For All Time (2000) [D: Steven Schachter. Mark Harmon, Mary McDonnell] Dissatisfied adman Charles Latimer yearns for a simpler time, buys an antique watch, which transports him back to an 1890s small town. There he meets widow Laura Brown who runs a the local newspaper. After enough plot twists to fill in the requisite 2-hour TV time slot, all’s well that ends well. Better than average romance movie, with characters just complex enough to make their decisions plausible, and a matter-of-fact acceptance that “the universe” sometimes makes a mistake and offers someone a chance to fix it. Nicely paced narrative, but obtrusive music. The downloaded copy I watched had atrocious sound. Nicely done train scenes. Nevertheless, a solid **½
Batman Forever (1995) [D: Joel Schumacher. Val Kilmer, Nicole Kidman, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Chris O’Donnell] A follow up to Batman Returns, the movie re-introduces Robin. There is little attempt to link the story-line to previous Batman movies, a flaw that bedevils all Batman series. I think the problem is the initial premise of Batman, an ordinary if wealthy bloke, who adopted the Batman persona in order to avenge his parents’ death on all the evil crooks that haunt his world. That’s about the only constant in the series, while different writers tried to reimagine the character so as to make more sense of his backstory.This movie excels at special effects. Watching it in the CGI era, I’m amazed at not only the quality of the art-work, but the skill of creating physically impossible but convincing visuals.
The story is simple. Two-Face wants to kill Batman. The Riddler (a former employee of Wayne Bruce Enterprises) wants to help him. Between them they cook up one failing dastardly plot after another, and as long as you willingly suspend disbelief, you’ll enjoy all the Things That Go Boom. Meanwhile, only survivor of the Grayson family Dick becomes Robin, and psychologist Dr Chase Meridian has a thing for Batman, while Bruce has a thing for her. Will They Fade Out On A Kiss? Of course, this is Gothic Romance, after all.
Tim Burton, producer, no doubt had a lot to do with the visual consistency. Schumacher I think understood the craziness of the premise, and managed to get wonderfully surreal performances from Jones and Carrey. Unfortunately, Batman/Wayne isn’t as well conceived. Kilmer gives a merely adequate performance. This may be a fault of the script, which hints at the darkness in Batman’s psyche, but doesn’t give him the depth we need to believe it. Robin/Grayson does a competent job. Kidman as Dr Meridian has the same script problem as Kilmer: her character is supposedly conflicted, and her professional insight should produce some complexity and ambiguity, but that doesn’t happen.
Fun while it lasted, but not the best Batman movie. A good investment if you find it at a yard sale for a dollar or less. **½
Still Mine (2012) [D: Michael McGowan. James Cromwell, Ronan Rees, Geneviève Bujold] Aging farmer Craig Morrison decides to build a single-level house on his land after his wife Irene, in the early stages of dementia, falls coming down the stairs from the second-story bedroom. Unfortunately, he’s faced with a particularly unimaginative building inspector, who neither understands nor accepts Morrison’s skill and knowledge as a house builder, and insists on strict adherence to the regulations. That’s the central conflict, but age brings a slew of obstacles and annoyances.
The first inkling of bureaucratic invasion of the old ways comes when Morrison can’t sell his strawberry crop as he always has, because he hasn’t transported it in a refrigerated truck. The Morrison children, worried about their parents, want them to move into a retirement home. The neighbours admire Morrison’s stubbornness, but his friends advise him to follow the rules and regulations. We feel the small town ambience of New Brunswick, where everyone knows everyone’s else’s business, but stays out of it. Morrison wins, of course, but along the way we see a couple who love and trust each other, depend on each other for comfort, and refuse to give up their independence.
A well-made film, with no attempt to make the characters look younger than they are. Cromwell and Bujold are superb, the supporting cast is quietly excellent. The script teeters near sentimentality a couple of times. The cinematography gives us both sweeping views of the land and close-ups of faces that reveal the complexity of human thought and feeling. The narrative rhythm is slow. The story begins with a court-room scene; the movie is a long flashback that leads us back to that scene. But we also see that Morrison is hoping to finish the house before his wife loses her self to the dementia that’s destroying her brain. Recommended. ****
The Damned (1969) [D: Luchino Visconti. Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem.] The aging patriarch of a geographically vaguely specified German steelworks enjoys
a birthday party in his honour. At dinner, he announces he will make
major changes to the board. His elder son objects. That night he’s shot dead with
that son’s gun. The two vice-presidents vie for the position of CEO.
Family tensions, political interference, ambition, and tangled sexual
relationships complicate the story, which tells how the company is tamed
and co-opted by the Nazis. The family stands in for the ruling classes of Germany,
who believed that they could co-opt and control Hitler and his uncouth
group of drunken bullies.Visconti knows how to keep you watching past the inevitable longeurs. He uses the Night of Long Knives, in which the SA was destroyed by Goebbels’ SS, to stage a typical Italian set-piece bacchanalia. He uses a lot of full-face closeups, and most of the story takes place in rooms and hallways. The characters reveal as little as possible about themselves, for to do so would betray their ambitions and betrayals. Yet in moments of unappeasable pain or rage they spill their guts, and we come to understand the moral rot at the core of the German ruling class, who refused to allow the political and economic reforms that would likely have prevented the Nazi takeover.
An interesting movie. Apparently filmed in several languages, the dubbing into English is (as seems to be the norm for Italian movies) so bad that there are long stretches of dialogue that are barely intelligible. Subtitles would have worked better, I think. For that reason I rate it at only **½
This is a Hallmark movie, the video version of Harlequin Romance. Like any such romance, it focuses almost entirely on the character’s feelings, which are sketched in with cliched dialogue, portentous glances, one world-weary sigh after another, and so on. These books and movies are designed to enable the audience to fantasise a life- and love-style. I recorded it last December for later viewing because it was set on a train.
The movie’s adapted from a novel by David Baldacci, a shlock writer of considerable skill. He has the formulas down pat, and knows how to plot the story so that it’s just over the line of reality, which makes suspension of disbelief easier. Unless, like me, you happen to have technical knowledge that spoils the illusion. There were too many small inconsistencies in the railroad setting, along with a major plot-flaw involving an avalanche and an inability to radio the dispatcher. At that point, the train mysteriously morphed from a streamliner to a short string of BC Rail Budd RDCs.
I have a copy of Baldacci’s book. It begins, Tom Langdon was a journalist, a globe-trotting one, because it was in his blood to roam widely. That vapid sentence captures the tone of the movie perfectly. I enjoyed the silliness of it, and was, I confess, hard put to resist the mawkish sentimentality of its Christmas spirit. Nevertheless, I rate it only *½
Gerwig picked up on all the hints of female strength and emancipation (limited, to be sure, this is the 1860s after all), and used scenes based on Alcott’s own life and fictional scenes from Jo’s novel to weave a riff on the love romance that works, despite the goopy happy ending, and the Dickensian sentimentality in the fictional scenes of family festivities. The result is a movie that works. Which is to say, I liked it. Jo ends up unmarried (her occasional suitor marries her sister instead). Pity, she’s an Elizabeth Bennet type, and deserves a man who can match her. Of course, such men are much harder to find in real life than in romances.
