When rating a film I ask myself these three questions: What is the director’s goal or purpose? How does the director try to achieve it? Is the director successful? Hence a big box office hit may get a “5” while a Eurosleaze sexploitation flick gets a “7”. My rating system in a nutshell:
10 = Brilliant!
9 = Exceptional
8 = Very Good
7 = Good
6 = Average
5 = Forgettable
4 = Bad
3 = Dismal
2 = Dog Barf
1 = Beyond Awful
~ ~ ~ ~
Propaganda (NZ 2012) (8): Supposedly smuggled out of North Korea by a pair of spies, this piece of anti-West agitprop skewers our most sacred institutions from organized religion to Reality TV, rampant consumerism, and the Cult of Celebrity. Westerners are cast as enslaved sheep drawn to the sedating effects of Christianity and a plethora of flashy yet useless consumer goods, sheep who are lulled into believing the illusion of “democracy” when in fact they are controlled, coerced, and seduced at every turn by the corporate overlords who actually run the show. Zionism gets a black eye, Hollywood and the One Percent get gutted, and flashy editing fills the screen with a non-stop barrage of everything from toy commercials to war atrocities (committed by the West and its allies, of course). And then our anonymous narrator gives the usual impassioned homage to North Korea’s “Glorious Leader” while placing his country at the forefront of revolutionary ideology. Of course the irony rests in the fact that this vitriolic attack is actually the brainchild of New Zealand writer/director Slavko Martinov and never graced a North Korean screen at all. However, as a mockumentary it is presented as deadly serious and only careful attention reveals the sarcastic humour behind the bluster and jingoism. Besides, aside from a few deliberately inaccurate allegations it really isn’t that far from the truth. If this had come directly from Pyongyang it would be tempting to use the old “pot calling the kettle black” analogy to discredit it, but these days one utensil pretty much looks like the other.
Last Party (Switzerland/France 2024) (7): Four acquaintances cross paths at a private graduation party: dour Angela who disdains all social functions until a spiked drink and line of cocaine lowers her guard; jock Alexander who is definitely not gay until he meets the party’s sexy young host; snobbish Lily whose health is not as robust as she pretends; and Ethan who just wants to be liked until a prank gets out of hand. As the party wears on and alcohol levels rise the four will suddenly find themselves curiously unable to leave the house—and that’s when things take a decidedly surreal turn… There is an unmistakable touch of Gaspar Noe to director/co-writer Nicolas Dozol’s existential drama about four teenagers who, during the course of one evening, will be traumatized both physically and emotionally while the world around them changes one tiny increment at a time. Perhaps it’s in the voyeuristic camerawork that’s presented as one continuous tracking shot, Dozol’s roving lens floating up and down stairs and in and out of doorways as if it were a restless guest itself (mirrors figure prominently). Perhaps it’s in the dreamlike cinematography which incorporates bursts of coloured light and an encroaching mist while snatches of trance music drone on in the background. Noe is definitely there in the transgressive drugs and sex as each character crosses an invisible threshold. But despite the build-up—a downplayed mix of angst-riddled psychodrama and subliminal horror—Dozol leaves us hanging with an intriguingly ambivalent epilogue. Is this a psychedelic coming of age allegory with a sunlit ending one would expect from John Hughes had he dropped LSD? Or is it more of a post-pubescent take on Tales from the Crypt?
No Way to Treat a Lady (USA 1968) (7): By day celebrated New York thespian Christopher Gill (Rod Steiger) runs one of Broadway’s more successful theatres, but at night he’s a serial killer who strangles single, middle-aged women right in their own apartments. And now NYPD homicide detective Morris Brummel (George Segal) has been tasked with catching the killer, an assignment which will prove to be more difficult than he imagined for how do you track down a madman who is not only a master of disguise but also takes sadistic delight in taunting you over the phone? From the chintzy decor and “mod” fashions to a host of over-the-top performances this is one policier firmly rooted in the ‘60s. Steiger growls and hisses before literally bringing down the house while Segal provides balance as the dogged mensch determined to track him down. Co-star Lee Remick plays it lukewarm as Morris’ newfound love interest and Eileen Heckart (bless her!) hams it up perfectly as his emasculating Jewish mother. It may not have withstood the test of time all that well—the retro technology is “interesting” while a couple of homosexual clichés are just plain tiresome—but like a fine piece of aged cheese it can still be enjoyed, mold and all.
