Tatum plays a brain-damaged vet who agrees to transport an equally damaged K9 war dog down the coast to his former handler's funeral. En route they begin to accept each other. Predictable, not necessarily credible, but enjoyable. And the music is by Tom Newman.
Bresson himself was a prisoner of the Germans in WWII. "Once I heard someone being whipped through the door, and then I heard the body fall. That was ten times worse than if I had seen the whipping. When you see Fontaine with his bloody face being brought back to the cell, you are forced to imagine the awfulness of the beating - which makes it very powerful."
Like The Wrong Man, everything in this film is based on fact, the memoir of André Devigny. With massive attention to detail, a condemned prisoner, convincingly played in the downbeat Bresson style by François Leterrier, is determined to escape, and gives the other prisoners hope. Wonderful attention to sound too, good intermittent use of Mozart, Bresson's beautiful ellipses.
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| Bresson directing Charles Le Clainche and Leterrier |
Cinematography - Léonce-Henri Burel (also The Trial of Joan of Arc and Pickpocket). Editing - Raymond Lamy.
Leterrier was quite a guy. His first escape was three days before he was due to be executed in 1943, then he was captured again and escaped again. Before the end of the war he was captured again, in Spain, but escaped again! He ended up a senior figure in French Intelligence, died in 1999 aged 82. (Source: Independent Obituary.) (He then escaped again.)
A thinly veiled account of John Huston's obsession with killing an elephant whilst on location filming The African Queen. Why he is so intent on this is only explained by 'It's the only sin you can buy a licence for and then carry out' - which doesn't do it for me. Thankfully, when the moment comes, he can't go through with it, but his loyal tribesman dies in the process - we were amazed the white hunting party just left the dead man there rather than return him to his tribe.
Based on Peter Viertel's fictionalized version of events (who actually was helping Huston on the script on this trip) thus all the name changes. Huston's autobiography 'An Open Book' doesn't seem entirely trustworthy, so this story is refreshingly honest - there's no way Huston would admit to having lost a fist fight, for example, as he does here (totally unexpectedly).
Eastwood plays him well and this is the most fun aspect of the film.
Jeff Fahey plays Viertel. (In the nineties he wrote a book called 'Dangerous Friends: At Large with Hemingway and Huston in the Fifties'.) The adaptation is by Burt Kennedy and James Bridges. Photography: Jack Green; editing: Joel Cox; music Lennie Niehaus
With George Dzundza (producer), Marisa Berenson, Boy Mathias Chuma, Alan Armstrong, Timothy Spall.
A Netflix film which to some extent evokes Psycho in its focus on a single house and the unfortunate people who end up dead there. Especially the dodgy-accented George Mackay, who is despatched early on, followed by his mother Kelly Macdonald later (killing her is a tricky move - it only leaves us with one person to care about - Percell Ascott... same as Psycho, I suppose). Hugh Bonneville is quite good as the killer. But overall it's a bit silly and doesn't quite work, and there are missed opportunities all over the place (daring escape by Macdonald, for example).
Eight part dramedy from Netflix. Texas. Multi-lingual title character played by Mo Amer (who often sounds like Seth Rogan) is Palestinian, also speaks great English and great Mexican (his GF is). Unable to get citizenship he resorts to selling knock-off gear from his boot. He's accidentally shot and this leads to him becoming addicted to 'lean'. (Lean is cough syrup containing codeine, soda and candy.)
Great episode (the third) when he learns his father was tortured and no one's told him and instead of counselling, his girlfriend takes him to confession at her local Catholic church - thus you get this interesting Muslim-Catholic Palestine-US-Mexico thing going on ('Jesus was Palestinian. Why do you have to show him nailed on the cross like that?') Which makes it truly original.
There's lots of stuff about olive oil and I'd predicted that by the end they've started to produce mother's recipe. Well, as it turns out, that was the plan, but the series ends with Mo accidentally in Mexico and being pursued on a motorbike by members of a cartel... Cue series two.
