We didn't remember anything about it. See here.
Dustin Hoffman's character is incredibly annoying. And he's something of a shit.
About families, it's spot on.
And amongst many funny things is that none of the adults have the slightest problem with the daughter's semi-pornographic films she's been making.
Neither title is any good; Rule Number 1?
Matthew Perry sorts out Harlem schoolkids.
November 2016:
My fascination with Carole Lombard continues - her face when attempting to fish, her cute scar, her graceful stoicism - in duet with Cary Grant's unhappily married neighbour. Indeed, they are matched by Kay Francis as the manipulative and utterly callous wife. Charles Coburn is the misunderstanding father, Maurice Moskowitz a useful 11th hour doctor. Peggy Ann Garner is Carole's cute daughter.
Roy Webb's music typically adept, J.Roy Hunt working in greys.
Now: Richard Sherman adapted Bessie Brewer's unremarkable novel 'Memory of Love'. Should mention Helen Vinson as the horribly flirtatious 'friend', Katharine Alexander as the sister.
Lombard's New York address is 5 West 10th Avenue - the Village - how cool.
As screen shots below testify, Cary Grant is as good as Lombard. But she's so natural...
OK, Once Upon A Honeymoon is a very interesting film, and thanks to Peter Bogdanovich for shining a light in this most interesting director who has been mentioned many times in these pages, for example for Make Way for Tomorrow and Love Affair.
This one is kind of weird, but I'd argue it still works. The director's deft touch is very much in evidence, for example in the splendidly funny and really quite erotic measuring scene, and in the playing of Grant with Ginger Rogers (complete with ridiculous accent), and the little touches of things all over the place. But this romantic comedy is supplanted on a story of the advancement of the Nazis - Rogers has married one for the money. He is Walter Slezak, who of course we knew from Lifeboat, and he's rather good again (poor guy getting typecast as the Nazi). So you also get savage moments, like the violent killings of good guys Albert Bassermann and Albert Dekker, or the awful moment that the couple are confused for Jews and about to face a terrible fate. It's slightly trippy.
And I think this conflict makes the film less successful in people's minds - it only has a 6.4 IMDB rating, for example, and Maltin only awards it **1/2, commenting 'strange but intriguing curio.. some boring stretches do it in'. The RKO story wrote it off as 'singularly tasteless... the stupidity and callousness of this very expensive undertaking'. But Time Out finds it rather more interesting, noting the Baron cutting up a cake representing Czechoslovakia, or the clock with the swastika as hands.
No - I think it's terrific throughout. And probably way ahead of its time.
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| One of those great little McCarey touches |
It was photographed by George Barnes. Written by Sheridan Gibney from McCarey's story. Both were RKO films.
A woman (Annette Bening) goes missing and her children are worried. We then cut back and forward in 'then' and 'now' titling to investigate. I think writers of this sort of multi part thing are now incapable of telling chronological stories.
A seven part series based on a novel by Liane Moriarty.
The family comprises volatile tennis star Sam Neill, kids Jake Lacy (successful banker), Conor Merrigan Turner (likes boats), Essie Randles (physiotherapist) and Alison Brie (flake). Georgia Flood is the annoying non-existent person who comes to stay. Jeanine Serralles is the detective. Many of these are Australian, where the show was filmed.
It's implausible, red herringy and not worth the time it takes.
Came from a short story by William Harrison, evolved into a satire where corporations run everything and we've returned to the blood and circus of the Roman amphitheatre (literally).
The stunt work is brilliant, overseen by Kip Gowans, and the stunt men quite rightly all receive main title credits. John Box designed the rink and it was built in the Olympic basketball stadium in Germany.
In the special feature, Tony Gibbs tells us how he put together such a mass of material, realising that they needed to actually know the rules of the game to make it work. He was phoned by Technicolor at one point to say he had over 900 cuts in one reel of film. But it's not just the action scenes you watch out for - for example, he's doing some interesting stuff at a cocktail party, and where the guests take to shooting trees. (His mate Brian Smedley-Aston is doing the multivision scenes, which may look flashy, but are a dumb idea.)