The movie was nominated for some Oscars, I don’t know or care which ones. I liked it. If you haven’t already seen it, do so. ***½
Knives Out (2019) [D: Rian Johnson. Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas] Did massively successful crime novelist Harlan Thrombey kill himself, or was he murdered? Daniel Craig plays the private investigator who winkles out the complicated truth. A well-done, old-fashioned crime mystery, depending on character and misdirection to keep you watching. Lovely plot twists and turns. And in the end, good triumphs over evil. Sly and not so sly satiric riffs along the way, music that occasionally signals too much. We’re given true versions of events before the detective discovers them, which adds an extra layer of tension. Christopher Plummer relishes his role as Harlan. Very good acting throughout.
Recommended. ***½
She moves in with her aunt, who’s a dog fancier. They show their dogs at a fancy dog show, judged by Mr Darcy, who’s somewhat arrogant, very wealthy, etc. And who lives across the street. And whose dog has just delivered the cutest puppies you can imagine. And who needs somone to look after the puppies while he’s away on business. And so it goes, in this lame riff on Pride and Prejudice. Biggest problem: Lizzie is supposedly 31 years old and an established professional. Yet she acts like a 15 year-old suffering her first “I don’t like him, but those eyes!!!” crush. The dog shows aren’t properly staged, either.
Give this one a pass, unless you like snorting at badly done cliches of romance and enjoy sussing parallels between two versions of the same material. Or want to suffer through another example of Awful Movies That You Watch Despite Yourself. *
Rogers tells Lloyd that he had to learn how to manage his anger and frustration when his schoolmates bullied him. I wish there’d been more about how Fred Rogers became “Mr Rogers” in his neighbourhood. The supporting roles weren’t as complex as I’m sure they were in real life. The director risks longeurs with extended close-ups of faces that with less skilled actors or direction would have lacked the tension that makes drama of the inner lives of the characters. The music is occasionally a little too obvious.
A movie worth seeing even if you’re not a fan of Mr Rogers. ****
The movie was interesting. But didn’t move me. The movie makers clearly wanted the red violin’s history to signify something profound about life, love, chance, and fate. What I saw was a series of sketches. The characters were pieces on a board, not actors in their own lives. The acting was very good, the cinematography and editing competent or better, the script moved the story along briskly enough that it didn’t drag. But, in the end, it didn’t satisfy. It was an innocuous way to pass a couple of hours. **
An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1997-1998) TV series extending the story of Cordelia Gray, 22 years old, unexpected heir to her boss and mentor Bernie Pryde’s private detective agency (“We take Pride in Our Work”) when he decides to suicide instead of living out his days with cancer. P D James wrote two novels about her. This series begins with an adaptation of the first book. The other three parts are completely new plots, developing Cordelia’s character and her relationship with Mrs Sparshott, the temp secretary who becomes he co-investigator and mother figure.I won’t summarise the stories here, there are enough details available online. The plots are simple, but the telling is convoluted, with slow reveals of details, much misdirection, fitful advances in sorting the puzzle’s pieces and arranging them into a truthful account. Cordelia is both smart and naive. She’s stubborn, and accepts risks that could be lethal. She is both too trusting and too suspicious. She illustrates how a fixed idea can mislead. In short, the scripts are well done, the acting also.
I enjoyed the leisurely pace of these now 30 year old movies, but younger audiences may find them too slow. They are now period pieces, just as P D James novels have become historical fiction. We read and watch them partly because they take us back to our younger selves, and partly to learn just how the world has changed. ***
Ladies in Lavender (2004) [D: Charles Dance. Judy Dench, Maggie Smith, Peter Brühl] Andrea (Brühl), a mysterious young Pole, washes up in the cove below the house where sisters Janet (Smith) and Ursula (Dench) live out their post-World War One lives. As their backstories emerge, and entanglements ensue, we learn something about love and loss, about quietly lived lives that mask sometimes unacknowledged pain, about the power of music. A gem of a movie. ****
The movie dragged more than a little in places, in large part I think because the Book didn’t explain enough, nor often enough. Maybe the producers thought that Adams’s sly allusions would mystify or even offend the audience.The story’s a quest, a plot always used to explore existential questions and answers, often in a satiric mode. There was a good deal less satire than I expected, and more space opera. In other words, this remake erred in its conception. The execution was quite good, though. A pleasant, but not very engaging two hours of entertainment.**
A low-key movie, which North American audiences may find boring, but which European audiences, imbued as they are with memories of dictatorships, will find subtly menacing. Flashbacks are handled well, the cinematography never intrudes, the acting is very good. Raimund’s attempts to solve the puzzles and find answers lead to self-discovery.
I liked this movie. Irons plays the self-deprecating Raimund perfectly. He encounters people with secrets, whose lives forced them to abandon dreams and lovers. In effect, to sacrifice their futures for the always elusive promise of freedom. To Raimund, their lives seem far more exciting and significant than his own. I think he’s wrong. IMDB rates it 6.8/10. I rate it *** out of ****
17th century Delft is evoked with ingeniously carpentered sets and mattes, the costumes and hairstyles copy the paintings of the time, the bearing of the actors intends us to understand that manners were different back then, and so on. Visually, the movie is a feast, although I’d have liked more screen time for the paintings. Well, one can look at them online. The cinematography deliberately mimics the palettes of Dutch painting, which doesn’t always work.
There’s a lot of staring, at people, at objects and paintings, at things only the starer can see. This is difficult to do well, besides, the actor is at the editor’s mercy. I’d have cut a few of these shots sooner. An interesting movie, depending hugely on the actors for success. The actors make their characters believable. Still, this isn’t a movie I want to see again. **½
Yesterday (2019) [D: Danny Boyle; Himesh Patel, Lily James, Sophia Di Martino et al] A sweet movie about love, “the poisoned chalice of fame and money”, reality (in several senses) and honesty with self and others. And the Beatles’ music.During a blackout (never fully explained, but who cares), Jack Malik (3rd rate struggling musician) is transported to an alternative timeline in which the Beatles never formed a band. He’s the only one who knows their music, and he builds a career by presenting their songs as his own. The story ends happily, with a couple of nicely done reveals that (almost) explain what actually happened. Along the way, there are some pretty good covers of Beatles songs (none of them complete, unfortunately), some neat riffs on the evils of fame and fortune, and a love story holding the whole thing together.
Acting: first rate, including the roles of the (inevitable) stereotypes. Cinematography: competent, with no pretensions. Story line: plausible. Writing: very good, its main strength being dialogue that doesn’t aspire to Great Thoughts (which IMO spoiled the latest A Star is Born).
Some reviewers think the movie falls over the edge into sentimentality, but I disagree. Go see this movie. If you know and love the Beatles music, it’s a nice nostalgia trip. If you’re too young to remember the Beatles, you’ll realise what you missed. ****
Paddington (2014) [D: Paul King. Hugh Bonneville et al, Ben Wishaw voicing Paddington] Montgomery Clyde finds intelligent bears in darkest Peru, leaves them the recipe for marmalade and assorted other guides to civilisation. Many years later an earthquake destroys their home, and their nephew must travel to London to find a new home. Stranded in Paddington station, he’s rescued by Mrs Brown, who also names him. And the rest is a charming story of how Paddington finds a family. Michael Bond’s creation has been well-served by this movie. We saw it first in the theatre, and now at home. DVDs are an obsolescing technology, so you may have to hunt for a copy. Highly recommended. **** 
Coraline (2009) [D: Henry Selick. Voiced by Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman et al]. Stop-motion animated feature by Pixar, based on a Neil Gaiman novel, it shows how Coraline realises her real father and mother are better than the “other” parents she finds in a world behind a locked door that opens into a tunnel between the two versions of her world. She’s almost trapped in that alternative reality, which is not as beautiful and perfect as she at first imagines.The animation is well done, the writing is sit-com smart with a dark and dangerous undertone. It’s not really a children’s movie, but it’s a favourite of a 6-year-old girl I know, so go figure. When I try to recall my own early movie experience, I realise that what a child sees in a movie is quite different from what an adult sees. Also, a scary movie is safe, much safer than real-life terrors, and this no doubt makes it easy for a child to watch horror movies and either miss or ignore the truly terrifying bits.
