This Gun For Hire (1942)

Lover without a heart...killer without a conscience!

Incredibly efficient opening, establishing Alan Ladd’s character, Philip Raven, as a probable hired killer about to set off on a mission. Within the first few minutes, the boundaries of his character's moral code, and his natural sympathies, are defined by the choices he makes, in a rapid succession of encounters with a kitten, a woman who is mean to the kitten, Raven's intended victim, the attractive young female companion of his intended victim, and a little handicapped girl. Who or what will he kill, hurt or treat well? (Raven's relationship with the kitten is reminiscent of the character-defining opening scene in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, with Elliott Gould’s modern Philip Marlowe.)

Although a youthful Veronika Lake, playing stage performer Ellen Graham, rightly has top billing as the central protagonist (in itself quite amazing in a male dominated genre), the "male gaze" is very much on view here. Certainly, with her slim figure, long wavy white blonde hair (happily without the later trademark curtain over one eye) and exquisite facial features, Lake is a great beauty worthy of our gaze, but her character is much more. In a stunning entrance, she shows that beyond her good looks, she is an expert magician, a smart comedienne and a gifted singer (in reality dubbed by Martha Mears) - a real professional. Like a prototype Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner in TV spy series Alias - Google it!), she is well regarded enough to be recruited by the government for espionage work. She is clearly no dumb blonde, and principled and courageous enough to put herself in danger working undercover to sniff out a traitor selling state secrets.

How ironic it is then that her boyfriend, Michael Crane (Robert Preston), a Californian police detective, puts to her a marriage proposal couched in terms essentially indistinguishable from an offer of domestic slavery, and protests against her intention to do one last job, as her role from now on will be to put all her efforts into staying at home, serving and caring for him. This underlines Keith Hopper's theory (lecture at St Clare's, Oxford, 2014) that the key subtext of film noir is one of gender, of a tension between the former domestic role of women and the new reality of independent workers who had staffed the work places while men were abroad during the Second World War.

Interestingly, at least initially, Raven does not turn his "male" gaze upon Lake; we have already seen what turns him on! Although Lake is top billed, it is Ladd's character who has the film's key developmental arc, and really, it is his character and his character's relationship with Lake's character, that is of greatest interest, though Laird Gregar is excellent as Raven's cowardly employer, Willard Gates. (Would his childhood friends have called him "Bill Gates"?) This very credible and ultimately sympathetic performance really is a stunning debut by Ladd. In supporting roles, Tully Marshall and Marc Lawrence are also very good.

N.B. Is Ladd's portrayal of Raven the prototype for Alain Delon’s assassin in Le Samurai? I have to confess that I found that film disappointingly dull. Ladd, by contrast, sizzles in this, apparently his first starring role. Frank Tuttle (director) and Ladd show how it is done. [Trivia: Isn’t Frank Tuttle the heroic plumber character played by Robert DeNiro in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil?]

Compared to the excessively lengthy productions of today (think of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit, dividing a single book into three 3-hour films), in a masterclass of economy of story-telling, the total running time of This Gun For Hire is 80 minutes!

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• Director: Frank Tuttle
• Writers: Albert Maltz and W. R. Burnett, based on This Gun for Sale by Graham Greene
• Starring: Veronika Lake, Alan Ladd, Laird Gregar, Robert Preston, Tully Marshall, Marc Lawrence

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 24 Jan 2014
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Appaloosa (2008)

Feelings get you killed.

This is a very fine adaptation of the western novel Appaloosa (2005) by the late great Robert B. Parker, famed for his tough smart modern day private detectives (Spenser and Randall) and lawman (Stone).

In this story, professional gunmen Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), who have been working as a team for a decade, are hired to bring order to the lawless town of Appaloosa. The town is being terrorised by local rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), who murdered the previous marshall and deputies.

The deal Cole makes with the city council is straightforward. As City Marshall, Cole lays down the law; people comply or are arrested; if they resist arrest, he shoots them or Hitch shoots them. Cole embodies the law; effectively, he IS the law. Beyond their obvious expertise with weapons, Cole and Hitch maintain the law by their public willingness to put their lives on the line. Facing a large group of armed men attempting to break a prisoner out of jail, for instance, Cole's stated readiness to die and to kill while dying breaks the resolve of the gang leaders.

Cole and Hitch are extraordinarily tough, pragmatic, straight-talking straight-shooting guys, laconic in the extreme, living according to strict codes of honour; supermen in a man's world. But into this world comes now a glamorous seductive flirty femme fatale, a beautiful piano-playing widow, Mrs Allie French (Renée Zellweger). Hitch spots her first, but she sets her cap at uber-male Cole. Hitch withdraws, but the stage is set for a difficult triangle, resting on one big question: what moral code, if any, does this woman live by, and will it be sufficient to keep her out of trouble?

I have read the source novel, and as far as I recall, the film sticks pretty close to plot of the book, and ably catches the distinctive unhurried pace and the flavour of the iconic characters of the main protagonists. The book is very filmic anyway, in the spare style Parker uses, with little description, mainly action and dialogue. "Stoic" is the word RottenTomatoes gives to the main characters, and that's right. That also means their actions are all very restrained, and their dilemmas are played out in a very understated low-key way, by inference, bizarrely, rather like a restrained social drama such as "Remains of the Day" (Merchant & Ivory, 1993).

