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Western Union
A nice 95-minute advertisement for a company still with us, 1941’s Western Union is appropriately both a western and about the Union, being an adaptation of a Zane Grey story about how the west was won, or at least connected up to the rest of the United States, by telegraph wire. In linking coast to coast, telegraph company Western Union helped forge the country into a more solid political entity. Three men dominate the action – Randolph Scott as Vance Shaw, a loner former outlaw and fixer persuaded to join the drive to lay cable across terrain good and bad. Robert Young plays rich man’s son Richard Blake, an engineer who is also … Read more
Made in England: the Films of Powell and Pressburger
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger is another of those Michael Scorsese Does… affairs (see My Voyage to Italy), which is to say a hot letter from a fan to the object of his adoration, this time the British duo behind movies like A Matter of Life and Death and Black Narcissus. So, no criticisms are to be found of the work, nor much in the way of examination of character or psyche, except where it touches the film-making. Instead, a wholesome, honest, thorough, well-researched, expertly assembled chronological run-through of what the two men did together, fronted and narrated throughout by an admiring and generous Scorsese, who regularly cross-references what P&P … Read more
The Return of Frank James
So The Return of Frank James it had to be, what with Frank’s brother Jesse James having died at the end of his eponymous 1939 movie. No sequel featuring hotshot outlaw Jesse being possible, how about one all about his more grounded older brother, the big sell being that Henry Fonda had been persuaded to return to the role? Boring Frank to sexy Jesse, on the face of it that’s not much of a proposition. And yet director Fritz Lang squeezes a good movie out of it, by focusing on the film’s looks. This is one of the handsomest westerns ever made. Shot in Technicolor and using locations Lang had scouted while prepping … Read more
Touch
Gentle and beguiling, Touch is a change of gear for director Baltasar Kormákur, the Icelander who made his name with a series of genre movies, like the homegrown thriller 101 Reykjavík, before heading to Hollywood where 2 Guns (with Denzel Washington) and Everest (Sam Worthington, Keira Knightley) showed he could handle big stars and big productions. That’s all dialled back here in a very human and quiet drama about a lone, ageing Icelander who, towards the end of his life and with a wife now dead, tries to find the young woman he fell in love with 50 years before. Kormákur chops between the eras. In the here and now Kristófer a grizzled … Read more
I, the Executioner
First things first. I, the Executioner, the 1968 one I mean, has nothing to do with the 2024 film. They share a snappy title and both trade in violence but it doesn’t go much further than that. The new movie is a police-focused South Korean action sequel (to Veteran) full of martial-arts sequences. The 1968 iteration is a Japanese revenge thriller, the story of a pitiless incarnation of natural justice – “divine punishment” he calls himself – raping and slaughtering his way towards cosmic retribution. I have not seen the newer film but doubt it can match the original for style. Because the 1968 movie is surely one of the most grippingly stylish … Read more
Anyone But You
Since Reality Sydney Sweeney has nothing left to prove. A standout performance that didn’t rely on her usual standout performers, it was sober and pitiless and one of the best films of 2023. And now? Anyone But You, the sort of thing you might have thought she’d have left behind, a boy meets girl, loses girl, etc romcom with the 90s in its rearview, with sexy jokes, some whoops-nudity, side characters who are funny and/or supportive confidants, plus parents who push too hard or are gross-out buffoons, all the trappings really. It’s a strange Frankenstein creation welding together bits from two Australian directors. From PJ Hogan the vibe and drive of Muriel’s Wedding … Read more
Tale of Ordinary Madness
Tales of Ordinary Madness is a snappier title than the book it’s based on. Charles Bukowski’s Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions, and General Tales of Ordinary Madness is the source of Marco Ferreri’s semi-doomed attempt to get the beat poet for guys (always guys) too young for Kerouac et al onto the screen. It doesn’t work and it can’t work – Bukowski is all about the voice, the words – but Ferreri at least gives it the college try in his second American movie. Oddly, like the first, Bye Bye Monkey, it’s a bitty affair with not much in the way of plot to hang onto. But that’s what you get when you adapt a … Read more
Trench 11
Trench 11 (aka Death Trench) belongs to a genre that didn’t much exist before the 21st century – war horror. Alongside films like Overlord, Frankenstein’s Army, Ghosts of War and Dead Snow, war horror slickly insists that war isn’t horrific enough, and that what’s needed is a bit more supernatural nastiness on top. Or, seen more positively, that a light sprinkling of generic horror can shift even the bleakest offering more obviously into the box marked “entertainment”. In war horror, ghosties, ghastlies and ghoulies will generally turn up at some point, to help fight against but usually with the Nazis (it’s often the Nazis). But here we’re in the dog days of the … Read more
Bye Bye Monkey
Translating 1978’s Ciao Maschio as Bye Bye Monkey doesn’t really help the film very much. Literally, it should be something like Farewell Machismo, and that title makes a lot more sense when you actually watch the film, whose eventual English-language title has been overwhelmed by the presence of a chimpanzee in the film. So, where to start with this one? It’s a strange movie set in New York, directed by a veteran, very talented Italian director, Marco Ferreri, with a cast of French and Italian stars. All concerned seem to be indulging themselves in what looks like late-to-the-party entry-level absurdist situationism. A bit of plot will help clarify things. In opening scenes we … Read more
Oddity
The TV show American Horror Story is probably partly responsible for Damian McCarthy’s Oddity, a horror movie that cuts through the subgenres with a cackle. AHS does it season by season, but McCarthy is doing it all in one compendious film, a bit of 1970s here, some 1930s there, a hint of silent-era horror even, plus a hefty dollop of 1980s and 1960s, the two epochal mainstays. Which is to say dangerous dolls (1980s) and psychics (1960s). But first the funny old big house, where Dani is in charge of doing up this doer-upper – and very grand it’ll be when finished – while husband Ted works long shifts at the local asylum, … Read more
Where the Sidewalk Ends
Not the best Otto Preminger film but a very good example of what he was about, Where the Sidewalk Ends is a film noir directed with maximum economy that re-teams Laura‘s golden pairing of Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, he again impassive as you like, she almost unbearably long-suffering. It’s not much of a role for her, as Laura wasn’t in fact (her character was literally dead for most of it and for the rest of it represented ideal womanhood). But for Andrews it’s a great example of his abilities inside the noir genre, where minimalism is generally the best option. No one was more minimal than Andrews. He’s Dirty Harry before Dirty … Read more
Kneecap
I’d not heard of Kneecap. The band from Northern Ireland rap in the Irish language, which makes them unusual and worthy alone of a biopic. The fact that they’re good at it and are also buzzy, funny, lairy lads who can act is just a bonus. There are only 80,000 native Irish speakers on the whole island of Ireland, an on-screen info dump tells us, and only 6,000 in Northern Ireland, the bit that remains part of the United Kingdom since Ireland broke away a century ago. So, band members Móglaí Bap (stage name of Naoise Ó Cairealláin), Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh) and DJ Próvai (JJ Ó Dochartaigh) are a minority … Read more
