Shane Black, Black Orpheus and awfully big problems – Reviews #241

Some reviews. In chronological order.


This tagline has absolutely nothing to do with the story, for which I admire it.

Crime of Passion (Gerd Oswald, 1957) – Tough-talking journo Barbara Stanwyck marries cop Sterling Hayden, then decides he needs a leg up the ladder, in this spirited if rather unbelievable late noir.

It stands out from the competition thanks to its decidedly adult approach, a typically imposing performance from Raymond Burr as Hayden's omniscient, brooding boss, and one fantastic shot after a key character receives a decidedly final comeuppance, though it doesn't change my conviction that Stanwyck did very little of value after 1944.

Hayden plays about the only characters in history who look as dishevelled and sweaty as me after working overtime at the office, which is reassuring and kind of disgusting. (2.5)

***



CINEMA: Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959) – An astonishing movie that I only heard of for the first time last month; it sounded amazing, so I got a ticket. It's the Orpheus myth transplanted to the Rio Carnival, with womanising guitarist Breno Mello falling in love with pure, troubled Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn). They dance, have sex, and save one another, but his feisty ex-girlfriend and Eurydice's psychotic, death-faced stalker hint at the unlikeliness of a happy ending.

It's a feast for the eyes and ears, with impossibly vibrant Eastman Color cinematography showcasing Rio and its carnival (those yellows!), invigorating dance and intoxicating bossa nova music, while the story moves effortlessly from utterly joyous to blackly terrifying and then abstractly spiritual. Perhaps it runs out of steam towards the very end, but for the most part it captures Rio with a startling immediacy: its characters pulsating with passion, natural charm and an unapologetic, everyday eroticism.

The story - adapted from a Brazilian play - struck me as one of those high-concept ideas that might extract a certain truth from its material by dropping it into Rio. In actuality, it's difficult to believe when watching Black Orpheus that it would or could make sense anywhere else, such is the film's complete conviction, and the virtuosic skill that Camus displays in meshing these diverse elements together, while capturing the penury, charm and beauty of the setting, and inspiring a host of pitch perfect performances.

It's extraordinary. (4)

See also: The overall effect may have been what Orson Welles may have had in mind when he pitched up in Rio to shoot the carnival in 1942, backed by the Roosevelt administration's Good Neighbour policy. In the event, he and studio RKO proceeded to bugger up the entire venture – a process documented in the second volume of Simon Callow's biography of Welles – though tantalising clips surfaced in the 1993 documentary, It's All True.

***



The Pit and the Pendulum (Roger Corman, 1961) – This is the second of B-movie legend Roger Corman's eight movies based on the works of Gothic genius Edgar Allan Poe, and it's a step up from The Fall of the House of Usher: smarter, sharper and far more experimental. You can see it in the tinted flashbacks, a flirtatious attitude towards the truth and its stunning use of sound, which is used to disorientate, haunt and alarm us from the off.

As so often during this series, Vincent Price is a recluse who's either been driven half insane by the death of his wife, or is pretending that he has in order to avoid a few tricky questions, posed in this case by her brother, John Kerr. In comic roles, Price's scenery-chewing could look embarrassing, but amidst the horror milieu it's deliriously enjoyable, while attaining a histrionic truth with this more heightened material.

The movie dips a little in spots − trimming 10 minutes could have meant less time simply getting from one place to the next − but its coherent mix of visual stylistics, intelligent placing between madness and reality, and outstanding horror highlights make it an enjoyable watch, while the climax benefits from the groundwork done in ingratiating us with Price's character, before going off the deep end to delirious effect. (3)

***



TVM: The Best of Friends (Alvin Rakoff, 1991) – A remarkably thoughtful and mature TV movie based on the correspondence between legendary playwright George Bernard Shaw (Patrick McGoohan), esteemed museum curator Sydney Cockerell (John Gielgud) and Dame Laurentia McLachlan, a Benedectine nun who was one of the world's leading authorities on church music. Quite how a play in which the characters simply wander in and out of one another's rooms and gardens, reciting their letters, can be this entertaining, immersive and affecting is rather beyond me, but Hugh Whitmore's script is remarkably incisive, insightful and inspiring − even curiously, enduringly comforting − in its ruminations on friendship, religion and death.

That's especially true in the hands of these performers, with McGoohan a barnstorming but immensely likeable Shaw, and two of the finest actors of all time delivering late masterclasses: Gielgud's Cockerell understated, self-deprecating and self-aware, Hiller's Dame Laurentia radiating compassion, humanity and understanding: a fitting companion piece, in Hiller's penultimate appearance, to the greatest performance she ever gave, in Shaw's own Major Barbara. (4)

***



Last Action Hero (John McTiernan, 1993) – A smug mess of a movie, theoretically in the Sherlock Jr/Purple Rose of Cairo tradition, about an annoying child (Austin O’Brien) who uses a magic ticket to enter the new Arnie movie, Jack Slater IV, causing the abrupt and unnecessary deaths of two people.

Shane Black, one of my favourite writers, was called in to rescue this one, and his dizzyingly post-modern screenplay has some great one-liners and clever, satirical ideas, especially at the beginning – from Arnie as Olivier as Hamlet (actually retained from the original script) to O’Brien’s mum saying “Tell me the story of your life starting this morning, first period” to a cartoon cat who turns up at various moments to smoke the bad guys – but it’s also long, flabby, frequently irritating, and infuriatingly aloof, establishing absolutely no emotional connection with the story and its characters, so that we don’t really care about anything that happens, we’re just waiting for the next spoof, barb, gag or absurdly OTT action sequence.

Nor does it actually seem to make sense within its own parameters (why would the world of a Jack Slater movie include cop characters from across other genres and eras?!), while the kid is really poorly written and played, spending most of the movie trying to convince Slater that he’s a character in a movie, which admittedly leads to a couple of vaguely interesting thoughts on artifice and reality, but is mostly just pointless and boring.

The film’s neither as bad as the initial reviews and box-office takings suggested, nor anywhere near as good as the recent re-evaluation would have it (or as it thinks it is): a shambles with some smart ideas, great gags and mind-boggling stuntwork, but a shambles nonetheless. (2)

***



Dans Paris (Christophe Honoré, 2006) – This is a pretty good homage to the French New Wave with one huge and inescapable problem: Romain Duris’ character. I’ve suffered from depression my whole life, and what you don’t – repeat don’t – do is abuse your partner because of it. We’re asked to side with a protagonist here who spends the first half hour of the film berating and assaulting his girlfriend, and even if the rest of it were as good as Les quatre cents coups, that wouldn’t be OK.