There's not much about the photography, though you can see Dougie Slocombe has some vehicle going around the rink with a camera on it, pre-Steadicam. Also some Olympic cameramen are shooting some of the action hand held. But Dougie, and Chic and assistant Robin Vidgeon, are also doing a lot of complicated zoom stuff outside of the rink also.
So it's an interesting film technically (Tony and Dougie were BAFTA nominated, Box won), well received in Europe but not so much in the US. The only joke is that the master computer which contains all knowledge has 'lost' the 13th Century! (However this sequence, the journey to Geneva and interview with Ralph Richardson, is virtually pointless.)
With James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn.
The privileged future looks really dull. Costumes and music are horrible. I take it they designed that 'futuristic' (very seventies) font for the film.
I don't know how this got financed - it's such a mixed bag. The plot of Oliver Platt being in the shadow of his comedian father superstar and being connected to his lost other family in Blackpool is interesting, but the way he reconnects with them is annoyingly undeveloped. The insane brothers and their ghost train and house with its tilted camera angles is a bit much. Lee Evans... there's something both amazing and annoying about him, and I'm not sure being perched on top of a pole is funny - it's skilful and acrobatic like a monkey. The plot about the eggs containing rejuvenating powder (cocaine?), the Frenchman's feet and Oliver Reed is just a load of nonsense. (Though the scene in the mortuary is funny.)
Blackpool locations used well. The acts they review are hilarious. That Evans has killed a performer on stage casts a weird and unpleasant shadow.
So yes, I can't really unscramble these eggs and conclude it's an interesting failure.
Good role for Leslie Caron as the mother. With Jerry Lewis, Freddie Davis and George Carl (brothers), Richard Griffiths, Ian McNeice, Christopher Greet good as booker, Ruta Lee.
Eduardo Serra on camera, Martin Walsh edited, John Altman music.
Chelsom (incidentally, was born in Blackpool) made the much better Hector and the Search for Happiness and the less successful Serendipity.
2017 review worth repeating:
Still in Emma Thompson mood, here she plays (with a somewhat wavering accent) the First Lady to John Travolta's Governor in Elaine May's adaptation of a novel by 'Anonymous' - Joe Klein - based on Clinton's first candidacy. Adrian Lester (good) gets sucked into the tour - it sort of reminded me of Almost Famous in that regard. It's very well, subtly written e.g. how well-oiled Lester's amateur team of aides has become, how the relationships (Billy Bob Thornton, Maura Tierney (ER), Kathy Bates) develop. Indeed, in just two shots, we learn that Lester and Tierney are in a relationship, and that Bates and Stacy Edwards (that was a hard name to track down) are too.
And it's subtle in that we are presented with who this man is right from the off - a serial adulterer and maker up of convenient tales. In fact in a way it's odd how Lester is so sucked in knowing those things. Though the Governor is charismatic...
With Rob Reiner, and a good performance from Larry Hagman, Diane Ladd, Alison Janney, Caroline Aaron. Abd Tony Shaloub.
Photographed by Michael Ballhaus - the widescreen is well used. Music from Ry Cooder. Quite long, but good.
I wonder why Lester didn't stay in Hollywood...
“It was kind of hard to swallow, because surely if you executed a role like that to any degree of believability you were a shoo-in for major auditions for other major roles… But it didn’t happen. Costa-Gavras wanted me to play the lead role in a movie. And Sidney Lumet was doing an updated version of 12 Angry Men and offered me a choice of two roles, so I went home thinking, ‘Great!’ Then both films fell through – they couldn’t get the money – and I sat at home unemployed for a year.
'Radio Times' December 2011.
Today. I had forgotten Nichols made this when watching Regarding Henry yesterday. He's of course a great actor's director and likes leaving things in long takes.
