James Martin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 4

Swimming Pool
France 2003
Director: François Ozon
Screenwriter: François Ozon
Runtime: 102 mns
Certificate: 15
DVD distributor: 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

(contains plot spoilers)

Acclaimed director François Ozon's thriller is a haunting, surreal tale of passion and intrigue, set amidst the sun-drenched vineyards of south central Provence. Charlotte Rampling is Sarah, an uptight, constipated English writer who goes to stay at her publisher's (Charles Dance) holiday home, in search of inspiration. It all seems a paradise of tranquillity, until Dance's promiscuous, fun-loving nineteen year-old daughter, Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) unexpectedly arrives. Before long, she upsets Rampling's old-fashioned values with her topless swimming, sunbathing and abuse of the house as a nightly, drug-fuelled disco-brothel. Just as the pair come to a mutual understanding, the hysterical girl viciously murders one of her partners in the heat of the moment….

The cinematography, with its slow, still shots of the sleepy summer countryside only enhance a feeling of eerie mystery, which works well with the equally dream-like, but utterly ambiguous ending. Touches of humour abound in the stereotypical contrast between Rampling's dour English haughtiness and Sagnier's French Lolita. However, the film's greatest asset is its gripping suspense, brought about by long moments of tense, rigid silence, dramatic facial expressions and the expanse of emptiness surrounding the whitewashed villa.

The unexpected bond formed between the two women is an integral part of the mystery and Charles Dance's brief role is in fact far more pivotal to the story line than it first appears. Swimming Pool is a fascinating portrayal of how unsettling past events and secrets can suddenly rear their ugly heads with cataclysmic effects.


Oliver!
UK 1968
Director: Carol Reed
Screewriter: Vernon Harris
Runtime: 153 mns
Certificate: PG
DVD distributor: Columbia TriStar

Carol Reed's deliberate saccharine portrayal of 1830s London, not to mention an unabashed sweetening of Dickens’ novel with several ounces of Tate and Lyle can be excused, for Oliver! is a fantastic musical with memorable songs and a first-class cast. Mark Lester makes a timid and highly credible young Oliver, Ron Moody is humorous as hard up skinflint Fagin, Oliver Reed plays a brutal Bill Sykes, but Shani Wallis steals the show as poor, kind-hearted, frustrated Nancy.

This version also deserves a mention as the first to re-tell the story in a non-monochrome format and in particular scenes, such as when Nancy is bludgeoned by Sykes, the exaggerated use of Technicolor is beautifully poignant, as her dress appears strikingly crimson. It would be so easy to ruin Charles Dickens with too much syrup and a lively score, but Carol Reed ensures that only so much edge is removed and that hardship and poverty are never far away.

Shani Wallis gives the best and most spirited performance by far, as she claims "civil words, civil words- God help me, you've had me out there on the streets since I was 'alf 'is age!" The film's most unforgettable scene is when Nancy snatches Oliver from the tavern, having engaged the other drinkers in a flurry of "Oom Pa Pa" to distract Moody and Reed. It is such a moving contrast with the subsequent outcome for her.

In order to create a family classic from the story of Oliver Twist, it is perhaps necessary to play down the sombreness and present particular aspects through a rose-tinted lens. With all of the essential ingredients, Reed has folded the mixture to just the right consistency.

Read the final Part 5 tomorrow!

James Martin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 3

Walkabout
UK 1971
Director: Nicholas Roeg
Screenwriter: Edward Bond
Runtime: 100 mns
Certificate: 12
DVD distributor: The Criterion Collection

(contains plot spoilers)

John Barry composed the wonderfully haunting background music for Nicolas Roeg's moving film about two anonymous English schoolchildren. A fourteen year old girl (Jenny Agutter) and her seven year old brother (Lucien John) live in suburban Sydney and become lost in the infinite wilderness of the Australian bush, after their suicidal father torches the car at a family picnic. In the book, they are called Mary and Peter, and are abandoned in the arid Northern Territory, the sole survivors of a plane crash. However in the film their identity is irrelevant, since they are far away from civilisation in most scenes.

Nicolas Roeg did his own cinematography, which is strikingly beautiful. The camera slowly pans out from rugged cliffs of quartz across the endless, burnished sand and salt plains. An oasis they discover bears lush vegetation and ripe red fruits under a deep azure sky, and offers a stark contrast with the suffocating heat of the open bush. The wonderful uniqueness of this cult classic is its strained and often unfathomable moments of silence, when all the viewer can do is sit back and soak up the breathtaking scenery.

In this coming of age drama, Lucien John's role is somewhat swept under the carpet, in favour of an erotic atmosphere, which crackles with sexual tension between Agutter and the young Aboriginal man on "walkabout" (David Gulpiplil). He kills himself after she apparently spurns his advances and we are shown endless, sinister close ups of strange insects and dehydrated animals. There is a constant reminder of the harsh, unforgiving natural environment, in this unusual story of death and imperative human resilience.

Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
USA/UK 1988
Director: Stephen Frears
Screenwriter: Christopher Hampton
Runtime: 119 mns
Certificate: 15
DVD distributor: Warner Home Video

John Malkovich is a hoot as the Vicomte de Valmont, a vile, manipulative cad who will stop at nothing until he has seduced his latest sexual conquest, forever having the upper hand. Glenn Close is perfectly cast as the scheming Marquise de Merteuil, whose ruthless endeavour is to publicly scandalise the sex lives of younger women who have stolen her former lovers, and utterly humiliate them. She works in liaison with Valmont to destroy nubile virgin Cécile (Uma Thurman) and former convent girl and paragon of chastity Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer).

The camerawork sumptuously portrays eighteenth century France and the romps and peccadilloes of its landed gentry, as depicted in Choderlos de Laclos' scandalous 1782 novel. Director Stephen Frears has produced a drama, which is as visually pleasurable as it is amusing, shocking and deliciously cruel. Lavish, decadent Versailles-style boudoirs and séjours dominate the screen, while Close typically fans herself as Malkovich, her one time lover, sensually whispers flattering profanities in her ear.

