Film review: Children of Men (2006)

Well this will NOT be a new Xmas favorite film.  Not because it's not good - it's one of the best films I've seen in a long time, but because it's all-too-realistic.  The only thing we've watched recently that could match its combination of being equal parts depressing, horrifying and completely gripping was the Chernobyl TV series.  I am amazed to see that it's almost a decade and a half old, because a more apt depiction of post-Brexit Britain I cannot imagine.  I think it's set some time in the 2020s after a couple of catastrophes: first was a flu pandemic (in 2008, I think) that (we find out) killed the child of the estranged couple played by (a revelatory) Clive Owen ("Theo") and Julianne Moore ("Julian").  The second, more devastating one is a mysterious sudden end to human fertility.  (The film begins with news reports of the death of the youngest person on the planet, 18-year-old "Baby Diego", who was an Argentine celebrity who scorned a fan and got killed for it.  People are seen publicly weeping at his death, presumably a poignant reminder of the fast-approaching end of the human race.) This led to the collapse of civilization in most nations on Earth, with the exception (so the propaganda broadcasts on TV tell us) of Britain, which maintains its fragile grip on some kind of status quo by (get ready) keeping all the foreigners out.  (It's never quite explained how London is still so crowded given the presumed loss of at least a quarter of Britain's population by now, but let that pass.)  Armed militarized police are forever rounding up "'fugees" and cramming them in camps behind  wire fences (okay, there's a lot about Trump's America, too - again making the film prescient, or perhaps accidentally so, because there are a few images (hooded prisoners, for example) that are obvious comments on Bush-era Guantanamo).  London is also prone to bombings (such as the one that destroys the coffee shop Theo has just left just before the titles at the beginning of the film) by various terrorist organizations, including the pro-immigrant "fishes" whose leader turns out to be the wife, Julian, Theo hasn't seen in 20 years.  He sees her now after being snatched off the street by some members of the group and taken to an undisclosed location.  She wants him to get traveling papers to transport an illegal alien to the coast and knows that Theo has a rich relative who can bring this about.  (The relative seems to live on top of Battersea Power Station (which has a huge inflatable pig tethered above it, in a recreation of the cover of Animals), and owns the Statue of David and Guernica, among other art treasures, presumably "rescued" from their respective countries as civilization crumbled.)  It turns out that the 'fugee in question ("Kee") is (drumroll) pregnant.  This makes her a valued commodity, and it turns out that her fate has caused a rift in the Fishes that leads to the death of Julian (her death is sudden and unexpected, much like Janet Leigh's in Psycho)

 as "Luke" (Chiwetel Ejiofor) takes over.  Julian seems to have foreseen this, however, and instructed Kee to trust Theo above all (despite the fact that Theo had been living a normal, white-collar life in the 20 years since he and Julian separated, after the death of their son), and they go on the lam.  There follows a flight across England (ostensibly to rendezvous with the possibly-mythical Human Project), along with an ex-maternity-nurse, who takes Julian's view on things, stopping off at hippy-esque Jasper's country hideaway

(a very surprising Michael Caine, whose final words of "pull my finger" are surprisingly poignant and courageous) and a 'fugee camp at what was Bexhill.  I'm not doing the plot justice, but then again, it's a bit picaresque, and also sort of beside the point.  The film is pure cinema, both in its incredibly immersive creation of an entirely plausible near-future (even better than Blade Runner, if a little less ambitious) and in several bravura set pieces, one of which is now one of the most lauded tracking shots in cinema history, and the other of which is an unbelievable gripping first-person run through a virtual war zone, where blood spatters the camera shortly into it and stays on it (until mysteriously vanishing about halfway through) presumably because the choreography and explosions were too expensive to recreate.  Once this film has you in its grip you can barely breathe (a la Wages of Fear).  As I discovered, it will also haunt your dreams.  I don't know why the Labour party didn't organize mass showings of this film before the last election.  As I mentioned, Clive Owen is a revelation.  He's entirely believable as a man in over his head who forces himself to be brave because he's lost everyone he cared about.  I don't really understand why he isn't a huge star now?  Perhaps it's because he doesn't seem to be able to do anything other than his own London accent (which rules him out even from playing James Bond, for which I believe he was considered) [having said that, apparently he will be doing an Arkansas accent because he's playing Bill Clinton next year!].  But there are other very good performances, including Caine and the repellent "Syd", who insists on referring to himself in the third person, as he is first help and then peril for the central pair of Theo and Kee.

