2017 - June
RANKING ALL FILMS:
01. The Music Lovers (1970) 4/4
02. Mahler (1974) 4/4
03. Savage Messiah (1972) 4/4
04. The Reckoning (1970) 4/4
05. Viridiana (1961) 4/4
06. American Psycho (2000) 3.5/4
07. Salome’s Last Dance (1988) 3.5/4
08. The Rainbow (1989) 3/4
09. Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1981) 3/4
10. Altered States (1980) 3/4
11. Lisztomania (1975) 3/4
12. Whore (1991) 3/4
13. The Boyfriend (1971) 3/4
14. The Lair of the White Worm (1988) 3/4
15. Tommy (1975) 3/4
16. French Dressing (1964) 3/4
17. Where’s Poppa (1970) 3/4
18. Cold Comfort (1989) 3/4
19. Gothic (1986) 3/4
20. Women in Love (1969) 2.5/4
21. Valentino (1977) 2.5/4
22. The Gift (2000) 2/4
23. Jerry and Tom (1998) 1.5/4
24. Little Sweetheart (1989) 1.5/4
25. Crimes of Passion (1984) 1/4
26. Bloodline (1979) 1/4
01. The Music Lovers (1970) 4/4
02. Mahler (1974) 4/4
03. Savage Messiah (1972) 4/4
04. The Reckoning (1970) 4/4
05. Viridiana (1961) 4/4
06. American Psycho (2000) 3.5/4
07. Salome’s Last Dance (1988) 3.5/4
08. The Rainbow (1989) 3/4
09. Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1981) 3/4
10. Altered States (1980) 3/4
11. Lisztomania (1975) 3/4
12. Whore (1991) 3/4
13. The Boyfriend (1971) 3/4
14. The Lair of the White Worm (1988) 3/4
15. Tommy (1975) 3/4
16. French Dressing (1964) 3/4
17. Where’s Poppa (1970) 3/4
18. Cold Comfort (1989) 3/4
19. Gothic (1986) 3/4
20. Women in Love (1969) 2.5/4
21. Valentino (1977) 2.5/4
22. The Gift (2000) 2/4
23. Jerry and Tom (1998) 1.5/4
24. Little Sweetheart (1989) 1.5/4
25. Crimes of Passion (1984) 1/4
26. Bloodline (1979) 1/4
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- DirectorSam RaimiStarsCate BlanchettKatie HolmesKeanu ReevesA fortune teller with extrasensory perception is asked to help find a young woman who has mysteriously disappeared.01-06-2017
With the amount of talent behind "The Gift" one would have a perfect right to assume it's ought to be a sure-fire hit. The screenplay is written by the writing duo of Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Epperson who wrote the stunning 1992 thriller "One False Move", directed by Carl Franklin. "One False Move" still remains one of my favourite thrillers. It's tough, uncompromising and haunting story enhanced by great acting (most notably from Bill Paxton) and Franklin's sweeping, grandiose directing style. Directing "The Gift" is Sam Raimi, one of those directors who deftly traverse between small, inspired passion projects usually peppered with great wit and horror ("The Evil Dead" trilogy, "Darkman") and Hollywood journeyman assignments where he proves himself over and over to be a reliable pair of hands ("The Quick and the Dead", "Spider-Man" trilogy). His most notable film, however, in my opinion, is 1998's "A Simple Plan", equally as tough, haunting and masterful as "One False Move" and with an equally brilliant performance by Bill Paxton. "The Gift" does, in a way, feel like the third in a trilogy. All three films are about brutal crimes disturbing small tight-knit communities full of colourful local characters. However, while "One False Move" and "A Simple Plan" were powerful and original pieces of work, "The Gift" feels more like a sanitised TV pilot. It lacks the punch and the grit of the previous two films, even if it does come quite close to it. It certainly has a great cast and is full of marvellous performances, thoughtful and complex. And the initial premise is quite fascinating. The film follows Annie (Cate Blanchette), a small town psychic, who in reality acts more like a psychiatrist to her clients. The regulars include a woman (Hilary Swank) who is being beaten by her jealous, cheating husband (Keanu Reeves) and a young car mechanic (Giovanni Ribisi) with a powerful, burning hatred of his father and serious mental issues. She comforts and advises them often less through her psychic abilities and more through her humanity and big heart. This aspect of the film is inventive, fascinating and deeply promising but "The Gift" never delivers on that promise largely because it ends up entangling itself in a predictable, silly, and cliched mystery plot. The film then takes a turn for the horror after Annie starts getting bad premonitions and a local woman (Katie Holmes) disappears. Annie is called upon by the woman's husband (Greg Kinnear) to help solve the crime. I was never interested in who the killer was, largely because I figured it out well before the murder even happened. And as the character drama aspects got pushed back in favour of the mystery "The Gift" started losing my interest. By the end, the film had turned into a thriller the likes of which you can find on your TV any time of day. There are scuffles, red herrings, nightmares, jump scares, until finally, Annie, with her psychic powers, figures out who the killer is. It all plays out like a slightly above average episode of "The Ghost Whisperer" and that's not OK. Perhaps for a straight-to-video movie, it might be, but for something with this much talent behind it, this much initial promise, it's not. I was disappointed by the road "The Gift" took. Psychic-thrillers are a dime a dozen these days while good, quiet, engaging, low-key character-driven dramas (which is what the first half of this film is) are rare. While the performances (especially that of Giovanni Ribisi), Christopher Young's score, and Jamie Anderson's cinematography are all top notch, the script fails to deliver any punches or surprises. Instead, all it does is present its tired formulaic thriller plot to a half-asleep audience.
2/4 - DirectorMary HarronStarsChristian BaleJustin TherouxJosh LucasA wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.01-06-2017
When Bret Easton Ellis' novel "American Psycho" was first released in 1991 it caused one hell of a hullabaloo. It quickly became one of the most banned and one of the most in-demand books of the 20th century. The original publisher Simon & Schuster declined to publish it, in Germany, Australia, and New Zealand the book can only be sold to those over 18 years of age and it has been the target of various noisy far-leftists and feminists over the world. It acquired the reputation of a hyper-violent, misogynistic piece of work and understandably became a megahit. But considering the level of violence and sex in it, I'm not surprised it took 9 years to reach the silver screen. In 2000, director and writer Mary Harron bravely took on the task of adapting Ellis' novel. Of course, from the moment the idea for a film adaptation was mentioned it became highly controversial. There were protests, actors were urged to decline to work on the film, and studios pressured to avoid it. When the film came out, the resident stock of offended bleeding hearts who have nothing better to do than brand other people's work with buzzwords such as racist, misogynist, etc. etc. had a field day besmirching it. However, while there is certainly a case to be made that Ellis' novel is overly violent and in bad taste, no such thing can reasonably be said of Harron's film. Witty, stylish, and with a painful bite, "American Psycho" is the very height of satire. Only a foolhardy moron could call this film misogynist or obscene. Oh sure, it's characters certainly are both of those things but they are also thoroughly unlikeable, hateful, dumb, and stomach-churningly disgusting. The film never portrays them in a sympathetic light, in fact, the film's entire point is to ruthlessly mock and laugh at their breed. The kind of person who thinks he's the smartest person in the world because he has a nice watch and an apartment with a window-wall, the kind of person who looks at himself in a mirror while having sex, the kind of person who cares more about what his business card looks like than about any person around him. The characters in this film are vapid, thoughtless, scum. Calling "American Psycho" misogynistic is like calling "Schindler's List" antisemitic or "Amistad" racist. The film focuses on a dreadful little man, a thoroughly nasty, unlikeable, and seedy businessman, Patrick Bateman, portrayed with a tangible satiric bite by Christian Bale, who plays Bateman as a man with an affable front behind which hatred, blind ambition and utter stupidity brew. We follow him as he goes around butchering people to appease his suppressed rage. But shed no tears for his victims. They too are as vapid, immoral and empty as he is. Throughout the film, we are never sure if what we're seeing is real or inside his head, but we are sure that Bateman is one sick guy. The film never fails to take a humorous potshot at either him or his batch of "friends" who are so disinterested in each other that they continually mistake each other for someone else. They are all the same, they suffer the same illnesses, have the same fantasies, and the same rage. On the technical side, the film is immaculate. Production designer Gideon Ponte envelopes Bateman's world in a sea of wooden panels, huge windows, and newly washed sheets and table cloths. Costume designer Isis Mussenden dresses all the yuppies in similar label suits, their uniforms, and status medals. Meanwhile, cinematographer Andrzej Sekula gives the film a sanitised, sterile, clean look. The film is, however, brought together by Mary Harron's competent and stylish direction. She is not afraid of giving the film a surreal, highly stylised look or framing shots more as tableaux than standardly blocked scenes. This way she gives us visual clues that what we're seeing is not meant to be taken at face value. Of course, the centre point of the experience is Christian Bale's incredible performance. Supposedly based on Tom Cruise's faux nice guy facade, his portrait of a ruthless, vapid yuppie is 100% on the money. He brings this man to life and brings him (evidently) too close to us for comfort. "American Psycho" is one of the sharpest, wildest, and strongest satires I've ever seen. Pitched at the right tone (a perfect blend of horror and comedy), relentlessly funny, and continually true to life it's an unforgettable experience. I was reminded of Neil LeBute's equally brilliant "In the Company of Men". Of course, the feeble minded and the weak stomached will scream "Oh, it's too much", but those with enough sense, smarts, and sense of humour to recognise it for what it is will love "American Psycho", a disturbingly true portrait of an all-American icon, the yuppie.
3.5/4 - DirectorJohn LaingStarsDavid HemmingsJohn HargreavesTony BarryA docu-drama covering one of the most famous murder cases in New Zealand history. Did Arthur Thomas kill Jeannette and Harvey Crewe at their Pukekawa farm house? Arthur was sure that trusting the police and co-operating fully would prove his innocence. The police held a very different view of this simple farmer.05-06-2017
On the 22nd June 1970, a New Zealand couple Harvey and Jeannette Crewe were reported missing by Jeannette's father Len Demler. A while later their bodies were discovered in the nearby river. What followed became the most notorious criminal case in New Zealand history after Arthur Allan Thomas, a local farmer who was once in love with Jeannette was accused and twice imprisoned for their murders. However, Thomas was apparently framed by an overzealous police inspector Bruce Hutton, whose investigation was producing no real leads. Under massive pressure from his bosses, he planted evidence, rigged the juries, and falsified evidence and statements to get Thomas convicted. After years in prison, Thomas was finally granted a Royal Pardon in 1979, but the damage was done. His home life was wrecked, Hutton was never punished (in fact he was awarded a certificate of merit), and the Crewe murders remain unsolved. This story is journalistic gold. The kind of stuff that careers are made of. It is also perfect for film, which is why it was eventually adapted in 1981 based on a script (from his own book) by investigative journalist David Yallop and directed by John Laing. Now, docudramas are one of my least favourite genres. Their manner is bland and flat, they lack any style, and have a matter-of-fact storytelling reminiscent of television broadcasts. Watching such films as "The Boston Strangler" and "The Town That Dreaded Sundown" is a chore for me. I feel I'd much rather watch a documentary because they lack all those things feature films have over documentaries, an opportunity to show us not what happened but why it happened and how come it happened. "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" works despite its genre precisely because it does those things. Laing and Yallop rightly assumed that everyone (at the time) would know the story so they spend less of the runtime on retelling the facts and more of it on the behind-the-scenes of both Hutton's investigation and his subsequent machinations. It also helps greatly that Laing and Yallop are obviously very emotionally involved with the story. Their wish for justice to be done gives the film an emotional and righteous charge to break free of the confines of a factual retelling. Not to mention the fact that the story is so fantastic and dramatic that it is at times really hard to believe it actually happened. Of course, the success of every film also lies heavily on its execution. First off, the cast is excellent. Hutton is played by the inimitable David Hemmings, lending his boyish charm and wit to the film and portraying the inspector less like a cackling villain and more like an able policeman caught up, under pressure, in his own web of lies. The script is heavily biased against Hutton, which is my biggest complaint of the film, but Hemmings manages to rise above it and create a fascinating character. His natural charisma also makes the fact that so many people go along with his scheme more believable. Arthur Allan Thomas is played by John Hargreaves, best remembered as the husband from Australian psychedelic, when-nature-strikes horror film "Long Weekend". His Thomas is a forthcoming goody-two-shoes, continually naive to Hutton's malicious scheming. Again, the scriptwriting bias strikes to the film's detriment. I was reminded a little of the appalling 2012 TV movie "The Girl" in which Tippi Hedren was portrayed as an angel who can do no wrong and Alfred Hitchcock was depicted as a brutal perv straight out of a 1980s slasher flick. Of course, Yallop's script isn't moronic to that degree, but shades of bias cast a long shadow over an otherwise exceptional film. John Laing's direction is at times a little stagey, a little dull, but it is always serviceable and reliable. He certainly has a way to make the mundane look creepy and would have made a terrific horror director. There's a scene here in which Hutton interrogates one of the locals in a barn that has an atmosphere of real menace and dread. He is aided here by some terrific work from Peter Jackson's frequent collaborator, cinematographer Alun Bollinger, who gives the film a bright sheen and almost no shadows making the New Zealand countryside look ethereal and surreal. All of this gives "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" real atmosphere and flavour differentiating it from all those other docudramas that tie themselves to the rock that is hard realism. Finally, there's a marvellous, jazzy score by Dave Fraser. Unlike those other true crime films I mentioned earlier, I found myself not just a spectator of, but very munch involved with the events of "Beyond Reasonable Doubt". It's not just a cold relating of facts, there's real heart, intent, and drama in this film that make it unforgettable stomach-churning. While it certainly never reaches the level of humanity and horror Truman Capote found in a true-crime story in "In Cold Blood", "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" is head, shoulders, and legs above such moribund fares as "The Boston Strangler".
3/4 - DirectorAnthony SimmonsStarsJohn HurtKaren YoungCassie BaraschA criminal couple, hiding out in a remote property become the unwitting victims of a plot to blackmail them by the most unlikely of conspirators.06-06-2017
Pedophobia, or the fear of children, has been fertile ground for horror films since way back when. When you think of iconic horror imagery one of the first to come to mind is that of the ghost twins from "The Shining". In fact, the scary little girl is a trope so common in horror films it's surpassed being a cliche and become a staple. Nasty little kids have had their surge of popularity in thrillers as well since "The Bad Seed". Despite being appearing in an overlong and stagey film, Patty McCormack's marvellously creepy and devious Rhoda, a perfect girl on the surface, and a murderous, vicious monster underneath is still one of the most memorable movie villains. What is it that makes children, little girls in particular (even though little boys have had their fair share in such films as "Pet Sematary", "Children of the Damned", and, of course, "The Omen") so creepy. Is it the idea of tarnished innocence, or the image of someone seemingly so angelic being so evil? I'm not quite sure, but I am sure that the most dangerous enemy is the one we underestimate and little children can get away with almost everything, mostly because adults are hesitant to believe them capable of wrongdoing. Now, as I said before, evil children in films are really nothing new. However, what is always interesting to see in such films is how far (and where) the filmmakers dare take the story. I'm automatically excluding such horror fare as "The Omen", "The Exorcist", or "Pet Sematary", not because they're bad films (quite to the contrary), but because they deal with a different kind of evil. Instead of that human (let's say natural) evil they deal with a supernatural force simply possessing (or embodying) a child. Here, I'm more interested in films following suit of "The Bad Seed" and focusing on children who are evil rather than those possessed by it. Mervyn LeRoy's film is, like I mentioned earlier, not as brilliant as people would like to remember it being. There's no denying that it's premise and story are still shocking, certainly not due to the material but rather the clever way the story unfolds (namely, following a mother whose suspicions that her sweet, perfect daughter is actually a vicious killer are destroying her). Sadly, the film has no pretensions outside of the suspense genre, nor does it really bother dealing with the character of the little girl. Why is she the way she is? The film also ends up failing as a suspense film due to its unwieldy length, overwriting, and general stinginess. It's too stiff for its own good. The popularity of the film, however, ensured that it would have a legion of rip-offs and quasi-remakes. The trend was only fortified by such hits as "Rosemary's Baby", "The Omen", and "The Other" and continued well into the 1990s. We got such sleazy nonsense as "What the Peeper Saw", a thoroughly nasty and unduly sexualised schlock fest that meanders awkwardly, unconvincingly, and disturbingly to its dumb conclusion. From the same cloth were cut the 1990s thrillers "The Good Son", which is more competent than its reputation would have it, but still fairly bland and dull, and its low-budget rip-off "Mikey" which is just unfortunate. Much better are 1970s TV movie "Bad Ronald", and the exquisite American proto-giallo "Alice, Sweet Alice". Also worth noting is "The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea", even if the film was not worth much, the Yukio Mishima novel it was based on certainly was. I'm not sure if I am to mention Narciso Ibáñez Serrador's "Who Can Kill a Child". The nature of the children's rebellion is never explained, so it might or might not be supernatural. Certainly, more worth noting is Tom Shankland's 2008 film "The Children". Even though it's not better than "Who Can Kill a Child" (the film's second act quickly descends into debauchery and cliches) it's worth noting as a children-killer film with a purpose. The children in it are not "just, inexplicably evil". They clearly rebel against their cold, uninterested, and uncaring parents. But I've gone a bit too far. "Little Sweetheart", the film in question here, owes a lot to "The Bad Seed". In both films, the evil little girl is a precocious, intelligent creature who knows full well what she's up to. She's not rebelling against anyone, nor does she have a good reason for what she's doing. Her main motivation is the sheer pleasure of causing havoc because she can. She is played very well by Cassie Barasch, an angelic looking girl with evil eyes she smartly keeps hidden behind large, childish sun glasses. Her targets are the new neighbours, a mysterious couple played by John Hurt and Karen Young she suspects of skullduggery. They are pretending to be married, but she notices that neither are wearing wedding rings, then John Hurt attempts to lie to her and tells her he's an undercover journalist on the trail of spies and gives her a camera, again the little kid reads him like a book. She misses nothing. Sadly, despite fine efforts from the cast, nothing can stop "Little Sweetheart" from disintegrating into an unbelievable and ultimately unsatisfying shocker. I have to give the film kudos for attempting something (for that time) new. Rather than focus on the adults trying to solve the mystery, the film follows Barasch as she (and her equally little accomplice) commits the crimes. Sadly, despite a good idea, writer/director Anthony Simmons never makes the characters or their actions compelling enough. Additionally, all the main characters in this film are either too heinous or too dumb to care for and the plot is too far-fetched and unbelievable for me to be interested in its conclusion. So instead of being emotionally invested, I was relegated to the position of an observer. However, there's not much of interest to observe here. The film is constructed out of long, rambling sequences, mostly following the two girls around as they chat on and on about nothing in particular. I suppose this is how little girls talk, I really don't know, but as I've mentioned before realism rarely makes for good entertainment. The only thing of interest in the film is just how unexpectedly grizzly it gets toward the end, but then, in a shockingly dumb move, its condescending and infuriatingly softball ending ruins even that. On the technical side, the film rarely reaches above the levels of a TV project. Anthony Simmons' direction is flat and journeyman-like. He shows no visual flair or inventiveness. Cinematography by John Hooper is equally as unimaginative and as a result the whole film looks and feels uninteresting. It also doesn't help to have one of the worst film scores in existence. Laurence Juber's 80s-style synth music sounds like it was written and performed on one of those mini Casio synthesisers children use to play "Chopsticks" on. It makes the whole production feel even cheaper. In conclusion, "Little Sweetheart" is disappointing. There was a lot of promise here, not the least from the very talented Cassie Barasch who sadly never made another film. I would also have been interested to see how these supposedly hardened criminals deal with a devious and entirely sociopathic little girl, and more importantly their own morality because, like the title of the aforementioned far superior film says "Who Can Kill a Child". None of these things happen and "Little Sweetheart" is a pedestrian, by-the-numbers exercise in futility. I was not compelled by it, I was not interested in it, and in the end it had nothing to say or new to offer.