The skilled direction ensures that the two protagonists interact and move in flawless timing, when shot together as in some sort of elaborate dance from the period. He lowers his powdered, wigged head as she rises, she reaches for his hand and he rolls his eyes at her catty remarks. The intricate flashbacks to their past relationships portray Valmont and Merteuil as infallible connoisseurs of sexual emotion and its exploitation and are startlingly contrasted with her final humiliating exposure and demise.

By today's standards, Dangerous Liaisons cannot shock nearly as much as the novel intended to and succeeded in doing at the time of print. Nevertheless, it is intriguing to see just how far Laclos was prepared to push the boundaries of so-called social acceptability and how exquisitely Frears has dramatised it.

Read Part 4 tomorrow!

James Martin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 2

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase
UK 1989
Director: Stuart Orme
Screenwriter: William M. Akers
Runtime: 93 mns
Certificate: PG
Not distributed on DVD

Stuart Orme's adaptation of Joan Aiken's children's novel is more amusing and camp than the book, which was a tearjerker. The drama is no less enjoyable, with a fine cast. Stephanie Beacham plays grasping governess Letitia Slighcarp, who along with port swigging sidekick Mel Smith, attempts to relieve holidaying Lord and Lady Willoughby of their fortune, in front of their helpless, spoilt eight-year old daughter Bonnie (Emily Hudson) and her quiet, well-mannered cousin, Sylvia (Aleks Darowska).

Filmed in winter, in the backdrop of dark, frigid woodland in former Czechoslovakia, this production is visually stunning and the cast has a whale of a time. Beacham, fresh out of Dynasty, flounces about in fussy Victorian dresses, making life a misery for the two girls, whilst teaching them nothing. She packs them off to a grim, industrial workhouse, where they languish under a hilarious drunken "Brisket" (Geraldine James), who casually misinforms them of the Willoughby's death in a sinking. Beacham's best line is "I'd like to see the wolf that could tackle me", which is ironically her gory end.

As a child, I loved this film for the suspense brought about by "the nasty adults and what they'd do next." Now, I appreciate it as a highly entertaining and sweet story, not intended to be hilarious, but which cannot help extracting laughs for its comically gifted cast and ridiculous, far-fetched situations. Understandably, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase received mixed reviews, as it would not be everyone's cup of tea. However, if your sense of humour is at times silly and puerile like mine, you will find that Aiken's book could not have been translated from page to screen with more flair.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

UK 1972

Director: William Sterling
Screenwriter: William Sterling
Runtime: 101 mns
Certificate: PG
DVD distributor: Reel Media International

Of all film productions of Lewis Carroll's novel, William Sterling's is by far the most faithful. This is a lively musical with an all-star cast, including Michael Crawford as the highly-strung, twittering white rabbit. Peter Sellers plays the March hare and Fiona Fullerton makes an impeccably spoken teenage Alice.

The opening scenes are breathtaking. Filmed on location on a verdant Oxfordshire riverbank in high summer, Charles Dodgson (Michael Jayston) begins his tale, sending drowsy Alice into her "curious" dream, an underground world with a pastel pink sky, insane creatures, accusatory playing cards and height-altering mushrooms. John Barry's dreamy score is most effective and complements the beginning, as inquisitive Alice wanders through the opening of a disproportionately large rabbit hole and begins floating down surreally "through the centre of the earth".

This version is so painstakingly true to the written text, where others by Walt Disney (1951) and Harry Harris (1985) are not. It successfully combines nonsensical dialogue with a definite sense of Alice's increasing self-awareness, through songs such as "The Me I Never Knew". Other versions seem to gloss over this part, concentrating solely on the absurd. Fullerton's constant analysis and self-questioning - "I wonder whether I shall land among the antipodes of Australia or New Zealand" or "why, I appear to be shutting up like a telescope"- emphasise the story's most important message. It is all about an adolescent girl's struggle to find meaning in a world which does not always make sense and where adults' actions are often illogical, therefore frustrating. For an avid childhood reader of Lewis Carroll, this film is excellent. It is the only one which convincingly manages to capture that strange dream world and its characters, both visually and audibly.

Read Part 3 tomorrow!

James Martin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 1

The Shining
USA 1980
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Screenwriters: Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson, Stephen King (novel)
Runtime: 119 mns
Certificate: 18
DVD distributor: Warner Home Video

The Shining is one of the most poignant horror films I have ever seen. In 1999, when I was going on sixteen, it unexpectedly scared the living daylights out of me. Some critics thought that Kubrick's portrayal of an insane writer attempting to slaughter his wife and son in a deserted, snow-bound hotel was over the top. Author Stephen King was appalled and felt that the director had made an incompetent hash of it. Critic Jacob Levich, despite having bestowed four stars upon it, wrote: "Nicholson's performance is too much. By the time of the climactic chase, he's lurching around like a cut-rate Quasimodo."

Harsh criticism did not detract from The Shining's success and it is easy to see why. Slow aerial opening tracking shots of Torrance's (Nicholson) car cruising through the wilderness of rural Colorado immediately emphasise how isolated he, his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) will be. The doleful, ominous brass score gives a sense of impending doom, while the contortions of the little boy's face, whenever he has premonitions of drowning in blood or self-regresses to become sinister imaginary friend Tony, are eerily convincing.

Best of all is the never ending, suspense-laden shot along a corridor, with the camera closing in behind Danny on his tricycle. The rumbling background music, coupled with that nauseating impression of moving along the hypnotic, vertigo-inducing patterned carpet is enough to make the viewer travel sick, when the scene suddenly climaxes in a vision of the mutilated twins beckoning him.

Nicholson's demonically possessed character comes unsettlingly natural to him and his "I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm just gonna bash your fucking brains in" is creepy and effective. Picture yourself in his victim's shoes. This movie may have lost much of its chilling appeal by now, but of its genre it is undoubtedly the most memorable for me.

