Allan Ahlberg, High Fidelity, and a bundle of old things – Reviews #266

Three all-new reviews, and a few I've had lying around since last year.

FILM:


O.J. "in full Naked Gun mode", as the film so superbly and disgustedly puts it

O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016) – While the montaged credits and eerie theme tune suggest that this got green-lit because ESPN wanted the closest thing they could find to Making a Murderer, this complex, even-handed and multi-faceted five-part documentary portrait of O. J. Simpson is really an exceptional addition to the recent spate of documentaries about African-American history (The 13th, I Am Not Your Negro), viewing his remarkable story – quite reasonably – through the prism of race.

It’s all here: exhilarating footage of Simpson at his athletic zenith, the Hertz ads (“Go, O. J., go!”), the Naked Gun years, the Bronco, the trial, the glove and the acquittal – which the film convincingly argues only makes sense in the context of post-Rodney King L. A. The narrative of his football career could be neater, and the convoluted Las Vegas debacle doesn’t exactly emerge in crystal clarity here, but the crux of the series – his abuse of his wife, the subsequent double-murder and the trial – is simply hypnotic*: brought to life through recordings, court footage, rare documents, news reports and a brilliant selection of interviewees from jurors to laywers to journalists and preachers (Jeffrey Toobin and Rev Mark Whitlock are my MVPs), who don’t just contextualise the trial, but seem to embody the very viewpoints they’re espousing.

It remains a heartbreaking indictment of America that the only black man to benefit from its justice system was a multi-millionaire who had refused to engage with the civil rights movement, purposefully become an honorary white and only reconnected with his proud heritage to avoid being convicted of murdering his wife. His acting, cunning and cultivation of distinct, useful personas is chilling and extraordinary. Did I mention that he is an absolute piece of shit? And his nickname’s rubbish. I only learned recently that he’s called ‘The Juice’ not because of his stamina and speed on the football field, but because in America they call orange juice ‘OJ’. Also lol at the court clerk fluffing her one line, that gets me every time.

*especially for a legal or quasi-legal nut like me: I love courtroom dramas, have been obsessed with HUAC for years and did my undergrad dissertation on Stalin’s show trials

***

BOOKS:



High Fidelity by Nick Hornby (1995) – “Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” Rob Fleming is a 34-year-old North London record store owner whose life is dominated by rejection, top 5 lists and music: pop, rock, Motown, STAX, oddities, dance numbers, floor-fillers and melancholy, idealistic, shimmeringly beautiful songs that have given him some unrealistic ideas about love, lust and break-ups. Unceremoniously dumped by girlfriend Laura, a former human rights lawyer who has grown out her spiky hair and moved into corporate work, he muses about men, women and relationships, while hanging out with exes, prospects and the two losers who work in his shop.

Hornby’s neatly-titled 1995 novel – made into a Hollywood film starring John Cusack four years later – is remarkably incisive, insightful and honest, in a way that makes me wish I’d read it 10 years ago and not turned my personal life into a binfire… and then makes me realise that basing our life choices on popular culture is exactly what this book is guarding against. It’s very 1990s – with a Harry Enfield cover quote and a left-leaning hero who’s unapologetic in his maleness, rather than drowning in self-loathing like the contemporary equivalent – and Hornby’s irritating, pedantic riffing on familiar phrases is a stylistic shortcoming (that “negative interest scenario” passage), but High Fidelity is also fast and funny and subversive, breaking the fourth wall while allowing us to judge the selfish, self-justifying Rob, and stripped of extraneous elements like lengthy scene-setting or laborious description.

