Clint, more Clint and back to the Southern Wild - Reviews #151

Dearest reader,

I haven't got around to that other Dardenne brothers film just yet, but I have watched a documentary about a chimp, a horror-mystery starring Joan Blondell and a lot of movies featuring Clint Eastwood. I hope that this in some way compensates.

Respectfully yours,

Rick



Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012)

"For the animals that didn’t have a daddy to put them on the boat, the end of the world already happened. They’re down below, trying to breathe through water."

What a stunning, dreamlike film this is, and what a beautiful, credible and unique performance lies at its centre, courtesy of the then six-year-old Quvenzhané Wallis, whose Hushpuppy is one of the great characters of recent decades. On second viewing, Beasts' many wondrous strengths seem greater, its few shortcomings slighter and its plotting more cohesive ("I wanna be cohesive") than at first glance.

The story sees Wallis's tiny titan facing down flooding, fire and famishment – while dealing with the busted remnants of her family – as the beasts of the title course towards her slum area, trampling all in their wake. These fearsome creatures, unleashed when Hushpuppy knocks her seriously ill father to the ground, almost certainly exist only in her mind, and – depending on your point of view – represent either rampaging global warming, the enormity of death or, to my mind, the need to "fix what was broken": her relationship with her impulsive, troubled but loving father (the excellent Dwight Henry) – and perhaps her 'gator-eating mother too.

Beasts is remarkable in every way: stunning to look at, full of jaw-droppingly lyrical dialogue and blessed with a triumphant, eminently hummable Cajun soundtrack. Lit by a multitude of brilliant sequences that seem to come out of nowhere, but don't, and dominated by Wallis's heroics (including some excellent screaming), it packs an emotional punch like nothing else I've seen in years. (4)

See also: My original review of the film is here.

***



Project Nim (James Marsh, 2011) - Project Nim is like Au hasard Balthazar, as an innocent creature is tossed around by the whims of humans, only it's all real and its hero isn't a doleful donkey but a chimp who smokes weed. Nim is wrenched from his mother at birth and adopted by an annoying hippy, who breastfeeds him for two years. It's all part of a plan, put in place by a Columbia professor, to see whether a chimp - raised as a human - can be taught to construct sentences in sign language. But personal conflicts and simmering jealousies throw the (questionable) venture into disarray, and Nim is variously abused, disorientated and admonished for his animalistic behaviour, as he passes through the hands of various handlers - many of them well-meaning and most still moved to tears by his plight - only for events to take a truly chilling turn.

It's an absolutely fascinating, remarkable story that's fairly well told. Marsh mixes reams of excellent archive footage with forthright, often insightful interviews, while introducing a great gimmick, central to our understanding of the film, in which the signing between Nim and his handlers is presented in subtitles. I do feel, though, that the film is hampered by focusing so tightly on Nim's life. It's a bold decision by the filmmaker, presumably informed by the idea that Nim's problems were caused by treating him in a human way, not a humane way, and failing to acknowledge how events were affecting him, a mistake the film is keen to avoid.

While we hear a lot about how Nim must have been feeling, complete with close-ups of his face - which is expressive, but perhaps not enough to sustain this approach - we don't get enough of an insight into the back-stories of the professor, Nim's adopted mother or the various students, doctors and philanthropists who come in and out of the chimp's life, whether they're providing moments of comfort and escape, encouraging him to try cannabis, or dragging him to the depths of despair. It means that we're asked to view the many shocking and alarming things that happen without proper context. You could argue that context is irrelevant when you're dealing with a project this misguided, or something as horrific as the Lemsip centre, but I think the wider picture is essential to our understanding of the story.

There's also a certain vagueness in some of the sequences near the beginning, coupled with imprecise pacing, though this is offset by later set-pieces that are variously affecting (aww, Nim's hugging a cat), amusing (no Nim, don't hump the cat) and utterly chilling, including one of the most upsetting 10-minute chunks I've ever encountered. And I've seen Blues Brothers 2000. So while it's an imperfect film, it's also a very interesting, compelling one, with a sometimes overpowering emotional charge. Project Nim, not Blues Brothers 2000, which is a terrible sequel in which Dan Aykroyd turns into a zombie.

Of course we don't hear from Nim himself, aside from various whoops and clapping noises, but if he could speak, I know that he would say, "Nim, hug, banana, play, banana." (3)

***



You'll Never Get Rich (William A. Seiter, 1941) - "Exciting loveliness and rhythm in a star-spangled army musical!", promises the tagline. Astaire's first film with his favourite movie dance partner, Rita Hayworth, is an ever-underrated trifle blessed with some astonishing hoofing. She said later that her two movies with Fred were the only "jewels" in her career, proper prestige productions that cleaned up at the box-office. He plays a dance director who gets entangled in philandering boss Robert Benchley's web of lies, jettisoning Hayworth's affections due to a misunderstanding over a diamond bracelet, but finds a way out of the frying pan thanks to the draft board, resulting in various in-the-Army-now shenanigans.

The story is silly and disjointed, and the humour is variable - one-joke comic relief Cliff Nazarro briefly becomes the star of the film to entirely tiresome ends - but there's a pleasingly irreverent tone, the leads are in peak form, and much of the dancing has to be seen to be believed. The two best routines are genuinely unusual, with Fred tapping explosively in a guard house to jazz and blues numbers played by an African-American group called the Four Tones. There's also a brief but brilliant rehearsal dance representing the stars' first collaboration on screen, a handful of lively propagandist numbers and a Latino-tinged routine set to Cole Porter's devastating So Near and Yet So Far. Hayworth is also one good-looking lady, but so might you be if you'd undergone a beautifying process that included having your hairline altered (I often wonder if that intensive programme of electrolysis led to her early-onset Alzheimer's).

In the back catalogue of cinema's greatest ever dancer, this isn't a classic to rank alongside Top Hat, Broadway Melody of 1940 or The Band Wagon, but it's still a joy to behold, the genuine care that went into it visible right from the clever, inventive credits sequence. "Exciting loveliness" indeed. (3.5)

***



Miss Pinkerton (Lloyd Bacon, 1932) - A static, muddled Old Dark House rehash that crams an awful lot of confusing plot and awkward pauses into its 65 minutes. If you want to see Joan Blondell dressed as a nurse, you won't be disappointed, and her bright, brassy performance does provide a sprinkle of Golden Age gold dust, but it's held captive in a slow and unsatisfying mystery given the usual perfunctory treatment by one of Warner's least creative directors. Bacon throws in a couple of Expressionistic shots he's lifted from Nosferatu, but does nothing to quicken the action or make the story clearer. George Brent's detective seems overly preoccupied with how handsome his number one suspect is. (2)

See also: This is in Vol 5 of the magnificent Forbidden Hollywood series, along with Hard to Handle.

***

And, of course, the rebranded ClintFest '13 (check out that upper-case 'F') has been continuing apace:



The Enforcer (James Fargo, 1976) - The third in the Dirty Barry series lands Clint with a female partner (Tyne Daly), who carries a fucking handbag everywhere and runs about one mile an hour (13.5 in her gym shorts, my arse). It's as deep as a puddle, as credible as a cartoon and as stupid as open day at Idiot World, but it's incredibly entertaining, building to a climax involving Alcatraz and a rocket-launcher. "Marvellous." (3)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
Sudden Impact (Clint Eastwood, 1983) - This unbelievably nasty fourth outing for Dirty Barry makes the original look like Dixon of Dock Green. San Francisco's growliest man is sent out to a small town after annoying the mob, where he ends up tangling with a rape victim (Sondra Locke) who's murdering her attackers one by one. The first half is like a compilation of 10 Dirty Barry movies, with only the bits where he crosses the line and then gets bawled out left in. The only recourse to excessive unpleasantness is the sickening rape scene, but that's probably as it should be. Clint's earlier vehicles tend to treat the subject (which turns up as a plot device with alarming regularity) far too lightly, even allowing his anti-hero in High Plains Drifter to rape someone and then joke about it. Here, the sequence is virtually unwatchable, which, even if the treatment is gothically sensationalist, seems a step forward. But there's absolutely no justification for flashing back to it a further four times in the film's second half. Presumably it's meant to hammer home to Clint's more neanderthalic fans that this time we're on the side of a murderer/rape victim/woman, but surely even they could remember back to when the film showed it half an hour ago.