Mohammed Amer is a stand-up comic and the series is partly autobiographical - his family did flee from Kuwait when the Iraqis invaded, and his father did die when he was 14.
With Teresa Ruiz, Tobe Nwigwe, Omar Elba, Farah Bsieso, Michael Kim, Lee Eddy.
Ramy is himself a writer-actor with his own self-titled series (2019) in which Mo co-starred.
Hitch himself introduces this film as a recreation of a true story, that is 'stranger than anything in my fictions'. It's certainly made with his usual finesse, but one note is that early on we seem to be focusing on details - hands, especially, feet, the rosary beads, the fingerprinting process - it's as though Hitch was doing Bresson - Un Condemné à Mort comes to mind specifically (though that not being released in the US until the following year makes it unlikely that he'd seen it). Also of course you can't help thinking about Hitch being locked in a cell when he was a boy (to teach him a lesson) and it's almost like this is purgatory (or therapy).
Nice guy Henry Fonda is arrested for a crime he hasn't committed - in Kafkaesque fashion the witnesses all identify him as the culprit. In the film's only humorous moment, two giggling girls inform him that one of the witnesses who could alibi him are dead.
The real victim of all this turns out to be his wife, played brilliantly by Vera Miles, who cracks up - seemingly with the idea that she is the guilty one. At the conclusion of the film something really weird happens - Fonda prays to a religious painting, then there's on overlay - a man walks into shot so that his face and Fonda's becomes superimposed - he looks a little like him - he's the real villain, who's then caught and the nightmare is abruptly over. Is Hitchcock making a religious statement here? I don't think he was particularly religious but it's an interesting thought. (He himself described it to Truffaut as 'an ironic coincidence'.) What with the prison childhood stuff, and the parallel Miles story, you start wondering whether this isn't the most personal film he made, and thus one of the most interesting.
The A Team is on hand - sterling work from Robert Burks, George Tomasini, Bernard Herrmann - there's a moment where Miles is looking at a painting and the incidental music is so like Vertigo, it's almost like we've stepped ahead into that film, with the added resonance that it was Miles who was supposed to play the Madeleine role, only she fell pregnant. (As a complete tangent, it is interesting to speculate how she would have played it.)
A stand-out shot is one where the camera seems to follow Fonda into his cell through a slit in the door - no idea how that was achieved.
Made for Warner Brothers. Written by Maxwell Anderson and Angus McPhail (Whisky Galore, Dead of Night, It Always Rains on Sunday, Went the Day Well).
A rather neatly worked out tribute to Mills & Boon on their 100th anniversary, via three intertwining stories.
In the first, we face the birthing pains of the new publishing house, its owners played by Patrick Kennedy and Danny Mays, and the latter's relationship with his new wife Jodie Whittaker. Then in the 1970s, repressed secretary Olivia Colman develops an unreciprocated fancy for surgeon Patrick Baladi (his mate played by Adam James), turns to writing a M&B type novel as an outlet. It's published. Then the glue that cleverly holds it all together is in modern day an English Lit professor (Emilia Fox) is teaching M&B as part of the course, thereby serving as a way of analysing the history of the brand and what it's expressing from a feminist viewpoint - and in a clever meta story, she receives the initially unwanted attraction of a randy student (O-T Fagbenle), which she eventually welcomes as passion she's not getting with her partner - there's a perfectly on-brand sex scene in the Uni library!
It was written by Emma Fox and produced for the BBC.
We hadn't seen it since its first broadcast. Photographed by Balazs Bolygo.
