Lupin - Season 3

Dazzling jewel heist from Place Vendome kicks off most entertaining series. Good music.

Then - Lupin - I mean Diop - dies. Very effectively cross-cut is his attempt to communicate with his mother in prison in Senegal. Then she's kidnapped, forcing Diop to pull off outrageous heists. Meanwhile his son Etan Simon and eventually his ex Ludivine Sagnier begin to suspect he isn't dead (after studying a Lupin story, naturally).

When sympathetic cop Soufiane Guerrab puts handcuffs on Smiley Sy, you know he's going to remove them immediately!

With Antoine Gouy as his loyal friend.

In satisfying ending, Lupin's mother escapes without any help from her son. Lots of good cross-cutting as we find out what happened in the past. Seven episodes with an ending that looks like there'll be more.

Sy is one of eight children of Senegalese parents, who raised him in Trappes, a suburb of Paris, in the Muslim faith. He got into films through appearing in comedy shows on the radio, then television, and when approached by young filmmakers Nakache and Toledano agreed to take part in their short film Cec Jours Heureux in 2002. They made four features together, Samba, Intouchables, Tellement Proches and Nos Jours Heureux.

3 Faces / سه رخ (2018 Jafar Penahi & scr)

The film ends on another homage to Abbas Kiarostami, with a very long still shot on a roadway (another of those 'dirt roads'), like the ending of And Life Goes On. So it's no surprise that Panahi was Kiarostami's assistant. In his career as a filmmaker his films have often been banned in Iran and he has been arrested and imprisoned - a video diary film he made was smuggled out of prison and shown in international film festivals, where his films often won awards - that must have pleased the authorities no end. He also made a film called Offside about some girls that sneak into a football game disguised as boys, that after being banned was distributed illegally on DVD all over Iran. He had studied at The College of Cinema and TV in Tehran, where he enjoyed the films of Hitch, Hawks, Godard and Bunuel. Whether they're still on the syllabus I couldn't say.

I'm beginning to get these Iranian films. It's no surprise, considering his pedigree, that the film is full of long takes, often from within a travelling and stationary car. It's edited by his son Panah Panahi, who went on to direct Hit The Road.

We start with a young woman recording a message on her phone leaving a message for an actress - she claims to have been accepted to a drama academy but her parents have refused it and that she's begged the actress for help - and shockingly, ends up hanging herself. Distraught, the actress, who really is an actress, and a film director, who really is the film director, journey to her village to find out what went on, and experience many quirky things. But even when the girl turns up, we're worried because her brother is crazy and wants to burn her house down and the villagers all hate the girl as an 'entertainer'. So it's true to the director's themes of the injustices in his country particularly to women. 

It takes place in a very rural and backward, Turkish-speaking part of the country. The bit with the bull made me laugh, as did the foreskin story. But it's quite tense right up till the ending.

The second scene, the beginning of the journey, is a continuous 10 minute single take, and we don't even see the director until the next one.

It won Best Screenplay at Cannes - though Penahi wasn't allowed to leave the country to collect it (his daughter did so on his behalf). He is the Golden Camera winner at Cannes in 1995 for The White Balloon. Other notable films include The Circle (2000), Offside (2006), This Is Not a Film (2011; a day in the life of the director himself) and Taxi (2015).

Operation Mincemeat (2021 John Madden)

Yes, a very good film. John's camera is always moving. Well, not always, but it gives the film a wonderful momentum - such as when the four of them are sat around the table in the club, making up their fake man's life, and the camera is circling them

Just the complication of the man who suddenly appears in Kelly Macdonald's apartment and the anti-Nazi Nazi thing seemed over-complicated and superfluous and could have simply been edited out?

Loved the way Fleming throughout is writing 'spy stories' and is surrounded by useful Bond material - 'M', 'Q branch', watches that are a saw etc. And is that him narrating? (Johnny Flynn.) If so, that gives the whole thing another resonance. Ben Macintryre, who co-wrote this, had written a non-fiction account of the operation and a biography of Fleming. Michelle Ashford is the other writer.

That evocative piano music about an hour in isn't the multi-talented Tom Newman but a piece called 'Fallen Soldier' by James Morgan.

Loved the way when they're constructing the dead man's history, and particularly his love life, it's like Firth and Macdonald are talking about each other (thereby falling in love).

