The Coen Brothers

I note that the maverick team of Joel and Ethan Coen has had some success at Cannes with their latest film, "No Country for Old Men", and I do hope this marks a return to form, since their last two, "Intolerable Cruelty" and "The Ladykillers" were just not up to scratch -- particularly the latter, for anyone who has fond memories of the original Ealing production.

I've been something of a fan since their first film back in 1984, the neo-noir "Blood Simple", and having re-viewed both "Miller's Crossing" (1990) and "Barton Fink" (1991) quite recently, I've been thinking about their output.  Although Joel is usually credited as the director and Ethan as the producer, it is well-known that they share both functions and also both write and edit their movies (it's when they've worked from outside sources that they've been least successful).  They have a wonderful way of putting their own spin on various genres, whether it be screwball comedy ("Raising Arizona"), the gangster flick, or regional humour (from the lilt of the accents in "Fargo" through down-South idiocy in "Oh, Brother Where Art Thou".)  They also are able to bring out the quirkiness and goofiness in actors normally thought of in straighter ways, like Tim Robbins in "The Hudsucker Proxy" (a movie many hated, but I loved -- once I was able to ignore Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Jeff Bridges in "The Big Lebowski".  If one adds the genuine noir of "The Man Who Wasn't There" to the above-mentioned, you have a truly remarkable body of work.  Then there are the actors who form something of a repertory company in their films: John Goodman, Jon Polito, and especially John Turturro who is more human in their movies than otherwise in his roles.  That's "human" in the sense of being imperfect, with all the doubts, conceits, and foibles of modern man, whether as a 20's wiseguy, a pretentious screenwriter in the Hollywood of the 40s, or a spandex-clad bowler.  Modern films would in general have been a lot less fun without the Coens' remarkable contributions.

Just a footnote: my counter (which has packed in more than once!) tells me that today is my two-year anniversary of sharing my weird viewing habits with you.  I haven't quite lost the enthusiasm yet, although I have slowed down (that's in writing, not -- goodness forbid -- in watching), so hopefully I'll still be about in ayear's time to thank you all again for bearing with me.  Cheers!

Tags: Film, Coen Brothers

The Garden of Allah (1936)

If going to the movies means an escape from reality, nowadays we have all too many mind-blowing, effects-laden choices, but this film is a fine example of early high-camp romantic kitsch which provides a different kind of wonderful release.  Produced by the legendary David O. Selznick three years before "Gone with the Wind", this film is one of the earliest examples of the new three-strip colour technicolor process and it is absolutely gorgeous to behold.  OK, the story may be hokum, but it is pretty irrestible hokum.  Convent-raised Marlene Dietrich has wasted her youth looking after her sick Dad and on his death is advised by a friendly nun to find what she has been searching for in the desert (that's Allah's garden of the title).  As one does!  There she meets swooningly-handsome Charles Boyer who is on the run from the monastery where he took his final vows.  They find love amongst the dunes, but he can not forget the burden of his past, and a lasting earthly love is not theirs to have.  A big sigh here!  Yes, it's complete romantic twaddle but beautifully done, and only Dietrich could get away with her designer togs, high heels, and perfect hair and make-up in a desert setting.  With a supporting cast of Basil Rathbone, C. Aubrey Smith, Joseph Schildkraut (as her native guide!), and John Carradine as a sand-diviner (the Arab equivalent of reading tea leaves), plus a stirring Max Steiner score, no expense has been spared.  The movie was actually a flop in its day, but stands now as a memorial to a very different kind of escapist entertainment.

