The Ramen Girl (2008)

In food as in life, sometimes the missing ingredient is love.

In this sweet comic drama of personal discovery, Abby (Brittany Murphy), a young American woman, moves to Tokyo, Japan, in order to join her itchy-footed boyfriend, Ethan (Gabriel Mann). She gets an undemanding office job and moves in with him. All seems well, but a couple of weeks later, she emerges from the shower to find him abruptly packing his bags to take up a job offer in another Japanese city, Osaka, and a new life that does not include her. Within minutes, he is on his way to the airport, leaving her on the pavement in her towel shouting angrily at the departing taxi, virtually friendless in a big foreign city.

Later, Abby, regretting her harsh words, tries to make up with Ethan by phone. While waiting for him to call back, she is drawn to the welcoming lights of a nearby family "ramen" (fast-cooking noodle broth) restaurant, where she weeps into a bowl of delicious ramen and has a mysterious but pleasant hallucination involving a china cat. On a second visit, with a different ramen dish, Abby's tears are somehow, almost magically, turned to laughter. Although Abby can't speak more than a word or two of Japanese, and the chef, Maezumi (Toshiyuki Nishida), and his wife, Reiko (Kimiko Yo), can't speak any English, Abby begins to frequent the restaurant and takes to helping out by serving dishes to the customers. When the chef tries to eject her, she declares that she wants him to teach her how to be a ramen chef.

I thought this was a really sweet funny film, not a rom-com as such, because although there is a little romance, that is by no means the main focus of the story. It really is a story of personal discovery, of finding a passion in life, and the journey to finding fulfilment along that path. Abby's story is contrasted with that of a young corporate Japanese man, Toshi (Sohee Park), whose personal ambitions are in conflict with his culture's work ethics, and also the story of her friend Gretchen (Tammy Blanchard) and Gretchen's drinking companion, Charlie (Daniel Evans), who show the seamier, more dissolute fate of those who give up their dreams and resort to sensual thrills and mind-numbing intoxicants. The emotional content of magic realism has as great an impact on me as on anyone else, so although from a rational perspective the spiritual element brought to the cooking process is mere wishful thinking, I was able to turn a blind eye.

As for the quality of acting, Murphy (excellent also in Sin City, 2005) projects endearing qualities of sweetness, uncalculated exuberance and vulnerability that make her perfect in the lead role. Nishida is brilliant as the grumpy tyrannical ramen chef, and Yo (so good in Yōjirō Takita's Oscar-winning Departures, 2008) is equally good as the supportive wife. The little coterie of local Japanese women customers in the ramen restaurant is also excellently played, and I was happy to see the great Tsutomu Yamazaki, so good in Departures, cameo as the master ramen chef.

According to Wikipedia, film critic Don Willmott describes The Ramen Girl as "a vacuous but atmospheric analysis of the redemptive power of a good bowl of noodles" in which "The Karate Kid meets Tampopo meets Babette's Feast." I haven't yet caught up with either Tampopo or Babette's Feast, but the comparison with The Karate Kid is apt and complimentary, especially the recent 2010 version with Jackie Chan. I didn't find the film vacuous at all, quite the reverse really, as it is about someone finding fulfilment in life through a demanding vocation, rather than simply through a relationship with another person, as would be the case in a rom-com. Abby's character, who, through passion for a chosen field (cooking), teaches herself self-discipline and a personal work ethic, is surely not a bad role model for anyone. It certainly reflects my path in life.

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• Director: Robert Allan Ackerman
• Writer: Becca Topol
• Starring: Brittany Murphy, Sohee Park, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tammy Blanchard, Kimiko Yo, Renji Ishibashi, Tsutomu Yamazaki

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 7 Jul 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Attack the Block (2011)

Urban city vs outer space

This British comic science-fiction thriller kicks off with an exciting opening scene. Young nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), walking home alone along dark inner city streets, is menaced, then mugged by a gang of masked teenage "hoodies" from a big tower block, a crime interrupted by the nearby crash-landing of an extra-terrestrial. While investigating the crash, the gang leader, Moses, is attacked and slightly injured, and in the resulting hubbub, the nurse escapes. After triumphing over the extra-terrestrial, the gang return to their tower block, little realising that this is only the beginning of their troubles.

The tower block scenario is very well chosen: as civilian combatants in an alien invasion story, members of an inner city teenage gang are hard to better. They will already be battle-ready and will be able to lay their hands on weapons of some kind. They will also be used to handling challenges themselves, rather than calling on police and other officials. The rationale behind the invasion is very well thought out and credible, and the way informed exposition is brought in is clever. The script is admirably lean, with a running time of only 84 minutes.

The character arc for the main protagonist, Moses (John Boyega), is great. The nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), functions in part as an avatar for the audience's developing point of view of these teenage gangsters.

Fast-paced, funny, quite frightening, this film succeeds as a window into the world of teenage gangs, and as a comic science-fiction action thriller.

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• Director: Joe Cornish
• Writer: Joe Cornish
• Starring: John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Luke Treadaway, Jumayn Hunter, Nick Frost, Danielle Vitalis, Paige Meade, Michael Ajao

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 6 Oct 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Horrid Henry: The Movie (2011)

Here comes trouble!

The eponymous books are great, essentially based on the premise that kids are totally selfish beings ruled by their desires, and that these desires are in conflict with what their parents think is best for them. (Henry is the junior equivalent of Fat Freddy in the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic books, ruled by the desires of his id: for food, drink, drugs and sex.) Kids like being on holiday, weekends, junk food, TV, computer games, lazing around, having fun, being rude, playing tricks on other kids. They hate school, homework, chores, getting up and going to bed early, being polite and well-mannered, eating proper meals, eating vegetables and so on. Their parents want them to do the opposite. With this conflict, kids are always in trouble. Perfect Peter, Henry's annoying younger brother, is essentially an idealised mirror intended, by contrast, to highlight Henry's character, who is in fact a pretty normal kid writ a little large.

What's good: the central kid's characters are well played: Henry (Theo Stevenson), Peter (Ross Marron), Moody Margaret (Scarlett Stitt) and indeed most of the other kids. Some of the adults rein in their performances sufficiently: Siobhan Hayes and Mathew Horne as Henry's Mum and Dad, Rebecca Front as the headmistress, Miss Oddbod, and Parminder Nagra as the teacher, Miss Lovely. Other adults portray their characters rather too large, too cartoonish, namely Angelica Huston (Miss BattleAxe), Richard E Grant (the head of Box Hill School), Jack Sanders as the gym teacher, Aerobic Al. Dick and Dom, talented comic creatives in their own TV shows (the "Mini Dick and Dom" shorts are brilliant), portray TV hosts so extremely unpleasantly nightmarishly styled that I wondered how they passed the censor for a U certificate.

There's quite a lot of breaking the fourth wall by Henry, which is OK, though used here rather lazily as a disguised voice-over to spoon-feed us backstory.

What's mainly wrong with this film, to my mind, is the script. The plot device of the kids having to save the local primary school is just so tired. And the idea that the head of the local private school would scheme to make money by getting the state school shut down and gaining fees from the desperate parents of kids from that school seems extremely unlikely. Also, the script is very laboured at times, with Moody Margaret metaphorically beating the audience over the head with key plot points that seemed obvious to me anyway.

