Robert Bresson, Porco Rosso and an unexpectedly fantastic musical - Reviews #234

Plus explosions, an early talkie that everyone says is rubbish, and hoo-hah.

FILMS



Mouchette (Robert Bresson, 1967) - Bresson's film about a neglected, abused teenage girl is difficult, gruelling and magnificent: an unrelenting, excoriating examination of human cruelty in a pitiless world (as was his previous film, Au hasard Balthazar): a flood of pain shaping its heroine into a malformed, spiteful, confused, unhappy and vicious young woman, but the director never losing sight of her basic humanity. As such, this must surely have been a huge influence on the Dardenne brothers, particularly the intriguing Rosetta and their 2011 masterpiece, The Kid with a Bike.

Lead actress Nadine Nortier apparently couldn't cry (so we always see her after the 'tears' have begun), but is otherwise note-perfect in her only film, and if a subplot about the violent rivals for a barmaid's attention occasionally distracts from the central story, that main narrative is so unsentimental, so intensely moving, so boldly and perfectly rendered that it barely seems to matter. Perhaps the best bit, ironically, is at first the lightest: a Truffaut-esque sequence on fairground dodgems that promises catharsis then offers quite the opposite. (4)

***



Porco Rosso (Hayao Miyazaki, 1992) - A wonderfully unpredictable, imaginative Studio Ghibli film about a former WWI flying ace, since turned into a pig, who battles pirates, evades fascists and unwittingly steals hearts in Mussolini's Italy.

It took me a while to warm to Ghibli's style: the stark simplicity of the foreground figures not as obviously attractive as, say, peak Disney (around about Bambi), but I've grown to love it: the stunning, sumptuously realised backdrops, the love and evocation of movement, those moments with the quality of a dream in which the bottom falls out of your world or you're lifted to improbably, unbelievable heights.

There are countless moments like that in Porco Rosso: the aerial dogfights, a fly-by over chanteuse Gina's remote house, and a flashback to the war that is simply one of the most ambitious, intensely moving animated passages I have ever seen on the big screen (today at London's legendary Prince Charles Cinema).

The film is an unashamed mixture of genres, moods and tones: from unapologetic (and sometimes slightly long-winded) comedy to existential rumination, epic romance to knockabout action, as Miyazaki develops a typically odd premise into a barnstorming, characteristically moving study of what it is to be human. (3.5)

***


It's better than it looks.

Kismet (Vincente Minnelli, 1955)

I saw your face, and I ascended
Out of the commonplace, into the rare
Somewhere in space, I hang suspended
Until I know there's a chance that you care.
- Stranger in Paradise

A surprisingly excellent, even magical later MGM musical with an Arabian Nights flavour, adapted by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis from their own hit Broadway play, about Baghdad-based thief Howard Keel setting himself up as a kingmaking sorcerer, while his daughter (Ann Blyth) falls in love with the incognito caliph (Vic Damone).

Its world is rather gaudily realised and, since the admittedly cheesy Keel can't dance, his songs generally feature him striding or crawling around, but the story is engaging, the script is pretty funny and the exuberantly-performed score is absolutely and unequivocally fantastic, with complex melodies coupled to either witty, intricately-rhymed lyrics or a surfeit of genuine emotion, in numbers like Stranger in Paradise, And This Is My Beloved and the spectacular Not Since Nineveh, a knockout dance number featuring the flexible, Fosse-ish 'Princesses of Ababu' (Reiko Sato, Patricia Dunn and Wonci Liu). The latter is vocalised by Dolores Gray who is, as usual, bloody amazing.

I've had this for ages but had never gotten around to it, imagining (with no good reason) that it would be bloated and self-serious, with little resonance beyond its immediate story. It's anything but, and, while it remains extremely divisive − particularly among fans of the play − I really loved it. (3.5)

***



The Last Boy Scout (Tony Scott, 1991)

"Jake attacks his job with a certain exuberance."
"Shit, we're being beat up by the inventor of Scrabble."

An unbelievably entertaining action-comedy, filled wall-to-wall with Shane Black zingers, as PI Bruce Willis and disgraced ex-quarterback Damon Wayans team up to investigate the murder of an exotic dancer, amidst an endless succession of exploding cars.

It's formulaic, with a rather nasty denouement, and - for an action director - Tony Scott just isn't that good at directing action, framing fine individual shots in his hazy, slo-mo, sunset style, but never knitting them together with any great sense of spatial awareness.

Thankfully the film is also incredibly funny, emotionally persuasive in its heavy-handed Hollywood way, and well played across the board, with Willis giving an appealing, charismatic star performance, before his wisecracking and stylised wincing traversed far the wrong side of smug.

Black has written a few of my favourite actioners, including the bonkers feminist amnesiac thriller, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and the post-modern masterpiece, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. This one may be a fraction below the latter, but - misogny and familiarity aside - it's pretty damn great nonetheless. (3.5)

***



Tempest (Sam Taylor, 1928) - Wonderful silent hokum, set in the lead-up to the Russian Revolution (presented here more like the French), with John Barrymore in his element as a peasant-turned-commissioned-officer, who falls for a princess (Camilla Horn), whose Horn-iness manifests itself as sadism.

The background is patently phony and the story a little far-fetched, not helped by Boris de Fast and Ullrich Haupt's one-dimensional (though charismatic) villainy, but what's in the foreground is immediate, intimate and irresistible, with Barrymore commanding the screen - and perhaps giving us a glimpse of one of his great stage roles, Galsworthy's Justice, in the prison scenes - while generating stunning chemistry with Horn, and Louis Wolheim's faithful sergeant and George Fawcett's sentimental general offering well-written, deftly-rendered support.

It doesn't touch art, as Barrymore's preposterously underrated film, The Beloved Rogue, did the previous year, but as entertainment it's tough to beat. (3.5)

***



Mr. Skeffington (Vincente Sherman, 1944) - A long, glossy but rewarding Bette Davis vehicle, adapted from a contemporary bestseller, with the star as a vain, cold flirt who marries (but doesn't love) measured, doting banker Claude Rains to save her feckle brother's reputation. It's a bit uneven, with a cartoonish supporting cast and a score that's initially too overbearing, but the leads are amazing, with Davis completely commanding and convincing as she ages to 50 then falls apart, and Rains playing a devastating scene in a restaurant that's as good as anything he ever did (except when he said, "Oh-thank-you-veddy-much" in Casablanca, obviously). (3)

***



Scent of a Woman (Martin Brest, 1992) - Rain Man Goes Blind. Hoo-hah.

It's cynical at first, then almost hypnotically naive (and silly), but Pacino's massive, Oscar-ogling performance works. (2.5)

***



Night Flight (Clarence Brown, 1933) - I just watched this because it's the only film that Myrna Loy starred in which I hadn't seen. It's one of a slew of ensemble dramas with interlocking stories made at MGM in the early '30s (typically starring one or more Barrymores), and this time focusing on aviation, a zeitgeisty subject about which dozens of movies were made that decade, some great (Only Angels Have Wings, Test Pilot) and many, well, not.

