John Ford, Romeo and Juliet, and a bawdy grandad - Reviews #177

Plus: Ben Hecht, Maggie Smith and a damp squib of a kung fu film.



Romeo and Juliet (George Cukor, 1936) - This is an astonishingly good translation of the Shakespeare play, devised and demanded by the brilliant, doomed producer Irving Thalberg, but only greenlit in the wake of Warner Bros' massively successful Midsummer Night's Dream, staged by Max Reinhardt. Thalberg was a prodigious, literary-minded man with an ailing body but a will of steel, who had escaped into books during a teenage year committed to his bed, and in the final years before his death at 37 brought to the screen such ambitious projects as The Good Earth and Marie Antoinette. His fingerprints are all over the best moments of this extravagantly mounted movie and, as much as I like elements of Luhrmann's version, this is one of the few film adaptations of Shakespeare that renders his work accessible to a modern audience without resorting to gimmickry or novelty.

Its masterstroke - and bizarrely its most derided element - lies in the casting of the titular lovers. At 36, Norma Shearer was twice as old as Juliet (who's supposed to be 14), while the 43-year-old Leslie Howard is at least 20 years older than the typical present-day Romeo. In the grand scheme of things, though, it doesn't really matter. Not only can they each pass for a decade younger - sprightly and sensitively lit as they are - but in order for the play to work, the flowering of first love needs only to convince, not to be between teenagers. It does that effortlessly, partly because both the leads are absolutely sensational.

As a rule, I'm far more a fan of Howard's humorous work than his dramatic parts. In films like Pygmalion and It's Love I'm After he's a comic whirlwind, a force to be reckoned with, spewing epithets and brilliant bile, seizing the material and contorting it to devastating ends. In his dramatic parts, he tends to be a bit of a wet blanket. But whereas his speechifying introspection in The Petrified Forest - that risible philosophical gangster movie - comes across as unbearably smug and irritating, put him in tights, in love and in the right setting, and such characterisation can work wonders. Added to which, he's simply a lot better here, his heartbreaking portrayal of the tragic lover equipped with a quicksilver air and a latent dynamism to go with that impossibly romantic posturing.

Shearer was married to Thalberg, and the likes of Joan Crawford spend a good deal of their time downplaying her talent, saying she was cross-eyed (she was, but it's very charming) and that she only got ahead because she was "sleeping with the boss". Considering that Crawford was not only about a tenth of the actress that Shearer was, but was actually sleeping with most of her bosses, that seems a bit rich. At her best, Shearer was an absolutely exceptional performer: a great actress, a muse, a centrepiece of truly great romances like The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, Lubitsch's immortal silent. Certainly she achieved less after Thalberg's death - her final film, We Were Dancing, really is a bit of a clunker - and clearly he tailored films to her talents, but what talents they were. She's a magnificent Juliet: ethereal, impulsive and matchlessly tender, grasped by one emotion and then the next, navigating a complex part with a skill, intelligence and emotional sensitivity that takes the breath away. Yes she's 36, but - without wanting to sound too much like a pompous idiot (it is hard for me) - is that honestly the level at which we're going to judge art? "She's a bit old"?

It's that stunning central coupling, perfect together or alone, their masterful handling of the dialogue rendering it utterly modern and entirely unforgettable, that gives the film its grip, its hold, its haunting power, and makes up for the things the movie does wrong, several of which are slightly baffling. Edna May Oliver, perhaps the least talented person in '30s America, is typically one-note as Juliet's nurse, while future John Ford stock company alumnus Andy Devine provides atrocious comic relief in a beefed-up role as her assistant. And, then, of course, there are Shakespeare's own shortcomings. He was one hell of a writer - of course he was - but that doesn't mean you can't quibble with plotting that includes a potion replicating the symptoms of death, a father figure who can't really be arsed to ensure Romeo's safety, and an extremely sudden, remarkably convenient outbreak of pestilence.

There's also bloody Mercutio, of course, arguably the most annoying character in theatre, here brought to life by the 54-year-old John Barrymore (OK, Thalberg, now you really are taking the piss), the legendary thespian who transformed the art of Shakespeare with his stage versions of Richard III and Hamlet, but here is a mere bloated, pointing shadow of his former self, his energy and genius traded for a raised eyebrow, a finger raised to the sky and, at most, two fleeting moments of resonance. In support, it's only Basil Rathbone as a stuck-up Tybalt and Reginald Denny's Benvolio who impress.

It's a film with dips, then: troughs filled with broad comedy and lazy hamming. But boy are those peaks mighty: Cukor and William H. Daniels' often masterful compositions - Romeo lit silver as he plays to the balcony, Juliet "dead" beneath a transparent veil - and Shakespeare's glorious words and intensely moving scenarios performed to perfection by two extraordinary actors. (3.5)

***



It’s a Wonderful World (W. S. Van Dyke II, 1939) - "I swear by my eyes." Claudette Colbert's Hechtian vow is right up there with "I close the iron door on you" (Twentieth Century), "I thought you thought so" (Libeled Lady) and "Oh Dook" (I Love You Again) as one of those Golden Age phrases that instantly transports me to a happier place. And every time she says it, it gets slightly funnier. This daft, fast-paced screwball thriller isn't terribly deep and isn't terribly polished, hopping from one comic scenario to the next with no thought other than where the next laugh might be coming from, but it's a film I happily return to every couple of years, always to discover that, yes, it still rocks. Hard. And - due to my current commuting - that I am sitting on a train, laughing out loud at my laptop like a weirdo.

Jimmy Stewart is a cynical, woman-hating private detective (in the film) who goes on the lam to try to save his playboy employer from the electric chair, and so scoop 100 Gs. Claudette Colbert is poetess and potentially incriminating witness Edwina Corday, who first finds herself his prisoner, then decides to never leave him alone, since she totally fancies him. It's one of the few variations on It Happened One Night that doesn't make me want to sue the writers out of sheer annoyance. At one point Stewart punches Colbert in the face, at another he does a blackface routine, but somehow it's all kind of fine, because the film is so light, charming and hysterically funny, thanks to Hecht's dialogue, the transcendent performances of the leads, and supporting masterclasses from Guy Kibbee and Nat Pendleton - the latter forming one of cinema's great "dumb cop" double acts with Edgar Kennedy.