Worse, the story betrays the characters of Henry and Peter at various points. The idea that Henry has had the self-discipline to become the lead singer of a fairly proficient pop band stretches credibility. And when Peter's rendition of the traditional canon "Frére Jacques" morphs into an extraordinary contemporary interpretation, it seemed like demonic possession. And when Henry, uncharacteristically altruistic, plots to save the school, it's as if he and Peter have swapped personas.

Annoyingly, the two ten-year old boys in my charge, though seemingly bored during the film, afterwards gave it 4 stars and 5 stars!

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• Director: Nick Moore
• Writers: Lucinda Whiteley (screenplay) based on the books by Francesca Simon
• Starring: Theo Stevenson, Scarlett Stitt, Ross Marron, Anjelica Huston, Richard E. Grant, Rebecca Front, Parminder Nagra, Siobhan Hayes, Mathew Horne, David Schneider, Wladmir Klitchko, Vitali Klitchko, Noel Fielding, Richard McCourt, Dominic Wood, Jo Brand, Prunella Scales, Tyger Drew-Honey, Kimberley Walsh, Helena Barlow

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• Rating: Rental
• When seen: 14 Aug 2011
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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The Seven Year Itch (1955)

It TICKLES and TANTALIZES! - The funniest comedy since laughter began!

What would any normal guy give to be one-to-one with Marilyn Monroe? What are the chances? Wouldn't even a happily married man with a kid get the "seven year itch"?

It's summertime in Manhattan, and like many men, publishing editor Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) sends his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes) of seven years and young son Ricky (Butch Bernard) up north for a 2-week vacation in Maine, while he stays and works in the city. Back at his apartment that evening, awaiting a phone call from Helen, Richard determines to keep on the straight and narrow during this time: no cigarettes, no drinking, and settles down to work on the patio with a manuscript. But out of the blue, literally, he is almost killed by a falling flower pot accidentally dislodged by his new upstairs neighbour, a stunningly gorgeous blonde bombshell played by the wonderful Marilyn Monroe.

Against the dictates of his rational mind, Richard, mesmerised by his neighbour's beauty and overcome with desire, can't stop himself inviting her to his apartment, and Monroe's character is so ditzy (innocently silly and scatterbrained) that she seems to have no idea what objective Richard's instincts are driving him towards.

So, will Richard be able to withstand the range of temptations available to the married man left alone in the big city, and in particular, to any male neighbour of Monroe? How will Monroe's character respond?

This is pretty much a two-hander between Ewell and Monroe. Though creepy like a lizard at some points in the film in his lust for Monroe, overall, Ewell's performance is magnificent. A great deal of the script has Richard dialoguing with himself, which is quite an unnatural thing to do, highly stylized, and could have gone disastrously wrong. Ewell pulls it off pretty well though, so that it is mostly very acceptable. Richard is a bit of a Walter Mitty, highly imaginative, and a lot of the fun consists of his imaginings coming to life, and delighting or scaring him. Monroe plays her rather challenging ditzy role very well, simpering like a small excited girl in a grown woman's body, highly desirable in a sexual way, but not slutty, managing to stay pure and chaste in herself.

The lack of political correctness in this film goes well beyond current socially-sanctioned norms, with Wilder commenting on the audience's fascination with beauties like Monroe, for instance, in the way Richard's publishing house markets their books, pandering to our men's objectification of women as sex objects. It is this film that includes the justly famous scene where Monroe stands over the air vent in the white dress, innocently enjoying the cooling breeze that pushes the skirt of her dress up in such a revealing flutter. Talk about objectification: Monroe's character does not even merit a name, for pity's sake, being labelled "The Girl" in the credits.

The peeping Tom aspect of cinema audience's appetite to watch actresses like Monroe is clearly paralleled in Richard's relationship with Monroe. The fourth wall is even broken at one point, in the third reel, by Ewell referring explicitly by name to Marilyn Monroe. This makes the story quite a meta-experience, but also makes one feel quite queasy while watching, as you come to understand that this is the true subject or target of the film.

The element of psychology is included in the person of Dr. Brubaker (Oskar Homolka), the author of the manuscript that Richard is editing, and whose writing is used to introduce statistics about temptations for married men in the summer and the "seven year itch" in particular. Ewell externalises the conflicts within him in the form of an itch on his chest, near his heart (geddit?), and a nervous twitch in one of his thumbs (presumably with phallic connotation?).

Apparently, the film is based on a three-act play by George Axelrod. In Wikipedia's entry for this film (see link below), there is an interesting discussion of the restrictions put on the film, compared to the play, by the studio's adherence to the Hayes Code of the time.

Five years later, in "The Apartment" with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, Wilder revisited the temptations-of-summer-affairs-in-Manhattan scenario introduced in "The Seven Year Itch" and created a human drama of great warmth and darkness and resonance. This film, while interesting, and a great showcase for Monroe's talents, does not approach those heights.

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• Director: Billy Wilder
• Writers: George Axelrod, Billy Wilder
• Starring: Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe, Evelyn Keyes, Marguerite Chapman, Robert Strauss, Oscar Homolka, Sonny Tufts, Donald MacBride

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• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 1 July 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Monkey Business (1952)

The quest for the recaptured vigour of youth, that holy grail for the middle-aged and elderly, is at the heart of this wonderfully fun light-hearted comedy that showcases the brilliance of Cary Grant's comedic skills, and reveals that Ginger Rogers too was not only nimble on her pins, but also a very gifted comedienne.

Grant's character, Dr Barnaby Fulton, a chemist, works at a laboratory where they are trying to develop an anti-ageing, vigour-restoring product, a kind of whole-body viagra-type drug. Grant's aged, overweight boss, Mr Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn), seems to have a personal stake in the speedy resolution of this product, connected to the person of his private secretary, Miss Lois Laurel (Marilyn Monroe), whose considerable personal charms outweigh her lack of secretarial skills.

But Barnaby's research has hit a roadblock. As the story begins, his mental preoccupation with "the formula" is showcased with some nice absent-minded professor style business, that also allows his relationship with wife Edwina (Rogers) to be shown as very solid and loving, with she being very understanding. It also allows Hank Entwhistle (Hugh Marlowe) the family friend and old flame of Rogers' youth to make his appearance.

The next day, in the lab, there is some excitement as it seems one of the experimental subjects, an elderly chimpanzee, is exhibiting extremely uncharacteristic youthful behaviour, and Mr Oxley, with Miss Laurel in tow, gets quite excited, till it is revealed to be a false alarm. Barnaby goes back to the drawing board, re-mixing his formula, but a young chimp, who has been observing him, concocts its own formula, to taste, and pours it into the water cooler stand, where it becomes mixed with the only drinking water available in the laboratory.

So begins a series of joyously comic set pieces where first Barnaby, then wife Edwina, then Barnaby and Edwina together, drink increasingly greater amounts of the formula, washing it down with water from the cooler, and mistakenly ascribing the effects to Barnaby's formula. In each case, it is an excuse for the actors to indulge in progressively more juvenile behaviour, much to the delight of the audience. Grant and Rogers are both fit and agile, and are impressively up to the physical demands of their roles, where they have to act and speak as much younger people. One imagines that the actors must have really had fun playing these parts, and the transformations are a joy to watch.

