Reviews

Police Academy: Mission to Moscow is without doubt up there as the Citizen Kane of comedies. It has revolutionised comic conventions as we know it and holds a very grand flame atop the highest mountain known to man.

I would like to mention everything that is so remarkable about this seminal movie but I feel I would be doing it an injustice if I decided to go in too deeply. I am sure any Russian or Eastern European would agree that Police Academy: Mission to Moscow grants this particular part of the world such a unique and generous perspective. The movie's socio-cultural analysis of Russian society and its insightful perceptions into the inner workings of the Russian psyche are just mindblowing and a joy to behold.

Every scholar, creature, and living organism should gallop wholeheartedly towards what I can only describe as a masterpiece of contemporary cinema. It does not only reflect cinema but art as a whole. You can appreciate Michelangelo's David, Bizet's Carmen, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, but you can also appreciate Police Academy: Mission to Moscow. That can be inserted quite confidently into the same category. I think I will walk away and cry as a result of my never to be forgotten experience. Send me to heaven, send me to hell - I will never forget the authenticity of this monumental moment in my life.

An uproariously witty satire on "petty" bourgeois American values, John Waters brings his own distinctive madness to the screen by focussing on cardboard cut-out caricatures of pop culture Americana.

Turning his outrageous gaze on an archetypally perfect housewife and mother from the Baltimore suburbs in Maryland, supportive to her loving husband and teenage kids and possessing a real tlent for cooking, it appears that she is everything a stable, hard-working business man could want. However, there is a slight catch. She is also a serial killer.

Mom's tendency to take bloody revenge on any poor neighbouring housewife who fails to observe her rigid socially acceptable guidelines, like not recycling rubbish or driving too fast, is so barmy you are sure to find it absurdly and darkly funny. Kathleen Turner, alternating between dizzy, unquestioning devotion to her family and clinically cool, yet psychotic anger to offending neighbours, either appears to possess a martyr's yellow halo above her head, denoting divine lightness and freshness, or a focussed smile as she carefully contemplates her next victim.

If you are on the lookout for some perfectly vibrant, yet malicious black comedy, subscribe to "Serial Mom", one of the most ruthless, patronising skits on good manners and nosey, voyeuristic neighbours ever to hit the screen. If you like Waters' latest irreverent venture into visceral, cutting black humour, then get all his other movies, because they are all even more extreme and grotesque - "Pink Flamingos", "Hairspray", "Cry Baby" - all kitschy, underrated classics in their own right.

The French have a remarkable tendency of creating free-flowing, poetic movies that transport this particular art form into subtle, poignant flights of fancy and nowhere is this more evident than in Jules et Jim, which embodies the beauty of French cinema.

I believe that Truffaut is the most poetic filmmaker in cinematic history. Jules et Jim is his finest moment and, in the ever fluctuating relationships between the Oskar Werner, Henri Serre and Jeanne Moreau characters, we are allowed to be taken along on a refreshing, beatific ride through the passionate simplicity of love and friendship.

The leisurely philosophical musings of the two men in Jules et Jim are counterbalanced by Moreau's bright, airy amorality. She brings about a radicalism and sense of unpredictability in the movie that is nonetheless charming and utterly innocent and benign. Moreau's instinctive will makes her out to be a selfish attention-seeker but without that this movie would not be so surprising and liberating. Truffaut's does not stick to a rigid narrative form, like many '50s and '60s French New Wave directors, and he allows the stream of consciousness dialogue and the ever-changing fortunes of Moreau's erratic relationships with the men to dictate the structure. Jules et Jim has a certain clarity of vision.

French love stories are often based upon dialogue that is rife with throwaway witticisms, perceptive trivial observations, and explosive utterances of love or despair, and Jules et Jim is no different. It can drift along tranquilly until a sudden unexpected change of mood occurs and everything is turned on its head. Moreau's leaping into the river after a civilised night out at the theatre is a delightfully liberating moment, utterly pointless yet still gleefully uninhibited. My finest memory is the heavenly ditty by Moreau which sums up both her and the movie's personality and atmosphere. So simple, so sublime, and always tugging away in the most sumptuous manner at the heartstrings. I don't think I have ever got that tune out of my head.

If you want to experience the sheer majesty of cinema, Jules et Jim just has to be seen. Not only is it bright and breezy but it has tragic moments of pathos as well. There is a surprise at every turn, almost always caused by the Moreau character, and such is the freedom of her spirit and the freedom of the movie's spirit, you can forgive her every action and fickle about-turns. There is no sense of permanence with her. Jules et Jim only confirms my belief that the French make cinema's greatest romances. Utterly natural, hardly ever contrived, and so cool and graceful.