Rick's 100 favourite movies: Part 1

I love movies. The film bug got me when I was 13. I was nursing a knee injury and looking for something to do that didn't involve playing football. I saw Star Wars, then not long afterwards On the Waterfront and Les 400 Coups, and that was that. Since then, my obsessions have moved from method-ish tough guys like Brando, John Garfield and Jean Gabin (and the juvenile delinquent poster boys such as Jean-Pierre Leaud), through the Empire, Leonard Maltin and Cahiers canons, to the current state of affairs, a heady, happy place where I can watch anything, enjoy the connections between everything, and mine whatever I like, lauding unheralded celluloid heroes like Lillian Gish and Jack Conway, trumpeting B-movie mystery-comedies from the 1940s (a constant and total favourite) and arguing the case for maligned or barely seen movies, whether it's MGM's "chocolate box" Little Women, Bernard Shaw's miraculous Major Barbara, or astounding arthouse movies such as The DreamLife of Angels and Seraphine.

As a massive nerd, I've always been an obsessive list-maker, as well as a journalist and writer, so I can tell you how many feature films I've seen (4,137), which ones I've seen on the big screen, and what the best movie I saw in 2011 was (Ghost World, again). Now and then I'll put together a list of my favourite movies. I have far more than a hundred favourites, but it's a fun game to play and hopefully representative of what I love about cinema: its ability to transport and transform, and its use as a crutch, a time machine and a tool for social change, in the best and worst senses of all those ideas. I created a new list this week (looking at the last top 100 I compiled, at the end of 2014, I've swapped out a quarter of the hundred), so I thought I'd share it with you here. Numbers 100-76 are below, with the others coming up soon. Did I mention that I love movies?

100. The Killer (John Woo, 1989)

Woo's A Better Tomorrow had as good a plot, and his Hard Boiled matched this one for action, but The Killer was by far the director's most effective marriage of the two, as noble hitman Chow Yun-Fat attempts to pay back the innocent woman caught in the crossfire, bringing him into conflict - and then partnership - with cop Danny Lee. It's full of breathtaking shoot-outs (yes of course with doves) and effective reflection, transcending its pulpy origins to become the definitive modern action film.

99. Little Women (Mervyn LeRoy, 1949)
A bewitching, exceptionally rewarding adaptation lit by Allyson's warm characterisation, O'Brien's lump-to-the-throat emoting and cinematography and music that - at least to me - seems perfectly pitched. Full review.

98. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen, 2013)
Unusually and arrestingly affecting. Perhaps my relationship with the Coens could yet blossom. Full review.

97. Forbidden Games (Rene Clement, 1952)
Its high points are so high, its view of childhood so arresting and deftly realised, that poorly-framed interiors and a handful of duff scenes seem a little beside the point. Full review.

96. Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli, 1954)
Is it better than Singin' in the Rain? Well, no, but this is 'favourites', not 'best'. Enrapturing and deeply moving, with an ending that destroys and exalts me every time. Watch 'The Heather on the Hill' here.

95. Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Sturges, 1944)

Perhaps the best of Sturges' immortal satires, though they're all pretty special. He coached star Eddie Bracken intensely on both this and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and the results are astonishing.

94. The Railway Children (Lionel Jeffries, 1970)
"Daddy! My daddy!"

93. Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950)
A dazzling film, containing one of the three or four best female performances in American cinema in the shape of Judy Holliday's endearing, eye-wateringly hilarious Billie Dawn. Born Yesterday is a flawless metaphor about the working classes and the emancipating power of knowledge posing as an utterly delightful romantic comedy. Full review.

92. The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973)
One of the great casts brings to life one of the great plays. I love the 1960 TV version with Jason Robards (who did more than anyone to reinvigorate interest in the work), and he's a better Hickey than Lee Marvin, but screen titans Robert Ryan and Fredric March are in sensational form.

91. Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)
Appallingly and sickeningly misogynistic, but that opening 40 is like nothing else I've ever seen, an astounding meditation on the impermanence of memory and the fatal allure of the past. I was obsessed with watching the film as a teenager, and completely overwhelmed by it when I did.

90. My Life as a Dog (see below)

"This movie, directed and largely written by Lasse Hallström and released in 1985, when he was thirty-nine and I was sixty-three, made me like life and human beings much more than I had ever done before. Quite a favour!” - Kurt Vonnegut

89. A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951)
Chaplin said this was the best movie ever made about America, and who am I to disagree? The pre-crash Monty Clift was surely the handsomest man ever to have lived.

88. Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
Probably Woody's best movie, though I have another of his films higher up since I watch it the most. Review.

87.Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
It's a shame I can't watch this any more because I hate Polanski so much (though I can watch Woody Allen films, apparently). Still, I know the script off by heart, so perhaps I can just say it to myself. In some ways it's the ultimate '70s movie, a paranoid howl of despair that explodes genre convention, but it's also a gorgeous homage to the '40s, full of the most extraordinary Robert Towne dialogue.

86. The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (Peter Godfrey, 1939)
Probably my favourite studio-era B-movie, though Confessions of Boston Blackie and The Saint in New York are up there too. A mixture of thriller tropes and screwball comedy, with Ida Lupino in incredible form as PI Warren William's dizzy new girlfriend, and Rita Hayworth as the femme fatale, just months from Only Angels Have Wings.

85. Séraphine (Martin Provost, 2008)

It’s such a different sort of movie: spiritually profound, quietly sincere, unusually yet perfectly-paced: not rushing to introduce its obscure, anti-social heroine, taking her faith seriously, and finding both humour and poignancy in her singularity and complete lack of interest in societal niceties or norms. Full review.

84. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2013)
A plotless ramble through the life of a 27-year-old dancer - who encounters assorted epiphanies and disappointments - shot like Woody's Manhattan or À bout de souffle, scripted with a nod to Whit Stillman and emanating its writer-director's usual good-natured angst, uncertainty about contemporary life and warm-hearted, off-kilter sentimentality. Full review.

83. Partie de campagne (Jean Renoir, 1936)
Renoir couldn't be bothered to finish this film because it kept raining. Review.

82. The Little Foxes (William Wyler, 1941)
Writer Lillian Hellman’s vision of America – imagined by Gregg Toland, enlivened by a killer ensemble, given order by the gifted Wyler – is far darker than anyone could have expected, the blanched Davis poisoned by greed, leaving goodness, humanity and virtue all gasping for breath. Full review.

81. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
This film is just so, so good. More than 20 years on, the freshness and effortlessness of it all is still astounding. Its vernacular. Its spiky, absurdist humour. Its moments of heart. Those long, wordless takes. The diner. The toaster. The watch up Walken’s ass. The legion of stylised lines that never feel mannered or forced. Actors like Samuel L. Jackson, Travolta and Uma Thurman producing performances from nowhere that continue to reward and astound. QT hasn’t done anything comparable since. Nowadays I will him to succeed – and with Django he did – but there was a brief time when all you could do was watch in slack-jawed amazement as he created dizzying, dazzling films that re-wrote the rules of genre cinema.

80. Another Country (Marek Kanievska, 1984)

"A sad, scintillating film." Full review.

79. A Thousand Clowns (Fred Coe, 1965)
85% of this film resulted in outright, prolonged laughter. 60% visibly moved me. 100% of Robards' performance is beyond brilliant.

78. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates, 1973)
"This is real life. But with better dialogue." Full review.

77. Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
I had this in my previous two lists too.

76. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F. W. Murnau, 1927)
Perhaps the most famous silent film of all, and one of the best, equipped with an emotional tractor beam too often absent from Murnau’s eye-wideningly inventive works. Full review.

***

Thanks for reading. The other 75 are coming up soon, here's the list so far:

Silent film special: City Girl, Clara Bow and cross-dressing - Reviews #159

As promised, here are some films without any audible talking.