I expected it to be funny and accessible (and London-centric and nerdy about music), but its concentration of hard-earned wisdom took me completely aback. (3.5)

***



The Bear Nobody Wanted by Allan Ahlberg (1992) – This children’s classic concerns a nameless bear who arrives off the production line feeling smug and superior – after all, a bear’s character is defined by his facial features – only to be tossed in a bin, rescued, rejected, burnt, used as a duster, savaged by a dog, repaired, briefly welcomed, relegated, forgotten, lonely, nameless, catatonic and bombed by the Nazis, on the way to a cathartic and happy ending. Telling the story in the third person but from the bear’s perspective, Ahlberg’s prose is beautiful, witty and whimsical, offering a lesson in humility and empathy, and peppered with memorable, perfectly-sketched characters and bits of human (or bearish) warmth – even as the story becomes perilously melancholy and dark.

It also economically evokes the vanished Britain of the author’s childhood: that world of smoking chimneys, cobbled streets and poky working-class houses which he wrote about so memorably in his great memoir, The Boyhood of Burglar Bill (and its sister title, My Brother’s Ghost), while ushering in a little of the timeless warmth of contemporary popular song, from 'My Blue Heaven' to 'Look for the Silver Lining'. It’s an offbeat, timeless and chokingly poignant book, and the line drawings by Janet Ahlberg (Handsome bears staring out of giant windows? Check. Chubby women with chubby sock noses? Check) are the perfect accompaniment. (4)

***

OLD REVIEWS COVERED IN COBWEBS

And now some odds and ends I saw or read last year, but never wrote about, because I was citing the books in the pitching of my novel, because the films were presents and I felt bad for criticising them, and because I forgot I'd written the one about the McGarrigles DVD.

FILMS


When you're playing an impoverished Irish waif but you're a star in 1930s Hollywood.

The Plough and the Stars (John Ford, 1936) - An abrasive, tone-deaf and dreadfully conceived film about the Easter Rising, which condenses Sean O'Casey's four-act play into just over an hour of shouting. There are a few passages of quiet lyricism, one memorably utilising the beautiful old Irish song Kathleen Mavourneen and another trading on Barbara Stanwyck's miraculous sensitivity, but for the most part it's loud, unconvincing and ugly: where badly framed bombs meet bombastic Blarney. (1.5)



Frontier Blues (Babak Jalali, 2009) - Proof that you can make any old shit and if it's in a foreign language it'll find an arthouse audience (1.5)

***

DVD



A Not So Silent Night (Gerard Schmidt, 2009) - Well that was extremely disappointing. I had high hopes for this December 2008 Christmas concert from the McGarrigle clan – Kate, her sister Anna, her children Rufus and Martha Wainwright, and assorted relatives – but it’s just completely shambolic: not in the charming, ramshackle manner it might have been, but in a crowded-stage, everyone-singing-from-sheet-music, Anna’s-lost-her-voice, tons-of-tuneless-guest-stars kind of way. Occasionally it does spark into life, with Lily Lanken kicking arse on 'Cherry Tree Carol', Rufus doing a heartbreaking 'What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve', and Martha singing 'I’ll Be Home for Christmas' with a crack in her voice, before a storming, punk-inflected Christmas Wrapping (the effect is of Greta Gerwig playing Patti Smith and just as wonderful as that sounds), but four songs out of 24 isn’t a great success rate, and the direction is lifeless and witless, fading out between songs to ensure that we don’t hear any cheering or really feel like we’re there. (2)

See also: I wrote about the obscure McGarrigles documentary from 1982 here.

***

BOOKS

I was reading lots of kids' books to help me pitch my own novel for eight to 12-year-olds (no, nothing yet, though Miranda Hart has a book deal).



Timecatcher by Marie Louise Fitzpatrick (2010) - An enjoyable, flavourful children's book, set in a Dublin-button-factory-turned-detective-agency, about a lonely girl who becomes involved with ghosts and a time travel portal. The writing is mediocre, relying on cliché and with a dubious understanding of how modern children talk, but the plot is exceptional, with a succession of brilliant twists and a most satisfying conclusion. (3)



