Film Catch-Up

[faustus]

Technically DVDs... These are things I watched last year and didn't comment on; after a couple of months memories are vague.

Millions

Appealing Danny Boyle kids movie - saint-obsessed young boy finds a bag of stolen money and decides how best to spend it in the ten days before Britain shifts to the Euro. Perfect Christmas fare - although I watched it in August. we are taken very convincingly into the young boy's world - and great that the two main child actors are given billing above James Nesbitt. There's charity message hidden away in the film that becomes a little too blatant, but otherwise held up to three viewings, one with director's commentary.

Sullivan's Travels

Classic Preston Sturges road movie comedy in which rich director Joel McCrea goes out to live life as a bum, and finds himself rather deeper under cover than he bargained for. Liberal subtexts but has it's cake and eats it.

Volver

Almodovar works again with Carmen Maura, in the haunting story of a dead mother and an ill aunt. Penélope Cruz's character has to cover up the murder of her husband by her daughter and run catering for a film company under false pretences. There are some deft Hitchcockian touches, and Maura is up there with the divine Tilda Swinton as a favourite actor, but I miss the younger, bad taste, Almovodar. He got too serious.

Little Miss Sunshine

Neat little ensemble road movie in which a dysfunctional family travel to a beauty pageant for their seven year old daughter and everyone discovers themselves. Could have been soppy, but it has a vein of black comedy, and anything that gets Alan Arkin work gets my vote.

All About Eve

Watched so that I can rewatch Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) and get the references. Guess what I've yet to do? Told in flash back by George Sanders at an awards ceremony: the story of an aspiring actor (Anne Baxter) who is taken under the wing and then supplants an old stager (Bette Davies). Won Best Picture, Best Director (Joseph Mankiewicz), Best Costume, Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor. It's very sharp, and very funny.

Big Fish
A Tim Burton film with Helen Bonham Carter which I missed for no very good reason (but she won't have helped). Albert Finney tells the tall tale of his life, Ewan McGregor plays the life, and Billy Crudup learns that sometimes the truth is not the same as the facts. Rather like Stardust, you could picture the Terry Gilliam version, as fantasies win out in most of his films. Actually ends up a bit weepy. I is a wus.

Brick
After all those teen versions of Shakespeare, here's teen Chandler: The Big Sleep in High School. The plot has more twists than a twisty turny thing, and the dialogue is played so straight that you forget quite how mannered it is. Brendan Frye's girlfriend Emily has vanished, and he is determined to find her, even if he has to turn the whole school upside down to do it. Fantastic debut feature from Rian Johnson. Run, don't walk.

Romance And Cigarettes
I had an argument with someone about this being John Turturro's directorial debut - I was right, though not about him directing The Luzhin Defence. I really wanted to like this musical featuring James Gandolfini and Susan Sarandon, but something about it didn't sit right. I'm not a musicals fan to be honest; it was here either too mannered or not mannered enough.

Only Angels Have Wings
Cary Grant in one of Howard Hawks's male bonding movies, although there is love interest (Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth). Grant runs an air postal service out of an Andean town, and is trying to make the service turn a profit in a dangerous location. The film explores a network of trust and betrayal, love and redemption.

Monkey Business
Grant, again, Hawks, again, Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. Dr. Barnaby Fulton (Grant) seeks for an elixir of youth, and thinks he's found it when a chimpanzee mixes up a formula that Fulton and Edwina Fulton (Rogers) unwiitngly drink. Both regress to increasingly childhood behaviours - just as Grant regressed to playing children's games in Hawks's Bringing Up Baby. Good fun.

The Awful Truth

Grant, again, directed by Leo McCarey. Jerry Warriner (Grant) comes home to suspect that his wife, Lucy Warriner (Irene Dunne), is having an affair, and they divorce. Lucy gets engaged to Dan Leeson (Ralph Bellamy) - a relationship Jerry tries to sabotage - but she realises she still wants Jerry, but now he's courting Barbara Vance (Molly Lamont). A comedy of remarriage; Dunne and Grant went on to do My Favourite Wife and Penny Serenade, but this is the best of the three. This is the Grant persona: the effortlessly witty and debonaire man about town.

Ripley's Game
Years ago I saw Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend), and I read the Ripliad a few years ago, so the twists of memory sometime collided with the twists of plot. Malkovich is Ripley, the wannabe socialite and ruthless killer, who latches onto his neighbour Jonathan (Dougray Scott) to perform the perfect murder. Naturally everything goes wrong, and Ripley has to clean up. Ray Winstone is a bit odd in his role as gay gangster, but over all I felt this much better than I feared given it's sink-without-trace. I wonder if the second novel's adaptation (Mr. Ripley's Return/Ripley Under Ground) will get a proper release?

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Rewatch with N - Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr) is a small-potatoes crook who falls into an audition by mistake and is cast in a movie. He meets Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), a private eye who will mentor his performance, and stumbles into a murder mystery. With twisty turny consequences - even though I'd forgotten half of them. Downey continues to impress and, well, I'm not a fan of Kilmer but here he's interesting at the very least. Downey's self-referential narration plays to my pomo tastes, mind. Shane Black's directorial debut - he wrote the Lethal Weapon films but don't be put off.

Lucky Number Slevin
Part of an unplanned Josh Harnett double bill. Slevin (Hartnett) shows up at the apartment of a friend to discover he has gone missing, and that he is in the middle of a turf war between rival gangs run by The Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and The Boss (Morgan Freeman). Meanwhile Mr Goodkat (Bruce Willis) appears to be stirring things up. More twists and truns than a very twisty turny thing indeed, and maybe needs a rewatch to see if it does add up. Very entertaining but asks a lot to be taken on trust.

The Black Dahlia
Why? You can see David Fincher directing this because the novel had a dark love triangle at its heart, but De Palma... always the least unteresting of his generation of directors, and usually ripping off Hitchcock. This is not in the same league as L.A. Confidential - this is Northern Under 21s League. There's a murder, mismatched cops investigate, one cop falls in love with another cop's girlfriend, it all gets messy, there's a set piece climax and Hartnett looks sad. I dunno why - the performances are largely okay. I gather about an hour got cut - that clearly sacrificed coherence, but at least it's shorter.