1.5/4 - DirectorVic SarinStarsMaury ChaykinMargaret LangrickPaul GrossThree lonely people depend on each other when they get stranded at a deserted gas station in a blizzard. Floyd is a truck driver balancing on the edge of lunacy. He is the caring father of 16-year old Dolores, but is also torn up by sexual feelings for his daughter. Sales rep. Steven also ends up in the blizzard with his car in a ditch. Floyd rescued Steven and brings him along as a birthday present for Dolores. In all the confusion Steven doesn't realize at first how he has become a prisoner. He is the pawn in a chess game between father and daughter which evolves in a matter of life and death.07-06-2017
"Cold Comfort" belongs in that subgenre of quirky indie flicks that were popular in the late 80s and early 90s that usually focused on disturbed people, unusual characters, and creepy situations and played out like unfruitful collaborations between Stephen King and Harold Pinter. Of course, this was before Tarantino came along and suddenly all independent films became "Pulp Fiction" knock offs. This surrealist trend of artsy, almost-horror films usually dealt with a limited cast of characters, trapped in a confined space, sorting out major personal issues. They are easy to recognise as they all have a cheap, flat look, music comprised mostly of a single note lasting sometimes up to a minute, and are readily available on YouTube with a slew of comments underneath from people who remember seeing it once on TV or VHS. They've also probably won an award or two and are usually unwatchable. Of the ones I remember best there are the unbearably dull "The Caller" and particularly egregious "Closet Land", and the surprisingly enjoyable "Highway 61" and "Whale Music". Even Roman Polanski made a film that could be considered an entry in this subgenre, "Death and the Maiden". As these films go, "Cold Comfort" is easily one of the best ones. It does suffer from a lot of the same shortcomings as most of these films do, there's the uninventive cinematography, stagey, stiff direction, and the (literally) one-note music, but unlike such duds as "The Caller" or "Closet Land", "Cold Comfort" is refreshingly clever, strangely engaging, and thankfully concrete. What I mean by that is that it doesn't attempt to convey some great message through half-cooked metaphorical claptrap, instead, it has an easy-to-follow story, genuinely quirky characters, and some good, awkward, and highly disturbing atmosphere. The film begins as a young travelling salesman (Paul Gross) swerves off the road in the middle of a blizzard and is rescued by an off-beat tow trucker (Maury Chaykin) who takes him to his house and "gives him as a present" to his daughter (Margaret Langrick). The two live in seclusion, far from the nearest town, in a strange, uncomfortable relationship. What his plan with the salesman is, we never quite figure out, but it seems like he wants him and his daughter to enter a relationship. He keeps hinting at it in an almost pimp-like way and even gets his daughter to perform a striptease for the two of them in what is easily the most uncomfortable scene in the film. From here on in the film plays out like an oddball mash-up of "Misery" and "The Darling Buds of May" as Chaykin imposes his "hospitality" on Gross who keeps attempting and failing to escape. Meanwhile, the daughter and Gross do hit it off and begin a bizarre, almost childish relationship. "Cold Comfort" works almost entirely because of the excellent three lead performances. Gross is likeable and relatable and Langrick is uncomfortably believable as the sad, childish daughter. However, the most impressive performance in the film comes, of course, from the imposing figure that is Maury Chaykin, at once hilarious and terrifying, shifting seamlessly between a loving father and a violent lunatic. He dominates the picture. The script is very good too, balancing gentle comedy and graphic horror with commendable ease. It's based on a play, however, and one can tell as 90% of the action takes place in Chaykin's spacious living room. Vic Sarin's direction doesn't do much to add cinematic quality to the proceedings and it's easy to see how "Cold Comfort" would look on the stage. As mentioned before, the soundtrack is comprised largely of single synth notes languorously extended, but there are a couple transition shots of the snowy landscapes surrounding the house which play with a loud, sweeping orchestral score reminiscent of Carter Burwell's work on "Fargo" 7 years later. I enjoyed those sections as brief as they were. I enjoyed "Cold Comfort" largely as I would a piece of theatre. It has a good script (even if the ending ends a few minutes later than it should on the wrong note), terrific performances, and a slow, uneasy atmosphere. As a film, it's cinematic qualities are quite underwhelming. As a whole, it actually works with several minor quibbles. An enjoyable and somewhat memorable indie flick.
3/4 - DirectorSaul RubinekStarsJoe MantegnaSam RockwellMaury ChaykinTom and Jerry are two hit men, they work by day at a third-rate second-hand car dealership. Tom is a veteran and Jerry is a novice in their business, and their attitude toward their profession differs a lot. It shows when Tom is required to kill his old friend Karl.08-06-2017
Most films attempt, consciously or unconsciously to emulate other films. And that's alright. In the world in which we have literally millions of variations on every possible story, it's genuinely impossible to come up with all, 100% new stuff. So we occasionally get moments even in the greatest films where we are reminded of similar moments in other films. Of course, there's also the kind of emulation we like to call cliches wherein a film sticks to the tried and worn formula of its particular genre. This is most prevalent in horror films most of which you can break down to a science. Now, just because a film reminds you of another film or even actively attempts to imitate it doesn't automatically make it bad. There is, however, a thin line there. The line represents the amount and use of emulation. If you do it too obviously or too much you cross the line and your film becomes either predictable or annoyingly reminiscent. "Jerry and Tom" definitely crosses the line, but not because it's predictable, but because the imitation is so obvious, in your face, and not nearly as good as the original that you just sit there having fond memories of other, better films. What or whom does "Jerry and Tom" emulate? Firstly and most obviously there's Quentin Tarantino. Being that this is a crime/black comedy made in the late 90s, Tarantino is an unavoidable influence. Most indie films and almost all crime films of the period were Tarantino knock-offs. Consider the opening sequence. Two hitmen have a man with a bag over his head tied to a chair in an empty restaurant. The younger hitman, Jerry (Sam Rockwell) is pacing nervously around with a shotgun. The older hitman, Tom (Joe Mantegna) is calmly sitting, drinking his whisky and waiting for a phone call from their boss. In order to kill the time, Tom asks the tied up man, Stan (Peter Riegert) to tell them a joke. "A grasshopper walks into a bar" he starts cool as if he's not about to be killed "and the bartender says, "Hey, we have a drink named after you!" The grasshopper looks surprised and asks, "You have a drink named Kevin?" The impatient Jerry is having none of it though and asks angrily how can a grasshopper be called Kevin. Stan tries another joke. "A penguin walks into a bar and orders a drink", "How's he gonna drink it?" Jerry asks, "Slowly" Stan answers. What ensues is a serious, nitpicky discussion about the joke on the topics such as how can a penguin drink, where does a penguin keep his wallet etc. etc. This is classic Tarantino stuff, done very badly. First off, the dialogue is neither as clever nor as fast as Tarantino's and the wit is completely missing. Also missing is any tension because the film's just started and we know nothing about any of these characters or what's happening. We are not invested in them. The film then flashes back 10 years when Jerry was just a spotty teenager and Tom a dashing hitman who takes him under his wing. The rest of the film is showing us how they got to this spot. How Jerry became this nervous sadist and how Tom becomes more and more scared of his temper. The film is comprised out of several sequences following the hits they perform. First up is Tom's old friend Karl (William H. Macy), then a possibly delusional man (Ted Danson) in love with a dead actress (Shelley Cook), then the wrong woman and so on. The sequences focus on the discussions between Tom and Jerry in that tried and tested Tarantino way as they discuss everything from the weather to how the JFK assassination was done. The film is based on a play and while such rambly back-and-forth can constitute a structure on stage on film it rarely works, especially when the dialouge is neither funny nor interesting. Some semblance of a plot could have helped "Jerry and Tom", something to get us invested in the characters and their plights, but the fragmented narrative without beginning, middle, or much of an ending just failed to grasp my attention. Now, if this film wasn't such a shameless Tarantino imitation with a touch of David Mamet I would have noticed the Harold Pinter influence much earlier. As it stands it came to my attention only in the third act. Pinter wrote a terrific one-act play called "Dumb Waiter" all the way back in 1957 about two hitmen waiting for instructions on who their next target was. I won't reveal the ending of the play but it's the same as the one in "Jerry and Tom". Pinter's play was a witty musing on freedom, political shackles, and free will and this nod only made me realise "Jerry and Tom" is a 90-minute conversation about nothing. It's also a wholly unmemorable film. Everything in it from the performances to the direction is never anything more than adequate and has a distinct 90s straight-to-video feel like no one cared enough to try hard. I can't really blame them as neither did I. This film lost me almost at the beginning and never got my attention back. I didn't care for the characters, I didn't care for the events, and I certainly never cared for the dialogue. Consequently, "Jerry and Tom" is a very forgettable movie and forget it I shall, gladly.
1.5/4 - DirectorCarl ReinerStarsGeorge SegalRuth GordonRon LeibmanWhen an attorney meets the girl of his dreams, he fears that his batty mother will scare her off, so he schemes to eliminate the senile old woman.09-06-2017
Carl Reiner has had one of the most eclectic, varied, and wildly unpredictable careers in comedy. After failing as a stand-up comedian he went on to create and run one of the funniest and best sitcoms in television history "The Dick Van Dyke Show" which successfully combined intelligent humour, heartfelt stories, and the considerable talents of Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore for five milestone years. Reiner then went on to direct, write, and occasionally appear in a whole bunch of films some memorable, most decidedly not. His best remembered acting role is certainly as the old, but reliable grifter in "Ocean's Eleven" and the subsequent sequels. Less memorable was his turn in "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle". Similarly varying between outstanding and dull is his directing career. While decidedly not full of hits (in fact, most of his work falls under the category of cult films), Reiner's filmography does feature several highly innovative and original, if not always wholly successful comedies. The best of his films are "Oh, God!" in which George Burns easily plays the best on-screen God in film history, Steve Martin's breakout vehicle "The Jerk", and my favourite of his films "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid", a clever comedy in which old film clips are weaved together in such a way they form a (largely) coherent film noir plot and one of the few truly good body swap films "All of Me". Less successful, but bearable are Reiner's autobiographical film "Enter Laughing", the Dick Van Dyke dramedy "The Comic", another Steve Martin vehicle "The Man with Two Brains", "Summer Rental" starring John Candy, and the forgotten Robert Lindsay vehicle "Bert Rigby, You're a Fool". However, Reiner's career has forever been tainted by such miserable flops as the wrestling comedy "The One and Only", the fatally dull "Sibling Rivalry", the instantly forgettable "Summer School", another failed 90s Bette Midler comedy "That Old Feeling", and most of all the incessantly unfunny "Naked Gun" knock-off "Fatal Instinct". Even when doing great films Carl Reiner is by no stretch of the imagination a great director. He has no real style to speak of or recurring subjects, but he has a terrific ear for comedy and can make a good script really sing. Meanwhile, stuff like "Fatal Instinct" is dead in the water, so you can't really blame him for not making it work. Right at the beginning of his directing career, after the forgotten "Enter Laughing" and "The Comic" came "Where's Poppa", by far Reiner's bravest, craziest, and probably most memorable film. It's also the only one to truly provoke an audience. This film could not be made in today's PC climate. In fact, I'm gobsmacked it ever got made. The jokes in this film are bound to upset every little liberal snowflake heart that sees it and misconstrues it. "Where's Poppa" is not offensive even though it's bloody daring. It laughs at old age, dementia, racism, war, incest, sex without as much as a blush or touch of soulfulness or elegance. You name it's probably ruthlessly mocked somewhere in there. But it's not offensive because it never takes itself seriously enough. It's never about anything, it's never trying to tell us something, and ultimately it has no message, or point other than to make us laugh. Reiner's and the film's writer Robert Klane's sole motive in this film is to get as many laughs as possible and that's all they go for. In many ways, "Where's Poppa's" eagerness to jump headfirst into any and every opportunity for a joke reminds me of later hit comedies such as "Airplane". If you strip it of laughs it has nothing else. It teaches us no lesson, it shows us nothing, it just wants to make us laugh, and if you aren't one of those horrid people who get offended at every turn you will laugh. It's relentlessly hilarious. In the struggle to get jokes, a plot got forgotten along the way. Not that this film really needs it. Its structure (if you can call it that) is a series of somewhat connected skits. Our lead is Gordon (George Segal), a New York City lawyer who lives with his mother (Ruth Gordon). She is totally in the bounds of dementia and keeps asking for her late husband, whom she refers to as Poppa. She is also demanding, controlling, and keeps ruining Gordon's attempts to bed a hot, ditzy nurse (Trish Van Devere). So Gordon decides to kill her. His crazy ideas include dressing up as a gorilla to scare her and waiting for his mother to shrink and then feeding her to a dog. There to stop him is his older brother Sidney (Ron Leibman) who has to dash across a park to get to Gordon before he kills their mother but keeps getting mugged on the way by the same gang of smooth black men. Meanwhile, we also get glimpses into his professional life when he has to defend a pacifist hippy (Rob Reiner) who cuts off a pompous colonel's toe so he can't go on fighting in the war. As you see "Where's Poppa" is a wild, crazy, fast-paced mishmash of plots and events connected mainly by the fact that Gordon's there to witness or entice them. The only thing that can break or make a film like this is how funny it is and "Where's Poppa" is hilarious. Though it could have used with a more manic, Zucker brothers type energy the film is consistently entertaining and its barely 80-minute runtime goes by like a shot. Segal, Gordon, Devere, and Leibman are all great in their respective roles, especially Leibman who successfully steals yet another film and the tush scene is genuinely funny. In this day and age of safe and inoffensive comedies with no imagination or daring it's refreshing to stumble upon a little known but highly entertaining work from yesteryears.