Tags: The Garden of Allah, Marlene Dietrich

Guilty Pleasures

One often sees the term "guilty pleasure" when critics admit that they actually enjoyed an example of inferior movie-making, and I understand the term well.  As a cure-all from a surfeit of seriousness, there is absolutely nothing like watching a bit of trash to bring one back to reality -- and I do have my own favourites in this category (like "Killer Klowns from Outer Space") that I return to from time to time.  As it happens I have seen three examples of this phenomenon in the last few days which I can almost recommend:

Gwendoline (1984):  This was the last movie directed by Just Jaeckin who also directed the original "Emmanuelle" in 1974 and since he is still amongst us, his was a relatively short but very stylish directing career.  The full title of this one is "The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of Yik Yak" which may give you some idea of how outrageous this movie, based on a graphic strip, is.  It's the old tale of a daughter in search of her father who has disappered while looking for the ultimate butterfly who lands up with her faithful maid and a male adventurer in a land of women.  Cue lots of gratuitous nudity and futuristic design, but all put together with a huge amount of ingenuity.  I had the choice of watching the movie in French (the language in which it was made) or English (the language which the heroine, American actress Tawny Kitaen was obviously speaking and then overdubbed) which meant that neither choice was ideal, so I settled on the French and ignored the fact that Tawny's lips were saying something else.  I guess that adds to the guilty pleasure syndrome.

Wild Zero (2000);  I've known about this Japanese cult item for a while but have only just got around to viewing what the world has eagerly awaited: a rock n' roll zombie flick!  With a trans-gender love story!  Made by a music video director, this film is lots of flash and not a great deal of coherence, as invading alien spaceships have awakened the dead who chomp on whatever they can find until a rock group and a rock fan put the world to right.  They have no idea how to destroy zombies, since in an amusing bit of interplay the main characters all admit that they have never actually viewed "Night of the Living Dead".  Still I was treated to a ridiculous number of exploding heads which always makes my day. 

DOA: Dead or Alive (2006):  If anyone had told me that I might actually be amused at this one based on a popular video game which I have never played and featuring a bunch of semi-clothed actresses of whom only Jaime Presley and Devon Aoki were names that I knew, I would have said 'you must be joking', but it was actually a lot of fun -- or maybe I was just in the right mood.  Directed by Hong Kong director Corey Yuen, it is yet another example of champion flighters squaring off against each other until the overall winner emerges -- and the fight sequences were all imaginatively done.  Add to this mix evil organiser Eric Roberts using a machine to steal their fighting skills to be absorbed into his own body and then sold to the highest bidders, the overall idiocy is clear.  However with nice bright colours and more than acceptable action, I would really have to be an old grouch to totally dismiss this one which was probably aimed at teenaged boys.

Tags: guilty pleasures, movies, Gwendoline, Wild Zero

Fausto 5.0 (2001)

Now here's a fine how-do-you-do!  I saw a trailer for this film on a disc that I was watching a few days ago and thought 'that looks interesting'.  I then discovered that I not only had a copy of the movie, but, according to my records, I had actually watched it just over four months ago.  Maybe I am going ga-ga, since I could remember absolutely nothing about it and certainly had not posted a review back in January.  So there was only one answer: have another look.

Once it got going I could remember most of the imagery -- much of which was incredibly striking -- but neither the plot nor where the film was headed seemed familiar.  I should say here that it is a Spanish film, directed not by one, not by two, but by three directors, and has won a raft of awards at fantasy festivals.  As the title suggests, it is a take on the Faust legend of someone selling his soul to the devil, but with a completely different spin.  The main character, Dr. Fausto, is a hard-working, never-playing doctor specialising in terminal medicine.  He goes off to a conference in a provincial town (where his hotel is completely in wrapping a la Christo) and strange things begin to happen.  At the station he is greeted by a somewhat fiendish looking chap called Vella who claims that the doctor removed his stomach seven years ago; he should be dead, but he is still vibrantly alive.  He insinuates himself into the doctor's life, initially to Fausto's annoyance, but ultimately to his pleasure as he realises that he can help make wishes come true.  This is all interspersed with some casual sex with very young ladies, supposedly arranged by Vella (one of the girls turns out to be his daughter!), some very strange-looking passing characters including an ancient dowager and a morbidly-dead looking woman, and some horrifying dream sequences including one where the doctor awakens to find a dog chomping on his intestines.  Add to this mix some psychodelic camera work and you have a real oddity.  The big question is not why it is called "Fausto 5.0", but rather how I could have forgotten it so completely.

