The Damned United (2009)

The Dumbed-down United

I went into this expecting to be underwhelmed and I was underwhelmed. Aside from Lean's Great Expectations I can't remember the last film of a book I have loved that didn't disappoint me. It could be argued, on the basis of that evidence, that cinema is the inferior medium but I don't believe that. I genuinely and fervently don't. Cinema can be the most enriching and human and touching and uplifting of all the arts because it combines the use of vision and sound to entertain or enthrall, where it lacks the spontaneity and sheer interactivity of theatre it is equally not bound by convention nor limitation as there is. Cinema can move me to laughter and tears simultaneously- just think about that for a moment- it can educate and challenge me, it can be beautiful or ugly or repulsive or charming or all of these things and more, moving between them in an eye-blink. Cinema can be anything and everything to everyone and anyone, it is a wondrous and limitless gift to humanity. I love it, I love thinking about it and writing about it and talking about it. I love reading about it. But I love nothing more than enjoying it when it is done really well.

Which brings me back nowhere at all near to the film in question, The Damned United. I just wanted to say all of that to make it clear that what follows is specific and subjective, applicable only to The Damned United and nothing beyond that limitation. Because The Damned United is a shabby, patronising, condescending, dumbed-down, own goal of a novelization. It is not by any means the worst film of the year, or probably even of the week. It is okay. But it is not at all worthy of the fine novel upon which it is based- notwithstanding the excellence of Michael Sheen, dear old Tim Spall and Jim Broadbent.

The Damned United book- a fictional account of real events- is a tumultous account of a man's hubris and paranoia and debilitating inner demons. It takes real-life relationships and contorts them into something strange and unrecognisable, where hate becomes obsessional and from there becomes a strange sort of adoration and admiration. It takes genuine events and distinguishes the pain and suffering involved from the mundanity, and then it takes that pain and exposes it and records the results. The book takes great liberties with personalities and memories and real events, it is written by a man (David Peace) who clearly doesn't give a fuck what people think of him- all he wants to do is to take whatever talent he has and apply it to his craft and create the best fucking book that he possibly can irrespective of the cost. It is genuinely a fucking magnificent book and what makes it special is that Devil-may-care attitude (common to both the authorship of the novel and its subject) which facilitates the taking of great liberties and the general fuck off which is signalled to anyone who doesn't agree. And that I don't give a fuck-ism is precisely what the film lacks.

The Damned United film is twee and nice. Everyone has their foibles but they're ultimately nice people and their motivation, however selfish or spiteful the act, is always clear and understandable. That may very well be what real life is like, but it makes for a fucking dull film. And this turns out to be a fucking dull film based on a gripping real-life story that is still within living memory. Made by a lot of the people involved in making The Queen it suffers from the same kind of excellent attention to detail at the expense of intrigue or drama. When I say attention to detail, I mean costumes and sets and cars and so on. I do not include some of the frankly hilariously bad casting decisions, nor some of the appalling players wigs. Stephen Graham is a good actor with an excellent range but he is physically incapable of convincing as a footballer of any description, never mind as the wiry Bremner. Likewise the feller roped in to play Johnny Giles was wisely kept in the background- this may well be because the real Johnny Giles isn't afraid to go to court but it helps because he is bloody awful in the role.

And so the situation is thus: life throws up a fascinating, bizarre but all-too-predictable scenario; Peace twists and expands it into a dark, compelling work of fiction; the director Tom Hooper takes out all of the darkness and reads the original scenario as a tragi-comic love story between Clough and his assistant. 3/10

The Class / Entre Les Murs (2008)

Plenty to admire here. It's a mockumentary which is utterly convincing- it must be largely improvised- and never dull or predictable. It takes the premise of a multicultural suburban Paris classroom as a representation of modern-day France and examines the issues of culture-clashes, respect, authority and autonomy, language and changing standards.

The comedy 'mockumentary' has been done brilliantly (Spinal Tap and The Office for example) but to use the format for a serious subject is a new one on me. Or, at least, I can't think of any other good examples off the top of my head in recent years. It isn't quite verité, it isn't neo-realism; it is a 'mockumentary'. In the culture of reality TV in which we find ourselves, the danger is that any great new ideas are swept aside amongst the deluge of mediocre ones and The Class, though not strictly TV oriented, suffers a little from that. How many people would turn away from this having been bombarded with similar 'straight' documentaries before? That said I don't think whether it gets bums on seats is a fair way of judging the film, on its own terms it's a success.

Taken purely at face value the film is good. A year in the life of a class of rowdy teenagers; sometimes shocking, sometimes touching, sometimes sad, sometimes uplifting. It isn't a Hollywood-style tale of redemption, of bad kids coming good against all the odds because their teacher imbues in them a real sense of self-worth by teaching them about Wagner's Ring Cycle or Chaucer. The kids aren't bad, they're real. Confused, pretentious, a bit muddled, a bit angry and a bit scared. They change, they grow up, they get confused about different things. And their teacher? François Bégaudeau (author of the source novel playing a version of himself), well he's just as confused and frustrated as the kids are- a good man trying to do a difficult job in spite of the handicaps that simply being a human being bring. If the film ends on an up-note, and the classroom relations appear terminally soured after the expulsion of Soulemayne which François tried his hardest to prevent, it comes with the end-of-year pupils versus teachers kickabout. This isn't redemption, this isn't valedictory, this is the exuberant joy that the year is finally over and the holidays are upon them. There may well have been a touching scene where the teacher handed out spiral-bound copies of the pupils' "self-portraits" (the only learning exercise that he was shown to be able to get Soulemayne involved in all year) to the class, but it was small beer compared to what had gone before. François, a good teacher and a good man, in his forlorn attempts to engage the pupils in learning French spoke to them as a teacher and as a peer. Each approach failed, the teacher couldn't persuade them to care about the use of the correct words in the correct context and the peer was never forgiven for one slip where he used the wrong word in the wrong context. That was a wonderfully subtle parallel, I felt.

