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Moving pictures, #17

Seems to be mostly US films this time, including a few populist ones. I don’t know what came over me.

ant_menAnt-Man, Peyton Reed (2015, USA). Superhero films are monumentally stupid and pretty much awful. Putting comics up on screen and investing billions of dollars in state-of-the-art CGI has not made them any cleverer or less juvenile. And yet Ant-Man is one of the few which, we’re told, transcends the genre. Which, when you think about it, is a backhand way of saying, “yes, we know superhero films are dumb and low art”. Of course, it does no such thing. Its hero is a bit grey, inasmuch as he’s no boy scout in tights; but neither is he a villain. As for the plot: nasty executive takes over noble inventor’s company, exploits’magical maguffin invention for typically capitalist reasons, or at least tries to… Yawn. We’ve seen it a zillion times before. The only difference is that in SuperheroWorld, said executive gets his comeuppance; in the real world, he gets a seven-figure bonus. Paul Rudd makes a good fist of the title role, although Michael Douglas these days feels more like a caricature of an actor than an actor. But the story was the usual superhero bobbins, and figuring out whether a superhero film is a good film per se is a bit like counting angels on the head of a pin – ie, you have to believe in angels in the first place. Best just walk away.

atlantisAtlantis – The Lost Empire, Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise (2001, USA). And if superhero movies are for people who haven’t grown-up, then Hollywood animated movies are for people who have yet to grow up. (When I wrote that sentence it seemed to make perfect sense to me, but coming back to it a couple of days later, I’m having trouble figuring out what I meant. Ah well.) There’s no reason why such films have to be like that, of course – just look at Japan’s anime industry; or indeed animated films from Europe, such as René Laloux’s La Planète Sauvage, or anything by Jan Svankmajer. (We’ll ignore Heavy Metal for the time-being, if you don’t mind.) Atlantis – The Lost Empire is a kids’ film, but the design is quite effective and the story is sufficiently oddball to appeal to me. Its performance at the box office was apparently “lacklustre”, so much so that Disney cancelled a planned television series and an underwater attraction at Disneyland. It’s by no means a great film, although it has become something of a “cult favourite”. There’s a sequel, Atlantis: Milo’s Return, which was cobbled together from three episodes of the cancelled television series, and it’s pretty damn poor. Atlantis – The Lost Empire doesn’t hold a candle to either Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella, but it’s still better than about half of Disney’s feature film output.

spySpy, Paul Feig (2015, USA). Every now and again I throw a Hollywood blockbuster onto my rental list (er, okay, perhaps more than one, given the above), so I can spend at least one night with my brain turned off (shut up at the back); and while I never have especially high hopes of such films I’m prepared to be pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t for Ant-Man, but Spy was a comedy and… Oh dear. Tonally, it was all over the place. Humour one minute, over-the-top violence the next. And the improv… Seriously, whoever decided that improv was a good way to make comedy movies “better” was clearly a fucking idiot. Remember those films with sharpy witty dialogue? They were written like that. Now we have witless burblings spontaneously vomited up by comedians who think that not filtering their verbiage is the way to generate laughter. It’s not. Spy had its moment, not least the set-up, in which a field agent’s support officer takes his place in the, er, field… but they just had to over-egg the cake and make her some sort of combat expert despite the fact her career had been spent behind a desk. And the dialogue bounced from the inane to the embarrassing, without doing much to advance the plot. Spy could have been a good film, but giving the cast free rein was a big mistake – this is a movie that needed to be tightly controlled to work. In its present incarnation, it doesn’t.

beyondBeyond, Joseph Baker & Tom Large (2014, UK). This was a charity shop find, and I’m not entirely what it was I actually found. Earth has been attacked by aliens, who have pretty much defeated humanity. There’s a couple, they meet at a fancy dress party. They get together, I think they marry, they have a baby. They argue about the baby. The film jumps back and forth chronologically. And I have to admit that after a while I started to lose interest. Beyond is one of those independent films in which pretty much everything is implied and all that remains on the screen is the bickering between the two leads. In and of itself, this is not necessarily bad, but Beyond does feel more like it should be a short film, rather than a 84-minute feature film. I’ll give the movie a rewatch, because I feel it ought to be more interesting than it proved – but we’ll, er, see…

evangelion_111Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, Hideaki Anno (2007, Japan). I am not a big fan of anime, although people continue to recommend various anime films and/or OAV to me. But it’s worth doing so, because sometimes it sticks. Usually it takes a while after I’ve watched it, however. (I am, incidentally, defining “big fan” based on those anime fans I know, who have watched absolute tons of the stuff.) For example, I watched and enjoyed Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, and then later decided to pick up a copy of it for myself. And I’m sort of feeling the same for Evangelion 1.11, except… Well, this film, and its sequels, is a reworking of the OAV Neon Genesis Evangelion, and I’m wondering if I might be better off watching the OAV. Especially since, according to Wikipedia, the OAV goes into more detail on the background – Evangelion 1.11 more or less throws you right into the middle of the story, and it’s only some way into the film that some background needed to follow the story is revealed. And yet, the art is of a high quality, the story is certainly intriguing, and I actually find the refusal to explain makes me like the film more. It’s set in, er, 2015, after aliens – called Angels – have wiped out much of the Earth’s population. Secret scientific organisation NERV has invented giant cyborg mecha to fight the Angels, and this film is about the first of those to go into combat, and its pilot’s relationship with the wounded pilot of the prototype mecha. I can’t get excited about men and women in giant robot suits – I really didn’t like Pacific Rim – but there’s enough going on in the story of Evangelion 1.11: You Are (Not) Alone, for me, to offset the fact it’s about men and women in giant robot suits. Incidentally, Neon Genesis Evangelion comprised twenty-six, but there are only four feature-film reboots – this one, Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance, Evangelion 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo, and an unmade final film.

shadowsShadows*, John Cassavetes (1959, USA). Cassvetes appears four times on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and he was certainly an important figure in US independent cinema, but, in terms of cinema as a whole, was he more important than, say, Varda, Wajda, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Sturges, Resnais, Kiarostami, Haneke, or Ophüls… to name a few? I can understand why Shadows is on 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, not just because if its importance in terms of indie cinema, but also because of its subject matter. But according to Wikipedia, its genesis was a bit fraught. Originally shot with improvised dialogue, Cassavetes ended up remaking great chunks of it using a script. As documentation of a particular time and place – New York, the late 1950s – and a particular sector of society, Shadows works well; but the improvisational nature of the story tells against it, and it often seems a little too chaotic – but that’s something all of Cassavetes’s films have in common, and probably explains why I’m not a fan of his work. Yes, Shadows belongs on 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, moreso perhaps than some of Cassavetes’s other movies; and at least I can now cross it off.

stradaLa strada*, Federico Fellini (1954, Italy). Fellini is a popular director in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, with seven films – one of which is La strada. I have to date seen all but one of those films, and I liked 8½ pretty much straightaway, and grew to love Fellini Satyricon as I watched it. The rest were a bit meh. To be fair, I like Italian Neo-realism as an idea more than I’ve liked those films which are labelled as such – not that all, or indeed many, of Fellini’s movies have been classified as Italian Neo-realist. La strada has Giuletta Masina as a naïf who is sold to an abusive Anthony Quinn to perform as assistant (and clown) to his travelling strong man act. She runs away, he finds her, there’s a rivalry with trapeze artist Richard Basehart. The rivalry intensifies, partly driven by the two men’s relationships with Masina… and it all ends badly, in a sort of all-too-predictable-but-gently-ironic way, not that Fellini is a director who does irony especially well. I would rate some of Fellini’s films highly, but not this one. I’m glad I saw it, and I can cross it off the list, but that’s about it.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 750


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Moving pictures, #16

If I was an organised sort of person, I’d write these as I watch the movies, and then all I’d have to do is gather them together after, say, half a dozen films to make a post. But while my book shelves are all organised alphabetically by author, and chronologically within author, and I, er, pile my DVDs by director, and I have lists of pretty much everything, including lists of lists… I’m a bit crap at organising work. Because it’s work. Well, yes, it’s writing – reviews, fiction, blog posts, etc, but that’s still work, even if it’s not for money. At least it feels like work. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. So there.

oklahomaOklahoma!*, Fred Zinneman (1955, USA). Since I’ve been working my way through the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list I have watched films I would never have even thought of bothering to watch… and enjoyed them and found them very good. But there are also those that were no more than ticking off an item on a list. Musicals are not films I normally bother to watch, although there are a few I really like. And yes, they’re from the 1950s (except for All That Jazz, from 1979, which I also like a lot; and Les demoiselles de Rochefort, from 1966 and, er, French). But Oklahoma! – a musical from the 1950s. It is also a Western. Although, to be honest, it didn’t really need to be, it could have been set in an inner city, given that it’s the old love triangle plot. With songs. The leads were likeable enough, the songs were mostly memorable, and Rod Steiger was impressively villainous. But it all felt a bit artificial (and I don’t mean the fact it was filmed in Arizona and not Oklahoma), and contrived. As the only film adaptation of the first musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein, I understand the need to put it on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, but I wouldn’t call it an especially notable example of the Hollywood musical.