In fact, the remainder of the movie is mostly spent with Duris in bed and his weird, warm-hearted womaniser of a brother (Louis Garrel) attempting to give him some vicarious pleasure by sprinting and shagging his way across the city, the whole thing presented as an updated pastiche of early ‘60s cinema. Around half of its derivative but energetic trickery hits the target: the apeing of Magnolia’s sole excursion into non-diegetic song is brilliant, the opening direct-to-camera address excruciatingly irritating. The non-linear narrative works, the Bande a part-ish dancing doesn’t. Contemporary Paris seen through the Nouvelle Vague lens good, sped-up action shamelessly half-inched from Zazie dans le Metro bad.

It’s also only partly successful in its evocation of mental illness: there’s truth and honesty in Duris’s characterisation (his wordless listlessness, his idea that we are born with a great sadness embedded inside us), but also pretension and falsity (the sections about his sister don’t ring true, much of the chat on the sofa is meaningless twaddle).

I loved Garrel’s appealingly offbeat character, though – just a note off normal, but that note is everything – and the climactic reading of a children’s story: the invasion of innocence into adulthood, seen there whole and like home, amidst the fracture of grown-up life, like the bit in the Ghost World comic where Enid puts on her favourite record from when she was a kid, and it both comforts her and exacerbates her unhappiness. The relationship between the brothers works too: sincere, standoffishness and loving, an unbreakable bond between their mutual exasperation.

Dans Paris isn’t a great film – it’s too annoying for that – but there’s something about it that’s oddly special. Such a shame then that it’s morally repellent.

***



The Heat (Paul Feig, 2013) – An enormously fun movie that revives the spirit of '80s buddy-cop comedies like Stakeout and Running Scared, adds a pinch of Lord and Miller's 21 Jump Street, and injects a heavy dose of Feig's feminism. Sandra Bullock is an arrogant FBI agent from New York, sent to bust a drugs ring in Boston. There she clashes heads with lone wolf cop Melissa McCarthy, whose idea of pounding a beat involves mostly pounding kerb-crawlers and beating drug dealers.

I've loved Bullock for years, so it was her co-star's performance that I found a revelation. I came into this movie as a McCarthy sceptic and left it as a fan: her performance is big but not too big, as interested in creating chemistry as stealing scenes, and to the benefit not the detriment of the material (not the case in Bridesmaids), which is exceptionally good throughout. There are simply dozens of big laughs here, as well as moments of emotion loaded with just the right balance of sentiment and cynicism, right through to a hilarious end-credits scene.

There are a couple of mental illness gags that made me want to section the writer, but hey-ho. (3.5)

***



The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (Francis Lawrence, 2015) – The same deal as before, only more so. Take Lawrence out of the equation, and this series may be barely watchable; with her in it, you can scarcely look away, her matchlessly expressive face rendering every twist, every tragedy believable and real, even when she's sharing the screen with a retired stylist who has inexplicably turned herself into some sort of tiger.

I'm in two minds about the material: it's nice that the movie looks to consider the morality of revolution, but you do worry that it would fall its philosophy SATS, and while I'm glad that this fourth and final film isn't an endless, no-holds-barred battle, the narrative it chooses isn't wholly satisfying. There's also an issue with suspending one's disbelief: if the fascist dictatorship that Lawrence's 'Mockingjay' opposes is really so devious and brilliant, wouldn't the booby traps they set be a bit more, y'know, certain? Throw 10 more gallons of oil into that flood. Set the oil on fire. Nuke all the buildings. Don't put the underground station's exploding floor on a timer. Send a thousand troops into the sewer.

Yet for all that, I found it more entertaining than a couple of films to which I've given five stars − a dichotomy that still confuses me. With Lawrence front and centre, the film sweeps you along, in its love triangle, its story of rebellion, its moments that I recognise as Hollywood hokiness but adore all the same: like when Katniss turns up incognito on the front line, and her co-conspirators begin to recognise and salute her. Something about this series gets to me, even when I know it's trading on cliché, even when I know it it's dealing with big subjects in a juvenile, even trite way.

You can pick holes in the movie − in its narrative, the murkiness of some of the cinematography, the utter redundancy of its patronising sunlit coda − but Lawrence carries it on her shoulders, and makes it work. I'm not sure these movies deserve the performance that she gives in them (the only other people who create anything comparable are Jena Malone and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who have little more than five minutes' screen time between them), but despite James Newton Howard's music, some snippets of strong action, and death scenes that surprise and therefore impress, it's her utter unbendable conviction that drags this out of the ordinary and sears it on your memory.

After the original, this final instalment is the second best of a series that I can watch all day, and then get infuriated about all night. (3)

See also: I've written reviews of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay – Part 1 at those linked pages there.

***

CINEMA: The Nice Guys (Shane Black, 2016)

"You know someone else who was just following orders? Hitler." *winks*

PI Gosling and thug-for-hire Crowe pool their erratic talents in this rollicking neo-noir buddy comedy from the inimitable Shane Black. It's such fun to gorge yourself on his cracking one-liners, exuberant set-pieces and subversive smarts, though I got full before the end.

(3)

***

Thanks for reading.

Joan Crawford, Nebraska and the B-movie actor, Jack Nicholson - Reviews #179

A mammoth round-up of recent cinema releases, things I watched on a tiny laptop on a train, and a few we had on in the run-up to Christmas.



CINEMA: Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013) - I saw this in a triple - yes, triple! - bill with Gravity and Don Jon, and I think it was my favourite of the three, a(nother) road movie about old age and family: an unsentimental, monochrome variation on the likes of Don't Come Knocking and The Straight Story, a bit overburdened with non-sequitur comedy, but nonetheless bearing the unmistakable handprint of the mighty Alexander Payne, whose films Election and Sideways are about as impressive as writer-director calling cards come.

Bruce Dern - the cult performer who once greeted Jack Nicholson's belated rise to prominence with the contemptuous remark: "Jack Nicholson's a star now? That B-movie actor?" - is an aged alcoholic trying to wander off to Lincoln, Nebraska at every opportunity, convinced he's won a million dollars in a patently phony mailing scam. In a bid to shake him to his senses, and perhaps enjoy some quality time with his old man, his gentle son Will Forte agrees to drive him there, the trip taking in family members, old watering holes and Dern's childhood home.