Madeinusa (Peru 2006) (8): The residents of a little Indian town high in the Andes are preparing to celebrate “Holy Time”—that period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday when, so the natives believe, God is dead and therefore sin does not exist. Or to put it another way, all moral constraints are temporarily lifted and anything goes. For the duration of Holy Time, teenaged Madeinusa has been crowned honorary Mater Dolorosa, but despite the Virgin Mary trappings foisted upon her what she really wants is to escape the confines of the village (and her father’s incestuous advances) and head to the bright lights of Lima like her mother before her. Enter Salvador, a handsome young geologist from the big city whose presence will not only complicate the village’s upcoming bacchanal (they don’t want witnesses) but fire up Madeinusa’s latent libido thus incurring her father’s wrath… It’s impossible to pin down writer/director Claudia Llosa’s outrageous and frankly blasphemous fever dream for just as you peel away one layer of meaning another presents itself. Is it a dig at her country’s colonial roots? Certainly the culture shock between white gringo Salvador (such an ironic name!) and brown Quechuan Madeinusa (another great name!) takes centre stage as does the seamless melding of Catholic voodoo and pagan ritual—a brawny statue of Christ carries indecent implications while more prosaic religious artifacts moulder away in an attic. And Salvador’s righteous disapproval of the town’s debauchery doesn’t stop him from taking advantage of Madeinusa’s newfound sexual urges. Even the village’s name translates as “The town no one can enter”. Is it a feminist fable following one woman’s singleminded determination to rise above her station in life? There is definitely an undercurrent of empowerment to Madeinusa’s otherwise downcast features, her self-effacement finding counterpoint in her older sister’s fiery outbursts. Or could it be a tale of madness and retribution wrapped up in religious pageantry and topped by a bitter coda? Under Llosa’s skilful direction a pair of broken earrings will represent a greater tragedy while a simple bowl of homemade soup will bring down revenge like a double bolt of lightning. However you choose to view it there is no denying its ability to divide audiences and outrage clerical sensibilities. Catholics beware!
The Rule of Jenny Pen (NZ 2024) (4): Veteran actors Geoffrey Rush and John Lithgow waste a pair of good performances in this insipid geriatric thriller which proves to be more embarrassing than frightening. After a stroke leaves him partially paralyzed, former judge Stefan Mortensen (Rush) winds up convalescing at a nursing home where the residents are being terrorized by one of their own, a sadistic psychopath named Dave Crealy (Lithgow) and his alter ego “Jenny Pen”, a creepy hand puppet whose empty eye sockets seem to glow with an inner malice. Taking an instant dislike to the new guy, Crealy proceeds to make Mortensen’s life as unbearable as possible—but the old judge still has a bit of fight left in him as Crealy will eventually find out… The institutional setting is depressingly real with forced bonhomie and a cast of septuagenarians suffering through various degrees of dementia. However the fact that the home’s support staff—who otherwise seem to be around every corner—are never present when Crealy is assaulting patients or going off on a manic rant pushes the believability factor especially when, conversely, they always seem to walk by just in time to misinterpret Mortensen’s indignant reactions. For his part Rush puts in a fine performance playing a crusty old man whose sharp tongue belies his feeble body, those fleshy features registering a mix of anger and fear as Crealy subjects him to a midnight campaign of terror. And Lithgow, for his part, plays the grizzled madman with a theatrical bravura that makes his silly puppet prop seem like excess baggage (when he starts talking in a little doll voice it comes across as comic relief). Two great actors hampered by a middling script, some cinematic overkill (as when Mortensen hallucinates a ten foot Jenny Pen looming over his bed), and a WTF? ending that leaves a couple of crucial loose ends still dangling. This is what you get when an attempt at psychological horror stays up way past its bedtime.
