My Viewing Diary - Not

I had planned to give you details of my viewing in the week or so since I last wrote, but evaluating the 24 (yes, that's right: 24) films I saw during this period, there is not a lot to inspire me to do so.  These were made up as follows:

5 films that I've seen before including one good seasonal television movie "Christmas Eve" (1986) -- a late return to the screen for Loretta Young and a nice weepy conclusion.  Of the others only "Sin City" (2005) kept me enthralled on its second viewing; I still find it a tour de force and a visual feast, despite what all the nasty critics think.

5 other television movies all equally forgetable and only watched "because they were there".

3 animated features new to me: the rotoscoped "A Scanner Darkly" (not my bag) plus "Hoodwinked" and Pixar's "Cars".  Of these it is no surprise that I preferred the last, although not as satisfactory a movie as other Pixar efforts.

4 foreign movies including one horrendously-dubbed Jess Franco abortion (of which the less said the better).  Of the others, "Joyeux Noel" (2005) didn't quite meet expectations despite its very moving middle section (too long and too much padding on either side), "The Score 2" (1999) a follow-up to the first Japanese heist movie with the same cast and suitably violent (just about everyone died brutally), and "Taxi 3" from Luc Besson's French franchise which was definitely a case of diminishing returns.

6 recentish movies including "Babel" (2006) -- interesting, but not the masterpiece that it thinks it is, "Ice Princess" (2005) -- far more entertaining than it had cause to be and an unexpected supporting role for 'Save the Cheerleader' for you "Heroes" buffs,  and "The History Boys" (2006) which started slowly but evolved into a totally satisfactory experience -- well-acted and ultimately emotional.  The other three have already descended into the "why did I waste my time" category.

That leaves one golden oldie which I had not viewed previously, "My Dear Secretary" from 1948, a would-be screwball comedy which was absolutely and totally charmless.  The early Kirk Douglas just couldn't play comedy and the latter one only just managed an acceptable tongue-in-cheek.

So that's it for another year.  With best wishes to all for a wonderful 2008...

Tags: Viewing Diary, 24 Movies, Happy New Year

Two very, very odd movies

A recent article in "Sight and Sound" asked 75 film critics from around the world to nominate films which time has forgotten, hidden gems by and large unknown.  "The Mad Fox" (1962) was one of these and when I noticed that the BFI's season dedicated to Japanese director Tomu Uchida included this movie, I was there -- but ever so disappointed.  Perhaps the fable of a fortune-teller driven mad by murder marrying his dead lover's ringer who is actually a fox in human form was just too esoterically presented with its Kabuki wailing to register with my Western sensibilities or perhaps it was just too late in the day to accept the strange artifice on view.  It reminded me of the similar "Princess Raccoon" but without that movie's charm or visual beauty.

A rather more successful National Film Theatre outing was to see "The Saragossa Manuscript" (1965), a film which has been on my "must see" list for years, and I am delighted that I now have done so.  It is an adaptation of part of a massive Polish novel by Count Jan Potocki which was published in 1813 and is nearly beyond description.  A young Belgian captain in 17th Century Spain wanders through a dreamlike barren landscape and stumbles upon a manuscript at a deserted inn which tells of the exploits of an ancestor.  We begin to relive these through the various characters he encounters, but the movie is a series of Chinese boxes as each character begins to tell his tale leading to the characters introduced each wanting to tell their own tales.  And so it rambles on and on until we eventually come back to what may or may not be current reality.  On the way we mix with enchanting Muslim ladies, gaga aristos, rotting hanging corpses, mystics, and cabalists.  Filmed in magnificent wide-screen black and white with a memorable Penderecki score, I felt as if I had been on some sort of magical drug trip without resorting to foreign substances.  I don't normally choose to see films which are over three hours long -- and on one level I wonder why any film needs to be so extended -- but this one was a wondrous ride.

I'll be back some time before the New Year.  In the meantime, have a happy holiday.. Disappeared...again 

Tags: The Mad Fox, The Saragossa Manuscript, film oddities, where's the link?