Ed Harris is perfectly cast in the central role of Virgil Cole, believably tough and laconic, embarrassed at his limited vocabulary, which he constantly attempts to improve by reading books. Mortensen is very good as Harris's sidekick and Jeremy Irons is excellent in the role of the murderous rancher Bragg.

Unlike Ebert who says, 'Zellweger is powerfully fetching in this role,' the main fly in the ointment for me is Zellweger in the role of Allie French, the woman who takes up with Ed Harris' character. The quality of her acting is not in question, it's just that she seems miscast as a femme fatale. The role requires a woman able to bewitch and enthral men. I'm sorry to be ungallant, but in this particular film she simply isn't attractive enough, certainly not as attractive as the character in the book. In every respect she fits the part, except for her face, which inexplicably looks abnormally swollen.

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• Director: Ed Harris
• Writers: Robert Knott and Ed Harris (screenplay), Robert B Parker (novel, 2005)
• Starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall, Lance Henriksen, Luce Rains, Tom Bower, Girard Swan, Ariadna Gil

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 09 Apr 2010, 01 August 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Barton Fink (1991)

Between Heaven and Hell There's Always Hollywood!

What a strange unsettling film, in tone, like a Mervyn Peake gothic fantasy novel, full of strange, compelling, appalling, disgusting details.

In 1941, a New York playwright, the eponymous Barton Fink (John Turturro), following his first major theatrical success, goes to Hollywood to begin writing under contract "for the pictures". He moves into a room at a downbeat hotel, Hotel Earle, and, in the sweltering heat, sets up his typewriter. He is asked to write "a simple wrestling picture" vehicle for the actor Wallace Beery (a real actor of the time, who we understandably never see) but appearing to have virtually no knowledge or experience of the movies, suffers from writer's block, and struggles to get past the opening paragraph.

He becomes distracted by noises from other rooms, including that of his immediate neighbour, travelling insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), a cheery if slightly troubled character, and features within his room, including the wallpaper, and a photo of a girl in a bikini, with her back to us, on a beach. Essentially, he seems to fall into a trance in which details of people, objects and events take on a hallucinogenically mesmerising intensity, which the Coen brothers brilliantly convey.

Apart from his neighbour, and a permanently quizzical hotel employee, Chet (Steve Buscemi), he meets a handful of strange Hollywood executives including his employer, the larger-than-life head of Capitol Pictures, Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) and his grovelling assistant, Lou Breeze (Jon Polito), and the film's producer, Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), who sends him for advice to a legendary but aggressively alcoholic older writer, W.P. "Bill" Mayhew (John Mahoney), and his alluring secretary, Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis), who, along with Fink's neighbour, Charlie, pass for the nearest thing to normal in this distorted world.

Fink is an odd but sympathetic character, clearly driven by good intentions. He waxes lyrical in defence of "the common man", but more in the abstract than in the flesh, ironically but endearingly turning a deaf ear to the travails of actual working class people such as his neighbour, Charlie.

As distractions mount and deadlines loom, the fulcrum on which this story turns is the question of whether or not Fink will be able to meet his contractual duties and come up with an acceptable script.

The film is not comfortable viewing but compelling. There are stretches where the action drags a bit, but there are also some very dramatic stretches. Overall, it is a fine externalisation of the internal landscape of psychosis or mental breakdown, roughly parable in theme and scope to 2011's "Take Shelter", where Michael Shannon's protagonist wrestles with a similar rupture in the barrier separating fantasy from reality.

The cast is uniformly excellent, notably Turturro in the central role (two years later shining in a quite different supporting role in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski, 1993), Goodman as the good-naturedly supportive if troubled "regular guy", and Lerner as the archetypal Hollywood executive.

Not one of my favourite Coen brothers' films, but on repeat viewing, a very creditable work.

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• Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
• Writers: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
• Starring: John Turturro, John Goodman, Michael Lerner, Judy Davis, John Mahoney, Steve Buscemi, Tony Shalhoub, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 10 Apr 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Departures (2008)

The gift of last memories

Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) just manages to land his dream job as cellist in a classical orchestra in Tokyo, Japan, when the orchestra is disbanded. Forced to sell his hugely expensive professional cello, he gives up on his idea of being a musician, and he and his young wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), return to live for free in his late mother's house in his old hometown, where he falls into a well-paid job, cash up front, though not at all the job he thought was being advertised, but one with high social stigma.

Without revealing Daigo's actual job title, suffice it to say that the backbone of the film is the question of whether or not Daigo will continue with the job. Will he tell his wife the true nature of the job? Will he be able to withstand pressure from others to give the job up? Will he come to like the job or find it too distasteful? Quite a lot of the film details the duties involved in the job. Through Daigo, we get to know both the gut-wrenching parts of the job, and also the emotionally uplifting power of work well done.

This is a rather sweet, quiet, melancholy film, with moments of gentle humour and much real pathos. Much of the emotional impact of the film is doubtless cued by the music, classical pieces, cleverly included diagetically via the playing of Daigo himself.