As to Ms. Boydell, the way she cuts this is so great. She has this way of cross-cutting which is so brilliant - it's sort of like scenes are folded into one another. And going 'back forward back forward', like when the Spanish find the body and it jumps around in time like that, so that at one point we see the all important briefcase floating in the sea, and you think 'Hang on', but the next shot is it on the cart with the dead man. She's very good, but naturally didn't win any awards whatsoever.

Unlike last time I didn't think Firth and Macfadyen were on low wattage, I thought they were great, particularly Matthew.

Saltburn (2023 Emerald Fennell & scr, prod)

What could be better than seeing Emerald's new film followed by a Q&A with the film's editor Vic Boydell?

Good screening facilities at the Charlotte Street Hotel; event hosted by the BFE

The film opens boldly in 4 x3 with curiously old-fashioned Gothic titles and I am immediately thinking of a Hammer horror film (whether intentional or not we didn't find out). That opening is a beautifully timed sequence to the music ('Zadoc the Priest') but otherwise Emerald insisted that Vic's assembly work be done without sound or effects -  a major departure for our well-seasoned Vic, who's so used to working the other way. We gather that was so Emerald could have ultimate flexibility over reshaping the film, and as the edit took something like nine months, we have to come to the conclusion that she didn't really know what she was doing - but Vic got her there in the end. (Loved her saying that when the film was in shape she 'un-muted' all the music tracks she'd been working with and it all fit perfectly!)

It's a darkly comic story, with frankly a few touches that are perverse and we could do without them - well, the film could do without them - in particular when Vic said that only her and Emerald felt the emotion in the scene where Barry seems to be having sex with a grave.

But let us not jump ahead. Barry Keoghan is a new student at Oxford, finds it difficult to mix but gets the attention of charismatic Jacob Elordi - and his half-brother (or something) Archie Madekwe. Keoghan is invited to summer at Saltburn, some hideous pile, where we encounter a brilliantly funny Rosamund Pike, a playful and ferocious Richard E Grant, a psycho Alison Oliver and a stern butler, Paul Rhys (Chaplin). Then things start to get out of hand.

With a brilliant Carey Mulligan, Reece Shearsmith, Dorothy Atkinson, Shaun Dooley.

This is all beautifully shot - on film - by Linus Sandgren. (He was introduced to the project by exec producer Margot Robbie, who had worked with him on Babylon.) The location is Drayton House, Kettering, and whilst the inevitable drone shot of it was filmed, they decided quite rightly not to use it at the arrival - it's getting to be a cliche, I think - though Vic said she used '11 frames' of it at the very beginning - didn't even notice.

Keoghan has that curious quality when half of him is breaking your heart, but there's that dark half from which you think something sinister will emerge.

I'm not sure it's quite as strong as Promising Young Woman but is certainly good fun in a dark way, well acted by all. I did wonder whether it was referencing The Servant, another film about a clash of classes between two men in a large house.

Archie (2023 Jeff Pope)

Made with the participation of both Dyan Cannon and Jennifer Grant, but this was always going to be difficult to pull off because Cary Grant is such an unusual and distinctive character. Jason Isaacs made a good stab at it, and Pope's screenplay faces the actor's difficult life - but ends on his love of having a child and his final happy marriage. The use of latter-day Grant giving an in-person talk to an audience helps to link sequences together in a quite creative way (in that sense its structure is rather like Judy). One little thing - when the previous versions of Grant appear on stage taking a bow, I would have liked to see them all together a bit longer - it's too quick.

Harriet Walter is splendid as his mum, and the most painful bits are when she tells Archie how great his father was when we're all quite clear how great he wasn't. (In this respect the plot jumps rather from that to when she starts saying she's known all along what kind of man he was.) It doesn't shy away from Grant's faults - his pernickety behaviour, his way of controlling Dyan.

Laura Aikman is Cannon, With Kara Tointon, Jason Watkins, Calam Lynch, Dainton Anderson, Linda John-Pierre, Oaklee Pendergast, Ian McNeice & Niamh Cusack (Hitch and Alma).

Directed by Paul Andrew Williams (London to Brighton). Music by Lindsay Wright, DP Laurens de Geyter, production design Jacqueline Smith... according to IMDB it wasn't edited... it just came like that in 4 ITV hours. It was James Taylor. 

California was played by Spain.