3/4 - DirectorJack GoldStarsNicol WilliamsonRachel RobertsAnn BellMichael Marler, a successful business man in London, is about to make his way to the top. The death of his father brings him - after five years - back to his hometown Liverpool, where he is confronted with his lost Irish roots. He finds out that his father died because of a fight with some anglo-saxon teddy boys. It becomes "a matter of honour" for him, to take his revenge without involving the British police.09-06-2017
As I mused in my earlier review for "The Levelling", the prodigal son returneth story is very popular in British films. I suppose the great class and creed divide is greater there than in any other country and anyone who moves from their home into (perceived) enemy territory is often branded a traitor. Feeling a bit like a mix between "Room at the Top" and "Get Carter", "The Reckoning" is a stupefying, powerful character study of one such traitor. Michael Marler (Nicol Williamson) is the son of proud Irish immigrants who moved away from his home in Liverpool to the bustling business world of London. When we first meet him, he is drunk and tired returning from some party or other with his cold, unloving trophy wife Rosemary (Ann Bell). Once home, they immediately start swapping insults before using each other to vent frustrations and considerable pent-up anger in an act of nasty, animalistic sex. Sweaty, rough, without a trace of love they scratch and throw each other around their king size bed with consideration only for themselves, other person be damned. Their home life is a disaster. They obviously have no feelings for each other. They don't hate each other, they don't love each other, they just spend time together. In a rare moment of truthfulness, Mick confesses to one of his friends that "There never was much between us, you know. About one weekend of pre-marital bliss at a cottage in the country. That's about all we've got to be nostalgic about. And that bit of romance vanished six days later at the Fulham registry office". Perhaps as a compensation for his lacking private life, Marler is a right bastard at work. The image of a proper London businessman, he is a beast in a suit and tie, unscrupulous, backstabbing, and never shy to use any method needed to get what he wants. In one of the film's best scenes, the company boss, a deliciously prim and proper man by the name of Moyle (Douglas Wilmer) walks through a crowd of waiting people straight into an empty lift. No one dares to follow him but Mick who looks him dead in the eye and asks about the party they both attended the night before. Moyle then asks him "On your way up, Marler?" and Mick replies, cool as ice "Just one below yours, sir". Marler's latest machination involves his bumbling boss Hazlitt (Paul Rogers) whom most of the company has a grudge against. Mick's idea is to have Hazlitt push the company board to enter the computer market or something along those lines. This, of course, involves a lot of going behind people's backs and manipulation which Mick is more than ready to do. And then there's a phone call. Mick's father has died and he sets off on a trip back to Liverpool. Once there he finds out his father was beaten to death by some youth but the authorities are trying to cover it up. Going by old Irish customs, Marler is expected to avenge his father's death. It's here that finally the true reckoning of the title is revealed. Mick finds that he has to deal with the two sides of his personalities. The London "gentleman" and the Irish "thug". Those monikers are in parenthesis because the reverse seems to be true. It's not hard to see which world is more honest and straightforward. Writer John McGrath endeavours to accurately portray how problems are dealt with in both of the worlds. While in London Marler has to lie, cheat, steal, backstab and use lots of incomprehensible words, abbreviations, and other business lingo, in Liverpool, among the Irish, all is very clear. The youth beat his father up and now he has to beat the youth up. Further complications ensue when Marler returns to London to find his uncaring wife giving a party. He flips out, punches a very important businessman and his wife walks out on him. As I mentioned earlier, however, "The Reckoning" is a character portrait. It's not so important what Marler does as what Marler is. And what he is is where the true surprises of the film lie. As we watch the way he deals with problems, traditions, his identity and the women in his life (including a frustrated housewife in Liverpool played brilliantly by Rachel Roberts and his boss' repressed secretary played by Zena Walker) we get to know this man. The film, rightly, never gives us definitive answers about him. Is he a monster, a hero, or a savage. He is certainly likeable, charismatic, and easy to root for even though his actions are often reprehensible even when they are justified. Nicol Williamson is, as always, electrifying. He absolutely makes this film. No one, and I mean no one, could have pulled this off but him. He portrays both sides of Mick Marler, the thug and the gentlemen at the same time and makes them feel equally as fake. The true Marler is somewhere in between and we never really get to see him. He gives Mick a real fish out of water feel, but most importantly he is never boring to watch. Williamson is in literally every scene and an actor with less charm and energy would have overstayed his welcome by the end. Williamson, on the other hand, always makes me want more even when I get two straight hours of him. The film is adapted from a Patrick Hall novel by John McGrath who also wrote Williamson's film debut, the exceptional "The Bofors Gun" another show Williamson stole. His script here is dynamic, clever, and full of wonderful dialogues mostly between Marler and his wife. They may not love each other, but they absolutely know and understand each other and use that in underhand methods. Also like "The Bofors Gun", the film is directed by Jack Gold, a well respected "safe pair of hands". Gold does a marvellous job here of shooting the two locations, London and Liverpool, in completely different ways. The scenes set in London feature flashy, quick editing and shiny cinematography while the scenes set in Liverpool are slow, shot mostly in long, unbroken takes. All of this is underlined by a snappy, jazzy Malcolm Arnold score which also, sadly, ended up being his last. I mentioned "Room at the Top" and "Get Carter" earlier, but "The Reckoning" is better than either of those films which is saying a lot 'cause both are absolute classics. However, "Room at the Top" is a typical angry young man film, idealistic and at times even naive and "Get Carter", while certainly featuring a lot of local colour lacks true depth and insight and eventually succumbs to its thriller nature. "The Reckoning" on the other hand is the adult film of the three. Realistic to the hilt and rightly cynical it is a striking, unforgettable character study with no easy answers. Mick Marler is not a man of mystery, he isn't undecipherable, but he is not a black-and-white figure either. He is not a good guy, he is not a bad guy, and he's definitely not an anti-hero (like Carter). He's a character whose flesh you can feel and blood you can taste. At times he feels as real as you and me, and at other times he feels more real.
4/4 - DirectorTerence YoungStarsAudrey HepburnBen GazzaraJames MasonWhen her father is murdered, a pharmaceutical heiress becomes the next target of an unknown killer amid the international jet set.16-06-2017
Sidney Sheldon is, to this day, one of those celebrity authors whose names sell books on their own. You can always recognise those kinds of writers first off, their names take up half (and sometimes more) the cover while the title, inconsequential as it is, is relegated to the very bottom typed out in the same letter size as the blurb and when Hollywood unavoidably adapts their books into movies they always get their names above the credits. Stephen King is probably the most obvious example, but some thirty-plus years ago Sheldon was it. The man was a tireless potboiler machine publishing hit after hit since 1970's "The Naked Face". It was, however, his second novel "The Other Side of Midnight" that propelled him into the stratosphere. I don't know many people who haven't heard, read, or even seen an adaptation of one of his novels. They used to be a television staple in the 80s with such cheesy classics as "Rage of Angels", "Master of the Game", and "Memories of Midnight". They were easily recognisable by their common denominators. The lead characters were always wide-eyed women whose idealism would be beaten out of them by the end of part one, the villain was always a debonaire rich guy (usually foreign), and they seemed to be set exclusively in huge, kitschy villas and manor houses. I have to admit that I have, on occasion, enjoyed Sheldon's work. It has a lot of charm and is great bedtime reading. Never overbearing, ponderous, or heavy, Sheldon is a skilful weaver of light, breezy thrillers. What not a lot of people know is that, before becoming a novelist, Sheldon was a screenwriter of great repute writing scripts for light and breezy screwball comedies such as "Easter Parade", "Annie Get Your Gun", and "Three Guys Named Mike". He even won an Oscar for the Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple threeway film "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer". Keeping this in mind it's a little surprising his novels never did that well on film, but in retrospect, they sure were typical TV fare. Only three of his potboilers ever made it to the silver screen and the first one "The Other Side of Midnight", an overlong melodrama with a certain, undeniably campy charm is the best of all. The final nail in Sheldon's cinematic coffin was "The Naked Face", a ludicrously plotted, predictable, and unconvincing mafia thriller. Between the two came "Bloodline". The most obscure Sheldon film of all. While "The Naked Face" is still alive in the memory of Roger Moore fans and "The Other Side of Midnight" is fondly remembered by Sheldon fans, "Bloodline" has sunk into obscurity as a total flop, rarely seen, almost never discussed, the most I knew about it before I started watching's that it was Audrey Hepburn's only R-rated film. As it turns out, it is deservedly forgotten. Oh, it must have sounded like such a good idea. A classy thriller based on one of Sheldon's best books starring a whole bunch of actors who hadn't been in hits for years but were still fondly remembered by the public. Sadly, the only thing "Bloodline" lacked was a coherent script. The film starts well enough with a mysterious death of a rich pharmaceutical magnate. He leaves his empire to his daughter (Audrey Hepburn) who will now have to navigate the treacherous waters of boardroom politics while someone is trying to kill her. However, "Bloodline" soon runs off the rails into cuckooland. There are subplots upon subplots in this film, all rambly, awkwardly edited into an increasingly thinning central plot with no rhyme or reason. First, we get a lengthy flashback to 1930s (?) Poland with no warning whatsoever as we follow Hepburn's father trying to cure his irritable future father-in-law. What this was meant to contribute to the film I don't know but it failed at it certainly. Then there's one of the silliest love stories I've ever seen even in thrillers between the supposedly naive ingenue played by the 50-year old Hepburn and the dashing, handsome, risen-through-the-ranks executive played by the 49-year old Ben Gazzara. They have the chemistry of two blocks of wood. I'd sooner buy Mexican jumping beans then the two of them as lovers. Most ludicrously of all, every thirty minutes or so, we cut to a brief segment in which a nude woman (always a different one mind) is strangled while some guy with a beard films it with a 16mm camera before the eyes of a mystery man sitting in the room wearing a giant leather hat and the killer's coat from the beginning of "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" with his back turned to us. Then the film proceeds. Again, one asks what does this contribute to the film? Absolutely nothing. We get to see three of these (surprisingly tame) snuff films made during the film for no reason whatsoever. The main plot meanwhile becomes more and more boring and meandering. Our main suspects are the five company stockholders seated on the board of directors who want to sell the company which Hepburn refuses to do, for some reason. We get to see a lot more of them than of Hepburn, though, as they all have quirky and absolutely languorous subplots as only 1970s movies can have. First, there's a constantly bickering French couple played by Maurice Ronet and Romy Schneider. Their segments are mostly annoying because I had no idea what was going on. Their dialogue is so badly written I had to stop following it so my head wouldn't explode and their performances were so hammy and empty I didn't care. Meanwhile, their Italian counterparts are the only entertaining part of the film, mostly because of Omar Sharif who obviously knows he's in a bad film and isn't afraid to play his role for laughs. He plays a philandering henpecked husband (the wife is played with the same comedic gusto by Irene Papas) who is being blackmailed (for some unexplained reason) by his mistress (Claudia Mori) with their three children. These scenes are genuinely hilarious but are too far apart to recommend the entire film to see them. Lastly, there's James Mason as a Conservative MP whose wife (Michelle Phillips) has an outstanding debt with the mob running a casino. Now, if you can't figure out who the killer is just from those descriptions you're the kind of person who would love "Bloodline". Other characters include Gert Frobe who is an inspector with a talking computer (by far the most annoying part of the film) and Beatrice Straight as Hepburn's dependable secretary. As you can see the film's a mess. There's no structure to it whatsoever. Scenes seem placed almost at random and often with a clear purpose of extending the runtime. However, if we were to cut out all the obsolete parts we'd have a 75-minute film, barely. Consequently, the tone is all over the place ranging from comedy to melodrama to touches of Giallo. Unsurprisingly, the film is made by the same people who made "Inchon", the similarly messy and unwatchable 80s Korean war drama. The most surprising thing about both of those films is how incompetent director Terence Young had become by this point. It's hard to believe this is the man behind the first three James Bond films, "Wait Until Dark", and "The Valachi Papers". His work here is downright amateurish. Take this scene for example. Two women (I won't name them for fear of spoilers) walk out into a hall of a hotel. Woman A touches her ear and turns around. Then we cut to a man in a uniform looking at a board full of numbers shouting "Jesus Christ! It's going to crash""
(this is the first we see of him), then there's an almighty bang and a cut to a welder. Then we go to woman A crying in a hotel room. What happened? Well, apparently Woman A went back to her room to search for her earing (hence the ear touching) while Woman B went into a lift (we never see this). Someone sabotaged the elevator which crashed killing her. We never see any of these things! The only thing we see is Woman A turning around. I have never seen a more incompetently directed scene in my life. No one who'd ever seen a film would cut it like that. Everyone in the world knows you'd need one shot of Woman B entering the lift. The obligatory shot of the lights dying inside the lift. Then someone screaming. Then the crash. This is one of the countless examples of terrible, confusing editing in this film. In one sequence Hepburn goes to Poland. She walks up to the town gates and smiles. Then we cut to what we presume is her POV but its now full of people dressed in period garment and riding horses. We don't realise it's a flashback until about two minutes later when the dialogue begins. What shoddy filmmaking! Laird Koenig's dreadful dialouge hardly helps either. One gets the impression he couldn't decide whether he wanted to be witty or introspective, aimed for both and got neither. It's embarrassing. I composed better sentences in kindergarten. All of this is underscored by a sickly sweet, over-the-top, badly placed score written by (unbelievably) Ennio Morricone of all people. It sounds like one of those awful scores Pino Donaggio would write for a Brian de Palma schlocker. And as a cherry on the cake, all of the actors seem to be slumming it. With the exception of Omar Sharif who's just having fun being a terrible film, the entire cast is drained of energy, charisma, or charm. Ben Gazzara's playing every scene like a failed audition to star in "The Godfather", Audrey Hepburn looks decidedly uncomfortable, while the great guest stars are put in embarrassing scenes. Schneider and Ronet throw unconvincing vitriol at each other in every scene they're in, Gert Frobe spends the entire film talking to a computer, and James Mason looks like a badly CGI-d version of James Mason. He sleepwalks through his parts without any semblance of emotion or effort. His performance is a sad sight as is "Bloodline" in general. It's a shockingly bad movie. I'd expect to see something like this on YouTube, shot on a digital camcorder by a bunch of amateur film enthusiasts, but not in a cinema and not from these people. I'm not surprised it's never mentioned, if I made this I'd never want to mention it either. "Bloodline" is not worthy of memory. It's the bad movie of legends, the kind you think can't possibly exist and if it does it's probably made by a first-time filmmaker on a shoestring budget and stars a guy in a gorilla suit. However, here's a high-tier production full of talented and deservedly highly respected people making absolute asses of themselves spouting lines from a script so bad I pity the trees that died to produce the paper it was printed on. If "Bloodline" is never mentioned again it will be too soon.
1/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsJames BoothRoy KinnearMarisa MellA drab little English seaside town tries to improve its image--and increase its revenues--by holding a film festival. When a famous continental star agrees to attend, things get out of hand.17-06-2017
It took a while for Ken Russell to become the irrefutable wild man of British cinema. After a while of life searching meandering and forays into the Airforce, the Navy, dance, and photography his amateur films "Knights on Bikes", "Peepshow" and "Amelia and the Angel" got him hired as a segment director on the groundbreaking magazine art show "Monitor" in 1959. Alongside such greats as John Schlesinger, Patrick Garland, David Jones, and Melvyn Bragg he worked for the edgy authoritarian producer Huw Wheldon under whose hand "Monitor" became one of Britain's most respected programmes. Russell directed several notable segments for the series including an early experiment into the music video genre "London Moods", wonderful documentaries on the lives of contemporary pop artists such as "Pop Goes the Easel", "A House in Bayswater", and "The Preservation Man", as well as the quirky short film "Lonely Shore" about a group of alien archeologists trying to make sense of Earthly objects. He finally came to the public eye with his marvellous, artsy docudrama "Elgar", the first documentary to feature dramatic reconstructions of episodes from the life of its subject. One of his greatest masterpieces, "Elgar" is an unforgettable, touching, and mesmerising film that brings the conflicted composer to life instead of simply informing the audience of his biography. Meanwhile, producer Kenneth Harper was trying to make it big in the B-movie industry. He took on several rip-off films trying to cash-in on various new fashions. "Yield to the Night" was a film noir almost ten years too late, "Passionate Summer" was an erotic melodrama without much erotica or melodrama, and "For Better, for Worse" was a typical 50s genteel comedy without the talents of Peter Sellers, Alastair Sim, or Terry-Thomas to breathe life into its overly pleasant carcase. As his career lay dying, Harper finally took on the latest film craze, musical comedies. These kinds of films had a thin plot most of which was an excuse to get good looking teenagers to dance to the latest rock'n'roll bands. Out came the Cliff Richards vehicles "The Young Ones", "Summer Holiday", and "Wonderful Life". These films can hardly be called films, let alone good ones, but successful they must have been. Eventually, Harper moved on from the Cliff Richards films and his next idea was to make a stylish comedy in the vein of all those European films (mostly coming out of France) set on a seaside resort in England. I don't know what it was about "Elgar", the serious, sometimes solemn, always highly imaginative BBC documentary that made him think "Ken Russell's the man to direct my film", but good thing it did because Russell's visual flair, relentless pace, and sense for absurd humour really make "French Dressing". The plot of the film is as thin as the ones in those Cliff Richards films, but instead of being an excuse for musical numbers it's an excuse for hijinks. The film's lead character is Jim (James Booth), a dreamer deck-chair attendant who in order to meet his crush, the sexy Brigitte Bardot expy Françoise Fayol (Marissa Mell) decides to organise a film festival in the seaside resort town he works at. Together with his slimy friend Henry (Roy Kinnear) and his American would-be-novelist girlfriend Judy (Alita Naughton) he sets off to bring Ms Fayol to England. The influence of Europe on this film is instantly obvious. From the cool sunglass wearing lead characters to the film's wacky, often surreal sense of humour it's hard not to think of the films of Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, and Jacques Tati. I was even thinking of the (at the time unmade) films by Milos Forman. The opening sequences of the lazy Jim at work reminded me somewhat of the similar sequences in Forman's 1964 "Black Peter", while the later sequence set at a formal reception that keeps going worse and worse reminded me of his 1967 classic "The Firemen's Ball". With its disparate set of influences the tone of "French Dressing" could have been a disaster, but Ken Russell's confident, fun direction gives it a unifying tone. Despite all the shades of Europe, this is very much Russell's film. First and foremost, his visual style is unmistakable. There are his wide, symmetrical shots, there is the sense of surrealism, and there is the clever, bombastic use of music. In this case, though, it's not Elgar or Debussy we're listening to but rather the reliable Georges Delerue who would go on to win the Oscar for George Roy Hill's "A Little Romance". "French Dressing" isn't always funny, quite a lot of its jokes fall flat, but there are several marvellous comedic sequences. The aforementioned reception is hilarious mostly due to the wonderful performance by Bryan Pringle who plays the town's uptight mayor trying (unsuccesfuly) to woo the French sex bomb. Also hilarious is the scene in which Ms Fayol goes to the beach for a photoshoot followed in step by the entire membership of the city hall all dressed in top hats and tails. I was never bored. I was also constantly entertained by Russell's visuals. There are several beautiful shots mostly of his lead actress Alita Naughton, who sadly never worked in film again. She has a certain tomboy charm and charisma that is indeed, decidedly European. I quite enjoyed "French Dressing" more than just any old curiosity. I found it stylish, entertaining, and at times hilarious. The performances are solid, the pace quick, and the directing exceptional. Sadly, not everyone agrees with me and when the film came out it was a resounding flop. So much so, that at the time Russell decided to quit filmmaking and return to television. It would take another flop, the dull and confusing "Billion Dollar Brain" before he was to make his first classic "Women in Love". As for Kenneth Harper, he also fizzled out making only four more unremarkable features including Cliff Richard's sad attempt to regain his film popularity "Take Me High". "French Dressing" remains the absolute high point of Harper's unremarkable career.