The script, by Kundo Koyama, is on a par, say, with Colin Higgins' script for Harold and Maude, and the direction, by Yojiro Takita, is immaculate. Wikipedia says that both the lead actor and the director did significant research in preparing before the filming. Motoki is superb in the lead role, and among the main supporting actors, Tsutomu Yamazaki is extremely impressive as Daigo's boss. Other notable players are Kimiko Yo, as his colleague, and Kazuko Yoshiyuki and Takashi Sasano, respectively, owner and long-term customer of a local "sento" bath house.

The story addresses important issues relating to family ties and the social and personal worth of normally stigmatised jobs. There are some very poignant scenes (some involving stones!) and the air in my viewing room did rather fill up with dust towards the end.

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• Director: Yojiro Takita
• Writer: Kundo Koyama
• Starring: Masahiro Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kimiko Yo, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Takashi Sasano

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• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 13 Jun 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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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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The Grey (2012)

Live or Die on This Day

Seven survivors of a plane wreck somewhere between an isolated oil refinery in Alaska and civilisation find themselves in a desolate freezing snowy windswept landscape, with no hope of rescue, and under threat from a large pack of ferocious wolves. Luckily, wolf-expert and salaried protector of the oil workers from dangerous animals, John Otway (Liam Neeson), who we have seen shoot an attacking wolf at the start of the film, is among the survivors.

This is a fine film, about endeavour and courage and tenacity and despair, and about accepting death and letting go of life, and about the puniness of humans lost in a wilderness when pitted against the terrible overwhelming forces of nature, as exemplified here by the wolves, as at least one critic said.

As Neeson's character says at the outset, the group is made up of outcasts and renegades and no-hopers, without much immediate charm. Some of the characters are overtly annoying or unsympathetic. Somehow, though, we come to care about the fate of each of them.

There is a clever use of wallets as almost spiritual icons standing for the characters, and providing glimpses of the inner man.

Very effective use of flashbacks / daydreams, where people are brutally wrenched back from idyllic reveries into the nightmarish present.

Neeson does an excellent job as a man without hope and of uncertain faith who nevertheless finds himself the group's main hope of survival.

My wife commented that the technology used to portray the wolves was not quite as invisible and so convincing as it might have been, but in my opinion, the strength of the script and the quality of the acting and the stunning location work easily make up for any failings in the realisation of the "monsters".

There are tears along the way.

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• Director: Joe Carnahan
• Writers: Joe Carnahan, Ian MacKenzie Jeffers
• Starring: Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, James Badge Dale

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 26 May 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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My Life Without Me (2003)

On receipt of news of terminal illness, there are perhaps four key choices that any of us would have to make:

1. On receipt of such news, in the short term, how would we choose to respond, say, by going to pieces or by remaining calm?
2. Who, if anyone, would we choose to share the news with? Family? Friends?
3. How would we choose to spend our remaining days? Would we spend our time putting our affairs in order or, exploiting a release from future consequences, throw caution to the wind and fill our time with wild debauchery?
4. Where would we choose to die?

"My Life Without Me" is the story of Ann (Sarah Polley), a young Canadian mother of two living in straitened circumstances in a mobile trailer home in her mother's (Deborah Harry) back yard, who goes to the doctor with symptoms of early pregnancy (nausea, stomach cramps and so on) only to learn that she has an inoperable tumour and has at most two or three months left to live. If this sounds like the premise of a traditional weepy, a sentimental drama "based on a true story", well, certainly for Ann the stakes could not be any higher. There is strong emotional content in the film, but the emotions are true emotions, and muted more often than amplified, and the high quality of the acting and direction lifts the story above clichéd dramatics to a level of apparent realism and authenticity.

In response to the news of her imminent death, rather than going all to pieces, Ann responds in an admirably level-headed way. Seeking to maximise the time she has left, she makes out a list of things to do before she dies. It is the nature of this "To Do" list, and the other choices she makes in response to the news that make this story compelling, particularly given the particular circumstances of her life, which emerge during the course of the film.

The lynchpin of the film is the performance of Polley, and she is totally believable in the role, portraying a young woman of intelligence, courage, determination and heart. She is so good with the girls who play her daughters (Jessica Amlee, Kenya Jo Kennedy) that it's hard to believe she is not their mother in real life. The supporting cast is uniformly good: Julian Richings as the doctor, Scott Speedman and especially Mark Ruffalo, respectively, Ann's husband and Ann's admirer, Deborah Harry and Alfred Molina as Ann's parents, Amanda Plummer, Leonor Watling, and Maria de Medeiros as Ann's friends, neighbours, co-workers, acquaintances.

The script is intelligent and the direction is unostentatious. The story is based on the book "Pretending the Bed Is a Raft" by Nanci Kincaid, and the scene where Anne acts out with the girls on the bed being on a raft, beset by dangers of different kinds, is a wonderful scene, one that as a parent I envy, like the scene in Crash (2004) where the admirably resourceful Daniel (Michael Peña) calms his daughter's fears of neighbourhood drive-by shootings with the invention of an invisible bullet-proof fairy cloak.

