Film Reviews by RJ

On first viewing, I hated this. I could barely wait to compose my withering one-star review. I found it garish, unpleasant and vulgar. But in the hours after watching it, I found myself considering why I had such a strong negative reaction to it. One thought kept occurring to me, which was to wonder whether I was perhaps being a bit prudish and above all whether, as a man, I was a little bit squeamish about engaging with a film which is so nakedly about male sexual desire and the objectification/fetishization of women. I did a bit of reading about the film and resolved to try again.

My second viewing was far more rewarding - although I still won't be declaring this a masterpiece anytime soon. The film is called City of Women and has a cast of women that must run into the hundreds, but it is not actually about women at all. It is about male sexual desire, specifically Fellini's sexual desire, and how this is affected by changes in societal attitudes to women through feminism and women's liberation. Marcello Mastroianni as Snaporaz is once again the proxy-Fellini. The whole film is Snaporaz's dream, which begins with his sexual urges inadvertently leading him to a hotel hosting a grotesque carnival of absurd, caricatured feminists who harass, terrify and bewilder him. Escaping them, he finds himself on the receiving end of aggressive, unwanted sexual advances at the hands of a woman he finds stoking the furnaces of the hotel, before another terrifying encounter with a group of teenage female electro-new wave punks who appear almost as an alien species to Snaporaz. This encounter takes place in a kind of post-apocalyptic landscape, a clear metaphor for the wilderness Snaporaz finds himself in following the collapse of his pre-feminist values.

His next encounter however, does allow him some respite. Dr Katzone has literally barricaded his house against the encroaching feminism which is a threat to his way of life (he is holding a party to celebrate sleeping with his 10,000th woman). The feminists in this instance are depicted as lesbian nazis, whilst Katzone is revealed to have a deep obsession with his late mother - subtlety is not Fellini's weapon of choice. It is whilst luxuriating in this embodiment of the celebration of male sexual desire that Snaporaz runs into his wife. It is suggested that Snaporaz's obsessive sexual fantasies about the 'perfect woman' have made him impotent in his marriage. Pursuing the elusive Donatella, who appears throughout the dream/film as the representation of Snaporaz's fantasy woman (she is at both the feminist carnival and at Katzone's conquest party), he believes himself to be on the verge of an exciting sexual encounter - only to be confronted once again by his wife and his impotence.

Snaporaz then journeys through his own memory, encountering the various women who awoke and subsequently shaped his sexuality, before finally facing a trial at which one of the questions demanded of him is 'Why did you choose to be born male?'. Wondering whether his perfect woman would be punishment or reward, he attempts to meet her - she is represented by a hot air balloon in the shape of Donatella which is subsequently shot down with a machine gun - by Donatella. The perfect woman proves to be a self-destroying paradox.

This is a very self-referential film and Fellini poses a lot of questions to himself without really coming up with any answers. Fellini is certainly self-aware, although I am not quite sure if he goes as far as being self-critical. Probably the most damning indictment of the film is its solipsism and self-indulgence. At one point Snaporaz muses: "A scoundrel never changes. Why should he change? To become what?" Fellini, of course, is the scoundrel and he certainly asks difficult questions of himself here - but he is both asking and answering (or avoiding) the questions. It is a one-sided conversation that no one else, least of all any of the women in the film, get to participate in.

There are so many things I loved about this film I'm not quite sure where to start, but I'll try to cover some of them. If/when you finish reading my ramblings, go and read this coherent and informative essay about the film by Jonathan Rosenbaum: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4543-good-morning-structures-and-strictures-in-suburbia

Firstly, I'll just say that I initially found this a bit difficult to get into - a lot of characters are introduced quite quickly and I wasn't fully concentrating, so I lost the thread of who was who and how they were all connected. I restarted the film after 20 minutes, engaged my brain properly and from thereon I really enjoyed it.

I loved the intimacy and intricacy of the space that the film takes place in - the 'action' mostly takes place in a series of detached but very closely connected houses. Characters routinely pop in and out of each others' houses, call to one another through doors or windows, and scurry up and down the narrow pathways between them. I've never really taken the time to analyse why, but I am always drawn to films that take place in spaces like this - discrete but connected, blending private and communal (I love the Dekalog films for this reason, and also pretty much anything set on a train).

Then of course there are the characters that inhabit these spaces. They are an eclectic bunch spanning the generations, from seven year old Isamu (a delightful performance from Masahiko Shimazu which I promise will make you smile) all the way through to an imposing grandmother who turns the tables on a pushy salesman with a 'Crocodile Dundee' style move of producing a knife much larger than the one he routinely uses to intimidate his unwilling customers with. There are gossipy housewives, bohemians with western film posters on their walls, unemployed drunkards, shy twentysomethings tiptoeing around their feelings for one another.... All have their flaws and foibles, but I don't think there is a single character in the film depicted without empathy.

