| seen 2-8 Sep: Animal Crackers [4/10]; Red Desert [5]; Breach [6]; Atonement [7]; Death Sentence [6] |
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| Sunday, 02 September 2007 | |
 ANIMAL CRACKERS : [4/10] : US 30 : Victor HEERMAN : 93 mins (timed) seen at Side cinema, Newcastle : 2nd September : semi-public show (gratis*) - DVD projection The Marx Brothers' second movie and, despite the occasional chuckle here and there, it's decidedly not one of their better efforts. The brothers themselves aren't on screen enough - far too much time is spent on lumberingly creaky subplots and superfluous musical numbers - and even when Groucho and company are around, none of them seems on anything like resembling top form. Barely "opened out" from the play which proved such a Broadway hit, the thin story involves an elaborate house party at a fancy New York mansion thrown by society matron Mrs Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont.) Star guest is famed "explorer" Captain Spaulding (Groucho), who's supposedly just returned from a hazardous trip to Africa - but whose spotless attire suggests he isn't the reckless daredevil his reputation would suggest... After making an enjoyably spectacular - and silly - entrance (his rendition of the song 'Hello, I Must Be Going' represents the film's highlight), Groucho struggles gamely to keep things watchable. But he's notably ill-served by the combination of the so-so screenplay and the uninspired direction by Victor Heerman - the picture keeps grinding to an awkward halt. Heerman (also responsible for the Marx's big-screen debut, 1929's The Cocoanuts) seems equally uncomfortable with both comedy and talkies - so it's just as well that he retired from directing after cranking out a quartet pictures in 1930. He "handed over" the Marxes to Normal Z MacLeod - whose 1931 Monkey Business would prove a much more satisfactory showcase for their trademark craziness 6/9.9.07 THE RED DESERT : [5/10] : Il deserto rosso aka Le desert rouge : Ity (It/Fr) 64 : Michelangelo ANTONIONI : 116 mins (timed) seen at The Tyneside Cinema - Gateshead : 2nd September : public show : £5.50 An austere example of mid-sixties art-cinema, The Red Desert won the top prize at 1964's Venice Film Festival - ahead of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Gospel According to St Matthew. PPP, as the saying goes, "wuz robbed": Antonioni's picture, small beer in comparison to his later Blow Up and The Passenger, hasn't dated very well - often very striking to look at, but awkward to listen to and decidedly muddy to ponder. The director was making a belated transition to colour, and seems to have devoted most of his energies to the visuals: in collaboration with cinematographer Carlo Di Palma, he makes strong use of various industrial locales in and around Ravenna, many of them wreathed in noxious fumes. This is a suitably oppressive setting for a slow-burningly measured tale of mental instability, infidelity and general anomie, focussing on unhappily-married Monica Vitti (who copes very well with a rather underwritten role) and her affair with itinerant engineer Richard Harris (crudely dubbed into Italian and looking acutely uncomfortable throughout). Following the vagaries of this relationship proves to be a classic case of much work for little reward, though the grim vistas across which the pair moves provide welcome, if unlikely, distraction. Antonioni, who co-wrote the script with Tonino Guerra, seems to be moving away from considerations of plotting and pacing before our eyes, as though he wanted to break free of narrative altogether - but, perhaps motivated by the financial exigencies of his time, couldn't quite bring himself to completely let go. 6/9.9.07 BREACH : [6/10] : US 07 (copyright-dated 2006) : Billy RAY : 111 mins (BBFC) seen at Empire cinema, Sunderland : 4th September : public show : £4.50 Encouraging that there's still room for an old-fashioned picture like Breach at our multiplexes: one concerned with dialogue and character; eschewing gratuitous pyrotechnics; unashamedly aimed at mature audiences; featuring a cast (Chris Cooper, Ryan Philippe, Laura Linney) free of "marquee" names. A pity, then, that the movie itself - a slight comedown after Ray's fine debut Shattered Glass (which also pivoted on the relationship between a boss and his youthful subordinate, and explored issues of trust and deception) doesn't quite live up to its admirable and lofty aspirations. Though based on the true story of how a respected FBI bigwig (Cooper) was unmasked as a long-serving spy for Soviet/Russian interest, many aspects of the dramatisation feel ersatz and/or over-familiar from previous suspense pictures. Plausibility is stretched at several key junctures - crucially the ones relating to how this supposedly hyper-intelligent individual was finally nailed thanks to the machinations of a twenty-something greenhorn (Philippe). In addition, many questions - principally relating to the spy's motivation, his hardline religion, and what's coyly referred to as his "sexual deviance" (the latter including a not-exactly-deviant passion for Catherine Zeta-Jones) - are left frustratingly unanswered. Just as well, then, that Cooper is on hypnotically absorbing form - and that Philippe manages, just about, to keep pace with his veteran co-star. Another big plus is Linney as Philippe's exasperated boss: it isn't much of a role, but does at least give the dependable actress the chance to deliver yet another of her trademark, spectacularly scary tellings-off. 6/9.9.07 ATONEMENT : [7/10] : UK 07 : Joe WRIGHT : 123 mins (BBFC) seen at Regent cinema, Redcar : 4th September : regional premiere If director Wright's overhyped debut Pride and Prejudice could nab four Oscar nominations, Atonement (that film's