According to The Guardian this was originally released in the UK after 161 censorship cuts.* It remains strong stuff, particularly because of the sexual violence of the Mitchum character, evident in John D MacDonald's original 1957 novel 'The Executioners'. And also interesting in that the liberal lawyer has to become something more primitive to defend his family from a psychotic presence. The ending, in which Peck doesn't kill him, rather send him back to prison for the rest of his life, was a good improvement on the original (screenplay James R Webb, also Cheyenne Autumn, Trapeze, Apache). (As an aside here, where Savalas is trying to convince the abused drifter girl to give evidence, he says Cady will go to prison for six months - I don't think so. For one thing he's on parole, and would be guilty of a similar crime that got him eight years in prison. It would be much longer. Also I'm not sure what 'lewd vagrancy' is but I wouldn't have thought that would preclude a couple from going into a hotel room.)
I wonder how long it took the wife - Polly Bergen - to forgive her husband for his insane plan?
Nicely lit by Sam Leavitt, a very distinctive score from Bernard Herrmann, and edited by Hitchcock regular George Tomasini. It's Universal, so Alexander Golitzen obviously credited for the production design (with Robert Boyle).
Robert Mitchum gives a great performance. (Just bought his biog 'Baby, I Don't Care'). In support of that, every time he appeared, Q would exclaim 'Go away!' Which is understandable, but it's a good job he didn't listen, otherwise there wouldn't have been much of a film.
With Martin Balsam, Lori Martin, Jack Kruschen, Barrie Chase (unfortunate drifter).
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| Lori Martin. "He's here. He's here." |
I seem to remember Scorsese's version being rather overwrought and not as good as this (and half an hour longer, I'll wager).
I was surprised to realise that Cape Fear is an actual place - I just thought it was a slightly melodramatic title - it's a promontory on North Carolina.
It was made by Peck's own Melville Productions.
* The BBFC were very helpful when I contacted them in listing the exact changes they required, which were:
'Reel 4 & 5 In the scene between Diane Taylor and Sievers remove all references which imply that she had suffered more than mere brutality, e.g .. "I'll show you photographs of girls who get mixed up with men like Cady. And, Miss Taylor, it'll make you sick" and her statement that she could never bring herself to tell anyone what he had done to her.
Reel 5 Reduce to a minimum the shots in which the camera concentrates on Nancy at the sailing club and remove Cady's reference to her as getting to be almost as juicy as Sam's wife.
Reel 6 Remove close shots of Cady approaching Nancy in car outside school and close shot of her watching him approach.
Reduce episode in which Nancy is frightened by a man in the school locker room.
Reel 7 Reduce to a minimum Cady's description of how he treated his ex-wife.
Remove "It 's Nancy he's after - and he'll get to her sooner or later unless I change his mind".
Remove the use of a chain as a weapon in the assault on Cady.
Remove all the dialogue (from "How could he even touch her...?" to "...we'd never put her through an ordeal like that") in which the parents discuss the question of Nancy's being called as a witness if she was assaulted.
Reel 8 Remove all dialogue beginning "Speaking about your wife and kid..." and ending "They ain't never gonna forget and neither will you, Counselor, never".
Remove "She? You can't be talking about Nancy".
Reel 10 Reduce the shots where the camera concentrates on Nancy whilst Cady is watching the house.
Reel 11 Considerably shorten Cady's attack on Peggy and her hysteria when Sam re-assures her.
Shorten the scene in which Cady advances on Nancy and she shows fear.'
You can see it would have been a much less powerful and disturbing experience after that lot of excisions.
P.S. a couple of weeks later I asked Q to do one of her sketches for it. Within a matter off seconds she came up with this:
You can see it as one of those avant-garde Polish film posters. It's rather cool.
I'm not being funny or anything, but still only four episodes - though the first is an hour long. Brilliant!
More mad stuff with meeting rooms that don't open, security lockdowns when a Royal is due to arrive, Anna Rampton becomes Head of Better - yes, exactly - seems to be infatuated with Ian. Will comes up with a novel idea for a programme format.
"If we get it wrong we're eating shit soup with no chopsticks."
"I am listening. It's just you guys aren't saying the right stuff."
"We're looking at a situation here, and not in a good way."