Most of Hecht's favourite things are in here - tough-but-secretly-sentimental heroes, cynical reporters, smart one-liners ("You couldn't find that guy if he was riding in a float"), absurd catchphrases, dizzy dames and murder - and they're mostly my favourite things too (the only one I'm not as keen on is murder), so that's cool. It's a Wonderful World isn't quite top-tier screwball, but it's close enough: endlessly quotable escapism, and another '30s comedy to be filed under "instant joy". (3.5)

***



Young Cassidy (John Ford, 1965) - I was surprised by how strong Young Cassidy was: a good movie that does a few things wrong, rather than a bad one that does a few things right. It's oddly billed, as "a John Ford film... directed by Jack Cardiff", as the great American director was on his penultimate legs and had to bail after two weeks of shooting, and that's about right: its themes and its characters are Fordian, its stylistics are for the most part pure Cardiff, the whole thing shot in the same way as Sons and Lovers, merely in colour. The exceptions, perhaps rather are obviously, are the pub brawl (recalling She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and most of Ford's others) and a crucial death scene, both of which were filmed by Ford.

It's all based on a memoir by the great Irish playwright Seán O'Casey, climaxing with the first night of his breakthrough work - The Plough and the Stars - which was filmed by Ford in 1936. Australian actor Rod Taylor is O'Casey, Johnny Cassidy by birth, a drunken, brawling working man with an artist's sensitivity, or "the most John Ford character ever", in shorthand. There's no narrative drive until the last 15 minutes, but what there is is a succession of vignettes, many of them interesting and powerful, as we move from a beautiful credits sequence, through O'Casey's encounters with poverty, free-spirited women and Irish rebels, to the flowering of his art and the meeting of the love of his life, a meek, virginal librarian played with a beguiling sincerity by Maggie Smith.

The film is far more effective from an emotional perspective than a historical one. O'Casey cheerily laments at one point that the Abbey Theatre feels he can never strike the right balance between plot and character. Neither can the film. Its feelings are real, but its storytelling is sometimes ham-fisted, particularly in the first half. The Easter Rising is effectively evoked, but the street battle that precedes it is poorly staged, and the grinding poverty of O'Casey's family is marked only by death, which intrudes guttingly but too suddenly. There's also the age-old problem with films about writers: how do you squeeze the literature into your story? At least here the whole thing is an O'Casey work, but there's still too little of his language, his themes, the specifics of his worldview: the things we're told about but rarely made privy to.

From a human angle, though, it works. I've seen Taylor in eight previous films (and have always wanted to see The Picture Show Man), without him ever making much of an impression beyond being a man with a broad hairy chest. I suppose he did a fair job with a weak part in 36 Hours, but his performance here is on a whole other level. There are three crucial parts to his characterisation: his macho energy, his massive screen presence - completely dominating the frame - and his total immersion in the character. It's superb stuff, bringing to vivid and convincing life a complex, contradictory and crucial figure.

Smith is even better. I always enjoy her work, but up until the late '80s it seemed like she still had something to prove, taking on complex, varied roles and doing flatly incredible things with them. On paper, her character may seem like a younger version of her Judith Hearne, but on celluloid she makes these shy, nervous and religious women utterly singular creations. The scenes between Taylor and Smith could have tipped over variously into comedy, farce or melodrama, but instead they feel entirely genuine, attaining a complex, multi-layered truth central - and perhaps largely responsible - for the film's claims to some sort of greatness.

By contrast, the supporting cast is studded with familiar names, but suffers from '60s-itis, stellar players piled into the picture to lend some glamour, then given little to do: Michael Redgrave, Dame Edith Evans, Flora Robson... At least Julie Christie's chapter is worth it: she's magnetic as a kept woman, and her sexually-charged meetings with O'Casey form an effective counterpoint to his relationship with Smith. Speaking of '60s-itis, veteran Carol Reed collaborator Ted Scaife also throws in a few of those crappy zoom-ins and zoom-outs that can provoke no possible response aside from: "Oh yes, now I remember, this is a film and it was made in the 1960s." With Cardiff shooting rather than directing, I wonder if we might have got something a little more artful and imaginative, something closer to what Freddie Young did on Ryan's Daughter.

As a Ford fan(cier), I also can't help but imagine what he would have done with this material. And, to be honest, it isn't hard to imagine. He was a masterful editor of scripts and would surely have zoned in more closely on the points of conflict. He was a great director of action and would have made the most of the two big set-pieces. He was a lover of Ireland who would have made the country a central character, as it was in The Quiet Man. He was a shameless sentimentalist who would have beefed up and milked the film's tragic elements. And he was an unapologetic whitewasher and lover of strong women, who would perhaps have taken the edge off Taylor's performance, and the fragility out of Smith's, giving us a less resonant and significant central pairing.

As it is, Young Cassidy is "a John Ford film... directed by Jack Cardiff", a good but not great movie without the urgency of its hero or the mark of the master, but with an abundance of vim, vigour and actorly poetry. (3)

***



*A FEW SPOILERS*
The Unsuspected (Michael Curtiz, 1947) - This sort of nasty, noirish melodrama was all the rage in the mid-'40s, and The Unsuspected owes more than a small debt to the likes of The Spiral Staircase, Laura and Undercurrent.

The mellifluously-voiced Claude Rains is Victor Grandison, an outwardly affable broadcaster whose interest in murder goes well beyond a ghoulish weekly radio show examining notorious cases. After his saintly, virginal and absolutely loaded ward (Joan Caulfield) dies in an explosion, and his secretary is murdered - the police call it suicide - his house is invaded by a smug, angry guy called Steve (Ted "Michael" North), who wants some answers, and claims to be Caulfield's husband. Further complicating matters are Grandison's malevolent, sexually voracious niece (Audrey Totter), her callow, gloomy and drunken husband (Hurd Hatfield, MGM's Dorian Gray), and Caulfield, whose bland, nervy Matilda isn't very dead after all.

It isn't particularly tense or at all mysterious, and there are more than a few loose ends, but it is an extraordinarily good-looking and stylish film, courtesy of Curtiz - who's simply oozing confidence - and the magnificent cinematographer Woody Bredell. There are touches here that will linger long after the rather erratic story has faded from memory: a murderer's face reflected upside down on a glass table, North pumping Totter for information (no smirking) - observed through net curtains and in full-length - and a Murder My Sweet-ish shot from the PoV of the addled, ODing Caulfield.

There are some good performances too. Caulfield, North and Hatfield are uninteresting, and William H. O'Brien is distractingly awful as the house butler, but, as you'd expect, Rains effectively inhabits the skin of the amoral, greedy Grandison - obsessed with playing God - Constance Bennett is ace in a small part as his Eve Arden-esque secretary, and character comic Fred Clark finds the sweet spot that he sometimes passed by through overplaying.