3/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsAlan BatesOliver ReedGlenda JacksonTwo best friends fall in love with a pair of women, but the relationships soon go in very different directions.20-06-2017
After years of toiling away, creating stunning docudramas to the BBC and an occasional, unsuccessful film, Ken Russell finally "arrived", as they say, with "Women in Love", his third (but first to truly reach the public consciousness) film. To this day it is considered by his fans to be one of his great masterpieces and by the mainstream public and critics to be his greatest. While it is certainly his most eagerly focused and restrained feature film, I found "Women in Love" to be a curiously cold affair. Adapted from a famously scandalous novel from that famous scandal-monger D.H. Lawrence, it is a coldly, analytical and chatty film about two courtships in upper-middle-class circles of 1920s England. Two sisters, the phlegmatic and practical teacher Ursula (Jennie Linden) and the fiery artist Gudrun (Glenda Jackson) fall in love with best friends Rupert (Alan Bates), a closet homosexual prone to philosophising and Gerald (Oliver Reed), a melancholically sadistic coal-mine heir, respectively. The two couples each engage in their own love and sex-fueled mind games but instead of being passionate and powerful as its plot and director would suggest, "Women in Love", instead, too often relies on its characters' incessant monologuing to get its metaphysical musings on love across. I have always believed that Ken Russell is best when he is focused and working off of a good, tight script but in this case, he might have bound himself too tightly by the Lawrence novel. Many of the passages that I see working brilliantly on the written page sound dry and almost parodic when said on screen. There are countless needlessly wordy scenes like a two-minute monologue by Rupert on how to eat a fig (yes, it is in fact what you think it is) or a silly exchange between Gerald and Gudrun into whose bedroom he's just sneaked. "What do you want from me," she asks. "I came because I must," says Gerald with a straight face. If you can take this kind of theatrical dialogue seriously than "Women in Love" is for you and you'll especially love the character of Rupert whose constant theories on love are expressed in every scene he's in. The characters in "Women in Love" can't even shut up when they're having sex. "Oh, my God, Gerald! Shall I die?" dramatically exclaims Gudrun in the moment of orgasm and I fall about laughing. Alright, perhaps all this chatting is intentional. Perhaps it characterises the distant, labyrinthine ways of the characters, but it is never-the-less distracting and harmful to the film. Even more annoying does it become when you see the rare few moments in which there is no talking. As is well known, Russell is best in silent, surreal scenes set to rousing music. Whenever the characters stop yapping and put themselves in the hands of their director's brave imagery "Women in Love" sings. There's a spellbinding shot of two drowned lovers, washed up on the beach in a deadly embrace. There is a powerful sequence in which Gudrun dances before Highland cattle. There's an unforgettable shot of Rupert walking naked and free of his spoilt and pretentious fiancee Hermione (Eleonor Bron) in a corn field. Then, of course, there's the highly sexually charged nude wrestling scene between Rupert and Gerald which still causes controversy, raised eyebrows, and blushing cheeks. Russell's visuals are haunting and tell the story on their own if only the script would trust him and stop forcing such cheesy, dull words into the mouths of the leads. This is not the fault of the excellent cast either. All four of the leads are marvellous, delivering perfect performances. Alan Bates is self-involved, pensive, and observant, Oliver Reed quietly menacing and imposing, Jennie Linden smart, sweet, and lovable, and Glenda Jackson powerful and unforgettable. If only they would stop talking such high-minded nonsense. I blame D.H. Lawrence really and Russell's obsessive fascination with his writing. Obviously too involved to cut out Lawrence's overcooked and overwritten dialogue, he drowns his own film with it just as Lawrence often drowned his books. The main reason why Lawrence is not more read is that his books are notoriously hard to get through. I had the same problems following and understanding the wordy script of "Women in Love". I had even more problems because I simply didn't care. For all the copying that must have gone into the script, someone seems to have forgotten to type out the scenes in which they actually make us like these people and get involved with their plights. Why should I sit and observe 2 hours worth of courtship between four people I have no investment in whatsoever. I didn't care who lived or died as long as they stopped talking. It's curious that hoaky dialogue on its own can completely ruin a film that possesses such visual beauty, intensity, and great performances and yet it does. By the end, I couldn't bear another second of it. I just wanted to leave all of its philosophizings, moralizings, and monologuing behind and just dive into Russell's psychedelic, surrealist, self-explanatory imagery. Thankfully, next came "The Music Lovers".
2.5/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsRichard ChamberlainGlenda JacksonMax AdrianPiano teacher Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky struggles against his homosexuality by marrying, but unfortunately he chooses a nymphomaniac whom he cannot satisfy.20-06-2017
Ken Russell's "The Music Lovers" is a wild, passionate, unbound film about love, lust, and music of almost savage power of which "Women in Love" can only dream of. Where "Women in Love" was talky, "The Music Lovers" relies solely on Russell's celebrated visuals. Where "Women in Love" was cold and analytical, "The Music Lovers" is vibrant, punchy. Where "Women in Love" was overwritten, what "The Music Lovers" says is stark and to the point. Like the music of the man it's about here is a film alternatively dark, brooding, powerful, bombastic, clever, witty... It's an energising experience of superb quality. Russell has outdone himself. After years of doing composer biopics for television, the imaginative, visually impactful "Elgar", the structurally complex "The Debussy Film", the soulful and unforgettable "Song of Summer", director Ken Russell in 1970, only a year away from officially becoming the wild man of British cinema, finally did what he does best on the big screen. A year after his first and last mainstream smash hit "Women in Love" he tackled, with considerable liberty, the difficult, emotionally unruly life of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russia's greatest composer. By rewriting and carefully crafting facts of Tchaikovsky's life into a rollercoaster of a script, Russell still manages to capture the essence of the experience of listening to his music. As in all of his films, the greatest sequences involve pure visuals without dialouge set to rousing music and "The Music Lovers" probably has the record amount of them. From the unforgettable opening sequence in which various patrons of a Tchaikovsky concert visualise their own interpretations of the master's piano concerto to the incredible final sequence showing Tchaikovsky's long-awaited rise to fame through surrealist imagery that would make the members of Monty Python blush with jealousy here is a film so visually striking that its script is almost unimportant. In fact, I would have gladly overlooked it if it wasn't so good. Written by one of Russell's old collaborators, Melvyn Bragg, the screenplay here is (as mentioned before) stark and to the point. There is no unnecessary verbalization as in "Women in Love", no undue explanations, the pictures are allowed to speak for themselves, and yet all that needs to be said is said in the right time and in the right way. The viewer is never left confused as to exactly what is happening. Bragg does a marvellous job of contextualising Russell's images without making exposition feel overbearing or intrusive. The realistic dialogue sequences are seamlessly intercut with the film's surrealist flights of fancy. Bragg also succeeds in crafting interesting characters out of what could have been potential cardboard characters. Each person in this film symbolises an aspect of Tchaikovsky's persona or surroundings. The beautiful blond count Anton (Christopher Gable) represents Tchaikovsky's suppressed homosexuality which plagues him throughout his life thus Anton has a nasty habit of simply turning up wherever Tchaikovsky goes. And yet he is a wonderful character. Given rich, sarcastic lines to say, Gable breathes a mischevious, nasty life to the count. Tchaikovsky's benefactor Nadezhda von Meck (Izabella Telezynska) represents his muse, his inspiration, his music. She is also perhaps the most striking character of the film. Segregated, by her own wish, from the rest of the action she lives in a giant marble mansion with her two demonic looking twin sons prone to bouts of mania whenever Tchaikovsky's music is played. Then there's Tchaikovsky's brother Modeste (Kenneth Colley), a leprechaun-like character, small, seedy, conniving, he is the embodiment of Tchaikovsky's lust for fame and money. Finally, there's Nicholas Rubinstein (Max Adrian), the perfect Russian gentleman of the time, representative of his class and the head of the music conservatorium where our hero works. But, like all of Russell's best films, "The Music Lovers" is tight, focused, and smartly, keenly, and successfully develops a single lead idea, the film's main thread upon which all other subplots, motives, and subjects are hung. The film finds that focus in a failed marriage of convenience between Tchaikovsky, seeking to squash the rumours of his homosexuality, and one of his fans, Nina, a mentally unstable, needy woman with more than hints of nymphomania in her personality. The scenes between them are intense, uncomfortable, and eventually soul-crushing as Tchaikovsky, in desperation tries to kill her and then abandons her to the mercy of her soulless, money grubbing mother (Maureen Pryor). Tchaikovsky is played with great understanding and feeling by Richard Chamberlain in a career-best performance, but he is continually under threat from the brilliant Glenda Jackson who successfully steals the show from him a few times as the unfortunate Nina. For my money, her performance here beats her Oscar-winning turn in "Women in Love". Upon original release, the film drew some controversy due to its freedom with facts. Even more controversial was the fact that the same year Russell made a similarly lax-about-truth BBC docudrama on Richard Strauss' involvement with the Nazi party "Dance of the Seven Veils". However, while "Dance of the Seven Veils" is always crude, vulgar, and often thoughtless, never taking the time to develop and examine the moral questions and motives of its lead's actions, "The Music Lovers" is a sensitive, intelligent, moving piece that is sure to move a rock from its place. Such a tangible, powerful surge can be felt in the final sequence that a typhoon emerging from the screen and blowing me away from my seat wouldn't have surprised me. Behind all the glitzy and stupefying Russell imagery there beats a true, understanidng heart in "The Music Lovers" and it makes the film admirable.
4/4 - DirectorLuis BuñuelStarsSilvia PinalFrancisco RabalFernando ReyViridiana, a young nun about to take her final vows, pays a visit to her widowed uncle at the request of her Mother Superior.22-06-2017
4/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsTwiggyChristopher GableMax AdrianWhen the leading lady of a low-budget musical revue sprains her ankle, the assistant stage manager is forced to understudy and perform in her place, becoming a star and finding love in the process.24-06-2017
"The Boy Friend" began its life in 1954, on the West End, as a Sandy Wilson musical which was written as a pastiche on all those saccharine 1920s productions focused on rich people falling in love and (usually) posing as either the opposite sex or poor unfortunates at the sunny, carefree seaside. It was witty, and breezy, and loveable even if you didn't know it was meant as a parody of sorts. MGM almost immediately snapped it up, but for some reason failed to adapt it until 1971. Now, if you're thinking "The Boy Friend" would make a terrific film pastiche of all those similar 1930s comedies with a screwball plot and Terrence Rattigan's drawing-room sensibility you'd be right, it probably would. However, if you think the film adaptation of "The Boy Friend" is that you've probably missed the director credit. Ken Russell, now officially the wild man of British cinema, fresh off of "The Devils", his most controversial, most censored, and by far best film, is not one for obvious if workable solutions. His "The Boy Friend" is a grandiose self-indulgence, as most of his films are. He's one of those directors you either love or hate. I love his films. Even when they don't fully work they're a blast. He has a magnificent imagination and is not shy to use it. All of his films have "flights of fancy", surrealistic sequences set to music and with no dialouge which are either meant to represent plot progressions (like the magnificent sequence in which Tchaikovsky becomes famous in "The Music Lovers") or character's dreams and fantasies (which is what happens here). Additionally, Russell always imposes his powerful and inventive personality onto whichever material he chooses. He did so with "Women in Love" and he does it again with "The Boy Friend". But as much as I do love his work, I have to admit it doesn't always work. It's easy for Russell to lose focus and go off on tangents which drag the picture out and make it lose some of its punch. Such was the case with one of his BBC docudramas "Dante's Inferno" which rather than focus solely on the fascinating relationship between Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his muse and wife Elizabeth Siddal has rather lengthy and dull portions dedicated to other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who are all peripheral to the Rossetti/Siddal story. A similar thing happens to "The Boy Friend", as the Russellian touch proves detrimental to its structure and our patience, however not to the extent that the film falls apart. Namely, instead of adapting the musical as a pastiche, Russell makes the film be about a performance of the musical "The Boy Friend" by a low-budget theatre troop which progressively goes more and more awry. First off, their leading lady (Glenda Jackson) sprains her ankle and the awkward but adorable stage manager (Twiggy) has to go on instead of her. Then the cast find out that a famous Hollywood director (Vladek Sheybal) is in the audience. This, of course, causes mayham among the fame-hungry cast who continually attempt to upstage and make each other fail. At this point I have to mention I think all of this is a splendid idea as well and it works. First off the cast is excellent. Twiggy, in particular, is an engaging, loveable, sweet screen presence who oozes charm and that awkward sweetness that stars are made of. Then we have the marvelous Max Adrian as the director/actor in the show. Adrian has, to my knowledge, never given a disappointing performance and he continues to impress even in his last film. Finally, there's the show's magnificent company who continually back stab each other to hilarious results. The film's funniest and consequently best sequence involves four actors tired of their co-star's constant mugging to Sheybal sabotaging her performance in the old slapstick tradition. It's hilarious to see her scramble. It would, of course, be very hard to make the fabulous cast of "The Boy Friend" not be funny. It has, to mention just a few names, Christopher Gable, Bryan Pringle, Murray Melvin, Moyra Fraser, and Antonia Ellis in prominent roles and they all deliever big time. In many ways, this backstage part of the plot is more entertaining than the stuff on the stage even though it's not as worked out as it should be. How come, for instance, do all the actors in the play have the same names as their characters? Another thing that really irked me is that up until the intermission (and yes, this film has an intermission) all the singing was contained to the stage bits, but suddenly, in the film's second part, we get musical numbers even backstage. There's one involving Twiggy longingly singing about her love for her leading man (Christopher Gable) and another one which is some comic banter between Bryan Pringle and Moyra Fraser. I don't understand this bit of the film, but it is symptomatic of its biggest failing. Namely, Russell is off the rails here. He allows himself too many needless indulgencies. There is probably 40 minutes worth of flights of fancy here which are entirely pointless to the film. There's one which is a recreation of some Greek myth done in the style of Isadora Duncan, then there's one involving Twiggy and Gable dancing on a giant record, and so on and on. There's no need for them, unlike in "The Music Lovers" they don't push the plot ahead, they don't tell us anything we don't know, and they're ultimately not much fun because I'd rather be watching the backstage backstabbing which I'm invested in than Russell's little leaps of imagination. They also end up stalling the pace of the film which needed to be much quicker a la Peter Bogdanovich's "Noises Off". All these sequences combined with the unexplained singing in the second half and several scenes showcasing the magnificent tap dancing abilities of Tommy Tune (again pointless for the plot) end up only needlessly dragging the film out to a whopping 138 minutes. "The Boy Friend" doesn't need to be that long and indeed its length almost suffocates it. The film ends up feeling a little repetative (there are at least three numbers in which the cast upstages each other in pretty much the same way), quite bloated, and the pace is jarringly uneven. The aforementioned Bogdanovich film is what kept popping into my mind because it is almost the perfect backstage comedy. Had Bogdanovich handled this material it would have had the focus it needed, less psychedelia and more 1920s charm. I love Ken Russell but the man is decidedly not for everything. However, to my geniune surprise, "The Boy Friend" doesn't fall apart. Despite all its failings the cast is wildly entertaining, the plot sufficiently involving, and the music's great. Probably most importantly, though, I loved Twiggy in the lead and the comedy is consistently hilarious. So put this one up on the "Works Despite Itself" list. It also belongs on the "Ken Russell Films Ken Russell Should Not Have Directed" list alongside "Billion Dollar Brain".
3/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsDorothy TutinScott AntonyHelen MirrenBiographical movie of the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.25-06-2017
"Michelangelo at his worst. It's dead. Just look at it. No holes, no muscle, and no mystery." shouts the leading man of "Savage Messiah". One Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (Scott Antony), a loud-mouthed, opinionated, and tireless sculptor to the woman he not so much seduced but rather appropriated himself to. "Art? Nothing but luck backed up by slave labour" he continues reminding me of the old adage that "genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration". That's precisely what Ken Russell's "Savage Messiah" proves. Finally, Russell tackles the subject of inspiration and creation without his usual reverential mystification. Rather than having it mysteriously, almost alchemically, appear inside the head of the artist like in his previous biopics, here we see how Gaudier-Brzeska sweats, toils, and struggles to create each of his pieces. Russell never fails to point out the dirt under his nails, the sweat on his face, or dust in his eyes. But I suspect Gaudier-Brzeska wouldn't have it any other way. He says his first lines about three minutes into the film and never stops talking until the end. Antony and Russell portray the sculptor as so energetic that it's a mystery how he doesn't explode. He is always moving, jumping on tables, rocks, and women. He is always spouting off some new philosophy, but unlike in Russell's much respected "Women in Love", all this philosophising doesn't get tiresome because we (like the characters) are not meant to take it analytically or, for that matter, seriously. Antony gives Gaudier-Brzeska a certain tongue-in-cheek tone which is very beneficial for the film. If we were to take this wild, crazy, clever man deadly seriously he'd become a grandiose bore by the second act. As is he is great fun to watch. When the film came out, Pauline Kael, the best writer of all the critics and the worst critic of all the writers, wrote: "[Russell's] not trying to deal with the age any of his subjects lived in, or the appetites and satisfactions of that age, or the vision of a particular artist; but is always turning something from the artists’ lives into something else – a whopping irony, a phallic joke, a plushy big scene." One suspects that Kael has not seen Russell's "Dante's Inferno" where Russell was so concentrated on his failed attempts to include endless arrays of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's contemporaries into the film that he forgot to tell his subject's story. No such thing happens in "Savage Messiah" and it is one of its many saving graces. T. E. Hulme, Ezra Pound, Robert Bevan, and Gaudier-Brezska's other contemporaries are simply not in this story and they have no reason to be in it. This is the life story of Henri Gaudier-Brezska and I don't see why Russell should worry himself about what time he lived in. All good art transcends its time and so do all great artists. If Gaudier-Brzeska had lived today I don't think he'd be a much different person. Kael's comment makes even less sense when you consider that the biggest flaw Russell's films exhibit is their lack of focus. Thankfully, "Savage Messiah" is his most tightly focused film since "Elgar". There are no flights of fancy here, no grand sequences of character's personal fantasies that bogged down the otherwise delightful "The Boy Friend", even though one can see plenty of places where Russell could have squeezed one in. However, he wisely chose not to and instead made "Savage Messiah" focus with an almost laser-beam attention and precision at the decidedly unusual, yet strangely heartwarming relationship between our leading man and the woman he attaches himself to. He first meets her in a public library and refuses to leave her side. At first, she protests but then warms to him and falls in love in her own way. The woman is Sophie Brezska, a neurotic, would-be-writer writer, who like her partner always seems to be spouting off philosophy. Unlike in "Women in Love" where it was a sign of bad writing, here it's a sign of her never explained but sufficiently hinted at mental illness. Their uneasy relationship rests on the fact that despite openly being in love with him, she constantly refuses his advances at intimacy. She eventually allows him to pursue other women for purely sexual conquests but she is obviously deeply disturbed whenever he does it. As is evidenced in the scene when Gaudier-Brezska brings his model, the tastelessly bored rich girl Gosh (Helen Mirren) to the house shared by Sophie and him. Sophie puts up a screen next to their bed and refuses to leave the room and even starts loudly singing in protest while they have sex or at least attempt to. Sophie is played fiercely, heartfeltly, and intelligently by Dorothy Tutin, an actress of considerable and impressive talent. In lesser hands, Sophie could have been pathetic, over-the-top, and utterly unlikeable. She gives a heart and a deep sadness in the eyes hinting at a difficult life of someone unloved. Without her to anchor the film and allow Antony to devour the scenery there'd be no "Savage Messiah". Without a performance so powerful and even when behaviourally over-the-top emotionally understated this film would be a silly, nigh-farcical mess. Arguably, it's her performance that makes and carries the film. Ken Russell's direction is, as mentioned above, less grandiose or fantasy-prone than usual, but that's not to say it lacks that delicious, unbound inventiveness that makes Russell so fun to watch. There are numerous intense sequences that betray his style. There's a hilarious sequence in which Gaudier-Brezska has only six hours to sculpt a statue and has to resort to stealing marble from a local graveyard. There's another sequence drenched in Russell's trademark grotesque satire in which the two Brzeskas dine with a bunch of self-congratulating, full-of-themselves artists, self-proclaimed art experts, and money grubbing art dealers. There's also his singular imagery, from weird angles to unexpected sights. There's a famous sequence in which Helen Mirren descends a flight of stairs wearing only pearls and a pair of shoes while spouting pretentious nonsense about wanting to do something. "I don’t care what I do as long as it’s creative. I want to leave something behind me that was never there before." "The toilet's that way" replies Gaudier-Brzeska. Mirren is great in this film succeeding at once to make her character appealing, appealing, and grotesquely hilarious. More impressive is the final shot of the film which I won't spoil but it involves a haunting image of a woman and a giant stone block. "Savage Messiah" is funny, sad, haunting, powerful as most Russell's films are but it's also focused and fast-paced which is a rare treat in his oeuvre undeniably making this one of his best films.
