Review of 2013: Part two - Crazes and discoveries

Here's the second part of my review of the year, dealing not with new movies, but with the best old ones I came across this year. For the other half, my top 10 of 2013, click here.

In brief:


The man and woman of the year. At least for me. (Only for me.)

Crazes: Clara Bow, Clint Eastwood, Michelle Yeoh
Continuing preoccupations: Documentaries, silent film, Myrna Loy
Stuff I caught up on: Martial arts movies, things I taped on video nearly 10 years ago and never watched and then decided I had to because I was having a clear-out.
Revelations: MGM's 1936 Romeo and Juliet being one of the best Shakespeare adaptations ever put on film - and Leslie Howard proving that he could be as good at drama as he was at comedy (for once).
A few performances that stuck with me: Clint in Unforgiven, Lake and McCrea in Sullivan's Travels, and, in terms of new ones, the boy (Thomas Doret) in Kid with a Bike.
Happiest surprises: Tootsie being nothing like any other drag film I'd ever seen (more below), Clara Bow offering a vivid, sexually-charged silent counterpoint to the virginal stylings of last year's breakout success, Janet Gaynor. My most(/only) extravagant purchase of the year was an iPhone cover from the BFI shop, showing Gaynor and Charlie Farrell in Street Angel.
Biggest disappointment: Cloudy 2 was so lazy and uninspired that it hurt my feelings.
Oddest films: Abel Gance's Napoleon was immense, avant garde and frequently baffling. And made in 1927. I'd forgotten how incredibly gruelling Dumbo is, especially for a kids' film.
Worst films: In just about any other year, Peggy Sue Got Married would walk it. I think Nicolas Cage's performance might be the worst I have ever seen in a movie. But this was the year I saw What's Your Number? I didn't know films that bad could actually exist.


Napoleon. Never knowingly not massive and arty.

Tell us about some great movies you saw that no-one's really heard of: Clara Bow's last film, Hoop-La, isn't available on DVD, but it should be. It's a staggering last hurrah: not her best movie, but quite possibly her best performance. Union Depot is a terrific Pre-Code cocktail that takes a dozen genres, shakes them and just goes with it. The Silent Partner isn't as well known as some of its '70s crime film cronies, but it's a cut above - if sometimes a little too nasty.
Some favourite moments: The scene between Dustin Hoffman and Charles Durning at the bar in Tootsie handled almost impossible material in the most staggeringly confident, virtuosic manner. The Intouchables made me smile no end, and Myrna got me choked up, as ever, in When Ladies Meet. And some least favourite moments: All of What's Your Number?, Ginger Rogers spoiling otherwise spot-on silent movie pastiches by mugging in Dreamboat, and any scenes featuring '30s annoyance Edna May Oliver, Joan Crawford or Nicolas Cage.
The funniest jokes: Most of Sam Rockwell's patter in The Way, Way Back was ludicrously funny. The "dirty great sea monster" gag in The Pirates! is sublime. Mr Poppy running out of the other door in Nativity! made me lose control of my face.
2013 was... The year I got married and finished the first draft of a book. Woop woop.
Best fight scene: I have a soft spot for the amazing market brawl at the start of Ip Man 2. Shame about the rest of the film.
Best film I saw at the cinema: Frances Ha or Napoleon. I've wanted to see the latter in all of its true glory for nine years, and it didn't disappoint.
I was bored by: A few too many, but Track of the Cat took things to a whole new level. I am reviewing my Mitchum completism as a result, as well as my slavish devotion to Philip French.
I wrote this pretty good review of _______________, you should read it if you have a minute: Remember My Forgotten Man, my favourite production number of all time.
Total number of films I've seen (new watches in brackets): 272 (231)

Most popular decades: 2010s (50 films seen), 1940s (45), 1930s (37), 2000s (31). ***

Top 20 "Discoveries" of 2013
These weren't new releases, just things I caught for the first time in the past 12 months.


1. Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) is remarkable in every way: stunning to look at, full of jaw-droppingly lyrical dialogue and blessed with a triumphant, eminently hummable Cajun soundtrack. Lit by a multitude of brilliant sequences that seem to come out of nowhere, but don't, and dominated by Wallis's heroics (including some excellent screaming), it packs an emotional punch like nothing else I've seen in years. Full review.


2. Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) is one of the great films, a rare movie that employs drag to interrogate gender stereotypes, not to sit lazily with them, smirking away. It's streaked with greasepaint, charmingly scored, richly romantic, hysterically funny and remarkably poignant. And the last 40 minutes is just utterly sensational. Full review.


3. Mantrap (Victor Fleming, 1926) - Clara Bow is at her absolute best as a combustible bundle of sex who heads to the country, and proceeds to drive all the men completely wild. Mantrap was her favourite of her films, and you can see why. It's lovely to look at, zips by in a flash and has at its centre one of the funniest, sensual and most startlingly charismatic performances I've ever seen. Full review.


4. Intouchables (Oliver Nakache and Eric Toledano, 2011) aka The Intouchables - Ladies and gentleman, I think we have a new comfort movie. And what a beautiful film it is: one of the funniest I've ever seen, and among the sweetest too. Omar Sy is an uneducated Senegalese immigrant from the Projects who applies to become a full-time carer to unhappy, wealthy quadriplegic Francois Cluzet, so he can complete his benefit form. Instead, he gets the job. Cluzet doesn't care about his background, he wants a man without pity, and he gets one - Sy's contempt for modern art, hilarity at high culture, and exuberant dancing to Earth, Wind & Fire are a bonus. Full review.


5. The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011) - One of the finest of the decade so far, a stunning, beautiful and utterly unpredictable comedy-drama, a perfectly-pitched rumination on existence, in all its chaotic, tragi-comic complexity. It's intelligent, incisive and poignant, its nuanced plotting, distinctive dialogue and glorious central performance accompanied by one of the most exquisite scores of recent decades, a Cooder-ish guitar accompaniment rich in authentic Hawaiian flavour. Full review.


6. Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941) - If Ball of Fire is Howard Hawks' best film - his most enchanting, entrancing and affecting - then Sergeant York has a claim to being his greatest: an astonishingly ambitious piece of storytelling, with sweep and style and a tremendous universality, that's also rooted in the personal. Its first half is a pastoral masterpiece (pastorpiece?) in the vein of Tol'able David, staggeringly shot in charcoal tones by Sol Polito, and chronicling hellraiser Alvin York's conversion to Christianity, within an isolated mountain community. The second follows Alvin (Gary Cooper) as he wrestles with his conscience upon being drafted during WWI, and winds up a war hero, via one of the greatest battle sequences ever filmed. Full review.


7. Le gamin au vélo (Dardenne brothers, 2011) aka The Kid with a Bike has elements of fatalism without being pessimistic, tells a simple story that never looks for an easy way out, and eschews sentimentality while radiating a bold and uncompromising sense of humanity. It moved me very deeply. Full review.


8. Wings (William Wellman, 1927) - A landmark of action cinema that perfectly blends jaw-dropping spectacle, intense bromance and compelling human drama. And features a lovely little teddy bear. Full review.


