As its title suggests, a terrible film. An annoyingly mousy young woman (Marie-France Arcilla), who clearly doesn't need the glasses she wears sometimes, comes to Rome to experience Life, seems to get most out of pasta and pastries. Some young men, yawn, opera etc. The bits of Rome we see are strictly for postcard buyers.
Acting and direction terrible.
Tala Gouveia is too much - she always looks like she doesn't believe the person she's talking to. It's too one-note. Jason Watkins is her partner. With Lily Sacofski, Claire Skinner (again, rather one note writing). It was Sian Phillips playing the 100 year old - she in fact is only 89. With Alan Davies (playing a sort of Prof Higgins), Cathryn Tyldesley, Holly Aird, and Caoimhe (pronounced 'kee-va' or 'kwee-va') O'Malley as the dead woman. We enjoyed sneaky story. Some of the editing (change of shot on same person talking) seemed clumsy.
Begins like Fat City - grabbed shots of urban life - makes me think how influential that film was. A teacher ('classroom assistant' she would correct me) with a messy, extended family, meets a benevolent landlord and they like each other. The problems are that he's married but separated, and she has a protective and violent son Callum who wasn't aware that his late father was a brute - leading to Ali's great line to the mother "Why do you let Callum keep those boots?"
These two are perfectly acted by Claire Rushbrook and the very wonderful Adeel Akhtar, who has one of the most expressive faces in 21st Century cinema.
I personally would have suggested that the normally reliable (Pieces of Her, Judy, National Treasure) Ole Bratt Birkeland open his aperture a tad, as it's rather gloomy; the editor is Maya Maffioli (Rocks). There's a good thing going on with his house / rap music versus her country / folk.
Rest of cast: Ellora Torchia, Shaun Thomas, Natalie Gavin, Mona Goodwin, Krupa Pattani.
It's good, of course. Clio has since made the six parter The Essex Serpent, with Claire Danes and Tom Hiddlestone.
The definitive basketball film, though you wouldn't know that from the title. It is soon evident why there are three editors working on this - for the record, Tom Costain, Kelko Deguchi and Brian Robinson. Adam Sandler is the coach, Queen Latifah his wife, Juancho Hernangomez the discovery and Ben Foster as the vile manager (Leave No Trace, Hell or High Water). With Kenny Smith, Jordan Hull, Robert Duvall.
DP Zak Mulligan.
What can I say? It's all very impressive, I'm sure. Best moment: the daughter suggests staging a live basketball challenge and it goes viral. Oh, and the champ's rest day - his beloved daughter from Spain is there in the hotel pool - he leaps straight in to greet her.
Another intimate and vividly sketched portrait of a woman in crisis, with a knockout performance by Charlotte Spencer (Sanditon, Misbehaviour, Baghdad Central, Wild Bill).
Made for the BBC and the National Film and Television School. DP Steven Cameron Ferguson in an odd 1.5:1 ratio, editor Abolfazl Talooni. It's on Vimeo.
This one's 19 minutes. Am now a serious Eva Riley fan.
You remember how the end credits of The Knack look like acid? Well, I think Dick had definitely been experimenting when he made this, two years later. It's - exhausting. And clever. And almost works. But fails. And you know those delicious bits in The Knack, where Charles Wood writes these great bits of mad, quotidian dialogue, viz "I'm on me last left leg"? Well it's almost like the whole of this film is written in that style - Lennon barely has anything intelligent to say. Though the central idea - a platoon ordered to create a cricket pitch in the desert - is great.
The references to real allied military failures - Dunkirk, Dieppe, El Alamein, Arnhem - don't quite work, and the subsequent colouring of members of the platoon doesn't work at all. It sort of gets into its much-needed serious mode towards the end - a real battle in which most of the remaining soldiers are killed - it needed more of that, more serious Wood stuff (I mean he's great at writing military satires like The Charge of the Light Brigade but I'm sure later work like Tumbledown is more serious).
A spirited cast helps - Michael Crawford, Roy Kinnear, Michael Hordern (stuff about 'the wily Pathan'), John Lennon, Jack MacGowran, Lee Montague, Jack Hedley, Karl Michael Vogler (German officer), Robert Hardy, Sheila Hancock. It was edited by John Victor Smith and photographed by David Watkin. Based on Patrick Ryan's novel.
Like the Lawrence of Arabia send-up music in desert scenes, the ending is, I feel, a Bridge on the River Kwai pastiche. There are lots of visually clever and funny moments. So a real mixed bag.
Though loved the joke between the two actors at the end. "What are you up to next?" "Oh there's a new Vietnam thing happening."