4/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsRobert PowellGeorgina HaleLee MontagueComposer Gustav Mahler's (Robert Powell) life, told in a series of flashbacks as he and his wife (Georgina Hale) discuss their failing marriage during a train journey.27-06-2017
"Mahler" starts with a blaze. Literally. What is at first a tranquil shot a cabin on a lake quickly turns into a striking image of inferno when it unexpectedly explodes into flames. There's a quick cut to a crash zoom showing Mahler (Robert Powell) himself trapped in the house, screaming yet unheard. Outside a vision of death looks on with his two children. On the mountain opposite, his cheating and maltreated wife Alma (Georgina Hale), at this point simply a feminine figure wrapped up like a mummy in a chrysalis is struggling to be born as she crawls towards a stone bust of her husband. It's immediately clear that this will be director Ken Russell's most fanciful film yet. Russell was known for his "flights of fancy", grandiose visions set to classical music. He used to say he was unable to listen to music without having these kinds of visions and it is obvious that he found Gustav Mahler highly inspirational. However, unusually for Russell for whom the opposite is often true, this film is also one of his most comprehensible and definitely the most comprehensive. He has a long history of making composer biopics, not all of which were wholly successful. His first, a TV docudrama "Elgar", still rules supreme as Russell worked from a very tight, true-to-facts script and used his famous (or rather infamous) imagery to enhance the story and bring the emotion of the artist closer to the viewer. His "The Debussy Film" got the story muddled in favour of style, while his most controversial TV effort "Dance of the Seven Veils" was an entertaining but shallow mockery of Richard Strauss. "Song of Summer" was another master stroke, a touching, loving, and highly sensitive depiction of the final years of Frederick Delius. It is also his most straightforward film. When he transferred from the small to the big screen, Russell took his favourite subject along. His fourth film, "The Music Lovers" is an absolutely riveting and powerful if not true-to-fact biopic on Tchaikovsky, and "Savage Messiah", also one of his best films is about Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who admittedly was not a composer but a sculptor. In "The Music Lovers", Russell probed deeply into the inspiration behind Tchaikovsky's melodies while focusing less on the man himself, in "Savage Messiah", his target was the demystification of the process of creation, showing instead how Gaudier-Brzeska worked his fingers to the bone for every one of his pieces. Neither of these is particularly informative in the pure documentarian sense. We don't learn much about the composers' lives, but in these films, that's not a problem at all simply because that's not what the films are about. In "Mahler", however, Russell achieves that which he hasn't since "Elgar". He creates a visually striking, fanciful study into both the personal and artistic life of his subject. It's a film that will inform you of facts, emotions, and the core of Mahler's artistic being. He achieves this by setting almost the entire film inside the composer's head. Namely, the centre point of the film is Mahler's final train journey. Tired, sick, dying, he travels with his wife back to Austria. Their relationship is chilly, snarky, even antagonistic. They don't miss any chances at having a go at each other and Alma even brings her lover, Max (Richard Morant) along for the ride. In order to escape his failing marriage, his sickness, and the incessant noise of the train, Mahler retreats to his memories. Now, flashbacks are a narrative device I'm not especially fond of. I find it an awfully lazy way of getting around things. But Russell makes it work for him. As most of his films are by their nature episodic, flashbacks make perfect sense. This way he can begin and end his sequences without worrying about tying them into the next ones. The device of having the entire film take place in our lead's head also gives Russell a chance to sensibly shift between factual realism and his usual nightmarish surrealism. The film shifts, like Mahler's fever-stricken consciousness, from reality to hallucination. Most of the surrealistic sequences are, in fact, framed by realistic sequences which contextualise them. For instance, there's a scene in which Mahler with his family discusses their lack of money and how him becoming the director of Court Opera would solve all of their problems. However, the woman who runs the music world of Vienna, Cosima Wagner (Antonia Ellis) is a militant anti-Semite and Mahler is Jewish. So he decides to convert to Catholicism. Cue one of the film's most memorable sequences, a silent film pastiche, in which Mahler, carrying a huge metal star of David, climbs Valhalla where Cosima, dressed in a sexy leather Nazi uniform with a whip, literally makes him jump through flaming hoops. Finally, after he is made to kill "the dragon of old" and eat a pig's head ("Still kosher?"), she propels him onto a giant cross where he conducts her singing (to the tune of her husband's "Ride of the Valkyries") "No longer a Jew boy, winning through straight joy, you're one of us now, now you're a goy! All doors are thrown open when I at you smile. Dictator of Opera. Mahler, Sieg Heil!" There are plenty of brilliant surrealistic sequences in "Mahler" and all of them could qualify as Russell's best work. There's another incredible scene in which Mahler imagines being buried by his wife and a bunch of SS men goosestepping to his music while Beethoven looks on. Russell also proves that he doesn't have to be grandiose and "vulgar" to be impressive. There's a very creepy and haunting shot made even better by its simplicity in which Mahler looks down a stairwell and sees the figure of death standing there. Powerful, yet simple stuff as we've never seen before in a Ken Russell film. However, there are also very deftly handled "realistic" sequences such as a prolonged one focusing on his childhood, his abusive father (Lee Montague), and his introduction to nature by a tramp named Nick (Ronald Pickup). These sequences are as fascinating as the surrealist ones. Of course, neither would really work without each other. The realistic stuff would be dry and uninspired and the surrealist stuff would lack context and be incomprehensible, together though they fit like a hand in a glove. They provide each other the needed elements to make "Mahler" an unforgettable experience. The thread of the film, or rather the framing story, of the train journey is equally captivating which is rare to see. The film only has two real flaws (neither of them major ones). First off, the script (by Russell) has a slightly grating tendency to verbalize that which is clear from the images. There's a terrifying sequence in which we see Mahler's children dying set to one of his "Songs on the Death of Children" sung in English. Russell, not one to be often accused of subtlety, has each of the children taken away by the vision of death and then match cutting their faces with closed, child-sized caskets while Mahler and Alma helplessly look on. This is easily one of the clearest scenes in the film and yet Russell felt the need to have Mahler say, the moment after it finishes, "I had my first heart attack after my first child died", "Yes" replies his interlocutor, "I read about it in the papers. Not the heart attack but the coincidence. The child's death and those morbid songs of yours" as if the film hadn't already spent close to ten minutes establishing the connection between the songs and Mahler's children's deaths. If these verbalizations were cut, perhaps the second issue might have been fixed as well. Namely, it's the old problem most films seem to have, and Russell almost always falls into it. The film is overlong. Not too much so, though. Never to the extent of it becoming tedious or boring, but a snappier, tighter pace could have made some of its images stand out more, they would have been less drowned in all the dialoguing about them. Perhaps, this is all one problem. Needless verbalization extending the picture. Why do we have to have a scene where the Emperor tells Mahler he can't become the director of the Opera because he's Jewish if we're going to have the same exact thing said in the very next scene by Mahler himself. Cut one. However, this is very small stuff in a film of such power and vision. I can't fault Russell's script too much either since it provides us with two very compelling lead characters neither of which are portrayed as black or white. Mahler is not like Tchaikovsky in "The Music Lovers" shown as a tortured soul only trying to write his music in peace. He can be nasty, opportunistic, spiteful, and most of all, utterly hypocritical. His wife Alma, on the other hand, while certainly a despicable character is shown to be driven to her sins by Mahler's uncaring behaviour. In flashbacks when they first meet she is a lovely, outgoing, loving woman which makes us realise it was Mahler who made her into the bitter, cheating, despicable shell of a creature we see in the train sequences. The script also provides them with several memorable lines. The one which will stick for a long time is the film's very final line, but I shan't spoil its impact here. Of course, with such character depth, "Mahler" relies more heavily on performances than typical Ken Russell films do. Still, I've never had a problem with a single performance in a Russell film and this extends to "Mahler" in spades. In my opinion this film features the strongest performances in his oeuvre. Robert Powell is brilliant in the lead capable of being alternately imposing and powerful and diminutive and servile. He is able to convey so much with his face that sometimes lines seem obsolete. He is one of my favourite actors and this is his best performance. Similarly excellent is Georgina Hale as Alma. She was brilliant in Russell's masterpiece "The Devils", but here she takes center stage and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Powell. Beyond the two of them we have a whole host of marvellous actors from the aforementioned Ronald Pickup and Lee Montague to such recognisable faces as Rosalie Crutchley, Peter Eyre, David Collings, Andrew Foulds, Kenneth Colley, and Oliver Reed in a single shot blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo. I also have to commend the cinematography by Dick Bush who seamlessly alternates between the various styles Russell utilises in the film and manages to give "Mahler" a unifying, darkly gothic feel despite its episodic nature. Finally, all I have to say is that "Mahler" is a powerhouse through and through. A film that is both comprehensible and fanciful. A Russell film which is approachable, enjoyable, and psychedelic. All in all, an unforgettable experience.
4/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsRoger DaltreyAnn-MargretOliver ReedA psychosomatically blind, deaf, and mute boy becomes a master pinball player and, subsequently, the figurehead of a cult.28-06-2017
Knowing Ken Russell's preference for stylish, psychedelic, surrealist sequences set to music it was a given that he would do a sung-through musical at some point in his life. The only question was what kind it would be. Well, it turned out to be based on a rock concept album. In the late 60s and the 70s rock concept albums were all the rage. A concept album is basically an album in which the songs are connected by a narrative thread. You'd be hard-pressed to find a successful rock group that doesn't have one. From the Beach Boys and The Beatles who are often credited with starting the genre to Pink Floyd whose "The Wall" is probably the most famous example. Even several would-be musicals began life as concept albums. Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Evita" were first rock albums and only then Broadway smash-hits. In 1973, director Norman Jewison turned "Jesus Christ Superstar" into a brilliant feature film opening the doors for more concept albums to be filmed. This finally led to the awful Michael Schultz film "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and finally to Alan Parker's brilliantly off the wall "The Wall" in 1982. Of course, one could say that "Jesus Christ Superstar" contributed to the creation of Ken Russell's "Tommy" as well, but I'm sure Russell would have stumbled upon the idea himself regardless. "Tommy" began life as a 1969 album by The Who which propelled the group to a Beatles-like status. The plot focused on a deaf, dumb, and blind kid named Tommy who becomes a pinball wizard and eventually creates a cult of personality. The film version keeps the basic plot but changes a lot of the details to suit Russell's visions. The Who album was a good fit for Russell because it was in and of itself psychedelic and hallucinatory and without a plot that is so strongly developed and narrative as was the case with "Jesus Christ Superstar". Instead, the album and the film are more episodic with each song focusing on another aspect of Tommy's life. While the story does move forward it doesn't really do so through the songs but rather between the songs while they chart the results. For instance, one song shows us Tommy figuring out he is brilliant at pinball, in the next song he's already the most popular player beating the long-standing champion. All the nitty gritty of the plot happened in between while the two songs focused on the spectacle. Russell chooses to follow the structure of the album and simply to provide the visuals for the songs. This is his first misstep. A lot is lost between the songs including characterization, motivation, and my general involvement with the story. While I appreciated the spectacle of the film I never really cared for either Tommy or the people around him. Now, this problem with the film I could forgive. After all, I'm not here for the plot but rather for the visuals and the songs. The problems I can't really get over are the problems with precisely those two elements. First off, and I know I am in the minority here, I didn't really like the music of "Tommy". While I loved "Jesus Christ Superstar", "The Wall", and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Band", I found nothing in "Tommy" that really caught my ear. All the songs sounded melodically diffused, rhythmically monotonous, in a phrase all over the place. I was a little bored of it by the end and when the film was over all the songs blended into one. The biggest problem I had with the film, however, was that Russell's visuals are so telling, so powerful and comprehensible on their own that the lyrics feel entirely obsolete and even annoying. While I can understand why characters need to describe what they are doing in an audio format such as a rock album, I don't understand why they need to do so in a film. For instance, there's no need for Tommy to say to his disciples "Now you can't hear me, your ears are truly sealed. You can't speak either, your mouth is filled." when we can clearly see him putting plugs into their mouths and ears and blacked-out glasses on their eyes. And since it is clearly established that his disciples can't hear or see him these lines are obviously for our benefit. In a more egregious example, we get a very long sequence in which Tommy is set free from his prison of deafness, dumbness, and blindness. We see him running, shouting, swimming. We experience the sights of the world as he does for the first time in years. We understand he is free and can now talk, see, and hear. However, the music still continually informs us that he is free and there is even a scene afterwards where Tommy himself informs us that yes, he can see, hear, and talk, just in case we missed it. This almost gave me the feeling that the visuals and the music were recorded separately without the musicians knowing what the director was up to and vice versa. I get the feeling that "Tommy" would work a whole lot better without any lyrics, almost like a rock ballet instead of a rock opera. Russell is a such a good director with such a talent in telling things visually that often dialogue undermines him. Here his visuals undermine the songs making them feel like surplus. Another problem with "Tommy", often found in Russell's films, is that it is too long. This actually happens often in film musicals as sometimes scenes overstay their welcome while the song is still playing. Here it happens quite a lot or I simply noticed it more than in other such films because I wasn't really enjoying the music. Never-the-less, I am going to recommend this film. Why? Well, it is spectacular in the real sense of the word. Russell's visuals are a lot of fun to watch (though not quite as much as the ones in "Mahler" or "The Music Lovers") and the whole thing plays out almost like a music video compilation before there was such a thing as a music video. Also, I must mention how great the actors in the film are. Even with not a lot to work with the cast gives us believable and powerful performances. Oliver Reed is terrific as the stepfather, Robert Powell is great as Tommy's deceased father, Jack Nicholson is hilarious in a small role as a doctor, and Roger Daltrey is good as Tommy, touching and vulnerable as a blind deaf-mute and almost messianic as a cult-leader. The best performance in the film, without a doubt, comes from Ann Margaret as Tommy's mother. She is unforgettably good, dominating the screen with both her considerable acting talent and her wonderful, powerful voice which overshadows everyone else's, including Daltrey's. When the film finally ended I wasn't displeased to have seen it, I was just a little underwhelmed. I expected something a lot better. Something more like "The Wall" in which Parker's visuals enhanced the music rather than overtaking it as Russell's did in "Tommy". Honestly, if I ever rewatch this film, I'll turn the sound off.