Tags: Spanish horror, Fausto 5.0

If Only (2004)

Jennifer Love Hewitt (whom I perjoratively refer to as Jennifer Big-T*** -- use your imagination) has not had an outstanding career in motion pictures, despite definitely having some talent.  This film which she co-produced was shot in England and went straight to DVD.  She plays an American music student living with her English boyfriend -- Paul Nicholls from a popular soap but barely well-known, a sub-Jude Law type.  He has a problem committing to the relationship and 30 minutes into the movie, Jennifer is dead.  He is heartbroken, but lo and behold when he awakes the next morning, she is in his bed and they can live the day over again.  Which they do, with most of the same net results but with slight differences, which gives some hope to the eventual outcome (which I will not disclose, just in case you wish to seek out this somewhat soppy flick).  I will admit that both leads are pleasant; the only other actor that any one has heard of is Tom Wilkinson playing an enigmatic taxi driver in Greek chorus mode.  Ms. Hewitt is given the chance to display her talents as a singer, but being a co-producer probably explains this inclusion.  I can see this movie appealing to a maudlin viewer, but I haven't enough boogie in my soul to give it another go.

Tags: Jennifer Love Hewitt, If Only

The Fourth Protocol (1987)

It seems that "The Eagle has Landed" did not sneak into my collection alone, but apparently hand-in-hand with another Michael Caine thriller which I could vaguely recall from a previous viewing.  In this one he's a definite goodie, playing a British spy out to stop a fiendish Russian infiltrator; he's much more in his Caine persona here, as a bolshy loner on the job who has no time for the political games of his superiors.  However we are also shown his soft side as the single parent (presumably widowed) of a young boy.  The Russian is played by a youngish Pierce Brosnan, who is a trained and talented cold assassin; his job is to breach the "fourth protocol" at a U.S. army base in England -- which appears to be the act of setting off an atomic device without warning -- to undermine the NATO alliance.  Only Caine, without the approval of the acting head of the secret service, can prevent this disaster, and the tension builds as Brosnan prepares to carry out his mission and Caine draws nearer.  Like "Eagle", this too is based on a best-seller (by Frederick Forsyth) and the action broadens out to cover a wide range of characters in both the KGB and MI5, most of whom have their own personal agendas for the outcome of the storyline; a great assortment of character actors too, including Ned Beatty, Julian Glover, Ray McNally, Michael Gough, and the always chilling Ian Richardson. It's all a little convoluted and not quite honest with the viewer, which frankly weakens any strong recommendation, but pleasant enough as a time-waster.  

Tags: Movie, Michael Caine

The Eagle has Landed (1976)

I found the DVD for this film hanging about the house; no doubt it arrived uninvited with a Sunday newspaper.  Since I was certain that I must have seen it once upon a time but equally certain that I could remember nothing about it (something to do with my blind spot on war films), I popped it in and spent a relatively painless 130 minutes viewing World War II from the German point of view -- well sort of.  Based on the first novel by Jack Higgins, Robert Duvall sporting a idiotic German accent decides to send a crack force to kidnap Churchill while he is having some R & R in Norfolk; this wheeze is approved of by Donald's Pleasence's Himmler, but only if it is successful.  Who do they get to carry out the plot to reverse the war (they are aware that they are already losing) but disgraced officer Michael Caine (sporting a far more pukka British accent than his norm) and his faithful squad of soldiers.  They are all facing court martial and disgrace for supporting Caine when he attempts to protect a young Jewish girl who is being transported (this shows that Caine is really a good and honourable guy despite being German), but they can redeem themselves by taking on this mission.  Also involved is Donald Sutherland's roguish Irishman who is in on it for the dough to donate to the cause.

