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

Posted from my MacBook Pro with the assistance of TextWrangler

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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Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France...

A terrific film in almost every aspect: story, characters, script, direction and acting. After the doldrums of Kill Bill 1 (2003) (so disappointing that I couldn't bring myself to see Kill Bill 2, 2004) and the IQ-lowering Death Proof (2007), this is a welcome return by Quentin Tarantino to the kind of brilliance displayed in the earlier work, Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), that inspired a generation of young film-makers. According to Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglourious_Basterds], the first draft of the script was written in 1998, before Kill Bill and Death Proof. It seems the script went through some significant changes along the way, so hopefully this current return to form is not limited to projects from his back catalogue but is a pointer to the future.

The story is set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, in a kind of alternate universe where the fixed historical realities of our world do not apply. The plot essentially centres around an Allied mission to assassinate a number of prominent Nazi government officials at a film premiere. The Basterds of the title are a volunteer group of Nazi-hating American soldiers, headed by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), working clandestinely behind enemy lines to instill fear into the hearts and minds of Nazi soldiers through acts of ruthless savagery, consciously creating a word-of-mouth reputation of mythical terror that can strike with impunity, anywhere, anytime. The other characters include French Jews, notably Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), either in hiding or striving to maintain a false public identity; a magnificently skillful Jew-hunting "national security" SD officer, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz); an equally perceptive Gestapo officer, Major Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl); a British secret agent with fluent German, Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender); and German film star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

As well as these principal characters, there are a good number of ordinary German soldiers and civilians. With the premise of the Basterds' mission being that it is fine to kill Nazis, interestingly, these "ordinary" Germans are written and played not as cartoonish caricatures, but as fully realised, rounded, sometimes likeable, even in some cases admirable human beings. I found myself wondering what part if any these people would have played in the atrocities committed by their government. Did they all deserve a grisly fate, or were some just soldiers at war, patriotic as any people at war might be about their country? The mission of the Basterds, to kill all Nazis, seemed harsh to my modern eyes, if the term "Nazi" includes normal German people caught up in a war not of their own making.

The film is a showcase for and a discussion of Hitchcock's famous formula for suspense (Hitchcock/Truffaut, 1985, by François Truffaut, Simon and Schuster, see also Themes and plot devices in the films of Alfred Hitchcock) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Themes_and_plot_devices_in_the_films_of_Alfred_Hitchcock], in which, as I understand it, explaining how to create suspense, Hitchcock describes a scenario where two people are talking in a room with a bomb under the table. In order to create suspense, Hitchcock explained, the audience needs to know about the bomb. If the audience doesn't know about the bomb, and the bomb goes off, it will be a surprise but nothing more. It is with the knowledge of the existence of bomb, that in the minds of the audience, over time, suspense can be built. In fact, the longer the bomb does not go off, the greater the suspense. In Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino puts metaphorical bombs under a lot of tables, and tells the audience about many of them. As the audience spend time with the participants, the metaphorical bomb under the table raises the level of the stakes (the perceived value of the outcome) for each participant, and correspondingly, ratchets up feelings of suspense.

Amusingly, in one key scene, Tarantino reverses the formula, so that for most of the scene, while the participants know, or suspect, that there's a non-literal bomb under the table, the audience is only later told of its existence, though, from the demeanour of the characters, the audience will rightly suspect that something is amiss but not quite know what. This is more like the Hemingway edict, if memory serves, consciously trialled in the short story "A Clean Well-lighted Place" (1926), where a tragic event is never explicitly stated, that you don't need to explicitly include the main event driving the plot, e.g. the climactic suicide, as its occurrence will be active in more or less subtle ways in other parts of the story, like the invisible parts of the iceberg that hit the Titanic. (For interesting discussion of alternatives to Hitchcock's classic formula for suspense, see "Building a Better Bomb: The Alternatives to Suspense" Peet Gelderblom, 19 October 2008, [http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/?p=2030])