Several actors have to do a lot without any (English) dialogue, as they are part of the teeming hordes of migrants, and are totally convincing.  The film does end with a note of hope, but it is a slim one.  If you haven't seen it, tough luck, you have to see it - it's that good.  But don't expect to feel good afterwards.  Then we can discuss exactly what it's supposed to mean, although that's not really necessary to appreciate it (like Invasion of the Body Snatchers).

Film review: It's a Wonderful World (1939)

Yes, that's WORLD, not LIFE, despite the fact that it's nearly Xmas, the time when you are practically obligated to watch the other Jimmy Stewart "wonderful" movie.  This one's billed as sort of a cross between a gumshoe film and a screwball comedy (like the Thin Man movies), but misses slightly.  A lot of the problem is how Stewart plays it: he's unusually hard and positively an unlikable cad.  A good contrast is with the sublime Clark Gable-Claudette Colbert pairing in It Happened One Night, where Gable is also a macho type with little time for dames, but still manages to elicit affection because he's obviously a big softy inside, who's falling hard for Colbert's character.  In contrast, Stewart shows no sign of even liking her until suddenly he's all over her in a decidedly leery fashion.

This is a shame, because the bones of the film are good, and the combination could work.  Stewart is a detective whose main job at the start of the film is chasing after a tobacco fortune heir to keep him from making drunken mistakes.  One mistake that is haunting him, especially now he is engaged, is a former dancer who claims he broke a promise to her after a dalliance.  While Stewart is resting in the office he shares with his older pal "Cap", the heir gets sozzled and goes out to settle a score with this dancer.  Stewart gets wind and is chasing after him, but too late: Stewart bursts in to the dancer's apartment to find the lights off, the dancer dead and the heir holding the smoking gun.  It is the work of a moment to work out that the heir didn't kill her (he doesn't even know she's there) and he carries him bodily out the back while the police run up the stairs.  Before he goes, though, he finds a charm consisting of half a dime clutched in the dead woman's hand.  He is certain that this means that the person framing the heir is his fiancée, but can't prove it before the police close in and follow him to the boat he's got the heir hidden in.  Stewart gets sentenced to a year while the heir gets sentenced to death.  Stewart is being taken in handcuffs to prison when he spots an ad in the paper apparently placed by a woman wanting to re-unite with her estranged husband, and it's signed "Half-a-dime".  We the viewers know that this has been put there by the fiancée and her murderous lover after he realized he'd left the charm behind at the scene, and also realized that the husband she thought she'd got rid of in Australia was actually visiting the US as part of an acting troupe and might blow her cover.  And all of this is just the set up!  Stewart jumps off the train handcuffed to one of the cops (who will be a recurring comic presence in the movie - he also appears in the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers) and is seen by Claudette Colbert apparently (but not actually) drowning the cop before unlocking the cuffs.  A dog gives her away and he realizes that he'll have to take her away from the scene and dump her somewhere or his cover will be blown before he has a chance to make it to Saugities, where the "Half-a-Dime" meetup is supposed to happen.  Colbert is playing a famous poetess, and, well, watch it yourself.  There aren't many laughs (even where there really should be, as when they encounter a boy scout troupe,

once he has won her over to his cause) but there are plenty of spaces where a laugh would be if the film was just slightly better done.  Again, the tone swings wildly: there is an actual murder of a young innocent that is sort of glossed over with a quick return to light-hearted shenanigans.  A missed opportunity, methinks.