Mulligan handles the kids so well, whether Mary Badham and Phillip Alford are lying on handrails, zipping in and out of the house with huge energy, clambering around trees, or just looking bashful, they appear perfectly natural. I had forgotten though that while it's Scout's coming of age story it's also Jem's - his two key moments are when he bravely refuses to leave Atticus while the lynch mob's there, then when he insists on accompanying Atticus to tell Tom Robinson's wife he's dead.
The maid Calpernia (Estelle Evans) is a sort of step-mother.
Broken, I realised, is a sort of update. Gregory Peck's performance is beautifully understated - he won the Oscar. His court summation is mainly played in a beautiful single take. With John Degna (Dill), Brock Peters, Frank Overton (sheriff), Rosemary Murphy, Ruth White, James Anderson, Collin Wilcox Paxton.
It's beautifully lit by Russell Harlan and Elmer Bernstein's score is wonderful (both were Oscar nominated). Produced by Alan Pakula. Horton Foote won Oscar for his screenplay, art direction won for Alexander Golitzen (with Henry Bumstead and Oliver Emert).
It was originally a TV film from 1954, part of the Little Women series, written by Reginald Rose. The film version is produced by Rose and Henry Fonda. It's a courtroom drama enacted in the jury room.
It's expertly photographed by Boris Kaufman. If you look at the close ups, you can see there's at least three lights in their eyes, giving clues as to how it was lit.
The jurors are Fonda, Martin Balsam, Lee J Cobb, John Fiedler, E.G. Marshall (the clinical one), Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Joseph Sweeney (the old man), Ed Begley, George Voskovec, Robert Webber.
It's still a corker.
Like Arthur Penn, Lumet started out in TV - this was his first feature.
Nurse Margaret Lockwood goes off on a naughty weekend with creep Hugh Williams, who hasn't even the sense to book a hotel room, thus they end up sleeping on the beach. I myself once tried sleeping outside on a hot summer's night - within hours I was freezing. Anyway, she can't help keep thinking of this guy who's wife just died (John Lodge) and if he's OK. Also holidaying are beauty queen wannabe Rene Ray and her friend Merle Tottenham and married couple Kathleen Harrison and Wally Patch. With Garry Marsh (I See A Dark Stranger, Dead of Night), Felix Aylmer.
Reed's trying some things with dissolves and memory but the film feels clunky overall.
There's a great scene early on where bounty hunter Henry Fonda and junior sheriff Anthony Perkins are in conversation in the office, and through the window in deep focus a man is shot and killed in the street, thereby triggering a conflict between Perkins and town bully Neville Brand. The DP is Loyal Griggs.
Fonda resists involvement but befriends a little boy and ends up boarding with him and his widowed mother - these are Betsy Palmer and Michel Ray. Add in the town's beloved doctor John McIntire and brothers who steal, Lee Van Cleef and Peter Baldwin, plus Perkin's unhappy GF Mary Webster, who's perpetually storming out of rooms.
The first of today's two attempted lynchings occurs as well. Written by Dudley Nichols from a story by Barney Slater and Joel Kane. The first of two films today also scored by Elmer Bernstein. An economical 93 minutes. Paramount.
In Gilliat and Val Valentine's fun script, Rex Harrison wakes up in a picturesque part of Wales with amnesia. Doctor Cecil Parker helps him to work out who he is, leads to merry complications.
Story involves Kay Kendall, Margaret Leighton, Nicole Maurey, George Cole, Eric Pohlmann, Robert Coote, Jill Adams, Michael Hordern (in amusing performance as the Judge). Raymond Huntely.
Good score from Malcolm Arnold, photographed by Ted Scaife.
Ian Fletcher (Hugh Bonneville) from the Olympics Deliverance team is now Head of Values and Big Thoughts at the BBC - it's cool how the institution embraces this spiky satire. There's more underlying love stories going on, Bonneville with Nina Sosanya and useless intern Hugh Skinner's obvious crush on Ophelia Lovibond.