superior in pretty much every regard) will surely prove an even bigger hit with the Academy. So long, that is, as that organisation's stuffier members don't take exception to some startlingly "frank" sexuality and language - including the fact that the first act pivots on the still-shocking C-word. This aspect of the picture has been (for obvious reasons) underplayed in the picture's advance promotion, which sells it as a classily tearjerking wartime romance in the venerable Waterloo Bridge tradition. Atonement does include such elements - the main "story" (in a structure of interlocking stories and storytellers) is the on-off, across-the-class-divide relationship between Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), the former a languid daughter of privilege, the latter the housekeeper's bookish son who was put through Oxford by Cecilia's father. But there's rather more going on besides, as we discover during a surprisingly leisurely-paced opening section, set in the Tallis's mansion in the summer of 1935. Key players include: Cecilia's sweet, precociously inquisitive 13-year-old sister Briony (startling newcomer Saoirse Ronan), a budding playwright/novelist; her flirtatious cousin Lola (Juno Temple); millionaire chocolate-manufacturer Marshall (Benedict Cumberbatch). Temple and Cumberbatch are exceptional in their limited screen-time (ditto Daniel Mays later on), but they're very much background figures: the focus is on Briony, whose inquisitiveness, and some developments which stray worryingly close to melodrama, lead to extravagantly dire consequences for hapless Robbie. Four years later we find him in occupied northern France, achingly desperate to return to Britain - and the bony embrace of his beloved, who's working as a nurse in blitz-strafed London. Briony (now played by Romola Garai) is similarly employed, seeing her service as a way of partially making up for her youthful misdeed... A little bit Cold Mountain (Anthony Minghella awkwardly cameos) a little bit French Lieutenant's Woman and - more unexpectedly - a little bit Caché (in its exploration of the crushingly burden of childhood "sin"), Atonement is an odd but ultimately beguiling mix of the old and the new, the latter via a certain post-modern tricksiness in Christopher Hampton's screenplay (adapting Ian McEwan's novel). Wright, meanwhile, adds welcome tweaks to what initially seems initially like a familiarly conventional directorial approach - including a score (by Dario Marianelli) which makes ample use of typewriter sounds - and delivers an audacious (if somewhat self-conscious) protracted tracking-shot around the crowded, Boschean/Brueghelish beach of a pre-evacuation Dunkirk. But what really matters is the emotion of the story - and on this front, Atonement finally does manage to deliver the goods via a highly effective double ending. Like much of what's gone before, this climax runs the risk of clever-cleverness - for reasons which it wouldn't be fair to explain here. It is, in effect a lengthy monologue - but since said monologue is delivered by no less an eminence than Vanessa Redgrave, it shouldn't be a surprise that it possesses such piercingly bittersweet resonance. 6/9.9.07 DEATH SENTENCE : [6/10] : US 07 : James WAN : 105m (BBFC) seen at Cineworld cinema, Bradford : 6th September : public (£5.40) Perhaps it's a delayed reaction to 9/11; perhaps it's a consequence of David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, but bloody revenge - and its psychological impact - has suddenly (re-)entered Hollywood's zeitgeist. Coming soon, Jodie Foster on a kill-crazy rampage in Neil Jordan's The Brave One - set on the same NYC streets supposedly "cleaned up" by Charles Bronson back in 1974's Death Wish. First up: Kevin Bacon turning all angel-of-vengeance in Death Sentence - very loosely based on the 1975 novel which Brian Garfield wrote as a semi-sequel to his own Death Wish book. Bacon is conscientious, risk-averse, fortysomething loss-adjuster Nick Hume whose (unlikely) journey to remorseless killer begins when he sees his beloved teenage son Brendan (Stuart Lafferty) murdered by a youth-gang from the wrong side of the tracks - an outfit led by tattooed, shaven-headed no-good-nik Billy Darley (Troy pretty-boy Garrett Hedlund, now somewhat overdoing the methody macho swagger). Let down by the "justice" system, Nick opts for tit-for-tat retribution - which soon spirals into all-out "war" with dire consequences for both sides. Fundamentally reactionary stuff, of course, and unashamedly manipulative. But Ian Jeffers' economic script does at least make it eminently clear that violent vigilantism of this type carries with it an enormous price: emotional, professional, personal, mental, social. Director Wan (of Saw fame) seems much more interested in delivering graphic bloodshed than exploring tricky moral ambiguities, however, even if he does endow this essentially grim and disreputable affair with a near-irresistible degree of blunderbuss force. 6/9.9.07  Neil YoungNB 1. all films seen in the UK - and all timings approximate - unless stated otherwise 2. timings, including those taken from the BBFC website are rounded to the nearest minute (i.e. 100min 29sec = 100min, but 100min 30sec = 101min) 3. an asterisk [*] in the rating indicates that film is not a feature (i.e. 0-39m = short; 40m-63m = medium-length; 64m+ = feature) * Animal Crackers replaced Duck Soup, which was cancelled at the last minute. Explaining that me and my pal had traipsed through from Sunderland expressly to see Duck Soup (only half a lie, as we'd also planned to catch The Red Desert nearby straight after) the "cinema" management (actually Side Cafe) put Animal Crackers on instead and didn't charge us.
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