Dead Man's Cove by Lauren St John (2010) - A magical detective story with a rich sea-swept atmosphere, in which 11-year-old heroine Laura Marlin finds her first permanent home − in St Ives, with a mysterious, brooding uncle − while pursuing a mystery just as dark and fascinating as the novels that have given her such welcome escape. It was sold with Blyton comparisons but aside from the title, a couple of minor plot elements and a helpful canine companion, it's not very similar and indeed dynamically subverts such expectations, while creating a gripping plot, an endearingly imperfect protagonist and the welcome promise of much more to come. There's one development near the close that I found simply too twee and clichéd, but for the most part it's an absolute winner. (3.5)



Kidnap in the Caribbean by Lauren St John (2011) - A dire sequel to the delightful Dead Man's Cove, which seems to have been written in one hell of a hurry. Laura Marlin is tricked into attending a pleasure cruise to Antigua, and from there on in it's all predictable plot-twists, painful expository dialogue and interminable polemicising about why we should protect sealife. Don't get me wrong, we should, but not like this. (1.5)



Skellig by David Almond (1998) - This short, simply-plotted story about a boy who finds a mysterious, winged man in his garage has a deceptive emotional impact. Some of that's down to Almond putting a seriously ill baby in the centre of his story - not perhaps the most subtle way of pulling at our heartstrings - but even if I'm not quite sure that Skellig is the unassailable, timeless classic it's often painted as, there's something special about it, in its intuitive understanding of childhood emotion, the author's graceful, spare and precise prose (when it isn't just going on about dead bluebottles again), and an agreeable lack of sentiment in its treatment of the titular character. (3)



Magyk by Angie Sage (2005) - A long, richly-textured book - attractively written and gorgeously designed - about a 10-year-old princess and the family of wizards who raised her and are now trying to keep her alive in the face of deathly danger, with the help of a ghost, an arrogant ExtraOrdinary Wizard in snakeskin boots, and a brainwashed former army cadet called Boy 412. Its big reveal is obvious, its villain is cliched and it sometimes feels as if Sage is making up the rules as she goes along, but its world is a fun place to visit, it's stuffed with incident and there's a pleasant unsentimentality about the book's emotional subtext, which manages to move you without being maudlin or mawkish. Sage also makes the most of the endless possibilities of writing, with an extremely ambitious action climax that comes off fairly well. (3)

***

Thanks for reading.

Next time: Line of Duty: Series 1 (I'm diving in at last), and a book by an LAPD detective who is convinced his dad committed the perhaps most notorious unsolved murder in American history.

Emily Watson, Fences and Hollywood alienation – Reviews #257

I went to the BAFTAs this week – yes, nice, thank you. Then I pathologically reviewed all of my other cultural endeavours. Here you go:

BOOK



The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (1939) – A nasty, nightmarish blast of Hollywood alienation, full of foreboding, about Tod Hackett, a hulking set-designer on the fringes of Tinseltown, who falls in love with cruel aspiring actress Faye Greener while fraternising with a panorama of grotesques: the detritus of tinseltown. Written in Hollywood’s greatest year, the near-mythical 1939, it’s an unremitting horror story in economic sentences: an acidic counterpoint to Steinbeck’s contemporaneous novels, depicting the unified masses not as a humane, nourishing whole, but as a blankly vicious mob, hooked on an unfulfilling dream, and chillingly ripe for fascism. The characters in the foreground all seem ripped from some forgotten B-movie, each one warped, pathetic or both. Most memorable of all is an ailing ex-accountant who moves to California for his health, and finds only emotional brutalism and unfulfilled longing. His name? Erm, Homer Simpson. (3.5)

West's other best-known book, Miss Lonelyhearts, was adapted twice for the screen. The first version gave its name to my blog (though I was also riffing on the fact that those smitten with Old Hollywood often find a solace in it that others find in love), though the film was a faithless cash-in looking to repeat the success of Lee Tracy's breakthrough vehicle, Blessed Event. The second version stars two of my favourites: a post-accident Monty Clift, and Myrna Loy in one of her sporadic character parts.