None of them can hold a candle to Totter, though, who strides off with the film as a bitter, cynical and extremely horny socialite too selfish to report a murder, and too distracted by North to stay faithful to her husband. Totter wasn't as integral to The Genre That Didn't Know Its Own Name as Gloria Grahame - who basically was film noir (sorry, Scorsese) - but in her own way she was also crucially important (and just as talented), appearing in everything from The Postman Always Rings Twice to the PoV noir, Lady in the Lake, High Wall and The Set-Up. She's sensational here, giving a well-directed but somewhat ponderous, flawed movie a proper shot in the arm. (3)

***



The Private Life of Henry VIII (Alexander Korda, 1933) - This is regarded as the grandaddy of British period dramas, but it's a bawdy, annoying sort of grandad who has no concept of how to pace a movie, and keeps pulling silly faces.

Rex Harrison memorably opined of Charles Laughton: "Everyone said he was a genius, I just thought he was a bit of a show-off." I think Laughton would have trounced Harrison in a talent-off, but this early performance is probably the sort of thing he had in mind, a mannered, slightly ridiculous turn full of stagy quirks that keeps the audience at arm's length, never letting you forget that you're watching someone acting. And acting rather badly at that.

I like the set piece about "The King's Guard!" and Laughton's yelling during the climactic council meeting - indeed, there are flashes of quality in both his performance and the film as a whole - but it's by and large a frustratingly empty, unfunny, superficial affair, in which triviality and tedium triumph, and supporting characters are reduced to a single characteristic, wasting a potentially astonishing ensemble that includes Robert Donat, Merle Oberon, Elsa Lanchester, Wendy Barrie, Binnie Barnes, Lady Tree, John Loder, Miles Mander and Claude Allister. (2)

***



Tai-Chi Master (Yuen Woo-Ping, 1993) - A bloody, ultimately pretty tiresome wire-fu wuxia film from Yuen Woo-Ping, nowhere near as good as Iron Monkey or Wing Chun – the two films he made either side – and notable only as the sole teaming of martial arts icons Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh... at least until The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (I haven’t seen it, is it any good?).

Leaning on a story as old as the hills (or at least 1934’s Manhattan Melodrama), the film follows childhood friends who ends up on opposite sides of the law, though in this instance it’s Chin Sui Ho’s amoral soldier who’s in the wrong – propping up a despicable regime – while the fugitive Li demands our sympathy, getting involved with a group of rebels defending some put-upon townsfolk, and boasting among their number the high-kicking Yeoh (have I mentioned my crush on Michelle Yeoh? Yes I have).

The comedy is wretched, even making the usual allowances for cross-cultural differences, incorporating an extended set-piece in which we’re encouraged to laugh at a man having a nervous breakdown (the film came out in 1993, but its understanding of mental illness is from 1893), the plotting is clichéd and largely uninvolving, and the acting is mediocre at best, though there are at least a few decent fight scenes.

I say “a few” as, though the film is action-heavy, its basic weakness calls to mind Fred Astaire’s objection to Busby Berkeley-style films: “either the camera dances or I do”. Not only does Woo-Ping frequently wander into the realm of the cartoonishly incredible, but his flights of fancy here bear so little relation to reality that he can only achieve them by throwing together mere fragments of film – a flying foot here, a barrel there, a disappearing victim way over there – all meant to represent some outlandish feat, an approach that has an altogether alienating effect, while failing dismally to showcase the gobsmacking gifts of Li and Yeoh.

It’s hard to nullify them entirely, though, and the stars do shine in fits and starts: when they fight side by side – if not quite in the buddy movie style you might like – it just about makes it worth sitting through the rest. (2)

***

... and I reviewed this one for MovieMail:



To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942) - It starts, of course, with Hitler. August 1939, and he is alone in Warsaw, bringing the streets to a standstill as he peruses the window of a delicatessen. Except it's not him. This is a film full of imposters and this Führer is our first: a stage actor (Tom Dugan) merely trying to prove a point.

That memorable, rug-tugging gag merely commences a legendary black comedy, the darkest, most ambitious movie to which Ernst Lubitsch ever turned his touch. It has a catchphrase about concentration camps, a palpable sense of fear and foreboding, and such gallows one-liners as Nazi colonel Sig Ruman's observation that what stage star Joseph Tura did to Shakespeare, 'we are now doing to Poland'. And yet it never strays into bad taste, thanks to the deftness of Lubitsch's handling, the strength of his righteous fury, and a simply pitch-perfect ensemble.

Jack Benny is Tura, an actor in Warsaw who comes complete with a massive ego and an unfaithful wife (Carole Lombard), also a renowned star. Their quarrelling, concerning a handsome young flyer (Robert Stack), is rudely interrupted by the Nazis, and the arrival in Warsaw of a double-agent who plans to smash the resistance. Cue the actors putting their skills to good use in the real world, with Benny posing as the colonel and the spy, Dugan reprising his Hitler, and Felix Bressart's spear-carrier finally getting to play Shylock.

Lubitsch was a magnificent director of actors and here he draws career-best performances from just about everyone involved: radio comic Benny, whose double-takes are a thing of sheer beauty, screwball titan Lombard - who tragically died prior to the film's release - and a supporting ensemble that includes such familiar faces as Bressart, Dugan, Charles Halton and Sig Ruman, who steals the show as the garrulous, idiotic 'Concentration Camp Ehrhardt'.

The film's stakes are high, and yet it can frequently break off into absurdity, poke gentle fun at actorly pretension, or knock you sideways with a deadpan gag. Like Benny wandering into a nest of Nazis who have left him to stew with a corpse. "I tried to open up a conversation with your friend in there," he says calmly, "but he seems to be dead." (4)

See also: This is one of my three reviews for MovieMail this month. The others are David Copperfield and Wings.

***

Thanks for reading.

Somewhere in Time, John Candy, and my hero - Reviews #158

I've been on holiday, can you tell?



Amélie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) - What was the best movie of last decade? Well, Ghost World, obviously, silly. But how about that coveted second spot? For me it's a straight fight between two films. In the sky-blue corner, we have the Irascible American, Mr Fredricksen, accompanied by a chubby kid called Russell and smelling rather strongly of prunes. And in the red-and-green-hued corner, his opponent, the Perky Parisian, Amélie Poulain, cracking creme brulee with a spoon and eating strawberries off her fingers. They're pretty special, Pixar's finest and that Gallic fairytale turned rom-com: both completely escapist, endlessly rewatachable and among those few precious films that change the way you see the world.

For the uninitiated, Amélie (Audrey Tautou in her signature role) is a painfully shy, insular Parisian waitress whose singular charm and vivid imagination are kept largely to herself. But, after chance inspires her to try an act of random kindness, she begins to engage with the world, transforming the lives of those around her, while yearning to connect with the dreamer - and fellow loner - who just dropped his eccentric photo album in the street. It was all quite a departure for Jeunet, who had made his name with co-directed parades of grotesquery and was going it alone back home for the first time.