3/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsRoger DaltreySara KestelmanPaul NicholasComposer and pianist Franz Liszt (Roger Daltrey) attempts to overcome his hedonistic life-style while repeatedly being drawn back into it by the many women in his life and fellow composer Richard Wagner (Paul Nicholas).28-06-2017
"The Music Lovers", "Savage Messiah", and "Mahler" all mixed realistic scenes with Russell's traditional crazy, surrealistic flights of fancy, but I suppose it was inevitable that one day Ken Russell would just give up trying to insert any semblance of realism into his films and just go all in with the insanity. "Lisztomania" is that film. It's also the logical conclusion of his film series on artists. "The Music Lovers" was about the act of listening to music. Each of the characters in the film (the titular music lovers) experienced Tchaikovsky in a different way and Russell, through his usual flights of fancy, portrayed that. "Savage Messiah" was about the creative process or rather the demystification of it. Instead of gentlemen in elegant dinner jackets who are mysteriously struck by flashes of inspiration, the artist in question here, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska sweats, toils, and works his fingers to the bones to create each of his sculptures. "Mahler", in turn, was about the psyche of the artist. "Lisztomania" is the logical conclusion because it is about the power (read popularity) of music. Lisztomania is an actual term not just a flashy title and it was coined by critic Heinrich Heine in 1844. It was used to describe the frenzy that would occur among Liszt's fans at his concerts. Based on stories women would scream hysterically and even throw their underwear at him in concert halls so crowded there wasn't even standing room left. In modern terms, one could call Franz Liszt, the first pop star. His popularity in the 19th century was reminiscent of that of The Beatles in the 20th. Liszt is played in Russell's film by The Who frontman Roger Daltrey who is, I imagine, not a stranger to that kind of popularity. He played, earlier the same year, the titular character in Russell's "Tommy". Daltrey is a charismatic, charming screen presence and he is so much better in "Lisztomania" where he gets a chance to use his attributes than in "Tommy" where he spent most of the film staring blankly off into the distance. The film begins with a silent film pastiche (another Russell trademark) in which Liszt and his mistress Maria (Fiona Lewis) are caught in flagrante by her husband (John Justin). The husband and Liszt engage in a sword fight full of leaping off and on furniture, swinging off of the chandeliers, and candle cutting until the husband eventually puts Liszt and Maria into a piano and plays it using their heads as hammers. The film then flashes forward to a Liszt concert showing the titular Lisztomania as young girls storm the stage, women show up with prams, and Liszt has a stage manager interview potential sex partners (including Nadezhda von Meck from "The Music Lovers" and Alma Mahler). Then there's the depiction of Liszt and Maria's relationship falling apart and his subsequent affair with Princess Carolyn Wittgenstein (Sara Kestelman). This is the first half of the film dealing with Liszt's popularity. I have to admit this part doesn't really work. Even though there are lots of hilarious lines ("Oh, piss of Brahms!") and insane imagery Russell seems too focused on them to actually deal with the subject at hand. The crazy popularity of Franz Liszt could have made a great subject matter for him but he forgets it among all the fancifulness. It is also a little overlong. There is an undeniably entertaining but pace killing sequence in which Liszt is castrated in a guillotine by the Princess' naked servants. It doesn't amount to much other than a startling moment of fancy. The second half of the film is markedly better. To avoid marriage to the Princess Liszt becomes a priest until one day the Pope himself (Ringo Starr) is rolled on a giant throne into his bedroom to catch him having sex with a hot redhead. "Holy father," he pleads "this is my music copyist, Mr Janina. At least in her letters, she said she was a mister". The Pope, uninterested in his sexual conquests, reminds Liszt that he is a holy exorcist now and tasks him with exorcising none other than composer Richard Wagner (Paul Nicholas), Liszt's biggest nemesis. "He's become the prince of darkness," says the Pope "singing the praises of an obscene religion of his own creation. His operas are cunning hymns of hate against Christ and humanity." From here on in the film turns into an all out remake/spoof of "Dracula" which sees Liszt as Van Helsing going to Wagner as Dracula's castle in the mountains (complete with a bunch of villagers who shudder and escape at the mention of his name). There he finds Wagner and his wife, Liszt's daughter, Cosima (Veronica Quilligan) dressed in Superman outfits brainwashing children. Eventually, Wagner becomes a Frankenstein's creature type Nazi monster killing Jews with a machine gun shaped like an electric guitar. If you think these are spoilers they really are not because nothing can soften the insanity of "Lisztomania". You could read the script and see the storyboards and you'd still be stunned into silence by Russell going farther than I ever believed possible to go. The second half of "Lisztomania" is excellent and finally tackles the subject matter of the film. It is a clash between Liszt whose concerts are often vapid and just entertaining but inspires love and Wagner whose music is revolutionary, intended to provoke, and activist, but inspires hate. In both of their cases, the music they produced was powerful enough to cause mania. Liszt's gave him a Beatles-like popularity while Wagner's inspired the Nazi movement. "Lisztomania" is not nearly as good a study on the nature of music as his other films, nor is it as thoroughly entertaining. It is occasionally languorous, sometimes even boring. However, "Lisztomania's" greatest attribute is its craziness. To see Russell discard all the documentarian factography and embrace his fancifulness is majestic and long awaited. The opening sword fight scene, the concert scene, Wagner turning into a vampire scene, the finale in which Liszt fights Wagner/Hitler-monster in a spaceship are all worth more than the price of admission just for the pure spectacle. Additionally here is a rare chance to see Daltrey give a proper, challenging, charming performance in a film that is not horrendous ("The Legacy"). I enjoyed most of "Lisztomania" and the moments I didn't enjoy weren't awful just a tad boring. There's enough insanity here to fuel anyone's dreams and nightmares for years to come.
3/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsRudolf NureyevLeslie CaronMichelle PhillipsIn 1926 the tragic and untimely death of a silent screen actor caused female moviegoers to riot in the streets and in some cases to commit suicide.28-06-2017
"Valentino" is Ken Russell's most "mainstream" cinematic biopic and also his last. Now, considering Russell's previous work that isn't saying much, it could mean that it is a "normal picture", but it could also mean that Valentino rides around on a 5-foot long penis instead of a 10-foot long one like Liszt. Strictly speaking, "Valentino" is neither since it doesn't feature any of Russell's trademark psychedelic, hallucinatory imagery but it does feature his rather lax attitude towards factography. It is, never-the-less, clearly a Ken Russell picture but instead of mummified women in chrysalises making out with stone busts of Gustav Mahler we get more subdued but still off-beat sequences. On the normalcy scale "Valentino" is only just slightly off to notice something's not right. For instance, there's a boxing scene in this film that could be straight out of a regular picture were it not for one of the boxers wearing a shirt and tie. The opening sequence of the film is a good example as well. There's a definite historical basis for it. When Rudolph Valentino died there was a large hysterical outcry from his immense female fanbase. In Russell's picture, the hordes of crying women storm the funeral parlour where Valentino is laid out, breaking the windows and falling at the feet of his coffin. Right before this happens we have a terrifically funny, short exchange between three Hollywood executives leaning on Valentino's coffin.
Executive #1: "The moment he goes into the ground, our grosses go with him."
Executive #2: "Right. So before they take him outta here we gotta re-release his movies into every theatre in the country."
Executive #3: "That's why I've got the lab working night and day grinding out reprints of "The Sheik"."
Executive #1: "Which labs? Better not be Pathe, Jesse. I've got "Son of the Sheik" running through there."
This scene encapsulates perfectly the darkly humorous tone of the film as well as its general attitude to Hollywood. One gets the feeling Russell's toes got stepped on one too many times and he's taking it out on them here. The film then takes on a similar format as "Mahler". Several newshounds who broke into the parlour with the crowd interview several women who knew and loved Valentino. However, unlike "Mahler", "Valentino" is not really episodic in nature and if the framing story were cut it would work as a straightforward narrative picture. First up is a gangster's moll (Emily Bolton) who murdered her husband for Valentino only to have him escape during her trial. Then there's June Mathis (Felicity Kendal), a screenwriter and producer who first discovered Valentino when he stole the girlfriend (Carol Kane) of Fatty Arbuckle (William Hootkins) right before his eyes at a lavish dinner party. This is one of the most memorable scenes in the film as the giant, gregarious, obnoxious Fatty goes redder and redder in his face as Valentino improvises a hugely sexual dance with his drunk girlfriend embarrassing him in front of all of his "friends". Through Mathis' story, we follow Valentino's rise to fame. Then Alla Nazimova (Leslie Caron) arrives and in the film's funniest scene faints twice for the cameras right next to the coffin. Then Valentino's wife and business partner Natacha Rambova (Michelle Phillips) shows up to tell basically the entire last half of the film. The framing story disappears as their tumultuous marriage unravels. From the days when they were lovers, to their illegal marriage in Mexico, and, most importantly, their business partnership when Rambova forced her way as a creative consultant on all of Valentino's films. This is the definite centerpoint of the film, so I'm not sure why all the stuff that came before it was even shot. Lots of characters are introduced in the first half, not the least of all Felicity Kendal who gives the film's best performance only to be forgotten or reduced to bit players in this second half. Her story extends all the way to Valentino's death after a boxing match with a mouthy newspaperman (Peter Vaughan) who challenged his manhood in the papers. As you can see there's a lot of bravado in "Valentino". Rudolph is incessantly insisting on having a fight with someone or is seducing his co-stars. What strikes me the most is that Russell doesn't really do much with all this abound machismo. His laser-sharp cynicism seems to be on holiday for this film. Even his scathing look at Hollywood is nothing more than a lot of cliche stuff you hear every day. "They only care for money, not for art" type of stuff. I expected a lot more from a fearless insider like Russell. One could almost get the idea that he was trying to make a more commercial, Hollywoodized film than his previous endeavours. Whatever the case might have been, Russell strongly regretted making the film and even denounced it in his autobiography as his biggest mistake. "Valentino" was a critical and box-office flop and almost ruined Russell's career. The backlash was so bad he retreated to television for a few years before finally returning with "Altered States" in 1980. Seeing it with this mind, "Valentino" is really not that bad. I quite enjoyed the story and the often witty if not particularly insightful look at 1920s Hollywood. There are lots of clever, memorable lines ("It's always Halloween in Tinseltown"), good performances (the aforementioned Kendal shines, but so do Michelle Philips, Leslie Caron, and Peter Vaughan), and Russell's eye is as good as ever. There are plenty of haunting shots in this film. There's a great scene with more than a touch of homoeroticism of Valentino dancing with Nijinsky. This potential subplot is never followed up on sadly, it could have been a fascinating film on a homosexual man becoming a sex-icon for legions of women, but the scene is shot great. There's also the wonderful scene in which the moll shoots the gangster who'd just forcibly taken her from Valentino's arms. Having said this, I can certainly understand those who found the film less entertaining than I did. There's certainly a strong case to be made in that direction. The pace is a mess, for one, as the film races over certain aspects of Valentino's life and lingers too long on others. It is also, as I mentioned earlier, not particularly insightful. When the film was over I knew about as much as if I'd seen a short featurette on the actor. Events were dramatised brilliantly but the core of the man is missing. He remains a mystery. Perhaps, though, this is because there's not much to know. I have to say that the film's biggest problem is Rudolph Valentino himself. Having seen the film I can only induce that he was a frightful bore. The character in the film certainly is. He is always boasting, always full of himself, but always lacking in a sense of humour, or any real charm. He comes across as a wooden block. The film's lack of insight doesn't help as it reduces him to a cog in his own story. The only reason, it seems, that he is in the film at all is so he can witness other people doing interesting things while he looks on occasionally saying something meant to be funny. He is played by ballet dancer and occasional actor Rudolf Nureyev. While I can see how Nureyev could be a good bit player, he's energetic and has a very photogenic face, he's no leading man material. He lacks charisma and the acting chops. In a phrase, he's a one trick pony. His portrayal of Valentino has no arc. From the first to the last scene he's basically playing the same one. His inflexion, face, or emotion never change and they are never particularly believable. He was fine for the first twenty minutes but then began to wear on me. However, as I said, he's only a bit player in this film as events and minor characters around him always manage to steal the scenes from him. What this all boils down to is really personal preference. I quite enjoyed the style, the look, and the wit of the film. While it dragged in places there was enough of a spectacle put on to amuse me for two hours. I also tend to find films-on-films very interesting anyway. On the other hand, I disliked the main character and felt that the film was empty as it lacked either the facts or the insight on its subject. My attention didn't wander during the film but I felt unfulfilled when it was over.
2.5/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsWilliam HurtBlair BrownBob BalabanA psycho-physiologist experiments with drugs and a sensory-deprivation tank and has visions he believes are genetic memories.29-06-2017
Ken Russell finally went to Hollywood with all the hullabaloo, drama, and one-upmanship that that entails in 1980 when he was hired to replace Arthur Penn as director of "Altered States" who'd left the picture due to disagreements with writer Paddy Chayefsky. According to Russell, he was the 27th choice to direct this psychedelic horror film due to the failure of his previous biopic "Valentino" which is sad because the premise sounds almost tailor-made for him. The film concentrates on Dr Eddie Jessup (William Hurt), a scientist exploring the possibility that our altered states of mind (read dreams and hallucinations) are just as real as what we call reality. He starts experimenting first with an isolation chamber but that is not enough. Finally, he treks up a Mexican mountain where a tribe of Indians give him an unknown, untested drug. He takes it and during a session of intense hallucinations murders a goat. Believing he had transgressed, tapped into dormant primordial genes in his brain (read gone ape) he decides to combine his two experiments and take the drug inside the isolation chamber. Now, this is not just the build up, it's the entire first two-thirds of the film because "Altered States" is not just any old horror film which is something you know if you've ever heard of Paddy Chayefsky. Horror and science fiction are not exactly his treading ground. Chayefsky made a name for himself in 1950s American television for realistic, kitchen-sink dramas of incredible intensity with some of the best dialogue since Shakespeare. Chayefsky's talent for writing catchy, jazzy gab is to this day unparalleled. All the best writers who came after him Quentin Tarantino, David Mamet, Aaron Sorkin, all confess Chayefsky's influence on them and even if they didn't it would be painfully obvious. In 1955, Chayefsky arrived in a grand manner to Hollywood with his Oscar-winning picture "Marty", but he would have to wait until the 1970s for new triumphs. And, ho boy, what triumphs they turned out to be. First in 1971 came his dazzlingly brilliant sharp and witty satire "The Hospital" which has what is in my mind undoubtedly the greatest monologue ever committed to film. George C. Scott (in his career best performance, to hell with "Patton") laments about his profession saying "It is all rubbish, isn't it. I mean transplants, anti-bodies, we can produce birth cytogenetically, we can clone people like carrots, and half the kids in this ghetto haven't been inoculated for polio. We have established an enormous medical entity and we're sicker than ever. We cure nothing! We heal, nothing! The whole goddamn wretched world, strangulating in front of our eyes." Five years later Chayefsky indelibly made his mark on the consciousness of film viewers with "Network", the much lauded and still heartbreakingly potent satire on the commercialization and television that boldly proclaims "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore". Knowing and loving his past success it is bizarre to see his name on a Cronenbergian high-concept horror film until you realise that that is not at all what he wanted it to be. Chayefsky was fascinated by the idea of primordial regression put forward by John C. Lilly, but I suspect Chayefsky was more fascinated by the possibility to explore human instincts and human nature in their purest form, in the moment of creation, rather than by its possible to make for a great creature feature. Chayefsky also made "Altered States" a fascinating study of love which is what most of the first two-thirds of his script focus on. Eddie is in a relationship with Emily (Blair Brown), a fellow scientist and they are very much in love, but Eddie's preoccupation with his research makes him neglect her and finally divorce her. However, in the end, it is that love in its purest instinctual form that he will need to survive. Chayefsky had no luck with "Altered States" from day one. He originally wrote it as a novel in 1978 but had great troubles with it. First, he suffered from stress writing it which led to his first heart attack. Before he'd even had time to recover he was sued by one of the researchers on the book. When that all cleared up, Hollywood snapped up Chayefsky's first (and, as it tragically turned out, only) novel. Of course, Chayefsky adapted it for the screen. This is where more trouble came from. Namely, Chayefsky's intellectual, heavy, philosophical script proved difficult to chew for lots of directors. Arthur Penn took it on for a few months but then quit. Finally, Ken Russell was tapped. Russell, talking about the film, later on, said that the studios realised that the film needed someone with a strong visual imagination. Knowing this and knowing Russell's track record and proclivity for flights of fancy and hallucinatory imagery it is surprising just how brief and somewhat underwhelming these scenes are in the film. I don't think they make up for two minutes of screen time and are mostly unconvincing slide shows of bright pictures like those people on acid like to stare at and see the universe. This is through no fault of Russell's though because Chayefsky and he clashed heavily during filming. Russell considered Chayefsky's dialogue and philosophy heavy script "ponderous, pretentious and laboured" and wanted to rewrite the whole thing. Annoyed with all this tampering Chayefsky went the other way and threatened to sue Russell if he so much as changed one word. Russell, ever the irreverent naughty boy, obliged Chayefsky and put every word of his script in the film but instructed the actors to mumble the lines or say them with their mouths full rendering most of Chayefsky's carefully shaped words unintelligible. Chayefsky left the picture after unsuccessfully attempting to get Russell fired and had his name removed from the credits. This constant power struggle is painfully obvious in the finished material which brings me back to the film itself. Chayefsky's idea for the film was a talky, brainy musing on the nature of man and his urges. Russell, on the other hand, clearly went for a full-blooded horror film loading it with tangible atmosphere, dark cinematography, and a terrific John Corigliano soundtrack clearly inspired by Jerry Goldsmith's work on "Alien" with twinges and twangs and metallic noises mixed with brass instruments. The two approaches are so different that they often jarringly clash, most notably during the mumbled dialogue sequences. Russell made a terrible mistake here because his cold, let's get this over with approach to these key (and quite long) scenes makes them stick out. By cutting out (or similarly obstructing) several quite important discussions he also makes the love-conquers-all ending feel saccharine instead of truthful and insightful. However, don't shed any tears over the film because although Russell changed Chayefsky's intended purpose it's no botch job. "Altered States" is a highly effective, creepy, and memorable film. Russell has often played with the horror genre before, most notably in "The Devils" and "Lisztomania", but this is his first honest and full-on attempt to make a horror film and in that sense, it's a resounding success. Other than an aggressively silly and immensely disappointing sequence in which the film turns into the most cliched werewolf picture just instead of a wolf we have an ape leaping over cars, fighting the police, and killing animals in zoos, "Altered States" is subtle, creepy, and suitably understated to the end of creating genuine terror in the viewers. But every few minutes there's an obvious hiccup when Russell's and Chayefsky's ambition crash. "Altered States" is a good film that could have been one of the greatest horror films of all time had the two found a common ground. Caught in between the two geniuses the cast does an admirable job of playing to both their needs. William Hurt is sensational in his film debut, distant and cool as the scientist in charge but with an infectious enthusiasm for his job. His two assistants the equally enthusiastic Bob Balaban and the "sensible man" Charles Haid provide great support. However, Blair Brown has the toughest job of all because both Russell and Chayefsky cast her in the centre of the film with markedly different intentions. In Chayefsky's script, she is the symbol of love and its main protector. He gives her several haunting monologues including: "Of all the men in this world, why do l have to love this one? I can't get him out of me. Do you know how many men I tried to fall in love with this year? No matter who I'm in bed with, I have to imagine it's him. No matter who I'm eating with or walking with there's always this pain because it isn't him. I'm possessed by him." But she's not just the girl in love. Chayefsky wisely makes a brilliant scientist in her own right and makes her the voice of scientific reason, the Scully to Hurt's Mulder. Russell, however, casts her in his horror film as the damsel in distress, the sexpot to show up gratuitously naked from time to time, and in the end the one to deliver the McGuffin that love (for Russell) is. I'm not saying Russell's approach is bad or ignoble it's simply wildly different to Chayefsky's. But Brown is brilliant managing to reconcile these disparate roles into one, convincing, three-dimensional character. And for the end, if for a second we examine Russell's direction and Chayefsky's script separately we see that neither of the men fails us. The script is extremely witty, clever, and fascinating. And despite what Russell says, the philosophical musings are interesting (if you can understand them through all the mumbling and chewing). On the other end of the spectrum, Russell's direction is masterful. He seamlessly builds tension and gives us several highly memorable images. The backlit shot of Eddie towards the end when Emily and one of his assistants realise what he's done is particularly haunting. A successful collaboration between Chayefsky and Russell might have tempered their excess and made for a competent film, but I wish that one of the guys had given way. Their extremes are far more fascinating than anyone competent picture can be. I'd much rather watch Chayefsky's musings on love and human nature or Russell's Gothic horror film than a middle-of-the-road movie a compromise might have produced. It's just a crying shame that instead of one extreme the film ended up featuring both. In the end, the experience of watching "Altered States" is like watching a tug-of-war with Russell pulling one and Chayefsky the other side, but while not excellent or as good as it could have been it's an undeniably terrific, chilling, and thought-provoking film.
