability to craft two so distinctive and memorable personas. He really is terrific.

Dog-faced Pre-Code lothario Warren William is strangely cast as D'Artagnan, struggling to embody the character's great virtues (a challenge which Fairbanks met effortlessly), and the action climax is a bit of a letdown - aside from one impressive fall under some horses - but it's a slick, handsome and fast-moving movie, with a very good performance at its centre and some lovely, lushly-scored romantic scenes between Hayward and Joan Bennett. There are also a few striking images courtesy of Frankenstein director Whale, almost all of them within the confines of that jail cell, spotlighting that brutal, hideous mask. And, alas, there is one concession to Code-era "morality", as one character is punished for promiscuity by being quite inexplicably shot.

I still prefer The Iron Mask, a flawed but frequently fantastic rendering of the story which served as Fairbanks' emotional farewell to the silent screen, but this entertaining film - from Hollywood at its height - does a lot right, and shouldn't disappoint anyone, except perhaps those seeking some exciting action to go with their impressively rendered period drama. Indeed, its changes to Dumas's original proved so popular and effective that later adaptations often based themselves on this version of the story, rather than the celebrated novel. (3)

***



Garbo (Kevin Brownlow, 2005) - An insightful, respectful Brownlow documentary on one of the greats, perhaps overly concerned with her reclusiveness, but also well-researched, with a few interesting talking heads (plus Snore Vidal) and a wealth of exceptional footage: not only from her films, but also from her private life, her fabled 1949 screentest for a comeback that never transpired, and, most extraordinarily, two adverts she shot as a chunky, generously-eyebrowed teenager. The typically beautiful original score from frequent Brownlow collaborator Carl Davis is a massive bonus, and the montage of kisses - presumably inspired by Cinema Paradiso - is a jolt of sensual old movie joy. (3)

***



It's All True (Richard Wilson, Myron Meisel and Bill Krohn, 1993) - In 1942, Orson Welles was asked by the American government to make a film in Brazil as part of its "Good Neighbour" policy, which was designed to warm up relations with South America and so prevent the countries there from siding with the Axis. For reasons of office politics and global politics - not to mention Welles' unpredictability, obsessiveness, perfectionism, erratic work ethic, quest for authenticity and desire to fill his magnum opus with socialism - It's All True was never finished.

Fifty-one years later, his assistant director Dick Wilson put together this crucial, often magical and sometimes quite frustrating documentary, bearing the same name and containing some of the recently rediscovered footage. It begins with a hagiographic history of the project - ironing out Welles' various shortcomings and mistakes - and catches up with many of the impoverished Brazilians who became the stars of It's All True, or would have done, had it ever been completed.

For some reason, and this is the biggest frustration, the documentary contains mere snippets of My Friend Bonito - the Mexican pastoral piece directed by Norman Foster under Welles' specific instruction - but, most significantly, it climaxes with a lengthy reconstruction of Orson's pet project, Four Men on a Raft, telling the story of four penniless "jangaderos" who sailed the unimaginable journey from Fortaleza to Rio to demand the same civil rights as those in the cities.

This piece of silent poetry, shot in Welles' distinctive style but also bearing the influence of Robert Flaherty, couldn't be presented as the director intended - he was long dead, and the footage emerged from the vaults simply as dailies - and comes with an unsuitable, overbearing and overly modern musical score, but it is a priceless piece of film history nonetheless, containing its share of longueurs and non-professional woodenness, but also much breathtaking imagery. The sequence in which a sobbing child tackles an obstacle course of daily life, as she runs to report the body she's just found, is simply magical filmmaking, especially when one considers the clunky cameras Welles was having to use by the time his team pitched up in Fortaleza. And there's plenty more where that came from: boats silhouetted against a tempestuous sea, working-class Brazilians preparing meticulously for the daily catch, or marching endlessly by as they bury their dead, an emotional charge beneath the sheer beauty of the pictures.

As a chronicle of Welles' doomed South American project, the film only really works in conjunction with Simon Callow's biography - which properly contextualises and explains the myriad problems surrounding the shoot - but it does fill in a major blank in one of the most important and fascinating of all cinematic careers, sharing the almost mythic footage collected during surely the boldest and most ridiculously managed venture ever attempted by a Hollywood director. (3)

***



Brother Orchid (Lloyd Bacon, 1940) - Edward G. Robinson seemed to spend more time riffing playfully on his gangster image than actually defining it, but I suppose the immortal Little Caesar was all it really took.