***

FILMS



CINEMA: Fences (Denzel Washington, 2016) – An astonishing drama, based on August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which tells an archetypally American story in the manner of Eugene O'Neill or Arthur Miller, but does so to elucidate the African-American experience, which as 13th so eloquently expressed, is the result of decisions that have never been in their hands.

Denzel Washington is Troy Maxson, an unyielding, fiercely proud working-class black man in '50s America, who's the king of his castle, a house he bought with his sweat and blood and the $3,000 his brother got for having half his head blown off in the war.

Across 140 minutes, via dazzling set-pieces both restrained and marauding, Wilson lays bear the virtues, vices, triumphs and compromises of Troy's existence, and that of black Americans both then and now: poverty, incarceration, brutal fathers, restricted choices and mistakes inherited and repeated across the generations. Viola Davis, who like Washington played her role on Broadway in a 2010 revival, is Troy's wife Rose, a fond, no-nonsense and fiercely loyal co-conspirator whose entire worldview is about to take an almighty beating.

To say more would be to undermine the film's ability to astound and confound, so I'll add simply that it is both extraordinarily original and utterly timeless, with a polemical power that comes along rarely, and two of the finest performances in years. Davis won a BAFTA at my office last night, but Washington is every bit as good, and probably even better – presumably the reason he's not scooping every gong going is because his character is so complex, and decidedly difficult to like. There are passages here that mesh together every emotion of a sidelined people fighting for self-worth: righteous but corrosive anger, well-earned but worthless pride, a cod-Biblical relationship with mortality and temptation that runs the gamut from twinkly-eyed gameplaying to supernatural terror.

He's haunted by his father, and he haunts his son.

There's superb support too from the likes of Stephen Henderson and Mykelti Williamson, and while the film perhaps has a couple of endings too many (with shades of Edna Ferber sagas or The Place Beyond the Pines' daddy issues), its epilogue does ultimately justify itself, at least in giving Davis another chance to shine, and articulating Wilson's final verdicts on manhood, on creativity and on Troy.

Fences must have been staggering on stage back in '83 and in its 2010 revival, but this filmed version is about as good as you could imagine – a little obvious symbolism here and there, like the rose falling to the floor – utilising cinema's virtues (close-ups, full sets, cuts and multiple takes) without sacrificing the intensity or authenticity of the material. Fences stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the great American plays of the mid-20th century; now in 2017 it can tell the kind of story that was kept off our cinema screens for too damn long. (4)

Many thanks to the NSPCC for inviting me to their preview screening.

***



The Great Lie (Edmund Goulding, 1941) – A far-fetched melodrama, in which an affecting Bette Davis unfathomably feuds with concert pianist Mary Astor for the affections of smugly stolid George Brent, the most objectionable leading man in ‘40s Hollywood. The first half is good fun, reaching its apogee with a beautiful wedding sequence augmented by dramatic and audial grace notes – a little black kid in a tree singing a spiritual as the newlyweds recline on a first-floor patio – but the film goes increasingly awry, degenerating into histrionics and inexplicable plot developments, and then failing to deliver the cathartic climax that would have made that halfway worthwhile.

There’s a fair amount going for it, including one of Davis’s most appealing characterisations: her Maggie is defined only in relation to a man, which is a missed opportunity in the writing, but her performance is perfectly balanced: joyous, explosive, then noble and sad: marinaded in misery, commandeered by confusion. The film is further enhanced by Max Steiner’s lush score, fitfully thoughtful direction– with crane shots and intelligent Tony Gaudio compositions, around a third of the time – and particularly Hattie McDaniel’s lovely supporting turn, the great African-American actress mining humanity from a role as Davis’s housekeeper that on paper’s not much more than a ‘mammy’ stereotype.

