Bad News Bears (2005)

Here I go again  about unnecessary remakes.  This Billy Bob Thornton vehicle is a fairly straight recreation of the 1976 Walter Matthau movie, adapting the original script and even using the same music from "Carmen" to comedic effect.  So why is it so rotten?  Well for starters Thornton whom I do not dislike as such -- he was memorable in "The Man who Wasn't There" and "A Simple Plan -- is just too scruffy and unlikeable here to carry the day.  Matthau was nearly as foul-mouthed in the original, but there was always something about his curmudgeonly manner to win the audience.  The only minor changes here are to make the Tatum O'Neill role into Billy Bob's estranged daughter and to add a kid in a wheelchair and some cheerleaders from Hooters.  Apart from anything else there have been so many movies about loveable and not-so-lovable kids' losing teams in the intervening thirty years -- not just baseball, but think of all the Mighty Ducks rubbish as well -- that the world is not exactly panting for more.  All in all it seems a weird choice for director Richard Linklater who has made some influential and experimental films over the last ten years or so, such as "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly".  His only other comedy has been "School of Rock", but at least that brought something new to the screen with infectious humour which this movie sadly lacks.  People will still be watching the Matthau movie long after this one is deservedly forgotten.

Venus (2006)

I was tempted to book this film at last year's London Film Festival because of the appealing teaming of Peter O'Toole (always a favourite) and Leslie Phillips as two aging actors, but I reckoned that it would quickly get a cinema release.  Well, quickly in this instance morphed into three months, but I finally attended a preview showing.  There is a lot of pressure afoot to award O'Toole an Oscar for his performance; he's been oft-nominated but never won, and it would certainly be a sentimental choice, but as good as he is here, he has been better, and I somehow don't see him overtaking actors in showier roles this year.

The role he takes could easily be based on his own career, an erstwhile beauty who rages at the dimming of the light signalled by his fragile body and disappearing libido.  Strangely attracted to Phillips' young niece played by newcomer Jodie Whittaker, he takes her under his wing with more than a small hope of romantic repercussions.  He nicknames her Venus after the Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery (oddly enough I had just been to the Velazquez Exhibition there before seeing this movie and that painting is the absolute highlight amongst a group of over-rated court portraits).  Being young, she treats him shabbily until it is just about too late, and I found their relationship a little short of acceptable.  However, O'Toole is in fact a sight to see and his playing, without too much vanity, a tour de force.  His scenes with Phillips are also a delight, and in a few brief scenes with Vanessa Redgrave who plays his ex-wife, we are reminded of just how fine an actor she too is.

Gambling Man (1995)

I seem to have an increasingly-encroaching heap of unwatched DVDs which came uninvited as newspaper or other giveaways, and occasionally I choose one at random to provide a change of pace.  This British TV production -- I assume it must have been a mini-series by its two and a half hours length -- is based on a book by Catherine Cookson -- a romance novelist whom I have never read; add to these factors the l9th Century setting and the regional accents, and I had little in the way of expectations.   While it started slowly, it soon became increasingly involving, once I accepted the extraordinarily melodramatic plot.  Robson Green who was previously only a "name" to me plays a working-class rent collector with a passion for gambling which gets his best friend put in jail and his being nearly beaten to death by the henchmen of villainous Bernard Hill; and despite his marriage to his spitfire girlfriend, he catches the eye of a rich spinster who has befriended him and encouraged his personal progress without realising that he has a wife (since despite the class barrier between them, she quite fancies him.)  The wife is soon disposed of in a catastrophe at sea to clear the way for his new relationship -- until she comes back from the dead!  This description can only provide a taste of the ins and outs of the convoluted story, but it was all well-done with good period detail, and if the ending was in fact somewhat downbeat, at least it held my attention.

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

I went to a preview of this soon-to-be-released and certain-to-be-talked about film and came away with mixed feelings.  It is without a doubt brilliantly acted and involving, but by the end it left something of a bad taste and was certainly by no means entertaining.  Now I can admire stupendous performances as much as the next guy, but for my money that is insufficient reason to warm to a film.  What we have here is Judi Dench playing a bitter and unfulfilled schoolteacher on the verge of retirement with hints of unhappy lesbian overtones.  Onto the scene comes the new art teacher in the luminous form of Cate Blanchett and Dench's life assumes new meaning as she begins to insinuate herself into Blanchett's friendship and life.  The latter is married to the older (and very good) Bill Nighy with a bolshie teenaged daughter and a Down Syndrome son, but she is also about to embark on a sexual spree with one of her fifteen-year-old students.  Dench gets wind of this and tries to manipulate her knowledge to further ingratiate herself to Blanchett, until the fury of a woman scorned unleashes the inevitable retribution.  Dench's characterization is a full-blooded one loaded with a mix of self-deprecating humour, a large dose of self-pity, and a fairly heavy strand of venom; she is a dangerous predator.  But finally, it is a movie to admire rather than to enjoy. 

Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story (2005)

Were it not for the heavyweight casting, I would have expected this horsey movie to have been made for TV.  But with three generations of horse lovers played by Kris Kristofferson, Kurt Russell (again), and Dakota Fanning and with Elizabeth Shue, David Morse, Luis Guzman, and Freddy Rodriguez in support, you can be certain that it was intended as a full-blown feature film.  It's a story we've seen before as injured horse recovers to become the underdog (underhorse?) in a big race.  I think it was called "Seabiscuit" most recently!  Yet it was completely watchable despite its predictability, largely due to the uncanny Miss Fanning -- I sometimes think she must be a very small adult in the guise of a child.  Talking about young female actresses stealing the glory from all other players, I also saw "Bee Season" (2005) yesterday which was so pretentious that it barely needs mentioning, except to say that the ll-year daughter of the family, played by Flora Cross was exceptional.  Watch out for the competition Dakota.

The Killing of Sister George (1968)

The weird thing about this "British" movie starring Beryl Reid, Susannah York, and Coral Browne (who was actually born in Australia) is that it is an American film, produced and directed by Robert Aldrich.  Based on a play of the period and set in London, it is the tale of butch lesbian Reid, a supposedly beloved character in a TV soap, and her childish lover played by a gormless York, and the ups and downs in their relationship as Reid's character is killed off by the Corporation suits.  Browne, a purportedly straight BBC executive, is enchanted by York and in a fairly explicit scene for the time contrives to win her for her own.  All three actresses are riveting, with special praise for Reid who plays a monstrous, controlling gargoyle with no vanity.  As a relatively early mainstream example of gay cinema, this film wins a place in movie history, but I doubt that it won many friends at the time of its release. 

No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948)

I was going on yesterday about the injustice of classic films being missing in action on disc and really bad movies being available, and this is a fine case in point.  This film is among the all-time stinkers of British film-making, yet there it is on its shiny DVD.  Part of the reason it smells bad is that it may be a British movie, based on the notorious novel by James Hadley Chase, but all of the cast (apart from the imported male lead, Jack LaRue) are pretending to be Americans, with the worst assortment of accents imaginable.  The violence of the book has been toned down, but the film still received really horrid reviews at the time, being described as 'something out of a sewer'.  A kidnapped heiress falls for the dubious charms of the gangster and instead of her being brutally treated, we are asked to believe a story of doomed love -- padded out with excrutiatingly bad variety numbers from a so-called night club.  The book had been regarded as unfilmable, so the awfulness of this first effort is no surprise; however it was in fact re-made in Hollywood in 1971 as "The Grissom Gang" and is a rare example of a re-make being the more watchable movie.  Incidentally, British actress Linden Travers in the lead role here never made another film nor did the hopeless director.  Carry-on regular Sid James has a bit part as a Chicago bartender.  Unbelievable!

The Notorious Landlady (1962)

One of these days someone will explain to me why really crap films are available on DVD (and I'm not thinking of only recent ones) and why certain studio classics have just disappeared from public view.  So in my down time -- such as it is -- I burn my own DVD copies from my elderly beta tapes, so at least I have some sort of resource to fall back upon.  Not that I can claim that this is one of the great comedies of all time, but it is certainly a superior one, co-written by Blake Edwards, with Jack Lemmon in his third picture with Kim Novak and with Fred Astaire (in a non-musical role) in great support.  While it is set in London and feels pretty authentic, it was completely filmed in California and tells the story of recent-appointee to the US Embassy Lemmon finding digs with Novak who both her neighbours and Scotland Yard think has murdered her husband.  One of these busybodies is Estelle Winwood who just about holds the record for the longest career in motion pictures; she was 79 here and went on for another 18 years.  Both Astaire and Lemmon fall for Novak's charms -- she was never a great actress but always a highly attractive screen presence -- and are determined to prove her innocence.  This pleasant movie also makes great use of popular music to frame its action and I particularly liked the chase at the denouement where the background was 'The Gang's All Here'.  So where's the DVD?