Despite the skills of the movie makers, I did not find this movie engaging, hence only a **½
First Man (2018) [D: Damien Chazelle. Ryan Gosling, Claire Foy] Well done biopic focusing on the Gemini and Apollo programs. Armstrong was apparently one of those close-mouthed types unable to show grief or other “weak” emotions. It’s OK to show elation at winning, in his case by succeeding at difficult and very dangerous tasks. Armstrong’s daughter died of a brain tumour. Anyone who’s lost a child can identify with his grief, and anyone who’s lost someone close knows that grief strikes repeatedly and without warning. The movie is based on a bio by James Hansen. I don’t know how true to life Hansen’ book is, but the movie convinced me. It’s an odd thing, that although the moon program happened in the 1960s, the NASA world was firmly stuck in the 1950s.So the movie’s a good psycho-sociological study of NASA and the men who had the right stuff. It’s also a hymn to work. The core of the story is the work of getting to the moon, and the personal and community sacrifices that this task entailed. I recall watching the landing on a large TV screen in the dorm in which I was staying while taking a teacher qualification course at Althouse in London, Ontario. But I didn’t recall much of that while watching this movie. It was all about Armstrong, the astronauts, the moon shot, and the effects on the families. The music was occasionally intrusive, and teetered on the edge of sentimentality a few times. The launches were impressively noisy and jittery: the astronauts are flying on top of a slowly exploding bomb.
Worth watching. ***½
Tea With Mussolini (1999) [D: Franco Zeffirelli. Cher, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Lily Tomlin] A determinedly and stupidly snobbish Englishwoman causes a lot of grief among her English expats in Florence during the 1930s and 40s. She believes that her special relationship with Mussolini will protect her during their internment as enemy aliens. Etc. Several subplots held together by the story of Luca, the illegitimate child of an Italian businessman, who’s taken in and raised by one of the English ladies.A tearjerker combined with comedy and a very sanitised nod towards the realities of war. Packaged as a Modern Classic by MGM, it delivers a very Hollywood couple of hours of entertainment. Zeffirelli knows how to make movies. Enjoyable, if you don’t think too much about the war. ***
Jack (Bradley Cooper) kills himself so that Ally will be free of the effects of his drink and downers. A tragedy? A noble sacrifice? Or a typically sentimental Hollywood gesture? Ally may have some self-esteem issues, but underneath it all she’s a steel-souled striver for fame. Jack thrives on stage, but has deep doubts about the value of his music. We get glimpses of what’s underneath the surface, but it’s not enough.
Cooper (who co-wrote the script) tries his best to show us the pain,. He’s given to long silent closeups of Jack’s face as he tries to understand himself. But he shies away from the dark side. We get glimpses of what drives these people: Is show business the only way they have of facing the central questions of existence? In the end, Ally and Jack end up as cardboard cutouts, pop-psychology figures instead of fully rounded characters. A pity, since the story is about character. Show business is merely the means of displaying the flawed glory of being human.
I found the movie boring in places, pretentiously portentous in others, with a handful of great moments. The music ranges from pretty good to awesome. The acting is generally good, and Lady Gaga is excellent. Sam Elliot is as always a treat to watch. The script overuses the F-bomb, it’s become a mere shtick. The photography is very good, never calling attention to itself, generating ambience and character, and carrying the story smoothly from one scene to the next.
Go see the movie, if only to get some idea of what makes a movie popular despite itself. **
Mama Mia! Here We Go Again (2018) [D: Ol Parker. Lily James, Amanda Seyfried, Meryl Streep] We went to see this movie because we had fond memories of the stage version of Mama Mia! (2003). This movie disappointed. Its narrative line is that Sophie has refurbished the hotel her mother Donna founded. She has a relationship problem, her three fathers may not all be there for the grand reopening, a storm messes up the outdoor patio. All’s well in the end, her grandmother shows up and reconnects with a former lover, a pile of friendly Greeks float in on a boat, there’s a lot of singing and dancing and fireworks.We also get the full backstory on how Donna managed to hook up with three guys in succession quickly enough that she couldn’t (honestly!) figure out whose sperm fertilised her egg. The timing is a bit, er, flexible, here, which triggered my implausibility meter.
All in all, a mildly amusing mess, with ABBA’s songs not fitting into the story as well as in the first version. I note that the first film version, with Meryl Streep playing Donna, has lower ratings than this one. If the ranking is valid, the earlier movie must be pretty bad; I’ve not seen it. I think you should see the stage version, and skip these movies. *½
Mrs Henderson Presents (2005) [D: Stephen Frears. Judi Dench, Bob Hoskins et al] It's 1937. Recently widowed and at loose ends, Laura Henderson (Judi Dench) buys a decrepit building, and converts it into the The Windmill theatre. With the help of director Vivian van Damm (Bob Hoskins), she operates it successfully as review venue. She wants nude girls, and gets them, but they must be perfectly still, so they appear in tableaux vivants.The dramatic tension comes mostly from the conflicted respect and affection between Henderson and van Damm. Otherwise, it’s an episodic story, which ends early in World War II, when the Lord Chamberlain reluctantly allows the theatre to remain open. Mrs Henderson lost her 21 year-old son Alec in WW I. Going through his effects, she found naughty French postcards, and realised Alec had never seen a woman naked. This, apparently, was Henderson’s motivation for a nude review.
As you can tell, there isn’t much of a story here. The movie succeeds anyhow, because Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins, old troupers that they are, play their characters believably, with a minimum of shtick. Dench got an Oscar for her role, the movie has “made for Oscar competition” written all over it. A good old-fashioned show-biz movie. It’s based on reality, see here for more. We enjoyed it. ***
Indian Horse (2017) [D: Stephen S. Campanella. W: Dennis Foon, Richard Wagamese . Sladen
A heavy movie, based on Wagamese’s novel. Well done as a movie, and as a character study: Saul’s journey is utterly convincing. But the story sets up one stereotype after another: the cruel nun, the wishy-washy school director, the kind priest, and so on. It’s a story with a mission. I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how closely the movie follows it. But the movie works because the story is told through visuals even more than through dialogue, and always from Saul’s point of view. This, and the above average acting, makes Saul convincing. The peace he achieves in the end is hard won, but believable. ***
Pygmalion (1983) [D: Alan Cooke. Peter O'Toole, Margot Kidder] Nicely done adaptation of Shaw’s play, with O’Toole playing a very convincing Higgins as a naughty boy, and Kidder a very good Eliza. The other parts were not, I think, as well directed. Pickering was a nice guy, but too much of a silly boy like Higgins to convince me. Mrs Higgins was well done by Frances Hyland, but her character didn’t explain how she brought up such an awful boy as Henry. Donald Ewer did a typical Alfred Doolittle, and made a good job of it. A pleasant entertainment, but no new insights. **½
Black Panther (2018) [D: Ryan Coogler. Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o] Well done fantasy-scifi, with better than average writing for
the genre, and only mildly overdone fight scenes. See the IMDb entry for details about the plot. For once, the CGI is justified by the story, which would be impossible to present convincingly without it. The movie uses all the tropes and clichés we’ve come to expect from the Marvel comic book universe, and takes them seriously but not solemnly. Striking visuals, beautiful design, pretty good acting, and generally unintrusive music help to make this an entertaining movie. Recommended. ***
Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010) [D: Michael Apted. Ben Barnes, Skander Keynes, Georgie Henley et al] I haven’t read this book, so I don’t know how well the movie adapted it. As a movie, it’s merely average fantasy, with vague plot points and underdeveloped characters. There were some good special effects, and the mouse-Eustace interplay was nicely done. The best episode in te movie was the last one of leave-taking, though it did drag on a bit.
