Thoughts on... The Long Riders (1980)

The Long Riders, 1980.

Directed by Walter Hill.
Starring James Keach, Stacy Keach, David Carradine, Keith Carradine, Robert Carradine, Randy Quaid, Dennis Quaid, Christopher Guest, Nicholas Guest, James Remar and Savannah Smith Boucher.


SYNOPSIS:

The story of the legendary bank raids of the James-Younger Gang.


Last year saw the end of Bin Laden and Gaddafi, and a curious morbidity in certain circles made bloodthirsty calls for pictures of the corpses, the likes of which haven’t been seen since the days of the old West. Back when photographs of bullet-ridden cadavers sold for the price of a keepsake locket, there was one man the collectors wanted to see dead more than any other. Schooled by Quantrill’s Raiders in the probably-not-that-noble art of bushwhacking, his name, of course, was Jesse James.

For the James-Younger gang, Missouri after the Civil War was a mess of unsettled old scores. Knocking off Union-owned banks, trains and stagecoaches, their crime spree certainly started as a way of getting back at the government, but there are only so many “permanent loans” you can take from the Rock Island Line before people get wise to your tricks and start putting timelocks on their safes.

Right. No more history cliffnotes. On with the gunslinging and the heart-wringing. That, more than anything, is what The Long Riders concerns itself with. Director Walter Hill certainly points out the historical landmarks, but we quickly sail past, headed for solid storytelling and gripping set pieces instead. His visual style, at least in the shootouts (sooo many shootouts), owes more than a little to Sam Peckinpah. Hill goes as far as he can for as long as he dares to make us feel every bullet rip through every man in the climactic Northfield Bank sequence. History tells us they had it coming all along; Hill makes us wish it didn’t have to be like this.

The Long Riders does hold together on its own merits, if only because we believe that these men are brothers. For a film chiefly about notorious, troubled families, Hill made the obvious, if somewhat ambitious decision to cast four sets of brothers as four sets of brothers. We get the Keachs, the Carradines, the Quaids and the Guests, probably the biggest collection of acting brothers in one film since Duck Soup. The simple fact that various groups of men look like each other is our way into the film.

By sheer virtue of the men it chooses to tell a story about, The Long Riders earns itself considerable familiarity with us. After the briefest of title sequences set to Ry Cooder’s rootsy, award-winning bluegrass score, we jump straight into the middle of a bank robbery with the gang. We know them, the locals know them, and, in their way, they respect them. After a century and a half of outlaw ballads, dime-store novels and Hollywood westerns bearing his name, Jesse James and his gang have become the men who need no introduction.

This film, like so many other westerns of the eighties, has been allowed to slip under the radar for too long. It was a genre going out of fashion at the time, with only the odd flash of brilliance like Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider to remind everyone just how cool gunslingers could be. Any western fan who rates The Wild Bunch or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford would do well to take advantage of this tantalising glimpse into the past lives of America’s most wanted men, played by one of the most fascinating cast ensembles you’ll ever see in Stetsons.

James Keach doesn’t play up to the usual cool and collected persona, showing up more of Jesse James’ violent temper and hypocritical tendencies than any hints of heroism. Then there’s David Carradine as Cole Younger, the cunning, blunt-mannered desperado. He’s coming to terms with his strange attachment to a prostitute with ambition (a supremely feisty Pamela Reed), which involves quite a lot of gambling and knife fights. Stacy Keach and his scene-stealing moustache comprise Frank James, a man fighting against his restless nature and a nagging feeling that he should have outgrown this lifestyle a long time ago.

It’s all compelling stuff, played with finesse and subtlety, but the sparse, episodic structure of The Long Riders feels more like a network TV series reaching the end of its run than a feature film. There’s a handful of stories here that might have panned out beautifully, if they hadn’t been boxed into a 100 minutes of screen time. Spread out over a six part series, who knows, it might’ve been bigger. Or maybe Jesse James was big enough when he was still alive, and no film is long enough or ambitious enough to hold him. Then again, the same could be said about Stacy Keach’s moustache. Spinoff series? Spinoff series.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

Movie Review - Goon (2011)

Goon, 2011.

Directed by Michael Dowse.
Starring Sean William Scott, Jay Baruchel, Alison Pill, Liev Schreiber, Kim Coates and Eugene Levy.


SYNOPSIS:

A bouncer undergoes a change of career to become the star enforcer of an underachieving ice hockey team.


Let’s get the Rocky reference out of the way to begin with. It’s a sports film, so of course Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is an underdog. Let’s not kid ourselves calling him ‘differently intelligent’, this man is a doofus of the first order. Mr Robert Balboa practically ranks as an Oxbridge candidate in comparison. Frankly, comparisons are unfair and irrelevant in this case. Goon isn’t shooting for the stars; it’s diving for the gutter and splashing around down there so joyfully you can’t help but develop a kind of admiration for it.

We’ll stick with the word ‘doofus’ for Doug. It fits his particular mindset beautifully. The man’s an idiot built like a brick shithouse – but he has no pretensions to being anything else. He’s been working security duty for his local bar, and he’s not terribly proud of it. Neither are his wonderfully Jewish parents (Eugene Levy and Ellen David), who would dearly have loved to have another doctor son. Like Doug’s brother Ira. Except not gay like Ira.

Doug unwinds watching a nice, relaxing, brutal game of minor league ice hockey with Ryan, his best friend (Jay Baruchel). Ryan is never one to keep his thoughts to himself, and good god does he have a lot of thoughts. Many of them about cock. He aims one too many cock jokes at a hockey player in the penalty box and very nearly gets the beating he so richly deserves. Lucky for Ryan (and the story), Doug steps in and headbutts the player so hard the man’s helmet cracks in half.

An offer to join the local team as an enforcer follows. He impresses the coach with his natural instinct for brute force, and he’s transferred to the semi-pro league. Doug is soon swept up into the team dynamic, dedicated to ‘protecting’ his team, even if they can’t win a match to save their lives. It works for us too; an audience who have never so much as glanced at an ice hockey match their whole lives soon grasp the fundamentals of the game, so far as they’re important to the story.

Goon isn’t very different at all to NHL ice hockey. Both of them are really all about the fights. We don’t see authorised bare knuckle fighting this side of the pond (it’s illegal), but in America the fisticuffs is part and parcel of the whole appeal of the game. Coach Hortense (Kim Coates) offers a more...concise definition to his team: “This. Is not. Fucking. BASEBALL.”

This film lures you into the hockey bloodlust in spite of yourself. After all, on an academic level, most of us would be with Eugene Levy, warning Doug of the long-term effects involved in repeated blows to the head. To director Michael Dowse’s credit, these are very believable blows. You can practically hear the teeth cracking in their mouths when Glatt jabs them in the jaw. Seriously, there are so many punches to the face through the course of this hockey season, you wonder how it is that the main supporting character isn’t a dentist.

So we buy the violence; the cracked teeth, the blood on the ice, that all feels real and we like some things to feel real in comedy. But why do we like Doug ‘The Thug’ Glatt? Again, Eugene ‘Voice of Reason’ Levy points out that ‘Thug’ isn’t the greatest nickname to have. Doug is essentially beating people up for a living, but because it’s in a sporting context, this is deemed exciting and satisfying. That can’t be his appeal. Liev Schrieber’s character does the same thing, and he’s a professional bastard, no question about it.

Perhaps it’s because we see Doug take just as much as he dishes out. You don’t grow up to own a skull that cracks a guy’s knuckles without taking your fair share of beatings. He doesn’t moan or sob about going home with a black eye or two at the end of a game. His team-mate LaFlamme (Marc-André Grondin) does, but he’s something of a whining nancy all the way through. Doug has a little more dignity. Sometimes. When he’s not trying to play hockey.

Eva (Alison Pill) has a lot to do with this. Finally snagging a proper supporting role after scene-stealing stints in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Midnight in Paris, Pill takes Eva to very interesting places. Eva already has a boyfriend, but she falls for the big doofus so quickly it frightens her. It kills her to mess him around, but she is genuinely torn. You’ve seen films before, you know who she’ll choose. It’s just that Pill does such an excellent job convincing us we’re wrong.