Empathy is the word I keep coming back to when I think of Ozu's films. In reading about this film, I came across the Japanese concept of 'Mono no aware' which is worth looking up if you're not familiar with it. Variously translated as 'the pathos of things', 'an empathy towards things' and 'a sensitivity to ephemera' (thanks, Wikipedia), it captures the warm, wistful, bittersweet nature of Ozu's films.

It is also very funny. All the Ozu films I have seen contain subtle, gently comic moments - this one however is more of an out and out comedy. Fart gags abound, and the film opens with one of the schoolboys 'sharting' - 45 years before Philips Seymour Hoffman had to explain the term to Ben Stiller in 'Along Came Polly'.

Throughout the film various contrasts are shown between the childrens' world and the adults' world - most specifically in the way that the children are direct in saying how they feel and what they want, whilst the adults speech is diluted by social niceties and empty language (including the phrase 'Ohayo/Good Morning', giving the film its title). The indirectness of the adults' speech hinders a young couple from expressing their true feelings for another, as well as to various comic misunderstandings amongst the gossiping housewives. But Ozu is not being cruel to the adult characters in his film - he is not cruelly mocking them for the absurdities of these 'social lubrications'. He gently teases them, for sure, but always with empathy and an understanding of the necessity of such modes of speech.

I'm sure there is more I could say - this is such a rich film - but I have surely already written more than any sane person who has stumbled across this review is likely to read, so I'll finish there.

Like other Japanese films from this era that I have seen (essentially a handful of Ozu films - I need to see more to broaden my knowledge), this is a simple story told with great clarity and conviction.

I would think that if you have even a remotely introspective nature you will be able to empathise with the protagonist, Watanabe, whose imminent death from cancer suddenly brings his life into sharp focus. Whether we are living our lives in the 'right' way, what constitutes a 'good' life, and why we choose to live the lives we do all seem to me to be fairly universal questions. Maybe it only seems that way to me because I am introspective by nature - I know a great many people who give the outward impression of supreme confidence and belief in their way of doing things. My assumption is that somewhere beneath all that they are prey to the same anxieties and fears as me, but I might well be wrong.

One moment in the film I found particularly interesting, and which I haven't seen commented on in the handful of reviews I have looked at, is during a scene in which Watanabe is discussing his predicament with Toyo, his young and optimistic co-worker. After 18 months working in the office of which Watanabe is the chief, she has had enough and is resigning in order to find something that suits her better. Unlike him, she is not willing to submit to three decades of unfulfilling drudgery. He bemoans his son's lack of sympathy and understanding towards him - to which she responds, quite bluntly, that his son did not ask Watanabe to be a martyr for his sake. I suppose that Kurosawa's intention for this moment was to illustrate the selfishness of the younger generation, their lack of gratitude towards their elders - which is a valid point, but it did also make me think about to what extent we are willing to blame others for our own actions - or, in Watanabe's case, his lack of actions. Could Watanabe have made more of his life and still provided for his son? Did he use his responsibilities as a single parent as an excuse not to make bolder and braver choices?

This is a film that, without doubt, will stay with me. It is very moving and there are some truly beautiful and poignant moments. I am holding back on a 5th star in my rating purely because - after one viewing - I did feel it was maybe just a little bit long. I got a bit restless in places and just had the impression that maybe 15 minutes could have been cut to tighten it up without losing any of its emotional impact. I really need a second viewing to make my mind up, but for the time being I'm giving it four stars on the basis that I found some of the Ozu films I have seen (Early Summer being one that springs to mind) equally poignant but slightly easier to get through.

Being rather ignorant when it comes to history, I had assumed that this compilation of GPO (General Post Office) films would consist solely of films about how the postal service operated. I had no idea what an integral part of the British communication network the GPO occupied at this time (this compilation covers 1933-1935). As well as the postal system, the GPO also ran the telephone and telegraph networks, the Post Office Savings Bank and even oversaw the running of BBC radio.

What I was slightly more aware of was that, despite the GPO being a government run department with, on the face of it, a fairly specific promotional remit, the GPO film unit was renowned for providing talented filmmakers with a surprising amount of room to experiment.

Because of these factors, there is more variety on show here than you might expect. There are some fairly 'straight' public information films about specific functions of the GPO (The Coming of the Dial, Cable Ship), impressionistic documentaries (Granton Trawler), self-satirising advertisements (Pett and Pott, The Glorious Sixth of June), abstract animation (A Colour Box) and all sorts of other curiosities.

