Sometimes unfairly described as something like David Lean's gravestone, Ryan's Daughter was the film that stopped the legendary director from making any films for fourteen years. Lean was apparently so distressed by Pauline Kael's scathing review of Ryan's Daughter that he lost faith in his ability as a filmmaker - seeming to forget that he was the guy who gave us such untouchable classics as Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia. Perhaps he really had dug his own grave... his previous film, Doctor Zhivago, had continued his penchant for epic historical adventures and had impossibly held up as a worthy successor to the exemplary Lawrence of Arabia. There isn't really much else you can follow that with, he was probably doomed no matter what he made next - especially if it was a three-hour drama that took place in a quiet village on an Irish shoreline. Ryan's Daughter isn't without it's faults, but I think it still stands up as a really solid piece of filmmaking from one of the great masters.
Rural Ireland, 1916. WWI is in full swing and the British still occupy the Emereld Isle. The daughter of the title is Rose (Sarah Miles), a wayward young woman whose free spirit makes her a less than ideal match for Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum), the town's reserved school teacher. Nonetheless, the two enter into a marriage and Shaughnessy reveals himself to be a practical and caring husband. Rose however is unfulfilled by the marriage, despite her initial hopes. She can't handle that this is all theremight be to her life, and she embarks on an affair with a British Major (Christopher Jones) stationed near the village. Where Shaughnessy's lovemaking is brief and without romance, the Major's is thrilling and passionate. Rose's world is about to change forever though as Irish Nationalists are planning an uprising against the British, and her adultery with the enemy won't be tolerated by the insular villagers.
As much as this is a slow and thoughtful piece of drama, there is still quite a lot in it that makes the film a memorable experience. Lean takes the small story of a love triangle and gives it the epic Lean treatment, playing it out against the backdrop of the Easter Uprising and taking in wide panoramic shots of West Ireland. The coastal village is a windy, desolate and lonely place - about as warm as the villagers themselves. The town idiot, Michael (John Mills in a wordless Oscar-winning role), flits around the village at the cruel mercy of the townsfolk, his dialogue-free role an extension of Lean's talent for clear visual storytelling. There's an effortlessly powerful scene where Shaughnessy confesses to Rose his knowledge of her affair, he does nothing and she simply runs out of the house and up onto the heath, embracing the Major as the music swells romantically- and then we cut back to Robert Mitchum in silence, watching through the window with that sad face of his. It's quietly devastating. There's just something magical and elegant about the way that Lean can move things forwards so organically with minimal dialogue. To be honest, nothing much really happens in this story that justifies it's three hours of runtime, but you don't really feel it because Lean is a true master of pace. Witness the scene where Rose and the Major meet in Ryan's pub, a tour de force sequence that changes the direction of each character's life without a single word.
The historical element of the story is underplayed for the most part, mostly exploring the awkward spot that WWI put Ireland in through a few snatches of dialogue and the way the actors play off each other. It was a situation where it was treasonous for the Irish to support the Germans, though many of them wanted to because of the hatred they had for their British occupiers. The film doesn't really tackle this head on with any of the leading characters, but the character of Ryan (Leo McKern), an Irish nationalist with braggartly tendencies, perhaps represents the difficulty in representing anti-British sentiment in a 1970s British film. The other most interesting character is Father Collins (Trevor Howard), the tough but loving priest who keeps the town in line by policing idle hands and idle minds, and acts as Rose's conscience. His realistically supportive stance throughout the uprising is a keen reminder of the church's role in small communities like this.
Of the three lead performances Robert Mitchum's is the most effective, his Irish accent is a little clipped but still sounds natural in his mouth and suits his character. Shaughnessy is a far cry from Mitchum's usual toughened, hard-edged characters, revealing himself to a be a quiet but good man - solid, unvindictive and perhaps too understanding for his own good. The end of the film's first half ends with Shaughnessy bashfully asking his wife if she'd ever be unfaithful before cutting to the intermission. It contrasts with the big pre-intermission climaxes in Lean's previous three epics, but Mitchum carries off the dramatic cliffhanger beautifully.
Sarah Miles on the other hand is well cast but falls a little short of what the role requires... her accent is inconsistent (sometimes she doesn't even attempt one) and her performance in the village ostracization scenes doesn't really move beyond a mild sense of trauma. The Major, played by newcomer Christopher Jones, is a mysterious portrait of damaged youth - a characterisation perhaps born out of neccessity due to the fact that Jones was apparently completely unable to play the part. This led to a lot of his dialogue being excised from the script, and Lean uses this to his advantage by contrasting the taciturn character with the voiceless Michael... both have difficulty walking and say nothing, but one is a war hero and the other a pariah. Both are outcasts of a kind, though their kinship is eventually revealed as superficial and driven by unchangeable forces.
I'll warn any fans of Lean's bigger, better-known work that this is a slower film that concerns itself more with character-based drama. It is however an ultimately rewarding experience, helped in spades by Lean's expert use of framing and breathtaking cinematography, and it doesn't deserve the poor reputation it recieved upon release.
DIRECTOR: David Lean
WRITER/SOURCE: Robert Bolt, loosely based on the novel Madame Bovery.
KEY ACTORS: Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Trevor Howard, Christopher Jones, Leo McKern, John Mills, Barry Foster, Evin Crowley
RELATED TEXTS:
- Robert Bolt's screenplay was initially an adaptation of Gustave Flaubert's classic novel Madame Bovery. At Lean's suggestion he reworked it into a new setting with some different characterisations.
- Jim Sheridan's The Field owes a lot to Ryan's Daughter in terms of atmosphere, setting and character dynamics. The character of Bird in particular (played by John Hurt) seems to be a homage to John Mills' Michael.
- Other tales of isolated village life in the UK include How Green Was My Valley, Straw Dogs and The Molly Maguires. Straw Dogs and The Molly Maguires both examine the darker side of these kinds of communities, much like Ryan's Daughter.
- Lean's follow-up film (his last) was A Passage to India, which is closer in feel and tone to Ryan's Daughter than any of Lean's other films.
- The film shares some thematic similarity with The Painted Veil, a classic novel by W. Somerset Maugham, which was also adapted into a film as The Painted Veil with Greta Garbo in 1934 and later with Edward Norton as The Painted Veil in 2006.
AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Supporting Actor (John Mills) and Best Cinematography. Also nominated for Best Actress (Sarah Miles) and Best Sound.
BAFTAs - nominated Best Actress (Miles), Best Supporting Actor (Mills), Best Supporting Actress (Evin Crowley), Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Direction, Best Soundtrack, Best Editing and Best Film.
Golden Globes - won Best Supporting Actor (Mills). Nominated for Best Actress (Miles) and Best Supporting Actor (Trevor Howard)
The best thing to come out of Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse project was undoubtedly the 'fake' trailer for Machete - a homage to the exploitative action films of the 70s that came across both a parody and an awesome antidote to the neutered action films we get today. Responding to fan reaction, director Robert Rodriguez did what should've been done years ago and cast ex-con turned actor Danny Trejo as the lead in a B-movie spectacular. The result is one helluva fun action film replete with rapid fire vomiting, decapitations, steamy sex scenes and explosive gunshot wounds. Basically, it's everything we've been missing from mainstream films since the beginning of the 1990s.
Machete (Trejo) is a Mexican cop with a penchant for knife work. We watch in the film's prologue as his wife is brutally killed by Mexican druglord Torrez (Steven Seagal) and then cut to three years later where Machete is now an illegal immigrant reduced to begging for work on the American-Mexican border. Down on his luck and plum out of money, Machete is forced to take work as a gun-for-hire by shady businesman Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey), and is promptly sent out to assassinate a local senator (Robert De Niro). It soon transpires that Machete has been set up though, and he gets shot by another sniper before he can carry out the job. Recovering from his wounds and enlisting the help of a sexy immigration official (Jessica Alba) and a gunshot-wielding priest (Cheech Marin), Machete goes on the warpath to exact revenge on the cartel of men who left him for dead.