Sky High (2005)

After my relative disappointment with the film reviewed below, I am beginning to think that it occasionally pays off to approach a movie without any expectations and to hope for a pleasant surprise. That, more or less, applies to the above flick about kids with "powers" of various strengths attending a high school for superheroes (where the principal appropriately is Wonder Woman, Linda Carter).  On arrival the intake are judged on their abilities and relegated to either the hero or sidekick stream -- kind of like the popular jocks and nerds in other U.S. school movies.  Our hero's abilities had not yet manifested themselves, despite his being the son of two of the greatest, and he is initially dumped with the other outcasts, whose skills range from being able to glow or to turn into a puddle or a very small hamster.  Apart from his parents, played by Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston (and horrified that he may not be able to follow in the family tradition), it is a no-name cast but a very appealing one.  Full of imaginative effects and ever good-natured, our hero learns the Disney lesson that everyone has worthwhile qualities -- except of course the obvious villainess who finally receives her just desserts.  Apart from Russell being somewhat obnoxious in his self-esteem and his expectations, it was by and large a wholesome and recommendable view for all the family.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

I must confess to being sorely disappointed with this film which I approached with great expectation, since not only have the reviews been excellent, but Tommy Lee Jones, who also directed it, won a best actor award at Cannes, where it also won a best screenplay award for Guillermo Arriaga.  So what was the problem?  It certainly wasn't the fine cinematography or the fact that the film alternated betwee English and Spanish or even the fairly thin story.  Jones plays a Texas rancher who befriends an illegal Mexican labourer and when the latter is accidentally killed by a careless and brutal border guard (Barry Pepper), he not only decides to take justice into his own hands (since the local police don't give a damn), but also decides to honour his friend's request that he be buried in his home town.  So he abducts Pepper and forces him to dig up his friend from his second grave (the first having been a short-term matter of expediency) and to accompany him and the rapidly decaying corpse over the Border with Pepper's fellow border guards in lacksadaisical pursuit.  They eventually discover that neither Estrada's supposed family nor home town are real, but Jones feels at last that he has honoured his friendship.

Part of the problem I had with this movie was its very slow exposition, although I was not overly alienated by the to-ing and fro-ing of the time frame.  The main problem, I felt, was Jones himself who was just a tad laid-back from being a hero with whom one could identify or completely understand.  If anything, Pepper's was the better performance, especially since one came to believe that despite his cruel streak and Jones' abrupt treatment that he truly regretted Estrada's death.  The fact that the film just stopped after the third burial with Jones riding off and Pepper left in the middle of nowhere did not achieve the necessary closure.  An interesting but, I think, somewhat flawed attempt to make a classic Western.

Where There's a Will (2006)

I very briefly considered reviewing "Revolver" (2005) which I sort of watched last night, but while this Guy Ritchie effort shows some much valued maturity in comparison to his earlier 'diamond geezer' gangster films, it was so convoluted and flashy that I quickly lost the plot.  Yet another anti-hero from Jason Statham, but despite Luc Besson's writing credentials and a weird turn from Ray Liotta as Statham's adversary, I was really past caring or even trying to make head or tail of the farrago.  So I'll tell you instead about the above Hallmark TV Movie which I was tempted to set since Sky described it as "drifter Keith Carradine goes to look after his wealthy grandmother".  Well, as is often the case, Sky got it wrong and Carradine plays the local sheriff -- but I'm not sorry to have viewed it.  The curmudgeonly grandma was played by Marion Ross (Richie Cunningham's mom from Happy Days) and the drifter was played by Frank Whaley, who was so very, very good in "Swimming with Sharks" (1994); anyone who manages to give Kevin Spacey his comeuppance gets my vote.  Of course having gone to his grandmother's Texas home for purely monetary ends, he learns the meaning of responsibility and love -- and that's what Hallmark movies are all about -- more or less.

Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005)

Not that he was ever a great personal favourite, but I can recall when Steve Martin's "crazy guy" persona was vaguely amusing and not a trying-too-hard embarrassment as it is in this movie.  This sequel came about because of the relative success of the 2003 movie which was theoretically sweet in a kind of sickening way; what it wasn't was a remake of the original 1950 film of the same title which had an acerbic Clifton Webb as the paterfamilias (and even there it was far from my favourite Webb role).  In this unnecessary follow-up, Martin wants to bring his large family to a favourite vacation home one last time before the older kids go their separate ways.  Here he resurrects a long-standing rivalry with Eugene Levy who has only eight high-achieving kids and I'm uncertain whether Levy or Martin demeans himself more in the empty pursuit for laughs.  At least I think (and pray) that we will all be spared "Cheaper by the Dozen 3".