I promised to catch up on these, and I’m determined to do so. True, the only person I’m really disappointing by not doing so is myself – don’t all shout out at once, legion of fans – because it’s not as if these are actual film reviews, more general rants about stuff inspired by the film in question. Sort of. I like to think I’m providing some sort of service in as much as I cover a wide variety of films from a wide variety of nations and cinematic traditions. Far too many actual film review sites are all about the Hollywood, and even the good ones are Anglophone plus the occasional critically-acclaimed non-English-language movie. I do not consider language a barrier – although lack of subtitles certainly is (although I could perhaps struggle through unsubtitled movies in three languages other than English…). My point being: I pride myself on watching, and documenting, movies from as many nations as I can lay my hands on – with, I admit, the hope of introducing these films to a wider audience. I like non-Anglophone movies, some more than others. I watch them and I document my watching of them.

And, after all that, somewhat disappointingly, the bulk of the movies in this post are either UK or US. Ah well.

Salome’s Last Dance, Ken Russell (1988, UK). Russell is perhaps the epitome of the creator whose output you want to like but whose individual works you often find you do not like. The idea of Ken Russell is more appealing than the works of Ken Russell, so to speak. Which is not entirely fair. He made a number of films of a very distinctive style, some of which garnered the approval of the cinematic critical establishment – with, I might add, good reason. But he also made some films, of very much the same style, which seem to have been disparaged by those selfsame critics. I am not the sort of person who discounts critics. Anyone who says, “critics are like arseholes…” is, to me, someone who is basically insecure about the quality of their output. It’s that anti-expert thing. Critics generally know what they’re talking about, and it’s at least worth checking the bona fides of any critic before slagging them off (and let’s not forget the creator’s opinion of a work is likely the least useful opinion of that work). But that’s an argument for another day, and a post all its own – celebrate our critics, because everything else is thinly-disguised marketing. But to return to the movie: Salome’s Last Dance was, for me, almost archetypal Russell, which was its chief appeal. It has the meta-fictional narrative, in which Oscar Wilde’s play Salome is performed before him; it has the 1980s UK counter-cultural aesthetic (sort of a gentrified Jarman): and it possesses an enthusiasm, both in the narrative and presented by the cast, that is completely at odds with mainstream Hollywood cinema of the time. And that, I think, is something worth admiring. To those used to Hollywood aesthetics and presentation, most of whom probably know no different, it’s too far from what they know to appreciate. I like Russell’s films, I’ve seen most of them. This struck me as one of the better ones and one of the more explicitly Russell ones.

Captain Lightfoot, Douglas Sirk (1955, USA). There are a handful of films made by Sirk during the 1950s that I count among the best Hollywood has ever made – indeed, All that Heaven Allows, a Douglas Sirk movie from 1955 is my favourite film of all time. Which does sort of present a problem – because directors, especially those who worked during the days of the studio system, were not auteurs, and their output can vary widely depending on the material and resources given to them. Sirk, for example, was at his best when subverting the material he’d been given. But when Sirk was given material not open to his brand of subversion… he struggled to find some way to tell the story other the obvious. Captain Lightfoot lies somewhere in between. It is, for a start, a very much romanticised view of its events, but that was hardly uncommon for Hollywood, or indeed for certain areas of popular culture both in the UK and US. On the other hand, it was partly filmed on location in Ireland, which was not always the case in Hollywood films set outside the US. Which is not to say that its cast convince as Irish, although star Rock Hudson makes a better fist of his Irish accent than I would have expected. (That may not be entirely fair: he was a bloody good actor, one of my favourites in fact, but I have the impression he was mostly viewed as beefcake.) Still, it doesn’t need to be said that Hollywood history is mostly romanticised bollocks, and certainly the British were completely bastards when it came to Ireland, but Hollywood’s weird fascination with Ireland and its history is not conducive to good historical drama. Hudson plays a pillar of the community who is secretly a highwayman. He has the best of both worlds, until a young woman catches his eye and he falls in love. Captain Lightfoot is a surprisingly good -looking film, given its topic and setting, but Sirk was good at working with what he had, and if Captain Lightfoot doesn’t really show his talent for subversion, it certainly demonstrates that technically he was an excellent director. Not one of his best, but worth seeing nonetheless.

