I’ve continued to binge-watch Unforgettable, but I’ve no idea why. The series was cancelled after its first series, and that was probably unfair, but after the network changed their mind the producers retooled the series for the second season… which saw the two leads move to New York’s “Major Crimes Section” and investigate crimes which jumped the shark ever higher each episode. They’re no longer solving murders, they’re now chasing special forces-trained international assassins – and beating them in a fist-fight! – or ripping off the plot of Die Hard and assorted other movies. Not to mention all the bollocks about hacking and computers. And the complete disregard for actual police procedure. Each episode turned into an exercise in spotting what the makers had got completely wrong. Unforgettable clearly didn’t spend money on its scripts, or even its wardrobe, as lead Poppy Montgomery seemed to wear the same pair of Louboutins in every episode requiring her to get dressed up…

I then moved onto Vikings, which has proven slightly better, despite a tendency toward pantomime villains in its early episodes. And Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, a reboot of the series from 2010, which was bigger on self-referential humour than it was on rigour. A running joke is the villains’ avoidance of the phrase “meddling kids”. But some of the jokes are cool, and it’s neat how it deconstructs itself each episode.

Incidentally, I renamed my film posts “Movie roundup” this year because I planned to write only a few sentences about each film I watched. But I seem to have ended up writing similar-length reviews to previous years’ “Moving Pictures” posts. Oh well…

Dangerous Ishhq, Vikram Bhatt (2012, India). You know all Bollywood plots are just variations on “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back”, right? Some of the variations are frankly bonkers, but some are actually quite clever, like this one, although they may not seem like it at first. For a start, in Dangerous Ishhq it’s gender-flipped. And it’s a timeslip romance. Sort of. Sanjana is all set to start a modelling career in Paris, but decides instead to stay and marry her boyfriend, Rohan. But he’s kidnapped by masked thugs, who demand an enormous ransom. Sanjana starts experiencing flashbacks… to an earlier life, during partition in 1947. And her boyfriend back then is Rohan (with another name). With the help of clues from her flashback, and the police inspector in charge of the case, she tries to rescue her boyfriend and uncover the identity of the kidnapper. After the 1947 flashback, she experiences one set in the 1700s, in which a similar story plays out – she and her lover are separated by a third man, who kills them both. And finally, a third flashback all the way back in the fourteenth century which explains what’s going on. I really enjoyed this. The production values were good, the historical sections were interesting, and while it all felt a bit plotting by coupons, it hung together entertainingly. Critics, however, apparently hated it. Ah well.

Salt and Fire, Werner Herzog (2016, Germany). A Herzog film is a Herzog film, and if you don’t go into one having a good idea of what to expect – no matter what the story or subject matter – then why are you watching it? In Salt and Fire, three UN scientists investigating an ecological disaster in South America are kidnapped – and it turns out the kidnapper is the CEO of the consortium responsible for the disaster. He maroons the chief scientist with two near-blind Andean boys on a rock outcrop in the middle of Salar de Uyuni, a toxic salt flat. Herzog has the actors play their roles flat, and their dialogue is stilted at best – Herzog reportedly wrote the screenplay in five days; it shows – but the cinematography is as good as you would expect. The characters have a tendency to lecture each other, and some of the plot reverses are delivered as expositional dialogue, which is a bit cringe-worthy. But there’s a strangeness to the story that is typical Herzog, and its swerve off-piste in the final act results in a beautiful piece of cinema. Critics were not impressed. It’s too clumsy in its first act to be a good Herzog film, but it gets a lot better as it progresses, and finishes up in an interesting place. Worth seeing.

The Railway Children, Lionel Jeffries (1970, UK). This is a piece of my childhood. It’s a film I remember seeing as a kid, possibly more than once, although I’ve no idea where or when – Dubai Country Club, possibly? the mid-1970s? – and some parts of which I’ve not forgotten in all the years since. But much of it, apparently, I had forgotten. It’s based on a 1906 novel by E Nesbitt, in which the three children of a man arrested for treason – that was something I had bizarrely forgotten – move to film-land’s version of Yorkshire, in which Bernard Cribbins, a Lancashire man famous for playing Londoners, proves a friendly local contact. The three kids spend a lot of time watching the local railway, and it’s all very innocent – until they manage to prevent a train from derailing and are lauded as heroes. A bit different from the time I sat in a train from Manchester Airport that was delayed for 60 minutes because of kids playing on the tracks… It’s all very “chocolate box” and most Tories probably think England should be like that again, and even for Edwardian fiction this is closer to Narnia than England. The film is a piece of my childhood, and it’s a good film, but it’s an historical document and no longer relevant.