sinatraTony Rome, Gordon Douglas (1967, USA). Sinatra and Douglas made three neo-noir films in the late 1960s, in two of which Sinatra played the title character of this movie. Not that Sinatra was ever much of a character actor. And in the three films his hair always seems a step or two behind him in the script (if it was a hair-piece, it was not a good one). In this movie, Rome is asked to take home a young woman who has passed out from drink in a hotel room, in order to prevent the hotel from any accusation of impropriety. When the young woman – who’s from a wealthy family, of course – wakes, she discovers a diamond pin is missing, and hires Rome to find it. Cue the sort of convoluted plot you only ever found in noir books and films. The movie scores well on ambience – it’s hard to imagine a more late-sixties USA film – although Sinatra plays his role with all the depth of a petri dish and the plot seems to think an overly-complex story counts for depth. Good for a lazy Sunday afternoon, but that’s about it.

five_easy_piecesFive Easy Pieces*, Bob Rafelson (1970, USA). All this time and I’d thought Five Easy Pieces was some counter-culture film like Easy Rider, and I’ve no idea where I got that idea from (I hope it isn’t something as dumb as the fact they both have the word “easy” in their titles)… because, well, it isn’t. Not at all. Jack Nicholson plays a middle-class classical pianist slumming it as a wildcat oil worker after a falling out with his family. He even puts on the accent. He also has a girlfriend, a waitress, played by Karen Black. And a friend, who introduced him to wildcatting. But when said friend is arrested for a petrol station hold-up a year earlier, and Nicholson learns his father has suffered a stroke, he heads home, taking Black with him. The title refers to five pieces of music played by classical pianists, and which are heard during the film. Nicholson chews the scenery, as per usual, and the only real notable thing about the movie is the swap from working class to affluent middle class, and the all-too-obvious deduction that Nicholson’s character is play-acting in his working class life, which is hardly something to be celebrated. I’ve yet to actually work out the numbers but I’d guess that at least two or three out of every five films from the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list have, to me, felt like they didn’t belong – and this is another of them. Meh.

sinatraThe Detective, Gordon Douglas (1968, USA). Unlike the other two films in this box set, this film is not a Tony Rome movie. But Sinatra does play, well, a detective. But not a private one, a police force one. In New York, not Miami. A man is found murdered in his apartment and his body mutilated. Various leads point to New York’s underground gay scene. Then a man commits suicide by jumping from the roof of a racetrack pavilion. And this somehow links back to the first murder, through some convoluted plot involving land sales by corrupt councillors. Sinatra’s investigation is enlivened by help from Jacqueline Bisset, wife of the suicide, who appears completely out-of-place. Compared to the two Tony Rome movies, this one is a bit grim and cheerless. The plot is just as daft as those, however, and Sinatra plays, well, Sinatra (with hair-piece); but this is more of a wet and miserable Sunday afternoon film. Apparently, a sequel was made many years later, and the makers were contractually obligated to offer the role to Sinatra. However, he was seventy years old, so he passed on it… and it went to Bruce Willis. The sequel was released under the title… Die Hard.

mocckingbirdTo Kill a Mockingbird*, Robert Mulligan (1962, USA). It’s been hard to avoid mention over the past year or so of the novel from which this film was adapted – first because of the “prequel” and the controversy surrounding its publication, and then because of the death of the author. I have actually somehow not managed to read the book for fifty years, or indeed see the movie. And I have now rectified the latter. And… really? Precocious kids, homespun philosophy, simple living a product of poverty not choice, and paternalism as a response to racism? Not to mention a muddled plot that can’t decide if its focus lies with the court case or with Boo Radley. True, this is a movie, not the novel, and perhaps the latter doesn’t seem so confused given that novels typically cover more ground. I’d always been under the impression To Kill a Mockingbird was about race relations in the US south, and that the court case formed the centre-piece of the story. But it isn’t. And it doesn’t. It’s just part of Scout’s childhood, and like many of the incidents, seems structured to teach her a life lesson. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this film, but it was certainly something a lot more critical and insightful than this. Disappointing.

love+one+another+coverThe Bride of Glomdal, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1926, Norway). Dreyer started his movie career as a writer of intertitles for Nordisk Films. Six years later, he directed his first film, Præsidenten, a convoluted adaptation of an 1884 Austrian novel of the same title. Glomsdalbruden (The Bride of Glomdal) was Dreyer’s eighth film, and the last he made before leaving Denmark for France, where he made The Passion of Joan of Arc. Despite the dour-sounding title, The Bride of Glomdal is a love story – poor man loves rich woman, woman’s father is against the match, etc. It was filmed in Norway, mostly outdoors, and the clarity of the picture is really quite astonishing given its age. There’s also an impressive sequence in which the hero is swept downriver and through some rapids. The plot is based on a pair of stories by Norwegian author Jacob Breda Bull – as far as I can determine, he has never been translated into English. Dreyer’s films are never less than fascinating, and if this one can’t compete with The Passion of Joan of Arc for emotional power, it still remains a superior silent movie.

1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die count: 748


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Moving pictures, #15

For the forseeable future, this blog will likely contain more posts about films than books – if only because I watch more films than I read books (it being a time thing, and a bad-organisation-of-time thing – although I remain committed to books as my favourite transport vector for culture). Anyway, I’ve got behind on these Moving pictures posts so I need to catch up a bit. So there might be a few of these in quick succession, beginning with…

ragnatokGåten Ragnarok, Mikael Brænne Sandemose (2013, Norway). On Amazon Prime, this looked like some terrible Viking-themed action movie, so I’ve know idea why I bothered watching it (particularly given its English retitling… Ragnarok – The Viking Apocalypse). Happily, it proved to be anything but. Maybe it was just the fact it was Scandinavian. Anyway, an archaeologist in Norway believes a tribe of Vikings travelled to the far north of the country and the legend of Ragnarok was a consequence of their trip. But he has no real proof. But then an assistant, sent north to Finnmark, returns with a piece of stone on which some runes have been carved… and despite having no museum backing, the archaeologist sets off to find more evidence for his pet theory, taking his two kids along with him (he’s widowed, and his late wife did much of the work toward the theory). They find a remote lake, and centred in it a small island which contains Viking artefacts… because a bunch of them went there and were slaughtered by… a monster. This was actually pretty good – perhaps not up there with Troll Hunter, but nonetheless and interesting mix of Norse mythology and modern monster movie. Worth seeing.

masqueThe Masque Of The Red Death*, Roger Corman (1964, USA). I admit it, one or two of the films produced by Corman’s New World Pictures are among my favourites. This is not one of them, It is, in fact, precisely the sort of film you’d expect Corman and American International Pictures to churn out. Based on the Edgar Allen Poe story of the same name, it’s little more than a US version of a Hammer Horror film, right down to the kitschy lead, the over-colourful production design, and the terrible over-acting. And perhaps it’s weirdly parochial of me, but I’ve always preferred it when Brits do it. Vincent Price plays your typical evil lordling, who discovers evidence of the titular plague on his land, and so offers his castle as a sanctuary to neighbouring nobility, who duly turn up, behave like everyone’s favourite cliché of decadent aristocracy, before themselves succumbing to the “red death”. It tries for the colour of The Adventures Of Robin Hood, but falls well short; I suspect that’s the only area in which it tried for anything. The louring mediaeval feudalism was done better, and earlier, by Mario Bava in 1960’s Black Sunday, and the effete nobles partying away the end days has been done better in several Hammer films. I have no idea with this film is on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, but if they had to absolutely pick one from American International Pictures’ catalogue, then why not Queen Of Blood from 1966, or, from Corman’s own New World Pictures, 1981’s Galaxy of Terror?

satyriconFellini Satyricon*, Federico Fellini (1969, Italy). I have a somewhat conflicted view of many of the great directors whose films I have watched – and there’s no denying Fellini is one of them – inasmuch as I love some of their films but can see little of note in their others. I do love Fellini’s 8½ but a lot of his others films have felt all a bit meh. And Fellini Satyricon seemed to be going the same way when I first started watching it – it felt like a weird cross between Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio and the sword-and-sandal epic Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (which are apparently also called “peplum fantasies”, as I learned from Aliette de Bodard; a phrase new to me). Anyway, so the film initially looked like Caravaggio… and then it put to sea in the most bizarre ships ever designed and I decided, for no good reason, that I actually really loved this film. And that, I suspect, is the mark of a movie that belongs on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. The more I watched it, the more I wanted my own copy of Fellini Satyricon, preferably a nice high-rez Blu-ray version with lots of features. I still have no idea why I went from not liking it to thinking it was a work of genius, but the only way to discover that is to own and rewatch it. It was self-indulgent and over-the-top, but it was also, as it progressed, increasingly beautifully shot and weirdly fascinating.

sorrowThe Sorrow and the Pity*, Marcel Ophüls (1969, France). Some films, it’s easy to see why they made the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, even if they don’t seem of sufficient quality, or historical importance, to be there. But The Sorrow and the Pity is historically important, and its presence on the list is pretty much incontestable… even if I found it somewhat dull and uninteresting. It covers the Occupation of France during WWII, first from the point of view of those who fought against the Nazis, and then from those who fought with the Nazis. So it essentially consists of series of talking heads. It was banned from TV broadcast in France, and wasn’t shown until 1981. I can understand how defeat and collaboration are seen as nationally shameful, but I’d have thought it more shameful for  politicians, and the press, to be spouting the same rhetoric as the Nazis, as they seem to be doing in the twenty-first century. And with films like this one around you’d think they’d know better. But, as they say, those who don’t know their history are doomed to repeat it – and those who do are doomed to suffer as the others repeat it.