Unfortunately the story, the casual misogyny and the limp dialogue prevent it all from amounting to very much, a problem compounded by two of the central actors. Astor is promisingly cast as the villain, but her one-dimensional, Oscar-winning (!) performance becomes merely annoying after a while. It’s also oddly sterile: I remain baffled that possibly the most sexual woman in Hollywood doesn’t know how to be sexy on camera. When it’s beside the point – as in The Palm Beach Story or Midnight – she sizzles, with an offhand attitude that’s immensely attractive, but when it’s demanded of her to be alluring, she ballses it up: in The Maltese Falcon she’s neurotic rather than fascinating, here’s she’s superficial and irritating in a way that fatally undermines an already compromised script. Despite her shortcomings, though, Astor’s character remains a passionate artist, and the idea that these vital women would be warring over someone as unappealing as Brent’s vapid, uninspired and casually sexist aviator is altogether incredible.

It’s still just about worth it for the film’s virtues, the greatest of which is Bette at her lofty zenith.

See also: I write about Bette Davis a lot, like here, for example.

***



CINEMA: Her Man (Tay Garnett) − A stunning little Pre-Code movie from Tay Garnett, with Helen Twelvetrees utterly irresistible as a hard-boiled waterfront prostitute who spies escape from under the heel of brutish pimp Ricardo Cortez when charming, fairheaded Phillips Holmes sails into town.

This is the meeting point of von Sternberg's vivid, melodramatic Docks of New York and Garnett's own ship-based romantic tragicomedy, One Way Passage, with a rich atmosphere created through Edward Snyder's sumptuous, jawdropping tracking shots and Twelvetrees' tough-but-tender characterisation.

It's messy as hell, with a touch of the stiltedness inevitable in early talkies, plenty of incomprehensible comedy from James Gleason and Harry Sweet, and ad-libbed crowd dialogue three years after that stopped being a good idea, but it's also remarkably innovative, in both its technical wizardry and the story such mastery is serving. It begins novelistically: opening on a man dropping his luggage into the ocean, zoning in unerringly on Marjorie Rambeau's dipsomaniac, and then roaming around the busy Havana streets in search of its heroine.

And though the comic passages have a distressingly low hit-rate, despite an amusing bit for Franklin Pangborn and a Tashlin-esque climax, the central story that renders them a nuisance also makes them an irrelevance.

It's really something: deeply affecting and enduringly fresh, as Twelvetrees' archetypal bad girl − her eyebrows at right angles, her upper lip curling into a sneer − is transfigured and transformed by love, while Holmes goes all gooey and Cortez's knife-wielding psychopath prepares for war.

That story, based unpromisingly on the murder ballad, Frankie and Johnny, is augmented by some gorgeous photography: a hatless corpse spreadeagled on a barroom floor; Twelvetrees' ecstasy turning to veiled terror as Cortez approaches her in a broken mirror; the pain in her eyes as she rearranges her face, while preparing to break Holmes's heart. (And a brunette Thelma Todd in a backless dress, because why not?)

It ends with carnage, Holmes like a prototype of Mitchum's he-man in His Kind of Woman as he bulldozers his way through a barroom full of heavies, using cans, a table and eventually just his fists, before Rambeau laughs, sighs and says those words we've been waiting for. (3)

***

TV



Apple Tree Yard (2017) − I watched this four-part BBC serial because of Emily Watson, whose performance in Breaking the Waves 21 years ago remains perhaps the finest characterisation I’ve ever seen (Robards, Gish, Rylance, Henry Fonda and Wendy Hiller are all in with a shout too), and whose subsequent career has been littered with breathtaking work. I think there’s an argument that she is the best actor around today, or at least the actor working today who has scaled the greatest heights; admittedly the past five years have offered few parts worthy of her virtuosic talents. This is more of the same: she’s given a prominent role, which is welcome, but the programme is bafflingly erratic: compelling one minute, repellent the next; so passionate that its stilted writing brushes erudition, then so laboured that it’s utterly embarrassing (a special mention for the awful girl talk sequences between Watson and best bud Susan Lynch).