Movies on TV This Christmas

As in previous years, I offer my advice (for what it's worth) on the films showing on the box this holiday season.  Of the literally hundreds of movies being screened, it is something of a washout from my point of view, since there are all of five premieres on terrestrial TV that I have not seen.  Actually I shall watch all of these since I have high hopes for at least four of them, starting with "Merry Christmas/Joyeux Noel" tomorrow afternoon.  I have heard some good things about this 'time out of war' film.  The other possibilities are "The Ice Princess" (probably blah) and "The History Boys" on the 28th, "Anything Else" -- another ignored Woody Allen movie -- on 2 January, and "Strings", a promising puppet film, on the morning of 4 January.

The satellite selection is not much better since I have already seen all of Sky's "big" offerings and am left with a total of seven movies that I've not viewed previously over the period.  Since two of these are animated and one is in rotoscope (a process I just can not warm to), that leaves pretty much "A Big Nothing" (one of the possible titles).  What I am actually looking forward to most of all is an offering from German satellite, "Der Rosenkavalier" -- a silent opera from 1926.  The thought of silent opera really grabs me!

Assuming that the rest of you are not quite so demented about movies as I am, I would recommend the following as the best terrestrial premieres over the period -- assuming you've not already seen them or have no desire to do so.  I would start with "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" late evening tomorrow, something of an offbeat romp.  Good family viewing on Christmas Eve afternoon on BBCl can be found with "Ella Enchanted" and "Lemony Snicket's..."  For proper adult viewing, don't miss the Korean shocker "Oldboy" on Channel 4 late evening on the 24th.  Back to recommended family viewing on Christmas Day on BBCl again with the double-bill of "Finding Nemo" and "Shrek 2".  The Russian fantasy "Nightwatch" which I saw a few years back is on Channel 4 late on the 27th.  A change of pace is on offer on BBC2 late on the 29th, with the Brazilian revenge drama "The Three Marias".  A number of the Japanese animations are on over the period, but the best is "Princess Mononoke", again on 4, on the afternoon of the 3lst.  Finally, I truly enjoyed "Finding Neverland" with Johnny Depp as J.M. Barrie, showing on BBC2 on New Year's Day.

I feel duty-bound to warn you that there is some real dross amongst the other premiere showings.  I'm thinking here of embarrassing offerings like "Garfield" and "The Cat in the Hat".  Avoid!

I'll probably post at least once more before Christmas since I have National Film Theatre tickets for a couple of real oddities tonight and tomorrow night, but in the meantime may I wish you all a joyful holiday. 

Tags: Christmas films, recommendations, silent opera

The Page Turner (2006)

This slow but chilling French drama from director Denis Dercourt reminded me of the accomplished psychological films of Chabrol and the developing air of menace was nearly tangible.  The story starts with a 10-year old butcher's daughter who is preparing for her first piano examination.  She has incipient talent but the thoughtless behaviour of one of the judges -- a famed pianist who sign's an autograph for a fan during the girl's performance -- puts her off her stride, and she fails.  She goes home and locks the piano, never to play again, but a grudge is slowly burning.

Flash forward some 10 years and the girl Natalie is now sedate but sexy Deborah Francois.  She takes an internship at a law firm and inveigles herself into the senior partner's home as a temporary nanny; his wife, as we must assume Natalie already knew, is the same famous pianist, but one who is having a crisis of confidence after a serious car accident.  Natalie ingratiates herself into the household looking after their piano-prodigy son and helping his mother, played by Catherine Frot, prepare for an important forthcoming concert by acting as her page turner.  After the concert's success, Frot becomes more and more dependent upon her and is also oddly attracted to her, when Natalie makes minor advances.  However the girl's lust for revenge continues to grow and does not manifest itself in the expected ways; she does not, for example, kill the boy's pet hen, when the audience is led to think that she might.  Instead, the net result of her deeds is to lead to the destruction of Frot's career and marriage and to possibly ruin the musical future of the young boy as well.  None of this is actually spelled out, but we have seen enough to know that her revenge will be devastatingly complete.

