The Group (1966)

There's an old joke that goes "When I saw the pennant on her wall, I said to her 'If you really went to Vassar, what are you doing in a whorehouse?' 'Just lucky' she replied."  I can tell this one since it is where to I went to college and this film based on the novel by well-known alumna, Mary McCarthy, tells of eight friends from the class of 1933 (a bit before my time) as they are about to graduate and take on the world in the run-up to the Second World War.  While it could be considered something of a potboiler, it is actually quite advanced for its time and touches on frigidity, contraception, lesbianism, unfaithfullness, mental illness, and just about every "wimmin's" issue you could imagine.  And it boasts a remarkable cast of young actors and actresses, many of whom went on to define movies over the next two decades, including the feature debuts of Candace Bergen, Joan Hackett (a lovely comedienne who died far too young), Joanna Pettet, Kathleen Widdoes, and Hal Holbrook.  The only problem for me was seeing Richard Mulligan as a feckless bohemian since to me he will always remain Bert from "Soap".  But I thoroughly enjoyed watching this one again, as it brought back so many memories of a very special time and of the young women with whom I spent those important college years.

Tags: Vassar College

Altered States (1980)

This film surprisingly still packs a wallop -- what a head-trip it is.  Starring '80s lead actor William Hurt in his feature debut (he still pops up in indies, but is not the draw he once was) and directed by Ken Russell in the days when a studio would still bankroll him, this movie is based on a Paddy Chayevsky novel on the possibility of experiencing different levels of awareness and existence.  Hurt plays a researcher dabbling with sensory deprivation tanks and mind-altering drugs and goes further than his medical colleagues Bob Balaban and Charles Haid (always associated by me with Hill Street and not endocrinology) would advise, regressing at different stages to a murderous simian being and pure spirit (I think).  Cue wonderful psychedelic special effects that would have been more in tune with the earlier LSD eras of the '60s and '70s, but still mind-boggling to behold.  It's the kind of movie that the viewer must just accept as it stands, rather than trying to make head nor tail of it.  Apparently Mr. Chayevsky was so perturbed by Russell's interpretation of his book that he tried to get him removed from the helm and his name taken off the credits; the screenplay is therefore credited to a Sidney Aaron which is actually Mr. C's real name.

Blind Beast (1969)

I am able to receive a number of German television channels via satellite and normally scan their schedules in the hope of finding something special, which usually nets silent films where the language is less important.  Most of the balance of the movies shown are dubbed into German, but occasionally as with this Japanese film they resort to German subtitles and I can just about cope.  Even without following all of the dialogue I was amazed at how unusual this film was and how strange its conception.  A young and very attractive bondage model is kidnapped by a blind sculptor and his mother and taken to his studio, so that he can feel her body and produce his ultimate masterpiece.  The studio in question is about the size of a football pitch and has walls and walls of oversized body parts: noses, eyes, lips, arms, legs, breasts -- the visual effect of this is so surreal that it is unnerving, especially since the main floor area is taken up with an enormous nude of at least fifty times life size.  After futile attempts to escape, the young model chooses to seduce the sculptor and he begins to fall for her, much to his mother's annoyance.  However when the latter tries to let the girl escape, the artist intervenes and his mother is accidentally killed.  Afterwards a strange sado-masochistic relationship develops between the other two characters which can only end destructively in mutilation and self-mutilation.  To see the pair energetically making love on the belly of the huge nude is another image from this movie which will remain in the memory.  Perhaps the Japanese have a penchant for obsessive love; one only has to remember "Ai No Corrida".   I have perhaps given away too many spoilers in writing about this film, but then again I doubt that it is one that is likely to come anywhere near your way soon. 

The Sea Inside (2004)

I was going on the other day about "feel-bad" films and although some might be tempted to put this Spanish Academy Award winner in that category, it is really very life-affirming despite its serious subject matter.  It is based on the true story of Ramon Sampedro who spent 28-plus years as a quadriplegic, much of it spent petitioning the government for the right to end his life; eventually he convinced ten friends (so that no one person could be prosecuted) to assist him in drinking cyanide and his death was videoed and shown on Spanish TV.  What makes this film so powerful is the towering performance of Javier Bardem in the lead, an actor often associated with  macho and muscular performances.  Here with all bodily movement limited, he expresses everything with his eyes and his words.  Despite being frustrated by his inability to enjoy life to the full, he seems bursting with life, hope, and talent, and it is understandable why the many women in his world can not bear the thought of losing him.  These include his sister-in-law who tends him, a young vibrant woman from the Die with Dignity campaign, a married lawyer with whom there is a mutual attraction and who is herself suffering from a wasting disease, and a single mother of two who has been abused by men -- remarkable and believable performances one and all.  While one can join them in bemoaning his loss, one must also respect the individual's determination to live or lose his life by his own criteria.  An incredibly moving film!