The conceipt of this 1952 film, with adults acting as children, is reminiscent of Dennis Potter's horrific comic psycho-drama "Blue Remembered Hills" (1979, part of BBC TV's "Play for Today" series), where adults play themselves as children, and sometimes the children they are playing choose to play at being adults, resulting in multiple levels of interpretation.

Never work with children or animals, film-makers are told, but Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers worked with both here, and emerged unscathed. Grant has such a great way of looking nonplussed and exhibiting his mental processes in physicality, and acting the character straight, not tongue in cheek.

Saw this film on 12 May and again on 3 August, with equal pleasure. My hesitation about awarding the film a very high mark is that it is lightweight in theme. On the other hand, it is perfectly executed.

References

• Wikipedia: Blue Remembered Hills

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• Director: Howard Hawks
• Writers: Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, I.A.L. Diamond
• Starring: Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn, Hugh Marlowe, George Winslow

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 21 May 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Woman of the Year (1942)

The picture of the year!

Woman of the Year (1942) is the first pairing of the legendary on-screen romcom couple, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The film poses the question, still relevant today, of how the busy modern woman can manage to combine a career with a happy marriage and home life, and, winning the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, it packs quite a punch.

The story wastes little time in throwing together Sam Craig (Tracy), a hard-headed sports reporter and all-round regular American, and Tess Hardy (Hepburn), a high society sophisticate and international charity worker, fluent in various languages, who writes a column for the same newspaper. Their little literary spat develops into a series of start-stop dates, driven by mutual attraction, but frequently delayed or interrupted by Tess's hectic schedule.

The gulf between their lifestyles is underlined. Sam takes Tess to a baseball game, something which she knows nothing of, but quite enjoys. Tess invites Sam to an evening party at her apartment, but has little time to talk to him. After failing to bond with groups of non-English speaking refugees and diplomats, he slips out early. He travels to sporting events, and hangs out in bars. She travels to conferences and holds open house in the evenings in her uptown apartment. Eventually, they kiss, confess their love for each other, he proposes, she accepts. Cue a happy ending...

But the story does not end there. It goes on, beyond the honeymoon period, itself not without its issues, to examine subsequent married life for such a loving but busy modern couple. It also, very cleverly, examines the issue of the quality of care for very young children in such a setup. So, the question remains till quite late in the story: can they make it work? And will they be able to meet in the middle, or will one have to make unequal compromises?

One has to appreciate the generally modern, progressive view of the sexes, evidenced by the script in the characters of Sam and Tess throughout most of the story. To my mind, the dilemma faced by Tess is never really satisfactorily resolved, but, along the way, Hepburn gets to do a revealingly inept extended comic kitchen routine.

There is real chemistry between Tracy and Hepburn. They both have impeccable comic timing. Tracy is very likeable, so that the male can identify with him, and Hepburn is a fine woman with stunning looks and personality, an aristocrat in the best sense of the word.

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• Director: George Stevens
• Writers: Ring Lardner Jr., Michael Kanin, John Lee Mahin, Garson Kanin
• Starring: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Fay Bainter, Reginald Owen, Minor Watson, William Bendix, Gladys Blake

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 2 Aug 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

A Tale of Murder, Lust, Greed, Revenge, and Seafood.

This is a very funny and generally entertaining film, the last great swan-song of brilliant creative humour (at least till now) of the legendary ex-Python, John Cleese, the writer, star and co-director. In the aftermath of a flawed jewel heist, compromised by witness identification of the gang leader, greed and distrust turn the four robbers against each other.

The film starts very succinctly by introducing the gang members, two American and two British, each with a passion, an idiosyncrasy, an Achilles' heel. Wanda, the glamorous and quick-thinking American girlfriend of the gang leader, George, is strongly aroused by the sound of foreign languages, a foible used to good comic effect. Otto, a dim-witted weapons expert, also American, and Wanda's secret lover, believing himself to be an intellectual, has a passion for the works of the philosopher, Nietzsche, though only limited comprehension. Ken, the getaway driver, a British man with a severe speech impediment, a stutter, and a tank full of tropical fish, ironically, given later developments, is a keen animal-lover. Only the leader, George, has no real identifiable passion, unless it be for diamonds. The only chinks in his armour are his trust in Wanda, shown from the outset to be double-timing him with Otto, and his identification by an elderly pedestrian at or near the scene of the robbery.

The plot develops briskly, alternating between the story-lines of defence barrister, Archie Leach (Cleese), and the robbers, and then showing how these initially parallel story-lines converge, in satisfyingly unexpected ways.

The use of American actors is brilliant casting, as it allowed the filmmakers to market the film in the USA as an American film starring American actors (Kline and Curtis) in a story set in England, and to market the film in the UK as a British film starring the much-loved ex-Python comedians, Cleese and Palin, with the bonus of glamorous American guest stars. (Kline was awarded an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.)

The character and portrayal of Archie's wife, Wendy, by Maria Aitken, is superb. She absolutely nails the kind of highly educated, sharp-tongued, sharp-minded, upper-middle class English woman who can deflate a fool with words in less than a minute, and who will fearlessly attack those who wrong her.

The sub-text is perhaps that of hidebound British cultural norms contrasted with the apparent freedoms of the American way of life and the desirability of the exoticism of overseas cultures. This is explicitly bemoaned both by John Cleese's character, George's barrister (lawyer), Archie Leech, who is delighted by the refreshing directness of the American style of social interaction, and also by Otto, who despises English stereotypical reserve and diffidence as unmasculine. A lovely example is the contrast between the dull, middle-class bedtime ritual of Archie and his wife, Wendy, and the extravagant passionate foreplay of Otto and Wanda.

Another strand is that of the use of language. There is Ken, with his communication-impeding stutter, Otto, with his cod-Italian and his catch-phrases ("Asshole!" "What was the middle thing?" "Don't ever call me stupid."), Wanda, with her apparent ability to be sexually aroused by the sound of a foreign language, George, with his creative use of bad language, and Archie, whose job it is to speak in defence of criminals.

The only bum note, to my mind, is a moment, near the end, where Archie, the very English barrister, talking to Otto, impersonates in voice and mannerisms a larger-than-life character from the southern USA, thereby stretching audience credulity and surreptitiously breaking the fourth wall, allowing Cleese himself to break through with a little advertisement for the versatility of his own acting skills.

Apparently, according to Wikipedia, there is a reported case of somebody in a cinema actually dying of laughter while watching A Fish Called Wanda.

References

• Wikipedia: Modern deaths attributed to laughter
  

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• Director: Charles Crichton, John Cleese
• Writers: John Cleese, Charles Crichton
• Starring: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Tom Georgeson, Maria Aitken, Patricia Hayes, Geoffrey Palmer

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• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 27 May 2011
• Where seen: School
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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The Apartment (1960)

Movie-wise, there has never been anything like it - laugh-wise, love-wise, or otherwise-wise!

The Apartment (1960) would make an interesting double bill with The Seven Year Itch, directed by Billy Wilder only five years earlier. Both films share the theme of affairs between married men and single women in New York City, including that crucial month or two in the summer when it seems many wives and children escaped the heat of the city on extended summer vacations, leaving married men to their own devices.