References

• Wikipedia: Crash (2004 film)

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• Director: Isabel Coixet
• Writers: Isabel Coixet, Nanci Kincaid
• Starring: Sarah Polley, Scott Speedman, Mark Ruffalo, Deborah Harry, Amanda Plummer, Leonor Watling, Maria de Medeiros, Julian Richings, Alfred Molina

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 17 Aug 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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The Wrong Man (1956)

An innocent man has nothing to fear.

The Wrong Man (1956) is an interesting split-genre film, in which a procedural crime mystery morphs into a psychological drama, like a trial run for Psycho (1960).

This film, according to Wikipedia, based very closely on a true story, is a study how of an ordinary working family man in New York City, accused of being a hold-up robber, becomes deeply embroiled in the US legal system.

The title, The Wrong Man, suggests a case of mistaken identity, but the opening scenes, in which we meet the protagonist, Manny (Henry Fonda) introduce small fragments of doubt. Manny is shown to be a quiet sober man with a steady job as a musician in a nightclub, a loving husband and beloved father to two young boys. Manny's wife, Rose (Vera Miles), needing expensive dental treatment, despairs of their constant struggle to make ends meet, but Manny reminds her of all the good things in their life, and reassures her that, in the short term, they can borrow money on her life insurance policy, like they did before on his life insurance policy, and that, in the long term, things will somehow work out all right.

So far so good: Manny seems to be satisfied with his lot. But when he opens his evening paper, his eyes are drawn to advertisements for luxury products, well beyond his means, promoted aspirationally as improving the quality of family life, and he turns from these to the horse racing form pages where he starts making notes in the margins, in the way that nowadays in the UK many working people with dreams of sudden wealth turn to the lottery or scratch cards. Could Manny be less honest than he seems? Could he have a secret vice? Where is he going to get the money for Rose's operation?

That afternoon, at the insurance office, Manny, with his wife's insurance policy in his pocket, dressed like almost all the men in this film in dark suit and tie, overcoat and hat, enters and is "recognised" as the man who held up the office the previous month.

Most of the rest of the film is a Kafkaesque nightmare (Kafka's The Trial, 1925, is the ultimate fictional legal conundrum, where the protagonist, K, can't even determine what crime he is being charged with) in which Manny is led through a judicial process where the labyrinthine progress of the legal machinery is so inexorable and inflexible and inhuman that circumstantial evidence is sufficient to point the finger of guilt and protestations of innocence are routine, making a mockery of the film's tagline, "An innocent man has nothing to fear".

Arrested outside his house, Manny is interviewed by detectives, then subjected to a series of witness and other types of identity tests, each of which seems to be technically flawed in some way, then formally charged and inducted into the US legal system. The filmmakers take care to show in precise detail the steps in the process, and how clinically de-humanising the process is. With an array of witnesses and other evidence positioned against him, as the detectives point out, it all looks very bad for Manny. If he cannot find cast-iron alibis, it seems that he will be found guilty.

I imagine Hitchcock was attracted to this true story partly because of its Kafkaesque aspect, but mainly because of the other, more overtly psychological, aspect, which comes in the final reel, in which the prospect of a physical prison gives way to the horror of a metaphorical mental prison, a prison of ideas, a theme which will be explored more thrillingly in the film Psycho.

Fonda, with his back catalogue of likeable honest characters, e.g. Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), is brilliantly cast in a role calling for a person audiences of the time would have assumed was innocent. His performance is very understated, like a blank that the audience can project themselves into. Interesting to read in his Wikipedia entry that, unlike daughter Jane, schooled in the Stanislavski / Strasberg Method, he was an intuitive actor without conscious technique. As for age, as is so common in the old Hollywood contract system, he was a good deal older than his character, a 51-year old playing 38. Vera Miles handles her role very well, nicely underplaying the dramatic challenges.

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References

• Wikipedia: Henry Fonda
• Wikipedia: Method acting

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• Director: Alfred Hitchcock
• Writers: Maxwell Anderson, Angus MacPhail
• Starring: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle, Harold Stone, Charles Cooper

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 11 Aug 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Creation (2009)

How he saw the world changed it forever

Creation (2009) may not have done very well at the box office, and had mixed reviews, but I found it extremely moving. The importance of the theory of evolution of species through natural selection is hugely important in our modern world, and the story of the man who travelled the world in his youth, and then spent 20 years developing the theory into a well-substantiated, carefully-articulated explanation of the story of life is of great interest.

According to Wikipedia, the story is factually based, being an adaptation of the book "Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution" by Darwin's great-great grandson, Randal Keynes. The title of the book gives the key to this film's interpretation, the story hinging on Darwin's relationship with his daughter, Annie, who died young.

The plot zig-zags between two key periods in Darwin's life: the course of the illness of Darwin's oldest and much beloved child, Annie, and a later period of time, when Darwin's work should have been reaching fruition, but finds him paralysed by a number of things, effectively stifling his scientific output. During this period Darwin's suffered chronic ill health, and was in conflict with his wife, Emma, a devout Christian, about the direction of his work. He was also wracked with guilt about the death of his child, Annie. Annie appears to him, as a kind of ghostly companion, with whom he converses. As Darwin listens to animal breeders, who speak knowledgeably about the frequent casualties incurred when mating closely related animals together in order to select desired inheritable characteristics, he comes to realise that Annie's illness may not have been random in origin, but may have its roots in the very nature of his and Emma's family closeness: being first cousins before marriage.