Goon isn’t the best it could be. Jay Baruchel and Evan Goldberg have written a fairly solid script, true. What is also true is that Baruchel couldn't resist writing himself an entirely superfluous role, amounting to little more than a cheerleader with Tourette’s. These writers were conscientious enough not to shoehorn in a forgiveness n’ hugs scene with Doug’s parents. They gave Liev Schreiber a believable aging hard man character. So why leave us in a cinema with a character like Ryan for 90 minutes?

Fortunately enough, Ryan all but disappears by the second act. Seann William Scott and Alison Pill take over as the far more convincing couple. Maybe it’s the massive size difference, maybe Pill just epitomises the kind of girl who can’t resist a 3-day beard, but you can’t knock these two onscreen together.

There’s a touching scene about 40 minutes in, as Eva tells Doug there’s no chance for them to be together, where Dowse tries something fairly brave. He pulls out Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma (None Shall Sleep)’. This could have been bombastic or overblown (take your pick); it’s not exactly a subtle sort of aria. Strangely though, it feels right. It hits us where it hurts for the right reasons, not for cheap ironic giggles, but for sincere, well-earned pathos. An unexpected, but very welcome feeling in the middle of a hockey fight comedy. More surprises like this, please.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

DVD Review - The Brigand of Kandahar (1965)

The Brigand of Kandahar, 1965.

Directed by John Gilling.
Starring Ronald Lewis, Oliver Reed, Duncan Lamont, Yvonne Romain and Katherine Woodville.


SYNOPSIS:

A mixed race lieutenant joins the rebel Bengali tribesmen in an offensive against the British forces in India.


Afghanistan’s a tough one. Hard to know what to make of it all, whichever way you look at it. Whether by design or by happy accident, The Brigand of Kandahar has a lot in common with its wild, war-torn setting. The blurbs and the captions call it the North West frontier of India, but for anyone with a map or even a smudge of an inkling of what the British Raj got up to in the 1850s, that translates directly to the borders of that same country the British Army are still trying to tame a century and a half later.

A blast of heroic trumpet fanfare and we’re already in Ripping Yarns territory. Not a terrific start for something that wants us to take it seriously. British officers strut about with the usual scrambled egg dangling off their uniforms. A hot naked affair is the talk of the fort, between a half-caste and a married woman, no less. Enter Lieutenant Robert Case (Ronald Lewis): he’s risen through the ranks, blacked up for the part, displays a convincing stiff upper lip and a semi-permanent Stick It Up Your Arse Sir facial expression. After a nice soapy bath and some blackmail, Elsa (Katherine Woodville) is persuaded that this sort of hot naked affair won’t do in a British regiment, what what, and that Case should be swiftly dumped.

Case has no sooner returned from helplessly watching his best friend be captured by rebels than he’s up in front of a court martial for running away instead of heading up a one-man Charge of the Light Brigade. Colonel Drewe (Duncan Lamont) strips him of his rank and freedom, and Case has lost everything worthwhile in his life in the same amount of time it takes to boil an egg. He’s soon fallen in with the notorious Eli Khan (Oliver Reed), leader of the rebels, scourge of the British, owner of this film’s fanciest turban.

Oliver Reed never fails to fascinate; he takes palpable delight in goading Lewis’ character, daring him to defy his word at every turn, teasing him with the idea of a position of power that he never truly has. Khan fights to free his people from the British invaders. Noble enough, perhaps, but he also takes a perverse pleasure in the suffering of his scarred, crippled prisoners, and he makes certain Case knows there’s not a thing he can do to stop him. That intimidating and unpredictable nature gives Reed plenty to play around with in this story, as the tension between Case and Khan finally snaps, and one man walks away with more than he bargained for.

On a practical level, The Brigand of Kandahar does what it sets out to do, telling a tale of adventure with a fair few layers of drama lurking beneath to surprise and fascinate. The period costumes work effortlessly, rich with blood reds, burnished golds and deep ocean blues. It really is a very fancy turban Reed’s had picked out for him here.

Story-wise, director/writer Gilling has come on leaps and bounds since The Scarlet Blade; with his characters freed up from traditional, one-dimensional hero/villain roles, they becomes hard to define. Khan and Drewe are as good and bad as each other, faithful to their cause however many human lives it costs. Glyn Houston’s fiery journalist tries a righteous sort of summing up of the tragedy of Robert Case, but it seems so much more than he can throw at Colonel Drewe’s feet.

Gilling’s women aren’t so wishy washy, either. Elsa is so sure she’s right about Case’s villainous nature, it almost breaks her to see the man is actually struggling to keep a moral centre in a den of thieves and habitual killers. Khan’s sister Ratina, so icy and aloof to begin with, is surprised with herself to find she’s taken with this strange ally. She can’t admit the kind of passion she has for him until it’s too late.

Whilst there’s no denying The Brigand of Kandahar is a step forward in the right direction, those big pitched battle scenes are still looking very stock-footage-y, and there’s no mistaking a polystyrene mountain pass when it’s that brightly lit. You have to adopt the mindset of a classic Doctor Who fan, looking past the shortcomings of a piecemeal budget and wobbly set dressing to the genuinely intriguing story hidden within.

Some shortcomings are harder to ignore than others. That dippy fanfare for the British springs to mind. Then of course there’s the blacking-up. It’s no reflection on an excellent cast, but you do find yourself staring at Reed and Lewis in full make-up, wondering exactly what they were thinking. Mercifully, it’s not quite like watching One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing and cringing at every nuance of Peter Ustinov’s performance; they don’t attempt daft accents, after all. They’re British-educated characters, so we mostly buy it. Still, blacking up? Could’ve sworn that stopped being acceptable about fifteen minutes into The Jazz Singer.

Gilling is trying, though. He’s asking tough questions and giving away no easy answers. Is Case trapped by circumstances, or just afraid to make decisions outside of the heat of battle? Whose side should he be on, the hypocritical army that raised him, or the bloodthirsty rebels who accept him without question as one of their own? Little by little, these questions start to chip away at his conscience, as he’s backed further and further into a corner, surrounded by enemies on all sides. Maybe he has more friends than he realises, but you’d have to give this a watch to find out who they are.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

DVD Review - The Scarlet Blade (1963)

The Scarlet Blade, 1963.

Directed by John Gilling.
Starring Jack Hedley, Lionel Jeffries, Oliver Reed, June Thorburn and Michael Ripper.


SYNOPSIS:

The daughter of an anti-royalist loyal to Oliver Cromwell falls for the Scarlet Blade - a dashing Robin Hood figure leading the Royalist rebels.


Civil Wars aren’t the most sensible of affairs at the best of times. Americans at least got some square-jawed heroes out of it all, to the point where a film has actually been made about Abraham Lincoln moonlighting as a vampire hunter. So what do we have to match that? We’ve got Prince Charles II heroically hiding in a tree from some soldiers. This is probably the most famous single act of the English Civil War, and probably also the reason cinema has largely ignored this entire period of English history.

Hence the imaginary hero of The Scarlet Blade, about a Robin Hood type (Jack Hedley) who organises guerrilla-style raids on villainous Parliamentarian forces to effect daring escapes for noble Royalists. That’s about as deep as Edward Beverley (or Ed Bev, which is much catchier) gets, so he can step aside for a minute and make room for the reason everybody’s here: Oliver Reed.

With twice the screen time and ten times the charisma and intrigue of Ed Bev, Reed’s Captain Sylvester hardly even needs to raise an eyebrow to upstage our hero. He embodies a certain wry, morally ambiguous air; other characters always seem on edge around him, completely unable to read him. A scarred, jaded, brutal pirate of a soldier, Sly pretty much sides with anyone he feels like, and with a personality vacuum at the centre of our plot, we almost find ourselves siding with him.

The Judds are the only other notable characters, comprising a gruff Parliamentarian Colonel (Lionel Jeffries) and his flaky secret Royalist daughter Clare (Jane Thorburn). We’re peddled a sort of forbidden romance between Clare and Ed Bev, but, like a blob of fluffy blu-tac thrown at a wall, it never quite sticks. Sly has changed sides in the hopes of seeing some action from Clare, so when this limp-wristed love affair comes to his attention, he changes straight back and captures Ed Bev for some light torture and a spot of dungeon gloating.