A White Christmas is only a dream

It was in the 50s for the past few days and projected past Xmas day.  Here is some photographic evidence of the sunshine from walks that I and the (recovering from a bug) Frederick managed:

Film review: Key Largo (1948)

That is a bad poster for a very good film.  Once again, after a lukewarm film we seek comfort in a Bogart and it does not disappoint.  I thought I'd seen it before, but all I really remembered was the end.  Like Petrified Forest, it concerns an establishment (in this case a seen-better-days hotel closed for high summer in the Florida Keys (the days before air conditioning)) held hostage by a gang leader and his hoods.  Only this time the gang leader is played by Edward G. Robinson and is a monster with no redeeming features, and his men are a pretty sorry bunch as well (among them "Toots"

and "Curly").  They're not on the run, in fact they have snuck in from Cuba, whence Robinson's Johnny Rocco was banished after the end of Prohibition, and are waiting to make a deal with a former rival ("Ziggy") on a shipment of counterfeit dollars.  The hotel is owned by a wheelchair-bound Lionel Barrymore who runs it with the help of his daughter-in-law, Lauren Bacall.  His son, her husband, was killed in the war, but his commanding officer was Humphrey Bogart, who comes by for a visit while he drifts about the country, having lost his direction and his commitment to his previous profession in that same war.  He walks in on the gang, who have not revealed their nature or intentions to Barrymore's Temple, but are not exactly welcoming.  In fact, they would have booted him out were it not for the drunken blonde enthusiastically following the horse races on the radio

(Claire Trevor, whom we've just seen as the no-good young wife in Murder My Sweet, and who won an Oscar for her role).  She is, it turns out, an ex-singer ("Gaye Dawn") and currently Rocco's moll.  There is no love lost between them, however: he regards her as a lush who wasted her talent, whereas she is clearly sickened by him (and helps to orchestrate his demise).  One particularly uncomfortable scene is where he forces her to sing for a drink, despite her clear shame and discomfort, and then refuses to give her it afterwards because she "stunk".  The more I see of Robinson, the higher I think of him.  The change between the character he played in Scarlet Street and Johnny Rocco could not be more extreme.  His eyes are dead

and he is equally terrifying when quiet and smug as when flaring into a rage.  He humiliates Bogart's Frank McCloud after he's mouthed off by giving him a gun and challenging him to shoot him knowing that he will be shot in return.  Bogart demurs, saying it's not worth dying just for there to be one fewer Johnny Rocco in the world, but in so doing he earns an accusation of cowardice from Bacall.  However, a cop who had been imprisoned and tortured by Rocco's men grabs the gun and uses it to get to the door, only to be gunned down by Rocco because it was empty.

Rocco also causes the death of two innocent young Indian men (who talk unfortunately rather like the Beano character Little Plum did in my childhood) by convincing a visiting cop that they were responsible for his colleague's death.  Ratcheting up the (already considerable) tension is a hurricane that descends, terrifying (to Temple and McCloud's amusement) Rocco and causing him to lose the ship that was to take him back to Cuba.  This means that after the sale of the counterfeit money is completed, Rocco and gang dragoon McCloud to ferry them across in a boat that has survived the hurricane at the dock by the hotel.  Before he leaves, though, Gaye, in a show of fake grief that Rocco is leaving, steals his gun, and passes it (along with advice to make a run for it between the hotel and the boat) to Frank.  Having been stung by the charge of cowardice more than he will let on, Frank turns down the chance, knowing that the thugs plan to bump him off as soon as they sight Cuba.  This means that he has to deal with Rocco and his gang of four.  Will he do it?  Well, that's the part I remembered from before.
This (like Petrified Forest) was a play before, and inherits the talkiness thereof (although it jettisons the blank verse of the original!) but doesn't appear set-bound largely through the talent of its director, the great John Huston.  It's not a particularly original plot but is elevated by excellent performances all round, beautiful lighting and a steamy, relentlessly tense atmosphere.  Plus it has the Bogart-Bacall pairing with an underpinning of sadness and palpable longing.  Can't beat that!