As the two story-lines develop, Darwin comes under increasing pressure from outside, and also, internally, shown partly through sleeping and waking dreams and visions, particularly of Annie, whose life-like presence becomes increasingly harder for Darwin to tolerate. Others may have disliked the device of Darwin interacting with Annie's ghost, but I thought it worked on many levels. For him to fully reject Christianity would mean necessarily losing the last vestige of her, her spirit. We also see the loving relationship Darwin enjoyed in former times with his wife, Emma, contrasted with the frosty alienation in the later period.

The performances by Bettany and Connelly (real life husband and wife) are superb, perfectly embodying the conflict and crisis in the Darwin family. Bettany brilliantly portrays the pain of conflict of a man whose intellectual discoveries bring him increasingly into conflict with local community life and his family's religious traditions and beliefs. Connelly personifies a devout woman bitterly at odds with her husband's beliefs. Nice performances too from Martha West (Annie), the talented Benedict Cumberbatch and Toby Jones (Darwin's scientific colleagues, Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Huxley), Jeremy Northam (Reverend John Brodie-Innes, the local vicar).

Interesting how the content of the film is ostensibly about one key scientific domain, the theory of evolution, but how the real subject is one of psychology: how Darwin is being paralysed and made physically ill by his own subconscious (an entity he himself sneeringly dismisses) and the subconscious guilt he feels for the death of his daughter, Annie, and how the film's climax takes the form of a psychological release relating to the expiation of guilt, and voicing of subconscious or largely unspoken fears between he and his wife.

As a coda, in connection with the publication of Darwin's book (On the Origin of Species, 1859), one has to wonder at the casualness of the postal service of the day, and remark how, with a single catastrophic jolt from a stone under the wheel of a post cart, our understanding of the living world around us, and ourselves, might have been terribly impoverished.

According to Wikipedia, Darwin's theory of evolution is still so controversial in the USA, outside the intellectual strongholds of the West and East coasts, that it took months of lobbying to find a distributor. Quote from Wikipedia: "According to producer Jeremy Thomas, the United States was one of the last countries to find a distributor due to the prominence of the Creation-evolution controversy. Thomas said: "It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There's still a great belief that He [God] made the world in six days. It's quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and Los Angeles, religion rules."

I think one stumbling block is that many people take the word "theory" to mean untested "hypothesis" or notion, something that still very much that needs to be verified. But in science, a theory is a much stronger entity. It is an explanation that has to fit in with verifiable facts, and has to be framed so that it can be shown to be false. But though many have argued against Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, nobody has been able to falsify it on genuine evidence-based scientific rational grounds, only on religious grounds. Of course, it is a work in progress, but subsequent evidence of carbon-dating and discoveries in genetics, including the role of DNA in the cells as biological blueprints, all support Darwin's great idea. To date, addressing the question of life on Earth, and taking into account huge mountains of evidence, it is the best explanation we have.

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References

• Wikipedia: Theory

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• Director: Jon Amiel
• Writers: John Collee (based on the book "Annie's Box: Charles Darwin, His Daughter and Human Evolution" by Darwin's great-great grandson, Randal Keynes)
• Starring: Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly, Jeremy Northam, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bill Paterson, Jim Carter

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 30 Jul 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using TextWrangler and HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

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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Mother (Madeo) (2009)

She'll stop at nothing.

"Mother" is an unusual character-based murder mystery set in modern day South Korea and featuring a superb performance by Kim Hye-ja, the actress playing the title character, a single mother of a mentally backward, memory-impaired, young man of 28 years of age accused of killing a local school girl. Finding precious little support from the law, Hye-ja, desperate to identify the real perpetrator, is herself forced to turn amateur detective.

The story begins with the son, Do-joon (Won Bin), being led into a needlessly violent confrontation with a group of elderly people by his best friend, Jin-tae (Ku Jin). Later, at the police station, facing a sizeable fine for criminal damage, Jin-tae exploits Do-joon's foggy recollection of the event to trick him into taking the rap. Of course, it is Do-joon's mother, Hye-ja (Kim Hye-ja), who will have to try to find the money to pay the fine from her meagre income as a herb seller and unlicensed acupuncturist. Later, when the body of the school girl is found, and the finger of suspicion points to Do-joon, based on circumstantial evidence (possibly planted by Jin-tae), Hye-ja begins a solitary struggle on behalf of her son.

Stripped to its essence, and in the hands of lesser filmmakers, perhaps, this would be just another stock genre murder mystery with an amateur sleuth. But the sly way the story is set up by director, Bong Joon-ho, and screenplay writer, Park Eun-kyo, edging the mother unexpectedly into the role of investigator, is so fresh and clever in its execution that it seems quite novel.

The script is brilliant, with the plot taking various surprising turns. People are not always what they seem at first, and there are some unsettling reveals. Along the way, a harsh light is shone on the investigative powers of the police and the moral fibre of the legal representatives, not to mention the cruel world of Korean schoolchildren, and there are episodes of strong suspense and violence. An intriguing secondary mystery clouds the nature of the relationship between two important characters. Is the one still a small child in the eyes of the other, or is something less savoury involved? Perhaps I missed some vital clues, but in my mind this puzzle was only satisfactorily resolved days after watching the film.