This 1940 "crime comedy", though, isn't really what you'd expect, especially when you hear that Eddie G will be playing an underworld kingpin who hides out in a monastery. Perhaps the comic possibilities of the premise couldn't be fully exploited because Code-era movies were banned from anything that might be seen to lampoon religion, or perhaps the writers were just looking to do something different from a culture clash comedy - because this is certainly different.

Robinson's uncouth mobster returns from five years abroad - searching in vain for "real class", as he had in The Little Giant - to discover that he's yesterday's news, and his malevolent, duplicitous old partner, Humphrey Bogart, is now running the show. Our hero's ditsy dame (Ann Sothern) tries to smooth things out, but instead sets him up for a gangland slaying, which he only just manages to avoid, collapsing fortuitously in front of a monastery run by wise, gentle Donald Crisp.

The first half is a mixed bag, with Lloyd Bacon showing his usual lack of panache behind the camera, but there are a few good jokes, including Robinson's line about a postcard from a psychiatric hospital and Frank Orth's bit with the phone, while the scene in which our hero thinks he's been betrayed by his girl is unexpectedly moving. There's also a first-rate cast: not just the commanding star, Bogart, Sothern and Crisp, but also the likes of Ralph Belllamy, Allen Jenkins and Richard Lane.

But nothing really prepares you for what follows: a strange, heartfelt and earnest diversion - perhaps not entirely different from the ones that followed in On Dangerous Ground and Looper - featuring a couple of sly, funny gangster-out-of-water gags concerning "chumps" and "rewards", but rather more concerned with showing Robinson the error of his ways. While it's not entirely successful, providing neither the crime that we were promised, nor the comedy, it is agreeably unusual, perhaps due to the input of maverick associate producer Mark Hellinger. In fact, it's so good that even Bacon perks up, his obviousness offset by the rather lovely presentation of the scenes at the monastery.

Sometimes studio films of this era turn into something else entirely, merely because the writers were under such time pressure that they wrapped things up any way they could think of. With this one, based on a Collier's Magazine story, you get the impression that the redemptive tale into which it develops is the whole point, the cliched crime and comedy trappings are mere dressing for what the talented, often left-leaning screenwriters Earl Baldwin (Wild Boys of the Road) and Richard Connell (Meet John Doe) were trying to say. As such, it doesn't really compare with Robinson vehicles like Larceny, Inc. and A Slight Case of Murder, precisely because it isn't supposed to. It's so shot through with flaws that they may as well have been coming out of a Tommy Gun, but this gentle movie is also more satisfying than many others of its era, because it has a proper message underlying its immediate story.

Bellamy's final scene should also astound anyone familiar with his '30s and '40s work... (3)

***



Forever Female (Irving Rapper, 1953) - A backstage comedy-drama, with a pinch of Dodsworth, centring on a vain, ageing actress still playing 29 (Ginger Rogers), her producer and ex-husband (Paul Douglas), the headstrong young man who wrote her latest play (William Holden) - and who makes her feel young - and the ambitious, pretentious newcomer (Pat Crowley) trying to nab her role, and her man.

The script by Casablanca scribes Julius and Philip Epstein is predictable and rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but also enjoyable and pretty witty, with a fair Broadway flavour and an approach to attraction, relationships and middle-age that's perhaps erratic but also unusually mature.

The three big-name leads are in good if not tip-top form. Rogers never delivered on the comic or dramatic potential of her performance in Stage Door, but she's more modulated than normal, and her closing scenes are good. Holden, ironically, is simply too old for his part, and has little chance to trade on either his seductive cynicism (Sunset Blvd., Stalag 17) or dynamic muscularity (Picnic), but he's solid enough, while Douglas - a heavy, jowly stage success - does his usual bit, as reliable as he is unexciting.