All in all, the movie felt unfinished. It did make me want to read the book, just to see what, if anything, I missed. Like many adaptations of well-loved books, it took the audience’s background knowledge of the series for granted. I think that’s a mistake, one that the Harry Potter movies did not make. There’s a TV adaptation of the book (1989) that gets better IMDb ratings than this one. I’ll look for it. **
Love Actually (2003) [D: Richard Curtis. Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Liam Neeson et al] Eight couples with messy love lives and some loose relationships with each other resolve their issues, not always happily, in the month and a half before Christmas. Script and acting very good, editing and intercutting of the stories sometimes muddled, overall ambience tends towards the maudlin. Not the 7.6/10 that IMDb reports as the overall score. I give it a 6.0, or **½
The Princess Bride (1987) [D: Rob Reiner. Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright et al]
So you might think this is just another light-weight entertainment. If that’s what you expect, that’s what you will see. I saw and heard an excellent script, above average acting, unobtrusive photography and music, and a meditation on the meaning and value of fairy-tale romance. Because True Love does win the end, though we may too often realise that too late. ***
The movie’s adapted from a Louis L'Amour novel, so we get a hefty dose of noble hero, and a fair amount of realism, or at least plausibility, in the gunfights, and impressive landscapes. The story is a riff on Shane, and would, I think, make a greater impression than it does if Shane didn’t exist. As it is, the Western tropes and cliches are competently handled, and will satisfy any fan of the genre. But for the average movie-goer, this will be merely an average movie. **½
Philomena (2013) [D: Stephen Frears. Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Sophie Kennedy Clark, et al] The story is now well known: up into the 1960s, the Irish government hived off unwed mothers to orphanages run by nuns. The babies were adopted: there was a steady traffic of Irish babies to the USA, with a fair amount of cash changing hands. No one was ever prosecuted, and many records were destroyed. Many children died.
Martin Sixsmith, at loose ends after losing his journalism gig, is asked to help Philomena find her son, adopted to the USA when he was six years old. At first he refuses, because he doesn’t do “human interest stories.” But after meeting Philomena, he changes his mind. He does find the son, but there’s a twist: her son had been looking for her, but died of AIDS before he succeeded.
With such a human interest story the question isn’t Is this a story worth telling, but How well do the movie-makers tell the story? The answer is, very well indeed. Judi Dench plays Philomena, the scriptwriter and director Steve Coogan plays Sixsmith, and assorted other actors put on very good to excellent performances. The risk in doing this story was sentimentality, and a couple of times the movie does drift over the edge, but overall, it merely presents the facts and the characters. The subtext is plain enough: The Catholic Church was intentionally cruel to the women and their children, their pain was a penance for yielding to carnality. Coogan wrote a scene in which Sixsmith says as much, but it wasn’t really needed. Even childless people will, I think, understand Philomena’s pain, and the bittersweet realisation that her son remembered her well enough to want to find her.
We enjoyed the movie, especially Judi Dench’s performance. Well-written, well-acted, well-photographed. Recommended. ****
Agatha Raisin: The Quiche of Death (2014) [D: Geoffrey Sax. Ashley Jensen, Oliver Lansley, Mathew Horne] Lame, unfocussed, and badly imagined video of M. C Beaton’s book. The creative crew apparently couldn’t decide whether Beaton’s series is farce or social comedy, so try to have it both ways. It doesn’t work.
Agatha Raisin in the books is a rather plain, short, definitely plump, 50ish ex-PR expert who’s moved to a Cotswold village to live a peacefully retired life. But of course murders happen and the detective work entangles her, as do her unrequited and occasionally requited loves. The video imagines Agatha as far a too glamourous tall, blond, high-heeled, 40ish ex-PR expert, with almost no character beyond her curiosity. Granted the books become increasingly formulaic and superficial and slapdash, which I why I stopped reading them. But that’s no reason for this video’s utterly mistaken interpretation of Agatha and her endearing self-doubt, attempts at self-improvement, and occasional triumphs over middle-age adversities, not merely murderers (some of whom want her dead, too). Definitely not a keeper. *
Dunkirk (2017) [D: Christopher Nolan. No stars featured] I don’t like watching war movies. The older I get, the worse it gets. But I thought I should see this one, and having seen it, I think you should see it, too.
It’s told in three over-lapping stories, which together tell the story of Dunkirk. 1, the evacuation from the mole at Dunkirk (many of the ships were sunk as they left, some even while tied up there); 2, the evacuation by the many, many small craft that came over from England to come in close to shore and pick up the troops; and 3, a Spitfire sortie sent out to destroy the dive bombers that were bombing and strafing the troops, and the Heinkels that were sinking the ships. In the end, over 300,000 men were evacuated. The Army initially expected 35,000, and the Navy thought they could bring out 45,000.
Each story focuses on a small group of people as exemplars of what was done and what happened. The focus was on the process, on the work being done. Character counted, but was simplified. There was death, there was fear, there was cowardice and courage, there was suffering and relief when it was over. A two hour movie that felt much shorter, well photographed, well-acted, well-edited. The music and the sounds of gunfire and explosions became one soundscape that surrounded and engulfed the people.
Christopher Nolan’s vision is the cliche that war brings out the best and the worst in people, but essentially it’s the bloodiest and most difficult work that humans engage in. There’s no attempt to analyse its causes, nor even to take sides. In many ways the narrative understates itself, which makes its effect even stronger: war is the best work men do, but for the worst of reasons.
Recommended ****
The Importance of Being Earnest (2002) [D: Oliver Parker. Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Frances, Reese Witherspoon, Judi Dench, et al.] A nicely done version of Wilde’s play, with a semi-successful attempt to make it into a movie by converting some of the dialogue into visuals (eg, the bit about Algy’s greedy love of water-cress sandwiches). But it’s the language that matters, and the artificiality of farce, which Wilde exploited and raised to the level of art. His script has a dark subtext about identity and self-knowledge, about being willing to disguise your true self for the sake of love. By downplaying the language, the overall effect of this movie is somewhat less that thrilling, on any level. The young folk are nice to look at, Judi Dench delivers a plausibly soft-hearted Lady Bracknell, the acting generally is good, and so on. A nice way to spend 100-odd minutes, a superior entertainment in fact, but a mere entertainment nonetheless. **½
Wonder Woman (2017) [D: Patty Jenkins. Gail Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright.] Great movie. The story is a mashup of Norse-influenced Greek mythology with the DC Comics Universe of Superheroes. The setting is an alternate First World War, very Steampunk, with better dialogue than usual for comic-book inspired movies. The story keeps the main outlines of the Wonder Woman story, nicely elaborated. The contact with the human world is plausible, given that this is a universe of magic, and Wonder Woman’s education in the ways of mere mortals is touching, funny, believable, and finally tragic. The fight scenes are well done, and for once go on only a little longer than necessary.
The acting, the photography and editing not only tell, they extend the story, an achievement which I credit to Jenkins. This is a director’s movie in the old sense: it embodies her vision of the story. A very well-crafted entertainment, the kind that exceeds its grasp, and makes you think.