Beyond the classroom (funnily enough the direct translation of the original title is "between the walls") the film's dialogue on the issues of integrating multiple communities whilst retaining French identity reflects a wider national debate. The issues are identified and examined without conclusions being drawn. The class may be predominantly white and French but a disproportionate amount of time is spent on the minorities and their issues with language, culture and identity. Soulemayne (of Malian heritage) is troublesome and disruptive, isolating himself from the others because of his scholastic difficulties and his feelings of inadequacy. He responds to feelings isolation by becoming further withdrawn, sullen and non-communicative, it is a vicious circle that is a not totally unrepresentative of the responses of minority communities as a whole. Carl (of Caribbean heritage) expresses confusion over his nationality- sometimes describing himself as French and at other times as Caribbean. He is more hostile towards other minorities than the French pupils when he sees them getting more attention. Rabah (Moroccan) feels excluded on the grounds of both his heritage and his Islamic faith. Wei (of Chinese parents) faces language difficulties which restrict his development and, we learn, his mother is threatened with deportation which will jeopardise his promising academic career. The mother of one French pupil complains that his development is being restricted by the 'slower learners' in the class. Everyone has issues, everyone feels entitled to point the finger at the pupils (communities) that are too blame and none will acknowledge their own faults.

Dramatic, well acted, phenomenally edited, profound, funny and entertaining. 9/10

Duplicity (2009)

I have a weakness for caper movies. Perhaps I fancy myself as an arch-mastermind or something, I've never really thought about it. Whatever the reason is, I gravitate towards them and have a propensity to really enjoy them. This one is shit, though. It's not the best premise in the world- two ex-intelligence agency spooks make a killing in corporate espionage by playing one business off against another- but I've seen great films with far less of a plot than that. And in Roberts, Owen, Wilkinson and Giamatti the acting talent is certainly there. Visually too it's fine if all-too-similar to a dozen other movies you'll see this year.

But it's so leaden-footed, it lacks any zing! The (frankly all-too-obvious) denouement takes forever to arrive and underwhelm you. And the circuitous route the movie takes to get there- with it's chopped-up time-line and twist-on-a-twist narrative- is tedious and banal. The screenplay isn't complicated, it's just really badly transferred to the screen. Tony Gilroy's direction is lazy, the soundtrack is flat and uninspiring, the stars are sleepwalking with Wilkinson woefully underused and the film ends up a flabby mess.

And it's such a shame because a good, punchy movie about big corporations screwing themselves up through myopic greed could have really ridden the zeitgeist and got bums on seats. Duplicity isn't anything like as clever as it would like to think, nor anything like as inscrutable as the ham-fisted direction makes it appear. 2/10

Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)

My wife, who I love more dearly with every passing day, has an unerring knack of choosing the worst films in the world. The only saving grace about her selecting this pile of abject, risible, insultingly unfunny wank is that she had already seen Marley and Me on her own in the week and I know that I don't have that to come. This is so bad that I feel morally offended that any of the clowns involved- the squeaky fat one, the gargoyle-faced one, the one with all of the brothers- hasn't come out and publicly apologised for it. It's a comedy-horror with no comedy or horror in it. The plot, which was written on the back of a soggy beermat, is thus: 'give the film a title to get teenage boys interested and make it look like a Lynx advert with a couple of flashes of nipple'. This is so bad that even Paul Ross won't like it. 0/10. That's being generous.

Bronson (2009)

I just didn't see the point of this tawdry little film. Presumably the backers saw the figures for Bronson's autobiography and fancied a slice of the pie. If so, then they must have been a little disappointed to see that the Director spent their money on something which is too arty to be popular and too exploitative to be arty. And the Daily Star-reading demographic will not be happy to see Tom Hardy's cock flaccidly waving at them from the screen either, not one little bit.

And it's a real tragedy for Hardy because this was his big break and he gives his performance everything he has. But Bronson is such an irretrievable mess that he must feel like he's scored the best goal of his career when his side were already 9-0 down and limping towards relegation. His by-turns over-dramatic and bemused performance is excellent and he huffs magnificently too- notwithstanding the fact that he doesn't age a day between 1974 and the present (as my friend Tony D said, the time-line of the film was almost incomprehensible anyway).