The themes are similar, but the story-telling is at a different level of expertise. The Seven Year Itch was a leery cartoonish comedy that winked at the temptations confronting married men, mixed with a meta-discussion of the impact of sex symbols such as Marilyn Monroe, and the somewhat disturbing excesses of male fandom. In The Apartment, Wilder has progressed to a dramatic comedy grounded in believable characters, with life-changing outcomes at stake, a film with real emotional heft.

Ambitious young company employee, C.C. Baxter, is one face among many in the serried ranks of wage slaves in the cavernous financial department of Consolidated Life. an insurance company on the nineteenth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, and a long way back in the normal line of seniority for promotion to an office of his own, or even ultimately, a key to the executive washroom. But he has found a possible short-cut. As well as frequently working late as unpaid overtime, he finds that he can curry favour with a small stable of middle managers of less than impeccable morals, by loaning out his apartment to them for their clandestine trysts.

Trouble is, the popularity of this venue amongst the managers creates scheduling problems for Baxter, the late nights waiting for the all-clear take a toll on his health, and there is little time left for him to develop a private life. What's more, ironically, given his apparent monk-like existence, the loud carousing coming almost nightly, in his absence, from his apartment, and physical evidence of excessive alcohol consumption, has given Baxter the reputation with his neighbours, a stolid medical doctor and his wife, of being a philandering libertine. When he does manage to get time in the apartment himself, there is little for him to do but eat a solitary TV dinner and read himself to sleep.

The one ray of light in the desolation of Baxter's personal life is a sweet lovely young elevator operator, Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine). On the day that Baxter's extended deprivations seem to be having the desired outcome, he asks her out on a date. But she already has an appointment to meet someone, a high ranking executive at the company, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), a middle-aged family man, with whom she had an extended summer romance, and for whom she is nursing a broken heart.

The real theme of The Apartment is that of loneliness, primarily the loneliness of young single people in a big city. Baxter's loneliness manifests itself in his misguided desire for acceptance in the workplace, and the mistaken perception that his stable of managers like him because of the favours he does for them. On the contrary, the indications are that they dislike being beholden to him: they call him "buddy boy" in a way that suggests he is far from their buddy; they pressure him to give them time in his apartment even when it is clearly very inconvenient for him; they even give his home address out to someone who wishes him harm. Miss Kubelik's loneliness manifests itself in the affair she has had with a married man. But perhaps this affair is not surprising: if young single eligible men like Baxter are busy climbing corporate ladders, where else can she find affection?

Fran Kubelik has aspects in common with the other women in the story, and aspects that differentiate her from them. Like them, she has had an affair with a married man, but unlike them, although heart-broken, her nature is still unspoilt. By comparison, the other women appear coarse, that is to say, coarsened by experience, by repeated disappointment and loss of hope. From the blowsy switchboard operator to the ditzy Monroe lookalike/soundalike in the bar, these women seem to given up looking for lasting love and happiness, and are settling for temporary kicks. Then there's the lonely wife of the jailed jockey, actively seeking out male company on New Year's Eve, like a forlorn reflection of the plight of married men in the summer. She seems to still love her husband, but just needs someone to hold for the night. Maybe these married men had flings with their secretaries, switchboard operators, etc, not because they were cynical thrill seekers, but because they too in their way were lonely.

As for Baxter's middle-aged middle managers, they are a disappointing lot: "happily" married men cynically using the apartment for assignations with long-term mistresses and one-night stands. When they mistakenly get the idea that Baxter has bedded Miss Kubelik, they respond as if it were a challenging sporting achievement. Jeff Sheldrake, Miss Kubelik's ex-lover, however, seems to be a different kind of person, ready to do the right thing for the love of his life. His character is the key to the question of whether a single woman like Fran Kubelik is likely to find happiness with a married man.

Jack Lemmon's performance as Baxter is exemplary. Technically, he is magnificent. Which actor was it who said the best advice he ever got was to do (physical) things quickly, lighting up a cigarette, packing something away, whatever. These sequences of actions may be unavoidable, but dramatically, they are dead time, and it's vital to move on as fast as possible to other more dramatic events. Lemmon exemplifies this skills in various bits of business in the apartment: getting a TV dinner ready, cooking spaghetti, etc. Fortunately, briskness of action fits in well with Baxter's rather frenetic character. This nervousness combines with his characteristic optimistic cheeriness, like a mask, which counterpoints nicely with his essential loneliness. Just the sound of him in the kitchen, humming operatic snatches in a kind of desperately cheery way (according to Wikipedia improvised by Lemmon), are very poignant. The business with the tennis racket too is very good. It makes the otherwise mundane cooking process unusual and interesting to watch. It adds a slightly creative, kooky angle to Baxter's character. It's a good illustration of the kind of makeshift rough-and-ready domesticity of the single male in the kitchen.

Shirley MacLaine is wonderful in the role of Miss Kubelik, combining the unthreatening approachability of the girl-next-door with an adorable sunny sweetness, cuteness and specialness, so that the women in the audience will identify with her and want the best for her, and the men, identifying with Baxter, will want to be with her. MacMurray is fine as Sheldrake. There are some excellent supporting actors, including Dr Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) and Mrs Dreyfuss (Naomi Stevens), the switchboard operator, and especially, the jockey's wife.

In short, The Apartment is an exceptional dramatic comedy with great story, script, characters, and performances.

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• Director: Billy Wilder
• Writers: Billy Wilder, IAL Diamond
• Starring: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens, Edie Adams, Hope Holiday

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• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 6 July 2011
• Where seen: Home, on iPad
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961)

Audrey Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, the craziest heroine who ever crept between the pages of a best-selling novel!

Breakfast at Tiffany's, based on the novella (1958) by Truman Capote, is a romantic comedy drama with a very dark heart about identity, self-delusion and ambition in New York City, featuring a mesmerising central performance by Audrey Hepburn.

Holly Golightly (Hepburn) is a bubbly kooky glamorous fun-loving girl whose life seems to be constant swirl of nightclubs, late night parties and men. A handsome young author, Paul Varjak (George Peppard), moves into an apartment above, and is willingly drawn into the carousel of Holly's chaotic existence.

The stage is set for romance, or would be but for one small hurdle. Varjak has long-term writer's block and seems to subsist on handouts from a wealthy patroness, Emily Eustace Failenson (Patricia Neal), while Holly has set her sights on marrying a man rich enough to validate her current life-style, a millionaire, and puts a kind of magic ring-fence around Varjak, nicknaming him "Fred" after her older brother.

The two leads are likeable characters, and we wish them well. Will the fixedness of Holly's ambitions prevent her from finding true happiness? Will Varjak ever find sufficient lead for his pencil (actually ribbon for his typewriter)? As the story unfolds, the happy-go-lucky world of Holly Golightly begins to develop serious fault-lines, as the world-conquering self-image that she has created for herself becomes increasingly difficult to maintain against the intrusion of inconvenient prosaic realities from her present and past lives.