Sure, it's deliberately cheesy and has a relatively straightforward plot, but Machete gets the tone completely right. There's just enough B-gradeness and over-the-top coolness to keep the viewer more than entertained. It's not too self-knowing or postmodern but it also doesn't go too far in the opposite direction by trying to conform to modern storytelling conventions or formulas. What I'm trying to say is that it doesn't sacrifice anything in the name of it's 'grindhouse' tag that would make it a boring film. I was initially worried that Rodriguez wouldn't be able to sustain the kickarse feel of the trailer for an entire movie, but I think he succeeds admirably. Machete is unusual in that it's a film that has been built around it's trailer, rather than the other way around. You can actually spot some of the shots from the trailer and the ways in which the film has been written to fit them in... I don't think it detracts from the film and I don't think it's neccessarily a bad way to write this kind of movie.
Rodriguez doesn't just make a grindhouse film either. There's a Mexican immigration subtext that is obviously close to Rodriguez's heart, and a lot of the film points towards the failure of the American legal system as the main cause for the injustice that surrounds the American-Mexican border. Some people might see this as too lofty a theme for such an apparently disposable genre but I see it as extension of why film fans have been reacting so favourably to this new wave of grindhouse films. Films like Machete (and also the films of Quentin Tarantino) can be seen as a reaction against the growing conservatism of action films... the growth of the modern action film into the cash-pinnacle of mainstream filmmaking has seen the genre evolve into something that's completely free of nudity, shows minimal actual bloodshed, and concerns heroes that are so straight-lacked and bound by strict filmic honour codes that they can only kill people in certain situations. These are usually situations that require the script to twist itself into the most contrived shapes possible, leading to a severe lack of quality in writing, direction and acting. Most of all, the spectacle of these films have been reduced to explosions and special effects. I'm not saying that the brutal violence in Machete is neccessarily a godsend, but it's definitely the result of the blind alley that Hollywood action films have crawled up into in recent years, and Machete's anti-American subtext is a reasonable reflection of the narrowmindedness of these films.
My only major criticism of Machete is that it doesn't end in the orgy of blood and severed limbs it should have... it kind of loses a little steam at the end (mainly due to Seagal's weirdness), but I think it's forgiveable as the film still manages to be consistently entertaining for it's entire duraction. Danny Trejo's stoic performance evokes the spirit of Charles Bronson, he's so cool that he even fights a guy whilst casually eating a sandwich. The collection of villains that he has to take down are great too - Jeff Fahey gives an oily and oedipal performance as the Senator's main stooge, Don Johnson makes for a great redneck sheriff, De Niro downplays his inner toughguy to highlight the duplicity of his faux-Texan politician character, and Steven Seagal is (initially) impressive as a badass Mexican crimelord with a samurai sword. Seagal's acting in particular needs to be seen to be believed... I really just don't know what planet this guy is on, his last scene is ego-tinged to the point of outright weirdness, but at least he's not boring.
HIGHLIGHTS: I loved the bit where Machete is randomly told an interesting fact about the length of the human intestine and then puts it to use in the next fight scene (!)
DIRECTOR: Robert Rodriguez
WRITER/SOURCE: Written by Robert and Alvaro Rodriguez
KEY ACTORS: Danny Trejo, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Jeff Fahey, Don Johnson, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Tom Savini
RELATED TEXTS:
- As mentioned, Machete started life as a 'fake' trailer that was screened as part of the Grindhouse double-bill. This was a film project masterminded by Quentin Tarantino to kickstart a new wave of exploitation films, and consisted of Rodriguez's fun zombie film Planet Terror and Tarantino's somewhat boring action thriller Death Proof.
- The other fake trailers were for the films Werewolf Women of the SS (by Rob Zombie), Don't (by Edgar Wright) and Thanksgiving (by Eli Roth).
- An extra fake trailer was included in some Canadian screenings of Grindhouse, this was Hobo With a Shotgun by director Jason Eisener. Like Machete this has since been expanded into a feature-length film, and is set for release mid-2011.
- Machete is supposedly the first in a trilogy of films that will be rounded out by Machete Kills and Machete Kills Again. I'm not sure whether to seriously expect these films to be made or not, it would be great if they were though.
- Rodriguez was partially inspired to make Machete by the John Woo Hong Kong films Hard-Boiled and The Killer.
- Trejo and Rodriguez first worked together on the Mexican action film Desperado.
The Mission
James Bond (Sean Connery) is getting some much needed rest at a health spa when he stumbles across a SPECTRE plot involving a dead NATO pilot. MI6 soon discover that SPECTRE have stolen two nuclear bombs. The evil organisation is holding the North Atlantic to ransom for 100 million pounds, and Bond promptly requests to be despatched to the Bahamas to follow up a lead. Once there he begins to investigate the activities of Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), a wealthy black marketeer who is in fact designated as Number 2 in the SPECTRE organisation and may know the whereabouts of the bombs.
Jimmy Bond Yo!
More than settled into the role, Connery is all jokes and double-entendres galore throughout the duration of Thunderball. He cheekily stops to eat a grape whilst snooping about at one point, and arrives late at a very important emergency conference when all the 00 agents are assembled together - which suggests he's very much the 'maverick' of the group. We're finally given a bit more insight into why he's apparently able to bed so many women - he reveals a rather dainty-looking minke glove that he uses to massage his lady-conquests, and even blackmails a health spa nurse into sex after a near-death experience (!) He foregoes his usual evening-wear whilst in the Bahamas, preferring to get about in a range of very short shorts and a snazzy red pantsless wetsuit. Connery's hairpiece also looks a little bit more noticeable than usual in this film, perhaps due to the extensive underwater sequences.
Villainy
Emilio Largo is a dapper, cold-humoured sporting count in an eyepatch, and very much an Italian stereotype. He's also the loyal Number 2 to SPECTRE's Number 1, Blofield, and has a resort-like bachelor pad in the Bahamas, complete with a pool full of rare man-eating sharks. Despite his trimmings, Largo comes across as a fairly boring stock-standard villain - he looks a lot more interesting than he really is.
Largo's main henchman is Vargas (Philip Locke), an intriguingly nondescript cronie with a talent for killing. In the tradition of Oddjob from Goldfinger, he doesn't really get any dialogue and just gets to stand around whilst looking a bit menacing.
Blofield makes a small appearance near the film's beginning, outlaying SPECTRE's plan to hold the world to ransom with stolen A-bombs. This time he deliberately hides his face from the rest of SPECTRE behind a frosted glass screen (as opposed to his last appearance in From Russia With Love, where he simply appeared with his back to the audience).
Buddies and Babes
Bond's CIA man Felix Leiter shows up in the Bahamas to represent the Americans and is played once again by a different actor (Rik Van Nutter). This time he's a lot more like a stereotypically British view of an American - all exclamations and dressed in a baseball cap and rather loud hawaiian shirt. Put alongside Bond, he offers a classless American contrast with Bond's British dignity and flair for style. Pinder (Earl Cameron) is Bond and Leiter's contact for the Bahamas, he's a fairly bland character who doesn't really do much other than stand around being black so we're reminded that they're in the Caribbean.
M (Bernard Lee) reacts to Bond with his usual weariness but also has the utmost faith in 007 even when it looks like he's failed in his mission - suggesting that he tolerates Bond's rogue-like tendencies because of his positive track record.
Bond deals with a whole gaggle of women throughout Thunderball, starting with Pat Fearing (Molly Peters) - an orderly at the health spa who features throughout the film's first forty minutes or so. After Bond travels to the Bahamas he is assisted by Paula Caplan (played by model Martine Beswick), a local MI6 contact who meets her maker after being kidnapped by Largo.