SNL regular Forte is best known for his comedy work, and he has that slightly simplistic way of rendering dramatic emotion onscreen common with crossover performers, but for this material that actually works very well, his sad-eyed puppy-dog routine an effective counterpoint to Dern's complex performance as an unrepentant, unyielding old man with none of Alvin Straight's hard-won gravitas, but rather the full gamut of human virtues and flaws: a proud, ailing, bitter individualist who did more for his friends than his kids and is now trying to atone for those failings - perhaps - while not willing to admit a single one of them.

June Squibb's comic relief as his wife, while sometimes very funny, detracts from the film's realism and quality when pushed too far, and there's one very misjudged joke that turns Forte's cousins from affable wallies into something else entirely, but Nebraska is mostly very good indeed, doing a few new things with one of the oldest of indie chestnuts, aided by fine acting, crisp photography of an alternately lovely and ugly America, and a typically incisive, amusing Payne script. The line "one and a half days" made me lose control of my face entirely, and the ending does absolutely everything right. (3.5)

***



CINEMA: Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen, 2013) - Woody Allen’s erratic latter-day renaissance continues with this throbbingly neurotic update of A Streetcar Named Desire in which a deluded, substance-abusing depressive (Cate Blanchett) moves in with her relatively unrefined sister (Sally Hawkins), only to clash with her host’s boorish working-class boyfriend.

But whereas Tennessee Williams’ landmark play – which made a star out of Marlon Brando, as an overly hunky incarnation of legendary slob Stanley Kowalski – gave equal prominence to the interloper and her rival, this one focuses almost unwaveringly on the sisters. For someone periodically dismissed as a bit of a sexist, Allen has always been a great director of women, and a great writer of female characters. Here, with Blanchett, he has potentially found another Mia Farrow: a muse for his mercurial gifts.

Her Jasmine (born plain Jeanette) is a dynamically nervy, pill-chomping conduit for Allen’s fevered examinations of a crumbling psyche, a fully-realised character, rather than a plaything of fate, as so many of his more recent creations have been. Flitting between time frames, she’s variously a red-eyed freak incapable of holding it together, or an airy, graceful hostess with just about the perfect existence. That perfection, though, is a fantasy, as surely as the films that Farrow sought solace in in Purple Rose, or the transparently false rewritten history that allowed Blanche Dubois to just about function in Streetcar. While the other key theme of Williams’ play: the death of purity in a masculine world (“You didn’t know Blanche as a girl – nobody but nobody was as tender and as trusting as she was, until people like you abused her and forced her to change”), is nowhere to be seen, the central, Allen-ish toss-up between self-delusion and brutal reality is beautifully handled, a performance every bit as good as Dianne Wiest’s in September or Gena Rowlands’ in Another Woman: two of the high points of the director’s dramatic oeuvre.

Because, despite a few broader moments and some concessions to black comedy, this is Allen on firmly dramatic ground. With Midnight in Paris he showed he could still pull off the kind of deceptively deep whimsy that came so naturally to him in the ‘70s; with Blue Jasmine, his other outstanding film of the past decade, he proves that he still has what it takes to be something like the dramatic writer-director he always imagined himself – even if it never felt quite so effortless as when he could lace the narrative with jokes.

The other notable performance is from Sally Hawkins, Allen making up for giving her a dog of a part in his worst movie, Cassandra’s Dream, by providing her with a meaty role as Blanchett’s working class counterpoint, a loyal, conflicted woman easily led astray, whose one chance of climbing out of her rut was pissed up a wall by Blanchett’s conman of a husband (Alec Baldwin). The rest of the cast is solid rather than remarkable. Baldwin is good if hardly stretching it as a slimeball, Peter Sarsgaard gets a taste of his own medicine following An Education, and Louis C. K. essentially reprises his part from Parks and Rec as a clumsily earnest bachelor – at least at first.

For anyone who’s familiar with the blow-up over Allen and his relationship with his long-term partner’s 17-year-old adopted daughter (the pair are now married), there’s a fascinating subtext to some of the later revelations. If Baldwin is Allen and Blanchett is Farrow, then, well… I don’t want to offer any spoilers, but the allegory isn’t very thinly-veiled.

There is some of the clunkiness and clumsiness that has marred Woody’s later work: the staging of a pivotal party is so unconvincing as to be faintly embarrassing, the scene outside the jewellery store is a very mechanical, convenient piece of writing, and everybody talks like Woody – fine for Blanchett, not so suitable for the macho, blue-collar types surrounding her – but there’s a confidence and a general realism in the story and the characterisation that makes an invigorating change. Back from Europe, he proves at home in San Fran, with a central character he understands, and who feels completely human, thanks to a writer on form and an actress on fire. (3.5)

See also: Woody's previous film, To Rome with Love, isn't quite the turkey it's been described as.

***



CINEMA: Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron, 2013) - This film turned me into the aliens from Toy Story. 3D tears in zero gravity? "Oooooooooooooh."

It's a solid but standard Hollywood script - disaster, fleeting romance, somebody running from their past - taken to a whole new level by Cuaron and Emmanuel Lubezki, whose gobsmackingly beautiful photography creates a litany of unforgettable images, and features by far the best use of 3D that cinema has thus far found. It sounds incredible too, an ominous score and some adventurous editing foreshadowing and soundtracking several of the most exciting and nerve-wracking sequences you'll experience on the big screen this year.

As you may have heard (I came to this one rather late), Sandra Bullock is an engineer, haunted by personal tragedy, who becomes stranded in space with astronaut George Clooney after their mission goes tits-up. She's got to stop spinning and somehow get home, via ruined space stations and blasted craft, facing fires, her personal demons and a terrifying barrage of flying debris. The film takes a while to find its rhythm, and it does sometimes turn too Hollywood-y, but Bullock is good, it's frequently thrilling, and it has a visual beauty that's often simply staggering to behold. The ending is perfectly judged too. (3.5)

***



CINEMA: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson, 2013) - There's nothing here to match Riddles in the Dark, and the whole thing is a little shapeless - lacking a clear focus or a real climax - but there are some effective emotional moments, most resulting from Ken Stott's nicely judged performance, and Jackson's talent for directing action is much in evidence, especially during the wonderful "barrel riding" set piece. Stray observations: the Leicester Square Odeon is very swanky - I hadn't been before - Gandalf's staff is a giant asparagus spear; I hope Sherlock and Watson make it up before New Year's Day. (2.5)

***



Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) - I watched this as a Christmas treat. It's one of the great films. I wrote a proper review earlier this year, so this is just a happy recap: Hoffman is sublime, Lange is the last word in love interests, there's superb comic support from Bill Murray and George Gaynes, and the film refuses to treat any of its characters as a joke (not Durning and not Garr), dealing deftly but properly with every serious issue it raises. It's a rare film 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. (4)

***



Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010) - My two favourite films of the decade so far are movies of water, poor folk and poetry, centred on a young female character of undefeatable tenacity. One is Beasts of the Southern Wild. The other is this bleak, humanist masterpiece, mixing character study, thriller and a portrait of social degradation and moral courage. It's beyond brilliant. (4)

***



*MINOR SPOILERS*
The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011) - Payne's greatest, and one of the finest of the decade so far, a stunning, beautiful and utterly unpredictable comedy-drama that's about nothing if not life itself.