There are strong parallels between the two lead characters, relating to their sources of income, indicated early on in the story. In the small hours in the apartment building one night, escaping from an insistent drunken date, angry that the $50 "restroom attendant tip" he gave her has got him nothing in return, Holly slips up the fire escape to Varjak's window and sees Failenson inside, adjusting her clothes and leaving a $300 gift on the bedside table before exiting. Holly's main income, it can be inferred, is in the form of "gifts", money or otherwise, from men at clubs, where she presumably serves as some sort of escort or companion. Wikipedia's entry for Capote's novella states: "Holly Golightly (age 18-19) is a country girl turned New York café society girl, who makes her living as a companion to society's most prominent men." Varjak has had a book of short stories published, but nothing else recently, so it seems very doubtful that he could be getting sufficient royalties to pay for an apartment in Manhattan. Judging by the decor, it seems more likely that the apartment is provided for him by Failenson.

While watching, I suspected that Holly Golightly was a stand-in for Truman Capote himself, casting himself, metaphorically as an aspirational "media whore". Wikipedia, however, draws parallels between Golightly and Capote's mother, who carved out a new life for herself in New York City in a similar way to Golightly: "both left the husbands they married as teenagers and abandoned relatives they loved and were responsible for in order to make their way to New York City, and both achieved Cafe Society status through relationships with wealthier men".

The best thing about the film is the character of Holly Golightly, the glamorous tart rejecting her heart, and Hepburn's wonderful portrayal of her. Wikipedia says that Hepburn herself "regarded it as one of her most challenging roles, since she was an introvert required to play an extrovert", and also that Marilyn Monroe was first choice for the role, which would have been different, but also probably very effective. The great song "Moon River" by Henry Mancini was apparently written specially for the "limited vocal range" of Audrey Hepburn, whose singing of it, according to Wikipedia "helped composer Henry Mancini and lyricist Johnny Mercer win an Oscar for Best Song."

Peppard, by contrast, 33 years old at the time, was surely too old for the role. (Hepburn was 42 32, but always looked young for her age.) Admittedly, he does have the intelligence and sensitivity for the role, but to attract a rich sugar mummy, surely his character would need to be a slimmer, more handsome, more waifish younger man, a young Warren Beatty or Anthony Perkins, for instance, not this stolid buttoned-up suit-wearing type.

Sources:

• Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_(novella)
• Audrey Hepburn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Hepburn
• George Peppard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Peppard

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• Director: Blake Edwards
• Writers: George Axelrod (screenplay), Truman Capote (novella)
• Starring: Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Martin Balsam, Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen, Mickey Rooney, John McGiver, José Luis de Villalonga

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 2 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Following good comment from @anonymous, deleted "more waifish" from description of the young Warren Beatty. Added ranking image. Following comment by Wanderer, struck through the whole of last paragraph, which has been pretty much blown out of the water.

Funny Face (1957)

'S Wonderful! 'S Marvelous!

Here's a romantic musical comedy with the most promising ingredients:

• featuring winsome Audrey Hepburn in her first musical outing and legendary dancer Fred Astaire
• directed by Stanley Donen, uncrowned king of Hollywood musicals and director of the glorious classic "Singing in the Rain"
• music by George and Ira Gershwin
• choreography by Eugene Loring
• set in New York City and Paris

Sadly, what should be a light and airy soufflé turns out to be a bit of a pudding.

The film starts well enough with a sprightly musical dance title sequence in a modernistic Mondrian-like style, apparently designed by photographer Richard Avedon, in which Maggie Prescott (the fabulously talented Kay Thompson), editor of Quality fashion magazine, throws out the design for next month's edition, and demands a bold new look, all in pink. Lead photographer, Dick Avery (Astaire), a character apparently based on Richard Avedon himself, seeking inspiration in a Greenwich book shop, happens upon fashion-eschewing philosophy-loving sales assistant, Jo Stockton (Hepburn), and convinces Prescott that Stockton has the fresh new look the magazine needs. Stockton, though somewhat smitten with Avery following an impromptu kiss on the lips, is at first reluctant to be involved. But, on the strength of a free trip to Paris, where at last, in her free time, she can attend lectures by her idol, Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair), professor of empathicalism, she finally agrees to work as Quality magazine's featured model, and they all fly to Paris.

The setup is a bit like a fifties' version of The Devil Wears Prada (2006), with Hepburn pre-figuring Anne Hathaway's fashion-ambivalent journalist Andrea Sacks, and Thompson trailblazing the tyrannical reign of Meryl Streep's ruthless Runway magazine editor, Miranda Priestly. It is a setup with fantastic potential for subtly exploring issues relating to the role of women in the modern world via the conflicting external and internal forces acting on the character of Stockton, a woman who, rejecting conventional gender stereotyping and espousing the world of ideas, nevertheless, has temporarily agreed to compromise her ideals by working in the fashion industry.

A great setup, yes, but a very unsatisfying payoff, where the issues posed in the setup, even the relatively minor issue of the questionable value of fashion (which The Devil Wears Prada addresses very smartly), are pretty much left by the wayside. Instead (without dropping specific plot spoilers), Stockton's behaviour becomes irrationally, even selfishly capricious, leading to peculiar plot developments, all apparently serving to maintain the conventions of the genre. Could this lack of bite in the script have resulted from a failure of nerve when facing up to the popular modern monsters of feminism, intellectualism and anti-materialism?

Forgetting the film's questionable morals and character development, taking it purely in terms of entertainment, the film is simply rather dull. Despite being awarded a Golden Laurel nomination for "Top Male Musical Performance" at Cannes Film Festival (1957), to my unschooled eyes, Astaire seems rather subdued and does not really do anything very impressive in dance, except when pretending to be a French beatnik, and his singing isn't that great, either. My teenage daughter, who has had a good deal of dance training, commented that his dancing was boring. The songs by Gershwin are quite unmemorable. The view provided on the bohemian Left Bank culture looks stereotyped and unconvincing. That said, the Paris-based Bohemian dance numbers by Hepburn, Thompson and Astaire are pretty funny. The best performers are Hepburn who does a funny modern dance routine to express herself in a French dive, and her boss, the head of Quality magazine, who is a hugely entertaining dancer.

Astaire was terribly miscast. (According to Wikipedia, Hepburn insisted that he be cast. He had starred with his sister Adele in the stage version years before.) Hepburn was 28 but looked younger. Astaire was 58 and looked it, especially in his frequent cardigans, a 30-year age gap, too wide. There seemed to be no reason why she should fall for him, except that he took the liberty of kissing her on the lips a couple of times, and also that he was the one that saw her potential as a model and chose her for the magazine feature.

According to Wikipedia, only a year or so after the release of this film, the bottom fell out of the musical film genre, and Donen had to change to other kinds of work. On the evidence of this film, I'm not really surprised.

Sources:

• Stanley Donen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Donen
  

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• Director: Stanley Donen
• Writer: Leonard Gershe
• Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Kay Thompson, Michel Auclair, Robert Flemyng, Suzy Parker

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• Rating: Rental
• When seen: 22 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendment: Added ranking image.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

My private life is my own affair

In The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, an original story by Billy Wilder and co-writer, I. A. L. Diamond, the filmmakers slyly play with the familiar tropes of the great fictional detective and audience expectations, fashioning a tale at once classical in plot and characters but contemporary in vision.