Mommie Dearest
USA 1981
Director: Frank Perry
Screenwriters: Frank Perry, Robert Getchell, Christina Crawford (autobiography)
Runtime: 129 mns
Certificate: 12A
DVD distributor: Paramount Pictures

To be engrossed by Joan Crawford (Faye Dunaway) screaming like a banshee and thrashing a wire coat hanger at her two innocent "darlings" must be something akin to sadism. Certain scenes are so cruel they are unbearable to watch, yet director Frank Perry never ceases to ensure that the attention of the viewer is forever consumed by morbid curiosity. Based on Christina Crawford's controversial autobiography, Mommie Dearest catalogues a childhood allegedly rife with emotional and physical abuse endured by Christina (Diana Scarwid) at the hands of her pernickety, obsessive and violently temperamental adoptive mother, in their lavish Hollywood mansion.

What makes this picture so intriguing is that Crawford genuinely appears to love both Christina and her brother Christopher, yet overreacts unimaginably and always vents her frustration on the girl, justifying it with a mere "I don't want her to make my mistakes." The story, if true, makes one wonder what psychological insecurity might cause somebody to treat a child so inhumanely. Dunaway, aptly done up for the most part like a monster in a face pack, epitomises how a lifetime in the cut-throat "shitty movie business", if taken too seriously, can make one embittered, insanely jealous and ruthlessly competitive.

Several years and events later, the ending is the cherry on the cake. Crawford is dead and "for reasons well known to them" leaves her foster children with nothing. Joan "has had the last word as usual". "Has she?" Christina retorts coldly to Christopher, as the camera focuses on the girl, dissolved in thought. This is a touching and disturbing film, which although excruciatingly one-sided, does every justice to an autobiography with a bone to pick. The delicious quirk is that Joan's apparent life-long insistence on "being unbeatable" will backfire with a vengeance, in the form of a poisonous memoir.

Read Part 2 tomorrow!

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man - Review by Robert Duffin

Director: Stephen Kijak
Screenwriter: Stephen Kijak
Runtime: 95 mns
Certificate: 12A
Release: Out now

Cinema has always been the prime medium to eulogize the figure of the rock star. Whether in the form of fiction, biopic or documentary, cinema loves the lone swagger of figures like Bob Dylan, Anton Newcombe, Johnny Cash and Jim Morrison. It is a stage where these figures can enter into pop-mythology, where their stories become even more larger than life and celebrated than before. Yet in the age of mass media can any rock star preserve their aura of mystique and myth surrounding their public persona? Documentary filmmaker Stephen Kijak answers a resounding ‘yes’ with Scott Walker: 30 Century Man.

Once a pop moppet lusted after by the youth of 60s Britain, Scott Walker abandoned the jangle pop of the Walker Brothers who had hits including ‘The Sun Aint Gonna Shine Anymore’ and became a reclusive figure favouring the avant-garde. Walker has never been interviewed on camera in decades, and Kijak has unprecedented access both in and out of the recording studio and the results are fascinating. The opening credits feature disembodied voices pondering the nature of Walker’s career and compare him to Orpheus, heightening seemingly beyond anticipation what we are about to witness, but Kijak does not disappoint.

The career trajectory of Walker is fascinating and we follow from his pop beginnings, solo career consisting of MOR rock and Jacques Brel covers, to his transformation into genuine artist. His contemporary sound is somewhere between Wagner and Nine Inch Nails, and while the film never convinces that they are worth purchasing and listening to repeatedly, Kijak’s visual presentation offers a satisfying engagement with Walker’s difficult output. Watching him record his music, which is compared by one rock journalist to experiencing your own birth or murder, is fascinating. He beats metal trashcans, punches a cow carcass and utilizes the howls of a donkey as his percussion. It could almost tip into the Spinal Tap arena, were it not for the extraordinary coming together of these elements into song. Walker himself is also a genial and un-pretentious individual, aware of the absurdities of his work but gifted with the ability to speak about it so eloquently that comparisons to Samuel Beckett and Francis Bacon are convincing.

Kijak also expertly conveys the anorakish nature of being a music fan. Instead of firing off questions, he plays Walker vinyls to high profile fans such as David Bowie, Marc Almond, Jarvis Cocker and members of Radiohead. It’s a wonderful moment to watch them re-experience some of their favourite songs, and is also a great introduction to the variety of music Walker has created. The film works as a companion piece to Ondi Timoner’s criminally under seen DiG, showing another side to the story of a talented artist trying to make it on the fringes of the corporate music industry. Regardless of whether you’re a fan or not, whether you would ever buy one of his records or not, this is a terrific and riveting portrait of a one of the only 60s music figures still producing ground breaking work.

Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End - Review by Robert Duffin

Director: Gore Verbinski
Screenwriters: Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio
Runtime: 168 mns
Certificate: 12A
Release: 24 May

It’s hard to imagine a time when Captain Jack Sparrow wasn’t a part of the pop culture lexicon. Yet if we cast our minds back only four years we’ll find ourselves in 2003, a time when the swaggering pirate was but a speck on the horizon and blockbuster aficionados’ hero of choice was a surfer dude who could like, totally stop bullets, man. 2003 was the year of The Matrix sequels, with two films being made and released back to back and endless tie-ins including video games, comic books etc surely it couldn’t do wrong in its attempt to dominate. Instead the two bloated sequels and endless tie-ins sickened the world to the cod-philosophical adventures of Neo and co. Amidst the murky waters then sailed in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and won audiences over with its romping sense of fun and action packed panto madness erasing the nasty memories of Matrix overkill.

Now we find ourselves sitting down to watch the second Pirates sequel, At Worlds End, also filmed back to back complete with all the product tie-ins and it’s a typical case of Hollywood not learning from its mistakes. The plot, blundering over from the second film, sees Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) and Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) team up with the inexplicably resurrected Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) attempt to save Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from Davey Jones’ Locker in time to unite the Pirate fleet of the world in a final battle against the East India Trading Company.

Someone wonders aloud in the film if Jack Sparrow has a plan or makes it all up as he goes along, and the same could be asked of writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio (Shrek, Godzilla). The multiple and incomprehensible narrative threads that sank Dead Man’s Chest either continue to do so here or are conveniently forgotten about. Each of the main characters has individual motivations, and the script is filled with more double crosses and backstabbing that you can shake a cutlass at but it’s all nonsense that’s eventually ignored come the water soaked action finale. Too much plot and an overstuffed script seem to be the blockbuster malady of the year.