So they all end up in scenic Norfolk where they mix with Jean Marsh's embittered local (the English slaughtered her mother in South Africa), John Standing's local catholic priest, and young lass Jenny Agutter who falls for the cad Sutherland.  Wearing German uniforms under their disguise as training Polish airmen (Caine has insisted upon this), their true identity is discovered when one of the soldiers saves a local youngster who has fallen into the mill race, but Caine and Co. perservere with their goal.  The local American base is headed by an idiotic Larry Hagman who has no battle experience and who gets most of his battalion killed by his ineptitude, so that it is left to Treat Williams (!) and some other anonymous Yanks to save the day.  Even when all of his men are no longer available, the determined Caine carries on.  It is not spoiling anything to tell you that Churchill was not kidnapped or murdered.  The final verdict: something of a potboiler from what was probably an exciting novel, but no worse than many boys' own type tales.

Tags: Michael Caine

The Prestige (2006)

Frankly I did not find this film as well-made as director Christopher Nolan's earlier ones -- it was a bit overlong and too leisurely in its approach -- but this did not stop it being a superior watch, largely because of the quality of the acting and two really socko twists in the tail.  Two aspiring magicians played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman start out as friends but become bitter rivals after the death of Jackman's wife.  Both aspire to be the best and will do anything in their power to steal the other's secrets and to upstage each other.  Bale is the more proficient conjurer, but Jackman has the greater theatrical flair and can not stand the idea that Bale is outshining him.  For my money, Bale wins the acting stakes hands down, since Jackman has always seemed something of a lightweight to me; but since he plays the lesser talent here, that actually serves the film's ends.  Fine support comes from the ever reliable Michael Caine, Scarlett Johannson, and a surprising David Bowie as the eccentric inventor Tesla.  Like "The Illusionist" reviewed somewhere in my archives below, this film has a great sense of period and wonderful art decoration, but having seen that film first, I did marginally prefer it.  Possibly had I seen this one first, the reverse might well have been the case;  it's still well worth seeking out.

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Tags: The Prestige

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

I watched "United 93" yesterday, but guess what -- I don't want to review it -- it's too raw and upsetting a film; while it captures the frantic feeling of what may have been, it is still conjecture, and a scenario which I don't really want to think about too much (which is probably why it was nominated as best picture, but also why it did little box office).

So to get myself back to unreality, I watched this late masterpiece from Spanish surrealist director Luis Bunuel, which actually was an Academy Award winner and deservedly so.  From his early collaboration with Salvador Dali through his long exile in Mexico down to his resurrected career, largely in France, Bunuel has made a tantalizing collection of films.  In this one the basic plot concerns six friends who keep arranging to meet for a friendly meal but who never get around to actually dining, as one or another bizarre interruption descends upon them.  The six are Fernando Rey playing the ambassador from the mythical country of Miranda who is in cahoots with two businessmen to smuggle drugs into France (one of these is the very recently deceased Jean-Pierre Cassel), their wives played by Stephane Audran and Delphine Seyrig, and Seyrig's younger and permanently drunk and/or high sister played by Bulle Ogier -- a super sextet.  Their meetings are interspersed with dream sequences of meetings so that it soon becomes less and less clear as to which events are actually happening and which are imagined, which is fairly typical of Bunuel's approach.  He may treat life as a dream much of the time, but he is unafraid of shooting down any sacred cow that may appear on his horizon. 