Taking place in a beautifully-realised Parisian neverworld redolent with mystery and magic, anchored by Tautou's astonishing performance (never underestimate how hard it is to pull off this kind of intense, impish, sometimes sad-eyed whimsy) and with a masterful, innocent story overflowing with invention and emotion, Amélie is one of the greatest joys that the cinema has to offer. I could watch it every day. Actually, I might start doing. So Ghost World must be pretty good, right? (4)

***



Somewhere in Time (Jeannot Szwarc, 1980) - It's the hotel guest from hell (Christopher Reeve), re-arranging his room, bothering the guests and waking up the caretaker in the middle of the night, demanding to go in the attic. And all because he's fallen in love with a woman from 1912 (Jane Seymour). This time-travelling love story was panned on release, but has since attracted an obsessive following, and with good reason. It's wonderfully imaginative, extremely sure-footed, and has a heightened romantic sensibility reminiscent of both Brief Encounter and The Ghost and Mrs Muir, with a strong sense of conviction and an engaging unpretentiousness across both the performances and direction.

I thought I might struggle to accept Seymour as the greatest actress of her age, but she's surprisingly good in this - with a warm, semi-regal quality that's perfect for the part - matched by the charming, slightly bumbling Reeve, and Christopher Plummer, in an ominous supporting part as her brooding, possessive manager, recalling John Barrymore's green-eyed character in the "Singing Sweethearts" movie, Maytime. Incredible nerds will also want to note that the first scene features not only Teresa Wright from The Best Years of Our Lives as the older Seymour, but also the young William H. Macy and Norm from Cheers!

Perhaps the biggest treat of all, though, is John Barry's timeless score, boasting a glorious central theme and some liberal helpings of Rachmaninov. It's so good, in fact, that it might still be the best music Seymour has been associated with - and she let Radiohead record OK Computer in her house. A society devoted to this film has penned 1,800 articles about it, and also paid for Christopher Reeve's Hollywood star. A tad excessive, I might argue, but it is a little gem, and one that will doubtless linger in my mind over the coming days. (4)

***


Good pictures from Four Hours to Kill! are in short supply. This one hasn't even been scanned in straight.

Four Hours to Kill! (Mitchell Leisen, 1935) - Terrific, ingenious little thriller, adapted by Norman Krasna from his own play, about a vengeful killer (former silent star Richard Barthelmess) spending his last few hours of freedom in a theatre, handcuffed to a cop. Around the pair play out various domestic dramas - neat slice-of-life portraits - enacted by the likes of Ray Milland, Helen Mack and Henry Travers. The first of these seems a bit melodramatic (and lets its obnoxious adulterer off too lightly), but it's crucial to much of what follows, which is smart, slick, compassionate, moving and even induces a genuine gasp. The script is first-rate - and funny - the direction from one of the great filmmakers of the Golden Age is suitably atmospheric, and there's a ridiculously strong cast for what's just a 70-minute B-movie. Barthelmess is extremely good, especially considering he was robbed of much of his great expressiveness by a botched facelift in the late '20s, Roscoe Karns has one brilliant scene on the phone to the hospital where his wife's expecting, and both Charles C. Wilson and Gertrude Michael stand out amongst the more well-known names. Clever title too. (4)

***



Planes, Trains and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987) - John Hughes's first non-teen movie is a hysterically funny bromance: a Bringing Up Baby for the '80s, but with Katharine Hepburn played by John Candy. He's the avuncular, optimistic blabbermouth who makes uptight Steve Martin's life hell as they travel by land from New York to Chicago, all flights having been grounded. That "nightmare journey" template is given surprisingly deft, stress-free treatment, with a good mixture of Grumpy Old Men-style gripes about the modern world and extremely effective, old-fashioned character comedy.

Martin is OK, peddling his usual schtick (and looking oddly like Malcolm McDowell when his face gets frozen), but the film gets most of its charm - and almost all of its laughs - from Candy's hilarious performance. Only he could make a sing-along to Ray Charles' Mess Around so uproariously funny, but barely a minute goes by without him eliciting a smile, a chuckle or a belly laugh through some facial expression, inspired piece of delivery or ad-lib ("the Grand Wizard of China"). The scene where he won't stop talking about how annoying it would be to be stuck with someone who won't stop talking is a thing of beauty. In support, a mulleted Kevin Bacon has a bit as a commuter trying to beat Martin to a taxi, and Dylan Baker appears - improbably - as a tobacco-chewing hillbilly, in a weak segment that makes light of domestic abuse. The film also has possibly the most simplistic musical score ever, occasionally missteps in its plotting (like when Martin is forced to trudge through snow), and has a finale that opts for schmaltz over humour, but it seems heartfelt, it's fairly well done and the rest of the film made me ridiculously happy, so we'll let it off.

Incidentally, I was watching the film on a train, and found its humanistic message so persuasive that I paused it halfway through to talk football with the bloke next to me. It turned out that his mate, sitting in front of us, was the last player beaten by Eric Cantona before he chipped the keeper to score that famous goal against Sheffield United. So there you go. Without Planes, Trains and Automobiles, I might never have found that out. (3.5)

Which makes this re-teaming of director and star all the more disappointing:



Uncle Buck (John Hughes, 1989) - Weak John Hughes comedy about feckless John Candy babysitting his brother's kids; less a movie, more a collection of vaguely connected scenes in which nothing happens. On the rare occasions where it does alight on something insightful or amusing, it tends to jettison the goodwill by throwing in an idiotic and unrealistic routine straight away. Lol, kidnapping and torture. Candy does his best, but the material is completely lifeless, and his charges consist of a dislikeable teenager and two kids who can't act. It's difficult to believe on this showing that Macaulay Culkin went on to become the highest-paid child star of all time. In his first film, his line-readings are just rote recital of unsuitably arch, grown-up dialogue. Interestingly, though, there is one scene in which he finds himself home (almost) alone, and imagines three thuggish blokes turning up at the front door, trying to gain entry - you can almost see the cogs whirring in Hughes's brain. Uncle Buck isn't as bad as Weird Science (what is?) - and, oddly, its incredibly mawkish ending is rather moving - but from a writer-director who made several of the best comedy-dramas of the era, it's still pretty bleak going. If only they'd remembered to include any jokes. Or a story. (1.5)

