Imagine the Sound (1981)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Imagine the Sound (1981) – R. Mann

If you like free jazz, then this one is for you.  It isn’t your typical talking head doco but instead full of complete performances interspersed with brief Q&A sessions with the players (who offer some deep and intriguing bits of wisdom).  Of course, the quality of any investigation such as this depends on the players.  Here, director Ron Mann was able to obtain participation by pianist Cecil Taylor, saxophonist Archie Shepp, pianist Paul Bley, and trumpeter Bill Dixon (sadly they do not play together). They are no slouches for sure but of course we feel the pain of the absence of several major figures of the movement: Coltrane (dead), Ayler (dead), Dolphy (dead), Coleman (alive at the time), Don Cherry (alive at the time), Alice Coltrane (alive at the time) and Sun Ra (alive at the time). The list could go on.  The four featured players skew the film in a certain direction (more abstract and intellectual, less spiritual and emotional perhaps).  Ornette Coleman featured in his own documentary by Shirley Clarke a few years later.  In the end, Taylor offers the most intriguing performances and Shepp and Bley have the sharpest insights.

 

The Shout (1978)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Shout (1978) – J. Skolimowski

Cryptic, in the way that most films that seek to portray the more mystical aspects of Aboriginal culture seem to be.  Jerzy Skolimowski’s third British feature (after Deep End, 1970, and a failed Nabokov attempt) starts with a framing device – a cricket match at a mental hospital where Alan Bates recounts a fanciful tale to Tim Curry while they are keeping score.  As it turns out, Bates is a trickster figure in his own story where John Hurt and Susannah York play the protagonists, a couple living in a rural oceanside village who seem to be enjoying an idyllic lifestyle (aside from the fact that Hurt may be cheating).  Bates shows up after a church service (Hurt, an avant-garde composer, is the organist) and engages the unwilling Hurt in meta-physical discussion, subsequently following him home.  It turns out that Bates spent 18 years in an Indigenous community in the Outback (Australia) and has learned some spiritual magic, including how to release a shout that will kill all living things in a several km radius.  He carries a number of bones with him (and may use them to inflict punishment on his enemies) and he possesses the power to usurp another man’s wife (in this case, York).  As with Peter Weir’s films that engage with this culture (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave), viewers may feel that there are ellipses in the story – something is elusive, a key to the mystery that occurs outside of what we see on the screen.  Here, Hurt does manage to vanquish Bates by smashing a rock – but the return to the framing story leaves things open-ended (Was Bates determined to be mentally ill and is he really? Is the story true? Has Aboriginal magic been used against him in the end? What the hell has happened in the end?). 

  

Mona Lisa (1986)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Mona Lisa (1986) – N. Jordan

Bob Hoskins plays George, just released from prison (and quite a few steps lower on the gang ladder than his Harold Shand from The Long Good Friday, 1980), and in need of work.  His old boss, Michael Caine, arranges for him to drive a high-class call girl, Simone (Cathy Tyson), on her dates in fancy hotels.  He’s too rough and Cockney but she buys him clothes to make him more respectable (basically an impossible goal). Although his wife has basically shut the door in his face, George manages to reconnect with his teenage daughter who he is sad to discover is the same age as some of the streetwalkers he sees on his nightly rounds with Simone. As a result, he wants to help them because he’s a good egg, after all.  But it’s so Eighties, right down to the Genesis/Phil Collins-soundtracked montage (“In Too Deep”) in the middle.  Eventually Simone trusts him enough to ask him to find her missing friend, Cathy, another young prostitute who has been beaten and subjugated by Simone’s old pimp, Anderson.  By this time, George is in love – and the film noir themes come to the forefront and carry us to the film’s violent conclusion.  Director Neil Jordan went on to greater fame with The Crying Game (1992) and Interview with the Vampire (1994).   

 

My Favorite Wife (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

My Favorite Wife (1940) – G. Kanin

Reunion of the leads from Leo McCarey’s wonderful The Awful Truth (1937) although this time directed by Garson Kanin.  In the previous screwball comedy, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne agreed to divorce but gradually realised they still loved each other (after they have other partners in tow, of course). Here, playing different characters, Grant remarries after Dunne is apparently lost at sea – when she returns, on the afternoon of the wedding (to Gail Patrick), Grant finds himself wanting to (having to?) get out of his new marriage. That is, until he discovers that Dunne wasn’t shipwrecked alone for seven years but instead had hunky Randolph Scott for company (in his pre-Western days). Of course, Dunne and Grant are really in love and Scott and Patrick are doomed to lose out.  Thus, it’s a similar funny premise and dynamic – but somehow things don’t catch fire as they did in the first film.  Instead, Grant seems to be underplaying a bit too much in contrast to Dunne’s warmer glow; the pace also feels too slow for screwball (although perhaps the laughs are supposed to creep up on you).  At any rate, it’s a notch below the best of the genre.  If you haven’t seen The Awful Truth, by all means watch that first!