9. Yip Man aka Ip Man (Wilson Yip, 2008) - A back-to-basics kung fu classic with a realistic setting, a powerful story and a series of superbly-choreographed fight scenes that place an accent on technical skill, and possess a heartening reverence for visual clarity. It's also rooted in a stunning evocation of time and place, complete with poignant, beautiful bleached-out cinematography that calls to mind old sepia photos. Full review.


10. Of Mice and Men (Lewis Milestone, 1939) - Lewis Milestone's translation of the Steinbeck novella is an immersive, extraordinary powerful experience, exceptionally well-acted, particularly by Chaney and Meredith, and shot in painterly tones by Norbert Brodine. The two key scenes here - the first concerning the potential shooting of a dog, the second the potential shooting of a man - are dealt with perfectly, eliciting a nauseating dread and bitter anguish quite unlike anything I've felt watching a movie before. Full review.


11. Somewhere in Time (Jeannot Szwarc, 1980) - 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. Full review.


12. The Hired Hand (Peter Fonda, 1971) 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. Full review.


13. Un long dimanche de fiançailles (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004) aka A Very Long Engagement - Jeunet’s follow-up to the incomparable Amélie is a transcendent romance, a complex mystery (with no shortage of whimsy) and a chilling evocation of the horror and futility of war, as Mathilde (Audrey Tautou) searches for her fiancé, one of five soldiers sentenced to death for desertion at Bingo Crépuscule three years earlier. It’s an extraordinarily successful melding of apparently incompatible moods and genres. Full review.


14. The Marriage Circle (Ernst Lubitsch, 1924) - Lubitsch's favourite of his own films, musicalised by the director eight years later as One Hour with You, is a perfectly crafted comedy-drama on his favoured topic of adultery. It's missing the catchy tunes and lush romanticism of the later film, but it's funnier, sexier and more resonant (thanks to its greater realism): masterfully conceived and directed, and with an exceptional turn from Prevost. Full review.


15. Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927) - I was lucky enough to see the five-and-a-half-hour reconstruction of this silent epic at the Royal Festival Hall in November. The enduring impression is as if Gance had never seen a film before, and no-one had told him that this simply isn't how it's done. Full review.


16. The Imposter (Bart Layton, 2012) - Like Man on Wire, The Imposter features a charismatic Frenchman explaining - direct-to-camera - how he pulled off the impossible. But unlike Philippe Petit - the visionary (and admittedly adulterer) - who walked above cities to bring a sense of wonderment to people's everyday lives, this guy is a sociopath. An incredible story, and a brilliant, compelling and ultimately unforgettable film. Full review.


17. In the Line of Fire (Wolfgang Petersen, 1993) goes to show what can be done when you take an unimpeachable idea, build on it cleverly, cast it perfectly and then hand over the reins to someone like Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen, a filmmaker who knows when to be patient, when to inject a breathless urgency into the narrative and when to linger on a close-up of an old man nodding appreciatively at Rene Russo's bum. An Ennio Morricone score always helps too, of course. Full review.


18. Hold Back the Dawn (Mitchell Leisen, 1941) - A romantic slow-burner, set in a Mexican border town, with Romanian gigolo Charles Boyer seducing American schoolteacher Olivia De Havilland to get in to the States, then starting to struggle with his conscience. Written in Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's distinctive style, and directed by Mitchell Leisen - the master of the romantic drama, now almost forgotten - it's a simply beautiful movie: one which completely sneaks up on you, with an original set-up, an unusual atmosphere, and superb performances by the leads. Full review.


19. Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Herbert Brenon, 1928) - A gutting, wonderful film and an important one too: in telling the story of a gifted mime who wins every heart except the one he wants, it must surely have influenced the ultimately incomparable Les enfants du paradis. Full review.


20. The Beguiled (Don Siegel, 1971) - A highlight of ClintFest '13. Siegel's film may not paint on the broadest canvas, but it has as good a feel for the Civil War as any film I've seen, from the sepia-toned credits to the vivid snippets of battle, and, most tellingly here, the realities of living with but not within the conflict: tying a ribbon to your gate as a code for passing soldiers, consuming rumour and counter-rumour of the latest shifts in dominance - a war shadowed in the schoolhouse - and trying to balance one's humanity, or selfish needs, with one's duty. This vividly-recreated world is a backdrop for mind games and power games heated by a bubbling cauldron of awakening sexuality, and heading who-knows-where. Full review.

I've done something about my top "discoveries" for years, but I used to call them "premieres". The new term is more evocative. I borrowed it from this chap.

***

Old favourites: my top 10 rewatches of the year:


1. The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927) (My favourite film of 2013, all told)
2. Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001) aka Amélie (Twice)
3. Wo hu can long (Ang Lee, 2000) aka Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
4. Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1929)
5. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
6. Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941)
7. Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959)
8. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates, 1973)
9. Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)
10. Winter's Bone (Debra Granik, 2010)

Unforgiven, Kathleen Turner and men shouting: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" - Reviews #157

Welcome! Eight reviews for your delectation/disgust, including three from ClintFest '13, one of Dustin Hoffman's best, one of Coppola's worst, and the definitive Michelle Yeoh movie.

ClintFest '13:



*SOME SPOILERS*
Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)

"Well, I guess they had it comin'."
"We all have it comin'."

Unforgiven is Clint Eastwood's masterpiece: a towering dismantling of Western mythos, extraordinary in every way. It's the best and most important oater since John Ford's supposed "last word" on the genre - The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance - and arguably the most morally and thematically interesting since The Searchers, the Ford film that cast John Wayne as a violent racist hell-bent on revenge, and for once held him to account. It's a film so complex, in fact, that I still don't know how to read its ending, pitched somewhere between Dirty Harry and Gran Torino, with that lingering shot of a cut-up face expressing... what? Gratitude? Longing? Disillusionment?

Eastwood is cast as Will Munny, a merciless killer turned stumbling pig farmer who gets in the saddle once more when a bounty is placed on the heads of two cowboys who beat up a prostitute. The film begins as a fascinating ensemble piece - dealing with Morgan Freeman's past-it partner, a young gun full of bravado, Richard Harris's extravagant liar, English Bob, and the sadistic sheriff who sets in motion this chilling chain of events (Gene Hackman) - before zoning in, tighter and tighter, on its unforgettable anti-hero.

Superbly scripted by David Webb Peoples, who also wrote Blade Runner and Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys, it's a film that subverts just about every stereotype in Western history. This isn't contrariness for its own sake, but a clear and singular vision of the re-writing of reality. There's that old Western town - built in that New Hollywood way, rather than the synthetic efforts of the '40s - the departing stagecoach and the central saloon, but the people who populate this familiar world are like nothing that the movies have ever seen before. Eastwood can barely get on his horse and can't shoot for shit, while the bloodthirsty young gunhand is a short-sighted blowhard who's never pulled the trigger, these characteristics coming to a head after they gun down an unarmed man who's on the toilet, before a haphazard escape that has more to do with Munny's fabled good fortune than any traditional Western virtues. Also key to the narrative is Hackman's brilliant speech about the irrelevancy of being quick on the draw, a point expertly made by the closing set-piece. Meanwhile, in a sublime development, Harris is accompanied by a hagiographer who writes historical novels based on the patriotic old soak's accounts of his exploits. Magnificently, the journo seems to tire of "printing the legend" after he hears the truth from Hackman, but ultimately plans to turn the ugly events of the final reel into a lyrical new book, with Munny the star.