There’s been a fuss about Gadot’s support of Israeli politics vis-a-vis
Palestine, even calls to boycott the movie on her account. I think that
people who think that actors and other celebrities are experts on
politics deserve all the delusions they get from listening to them. ****
Gifted (2017) [D: Marc Webb. Chris Evans, Mckenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Jenny Slate, Octavia Spencer] Single Uncle Frank Adler is raising his first-grader dead sister’s daughter Mary, who’s a math genius. When a discipline issue makes the principal aware of her gifts, Frank’s mother Evelyn is informed, and a custody battle ensues. Evelyn is a stage-mother: she drove her daughter Donna to attempt the solution of one of the Millennium problems, and suicide. Messy. In the end, the Right Decision is made: Mary will attend the Oakes School for gifted children as well as her local school. Frank and Bonnie (Mary’s teacher) will, no doubt, become a couple, Evelyn is faced with her guilt and reforms, and so on. Too TV for me.
Mckenna Grace is a remarkable actor, Chris Evans et al make a good supporting cast, the director has a clear (but I think a too sentimental) vision, the photography is consistently good or better, the music occasionally intrudes, and all-in-all it’s one cliche after another. But well put together, making for a nice 100-odd minutes of undemanding entertainment.
Issues of how to best raise a gifted child are touched on, but the movie assures us it’s no big deal. A more thorough treatment of these issues and the family backstory (Frank himself has problems, he was a philosophy professor before picking and moving to Florida with Mary) would have made for a longer and I think a better movie. But not as easy to watch as this one. **½
Midsomer Murders: Murder by Magic (2015: S17E2) Hannah Altman, pub owner and pianist, dies when Gideon Latimer’s magic apparatus falls on her. The concert and magic show was staged as a church fundraiser. The curate hates it, and also hates the night-time pagan rituals. He’s the next victim. The usual links between suspects (marriage and financial problems, infidelity, mutual secrets, blackmail) make for a nicely done puzzle. The writing is better than usual, so that the solution doesn’t seem as forced psychologically as is sometimes the case. ***
Downfall (Der Untergang) (2004) [D: Oliver Hirschbiegel. Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lana, et al] The last weeks in Hitler’s Bunker in Berlin. Based on Traudl Junge’s (and other people’s) accounts. She was one of Hitler’s last secretaries.
The movie shows how Hitler deteriorates. It’s now known how many drugs Hitler took, there’s no question they were factor in his erratic behaviour. But the fanatical Nazis, such as Goebbels and his wife, Bormann, and others, as well as the Generals who had sworn personal loyalty to the Fuhrer, supported him to the end, and that was a greater factor in the prolongation of the war. The fact that they all had cyanide capsules indicates that they knew that their behaviour was criminal: it was not merely fear of defeat that drove the suicides, it was fear of what would happen to them. What did happen to the surviving top Nazis and Generals was the Nuremberg Trials. Traudl Junge comes across as a naive girl. The three secretaries feel pity for Hitler, they find it difficult to abandon him.
Some critics have attacked Ganz’s portrayal of Hitler. They say it makes him an object of pity, that he is too human. Well, Hitler was human. It’s easy to think of him as some sort of inhuman monster, but he was a human monster. So were they all. The most depressing effect of this movie is the realisation that humans are capable of evil, that much evil is a consequence of people’s beliefs, of the inability to admit that their view of how the world works is incomplete and mistaken, that logic is a terrible guide to action. For the Nazis were thoroughly logical. The mistook logical consistency for truth. This movie shows us what humans will do when in the grip of a belief that they take to its logical conclusions.
Does it work as a movie? Yes. ***½
Midsomer Murders: Last Year’s Model (2006) [D: Richard Holthouse. John Nettles, Jason Hughes, Jane Wymark] DI Tom Barnaby arrested Anne Woodrow for the murder of her best friend Frances Trevelyan, but at the beginning of the trial a remark by Frances’s younger daughter raises doubts. He and Jones reinvestigate, and focus on the testimony of an elderly lady who has an indirect connection to the victim. That link unmasks the murderer.
This is episode eight of series nine. I like Tom Barnaby, he’s a laid back, soft-spoken but tough copper who doesn’t like loose ends or niggly inconsistencies. The stuff of complicated puzzles. He has a good family life, which develops plausibly throughout the series. Most of the stories are well done procedurals, the kind that show us enough police work to make us believe we’re seeing something like reality. The motivations are sometimes outlandish, the background characters are too often cliched stereotypes, but the quality of the writing and acting create a believable world. Good entertainment. This episode was better than most. ***
La La Land (2016) [Written and directed by Damien Chazelle. Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Rosemarie DeWitt] A textbook example of the folly of letting a mediocre writer direct his own script. I’ve rarely seen such a pretentious, muddled, incoherent mess. The basic problem is that Chazelle doesn’t know whether he’s written a romantic drama or a musical romance. An independent director would have cut and rewritten the script to be firmly one or the other. As it is, two fine actors are wasted, as are some fine musicians and dancers. Worst of all, the movie was boring. BOMB
The Lady Confesses (1945) [D: Sam Newfield. Mary Beth Hughes, Hugh Beaumont, Edwin MacDonald] A straightforward film noir B movie, nothing special, no attempt to do more than tell the story. Music cues the dangerous bits, so the audience can briefly pause from necking to watch the heroine escape from danger once more. That kind of thing. Dark interiors, night-time setting, etc. Barely an hour long. Perfunctory script and acting, competent editing. It was probably written, shot, edited, and printed in a week. The title has nothing to do with the story. *½
Sink the Bismarck (1960) [D: Lewis Gilbert. Kenneth More, Michael Hordern, Dana Winter et al] The Bismarck was one of the biggest, baddest battleships ever, the pride of the German Navy. On its maiden mission (to destroy convoys in the North Atlantic) it was sunk by the British navy at the cost of the battle cruiser Hood and several other ships (see the Wikipedia article for the details).
The movie follows the actual operations quite closely, with both British and German sequences, and both operations HQ and shipboard events. The battle sequences are very well done considering that the movie makers had to work with models. The naval airforce, operating off Ark Royal struck the crippling blow which pretty well guaranteed the destruction of the Bismarck. The human interest bits fit into the story.
The sequence in which the Bismarck is pounded to bits is especially impressive. All in all, the operation cost more than 5,000 lives, and showed that battleships were no longer worth the investment: a few aircraft could destroy a large ship at relatively low cost. But aircraft carriers in their turn became obsolete when the long range nuclear submarine was developed into a missile platform.
All in all a well done war movie. ***½
The Ghost Train (1941) [D: Walter Forde. Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch, Kathleen Harrison et al] A vehicle for Askey and assorted other comedians, all of whom seem to be playing their well-known shticks. A gaggle of travellers bound for Truro are dropped at a junction, but miss the connecting train. The station master tells them about a ghost train, etc and so on and so forth. Askey and a couple of other travellers are smitten with the beautiful blonde whose fiance is a cricketer and ex-boxer. Askey and others do a lot of business which the audience of the time must have rcognised. A naive engaged couple carrying a bed frame offers occasion for mildly risque jokes. And so on. What plot there is, is hurriedly tied up at the end when the ghost train turns out to be a gun-running operation. A silly escapist movie, no doubt helping to take the audience’s minds off the war, which by 1941 was going wrong for Britain. Workmanlike movie-making, nothing special. **
This Island Earth (1955) [D: Joseph Newman. Jeff Morrow, Faith Domergue, Rex Reason) Cal Meacham, a scientist and inventor working on a method to make more atomic fuel (understood to be uranium) makes contact with aliens from Metaluma who need more uranium in their war with other aliens. They’ve set up a “secret” underground lab. Meacham is met by Ruth Adams, who at first denies they met in grad school, as she fears being mind-controlled by the aliens. They try to escape, but their plane is drawn up into the flying saucer that’s returning to Metaluma. They arrive just in time for the final phase of the war, which destroys Metaluma. They barely escape with their lives, and the Metaluman Exeter takes them back to Earth, then crashes his flying saucer in the Pacific. He’s the last of his species.