  

Tootsie (1982)

 

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Tootsie (1982) – S. Pollack

Of course, there is an inescapable datedness about Tootsie but this lies more in the fashions, music, cinematography, and art direction than in the gender relations at the heart of its plot.  In fact, the central conceit that Dustin Hoffman becomes a better man as a function of spending time as a woman holds up just as well today as in 1982.  This is precisely because the burdens of being a woman (unwanted sexual attention and patronising treatment by men, additional requirements for make-up and body maintenance, etc.) have not changed.  Hoffman learns about these things when he decides to dress in drag to land the part of a hospital administrator on a soap opera, going from Michael Dorsey to Dorothy Michaels.  Perhaps the only sour note is the implication that Jessica Lange, another actress on the soap who is in a relationship with the director who treats her badly, can learn something from the empowered Dorothy who stands up for women’s rights on the set (the problem is that it seems to take a man in drag to take action whereas the actual women here, including friend Teri Garr, are more submissive).  But aside from this, the movie is surprisingly good natured, even when Jessica Lange thinks that Dorothy is a lesbian or when the various available older men (Charles Durning, George Gables) make their plays for Dorothy and she/he wants to resist. We don’t get slapstick here but something more genuine.  Even Bill Murray, as Hoffman’s roommate, plays things straight with only a handful of witty one-liners (apparently improvised), a sign of things to come. All told, although I hesitated when the film began with nary a laugh in sight, sticking it out proved to be worth it for the wider arc and message of the story.  

 

The Rite (1969)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Rite (1969) – I. Bergman

Bergman teleplay that sees three actors interviewed by a judge in an unnamed country after obscenity charges are brought against them.  After an initial session with all three (Ingrid Thulin, Anders Ek, and Gunnar Björnstrand), we then see the judge (Erik Hell) interrogate each actor separately; in between these scenes we see the actors in pairs discussing their relationships. Although Björnstrand and Thulin are married, she seems to sleep exclusively with Ek who is in turn married to someone else (but separated). The three are suggested to be internationally famous actors yet each has their own neuroses that facilitate the awkward situation.  It is never quite clear until the end exactly what the obscenity involves (and even then, it seems a bit obscure) nor do we fully understand the motives of the actors in that final scene.  Bergman seems to be suggesting (again) that actors are unfairly persecuted in society and should be free to pursue creative expression even if (or especially when) it is threatening to others’ values – but he also portrays those actors as deeply flawed.  Although brief and admittedly stagebound, the film somehow grips you with the puzzle it slowly pieces together (and never really solves). 

 

Three on a Match (1932)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Three on a Match (1932) – M. LeRoy

Pre-code drama that shows us three childhood schoolmates (not necessarily friends), first as “types” at grammar school (the bad girl, the good girl, and the popular girl) and then as young adults who have transformed into Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, and Ann Dvorak.  They still fit the same type:  Blondell has been in the reformatory but is now a showgirl; Davis is a hard-working typist; Dvorak is married to a rich lawyer (Warren William), has a young son, and lives in a mansion. But Dvorak’s character yearns to be free from the shackles of marriage and motherhood (this is pre-code, remember) and soon we see her take up with a bad egg (Lyle Talbot), bringing her 3 or 4 year old son into squalor.  Against type, Blondell saves the child.  Alcoholism and drug abuse soon follow for Dvorak and when Talbot gets on the wrong side of the mob due to a gambling debt (led by Edward Arnold with a young Bogart as his henchman), he kidnaps the young boy to try to elicit ransom money.  It’s all pretty bleak, especially the shock ending.  Still, Blondell is her perky self and Dvorak inhabits the wasted girl well (Davis has nothing to do and Bogart gives only a glimpse of his later tough guy persona).  Worth a look, esp. since it clocks in at just over an hour and offers an eye-opening and lurid look at 1932.  The title refers to the famous superstition, of course.