3/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsKathleen TurnerAnthony PerkinsBruce DavisonA mysterious woman, fashion designer by day and prostitute by night, is hounded by two men: a married father of two children and a sexually repressed preacher.29-06-2017
"Crimes of Passion" is a movie that wants so much to be shocking and provocative that it goes blue in the face and becomes laughable. It, however, never makes it because the whole thing seems like it was created by a Christian parenting group to show the evils of movies. It has all the right elements to be shocking. It has prolonged scenes of degenerate sex acts, people swear, talk about cum, sex, and prolifically use the f-word. There's also nudity, violence, and blasphemy but it lacks any kind of gusto, style, and conviction. It is nothing more than a clustering of elements taken from the MPAA folder marked "offensive" and incoherently put together into a passionless, dull movie. The subject matter is sex and the hapless author of this mess elects to deal with it through the story of China Blue (Kathleen Turner), a streetwalker by night and a successful fashion designer by day. For some pretty thin faux-Freudian reasons she has this split personality sexual fantasy which remains unexplored. Her motivations, feelings, and even character remain unexplored in the movie. She's merely a means to an end. Following China Blue, we meet her various clients, all perverted and cartoonish with a distinct taste of cardboard. "Crimes of Passion" is mainly episodic with two threads that go through the movie loosely binding the plot together. Each concerns one of China Blue's regulars. One focuses on Bobby Grady (John Laughlin), a goody-two-shoes who's wife has lost all passion for him. He is employed to follow China Blue by her day-job employer and in doing so he discovers her nighttime activities. He also, as it always happens in bad movies, falls in love with her and, would you believe it, she does with him, though she won't show him yet. More amusing but equally perplexing is the second story focusing on an insane fake preacher (Anthony Perkins) who is obsessed with saving China Blue's soul to the point that he starts stalking her and planning to kill her with a big, sharp, metal dildo 'cause that's the kind of movie this is. Amid scenes, with either the preacher or Bobby (the two intertwine only twice) China Blue gets it on with a violent policeman who likes to be penetrated by his truncheon, a rich couple who lifelessly have a threesome with her in a back of a car, and a dying man who finally brings out that heart of gold we all knew was hiding in there. We also get the incredibly boring looks at Bobby's personal life and his marital problems. The film is written by Barry Sandler, the same horny hack who churned out such nonsense as the unbelievably dumb "Easy Rider" knock-off "The Loners", the inept "serious vehicle" for Raquel Welch "Kansas City Bomber", one of the worst biopics in film history, the sensationalist and cheesy "Gable and Lombard", and the equally passionless "Making Love". The closest Mr Sandler has ever come close to good movies were "The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox", a somewhat charming but dumb comedy starring George Segal and Goldie Hawn and the Miss Marple film "The Mirror Crack'd" that owes more to the Agatha Christie novel and its talented cast than Sandler's efforts. His script here is beyond dull and empty. The story is disjointed, languorous, and lacks any kind of pace or rhythm. It is also packed with the worst, most overcooked dialogue I've heard in a long time. No one can speak without it being in one-liners or zingers. I kept waiting for rimshots. In their first encounter, China Blue and the preacher have this dialogue. The preacher goes first.
"I'm here to save you."
"Why don't you f- me that'll save me."
"Not from your disease."
"What disease? I'm as healthy as a horse, fit as a fiddle, and ready for cock."
"Whores and metaphors don't mix. Who are you?"
"I'm Cinderella, Cleopatra, Goldie Hawn, Eva Braun. I'm Lois Muffin, I'm Pocahontas, I'm whoever you want me to be, reverend."
"But what are you doing here?"
"Satisfying."
"Who?"
"I think the confessional is about over."
"Don't you want to be saved? Do you get that much out of this?"
"I get paid."
"But I'm not interested in what you're selling, only what you're buying."
"Why don't you assume the missionary position, Reverend."
"My purpose here is strictly humanitarian."
"To make me see the light?"
"To make you see through the b-s-."
And so on and on and on. This kind of writing wears on you very quickly. Ten minutes in and I was tired. I had the feeling my ears were bleeding. The script has no point, no ideas, only overwritten dialogue which is consequently empty, tiresome, and perfunctory. There are no characters merely cardboard cutouts being moved about by an unseen but heavy-handed and eagerly felt writer. They have no emotions only wise-ass attitudes. The acting doesn't help them much either. Other than Anthony Perkins who is obviously having fun chewing up the scenery the rest of the cast is stunningly bad. John Laughlin is a block of stone that Michelangelo couldn't shape. He lacks all things that would make a good extra, let alone leading man. He has no charm, no charisma, and no talent. He's stupefyingly uninteresting to watch. The bit players are cut from the same cloth and all act like they were recruited from the local amateur theatre. Kathleen Turner, who should by all logic be the centerpoint of this film but isn't, doesn't fare much better either. I was never particularly impressed by her acting chops. She was fun in "Romancing the Stone", and moderately sexy in "Body Heat" but little beyond that. Here her character is so vapid and thoughtlessly written that her crude and over-the-top performance doesn't help inject any sensitivity or life into China Blue. With the names listed here so far, I couldn't have possibly hoped for anything better, but the one name that I was shocked to see in the credits was director Ken Russell's. What is one of the greatest British filmmakers of all time, the genius who brought us "The Music Lovers", "The Devils", "Mahler" doing directing this dreck? And so badly as well. His direction of this film is so overheated, over-cranked, and over-the-top that the film tips over into self-parody. Russell is the pope of over-the-top directing, agreed, but "Crimes of Passion" goes the wrong way. Instead of his usual fanciful hallucinatory sequences which could have made this film at least interesting, Russell elects to shoot the whole thing in a sort of a theatrical, quasi-surrealistic way, confining action to single rooms overlit by neon blues and reds and then shooting the scenes in single long takes. He also seems to direct everyone in the cast to overact which is definitely the wrong way to go for everyone but Anthony Perkins. There is no reason why John Laughlin should flail his arms around butt naked, there is no reason for Kathleen Turner to spasm on a bed in a woeful attempt at sexiness, there is no reason to play every sex scene like a wrestling match between two weightlifters on cocaine. The only thing his direction succeeds in is making the film look and feel like a cheap straight-to-video softcore flick. Aiding him in creating that atmosphere is a truly grating synthesiser score by Rick Wakeman who definitely knows better. "Crimes of Passion" would only work as a porn. If its simulated short and surrealistic sex scenes were replaced by hardcore then its episodic nature would be understandable, it's wooden acting easier to overlook, and its score more than fitting. As a film that aims to take itself seriously, this is an unmitigated disaster that would make Ed Wood blush. And I'm not talking about the 1940s enthusiastic, full of ideas Ed Wood. I'm talking about the 1970s hardened, porn director Ed Wood who made "Necromania". I think he'd be ashamed to claim "Crimes of Passion" as one of his own.
1/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsGabriel ByrneJulian SandsNatasha RichardsonThe Shelleys visit Lord Byron and compete to write a horror story.30-06-2017
"Gothic" is a very strange movie even by Ken Russell's standards. It's infuriatingly vague, hypnotically atmospheric, and psychedelically nightmarish. It's a typically Russellian speculation on what the most productive summer in literary history might have looked like. The night in question is the one when Percy Shelley, his soon to be wife Mary and her half-sister Claire went to visit Lord Byron and his doctor/biographer John Polidori in his villa in Italy. That night two horror classics were born. Polidori wrote, "The Vampyre" which is now considered the great predecessor of "Dracula" and Mary, of course, wrote "Frankenstein", the undying literary classic. The holiday, however, is shrouded in mystery as the only written account of it, a joint diary of Percy and Mary Shelley is now considered lost. This proved to be such apt ground for speculation that it inspired five different portrayals on the screen. First, of course, there's the framing story of "The Bride of Frankenstein" that sees Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester) relating the remainder of the story to her friends. Then came "Gothic", followed by a more realistic, but significantly duller retelling of the same story, Ivan Passer's 1988 film "Haunted Summer". I find it quite funny that someone saw "Gothic" and thought "Good story, needs realism". The same year came "Rowing with the Wind", a melodramatic Spanish-produced bored that's happily mostly forgotten nowadays. Finally, there's the quirky little comedy "Dread Poets' Society" in which the famous four (no Polidori) are transported onto a modern train where they discuss all things poetic with Rastafarian poet Benjamin Zephaniah. Of all of them, "Gothic" is by far the most interesting and original. It doesn't fall into the trap of romanticising history nor does it feel the need to stick blindly to dull realism. Ken Russell has never had that problem. Instead "Gothic" goes the opposite way providing us with a psychedelic vision in which the five take too many drinks and drugs, perform a seance, and have a bad trip in which they convince themselves they've summoned some kind of a demon. What follows is mass hysteria which we're invited to participate in. All kinds of weird and unexplained hallucinations occur including pig's heads turning into human heads, bugs and leeches crawling on skin, vampires, and most famously breasts with eyes instead of nipples. All of this is played out with trademark irreverence and grandiosity by Russell who builds up a terrifically creepy atmosphere akin to the one in his earlier horror film "Altered States". In that respect, "Gothic" more than lives up to its title. It's set in a vast, eery, unlit manor with creaky doors and large staircases. The visions are nightmarish and creepy and wouldn't feel out of place in a Lawrence Gordon Clark M.R. James adaptation. Where the film stumbles a bit is the question of its intent. Other than Russell recognising the trippy value of a bunch of Romanticist poets dreaming up scary stories while high I can't see any other intention behind this film. Oh, sure, there are lots of unwieldy discussions about god, creation, and meaning of poetry, but it all feels like set dressing. What's sorely missing is Russell's keen and interesting discourse on art which made his earlier films on the subject like "The Music Lovers" or "Mahler" so fascinating. "Gothic" has nothing to say on that topic. An argument could be made that Russell only wanted to make a horror film, but in that case, his film would be a failure from the start. You can't provoke horror without suspense and there is no suspense in this story since we know they all came out of it well and alive. But whatever his intent "Gothic" turned out pretty good. This is not just down to Ken Russell's excellent direction though. The cast is excellent. Natasha Richardson plays Mary Shelley and is terrific. Russell cast her well. Her elongated figure and unusual face lend a certain otherworldliness to the character. She manages to bring her vulnerability to the surface without ever making her pitiful. Myriam Cyr plays Mary's half-sister Claire, a nymphomaniac in love with Lord Byron who is very quickly possessed by some sort of entity or hysteria. Cyr is marvellous in that classic horror film role of the creepy, crazy possessed girl. She has huge, impressive, hypnotic eyes and a wild, unkempt look betraying her inner unrest. Strangely, the weakest link of the group is the usually exquisite Julian Sands. His portrayal of Percy Shelley is decidedly weak and one note. He seems to go through the entire film blubbering and screeching and being a general distracting nuisance. The best of the lot, however, fighting for the top spot are Timothy Spall and Gabriel Byrne. Spall is John Polidori, hopelessly in love with Lord Byron and crushed by his cruel dismissals. Spall is always brilliant and fun to watch and here he is given the opportunity to chew the large gothic scenery which he does with delight. He is not afraid to take Polidori way over the edge of insanity and back again. On the other hand, Byrne as Lord Byron is the cynical voice of reason. While never failing to take a wise-ass potshot at one of his guests he is the most grounded of the five staying rational in the face of adversity. It's a role that gives Byrne the opportunity to do two things he does best. Bring out his acidic cynicism and be the commanding presence in the film. Russell's view of the characters is very interesting. He sees them as early hippies. There's a lot of talk of free love, a lot of sex going on in public, and quite a lot of drinks and drugs going 'round. I suspect he would have taken more advantage of this idea, however, had he made this film in the early 70s. Not everything in "Gothic" works well. First of all, I was not overly impressed by the Stephen Volk script. Volk is a screenwriter who continually disappoints me. After writing what I consider to be the greatest ghost story ever put on screen, "Ghostwatch", he's moved from one flop to another. "Gothic" is his only good theatrical film and not thanks to him. He is guilty of one of the most annoying film sins. It is a pet peeve of mine to watch films about writers in which they seamlessly quote themselves. Here everyone does it. Additionally, they all speak like they write, in fabulously composed, witty, clever lines full of philosophical and religious references. You can just hear the typewriter clicking away. Though he sets up five interesting characters and provides a lot of tension between them he does little with them. They never discuss or exorcise their mutual problems and tangled relationships which seem to be forgotten once the craziness begins. Another aspect of the film I disliked is the highly inappropriate and hammy synth score by Thomas Dolby. I have nothing against synth scores, in fact, my favourite film scores are the ones done by Claudio Simonetti for Dario Argento, but a lot of composers forget that synthesisers are instruments on their own accord and not replacements for orchestras. Jerry Goldsmith wisely used synthesisers in his orchestral scores to provide additional sounds and never used them to mimic violins or trumpets. Dolby, on the other hand, forgets this and uses a synthesiser to replace an orchestra he probably couldn't afford. The score is grandiose and old-fashioned and would have worked great with an orchestra, but his synthesiser just doesn't sound like one. It tries its best to emulate string sections, rhythm sections, and brass sections but to no avail, it all sounds very early 80s disco. The images inspired by classic gothic horror films jar with the music heavily throughout. It is very distracting. So, what can one say in summation about "Gothic". Nothing definite, really. I enjoyed the psychedelic imagery, the hypnotic atmosphere, and the performances, while I certainly found flaws to pick at. The film lacks depth, that analytic dimension Russell's earlier films had as I suspect there's more to be said about what happenned that summer in Italy. The film also needed a better screenwriter who wouldn't forget to allow his characters to clash and who would know how to write convincing dialogue. Finally, someone needs to go back and rescore this film and quick. In a sentence, an enjoyable and creepy if unfulfiling thrill ride.