Clooney is a self-absorbed lawyer - a descendant of genuine Hawaiian royalty - who's forced to take charge of the situation after his wife has a boating accident, and lapses into a coma. Whilst reconnecting with his opinionated daughters, he's also considering a land deal central to the future of the island... then he discovers that his wife was having an affair.

Whilst rarely original in conception, where Payne's films are truly distinctive is in their execution: that off-kilter humour, heart-melting sentiment and ability to immerse you in the lives - and the world - of his characters. Here he's adapting with the help of Way, Way Back creators Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, to unfailingly spectacular effect.

I'm not a huge Clooney fan, but, as with his idol Cary Grant in his later career, when his smug facade is scratched, cracked or punctured, he becomes an entirely different proposition. He was very good in Up in the Air, and he's absolutely exceptional here, asked to play between the lines, and to nail just about every emotion known to man. The results are extraordinarily affecting.

Nebraska has been bafflingly hailed in some quarters as Payne's "return to form". Following what? A perfectly-pitched rumination on existence, in all its chaotic, tragi-comic complexity? The Descendants is a unique and brilliant movie: 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. (4)

***



The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (Peter Lord and Jeff Newitt, 2012) - Aardman's best feature to date, packed to the gills with gags that exhibit a sharp, silly and deliriously post-modern sense of humour. The "sea monster" line is a thing of genius. (3)

***



The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973) - Something like the Spanish Whistle Down the Wind: a story of childhood innocence and imagination in which a girl becomes convinced that the murderer in a nearby barn is a cherished figure: there Jesus, here the spirit of Frankenstein's Monster. Set in Franco's Spain, saddled with some deeply uninteresting adults and at times both slow-moving to the point of tedium and narratively confusing to the point of impenetrability, it also contains utterly wonderful performances by the two nippers at its centre, and a few of the most visually and emotionally beautiful passages I've ever seen on film, blessed by a rare and special understanding of childhood in all its intense, sentimental, nonsensical glory. (3)

***



The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) - Ernst Lubitsch was a master of endings, even in these early days, and the final reel of this live-action cartoon is just brilliant. The rest of it, dealing with oyster heiress Ossi Oswalda's attempts to wed a prince - but accidentally marrying his imbecilic, chrome-domed butler - is a bit too self-consciously quirky, riddled with amusing but shallow non-sequiturs like female boxing matches, split-screen foxtrotting and drunken wanderings choreographed in meticulous fashion. With his amazing catchphrase of "I am not at all impressed", oyster king Victor Janson would steal most pictures, but this one - as ever - belongs to Lubitsch's unconventional, unpredictable and hugely likeable leading lady, who's completely lacking in vanity, falsity and synthetic celluloid glamour. She's fast becoming one of my favourite movie stars. (3)


See also: Two earlier films that Ossi made with Lubitsch.

***



Nativity! (Debbie Isitt, 2009) - It's formulaic to a fault, and the nativity sequences go on for far too long - and with far too much cheap sentiment - but Freeman is superb, it's very, very funny during the first hour, and its heart is unquestionably in the right place. It also makes me feel proper Christmassy. Typical BBC, though, eh, funding a movie about a multicultural state school whupping a bunch of privileged white-os. (3)

***



Father of the Bride (Vincente Minnelli, 1950) - This is one of those films so ingrained in cinematic folklore that it’s a little difficult to really get a handle on it: so fondly half-remembered that its mere mention turns a certain sort of audience dewy-eyed and gooey-hearted, and so much a part of Hollywood history that it was one of the three films shown on the big screen during The Last Picture Show.

Removed from all that, and seen as merely another movie, it’s essentially another addition in the “stressful family comedies” sub-genre (Mr Blandings et al), which has a fair amount to say about family and ‘50s America, missteps every now and then, but gets by on the strength of its convictions, and its performances.

Spencer Tracy is the patriarch and lawyer forced to foot the bill for daughter Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding, while speculating blackly about his new in-laws, the unsuitability of wife Joan Bennett’s plans, and the spectre of bankruptcy – which he imagines is just around the corner.

A lot of it is just Tracy grumbling about money or being frustrated in his attempts to join in, and some of the sitcom-ish cuts and fades are rather smug and annoying, but it is a fundamentally decent, good-hearted and often incisive film about family, aspiration and the necessities of adult life, with a few amusing moments thrown in. I did find it a little galling to see what 1950s Hollywood imagined a “small house” and an average lifestyle to be, but then I am perpetually broke.

Tracy was a far better dramatic actor than he ever was a comedic one, lacking a lightness of touch and often coming across as sullen and awkward rather than sardonic or witty, but he’s good here, dealing with the funny moments pretty well – the sequence in which he tries to squeeze into an old, excruciatingly tight suit sees him display an unexpected flair for visual comedy – and the emotional ones just as superbly as you’d expect.

The film’s real ace, though, is the young Elizabeth Taylor, who displays a heartbreaking sincerity, an intense sensitivity – everything so keenly and purely felt – that would soon be eroded by who knows what (Hollywood? Her lifestyle? Her lack of discipline?). She had played a similar role in Julia Misbehaves two years previously, and done it very well, but here she’s simply exceptional: wracked with unhappiness, shaking with anxiety, bursting with love.

Just look at the scene she has with Tracy near the close, navigating material that saddles her with nerves about the service, when something deeper and more profound, rendering her more fragile, might have worked so much better. Despite that, she handles it superbly, eliciting a strong, believable and memorable connection with her screen dad, who’s just experienced a vivid Expressionist nightmare of his own. And then there’s her acting in the pay-off, which, is just, y’know... *bursts into tears*

Her performance is something very real at the centre of a film that has a few too many cop-outs and weak gags to justify its lofty position in the cinematic canon, but also some great and enduring strengths that periodically lift it way out of the ordinary.