Date Movie (2006)

While I can't say that this is the worst modern so-called comedy I have ever seen, since I had the misfortune of seeing "Freddy Got Fingered", it is an absolutely dire effort to spoof recent rom-com movies.  Starring Alyson Hannigan, the likeable "band-camp" gal from the "American Pie" series, she lowers her horizons by starting off in a ghastly fat suit a la "Shallow Hal" whilst working at her family's Greek restaurant (despite the fact that her father is black, her mother Indian, and her sister Japanese).  Streamlined into something of a looker by date-doctor Hitch (played by a black midget), she falls for a David Spade lookalike called Adam Campbell whom I know not.  His ex-girlfriend and her family are against the match, but a wedding is planned with an enormously fat-assed wedding planner called Jell-O...and so it continues with time taken to focus on a farting cat and a foul-mouthed baby.  Only Jennifer Coolidge as a Barbra Streisand clone from "Meet the Fokkers" is even vaguely amusing.  What I really hate about films like this one is how they can fatally spoil happy memories that one has from other movies, like the 'I Say a Little Prayer for You' singsong from "My Best Friend's Wedding".  Incidentally the Campbell character's surname is Fockyerdoder.  Hysterical or what?

House of Sand and Fog (2003)

Is there a good justification for watching "feel-bad" films?  There is no getting around the fact that this film tragedy will leave the viewer totally despondent, but since it garnered two Oscar acting nominations, I did feel that I should take a look.  The lovely Jennifer Connelly playing an abandoned wife and recovering alcoholic loses the house she has inherited from her father through her own inefficiency.  "Sir" Ben Kingsley playing an ex-Colonel in the Shah's Iranian army purchases the house for a pittance when it has been siezed for non-payment of taxes with the intention of moving his wife (memorably played by Shoreh Aghdashoo) and son in until he can sell it for its market value.  It is implicit that they have come well down in the world since moving to the States and that Kingsley helps them keep up appearances by taking a series of menial jobs. His wife has limited English and lives in fear of being sent back to Iran.

Connelly feels she has been wronged and Kingsley believes that the law is on his side, leading to a battle of wills between these two protagonists.  A non-too-bright cop played by Ron Eldard is infatuated by Connelly and walks out on his family to be with her; his efforts to aid her in recovering her house start an irreversible sequence of events that results in heartbreaking tragedy all round.  The end scenes are no less than devastating.  First-time director Vadim Perelman does a masterful job in unveiling the events and obtains great performances from all of these actors -- but just don't ask me to watch this film a second time! 

Two DVDs for a Fiver!

That's what they charge for what I assume are remaindered titles at my local garage, with the selection updated every few weeks, and there are some real gems among the dross.  (I won't mention the really crappy titles that have tempted me at this price, which are watched and then discarded).  Generally, however, these purchases join the backlog and only surface periodically, but last night's double-bill was a doozy:

The Sleeping Dictionary (2002):  I must confess that I had never heard of this movie which, I think, went straight to video/disc, but the cast and premise sounded promising -- and they were.  Set in the 1930s, a young Englishman, Hugh Dancy, is sent to Borneo to do his colonial duty at the station run by Bob Hoskins.  Part of his job is to learn the local language, and what better method than to take a concubine who will teach him in the bedroom -- such women are referred to as the sleeping dictionaries of the title.  He is offered a very luscious Jessica Alba in an early film lead, and his British scruples to remain a virgin until he's married fall to one side as he falls for her.  When he wants to marry her, he discovers that pukka blokes don't do such things and they are forcibly separated.  When he returns after a year married to Hoskins' daughter, Emily Mortimer, he finds that Alba, 'though married to one of her tribe, has bourne his child and the bond between them is still deep.  Minor villain Brenda Blethyn, playing Hoskins' wife, and the wonderful Australian actor Noah Taylor playing a real sadist do their utmost to destroy the love affair and the story built to what I thought would be a miserable ending.  But I was wrong; that's good!