Performance wise we’re on less shaky ground. Depp continues to be great fun and Rush, turning out to be the franchises secret weapon, is a welcome return as the devious Barbossa. Their captaincy rivalry (it’s all about the size of your telescope you know) gets the most laughs and left me wishing that if the sequels had to be made then they could have created individual adventures around their characters. Orlando Bland and Keira Knightley are as damp as ever, neither convince as lovers or Pirates, and eyes are thoroughly rolled during their retina scraping screen time. Why these two weren’t dumped overboard after the first film can only be to appease the lowest common denominator that make them box office champs.

The film does remain entertaining for the majority of its duration, it might not make much sense but there’s a sense of fun that keeps it afloat through choppy waters. Special effects are naturally top notch, and the character designs of the pirates and the cursed crew members of the Flying Dutchman are delightful. Director Gore Verbinski knows how to put together action scenes, the finale with two ships going head to head in a whirlpool is spectacular stuff. The haunting scene where the crew return from the land of the dead, and witness people passing over to death in little lamp lit boats is equally beautiful. Yet the occasional moment of eye candy and the odd excellent action set piece don’t make up for the crushing disappointment of wasted potential. The Pirates may be at world’s end, but you’ll find me at wits end with the noisy and insipid rubbish passing for entertainment these days.

Robert Duffin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 5

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
USA 1982
Director: Steven Spielberg
Screenwriter: Melissa Mathieson
Runtime: 115 mins
Certificate: PG
DVD Distributor: Universal DVD

I remember watching E.T. for the first time in the summer of 1988 not long after its first VHS release in the U.K. I became happy, scared, sad and enthralled by this adventure and at that very young age I found an affinity with a filmmaker in Steven Spielberg. At only four years old I would be attracted to anything his name was attached to and for that he remains an important influence on my cinephilic nature. In my top ten I felt these formative years deserved some kind of representation.

E.T. showed me for the first time in my life the power of cinema to move, to completely emotionally involve you in a story, to have you hysterically laughing one minute and sniffling through uncontrollable tears the next. Everything that worked for me then, continues to now. This remains Spielberg’s greatest
cinematic achievement, as he takes his camera to child height level and tells a simple story of love between two best friends and finds universal themes that make this story timeless. E.T. is undoubtedly sentimental but never becomes the syrup Spielberg is prone to. He also directs the three siblings into fantastic child performances that never become too precocious. Screenwriter Melissa Mathieson also has a unique ear for the way children converse, which combined with said performances, offers a touching portrait of a family dealing with loss and loneliness.

John Williams’ epic score, a mix of the pulse pounding and gentle, coupled with some of the finest visual moments still gives me chills. The emergence of E.T. from the shed bathed in distilled light, the moment E.T. touches his heart (“ouch”) as he leaves Elliot or the scene when the children take off on their bicycles and I sore with them. Re-watching E.T. was a revelation, as it crossed the boundary from great nostalgia film into great film.

Rear Window

USA 1954
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: John Michael Hayes
Runtime: 112 mins
Certificate: PG
DVD Distributor: Universal DVD

From the moment the snare drum kicks off the opening credits my heartbeat quickens! When thinking of my favourite films, Rear Window was the first one that came to mind. It’s one of the most elegant pieces of entertainment that has ever came out of Hollywood yet is almost perverse in the way that Hitchcock makes you complicit in the giddy excitement of voyeurism.

In Hitchcock, French auteur Francois Truffaut’s series of interviews with Hitchcock published back in 1967, the Master of Suspense asserts that he was “feeling very creative at the time. The batteries were well charged.” Hitchcock’s precision storytelling and gradual reveal of the homicide clues creates a sense of tension that creeps up on you almost unexpectedly. His cinematic sleight of hand distracts with the delightful banter between the cabin fever suffering L.B. Jeffries, his luminous girlfriend Lisa and the busybody nurse Stella. The big moment, and a personal favourite, occurs after the death of the dog and the neighbours come to their windows. That’s all the neighbours apart from one. The small flicker of light coming from the murderer Thorwald’s cigarette embers in his dark apartment is chilling.

Hitchcock’s master handling of both space and time create a truly unique cinematic environment and example of character alignment. Sure, Jeff is a voyeur, but aren’t we all? We share his guilt as a nosy neighbour. We indulge in the excited triumph of discovering the murder. We also share in the terror as the door to his apartment is opened, and worry that Thorwald is coming into our own living rooms. Whatever it says about me, there’s something special about this film, and I’ll jump at any chance to take my seat right next to L.B. Jeffries and pull out the binoculars.

This concludes Robert Duffin's Top Ten!

Thank you for reading!

Robert Duffin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 4

Grave of the Fireflies

Japan 1988
Director: Isao Takahata
Screenwriter: Isao Takahata
Runtime: 93 mins
Certificate: 12
DVD Distributor: Optimum DVD

Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies is one of the most potent animated films ever created and marks an impeccable pairing of story and form. Labelled as an art solely catered towards children, here Takahata creates a subtle character study that is one of the most powerful anti-war films ever made.

The first time I saw Grave of the Fireflies it left me an emotional wreck and constantly permeated my thoughts for days. The story, which follows two young siblings, Seita and Setsuko, in World War II Japan is deceptively simple yet compelling. You are drawn in by their story as the overwhelming responsibilities of adulthood fall on young orphaned shoulders. Setsuko and Seita’s enjoyment of life is transcendent, they don’t realise their circumstances, and they just want to live life to the fullest possible and yet the film never characterizes them as idealized victims. They are not the angelic children of many a Disney feature; they loot, lie and succumb to the most stubborn of enemies: teenage pride.

This film will tear the heart out of anyone watching it for the utter lack of sentimentality and the inexorable optimism of its characters. Some of the scenes depicted by Takahata are relentlessly brutal, such as when after American bombings we see their injured mother wrapped head to toe in bloody bandages, being gnawed at by maggots in a mass grave. These types of sequences would be un-watchable in a live action film; they would feel so over the top and brutally sadistic. In this I see the real power of anime. The distance between what is being represented and what is depicted does not reproduce the horrors of reality but instead heightens them and allows for the expression of ideas. It may be a ‘cartoon’ but it is one of the finest films ever made.