Set a few years previously, before night flights became standard, it's a heavily flawed movie that leans far too much on mediocre flight footage, and, when it does set foot on the ground, it's frequently too unrealistic (Helen Hayes having an idiotic dinner party by herself), too saccharine (Helen Hayes being all mawkish about husband Clark Gable) or too boring (people just talking about planes).

Drably directed by Garbo's favourite, Clarence Brown, it's at its best when dealing with human emotion in an understated or unsentimental way: flyer Robert Montgomery's decision to take boss Lionel Barrymore out to dinner, Loy casually expressing her deepest concerns to husband William Gargan about his safety; or imperious, uber-tough John Barrymore barking out his views on employee safety. It's not one of the stage legend's best performances (The Beloved Rogue, Counsellor-at-Law<, A Bill of Divorcement, Twentieth Century), but nor is he phoning it in as he would so often later on: though there's a bit of raised-eyebrow laziness, his voice and presence are so commanding that − almost invariably standing before a huge map of South America with moving lights − he dominates the film.

By contrast, Helen Hayes − another Broadway titan, whose accomplishments dwarfed Barrymore's − is playing a character so badly-written and unconvincing that she's ultimately just irritating, no mean feat when you consider that we would usually root for a blameless woman who's husband has gone missing while piloting a perilous night flight. That's a pity, as she made fewer than 20 proper appearances in films, and her first scene here is really promising.

Though billed above the title for the first time, Myrna's actually only in the film for about six minutes, and the rest wasn't really worth the effort, despite a cast that on paper is almost uniquely impressive. (2)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
Born Reckless (John Ford and Andrew Bennison, 1930) - I don't usually watch films that I think will be rubbish, but I made an exception in the case of the infamous Born Reckless, a film synonymous with early talkie stiltedness.

Why? Partly because I already had it on DVD (I bought it for the other film, Pilgrimage), but mostly because it was made by my favourite director (John Ford, best known for his Westerns) and features my favourite male actor (nasal Pre-Code motormouth, Lee Tracy) - the only time the two ever worked together.

And it's actually a bit better than its reputation suggests. Yes, much of the actors' delivery is hesitant and uncertain in that unmistakable early talkie way - almost all sound films made between 1927 and '29 have this problem, though particularly those staged by Andrew Bennison, the dialogue director here - but hero Edmund Lowe and sardonic reporter Tracy (but of course) are both fairly good, and there are some effective visual flourishes, particularly during a Western-style gunfight in which Ford dispenses with the fourth wall entirely, dragging his camera back through the flapping saloon doors (if we're being charitable, we can credit the movement to the off-screen barkeep, Needle, but it's a stretch).

Lowe, heftier and earthier than he would be in later roles (and without his pencil moustache), is Louis, a second-gen Italian immigrant who knocks over jewellery stores as part of Warren Hymer's mob. Given a choice between going 'up the river' (coincidentally the name of Ford's next film) or joining the army, he plumps for the latter, becoming a WWI hero. Upon his return to the city, he turns (fairly) respectable, opening a nightclub. But when his old flame's daughter is kidnapped, he has no choice but to grab a gat and head for the hideout where some old pals may be hanging out...

The allegedly comic 'in the army now' scenes are dreadful, but the ones in the city - while hamstrung by some slow dialogue exchanges and flat staging (Lowe and Hymer come face to face near the end for what appears to be a 'bad acting' competition directed by a blind man) - are often quite atmospheric, emotionally convincing and (whisper it) enjoyable.

And if Dudley Nichols' script is a bit too soft - would a murderous gangster really repeatedly dismiss a love rival as 'four eyes'?! - and a bit too clichéd (undermining its 'honour among thieves' material through melodrama and muddy motive), it's by no means the unmitigated disaster as which it's usually painted, and about as good as Roland West's daft but handsome Alibi, released the same year and still hailed by many as a great gangster film. It's interesting too to see Hymer playing a straight heavy, rather than the comic characters he was usually handed.

Fans of the genre would do better checking out the late silent Underworld or the early(ish) talkies, Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, but for Ford completists this one isn't too much of an ordeal. (2)

***



The Case of the Black Cat (William C. McGann, 1936) - The fifth entry in Warner's spectacularly underwhelming Perry Mason series has a smug Ricardo Cortez replacing a bizarrely leaden Warren William, as he investigates a series of murders related to the will of a rich old man (veteran character actor Harry Davenport).

These films are really flat compared to later B mystery-comedy series like Boston Blackie and William's own Lone Wolf, though this entry does get better as it goes along, until a baffling denouement in which Mason manages to win the case without a shred of evidence. That oversight was by second-rate staff writer F. Hugh Herbert, though he does at least throw in a decent twist that I didn't see coming.

I can't be bothered watching the last one in the series, especially as it stars Donald Woods, an actor so uninteresting that he makes Cortez look like Jason Robards. (2)

***



Smarty (Robert Florey, 1934) - A notoriously nasty Pre-Code 'comedy' about how you should slap women around a bit. It was a major flop on release, and deservedly so: though it features the two best character comics of the era, Frank McHugh (who's great) and Edward Everett Horton (who isn't) and has a few amusing bits unrelated to the main story, its central narrative about capricious, flirtatious Joan Blondell deserving − and enjoying − being beaten up by husband Warren William should never have been put on screen. This debacle exacerbated William's sharp decline from Pre-Code behemoth (in films like Skyscraper Souls and Employees' Entrance) to bit-part-playing has-been. Blondell's actually rather good, which is problematic. (1.5)

***

SHORTS



One Run Elmer (Charles Lamont, 1935) - Aside from Grand Slam Opera, this is the Buster Keaton short from his stint at Educational Pictures that has the best reputation: a spirited salute to the joys of baseball, the filmmaker's other enduring passion.

Barely uttering a word, with his pork-pie hat re-established atop his head, and his imagination firing, Buster makes up for a lack of budget and a poor supporting cast as he gets involved in a gasoline price war, destroys most of his possessions in a baseball warm-up and then takes part in a climactic match that's full of fun and charm, if rather lighter on innovation, athleticism and genuine movie magic than the solo game in his classic feature, The Cameraman.

When his desert shack starts to wobble, you can't help but think wistfully of One Week, the sensational short that effectively shot him to megastardom when all was well with the world, but on its own terms One Run Elmer isn't bad, especially if you're a Keaton obsessive. (2.5)

***



Palooka from Paducah (Charles Lamont, 1935) - An excruciatingly bad Buster short - one of 16 variable, no-budget films he made for Educational Pictures in the mid-'30s - with Keaton and his family as thick, dirt-poor rednecks who get involved in pro-wrestling.