And the church looks just like the one where I got married. Cool. (3)

***



The Mask of Dimitrios (Jean Negulesco, 1944) - An intriguing, boldly non-linear biography of pure evil (Zachary Scott), as writer Peter Lorre delves Citizen Kane-style into the past of a man washed up dead, bumping into a hulking mystery man (Sydney Greenstreet) on the same trail. It's not quite as successful as The Verdict, as its raison d'être is less clear and its destination less impressive, but there are many enjoyable performances and scenes within its less than perfect story. (3)

***



"I beg your... complete pardon."
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (Woody Allen, 2001) - Woody's much-maligned version of a battle-of-the-sexes screwball comedy, set in 1940, is overlong and rather repetitive, but full of nice period flavour and good music, and sometimes simply hilarious. The scene in which his investigator searches rival Helen Hunt's office is one of the funniest things he's ever done. The film as a whole is minor, a little one-note, and has too many gags that fall flat, but it's still a fun watch, and certainly undeserving of its sullied reputation. (2.5)

***



The Conspirators (Jean Negulesco, 1944) - I realised halfway through this film that I'd seen it before, which says a little about me and quite a lot about the movie.

It's a solid but unremarkable Casablanca knock-off made by the same studio, Warner Bros, and featuring Paul Henreid as another freedom fighter engaged in a relationship with a brooding, accented mystery woman (Hedi Lamarr going all Ingrid Bergman on us). Whereas in Casablanca he was striving to get to Lisbon, here he's trying to leave it, but gets drawn into the local espionage scene, encountering such superb character actors as Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, in another of their fine teamings.

The incomparable Lorre is actually a little underused, but Greenstreet is superb, Joseph Calleia has a nice bit as an understanding detective, and both Henreid and Lamarr give it their best, despite the rather formulaic and overly propagandist material. Lamarr is frequently derided nowadays, but I think she could be a decent actress when not asked to merely be a clothes horse. In King Vidor's H. M. Pulham, Esq. and her nudey breakout role, Extase, (I've already seen everything), she was absolutely excellent.

Director Negulesco also creates a handful of memorable suspense sequences, as well as a few tedious ones. While the action finale is completely uninvolving, Henreid's attempted prison break is a knockout in the Mesrine vein, and the climactic, Hitchcockian roulette sequence is cleverly handled, despite the obviousness of the culprit, which seemed like a muddle-headed cop-out even on first watch. I'm sure I'll enjoy another first viewing one day. (2.5)

***



Fancy Pants (Charles Walters, 1950) - A very loose, slightly racist remake of Leo McCarey's Ruggles of Red Gap, re-imagined as a Bob Hope vehicle. He's an American actor who poses as an English butler, then an earl, while tangling with various Western sorts, getting to meet Teddy Roosevelt, and taking the mickey out of how Chinese people speak.

It's slight and very inconsistent, but overall not bad. Lucille Ball is excellent as the combustible love interest gradually falling for our hero (while cultivating her new screen persona), and the best moments see her giving Hope a peck on the cheek - one of those small, sweet touches that can make a film - and the amazing punchline to his story of imperial derring-do, which is as good (and subversive) a gag as he ever delivered.

There's also a fun appearance early on from the great character comic Eric Blore, playing a sort of embryonic version of the Fast Show's Rowley Birkin QC - perhaps based on a character from the 1937 comedy Personal Property - a largely unintelligible aristo with strange moments of clarity. (2.5)

***



*SPOILERS FOR THIS AND WHEN LADIES MEET*
Susan and God (George Cukor, 1940) - On paper this sounds pretty good: a comedy-drama based on the most celebrated work of grown-up playwright Rachel Crothers - whose play When Ladies Meet was made into one of the most intelligent American films of the '30s - adapted by one of the best screenwriters of all time, Anita Loos, and featuring a promising cast that includes the likes of Fredric March, Ruth Hussey and Rita Hayworth. Unfortunately it rarely catches fire, due to weak writing and a disastrous choice of leading lady.

Was there ever a more dislikeable actress than Joan Crawford? That's a rhetorical question. No there wasn't. Kudos to Crawford for taking a part turned down by Norma Shearer because she wouldn't portray a character with a teenage daughter, but that's where the praise ends. With her maniacal stare, grating sanctimoniousness, shiny head, massive shoulder pads, innate lack of warmth and critical lack of talent, Crawford managed to torpedo many a movie from the mid-'30s onwards. She is a disgrace to people like me everywhere with slightly large jaws. I actually quite like some of her earlier work: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, Grand Hotel, Rain, Love on the Run and The Women (cast most convincingly against type as a bitchy adulteress), when she was a proper performer rather than a riotously vain star upon which to pin entire films. After that, she was usually a bloody nightmare (Mildred Pierce is an exception of sorts) - and that's before we even consider her noted aversion to wire hangers.

So why do I persist with her films? Because there's often so much good stuff filling up the rest of those vehicles: like everyone else in The Last of Mrs Cheyney and Sudden Fear, Melvyn Douglas's engaging antics in They All Kissed the Bride, John Garfield's pyrotechnics in Humoresque, and as much quality in every area, in just about every film, as America's biggest studios could conceivably sling at a picture. Incidentally, the secret to Crawford's longevity was partly contained in The Greatest Put-Down of All Time - "She was the original good time that was had by all" ((c) Bette Davis) - and while the unusual, indomitable and outrageously talented Davis seemed to sum up Warner Bros, the earthy, socially-conscious studio where she made her name, so Crawford epitomised the magnificent, ugly and terrifying monolith that was Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Here she's cast as a deluded, maniacally-staring socialite with a shiny head who returns from a jaunt to England full of fervour and constantly mouthing off about God. Her alcoholic husband (Fredric March) wants to reconnect - and have them spend some time with daughter Rita Quigley - but she's more concerned about self-righteously condemning the behaviour of all her friends, including a pair of dating divorcees (Bruce Cabot and Rose Hobart), a former actress (Rita Hayworth), who's thinking of cheating on her husband (Nigel Bruce!), and the stoical spinster in love with March (Ruth Hussey).