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (USA 1941) (7): Thanks to a heavenly error, prize boxer Joe Pendleton (Robert Montgomery) finds himself entering the afterlife too soon. In an attempt to rectify the situation a pair of guardian angels (Claude Rains, Edward Everett Horton) offer him a chance to return to Earth in a different body—that of a recently murdered millionaire. But the rich man’s killers are still at large and things get further complicated when Pendleton falls for the daughter of a man he (that is the dead millionaire) once swindled… Yes, it’s Heaven Can Wait done up as a sparkling screwball comedy in which the jokes centre mainly on reincarnated identities and divine confusion, and for the most part it works admirably. Regardless of what “body” he’s in Montgomery plays the lovable big palooka with conviction while Rains is in top form as the reasonable angel with Horton huffing and sputtering as his exasperated foil. But it’s co-star James Gleason who rakes in the biggest yuks as Pendleton’s grieving trainer who’s now faced with a reincarnated champ. A low note is provided by Donald MacBride’s hammy performance as a short-fused detective, and love interest Evelyn Keyes has too many stars in her eyes to be taken seriously.
Werckmeister Harmonies (Hungary 2000) (9): Composed of long, meticulously choreographed pans shot in sober B&W, Béla Tarr’s allegory on the twin perils of fascism and revolution takes time and patience in order to appreciate the artistry at work. Set around the time Hungary was transitioning away from Communism it centres on young János, an everyman figure who always strives to see the best in the people populating his small town. But rumours of criminality and vandalism are beginning to circulate prompting an ad hoc committee of frightened citizens to demand a return to law and order at any cost. Meanwhile, the arrival of a bizarre circus begins to have a curious, and decidedly dangerous, effect on the townsfolk… Anarchy and totalitarianism are two sides of a common coin in Tarr’s production where existential dread creeps over cobblestone streets like a shadow and chaos vies with order. Never one for straightforward narrative, Tarr instead drives his points home with brilliantly staged metaphors set to an appropriately sombre score of strings and piano: whirling drunks reenact a solar eclipse (wherein the joy of sunlight temporarily falls prey to the anguish of darkness); a violent mob assault takes on a funereal pall after the rioters come face to face with one of their intended victims; a soft-spoken matron, grown tired of lax morals, eagerly welcomes the arrival of an army tank; and a grotesque parody of nature, slowly rotting away in its oversized display case, is exploited for profit. And throughout the film winter landscapes shiver beyond bare windows and fog banks thicken. Not for those seeking easy answers and tidy resolutions, this is the art of cinema in its purest form wielded by a master.
La Syndicaliste (France 2022) (7): Union rep turned whistleblower Maureen Kearney (the incomparable Isabelle Huppert) steps on some pretty big toes when she starts reporting on corruption within France’s largest atomic energy consortium…corruption which stretches right into the halls of government. She soon finds herself the target of threatening phone calls and harassment, a campaign of intimidation that reaches its climax when she is physically and sexually assaulted in her own home by an unknown assailant. But a subsequent police investigation uncovers enough evidence to suggest she may have staged the attack herself in order to gain sympathy…. Based on a true story, director/co-writer Jean-Paul Saolmé’s political thriller has Huppert in top-notch form as a complicated protagonist whose private history doesn’t quite jive with her self-assured public persona—a woman able to stare down corporate CEOs over workers’ rights yet plagued by memories of past trauma. Not quite the feminist polemic one would expect given its subject matter, but the question of Maureen’s culpability does address issues of double standards, accountability, and the many ways personal bias can affect objective truth.