The two main Bond babes for this film though are Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi) and Domino (Claudine Auger, who was Miss France in 1958). Fiona is a SPECTRE agent who attempts to seduce Bond and makes direct fun of the growing cliche where Bond converts exotic foreign enemies to his cause after sleeping with them. Domino is Largo's naive mistress, and is the main love interest for Bond for the bulk of the film. I have to admit that I got a little confused throughout the second half of Thunderball as I thought the actresses who played Domino and Fiona looked too similar, and at one point I was convinced they were even the same character!
Locations
The first forty minutes or so of Thunderball take place in England whilst the rest of the film is set in the Bahamas. Unlike the Jamaican setting of Dr. No, the location work here is a lot more extensive and picturesque - no doubt reflecting the much larger budget of Thunderball. There are also a lot of underwater sequences that showcase tropical coral reefs, but more on that later.
Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
Bond employs the use of a rather ridiculous rocketpack quite early on in the film, using it to escape some angry SPECTRE agents after killing one of their men. He also has a bulletproof shield on the back of his car, which also comes equipped with the ability to spray high-pressure water streams.
Q (Desmond Llewelyn) turns up in the field to give Bond a handy geiger counter, an underwater camera, a mini-flare gun, a mini-oxygen tank and a special pill that emits a homing signal when swallowed. Bond also has a tape recorder hidden inside a book that he leaves in his hotel room to record any chatty intruders. As expected, he gets to use each and every one of these gadgets.
Licence to Kill
Bond kills more enemies than ever before, starting with a high-ranking SPECTRE agent incongruously dressed as a woman.
Once in the Bahamas he really lets loose with his licence to kill - shooting one of Largo's men and stabbing another whilst sneaking into the mastervillain's island mansion at night. He later cuts the oxygen tube on a scuba man (something he does about five more times during the film's climactic underwater battle).
Most spectacularly, he kills Vargas with a speargun whilst lounging around on the beach, and uses Fiona as a human shield whilst dancing with her (causing her to get shot by one of her own stooges). During the big underwater fight at the film's end he fires a mini-torpedo into someone from his special backpack, stabs two other guys and kills yet another with a speargun.
Shag-Rate
Positively high! As mentioned earlier, he 'convinces' Pat to sleep with him whilst on leave at the health spa. He later shags incorruptable SPECTRE agent Fiona Volpe, amusingly claiming afterwards that it gave him no enjoyment. It's also strongly implied that Bond and Domino shag underwater in the reef whilst in scuba diving gear.
Quotes
BOND (referring to himself): Is there ever a man more misunderstood?
PAT FEARING: Haven't you had enough exercise for one evening?
BOND: It's funny you should say that...
BOND: Try some clam chowder.
DOMINO: You've been reading the wrong books.
BOND: How so?
DOMINO: About clam chowder being an aphrodisiac.
BOND: It just so happens that I like clam chowder.
DOMINO: What sharp little eyes you've got.
BOND (quietly): Just wait till you get to my teeth.
BOND: Moneypenny, next time I see you I'll put you across my knee.
BOND (after shagging Fiona): What I did this evening was for Queen and Country. You don't think it gave me any pleasure, do you?
BOND (after killing Vargas with the speargun): I think he got the point.
How Does It Rate?
Following on from Goldfinger, Thunderball further exploits the 1960s fear of atomic warfare as a means to highlight SPECTRE's villainy. The Bond creative team are clearly working their way towards a direct battle between 007 and the SPECTRE organisation - we first learnt about them in passing at the end of Dr. No, then we met them (Number 3 in particular) in the flesh during From Russia With Love. Now in Thunderball we meet the next highest member, Number 2 - Emilio Largo. Unfortunately this exploration of SPECTRE is just a little too slow and any momentum the filmmakers may be hoping to build up just doesn't really happen - perhaps due to the absence of any new information or developments.
Thunderball is a lot more sexually suggestive and sillier than the previous Bond films - starting off with Bond duking it out with a high-ranking SPECTRE agent in drag before wobbling off into the air with the help of a jetpac. We then follow his slightly-rude misadventures in a health resort where he bumbles across a dastardly SPECTRE plot to nuke the world. It probably also doesn't help that SPECTRE don't really make much sense as far as terrorist organisations go - for a criminal venture motivated by financial reasons they seem to have an unusually fanatical leaning towards fascism. The number-based heirarchy and the fervant loyalty of Numbers 2 and 3 (not to mention Blofield's dictator-like fashion stylings) seems to suggest an adherence to some kind of political doctrine - though what that might be is anyone's guess.
The other major failing of Thunderball is it's big selling gimmick of underwater sequences. I can't speak for anyone who first saw the film back in the 1960s, but I found these bits dreadfully boring. The problem with realistic underwater sequences is that everything slows down in water... it's hardly ideal for an action film, is it? This film would've been a lot more entertaining if they'd kept these scenes down to a minimum (or at least made them a bit more dramatic - the director seems to think that the underwater stuff is so exciting that it doesn't even need incidental music. He's wrong). If they'd shaved off about half an hour or so from the overall screentime (the England-set part of the film could've been drastically shortened) then it would've been a lot snappier and a far better movie.
Visit my James Bond page.
DIRECTOR: Terrance Young
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Richard Maibaum and John Hopkins, based on an alternate script by Jack Whittingham that formed the basis for a book by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Sean Connery, Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Luciana Paluzzi, Rik Van Nutter, Bernard Lee, Desmond Llewelyn, Guy Dolan, Molly Peters, Martin Beswick.
RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel Thunderball by Ian Fleming, the ninth James Bond novel and one that was actually based on a script written by someone else.
- The legal issues arising from the conception of the Thunderball storyline led to it being remade as an 'unofficial' James Bond film in the early 1980s, renamed Never Say Never Again and starring an older Sean Connery as 007.
AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Visual Effects.
BAFTAs - nominated Best Art Direction.
If Bryce Courtenay is Australia's biggest selling author, and The Power of One his biggest selling, most popular and enduring book, does that make The Power of One Australia's biggest novel? Australia's habit for appropriating other country's products (EG. Crowded House, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson) aside, I'd be inclined to say no, if only because it's so completely a novel of South Africa... of South African origins and about the country itself - it's history, it's people, it's problems and it's hopes. It's tantamount to Courtenay's talent that the novel transcends these nationalistic ties and speaks to readers everywhere on a private level, charting the human condition in trying times and connecting with it's audience by tying us to the protagonist's epic journey to manhood.
PeeKay is a troubled young Rooinek (what the Afrikaners call English South Africans). He has been sent to a boarding school made up almost entirely of Boers, and with the approach of World War II the Boer children threaten to march PeeKay (along with all the other English people) into the sea when their saviour Hitler comes to liberate the Afrikaners. PeeKay wets the bed, he is bullied and beaten by a child known as the Judge, and it is only through a special meeting with a Zulu medicine man that he is able to find an inner strength that allows him to overcome these obstacles.
We follow PeeKay throughout his childhood, from World War II-era South Africa through to the beginnings of Apartheid, and witness the emergence of a special kind of intelligence, a deep desire to always win, and the strength of the 'power of one'. Through a meeting with trainguard-cum-boxer Hoppie Groenweld, PeeKay happens upon an early ambition to become welterweight champion of the world in boxing. Everything he does after this is tinged with his urgent desire to box. His adventures after this are too numerous and complex to go into detail about... he befriends a German music professor named Doc, learns how to box in a South African prison, attends an elitist school for English South Africans, becomes the Onoshobishobi Ingelosi (Zulu for 'Tadpole Angel') and works in a dangerous mine in Rhodesia. It's a colourful and unpredictable journey, and it takes us right up the beginning of PeeKay's manhood.
The Power of One is a classic. At first I read it looking for something along the lines of the film version of The Power of One, but the book and the film bear very little resemblence to one another. I'm not bagging the film, I still enjoyed it, but they are about different things. Where the film focused more on the race situation in South Africa and PeeKay's role as an equaliser between the many tribes, the book is more about PeeKay's journey to self-actualisation and the point where he triumphs over his own inner loneliness. The racial themes are still there, but the book is a little more realistic about the nature of PeeKay's inner quest.