It's a movie that's endlessly preoccupied with death, as evidenced by those remarkable visions that accompany Eastwood's fever, all the more striking for arriving only through dialogue: the ghost of a blameless victim with his head blown off, an Angel of Death coming for Munny, and his wife's corpse crawling with worms. In those passages, Eastwood achieves a level of performance unlike anything he's ever approached, in its authority, sincerity and emotional resonance. Of course Clint's no killer in real life, but you do sense in these later films that he is atoning for the bloodlust of his early vehicles, with their reductionist view of human nature and plethora of unsavoury character traits. This, he's saying, is the cost of killing: the damage that it does to a man's soul.

As a director, too, he's operating in a heightened mode. I love High Plains Drifter (aside from its dodgy sexual politics) and I like Pale Rider, but Unforgiven knocks them both into a ten-gallon hat. Right from the opening scene, with its spare score, stately sense of composition and masterful title card, written in archaic, flavourful Western language, it's clear that he's reaching for a definitive statement - and finding it. This isn't just a solid genre piece or a lively revenge flick with vivid stylistic trappings. Not this time. Unforgiven is a character study of epic proportions in which a reformed man, clinging to sobriety and the morality of his late wife, still haunted by past deeds committed in a fog of booze, slowly begins to transform back into that hollow-eyed compassion-vacuum: an Angel of Death who revels in blood-letting and mythologises murder.

He's blessed, too, with one of the best casts of the decade. Jaimz Woolvett is formidably annoying as the "Schofield Kid" - but his whining, bragging and repetitive dialogue is rather the point - while Hackman is magnificent as the malevolent sheriff, and Freeman stays mercifully clear of the cliches that have dogged his later work. Saul Rubinek, as the nervy writer trying to navigate a world he really doesn't understand, brings something altogether new to the genre, but best of all - almost as good as Eastwood, in fact - is Richard Harris. Yes, his English accent falters a little during his farewells, but it's an irrelevant quibble with a jaw-dropping performance. Arriving in the film as that Western ever-present, the gunfighter with a past whose mere name results in widespread quivering, he moves from garrulous theatricality - recalling Alan Mowbray's heroics in My Darling Clementine - to despondent self-loathing, and then bitter verbal recrimination. The sequence in which Rubinek passes him a gun with which to shoot Hackman, is one of the most unusual, arresting and memorable scenes in Western history, shot through with tension, sadness and a gleeful contempt for genre convention. You think it's reached its zenith when Harris places an emphatic hand on his cell bars, as an admission of defeat, only for Hackman to prolong his misery, dropping the shells onto the floor, each one prompting a jerk of agony from the "Duck of Death". Sorry, "Duke".

Of the women who earn their living "playing billiards" with strangers, only Frances Fisher and Anna Levine really get anything to do. Fisher is a sort of player-manager madam, whose escalating, even horny, desire for revenge is cleverly juxtaposed with Levine's apparent apathy: she may be the real victim in all of this (even without her ears being cut off), but the only wish she expresses in the whole film is to give Munny "a free one". Incidentally, Fisher's fairly broad performance and the staging of the pivotal beating remind you how far Eastwood has come, calling to mind the nasty harpies and knife-wielding psychos who tended to turn up in his lesser work. Happily, we're light years away from the offensive triviality and gratuitous unpleasantness of Play Misty for Me and Sudden Impact. There's a reason why Unforgiven is the film that Clint chose to dedicate to his mentors: Sergio Leone and Don Siegel.

The '50s was the Golden Age of the Western, a decade when filmmakers like John Ford, Anthony Mann and Budd Boetticher took every old-hat notion going, and sat it on its head. Mann turned Jimmy Stewart and Gary Cooper into vicious killers, Ford x-rayed John Wayne's screen persona, and Boetticher and his screenwriter Burt Kennedy created a series of fascinating antagonists often more human than their nominal hero (Randolph Scott). Unforgiven takes those movies, rips out every romantic notion and leaves the bloodied, rotting carcass in front of the saloon. No-one need ever make another Western, because Eastwood's genre epitaph says it all.

***



The Rookie (Clint Eastwood, 1990) - Near the start of this film, you think that Clint's talking about a car, but really he's talking about a woman. Classic. As you might expect, he plays a tough cop who's on the trail of one of the Scousers from Harry Enfield (Raul Julia) and his nympho bird, but finds himself saddled with a blazer-wearing foetus haunted by a voice in his head saying "Jump, Joey! Jump!" (Charlie Sheen). Aside from his moustache and three-stripe tracksuit, Julia may be the least interesting adversary of Eastwood's career, largely because of the laughable disconnect between his main avenue of work (stealing and re-spraying cars) and the measures he takes to cover it up: namely shooting everyone in sight.

Many regard The Rookie as Eastwood's worst ever movie: perhaps swayed by the atrocious dialogue (it's essentially just people saying "motherfucker"), his preposterous partner, and the bit where he's (perhaps) raped by the razor-wielding Sonia Braga. There's certainly further evidence of the nastiness that pervades most of Clint's lesser movies, as well as sort of hypnotic idiocy in excess of almost everything else he's ever done. But, for all that, the first half is great fun, lit by a neat freeway chase staged by Dead Pool director Buddy Van Horn - in which Clint has to dodge swanky sports cars being shoved off the back of a moving lorry - and the star's masterclass in grizzly growling. Then the focus shifts almost entirely to Sheen's titular cop - a man so tormented that he headbutts a mirror - and the bottom falls out of the film. Still, at least Sheen, one of the only Brat Packers to miss out on The Breakfast Club, gets to moan about his dad. That final hour of the film is almost entirely stupid, though a special mention is required for the hilarious set-piece in which Charlie Sheen runs around shouting, "Come on! Come on", and then shoots a dog.

It's an inauspicious re-teaming for Julia and Braga, who won international plaudits in Hector Babenco's Kiss of the Spiderwoman, but Clint's motivations are rather clearer. Hollywood folklore has it that he had to make this one, a kind of Dirty Harry 6 (albeit with a pay-off in which his Nick Pulowski makes Callahan look like a Liberty activist), in order to get the backing for Unforgiven. That seems a reasonable trade-off, even in light of the woof woof bang bang. (2)

***

And here's one I wrote a few weeks back, but forgot to tack up. Note the poverty of my invention, as I again justify a lousy Clint film by harping on about Unforgiven:



Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood, 1971) - When a smug radio DJ - who would be faithful to his girlfriend if only he didn't have so many demons (wanker) - opts to boff Lucille Bluth, little does he know that she's going to go all Stabby Titmus on him. But that's what happens, as Lucille graduates from behaving a bit like me as a teenager - needy, desperate, not very good at dealing with rejection - to behaving like me now: scary, fond of lounge pyjamas and weirdly obsessed with Clint Eastwood.

The star's debut behind the camera isn't my sort of film, and isn't very well-directed - goodness knows how he went from this erratic, of-its-time slice of slasher silliness, full of clunky cuts, extraneous coastal footage and ostentatious crane shots, to High Plains Drifter in the space of a year and using the same DP (Bruce Surtees) - but if he hadn't made Play Misty, then I suppose we might never have had Unforgiven, so sitting through it seems a small price to pay.