Among the longer films are A Song of Ceylon, commissioned essentially as a piece of propaganda by the Ceylon Tea Propaganda Bureau and the Empire Tea Marketing Board, but transformed here into something much more intriguing and ambiguous, and BBC The Voice of Britain, a larky behind-the-scenes look at BBC radio, with various BBC employees gamely parading through a series of staged conversations and meetings.

So if you have an interest in the history of either British filmmaking and/or British social history, you should find something of interest here.

If you are renting this you won't have the booklet that comes with it, but synopses of all the films, which help to put them into context, can be found at http://www.screenonline.org.uk/

This was my first experience of Miklos Jancso, and it was a like going on a slightly awkward first date where you come away feeling unsure if you want to see the other person again or not.

I can see that there is much to admire from a technical point of view - the long takes, the meticulous choreography etc - but I keep asking myself if I actually felt anything when I watched it. If I am honest I think the main thing I felt was a little bit of boredom, even though the film is only 70 minutes long. It is a highly formal, intellectual film with a didactic, polemic message regarding the need for violent revolution. I think that its focus on the political rather than the personal kept me at a distance - I generally have a preference for films about the minutiae of life rather than grand, sweeping ideas. I would find it easier to respond emotionally to a film about individual experience within an oppressive political regime, whereas this is more of a universal, ideological depiction of oppression and revolution. On the other hand, I find myself thinking that if I had seen something similar in the theatre I may have responded more positively... Maybe there is something about this formal, choreographed, declamatory style that I feel 'belongs' in theatre and not in film. Maybe I am just not yet attuned to Jancso's methods and vision.

If I had outright hated the film it would be much easier to dismiss, but I didn't. The image of the red helicopter appearing in the hitherto timeless landscape is undeniably striking and the last ten minutes, during which the message is made rather more explicit than in some of the opaque earlier scenes, did to an extent bring the film together and give me enough clarity to suggest I might benefit from a second viewing. Then again, maybe I am just trying too hard to like something that just isn't to my particular taste.

I think I have some more Jancso films on my list, so for the time being I don't think I'll call him for a second date but I'll probably see him around, and we'll see what happens.

I'm writing this review after my second viewing of Arcadia, which only confirmed my initial opinion that this is an incredible piece of work. Having read the two earlier reviews on this site, it is fair to say that my viewing experience could hardly have been more different to theirs! Which is not in any way a criticism of those reviewers, simply an observation of how vastly individual experiences of the same piece of work can differ.

I am tempted to comment directly on a couple of the points made by the other reviewers but I won't, because their opinions are absolutely valid and I wouldn't want to give the impression that I am trying to prove them wrong (or me right). All I will say is that I would recommend this film as highly as it is possible to do so - I see so many films that fade almost instantly from the memory, so when I come across something like this that really affects me I just have an urge to shout about it to anyone inclined to listen (usually no one, or perhaps a patient friend nodding politely).

It is not a documentary in the conventional sense, rather (as pointed out by a previous reviewer) a film poem. For me, poetry is about gut feeling and instinct, rather than analysis. It is political only in a tangential way and does not profess to have 'answers'. Some of the montage sequences in this film were so powerful they literally brought tears to my eyes, which I am fully aware sounds gushing and hyperbolic, but it's true so we're all just going to have to deal with it. I think I will find Arcadia endlessly rewatchable because there is just such abundance in it - on my second viewing new, different patterns and associations emerged which I had not seen the first time, and images which had barely registered the first time suddenly jumped out at me. I also loved the way that certain images are repeated in different contexts, slightly changing their meaning (or their feeling) each time. I said that I would prefer not to analyse the film, which is not the same as saying that it can't be analysed. It would be easy enough to dust off all my old film studies terminology and discuss the film in a very academic way - but for me, to do so would be to risk losing the essence of the film.

Anyway, I think I am too excited by the film to write sensibly about it. I suppose I just wanted to provide an alternative view to those that had already been published here. I will just urge you once again to give it a try. In my opinion it is a treasure trove of fascinating imagery skillfully woven into an ever changing kaleidoscope of patterns and associations. I'm gushing again, so I will stop writing before I use the phrase 'patterns and associations' again, and head over to the BFI website to buy a copy.

Oh, one more thing - it would be remiss of me not to mention the soundtrack which I loved and massively contributed to my overall experience.

I watched this a couple of days after watching another Ray Harryhausen film, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and it did suffer slightly in comparison. Despite being only a year older than Sinbad, it felt much more dated and lacked the richness of the later film.

