Review of 2012

Woman of the Year: Janet Gaynor

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

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

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

***

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

***

Top 5 of 2012:

1. Silver Linings Playbook



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

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

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

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

Worst film of 2012: This Means War

***

Rick's end-of-year report:


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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dark Knight Rises - Reviews #123

*SPOILERS*
The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) - Patrick Batman (Christian Bale) has spent eight years in hiding. Confined to the east wing of Bat Towers and reduced to resting on a walking cane, he's forced to come out of retirement so he can be really badly beaten up by hulking, masked former mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy), who has designs on a nuclear bomb. The film does a good job of reducing Batman to nothing: robbing him of his wealth, his hero status, his health, his stoutest ally (Michael Caine) and finally his freedom, but then isn't quite sure what to do next. The script has moments of profundity - particularly the "Not everything; not yet" exchange so nicely used in the trailer - but the whole thing sags under the weight of its self-importance, and has some strangely weak dialogue ("I needed you for your infrastructure," the psychotic Bane tells a redundant pawn, declining to add: "Now we've streamlined the operation, your resources are superfluous"). That's when you can tell what anyone is saying, which is about 30 per cent of the time, thanks to the pounding music, some ridiculous accents, and Bane's Vader-esque muffler. The bits where indecipherable Russian-Connery Hardy and Batman Voice are shouting at each other are just too funny to carry much import.

The film is rarely boring (though I think I have a far lower tolerance for vehicles chasing other vehicles than most people), and it has a few nice set-pieces - particularly the Star Spangled Banner bit, which is so pictorially impressive and full of conviction that it overcomes the slightly trite concept - while there's a good performance from Caine, a surprisingly lively one from Anne Hathaway (as the perma-quipping Catwoman) and a superb characterisation from Joseph Gordon-Levitt, playing a loyal, troubled cop, whose early heart-to-heart with Bats is easily the best scene in the movie. But the film is sloppily plotted - the relationship between our hero and would-be girlfriend Marion Cotillard is negligibly developed, the detonator concept doesn't make much sense, and Nolan's twist-itis is undone by a rug-pull that's just not very interesting - and it's not sufficiently different to The Dark Knight, with the exception that Bane lacks the mercurial charisma of Keith Ledger's Joker, and Bats spends much of the film off-screen or down a hole. All this is irrelevant, of course, as IMDb and the emerging critical consensus is showing, but I just don't understand why this film or its predecessor have the reputation they do, unless you're just a huge fan of extreme humourlessness and vehicles with fat wheels. The Amazing Spider-Man may lack this film's crashing sense of portentousness, but it's a far more coherent, engaging and exciting movie. (2.5)

(Please note: I do know that Heath Ledger isn't called Keith, but one of my friends thought he was, and the idea is too funny for me to let go.)

The Prestige, Élodie Bouchez, and RKO's breeding ground - Reviews #105

In the latest reviews round-up, I swear twice (sorry), get swept away by a modern French masterpiece and wander the streets of London clutching a naked cut-out of Jane Asher. Oh no, that wasn't me, that was John Moulder Brown.



La vie rêvée des anges (Erick Zonca, 1998) aka The Dreamlife of Angels – Profound, poignant film about the friendship that develops – and then unravels – between two young women who meet at a factory in Lille. Ila (Élodie Bouchez) is friendly, compassionate and happy to ask for help; self-centred Maria (Natacha Régnier) throws her pride and practicality to the wind as she embarks on a self-destructive affair with an utter shit. A wise, insightful and immersive study of human relationships, and the nature of friendship, with exceptional performances from the two leads – especially the big-eyed, expressive Bouchez. This one’s going right to the top of the 2012 list. (4)

***



Deep End (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1970) is a fascinating, virtuosic study of romantic and sexual obsession set around a London bath house gone entirely to seed. John Moulder Brown plays a 15-year-old school leaver who finds work there and becomes besotted with the free-and-easy redhead (Jane Asher) who shares his duties. Their innocent flirtations escalate until he's chasing her around the London Underground with a monochrome cut-out of her naked body, shouting: "Is this you?!" It begins as a playful, absurdist and almost bawdy comedy - the only film I've seen that shares the feel of My Own Private Idaho, as Diana Dors shouts about George Best whilst rubbing a teenager's head against her boobs - then becomes darker and odder by the minute, as Skolimowski brings an outsider's eye, and an Eastern European sensibility, to bear on the complex, mutating material, on its way to the only ending these films ever have. Moulder Brown's accent is a pity - as with A Kid for Two Farthings, cockernee would have been preferable to estuary - but Asher's pitch-perfect performance, the inventive, well-paced narrative and Skolimowski's vivid visual sense, tying the intro to the ending with intelligent glee, make it a cast-iron classic. (4)