Lucille (oh, OK, Jessica Walter) brings a dynamism and an appealing vulnerability to her role, alongside all the silly shouting and stabbing, but it's not enough to sustain a film this dated, dislikeable and tiresomely sensationalist - especially when Clint and Donna Mills are so utterly dreadful. The "twist", which is set up with an almost insulting lack of subtlety, is fairly well handled once it arrives, though my favourite bit was when the movie decided to dispense with its plot for 15 minutes while everyone went to the Monterey Jazz Festival. Had I been enjoying it up to that point, I might have felt a bit more annoyed. The musical footage includes that popular number, Willie and the Hand Jive. Smirk. (2)

***



The Raid (Gareth Evans, 2011)

INT. RUNDOWN TOWER BLOCK - DAY

Some men run towards a cop, shouting.

MEN
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

They fight.

Repeat for an hour and a half.

(2)

***



Wing Chun (Yuen Woo-Ping, 1994) - Kung fu meets Benny Hill in this delirious helping of cartoonish nonsense from Yuen Woo-Ping. It's a bad, magnificent, beautiful, stupid mixture of jaw-dropping wire-work, abysmal comedy and shambolic plotting that expects us to accept Michelle Yeoh as a bloke and Donnie Yen as goofy comic support. Yeoh is the allegedly mannish kung fu supremo and spinster Wing Chun, who becomes entangled with a wronged woman, a gold-digger and a gang of marauding bandits, whilst falling for guileless wally and childhood sweetheart Yen, resulting - of course - in all manner of airborne martial arts mayhem.

It's Yeoh's definitive role, as her lone, aloof fighting machine allows her defences to crumble - though only in romantic terms - leading to some wonderfully sweet moments alongside the film's more visceral delights. Though the plot is all over the shop, the film is grounded and imbued with real resonance by her dynamic performance: not just the whirling, diving and high-kicking that you'd expect, but her subtle expressiveness, variety and swagger too, Wing's calm, personable persona swelling with bravado whenever she's compelled to fight. It goes without saying, of course, that most of her action scenes are stunning. The fiery duel is rather a non-event - and utilises a double due to competing filming commitments - but her rescue mission is nicely done, the tofu fight is a wow and her three scenes with a rather vague villain are just absolutely gobsmacking.

There's also a nice night-time scrap featuring Donnie Yen, who shot the action scenes. He's cast against type as a thick, endlessly grinning comic character - and unlikely love interest - and does OK, coming to life in the fight sequences as you'd expect. Incidentally, he was disappointed that Woo-Ping - his mentor - barely used any of the titular style in the movie. Wing chun was spotlighted memorably in Yen's 2008 film Ip Man, and its sequel, prompting a resurgence of popularity in China. Here, I do think Woo-Ping sometimes pushes too far with his innovative action staging, going past fantastical to unsatisfyingly artificial. I'm far fonder of Crouching Tiger's magical flights of fancy than Kung Fu Hustle's knowing excesses, and there are hints of the latter throughout. There is, though, a respect for Yeoh's balletic grace and mastery of the medium that seems to rein him in. Well, a bit. Some of the time.

Wing Chun is a mess, and appears almost proud to be so, wearing its low comedy, negligible story and transparent improbabilities like a badge of honour, and regarding a running gag about halitosis as at least as valuable as its actual strong suits. But the film is also staggeringly brilliant, full of virtuosic fight scenes, striking location photography and moments of quiet, tender revelation, and lit by the mother of all performances from the mother of all female action heroes. To illustrate the film's problem with its own brilliance/ineptitude, take a look at the film's gender politics, which include not only the initially contemptuous treatment of Kingdom Yuen's smelly sidekick, but also a female hero who bows to no man, and an unexpectedly mature treatment of female sexuality that comes out of nowhere in the movie's second half. Or have a listen to the score: part rousing battle music, part nostalgic love theme and part what appear to be outtakes from The Benny Hill Show that were thrown out for being too heavy-handed. The whole thing is just ridiculous. It should be better than it is. But it doesn't care. (3)

***



Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) - A brilliantly-scripted, very old-fashioned comedy about a frustrated actor and full-time chauvinist (Dustin Hoffman) disguising himself as a woman to land a part in a soap, then falling for co-star Jessica Lange. It's incredibly witty, slyly satirical in both its take on sexual politics and modern entertainment, and positively reeks of greasepaint, recalling such fine movies about the thespian trade as Twentieth Century, A Double Life and John Osborne's The Entertainer (the poster of which is tacked above Hoffman's bed). The film gambles on a rather conventional trip to the country (with one notable exception) to affirm the central relationship, but pulls it off magnificently, the diversion so well-handled that it draws comparison (perhaps intentionally) with my favourite film of all time, Mitchell Leisen's Remember the Night, while the wrap-up - always the hardest part in a film of this type - is simply flawless.

Movies about cross-dressing tend to be a drag (pun very much intended), or at least to fall down in those sections - I Was a Male War Bride and Love Crazy are a pair of fun comedies that stop firing when Cary Grant and William Powell put on women's clothes, but Tootsie belongs in that rarefied bracket that don drag for their entire length, and yet succeed superbly, a Some Like It Hot for the '80s. Of course, whether it works depends a great deal on whether Hoffman can convince as a woman. He can, while exhibiting impeccable timing, displaying that effortless ability with quick-fire dialogue, and unleashing a succession of magnificent reaction faces. The supporting cast is also note-perfect, with Lange tremendously appealing as the self-deprecating love interest (this was before she decided to get a different face), Charles Durning and director Pollack excelling in well-written parts, and Bill Murray scoring big as Hoffman's roommate, his humour so dry it's in danger of catching alight. It's just an absolute joy from start to finish. (4)

***



Peggy Sue Got Married (Francis Ford Coppola, 1986) - This is an astonishingly awful spin on Back to the Future, with middle-aged divorcee and mother-of-two Kathleen Turner passing out at her school reunion, and waking up back at school, a few weeks shy of graduation. That promising premise is given the most appallingly flat, confused and meaningless treatment, with no apparent dramatic stakes, no plot developments of even the slightest interest, and Turner repeatedly vocalising her plight - and her considerable life experience - for no apparent reason, much to the general bafflement of every other character in the film. She also keeps saying that she loves and misses her kids, but toys relentlessly with the idea of dumping their father (Nicolas Cage), meaning that they wouldn't - of course - ever exist.

Turner is actually very good, but she's powerless against a script that's more concerned with churning out smug one-liners than giving us anything even resembling an engaging story, and a turn from Cage that may genuinely be the worst performance I have ever seen in a movie. As a whining, bleached-blonde crooner, Cage behaves in a way that bears so little relation to how humans actually act that I think he may have been sent by robots to destroy our movies. You know how bad Gary Oldman was in Leon, with every conceivable recognisable trait replaced by some fucking terrible twitch? Well that's what Cage is like here, only he's so committed to sinking Coppola's melancholy sci-fi romance that he can't even speak properly. Bizarrely, though, he can sing - actually rather well. It's a good job that Cage (Coppola's nephew) is so bad, though, because otherwise I'd be forced to round on the ever-wooden Sofia Coppola (the director's daughter) and the perma-gurning Jim Carrey (apparently no relation), whose mindless supporting characterisation makes his part in The Mask look like the very model of restraint.