While it's tagged as a comedy-drama, I'm not sure I spotted a single joke. Rather, Susan and God is a wearying, single-note film, obvious in the extreme, about a selfish person being very annoying for two hours, and then quite nice for five minutes. And while Hussey is very good and March is absolutely exceptional, it's hard to stay on good terms with a movie that sees Crawford's ultimately repentant egomaniac as better marriage material than the caring, compassionate, empathetic, witty, intelligent and good-looking Hussey. (What is it with pretty brunettes with sticky-out ears getting their hearts broken in Crothers adaptations? It's a conspiracy.) But maybe I'm projecting again. Still, a word on Crawford's hilarious outfits. There's one featuring a miniscule satchel that makes her look like a giant postman, a second that seems to feature several lassos, and another that's like a beekeeper's outfit, but topped off with a Dick Whittington-style bundle on a stick.

Certainly the film as a whole is nothing better than a low-rent, unconvincing American spin on Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara - an immaculate work that deals with faith, femininity and moral want in spectacular fashion - which squanders a good cast on a muddled script with a simply dire characterisation at its centre. Incidentally, that's Joan Leslie in a non-speaking part as one of Quigley's friends. Within a year she would be one of the biggest stars in the world at just 16. And within a year Crawford would take the Myrna Loy role in a remake of When Ladies Meet. *Punches own face*

***



The Impatient Years (Irving Cummings, 1944) - War bride Jean Arthur and her husband Lee Bowman, with whom she's only spent four days, are reunited after 18 months. He's grown a moustache, she's now a dedicated mother with a fixed daily routine, and frankly they don't like each other much. But instead of being granted a divorce, they're forced into a court-ordered courtship - thanks in part to her father Charles Coburn, whose character oscillates between very wise and completely stupid - retracing those four days in San Francisco, where they begin to reconnect.

I reckon I could have written a better script than this: most of the gags concern Arthur and Bowman inexplicably half-explaining their plight to character actors like Grant Mitchell, Charley Grapewin and Charles Arnt, then - having being met with complete confusion - saying something vague and petulant before leaving the room. The only scene where the gimmick works is a nightclub sequence featuring amorous sergeant Frank Jenks, because at least here Arthur has a proper reason for misleading him.

The other good scene has the couple meeting justice of the peace Harry Davenport and his wife Jane Darwell. It's very sentimental, but it shifts the viewpoint of the film from a shallow celebration of the first flowering of romance (which I believe may have been done becore) to the less escapist but more timely subject of building a marriage in the face of adversity, which, given the characters it's dealing with, feels completely right.

And, while the film isn't very funny or romantic or particularly credible, it does at least have the almighty Arthur, one of the great Hollywood actresses, who can make anything look - and particularly sound - a whole lot better, squeaking her way through every contrived situation with the absolute maximum of charm. Aside from perhaps Garbo in Ninotchka, who has ever pronounced the word "silly" in such a marvellous manner?

Sadly, the other central players are disappointing. Bowman is simply weak: he was a passable second lead who should never have become a star (and didn't stay as one for long), while Coburn is completely coasting, and few of the many familiar faces who turn up in support are given anything memorable to do, with several of them being actively annoying.

I don't really ever say "meh", but "meh". (2)

***


Great poster. Weak film.

The Family Man (Brett Ratner, 2000) - Nic Cage is high on my list of least favourite actors, a little below Joan Crawford. He just can't do anything that isn't massive, which is a Bad Thing. He's asked to carry this Christmas fantasy (which riffs on It's a Wonderful Life) and does a predictably hamfisted job. The second half's a lot better than the incredibly flat, pointless first - with an agreeably nuanced approach to its premise - and Tea Leoni is pretty good as the one who got away, but it never quite comes together, and the ending doesn't really work. (2)

A Star Is Born, John Barrymore and zingers - Reviews #122

In this latest reviews round-up: Canadian dogs, Argentinean dogs, tiresomely dotty grandmothers and Jennifer Aniston's answer to Pulp Fiction.



*MINOR SPOILERS*
A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937) - The original version of this Hollywood heartbreaker, a romance between two stars heading in opposite directions, is often overshadowed by its 1954 remake, which brought an epic sweep and much musical magnificence to the story – but this earlier film is a masterpiece in its own right, with an immediacy and an insider feel that's absent from the later film. Janet Gaynor is Esther Blodgett, an ambitious farm girl who arrives in Hollywood with stars in her eyes and, after getting her big break from alcoholic matinee idol Fredric March, proceeds to hit the heights, as he hits the skids. Shot in three-strip Technicolor and offering a vivid, sometimes cynical and always exhilarating portrait of Hollywood in the ‘30s, the film is tighter, less flowery and more naturalistic than Cukor’s version, typified by March’s performance: devastatingly effective but straightforward and understated in comparison with Mason’s dynamic, grandstanding exercise in self-loathing. Gaynor, who made her name in dramas – winning the first Best Actress Oscar in 1928 – spent most of the ‘30s making musical comedies, but got a last crack at a meaty emotive part here, and was never better.

The script is one of the best of the decade, stuffed with truly timeless dialogue – the closing line just has me in floods – along with a few killer barbs that you imagine flew from the poisonous pen of Dorothy Parker (“His acting’s getting in the way of his drinking”). And really – if you buy into its ideas about sacrifice and art, and I’m largely able to – the film comes close to perfection, with the minor caveats that a couple of incongruous bits of broad physical comedy drop into the story near the close of the first half courtesy of Edgar Kennedy, and Adolphe Menjou’s endlessly benevolent producer is a touch hard to swallow (the film’s dirty work is done instead by a nasty press agent, played by the legendary frog-voiced leftie Lionel Stander). For silent film nerds, there’s the chance to see Gaynor re-teamed with the villain from her 1929 film Lucky Star: that’s Guinn “Big Boy” Williams (cool nickname) teaching her how to walk with a book on her head; an important skill for any young woman. This may lack the legendary status of Judy’s effort, and the big hair of that Streisand monstrosity (Barbra, that's her name), but this first version – well, second, if you include What Price Hollywood? – still takes some beating. (4)