Courtenay's technique is deceptively easy to read. Calling upon his own experiences, he bundles up South African history and kneads it into the text liberally - making for a fascinating background to PeeKay's story. The style is a first-person narrative, told by PeeKay from the age of 4 to the age of 18, and we get a curious mix of childhood perception and adult hindsight. Whilst it's not as experimental, realistic or in-the-moment as Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, it suits the purposes of The Power of One entirely, allowing for a child's-eye view coupled with an adult understanding of the bigger picture - hence we get asides and explanations about the South African situation throughout the 1940s.
Courtenay also demonstrates an almost Dickensian approach to plot and character. It's a big story and we are shown various wonderful characters throughout PeeKay's life - even the briefest-appearing character is memorable. It's a talent of Courtenay's that we don't lose ourself in the mammoth and ever-changing cast of characters. Likewise, the plot is refreshingly old fashioned - simply charting a fictional life in a non-fictional setting, without contrivances and circular subplots.
I really loved this book. I was sad to see it finish and I can see myself reading it's followup Tandia in the not too distant future. It's the kind of book that almost anyone can enjoy and - therefore - I would reccomend it to almost anyone.
Sometimes I get these strange desires where I'll yearn to watch something that I know is going to be quite appalling. Having recently watched Steve Gutenberg's decent comeback work in the TV shows Veronica Mars and Party Down, my interest in his film Don't Tell Her It's Me was piqued. For a brief segment of the late 80s and early 90s Steve Gutenberg was one of the biggest stars on the planet but, unlike contemporary comedy superstars like Steve Martin or Eddie Murphy, you'll find that today's post-80s generation has no idea whatsoever of who Gutenberg is. Whilst Police Academy, Short Circuit and Three Men and a Baby were big hits of their time they've dated too quickly to gain any kind of true classic status, leaving Gutenberg out in the cold. Don't Tell Her It's Me is a romantic-comedy and the last proper vehicle for Gutenberg's somewhat light talents. Unbeknownst to American fans, it's achieved some small notoreity in the antipodes due to the film's mangled interpretation of the culture of New Zealanders (helped in part by Australian-New Zealander comedian Tony Martin, who hilariously examined the forgotten film on his radio show a few years back).
Gus (Gutenberg) is a shy comic book artist recovering from a near-fatal bout of Hodgkin's Disease. His meddling romance-novelist sister Lizzie (Shelley Long) wants him to start dating again, thinking it will help his self-esteem. When a blind date with journalist Emily (Jamie Gertz) ends in a horrifically awkward fashion, Lizzie takes it upon herself to give Gus a magical make-over that sees him transform from a bald, pudgy albino into a Fabio-like lothario named Lobo Marunga. Lobo rides a harley and comes from mystical New Zealand. Emily is unable to resist his rugged charms.
Everything about this film screams cliched piss-poor 80s filmmaking. The opening credits feature a nauseating cartoon sequence set to a crappy forgettable pop theme, Shelley Long is embarrassingly kooky, and the ending is that typical romance trope where someone races against time to find their true love before it's too late to tell them I LOVE YOU, DON'T GO! Despite being trashy and almost unbearably stupid, there's still some guilty pleasure to be had in a film where Steve Gutenberg makes the most atrocious attempt at a New Zealand accent ever. Every line he speaks as Lobo is unintentionally hilarious, and the script assumes time and time again that Australia and New Zealand are pretty much the same place (a land of drizabones and didgeridoo-playing Maoris). His weight-shedding, hair-growing transformation also stretches credibility beyond it's reasonable limits. A possible entry into the so-bad-it's-good category for any Aussie or Kiwi viewers.
HIGHLIGHT: The first half of the film where Gutenberg is fat and with no hair has him looking scarily like Matt Lucas from Little Britain.
DIRECTOR: Malcolm Mowbray
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Sarah Bird, based on her novel.
KEY ACTORS: Steve Gutenberg, Shelley Long, Jamie Gertz, Kyle MacLachlan, Ron Orbach
RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel The Boyfriend School by Sarah Bird. The film is sometimes also known by this title instead of Don't Tell Her It's Me.
- Romantic comedies where a protagonist has to hide something are almost a dime a dozen... some recent examples include The Ugly Truth, Hitch and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. The tradition dates back to Shakespearean comedies like Twelth Night.
The Last King of Scotland was one of the left-field surprises of the 2007 Oscar season, bringing the fascinating story of Ugandan dictator and all-round atrocity-committing madman Idi Amin to the screen. It also featured the underestimated Forest Whitaker in one of the most spectacular performances of his life. This British-made film was based on the fictional memoirs written by English journalist Giles Foden, and whilst it initially only got a limited release in the U.S., it's Oscar-buzz (Whitaker walked away with a Best Actor Academy Award) gave the film a bit more pep than it initially enjoyed when it was first released.
James McAvoy plays Nicholas Garrigan, a young Scottish doctor who heads to Uganda on a whim after graduating. He's partially there to lend a hand at a local hospital but has mainly come for some adventure and fun. Boy, did he pick the wrong country at the wrong time! Uganda has just recently been taken over by a new General and President, Idi Amin, a colourful and charismatic figure who is still battling with enemies who wish to usurp him. Garrigan endears himself to the new President through a chance meeting and Amin insists on making him his personal doctor and most-trusted advisor (bizarrely, Amin loves Scotland and all things Scottish). From here we see the country's eventual descent into madness and violence, and Garrigan comes to realise that he is in a very bad position - one from which it appears he cannot escape, and as things become worse and worse he realises how irresponsible he has been.
The first half of the film is deceptively upbeat and colourful. Amin is almost uniformly likeable for this portion of the movie, but through all these fun and fancy-free segments of rough-and-tumble tourism there's an undeniable and ominous sense of foreboding. We know things are going to turn bad - let's face it, Amin is one of the most notorious names of the 20th century history - but just how bad, or when, we're not sure. Garrigan is initially a fairly likeable character, he is our eyes and focal point as the western protagonist in the film, but as the film pulled me further and further inside Amin's reign of terror I couldn't help but despise Garrigan's reckless and careless involvement in one of the most brutal regimes in recent times. I would've been quite angry if I hadn't've learned (quite some time after the film I admit) that this isn't at all based on a true story. Hell, it isn't even a filmic distortion of a true story... I'm not sure how I feel about this. I think the film packed more punch when I thought it was all real - I know the various details of Amin's era are real enough, but when you invest so much emotional weight in an (albeit ambiguous) identifiable protagonist like Garrigan, well it feels a little bit like a cheat. I guess I shouldn't grumble too much - if it makes Amin's story more accessible or easier to tell than I guess some dramatic licence (however grounded in the realm of fiction) is neccessary.
The biggest punch in this film is, no doubt, Whitaker's amazing performance as Idi Amin - a carefully constructed yet effortless-looking performance that highlights the man's jovial and charming qualities whilst keeping a constant undertone of wrongness underneath. Put simply, he's a scary dude. McAvoy does well as Garrigan too, and British character-actor Simon McBurney is suitably scrupulous as the diplomat Nigel Stone. An almost unrecognisable Gillian Anderson also puts in an all-too-brief supporting appearance as the wife of a doctor too. Like I said though, the big punch of the film is Whitaker... the film is pretty much all him and McAvoy. It was inevitable that Whitaker would get an Oscar for this role - he'd never played a performance like this before in his life, and he played it incredibly well.
This is a better than average film about a master of barbaric atrocity... one or two scenes might make you squirm, but they really drive home how evil Amin was. It's a good film, but I can't help feeling a bit like it's the latest in a long and neverending line of revisionist films exposing western foreign policy and it's horrendously negeative effects on third-world countries. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad these films are being made - but at least Hotel Rwanda was entirely factual. I would've liked to have seen more focus on Amin in a film that's meant to be all about him... maybe we could've seen more of his most terrifying years as the tyrant of Uganda. Then again, I guess that's more a criticism of the source material than the film itself. Don't let me put you off, this film is definitely worth seeing if only for Whitaker's magnetic performance.