The other edict Tarantino seems to follow (one for which I can't find a reference online, and would welcome one) is that, films being essentially a sequence of scenes, if a filmmaker aims to make a great film, it must include half a dozen or so really great scenes, which Basterds does. Where Tarantino excels, in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Inglourious Basterds, is in setting up (physically) fairly static scenarios marked by really kick-ass dialogue. The dialogue, in itself, is often concerned with apparently mundane topics, such as pop culture, food and drink, but nevertheless, because of clear conflict of interests and high stakes (such as a figurative bomb under a table which the audience is well aware of), Tarantino's scenarios are full of suspense. One scene in particular in Inglourious Basterds, full of pleasantries about a family's health and the quality of drink on offer, parallels the technique used by Hemingway in the superb short story "The Killers" (1927), where the menace of two gangsters waiting in a restaurant to murder another character is mainly conveyed through the most banal exchanges, largely relating to the availability - or rather lack of availability - of food, but covering a potential for great violence.

The script includes some nice interplay between art and life, where one character, interacting with another character in person and also able to see that character in a fictive role on screen, is undone when the response to the fictive role supersedes that of the real person, fatally attributing the fictive character's motivation to the real person. While watching this film-within-a-film, which seems to be little more than a series of back-to-back killings, appreciated hugely, for the wrong reasons, by the kind of people most of us would not wish to be associated with, I thought it a neat commentary (inadvertent or not) on the poverty of interest of pure action films such as Kill Bill 1, to my mind is more like a test run of action sequences than a fully-fledged storied film. My brother, Rob, however, suggested that this partially glimpsed film sounded more like a Nazi version of the biopic, Sergeant York (1941) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergeant_York], for which Gary Cooper won a Best Actor Oscar in the title role, which follows a similar plot-line, or alternatively, To Hell and Back (1955) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Hell_and_Back_(film)], starring Audie Murphie as himself, another film about a WWII expert marksman who single-handedly takes on a large number of enemy soldiers.

As for the performances, as a director, Tarantino must be doing something very right, as he has assembled a brilliant cast and got fantastic performances by almost everyone. Of particular note are:

• Christoph Waltz, superb as the character of the charming "national security" officer and rightly received various prestigious awards, including "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe, as well as (confusingly), Best Leading Actor at Cannes
• August Diehl as the Gestapo officer in the beer cellar
• Michael Fassbinder as a British secret agent
• Diane Kruger as a German film star
• Mélanie Laurent as a French Jew
• Daniel Brühl as a German hero

The only slight question mark in my mind hangs over Brad Pitt's portrayal of First Lieutenant Raine, leader of the Basterds. It's a difficult role, with little shading to it, and he plays it with a good deal of swagger, like an old-fashioned swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks or (American) Errol Flynn, mixed with the ruthlessness of a military Clark Gable or a mercenary Lee Marvin. My reservation is that his portrayal, or at least the camera's representation of his portrayal, does not take us into his thought processes, resulting in a person without depth of feeling beyond the actions required, so it's tricky to judge whether or not he is a trustworthy guide to the rights and wrongs of dealing with Nazis. Is he a good man who has embraced a distasteful but essential duty, or a cheerfully heartless executioner? Trying to think of another actor for the role, Sam Shepherd as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983), comes to mind as having the requisite phlegmatic unflappability and toughness and machismo. There's a quiet intelligence behind the eyes there that Pitt doesn't seem to attempt.

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• Director: Quention Tarantino
• Writer: Quention Tarantino
• Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, Eli Roth

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• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 24 Jun 2011
• Where seen: Home
• 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.

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.

The best science fiction movie...

Over on the Linkedin website, in the Movie Addicts discussion group, Michael Gericke posed the question "Science Fiction - What's the best movie?" Although it's not a movie commentary as such, I'd like to re-post my answer here, somewhat amended.