The Third Man
UK 1949
Director: Carol Reed
Screenwriter: Graham Reed
Runtime: 104 mins
Certificate: PG
DVD Distributor: Optimum Home Entertainment

Writing for Slate Magazine, Stanley Crouch says that everything in film noirs “takes place at the bottom, in the sewers of sensibility” and in the case of The Third Man he is literally correct. As the film’s much-celebrated final chase scene in the Wienkanal sewers of war torn Vienna kicks in it is but the icing on Carol Reed’s sumptuous piece of noir. What brings it to my list is that fifty-eight years later it remains as fresh and as exciting as if it was filmed only yesterday and puts most modern thrillers to shame.

Along with Greg Tolland’s work on Citizen Kane, and Russell Mety’s work on Touch of Evil, Robert Krasker’s black and white cinematography on this film has to be one of the defining achievements in cinema. The crisp chiaroscuro is breathtaking as shadows pervade and creep over the bombed out streets of post-WWII Vienna. His skewed compositions reflect the disorientation and paranoia of both the period and the plot, and who can forget Orson Welles’ entrance? Krasker’s light lapping over his face sporting a devilish smile. Despite Welles now appearing on the cover of the DVD, I still get a pang of excitement in my chest when he is revealed in the doorway.

Coupled with the stunning visuals is Graham Greene’s magnificent yarn that he spins around the neck of his protagonist, laconic pulp fictionist Holly Martins. It has all the hallmarks of the noir tradition that I love: shifty spies, sharp suited gangsters, hardboiled dialogue (“leave death to the professionals”) and everyone can hold their liquor and puff their smokes. Yet their remains at the soul of The Third Man a doomed romance more heartbreaking than the similar Casablanca. The final image of the film, as Anna Schmidt walks down that long road in front of the cemetery and ignores Holly Martins, is shattering.

Read the final Part 5 tomorrow!

Robert Duffin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 3

Mulholland Drive
USA 2002
Director: David Lynch
Screenwriter: David Lynch
Runtime: 148 mins
Certificate: 15
DVD Distributor: Vision Video

With a crackle of electricity and a puff of blue smoke David Lynch can have me sweat drenched and quivering as if awaking from the most horrifying of nightmares. For me, there had to be a Lynch film on the list, and I turn to American uber-critic Roger Ebert for the reason why it had to be this one: “David Lynch has been working towards Mulholland Drive all of his career. At last his experiment doesn’t shatter the test tubes.”

Contributing to its transfixing quality is the lead performance by Naomi Watts, which I think is the most accomplished female acting performance of recent times. Her initial appearance and performance as a naïve ingénue who is unfeasibly innocent towards the Hollywood machine at first comes across as weak pastiche acting. Yet this is quickly dispelled as the film progresses and her character Betty’s identity begins to crumble, and Watts is left emotionally raw. The audition scene is sheer perfection, as Watts stuns you with her versatile handling of multiple characters; you simply can’t take your eyes off her.

The pairing of Lynch and cinematographer Peter Deming creates a sublime terror in the director’s most gorgeous looking film. The noir cityscape of Los Angeles is foreboding and instils a sense of alienation, and the camera creeping around the corner of the hotel room to reveal the corpse glistening with rot gets the heart pumping. The cinephilic community that can build around Lynch’s cinematic texts are equally part of the experience of the film. Debating theories and meanings with people as equally enthused by the film gives the unique and thrillingly impossible sensation of discussing a shared dream.


Some Like It Hot
USA 1959
Director: Billy Wilder
Screenwriter: Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond
Runtime: 117 mins
Certificate: PG
DVD Distributor: MGM Home Entertainment

Billy Wilder had to be on my list and picking only one was far from easy given his ability to spin gold in any genre. Yet the classic screwball comedy Some Like It Hot wins out this time for its pace, firecracker wit and effervescent laughs.

The screenplay has a ridiculous number of guffaws. The interplay between the characters offers so many great quotable lines: “Water polo? Isn’t that terribly dangerous?” “I’ll say I had two ponies drown under me!” The script is perfectly written, combining slapstick, one-liners and, more lastingly, repetitive motifs and dialogue hooks. There are also some sublimely perfect moments such as the smitten ‘Daphne’ playing the wrong side of his double bass and Tony Curtis’ Cary Grant aping oilman (“nobody talks like that!”)

The characterisation and performances are incredibly sharp. Lemmon and Curtis as the worrier and the schemer respectively are the classic comedy duo, and when they cross-dress and subvert the expectations (Lemmon embraces his inner female while Curtis becomes the conservative) it’s even funnier. Marilyn Monroe here proves her comic acting ability with her faultless dialogue delivery; she finds the exact laugh in every witty barb (“Real diamonds? They must be worth their weight in gold!”).

The first time I saw the film I didn’t laugh out loud many times yet I knew it was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. After multiple viewings I can safely call it the best comedy ever made as unlike contemporary counterparts it gets funnier the more familiar you are with it. Some Like It Hot is most definitely on the sweet end of the cinematic lollypop.


Read Part 4 tomorrow!

Robert Duffin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 2

Chungking Express
1994 Hong Kong
Director: Wong Kar Wai
Screenwriter: Wong Kar Wai
Runtime: 102 mins
Certificate: 12
DVD Distributor: Artificial Eye DVD

Wong Kar Wai emerged over the last decade as the most artistically adventurous filmmaker in Hong Kong cinema, and Chungking Express was his international debut. It’s a charming meditation on love in the post-modern environment, where relationships are defined by time and space. In a favourite scene we see Faye staring longingly at Cop 633 drinking coffee as pedestrians on the street move at hyper speed around them. Wong’s fresh visual style reinforces his themes as we see these characters as if they were trapped in time, lost and isolated from the world around them.

The wonderful performances in the film define whimsical romance. Takeshi Kaneshiro’s Cop 223 buys tins of pineapples every day for a month all with the expiration date of May 1st which is the day he has set aside for the end of his current romantic relationship. Cop 633 talks to inanimate objects in his house to project his own sadness, I giggle every time he laments to his bar of soap how much weight it has lost since he first bought it. Finally there is the elfin Faye whom Wong captures in improvised moments of perfection. We see her using salad tongs as drums as she mimes along to California Dreamin’ and re-imagining screwball comedies as she sneaks into Cop 633’s apartment to give him new pet fish.