***



*SPOILERS*
The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006) - Wow. That was great: one long magic trick, in which turn-of-the-18th-century magicians Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman indulge in an obsessive rivalry, their secrets revealed through a series of delicious, rug-pulling twists. Two of Nolan's most highly-praised films - The Dark Knight and Memento - leave me a little cold (he probably doesn't care), but this one's a wow: somehow sheer escapism, despite a narrative that takes in existential despair, suicide and death-by-drowning. Like Nolan's later Inception, his non-linear structure juggles three stories (or in this case, three time-frames), as Bale-reads-about-Jackman-reading-about-Bale's-life. Phew. There's the odd bad line ("You deserve each other"? Really?) or slip into domestic melodrama, and the film suffers from a serious case of Scarlett Johansson, but it's just a ripping good ride, with a spectacular denouement that made my brain ache. Someone is probably going to tell me that the pay-off doesn't make sense, but I don't care. So nerr. (4)

***



The Moon Is Blue (Otto Preminger, 1953) - Stagy, unusually frank sex comedy - written by playwright and '30s character actor Hugh Herbert of the "woo hoo!" catchphrase - about a professional virgin (Maggie McNamara), the newly-free bachelor (William Holden) who picks her up up the Empire State Building, and the caddish elder gent (David Niven) who later muscles in. It starts off very slowly - with a deeply boring wordless opening - but picks up greatly for a fresh, funny second half that recalls Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch's most underrated comedy), and is dominated by Niven's hilariously immoral characterisation. He really was a sensational light comedian - right up there with Cary Grant and William Powell. Wordy farce wasn't Holden's forte, but he's OK, while McNamara equips herself well - once you get used to the fact that she looks and sounds like the five-year-old Margaret O'Brien. Dated, sure, but for all its flaws, a fun way to spend an evening. (3)

***



The Assassination of Richard Nixon (Niels Mueller, 2004) - This functional portrait of a beaten-down loser who finally snaps - and proceeds to mount the most hilariously shit assassination attempt of all time - owes no small debt to Taxi Driver and the classic Edward Dmytryk B-movie The Sniper. But it's just not in the same league. Sean Penn, surely the most overrated person in the entire world, isn't "acting" as much as usual - a welcome relief - but despite that atypically nuanced performance, a reasonable, unsensationalised script and Mueller's sporadically intelligent handling, it's all been done a whole lot better before. (2.5)

***



Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) - Bizarrely lacklustre Tarantino film about various pockets of resistance fighters and secret agents planning to off the Nazi brass during a film premiere. It's watchable throughout and there's a taut, tense, tight-as-a-drum suspense sequence set in a bar - as a Gestapo officer begins to suspect undercover British soldier Michael Fassbender isn't all he seems - but the film is largely lacking the excitement and raw energy one usually associates with the director, or at least used to. Christoph Waltz is exceptional as a cultured Jew-hunter, but he's also the only character Tarantino bothers to flesh out, a mystifying decision in a film that bills itself as a Jewish revenge fantasy. When one considers the car-wreck that was Death Proof - comfortably one of the worst 10 films I have ever seen - you can view this as something of a return-to-form but, compared to Reservoir Dogs, it lacks distinctiveness, quality and heart. (2.5)

***



The Ploughman’s Lunch (Richard Eyre, 1983) – Incredibly cynical satire, written by Ian McEwan, about a BBC radio producer (Jonathan Pryce) and his relationships with fellow right-wing media types (including camp, mulleted Tim Curry), his working class parents and a Socialist historian. It’s more a series of polemics on British history and Thatcherite Britain than it is a coherent drama, which means that while individual scenes are often striking and interesting, the overall effect is rather muted. I also found it quite hard work spending 100 minutes in the company of such a hateful human being, so bereft of redeeming qualities, as Pryce’s selfish, duplicitous journo, even in the name of satire. I do get quite turned on by newsreels of the Suez Crisis, though, so we have that in common. (2.5)