Tune in Tomorrow (1990): I had actually seen this one previously, but only remembered it as an overly quirky oddity.  So I was unprepared for how amusing I found it the second time around.  A very very young and gormless Keanu Reeves falls for his visiting "aunt" (his father's brother's wife's sister) played by a mature Barbara Hershey, who has returned to their New Orleans hometown to hook a rich, old geezer.  Set in the 1950s, Reeves works at a local radio station which boasts a popular evening soap opera which has just hired a well-known writer to jazz up their ratings.  As played by a very wild and woolly Peter Falk, the writer not only sprinkles the soap with more and more outrageous developments (played out by an over-the-top cameo cast which includes Peter Gallagher, Dan Hedaya, John Larroquette, and Elizabeth McGovern), but also has a fierce line of vitriol against anything and everything to do with Albanians (some 15 years before Borat's diatribes).  Falk also sticks his two cents' worth into the Reeves/Hershey romance and manages to complicate everyones' lives.  He is responsible for most of the laughs, which are many, as he dresses in outlandish costumes to get the feel of his characters and generally leads the cast into merry mayhem.

All in all a fine evening's entertainment for a fiver, and I won't be throwing away either of these discs.   

Legendary Weapons of China (1982)

Every so often the National Film Theatre will do a season of Chinese martial arts films which is most welcome in the pursuit of "must-see" movies; this one is in fact one of the most legendary (the title gets it right) that has hitherto escaped me.  It nearly completely escaped me again as a combination of appalling service on both British Rail and the London Underground made the trek to the South Bank more fraught than usual.  We arrived late, after the film had recently started, but in time to see that the Shaolin masters who had decreed that their kung fu was invincible watch four of their best fighters shot dead by fiendish Western rifles. This was the main plot point of this marvellous movie directed and starring Lau Kar-leung, one of the top martial-arts instructors ever.  He declines to carry on teaching and goes into exile as a master wood-cuuter, but three young assassins are dispatched by other schools to kill him lest he spread the message that their disciples are now vulnerable.

From here onward the viewer is treated to non-stop martial mayhem including a long middle section where the fighting is played for laughs by a rogue conman pretending to be the missing Lau.  But even here the brilliance of the action is undeniable.  All three potential assassins, including one girl dressed as a man (an unconvincing convention of Hong Kong movies since they always look like girls to me), have ample opportunity to show their own skills as they first oppose each other but end up joining Lau.  However the culminating fight between Lau and his on-screen estranged brother (played by his real-life brother) in which they employ 18 traditional Chinese weapons in rapid succession is nothing short of breathtakingly amazing.  The actual quality of the film stock was quite poor in places and I can only entreat that this film be digitally remastered and released on DVD before it deteriorates completely.  Get cracking Hong Kong Legends!

Proof (2005)

A second appearance from Anthony Hopkins in my viewing schedules within a few days, but a much more convincing one, although his role was in many ways a minor one and he only appeared periodically throughout the film -- mainly because he died a few days before the start and only appears in flashbacks and in his daughter's imagination.   It's actually a Gwyneth Paltrow vehicle and while I have never doubted her talent, I can't say that I've ever looked forward to watching her go through her paces.  Yet she is convincing enough here as the dutiful daughter who looked after her father (Hopkins) -- once a brilliant mathematician but hopelessly lost to mental illness -- for the last five years, at the expense of her own career.  She may have inherited his intellectual capabilities, but she fears she is also prone to the same mental weaknesses.  In what is basically a four-hander,  one of the other two characters is a young teacher searching through Hopkins' papers in the hope of finding a gem; Jake Gyllenhaal plays this self-confessed nerd who starts a not very convincing romance with Paltrow.  The final role is taken by Hope Davis as Paltrow's insensitive elder sister who tries to take command of the situation and Paltrow's future.  This film was adapted for the screen by David Auburn from his own stage play and despite some opening-out, it does come across as a filmed drama.  Still the story was involving, if not completely fascinating, and the overall level of acting was sufficient to justify one's time.

A mixed bag of viewing delights (?)

Of the 22 movies (!) I watched last week, only three got the full-blown treatment below, but since I always live in hope of finding something really great, I thought I might comment on some of the other nineteen:

Dumplings (2004): This is an expansion of Hong Kong director Fruit Chan's segment in the three-parter "Three Extremes" and I wish no one had bothered.  It's the story of a back-street "doctor" who peddles a remedy for staying youthful of dumplings stuffed with human foetuses.  In a word: unsavoury!