جاده خاکی / Hit the Road (2021 Panah Panahi & scr)

The literal translation is (as usual) better - 'Dirt Road'. A family on the road, is the essence - they are on their way to a mysterious destination as the older son is going to leave the country to find work elsewhere. Hassan Madjooni is the sardonic broken-legged husband, Pantea Panahia as his strong-willed wife, Amin Simiah as the elder brother, and a remarkably authentic performance from Rayan Sarlak as the chattering, free-willed little boy.

Looks like it's paying homage to Addas Kiarostami in its long wide shots of cars travelling through inhospitable terrains. Often plays out in long scenes against great backdrops. In this one -

- (in which thoughtfully the subtitles are in the middle of the screen, so as not to disrupt the action) you cannot help but get lost on the changing shape of the clouds. And this one - 

- is a single take which lasts several minutes.

2001 and comic book characters get references.

Liked some of the popular music e.g. Hayedeh by Soghati. And some of the landscape is incredible:

And then, despite all this naturalistic shooting, the ending features the father and boy melting into the stars; then the very finale has the boy singing us out, to camera. So it's a surprising and warm and interesting film, which stays in the head after it's finished.

Panahi's first film - his only previous credit was as the editor of 3 Faces!

I didn't realise - Q told me - the sequence with the cyclist: he's actually cheating, using them as a way of getting ahead of the other competitors!

Blonde (2022 Andrew Dominik & scr)

From Joyce Carol Oates' novel.

Ana de Armas is fabulous as Marilyn Monroe, but the film is long and pretentious (e.g. in its arbitrary changes of three different aspect ratios and colour to B&W) and we only made it through 90 minutes of a total of 167. Romantic triangle plot is totally redundant. Beginning with young Norma Jean (Lily Fisher) and mad mum Julianne Nicholson (August Osage County) is probably the best bit.

Dominik also made Killing Them Softly. I wish I'd realised, as that was another film we started and then gave up (after 34 minutes).

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961 Val Guest & co-scr)

A horribly prophetic film in which as a result of man's stupidity the earth's weather goes berserk - cue lots of global disaster footage weaved in to a sinister and apocalyptic London (ahead of 28 Days Later). It's weirdly like watching the news.

Fast talking journalists, written by Guest and Wolf Mankowitz, monitor the situation, one, Edward Judd, through the bottom of a glass, until he meets attractive Janet Munro (Swiss Family Robinson). (Judd's career was no more spectacular.) Mixed acting all round: Leo McKern, Michael Goodliffe, Bernard Braden, Reginald Beckwith, Gene Anderson, Renée Asherson, Arthur Christiansen (thankfully only in one other film - he actually was the Express editor). And features a single (speaking) scene with Michael Caine as a copper.

The behaviour of the 'kids' at the end is unreal, footage of pro- and anti-nuke protestors well integrated. The script won the BAFTA.

Some quite good special effects, e.g. London under a four storey high fog. Shot by Harry Waxman, edited by Bill Lenny, uncredited music from Stanley Black.

A Scandal in Paris (1946 Douglas Sirk)

I guess I'm most used to seeing Akim Tamiroff with a moustache, but as here, he often wasn't - a good performance as George Sanders' sidekick.

And I did notice early on the interesting designs which are often in the background, as pictured above, perhaps a nod to Sirk's theatrical past?

This was an independent production which Sirk co-wrote (uncredited) with Ellis St Joseph. "Vidocq was one of these in-between characters: a crook turned policeman, but still a crook. The starting point was this. If you want to catch a thief, find another thief to do the job. George Sanders had a great capacity for understanding in-between values, being an in-between person himself. He had just the right mixture of arrogance and aplomb for the part. I thought he was great in all the pictures he did for me."

This horse is incredibly still. Just when I was convinced it was a fake horse, it moved (a bit).

He found that American audiences did not pick up on the film's ironies and it didn't do too well.

It has some wonderful touches like that when we meet the Carole Landis character she's in silhouette, and that's also how she ends in the picture:

Also like the way he employs all of Tamiroff's disreputable family in positions in the bank to help him steal all the money; then, when he changes heart, we find they would rather keep the jobs they've grown used to than go back to crime!

Chinese fair a good setting - makes final showdown between Tamiroff and Sanders theatrical (probably on purpose).

Apart from a slightly wet Signe Hasso, a good cast. Gene Lockhart funny as Chief of Police (see Madame Bovary), Alma Kruger, Alan Napier, Jo Ann Marlowe (Mildred Pierce), Vladimir Sokoloff, Skelton Naggs.