DIRECTOR: Kevin Macdonald
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Jeremy Brock and Peter Morgan, based on the book by Giles Foden.
KEY ACTORS: Forest Whitaker, James McAvoy, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Simon McBurney
RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden.
- Writer Peter Morgan and director Kevin Macdonald would later collaborate on the film State of Play, a political thriller based on an acclaimed British mini-series of the same name.
- Other recent films that deal with the brutal political regimes of modern Africa (and the ways the western world exploits these nations) include Hotel Rwanda, The Constant Gardener, Blood Diamond and Beyond Borders.
AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Actor (Forest Whitaker)
BAFTAs - won Best British Film, Best Actor (Whitaker) and Best Screenplay. Nominated for Best Supporting Actor (James McAvoy) and Best Film.
Golden Globes - won Best Actor (Whitaker)
A topping screwball comedy that combines Cary Grant in all his quipping glory with ghostly shenanigans and a Christmas Carol-ish message. Cosmo Topper (Roland Young, in his Oscar-nominated role) is a jittery, slightly-stuffy and henpecked bank manager who secretly yearns for a break from his routine. George (Grant) and Marion Kerby (Constance Bennett) are fun-loving stockholders in the bank who drive Topper crazy with their frivolous, unpredictable ways. Not long after visiting Topper, the Kerbys find themselves stranded on Earth as ghosts after George's careless and carefree driving gets them killed. Their lives of flippancy haven't contained enough good deeds to get them into heaven, so they take it upon themselves to help Topper find happiness.
Much of the film's set-up is spent contrasting the stifled Toppers with the partying Kerbys... Topper and his wife are sticklers for rules, with Mrs. Topper so eager to break her way into the social set that she has Topper nailed shut into a routine designed to attract the least amount of scandal or fun. When the Kerbys start haunting Topper it leads to an open mid-life crisis for the meek and mild-mannered banker, and has him causing such a fracas that high society finally comes calling for his wife and himself, and he becomes something of an unlikely hero in his workplace.
Despite the fact that his Oscar nomination was for Best Supporting Actor, Roland Young is very much the star of this film (it's perhaps worth noting that this category had a bit of a different meaning in the 1930s... it was originally specifically designed to honour lesser-known actors rather than actors playing actual supporting roles in films). Young pulls off the unexpected phsyicality of his role with aplomb, such as the scenes where he's passed out drunk and is carried around by the invisible Kerbys. He's also hilariously earnest in the scene where he has the urge to dance but doesn't quite understand why. Bennett and Grant are very much a double-act here, the 1930s being an era when fictional husband-and-wife combos could be a source of wisecracking camaraderie rather than a means for drama. Bennett has the more endearing role out of the two Kerbys, whereas Grant just kind of does his regular casual-madcap schtick.
It's a funny enough film but it doesn't really get going until the second act when the ghostly Kerbys meet up with Topper. Topper wouldn't be the classic it is though if it wasn't for Young's unassuming performance, he steals the film right out from under Cary Grant's nose.
DIRECTOR: Norman Z. McLeod
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Jack Jevne, Eddie Moran and Eric Hatch, based on the novel by Thorne Smith.
KEY ACTORS: Roland Young, Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, Billie Burke, Alan Mowbray, Hedda Hopper
RELATED TEXTS:
- The comedy novels by Thorne Smith, Topper and Topper Takes a Trip, published in 1926 and 1932 respectively.
- Roland Young and Constance Bennett returned for the sequel Topper Takes a Trip, and Young alone returned for a third film, Topper Returns.
- A television series based on the film was also made in 1953 and ran for two seasons.
- Roddy McDowell starred in a pilot episode of a new proposed TV series in the early 70s, but it didn't take off. A TV movie, Topper, was also produced in 1979, starring Jack Warden.
- At the time of writing, Steve Martin is in pre-production for a new film version of Topper.
- The 1980s Steve Martin film All of Me features some comedy routines and general themes that may have been inspired by the 1937 Topper.
AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominations for Best Supporting Actor (Roland Young) and Best Sound.
High Society is one of Ben Elton's more popular and resonating books. From my perspective, which is by no means a definitive one, I'd say it was the point where Elton became (primarily) a novelist as opposed to a comedian/TV guy. Sure he'd written quite a few books before, and good ones too, but it was this book's widespread success that marked the height of his talents... he pretty much reached his pinnacle as an author on this one, and has enjoyed commercial success with each novel he has released since.
High Society is an ambitious work for something so unashamedly aimed at a mainstream audience. Elton focuses on several characters, each one with a wildly different viewpoint into the world of drugs. It's like a British version of the film Traffic, only sometimes very funny, and altogether more forthcoming in the way of offering solutions to the drug problem. The primary plot of High Society is driven by one Peter Paget, an obscure backbencher who is given an opportunity to introduce a new law into parliament for discussion. Paget seizes his long-awaited chance to propose the legalisation of all drugs. It's a proposition that has a lot of enemies. The other politicians and media are in an uproar, but he has unlikely allies, one of whom is a high-ranking member of the police department, and it soon begins to appear that Britain may become the first country in the world to legalise all drugs...
It's not an entirely new idea, but Elton manages to imbue each and every page and character with life, wit and forthright arguments about whether drugs should or should not be legal. Elton doesn't just talk about the many ways a country might benefit from the legalisation of drugs, he shows us how it might happen. He gives a view of all levels of the country's drug trade... from the scungiest and lowest level of prostitution and scumlife drug-dealers to the hypocritically cocaine-high journalists who seek to denounce and tear apart politicians like Paget for their own ends. Elton shows us all these aspects of society and the fallout from Paget's proposition through the eyes of several characters, most entertainingly of which (for my money) is the Robbie Williams-esque popstar Tommy Hanson, who endearing snorts and drinks his way through groupies, Alcoholic and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, the media, and various other hangers-on.
High Society is a highly entertaining and interesting book from Elton, and marks the meeting of his two previous styles, with Elton taking his penchant for contemporary on-the-pulse comedy and marrying it to his earlier, politically-futurist 'what if'-scenario freewheeling. It makes for an excellent book that could've been a spectacular failure in the hands of a lesser writer, but Elton mixes the right amount of tragic and funny into it all to ensure that it never gets too depressing or flippant. And at the end of the day he makes a good point, and the realistic ending is a familiar reminder of western society's flawed priorities. One of Elton's best books.
This macho, underachieving sci-fi actioner has (admittedly admirable) pretensions of being to the original Predator film what Aliens was to Alien. I have to say straight-up that it doesn't really succeed. As a homage to Predator it wears its loyalty too obviously on its sleeve... we have a jungle setting, a moral hispanic female lead, a bunch of army-types pitted against a hidden killer, and a whole host of smaller nods and references to the original 1987 action classic. There's even slippery Topher Grace in amongst the he-men in reference to similar characters played by Paul Reiser in Aliens and Carl Weathers in Predator.
The second paragraph is where I usually talk about the plot of the film I'm reviewing, but there isn't really much to say in this case. A bunch of tough guys land on a planet where they have to fight some predators. That's about it. Adrien Brody feels miscast as a gravelly-voiced action hero (I know they were going for something a bit less stereotypical in comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger but c'mon... Adrien Brody?!) If the film had any sense it would've had Danny Trejo as the lead, or better yet, Danny Trejo as his character from Machete as the lead. There's a subtext buried in the film about how being a good warrior means you have sacrifice your humanity to some extent but it's done in a fairly half-arsed way, and all the characters are too broad and stereotypical (the big Russian, the silent Yakuza, the nervous weakling, the token female...) to truly offer anything interesting in the way of thematic depth.