The film kicks off with a very smart temporal bookend, set in a bank vault 50 years after the main action, in which a dust-covered, bound, sealed chest of Sherlock Holmes memorabilia belonging to Dr Watson is opened and, piece by piece, the contents revealed. First, the audience is reminded of the familiar elements of Sherlock Holmes' life - the deerstalker hat, the meerschaum pipe, the magnifying glass, the door number 221B, and so on. Second, a tantalising puzzle of novel or less familiar elements is introduced: a musical score entitled "for Ilse van H. Sherlock Holmes, comp.", a gold pocket watch containing the photograph of an attractive young woman, a ring fronted with the initials "SH" hiding a miniature magnetic compass, a medical syringe, a snow globe featuring a bust of Queen Victoria, and a sheaf of papers entitled "To my heirs", from which a ghostly Dr Watson narrates. After mentioning the 60 or so published accounts of Sherlock Holmes' cases, he continues, "But there were other adventures which, for reasons of discretion, I have decided to withhold from the public until this much later date. They involve matters of a delicate and sometimes scandalous nature, as will shortly become apparent…".

The story switches back 50 years to Holmes (Robert Stephens) and Watson (Colin Blakely) returning to their shared Baker Street flat, and to an immediate puncturing of some less modern aspects (the habit of wearing a cloak and deerstalker hat) of the familiar Sherlock Holmes stereotype, and the reinforcing of some other ostensibly more modernistic elements (the interest in music, the use of recreational drugs), with Holmes waxing irate at the public's inaccurate image of him, foisted on him by Watson's use of poetic licence when reporting his "simple exercises in logic" and the publisher's erroneous illustrations. Holmes also protests that Watson has falsely characterised him as a misogynist - he does not dislike women, merely mistrusts them - thereby introducing another of the more modernistic themes of the film: Holmes's sexuality.

Nowadays, if two unmarried men share a flat and one writes consistently glowing reports of the other's exploits, people might reasonably wonder about the nature of their personal relationship. Wikipedia reports that "Holmes is not known to have had any relations with women" whereas Watson was married in some stories. In a minor plot thread involving an ageing Russian prima ballerina (Tamara Toumanova) on the point of retirement, the script writers have some fun playing with the notion that Holmes might have been gay. Holmes is summoned to the side of the ballerina, and only manages to avoid a proposal to father her first child, in exchange for a precious Stradivarius violin, by pretending to be in a relationship with Dr Watson. Watson's conventional panic about what people will think of him highlights Holmes' amused and urbane response, adding to his status as a man socially, as well as intellectually, ahead of his time.

Now into the film comes a damsel in distress, Gabrielle Valladon (Geneviève Page), a beautiful woman with a foreign accent and a missing husband, and the story takes on more of the elements of a standard Sherlock Holmes mystery, including cages of canaries, disappearing circus midgets, monks sworn to silence, odd goings-on in the ruins of a Scottish castle and even sightings of a Loch Ness monster.

The scriptwriters continue to have fun with Holmes' sex life, allowing him to provide a rationale for his distrust of women, and placing him in various interesting juxtapositions - and let's be honest, temptations - with his new client, Valladon, including full-on nudity and the semblance of domestic married bliss. Early on, at the Baker Street flat, for example, Valladon, mentally confused after a recent near drowning and apparently thinking herself in her own home and mistaking Holmes for her husband, wanders around unashamedly in a state of undress and attempts to embrace him. Later on, to mask their true identities, Holmes and Valladon pretend to be a married couple, with Watson as their valet, leading to interesting developments in the bedroom.

In any case, by the end of the film, the significance of the items pulled out of Dr Watson's chest should be quite clear and questions about Holmes' choice of relationships feel satisfactorily resolved.

Turning to performances: as the great consulting detective, Robert Stephens, his features suitably angular, is really pretty convincing. With voice and body language, he conveys a background of sufficient social and educational privilege and the required intellectual arrogance, and with just a hint of arch campness, introduces the shadow of a doubt. Colin Blakely plays Watson very conventionally, as is right, to emphasise Holmes' uniqueness; Geneviève Page is just right as Holmes' client, lovely and loveable; and Christopher Lee is very sinister as Mycroft. Of the supporting actors, Irene Handl gives a wonderful performance as Mrs Hudson, Holmes' landlady.

This film would make a good double bill with John Huston's classic The Maltese Falcon (1939).

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• Director: Billy Wilder
• Writers: I. A. L. Diamond, Billy Wilder
• Starring: Robert Stephens, Geneviève Page, Colin Blakely, Christopher Lee, Irene Handl, Clive Revill, Tamara Toumanova, Stanley Holloway

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 27 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home, on iPad
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Added ranking image.

Groundhog Day (1993)

He's having the worst day of his life... over and over...

This is a wonderfully entertaining romantic comedy in which a clever fantasy premise is exploited to the full by a really sharp script, supported by exemplary performances, and underpinned by a subtext of real substance.

The film poses the question, "What would you do if you got stuck in a time loop, and were condemned to relive the same day, over and over again?" Would it be a curse or a blessing? Scriptwriters Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis take obnoxiously jaded TV weather reporter, Phil Connors (Bill Murray), with accompanying producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell) and cameraman, Larry (Chris Elliott), and drop him into small-town hell. For Phil's fourth year running, he is being sent to report from the otherwise unremarkable town of Punxutawney, Pennsylvania, on the February 2nd tradition of using a burrowing animal, the eponymous groundhog, a sort of over-grown hamster, to predict the weather, and the accompanying goofily energetic celebrations that grip the townspeople.

February 2nd, our first day in Punxutawney introduces us, at least tangentially, to most of the characters and locations that we will be revisiting in the rest of the film. Phil, painted as a cynical pessimist, a "glass is half empty" kind of guy, dismisses the enthusiastic Rita as "fun, but not my kind of fun", cold shoulders the rather nerdy Larry, and sneers at the small town antics of the townspeople and their ignorance of more fashionable ways of life in the metropolis. Forget about being able to get an espresso or cappuccino, they don't even know how to spell the words!

The following morning, Phil is subjected to a second performance of the previous day, but finds that he is the only person aware that the day is repeating, in a kind of nightmarishly extended deja vu. As he continues to wake up, at 6.00 a.m. morning after morning, on the same day, February 2nd, he goes through the full gamut of responses to the situation, ranging from scepticism, confusion and disbelief to panic, stoicism and darkest despair, all to no avail. Although he can behave as a free agent, no matter what he does, he can't escape this loop in time.

Quickly figuring out the parameters of the situation, Phil realises that when time loops, effectively, there are no social consequences, no retribution for selfish, immoral or illegal actions, and he begins to "game" the system. This aspect of the film is highly entertaining, as day-by-day, Phil cynically accumulates knowledge in order to exploit other people and gain material things and experiences, and various scenarios mutate and extrapolate in different ways, some of them laugh out loud funny. It is only when he realises and tries to win his heart's desire that his system breaks down, and things get very interesting.

The cinematography is not flashy, but in some scenes the visuals and audio are used in quite sophisticated ways to subliminally enhance the emotional impact, with the filmmakers subtly distorting spacial dimensions and/or soundscapes. For example, to create an eerie "deja vu" effect when Phil returns to Gobblers Knob, the little park with the bandstand, the music is slightly distorted with a chilling echo effect. Later too, when in extreme close-up the clock numerals on Phil's hotel alarm clock change from 05.59 to 06.00 a.m., the audio effect is amplified, heightening the dreadful inevitability Phil feels. And apparently the dimensions of Phil's hotel room were changed to increase feelings of claustrophobia and alienation.