Tags: Page Turner, revenge

The Holiday (2006)

This romantic comedy is so inoffensively pleasant that it is an easy watch despite any skepticism that the viewer may bring to the table.  Two ladies disappointed in love -- Cameron Diaz, a successful movie trailer exec in L.A., and Kate Winslet, a successful newspaper writer in London -- decide to exchange homes for the Christmas holiday period, hoping that a change of scenery will be the cure for their male-induced blues.  So Diaz ends up in a simple countrified cottage (as Yanks probably assume we all reside in) and Winslet ends up in a high-tech mansion (as of course we believe all Americans possess!) where each in turn finds a new love.  Diaz's is in the handsome form of Jude Law, playing rather less egocentrically than in some of his other roles, and Winslet's in the unlikely chubby and droll form of Jack Black.  Rather more time is devoted to the Diaz-Law duo and their chemistry is believably good, even if their roles are not much of a stretch for either of them.  The growing attraction between Winslet and Black gets less screen time and in fact seems less likely, especially since he has a ditsy girlfriend still in the picture, but both characters are extremely likeable.

The most interesting part of the story is the relationship between Winslet and her new elderly neighbour, Eli Wallach, playing a famous screenwriter of yore, full of tales of Hollywood's golden years.  She encourages him to accept an invitation to a tribute evening which he just could not face without her help.  This part of the movie was very touching and I must confess that the film was generally well-written and the various characters well-rounded.  It still remains something of a chick-flick, but it is none the worse for that and I was surprised to react as positively as I did.  Not all movies are great cinema, but some are pretty good entertainment.

Tags: The Holiday, chick-flicks

Pretty Poison (1968)

What makes a cult movie?  Certainly not just being well-liked or popular, but being less well-known than it deserves to be and being cherishable for probably all the wrong reasons.  This little gem did virtually no business on its minimal release way back when, garnered a smallish following on the box, and only recently has come to DVD.  It's a sharp little tale of fanciful thinking and mayhem and offers perfect roles for its two leads, Tuesday Weld at 25 playing a 17-year old high school senior and Anthony Perkins at 36 -- but looking far, far younger -- playing a young, disturbed man of indeterminate age.  Some eight years after "Psycho", Perkins is back in the role of 'The Nutter' which will haunt him for the rest of his career.

Having recently been released from an institution where he has been for many years after an arson attack as a teenager, he takes work in the small Massachusetts town where lissome Weld catches his eye.  Being something of a fantasist, he suggests to her that he is really an undercover CIA agent and she willingly joins him in his fantasy life.  When he is dismissed from his job at the local lumber mill, he turns to sabotage with her assistance, during which she blithely kills the night watchman and lifts his gun.  She promptly uses it to rid herself of her overbearing mother and assumes that Perkins will arrange the cover-up and will whirl her away into a realm of excitement.  Instead, he is left facing the blame on his own, while Miss Innocence looks for her next bit of male escape.  Perkins may be not quite the model citizen, but she is in fact the incipient psychopath.  It's all rather grippingly done and amongst both actors' best roles.  There was a time when I thought the young Perkins was charismatically gorgeous -- if not quite in the Tyrone Power class -- but I now realise that what I thought to be male beauty was really rather callow youth.  Oh well, some of us grow up eventually, but I still do reckon this film.

Tags: Pretty Poison, Anthony Perkins, Tuesday Weld, cult movies

Two very recent flicks

As luck would have it, I've viewed two very new releases within the past few days -- "Enchanted" and "The Golden Compass", however, it is a 'no contest' to tell you which I preferred.

"Enchanted" as the name would have it is a totally enchanting movie from Disney which draws on the Disney heritage, but with a post-modern spin.  Our cartoon heroine from the old-fashioned, hand-drawn opening section is banished by wicked stepmother Susan Sarandon and finds herself adrift in New York City; as embodied by Amy Adams in a totally inappropriate bouffy dress, her naive and childish approach to life does not prepare her for the real world -- but cope she does, and brilliantly.  This is not just or not even a story for kiddies, but a hip take on fairy tale conventions which should please even the sourest of adults with its clever updatings.  Here she meets cynical lawyer Patrick Dempsey who ultimately finds her as irresistible as the rest of us, while her fairy-tale prince, handsome but extremely dim James Marsen, has followed her to this alternate world to 'save' her.  The film is awash with Disney references for the film buff, but more importantly embodies a truly feel-good aura for the general viewer.  Very, very highly recommended.

