Black Book (2006)

Before he "went Hollywood", Netherlands-born director Paul Verhoeven made some remarkable films, mainly starring the young Rutger Hauer.  After making something of a splash Stateside, his career there seems to have petered out, largely through some misguided projects -- although I personally find "Showgirls" a guilty pleasure and also think "Starship Troopers" is a hoot.  Anyhow, after 20 years, he is now back in Holland where he started and has directed this well-made World War II saga.  Carice van Houten plays a Jewish singer still in hiding in 1944.  When the farm where she has been holed up is bombed, she joins other fugitives, including her parents and brother whom she has not seen for years, on a barge headed for freedom only to see all of them slaughtered by a Nazi patrol.  Suspecting a set-up, she joins the resistance under new identity and a new appearance and agrees to become the mistress of a gestapo officer to help the cause.  The actual story with its ins and outs is far more complicated, as one would expect from a 135-minute movie, but it is all very competently presented and even suspenseful.  Van Houten, who is on-screen non-stop, is magnetic and the balance of the cast excellent.  The film is something of a throwback to the director's earlier works, in particular "Soldier of Orange" from 1977, although Verhoeven can't resist the occasional unnecessary vulgarities and gratuitous nudity that marked his Hollywood years.  Still the movie is a definite return to form, albeit occasionally potboiler-ish, but on balance certainly recommendable.

The Longest Yard (2005)

This vehicle for acquired taste Adam Sandler is a remake of the Burt Reynolds movie of the same name from 1974.  We can safely ignore the other recent remake called "The Mean Machine" starring that thespian great, Vinnie Jones.  All three films concern themselves with an ex-pro footballer, jailed for a minor offense, who is forced by the venal prison warden to form a football team to showcase against his crack team of prison officers.  Apart from the difficulty of picturing Sandler as any sort of football star, the film probably has enough funny bits to please both fans of Sandler and sports fans.  He gradually puts together a team of misfits who are attracted by the premise of being able to bash their sadistic guards.  When sidekick Chris Rock is murdered by the prison authorities, they try to frame Sandler to get him to make his team throw the big game.  You can guess which team wins in the end, and Sandler emerges as a better person, even with the threat of a longer prison sentence hanging over his head.  And it comes as no surprise that aging actor Reynolds has taken on a meaty role to prolong his now definitely defunct film career.  I think the word "mindless" best describes this farrago.

The High and the Mighty (1954)

This early cinerama film directed by William Wellman and starring John Wayne was one of the earliest airline disaster movies and is highly rated in retrospect by most critics.  I stress "in retrospect" since the film has not been available until recently on DVD (and was never on VHS) and according to records that I have been keeping since the early '80s, it has not been shown on terrestrial television either.  Therefore when Sky Cinema screened a copy a few days ago, I was delighted to catch up with this missing "treasure".

However sorry to say the film has dated very badly and the back stories of the 22 passengers on the flight from Honolulu to San Francisco (scheduled to take 12 hours and 16 minutes!) and the five crew members was not really involving stuff.  Wayne, as always, strides through the procedings as an over the hill pilot who has lost his family in a previous crash, goaded by the younger crew.  However, naturally when disaster threatens, it is the old warhorse who saves the day.  The cast is a watchable assortment of actors from the 40s and 50s, but of B ranking, who only make Wayne look all the more starry in comparison.  The most memorable part of the film is the Dmitri Tiomkin score and theme tune which won Oscars and which became so associated with Wayne that, I understand, the music was played at his funeral.  I'm pleased to have seen the film since it always worries me when mainstream productions remain unavailable for one reason or another, but having seen it, I won't be watching it again.

Taxidermia (2006)

Even the excesses of "A Zed and Two Noughts" below could not have prepared me for the body horror of my first London Film Festival screening.  I chose this movie since I was very taken with the Hungarian director, Gyorgy Palfi, and his first feature length film "Hukkle", a virtually silent effort with only ambient noise -- mainly hiccups -- and the hint of murder in an idyllic community.  This film is his sophomore effort and one that will undoubtedly gain cult status, but only among those cinema-goers with very strong stomachs.  The opening shot of a penis shooting out flames set the tone for the explicit sex, regurgitation, and mutilation to follow.  The film covers three generations of Hungarian men.  The first is a lowly soldier who after various hysterical attempts at masturbation manages to impregnate his superior's wife.  She gives birth to a baby with a pig's tail who grows up to be a competitive eater, a sport for which he craves Olympic status.  The scenes here of gross men stuffing their faces and then vomiting are frankly sick-making, albeit hilarious.  He and his equally obese wife produce a sickly child who grows up to be a taxidermist; that is he stuffs animals rather than himself with food.  However he craves his own form of recognition, which he achieves by turning his body into a work of art (in the Damien Hurst sense) which will stand forever as proof of the taxidermist's artistry.  Only the stout-hearted need apply...