Though the film's first hour has no narrative coherence, features the worst line of dialogue of all time ("Call D'Ambrosia in the DA's office - ask him if coffee is psychic") and includes a scene in which Clint drives around with his car on fire, it's indecently fun. What follows is just horrific. Who enjoys watching a woman being raped, punched repeatedly in the face, and then faced with being raped again? There's a stunning shot near the close, when Barry arrives at a closed-down fairground like a gunslinger at high noon, silhouetted in the night by vivid white light, and Lalo Schifrin pipes up with a super, noir-tinged theme every time we head for Locke's house, but such concessions to class offer scant consolation in a quite hideously misjudged second half. For what it's worth, the performances are a mixed bag. I couldn't tell if Audrie Neenan was good, because her character made me feel too ill, and Pat Hingle was absolutely terrible as the small-town chief (he really needs to take bigger breaths before talking), but Clint and Locke always work quite well together and Wendell Wellman offers an interesting portrait of a supposedly reformed character who still gets shot in the head. And also the balls. (2)

***



*MINOR SPOILERS*
Pale Rider (Clint Eastwood, 1985)- A grizzled mystery man (Flint Lockwood) saves a homesteader (Michael Moriarty) from a shellacking at the hands of a gold tycoon's hired goons, and becomes a symbol of hope to the community of brutalised miners, while sending Moriarty's fiancee (Carrie Snodgress) and her 14-year-old daughter wild with lust. If Clint's High Plains Drifter was a delirious subversion of the "outsider hero" seen in such films as Shane, then this is basically just a remake of Shane, right down to the kid yelling "Come back! We love you!" at the close, an act of outlandish thievery that frankly amounts to taking the piss. There's also a slight lack of dramatic tension that comes with having a hero who can teleport. Still, it's a solid, entertaining allegorical Western - Clint's "preacher" being a messenger of death sent from God - that boasts some truly iconic imagery, particularly during its climactic shoot-out, and a pair of very good performances from Clint East-woooooood and his new best mate. A young, svelte Chris Penn turns up as a bad guy, looking eerily like his Argentinean brother Sean. (3)

***



Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Michael Cimino, 1974) - Michael Cimino's attempt to make a '70s action movie in the New Hollywood style is a memorable, fascinating and beautifully-acted existential buddy flick that gets rather sidetracked by its second-half heist. The opening is as good as any you'll ever see, as a Brylcreemed preacher (Clint Eastwood) is forced to flee for his life across a wheatfield, while across town a grinning tearaway (Jeff Bridges) with a possible wooden leg jacks a car from a dealership. They're about to collide - literally - sparking an unlikely, truly affecting friendship that will get them laid, shot at and beaten, before they join forces with the two hoods on their trail (George Kennedy and the quite brilliant Geoffrey Lewis).

It's then that the film, an astonishing piece of Americana, full of fluttering flags and vast, arid landscapes, and met by an extraordinary theme song from Paul Williams (who wrote the Bugsy Malone score), turns into a Hot Rock-ish heist film: above par for the genre, but nothing like as interesting or unusual as the movie we were watching. Almost fatally, the focus shifts from the smiling, weary Eastwood and the young friend who "came along 10 years too late" and gives too much screen-time to the blustering Kennedy, diluting the film's power by simply forgetting its strong suit. You can shout "What about The Big Lebowski?" all you want, but I've found that Bridges is usually the best thing in a bad film or the worst thing in a great film. Here he's just brilliant, and it isn't his fault that the movie's steering goes awry, or demands that he dress up as a woman. While that's not very entertaining, it's no slight on her to say that he looks a bit like Laura Dern.

Then, when the film seems to have died out in a fit of cross-dressing and a flurry of skidding motorcyclists, it crawls out of the wreckage, towards a magnificent, dreamlike coda that leaves you slack-jawed in amazement. Cimino straddled two worlds, having co-written the second Dirty Harry film and gone on later, of course, to make The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate. This, his debut behind the camera, doesn't sustain its fusion of the mainstream, the modern and the avant garde as successfully as genre-fucks like Charley Varrick, Fat City or Electra Glide in Blue, but at its best it's gobsmacking: Williams on the soundtrack, a car on the endless highway and Eastwood at the wheel, looking dead ahead, a canvas for our own emotions, like a John Ford hero. (3)

***

Thanks for reading.

Prison, presidents and plains, as Clintfest continues - Reviews #150

Coming up in this very special* 150th reviews collection: all the latest from behind the scenes at Clintfest '13 - a private film festival held in my room during which I watch some Clint Eastwood films - which really kicked into gear this past week. Plus, as promised, a Dardennes brothers movie. I have another from LoveFilm to watch, The Son, so I'll be reviewing that next time, along with more Clint than you could shake a stick at. Or would care to.



In the Line of Fire (Wolfgang Petersen, 1993) - An ageing secret service agent (Clint Eastwood), still haunted by that day in Dallas in 1963, gets drawn into a deadly duel with elusive, lilting-voiced psychopath John Malkovich in this pulsating, nerve-shredding thriller. Jeff Maguire's script - based on research by producer Jeff Apple - sticks closely to rigid screenwriting rules: as well as the tragedy in the hero's past, both he and his nemesis have idiosyncratic hobbies; but it makes sense that a secret service agent who failed that day would never get over it, that this melancholic soul would find escape in tinkling the ivories, and that a metciulous DIY terrorist such as Malkovich's would delight in model-making. And crucially such traits augment, rather than replace, the human characteristics required to pull you into a story of this kind. The hero and the man who claims to be so very much like him are both believable, persuasive creations, heightened and unforgettable though they are. Just as their characters are perfectly matched, so are their performances. Malkovich's is a study in effete, silky-tongued malevolence, dripping with danger, Eastwood's is as craggy as you'd expect, but sensitive with it, and not without a gentle sense of humour - light years away from the macho sardonism he peddled in those '60s and '70s vehicles.

There are a couple of minor flaws in the story: there should really be a scene with Eastwood and the family of a fallen comrade - without it he seems a touch selfish - and I'm not sure the climactic reveal, as exciting as it is, quite makes sense, though that's perhaps because I could spot a Malkovich literally anywhere. Such quibbling aside, it's a sensational film, and along with The Fugitive - for which Tommy Lee Jones beat Malkovich to an Oscar - perhaps the best popcorn flick of the '90s. Its action scenes are clever, well-paced and have a sense of genuine peril and purpose, but the film is also bracingly intelligent and unexpectedly thoughtful, with some fascinating, off-beam polemicising from its villain about Kennedy, John Wilkes Booth and the legitimacy of self-sacrifice, and a collection of real characters who behave in believable ways, at least in the context of a summer crowd-pleaser. These virtues, within an American blockbuster of the period, shimmer like an oasis in the desert, and it all goes to show what can be done when you take an unimpeachable idea, build on it cleverly, cast it perfectly and then hand over the reins to someone like Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen, a filmmaker who knows when to be patient, when to inject a breathless urgency into the narrative and when to linger on a close-up of an old man nodding appreciatively at Rene Russo's bum. An Ennio Morricone score always helps too, of course. (4)

***



High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1973) - High Plains Drifter is like an evil melding of High Noon, Shane and The Magnificent Seven, as a nameless gunslinger arrives in a mining town, where he's hired to protect the self-serving residents from three vengeful outlaws, only to prove something of a problem himself. It's a claustrophobic, brutal, brilliantly-directed Western - amazingly Clint's first behind the camera - with a powerful plot that's dusted with supernatural overtones and laced with unexpected, extremely funny comic touches. The opening sequence is a classic of the genre, Eastwood instantly drawing us in to this convincing Western world and borrowing from his mentor, Sergio Leone, as he builds tension through the repetition and steady escalation of everyday sounds: his horse's whimpering and heavy footsteps building to a deafening crescendo. There's also a fantastic shot in the first bar scene in which Eastwood slowly lifts his head, the brim of his hat rising to reveal the townsfolk nervously waiting to see what happens next.