 

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Daughters of Darkness (1971) – H. Kümel

Euro-horror that is less trash and more arthouse than most, with a dream-like visual sense and eerie soundtrack. A recently married couple visits a Belgian resort in the winter, finding themselves the only ones in the hotel until Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Delphine Seyrig) and her lesbian lover/assistant/slave turn up.  Of course, the Countess seems likely to be a vampire and a series of unexplained murders are currently in the news.  But the film is all cat-and-mouse with the Countess stalking the couple and the new wife discovering that her husband may be harbouring secrets (I’m not sure what to make about his strange call to his “mother” who appears to be a man in drag) including violent tendencies of his own. The movie moves slowly to its conclusion which seems inevitable until a sudden twist and epilogue.  Some haunting visuals adorn this finale.

  

Bombshell (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Bombshell (2019) – J. Roach

Were there always this many films that offer a retelling of recent events using actors and Hollywood techniques?  I feel as though we are being asked to revisit and rethink what we know about history over and over again – is it Oliver Stone’s fault? Can we trust the retelling?  This time, it is the events at Fox News leading up to the sexual harassment lawsuit that was Roger Ailes’ downfall (and Bill O’Reilly’s too).  If I were living in America, I might be able to discern whether the film is telling the “truth” or not.  But at this point, I don’t know who Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is and I’ve barely heard the name Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and that is only because she moderated one of the 2016 Republican debates and got into a spat with Trump (which I read about in the media at the time).  The film covers that spat and Kelly’s complicated relationship with Fox and Ailes (played with fat-suit prosthetics by John Lithgow).  As the “me too” movement gains steam, Carlson sues Ailes and Kelly needs to decide where she stands.  Margot Robbie plays a new recruit who is also harassed by Ailes.  The film gets pretty depressing as the various bad behaviours are outlined and director Jay Roach does let us feel the shame and degradation and powerlessness of the women involved.  For that, its heart is in the right place and it is good to explore the terrible dynamics of this situation that women are too often placed in.  Perhaps it is empowering to see them confront their tormentors.  But this series of films featuring impersonations and restaging of current events is a weird genre and I worry sometimes that these deep fakes might begin to replace our actual history (at least in people’s memories). 

Nothing Sacred (1937)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Nothing Sacred (1937) – W. Wellman

I’ll admit that I was a little underwhelmed by Nothing Sacred (screenplay by Ben Hecht, directed by William Wellman) although I do see the blackness of the comedy here (despite the technicolor) which focuses on how New York responds to the heart-wrenching story of young Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) who has been diagnosed with radium poisoning and is soon to die (but the comedy lies in the fact that it isn’t true and she’s scamming everyone but perhaps rather innocently). Frederic March is the reporter (Wally Cook) who sees the value  (for his career) in the personal interest story for his newspaper and travels to Vermont to pick up Hazel and bring her to the big city for one final trip of a lifetime. The daffy dipsomaniac doctor who made the errant diagnosis is also along for the junket. The tension builds as we wonder how soon everyone will find out that Hazel just isn’t sick and the implications of this for Cook’s job, their budding romance, and, well, the investment of all those kind hearted people who have put forward their public acknowledgment of Hazel’s bravery (and encouraged people to join them). The point is that everyone’s out to make a profit or to boost their own images/egos on the back of Hazel’s sad misfortune – that is, nothing’s sacred.  But alas the film isn’t really very funny (not really screwball either – too slow and not sharp enough for that) apart from some sight gags that wryly go by without comment.  A little bit racist and sexist too.  However, Lombard and March are good as usual, even if the character actors in bit parts aren’t of the calibre found elsewhere. Start with Sturges or Hawks.

 

 

Blood and Roses (1960)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Blood and Roses (1960) – R. Vadim

Roger Vadim’s take on Sheridan Le Fanu’s (lesbian) vampire tale, Carmilla, is a haunting widescreen fantasy, slower and more dreamy than most Hammer productions (although obviously there are similarities – Christopher Lee was considered for the male lead role that went to Mel Ferrer).  The vampire here, Carmilla, is played by Vadim’s then wife (and Bardot substitute) Annette Stroyberg – she is jealous that her cousin Leopoldo (Ferrer) is about to marry Georgia (Elsa Martinelli) and begins to fantasise about the family history that involves a vengeful vampire, Millarca, who kills the young fiancées of the cousin _she_ was in love with.  After a fireworks accident reveals a hidden tomb (Millarca’s, of course), Carmilla seems to become possessed by the ancient spirit, although we never quite know whether this is real or all in the mind of the jealous girl.  She does prowl around at night in a white dress amongst ruins – the cinematography by Claude Renoir (nephew of Jean) is quite sumptuous and worth the price of admission.  I watched the French version which is longer than the US cut and contains a woozy dream sequence (Georgia’s dream) as well as extra footage with peasant girls observing the action of the decadent nobles.  In the end, this is more style than anything else and proceeds at an arthouse pace, but at only 79 minutes, how can you go wrong?