The Better Angels (USA 2014) (5): Writer/director A. J. Edwards and co-producer Terrence Malick have collaborated in the past and it shows in this rambling arthouse experiment which looks wonderful but has nothing much to to say. In the wilds of 1820s America a young boy works the land with his gruff taciturn father, gentle-natured mother, and sweetly naïve kid sister. With tragedy and deprivation never far away—sickness takes its toll, crops are never guaranteed, orphans are plentiful—the intelligent if somewhat dull boy loses himself in books, a habit encouraged by his mother though frowned upon by his more pragmatic father. And then he goes to school for the first time and his world becomes just a bit bigger… Filmed in evocative B&W with sweeping pans and off-centre zooms, Edwards and cinematographer Matthew J. Lloyd certainly know how to compose a shot as sunlight bursts through a homespun woollen sheet, bare winter trees are framed through a rustic window, and sheets of silvery water tumble over ancient rocks. But if you didn’t read the liner notes would you even know that the kid is supposed to be a young Abraham Lincoln? Aside from a few opening stills which will only make sense to those familiar with American landmarks, his name is never even mentioned. Presented as a collection of loosely linked vignettes, this is not so much a biopic as it is a visual poem giving us a series of impressions rather than a story, and therein lies the problem. This freeform approach to filmmaking works beautifully if it is built upon a solid base: Malick’s The Tree of Life used wild associations (dinosaurs and protoplanets!) to create a discourse on mortality, in Mother and Son Aleksandr Sokurov used warped lenses and strained whispers to impart the emotional devastation of a young man saying good-bye to his dying mother. In Better Angels we’re merely shown a succession of nicely composed snapshots while orchestral crescendos try to convince us that we’re witnessing something far deeper. An accomplished photography display and nothing more.
Dear Evan Hansen (USA 2021) (8): There are two types of people who will critique this film: those who saw the stage musical first and those who did not. The former tend to find it lacking while the latter tend to judge it based on its own merits. Thankfully I fall into the latter group and found myself quite moved. Neurotic, medicated, and suffering from all manner of anxiety, high school senior Evan Hansen (a 28-year old Ben Platt revising his Broadway success) finds himself tangled in the affairs of a grieving family who mistakenly believe he was the best (perhaps only?) friend of their late son, a troubled student who recently committed suicide. But as he tries to bring them closure with comforting stories about a friendship that never was, a crusading student decides to make him the poster child for a grassroots suicide prevention program. And thus his lies, made with the best of intentions, begin to snowball… Graced with simple yet powerful songs—recorded live on set to give them a sense of immediacy—this film adaptation was custom made for the GenZ/GenA demographic covering as it does such hot-button issues as bullying, depression, teenage anomie, and peer pressure. And director Stephen Chbosky casts social media itself as if it were a distinct character, all those little glowing screens offering either condolence or condemnation depending on which way the wind of popular opinion is blowing. The feeling of isolation even in the midst of a crowd is especially poignant to those of us who spent our high school years fading into the brickwork, yet there is enough humour (both light and dark) to keep things on the right side of maudlin right up to that bittersweet final pan. If it tends to be a wee bit preachy in parts it’s still a sermon that deserves to be heard. Julianne Moore plays Evan’s fiercely protective mother, Amy Adams and Danny Pino play off each other as the grieving parents with Kaitlyn Dever as their angry daughter, Nik Dodani plays for laughs as Evan’s cynical geek friend, and Amandla Stenberg gives a moving performance as a “perfect student” with a heavy secret.
The Company of Wolves (UK 1984) (8): Employing fantastical sets which unfold like a child’s pop-up book, director Neil Jordan’s stylized fever dream of a film, based on Angela Carter’s novel, adds a psychosexual dimension to the tale of Little Red Riding Hood resulting in one of the more visually striking and cerebral films to emerge from the ‘80s. As she drifts in and out of a restless afternoon nap, twelve-year old Rosaleen (a coy Sarah Patterson) finds herself immersed in a fairy tale world of rustic villagers and a gloomy forest beset by slathering wolves where a young maiden is only safe as long as she sticks to the sunlit path. “Beware…” warns her prudish dream granny (a delightfully prim Angela Lansbury), “…the worst kind of wolves are hairy on the inside and when they bite you they drag you straight to Hell!” Regaled by fireside tales of damsels betrayed and virtue lost, it becomes obvious to Rosaleen that in granny’s world lust and desire walk hand in hand with fear and damnation, and Beauty must always be wary of the Beast. But Rosaleen is not so sure the old woman knows everything and a detour off the straight and narrow opens her eyes to another kind of story… Awash in perpetual twilight where animal familiars cavort in the underbrush (or uncoil seductively from tree branches) and superstition rules everyday life, Jordan’s bedtime allegory cloaks one young girl’s rite of passage in layers of storybook metaphors: a stork’s nest heralds the onset of puberty; grandma’s house goes from repressed haven to sensual revelation; and a pack of howling wolves, eyes aglow and tongues drooling, represent both a threat…and a promise. Pure cinema!