A Zed and Two Noughts (1985)

I should by rights at the moment be sitting in the Odeon West End watching "The King and the Clown", the first of my London Film Festival selections, but when I got there I found that the screening had been cancelled.  Great, what a way to start the fortnight!  Grrr.  So I'll write instead about this earlyish Peter Greenaway film which I have seen before but which, together with "Drowning by Numbers", I have never quite reckoned sufficiently to consider owning a copy.  So I gave it another go yesterday evening and have not really revised my feelings.  The visuals are brilliant, if often disturbing, but the storyline is so off the wall that it takes a great deal of acceptance.  The film is also hampered by a rather mixed bunch of actors, in particular the French actress Andrea Ferreol in one of the main roles speaking fairly unintelligible English and for some reason Jim Davidson (cor blimey) as a zookeeper.

If you've never seen this movie, be advised that it touches on detached Siamese twins, amputations, and the graphic decaying of flesh.  Brothers Brian and Eric Deacon (not actually twins but growing more alike as the film progresses) take the lead as husbands mourning the death of their wives when the car in which they were being driven is wrecked by a falling swan.  As can happen from time to time!  They are involved with courtesan Frances Barber, the aforementioned frenchwoman who was driving the car, a mysterious double amputee German, and a woman in a red hat straight out of a Vermeer painting.  Much of the film is gorgeous to look at, but other images of rotting animals and snails crawling across bodies does take the edge off any lasting enjoyment.

Feet First (1930)

Silent comedian Harold Lloyd made an easy transistion to the talkies, even if these films do not consistently reach the heights of brilliance to be found in his earlier ones.  This one is a good case in point.  He plays his usual nebbish but eager to better himself at the shoe store where he works as a stock boy, especially after he meets the girl of his dreams.  He takes a six-month "personality" course and has worked his way up to salesman when he meets her again and believes her to be the daughter of a shoe magnate.  When they sail to the States (the movie opens in Honolulu) he finds himself as a stowaway on their liner and tries to maintain his pose as a "leather mogul" while avoiding capture by the ship's crew.  All of this is episodic with some great bits of business tucked into the so far predictable story line.  The real kicker is when he brags that he will get an important letter that the magnate has dictated to San Francisco before the ship docks and after hiding in a mailbag he is air-mailed ahead of the ship.  There then follows a hanging-on -the-facade-of-a-tall-office-building sequence, reminiscent of his famous "Safety First", which probably goes on a tad too long, but which includes some breathtaking stunts and duels with disaster.  For all its longeurs, still better entertainment than so many of our modern so-called comedies.

Zhou Yu's Train (2002)

I knew virtually nothing about this Chinese film in advance and I am not all that much the wiser having seen it.  It is unusual among the Chinese films that reach the West insofar as it is a fairly simple love story, albeit a confusing one.  Gong Li now past the first flush of beauty evident in her earlier films, but still a fine actress, plays a porcelain painter.  On a train journey she meets poet Tony Leung (not the Hong Kong superstar of the same name, but the one out of "The Lovers") and indeed begins a passionate romance with him which requires her to make the long train journey twice weekly to the far-off city where he lives.  On one of these trips she also meets a cheeky vet (who doubts her lover's existence), and when the poet's day job moves him to Tibet, she begins a tentative relationship with the vet as well.  On the train we periodically see another woman with different hair, but also played by Gong Li, whose role is something of a mystery.  The film addresses love, both genuine and imagined, longing, and quite possibly reality in an elliptical way, but I found it hard to get a grip on the themes.  The one thing that did leave a wonderful impression was the cinematographer's love affair with the changing scenery along the train's route.

Yes, it's been a year since the last London Film Festival which starts tomorrow night.  I have only pre-booked eight movies this year, mainly ones which are unlikely to get a wide cinema release, and I shall be reporting accordingly over the next fortnight.  If any of you are in the London area, there is still plenty of availability to indulge any curiosity you may have. 

Pride and Prejudice (2005)

There have been several very popular television versions of this story, so it is hard to remember that this is only the second big screen version, the first being the charming 1940 black and white classic (if you ignore the recent "Bride and Prejudice" which is nothing to do with things).  I was pleasantly surprised by the professionalism of this outing -- well conceived, well acted and nicely photographed.  I have not seen the Colin Firth in a wet shirt and breeches TV effort, so I can't make any comparisons, except to note that being longer, it was probably more inclusive and more faithful to the novel.   Keira Knightley comes into her own as the most sensible of the five unmarried Bennet sisters; it's the first time I really felt that she was a talent to watch.  Her Darcy, Matthew Macfadyen, was previously a television actor, but deserves to break out to bigger things.  All of the cast were enchanting, with the possible exception of Brenda Blethyn as the girls' hysterical mother, but special praise must be reserved for two of the smaller roles: Donald Sutherland as the girls' father and Judi Dench as Lady Catherine.  All in all, something to restore one's faith in British films and talent.

