The Perfect Man (2005)

There's a thin line sometimes between stories that should have stayed as television movies and those that deserve to be blown up for the big screen; this film is fine for viewing at home and then forgetting, but to try to make something more meaningful out of this bit of fluff is hopeless, especially since two of the three leads -- Heather Locklear and Chris Noth -- are best known for their TV roles.  The third lead and presumably conceived as a vehicle for her is young Hilary Duff, one of the least offensive young comers.  Her mother moves her and her younger sister across the country on a regular basis every time that she is dumped by an unsuitable boyfriend.  When she lands up in Brooklyn (huh?) where there is the promise of a more stable life, Duff creates a fictitious beau to keep her mum happy and to forestall her relationship with a geeky baker.  This would-be lover is based on her friend's uncle (Noth) and initially Duff must keep him away from her mother to avoid being found-out; this includes some really dumb antics at the restaurant which he runs and at a wedding that he is catering.  In the end, mother and daughters learn the value of family, the strengths in being oneself, and of course the promise of real love all round.  Apart from there being no 'disease-of-the-week', perfect TV fare.

Le Combat dans l'Ile (1962)

Jean-Louis Trintignant is rapidly becoming something of a bete noir to me.  This busy French actor has appeared in dozens of films, some of them classics, but his vacantness is beginning to annoy me.  Having seen him recently in the pretentious "Trans-Europ Express", he was even less likeable in this political (not very thrilling) thriller.  He plays a right-wing conspirator framed by his mentor and on the run for a set-up, but unsuccessful, assassination attempt.  He is alienated from his wealthy family and from society at large, but his strained relationship with his wife, Romy Schneider, is really his only tenuous link with reality.  They take refuge with an old friend, Henri Serre, a socialist and pacifist.  When Trintignant tootles off to Buenos Aires to take revenge on his betrayer, Schneider and Serre begin a relationship which can only be resolved by Serre reluctantly adopting violence as well.  It may be something of a spoiler for me to write that by the end of the film I was rooting for Serre to "Kill the Bastard".

The Cold Light of Day (1995)

I've said before, but I'll say it again, I do wonder how certain films come to be made.  This one is a good case in point, since it is a remake in English by a Dutch director of an obscure German movie from 1958.  What makes it even weirder is that it is set somewhere in Eastern Europe, some time after the fall of Communism with a mainly English cast speaking in pukka tones.  Richard E. Grant plays a cop who has quit the force when his superior (in search of political glory) has framed a known offender for the murder of three young girls.  Grant wants to find the real killer in his own way, even if this in fact means placing a youngster and her mother in harm's way.  No suspense is involved since the viewer knows from about ten minutes in that the perp is Simon Cadell, a seemingly respected doctor (but one in the Patch Adams vein).  Yes, that Simon Cadell out of "Hi-de-hi" playing one very creepy paedophile, but thinking about it, his character was pretty creepy in the sitcom as well (in a different way).  He manages to ingratiate himself to Grant's young bait, but disaster is of course averted in the nick of time.  To add to the peculiarities of this film, the story is based on a fairly elderly Durrenmatt novel, written well before the end of the communist era; this updating adds nothing to the story itself.  So why did they bother?

Brain Damage (1988)

Many thanks to those of you who left birthday greetings, although thinking about it, I can't explain what made me announce this in the first place!  Sky last night had nothing new to help me celebrate, showing an interminable TV movie called "Category 7 - The End of the World" about severe weather conditions (unexplained) wreaking havoc on various landmarks and adding a totally unnecessary subplot about a religious fanatic planning the slaughter of the first-born.  Forget about it.

Instead I'll tell you about this weirdie which I rewatched a few days ago.  The second horror film from low-budget auteur Frank Henenlotter (who? you ask) who went on to make the Basket Case series and "Frankenhooker", it is really a lot of fun if you have no cultural hang-ups.  A puppet-like mobile spinal cord escapes from its elderly owners and ends up through the water system in an adjoining flat where it attaches itself to the neck of a young man.  In exchange for providing him with hallucinatory images, the boy's mobility allows the thingy to find new victims whose brains it can suck for sustenance.  What, you now ask, am I doing watching this sort of rubbish?  Well, it's all a matter of perspective and there are times when a dose of lowbrow amusement does set me up for more serious viewing.  So there!

Fantastic Four (2005)

Ho hum!  Another day, another set of super-heroes -- but don't expect me to remember these next week.  Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, and Michael Chiklis are exposed to radiation which affects their DNA (or something) and they can stretch, go invisible, become a fireball, or be a human Rocky (literally) respectively.  Big deal.  Neither terribly well done nor particularly interesting, I can see youngish men panting over the delectable Ms. Alba, but otherwise, forget it.  I now know -- yet again -- why I do not rely on current blockbusters for my entertainment, not that I suppose this one made much of an impact at the box office.  I don't suppose that this will prevent our being lumbered with a sequel in due course, more's the pity.