The star's performance is superb, playing a laconic, sardonic anti-hero who shoots deadly straight (but can't paint a sign to save his life), and there are strong supporting characterisations from little person Billy Curtis (a veteran of The Terror of Tiny Town) and Verna Bloom, who brings sensitivity and a quiet authority to a cliched part that reminded me - in both role and execution - of Wendy Hiller's heroics in Outcast of the Islands. And while perhaps the intriguing story shows its hand a little too early, my only real complaint is that a subplot featuring Marianna Hill takes rape so shockingly lightly - going as far as to suggest that her character is enjoying the experience. There's an unfortunate thread running through these testosterone-heavy '60s and '70s Eastwood vehicles, too many of which belittle sexual assault and mine the subject of rape for misguided attempts at wry humour. Aside from the more troubling moral implications of feeding that message to an audience, it simply makes it nigh on impossible to side with Eastwood's anti-hero, no matters how many jars of sweets he gives to cute Native American kids (it's two, in case you were wondering). That issue aside, it's a very interesting, extremely entertaining film, brought to the screen with no small sense of skill, imagination and style. (3.5)

***



Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979) - An everyman con and multiple prison escapee (Clint Eastwood) is sent to the supposedly impregnable island prison of Alcatraz, where he bonds with some well-realised inmates, before plotting to vamoose alongside his nervy next-door neighbour and a couple of interchangeable ciphers.

It's a low-key, meticulously-detailed, often unbearably tense telling of a true story that benefits from solid performances and some virtuoso direction in its second half. But it's also slightly cliched, lacks the brutality and realism of The Big House (made almost 50 years before) and Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11, and is at times just too confusing to work as effectively as it should. In a cleverly-conceived opening, we see the levels of security surrounding the prison, but it isn't always clear during the finale where the characters are and what obstacles they still have to overcome. If such disorientation were intentional and well-utilised, it could add to the suspense, but as it isn't, it sometimes detracts.

Fittingly, the acting from the central inmates is as solid as a rock, even when the stark process of dehumanisation that begins so promisingly loses much of its momentum. Yes, the prison's fascist clampbown on news from the outside and the lifeline of creativity is chilling, but that sense of danger and despair ebbs away as the movie progresses, replacing such heightened sadism with some unconvincing symbolism about a flower head. Far more effective is the simple explosion of colour that we see just outside the prison walls, that lush green flourishing of nature lying merely metres away from the bleached concrete that dominates the inmates' unforgiving daily lives, though it's never seen nor sensed. Some of these poor, put-upon souls probably do deserve to be inside, though, going by the law of averages, which isn't something that the film regards as even worthy of discussion, painting a black-and-white portrait of institutional cruelty that is neither complex enough to act as social commentary nor convincing enough to load its climax with the requisite dramatic charge, beyond the nauseating, stomach-tightening tension that comes with someone simply being somewhere they shouldn't be, doing something they shouldn't (the best comparison I can offer is when I was 10 and I kept a copy of the Daily Sport in a biscuit tin).

Eastwood's character is more of a people person than his usual angry mavericks, allowing for some effective, offbeat and understated moments of pathos, particularly opposite Paul Benjamin, the character actor who bequeathed that broken-down old shack to Peter Dinklage in The Station Agent. The star's unshowy turn forms part of a cohesive, complementary unit that just about manages to avoid being overturned by Patrick McGoohan and Bruce M Fischer's one-dimensional villains: one of whom wants to break Clint's spirit and the other of whom wants to brea- well, wants to become better acquainted with him. And his bottom. Danny Glover also turns up briefly, in his first film, to call Clint the n-word. They're all rather overshadowed, though, by an awesome little spaghetti-eating mouse who hangs around with a personable old lag, acting as his messenger, shower companion and confidante. I like Melvyn Douglas as much as the next man - probably a whole lot more - but let's just say he was lucky to get the Best Supporting Actor gong that year.

While Siegel and his screenwriters could undoubtedly have made the escape attempt a little clearer, the director does hit a dizzying pitch for those scenes, aided by Bruce Surtees' flashy (and flashing) cinematography - saturated with rich red light - and a clanging, discordant score by Jerry Fielding that mirrors its characters' nervousness and desperation, while playing on the endless chipping, booting and shuffling necessary to facilitate their departure. There's also a fantastic, bravura moment in which a screw's hand stretches out for the dummy in Eastwood's bed, and time stands still, before the film provides the mother of all reveals.

Escape from Alcatraz is no classic - neglecting to contextualise its characters' plight beyond stock situations, failing to capture the unrelentingly grim, intensely inhumane atmosphere inside the prison, and jeopardising the success of its titular set-piece through a slight muddiness of method - but it's decent entertainment, with some nice touches in both the matter-of-fact performances and Siegel's increasingly frenetic handling. (3)

***



Rosetta (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1999) - This typically chucklesome romp from the Dardenne brothers concerns a cripplingly poor, emotionally combustible 16-year-old girl (Émilie Dequenne) striving to secure and then hold on to a permanent job, while looking out for her unspeaking, alcoholic, promiscuous mother. Rosetta makes friends with a waffle chef around her age, who sees past her fierce facade and allows a chink of light to shine into her life, only for her intense desperation to guttingly intervene. This largely plotless film may be excessively mundane, around half of it seemingly consisting of Dequenne taking her boots on and off, but it's blessed with an invigoratingly natural, unpretentious central performance - spotlighted by the Dardennes' fondness for handheld close-ups - has two absolutely unforgettable sequences set in and around a muddy lake, and ends in genuinely life-affirming fashion. Its emotional clarity and rich sense of character will endure in the heart and mind, long after the endless welly footage has faded from the memory. (3.5, as I like wellies)

See also: The Dardennes brothers' latest, The Kid with a Bike, is a masterpiece.

*may not be very special

Beasts of the Southern Wild, Ann Sothern's daughter and Clintfest '13 - Reviews #149

Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin, 2012) - A young girl named Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) - living in a slum area called The Bathtub - faces down flooding, her father's ill-health, and six fearsome monsters she believes she has let into the world, in this dazzling slice of magical-realism. "I made the whole world get sick," she boasts bleakly in one of the deleted scenes. Kicking off with the best opening five I've seen in a long time (that firecracker run and that music - wow), Zeitlin plonks us into a vividly-realised universe, viewed through the eyes of a perfectly-drawn heroine who speaks in bold, Faulkneresque language that bridges the gap between wisdom and innocence. And who isn't averse to standing on a table, roaring and showing off her guns.

The story, which avoids convention at every turn, winds - like the film's overflowing river - through strange, at times almost hallucinatory encounters at a bar, a hospital and a floating stripclub without leaving us behind, building exponentially on the connection between father and daughter, and trading on the stark simplicity of its young star, who has the best voice in movies and gives the most entrancing performance by a child that I've seen in a decade. There are moments, at least on first viewing, where the film's rhythm seems slightly off, where this refreshingly original film - recalling the poetic African-American feature Killer of Sheep in its bracing rejection of formula - seems to falter for a minute or two, a scene outstaying its welcome or another leaning towards pretension, but it always drags it back, thanks to that script and that performance. It's one of those movies, those glorious one-of-a-kind movies, where the freshness of the concept, the scale of the ambition, and the virtues of acting and atmosphere overwhelm such trivial considerations as plot, pacing and possible posturing. A great film, in other words. (4)

See also: This leapfrogs A Star Is Born and The Kid with a Bike - wonderful movies both - to become my favourite film of the year so far.

***

These other two were the first films in Clintfest '13, happening exclusively at my house, in which I watch some of those Eastwood films I've taped off ITV4.



Magnum Force (Ted Post, 1973) - Dirty Harry returns for this slick but unexceptional sequel, written by John Milius and Michael Cimino, in which Clint's staggeringly trigger-happy cop hunts down a vigilante who's offing drug dealers, mobsters and pimps - much like the idea pitched by Sam Rockwell in Seven Psychopaths. It's a promising premise, but the potential to explore the morality of Callahan's own commitment to bloody violence is almost completely squandered. It isn't that the script doesn't want to engage with those ideas - that seems to be its raison d'etre - it's more that it doesn't know how, as it tries, and fails, to address the criticism directed at the fascist (though classic) original simply by having Clint murmur something reconciliatory about the system being broken, but it being the only one they have. As a code of ethics, and coming from a character who fucking loves shooting people, it's just too muddled to engage with, on either an intellectual or emotional level. The film also fetishes guns to an almost hysterical degree, allows its hero to foil a plane hijacking in his lunch hour, and is saddled with a tedious action climax that's extremely difficult to follow. Still, it is otherwise well-directed by TV veteran Ted Post, the basic story remains very entertaining - at least until a misjudged twist near the end - and a good cast helps, with Hal Holbrook showcasing his familiar persona as a patronising authority figure. (2.5)

***


"Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."