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Murder on the Orient Express (2017) – K. Branagh

I went into this Agatha Christie adaptation thinking it wasn’t going to be too challenging – more of a TV mystery comfort food sort of thing – but unfortunately, it is much worse than that.  Although director Kenneth Branagh has lined up an array of top-drawer stars (Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Olivia Colman, Daisy Ridley et al.), they are almost all wasted in small unrewarding parts. Branagh gives himself (as Hercule Poirot) the most screen time but his moustache tends to overshadow his acting; I didn’t think that he established the character any better than David Suchet, despite the bigger budget, bigger canvas.  Even worse, the plot itself is botched – we barely get to learn each character’s backstory by the time we find Poirot lining them all up and revealing the solution to the crime.  Instead much time is wasted trying to make the film feel like an action flick (that chase after Josh Gad) or to use the 65mm screen with what feels a lot like CGI landscapes behind the fabled train.  Give it a miss. 

They Won’t Believe Me (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

They Won’t Believe Me (1947) – I. Pichel

At the start of this film noir, Larry Ballentine (Robert Young) is on trial for murder.  The prosecution has already rested and he is called to the stand by his defence attorney to tell his side of the story.  We see this unfold in flashback, although occasionally we return to the courtroom to see the impact his version of the events is having on the jury.  To his credit, Ballentine does not always present himself as a good guy – instead, he cheats on his wife with two other women. She keeps him as a trophy husband because he is good looking, but he is basically good for nothing.  As the events of the story unfold, we learn how he finally decided to split from his wife and take up with his cynical girlfriend, Verna (Susan Hayward) – but a tragic car accident changes everything.  In a twist that wouldn’t be possible in the days of DNA-testing (let alone dental records), Larry manages to free himself from his marriage but still retain his rich wife’s fortune.  Until, that is, he is arrested and put on trial.  The title refers to his perception of the jury and the ending hinges on this belief.  The strengths here follow from Young’s willingness to play a morally dubious character (with some of his lecherous moments apparently edited out of the versions shown on TV) but the ending is very abrupt! 

The Legend of Hell House (1973)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Legend of Hell House (1973) – J. Hough

Of course, this film owes a huge debt to Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), based on Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, which also featured a team of paranormal investigators visiting a supposedly haunted house to determine its secrets.  Here, the visitors include two mediums, played by Roddy McDowall and Pamela Franklin (who was the young girl in The Innocents, 1961, another haunted classic), and a physicist (Clive Revill) and his wife (Gayle Hunnicutt).  The house was fortress of a debauched Crowley-type figure who still haunts the place and has succeeded in killing earlier investigators (only McDowall escaped an earlier incident).  The set-up is good and creepy and the early “sittings” by Franklin’s medium capture the right spooky tone.  She believes the ghostly son of the evil man is trapped in the house and wants to free him – but is she being fooled?  Things do take a rather sexual turn as the women are molested or possessed – it is hard not to see this as a bit gratuitous but I guess it relates to the backstory.  Then, the physicist attempts to suck out all of the spiritual energy from the house with a big contraption.  I’ll leave it for you to watch to see whether it works but when all is said and done and the big reveal is revealed, I’m not sure it completely adds up (or at the very least Richard Matheson’s script does not do a good enough job of highlighting the important clues).  Worth a look, if only because there are so few good entries in this genre and this does capture a certain vibe.

  

Dangerous Crossing (1953)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Dangerous Crossing (1953) – J. M. Newman

Jeanne Crain is a newlywed having met her new husband just one month earlier and tying the knot in one of those roadside wedding chapels, now she is onboard a cruise ship ready for departure.  Her husband just has to leave some money with the purser as the ship is departing.  She awaits his return in the bar.  And he doesn’t come back.  When she seeks help from the ship’s steward, he informs her that no such husband exists on the passenger register and that she boarded alone and her luggage arrived early and was taken to her cabin – not the cabin she originally arrived to with her husband.  He takes her to the ship’s doctor, played by Michael Rennie, and the rest of this brief film (75 minutes) involves Crain trying to convince everyone that she is not crazy and to find her husband.  Yes, it’s film noir but a minor entry in the canon; the plot resolves too quickly and too patly, methinks, and the premise only takes us so far before it gets old…

  

Attack the Block (2011)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Attack the Block (2011) – J. Cornish