chariotsChariots of Fire*, Hugh Hudson (1981, UK). Everyone knows the theme tune, right? By Vangelis? I mean, it doesn’t sound at all appropriate for the 1920s, which is when this film is set, but it’s pretty damn memorable. Unlike the actual movie. Which purports to tell the story of the rivalry between Bible-bashing Calivinist Eric Liddle and upper-crust Jew Harold Abrahams, both runners who competed in the 1924 Olympic Games. It takes a few liberties, apparently, in pursuit of drama, as the silver screen is wont to do – particularly in regard to Liddell’s refusal to run at the Olympics on a Sunday. In the film, he learns on his way to Paris that the race is scheduled for a Sunday, but in reality he knew months beforehand and the British Olympic Committee had made plain their unhappiness about it. Having said all that, my overriding memory of the film is of a bunch of over-entitled toffs at Oxford or Cambridge (they’re interchangeable, after all) – as if that were in any way representative of the UK at that time (but hey, our current lords and masters are working hard to return us to those days of an over-privileged elite living off the backs of a working class trapped below the poverty line in slums). A boring film, and if the makers of the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die list were determined to include some British movies, they could have picked far better than this.

babetteBabette’s Feast*, Gabriel Axel (1987, Denmark). Three pieces of fiction by Karen Blixen (AKA Isak Dinesen) have been made into films, which is not a bad record. Out Of Africa, of course, everyone knows. The Immortal Story by Orson Welles is perhaps less well-known (and Blixen’s novella is superior to Welles’s movie). But Babette’s Feast is reasonably well-known, as is the fact it’s based on something by Blixen. At least, I think it’s reasonably well-known. And while it’s not the best novella from the collection in which it appears – that would be, for me, ‘The Tempest’ – it’s a good story and worth filming. I suspect I may have in the past avoided the film under the mistaken impression it involves a feast much like that in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover. It doesn’t. Amusingly, the story is set in Norway but was filmed in Denmark, because the Norwegian village in the story didn’t look dour and miserable enough. An excellent film.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 744


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Moving pictures, #14

The whole reading books instead of watching films thing isn’t quite working out as planned – well, inasmuch as it’s not really working out at all. Having said that, of late I’ve been binge-watching The Killing season one – unfortunately, like most television series, it didn’t quite survive the experience. About two-thirds into the season, it completely lost the plot, dragging suspects back and forth in front of the viewer, and missing out so many logical steps for the investigation to take, that it no longer mattered who actually committed the original murder, it was all about Lund and keeping her centre of whatever mad theory she was spinning that episode. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy it, and would like to watch later seasons. Anyway, I did watch some films as well, and here they are…

busbyGold Diggers of 1935, Busby Berkeley (1935, USA). I think this is the final film in the Busby Berkeley Collection, although there was a second collection released which seems to be deleted, which includes Gold Diggers of 1937, Hollywood Hotel, Varsity Show and Gold Diggers in Paris. Anyway, Gold Diggers of 1935 shares only the term “gold diggers” with Gold Diggers of 1933, and the only cast member to appear in both is Dick Powell – but then he appeared in pretty much every musical film made in the 1930s, or so it seems. The plot is also more of a comedy, and takes place almost entirely in a resort hotel for the rich. A rich old woman wants her daughter to marry a rich old man, but she falls for Powell, who has been paid to escort her. There’s a charity show in which they’re all involved – the rich old woman wants it done on the cheap, but those making the show want it to be as expensive as possible so they can skim some off the top. Gold Diggers of 1935 is perhaps best-known as the film which contains the Berkeley routine ‘Lullaby of Broadway’. Not the best film in the collection, but still a lot of fun.

enter_the_dragonEnter the Dragon*, Robert Clouse (1973, Hong Kong). I have a feeling I may have seen this many years ago: bits of it seemed familiar – although it’s just as likely I’ve seen parts of its on various telly programmes or something. Anyway, I’ve seen the entire film now… because it was on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die list… and it was pretty much a cheap 1970s action movie that appears to be held in much higher regard than it actually deserves. But when an actor becomes a cult figure, as Bruce Lee has done, then by definition their movies assume an importance out of all proportion to what they deserve. I’m not entirely sure why Lee became the cult figure he did – according to Wikipedia, it’s because of his role as Kato in The Green Hornet TV show, which lasted for a single season. In Enter the Dragon, he certainly proves himself… well, muscular, and a good martial artist (cinematically, at least; I’ve no way of judging his actual martial arts skills); and, of course, there’s that weird shrieking he does when he fights. But Enter the Dragon is a relatively ordinary and cheap 1970s Hong Kong/USA action movie, and in no way deserves to be on a 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die list.

demyThe Pied Piper, Jacques Demy (1972, UK). One thing to be said for the Intégrale Jacques Demy collection is that its contents are varied. If I’d imagined Demy’s oeuvre consisted solely of films like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or Lola, I’ve certainly learnt otherwise from this box set. The Pied Piper is a case in point. It was  filmed in the UK and features a lot of familiar faces (to someone of my age, at least). The title role – it’s the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, as should be clear from the title – is played by Donovan, of ‘Mellow Yellow’ fame. The first time the Pied Piper, a travelling minstrel, performed, and it was a modern folk song, I thought, oh that works, it works really well. The contrast between modern music and period set dressing I thought an interesting approach. Admittedly, it’s probably the only thing that is interesting about the film. There’s a sense throughout the UK cast were enjoying themselves a little too much, at the film’s expense; and, true, Donovan is not much of a thespian – but in his defence, he can actually play his guitar, and there’s nothing more annoying in films than actors badly faking playing musical instruments. Overall, enjoyable, but not an especially good film.

fassbinder1Gods of the Plague, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1970, Germany). This first volume of Fassbinder’s movies has been, I admit, more of a chore to watch than the second volume. Possibly because Fassbinder seems to have spent much of his early years recycling ideas picked magpie-like from US noir and gangster films. The protagonist of Gods of the Plague is a gangster. Recently released from prison, he gets involved with two women, hooks up with the gangster who kills his brother, and eventally participates in a robbery of a supermarket. However, unlike the noir films which Fassbinder clearly loved, Gods of the Plague is far from snappy. The dialogue is much more reflective, often self-reflective, and the pace frequently slows to a crawl – those beloved pauses between question and answer, used so often to suggest an atmosphere of angst. I’m sympathetic to the idea of exploring themes and concepts using genres of milieu with which they’re not normally associated, and from what I’ve seen so far it’s something Fassbinder spent a lot of time doing – not always to good effect. Gods of the Plague is also apparently the second in a loose trilogy, preceded by Love is Colder than Death and followed by The American Soldier. All three were shot in black and white. They likely need rewatching, and the collection was a good investment, but at first blush, their appeal is not immediately obvious.

exilesThe Exiles*, Kent MacKenzie (1961, USA). I saw  this film discussed on Twitter, and a day or two later I was sent it as a rental DVD. It’s a documentary, one of several on the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die list. Most of which, it has to be said, have been a bit of a mixed bag. The problem with documentaries – and I say this as a fan of Sokurov’s films – is that they’re often judged on their subject more than they are their approach to that subject. Admittedly, when a topic is worth documenting, should be documented, it’s hard not to think kindly on the documentary. The topics of some of Sokurov’s documentaries may be somewhat esoteric, or perhaps not even immediately obvious, but the manner in which the film unfolds is fascinating and impressive. The Exiles, however, is one of those documentaries that tells an important story in an unadorned style, and so appears to be celebrated chiefly for its topic. The exiles of the title are members of American Indian Nations who live working-class lives in Los Angeles, and The Exiles is an unadorned look at their existence. The subjects show no self-consciousness before the camera – and equally no self-editing: they behave precisely as they would had no camera been present. It’s clearly not confidence, but lack of self-awareness… which only makes the topic of The Exiles even more heartbreaking and sad than its subject would suggest. This is a film that has only recently been released on DVD, and it definitely deserves to be seen.

dil_chahta_haiDil Chahta Hai, Farhan Akhtar (2001, India). Bollywood films have now become part of my rental list, but there are rather a lot of them so I have to be a bit picky… but this one seemed to have good reviews and be held in high regard… Three young men, all close friends, each have their own experience with love. The film is mostly told in flashback, which seems to be a Bollywood thing. Akash is a total prat and in a nightclub tries chatting up a woman only to be thumped by her fiancé. Later, he’s sent to Australia to run a branch of his parents’ business, and finds himself sitting next to the same woman on the plane. They get chatting become friends, and he falls in loive… eventually manages to steal her from her fiancé… at the actual wedding. Sameer’s parents have arranged a marriage for him – he’s get against the idea… until he meets his intended. But she’s in a relationship, so he has to be content with being friends only. But then she and her boyfriend split, so Sameer proposes. And Sid is an artist who falls in love with a neighbour, an older woman and an alcholic – much to the horror of his friends and family. In fact, the film opens in the hospital where the woman is dying of cirrohsis of the liver. Of course, there’s the usual Bollywood singing and dancing. But… well, it all seemed a bit yuppie. Everyone drives Lexuses. They’re all well-off. Even the part of the film set in Australia is more Darling Point than Muriel’s Wedding. It sort of spoiled it all a bit – everyone was so well-off, you pretty much expected they would come out of it all okay. The World Of Apu this was not.

