| SPRING CLEANING : Mar/Apr roundup including 'Kingdom of Heaven', 'Radio On', 'Peeping Tom' etc |
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| Tuesday, 26 April 2005 | |
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SCROLL DOWN FOR Radio On - Peeping Tom - The Ring Two The Call of the Blood - Human Law - The Woman He Scorned The Assassination of Richard Nixon KINGDOM OF HEAVEN : [6/10] : USA (US/UK/Spn) 2005 : Ridley SCOTT : 146 mins seen at Odeon cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 26th April - press show The success of Scott's Gladiator gave Hollywood the green light to return to one of its favourite, long-dormant genres, the historical spectacular - but with Troy being regarded as a domestic under-achiever, King Arthur doing so-so and Alexander bellyflopping (King Arthur and Troy made their money overseas), this school of film-making is in danger of falling back into disrepute. So there's an awful lot riding on Kingdom of Heaven, which dramatises the Siege of Jerusalem in the late 12th century - one of the key episodes in the Crusades. Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to get a Crusades project off the ground in the late eighties, but Christians-vs-Muslims was always tricky subject-matter - events of 11th September 2001 made it even trickier still. So hats off to Scott for grasping the nettle - needless to say, 21st century considerations ensure we get a picture which is scrupulously even-handed, presenting Saladin (Ghassan Massoud) as a wise, noble adversary for the western warriors who we are invited to cheer on (as opposed to Marton Csokas's grindingly one-dimensional, black-bearded French villain). But we've really seen this kind of stuff many times before - Scott's direction is competent but feels rather second-hand, with its muted dark-hued colour palette (and moodily tinted skies), juddery-cam battle sequences, elegaic slomo and soundtrack packed full of wailing angelic choirs. The Siege itself, though impressive, pales alongside Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith from the Lord of the Rings pictures, and Orlando Bloom (as blacksmith-turned-knight Balian) is a much less magnetic central figure than, say, Gladiator's Russell Crowe. He's backed up by the usual strong, Brit-heavy supporting cast - Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson (in Troy mode), Liam Neeson (in Gangs of New York mode) David Thewlis, Jon Finch (!) etc. But the real scene-stealer is Edward Norton, who provides the voice for the leprosy-afflicted King Baldwin of Jerusalem, his deformed features hidden behind a sleek silver mask. This gentle-voiced, spooky presence is just about the only really original feature of this watchable but overlong would-be epic - so humourless that many audiences may find themselves secretly longing for the breezy irreverence of Brian Helgeland's daft A Knight's Tale. Scott, meanwhile, may well become a victim of his own Gladiator success - Matchstick Men, the seemingly 'slight' comedy he slotted in between more 'heavyweight' projects, was arguably the best and most enjoyable thing he's ever done. It's more than a little depressing to see him abandon the zing and freshness that made that movie such a delight, and return instead to this same-old-same-old territory... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- seen in March 2005 RADIO ON : [9/10] : UK (UK/W.Ger) 1979 : Christopher PETIT : 102 mins seen at Brewery Arts Centre cinema, Kendal (UK), 15th March - public show Quite unlike anything else in British cinema before or since, this debut by former Time Out film-section editor - and sharp critic - Petit is a monochrome road-movie in which a modishly alienated young man (David Beames - whatever happened to him?) drives from London to Bristol to investigate his brother's suicide. Shades of Get Carter are presumably entirely deliberate, given the fact that Petit reviewed that picture for Time Out - he described it as "one of the relatively few British films of the period... to exploit its setting to advantage." And if he does nothing else, Petit certainly exploits all of his settings to maximum advantage: London, Bristol, Weston-Super-Mare and all points in between. Radio On was famously co-funded by Wim Wenders, who also loaned Petit his cinematographer Martin Schafer and actress wife Lisa Kreuzer - but Wenders himself only very rarely hit these sorts of heights. Unashamedly highbrow, making terrific use of music (fans of Kraftwerk will be in siebter himmel; even Sting comes across as cool) and with unexpected shafts of sly humour, the picture is especially fascinating as a portrait of a defeated, winter-of-discontent late-seventies Britain poised on the verge