Film Reviews by sb

FILM & REVIEW https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109688/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_ashes%2520of%2520time Wong Kar-Wai’s haunting visually stunning martial arts movie has Cheung as Feng a master swordsman for hire who waits for people who require someone to be killed call on him. He also encounters various other fighters passing though some of whom he engages with - others leave the next morning. There is no real narrative structure as such more like chance encounters over a year including a brother and sister who turn out to be the same female person, a peasant girl who seeks her brothers killers and a village who needs protection from some maurading bandits. We also discover Feng couldn’t commit to the woman he loves (Maggie Cheung) who marries his brother to both of theirs bitter regret. None of this is at apparent at first and the film is more a shifting tonal poem with musings on love, honour and regret. There are flashback sequences and voice over narrations although it’s not always clear whose memories we are seeing or even which character is telling the story at each point. It’s shot by Chris Doyle who was Wong’s regular cameraman and each frame is like an impressionist painting - it’s just breathtakingly beautiful. You do need to work at it as it can be quite difficult to follow but there is much reward to be had - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Terrific and very droll family coming of age story - Dolan plays Sue a somewhat frumpy middle aged librarian whose husband upped sticks for Florida for a new wife and baby. The plan was that their son Daniel would fly over for the summer but they decide it’s all a bit much so he is stuck with Sue. The problem is that Daniel (Earl Cave - Nicks son) is the worlds surliest , apathetic Goth/Metalhead who just wants to be left alone with his music. Sue tries to jilldey him up but all attempts are rebuffed with a indifferent shrug. He has another metal friend but spends most of time locked in his bedroom and nothing seems to get through. Even a day at the seaside in Leigh-on-Sea falls flat. In he meantime Sue is wooed by Daniels history teacher ( a very creepy Rob Bryson) while the summer rolls onward. On the one hand it’s a very slight film but the performances and interplay between the leads are excellent with real laugh out loud moments. He auditions for a local band and the reveal is priceless and a lot off the small glances between say more then pages of scripts. Lovely score by Belle & Sebastian acts almost as a Greek chorus and the film avoids any hint of cloying sentiment. As mentioned both leads are terrific and will strike a cord with parents used to slamming bedroom doors. Well worth seeking out - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Roger Cormans cheap and cheerful black comedy/political satire set around the annual American TransContinetal road race. The barb being it’s not the driver who finishes first that wins it’s the one who can kill as many hapless pedestrians on the way. It takes some none too subtle swipes about a society so steeped in violence that this is the only way to keep the population docile with a toothy cheesy commentator hitting all the right notes so beloved of American TV. Apart from Carradine the acting is terrible (Stallone is especially awful) but with spills and thrills as a rebel group try and sabotage the race it zips along nicely. The ending is less than convincing and it’s interesting that it shares a similar viewpoint as Rollerball which came out around the same time…a piece of 70’s trash cinema - 3/5

FILM & WATCHED Ultra violent Korean spatter fest. After an attempt to repartitiate violent criminals from the Philippines failsa cargo ship is hired to bring them home to face justice. They are guarded by loads of cops but some of the cops are on the crooks payroll and are freed to unleash bloody havoc on their captors. To complicate matters the ship is also transporting a geneticly modified soldier from WWII who a corrupt pharmaceutical company is using to experiment on and has reduced him to a unstoppable killing machine. And that’s it really - 2 hours of endless bloody mayhem…..the problem is that it’s so overdone you become numb to it - the first time a guy gets his head reduced to a pulp with blood and gore everywhere it’s quite shocking … When happens for the 20th time - not so much. There is zero characterisation so the cast are just meat for the grinder and whole swaithes of the back story make no sense. So one for the hard gore horror hounds really - 3/5