There are a couple of nice moments dealing with Turner's late grandparents (now, of course, in her life once more), but both times the film immediately jettisons the emotional impact by doing something unfathomably stupid. When Turner breaks down at hearing her grandmother's voice on the phone, and proceeds to touchingly discuss mortality with her mother, the writers decide that now is just the right time for a cock joke. And after she opts to visit her grandparents ('30s movie legends Leon Ames and Maureen O'Sullivan), the lovely set-up is spoilt by a shallow conversation about reincarnation, partially redeemed by the revelation that Turner's daughter is named after O'Sullivan, and then trampled into the dirt by a deus ex machina of a lodge meeting that's so fucking dreadful I thought my eyes were about to start bleeding. All that, and an ageing make-up job in the book-end scenes that appears to have been done by the team responsible for Brokeback Mountain - and my primary school nativity play.

Helen Hunt's in the movie - looking the same age she does now - Joan Allen does a bit, John Carradine has a walk-on and John Barry contributes a reasonable if repetitive score, but whatever the film's promising credentials, it remains a load of absolute fucking shit. (1)

***



*A FEW SPOILERS*
Millions (Danny Boyle, 2004) - This is a magical, charming fable written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, and shown through the eyes of a hallucinating child - much like The Butcher Boy or In America - that, sadly, starts to falter in its final third. The story sees a fortune fall from the sky into the laps of little Alex Etel and his elder brother. The catch: they have 12 days to spend the lot, before the Euro comes in. The other catch: someone wants it back. And while Etel is desperate to help the poor, guided as he is by visions of the saints, his brother wants a scuba suit, a bike chauffeur and someone to hang up his coat for him at school. Boyce's script is whimsical, wise and clever, recapping and re-writing Bible stories to supplement its vivid view of the world, which is sentimental and idealistic whilst still practical and rooted in realism. The portrait of young minds is recognisable and attractive, and there are loads of good jokes and some very funny supporting characters, including Pearce Quigley as an incredibly ineffective PCSO ("Statistically, you're going to get burgled," he tells a roomful of unhappy looking residents).

Unfortunately, after that glorious bus ride with a papier-mache donkey, the film slightly loses its way: the only thing that really works in the muddled last half-hour is a devastatingly effective chat by the railway tracks that gave me a lump in my throat the size of a football. Most of Boyle's films run out of steam before the end, but I think here the problem is with the script, which vehemently rejects formula, but sadly kicks out clarity at the same time, whilst incorporating an overbearing subplot about a nasty bank robber, and a familial disagreement that's interesting at first, but doesn't pan out well enough. Perhaps Boyce's much-lauded novelisation does a neater and more coherent job of developing and tying up the story. I wasn't impressed by Etel in Cranford, but these first roles are usually more effective because the young actor is just right for the role, and so it is here. His limitations lend his character an earnestness and slight detachment from the real world that suits the material. I'm not really sure what accent James Nesbitt is attempting to approximate as the dad, but he's quite an underrated actor, and he's very good here in a relatively challenging part.

This low-key, low-budget movie does a lot right, but after that wonderfully engaging first hour - notable for a delightfully light touch - it does somewhat lose its way, becoming muddled and a little draggy. And a Cartman figurine is frankly an inappropriate Christmas present for a child. Still, a film this unusual, literate and appealing is always welcome, and kids should love it, especially since the film's youngsters are so adept at outwitting their adult counterparts. (3)

See also: Slumdog Millionaire, my favourite Boyle film, is reviewed here. I didn't think quite so much of Trance.

***

Thanks for reading.

Michelle Yeoh, Skyfall and why philosophers love Thor - Reviews #156

A couple of these are in-depth, the rest are mostly jokes (you'll be the judge of that), as I had a busy weekend, without much time to scribble. This reviews update includes... Peter Lorre! James Bond! The return of ClintFest! But first, a Michelle Yeoh double-bill:



Reign of Assassins (Su Chao-pin and John Woo, 2010) - A reformed killer (Michelle Yeoh) with a new face gets a visit from her old gang, and must take up her flappy sword once more in this colourful wuxia film overseen by John Woo. It's Crouching Tiger-lite, but it's enjoyable, affecting and, at their best, the action scenes are a joy to watch. They all involve swords. Yeoh doesn't move with the same breathless speed that she once did, but, like Fred Astaire in the '50s, she's adapted to middle-age delightfully, and that peerless physical grace is still present and correct. Unlike Fred Astaire in the '50s, she could also still have you in a fight.

While the story, which sees various sword-wielding assassins vying to get their hands on the two halves of a corpse that will give them supreme martial arts abilities, is too confusing in places, it's agreeably personal in nature, with most of the characters getting a nice little sketch of a back story: one wants to open a noodle shop, another fears he isn't a real man, and newcomer Barbie Hsu is great fun as a promiscuous psychopath who's offed her fiance and his family, and now can't seem to keep her clothes on. As with The House of Flying Daggers, a third act twist that threatens to derail the whole movie instead provides a wholly unexpected but completely satisfying ending, which in this case should leave you with a tear in the eye and a stupid grin splashed across your face.

Of course, you don't just watch a martial arts movie for the plot, you watch it because you want to see people pretending to have a fight. At first, the action scenes here are infuriatingly mediocre, particularly in the imprecise way they're directed, so you can't quite see what's transpiring. But as the movie progresses, they improve exponentially.

Yeoh's scenes are typically superb - I could watch her just hopping up and down walls all day - and the scene in which she reveals her kung fu smarts is as superb as you'd expect, though perhaps the most memorable scrap has a chap called The Magician nattily employing a load of fire as he engages in a night-time duel. The scene, which sees no fewer than five assassins facing off (pun intended) in a courtyard, has a real whiff of Crouching Tiger about it, even if at that stage the human context hasn't been amped up as effectively nor are the characters as pure and well-defined for it to pack quite the same heavy emotional punch. But, really, what does? It's still an ace set-piece. And while there's scant evidence of Woo's fingerprints in this lively actioner, I do wonder if he suggested that tasty 3D-photo gimmick used to introduce the characters at the beginning.

Reign of Assassins is slightly too inconsistent in both its narrative and its fight sequences to approach the true classics of the genre, but it's entertaining, touching and has a fantastic pay-off. And without wanting to sound like a massive, creepy, lovestruck weirdo, it's just good fun hanging around with Yeoh for an hour-and-a-half - she's an excellent actress and the finest female action star on the planet by an almost insulting distance.