The reveal of the predators is botched, the first one we see is tied to a stake and doesn't really do anything. It also feels wrong to then show the super-predators in their own scene when every other scene in the film up until this point has been from a human point-of-view. Also, I didn't really like the design of the 'super'-predators, they looked too bulky and you can't really improve on an already perfect design, so why bother? There's a samurai-film homage where one of the good guys faces off against a predator in a field of grass, I have to admit that that was pretty cool. Also, there's a bit where our heroes fall off a cliff into some water and the camera seems to follow them all the way down... that was pretty impressive too. Predators also gets points for the unexpectedly crude line, "Die you space faggot". It's not a bad film. It just isn't as special as the first Predator film, and it so badly wants to be.
DIRECTOR: Nimrod Antal
WRITER/SOURCE: Alex Litvak and Michael Finch, based on 'characters' created by Jim and John Thomas.
KEY ACTORS: Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Danny Trejo, Alica Braga, Walter Goggins, Laurence Fishburne
RELATED TEXTS:
- Predator, the classic 1987 action film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- Predator 2, the less well-received but still fairly solid sequel made in 1990.
- Alien Vs. Predator, a poor film followed by an even poorer sequel, Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem (which combined the monsters from both the Predator and Alien franchises to create an uber-monster).
- Aliens, the mercenary-heavy sequel to the film Alien, which influenced this attempt to relaunch Predator as a stand-alone franchise
- There are also various tie-in Predator comics, novels and computer games.
Today Barry Humphries is known primarily as the alter-ego of purple-haired media queen Dame Edna Everage, but it should be remembered that he was also responsible for the altogether less-annoying character Barry McKenzie - a larrikin-ish Australian stereotype who originated in a comic strip aimed at British audiences. This film, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, was the first Australian movie to make a million dollars, and helped kickstart the modern Australian film industry as a result (prior to the 1970s our industry had been a poor cousin of the BBC). A work of parody that laughs as much at the British stereotype as it does at that of the unsophisticated Australian, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie is memorable if only for introducing audiences to the art of the on-screen chunder and other low-brow delights.
For barely-explained reasons, Barry McKenzie (Barry Crocker) and his Aunt Edna (Barry Humphries) are given instructions to travel to England in order to exchange cultural ideas with the British. Once there Barry finds himself embroiled in a series of misadventures that test his patience for 'pommy bastards'... he gets cast in an advertisement, gets drunk with Australian expats, fumbles his way through a sexual proposition, becomes a musical superstar, is mistaken for a homosexual, and gets invited onto British television. Through all this his voraciousness for beer remains undimmed, and he curses and exclaims his way across the country.
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie puts the Australian character on screen in a way that both represents all our worst qualities as perceived by the British and all our best ones as perceived by ourselves. An Australian viewer might watch this as a long extended joke at the expense of the British, whereas British audiences would cluck their tongues at how over-the-top we are. This is where the film's charm lies... there's no real plot to speak of, it's more or less just a series of sketches where the rather naive and easily-riled Barry interacts with stuck-up money-grubbing pommies. In various stages the film contrasts Barry's uncultured and sincere Australian-ness with British uptightness, intellectualism, alternative hippy culture, gay and lesbian culture, British TV and general high class snobbery. There's a running joke that the British will charge people through the teeth for all sorts of rubbishy crap and one character (Mr Gort) is amusingly given over to all kinds of private-school perversion, which should demonstrate the somewhat narrow and 'specialised' scope of this film's jokes.
On the flipside, it's implied that Australians eat vegemite straight from the jar and are both hugely homophobic and overtly racist (cue Barry's endearingly backwards observation, "Boy have they got a colour problem!") Great fun is also had in exposing Barry's typically Australian knowledge (or lack thereof) when it comes to sex... he reads what he calls a 'hygiene' book, The Perfumed Fanny, which bizarrely inspires him to dump a can of curried beef into his pants. I also had to laugh when Aunt Edna asked to take a snippet of some rhododendrons from the Gort family's garden - my mum used to do this all the time! It's probably the late 60s counter-culture that gets the harshest treatment of all though, with the film parodying their pacifism, political awareness and anti-materialism by suggesting that it's all a cover for capitalistic exploitation.
Anyway, it's not a film to be taken seriously by any stretch of the imagination. At first you might find Barry to be a bit too much of a dimwitted yob but you'll learn to love his simplistic tastes and neverending quest for beer by the film's end. I laughed a lot more than I expected to, and it made me feel strangely patriotic.
HIGHLIGHTS: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie is chock full of Aussie idioms, here's a few choice cuts: "Point percy at the porcelain", "Spear the bearded clam", "Shake hands with the unemployed", "Don't come the raw prawn with me" and "Fair suck of the sauce bottle".
Also, I loved this exchange...
(Psychiatrist) "What is your relationship to your mother?"
(Barry, rather perplexed) "...I'm her son".
DIRECTOR: Bruce Beresford
WRITER/SOURCE: Bruce Beresford and Barry Humphries, based on the comics by Barry Humphries and Nicholas Garland.
KEY ACTORS: Barry Crocker, Barry Humphries, Peter Cook, Spike Milligan, Dennis Price, Jenny Tomasin
RELATED TEXTS:
- The comic strips originally printed in the British comedy magazine Private Eye.
- This film was followed by a sequel, Barry McKenzie Holds His Own.
- The late 70s Australian film Dimboola features a British journalist coming to Australia for cultural purposes, which can be viewed of a reversal of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.
- Crocodile Dundee is very much a direct descendent of Barry McKenzie.
- Sacha Baron Cohen satirises the prejudices of modern western culture in a similar (though somewhat more sophisticated) fashion in the films Borat and Bruno.
As far as music biopics go, the world was hardly demanding a film about seminal girl-rock band the Runaways. It's easy to look back on the band now and see how ahead of their time they were, or to recognise the importance of what they did in terms of musical history, but they just haven't had that much of an immediate impact on popular culture. To most people Joan Jett is just an 80s rock chick and a one-hit-wonder (I Love Rock n Roll). This doesn't mean The Runaways can't be a great film - there are lots of unknown true stories out there waiting to become great movies. However, biopics are essentially about actors uncannily recreating very famous figures or amazing too-bizarre-to-be-true stories. The Runaways isn't really either of these things, so it falls short of greatness as a result.
Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) is a sexually ambiguous proto-punk rocker who, inspired by Suzi Quatro, dreams of playing electric guitar in an all-girl rock band. She meets Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon), a self-styled glam rock guru who sees the marketable potential in such an idea and helps Joan put together such a band. Into the mix comes Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), an awkward love-starved waif who dreams of being David Bowie. Despite an apparent lack of talent, Cherie is recruited as the band's singer and she leaves her family and her woes behind to go on tour (literally.... her alcoholic father is passed out on the lawn when the band comes to pick her up).
Kristen Stewart apparently had a longstanding ambition to play Joan Jett on the screen... as such she slouches and surls her way through the film in an assortment of denim wear and tight T-shirts, straddling the line between bi-curious and outright lesbian. Beyond this (admittedly accurate) piece of casting, it's hard to see why else this film should've been made. Whilst suitably doe-eyed enough to play the jailbait vocalist, Fanning doesn't really have the presence to play the ego sequences or Cherie's disappearance into a haze of drugs and adulation in the second half of the film. Michael Shannon steals scenes galore as Kim Fowley, but it's not really his movie.
At the heart of The Runaways is the idea that the two protagonists are freaks in their time - apeing the British glam rock movement and idols like Bowie and Quatro in a midwestern American suburban landscape of indifference. This rebellion rears it's head in the ideas of girl power and the positive sexualisation of females in a male-dominated industry... ironically, these girls turn out to be tougher than the androgynous male rock n roll acts of the time. There's also a little bit of stuff about the antagonistic relationship the Runaways have with the male rock n roll heirarchy but it's only really brushed on in the scene where Status Quo are rude to them and Jett responds by pissing on their guitars.