Watson plays Dr Yvonne Carmichael, a married mother – and renowned gene specialist – who falls for mystery man and apparent spook Ben Chaplin (giving a forced, detached fraction of a performance), after meeting him in the Commons lobby. Their passionate encounter in the Emily Davison broom cupboard sparks a destructive chain of events, which begin with a truly horrifying scene that has polarised audiences. My feeling was that it was entirely justified in the context, but others who are better placed to comment think otherwise. The series then plods along for more than two hours: two hours dominated by heavy-handed writing, but punctuated by both tragedy and the odd moment of insight, before juddering into life for its final half-hour.

At its best, it’s thoroughly worthwhile: its depiction of the dehumanisation and persecution faced by rape victims is timely and fittingly nauseating, the shifting dynamics of Carmichael’s relationships are effective, and there are small moments of moral grace (a postcard, a gesture from the public gallery, a dinner party rant), before an ending that tries to be maturely unresolved and then opts for being gleefully trivial and yet altogether unforgettable (who cares about social polemicising when you can Shyamalan the shit out of it). But taken as a whole, it’s absolutely all over the shop: a baggy, plodding, self-satisfied series that seems to regard its every move as remarkable or revelatory, when we’ve seen the vast bulk of this before: a woman violently punished because she steps outside the accepted social norms. Apple Tree Yard doesn’t think that’s acceptable, but it’s still the story it tells, rather than another one.

Watson can’t always wring quality from a script this weak, directed in such a pedestrian fashion (she somehow managed in Julian Fellowes’ risible Separate Lies, though was sunk by Miss Potter, having been overlooked for the main part, *sigh*), but she has some fine moments, particularly in the courtroom climax. Next time, why not give her something better to work with? (2.5)

***

Thanks for reading.

Secret Cinema, Adam Curtis and gut punches - Reviews #209

I'm planning something separate about my overriding preoccupations - D. W. Griffith and Lillian Gish - but here's everything else I've been enjoying/not really enjoying of late...

FILMS



Bitter Lake (Adam Curtis, 2015) - The latest film from Power of Nightmares director Adam Curtis, available solely on iPlayer, is an astounding piece of work.

His thesis is that we are unable to truly engage with or understand contemporary affairs because of the simplistic stories to which we have become addicted. To make this point, he considers the case of Afghanistan, creating a sprawling mosaic that alternates utterly fascinating, eye-opening polemicising with thousands of feet of extraordinary, raw, unbroadcast footage − poetic, surreal, chilling, heartbreaking and enraging − shot by BBC News crews over the past 15 years.

Oddly, Curtis doesn't actually succeed in constructing a convincing case around what turns out to be a rather nebulous, ironically simplistic theory, while the idea that most of us stand for nothing, compared to the Mujahedeen, is frankly madness. But the story he weaves, of the seeds for our economic and ultimately ideological destruction being unwittingly sown by Roosevelt (hands down my favourite president) when he met Saudi Arabia's Kind Saud on Seattle's Bitter Lake in February 1945, is quite, quite brilliant. And while at first many of the clips seem to be going on a bit, Curtis's unique approach ultimately gives the movie a haunting, cumulative power that lingers on long after the credits have rolled.

It's an imperfect but essential film. (3.5)

***



An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, 2006) - Despite being a slightly annoying, militant eco type (I didn't fly between 2005 and 2013, I don’t drive for the same reason), I'd never gotten around to Al Gore's Morally Righteous PowerPoint Presentation, as this film should obviously be called.

His sincere, twinkly-eyed hectoring, which includes wiping his mouth whenever he makes a joke, is mostly extremely effective and informative, ticking all the boxes from the Confident Presenter course I once went on with work, and making a passionate, inspiring case for saving the planet. Though admittedly, putting axes on several of these graphs might be helpful if we're going to finally see off all the selfish, blinkered wankers, sorry, 'climate change sceptics'.

The problem with An Inconvenient Truth, and there really is a true, inconvenient problem, is that it breaks off regularly for folksy, glossily-shot segments about Al Gore's life, which are occasionally illuminating (his college professor was the first person to measure the amount of CO2 in the air, for instance) but mostly self-aggrandising and completely irrelevant. There is also a quite staggering amount of PowerPointPorn, as Al smoulders in close-up, dragging pictures from one window to another, as if the other main crisis threatening to engulf us is shoddily assembled slideshows.