City Girl (F. W. Murnau, 1930) - Murnau's follow-up to Sunrise is a pictorially stunning comedy-cum-melodrama that reunites the leads of Frank Borzage's The River, made at Fox the previous year. Charles Farrell is a mummy's boy who travels to the big city to sell his family's wheat crop, where he meets waitress Mary Duncan, her incredible emotional attractiveness (in a kind of proto-Jean Arthur vein) not even hampered by her subliminally Satanic hairdo: the numbers "666" spelled out in big curls across her forehead. They fall in love, amidst much sweet interplay and gentle comedy, and decide to marry. But uh-oh, what's this? Farrell's dad is a complete twat? And he hates her? What's he going to do, make a film about how all girls from the city are pure evil, and call it Sunrise?

Some great European filmmakers never quite fulfilled their potential in the States: Lang and Renoir moved too late, finding a studio system that shackled visionaries. Not Murnau, he pitched up at just the right time, and in just the right place, being given carte blanche by producer William Fox, and creating films in an altogether different league to those that had come before. 4 Devils no longer exists (apparently Mary Duncan lost it!), but Sunrise and City Girl are vastly superior - far more nuanced, engaging and entertaining - than his German movies like Nosferatu, Faust and The Last Laugh, one of the worst films to have ever attained "classic" status. I think part of that is down to the extraordinary speed of technical advancement during this period, part of it is down to the talents and resources he was surrounded by, and part of it is attributable to both his thirst for innovation and his growing desire to tell human stories.

City Girl - which is essentially Sunrise, if the characters had made different choices - can't equal that earlier film, but that's hardly a criticism: Murnau's first American film remains one of the enduring high-points of soundless cinema. City Girl is still a remarkable achievement, a slight sagginess in its mid-section compensated for by Mary Duncan's terrific performance and some astonishing direction, including a dizzyingly brilliant "bringing in the harvest" montage, the central couple's joyous run through a wheat field - one of the most intoxicating things I've ever seen on screen, the score rising to meet it - and the entirety of the final reel, a vivid, painterly portrait of a rural idyll lit by lamp-light.

In The River - or what remains of it - Duncan gives one of the greatest performances I've ever seen, starring as an eye-wateringly seductive "kept" woman who's watched over by an absolutely terrifying crow. Here her pet bird is rather cuter, and she is too, instantly entranced by her visitor, then repeatedly brutalised by the environment that she has idealised for so long. There's a definite parallel with Sjostrom's The Wind - perhaps the greatest silent film of them all - but whereas Lillian Gish was a virginal waif, Duncan is a pure-hearted but hardy sort with a smart mouth and a Suarez-sharp set of teeth. Duncan didn't really make the transition to talkies, and jacked in movies when she got married (one of her final films was 12 Women, a notorious entry in Myrna Loy's "ethnic psycho" oeuvre, that also starred Irene Dunne and the tragic Peg Entwistle), but City Girl shows just what she was capable of.

Murnau never actually finished the film - his assistant completed it, after the director had a row with the studio - but his fingerprints are all over its many and varied highlights. The blissful, stunningly-directed rom-com opening is like a mini-film in itself, completely at odds with anything else Murnau ever did, and oozing with invention, romance and charm. While the film does dip a little in the middle, as its penchant for unsmiling melodrama becomes almost self-parodical, I was still absolutely entranced by it, especially the way Duncan's displacement from the cruel city to the cruel country is so evocatively and heartbreakingly rendered. Then, after a slightly iffy passage in which some of the plot threads are tied up in less than convincing ways, Murnau drops the big one: a finale that's among the most intensely moving and beautifully-shot I've ever seen. (3.5)

***

Clara Bow:



Mantrap (Victor Fleming, 1926) - Ah, Clara Bow. Often you'll find yourself watching a '20s movie, and see all the men in it cooing over some pan-faced woman with bad hair. "Well, tastes have changed," you'll shrug conciliatorily, because you're a nice guy. Eighty-seven years on, though, and you can still see why Clara Bow was the defining sex symbol of her era: it's not so much her looks, though these have never gone out of fashion, it's more the erotically-charged way she carries herself: her kittenish manner, the way she winds men around her little finger, or just jumps into their lap.