Oliver Reed might have just about saved his credibility through The Scarlet Blade, but it’s no thanks to John Gilling’s writing and direction, apparently living ten years behind every other film-maker of the time. Fair enough, Hammer couldn’t muster the kind of budget Zulu was boasting, but it’s no excuse for a story burdened with stagey, repetitive skirmishes and a priest hole that effectively functions like a revolving door for anyone who feels like sneaking into Colonel Judd’s base of operations.

The much-lauded betrayals involve some back-and-forth rescues and raids, and a criminally squandered ‘ambush on an ambush’ scene. But Gilling’s most squandered asset has to be Oliver Reed.

Throughout his career, Reed was a prodigious drinker and renowned bar brawler. He’d invented his own patented drinking game ‘head butting’, in which participants smashed their heads against each other until one collapsed or surrendered. He spiked Mark Lester’s coke with vodka. Bear in mind, Mark Lester was 10 years old and playing Oliver Twist at the time. This was a man you completely believed could and would fuck you up at a moment’s notice. So why waste him in a role where he is almost pointedly restrained from any significant act that might affect the plot?

It’s not even this pointless oversight that spoils The Scarlet Blade in the end. It’s the failure to deliver on the promise of the title. To all appearances, this might seem to be a Scaramouche or Scarlet Pimpernel-style historical swashbuckler. Not so. Ed Bev fits in a few swish, swish, click clicks with the Roundhead stooges, but there’s never any sense of danger or theatrics. It’s even more of a failure because any fan of Hammer films knows that their best efforts were a triumph of expertly-timed theatrics, rich with shadows and foreboding. Making this film exciting and daring and full of suspense was hardly beyond Hammer’s grasp. For shame, Hammer. Dracula is probably turning in one of his many graves at the very thought of it.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

Five Essential... Hollywood Remakes (The Remake)

Simon Moore selects his Five Essential Hollywood Remakes...

Remakes are easy targets. Anyone who wants to make Tim Burton cry, for instance, need only whisper ‘Planet of the Apes’ in his pale, elfin ear. Even seeing Conan the Barbarian rehashed with an Easter Island statue in the title role gets film buffs nostalgic for Arnie’s bouncing biceps. Bear in mind though, if you go to see a film about a guy in a loincloth, you’re getting all the homoerotic mental images you deserve.

Ho there, pilgrim. Let’s be sensible here. Conan is only the tip of the iceberg. The absolute worst remakes are like the worst sequels; it’s the same old story, same old beats, usually even the same bloody sets if they can manage it. So it follows that the remakes that work... aren’t remakes at all. They start over. They look at the whole story in a new light. If you know the original you can spot the similarities here and there, but somehow those beat checklists become irrelevant. The new film has become something else entirely. Inventive. Inspirational. Incomparable.


The Mummy (1999, dir. Stephen Sommers), remake of The Mummy (1932, dir. Karl Freund)

1926. An ancient evil is awakened because some British types get a bit giddy in the city of the dead and start reading hieroglyphs aloud. Now a decrepid, malevolent mummy is putting himself back together by stealing body parts from glorified grave robbers. And only a gun-toting American, a foxy librarian and her Hooray Henry brother can stop it. Bedouin George Harrison lends a hand too.

Everybody saw this. It was high spirited slapstick; it was jaw-dropping horror; it was Indiana Jones for the ‘90s with pyramids and curses and a foxy Egyptologist. Sommers took Freund’s original stark, slow-release horror and gave it a new lease of life, introducing some of the first really convincing CGI sequences in a live-action film at the same time. Tell me you weren’t completely blown away by that sandstorm shaped like Imhotep’s face chasing a biplane through the Saharan desert. Go on. I dare you.


Outland (1981, dir. Peter Hyams), remake of High Noon (1952, Fred Zinnemann)

How do you top Gary Cooper facing down dusty, sweaty goons in the New Mexico desert? Easy. Don’t go back to the desert. Go to the moons of Jupiter, and hire Sean Connery as your Marshal. Marshal William T. O’Neil. He spots a connection between three recent deaths in the mining colony, and he smells a cover up. Nobody on the colony but a crabby doctor will so much as give O’Neil the time of day, so it’s up to him to fight off assassins and corrupt officials with nothing but his wits and a shotgun.

Hyams isolates O’Neil totally; the only light is artificial; his world is the claustrophobic white corridors inside, or the vast infinities of nothingness outside. It takes a hell of an actor to rivet our eyes to one man for nearly two hours of screentime. Luckily, Sean Connery happens to be the first entry in the dictionary under ‘badass’. Now you know why he wasn’t in Alien. He’d have let John Hurt have both barrels before he even started feeling queasy at the dinner table.


True Grit (2010, dir Joel and Ethan Coen), remake of True Grit (1969, dir. Henry Hathaway)

This one threw us for a loop. The Coen brothers remake a John Wayne classic? Except that, no, they didn’t. They squeezed right past John Wayne back to the original Charles Portis novel, immersing us in Indian Territory and eyepatches and aggressive horse trading, to astounding effect. This film is shot through with the puritanical and the profane, the extremes Americans have lived and died by for centuries, never more so than in the Wild West.

You know the story, mostly. Revenge and a precocious girl named Mattie Ross. Rooster Cogburn is a drunk and a slob and probably the most honourable human being little Mattie Ross will ever meet, if she lives to be a hundred. True Grit is everything it ever promised it would be; it’s Biblical blood and thunder and it’s friendship tested to limits this crusty old marshal never knew he had. Fun as John Wayne was, there was never half as much danger and strangeness as the night the Coens came to town.


The Thief of Bagdad (1940, dir. Alexander Korda et al), remake of The Thief of Bagdad (1924, dir. Raoul Walsh)

You read that right. This remake con is nothing new, not by a long chalk. Still, in the 40s, sound and certainly colour were new. Douglas Fairbanks’ silent version was all good and thrilling, but firebrand producer Alexander Korda was much more ambitious. Nothing could stop this man. Don’t like the director? Hire five more. London Blitz hampering production schedule? Move the shoot to America.

Even today, The Thief of Bagdad seems light years ahead of its time. It takes such an obvious and infectious joy in its fantastic story, the viewer can’t help but be swept along. It’s got it all; adventure, flying carpets, palaces that stretch on forever, true love, and a giant spider in the heart of a Buddha statue in a mountain-top temple. It’s a whole other world, ablaze with Technicolor, trilling with the clashes and flashes of daring swordplay and the genie of the lamp laughing fit to burst a man’s eardrums. They’ve remade it again a dozen times since, but for ambition and sheer madness aforethought, Korda’s version is the one that goes down in history.


A Fistful of Dollars (1964, dir. Sergio Leone), remake of Yojimbo (1961, dir. Akira Kurosawa)

Chances are you’ve seen one and never knew the other even existed. Yojimbo (Japanese for ‘Bodyguard’) is the culmination of Kurosawa’s fascination with films of the West. For anyone starting out on Kurosawa, or even Japanese film, it’s probably the most accessible film to jump in on. Sergio Leone seemed to think so too. But, he decided, it needed more Clint Eastwood. And the soundtrack, that needs to be weirder, simpler, better than anything anyone’s done before.

And so he made A Fistful of Dollars; a wry, brutal film, smeared head to toe in blood and trail dust, swathed in the rattling, snarling, stirring electric opera of Ennio Morricone’s music. Westerns were dangerous again. They were bigger, cooler, dirtier than ever. The soundtrack mixed whip cracks, whistles and Fender Stratocasters into something bold and exciting and different.

So Leone poached the story from Kurosawa, who (possibly) poached it from Dashiell Hammett. Okay, slightly lazy and a bit sneaky. On the other hand, A Fistful of Dollars and the films it inspired changed the landscape of cinema throughout the 20th century and beyond. So maybe remakes don’t deserve their usual sweeping dismissal after all. It doesn’t matter whether we call it a re-imagining or a re-visitation or a re-gurgitation, the question we ask is the same of any film – is it worth 90 minutes of my time? The answer given, of course, is the same as always: you won’t know until you watch it.


Check out the original Five Essential Hollywood Remakes here.


Agree? Disagree? We'd love to hear your thoughts on the list...

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

Essentials Archive

Ten Films To Possibly Maybe Get Excited About In 2012

Simon Moore explores ten of 2012's potential cinematic highlights...