***



Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, 1934) - Stage and screen legend John Barrymore was a great many things - not least a lush - but above all he was a ham. Who better, then, to portray Oscar Jaffe, the egomaniacal theatrical impresario who manipulates the lives of all around him as he tries to get back on top, and reclaim the affections of the monster he created: actress Lily Garland (Carole Lombard), the diva to end all divas and the only person who can rival him for histrionics. The film was adapted from a New York hit by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, two writers with an unmatched ability for evoking the world of American theatre at its height ("I'll slit my throat," threatens Jaffe; "If you did, greasepoint would run out," retorts Garland). It crams the standard Broadway-on-film narrative of a shopgirl attaining fame on the boards - and winning the heart of her producer - into a conventional but devastatingly deft opening 20 that makes chalk lines seem like the funniest thing you've ever seen. And for their next trick, the writers show you what happens after the happy ending. Because, fast forward three years, and Jaffe is consumed by jealousy, Garland has transmogrified from a sweet, muddled ingenue into a rampaging ball of fur-lined fury with a frankly ridiculous boat-bed, and their romance lies in ruins. As does the face of the private detective he sent to spy on her. The next 65 minutes, all set aboard the Twentieth Century train between Chicago and New York, is a screwball comedy par excellence, as Jaffe - now a nobody, following three years of flops - endlessly plots, schemes and connives in a bid to reclaim his theatrical mantle, while drunk press agent Roscoe Karns cracks wise, Walter Connelly gets repeatedly bawled out, and periodically repentant asylum escapee Etienne Girardot passes out phony cheques, while putting biblically-themed stickers on anything that moves - and many things that don't.

Barrymore is sensational in the part he was born to play: every line steeped in hyperbole and every gesture playing to the gallery. The ways he says: "What was that? That... squeak" always has me in hysterics, and his Hechtian joke about Jews changing their names ("... who is now Max Jacobs, for some mysterious reason") is an absolute beaut. Meanwhile, legendary comedienne Lombard is in peerlessly noisy form - and contributes an inspired sight gag that essentially consists of her trying to kick Barrymore repeatedly with both feet - while Karns peddles a near-endless stream of sardonic retorts. Girardot's preposterous performance only amounts to a handful of screen minutes, but it's truly memorable - one of my favourite bit-parts in '30s film. Happily, while the film deals with a couple of tough topics for comedy - mental illness and suicide - it's reasonably progressive on both counts: the train guards are sympathetic to Girardot's "condition" (fat lot of good it does them and their uniforms), while Barrymore's threats to off himself are the rantings of an inveigling cad, doing nothing to belittle the issue. Hecht and MacArthur wrote many of the cleverest, wittiest and most lyrical scripts of the period, from established classics like The Front Page to neglected masterpieces such as Angels Over Broadway, and Twentieth Century is stuffed to bursting with comedy, greasepaint-smeared patter and even romance, while handled in the characteristically zippy style of Howard Hawks, among the greatest of all classic American directors. Hawks was adaptable, but specialised in two types of pictures: rugged action-adventures and daffy comedies. This one, saturated with the spirit of Broadway, and with an unforgettable performance at its centre, is among his very best. (4)

***



Bombon: El Perro (Carlos Sorin, 2004) – A travelling salesman (Juan Villegas), let go by a petrol station and now flogging hand-crafted knife handles – finds that his luck starts to look up after he inherits a very special dog. It's a Dogo: exhibition-quality. This kind-natured Argentinean film, anchored by Villegas’s wonderful turn as the sad-eyed but optimistic hero, tells a simple feelgood story – with some unfamiliar trappings – made all the more affecting because it’s set against a realistic backdrop of economic depression and social desolation, as if Capra had made the Bicycle Thieves. But not quite as good. (3.5)

***


I've opted here to share a photo of the villains with you. Because they look ridiculous.

Dragons Forever (Sammo Hung, 1988) – The Three Dragons play against type in this action-comedy, with womanising lawyer Jackie Chan, philosophising thief Yuen Biao and greedy arms dealer Sammo Hung teaming up to bust a drugs factory – and save a fish farm. Yes, the plot is a touch hard to follow in the first third and there’s an unpleasant bit where a judge says gay people are “abnormal”, but this is still one of their best: a slick mix of lengthy fight scenes, above-par comedy and unexpectedly affecting romance, including a really nice sequence where Sammo woos a woman using a megaphone. If that isn’t enough to convince you: our heroes also face off against Benny Urqiduez, who is wearing lots of blue eyeliner for absolutely no reason. (3)

***



Never Say Goodbye (James V. Kern, 1946) – Errol Flynn and Eleanor Parker are charming as a divorced couple who would love to rekindle their romance – and find a permanent home for seven-year-old daughter Patti Brady – if it weren’t for his caddishness and carousing. For the most part this is fairly standard fare, and fairly derivative at that, but every so often the quality of the Kern/I. A. L. Diamond writing team shines through with some brilliant comic epithet flying right out of the blue, like Parker’s line about Flynn’s singing, or that cracker about wondering where he is at night. The leads’ first scene together has just one great line after another, though the subsequent date swaps badinage for farce, calling to mind an inferior My Favourite Wife, and not for the last time: Fenwick the Marine bears more than a passing resemblance to Randolph Scott’s he-man from that earlier film. The movie’s main comic set-piece, utilising no fewer than three Santas, isn’t subtle – and borrows liberally from Duck Soup’s legendary mirror routine – but it's certainly memorable, and has wit to go with its thievery and slapstick. The film is a little pedestrian and predictable in spots, but if you like classic comedies it’s well worth seeing, with a few neat in-jokes for buffs – trading on Flynn’s image as a matinee idol and ex-Robin Hood, and exhibiting his best Bogart impression – along with some nice romantic bits and a fair few fine lines. (3)

***



The Kidnappers (Philip Leacock, 1953) - Well, this is an odd film: a British movie set in a Scottish community in Nova Scotia that nominally tells the story of two young brothers who want a dog but instead find a "babby" and decide to keep it – only that doesn't happen until the second half of the film, and even then isn't really the focus. Instead, there's lots of simplistic nonsense about their strict, protestant grandfather and his a) fury at the "Boer" who wants to get off with his daughter; and b) obsession with a big hill owned by another Dutchman. The kids got special Oscars: the elder, Jon Whiteley, is good, while Vincent Winter - as Davy - is so cute that I'm unable to offer any objective or scholarly guarantees about his quality, though I think he is too. Their scenes have a real lyricism to them – especially once the babby enters the story – but exist within a narrative that frequently tips over into self-parody, not helped by Duncan Macrae's silly performance and a Muir Mathieson score that falls just the wrong side of "Ow, my ears". It's worth seeing for some nice passages about childhood and the shedding of innocence, but ultimately overbalanced by a clumsy subplot that turns out to be the actual plot. (2.5)