fassbinder1Rio das Morte, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1971, Germany). The title refers to a region in Brazil, which contains treasure according to a map found by a pair of dimwitted young men in Munich (and they also think it’s in Peru). So they try to drum up cash for the journey to South America, and make plans to fly there and put their map to good use. Their girlfriends are less keen on the project. Rio das Morte is plainly more an an examination of idle youth in 1970s Munich, than it is of the power of dreams to distort lives – if, sadly, only because the two young men are plainly out of their depth right from the start. There is a cringe-inducing conversation with a travel agent in which the dreams of one of the two young men is shown to be complete nonsense – and yet he does not seem to notice. In fact, when the pair approach a business man for funding ,and he demands cash flow projections and the like, they see it merely as a series of hoops they must jump through before they will be gifted the cash – and they seem equally mystified when the cash fails to present itself because their plan is rubbish (a situation Fassbinder mocks by having the secretary laugh mockingly at each element of their plan). Fassbinder did not, as a rule, to my mind make mean films, but Rio das Morte does feel uncharacteristically like one. As I said earlier, the films in this first volume DVD box set have proven less immeduately likeable than those in Volume 2, but I suspect that means they will also weather repeated watchings more robustly.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 739


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Moving pictures, #13

Had a fun weekend not so long ago. The Royal Mail managed to lose my address, they somehow managed to not find the place they’d been delivering my mail to for the past ten years. The mail in this case being my rental DVDs from Amazon. On receiving the returned DVDs, Amazon marked my account so no new films would be dispatched until I’d confirmed my address. Which I did. But this managed to break things, so my account got stuck in “do not dispatch”. I contacted Amazon’s help desk, and they apologised and immediately put 3 DVDs from my list in the post. And they added a fourth to make up for the hassle. The help desk person also raised a note to Amazon’s engineering department about the fact my account was stuck. And they fixed it. Which meant their system immediately despatched the next 3 DVDs from my rental list. With the two discs a week I get from Cinema Paradiso… I ended up with nine DVDs to watch that weekend.

busbyGold Diggers of 1933, Mervyn LeRoy (1933, USA). There is, it has to be said, something of a formula to the films in this Busby Berkeley Collection. A producer wants put on a show, but for some reason can’t. Then everyone rallies round… and it happens. Here, it’s a lack of money but once that hurdle is overcome, the show goes on. The story focuses on four actresses – the “gold diggers” of the title – played by Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, Ginger Rogers (all three of whom appear in several of the other films) and Aline McMahon. Of course, it’s the Berkeley routines for which these movies are remembered – and with good reason. (Although, to be honest, I also think Ginger Rogers is great.) In this one, Rogers sings ‘We’re in the Money’, which probably everyone knows – although they probably don’t know it’s from this movie, I certainly didn’t – including a verse in pig Latin. Another routine features dwarf Billy Barty as a baby in a pram, who later gives Dick Powell a can opener so he can get through the metal lingerie (yes, actual metal) worn by dancers. Er, right. I’ll admit I bought the Busby Berkeley Collection so I could watch a couple of the films on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list that were not available on rental (or indeed in UK editions). But I’ve really enjoyed the movies and, unlike some other DVDs I’ve bought just because they’re on the list, I’ll be keeping this box set. Well worth the money (sung to the tune of ‘We’re in the Money’, of course).

christ_eboliChrist Stopped at Eboli*, Francesco Rosi (1979, Italy). This is another one of those Italian Neorealist films that was new to me and which I found myself impressed by. Admittedly, one of the reasons I started watching the films on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list was to expand the range of films I was watching. It’s not that my viewing was limited to Hollywood films – I’ve been a fan of a number of non-Anglophone directors for many years, such as Tarkovsky, Bergman, Kieślowski, Suleiman, Haneke, Antonioni… among others. But the list seemed like an excellent source of titles I’d not seen and would probably like… and it subsequently introduced me to Italian neorealism as a film movement I’d not previously been aware of or explored. All of which is probably irrelevant as Christ Stopped at Eboli is not classifed as Italian neorealism – but it is Italian and it is on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and it’s also a film I likely would never have seen otherwise. Which would have been a shame, as it’s very good. In 1935, painter and writer Carlo Levi is exiled to a village in southern Italy for his anti-fascist activities. Since he studied to be a doctor, he ends up practicing medicine for the peasants (the local doctors aren’t interested in treating the peasantry). His politicial sensibilities also result in a rocky relationship with his putative “warden”, the local mayor; and he also forms a relationship with the local priest, also an exile, whom the mayor hates. Christ Stopped at Eboli is an odd film – it was filmed in 1979 but set 44 years earler… and from the looks of it horribly little set dressing was required. The pace is languid, content to let the relationships between the characters slowly be revealed and the scenery to speak for itself. The end  result is a movie which is slow to start but slowly drags you in. So much so, in fact, that by halfway through the film I was very much impressed. Worth seeing.

calvaryCalvary, John Michael McDonagh (2014, Ireland). Several people recommended this film to me, and I’d heard good things of it, so I bunged it on the rental list and lo it dropped through onto the doormat one day… It’s set in present-day Ireland, a man gives his confession to his local priest and tells him he will kill the priest because the man giving confession was abused as a boy. The priest knows who it is, but there’s nothing he can do about it. However, the priest has a week to get his affairs in order – and so he does. Sort of. He goes to the bishop, but the bishop tells him he should go to the Garda (the bishop comes across more like a politician or middle manager than a man of God). At one point, someone sets fire to the church. Calvary is sort of a gentle black comedy, if such a thing exists, and very much based on its characters – none of which, it must be said, are especially sympathetic, with the exception of the priest, played by Brendan Gleeson, who has been threatened with murder. His assistant (verger?) is an idiot; one of the locals is a doctor and a nasty snide piece of work; another is innocent to the point of stupidity… At times, some of the characters teeter on the edge of caricature, and I suspect it’s only the presence of Gleeson anchoring the film which keeps them from doing so. A film worth seeing, but not I think a great film.

weekendWeekend*, Jean-Luc Godard (1967, France). I was convinced my Godard theory held water – colour films good, black-and-white films not good. True, it was based solely on the fact that the two Godard films I really like – Le mépris and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her – are both colour films. It wasn’t much of a theory, it has to be said – for a start, I’ve only seen nine of Godard’s films, the most recent of which is, er, Weekend, and which is also a colour film. On the one hand, I didn’t like Weekend as much the other two films, but I did like more than the black-and-white films I’ve seen. It’s a less pretentious movie than Godard’s others, but it’s also more… chaotic. A bourgeois couple drive out to the country to visit the wife’s dying father. Each has decided to murder the other, so their relationship is somewhat fraught. As they drive through the country they become involved in various violent events. An odd film, and plainly deliberately so. That sort of appeals to me – although it did, in places, do that Godard thing I’m less fond of, where characters talk at each other. And the scenes set in the wood were dubious at best. I guess, on reflection, my Godard theory still holds, although I think Weekend probably requires another watch.

excitedI’m So Excited!, Pedro Almodóvar (2013, Spain). I spotted this one in a charity shop, and I’ve always enjoyed Almodóvar’s films… albeit not as much as I once did… but I thought it worth a quid and… Oh dear. Talk about light and frothy – I’m So Excited! (original title Los amantes pasajeros translates as “the fleeting lovers or “the passenger lovers”, according to Wikipedia; and seems better suited) is set aboard a flight to Mexico, and it’s probably only the frothiness of the script that keeps the aircraft in the air. A cock-up on the ground, perpertrated by Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz in cameos, results in one of the aeroplane’s undercarriage not folding away properly, which means the aircraft will not be able to land when it reaches Mexico City. So they go into a holding pattern above the airport they departed from while things are figured out. The economy class passengers and cabin crew are put to sleep with tranquilisers, leaving only the dozen or so first class passengers, four cabin crew and the two pilots awake. All of whom, it transpires, have some sort of known or unknown relationship with each other. It’s not that I’m So Excited! isn’t a fun film – because it is. It just feels like a somewhat OTT comedy-drama sketch stretched to feature-film length. The brightly-coloured production design, and the fact much of the movies takes place in the aircraft’s first class section, only heightens this resemblance. One for fans, probably.

busbyDames, Ray Enright (1934, USA). This is the one with the Berkeley routine with giant Ruby Keeler heads which freaked me out. Not because they were Ruby Keeler, just the sight of loads of giant heads dancing about it. (Not real heads, of course; they were actually giant cut-outs.) In pretty much all other respects, Dames follows the pattern as followed in the other films in the Busby Berkeley Collection. Well, almost. In this one, an eccentric millionaire promises to leave his fortune to a relative, providing said relative can prove he leads a moral life. Unfortunately, the relative’s daughter is a dancer in a musical show, and the millionaire thinks muscial shows are the height of immorality. Dames is more of an outright comedy than the other films in the box set, but the Berkeley routines – in all their shark-jumping glory – are all present and correct. Not just the previously-mentioned one with the giant heads, but also one in which Joan Blondell sings to washing hanging on a line and the various garments start dancing. (Sadly, no Ginger Rogers in this one.) Again, a good box set to get. I’ve really enjoyed the movies in it.

some_came_runningSome Came Running*, Vincente Minnelli (1958, USA). There are quite a few movie adaptations of Great American Novels on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and this is the second by author James Jones (his other is From Here to Eternity). An Army veteran, Sinatra, wakes on a bus on his way to his home town, having been put on it while drunk. He doesn’t really want to go, but he’s there now. The vetervan was a published writer and is estranged from his brother, who put him in an orphanage when their parents died, even though the brother had just married. This brother tries to patch things up, but Sinatra is not interested – although he is friendly to his niece, and falls in love with a friend of his brother, an English teacher. Then there’s Shirley Maclaine, who had been as drunk as Sinatra and joined him on the bus – but sober, he’s not interested in her, although she has fallen in love with him. Meanwhile, the teacher persuades Sinatra to start writing again. And he’s also fallen in with a group of gamblers, headed by Dean Martin. Some Came Running is very much a Great American Novel film – it’s all there: the romantic triangle, the class commentary, academia, the military, writing, small town America… If there were a checklist, Some Came Running could probably manage a good 75%. Sinatra is good in the lead, Maclaine was nominated for an Oscar (but lost to Susan Hayward in I Want to Live!), and Martin plays Martin… I suppose your appreciation of this movie depends on how you feel about Great American Novels. I enjoyed it, but I’m not entirely sure why it’s on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list.

