Don’t Breathe (2016)

☆ ☆ ½

Don’t Breathe (2016) – F. Alvarez

I’ve been trying to decide who is the target audience for this picture (it wasn’t me) and I’ve come to the conclusion that it is a thrill ride meant for young people to watch in the cinema.  In retrospect, I can hear people gasping, ewwing, and perhaps even cheering during the action in the cinema – it would play better in a crowd than alone in headphones (which is how I watched it).  The plot sees three millennial thieves breaking into the house of an old blind veteran in a run-down Detroit neighbourhood after hearing that he has a few hundred grand inside.  Unfortunately for them, the old man is more than they bargained for and they are soon playing a game of cat-and-mouse -- where they are the mice scurrying through the basement catacombs in the creaky old house.  Director Fede Alvarez uses all the tricks of the trade to heighten the tension – but it really is all technique and virtually no plot here.  You’ve paid your admission and you have a 90 minute ride.  (My worry that this might turn into torture porn was fortunately groundless – but it has a few sicko moments for sure).  Not my thing.

It Happened Here (1965)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

It Happened Here (1965) – K. Brownlow & A. Mollo

Imagine Britain if Hitler and the Nazis had succeeded in their invasion plans.  How would the nation respond?  Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s low budget project (scripted when they were teenagers and shot in 16mm with film stock provided by Kubrick among others) presents a nation divided among the resistance (partisans) and the collaborators, a nation now at war with itself as well as with the Nazis.  As a case study, the narrative follows Pauline, a nurse who sees her friends killed by an attack by the resistance while she is being relocated to London by the Germans. As a reaction, she joins the black shirted collaborators who spruik law and order -- and the elimination of dissidents and those who cannot contribute to society.  A terrifying speech by an actual British National Socialist was removed by the censors back in the 1960s but has since been replaced, advocating euthanasia for the undesirables.  While following Pauline’s movements, the camera happens to pass a Jewish ghetto behind barbed wire (no stock footage was used, all events were restaged with amateur actors and authentic or makeshift props).  Later, after she fails to report former friends who have sheltered an injured partisan, Pauline is transferred to a sanitorium for TB patients that in reality is the last way station for those about to be executed by the state (i.e., Jews and others rejected by the Nazis).  Obviously, the resulting film is chilling and politically relevant today – how would our neighbours respond to a totalitarian takeover?  Would they give in? Would they resist? Would they actively support the new regime?  When they come for your neighbour what would you do?  Sobering stuff. 

Horror Hotel (1960)

☆ ☆ ☆

Horror Hotel (1960) – J. L. Moxey

The first film from the production team that later turned into Amicus Productions, a rival for Hammer, the primary producers of horror films in England in the ‘60s and ‘70s.  It is rather quaint and clearly low budget but it manages to create an air of foreboding on a par with what Bava accomplished in (the far superior) Black Sunday (also 1960).  The plot similarly sees a collision between a reincarnated witch (previously burned at the stake) and the modern folks who run across her and suffer for it.  In this case, uni student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) is writing a term paper about witchcraft (for Professor Christopher Lee!) and travels to an out-of-the-way New England town to do some research (upon Lee’s recommendation). She stays in the local inn which is full of shadowy guests and run by, you guessed it, the reincarnated witch herself. When Nan disappears, her brother and her boyfriend travel to the town to find her. (As some point out, the plot is reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Psycho, also 1960, in this way).  They get help from Patricia and her grandfather, the local clergyman who is blind and running on empty after his long battles with the forces of evil.  The mise-en-scene, although bare bones, is suitably creepy (fog everywhere helps) and the awkward acting from the undead adds to the effects. And the final showdown has to be seen to be believed. At only 76 minutes (in this US cut, which is missing 2 minutes of material that offended religious censors), Horror Hotel is short and scary/sweet and a recommended contribution to your horror film education. 

  

Goyokin (1969)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Goyokin (1969) – H. Gosha

Tatsuya Nakadai (probably best known for Kagemusha and Ran but also in Harakiri, Yojimbo, The Human Condition, When A Woman Ascends the Stairs, and Samurai Rebellion, among many others) stars as a ronin samurai who has left his clan because they were involved in the massacre of innocent farmers, as part of a nefarious plot to steal gold from the shogun.  Nakadai’s character has felt terrible guilt in the three years since, because he never turned in the villains or challenged them.  His honour gone, he is about to sell his sword when he hears that his clan, led by Tetsurô Tanba is about to try the same plan again, with another village doomed to be wiped out to cover up the theft of more gold.  So, Nakadai makes his way slowly and steadily to the scene of the battle to make up for his mistake.  Naturally, in true chambara style, the film will end in a duel between Nakadai and Tanba.  However, the inexorable nature of the plot still leaves room for some great scenes (Nakadai besieged in a two-story shack that is eventually set on fire) and some excellent widescreen vistas (waves crashing on rocks, samurai against the sunset).  Perhaps not the greatest of samurai films, but enjoyable for fans of the genre or Nakadai.