It’s a film that flaunts my desire of an equal correlation between plot and style, but it is such a rush I’ll forgive it. It was released the same year as Pulp Fiction, and while Tarantino’s stylistic cool won over the worldwide box office, the similarly experimental narrative of Chungking Express is achingly romantic and more importantly has an enduring soul.

Unforgiven
USA 1992
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: David Webb Peoples
Runtime: 126 mins
Certificate: 15
DVD Distributor: Warner Home Video

The opening scenes of Unforgiven reveal a sorry sight. We see an old bedraggled cowboy rolling around in the mud with the hogs, unable to shoot a can from ten yards and incapable of even mounting his steed. This isn’t just any cowboy; it’s the haggard face of Josey Wales, Blondie, Monco, Walt Coogan or however you best know Clint Eastwood. Here he is William Munney, a farmer whose wicked ways have been long neutralised by the societal integration never afforded to the likes of The Searchers’ Ethan Edwards, yet he is about to discover violence is like a disease in remission.

Unforgiven remains Clint Eastwood’s greatest triumph as a director and actor, and is my favourite Western. For so long seen as the genre of definitive oppositions, Cowboy and Indian, good and evil, moral ambiguity pervades the story here. Munney and partner Ned are nominally the good guys but are both notorious killers, and the sadistic Sheriff Little Bill is ostensibly the villain yet all he really wants is a gun free town.

My favourite scene takes place in Big Whiskey’s jail as Little Bill deconstructs the character of the assassin English Bob. The nebbish biographer Beauchamp is shocked to learn that one of Bob’s famed killings was in fact a charade; he didn’t win quick draw, instead his foe’s gun backfired. If the Old West was defined by printing the legend, Unforgiven is interested in the less glamorous truth.

The finale, drenched in rain and Eastwood’s trademark shadow lighting, is a thrilling rewrite of the traditional gun-blazing climax. While Munney’s implausible execution of Little Bill’s gang gives rise to the traditional mythic gunslinger, his descent into violence marks a fall from grace destroying the romanticised aura. Eastwood uses the Western as the arena to play out one of cinema’s most thrilling morality tales.

Read Part 3 tomorrow!

Robert Duffin reviews his ten favourite films, Part 1

Amelie
France 2001
Director: Jean Pierre Jeunet
Screenwriters: Jean Pierre Jeunet & Guillaume Laurant
Runtime: 122 mins
Certificate: 15
DVD Distributor: Momentum Home Entertainment

Jean Pierre Jeunet collected anecdotes, noted intriguing moments and sketched characters from nearly twenty years of his life in a dusty little notebook. He returned to it in the dawn of the new Millennium after an unsuccessful spell in Hollywood and used it to construct the magical world of Amelie Poulain. “Magic” has long been a byword in the film world for the sickly sweet sentiment of childhood wonder, strangled by the corporations and squeezed into the worst of animation and special effect blockbusters. Yet Amelie is true magic.

The Paris of Jeunet’s world is a fairytale city, made colourful, airy and vibrant by Bruno Delbonnel’s photography. The first twenty minutes move at a dizzying breakneck pace, like a mash up of an anarchic early Disney animation and an opulent musical, and the skewered humour of the narration wins me over every time. The film is also filled with little charms; Amelie’s gnome nabbing escapades, the return of the old man’s childhood treasures and the Rube Goldberg-esque plots Amelie employs to bring happiness to the lives of others.

Cinema is often about the exploration of darker themes, a plunge into the depths of society and psyche. Yet Jeunet wisely considers happiness and joy finally worthy of an artistic celebration. I love films that can lift my spirits and leave me with a grin on my face and Amelie is the best at that job. Jeunet’s life-affirming message is clear, embrace the idiosyncrasies of yourself and make the most of the life you’re given. Amelie, like cracking the crystallised caramel on top of a Crème Brûlée, is one of life’s little pleasures.

Taxi Driver
USA 1976
Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenwriter: Paul Schrader
Runtime: 109 mins
Certificate: 18
DVD Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

Martin Scorsese had to be on the list, but ask me again in a week and it might have been Raging Bull, King of Comedy or Goodfellas. For now however, it is Taxi Driver, Scorsese’s treatise on alienation, loneliness, misery and violence. In the opening scene, as Travis Bickle’s taxi materializes from the red smoke you would be forgiven for thinking he is emerging from hell. It is the viewer who is entering Bickle’s hell; the streets of 1970s New York awash with criminals, prostitutes and other such “scum”.

The excellence of the film lies in the poetic correlation between Scorsese’s direction and Robert DeNiro’s performance. The early scene of DeNiro watching a headache tablet dissolve in water is a perfect moment that reflects the building rage inside DeNiro’s deranged character. The camera focuses in as the sizzling sound of the tablet drowns out the conversation around the transfixed Bickle. Scorsese’s vision of New York is borderline apocalyptic, with gaseous clouds of steam and red neon lighting, and his direction brings us crashing into this eerie world. His camera sometimes finds it hard to stay attached to the perturbed Bickle, such as when he pans away to focus on an empty corridor during his awkward morning after phone call to Betsy, whom he took to a porn theatre on a date.

The script and score, by Paul Schrader and Bernard Hermann respectively, also deserves credit in creating the descent of Bickle. Schrader’s scenes and Hermann’s velvety jazz score echo performance and direction in their slow build and eventual

explosion. Above everything perhaps the greatest achievement is the ability the film has to align your feelings with a certifiable psychotic, and forces you to ask if it is really crazy to be so detached in a world that is sadly, so recognizably ours.

Read Part 2 tomorrow!

Zodiac - Review by Carmody Wilson


Director: David Fincher
Screenwriter: James Vanderbilt
Runtime: 158 mns
Certificate: 15
Release: Out now

Ever had a heavy breather call and hang up on you? Look out, it could be the Zodiac. Yes, arguably the most unsettling serial killer America has ever produced was never caught, and just when everyone has forgotten about him, he has returned, in David Fincher’s spine-tingling police-procedural suspense thriller Zodiac.