***



Bagdad Cafe (Percy Adlon, 1987) – None-more-indie film about a “big German woman” (Marianne Sägebrecht) who, after a violent row with her husband, walks out of the desert and into the lives of a black American family running a dusty café and motel. It’s a poor man’s Paris, Texas, really, with barely any story (and what there is moving far too fast), all to the strains of a plaintive theme song that’s done to death. It’s interestingly directed, though, with adventurous camera angles and filtered vistas loading emotion and atmosphere onto a slender script. Sägebrecht is quite good, though Monica Calhoun is am-dram standard, G Smokey Campbell has nothing to do except look through binoculars and say "Oh, Brenda" like some sort of lazy, alienated Frank Spencer, and CCH Pounder seems to have wandered in from a Tennessee Williams play. Jack Palance always did turn up in the strangest places – here he is an ex-Hollywood set painter who falls for Sägebrecht. There was a spin-off TV series starring Whoopi Goldberg, which made me laugh. The concept, not the programme. (2.5)

***



He’s Just Not That into You (Ken Kwapis, 2009) – An apparently hideous book becomes a fairly successful ensemble romantic comedy drama, with a half-dozen characters walking into and out of each other’s lives. You know, like in Pulp Fiction. Or Friends. The best story strand by far Ginnifer (who? Surely you’re joking) Goodwin getting relationship advice from bar manager Justin Long (in an atypically harsh characterisation), though none of the threads or characters are uninteresting, even if we're hardly dealing with Woody Allen at his zenith. Terrible title, risible real-life chapter introductions, but actually not half bad. Or indeed all bad, as you might have feared. (2.5)

***



The Proposal (Anne Fletcher, 2009) – This Sandra Bullock romcom is formulaic stuff, right down to the tiresomely dotty grandmother, but Bullock and leading man Ryan Reynolds are both very good and have an effortless chemistry together, while there’s an enjoyable supporting performance from Denis O’Hare. There aren’t many laughs, but the scene in which Bullock announces their impending nuptials is very funny, and the post-credits sequence works well. (2.5)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
The Little Giant (Roy Del Ruth, 1933) – After the repeal of Prohibition, bootlegger Bugsy Ahearne (Edward G. Robinson) crashes high society, only to be hoodwinked by a bunch of amateurs. This Pre-Code comedy is enjoyable but something of a missed opportunity, surprisingly light on jokes for the most part beyond its amusing premise – at least until the big guy calls the boys in – though buoyed by Robinson’s typically charismatic star turn and with a simply lovely performance by Mary Astor as the society woman who really loves him. While a touch broad, the final scene has a madcap spirit rather missing from the rest. (2.5)

***



*SPOILERS*
Taxi! (Roy Del Ruth, 1932) – Cagney cries, tap dances and speaks Yiddish in this messy melodrama about warring taxi drivers, which has far more to offer in incidental pleasures than from its tedious, unconvincing narrative. The highlight is a lovely little vignette set at a cinema, with the stars talking about their favourite actors, and watching a fake, specially-filmed Donald Cook romance. But the film – which starts poorly, picks up considerably, and then falls away again – ultimately leaves a sour taste, due to Cagney’s constant threats to punch his wife (Loretta Young) in the face. (2.5)

***



TV: Terriers (2010) – Private detectives Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James trade zingers and fight their personal demons whilst investigating corruption, murder and high-level scumbaggery amidst the vivid locales of San Diego. The series starts with a bang, toddles off for a few fun, self-contained episodes, then brings everything back together for a final four that are nothing short of phenomenal. The second of those, Sins of the Past, which takes place in two time-frames and strays into perilously dark territory, feels like the best James Ellroy story he never wrote, and packs a devastating emotional punch. I’d heard this was the only series that came close to possessing the singular feel of Veronica Mars – and so it did. Witty, subtly sentimental and possessing a distinct fondness for the twisty-turny, it boasts gripping storylines, fine performances across the board, and terrific chemistry between the leads. It’s nothing short of a national disgrace that it was cancelled after this single, scintillating season. (4)

Why the Oscars are worthless

"And the award for the most stultifying, simplistic, unchallenging guff of the year goes to..."

What have Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Mitchum, Cary Grant and Judy Garland got in common? Here's another clue: it's the same thing that unites The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Double Indemnity, It's a Wonderful Life, The Searchers and Hoop Dreams. They've all played a crucial role in the evolution of movie-making. They've all brought joy and heartache to countless millions. And not one of them has grabbed a single competitive Oscar.

The Academy Awards is the annual ode to gaudity and mediocrity that chose Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction, that decided Marty was a more important film than Rebel Without a Cause, that gave Bogart his Oscar for The African Queen and Scorsese a gong for The Departed.

As the gold dust settles on this year's ceremony, the results are being met with the usual cries of surprise and dismay. Why? The Oscars has been getting it so completely wrong since its inception, the only mystifying thing is that anyone takes it seriously at all.

But even aside from the subjective argument that the Oscars consistently fails to reward "great movies", their more troubling flaw is a refusal to recognise important, era-defining ones - an issue that goes to the very heart of its purpose. Its continual embracing of the bland is not by coincidence, it's by design.

Set up in 1928 with the express purpose of mollifying censors and right-wing critics who saw Hollywood as debauched and amoral, the Oscars has always returned to that offensively unchallenging remit. The Academy had been established the previous year by MGM head Louis B Mayer as an anti-union move. As early as the first ceremony, its awards overlooked King Vidor's progressive liberal drama The Crowd in favour of the dazzling but apolitical romance Sunrise. It's barely deviated since. If in doubt: play safe.

Social polemics, state-of-the-nation dramas and movies that with one fell swoop have created entire genres have been - and are - consistently ignored, in favour of unchallenging, box-ticking, hateful, award-ogling guff. That underwhelming, simplistic fare can be so easily dismissed as "awards fodder" is a damning indictment of what these events represent. This is the awards ceremony that heralded Rocky over both Taxi Driver and Network, that decided Kramer vs Kramer was not only better than Coppola's Vietnam opus Apocalypse Now, but also knocked the Tin Drum into a cocked hat. That has just overlooked In the Loop. That seems to think Gandhi isn't shit. (The film, not the man).

The awards are reactionary, even regressive, with pet fixations that members think compensate for their general blinkeredness. Disabled people are sort of alright, and gays can get up to what they want - so long as we don't have to really see it - but keep the dissidents and the self-possessed blacks away at all costs. The Oscars have always prized the worthy and the preachy above the challenging or the new, consistently celebrated the cautious, the mawkish and the dull. The awards are pointless and redundant, irrelevant and obscene. And did you see what Sandra Bullock was wearing?