***



Curse of the Golden Flower (Zhang Yimou, 2006) - A riot of camp, colour and cleavage, concerning the power struggles within the ruling family of Imperial China. Zhang Yimou's follow-up to Hero and Flying Daggers dilutes its superb Shakespearean story with soapiness and a climactic shift into impersonal spectacle, but it's imaginatively conceived, it's stunning to look at and Gong Li is just magnificent (again), as a steely, feverish adulteress being slowly poisoned by her husband, the emperor. She can suffer better than any actress since Garbo. After a set-up that's slow, even stodgy, the film plays its hand extremely well, the increasingly engrossing story packed with intelligent twists and turns - and even a few short, sharp fight scenes - until its focus switches to grand-scale battle scenes and lots of people performing actions in unison (which is basically Yimou's favourite thing ever), a decision that rather stalls its momentum. It's still a very good, bafflingly underrated movie, blessed with a compelling story and one of the finest performances of recent years. (3.5)

***



Sicko (Michael Moore, 2007) - Moore takes on the American system of healthcare (as was), in a film as gratuitous, sanctimonious, disingenuous, uneven, entertaining, impassioned and correct as all his others. Mixing horror stories from people cut adrift with intelligent interviews (hurray, Tony Benn!), historical analysis and those attention-grabbing, usually overwhelmingly pointless stunts, he creates an erratic, patchwork portrait of a sickening, profit-driven industry that leaves society's weakest to fend for themselves. And then he ventures further afield, to see how other countries care for their citizens. I could do without Moore's camera zooming in greedily as soon as anyone starts crying - a hideously exploitative affliction - his mock-ignorance becomes a little tiring after a while, and his films would be a whole lot better if they were a whole lot more straightforward ("I asked them to give us the same exact care they give their fellow Cuban citizens. No more. No less. And that's what they did." Did they? Well I'm completely convinced), but his thesis is essentially sound, and I admire him for telling stories that need to be told, regardless of whether or not his films are objectively great. I think Moore's best movie so far is actually 2009's Capitalism: A Love Story, a real step up, in which his vices as a filmmaker and polemicist were less prominent, and his virtues more pronounced. And I've got the fragments of quotes and slightly suspicious-looking statistics to prove it. (3)

See also: Tony Benn is pretty much my hero. I wrote about his favourite movies here.

***



Fearless (Ronny Yu, 2006) - Jet Li's best film since Fist of Legend (admittedly neglecting the handful I haven't seen, like War) is a nevertheless frustrating affair that flirts with greatness, but also fancies greatness's sister, mediocrity. And also its cousin, silliness. Apparently intended as a summation of Li's stellar if wildly erratic Hong Kong career, it tells the story of Huo Yuanjia, who brings tragedy on his family through sheer recklessness, moves from the mean streets of the city to Hobbiton, then returns to find the place teeming with soldiers, tourists and Christians.

In many ways it feels like a precursor to Ip Man and its weak sequel, in which Donnie Yen fought against Westerners and the Japanese for the pride of China. More interestingly, though, it can be viewed as a companion piece to the Once Upon a Time in China trilogy, those three unassailable epics in which Li personified the folk hero Wong-Fei Hung. Here he's asked to subvert his screen image, and thus that role (as he had admittedly done in the sporadically magnificent but mostly moronic Last Hero in China), by depicting a selfish, arrogant carouser who wants to instill fear in all those around him, and be declared the best fighter around. Yes, that's right, he's playing a complete idiot. It's a handsomely-mounted, dramatically ambitious movie stuffed with brilliant fight scenes -staged by Yuen Woo-Ping, in agreeably sensible form - but it's nevertheless brought down by a few major flaws.

First off is the script, worthy of Basil Exposition, in which most things are over-explained (why exactly is Huo nicknamed "Ox"? Oh yes, I remember they explained that it's because he sleeps as much as an Ox, that's why they call him Ox). Second is the treatment of tragedy, which feels like it's being brought to us fifth-hand, through recycled bits of other films. It's hackneyed and calculated, and keeps us at a distance, muting its emotional clout. And, thirdly, there is Li's performance. He's a sublime martial artist, but the price we pay for those skills is a rather limited acting ability. His typical mode of being vaguely impassive suited the stoic, noble Wong Fei-Hung, but here he's asked to emote, and repeatedly gets caught acting. It's not that he's bad - he has a couple of good scenes - but broad strokes aren't usually found in great films. It's only when he resumes his typical screen characterisation for the powerfully-realised homecoming scenes that we really buy him as this character.

And, finally, there's one of those uniquely crap sequences in which a Chinese martial artist fights a massive white guy. It was stupid in Born to Defend, it was about to be stupid in Ip Man 2, and here it's just sort of embarrassing. I've spent such a large proportion of the review cataloguing the film's flaws precisely because the rest of it is so good: the story of a man remade is an intriguing one, those shots contrasting the city and country are breathtaking (a little like Murnau's City Girl, which I watched the other day), Li's final adversary is admirably admirable, and there are a succession of spectacular fight scenes among the finest the star has ever committed to screen. For a film that feels like a lost opportunity, there's a great deal to enjoy. (3)

***



Sunnyside Up (David Butler, 1929) - It was a funny old year, 1929, as Hollywood shifted its emphasis from silents to talkies, the former medium having reached its artistic zenith, and the latter yet to find its feet. In August, Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell made their final silent - the transcendent Lucky Star; two months later they released their first sound film, the all-singing, partially-dancing musical, Sunnyside Up. They even have a number on the timely subject, the rather meta If I Had a Talking Picture of You. With the glorious exception of King Vidor's Hallelujah!, I don't think that there was a truly great sound film made until 1930, when All Quiet on the Western Front, Little Caesar and The Big House were released, and it's true that Sunnyside Up is afflicted by some of the early problems with the new medium. The dialogue scenes are often rather stilted, and the material is very stagy, as the writers struggle to grasp exactly what they should be doing with movie dialogue. For all that, though, it's a cut above most films of this uncertain period, with a number of virtues that make it well worth seeking out

The principle one is Janet Gaynor, who's simply adorable as a diminutive tenement girl who falls in love with a socialite (Charles Farrell) and agrees to appear in his charity musical, while trying to make his flighty fiancee jealous. We all have those movie stars whom we think can do no wrong, and for me Gaynor is top of the list. I think she's simply the greatest actress in the history of Hollywood and, while I'd say her three best performances were in her three silent movies for Frank Borzage (7th Heaven, Street Angel and Lucky Star), she was just wonderful in everything. Here she overcomes some rather dubious scripting through sheer force of personality, and whether she's being compassionate, playing daft or welling up with her tears as her hopes of matrimonial bliss are dashed, she's just a tremendously affecting, appealing presence. Farrell wasn't much of an actor, and he's even less of a singer, but I don't end up watching Gaynor's co-stars anyway, as they're never nearly as interesting. On the rare occasions I did deign to cast my eyes sideways, I did note that El Brendel - who in Delicious seemed to embody every single damaging misconception that people have about '30s comedy - was surprisingly bearable, while legendary child star Jackie Cooper appeared unbilled in only his second feature, as a grumpy little boy who curtails his poetry recital because he's desperate for a wee.