Yes, it's a muddled and befuddled mess of a movie- albeit with some nice authentic settings- with no clear vision of what it wants to say. It is a character study that reveals nothing of the character it studies. This is the real achievement of Tom Hardy, he gives a great performance even though the script gives him nothing to work on. In his head Britain's most violent prisoner is a celebrity; but although infamy and celebrity have become pretty interchangeable terms since the mid-90s and the Loaded-fueled rise of celebrity criminals, this doesn't explain why he would have spent most of the 70s and 80s carving out the reputation that allowed him to gain a bit of space in the tabloids. And there's the rub- this is a film which repeats the same scene over and over. Bronson either starts a fight or takes someone hostage with no intention beyond committing the act itself, this leads to even harsher incarceration and he has to co-operate (presumably for a period of months maybe years) before he gets the opportunity to do it again and repeat the action. Well fuck me, that's interesting isn't it?

The supporting characters in this film are all caricatures the blinded-by-loyalty Mother, the flamboyantly gay bare-fist fighting promoter, the flamboyantly gay Uncle, the flamboyantly gay art teacher, the 'Allo 'Allo comedy Nazi style prison governor, the wimpish prison librarian, brain-dead thuggish prison guards and so on. It may very well be how Bronson sees the world and this may very well be the point of the film but is that really what's going on? Isn't it just a shorthand means of making Bronson seem understandable, maybe even laudable in comparison? If you went into the film with the idea that Bronson is some kind of larger-than-life maverick, standing up to the man and refusing to compromise- then you could take that message from it. But he's actually pitiful and the Director (Nicolas Winding Refn) steers the audience away from that conclusion by putting that sentiment in the mouth of the least sympathetic character on show and having him deliver it with a weedy sneer.

The comparative exaltation of the lead character is no more sharply demonstrated than during his incarceration at Rampton (a secured institution for the mentally ill). The inmates are pretty disgracefully exhibited as comedy figures as a means of rationalising Bronson's attempt to kill the least appealing of them in order to secure his transfer back to prison. The cinematic portrayal of the mentally ill is a tough balancing act to get right when you try really hard since their behaviours are necessarily incongruous and bizarre, but the fact remains that they are ill. If you look at the behaviour of, say, Martini or Scanlon in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest it isn't normal, but it isn't portrayed as a fucking joke either. Bronson has a scene where an inmate defecates into his hand and then slowly, for maximum comic effect smears it on his face. It is designed to raise a repulsed laugh in the audience. Look at him, he's crazy, how funny! Woop woop! It's disgusting. When the inmates are shown enjoying a disco and dancing badly it is designed to make Bronson's choice of attempted murder appear to be the best course of action. What the fuck is this?

And that's the big problem I have with the movie. It is as badly constructed and misconceived a film as I've seen anyway, but it is also morally repellant. Notwithstanding the great lead performance and some pretty good technical stuff, this is a horrid 0/10.

On 21st April (about a month after I first saw this) I boosted it to 1/10 on the basis of the great lead performance.

Hush (2009)

Low-budget horror films; the easiest type of film to make and yet the hardest of all to make well. There are, as Wes Craven observed and had great fun with, rules that horror films must follow. Follow too many and the whole thing descends into farce (like My Bloody Valentine 3D which I saw last month) but put too few in and the audience won't follow you where you're trying to lead them. It's a difficult balancing act, especially for a first-time director. What Hush does well is to put in just enough schlock and horror convention- you never see the bad guy's face, for example, and the girl suddenly hammering on the window makes you jump out of your seat- but it retains enough intelligence to elevate it above your typical fare. And so when the bad guy dies and then doesn't spring back to life and die again three or four more times, it feels a bit weird. It's certainly right and commendable, but a bit disorientating- like a post-match interview where a player quotes Proust.

The opening scenes have a lot of back-story to cram in and so we endure rather forced conversation between William Ash (impressive as Zakes- by the way, Zakes? That's just bizarre) and Christine Bottomley (his disillusioned girlfriend Beth). It's a blatant exposition but in a first time writer-director I'm not fussed, he'll sort that no bother. Against the backdrop of their relationship breakdown and misguidedly interfering local policemen (when will they learn to trust the kids?) they stumble upon a trafficking ring with Beth being kidnapped by them. Obviously the story is nothing to write home about but it's okay. It's relatively plausible anyway.

The tension builds pretty well- dark rainy nights with faceless men chasing you to the accompaniment of bass-heavy music always do that- and there are a nice couple of twists and surprises with some pretty gory incidents. It never verges into self-parody and doesn't overplay it's hand, the Director does just enough of everything to be effective. It's pretty well measured and even if it's not really my cup of tea, it's impressive and economical for what it is.

If only the handheld camera used for much of the opening fifty minutes would have held still or focused upon what we were hearing I'd have loved it. 7/10, keep your eye on Tonderai and Ash.

First Blood (1982)

This movie is unfairly remembered because of the misquote "don't push me"- it was "don't push it", is that so hard to remember?- and the increasingly ludicrous sequels it spawned. Even the name of the film has now been changed in the same way that the original Star Wars has, this is now apparently called "Rambo: First Blood". Fuck that, why would I go along with that. There are similarly named characters with vaguely similar characteristics in the sequels but no other similarities. This is an unfairly maligned film; much, much better than its reputation. In First Blood a Vietnam veteran Green Beret John Rambo (Stallone, obviously) is the innocent victim of a bullying small-town Sheriff (Brian Dennehy) who simply picks a fight with the wrong man. Rambo escapes and takes to the woods where he is hunted by policemen and the National Guard with machine guns and helicopters. It's a Western, a modern-day Western. Rambo goes to great lengths to avoid killing any of his hunters, despite the constant and excessive provocation, the threat upon his life and despite suffering flashbacks to his torture in a Vietnam prisoner of war camp.