A young John Boyega (pre-Star Wars) plays the leader of a gang of kids in a housing estate block in South London who have to fight off some “alien gorilla wolf MFs”.  I’m maybe not the right demographic for this (which would seem to be young stoners?) but there’s no denying that it gets right to the action and doesn’t really flag. That might also be a weakness (i.e. no time for character development) but if you think so, you’re watching the wrong picture. Billed as an action-comedy, I guess it could be funny but I didn’t laugh; however, the non-CGI aliens are pretty effective. Overall, I think it wins because of its warmth toward its characters, pushing past the initial semi-stereotypical presentation to treat them more humanely.  We also get a nod to racial and class harmony with the inclusion of Jodi Whittaker who is first mugged by the kids and then ends up fighting the monsters with them.  A bit of a feel-good finale for you but I wouldn’t necessarily go out of my way for this one.  

  

Ghostwatch (1992)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Ghostwatch (1992) – L. Manning

Perhaps this has gone down in the annals of “seemed like a good idea at the time” events but even now it managed to pack a punch, 28 years later.  So, yes, the BBC decided to make a faux live broadcast (hosted by Michael Parkinson no less) where they station a reporter and camera crew in a supposedly haunted house and film what happens on Halloween.  In the studio is an expert on parapsychology and interviewees include a skeptic from New York City.  Of course, weird things do begin to happen, centered on a young girl nearing puberty.  Apparently, many Brits tuned in late (after a movie on ITV finished) and did not realise that the broadcast was staged & fictional – so the outcry and shock resembled what happened after Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast in the 1930s.  In practice, the film feels a bit like the subsequent Blair Witch Project with its “you are there” shaky cam and inexplicable chaos.  Apparently, if you look closely enough you can see the apparition (that callers to the show’s hotline were reporting) approximately 13 times – I only saw it once after being told where to look!  I knew it wasn’t real but still I had to keep pinching myself…

 

The Woman in Black (1989)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Woman in Black (1989) – H. Wise

This British TV movie (not the more recent Daniel Radcliffe big screen release) was highlighted by The Guardian as containing one of the top 10 scariest ghosts of all time.  And, true enough, it is one of those low-key spooky affairs (not unlike the BBC’s M. R. James adaptations) that takes place in the early 20^th century where the old fashioned customs and surrounds add to the creepy ambience. Adrian Rawlins plays Arthur Kidd, a young lawyer who is ordered to attend to the affairs of a recently deceased widow who lived in an isolated old house on the marshes near the (fictional) seaside town of Crythin Gifford. No one in the village is keen to go anywhere near the house and no one shows up for the funeral of the widow, although the Kidd sees a mysterious woman in black that no one else acknowledges.  Of course, she is a ghost and, as it turns out, not a very friendly one (among the scariest of all time – maybe if you saw this as a child)!  Kidd eventually has to spend the night uncovering the facts in the haunted house and indeed it does send chills down your spine.  The screenplay is by Nigel Kneale (of Quatermass fame) from Susan Hill’s story. Although you might expect that this is the sort of TV movie where a happy ending awaits with the mystery of the ghost’s unhappy demise tied up with a bow – but you could be wrong!  Worth a look if you like eerie rather than gory, implicit rather than explicit horrors. 

 

Under the Shadow (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Under the Shadow (2016) – B. Anvari

Set in Tehran during the ‘80s (near the end of the lengthy Iran-Iraq war), director Babak Anvari uses the ghost story genre to raise questions about gender roles in society (a critique that applies not only to the Middle East).  When her husband, a doctor, is called to duty in the warzone, Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is left to take care of their young daughter, Dorsa, on her own.  All seems fine (apart from Shideh’s stresses and the sexism directed against her) until a missile strikes their building, neighbours begin to flee the city, and Dorsa loses her favourite doll.  Soon, Dorsa is reporting that another woman promising to be a better mother has been talking to her. Shideh herself begins to see things moving in the apartment. One of the remaining neighbours begins claiming that there is a Djinn in the building, supposedly invited by the mute orphan she has taken in.  Indeed, the ghost appears in a full burka (or chador but we don’t see a face – perhaps invisible in there!) threatening Dorsa even as Shideh knows they must flee to the basement bomb shelter. In the end, apart from a few solid jump scares, the film is less scary or spooky than it is thought-provoking,  Not surprisingly, Anvari filmed this outside of Iran and its censors.   