Jason Watkins is terrific as a passive-aggressive manipulator, Monica Doolan great as always, having mastered a Welsh accent. With a stone-faced Sarah Parish, straight-talking David Westhead and the terribly annoying Jessica Hynes. Only four episodes in this first season. Like the way Bonneville is on the back foot until the final episode where he out-manoeuvres Watkins finally.
Very funny.
Hollywood does have this strange habit of making supposedly cute romcoms about Americans in Italy, packed with clichés and cheesy - mozarella, naturally. (Avanti a rare exception) This is another in that long, undistinguished line, though at least it's better than the execrable Love & Gelato. The CGI cats are ridiculous.
Kat Graham and Tom Hopper, saddled with no chemistry and one of those totally contrived situations in which they're forced to share an apartment - which they keep referring to as a 'villa' - fight, and then... guess what happens. Things are slightly complicated (in a routine third-act-by-computer way) when their exes both show up, Raymond Ablack and Laura Hopper. Oh yeah - I meant to say it's set in Verona, and that at least is nice to see (I presume it was filmed in the winter). One of those films where a character turns her nose up at Prosecco when she's clearly already drinking one.
I hated Johnson's Grumpy Old Men and at least it's not as bad as that.
A true story, screenplay by Arnold Schulman and David Seidler (The King's Speech), nicely summarised in the title. What's the moral? You can have a dream and succeed, but you can't go big as Big Corporate America won't let you. Yeah, try telling that to Mark Zuckerberg. (The difference I suppose he he was an innovator, a new market.)
Anyway, Jeff Bridges is winning in the lead role, supported by Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Frederic Forrest, Mako, Elias Koteas (the designer), Christian Slater, Nina Siemaszko. Luscious photography from Vittorio Storaro, sound design by Richard Beggs, edited by Priscila Nedd (Friendly) (also Pretty Woman, Doc Hollywood, 27 Dresses and The Guilt Trip).
Coppola often shoots from below, directs smoothly. Good use of incidental music, e.g. 'Tiger Rag'. Tucker's enthusiasm is infectious. Love the way the Landau character becomes part of the family. The madness that the army didn't want his armoured car as it was too fast. Very enjoyable.
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| A genuine Futurist painting in the background? |
A Netflix 8 x 30 has Neil Patrick Harris suddenly alone after a 17 year relationship, and how he deals with being single and gay in NYC, where you need a million dollars just to think about living. (The average price of a two bedroom apartment in Manhattan is $2.2 million.) He couples up quite easily, as it happens, but there's problems everywhere: guys who don't use condoms or whose penises are too large or who are too clingy. He navigates all this with the help of close friends Brooks Ashmanskas and Emerson Brooks and work friend Tisha Campbell and client Marcia Gay Harden, who's also recently separated. André de Shields plays the most sympathetic character as a neighbour in the same Gramercy Park apartment (his being worth $2.2 million, as it happens). With Harris's ex Tuc Watkins showing up at the apartment at the end of the season, and Campbell confronting the father of her son, you can be sure there'll be a part two.
Directed by Andrew Fleming, Zoe Cassavetes and Peter Lauer.
Yeah, I'm beginning to find this a bit too teen-targeted now (it wasn't before?) with some of the acting rather broad (I don't think they've been directed very well) and actually the moments of McEnroe voiceover are a bit embarrassing because the actors have to stand there gawping while he talks - in some of the longer ones, a freeze frame might have worked better. It's also becoming very predictable, still with some good laughs.
More lovely nonsense. New to cast: Morvern Christie (Head of Legacy) and Samuel Barnett (Murder in Provence, Four Lives), who's the new super-efficient PA, at least until Bonneville is shot in the foot by a starting pistol and Olivia Colmans returns to the fold to look after him - the sweetest moment.
So, that's all good.