For its time, a major breakthrough, because the producers took the visuals (set design, costumes, and such) seriously. But the story is hackneyed, with several implausible redirections of the plot. There’s even a totally gratuitous bug-eyed monster (a “mutant” developed to be a guard) who threatens Adams. Thoroughly pulp fiction in its weak characterisation, creaky plotting, banal philosophising, and resolute violation of the laws of physics. Pretty good sets and special effects, acting a cut or two above the wooden, but naive wow-gee-whiz presentation of science and technology. The overall effect is that the visuals were more important than the story.
The first few reviews on IMDb praise it as “enthralling” etc, and/or wonder why it has a rep as a bad movie. Well, it is a bad movie, the kind that was made by the hundreds by Hollywood, in every genre. They are often defended as escapist fun, but even escapist fun should be intelligent. This movie just barely makes the cut. As an early example of an attempt to do serious SciFi, worth seeing. It won’t make you groan too often. A year later, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Forbidden Planet were released, arguably the first successful serious SciFi movies.
A couple of oddities: The scientists all address each other as “Doctor”. Ruth Adams has perfectly coiffed hair and makeup throughout. The ray-blasts miss the car every time until Meacham and Adams get out. The mutant guard with supposedly limited intelligence has a huge unprotected brain, and hands with two-finger claws. The Metalumans use the by then standard graphic for an atom, a core surrounded by six loops with li’l dots on them. **
Atomic War Bride (1960; Czech) [D: Veljko Bulajic. Antun Vrdoljak, Zlatko Madunic, Ljubisa Jovanovic] An earnest attempt to show the awful effects of war-mongering etc. The hero sets off to be married, encountering troops warning of imminent war along the way. The happy couple is separated when he is dragooned into the army immediately after the wedding. He makes his way back to her, but their reunion is interrupted by an atom bomb. The final scene shows her dying in his arms. Awful movie. Simplistic acting, dreadful dubbing into English, confused cutting, script that tries to make thesis points instead of revealing character or telling the story. I found it online. Don’t waste bandwidth downloading it. The director was nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1960, probably because the nominators thought an earnestly moral thesis compensates for bad story telling. BOMB
Midnight Limited (1940) [D: Howard Bretherton. John
King, Marjorie Reynolds] A train robber gets away with loadsadough and
murder until Val Lennon (a railroad detective) and Joan Marshall (a
victim of crime who persuades Val to let her assist him) get on the case
and of course solve it. Laughably awful script, wooden acting (I’ve
rarely seen such unconvincing romance), and minimal sets lead you
through a movie you probably weren’t watching anyhow. A movie date back
then wasn’t for watching a run-of-the-mill programmer.
The
sound effects of the train are nice, but not well synchronised to the
action. The plot has potential: the robberies are planned by a gang that
includes the baggage car guy, a hotel clerk who books the Pullman
compartments for the victims, and a dead body that isn’t. Not an easy
scam to unravel. In better hands, and with a better budget, the story
could have made a pretty good product. *
Broadway Limited (1941) [D: Gordon Douglas. Victor McLaglen, Marjorie Woodworth, Dennis O’Keefe, Zasu Pitts.] The papers headline a baby-napping while a flim-flammy movie director is pulling a PR stunt by announcing his star has a baby. The star’s old flame shows up, and of course the romance flares up again. Second string story: a locomotive engineer books off on holiday, he’s the star’s assistant’s boyfriend. Multiple mixups, misunderstandings, attempts at hiding the supposedly kidnapped baby, etc, ensue. All this happens on the Broadway Limited, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s prestige sleeper-only train running from Chicago to New York.
Reasonably well-done on-train sets, occasional train noises to heighten realism, some standard publicity shots of the train and its interiors, etc. Not exactly a treat for the railfan, but good enough for the movie. Competent direction, acting, and photography. Zasu Pitts plays the man-hungry spinster (again), the other actors play the roles assigned to them by their fans. Average Hollywood fare for the time. One could write extended notes on the stereotypes, mores, comic shticks, etc. IOW, essay fodder for the film student. **½
The Quest (2002) [D: D. Jason. David Jason, Hewell Bennett, Roy Hudd] Coming of age story shown as a flashback beginning when Ronno rear-ends Dave at a stop light. He invites Dave to his retirement party, a at which Ronno, the third of the “three musketeers” also shows up. This sets of a round of reminiscences of their trip up north on motorbikes in search of girls. It’s Charlie, the shy, soft-spoken one, who gets a girl, or rather, she gets him, but she rejects him when he persuades the other two to go to Blackpool where she lives. A nicely done study of horny adolescent males. The girls are of course much wiser, and know perfectly well how to handle the lads. The movie ends with the men leaving a pub and agreeing to get together again.
Part two begins with Charlie receiving a phone call from Sondra, an old flame. He’s on a ladder fixing the roof, and falls. When Dave and Ronno visit him in the hospital, we see the flash back to the lads’ trip to the Isle of Man, this time to ride the TTC course. But Charlie really wants to find Sondra, whose mother has other plans for her daughter and has forbidden the romance. This movie is much piecier than the first one, there’s no solid central narrative line, things just happen. Charlie of course discovers that Sondra isn’t really interested in him, in fact she’s a little tart, but a nice beauty pageant contestant takes an interest in him, etc. When that episode falls apart, three older women pick up the boys, but the desired rendezvous is kiboshed by the landlady of the B&B at which the women are staying. So that’s that.
There’s a part three, which I don’t have. I recorded these two parts on VHS years ago from TVO. I’m tossing the tapes, but decided to see what was in this one. If you like mildly amusing nostalgia-inducing movies, you’ll probably like The Quest. It’s resolutely male point of view is unusual. **½ (posted 2016-10-19)
Farewell, My Concubine (1989) A “much acclaimed film,” as the TVO program blurb says; but one that ends up being oddly unappealing. Set in China, the story is plain enough: two actors bond in acting school as boys suffering from the sadism of the school's director sand teachers. Their careers fuse into a single symbiosis. The one who plays the Concubine is damaged by a homosexual encounter with an admirer, and becomes sexually ambivalent. His partner, who plays the King, is not only aggressively heterosexual, he marries his favourite prostitute, who realises that she must compete with his partner. During the Cultural Revolution, the two actors betray each other and the woman. Many years later, the two actors come together for a last performance (whose venue is never clearly explained). The King wears a real sword that has figured several times in the plot; in the key scene, the Concubine uses it, but since it is not a prop, he dies.
I don’t like Chinese classical opera. Classical opera all over the world seems to decline into frozen custard, into carefully preserved museum pieces, beautifully restored but dead as mutton. There is something in the opera fan that resents living theatre, that wants to see and hear the same thing over and over again, exactly. Like child that wants to hear the same story over and over again at bedtime, exactly. The Chinese haven’t escaped either. The emphasis on elaborate costume and elaborate and exactly repeated acting merely emphasises the lifelessness of a tradition of copying rather than emulating the past.