Based on the book of the same name and actual case files from the San Francisco Police Department, Zodiac traces the genesis of a serial killer superstar from his first encrypted letter to the San Francisco Examiner through the maze of killings, phone calls, false leads, and bureaucracy. Jake Gyllenhall stars as Robert Graysmith, the cartoonist for the Examiner who went on to “write the book” on Zodiac, with Robert Downey Jr. as crime-beat reporter Paul Avery and Mark Ruffalo as Inspector Dave Toschi. The cast is filled out with Anthony Edwards as Toschi’s partner, Chloe Sevigny Elias Koteas and Brian Cox.

Zodiac is as tight a thriller as it gets, and is all the worse for being true. The cast, the heart-in-your-throat pacing, and the creepily inconclusive ending all add up for one of the best crime films ever made. Fincher, topping his record for serial killers from Seven and blasting his adeptness for tension from Panic Room, nails the feel of the late sixties and seventies and hammers us with the terror Zodiac wrought on the residents of northern California during his murderous reign. Ruffalo is excellent, as always, as the hard-working, frustrated lead detective Toschi, and Gyllenhall lends his soppy earnestness to good result as the unlikely sub-hero of the story. Downey Jr. replays his wild track to rehab as the drunk and drugged case-breaker Avery while never missing a beat in his clever patter. Zodiac takes every dip, turn, disappointment and lead that the original case took while never letting up on pacing or succumbing to slasher-pops-out-of-the closet clichés. I held my breath so often and clenched up on my seat so firmly that when I left the theatre you could bounce quarters off my bottom. Zodiac is taunting, terrifying, terrific cinema.

Emma J Lennox reviews her ten favourite films, Part 5

The Hudsucker Proxy
USA 1994
Director: Joel Coen
Screenwriters: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Runtime: 111 mins
Certificate: PG
DVD Distributor: Universal Pictures Video

The Coen brother's The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) is my next choice which tries to recreate old fashioned love through a modern lens. The year is 1958 and it is soon to be 1959, the clock on the Hudsucker industries building states 'the future is now' and everything is aglow with the hope of modernism. Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) and Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) are the couple in question yet the real romance story is the Coens' love for cinema itself, in particular the work of Preston Sturges and Frank Capra. The Coen brothers know how to rewrite the myth, and their period films always gleam the best from nostalgia to mix with their own skewed perspective. In highly stylistic overtones The Hudsucker Proxy has several montages, acting is similar to screwball comedies and the music evokes the drama of Gershwin. Dialogue has always been crisp in Coen brothers films, but here they can hark back to His Girl Friday quality in particular Archer's character, the brassy journalist; 'I used to think you were a swell guy. Well, to be honest, I thought you were an imbecile. But then I figured out you were a swell guy...a little slow, maybe, but a swell guy. Well maybe you're not so slow, but you're not so swell either. And it looks like you're an imbecile after all!' The camera work however, is modern; slow tracks create a dynamic quality as if it was a musical that never quite got around to the songs.

Though many Coen films were in contention, I chose The Hudsucker Proxy because it is a playful film. With its cyclical symbols and its expressionist design, it celebrates an era which I adore to see; men in fadora hats and fast talking, funny women.

Dead Man's Shoes

UK 2004

Director: Shane Meadows

Screenwriters: Shane Meadows & Paddy Considine

Runtime: 90 mins

Certificate: 18

DVD Distributor: Optimum Home Entertainment

To finish the list I have chosen Shane Meadow's Dead Man's Shoes (2004). Like my other choices, the film continues the themes of travelling, memory, meaning, and effective use of music. It could have been another grim portrayal of working class Britain with dour humour yet developing rapidly is a troubling undercurrent of sadness and terror. Paddy Considine plays Richard, on one hand loving brother to Anthony (Toby Kebbell) and on the other vengeful psychopath. As in its near namesake, Dead Man, death is portrayed as an eternal, inevitable force complimented by folk music and a stalwart sense of place.

Getting picked off one by one is a gang of drug dealing delinquents. Undesirable as they may be the naturalistic style renders them as individual characters who impart amusing banter. I consider it a British trait to be able to mix humour into the darkest situations, and the initial torturing by Richard is so playful it could be part of a comedy (even members of the gang find it funny). However, in the doping scene the full implications of Richard's hatred become apparent as we witness his executions for the first time. Memory and guilt flood the drug addled brains of the remaining three as Richard observes them, 'are you the devil?' one asks, and when Richard shakes his head he questions further, 'Jesus?' Dead Man's Shoes makes my top ten for its unshakable nerve and for possessing the energy of a horror and a western simultaneously. The films I have selected fit into what I consider my philosophy of film viewing; I am a fan of experiencing the unknown and unexpected, and I value emotional over narrative identification. It may not be an infallible list but then nobody's perfect, and that's what makes life interesting.

This concludes Emma J Lennox's Top Ten!

Thanks for reading!

Emma J Lennox reviews her ten favourite films, Part 4

Dumbo

USA 1941

Director: Ben Sharpsteen

Screenwriters: Helen Aberson & Harold Perl (book) , Otto Englander(story direction), Joe Grant & Dick Huemer