2011 is almost over. This is a fact. Calendars will back me up on this. So sooner or later you will have to deal with this. Films for the rest of this year look to be the sticky, syrupy Christmassy sort. We are now scraping the bottom of the barrel. Unless of course Happy Feet Two happens to change the face of cinema forever with its gritty reboot of penguin dance crazes.

Not holding my breath.

So, 2012 is where we look to now; where the promise of new films that may or may not sound credibly entertaining still holds true. Behold, I offer you some films to possibly maybe get excited about in the year ahead...

The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists (a.k.a The Pirates! Band of Misfits)
Released 28th March
Directed by Peter Lord & Jeff Newitt

Probably the most fun anyone will have with their trousers on in the new year. The trailer that isn’t a charming little song tells us there’s a band of misfit pirates trying to win the coveted Pirate of the Year award. Queen Victoria hates pirates. Charles Darwin is fascinated with the Pirate Captain’s ‘parrot’. There’s a monkey butler with his own cue cards, and a Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate.

It is, of course, Aardman animation behind it all, the creators of Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. An all-star cast (which usually spells trouble) look very promising, as even Hugh Grant plays against fumbly rom-com type for once to shiver his timbers as the Pirate Captain.


Porco Rosso: The Last Sortie (Kurenai no buta 2)
Released 2012 Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

Not a lot known about this one, save the phenomenon of its existence. Studio Ghibli aren’t really much for sequels, but Hayao Miyazaki has mentioned in interview that he wants to return to animating everyone’s favourite flying pig. Porco is much older now, somehow caught up in the Spanish Civil War. Now we hope against hope that Miyazaki isn’t just having us on.

The Dictator
Released 18th May Directed by Larry Charles

Again, no trailer yet, only the promise of the funny to come. Sacha Baron Cohen teams up once more with his Borat director Larry Charles to tell ‘the heroic story of a dictator who risk his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.’ With a logline like that, and a picture of Cohen in costume that makes him look like a cross between Colonel Gaddafi and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, this looks to be a welcome return to form after the disappointment of Brüno.


John Carter
Released 9th March Directed by Andrew Stanton

Okay, it’s a Disney film. That is something that may count against it, but it is also Pixar’s first venture into live action. What’s more, on the strength of the latest trailer, this adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Princess of Mars novel looks nothing short of powerful. They haven’t slipped into the usual trailer trap of agitated choirs and orchestral stabs; we’ve got a classy Peter Gabriel song that builds just the right kind of mystic Martian atmosphere this material needs.

Quick story sum-up: Taylor Kitsch plays an American Civil War veteran somehow transported to Mars, held prisoner by giants and roped into fighting another senseless war. As a bonus, nobody as yet has told him he’s their ‘only hope’ or the ‘chosen one’. If this is a trap, the cheese is looking pretty tasty right now.


The Iron Lady
Released 6th January Directed by Phyllida Lloyd

An odd one here. Not sure whether we’re supposed to sympathise with Margaret Thatcher’s struggle to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of politics, or with Meryl Streep’s struggle to keep up that horrific accent. Thatcher’s a big ask for a British audience’s sympathy, so it’s hard to tell if Phyllida Lloyd is aiming for an Elizabeth-type biography of a strong woman or a Nixon-type tragedy of power in the wrong hands. Either one is still going to feature Meryl ‘Mamma Mia’ Streep, so proceed with caution.


The Woman in Black
Released 10th February Directed by James Watkins

More huge expectations, given this is based on the supremely terrifying book by Susan Hill. It’s about a young lawyer, haunted by a strange woman as he tries to put a dead client’s estate in order. Some impressive cinematography and a seasoned horror director inspire confidence, but it’s the surprise lead who must prove himself here.

This is Daniel Radcliffe’s first role for some years away from his Harry Potter comfort zone. Whether he nails it or not, we’ll have to wait and see. We can but hope he doesn’t drift back into Exploring Yet Another Secret Part of Hogwarts autopilot. You’re a lawyer, Harry...


Brave
Released 17th August Directed by Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman

Technically, there should be three or four ‘r’s in that title, in keeping with the gloriously Scottish setting. Pixar’s first female-led feature sees the tomboyish Princess Merida (Kelly MacDonald) defying custom and her humongous father in a bid to make her own way in the world.

We can count on seeing bears of all sizes, ominous monoliths and kilts flapping in the wind, and, given Pixar’s track record, some sights to stick in your mind for years to come. Count in Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson and Robbie Coltrane, and you have spring and summer 2012 belonging to one Pixar Incorporated.


The Avengers
Released 27th April Directed by Joss Whedon

“If we can’t protect the Earth, you can be damn sure we’ll avenge it.” Yeah, thanks Iron Man. Inspiring words there. So what does the trailer tell us those half a dozen Marvel films have thus far only hinted and winked at? The Avengers desperately wants to be sharp and witty, we know this much. Heroic writer/director/comics fan Joss Whedon has risen to the challenge by....referencing what each character does. Thor is grumpy. Captain America is also grumpy. Iron Man says things quickly and that makes them funny. Black Widow wears a catsuit. Hulk is big and green. Nick Fury has an eyepatch. Hawkeye...fires arrows? Expect gushing reviews about the special effects, is what I’m saying.


Snow White and the Huntsman
Released 1st June Directed by Rupert Sanders

Next up for the Gritty Reboot treatment is the centuries-old fairytale of Snow White, passing over other ripe Disney candidates like Flubber and Mary Poppins. Never mind, this looks gorgeous, if pushing their limits a bit with Charlize Theron’s questionable Historical Accent.

Kristen Stewart proved she can act outside of Twilight office hours with 2010’s The Runaways, so there’s every chance this could be a credible, thrilling new take on a classic story. If nothing else, it’ll have Mirror Mirror to make it look good by comparison.

P.S. If you are even vaguely tempted to check out the Mirror Mirror trailer, be warned: Julia Roberts. That is all I will say.


The Dark Knight Rises
Released 20th July Directed by Christopher Nolan

In the immortal words of the Bisto advert, one must always save the best to last. In fact, do I even need to say anything about this one? You already know you’re going to see this. I know it, you know it, Batman knows it. He knows everything. Come on, keep up.

Despite this, Batfans seem fraught with panic that somehow Nolan will fuck up a franchise he saved from a decade of rubber-nippled purgatory. You know what, I think he’ll manage. Scratch that, he’ll more than manage, he’ll ace it. Given the incredible job he’s done re-establishing Ra’s Al Ghul and Joker as plausible, threatening villains, I can’t see him slipping up with Catwoman and Bane, can you?

What films are you most looking forward to in 2012? Let us know in the comments below...

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

Thoughts on... The 39 Steps (1935)

The 39 Steps, 1935.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Starring Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle, Peggy Ashcroft and Wylie Watson.


SYNOPSIS:

Wrongfully accused of the murder of a counterespionage agent, a man (Robert Donat) must go on the run to clear his name whilst preventing a spy ring from stealing top secret information.


"Clear out, Hannay! They'll get you next..."

With these words on her lips and a knife in her back, Annabella Smith, spy for hire, dies. Richard Hannay (Robert Donat), the man who put her up for the night, is now in mortal danger. From here on, The 39 Steps continues to shift up gears into a breathlessly paced thriller, often imitated, never bettered.

Crucially, Hitchcock doesn’t cheat with rapid-fire edits to get the audiences’ pulses pumping. Scenes are played out to their natural length, teasing out real tension from everyday occurences, planting us so firmly in Hannay’s shoes we can practically feel the patent leather pinching our toes.

Adapted from John Buchan’s novel, this is Hitchcock’s original “innocent man on the run” story. It doesn’t have the Technicolor gloss or the stirring orchestral score of North by Northwest; this film feels truer and wittier and more convincing by a country mile than the master director’s later Hollywood efforts.

A lot of this is down to Robert Donat’s central performance, lending the desperate Hannay an air of wry cunning and a tireless energy that sees him escape capture again and again. Whether he’s hanging off the Forth Bridge, silhouetted against the rolling valleys of the Highlands, or leaping head first through windows, Donat makes for a mesmerising man of action.

Donat’s Hannay is an individualist; an first-rate improviser who seems far more at home spinning saucy yarns for milkmen or stirring up a crowd, cooking up slogans on the fly. He’s always got a cheeky line for the crooks, and we love him for it.