Second among the film's strengths is an admirably gung-ho attitude towards direction. The heavy, noisy sound cameras made complex shots difficult, but Butler doesn't seem to care, beginning with an incredibly ambitious crane shot that takes us to the heart of the tenement (it's kind of Dead End meets the start of Ghost World!), and, while that precedent isn't really built upon, there are a few nice shots during the film, despite the images moving at the snail's pace necessitated by the fledgling technology. And then there are the numbers. The songs won't rival Top Hat or Kiss Me Kate for tunefulness, lyrical wit and ambitious staging, but they're a decent bunch - easily above average - and I really like Gaynor's limited, untutored voice. The first few routines we see are charmingly low-fi, as the actors appear to just do whatever they thought might be cool - shuffling across the stage, skipping over a top hat, turning around a bit - rather than the meticulously-choreographed routines we have since come to expect. But then the show-within-a-film kicked off, and I had to scrape my chin off the floor, because Turn on the Heat must be the dirtiest, most overtly sexualised number in the history of Hollywood musicals, a tasteful ditty in which a large group of horny women in bikinis gyrate in unison as they urge some penises - sorry, "palm trees" - to rise through the earth. Then they crawl about in the dirt, humping the ground until it sets on fire. It's AWESOME. I would, however, caution against believing the claims that the song makes about eskimos, as most of them are patently untrue. I haven't seen any evidence that the hottest girls in the world are of Inuit extraction, nor that they all possess "dancing feet", while all of the "eskimos" on the stage shaking their arses are clearly Caucasian dancing girls. It was 1929, though, so they may not have been entirely clued up. So how to follow that incongruous smut-fest, you might wonder? Well, with a spot of crooning from the central couple, a nice solo number for Gaynor, and the rather long-winded unwinding of the film's misunderstandings.

Sunnyside Up isn't a classic to rival Gaynor and Farrell's silent films, but it's a fun diversion, those typical early-talkie flaws overcome by one lovely performance, a gaggle of singable songs and one absolutely filthy production number. (3)

***



Police Story 4: First Strike (Stanley Tong, 1996) - Painfully bad fourth Police Story film, apparently made for those Jackie Chan fans who think he's at his best when he's driving around or moaning that he's cold. There's one good chase around an apartment block and a busy fight scene in a warehouse, but the novelty action scenes (Jackie on a snowboard! Jackie on stilts! Jackie in shark-infested waters!) are pathetic, the story is muddled and boring, and the comedy is almost entirely unfunny. Cute koala, though.

***

ClintFest '13:



Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton, 1968) - "Broadsword calling Danny Boy." A truly exceptional, nerve-shredding action-thriller, set during WWII, in which a crack team of Allied agents - led by Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood - try to break a top officer out of a Nazi compound atop a mountain. It's light on characterisation and features a bit of dodgy process screen work, but it's massively entertaining, extraordinarily well-plotted and full of cracking action scenes directed by none other than Yakima Canutt, the stuntman who performed THAT fall in John Ford's Stagecoach. Burton had many talents that aren't required by a film like this, but for once he gives his best to some less obviously artistic material, injecting untold class and charisma into proceedings, not least in that classic scene where the double and triple-crosses pile up so quickly that you can hardly keep your head above water. It's cool, jtoo, to find a war movie with such a kick-ass female character (Mary Ure). This is a Boys Own adventure that passes the Bechdel Test! Fantastic stuff. (4)


"Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into!”

Joe Kidd (John Sturges, 1972) - Minor but enjoyable Tex-Mex Western, with Kidd (Clint) drawn into the hunt for an icon of Mexican resistance (err, John Saxon), which is being led by psychotic land baron Robert Duvall. The story, written by Elmore Leonard and ultimately recalling his classic 3:10 to Yuma, doesn't quite work, having little emotional pull, though that may not be the writer's fault: several of Saxon's scenes were cut to give greater prominence to the two big names, accounting for the peculiarly brief running time. Despite that central failing, the film still manages to entertain. Sturges exhibits his usual sure hand with an action sequence: not just the scene with the train that I'm legally obliged to mention, but a neat little bit with a trap door, and one absolute wow of a suspense sequence in which Clint tries to assemble a sniper rifle with his whole company under fire. The star is in very good form - displaying a delightfully offhand sense of humour and the acting ability that had begun to surface in Two Mules for Sister Sara, and looking his most like Stan Laurel - his regular cinematographer Bruce Surtees throws in a handful of masterful shots, and the whole thing is accompanied by one of Lalo Schifrin finest scores. Check out how excited he gets whenever Clint does anything brave. (2.5)

***

Thanks for reading. Next time it'll be a silent film special (I'm holding a few reviews back, because I'm like that.) Expect Clara Bow, Lubitsch in Berlin, and F. W. Murnau, because that's what you'll be getting.

Glenda Jackson, Trance, and flying daggers - Reviews #153

Of course the only thing anyone's really watching this week is Glenda Jackson's excoriating, yet deeply-moving takedown of Thatcher and her legacy. I've watched it four times already - speak for Britain, Glenda! - and never have the words "thousands" and "extra-ordinary" been bellowed over the sound of mewling right-wingers with such stentorian, earth-shaking intensity. I always did like her. I suppose I should review some films now.

***



*SPOILERS IN THE FINAL PARAGRAPH*
The Hired Hand (Peter Fonda, 1971) - The Hired Hand is a New Hollywood masterpiece from Peter Fonda, a reflective Western in which redemption comes not through revenge, but romance, in all its selfish, selfless glory. Its title comes from the stone of story at its centre, in which Fonda tries to atone for walking out on his wife (Verna Bloom, shorn of all vanity) by signing on as her hired hand, accompanied by his friend Warren Oates. That set-up suggests gender battles or sexual power-games, but what we get is something altogether quieter, subtler and more persuasive: a story about forgiveness, dependence and the healing of wounds, with an almighty kick in the tail that takes genre mythology and proceeds to do something unforgettable with it. The relationship between the reformed, gentle Fonda and his strong, unrepentant wife only accounts for perhaps a third of the running time, but gives the film such heart that it can justify the numerous asides and self-contained vignettes: a fatal shot from out of nowhere, an early-morning mission of vengeance and the shattering of a tranquil idyll as a young girl's dead body snags on a fishing line.