Here she's at her absolute best as a combustible bundle of sex who heads to the country, and proceeds to drive all the men completely wild, including her new husband (Ernest Torrence) - a gurning lunk of a man - and an uptight New York divorce lawyer (Percy Marmont), who's driven to distraction by her coquettishness. And also her legs. Mantrap may be the name of the town where she pitches up, but really it refers to the woman who arrives there, and from whom there appears to be no escape.

Such heroics, though, wouldn't be worth much if the film as a whole didn't pull its weight. It does. Mantrap is a comedy, with a few concessions to drama, and it's a marvellous one, full of clever gags, witty intertitles and solid comic characters. Torrence, who began as a singer, became a stage comedian and was then reinvented as a towering bad guy in the immortal Tol'able David, is ideally cast as Bow's husband, who becomes an awkward "aww shucks" kind of patsy in the city, but is in his element back home. Marmont's character is interesting in that he performs none of the roles you would expect if this film had been made 10 years later: he isn't terribly dashing, but nor is he devious or a disposable idiot: instead he's a moderately charming man whose mannerisms (and money) make him stand out in an uncouth environment, and whose relationship with Bow becomes impossible to predict as a result. In support, there are bit parts for two actors who would make a successful transition to talkies: the ever-popular Eugene Pallette - whose gravelly voice and big belly were yet to be unleashed on audiences - and Tom Kennedy, the character comic who appeared in countless films of the '30s and '40s, including the Torchy Blane series, and my favourite movie, Remember the Night, where he played Fat Mike.

As well as being amusing and well-acted, the film is also breathtaking to look at, thanks to the work of director Victor Fleming (who had made his name helming Douglas Fairbanks vehicles and would go on to direct The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind) and - more importantly - his cinematographer, the incomparable James Wong Howe. Some of the interior sets and shots are a bit bland, but when the film ventures outside it looks absolutely phenomenal, right up there with Louisiana Story, The River and, yes, Tol'able David, as a pastoral fantasy. The finest sequence is a gobsmacking journey, the same one taken by Torrence, in which Howe's ever-moving camera takes us from the bucolic tranquility of a boat on a lake, to a train flying past fields, then past houses, before the footage melts into a city scene, following at first a car and then a streetcar, before showing Torrence's shambling figure trying to avoid being run over. Several films of the period, including Murnau's Sunrise and City Girl, vividly juxtaposed city and country living, and Mantrap, despite its modest intentions, does it as well as any.

While 1927's It remains the definitive Bow vehicle: the one that engraved her on the public consciousness and lives on in the public memory, Mantrap was her favourite of her films, and you can see why. It's lovely to look at, zips by in a flash and has at its centre one of the funniest, sexiest and most startlingly charismatic performances I've ever seen. (4)



It (the marvellously named Clarence Badger, 1927) - Clara Bow is in luminous form playing the embodiment of "it" (sex appeal) in this legendary silent movie, which popularised the concept of the 'It Girl', first mentioned in Cosmopolitan. Bow plays a salesgirl who wants to marry the boss (Antonio Moreno), and decides the best way to go about this is to basically just throw herself at him, if a little slyly at times. In the judgemental Hays Code days, her character would have been a villain - women using sensuality as a weapon usually met terrible or risible ends - but here she's the heroine, a good, moral person who just happens to drive men to distraction with her plunging neckline and come-hither-now-get-in-my-bed-let's-do-a-sex expression. The film has a qualified reputation as a crucial pop cultural artefact that's likely to disappoint, but the criticism regularly levelled at it - that it's boring, dated, disposable - is a little unfair. Certainly it's no cast-iron classic: its baggage includes a daft walk-on by the author, a love rival who actually seems quite nice, and a slew of melodramatic improbabilities, but it has greatness in it.