Speaking of alienation, Brian Aldiss, one of the later breed of science fiction writers mining inner space (people's psyches) rather than outer space, successfully created an objective rationale for alienation in the short story "Man In His Time" (1965). The idea in this story is that planets have their own time zones and that planet-hopping astronauts may return to us physically but remain separated from us temporally, even, in the case of the protagonist of this story, finding himself experiencing everything an awkward three minutes ahead of his wife and colleagues. Likewise, Groundhog Day is an elegantly realised externalisation of inner space through a time-travel or alternate dimension paradigm, encapsulating the whole breadth of human emotion and attitude to life. For all that it is a comedy, at its centre, I would say Groundhog Day is a story about human depression and despair and our responses to that human predicament. The title has entered the vernacular as short-hand for a tedious repetitive (working) experience.

Turning to the performances, Bill Murray puts in a great performance, typically minimal, and credible across a wide range of character traits, from warm-hearted and loving to coolly obnoxious to clinically depressed. I hadn't given Andie MacDowell much credit, but on second thoughts, she is an excellent foil for Murray, and functions as the story's moral and emotional compass, guiding the audience via her reactions to Phil. As Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson said about Michelle Monaghan's performance in Duncan Jones's similarly themed Source Code (2011), MacDowell is able to overcome the inherent difficulties in a role with a lot of repetition, keeping her performance feeling fresh and spontaneous.

It is not only the leads who give good performances. A host of actors with small roles provide outstanding supporting performances. Stephen Tobolowsky is gorgeously obnoxious as the insurance salesman and Marita Geraghty is stunningly ditzy. Given only the verbal equivalent of post-it notes, Angela Paton, Brenda Pickleman, Robin Duke and Rick Overton, to name but a few, are all brilliantly effective in making their points.

Exceptional films like this remind us that, like good dramas, good comedies turn out to be about something substantial. I tell my students that we can derive two morals from this film: 1) It's up to you what you make of your time (your day) on earth, so spend your time wisely; 2) If you want to win a person's love, you need to make yourself loveable.

Postscript (30.05.11): I've been reading "How to Read a Film" by James Monaco, and this has reminded me of the filmic writing of Alain Robbe-Grillet. It occurs to me now that the literary equivalent of Groundhog Day is Robbe-Grillet's novel "Jealousy" (1957), in which the same scenes are revisited again and again, with new twists and false trails and dead ends and backtracks and insights, in the mind of a man suspicious that his wife may be having an affair.

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 14 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• Filmspotting #342

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Corrected "Quickly figuring out the parameters of situation" to "Quickly figuring out the parameters of the situation". Added ranking image.

Desk Set (1957)

Make the office a wonderful place to love in!

Desk Set is a smart romantic office-based comedy starring the legendary on-screen/off-screen couple, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and an interesting man (or in this case, woman) vs. machine theme, with a sly twist of woman vs. man thrown in.

Miss "Bunny" Watson (Hepburn) is the operational head of the Reference Department of a large corporation (the fictional Federal Broadcasting Network, it says on Wikipedia), where she oversees a small team of women researchers, fending a host of queries by phone. Watson has moulded her researchers into a capable and productive team, and she herself is stunningly encyclopaedic in her knowledge. Into this smoothly-running department comes a mystery consultant assigned by top management, Richard Sumner (Tracy), a self-effacing tight-lipped but strangely likeable character who spends his time poking into obscure corners, measuring things with his tape measure, and crawling around on the floor with a piece of chalk. He turns out to be an efficiency expert, or "methods engineer" as he puts it, whose work in the Accounts Department is rumoured to have resulted in the installation of a new computer system, and a large number of workers losing their jobs. As one would expect, such rumours lead to high anxiety among the Reference Department staff, particularly as, because of a possible upcoming merger deal, Sumner has been sworn to secrecy by the top brass as to his true goals within the department.

There are some very enjoyable scenes, including one where Sumner, hoping to prove to Watson how useful a computerised reference system would be, tests her with the sort of questions that computers are very good at but most humans are rather poor at, with interesting results. Another excellent scene pits the women in the reference department against a computerised system, like a modern version of John Henry, the legendary railway worker who pitted his skills against a mechanical steam hammer (or drill, depending on the source [Wikipedia: John Henry (folklore)]).

As for the romantic angle, Watson is in a long-term relationship with her immediate boss, titular head of the department, Mike Cutler (Gig Young), and as the film begins, is waiting for her invitation to accompany him to some upcoming key social event. There is more than a little anxiety on her part due to the length of their relationship, and the way he seems to take her for granted. Sumner's arrival introduces an interesting twist. Watson is unexpectedly asked out to lunch by Sumner, and there is a little flutter of excitement at a potential rival suitor, though the lunch engagement turns out very differently to how Watson imagines.

For those familiar with the genre of romantic comedies (and who is not?), there is little suspense to be had here, but a great deal of pleasure in watching the easy interplay between the two leads in their familiar double act (they first teamed 15 years earlier, according to Wikipedia), with Tracy playing the quiet straight man, the understated foil, to Hepburn's high intensity comic. Of course, as often happened in the old Hollywood studio system with its stables of highly charismatic and capable but ageing stars, Tracy and Hepburn are too old for their roles. The role of Watson would be best suited to someone in her late thirties, at a guess, while Hepburn was a decade older, and Tracy was in his mid-fifties at the time of filming. Perhaps this is partly why Hepburn ramps her performance up to such high levels of energy, simulating youthful vigour and joie de vivre.

Viewed as a group, the women represent a cline of romantic options in the office environment. At one extreme is the fresh young recruit, Ruthie (Sue Randall), so green she has to ask how far you can go with male co-workers at office parties (the unwritten rule being, apparently, whatever you can get away with without having to lock the door). At the peak of her powers is Sylvia (Dina Merill), still young and confident that she can have her choice of men, (it is she who pins a sprig of mistletoe to the inside of the department door so that she can nab any good-looking men on entry). Further along is Watson, older and on the border of hope and despair, languishing in an excessively long and uncommitted relationship with her immediate boss and worried that, like a dependable old suit of clothes that he knows will be waiting for him at the back of the closet, he might tire of her and pass her over for a younger woman. Finally, at the end of the road is Watson's best buddy, Peg (Joan Blondell), more mature, not quite so attractive, perhaps, who describes herself as having passed the point of no return, and is now on the shelf with no hope of romantic salvation.

This all begs the question of why the men should seem to have all the initiative in romantic relationships, severely disadvantaging the women, and leads on more generally to the issue of equality in the workplace. The script clearly establishes that Watson is the brains of the department, with Cutler exploiting their relationship to get her to help him with his work, which he then takes credit for. The women are clearly on relatively low salaries, with Ruthie struggling to find an affordable party dress, and even Watson having insufficient funds in hand to repay a co-worker ten dollars until another colleague repays her loan of five dollars, putting them almost at the level of the office errand boy, happy to be able to extract another five dollars in tips with their advice.

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 16 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_(folklore)
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Hepburn)

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Delicatessen (1991)

A futuristic comic feast

Surreal expressionistic vision, as in The City Of Lost Children (1995), surprising and interesting in its fantastic story and weird visuals; enjoyably so. The Radio Times compares the vision to that of David Lynch or Terry Gilliam.