And God Created Woman, Roger Vadim (1988, USA). This is not a remake of Vadim’s 1956 French film of the same title – the only thing the two movies share is the title. The first famously launched Brigitte Bardot’s career; this 1980s movie is, well, embarrassingly 1980s. And pretty bad. Rebecca De Mornay plays a convict who escapes, is offered a lift in a passing limo, which it turns out is carrying a gubernatorial (I love that word; we don’t have it British English because we don’t have governors) candidate, who persuades Mornay to break back into prison, and he’ll speak up for her at her parole hearing. And that’s what happens: de Mornay is released, marries a local builder, has an affair with the governor, is promoted as a success in the new governor’s rehabilitation programme, screws it up, has an arrest warrant sworn out on her, but gate-crashes the governor’s ball, or something, and sings a very 1980s song and everybody lives happily ever after. I did not have a high opinion of Vadim’s films – Barbarella is a guilty pleasure – and this one did nothing to dispel that opinion. Avoid.

Eddie the Eagle, Dexter Fletcher (2016, UK). Eddie the Eagle is possibly a more accurate representation of the English character than any person, real or fictional, the gammons admire. Michael ‘Eddie’ Edwards was determined from an early age to be an Olympiad despite being unqualified to be one. The film implies he was dropped from the Winter Olympic skiing team because he was the wrong class – which is entirely plausible – but his attempts at ski jumping are… Well, he was shit at it. Happily, that was not a barrier to his Olympian dreams. He found a sympathetic trainer – this part of the film was, I believe, completely fictional – and eventually made the jumps he needed to qualify – this part was entirely factual, as was the UK’s Olympic committee’s attempts to prevent him from competing. On the one hand, I rue the rule introduced after Eddie the Eagle which prevents his like from ever competing again – the Olympics are, after all, allegedly “amateur”, but the IOC is actually even more corrupt than FIFA, which is an achievement – but on the other hand, I can understand the need to set a minimum standard for competitors. On balance, my sympathies are with Edwards. The IOC is notoriously corrupt, so I won’t take their word for anything.

Kanarie, Christiaan Olwagen (2018, South Africa). Sometimes, hunting around on Amazon Prime for non-US movies throws up some some odd films that you might never have watched otherwise. And certainly a gay coming-of-age film set in an army choir of conscripts in early 1980s South Africa is not something I’d have normally watched. I’m not entirely sure what I got from watching this one. Everything seemed so horrible. Other than the central handful, the characters were mean – and the officers were completely intolerant and racist. The music was pleasant, if somewhat more religious than I preferred. Later, the film drifted into drag… Drag is pretty much mainstream these days – it might not appear in many Hollywood blockbusters, but it has huge media conventions and touring shows, and some of the bigger stars are international celebrities. So the whole drag-as-affirmation trope never quite convinces given its current media profile.

Conquest, Lucio Fulci (1983, Italy). There were a shedload of low-budget sword & sorcery films released in the early 1980s, but this one usually gets missed off the list. Perhaps because it was directed by Fulci, who is known primarily for gialli and responsible for several “video nasties”. As a fantasy film… it’s pretty much a failure. It’s in love with its monsters, and it shows. A naif with a magic bow travels to a fog-shrouded land and falls foul of an evil masked sorceress. He’s joined by a nomadic warrior – the actual hero of the film – and the story then follows the usual beats. The plot is a staple, and the characters are equally clichéd, but some of the production design is slightly off-the-wall and that’s a little interesting. Worth seeing – for fans of Fulci, or fans of 1980s sword & sorcery movies.

La Terra Trema, Luchino Visconti (1948, Italy). One of my favourite films is Ritwik Ghatak’s A River Called Titas (1973, India), and while Visconti’s La Terra Trema, The Earth Trembles, covers similar material I found it a less interesting film. Which is not to say it’s not good. It’s about the fishing families of a small Sicilian village, and it’s told in a semi-documentary style, with voice-over, although it does have a dramatic plot. Much like A River Called Titas (although that has no voice-over). But La Terra Trema is very much an Italian neorealist movie, and in terms of presentation echoes them in all respects. It’s entirely in Sicilian, which would certainly have meant something to an Italian audience, but seems almost incidental to an non-Italophone audience. The cinematography is really quite beautiful, but if Italian neorealism did one thing really well it was beautifully photograph the damage caused by WWII on Italian towns and cities. Which is a shame… up until the point when you realise the Italians were the enemy. As an example of Italian neorealism, La Terra Trema is probably a defining one. Visconti went on to make historical dramas – very good ones, it must be said – and other directors made films  closer to the Neorealist ideal. But La Terra Trema feels like it embodies more of the genre than similar films. Perhaps it’s too long, perhaps it’s not dramatic enough. But on reflection I feel I may have under-rated it. Nonetheless, worth seeing.