Oh, and I would remiss if I didn't share one of the best exchanges in the film (that I knew tangentially because it was referenced in a song I heard on John Peel's radio show in the '80s):

Film review: Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

I know I've seen this before, and I'm pretty sure it was at a Christmas visit to my Granny's in the late seventies or maybe even early eighties.  This is a real "BBC Christmas schedule" film - star studded and designed to be watched with a belly full of turkey.  I'm pretty sure I didn't realize just how star-studded it was when I saw it before.  It's got (deep breath),  Lauren Bacall! Ingrid Bergman! John Gielgud! Sean Connery! Vanessa Redgrave! Albert Finney! Michael York! Anthony Perkins! Richard Widmark! Wendy Hiller! Jacqueline Bisset! and even the lesser stars are recognizable faces, both British (Colin Blakely) and American (Martin Balsam). Sadly, apart from Finney who is (I think) miscast as Poirot (there can only be David Suchet), none of the others really gets to strut their stuff, although Bergman got an Oscar for her performance as a super-religious Swedish missionary, but it was probably one of those Paul-Newman-in-The-Color-of-Money deals where they were just so pleased to see her in an English language film again they had to do something.  I must say, I must've been a more patient tot (I think we all had longer attention spans back them) because watching it now, it seemed to drag.  The pacing was slow and the film was over-long, even though, after a slowish prologue, something is pretty much guaranteed to be happening every minute to make use of that amazing cast.  I remember enjoying it, and it must've been because I legitimately did not know the plot.  But once you do know it, there isn't much to enjoy.  Gielgud's great, but there's nothing for him to chew on.  Connery's great but... you get the idea.  Christie's characters aren't always cardboard cut-outs, but when there are 12 suspects, you never have enough time, even in an overlong movie, to get to care about them.  Also, although there are some nice shots of scenery, the train always seems so claustrophobic a set, so I can't imagine wanting to see it on the big screen.  Maybe if it was an HBO miniseries?

Film review: High Sierra (1941)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, watching old movies makes you aware that there didn't used to be such rigid thematic classifications.  Which is to say, it's much harder to classify some old movies.  Is it an old fashioned, 30's style gangster flick?  Is it an early Film Noir?  Is i66v7ht a rather schmaltzy Capra-esque melodrama, a love story, a preachy political film siding with the downtrodden?  Yes.  Yes it is.  It's also a film that came out in 1941 alongside The Maltese Falcon that made Bogart a star (which he wasn't when it was made, as you can see from the poster above, where Ida Lupino is billed above him, as she also is in the credits).  I picked this because I needed a shot of Bogart to make up for Dick Powell's tepid turn as Marlowe, and this does not disappoint.  It is also boosted by an excellent performance by Lupino (who is also great in On Dangerous Ground, and as the director of The Hitch-Hiker) playing a moll with a gritty past who falls hard for Bogart's Roy "Mad Dog" Earle and goes on the lam with him.  The film begins with Earle, who is compared with Dillinger (who is quoted as saying that men like him are "rushing towards death") being sprung from prison in Indiana despite being on a life sentence for armed robbery, and immediately showing up to an apartment to get his marching orders for his next job.  He doesn't like that his old friend Mac, who paid to have him sprung, isn't there, and instead there is an ex-cop, for whom Roy cannot hide his disdain.  (Earle and this film appear to share a hearty dislike of the police.)  But he takes the instructions, and, pausing only to visit his old family farm and instruct a local lad on the best fishing pond, he sets off for the West, to a skiing resort near the titular California mountain range, where the job is to happen.  On the way he nearly gets into an accident with a truck driven by the instantly recognizable Henry Travers ("Pa"), who was the angel in It's a Wonderful Life.  He's lost his farm too, and is taking his wife and their granddaughter out to LA to live with their daughter and her new husband.  Roy takes a shine to them, and the granddaughter Velma in particular, and helps them out of various scrapes intermittently, including paying to have Velma's club foot operated on.  Meanwhile, he arrives at the resort to find that his assistants are a couple of inexperienced punk hot heads ("Red" and "Babe") and the moll they brought along (Lupino's Marie).  He wants to ship her back to LA because he sees that she is the cause of fights between the two punks, but she persuades him to let her stay.  He begins to soften to her, and also to the mongrel dog "Pard" who hangs around, whom the camp dogsbody (a rather Step n Fetchit performance by the pop-eyed Willie Best) informs him is bad luck, because his last three owners died.  Eventually we see Velma's true colors: after she is no longer a "cripple" she vows to enjoy life and turns down Roy's offer of marriage in favor of loyalty to her no-good divorcé boyfriend from back home.  We also see the true colors of the gang's "inside man" at the resort, "Mendoza" who begs to be brought along after the heist goes bad and a security guard gets shot.  The gang split into two cars, but the one carrying Red, Babe and Mendoza takes a wrong turn and crashes, and bursts into flames.  Marie and Roy and Pard proceed to LA, but Mac, whom Roy has been working with in LA, has died, and the ex-cop decides that he and Roy should change plans and just split the loot.  Roy rejects him and a gunfight ensues.  This leaves a wounded Roy with a box full of jewels and the need to find a fence, as Mac was going to buy the jewels off him before.  Meanwhile, Mendoza is the lone survivor of the crash and has grassed up Roy (and Marie and Pard) so they're fugitives.  And the rest of the movie is Roy "parking" Marie and Pard on a bus to Las Vegas and attempting to find a fence and then running for the mountains.

