Popular Reviews
City Lights
Charlie Chaplin started making his film City Lights in one era and released it in another. In the three years the picture was in production, an epochal shift occurred as Hollywood abandoned the silent movie and went wholesale over to talkies. When Chaplin started shooting what was intended to be his biggest picture to date in 1928 he was the king of the hill – and of the world, its biggest ever star before or since – in a world of silent movies. By the time he finished, Keaton and Laurel and Hardy and Harold Lloyd were all talking and the world was going crazy for the likes of Fredric March snarling his way … Read more
Perfect Days
We have Covid to thank for Perfect Days, the best film from Wim Wenders in some time. The original idea was to get Wenders to Tokyo to make a documentary about the toilets built for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (a gig is a gig). But the Olympics first got postponed to 2021 and then eventually took place behind closed doors without any spectators. The toilets barely got used. Wenders, however, did get to make his film. But instead of a documentary, Wenders pushed to make a feature film, incorporating those 17 toilets designed by leading architects, with the action focused not on the toilets themselves – though they do feature prominently – but on … Read more
House of Tolerance
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 11 February Cynthia Payne acquitted of running a brothel, 1987 On this day in 1987, 54-year-old Londoner Cynthia Payne was acquitted of being a madam and living off the immoral earnings of others. She’d been arrested before, in 1978, when her suburban sex parties for pensioners had attracted the attention of the newspapers, not least because she accepted Luncheon Vouchers as payment for activities including being spanked by young ladies. On the first occasion she’d been sentenced to 18 months in prison, reduced to six months on appeal, of which she served four. Payne’s notoriety stemmed in large part from her … Read more
The Fighter
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 28 June Mike Tyson bites Evander Holyfield’s ear, 1997 On this day in 1997, during a boxing match for the WBA Heavyweight Championship title, one of the fighters, “Iron” Mike Tyson, bit off a chunk of the ear of his opponent, Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield. The fight was a rematch, after Holyfield had knocked out Tyson in the 11th round seven months earlier, to take the title. Billed as “The Sound and the Fury”, the fight took place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, and right from the start Tyson was complaining to referee Mills Lane about … Read more
Long Live the Republic!
Memory, fantasy and the Second World War make surprisingly comfy bedfellows in Long Live the Republic! (Ať žije republika), Karel Kachyňa’s lyrical and lovely coming-of-ager from 1965. A Czech movie set in Moravia as the German army pulls out and the Soviet army readies itself to take over, it’s far less critical of the communist regime than you might expect from a mid-1960s film. Especially from a film-maker who’d later make The Ear, a film so scathingly anti that it was instantly banned and not seen until communism collapsed. But poke around a bit and there’s a critique of sorts going on, delivered with the maximum of plausible deniability. The non-plot follows a … Read more
Starter for 10
Write what you know, they say, and David Nicholls certainly does that here. An adaptation of his 2003 best-seller about a 1980s working class kid going to university, written by a 1980s working class kid who went to university, this comedy is full of period flavour and has the tang of authentic experience. Nicholls and director Tom Vaughan haven’t left success to chance, however, they’ve pumped all this bittersweet detail into the most durable of genre plots – the romantic comedy – with James McAvoy playing the Nicholls avatar, Brian Jackson, a fresher at the high-end Bristol university (Nicholls’s own alma mater) who is slightly out of his social class and so signs … Read more
Niagara
Shot of Niagara, anyone? As a film it’s famous for all sorts of reasons – a film noir in Technicolor, Marilyn Monroe’s first star billing, the use of Niagara Falls as a set backdrop. On the other hand it isn’t famous for being a good film. Even its stoutest supporters struggle to defend it, largely because it starts off as one thing and then fails to follow through on what looks like a delicious promise. Two couples at Niagara Falls, famous for its honeymooners. First we meet the Loomises. George (Joseph Cotten) the husband who we first glimpse moping about at the edge of the Falls at 5am. Rose (Marilyn Monroe) back at the … Read more
Perfect Sense
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 1 May England and Scotland become the United Kingdom, 1707 On this day in 1707, the countries of England and Scotland officially became united in “one kingdom by the name of Great Britain” (according to the Acts of Union). By “England”, the acts included the country of Wales, which had become absorbed legally into England by the Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542. Though in terms of monarchy, the English throne had been seized by a Welshman, when Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) defeated Richard III in battle in 1485. This Tudor line persisted in England until 1603, when … Read more
Our Daily Bread
A movie for every day of the year – a good one 10 August Henri Nestlé born, 1814 On this day in 1814, Henri Nestlé was born, as Heinrich Nestle, in Frankfurt am Rhein, Germany. His father was a glazier and the business had been passed down the family line for five generations at least. Heinrich trained and qualified as a pharmacist, changing his name to Henri Nestlé on the way, because he was now living in a French-speaking part of Switzerland and wanted to fit in. In 1843, he bought his way into a company involved in the synthesis of oil from rape seed. It also produced alcoholic drinks, vinegar, mineral waters … Read more
Alcarràs
Like Carla Simón’s previous film, 2017’s Summer 1993, Alcarràs is an intimate family drama shot in an unobtrusive semi-documentary style with performances so good you wonder how come actors like these get overlooked at awards time. There’s a feature idea – too good for an award (quietly files away idea only to forget it). Not the film itself, which has won a rake of gongs for direction and screenplay. But if I were handing out the trophies, almost any one of the actors (non-professionals all!) in Alcarràs involved would be a prime candidate for an honour, with Josep Abad at the top of the list. He plays Rogelio, the aged grandfather and patriarch … Read more
Hidden aka Caché
Everyone loves a form/content double whammy, when a film’s story and its method of telling correspond. It’s why Memento succeeds so well, for example, a tale about an amnesiac told in partial and unreliable flashback. How much craftier is Michael Haneke’s psychological thriller Hidden. Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) are media professionals, members of the Parisian chattering classes, liberal right down in their DNA. What could people of such good intent have to do with the rising tide of Islamism, anti-westernism, terrorism? Why are they being blackmailed by an increasingly incriminating series of videotapes? Are they guilty of something, or innocent, as the film seems to proclaim? Haneke’s double whammy is … Read more
Supernova
Supernova is an admirably tight drama starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci. It gives us the who and the where immediately – Sam (Firth) and Tusker (Tucci), a long-established couple on holiday in the Lake District in one of those tiny RVs, a Fiat Autotrail, that offer all the creature comforts (cooking, sleeping, sanitation) a crab could want. There’s a bed (the opening shot of a naked Sam wrapped around Tusker) and there’s banter as the two drive from one location to another, Tusker wheeling out the terrible jokes, Sam groaning in response, the pair of them reacting to the landscape and the songs on the radio as the vehicle snakes along tight … Read more