The long-forgotten Crowley gets a huge credit at the start and another siamese stand-alone one at the end, billing her as a "future Paramount star", going to prove William Goldman's acerbic adage that no-one in Hollywood knows anything. She holds her own in the prestigious company, offering a decent variation on Anne Baxter's All About Eve heroics, and won the Golden Globe for Best Newcomer, but her energetic, charismatic performance is less nuanced than it should be, her sudden and not entirely convincing graduation from peppy youngster to wise young woman reminiscent of - and directly analogous to - Phoebe Nicholls' pleasant but mannered turn in the TV version of Brideshead Revisited. (3)

***



Black Legion (Archie Mayo and Michael Curtiz, 1937) - This bristling social drama is still shocking - and relevant - today, as an American everyman (Humphrey Bogart) loses a promotion to a second-generation immigrant, and joins the Klan. Or rather a Klan-like group called the Black Legion, though that rebranding appears to have had more to do with legal caution than moral cowardice, as the KKK is explicitly namechecked in the film.

It's a B-movie, really, with some convenient plotting, a lot of thick characters and a bit more romantic padding than is really welcome - as sweet as it is - but the central story retains a haunting power, much of it from the chilling imagery: masked figures swathed in black laying waste to farms and drug stores, whipping half-stripped immigrants, or conducting initiation ceremonies in the dead of night, at gunpoint, in which new recruits sign away their souls.

Scorsese must have had Bogart's revolver-based posing in mind, too, when Travis Bickle enquired as to whether anybody was talking to him. And there's something sublime about the movie calling into action bland, benign character players like Charles Halton and Harry Hayden (you'll probably know the faces, if not the names) to play its more banal, inconspicuous fascists. A shame, then, that the film's transparent contention that its higher-ranking Legionnaires are motivated more by money than proper racism does seem to be rather missing the point.

Warner Bros was more socially conscious, and spent more time and effort speaking to immigrant audiences, than any other studio, and this film goes where MGM and the rest would never have dreamt. It has its fair share of wooden acting, trite scripting and even silliness, while its attack is more on vigilantism than intolerance, but the boldness of the concept endures - along with a few unforgettable moments. (2.5)

***



Two-Faced Woman (George Cukor, 1941) - Three words: Garbo career apocalypse.

The ethereal Swedish sufferer works absolute wonders in this most unlikely of settings - a screwball comedy containing barely a trace of her established image - but the film around her is utterly dire, with a brainless, bad-tempered script, a supporting cast simply going through the motions, and the laziest direction Cukor ever gave. Stung by the (understandably) vitriolic critical reception, the great Garbo would never make another picture.

For what it's worth (and that really is very little), Garbo plays a Swedish ski instructor whose new husband (Melvyn Douglas) either wants to return to New York so that he can work incredibly hard editing his magazine, or just doss around chatting up women - the film is incredibly confused on this point. So she creates a twin sister for herself, who is apparently going to be such a handful that Douglas will return to the arms of his wife. Only he falls for her. But also finds out almost immediately that it's a ruse. So it's a battle-of-the-sexes comedy in which the male is entirely in charge the whole time, which also makes absolutely no sense, and which is bookended by some of the unfunniest slapstick ever misguidedly committed to film.

Douglas is so half-arsed it's little wonder that he soon took his considerable talents to the stage and the political arena - the scene in which he conceitedly smirks whilst hoodwinking her on the phone seems to sum up what he thought of the role - and the likes of Ruth Gordon, Roland Young and Constance Bennett look similarly embarrassed to be associated with something so abysmally conceived.

Somehow, despite all that, Garbo gives one of her most charming and delightful performances, following up her comic debut in Ninotchka with an altogether different characterisation: vivacious yet tormented, full of life, fun and flirtation, but with a heartbreakingly melancholy undercurrent. It would be the last time audiences would ever see her: Sweden's greatest cinematic export vanishing from sight for all time; well, except for to clomp around the streets of Manhattan in a huge hat and sunglasses for 50 years, the "hermit about town". (2)

***


These probably weren't that much use in the end.

*A FEW SPOILERS*
Tarzan Escapes (Richard Thorpe and John Farrow, 1936) - A film that's better known for what it doesn't contain than what it does, its notorious "vampire bats" sequence being excised after previews as it was deemed too frightening for audiences - and later lost (though some fans report seeing it in the '60s). As such, the characters climactically travel into a cave and emerge bloodied and beaten for no discernable reason, which I think we can file under "continuity error". Ironically, the whole film had already been completely repatterned by MGM after the 1935 cut, Tarzan Returns, was said to lack a central menace. Make your mind up, fellas.