Awarapan, Mohit Suri (2007, India). If there’s one thing my somewhat haphazard journey through Indian cinema – Bollywood, Kollywood and Tollywood – has taught me it’s that not all Indian films are boy-meets-girl with item numbers. Awarapan is a case in point. It’s a remake of a Korean thriller, but set in Hong Kong. Shivam is the right-hand man of gangster and hotelier Malik, and runs one of his hotels, successfully, for him. So successfully, in fact, that it earns him the enmity of Malik’s actual son. Not that the son is a fine and upstanding son – he’s a nasty piece of work, and the movie opens with him being upbraided by Shivam for allowing Malik’s dissipated nephew to kill a prostitute in his hotel. You can see where this is going. But this is a Bollywood film, and while it may only be 133 minutes long, that’s not enough plot for a Bollywood movie, and where the hell is the romance? It is, of course, in the subplot which gets most of the screentime. Malik asks Shivam to keep an eye on his beautiful young mistress because he suspects she’s having an affair. Which she is. But when Shivam learns she was sex-trafficked and is pretty much a slave, he helps the mistress and her boyfriend escape. Which brings him into conflict with Malik. And Malik’s brother. And their sons. It’s polished stuff. Emraan Hashmi does moody really well, but doesn’t have the physical presence a Westerner would expect in the role. And the villains are a bit pantomime. But Bollywood has always been good at making use of its locations, and Awarapan does an excellent job with Hong Kong. If you like thrillers, then this is a pretty good one.

Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, Otto Preminger (1970, USA). I’m not sure why but I formed a desire to see all the films Preminger had made, and while many of them are definitely worth seeing – his 1940s output is superior 1940s noir – such completism often ends up being less than useful. Especially with old school Hollywood directors, particularly European ones who had careers stretching from the 1920s and earlier. While they may have brought any number of  innovative techniques to Hollywood, they tended to make a certain type of film for much of their career, before having the freedom to make movies you have to wonder why anyone would want to make… Like this one. I argued with a friend on Facebook – somewhat inconclusively, I  must admit – over Preminger’s control over his choice of projects. This was not, I hope, a friendship-destroying argument, even if we never reached agreement – but I maintain that Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon was a film Preminger himself chose to make, as he had enough clout by the late 1960s to do so, and had done before. My friend maintains he was a director for hire. The final result certainly argues for the latter. Because this is not an interesting movie. Liza Minnelli plays a somewhat dimwitted but happy-go-lucky young woman whose face was badly-scarred by an acid attack by her boyfriend. She leaves the institution where she has been recuperating, and sets up house with a gay man in a wheelchair and a man with severe epilepsy. And, er, that’s pretty much it. I didn’t get this film, I didn’t get why Preminger chose to make it. It’s based on a novel, which is hardly surprising, and you have to wonder if Minnelli was a such a fan of the novel she persuaded Preminger to film it. She was on a career high after her previous film, The Sterile Cuckoo, but if that was the case, it backfired as Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon was a flop. Fortunately, Minnelli’s next film was Cabaret. Preminger went on to make three more films, none of which was especially successful.

Body Puzzle, Lamberto Bava (1992, Italy). Giallo does not have an especially good reputation in the Anglophone world, possibly because some of its titles were characterised as “video nasties” in the UK. I don’t know that Body Puzzle was one of those, but it wouldn’t surprised if it was. It’s only mentioned in passing on Bava’s Wikipedia page, for a start. And it is a pretty gruesome movie. A serial killer goes on a spree, and sends a body part from each victim to a young woman. There doesn’t seem to be any link between the victims and the woman. The detective in charge of the investigation finds himself drawn to the woman  – which is pretty much a cliché in police procedurals – but eventually discovers the story behind the murders. It’s… original, but a bit silly. What most people will likely remember from this movie, however, are the gruesome murders. If Body Puzzle had been a twenty-first century film, with CGI and everything, I’d have found it unwatchable. I’m far too squeamish for torture porn. But because Body Puzzle is nearly thirty years old, and a giallo, its effects are far from state of the art. I mean, the murders are not pretty, but they look like they’re the products of special effects, and probably no different in level of sophistication to television shows of the time, albeit a lot gorier. Even for a giallo, Body Puzzle is, I think, more notorious than good. It has its moments, but it’s plain Bava was out to shock and that often gets in the way of the story and the central romantic relationship. Worth seeing at least once.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 941