I'm happy to stomach a silly ending and that unintentionally amusing scene in which Bow essentially goes off on one about how terrible it is that her prospective husband thinks she might have had an illegitimate baby - right in front of her mate, who's had an illegitimate baby - given what other treats the film provides. There's that iconic set-piece in which Bow first catches Moreno's eye, after snagging a date at the Ritz, the fairground sequence, shot with an intoxicating joie de vivre that elevates it almost to the level of similar passages in Sunrise and Les quatre cents coups, and an aggressively sexual scene in which Bow cuts her work clothes to shreds with a big pair of scissors - whilst wearing them.The BFI cassette also comes with a stunningly beautiful Carl Davis score (from the Thames Silents run); what a wonderful composer he is.

Moreno is bland as hell, his pleasant best mate gets a raw deal and the plot degenerates into complete nonsense (partly courtesy of a young Gary Cooper, in a bit part as a reporter), but this romantic comedy is well-filmed, good fun for the most part, and has a game-changing, near-mythic performance at its centre: bubbling with life, individuality and "it". Not bad considering I was expecting a film about a scary clown who worked in computing. (3)

***

Early Lubitsch:



*SOME SPOILERS*
Die Puppe (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) - One-of-a-kind Lubitsch comedy, supposedly set in a toybox, about an aristocrat who's so scared of girls that he decides to marry a life-size doll - but marries the model instead.

Like the baron's son, the film takes a little while to get warmed up, but once Ossi Oswalda appears, it sparks into life. She's simply wonderful as the impish heroine, walking on tiptoes, dancing on command (or whenever she feels like it), and finagling her way into the heart (and pants) of her frigid husband. When's she's not playing a doll, there's something charmingly natural and unmannered about her acting and, when she is, she resists the temptation to over-do the part, a restraint that few comedians of the period would have exhibited.

Lubitsch, too, is at his most playful, introducing the film by (supposedly) assembling the set before our eyes, and including cartoon inserts, dotty chase sequences (which aren't particularly funny) and even a "hair-raising" gag that Harold Lloyd used in Hot Water five years later. I don't know whether Die Puppe was ever screened in the States: if not, it's merely coincidence that the aristocrat is forced to flee on foot from a large group of prospective brides, as in Buster Keaton's Seven Chances. It's a shame that Chaplin didn't get in on the act by nicking that bit where a group of monks all stand around a cardinal, rubbing his head.

The film pokes fun at the titled, the greedy and the Catholic Church, but those satiric elements feel rather unnecessary and a little strained: the film is at its best when telling its slight story, and throwing in a bit of silliness alongside. The inventor's amorous assistant - not unlike Pepi in The Shop Around the Corner - is hilarious (at least until he toys with the idea of breaking his boss's neck), the gag with the pantomime horse is wonderfully surreal, and there are some very funny sex jokes that Lubitsch wouldn't have got away with in his later Hollywood career, as well as an, erm, climax in a monastery that he couldn't have tried even before the Code.

Die Puppe isn't as streamlined or finely-tuned as Lubitsch's later triumphs, but it's a very fun excursion, with a fantastically stylised aesthetic (partially revisited in Lubitsch's The Merry Widow), some big laughs, and an absolutely lovely performance from that charming vanity-vacuum, Ossi Oswalda. (3)

***



I Don’t Want to Be a Man (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918) - Gender-bending one-joke comedy from the legendary Lubitsch, with Ossi Oswalda deciding that the only way she can party as hard as she'd like is by pretending to be a bloke. It's not Ninotchka, but it's not bad, with a very funny opening scene, a game central performance and a brilliant ending - a clear influence on the denouements of Wilder's The Major and the Minor and particularly Some Like It Hot - that puts the capper on a delightfully unusual final third. And Ossi's right - women have it easy, not having to wear starched collars. (2.5)