If that doesn’t seem quite true to the awkwardness of real life, then the little, humanising moments between characters more than make up for it. Hannay fries a herring for a secret agent. Corset salesmen get tetchy about advertisements and cricket scores. Stockings are propped up to dry in front of the fire. It doesn’t sound like much, but these little things ground a scene in mundane reality, providing a springboard to the outlandish antics of a fugitive from the law.

The 39 Steps really sets alight when Hannay is handcuffed to Pamela (Madeleine Carroll), a beautiful schoolteacher convinced of his guilt, if only out of spite for being kissed without permission. The atmosphere between the two is electric; they spark off each other at the slightest remark, the smallest touch. In characteristic Hitchcock style, Donat and Carroll were cuffed together on their first day of filming, and the key was conveniently “lost”, forcing the two to get to know each other very well indeed.

Whatever tactics Hitchcock worked on the pair, it worked. Hannay and Pamela’s relationship doesn’t feel like the usual tacked-on romantic subplot. Peppered with delightfully bitchy repartee and driven by a palpable chemistry between the leads, it’s the centrepiece of the film. Shifting constantly from shaky alliance to open warfare, it doesn’t take a genius to see where they’re headed with this kind of behaviour.

Whichever way you look at The 39 Steps – whether you catch it on daytime TV or turn out the lights for that teatime premiere feel – this is a film that earns its ‘classic’ status with effortless style and panache. The visuals are gorgeous. The cast are restrained (especially for the typically stagey style of most 1930s acting) and colourful. Buchan’s original plot is kept simple and compelling, the best kind for a thriller. Don’t bother with the remakes, or you may never find out what a flock of detectives, Mr McCrocodile and a man with no top joint to his little finger have in common.

Movies... For Free! The 39 Steps (1935)

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

DVD Review - Everything Must Go (2010)

Everything Must Go, 2010.

Directed by Dan Rush.
Starring Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Michael Peña, Laura Dern, Christopher Jordan Wallace, Rosalie Michaels, Glenn Howerton and Stephen Root.


SYNOPSIS:

After losing his job and his wife, an alcoholic holds a yard sale in an attempt to start over and meets a new neighbour who may be the key to his return to form.


This film wasn’t supposed to be surprising. We all knew Will Ferrell was capable of this. Come on. Stranger than Fiction was only five years ago, we can’t have forgotten the incredible pathos he brought to the role of Harold Crick. The man aced that film without so much as an improv-session or a poop joke, and we respected him that much more for broadening his cinematic horizons.

Now Everything Must Go demands even more drama. We won’t call Will Ferrell’s character here a ‘serious’ role, because we’re not the Oscar nomination board and we don’t automatically disqualify comedy films from being worthwhile simply for making us laugh uncontrollably and maybe snorting beverages out of our nostrils accidentally. It could happen to anyone. In fact, let’s leave off the name-calling of roles altogether until we work out what this is.

Nick Halsey (Ferrell) is an alcoholic. He’s been dry these last six months, but he relapsed at a work party and now he’s paying for it. His boss fires him. His wife leaves him. We’re never sure of the exact dynamic between husband and wife (she never makes an appearance), but it must have been pretty rough – he comes home to find she’s changed the locks and thrown out every single possession of his onto the lawn. Add a frozen bank account and a cancelled phone contract and you have one supremely shitty day.

His first plan of action is to call his wife. She doesn’t answer, and he burbles some desperate promises into her answering machine. One 12-pack of Pabst later, he’s sunk into his comfy chair out on the lawn, surrounded by his mess of clothes and furniture and baseball memorabilia. Robbed of the context of a beautiful house, it’s all just...stuff. He struggles to justify it to neighbours and passers-by, who think he’s just holding an extended yard sale.

Writer/director Dan Rush traps us in Nick’s little bubble; we live with him from day to day, watching him put away can after can of beer. Nick is stuck on this lawn. He can’t wander off into the world and have mad adventures like the flamboyant alcoholics of Arthur or Withnail & I. His world is his front lawn, where he is forced to literally re-evaluate everything in his life. This seems too hard, so he hires local boy Kenny to evaluate it for him instead, at an enticing minimum wage salary.

It’s a wry, bittersweet experience, to say the least. Without trying too hard to be eccentric and quirky, Rush finds his own distinctive slant on the familiar midlife crisis story. It’s a relatively straightforward plot, so with no barmy antics or slapstick to distract us, the charm and impact of Everything Must Go relies very much on its impressive cast.

Will Ferrell reins in his wilder side to give us a delightfully understated portrayal of Nick Halsey as an simple, awkward man, capable of great generosity and terrible “yo momma” jokes. Rebecca Hall’s Samantha is fascinating, shy and forthright at the same time, trying to work out where she stands with the drunk who sits opposite her house. Christopher Jordan Wallace (Kenny) is the real acting revelation here, showing more versatility and maturity at fourteen than most A-listers manage in their mid-thirties.

Kenny is the catalyst for a change in Nick, putting a trust in his friend that goes beyond child-like naïvety. This trust is more than his wife or his AA sponsor ever gave him, and it catches him completely by surprise. Watching Nick find out about himself from his friends is one of the unexpected joys of Everything Must Go; Laura Dern features in a particularly touching scene, as an old high school friend reminding Nick of the instinctive heroism that made sure she never forgot him.

Playing out to The Band’s “I Shall Be Released” was always going make this writer a fan of Everything Must Go, but this is a film that gets its hooks into you long before then. Rush is never glib or flippant on that core issue of alcoholism, but at the same time he never lets the absurdity of Nick’s situation pass him by. This film walks that fine line between drama and comedy without trying to mush the two up into one horrific concept like ‘dramedy’. Rent it, buy it, take a look at this film somehow. You might laugh, you might cry, you might say “wait a minute, wasn’t she that archeologist in Jurassic Park?” And the answer would be yes. Yes she was. But now she is that high school friend, so let’s see if Will Ferrell can resist a dinosaur impression.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

Blu-ray Review - Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Quatermass and the Pit (US: Five Million Years to Earth), 1967.

Directed by Roy Ward Baker.
Starring James Donald, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley and Julian Glover.


SYNOPSIS:

When a Martian spacecraft linked to the origins of humanity is discovered at a London tube station, only Professor Bernard Quatermass is capable of unravelling its mysteries.


If you think you know a rule about sequels, banish it from your mind. Certainly, never make the same film twice, but don’t be afraid of providing a next chapter to your story. If at all possible, leave a bit of time between instalments. Ten years would be good, just to make sure your characters are a little older, a little wiser and hopefully a lot stranger.

Quatermass and the Pit was probably the first sequel to pick up on this technique. A decade after the Professor’s original alien encounters in The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957), an ancient skull is unearthed during extension works on the London Underground. Archeologists Dr Roney (James Donald) and Barbara Judd (Barbara Shelley) estimate it at five million years old, dating human existence on this planet much further back than previously thought. They’re practically bouncing off the tiled walls, until they stumble on what appears to be an unexploded bomb.

The military move in, led by Julian Glover’s smug young Colonel Breen, and, it just so happens, his new colleague at the British Experimental Rocket Group, Professor Bernard Quatermass. We’re introduced to a Quatermass markedly different to Brian Donlevy’s abrupt, dogmatic man of action. Andrew Keir plays our hero as a man scarred by his experiences: “I never had a career. Only...work.” Keir’s Professor has his occasional rail against establishment, but this is largely a quiet, curious scientist, reluctant to be drawn back into mysteries and adventures.

Then he sees what the Army have dug out of Hobb’s End station, and you can practically see the events of ten years past flash through his mind. Unexploded bombs left over from the war were all too commonplace in 1960s Britain, so naturally, the first thought is of some kind of top-secret Nazi rocket. Colonel Breen never gets past this first thought, ploughing on through the whole event in tunnel vision, blinkered to any other possibility.

Glover excels, even revels in making Breen as unlikeable as possible. This man isn’t a villain in the sense of being actively evil; he thinks himself practically minded, curbing the scientists’ flights of fancy about Martians and spaceships. He knows about missiles and war-time propaganda. He’s heading up this operation. There it is, then. The two must be connected. We can understand what’s going on with Breen; the tragedy is that he doesn’t understand what’s going on around him.