An underlooked film, written by Mark Horowitz from Brooks' idea. Who is Adam Brooks, by the way? And who is Brooke Adams? You see - that's... Are they the same person, flipped? It's my theory that they are.
Anyway, Griffin Dunne seems like he's not getting on very well with his wife, Brooke Adams. who wants to go to California and spend time with family. When she has an accident, he becomes attracted to her therapist, Karen Young, who in turn is experiencing dissatisfaction with actor Marty Watt. (None of these people exist, except Griffin Dunne of course. They are all the product of Nick's rather unsteady Sunday morning. A ripple, a wave, a shimmer.)
Yuh. And then the Watt character goes for a job at Dunne's and ends up being invited for dinner, cue awkward moments. Very awkward, as it turns out, when the therapist stays the night...
Lives are messy, or they can be. Some people have messy kitchens, other people have very clean and orderly kitchens (but messy bedrooms). The film was photographed, and edited.
The apartment's in Gramercy, the play no doubt takes place off Broadway - let's say Greenwich Village. The clothing factory is in the Garment District, if there is one. That guy from Cronenburg is in it.
Charlotte Randle, Adam Flint. Another good teenage performance.
A very distraught woman takes her son to a cliff edge to dispose of (presumably) some man's possessions. It's ten minutes.
Vivid and immersive.
Halle Kidd, Rafael Constantin, Michael Elkin, Ray James.
Excellent short film produced by the National Film and Television School. Cannes Palme D'Or Short Film nominee
A girl from a troublingly racist family has her own encounter with a young Gypsy lad. Powerful and perfectly controlled.
Riley's debut feature was Perfect 10.
Directed by Marta Cunningham. DP Andy Strahorn, editors Mark Keady, Richard Ketteridge.
There's a ridiculous episode where everyone panders to the needs of the stand-in for a sex scene - I would have just fired him (he's late to set, for one thing). I mean I know where they're going, sort of attacking the We've Got To Be So Careful mood of the times, but that was just ridiculous. So, only a partially successful attempt to puncture the #MeToo movement.
Luckily the story of an indie film maker Sarah Solemani and producer Coogan gets more interesting, particularly when it involves foul-mouthed and acidic exec producer Wanda Sykes (Monster-in-Law, Bad Moms).
6 x 30m for Channel 4.
An efficiently made thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Sam O'Neill and Billy Zane.
Charles Williams' novel* was originally to be filmed by Orson Welles as The Deep, who according to Barbara Leaming had begun work on it in the Bahamas when in 1973 the lead Laurence Harvey suddenly died and the project was abandoned. In fact (obviously Peter Bogdanovich's is the source to believe), it was filmed 1967-69 in Yugoslavia, and was never completed because of difficulties with cast and budget. It also featured Jeanne Moreau, Oja Kodar and Michael Bryant. Some of the footage can be seen here.
Anyway, back to this version, in which writer Terry Hayes has slimmed the five characters in the book down to three. It has some good tense writing, cross-cutting Kidman vs. Zane with O'Neill's terrible problems on the abandoned boat, but there are some really dumb plot moments. For example, Kidman has it in her power to kill Zane twice, but doesn't, cueing the obligatory 'I'm not really dead' ending. Also she consents to sleep with him rather quickly. At times it seems like an ad for her bum. The dog is used well though.
Well photographed on the Barrier Reef by Dean Semler (spent the whole film trying to remember what his Oscar was for - Dances with Wolves in 1991). Rather well edited by Richard Francis-Bruce, whose credits include the Witches of Eastwick, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.
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| She is indeed piloting the boat herself |
* Itself based on the fascinating and terrifying true story of Julian Harvey and Terry Jo Duperrault, told here.
Season seven, can you believe.
Twisty episodes. Sophie Okenedo in episode in which writers appear to be writing one another's stories. The Wise Old Owl - dark stuff. Kid / Nap = Daisy Haggard and Danny Mays.
Mind-bending, dark, funny. They evoke a sort of hideous laughter.
Written by John Morton, Ella Road, Keith Akushie, Cat Clarke, Bryce Hart, Abigail Wilson.
A superfluous remake of Dix Pour Cent, with rather too much of the 'Yes. No. Exactly.' type of dialogue from W1A, on which Morton was a writer (and Twenty Twelve).
With Jack Davenport, Lydia Leonard, Maggie Steed (who steals the show), Prasanna Puwanarajah, Hiftu Quasem, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Harry Tevalwyn, Natasha Little, Rebecca Humphries, Tim McInnerny. And Chelsea Crisp as the new American boss.