Whist Sinbad had a variety of Harryhausen creatures on display, this one has only one, the Ymir. The Ymir is visually impressive and is without doubt the main attraction of the film (as you would expect of a 'creature feature'), although the sound design for it wasn't great. I have read that the sound used for the Ymir was that of an elephant played back at a higher speed, but what it sounded like was a man with a bucket on his head shouting a lot. I think the filmmakers must have learnt from the experience because the sound design for the cyclops in Sinbad was much better. Sinbad also had a very distinctive score by Bernard Herrmann, whereas the score for this film is pretty anonymous and could have been from any number of similar films.

The plot is a fairly rote King Kong/Godzilla hybrid, and the script is pretty ropey. As in Sinbad, I think that the cast generally do as good a job as could reasonably be expected with a daft plot and some weak dialogue - the cast of Sinbad probably had it easier because that film is essentially set in an entirely fantastical realm, whereas this is set in the 'real' world, where the silliness of all the sci-fi hokum is more apparent. My favourite scene is when a select few of the press are gathered together and told that not only has there been a top secret space mission which has landed men on Venus, but that the mission has brought back a new, alien life form.... and they react with all the excitement you would expect if they had just been informed of a minor cabinet reshuffle. I am guessing the director just couldn't be bothered that day....

All of which is not to say that this isn't an enjoyable film - just that in comparison this felt a little more throwaway than Sinbad, which had a bit more going for it to help elevate it above being a mere B movie. The blu-ray has both the original B&W version and the colourised version of the film - I personally prefer the B&W version, even thought the colourisation has been done well.

I don't know too much about the ins and outs of film restoration, distribution rights etc - so it's a mystery to me why some films get lovingly restored and released on dvds/blu-rays crammed with extra features, whilst other films remain neglected and, at best, chucked out on dvds containing terrible quality prints and no extra features. All I know is that, sadly, this film falls into the latter category. This really is an awful quality release. The print of the film is very poor, so blurry in places that you can hardly see what is going on. There are clearly intertitles missing, and the English subtitles for those that remain seem to have been generated using Google Translate. There are no extra features whatsoever and (for me at least) this is exactly the kind of film which would benefit from some supplementary materials to help put it into context. I had to go online and do some reading to aid my understanding, otherwise I would have had real difficulty getting anything out of it. The exact same version of the print is available on Youtube and the physical disc adds nothing to this whatsoever.

All of which is a shame because, struggling to emerge from all of this is clearly a very interesting film, with an equally interesting history. It is ostensibly a propaganda film promoting the Soviet policy of collectivism, however although the film is clearly in favour of this policy, it was nevertheless deemed by Soviet officials to be too ambiguous in its message and to be excessively concerned by man's relationship with nature. Whilst this was bad news for its director (Aleksandr Dovzhenko) at the time, it's good news for anyone watching it now as it elevates it above being purely a simplistic propaganda film. The montage sequence near the end of the film, intercutting a vengeful priest begging God to punish the pro-collectivist revolutionaries, a man driven insane by despair and guilt, a child being born whilst a young man's funeral takes place, and a grieving woman in a primal display of (literally) naked emotion is particularly startling.

So, absolutely worth watching, and if you stick with it long enough the power of the film will transcend the shabby way it has been presented.

This is one of those films that just about holds the attention for its duration but which you start forgetting even as the end credits are rolling. I found it mildly engaging but psychologically lightweight and I honestly can't think of a single aspect of it that was striking, unusual or memorable. It's a solid, efficiently put-together drama, but there was nothing in it which would compel me to actively seek out more of Francois Ozon's films.

I added a few Ray Harryhausen films to my list as I had long been meaning to revisit the hazy childhood memories I had of them. This was the first one that landed on my doormat. I am a big fan of pre-CGI special effects involving actual, tangible materials. I just think the craftsmanship is incredible, and for me the most unrealistic looking stop-motion animation will always be preferable to slick CGI which always feels a bit cold and empty to me.

Anyway, after however many years since I last saw any Harryhausen films (maybe 25/30 years...), the creatures on display here did not disappoint. The cyclops, the snake woman, the roc, the dragon and - of course - the skeleton are all fantastic. The level of skill required to bring these creatures to life and integrate them into the live action still amazes me.