As it exists today, Tarzan Escapes contains the usual mix of staggering racism, breathtaking colonial arrogance, incoherent philosophising and haplessly incorporated location footage, partially rescued - as ever - by some lively mythmaking and the megawatt charisma of Johnny Weissmuller (Tarzan) and Maureen O'Sullivan (Jane).

Plummy Benita Hume idiotically provokes a lioness, who is then shot dead - nice work, moron - with the travelling party doing nothing to atone, while black characters plummet to their death only for their civilised overlords to remark: "That was a close one." Indeed, the tribal inhabitants of Tarzan's perilous paradise exist only to be slaughtered, so that we, the viewer, are aware some white guy might be in a spot of danger - which, of course, they never are.

The film cleverly keeps Tarz off screen - aside from a couple of aaaheehaaaeeeaaaahs - for a good 20 minutes, then introduces him unexpectedly with a pip of a reveal, the camera swooping backwards to show his imposing frame in the upper reaches of a jungle tree. There's also a killer PoV shot of Tarzan kissing a very horny Jane, cutting to a flower floating in an inky lake that's very artily done, but the film in its entirety is an almost plotless inconsequence, its small snippets of story merely rehashed from its two predecessors, and coming out as dull domestic drama.

Jane's jungle house is impossible to take seriously in light of the excoriating Me Cheeta, James Lever's "autobiography" of the simian performer, while, perhaps most damagingly, Herbert Mundin provides some of the unfunniest, most overbearing comic relief I've ever seen - aside from his final scene - even if surprisingly effective when asked to play it straight. Had the whole production hadn't been so appallingly tortuous - going through three directors, including O'Sullivan's husband, John Farrow - you could almost accuse the film of being very, very lazy. As it is, it's perhaps just notably lacking in inspiration.

Then with 15 minutes left, it finally finds a bit of rhythm: Tarzan's escape is good fun, the swampy, foggy cave into which he leads his gang is overloaded with proto-noirish atmosphere - as man-eating lizards skulk around, gobbling black people - and the punchline to the sequence is superbly conceived. What it's really crying out for, though, is a topper: something to erase the tedium of the preceding 70 minutes and make it all worthwhile. You know, like vampire bats. (2)

***

BOOKS



Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre (2007) - You may remember this as the book that everyone was buying for everyone else (and particularly their dads) six Christmases ago. I gave it to my brother, but only just got around to borrowing it. It's the superb, ridiculous true story of Eddie Chapman, the North Eastern safecracker, womaniser and all-round Jack-the-lad who managed to get out of a Jersey prison by offering to spy on Britain for the Nazi occupiers... then turned double-agent under the guidance of spymasters supreme Tar Robertson, John Masterson, and his handler, Ronnie Reed. Barely a paragraph passes without some remarkable or hilarious detail, from fervent Nazi Walter Praetorius's obsession with Morris dancing, to the German agent who blew his cover in Britain by paying £10 and six shillings for a train ticket costing "10 and six". Chapman emerges as a fascinating character, his life the stuff of fiction, whose motives were often murky but who was transformed by that most appalling of creations - war - into a man of conscience. Meticulously assembled and written with the lightest of touches, it's one of the most enjoyable factual books I've read in an age. Highly recommended. (4)

***



My Wicked, Wicked Ways by Errol Flynn and Earl Conrad (1959) - Flynn's epic, notorious (and ghost-written) final statement is a patchwork of lies, fantasy and perhaps even a few things that actually happened, underscored by an obsession with sex that borders on the hysterical. It's the heartbreaking climactic third, though, that shifts it from a rollicking good read to something timeless, shot through as it is with sadness and loneliness, the spectre of addiction dominating. In addition to countless tall tales about his death-defying escapades, a false murder confession and some troubling sexual politics - Flynn and his aide lurching from one topic to the next with little interest in structure but a killer turn of phrase - there's an extraordinary amount in the book about the meaning and purpose of existence, somewhat at odds with the image of its (purported) author as a brainless carouser. But, as he so forcefully argues, he is as contradictory as any man, or indeed, as all of them. (3.5)