It’s sad, really, since as theatre, operas are superb. Staged with a sense of theatre, they work very well. I remember an Abduction from the Seraglio in Graz that was lively and drew you in. The music helped, too. Chinese classical music has melody, harmony, and rhythm, but the classical instruments are bloody awful. I wonder why the Chinese clung to those badly tuned, badly made, and awful sounding monstrosities so long. They have recently adopted and adapted European instruments and musical styles to their own traditions, and have produced not only some of the best interpreters of European music, but have also developed wonderful new music of their own.
The movie has beautifully crafted sequences. The acting is very good, the photography at times eerie in its power. Yet overall, it didn’t work for me. Perhaps the sensibility was too alien, or perhaps the opera simply grated too much, so that I was in no state to fully enjoy the rest of the movie. ** (2002)
After the Harvest (2001) This film is very loosely based on Martha Ostenso’s Wild Geese. It works quite well if one has not read the book, or read it so long ago that one has forgotten all but a few salient details. Marie was in the latter case; I had read the book within the last ten years (scanned it rather, as I did every two or three years when I taught it). The differences between the movie and the book will disappoint anyone who expects to see Wild Geese. But the producers clearly wanted to make a movie inspired by the themes of the book, and used its characters and its situation as a starting point.
Peppard is very good as a hard, arrogant, and self-righteous Caleb Gare. Amelia is played with a hidden strength that could have made for a more tense relationship with Caleb than was shown. Judith is a bewildered but determined animal trapped in a situation she cannot understand. The other three children are merely sketched, which is a pity, since they could have enriched the movie. Lind and Jordan have more flaws than they do in the book, which makes their love affair, fight, and reconciliation more believable. The neighbours are reduced in number, and the plot accordingly simplified. All in all, the adaptation suggests that the makers didn’t have the money to make the kind of large scale movie the book demands.
There are other signs of lack of money. The continuity of landscape is haphazard: at times I wondered whether the farm was in the foothills or on the bald prairie. The town is too obviously a stage set (it was actually a museum site, IIRC) The fire doesn’t convince. But all in all, it’s a good little movie; several of its images linger in the mind, a sure sign that a central vision informed it, and the director knew what she was doing. **½ (2002)
Encounter at Far Point (1987) I bought this at a Value Village. The first of the Star Trek: Next Generation series, hence a full length movie. It introduces the central characters, and sets up enough hints of their pasts that we expect many future revelations. Also introduces Q, who demands that Picard prove that the human race has progressed somewhat beyond barbarianism, and should be permitted to explore the Galaxy. Picard succeeds, by helping an energy-being rescue its mate from Deneb 4, where the latter was marooned, and exploited by the local race for their own ends.
Q is a beautifully conceived Satan figure. The Accuser, that is, his role in Job, not the Tempter. He shows that accusation spawns temptation, for one wants to clear one’s name, and that desire itself is a form of pride. Should one not humbly acknowledge one’s sin? Q also provokes the resentment and suspicion of intellect, an attitude first dramatised via Faust. Q’s governing trait is intellectual curiosity: it is his desire to find out what Picard can do, and how, that moves him to grant a delay in the sentencing of the human race. (The sentence will be extinction).
The special effects are minimal. Gene Roddenberry (who co-wrote the script) chose to focus on character rather than technology. He wants to show both what moves us and what might move us. He believes strongly that our positive drives, such as love, friendship, and loyalty, guarantee our survival. This aspect of Star Trek, found in all its variations, I think accounts for the series' longevity. This movie is an excellent first outing for the crew of the Enterprise, and worth keeping. It’s also fun to note the subtle differences between this crew and the later versions in subsequent episodes. *** (2002)
Harry Potter: The Philosopher’s Stone (2001) Based on the book. A boarding school adventure romance, updated in two ways: a) the magic; b) the presence of girls. The magic is convincing in its matter-of-factness, there’s no sex stuff beyond a bit of goofy grinning at the opposite sex (who happens to be an almost insufferably superior sort of female person, but with her heart and ethics in the right place). In the end the bad guy turns out to be the good guy, and vice versa. But the bad guy gets his.
Lessons are portentously announced, special effects suit the story, the characters are just convincing enough to make you care about them, but the focus is definitely on story. A fun movie, with a few bits a tad too scary for children old enough to imagine the danger that lurks in the shadows, but otherwise good family entertainment. Inoffensive, really, unlike Resident Evil. *** (2002)
Resident Evil (2002) Some people are trapped in “the hive” when the computer kills everybody because of a serious bio-hazard, an escaped virus, of course. The virus “mutates”, of course, flesh creepy-crawls to sounds of rubber stretching and twigs cracking, blood spurts, and so forth, and changes dead meat into reflex-driven quasi-living flesh. Gruesome horror fantasy intended to gross out and scare teenagers. No plot beyond the search for the computer and escaping from mutant humans and dogs. Perfunctory characterisation, inconsistent special effects, etc. Ghastly. But teenagers like this stuff. It would work quite well as a plain old comic book. Maybe better. (2002)*1/2
A Nightingale Sang (1989) (Joan Plowright, Tom Watt, etc.) Wartime story tracing the affair between Helen, older, plainer daughter of a Newcastle family, and Norman, a soldier from London. He’s married, as Helen discovers when she takes a flat of her own so they can set up housekeeping. The family is dysfunctional. Joyce, the younger sister, marries Eric, and is promptly unfaithful to him with a variety of men. The mother is a pious and a more than semi-superstitious Catholic. The father likes to play piano and sing. Well scripted, if somewhat predictable, well acted, and nicely photographed. A nice little movie, the kind that used to provide reliable entertainment at the cinema before television. **1/2 (2002)
Sophie’s Choice (1982) (D: Alan J. Pakula. Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Peter McNichol) McNichol plays William Styron’s stand-in, and Streep and Kline play the doomed couple he befriends and wishes to save (especially Streep). The write-ups note that Styron’s novel is autobiographical, but I don’t believe it. That is, I think his book is embellished. Not that Sophie’s terrible choice at Auschwitz is improbable, but that it doesn’t ring true in the context of the movie (and maybe of the book; I haven’t read it).
The movie drags; it’s a “literary” movie, clearly made to win Oscars. Streep got one for her portrayal of Sophie Zawitowska, but her Method shows, as does Kline’s (her lover Nathan). McNichol is the most believable, partly because the character is such a gormless naif, and partly because he was clearly directed never to steal a scene from his two co-stars. This underplaying works better than Streep and Kline’s attempts to portray extreme and extremely volatile emotions. The structure of the movie also works against it; again, this may be Styron’s fault. The revelation of Sophie’s choice near the end is clearly intended to shatter the audience. Imagine having to choose which of your children will go to the gas chamber! But by then we have seen Streep “confess” so many times (and in deliberately greyed 1930's Agfa colour-film flashbacks, with subtitles, yet) that one more confession just doesn’t make any difference.
Perhaps a shorter movie would have worked better. Perhaps we would have had greater involvement if we’d known Sophie’s secret at the beginning. The movie would then have built its plot on just how and when the secret was revealed in the USA. As Hitchcock pointed out, there’s a vast difference between suspense and surprise. ** (2002)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) (Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard; D: Blake Edwards) Party girl Holly Golightly wants to marry a rich man, poor struggling writer Paul Varshak wants to marry Holly. That’s the premise. Along the way we meet Holly’s former husband from a former life (played by Buddy Ebsen), an ugly rich American, a handsome rich Brazilian, a wife (Patricia Neal) who likes to keep poor struggling writers in fancy apartments, and an assortment of caricatures. Plus a cat with no name (who I’m sure became Morris the advertising cat in later lives).