Creepy (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Creepy (2016) – K. Kurosawa

After a case goes bad, Takakura leaves the police force and becomes a criminology professor.  But when a former colleague asks for his assistance, he can’t help but get sucked into investigating a cold case (the disappearance of three members of a local family), despite his wife’s hope that he would stay out of it.  In fact, he and his wife Yasuko (Yûko Takeuchi) had moved to a new neighbourhood to get a fresh start after he changed careers.  However, their new neighbours are distinctly unfriendly or awkward and weird.  Nevertheless, Yasuko grows closer to their strange next-door neighbour Nishino (Teruyuki Kagawa) who may be harbouring a secret that links him to the cold case.  Despite this intriguing set-up in line with earlier genre successes from director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (e.g., Cure, 1997), the subtitles let me down (seemingly created using Google Translate) and I suspect that I missed some important nuances.  For example, Yasuko’s motivations and behaviour seem to alter strangely without notice – although this may be due to some mysterious powers exerting influence on her (not unheard of in Kurosawa’s films which often include spooky and supernatural elements, hence this title).  I’m sure things must be much more coherent for native speakers.  (That said, Kurosawa has not always wanted to connect the dots in the past).  So, if you can find a proper source, this is likely a solid entry in the morbid serial killer police procedural genre.

  

A Dark Song (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Dark Song (2016) – L. Gavin

Very spooky and sinister (and punctuated by my DVD player abruptly spitting out the disc at a particularly scary moment 85 minutes in).  Sophia (Catherine Walker) who harbors grief (and hate?) in her heart hires Joseph Solomon (Steve Oram) to help her perform an occult rite (based on Crowley) that will allow her to summon her guardian angel and speak to her dead son.  The rite involves months of gruelling and painful sacrifices inside an old mansion (surrounded by a ring of salt, of course).  First time director Liam Gavin expertly manages the tone and suspense, keeping things creepy even when nothing is happening – it is the air of expectation (and the shadows) that keeps viewers glued to the screen.  Will anything really happen or are these people simply desperate and confused? (Solid acting keeps us unsure).  And then, of course, things start to happen.  I missed about 60 seconds of the darkest moments, I think, due to the damaged disc – I don’t think things became too gruesome or sadistic (but I guess viewer beware).  The end reminded me of Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture (1991) -- which I should certainly watch again – conjuring up a reset of your expectations. Worth a look, esp. for the Halloween season.

Hue and Cry (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Hue and Cry (1947) – C. Crichton

Yes, it’s corny at times and doesn’t scale the heights that the best Ealing comedies do, but if taken as a picture for kids, it certainly does the trick.  Amon watched this with me and, although the plot might become elusive at times for an 8 year old, there are enough fun moments to carry the day.  Harry Fowler plays Joe Kirby who discovers that a gang of crooks are using a weekly comic book (called The Trump, no less) to communicate through code about their next evil deeds.  Kirby tracks down the serial’s writer (Alastair Sim) and the publisher before he latches on to the evil mastermind (much closer to hand than expected) and uses an army of boys to dispatch him and his mates.  This is the part that Amon liked most.  For me, the most absorbing element was the location shooting in bombed out London of 1947 – everything seems destroyed but the kids run amok in the rubble.  Those were different times.  Worth a look, particularly if you are an Ealing completist.

 

Conflict (1945)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Conflict (1945) – C. Bernhardt

My PhD supervisor gave me a book called “Psychiatry and the Cinema” (Gabbard & Gabbard, 1987) and it’s a shame that this film is only relegated to a footnote.  Sydney Greenstreet plays a psychiatrist who seems pitched halfway between the Freudian psychoanalysts of yore and the cognitive behavioural therapists of today.  He suggests to Humphrey Bogart that obsessive thoughts can take hold of a person and need to be changed via talk therapy rather than surgery.  Of course, he doesn’t yet know that Bogie has become infatuated with the younger sister, Evelyn (Alexis Smith), of his wife, Kathryn (Rose Hobart) – and when the opportunity arises, when he has the perfect alibi, Bogie does kill Kathryn.  Or does he? Over the course of the second half of the film, clues materialise suggesting that she is still alive since her body was never discovered.  Bogie feels as though he is going crazy as a result which drives him to the story’s inevitable conclusion.  Although Bogie did not always play the good guy, his portrayal of the killer feels a bit more regressive to his earlier heavy roles rather than his more complex and ambivalent anti-heroes of the future (i.e., Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948; In a Lonely Place, 1950). We don’t feel much sympathy for him.  Greenstreet, in contrast, does make for a avuncular and positively framed psychologist – not always the case in Hollywood films of the day.