There is no deep underlying message in First Blood, unless you count 'beware who you fuck about with'. This is simply a documentation of an innocent man fighting for survival, waging a war of attrition and defying overwhelming odds to survive everything that is thrown at him. It is, to some extent, an elegy to machismo. Stallone is portraying every reactionary, right-wing, frustrated, pot-bellied, balding, middle-aged man's dream- taking on everyon who has ever stopped him doing whatever he wants, wherever he wants with whoever he wants and however he wants. Just like Michael Douglas's D-Fens Foster in Falling Down, Rambo is a wet-dream for the insecure and the impotent. That its appeal goes beyond that, however, says more for its quality than its limited macho hand-job appeal would have you believe.

And do you know what else? Stallone is really, really good in this. Not in the fat, lumbering "look at me, I'm stupid" way that he mistakes for acting in the likes of Copland and Rocky Balboa, but in a genuinely convincing, steely, haunted way. At no point does Stallone's performance fail him- even his 'tormented by flashbacks' scenes or his climactic breakdown where I expected him to struggle are fine. He even looks handsome and hadn't yet bloated himself into the caricature of a man that he became. This is as good as it would ever get for Sly. The second-stringers are solid and the direction by Ted Kotcheff (who I only know from the flimsy and disappointing Jane Fonda/George Segal comedy Fun With Dick and Jane) is straightforward enough to allow the story to work.

It's a real pity that Rambo survived the film- he didn't survive the source novel- allowing a fine and intelligent movie became a bloated, dumb, crash-bang-wallop series. 7/10

Lantana (2001)

The real tragedy of Lantana is that we see the corpse of Valerie at the very outset. We know that she dies prematurely from the title sequence and thus are constantly looking out for clues or indicators from the director (Ray Lawrence). Had we not seen this, then our focus of our attention for the first hour would have been on the spreading and tangled influences of the lives and relationships within the film upon one another. The film would have then taken a darker, more sinister turn with the disappearance of Valerie and the playing out of people's lives and loves and choices and fears would have continued from there. It could have been almost Twin Peaks-y in the way that the malevolence and darkness slowly built while never obscuring the wider themes of the piece.

That said it is still a very good, very powerful film. Anthony LaPaglia leads as an emotionally-stunted, bullying policeman who jeopardises his marriage and family without thought and then comes to see the depth of that betrayal and the ramifications. This is juxtaposed with the lives of other people throughout the film and we see an interesting device whereby LaPaglia learns about himself and his life by interviewing suspects. Similarly, the therapist Valerie listens to her patients as a means of making sense of her own relationship and grief over her recently-murdered daughter.

The film is slow-moving and painstaking, you can imagine that it would drive people crazy in a multiplex. The themes of love and betrayal and the breakdown of trust are played out in situations where no-one is honest and no-one is solely to blame, there is no black and white and no clear moralising here. One of the characters utters the phrase "sometimes love isn't enough" and that could be the theme of the film. That said, the film also demonstrates that sometimes love is enough. The couple who retain their trust in one another throughout are the happiest as the film closes, the character who is least interested in trust and honesty but views relationships as a contest (Patrick, played by Peter Phelps) loses the game of his choosing. All of this without the issue of Valerie's disappearance and death- it is not a straightforward piece at all.

I really liked the confident direction and some of the visual touches- the coldness of the police station contrasted with the warmth of the homes for example- were tremendous, the unflinching portrayal of an unsympathetic situation, the attention paid to each aspect of each story- and the performances were excellent throughout (Kerry Armstrong as LaPaglia's wife Sonja was absolutely exceptional). All in all it was a great story with interesting undercurrents expertly told. 7/10- it would be 8 but for the opening giveaway!

The Trip (1967)

Not really sure why I hadn't seen this before. I went through a phase of really obsessing about the 'summer of love'. I was intrigued by psychedelia, acid, free love, Haight-Ashbury and all that shite. I also used to really love Jack Nicholson- still do to an extent- and so this should have been right up my street. What I really envied was the feeling that people seemed to have that everything was just about to get a whole lot better- a zeitgeist that probably lasted for a couple of weeks and no more. Wisdom and experience have taught me how false a dawn it was. The Paris riots, the Kennedy and King assassinations, Altamont, Kent State and everything that followed were bad enough, but learning how the Haight became full of broken-minded junkies almost overnight and how the whole thing allowed Nixon to get a stranglehold on America does sour the taste a little. So there's baggage accompanying this film. It isn't just a Corman exploitation flick (it is that, obviously) but it's a relic from a shattered dream. It represents the crushing of hope under the weight of the establishment, the man rules okay!

Excluding the context, how is it as a film? Well, a failure I guess. It's like being at a party where you're the only person who isn't drunk. There's a lot of fun being had but you aren't included and watching other people in an altered state isn't exactly rewarding. Peter Fonda (who undergoes the titular trip) sees things that scare him or make him feel euphoric or blow his mind, but we just see dwarves or mounted men in soft-focus. If the aim of the film is to replicate the LSD experience- whether for educational reasons as the introductory titles claim, or to make a quick buck like any other exploitation film- then it fails miserably. Except in the sense that LSD is a dissociative drug and I was anything but engaged.