"The Isle" (2000):  I saw this originally at a film festival before the UK censors got their scissors out.  It's another remarkable feature from Korean director Ki-duk Kim, who gave us the wonderful "Spring, Summer..." among others.  This film tells in its beautiful style of a murderer on the run holing up in a floating fishing hut and his odd relationship with the mute caretaker-cum-prostitute who looks after the site.  The cuts incidentally were mainly omitting cruelty to fish (!) rather than the many scenes of explicit sex and self-mutilation.  A remarkable and puzzling film and most of all, very strange.

Zathura (2005): This is a similar movie to "Jumanji" where a board game takes over and pitches two brothers and the teenaged sister who is supposed to be looking after things into a terrifying journey through outer space with its many monsters and hazards.  Pretty imaginative but I wonder if it will pass the test of time which the earlier film hasn't.  At least this one doesn't have Robin Williams in it.

Woman on the Moon (1929):  Probably the last silent movie from German director Fritz Lang and while inventive, ever so long and tedious.   A mad professor claims there is gold on the moon and an oddball assortment of heroes and a villain join the mission to retrieve it.  For completists only.

The Human Stain (2003):  Based on a Phillip Roth novel I doubt that this made any dents at the box office despite the pairing of Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman.  He plays a light-skinned black passing as a white Jew and she plays a down-in-the-mouth custodian with whom he starts an affair.  You may suspect poor casting of both roles and you are partially right: Hopkins seems to be on autopilot whileKidman who the critics hated for this part is more believable than one would expect.  But all hardly worth anyone's time.

Gosh I'm getting tired of all this remembering, so I'll cut back now to briefer comments on some of the balance:

The Great Gatsby (2000): Yet another version of this tale done for TV with perhaps rather more faithfulness to its literary roots, but totally superfluous when one has the Redford/Farrow version and the cracking 1949 one.

Il Grido (1957):  Also known as "The Outcry" this is yet another bleak affair from that great bore (to me) Antonioni.  Steve Cochrane hits the road as love goes sour in rural Italy.

Battling Butler (1926): The great Buster apparently loved this film about a louche sybarite who must pretend to be a famous boxer, but it's not really one of his best.  But so-so Keaton is still better than nothing.

Shirley Valentine (1989) and Exodus (1960):  I hadn't watched either of these in a while and can report that the former holds up well and that the latter is a somewhat patchy slog (all 199 minutes of it!)

The rest was made up of an early Hitchcock (not too special), the 2006 Disney animation "The Wild" (which was really no worse than "Zanzibar"), a late Paul Muni fantasy from 1946 ("Angel on my Shoulder") which is a heck of a lot better than its remake, another look at the Japanese film "Death Trance" which is still as weird as when I reviewed it last March, and a few stinkers which shall remain nameless and which are definitely best forgotten.

So now you know everything....

 

Dellamorte Dellamore (1993)

I originally saw this film (also known as "Cemetery Man") at a horror festival; it was then shown once on Channel 4 some ten years ago which is how I got my first copy.  Since it has not been shown since and since it seems to be unavailable on DVD, I bought my disc in Spain, where it is known under the lovely title of "My Sweetheart is a Zombie".  It's an Italian flick directed by Michele Soavi, once an assistant to the great Dario Argento, and only seems to be available in a dubbed version which is just about fine since the lead actor is Rupert Everett whose own voice is on the track.  I believe he was chosen for the part because of his strange resemblance to the hero of an Italian comic, "Dylan Dog" written by the same author as the novel on which this film is based.

But enough about the background.  This is one superior horror movie and quite unlike the average run-of-the mill scarefest.  Everett plays the caretaker of a cemetery where the dead come back to life within seven days of being buried and can only be dispatched by a bash or a shot to the head which keeps him pretty busy.  This all takes place in a matter-of-fact but mildly amusing mode.  His accomplice is his assistant, an obese and nearly mute retarded fellow, played memorably by one Francois Hadji-Lazaro.  There is also a rather gorgeous love-interest played in three separate incarnations by Anna Falchi.  Everett is so wrapped up in death that when Death himself appears to him, suggesting that it is not his place to interfere with the newly dead and that he should go out and kill his own victims, Everett obliges -- but in such an offhand and casual way that we never lose affection for his character.  A sub-strand involves the infatuation between Hadji-Lazaro and the recently deceased Mayor's daughter, who was decapitated in a motorcycle crash, and how he keeps her talking head in his demolished TV set.  You have to see this to appreciate how sweet, rather than gross, this romance is.