 

The Invisible Man (2020)

 ☆ ☆ ½

The Invisible Man (2020) – L. Whannell

I realise this is a horror film but does it have to be so grim and depressing? Yes, it’s topical and relevant with the villain (some powerful Silicon Valley start-up millionaire), a bona fide example of toxic masculinity, gaslighting and controlling poor Cecilia (Elisabeth Moss), even apparently from beyond the grave. Except we are pretty certain, given the film’s title, that he really has just found a way to fake his own death and turn invisible, so as to better stalk his ex (who we see trying to flee his abuse at the start of the film, pre-fake death).  So, the film is simply a bunch of stunts where havoc (and murder) is inflicted by someone not there – cue special effects (which probably wowed everyone in 1933 but are pretty ho-hum these days).  And I guess there is a twist but I wasn’t encouraged to care enough to be intrigued or surprised by it, especially when a lot of the characters here don’t seem to stay in character anyway (i.e. friends and family suddenly turn cold). To her credit, Moss holds the film together and could be considered an example of an empowered woman (by the end, if not for most of the running time where she is a stereotypical “woman in peril”).  To conclude:  I wanted to like it, but could not.

 

The Gentlemen (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Gentlemen (2019) – G. Ritchie

After a few duds, Guy Ritchie has gone back to his trademark formula (Lock, Stock etc.) to offer up this easy-going action flick that is, well, all style and not much substance.  Sometimes that’s what you want but it isn’t going to inspire any deep thinking.  Matthew McConaughey is an American expat who has set up a very large cannabis syndicate in the UK, which he now wishes to sell.  However, the potential buyer and the competition are not particularly trustworthy.  We learn this because the story is told in flashback by Hugh Grant who plays a private detective who has been following the action and is now prepared to blackmail McConaughey by exposing him to the press.  He reveals what he knows to McConaughey’s loyal deputy (Charlie Hunnam) and the plot moves back and forward between the flashbacks and the interaction between Grant and Hunnam. Colin Farrell is good in a small well-defined role. It’s all a bit of fun but laced with profanity and sometimes derogatory slurs for ethnic and sexual minorities (why include this, I always think – it undercuts the fun).  As usual, the plot clicks into place with a few surprises -- but are surprises surprising when you expect them?     

 

The Love Witch (2016)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Love Witch (2016) – A. Biller 

Whereas this might look on the surface like an homage to (or spoof of) the sexploitation horror films of the late 60s/early 70s, it is something much more.  Director Anna Biller uses Brechtian tricks -- mainly the stilted vocal delivery of all characters but also the slow dreamlike pace – to get us to detach from the events at hand and ponder her aims.  And to her credit, these are not obvious nor simplistic.  Samantha Robinson stars as Elaine, the Love Witch of the title, who has fled San Francisco for a small Northern California town where she begins making candles and witchy objects and hooks up with an occult community (treated as a sizable minority in the town).  After the breakup of her marriage (we see her husband dead in flashback, seemingly after drinking a spiked drink), Elaine wants love and uses sex magick to try to get it.  Unfortunately, the men she lures do not respond as she had hoped – although they are keen for lovemaking (and self-objectification on Elaine’s part), they soon turn into needy emotional messes.  She may not have gotten the spells exactly right – or so she thinks. Soon, the police are after her – but he is certainly a hunky detective and she reels him in.  Despite its nudity and sex, it is easy to read this as a feminist film.  For one thing, it is told from Elaine’s point of view; she may not be aware of the inadequacy of sexualizing herself to achieve the love she wants – but viewers are; and other characters explicitly discuss women’s roles (and do not think it is to please men, first and foremost, as Elaine suggests). Beyond this, the film has many fanciful and surprising scenes (again with the quality of a dream) although some might feel it drags – but you’ve got to be impressed by Biller’s talents (she wrote, directed, edited, and did the production/costume design).  

 

Heavy Metal (1981)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Heavy Metal (1981) – G. Potterton et al.

When this was released, I was 14 and perhaps just the right age for its adolescent fantasy/sci-fi sex & violence cocktail.  But seeing it now, on the verge of its 40^th anniversary, was still something of a pleasure, notwithstanding its undeniably sexist pubescent wet dream fodder. “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way” was the line from another movie.  But seriously, this is R-rated animation that reminded me of Philip K. Dick or Neuromancer or Beastmaster or Dungeons & Dragons.  All the stories (there are 6 or 7) are drawn from the pages of Heavy Metal magazine and held together by a connecting “plot” about an evil green orb.  The music here isn’t exactly what I think of as heavy metal (Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult aside) and this would be much better rescored with some stoner rock, methinks.  So, don’t come for the music because perhaps surprisingly it isn’t the main game.  Another surprise was that the film’s voice cast is drawn from the ranks of SCTV (John Candy, Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, etc.) – but it isn’t mostly comedy (although there is some and some things are clearly tongue in cheek).  Instead, this is for animation geeks circa 1981 with some really great images and direction (and no doubt for teenage stoners as well). 