The script is great, but best of all is the outstanding performance by Kim Hye-Ja as the mother, a master class in method acting, her incredibly expressive face able to communicate a range of conflicting emotions within a matter of seconds. The enigmatic temporal bookends in which she features linger in the memory. Very good performances as well by Jin Goo and Won Bin as the two young men.

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• Director: Bong Joon-ho
• Writers: Bong Joon-ho, Park Eun-kyo
• Starring: Kim Hye-ja, Bin Won, Ku Jin, Yoon Jae-Moon, Mi-sun Jun, Young-Suck Lee, Sae-Beauk Song, Mun-hee Na, Woo-hee Chun, Byoung-Soon Kim

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• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 6 May 2011
• Where seen: Home
• 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.

True Grit (1969)

The strangest trio ever to track a killer.

A very enjoyable character-based western, directed by Henry Hathaway, and notable for the remarkable strength of will and general audaciousness of its female protagonist, teenager Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), who propels herself into a brutal male-dominated world of violence and death. As in the Coen brothers' 2010 remake, Mattie embarks on a quest to bring her father's murderer to justice with the help of two very different law enforcers, a grizzled hard-drinking US Marshall, Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne), and a charismatic young Texas ranger, La Boeuf (Glen Campbell).

This 1969 film has more back story than the Coen brothers' remake, introducing Mattie and her father, Frank Ross (John Pickard), at home, and showing the context of the murder and the murder itself. From then on the plot follows fairly similar paths, driven by Mattie and her mission. Finding that the local sheriff has no jurisdiction in the Indian Territory to which the murderer, Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey), has fled, Mattie, on her own initiative, hires the meanest licensed federal law officer she can find, Cogburn. La Boeuf also turns out also to be in pursuit of Chaney, for an earlier crime, and in fairly short order, Mattie, Cogburn and La Boeuf enter Indian Territory all bent on the same goal.

As in the Coen brothers' version, the main delight of the film is Mattie Ross herself: the way she interacts with the range of people she encounters and the character of her responses to events. She is an amazing person, only 14 years old but clever and audacious, whose personal courage and readiness to engage in violent action, as the story develops, is tested to the extreme. Perhaps in those days (1880 according to Wikipedia, not that long ago really, around the time my father's grandfather was running around in short trousers), children were less sheltered. Near the start of the film, the filmmakers deliberately show how public executions were treated by many townspeople as a fun day out, with snacks for sale, and small children apparently free to mingle with the watching crowds, and even, from their playground swings opposite the town square, getting the best views.

Hathaway permits his young protagonist more emotion than the Coen brothers do. He shows, from the outset, how Mattie is taken with La Boeuf and briefly shows her crying (privately) over her late father's possessions. Possibly related to this, but less satisfactorily, is the use of the musical score, which to modern ears seems rather unsubtle at times.

Another delight, of course, is the debauched but doughty character of Cogburn and the great performance of Wayne (despite being 20 years or so older than the character in the book, he received an Academy Award for Best Actor), contrasting strongly with the characters of the strictly brought up Mattie and straight-arrow La Boeuf. According to Wikipedia, Wayne did his own stunts, including the final jump.

There's so much fun to be had, especially, in the first reel, in Mattie's interactions with other characters. When she comes into conflict with La Boeuf, their brief flirting turns to verbal sparring, and she stands up to him just fine, as she does with everyone else. Her dealings with the horse dealer, Col. G. Stonehill (an outstanding performance by Strother Martin), show her to be a wonderfully feisty resourceful person.

Speaking of supporting characters, others of note include Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper, who play their roles relatively sympathetically, showing that criminals are more than simple monsters.

My only criticism is that Glen Campbell, hand-picked by Wayne, according to Wikipedia, seemed too old for the role (he was 33), or not quite vulnerable and good-looking enough for Mattie to take a shine to him, or maybe just not an expressive enough actor. I never felt there was any chemistry between the two of them.

Sources:

• Glen Campbell: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Campbell

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• Director: Henry Hathaway
• Writers: Marguerite Roberts (screenplay), Charles Portis (novel)
• Starring: John Wayne, Kim Darby, Glen Campbell, Robert Duvall, Jeff Corey, Dennis Hopper, Strother Martin, John Fiedler

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 26 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: corrected some links. 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.

Amadeus (1984)

Amadeus. The man. The music. The magic. The madness. The murder. The mystery. The motion picture.

Who could make a film about the life of a dead white European classical music composer that would be anything but worthy and dull? Peter Shaffer and Milos Forman, that's who. Adapted from Shaffer's stageplay, Amadeus (the middle name of Wolfgang Mozart) is a highly entertaining film, a wonderful portrayal of creative genius and the feelings of people around a creative genius, positive and negative, and a very effective dramatic packaging of the music of Mozart.