Most of the 'jokes' are just embarrassing and those that aren't - Buster giving his brother all the dishes at dinner time, or performing a mock manicure in the ring - are largely no funnier than something you might do yourself if you were bored. The one exception is the last gag in the arena sequence, which isn't particularly funny in itself, but is recognisable as Buster's sense of humour, and so poignantly recalls happier times.

A real nadir. (1)

***

Thanks for reading.

John Barrymore, Hold Your Man, and the Great American Novel - Reviews #201

FILMS:



The Great Man Votes (Garson Kanin, 1939) - John Barrymore was the best and quite possibly the laziest actor of his generation. He reinvented Shakespeare on the American stage, with the help of astonishingly talented collaborators Ned Sheldon, Margaret Carrington and Edward Gordon Craig, before making a near-permanent transition to the screen, where he found that while occasionally there was something worthy of his gargantuan talents (The Beloved Rogue, Counsellor-at-Law), most of the time he could just throw an eyebrow and a finger skywards and that satisfied the punters and paid the bills.

By the late 1930s, a string of failed marriages, a disastrous approach to his personal finances and a severe drink problem had left him in the unfortunate position of having to accept whatever work came his way. Like three Bulldog Drummond films, each worse than the last, which is fairly astonishing given how bad the first one was.

Meanwhile, former wunderkind of the American stage Garson Kanin – the 24-year-old assistant who had turned around director George Abbott’s fortunes almost single-handedly – was gearing up to shoot his second film. Having served an apprenticeship as a prospective executive under legendary independent producer Sam Goldwyn, he had risked it all to start a career as a filmmaker over at RKO, where his debut – A Man to Remember – met with rave reviews and emerged as one of the major sleeper hits of the year. Given the chance to pick his next project, he alighted on a dormant project called The Great Man Votes, then somehow managed to persuade boss Pan Berman to let him cast his personal idol, John Barrymore, in the lead.

When Kanin rang Barrymore to speak to him about the part, the legendary thespian asked him to come right over, and greeted him in his customary style: nude. Though it's tempting to applaud the star for a lifetime of carousing, debauchery and being a ‘ledge’ or whatever, it was frankly this kind of behaviour, reinforced by sycophantic acolytes and frequent boozing, that moved Barrymore from the realm of the immortal into the Bulldog Drummond canon. Kanin, though, knew how to handle Barrymore, insisting that his cast and crew foster an atmosphere of formality and mutual respect by calling Jack as “Mr Barrymore”, and firing anyone who brooked the idea. The result, bar the occasional tantrum at little co-star Virginia Weidler’s scene-stealing, was remarkable: an unexpected professionalism on set, and the last great lead performance of Barrymore’s career.

The Great Man Votes is, to all intents and purposes, a smart but standard B-movie, a sweet little story about a down-and-out ex-teacher (Barrymore), on the skids since his wife’s death, who ekes out a living working as a night watchman, so as to support his two kids (Peter Horton and Virginia Weidler). With an election looming, he suddenly finds himself the only voter in a key precinct, and the toast of the town – working the angles to get the best deal for himself and his family.

The story isn’t always exploited as keenly and clearly as it might be and the supporting cast is mediocre, but it’s a solid mix of family comedy and political satire – with a sting in the tail – and presumably a minor influence on Preston Sturges’ films of the subsequent decade, casting Sturges regular William Demarest as a shouty ward boss. Where it excels, though, is in Kanin’s inventive direction – like a simply wonderful sequence in which Horton and Weidler walk to school deep in conversation, Kanin only shooting their fleet feet – and in Barrymore’s performance.

He was working from cue cards, as his memory ailed and his enthusiasm for learning dialogue waned, but he was at least energised about the project, thanks to his spirited, intelligent director, with the pointing, eyebrow-raising and eye-rolling all kept to a merciful minimum. Those tics aren’t eradicated completely – at moments he still goes for the easy gag or the lazy gesture – but this is Barrymore closer to his best than at any other time after Twentieth Century, in which he gave a simply legendary comic performance. One of the most telling things about the star is just how well he played fragility. When he was on top, he didn’t seem to know how to act, or at least how to act well, coming off as smug, broad and triumphal. But when he was vulnerable – as in A Bill for Divorcement, his staggering 1932 portrait of a man beset by crippling mental ill-health, or here, wracked with unhappiness, sodden with drink – he still had it in spades. If you want to know why, read John Kobler’s book about Barrymore, Damned in Paradise, which paints him as a mercurial lost soul, tormented by his father’s descent into madness.

For Barrymore, there was to be no grand revival. After a charming supporting part in Mitchell Leisen’s classic rom-com, Midnight, he slipped into sad, self-parodical projects, as his life slipped into the abyss. The Great Man Votes, though, is something like a great, low-budget hurrah for the actor that was: a tender, touching characterisation that showed what he could still deliver when he stopped being a dick and just did his job. (3)

***



Executive Suite (Robert Wise, 1954) - A glossy drama about big business – peopled by big-hitters of the ‘50s screen – that ultimately reveals itself as a state-of-the-industry statement, arguing that America needs to innovate, produce and grow, not just cut costs to keep shareholders happy. That might sound dry, but it’s actually the most arresting material in the production, the rest of it highly entertaining but barely remaining in the memory: two affairs, a couple of revelations, a bit of insider trading.

Launching with a very effective PoV sequence, it’s skilfully directed by Robert Wise (and was produced by fellow Orson Welles alumnus John Houseman), with a solid script by regular Hitchcock collaborator Ernest Lehman, but really you’re watching it for the performances. They’re good across the board – pun intended – though the real standouts are William Holden as a muscular up-and-comer, Shelley Winters playing a lovelorn secretary, and Fredric March in one of his best mid-period roles as a supercilious, blandly detestable financier.

Barbara Stanwyck, my reason for watching most films nowadays, is rather overwrought but has a couple of nice quieter moments, as a major stockholder thrown over by the head honcho now lying on a slab. (3)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
Hold Your Man (Sam Wood, 1933) - In the immortal words of Sven-Goran Eriksson: first half good, second half not so good. Hot off the back of their phenomenally successful first teaming, Red Dust, MGM put stars Jean Harlow and Clark Gable into a second vehicle. At that point, though, the Hays Office was expressing severe concerns about Harlow’s hyper-sexual image – especially in the wake of the Paul Bern scandal that had unfortunately engulfed her – and the result was this slight botch job, in which a fantastic opening 40, rich in irreverent wrongdoing and flirtatious badinage, gives way to a stodgy, slightly dreary drama of reformation.

Gable is a cocksure conman who, fleeing from the cops, meets his match in the hot, funny good-time girl (Jean Harlow) who agrees to shield him, the pair trading zingers from the unmistakable pen of Anita Loos, a brilliant – though erratic – screenwriter responsible for everything from early Doug Fairbanks vehicles to Gentleman Prefer Blondes, and most of Harlow’s key credits. But after a (confusingly conceived) encounter with a drunk, Gable finds himself wanted for murder and Harlow finds herself in the reformatory, alongside a socialist, a minister’s daughter (the smoking hot Theresa Harris) and her own arch nemesis (a borderline psychotic Dorothy Burgess). Cue much moping, hand-wringing and sub-Ladies They Talk About melodrama, partially rescued by Sam Wood’s handsome direction and particularly Harlow’s brilliant performance.