There are a couple of outstanding zoom or track-ins - one is Lester looking at a donut shop out of his hotel window and the camera goes all the way in to it. There's another great one on a balcony in which we go in close and Travolta and Thompson. Terrific work from Ballhaus and operator Peter Hutchison. It was edited by Arthur Schmidt.
It's a clever film because you are quite sucked in by the charisma of the candidate at the outset only to realise by the end that's he's a terrible shit and has built his campaign on lies - this demonstrated in the brilliant way we see him shake hands, something that's been identified at the outset. But the Lester character renounces his integrity and stays with the senator. An honest film about politics.
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| I love something about the colours and textures of this shot |
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| Another amazing shot as the camera lifts off the highway and up... |
Hugh Whitemore adapted William Trevor, an Irish writer noted for Chekhovian short stories; as a novelist he wrote the books on which Fools of Fortune (1990) and Felicia's Journey (1999) were based; this was from a novella published in 'Two Lives'.
Maggie Smith plays a reclusive, rubbish romance writer and alcoholic in Umbria who looks after the survivors of a train explosion. And, as it turns out, has had something of a sordid and unhappy past, so it's not as straightforward as you might think. She's an excellent judge of character and situation.
The survivors are Ronnie Barker - so great to see him in his last and serious role - Benno Fürmann, and Emmy Clarke, who was also in Monk. Tim Spall is the loyal Oirish housekeeper, Giancarlo Giannini the detective and Chris Cooper the repressed uncle.
It was a TV movie made for HBO. Photographed by Marco Pontecorvo and edited by Humphrey Dixon (A Room with a View).
I was thinking about Giancarlo Giannini in Swept Away, and wondering whether that film inspired Overboard. Loncraine and Maggie had worked together before on The Missionary. According to The Guardian obituary, Ronnie "had been at architectural college with Smith’s two brothers and had left them to join her at the Oxford Playhouse".
I was going to say that I had long wondered what this film was about, but it turns out I'd already seen it, on 16 June 1980 (rating 5/10). It's a really stupid title because I can't be the only one that doesn't know what 'Internecine' means - it's an immediate put-off. ('Destructive to both sides in a conflict.')
Anyhow. For reasons I wasn't really paying attention to, 'economist' James Coburn has to wipe out a secret network he's created, comprising Michael Jayston, Harry Andrews, Ian Hendry and Christiane Krüger. How he achieves this is the main bit of the film and makes it worth watching. In parallel he's having an affair with ex Lee Grant. Other than that, Coburn spends his whole time walking in and out of various locations, pouring himself a Scotch (or Brandy, on one occasion) all the time.
It was shot by Geoffrey Unsworth but the print on Legend is not of good quality.
A stupidly neglected film. At the time it caused some confusion - the critics thought Woody was attacking them and his audience - he's having a dig, certainly, at over-critical thinking and crazy fan worship - not specifically his critics and fans. In fact Woody doesn't have the best opinion even of his own films or abilities as a film maker. Though this was one of his favourites at one point.
Whilst it certainly evokes 8 1/2, there's also a very strong Preston Sturges reference right from the off - Sullivan's Travels. It even begin in the same way - what we think we're seeing is the ending of a film which the execs then discuss as being terrible. But yes - the way scenes turn into flashbacks is definitely very much like the Fellini film. (That bit on the train - is this some reference to death camp trains from WWII?)
And about a man who cannot find the right path in love. That montage of the fucked up Charlotte Rampling, direct to camera, is still one of the director's most powerful moments.
The POV camera through the fans, and the 'interesting' faces, and Gordon Willis' beautiful darkness, all memorable. And, you know, a depressed man, who has that photo from Vietnam, massively blown up his wall - what do you expect?
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| Woody's useless agent is another good touch, as is the fact that it;s his first wife, Louise Lasser! |
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| Good one for SSS |
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| Woody likes long takes |
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| Don't bother telling me how many awards Gordon Willis was not nominated for |
The ending - the film is over and the cast swap notes - is a doozy.