It's an entertaining enough film for music fans but overall it just isn't a satisfying experience. Much like the band itself, The Runaways has a lot of promise but just sort of peters out.
DIRECTOR: Floria Sigismondi
WRITER/SOURCE: Floria Sigismondi, based on the book by Cherie Curie.
KEY ACTORS: Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, Michael Shannon, Tatum O'Neal, Alia Shawkat
RELATED TEXTS:
- The memoir Neon Angel by Cherie Curie, about her time in the Runaways.
- Edgeplay, a documentary about the Runaways directed by the band's former bassist Victory Tischler-Blue.
- For a better (but entirely fictional) film about rock music in the 1970s, just watch Almost Famous.
(Here be spoilers if you are yet to see the James Bond movies...)
The Mission
Whilst lounging about in Miami, James Bond (Sean Connery) recieves a message from MI6 to keep an eye on card-playing entrepeneur Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe). Bond takes umbrage when Goldfinger kills a girl in retaliation for helping 007, and this leads to an investigation of the gold-loving tycoon's smuggling ring. Bond soon uncovers Operation Grandslam; a dastardly plan to detonate an atomic bomb inside Fort Knox with the help of communist China.
Jimmy Bond Yo!
Interestingly, Bond's predilection for women is depicted here as a weakness, and one that he is well aware of. Connery expands on this to give a more human performance than what we saw in the two previous films... he's visibly scared when a laser slowly creeps up the table towards his splayed groin (who wouldn't be?) and has to be pulled into line by M a few times when his emotions cause him to speak out of turn (it's worth noting that he's actually quite obedient when it comes to the chain of command). He also swaggers about in some very short shorts whilst in Miami, can play golf, and is particular about the finer things in life (such as what temperature Dom Perignon should be chilled at).
Villainy
There's a case to be made that Goldfinger is the first proper Bond film mastervillain. Dr No barely figured in Dr. No, and the villains in From Russia With Love were very much a collection of footsoldiers acting on behalf of SPECTRE. Goldfinger on the other hand is very much the centre of this film, Bond actively goes after him and a lot of screentime is given to him. He's introduced quite casually as a money-obsessed man with a taste for gambling (and a shameless cheater). He's later shown to be in league with a gallery of communists - Korean henchmen, Red Chinese business allies, and Cuban soldiers. Frobe portrays the character with a streak of slight petulance, suggesting a man who is used to getting what he wants.
Goldfinger also sets up the classic Bond-villain configuration of mastervillain and quirky head-henchman... here it's Oddjob, a faithful and surly Korean lackey armed with a deadly metal-rimmed bowler hat. He growls wordlessly throughout the film and proves quite the match in a showdown with Bond at Fort Knox.
Buddies and Babes
The improbably named Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) is the main Bond girl for this outing, and doesn't show up until the second half. She's Goldfinger's personal pilot, and she resists Bond's charms for most of the film (apparently the Goldfinger novel suggests that she's a lesbian... something that Blackman may or may not be channelling in her cocksure performance). She's certainly a more assertive woman in comparison to previous Bond girls, and is quite full of herself when it comes to her flying skills. She's also inappropriately dressed as far as her vocation goes, though it matches this film's lighter tone (in comparison to the seriousness of From Russia With Love).
The first half of the film also features (in succession) the sisters Masterson - Jill is one of Goldfinger's stooges (she famously dies due to an all-over gold paintjob), and Tilly is her avenging sister. CIA man Felix Leiter (previously seen in Dr. No) shows up but is played by a different actor, and Bond treats him as both a friend and valued colleague. Intriguingly, there are also a couple of mentions of an agent 008.
Locations
Quite the jetsetter, Bond starts the film out in Mexico before relaxing in Miami, returning to Britain, visiting Goldfinger's base in the Swiss Alps, and then heading back over to America. Most of the film's third act takes place in Kentucky - namely Goldfinger's horse farm and Fort Knox itself.
Gadgets and Tricks of the Trade
Bond finally gets his famous Aston Martin. It comes with bulletproof-windows, revolving numberplates, a global-tracking device, smokescreen, oil slick devices, machine guns, passenger eject seat and tire-shredding blades.
Bond also has a depository in his shoe where he can hide things. He infiltrates a Mexican drug cartel by use of scuba gear and a breathing apparatus disguised as a seagull that sits on his head. Amusingly, he strips off this scuba gear to reveal a pristine white suit underneath.
As quick and resourceful as ever, he gets the jump on a guard by pressing himself into the space above a doorway, and also spots an approaching killer in the reflection of a girl's eye.
Licence to Kill
Bond's first direct kill of the film comes before the titles sequence... after blowing up the Mexican base he electrocutes an assassin by throwing him into a bathtub. He later kills a car-load of Asian communists when their pursuing car slides on his oil slick and explodes, and finishes off his tally by electrocuting Oddjob inside Fort Knox.
Shag-Rate
Our man hooks up quite smoothly with Goldfinger's woman Jill Masterton (Shirley Eaton) quite early on in the film, and is more than dismayed when Goldfinger kills her for it. His main girl for Goldfinger though is Pussy Galore, who seems thoroughly uninterested in Bond at first. Eventually they shag in a barn after a bit of judo-tussling, and they later do the business again under a parachute in the forest.
Quotes
WOMAN (referring to Bond's gun): Why do you always wear that thing?
BOND: I have a slight inferiority complex.
BOND (after electrocuting his would-be assassin): Shocking. Positively shocking.
BOND: Sir, I'm aware of my shortcomings, but I'm prepared to continue this assignment in the spirit you suggest.
BOND: Do you expect me to talk?
GOLDFINGER: No, Mr. Bond - I expect you to die!
GOLDFINGER: Choose your next witticism very carefully Mr. Bond, it may be your last.
How Does It Rate?
After the relative realism of From Russia With Love, this film revisits the bigger and bolder leanings of Dr. No but with a much larger budget... this time we get lasers, atom bombs and gold-smotherings! The near-irrelevant pre-credits sequence in Mexico also sets the tone for the overall franchise, with Bond delivering delightfully ill-humoured puns and charming his way through danger.
Slickly directed and very confident, Goldfinger features more than a few rewarding touches... witness the helicopter zoom into a man diving off a high-board at a resort pool, the spectacular explosions, or even a bit where a horse neighs at just the right spot in a musical refrain (okay, I'm not really sure if this last one is intentional or not but it's definitely in the right key). The only weak point of the film would have to be the scene where Goldfinger explains his plan to some dopey American hoodlums and then proceeds to kill them all afterwards... it's an incredibly awkward and illogical piece of exposition that threatents to stall the whole film. Thankfully, everything else about Goldfinger is so fun and entertaining that it's fairly easily forgotten.
Visit my James Bond page.
DIRECTOR: Guy Hamilton
WRITER/SOURCE: Richard Maibaum and Paul Dehn, based on the book by Ian Fleming.
KEY ACTORS: Sean Connery, Gert Frobe, Honor Blackman, Shirley Eaton, Tania Mallet, Harold Sakata, Bernard Lee, Cec Linder
RELATED TEXTS:
- The book Goldfinger by Ian Fleming, the seventh James Bond novel.
- Oddjob was the inspiration for the spoof-character Random Task, featured in the first Austin Powers film.
- The scene where Goldfinger pins Bond onto a table for death-by-laser also inspired a similar sequence in You Only Move Twice, a Bond-parody episode of The Simpsons.
- The 1966 Italian film Two Mafiosi Against Goldfinger is a direct parody of this film.
- A scene in the more recent Bond film Quantum of Solace pays homage to the gold-smothering death in Goldfinger.
AWARDS:
Academy Awards - won Best Special Effects.
BAFTAs - nominated Best Art Direction.