The climax of the movie is famous: Bogart hiding out behind rocks on a steep mountain slope with a machine gun shouting "come and get me, coppers!" to the massed blue ranks below.  It ends tragically, of course, although Marie clutches to the fact that Roy has "crashed out" (found freedom).  So there you have it: unless you're looking for comedy or horror, this movie has something for everyone.  And Bogart and Lupino make an affecting couple.

Film review: Murder, My Sweet (1944)

It's Philip Marlowe, but not as you know him.  I've seen him played by Bogart, Elliot Gould and I know there's a Robert Mitchum version, but here he's played by Dick Powell, and... eh.  He just doesn't convince me.  For one thing, he's kind of squirty (it's particularly comical when the femme fatale comes in on him shaving in his undershirt and comments approvingly about his "build", when he has shrimpy shoulders and a sunken chest).  For another, he just doesn't have the tough guy aura (which can make up for the shrimpiness, as Bogey was a skinny 5'8" but you never question his Marlowe).  Also, he bears rather a striking resemblance to Dana Carvey.  Other than that, it's a serviceable Chandler adaptation, replete with dialog sharp enough to cut you with and with people called things like Moose Malloy wandering around.  Marlowe is hired by said lunk to try to find a woman he loved eight years ago before he was put away.  She was "cute as lace pants," he says.  Meanwhile, a man named Lindsay Marriott also hires him to go along with him as he goes to a deserted canyon road to buy back some stolen jewels.  But Marlowe gets knocked out and Marriott gets bludgeoned to death.  Apparently the jewels belonged to the rich young wife

of the father of a young woman who comes to see him (poorly disguised as a reporter) the next day.  It's a tangled web that involves Marlowe getting knocked out two more times, having his eyes scorched by a gun going off right next to them (he's got them bandaged when we first see him, in the bookending device common to noirs) and having a hallucinogenic dream sequence when his kidnappers pump him full of narcotics to get him to talk (they think he's got the stolen jade necklace).  His love interest (the daughter) is pretty striking, but she walked away from acting after this film:

The actor who played Moose Malloy also had a fascinating backstory.  No spoilers for the film (which, like a lot of Chandlers, is pretty hard to follow), but I will say this: a major plot twist is given away by the cast listing on IMdB...

Dawning of a new era (next door)

 Family video closed in 2012 and that sign has been thanking us for 12 great years for nearly 8 years.  But finally America's fastest-growing retail empire has decided to move in (despite there being at least two other dollar stores in a couple of miles radius).  They've been working on the the roof and interior for about a month now - God knows what a state it was in.