FILM & REVIEW Walter Hills supurb 80’s action thriller has Nolte as Jack a no nonsense straight down the middle Texas Ranger. He is at war with a drug kingpin Cash (Boothe) who not only operates over the border in Mexico and is therefor untouchable but he and Jack used to be best friends and even shared the same girl but they have ended up on opposite sides. Into this tension comes a US Army Black Ops team led by Ironside all whose members are listed as killed in action. They appear to be in town to rob a bank but are actually after Cash’s ledger books which could embarrass the Govt. Jack reluctantly agrees to team up with them and they all head over the border but as always things aren’t as clear cut as they seem. It was originally going to be a John Milius film but the rights were eventually passed to Hill giving Milius a screen credit. As always with Hill its a Western at heart with Nolte in the Gary Cooper role and you just know when the team arrive in the Mexican compound we are heading for a Wild Bunch finale. Boothe chews everything in sight as the bad guy and it’s got a real a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do feel to it……cracking stuff - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Hammer’s cinematic version of the Nigel Keane tv series. Donlevy plays Quatermass who has launched a rocket into space but after losing contact it crashes back to Earth. It only contains one crew member and two empty space suits with no trace of the others. The only survivor is Carroon (Wordsworth) and he is unable to communicate and seems to be undergoing some kind of physical transformation. His wife engineers his escape from the lab but this time Quartmass has realised he is infected with an alien parasite that feeds off living life forms to grow and multiply and the race is on to stop it. Donlevy who was hired to appeal to US audiences is fine as the tetchy irascible Prof but it’s Wordsworth who gives a really uncanny performance as the human seeing his very humanity being transformed to his horror but is powerless to stop it. It’s interesting how it predates Cronenberg’s body horror stuff by a couple of decades with a cracking finale in Westminster Abbey - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Second in todays Quatermass double bill and as always it’s the superior of the two. This time Donlevy is caught up in a mysterious meteor shower and they all see to land around some kind of top secret plant with numerous armed guards. He is warned off but not before his assistant picks up one of the rocks but it bursts infecting him. Quatermass engages the help of a politician who doesn’t buy the story the plant is making synthetic food for humans but a sight visit goes badly wrong and Quatermass barely escapes with his life. He contacts Scotland Yard but sees some of the same burn marks on the chief commissioner and realises some kind of alien intelligence had infected powerful people to help build and maintain the plant. With the help off sozzeled crime reporter Sid James he returns and with the help of local villagers takes on the menace. It’s works really well as a 50’s sci-fi paranoid thriller with excellent use of the Shell Oil refinery at Stanford standing in for the alien base with sinister gas mask wearing troops adding to the sense of unease. Hammer regular composer James Bernard’s score is full of atonal shrieking violins enhancing this with fine special effects for the time with some quite gruesome undercurrents - terrific stuff - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Don Siegel’s wonderful eligiac Western has Wayne as JB Books an elderly gunfighter and sometime lawman who arrives in a small prosperous town. He calls on his old friend and doctor Jimmy Stewart who confirms his worst fears - he has terminal cancer with only weeks to live. Stewart when pushed tells him how bad it will get in the end and recommends he rent a room from local widow Mrs Rogers (Bacall) who lives with her teenage son (Ron Howard). He pretendsto be someone else but is soon find out and being a Christian soul she wants him out due to the amount of men he has killed. He explains he has no else to go in the time he has left so an uneasy truce is set. In the meantime his name has got about and several people - either to settle old scores or make a name for themselves fancy their chances against him. There is a key scene early on when Stewart indicates Books end may lie in his own hands so the whole film is predicated on him leaving this life the way he lived it. Wayne brings a superb quiet dignity to the role and the eligiac quality is enhanced with it being his last film as he too would die of cancer within 2 years. Bacall is also very good eventually coming round the man for all his faults. It’s set in 1901 so it’s as much about the passing of the Old West as much as Books own fate - he is a man who did what he had to do and seeks neither redemption from The Lord or anyone else. It’s a superb final chapter in his career - 5/5

FILM & WATCHED Ok so I have seen it……and what a tedious , bloated, self indulgent mess of a movie…… It opens with one of the leads being showered in elephant shit and the film never raises itself above that level…. The whole thing is dialled up to eleven from the opening orgy and keeps it at that pace for 189 minutes with endless exploding bodily functions along the way. There is no coherent plot or narrative with every rags to riches and out the other side cliche in the book. I suppose Robbie is ok in the limited role but Pitt just phones it in….only Calva as Manny emerges with any kind of dignity intact…. The film references Singing in the Rain throughout which only highlights the true awfulness we sit through in comparison. In fact the only good scene is at the end when Manny goes many years later to see Singing and weeps for what might have been….as do we all. It cost $150 million and made half that and when you add in all the marketing costs the true break even figure is $250 so it lost a fortune. It really is just shite - 1/5

FILM & REVIEW Really interesting and unusual film from Iranian film maker Jafar Panahi. It opens outside a cafe where a couple are arguing over fake passports they intend to use to escape the country. A voice shouts cut! and the camera pans back to reveal Panahi himself watching events on a laptop connected to a mobile signal. The filming is taking place over the border in Turkey as Panahi is banned from leaving Iran. He is staying in remote village near the border and the offer to be smuggled out is there but he doesn’t take it. He also gets involved in a local dispute over a rivalry between two men and a local girl. He is accused of taking a picture of the non betrothed couple but is adamant that he has no such thing. It’s also revealed that the apparent fictitious film he is remotely directing is more of a staged documentary where the couple are genuinely desperate for a new life and the camera follows them as thing come apart. So it’s a kinda film within a film without it being made clear where the lines between fact and fiction are drawn…..the whole process remains blurred. Panahi has long been a guerrilla film-maker in Iran but his films achieve widespread acclaim abroad much to the annoyance of the state. To give added poignancy to this the film won an award at Cannes but the director couldn’t attend having been sentenced to 6 years in prison on a trumped up charge of anti state propaganda….. Well worth a look - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Siodmak’s gothic masterpiece has McGuire as Helen a live in servant who has been struck mute by a previous trauma who works at the Warren house. The roost is ruined over by the formidable matriarch (Barrymore ) who is now bedridden but still exerts control over her two half-sibling sons Albert (Brent) and Stephen (Albert). Someone in the local town has been murdering local girls all of whom have some physical affliction so it’s obvious Helen is next on the list. Stephen has been away and the killings have only resumed on his return and he seems a shifty character so the audience are pointed in his direction - but are things that simple….. Fine supporting turns by Lanchester as the housekeeper more than a little keen on nip of brandy and Smith as the local doctor who is the subject of Helen’s affections. McGuire is very good in the role using her eyes and gestures to convey what she cannot express - one key scene in which she has to make a phone call but cannot is almost painful to watch. What lifts it into the realm of the sublime is the deep focus Chiaroscuro photography of Nic Musaraca - the king of noir lighting. The way he lights the set giving each huge room almost an extra spatial quality with superb use of shadow and contrast is just genius. Love the way apart from the prelude the entire film is set in the house over a single storm- tossed night the raging weather reflecting the suppressed emotions inside - just brilliant - 5/5