I have not read the trilogy on which "The Golden Compass" (the first of the three) is based, although I now think it is incumbent upon me to do so, despite being somewhat disappointed with this first cinema effort.  A lot of money seems to have been thrown at the screen with frankly variable results -- there just doesn't seem to be the air of wonderment appropriate for the tale.  Existing in a parallel world to ours, the young heroine travels afield when one of her playmates is captured by the wicked child grabbers who aim to destroy their daemons (their accompanying animal spirits).  She travels North to the land ruled by CGI bears (they have a wonderful way of galumping along) for a section which sags badly and which seems to go on forever, before the picture grinds to a halt to make way for the next installment.  There is a horrible Darth Vader moment when her true parentage is revealed, but that too seems something of an anti-climax.  With Daniel Craig and Eva Green and Nicole Kidman in attendance, one did hope for something a little better and more involving and definitely something rather more magical   

Tags: Enchanted, The Golden Compass, Disney Magic, Pullman non-Magic

Red Angel (1966)

If you have been paying attention, you will know by now that war movies are just about my least favourite genre.  You know the drill, take a bunch of loveable guys and kill them one at a time.  However, I was completely blown away by this no-holds-barred Japanese film which is one of the most brutal films I've ever seen.  Set in 1939 during the Sino-Japanese war, it follows the story of nurse Sakura Nishi, played by hauntingly beautiful Ayako Wakao, as she moves between an army rehab hospital and a bloody field hospital, and let me tell you  now, this movie is no M*A*S*H.  None of the horrors of war is skimped upon nor the traumas of those involved.  Sakura is raped by patients who consider her no better than a "comfort woman" and a witness to the casual hacking off of arms and legs to purportedly save lives -- all graphically rendered.  She takes pity on an armless patient who is unable to relieve his sexual urges and who, 'though married, knows he will never be allowed to go home, since letting the public see his condition would imply that Japan is losing the battle; her attempt on a single day trip with him away from the hospital to let him regain his self-respect as a man is wincingly graphic.

She also falls in love with an older doctor at the field hospital who relies on morphine as a solace for the abuse of his surgeon's skills and for his own impotency.  Their relationship is amazingly tough, yet tender, as the mutilated bodies pile up and as an outbreak of cholera further decimates the ranks.  Her name translates as 'Cherry Blossom' and he comments that it is impossible to imagine anyone other than  a young woman with such a symbolic name.  Even if she survives the inevitable carnage, she is bound to be an old soul after all that she has experienced.

The director, Yasuzo Masamura, although very prolific, is not one of the Japanese masters well-known in the West.  He was also responsible for the oddball "Blind Beast" that dazzled me a few months back, and after this film, I do feel obliged to seek out more movies from his singular vision.

I shall be away until the end of the week -- but I shall be back before you know it!  See you then...

Tags: Red Angel, Japanese film, war horrors

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006)

I understand that this German-made, English-language film did virtually no business Stateside and more's the pity.  Based on Patrick Suskind's 1985 novel and long considered unfilmable, I think director Tom Tykwer and his crew made a bold attempt to turn the book into cinema.  The major problem was how to convey the sense of smell into visual images without resorting to gimmicks like Odorama or Smell-o-vision.  But if you think about it, the author would have faced the same problem with the written word.

The story concerns one Jean-Baptiste Grenouille born into squalour beneath a fish stall in l8th Century Paris and blessed (or cursed) with an overly developed olfactory sense.  Throughout his miserable early life he mentally catalogs the smell of everything around him and becomes obsessed with being able to capture the transitory sensations into more lasting ones.  He apprentices himself to a master but past-it perfumier, played by Dustin Hoffman (in one of his less objectional incarnations, although still probably a bit OTT), who rapidly becomes aware of Grenouille's amazing talents and who looks to profit from them.  Having learned all he can from Hoffman, he plans to travel to the perfume centre at Grasse and along the way discovers that he himself has no discernible odour.  After a chance encounter with a comely market wench, he strives to bottle the essence of beauty and virtue into one undescribable odour -- hence the killings that follow and the very, very strange ending of the tale.