Like the best Italian horror films, this one is shot with an arthouse sensibility and despite the lashings of gore, the movie is far from one for the mindless fanboy crowd.

Space Cowboys (2000)

The programme content for my obsessive movie-watching falls into a number of categories.  The most satisfactory, which is also unfortunately the smallest proportion, is watching films in a cinema, largely in my instance reserved for previews, festival, and repertory showings, and only occasionally for recent blockbuster releases.  I watch just about everything new on both satellite and terrestrial TV which is less than I would wish (since I have usually already seen most of the so-called premieres) and too many of the balance aren't really worth anyone's time.  Then there is the DVD backlog composed of films not previously viewed with the occasional old favourite not seen in yonks also in competition for my time.  Some of the time I watch old flicks from my collection which have not been released on DVD, as I attempt to transcribe them from their often flawed taping to a new shiny disc.  Finally there is the huge DVD backlog of discs that have been purchased as replacements for films previously on video tape, which await being checked for quality and occasionally their extras.  I must admit here that although I am tempted by a huge selection of features and mumble under my breath about vanilla releases, I do in fact get easily bored checking out the padding on so many discs.  And while I do not always view all of these movies before filing them away, I do watch perhaps one in five when I feel in the mood for revisiting an old friend.  Such is the case of the above film.

It is such a good-spirited romp that while probably aimed at the older viewer, it also has much to offer any-age fan.  Four "old farts" -- Clint Eastwood, James Garner, Donald Sutherland, and Tommy Lee Jones -- who left the space programme back in the 60s when they were replaced by a chimpanzee, come together again when they are the only team likely to be able to fix a rogue Russian space station which is due to crash to earth.  Cue all the old animosity between Eastwood and NASA administrator James Cromwell and all the old rivalry between Eastwood and Jones (the youngest of the four by years).  How they prepare for their physical training as potential astronauts well past their prime (and in Sutherland's instance nearly blind) and how they are allowed to actually tackle the mission once the press gets hold of the story (much to Cromwell's disgust) is just part of the fun.  My main criticism is that the movie is probably too long and too bogged down in the minutiae of space travel during the final portion.  However, despite "losing" one of the team in a spectacular way, this is actually a feel-good film -- and not just for the geriatric set. 

Half Light (2006)

Half-witted might have been a better title for this Demi Moore vehicle (which should have stayed in the garage), a glossily filmed but incredibly preposterous bit of hokum.  She plays a very successful American writer living in London with her husband, played by that weird Scot out of "Lost", and her son.  Her husband also has ambitions as a writer and seems to envy her success.  When the son drowns in the scenic canal adjacent to their home, purportedly through her carelessness at leaving a gate unlocked and her failure to join him at play as promised, we are led to believe that her grief is endless and that she has lost the motivation to live and/or write.  We are more or less told this, since Ms. Moore does not seem up to emoting.  She may still have the body of a young woman, but she has had so much facial surgery that her blank expression reminds one of those Easter Island statues.

Anyhow she takes herself off to a colourful fishing village on the Scottish coast to "heal" and the viewer is now treated to a combination of a ghost story and a let's-drive-the-woman mad scenario.  She finds a soulmate in a widowed lighthouse keeper who it seems died some seven years before and the local psychic keeps telling her that her dead son is at her side attempting to keep her from harm.  Of course it's all about money, but the ghostly spirits are given equal billing to try and create something a little different, without let it be said much success.  I was surprised at all of the positive comments on IMDb concerning this movie -- I'm sure I saw the same one as all of those Demi Moore fanatics!