***



Magnificent Warriors (David Chung, 1987) - There's an action sequence here - in which Michelle Yeoh decides to "distract" the enemy - that's among the most extraordinary things I've ever seen on screen: five solid minutes of eye-popping combat, stuntwork and feats of outrageous derring-do that sees her evading, fighting and escaping from a slew of soldiers, and is akin to watching the very best of Jet Li, Yakima Canutt and Buster Keaton all at once. It's worth the £2.99 that I paid for the DVD at least 10 times over. The rest of this period, Indy-ish adventure movie is quite fun too, hampered by a bitty, rather uninvolving story, some tiresome comedy and an unfortunate predilection for slo-mo, but with many incidental pleasures and enjoyable individual scenes. Can't say I think much of Yeoh's hairdo, mind. (3)

***



Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012) - What the hell have they done to this Bond movie? It's got real characters, an interesting story, and even a good supporting cast. And wait, Bond can act? And his best gadget's a gun? It's almost like they made a proper film, and it only took them 50 years. Craig Not Bond (Daniel Craig) is James Bond, international man of misogny, who gets shot by a sexywoman (Naomie Harris), but survives to enjoy further encounters with sexywomen, and to do battle with a cyber-psycho (Javier Bardem), who's gunning for Bond's boss (Judi Dench). Chock-full of imagination and shot through with a Tinker Tailor-ish view of patriotism, it's exciting, amusing, even pleasantly sentimental at times, and though a smidgen of silliness remains and the offbeat final act goes on a bit, Mendes and his team still deserve great credit for trying something a bit different, particularly in the pay-off, while still retaining the requisite number of massive explosions. The whole piece is exalted by a great cast, with Harris, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Whishaw all wonderful additions, and both Craig and Dench making the most of the hidden depths revealed across this unusually elegiac, reflective and grown-up action movie (that still includes a bit where a man gets eaten by a Komodo dragon). The name's Bond, and for once my reaction isn't to yawn in his face. (3)

See also: Casino Royale was my previous favourite; it was alright.

***

ClintFest '13:



The Dead Pool (Buddy Van Horn, 1988) - Have you ever wanted to hear Clint call Liam Neeson "love"? Stupid question, of course you have. Received wisdom has it that the Dirty Barry movies follow the law of diminishing returns. I disagree. The Enforcer, a daft, gimmicky flick pairing Clint with a female sidekick, is far more entertaining than Magnum Force - which squanders a fine premise and has no concept of its own muddled worldview - while the widely-reviled swansong, The Dead Pool, for all its many and glaring faults, is a whole lot easier to take than the disgusting rape revenge movie that preceded it, Sudden Impact.

Yes, the story here about a serial killer is daft (even with its then-novel twist), the script has an unfortunate tendency to explain its own one-liners - along with easy-to-grasp phenomena like celeb deaths coming in threes - and the guy playing the hospital psychiatrist seems to have been fashioned from the same block of wood that once produced Charlton Heston. But look at what else we get: Jim Carrey miming to Guns N' Roses as a hopped-up rock star, Liam Neeson sporting a proto-Qui-Gon Jinn ponytail as an egomaniacal horror director, and future indie darling Patricia Clarkson cooking up some surprisingly strong chemistry with the greying Clint, in her role as a saucy TV journalist.

Most excitingly of all, the film features one of the best and most surreal car chases in movies (though I'll acknowledge that I find almost all car chases deathly dull), as Clint is forced to speed around the streets of San Francisco, pursued by a toy car. And, of course, there's the solid entertainment value that comes with each one of these films: their winning formula, strong sense of location and charismatic central performance, which carry them through even when the improbabilities begin to pile up, the stock situations start to tire or the unsuccessful catchphrases ("Marvellous", "Swell") get trotted out one more time. You'd be hard pushed to argue that it's a great film, or that it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as that unassailable original, but - at least until it tips over into nastiness in the final reel - it's good, silly fun: a diverting little curio undeserving of its dreadful reputation. And Clint calls Liam Neeson "love". Nope, no idea why. (2.5)

Trivia note: Clint becomes the first person to take a harpoon to a gunfight since Sterling Hayden in Terror in a Texas Town. Almost certainly. ***



*SOME SPOILERS*
Mr. District Attorney (William Morgan, 1941) - Hurray, it's the New York Times' least favourite film of 1941! And to be honest, you can see why: the dialogue is dire and the story's even worse. Dennis O'Keefe plays a wannabe lawyer from a powerful family who becomes attached to the DA's office, thanks to his uncle's connections, then attached to the pretty newspaper reporter he keeps accidentally walking into (Florence Rice). That's all very well, a suitable set-up for a screwball mystery, but, from then on in, the characters' actions make no sense: he overrides a colleague to purposefully botch a case (while supposedly observing), the central couple reconcile immediately after she tries to write in the paper that he's hounded someone to suicide, and they wrap up the case of mystery man Mr Hyde (Peter Lorre) through a heady fusion of dumb luck, incoherence and unfunniness. There's one laugh in the whole picture (the DA's exasperated retort to O'Keefe when sending him back to his office), which is half the number of hideously misjudged gags: one about a stroke, and the other Rice's baffling exclamation in the climactic scene: "Don't waste ammunition, hit something - if it's only an innocent bystander." Err, what?

So why the two stars? Well, for two of the stars. Rice is cute and appealing as our perky, sparky heroine, calling to mind her performance in the Thin Man rip-off par excellence, 1938's Fast Company. And Peter Lorre is just mesmerising. I'm a big Lorre fan - I'd have him in my five favourite actors of all time - but that fondness for his singular artistry isn't obscuring my judgement. His performance drips with menace and creeping malevolence, turning the movie from a stale programmer to something truly remarkable each time he appears. He has only three scenes, but those passages, shot in an Expressionistic style completely at odds with the rest of this bland movie, are visually superb and dramatically electrifying. We hear a lot about Hyde before he appears, but nothing prepares you for that ominous entrance - emerging from the shadows like Harry Lime - or his quiet, introductory spiel, the potentially banal dialogue lent a chilling air by Lorre's unapproachable delivery. And he even hides out after a murder by just inching up some stairs, as he had in the "first noir", Stranger on the Third Floor, the previous year.

O'Keefe, who would find a niche as a cynical, brutish leading man in Anthony Mann's superb noirs of the late 1940s, is simply miscast as our lolloping, effete lawyer, though there's a ridiculously strong supporting cast for a film from the cheapo Republic studio. Almost a dozen recognisable character actors appear in some form or another: camp southerner Grady Sutton, bespectacled Charles Halton, even gaunt, blonde-haired Billy Benedict, whose sole contribution is to walk down a corridor. Charles Arnt - who played a cheery banker memorably in I Love You Again - is neatly cast against type as, well, a banker again, but one driven to theft by pure animal lust. Joan Blair is also quite interesting as unrepentant bad girl Betty Valentine, overcoming some dodgy material thanks to a dose of unexpected charisma. She had a bit part in Citizen Kane, of all things, the same year.

Mr District Attorney is a patchy, brainless affair that begins with a crap "meet cute" and ends in a blizzard of incoherence and improbability, but it is worth it for Lorre's startling contribution, and Rice's best efforts to inject some sense of charm and realism into an almost wilfully scrappy hotchpotch of improbable plotting, inconsistent characterisation and deeply unamusing irascibility. O'Keefe returned six years later for a film with an identical name, based on the same successful radio series, though no longer playing for laughs. Not that he, or anyone else, get many here. (2)

***



Also, I found this great quote by Heidegger about how much he enjoyed the film Thor: "The less we just stare at the hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it encountered as that which it is." He's right, you know. He also likes it in Avengers when Hulk goes smash.