FILM & REVIEW Things to Come - as there doesn’t seem to be very much new coming out of note of late decided to use my screen time to either complete working through older directors catalogues or begin a new one. Mia Hansen-Love’s films always get high praise and as all are on Mubi decided to have a look - and glad i did. Huppert plays Nathalie a middle aged philosophy teacher with a radical communist past who observes with rye amusement the current student upheavals over the planned rise in pension age ( the film is 7 years old so plus la change). She has two grown up kids , a husband who also teaches philosophy and an ailing mother (Irene Scob in her final film) who becomes more and more demanding. Her life seems to begin to unravel when her husband leaves her for a younger model and her Mother goes into terminal decline but being a philosophy teacher means she takes it all as part of life. There is also her protege Fabian who is dashingly handsome and lives in a remote farmhouse with his other radical friends… It’s very French with everything understated - she accepts her husbands decision without any great scenes and views her Mothers passing as a release for both of them. You kinda expect the relationship with Fabian to go down the obvious route but it avoids that cliche as well. Huppert is as always superb indicating emotions with small glances and tight smiles…..it’s a film in which not that much happens but it’s still engrossing throughout - so another directors list to work through - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Cracking crime thriller has Plaza as Emily - up to her ears in debt and working dead end jobs as some low level earlier criminality locks her out of anything else. One of her work colleagues gives her a number to make $200 and this involves her in a dummy shopper credit card fraud ring. She goes into a shop using a fake card and walks out with a high end TV that is then sold on for cash. She finds that idea intriguing so does a larger scam that very nearly goes badly wrong but when she realises how much money can be made she offers to join the team. It is run by Yousaf (Rossi) and his cousin and as soon she is making her own credit cards and getting romanticly involved with Yousaf. The cousin is not at all happy with this and indicates he will cut Yousaf out so he decides to rob his cousin - only to discover his cousin has beaten him to it….. As Emily sees all the hard work going to waste and a return to her dead end life she decides to take action…. Plaza is just superb in the part - after a lifetime of lousy jobs and being ripped off there is no way she is going to walk away with Rossi as the boyfriend who is just beginning to realise what he has unleashed. Cracking synth wave score and in an age where so many movies drag on well over the 2 hour mark this achieves all it wants in a taut 97 minutes. Terrific stuff - 4/5

FILM & REVIEW Yasujro Ozu’s final film before dying on his 60th birthday and it’s a wonderful meditation on family, ageing and loneliness. Ryo plays Shehai an elderly widower whole eldest son is married leaving him with his teenage son and unmarried daughter Michiko (IWashita) She as is as much a housekeeper to him as daughter and all his friends who have married off their own daughters keep asking him when he will sort it out. She however seems perfectly happy with things as they stand showing no desire to be married off. Things come to a head when they invite their old schoolteacher to a reunion and he turns out to be a drunken bitter old man who has kept his own daughter to look after him well past her marrying age and this gets Shehai to wonder if the same fate awaits him and Michiko… Various plans and plots are laid to get things moving along and it culminates in a really bittersweet ending. The performances are superb with Ryo bringing his customary quiet dignity to full fruition and Ozu used his customary static camera to create a real still point in a turning world. In the hands of a lesser director this could easily become dull or even dour but by keeping a lightness of touch he imbibes the film with a deeper more moving meaning and proves for the final time why he was one of the worlds greatest film makers - 5/5

FILM & REVIEW A Dandy in Aspic - Anthony Mann’s final film - in fact he died before finishing it and star Laurence Harvey had to finish the movie. Harvey plays Eberlin an arrogant upper class English spy working for MI6 - except he’s not. He’s a deep cover Russian agent and KGB assassin called Krasnevin who has been killing off British agents. His boss sends him to Berlin to hunt down Krasnavin unaware the two are one and the same - he is sent to Berlin to hunt himself….. He desperately wants to return to Russia but his controller won’t let him so he trapped between both sides. Add in lots of betrayals, double crosses and red herrings and you have a top Cold War spy thriller. Harvey is excellent as his choices narrow with Courtney as his cold blooded boss, a foppish Peter Cook and Mia Farrow (sporting a cut glass English accent ) who just happens to be every where he is…..can it be merely coincidence. It’s very much of its time taking its feel more from Harry Palmer rather than James Bond with terrific use of the London and Berlin locations- 4/5.