Coogan's Bluff (Don Siegel, 1968) - Reactionary nonsense with Clint as a deputy sheriff from Arizona who turns up in New York to beat up hippies and women (though they started it). If you can get past the scene with all the rape jokes and the bit where he slaps around Tisha Sterling - and it is a struggle - it's a diverting enough piece of right-wing wish-fulfilment, with a lively bar fight, an agreeably arsey supporting performance from Lee J. Cobb, and a truly memorable one from Sterling - the daughter of '40s leading lady Ann Sothern - playing a voracious, bob-cutted counter-culture siren who uses sex both as a weapon and to make a living. There's also a sequence in which Clint goes to a nightclub and growls something fierce at a succession of boobs and same-sex couples, all to the tune of a phony, cod-psychedelic number called The Pigeon-Toed Orange Peel. Which is the name of the nightclub. Yes, really. It's not a great film, then - and its action climax is seriously boring - but it is a key credit in Eastwood's career, allowing him to make a seamless transition from Westerns like the Dollars Trilogy to present-day cop films such as Dirty Harry. Betty Field, who I usually enjoy, appears as a kind of crap Claire Trevor. (2.5)

***

Thanks for reading. Join me next time for some Dardenne Brothers-related fun, and the continuation of Clintest '13. It should be up some time next week.

A Star Is Born revisited, Jennifer Lawrence and how to start an argument - Reviews #148

Hello, and welcome to a special Oscars-themed update, as the Oscars happened yesterday and it would be negligent of me not to piggy-back pointlessly on that kind of publicity. To celebrate, I've reviewed a film starring Jennifer Lawrence, who won Best Actress last night, and another starring the first winner of that award and featuring an Oscars ceremony of its own. That this was all just a coincidence shouldn't stop you reading on. JOIN ME.



A Star Is Born (William A. Wellman, 1937) - The initial incarnation of this Tinseltown tragedy is right up there with Judy's, and holds up superbly on second viewing, revealing - most rewardingly - additional layers to the stunning central characterisations. We first meet Norman Maine (Fredric March) as he's toppling off his mantle - and his chair - and it's largely downhill from there, via a sanitarium, a night court and three of the saddest and most uncomfortable scenes I've ever had the good fortune to dread coming round again. Esther Blodgett (Janet Gaynor) is introduced as a feisty fighter of a farm girl - not unlike Gaynor's character in Lucky Star - if one with a sensitive soul, but once she gets to Hollywood, with stars in her eyes, we see her as the naive, innocent dreamer she really is. What the film does next is magnificent, but so seamlessly, subtly done, that it's only when the credits roll that you appreciate the shifting, sliding, dynamic: Esther growing in confidence, authority and compassion - growing up, if you will - and Norman sinking, faster than you keep up, his chilling forecast that he has lived too much to have anything left being proved tragically true.

Evelyn Waugh said of Brideshead Revisited that he wanted to write a book about people brought low by nothing more than love and drink. Add a bit of masculine pride into the mix and you have A Star Is Born. The film is perhaps a test of empathy (as I feel something like The Kid with a Bike may be), as its success - or otherwise - is based on how much compassion you feel for a good-looking millionaire whose greatest problem, at least that he will acknowledge, is that his star is slipping. Really, though, he's a man being consumed - from the inside - by demons and disease, slipping into dissolution even as he appears to have it all, as would his contemporary John Barrymore, and their spiritual successor, Errol Flynn. March makes Maine - and his problems - seem utterly, desperately real, in a gutting characterisation that may well be the best thing he ever did. It's only in the final third that the human cost really becomes apparent, though, and up until then it's a lighter proposition, a revealing snapshot - in early Technicolor - of Hollywood in the '30s, and just as fun as that sounds (I'm aware that some people may not think that sounds very fun). I still think Adolphe Menjou's benevolent producer is too good to be true, and Edgar Kennedy's comic sequences seem incongruous, but Lionel Stander brings just the right mix of amusing irascibility and sadistic insensitivity as a kind of hybrid press agent/fixer, perhaps patterned after MGM's Howard Strickling and Eddie Mannix, and Andy Devine is just lovely as Gaynor's first friend in Hollywood. It's a superlative film, wonderfully conceived and scripted - with some of the best barbs coming unmistakably from Dorothy Parker's poisonous pen - and with an emotional clout like little else in '30s cinema. (4)

***



Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Herbert Brenon, 1928) - A gifted clown (Lon Chaney) finds a little girl in the rushes, makes her laugh with his cockerel-based shadow puppetry and takes her under his wing (pun intended), naming her Simonella. When she grows to adulthood, and reveals a bit of shoulder, he realises he loves her in a different way - but then so does the count and reformed cad with whom he shares a psychiatrist. This intensely moving melodrama sticks to the familiar Chaney formula, strikes a few questionable notes (having the count's deep unhappiness manifest itself in bursts of manic laughter seems an unnecessarily gothic touch), could do with a scene showing the children's connection to the comic that would give its final line even greater resonance, and fails to explain its characters' motivations at some key junctures. But who cares? Chaney is sensational, the 15-year-old Atilla the Nun, Loretta Young, is at her ethereal best as Simonella, and the film is stuffed to bursting with unforgettable images of love, longing and desolate desperation, many focusing on Chaney's matchlessly expressive face - painted or otherwise - and all showcasing legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe's unique eye for contrast and composition.

Some viewers may feel queasy about Chaney's sad clown trying to "do a Woody Allen" and cop off with his adopted daughter (legal disclaimer: in Woody's case, it was his long-term partner's adopted, of-age daughter), but these were different times, Young isn't playing a 15-year-old. and the film is so persuasively acted that you can't help but feel for the sad-eyed Chaney, and wish for him some modicum of happiness. It's a gutting, wonderful film and an important one too: in telling the story of a gifted mime who wins every heart except the one he wants, it must surely have influenced the ultimately incomparable Les enfants du paradis. It was Chaney's favourite of his pictures, and with good reason. The TCM release features a wonderful addition in H. Scott Salinan's beautiful new score, which recalls Howard Shore's classic work on The Lord of the Rings. (4)

See also: The other two films in TCM's Lon Chaney Collection are reviewed here.

***



Hard to Handle (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933) - An anarchic Cagney comedy, with Jimmy cast (once again) as an inveterate go-getter for whom the Depression is little more than a mild inconvenience. Having lost the takings from an epic dance marathon to an unscrupulous partner, his versatile promoter spents the rest of this fast-paced, sex-fuelled jolt of Pre-Code hilarity putting his quick wits and absent morals to good use by hoodwinking the ordinary folks of America into taking part in a phony treasure hunt, smearing meritricious gloop over their wobbly bodies or buying up acres of grapefruit groves (a nod to that notorious scene in The Public Enemy). Like Groundhog Day's Phil Connors, he subscribes to the somewhat damning notion that people are morons.

There's little of Warner Bros' famed social conscience at work here, but it's delightfully unpredictable and extremely funny with it - its laughs, unusually for the studio, coming more from the performances and the situations than the repartee - while providing a fascinating glimpse of how my favourite comedy of all-time might have panned out, reuniting sassy Mary Brian and sardonic Ruth Donnelly from the previous year's Blessed Event, originally set to star Cagney. His chemistry with Bryan is both appealing and electric, Donnelly proves a perfect(ly unscrupulous) foil and sometime ally. and Cagney is, of course, magnificent: a whirlwind of energy, playing every comic scenario to the absolute hilt. (3.5)

***



The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012) - It's Winter's Bone meets Battle Royale meets The X-Factor in this tense futuristic thriller, as Jennifer Lawrence takes the place of her terrified little sister in a televised fight-to-the-death against 23 other kids and teens. The only other contestant from her district is dishy, slightly wood-prone Josh Hutcherson, whose character has so many contrasting facets that I stopped thinking he might be realistically complex and decided he wasn't particularly well-drawn. The plotting, which inserts breathless action sequences at regimented intervals, seems a bit too clinical, the lead-in goes on too long (check out The Wages of Fear for how to properly execute an hour-long prologue to your suspenser), and the gaudy world fashioned around the game is tacky and heavy-handed. But the film has a wild card like few others, allowing you to spend two hours in the exultant company of Jennifer Lawrence. The whole thing hinges on her performance, and she's simply mesmerising. I've seen her in four movies so far (including Winter's Bone - the best of the decade so far - and Silver Linings Playbook, my favourite film released last year), and she hasn't struck a false note in any of them. Here, the story takes the toughest decisions away from her character, Catnip Evergreen, but she's wondrous nonetheless, creating an affecting, kind-hearted, ass-kicking protagonist with an innate emotional intensity who keeps the film grounded and real, even when being interviewed by a man with a blue ponytail in front of the crowd from Take Me Out.