The rest of it's good, though, and I was glad to see in the credits that it's a carbon neutral production, as Al seemed to be flying around the world telling people to stop flying around the world. Next I expected him to start stoking a bonfire while shouting: "This is really irresponsible!" (3)

***



Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) - An above-average dystopian flick set in an apocalyptic England, the last outpost on an Earth battered by untold calamity, including an infertility epidemic. Clive Owen is the bereaved activist who’s dragged into radical politics again by his ex-wife (Julianne Moore) and ends up as the protector of a mysterious young woman on the run (Claire-Hope Ashitey).

The frequently redrafted script has too many annoying tics and speeches of weak, mannered dialogue – the sort of thing you’d write if you had writer’s block – but the one-take action scenes are dizzying and dazzling, and the story is hearteningly unpredictable, incorporating not only unexpected deaths and shifting sympathies, but Biblical allegory, Pam Ferris with dreads and a man being shot for farting.

The cast is alright too: though Owen isn’t much of an actor, he’s a decent star, and the supporting ensemble is unpolished but interesting, featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Peter Mullan and a weed-smoking Michael Caine, playing a kind of slightly damaged Bob Harris. Ashitey is also quite good as the key central figure, her unorthodox performance – sincere, twinkling yet fearful – adding another layer to this flawed but impressive vision of the future. (3)

***



Sunshine (Danny Boyle, 2007) - I don't know what to think about this one, exactly, which is probably a good thing.

Danny Boyle’s visceral film about sticking an atom bomb in the sun throbs with the director’s typical restlessness: has he ever ended a film in the same genre that he began it? It starts as a men-(and-women-)on-a-mission movie, full of suspicion and setbacks, then becomes a psychological thriller and ultimately an explosive, screeching fusion of horror and action.

There’s some Alien in there, a bit of 2001, Silent Running and Cube, but plenty that’s new too, particularly in its theme of sun worship, which hangs over the story and overpowers its visual sense, resulting in scenes of increasingly exhilarating screen saturation.

The dialogue can be perfunctory and the story extremely difficult to follow, but the ensemble cast is interesting – including future stars Chris Evans and Rose Byrne (who I finally fancy, now she’s an intense tomboy rather than a vacuous neurotic) – there’s fascination to spare, and the imagery is immense. (3)

***



SECRET CINEMA: Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980) - I reviewed this movie very recently, so no need for a big write-up.

What I did notice this time were a couple of things half-inched from Tarzan movies, which provided serial-like thrills of their own in the 1930s. Firstly and most obviously, Luke swinging on the vines at Degobah, but then also the Mynocks attacking the Falcon - this far, far away galaxy's answer to the "vampire bats" so cruelly cut from Tarzan Escapes.

I was watching the movie again due to Secret Cinema. Though I found everything surrounding it rather underwhelming and amateurish, the film itself did manage to transport me, in a way that it always does, and in a way the rest of the experience didn't. (4 for the film, 2 for the overall experience)

***

THEATRE



Gypsy (Savoy Theatre) – This is a fun, funny, intensely sad translation of Sondheim’s 1959 musical about the creation of striptease sensation Gypsy Rose Lee (Lara Pulver), focusing on her manager, Rose (Imelda Staunton), the ultimate stage mother. A work of real emotional heft, it starts off light and sweet and frothy, then takes us deep into the souls and psyches of its characters, peddling a little of Sondheim’s broad sordidness (which isn’t really my sort of thing but works alright), before flooring us with a succession of gut punches. Completely compelling even at two-and-a-half-hours, it’s a show shot through with wit, ugliness, angst, desperation, panache and pizzazz, from the stylised, skewed-perspective sets to a slew of stellar songs and Staunton’s sensational central performance, the best I've ever seen her give. (4)

See also: I reviewed another favourite Staunton performance here.