With guest stars Dominic West, Clémence Poesy, Jim Broadbent, Helena Bonham Carter, Kelly Macdonald, Olivia Williams, Himesh Patel, David Harewood, David and Jessica Oleyowo, that guy from the political thing again.
And so once again I find myself reaching for that indispensable volume, 'Who the Devil Made It?' by Peter Bogdanovich, for the lowdown on B movie king Ulmer's low budget independent movie, which paints Hedy Lamarr as a worse woman than Scarlett O'Hara. Well, the first thing I read was that it was an A picture. Ulmer says "Beautiful picture. It nearly got Hedy Lamarr an Academy nomination. It's the only picture where she ever had to act. A beautiful picture - very difficult, very beautiful." Lamarr was acting as executive producer - she got Ulmer involved. (Let's not forget, Ulmer was one of the team who made People on Sunday in Berlin - Billy Wilder's first film.)
Well, it may have had a bigger budget than some of Ulmer's, but let's just say it feels economical. Bangor, Maine, 1820s. A wild child with an alcoholic father grows up as a beauty, marries the elder post office owner, then brazenly begins flirting with his son. She makes him kill her father, then completely rejects him. Then George Sanders comes along...
I found it quite funny. I'm not sure myself it's a great performance from Lamarr - she comes across like some scheming bitch in Dallas or the like. It feels quite risqué for its time. It seems overly underscored, though moves on well. Lucien Andriot shot it. IMDB reports Douglas Sirk directed the opening but I don't know the source for that - it's not in 'Sirk on Sirk' as far as I can see, though he did work with producer Hunt Stromberg, so it's possible, I guess.
I don't want to start getting too scriptural, but the title comes from an early version of Proverbs V - 'the lips of the strange woman drip honey and her mouth is as smooth as oil' - more recent versions update 'strange' to 'immoral' or plain 'adulterous'. And it continues 'But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, Her steps lay hold of hell', which is kind of the end of the film. It was written by Herb Meadow (the film, not the Bible) from Ben Ames Williams' novel, and (again according to IMDB, uncredited) Hunt Stromberg and Ulmer himself.
With Louis Hayward (the son), Gene Lockhart (the father), Hillary Brooke, Rhys Williams, Alan Napier.
An interesting film which seems to explore sides of the Irish question - in particular it's framed by a couple of ? friends who represent the Irish and British points of view (Joseph Tomelty and Gilbert Harding). Then as the action moves from London to Ireland, it's about the internal divisions, the IRA versus the peace-abiding citizens. So John Mills has turned his back on violence, but isn't a snitch, neither, whilst younger brother Dirk Bogarde is still a little confused. It's a good plot, well filmed by Dearden (making the most of desolate Irish locations - or wherever it is) and photographed by Gordon Dines; written by Roger MacDougall from his own play.
With Robert Beatty (the scary Shinto), Elizabeth Sellars (The Barefoot Contessa), Molly Fagan, Eddie Byrne, Jack MacGowran.
Great scene with kids playing round suitcase with bomb in Underground. Another scene involving the bombing of a truck also uses children suspensefully. The ending could have been wildly different - and quite powerful - if the two freed men (who've just popped into the pub for a quick one) arrive too late and find Mills has been unfairly executed.
It's unfortunate that Mills and Bogarde are unable to deliver a convincing Irish accent between them. A late Ealing film.
Richardson, let us not forget, made some excellent films in the sixties such as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Tom Jones, but it's the tricks from the latter (speeded up footage, rather rough overdubs) that don't work so well here - in fact some of it is downright crudely put together.
The John Irving adaptation has memorable characters and situations and is certainly quirky, but it at times is unexpectedly moving (after Jodie's rape and she says to Lowe 'Just another Halloween, kid'). Loved the moment before that when Lowe goes to summon help, and is introduced to a most angry black man, Dorsey Wright, who refreshingly (though underwritten) becomes a part of the family.
Still don't understand why Jodie is still into the bastard Chip (Matthew Modine, who does also play the Viennese alter ego). She gives a splendid performance. With Rob Lowe, Beau Bridges, Jennie Dundas, Seth Green, Joely Richardson (good), Wallace Shawn, Wilford Brimley, Paul McCrane, Nastassia Kinski, Amanda Plummer.
Some of it - situations, characters, dialogue, plot - seem very Garpy, in other words, Irvingy.
Shot by David Watkin. Edited by Robert K Lambert. Music by Jacques Offenbach. The hotel is The Tasouusac in Quebec, and still looks exactly the same.
Jodie: "She fainted while diaphragming herself."