What is interesting about The Trip is how it is almost a dry run for Easy Rider, lots of things that work well in that movie (the campfire scene, the counter-culture dialogue, the way the sunlight bleeds into the camera, the different film effects used, Fonda's dissatisfaction with the career/marriage conformist life and Hopper's monumental performance) are given a dry run here. And for that, it is important. So I forgive it for being a bit crap. 4/10

Watchmen (2009)

A film needs above all else to have a clear narrative. It is the single most important thing in determining whether a film is a success or a failure. I have read Watchmen. If I hadn't, like my friend Antony who I watched it with hasn't, I would almost certainly have been lost. He's brighter than me, though, so I think he got most of it. My biggest fear with Watchmen was that as an cultural icon it is so big and so influential and so revered that the film-makers would be crippled by fear of a backlash if they left anything out. Zack Snyder doesn't appear to have been crippled by fear, he just treated Moore's book as a storyboard and filmed exactly as it is drawn. Barely anything is removed and nothing whatsoever is added. And so there are moments when things do need clarifying; when a reader would flick back a few pages and check their understanding or refresh their memory or contextualise an event or a comment or check their understanding of who said what and when. That clarity never comes. Which leaves a two hour forty minute live action portrayal of something that was damn near perfect anyway. Would you buy a photograph of a lookalike of the Laughing Cavalier?

It's been said that Watchmen is unfilmable but that's bollocks. It can be done; but with courage and with invention. The worst ways to film this are to take out all of the darkness and malevolence (which this film does to some extent) or to take out all of the backstory but leave in the things which need that context (Snyder's film does that an awful lot). So it's too long, the screenplay is worthless and the direction utterly uninspired- what does that leave? The performances are cartoonish and 2D given by actors and actresses seemingly chosen for their physical resemblance to the drawn character (they could take a lesson from the casting in The Young Victoria there) but in truth they have little to work with- character arcs are only present in the original work when taken in the context of the backstory- other than Malin Akerman who conveys love, joy, fear and pain with the same blank face.

What is lost from the film- and this stuff is so pivotal that it can surely only have been a running length issue- are the dynamics between the characters, the whole story of the Minutemen, much of what happened to bring about and then ultimately to force the end of the Watchmen and the character detail for each of them. What is kept is every single drop of blood, pyrotechnic, punch, kick, insult and firework. I guess Snyder reveals his expectations of his audience right there.

It was a flawed idea from the start this and it could, I suppose, have been more infuriating and disappointing that it is. And the story is ingenious. And this is probably the best use of CGI in a live-action film I've seen. But it's still a 3/10 for me. May even have been less had I never read the book too!

Holiday on the Buses (1973)

This is the third On The Buses film, I got a bit confused after watching the first one (notes here) and should have been watching Mutiny On The Buses. D'oh! And of course you know what you're getting when you put one of these movies on- bawdy humour, outrageous set-pieces and very dated attitudes. It's just disposable daftness, no reason to get excited. In this film Blakey, Stan and Jack have all been sacked from the bus depot (by Grange Hill bastard/big-screen Hitler Mr Bronson no less!) and find employment on a holiday camp. As soon as Stan's family arrive to stay for a holiday the film continues in the usual vein, only in summer sunshine- that must be CGI surely!

The usual characters are augmented by a few seventies TV comedy stars (Wilfrid Bramble, Henry McGee, Arthur Mullard) and the change of scenery and fresh faces reinvigorate the format and make the film work pretty well for a while. It's unsustainable sadly, despite the film being less than an hour and a half long, and the film grows tired with the same jokes repeated as it limps towards the titles.

So, I enjoyed it- but I wouldn't want anyone to know that this is my kind of film. Especially as it features a shot of Olive's bare arse! 4/10

Conan the Destroyer (1984)

There is probably someone somewhere in the world who considers this to be the best movie ever made. Whoever he is (and let's face it, it's going to be a he) is a twat. But you can see why it would appeal to people because it chimes with a nostalgic view of the 80s- they were shit, I was there trust me- and because it has loads of sword and sorcery elements that a certain type of person really, really gets off on.

In truth this is a bag of wank. And what's worse is that the people involved don't seem to realise that they are making a bag of wank and are actually taking it seriously. Arnie, for example, really attempts to act in this one- except during the fight scenes where he struggles so badly with the choreography, blocking attacks before they're even made, that he loses all control of his face and looks like a boxer at the exact moment that his face-shape is distorted by a left-hook.

The film opens with an deep, husky voice-over played against blood-red footage of some mounted ancient or alien warriors going across a desert or a moon. The voice-over probably explained who they were and where they were headed or leaving but I can't remember. They then try and capture Arnie and a helium-voiced scrotum that he's stood near but the big Austrian batters them with a sword which seems most reluctant to draw blood. It turns out that they're with Ursa from Superman who dresses like the Wicked Queen from Snow White and promises to bring some girl or other back to life for Arnie if he completes some task or other. Ursa then tells a big black lad (whose height varies throughout the film) to go with them and then kill Arnie. Why she didn't just send him in the first place I don't know.