The star was at the peak of her popularity and – aside from one ill-judged sequence where the tone-deaf actress talks her way through a song – is at the peak of her considerable powers, vaulting contrived plotting and some unaccountable changes in characterisation with consummate skill, and proving that by 1933 there was very little she couldn’t do. Her scenes with softly-spoken Stuart Erwin (essentially doing his bit from Make Me a Star) are beautiful, with both players in their element, and her chemistry with Gable in those early scenes is just exceptional, crackling with sex while eliciting a succession of belly laughs, as she bats away his advances, mocks his grin and pockets his cash. She also punches his ex-girlfriend.

Ultimately it’s half a screwball classic, half a laboured morality tale in which people shout, sulk and walk around a lot, but that’s kind of good enough, especially with a star like this. (3)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
Mandalay (Michael Curtiz, 1934) - I hate it when you go for a date with your boyfriend and then he sells you to a nightclub. That’s sadly the situation facing Kay Francis (she of the slender talent and soft ‘r’) in this largely incomprehensible Pre-Code movie. Reinvented as hostess (prostitute) ‘Spot White’ (is that even a pun? What of?), she spends her evenings seducing men, having them buy her jewellery, taking off the jewellery whilst doing a sad face and just generally being in montages. Then she blackmails a police chief and leaves town with 10,000 rupees, falls in love with a doctor, renews her acquaintance with her ex-boyfriend and is accused of murder. This film is 65 minutes long.

It’s largely complete nonsense, but sufficiently tawdry, barmy and good-looking to hold your interest, with the talented Michael Curtiz finding atmosphere where others would find only embarrassment, and the usual familiar faces turning up in bit parts: Lyle Talbot, Warner Oland, Ruth Donnelly, Etienne Girardot and Ricardo Cortez – who, I shall never tire of relating, was a Brooklyn-born Jew who changed his name from Jacob Krantz during the silent era so as to cash in on the boom in ‘Latin lovers’ like Rudolph Valentino.

Francis is one of those gargantuan stars of the 1930s who – like Eddie Cantor or Warren William – are virtually forgotten nowadays, beyond circles comprising complete nerds. Unlike those two, it’s difficult to quite comprehend her appeal – which saw her become the highest-paid actress in America – beyond her fashionable looks and competent performances, though she does appear in a handful of all-time classics, all released in 1932: Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise and two films with regular co-star William Powell, One-Way Passage and Jewel Robbery. (2)

***

BOOK:



"Basketball was never like this, Skip."
American Pastoral by Philip Roth (1997) - Oh, someone wrote the Great American Novel. Well done them. Roth's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1997 work - the first of his I've read - is a mammoth accomplishment, a dizzying, jawdropping story, spun with bravura style, that deals with immigrant identity, the unknowability of everyone, the disappointments of adulthood and the utter chaos of existence, as a legendary high school sports star turned upstanding citizen has his life exploded by an unexpected act of violence. It is his daughter “who transports him out of the longed for American pastoral and into everything that is its antithesis and its enemy, into the fury, the violence, and the desperation of the counter-pastoral — into the indigenous American berserk", as Roth unforgettably characterises it.

He is "Swede" Levov and his fat, stuttering, psychotic daughter Merry is his flipside: the girl whose rejection of his country, their country, makes him question everything he has ever done in his life. An unwise joke. An unwise kiss. The even-tempered appeasement of her burgeoning, spittle-flecked rebellion. And his perfectly ordered, doggedly restrained, all-American existence, an idyll blown to bits along with a doctor, in a general store. Merry was the fourth generation of immigrant Jews. She was supposed to perfect the art. And now this. Lit by twists that astound and yet ring utterly true, blessed with slivers of black comedy and bitter humour, and loaded with faultless symbolism - from the glove industry that defines his father's life to the cattle business and face lift that reshape his wife's - it's as good a book as I've ever read about America. (4)

Holidays, Hawks and De Havilland - Reviews #142

I've actually resolved to watch fewer films this year, but I saw a fair number last month. This is the first of two reviews updates; the second should be up on Friday. Ratings, as ever, are out of four.



It Happened on 5th Avenue (Roy Del Ruth, 1947) – A truly sweet natured holiday film about an eccentric old squatter (Victor Moore), who commandeers the home of a joyless millionaire (Charlie Ruggles), and invites other unsheltered souls to spend Christmas there – including, unwittingly, Ruggles, his daughter and his ex-wife (Ann Harding, in fine form). It’s leisurely, funny and sometimes moving, with a very special cast and a great closing gag. (3.5)

***



A Bill of Divorcement (George Cukor, 1932) – A stunning drama about mental illness, with John Barrymore as a war veteran who leaves a sanitarium after 15 years and tries to reconnect with the wife (Billie Burke) and daughter (Katharine Hepburn) he left behind after “God turned his face away”. People talk a lot of nonsense about “brave” performances, but this one really was – Barrymore’s father had died in an asylum and he lived his whole life in fear of losing his mind. The film is very much of its time, subscribing to the notion that those with mental illness shouldn’t have children, but it’s compassionate and superbly scripted, with Barrymore at his considerable best and Hepburn close to hers in a winning and naturalistic debut performance. Their first scene together is a towering achievement. (4)

***



Arthur Christmas (Sarah Smith and Barry Cook, 2011) – I enjoyed this at the cinema and it’s just as good second time around. There’s the odd lull, McAvoy was a curious choice for Arthur and I wonder if the film’s cleverly thought-out mythology might confuse children, but it’s often hilarious (the hand of Peter Baynham is much in evidence), the high-tech present drop is very cool and Grandsanta is a great character. Each of Aardman's features has been better than the last, so while this was the best upon release, it's now been surpassed by The Pirates! The Biebster’s song over the credits sounds like it was cobbled together from 300 takes and fed through autotune. He’s clearly very talented. (3.5)

***



Princess O’Rourke (Norman Krasna, 1943) – A European princess (Olivia De Havilland), looking for excitement, gets all sleepy, meets a charming American (Robert Cummings) and wakes up in his bed, wearing his pyjamas. From there, love blossoms, but will her royal duty stand in the way of their happiness? This prototype Roman Holiday isn’t as transcendent (or realistic), and the demands of the period make it a bit too propagandist, but it’s still great fun, with a good Krasna script and lovely De Havilland. She was at war with Warner, battling illness and had taken to strolling onto set an hour late – if at all – but you wouldn’t know it from her effortlessly charming characterisation. (3)

***


Errol Flynn is doing this expression for most of the film.

