Film Reviews by DB

I well understand why the story of Robert Graves and his household after the war caught the imagination of the film makers - and the result is watchable and engaging. Moments in the dialogue, though, stand out as inauthentic, mostly because British characters are made to use Americanisms it's hard to imagine they would have adopted - even with an American in the family! Would Robert Graves really have said that he had "fixed lunch"? Would Nancy Nicholson really have instructed Laura Riding to "lose the curtain" so that she could draw her nude? Would a contemporary consultant physician have said, "that is all I can tell you at this time" rather than "that is all I can tell you at the moment"? The film also omits the household's time in Cairo - perhaps that's for the sequel!

Perhaps this has just become rather dated, but the film mostly involves children and young people bullying and beating each other, in between driving aimlessly, drinking, smoking, and taking drugs. Or maybe the rebel in me has died.

I chose this because it was described as one of the funniest films ever made, it followed a tried and tested formula, and included some big names in American comedy. It may well have been viewed very differently in 1963, although the Oscar nominations were for sound, music, editing, and cinematography, not for the writers, director, or actors. The dialogue is not funny, or if it is meant to be, its humour relies on sexism and characters being rude to each other. They don't seem to be able to have a conversation without poking, slapping, and pushing each other with every phrase. Destruction and demolition feature heavily. When an African-American couple strayed into the path of the protagonists, I was bracing myself for offensive racial stereotypes. Mercifully that scene didn't go as badly as it might have done, but it does not redeem a film that is not funny and badly dated.

As the film played, I came to see that the Hustlers weren't the women, but the men whose needs they profited from meeting. Or rather, that it's about the power imbalance between them, and therefore what's behind the sex is a new take on the old exposure of capitalism for what it really is. In the third act of the film, I began to feel it started pulling its punches. But it was just setting me up for the uppercut in the final scene.

This film of Ian McEwan's "Atonement" looks sublime, drawing on a Merchant-Ivory atmosphere of English summer perfection and social formality. The oppressive heat of the opening act only augments the mood. It's a striking feat to fit so much of the novel's essence into a two-hour film, and it's therefore all the more dismaying that the film robs the story of its deliciously ambiguous ending, and therefore of its essential thesis.

Before I go on - the synopsis above needs proof reading! It's 50 BC, not "so b.c."!

The recent death of Uderzo, not long after the revival of Asterix's adventures by new writers, prompted me to look at the feature films. I have loved Asterix since I first encountered him as a child, and have been wary of the films in case their characters didn't match those in my imagination.

There is an element of that in this film. The voices don't quite fit with the characters I know, and it's unhelpful that the English lines are often rushed to fit with the original animation. The basic story is fun and quite clever, but the style is very much of its time (the film was made in 1976) and looks rather dated now. Overall it's a good effort, and a reasonable diversion, but not a patch on sitting down with one of the books.

Grantchester is a well-written serial with engaging characters and relationships animated by high-quality acting. Viewers with an eye for detail and historical accuracy may find it frustrating, though: for example, suicide victims could not be buried in consecrated ground in 1954, and Leonard would not have been able to be at all open about his sexuality in society at large, let alone in the church.

None of these things need spoil the enjoyment of the drama overall, and a mild suspension of disbelief reveals sensitive treatment of complex questions which, I sense, were simply not talked about at the time. All of this is played out against the gentle background of the Cambridgeshire countryside and the cobbles and colleges of the University, so it always looks pretty, whatever the plot.

Whilst everyone is trying their best, this romantic comedy must have been outdated even when it was released. It leans so heavily on outmoded tropes of expensive weddings and hetero- and mono-normative relationships that its cultural assumptions alone left me frustrated. Let alone the apparent re-location of Heathrow Airport to somewhere just off the King's Road! The only time anyone seems to have considered doing something more sensible that getting a taxi between Heathrow and London was some rather conspicuous advertising by the (then new) "Heathrow Express" rail service - an almost equally ill-informed way to travel.

In the end I'm sorry this wasn't better. Maybe this formula has missed its last chance.

I enjoy watching films and television programmes that are celebrated, but that I didn't see when they were first shown. To that end, I put "Twin Peaks" on my list, remembering the stir it created when first shown on British television - although at the time I was too young to watch it.

Disappointingly, it turned into a bit of a chore. By mid-way through the serial, the plot had departed so far from its starting point that it was no longer about who committed the original crime. The characters were not deeply enough developed to keep my interest, either, mostly being two-dimensional charicatures given little development, and sometimes changing completely over the course of the serial (which, I'll concede, is part of the plot!). David Lynch's work is admirable, and often sublimely creepy and chilling, but in Twin Peaks, those moments were often simply ridiculous, and I couldn't decide whether it was meant to be as funny as it was!

My final reflection is that it may have been ground-breaking at the time, but so much of that ground has now become well-trodden and familiar, that the impact of the original is lost.

I didn't see this when it was first shown, and was curious to catch up on a modern classic. I can't rate it yet, because I have only watched the first episode, but I thought I should write a note to advise other viewers that the first disc consists of the "pilot" episode, and episode 1. However, the key background to the story seems to be in the pilot: I didn't watch it (because it seemed right to start with the first episode) and now feel I may have missed some of the set-up and exposition.

In "Raining Stones", Loach picks up some of his familiar themes - in particular, the ways that small pieces of poor fortune can spiral into serious, sometimes life-threatening, situations for those who are already vulnerable. Bob (Bruce Jones) and Tommy (Ricky Tomlinson) are friends, neighbours, and collaborators in various schemes to raise a bit of money, but things seldom work out as they hope. Bob's daughter is about to make her first communion, and he wants the very best for her, which means an expensive new outfit for the big day. His pride is one of his great strengths - but it is also the root of his problems.

The dialogue is also classic Loach, apparently ad-lib and conversational rather than slick and scripted, which adds to the humanity of the characters and the realism of the film. Perhaps less typical of Loach is his portrayal of the church's role in the community in this film, in the person of Fr Barry (Tom Hickey), who is known by his people, and who knows them - the good and the bad - and loves them.