Everything is Illuminated (2005)

What a delightful surprise this film turned out to be since the little I knew about the slim plot did not seem likely to suggest the moving experience it became.  This is a first directorial effort from actor Liev Schreiber from his own script based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer -- which I have not read but will now definitely seek out.  Elijah Wood is effectively the only American in the cast, playing a young Jewish man of the same name as the book's author who documents his family's history in ziplok bags hung on a wall and who decides to travel to the Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather's life during World War II.  He enlists the aid of a young man who runs "Heritage Tours", catering to similar Jewish pilgrims and the boy's grandfather (who claims to be blind but who drives the van!) complete with his seeing-eye mutt.  What starts off as a quirky road movie as they attempt to find the small town which no one has ever heard of (or more likely would prefer to forget) takes a radical change of pace into serious waters.  When they eventually find one old woman who is able to shed some light on the past, which needless to say is rather different than Wood was expecting, all three travellers must examine their own feelings about family, bigotry, and the crimes of the past.  Without giving too much away I can only recommend that you seek out this movie -- unless getting all choked-up at the end is really not your scene.

Fando y Lis (1968)

The National Film Theatre is sort of doing a season (more of that below) of films by the Chilean-born, Mexico- or Paris-based surrealist man of all seasons, Alejandro Jodorowsky.  I was not however tempted by the previously rarely screened cult favourites "El Topo" and "The Magic Mountain" since I have seen both several many times and have my own copies, even if it did take some years to find a non-Japanese copy of the latter without white bouncy balls covering the many genitals on display!  However I went there like a shot when I discovered that they would be showing Jodorowsky's first feature -- one that was considered lost for many years and seldom available-- the very, very weird "Fando y Lis" which premiered at the Acupulco Film Festival in '68, provoking a riot and causing the festival to be suspended.

Naturally I am very pleased to have finally viewed this early example of guerilla film-making, shot basically at weekends on an incredibly low budget.  One is reminded of other first films which followed the same route, like David Lynch's "Eraserhead".  Lis is paralyzed from the waist down and her lover, Fando, wheels her through the barren, mountainous landscape on a small cart shared with a phonograph and a drum.  They are looking for the mythical city of Tar which is meant to be an earthly paradise.  As they progress through the wilderness they encounter an assortment of unlikely pilgrims -- from debauched socialites through a pope being nursed by a vastly-pregnant woman, through white-haired matriarchs gambling for the attention of a young man, through a pack of transvestites, through a doctor seeking fresh blood for a blind man.  In other words, Planet Weird!  I did think that the director was trying just a little bit too hard to be subversive, but the end result was fascinating nonetheless, and one could certainly spot mystical themes revisited in Jodorowsky's later and slightly more polished movies.

I did say above that this was not really a season of his films since it did not include his best-known later feature the remarkable "Santa Sangre".  Nor did it include two of his last films which I somehow think will continue to elude me.  One of these called "Tusk" is apparently about the relationship between a girl and an elephant.  The mind boggles!  His most recent was made in 1990 and apparently released in 1994 and is called "The Rainbow Thief", starring -- get this -- Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, and Christopher Lee.  I thought for a long time that this film could not possibly exist with that cast without being better-known, but at least the hundred-odd people who rated it on IMDb have seen it.  So where the heck is it and why has it disappeared?  However awful it may or may not be, I want to decide for myself.  

Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)

It's easy to say that "they don't make them like this anymore", but that is more true of some movies than others; this one really exists in its own timewarp, but is none the less appealing for it.  This is a second-tier MGM musical, not from the opulent Arthur Freed stable, a black-and-white movie spotlighting some of the studio's B-list performers -- but gosh it was good to see them all again.  The storyline has two young show business-raised sisters played by the ever-wonderful June Allyson and Gloria DeHaven (who? you ask, although she had a long career on TV) starting a canteen for servicemen on furlough; the dough for this comes anonymously via factotum (the always delightful) Donald Meek who is acting on behalf of the sailor they both fancy, played by Van Johnson.  (As is often the case in movies of this period, the plain guy is actually the heir to millions.)   Apart from leaving the viewer to guess which of the two sisters will eventually hook the big lunk, the whole point of the film is to host a slew of musical acts including two big bands -- Harry James and Xavier Cugat, the nonsense shtick of Jimmy Durante, the poker-faced scat of Virginia O'Brien, the crazy dancing of Ben Blue, the hightone piano performance of Jose Iturbi and his sister, the positively gorgeous Lena Horne given a speciality slot as the only black in the house, and even Gracie Allen (without George Burns here) who I usually only tolerate is quite amusing in her slot.  If many of these names don't mean much to you, more's the pity, since the whole concoction results in one of the pleasanter ways of passing two hours amongst talents from the past.