Meanwhile, our small team of scientists charge headlong into the unknown, researching, examining, experimenting with this strange new object. Director Roy Ward Baker uses a certain unspoken chemistry between Keir and Shelley’s characters to give us a sense of the sheer thrill of chasing down the truth. Rather than exploit this chemistry with some overblown romantic subplot where Quatermass has to save her and gather her up in his arms, these characters go on something of a secret arc of their own. Quite fitting for a story that offers no easy solutions to dealing with real evil.

Keir and Shelley were already the best thing about Hammer’s Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), so it’s a joy to see Barbara Shelley commanding the screen as a leading character accepted on her own terms, as a serious, clever and determined scientist. It’s not just Shelley holding her own either; Nigel Kneale’s polished, intelligent script gives her every opportunity to shine in her own right without slipping into the sassy, outspoken, feminist mouthpiece trope. Women’s lib may have been the bigot’s joke of the time, but Quatermass and the Pit is a horror film that bucks the trend. For once, females aren’t objectified, demonised, belittled or ignored on screen, and that deserves as much of a shout out as anything else of merit here.

Roy Ward Baker wasn’t working with cutting edge equipment, generous budgets, or even an original story; he was adapting a TV serial about Martians in the London Underground. So what? He had a killer script, a disciplined, highly professional approach to film-making and an unbeatable cast.

Quatermass and the Pit throws some pretty fantastic concepts at us, but because it’s Barbara Shelley telling you we’re all Martians, you suspend that all-important disbelief. Put Megan Fox or Jessica Alba in the same position and we’d have a problem. But Barbara Shelley? Nope. We’re Martians alright. Better get used to it. Barbara Shelley said so.

EXTRA FEATURES: A Worlds of Hammer documentary looks enticing, until you realise it’s completely unwatchable. Oliver Reed talking over clips of sci-fi cinema might have been fun, but we can’t hear him. The deeply unbalanced sound mix forbids it.

Next, the cast and crew interviews. Now we’re cooking with gas. Sci-fi legend Julian Glover heads up the list, giving us his take on life, death, the filming process, working with his screen idol, buying a used car off his screen idol and why today’s CGI will never top yesterday’s good storytelling. You could seriously watch this man for hours, setting the world to rights with a few Star Wars and Indiana Jones anecdotes in between.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

DVD Review - My Voyage to Italy (1999)

My Voyage to Italy (Italian: Il mio viaggio in Italia), 1999.

Directed by Martin Scorsese.


SYNOPSIS:

Acclaimed director Martin Scorsese embarks on a journey through Italian cinema history.


Let’s get something straight, right now. If you’re a film lover, you will quite happily soak in Scorsese’s documentary of Italian cinema for all four hours of its run-time. If you’re not much of a film lover, if you still think Transformers is the pinnacle of cinematic accomplishment, My Voyage to Italy is not for you.

You’re more than welcome to go pick up a copy and gaze lovingly on Anita Ekberg’s glorious...achievements, but let me stress that run-time for you again: this documentary is four hours long. If the prospect of Martin Scorsese talking, or reading subtitles, or not witnessing explosions frightens you, take a step back.

If you haven’t been scared off by that introduction, well done. Let’s get into the meat of the matter. Sometime in 1999, whilst everyone else was buzzing on millennium bugs and a phantom that wasn’t very menacing, Martin Scorsese decided to make a documentary about Italian cinema and what it meant to him. Yes, he of the highly acclaimed films and the fascinating eyebrows. He took the time to sift through footage of thirty-odd films he’d seen and loved growing up in New York. He sifted through it and he found some of the most beautiful, the most affecting moments in the history of Italian cinema.

Moving in a chronology more in sync with his own experiences than with the traditional forward-motion marching of time, he tells the story of how he fell in love with film. We learn about Friday night Italian films, playing on a black and white television up in an Elizabeth Street apartment, gripping a very young Scorsese with haunting accounts of the war in Italy.

Films like Paisá (1946) and Shoeshine (1946) struck him with their vivid sense of reality, depicting the tough, unforgiving world of post-war Italy through the eyes of children that could have so easily been him. Cabiria (1914) and The Iron Crown (1941) told epic, deeply expressive stories of ancient Carthage and medieval Italy, capturing the texture and the detail of their periods like nothing Scorsese had ever seen in a Hollywood swords and sandals picture.

From here, Scorsese settles into a steady pace, cycling through a list of Italian classics as long as your arm. Well. Not your arm. Maybe Richard Kiel’s arm, he’s tall enough. We linger just long enough on each film to pick out the interesting bits, sometimes replaying them so we can catch a brief expression on an actor’s face.

It’s all too easy to lose yourself in these powerful, passionate images. The stark desperation of The Bicycle Thief (1948), the revolutionary romanticism turned ugly in Senso (1954) and the small-town heartaches of I Vitelloni (1953) all become strangely familiar. We spend maybe five or ten minutes with each and it feels like a lifetime.

Time after time, Scorsese throws us in the deep end with these films, introducing characters here, tossing out a telling remark there. Even if you’ve forgotten to turn your subtitles on, there’s a remarkably universal feel to these films. You get what these films are saying; the story is summed up in a few luxurious minutes without spoiling the intricacies and subtleties of the plot. You start to wonder about the potential for this approach. Never mind those rubbish jump-cut edited cinema trailers, Martin Scorsese and a microphone is the future of film promotion.

And that’s only half-joking. Scorsese’s voice dominates My Voyage to Italy, so much so that he becomes almost synonymous with the images. He pitches his delivery just right for the material; relaxed, authoritative, with occasional fevers of passion just as we get to his favourite bits. You can feel a palpable excitement in his voice as he pitches the crowded media circus illusions of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) against Antonioni’s mysterious wilderness romance L’Avventura (1960). See? It’s catching.

Fellini’s gloriously surreal 8 ½ (1963) finishes as every single batty character in the film parades down a staircase in one great big sensory overload. As you’re watching this, you realise this is pretty much what My Voyage to Italy has done for a staggering two hundred and forty six minutes.

There is so, so much more to be said about these films, but that’s Scorsese’s job here; it’s his documentary, so let’s not take that away from him. Normally, documentaries are a bit like buses. There’s one that comes along every ten minutes, but it’s rarely one you want. Running away somewhat irresponsibly with this documentary/bus metaphor, consider My Voyage to Italy as the speedboat of documentaries –never in a million years did you expect anything like this to come along, but hell, it’s a speedboat, why wouldn’t you take a look?

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

Movie Review Archive

DVD Review - The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

The Lavender Hill Mob, 1951.

Directed by Charles Crichton.
Starring Alec Guiness, Stanley Holloway, Sid James and Alfi Bass.


SYNOPSIS:

A bank clerk finds himself drawn into a gold smuggling racket.


You may as well know something right now. You will have to get a new mouth after watching The Lavender Hill Mob, because the one you’ve got will have worn out completely from grinning ear to ear for 78 minutes. It’s not just that this film is funny. It is spleen-shatteringly funny, but somehow, that doesn’t quite cover how relentlessly joyful and excitable the whole experience is.

We start at the end, of course. Henry Holland (Alec Guinness) is a man taking very well to being filthy rich. He dishes out banknotes like they were jelly babies; a radiant Audrey Hepburn (in her first film role) pops over for a quick kiss and some walking around money. Holland wants to tell his story to somebody, but it’s not entirely clear who this person is. He might be from the press, but there’s not a notepad in sight. Never mind. Guinness launches into the story in a rather charming voice, wobbling his ‘r’s like an elephant in hipster jeans.

It seems Holland wasn’t always a South American armchair philanthropist; once upon a time one year ago, he was a bank clerk manning the bullion van. A “non-entity”, playing the long game, biding his time for a chance to get his hands on the Bank of England’s gold reserves. He has a plan all worked out in his head, but he can’t do it alone, and so he’s stuck with his measly six shillings a week.

Holland is a shrewd, patient man with a taste for dry wit and a heart of gold. His only friend, so far we can see, is Mrs Clark (Marjorie Fielding), a spinster with a voracious appetite for pulp crime fiction. He reads her ‘Look Swell In A Shroud’, a paperback with lines like “...and then I glimpsed something that had my underwear creeping on me, like it had legs.” Mrs Clark nods sagely. “I know that feeling well.”