Photographed by Guy Roe. Interesting credit of production supervisor Eugen Schuftan (who's uncredited on camera also). Music by Schoenberg pupil Hanns Eisler. Edited by Albrecht Joseph and designed by Gordon Wiles.

My Brothers (2010 Paul Fraser)

 

Paul Fraser is well known to us as a writer of Shane Meadows films like Twenty-Four Seven, A Room for Romeo Brass and Once Upon a Time in the Midlands; as well as contributing to Dead Man's Shoes and the delightful Heartlands. So you can see why this sort of material, written by Will Collins, would appeal to him - the story of a mission by three brothers to find a replacement crappy watch for their dying father, in a clapped out Bread and Cakes van. It's not all twee and sympathy, though - there's some quite realistic falling out between them. And some totally unexpected moments.

Loved the watch suddenly falling at the end.

Fraser didn't make any more films, unfortunately, and seems to have disappeared off the map.

May I introduce the brothers? They are (in height order, descending) Tim Creed, Paul Courtney and Tj Griffin. Their mum is Kate Ashfield and dad Don Wycherly (Sing Street). With Eamonn Hunt and Sarah Greene as a wonderful pub proprietor.

The music is by Richard James, with songs from Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody and Jacknife Lee.

Time (2023 Jimmy McGovern & Helen Black)

Hooray! More Mr Sunshine Jimmy McGovern! (What kind of character is he?)

At least it's only three parts. Jodie Whittaker finds herself in prison for 'fiddling the leccy'. Meets Bella Ramsey, teenager pregnant drug addict, Tamara Lawrance, who has killed her baby. Siobhan Finneran a nun. Faye McKeever is the school bully. Who's the guard? I've looked at two Radio Times posts and a Wales Online and I still don't know. OK, it's Lisa Millett.

Stand out scene where Lawrance helps deliver Ramsey's baby.

There's some tears, and light at the end of the tunnel, though ultimately one's living in a tent, one faces possible revenge from her ex, and the other's still in prison for life. It was good, though - very well acted. Directed by Andrea Harkin.

A Hologram for the King (2016 Tom Tykwer & scr)

Plagued by flashbacks to his failed past, salesman Tom Hanks attempts to set up IT deal in Saudi Arabia. He is also bedevilled by a lump on his back, and jet lag, and the fact that the people who he is due to meet continually elude him. He gets involved with a pragmatic driver, Omar Elba, a randy co-worker, Sidse Babett Knudsen and a sympathetic doctor, Sarita Choudhury.

Personal freedoms in Saudi Arabia have I think become more suppressed since this film was made. (It was filmed safely in Morocco.) That aside, the film (based on Dave Eggers novel) is interesting, put together well by Tykwer and editor Alexander Berner (both directed-edited epic well-rated Babylon Berlin TV series), e.g. panic attack scene. (It's a German director and crew.)

Ben Whishaw's in it, apparently.

The Gauntlet (1977 Clint Eastwood)

An annoying film, written by Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack. In one way it's a great idea - a dumb, alcoholic cop is sent to Vegas to bring back a witness to Phoenix - she's a hooker with more brains than him, and she starts figuring out that they're never going to get back alive, and the police force itself is corrupt. So far so good, and in a scene where she phones her mum and tells her she's fallen for him, very sweet (the highlight of the film, in fact).

Excess comes early in scene where house is shot so much it collapses; then a car; then in the climax a bus. There's a great moment where they pinch a biker's bike and elude the police - how is it then in the next scene a helicopter know exactly where they are? The helicopter scene (one filming another pursuing a motorbike) is technically well done but the marksman is a terrible shot and the scene is pointless.

In the climax, why on earth does Clint drive the bus so slowly through the ranks of shooting police - stupid! And none of the fifty thousand cops shoot the tyres? And at the very end, the Police Commissioner shoots Clint, and none of the millions of cops surrounding them do a thing - stupid.

So, an appealing couple - Clint and Sondra Locke were a real couple them - in a lively and potentially great film let down by some real daft bits. With Pat Hingle (Clint's buddy), William Prince, Bill McKinney (dumb Vegas cop).

You have to admire the perfect timing of this shot

Good jazzy score from Jerry Fielding, with Art Pepper and Jon Faddis as soloists. Photographed by Rexford Metz, edited by Ferris Webster and Joel Cox. Stunt coordinator Wayne Van Horn isn't Buddy's son - he is Buddy. So that clears that up.