Nacho Libre (2006)

The singer-actor-comedian Jack Black has been around for a while, but came into his own as the bolshy clerk in "High Fidelity".  From there he was catapulted into lead roles in films like "Shallow Hal", "School of Rock", and even "King Kong"; in all of these he was a likeable presence, but the supporting cast was a necessary part of the success of those movies.  In this one, shot in Mexico, he is the whole show and without high production values, the net result is something of a let-down.  If I tell you that it is by the same talents behind "Napoleon Dynamite", a film which people either love or hate (with probably the higher percentage in the latter category), you can get some idea just how laid-back the action is here.  Black plays a put-upon monk in a poor monastery who decides to become a masked wrestler as a way of providing better food for the orphans in his charge and also as a way of proving himself both to the world and especially to the Penelope Cruz lookalike nun that he fancies.  Of course he is pretty hopeless in the ring and the scrawny guy he chooses for his tag team partner is no better, but he has a good heart and ultimately virtue (of a sort) triumphs.  The trouble is that although the movie is a pleasant enough watch, it just isn't particularly funny despite trying; how many times can one laugh at a fat guy with a big belly wearing a leotard?  I believe Black's next film with his partner from Tenacious D is not much cop either, so perhaps he needs to find a better way of profiting from the good will he has previously built up if he is to remain on top of things.

Tags: Jack Black

Lisa & the Devil/House of Exorcism (1972/5)

The dubbed horror film by the Italian maestro Mario Bava normally titled "Lisa & the Devil (but it has many alternate titles) used to turn up periodically -- usually in chopped about form -- on television, but it has been some years since I last viewed it.  While from my point of view it is not amongst his best, it is an interesting movie and full of the visual bravura touches for which Bava is known.  A tourist in Spain played by Elke Sommer wanders away from her tour group and hitches a ride with an aristocratic couple; when their car breaks down they are invited to stay on the grounds of an isolated mansion where Telly Savalas (who looks exactly like the devil on the fresco in the town square) is the major domo and where the always welcome Alida Valli is the blind grande dame living with her slightly demented son.  The family, we discover, is obsessed with death and there are various corpses lying about to be disposed of -- and even more by the end of the movie.  While Ms. Sommer is hardly a great actress and, if the truth be told, Savalas is also something of an embarrassment (sucking his trademark lollipop before Kojak), the film is still an exciting watch as an example of Bava's aesthetic eye.

Fast forward a few years and the film's producer,Alfredo Leone, decides that what the world really needs is the "producer's cut", and the net result is the abomination called "House of Exorcism" where some of the footage from the first movie is intercut with a story of the Sommer character being possessed a la Linda Blair and being exorcised by priest Robert Alda (who does not appear in the first film).  So the viewer has in fact two stories and two Ms. Sommers for the price of one and these do not really fuse together at any point; plus there is a great deal more nudity and sexual scenes than can be found in the earlier cut.  These additions were shot separately by Leone and the film now credits someone called "Mickey Lion" as the director; while people seem to assume that the Sommer character is still played by the same actress with horrible caked make-up, my own feeling is that a "ringer" was employed for the cursing, writhing, and emoting.  Not only are the front credits different from the earlier version, but the ending has been totally changed -- and the original one, set on a deserted jumbo jet, was really quite effective.  In short, avoid this later cut should it ever come your way. 

Tags: Mario Bava

Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Having found Clint Eastwood's "Flags of our Fathers" a brilliant bit of movie-making last autumn, I felt obliged to see his companion film on the same theme, telling of the battle for Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective.  Cast with mainly Japanese actors and primarily in that language, one would not have guessed that this was an American production without knowing it upfront.  One would have assumed that in fact it was made by the Japanese and maybe it's a film they should have tackled, although I wonder if they could have presented their relatively recent history with the same detachment.

As I have written many times previously, I physically dislike war movies and I confess that I found this a very hard watch, despite the fact that it was brilliantly filmed in the same washed out colours as the first film and was accompanied by a haunting score.  In addition the lead actors from the general played by Ken Watanabe, now reasonably well-known to Western audiences, through Kazunari Ninomiya playing a simple baker and reluctant conscript who wants nothing more than to survive the war and return to the wife and daughter he has never seen, through Tsuyoshi Ihara playing an aristocratic Olympic equestrian, were uniformly memorable.  However it is hard for the occidental mind to get one's head around the Japanese concepts of honour or to accept the mindset that suicide is preferable to the disgrace of losing, and the scenes of slaughter and self-immolation were upsetting to say the least.  As I said at the outset, I did feel the need to watch this film and on that level alone, I am pleased that I did.  Being a more contained story, it is quite probably the better of the two, but given my druthers, it's the first one that I would choose to see again.