of the Thatcherite apocalypse. "Get out (to the DDR) while you can!" is the not-so-subtle message. PEEPING TOM : [8/10] : UK 1960 : Michael POWELL : 109 mins seen at Hebden Bridge Picture House, Hebden Bridge (UK), 17th March - public show Quite unlike anything else in British cinema before or since, Powell's garish, deliciously perverse proto-slasher pic stands up at least as well as its better-known trans-Atlantic cousin Psycho. Intriguingly, both pictures kill off their nominal female lead - Moira Shearer gets second billing behind sweaty Karl Bohm, and while she only appears in one scene before meeting her grisly end, it's an audaciously extended sequence in which she gets off to show all those dance moves she perfected for Powell over a decade before in The Red Shoes. But the most prominent distaff performer on view is Anna Massey (12 years before Hitchcock's Psycho) as a spirited young gal who starts to suspect that her young live-in landlord (Bohm) isn't quite the mild-mannered gent he seems. She's spot on - but to explain exactly why would be unfair to a picture about which the less the viewer knows beforehand, the better. It isn't giving anything away, however, to point out that there's rather a lot of humour in what is fundamentally a strikingly bleak journey into psychosis (mostly from Shirley Anne Field as a talentless starlet and Esmond Knight as her exasperated director); and that Maxine Audley steals the picture with her phenomenal performance as Massey's blind, whiskey-swigging mother. Two mysteries persist: why is the picture called 'Peeping Tom', when Bohm's character isn't really a 'peeping tom at all'? And why does Boehm's character - named Mark Lewis, born and bred in Blighty, speak with such a pronounced German accent? ........................................... for reviews of other "archive" films click here THE RING TWO : [5/10] : USA 2005 : Hideo NAKATA : 110 mins seen at Vue cinema, Leeds (UK) 29th March - press show So-so sequel sees Naomi Watts' underworked journalist Rachel and her creepy young son escaping the big city - and, they hope, Sadako's curse - for the quiet life in a Fog-type village up on the north-west pacific coast. They should be so lucky - within days, a creepy videotape surfaces which suggests that Sadako isn't going to give up without a fight. In fact, Nakata soon dispenses with the whole possessed-VHS angle altogether, instead using water as a channel for hauntings and possessions - to the extent that we may wonder whether he's trying to dovetail the Ring series with his Japanese hit Dark Water, both of them based on novels by Koji Suzuki. Despite some serious lapses of judgement along the way - the attack by CGI deer seems to have been spliced in from another film altogether - the screenplay has some intriguing aspects, not least the possibility that Rachel is suffering from some kind of Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy delusion which is causing her to inflict harm on her son. Unfortunately scriptwriter Ehren Kruger is too hidebound by the requirements of Hollywood horror blockbusters, which have no room for multi-layered ambiguity. Given a little more leeway, a better writer might have been able to maintain the possibility that it's all in Rachel's mind and deliver the thrills and spills - but Kruger never comes close to squaring that particular circle. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8th British Silent Film Festival Nottingham THE CALL OF THE BLOOD : [6/10] : L'appel du sang : France (Fr-UK) 1920 (1919?) : Louis MERCANTON : 71 mins At the age of 26, the superlatively successful songwriter/actor/matinee-idol Ivor Novello (played by Jeremy Northam in Gosford Park) made his somewhat underwhelming screen debut as a character referred to "the embodiment of youth" in this overheated melodrama mainly set in a small Sicilian fishing village. The windswept locale provides a strikingly scenic backdrop for an uneven, intriguingly-structured, coincidence-heavy tale of violent jealousy, mismatched lovers and unrequited passions, the highlight being the moment when Novello is thrown off a particularly photogenic cliff-top walkway. We also get to see late-teens Rome (including the Coliseum) and an unspoilt Taormina - several decades before the film festival hit town. HUMAN LAW : [7/10] : Tragodie einer Ehe : UK/Germany 1926 : Maurice ELVEY : 84 mins Nearly eight decades on, this UK-German co-production (which appears to have been filmed entirely "on the continent") remains compelling viewing. The plot begins in a fancy big-city hotel, with a young chap chaperoning his elderly mother. His attention is drawn to a couple who've just arrived on their wedding night - the husband conspicuously