Written with Peter and Bobby Farrelly, and based on the former's novel, this is a refreshing seventies set comedy-romance, starring Shawn Hatosy (been in tons of things we haven't seen, except Alpha Dog) and Amy Smart (been in tons of things we haven't seen). And Alec Baldwin.
The boy gets into trouble with his stoned pals and is sent to a prep school, where he mixes with other stoners, and meets the boy-meets-girl girl.
I have to say I found the romance angle refreshing (they don't even have sex, or if they do, it's off camera), and laughed out loud at a few things, such as the stoner friend Jon Abraham who drives the wheelchair-bound brother behind his van to expedite paper round, and Jack Ferver being sick on Hatosy's arm.
Good soundtrack of seventies rock standards. The lighting's rather blue. Feels autobiographical.
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| George Wendt is far left |
Gabriel Mann is not James Spader.
Weirdly, Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) gets another mention - we just saw some of it featured in The Outsiders.
And what was the great sign? Something like, "Three Fingered Steve's Fireworks Emporium"!
Kit de Waal novel, adapted by Shola Amoo, (who also did The Last Tree) stars Cole Martin, Monica Dolan (great as always), Malachi Kirby (Boiling Point), Olivia Williams, Poppy Lee Friar, Shobna Gulati, Leemore Marrett Jr., Chris Eccleston, Lenny Henry (exec producer).
Linton is often very close in on Cole. Story is set in Birmingham in early eighties and features Handsworth-type riots and police racism. And allotments.
Lots of good music includes Marvyn Gaye's 'What's Going On' as the boy finds his 'people'. Good.
Made back-to-back with The Outsiders, from the same novelist S.E. Hinton (who in this one cameos as a prostitute) - she co-wrote. Both films were made in Oklahoma. Matt Dillon takes the lead, with Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Dennis Hopper, Diana Scarwid (stoned teacher, Inside Moves), Vincent Spano, Nicolas Cage, Chris Penn, Larry Fishburne, Tom Waits, Sofia Coppola (Lane's sister, billed as 'Domino').
It comes across like an Orson Welles film for the eighties, Touch of Evil in tone (though in later, night city sequences, Fellini). It's a staggering film in which you can frequently preserve the image as art. But the sound design by Richard Beggs is also amazing, e.g. the scene where they frequent the lively black area of town and there's a moment where the sound is replaced by different sound - I think the sound of the family home.
The style threatens to submerge the story, which is quite slim. But sequences like the fight to flickering lights and birds are outstanding.
The (outstanding) photographer is Stephen Burum (not a single award or nomination). Editor Barry Malkin. Percussive score courtesy Stewart Copeland.
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| Symbolic clocks run throughout the picture - time is running out? |
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| In this amazing interview, Diane reveals she debuted on stage aged six in Medea - in Greek! |
There's even a touch of Soy Cuba to it, though it can't have been on Coppola's radar as it was not shown in the US until 1992 (Telluride). He and Scorsese helped to revive it.
So, it's exhaustingly beautiful, and slightly annoying, but unquestionably a remarkable film.
A strange film. What kind of man is Sefton? He's out for what he can get, but in his defence, 'The first week I was in this joint, somebody stole my Red Cross Package, my blanket and my left shoe' - love the left shoe - writers take note. It's a tough and quite grim storyline mashed up with a broad comedy (Robert Strauss and Harvey Lembeck dancing together, the former thinking he's Betty Grable). It works, though, as the whole thing is underpinned by Billy's tough humour and his great construction and direction, as we slowly uncover who is the traitor in their midst.
William Holden, Don Taylor (the lieutenant), Otto Preminger, Richard Erdman, Peter Graves, Neville Brand (the one with the temper), Sig Ruman, Robinson Stone (the flute player).
Co-written with Edwin Blum, based on the play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, from which several cast members repeated their roles. It was photographed by Ernest Laszlo and scored by Franz Waxman. Doane Harrison is the supervising editor, George Tomasini cut it. Paramount.
It's funny:
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| "One Führer is enough!" |
Kirk Douglas turned it down; Holden won the Oscar.
I was fascinated to learn (via 'Billy Wilder in Hollywood', Maurice Zolotow 1987) that Paramount wanted to release the film in Germany, and requested that the identity of the Nazi spy in their midst should be changed to that of a Polish POW who had sold out to the Nazis. Wilder wrote back expressing his outrage, talking of his background in Galicia (then Poland), the deaths of his family in Auschwitz and his support for the Polish Resistance, and demanding an apology. He didn't get one, so Billy severed his relationship with Paramount immediately (and drove through the studio gates for the last time in his Jaguar - love that detail).