Three Comrades (1938)

As many of you must now realise, I relieve the frustrations of much of my modern movie viewing by revisiting favourites from the far distant past -- hence my having another look at this classic MGM movie.  On many levels it is a strange film to have been made in Hollywood on the eve of World War II with its not so much anti-war message, but with its let's try to live in peace approach.  Based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, who also wrote "All Quiet on the Western Front" (the great anti-war novel from the German perspective) it features three close German friends at the close of the Great War: Robert Taylor, Robert Young and Franchot Tone -- a thoroughly representative selection of MGM leading men of the period.  They try to adjust to civilian life in a Germany of poverty and growing radicalism and are all, to some extent, in love with poor aristo Margaret Sullavan.  Encouraged by the others, despite knowing she is ill, she marries Taylor but is nearly immediately sent off to a sanitarium.  We see the comrades attempting to deal with the demands of life in a dissolute environment and, despite their noble efforts, only two of the four characters survive to the end credits.  However to see the four of them marching off into a problematic future -- two of them as transparent ghosts -- is one of the great images from '30s cinema and one that stays with the viewer forever.

Long Weekend (1978)

Remind me not to go camping on isolated beaches reached via inpenetrable woods.  Not that I am likely to.  The DVD of this Australian movie was beginning to gather dust, so I popped it in and a chilling message it bore.  A not-so-happily married young couple decide on a back-to-nature weekend away to try to rekindle their relationship, except nature fights back and wins.  Not that they had much respect for nature: they cut down trees, littered the environment, smashed an eagle egg, and shot a dugong.  Not smart!  As both the weekend and their fragile relationship continued to deteriorate, each tried to find an out -- with effectively scary results.  This was basically a two-hander and while I did not know of either actor, they successfully proved to me that man may be a minute speck in a chaotic universe.  It never pays to take one's isolated importance too seriously or for granted.

Memories of Murder (2003)

While I do try to keep up with the terrific flow of Korean movies that reach our shores, I hadn't seen this one previously, despite its many positive reviews.  It is an earlier effort from director Joon-ho Bong and lead actor Kang-ho Song, both familiar to me now from the current mega-hit "The Host".  It's a long and fairly slowly-paced policier and I had to control my anger at the police procedures on display, although these did have their comic overtones.  Based on a true series of murders, we are in a backwater town in the late '80s where Song and his sidekick on the local force are so stripped for resources that their approach is to torture a confession out of their very unlikely suspects and they are not beyond planting evidence to get a conviction.  A smart-ass detective from Seoul is seconded to the unit; he has a more sophisticated approach to crime-solving and initially it seems that his logic may unearth the hidden truths. However he too is eventually undermined by the frustrations of the search; it is unsettling to see anger and impatience overtake logic and this is part of what I think will haunt me about this movie.  To this day the killer has not been caught but a flash-forward to a latter-day Song who has left the force reminds us that there are killers walking among us who might just look like you or me.

Volver (2006)

I am as big a fan of Spanish director Pedro Almodovar as anyone and have seen all of his films; I therefore suprised myself by not reacting more positively to this, his latest.  Or maybe all the hype has taken its toll.  He and lots of others have been pushing Penelope Cruz as a latter-day Sophia Loren, an unstoppable force of nature -- hence her Academy Award nomination, which having now seen the movie, I am rather pleased that she did not win.  I must confess to a certain difficulty with this actress.  All of her Spanish-speaking roles have been infinitely superior to the crap/pap roles she has taken in Hollywood and she does have some talent as an actress; however I have always found her looks disturbing, something about the way her nose seems to touch the top of her upper lip -- and superior cleavage doesn't make her any the more attractive to me.  But Pedro loves her, so let's just accept that.

If one approaches this movie as I think it should be approached as an ensemble effort rather than a Cruz starrer, then the film does work as a very superior women's picture.  From the opening shots of the women of La Mancha tidying the graves of their departed menfolk, through the contributions of the various actresses, both old and young, to the action -- the men here are completely irrelevant -- one is left with a satisfying confection on the ways that women support each other practically and emotionally.  If there is in fact one standout actress in the cast, then my money would be on Carmen Maura, reunited with Almodovar after an 18-year break.  She plays the purportedly long-dead mother of Cruz and her plain sister who has returned (this is the meaning of "volver") to help her family as is best needed.  All in all, an interesting addition to Almodovar's canon, but not I think necessarily amongst his top few, but so much better than much of what is shown.