At Eternity’s Gate (Ireland/Switzerland 2018) (6): Writer/director Julian Schnabel’s fractured film covers the final years of Vincent van Gogh as he slowly succumbed to mental illness while pursuing his elusive muse in the south of France. Less biopic and more stream of anecdotes, Willem Dafoe’s studied performance gives us an artist enraptured by light and colour, able to translate simple pastoral landscapes into primitive canvasses so bold and vivid in their depictions of the commonplace (a field of wheat, an empty cabin, a reclining mailman) that they helped herald a new school of art. Yet his personal life was a tragedy with blackouts and bouts of erratic behaviour leading to ever more frequent hospitalizations while his paintings remained largely unsold. Perhaps taking cues from van Gogh’s passion for painting coupled with his tenuous connection to reality, Schnabel utilizes shaky editing, overlapping voices, and the occasional rewind to underscore his subject’s state of mind—at one point the camera focuses on Vincent’s legs trudging through a field of flowers, another scene has him repeating his lines as if caught in a time warp, and as the film progresses unsold paintings (future masterpieces all) pile up on the walls of his humble shack like so many hallucinatory dreams. When it works, this quasi-impressionistic approach to filmmaking leaves us with a feeling of who van Gogh was rather than facts and dates, but when it falters we’re left with a rambling piecemeal story that seems to jump about with no discernible centre. Rupert Friend gives a compassionate performance as Vincent’s loving brother Theo; Oscar Isaac provides focus as fiery fellow artist Paul Gaugin; and Mads Mikkelsen has a small but vital role as a cynical priest whose verbal sparring challenges van Gogh’s commitment to his art.
Red Dust (USA 1932) (8): Macho rubber plantation foreman Clark Gable is already asking for trouble when he begins an affair with a new employee’s pretentious society wife (Mary Astor). But things start getting really hot in the jungle after platinum blonde hooker Jean Harlow arrives at his doorstep looking to turn a former trick with Gable into something more. Lust, adultery, and prostitution make for a racy good time in this pre-code adult feature and its three leads are in top form: Harlow’s bitchy wisecracks are launched with hilarious precision as she takes aim at the cheating couple while Gable and Astor share one of early Hollywood’s most erotic smooches (the fact that they’re both sopping wet from a sudden monsoon makes it almost indecent). Kudos as well to the art and stage design crew for turning an MGM soundstage into a tropical forest complete with paddlewheel boat and wild tiger.
Seraphine (France 2008) (7): Presented as a string of fade-ins and fade-outs, writer director Martin Provost’s tragic biopic of French artist Séraphine de Senlis (1864 - 1942) floats across the screen like an unravelling dream. A self-taught painter, Séraphine worked as a maid during the day and created colourful canvases at night with pigments she developed herself using everything from plants to chicken blood. Catching they eye of a German art critic who compared her fantastical images to the works of Van Gogh, Séraphine would go on to enjoy a small taste of fame and fortune. But the underlying mental illness which powered her creativity would eventually take its toll… Lead Yolande Moreau gives the performance of a lifetime as the simple-minded woman whose haunted paintings reveal an underlying pathology—impossibly bright flowers stare out from the canvas like a thousand eyes while trees erupt from the ground like glowing geysers. And as if to contrast the intense colours of Séraphine’s creations, Provost films her life against a backdrop of sculleries and drab rooming houses, his palette only brightening when she wanders through her beloved nature—a nude dip in a clear stream filmed as if it were an impressionist masterpiece while a brief sojourn beneath the branches of an enormous tree provides a fitting elegy. Unfortunately the film’s meditative pace tends to get bogged down in places, but the combination of rich visuals and Moreau’s soul-shattering performance are enough to carry it through.