Sunrise, Louise Brooks, and stars in disguise - Reviews #118

*BIG SPOILERS*
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927) – Perhaps the most famous silent film of all, and one of the best, equipped with an emotional tractor beam too often absent from Murnau’s eye-wideningly inventive works. George O’Brien is a farmer driven to the point of murder by a devilish flapper (Margaret Livingston). He takes his wife (Janet Gaynor) on a boat ride with the intention of killing her, but relents in the face of her terror – and, during a day in the city, falls in love with her anew. The film begins in matchlessly oppressive, moody fashion, morphs into a romantic comedy and then takes a hard left with the introduction of a great big storm. If you can accept a romantic drama with such wild shifts in tone, and in which boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy attempts to strangle girl and then boy relents and decides he really, truly and everlastingly loves girl – and I really can, such is the majesty of Murnau’s masterpiece – then Sunrise is just about as good as movies get.

To be honest, it’s almost impossible to conceive how talkies ever got off the ground, novelty aside, when you compare something like Sunrise with almost any sound picture made before 1930. Silent cinema had reached a startling apex of visual creativity, particularly in these Fox films where visionary artists were given completely free rein, with restlessly mobile cameras, jawdropping trickery and as much atmosphere as one can conceivably cram into several cans of film. Early talkies consisted of someone nailing a camera to the door like some Ozu-obsessed DIY fanatic and then not being able to move it because it was too heavy. The central performances in Sunrise are unspeakably wonderful. Gaynor won the most well-deserved Oscar you could ever possibly imagine for her work here, and in Borzage’s 7th Heaven and Street Angel, giving a more stylised performance than usual, while still exhibiting much of the breathtaking naturalism that was her forte. O’Brien, who had starred in John Ford’s The Iron Horse and went on to be one of his famous stock company, had clearly been directed to give a more expressionistic turn, at least in the earlier scenes, moving like a prototype Frankenstein's Monster – all high shoulders and odd, jerky movements, as if manipulated by some heinous flapper puppeteer – before freeing himself from the chains of destructive, avaricious lust, and consequently loosening up a bit. He's bafflingly attractive in the middle third of the film – considering what his character has just been up to – and appealingly repentant and lost in the frantic climax. By way of contrast with such wordless majesty, you can watch someone start to say a word in an early talkie, go downstairs, make some toast, put the kettle on, have a cup of tea, nip out to the shops because you’re out of milk, catch a bus to the park as it’s a nice sunny day, come back home again, wash up, go back upstairs, and find that the person is still saying the same word. There are vowels in The Black Watch that last longer than a typical working day.

Sorry, I forget where I was. Sunrise! Of course, Sunrise. It’s the best film Murnau ever made, from its swampy opening, through the moral quagmire of premeditation, to the rediscovery of love and life, and the affirmation of everything dear in the world. There’s also a bit with a runaway piglet. It really is very good. (4)

***

Skeletons (Nick Whitfield, 2010) - Bickering best friends Davies (Ed Gaughan) and Beckett (Andrew Buckley) make a living from psychically uncovering the skeletons in people's closets. Metaphorical skeletons, but real closets. As the intense Davies nears a nostalgic meltdown, his amiable, lumbering companion yearns for a normal existence, and their boss (a gruff, northern Jason Isaacs, in a flat cap) eyes them for promotion, they're pitched into the trickiest case of their career. The film starts off in a precise, literate comic manner, with hilarious scenes of obscure bureaucracy and awkward revelations, then gets stranger and stranger as it progresses. Though the whydunit isn't terribly mysterious, the film's frequent dips into the world of weird - dizzying diversions that drop the characters into one another's dreams and reminiscences - are satisfyingly original, the largely unknown cast is excellent and the film never forgets to be funny. "Going Bulgarian" must be my favourite comic invention of the decade so far. A high (3.5).