 

The More the Merrier (1943)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The More the Merrier (1943) – G. Stevens

Somehow, I found myself underwhelmed by The More the Merrier and I’m rather hard-pressed to know why.  Perhaps it is because I’ve watched a few screwball comedies from the era recently and this film is far less madcap, even if it does conjure up a few chuckles.  Perhaps it is because Charles Coburn is so great as the slick swindler in Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve (1941) that seeing him in a somewhat goofier role is rather off-putting.  Beyond that, this film feels dated in a way that other comedies of the period do not – it might be the references to wartime problems with housing and the shortage of men but it also might be the more sexist tone that director George Stevens adopts.  The plot sees Joel McCrea and Coburn moving into Jean Arthur’s apartment (due to housing supply issues) and the subsequent romance that blossoms (or is orchestrated by Coburn).  She’s engaged to someone else (a government bureaucrat) but really shouldn’t be.  The film gets the three leads into a variety of silly situations but still it doesn’t feel as chaotic as it should (for the genre). There seems to be a need to play to the home team, soldiers heading overseas and those remaining behind who are missing them – and this gentle aim undercuts any sharper bite that the comedy might deserve.  Again, I suspect my under-reaction is all about the comparison to other better films in the genre.  But don’t get me wrong – all three actors are funny and worth watching, they’re just better in other films.

  

The Third Murder (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Third Murder (2017) – H. Kore-eda

I think I remember hearing that Kore-eda’s The Third Murder (the film before his Cannes winning Shoplifters, 2018) was a big hit in Japan. It stars Koji Yakusho as Misumi, a man who has confessed to murdering his boss, a factory owner, which would be his third murder, as he was only recently released from prison after serving a sentence for killing two yakuza loan sharks 30 years earlier.  Masaharu Fukuyama plays Shigemori, the defence lawyer who digs deeper into Misumi’s case when the facts don’t really line up.  For most of its running time, Kore-eda delivers us a crisp legal thriller as Shigemori and his team interview various witnesses and potential accessories, following up every lead and discussing matters with the somewhat cagey or confused Misumi.  Shigemori even travels to Hokkaido where the earlier murders took place.  However, Kore-eda seemingly has a different goal than to just serve up a genre film – his real interest lies in making a case that the death penalty as deliberated in Japan is extremely problematic, primarily because there is social pressure placed on everyone to make the system run smoothly and efficiently and thus dissent may be suppressed.  In getting this point across, Kore-eda seems to leave the answer to the question of Misumi’s real motives ambiguous.  Another goal of equating Misumi and Shigemori -- both have daughters as did the murder victim – seems more in line with Kore-eda’s usual focus on family drama, but the dots aren’t fully connected here.  I suspect that Japanese audiences may have gotten more out of the film in its native language and context. Still, the film does reward those who want to think about it, after the fact.

 

Ford v. Ferrari (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Ford v. Ferrari (2019) – J. Mangold

There’s a lot of chest-thumping in Ford v. Ferrari – but what did you expect?  Matt Damon plays retired driver and race car designer/team leader Carroll Shelby and Christian Bale plays anti-social hotshot driver Ken Miles who team up to try to beat the Italians at the 1966 LeMans Grand Prix of Endurance (a 24-hour race).  I’m not into cars but nevertheless director James Mangold manages to pull all the strings to set up various tensions that keep the movie churning along:  underdog vs. Goliath, artistry vs. corporate manipulation, mano a mano.  Although Ferrari has to be beat, the real enemy here is Ford itself or at least their exec Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) who doesn’t like Miles because he doesn’t project the right image to customers.  Lee Iacocca (yes him; Jon Bernthal) is in the Shelby/Miles camp but seems to have less power to influence Henry Ford II.  There’s a lot of back and forth over whether Miles will be able to drive for Ford or not.  And then there are the racing sequences which are in fact pretty good.  As usual, Bale loses himself in his character who does a lot of muttering while driving (in a Midlands accent that requires Bale to do something funny with his upper lip). Damon is, well, Damon.  The final coda feels tacked on and maybe should have been relegated to an onscreen postscript.  Fawning reviewers suggest that the film is a return to mainstream Hollywood filmmaking of yore (uh Rocky?), but your mileage (ha, ha) will depend on how much you enjoy this genre and its formula.