Footsteps in the Dark (Lloyd Bacon, 1941) – Investment adviser Errol Flynn launches a second career as a writer of scandalous mysteries, then gets plunged into a case of his own in this daft but diverting detective yarn. The script could be better, but the film’s buoyed by Flynn’s lively comic turn, a strong supporting cast and a rather cool art deco train station. (2.5)

***



Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) – This is pretty much my favourite movie ever: a perfectly conceived and masterfully executed romantic comedy in which gangster’s moll Barbara Stanwyck hides out from the cops with an unsuspecting professor (Gary Cooper) and the seven affectionate, ineffectual old men helping him to compile an encyclopaedia. The script by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett is utterly superb, but so much of the magic lies in the performances, since such a lot of what Cooper and particularly Stanwyck have to play is complex and unspoken. For most of the film she’s neither as smitten as she tells the professor, nor as heartless as she tells her boyfriend (Dana Andrews, in an atypically ruthless characterisation), and she walks that line beautifully, always staying sympathetic and beguiling us, as she does the loveable old fuddy duddies. There’s no denying that elsewhere Stanwyck could be a bit annoying, but she had a certain something that no other actress has ever possessed, an ability to – with just a single expression or line reading – bypass your critical faculties and get you right in the tearducts. The film is a wonderful mix of comedy and sentiment; the leads prove masters at both (how about that "Richard Ill" scene?), and they’re ably supported by the likes of Henry Travers, Allen Jenkins and Richard Haydn, whose bachelor dinner speech is an absolute knockout. The gag count is off the scale (personal favourites are: “I’ve always thought of you as something of a… WOOOH!” and “I don’t know. Where do you live?”), allied to a lush romanticism unlike almost anything else I’ve encountered. It looks sumptuous too, thanks to the talents of the legendary Gregg Toland. To get that startling effect of Stanwyck’s welling eyes shining out from the dark, he blacked up her face, like an outrageous bloody genius. (4)

And for no other reason than that I found it the other day, here's the full-length review I wrote for MovieMail a while back (a shortened version appears on their site here):



There are a handful of romantic comedies so inspired, so deft in their balance of heart and hilarity, that they seem to touch perfection. Joyous on first discovery, revisiting them only serves to show their depth, their invention and their ability to grab a willing participant by the heartstrings – whilst adding a few favourite phrases to the viewer’s vernacular. Ball of Fire is one such movie.

Gary Cooper plays Prof. Bertram Potts, one of eight academics living in a musty townhouse, working on a new encyclopaedia. They’re partway through ‘s’ when an encounter with lingo-heavy binman Allen Jenkins flags up a serious shortcoming: their entry on slang is farcically outdated. So Potts ventures into the real world to brush up on his street talk, and encounters nightclub singer and gangster’s moll Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck). Forced to lie low after a mob hit orchestrated by lover Joe Lilac (Dana Andrews), she figures the professors’ house was made to fit – zoning in on Potts to seal the deal.

The script by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, loosely based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is simply glorious – and this cast makes the most of it. Barely a minute passes without a big laugh from a great one-liner, sight gag or bit of character comedy. There’s Cooper accidentally flirting with his benefactor’s daughter, criminal Benny the Creep telling the cops he’s the owner of improbably large pyjamas inscribed with Lilac’s initials and Stanwyck turning up at the professors’ home, expecting room and board. “OK, where do I sleep?” she asks. “I don’t know,” replies Cooper. “Where do you live?”

Such comic brilliance is punctuated by sequences of uncommon emotional clarity, anchored by the beguiling Stanwyck. As in Remember the Night – the transcendent Preston Sturges-scripted romantic comedy that marks perhaps the apex of the genre – she plays a hard-boiled dame transformed in the face of love, and the results are truly unforgettable. Cooper is similarly effective, touching and amusing as a smitten bookworm with the soul of a poet but the naïvety of a child, while the seven ‘dwarfs’ add to both the gag count and the winsome, sometimes wistful atmosphere. It’s a wonderful film.

***



Searching for Sonny (Andrew Disney, 2011) – An entertaining black-comedy-noir, in which aimless 28-year-old Jason Dohring (Logan in Veronica Mars) attends his high school reunion, notices that his best pal has gone missing and winds up neck-deep in conspiracy. I got this low-budget indie to see what Dohring had been up to and – despite the odd bum note (like a running joke about hating the Irish) – it was good all round, with some enjoyably offbeat dialogue (much of it ad-libbed), interesting direction (well, apart for the circling shot near the close, which was like being on the teacups at Alton Towers) and solid performances – particularly from Nick Kocher as Dohring’s loose cannon of a brother. “Coinky-dink? I think ninky-dink.” (3)

***



5th Ave Girl (Gregory La Cava, 1939) – An unhappy industrialist (Walter Connolly) tires of his wife’s infidelity, and hires a working girl (Ginger Rogers) to pose as his mistress. La Cava made perhaps the best social comedy of all time, My Man Godfrey, and while this one can’t compete, it has a few good jokes and observations, Connolly’s as good value as ever and Rogers is unusually – and admirably – restrained. Her two modes of comic playing were “appealingly deadpan” and “unforgivably broad” (see Howard Hawks’ Monkey Business for one such chilling example) – the former serves her well here. Tim Holt, whose whole career was basically just really weird, appears as Connolly’s polo-playing son. (2.5)

***



The Case of the Howling Dog (Alan Crosland, 1934) – Perry Mason’s first screen appearance is a densely plotted, sometimes confusing mystery given a shot in the arm by star Warren William. Some of the supporting cast are a bit wooden, though curiously this B production managed to attract Mary Astor too. She’s always worth a watch, even when not playing as eye-wateringly horny as usual. (2.5)


***



Paradise for Three (Edward Buzzell, 1938) – A competition winner (Robert Young) and a multi-millionaire (Frank Morgan) pitch up at a mountain hotel, where their identities are confused, leading to various romantic complications. The film’s Depression-era ruminations on the incompatibility of the rich and the poor are never quite sorted out, but it’s amusing – when not resorting to slapstick – and the cast is fantastic, a virtual who’s who of ‘30s character comedians, including not only Morgan but also Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Herman Bing and Sig Ruman. Mary Astor dresses as a schoolgirl whilst trying to entrap Morgan. Well of course she does. (2.5)

***



Blast of Silence (Allen Baron, 1961) – A lean, mean Christmas noir, in which a self-hating hitman – violence coursing through him like a virus – comes to NYC to do a job, but finds himself tempted by the lure of a real life. The acting’s not always the best, but Larry Tucker is super as a sweaty gun-dealer, the location photography is absolutely stunning and there’s a florid, doom-laden second person narration by the blacklisted Lionel Stander! (3)

***



Nothing to Declare (Dany Boon, 2010) – A French customs officer (Dany Boon) teams up with his virulently anti-French Belgian counterpart (Benoît Poelvoorde) – also the brother of his secret girlfriend – to take down some drug smugglers in this hugely enjoyable comedy. There’s a curious shift into drama at one juncture and the closing gag is a bit off, but writer, director and lead Boon – France’s biggest movie star – creates a credible, completely charming world set around the border on the eve of the Eurozone launch in 1993, and fills his film with clever sight gags, smart one-liners and funny characters. His impression of a Belgian person is also amazing waffle. (3.5)

***


I can only assume that Fred MacMurray's hair smells really nice.