Jessica Harper... I fell for her in Phantom of the Paradise, on the 10th of December 1977, aged 14. How many decades ago was that? She's still working...
With Marie-Christine Barrault, Tony Roberts, Daniel Stern, Woody's dentist and accountant, Sharon Stone as 'Pretty Girl on Train'...
My review from 2013:
Scr. JJ Abrams (before he started doing silly things like Lost and Super 8, which is apparently an amalgamation of old Spielbergs).
Harrison Ford, Annette Bening, Elizabeth Wilson (the secretary, also in Nine to Five, Catch 22, The Graduate), Donald Moffat, Mikki Allen (daughter, one of those sensible children who probably decided making films was too boring and didn't do it again), Bill Nunn (therapist: Legend of 1900, Spider Man films), Bruce Altman (partner).
Well written, and shot with the lush and rich camera of Giuseppe Rotunno (not captured in screen shot).
This was as good as the first time we saw it (for the record 18 April 1992. Review: Wonderful humane story is moving without being manipulative (?), great script, superb central performance. Not a dry eye in the house.")
Not mad about Hans Zimmer's music in this (not generally).
Loved the moment when daughter knocks glass of orange juice over, so Dad does the same.
2024: I also love the way that Nichols or whoever decides that Ms Allen is third billed in the titles, as she should be - a key member of the cast, and not relegated to 'and introducing...' after everyone else.
Edited by Sam O'Steen. Nichols likes to keep actors in long takes; also has a propensity for starting a scene with his camera somewhere - looking out of a window, for example - and then gracefully tracking in.
In 1930s Cornwall, or somewhere, a young man is washed up on the beach. What the hell is a Polish violin virtuoso doing in a boat off the edge of Cornwall anyway? Do we find out? I don't think so. Anyway, the sisters (or Dames) Maggie and Judi Dench look after him. And as Judi's never experienced love she rather crazily falls for him. And in parallel, David Warner thinks he has a chance with young Dane or wherever she comes from Natasha McElhone, who interestingly does not have a thing going on with the German - I mean Pole - who is, by the way, Daniel Brühl. In fact, Brühl is half-Spanish, not that that has anything to do with anything. The final piece performed is original, 'Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra' by Nigel Hess.
With Miriam Morgolyes, Freddie Jones, Clive Russell, Toby Jones. Photographed by Peter Biziou, Oscar winner for Mississippi Burning (also Unfaithful, The Truman Show, The Road to Wellville, Life of Brian).
Why Ladies in Lavender, though? And why don't they want him to be a successful violinist? Because they want to 'keep' him? A film that asks more questions than answers them is not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case, it is.
Dame Maggie died this morning aged 89. I'm glad we'd seen two of her earlier films - The Pumpkin Eater and Young Cassidy - not too long ago but we made a mistake with Travels With My Aunt as though she's fine as always - in her mid-thirties playing seventies and twenties - the film doesn't really work. I suppose where it does come off is that it's a coming-of-age story of a stuffy middle-aged banker, played by Alec McGowan, but the story and situations are bland. We couldn't even finish it.
It looks great thanks to Douglas Slocombe and John Box, though Dougie's efforts to de-age mid-thirties Maggie using filters are quite transparent. There's no camera operator credited, unusually.
Our next choice though was fried solid gold. Maggie is Aunt Charlotte, on the one hand an overly prim and proper guardian ("I'm sorry to take the larger room, but the young man was using it") but conversely gossipy and at heart romantic.
E.M. Forster's story is a wonderfully observed critique of Edwardian manners and morals, adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.
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| The film was 'Not Rated' in the USA |
It was also Helena Bonham Carter's feature debut (and that of Rufus Sewell), and she's wonderful. Beautifully photographed by Tony Pierce-Roberts.