Fonda's Easy Rider is a great film, because it captures a feeling, epitomises an entire period and exploded an outmoded cinematic status quo, but it isn't a very good film. It's tacky, juvenile, boring and full of ridiculous visual quirks that make no narrative sense (there's a reason why no-one uses those juddering transitions it attempted to initiate, and it's that they're pointless and crap). The Hired Hand, however, is a film touched with that refined, adventurous brilliance that seemed to be in the air in '70s Hollywood. It's visually outstanding, but it's more than that: it's like Monte Walsh - William Fraker's film about the "last cowboy" - but loaded with longing and sexual angst, and equipped with some trippily avant garde imagery that still stays true to the genre, Fonda, photographer Vilmos Zsigmond and editor Frank Mazzola simply kicking Winton C Hoch's eye-popping compositions up a notch. The most remarkable has Fonda and Oates talking by a corral. As they turn gradually to silhouettes, close-ups of their faces illuminate the sky behind, tinted by the setting sun. It's a jaw-dropping trick that pitches them as Western icons, larger-than-life, greater than contemporary folk heroes and at one with the sprawling plains and vast skies that are - or were - America. Fonda isn't interested in a conventional narrative, more in evoking an atmosphere, and as he slips from one episode to the next, he layers one piece of footage - a body twisting in a river, horses stalking along the trail - over the next. It's odd, then, that some of the interior scenes in the early part of the film look flat and cheap, if not '50s-B-Western shoddy.

Fonda is superb, while Bloom, one of the best things about Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, gives a remarkable performance as a woman who refuses to repent after looking for sexual solace in his absence, but yearns to be loved - and not just wanted. It's only during her pivotal speech that I feel she falters, but perhaps subsequent viewings will be kinder. And Oates? Well, Oates is simply sensational. Perhaps only Jason Robards ever combined the scuzzy, the world-weary and the roguishly appealing as well as the toothy, grubby, bearded Oates, and as a good guy fighting the lust coursing through his body, he damn well walks away with the film. The Hired Hand is one of the great movies of the '70s: a unique, unsentimental vision that doesn't seek to dismantle the Western, as Altman would with McCabe and Mrs Miller, but to take its iconography and its stock characters somewhere new. The gunfighter still rides to the rescue. The showdown still happens. And his body still falls to the floor with that same sickening thud. But then a hired hand returns to a homestead and closes a door, and we realise that there was never a Western like it, and that none ever gave us an ending like this, in all its simple, beautiful and perfect ambiguity. (4)

***

A Zhang Yimou double-bill:



House of Flying Daggers (Zhang Yimou, 2004) - A blind showgirl and the undercover agent sent to catch her run away together, pursued by scores of soldiers AND OH MY WORD, WILL YOU LOOK AT THOSE COLOURS, I THINK MY EYES HAVE AN ERECTION. Zhang Yimou's stunning, vivid, extremely green contribution to the wuxia genre is like opium for your optics: beautifully designed and filmed in colours both bold and gentle, vibrant but never garish, its vast widescreen frame filled with an abundance of detail: drums, trees and ribbons all seen as if seen for the first time.

There's also like a story. Zhang Ziyi stars as a blind, dancing prostitute and enthusiastic insurgent - allied to a revolutionary movement called the House of Flying Daggers - who's trying to bring down the authoritarian government. The government, however, has other ideas, as captain Andy Lau arrests her and then sends his pal Takeshi Kaneshiro to break her out of prison, inveigle his way into her confidence, and so trap the whole House. It's a great set-up, with something of It Happened One Night about it - though the stakes are higher -and for over an hour the film carries confidently along that path, its story of romantic awakening finding time for a song, two dances and a flurry of fights. Then five minutes of twists send it careering off in another direction. That change of tack looks unpromising at first, threatening to skew our sympathies, but boy does it ultimately deliver. (Just to confirm: yes it does.)

Wuxia movies are, of course, comparable to musicals in their construction, and if Fred and Ginger's first starring vehicle, The Gay Divorcee, was a sophisticated comedy with periodic concessions to superlative song and dance, then Flying Daggers isn't really a martial arts film, more a love story of epic proportions (it must be, look at that snow), with kung fu interludes. Those interludes are a mixed bunch: exhilarating to begin with - particularly during the rough-and-ready prison break sequence and Ziyi's flight through the woods - then too samey, too gimmicky and too overloaded with fantasy elements and baddies moving in Oompa-Loompa unity to really engage. By the time our heroes are trapped inside a prison of lusciously green bamboo that's just come at them from three dozen angles, you're marvelling at the look of the film, while wondering if perhaps we could just get back to Ziyi kicking people in the head.

The problem may be that the cast lacks many proper proponents of martial arts, meaning a lot of close-ups, quick cuts and some busy, CGI-led direction that follows the flight of objects: more 42nd Street (where the camera dances) than Top Hat (where Fred does). Having said that, the editing is absolutely virtuosic - a wonder to behold - with one notable exception: what kind of pervert puts jump cuts in a sword duel? In some ways the film reminds me of Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, sharing that breathtaking visual originality, rich romantic sensibility and fondness for a nice field. Like that movie, while it offers countless entertaining diversions and a litany of quirks, it succeeds because of the strength of feeling generated by its central love story. In terms of obvious influences, Flying Daggers is enough of a one-off to escape easy categorisation, but I do wonder if the early scenes in the brothel were inspired by Satyajit Ray's bright, brilliant satire of colonialism, The Chess Players.

Yimou's film stutters a little at the beginning of the final third, as plot twists send the story juddering to a halt, and I wish certain action scenes didn't feel as synthetic, but its first 80 is brilliant, its ending is unforgettable and between that there's enough swordplay, sentiment and spellbinding cinematography to keep you nothing short of enraptured. Ziyi is in scintillating form, displaying that combination of the earthy and the ethereal that served her so well in Crouching Tiger - as well as that predilection for a) Dressing up as a boy, and b) Showing everybody her shoulders all the time - though while Kaneshiro makes a good fist of his cliched part, Lau has a rather lacklustre crack at a more interesting one. Flying Daggers is flawed, yes, but it's remarkable too: engaging, enthralling and simply extraordinary to look at. (3.5)



Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002) - At last, a film extolling the virtues of a brutal, oppressive regime! I haven't seen one of those since Triumph of the Will. Do you know what that smell is? I'm not sure, but I think it might be fascism! Jet Li, exhibiting all the expressiveness of a Botoxed cyborg, is a minor government official who wins an audience with the king after crushing the state's three most notorious dissenters. But all may not be what it seems, prompting much Rashomon-ish remembrance, each vignette given a striking colour scheme and a directorial style all its own. Yimou's first martial arts movie is big on spectacle, with a cast of thousands, and its epic sweep is allied to stunning, distinctive photography: the scene in which the world turns red as Zhang Ziyi perishes is one of the most breathtaking bits of visual artistry ever to grace a cinema screen. At a more prosaic level, Hero is also notable for featuring only the second screen teaming of genre icons Li and Donnie Yen - whose previous film together was the greatest kung fu movie I've ever witnessed: Once Upon a Time in China II - and reuniting the leads of Wong Kar-wai's incredible In the Mood for Love, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung.