I think this is one instance where knowledge of the book is advantageous to the viewer (although like all adaptations, much is of necessity omitted).  The movie relies heavily on John Hurt's voiceover narration at the start, although this is far from intrusive, to carry the tale along -- but the images and the music do give one a strange sense of actually being able to smell things as Grenouille does.  Young Ben Whishaw who takes the lead is very, very good at portraying the strange, obsessed anti-hero.  He is nowhere near as hideous as he is described in the novel, but perhaps this is just as well for a character who is almost never off-screen and constantly in our view.  Something of a successful adaptation I think, but one which is obviously struggling to find its audience.

Tags: Perfume, Ben Whishaw, Dustin Hoffman, obsession

Casino Royale (2006)

You probably recall the fuss when it was announced that Daniel Craig would be the next Bond, with opinion veering towards the negative.  Then when the above film proved so successful and Craig was signed for umpteen further outings, the casting decision seems to have been justified.  I am not so sure.  I acknowledge that Craig has proved his acting chops in various roles and he makes a fine action hero here; however I can not bring myself to embrace him as the definitive Bond.  He just seems too much of a ruffian or thug to fit in with previous Bonds; granted that the character is at heart a cold and calculating customer, previous incarnations have overlaid this with a suave exterior.

My other problem with this movie is with its position within the series.  While the moviegoer has accepted the changing lead, I don't think we were ever asked to believe that Bond had only just received his 007 status.  It's been too long since I read the novel on which this is based to remember if it was the first in the series and if in fact Bond had only just become a licensed killer, but the film does not feel like any sort of prequel since the setting appears more or less contemporary.  I think the viewer brings too much baggage to the table to accept a completely different lead personality.

That said, Craig's is certainly a very modern and brutal take on the role and forgoes the usual corny quips.  However the one bit that did make me smile was when he is asked if he would like his martini shaken or stirred and he replies, "do I look as if I care" or words to that effect.  Eva Green made an acceptable heroine and we were allowed to see Bond's inner softy in their relationship.  Very 2006 I'm sure, but not the Bond we all know so well.  Finally I thought that the villain as played by Mads Mikkelsen was one of the least memorable of the series, but perhaps this is all part of giving us a Bond for our times.

Tags: Casino Royale, Daniel Craig, James Bond

Octane (2003)

I saw this film originally at a FrightFest some four years ago and recall not being terribly taken with it.  However, since I am aware that I can suffer from horror-overload on such occasions, I thought it was worth another try.  Sad to say, I was even less impressed this time around.  The makers had some interesting ideas, but seemed incapable of putting these into any semblance of sense or order.

The basic concept is promising: An over-stressed divorced mother played feistily by Madeleine Stowe is driving her 15-year old daughter home from a weekend with her father -- a six hour journey (taken for some reason in what appears to be the dead of the night).  The daughter is played by actress/model/girl-about-town Mischa Barton, so very good in "Lawn Dogs" (1997) when she was only eleven.  After a stroppy argument,  Stowe faces every parent's worst nightmare when Barton storms off at a rest-stop and seems to disappear, even if the mother thinks she has seen her get into an RV with some other young people.  What the director and writer manage to get across is the creepy eerieness of the people who can be found late at night at such places (as if they had nowhere else to go), but they take it too far by having virtually the entire cast involved in a conspiracy to steal bodies for their blood, making Stowe seem like the worst sort of paranoiac when she finally meets a real police officer.  News: the world is not really inhabited only by vampires or followers of a blood cult.  Their charismatic leader is played by ever-so-pretty Jonathan Rhys Meyers, whose fondling of Barton comes across more like child abuse than horror.  In fact, the more I think about this movie, the less sense it all makes and even the "kicker" in the end shot seems stupidly meaningless.

Tags: Octane, FrightFest, Madeleine Stowe, Mischa Barton, Jonathan Rhys Meyers