1001 Movies You Must see Before You Die count: 737


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Moving pictures, #12

You do realise I’m never going to manage to see all of the films on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. Some of them are no longer available – not just in the UK, but anywhere (I’ve had to purchase some from the US already, just to see them). Sadly, this doesn’t mean I will never die. But if I can say I’ve seen over 950 of them – with dates – then I’ll be happy. And, oh look, there’s another three from the list in this installment…

boyznthehoodBoyz N the Hood*, John Singleton (1991, USA). This was not a film on my radar but, as the asterisk indicates. it’s on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list… so I bunged it on (one of) my rental list(s), and lo it duly arrived. And, to be honest, I can remember very little about the film. I seem to recall expecting some sort of gangsta movie with a rap soundtrack, and being surprised to discover it was actually about growing up in South Central LA. At least, the first part of the film is… And then it’s about the Crips and the Bloods, and Cuba Gooding Jr trying to avoid becoming a gang member even though most of his friends are in the Crips. While I was watching it, I tweeted “A+ for social commentary, D for direction” and “oh, and D for casting Cuba Gooding Jr”. Later, I added “the Kenny G soundtrack is not helping this film”. I can see how Boyz N the Hood belongs belongs on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list for its cultural impact, but it wasn’t a film I found especially interesting or impressive. But at least I can cross it off.

clerksClerks*, Kevin Smith (1994, USA). It seems to me Kevin Smith trades on his geek credentials, but has actually proven relatively successful because he is sophomoric. I’ve seen a number of his films over the years, and never been much impressed – but I’d somehow managed to miss the film which made his career, Clerks. I’ve now seen it… and all those years, well, I don’t think I’ve missed much. Two whinging slackers work in neighbouring stores, a mini-mart and a video rental. Their conversation is either prattish or sophomoric. The attempts at humour are not actually that funny, and the continual whinging tone gets annoying very quickly. I can sort of understand how the film would appeal to a particular demographic – but I’m not in that demographic, and so Clerks simply doesn’t work for me, and I can think of no good reason why it belongs on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list.

busbyFootlight Parade*, Lloyd Bacon (1933, USA). I tweeted while watching this film that Busby Berkeley had made a career out of jumping the shark. And this film provides as much evidence as any in which he was involved. James Cagney plays a fast-talking director of musical theatre, but audiences are declining thanks to that new-fangled cinema. So Cagney comes up with the idea of “prologues”, short musical numbers performed on stage in a cinema prior to the main feature being shown. Much of Footlight Parade is a sort of like Chorus Line, as Cagney tries to stage his numbers while a rival steals his ideas. Dick Powell grins his way through the proceedings as usual, Joan Blondell plays Cagney’s secretary who’s secretly in love with him, and Ruby Keeler removes her glasses and goes from secretary to my-gosh-you’re-beautiful star dancer… But it’s Berkeley’s staging of the musical numbers which is the main draw. And with good reason. ‘By A Waterfall’ is jaw-dropping. I suspect it’s what invented synchronised swimming. One hundred chorus girls dive into a glass pool and form shapes like a giant human kaleidoscope – and all allegedly taking place on a tiny cinema stage! I had to buy a Region 1 Busby Berkeley DVD collection in order to watch this film – the set also includes 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933, Gold Diggers of 1935 and Dames – and I’m quite glad I did. I knew who Berkeley was, of course, and in the past I’ve seen some of the muscial numbers he’s famous for – although don’t ask me which films, because I’ve no idea – so I pretty much knew what to expect. But even if it’s easy to see why Cagney switched to playing gangsters, and all five films in the collection follow the same Chorus Line-like plot, they were worth the money because of the Berkeley numbers alone. Footlight Parade is one of three films in the set on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list – and yes, I can understand why they’re on it.

storyofwomenStory of Women, Claude Chabrol (1988, France). This film does not appear on the 2013 edition of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, which is the one I’m using, but does appear on the amalgamated version on listchallenges.com – so at some point it was, or will be, on the list. Given that it was released in 1988, I suspect it was on an earlier version – and, if so, it’s a shame it was dropped. Because it’s a damn sight better than many films which remained. And I say that as someone who has yet to really click with Chabrol’s oeuvre. But then, perhaps it’s the subject matter of Story of Women, which is based on a true story. During the German occupation of France in WWII, in a small town in Normandy, a middle-class mother played by Isabelle Huppert (one of the best actresses currently making movies) helps a pregnant friend abort (husband away at a German work camp, Nazi lover…). This becomes a lucrative business. She also rents out a room to a prostitute friend. Her husband, an injured war veteran, returns home, but she is no longer in love with him. Eventually, he grasses her up to the authorities. They arrest her, and decide that performing abortions is treasonous – so they sentence Huppert to death, and guillotine her. It’s an offensively male argument – that France needs to regain its moral strength after its defeat by the Nazis, and Huppert’s death will do this. Yet, for much of the film, during the period before she is arrested, Huppert’s character is resolutely pragmatic – she betters the lot of her family by providing a much-needed service, for which she charges. She has an affair with a collaborator, because she is focused on herself and her children, and her husband is inconsequential. I find Chabrol a mixed bag, but this was a strong film, undoubtedly carried by Huppert’s performance. I suspect it deserves to be back on the list – and I can think of at least a dozen movies whose place it can take…

showgirls2Showgirls 2: Penny’s from Heaven, Rena Riffel (2011, USA). Several years ago, I went through a phase of enjoying “so bad they’re good” films, despite being all too sadly aware that the films were “so bad, they’re actually really bad”. You know, stuff like the “mockbusters” released by The Global Asylum, or those shitty straght-to-video sf films you find on 4-movie sets sold in Poundland… Happily, I grew out of it. Or at least, I thought I had. Now, I like Paul Verhoeven’s movies, and I have a lot of time for him as a director, and though his Showgirls has a lot of problems and is clearly his worst film, it is sort of watchable. But the moment I discovered there was a sequel to it… I decided I had to watch it. And now I have. And I sincerely wish I hadn’t. Rena Riffel played a minor character in Showgirls and, after a couple of decades in Europe making soft porn films, she realised that what the world really needed was a sequel to Showgirls – and not just any sequel, it needed a parody sequel. Argh. “Parody”. If you see that word in the description of a film, avoid the film. Showgirls 2 spoofs scenes from Showgirls, but on a budget of $30,000 and with a cast that can’t act to save their lives. A few of the original cast do make appearances – not the main stars, of course – but the film is very much about Riffel’s lap-dancer Penny Slot, and her attempt to become the lead on a cheap TV show called ‘Star Dancer’. It’s not funny, and it’s certainly not clever. It is, however, embarrassingly, cringe-inducingly, bad. Words cannot express quite how awful this film is. One to avoid, if you value your sanity.

terminatorTerminator Genisys, Alan Taylor (2015, USA). And from the sublimely stupid to, er, this one. Which, on paper, should not be the hot mess it proved to be. On paper, the idea has merit – let’s tell the Terminator story from the point of view of Kyle Reese, the man sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor, and who becomes John Connor’s father… but let’s mix it up a bit and have the T-80 arrive earlier and so be a fixture in Sarah’s life when Kyle arrives. And let’s mix it up EVEN MOAR and make John Connor a villain – the going-back-in-time thing is all a plot to enable Skynet not disable it. And, you know, it could have worked. But they recast all the leads (because, let’s be honest, they’re getting on a bit, and CGI-ing them back to their 1984 appearance would be very weird), except Arnold Schwarzenegger, and while they wrote in a reason for his ageing, the years have not been kind to him or his minimal acting ability… And while a new cast is not in and of itself a reason for failure – recast reboots have been successful, although no example springs readily to mind – and when you add in the self-referentiality of the project… so why did it turn out be so crap? Well, itt’s completely lifeless. I don’t know if it’s because the lead characters are charisma-free zones, or if Schwarzenegger sucks in their charisma to power his own over-written role. Or maybe it’s that the plot sheds sense as it progresses. I’m not really sure. All I can say for certain is that this was a dreadful film and my expectations were not especially high to begin with. A proper review of it would be more analytical, but these posts are not intended to analytical and to be analytical of this film would require I watch it with a great deal more attention than it actually deserved. A film to be avoided, at all costs.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 734