It isn't exactly original - it riffs on the superior Battle Royale, there are shards of Logan's Run in there, and it occupies a similar world to the hugely silly Equilibrium - but it is very entertaining, and has one particularly fine, powerful scene, rather dubiously utilising Holocaust imagery, in which Lawrence volunteers for those there Hunger Games. It's also a well-directed film, in a showy sort of way, employing warped images and aggressive jump cuts while Lawrence is tripping on wasp bites, and fantastic use of sound throughout. It's clearly aimed at a teenage audience rather than an adult one, and perhaps a film like this should do more with its subtext of anti-establishment rebellion and social degradation, but when it tries to it feels forced and shallow, and Ross doesn't really know how to handle crowd scenes (he seems to be taking pointers from tea-time dramas on ITV), so it may be for the best. For all its imperfections, I enjoyed it a great deal, and Lawrence's performance confirms her status as one of the three most exciting actresses around, along with Carey Mulligan and the mighty Michelle Williams (Emily Watson doubtless remains the finest, but can't seem to land too many strong roles nowadays). This has really whetted my appetite for a sequel. Though apparently the "book" is better, whatever "books" are. (3)

***



Undefeated (Dan Lindsay and T.J. Martin, 2011) is like Hoop Dreams remade by Disney. It's an Oscar-winning doc about a volunteer high school football coach (Martin Clunes) who whips his troubled African-American charges into a formidable team, as they cope with injury, anger issues and everything else that comes with growing up in black, inner city ghettos (see The Interrupters and The House I Live In for yet more chilling detail). Compared with the benchmark for all documentaries of its type, Steve James' unforgettable Hoop Dreams, it's too much a surface look at the issues it raises - and a calculating, sometimes staged one at that - to be a real contender, but it is slickly done, emotionally stirring when not opting for easy sentiment (Chavis's speech is a wonderful moment), and in entertainment value alone deserves its place in the play-offs. Also, "Why you gotta sit by me for bro? You gay" is my favourite ever way to start an argument. I've spotted a goof, though, they're not undefeated - they lost their first match. What's that you say? A metaphor? (3)

Thanks for reading.

Wreck-It Ralph, Kathleen Turner and the Great Depression - Reviews #147

We went to Wreck-It Ralph (and Paperman) for Valentine's, and I managed to fit in a few other things during the week as well. Tonight I'm planning to catch a Lon Chaney movie, Laugh, Clown, Laugh - I'll let you know what it's like.



"I'M GONNA WRECK IT!"
CINEMA: Wreck-It Ralph (Rich Moore, 2012) - Ralph isn't such a bad guy. Well, he is a bad guy, but he's not a... bad guy. His job is to smash up an apartment block and he's been doing it for 30 years, as the villain in the arcade game Fix-It Felix, Jr. But tired of being excluded, overlooked and feared - as well as having to live in a dump - Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) strikes out on his own, in a confused attempt to switch games and win the medal that he thinks will prove his worth, and see him accepted into society. Fate, though, has other ideas, chucking him into the tooth-achingly sweet world of racing game Sugar Rush, where he's forced into an unlikely alliance with an acerbic, sweet-natured and flickering little girl, known as The Glitch (an unexpectedly affecting Sarah Silverman). The first half of this Disney animation is very good, if a little inconsistent, typified by the way that the fantastic opening voiceover segues into a hit-and-miss meeting of the "bad guys anonymous" group. But the second is simply stunning, its various strands dove-tailing delightfully, the jokes coming thick and fast, and the relationship upon which the whole thing hangs drawn so effortlessly and beautifully that it takes your breath away.

We've seen a friendship between a hulking monster with a heart of gold and a sweet, brown-haired little girl before - in exec producer John Lasseter's Monsters, Inc. - and yet this feels so fresh and funny and original. We've been pitched into a 3D video game world packed with peril and racing cars, in the execrable Spy Kids 3: Game Over, but that was a film that did almost everything wrong, just as this one does almost everything right. There's a sense of ambition and imagination here that's been missing from most Disney animations since its brief renaissance in the '90s - I haven't seen them do anything this good since The Lion King. Take that first, swooping trip into Game Central Station, during which I genuinely craned my neck in a bid to take in the jaw-dropping spectacle across the right side of the screen. Or the amazing "going Turbo" sequence, a masterpiece of comic timing that riffs expertly on the rapidly changing world of gaming. That breathtakingly sad moment at what looks like the spot in the des(s)ert where Ethan and Martin face off in The Searchers. Or the sublime pay-off, which threatens to drown the film's message in a blast of Disneyfied treacle, only to emerge, triumphant, with its convictions intact.

Someone at work expressed surprise that I was off to see a kids' film, but Wreck-It Ralph - like so many contemporary animations - is a movie wholly undeserving of such a tag: it's about disability, anger and alienation, has a hero who's undergoing a mid-life crisis, and features at least a joke a minute that will whizz over the head of anyone under the age of 18. It's about video games, but it's about so much more than that. A good job, as I've only ever played on arcades about three times in my life. (3.5)

And this is the short that's screening with it:



SHORT: Paperman (John Kahrs, 2012) - Wreck-It Ralph is in the unenviable position of having to follow this intoxicating short, a silent, black-and-white masterwork that pays oblique - and then overt - homage to The Red Balloon, as a paper plane with a mind of its own (and a fair few friends) tries to unite two lonely souls. It's extraordinary. (4)

***



Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981) is a sweaty, scintillating neo-noir, in which the horniest woman in America (Kathleen Turner) shags a moustache (William Hurt) into killing her husband. You almost want Hurt to die or go to jail so his willy can have a rest. While it's an homage to vintage '40s noir like Double Indemnity, Out of the Past and The Postman Always Rings Twice (right down to a nattily incorporated fedora), Body Heat also stands superbly on its own two feet: the dialogue is colourful, the plotting keeps you guessing - despite being rich in fatalism - and Turner is dynamic as a woman so warm that she must take off her clothes at every opportunity. Hurt is wooden in places (particularly his penis), the revelations near the end - while gripping - are perhaps revealed too conveniently, and the film should really have ended on a freeze-frame of that photo, but it's still a classy, compelling crime flick, with a sweltering, stifling atmosphere and showy supporting turns from Mickey Rourke and Ted Danson - almost unrecognisable with a fringe that disguises the sheer length of his Easter Island head. And while the writer-director's idea of his hero keeping an illicit affair under wraps is to have him lob a chair through a plate glass window at his lover's house, that scene with the contract discussions is worthy of Wilder. They don't call his Law-rence Kasdan for nothing. (3.5)

***



Brother, Can You Spare a Dime (Philippe Mora, 1975) - An impressive, impressionistic and immersive collage of the Depression and its aftermath, arranged in roughly chronological order and mixing newsreel footage with classic movie clips, the majority from Warner - the studio most pre-occupied with the real world - and many featuring Jimmy Cagney, who's used as a recurring character. It gets across, like little else I've seen, the feel of the '30s: a world in flux, with its poverty, violence, confusion and raw ideological fervour, its vivid contrasts, a decade where fantasy and reality clashed, as contemporary concerns bled into movies, and movie stars came out to endorse politicians. And it's chock-full of classic Franklin D. Roosevelt speeches, America's greatest president providing a virtual narration - idealistic, flavourful and funny - even if he looks at his notes a bit much.

It's frequently stunning, then, but not perfect. Some of the thematic and visual juxtapositions are startlingly imaginative - like footage of Joe Louis spread-eagled on the canvas, segueing into Billie Holiday singing prostrate on the floor - but with others it isn't always clear what Mora's getting at, if indeed he knows. The accompanying music is as great as you'd expect - incorporating most of the standards that sum up the era, like Ruth Etting's Ten Cents a Dance and the title tune, delivered in three contrasting versions (including Rudy Vallee's unsuitably effete reading) - though curiously the songs don't always match the pictures: having Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out play out partly over footage of a flooded New York seems simply incongruous, but then it cuts chillingly to film of homeless, hungry kids beaten down by life at five years old. A simple sequence that runs together clips of the dustbowl at its most unlivable crystallises the horrors facing farmers in chilling fashion, but you can't help but wish they'd had the rights to throw in a bit of The Grapes of Wrath alongside. And wouldn't it make sense - in the same way that That's Entertainment! utilised the An American in Paris ballet - to climax with the most stunning evocation of Depression-era America ever to grace a movie screen, Remember My Forgotten Man from the Warner musical Gold Diggers of 1933, rather than merely offering a couple of snippets, and using a pointless recap of America from 1941-75 as the film's big pay-off?