Runtime: 64 mins

Certificate: U

DVD Distributor: Walt Disney DVD

Populating my list of films are vagrant, emotionally scarred outsiders and my animation choice is no different; Disney's classic Dumbo (1941). The tale of the circus freak with ears 'only a mother could love' is a sentimental choice from childhood, but subsequent viewings and post modern cynicism hasn't dulled its quality. A beautifully rendered animation, (the only film other than Snow White to use watercolours backgrounds,) the plethora of colours and imagery form a vivid, illusory story unmatched by any other Disney film. Featuring the only lead Disney character not to speak, Dumbo is a tightly scripted, visually inventive tale of overcoming adversity. It has a range of humour including visual prat falls, funny characterisations, popular culture references and satire. Even as a child I was eternally grateful for the absence of any insipid love song to slow the pace, and the closest attempt 'Baby Mine' can be forgiven for its 'mad elephant' house setting. Accidentally getting drunk on champagne is unlikely to be a plot point used in any of today's children's films, but in Dumbo it leads to the most surreal, enjoyable experiences in animation. The pink elephants on parade sequence is a disturbing march of big band buffoonery from the animators' imagination with wonderfully bizarre lyrics; “I can stand the sight of worms/ and look at microscopic germs/ but Technicolor pachyderms are really too much for me.” Eventually salsa dancing elephants turn into a range of fast driven vehicles and end up as clouds as it fades to the morning after. The crows who appear in this scene were once criticised for being racial stereotypes, but this view has been generally dismissed by the fact that they are sympathetic and interesting characters. Their jazzy 'when I see an elephant fly,' complete with scatting and trumpet singing, is the most entertaining song in a Disney film. It is also the crows that lead to the revelation that every outcast wants to hear; “the very things that keep you down are going to carry you up and up and up”

Punch-Drunk Love

USA 2002

Director: Paul Thomas Anderson

Screenwriter: Paul Thomas Anderson

Runtime: 95 mins

Certificate: 15

DVD Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

My next defected hero is Barry Egan in Paul Thomas Anderson's Punch Drunk Love (2002). It is a dreamlike Hollywood romance told through a distortion of music and colour. Emily Watson plays Lena Leonard, the love interest to Adam Sandler's oddball loner in a story which crosses genres from comedy, to drama to thriller. As with Don't Look Now, Punch Drunk Love engages the audience through their senses but instead of imagery and editing it fades to a spectrum of colour-scapes and uses an intrusive soundtrack. Depending on how Egan is feeling the mood of the film alters. Under duress the soundtrack is a clashing and clattering percussion like an erratic heart beat as Egan's blood pressure raises. On the other side is a romantic waltz interjected with refrains of Shelley Duvall's He Needs Me, mixed with moments of colour and lens flares. Critical studies of film music suggest 'unheard' soundtracks produce our immersion into the story. Yet it is reversed in this case, the dialogue is insignificant and misplaced, at times barely audible, whereas the music takes over the emotional impact. It may disrupt the realism, but in heightened moments of fear or love, the emotion for the viewer 'feels' more authentic. Paul Thomas Anderson's unconventional humour appears in unexpected bursts and he has an exceptional cast to pull it off, including Luis Guzman and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hoffman almost steals the film with one angry phone call to Egan where the two men are are so enraged with each other as to be rendered dumbstruck with frustration; (“Shut up! Shut! Shut! Shut! Shut! Shut up! (pause) now, are you threatening me, dick?”) It is a purposefully clumsy and magical romantic comedy which combines fifties' love story charm with modern off kilter characters.

Read the final Part 5 tomorrow!

Emma J Lennox reviews her ten favourite films, Part 3

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

USA 2004

Director: Michel Gondry

Screenwriter: Charlie Kauffman

Runtime: 108 mins

Certificate: 15

DVD Distributor: Momentum Home Entertainment

As a medium cinema is well equipped for dealing with the elusive and transitory, but in comparison to the novel it can lack the depth and contrariness of character. By placing the plot of my next top film inside the memories of one person, Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), is able to merge identity with point of view. The unconventional narrative structure is built upon the lucid memories and irrational thoughts of Joel Barish (Jim Carrey). The story becomes more erratic and chaotic as we roam Barish's mind as he tries to save the memory of Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) from an operation to erase her. It is quirky and inventive but it also has a profound meaning coursing throughout; that pain is a necessary part of life. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind's intimate journey of the cerebral is fashioned out of visual tricks and effects, which dismantles moments of reality in a subjective way. The camera work is frenetic and hand held, the editing is disjointed and non linear and lighting is used theatrically in spotlights, all of which culminates in a nonsensical, but human, point of view of the world.
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman not only creates a bizarre premise but fills it with layers of complex characters and engaging human drama resulting in an absorbing story which can be enjoyed on a number of levels. My favourite sub plot involves the cyclical turmoil of medical assistant Mary (Kirsten Dunst), who has a crush on her boss Dr. Howard Mierzwiack (Tom Wilkinson). Her emotional make up leads her to making the same decisions and mistakes even after 'altering' her memory. Her story in particular reinforces the allegorical tale and shows the strength of personality over events. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind flips the relationship genre inside out and demonstrates the true spark of individuality.

Don't Look Now

UK 1973

Director: Nicolas Roeg

Screenwriter: Allan Scott

Runtime: 110 mins

Certificate: 18

DVD Distributor: Warner Home Video

Warning: Contains Significant Plot Spoilers!

There is another film, however, who's cognitive use of memories and internal thoughts form a cinematic nightmare which has haunted me from the first viewing. Nicholas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973) is a terrifying drama in which everything appears to connect to a supernatural subconscious. John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) are a bereaved couple who move to Venice after the death of their daughter, Christine. Reading the film is much like psychoanalysing a dream, and could also be described by Freud as 'a psychological structure, full of significance.' The labyrinthine city possesses many 'other worldly' qualities including mirrors, water and portals and the deadly use of the colour red. The meanings of symbols are conveyed by an expressive editing style which uses impulses of emotion as edit points rather than narrative. For example; by cross cutting mid action between Christine and her parents, significant tension is built up before the drowning scene.

Central to the story is John's neglected psychic ability, and like a tragic Shakespearean character this is the magic which brings about his downfall. There are even two witch like sisters (from Scotland to drive home the Macbeth reference), and the connotations are unsettlingly difficult to shake. There is an atmosphere of brooding apprehension, as piece by piece an intricate mural of supernatural terror develops. Shadows of precognition bring about the cutting and dramatically ironic ending in a climax of violence. The hooded figure which reminds John of his daughter turns round to reveal a grotesque gargoyle-like figure brandishing a knife. As he is struck, his life flashes before his eyes in a montage which combines insignificant moments now reaped together into cause and effect.

Yet Don't Look Now is also a realistic portrayal of a relationship surviving grief. Without a natural performance as a focus, the style would be ineffectual. As it is, chills crawl down my spine as the murdering dwarf shakes her head; a negative response to the question of John's existence.

Read Part 4 tomorrow!