Take a Letter, Darling (Mitchell Leisen, 1942) – An artist (Fred MacMurray) takes a job as a secretary to get the money he needs to go travelling. But his new boss is a woman: advertising executive Rosalind Russell, who seems to be treating him like a high-class gigolo, throwing his manhood into question (not a euphemism). This one lacks that special quality that hangs around so many of Leisen’s finest – not least Remember the Night, which also starred MacMurray – but the dialogue is zingy, the set-up is agreeably unusual and the credits sequence is awesome. (3)

***



In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000) – An elegiac story of two repressed would-be lovers in '60s Hong Kong – a journalist (Tony Leung Chiu-Wai) and a secretary (Maggie Cheung) – who discover that their spouses are having an affair, and begin to tentatively re-enact it, while stopping short of the physical contact they say would shift it from the insightful to the tawdry (though really the reticence smells like apprehension, and the failure to act seems borne of misunderstanding). It's a romance like none other I've ever seen, directed in a more restained way than WKW's contemporary films – such as the jaw-dropping Fallen Angels, one of the best of the '90s – but blessed with his recognisable style, utilising pop music, Christopher Doyle's sumptuous cinematography and a desperately moving pay-off to stunning effect. There's also something truly daring about the bitty narrative structure, which regards only the couple's contact as being worthy of focus, reducing their spouses to off-screen voices (like something from an old sitcom) and presenting a steady succession of loosely-defined fragments in which Leung and Cheung fret, murmur and fall in love. It can be too aloof, it's sometimes a little hard to follow and don't expect much in the way of emotional release, but this is a true original, and a film that lingers long after the credits fade. (3.5)

***



Mad Dog and Glory (John McNaughton, 1993) - Genuinely unusual crime-comedy-drama-romance about an anxious cop (De Niro) who unwittingly saves the life of a mobster and stand-up comic (Bill Murray) – whilst literally wetting himself – and finds that he's repaid by having a frantic, amorous Uma Thurman installed in his flat. There are some really nice offbeat touches and self-contained scenes, as well as a smokily atmospheric (if underused) score from Elmer Bernstein, but it never really goes anywhere or amounts to anything, and ends with a grand anti-climax. For movie nerds, it's an interesting film in terms of where it finds its leads: De Niro (sporting copper-tinged hair) was three years on from his last great performance but yet to dive into mainstream comedy, Murray was entering the (relative) wasteland between Groundhog Day and his indie renaissance, and Thurman was still a year off Pulp Fiction. David Caruso, who's extremely charismatic as De Niro's macho partner, appears on the cusp of a Clooney-like transition into megastardom that never materialised. All told, Mad Dog and Glory doesn't weld absurdism and quiet emotion to the crime template nearly as successfully as something like Brick, but it remains an intriguing and sometimes satisfying watch, due to its offbeat approach and a couple of eye-catching performances, including Murray cast cleverly against type as a ruthless, supercilious gangster. (2.5)

***



Sugar & Spice (Francine McDougall, 2001) - When toothy blonde cheerleading captain Marty Shelton gets up the duff, courtesy of affably gormless quarterback James Marsden, she and her troupe decide that staging a bank robbery would ensure the baby gets the best possible start in life. This mildly diverting teen comedy lacks a coherent voice or viewpoint, oscillating between being offputtingly nasty and sickly sweet, is saddled with one of the unfunniest running gags I've ever seen (one of the group really fancies Conan O'Brien, which is about as much character development as she gets), and ends in oddly muted fashion. The one truly interesting scene in the picture, in which Mena Suvari's troubled teen visits her mum in prison, manages to morph from subtly moving to unwatchably juvenile in the blink of an eye, before McDougall attempts to drag it back, with limited success. I've seen this cited as a spiky sibling to the jaw-dropping Brick – one of the finest movies of the last decade – and the distinctive but compromised Juno. It's nothing of the sort, though it's fairly watchable, Marsden is amusing and there are a handful of good gags, especially the Lincoln mascot looming surreally over the dazed quarterback. I was surprised to see Suvari, two years on from American Beauty, way down the pecking-order in a film I only heard of this week, but her strange performance – sometimes wooden, at others intriguing, as changeable and erratic as the movie itself – went some way to explaining it. (2)

***

TV:



TVM: One Christmas (Tony Bill, 1994) – Truman Capote’s misery memoir, with moments of catharsis, gets the superior TV treatment, thanks to a wobbly-voiced Kate Hepburn (in her last film) and The Fonz. A lot of authors seem to have had feckless fathers (similar pipe dreamers turn up in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Parenthood and Imaginary Crimes), but the familiarity of the story does little to dim its resonance, and there is at least some ray-of-light reward for braving its bleakness. (3)

***



*MINOR SPOILERS*
The Snowman and the Snowdog (Hilary Audus, 2012) – It was never going to touch the original (to which it adheres too slavishly) and the sleigh race wasn’t very good, but for the most part I enjoyed this: the opening, with the dog’s death, was beautifully handled, it was all very handsome to look at and the final shot was very moving. (3)

***



Room on the Broom (Jan Lachauer and Max Lang, 2012) – OK animation: rather repetitive and Simon Pegg’s narration didn’t quite work, but the last five was really good. (2.5)

***



Downton Abbey Christmas Special 2012 (Andy Goddard, 2012) – Wow, that was the most boring episode of Downton EVER! Branson’s a good actor, though. I’m not sure what on earth Phoebe Nicholls was doing. I liked her a lot in Brideshead (the best thing ever on TV), but she really phoned in this one. Also, there was an old dude in it called "Shrimpy". Could do better. (2)

***



Homeland: Season 2 (2012) – “If you are in a minority of one,” Gandhi once opined, “the truth is still the truth.” I’m going to now completely trivialise that quote by applying it to a review of a TV show. Though the backlash has now started and we’ve all stopped watching Homeland because it’s really shit and unrealistic and like 24 or something, and the first season was well better and now it’s just embarrassing and they should have stopped it after 12 episodes rather than spinning it out and Claire Danes hasn’t taken her bra off, not even once, I actually think this second season of Homeland was probably slightly better than the first. The opening two episodes were arguably the finest so far and while Brody’s Norman Wisdom-esque escapades got a bit silly at times (particularly in episodes 3 and 10), and the hit-and-run subplot was possibly the least interesting thing that has ever happened in the world, I thought the acting from Danes, Lewis and particularly Potinkin was tremendous and the programme developed both in the ways that you wanted it to… and in ways that you’d never expect. All rather excellent. Can't wait for the next shit season that none of us are going to watch. (3.5)

Review of 2012

Woman of the Year: Janet Gaynor

If you would have told me this time last year that by now I would have finished directing my first movie, skydived from 3,000ft and become a father, I wouldn't have believed you. And with good reason: none of those things have happened. I have watched a lot of films, though.