Anyway, we have Conan and the big lad and Conan's gimmer of a sidekick and some Princess or other going to steal some diamond that acts like a key. It was a curious thing in the 1980s to have characters paired-up with a ridiculous companion as if they would add light relief somehow and broaden the appeal. In fact these characters just fucked everyone off. I'm going to call this the Scrappy Doo phenomenon and it turns out that Conan's Scrappy Doo is a man whose real-life name is Tracey. There's an unfortunate fucker that you wouldn't want swap places with!

Right so where was I? Oh yes, the hard-right power-crazed sex-pest who allegedly needs to inflate his cock to have sex after years of steroid abuse and some other idiots are on some sort of quest. Along the way they pick up a mystical Oriental magician whose powers can't be up to much as he's about to be roasted alive on a spit when they find him and Grace Jones in a g-string. This is another time when I just can't be bothered to type any more. I just want to type "some stuff happens then some more stuff happens" because, frankly, who cares?

Then some other stuff happens with some crap special effects and that irritating Scrappy Doo feller doesn't die at any point and the one thing that stands out is Jack Cardiff's epic cinematography which is the one thing that keeps Conan The Destroyer from equalling Richard Fleischer's other disastrous big-budget movie Ashanti and gives it a 1/10.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002)

It's difficult to get this wrong. Such are the awesome achievements of the Funk Brothers and so great are the songs they played upon that the only way to balls it up would be to secure interviews only with the most peripheral of people (people who bought the records or went to the concerts and twenty-something pop writers) and to not have the rights to play the music. Being made at the time of a big Funk Brothers show in Detroit and having all of the surviving members on camera makes this well worth seeing.

If I'm honest, it's a bog-standard documentary: snippets of songs, talking heads pieces, the odd vox-pop with modern day soul stars and footage from the reunion show are interspersed with a chronological telling of their story. But that's fine, the very last thing this film needs is someone trying to be too clever. You don't wrap a gold bar in tinsel do you? The tough parts of the story aren't shied away from- Berry Gordy's ruthless and certainly questionable decision to dump the band and relocate Motown to LA or James Jamerson's sad descent into alcoholism and an early death.

What would I change about it? I may have wanted to hear from Berry Gordy- I think that's about all. A great testimony to a fine band.

And, in case you don't know (and shame on you if so) the Funk Brothers were Motown's house band and have played on more number 1 hit singles than the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, the Who and Elvis Presley combined. 9/10

The Young Victoria (2009)

I've seen about five films in a row without posting any notes on here, so they'll be necessarily brief. But that's okay, there's not too much to say about this really. It has sumptuous costumes and settings, is well acted in the main by some top European actors (and we should be thankful that Keira Knightly wasn't asked to portray the overweight monarch) and has a vaguely diverting story by the almost excellently named Julian Fellowes. But it's just a bit crap. Costume dramas tend to be, perhaps it's the period detail that distracts but I think it's more likely that the authentically stilted dialogue works against the building up of suspense or drama or intrigue unless it is really, really well written and rendered (as in David Lean's Great Expectations) for example.

Apart from that, there is always the problem- when making a biopic about a period of someone's life- about how to ensure that you leave nothing unresolved. Life simply isn't like that and only death can really finalise matters in the way that suits a movie. This issue is dealt with here by having half of the bad guys sent away and the remainder repenting having seen Albert take a bullet aimed at Victoria and realising that he's more of a brainbox, hero and all-round nice guy than the conniving German sausage they had originally taken him for. Simplistic and unsatisfying, especially in the case of Paul Bettany who had built his character's wolf-in-sheep's-clothing persona beautifully until he had to simply front up that Albert was tops with him. Albert, by the way, seems to have hair that changes colour from one scene to the next. I'll put it down to my eyesight but it could just be that it was inconsistently dyed or managed over the course of the shooting of the film.

So anyway, Emily Blunt is passable in the lead role (if miscast physically), Jim Broadbent- who has previously played the role of Albert- has a nice cameo with a great King William quiff, Miranda Richardson underplays the role of wicked Mother well and Mark Strong is both brooding and boring as the thoroughly 2D bad-guy Sir John Conroy. The whole thing is passably directed and the cinematography (by Hagen Bogdanski, the guy who did The Lives of Others) is markedly hit-and-miss, doing the easy things badly and the hard things well.

So it's better than I expected but, if I'm honest, still a failure. But a very pretty one. With some nice wigs and pairs of trousers on display throughout. It isn't quite the sum of it's parts, but it will do nice business at the Box Office. No-one's career will be any the worse for it and everyone's happy. Moderate ambitions, moderate achievement. 5/10

Cul-de-sac (1966)

I can't in all honesty tell you if this is supposed to be a comedy or a thriller or a psychological character drama. It has elements of them all but is neither one nor the other. I liked it a hell of a lot. But I don't think I quite got it. Whatever misgivings I have about Polanski the man- and I genuinely don't have an informed opinion, just concerns- he is an artist when it comes to film-making. If I was pushed to name the single best film I have ever seen I'd choose Polanski's Chinatown because it has everything that it possibly could have. Well this isn't a film of that calibre by any means, but it is a marker on the road to it. Filmed in sharp monochrome in an isolated Northumbrian castle the visuals are stunning (the DoP was Gilbert Taylor who had done Dr Strangelove and Ice Cold in Alex and would go on to do Flash Gordon, Star Wars and The Omen (1976)).

