Popular Reviews
The Magnificent Ambersons
The film that never was, a magnificent mess, Orson Welles’s masterpiece, better even than Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons is all these things and more, or perhaps less, since no one apart from a handful of people in 1942 has ever seen the finished version. Instead there’s just the version we have, which is minus 50 minutes of material Welles had included in the rough cut he’d made with editor Robert Wise (later of The Sound of Music fame). After negative screenings, a general antipathy towards Welles at RKO and a change of public mood on account of Pearl Harbor having just propelled the USA into the Second World War, the studio ordered … Read more
Wasteland
In Wasteland (it also goes by the name Undercliffe) a young man wakes up with amnesia, having been badly beaten up on some old waste ground in Bradford, gets taken in a by a kind Muslim family and then, as bits of his memory start to reappear, starts to put together a picture of his old life. What he finds he doesn’t like. Though Stevie (Laurie Kynaston) is kind to Meeba (Mariam Haque) and her brood, and forms a bond of sorts with Khalid (Akhbar Kurtha), whose taxi ferries him all over town in the hope that Stevie will spot somewhere familiar, wherever it takes him Stevie keeps bumping into people who find … Read more
Party Girl
Party Girl reminds us that director Nicholas Ray wasn’t just a master of noir. Alongside the stark monochrome of great dramas like In a Lonely Place and They Live by Night, there’s this insanely lush, ridiculously colourful offering, often bracketed with Ray’s other colour movies of the era – Johnny Guitar or Rebel without a Cause, for instance – but quite apart from them in tone. It’s still very noirish, a gangster movie in colour, really, with Cyd Charisse the titular star but the movie very much focused on the character Robert Taylor plays, Tommy Farrell. They’re both not-quite people: she’s a fan dancer (which really means stripper at the very least) at … Read more
Zorro: Who Is That Masked Man?
The Mexicans like their heroes the way they like their tacos – with cheese. Enter Zorro. Cue mask, cape and ludicrous pencil moustache Next time you’re in London, try the Robin Hood Zorro restaurant in Hammersmith. This oddly conceived English/Mexican hybrid serves an equally odd drink called the Robin Hood Meets Zorro cocktail. A mouthful to order and a hell of a thing to drink, it contains tequila, gin and beer. The menu doesn’t say it’s served with a bucket, but it probably should be. What is it about Zorro that seems to bring out the naffness in … well, everything? It was not always thus. Dial back to the mists of the … Read more
The Da Vinci Code
“What, [dodges bullet] you mean Jesus wasn’t really the Son of God [jumps into speeding car] and married Mary Magdalene [hijacks armoured vehicle] who bore a child who [takes plane to an England full of half-timbered cars] established a bloodline which [evades knife-thrust of albino monk] if it were ever to become public knowledge would [accidentally shoots cardinal] undermine the power of the Catholic Church [garrottes nun]?” There’s plenty more of this sort of carry-on in director Ron Howard’s almost satisfying attempt to turn Dan Brown’s 560 pages of lecture-chase-lecture into something cinematic. And it had to be made into a movie – the sales figures of the book said so. But did … Read more
Ambush
Starring Aaron Eckhart, the blurbs for Ambush proclaim. Also starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, they trumpet. Not true, either of them. Connor Paolo is in fact the star of this potentially rather good Vietnam war movie hobbled by a plot lacking sparkle. A Vietnam war movie? In the 2020s? A boldly unfashionable move by Mark Burman, who directs, co-writes and produces, so presumably made the phone call that brought Eckhart and Meyers on board. Eckhart, in what is probably a “one and done” deal in terms of days worked, plays a general ordering a team of rookie engineers into Vietcong tunnels to retrieve a vital document containing the names of agents working for the … Read more
Larks on a String
Production on Larks on a String (Skrivánci na niti) started during the Prague Spring, an eight month period in Czechoslovakia when political liberalisation under the rule of new Communist First Secretary Alexander Dubček looked set to transform the country. It was not to be. By August 1968 the experiment was over, Soviet tanks were rolling in to the Czech capital and Dubček had been deposed. Also kicked into the long grass was any chance of distribution for Jiří Menzel’s now completed film, which wasn’t seen until 1990, after communism collapsed. Menzel is a master of straight-faced satire. In Closely Observed Trains he used a story about Nazis during wartime to comment on the … Read more
Firebrand
Unusually for a film concerning King Henry VIII of England, Firebrand is not interested in wife one (Catherine of Aragon) or wife two (Anne Boleyn). Instead focus is on the last of Henry’s six wives, Katherine Parr. And, no bones about it, she is the focus of this film, not the king. A history lesson. At the time this film is set Henry has broken politically but not entirely religiously with Rome. The Church of England has been established and Henry is its head. But because he’s relied so heavily on Protestants to support his break, Henry’s brand of Catholicism is on the defensive and the Protestants are on the prowl. It’s against … Read more
30 June 2014-06-30
Out in the UK This Week Non-Stop (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD/digital) Though there are pretenders, Liam Neeson is the king of the geri-action stars, a modern Charles Bronson whose attitude to violence is, to paraphrase the mild-mannered Dr Banner, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” This time Neeson starts out angry and hungover, then becomes increasingly vexed at 35,000ft, playing an air marshal no one will listen to, in spite of the fact that there’s a crazy man on board who wants to blow up the plane unless a large amount of money… etc … etc. Other big names include Julianne Moore, Downton Abbey‘s Michelle Dockery, Scoot McNairy and 12 Years a … Read more
100 Years of… Salomé
Salomé, a notorious enterprise for the Russian-born, now-forgotten Hollywood great Alla Nazimova, its star, co-writer, co-director and producer, is the film that ruined her financially and brought an end to her time as a Hollywood player. It needs to be bad to justify the damage it caused to such a glittering career. It is. The original story is from the Bible, as retold by Oscar Wilde, then retold again by adapter Nazimova and co-writer Natacha Rambova (Rudolph Valentino’s wife and possibly Nazimova’s lover). But in spite of the reworkings it’s still the story we all know, of the young and beautiful Salomé demanding that Herod bring her the head of John the Baptist. … Read more
Three Wishes for Cinderella
If you already know Václav Vorlíček’s Three Wishes for Cinderella it’ll most likey be because you grew up on it. It’s a tradition in some European countries to watch it at Christmas. A Czech/East German co-production made in the days of the Iron Curtain, its appeal is obvious as soon as it gets going. It gives it to us straight – a good, old-fashioned fairy tale so traditional it could be half-timbered, with virtuous maidens and hissable villains, noble rulers and stout yeoman. All is in its place and all is right in the world. That said, there is no fairy godmother, no pumpkin coach and no glass slipper. Instead the nearest we … Read more
The Avengers: Series 4, Episode 17 – The Girl from Auntie
The Girl from Auntie this episode is called, a nod to The Man from Uncle, which had debuted about six months earlier on US TV and become an instant hit with its sexy spies, gadgets, 007 goofery and strong sense of the ridiculous, having clearly drunk from the same well as The Avengers. All that said, sadly this is not a great episode, though it is stuffed with good things. It’s also not particularly heavy on Emma Peel, who was perhaps off talking to the Bond people – Honor Blackman’s Pussy Galore having made waves – or just enjoying a bit of a break when the episode was in production. She turns up in … Read more