A shame then, that Hero - despite that uniquely arresting imagery and a hugely promising pedigree - is such a hollow, misguided venture: shallow and aloof, with a hideous totalitarian undercurrent that dominates both the tedious opening and a climax that would have had Stalin licking his lips. You know his line about one death being a tragedy, but a million deaths being a statistic? That's this film. Enjoy! It's also a movie where you see things happening, but you don't really feel them. Characters die, betray or are betrayed, but they seem distant and hard to relate to, while the story is fractured, convoluted and hard to understand. And while Yimou is a magnificent filmmaker, he's no action director. There are mesmerising shots throughout, which extends to the action sequences, but the fights themselves have little energy and no rhythm: choppy and feverishly edited in a way that's both distracting and pointless.

If you have Li and Yen, you don't need to cut endlessly, or have your camera flying through the air, you just hold steady and shoot. Yimou may be the superior stylist, but he could learn a thing or 10 from Tsui Hark about how to make a mythic martial arts film while establishing a visceral intensity in the fight scenes. Flying Daggers was certainly a step up in terms of choreography and spatial coherence, but once the fists start flying (or, indeed, the outsized pieces of bamboo), these films start floundering. There a couple of exciting moments during Li and Yen's monochrome fantasy duel, but this film just isn't a very good showcase for these talented martial artists.

There are virtues all over the place in Hero, but aside from the way the film looks - which is unequivocally fantastic - each one is met by a vice; y'know, like yin and yang. Periodically, the story latches on to some idea of clarity and wonder, the script matching the visual invention that drips from every frame, but these moments of incisiveness are scattered and disconnected, and not helped by characters dying and coming back to life with alarming regularity. The orchestral score is rousing and memorable, but it's also rather repetitive. And while Ziyi and Maggie Cheung are actresses of extraordinary emotional attractiveness, and both are excellent, they're ill-served by that confused, confusing, bitty and ultimately rather tiresome story, an oddly inconsistent performance from Tony Leung and uniformly lacklustre ones from the rest of the male cast (particularly Li, who has been replaced by a blank-faced automaton). Having said that, the king does make a noise like a motorbike when he runs around, which is hilarious. I had high hopes for Hero, but it didn't come close to matching them. Gobsmacking photography aside, it's a bit of a mess. And a dangerous one at that. (2.5)

***



Splash (Ron Howard, 1984) - This I liked. Produce trader Tom Hanks. who fears he may never fall in love, is reunited with the mermaid he met when he was eight (Daryl Hannah). She arrives at the Statue of Liberty, starkers, and while he doesn't know her secret, painfully unfunny scientist Eugene Levy does. According to a copy of Empire lying about in my front room, this movie filled Charlize Theron with lust, and you can see why. It's a headily romantic movie with lovely performances by the leads, an enjoyable one from John Candy as Hanks's wide boy brother and an abundance of dry, low-key comedy, which partly explains why Levy's endlessly shouty supporting turn feels so completely out of place. Perhaps the film goes a bit too gloomy for a bit too long during the customary "down time", but it's still one of the decade's best rom-coms. And while I laughed a lot, its greatest strengths are an old-fashioned sensibility that overrides its '80s trappings, and an unshakable conviction in its wonderfully appealing central romance. (3.5)

***



Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2005) - Kung Fu Hustle is like a martial arts movie as imagined by Frank Tashlin: a dizzying genre mash-up turned live-action cartoon that slings everything at the wall, from Tommy Guns to spoofery to sparring matches, and comes up smelling of bonkers. The story, if you can call it that, sees a slick urban gang of be-hatted, machine-gun sporting hoods trying to crush a poor rural district under its heel. Unfortunately for them, there are an improbable number of retired kung fu warriors working in a single village square. As the mobsters get their arses handed to them, reformed good guy (writer-director Stephen Chow) attempts to ingratiate himself with the gang, spurning the advances of the mute girl he once tried to save from bullies. With a film this frenzied, freewheeling and full of energy - something like wuxia's answer to Hellzapoppin', or Chuck Jones - of course not all of it hits the target, and Yuen Woo-Ping's purposefully OTT fight scenes work best when they at least pay lip-service to reality, but it's frequently funny, has a genuinely sweet romance at its centre and is impossible to second-guess, which is a welcome trait in any movie. (3)

***



CINEMA: Trance (Danny Boyle, 2013) - This reminds me of the time I shaved my pubes to impress James McAvoy. Mr Tumnus plays an auctioneer hospitalised during an art theft committed by Vincent Cassel and his gang. They think he knows what happened to a priceless Goya but, since he's now an amnesiac, they send him to a pouty hypnotist (Rosario Dawson), and from then on it's twist, twist, twist, naked Dawson, twist, naked Dawson again, another twist. The latest from one of Britain's most reliable - if not greatest - filmmakers is a flashy, well-directed thriller that's happy to give its audience a bit of credit, cutting between scenes from different timeframes, dropping tantalising clues as to its direction, and yet still keeping a couple of surprises up its sleeve. It does a reasonable job of shifting our sympathies as the back stories hove into view, and exhibits Boyle's handiness with an action set-piece, boasting a handful that throb with kinetic energy and dissolute discombobulation, soundtracked by a thumping score.

It's been called "Hitchcockian", but it's not quite. There's a little of Spellbound in there (art, amnesia and vivid dreams), but it has a whole lot more in common with the '60s thrillers Charade and particularly Mirage, both written by Peter Stone and said to bear the mark of the Master. Where those films are superior, though, isn't just in the crackling dialogue, it's in reeling you in with gimmicks and even gags, then giving you characters to empathise with and root for. Trance doesn't really do that. McAvoy and Cassel are passable and Dawson is quite good - while shot in that adoring, slobbering way that can only mean "this actress is my girlfriend" - but the film would rather give you another twist than a human feeling, and the effect is much like the way you pine for something savoury if you spend a day stuffing your face with cake. (Yes, I am quite greedy.) Trance is consistently entertaining, keeping you guessing much of the time, but it's more Shallow Grave than Slumdog: a malevolent rug-puller that just about delivers the goods as a mystery, but offers little that will linger after the credits have rolled. (2.5)

***

Thanks for reading. I'll do a bit more ClintFest in a little while.