***

*ABSOLUTELY GARGANTUAN SPOILERS*
Diary of a Lost Girl (G.W. Pabst, 1929) – Pabst and star Louise Brooks’ follow-up to the legendary (and rather unpleasant) Pandora’s Box is a bizarre mix of tawdry melodrama and social comment that manages to keep an entire cake in its cupboard, while scoffing it before your very eyes. Brooks plays a nubile, bob-haired innocent who undergoes a litany of horrendous experiences, including being raped twice, losing her child and being widowed (even von Trier never put his heroines through so much), before becoming a kick-ass social stateswoman. Elsewhere, Pabst incorporates voyeurism, sadism and quiveringly lascivious lesbianism – a drooling, butch authority figure smacks a big gong and licks her lips as a group of abused young women bounce up and down in front of her – as well as a bald workhouse enforcer being bopped repeatedly on the head, and a baddie wearing a bobble hat on the beach. Pabst is clearly infatuated with his lead actress, and as she slips from backless evening gown to backless bathing suit and back again, a paragon of flapper fashion, it does sometimes appear that he made a list of costumes that he might quite like to see her wear, and then built the story around those. But his handling is stylish and sometimes striking, and Brooks is magnificent – sweet, steely, alluring and iconic, guiding the film through some uncertain, morally confused territory on the way to a stunning last half hour. (3)

***

Get Low (Aaron Schneider, 2009) – Gun-toting hermit Robert Duvall, who has neglected company since a mysterious incident 40 years earlier, decides to hold a party prior to his imminent death, and enlists the help of local funeral director Bill Murray – who doesn’t suit the ‘30s setting – and assistant Lucas Black (the boy from Sling Blade). This mixture of mystery and character study, with some concessions to wry humour, is reminiscent of The Straight Story, but never quite hits the heights, despite an interesting set-up and Duvall’s best performance in ages. Perhaps it’s the pace, which seems too leisurely by half, or a succession of half-hearted subplots that distract from rather than enhance the central story. It’s still worth a look, though, largely for the commanding central turn, and it’s always nice to see Sissy Spacek, who has a couple of good scenes as Duvall’s old flame. (3)

***

"White folks sound so stupid when they get mad. They be like, "Hey... I'm going to kick your B-hind'."
Wet Hot American Summer (David Wain, 2001) – It’s the last day of summer camp, and as director Janeane Garofalo begins a nervy relationship with astrophysicist David Hyde Pierce, and awkward Michael Showalter falls unwisely in love, most of the key American comic actors of the newly-minted decade pop up to engage in messy kissing (Paul Rudd and Elizabeth Banks), gay marriage (Bradley Cooper and Michael Ian Black), amateur dramatics (Amy Poehler) or last-gasp child rescue (Ken Marino and Joe Lo Truglio). It’s part teen movie spoof, part summer camp reminiscence and part complete nonsense, and though sometimes it doesn’t work, and it never amounts to anything more than a series of sketches, it's often very funny. Many of the cast had worked on the MTV sketch show The State, and re-teamed four years later for a brilliant little romantic comedy called The Baxter, starring Showalter and Michelle Williams. This comedy, which is now a cult phenomenon in the States (there’s a full episode of the underwhelming podcast The Nerdist devoted to it), isn’t in the same league, but it’s diverting and amusing, with a discombobulating habit of subverting the very thing it’s partway through emulating. (3)

***

Three legends: Frank McHugh, the greatest character comic of his generation, with Cagney and Kazan.