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Moving pictures, #11

I’m pretty much up to date now, and this post only includes a single film from the list. In all other respects, a fairly typical spread, featuring directors I’ve mentioned in previous posts.

naked_kissThe Naked Kiss, Samuel Fuller (1964, USA). Fuller’s Shock Corridor, filmed around the same time, is on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and I watched it and was much impressed. This movie appeared as a trailer on the DVD I watched of that film, so I decided to buy Criterion Blu-ray editions of both. As you do. But only now have I got around to watching The Naked Kiss. And… it’s exactly what I expected. And exactly as good as I expected. Which is: pretty damn good. Constance Towers (the girlfriend in Shock Corridor) plays a prostitute who flees her pimp after he abuses her, and ends up in the small town of Grantville. The local head copper directs Towers to a brothel across the river, but she decides it’s time to go straight and – because the man from the big house, and most eligible bachelor in town, has financed a wing for disabled children at the local hospital – decides to become a nurse’s aide on that wing. She gets to meet the big man, the two fall in love and become engaged… The copper, of course, is convinced it’s all an act, although it does in fact seem genuine. But just before the marriage, Towers catches her fiancé abusing a child, brains him and accidentally kills him. The copper sees this as vindication, but when the child is found and confirms Towers’s story he has to re-assess his opinion of her. This is pretty strong stuff, but then Fuller was never one to shy away from difficult material. Towers is good in the lead – she carries the film, in fact – and even Fuller’s shock opening, in which Towers attacks her pimp – filmed as if the camera were the pimp – and he rips off her wig revealing she is bald, is both arresting and highly effective at establishing her character. Worth seeing.

alice_creedThe Disappearance of Alice Creed, J Blakeson (2009, UK). I stumbled across this on Amazon Prime, and the reviews seemed positive so I gave it a go and… It’s one of those tight little thrillers with a small cast – three in this case – which work or fail depending on the quality of the cast. Fortunately, in this case they have Gemma Arterton, Eddie Marsan and Martin Compston, all of which possess the acting chops required. Arterton is kidnapped by Marstan and Compston, and the film pretty much takes place entirely within the flat where they hold her prisoner. However, there’s more going than there initially appears – not just between kidnappers and victim, but also between the kidnappers as well. Perhaps the twists were signposted a little too heavily, but I’ve seen much worse thrillers with much bigger budgets and A-list casts – in fact, I’ve given up after ten minutes on such movies. But this one is a taut little well-made thriller and worth a watch.

demyLe bel indifférent, Jacques Demy (1957, France). And so I continue to work my way through my Demy collection, and while I certainly think it was worth buying I can’t say every film in it has been a winner. This is a short film, less than an hour long, and consists of a woman wandering around an apartment giving a monologue, while her eponymous lover is, er, indifferent. It’s based on a 1939 play by Jean Cocteau, and Demy films it with a limited colour palette and stages it as if it were indeed a play (with opening and closing curtains too). I found myself somewhat… indifferent to it.

fassbinder1The Merchant of Four Seasons, Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1971, Germany). And so I continue to work my way through my Fassbinder collection, and while this first volume of films from 1969 to 1972 has, I think, proven less satisfying than the second volume of films from 1973 to 1982, I’m still glad I have it. As for this film, it seems to be Fassbinder’s try at a kitchen-sink drama, inasmuch as it’s a domestic drama which contains everything but the kitchen-sink. The fruit peddler of the title is in a loveless marriage, and pines for his past career as a policeman. His mother doesn’t like him, his wife thinks he’s having an affair, he drinks heavily… and then he has a heart attack. After he recovers, he reconciles with his wife and then meets an old friend from his Foreign Legion days… who he first gives a job and then invites to live with him and his wife, and so finds himself replaced… Grim, German realist stuff. Perhaps not the most engaging Fassbinder I’ve seen so far, but a step up from some of the earlier experimental films.

trouble_paradiseTrouble in Paradise*, Ernst Lubitsch (1932, USA). Posh con man meets posh con woman, it’s love at first sight. Years later, they get involved with the profligate heiress of a perfume fortune… and why is this on the list exactly? The leads – Miriam Hopkins, Herbert Marshall and Kay Francis – are all perfectly watchable, the script has plenty of snappy one-liners, and there are clear character arcs. But it’s all a bit ordinary, and though it may well have done really well when it was released , I can’t honestly see what makes it a candidate for the 1001 Movies you Must See Before You Die list.

barbary_coastBarbary Coast, Howard Hawks (1935, USA). A gold digger, Miriam Hopkins, arrives in San Francisco in 1850, only to discover her fiancé has been murdered. So she takes a job as a croupier at local gangster Edward G Robinson’s casino. And the rest of the film is basically Robinson strutting around like the worst kind of cinema villain, while everyone else in San Francisco runs around scared of him. Obviously – the title is sort of a clue, although it was apparently the actual name of San Francisco’s red light district from the 1860s to the 1910s – that’s the intent… but it makes for annoying viewing. He’s so reprehensible and powerful a villain that his eventual downfall is inevitable and his depredations prior to that somewhat unbelievable. There’s a good guy, of course, Joel McCrea, who plays a  complete naïf who manages to confound Robinson and win Hopkins’s heart. But it’s not enough to offset Robinson’s pantomime villainy.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 731


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Moving pictures, #10

Here we go again, more movies watched by yours truly. Only two from the list this time around.

drugstoreDrugstore Cowboy*, Gus Van Sant (1989, USA). Even if you show how degrading junkie culture is in a movie, the very fact it is in a movie is in some way celebrating it. And there is seriously nothing to celebrate about junkie culture. Drugstore Cowboy is apparently based on a memoir, and depicts how a drug addict, and habitual robber of pharmacies, tries to go straight after one of his gang ODs. Matthew Dillon is a good-looking bloke; both Kelly Lynch and Heather Grahame are extremely attractive – a junkie might look in the mirror and see a Hollywood star, but that’s not what everyone else will see. Not only do films like Drugstore Cowboy sanitise and beautify their subject, but they also legitimise the lifestyle. I have no problem with people taking drugs, of whatever class (the drug, that is) – it’s their body and they’re free to abuse it how they like, using whatever substance they choose. But, short of legalising all non-ethical pharmaceuticals, which will likely never happen as long as governments remain broadly right-wing, the culture that illegality has created, not to mention the industry and power-structure, is not a fit subject for celebration in movies. Which sort of renders any criticism about this film as a film per se sort of moot. Nevertheless, its presence on the list didn’t seem justified.

bedknobsBedknobs And Broomsticks, Robert Stevenson (1971, USA). Disney have apparently allowed a whole bunch of their films to be streamed free via Amazon Prime, so I’ve been working my way through the ones I’d never actually seen before. I didn’t mention my watches of Pinocchio or The Love Bug as I’d seen both as a kid, and besides I wasn’t impressed enough with them to want to write about them. I thought I might have seen Bedknobs And Broomsticks before, but as soon as I started watching it I realised it was all new to me… Except, well, it wasn’t. The animated section, set on the Island of Naboombu, I’d certainly see before. I even remembered the undersea sequence and the song ‘The Beautiful Briny’. So I must have seen that at some point. The rest – Angela Lansbury as a witch, the evacuee kids, the whole Portobello Road dance routine, even Bruce Forsyth as a spiv, never mind the actual story in which they hunt for the final parts of the spell for “substitutiary locomotion” – well, that was all completely new to me. Apparently, the film had been planned as an epic to capitalise on the success of Mary Poppins – I’d watched Saving Mr Banks over Christmas, but I don’t recall ever sitting all the way through Mary Poppins, although I probably have done – but was cut down from its planned 3-hour length, and eventually released as 117 minutes long. There’s currently a 139-minute “reconstructed” version available on DVD. I watched the theatrical release version on Amazon Prime. It was all a bit Hollywood England, and very nineteen-seventies (even though it was set during WWII), but better than I’d expected – but if I had to pick ten best Disney films… I could probably manage about three or four… this wouldn’t be one of them.

demyLa naissance du jour, Jacques Demy (1980, France). And so continues my journey through Demy’s oeuvre, as represented by the intègrale Jacques Demy DVD collection I bought earlier this year. La naissance du jour is a television movie adaptation of the novel of the same name by Colette. Watching it, I found myself wanting to read the novel – which, to me, a sign of the success of an adaptation. The main character, Colette herself, is living alone in a house and the film depicts her relationship with her neighbour, Vial, a a studly young man she sort of fancies, as well as her friends in the area. It’s set in the 1920s, roughly at the time of writing, and appears to be autobiographical – indeed, Colette spends a lot of time writing something in longhand, which might well be the novel La naissance du jour. It’s one of those typically French films in which the cast sit around a table outside eating their dinner and pontificating on love – and if that’s not the entire film, it ‘s certainly a pivotal scene. I hadn’t expected to enjoy La naissance du jour, and it didn’t feel especially Demy to be honest, but I did like it – and I suspect that was more a consequence of the source material than Demy’s adaptation. Nonetheless, I’m still glad I bought the collection.