***



See You at the Movies by Melvyn Douglas and Tom Arthur (1986) - A wise, intimate autobiography with a rather misleading title, since the suave leading man turned heavyweight character player is so much more enamoured of his stage work than the featherweight Hollywood efforts that made his name. There are a few extremely insightful pen portraits of stars like Joan Crawford and Cary Grant, but Douglas spends more time - and energy - on the art of acting, the politics of the period, and his relationship with his beloved wife, Helen Gahagan Douglas. He's self-critical, frequently self-effacing - undercutting seriousness with sarcasm in the most unexpected places - and occasionally self-satisfied. He's also a charming companion in this, his twilight, with an irredeemable fondness for stories in which he behaves arrogantly and then trips over: pride coming before a quite literal fall. (3.5)

***

TV



Sherlock (Season 3, 2013) - Still the best thing on TV, perfectly balancing humour, sentiment and suspense, and provoking one of the most tedious, unconvincing backlashes in living memory. There's nothing here to touch the Season 2 finale, but then there's little else I've ever seen to touch the Season 2 finale. The first episode perhaps missteps by reuniting John and Sherlock in a comic, rather than a heartfelt manner, a few of the one-off supporting characters (the train nerd, the women on the online forum) have a case of the woodens, and there isn't always that much detecting going on, but those are infinitesimal quibbles with a truly remarkable programme - one of those works of dramatic art that exalts you, then leaves you bereft as the credits roll. The season finale, His Last Vow, is simply gobsmacking. Face-licking too, at one point. (4)

***



Veep (Season 1, 2012) - Armando Iannucci and Simon Blackwell's attempt to transfer their profound, profanity-laced brand of political satire to the US is a complete and staggering success, the unmistakable feel of their work remaining gloriously untouched, albeit with a touch of Parks and Rec sweetness smuggled in. Cracking ensemble too. I loved it. (4)

Searching for Sugarman, Jimmy Cliff, et une chat - Reviews #127

Music, music and music. And Jack Nicholson.



*MAJOR SPOILERS, SO TAKE CARE*
CINEMA: Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul, 2012) - In the early '70s, Rodriguez, a singer-songwriter from Detroit, made two folksy political records that flopped upon release, before disappearing off the face of the planet. But in Apartheid-era South Africa, his music took on a life of its own, inspiring a whole generation of activists and musicians. In every white, liberal household there were said to be three records: Abbey Road, Bridge Over Troubled Water and Rodriguez's Cold Fact. The myths around this mysterious figure were legion - largely due to South Africa's heavily-regulated media - and so a group of dedicated musicologist "detectives" decided to find out what had happened to their hero - and whether he had really died after setting himself alight on stage following a disastrous comeback gig. It's a riveting tale, very well-told, with a fine selection of talking heads - whose infectious enthusiasm and eulogising of the subject provides the movie with much of its pathos, heart and humour - intelligent use of Rodriguez's songs and even some nice snippets of animation, which feed cleverly into the film's later chapters. And what begins as an eerie, ominous and apparently sad story is flipped on its head at the halfway point, becoming an unexpected, uplifting story about nice things happening to nice people. It really is a very affecting, appealing film, similar in some regards to Anvil, and only undermined by lingering city-scape shots that occasionally feel like padding and a series of false endings in which the chronology seems a little off. Some critics have questioned the film's decision to ignore a parallel story concerning the singer's links to Australia but, while you can see their point, you can also understand why it was excluded: after all, the movie is about the way Rodriguez's music about oppressed peoples resonated in South Africa. Highly recommended. (3.5)

***

This next one screened in York the other week, to mark the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence.