The Ice Storm (USA 1997) (10): Ang Lee’s clinical look at angst and anomie in an upscale Connecticut neighbourhood circa 1973 remains one of the most perfectly realized films I have yet to see. As spring heads into autumn the lives of two families will become tragically intertwined—the adults’ dalliances with lies and infidelity reflected in their teenaged children’s experimentation with drugs, sex, and misplaced rage. While one son reflects on the life lessons he’s gleaned from his comic books (the adults in the room fall short of superheroes) another destroys his childhood toys in a fit of ritualized violence. Yet another son finds some solace in the “perfect world” of geometry while a lone daughter comes to realize that her sense of moral superiority rests on shaky ground. By the time the storm of the title finally descends—coating the world in layers of treacherous ice—Lee’s cast find themselves likewise frozen both morally and spiritually. The film crew certainly bring the ‘70s to life with fashions and furnishings spot on, an unobtrusive soundtrack that includes Jim Croce and Harry Nilsson, and the Watergate scandal unfolding on everyone’s TV set. In addition, the script (based on Rick Moody’s novel) is a deceptively shallow mix of “couples therapy” jargon and everyday banter which evolves into genuine communication only after a series of tragedies, both big and small, jar everyone’s complacency. A queue of male commuters all wearing the same trench coat speaks of conformity, Dostoevsky makes a cameo of sorts, and the ubiquitous ice—floating in vodka, wrested from freezer trays, or hanging off dead branches—provides a glacial metaphor. A truly great film that manages to tap into the American “Me Generation” zeitgeist as naturally as if it were actually filmed at the time. The all-star cast includes Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood, Christina Ricci, and Allison Janney.
The Woman in White (USA 1948) (7): In 1850s England a dashing young professor (a dashing Gig Young) takes up residence at a country estate in order to give art lessons to the mansion’s alluring heiress (Eleanor Parker). But the big old manor house is home to all sorts of terrible secrets as well as a host of unsavoury residents including the family’s gratingly neurotic patriarch (John Abbot hogging the spotlight) and a sinister Count (a despicable Sydney Greenstreet) who exerts a tight psychological grip on the entire household, especially his dour browbeaten wife (Agnes Moorehead). Meanwhile, the nearby woods are haunted by a disturbed young woman dressed all in white (Parker in a dual role) who seems to have a warning for the lady of the house—a woman with whom she shares a striking resemblance. Hoo boy! With its gothic sets and knuckle-biting performances, Warner Brothers pulled out all the stops for this overcooked Victorian melodrama and the result, while terribly dated, is definitely fun to watch. Just who is the Woman in White? What terrible news is she carrying? And why is the evil Count so obsessed with finding her? Before those questions are answered storms will rage and candles will flicker, hidden passages will be revealed and the plot will thicken until it all comes to a shuddering revelation! John Emery co-stars as Parker’s slimy fiancé, a man whose attentions stem from something other than love, and Alexis Smith plays her protective cousin and romantic rival once the handsome professor arrives. Also notable is Curt Bois who, as beleaguered manservant to Abbot’s whiny hypochondriac, nails his role with little more than a series of hangdog expressions.
The Pass (UK 2016) (6): True to its original stage production, director Ben A. Williams’ two-handed drama plays out in three acts over the course of a decade. While on an away game in Romania, football league hopefuls Jason (a half naked Russell Tovey) and teammate Ade (a half naked Arinzé Kene) are sharing a hotel room when the usual male drinking and bullshitting turns into something far more intimate. Ten years later Jason is living the high life as a soccer legend while Ade has fallen into obscurity—something he blames, at least in part, to a grandstanding incident by Jason. But when the two of them reunite in a posh London hotel room long held resentments will finally be aired and the past will be confronted leaving us to wonder which man is truly the “successful” one. For all his bluster Jason remains solidly in denial, terrified of alienating his fan base and corporate sponsors even after a sham marriage meant to quash rumours about his sexuality ends predictably. Ade, on the other hand, has found love and grown comfortable with his life albeit with some bitter regrets… There is definitely an erotic chemistry between the two actors and a biting script strives to cover all bases from overbearing fathers and internalized homophobia to identity and the dogged pursuit of celebrity, the more heated passages making up for the film’s generic Holiday Inn sets. But I can’t help feeling that there’s a false dichotomy being presented here: the self-destructive closeted gay man vs the self-affirming openly gay man. This isn’t the 1950s and watching Jason rage against himself—numbed by the usual doses of drugs, alcohol, and chest-beating machismo—comes across as trite and overworked. Brokeback Mountain may have fallen into the same pothole, but at least writer Annie Proulx set it in the proper time period.