justineJustine, George Cukor (1969, USA). The Alexandria Quartet is one of my favourite novels – as the title indicates, it’s properly four novels but is most often found these days in an omnibus edition… and Durrell rewrote chunks of it for the omnibus edition anyway. Only one attempt has ever been to adapt the quartet for cinema or television – it would make an excellent television mini-series, it must be said – and that was this one, Cukor’s 1969 movie, which sort of munges together the plot of all four books into the first and uses its title. The end result is hugely unsatisfying – and not just for the casting of Michael York, who could be out-acted by a plank of well-seasoned oak – but for a series of casting decisions, and a script, that does neither the film nor the book any favours. And yet… in Anouk Aimée, they managed to find the perfect Justine. Go figure. And speaking of casting… John Vernon as Nessim Hosnani and Robert Forster as Narouz Hosnani is just plain indefensible white-for-black casting. But Dirk Bogarde, much as I love him, is totally the wrong person to play Pursewarden – he’s just not dissolute enough. George Baker, on the other hand, while he’s far too bluff for Mountolive, it sort of works in the movie. Having said all that, the major character in The Alexandria Quartet has always been the eponymous city. I have never visited Egypt – although I’ve always wanted to – but the city as revealed in the film certainly resembled the Alexandria I had imagined from Durrell’s novels. It’s a shame so little else in the movie did.

cinderellaCinderella, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske (1950, USA). Cinderella is generally reckoned to be one of Disney’s best animated feature films, and being a fan of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, I was keen to watch it. Happily, Disney have made a whole bunch of films available on Amazon Prime – a situation of which I have taken advantage of, so to speak. I’m fairly sure I’ve seen Cinderella before – familiarity with Perrault’s story is not enough to explain memories of the Disney mice… Which is not to say I ‘d remembered everything from the movie. I had, in fact, been expecting not to like it much, having almost convinced myself that Sleeping Beauty was some sort of weird Disney aberration… except, well, it has to be said… okay, the mice are really irritating… but the animation in Cinderella is really quite lovely. I’d discussed Disney animated feature films earlier that day with David Tallerman, and texted him that night while watching the movie to say how much I was enjoying it. (He, incidentally, was watching Pinocchio that night, and enjoyed it a great deal more than I had.) I have by no means seen all of Disney’s best-known animated feature films, but I have seen a number of them. And so far, to my mind, Sleeping Beauty is easily the best, by quite a long way. But Cinderella is in second place. Fantasia holds a tentative third – albeit based on last watching it a couple of decades ago. A few years ago, Pornokitsch posted a “year of Disney” series of posts by Dreampunk.me – and while I’ve no desire to embark on anything remotely similar, I ‘ve seen a number of the films covered in the posts and… I was surprised at the lack of love for both Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. And I hated Frozen. But I’d otherwise agree that Treasure Planet (a recent watch – see above re Disney films free on Amazon Prime – but not mentioned on this blog) is a lovely-looking animated film, but that’s about all it has going for it. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I may at some point – thanks to Disney and Amazon’s “generosity” – end up in a situation where I have watched more Disney feature films than I ever thought likely; and, given my love of lists, I will likely order them according to some criteria or other which makes perfect sense to myself… But at this point in time, I can recommend both Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella as excellent films. Later, I may do the same for others from Disney.

cinema_paradisoCinema Paradiso*, Giuseppe Tornatore (1988, Italy). My mother admitted to me this was one of her favourite films. so I bought her a copy for Christmas – and she lent to me and now I’ve seen it and… Yes, it’s a good film, but I doubt it will ever become one of my own favourites. This is no way different to my comments above regarding Disney films. To think a film is good is one thing, but to think a film is great requires you to love it in a way that can’t be explained as you would explain a film you think good. It’s the point where objectivity and subjectivity battle it out and subjectivity beats off all comers (while it sits on objectivity’s shoulders, of course). There are movies I love, and I can think of no rational reason why I love them. None of which is relevant. Cinema Paradiso is about the cinema in a small town in Sicily. A young boy becomes an unofficial apprentice to the projectionist, and when the latter is injured during a fire which guts the cinema, he becomes the projectionist in the newly-rebuilt cinema. The film is framed as the boy’s reminiscences, now that he is a grown man and a successful film-maker, which leads to some odd scenes set outside what is essentially a very long flashback. It’s a good film, and one that likely belongs on the list, perhaps more for revitalising Italy’s film industry than for the film itself – though I’d likely think that, given I’m more of a fan of Italian Neorealism than I am sentimental films like this. Nonetheless, worth seeing.

1001 Movies To See Before You Die count: 730


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Moving pictures, #9

Eighty percent of this post’s films are from the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, although that was more by accident than design. The Exorcist, for example, was a charity shop find; and the rest were just the ones the rental services sent me.

price_achmedThe Adventures of Prince Achmed*, Lotte Reiniger (1926, Germany). Another film on the list that would otherwise have never pinged on my radar – and not just because of its age, since I do, after all, like quite a few silent films (particularly those by Murnau, Dreyer and Lang). But The Adventures of Prince Achmed is also an animated film, done using a silhouette puppetry technique like the shadow theatre of Indonesia. It’s also apparently the oldest surviving animated film. The story is based on one from 1001 Nights, in which a prince visits a strange land on a flying horse, falls in love with the beautiful ruler, fights off an attack by demons, but she’s kidnapped by an evil magician, who traps Achmed under a boulder, but a witch rescues him, and then Achmed rescues Aladdin who is being attacked by a monster – cue 1001 Nights style flashback giving Aladdin’s back-story – and then the witch and the magician fight and the witch wins, so Achmed and Aladdin can rescue the princess, which involves fighting a hydra, but eventually Achmed wins that too, with the witch’s help, and they all live happily ever after… At 65 minutes, this does tend to drag a bit, even though there’s a lot of story to get through. The copy I watched had English narration and English intertitles, although only the intertitles were really necessary. The narration did emphasise the 1001 Nights nature of the story, however. I’m glad I’ve seen it, and can cross it off the list, but I’ll not be adding it to the wants list.

exorcistThe Exorcist*, William Friedkin (1973, USA). Back when I was at school, I worked my way through the first three of the Omen novelizations, although it was many years before I actually saw the films. The Exorcist, however, is an adaptation of a novel, which, despite reading the Omen books, despite, at that time, reading novels by James Herbert and Guy N Smith, I’ve never read. Nor did I ever see the film. But then I was never much of a horror fan, and even less so for films than books. And I’m far too squeamish to watch torture porn. But, The Exorcist… I knew the story, of course; and I’d heard about some of its more famous scenes. But it still came as a surprise when I started watching it that a) it begins at an archaeological dig in Iraq, and b) the lead character at that point is played by Max von Sydow. Also surprising is that The Exorcist is very much a 1970s film, in fact, it’s more a 1970s film than it is a horror film. If that makes sense. I’d relied on the film’s age meaning it was unlikely to trigger my squeam, if only because horror effects were so much more cinematic and less realistic back in the day; but in the event I wasn’t in the slightest bothered by even the most gruesome parts of the film – the projectile vomiting, the 360 head-turning thing – and even then they didn’t make an appearance until well near the end of the movie. I can see how the film has become iconic, although there’s not much in it that actually stands out. It is in all respects a typical 1970s movie adaptation of a novel, with a cast of vaguely familiar faces, a story that crams in far more of the book than is really needed, and solid directing and cinematography. I’m not sure it belongs on the list, however – and that’s not just because of my prejudice against horror films.

presidentThe President, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1919, Denmark). I count Dreyer’s Gertrud among my favourite films, and think extremely highly of his Day Of Wrath and The Passion of Joan of Arc (not that his other films are far behind). But Dreyer spent the first part of his career making silent films in Denmark and Sweden, few of which were especially successful, before heading to France to make The Passion of Joan of Arc. The Danske Filminstitut has released several of Dreyer’s early films on DVD and Blu-ray (his later movies are available in excellent editions from the Bfi), and Præsidenten (The President), Dreyer’s first feature film, is one of them. And having now seen it, I think I understand why it may not have hugely successful. It’s very, well, talky. There are pages and pages of intertitles. And the story, based on the novel Der Präsident by Austrian writer Karl Emil Franzos, is pretty complex for a silent film of 75 minutes. It’s also pretty grim. A Danish aristocrat returns to his home town as the president of the local judiciary, and one of his cases he’s due to see turns out to be a charge of infanticide against his daughter. He’d had an affair with his uncle’s governess, but refused to marry her because his father had advised him to never marry a commoner. He recuses himself and pleads for clemency – but the woman is sentenced to death. The aristocrat is assigned to another town, but before leaving he arranges for his daughter’s escape. Years later, he bumps into her and learns she is affianced to a plantation owner from Java. He returns to his home town to confess he organised her escape but is told that to do so would undermine the judiciary – and if he insists on confessing, then they will track down his daughter and see that her sentence is passed. All those intertitles, and the film even starts with a flashback… it makes for a confusing story.