The main characters are retired businessman George (Donald Pleasance), his younger restless French wife Teresa (Françoise Dorléac) and a criminal intruder Richard (Lionel Stander- Max the gruff-voiced old guy from the titles of Hart to Hart) and much of the strength of the film stems from their interdependence and mutual loathing. George and Teresa are clearly unsuited, she appears to be conducting an affair with a neighbour which he condones for fear that confrontation may mean the loss of her. They are bored of one another and appear bored of their life of isolation- hence the scene where Teresa dresses and makes up George as a girl. Richard enters their lives as one of two wounded criminals seeking refuge. They arrive in a presumably stolen driving instructor's car (this is never explained and it's these little details that make the film so interesting) and are soon cut off from leaving by the incoming tide. Richard's partner Albie dies and the dynamics of the film changes- Richard buries him without a flicker of remorse and then we see the three relationships build (or in the case of the married couple disintegrate), learning more about them by from what they don't say than what they do. The focus of all three's attention is the due arrival of criminal boss Katelbach, by the standard theatrical device of concentrating upon someone that the audience hasn't seen Cul-de-sac eases up the tension a little.

The tension is broken when some friends of George arrives unannounced. Richard pretends (extremely unconvincingly) to be a handyman/butler and the guests, including a young Jacqueline Bissett who called herself Jackie in those days, make themselves at home. Their spoilt young child Nicholas runs amok ("That Froggy bitch pulled my ear off!"), William Franklyn schmoozes Teresa, Marion looks down her nose at everyone and everything and her husband Philip simply bores everyone. Anticipating the arrival of Katelbach, George ushers them out at first abruptly and then with great rudeness.

The denouement of the film includes one of the all-time screen deaths and rounds the whole thing off wonderfully. It is bleak and bizarre and unsettlingly neurotic. The frustration and alienation that each character feels is brilliantly conveyed. 8/10

Incidentally, isn't this Japanese promo poster rather wonderful:

Critters (1986)

Something unusual now. My friend Shane asked me if I would watch this specifically so that it could appear on this blog. I find that a bit odd but he's a nice bloke and comes from West Bromwich, so I obliged happily. I say happily, I obliged then watched it and it wasn't a happy experience. It isn't a really bad film, it's just a bit crap. But it starts brilliantly. Not the film itself, the credits- when Billy Zane has the most sensible name of any of the actors involved then you know that you're watching a once in a lifetime credit sequence. Seriously, look at the names!

M. EMMET WALSH

BILLY GREEN BUSH

DON OPPER

MICHAEL LEE GOGIN

DOUGLAS KOTH

ART FRANKEL

MONTROSE HAGINS

Why the hell aren't these people stars while boringly-named actors like Will Smith and Tom Hanks have Oscars and multi-million dollar pay-packets thrown at them? It's enough to make you weep. Billy Green Bush must curse at his petrol pump every hour of every single day. And who can blame him? Look at those fucking names.

The film is pretty shit obviously. It's a Gremlins cash-in, without the wit or the cuteness but with added gore and a sci-fi element. None of the actors are up to much, the plot elements (drunken local who knows the truth but no-one believes him, dysfunctional family learn that they really love each other, world-weary local sheriff rolls back the years to save the day...) are all pretty standard. In fact I could probably write this film myself by cut and pasting from any five scripts from the same period.

On the other hand, I doubt that I'd cast 80's DJ turned TV presenter Pat Sharpe in a lead role. 2/10 (great cast names and short running time).

On The Buses (1971)

On The Buses was a popular and indeed populist British TV sitcom of the late 1960s/early 1970s and, as was common at the time, spawned a number of spin-off films which were either extensions of the premise or else rehashes with two or three episodes strung together and re-enacted as a film. In the main, they were inferior to the original product- startlingly so in many cases- but On The Buses was actually a little better.

What distinguishes the film isn't any greater sophistication, loftier ambition or production values- it is the budget. For a programme about a bus driver and his conductor (and their bawdy shenanigans) being unable to stretch to many external shoots obviously prevented logistical and writing difficulties. In the film, however, we see Stan crashing his bus into a phone box and a bus shelter. We see him take a driving test on a skid pan, injuring Blakey in the process, and we get to see Stan and Jack trick several women drivers into driving their buses onto the motorway. Hilarity prevails! Okay, so I'm being a little facetious but it is still enjoyable in its own way.

I had a really interesting conversation with a guy about British cinema in the 70s last year. He completely wrote it off. He pointed to the sex comedies and sit-com spin-offs and contrasted it to what was coming out of Hollywood at the time. When a man says "while Michael was having Fredo whacked we were watching Robin Askwith hiding in wardrobes", then you have to concede that he has a point. But the argument was skewed, that was the best Hollywood would ever get and British cinema was in a rut but still produced the likes of Get Carter, The Go-Between, Sunday Bloody Sunday, The Wicker Man, Barry Lyndon, Paper Tiger and Don't Look Now. On top of this I argued, and still argue, that there is some merit in the likes of On The Buses. Movies, it is sometimes forgotten, are made to entertain and this is an entertaining movie. The characters, familiar from the TV show, are well-drawn (if a little one-dimensional) and played consummately- not least by the underrated Michael Robbins who plays Arthur. The storyline, which was little more than an excuse to string together some gags and the action sequences above, is actually pretty interesting and resonant of the time. Future historians would do well to dig out On The Buses and Carry On At Your Convenience if they want to learn all about Britain at the time.