But perhaps the most pleasant surprise was how enjoyable the film as a whole was. I think it would be easy for supposedly 'sophisticated' modern audiences to laugh at the acting, the dialogue and the outdated stereotypes found in this film but I actually think the cast did a really good job of creating the energy required for a fantasy epic of this nature. A lot of the time the actors are interacting with things that are not really there and the performances need to be big and bold to sell this to an audience - it would not be fair to compare what they are doing here to more naturalistic film acting. There is also some really interesting stuff about how the film was made in the extra features and commentary on the Blu-ray, particularly about some of the incredible filming locations and how these were integrated with material filmed on studio sets.

Oh - and I almost forgot to mention the film also has a brilliant score by Bernard Herrmann!

So in summary, there is a lot to enjoy here, not only Harryhausen's monsters.

I first watched this about a year ago having bought a box set of 10 Michael Haneke films on an impulse and I did not enjoy it at all. I think I found it too cold, too clinical, too repetitive. However, unlike the majority of films which I can barely remember a week after I have watched them, this one really lodged in my brain and lingered there for a long time, so I had been waiting for an opportunity to revisit it. On second viewing my reaction could hardly have been more different - I absolutely loved it. In fact, I loved everything I had disliked about it the first time.

The premise of the film is extremely simple. A middle class family become disillusioned with the emptiness of their lives and decide to systematically destroy all of their possessions before committing suicide. Obviously this is neither the first nor the last film to explore the alienation of modern life and the self-destructive urges which lie beneath the surface of bourgeois life, but what I loved about this film was its patient dedication to the clinical, meticulous depiction of the lifeless, repetitive activities of the family. The subsequent mission of self-destruction they embark upon is depicted in the same forensic manner. It is painstakingly and brilliantly edited.

It won't be for everyone, and if you are someone who has never felt alienated or considered what lurks beneath society's veneer of politeness then I have no idea what you might make of it. It is a harsh and brutal film, but it is also full of gallows humour - I laughed out loud quite a few times. A simple idea but perfectly executed - highly recommended.

Although this film is stunning to look at, it is, like the mind of the protagonist Giuliana, dissonant, disordered and disorienting.

Giuliana is struggling to 'reintegrate into reality' following a mental breakdown from which she has clearly not recovered despite having been released from hospital. Her husband Ugo's approach to her affliction appears to be to ignore it as much as possible and hope it goes away. Enter Corrado Zeller, a business associate of Ugo's, who is immediately drawn to Giuliana. This is partly because he regards himself as a fellow outsider, although he suffers from a far more common and manageable form of ennui, in contrast to the genuinely unstable Giuliana.

I think that Zeller is not, initially at least, cruel in his treatment of Giuliana, rather I think he is just careless. He does not seem to recognise the extent of her problems and therefore does not understand the potential consequences of becoming involved with her. Eventually, in a difficult scene to watch, he decides that the most appropriate course of action when confronted with a woman clearly suffering from extreme mental problems is to more or less force her to have sex with him. Maybe he even imagined his magical sexual powers would cure her (spoiler alert: they don't).

Interestingly, there is foreshadowing of this weary sexual acquiescence earlier in the film, when a group of friends appear to be on the verge of having an orgy, although it turns out to be mostly talk. A balding middle aged man with wandering hands focuses his attentions on one particular woman who, although apparently unreceptive to his advances, later admits to the man's wife that "he will have his way with me too, eventually".

Monica Vitti is convincing as a woman alienated from the landscape, from the people around her, from life itself. The polluted industrial landscape and haunting soundtrack convey Giuliana's sense of dislocation perfectly. Smoke and steam from the factories and melancholy fog rolling in off the sea suffocate the environment around her.

The ending has really stayed with me - Giuliana explains to her young son that the birds have learned to avoid flying through the toxic yellow smoke emitted from the factory chimneys so that they don't die. Maybe Giuliana is resolving that this is what she must do in order to survive - but when the toxicity is as ubiquitous as portrayed in this film, there is little hope that she will be able to do so.

I've given this film four stars, but with the nagging feeling that I am simultaneously under and over rating it....

I feel like I am overrating it in the sense that I am not sure I enjoyed it as much as four stars would suggest - but it's tricky because I don't think 'enjoyment' is really the intended reaction to this film. It places the viewer in an uncomfortable position by presenting complex characters in an ambiguous and constantly evolving scenario, so that I found my allegiances and opinions regularly changing.

On the other hand I feel like I am underrating it, because it has to be said it is virtually flawless in terms of the kind of film it is aspires to be. I can't really think of any moment which I found to be unbelievable, or any time when a character behaved in a way that did not ring true or where they seemed to be acting in a way that serviced the plot rather than their character.

In summary, I found this to be an engaging and challenging film, which after one viewing I still feel a sense of ambiguity about, largely because it never allowed me to get comfortable by making easy judgments.