***



*INCLUDES A FACT-HEAVY GUIDE TO THE CHARMS OF THE FALCON SERIES*
The Falcon in San Francisco (Joseph H. Lewis, 1945) – This was the eighth of Tom Conway’s 10 outings as the eponymous crime-solver and adventurer, a role he took over from his real-life brother, George Sanders, in 1942. The series is notable for that trivia point, and as a breeding and dumping ground for studio RKO. The Falcon in Mexico is said to contain footage shot by Orson Welles for his never-completed film It’s All True. Music that features prominently in Falcon films turns up in other RKO pictures: San Francisco uses 'My Shining Hour' from the Fred Astaire musical The Sky's the Limit as background music, while the sumptuous theme for the classic noir Out of the Past was featured as an on-screen nightclub number in The Falcon Takes Over. That same film was the first adapted from Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, a huge hit for the studio two years later when it was filmed more faithfully as Murder, My Sweet. The series also includes bit parts for stars on the rise and on the skids. Alibi features up-and-coming Lawrence Tierney (later Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs) and future Out of the Past femme fatale Jane Greer - who later fell out of favour with Howard Hughes by not boffing him - while that idiot who brought King Kong to New York, Robert Armstrong, turns up in San Francisco 12 years on. People like Allen Jenkins, Cliff "Ukelele Ike" Edwards (the voice of Jiminy Cricket), Edward Brophy (the voice of Timothy the Mouse), Esther Howard, near-legendary character actor Elisha Cook, Jr. (the gunsel from The Maltese Falcon), Barbara Hale and Fox's favourite "other woman", Lynn Bari, appear in other outings.

Two key directors of the ‘40s and ‘50s also got their big break in Falcons: Edward Dmytryk – the noir specialist and notorious Hollywood Ten-ner who gave series highpoint Strikes Back such a punchy style – and Joseph H. Lewis, the B-movie legend who went on to make Gun Crazy and The Big Combo. Lewis isn’t given much of a free rein with the low-budget San Francisco, but he does contribute one fantastic little set-piece, in which Conway wakes up from being slugged, sees various blurry figures hoving into view, gets smacked around a bit and then falls to the floor, photographed artfully through a wooden chair – recalling Lewis’s predilection for shooting-action-through-inanimate-objects that got him the nickname “Wagon Wheel Joe” in his Western days. Otherwise, it’s a pretty pedestrian affair by the series’ standards, pleasant enough, but with a thin, somewhat unconvincing story and a predictable reveal, though if you want to see Edward Brophy being insulted by a lot of women, this is definitely the film for you. It was Conway’s last Falcon based on an original story; the final pair were remakes of the first two Sanders films. (2.5), just about.

***



The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1959) - One of Ford's worst films, a long, shapeless biopic of West Point trainer Marty Mahan (Tyrone Power) that's something like his version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips. It's seriously light on plot, beginning with tons of broad, witless comedy, before segueing into an hour of overwraught sentimentality, with no coherent viewpoint or - indeed - any point at all. There are some moving moments along the way, especially the scenes set around Mahan's son's birth, and Maureen O'Hara is very good in support, but it's one of the director's rare misfires. (2)

See also: Ford's 1956 Western, The Searchers, isn't half bad, though...

Inception and the wonder of Wendy Hiller - Reviews #48

Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) - Director Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to The Dark Knight is an intelligent, meticulously-plotted actioner - and a real breath of fresh air. In 2010, we’re used to blockbusters that play out by numbers, take us for idiots or try to sell us watches. This mind-bending, riotously original film reminds us just what mainstream cinema can do. Leonardo DiCaprio is a tormented “extractor”, skilled at entering the dreams of the rich and powerful and plundering their subconscious minds. On the run after the death of his wife, he’s given the chance to return home: if he can plant an idea within the mind of tycoon’s son Cillian Murphy. So, recruiting gifted student Ellen Page, he and fellow extractors Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy construct and enter an elaborate dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream scenario, a head-scratching succession of vivid worlds, each fraught with danger. It isn't perfect - the scenes between DiCaprio and wife Marion Cotillard sometimes drag and the snow-bound sequences are confusingly staged - but it's frequently exhilarating, fairly humming with invention. Scorsese’s Shutter Island also saw DiCaprio trapped in a labyrinthine case, as the music pounded and the spectre of his late wife loomed large. But while that film unravelled midway through, this one builds in excitement and ingenuity as it progresses, augmented by superb direction and some fine action set-pieces, with a few incisive thoughts about the nature of fantasy and reality cast into the mix. As a lightning-paced thriller, it was never going to be an acting showcase, but the performances snugly fit the piece, the ensemble - including Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Pete Postlethwaite and the excellent Hardy - smartly employed to serve the story. And what a story it is. (3.5)