Then Alfred Pendlebury turns up. If Stanley Holloway ever had more fun playing a character, he never showed it half as much as he does playing Pendlebury. This mad, verbose art lover is large and in charge, spicing up Holland’s life no end. In each other they find the perfect friend and the ideal business partner. After all, Pendlebury’s refinery for turning lead into Eiffel Tower paperweights is no different to the bank turning gold into bullion bars...

Director Charles Crichton takes on the classic Ealing theme of unlikely criminals from here on with style and ease. His comedy world of crime, where guns fire a stick of rock and thieves miss their last train home, chimes in with the British audience’s work-a-day experiences. Crichton turns us all into Mrs Clark, lapping up the romance of the criminal world, caught in the thrill of the chase.

Every scene (and it is every scene, not just the best ones) is wrought with schoolboy mischief of one sort or another. T.E.B. Clarke’s script has enormous fun undermining and outsmarting authority at every turn. Policemen chase each other in circles; the crowned heads of Scotland Yard are led around blindfold by a gleeful Henry Holland.

The supporting cast, featuring Alfie Bass and a pre-Carry On Sid James, are indispensible, but it’s Alec Guinness who owns this film. He plays his part with characteristic subtlety, the downtrodden everyman who gets his chance to shine, just once. We totally, utterly believe in Henry Holland. We want him to win against all the odds. Star Wars fans will know that any line Alec Guinness utters becomes instantly quotable; the same is twice as true here. No other man on Earth could shout “Mess me up! It’s essential!” to a pair of professional thieves and make it sound every bit as truthful and hilarious as Guinness does.

DVD copies of The Lavender Hill Mob have been around since the dawn of the disc, no arguments there. By now though, they’re in a terrible old state, worn out by long and repeated use. So stop hoarding round the one library copy that doesn’t skip or freeze or explode all over your living room; this release is here to save the day. Like the incomparable, Whisky Galore, it’s been given a buff and a shine and a whole boxful of toys to go with it this time. Truly, Ealing DVDs are easily scratched, but they will soon be back, and in greater numbers.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

Movie Review Archive

DVD Review - Whisky Galore! (1949)

Whisky Galore!, 1949.

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick.
Starring Basil Radford, Bruce Seton, Joan Greenwood and Gordon Jackson.


SYNOPSIS:

Scottish islanders attempt to plunder a ship's cargo of whisky when it becomes stranded on the shore.


Some films need a run-up. They need their entrance onto the DVD market trumpeted by fanfare, or at least a couple of bars of Zadok the Priest tooted on on a ceremonial kazoo. Whisky Galore doesn’t need that confidence boost. Sixty years of high praise from the cinema-going public and the BFI have taken care of that. So let’s crack on with the what, the who and the why of Whisky Galore.

1943. The Isle of Todday, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, has run out of whisky. The locals, scotch drinkers to a man, are mortified. One man is struck down dead with the shock of it. Just as all seems lost, and it seems as if they’ll be doomed to drink lemonade ‘til the end of the war, the SS Cabinet Minister is wrecked just off the island, abandoned by captain and crew with 50,000 cases of whisky still on board.

Whisky Galore thrives on the idea that all the great Ealing Comedies play on; that anyone, man or woman, old or young, rich or poor, is capable of becoming a criminal. Probably the funniest thing about the Isle of Todday is that everyone on it becomes a criminal. If not an actual looter of the ship, they’re willing accessories to the fact, and, let’s face it, we want them to get away with it.

This is Alexander Mackendrick’s doing. A story other directors could (and would) mire in moral complexities is dealt with simply but decisively. His first feature remains a masterpiece in compact storytelling, aided in no small part by the expert pacing Charles Crichton introduced in his uncredited re-edit.

It’s Mackendrick’s outstanding cast though, that bring these canny little islanders to life. There’s a young Gordon Jackson as a henpecked son born two drinks below par, and Joan Greenwood purrs a seductive Scottish burr into the telephone exchange. Supporting them, a wealth of craggy, characterful faces fill our screens, needing only to twitch a wrinkle to prompt fits of raucous laughter. Watch the crowded scenes and see if you can tell which are the actors and which are the real islanders.

For all that, Jean Cadell and Basil Radford’s scene-stealing antics are what drive the action. Cadell plays Mrs Campbell, a strict Calvinist, strict mother and award-winning purveyor of sour grapes. Basil Radford’s Captain Waggett is the prototypical Captain Mainwaring, pompous and bureaucratic, convinced he’s the only honest man for miles around. Equally determined to stop people having fun, their personalities clash in a delightfully believable scene where the Captain’s second-in-command is locked in his bedroom by his mother.

Mackendrick delights in this oddly familiar brand of comedy. His characters aren’t necessarily funny because they always have an answer for everything. They’re funny because they feel authentic. They don’t fall into neat moral categories, they act and sound confused when faced with new situations. We don’t judge the islanders for hoarding looted goods, but neither do we hate Waggett and the customs men for trying to catch them out.

So why is this funny? Let’s take Farquharson, the customs officer constantly trimming his fingernails, as a case in point. Waggett secretly calls him in to help catch the looters red-handed. Whilst he’s there, Farquharson is the most powerful man on the island. They chase the islanders’ truckful of whisky along the island road, only to run straight into the barbed wire roadblock Waggett had the Home Guard build earlier. Waggett opens the driver’s door. “We’ll have to cut our way out.” Without missing a beat, Farquharson hands Waggett his nail scissors. From this moment, we utterly adore Farquharson.

This DVD release is the best Whisky Galore has ever looked, sounded, felt. The quality of the home cinema medium has finally caught up with the quality of the film, so waste time? Get this in your film collection, if only to fill out the ‘W’ section. Wizard of Oz and Where Eagles Dare will be glad of the company.

Movie Review Archive

World Cinema - D’Artagnan’s Daughter (1994)

D’Artagnan’s Daughter (French: La Fille de D’Artagnan), 1994.

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier.
Starring Sophie Marceau, Philippe Noire, Sami Frey, Jean-Luc Bideau, Raoul Billerey and Claude Rich.


SYNOPSIS:

For sheltering a runaway slave in her convent, Eloïse D’Artagnan’s guardian is murdered – Eloïse vows revenge and sets off to find her famous father to ask for his help.


Perhaps you went to the cinema recently. Perhaps you too were inflicted with a headache’s worth of 3D trailer worryingly titled The Three Musketeers, featuring the kind of buff, swaggering nonces we’re used to seeing in Pirates of the Caribbean series. It seems determined to be epic, or somesuch other flash word. With lines like “Only we can prevent the coming apocalypse”, the plot seems destined to go the way of Pirates; straight up its own arse.

Whatever happened to all the fun in the world? Didn’t we already have a rubbish Musketeers remake back in the ‘90s? Why does D’Artagnan always look like a girl in these films? These questions and more can be answered with eerie precision and excellent humour by D’Artagnan’s Daughter.

Chances are this one passed you by; short of the odd Amelie, French cinema doesn’t get much of a look-in at UK cinemas. A pre-Braveheart-fame Sophie Marceau leads the cast with gusto as Eloïse D’Artagnan, a hot-headed tomboy with a taste for adventure and a talent for swordplay kept under wraps in a remote convent. French acting legend Philippe Noiret plays D’Artagnan, the fourth musketeer himself, grown old and fat, aching in places he never dreamed existed. A murdered Mother Superior and a mysterious laundry list prompt Eloïse to seek out her father and implore him to investigate.

The plot from here on is farcical and thrilling by degrees, with all the passion and patois of Alexandre Dumas’ original stories. Tavernier gets straight to the heart of these blithe, wry characters in a way no director has come close to since Richard Lester’s acclaimed pair of Musketeers films in the ‘70s. Here, spectacle goes hand in hand with comedy gold. Deadly swordplay quickly develops into spirited horseplay; daring rescues get rudely interrupted by desperate escapes. Film-makers adapting a Dumas story forget his wicked sense of humour at their peril.

In this respect, special credit must go to Claude Rich’s Duc de Crassac. His is a character both monstrously ambitious and delightfully daft. He proposes to Sophie Marceau’s chest. He schemes mid-coitus. Whenever you fear this film might take itself too seriously, you spot Crassac unashamedly leering at a nun whilst he’s having his dastardly plans explained to him by a subordinate. And he’s not even the best part about D’Artagnan’s Daughter.