In Vienna, Austria, in the late 1700s, Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones), a rather dull-witted but enthusiastic and well-meaning, if undiscriminating, patron of music, is surrounded by a group of master musicians, with vested interest in maintaining their influence over him. Into their midst comes the young hugely gifted composer and performer, Mozart (Tom Hulce), whose brilliance, to their annoyance, far outshines anyone else's. The current leading light, Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), finding himself beginning to be eclipsed by this new star, begins a secret "dirty-tricks" campaign against Mozart, while at the same time pretending to work on Mozart's behalf.

The story is structured as a series of flashbacks, narrated to an incredulous priest by an apparently victorious, aged wheelchair-bound Salieri, incarcerated in a madhouse, and fixated on the idea that, many years ago, he murdered Mozart. Telling the story mainly from Salieri's point of view is a very effective device. Unlike the rest of his contemporaries, apparently, Salieri has the capacity to fully appreciate the beauty of Mozart's music and the seemingly superhuman power of his genius, is transported by the music, flooded with admiration for the ability to create it. Through Salieri, we, the audience, are brought to feel a similar appreciation. What Salieri, and to an extent, we, the audience, cannot understand is why a person of such obvious personal failings as this arrogant crass immature youth should be chosen to be the vessel of (divine) inspiration, rather than a more deserving recipient, such as himself. Viewing Mozart through Salieri's twin emotional filters of admiration and jealousy intensifies our appreciation of Mozart's genius.

As well as providing an excellent way to view the genius of Mozart and an appreciation of his music, Salieri's jealousy of Mozart provides the engine that drives the story forward. Paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes' remark to Dr Watson about mediocrity, Salieri's tragedy is that he has the talent to recognise genius in others, but not the talent to create genius in himself. In so far as Salieri cannot possess that which he loves best, he will be compelled to act to destroy it, and these actions provide the trials that beset Mozart and start to take their toll on his career and his family life. With regard to historical accuracy, according to Wikipedia, in order to heighten the dramatic thrust of the story, Shaffer used a large measure of artistic licence, pretty well inventing Salieri's dirty tricks campaign and even tampering with Mozart's character, making him more childlike in his personal life than he probably was.

Whatever the case as regards historical accuracy, this is a really enjoyable film that succeeds in dramatising musical genius with a compelling story and a masterful script. The staging of the musical numbers is terrific. The choice of an all-American cast was apparently controversial at the time, but did not bother me, maybe because I'm half-American myself. Amongst a host of excellent performances, including Hulce, with his signature giggle, in the title role (Wikipedia says Hulce is thought to have based his performance partly on the character of the irascible tennis player John McEnroe), and Jones as the slightly dimwitted Emperor, the performance by F. Murray Abraham as Mozart's nemesis, Salieri, is simply outstanding. Interestingly, both Hulce and Abraham were nominated for Best Actor Oscars; Abraham won. The film also won seven other Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 7 Apr 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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

Two Rode Together (1961)

TOGETHER...THEY RODE INTO A THOUSAND DANGERS!

John Ford's earlier film, The Searchers (1956), dug deep into the psyche of one man, Ethan Edwards' (John Wayne), obsessive and increasingly conflicted search for the niece stolen years before by native American tribespeople. This film moves the discussion on, unearthing wider social aspects of the issue. Can children or adults taken prisoner by native American tribes be successfully returned to "civilised" society? What if they don't want to be rescued? What problems will returnees face in reintegrating into society? Underlying these questions is the more basic issue of the nature of the immigrants' attitudes to native Americans. Consider cultural invasions by other groups of immigrants at other times and places in history, and the resultant subjugation and marginalisation of the indigenous peoples, and the nature of these attitudes is easy to predict. I read on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche) that just a decade or so previous to this story (1880s), the Commanches had agreed to move into a reservation on the government's promise to protect the buffalo herds, but the government had failed to keep up their end of the bargain, and at the time of this story, "the buffalo were on the verge of extinction, effectively ending the Comanche way of life as hunters".

The film opens rather leisurely, setting up the contrasting characters of the two leads, in many ways the personifications of private enterprise and state-sponsored aid in the USA, who ironically will contract to "ride together". James Stewart's elegantly attired US Marshal Guthrie McCabe, luxuriating in debauched affluence on 10% of the town's business, is shown to be driven by venal self-interest, and has to be tricked and coerced into acting on behalf of others. By contrast, Richard Widmark's standardly uniformed low paid US Army Lieutenant Jim Gary is the epitome of honourable selflessness.

The action shifts to a US Army fort on the edge of Indian territory where an encampment of hopeful parents and siblings awaits. Their view of Stewart as a saviour figure, the man most likely to be able to rescue long-lost family members due to his history of successful dealings with Commanche Chief Quanah Parker (Henry Brandon), contrasts ironically with his efforts to extract money from them. Without disclosing specific plot-spoilers, can I say that already there are pre-figurings of the torrent of ignorance and fear and revulsion, driven by demonisation of the unknown "other", that will later sweep through the immigrant encampment, blindly seeking retribution and revenge, and not drying up until the life of at least one person has been carried away.

I was somewhat bemused by the way, early on, the film dwelt on Stewart's hostility to the woman in his life, Belle Aragon (Annelle Hayes), until I realised that attitude to romantic partner in general, and matrimony in particular, was being used as a metaphor for degree of social commitment, with Stewart's antipathy contrasting with Widmark's willingness.