***



The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (David Zucker, 1991) - This lacklustre sequel sees Leslie Nielsen and co doing battle with a cabal of shady industrialists who are trying to thwart a new green energy policy. Despite that oddly admirable (if simplistic) eco agenda - this from a filmmaker who went on to film campaign ads for the Republican party - it's a pretty poor showing, with the cast mugging relentlessly in the absence of decent material. Indeed, you'll feel like you've been mugged if you spend any money trying to catch it, particularly by the time Nielsen takes to scrubbing Richard Griffiths' bottom in front of the President. The opening credits are good and the closing ones hilarious, while Nielsen's interrogation scene ("Right, who else is dying?") and his noir description of Presley are fun - but that's five minutes of chuckle-worthiness across an hour-and-a-half, and it isn't really enough. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of gags - there are bloody hundreds - but the majority are tired and predictable and most of the non-sequiturs are idiotic. And I can't watch O.J. Simpson without wincing. (2)

***



Major Barbara (Gabriel Pascal, 1941) has introduced me to the delights of Wendy Hiller, a remarkable performer born just down the road from where I grew up in Cheshire. Hiller, who I'd previously seen in I Know Where I'm Going and The Man For All Seasons without really clocking her, was G.B. Shaw's favourite actress and now she's one of mine too. I'm sure she'd be delighted. Sparky, passionate and with fire in her eyes, here she achieves a heightened expressiveness - coupled with remarkable, singular diction - to produce one of the most moving affirmations of faith I've ever seen on screen (Richard Burton in Becket is another personal favourite). Hiller is cast as a Salvation Army worker who entrances professor Rex Harrison whilst fighting off the rapscallion tendencies of her arms-dealer father (Robert Morley). But although the dialogue is glorious and Morley provides support for Hiller's wonderful performance with a typically devilish characterisation, the propaganda purposes of the film become readily apparent as the plotting - and rhetoric - goes completely off the rails in the final third. A pity, as it touches true greatness for the first 90. Robert Newton is compelling, though perhaps slightly over-ripe, as a trouble-magnet whose soul needs saving, while David Tree and Marie Lohr make for a hilarious comic team. (3.5)

***



So then I watched Hiller's breakthrough film, Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard, 1938), which had the same writer and producer, as well as featuring the only other pairing of Tree and Lohr. It's a more conventional outing than the later film, similar to Hollywood romantic comedies of the period and sharing a basic plot with Capra's Lady for a Day. Leslie Howard is Professor Higgins, the egomaniacal Svengali figure who bets he can transform Covent Garden flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Hiller) into a lady in just three months, then becomes smitten with his creation. Perhaps the film can't quite match the majesty of Major Barbara's opening hour-and-a-half, but it forms a more coherent whole, blessed with incisive plotting, lyrical dialogue and pitch-perfect performances. Howard was annoying in Intermezzo, insufferable in The Petrified Forest and even worse in Gone With the Wind, but given the right material - ideally comic - he was a wizard. His turn in It's Love I'm After is utterly immense, one of the finest in '30s comedy, and he delivers more of the same here, becoming a whirlwind of malignant self-obsession, spewing bile and arrogance. You could argue that Shaw's epigrams are unnecessarily caustic - while the script contains a couple of lunacy gags that make the skin bristle today - but Howard's serio-comic grandstanding makes it all seem palatable. He's matched, perhaps even surpassed, by Hiller, whose performance as Eliza is surely definitive: funny, moving and utterly sincere. This is high-grade entertainment, powered by two wonderful stars, and with a good deal to say about life, love and how to pretend you're not a Cockney. (4)

***



Miss Firecracker (Thomas Schlamme, 1989) is a spirited indie film, with a strong cast making the most of distinctly variable material. Holly Hunter plays a damaged young woman who dreams of emulating stepsister Mary Steenburgen's success in the Miss Firecracker beauty pageant. Meanwhile, their brother Delmont (Tim Robbins) tackles a few demons of his own, while apparently remaining oblivious to the effect he's having on the town's womenfolk. It's sometimes amusing and occasionally arresting, with a handful of genuinely special moments, but more often than not it's muddled and slow, with underwritten characters and plot strands that don't go anywhere. (2.5)

***



Le château de ma mère (Yves Robert, 1990) aka My Mother's Castle is a hugely enjoyable continuation of the story begun in Le gloire de mon pere, charting the early life of French writer Marcel Pagnol and his burgeoning love affair with the mountains of Provence. It can't quite match the earlier film, since its episodes are generally less remarkable and their incorporation is more disjointed, but the performances are delightful (only Julie Timmerman's wooden showing lets the side down), and the cinematography and music glorious. It concludes with a gutting epilogue that's sensitively filmed and carries one of the heftiest emotional clouts I've yet encountered in movies. (3.5)