Princess Tam Tam (1935)

As you may have gathered by now, I will go out of my way to view rareties, hence my visit to the NFT to see this French flick starring the incredible Josephine Baker.  If ever a performer was in the right place at the right time, it was this Black American who was the toast of Paris in the 20s and 30s, mainly for her wild dance routines and her somewhat operatic voice.  However the films that she made, while they form a record of her singular talent -- such as it was -- come from Planet Weird.  In this one which was banned Stateside since it implies a multi-racial romance, she plays a Tunisian goatherd (would you believe) who is tutored by a vacationing author to make his feckless wife jealous.  The fact that Baker was 31 at the time with a sophisticate's make-up did not stop the film-makers here trying to portray her as some sort of street urchin.  This Pygmalian-like tale has its moments but as a showcase for Miss Baker, it leaves a great deal to be desired.  Since it was conceived and written by her husband of the time, she can't really blame anyone else for some of the idiocies inflicted upon her.  One has a long wait before seeing her dance routines, but there are compensations, particularly with an elaborately-staged production number that wouldn't have shamed Busby Berkeley (not that she was in this one).  I'm happy to have seen this film, but wouldn't break my neck to see another of her vehicles. 

Broken Flowers (2005)

Bill Murray strikes me as one of those actors that you really dig or wonder what he is all about and how he managed to have a career.  As you have probably guessed, I fall in the latter category.  In his early roles I found him slightly too sour to appreciate and in his later roles he has adopted a kind of Zen stillness which is mystifying.  Put him together with the director, Jim Jarmusch, whose films specialise in stillness (although I must admit a real liking for his "Dead Man" with Johnny Depp and "Ghost Dog..." with Forest Whitaker), and you get a movie like this one where at the end, you wonder why you bothered watching it in the first place.

Murray receives an anonymous letter on pink stationery announcing that he is the father of a now 19-year old son.  His next door neighbour, Jeffrey Wright -- speaking with a weird Jamaican accent -- encourages him to seek out his ex-flames from twenty years previous to find the truth.  So he reluctantly begins a road trip which has him visiting Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, and an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton.  That the film ends with his being none the wiser nor being any better a man comes as no surprise.

Monte Cristo (1928/29)

I don't know how many versions of Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" I have seen -- certainly a fair number -- but this silent French version was not one I'd viewed previously.  Apart from its antiquity -- and it is not even the oldest version by any means -- there was frankly little to commend it.  At over 220 minutes the director, Henri Fescourt, apparently wanted to film the novel word for word as it were, but the result was a pedestrian and overstuffed movie.  The fact that the lead was taken by a fairly uncharismatic actor called Jean Angelo did not help, and even having a famous silent beauty, Lil Dagover, as the female lead was of little avail.  Still, because it joins my list of obscurities on disc, this 2006 restoration could become yet another movie that I probably will not look at again -- but it's there should I wish to.

The Fantastic Planet (1973)

This Czech-French animated classic is now available on DVD and really deserves to be better known as it was one of the first films with a SciFi slant intended for an adult audience.  Nowadays we look to anime for this, but this movie is an important forerunner.  Set in a world dominated by huge blue creatures called Draags who keep tiny human-like beings called Oms as pets, the wild oms in the surrounding parkland are considered vermin to be periodically culled.  We follow once such om, Terr, who is treated like a doll but who manages to learn (by transfer direct to the brain) as his mistress learns.  When she loses interest in him as a teenager, he escapes dragging a learning device with him.  With this he manages to educate the wild oms and to lead them, initially into rebellion, but then into a fragile peace.

The animation is very much of its period and has a psychodelic feel like "The Yellow Submarine" and the Gilliam cartoons for Monty Python, creating fabulous landscapes and creatures in a fantastic world.  Seek out the DVD which I am sure you will find of unusual interest; it also contains two rather super shorts which are more than worth your time.

High School Musical (2006)

I don't make a habit of watching Disney made-for-cable movies (although I have seen a few), but I made a point of viewing this one since it has been something of a phenomenon, selling millions of DVDs and CDs and even being licensed for school performances.  There has also been a dance track video and the sequel is in the works.  Wow!

The most I can say is that it is harmless fun with no drugs, sex or rock 'n roll to offend anyone.  The score is derivative but pleasant and the storyline unsurprising.  Basketball jock Zac Efron (a pretty boy in the Rob Lowe mold) meets latina Vanessa Anne Hudgens at a resort New Year's Eve party and is delighted when she transfers to his high school.  Meanwhile brother and sister Ashley Tisdale and Lucas Grabeel (a Disney alumnus) are the star musical performers of the school drama club.  (She is in fact the most experienced of the cast, but did come across as something of a clunker).  Anyhow when the first pair decide to audition for the leads in the new production much to the second pair's horror, everyone tries to put obstacles in their way.  Oddly enough Efron's voice which was partly dubbed was certainly a whole lot weaker than Grabeel's.  But, as expected, the diva loses out when the rest of the school supports the underdogs -- and everyone ends up as good friends regardless, a wholesome rainbow world where even the fat kids are popular.

