Popular Reviews
Deception
The last of the Great American Novelists of the 20th century, Philip Roth died in 2018, leaving behind a substantial body of work. Deception (Tromperie in the original French) adapts yet another of his novels for the screen, becoming yet another brave attempt at making a movie out of something that doesn’t really want to go there. In episodic instalments the plot tracks the on-off relationship between a smart, ageing but horny American novelist called Philip and a much younger English woman, called simply the English Lover. He’s played by Denis Podalydès, who makes Philip a confection of suaveté and savoir-faire plus a crucial dollop of self-doubt (otherwise too smug). She is played … Read more
The Avengers: Series 3, Episode 3 – Man with Two Shadows
Shown the same day that RA (“Rab”) Butler made his big pitch to be the new leader of the Conservative party after Macmillan’s shock resignation (Butler’s big speech was a total fail), Man with Two Shadows also plays with the idea of the wrong man – the double being so fruitful a concept that The Avengers would return to it often, as did a lot of 1960s TV. Perhaps the widely prevalent notion of “false consciousness” – there is a right way of seeing things and a wrong way – has something to do with it. Another well worn path is that of someone being killed before the opening credits have rolled. In … Read more
Köln 75
Corny in a good way, Köln 75 (aka Cologne 75) tells the strange but true story behind the story of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, to this day the biggest selling solo jazz album of all time. The album is just Jarrett improvising on a piano in a cavernous concert hall. Unlike the film, which is a winning mix of two familiar tropes as the triumph over adversity drama meets the can-do of the let’s-do-the-show-right-here musical. Mala Emde plays the young woman who made it all happen, German jazz enthusiast Vera Brandes. We meet Vera aged 16 forcing herself on British jazzer Ronnie Scott after a gig. Impressed by her chutzpah, and possibly also … Read more
The War Below
War movies cost money, but the team behind The War Below have somehow managed to produce one on the sort of budget that Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk or Peter Jackson’s 1917 probably spent on catering. And they’ve made a decent fist of it. The fascinating and true story it tells is of the British miners recruited during the First World War to break the stalemate at the battle of Messines. Their task was to burrowing out through no-man’s-land and under German lines, lay explosives and blow the enemy position to pieces. Up against the obvious challenges such as unknown terrain and impossible deadlines, the five recruits, all mates of long-standing, are also battling the … Read more
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 12 January Caves of Nerja discovered, 1959 On this day in 1959, the Caves of Nerja were discovered. Or rediscovered. Stretching for about 5 kilometres close to the town of Nerja, Malaga, Spain, the system was entered by five friends who decided to follow a flock of bats into a locally well known small opening in the ground. This led to a narrow passage. And this led to a huge cavernous grotto now known as the Cascade Room. With the lights they had available they were able to make out the enormity of their find. They pressed on, accompanied by the … Read more
Ride the Pink Horse
Ride the Pink Horse? Strange title. A gay slur, perhaps? Like “playing the pink oboe”, maybe? But as the title music comes up, all clippity cloppity, this unusual movie from 1947 sends us off in yet another direction. Because this isn’t a cowboy movie either, or even something more esoteric, it’s an unusual slice of dark noir set, atypically, on the Mexican border, where an ex-soldier recently back from the Second World War arrives in town to exact revenge on the guy who caused the death of his old comrade-in-arms. Robert Montgomery plays the ex-soldier, Gagin, and Fred Clark plays the slippery Mr Hugo, from whom revenge will be extracted, that’s if Gagin … Read more
S-a Furat o Bombă aka A Bomb Was Stolen
The Romanian animator Ion Popescu-Gopo’s live-action film S-a Furat o Bombă (translated as A Bomb Was Stolen or They Stole the Bomb) was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1962. It had very little chance of winning, since it was up against Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc, Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7, Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel, Antonioni’s L’Eclisse and Satyajit Ray’s Devi. But it was there, an achievement in itself for someone who’d never made a live-action film before. Popescu-Gopo’s animated short, Scurtă Historie (A Brief History) had won the Short Film Palme d’Or in 1957. It’s also a film without dialogue, another potential handicap, though … Read more
Riefenstahl
As you might expect, Riefenstahl is a documentary about Leni Riefenstahl, “Hitler’s favourite film-maker”. The director of Triumph of the Will and Olympia, Riefenstahl’s career was first boosted and then destroyed by her association with the Führer. She insisted to the grim end – she died aged 101 in 2003 – that she was enthusiastic for Hitler at the time because all Germans were, nothing more or less. Director Andres Veiel had access to the Riefenstahl estate and so is able to include material that’s not been seen or heard before – interviews blowing up spectacularly when Riefenstahl loses her rag and telephone conversations with supporters, including Albert Speer. Veiel largely takes the combative … Read more
The Avengers: Series 5, Episode 5 – The Bird Who Knew Too Much
Even being kind The Bird Who Knew Too Much is a fairly crap episode of The Avengers, a half-hearted rewrite of an Alan Pattillo story by Brian Clemens. But it gets off to a quirky enough start – a man on the run is shot and, instead of shedding blood, gives out a little trickle of bird seed. Steed Fancies Pigeons: Peel Gets the Bird is what the irritating subhead card reads before action recommences after the credits with another one of “our” gang – a pigeon keeper (a “fancier” in the terminology) – winding up backwards in a tank of wet cement. “He was a pretty solid sort of man,” Steed later … Read more
Lucky
And so, Lucky, a gigantically ironic title for a film about a woman being stalked night after night in her own home. It stars Brea Grant, who also wrote it, and until recently I’d not heard of her. But there she was just a few weeks back in After Midnight, Jeremy Gardner’s cute, smart, smallscale horror film about a man being stalked night after night in his own home – she played Gardner’s wife – and now here she is in what could be called a companion piece. Both films make use of the massive film-making infrastructure of the West Coast – technicians who just know how to do stuff quickly and properly … Read more
26 January 2015-01-26
Out in the UK This Week Jimi: All Is by My Side (Curzon, cert 15) Imagine a Jimi Hendrix record without any of his guitar pyrotechnics. That’s the feeling you get from this efficient, workaday biopic about the godlike genius who came and went so quickly, leaving behind enough music for us to know how good he was. The film follows Hendrix’s transformative year in London 1966-67, makes glancing references to his influences and to his ethnicity (as you might expect from a film directed by 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley). The ethnicity, it claims, Hendrix chose to ignore, which almost brings into focus a man who might have been remarkably … Read more
9 May 2016-05-09
Out This Week Room (StudioCanal, cert 15) Starting with 2004’s Adam & Paul, then continuing with Garage, What Richard Did and even in the comedic, less typical Frank, director Lenny Abrahmson has given us a series of intense psychological dramas examining human relationships under stress. Room continues the trend with a story about an abducted woman living in a shed with her son, he being the result of a rape by her abductor. The facts of the situation are dripped out in an un-explicatory way and keep things real, though it’s the current situation rather than the headline-grabbing aspects of the situation that fascinate Abrahmson: how the mother keeps her sanity; how she explains the … Read more