It has its flaws, then, and you really do need to know something about America in the '30s to follow what's going on, but really it's a bit of a treat, especially if you're a history nerd with a special interest in this period - as I categorically am. The clips of William Wellman helming A Star Is Born, Dillinger's dad defending his boy, and Roosevelt's armed assailant trying to explain what he's been up to are astonishing historical documents. (3)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold, 1959) - A tiny, English-speaking state buried in the French Alps declares war on America, hoping that - following an immediate surrender - it will be flooded with the aid needed to revive its ailing, wine-based economy. Unfortunately, the Duchess (Peter Sellers) and Prime Minister (Peter Sellers) send over-earnest military chief Tully Bascomb (Peter Sellers) to execute their plan, and he returns with hostages and a nuclear bomb. This '60s satire, with faint echoes of Passport to Pimlico, has an absolutely uproarious first 20 minutes (including a perfect opening gag), before settling into a less exceptional groove, making a few wry points about Cold War paranoia and the '60s power balance, but getting most of its pizazz from Sellers' sublime comic gifts - witness the way he turns the Duchess's theoretically unpromising harpsichord performance into a comic highlight, simply by adding a confirmatory "ye may" at the end of a line. Jean Seberg isn't altogether hideous as the love interest. (2.5)

The Breakfast Club, Rocky VI and my concerns about your heart - Reviews #146

After an explosive start to the year, brimming over with four-star films (four being the highest star rating known to (Leonard )Ma(lti)n), this latest bunch of movies rather brought me back down to earth. Still, it was nice to hand out with the Breakfast Club again - sort of - and Delicious gave me one of my favourite movie moments of 2013 so far (82 years after the fact)...



The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1984) - A geek, a squeaker, a ginger, a sex pest and a moron bond during Saturday detention, dancing, giggling and smoking weed, but mostly just moaning about their parents. Hughes's high-concept talkathon - and his most fondly-remembered film, belying its bleakness - is surprisingly stagy, makes strange excuses for its characters (Estevez's jock taped a boy's buttocks together to impress his dad) and climaxes with a horrid makeover scene that calls to mind Rosemary's Baby, but it's also funny, quite poignant and frequently spot-on about teen angst and the quirks of adolescent behaviour. And it's all done in the typical Hughes style - bright colours, bombastic '80s tunes and stylised sound - which you'll either love or hate, depending on whether or not you're cool. This being Hughes, there's also a sadistic teacher, and, this being the '80s, there's a bit where the club pull a Michael J Fox (TM), running along a corridor and then having to quickly change direction, skidding noisily across the shiny floor.

It's Judd Nelson's film, really, as the archetypal bad boy: a crowing, abused bully whose aggressive sexual advances sadly tip him over, apparently unnoticed by Hughes, from misunderstood kid to dangerous weirdo. He's the worst actor of the five, prone to woodenness and gormless facial expressions, but he has undeniable presence, and throws himself into the eye-catching and sizeable role with considerable gusto. Of the other club members, Emilio Estevez struggles a little as a supposedly sensitive wrestler, but Molly Ringwald is ideal as the pouting "princess", Anthony Michael Hall proves superb as "the brain" - aside from a brief outing for his "blues" voice (showcased at length in the abysmal Weird Science) - and Ally Sheedy makes for a truly excellent attention-seeker.

It's an easy film to pick holes in, and Hughes would make better movies, but in pop cultural terms it's a towering achievement, a Rebel without a Cause for the '80s, which forms vivid stock characters - a Mount Rushmore of recognisable American teen types - only to send them crumbling into dust. (3)

***



The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993) is a very watchable, sometimes exciting Grisham adaptation that lacks credibility, and is beset by a certain vagueness, but gets by on the strength of its cast. An ambitious young Harvard law graduate (Tom Cruise) signs up with a high-powered, secretive Memphis firm, only to find that they're really corrupt, and he's never allowed to leave. Cruise and Jeanne Tripplehorn do their starry bit, but the real draw is a ridiculously good supporting cast, with a realistic turn from David Strathairn as Cruise's jailbird brother, an eye-catching performance from a red-permed Holly Hunter (the same year as The Piano), who seems to have wandered in from a '40s dime novel, and an overpoweringly sleazy one from Gene Hackman, who's simply excellent, twinkling ominously as Cruise's lascivious mentor. (He fancies Tripplehorn, not Cruise. I think.) Elsewhere, Ed Harris turns up as an irascible fed, Wilfred Brimley is gruffly intimidating as the firm's security chief and there are bits from Gary Busey, Hal Holbrook and Paul Sorvino. I've no idea why it's two-and-a-half hours long, but it's good fun for the most part, and the padding comes at the start rather than during a particularly well-edited final third, packed with snippets of action and suspense, cross-cut for maximum effect. (2.5)

***



Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, 2006) - An old man has a fight. (2.5)

***


Things are about to get rubbish...

*SOME SPOILERS*
The Flight of the Navigator (Randal Kleiser, 1986) - A 12-year-old boy (Joey Cramer) falls into a ravine and wakes up eight years later, having not aged a day. This maddening slice of mid-'80s sci-fi has a sensational premise and milks it for most of its worth in a spectacularly eerie opening (at least once the interminable doggy credits are over), with a scattering of false scares worthy of Val Lewton, and a couple that are all too real. After that, it morphs into alarmingly obvious family fare, serving up a quick explanation, a friendly (and incredibly irritating) robot and a sentient mail truck that exists only to chivvy the plot along. And the 21-year-old Sarah Jessica Parker, who turns up to flirt with the little boy.

By the halfway point, it's obvious that it's all going to be a big missed opportunity - vapid, plotless and pointless, albeit with an excitable Alan Silvestri score - but the film does at least remember what it's about at its finale (note to the kid: if you do want to be left alone, probably best not to adopt an alien), and I do think it's worth it for that strikingly original opening 30 - one of the creepiest things Disney has ever done, even taking into account the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Pinocchio's questionable subtext and the way they treated little Bobby Driscoll. (2.5)

***



Delicious (David Butler, 1931) - Janet Gaynor and Charlie Farrell co-starred in three of the best dramatic movies of the late silent period: Frank Borzage's breathtaking metaphysical trinity of 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Lucky Star. With the advent of sound, the pair were peculiarly reinvented as a musical-comedy team - albeit one not averse to heavy melodrama - and placed in movies like this one, an antiquated but fairly enjoyable vehicle in which Gaynor's Scottish waif falls in love with rich boy Farrell while en route to start a new life in America, only for the immigration authorities (and his horrendous fiancee) to put a dampener on things. The story isn't the strongest and the comic relief from El Brendel is very dated (aside from his surprisingly funny song, Blah Blah Blah), but Gaynor is incredibly charming - even taking into account her unusual Scottish accent - particularly when shyly crooning Somebody From Somewhere direct to camera, the transcendent highlight of the Gershwins' first full movie score. A vocal coach would tell you there are lots of things wrong with her voice, and whether by accident or design she starts singing ahead of the beat, but that certain quality in her singing, and the subtle emotion she invests in the words just blew me away.

While the movie stops and starts, and rather creaks in that early talkie way, there's curiosity value to spare. Virginia Cherrill, who played the blind flower seller in Chaplin's City Lights the same year, is a massive bitch as the love rival. There's a peculiar dream sequence in which Gaynor is welcomed to America by nine dancing Uncle Sams. And the ambitious climax, set to New York Rhapsody (a second gem from the erratic musical material), is really quite impressive - Gaynor wandering the intimidating city at night, the citizens, the buildings and even the river grasping at her - though it pales alongside similar sequences in Street Angel and Murnau's rather silly film, The Last Laugh. It's weird, it's wooly and there's a daft Russian-themed song called Katinkitsha that seems to have been staged by the world's laziest drunk choreographer (why does Gaynor end the number with a chair round her neck?), but if you aren't won over by the leading lady's wide-eyed characterisation - and that short, earnest tune she sings from under a blanket - your heart may well have stopped beating. (2.5)

Thanks for reading.