In this review, you'll find the best films I happened upon all year, the five finest from 2012 itself, and a fun questionnaire that you might like to fill in yourself (feel free to nick it, but give us a mention if you do). The Ghosts of Annual Reviews Past are here: 2010 and 2011.

Are you ready? I was born ready. Sorry, relatively near Reading. I've included a couple of pleasant views later on, in case you get bored.

***

Premier Premieres: The best new old films of the year...

... being an excitable whizz through the finest movies I saw for the first time this year. This excellent blog calls them "discoveries", which is frankly perfect, but I don't like to steal, so I'm going to persist with my terrible title and incredibly long-winded explanation instead.



7th Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927) – An exalting, extraordinary metaphysical romance that alerted me to the peerless powers of Janet Gaynor. Headily romantic and overflowing with staggering imagery. Full review.

La vie rêvée des anges (Erick Zonca, 1998) aka The Dreamlife of Angels – A profound, poignant drama about the friendship that develops – and then unravels – between two young women who meet at a factory in Lille. Élodie Bouchez is remarkable. Full review.

Little Fugitive (Ray Ashley and Morris Engel, 1953) – An absorbing and subtly moving film – filled with quiet charm – about a seven-year-old boy who goes AWOL to Coney Island, after thinking he's killed his brother. A stunning, hyper-realistic movie, shot entirely on location, that paved the way for Les 400 Coups. Full review.

Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1929) – More Gaynor-y goodness, as J-Dog and the Borzagemeister team up for one final blast of silent transcendence. Pastoral, amusing and unfailingly sweet-natured, with an utterly enchanting characterisation at its core. Full review.



A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937) – The original Hollywood heartbreaker, with two stars falling in love as one goes stratospheric and the other implodes. Lesser-known that the 1954 remake (which is also superb), but with an immediacy and insider feel that's all its own. Stars Janet Gaynor. Full review.

Street Angel (Frank Borzage, 1928) – What an ending – and the rest of it isn't too shabby either. Stars Janet Gaynor. Full review.

Reagan (Eugene Jarecki, 2011) – Simply one of the greatest documentaries I’ve ever seen, an endlessly illuminating, virtuosic study of one of the most fascinating American figures of the 20th century. Full review.

Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray (Serge Bourguignon, 1962) aka Sundays and Cybele – An intensely moving, truly original drama – with increasingly spare comic touches – that confronts the cynicism, horror and alienation of the adult world. The three central players are terrific, and the film boasts some of the most striking black-and-white photography you’ll ever see: an endlessly creative variety of shots drawing you inexorably in to the heartbreaking story. Full review.



Raising Victor Vargas (Peter Sollett, 2002) – An authentic, immersive and charming inner-city indie about a self-proclaimed teen lothario (Victor Rasuk) who falls for a girl clearly out of his league. The film has a unique atmosphere, Sollett immersing you in a fully-realised, insular world, aided by Tim Orr’s stunning close-up photography, and uniformly fine performances from the no-name cast. Full review.

Léon Morin, prêtre (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961) – One of the best films ever made about man's relationship with God. Full review.

Les rendez-vous de Paris (Eric Rohmer, 1995) aka Rendezvous in Paris – With its endlessly tramping camera pulling you around Paris, this trio of tales brings a painter’s eye, a capricious, coquettish woman’s fancies and a hardened girl’s perspective to bear on the City of Light, creating something indelible and unforgettable from the everyday. Full review.

Young Tom Edison (Norman Taurog, 1940) – Captivating Americana based on the boyhood of the famed inventor. It's a wonderfully-mounted production, with a literate script that mixes things that actually happened, things you wish had happened and MGM staples like the family sing-along. And it climaxes with two extraordinary, unbearably tense suspense sequences. If you're a cynic, just don't bother. For everyone else, this is a rosy primer on Edison's early years and a poignant, exciting and flavourful example of MGM at its absolute best. Full review.



Los amantes del círculo polar (Julio Medem, 1998) aka Lovers of the Arctic Circle - For 70 minutes, an astonishing love story that traces, in alternate chapters, the dovetailing lives of palindromically-named Spanish stepsiblings Otto and Ana. Then the coincidences start to pile up too heavily, and Otto winds up dangling rather impotentently from a tree, a metaphor for the film’s third act struggles. For all that, it remains a remarkable achievement, armed with a tireless but revolutionary concept of the human condition, and the surefooted grasp of aggressively non-linear narrative required to sustain it most of the way. Full review.

Passenger Side (Matt Bissonette, 2009) – A very smart, punchy little indie, with Adam Scott ferrying around his ex-junkie brother for a day. Hilarious, offbeat and genuinely affecting. Full review.

The Interrupters: How to Stop a Riot (Steve James, 2011) – A haunting humanist documentary from Hoop Dreams director James, about ex-gang members trying to stop violence on the streets of Chicago. Both inspiring and utterly devastating. Full review.

Robin Hood (Allan Dwan, 1922) – Copywright wrangles meant that The Adventures of Robin Hood - starring Errol Flynn - couldn't replicate the plot of this silent classic, and so alighted on lesser-known aspects of the story. It's ironic that the '38 film is now a staple of popular culture, and the prism through which we see the legendary Robin. Dwan's film, featuring a perfectly-cast Douglas Fairbanks in the lead, feels more authentic and grown-up, while still brimming with energy, derring-do and romance. I thought it was fantastic. Full review.

***

Top 5 of 2012:

1. Silver Linings Playbook



Director: David O Russell
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro
What's it about? "Cooper is a psychiatric patient released after eight months in a hospital, following an explosive episode brought on by his wife’s infidelity. Invited to dinner by his best friend, he meets a bereaved, "slutty" depressive (Jennifer Lawrence) who offers him a deal: she can get a message to his estranged wife, if he helps her compete in a dance contest."
Why's it so good: "It’s nice to see these kinds of characters – and specifically these characters – on a movie screen. Cooper is nothing short of a revelation, and his chemistry with Lawrence – one of the finest actresses working today – is really beautiful. There’s also a nice performance from De Niro, his most interesting in years, as Cooper’s father, who may be trying to build bridges with his son – or may just be using him as a good-luck charm to win money betting on football. His sequences seem distracting early on, taking us away from a beguiling burgeoning friendship, but the film’s apparently disparate elements slot together perfectly as it progresses, leading to a wonderfully satisfying finale. I loved it to pieces."

Full review: http://advicetothelovelorn.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/silver-linings-playbook-paul-rudd-and.html.