In the second reel, Stewart and Widmark enter Indian territory, and the realities of the captives' situations becomes apparent. Ford is known for his relatively even-handed attitude to native Americans, and his depiction of them in this film is of special interest. Overall, I would say, Ford paints a reasonably fair, if harsh, picture of Commanche culture and peoples. If anything, the Commanches emerge with greater honour than any other social group. Unlike some other directors of westerns, as I recall, Ford employed actual native Americans. In this film, however, Henry Brandon and Woody Strode, the actors playing the key native American roles, were not native American.

Again without revealing specific plot spoilers of a key scene, mention must be made of the masterful exposition during the film's final act of the kind of obstacles faced by ex-captives of the Commanches hindering their reintegration into society. The bottom line for the immigrants, it is revealed, is the conviction that confronted by a future as a "squaw", as the wife of a native American and all that entails, the only honourable option for a woman is to take her own life. And every look and twitch of body language thrown their way lets the survivors know that, in choosing life, they have become objects of shame and disgust.

There are two elements of the film that are not entirely successful. First, the use of whimsy. Ford has a habit of using whimsy, in interstitial scenes and in certain supporting characters. In this film, the estimable Andy Devine is the butt of various verbal and visual size-related jokes. Harry Carey Jr and his screen brother figure in some routines based on foolishness peripheral to the main themes. Ford is using whimsy like cheery neon signs designed to lure reluctant viewers into a jolly amusement arcade until they turn a corner and find themselves in the middle of somewhere much more dark and dangerous and interesting. The assumption that entertainment must always equal fun is false, insults the intelligence of the viewer, and so ends up being counter-productive.

Second, the casting. Linda Cristal, who will go on to co-star in the TV show Bonanza, is very good, as are most of the rest of the supporting cast, notably Annelle Hayes as Belle Aragon, John McIntire as Widmark's superior officer, and Henry Brandon and Woody Strode as the two key native Americans. Jeanette Nolan is terrific as the most notably distressed mother. Shirley Jones is all right but seemed a bit old for the part, as do both Widmark and Stewart, by as much as a couple of decades, a common fault to my mind with the old Hollywood studio system, with its stables of ageing stars.

Despite arguably excessive maturity, Widmark is entirely believable and likeable as the upright military officer, playing it naturalistic and low key, his character's integrity and honour never in question. When you consider the kind of extremely psychotic characters he played at the start of his film career (notably in Kiss of Death, 1947), this is quite a feat. For the role of McCabe, the epitome of self-interest, what's needed is someone likeable but unpredictable and with a dark side to him, someone with inner conflict, to keep the audience guessing as to the moral choices he will end up making. Stewart, surprisingly, given his brilliance in similar roles in films by Anthony Mann (e.g. The Naked Spur, 1953) somehow mainly fails to convince, possibly due to poor scripting, possibly due to lack of belief in the role, possibly due to poor technique. The trouble seems to be that, especially in certain key scenes in the first and second reels such as the scene where he demands payment for his services or the one where he gets drunk, where the film tries to establish the corruptness or wildness of his character, he plays the part much larger than is required, unconvincingly large. In the third reel, however, where his character has strong points to make, there is a return to form. Perhaps if Widmark and Stewart had switched roles, Widmark would have been more convincing as the corrupt jaded lawman that the audience hopes will prove to have a heart of gold.

While watching the first two thirds of the film, I thought it was a very below average Ford movie. However, given the strong final reel, and considering how well the film exposes anti-native American prejudice in the West, I like it enough to raise its ranking to high matinee / low full price (3.5/5).

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 31 Mar 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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

The Karate Kid (2010)

A Challenge He Never Imagined. A Teacher He Never Expected.

Long, but very good. The new film keeps to the same general plotline of the old film, with neat twists to the iconic moments. What's great about the storyline is that the main characters' stakes are strong and clear from the outset (except of course for the mystery about why Kung Fu master Chan is content to work as a handyman). There's a similar story arc, as I think the Spill Crew or maybe the Filmspotting guys said, as Rocky (1976): boy loses respect of peers, boy trains hard, boy gains respect of peers by excelling in competition. Or is it, more generally, boy is taken over by fear, boy trains to battle fear, boy battles and conquers fear.

In any case, the stakes are high: Smith must cope with bullies who have no mercy and can't be avoided.

Jackie Chan, in particular, is excellent, with real gravitas, a little like Beat Takeshi. Jaden Smith, in the lead role, also does very well; the girl, WenWen Han, is very cute, and the romantic sub-plot is well handled; the rest of the cast is good.

The action sequences are very well handled. As Mark Kermode (if I remember right) pointed out, however, the violence to Smith in the first and final reels is pretty extreme, and the script writer's have to stretch credulity to allow Chan and Smith's mother to permit Smith to fight on despite very serious injury.

In the end, does it matter if the martial art is not karate, but kung fu?

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 15 Aug 2010
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Amendments: "As Mark Kermode (if remember right)" corrected to "As Mark Kermode (if I remember right)". Removed link to Wikipedia-sourced image. Added ranking image.