Fun and funny, a fantasy in which the girl gets the right guy despite herself. Audrey’s clothes are wonderful, George Peppard’s eyes are a brilliant blue, the acting is just good enough to make the story work, and as long as you don’t dig too deeply for plausible motivations, it’s a pleasing enough entertainment.
Edwards is not a first rank director, and one wonders what Billy Wilder could have done with this material. Edwards likes sight gags and crude satire too much, which works fine when he does Pink Panther movies, but doesn’t quite work here. A social comedy must stay tightly focused, for it needs a precise balance between character and setting. Digressions into satire and farce spoil this balance. Moon River comes from this movie; it’s a song that seems to belong to the thirties or earlier. **½ (2002)
The Lord of the Rings I: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) [D: Peter Jackson. Ian McKellen, Elijah Wood] I watched this because Grandson Jonathan noticed the VHS tape on the shelf. I have no idea how well Jackson follows or interprets Tolkien’s books. I found them unreadable. Long-winded, detailed, world-inventing fantasy caters to a very personal taste: Tolkien’s happens not to be mine.
But the movie is three hours of long-winded, detailed, and world-inventing fun. It’s not especially moving, in fact some of the solemnities seem to me to parody and satirise the medieval chivalric romance conventions, but a willing suspension of disbelief is enough to ensure a pleasurable time. The actors are obviously enjoying their over-the-top roles. I especially liked Ian McKellen as Gandalf, and Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins.
It was the first time I watched this movie. I bought it thinking I’d wait for all three parts. It’s good enough that now I’ll buy the whole series on DVD. And I'll probably watch this part again: I prefer high definition. But I disagree with most raters, I give it only *** (out of four). (2002)
To Please a Lady (1950) [D: Clarence Brown. Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck] An old-fashioned romance, competently made, and with good race car stuff for the guys (who after all squired their ladies to these confections). Gable plays a race car driver who’s been accused of cutting off competitors, which led to crashes and death. Stanwyck plays a muck-raking columnist with a tough reputation. After the usual plot twists, they finally get together, after Stanwyck has been chastened by the news that one of her targets has committed suicide, and Gable has been injured after giving ground to a competitor. Kiss and fade out.
What’s charming about this movie how it uses all the usual cliches, and how the stars, both competent actors, make them sound fresh and meaningful. Undemanding in every way, just right for shopping & a matinee with the girlfriends, or an evening out for couple who were more interested in each other than the screen. I liked the way the closeups on the technical details of the gear in preparation for the Big Race echoed the preparation of the knight for his joust. **
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) [D: Otto Preminger. Frank Sinatra, Kim Novak, Eleanor Parker] A movie controversial in its day for scenes that are tame in comparison to what’s routinely shown on TV dramas these days. But it still packs a punch: Frankie Machine’s attempts to avoid being drawn back into the seedy world of illegal poker and drugs are well drawn and well acted. True, the acting style, characterisation, photography, and pacing are very much of their time: Watching the movie on DVD in one’s living room isn’t the same as watching it a 1950s movie theatre. Back then, movies were slower, the acting broader, the plots simpler. Still, the movie works: Frankie is a man with dreams that he can’t fulfill. A combination of virtues (he feels obligated to look after the girl who was lamed in an auto accident he caused), old habits and relationships, and exploitation of his weaknesses by unscrupulous crooks conspire to destroy him. But a bit of luck saves him, and he walks off with his new girl, not into the sunset, but out of the darkness of Chicago’s lower East side. Sinatra was deservedly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his work in this movie. The title music became a hit. **½
The Dresser (1985) [D: Peter Yates. Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay] Based on a play by Ron Harwood, dresser of Sir Donald Wolfit, an actor-manager of some reputation from the 1930s to the early 1960s. I have no idea how accurately Harwood portrays Wolfit, but the script has the ring of truth. Courtenay and Finney give astonishing performances, which make the movie worth seeing, but once is enough. The story’s simple: A small theatre company on tour during WW2 fetches up in a northern town. “Sir” becomes ill, but refuses to stay in the hospital. Norman, his dresser, cajoles and bullies him into playing Lear. After the performance, Sir dies. The unromantic facts about theatre as a trade or craft are well portrayed, there are hints of tangled relationships among the company, but the focus is on the actor-manager and his dresser. There are glimpses of Sir’s performance both from the front and backstage. Good stuff. The movie/play’s a study of two characters, but in the end it’s unsatisfactory. I didn’t feel that I knew Sir and Norman well enough: the characterisation is thin, constrained and limited by the focus on the last one and a half days of Sir’s life. **½
The Train (1964) [D: John Frankenheimer. Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau] Railroad inspector and Resistance cell leader Labiche (Lancaster) is drawn into a plot to prevent a Wehrmacht Colonel (Scofield) from stealing hundreds of paintings. The sabotage is ingenious, the heroics plausible, the Colonel believable. Many people die, and of course the Colonel loses the match. The movie feels shorter than its 2 hours and 13 minutes, the photography (black and white) is very good. The characters are a little thin, but one rarely needs to suspend disbelief. The story was suggested by a real incident: the Wehrmacht did try to remove a trainload of stolen paintings, but the Resistance used paperwork to prevent the departure of the train. That would have made a comedy, not an action movie.
This is the second time I’ve seen the movie, and this time round a question nagged at me: Is a painting, or any artwork, worth a human life? There was a time when I hesitated answering this question. It seemed to me to be a real question, as if human lives and art works were measured by the same scale. They’re not.
Great artworks of the past are extant mostly because of luck. For most known art makers, we also know of works that didn’t survive. Are these irreparable losses? Yes and no. It’s a pity we don’t have more plays by Sophocles, for example; and that probably half of Vermeer’s works have disappeared. But there are other paintings, other plays, other poems. There will be many more in the future. There’s no point bewailing lost works: we’ll never experience them, and feeling sentimental about them will merely distract attention from what is there for us to admire and wonder at. For each of us, some of these works will be soul food. Be glad if you come across these.
A movie worth watching. ***
Gunga Din (1939) [D: George Stevens. Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Sam Jaffe.] Derring-do on the Northwest Frontier, where a nasty cult of Kali plans to destroy the local British army garrison, and then sweep across India. Our heroes stop it, at the cost of Gunga Din’s life. A formula mix of humour, action, and a surprising amount of sentiment. Well filmed, thin story, a Western set in India. One cliche after another, nicely paced. This movie was apparently something of a classic in its own time, but its main interest these days is as an almost perfect example of the Hollywood “actioner”, and a reminder of how Hollywood put in bits to please all segments of the audience. I liked it, but more as a specimen of something rare and strange than as a movie. **½
I’ve Loved You So Long (2008) [D: Philippe Claudel. Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Sylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius] A woman is released into the custody of her sister after spending fifteen years in prison for the murder of her son. That’s the premise of this movie, but what Claudel has built on it is a story of love and redemption. I won’t spoil the story for you. Thomas does an astonishing job, her acting is a tour de force of understatement that reveals a character and her history until we feel totally engaged in her grief and (finally) her glimmers of hope. The supporting actors are brought along by that performance, so that we believe in their increasing self-knowledge and their changes in attitude, too. The movie demonstrates that the most gripping drama is what unfolds within a person. But I know that many people will think it’s too slow and that nothing happens. Highly recommended. ****
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