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006)

This is the third history-as-fantasy film from acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou after "Hero" and "House of Flying Daggers" -- both of which were super-duper filmgoing experiences.  However for the first half of its running time, this one comes across as an opulent bore.  There is no denying that the design and photography are lavishly fantastic, but it feels overstuffed and the domestic story of the 10th Century emperor, his wife and his three sons plays out initially as a period soap.  The wife who is being slowly poisoned by her husband (Gong Li, who actually does a wonderful and emotional job here) has been having an affair with the eldest son for three years; that she is not his birth-mother is technically irrelevant.  The emperor is played by one of my favourites, Chow Yun-Fat, whom I have always considered the coolest man in moviedom, but who initially is hampered here by heavy make-up and robes; however by the film's end his legendary coolness mixes well with the emperor's evil nature.  The movie is saved by the incredibly spectacular second half when the ineptness of the eldest son, the unrealistic ambitions of the youngest, and the mother-driven attempted coup by the middle son drive the action.  There follows some of the most amazing and beautiful battle scenes that I have ever witnessed.  I wouldn't like to say whether these were achieved with CGI, but it certainly didn't look that way, as wave upon wave of thousands of soldiers took the field for a mighty massacre.  Similarly in the end, once the blood has been washed away, the viewer is presented with row upon row of flowers, courtiers, servants, concubines, and musicians paying homage at the chrysanthemum festival.  I was awed, but still slightly worried by the director's emphasis on push-up cleavage; this just didn't seem to mix with the Tang Dynasty of 928 AD -- but what do I know?   

Capote (2005)

I must confess to being slightly weary of the Academy doling out acting Oscars for impersonations rather than interpretations of real people whether it be Ray Charles, Katharine Hepburn, Virginia Woolf, or whomever.  This is not to say that versatile actor Philip Seymour Hoffman isn't very adept in the title role here, but mimicry in itself is not enough to satisfy.  Fortunately we are given a well-written and absorbing story as well, even if the facts were pretty well-known beforehand.  The gist of the plot is that Capote is commissioned by the New Yorker magazine to cover the trial of two lads who senselessly slaughtered a family of four on their farm; this forms the story of the film "In Cold Blood" which is from the book that Capote ultimately produced.  How he came to write  it and why he never wrote another, despite being one of the best-known authors of his day, is the meat of this movie.  Much is made of his interest (quite probably romantic) in the more sensitive of the two killers and how he intervened to postpone their hanging for as long as possible, all the time knowing that he could not complete his book until they were dead.  Hoffman slips into the role of the rather effete writer with some ease, even if he is substantially larger than the wee Capote.  But while this shows the actor's craft, it still leaves me wondering how necessary the whole pantomime is.  I am in no rush whatsoever to see the second of the two movies which came out a year later with Toby Jones doing his own Capote cloning. 

Q the Winged Serpent (1982)

The director of this super cult horror is Larry Cohen and he is one of those people who seems to have been around the fringes of Hollywood for many years, both as a director and as a writer-cum-script-doctor.  His output has seldom fallen within the mainstream, but he has produced a fine body of work by his own slightly perverse standards, including the "It's Alive" series which I confess is probably not to many people's taste.  This movie is about a mythical giant feathered serpent from Aztec lore which has been brought back to life by a series of ritual murders and which is now making its nest at the top of the Chrysler Building in New York City.  For sustenance, it picks off sunbathers and construction workers from the rooftops; as one cop cracks, 'New York has always been famous for good eating'.  The detective hottest on his trail is played by David Carradine (now of "Kill Bill" fame) but as charismatic as a plank of wood here, but this is compensated by the balance of the B-cast who give their all to the nonsense on display.  Foremost among them is Michael Moriarty -- a regular in Cohen's movies -- playing a not-too-bright crook who chances upon the monster's nest and sees it as his chance to get rich quick.  The ending which was an original one here has been ripped off so many times since by bigger budget movies (in particular the dire U.S. version of "Godzilla") that it has lost its punch.  However the film still holds up as an example of what can be achieved with good dialogue and a great imagination. 