The bus company, being understaffed are exploited by the drivers who do not have to fear the sack. They choose to recruit women drivers and the men (portrayed as the heroes) try and force them out so that they can go back to their cushy, well-paid lifestyles. In the meantime they are still successfully chatting up every attractive young girl in sight despite being middle-aged, out of shape and unattractive (Jack's teeth!). What makes it so resonant is the 'battle of the sexes' angle- more specifically the blatantly sexist way that it is portrayed. It's all done in good fun and there's no malice to get offended about; if you believe anyone would take seriously a film that suggests all women are moaners who are afraid of spiders and have no road sense then you've got bigger problems than this cheeky number.

The point is that this is low and sometimes painfully telegraphed humour, but funny nonetheless. Is it any less worthy than, say, the films of Mel Brooks? 5/10

The Queen (2006)

I didn't enjoy this at all. It was arid and joyless and unengaging. I found myself thinking, to my shame, that Mirren played her role excellently as did Sheen but I just didn't care about any of it. The premise of the film is actually really interesting, though, so I can't put my finger on what went wrong. Probably a combination of the dull and turgid dialogue (accurate though it doubtless is) and the styling of the film. The actual footage used may well give the film an authenticity, but it also highlights the fact that this is a dramatisation and compromises the whole premise.

Interestingly I read Alastair Campbell's diaries last year and the most vivid chapters concern this period. The Queen chimes almost exactly with events as Campbell described them meaning that either he is spot on or that, as the only published diaries of one of the prominent players at the time, they are the main source. If so, they're far more interesting to read than see- even if the film does offer a better insight from the Monarch's perspective.

I was also really distracted by Dudley Smith from L.A. Confidential playing Prince Philip (badly). Mind you any distractions were welcome by the time he appeared. The only bright spot was Blair's famous hand-kiss gaffe making it on screen. Oh I'm bored just writing about it. 2/10, two marks for the performances. A real wasted opportunity.

Frankenstein (1910)

This was the oldest film that I could find to watch. I believe that is the oldest surviving horror film ever made. I wanted to watch it to see just how unsophisticated films were when they began and, by implication, how sophisticated last night's The Fall of the House of Usher from 1928 was. This is pretty rough to be honest- the still camera captures some theatrical acting and the monster costume is lousy- but is surely the inspiration for Carry On Screaming's Oddbod.

It also takes liberties with the text by changing the method of creation- the monster emerges from a cauldron full of ingredients- and the ending. But with the limitations upon the film-maker, that was necessary. In fact, Director J. Searle Dawley's new ending is fantastic, the intertitle had said "Instead of a perfect human being, the evil in Frankenstein's mind creates a monster" and the monster we see attack first the Doctor and then Elizabeth disappears as it looks in the mirror and is replaced by the Doctor himself. If you thought Fight Club was a twist, then it was by no means a new one. Frankenstein is the monster! It's a great way to tie up the story and also to bring into play the internal good v evil wrangling from the original text.

The creation of the monster is remarkably well executed for the period and the tinting- brown for storyline and blue for horror is an interesting idea. It works far better than I'd expected. 8/10

Here it is on YouTube.

Life Is Sweet (1990)

It's a lovely film this. Bittersweet, engaging and wonderfully performed. A little vignette on small town English life from Mike Leigh which tackles big issues with sensitivity and small issues with wit. The plot of the film doesn't really go anywhere (a man is conned into buying a crappy burger van, his wife and daughter argue then make up and his friend opens a restaurant but has no customers) but the beauty is in the way that you enjoy and are enriched by this brief overview of the characters' lives. The dialogue has a natural flow and zippiness to it and each of the characters is well drawn, memorable and believeable with tics and affectations like Alison Steadman's nervous laugh at the end of each sentence or Claire Skinner's nasal sigh- the delivery of a world-weary seventeen year old. Even the minor characters like Aubrey and Patsy are comic characters without being caricatures. As with all of Mike Leigh's films this is the product of the lengthy and largely improvised rehearsals he insists upon. The benefits are on screen forever and their value in what transpires in the film are immeasurable.

The whole thing looks great. Granted the opportunity for grand widescreen footage of thousands of Zulu warriors on a majestic hillside or tracking shots through the crowded streets of New York are few and far between, but it looks thoroughly authentic. The scenes in this film are beautifully conceived and shot to imbue the whole thing with a kind of gritty resplendence- there are scenes in a scrapyard with a gaudily coloured van in the middle that look almost like a kind of fin de siècle artwork.

Leigh's film is warm and entertaining but is also unsentimental and matter-of-fact in its presentation of the characters. No devices are employed to elicit sympathy, as if that would cheapen or undermine the whole thing. Bravo for that. And yet his film is certainly empathetic towards Jane Horrocks' bulimic Nicola, the most externally unappealing character, and her struggles. The harrowing scenes of her emotional torture- writ large with her wringing, fidgeting panic-are finely balanced, steering clear of overbearing sensationalism, not played in adjacence to light comedy. It is an excellently judged treatment of a tough topic.

And the small journey which each of the characters- not least Natalie- goes upon allows them to succeed in small ways and fail in comic ones. Life is indeed sweet. Tough, painful, mundane and yet touched with light and love and happiness. Life Is Sweet is much like life itself. 10/10