From a Robert Drummond story, directed by Isher Sahota.
F1 driver dies at pit stop change. Watkins & Gouveia investigate in what seems a barely credible story. Paul McGann, Daisy Bevan, Bluey Robinson, Ben Batt.
Amused to learn there really is a 'Quiet Street' in Bath, the location of the bookshop (in reality antiques).
Stopped reviewing these after this. They're really not very good.
Quite fun to see, obviously, but terribly edited (by me) - boring footage, montages that only half work - needs a serious re-edit by my wife - someone who knows what she's doing.
The Monkees sequence at the end holds up.
The opening episode, 'Strangers', is fantastic. Who is this female soldier from Afghanistan? Who is this young black man who has a child? And this blind guy with a little white dog? It's fabulous.
The side-effects of Randall's therapy are devastating. (Pamela Adlon is the therapist.) Great bit of misdirection when Rebecca gets lost - only we're seeing a flash forward to another time.
Lyric Ross's day out in Philadelphia. (Her new boyfriend is Asante Blackk.)
Edited (in rotation as usual) by Howard Leder, Julia Grove and Lai-San Ho (and Susan Vaill). The transitions from past to present are done so artfully (a door closing / another opening). Brilliant stuff between Kevin and Nicky, who at times appears as Jack.
We were reminded to watch it by This Is Us - it features in the story of a couple who never saw the ending, and make up their own versions.
It's a very wise screenplay from such young writers. A wonderful film.
Usefully jotted here and here. Apparently, Kevin Smith brought the screenplay to the attention of the infamous Harvey Weinstein and it was Miramax who made the film.
Oh... The Jacket. That's where we know him from, and offers the connection to Emma Hickox. He was also known for a film about Francis Bacon (Love is the Devil), and thus has a penchant for (a) weird subject matter (b) historical drama (c) gay cinema (his early work was music videos for the likes of Marc Almond and Boy George).
This exposes Dylan Thomas (who Q fittingly describes as the Destroyer) who seemed entirely unlikable, though the film's really about the relationship between his wife Sienna Miller, and a former lover of his, Keira Knightley, who is also courted by soldier Cillian Murphy (it's 1942 Britain).
Dylan's played by Matthew Rhys, and his unlikableness, and the strange behaviour of his wife, make it hard to swallow. It's written by Sharman Macdonald, from an idea by Rebekah Gilbertson, who both should have known better.
The direction is frequently pretentious, using all manner of reflections and upside-down shots. These screen shots are symptomatic:
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| Pop video |
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| Scramble jamble |
Emma's notable contributions are some Jacket-like furious war sequences and a shimmery, dissolve-heavy love scene, perhaps influenced by her mum. Jonathan Freeman's photography (Hollywoodland, Rome, Boardwalk Empire) and Angelo Badalamenti's score are other assets.
Experimental doctor Ray Milland takes serum which makes him see under the layers of things, but at the same time gives a sort of triple-coloured, triple-duplicated image of things, giving the film a trippy effect which was no doubt of interest to drug experimenters (thus one experiment leads to others). It's a bit crap really, though the story following his accidental murder of a colleague, leading him to becomes first a fairground act, then a faith healer, is not uninteresting. Shot with the director's usual economy, most of the budget going to Milland, photographed by Floyd Crosby, music by Les Baxter with lots of theremin. Has quite an ending when in a religious tent he claims to see a mystical centre of the Universe, then plucks his own eyes out. Corman posits that the film's theme was echoed in 2001!
Scripted by Ray Russell and Robert Dillon. Don Rickles is the con man, Diana Van Der Vlis, Harold Stone and John Hoyt as medical colleagues.
Very quirky but sweet, Loren Horsley (who developed the story with Waititi) falls for a nerdish habitual liar (Jermain Clement) who has a difficult relationship with his family and a score to settle with former school bully. Complete with animated stop motion scenes.
Taika has directed three of New Zealand's top grossing films - Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Boy and What We Do in the Shadows. He's making Marvel films now, unfortunately.
Begins on sepia photos of Native Indians - the Apache are at the heart of the story. Then an amazing silent scene featuring horses, which 'Indian' Paul Newman helps to catch. It turns out he's white but been raised by the Apache, which puts him out of favour with fellow passengers he's forced to travel with...
They are:
Shifty fraudster Fredric March and his lady Barbara Rush
Coarse roughneck Richard Boone
Tough boarding house lady Diane Cilento
Nice Mexican Martin Balsam
Young married couple Peter Lazer and Margaret Blye
...until, of course, they need him when they're held up. Bad guys are Cameron Mitchell, Frank Silvera, Skip Ward. Newman's stillness is well to the fore here.
It's beautifully shot in deep focus by Jimmy Wong Howe, who also collaborated with the director on Hud. Good story by Elmore Leonard, adapted by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, in its characters and the critique of white oppression of Indians. Good score from David Rose. Edited by Frank Bracht.
20th Century Fox.
This is certainly one film Mr Camp might have viewed before making the terrible Love & Gelato. This is how to write a film, this is how to direct a film (lots of long takes, I noticed this time, our fourteenth viewing).
It was Billy's birthday.
"Could I have a couple of noodles - for colour?"
Cameron: "I was watching your airplane-landing shots and they suddenly looked very familiar to me. Then I realized - I bought those landing-gear shots from a film house, and one of those stock shots appears at the beginning of Jerry Maguire. So, like it or not, you are in my movie."
Billy: "I beautified one of your pictures."
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| Great blocking, even |
The music:
A Tazza E' Cafe. G Capaldo, V Fassone
La Luna Don Backy & Detto Mariano
Palcoscenico (E Bonagura, A Giannini, S, Bruni
Senza Fine Gino Paoli
Core 'Ngrato Sergio Bruni
Un'ora sola ti vorrei Carlo Bruni
Editor Ralph Winters on Juliet's horse and buggy ride round Ishchia:
"The little horse and carriage pass an open bar where people are sitting outside the bar having a drink. As the camera pans cross this group, there is a lady nursing a baby at the very end of the pan, the gag being that everyone is having a drink in the warm summer sunshine, even the baby.
Do you believe that I cut away from the shot before the camera finished its pan past the end of the shot, missing the gag completely? Well, I did. Billy just about fainted. "Raulf!" he shouted. "How could you do that? You cut off the joke!"
Ralph Winters 'Some Cutting Remarks'.
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.