The Island (2005)

Michael Bay's first directorial outing without producer Jerry Bruckheimer is as much a flashy production as one has come to expect from the pair of them -- but this one is all flash, without much substance.  We meet our main protagonists Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson when they are living in a controlled environment, the remnants -- we are led to believe -- of a society devastated by war.  The only hope these people have is to someday go to The Island where a better life awaits them.  McGregor starts to question the status quo and when Johansson's name is drawn, he fears the worst and they escape to a very real outside world of which they knew nothing.  Turns out they are all clones, grown for their spare parts by their "sponsors" who hope to live forever.  So they start the search for their counterparts and McGregor meets the real McGregor (who obviously looks exactly the same but who has a stronger Scots accent).  The latter is horrified and says, "People who eat burgers don't want to meet the cow".  Quite!  Of course our heroes and all the other doomed clones revolt and live happily ever after.  If you can believe that, you can believe anything, but it is probably not worth thinking about -- just more disposable so-called entertainment.

Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991)

This DVD was given away by one of the Sundays a while back and I was convinced that I must have seen it previously, since it has certainly been shown on terrestrial television.  But I hadn't.  Based on E.M. Forster's first novel and with Helena Bonham Carter in the cast you can bet that it was yet another "Heritage" drama like so many of the Merchant-Ivory's (not that it was one of theirs), but it was not without interest.  Held together by a small but perfect cast which included Rupert Graves, Helen Mirren, and Judy Davis, a tragedy unravels as unthinking Edwardian characters unleash their various hang-ups on a romanticised Italian world.  Davis in particular is brilliant as the priggish spinster looking down her nose on any sort of joie de vivre who is responsible for the final disastrous turn of events.  As the first half of the film's title would have it: "Fools rush in".  My only criticism is that the movie peters out rather sharply and I half expected 'to be continued...' to pop up on the screen. 

Rick (2003)

Having been a little dismissive of the Hallmark Channel recently, I was surprised to find this oddity tucked away in its middle-of-the-night schedules and not even listed as a premiere; I'm not even convinced that it was a cable movie like most of their film offerings, since the strong language and sexual scenes are not the channel's usual bag.  However it was a very strange and provocative black comedy/drama, based on Verdi's Rigoletto in modern dress, written by the author of the Lemony Snicket books, and starring Bill Pullman as a completely unsympathetic company high-flyer who finds himself working for a man half his age.  All of the men in the tale are called names like Rick and Buck and Duke and Nick (words ending in a K are funny as Matthau might have said in "The Sunshine Boys") and each of them is obnoxious in their own special way.  When Pullman gets all snitty with interviewee Sandra Oh and later causes her to lose her cocktail waitress job, she puts a curse on his 'evil soul'.  All of a suddent taxis won't stop for him, he discovers that his nubile teenaged daughter is involved in on-line sex chat with his boss, and a plan to rid himself of the latter goes disastrously wrong.  All this with tinkly (and sometimes too loud) Christmas music in the background resulted in a surreal and disturbing film.  Not Hallmark's bag at all.

The DVD backlog

Now that Sky in its wisdom has decided that two or three new films a week is sufficient and Film4 is replaying its back catalogue for its new Freeview audience, most nights when I'm in there is little to watch on the box that I've not seen previously -- I have even seen all of the "new" Korean premieres on Film4 this month.  And there is a limit to the number of television movies shown on Hallmark and their sister channel that I can tolerate at any one time.  So most nights, we fall back on our DVD backlog -- which I hate to admit is quite substantial -- in the search for new thrills.  Poor, poor Patty!  Some evenings are more successful than others, and yesterday's was a typical mixture:

Rider on the Rain (1969):  We remembered seeing this on a transatlantic flight many moons ago, but could remember nothing about it other than that it was French-made and starred Charles Bronson (whose granite-like masculinity I like just fine).  It is also fairly well rated by the critics, so I was not prepared for the disappointment in store.  Firstly it was one of the worst prints I ever seen on a DVD transfer, nearly black and white when it wasn't meant to be.  Also I found Bronson's co-star Marlene Jobert something of a disappointment, especially since she was on screen nearly non-stop.  Part of the problem is that the film which was set in France was probably originally shot in French with a dubbed Bronson, which might or might not have been an improvement.  Bronson was as usual just dandy and there was even a small part for his beloved wife, Jill Ireland.  Mind you in the olden days they probably could get away with showing an in-flight film about a raped woman who murders her attacker -- not nowadays I bet.

Police Assassins/Yes Madam (1985):  This Hong Kong movie was a real mixed bag, but on balance more jolly than not.  Michelle Yeoh (billed early in her career as Michelle Khan) is now famous for her martial arts skills, but in this her third movie, she had to practice for months to try her hand (and feet) here for the first time.  She plays a cop searching for missing microfilm and paired with real-life champion fighter Cynthia Rothrock, who wasn't attractive enough for US movies but who made a big splash back then in Hong Kong.  The two of them really do kick some ass in flamboyant style by the film's end.  Unfortunately one also has to put up with some singularly low and unfunny Chinese humour by an array of familiar faces from Sammo Hung downwards during much of the exposition.  I was wondering why Yuen Biao wasn't fighting, until I worked out that the actor I thought was him was actually a ringer.  Even more weirdly prolific Hong Kong director Hark Tsui appears as one of the quasi-baddies -- he should stick with his day job.