Delicacy, Donnie Yen and John Wayne's bottom - Reviews #155

This week's reviews update includes a martial arts masterpiece, a wonderful, disarming rom-com and a couple of old B-Westerns. Plus: other stuff.



*SOME SPOILERS*
Ip Man (Wilson Yip, 2008) - This is, simply, one of the three or four best kung fu films I've ever seen, a back-to-basics classic with a realistic setting, a powerful story and a series of superbly-choreographed fight scenes that place an accent on technical skill, and possess a heartening reverence for visual clarity. There are no mystifying close-ups of unidentifiable feet, and the film benefits from both a negligible amount of wire-work and a complete absence of juvenile comedy, placing it in a bracket almost by itself. It's also rooted in a stunning evocation of time and place, complete with poignant, beautiful bleached-out cinematography that calls to mind old sepia photos.

Donnie Yen starred in Yuen Woo-Ping's groundbreaking Iron Monkey (perhaps the first film to properly spotlight the stylistic preoccupations that would find a worldwide audience through The Matrix and Crouching Tiger), and had supporting parts opposite Jet Li in the jaw-dropping Once Upon a Time in China II and Zhang Yimou's disappointing Hero. But, unlike Li, he hasn't had it all his own way. As Yen searched for worthy starring vehicles, so fans had to suffer dreck like New Big Boss, a film which boasts the unique distinction of having a story so mystifyingly convoluted that it makes The Tree of Life look like Under Siege. When Yen ventured abroad, it was to appear as the villain in Shanghai Knights, and then to choreograph the action scenes in Stormbreaker. The poor bastard.

Ip Man, happily, is the perfect vehicle for his talents, casting him as the eponymous aristocrat, a quiet, noble family man who is forced to give up his home, his lifestyle and his beloved Wing Chun martial arts after the Japanese invade in 1937. After a fun, fight-heavy opening, we follow Ip Man and his compatriots through all manner of physical, moral and spiritual degradation, a process of dehumanisation that reaches a symbolic pinnacle when the martial arts masters are offered rice to prostitute their talents in front of the military brass. Ip Man doesn't want the rice, not at that cost, but he would quite like to fight 10 Japanese guys at once, train a factory-full of workers to stick up for themselves, and face down the general in front of the whole town.

It's a story of great heart, masterfully-conceived and perfectly-paced, with numerous punch-the-air(/punch-the-baddie) moments, the dramatic entrances from Yen's near-mythic hero - fists clenched in fury - set-up with such intelligence and emotion that, when he appears, the spirits soar. Each fight scene serves a purpose within the narrative, and every one is viscerally, intensely exciting, Yip and his action director, Sammo Hung, respecting Yen's artistry to such a degree that he's frequently shown in full-length shot, cuts only made to better showcase his skill or to transmit the pure power inherent in those twisting hands and flitting feet.

Agreeably, Yen's hero is also one of the most sensitive and progressive in action movie history. He uses a style of fighting devised by a woman, refuses to fight until given permission by his missus, and dismisses the taunts of a thuggish brute who's just turned up in his house by saying that there is nothing wrong with a man who "respects his wife". Take that, '70s Clint, you chauvinist twat. The thuggish brute, incidentally, is Siu-Wong Fan, who I saw in the terrible Supercop 2 just the other day (see below). There he was a pleasant, slim, slightly vacant young man with big eyes, who turned out to be fairly handy in a scrap. Let's just say that he's eaten several few pies and a lot of creatine since then. And grown a little beard.

Ip Man is an exhilarating experience, one of those films that uplifts you through its sheer brilliance and makes you ask: "Why can't ALL movies be this good?" I never thought I'd type these words, but it's like Fist of Legend. Only better. (4)

***



Ip Man 2 (Wilson Yip, 2010) - A silly, synthetic sequel that begins brilliantly, before turning into Rocky IV for reasons unknown. We pick up the story with Ip Man (Donnie Yen) pitching up in Hong Kong, where he establishes a rooftop martial arts school, attracting some rather cocky students. That promising story is dropped rather abruptly upon the arrival of a patently ludicrous English boxer called Twister, who insists on punching out the kung fu masters, and showcasing his loud, uber-confident and preternaturally gung-ho persona. Surely he's an American, then. If he were English, he'd be wearing cricket whites, constantly doubt himself and lose the climactic contest in a penalty shoot-out.

The opening 40 is riotously entertaining, peppered with superb action scenes, including a much-celebrated string of wire-work duels atop a table and - even better - a frenetic battle at a fish market that's among the finest fight scenes ever filmed. But then the one-dimensional villains arrive and the film starts to stutter, with much melodrama and a Chinese v Western boxing match between Twister and a very special guest that exhibits the latter's amazing two-footed flying kicks, but seems to go on for about three years. The movie builds, of course, to a high-stakes confrontation between the English boxer and our hero, but it's an ugly, unenjoyable and graceless affair full of ridiculous touches (Yen is told he's not allowed to kick his opponent, but only at the end of the third round?!), which dismantles the mythology around the title character.

This movie wasn't necessary, but it could - and should - have been great. Instead, it squanders a sensational opening to emerge as a curiously joyless affair, no better than Jet Li's foray into similar territory, Born to Defend, and light years behind that extraordinary first outing. (2.5)

***



Delicacy (David and Stéphane Foenkinos , 2012) is a charming romantic comedy with plenty going on under the surface, which sees grieving widow Audrey Tautou - who's devoted herself to work after her husband's untimely death - feeling a strange attraction to an ungainly, balding Swede (Francois Damiens), much to the mystification of everyone else, including him. Tautou's films away from Jeunet tend to be either rather wonderful (like Priceless) or absolutely terrible and enlivened solely by her presence. While 2010's Beautiful Lies promised whimsical escapism but delivered only a refined form of cinematic stress, this potentially heavy, gloomy film does quite the opposite, tackling complex subject matter but emerging as a wonderfully entertaining romantic comedy thanks to real characters experiencing real emotions, a pair of lovely performances and a great lightness of touch. Tautou is typically affecting as the sweet-natured Nathalie, who represses her playful, tender side upon the death of her soulmate, and Damiens is simply hilarious as a man who can't believe his good fortune, and is frankly terrified by it.

The film starts in a heightened romantic vein, full of joshing and snogging, moves sure-footedly through tragedy - with the confidence and conviction to give us nothing else for 20 minutes - and then sparks up a romantic comedy, clambering over a couple of contrivances to provide not only a succession of big laughs but also some very real feelings, ending with an ambitious closing solliloquy that strikes just the right note: staying true to its story whilst also looking to the future. There's the romantic scene filmed against the Eiffel Tower that you might expect - though with an amazing punchline that's entirely out of the blue - but my favourite scene is one you won't have seen in any other romantic comedy. After an underwhelming introduction to Tautou's friends, happily lacking in crass Meet the Parents-style disaster, the pair return to her house, where they just sit happily and quietly in one another's company, before nodding off.