2. Take This Waltz
3. Damsels in Distress
4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists

Four American indies and an Aardman animation. Yes, I am a disgrace.

Worst film of 2012: This Means War

***

Rick's end-of-year report:


An enduring preoccupation: the mighty John Barrymore (think John Barrowman mixed with Michael Barrymore, then the opposite of that). He's with a woman, as usual.

Crazes: Janet Gaynor, Douglas Fairbanks, Hayley Mills.
Continuing preoccupations: Wendy Hiller, Buster Keaton, John Barrymore, Frank Borzage.
Revelations: Just how good Janet Gaynor was. And that she didn't sing I Will Survive. Douglas Fairbanks' swashbucklers were even greater than I could have imagined - especially Robin Hood, which may be superior to the Flynn version. I also realised that I'd been spelling Dan Aykroyd's name wrong for my entire life. "Ackroyd", since you ask. That was the only thing I got out of Dragnet.
A few performances that stuck with me: I haven't been able to get Gaynor's performance in Lucky Star out of my head. Nor would I want to. Just beautiful. Elodie Bouchez's turn in The Dreamlife of Angels got to me too, while both the leads in Sundays and Cybele did remarkable things. Ellen Page was chilling – and brilliant – in the very nasty Hard Candy. I revisited two of my favourites: Wendy Hiller in Major Barbara and JGL in Brick. And the younger brother in The Kidnappers was very cute. He went on to produce Superman (oversee the film, not expel him from his body).
Stuff I caught up on: A lot of silent films, some documentaries, some Truffaut, some Rohmer.
Happiest surprises: Lots. 7th Heaven blew me away and set me on a very Janet Gaynor-y path for the remainder of the year (it took in other happy surprises like A Star Is Born – just as good as the Judy version – and a remarkable offbeat comedy called The Young in Heart). I hadn't heard of The Dreamlife of Angels until it turned up on Film4, but it was an extraordinary movie. Both 17 Again and Easy A were great fun, completely immersive and brightened up gloomy days. Kissing Jessica Stein, Raising Victor Vargas and The Tao of Steve proved that the classic romcom has been alive and well over the last 15 years, it's just been hiding. Jimmy the Gent couldn't touch Blessed Event (with which it rhymes) or It's Love I'm After, but it was nice to find another comedy in the same punchy Warner vein. I'm a big Melville fan, but Léon Morin is usually referred to as a lesser work. It's hardly that. Same for Nolan's The Prestige – his best film so far, for me. I'd long laboured under the misapprehension that Eric Rohmer movies would be a bit heavy, largely because I hadn't bothered to find out anything about him except his name. Rendezvous in Paris was anything but, while The Green Ray was merely making you earn that chink of light. He's one to explore further next year.

Still with me? Thanks. Enjoy this photo of Venice, then we'll continue.

Biggest disappointments: A slew of overhyped, overrated sci-fi movies: Avengers, Looper and The Dark Knight Rises. I always imagined that Cocoon would be a delight, but it bored the sexy fly-around alien orgasm spirit out of me. After spending some quality time with John Hughes' finest films, Weird Science was like a kick in the balls. And not in a nice way. I think I may have seen a different Kill List to everybody else. A rubbish one.
Oddest films: Outcast of the Islands took a sensational cast and gave them very strange things to do. It was perplexing, sometimes unsuccessful, completely batshit, but kind of brilliant. Liliom had a handful of things going for it (Lee Tracy, H. B. Warner, the train), but set a new benchmark for stilted awkwardness in early talkies. Kings Row was about 11 different kinds of films in one: most of them very enjoyable.
Worst films: A Touch of Class is a romantic comedy in which the lead characters get together after she jokes that he "can't even rape her" properly. Everything else paled beside that, really. I did watch more crap than usual this year. I better fine-tune my instincts before 2013 kicks off, or just listen to the ones I have.
Tell us about some great movies you saw that no-one's really heard of: Right, there's this film called Manhattan by this guy called Woody Al- Oh right. Matt Bissonette's movies with Adam Scott, Who Loves the Sun and Passenger Side, were a pair of very funny, emotionally satisfying indies. The first 70 minutes of Lovers of the Arctic Circle was staggering, and if the momentum wasn't necessarily maintained, it's still well worth your while – or anyone else's.
Some favourite moments: Gaynor saying bye-bye at the gate as she left Farrell's house for the first time in Lucky Star. The train arriving in Liliom was breathtaking (shame about the rest of the film). And the pony rides in Little Fugitive were a delightful, hilarious touch. I also really enjoyed having a wee at the end of Batman.
And some least favourite moments: That line from A Touch of Class made me feel ill. The little girl (played by Anne Shirley!) mythologising domestic violence in Liliom made me feel angry. Edward Herrmann going on about cock-rings in Wedding Daze made me feel sad.

In a moment, I'll be carrying on. But first: here's Paris at night.

The funniest jokes: The Other Guys still makes me laugh like a wally, especially, "We WILL have sex in your car – it WILL happen again." Marion Davies' impression of Lillian Gish in The Patsy is about as good as it gets for silent film nerds, and Fredric March's Oscar-winning John Barrymore impersonation in The Royal Family of Broadway is much the same for '30s obsessives. Frederic Lederer's "I notice she didn't leave on her own" in Midnight was amazingly funny (that was the only film I didn't review on here this year, as I lost my write-up), and so is everything else about that film and fellow screwballer Twentieth Century. Archive footage of Ronald Reagan saying, "Attaboy, Bonzo" to a chimp and then hugging it, in Reagan, was also hilarious.
2012 was... The year of hype. Or maybe I've just been on Twitter more. I saw around 25 films from this year (compared to the 39 I saw in 2011) and though some were very good, the standard seemed a little lower than last year.
Best musical numbers: Billie Holiday's songs in New Orleans were nothing short of sensational, and I liked the work of an unexpectedly vital, vibrant and energetic young Louis Armstrong in A Rhapsody in Black and Blue, a rather cool short from the early '30s. It was great reliving the fantastic numbers in Girl Crazy, while Kathryn Grayson's Daybreak (not to be confused with Lorraine Kelly and Aled Jones's Daybreak) and Alice Faye's They Met in Rio lit up a couple of mediocre musicals.
Best film I saw at the cinema: Silver Linings Playbook. My instant reaction: "I loved Silver Linings Playbook. Best film I've seen at the cinema this year. Original, screwball-y, w/beautiful chemistry between the leads".
I was bored by: The usual tedious hoopla around Bond. Also, the film Agatha, which I only finished due to my affection for Harrogate.
I wrote this pretty good review of _______________, you should read it if you have a minute (with a link): Damsels in Distress, putting that Whit Stillman buffery to use at long last (http://advicetothelovelorn.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/whit-stillman-magic-glasses-and-singing.html). It was nice to have him back.
Total number of films I've seen (new watches in brackets): 297 (280) - with the Christmas holiday still to come.