A Kiss Before Dying (1956 Gerd Oswald)

A similar story (from a novel by Ira Levin) to A Place In the Sun, as young Robert Wagner resorts to murder to get in on the money. His victim is pregnant Joanne Woodward; he has his sights set on her sister, Virginia Leith. Jeff Chandler starts to think something fishy is up (luckily). With Mary Astor, George Macready (girls' steely father), Robert Quarry, Howard Petrie.

Quite stiltedly directed in that early CinemaScope way. Effective music (Lionel Newman) and photography (Lucien Ballard) - though in two supposed evening scenes it's clearly midday - tut, tut.

ドライブ・マイ・カー / Drive My Car (2021 Ryusuke Hamaguchi & co-scr)

Written with Takamasa Oe, based on Haruki Murakami's short story of the same name and other stories from his 2014 collection 'Men Without Women'. It's a long, thoughtful, meditative, complex, immersive, fascinating and profound film, told without much humour, though when its sad protagonist Hidetoshi Nishijima offers a little smile, it's beautiful. He's a theatre director, rehearsing 'Uncle Vanya', the plot of which starts to reflect in the film itself, and he's being driven every day (in his Saab 900) by young Toko Miura, who I think never smiles - it turns out both have suffered an incredibly painful loss. 

The opening tells a story about the director's relationship with his writer wife. Then 40 minutes in, we get the credits and the 'proper' film begins - a thought-provoking technique.

Watching the rehearsals is all very interesting as characters develop and inter-relate - they from different countries, don't all speak the same language, another point of difference (and in communication a theme of the film). In fact one of the actors Park Yu-rim is a mute Korean who signs her part, something you think will not work at all, but it makes for an incredible (almost) ending. (She's great.) Her smiley husband Jin Dae-yeon works at the theatre, Masaki Okada is the young actor who was in love with the director's wife.

Many long scenes are set in the car - the sound design is great - and very noticeable when they reach the girl's home town and the sound goes completely.

It posits that you can never really know anyone else and therefore you have to examine your own heart.

Photographed in and around Hiroshima by Hidetoshi Shinomiya, lighting by Taiki Takei (I know, it's a separate credit), edited by Azusa Yamazaki, music by Eiko Ishibasi.

It was Oscar nominated for Film, Director and Screenplay; won (and the BAFTA) for Best International Film; won Prix Du Scénario at Cannes; swept the Awards at the Japanese Academy. Partly I guess because it was set in Japan, it reminded me more than once of Lost In Translation, though it's a very different film.

Looking forward to seeing the director's Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy next.

Road House (1989 Rowdy Herrington)

Produced by Die Hard / Lethal Weapon's Joel Silver - thus those sad guitar bits that pop up in the 'deep' moments.

A cheesy pleasure. Why does he pack the boot full of tyres? Because he knows his will be slashed. And "Do you always take your medical records with you wherever you go?" "It saves time." sort of thing. And why doesn't the big guy just get out of the way of the falling bear?

Swayze is fucking fit, that much I will agree to. But why make him a philosophy graduate and then not use that somehow?

Ben Gazzara  pretty much just smiles his way through; Sam Elliott, Kelly Lynch, Marshall Teague, Julie Michaels, Red West, Sunshine Parker, Jeff Healey (blind singer / guitarist).

The ending in which the beleaguered townspeople take turns in shooting Gazzara to death is particularly satisfying. 

Photographed by Dean Cundey, music Michael Kamen, editing Jon Link, Frank Urioste (both cut Die Hard).

Sideways (2004 Alexander Payne)

Our main takeaways this time were:

Paul Giamatti did not even get an Oscar (nor a BAFTA) nomination.  Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen did, but not he??? I don't understand that. He's fantastic.

Kevin Tent's editing (also not nominated by anyone). That dinner sequence between the four of them, the dissolves, the wine pouring, the meal, the faces - it's not always easy to do that sort of thing well, but this is a superb example. And later, there's a scene with Giamatti in a phone booth, and it looks like it's both in close and medium shots (maybe the closer shot is a crop?) and there's a wonderful slow fade between them.

The fact the Church character still gets married when he clearly isn't ready to do so is unbelievable. Lovely subtleties, like that Giamatti never lets on he's the one who's blabbed the secret about the marriage.

One of those back seat of car shots I love

Rolfe Kent's main theme sounds like it could be modelled on 'Chim Chim Cheree'.