The Imposter, Lon Chaney and the impossible job - Reviews #145

In this latest reviews update: four documentaries, two silents, Mandy Moore, Ken Loach and Mack Sennett. Join me (please)...



The Imposter (Bart Layton, 2012) - Like Man on Wire, The Imposter features a charismatic Frenchman explaining - direct-to-camera - how he pulled off the impossible. But unlike Philippe Petit - the visionary (and admittedly adulterer) - who walked above cities to bring a sense of wonderment to people's everyday lives, this guy is a sociopath. And a twat. And he is most certainly not Nicholas Barclay. Or "Nick-oh-las Bar-clay", as he would pronounce it. And does. You may know the story by now. In 1994, Nicholas Barclay, a blonde, blue-eyed 13-year-old Texan, went missing without trace. Three years later, he was found in Spain, and welcomed back into the bosom of his family. Only it wasn't him. It was a swarthy, brown-haired, brown-eyed, 23-year-old French-Algerian. What you're probably thinking is: "What?" And then presumably: "How could this happen?" This astonishing documentary cuts to the heart of the matter in invigorating fashion, allowing the imposter (the consummate unreliable narrator) to guide us through much of the early action, before letting the family, American diplomats and even the FBI have their say, as the story gets increasingly dark - and stays just about the same level of strange.

Looking at Layton's credits (which include several episodes of Banged Up Abroad), critics have sought to say that it's the story gaining him plaudits, not the way he tells it. I'd disagree. Almost every decision he makes is the right one. If you're asking how the subject established and sustained his audacious ruse, then much of the answer surely lies in his mesmerising charisma and his unshakeable self-belief. By putting him front and centre, and letting the imposter draw us into his weird logic, his plays for sympathy and his bizarre, sad life, we're put in the same position as the family. Crammed in alongside the director's incisive interviews, and some immaculately incorporated home video snippets, are superb reconstructions, which, since Layton offers no objective truth, bring to vivid life the interviewees' claims, lies and suspect memories. And finally there's the measured, intelligent withholding of information, which keeps the viewer guessing - and laughing, incredulously - as the knot in the stomach tightens.

If there is a shortcoming, it's that the cross-cutting in the final third - presumably meant to provide a kind of hypnotic rhythm and cumulative impact - feels forced and distracting, while the digging-in-the-backyard climax doesn't really come off. Still, Layton saves a wallop for the coda: not his imposter's much-quoted line hinting at psychopathy (which we'd kind of got anyway), but that chilling clip of him in the detention centre, where he'd been giving false hope to thousands of parents. What a dickhead. It's an incredible story, though, and a brilliant, compelling and ultimately unforgettable film. (4)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield, 2012) – A Wall Street timeshare shark and his trophy wife start building the biggest house in America – patterned after a certain French retreat – only to see the recession hit their finances. Hard. This "riches to rags" tale is a film about everything: love, greed, ambition, relationships, the financial crisis and – above all – the American Dream, providing vivid character portraits of the pair, their kids, their in-house staff and their employees, none of whom are quite what they seem at first glance. The former Miss Florida really loves her husband (goodness knows why), their adopted daughter starts by being a voice of reason before wealth consumes her – if not her self-awareness – and his bolshy businessman of a son turns out to be a lost kid desperate to side with his father even when it risks ruining the lot of them. It’s one of the best documentaries of the decade so far, full of hilarious details ("I didn't know we had a lizard," says one of the eight kids after they're admonished for not feeding it), but also blessed with a sadness, melancholia and wisdom that renders it far more than mere Schadenfreude. (4)

***



Why We Fight (Eugene Jarecki, 2005) - This typically superb polemic from liberal documentarian Jarecki takes its name from Frank Capra’s World War Two propaganda films and its cue from Eisenhower’s farewell speech of 1961, in which the departing president warned of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex”. What he spoke of, what he feared, was the possibility of the country's foreign policy being dictated by its swelling, corporate-sponsored defence sector. Speaking to DC insiders, war veterans, Iraqis and left-leaning theorists, while peppering his film with apposite archive footage (Eisenhower’s statistics about the cost of weaponry compared to schools and hospitals feel particularly resonant), Jarecki presents a bleak, often brilliant portrait of a nation that claims to fight for freedom, but is locked into a self-perpetuating cycle of war-mongering, habitually lying to its citizens and engaging in conflicts out of avarice, political expediency and self-interest – both national and personal. It’s unlikely to sway anyone not already attuned to Jarecki’s viewpoint, but it’s extremely well done, and far more focused, articulate and well-argued than Michael Moore’s similarly-themed Fahrenheit 9/11. (3.5)

See also: Jarecki's masterpiece, Reagan, is reviewed here. There's a write-up of his latest, The House I Live In, here.

***

I was going to be all clever (sorry, "clever") and write this next review in Helvetica, but my computer doesn't have it. Sorry.



Helvetica (Gary Hustwit, 2007) – Perhaps I might have had a better time if I was more interested in fonts. What promises to be an intriguing look at the most divisive typeface this side of Comic Sans – the all-conquering Helvetica – too often turns pretentious and self-indulgent when trying to evaluate the role that fonts play in articulating, obscuring or subverting the message they’re meant to convey; in theory a very interesting idea. Much of the problem lies with the interviewees, who are mostly pretty insufferable, either talking very pedantically about letter shape or spouting hideously superficial Sugar Ape-like bollocks. One very confusing American graphic designer says, hopefully joking, that Helvetica was “the font of the Iraq War”. Tsk, you can sponsor anything these days. There are some insights about the homogeneity of corporate identity, and the very likeable David Carson tells an amusing story about a Bryan Ferry interview, but the film is saturated with a self-importance that isn’t merited, loaded down as it is with industry chat, vague historical analysis and endless footage of signs written in the titular font. It’s also a bit difficult to tell what most of the people are saying (I had the subtitles on; they weren’t in Helvetica), while the guy who argues that a font on your MySpace profile (lol, MySpace) is as a great an expression of identity as your haircut has terrible hair. I got a bit bored. (2)

***



The Angels' Share (Ken Loach, 2012) – A new father (Paul Brannigan), struggling to make ends meet and keep his violent temper under wraps, develops a taste for whisky-tasting, then spies the chance for a new start, in the shape of a priceless cask of the stuff. What a lovely film this is: a humane, charming but hard-edged collision of typical Loach fare and caper comedy, with a very understated, impressive central performance. As with On a Clear Day, another Scottish-set film that makes you earn its cheerier moments, the more cartoonish comic elements seem to have wandered in from a different movie, but it’s a minor complaint about a bruising, winning and wonderful movie blessed with a touch of sentiment and great performances across the board. (3.5)

***

A Lon Chaney double-bill:



The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927) - When the police pitch up at a gypsy circus to look for the criminal who's just strangled the ringmaster, they don't suspect foot-centric knife-thrower Lon Chaney - after all, he seems quite armless. Meanwhile, the big fraud's plotting to marry swarthy Joan Crawford, the victim's daughter, who's sworn off sex after encountering too many sleazeballs, and really, really hates men's hands. Still, at least Chaney doesn't have a double-thumb. Oh wait. This classic silent horror from Freaks director Tod Browning is short, sharp and spectacularly eerie, with a superb premise (more than compensating for some overly convenient plotting), a fantastically charismatic performance from Chaney and a frantic, fitting and discordant score on the TCM release that can best be filed under "completely bonkers". The ending is a bit rushed, and features one notably un-special effect, but it is gloriously intense. Two thumbs up. And that's just on my left hand. (3.5)



The Ace of Hearts (Wallace Worsley, 1921) - Love and jealousy among the anarchists, as gloomy, lank-haired Lon Chaney and romantic John Bowers compete for the hand of single-minded revolutionary Leatrice Joy, while their terrorist cell plots to blow up a restaurant. It's an interesting but imperfect mix of drama, love story and thriller that's a bit too ponderous, and foolishly telegraphs some of the cards up its sleeve through spoiler-heavy on-screen chapter titles, though Chaney and Joy are good, the story is timely and original, and there are a couple of very tense set-pieces. (3)