The protagonist, Louison (Dominique Pinon), is an unlikely but engaging and endearing character. The other characters are amusingly grotesque.

There are some very funny moments, such as when the butcher and wife's love-making is echoed by everyone in the building; also, when the protagonist and the butcher's wife test the bedsprings in a synchronised rhythmic dance-like sequence, echoing the previous love-making sequence; and when Louison comes to tea with the butcher's short-sighted daughter, Julie, who decides not to wear her glasses.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 2 May 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Adaptation (2002)

Charlie Kaufman writes the way he lives... With Great Difficulty. His Twin Brother Donald Lives the way he writes... with foolish abandon. Susan writes about life... But can't live it. John's life is a book... Waiting to be adapted. One story... Four Lives... A million ways it can end.

Adaptation is a wonderfully cerebral, ultimately solipsistic journey, the filmic version of a Cubist or Futurist painting from the early 20th century. I say Cubist and Futurist because artists like Pablo Picasso (Le guitarist, 1910) and Marcel Duchamp (Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912), though working in a two dimensional plane, found a way to include the third dimension, giving an all-round view of an scene, and in doing so, managed to incorporate the fourth dimension, time: the time needed to move round exploring a scene from different angles. Likewise, the makers of Adaptation take the story of a New York journalist's fascination with a remarkable Florida botanist, and incorporate the process of bringing the story to screen, which becomes its own story, the story of an obsessed screenwriter's agonised struggle to achieve artistic resolution. This self-reflectivity forms a plot of fantastically convoluted knobbly structure, like the surface of the screenwriter's brain.

The first few minutes of this film are quite disconcerting, as it seems as if we are going to watch a documentary, with the actor John Malkovich appearing as himself. But then when Nicholas Cage appears as Charlie Kaufman, a real life screenwriter trying to adapt The Orchid Thief, a book by Susan Orlean, played by Meryl Streep, we realise that the story is more complex than that, using a range of time-shifting techniques, both flash-backs and flash-forwards, and of voice-overs by Kaufman.

Using the structural conceit of twin screenwriting brothers, each following very different paths, one commercial, the other artistic, the filmmakers are able to have their cake and eat it, so to speak, that is, to have a product that is eminently artistic and cerebral, but also includes mainstream elements of dramatic conflict, danger, violence, action, sex, drugs, etc.

The three leads are brilliant. You can't help but admire Nicolas Cage and Chris Cooper for playing characters quite far from the norms of physical attractiveness. Cage is excellent as the sweaty, balding, overweight, anxious, obsessed Charlie Kaufman, and his twin brother and budding screenwriter Donald. Cooper is also great as the botanist Laroche, played throughout as a man missing his two upper front teeth. Streep is very good as the New Yorker magazine writer shadowing Cooper's character. The supporting cast is very good, with Brian Cox notable as a charismatic writing coach.

The film is a meditation on the creation of itself, and of the obstacles in creating something or adapting something that will be true to life... or not. Within its genre (solipsistic self-referential fiction), Adaptation is an exceptional example, culminating, if I understood the plot correctly, in a perfect exclusionary circle of self. The end credits finish with special thanks to the real-life people whose fictionalised characters we have been watching, bringing the story full circle back into reality.

In his intensity and passion and scorn for the easy well-trodden but temptingly well-paid commercial route, the central character of the film, the screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, is reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp: "Following his maxim never to repeat himself, Duchamp "stopped" painting (1923) after 20 works and devoted himself largely to the game of chess." (Source: Idiom.com) We can only hope that Kaufman does not follow the same career path too closely.

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 23 Mar 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

It's Complicated (2009)

Divorced... with benefits.

I wouldn't normally have chosen to watch this film. It was lent to me, impromptu, by a colleague with whom I had been talking - positively - about Meryl Streep, praising her for her ability to pull off strongly contrastring roles in Mama Mia and Doubt. But then I thought, why not give it a spin: Xanthe and I can watch it on Valentine's Day!

So, it's clearly a chick flick - which is to say a film proceeding within or alongside a set of audience expectations relating to the loose conventions of the romantic comedy genre - but with such well-seasoned protagonists, definitely one for middle-aged chicks. I have mixed feelings about the film, but it does have some strong comic moments.

The plot plays with an interesting premise: given the opportunity to have a second chance at a relationship with your ex-husband or wife, who previously left you for a much younger partner (to whom they are still married), what happens? Where does happiness lie? Is it with the old familiar partner or might a new love interest win out?

Meryl Streep is in Mama Mia rather than Doubt mode: laughing, smiling, twinkling, chortling, cavorting; doing her winsome best to keep the proceedings light and frothy.

Alec Baldwin very good value as the ex-husband. Steve Martin, the new man on Streep's horizon, looking strangely well-preserved, so that Xanthe was sure he'd had some "work" done, especially as this was an topic raised early in the plot.

The attitude towards physical love-making is quite positive: two key protagonists get very excited about all the great sex they are having and behave very impulsively. By contrast, the young people in the film are all nicely dressed and behave quite demurely.

I was annoyed by the "Greek chorus" of girlfriends Streep's character, Jane, gets together with on occasion, who presumably function partly as our on-screen surrogates (or is it peers?), egging her on. Likewise, I felt that her therapist took a wrong turn in their meeting, in a way that stretched credibility.

The wealth of the main protagonists rather reduced for me the urgency of their personal stakes. At times I felt I couldn't care less about the petty emotional issues of such well-to-do, over-fed people.

Xanthe and I were stunned at the size and opulence of Streep character's home and garden, and couldn't understand why she needed to extend the building, which already seemed quite large enough. We also wondered where the money to pay for it all was coming from. I had thought she was just an employee at the bakery where she worked, but to have acquired so much disposable income, she must surely have been the proprietor.

• Rating: Matinee
• When seen: 14 Feb 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994)

He's quite engaging. She's otherwise engaged.

Such a successful romantic tragi-comedy. Really funny, moving, emotionally credible. A breakout success that paved the way in the US market for a rush of other British films.

Remarkable how no backstory is given for the characters. Yet we believe in them as a strange social group. The plot cleverly excludes almost all references to the world of work, so the characters exist in a pure world of social relationships.

The WH Auden poem, Stop All The Clocks, is a real highpoint. I saw it on the day of a colleague's funeral, and wept.

Such a good performance by Hugh Grant - probably the key to film's success. Also of course Kristen Scott Thomas. Not to mention the gay couple Simon Callow and John Hannah. And McDowell is fine, if less desirable, ultimately, than Scott Thomas, who is luminous, rivettingly (regally?) fine and intelligent.

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 17 Dec 2010
• Where seen: School
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: added actor tags: "Simon Callow, James Fleet, Rowan Atkinson, John Hannah, David Bower, Charlotte Coleman". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

Zombieland (2010)

Survival rule#4: Don't be a hero.

Delightful start! Very good script, smart funny, scary at times. Cool use of over image titles, and voice over, surprisingly. Performances by the two male leads in particular are excellent.

There is also a substantial sub-text that works very well, about alienation, loneliness, suspicion of others, but desire for love and friends and family and belonging.

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 21 Dec 2010
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Amendments: Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.

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