*SOME SPOILERS*
CINEMA: The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell, 1972) - Jimmy Cliff is a jobless singer who moves to the city in search of a break, cuts a nifty reggae record, but can't buck the studio head's stranglehold on the industry. Then someone nicks his bike, so he stabs them repeatedly in the eyes. The movie that brought reggae to big chunks of the globe has some sensational music, a charismatic performance from Cliff and a trio of genuinely great sequences: footage of poverty accompanied by his spellbinding Many Rivers to Cross, the neat photoshoot sequence that gave the film its one truly iconic image, and a classic, vital performance of the title track (which ultimately gets played to death). But it can never get over its completely ridiculous story, the generally abysmal acting and some of the most incompetently staged scenes I've ever seen. Every so often there's a well-constructed set piece - like the gospel choir's concert - or a clever gimmick, such as the camera itself being shot off its bike; but then the film will confound you with 20 minutes of the most unintelligible nonsense you've ever seen, sequences that look like they were shot by mistake and then edited in a garage. The story could have been a hard-hitting piece about Jamaican society in the '70s, and does offer a borderline-insightful portrait of the country in its opening reels, but ultimately emerges as a series of barely-connected scenes in which characters do things for apparently no reason. Like shooting a policeman. Or the eye thing. Cliff, who can't deliver dialogue but has undeniable star power, is kind of cool, but that's the only reason to like his character, who goes from amiable drifter to gun-toting fugitive in as much time as it takes to say: "Uhfuhfuhfuhfuhfuhfuh, man." Because, yes, this movie has a supporting cast who make Bane sound like Alec Guinness. There is also some spectacularly gratuitous nudity, in the Blaxploitation tradition. If I'm about to be shot, I always make sure I'm naked first. The film is a fairly interesting period piece and worth seeing for the sounds - which also include You Can Get It If You Really Want and Limbo - but ultimately it's too tawdry, silly and incoherent to actually be any good. (2)

***



"I'm a very manly Muppet..."
The Muppets (James Bobin, 2011) – I saw this in a cinema room on a boat. It was very noisy and I missed a couple of little bits (what happens with Gonzo’s act on the show?) as they were flashing up announcements, but I really, really enjoyed it. The narrative is framed in a remarkably effective, nostalgic, heart-tugging way – even for someone who didn’t previously feel quite the same warmth for these characters that the filmmakers clearly do – Segel is great (as is his Muppet alter-ego), the new songs are uncharacteristically superb and there are a lot of laughs (Walter sprinting out of Muppet Studios screaming had me in hysterics). A few scenes drag a little and the meta elements of the script only work about half the time – it’s an easy, slightly lazy way of writing – but this is still a very fine, very entertaining piece of work, and the Muppets’ best feature so far. If proof were needed, the film takes the idea of a Beaker-led barbershop quartet performing Smells Like Teen Spirit, and makes it work. Brilliantly. (3.5)

***



A Cat in Paris (Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol, 2010) - A young girl, struck mute after her father's death, is aided by a jewel thief and their mutual cat after a psychotic gangster threatens her life, in this attractive hand-drawn animation. The first thing to note is that, like Kung Fu Panda 2, this is a lot better than Rango, which hilariously won the Best Animated Feature Oscar. The second is that while most animations are either aimed at five or six-year-old kids, aimed at five or six-year-old kids but with enough gags for grown-ups, or made by Pixar, this one's a little different, ideally suited for nine or 10-year-olds, with more adult themes and a touch of artiness about its slinky, distinctive, slightly skewed visuals. Let's just say it, it looks really French. I especially like the way our Lupin-esque looter spins in a circular whirl as he leaps between improvised platforms on another of his exciteable Parkour runs. The story is agreeably straightforward and entertaining, with strong comic relief from some typically incompetent criminal goons - every one of the villain's henchmen seems to be an idiot of some description - and an exciting, imaginative climax. Many Paris-set films, particularly the thrillers, conclude with their characters legging it up the Eiffel Tower, but this one does what only an animated film can (unless of course a live-action production constructed a large replica of the Notre-Dame Cathedral), by having its hero and villain duke it out at - well, I suppose I spoiled that with the parentheses. Notre-Dame Cathedral. That's where they have a fight. If there are criticisms, and there are usually a couple, it's that the characters' faces appear too simplistic (and curiously hairy) when contrasted with the sometimes spectacular settings, while the film is a little short on that intangible movie magic that its premise promises. It's good solid entertainment, though, with a streak of style. (3)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (Peter Sollett, 2008) - I imagine some people will find this unbearable: a twee romantic comedy starring Marmite's Michael Cera, in which his burgeoning relationship with gobby Kat Dennings is built on a shared love of indie rock. It's actually not bad, benefiting from Cera's doe-eyed sentimentality and fine comic timing, and emerging as a contemporary, neon-lit spin on John Hughes's Sixteen Candles, right down to the tiresome gross-out excesses. One could argue that it'd be nice if Cera did something a bit different, but then he did that in Scott Pilgrim (unless his annoying, self-centred character was supposed to be attractive from the off, which I don't think he was), and I didn't like it. He plays high-school student Nick. Still unable to climb out of a slump after being dumped by vacuous, scheming Tris (Alexis Dziena), he insists on bombarding her with mix CDs in which the likes of Bishop Allen rub shoulders with the likes of him moaning about how he was dumped. Then he meets Tris's arch nemesis (Dennings), a lonely, smart-mouthed music fan who's been admiring him from afar - or at least his mix CDs. And across one long, sometimes interesting night, they fall in lurve. The film starts off funnily, introduces a lot of mediocre archetypes (nowadays Cera is usually equipped with at least one witty, unapologetic gay friend - here he has three), goes on too long and then somehow manages to have an abrupt ending, but there are some nice moments along the way (I'm thinking of Cera's whining CD interlude, rather than the public toilet filled with vomit) and it's lifted by the leads. Cera and Dennings are hardly Nick and Nora, but he's a very nice actor - within his apparent limitations - and they work well together. That's despite the discrepancy in their head size - when they kiss it's like a T-Rex (Dennings) getting off with someone who's inadvisedly annoyed a tribe in the rainforest (Cera). (2.5)