It can't be said that Jim Carrey is afraid of stretching his talents. This quasi-comedic indie flick features the actor combining his comedy skills with a brave, open-hearted performance to depict Steven Russell, a highly-intelligent southern conman in search of an identity. I Love You Philip Morris is directed by the writing team behind Bad Santa, and whilst this film shares a similarly black vein of humour and a willingness to embrace the taboos of western society, it's less an out-and-out comedy due to the fact that it's based on an amazingly unbelievable true story. Made in 2009, it didn't actually get a cinematic release in any English-speaking countries until late 2010 due to a lack of distributor interest. This isn't unusual in itself, but in this case it's unusual because it happens to be a brilliant and entertaining film.
Steven Russell is a happily-married police officer who has a near-death experience in a car accident one day. He has a kind of epiphany as a result and decides to embrace his homosexuality, moving to Miami to live the life of a flamboyant gay man. He turns to fraud and con-artistry to support his lifestyle, and this leads him to prison - a place ideally suited to his unique talents as a hustler. He meets Philip Morris (Ewen McGregor) and falls head over heels in love. Upon their release from prison, Steven begins posing as a lawyer to make money. From here on in, Steven's skills of deception grow exponentially.
There isn't much I can say about this film without spoiling it too much, it's just one of those amazing true stories. The real life Steven Russell holds some kind of record for prison-escapes - all of which he achieved non-violently and through the power of his unassuming intellect. The nature of this story (prison romances on film are few and far between) allows for the director-writer team to heavily mine it for dark laughs. The film is full of brilliant contrasts... one scene shows Philip and Steven snuggled up in prison watching an old movie, and the camera then pans across to show a sex offender having his way with himself. There's also a running motif of divine observation, possibly suggesting that only a higher power can truly judge Steven's actions. The person Steven hurts the most is certainly himself... at the core of the film are his indentity crises, a search for acceptance that allows him to continuously adapt or hide his true self, but his single-minded pursuit of what he perceives to be happiness will eventually cost him almost everything.
Carrey completely owns this film. There are touches of The Truman Show in his performance, only here he plays the flipside - the conner rather than the connee. He's naturally funny enough to make the more outlandish comedy sequences work without it feeling like a betrayal of the character or the film. Non-Carrey fans can relax, he doesn't do any of his rubber face stuff... he knows how to be funny in other ways, and he brings a bittersweet earnestness and an almost paradoxical innocence to his role. McGregor is suitably sensitive in the less-showy role of Philip, affecting a southern accent more than a little remniscent of Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire, and between this and Carrey's performance you'll believe in their tumultuous relationship.
Unfortunately, the fact that this film remained unreleased for such a long time is a worrying sign that our society is still very much subject to open displays of discrimination when it comes to homosexuality. It seems that if gay-themed films don't have a tragic, politicised subtext then they won't be embraced enough by the film community to overcome the industry's prejudices. It's all well and good for films like Milk, Brokeback Mountain and A Single Man to break down the boundaries and attract high-minded plaudits, but when a genuinely funny and highly-engaging film like I Love You Philip Morris comes along (complete with A-list cast) and sits on the shelf for nearly two years before seeing cinematic release, it's a clear indication that the anti-homophobe PC brigade doesn't understand just how damaging it can be when they continue to weight their support in favour of stereotypically serious and downbeat gay films.
This is a film that deserves your support and attention, go see it and be amazed. It's just a really good film.
DIRECTOR: Glen Ficarra, John Requa
WRITER/SOURCE: Glen Ficarra and John Requa, adapted from the autobiography of Steven McVicker.
KEY ACTORS: Jim Carrey, Ewen McGregor, Leslie Mann
RELATED TEXTS:
- The memoirs of Steven McVicker, I Love You Philip Morris: A True Story of Life, Love and Prison Breaks.
- This film can be seen as a nice companion piece to Carrey's previous too-true-to-believe biopic, The Man on the Moon.
- The creative team previously wrote the film Bad Santa and 2005 remake of The Bad News Bears.
Sabotage stands out amongst Hitchcock's earlier work as both a film cut from the same cloth as his later espionage thrillers and a film that famously breaks the rules old Hitch would later adhere to religiously in the name of suspense. The premise concerns acts of bomb-orientated terrorism in central London - a theme more than a little prophetic in light of 21st century events. This film is fascinating as an early example of Hitchcock's deft command of plot mechanics and character response, and remains a highlight of his pre-Hollywood work.
Hitchcock would famously maintain later in his career that the audience must always be in on the immediate threat... over and over again he would brazenly present to the viewer exactly what was waiting around the corner for the hero whilst leaving the hero in the dark. He believed that suspense could best be achieved this way as audience empathy for the hero would put them on the edge of the seat, EG. Don't go in there, there's a killer waiting for you!
The thing is, it took Hitchcock a bit of working out to get there. By the end of the 1930s he would pretty much have his technique finely tuned, but some of his earlier British-made films reveal the experimentation that got him there. Sabotage features an infamous scene involving a boy, a bomb and a busy London bus... it belies a streak of unexpected ruthlessness on the part of the director that may shock modern viewers. The rest of the film is your typical hodge-podge of scotland yard, secret agents, desperation and dastardly plots. It's a fairly enjoyable ride at a rather snappy seventy-plus minutes, and it's definitely worth checking out if you're fan of the director's more famous work.
DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
WRITER/SOURCE: Script by Charles Bennett, based on a book by Joseph Conrad.
KEY ACTORS: Sylvia Sidney, Oskar Homolka, Desmond Tester, John Loder
RELATED TEXTS:
- The book Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, on which this film is based.
- There is also a 1930s Hitchcock film called Secret Agent, but it doesn't really have anything to do with this movie.
- Other 1930s Hitchcock films that deal with espionage and secret plots: The 39 Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Secret Agent and The Lady Vanishes.
Tim Burton's exploration of victoriana-gothic was always going to veer into stop motion territory at some point - Burton's first film was a short stop-motion film called Frankenweenie and he later produced and had creative input in the cult classic The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's somewhat surprising then that The Corpse Bride should feel like such a minor work; running at just 72 minutes, covering much of the same material as Burton's previous films, and not really going anywhere all that surprising at any point. It's also oddly macabre for something assumedly aimed at kids, and yet too simplistic for something that might cater solely for adults.
Johnny Depp plays Victor, a nervous Sleepy Hollow-ish British gentleman who accidentally betroths himself to Emily (Helena Bonham-Carter), a once-jilted corpse bride who is elated by her new husband. But Victor is meant to marry Victoria (Emily Watson), the good-hearted daughter of despicably snobbish parents, and he finds himself unable to return to the world of the living without bringing his newfound friends of the underworld in tow.
There are flashes of ingeniousness throughout The Corpse Bride that hint at a better film... at times it feels like it might be quite subversive for an alleged kids' movie. The existence of a jolly jazz underworld suggests that there isn't a heaven or a hell, and the reaction of Christopher Lee's nasty priest character to Victor's predicament seems to confirm the irrelevance of the church. Burton isn't willing to go so far though, with the ending suggesting a more traditional view of the afterlife.
The overall look of the film is of a stylised Dickensian world inhabited by spindly-limbed near-grotesque characters in a blue-grey landscape, but this then gloriously shifts into a Mexican day-of-the-dead feel for the underworld sequences with typically Burtonesque contrast achieved through brighter colours. Victor's awakening in the underworld is the first point where greens, reds and other vibrant colurs are introduced into the colour palette. The ending too - where the dead walk the Earth - is a fun and moving subversion of gothic convention.
Unfortunately though, The Corpse Bride feels like a short film stretched as closely to feature-length as possible. Burton just can't sustain the energy levels needed to keep a feature-length stop-motion film in the air. At times it comes across as a bit too BBC kids-TV, and it lacks the verve of The Nightmare Before Christmas or the more recent Coraline. The rotting corpses and skeletons are a good laugh, and the all-star cast have fun disguising their voices with outlandish accents, but it isn't anything special and it never evolves beyond something we'd routinely expect from Tim Burton.