What is, then? It could be the swordplay, fast and flamboyant, brimming with surprise and suspense. Scenes showcasing Marceau’s skills in particular are riotous and tense by degrees, as her mad-flailing-novice style terrifies and perplexes her opponents. Or it could be the musketeers themselves, rheumatic oddballs and hard cases to a man. It might be the mad mix of supporting characters, confusing and bamboozling each other with sex and politics and eyepatches. Ultimately, all these separate elements might sum up to a good film, but it’s the direction that makes D’Artagnan’s Daughter greater than the sum of its parts.

Tavernier doesn’t treat a comic scene like comedy. There’s no jokey musical cues to instruct us that this scene or that line is supposed to be funny. His actors play it deadpan all the way. There’s a scene where the Duc de Crassac poisons his chief poisoner. The look on the poisoner’s face is more perplexed than anguished. Crassac says, with a little shrug, “You knew too much.” Not a hint of malice, not a cackle to be seen. As if this is a perfectly normal thing to do. Rich doesn’t play a villain, he plays a callous, ambitious idiot, genuinely convinced he’s justified in committing murder.

D’Artagnan’s Daughter is precisely the kind of fun and feisty swashbuckler French cinema excels at. Tavernier throws conspiracy, duels to the death and father/daughter tensions into an adventure film and still keeps the tone indomitably light-hearted. This is quintessential Saturday night entertainment; it just happens to be in French. So man up. You’ll stop noticing the subtitles after the first tavern brawl anyway.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

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DVD Double Feature - Anna May Wong in Java Head & Tiger Bay (1934)

It’s taken pretty much for granted in modern cinema that, for a Chinese film role, you cast a Chinese actor. Just as leading men no longer black up in boot polish to play Othello, actresses long ago stopped painting their eyes slanted to look Chinese. It’s daft, it’s unconvincing, and to the actors turned away for being ‘too Chinese for screen’, it’s racist.

In Anna May Wong’s day though, this was standard practice. In spite of this idotiic, pig-headed racism shown to her by studio bosses, Wong carved out an enviable career for herself, becoming the world’s first Asian-American star. She cut her acting teeth playing alongside the inimitable Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad (1924); Shanghai Express (1932) saw her upstage Marlene Dietrich in the slinky seductress stakes. After all that, Hollywood’s ridiculous Hays Code forbade her to share an on-screen kiss with any actor that wasn’t Asian, so she could forget any ideas about significant leading roles.


Java Head and Tiger Bay mark Wong’s brief venture into British film, where she didn’t have to rely on cackling dragon lady roles to earn her crust. Here, Wong gets to challenge, even to rise above those stereotypes; she’s a joy to watch, clearly revelling in her newfound freedom.


Java Head (1934, dir. J. Walter Rubin)

Starring Anna May Wong, Elizabeth Allan and John Loder.

On the face of it, Java Head could be your ordinary, garden variety Victorian society romance; two people, who have been falling in love with each other since they were 8 years old, are suddenly separated by a third person, exotic and beautiful and perfect. That third person flips their lives upside down and whatever chance those two people had of being together seems utterly impossible now.

Given these fundamentals of plotting, it’s quite clear that Java Head is essentially Pretty In Pink fifty years before the fact. Except that Andrew McCarthy doesn’t top himself at the prom so Molly Ringwald can be with Jon Cryer. Which, frankly, would’ve made for a better ending. However, even in the thirties, this love triangle formula was well worn and in need of a good lie down for a couple of decades.

Then you factor in Anna May Wong’s character, and suddenly Java Head seems that bit more different. You see, that third person in this love triangle isn’t just another woman. She’s Taou Yuen, a Chinese Manchu Princess rescued from god knows where by Gerrit Ammidon (John Loder) and brought home to Bristol as his surprise wife. To Nettie (Elizabeth Allan), the girl he should’ve married, this is mystifying and heartbreaking. To Gerrit’s bean-counting brother William (Ralph Richardson), this is scandalous and stupid and all sorts of other outrageous things he’ll think of later. As for springing this on his father (Edmund Gwenn) with his weak heart, it’s a little bit irresponsible. His marriage is almost all of these things, but not for the reasons the people closest to him believe.

Wong has a whale of a time as Taou Yuen, a wise, noble woman trying to cope with a culture, a language, and a situation completely new to her. She’s reviled, even resented for daring to marry a white man, and still rises above it, because she truly loves Gerrit for who he is. Presented to his family, she’s met with horrified faces and shocked silence. Taou understands the situation; she knows full well how her people are viewed in the West. And yet...she doesn’t make any attempt to blend in. She doesn’t stick on a bonnet and make believe she’s Asian Jane Austen. Taou paints her eyebrows, sculpts her hair into arches and prisms and wears carved silver claw rings, because she’s proud of her culture and her heritage and her beliefs.

This is very much Anna May Wong’s film; we get to see the love triangle from Taou’s perspective, as the outsider who never had a chance. She doesn’t lose Gerrit because she’s Chinese; far from it. He always counts her as an equal, even coming to her for advice and solace. Taou loses Gerrit simply because she isn’t Nettie, and she never will be.


Tiger Bay (1934, dir. J. Elder Wills)

Starring Anna May Wong, Henry Victor and Lawrence Grossmith.

Limehouse sits on the bank of the Thames, and for a good couple of centuries, up until the bombing of London in World War II, it was a byword for crime, vice and general depravity. The first cut of Tiger Bay was set in this deplorable slum. Then the BBFC saw it, and saw this as rather letting the British side down a bit. Couldn’t one set the action in some scummy old South American port, what?

And so we have this opening guff with the spinning globe and a little map of Brazil that must’ve taken all of ten minutes to shoot. Then we’re in a gentleman’s club somewhere intolerably hot and sticky, where the members dress for dinner in black tie, as one does when one is British and abroad. The members get onto talking about romance, and what a load of old beeswax it all is. Some grinning munchkin called Michael (Victor Garland) disagrees. One can find romance everywhere, especially in the slums, don’t you know. He seems to think he’s making a bet; the other members look at each other like he’s fishing for a plausible excuse to go whoring of an afternoon.

Sadly, nothing so interesting motivates Michael. He really is a chump for twue wuv, and he soons finds his very own dream chumpette in Letty (René Ray), young ward of the wily club owner Miss Lui Chang (Anna May Wong). Michael wades straight into her business once he spots she’s in a fix with a rummy sort of chap. He gets a whopping great knife in the arm for his trouble, and Letty goes dotty for him, nursing him back to health and listening at keyholes to check he really truly wuvs her too.

Enough of that sort of thing. This rummy chap, Olaf (Henry Victor), is the real catalyst. He’s as crooked and twisted as they come; the sort who murder a waiter to make a point, then laugh like a drain at the look of horror on the faces of those who loved him. He wants a generous cut of Miss Chang’s takings, and he stops at nothing to get his way. This is the kind of scum and villainy Obi-Wan Kenobi tends to warn young people about, but Mos Eisley has nothing on Limehouse – er – Tiger Bay.

As watchable and gloriously villainous as Henry Victor’s Olaf is, this is Wong’s picture all over. She plays Lui Chang rather like Jeremy Brett used to play Sherlock Holmes; insular and abrupt, only allowing glimpses of her true self through cracks in the marble. She’s slinky, sexy and sassy and she never gives an inch, even faced with the likes of the wily Olaf. Michael and Letty’s boring, predictable little romance is rightly sidelined, to give valuable screen time to the battle of wills between these two bitter enemies.

Writer/Director J. Elder Wills is clearly working on a tight budget, shooting on no more than a handful of sets, but he brings them to life with commendable attention to detail. Even in black and white, we’re struck by the uncommonly tasteful Chinese decor in Miss Chang’s apartments, and the stark contrast of the streets at night, echoing with the jeers of drunkards and the rattle of dice games. Wills squeezes more action and despair and intrigue into 70 minutes than most modern bum-numbing ‘epic’ crime dramas manage in 2 hours.

A bluff old hand at Michael’s club sums up Tiger Bay for him, in the hope of putting him off blundering around there in his state of naïvety: “It’s like this mosquito. Stubborn, vindictive and damned unfriendly.” Sounds awful. Best go take a good look.

Simon Moore is a budding screenwriter, passionate about films both current and classic. He has a strong comedy leaning with an inexplicable affection for 80s montages and movies that you can’t quite work out on the first viewing.

Movie Review Archive