Eye of the Needle (1981)

☆ ☆ ☆

Eye of the Needle (1981) – R. Marquand

The score by Miklós Rózsa (who scored so many films from Hollywood’s Golden Age, such as Spellbound, The Killers, The Asphalt Jungle, Moonfleet, Ben-Hur, and countless more) really elevates this otherwise standard spy story (from the novel by Ken Follett) to something more classical (if not classic).  Those swirling strings when the tension is high!  Donald Sutherland plays a Nazi spy (“the needle” because he kills with a stiletto knife) who, in the first half of the film is undercover in London, ordered by Hitler to find out where the Allied D-Day invasion will happen.  Once his cover is blown (and he has discovered the Allied plans), he escapes to a lonely (and very scenic) island off the coast of Scotland to await his U-boat rendezvous.  On that island, he meets Kate Nelligan who lives there alone with her disabled husband and preschool son, not very happily since her husband is bitter and mean.  A romance develops and viewers are put on edge, knowing what Nelligan does not. Scotland Yard begins to close in.  The husband begins to suspect.  Rózsa’s score swirls.  And things resolve as you know they must, as they would in the Golden Age of Hollywood.  And there is something reassuring, if not exactly ground-breaking, about that. (Direction is by Richard Marquand who was subsequently hired for Return of the Jedi).

  

Look Back in Anger (1959)

☆ ☆ ☆

Look Back in Anger (1959) – T. Richardson

The first of the British “Kitchen Sink” Realism pictures (from director Tony Richardson) aims to take an unvarnished look at contemporary working class life. Richard Burton plays Jimmy Porter, an angry young man with a strong animosity toward the middle class bourgeoisie who is nevertheless married to a young woman from that class. We learn that he has a university education but he isn’t using it – instead he is working at the local market selling sweets from a stall.  Jimmy is hard to understand – he is nasty to everyone, particularly his wife Alison (Mary Ure) and her friend Helena (Claire Bloom).  He is chummy with his friend Cliff (Gary Raymond) who lives with the couple and he adores his former landlady “Ma” Tanner (Dame Edith Evans) who is earthy and working class.  But I can’t understand the man and his resentments – he just comes across like a prick.  Some have argued that Burton (at age 34) was too old for the part and perhaps he lacks the immaturity that is necessary to convince an audience that his generalised hostility is borne from youthful wilfulness and resistance rather than just dickishness.  If he wants to fight “the man” and fight for the working class, he isn’t going about it the right way. I guess we are meant to see him as frustrated. But then the plot has him inexplicably have an affair with the once hated friend and then eventually return to his wife (but why she returns to him is hard to fathom).  He’s mixed up, I’m mixed up.  (The original play may make more sense).  If you are looking for kitchen sink films, I’d recommend Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), A Taste of Honey (1961), or The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962; also by Richardson), all better than this one (which nevertheless looks pretty good in moody B&W and has some nice jazz interludes).

Battle of the Sexes (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Battle of the Sexes (2017) – J. Dayton & V. Faris

Yesterday, a student in my social psychology class linked a youtube clip of Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson to our subject’s facebook group, so I had a look.  Although it was an older talk, it wasn’t long before I discovered Peterson’s more recent comments about gender relations (cherished by the alt-right).  To me, they represent “essentialist” thinking – men and women are different and constrained by their biological differences and that is how it ought to be (so says Peterson, or at least he implies that people will be happier if they follow the rules set out deterministically by biology and evolutionary history).  Of course, I heartily disagree, noting that gender differences on most personality traits are very small and shouldn’t be generalised and moreover, even if any differences exist they shouldn’t be represented as a constraint on what any one person or group of persons should be expected to do (and so on).  So, perhaps it was a happy coincidence that I found Battle of the Sexes in my mailbox on the same day.  Directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris take us back to the early seventies and those more naïve days when “womens’ libbers” were just starting to tackle the (unrepentant) male chauvinists out there and a tennis match could become a focal point for debate about gender roles and abilities.  So, the film is a history lesson of sorts, no doubt aimed squarely at the current terms of the debate and the pussy-grabber-in-chief.  It is also a recreation of a particular event, a bio-pic of a moment, when 55-year-old Bobby Riggs (played by expert mimic Steve Carrell) challenged 29-year-old Billie Jean King (a nice turn by Emma Stone) to three sets to put male supremacy to the test (or to confirm it, in Riggs’ eyes).  Riggs was a bit of a joke and probably didn’t take any of this seriously but others around him did (although the film keeps things light). A separate theme focuses on King’s awakening same sex attraction and the pressures it puts on her marriage and her game (Alan Cumming is there to support her though).  Ironically, it is Australian Margaret Court (now an unabashed and outspoken gay marriage opponent) who is her biggest female rival.  Of course, King won the big match (hurrah!), although since I was not yet 6 at the time, I don’t quite remember it – but I do remember the seventies and Howard Cosell (appearing as himself in archive footage here) and the music and the gauzy feel of the moment, all captured beautifully here.  Those were different times.