Princess (2006)

In comparison to my previous entry, this London Film Festival choice by Danish director Anders Morgenthaler was a fascinating film, but one that is difficult to describe.  Combining anime-like storytelling with some unfocused live action, the Princess of the title was a porn star killed in a car crash, leaving her worldly-wise five-year daughter alone.  Her brother returns from his missionary work abroad to claim responsibility for the child, but they do not bond easily since he is far too uptight to understand the debauched life the girl has witnessed.  In addition he feels guilty for his sister's fate, since it was his videotaping her making love some years before that sealed her career choice.  He determines to rid the world of her legacy by destroying all of the porn films she has made and the men responsible for exploiting her. There is a lot of bloodshed and not quite the hoped-for resolution, but rather a poetic one that is in its own way satisfying.  Interestingly only the Princess is never depicted in cartoon form, perhaps because it was her real tragedy which created the story.  A truly original film and a truly unusual vision.

Lights in the Dusk (2006)

What a major disappointment!  My fourth London Film Festival choice was one of the most miserable, minimalist films I have ever watched.  The Finnish writer-director Aki Kaurismaki has always veered to the downbeat (it must be all those dark Northern nights), but he has hit rock bottom here.  Intended as the third part of a loose trilogy which focussed on unemployment ("Drifting Clouds) and homelessness ("The Man without a Past"), this film was meant to emphasise loneliness.  However where the previous two movies were leavened with humour and a large measure of love and hope, this one only offers the viewer the merest glimmer of a better tomorrow.  It's the sorry tale of an alienated night watchman who is deceived by a femme fatale into unwittingly allowing a major burglary on his watch for which only he receives any punishment.  He spends most of the film being beaten up and generally abused or ignored, and is unable to accept the friendship of an equally lonely, but plain, young woman.  I kept waiting for some kind of sweet revenge or redemption, but alas my wait was in vain. 

Nanny McPhee (2005)

This was nearly a good film.  All of the elements were there for a charming tale, but somehow the whole slightly misfired.  Widower Colin Firth has seven adorable but horrible kiddies who have sent every nanny fleeing in terror.  Onto the scene comes Emma Thompson (who also wrote the screenplay) as the hideous but magical eponymous nanny.  As she gradually reforms her charges, her ugliness -- literally warts and all -- begins to disappear; and when she knows that she is no longer needed, so does she.  So far, so good, but an embarrassing role for Angela Lansbury as great-aunt Moneybags in a stupid false nose, and some screechy parts for Imelda Staunton as the ex-army cook and Celia Imrie as a proposed bride for Firth detract horribly.  The scene where the kids try to scare off Imrie with worms and toads and various booby traps, causing Firth to fall all over her in perceived amorous mode is just not funny.  Still, the nice bright colours, a sweet performance from Kelly MacDonald as the gentrified scullery maid, and the on-balance appeal of the children all help to make this a pleasant family film -- just not a great one.

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.