City for Conquest (Anatole Litvak, 1940) is an over-ambitious Warner film that tries to create a symphony of New York via three inter-linking stories, but lacks the eloquence to match its size and sense of self-importance. The main narrative sees truck-driver-turned-boxer Jimmy Cagney losing childhood sweetheart Ann Sheridan to her relentless, nagging ambition, while his little brother (Arthur Kennedy) composes an ode to the city and their neighbourhood pal Elia Kazan becomes a slick gangster. The portentous tone is set by Frank Craven’s garbled monologue, which kicks off the picture, uses the phrase “seven million teeming masses” and concludes with him bafflingly proclaiming: “I know this town, brother, because I got clothes on my back”, which turns out to be his catchphrase. Still, it’s a very handsome production, well-shot by Sol Polito and James Wong Howe, with a solid performance from Cagney and a fantastic one from legendary (and indeed notorious) director Kazan, in a rare acting role. (2.5)

***

*SOME SPOILERS, I SUPPOSE*
New Orleans (Arthur Lubin, 1947) – Patronising, racist fiction about the birth of jazz - years in gestation - that features one of the most embarrassing stories you will ever see, and truly execrable performances, but scintillating music from Louis Armstrong, his band and the incredible Billie Holiday, insultingly cast as a maid in her only feature. Annoying, white opera starlet Dorothy Patrick falls in love with both smug white gambler Arturo de Cordova and the ragtime played in the back of his casino, and together they popularise jazz. Well, with a little help from Woody Herman (who on earth is Woody Herman?), who’s also white, not that good and – like Satchmo – playing himself in a film set in 1916. Frankly, I have no idea. The whole thing is pretty hideous, but as a rare chance to see Billie on screen, it’s unmissable. She sings three songs, including Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?, which is comfortably one of the best musical numbers ever put on film. Predictably, it’s reprised for the climax by a bunch of white guys playing in front of a white audience at Symphony Hall. Yuck. (2.5)

SHORT: A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (Aubrey Scotto, 1932) - A jazz-loving layabout gets thwacked over his head by his nagging wife and dreams that he's the King of Jazzmania, receiving a command performance - at a foam party - from a leopard-skin clad Louis Armstrong. This was Armstrong's second appearance on screen, and I've never seen him play with this level of intensity. There's a sense of fun about his performance, but also a sense of fire - he's not twinkling and goofing around, he's tooting, scatting and singing as if his life depended on it, shaking through blistering renditions of I'll Be Glad When You're Dead and Shine. The framing device is mildly amusing (I liked the last gag), but this is all about the exhilarating middle, and the chance to see a bona fide legend when he was keen, raw and almost impossibly magnetic. (3.5)

SHORT: Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life (Fred Waller, 1935) - These musical shorts usually require a little gimmick that leads into the main business of jazz musicians cutting loose. This one strikes upon the incredibly lazy idea of showing Duke Ellington writing some music at his piano, which segues into his band playing the pieces on stage, with some cuts to occasionally thrilling imagery. The footage of black labourers shovelling coal in time to the music at the beginning works superbly, but this idea of marrying the music to culturally significant visuals isn't really sustained. Still, Ellington's rhapsody is engaging and, while the film's various elements don't quite click, this 10-minute short does include Billie Holiday's mesmerising reading of I've Got Those Lost My Man Blues. (3)

***

The List of Adrian Messenger (John Huston, 1963) – Gimmicky thriller that puts a gaggle of stars – including Mitchum, Sinatra and Tony Curtis – under elaborate make-up, as George C. Scott wanders around Britain trying to work out why Kirk Douglas keeps killing people from a lengthy list. It starts off intriguingly, promising plenty, and Scott is very good indeed, but the film goes completely off the rails in the second half, with a coincidence-heavy plot and lots of boring footage of fox hunting. Added to that, the film’s USP sounds fun, but doesn’t really work at all. According to Lee Server, of those disguised, only Mitchum and Douglas actually filmed their parts in full, with Sinatra and Curtis just turning up for the reveal. The supporting cast includes two stiff Englishman of the Golden Age – the excellent Herbert Marshall and the often less excellent Clive Brook (though get a load of his performance in the silent gangster classic Underworld – wowsers) – along with Dana Wynter. (2)