***



Lucky Partners (Lewis Milestone, 1940) – A penniless, smooth-talking and “lucky” artist (Ronald Colman) goes halfsies on a lottery ticket with the bookseller across the street (Ginger Rogers). The deal? If they win, she has to join him on a horizon-expanding “honeymoon”, before her wedding to bespectacled, suspicious insurance agent Jack Carson. The film starts off stagily but winningly, stumbles through some erratic farce and then winds up, as per usual, with everyone in the courtroom; though here they spend a whopping 16 minutes trying to untangle the plot threads. Lucky Partners flirts with philosophy and fantasy, but doesn’t go far enough along either of those intriguing avenues, preferring instead to keep things on the romcom straight-and-narrow. Colman, with his creamy upper-class English tones, could be utterly charming or overly smug – here he’s largely leaning towards the former. Rogers is her usual inconsistent self: nailing some gags, over-selling others and offering the odd glimpse of sentimental brilliance. Carson doesn’t have as much to do as in later, better comedies like The Male Animal or It's a Great Feeling, but he’s always good value. It’s a slightly frustrating film, as you can see how it could have been so much better, but it’s diverting enough and Milestone’s skilful direction incorporates some delicious door gags worthy of Lubitsch: including a hilarious running joke about Rogers inadvertently terrorising a hotel maid. (2.5)

***



Prizzi’s Honour (John Huston, 1985) – A “straight arrow” Mafia fixer (Jack Nicholson) falls in love with a hitwoman (Kathleen Turner), who may or may not have been ripping off the family, in this twisty-turny black comedy. Huston creates a credible, slyly subverted world of Sicilian gangsterism, from the throaty, chalk-faced Don apparently on the brink of death (William Hickey), through the outwardly officious consigliere (Lee Richardson) to Anjelica Huston’s scheming, sad-eyed Maerose, spurned first by Nicholson and then by her entire family. It’s a knowing and exaggerated universe, without degenerating into the broad parody of something like The Freshman, and helped tremendously by Alex North’s majestic score. Richard Condon’s script, adapted from his own novel, is never clever, funny or precise enough to give the film a shot at greatness - there's an endlessly repeated joke about Nicholson and Turner taking the plane that is almost insultingly useless - though its often understated sense of humour does build in effectiveness towards the close and there are a smattering of very funny lines (“If Moxy’s so fucking clever, then why’s he so fucking dead?”). The film also features that strange ‘80s cinematography with the glowing whites, as if the DP has let too much light into the shot. The performances are variable. Turner is OK and Nicholson has a couple of good scenes – his phone call near the end is nicely played – but like John Barrymore before him, he largely retired from acting to become a star, relying on an arsenal of lazy tics. In this instance, he also displays an alarming propensity for woodenness. Thank goodness then for Anjelica Huston (the director’s daughter), whose sad, wicked and romantic characterisation lifts the film onto a whole other level whenever she’s on screen. What a fantastic actress she is, and always was. Richardson, John Randolph – playing Nicholson’s sympathetic father – and Hickey are also strong in support, giving the film some much needed pathos and menace. This is hardly among Huston’s classics, of which there are many, but it’s interesting and moderately entertaining, despite its many shortcomings. The director would re-team with Anjelica for his final and finest film, an adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead. (2.5)