apuThe World of Apu*, Satyajit Ray (1959, India). This is third and final film of Ray’s Apu trilogy, following on from Pather Panchali (Song of the Road) and Aparajito (The Unvanquished) – um, I should really be consistent and use the Bengali titles for all three, so this third film is Apur Sansa. Anyway, I saw the first of these back in 2009 and the second in 2014, but in the last year or so – after seeing Jalsaghar (The Music Room) – I’ve come to a new appreciation of Ray’s films and am determined to see more of them. Anyway, Apur Sansa is the third film to feature the titular character, but unlike the other two is not based on a novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. Apu is a young man, unable to enter university because of lack of money, and struggling to find a job. He fancies himself a writer and is working on a novel. He accompanies a friend back to his home village for a cousin’s wedding. But on the wedding day, the groom has a mental breakdown. Another groom is desperately sought, since the wedding date is auspicious and to not marry off the bride would blight her life forever. After some persuading, Apu reluctantly agrees to take the groom’s place. He and his new wife return to Kolkata, and soon settle into a loving relationship. But when the wife, Aparna, returns to her home village, she dies giving birth to their first child. Apu blames the child for his wife’s death, and leaves his job and his home. He travels about India, taking odd jobs, and is only reunited with his son five years later when his friend comes looking for him and persuades him the boy needs him. The final scene, as had been long recognised, is a killer. There’s a starkness to Ray’s cinematography and staging, not to mention the social realism of the poverty he unapologetically documents, that gives Ray’s films a solid foundation of emotional power. Certainly a film that belongs on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and I plan to watch more Ray.

jfkJFK*, Oliver Stone (1991, USA). I can remember when Stone could seemingly do no wrong, and even though each project he worked on seemed, frankly, a bizarre choice, he still managed to impress both audiences and critics. But his career has long since waned. JFK was possibly his high point – fourteen award nominations and five wins. There’s not much point in giving the plot of the film – is there anyone on this planet that doesn’t know about the Kennedy assassination? Or indeed the various conspiracies which have sprung up to explain it? Stone takes Jim Garrison, a Louisiana DA, who obsessed over the case, and was the only person to ever bring a case related to the assassination to court (he lost, of course), as played by Kevin Costner. Over 3 hours, Stone goes through many of the inconsistencies ignored by the Warren Commission, and presents considerable evidence that contradicts the Commission’s findings… But I’m not quite convinced by his solution. Nor by James Ellroy’s, for that matter. The government;s preferred solution, lone gunman, is obviously complete bollocks. And certainly those Cubans who lost everything when Castro took over had motive… but assassinating a president, and getting away with it, requires help from the very highest levels of US government, industry and military. Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” makes for a handy villain – and certain the loss of future profits seems a viable motive… But such people can generate conflict whenever they want, wherever they want, and the president of the US is unlikely to have much impact on that – Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Isis, notwithstanding. Any way you look at it, there were – and probably still are – a group of powerful people in the US who are so arrogant they believe they can effect a regime change simply in order to better their own situation. It’s tempting to think a group of right-wing industrialists and technocrats arranged Kennedy’s death, and while subsequent history has given them more than they could have possibly wished for, it’s hard to believe they were that forward-thinking, or prescient, back in 1963. I can believe a small group of people in the intelligence services and military, for whatever reason, set it all up – but why? Afraid of budget cuts? Frightened the Cold War might come to an end? They’re not… visceral enough motives. It takes real hate, and a perception of real benefit, to plan something like the assassination of a president. We may well find out fifty years from now that it was all to do with something completely different, some other power group JFK had attacked… Or we may never find out. Still, it hasn’t stopped endless speculations.

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 728


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Moving pictures 2016, #8

Almost up to date now – so it’ll back to the usual, somewhat irregular, schedule for these Moving picture posts after this one. A bit of a mixed bag this time – three from the US, two from France, and one from Spain (that isn’t actually Spanish); mostly from the 1980s; and mostly drama.

demyParking, Jacques Demy (1985, France). I’m really not sure what to make of this one. It’s like a cross between Cocteau’s Orphée and Xanadu, although without being anywhere near as awful as the latter. It’s actually a retelling, more or less, of Orphée – and Jean Marais, who played the title role in Cocteau’s film, plays Hades in this – but rather than a beatnik poet, Orpheus is a rockstar. Who wears a white jumpsuit and a red headband. And his music is awful – bland, insipid elevator rock, the sort of music Kenny G would sing if he’d been a singer. While rehearsing on stage, Orpheus is electrocuted. But when he gets to the afterlife, Hades can find no record indicating he was due. So he sends him back. Then a woman he met there, Hades’ personal assistant, Claude Perséphone, contacts Orpheus and offers to represent him. He refuses. But Orpheus’s girlfriend, Eurydice, commits suicide, so he tracks down Perséphone and persuades her to lead him back to the underworld in order to rescue Eurydice. The sections set in the afterlife are in black and white, with the occasional red, and the underworld itself resembles either an underground car park or the basement of some huge building. Those scenes are reasonably effective, although they’re not a patch on Orphée‘s, but the movie is completely hamstrung by Orpheus’s music and the baffling success he has apparently had with it. Not one of Demy’s better efforts.

sex_liessex, lies and videotape*, Steven Soderbergh (1989, USA). This film apparently had an enormous impact on the independent film industry in the US, and Soderbergh has always been one of the more interesting US directors… and, to be fair, time has been relatively kind to it… but it’s a type of drama I don’t find particularly interesting. A school friend of a philandering lawyer drops into town to stay for the weekend, but decides to stay on for longer and rents a house. The lawyer’s wife helps him furnish the flat, and thwe two swap personal histories. The friend admits he cannot perform sexually with another person, and has taken to interviewing women on video about their sexual histories. Meanwhile, the lawyer is having an affair with a sister-in-law, and she becomes interested in the friend with the videotapes… and it only really ends badly for the lawyer, who pretty much deserved it. For all its polished dialogue and cast, I found it all a bit dull. But given the film’s impact, I suspect it belongs on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and I can at least now cross it off.

koyaanisqatsiKoyaanisqatsi*, Godfrey Reggio (1982, USA). I knew of this film but had never heard it mentioned all that approvingly, and despite knowing roughly what it was – ie, footage of cities and landscape, with music but no voiceover – and being a fan of James Benning’s films – it had never occurred to me to actually watch Koyaanisqatsi. But it’s on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, so I bunged it on the rental list, and in the fullness of time it dutifully dropped through the letterbox. And I watched it. And, unsurprisingly, I loved it. Using slow-motion and time-lapse cinematography, Reggio filmed various parts of the US countryside, such as the Canyonlands National Park, as well as various cities – including footage taken on the streets of pedestrians, some of whom actually take notice of the camera. Over it all is a repetitive, but quite appropriate, electronic score by Philip Glass. It’s an easier watch than any of Benning’s films – despite the lack of voice-over, there’s a plain narrative to follow, and the visuals are, of course, quite stunning. The rental service screwed up when sending me this – although I suppose it might have been me – and a Blu-ray arrived rather than a DVD. So I got to see it in even better quality than expected. And it came with the sequel Powaqqatsi – see below.

aviators_wifeThe Aviator’s Wife, Éric Rohmer (1981, France). I do like Rohmer’s films – at least those I’ve seen – albeit some more than others. This one strikes me as… middling Rohmer. A young man is afraid his girlfriend is still seeing her ex-, an airline pilot, and witnesses the pilot leaving her flat. Later, he spots the pilot with another woman, and decides to follow the pair. In a park, he bumps into a fifteen-year-old girl, who quizzes him on his behaviour, and the decides to help him trail the couple. Which is what they do. Around Paris. And the two of them discuss what the couple they are trailing might be up to. It’s a typical dialogue-heavy and leadenly-paced Rohmer film, and despite its plot and cast, it’s unfortunately somewhat light on charm.

falstaff_dvdFalstaff – Chimes at Midnight*, Orson Welles (1966, Spain). Welles has done quite well on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, with half a dozen – that’s around half of his feature film output – on the list. Three of them I’d seen many years before, one I watched and liked so much I bought the Criterion Blu-ray… and now there’s the only Shakespeare film of his that makes the list. And I hadn’t really expected to like it as much as I did. Possibly because I hadn’t been that impressed by The Immortal Story, seen only a few weeks before. And, it has to be said, Shakespeare is hard to do well… and Welles not only plays the title role but created his story, and dialogue, from Falstaff’s appearances in various of Shakespeare’s plays. And yet… it works really well. It doesn’t much feel like a Shakespeare play, despite the Shakespearean dialogue – and the scenes depicting the Battle of Shrewsbury are surprisingly brutal and effective. Welles’s make-up, to be fair, does appear a little over-done, much as it did in The Immortal Story, but it’s only noticeable in some of the scenes. I am not really a fan of Shakespeare’s plays, and watching the BBC adaptations was more prompted more by a desire to see what they were like, and I’ve never really found myself all that enamoured of the various film adaptations I’ve seen – such as those by Baz Luhrmann, Kenneth Branagh, etc – but I’ve seen two since I’ve been working my way through the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list, and was somewhat surprised to discover they’re both very good – this one and Laurence Oliver’s Henry V. Go figure.

koyaanisqatsiPowaqqatsi, Godfrey Reggio (1988, USA). This is the second of three films – the third, Naqoyqatsi, didn’t appear until 2002 – and where the first film’s title translates as “life out of balance”, Powaqqatsi means “life in transition”. It focuses on the developing world, not the US, but follows the same pattern. This time, however, the Philip Glass score is much more intrusive, and seems to work to work against the visuals rather than with them. It don’t think it’s as successful a film as the first, although the cinematography is just as good. But now, I want the entire trilogy – apparently there’s a Criterion Collection Blu-ray trilogy, so that’s gone on the wants list (for some reason the Region B release, by Arrow Academy, only contains the first two films).

1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die count: 724