The Russians are Coming... (1966)

It is always a pleasure to come back to this comedy which is so redolent of the Cold War paranoia of its period.  Set on an island off the coast of Massachusetts where Carl Reiner (more remembered as a writer-director and father of Rob) and his wife Eva Marie Saint are about to leave their summer rental, a Russian submarine has just been grounded on a sandbar.  The captain played by that wonderful folksinger and occasional actor Theodore Bikel, who unfortunately has little to do here, was anxious to have a look at America and foundered the vessel.  He sends a party ashore led by nearly-English speakers Alan Arkin and John Phillip Law to find a small craft to get them afloat.  Although determined in their mission, they are basically kindly, but they are perceived by the locals they encounter as the foreruuners of the doom-mongers' promised war.  As rumours about them grow more and more outlandish amongst the locals, the police chief played by Brian Keith (the middle generation of three fine actors) must face off against retired military nutter Paul Ford who is trying to galvanize the islanders.  Further great support comes from the island's telephone operator, a rare screen performance by "two-ton" Tessie O'Shea.  Finally we have a drunken Ben Blue attempting to catch and mount his horse, so that he can, a la Paul Revere, ride through the island to announce that "the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming".  When all is said and done, this is an amusing reminder of an earlier mindset; unfortunately the world has found new "villains" nowadays.

Two foreign films - a world apart

It is no secret to readers of this journal that I probably see a disproportionate number of subtitled films and that I am nothing if not adventurous in seeking out new (to me) titles.  However this does not mean that I do not return to ones I have previously seen, as with "Cronos" (1993).  I think yesterday's matinee was my fourth viewing and it still enchants with its individual vision.  The first theatrical outing from Mexican genius Guillermo del Toro (and you all will recall how enamoured I am of his latest - "Pan's Labyrinth"), this riff on the vampire myth is amazing as is its lead actor Federico Luppi, the kindly and elderly antiques dealer who chances on the machine that can offer eternal life -- at a price.  Del Toro had his own special effects company for some years to bankroll the making of this film and to handle the effects required, which he closed after its release, and has since moved between the Hollywood dollar and his own remarkable visions.  Even "Blade 2" is not completely dismissable because of del Toro's involvement and keen visual touch.  "Cronos" also marked the first of three collaborations with that strange-looking actor Ron Perlman, who plays a horrible thug here.  I've often wondered what attracted the director to him; perhaps it is because they are both grotesques in the nicest possible meaning of this word.

Brothers (2004): This Danish film was the second part of yesterday's double-bill and a fairly distressing picture it was too.  A professional soldier leaves his wife and two young daughters to join the multi-nation peace-keeping forces in Afghanistan.  He is believed killed in an ambush explosion and his family, including his doting parents and feckless brother, grieve his loss.  He has in fact been captured by rebels and during his imprisonment reluctantly butchers a fellow-prisoner to save his own life.  (Mind you, I did at this stage think that the army might be more certain before announcing deaths to the next of kin). When he is liberated, he is unable to admit either to the authorities or to himself what he has done and his eventual return to the bosom of his family is coloured black by this sublimated guilt.  It was all very well acted and put together, even if one didn't get a clear indication of the timescale involved, but ultimately pretty depressing.  One point of interest is that the wife was played byConnie Nielsen, who was in fact born in Denmark but who made her name (such as it is) in Hollywood, and who here makes her Danish debut at the age of 39; while still very attractive, she was so unglammed-up that I nearly didn't recognize her.

Tags: Guillermo del Toro