These are characters whose mutual attraction has as much to do with a shared sense of humour and a similar way of seeing the world as it does the physical connection that dominates the genre, and I think that's true in real life. For this affable, lanky, socially uncomfortable nerd, batting similarly out of my league with a funny, brown-eyed brunette, I found the film a welcome change: an unusually mature, intelligent and nuanced romance, albeit with a few clear concessions to broad comedy. It's also nice to see Tautou's preposterous talents used to their full. She's too rare a talent to have to wade through rubbish like Beautiful Lies. I watch a lot of romantic comedies (shut up); if only they all had this film's humour, wisdom and view of humanity. (3.5)

***



The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012) - Another tale of two men tied together by love and loathing from Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the few directors from whom every movie is a must-see. And, as with his last one, the story is framed so tightly around these central characters that there's barely any room for anyone or anything else to squeeze in. But whereas There Will Be Blood was a gripping experience - that ill-judged ending aside - this follow-up is as erratic as its protagonist: a frustrating, pretentious and unsatisfying film that builds up a head of steam time and again, only to repeatedly fall away to nothing. Joaquin Phoenix is an unpredictable, alcoholic and horny World War Two vet still crippled by PTSD, five years on from being demobbed. Wandering by chance into the life of a cult leader and skilled manipulator (Philip Seymour Hoffman), he falls under his spell, prompting numerous peculiar psychological experiments.

What power the film has comes largely from its performances. Amy Adams is decent but underused in an underwritten part, while Hoffman plays a man of menace and charisma with oodles of both, but it's Phoenix who leaves the greatest impression, with surely his finest performance to date. Gaunt, haunted and hampered by a slow mouth and a slower mind, his characterisation is coarse, violent, dislikeable and yet human, a man living in the shadow of past failings, but too inarticulate and fuzzy-minded to put things right. Unfortunately his efforts and the strong period atmosphere - created by an ingenious photography sequence and a slew of jazzy period tunes - are spent on a script that has a great many virtues and fine individual scenes, but even more flaws, with many sequences that are laughably written, elliptical to the point of parody or just plain boring. Anderson is out of his comfort zone, striving for the existential majesty of a Malick film, and frankly he seems out of his depth.

The Master is a film with an enquiring mind and an intriguing view of cultery - shown insightfully from the inside - but it's also extremely self-satisfied, entirely humourless and a good deal less than the sum of its parts. (2.5)

See also: My favourite Anderson film is still Punch-Drunk Love.

***


I thought it safer to Google the poster.

Wild Things (John McNaughton, 1998) - Like every other boy who was 14 in 1998, I've seen two minutes of this film before. The rest of it's good too, probably better: a pervy, shallow but very entertaining neo-noir that plays like The Last Seduction made by FHM. Matt Dillon is a Gareth-Bale-faced guidance counsellor who's accused of rape by two students: a pair of lips with a blue bikini attached (Denise Richards) and a weed-smoking malcontent from the wrong side of the tracks (Neve Campbell). As his life is torn to shreds by Richards' wealthy mother and her society friends ahead of the much-publicised trial, he enlists the services of a lawyer and some time insurance fraudster (Bill Murray), who starts to look for dirt on the accusers, while cop Kevin Bacon sniffs around.

There's no depth to the characters and I do have an issue with the utilisation of such serious subjects in such a light-hearted film, but there's no quibbling with its entertainment value, and just as you think the momentum may be starting to flag, so the twists and turns start coming again, at breakneck speed, and don't you dare switch off once the credits begin to roll. Murray, who's not on screen for more than 10 minutes, steals the show as the low-rent but deceptively brilliant shyster, directed by John McNaughton, who drew such an interesting performance from him in Mad Dog and Glory, but who made his name with one of the best and most shocking films of the '80s, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. George S. Clinton's swampy if repetitive score is another plus.

Incidentally, that scene (not the one with Kevin Bacon's penis), whilst a formative part of my adolescence, looks entirely gratuitous and a bit silly to grown-up eyes, not least because Campbell appears to be so incredibly uncomfortable, but it's still, y'know, alright. (3)

***


Not a great photo, but then it's not a great film.

Supercop 2 (Stanley Tong, 1996) - An idiotic, interminable spin-off from Supercop, one of the best actioners of the '90s, with Michelle Yeoh reprising her role as the high-kicking Inspector Yang, who pitches up in Hong Kong to fight bank robbers. She's always a joy to watch, with a balletic grace, an invigorating physicality and a cat-like ability to spring to improbable heights - or to fall from them, and land on her feet. Sadly the film has a terrible story, banal, ridiculous characters, and an abundance of abysmal dialogue (at least in the dub), with Yeoh simply given too few opportunities to do her thing. Many of the action scenes don't feature her at all, instead just offering endless footage of people firing machine guns. It's as if you've decided to watch a musical, and most of the songs just consist of people shouting (a bit like an Ethel Merman film, then). Jackie Chan, who starred in the original, appears only in a woeful three-minute cameo, dressed in drag. A couple of the fight scenes did briefly rouse me from my stupor, and Siu-Wang Fan isn't bad in a scrap, but this is still one of the most boring, confusing and poorly-directed films I've seen in quite a while. It's full of product placement too. I would tell you more, but I can barely see the computer screen through the smoke from these MARLBORO CIGARETTES BUY MARLBORO CIGARETTES BUY CIGARETTES CHOOSE MARLBORO DELICIOUS MARLBORO MARLBORO ARE THE BEST MARLBORO MARLBORO. (1.5)

***



Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959) - It was John Wayne who started it all. Budd Boetticher needed a star for his next Western, Seven Men from Now, and his big-name producer had an idea. "Let's use Randolph Scott," said Wayne, "he's through". And so began a remarkable collaboration in which, to quote the director, he and his spirited team "shoved Randolph Scott up Duke's ass". Fans known them as the 'Ranown Cycle': seven lean, mean chamber Westerns usually featuring the athletic, stoic Scott as a bereaved gunslinger searching for redemption. The highlights, Seven Men, The Tall T, Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station, hold a strong case for being the best B-Westerns ever made, lit by breathtaking cinematography, Burt Kennedy's spare, poignant dialogue and a complex worldview that allows for a succession of fascinating antagonists. Ride Lonesome, which sees bounty hunter Scott escorting prisoner James Best to a hanging, accompanied by Pernell Roberts' mesmerising anti-hero and a debuting James Coburn, is probably the greatest of the lot: an action-packed, emotionally arresting oater that takes hold from the first, and just never lets go. (4)



Comanche Station (Budd Boetticher, 1960) - The last film in the Ranown Cycle is a fitting swansong: the saddest and most elegiac of the bunch, with a heavy human cost that recalls Douglas Fairbanks' farewell to swashbucklers, The Iron Mask. Randolph Scott stars as a mysterious stranger who frees a married woman (Nancy Gates) from captivity a year after she was swiped by Comanches. But with the Indians on the warpath and a reward posted for her return, the pair are soon forced into an uneasy alliance with a shady figure from his past (Claude Akins), and a pair of young gunmen with an unexpectedly human side. From the unorthodox opening to one of the greatest endings in Western history, Comanche Station is a masterful film, full of warmth and wisdom, but touched by an acute melancholia, and featuring a hero not unlike The Searchers' Ethan Edwards. Scott is more noble, certainly, and has a more progressive view of Native Americans, but he's a man consumed by his endless quest, which in the end isn't so different to Wayne's. (4)

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ClintFest '13 will return in Reviews #156.