I'm sure that the main audience for this movie must be pre-teen girls, since I can't believe that older teens would buy into it, unless they are pretty uncomplicated indeed.  And for once in a teenie flick the cast looked too young.  Normally the reverse is true with the actors seeming nearly elderly (think of "Grease" -- incidentally the working title for this movie was "Grease 3".)  In this film even the star basketball team seemed to be made up of midgets -- well at least not the l7-l8 year-old giants one expects.  Yet in this era of bad-taste movies, the film had an old-fashioned morality which must go down a treat with many.

One day's viewing

To compensate for last week's deprivation, yesterday became Marathon Sunday -- but even I drew the line at four films.  And what a mixed bunch they were:

Two from 1951: That's 55 years ago says PPP proving she can still do arithmetic and two that I've not seen previously, although "The Steel Helmet" has been on my "must-see" list for a long time.  Written and directed by Samuel Fuller (and just about anything he has done is loaded with interest), I should have hated this war movie (my least favourite genre), but it was brilliantly conceived and held up very well after all these years.  Always a low-budget auteur, this Korean war tale was shot in a local L.A. park with a minor cast and starred Gene Evans, who is not exactly a well-known name.  He plays a sergeant, the only survivor of his regiment, who is rescued by a Korean youngster and who  meets up with the stragglers from other decimated platoons; these include a tough by-the-book officer played by Steve Brodie, a black medic, an Asian-American and various other oddballs.  Like all war movies, not everyone survives the attack on the Buddhist temple where they are holed up, but the dialogue and emotion felt very real and the total futility of war manifest.  The second 1951 flick was more of a potboiler, but at least I have now seen it.  Called "The Second Woman", it stars Robert Young in a late movie role as an architect with a secret.  His fiancee has been killed on the eve of their wedding, and after he meets new love interest Betsy Drake (once married to Cary Grant, but a strangely anaemic actress), bad things happen -- his horse goes lame, his dog and his rosebushes are poisoned, his house burns down, he loses the big contract he's been chasing.  We're meant to believe he is a "paranoiac" as claimed by the local doctor and that he is responsible for all of these things, but we the audience know that nice Mr. Young is incapable of bad behaviour.  The obvious villains turn out to be red herrings and the least likely culprit is eventually revealed.  But by then you will have ceased caring. 

Mean Creek (2004): This was a beautifully done coming of age film from writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes with an underlying sense of unease to keep the viewer on the edge of his seat.  Young Rory Culkin is being bullied at school by fat misfit Josh Peck; Culkin's elderbrother and his two mates decide that Peck must be taught a lesson and invite him to join them, Culkin and the latter's young girlfriend, Carly Schroeder, on a birthday outing on the river.  They plan to humiliate Peck to teach him a lesson, but young Millie (the moral voice of the group) dissuades them -- and indeed Peck does not appear to be as much a monster as he seemed; his agression stemming from his own insecurities, as is so often the case.  However a tragedy ensues and the youngsters do not know how to deal with it -- do they cover it up or face the music?  They are unable to agree unanimously and the film does in fact stop quite abruptly without spelling out the various results.  It could have done with a lot more closure.

Wedding Crashers (2005): It's not difficult to see why this was a big surprise hit at the box office since its likeable leads, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn, are amusing company.  They're best friends and business partners, but their main downtime activity is crashing weddings (of all faiths and hues) where they are always remarkably popular and always manage to entice a female or two into bed -- which is the point of the exercise from their point of view.  They come unstuck when they crash the reception of Christopher Walken's eldest and become involved with his two younger daughters.  They are roped into a house party which includes a gay brother, a nymphomaniac wife (a real rotten part for Jane Seymour), and the swarmy yuppie fiance of the daughter that Wilson fancies.  It's by and large good-natured fun, although I could have lived without meeting Vaughn's original mentor played by an uncredited Will Ferrell who has now taken to crashing funerals.  That's really not funny.

 

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)

Without wishing to rain on anyone's parade, I must confide that I have never been a sucker for the Star Wars films.  I can understand why they have their fans (although not why some of them are obsessive) and I can admire the skills that George Lucas has brought to film-making technique, but I just can't bring myself to view the series as anything other than glorious hokum.  Maybe that is enough. 

Now that they have finally shown the third prequel on Sky, I have at last seen all six movies, since I never cared enough to view the above film at the cinema or on DVD.   The film is undoubtedly spectacular with its non-stop visual effects, but since one is never in doubt where the story is going (one knows all this from the original three movies), there is not much in the way of plot to involve the viewer, forcing one to focus on some very wooden acting and some very duff dialogue.  I guess I should be grateful that Lucas scrapped his original plan to do nine films in total -- although who knows what the future will bring.  In short, a feast for the eyes, if not for the brain.