3/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsGlenda JacksonStratford JohnsNickolas GraceOn Guy Fawkes Day 1892m Oscar Wilde goes to a performance of his controversial, banned play 'Salome'. The 'theatre' is a brothel and the performers are prostitutes.30-06-2017
After the success of "Gothic", wild man visionary director Ken Russell signed a three picture deal with Vestron, a low-budget film company. The films would prove to be quite ambitious for their monetary restraints. The first was to be an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's biblical drama "Salome", the next a gothic Bram Stoker adaptation "The Lair of the White Worm", and the third a costume drama based on D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow". All three would require a fair share of rewriting and imagination. The way Russell found around "Salome" actually ended up improving the film. "Salome's Last Dance" begins deceptively with two men entering a brothel. But these two men are not in search of prostitutes, nor is this going to be another "Crimes of Passion". The older, more acerbic fellow is famous playwright Oscar Wilde (Nickolas Grace) and the dashing chap with him is his lover Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (Douglas Hodge). The brothel is their regular haunt and they are well known and respected there. Upon arriving Wilde is informed by the brothel's jovial proprietor (Stratford Johns) that in his honour the staff and the guests of the brothel will perform his forbidden play "Salome". This is the way Russell frames this incredible adaptation of a dramatic stalwart. The action never leaves the improvised and cheaply built stage in the tacky whorehouse room and the entire play is watched on by the writer himself other than during occasional indulgences with the manservant. The whole set-up has a distinctly Brechtian feel because we are never allowed to forget we are watching a play, or rather a film. However, "Salome's Last Dance" is not just a strange interpretation of "Salome". First off, it is a complete and brilliant reinvention of it. The original play was written in French and then translated three years later. This is the text that has been used ever since. Russell, never one for blind reverence said to hell with all that and had his wife write a new translation. Her contribution to the film is a modernised, simplified "Salome" whose words trickle off the tongue. So, for instance, instead of the cumbersome "Do not listen to your mother's voice. She is ever giving you evil counsel. Do not heed her." we get "Why, don't pay any attention to your mother, she's always giving you bad advice. You mustn't listen to her." While some may (and indeed do) consider this a bastardization of the original text I think it is a masterstroke. All that Shakespearian writing would sound odd in the film's context. It also manages to make the play accessible and, strangely, more powerful. Russell's contribution to the play is even larger. "Salome" is often played dead straight and can be something of a bore. It is, unusually for Wilde, languorous, talky, and drags towards the middle. Russell, meanwhile, elects to play the whole thing for laughs. Everyone gloriously overacts milking every line for all its worth, there is a hilarious slapsticky subplot about two soldiers having it off with the Queen (Glenda Jackson) and Herod (Stratford Johns again) slips on a banana peel. After the play is over Wilde walks up to the proprietor and says "I was delighted to find I had written another comedy". Again, purists will be outraged, but I don't think Wilde would mind. In fact, again Russell improves "Salome". By turning the whole thing into a farce he gives the otherwise boorish play a sharp satirical edge which is strongly present in all other Wilde's work. Herod now becomes a universally applicable figure of mockery, a King Ubu of the Biblical age, a marvellous parody of all insecure monarchs always worrying about the opinions of their Caesar. In fact, having seen how wonderfully the play works as a comedy I am not wholly convinced that Wilde didn't intend it to be played that way. If the next time I see "Salome" Herod doesn't slip on a banana peel I'll be bitterly disappointed. And even beyond all these changes "Salome's Last Dance" has yet another layer. Brilliantly, at the very end, Russell ties the play into the life of Oscar Wilde. For those of you who don't know, "Salome" is a tale of a bored, spiteful girl (Imogen Millais-Scott) who falls for a prisoner, John the Baptist (Douglas Hodge again) who doesn't return her feelings. Scorned she agrees to indulge her stepfather Herod's sexual advances to her by performing a striptease on the agreement that she can ask anything of him once she is done. After the legendary dance of the seven veils is over she asks for John the Baptist's head. Paralleling the play is the story of Bosie and Wilde. Namely, Bosie is the one who turned his former lover Wilde in to the police and later testified against him in court when Oscar stood trial for charges of sexual indecency (read homosexuality). In Russell's vision, Bosie did so because Wilde scorned him, rejected him, and cheated on him thus Bosie becoming a Salome figure and Wilde becoming a John the Baptist figure. The ending is a really great final touch giving the framing story a deeper meaning than just a cost-cutting tool saving them having to build majestic towers in the desert. "Salome's Last Dance" becomes not just a reimagining of a classic play but also a unique biopic which only Ken Russell could make. He subtly weaves the tale of Bosie and Wilde into the film so that by the end we can understand both of their feelings and motivations for their rash actions. On a lighter note, Russell is not above laughing at himself and he appears as the bordello photographer and one of the actors whom Wilde jokes with telling him: "And if your acting is as grossly indecent as your photographic studies, we're in for an outrageous evening!" He also tells him, foreshadowing the film's brilliant ending, "Kenneth, as usual, you've captured the perfect moment! The climatic one!". The cast of "Salome's Last Dance" is given a tough assignment. They are not playing characters from "Salome" but rather prostitutes and johns playing characters from "Salome". They do this very well but with three exceptions this gives us one of the film's two problems. Namely, because they are playing amateurs the actors end up looking like amateurs. Their deliveries are either flat or way over the top and while this works from time to time it can get a little grating. The first exception is Stratford Johns who plays both the proprietor and the proprietor playing Herod with supreme haminess. The second exception is Glenda Jackson who plays the philandering Queen with a delicious amount of acidic cynicism. And finally, Salome herself. I cannot tell you how impressed I am by the performance of Imogen Millais-Scott in the title role. Millais-Scott is a name you've not heard of merely because of her personal misfortunes. Diabetes wrecked her kidneys leaving her unable to act and depriving us of possibly one of the greatest new talents to grace the screen in the 1980s. Millais-Scott is not your typical Salome. She is not a tall, curvaceous beauty. She's no Jessica Chastain or Sheryl Lee. She's a 5-foot, impish, thin as a board girl who never-the-less displays the intensity Olivier could envy her for. Whenever she's on screen she owns it, dominates it. I hung to her every word, every marvellous, delicious inflexion, every small hand gesture. Whenever Russell would dare give her a close-up the raw power of her performance would hit me like the proverbial tonne of bricks. I can only imagine what great heights she would have climbed. Every discerning film viewer should see this film just for her performance, a rare chance to see a powerhouse cut down in her prime at work. It becomes even more impressive when you learn that just before filming she contracted glandular fever and went half blind. Russell, a man who knows talent when he sees it, insisted on keeping her on. She is the antithesis of the cliche, beautiful and charming Salome. However, her spiteful, malicious, diminutive yet imposing screen presence is spot on perfect for Russell's reinterpretation. The comedy would have failed if a ditzy blonde with great legs had been cast and without the comedy, there's no "Salome's Last Dance". The film's second problem is the play itself. Even though Russell's approach breathes new life into it, his decision to include almost every line proves bad. There are several scenes that go on for far too long for the silver screen. That which works on the stage doesn't necessarily work on film and long, archaic monologues never do. This is the main reason why great Shakespeare film adaptations are rare. But both of these problems are very minor in the face of such a bold, clever, and powerful film. This is a late Ken Russell masterpiece and just like his biopics on Tchaikovsky ("The Music Lovers"), Mahler, and Elgar managed to bring their music closer to us and allow us to understand it on a personal note so does "Salome's Last Dance" enhance and give a sharp edge to "Salome" while at the same time being sufficiently irreverent and subversive to do it in an entertaining, often shocking way. I was thrilled, entertained, and surprised all the way through.
3.5/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsAmanda DonohoeHugh GrantCatherine OxenbergWhen an archaeologist uncovers a strange skull in a foreign land, the residents of a nearby town begin to disappear, leading to further inexplicable occurrences.30-06-2017
"The Lair of the White Worm" is one of the most entertaining, campiest, and most aggressively silly horror pastiches ever made. It's a full-blooded, loving recreation of those majestically entertaining horror films of the 60s produced by Roger Corman or Hammer in which some ancient curse plagues a small village in England. In this case, it is the eponymous worm and the cult of lizard vampires that worship it. Its head is Lady Sylvia (Amanda Donohoe), the best example of a vamp seductress I've ever seen, preying on local women, men, and boy scouts. She parades around in boldly outrageous leather outfits and in one instance thigh high boots and a black bikini. Pitted against her is the significantly duller but quite entertaining group consisting of two sisters (Sammi Davis and Catherine Oxenberg) and their respective boyfriends, a Scottish archaeology student (Peter Capaldi) and the local rich guy (Hugh Grant). Grant is particularly entertaining here almost playing a spoof of the persona he would become known for some five or six years later. He has a hilariously stiff-upper-lip British accent and a smile you can only see in those classy BBC mini-series set in 1920s colonial Africa. While the group struggles to comprehend the threat they are facing we are treated to several highly memorable and unbelievable sequences. In one, Ms Oxenberg hallucinates a bunch of topless nuns observing a giant snake devouring Christ on a cross. In another, Peter Capaldi charms the snake vampires by playing the bagpipes. Yes, you might have guessed that Ken Russell directed this film. I certainly know no other director who would have the guts to make a film so knowingly silly. It's based on what many consider to be one of the worst horror novels ever written. It's by Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula, who supposedly wrote it while in throws of serious dementia caused by either overwork or syphilis. Consequently, the story makes little sense but its disjointed, over cranked nature proves to be a perfect ground for Russell's extravaganzas. With his tongue firmly in his cheek as only Russell's can be, he proceeds to create a consistently entertaining and dizzyingly insane horror throwback. In fact, the atmosphere of those films of old is so faithfully recreated that I kept expecting Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee to show up and explain the plot to us. But Russell's presence is both a blessing and a curse. It's hard to imagine anyone else making this material work, but I've come to expect so much more from Ken Russell than just an entertaining horror/comedy. This is the man who made "The Devils", "Savage Messiah", "Mahler". All those films were devilishly funny, I agree, but they had a strong metaphorical and satirical edge to them. To use a cliche phrase, they meant something. While I certainly enjoyed "The Lair of the White Worm" a thought that Russell is somewhat wasting his time here nagged at me. He should be busy at work giving us another "Salome's Last Dance" instead of holidaying in tongue-in-cheek land. But even so, watching this my mouth watered imagining what Russell would have made of "American Werewolf in London" or "Lifeforce", two films I enjoyed (especially the latter) but that could have benefited from the Russell touch. Finally, I'd like to point out that I enjoyed "The Lair of the White Worm" more than Russell's previous foray into horror "Gothic". While the acting in the previous film was undeniably better (Oxenberg, in particular, is weak here) the campy fun quality of "The Lair of the White Worm" is so much more appetising than the vague psychedelia of "Gothic". "The Lair of the White Worm" is a pleasure. A hilariously over-the-top and purposefully silly horror film with little depth but charm and insanity to spare.
3/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsSammi DavisAmanda DonohoePaul McGannA young woman deals in her own personal way with the trials of adolescence and young adulthood in early 1900s England.30-06-2017
Ken Russell rose to prominence in the cinematic world with his third feature film "Women in Love", the adaptation of the samenamed novel by D.H. Lawrence. The film is now widely considered a classic but I found it to be a cold, lifeless film full of droning monologues. The film came to life only sporadically in several stunning visual scenes but kept being bogged down by the horribly literal and dull dialogue. But those who've only seen the film and not read the book might be forgiven for not knowing it is, in fact, a sequel, or rather a second volume to "The Rainbow" one of Lawrence's most controversial works. He'd originally intended it all to be one book titled either "The Sisters" or "The Wedding Ring" before it was split by his publisher. "The Rainbow" was eventually banned in England due to its frank depiction of sexual desire and lesbianism. Due to their author considering them a single work it's fitting that one director, Ken Russell, would adapt them both for the screen, however, the two films couldn't be farther apart. In fact, it's hard to see the film of "The Rainbow" as having any connection at all to the film of "Women in Love". It follows the youth of Ursula Brangwen in an episodic but thematically bound manner as she struggles with her sexuality, identity, and for her place in the strict patriarchal English society. Ursula was played wonderfully in "Women in Love" by Jennie Linden. Here she is played by Sammi Davis, but their performances are hugely different. Linden's Ursula was a cold fish, straight-laced and even stiff compared to her wild younger sister Gudrun. Here, Ursula is idealistic, curious, and rebellious, sure one point out that in the several years that pass between the two stories she could have changed, grown into the woman we see in "Women in Love" but I doubt the unbreakable, emotional child we see in "The Rainbow" could ever become that down-to-earth woman. But this is not where the differences between the two movies stop. The biggest difference between the two films is that I was genuinely engaged in "The Rainbow". It has none of that analytical, philosophical coldness of the earlier film, quite to the contrary, this is a warm, optimistic, at times even sweet film uncharacteristic of Russell. There are undoubtedly dark and difficult moments in it but it never tips over into cynicism. The script here (by Russell and his wife Vivian) is markedly better than the one for "Women in Love". First of all, I actually found myself really caring for and understanding all of the colourful characters present in the film. The most memorable is Winifred (Amanda Donohoe), Ursula's sexually liberated teacher who seduces and then becomes a mentor to the much younger girl. Russell resists the temptation to make her into an all out 19th-century hippy like he did with all of his characters in "Gothic", but the clues are all there. The most likeable is Ursula's father Will (Christopher Gable), a jovial and sweet man who finds himself torn between his daughter's liberated views and his own old-fashioned understandings. Then we also have Ursula's self-righteous lover Anton (Paul McGann) who turns out to be an unimaginative bore, her kind-natured Uncle Henry (David Hemmings) with whom she consistently but amicably clashes over political issues, and her no-nonsense working class mother Anna (Glenda Jackson) who provides her with a much-needed anchor to reality. The best episode in the film, however, takes place in a tough school Ursula finds a job at where she learns (like the title character in Bunuel's masterpiece "Viridiana") that kindness doesn't always breed kindness the hard way. But at the centre of the film is doubtlessly Ursula herself and it's fascinating to watch this free-spirited girl grow up into a strong-minded woman. Davis' performances is perhaps a little too ditzy, too naive, but she has a wide-eyed charm to her that coupled with the heart she wears on her sleeve makes her a very likeable character whose fate we can get invested in. All this is in contrast with "Women in Love" where the characters were so frigid and distant I didn't care whether they lived or died let alone learned their life's lessons. Another problem in the earlier film that is fixed here is the dialogue. "Women in Love" is full of unwieldy, hard-to-swallow, archaic lines that always rang false. Somehow, every character in the film always spoke in perfectly formed, thoughtful lines that were full of deeper meaning but desperately lacked character. They were also unconvincingly recited rather than delivered by actors keeping deadly straight faces. It all looked more like an austere school production of Shakespeare than a treatise on love and passion. I blame this not on the excellent cast but rather Russell himself, a director who admits he doesn't bother much with actors. "The Rainbow", however, has no such problems primarily because the dialogue has been adapted and revised to sound more natural and trip off the tongue. While Lawrence's fillibusters look great and wise on the page they don't work on the silver screen which has an unfortunate tendency to expose such high-minded pretentiousness. And even when someone does deliver a monologue in "The Rainbow" it is either contextualised, such as feminist Winifred educating young Ursula, or delivered in a comical fashion such as Will's drunken speech in which he stumbles over his own religious ponderings as to where exactly do angels come from if there is no marriage in heaven. Christopher Gable is terrific in this film as he always is. He's a criminally underrated actor who manages to make a loveable rogue out of a character who could have easily become a brute or unloveable in less skilled hands. The only thing "Women in Love" does have that "The Rainbow "doesn't is style. "The Rainbow" was made on a shoestring budget and it shows. There are no grandiose sequences, no tableaux, and little stunning imagery Russell is best known for. The film looks more like a television production than a film by possibly the greatest visionary of 20th century British cinema. But perhaps this simple story doesn't need it. It works well enough on its own and also to show that Ken Russell can make restrained, heartwarming films. He'd done it brilliantly on television in 1965's "Song of Summer" and he does it here again but not at the price of sensuality, sexuality, and a sharp edge (this time more political than satirical).
3/4 - DirectorKen RussellStarsTheresa RussellBenjamin MoutonAntonio FargasA night in the life of a cynical prostitute forms the basis of Ken Russell's portrait of the world's oldest profession.30-06-2017
"Pretty Woman", the Richard Gere and Julia Roberts romantic comedy about a prostitute and a john falling in love came out in 1990 to resounding success. The reviews were good, the audiences adored it, and it was a box office smash hit. "Pretty Woman's" not a bad film by any stretch. It's well-written, it's funny, quirky, and romantic, but whenever I see it there's an unpleasant little sneaky thought at the back of my mind that here is a film aimed so popular with teenage girls that essentially (and I must add unwittingly) glamourises prostitution. It's a film about a woman who finds love and success by being a prostitute. Not to mention that the world of prostitution is portrayed as being basically as comfortable as an office job. Some people protested against the film getting an R rating and a wide release but few did anything about it. Ken Russell, the wild man of British cinema, didn't keep quiet. He made "Whore". Often called the flipside of "Pretty Woman", it's a dark, tough, uncompromising, and unflinching portrayal of prostitution with a real sharp edge both satirical and realistic. Its lead is no romantic sweetheart, but a hardened, disillusioned broken woman who prowls the streets at night, not in the hope of finding happiness but because she has to survive. She has no other skills, she's afraid that if she tries to leave her pimp will kill her, and in the end, it's what she knows. She knows all the streets, all the haunts, and all the types, and now she'll let you into a secret. The film is based on "Bondage", a one-woman play by David Hines and keeps its basic structure. The titular character, Liz (Teresa Russell) talks to us in the well-tried style of "Alfie" or "House of Cards" and her witty, sharp, realistic monologue is only occasionally interrupted by potential clients, her pimp, and flashbacks. Most of the film consists of Steadicam shots of Liz walking around the city talking to the camera. And it really, really works mostly because the text is so good. She talks in a disarmingly and heart-wrenchingly matter-of-fact way about the realities of her job, all the ugly and nasty things that have happened to her and how she got here. She tells us about how she was once raped by five guys on the job as if she's telling us about the weather. She displays no remorse, no sentimentality, no self pitty. It's too late for all that. Her brief and to-the-point interactions with men who proposition her on the streets are equally telling of what her profession has done to her. There's no small talk, straight to business. She never flinches, never thinks twice, and never hesitates, those days are long gone. In a much less successful part of the film, she tells her backstory, how she got into prostitution. I think the movie would have worked much better without this portion especially since it's so predictable and cliched. She marries an abusive drunkard and escapes with their baby to the big city. It's tired stuff. But even beyond that, the film would have a bigger punch if we didn't know her life story. It would make her more of an everywoman, it would give the film the strong and terrifying idea that what has happened to her could happen to anyone, even to you. This way the film is a little less punchy. You see this part and unless you recognise yourself or someone you know in this situation you breathe a sigh of relief. It also slows the film down and distracts from its tough portrayal of her job. But when the film is focused and out on the streets it is really powerful. Some of it is so tough that I caught myself getting breathless. In the film's best scene Teresa Russell sits in a public toilet washing her feet in the basin while in the stall some prostitute is having oral sex with a john. It's a masterfully framed shot telling of the world "Whore" is set in. Ken Russell does some of his most unusual work here. For the most part, he embraces that which he has been running from all his life. Realism. And does it stunningly well. From time to time, however, there's a sequence which is more grotesque than real such as the one about an old man who likes being whipped that is played like something out of an Amy Schumer comedy. These are some more moments in "Whore" that don't work. Another major problem with the film is its ending which instead of going for toughness goes for the grotesque and fails undermining everything that came before it. If you see "Whore" (and you should) stop watching before the last five minutes or so. Why should you see the film? Well, because for the most part it's the best portrayal of prostitution I've ever seen. It really brings us up close and personal to this world and demystifies it. It also does a similar thing Dante did with his "Inferno". It takes us through all the ins and outs of the world these women live in with a smart, mouthy, street-wise broad for our guide. Of course, the entire film rests on her shoulder and Teresa Russell is excellent. She's always been an exceptional actress ever since her turn in Nicolas Roeg's "Bad Timing". She may be a little hoaky and over-the-top at times (more Ken Russell's fault than her's I'm guessing) but for the most part she's tough, assured, and immensely likeable which makes the tragic story she has to tell even more potent. "Whore" doesn't consistently work, but when it does it's terrific and honestly, I'd much rather have my teenage daughters see this than "Pretty Woman". Though I don't believe "Pretty Woman" is a film that will truly convince anyone to turn to prostitution, I think "Whore" is a harrowing cautionary tale. Paradoxically, "Pretty Woman" got an R and a wide release and "Whore" got an NC-17 and was buried into art house cinemas and the seedy part of the video store. Roger Ebert explained this best when he said in his review: "“Pretty Woman” was about a character who lived in an R-rated world, and “Whore” is about a woman who lives in the real one."
3/4