***



Private Detective 62 (Michael Curtiz, 1933) – William Powell goes from spy to PI in this fast-paced Pre-Code crime comedy, before riding to the rescue of society girl Margaret Lindsay, who’s suspected of murdering his crooked boss. The story is nothing out of the ordinary and the love interest in introduced hurling a string of snobbish invective at what she thinks is a doorman, but the dialogue and direction both have a bit of class about them (aside from the above), with the latter incorporating a powerful montage depicting job-hunting in the Depression. It’s also interesting to see a ‘30s film with a “snowbird” (cocaine addict) for a hitman; such grimy, realistic touches would be shorn from the genre by the following year’s censorship clampdown. The real reason to watch, though, is Powell – among the best leading men of his or any other era – whose inimitable delivery could inject untold humour, pathos or even menace into whatever material he was given. He’s simply excellent here, fashioning a tough, sardonic but good-hearted private detective more world-weary than his Philo Vance and more likely to brutishly threaten a drug addict with a gun than Nick Charles. (3)

***



Baby Face Harrington (Raoul Walsh, 1935) is a rare starring vehicle for Charles Butterworth, one of the most popular character comedians of the ‘30s. He’s perfectly cast as a meek, downtrodden insurance agent who’s reinvented – through misunderstanding and via a rabid tabloid press – as the eponymous gangster, a transformation he rather enjoys. The film turns too dark near the close, before lurching into slapstick, but for the most part it’s a delightfully funny, offbeat and engaging comedy, similar in tone to Three Men on a Horse, which gave Frank McHugh a rare leading part, and lit by Butterworth’s hilarious performance, Una Merkel’s touching characterisation as his loving wife, and a funny supporting bit by Stanley Fields (who appeared in Little Caesar), playing Harrington’s cell mate. The script, co-written by Nunnally Johnson and with extra dialogue by Charles Lederer, is as sharp as you'd expect, and equipped with an agreeable fondness for sly genre subversion. The scene in which Butterworth is interrogated by the police is just brilliant. “Take him back to the cell,” says chief Eugene Pallette, as their questioning proves fruitless. “That’s a good idea, Uncle Henry,” replies Butterworth. “Where I’m sitting there’s been a light shining right in my eyes.” (3)

***



Saved! (Brian Dannelly, 2004) - A lively satire about religious intolerance, in which Jena Malone's cloistered teen tries to save her boyfriend from gayness through the power of sex, setting in motion a chain of events that rock her evangelically-minded school. At times it feels a little too conventional - the prom night surprise wouldn't be out of place in She's All That - but at its best it recalls Heathers, Election and Mean Girls, with the same predilection for stinging one-liners and taboo-busting, and a prize one bitch (Mandy Moore, compensating marginally for A Walk to Remember) with more than a touch of the Heather Chandler/Tracy Flick/Regina George about her. It's also nice to find a film so focused in its viewpoint and, on a personal level, to find that its message is: if there is a God, he wouldn't want you to hate everybody who's different to you. Malone is good in a role that never tends towards cliche, though the real acting honours go to Macaulay Culkin, superb as her comrade-in-arms, a poster boy for unfailingly acerbic wheelchair users everywhere. (3)

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
2 Days in New York (Julie Delpy, 2012) - 2 Days in Paris was a perceptive, intelligent and richly entertaining film about a Franco-American couple bickering, splitting up and getting back together across 48 hours in the City of Light. This sequel joins up with Julie Delpy's artist five years on, to find her separated from the father of her daughter, living with talkshow host Mingus (Chris Rock), the only brother who doesn't smoke weed, and welcoming a trio of familiar to the Big Apple: her eccentric father (Delpy's dad Albert), vindictive sister (Alexia Landeau) and ex-boyfriend (Alex Nahon). When they arrive, all hell naturally breaks loose, while Delpy turns into a "psycho bitch". (She also sells her soul, but I'm not telling you who to.) It’s difficult to know how to rate this one. In a way it’s a disappointment: it's conspicuously lacking the effortlessness, energy and curiously profound meanderings with which the original fairly overflowed, the subplot about Delpy pretending to have a brain tumour is completely misguided and approximately half the running time consists of her sister just repeatedly saying "Mingoooose", but Rock, Nahon and Delpy, Sr are great value, there are sporadically insightful observations about relationships both familial and romantic, and I was certainly never bored. (2.5)

***

I've started working my way, happily, through Treasures V: The West, the incredible NFPT box-set that Mrs Rick bought for me at Christmas. So many exciting-looking movies still to come. First up were these...



SHORT: The Tourists (Mack Sennett, 1912) – Pretty funny Sennett half-reeler about Mabel Normand and her family visiting a Native American tourist town. Their plan is to buy as many bowls as possible and get the hell out of there, but fate, lust and misunderstanding intervene, and they end up being pursued by a lot of indigenous folks with hatchets. The primitive production techniques count against the film, and it doesn't live up to the promise of the first minute, but it’s an interesting snapshot of the time and quite subversive in its own silly way. (2.5)



SHORT: The Sergeant (Francis Bogg, 1910) – A strictly standard plot about a sergeant restoring his reputation – after a pesky Indian steals his horse and makes it look like he’s shagged the colonel’s daughter – coupled with an unfortunate propensity to shoot everything in medium to long shot might have done for this one, were it not for the stunning locations. It was shot entirely in the Yosemite Valley, which looks frankly astonishing. (2.5)



SHORT: Sunshine Gatherers (George E. Stone, 1921) – It’s from the ‘20s! It’s in colour! It was made by Del Monte to publicise the way they picked and packed fruit, but includes a prologue about the discovery of California! I enjoyed the outdoor photography and historical recreations more than the bits about which fruit salads are the nicest and how to preserve a tinned peach, but the steaming machine was pretty nifty. (2.5)

***

TV:



An Impossible Job (1994) - Rick: "This legendary documentary about Graham Taylor's disastrous reign as England manager paints him as an avuncular, unlucky and only occasionally misguided figure - rather than the clueless idiot portrayed by the tabloid press - and remains remarkable for the level of access to training sessions, press conferences and, most extraordinarily, the matches themselves. One thing that really struck me, and which may count against Taylor, is that he's often seen on the bench during a game just having a bit of a chat, rather than planning his next masterstroke. That might be why his planned masterstroke is usually just "Bring Wrighty on" or "Bring Nigel on". There are countless great moments, though Lawrie McMenemy's classic repetition of "I don't believe it... I don't believe it" is a personal favourite, along with that famous bit of the three men on the bench all giving John Barnes the same instructions. (3.5)"

Phil Neal: "This legendary documentary about Graham Taylor's disastrous reign as England manager paints him as an avuncular, unlucky and only occasionally misguided figure - rather than the clueless idiot portrayed by the tabloid press - and remains remarkable for the level of access to training sessions, press conferences and, most extraordinarily, the matches themselves. One thing that really struck me, and which may count against Taylor, is that he's often seen on the bench during a game just having a bit of a chat, rather than planning his next masterstroke. That might be why his planned masterstroke is usually just "Bring Wrighty on" or "Bring Nigel on". There are countless great moments, though Lawrie McMenemy's classic repetition of "I don't believe it... I don't believe it" is a personal favourite, along with that famous bit of the three men on the bench all giving John Barnes the same instructions. (3.5)"

Thank you to Phil Neal - the human echo, history's most virtuosic yes man - for contributing to that review. Some great insights, if I do say so myself.

***



*SOME SPOILERS*
Bored to Death (Season 3, 2011-12) - The first season of Jonathan Ames' deadpan, post-modern noir series – something like Wes-Anderson-does-Raymond-Chandler – was very good, especially the pilot. The second was even better. So when I heard the show had been cancelled after its third season, I was gutted. Watching the final run, though, I can see why, and really it doesn't feel like a great loss. The cast tries hard, the Brooklyn locations are great and some of the dialogue still zings ("The rat's on fire!" and "We still have the briefcase" both made me guffaw), but Ames seems completely out of ideas when it comes to story. Jason Schwartzman's central PI has hardly any crimes to solve, aside from an exciting one near the start that's over too soon, and an over-arching mystery to do with his biological dad that's badly-paced and has a horrible, indefensible pay-off. His sidekick, Zach Galifianakis, “breastfeeds" a baby whisky, accidentally steals another child and shags a pensioner (a shame, as when he’s given anything halfway decent to do, like skipping down a street or arguing with arms dealer Patton Oswalt, he’s hilarious). Ted Danson, meanwhile, spends most of the season sparring with his irritating, needy daughter and her over-aged boyfriend. The rest of the season is just spent going on and on and on about weed. Bored to Death used to be about writing, crime-solving and witty one-liners. Now it's about incest, granny sex and making a baby drink alcohol that a grown man has smeared on his nipple. And weed. Lots and lots of weed. Bored is right. (2)