Sisu (Finland/US/UK 2022) (9): In 1940s Lapland a grizzled old prospector digs up a fortune in gold, a discovery which puts him directly in the crosshairs of a roving band of Nazis and their ruthless commanding officer. But when the German officer decides to take the gold for himself, he and his men discover the old man is a far deadlier opponent than they could ever have imagined. Writer/director Jalmari Helander’s ridiculously entertaining bloodbath is a riot of exploding bodies and steaming carnage made all the more enjoyable by a grisly sense of humour which will have you cheering his scar-faced protagonist as he cuts a swath of crushed skulls and dripping guts. Leads Jorma Tommila and Aksel Hennie are pitch perfect in their roles, the former giving us a hybrid of stubborn old man and enraged demon, the latter a crusty-faced Nazi with a soul of pure evil. It’s a dark comic book fantasy full of bones, gristle, and escapes so impossible that even James Bond would have rolled his eyes—a CGI-enhanced airplane sequence complete with Dr. Strangelove reference had me laughing out loud while an underwater “breathing exercise” elicited a gag reflex. And yes, there’s a SEQUEL!!
All the Brothers Were Valiant (USA 1953) (5): It’s 1847 and ship’s captain Joel Shore (Robert Taylor) has taken his new wife Priscilla (Ann Blyth) on a whaling expedition in the south seas where he happens upon his long lost brother Mark (Stewart Granger), the black sheep of the Shore clan believed to have died on an earlier expedition. It doesn’t take long however for the happy reunion to turn sour when the two brothers—the saintly Joel and devilish Mark—begin fighting over Priscilla while Mark urges the crew towards mutiny with his tale of a hidden fortune in pearls just waiting to be picked up… Garnering an Oscar nomination for its high seas cinematography captured in eye-scorching Technicolor, this swashbuckling melodrama is a visually impressive mix of soundstage constructs and location shots which used Jamaica as a stand-in for the South Pacific. But the drama is heavy-handed with Taylor’s monotone voice and perpetual frown, Granger’s lopsided smirk, and Blyth’s Vestal Virgin chewing her knuckles between costume changes (how many dresses does one need on a whaling vessel anyway?!). Then there’s the supporting cast of spear-chucking natives (with Betta St. John and her magical sarong playing an island vixen) and a crew of salty sea dogs who look like rejects from Mutiny on the Bounty. Sadly, when the big climax finally arrives it quickly devolves into a ridiculous melee of fisticuffs and stage blood which couldn’t have gotten any cornier had everyone started lobbing cream pies at one another. An entertaining slice of nostalgic silliness for those so inclined—the rest of us can just walk the plank.
The Long Day Closes (UK 1992) (9): Yet another fanciful stream of consciousness from writer/director Terence Davies as he once again conjures up memories from his childhood in 1950s Liverpool. Using snippets of magical realism attached to a diverse soundtrack ranging from classical compositions to operatic solos and pop tunes, we follow 11-year old “Bud” (Leigh McCormack) as he manoeuvres his way through the rigours of Catholic school, the confusion of impending adolescence, and the escapism he seeks at the local cinema. Much like his later Distant Voices, Still Lives (1998) and Of Time and the City (2008) Davies takes a slow, non-linear approach to his subject giving audiences a montage of impressions rather than a simple narrative and the result flashes across the screen in a series of nostalgic postcard moments: a dingy coal cellar morphs into a midnight movie screen, a theatre balcony suddenly looks down upon the real world, and a mother tenderly cradles her frightened son like a working class Pietà. A decidedly subjective evocation of the director’s youth, yet this arthouse experiment is still universal enough to trigger a few gold-tinged memories of our own. Hypnotic.