As the notion of "best" here is clearly subjective, it's not really possible to arrive at a definitive answer. That given, my vote would go to Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), probably the most far-reaching SF movie ever in ambition of ideas and brilliance of technique, though its intellectual "coldness" may put many people off.

My second vote would probably go to Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) which was hugely influential and which I can watch again and again. As well as the brilliant scenes where replicant androids are tested for emotional responsiveness, I especially love the scene where Deckard, using speech navigation on his home computer, finds a crucial clue in a photo, zooming in beyond all belief.

Here are some other contenders, organised by topic:

• Best noir-inflected: Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville;
• Best robots/androids: Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running, Paul Verhoeven's Robocop, John Cameron's The Terminator / T2, and again Ridley Scott's Blade Runner; Brad Bird's The Iron Giant;
• Best aliens: Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still, Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth, Ridley Scott's Alien, Steven Spielberg's E.T,, Close Encounters of the Third Kind;
• Best action-packed: Andy & Larry Wachowski's The Matrix, James Cameron's Aliens and The Terminator / T2, John McTiernan's Predator, Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall, John Carpenter's The Thing;
• Best social satire: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Stanley Kubrik's A Clockwork Orange;
• Best paranoia: Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris
• Best humour: John Carpenter's Dark Star, Stanley Kubrik's Dr Strangelove;
• Best special effects (at the time): Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man, Stanley Kubrik's 2001, Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park; James Cameron's Avatar

N.B. I referred to an excellent book: The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies, John Scalzi (2005)

Source Code (2011)

Make Every Second Count.

Source Code is an intelligent suspenseful science fiction thriller with a clever script and excellent performances.

The premise of the story, like an updated version of Groundhog Day (1993) for the attention deficit generation, repeatedly casts the central protagonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) back into a single 8-minute period of time on a speeding train. Groundhog Day's weatherman Phil Connors' comparatively leisurely 24 hours are compressed into the high pressure intensity of Gyllenhaal's character's situation, and the minor misadventures and personal tragedies punctuating small town life in Punxutawney are upgraded to kick-ass action sequences and life-threatening explosions.

Like Gyllenhaal's character, the audience is thrown right from the very start of the film into a very confusing situation, and a large part of the fun for the audience is working out, in parallel with him, why he is there and what the heck is going on. Like Groundhog Day, more fun is then had exploring the parameters of the situation, introducing permutations, and learning how to "game" or otherwise exploit the situation.

Without dropping any specific plot spoilers, and without getting into questions of strict scientific legitimacy, I can say that for me the story develops and concludes very satisfyingly. Geeky types like me, familiar with the standard tropes of time travel fiction, will probably see a key plot revelation coming quite a long way off, but the difficulty of avoiding a degree of predictability is a problem common to all popular genres and not a major criticism.

If there is anything that doesn't work so well for me, it is a recurring story thread of a person Gyllenhaal's character needs to contact. Somehow, this seemed tacked on, not intrinsic but as if it was intended to manipulate the audience's sympathies.

As for the performances, the film stands or falls primarily on the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal, and he carries the role with ease, combining a character of intelligence and sensitivity with a believable potential for physical action and even violence. Vera Farmiga also impresses as Goodwin, ably intimating her character's internal conflict between personal empathy and strict by-the-book professional competence. Within a narrow range of rather repetitive dialogue, as Adam Kempenaar and Matty Robinson pointed out in their review, Michelle Monaghan keeps her performance fresh and apparently spontaneous.

I don't mean to make too much of the similarities with Groundhog Day, as this is quite a different film, in a way more similar to Tony Scott's fun but somewhat less compelling Deja Vu (2006). Beyond the confines of the story itself, looking at the character arc, and even the morals of the stories, one has to say that Groundhog Day has far more to give and far more to say than either Source Code or Deja Vu.

Groundhog Day stands the test of repeated viewings, remaining delightful. If Source Code can achieve that, it will have done very well.

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

Sources:

• Filmspotting #342

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Amendment: Added ranking image.