older than the wife. Young chap takes a shine to wife, much to husband's displeasure. Complications ensue - and very far from the comic ones which this set-up would seem to promise. Unfair to say any more, however, as much of the pleasure derives in the unexpected twists of the skilfully-choreographed plot. Proto-feminist and with a Fritz Lang-ian interest in crime, punishment, crowds and conscience, Human Law features several striking sequences - most notably a very unusual dinner in which one of the diners has just been released from a long spell "inside". And, knowing R W Fassbinder's ravenous appetite for German cinema, one presumes that the pre-echoes of The Marriage of Maria Braun are far from coincidental... THE WOMAN HE SCORNED : [6/10] : The Way of Lost Souls aka Rue des enfants abandonees aka Son dernier tango* : UK (UK/Fr) 1929 : Paul CZINNER : 90 mins Legendary silent-screen vamp Pola Negri is terrific as a reformed prostitute in this UK-French co-production, filmed in Cornwall, Marseille and the Channel Islands. The geographical dislocation (British cops in white helmets?!) only adds to the timeless, fable-like quality of this can-a-leopard-change-her-spots tale in which a stolid lighthouse-keeper (uber-impassive Swiss-German Hans Rehmann, seemingly auditioning for der Golem) tries to save a flighty good-time-girl (Negri) only for her past (Warwick Ward in full-on 'cad' mode) to catch up with them both. There are some intriguing compositions and shots here and there, and one outstanding, slyly comic "fade" into the not-so-happy couple's wedding day. But this is fundamentally very melodramatic stuff, old-fashioned even for 1929, and feels like an hours' material dragged out to 90 minutes - material as flimsy and shopworn as our heroine's laddered tights. But the indefatigable Negri more than makes up for any stodginess, her vivaciousness all the more conspicuous alongside the uber-impassive Swiss-German Rehmann, who seems to be auditioning for the role of der golem. Negri barrels the picture along almost single-handed, displaying the talents and star-power that made her one of the main rivals to Gloria Swanson's mantle in the mid-1920s. It's no surprise that her significant cult following shows little signs of diminishing all these years later - hardcore admirers can now even feast on 'Pola Negri' chocolates, produced by a small company in her native Poland... all seen at Broadway cinema, Nottingham (UK) 7th April - public shows [with thanks to Jay Weissberg, Laraine Porter and Louise Butler] * other alternative titles for The Woman He Scorned include The Street of Abandoned Children; The Street of Lost Souls, and Traquee (= "Tracked down" / "Hounded") ........................................... for reviews of other "archive" films click here -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- seen in April THE ASSASSINATION OF RICHARD NIXON : [6/10] : USA (US/Mex) 2004 : Niels MUELLER : 95 mins seen at Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 11th April - public show "Inspired by" a true story of how a failed office-furniture salesman plotted to kill President Nixon in 1974, this unwieldily-titled drama went down only so-so at Cannes, and it's not too hard to see why. It's an intermittently diverting cross between Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, with Sean Penn as charmless putz Sam Bicke (did the name partly inspire Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader?), whose failure to live the American Dream produces unexpectedly violent, headline-making consequences. Basically this is yet another entry into American cinema's sub-genre 'Portrait of a Louse', with Penn given ample room to flex his Acting Muscles. But while there seems to be a conspiracy to persuade the public that Penn is now a Great American Actor, Assassination provides further ammo for those who suspect he's turning into a pompous, humourless ham in the Rod Steiger / George C Scott mode - capable of greatness, to be sure, but far too often weighed down by his ego and gravitas. There's a terrific sequence here where he's acted off the screen by Michael Wincott - who gets one scene and one scene only as Bicke's sombre older brother but manages to deliver one of the most astonishing performances in recent American cinema. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FULL SEPARATE REVIEWS OF ALL THE ABOVE FILMS WILL BE POSTED ON THIS SITE DURING THE FIRST COUPLE OF WEEKS OF MAY (HONEST) ALSO COMING SOON: EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE OF THE SECOND 'CROSSING EUROPE' FILM FESTIVAL AT LINZ IN AUSTRIA... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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